[45] Rev. F. W. Aveling, Principal of Taunton Independent College, in leaflet “Down with the Socialists,” August, 1888. See also Professor H. Sedgwick on “Economic Socialism,” Contemporary Review, November, 1886.
[46] That is to say, unfortunately, in nearly all the utterances which profess to guide our social and political action.
[47] Contemporary Review, February, 1888.
[48] “Social Statistics,” passim.
[49] See Professor Leone Levi’s letter to the Times, 13th August, 1886, and Mr. Frederic Harrison’s speech at the Industrial Remuneration Conference held in January, 1885 (Report, p. 429).
[50] See Report of the Lambeth Episcopal Conference, 1888; subject, “Socialism”: also the proceedings of the Central Conference of Diocesan Councils, June, 1889 (paper on Socialism by Canon Furse).
INDUSTRIAL.
BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A.
My object in the following paper is to present a brief narrative of the economic history of the last century or century and a half. From this I wish to draw a moral. That moral is that there has been and is proceeding an economic evolution, practically independent of our individual desires or prejudices; an evolution which has changed for us the whole social problem by changing the conditions of material production, and which ipso facto effects a revolution in our modern life. To learn clearly what that revolution is, and to prepare ourselves for taking advantage of it in due course—this I take to be briefly what is meant by Socialism. The ignorant public, represented by, let us say, the average bishop or member of Parliament, hears of the “Social Revolution” and instantly thinks of street riots, noyades, with a coup d’état: a 10th of August, followed perhaps by its Nemesis in an 18th Brumaire. But these are not the Social Revolution. That great change is proceeding silently every day. Each new line of railway which opens up the trackless desert, every new machine which supplants hand labor, each fresh combination formed by capitalists, every new labor organization, every change in prices, each new invention—all these forces and many more are actually working out a social revolution before our eyes: for they are changing fundamentally the economic basis of life. There may possibly come some one supreme moment of time in which a great dramatic incident will reveal to men the significance of the changes which have led up to it, and of which it is merely the final expression. And future historians may write of that as The Revolution just as historians now write of the fall of the Bastille, or the execution of Louis XVI, as though these events constituted the French Revolution, instead of being the final terms in a long series of events which had been loosening the fabric of French feudalism through several generations. The true prophet is not an ignorant soothsayer who foretells some Armageddon, but rather he who perceives the inevitable drift and tendency of things. Somewhat in this spirit we may consider the economic history of the modern industrial era in order to discern its meaning, to see what it has led up to, and what, consequently, are the problems with which we find ourselves confronted to-day.
Had we visited a village or small town in England where industrial operations were going on one hundred and fifty years ago, what should we have found? No tall chimney, vomiting its clouds of smoke, would have been visible; no huge building with its hundred windows blazing with light would have loomed up before the traveller as he entered the town at dusk; no din of machinery would have been heard; no noise of steam hammers; no huge blast furnaces would have met his eye, nor would miles of odors wafted from chemical works have saluted his nostrils. If Lancashire had been the scene of his visit he would have found a number of narrow red-brick houses with high steps in front, and outside wooden shutters such as one may still see in the old parts of some Lancashire towns to-day. Inside each of these houses was a little family workshop, containing neither master nor servant, in which the family jointly contributed to produce by the labor of their hands a piece of cotton cloth. The father provided his own warp of linen yarn, and his cotton wool for weft. He had purchased the yarn in a prepared state, while the wool for the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. There was a simple division of labor in the tiny cottage factory; but all the implements necessary to produce the cotton cloth were owned by the producers. There was neither capitalist nor wage-receiver: the weaver controlled his own labor, effected his own exchange, and received himself the equivalent of his own product. Such was the germ of the great English cotton manufacture. Ferdinand Lasselle said: “Society consists of ninety-six proletaires and four capitalists. That is your State.” But in old Lancashire there was neither capitalist nor proletaire.