18703	----	[Transcriber's Note: Punctuation in catalog entries has been silently regularized. Other errors are noted at the end of the text.] * * * * * SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION--BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTIONS OBTAINED FROM THE INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO IN 1880. BY JAMES STEVENSON. * * * * * CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION 429 Collections from Cuyamunque 435 Articles of stone 435 Rubbing stones 435 Articles of clay 436 Collections from Nambé 436 Articles of stone 436 Articles of clay 437 Collections from Pojuaque 438 Articles of stone 438 Articles of clay 439 Articles of bone and horn 440 Collections from Old Pojuaque 441 Articles of stone 441 Articles of clay 441 Collections from Santa Clara 441 Articles of stone 441 Articles of clay 443 Polished black ware 443 Black or brown ware 447 Whitened ware with colored decorations 449 Vegetal substances 449 Collections from Tesuque 450 Articles of stone 450 Articles of clay 450 Collections from Turquoise Mine 450 Collections from Santo Domingo 450 Articles of stone 450 Articles of clay 451 Collections from Jémez 452 Articles of stone 452 Articles of clay 452 Miscellaneous articles 454 Collections from Silla 454 Articles of stone 454 Articles of clay 454 Miscellaneous 455 Collections from San Juan 456 Articles of stone 456 Articles of clay 456 Polished black ware 456 Brown and black ware 457 White ware with decorations 457 Miscellaneous articles 458 Collection from Santa Ana 458 Articles of stone 458 Articles of clay 458 Collection from Sandia, N. Mex. 458 Collection from Cochití 459 Articles of stone 459 Articles of clay 459 Miscellaneous articles 460 Collections from San Ildefonso 460 Articles of stone 460 Articles of clay 461 Red ware with decorations in black 462 Red and brown ware without decorations 463 Black polished ware 463 Black ware not polished 463 Miscellaneous articles 464 Collections from Taos 464 Articles of stone 464 Articles of clay 464 White and red ware with decorations 465 ILLUSTRATIONS. Fig. 698.--Pojuaque pitcher 440 699.--Santa Clara polished black ware 443 700.--Santa Clara polished black ware 444 701.--Santa Clara bowl 445 702.--Santa Clara image 445 703.--Santa Clara meal basket 446 704.--Santa Clara pipe 446 705.--Santa Clara canteen 447 706.--Santa Clara canteen 449 707.--Santo Domingo tinaja 451 708.--Jémez water vase 453 709.--Silla water vessel 455 710.--The blanket weaver 454 711.--San Juan water vessel 457 712.--San Ildefonso water vessel 461 713.--Taos polishing stone 464 714.--Taos vessel 465 [Illustration: MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF TUSAYAN, ARIZONA Surveyed by A. L. WEBSTER 1881] * * * * * ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTIONS OBTAINED FROM THE INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO IN 1880. By James Stevenson. * * * * * INTRODUCTION. It is thought best that I should give, in connection with the catalogue of collections made by the party under my charge in 1880-'81, a brief statement in relation to the collections described in the catalogues, and the information obtained in regard to the Pueblo tribes. Our explorations during the field season of 1880 and 1881 were restricted to the Pueblo tribes located along the Rio Grande and its tributaries in New Mexico. The chief object in view was to secure as soon as possible all the ethnological and archaeological data obtainable before it should be lost to science by the influx of civilized population which is being rapidly thrown into this region by the extension of railroads into and through it. Not only are the architectural remains being rapidly destroyed and archaeological specimens collected and carried away by travelers, excursionists, and curiosity hunters, but the ancient habits and customs of these tribes are rapidly giving way and falling into disuse before the influence of eastern civilization. Our party, consisting, besides myself, of Mr. Galbraith, archaeologist, Mr. Morancy, assistant, and Mr. J. K. Hillers, photographer, proceeded to Santa Fé, N. Mex., where an outfit was secured for the season's work. From here we proceeded to Taos, one of the most extensive pueblos in the Rio Grande region. This village is situated on the Rio Taos a few miles from the Rio Grande, and just under the shadow of the Taos Mountains. It comprises two large sections, one on each side of the Rio Taos. These are compactly built and each six stories high. The industrial pursuits of these Indians are principally pastoral and agricultural, they having a good market for their products in the Mexican village of Fernandez de Taos, containing a population of about 4,000 Mexicans and eastern people. The party spent several days here making investigations and collections. The collection made was small but quite varied and novel, though few of the articles obtained were of their own manufacture. Quite a number of stone implements were secured, among which were some stone knives, pipes, a number of rude stone axes and hammers, arrow smoothers, &c. The pottery obtained here is chiefly of the common type and resembles that from San Juan, from whence in all probability it was received by exchange and barter. Earthenware, so far as I can learn, is not now made in Taos, except by a few families where a Taos Indian has married a woman from San Juan or some other tribe where the manufacture of pottery is carried on. If this industry was ever, practiced by the Taos Indians it must have been at a remote period; in fact there seems to be no tradition of it now among them. From here we went next to the pueblo of San Juan, situated on the left bank of the Rio Grande, about 50 miles south of Taos. At this pueblo a collection was made of stone implements, articles of clay, &c. These specimens are not quite so representative as those from some of the more southern pueblos, the village being situated on one of the military wagon roads, over which many Europeans pass, and hence frequently visited; many of the most valuable specimens of implements and pottery have been bartered away; however, those we obtained display quite fully all the industries of the people of this pueblo. This collection consists of a number of fine stone mortars, pestles, arrow and spear heads, also several polishing stones. Quite a number of small animal forms carved out of stone were also secured. At this pueblo many specimens of the black polished ware peculiar to a few of the tribes in the Rio Grande Valley were collected. From San Juan we proceeded to Santa Clara, situated a few miles below on the right bank of the Rio Grande. This pueblo proved to be so interesting in its surroundings that some time was spent here in making investigations. We found the people extensively engaged in the manufacture of that black polished pottery of which so little has been known heretofore, especially in regard to the process of baking and coloring it, which is fully described in the text accompanying the catalogue of last year in this volume. The larger portion of the specimens of earthenware obtained here was of this kind, though several specimens of the red and some few of the ornamented class were also secured. Most of the pottery manufactured at this village is the black polished ware. That of the decorated class is ornamented with the juice of _Cleome integrifolia_, which is fixed in the ware in the process of burning. Mineral substances, so far as I could learn, are not used by the Indians of Santa Clara in decorating their pottery. Among the specimens are a number of interesting stone implements, nearly all of an older kind than any made by this people at the present day. During our stay at this pueblo some interesting archaeological discoveries were made of which a brief mention in this connection may not be out of place, and which will certainly prove of great interest to future investigators. Between the Rio Grande and Valle Mountains, commencing about 12 miles below, or south, of Santa Clara, and extending south, to within ten miles of Cochití, a distance of about 65 miles, is an extensive area, the intermediate elevated portion of which is composed of a yellowish volcanic tufa, of coarse texture and sufficiently soft and yielding to be readily worked or carved with rude stone implements. Over this entire area there are irregular elevations, somewhat circular in outline, from 50 to 200 feet in height, the faces of which have been worn away by the elements, and are in nearly all instances perpendicular. These consecutive elevations extend back from the Rio Grande from five to fifteen miles. Over this whole expanse of country, in the faces of these cliffs, we found an immense number of cavate dwellings, cut out by the hand of man. We made no attempt to count the number of these curious dwellings, dug like hermit cells out of the rock, but they may be estimated with safety among the thousands. I made many inquiries of the neighboring tribes in regard to the history of these dwellings, but could elicit no information from any of them. The response was invariably, "they are very old and the people who occupied them are gone." An inspection of a portion of this area revealed a condition of things which I have no doubt prevails throughout. The dwellings were found in the faces of the cliffs, about 20 feet apart in many instances, but the distances are irregular. A careful examination satisfied me that they were excavated with rude stone implements resembling adzes, numbers of which were found here, and which were probably used by fastening one end to a handle. The doorways, which are square, were first cut into the face of the wall to a depth of about one foot, and then the work of enlarging the room began. The interiors of the rooms are oval in shape, about 12 feet in diameter, and only of sufficient height to enable one to stand upright. The process, from the evidences shown inside, of carving out the interior of the dwelling was by scraping grooves several inches deep and apart, and breaking out the intermediate portion; in this way the work progressed until the room reached the desired size. Inside of these rooms were found many little niches and excavated recesses used for storing household ornaments, the larger ones probably supplying the place of cupboards. Near the roofs of many of the caves are mortises, projecting from which, in many instances, were found the decayed ends of wooden beams or sleepers, which were probably used, as they are now in the modern Pueblo dwellings, as poles over which to hang blankets and clothing, or to dry meat. These dwellings were without fireplaces; but the evidences of fire were plainly visible at the side of each cave, and in none of those visited did we find any orifice for the egress of the smoke but the small doorway. On the outside or in front of these singular habitations are rows of holes mortised into the face of the cliffs about the doors. It is quite evident that these were for the insertion of beams of wood (for forming booths or shelters in the front), as ends of beams were found sticking there, which, in their sheltered position and in this dry climate, may have been preserved for centuries. Upon the top of the mesa of which these cliffs are the exposed sides we found the ruins of large circular buildings made of square stones 8 by 12 inches in size. The walls of some of these structures remain standing to the height of ten or twelve feet, and show that from four to five hundred people can find room within each inclosure. One of these buildings was rectangular and two were round structures. The latter were about 100 and 150 feet in diameter, the rectangular one about 300 feet square. Many small square rooms were constructed in the interior from large cut bricks of the tufa of which the bluffs are composed. These rooms all opened toward the center of the large inclosure, which has but one general doorway. From these ruins we secured great quantities of pottery, arrow and spear heads, knives, grinding-stones, arrow-smoothers, and many of the small flint adzes, which were undoubtedly used for making the blocks for the structures on the mesa and for excavating the cave dwellings. Among the débris in the dwellings are found corncobs and other evidences of the food used by the inhabitants. This certainly indicates that the people who occupied these singular dwellings were agricultural. The faces of some of the more prominent cliffs contained as many as three rows of chambers one above the other; the débris at the foot, sometimes 200 feet deep, covered up at least two rows of these chambers. Along the edges of the cliffs and over the rocky surface of the mesa are winding footpaths from 3 to 10 inches deep, worn by the feet of the inhabitants. Some of these paths showed perceptible foot-prints where it was inconvenient for those following the path to do otherwise than tread in the footsteps of their predecessors. In our limited investigations we were unable to discover any evidence of burial customs. No graves could be found, and nothing of human remains. The southern portion of this area seems to have been most densely populated. Some of the protected walls in the neighborhood retain hieroglyphics in abundance. These resemble the picture writing of the present Indians of that region. Many interesting specimens of the art of this ancient people can be seen in the images of wild animals scattered over various spots. Many of them are cut in full relief out of the tufa and are always in some natural attitude, and can always be identified where the weather has not destroyed the original form. The most prominent are two mountain lions, side by side and life size. Further examinations will reveal much more of value and interest in connection with this very inviting locality. Mr. Galbraith, who accompanied my party, spent some time examining this region and made collections here. The next pueblo visited was San Ildefonso, about five miles below Santa Clara, on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande. But few specimens were obtained here. The people of this pueblo devote their time chiefly to agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and have almost abandoned the manufacture of pottery, that in use by them at the present time being mostly obtained from neighboring tribes. From San Ildefonso we proceeded to Nambé, a pueblo which has become almost extinct. The remnant of this people is situated about 25 miles above Ildefonso, on Nambé Creek, and not far from the base of the mountains. The people of Nambé have several times in years past moved their pueblo higher up the stream, the valley of which furnishes them fine agricultural and grazing grounds. They make very little pottery, but we found stored in many of the houses of the village great quantities of stone implements, principally large metates and grinding-stones. We also found many specimens of interest among the ruins of old Nambé and Pojuaque, as well as the remains of pottery in such quantities as to show that in the past the manufacture of pottery had been carried on quite extensively. In this vicinity I made arrangements with one of the employés of the party, who had resided many years at Santa Fé, to make excavations and collections from the old sites of Nambé, Pojuaque, and Cuyamunque, in which he was quite successful. From the pueblos north of Santa Fé we traveled direct to Cochití, 27 miles southwest of Santa Fé. This village is situated on the right bank of the Rio Grande and about three miles from Peña Blanca, a small Mexican town opposite. Here a very interesting collection was secured consisting mostly of pottery, many of the vessels simulating animal forms, variously ornamented with representations of some varieties of the flora of the locality. A few stone implements were also obtained here. We next visited Jémez, situated on the Rio Jémez. From thence we went to Silla and Santa Ana. At each of these villages representative collections were made, all of which are referred to in detail in the catalogue. The next villages visited were Santo Domingo and Sandia, on the Rio Grande. Some characteristic specimens were obtained at each of these pueblos. The method of their manufacture and the manner of using them are generally the same as in most of the other pueblos. A small collection of rude stone hammers was obtained from the turquois mine in the Cerrillo Mountains, about 25 miles from Santa Fé. The products of this celebrated mine, which were objects of traffic all over New Mexico, as well as contiguous countries, probably formed one inducement which led to the Spanish conquest of this region. The turquoises from this mine have always been valued as ornaments by the Indians of New Mexico, and carried far and wide for sale by them. The mine was worked in a most primitive manner with these rude stone hammers, a number of which were secured. The collections are all now in the National Museum for study and inspection. The following sketch is introduced here to show the method of using the batten stick represented in Fig. 546. There is not a family among the Pueblos or Navajos that does not possess the necessary implements for weaving blankets, belts and garters. Figs. 500-502 will convey an idea of the variety in design and coloring which prevails in this class of Indian fabrics, while Fig. 710 represents a blanket weaver at work. The picture is taken from a photograph made on the spot by Mr. Hillers, and is colored in accordance with the actual colors of the yarns and threads used in its manufacture. The particular class of blankets represented in this illustration is woven in the estufas, and is used almost exclusively in sacred dances and ceremonies of the tribe, all other garments being made in the houses or in the open air. The Navajos are celebrated for their skill as blanket weavers, and the Mokis are equally skilled in the manufacture of a finer class of the same article, which is much sought after by the surrounding tribes for ornamental purposes in sacred and other dances. The vertical threads, as shown in the figure, are the warp threads; the coarser thread which is inserted transversely between these is the yarn or weft. The three rods in the center of the blanket are lease rods, which are introduced among the threads of the warp to separate them and thus facilitate the insertion of the weft thread. These rods are each passed in front of one warp thread and behind another, alternately, across the whole warp, and between each rod the threads are brought from the back of one to the front of the next, and _vice versa_. The bar held in hands of the weaver serves as a batten for driving or beating the weft thread into the angle formed by the crossed warp threads. This loom resembles in principle the ancient Egyptian, Grecian, and French looms which are described on pages 55 to 62 of "The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and Power," by A. Barlow, London, 1878, and on pages 41 to 45 of the "Treatise on Weaving and Designing of Textile Fabrics," by Thomas E. Ashenhurst, Bradford, England, 1881. See also pp. 200 to 208, Vol. II, of the "Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by A. Ure, London, 1861. COLLECTIONS FROM CUYAMUNQUE. ARTICLES OF STONE. _RUBBING STONES._ (Used as rubbers in grinding corn on metates.) 1-3. 1, (46506); 2, (46507); 3, (46517). Basalt. 4, (46510). Sandstone. 5, (46512). Conglomerate. 6-9. 6, (46513); 7, (46514); 8, (46515); 9, (46516). Mica schist. 10-11. 10, (46518); 11, (46529). Of hornblende schist; these are elongate and intended to be used with both hands. 12-13. 12, (46508); 13, (46567). Quartzite metates. 14-15. 14, (46509); 15, (46511). Sandstone metates, the latter but little used and almost flat. 16, (46551). Rubbing stone of andesite. 17-24. 17, (46555); 18, (46556); 19, (46557); 20, (46558); 21, (46561); 22, (46563); 23, (46569); 24, (46559). Small smoothing stone mostly of quartzite, one or two only of basalt. These are bowlders weighing from one to three pounds, rounded by natural agencies, and selected by the natives to be used for smoothing and polishing purposes. When much used they are worn down flat on one side, the side used being worn off, just as the rubbing stone in the old process of preparing paint. 25-26. 25, (46519); 26, (46520). Unfinished celts of basalt. 27, (46521). Crude hoe or adze of mica schist. 28, (46522). Schist stone with groove for smoothing arrow shaft, and hole for rounding point. 29-31. 29, (46523); 30, (46524); 31, (46525). Crude stone implements, supposed to be used for digging. 32-34. 32, (46526); 33, (46527); 34, (46528). Very crude stone implements, probably used for pounding. 35, (46530). Double-handled baking stone; basalt. The use of stones of this kind will be more particularly noticed hereafter. 36, (46531). Broken rounded mortar; basalt. 37, (47532). A small, oblong, mortar-shaped vessel of lava. The width three inches, length when unbroken was probably four and a half inches; width of inside two inches, length probably three and one-fourth inches, depth of cavity three-fourths of an inch. On the portion remaining there are four feet; originally there were doubtless six. On one side is a projection or handle similar in form and size to the feet. 38-54. 38, (46533); 39, (46534); 40, (46535); 41, (46536); 42, (46537); 43, (46538); 44, (46539); 45, (46550); 46, (46552); 47, (46553); 48, (46554); 49, (46560); 50, (46562); 51, (46565); 52, (46566); 53, (46568); 54, (47571). Pounding or hammer stones, some of them simple cobble stones, others with marks of slight preparation for use by chipping off or rubbing down prominences. 55, (46540). Sandstone with smoothed surface and groove for smoothing arrow shafts. 56-64. 56, (46541); 57, (46542); 58, (46543); 59, (46544); 60, (46545); 61, (46546); 62, (46547); 63, (46548); 64, (46564). Small stones, chiefly quartz, basalt, and agate, used for smoothing and polishing pottery. 65-68. 65, (46570); 66, (46572); 67, (46573); 68, (46574). Broken rubbers for metates. 69, (46988). Spear head. Basalt. 70, (46989). Arrow head. Obsidian. ARTICLES OF CLAY. (Only one perfect specimen obtained.) 71, (46575). A bowl. 72, (46718). Fragments of ancient pottery. COLLECTIONS FROM NAMBÉ. ARTICLES OF STONE. 73-78. 73, (46577); 74, (46578); 75, (46579); 76, (46580); 77, (46581); 78, (46583). Quartzite rubbing stones of an elongate form. 79, (46582). Similar to the last group, but appears to have been used as a pestle as well as a rubber. 80-85. 80, (46584); 81, (46585); 82, (49586); 83, (46587); 84, (46588); 85, (46589). Pounding stones, chiefly of quartzite. These are quite regularly formed, cylindrical or spindle-shaped, with blunt or squarely docked ends, from four to seven inches long and two to three inches in diameter, used chiefly in pounding mesquite beans. 86-89. 86, (46590); 87, (46591); 88, (46592); 89, (46593). Round, flattened, or disk-shaped quartzite pounders, medium and small sizes. 90-91. 90, (46596); and 91, (46597). Pounders similar to the preceding group, but smaller. 92, (46594). A flat or disk-shaped polishing stone of quartzite. 93, (46595). An oblong rectangular quartzite pounding stone. 94-105. 94, (46598); 95, (46599); 96, (46600); 97, (46601); 98, (46602); 99, (46603); 100, (46604); 101, (46605); 102, (46606); 103, (46607); 104, (46608); 105, (46609). Small irregular stones of jasper and basalt used in shaping and polishing pottery. 106, (46610). Elongate, well-worn, sandstone meal rubber or rubber for metate. 