But the declaration of Parliament at the accession of William and Mary, which subsequently was enacted as a famous Bill of Rights, showed a great permanent gain in constitutional liberty. It centred the power in Parliament, whose authority was in the Commons. It was true the arbitrary power of kings came to the front during the rule of the four Georges, but it was without avail, and reform measures followed their reign. Constitutional government had won. It is true that the revolution failed to establish religious toleration, but it led the way with rapid strides.

In the progress of civil liberty and freedom of conscience in {398} England, the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a powerful influence. In the world of ideas, freedom of thought found expression through the great writers. While few attacked the evils of government, they were not wanting in setting forth high ideals of life, liberty, and justice. Such men as John Milton, John Locke, John Bunyan, and Shakespeare turned the thinking world toward better things in government and life.

Thus England had a check on the growth of monarchy, while freedom of investigation led to an inquiry about the rights of the people; hence, the seeds of popular liberty were growing at the time monarchy was making its greatest assumption. The people never yielded, in theory at least, their ancient rights to the absolute control of royalty. Kingship in England was developed through service, and while the English were strong for monarchy because it expressed a unity of the nation, they expected the king to consider the rights of the people, which gave rise to a complex movement in England, making for religious and political liberty, in which all classes were engaged in some degree at different times.

In France, however, it was different. At first the feudal nobility ruled with absolute sway. It continued in power long enough to direct the thoughts of the people toward it and to establish itself as a complete system. It had little opposition in the height of its power. When monarchy arose it, too, had the field all to itself. People recognized this as the only legitimate form of government. Again, when monarchy failed, people rushed enthusiastically to democracy, and in their wild enthusiasm made of it a government of terror. How different were the results. In England there was a slow evolution of constitutional government in which the rights of the people, the king, the nobility, and the clergy were respected, and each class fell into its proper place in the government. In France, each separate power made its attempt to govern, and failed. Its history points to a truth, namely, that no kind of government is safe without a system of checks.

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The Place of France in Modern Civilization.—Guizot tries to show that in the seventeenth century France led the civilization of the world; that while Louis XIV was carrying absolute government to its greatest height, philosophy, art, and letters flourished; that France, by furnishing unique and completed systems, has led the European world in civilization. To a great extent this is true, for France had better opportunities to develop an advanced civilization than any other European nation. It must be remembered that France, at an early period, was completely Romanized, and never lost the force and example of the Roman civilization; and, also, that in the invasion of the Norman, the northern spirit gave France vigor, while its crude forms were overcome by the more cultured forms of French life.

While other nations were still in turmoil France developed a distinct and separate nationality. At an early period she cast off the power of Rome and maintained a separate ecclesiastical system which tended to develop an independent spirit and further increase nationality. Her population was far greater than that of any other nation, and her wealth and national resources were vastly superior to those of others. These elements gave France great prestige and great power, and fitted her to lead in civil progress. They permitted her to develop a high state of civilization. If the genius of the French people gave them adaptability in communicating their culture to others, it certainly was of service to Europe. Yet the service of France must not be too highly estimated. If, working in the dark, other nations, not so far advanced as France on account of material causes, were laying a foundation of the elements of civilization, which were to be of vast importance in the development of the race, it would appear that as great credit should be given them as to the French manners, genius, and culture which gave so little permanent benefit to the world. Guizot wisely refrains from elaborating the vices of the French monarchy, and fails to point out the failure of the French system of government.

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The Divine Right of Kings.—From the advent of the Capetian dynasty of French kings royalty continually increased its power until it culminated under Louis XIV. The court, the clergy, and, in fact, the greater number of the preachers of France, advocated the divine origin and right of kings. If God be above all and over all, his temporal rulers as well as his spiritual rulers receive their power from him; hence the king receives his right to rule from God. Who, then, has the right to oppose the king? Upon this theory the court preachers adored him and in some instances deified him. People sought to touch the hem of his garment, or receive from his divine majesty even a touch of the hand, that they might be healed of their infirmities. In literature Louis was praised and deified. The "Grand Monarch" was lauded and worshipped by the courtiers and nobles who circled around him. He maintained an extravagant court and an elaborate etiquette, so extravagant that it depleted the rural districts of money, and drew the most powerful families to revolve around the king.

The extravagant life paralyzed the energies of kings and ministers, who built a government for the advantage of the governing and not the governed. "I am the state!" said the Grand Monarch. Although showing in many ways an enlightened absolutism, his rule plunged French royalty into despotism. Louis XV held strongly to absolutism, but lacked the power to render it attractive and magnificent. Louis XVI attempted to stem the rising tide, but it was too late. The evils were too deeply seated; they could not be changed by any temporary expedient. French royalty reached a logical outcome from all power to no power. Louis XIV had built a strong, compact administration under the direction of able men, but it was wanting in liberty, it was wanting in justice, and it is only a matter of time when these deficiencies in a nation lead to destruction.

The Power of the Nobility.—The French nobility had been mastered by the king, but to keep them subservient, to make them circle around royalty and chant its praises, they were {401} given a large extension of rights and privileges. They were exempt from the responsibilities for crime; they occupied all of the important places in church and state; they were exempt from taxation; many who dwelt at the court with the king lived off the government; many were pensioned by the government, their chief recommendation apparently being idleness and worthlessness. There was a great gulf between the peasantry and the nobility. The latter had control of all the game of the forests and the fish in the rivers; one-sixth of all the grain grown in the realm went to the nobility, as did also one-sixth of all the land sold, and all confiscated property fell to them. The peasants had no rights which the nobility were bound to respect. The nobility, with all of the emoluments of office, owned, with the clergy, two-thirds of all the land. Yet this unproductive class numbered only about 83,000 families.

The Misery of the People.—If the nobility despised the lower classes and ignored their rights, they in turn were hated intensely by those whom they sought to degrade. The third estate in France was divided into the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and small artisans. The former gradually deteriorated in character and tended toward the condition of the lowest classes. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a large number of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, was driven from France. This deprived France of the class that would have stood by the nation when it needed support, and would have stood for moderate constitutional government against the radical democrats like Robespierre and Marat.

The lowest class, composed of small peasant farmers, laborers, and artisans, were improved a little under the reign of Louis XIV, but this made them feel more keenly the degradation in succeeding years, from which there was no relief. The condition of the people indicated that a revolution was on its way. In the evolution of European society the common man was crowded down toward the condition of serfdom. The extravagances and luxuries of life, the power of kings, bishops, and nobles bore like a burden of heavy weight upon his {402} shoulders. He was the common fodder that fed civilization, and because of this more than anything else, artificial systems of society were always running for a fall, for the time must come when the burdens destroy the foundation and the superstructure comes tumbling down.

The Church.—The church earned an important position in France soon after the conquest by the Romans; seizing opportunities, it came into power by right of service. It brought the softening influences of religion; it established government where there was no government; it furnished a home for the vanquished and the oppressed; it preserved learning from the barbarians; it conquered and controlled the warlike spirit of the Germans; it provided the hungry with food, and by teaching agriculture added to the economic wealth of the community; and finally, it became learned, and thus brought order out of chaos. Surely the church earned its great position, and reaped its reward. Taine says:

"Its popes for two hundred years were the dictators of Europe. It organized crusades, dethroned monarchs, and distributed kingdoms. Its bishops and abbots became here sovereign princes and there veritable founders of dynasties. It held in its grasp a third of the territory, one-half the revenue, and two-thirds of the capital of Europe."

The church was especially strong in France. It was closely allied to the state, and opposed everything that opposed the state. When the king became the state, the church upheld the king. The church of France, prior to the revolution, was rich and aristocratic. In 1789 its property was valued at 4,000,000,000 francs, and its income at 200,000,000 francs; to obtain a correct estimate according to our modern measure of value, these amounts should be doubled. In some territories the clergy owned one-half the soil, in others three-fourths, and in one, at least, fourteen-seventeenths of the land. The Abbey of St.-Germain-des-Pres possessed 900,000 acres. Yet within the church were found both the wealthy and the poverty-stricken. In one community was a bishop rolling in luxury {403} and ease, in another a wretched, half-starved country curate trying to carry the gospel to half-starved people. Such extremes were shocking commentaries upon a church founded on democracy.

The church persecuted the literary men who expressed freedom of thought and opinion. It ignored facts and the people distrusted it. The religious reformation in France became identified with political factions, which brought the church into a prominent place in the government and made it take an important place in the revolution. It had succeeded in suppressing all who sought liberty, either political or religious, and because of its prominence in affairs, it was the first institution to feel the storm of the revolution. The church in France was attacked fully forty years before the king and the nobility were arraigned by the enraged populace.

