the “Boss,” the union laborer, and the lawyer, have all taken advantage of the loose American political organization to promote somewhat unscrupulously their own interests, and to obtain special sources of power and profit at the expense of a wholesome national balance.  But the foregoing examples of specialized organization and purposes do not stand alone.  They are the most conspicuous and the most troublesome because of the power wielded by those particular classes, and because they can claim for their purposes the support of certain aspects of the American national tradition.  Yet the same process has been taking place in all the other departments of American social and intellectual life.  Technical experts of all kinds—­engineers, men of letters, and artists—­have all of them been asserting much more vigorously their own special interests and purposes.  In so asserting themselves they cannot claim the support of the American national democratic convention.  On the contrary, the proclamation of high technical standards and of insistent individual purposes is equivalent to a revolt from the traditions of the Middle Period, which were all in favor of cheap work and the average worker.  But different as is the situation of these technical experts, the fundamental meaning of their self-assertion is analogous to that of the millionaire and the “Boss.”  The vast incoherent mass of the American people is falling into definite social groups, which restrict and define the mental outlook and social experience of their members.  The all-round man of the innocent Middle Period has become the exception.  The earlier homogeneity of American society has been impaired, and no authoritative and edifying, but conscious, social ideal has as yet taken its place.

The specialized organization of American industry, politics, and labor, and the increasingly severe special discipline imposed upon the individual, are not to be considered as evils.  On the contrary, they are indications of greater practical efficiency, and they contain a promise of individual moral and intellectual emancipation.  But they have their serious and perilous aspects, because no sufficient provision has been made for them in the national democratic tradition.  What it means is that the American nation is being confronted by a problem which the earlier national democracy expected to avoid—­the social problem.  By the social problem is usually meant the problem of poverty; but grave inequalities of wealth are merely the most dangerous and distressing expression of fundamental differences among the members of a society of interest and of intellectual and moral standards.  In its deepest aspect, consequently, the social problem is the problem of preventing such divisions from dissolving the society into which they enter—­of keeping such a highly differentiated society fundamentally sound and whole.