107, (46611). A stone bowl or basin made from an oblong, somewhat oval-shaped quartzite slab, and used for pounding and grinding mesquite beans. The length is 19 inches, greatest width 10 inches, depth of depression 2 inches. 108, (46612). Rather large disk-shaped smoothing stone of basalt. 109-114. 109, (46719); 110, (46720); 111, (46721); 112, (46722); 113, (46723); and 114, (46724). Rubbers for metates of the usual form, mostly of basalt, well worn, and most of them broken. 115-131. 115, (46725); 116, (46726); 117, (46728); 118, (46729); 119, (46732); 120, (46733); 121, (46734); 122, (46735); 123, (46739); 124, (46740); 125, (46741); 126, (46742); 127, (46743); 128, (46744); 129, (46749); 130, (46750); 131, (46761). Crude pounding stones, mostly simple cobble stones, more or less worn by use. 132-150. 132, (46727); 133, (46730); 134, (46731); 135, (46736); 136, (46737); 137, (46738); 138, (46745); 139, (46746); 140, (46747); 141, (46748); 142, (46751); 143, (46752); 144, (46753); 145, (46754); 146, (46755); 147, (46756); 148, (46757); 149, (46758); 150, (46759). Small and mostly polished smoothing stones, used chiefly in polishing pottery; all well worn; of jasper, quartzite; or basalt. 151, (46760). A broken grooved ax of basalt. 152, (47051). A very large metate, twenty-four inches long and fifteen inches wide, much worn, the middle of the curve being three and one-half inches below the surface. 153, (47048). Ax with groove on one edge. 154, (47049). Hammer with broad annular groove. 155, (47050). Hammer with lateral notches. 156, (47051). Ax, broken. 157, (48052). Grooved hammer. 158, (47056). Half of a large mortar, much worn. 159, (47058). Metate. 160, (47059). A small mortar, probably used for grinding and pounding chili (pepper). ARTICLES OF CLAY. Articles of clay from this pueblo, which are but few in number, are either of polished black ware or unpolished of the natural _tierra amarilla_ or yellow earth, color, but more or less blackened by use. This ware is of precisely the same character and quality as the black pottery from Santa Clara. The pitchers, cups, and basins are evidently modeled after introduced patterns from civilized nations. All are without ornamentation. 161, (47033). Tinaja or olla, with narrow neck; _tierra amarilla_, blackened. 162, (47032). Tinaja or olla, rather small, polished black ware. 163-164. 163, (47034); 164, (47035). Pitchers of the ordinary form with handle and spout, about half-gallon size, polished black ware. 165, (47036). Small olla, yellow ware. 166, (47037). Small olla-shaped bowl; yellow ware. 167, (47038). A cup without handle. 168-171. 168, (47039); 169, (47040); 170, (47041); 171, (47042). Cups with handle similar in form and size to the ordinary white stone-china coffee cups; yellow-ware. 172, (47043). Cup similar in form and size to the preceding, but of polished black ware. 173, (47044). Small cup without handle; polished black ware. 174, (47045). Small cooking pot with handle; polished black ware. 175, (47046). A pear-shaped water vessel with two loop handles placed opposite each other near the mouth. 176, (47047). A large, polished black ware basin of the usual washbasin form, but with undulate border. 177, (47060). Small bowl, black polished ware. COLLECTIONS FROM POJUAQUE. ARTICLES OF STONE. 178-189. 178, (46613); 179, (46614); 180, (46615); 181, (46616); 182, (46617); 183, (46618); 184, (46619); 185, (46620); 186, (46621); 187, (46622); 188, (46657); 189, (46658). Hammers with groove around the middle. In 46618 the groove is double. They are of quartzite, lava, greenstone, metamorphic rock and basalt. 190-202. 190, (46623); 191, (46624); 192, (46625); 193, (46627); 194, (46639); 195, (46640); 196, (46641); 197, (46642); 198, (46644); 199, (45645); 200, (46646); 201, (46647); 202, (46648). Small smoothing-stones. 203, (46626). A triangular pounding stone. 204-212. 204, (46628); 205, (46629); 206, (46630); 207, (46631); 208, (46632); 209, (46633); 210, (46634); 211, (46650); 212, (46632). Oval pounding-stones made out of rolled pebbles or bowlders. 213, (46635). Elongate slender implements of basalt, probably used in molding pottery, especially the larger flaring bowls. 214, (46636). A smaller implement of similar form used as a polisher for particular vessels. 215-216. 215, (46637); 216, (46638). Flat stones with straight groove for smoothing arrow-shafts. 217, (46643). An unfinished ax of basalt. 218, (46651). A mortar for pounding and grinding mesquite beans. 219, (46653). Rude, partially grooved ax. 220, (46654). Small quartzite pestle. 221, (46659). A very regular, much-worn basaltic metate. 222, (47926). A large, well-worn metate. 223-226. 223, (46660); 224, (47927); 225, (47928); 226, (47929). Rubbing stones for metate. 227-228. 227, (47930); 228, (47931). Broken hatchets with annular groove near the hammer end. 229-232. 229, (47932); 230, (47933); 231, (47934); 232, (47935). Rude hatchets or digging implements notched on the side. 233-234. 233, (47936); 234, (47937). Hammers or pounding-stones with groove around the middle. 235-248. 235, (47938); 236, (47939); 237, (47944); 238, (47951); 239, (47952); 240, (47953); 241, (47954); 242, (47955); 243, (47956); 244, (47958); 245, (47959); 246, (47963); 247, (47964); 248, (47965). Pounding-stones. 249-255. 249, (47940); 250, (47941); 251, (47942); 252, (47943); 253, (47960); 254, (47961); 255, (47962). Small smoothing-stones. 256, (47945). Quartz pestle. 257, (47946). Stone for crushing and grinding mesquite beans. 258-261. 258, (47947); 259, (47948); 260, (47949); 261, (47950). Small disk-shaped hammer-stones with finger pits or depressions usually on both sides. 262-265. 262, (47966); 263, (47967); 264, (47968); 265, (47969). Stones with flat surface and a single straight groove for polishing or straightening arrow-shafts. 266-267. 266, (47971); 267, (47972). Similar stones, with two and three grooves, used for same purpose. 268, (47970). Piece of soap-stone used for moulding bullets. 269, (47974). Rude mortar for grinding paint. 270, (47973). Muller for grinding paint in the paint mortar. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These are few and simple and chiefly of the yellow micaceous ware, some of it blackened by use so that the original color cannot now be observed. Some of the pieces are of red ware with ornamentations. 273-274. 273, (47431); 274, (47432). Pottery moulds for bottoms of vessels. 275, (47434). A pitcher-shaped teapot of red micaceous ware, with handle; a row of projecting points around the middle, one-half of these (those on one side) having the tips notched. There is a triangular spout in front, the opening to it being through numerous small round holes forming a strainer. Capacity about three pints. (Fig. 698.) [Illustration: Fig. 698. 47434] 276, (47435). Small pitcher-shaped cooking pot with handle and crenulate margin. 277-278. 277, (47436); 278, (47437). Small plain bowls used in cooking. 279, (47438). A small boat-shaped bowl resembling a pickle dish. 280, (47439). A small, polished black olla. 281, (47440). A small flat flaring bowl of red ware, with simple, narrow, inner marginal black band and an inner sub-marginal line of triangular points with dots between them. 282, (47441). Small image of a quadruped, very rude; impossible to determine the animal intended; white ware with undulate black lines. 283, (47442). Image of a small bird with wings spread; white ware with black lines. 284, (47443). Small bowl of white ware, ornamented with red triangles and squares bordered by black lines. 285, (47444). Specimen of the paint used by the Indians to ornament themselves in their dances. ARTICLES OF BONE AND HORN. 271, (46656). Corn-husker; handle of antelope-horn and point of iron. 272, (48047). Implement of horn, perforated for straightening arrow-shafts. COLLECTIONS FROM OLD POJUAQUE. ARTICLES OF STONE. 286-288. 286, (46661); 287, (46662); 288, (46714). Fragments of metates. 289, (46663). Large, very regularly shaped and much worn metate. 290-296. 290, (46664); 291, (46665); 292, (46666); 293, (46667); 294, (46668); 295, (46669); 296, (46670). Rubbing stones for metates, mostly broken. 297-319. 297, (46671); 298, (46672); 299, (46673); 300, (46674); 301, (46675); 302, (46676); 303, (46677); 304, (46678); 305, (46679); 306, (46683); 307, (46684); 308, (46695); 309, (46690); 310, (46680); 311, (46701); 312, (46702); 313, (46705); 314, (46709); 315, (46710); 316, (46711); 317, (46712); 318, (46713); 319, (46715). Smoothing stones. 320-335. 320, (46681); 321, (46682); 322, (46685); 323, (46686); 324, (46687); 325, (46688); 326, (46689); 327, (46690); 328, (46691); 329, (46692); 330, (46693); 331, (46694); 332, (46699); 333, (46704); 334, (46706); 335, (46707). Hammers or pounding stones, mostly rude and simple, showing but little preparation. 336-338. 336, (46697); 337, (46698); 338, (46700). Rude unpolished celts. 339, (46703). A sharpening stone. Slate. 340, (46708). Grooved stones for polishing arrow-shafts. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These consist of only a few fragments of ancient ornamented pottery. 341-342. 341, (46716); 342, (46717). Fragments of pottery from the ruins of the old pueblo. COLLECTIONS FROM SANTA CLARA. ARTICLES OF STONE. 343-349. 343, (46762); 344, (46763); 345, (46764); 346, (47535); 347, (47552); 348, (47563); 349, (47564). Metates or grinding stones. 350, (46765). Blocks of stone from the walls of a ruined pueblo, (Liparito or Mesa.) 351-352. 351, (46767); 352, (46780). Rude hatchets or digging stones, notched at the sides and one end, more or less chipped. 353, (46781). Stone hammer, regular in form, grooved, and more than usually slender and pointed. 354-355. 354, (46782); 355, (46787). Pounding stones, chipped and notched at the sides. 356-357. 356, (46792); 357, (46793). Rounded pounding stones with finger pits. 358-359. 358, (46794); 359, (46799). Spherical stones used for casse-têtes, or in common parlance, slung-shot. 300-378. 360, (46800); 361, (46801); 362, (46802); 363, (46815); 364, (46828); 365, (46830); 366, (46832); 367, (46834); 368, (46841); 369, (46873); 370, (46881); 371, (46896); 372, (46965); 373, (47565); 374, (47679); 375, (47689); 376, (47693); 377, (47701); 378, (47707). Rude hammer-stones, some with notches at the sides, others without; none grooved. 379-381. 379, (46803); 380, (46812); 381, (46814). Rubbing stones for metate; mostly broken. 382, (46813). A rude, broken axe. 383-384. 383, (46824); 384, (46825). Smoothing stones used in making and polishing pottery. 385, (46826). Grooved stone for polishing arrow-shafts. 386, (46827). Fragments of pestles. 387-392. 387, (46831); 388, (46833); 389, (46842); 390, (46843); 391, (46963); 392, (46982). Smoothing stones. 393-396. 393, (46844); 394, (46864); 395, (47694); 396, (47700). Rubbing or smoothing stones. 397-398. 397, (46865); 398, (46868). Stone balls used as slung-shot. 399-400. 399, (46869); 400, (46871). Small, round hammer stones. 401, (47714). A rudely carved stone, probably intended to represent some animal. 402-404. 402, (46872); 403, (46882); 404, (46895). Grooved hammers. 405, (46983). Large pounding stone. 406-407. 406, (46985); 407, (46986). Bottles containing chips and flakes of obsidian and agate, from ancient pueblo on mesa. 408, (47987). Collection of 10 stones used in smoothing pottery. 409, (47536). Collection of 67 stones used in smoothing pottery. 410, (47537). Twenty-one stone chips and flakes. 411, (47538). Eight hammer stones and chips. 412-413. 412, (47539); 413, (47549). Grinding or rubbing stones for metate. 414, (47551). Stone mortar. 415-416. 415, (47553); 416, (47559). Rubbing stones for metate. 417-418. 417, (47560); 418, (47562). Pounding stones. 419, (47680). Large metate. 420-421. 420, (47681); 421, (47688). Rubbing stones for metate. 422, (46990). Grooved hammer. 423, (47709). Round pounding stone. 424, (47710). Chips and flakes of agate and jasper (one box). 425, (47711). Smoothing stones for pottery. 426, (47713). Chips and flakes of obsidian (one box). 427, (47715). Flakes and arrow heads of obsidian. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These consist of vessels of pottery, a few clay images, and two or three clay pipes. The pottery (with the exception of one or two pieces obtained from other pueblos) is all black ware, some of which is quite well polished. Some of the ollas are quite large, the form shown in fig. 699 (46993), predominating; others with rather high neck which is marked with sharp, oblique ridges, as shown in fig. 700 (47023). [Illustration: Fig. 699. 46993] _POLISHED BLACK WARE._ 428, (46993). Olla shown in fig. 699. The somewhat peculiar form of the body, the sharp curve at the shoulder and straight line in the lower half, is the point to which attention is more particularly called, as this appears to be the principal type form of these vessels, with this pueblo. 429, (46994). A jar-shaped olla. 430-433. 430, (46995); 431, (47023); Fig. 700. 432, (47024); 433, (47147). These are well shown in fig. 700. The oblique lines on the neck indicate sharp external ridges. The lip is also usually undulate or crenate. The size is from medium to large, varying in capacity from one to three or four gallons. 434, (46996). A large pitcher, lower part of the body much inflated, neck rather narrow and encircled by a sharp undulate ridge, handle and spout of the usual form; capacity about two gallons. Coarse brown micaceous ware blackened by fire. 435-437. 435, (46997); 436, (46999); 437, (47008). Small flat olla-shaped bowls. 438, 439. 438, (47002); 439, (47014). Small tinajas with angular shoulders. [Illustration: Fig. 700. 47023] 440, (47019). A rather small flaring bowl with flat bottom, ornamented with oval depressions on the inner surface; the margin is distinctly and somewhat regularly heptagonal. 441-448. 441, (47029); 442, (47123); 443, (47137); 444, (47141); 445, (47142); 446, (47143); 447, (47143a); 448, (47150). Large tinajas most of which are similar in form to that shown in figure 699 (46993); Nos. (47133) and (46137) being the only exception; they are more jar-shaped. 449, (47030). A broken tinaja. 450, (47085). A flaring, flat-bottomed, bowl or dish, similar to number (47019) except that the inner ornamental depressions are spirally arranged. 451, (47109.) A jar or tinaja similar in form to (46993) fig. 699, except that the neck is longer and the lip flaring and undulate. [Illustration: Fig. 701. 47120] 452-454. 452, (47112); 453, (47127); 454, (47494). Small pitcher, probably a toy, with handle and a long lip projecting backwards as well as in front. 455-457. 455, (47517); 456, (47115); 457, (47132). Flat-bottomed flaring bowls or dishes similar in form to 450, (47019), but without the inner indentation. [Illustration: Fig. 702. 47123] 458, (47120). A flat-bottomed flaring bowl ornamented internally with spiral ridges and undulated margin shown in fig. 701. 459, (47123). An image of a person in a worshiping attitude, probably intended to represent a Catholic priest chanting. See fig. 702. 460-461. 460, (47134); 461, (47504). Flat-bottomed fan-shaped dishes. 462, (47088). Tea-pot with ordinary handle and spout, copied after the ordinary tea-pot of civilized life. 463, (47116). Basin-like dish, with numerous slightly elevated lines internally. 464, (47136). A duck, small and rude. 465, (47481). An urn-shaped vase with long neck, and without handles. Quite small, scarcely above toy size. 466, (47482). A pottery meal basket used in religious ceremonies and dances; shown in fig. 703. Although differing materially from the Zuñi sacred meal baskets, yet, as is shown in the figure, the pyramidal elevations on the margin are retained. [Illustration: Fig. 703. 47482] [Illustration: Fig. 704. 47492] 467-468. 467, (47483); 468, (47487). Tinajas, usually with the lip margin undulate. 469, (47492). Pipe, ornamented on the side with an indented line terminating in an arrow-point, probably denoting lightning; fig. 704. 470, (47493). Pipe, small, cylindrical, slightly hexagonal. 471, (47496). A singular canteen or water vessel shown in fig. 705. 472-477. 472, (47497); 473, (47500); 474, (47506); 475, (47507); 476, (47519); 477, (47516). Pottery moccasins, small toy size. 478, (47498). A squat-shaped olla used as a bowl. 479-480. 479, (47501); 480, (47138). A water vessel precisely of the form and ornamentation shown in fig. 700, but with a handle on each side. 481, (47503). Pitcher without spout. 482, (47502). Earth used for whitening in the manufacture of pottery. 483, (47510). Plain bowl. 484, (47512). Plain bowl. 485, (47527). Well formed bowl with foot or pedestal. [Illustration: Fig. 705. 47496] 486-489. 486, (47001); 487, (47716); 488, (47028); 489, (47717). Flaring bowls with undulate margins. 490, (47718). Bowl similar in form to the preceding one, but much larger. _BLACK OR BROWN WARE._ (Blackened by use on the fire; not polished.) This ware, when first made and before use, varies in shade from dark earth color to reddish-brown, but the soot, smoke, and fire, when in use, soon darken it; hence it is usually described as black ware. The articles are used for cooking purposes, such as pots--which are usually pot-shaped--some without handles and some with a handle on one side, bowls, &c. The pots vary in capacity from a pint to a little over a gallon. 491-517. 491, (46998); 492, (47000); 493, (47003); 494, (47004); 495, (47010); 496, (47011); 497, (47015); 498, (47021); 499, (47026); 500, (47089); 501, (47100); 502, (47104); 503, (47108); 504, (47119); 505, (47126); 506, (47128); 507, (47488); 508, (47489); 509, (47499); 510, (47505); 511, (47508); 512, (47511); 513, (47521); 514, (47523); 515, (47528); 516, (47529); 517, (47531). Cooking vessels shaped much like the ordinary pot, without handles and without legs. 518-533. 518, (47007); 519, (47012); 520, (47017); 521, (47018); 522, (47020); 523, (47022); 524, (47025); 525, (47092); 526, (47096); 527, (47101); 528, (47111); 529, (47117); 530, (47121); 531, (47124); 532, (47515); 533, (47522). Cooking vessels with handle on one side resembling pitchers. 534-540. 534, (47005); 535, (47009); 536, (47016); 537, (47107); 538, (47129); 539, (47148); 540, (47006). Toy bowls. 541, (47013). A double-mouthed canteen. 542, (47027). A bowl with handle on one side used for cooking purposes. 543-544. 543, (47086); 544, (47090). Globular paint cups, small. 545-546. 545, (47087); 546, (47091). Pipes of the ordinary form, _Tierra amarilla_. 547-549. 547, (47093); 548, (47097); 549, (47098). Images similar to that shown in fig. 702. 550, (47094). Double paint-cup. 551, (47095). Imitation in pottery of a Derby, or some round-crowned, straight-rimmed hat. 552-555. 552, (47099); 553, (47102); 554, (47118); 555, (47122). Small, somewhat boat-shaped dishes; that is, dishes slightly oval with the margin flared at the ends: used as soap dishes. 556, (47103). Small image of a person bearing something on each arm. 557, (47105). A gourd-shaped pipe. 558-559. 558, (47106); 559, (47490). Bowls with legs; margin undulate. 560, (47110). Pottery basket with handle, with smooth margin and without ornamentation. 561, (47113). Globular cooking-pot. 562, (47114). Skillet with handle and feet. 563, (47130). Toy cooking vessels. 564-565. 564, (47131); 565, (47139). Sitting images wearing something like a crown on the head. 566. Sitting image with representations of feathers on the head. 567-568. 567, (47145); 568, (47146). Images. 569-570. 569, (47151); 570, (47300). Fragments of pottery from the mesa. 571-572. 571, (47479); 572, (47532). Doubled-bellied bottles used as water vessels. 573, (47491). Small cup with handle. 574, (47495). Image with horns. 575, (47507). Bowl with straight side and flat bottom. 576-577. 576, (47509); 577, (47533). Toy bowls. 578, (47514). Plain bowl with foot or pedestal. 579, (47513). Small pitcher with handle and spout; ordinary form in civilized life. 580, (47520). Tinaja. 581-583. 581, (47525); 582, (47526); 583, (47530). Potter's clay of the kind used in making the preceding vessels. _WHITENED WARE WITH COLORED DECORATIONS._ There are but few specimens of this ware, which are chiefly important from the fact that the material is of that firm, close, and superior quality that characterizes the ancient pottery of that region. The decorations and general appearance also ally it to the ancient ware. 584, (47476). A turnip-shaped canteen; the only opening being a small hole in the top of the handle, which arises from the top in the form of a semicircular loop. Decorations consist of three bands around the upper half, the first alternate white and black squares, the second a plain red band, and the third or lower like the first. Capacity about three quarts. (Fig. 706.) [Illustration: Fig. 706. 47476] 585, (47477). A bowl decorated internally with a submarginal band consisting of a vine and leaf; externally with a band of small pear-shaped figures; all in black. 586, (47478). Canteen of the usual form. 587, (47480). Turnip-shaped canteens; small, circular mouth at the center on top; on each side a knob. VEGETAL SUBSTANCES. 587½, (46829). Spinning top copied from the ordinary top of civilized life. COLLECTIONS FROM TESUQUE. ARTICLES OF STONE. 588, (47061). Large regular metate, not much worn. 589, (47063). Metate with legs, regularly oblong, not much worn. 590, (47062). Stone axe and chisel combined. ARTICLES OF CLAY. 691, (47064). Medium-sized tinaja of the usual form, quite regular and symmetrical, white ware with decorations; zigzag band around the neck; body divided into compartments with a large three-leaved figure in each. 592, (47065). Tinaja similar in form and size to the preceding; black polished ware. COLLECTIONS FROM TURQUOISE MINE. This collection, which is a small one, consists, with the exception of some bows, arrows and quivers, of stone hammers only, which were used for mining purposes. 593-594. 593, (47066); 594, (47082). Mining stone-hammers; are large and roughly hewn, usually with an imperfect groove around the middle. 595, (47083). Bows, arrows and beaded quiver. 596, (47084). Bows, arrows and plain quiver. 597, (48048). Bird snares. COLLECTIONS FROM SANTO DOMINGO. The collection from this pueblo consists chiefly of pottery belonging to the white decorated variety with ornamentation in black. But few articles of stone were obtained. ARTICLES OF STONE. 598-599. 598, (47182); 599, (47185). Stone hatchets with broad annular groove near the blunt end. ARTICLES OF CLAY. 600, (47154). Medium-sized tinaja, much, ornamented with vines and birds; body with a broad belt of Greek frets with leaf ornaments above and below. 601, (47155). Similar in every respect to the preceding except that the neck has on it only figures of the cactus leaf. 602, (47157). Tinaja, medium size; zigzag band around the neck, body ornamented with triangles and curved twigs with pinnate leaves. 603, (47156). Large tinaja with scalloped band around the neck; a broad belt of straight lines and crescents on the body. 604, (47158). Large tinaja shown in Fig. 707. [Illustration: Fig. 707. 47158] 605, (47159). Water vessel somewhat in the form of a teapot, with short, straight, cylindrical spout, open on the top, and a transverse loop handle. Ornamented with bands of small triangles. 606, (47223). Similar to preceding, except that the handle is not transverse and the figures are chiefly large stars. 607, (47160). A cup-shaped ladle with handle like ordinary teapot; birds and triangles internally, zigzag lines externally. 608, (47161). Bowl; a double-scalloped, ornamental, broad marginal band and a cross ornament internally. No external ornamentation. 