The suddenness of these economic changes has swept the world away from its accustomed moorings, out upon an uncharted sea. Only yesterday the race was struggling to make a meagre living: to-day the centres of industry are glutted with bulging warehouses and equipped with idle machinery that will produce unheard of quantities of shoes and blankets and talking machine records, if the owners will but give the word to the workers who are eager to perform those services that yield them a living. Only yesterday the world was maintained by local production: to-day it depends upon transport and exchange. All of these changes in the accustomed ways and acts of men have been brought about in the course of an economic revolution.
The tidal wave of the industrial revolution has not stopped with the economic world. No phase of life has been exempt from the power of its magic. The school, the church, the family, the home, the state, have all felt its transforming might. The aggregate of these changes is the profound social revolution that has been for some time, and that is at present tearing the fabric of the old society to tatters, while beneath its surface-chaos is forming the nucleus of a new social order.
The results of profound changes such as those that are now occurring, must be chaos except in so far as the ingenuity and organizing capacity of man re-establishes order. The people in the world are in very much the position of a valley population suffering from a disastrous flood. Their houses and fruit-trees—the product of generations of labor—have been swept away. The valley is filled with debris. As the water recedes, the wreckage must first be picked up, then the whole population must fall to with a will and rebuild the community—put up houses, re-plant trees, re-make gardens, repair roads.
The social revolution has not swept everything away, but it has modified the form of social institutions, and some of them, such as the old time farm home, the individual workshop and the agricultural village have been obliterated in many localities. How shall the new society be rebuilt? Only as the old was built—by the expenditure of human effort and under the guidance of the best wisdom that the community can muster.
There are a number of points of view from which the present-day economic chaos may be regarded. The humanitarian feels pity for the suffering and hardship imposed upon multitudes of the world's population. The conservative laments the alterations which are being made in the established order. The liberal regrets that the changes are occurring so rapidly that construction cannot keep pace with destruction. The radical sees, in these fundamental changes, the dawn of his millennium. The scientist and the engineer upon whose shoulders will rest the burden of rebuilding the new society, tighten their belts and turn to the mightiest task that men have ever faced.
The economic muddle in which the world now finds itself is one of many transition periods in the history of civilization,—a phase of the great revolution. Like any period of chaos, it is the seed-ground of the new order—the demolition which precedes construction.
Some day men may be wise enough and sufficiently well organized and equipped to demolish and construct at the same time. As yet no such stage has been reached. During the intervals of chaos which separate two periods of forward movement (the dark ages of the world, as they are sometimes called) the masses agonize and suffer, groping blindly and crying out for guidance. Such is the period in which the world now finds itself.
Out of this chaos, men must bring order; and to do this they must discover the foundations upon which the new order can be successfully built. This is the work of the engineers, the constructors of the new society.[3]