TttE PRESENT CRISIS 2I
lom and knowledge has only ruade men keener to surfer. Give me a seat among you, and let me think why it has been SO." The others turned to the Spirit of the First Century, "Your promised redemption is long in coming." "But it will corne," he replied.
Man has always suffered want and the fear of want. His dangers have always corne Irorr, two sources,—nature and m21. Drought or flood, locusts or wild beasts, swept away his crops or herds. Earthquake and tire shook his home to ruin or ate up in the tiare of an hour the toil of a lifetime. But there is a disciplining power in the adversities of nature. If man wrestles bravely with her, she will turn to bless him and make him more a man. By learning nature's laws and obeying them, he makes nature obey him. The really grinding and destructive enemy of man is man. The roaming savage in famine and superstition hunted and ate his enemy as he hunted the beast. When men settled down to till the fields, they captured prisoners and ruade them drudge for them as slaves, just as they domesticated the horse and ox and ruade them work. Strong peoples conquered the weak and exacted forced labor or rent for the use of the land which the serf had once owned. Exploitation has changed its form from one stage of society to another, but it has always existed. "From the beginning until now man bas divided his fellows into those who were to be fed and those who were, figuratively at least, to be eaten." 1 There has always been social misery. The pyramids of Ely, "Outlines of Economics," p. 5-
Egypt were built on it; the Roman roads were cemented with it. But to-day we face a new form of it, which affronts all just conceptions of human lire in new and peculiar ways. Modern poverty, strangely enough, began when man for the first rime in history began to escape from poverty. The American Declaration of l_ndependence in x776 and the French Revolution in x789 were the birth of modern democracy. But about the saine rime another revolution set in beside which these great events were puny. 1 In x769 James Watt harnessed the expansive power of steam for human use. Hitherto man had used only the localized power of falling water and the fitful power of blowing wind. The only ready force had been the vital energy of man and beast. Now at last the weary hum of the hand-spindle and the pounding of the hand-loom could cease. Nature bent her willing neck to the yoke, and the economic production of our race took a leap forward— as when a car has been pushed forward by hand on the level, and now grips the cable and rushes up a steep incline. If some angel with prophetic foresight had witnessed that epoch, would he not have winged his way back to heaven to tell God that human suffering was drawing toits end? Instead of that a long-drawn wail of misery followed wherever the power-machine came. It swept the bread from men's tables and the pride from their hearts. Hitherto each toaster of a handicraft, with his family and a few apprentices and journeymen about him, had plied his trade in his home, owner of his simple tools and master of his profits. His workmen ate at his table, married his daughters, See Arnold Toynbee, "The Industral Revolutlon in England." For a popular summary see R. T. Ely, "Ouflines of Economics," Chaps. I-IX.
TIKE PRESENT CRISIS 215 and hoped to become masters themselves when their rime of education was over. He worked for customers whom he knew, and honest work was good policy. He supplied a definite demand. The rules of his guild and the laws of his city barred out alien or reckless competitîon which would undermine his trade. So men lived simply and rudely. They had no hope of millions to lure them, nor the fear of poverty to haunt thern. They lacked many of the luxuries accessible even to the poor to-day, but they had a large degree of security, independence, and hope. And.man liveth not by cake alone, t Then arrived the power-machine, and the old economic world tottered and fell like San Francisco in 19o6. The machine was too expensive to be set up in the old home workshops and owned by every rnaster. If the guilds had been wise enough to purchase and operate machinery in common, they rnight have effected a co/5perative organization of industry in which ai1 could have shared the increased profits of rnachine production. As it was, the wealthy and enterprising and ruthless seized the new opening, turned out a rapid flow of products, and of necessity underbid the others in marketing their goods. The old custorns and regulations which had forbidden or limited free competition were brushed away. New economîc theories were developed which sanctioned what was going on and secured the support of public opinion and legislation for those who were driving the machine through the framework of the social structure. The distress of the displaced workers was terrible. In t See Thorold Rogers, « Six Centuries of Work and Wages"; L. Brentano» «, On the History and Development of Guilds."