609, (47162). Bowl; crenate marginal band and square central figure internally; external surface plain. 610-617 610, (47163); 611, (47164); 612, (47165); 613, (47166); 614, (47167); 615, (47168); 616, (47169); 617, (47170). Small saucer-shaped bowls ornamented on the inside only, chiefly with crenate marginal bands and leaf figures. In one 615, (47168), there is the figure of a deer and of a long-billed bird. 618, (47171). Pitcher with handle and lip usual form, undulate margin, ornamentation as on the neck of (47158), Fig. 707. 619, (47222). Similar in every respect to 618, (47171), except that the handle is twisted. 620, (47172). Basket-shaped water vessel with handle, three-leaved figures. 621, (47173). Small jar with handle on the side, leaf figures. 622-623. 622, (47174); 623, (47175). Small barrel-shaped jars with diamond figures. 624-626. 624, (47176); 625, (47178); 626, (47179). Double-bellied water bottles, the first with birds and triangles, the second with triangles and diamonds, and the third with flower and leaf ornaments. 627, (47177). Pottery moccasins with leaf and flower ornamentation. 628-629. 628, (47180); 629, (47181). Small bowl-shaped cups with handle; ornamentation chiefly triangles. COLLECTIONS FROM JÉMEZ. ARTICLES OF STONE. 630-635. 630, (47209); 631, (47211); 632, (47212); 633, (47279); 634, (47280); 635, (47281). Stone hatchets with imperfect grooves. 636, (42282). Square block of stone with grooves lengthwise and crosswise on one face, used to polish arrow shafts. 637-638. 637, (47051); 638, (47053). Broken rubbers for metates. 639, (48034). Rude stone pounders. 640, (48038). Pestle. 641, (48059). A celt of jasper. 642-643. 642, (48060); 643, (48061). Smoothing stones. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These are mostly white ware with ornamentation in black and red; there are a few black specimens. 644-646. 644, (47186); 645, (47187); 646, (47188). Specimens of clay used in making pottery. 647-648. 647, (47216); 648, (47220). Bricks from an old Spanish wall. 649-655. 649, (47189); 650, (47190); 651, (47191); 652, (47193); 653, (47194); 654, (47195); 655, (47198). Small jar-shaped tinajas. The ornamentation consists of heavy waved lines on the body and interrupted straight lines, triangles and narrow simple or scalloped bands on the neck. 656, (47192). A medium-sized tinaja, swollen at the shoulder and of the form shown in Fig. 372. The upper part is ornamented with a broad belt of animal figures, deer and birds, separated from each other by a triangle between each, two, with the elongate point directed upwards. Middle surrounded by a belt of oblique broken lines. 657, (47196). Olla of the usual form; ornamentation, a vine, leaves and birds. 658, (47197). Medium-sized, jar-shaped olla, with undulate margin and ornamentation as shown in Fig. 708. [Illustration: Fig. 708. 47197] 659, (47199). Olla with zigzag band around the neck and four dentate bands around the body. 660-665. 660, (47200); 661, (47201); 662, (47202); 663, (47203); 664, (47204); 665, (47215). Canteens of the usual form with two loop handles; upper half ornamented. Chief figures, triangles, stars, and birds. 666, (47205). Tinaja with handle on the side, ornamentation delicate and decidedly neat; zigzag and dotted lines, long pinnate leaf, flowers, &c. 667, (48062). Fragments of pottery from ruins (7 pieces.) 668, (47206). Water vessel resembling in form a tinaja, but with small orifice; ornamented with slender vines and leaves. 669, (47207). Biscuit-shaped bowl; triangular figures on external surface similar to those so common on Zuñi bowls. 670, (47208). Small regularly-shaped bowl; triangular figures. 671, (47213). Tinaja with handle; resembling in form and ornamentation, the pitchers found at Cañon de Chelley. 672, (47214). Olla with crenate margin; external decorations elks and birds. 673, (47278). Small tinaja with a kind of scroll figure around the body. 674-675. 674, (47276); 675, (47277). Small unburned and unadorned tinajas. MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES. 676, (48050). Wooden image decorated with feathers (presented by Mrs. T. Stevenson). 677, (47221). Specimen of the matting used in building. COLLECTIONS FROM SILLA. ARTICLES OF STONE. 678, (47224). Small square mortar of lava. 679-680. 679, (47242); 680, (47255). Stone hatchets rather well formed with blunt poll, distinct annular groove, and tapering blade; chiefly of basalt, three of metamorphic rock. 681-682. 681, (47256); 682, (47258). Smoothing stones. 683-684. 683, (47259); 684, (47260). Stone hammers with groove. 685-686. 685, (47261); 686, (47263). Pounding stones. 687, (47262). Small oval mortar (lava.) ARTICLES OF CLAY. (White ware with red and black decorations.) 688, (47225). Small toy tinaja, a narrow scalloped band at the margin and near the bottom, crescents between. 689, (47227). Tinaja with small orifice, duck figure in red. 690, Water vessel in form of a duck; orifice on the back, wings formed into loop handles. Red and black decorations. 691, (47228). Water vessel in form of a duck; orifice over the neck, loop handle on the back. 692-693. 692, (47237); 693, (47239). Water vessels in form of a duck, without handles. [Illustration: Fig. 710. THE BLANKET WEAVER.] 694-696. 694, (47229); 695, (47230); 696, (47232). Animal images; first probably a Rocky Mountain sheep; the other two probably dogs. Very rude ornamentation without design. 697, (47236). Water vessel of the form and ornamentation shown in Fig. 709. [Illustration: Fig. 709. 47236] 698, (47238). Medium-sized tinaja with leaf ornaments. 699, (47294). Tinaja with figures like those common on the Zuñi ollas. 700, (47818). Water vessel in the form of a horse, white ware ornamented. 701, (47820). Dog's head, plain. MISCELLANEOUS. 702, (47264). Specimens of mineral paint. (Ochre or clay-stone.) 703-705. 703, (47265); 704, (47267); 705, (47268). Turquoise drills. 706, (47266). Block of wood to be used in connection with the turquoise drill. Has a simple pit in the center in which the apex of the drill turns. 707, (47269). Wooden war-club of hard oak with serpentine line and arrow point (as on pipe, Fig. 704), cut on one side. 708, (47270). Bow, arrows, and quiver. 709, (47819). Leather bag adorned with feathers, with pebbles inside, used as a rattle in dances. 710, (47234). Tortoise shell with pendent rattles, used us a dance ornament. 711, (47235). A gourd with pebbles inside, used as a rattle. COLLECTIONS FROM SAN JUAN. ARTICLES OF STONE. 712, (47760). Flat rubbing or smoothing stone of slate. 713-714. 713, (47762); 714, (47763). Stone hatchets notched at the sides. 715, (47764). Small hammer notched at the sides. 716-717. 716, (47765); 717, (47766). Stone candlesticks, the former with circular base, body hemispherical, with hole in the top. The other (from the altar of the Catholic Church) with square base, the stand short, circular, with moldings. 718, (47767). Square, flat mortar. 719-724. 719, (47768); 720, (47769); 721, (47770); 722, (47799); 723, (47783); 724, (47776.) Pounding stones. 725-733. 725, (47771); 726, (47774); 727, (47777); 728, (47778); 729, (47782); 730, (47785); 731, (47787); 732, (47790); 733, (47792). Stones with grooves or notches. 734-742. 734, (47772); 735, (47775); 736, (47779); 737, (47781); 738, (47784); 739, (47786); 740, (47789); 741, (47793); 742, (47796). Stone hammers, some grooved, others not. 743-747. 743, (47773); 744, (47788); 745, (47797); 746, (47798); 747, (47808). Smoothing or polishing stones. 748, (47800). A collection of fifty smoothing stones used in polishing pottery. 749-750. 749, (47803); 750, (47804). Small paint mortars. 751, (47805). Scraper and polisher. 752, (47806). Rude animal image, (quadruped). 753, (47807). Hammer. 754, (47809). Hornstone triangular knife. 755, (47810). Collection Of nine stone implements. ARTICLES OF CLAY. The collection of pottery made at this pueblo presents quite a variety of articles, such as the ordinary clay vessels, bowls, tinajas, water vessels, &c., of black, polished black, brown, mostly without ornamentation, and white ornamented ware, images, pipes, moccasins, &c. _POLISHED BLACK WARE._ 756, (47720). A bowl with indented lines and areas internally. 757-758. 757, (47732); 758, (47742). Globular water vessels with loop handles. 759-761. 759, (47733); 760, (47745); 761, (47750). Small tinajas. 762-764. 762, (47735); 763, (47748); 764, (47749). Flat dish-shaped bowls. 765, (47737). A canteen made upon the same plan as that shown in fig. 706, (47476); that is, with opening only at the top of the loop-handle. The body is crock-shaped with top flat. 766, (47752). Small image. 767-768. 767, (47753); 768, (47759). Straight cylindrical pipes. 769-770. 769, (47754); 770, (47755). Moccasins. 771, (47757). Small dish. 772, (47758). Pipe precisely the same in ornamentation as that shown in fig. 704. _BROWN AND BLACK WARE._ The black are only cooking vessels, not polished, but colored chiefly by use in cooking; the rest are brown. 773, (47726). A very regularly formed teapot with handle and spout, similar to, and evidently modeled after, those used in civilized life. 774, (47728). Sugar bowl with lid, ordinary form. 775-777. 775, (47772); 776, (47739); 777, (47741). Bowls with feet. 778, (47731). Water vessel in the form of a ring, orifice on the outer surface. 779-781. 779, (47734); 780, (47736); 781, (47744). Cooking pots without handles. 782, (47738). Cooking pot with handle, regular pitcher form. 783, (47740). Canteen without handles. 784-785. 784, (47746); 785, (47747.) Small (toy) bowls. 786-787. 786, (47751); 787, (47756). Small (toy) tinajas. _WHITE WARE WITH DECORATIONS._ But few specimens; ornamentation simple and in black. 788, (47721). Bowl; internally an undulate marginal band, externally a middle band of diamonds and ovals. [Illustration: Fig. 711. 47723] 789, (47730). Bowl; broad inner marginal band of outline blocks alternating with snake-like figures, external marginal band of outline leaves. 790, (47722). Canteen of the usual form with knobs at the sides. 791, (47723). Small tinaja shown in Fig. 711. 792, (47725). Small tinaja with cross on the neck and a double scalloped middle band. 793, (47724). Water vessel in the form of a duck, loop-handle on the back; plain. 794, (47719). Small tinaja. 795, (47727). Canteen of usual form, knob handles, with circle and square. MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES. 796, (47811). Head mats of corn-husks, ring-shaped and painted. 797, (47812). Arrow-points, chips, flakes, &c. 798, (47813). Young otter skin. 799, (47814). A scarf to be worn over the shoulder while dancing; with long beaded streamers and tassels. 800, (47815). Medicine bag. 801, (47801). Pottery spindle whirl, simple small disk with hole in the middle. COLLECTION FROM SANTA ANA. ARTICLES OF STONE. 802-804. 802, (47284); 803, (47285); 804, (47286). Stone hatchets with groove. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These consist of white ornamented ware. 805, (47287). Animal image, probably a fawn, handle on the back. 806-809. 806, (47290); 807, (47291); 808, (47292); 809, (47293). Small tinajas with decorations in black. The figures are the same as those found on Zuñi pottery--scrolls, triangles, scalloped lines and birds, but no antelopes or deer. COLLECTION FROM SANDIA, N. MEX. 810-811. 810, (47240); 811, (47241). Biscuit-shaped unburnt bowls. COLLECTION FROM COCHITI. ARTICLES OF STONE. 812-815. 812, (47901); 813, (47905); 814, (47474); 815, (47475). Hat-shaped lava stones used in cooking bread; they are heated and placed on top of the cake. This is an old custom almost entirely abandoned, and now practiced only by a few families of this pueblo. 816-818. 816, (47906); 817, (47907); 818, (47909). Regularly formed pestles. 819-820. 819, (47908); 820, (47910). Pounding stones with groove. 821-822. 821, (47911); 822, (47919). Grooved hatchets or axes. 823-824. 823, (47920); 824, (47923). Smoothing stones. 825, (47924). A collection of 20 smoothing stones. 826, (47925). Seven oval segments or disks of gourd, regularly cut and edged for scraping and smoothing pottery. 827-828. 827, (47470); 828, (47471). Hatchets or pounders (for it is doubtful to which class they belong), with handle yet attached. The second was probably used as a hatchet, the first more likely as a pounder. 829, (47472). Well-shaped hatchets. 830, (47473). Lava mortar. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These, with only one or two exceptions, consist of white decorated ware; the bottoms are polished red as usual, but the decorations are in black. 831-832. 831, (47273); 832, (47274). Canteens with loop handles on the side, the first with a star or rosette ornament in the top and scalloped line around the middle, second with triangular figures. 833, (47275). Plain unburnt tinaja. 834, (47288). Image, duck's body with cow's head. 835, (47289). Duck image. This and also the preceding with loop handle on the back and trident figures on the sides. 836, (47295). Pitcher-shaped cup, with handle, ornamentation, oblique dashes. 837, (47296). Deep, olla-shaped bowl; anvil-shaped figures on the outside. 838, (47297). Small canteen, loop-handles at the sides, central star ornament. 839-840. 839, (47445); 840, (47446). Bowls adorned with sprigs and flowers internally and stars externally; quite neat. 841-844. 841, (47447); 842, (47448); 843, (47449); 844, (47460). Bowls; most of them with a narrow dotted marginal band externally and internally. 841, (47447) has a central star inside and a band of triangles on the outside. 842, (47448) with no other ornamentation. 843, (47449) and 844, (47460) with animal figures on the inner face. 845, (47461). A biscuit-shaped bowl, with vertical ridges on the external surface. 845½, (47462). Water vessels, the body shaped as the ordinary tinaja, surmounted with outstretched arms and human head, the orifice through the mouth. Scroll ornaments. 846, (47463). Canteen of the usual form with loop handles and leaf ornaments. 847-848. 847, (47464); 848, (47466). Duck images used as water vessels. 849, (47465). Water vessel; animal image somewhat resembling a fish, but was probably intended for a duck; loop handle on the back and at each side. 850, (47468). Gourd-shaped water vessel with animal head at the apex, as in Fig. 709. 851, (47467). Toy cooking vessel of unadorned brown ware. 852, (47816). Large tinaja of white painted ware, with lid much like Fig. 651, (39533), plate 81. MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES. 853, (47301). Specimen of dried melon; is twisted like a rope. 854, (47392). Fox skin. 855, (47303). Brick from a wall. 856, (47304). Copper cannon ball scarcely one inch in diameter. 857, (47305). Copper kettle with handle. 858, (48049). A musical instrument. COLLECTIONS FROM SAN ILDEFONSO. The collections from this pueblo were the largest made during the year 1880, consisting of pottery of different kinds, black and brown painted ware, stone implements and wooden utensils. ARTICLES OF STONE. 858½-861. 858½, (47976); 859, (47977); 860, (48031); 861, (48044). Lava mortars. 862, (48032). Mortar with three cavities. 863, (47978). Pestle and rubber combined. 864-867. 864, (47979); 865, (47985); 866, (47017); 867, (48025). Rubbers for metates, of regular form. 868-877. 868, (47986); 869, (47999); 870, (48000); 871, (48010); 872, (48013); 873, (48015); 874, (48016); 875, (48026); 876, (48033); 877, (48039). Pounding stones. 878, (47987). Paint muller. 879-880. 879, (47988); 880, (48045). Pestles. 881-883. 881, (47989); 882, (48028); 883, (48029). Grooved hammers. 884-887. 884, (47990); 885, (47996); 886, (47998); 887, (48030). Hatchets with grooves or notches. 888-892. 888, (47997); 889, (48001); 890, (48009); 891, (48040); 892, (48043). Smoothing stones. 893, (48014). Round stone used as slung shot. 894, (48027). Chisel. ARTICLES OF CLAY. These consist of painted white ware with decorations in black; polished black ware and black and brown ware. The white pottery resembles very closely, in the forms, color, and ornamentation, that from Taos and Cochiti, the white in all these being of a creamy color. [Illustration: Fig. 712. 47326] 895-897. 895, (47319); 896, (47321); 897, (47325). Medium-sized hemispherical bowls, ornamented, on the inside only, with star figures or rosettes and triangles. 898-899. 898, (47320); 899, (47324). Similar bowls with similar ornamentation both internally and externally. 900, (47323). Bowl of similar form and size; only decoration a broad external marginal band with oval spaces in it. 901, (47322). Small bowl with decorations on the inner surface only. 902-903. 902, (47326); 903, (47327). Medium-sized olla-shaped bowls not adorned internally; marginal line of dots externally. Latter with zigzag belt; former with serpents, crosses, and figure of bottle on a stand; Fig. 712. 904, (47329). Large tinaja with cover. Vines and leaves on the neck, and around the body a broad belt of figures resembling fringed medicine bags. 905-906. 905, (47334); 906, (47336). Canteens of the usual form, with loop handles at the sides; the first ornamented with the common central star and triangles, the second has no central figure. Posterior Half with interlaced figure. 907, (47335). Globular canteens; side handles; cactus leaves and simple broad bands. 905, (47337). Flower-pot precisely of the usual form, with hole in the bottom, grooved outline, dentate bands. 909-916. 909, (47351); 910, (47354); 911, (47359); 912, (47360); 913, (47361); 914, (47362); 915, (47363); 916, (47364.) Small bowls with decorations on the inner face. 917, (47373). Small pitcher; handle broken off. 918, (47387). A bowl of peculiar and significant ornamentation. 919-920. 919, (47389); 920, (47390). Bowls ornamented on the inner face only. 921-922. 921, (47391); 922, (47392). Straight-sided or crock-shaped, deep bowls, with foot. First with a zigzag submarginal band on the inner side and a zigzag line and dots around the body on the outside. The latter with a dotted inner marginal band, a vine and leaves around the outside. 923-925. 923, (47399); 924, (47400); 925, (47401). Pear-shaped or conical water-vessels, with animal heads at the apex; decorations simple. 926-927. 926, (47414); 927, (47415). Olla-shaped bowls, of medium size, ornamented internally and externally. 928, (47416). Basin-shaped bowl, with foot, ornamented internally and externally. 929, (47426). Bird image. _RED WARE WITH DECORATIONS IN BLACK._ 930, (47328). Medium-sized tinaja, bead figures or necklace around the neck, zigzag band on the shoulders, sprig, double looped and serrate triangular figures on the body. 931, (47331). Small tinaja; undulate marginal band, tear-drops on the neck, large band divided into triangles pointing alternately up and down, fitting into the spaces, each with two oval, red spaces. 932, (47333). Small tinaja, with alternating triangles base to base on both neck and body, those on the body with circular spaces. 933, (47338). Flower-pot of the ordinary form, with undulate margin, zigzag submarginal band, belt of flower ornaments on the body. 934, (47340). Bowl with a belt of anvil-shaped figures on the outside. 935, (47352). Bowl decorated on the inside, outside plain. 936, (47355). Bowl with vine externally and internally. _RED AND BROWN WARE WITHOUT DECORATIONS._ 937-939. 937, (47339); 938, (47358); 939, (47379). Plain bowls. 940, (47353). Olla-shaped bowl with undulate margin. 941-942. 941, (47370); 942, (47375). Small tinajas. 943, (47372). Bottle with square groove around the middle. 944, (47376). Oval dish. 945-946. 945, (47377); 946, (47378). Flat circular dishes. 947, (47397). A rather large, regular-shaped fruit jar with margin expanded horizontally. 948-953. 948, (47404); 949, (47405); 950, (47406); 951, (47409); 952, (47410); 953, (47411). Bird images. 954-956. 954, (47407); 955, (57408); 956, (47413). Images of the human form, first with hat on, second apparently praying, third with arms extended and sash crossing in front from each shoulder. 957, (47424). Images of the human form. 958, (47403). Basket-shaped, toy water-vessel with loop handle. _BLACK POLISHED WARE._ 959-961. 959, (47341); 960, (47350); 961, (47417). Bowls. 962-963. 962, (47356); 963, (47357). Dishes with undulate edge. 964-965. 964, (47365); 965, (47366). Toy bowls. 966-967. 966, (47380); 967, (47386). Small basket-shaped vessels with handles across the top. 968, (47388). Oblong dish. 969, (47393). Basin with foot and undulate margin. 970, (47394). Toy jar. 971-972. 971, (47395); 972, (47396). Toy pottery kegs, the latter with a handle. 973, (47402). Duck-shaped water-vessel. 974, (47412). Two-headed bird image. 975, (47418). Small paint cup. 976-977. 976, (47419); 977, (47420). Bowls with arched handle. 978-979. 978, (47427); 979, (47430). Toy dishes. _BLACK WARE NOT POLISHED._ 980-982. 980, (47367); 981, (47369); 982, (47371). Cooking pots. MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES. 983, (47318). Ox cart, "_carreta_." 984, (47425). Arrow straightener of bone; (a piece of bone with round holes in it). COLLECTIONS FROM TAOS. The collections made from this pueblo were quite extensive and varied. ARTICLES OF STONE. 985-997. 985, (47846); 986, (47848); 987, (47852); 988, (47854); 989, (47856); 990, (47858); 991, (47863); 992, (47873); 993, (47875); 994, (47879); 995, (47880); 996, (47883); 997, (47887). Stone hatchets grooved. 998-1004. 998, (47847); 999, (47853); 1000, (47861); 1001, (47864); 1002, (47876); 1003, (47878); 1004, (47882). Rounding stones. 1005-1014 1005, (47855); 1006, (47860); 1007, (47866); 1008, (47869); 1009, (47880); 1010, (47871); 1011, (47872); 1012, (47877); 1013, (47881); 1014, (47884). Stone hammers very rude, sometimes with a groove, but generally with simply a notch at each side. 1015, (47859). Rude stone knife. 1016-1021. 1016, (47862); 1017, (47865); 1018, (47867); 1019, (47868); 1020, (47885); 1021, (47886). Rubbing and polishing stones. 1022, (47874). Grooved stone for polishing arrow-shafts (Fig. 713). [Illustration: Fig. 713.] ARTICLES OF CLAY. These are chiefly vessels of brown and black ware, some two or three pieces only being ornamented ware. 1023-1027. 1023, (47821); 1024, (47822); 1025, (47828); 1026, (47829); 1027, (47833). Brown ware, pitcher shaped vessels with handle, used as cooking vessels. 1028-1032. 1028, (47823); 1029, (47824); 1030, (47825); 1031, (47826); 1032, (47827). Cooking pots, brown ware, smoke stained. 1033, (47830). Olla of unburned ware. 1034, (47831). Bowl with handle, black ware. 1035, (47832). Teapot of the ordinary form, polished black ware. 1036, (47834). Small globular olla with undulate margin, of polished black ware. 1037, (47835). Water bottle with four loop handles, brown ware. 1038-1041. 1038, (47836); 1039, (47839); 1040, (47839); 1041, (47845). Small spherical ollas of brown ware. 1042, (47840). Small bowl of black polished ware. 1043, (47841). A globular water vessel with a ridge around the middle; polished black ware. 1044, (47842). Dish of polished black ware. _WHITE AND RED WARE WITH DECORATIONS._ 1045, (47844). A singular-shaped bowl shown in Fig. 714. The outside is red but the inside is painted white; ornamentation in black. [Illustration: Fig. 714. 47844] 1046, (47843). A bottle-shaped canteen with animal head, flower and serrated ornamentation. Red ware. 1047, (47838). Large tinaja, white ware with black ornamentation, sprigs and triangles. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Errata noted by transcriber: [List of Illustrations] 710.--The blanket weaver 454 _text reads "434"_ turquois _normal spelling for this publication_ short, circular, with moldings. _text reads ".?"_ 
