And in giving the figures of the Socialist growth, it is worth while to point out that this is not merely a local movement, but a world movement; that the United States is one of the most backward of the civilised nations in respect to Socialism. In Australia the labour unions have adopted a full Socialist program, and the labour unions hold the balance of power. In England, they have just elected twenty-seven members of Parliament; they have now members in the Cabinet of France, and in Italy they have turned out ministries. In Belgium, the vote of the party is half a million, and in Austria it is nearly a million, while in Germany it has grown from thirty thousand in 1870, to five hundred and forty-nine thousand in 1884, one million, eight hundred and seventy-six thousand in 1893, three million and eight thousand in 1903 and three million two hundred and fifty thousand in 1907. The Socialists are electing representatives in Argentina and South Africa; in spite of government persecution, the movement is now growing rapidly in Japan. Including all languages, the Socialist journals number nearly seven hundred, and the Socialist vote of the world is figured at nearly eight million. Allowing for women, and for the disfranchised proletariat of such nations as Russia, Austria, and Italy, there are estimated to be thirty million class-conscious Socialists in the world.
To overlook the significance of a movement such as this, is but to repeat upon a larger scale the error of half a century ago, and to pay with blood and anguish for blundering and indifference. The processes of time have their laws, which can be studied; and all the waste and ruin of history, which make its records scarcely to be read, are consequences of the fact that man has to be lashed to his goal through the darkness, instead of marching to it in the light. You take but a shallow view of the problems of our present time, if you do not realise that when thirty million people, in every corner of the civilised world, organise themselves into a political party, they do it because of some fundamental and tremendous motive, and that they will not be apt to abandon their efforts until they have accomplished some proportionately significant result.
CHAPTER II
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
Herbert Spencer gives a definition of Evolution, phrased in technical terms, which might be roughly summed up in these words: A process whereby many similar and simple things become dissimilar parts of one complex thing. If we trace, for instance, the evolution of human society, we see about as follows: In the beginning man exists in widely scattered and unrelated tribes, having a very loosely organised government, each individual doing about as he pleases, and all individuals being very much the same. Each finds his own food and cooks it, makes his own weapons and clothing, and looks and thinks and acts like his neighbour. Little by little, as the tribe grows, it begins to come into contact with other tribes that also are growing, and a pressure begins; the tribes make war upon each other, and each individual of the tribe is forced by the presence of danger to unite himself more closely with his fellows, to establish a more rigid rule of obedience, and to force refractory members to the general will. Then, under still growing pressure, one tribe unites with another against a common enemy, and the strongest man in the two rules both; which process of combining continues until at last there results an organism of great complexity, whose members are no longer equal and self-sustaining, but have different activities and ranks and characteristics, and are each dependent upon the rest. If, for instance, we examine France during the Feudal period, we find numerous principalities, duchies and baronies, each one an elaborate and complex organisation, with various classes and hierarchies and tributary parts, and a whole system of laws and customs and beliefs to correspond. And no sooner is this process complete than an evolution begins among these organisms; under the stress of jealousies and ambitions they too begin to struggle, to combine; and presently in one of them arises a strong man who secures command of them all. When the process is completed, there stands in the place of a hundred principalities, one kingdom, the Kingdom of France.
The object of all this long labour is, of course, to get some kind of an organism that shall be capable of maintaining itself in a world of ferocious strife; that shall be able to withstand all enemies that may come against it, and all rebellions that may arise within it. The French monarchy was a marvellous piece of work when it was done; it had men graded into a thousand different classes and occupations, and everything fitted perfectly and ran like a clock. It had peasants to till the soil, and soldiers and sailors to fight; artisans to make all its necessaries, and merchants to handle them; and rising tier upon tier, a whole pyramid of governing and administrative officials, up to the king. It had likewise the whole outfit of ideas and customs necessary to its operation; it was complete and perfect and sublime—it was like a mighty vessel defying the tempests; it had also its pennons that waved, and its songs for the crew to sing. Was it any wonder that those who had made it were proud of it, and felt that there was nothing more to be done in the world but to keep it going?
And yet evolution was not through with it. Men grow weary and want to rest, they become “conservative” and fret at the bare thought of change—but the processes of life go on inexorably. This mighty structure, the Kingdom of France, was only a means and not an end—its purpose was to bind the people of the nation together and protect them until they were able to take care of themselves. It took a long time for this idea to make its way; it took a fearful struggle—men were imprisoned and exiled, burned and beheaded; but the idea went right on, and the nation went right on; and when the time came, it burst the old integument to pieces, and out of the Kingdom of France there emerged the French Republic.
What a marvellous event that was, and what a stir it made in the world—what a stir especially in our own corner of the world—every one knows. Looking at it from a century’s distance, and calmly, we see the whole age-long event as an exemplification of the process of life; the combining of a number of simple things into one complex thing. The means was struggle and rivalry—it was a cruel process; but you will notice that at the end the effort and the pain are all gone—that the organism fulfils its functions freely and joyfully, and that the only difference between the first stage and the last is that the individual man has been raised to a higher plane of being.
Now, as I have said before, the first care of a man is to protect his life; the second is to accumulate wealth. A man does not set much store by his goods while his enemies are within sound; but just as soon as they are dispersed, the tribe begins to gather flocks, and to till the soil. And so, following close upon the heels of the evolution of political society, you have the evolution of industrial society.
And it is precisely the same process. We may see nearly the whole of it in this country. It begins with the colonial village, where every man owns a little land and raises his own food; also he cobbles his own shoes, spins his own wool, weaves his own cloth, and makes his own clothes. In the very earliest days, he never buys anything, because there is nothing to buy. He may be the deacon or the schoolmaster or the judge, but still he has his own farm, and any other man in the village is about as well fitted to be the deacon or the schoolmaster or the judge as he. But then his goods expand and war begins—industrial war, I mean—a horse-trade, for example. Political evolution is slow, because the rate of increase of men is limited; but the rate of increase of goods proves to be unlimited. Machines are invented, and straightway the industrial process is accelerated tenfold. It took a thousand years to evolve a monarchy; it took only a hundred to evolve a trust.
The industrial units fight each other, and the strongest survive as employers, the weakest becoming employees. Then, as growth continues, these various little groups all over the country come into contact, and they struggle also. The struggle is of course no longer fighting with swords—it is underselling; but the process is exactly the same, and its purpose is the building up of a capable industrial organism. Precisely as in one case the tribes by combining find they are stronger to fight, the employers, by combining, find that they are stronger to undersell; and this process goes on until you have an industrial feudalism, corresponding in all its details to the political feudalism of France. And then, as before, the barons and the princes and the dukes fight among each other, until out of the midst arises a strong man, a Rockefeller or a Harriman, who smashes them right and left, and makes himself a king.