Influence of the Philosophers.—There appeared in France in the reign of Louis XV what was known as "the new literature," in contrast with the classic literature of the previous reign. The king and the church combined fought this new literature, because it had a tendency to endanger absolutism. It was made by such brilliant men as Helvetius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Condillac, and Rousseau. Perhaps the writings of these men had more to do with the precipitation of the revolution than the arbitrary assumptions of royalty, the wretchedness of the people, the supercilious abuses of the nobility, and the corruption of the church.

Without presenting the various philosophies of these writers, it may be said that they attacked the systems of government, religion, and philosophy prevailing in France, and each succeeding writer more boldly proclaimed the evils of the day. Condillac finally convinced the people that they owed their evil conditions to the institutions of church and state under which they lived, and showed that, if they desired a change, all it was necessary to do was to sweep those institutions away. Other philosophers speculated on the best means of improving the government. Presenting ideal forms of {404} government and advocating principles not altogether certain in practice, they made it seem, through these speculative theories, that a perfect government is possible.

Of the great writers of France prior to the revolution who had a tremendous power in hastening the downfall of the royal regime, three stand out more prominently than others, namely, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Voltaire, keen critic and satirist, attacked the evils of society, the maladministration of courts and government, the dogmatism of the church, and aided and defended the victims of the system. He was a student of Shakespeare, Locke, and Newton, and of English government. He was highly critical but not constructive. Montesquieu, more philosophical, in his Spirit of the Laws pointed out the cause of evils, expounded the nature of governments, and upheld English liberty as worthy the consideration of France. Rousseau, although he attacked civilization, depicting its miseries and inconsistencies, was more constructive, for in his Social Contract he advocated universal suffrage and government by the people through the principles of natural rights and mutual aid. These writers aroused a spirit of liberty among the thoughtful which could not do otherwise than prove destructive to existing institutions.

The Failure of Government.—It soon became evident to all that a failure of the government from a practical standpoint was certain. The burdens of unequal taxation could no longer be borne; the treasury was empty; there was no means of raising revenue to support the government as it was run; there was no one who could manage the finances of the nation; the administration of justice had fallen into disrepute; even if there had been an earnest desire to help the various classes of people in distress, there were no opportunities to do so. Louis XVI, in his weakness, called the States-General for counsel and advice. It was the first time the people had been called in council for more than 200 years; monarchy had said it could run the government without the people, and now, on the verge of destruction, called upon the people to save it from the {405} wreck. The well-intended king invoked a storm; his predecessors had sown the wind, he reaped the whirlwind.

France on the Eve of the Revolution.—The causes of the revolution were dependent, in part, upon the peculiarity of the character of the French people, for in no other way can the sudden outburst or the course of the revolution be accounted for. Yet a glimpse at the condition of France before the storm burst will cause one to wonder, not that it came, but that it was so long delayed.

A careful examination of the facts removes all mystery respecting the greatest political phenomenon of all history, and makes of it an essential outcome of previous conditions. The French people were grossly ignorant of government. The long period of misrule had distorted every form of legitimate government. One school of political philosophers gave their attention to pointing out the evils of the system; another to presenting bright pictures of ideal systems of government which had never been put in practice. The people found no difficulty in realizing the abuses of government, for they were intense sufferers from them, and, having no expression in the management of affairs, they readily adopted ideal theories for the improvement of social conditions. Moreover, there was no national unity, no coherence of classes such as in former days brought strength to the government. Monarchy was divided against itself; the lay nobility had no loyalty, but were disintegrated by internal feuds; the people were divided into opposing classes; the clergy were rent asunder.

Monarchy, though harsh, arbitrary, and unjust, did not have sufficient coercive force to give a strong rule. The church had lost its moral influence—indeed, morality was lacking within its organization. It could persecute heretics and burn books which it declared to be obnoxious to its doctrines, but it could not work a moral reform, much less stem the tide that was carrying away its ancient prerogatives. The nobility had no power in the government, and the dissension between the crown, the nobility, and the church was continuous and {406} destructive of all authority. Continuous and disreputable quarrels, profligacy, extravagance, and idleness characterized each group.

Worst of all was the condition of the peasantry. The commons of France, numbering twenty-five millions of people, had, let it be said in their favor, no part in the iniquitous and oppressive government. They were never given a thought by the rulers except as a means of revenue. There had grown up another, a middle class, especially in towns, who had grown wealthy by honest toil, and were living in ease and luxury, possessed of some degree of culture. They disliked the nobles, on the one hand, and the peasants, on the other; hated and opposed the nobility and ignored the common people. This class did not represent the sterling middle class of England or of modern life, but were the product of feudalism.

The condition of the rural peasantry is almost beyond description. Suffering from rack-rents, excessive taxation, and the abuses of the nobility, they presented a squalor and wretchedness worse than that of the lowest vassals of the feudal regime. In the large cities collected the dangerous classes who hated the rich. Ignorant, superstitious, half-starved, they were ready at a moment's notice to attack the wealthy and to destroy property.

The economic and financial conditions of the nation were deplorable, for the yield of wealth decreased under the poorly organized state. The laborers received such wages as left them at the verge of starvation and prepared them for open revolution. The revenues reserved for the support of the government were insufficient for the common needs, and an empty treasury was the result. The extravagance of king, court, and nobility had led to excessive expenditures and gross waste. There were no able ministers to manage the affairs of the realm on an economic basis. Add to these evils lack of faith, raillery at decency and virtue, and the poisonous effects of a weak and irresponsible philosophy, and there are represented sufficient evils to make a revolution whenever there is sufficient vigor to start it.

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The Revolution.—The revolution comes with all of its horrors. The church is humbled and crushed, the government razed to the ground, monarchy is beheaded, and the flower of nobility cut off. The wild mob at first seeks only to destroy; later it seeks to build a new structure on the ruins. The weak monarch, attempting to stem the tide, is swept away by its force. He summons the States-General, and the commons declare themselves the national assembly. Stupendous events follow in rapid succession—the revolt in Paris, the insubordination of the army, the commune of Paris, and the storming of the Bastile. The legislative assembly brings about the constitutional assembly, and laws are enacted for the relief of the people.

Intoxicated with increasing liberty, the populace goes mad, and the legislators pass weak and harmful laws. The law-making and constitutional bodies cannot make laws fast enough to regulate the affairs of the state. Lawlessness and violence increase until the "reign of terror" appears with all its indescribable horrors. The rest is plain. Having levelled all government to the ground, having destroyed all authority, having shown themselves incapable of self-government, the French people are ready for Napoleon. Under his command and pretense they march forth to liberate humanity from oppression in other nations, but in reality to a world conquest.

Results of the Revolution.—The French Revolution was by far the most stupendous event of modern history. It settled forever in the Western world the relation of man to government. It taught that absolutism of any class, if unchecked, must lead sooner or later to the destruction of all authority. It taught that men, to be capable of self-government, must be educated in its principles through a long period, yet proclaimed to the Western world the freedom of man, and asserted his right to participate in government. While France temporarily failed to bring about this participation, it awoke the cry for independence, equality, and fraternity around the world.

The results of the revolution became the common property {408} of all nations, and a universal sentiment arising from it pervaded every country, shaping its destiny. The severe blow given to absolutism and exclusive privilege in church and state settled forever the theory of the divine right of kings and prelates to govern. The revolution asserted that the precedent in religious and political affairs must yield to the necessities of the people; that there is no fixed principle in government except the right of man to govern himself.

The establishment of the theory of the natural right of man to participate in government had great influence on succeeding legislation and modified the policy of surrounding nations. The social-contract theory was little understood and gave an incorrect notion of the nature of government. In its historical creation, government was a growth, continually suiting itself to the changing needs of a people. Its practice rested upon convenience and precedent, but the real test for participation in government was capability. But the French Revolution startled the monarchs of Europe with the assumption of the natural right of people to self-government. Possibly it is incorrect when carried to extremes, for the doctrine of natural right must be merged into the practice of social rights, duties, and privileges. But it was a check on despotism.

The revolution had an influence on economic life also. It was only a step from freedom of intellectual opinion to freedom of religious belief, and only a step from religious freedom to political liberty. Carried to its legitimate outcome, the growing sentiment of freedom asserted industrial liberty and economic equality. Its influence in the emancipation of labor was far-reaching. Many of the theories advanced in the French Revolution were impracticable; sentiments engendered were untrue, which in the long run would lead to injustice. Many of its promises remain unfulfilled, yet its lessons are still before us, its influence for good or evil continues unabated.

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SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. The progress in constitutional government was made in England during the Commonwealth.