15229	----	[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE.--WASHINGTON'S NEW CAPITOL BUILDING. (Photo Engraved from a Drawing.) CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW CAPITOL TO BE ERECTED ON THE FOUNDATION ALREADY LAID AT OLYMPIA WAS AUTHORIZED AT THE 1909 SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE.] [Page 1] A REVIEW OF THE RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES OF WASHINGTON 1909 * * * * * PUBLISHED UNDER AUTHORITY OF THE LEGISLATURE, FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION BY THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS, AGRICULTURE AND IMMIGRATION I. M. HOWELL. _Secretary of State_ _Ex-Officio Commissioner_ GEO. M. ALLEN, _Deputy Commissioner,_ [Page 2] OFFICE OF THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS, AGRICULTURE AND IMMIGRATION, OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, JUNE 1, 1909. _To His Excellency M. E. Hay, Governor of Washington:_ We have the honor to transmit herewith the Biennial Report of the Bureau of Statistics, Agriculture and Immigration for the year 1909, dealing with the various resources and industries of Washington. Very respectfully, I. M. HOWELL. _Secretary of State_, _Ex-Officio Commissioner_. GEO. M. ALLEN, _Deputy Commissioner,_ [Page 3] INTRODUCTION OFFICE OF THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS, AGRICULTURE AND IMMIGRATION, OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, JUNE 1, 1909. This publication represents an effort to place before the general public, and particularly the visitors at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a brief description of the principal resources and industries of the State of Washington. Its imperfections may be accounted for largely by reason of the fact that funds for the purpose did not become available until the first day of April of the current year. This necessitated unusual haste in securing and preparing the material upon which the pamphlet is based. However, we have endeavored to deal conservatively and fairly with the various subjects under consideration, and to present all the information possible within the limits of the space at our disposal. Our purpose has been to supply the reader with an outline of the salient facts which account for the marvelous growth and development which the commonwealth is enjoying. To go largely into detail within the scope of a pamphlet of this size would be, manifestly, an impossibility. We might readily exhaust our available space in dealing with one industry or in describing a single county. Details, therefore, have been necessarily and purposely avoided. We have sought to bring the entire state within the perspective of the reader, leaving him to secure additional facts through personal investigation. Along this line, attention is called to the list of commercial organizations and local officials presented [Page 4] in the statistical portion of this report. Nearly all the larger communities of the state maintain organizations, equipped to supply detailed facts relating to their particular locality. Much valuable information may be obtained on application to these organizations or to local officials. An expression of appreciation is due those who have assisted us by supplying information and collecting photographs for use in this publication. Without such aid the completion of the pamphlet would have been materially delayed. [Illustration: Plate No. 1.--Fruit Farm Adjoining Town of Asotin, Asotin County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 2--Asotin County Views.] [Page 5] GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES OF WASHINGTON. The State of Washington as now constituted, was, prior to 1853, a portion of the Territory of Oregon. During the year mentioned, a new territory was carved from the old Oregon boundaries, which the statesmen of that day evidently believed was marked by destiny for the achievement of great things, for they conferred upon it the name of Washington. That our state, thus highly distinguished, has already demonstrated itself worthy of the exalted name, so happily bestowed upon it, the most carping critic must admit. With a population now reaching up toward a million and a half, and with all the forces that make for industrial, commercial and agricultural supremacy in full swing, and gathering new momentum yearly, Washington is moving onward and upward toward a position among the very elect of our great sisterhood of states. As briefly as the story may be told, the fundamental facts which underlie the marvelous advancement made by the state during recent years will be set forth in the pages of this pamphlet. NATURAL DIVISIONS OF THE STATE. By virtue of its varied topography, Washington is naturally divided into a number of districts or sections, each possessing its own particular characteristics. Olympic Peninsula. The first of these districts may be described as consisting of that section of the state including the Olympic mountains and extending westward from them to the Pacific ocean. Within the limits of this Olympic peninsula, as it is ordinarily termed, there is standing one of the largest and most valuable tracts of virgin timber yet remaining in the United States. [Page 6] Puget Sound Basin. The second district includes the territory lying between the Olympic and Cascade mountains, the chief physical feature of which is the great inland sea known as Puget Sound. The shore front of this important waterway exceeds 2,000 miles, and its length is broken by numerous bays and harbors, upon which are located Seattle, the state's metropolis, and the growing cities of Tacoma, Everett, Bellingham and Olympia. The climate of this section is mild in winter and cool in summer, extremes in either season being practically unknown. Deep sea shipping enters the port of Puget Sound from every maritime country on the globe, and the industrial and commercial interests of this section are expanding with extraordinary rapidity. The Cascade Mountains. The Cascade mountains constitute the third of these natural divisions. This range extends in a broken line across the width of the state, at a distance of about 120 miles from the Pacific ocean. These mountains, their rugged peaks capped with a mantle of eternal snow, their sides covered with a heavy timber growth, and their valleys carrying numerous sparkling mountain streams, with illimitable possibilities for the development of power, are one of the important assets of the state, the value of which has not as yet even been estimated. The mineral wealth of the Cascades, only a slight knowledge of which has as yet been secured, will ere long contribute largely to the prosperity of the state, while the more moderate slopes of the mountains serve a valuable purpose for the pasturage of numerous flocks and herds. Okanogan Highlands. The fourth district is known as the Okanogan highlands, and occupies that portion of the state lying north of the Columbia river and east of the Cascade mountains. This section of the state contains valuable timber and mineral wealth in addition to presenting many attractive opportunities to the farmer and horticulturist. It has been hampered thus far by [Page 7] lack of adequate transportation facilities, and for this reason land may be had at exceptionally reasonable figures. Columbia River Basin. The Columbia river basin is by far the largest natural division of the state, and, generally speaking, includes the section drained by that river and its tributaries. Within the confines of this district are the great irrigated and grain-growing sections of the state, which are a source of constantly increasing wealth. This great "Inland Empire," as it has come to be called, has made thousands of homeseekers independent, and is largely responsible for the rise to commercial greatness of the splendid city of Spokane. Other cities of growing importance lying within the Columbia river basin are Walla Walla, North Yakima, Ellensburg and Wenatchee, while scores of smaller communities are annually adding to their population with the continued development of the districts of which they are the immediate distributing centers. The Southeast. The Blue mountains form the chief natural characteristic of the extreme southeastern section of the state, which constitutes the sixth division. This is comparatively a small district, but one that is highly favored by climatic and soil advantages, and it is well timbered and watered. The Southwest. The southwest is the seventh and final division of the state. It comprises an extensive district, fronting on the Columbia river and the Pacific ocean. It is heavily wooded and its chief industries are based upon its timber wealth. The taking and canning of fish and oyster culture are also important industries, while fruit growing and general farming are carried on upon a constantly increasing scale. [Page 8] NATURAL RESOURCES OF WASHINGTON. Probably few other states in the Union excel Washington in the great variety, abundance and value of the natural gifts prepared and ripe for the hand of man within its borders. Preceding races were content to leave its wealth to us, being themselves satisfied to subsist upon that which was at hand and ready for consumption with no effort but the effort of taking. The impenetrable forests were to them a barrier to be let alone. For the minerals within the mountains they had no use, and to gather wealth from the tillage of the soil needed too much exertion. Fish and game and fruits all ready to gather were all they sought, and the state had enough of these to attract and hold a large population. But the vision of the white man was different. His eye scanned the peaks of the Cascades with its great eternal white Rainier having its head thrust up among the clouds, and he realized that around and beneath them must be a vast hoard of the precious metals. His eye caught the dazzling grandeur of the white-capped Olympics, but he realized that they held in reserve something more substantial to his needs than scenery and hunting grounds. The impenetrable barriers of the forest-covered foothills were to him a treasure worth the struggle for an empire. He scanned the glittering waters of the bays and inlets of Puget Sound and its great open way to the Pacific Ocean and realized that it meant more to him and to his children than a place to catch a few fish. He viewed the vast plains of "barren" land within the great winding course of the Columbia river and believed it worth more than pasturage for a few bands of ponies. The thousand tumbling water-falls that hastened the course of the rivers toward the sea meant more than resting places for the chase. No wonder the hardy pioneers whose vision saw the grandeur of Washington and comprehended its meaning dared a mighty journey, vast hardships and trying and dangerous hazards to save this empire to Uncle Sam. Washington, saved by the energy and foresight of a few, has become the [Page 9] delightful home of a million and more, and their possession is one that Alexander or Napoleon would have coveted, had they known. [Illustration: Plate No. 3.--Chehalis County Timber.] [Illustration: Plate No. 4.--The Logging Industry in Chehalis County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 5.--View of Harbor, Aberdeen, Chehalis County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 6.--Limb Cut from a Chelan County Peach Tree.] [Illustration: Plate No. 7.--Six-Year-Old Winesap Apple Tree on Farm of Blackmont Bros., Chelan County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 8.--Farm of Wm. Turner, Chelan County. From Sage Brush to Bearing Orchard, Showing How Living Is Made While Orchard Is Coming Into Bearing.] FORESTS. From British Columbia to the majestic Columbia river and from the Cascade mountains westward to the ocean a vast forest of magnificent timber stretches out over mountain and hill and valley, covering the whole landscape of western Washington in a mantle of living green. The majestic fir trees, which, as small evergreens, adorn the lawns of other climes, here stretch their ancient heads 300 feet heavenward and give the logger a chance to stand upon his springboard and, leaving a fifteen foot stump, cut off a log 100 feet in length and 7 feet in diameter free from limbs or knots. Side by side with these giants of fir are other giants of cedar, hemlock and spruce crowded in groups, sometimes all alike and sometimes promiscuously mingled, which offer to the logger often 50,000 feet of lumber from an acre of ground. But these great forests of western Washington are not all the forests within the state. The eastern slope of the Cascade mountains well down toward the lands of the valleys is mostly covered with timber. A belt from 30 to 50 miles wide stretching clear across the north boundary of eastern Washington is mostly a forest, while a large area in the southeastern corner of the state, probably 24 miles square, is also forest covered. To estimate the amount of timber which can be cut from these vast forest areas is difficult; estimates are not accurate, yet it is probable that the lumber made will in time far exceed any estimate yet placed upon this chief source of the wealth of the State of Washington. Of the fir the estimate has been made that shows still standing enough timber to make 120 billion feet; for the cedar the estimate is 25 billion feet, while the same amount of 25 billion feet is credited to hemlock; 12 billion feet of spruce are claimed, 12 billion feet of yellow pine and probably 6 billion feet of other woods, including maple, alder, oak, yew, ash and many others, together forming the great mass of 200 billion feet of lumber. Where forest areas are cut off, the [Page 10] sun and air at once start to life seeds which lie dormant in the shade and a new crop at once starts and the old ground is in a few years reforested in nature's prodigal way, a thousand seeds sprouting and growing where only one giant can ultimately stand. Of these timbers, the fir, largest in quantity, is also largest in usefulness. For bridge work, shipbuilding, the construction of houses, etc. it is unsurpassed. Cedar is lighter and more easily worked and for shingles chiefly and many other special uses is superior. Spruce is fine grained, odorless and valuable for butter tubs, interior finish, shelving, etc. The hemlock is valuable not only for the tannin of its bark, but as a wood for many purposes is equal to spruce. The yellow pine, where it is plentiful is the main wood used in house construction and for nearly all farm purposes. The yellow pine is the chief timber in all eastern Washington. The harder woods, maple, alder, ash, etc., are used where available in furniture construction and for fuel, as are also all the other woods. COAL. Not content with covering half the surface of the state with forests for fuel, the Creator hid away under the forests an additional supply of heat and power sufficient to last its future citizens an indefinite period. The white man was not slow to find and locate the coal measures in many counties, notably in Kittitas, King, Pierce, Lewis, Whatcom and Thurston, and to put it to the task of driving his machinery. The coal measures of these counties are of vast extent, and, although little developed yet, there are 3,000,000 tons of coal mined annually in Washington. Other counties are known to have coal measures beneath their forests, but as yet they have not been opened up for commerce. The coal already mined includes both lignite and bituminous varieties and furnishes fuel for the railroads, steamboats and power plants, giving very satisfactory results. Much of the bituminous coal makes an excellent article of coke and provides this concentrated carbon for the various plants about the state engaged in smelting iron and other metals. [Page 11] The fixed carbon of the coal ranges from 48 to 65 per cent. and the total values in carbon from 64 to 80 per cent. and the ash from 3 to 17 per cent. The coal measures underlie probably the great bulk of the foothills on both sides of the Cascades and some of the Olympics, the Blue mountains of the southeast and some of the low mountains in the northeastern part of the state. Besides these coals already mentioned, it is known that veins of anthracite coal exist in the western part of Lewis county, the extent and value of which have not been fully determined, and, owing to the absence of transportation, are not on the market. MINERAL ORES. The general topography of the state suggests at once the probability of deposits of ores of the precious metals, and the cursory prospecting already done justifies the outlook. Practically the entire mountain regions are enticing fields for the prospector. Substantial rewards have already been realized by many who have chanced the hardships, and there are now in operation many mining enterprises which are yearly adding a substantial sum to the output of the wealth of the state. The ores occur chiefly in veins of low grade and great width and known as base on account of the presence of sulphur, arsenic and other elements compelling the ores to be roasted before smelting. There are, however, some high grade ores in narrow fissures and in a few localities free milling ores and placer deposits are found. In most cases the free milling ores are the result of oxidation and will be found to be base as water level is reached in the mining process. Mining of precious metals is being prosecuted in Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Lewis, Skamania, Cowlitz, Okanogan, Chelan, Kittitas, Yakima, Klickitat, Ferry and Stevens counties. Of the metals the mines of the state are producing gold, silver, lead, copper, quicksilver, zinc, arsenic, antimony, molybdenum, [Page 12] nickel, cobalt, tungsten, titanium, bismuth, sulphur, selenium, tellurium, tin and platinum. There are also iron mines, and quarries of marble, granite, onyx, serpentine, limestone and sandstone--beds of fire clay, kaolin, fire and potter's clays, talc and asbestos and many prospects of petroleum. Mining is suffering for the lack of transportation for the low grade ores, but prospects are excellent for relief in this regard in the near future. The era of wildcat exploitation has been relegated to the past and legitimate mining is now getting a firmer hold in the state, and we look for results within the next five years which will astonish many who think themselves well informed. FISHERIES. A glance at the map of the state will disclose a remarkable combination of salt and fresh waters within the jurisdiction of the state of such a character as to amaze one not familiar with it, but learned in the habits of the finny tribe in general. The ocean is the great feeding ground. Out of its mysterious depths the millions of fish come into fresh waters fat and rich from the salt water vegetation. [Illustration: Plate No. 9.--Chelan County Views.] [Illustration: Plate No. 10.--Farm and Dairy Scene Common to Clallam County.] The great Columbia river in the south, Willapa harbor, Grays harbor, the majestic straits of Fuca and the equally majestic straits of Georgia on the north are all great open highways from the sea, not only for merchandise laden ships, but for myriads of salt water food fishes which annually traverse their bottoms. Into these open mouths flows a great network of fresh water rivers and streams, draining the entire area of the state and providing the spawning waters for the fishes from the sea not only, but for millions of strictly fresh water fishes. Not only these, but late years have proven the shore waters of the state to produce also great numbers of oysters, clams, crabs and shrimp. Nor is this all, because the proximity of the state to the ocean gives it a great advantage in profiting from the fishing industry among that class of the finny hosts who refuse to leave their salt water homes. So that from the whales of Bering sea to the speckled beauties that haunt the mountain [Page 13] streams, through the long list of delectable salt and fresh water food, the fisherman of Washington has an enticing and most profitable chance to satisfy his love of sport and adventure not only, but to increase his bank account as well. SOILS AND LANDS. Washington is particularly blessed in having a diversity of soils, all admirably adapted to some department of agriculture and giving the state the opportunity of great diversity in the occupations of its people. The central plateau of eastern Washington, made up of level stretches and undulating hills, is all covered with a soil composed of volcanic ash and the disintegration of basaltic rocks which, together with some humus from decayed vegetation, has made a field of surpassing fertility for the production of the cereals with scant water supply; but under the magic touch of irrigation it doubles its output and makes of it not only a grain field but an orchard and garden as well. Underneath the forests of eastern Washington, along the northern border of the state and in its southeastern corner there is added a large proportion of clay, a necessary element for perpetual pasturage, and widening the field for fruit growing. In western Washington, upon the bench lands and on the hills and foothills the forests are supported upon a gravelly soil, intermixed with a peculiar shot clay which disintegrates with successive tillage so that when the forests are removed the soil becomes ready for all the grasses and grains and fruits. In the valleys more silt and humus make up the soil, and when the cottonwoods, alders and maples are gone there is left a soil deep and strong for the truck gardener and general farmer, which will endure successive tillings for ages. At the deltas of the rivers are large reaches of level lands, some of which have to be diked to prevent the overflow of the tides, which have had added the fertility of the salts of the ocean and are probably the richest lands in the state fit for cereals and root crops, not omitting the bulbs which have made the deltas of Holland famous. There are also extensive peat beds which, scientifically [Page 14] fertilized, will produce abundant returns to the intelligent farmer. LANDS. The lands of the state are owned, some by Indian tribes, some by the general government, some by the state, but largely by individual citizens and corporations. Indian Lands. Of the Indian lands most of them have been "allotted" and the balance will soon be thrown open to settlement. Of these the largest in western Washington are the Quinault and Makah reservations and in eastern Washington the great Colville reservation. This latter will in time make two or three counties of great value, being adapted to general farming, dairying, fruit growing and mining, and having an abundance of forest area for fuel and building purposes. Those in western Washington are timbered areas at present. Government Lands. The remnant of government lands are chiefly among the more barren areas of eastern Washington and the poorer forest lands of western Washington. The method of obtaining title to government lands is generally known, and if not, can be obtained from the general land offices, one of which is in Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver, Spokane, Waterville, Walla Walla and North Yakima. The government still holds title to nearly six million acres, and, while the best has been acquired by others, the diligent searcher can still find homesteads and desert claims