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increased 3,000,000 acres since 1846, but the area under crops has fallen from 21,900,000 to 20,500,000 acres. This has come about because England has devoted her attention to manufacture, and not because the soil has been exhausted or its productiveness has reached its limits. In Europe, the population has increased 44 per cent. since 1840, while the output of food stuffs, grain and meat, has increased 57 per cent.; and yet Nordau tells us that "if the soil of Europe were tilled and managed like that of China, it would support one thousand millions of human beings instead of its three hundred and sixteen millions, who are so poorly fed that they are emigrating annually by the hundreds of thousands to other parts of the world." The reaction against the factory craze has already set in, but, as Gibbins points out, high rents stand in the way not only of intensive farming, but also of increasing the number of acres under crops. We may do well to remember these pungent words from the "Conventional Lies of Civilisation": "The European factory operative is even now the slave of the negro on the Congo. He stills his hunger with vile whisky, spends his life in the factories, and dies of tuberculosis, so that some barbarian may lead a more comfortable existence than has heretofore been the case. This feverish labour, which is not applied to the production of food but to industrial over-production, will finally produce a nation of hungry moneybags. The world may then behold the spectacle of a country where a piano of the very latest make stands in every cottage, the people rustling in bran-new clothing, but with disease in their bones, no blood in their veins, and consumption in their lungs."

CHAPTER III

THE BREAKING UP OF THE OLD ORDER

Sec. 1.-The Factory System. We have examined the conditions which existed in England at the middle of the eighteenth century, and made a brief survey of the mechanical inventions which revolutionised the methods of production and distribution. We may now turn to the changes brought about in the industrial organisation and in economic theories by the sudden alteration of the economic basis of life. In the old order described in the first chapter the workshops were the homes of the people. Weaving and spinning were not done by workers under capitalistic masters, but by members of the family of the workman or a few employés. The workers for the most part owned their own machinery, and handled the raw materials and the manufactured products for themselves. Even where several men worked under one master, there was no complete separation as we see in modern life. "The manufacturer employed a group of journeymen and a few apprentices, the number of the latter being apportioned by law to the number of the former. In this way the proportion of workers in each trade was balanced according to the relative growth of each; and as there were no sudden displacements of labour by the introduction of machinery, as years went on the old habits and methods of life 45

were preserved, while the relation between employer and employed, commencing under an indentured apprenticeship, usually for seven years, and continuing under a system of journeymanship, became a kind of family relation. As a rule, with personal knowledge there was personal respect, though not without those occasional disagreements which opposing interests will sometimes beget, however carefully they may be regulated." But the hand workers could not compete with the new and tireless machines. Home and small industries gave place to the Factory System, under which the output was enormously increased, not only by reason of the machines, but also because of the division of labour and the consequent augmentation of the skill of the labourer. Instead of the hand worker turning out a finished product, came the organised army of workers, each filling a particular niche by performing one of the processes in the production of a commodity. To quote Hobson: "The typical unit of production is no longer a single family, or a small group of persons working with a few cheap, simple tools upon small quantities of material, but a compact and closely organised mass of labour, composed of hundreds or thousands of individuals co-operating with large quantities of expensive and intricate machinery through which passes a continuous and mighty volume of raw material on its way to the consuming public." At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the men who owned the new machines had the advantage, and they made full use of it, for they were unhindered by factory legislation and unrestricted by public opinion. This collecting of vast armies of labourers under the dominion of one capitalist broke off the old relations of master

and man, and society gradually divided into two classes, the employers and the employed, bound together only by the "cash nexus." The ever-widening markets increased the demand for vast capital, and its relative importance consequently outgrew that of labour. Capital was necessary to buy machinery, erect factories, and initiate industries. Against the factory system, with its requirements and advantages, the hand workers could not compete, and they were compelled to give up their home industries and enter the ranks of the employed or unemployed as opportunity offered. “The new machinery soon threw out of employment a number of those who worked by hand; it enabled women and children to do the work of grown men; it made all classes of workers dependent upon capitalist employers; it introduced an era of hitherto unheard-of competition." The factory system saved labour, but the labourer did not profit much by the saving. However, the new order has apparently come to stay, notwithstanding the rhapsodies of some of our reforming poets, who sing of the picturesque days of the hand wheel and loom. The ills which have stung the poets to the quick have come, not from the use of machinery, but from its abuse.

Sec. 2.-The Rise of Capitalism. The new order was also marked by the rise of capitalism, which brought with it the destruction of the old mediæval policy of trade restriction and regulation, and ushered in an age of unrestrained individualism in industry. It would be well to define here what is meant by capital. Without considering the fine metaphysical distinctions drawn by the classic political economists in their attempted definitions of capital, we may accept for our use the conclusion of Hobson that the actual concrete forms

of capital are the raw materials of production, includ ing the finished stage of shop goods, and the plant and implements used in the several processes of industry, including the monetary implements of exchange. By the rise of capitalism, then, we mean the gradual concentration in the hands of individuals or corporations of money, plant, implements, raw and finished materials necessary to the production of commodities.

Before the Industrial Revolution the communities were more self-sufficing, and competition among the home workers was very limited. Vast fortunes accumulated from manufacturing industries were unknown, and there was little demand for capital before the rise of the factory system. In the old domestic system little machinery was required, but the factory system altered the situation. Capital became relatively more important than labour. Machinery, vast quantities of raw materials, and funds to meet large running expenses were necessary to meet the demands of competition in the new industrial system. Before the Industrial Revolution wealth had been accumulated by gains from agriculture, commerce, and from the crude industries then in existence. By amassing some wealth in the old industries and by taking advantage of the new machines, men were enabled to lay the foundations of immense fortunes, and thus to acquire almost unlimited power over the lives of others. The hand worker without capital could not compete with organised mechanical industry, and consequently he was forced to become entirely dependent upon his employer who, taking advantage of the lawlessness of the time, pushed wages toward the lowest point of subsistence. Says Gibbins: "It is a sad but significant fact that, although the total wealth of the nation vastly increased at the

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