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Production was subjected to systematic regulation with the object of securing the goodness and the cheapness of the exported articles, and so maintaining the place of the nation in foreign markets. The industrial control was exercised, in part directly by the state, but largely through privileged corporations. High duties. on imports were resorted to in the interests of national production. Commercial treaties aimed at excluding the competition of other nations in foreign markets and the exclusion of foreign goods, other than raw materials, from the domestic market. The colonies were prohibited from trading with European nations other than the parent country. The mercantile doctrine was essentially the theoretical counterpart of the practical activities of the times. Governments were led to it by the force of outward circumstance.

We must pronounce the universal enthusiasm of this period to have been essentially just, as leading the nations into the main avenues of general social development. The organization of agriculture could not at that time make any marked progress, for it was still in the hands of the feudal class. The industry of the towns had to precede that of the country. And it is plain that in the life. of the manufacturing proletariat a systematic discipline could first be applied, to be afterwards extended to the rural populations. Technical skill must have been promoted by the encouragement of industry and commerce. New forms of national production were fostered by attracting workingmen from other countries, and by lightening the burden of taxation on struggling industries. Communication and transport were rapidly improved with a view to facilitate traffic. And, not the least important, the social dignity of the industrial professions was enhanced.

II

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Our historical sketch requires for its completion a study of that later aspect of social development which we so often and so strangely call the "Industrial Revolution." This movement has done far more than shower upon us a series of "great inventions" or bless mankind with a new technique. Appearing gradually and working indirectly, as well as directly, it has affected our whole world of thought, of action, and of institutions; it has modified our economics, our politics, our ethics, and even our religion; it has changed in nature, number, and form our baffling problems; it has written itself large in our culture. In view of its many-sidedness and the gradual way in which it has effected and is still effecting its changes, it seems amiss either to call it "industrial" or to refer to it as a "revolution."

We look in vain for its beginnings. We know that early mediaevalism could have given us nothing which, even erroneously, could be called an "industrial revolution." Before it could appear the mediaeval scheme of values had to be transformed. Desires for earthly things had to be freed from their unethical taint; a wholesome respect for the world had to be built up; man had to acquire greater reverence for his own powers and functions; people had to learn to conform to the things of this world if they would transform it. This change in the attitude toward life and its problems was intimately associated with several other lines of development. There appeared a new interest in nature as nature, a new philosophy, a new mathematics, and a new physics. These laid the foundation of the new technique. Many discoveries of new lands were made, adding tremendous resources calling for utilization. There was brought to Europe gold alike serviceable for the furtherance of the new money economy and the more rapid accumulation of capital. Colonial ventures led to an extension of the market and a great increase in the size of the industrial unit. This necessitated a reorganization of the "factory" and a more extensive use of the principle of the division of labor. The last produced a minute specialization which both served to create an incentive for the invention of new machines and furnished an opportunity for their use. Together with accumulated capital and the necessary scientific knowledge this new organization led to the new technique. Even this is not the whole story; for in England the movement was hastened by conditions peculiar to the country. The indented coastline, by cheapening transportation and enlarging the market, must have been a factor of prominence. It has been suggested, too, that an institution, seemingly as extraneous as primogeniture, played its part by forcing into mercantile pursuits those whose veins contained the adventurous blood of nobility.

The course of the "revolution" has been as comprehensive as its antecedents. The changes in technique are most clearly appreciated. Even here the tendency toward a "machine-process" embracing a large part of the industrial system is generally overlooked, as is also the seemingly antagonistic fact that up to the present the conquest of the older system by the machine has been partial and incomplete. On the economic side, the increasing importance of capital, the rise of the "factory system," the disappearance of "domestic industry," the trend toward large-scale production, the separation of the laborer from the "tools of his trade," and increasing class differentiation based upon differences in industrial functions are most clearly seen. These aspects of the movement raise the questions of artificially controlling the tendencies inherent in the development of the machine-system, the deter

mination of the size of the industrial entity, the social control of large aggregates of wealth such as railroads and capitalistic monopolies, the elimination of economic insecurity which alike attends labor and capital, the equities of the distribution of wealth, and the urban enigmas of overcrowding, housing, sanitation, vice, and poverty. They reveal, too, just over the horizon the more ominous questions of property, inheritance, and the reconstruction of industrial society.

The questions reveal but a single aspect of the influences of the Industrial Revolution. Political, ethical, religious, and social questions have all been involved in the general transformation of life and values. In many cases they are inseparably connected with economic problems. For instance, when the machine took over the work of the home, the latter became a new institution. One writer insists that the home, and woman as well for all that, has not yet adapted herself to the new society. We all complain that the "machine-process" has entered our colleges, and that college instruction is being "standardized" and college graduates "tagged." We all, at least occasionally, complain of the inability of law and religion alike to adjust themselves to Modern Industrialism. And our friends in ethics tell us that the newer industrial life is effecting startling changes in our standards of social and individual ethics.