worth energy and considerable expense to secure. State Lands. A recent estimate of the value of the state lands still in possession makes them worth 56 million dollars. They include nearly 3,000,000 acres, a large portion of which is heavily timbered. These lands may be obtained from the state through the state land commissioner by purchase outright on very easy terms, or may be leased for a term of five to ten years at a low rental, the lessee receiving virtually a first right to purchase. These state lands are as good as any in the state and offer to the homeseeker a splendid opportunity for a start. [Page 15] In this state there are also numerous tide lands, oyster lands, and shore lands to be obtained at various prices, both from the state and from private individuals who have already acquired title from the state. WATER POWER. It is probable that no state in the Union is better equipped for creating power than the State of Washington. Numerous waterfalls of magnitude are already successfully utilized. Among these the most noted are the Spokane falls, capable of producing 400,000 horse power; the Snoqualmie falls, with a sheer descent of 250 feet, with a capacity of 100,000 horse power; Puyallup river at one place is furnishing about 20,000 horse power; the Cedar river has a capacity of 50,000 horse wer; the Nooksack falls with 15,000 horse power already generated; Tumwater falls with 4,000 horse power, with Chelan falls, the Meyers falls and the falls of Asotin creek all in use to limited extent. The waters of the Yakima river are also in use in part for power purposes, but more extensively for irrigation. Besides these there are many minor streams already harnessed. But the unused water powers of the state far exceed that portion now developed. All its streams are mountain streams, excepting perhaps, the Snake and Columbia rivers. These mountain rivers in a flow of 50 to 200 miles make a descent of 2,000 to 5,000 feet in reaching sea level, providing innumerable opportunities to use the falls already created by nature, or to divert the waters and produce artificial falls. No heritage of the state is of greater value and none more appreciated than this water power. Since the introduction of electricity as a lighting and motive force, its creation by water power looms into immense importance. The exhibition of its achievements to be seen in Washington today is amazing to the men whose vision of light and power was first with the tallow dip and four-footed beasts, and later with kerosene and steam. Electricity, created by our water falls, lights our cities and farm homes, draws our street cars and some railroad cars--pushes most of the machinery used in manufactories, to the great satisfaction and profit of our citizens. [Page 16] GAME. The State of Washington was once a paradise for the sportsman in its every corner. Its desert lands were full of jack rabbits and sage hens; over its mountains and foothills roamed herds of elk, mountain goats, deer, and many bear, cougar and wild cats. In its timbered valleys were pheasants and grouse in plenty. Upon its waters and sloughs the wild ducks and geese were in vast flocks, while its waters teemed with salmon in many varieties, and several families of the cod tribe, sole, flounders, perch, mountain trout and other fish. While these conditions cannot now be said to exist in full, yet at certain seasons, and in some places, the same game, animals, birds and fishes are in abundance, and the sportsman, while he may not have his "fill," may satisfy a reasonable amount of his craving for the excitement of the frontier. The state has deemed it wise to restrict the time and place within which its game can be taken and the amount a single individual shall kill. These regulations suffice partly to preserve the game from extinction and help replenish the state's treasury, and are considered wise and reasonable. SCENERY. If Washington is mighty in forest possession, provided with fuel for centuries in its coal beds, rich in precious metals, with great open waterways full of fish roads from the ocean and millions of fishes in its inland waters, with game upon its thousand hills and its vast plains loaded with waving grains and red with luscious fruits, still its crowning glory is its matchless scenery. Towering above the clouds, with its head crowned with eternal snows, its sides forever glistening with icy glaciers till their feet touch the green tops of its foothills, near the center of the state, stands in imposing grandeur the highest mountain of the states--grand, old Mount Rainier. [Illustration: Plate No. 11.--Fish Cannery at Port Angeles, Clallam County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 12.--A Forest Scene in Clallam County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 13.--North Bank Bridge Over the Columbia River at Vancouver, Clarke County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 14.--U. S. Army Post, Vancouver, Clarke County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 15.--Stock-Raising in Clarke County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 16.--A Clarke County Fruit Ranch.] Through its center north and south the Cascade mountains in a zigzag course lift their clustered peaks and mountain passes from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, while Mount Olympus and his colleagues higher still poke their inspiring [Page 17] front heavenward. Between these two white and green clad mountain ranges, protected from the blizzards of the southwestern plains and from the hurricanes from the ocean, lie in safety the placid waters of Washington's great inland sea, matchless Puget Sound. Where else upon the globe is such a diversified stretch of tranquil water, upon whose shores the ocean tides ebb and flow, upon whose surface the navies of the world could maneuver to their heart's content, while visible from shore to shore are the vast evergreen forests, interlaced with winding waters and stretching gently upwards till they reach the visible mountain peaks a hundred miles away, thousands of feet skyward? Scarcely less enchanting is the view eastward from the Rainier's lofty height--a vast stretch of hill and plain almost surrounded by green mountain sides, through whose gray and green fields flow the great winding courses of the mighty Columbia and the lazy Snake rivers, while a multitude of smaller streams gleam through the forest sides of the mountains over innumerable waterfalls. Here within the foothills you gaze upon the largest lake within the state, a beauty spot to enchant alike the artist and the sportsman. Deep within its rocky sides and full of speckled beauties lying like a mirror in the stretch of green hills about it, lies Lake Chelan, and on its unruffled bosom a fleet of boats ply for fifty miles beyond its outlet till reach the mining foothills of the mountains. A hundred miles eastward, still among the scattered pines of northeastern Washington, the Spokane river tumbles in masses of foam and spray over a succession of rocky falls on its way to the Columbia, while still further on the Pend d'Oreille and upper reaches of the Columbia river flow close up among the mountains and foothills and present a series of beautiful combinations of rock, trees, hills and valleys, of forests and waterfalls of magnificent beauty. Washington in its scenery is magnificent in proportions, wonderful in its variety, grand and imposing in form and feature--picturesque--enticing--"a thing of beauty and a joy forever." [Page 18] PRINCIPAL INDUSTRIES OF WASHINGTON. LUMBERING. The description of the resources of a state naturally suggests what its industries are. The forests of western Washington inevitably lead to the lumber industry and the fertile soil of eastern Washington point as unerringly to agriculture. These are the two great industries of the state. The lumberman and the farmer are in the majority. Already there are sawmills enough in operation to cut up all the standing timber in the state within fifty years. They employ probably 100,000 men. This includes those engaged in logging and the subsidiary industries. Of the trees the fir is pre-eminently useful, and more than half of the forests of the state are fir trees. It is of greater strength than any of the others and hence is used for all structural work where strength is of special importance. It is rather coarse grained, but when quarter sawed produces a great variety of grains very beautiful and capable of high finish and is extensively used for inside finishings for houses as well as for frame work. Its strength makes it ideal for the construction of ships. The yellow pine is strong, medium grained and well fitted for general building purposes, and is very extensively used in eastern Washington. Cedar is very light and close grained and is chiefly used for shingles, and for this purpose has no superior. The cheaper grades are also used for boxes and sheathing for houses and many other purposes. The spruce furnishes an odorless wood especially useful for butter tubs; for shelving and similar uses it is superior to either the fir or cedar. It is a white, close grained lumber, and appreciating in value. The hemlock, whose bark produces tannin for the tanneries, is also a close grained light wood coming more and more into [Page 19] general use, for many purposes, especially where it will not be exposed to the weather. Logs frequently seven feet in diameter require big saws, and big carriers 50 to 100 feet long, and hence Washington has probably the largest sawmills in the world. Our lumber is used at home and shipped all over the world to make bridges, ships, houses, floors, sash, doors, boxes, barrels, tubs, etc. Factories for the manufacture of wood products are scattered all over the state. Most of the sawmills and some factories are driven by steam made by burning sawdust, slabs, and other refuse of the mills. Coal and electricity, however, are both in use. COAL MINING. The mining of coal for foreign and domestic purposes is one of the most important of Washington's industries. The annual output of the mines is about three million tons, worth about eight million dollars; Fifty thousand tons of coke are made annually, worth at the ovens about $300,000. The coal mining industry gives employment to 6,000 men. The production of coal for 1907 was distributed as follows: Kittitas County, tons 1,524,421 King County, tons 1,446,966 Pierce County, tons 612,539 Lewis County, tons 101,275 Thurston County, tons 33,772 Whatcom County, tons 3,160 Clallam County, tons 300 The coke nearly all comes from Pierce county. Nearly forty different corporations and individuals are engaged in coal mining. The coals thus far commercially mined are chiefly lignite and bituminous. These coal measures lie along the base of the foothills, chiefly of the Cascade mountains. Higher up are some mines of anthracite coals, not yet on the market for lack of transportation. As far as discovered they are chiefly near the headwaters of the Cowlitz river in Lewis county. Coal forms the largest factory in furnishing steam for the mill roads. Some of the railroads, notably the [Page 20] Northern Pacific and Great Northern, own their own mines and mine the coal for their own engines and shops. It is also the main fuel supply for domestic uses, although fir and yellow pine cordwood is extensively used when the cost of transportation is not too great. Coal is also the chief fuel used in steamboats, both those plying over inland waters and the ocean-going boats as well. Here also, however, the fir wood proves a good substitute and is used to some extent by local steamers on the Sound. Coal is also used to create both steam and electricity for most of the large heating plants in the cities and in many factories and manufacturing plants, flour mills, elevators, etc. The fact that vast coal measures lie within 50 miles of the seaports of Puget Sound is a very important factor in insuring the construction of manufacturing establishments and the concentration of transportation in these ports. Coal is also used in all the large cities for the manufacture of illuminating gas and as a by-product of this industry coke, coal tar, and crude creosote are produced. The coke from the ovens goes chiefly to the smelters for the reduction of ores, both of the precious metals and iron. METAL MINING. The mining industry other than coal is quite rapidly reaching importance among our industries. There are in the state three large smelters, whose annual output of precious metals far surpasses in value the output of our coal mines. The ores for these values, however, do not all come from the mines of this state. Other states, British Columbia, Alaska, and some foreign countries help furnish the ores. But Washington has within its borders a great mineralized territory, not yet thoroughly prospected and very little developed, yet which materially assists in supplying these smelters with their ores. [Illustration: Plate No. 17.--Ocean-Going Raft, Built at Stella, Cowlitz County, by the Oregon Rafting Company.] [Illustration: Plate No. 18.--COWLITZ COUNTY TIMBER. This Stick Was 301 Feet Long and 36 Feet in Circumference at Stump.] The smelter at Everett receives a steady supply of arsenical ores of copper, lead, gold, silver and zinc from the mines of Snohomish county which are of magnitude sufficient to make profitable the railroad which has been built to Monte Cristo [Page 21] purposely for these ores. This smelter has a special plant for saving the arsenic in these ores, which materially adds to the value of its output and is said to be the only one of its kind in the nation. Besides the mines at Monte Cristo, there are copper mines being successfully worked at Index, whose ores are shipped both to Everett and Tacoma. At Tacoma is located one of the largest smelting and refining plants in the nation, which draws its ores from all parts of the world. At North Port in Stevens county is a smelter which is chiefly supplied with ores from this state, supplemented by those of British Columbia. At Republic in Ferry county are mines producing gold and silver ores of such extent as to have induced the building of a branch line of railroad to carry their ores to this smelter. There are also in Stevens county large deposits of silver-lead ores, which will be large producers as soon as better transportation is secured. This last statement is also true regarding many mines in other counties. FISHING INDUSTRY. The business of catching, preserving and selling fish gives employment probably to more than 10,000 men in this state and adds probably four million dollars annually to its wealth production. The fishes include salmon, which is the chief commercial species, cod in many varieties, halibut, salmon trout, perch, sole, flounders, smelt, herring, sardines, oysters, clams, crabs and shrimp from its salt waters, and sturgeon, trout, perch, black bass, white fish and many others from the fresh water. Great quantities of salmon and halibut are shipped in ice-packed boxes, fresh from the waters, to all parts of the nation. Of these fish, many salmon, halibut and cod are caught in Alaskan waters and brought into this state to be cured and prepared for the market. The salmon are chiefly packed in tin cans after being cooked; the cod are handled as are the eastern cod, dried and salted. The business of handling the smelts, herring, etc., is in its infancy, as is also that of the shellfish. [Page 22] The propagation of oysters, both native and eastern, is assuming great importance in many places in the state. In Shoalwater bay, Willipa bay, Grays harbor, and many of the bays and inlets of Puget Sound, oysters are being successfully grown. In some instances oyster farms are paying as much as $1,000 per acre. The state has sold many thousand acres of submerged lands for this purpose. It has also reserved several thousand acres of natural oyster beds, from which the seed oysters are annually sold at a cheap price to the oyster farmers, who plant them upon their own lands and market them when full grown. The native oysters are much smaller than the eastern oysters and of a distinct flavor, but command the same prices in the market. AGRICULTURE. Cereals. The largest and most important industry in the state is without doubt the cultivation of the soil. The great variety of the soils and climatic conditions has made the state, in different parts, admirably adapted to a large variety of farm products. Vast fields of wheat cover a large proportion of the uplands of eastern Washington, the average yield of which is greater than that of any other state in the Union. The diked lands of western Washington produce oats at the rate of 100 to 125 bushels per acre. In some counties in southeastern Washington barley is more profitable than any other cereal, on account of the large yield and superior quality. Corn is successfully raised in some of the irrigated lands, but is not as profitable as some other crops and hence is not an important factor in Washington's grain supply. Rye, buckwheat, and flax, are successfully grown in many localities. In western Washington, particularly, peas form an important ration for stock food and are extensively raised for seed, excelling in quality the peas of most other states. [Page 23] Hops. Hops are a large staple product in many counties of the state. They are of excellent quality, and the yield is large and their cultivation generally profitable. The chief drawback is in the fluctuations of the market price. Grass and Hay. Grass here, as elsewhere, is very little talked about, although it is one of the large elements that make the profits of agriculture. Saying nothing of the vast amount of grass consumed green, the state probably produces a million tons of hay annually, averaging $10 per ton in value. Western Washington is evergreen in pasturage as well as forests and no spot in the Union can excel it for annual grass production. East of the mountains a very large acreage is in alfalfa, with a yield exceeding six tons per acre. Potatoes. On the alluvial soils of western Washington and the irrigated lands of the eastern valleys, potatoes yield exceedingly heavy crops of fine tubers, often from 400 to 600 bushels per acre. All other root crops are produced in abundance. Beets. Extensive experiments have proved that the sugar beet can be raised profitably in many counties and sugar is now on the markets of the state, made within its borders from home-grown beets. Truck Gardening. Garden stuff is supplied to all the large cities chiefly from surrounding lands in proper seasons, but much is imported from southern localities to supply the market out of season. The soils utilized for this purpose are the low alluvial valley lands and irrigated volcanic ash lands. The yield from both is astonishing to people from the eastern prairie states, and even in western Washington, with its humid atmosphere and cool nights, tomatoes, squashes and sweet corn are being generously furnished the city markets. The warm irrigated lands of eastern [Page 24] Washington produce abundant crops of melons, cucumbers, squashes and all other vegetables. HORTICULTURE. The conditions for successful fruit growing are abundant, and peculiarly adapted to produce excellence in quality and quantity in nearly all parts of the state, but some localities have better conditions for some particular fruits than others, e. g., western Washington excels in the raising of raspberries and other small fruits of that sort, its climate and soils being suited to the production of large berries and heavy yields. Certain localities in eastern Washington excel in the yield of orchard fruits, chiefly on irrigated lands. Owing to the abundant sunshine, the fruits of eastern Washington are more highly colored than those of other sections of the state. Taking the state as a whole, horticulture is rapidly assuming vast importance. Thousands of acres are yearly being added to the area of orchards, and remarkable cash returns are being realized from the older plantings now in full bearing. This is true of all the common orchard fruits, apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, etc. In western Washington large plantings of the small fruits are growing in favor, some of the new fruits receiving especial attention. One plantation of thirty acres is devoted exclusively to Burbank's phenomenal berry. Grapes are being grown on both sides of the mountains, the eastern side, however, giving this fruit much more attention. Cranberries are being produced in quantities on some of the bog lands near the sea coast. Nuts have been planted on both sides of the mountains in an experimental way, and it has been found that walnuts, chestnuts, and filberts are profitable. In the southeastern section of the state, nut growing bids fair to develop into a considerable industry. [Illustration: Plate No. 19.--Royal Anne Cherry Tree, Owned by J. H. Rogers, Lexington, Cowlitz County. Circumference of this Tree Below First Limb, 72-3 Feet. Yield in 1907, 1,500 pounds.] [Illustration: Plate No. 20.--Dairy Herd on Ranch of T. D. Dungan, Kelso, Cowlitz County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 21.--Douglas County Fruit.] [Illustration: Plate No. 22.