blind agony they mobbed the factories and destroyed he machines which were destroying them. But the men who owned the machines, owned the law. In England the death penalty was put on the destruction of machinery. Sullenly the old masters had to bow their necks to the yoke. They had to leave their own shops and their old independence and corne to the machine for work and bread. They had been masters; henceforth they had a toaster. The former companionship of toaster and workmen, working together in the little shops, was gone. Two classes were created and a wide gulf separated them: on the one hand the employer, whose hands were white and whose power was great; on the other the wage-earner, who lived in a cottage and could only in rare and lessening instances hope to own a great shop with its costly machinery/ This disintegration of the old econonaic life has slowly spread, reaching one trade after the other, one nation after the other. To-day it is working its way in Russia and India. Lonellow, in his "Village Blacksmith," has described a toaster of the old kind. "The smith, a mighty man was he, with strong and sinewy hands." To-day one son of the smith is nailing machine-ruade horseshoes on with machine-ruade nails, and repairing the iron-work of farmers which is wrought elsewhere. The other sons have gone into town and are factory hands. One worked in the fluff-filled air of a cotton mill and slept in a dark bedroom. He died of consumption. Thus went the old independence and the approximate equality of the old life. The old security disappeared, too. A man could not even be sure of the bare wages which he received for his toil. The machine worked with such headi F. Engels, "Condition of the Working Class in England in i844."
THE PRESENT CRISIS 21
long speed that it glutted the market with its goods and stopped its own wheels with the nlass of its own output. Periodical prostrations of industry began with speculative production, and a new kind of famine became familiar,- the famine for work. The machine required deftness rather than strength. The slender fingers of women and children sufficed for it, and they were cheaper than nlen. So men were forced out of work by the competition of their own wives and children, and saw their loved ones wilt and die under the relentless drag of the machine. The saying that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household," received a new application. Under the old methods industry could be scattered over the country. The machine now compelled population to settle about it. It was the creator of the modern city. It piled the poor together in crowded tenements at night and in unsanitary factories during the day, and intensified all the diseases that corne through crowding. Poverty leaped forward simultaneously with wealth. From 176o to 1818 the population of England increased seventy per cent; the poor relief increased rive hundred thirty per cent. Here, then, we have the incredible paradox of modern life. The instrument by which all humanity could fise from want and the fear of want actually submerged a large part of the people in perpetual want and fear. When wealth was multiplying beyond all human precedent, an immense body of pauperism with all its allied misery was growing up and becoming chronic. England was foremost in the introduction of machine industry, and the first half of the nineteenth century was one of the darkest rimes in the economic history of England. While the nation was attaining unparalleled wealth and power, many of its people were horribly destitut« and degraded. It is hardly likely that any social revolution, by which hereafter capitalism rnay be overthrown, will cause more injustice, more physical suffering, and more heartache than the industrial revolution by which capitalisw rose to power. That such an evil turn could be given to an event that held such a power for good, is a crushing dernonstration that thè moral forces in hurnanity failed to keep pace with its intellectual and econornic developrnent. Men learned to rnake wealth much faster than they learned to distribute it justly. Their eye for profit was keener than their ear for the voice of God and hurnanity. That is the great sin of rnodern humanity, and unless we repent, we shall perish by that si_n. But the first call to repentance cornes to all those who bave had this defective rnoral insight of hurnanity under their training, and whose duty it was to give a voice to the instincts o__..f righteousness and brotherhood. The first dire effects of the industrial revolution have been greatly mitigated in European countries" partly by the defensive organization of the workers; partly by the interposition of the State; partly by the awakened conscience of the people; and chiefly by the fear of the Social Democracy. In our own country the machine in the past wrought no such harrn. Our industries were in their infancy when the machine arrived, and there was no old econornic structure for it to destroy. Our people were an ernigrant folk, less rooted in the ancestral soil than any other nation, and have been ready and able to seek ernployment elsewhere when economic readjustments broke up their old employment. What Kipling calls the "hideous versatility" of Americans, which is a result of lire in a new country, has made it easy to turn from one trade to another, or to learn the work with a new machine. Above ail, our free and cheap land has been a constant outlet for labor, and long kept labor scarce and wages high. -But; there is nothing in the nature of our country that will permanently exempt us from the social misery created by the industrial revolution elsewhere. Popular orators have often asserted that the conditions of the effete monarchies could never corne to a people with free institutions like ours. Developments in recent years have given them the lie. Capitalism is no respecter of governments; it v«ill flourish in a republic as well as in a monarchy- perhaps better. The people cannot eat the ballot. It ill serve them only if they are wise and strong enough to use it as a shield for their own defence