2. Changes in the social and economic condition of England from 1603 to 1760.

3. When did the Industrial Revolution begin? What were its causes? What its results?

4. The rise of British commerce.

5. Effect of commerce on English economic and social life.

6. Of what use to England were her American colonies?

7. The effect of the American Revolution on the French Revolution.

8. The effect of the French Revolution on American liberty.



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PART V

MODERN PROGRESS

CHAPTER XXVI

PROGRESS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

Political Liberty in the Eighteenth Century.—Looking backward from the standpoint of the close of the eighteenth century and following the chain of events in the previous century, the real achievement in social order is highly disappointing. The French Revolution, which had levelled the monarchy, the church, and the nobility, and brought the proletariat in power for a brief season and lifted the hopes of the people toward a government of equality, was hurrying on from the directorate to the consulate to the empire, and finally returning to the old monarchy somewhat worn and dilapidated, indeed, but sufficient in power to smother the hopes of the people for the time being. Numerous French writers, advocating anarchy, communism, and socialism, set up ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were not to be realized as the immediate result of the revolution. Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc set forth new ideals of government, which were diametrically opposed to the practices of the French government in preceding centuries. Though some of their ideals were lofty, the writers were critical and destructive rather than constructive.

England, after the coming of William and Mary and the passing of the Bill of Rights in 1689, witnessed very little progress in political rights and liberty until the reform measures of the nineteenth century. On the continent, Prussia had risen to a tremendous power as a military state and developed an autocratic government with some pretenses to political liberty. But the dominant force of Prussia working on the basis of the ancient feudalism was finally to crush out the liberties of the German people and establish autocratic government. {414} The Holy Roman Empire, which had continued so long under the union of Austria and Italy, backed by the papacy, had reached its height of arbitrary power, and was destroyed by the Napoleonic wars. In the whole period there were political struggles and intrigues within the various states, and political struggles and intrigues and wars between the nations. It was a period of the expression of national selfishness which sought enlarged territory and the control of commerce and trade. Taken as a whole, there is little that is inspiring in the movement of nations in this period. Indeed, it is highly disappointing when we consider the materials at their hand for political advancement.

The political game at home played by cliques and factions and politicians struggling for power frequently led to disgraces abroad, such as the war against the American colonies and the extension of power and domination in India. There is scarcely a war, if any, in this whole period that should not have been settled without difficulty, provided nations were honest with each other and could exercise, if not reason, common sense. The early great movements, such as the revival of learning and progress centring in Italy and extending to other nations, the religious revolution which brought freedom of belief, the revolution of England and the Commonwealth, the French Revolution with its projections of new ideals of liberty on the horizon of political life, promised better things. Also, during this period the development of literature and the arts and sciences should have been an enlightened aid to political liberty.

Nevertheless, the higher ideals of life and liberty which were set forth during these lucid intervals of the warring nations of the world were never lost. The seeds of liberty, once having been sown, were to spring up in future years and develop through a normal growth.

The Progress of Popular Government Found Outside of the Great Nations.—The rise of democracy in Switzerland and the Netherlands and its development in America, although {415} moving indirectly and by reaction, had a lasting influence on the powerful nations like Germany, England, France, and Austria. In these smaller countries the warfare against tyranny, despotism, and ignorance was waged with success. Great gain was made in the overthrow of the accumulated power of traditional usage and the political monopoly of groups of people who had seized and held the power. Through trial and error, success and failure, these people, not noted for their brilliant warfare but for their love of peace, succeeded in establishing within their boundaries a clear definition of human rights and recognizing the right of the people to have a better government.

Reform Measures in England.—The famous Bill of Rights of 1689 in England has always been intact in theory. It laid the foundation for popular government in which privileges and rights of the people were guaranteed. It may have been a good expedient to have declared that no papist should sit upon the throne of England, thus declaring for Protestantism, but it was far from an expression of religious toleration. The prestige of the House of Lords, an old and well-established aristocratic body, built upon ancient privilege and the power of the monarchy which too frequently acknowledged constitutional rights and then proceeded to trample upon them, made the progress in popular government very slow.

One great gain had been made when the nation agreed to fight its political battles in Parliament and at elections. The freedom of the press and the freedom of speech gradually became established facts. Among the more noted acts for the benefit of popular government was the Reform Bill of 1832, which enlarged the elective franchise. This was bitterly opposed by the Lords, but the persistency of the Commons won the day and the king signed the bill. Again in 1867 the second Reform Bill enlarged the franchise, and more modern acts of Parliament have given greater liberties to the English people.

England opposed independent local government of Scotland and Ireland and of her colonies. Ireland had been oppressed {416} by the malady of English landlordism, which had always been a bone of contention in the way of any amicable adjustment of the relations between England and Ireland. Throughout the whole century had waged this struggle. England at times had sought through a series of acts to relieve the country, but the conservative element in Parliament had usually thwarted any rational system like that proposed by Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, the Irish people themselves desired absolute freedom and independence and were restive under any form of restraint.

Nothing short of entire independence from the English nation or the establishment of home rule on some practical basis could insure peace and contentment in Ireland. Nor in the past could one be assured at any time that Ireland would have been contented for any length of time had she been given or acquired what she asked for. Being forced to support a large population on an infertile soil where landlordism dominated was a cause of a continual source of discontent, and the lack of practice of the Irish people in the art of local government always gave rise to doubts in the minds of her friends as to whether she could succeed as an independent nation or not. But the final triumph of Ireland in establishing a free state with the nominal control of the British Empire shows that Ireland has power to govern herself under fair treatment.

What a great gain it would have been if many years ago England had yielded to the desire of Ireland for an independent constitutional government similar to that of Canada! Tremendous changes have taken place in recent years in the liberalizing movement in England. The state church still exists, but religious toleration is complete. Women have been allowed the right to vote and are taking deep interest in political affairs, three women already having seats in Parliament. The labor movement, which has always been strong and independent in England, by the exercise of its right at the polls finally gained control of the government and, for the first time {417} in the history of England, a leading labor-union man and a socialist became premier of England.

The Final Triumph of the French Republic.—On account of ignorance of the true theories of government, as well as on account of lack of practical exercise in administration, for several decades the government which the French people established after the destruction of the monarchy of Louis XVI failed. The democracy of the French Revolution was iconoclastic, not creative. It could tear down, but could not rebuild. There were required an increased intelligence and the slow process of thought, a meditation upon the principles for which the people had fought and bled, and an enlarged view of the principles of government, before a republic could be established in France. Napoleon, catching the spirit of the times, gratified his ambition by obtaining the mastery of national affairs and leading the French people against foreign nations under the pretext of overthrowing despotism in Europe. In so doing he established absolutism once more in France. He became the imperial monarch of the old type, with the exceptions that intelligence took the place of bigotry and the welfare of the people took the place of the laudation of kings. But in attempting to become the dictator of all Europe, he caused other nations to combine against him, and finally he closed his great career with a Waterloo.

The monarchy, on its restoration, became constitutional; the government was composed of two chambers—the peers, nominated by the king, and the lower house, elected by the people. A system of responsible ministers was established, and of judges, who were not removable. Much had been gained in religious and civil liberty and the freedom of the press. But monarchy began to grow again, urged by the middle class of France, until in July, 1830, another revolution broke out on account of election troubles. The charter was violated in the prohibition of the publication of newspapers and pamphlets, and the elective system arbitrarily changed so as to restrict the suffrage to the landowners. The reaction {418} from this was to gain something more for democratic government. In the meantime there had been a growth of socialism, the direct product of the revolution.

The king finally abdicated in favor of his grandson, and then a provisional government was established, and finally a republic, the second republic of France. Louis Napoleon, who became president of the republic under the constitution, gradually absorbed all powers to himself and proclaimed himself emperor. After the close of the Franco-German War, in 1871, France became a republic for the third time. A constitution was formed, under which the legislative power was exercised by two chambers—the Chamber of Deputies, elected by direct vote and manhood suffrage for four years, and the Senate, consisting of 300 senators, 75 of whom were elected for life by the national assembly, the rest for nine years, by electoral colleges. These latter were composed of deputies, councils of the departments, and delegates of communes. The executive power was vested in a president, who was assisted by a responsible ministry. Republicanism was at last secured to France. Many changes have taken place in the application of the constitution to popular government since then, and much progress has been made in the practice of free government. The whole composition of the government reminds one of constitutional monarchy, with the exception that the monarch is chosen by the people for a short period of time.