And are we sure that we have reached the end of the "revolution"? Most likely we are in a second stage of the process where problems are vastly different from those met in the first stage which occupied the larger part of the nineteenth century. Perhaps there will be a third stage unlike the second. Clearly the end of the new technology is not as yet. The technique first introduced has not as yet produced its full complement of social results. Quite as important, the new technique is being rapidly extended over a wider and wider area, constantly affecting the fortunes of people less and less adapted to it. Its extension preserves a frontier where machine-culture is constantly pushing back a civilization founded on a less complex technique. The reaction upon our system is fraught with grave consequences.

A. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION

20.

The Characteristics of the English People1

BY ALFRED MARSHALL

England's geographical position caused her to be peopled by the strongest members of the strongest races of northern Europe; a process of natural selection brought to her shores those members of each successive migratory wave who were most daring and selfreliant. Her climate is better adapted to sustain energy than any other in the northern hemisphere. She is divided by no high hills, and no part of her territory is more than twenty miles from navigable water. The strength and wise policy of the early kings prevented artificial barriers from being raised by local magnates.

The custom of primogeniture inclined the younger sons of noble families to seek their own fortunes; and having no special caste privileges they mixed readily with the common people. The fusion of different ranks tended to make politics business-like; while it 'Adapted from Principles of Economics, 4th ed., 32-35 (1895).

warmed the veins of business adventure with the generous daring and romantic aspirations of noble blood. Resolute in resistance to tyranny, they have submitted to authority justified by reason. They have known how to combine order and freedom. They alone have united a thorough reverence of the past with a power of living for the future.

The English yeoman archer was the forerunner of the English artisan. He had the same pride in the superiority of his food and his physique over those of his continental rivals; he had the same indomitable perseverance in acquiring perfect control over the use of his hands, the same independence and the same power of selfcontrol and of rising to emergencies.

But the industrial facilities of the Englishmen remained latent for a long time. They had not inherited much acquaintance with nor much care for the comforts and luxuries of civilization. In manufactures they lagged behind the rest of Europe. For a long time there was no sign on the surface of future commerce. They had not originally, and they have not now, the special liking for dealing and bargaining, nor for the more abstract side of financial business which is found among Jews, Italians, and Greeks. Trade with them has always taken the form of action rather than manouvering and speculative combination. Even now the subtlest speculation on the London Stock Exchange is done by those races which have inherited the same aptitude for trading that the English have for action. The latter characteristic has impelled the English into production, into discovery, invention, business organization, and into navigation. Their commercial activities are a result of peculiar conditions and a development of these latter activities.

21. English Industry on the Eve of the Revolution"

BY ARNOLD TOYNBEE

I must ask you to transport yourselves in imagination to England as it was a century and a quarter ago. Then the farms were small and the method of cultivation primitive. The old system of common cultivation was still to be seen at work in a large number of parishes in the Midland counties. Rotation of crops was only imperfectly understood; the practice of growing winter roots and artificial grasses was only slowly spreading. "As for the sheep,” said an old Norfolk shepherd, speaking of a still more recent period,

Adapted from "Industry and Democracy," in Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, 179-188 (1881).

"they hadn't such food provided for them as they have now. In winter there was little to eat except what God Almighty sent for them, and when the snow was deep on the ground they ate the ling or died off." The cotton industry, which now supports more than half a million of persons, was then oppressed by Parliament as a possible rival to older industries, and was too insignificant to be mentioned more than once, and then incidentally, by Adam Smith. The iron industry, with which the material greatness of England has during the present century been so conspicuously associated, was gradually dying out. Much of the ore was still smelted by charcoal in small furnaces blown by leather bellows worked by oxen. Not cotton and iron, but wool was considered, in those days, the great pillar of national prosperity. There were few people who doubted but that the ruin of England would follow the decay of this cherished industry. It was only philosophers like Bishop Berkeley, who, going very deep into matters, ventured to ask whether other countries had not flourished without the woolen trade.

To show you the external conditions of industrial life in the middle of the last century, I cannot, I think, do better than give a short description of the way in which wool was manufactured in the neighbourhood of Leeds. The business was in the hands of small master-manufacturers who lived, not in the town, but in homesteads in the fields, and rented little pasture-farms. Every master worked with his own hands, and nearly all the processes through which the wool was put-the spinning, the weaving, and the dyeing -were carried on in his own house. Few owned more than three or four looms, or employed more than eight or ten people-men, women, and children. This method of carrying on the trade was called the domestic system. "What I mean," said a witness, "by the domestic system is the little clothiers living in villages or detached places, with all their comforts, carrying on business with their own capital; every one must have some capital, more or less, to carry on his trade, and they are in some degree little merchants as well as manufacturers, in Yorkshire." A spinning-wheel was to be found in every cottage and farm-house in the kingdom, a loom in every village.

The mention of this fact brings me to another point in the economic history of this period-the extremely narrow circle in which trade moved. In many districts the farmers and labourers used few things which were not the work of their own hands, or which had not been manufactured a few miles from their homes. The poet Wordsworth's account of the farmers' families in Westmoreland, who grew on their own land the corn with which they were fed,

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