and as a sword against the enemies of the republic. The influences which formerly protected us and gave us a certain immunity from social misery are losing their force. We axe now running the rapids faster than any other nation. We do everything more strenuously and recklessly than others. Our machinery is speeded faster; our capital centralizes faster; we use up human lire more carelessly; we are less hampered by custom and prejudice. If we are once headed toward a social catastrophe, we shall get there ahead of schedule time. No preventivcs against the formation of social classes oEitten in a paper constitution can long save us from the iron wedge which capitalism drives through society. The existence of at least two distinct classes is inherent in the nature of capitalistic organization of industry, and essential to its very existence. Gustav Schmoller, the eminent professor of political economy at Berlin, says in his great work, "All experts agree that no country has such a plutocracy as the United States. ''1 The purpose of this chapter is to bring the present situa. tion before us with a few rapid strokes in order to create a realizing sense of the present crisis. The main concern of the discussion Mil be with the moral element contained in the condition of society and in its drifts. In former chapters I have shown that the moral power generated by the Christian religion is available for the task of social regeneration. I wish here to show that it is needed, fully and immediately,']f our Christian civilization is to stand and advance. In the nature of the case the discussion »viii be a critique of present conditions. It »viii have to dwell on the adverse symptoms, like the diagnosis of a physician. If he is dealing with the breakdown of the digestive or nervous apparatus, he may fail to mention that the bones are ail sound and that the patient has a splendid head of hair. Personally I ara nota despiser of my age and its achievements. There is no other age in which I should prefer to have lived. The very fact that we can feel our social wrongs so keenly and discuss them calmly and without fear of social hatred, is one of the highest tributes to be paid to our age. My appeal is ruade hopefully to the educated reason and the moral insight of modern Christian men.
Next to lire itself the greatest gift of God to man is the land from which all lire is nourished. The character of a nation cannot be understood apart from tle co:l.try and climate in which it lires. The social prosperity, the mora!ity, the rise or i G. Schmoller, "Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre," II 453- decline of a people, always fundamentally depend on the wis. dom and justice with which the land is distributed and used. In our country the land in its vastness and abundance, its variety and wealth, has been one of the most sanitary influences in our national life. The mass of independent farmers have been and still are the moral backbone of our nation. The "embattled farmers" won our indcpendence and formed the incomparable armies of our Civil War on both sides, just as the rnarvellous army of Cromwell was composed of the sons of English yeomen. It was our land, fully as much as our institutiolas, which absorbed and assimilated the mass of our immigrants in the past, and formed an automatic safety-valve for the overheated machine of out commercial and political life. Our system has been to distribute our farming land in severalty as the private property of the family which tilled it. This system has doubtless been of great use in the rapid settlement of our country. It has offered the individual every incentive to improve his land to the utmost, since it belonged absolutely to him and his descendants. It is often asserted that the secret of our prosperity lies in this private ownership of land in contrast to the land communism prevailing, for instance, in the Russian village community. It is overlooked that our method of assigning homestead claires from the public lands has in fact been a kind of gigantic communism in land. Nearly all ancient communities with which we have historic connection recognized that the community is the real owner of the land. 1 In the old English village the woodland x See the great works of Sir Henry Maine, "' Village Communities in the East and West" and "Early History of Institutions."
and pasture were common to all. t The meadow-land was divided only till the hay-harvest was over and then was com, mon once more. Only the plough-land was permanently divided, but subject to fresh division as new claimants were admitted to the commune. Only those entitled to a share in the common land were citizens with full political rights. This institution is one of the marks of the Aryan race and underlay the freedom and virility of the people. It was disturbed and destroyed by the saine influences which sapped the primitive self-government of the people. Large remnants of it persisted down to out day in Europe. Previous to the industrial revolution vast tracts of common land still existed in England. The poor man could build on it free of rent and could till patches of it and pasture his sheep or geese. In out own law the principle that the larld is the property of the community- a principle which has all good sense and political philosophy on its side- is still embodied in the "right of eminent domain." The State can condemn private property for public uses, because the community has a latent and superior right in the land which may at any rime supersede the inferior right of the individual. But in general out law treats land as private property. This institution is of comparatively recent origin. 2 It is due mainly to the influence of Roman law. Rome, too, in the early days of its strength had communal ownership. The herds were pastured on the ager pdlicus. If new land was conquered, the younger sons got their allotment there. But gïalully the wealthy families crowded out the plebs mstica. They took the lion's share of land conquered. They turned 1 F. Seebohm, "The English Village Community." E. de Laveleye, "De la propriété."