Democracy in America.—The progress of democracy in America has been rapid. The first colonists were oppressed by the authority of European nations and bound by unyielding precedent. While the principle of local self-government obtained to a large extent in many of them, they partook more of aristocracies, or of governments based on class legislation, than of pure democracies. When independence from foreign countries was won by the united efforts of all the colonies, the real struggle for universal liberty began. A government was founded, so far as it was possible, on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which asserted "that all men {419} are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"; and that "for securing these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The creation of a federal constitution and the formation of a perfect union guaranteed these rights to every citizen.

Yet in the various states forming a part of the Union, and, indeed, in the national government itself, it took a long time to approximate, in practice, the liberty and justice which were set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Still, in the past century, the people have become more and more closely connected with the state, and a "government of the people, for the people, and by the people" is a certainty. The laws which have been made under the Constitution increase in specific declarations of the rights of the people. Justice is more nearly meted out to all classes at present than in any decade for a century. The political powers of citizens have constantly enlarged. The elective franchise has been extended to all citizens of both sexes. The requirements as to naturalization of foreigners are exceedingly lenient, and thus free government is offered to all people.

Of necessity the central government has been strengthened on account of the enlargement of territory and the great extension of national governmental powers. It has been necessary that the central forces which bind the separate parts of the nation together in a common union should be strengthened. The result has been a decline in the importance and power of the state governments. On the other hand, the large increase of population in the great cities has tended to enhance the power and importance of local government. The government of a single large city now becomes more difficult and of greater vital importance to the people than that of a state.

The enlarged territory and increased population, and the enormous amount of legislative machinery, have tended to extend to its utmost limit the principle of representative government. Congress represents the people of the whole nation, {420} but committees represent Congress and subcommittees represent committees. There is a constant tendency to delegate powers to others. Pure democracy has no place in the great American republic, except as it is seen in the local government unit. Here the people always have a part in the caucus, in the primary or the town meeting, in the election of local officers and representatives for higher offices, in the opportunity to exercise their will and raise their voice in the affairs of the nation. To some extent the supposed greater importance of the national government has led the people to underestimate the opportunities granted them for exercising their influence as citizens within the precinct in which they live. But there is to-day a tendency to estimate justly the importance of local government as the source of all reforms and the means of the preservation of civil liberty.

It has been pointed out frequently by the enemies of democracy that the practice of the people in self-government has not always been of the highest type. In many instances this criticism is true, for experience is always a dear teacher. The principles of democracy have come to people through conviction and determination, but the practices of self-government come through rough experiences, sometimes marked by a long series of blunders. The cost of a republican form of government to the people has frequently been very expensive on account of their ignorance, their apathy, and their unwillingness to take upon themselves the responsibilities of government. Consider, for instance, the thousands of laws that are made and placed upon the statute-books which have been of no value, possibly of detriment, to the community—laws made through the impulse of half-informed, ill-prepared legislators. Consider also the constitutions, constitutional amendments, and other important acts upon which the people express their opinion.

The smallness of the vote of a people who are jealous of their own rights and privileges is frequently surprising. Notice, too, how frequently popular power has voted against its {421} own rights and interests. See the clumsy manner by which people have voted away their birthrights or, failing to vote at all, have enslaved themselves to political or financial monopoly. Observe, too, the expenses of the management of democratic governments, the waste on account of imperfect administration, and the failure of the laws to operate.

Consideration of these points brings us to the conclusion that the perfection of democracy or republican government has not been reached, and that while liberty may be an expensive affair, it is so on account of the negligence of the people in qualifying for self-government. If a democratic form of government is to prevail, if popular government is to succeed, if the freedom of the people is to be guaranteed, there must be persistent effort on the part of the people to prepare themselves for their own government; a willingness to sacrifice for liberty, for liberty will endure only so long as people are willing to pay the price it costs. They must govern themselves, or government will pass from them to others. Eternal vigilance is the price of good government.

Modern Political Reforms.—Political reform has been proceeding recently in many particular ways. Perhaps the most noticeable in America is that of civil service reform. Strong partisanship has been a ruling factor in American politics, often to the detriment of the financial and political interests of the country. Jealous of their prerogative, the people have insisted that changes in government shall occur often, and that the ruling party shall have the privilege of appointing the officers of the government. This has made it the almost universal practice for the incoming party to remove the officers of the old administration and replace them with its own appointments. To such an extent has this prevailed that it has come to be known as the "spoils system."

But there is now a general tendency for the principles of civil service to prevail in all parts of the national government, and a growing feeling that they should be instituted in the various states and municipalities of the Union. The {422} federal government has made rapid progress in this line in recent years, and it is to be hoped that before long the large proportion of appointive offices will be put upon a merit basis and the persons who are best qualified to fill these places retained from administration to administration. Attempts are being made in nearly all of our cities for business efficiency in government, though there is much room for improvement.

The government of the United States is especially weak in administration, and is far behind many of the governments of the Old World in this respect. With a thoroughly established civil service system, the effectiveness of the administration would be increased fully fifty per cent. Under the present party system the waste is enormous, and as the people must ultimately pay for this waste, the burden thrown upon them is great. In the first place, the partisan system necessarily introduces large numbers of inexperienced, inefficient officers who must spend some years in actual practice before they are really fitted for the positions which they occupy. In the second place, the time spent by congressmen and other high officials in attention to applicants for office and in urging of appointments, prevents them from improving their best opportunity for real service to the people.

The practice of civil service reform is being rapidly adopted in the nations of the world which have undertaken the practice of self-government, and in those nations where monarchy or imperialism still prevails, persons in high authority feel more and more impelled to appoint efficient officers to carry out the plans of administrative government. It is likely that the time will soon come when all offices requiring peculiar skill or especial training will be filled on the basis of efficiency, determined by competitive examination or other tests of ability.

Another important reform, which has already been begun in the United States, and which, in its latest movement, originated in Australia, is ballot reform. There has been everywhere in democratic government a tendency for fraud to increase on election days. The manipulation of the votes of {423} individuals through improper methods has been the cause of fraud and a means of thwarting the will of the people. It is well that the various states and cities have observed this and set themselves to the task of making laws to guard properly the ballot-box and give free, untrammelled expression to the will of the people. Though nearly all the states in the Union have adopted some system of balloting (based largely upon the Australian system), many of them are far from perfection in their systems. Yet the progress in this line is encouraging when the gains in recent years are observed.

Since the decline of the old feudal times, in which our modern tax system had its origin, there has been a constant improvement in the system of taxation. Yet this has been very slow and apparently has been carried on in a bungling way. The tendency has been to tax every form of property that could be observed or described. And so our own nation, like many others, has gone on, step by step, adding one tax after another, without carefully considering the fundamental principles of taxation or the burdens laid upon particular classes. To-day we have a complex system, full of irregularities and imperfections. Our taxes are poorly and unjustly assessed, and the burdens fall heavily upon some, while others have an opportunity of escaping. We have just entered an era of careful study of our tax systems, and the various reports from the different states and the writings of economists are arousing great interest on these points. When once the imperfections are clearly understood and defined, there may be some hope of a remedy of present abuses. To be more specific, it may be said that the assessments of the property in counties of the same state vary between seventeen and sixty per cent of the market valuation. Sometimes this discrepancy is between the assessments of adjacent counties, and so great is the variation that seldom two counties have the same standard for assessing valuation.

The personal-property tax shows greater irregularity than this, especially in our large cities. The tax on imports, though {424} apparently meeting the approval of a majority of the American people, makes, upon the whole, a rather expensive system of taxation, and it is questionable whether sufficient revenue can be raised from this source properly to support the government without seriously interfering with our foreign commerce. The internal revenue has many unsatisfactory phases. The income tax has been added to an imperfect system of taxation, instead of being substituted for the antiquated personal-property tax. Taxes on franchises, corporations, and inheritances are among those more recently introduced in attempts to reform the tax system.

The various attempts to obtain sufficient revenue to support the government or to reform an unjust and unequal tax have led to double taxation, and hence have laid the burden upon persons holding a specific class of property. There are to-day no less than five methods in which double taxation occurs in the present system of taxation of corporations. The taxation of mortgages, because it may be shifted to the borrower, is virtually a double tax. The great question of the incidence of taxation, or the determination upon whom the tax ultimately falls, has not received sufficient care in the consideration of improved systems of taxation. Until it has, and until statesmen use more care in tax legislation and the regulation of the system, and officers are more conscientious in carrying it out, we need not hope for any rapid movement in tax reform. The tendency here, as in all other reforms, especially where needed, is for some person to suggest a certain political nostrum—like the single tax—for the immediate and complete reform of the system and the entire renovation and purification of society. But scientific knowledge, clear insight, and wisdom are especially necessary for any improvement, and even then improvement will come through a long period of practice, more or less painful on account of the shifting of methods of procedure.

