I PROPOSE that all disputes over class and values be settled from now on by reference to survival statistics from the ship's roster of the Titanic. Via Andrew Sullivan , I see that Mark Steyn , in typical Götterdämmerung mode, opined the other day that the undignified scramble to leave the sinking Costa Concordia exemplifies the deterioration of Western values since that noble night to remember in 1912 when men of all classes and stations chivalrously ushered women and children first into the lifeboats and went unflinchingly to their watery graves. "[T]he social norm of 'women and children first' held up under pressure and across all classes. Today there is no social norm, so it's every man for himself—operative word 'man,' although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as 'men.'"

The "held up under pressure and across all classes" claim promptly slams headlong into Commonweal's Eduardo Peñalver, who rips a hole in its side and sends it to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Let's complicate Steyn's observations with some actual facts about survival rates. On the Titanic, these varied dramatically by social class, even among women and children. Less than half of the third class women (46% saved) and children (34% saved) survived, compared to 100% of the first and second class children, and 97% and 86% of the first and second class women, respectively. Second, Steyn says that the women and children first ethic “held up under pressure and across all classes.” In fact, despite the large number of third class women and children who went down with the ship, a significant number of first class men declined the opportunity to “finish in style” and opted to save themselves instead. Interestingly, adherence to the norm of women and children first seems to have been most completely internalized by the men in second class, just 8% of whom made it into lifeboats, compared to 33% of the captains of industry in first class.

Mr Peñalver draws on one of those fantastic hobbyist independent-research sites that are the true glories of the internet: John Henderson's "Demographics of the TITANIC Passengers: Deaths, Survivals, and Lifeboat Occupancy". Mr Henderson finds, as Mr Peñalver says, that fully 33% of the male passengers in first class survived the disaster, while just 8% of those in second class did. A lifeboat-by-lifeboat breakdown tells a tale of chaos, in which for the first half hour no rules, moral or otherwise, seem to have held sway. The first six boats to launch included only first-class passengers and crew; many launched more than half empty. In the first boat to launch "over half the occupants were men—several of whom were not even traveling with their wives or families." It was not until the fifth boat launched, 25 minutes into the evacuation, that the "women and children first" rule began to be strictly observed, and not until 45 minutes had elapsed in the evacuation, with the seventh or eighth lifeboat, that second- and third-class passengers began to find their way on board the lifeboats. The overall survival rate for first-class passengers was 63%. In third class, it was 25%.

If we're going to draw broad sociological conclusions from the Titanic disaster, the ones James Cameron drew actually seem pretty apt. The reason this comes up, of course, is that we're involved in a national conversation about the relationship between our society's first-class passengers and its second- and third-class ones. In many ways, the Titanic is a bad metaphor to use in this conversation, because unlike the economy, it's a zero-sum system. There are only so many lifeboat places available. But while not all aspects of our economy are zero-sum, some of them are; and, on balance, people who have fought their way to the top of the heap are likely to be the sort of people who are good at maximising their share of limited resources. Mr Steyn calls Mr Cameron's movie, with its scathing melodramatic portrayal of upper-class greed and cowardice, "mendacious"; he thinks the evacuation of the Titanic was "orderly, dignified, and moving". But the numbers bear out Mr Cameron's version.

(Painting credit: Henry Reuterdahl)