FOOTNOTE:

[122] Auguste Jorns, _The Quakers as Pioneers in Social Work_, trans. by
Thomas Kite Brown (New York: Macmillan, 1931).

Work for Social Reform

The activity of Quakers in the abolition of slavery both in England and
America, especially the life-long work of John Woolman in the colonies,
is well known. Here too, the first "concerned" Friends attempted to
bring to an end the practice of holding slaves within the Society
itself. When they had succeeded in eliminating it from their own ranks,
they could, with a clear conscience, suggest that their neighbors follow
their example. When the time came, Quakers were willing to take part in
political action to eradicate the evil. The compensated emancipation of
the slaves in the British Empire in 1833 proved that the reform could be
accomplished without the violent repercussions which followed in the
United States.[123]

Horace G. Alexander has pointed out that the person who voluntarily
surrenders privilege, as the American Quakers did in giving up their
slaves, not only serves as a witness to the falsehood of privilege, but
can never rest until reform is achieved.

"The very fact," he says, "that he feels a loyalty to the
oppressors as well as to the oppressed means that he can never rest
until the oppressors have been converted. It is not their
destruction that he wants, but a change in their hearts."[124]

Such an attitude is based upon a faith in the perfectibility of man and
the possibility of the regeneration of society. It leads from a desire
to live one's own life according to high principles to a desire to
establish similar principles in human institutions. It rejects the
thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr that social groups can never live according
to the same moral codes as individuals, and also the belief of such
groups as the Mennonites that, since the "world" is necessarily evil,
the precepts of high religion apply only to those who have accepted the
Christian way of life. Instead, the conviction of those who hold this
ideal that it is social as well as individual in its application leads
them into the pathways of social reform, and even into political
action.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] Henry J. Cadbury, _Colonial Quaker Antecedents to British
Abolition of Slavery_, An address to the Friends' Historical Society,
March 1933 (London: Friends Committee on Slavery and Protection of
Native Races, 1933), reprinted from _The Friends' Qua