The most appalling example of the results of modern government is to be found in the municipal management of our {425} large cities. It has become proverbial that the American cities are the worst ruled of any in the world. In European countries the evils of city government were discovered many years ago, and in most of the nations there have been begun and carried out wisely considered reforms, until many of the cities of the Old World present examples of tolerably correct municipal government.

In America there is now a general awakening in every city, but to such an extent have people, by their indifference or their wickedness, sold their birthrights to politicians and demagogues and the power of wealth, that it seems almost impossible to work any speedy radical reform. Yet many changes are being instituted in our best cities, and the persistent effort to manage the city as a business corporation rather than as a political engine is producing many good results. The large and growing urban population has thrown the burden of government upon the city—a burden which it was entirely unprepared for—and there have sprung up sudden evils which are difficult to eradicate. Only persistent effort, loyalty, sacrifice, and service, all combined with wisdom, can finally accomplish the reforms needed in cities. There is a tendency everywhere for people to get closer to the government, and to become more and more a part of it.[1] Our representative system has enabled us to delegate authority to such an extent that people have felt themselves irresponsible for all government, except one day in the year, when they vote at the polls; we need, instead, a determination to govern 365 days in the year, and nothing short of this perpetual interest of the people will secure to them the rights of self-government. Even then it is necessary that every citizen shall vote at every election.

Republicanism in Other Countries.—The remarkable spread of forms of republican government in the different nations of the world within the present century has been unprecedented. {426} Every independent nation in South America to-day has a republican form of government. The Republic of Mexico has made some progress in the government of the people, and the dependencies of Great Britain all over the world have made rapid progress in local self-government. In Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, we find many of the most advanced principles and practices of free government.

It is true that many of these nations calling themselves republics have not yet guaranteed the rights and privileges of a people to any greater extent than they would have done had they been only constitutional monarchies; for it must be maintained at all times that it depends more upon the characteristics of the people—upon their intelligence, their social conditions and classes, their ideas of government, and their character—what the nature of their government shall be, than upon the mere form of government, whether that be aristocracy, monarchy, or democracy.

Many of the evils which have been attributed to monarchy ought more truly to have been attributed to the vital conditions of society. Vital social and political conditions are far more important to the welfare of the people than any mere form of government. Among the remarkable expressions of liberal government in modern times has been the development of the Philippine Islands under the protecting care of the United States, the establishment of republicanism in Porto Rico and Hawaii, now parts of the territory of the United States, and the development of an independent and democratic government in Cuba through the assistance of the United States. These expressions of an extended democracy have had far-reaching consequences on the democratic idealism of the world.

Influence of Democracy on Monarchy.—But the evidences of the progress of popular government are not all to be observed in republics. It would be difficult to estimate the influence of the rise of popular government in some countries upon the monarchial institutions of others. This can never be {427} properly determined, because we know not what would have taken place in these monarchies had republicanism never prevailed anywhere. When republicanism arose in France and America, monarchy was alarmed everywhere; and again, when the revolutionary wave swept over Europe in 1848, monarchy trembled. Wherever, indeed, the waves of democracy have swept onward they have found monarchy raising breakwaters against them. Yet with all this opposition there has been a liberalizing tendency in these same monarchial governments. Monarchy has been less absolute and less despotic; the people have had more constitutional rights granted them, greater privileges to enjoy; and monarchies have been more careful as to their acts, believing that the people hold in their hands the means of retribution. The reforming influence of democratic ideas has been universal and uninterrupted.

The World War has been iconoclastic in breaking up old forms of government and has given freedom to the democratic spirit and in many cases has developed practical democracy. Along with this, forces of radicalism have come to the front as an expression of long-pent feelings of injustice, now for the first time given opportunity to assert and express themselves. The ideal of democracy historically prevalent in Europe has been the rule of the "lower classes" at the expense of the "upper classes." This theory has been enhanced by the spread of Marxian socialism, which advocates the dominance and rule of the wage-earning class. The most serious attempt to put this idea in practice occurred in Russia with disastrous results.

SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Why did the French Revolution fail to establish liberty?

2. What were the lasting effects of the English Commonwealth?

3. What were the causes of liberal government in the Netherlands?

4. The reform acts in 1832 and in 1867 in England.

5. The chief causes of trouble between England and Ireland.

6. The growth of democracy in the United States.

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7. Enumerate the most important modern political reforms. What are some needed political reforms?

8. England's influence on American law and government.

9. Investigate the population in your community to determine the extent of human equality.

10. City government under the municipal manager plan; also commission plan.



[1] Consider the commission form of city government and the municipal manager plan.



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CHAPTER XXVII

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS

Industries Radiate from the Land as a Centre.—In primitive civilizations industry was more or less incidental to life. The food quest, protection of the body from storm and sun by improvised habitation and the use of skins, furs, bark, and rushes for clothing, together with the idea of human association for the perpetuation of the species, are the fundamental notions regarding life. Under such conditions industry was fitful and uncertain. Hunting for vegetable products and for animals to sustain life, the protection of the life of individuals from the elements and, incidentally, from the predatory activities of human beings, were the objectives of primitive man.

As the land is the primary source of all economic life, systematic industry has always begun in its control and cultivation. Not until man settled more or less permanently with the idea of getting his sustenance from the soil did industrial activities become prominent. In the development of civilization one must recognize the ever-present fact that the method of treatment of the land is a determining factor in its fundamental characteristics, for it must needs be always that the products that we utilize come from the action of man on nature and its reaction on him. While the land is the primary source of wealth, and its cultivation a primal industry, it does not include the whole category of industrial enterprises, for tools must be made, art developed, implements provided, and machinery constructed. Likewise, clothing and ornaments were manufactured, and habitations constructed, and eventually transportation begun to carry people and goods from one place to another. These all together make an enlarged group of activities, all radiating from the soil as a common centre.

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We have already referred to the cultivation of the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile by systems of irrigation and the tilling of the soil in the valleys of Greece in the crude and semibarbarous methods introduced by the barbarians from the north. We have referred to the fact that the Romans were the first to develop systematic agriculture, and even the Teutonic people, the invaders of Rome, were rude cultivators of the soil.

Social organization is dependent to a large extent upon the method of attachment to the soil—whether people wander over a large area in the hunter-fisher and the nomadic stages, or whether they become attached to the soil permanently. Thus, the village community developed a united, neighborly community, built on the basis of mutual aid. The feudal system was built upon predatory tribal warfare, where possession was determined by might to have and to hold. In the mediaeval period the manorial system of landholding developed, whereby the lord and his retainers claimed the land by their right of occupation and the power to hold, whether this came through conquest, force of arms, or agreement.

This manorial system prevailed to a large extent in England, France, and parts of Germany. These early methods of landholding were brought about by people attempting to make their social adjustments, primarily in relation to survival, and subsequently in relation to the justice among individuals within the group, or in relation to the reactions between the groups themselves. After the breaking down of the Roman Empire, the well-established systems of landholding in the empire and the older nations of the Orient in the Middle Ages developed into the feudal system, which forced all society into groups or classes, from the lord to the serf. Subsequently there sprang up the individual system of landholding, which again readjusted the relation of society to the land system and changed the social structure.

The Early Mediaeval Methods of Industry.—Outside of the tilling of the soil, the early industries were centred in the home, which gave rise to the well-known house system of {431} culture. "Housework" has primary relation to goods which are created for the needs of the household. Much of the early manufacturing industry was carried on within the household. Gradually this has disappeared to a large extent through the multiplication of industries outside the home, power manufacture, and the organization of labor and capital.

In many instances house culture preceded that of systematic agriculture. The natural order was the house culture rising out of the pursuits of fishing, hunting, and tending flocks and herds, and the incidental hoe culture which represented the first tilling of the soil about the tent or hut. The Indians of North America are good examples of the development of the house culture in the making of garments from the skins of animals or from weeds and rushes, the weaving of baskets, the making of pottery and of boats, and the tanning of hides. During all this period, agriculture was of slow growth, it being the incidental and tentative process of life, while the house culture represented the permanent industry.

Industries varied in different tribes, one being skilled in basket-making, another in stone implements for warfare and domestic use, another in pottery, another in boats, and still another in certain kinds of clothing—especially the ornaments made from precious stones or bone. This made it possible to spread the culture of one group to other groups, and later there developed the wandering peddler who went from tribe to tribe trading and swapping goods. This is somewhat analogous to the first wage-work system of England, where the individual went from house to house to perform services for which he received pay in goods, or, as we say, in kind. Subsequently the wage-earner had his own shop, where raw material was sent to him for finishing.

