Note 156 — Chapter VIII · Catastrophe and Social Change

There are other causes of conservatism. A comparative freedom from disasters in the past is one. Halifax has suffered few in her entire history. Indeed the cholera epidemic is the only one of any consequence. She remained one of the last large wooden cities. Her sister city, St. John, was stricken by a disastrous fire and stands to-day safer, more substantial, more progressive in every way.

Again communities are generally conservative in character when a large percentage are property-holding people. It was one of the surprises of the Halifax catastrophe that so large a number of citizens were found to own at least in part the homes they lived in.

There are other questions which the sociologist would ask if it were possible to carry the investigation further. Is the community loath to disturb the existing relations or to resort to extreme means to achieve desired ends? Or is it eager to sweep away the old, to indulge in radical experiment and to try any means that give promise of success? He would study too the distribution of people relative to their interests. Is there a majority of those whose experiences are narrow and whose interests are few? Or is there a majority of those who have long enjoyed varied experiences and cultivated manifold interests, that yet remain harmonious? He studies the character of the choices, decisions, selections in a people's industry, law-making, educational and religious undertakings. It is thus that he proceeds in diagnosing a population as to the degree of conservatism and to discover what the ideal community should be.—Giddings, Franklin H., Inductive Sociology (N. Y., 1909), p. 178, et seq.