--Douglas County Wheat at Tram Waiting Shipment on Columbia River Boats.] STOCK RAISING. The glory once enjoyed by this industry is rapidly changing color. Formerly, a predominating feature of the state was its [Page 25] big herds feeding gratuitously on government lands. This condition still exists to an extent, the forests being utilized, under regulations by the government, but the herds are limited. Individual farms and small herds are now the order of the day and, incidentally, better breeds are developing. This is true of horses, cattle and sheep. The demand for horses is chiefly for the heavy draft animals for use in the logging camps and on the streets of the cities, and the demand is fairly well supplied, chiefly in eastern Washington. Good cows and fat steers are always in demand, and Washington's market for them is not fully supplied from the home farms. The same is true regarding sheep and hogs. The phenomenal growth of the seaport towns on Puget Sound and the difficulty in clearing the lands in western Washington combine to make the consumption exceed the home grown supply, and many are imported from neighboring states. There is abundant room for expansion in stock raising in the state. Conditions are admirable. Grass is abundant for pasturage, hay is a prolific crop, the climate is mild, no pests afflict the cattle, and the markets are at the door and always hungry. THE DAIRY. There are few states in the Union equal to Washington in its possession of natural conditions suited to make dairying profitable. In all of western Washington, in the western part of eastern Washington, and in both the northeastern and southeastern sections of the state, the climate and soil conspire to make ideal grazing. Particularly is this true in the western part of the state. All the grasses grow in luxuriance, and with proper care and forethought there may be secured almost twelve months of green feed annually. The crops best adapted for use as ensilage grow well, making large yields. Timothy, clover hay and alfalfa are the standbys for winter feed so far as the coarse feed is concerned, and while mill stuffs and all grains are high in price, so are correspondingly the products of the dairy. Butter ranges from 25 cents to 40 cents per pound, and milk sells in the coast cities for 10 cents per quart. [Page 26] POULTRY. Perhaps no part of agriculture is more profitable to the wise farmer than his barnyard fowls, and in Washington this is exceptionally true. Eggs retail in the coast towns at 25 cents to 60 cents per dozen. Turkeys at Thanksgiving time are worth from 25 cents to 30 cents per pound dressed, and other fowl in proportion. Conditions can be made as ideal for poultry raising in this state as anywhere, and with the market never satisfied, the poultry raiser has every essential to success in his favor. BEE CULTURE. Bee culture among the orchards and alfalfa fields of eastern Washington is a side line which should not be neglected by the farmer or horticulturist. Many are fully alert to the favorable conditions, and Washington honey is on sale in the late summer in most of the cities and towns until the supply is exhausted, and then that from other states comes in to meet the demand. Pasturage for bees is also abundant in many parts of the western half of the state, and many a rancher among the forest trees has upon his table the products of his own apiary. MANUFACTURING OTHER THAN LUMBER. The State of Washington has natural products either within its own borders or nearby, to foster many manufacturing industries, besides those having lumber for their raw material. In the Puget Sound basin are vast deposits of lime rock, which is manufactured into commercial lime, supplying the home market not only, but is being shipped also to foreign ports. These are chiefly on San Juan island. Considerable granite of fine quality is used in building and cemetery structures, from quarries in Snohomish and Skagit counties. Sandstone is being used for building purposes and is of splendid texture. Onyx of great variety and beauty is extensively quarried in Stevens county. Marble of good quality is being sawed up to limited extent. Quarries in southeastern Alaska furnish rather a better quality and are more extensively worked. [Page 27] Clays of great variety, including fire clays and those suitable for terra cotta, are abundant, and large factories in King county are turning out common and pressed brick of many colors and fine finish, vitrified brick for street paving, terra cotta, stoneware, drain tile, sewer pipe and other kindred products. At Concrete, a town of 1,200 people in Skagit county, two factories, employing 500 men, are daily turning out 1,400 barrels of Portland cement of fine quality, which is finding ready market in all the large cities. At Irondale, in Jefferson county, a large plant has been in operation turning out pig iron. It is now in process of being turned into a steel plant and within a few months will be turning out steel bars and pipes for sewer, gas and other purposes. The ores are obtained from Whatcom and Skagit counties, some bog iron in the immediate vicinity and additional ores from Vancouver island. More than a half million dollars has already been invested and this will probably reach a full million when the plant is in complete operation. Although iron ores are present in the state in large quantities, no other serious effort is being made to supply the state with home made pig iron or its products. Here is a vast field awaiting brains and capital. The above represent only a few of the many lines of manufacturing that have been successfully developed in Washington. TRANSPORTATION. Commerce and transportation are two affinities, ever seeking each other. They have found on Puget Sound an ideal trysting place. Here the ships of the ocean reach immense placid waters, not duplicated on either side of the continent, and for this reason the railroads have come from the interior to meet them. From foreign ports all over the world ocean carriers are bringing in great loads of merchandise and passengers, and the railroads coming from the Atlantic coast across the entire continent bring like loads of merchandise and human freight, and here they are exchanged. Teas from China and Japan for cotton from Galveston and cotton goods from Massachusetts; [Page 28] rice and silk, hemp, matting, tin, copper and Japanese bric-a-brac are exchanged for grain, flour, fish, lumber, fruit, iron and steel ware, paper, tobacco, etc. Merchandise of all sorts from Asia, the Philippines, South America and Australia is here exchanged for different stuffs raised or made in every part of the American continent and some from Europe. This commerce, however, is in its infancy. The Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways have fattened on it for years. All their rivals have looked on with envious eyes till now a mad rush is on among them all for vantage ground. The Milwaukee, Canadian Pacific and Burlington systems already run their trains here, while the Union Pacific and others are rushing for terminals on Puget Sound tide water. And while thus racing for the great long haul prizes, they are incidentally giving to the state a complete system of transportation in all its parts and for all its multitudinous productions. Of almost equal importance to the state is its great fleet of local steamers which ply its inland waters, and the numerous electric lines that are rapidly uniting its cities and villages and giving a new and cheap method of migration. From the city of Spokane and radiating in every direction, electric lines are in operation and more are in course of construction, bringing the most distant points of the great "Inland Empire" into close touch with its metropolis and great distributing center. On the west side the same thing is true, only in less degree. Between these two groups of transportation facilities, and the commerce which the union of rail and tidewater has created, the citizens of Washington have found innumerable opportunities of employment. These opportunities are increasing and broadening every year with the continued development of the state and in multiplied and varied form they await the newcomer who possesses the ability to rise to the demands of the situation. [Illustration: Plate No. 23.--FERRY COUNTY VIEWS. Plant of Karamin Lumber Co., Karamin, Ferry County. (1) Track of Spokane & B. C. Railway. (2) Track of Spokane Falls & Northern Ry.] [Illustration: Plate No. 24.--Helphrey Ranch, Curlew, Ferry County.] [Page 29] OPPORTUNITIES IN WASHINGTON. Washington is a land of widely diverging natural conditions. Its topographical characteristics vary from the low southern exposures of the inland river valleys, where strawberries mature as early as April, to the mountain summits of the Cascades and Olympics, where winter reigns supreme the year round. Between these extremes may be found every range of climate known to the semi-tropical and temperate zones. For the Homeseeker. Our lands include those suitable for the successful raising both of the more tender, as well as the hardier fruits. Every grain, other than corn, yields splendid results, while the truck gardener, small fruit grower, dairyman, stock raiser and, in fact, every man who aims to secure a living and a competence from some form of farm industry will find, if he looks for it, a spot within the confines of this state that will meet his most exacting requirements. To insure success in any of the above lines requires pluck, energy, stick-to-it-iveness, a determination to secure desired results, and some capital. But given these, the man who is looking to Washington as a favored location for the establishment of his household gods need have no fear of the outcome. Land may be secured suitable for any of the different purposes mentioned, and with proper care it may be made to yield beyond the most sanguine expectations. A market is ready and waiting to absorb every class of product at profitable prices. Transportation facilities are already excellent and the millions now being expended in new railway construction through the state give some idea of what the future holds forth in this particular. [Page 30] For the Business Man. To the business man a new state, developing as is the State of Washington, naturally offers numerous and attractive opportunities. New communities are springing up along the lines of the Milwaukee, the Portland & Seattle, and other railways now in process of construction, each demanding its quota of commercial enterprises, while the older cities and towns are continually absorbing new additions to their population, thus paving the way for new business facilities. For the Investor. The investor will find an attractive field of action in Washington, and with the exercise of caution and prudence may anticipate far better returns than he has been accustomed to, without undue risk of the impairment of his capital. Raw lands, timber lands, improved farms, irrigated lands and city and town property are exhibiting a steady increase in value and undoubtedly will continue to do so for years to come. The capitalist may take his choice of any of these forms of investment, or he may turn to private, industrial or municipal securities which are constantly being offered on excellent terms and based upon unimpeachable assets. For the Manufacturer. To the manufacturer this state offers all the conditions that may be classed as prerequisite to success. Cheap electric power is available in nearly every community of any size in the state, while millions of horse power remain still undeveloped in the rivers and mountain streams. Raw material is here, in abundance, and the markets of the world are accessible through rail and water transportation. The principal manufactured products of the state consist of lumber and lumber products, flour, feed and various cereal foods, butter, cheese, evaporated milk, crackers and candy, baking powder, soda, fruit extracts, clothing, boots and shoes, baskets, bags, beer, ice, brick and other clay products, iron products, wagons and agricultural implements, turpentine, leather products, cordage, saws, boilers, asbestos, water pipes, tin cans, railway equipment, ships and [Page 31] boats, canned fruits and vegetables and a variety of other products. Desirable locations are frequently offered free to those who will establish manufacturing industries. For the Wage Earner. The wage earner who comes to this state sufficiently fortified to maintain himself and family for a period may usually expect to find satisfactory employment at good wages. Washington has never been exploited as a poor man's paradise, but there is a tremendous development in progress throughout the state in every line of industry and there is a steady demand for mechanics and laborers of all classes. The foregoing is intended to present in brief form an outline of the opportunities that await the enterprising newcomer in this state. Success is being achieved in all of the various lines touched upon, by thousands who have located here in the past few years, and as yet the resources of the state have scarcely been touched. The future of Washington is big with promise, based upon results already achieved, and in that future the newcomer may expect to participate in proportion to the effort he expends. [Page 32] WASHINGTON'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. The importance of a complete and well rounded public educational system has not been overlooked at any stage in the growth and development of this commonwealth. From kindergarten to university no link is wanting to supply the ambitious boy or girl with the very best training that modern educational experts have evolved. The common school system of the state is based upon the theory that every child must be educated, and that the state must provide the facilities for the accomplishment of this purpose. This theory has been carried out so thoroughly and intelligently that there is scarcely a child in the state of school age who does not live within easy reach of a school house. Moreover, attendance is compulsory and no child is excused unless satisfactory reasons are presented to the proper authorities. EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENT. Upon admission of Washington to statehood a land endowment was granted to the state by the federal government for common school purposes which in round numbers totals nearly two and one-half millions of acres. This land is offered for sale or lease by the state, through the office of the state land commissioner, and the proceeds constitute a permanent and irreducible fund to be invested for educational purposes. In addition to the foregoing lands, the state university has an endowment of 100,000 acres; the agricultural college, 90,000 acres; the scientific school, 100,000 acres, and the state normal schools, 100,000 acres. As yet only a small portion of these lands has been disposed of. The expense of maintaining our schools, therefore, is met almost entirely by taxation. [Illustration: Plate No. 25.--View of the Country Near Curlew, Ferry County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 26.--Three-Year-Old Orchard, Near Pasco, Franklin County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 27.--Combined Harvester Operating in the Wheat Fields of Franklin County. This Machine Cuts, Threshes and Sacks the Grain, Depositing the Filled Sacks on the Ground as it Moves Through the Field.] [Illustration: Plate No. 28.--(1) A Jefferson County Country Home. (2) A logging Railroad, Jefferson County. (3) Prize Products, Jefferson County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 29.--JEFFERSON COUNTY RURAL VIEWS. Field of Oats and Vetch Yielding 5 Tons Per Acre. Herd of High-Grade Holstein Dairy County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 30.--View of Waterfront, Port Townsend, Jefferson County.] HIGHER INSTITUTIONS. The University of Washington occupies a campus of 350 acres, located entirely within the limits of the city of Seattle. [Page 33] The buildings of the university consist of the administration building, science hall, chemistry building, engineering building, power house, dormitories for men and women, and other smaller buildings. In addition to the foregoing, the university will come into the possession of a number of commodious structures at the conclusion of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. For the current year, the enrollment of students at the university is 1,838. The faculty consists of 115 members and for the ensuing biennial period the legislature appropriated the sum of $673,000 for the support of the institution. The State College of Washington is located at Pullman, in Whitman county. This institution emphasizes technical and scientific education and in its agricultural departments has accomplished remarkable results. It is annually giving the state a number of highly trained experts in modern agricultural science, and the farming interests of the state have been greatly assisted by the work of the college. Instruction is given in civil engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, geology, botany, chemistry, zoology, economic science and history, modern languages, domestic economy, besides the practical operation of a dairy farm and other branches of agricultural industry. The institution, in addition to its land endowment, receives annual assistance from the federal government and a biennial appropriation from the state legislature. The state also maintains three normal schools, located respectively in the cities of Bellingham, Ellensburg and Cheney. These institutions have a combined attendance of about 850 and are the recruiting ground for securing instructors in the public schools. At Vancouver is the State School for the Deaf and Blind. The defective youth of the state are cared for in a well equipped institution located at Medical Lake, in Spokane county, and at Chehalis is the state training school for incorrigibles. [Page 34] LOGGED-OFF LANDS. The problem of making a home and providing a competency for old age upon the lands in western Washington is somewhat different and more difficult than doing the same upon the prairie lands of the east. As they come to the hands of the would-be tiller of the soil, they present a forbidding and disagreeable aspect. The loggers have left them with considerable standing timber, with the tops of the giants of the forests lying where they fell, scattered over the land and covering it with an almost impenetrable mass of great limbs and brush and dead logs. If seen in the summer, there is added the view of a mass of green vegetation, rank and to a large extent covering up the mass of dead stuff left by the loggers with the huge stumps sticking up through it all, mute monuments of the lost wealth of the forest. In some instances this is somewhat relieved by the fact that, either by accident or design, the fire has been there and swept through it all, leaving nothing but blackened and smouldering emblems of its prior greatness. In this case, however, only the lighter part of the refuse has been destroyed. The great stumps of fir and cedar are there still, blackened and perhaps with their dead hearts burned out. Great and small decaying logs are there, some too wet to burn, some with the bark alone burned off, and some with the dead centers burned out, scattered about or piled in crisscross masses as they had fallen during the ages of the forest's growth. In either case it looks different from the smooth surface of the sagebrush plains about to be converted into irrigated farms or the clean face of the prairie lands covered with grass and ready and longing for the plow. But with all their forbidding aspects, black with a portentous cloud of hard labor and long waiting, their known hidden wealth lures on the hardy pioneer to the task. He throws off his coat, rolls up his sleeves, gathers together his tools, and with the indomitable courage of the Anglo-Saxon [Page 35] tackles the problem, works and fights and rests by turns till within a few years he finds himself triumphant. Eventually, beneath his own orchard trees laden with fruit, and in the comfort and delight of his big home fireplace, he contemplates the rewards of his struggle, as he sees his cows complacently chewing their cuds in his green pastures and listens to the neigh of his fat horses, and at his table, laden with all the bounty of his rich lands, thanks his Maker for the successful completion of a hard struggle and the enjoyment it has brought to him and his family. MODERN METHODS. Having thus presented the picture in perspective, we will now work out some of the details which help to rob it of its difficulty and add to its attractiveness. If the lands have not been burned off, and in many instances where this has been done, the rancher will find a lot of cedar logs, perhaps partially burned, and possibly long black stubs that it will be wise to save. Cut into proper lengths and put into piles for preservation, they will make his raw material for fencing, barns, etc. The cedar is straight-grained, splits easy, and true, and to the rancher is very valuable, taking the place of sawed lumber for a great many farm purposes. Having carefully saved the cedar, the rancher will fire his clearing, thus getting rid of a large share of the logger's waste with practically no labor. To the task of disposing of the remaining logs and stumps he will bring modern tools and methods into action. The axe and shovel and hand lever have given place to gunpowder, the donkey engine, derrick and winch. Stump powder puts all the big stumps into pieces easily. The modern stump-puller lifts out the smaller stumps with ease. The donkey engine and derrick pull together and pile the stumps and logs into great heaps, and once more the friendly fire helps out; and while the dusky woodlands are lighted up with passing glory the rancher sleeps to wake up and find his fields almost ready for his plow, nor has the task had half the hard labor nor consumed half the time that years ago would have been expended in clearing the same amount of oak and maple and hickory land in the valley [Page 36] of the Mississippi. It should be said, however, that what is gained in time and saved in labor costs money. The expense of clearing the logged-off land by these modern methods and tools will run from $40 to $150 per acre, dependent upon various conditions, number and size of stumps, etc. There are in western Washington thousands of acres which are being pastured and tilled, from which the large stumps have not been removed. In these instances the same methods can be used, handling all the small logs and stumps and litter, and after the first burning, carefully repiling and burning the refuse and then seeding to grass. In the ashes and loose soil, grass seed readily starts, and a single season will suffice to provide fairly good pasturage, which will annually grow better. COST OF LABOR AND MATERIAL. The following table, taken from the report of a government inspector, will give an idea of the cost of the different materials and labor used in clearing logged-off land: Cost of removing stumps from 1 foot to 4 feet in diameter from 120 acres of land in 1907: ========================================================================== | | | | | Labor. MONTH. | Powder,| Fuse, | Caps, | Stumps, |-------------------- | lbs. | ft. | No. | No. | Hours. | Dollars. -----------------|--------|--------|-------|---------|--------|----------- June | 13,700 | 10,100 | 2,400 | 2,135 | 2,380 | $650.00 July | 1,750 | 2,050 | 400 | 239 | 260 | 87.00 August | 2,750 | 2,700 | 700 | 445 | 324 | 114.90 September | 1,950 | 2,160 | 500 | 383 | 324 | 126.37 October | 1,250 | 1,000 | 300 | 237 | 198 | 77.53 November | 2,350 | 3,100 | 800 | 378 | 283 | 114.97 |--------|--------|-------|---------|--------|----------- Total | 23,750 | 21,100 | 5,100 | 3,818 | 3,709 | $1,170.77 Av. pr. Stump | 6.22 | 5.52 | 1.33 | | 0.987 | 0.3006 Av. Cost, cents | 19.76 | 2.37 | .87 | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The average cost of the removal of each stump is shown below: _Cents._ Powder 49.76 Fuse 2.37 Caps .87 Labor 30.66 ----- Total 83.06 The average cost of the materials used was as follows: Powder, per pound, 8 cents; fuse, per 100 feet, 43 cents; caps, per 100, 65 cents. [Illustration: Plate No. 31.--View of Second Avenue, Seattle, During Parade of Marines from Atlantic Fleet, May 26, 1908.] [Illustration: Plate No. 32.--A Corner of the Seattle Public Market. Truck Gardeners Find Ready Sale for Their Wares Here the Year Round.] [Page 37] There are probably two and one-third million acres of logged-off lands in the state, of which only half a million are under tillage or pasturage. The same report shows the distribution of these lands as follows: =========================================================================== | Acreage | Acreage | Acreage in | Total | Per cent. COUNTY. |merchantable| logged |cultivation.