All through Europe these customs prevailed and, indeed, in some parts of America exist to the present day. We see survivals of these customs which formerly were permanent, in the people who go from house to house performing certain types of work or bringing certain kinds of goods for sale, and, {432} indeed, in the small shop of modern times where goods are repaired or manufactured. They represent customs which now are irregular, but which formerly were permanent methods. It was a simple system, requiring no capital, no undertaker or manager, no middleman. Gradually these customs were replaced by many varied methods, such as the establishment of the laborer in his individual shop, who at first only made the raw material, which people brought him, into the finished product; later he was required to provide his own raw material, taking orders for certain classes of goods.

After the handcraft system was well established, there was a division between the manufacturer of goods and those who produced the raw material, a marked distinction in the division of labor. The expansion of systems of industry developed the towns and town life, and as the manor had been self-sufficient in the manufacture of goods, so now the town becomes the unit of production, and independent town economy springs up. Later we find the towns beginning to trade with each other, and with this expanded industry the division of labor came about and the separation of laborers into classes. First, the merchant and the manufacturer were united. It was common for the manufacturer of goods to have his shop in his own home and, after he had made the goods, to put them on the shelf until called for by customers. Later he had systems of distribution and trade with people in the immediate locality. Soon weavers, spinners, bricklayers, packers, tanners, and other classes became distinctive. It was some time before manufacturers and traders, however, became separate groups, and a longer time before the manufacturer was separated from the merchant, because the manufacturer must market his own goods. Industries by degrees thus became specialized, and trades became clearly defined in their scope. This led, of course, to a distinct division of occupation, and later to a division of labor within the occupation. The introduction of money after the development of town economy brought about the wage system, whereby people were paid in money rather than {433} kind. This was a great step forward in facilitating trade and industry.

One of the earliest methods of developing organized industrial society was through the various guilds of the Middle Ages. They represented the organization of the industries of a given town, with the purpose of establishing a monopoly in trade of certain kinds of goods, and secondarily to develop fraternal organization, association, and co-operation among groups of people engaged in the same industry. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the first in order of development of the guilds was known as the "guild-merchant," which was an organization of all of the inhabitants of the town engaged in trading or selling. This was a town monopoly of certain forms of industry controlled by the members of that industry. It partook of the nature of monopoly of trade, and had a vast deal to do with the social organization of the town. Its power was exercised in the place of more systematic political town government. However, after the political town government became more thoroughly established, the guild-merchant declined, but following the decline of the guild-merchant, the craft guild developed, which was an organization of all of the manufacturers and traders in a given craft. This seemed to herald the coming of the trade-union after the industrial machinery of society had made a number of changes. English industrial society became finally completely dominated, as did societies in countries on the Continent, by the craft guilds.

All the payments in the handcraft system were at first in kind. When the laborer had finished his piece of goods, his pay consisted in taking a certain part of what he had created in the day or the week. Also, when he worked by the day he received his pay in kind. This system prevailed until money became sufficiently plentiful to enable the payment of wages for piecework and by the day. The payment in kind, of course, was a very clumsy and wasteful method of carrying on industry. Many methods of payment in kind prevailed for centuries, even down to recent times in America. Before the great {434} flour-mills were developed, the farmer took his wheat to the mill, out of which the miller took a certain percentage for toll in payment for grinding. The farmer took the remainder home with him in the form of flour. So, too, we have in agriculture the working of land on shares, a certain percentage of the crops going to the owner and the remainder to the tiller of the soil. Fruit is frequently picked on shares, which is nothing more than payment for services in kind.

The Beginnings of Trade.—While these simple changes were slowly taking place in the towns and villages of Europe, there were larger movements of trade being developed, not only between local towns, but between the towns of one country and those of another, which led later to international trade and commerce. Formerly trade had become of world importance in the early Byzantine trade with the Orient and Phoenicia. After the crusades, the trade of the Italian cities with the Orient and northwest Europe was of tremendous importance.[1] In connection with this, the establishment of the Hanseatic League, of which Hamburg was a centre, developed trade between the east and the west and the south. These three great mediaeval trade movements represent powerful agencies in the development of Europe. They carried with them an exchange of goods and an exchange of ideas as well. This interchange stimulated thought and industrial activity throughout Europe.

Expansion of Trade and Transportation.—The great discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a vast deal to do with the expansion of trade. The discovery of America, the establishment of routes to the Philippines around South America and to India around South Africa opened up wide vistas, not only for exploration but for the exchange of goods. Also, this brought about national trade, and with it national competition. From this time on the struggle for the supremacy of the sea was as important as the struggle of the various nations for extended territory. Portugal, the {435} Netherlands, England, and Spain were competing especially for the trade routes of the world. France and England were drawn into sharp competition because of the expansion of English trade and commerce. Portugal became a great emporium for the distribution of Oriental goods after she became a maritime power, with a commercial supremacy in India and China. Subsequently she declined and was forced to unite with Spain, and even after she obtained her freedom, in the seventeenth century, her war with the Netherlands caused her to lose commercial supremacy.

The rise of the Dutch put the Netherlands to the front and Antwerp and Amsterdam became the centres of trade for the Orient. Dutch trade continued to lead the world until the formation of the English East and West India companies, which, with their powerful monopoly on trade, brought England to the front. Under the monopolies of these great companies and other private monopolies, England forged ahead in trade and commerce. But the private monopolies became so powerful that Cromwell, by the celebrated Navigation Acts of 1651, made a gigantic trade monopoly of the English nation. The development of agricultural products and manufactures in England, together with her immense carrying trade, made her mistress of the seas. The results of this trade development were to bring the products of every clime in exchange for the manufactured goods of Europe, and to bring about a change of ideas which stimulated thought and life, not only in material lines but along educational and spiritual lines as well.

Invention and Discoveries.—One of the most remarkable eras of progress in the whole range of modern civilization appeared at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, especially in England. The expanded trade and commerce of England had made such a demand for economic goods that it stimulated invention of new processes of production. The spinning of yarn became an important industry. It was a slow process, and could not supply the {436} weavers so that they could keep their looms in operation. Moreover, Kay introduced what is known as the drop-box and flying shuttle in 1738, which favored weaving to the detriment of spinning, making the trouble worse.

In the extremity of trade the Royal Society offered a prize to any person who would invent a machine to spin a number of threads at the same time. As a result of this demand, James Hargreaves in 1764 invented the spinning-jenny, which was followed by Arkwright's invention of spinning by rollers, which was patented in 1769. Combining Arkwright's and Hargreaves's inventions, Crompton in 1779 invented the spinning-"mule." This quickened the process of spinning and greatly increased the production of the weavers. But one necessity satisfied leads to another in invention, and Cartwright's powerloom, which was introduced in 1784, came into general use at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

During this period America had become a producer of cotton, and Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, invented in 1792, which separated the seeds from the cotton fibre in the boll, greatly stimulated the production of cotton in the United States. In the meanwhile the steam-engine, which had been perfected in 1769, was applied to power manufacture in 1785 by James Watt. This was the final stroke that completed the power manufacture of cotton and woollen goods.

Other changes were brought about by the new method of smelting ore by means of coal, charcoal having been hitherto used for the process, and the invention of the blast-furnace in 1760 by Roebuck, which brought the larger use of metals into the manufactures of the world. To aid in the carrying trade, the building of canals between the large manufacturing towns in England to the ocean, and the building of highways over England, facilitated transportation and otherwise quickened industry. Thus we have in a period of less than forty years the most remarkable and unprecedented change in industry, which has never been exceeded in importance even by the introduction of the gasoline-engine and electrical power.

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The Change of Handcraft to Power Manufacture.—Prior to the development of the mechanical contrivances for spinning and weaving and the application of steam-power to manufacturing, nearly everything in Europe was made by hand. All clothing, carpets, draperies, tools, implements, furniture—everything was hand-made. In this process no large capital was needed, no great factories, no great assemblage of laborers, no great organization of industry. The work was done in homes and small shops by individual enterprise, mainly, or in combinations of laborers and masters. Power manufacture and the inventions named above changed the whole structure of industrial society.

The Industrial Revolution.—The period from 1760 to about 1830 is generally given as that of the industrial revolution, because this period is marked by tremendous changes in the industrial order. It might be well to remark, however, that if the industrial revolution began about 1760, it has really never ended, for new inventions and new discoveries have continually come—a larger use of steam-power, the introduction of transportation by railroads and steamship-lines, the modern processes of agriculture, the large use of electricity, with many inventions, have constantly increased power manufacture and drawn the line more clearly between the laborers on one side and the capitalists or managers on the other.

