The machine made a new society. The artisan could not compete with the products of the machine. The home workshop disappeared, and in its place rose the factory, with its tens, its hundreds and its thousands of operatives.
Under the modern system of machine production, each person has his particular duty to perform. Each depends, for the success of his service, upon that performed by thousands of others.
All modern industry is organized on the principle of coöperation, division of labor, and specialization. Each has his task, and unless each task is performed the entire system breaks down.
Never were the various branches of the military service more completely dependent upon each other than are the various departments of modern economic life. No man works alone. All are associated more or less intimately with the activities of thousands and millions of their fellows, until the failure of one is the failure of all, and the success of one is the success of all.
Such a development could have only one possible result,—people who worked together must live together. Scattered villages gave place to industrial towns and cities. People were compelled to coöperate in their lives as well as in their labor.
The theory under which the new industrial society began its operations was "every man for himself." The development of the system has made every man dependent upon his fellows. The principle demanded an extreme individualism. The practice has created a vast network of inter-relations, that leads the cotton spinner of Massachusetts to eat the meat prepared by the packing-house operative in Omaha, while the pottery of Trenton and the clothing of New York are sent to the Yukon in exchange for fish and to the Golden Gate for fruit. Inside as well as outside the nation, the world is united by the strong hands of economic necessity. None can live to himself, alone. Each depends upon the labor of myriads whom he has never seen and of whom he has never heard. Whether we will or no, they are his brothers-in-labor—united in the Atlas fellowship of those who carry the world upon their shoulders.
The theory of "every man for himself" failed. The practical exigencies involved in subjugating a continent and wresting from nature the means of livelihood made it necessary to introduce the opposite principle,—"In Union there is strength; coöperation achieves all things."
3. The Struggle for Organization
The technical difficulties involved in the mechanical production of wealth compelled even the individualists to work together. The requirements of industrial organization drove them in the same direction.
The first great problem before the early Americans was the conquest of nature. To this problem the machine was the answer. The second problem was the building of an organization capable of handling the new mechanism of production—an organization large enough, elastic enough, stable enough and durable enough—to this problem the corporation was the answer.