| acreage. | suitable for | timber. | off. | | | agriculture. -----------|------------|-----------|------------|-----------|------------- Chehalis | 583,200 | 112,748 | 11,216 | 807,432 | 90 Clallam | 296,611 | 195,933 | 11,784 | 504,329 | 75 Clarke | 190,000 | 108,661 | 51,570 | 350,231 | Cowlitz | 500,000 | 25,000 | 20,000 | 704,000 | 75 Island | 8,013 | 99,866 | 9,317 | 117,196 | 75 Jefferson | 186,647 | 59,427 | 4,657 | 254,385 | 50 King | 640,000 | 110,000 | 74,857 | 1,243,000 | Kitsap | 45,429 | 171,364 | 7,978 | 224,771 | Lewis | 543,995 | 160,425 | 47,059 | 884,050 | 65 Mason | 240,211 | 150,430 | 7,540 | 398,181 | Pacific | 367,827 | 62,720 | 23,042 | 453,139 | Pierce | 413,044 | 150,000 | 27,915 | 658,052 | 75 San Juan | 10,000 | 80,000 | 4,000 | 95,684 | Skagit | 306,759 | 149,923 | 45,605 | 502,287 | 25 Snohomish | 258,005 | 270,422 | 20,908 | 558,336 | Thurston | 291,200 | 120,000 | 13,680 | 428,005 | Wahkiakum | 74,564 | 67,337 | 3,642 | 145,544 | 50 Whatcom | 78,405 | 258,302 | 35,059 | 371,766 | -----------|------------|-----------|------------|-----------|------------- Total | 5,033,911 | 2,352,109 | 428,829 | 8,700,388 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are a great many acres of these lands that can be slicked up and burned over and prepared for seeding, not disturbing the stumps, at an expense of about $10 per acre. Thus treated, good pasturage can be secured cheaply. In time some of the stumps will rot out and be easily removed. When the stumps are not too thick, the lands can be successfully prepared and planted to orchards without removing the stumps, and their unsightly appearance can be turned into a thing of beauty and great profit by planting evergreen blackberries and loganberries about them, using the stumps for trellises. These berries in the climate of western Washington are wonderfully prolific and find a greedy market. COMPENSATIONS. There are several facts about making farms out of logged-off lands which should not be lost sight of, because they largely compensate for the labor spent in the undertaking. One of these is that the problem of fuel is solved for a lifetime and for the coming generation. Five acres can be left untouched as a reserve and in a remarkably few years it will re-forest itself. [Page 38] The growth of trees under the humid atmosphere of western Washington is astonishing, and a very few years will suffice to provide one with a wood lot to last a generation. Meanwhile some of the fir logs and alder and maple trees will be preserved from the fire and piled up to provide fuel for the years until the wood lot furnishes a fresh green supply. Then, too, as has already been suggested, the fence question, no small item in a prairie country, is satisfactorily answered with no expenditure but for labor. The cedar logs, splitting with ease, can be turned into rails or boards or posts--preferably the former--and the rails put on top of each other between two posts fastened together at the top make as good a hog-tight and cattle-proof fence as can be desired, and these rails will last in the fence for a century. For the house, doubtless more satisfaction can be had by patronizing the nearest saw-mill, although many houses made out of split cedar timbers and boards are in the state, proofs at once of the usefulness of this timber and the hardihood and ingenuity of the rancher. But for the barn and stable, pig-stye, hennery, chicken-coop and fruit boxes, and a great many other things, the rancher patronizes his reserve log pile instead of the lumber yard, and saves time and labor in so doing. Another fact which compensates the rancher in western Washington in the struggle for a home which will provide a safe and generous support in his old age is that during all the labor and waiting he is enjoying a delightful climate, in which no blizzard drives him from his work. No cyclone endangers his life and fortune. No snakes lurk in the underbrush. No clouds of dust blind his eyes. No sultry summer suns make him gasp for breath, and no intense cold freezes his face or feet. He can work if he wishes as many days as there are in the year, and know that every stroke of his axe or mattock is a part of his capital safely invested that will pay back an annual dividend for a lifetime. No soil will respond to his energy more quickly or more generously. There is one more possible compensation. Fir logs and stumps and roots and bark are all full of pitch. Factories are now in operation that are turning this wood into charcoal and [Page 39] saving and refining all the by-products, particularly turpentine, wood alcohol, pitch and tar. These factories are successful and paying dividends, but are on a large scale and permanently located. It is probable that some genius will soon evolve a movable plant, capable of serving the same purpose, which can go from one ranch to another. When this is done, it will be found that the refuse left by the logger is worth several times more than the cost of getting it off the land with powder and fire, and, instead of being a burden upon the land of $100 per acre, will become a matter of merchandise to be sold for much more and removed from the land with no expense to the owner. As a final word, it should be remembered that, after these lands are put under good tillage, every acre can be made to return more than the cost of clearing annually. Western Washington has never been able to produce enough to feed its wonderfully increasing population. Meats, vegetables, fruits, poultry, eggs, etc., are all constantly coming in from outside to supply the markets. This condition keeps prices high. It has been so for twenty years, and will be for twenty years to come. From $100 to $500 per acre per year can be had from fruits and vegetables. The same can be realized from poultry, nor will the dairy fall far behind when the scrub cow is abandoned and a choice thoroughbred animal takes its place and the soil is intensely tilled and fertilized. The logged-off lands when first looked at are black and big labor and difficulties. When the problem is intelligently understood--undertaken with comprehension and some capital and plenty of grit--the solution is easy and the rewards ample and gratifying. [Page 40] IRRIGATION IN WASHINGTON. The lands which require irrigation in the state are chiefly the lower lands in the valleys of the rivers east of the Cascade mountains. The winds from the Pacific, though heavily laden with moisture, are forced to surrender the greater portion to western Washington, as they meet the cold heights of the mountain ranges. The mountains themselves receive a very heavy fall of snow in winter, which fills the lakes and sources of the rivers on the eastern side, providing a large amount of water available for irrigation purposes, for lands not too far distant. Within fifty miles from the mountain peaks there is a drop of about 4,000 feet. The sides of the valleys in the main are gradual slopes. These conditions make irrigation very feasible. Its wonderful results have been seen and the process of irrigation has found a wide field within the past few years. THE IRRIGATION AREA. Not only the Yakima valley, where this method of farming had its beginning in the state, but many other places, are now being made productive which were once thought wholly worthless on account of their aridity. Among these are the Wenatchee valley, the Entiat, the Methow, the Chelan, and the Okanogan--all on the slope of the Cascades. The immediate low lands of the Columbia and Snake rivers and considerable of the narrow valleys of the small streams emptying into them have in many instances been irrigated. [Illustration: Plate No. 33.--King County Rural Views.] [Illustration: Plate No. 34.--HOW THE HILLS MAKE WAY FOR THE SKYSCRAPERS IN SEATTLE. 1907--Last of Hotel Washington. 1908--New Hotel Washington.] [Illustration: Plate No. 35.--A Portion of the City of Seattle Overlooking the Harbor.] [Illustration: Plate No. 36.--Torpedo-Boat Destroyer in Government Drydock at Navy Yard, Puget Sound, Kitsap County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 37.--Steamship Dakota in Government Drydock at Navy Yard, Puget Sound, Kitsap County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 38.--A Kittitas County Apple Tree.] WORK OF THE GOVERNMENT. The work of reclaiming the arid lands has been wonderfully accelerated and widened in scope by the national government. The projects of the reclamation service now include practically all of the available waters of the Yakima valley for irrigating the lands therein. In Yakima county alone there are probably [Page 41] 260,000 acres now under ditch, and probably 50,000 more will be reclaimed this season. This is probably not more than half the lands in the county capable of irrigation. The fact that the general government is in control of these projects insures as wide and just a distribution of the available waters as possible. The cost of irrigation, which is from $50 to $60 per acre, is paid by the owners of the land in ten annual payments. There is also an annual charge for maintaining the canals from $1.25 to $1.50 per acre. These projects of the government cover the lands in Benton and Kittitas counties also--both of these counties being in the Yakima valley. The government is also engaged in managing an extensive project in the southern part of Okanogan county, where probably 50,000 acres will be reclaimed. There is a large acreage in Franklin and Walla Walla counties, about the junctions of the Snake and Columbia rivers, to which Pasco is central, which is arid. The government has once turned this project down, but is now reconsidering it, and it is reported that these lands will soon be put under ditch by the joint action of the government and the Northern Pacific railway, which owns a large portion of the lands. Meanwhile private enterprises are reclaiming extensive tracts in Klickitat county, and in fact nearly all the counties bordering on the Columbia and Snake rivers in eastern Washington. It is probable that there are more lands capable of irrigation in the state than can be irrigated with available waters. This fact adds to the importance of the question of what to do with arid lands when no water can be put upon them. METHODS OF IRRIGATION. There are three methods in use in supplying water to the arid lands. The first and the one most generally adopted for obvious reasons is the gravity system. The waters are impounded in lakes or artificial reservoirs and carried thence in large main canals, winding about the hills so as to secure a low uniform grade. Once established, no other force is needed but the usual flow of the water. [Page 42] Another method resorted to when the gravity system is impossible is to pump the water from the big rivers into smaller reservoirs leading to the canals, the pumps being kept busy only during the months in which the water is needed. This method is quite successful, but requires a somewhat larger annual expenditure. It is being used in some extensive projects, the water being taken out of the Columbia river. The third method is in securing the water by means of artesian wells. This method is naturally limited to small areas, the projects being undertaken by individual private owners. Several spots have been found in the arid belt where this method is successful. SOILS. The soils over the entire areas of eastern Washington on the arid lands is a volcanic ash mixed with disintegrated basaltic rocks and some humus, varying in depth and in the amount of sand it contains. The low lands are usually more sandy and warmer and earlier in season. The depth of this soil is in some places 80 feet and generally so deep as to insure great permanency to its fertility. It readily absorbs and holds moisture, and is admirably adapted to artificial watering. In some spots there is an injurious surplus of alkali. It is generally covered with sagebrush and has the appearance of sterility, but upon cultivation under irrigation, produces wonderful results in quantity and quality of grains and grasses and fruits and vegetables. GRAINS. Wheat, oats and corn are successfully grown, but not in large acreage, because larger profits can be realized from other crops. HOPS AND POTATOES. Hops, for example, which can be produced at a cost of 7-1/2 cents per pound, yield from 1,500 to 2,000 pounds per acre, and potatoes, yielding from 300 to 500 bushels per acre, and receiving the highest market price, are both more profitable than wheat or oats. [Page 43] ALFALFA. Alfalfa, yielding from eight to ten tons per acre, and commanding from $6.00 to $12.00 per ton, is a very profitable crop. Much wheat and oats are cut when in the milk and sold for hay, and yield better returns than when matured and threshed. FRUITS. The smaller fruits are very profitable under irrigation, yielding from $300 to $500 net per acre, while apples, pears, peaches, grapes, etc., often far exceed these figures, sometimes yielding as much as $1,000 per acre net. DAIRYING. Dairying is extensively followed on the irrigated lands, particularly in Kittitas county, where the cool atmosphere is very favorable, and the farmers find that turning timothy and clover, alfalfa and grain hay into butter fat is more profitable than wheat-raising. PREPARATION OF LAND. There is a good deal of this arid land which will have to be freed from the sagebrush and smoothed over before it will be fit for irrigation. This expense, together with building headgates and lateral ditches, building flumes and seeding to alfalfa, will cost from $15.00 to $20.00 per acre, depending upon the character of the surface, the size of the sagebrush, and amount of flumes, etc. Some, however, very smooth lands can be prepared for seeding at less expense. DISPOSITION OF CROPS. The hay crops are in large part sold on the ground and fed to cattle and sheep which have summered in the mountain ranges and are carried through the winters on the farms in the valleys. What is left after supplying this demand is baled and shipped by rail to the markets on Puget sound, Portland or Spokane. The Sound country is also the chief purchaser of the fruits, although many winter apples, on account of their superior quality, are shipped to eastern markets. [Page 44] Potatoes and other vegetables usually go west, although an occasional season finds the eastern market depleted, and then the shipments go to the best market. Hops are sold to be delivered at railroad stations and go east, many even to Europe. VALUE OF LANDS. The irrigated lands are yearly appreciating in value, mindless of the large acreage annually added to the supply. This is largely due to the fact that they are bought up and held for speculative purposes. However, there are still many farms in the hands of first purchasers from the government, and others still to be had directly from the government and others from the Northern Pacific company, not yet under ditches, which may ultimately be reclaimed. These latter can be had from $7.00 to $25.00 per acre. The lands already under ditch, or which will soon be irrigated certainly, are held from $50 to $100 raw and from $125 to $200 with water rights paid for. Much land is on the market, already planted or to be planted to orchards, and cared for, for a term of years until the orchards are in bearing, which can be purchased on easy terms, ranging in price from $200 to $500 per acre. TRANSPORTATION. Nearness to transportation is a valuable factor in determining the price of lands--whether under irrigation or otherwise. The lands being irrigated in eastern Washington are, for the most part, adjacent to competing railways and water craft on both the Columbia and Snake rivers. Projects are in contemplation by the government and state to remove all obstructions from the Columbia river and give a great navigable stream from Kettle Falls to the mouth of the river. This will add to the shipping facilities by increasing the number of boats which will ply the river and be of great help to all farmers holding lands adjacent. Numerous trolley lines are already running in many directions--and more are projected--among the irrigated farms connecting with the cities of Spokane, North Yakima, [Page 45] and Walla Walla. These add greatly to the facility and cheapness of transportation. CLIMATE. The character of the climate is well suggested by the crops which can be harvested. They include peaches, apricots, grapes, figs, tomatoes, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other things which require a warm summer and warm soil. Very little moisture comes upon the land in the summer. The winters are moderately cold, with some snow, which is joyfully hailed by the farmers, for all moisture is quickly absorbed by the soil and held for summer's use. The spring season is two or three weeks earlier than in the Puget sound basin. Moderate winds prevail during the summer months, coming from the east and west by turns, and prevent excessive sultry weather. OCCUPATIONS. Aside from the ordinary agricultural pursuits suggested by the foregoing, which includes grain-growing, horticulture, dairying and truck gardening, should be mentioned stock-raising, particularly of sheep, many thousands of which are yearly wintered in the valleys and summered on the ranges. Bee culture and poultry-raising are also both becoming important. In closing, it should be said that the activity of the government and private investors together has given a great impetus to the settlement of these arid lands, and the population is rapidly increasing, being made up of a miscellaneous assortment of Uncle Sam's energetic, wideawake, industrious citizens, building homes and making fortunes more rapidly, probably, than in any other part of irrigated regions in his domain. The doors are open, too, for the newcomers, for ten times the population now there can well be made prosperous. [Page 46] THE COUNTIES AND MORE IMPORTANT CITIES AND TOWNS OF WASHINGTON ADAMS COUNTY LOCATION. Adams county is in the center of southeastern Washington, cut out of the once great desert plateau, covered with sage brush. It has developed into one of the most important food-producing counties of the state. It has a population of about 13,000 and covers 1,908 square miles of territory. CLIMATE. Its climate is not different from that of the balance of the district in which it is situated, and, although some days in winter are severely cold and some in summer hot, its dry atmosphere softens the asperity of its cold, and its generous crop yields are full compensation for the heat of the summer's sun. Its mean temperature ranges from 30 degrees to 40 degrees in winter and from 50 to 74 degrees in summer. Its usual coldest days are 20 degrees to 25 degrees and its hottest ranging above 100 degrees. Its rain and snow give about 12 inches of water. It has one small stream, a tributary of the Palouse river. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway cutting the county diagonally from northeast to southwest and the Oregon Railroad & Navigation railway across its southeast corner and near its south and west borders furnish good facilities for handling its generous wheat crops. To these are soon to be added the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the Portland & Seattle, and the North Coast roads, giving the county very superior railroad facilities. INDUSTRIES. Wheat is its great staple crop, and the last year out of a crop acreage of 275,000 gave to the world nearly 6,000,000 bushels, an average of upwards of 20 bushels to the acre. When this average is compared with that of the wheat fields of the Mississippi valley, it is no wonder that the value of its realty has increased for the purposes of taxation more than 300 per cent. in the past six years. Horses, cattle, hogs and sheep are to a limited extent raised on the farms, and are important adjuncts to its prosperity. [Page 47] PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. RITZVILLE is the county seat, and has a city hall, electric lights and water system, flour and feed mills, and is the chief distributing center of the county. LIND will be one of the important points on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway, now building across the county. WASHTUCNA also is to have another outlet for its wheat over the Portland & Seattle railway, projected and building. All these towns have good schools, churches, warehouses, mercantile establishments, and all enjoy an abundance of prosperity from the marketing of the crops. ASOTIN COUNTY LOCATION. Asotin county occupies the extreme southeastern corner of the state, being separated from Idaho on the east by the Snake river and from Oregon on the south by the state boundary. Its population is about 7,500, its area 640 square miles. It takes in a portion of the Blue mountains, from which numerous small streams furnish abundant water for all domestic farm purposes and for irrigating quite a large area of lands, which makes the county ideal for the stock-raiser and fruit-grower. INDUSTRIES. The irrigation of the low lands has had a wonderful effect in stimulating the fruit industry, and resulted in a great advance in land values, particularly about Clarkston and Cloverland, while the cool water of the mountain streams and their grassy slopes make the dairy business especially profitable. General farming, however, is still the standby of the bulk of the population. At Clarkston the lands irrigated and planted to orchards have reached in many instances a value of $1,000 per acre, the waters being taken out of Asotin creek. About Cloverland, waters from George creek have wrought almost an equal increase in values. Cloverland is on a plateau about 2,500 feet above sea level, and the lands irrigated and planted to winter apples are paying handsome dividends to their fortunate owners. On ordinary farm lands wheat yields 25 to 50 bushels per acre and barley from 40 to 60 bushels per acre. TRANSPORTATION. The transportation is limited to the power of steamboats on the Snake river and the Oregon Railroad & Navigation railway, which is reached at Lewiston, across the river from Clarkston. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. ASOTIN, the county seat, situated about seven miles south of Clarkston, on the Snake river, has about 1,500 people within its borders. It [Page 48] has a flour mill, warehouses, churches, schools, public library, light and water systems, and is a prosperous, thriving town. CLARKSTON, an important commercial center, is situated on the flats of the Snake river, in the northeast part of the county. Its population somewhat exceeds that of Asotin. It has all the business institutions of a thriving town, is the main distributing point for a large area, and is rapidly growing. CLOVERLAND, CRAIGIE AND ANATONE are thriving smaller towns. BENTON COUNTY Benton county is bounded north, east and south by the Columbia river and west by Yakima and Klickitat counties. It has an area of 1,600 square miles and a population of about 9,000 people. TOPOGRAPHY. The Yakima river traverses the center of the county in a very crooked course, through the valley of which the Northern Pacific railroad winds its way to the top of the Cascades. Both north and south of the valley of the Yakima are extensive hill and plateau lands, which are being rapidly utilized for general farming. The valley lands are arid and useless without irrigating water. IRRIGATION. Extensive irrigation projects are in successful operation and projected to bring a very large portion of the valley lands into successful use, for these lands, when irrigated, are of unsurpassed fertility. Lands capable of irrigation have rapidly risen in value during the past few years because of the immense yields of all crops under irrigation. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway through its center, the Portland & Seattle around its southern and eastern border and the North Coast coming into the Yakima valley from the northeast and the southeast, together with the shipping on the Columbia river, give abundant means of marketing its products, while several local electric roads are projected to connect its towns and help to open up the newly developed portions of the county. IMPORTANT INDUSTRIES. General farming on the uplands, truck-gardening and fruit-raising on the irrigated lower lands are the chief occupations. On account of the great fertility of the volcanic soils and the early springs, Benton county is able to supply the large towns with fruits and vegetables some two weeks earlier than most other sections, giving it quite an advantage in prices. The county is rapidly growing in population and prosperity. [Illustration: Plate No. 39.