CHAPTER III
THE NEW FORMS OF DEMOCRATIC BELIEF
1. The Conflict between Capital and Labour.
While our legislators are reforming and legislating at hazard, the natural evolution of the world is slowly pursuing its course. New interests arise, the economic competition between nation and nation increases in severity, the working-classes are bestirring themselves, and on all sides we see the birth of formidable problems which the harangues of the politicians will never resolve.
Among these new problems one of the most complicated will be the problem of the conflict between labour and capital. It is becoming acute even in such a country of tradition as England. Workingmen are ceasing to respect the collective contracts which formerly constituted their charter, strikes are declared for insignificant motives, and unemployment and pauperism are attaining disquieting proportions.
In America these strikes would finally have affected all industries but that the very excess of the evil created a remedy. During the last ten years the industrial leaders have organised great employers' federations, which have become powerful enough to force the workers to submit to arbitration.
The labour question is complicated in France by the intervention of numerous foreign workers, which the stagnation of our population has rendered necessary.[13] This stagnation will also make it difficult for France to contend with her rivals, whose soil will soon no longer be able to nourish its inhabitants, who, following one of the oldest laws of history, will necessarily invade the less densely peopled countries.
[13] Population of the Great Powers:— 1789. 1906.
Russia … … 28,000,000 129,000,000
Germany … … 28,000,000 57,000,000
Austria … … 18,000,000 44,000,000
England … … 12,000,000 40,000,000
France … … 26,000,000 39,000,000
These conflicts between the workers and employers of the same nation will be rendered still more acute by the increasing economic struggle between the Asiatics, whose needs are small, and who can therefore produce manufactured articles at very low prices, and the Europeans, whose needs are many. For twenty-five years I have laid stress upon this point. General Hamilton, ex- military attache to the Japanese army, who foresaw the Japanese victories long before the outbreak of hostilities, writes as follows in an essay translated by General Langlois:—