In the first place, because the home and the small shop could not contain the necessary machinery, large factories equipped with great power-machines became necessary, and into the factories flocked the laborers, who formerly were independent handcraft manufacturers or merchants. It was necessary to have people to organize this labor and to oversee its work—that is, "bosses" were necessary. Under these circumstances the capitalistic managers were using labor with as little consideration or, indeed, less than they used raw material in the manufacture of goods. The laborers must seek employment in the great factories. The managers forced them down to the lowest rate of wage, caused them to live in {438} ill-ventilated factories in danger of life and health from the machinery, and to work long hours. They employed women and children, who suffered untold miseries. The production of goods demanded more and more coal, and women went into the coal-mines and worked fourteen to sixteen hours a day.

Society was not ready for the great and sudden change and could not easily adjust itself to new conditions. Capital was necessary, and must have its reward. Factories were necessary to give the laborers a chance to labor. Labor was necessary, but it did not seem necessary to give any consideration to the justice of the laborer nor to his suffering. The wage system and the capitalistic system developed—systems that the socialists have been fighting against for more than a century. Labor, pressed down and suffering, arose in its own defense and organized. It was successively denied the right to assemble, to organize, to strike, but in each separate case the law prevailed in its favor.

All through the development of European history the ordinary laborer never received full consideration regarding his value and his rights. It is true at times that he was happy and contented without improvement, but upon the whole the history of Europe has been the history of kings, queens, princes, and nobility, and wars for national aggrandizement, increased territory, or the gratification of the whims of the dominant classes. The laborer has endured the toil, fought the battles, and paid the taxes. Here we find the introduction of machinery, which in the long run will make the world more prosperous, happier, and advance it in civilization, yet the poor laborer must be the burden-bearer.

Gradually, however, partly by his own demands, partly by the growing humanity of capitalistic employers, and partly because of the interest of outside philanthropic statesmen, labor has been protected by laws. In the first place, all trades are organized, and nearly all organizations are co-operating sympathetically with one another. Labor has been able thus to demand things and to obtain them, not only by the persistency {439} of demand, but by the force of the strike which compels people to yield. To-day the laborer has eight hours a day of work in a factory well ventilated and well lighted, protected from danger and accident, insured by law, better wages than he has ever had, better opportunities for life and the pursuit of happiness, better fed, better clothed, and better housed than ever before in the history of the world.

Yet the whole problem is far from being settled, because it is not easy to define the rights, privileges, and duties of organized labor. Some things we know, and one is that the right to strike does not carry with it the right to destroy, or the right to organize the right to oppress others. But let us make the lesson universal and apply the same to capitalistic organizations and the employers' associations. And while we make the latter responsible for their deeds, let us make the organization of the former also responsible, and let the larger community called the state determine justice between groups and insure freedom and protection to all.

Modern Industrial Development.—It was stated above that the industrial revolution is still going on. One need only to glance at the transformation caused by the introduction of railway transportation and steam navigation in the nineteenth century, to the uses of the telegraph, the telephone, the gasoline-engine, and later the radio and the airplane, to see that the introduction of these great factors in civilization must continue to make changes in the social order. They have brought about quantity transportation, rapidity of manufacture, and rapidity of trade, and stimulated the activities of life everywhere. This stimulation, which has brought more things for material improvement, has caused people to want paved streets, electric lights, and modern buildings, which have added to the cost of living through increased taxation. The whole movement has been characterized by the accumulated stress of life, which demands greater activity, more goods consumed, new desires awakened, and greater efforts to satisfy them. The quickening process goes on unabated.

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In order to carry out these great enterprises, the industrial organization is complex in the extreme and tremendous in its magnitude. Great corporations capitalized by millions, great masses of laborers assembled which are organized from the highest to the lowest in the great industrial army, represent the spectacular display. And to be mentioned above all is the great steam-press that sends the daily paper to every home and the great public-school system that puts the book in every hand.

Scientific Agriculture.—It has often been repeated that man's wealth comes originally from the soil, and that therefore the condition of agriculture is an index of the opportunity offered for progress. What has been done in recent years, especially in England and America, in the development of a higher grade stock, so different from the old scrub stock of the Colonial period; in the introduction of new grains, new fertilizers, improved soils, and the adaptability of the crop to the soil in accordance with the nature of both; the development of new fruits and flowers by scientific culture—all have brought to the door of man an increased food-supply of great variety and of improved quality. This is conducive to the health and longevity of the race, as well as to the happiness and comfort of everybody. Moreover, the introduction of agricultural machinery has changed the slow, plodding life of the farmer to that of the master of the steam-tractor, thresher, and automobile, changed the demand from a slow, inactive mind to the keenest, most alert, best-educated man of the nation, who must study the highest arts of production, the greatest economy, and the best methods of marketing. Truly, the industrial revolution applies not to factories alone.

The Building of the City.—The modern industrial development has forced upon the landscape the great city. No one particularly wanted it. No one called it into being—it just came at the behest of the conditions of rapid transportation, necessity of centralization of factories where cheap distribution could be had, not only for the raw material but for the {441} finished product, and where labor could be furnished with little trouble—all of these things have developed a city into which rush the great products of raw material, and out of which pour the millions of manufactured articles and machinery; into which pours the great food-supply to keep the laborers from starving. Into the city flows much of the best blood of the country, which seeks opportunity for achievement. The great city is inevitable so long as great society insists on gigantic production and as great consumption, but the city idea is overwrought beyond its natural condition. If some power could equalize the transportation question, so that a factory might be built in a smaller town, where raw material could be furnished as cheaply as in the large city, and the distribution of goods be as convenient, there is no reason why the population might not be more evenly distributed, to its own great improvement.

Industry and Civilization.—But what does this mean so far as human progress is concerned? We have increased the material production of wealth and added to the material comfort of the inhabitants of the world. We have extended the area of wealth to the dark places of the world, giving means of improvement and enlightenment. We have quickened the intellect of man until all he needs to do is to direct the machinery of his own invention. Steam, electricity, and water-power have worked for him. It has given people leisure to study, investigate, and develop scientific discoveries for the improvement of the race, protecting them from danger and disease and adding to their comfort. It has given opportunity for the development of the higher spiritual power in art, music, architecture, religion, and science.

Industrial progress is something more than the means of heaping up wealth. It has to do with the well-being of humanity. It is true we have not yet been able to carry out our ideals in this matter, but slowly and surely industrial liberty and justice are following in the wake of the freedom of the mind to think, the freedom of religious belief, and the {442} political freedom of self-government. We are to-day in the fourth great period of modern development, the development of justice in industrial relations.

Moreover, all of this quickening of industry has brought people together from all over the world. London is nearer New York than was Philadelphia in revolutionary times. Not only has it brought people closer together in industry, but in thought and sympathy. There have been developed a world ethics, a world trade, and a world interchange of science and improved ideas of life. It has given an increased opportunity for material comforts and an increased opportunity for the achievement of the ordinary man who seeks to develop all the capacities and powers granted him by nature.

SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Show that land is the foundation of all industry.

2. Compare condition of laborers now with conditions before the industrial revolution.

3. Are great organizations of business necessary to progress?

4. Do railroads create wealth?

5. Does the introduction of machinery benefit the wage-earner?

6. How does rapid ocean-steamship transportation help the United States?

7. If England should decline in wealth and commerce, would the United States be benefited thereby?

8. How does the use of electricity benefit industry?

9. To what extent do you think the government should control or manage industry?

10. Is Industrial Democracy possible?

11. Cutting and hammering two processes of primitive civilization. What mechanical inventions take the place of the stone hammer and the stone knife?



[1] See Chapter XXI.



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CHAPTER XXVII

SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The Evolutionary Processes of Society.—Social activity is primarily group activity. Consequently the kind and nature of the group, the methods which brought its members together, its organization and purpose, indicate the type of civilization and the possibility of achievement. As group activity means mutual aid of members, and involves processes of co-operation in achievement, the type of society is symbolic of the status of progress. The function of the group is to establish social order of its members, protect them from external foes, as well as internal maladies, and to bring into existence a new force by which greater achievement is possible than when individuals are working separately.

The Social Individual.—While society is made of physio-psychic individuals, as a matter of fact the social individual is made by interactions and reactions arising from human association. Society on one hand and the social individual on the other are both developed at the same time through the process of living together in co-operation and mutual aid. Society once created, no matter how imperfect, begins its work for the good of all its members. It begins to provide against cold and hunger and to protect from wild animals and wild men. It becomes a feeling, thinking, willing group seeking the best for all. It is in the fully developed society that the social process appears of providing a water-supply, sanitation through sewer systems, preventative medicine and health measures, public education, means of establishing its members in rights, duties, and privileges, and protecting them in the pursuit of industry.

