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on separate railway management in England is set at £30,000,000 yearly. It is calculated that there are in London two and a half times as many shops as are necessary for convenient and efficient distribution. Business men struggling with one another waste an enormous amount of wealth, and capitalists and workmen fighting each other waste a great deal in addition. For example, in 1897-98, 25,636,001 working days were lost in England through labour disputes arising out of the inevitable antagonism existing in the modern industrial system. To quote Professor Ely again: "The losses in a single year of industrial crises, and consequent industrial stagnation, amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and involve untold misery to millions of human beings. Capital is idle; labour is unemployed; production of wealth ceases; want and even starvation come to thousands; separations, divorces, and prostitution increase in alarming proportions and all this happens because the machinery of the industrial system has been thrown out of gear by the operation of some force or another, which, so far as we can judge by experience, is an essential part of the order of competition."

On page 104, I say: "The charge of inefficiency, weakness, and crudity need not be based upon sentiment about rich and poor, or class jealousy." At the same time, I do not doubt that the reorganisation of industrial society upon a democratic basis will be brought about by a political and social movement depending for its numerical strength upon the working classes. CHARLES BEARD.

MANCHESTER, January 22, 1902.

The Industrial Revolution

1928

158

CHAPTER I

ENGLAND IN 1760-AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, POLITICS

Sec. 1.-Definition. Owing to the unity of all history, we are compelled to define arbitrarily and set limits when any special field is undertaken. Industrial History is the story of man's labour with tools and mechanical and power appliances for the satisfaction of his wants. By the Industrial Revolution we mean that great transformation which has been brought about during the past one hundred and fifty years, by discoveries and inventions which have altered fundamentally all the methods of production and distribution of the means of life, and consequently revolutionised all the economic functions of society. Man, who through the long centuries had toiled with his hands, aided by crude implements, to wrest a pitiful subsistence from Nature, suddenly discovered that the blind forces against which he had been struggling could be chained to do his work. Through the countless ages, humanity had been the helpless prey of the vulture elements-consumed by fire, drowned by flood, struck down by

lightning, frozen in the winter storms, eliminated by pestilence and famine. Man's first action was then defensive. He sharpened a bit of wood, polished a flint, kindled a flame-Industrial History was begun. The thousands of years which separate the eighteenth century from primeval dawn did not produce, however, as many mechanical and scientific triumphs as have been brought forth in the last century and a half.

Sec. 2.-Mechanical and Social Phases. The Industrial Revolution has two phases: one material, the other social; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men. A man's work and the conditions under which it is performed are tremendous factors in determining his character. Though the Industrial Revolution opened the way for the production of the means of life without the consumption of all human energy, man, startled and stunned by the sudden changes in the methods of working and living, was unable to organise his life so that all might share in the benefits of the new inventions. The Industrial Revolution, with its factory system, and its increased facilities for intercourse, wrought wonderful changes in the social organism. It brought with it long hours, overwork, over-crowding, and other evils. It called into existence suddenly the factory towns, with their want of corporate life, their vile sanitary conditions, and filthy hovels. Men were forced rapidly into new relations, in which the old formulæ, maxims, and moralisings became useless and void. The old economic order and basis of life were swept away, and in the confusion-" the wreck of matter and crush of worlds"-it seemed as if man had become utterly powerless to adjust himself to the new conditions, to conquer and control them as he had

the forces of Nature. For a while after this industrial convulsion, and the demolition of the old order, man seemed paralysed.. Economists, moral teachers, and social leaders groped in darkness amid confusion. Man had become a machine-a producer of things, a commodity to be bought and sold. His character, his powers of love and joy and admiration, his desire for freedom from misery, pain, and wretchedness, were made secondary to the production of marketable commodities. However, the bitter wrongs which called forth the scathing denunciations of Carlyle, Kingsley, and Ruskin were the result not only of the new mechanical developments, but also of the want of a reorganisation of society upon the basis of the new achievements. This process of reconstruction is now going on, and corporate society is the hope of the future. From the standpoint of achievement of human brain and hand, the mechanical revolution possesses a lasting and constantly increasing fascination; but being inseparably interwoven with the life and labour of the people, it has an interest as deep and abiding as the problems of human health, happiness, character, and power.

Sec. 3.-England in 1760. To realise the magnitude of the change wrought in industry, politics, and social organisation, we must turn to England of 1760, and examine the old order. What a strange panorama unrolls before our eyes! We see not the England of to-day, but a quiet, rural England yet unawakened by the roar of traffic and industry. At the middle of the eighteenth century man produced the necessaries of life-food, clothing, and the like-by the labour of his hands, almost unaided by machinery. The flail, the

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