The Ethnic Society.—Just at what period society became well established is not known, but there are indications that some forms of primitive family life and social activities were {444} in existence among the men of the Old Stone Age, and certainly in the Neolithic period. After races had reached a stage of permanent historical records, or had even handed down traditions from generation to generation, there are evidences of family life and tribal or national achievements. Though there are evidences of religious group activities prior to formal tribal life, it may be stated in general that the first permanent organization was on a family or ethnic basis. Blood relationship was the central idea of cohesion, which was early aided by religious superstition and belief. Following this idea, all of the ancient monarchies and empires were based on the ethnic group or race. All of this indicates that society was based on natural law, and from that were gradually evolved the general and political elements which foreshadowed the enlarged functions of the more complex society of modern times.

The Territorial Group.—Before the early tribal groups had settled down to permanent habitations, they had developed many social activities, but when they became permanently settled they passed from the ethnic to the demographic form of social order—that is, they developed a territorial group that performed all of its functions within a given boundary which they called their own. From this time on population increased and occupied territory expanded, and the group became self-sufficient and independent in character. Then it could co-operate with other groups and differentiate functions within. Industrial, religious, and political groups, sacred orders, and voluntary associations became prominent, all under the protection of the general social order.

The National Group Founded on Race Expansion.—Through conquest, amalgamation, and assimilation, various independent groups were united in national life. All of the interior forces united in the perpetuation of the nation, which became strong and domineering in its attitude toward others. This led to warfare, conquest, or plunder, the union of the conquered with the conquerors, and imperialism came into being. Growth of wealth and population led to the demand for more territory {445} and the continuation of strife and warfare. The rise and fall of nations, the formation and dissolving of empires under the constant shadow of war continued through the ages. While some progress was made, it was in the face of conspicuous waste of life and energy, and the process of national protection of humanity has been of doubtful utility. Yet the development of hereditary leadership, the dominance of privileged classes, and the formation of traditions, laws, and forms of government went on unabated, during which the division of industrial and social functions within, causing numerous classes to continually differentiate, took place.

The Functions of New Groups.—In all social groupings the function always precedes the form or structure of the social order. Society follows the method of organic evolution in growing by differentiation. New organs or parts are formed, which in time become strengthened and developed. The organs or parts become more closely articulated with each other and with the whole social body, and finally over all is the great society, which defends, shields, protects, and fights for all. The individual may report for life service in many departments, through which his relation to great society must be manifested. He no longer can go alone in his relation to the whole mass. He may co-operate in a general way, it is true, with all, but must have a particularly active co-operation in the smaller groups on which his life service and life sustenance depend. The multiplication of functions leads to increased division of service and to increased co-operation. In the industrial life the division of labor and formation of special groups are more clearly manifested.

Great Society and the Social Order.—This is manifested chiefly in the modern state and the powerful expression of public opinion. No matter how traditional, autocratic, and arbitrary the centralized government becomes, there is continually arising modifying power from local conditions. There are things that the czar or the king does not do if he wishes to continue in permanent authority. From the masses of the {446} people there arises opposition to arbitrary power, through expressed discontent, public opinion, or revolution. The whole social field of Europe has been a seething turmoil of action and reaction, of autocracy and the demand for human rights. Thirst for national aggrandizement and power and the lust of the privileged classes have been modified by the distressing cry of the suffering people. What a slow process is social evolution and what a long struggle has been waged for human rights!

Great Society Protects Voluntary Organizations.—Freedom of assembly, debate, and organization is one of the important traits of social organization. With the ideal of democracy comes also freedom of speech and the press. Voluntary organizations for the good of the members or for a distinctive agency for general good may be made and receive protection in society at large through law, the courts, and public opinion; but the right to organize does not carry with it the right to destroy, and all such organizations must conform to the general good as expressed in the laws of the land. Sometimes organizations interested in their own institutions have been detrimental to the general good. Even though they have law and public opinion with them, in their zeal for propaganda they have overstepped the rules of progress. But such conditions cannot last; progress will cause them to change their attitude or they meet a social death.

The Widening Service of the Church.—The importance of the religious life in the progress of humanity is acknowledged by all careful scholars. Sometimes, it is true, this religious belief has been detrimental to the highest interests of social welfare. Religion itself is necessarily conservative, and when overcome by superstition, tradition, and dogmatism, it may stifle the intellect and retard progress. The history of the world records many instances of this.

The modern religious life, however, has taken upon it, as a part of its legitimate function, the ethical relations of mankind. Ethics has been prominent in the doctrine and service of the church. When the church turned its attention to the {447} future life, with undue neglect of the present, it became non-progressive and worked against the best interests of social progress. When it based its operation entirely upon faith, at the expense of reason and judgment, it tended to enslave the intellect and to rob mankind of much of its best service. But when it turned its attention to sweetening and purifying the present, holding to the future by faith, that man might have a larger and better life, it opened the way for social progress. Its motto has been, in recent years, the salvation of this life that the future may be assured. Its aim is to seize the best that this life furnishes and to utilize it for the elevation of man, individually and socially. Its endeavor is to save this life as the best and holiest reality yet offered to man. Faith properly exercised leads to invention, discovery, social activity, and general culture. It gives an impulse not only to religious life, but to all forms of social activity. But it must work with the full sanction of intelligence and allow a continual widening activity of reason and judgment.

The church has shown a determination to take hold of all classes of human society and all means of reform and regeneration. It has evinced a tendency to seize all the products of culture, all the improvements of science, all the revelations of truth, and turn them to account in the upbuilding of mankind on earth, in perfecting character and relieving mankind, in developing the individual and improving social conditions. The church has thus entered the educational world, the missionary field, the substratum of society, the political life, and the field of social order, everywhere becoming a true servant of the people.

Growth of Religious Toleration.—There is no greater evidence of the progress of human society than the growth of religious toleration. In the first hundred years of the Reformation, religious toleration was practically unknown. Indeed, the last fifty years has seen a more rapid growth in this respect than in the previous three hundred. Luther and his followers could not tolerate Calvinists any more than they could {448} Catholics, and Calvinists, on the other hand, could tolerate no other religious opinion.

The slow evolution of religious toleration in England is one of the most remarkable things in history. Henry VIII, "Defender of the Faith," was opposed to religious liberty. Queen Mary persecuted all except Catholics. Elizabeth completed the establishment of the Anglican Church, though, forced by political reasons, she gave more or less toleration to all parties. But Cromwell advocated unrelenting Puritanism by legislation and by the sword. James I, though a Protestant wedded to imperialism in government, permitted oppression. The Bill of Rights, which secured to the English people the privileges of constitutional government, insisted that no person who should profess the "popish" religion or marry a "papist" should be qualified to wear the crown of England.

At the close of the sixteenth century it was a common principle of belief that any person who adhered to heterodox opinions in religion should be burned alive or otherwise put to death. Each church adhered to this sentiment, though, it is true, many persons believed differently, and at the close of the seventeenth century Bossuet, the great French ecclesiastic, maintained with close argument that the right of the civil magistrate to punish religious errors was a point on which nearly all churches agreed, and asserted that only two bodies of Christians, the Socinians and the Anabaptists, denied it.

In 1673 all persons holding office under the government of England were compelled to take the oath of supremacy and of allegiance, to declare against transubstantiation, and to take the sacrament according to the ritual of the established church. In 1689 the Toleration Act was passed, exempting dissenters from the Church of England from the penalties of non-attendance on the service of the established church. This was followed by a bill abolishing episcopacy in Scotland. In 1703 severe laws were passed in Ireland against those who professed the Roman Catholic religion. The Test Act was not repealed until 1828, when the oath was taken "on the true {449} faith of a Christian," which was substituted for the sacrament test.

From this time on Protestant dissenters might hold office. In the year following, the Catholic Relief Act extended toleration to the Catholics, permitting them to hold any offices except those of regent, lord chancellor of England or Ireland, and of viceroy of Ireland. In 1858, by act of Parliament, Jews were for the first time admitted to that body. In 1868 the Irish church was disestablished and disendowed, and a portion of its funds devoted to education. But it was not until 1871 that persons could lecture in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge without taking the sacrament of the established church and adhering to its principles.

The growth of toleration in America has been evinced in the struggle of the different denominations for power. The church and the state, though more or less closely connected in the colonies of America, have been entirely separated under the Constitution, and therefore the struggle for liberal views has been between the different denominations themselves. In Europe and in America one of the few great events of the century has been the entire separation of church and state. It has gone so far in America that most of the states have ceased to aid any private or denominational institutions.