--Stacking Hay in Kittitas County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 40.--New Training School, Ellensburg, Kittitas County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 41.--Sheep-Raising in Klickitat County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 42.--Wheat-Raising in Klickitat County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 43.--Eighty-Acre Orchard in Klickitat County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 44.--Manufacturing Scenes, Chehalis, Lewis County.] [Page 49] PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. PROSSER, its chief town and county seat, is on the Yakima river and Northern Pacific railway in the western central part of the county, and has about 2,000 population. It is the chief distributing center of the county. It has three weekly newspapers, six churches, good water supply, banks, stores, warehouses, lumber yards, etc. KENNEWICK, at the easterly center of the county, on the Northern Pacific and Portland & Seattle railroads and on the Columbia river, is a town of much importance, having about 1,500 people. It is noted for the remarkable earliness of its fruits and vegetables. It has the usual business, church and school establishments, including an ice and cold storage plant. KIONA, on the Yakima river, midway between Prosser and Kennewick, CARLEY AND PETERSON, in the southern portion of the county, on the Columbia river, are all growing and prospering smaller towns. CHEHALIS COUNTY Chehalis county is central among the counties bordering on the Pacific, the towns about Grays Harbor being its seaports. It has an area of 2,600 square miles and a population of 35,000. RESOURCES. Its industries arise out of its vast timber belts, its fertile low lands, and its fisheries. It is said to have 800,000 acres of magnificent timber lands, the great bulk of it unmarketed. Logging and the manufacture of wood products make up its chief occupation, though general farming and fruit-raising is rapidly gaining. The lands of the county when reclaimed from the forests are fertile and respond generously to the labor of the husbandman. In 1906, 15,000 apple trees were planted in the county. The fishing industry, including the canning of salmon, sardines, clams and oysters, is a thriving industry and destined to develop into much larger proportions. TRANSPORTATION. Grays Harbor is open to the ocean, but is splendidly protected and has safe anchorage. It is the largest lumber shipping port in the state. The Humptulips and Chehalis rivers empty their waters into the bay, and are both navigable for some distance. In addition, the Northern Pacific railroad skirts both sides of the bay and a logging railroad from Shelton, in Mason county, has nearly reached the ocean, going through the county from east to west. Other railroads have surveying parties in the field, and a conflict is on to share the vast lumber-carrying trade of the county with the Northern Pacific, which has till now monopolized it. Chehalis county is one of the most important counties in the state, and offers an abundant opportunity for Yankee energy to exercise itself [Page 50] in almost every avenue of business. Its opportunities and resources are numerous and vast. The newcomer may look long and find no better place for his talents. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. MONTESANO is the county seat, located at the head of navigation on the Chehalis river, and on the Northern Pacific railway. It has a population of about 3,500. It has sawmills, sash and door factories, and is surrounded by a prosperous farming community, dairying being very remunerative. ABERDEEN is the commercial metropolis of the county. Nearly $15,000 is daily paid out to wage-earners. Much commerce from the ocean is centering here, 736 vessels clearing from Grays Harbor in 1907. Seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars has been appropriated by congress for the improvement of the harbor. The city has terminal rail rates, and the Northern Pacific and Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroads are hustling after its trade. The business portion of the city is built of stone, brick or cement. It has eleven large sawmills, many shingle mills and various other factories for utilizing the products of its timber, besides fish and clam canneries and other factories. Its population, now about 15,000, is rapidly growing. HOQUIAM, Aberdeen's nearby neighbor, has a population crowding 11,000, and is a hustling manufacturing and commercial center, not different in its general business from Aberdeen. ELMA, twelve miles east of Montesano, is a town of 2,700. COSMOPOLIS, south of the river from Aberdeen, has about 1,200, and is a sawmill town. OAKVILLE, MAKRHAM and SATSOP are small growing towns on the Northern Pacific railway. Many other embryo towns will in time grow into prosperous business centers. CHELAN COUNTY Chelan county is one of picturesque beauty and abundance of both developed and undeveloped wealth. It faces the Columbia river eastward, while its back rests against the peaks of the Cascades, 5,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea. Lake Chelan is the largest fresh water body in the state, fifty miles long and one to four wide, and lies 400 feet higher than the Columbia river. Chelan county has 2,000 square miles, much of it mountainous and full of minerals. Its population is at present about 14,000. RESOURCES. Horticulture, agriculture, lumbering, stock-raising, mining and dairying all flourish on the bountiful natural fitness of the county for these occupations. The climate is attractive. It is a sunshiny county. [Page 51] TRANSPORTATION. Steamers ply up and down the Columbia river. The Great Northern railway crosses the county through the valley of the Wenatchee river and the Washington & Great Northern railway is projected along the western boundary of the Columbia river. PRODUCTS. All kinds of temperate zone fruits mature here in wonderful perfection and abundance. The valleys run with water from the mountains to irrigate the lands, and furnish vast power, much of it undeveloped. Hills in the western part of the county are timbered and all the vacant lands are grass covered. Over 1,000,000 fruit trees have been planted in the last three years in the county. The mountain foothills are full of mineral veins of copper, gold, silver, lead and molybdonite. Some have been producing for twenty years. Trout in the streams and game on the hills add to its attractiveness. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. WENATCHEE is the county seat and largest town, having about 3,500 people. It is located on the Columbia river near where the Great Northern railway crosses it. It is the chief distributing center for the county and much other territory, chiefly north of it. LEAVENWORTH, westward of Wenatchee, and also on the railroad, has a population of 1,200 and is a division point. CHELAN, at the foot of Lake Chelan, has about 700 people. CASHMERE, on the railroad, is of about equal size. LAKESIDE, PESHASTIN and ENTIAT are smaller towns, all thriving and growing. CLALLAM COUNTY Clallam county occupies 2,000 square miles of the northwestern part of the Olympic peninsula, having 35 miles of shore land on the Pacific and 90 miles on the straits. The Olympic mountains and foothills cover the southern half mostly, while the northern half is made up of lower hills and valleys. Several large lakes nestle among the mountains; one of them, Lake Crescent, is a famous summer resort. Lake Crescent is known as the home of the celebrated Beardslee trout. The eastern and southern parts have a rainfall sometimes nearing 100 inches annually, while in the eastern northerly part it is about 20 to 25 inches only. An important section of the county is that known as Sequim Prairie This is a level district of about 5,000 acres, located three miles back from Port Williams. Most of it is under irrigation, and the soil thus treated produces marvelous crops. [Page 52] RESOURCES. Lumber, fish, agricultural products and coal comprise its chief resources. The timber of the county is very vast and very little exploited. Its proximity to the ocean makes it very advantageous for all fishing industries. Its valleys are noted for the fertility of their soils, and many a farmer has grown wealthy from their cultivation. TRANSPORTATION. Facilities for getting about are limited to boats and wagons. A splendid boat service is maintained with Seattle and other Sound ports, and a system of public roads is now in process of construction that will be unexcelled in the state. Several surveying parties are now in the woods and it is believed that Grays Harbor and the Straits of Juan de Fuca will be soon united with railroad iron and Clallam county will come to its own. PRINCIPAL TOWNS AND VILLAGES. PORT ANGELES, located about 60 miles from the ocean on the Straits of Fuca, is the largest town and county seat. It has a splendid harbor, with fine anchorage, furnishing a safe refuge for ships when the storms rage outside. DUNGENESS and SEQUIM, three miles from PORT WILLIAMS, are important farming centers, both noted for their dairy products, and contribute largely to make Clallam the second county in the state in the value of its dairy products. QUILLAYUTE, FORKS, BEAVER, BLYN and GETTYSBURG are other small settlements waiting for the railroads to open up the country and render their natural resources available for the good of the world. CLARKE COUNTY Clarke county lies on the north shore of the Columbia river, opposite Portland, Oregon. It has 600 square miles of territory. It was one of the earliest settled parts of the state, and its timber as yet uncut is large. It is extremely well watered. The Columbia and Lewis rivers border it on three sides with navigable waters. It has a mild climate, very fertile soil, and splendid markets at its doors, abundant rainfall, and agriculture is successfully carried on without irrigation. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway connects its various towns with both Portland and Seattle, and the North Bank and Oregon & Washington railroad, paralleling the Northern Pacific, will add greatly to the facility and cheapness of its transportation. From Vancouver northeasterly a road is in operation nearly across the county, headed for North Yakima and the East. [Illustration: Plate No. 45.--Mt. St. Helens and Reflection in Spirit Lake, Lewis County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 46.--LEWIS COUNTY SCENES. Dairy Farm and Hop Field. A Valley Ranch.] [Page 53] INDUSTRIES. Much of the southern part of the county is devoted to fruit-raising, prunes being a very prominent factor in the county's output. General agriculture, with dairying, are very profitable, and to these are to be added fishing, lumbering and mining. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. VANCOUVER has a population of about 8,000, and is rapidly growing. It is the county seat, and is connected with Portland, Oregon, by a trolley line. The Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, Oregon Railroad & Navigation and North Bank railroads all compete for its traffic. It is the central distributing point of the county, and is the United States military headquarters for Washington, Oregon and Alaska. It is well represented in business establishments, including barrel factory, fruit cannery, ship yard, iron foundry, shoe factory, and others. LA CENTER, ETNA, NACOLT, AMBOY and BRUSH PRAIRIE are smaller towns, all holding out an inviting hand to the newcomer, and offering desirable opportunities for new business in both merchandising and agriculture, as well as in lumbering and its kindred industries. Clarke county is one well worth investigating by intending settlers, both on account of its latent possibilities and because of its peculiarly desirable climatic conditions, and its abundant competing transportation facilities, both by rail and water. COLUMBIA COUNTY Columbia county is one of the four counties in southeastern Washington, lying on the Oregon state line and south of the Snake river. A forest reserve in the Blue mountains covers much of the southern portion of the county, which is heavily timbered. The Northern part of the county is made up of rolling prairie lands, of great fertility on account of the large proportion of clay added to the volcanic ash, which composes most of the soils of eastern Washington. Irrigation is here unnecessary, and abundant crops reward the agriculturist. The climate is mild, healthful and vigorous, inclining to much outdoor life the year around. PRODUCTS. Columbia county is essentially an agricultural county, but of late years is branching out into fruit-raising and dairying with marked success. Apples and pears predominate among the fruits, though all others do well. Wheat is, however, still its great product, and both the Northern Pacific and Oregon Railroad & Navigation railroads are in operation through the northern part of the county to carry away its rich grain harvests. The citizens of Columbia county are among the most prosperous of the state, its average of per capita wealth being exceeded by only three other counties. [Page 54] PRINCIPAL TOWNS. DAYTON, the county seat, has a population of about 3,500 people, is situated about in the center of the county, and is the chief town for the county's exports, as well as the distributor of its merchandise. It is a substantially built city, with flour and feed mills, and general mercantile establishments of importance. All the public interests, including schools and churches, are generously provided for. Its chief exports are grain, fruit, livestock and wool. STARBUCK, in the northern part of the county, is a shipping point of no mean importance on the Oregon Railroad & Navigation railway. COWLITZ COUNTY Cowlitz county lies immediately north of Clarke county, bordering about 40 miles on the Columbia river. It has about 1,100 square miles of territory, and about 13,000 people. The southwestern portion is largely composed of level valley lands, while its northeastern part is occupied by the foothills of Mount St. Helens. The drainage is all westerly and southerly into the Columbia river. Cowlitz river is navigable as far as Castle Rock, and is an important factor in the transportation problem. RESOURCES. Timber is the great source of industry at present, the county having about two-thirds of its area heavily covered and unexploited. About 40 saw and shingle mills are engaged in disposing of its logs. Agriculture follows close on the heels of the lumberman everywhere in western Washington, and nowhere are better results in general farming and dairying obtained than in Cowlitz county. Cowlitz coal fields have not yet been largely utilized, but will be extensively developed in time. TRANSPORTATION. Aside from the river navigation, this county is well supplied with transportation facilities by rail. The valley of the Cowlitz river affords the natural highway for roads between the Columbia river and Puget sound, and is already traversed by the Northern Pacific, while the Union Pacific systems and the North Coast road are projected over practically parallel lines through the county. From Kalama all three systems extend south to Portland and Vancouver. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. KALAMA, on the bank of the Columbia river at the ferry crossing of the Northern Pacific railway, is the chief town and county seat. There are here extensive electric power plants and a gravity water system. The chief industries grow out of the lumbering and fishing interests. It has about 1,250 people, but is just now rapidly growing, owing to its superb transportation facilities by both rail and water. [Page 55] KELSO and CASTLE ROCK are both important towns on the railroads and Cowlitz river, each having about 1,500 people. At Kelso, which is near the Columbia river, considerable fish are caught and packed, yet the timber furnishes the chief industry. Fruit and dairying and general agriculture provide a large part of the support for the town merchants. OSTRANDER, CARROLTON, CATLIN, ARIEL and LEXINGTON are smaller towns, all prospering and being built up into substantial business centers by the steadily increasing development of the latent resources of the county. This county offers many opportunities for business to the newcomer in either merchandising, manufacturing or farming. DOUGLAS COUNTY Douglas county occupies the big bend of the Columbia river, having about 1,800 square miles of territory. Formerly there were 4,500 square miles. The last legislature carved the county in two, giving Grant county the southeastern part, about 2,700 square miles of territory, and leaving 1,800 to the northeastern part, with the old name. The bend of the Columbia on the northeast and Grant county on the southeast, compose its boundary. This division boundary follows the northeastern bank of the Grand coulee, and following its general direction meets the Columbia river where the Great Northern railroad touches its valley, thus putting all of that railroad in this new county, excepting only a few miles of the railroad along the banks of the river in the southeastern corner of Douglas county. Douglas county is essentially a high plateau, some of it 1,500 feet above the main bank. Waterville is the county seat, and considerable land along the valley of the Columbia is being irrigated and proving to be of great value for fruit and grain growing. In the southeastern part of the county are some lands covered with black basaltic rocks, but the great bulk of the lands are rich in a volcanic ash soil, and produce large crops of grain without irrigation. A wrong view of the county can easily be impressed upon the traveler by rail; he will see so many of the basaltic rocks from the car windows but once up out of the canyon which the railroad follows, he will find himself in view of an expanse of wheat fields so vast and rich as to astonish him. RESOURCES. As already indicated, this county is essentially a grain producer. Wheat and oats are marketed in large quantities. Fruit-growing and stock-raising are important adjuncts to the county's wealth. It is comparatively new, and lands can be had at very reasonable prices. TRANSPORTATION. As now constituted, Douglas county will rely wholly upon the steamboat crafts on the river to get its grain to market. Its trade, however, [Page 56] is too vast to be passed by, and already two lines of railroad, the Washington & Great Northern and North Coast, are projecting into the very center of its vast wheat fields. With these roads completed as projected, Douglas county will have easy access to both water and rail transportation, and renewed importance will be given to its farming industries. CITIES AND TOWNS. WATERVILLE is its chief town and county seat. It is among the wheat fields, in a broad plain, about seven miles east of the Columbia river, to which it is connected by good roads for stages and freight wagons. It has one of the U. S. general land offices. It has good schools and churches, water and electric lighting systems, both owned by the city. It has a population of about 1,200 people, and is well supplied with business houses, flour and feed mills, a brick yard, bank, etc. BRIDGEPORT, a town of some 400 people, is situated in the northern part of the county on the Columbia river east of its junction with the Okanogan river, and is an important wheat-shipping point, having a regular steamboat service. A bank, flour mill, warehouses and general stores are serving the community, but other industries await the newcomer. DOUGLAS, FARMER, JAMESON, MANSFIELD and HOLLISTER are growing agricultural centers. FERRY COUNTY Ferry county is about in the center of the northern part of eastern Washington, stretching from the northern boundary of the state to the Columbia river, which marks its southern and southwestern boundary. The southern half of the county is within the Colville Indian reservation, and is therefore wholly undeveloped. The lands, however, have in fact been allotted and the remainder will be thrown open for settlement in the near future. Altogether it has an area of 2,200 square miles, and a population of 5,000. It is principally composed of low mountains, well timbered, with valleys furnishing fine grazing. CLIMATE. The climate of the county is such as prevails generally in northeastern Washington--a couple of months of snow in winter, affording plenty of sleighing, skating, etc. Summers are very pleasant, and spring and fall delightful. [Illustration: Plate No. 47.--A Ranch Scene in Lincoln County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 48.--Harvest Time in Lincoln County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 49.--View of Spokane River in Lincoln County, Showing Possibility of Power Development.] [Illustration: Plate No. 50.--Mason County Timber.] [Illustration: Plate No. 51.--Dairy Scene in Mason County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 52.--Oyster Beds in Mason County.] RESOURCES. The bulk of the resources of this county are yet dormant. The mountains are full of minerals; timber is abundant; grassy hillsides are tempting to the sheep and cattle, while the soil is rich, and when tilled will be found to produce excellent crops. The county has a fine future for wealth from all these sources, and, while the mines are [Page 57] first to be made productive, without doubt the fruits and cereals will come into their own in time and furnish much of its wealth. TRANSPORTATION. Two railroads reach the center of the northern half of the county, terminating at Republic, the county seat. These railroads have pushed in here after the precious metals mined in the vicinity. The Columbia river is navigable most of its course on the county boundary, barring some obstructions which the national government will remove and thus open up to river navigation to the ocean the fruits of toil in Ferry county. CITIES AND TOWNS. REPUBLIC, the county seat, is the only large town in the county, and has a population of about 1,250 people. It is the distributing point for supplies for the mines and ships out much ore for the smelters. Ferry county altogether offers exceptional opportunities for the homeseeker in a variety of occupations, as already indicated. FRANKLIN COUNTY Franklin county occupies the basin formed by the junction of the Columbia and Snake rivers, being bounded east, south and west by them. The southern portion of the county is scarcely 300 feet above sea level, and the soil is fine and sandy. The northern part of the county is somewhat higher and composed of successive benches till they reach an altitude of 1,000 feet. It is only a few years since these lands were all considered barren and useless. Yet in 1906 these bench lands in this county added 1,500,000 bushels of wheat to the world's supply and in the following season nearly doubled that output. There are no forests, the land being covered with bunchgrass and sagebrush. IRRIGATION. Along the rivers some farmers have irrigated small parcels of land by pumping water, but the bulk of the irrigable lands are awaiting the action of the U. S. Reclamation Service, which it is thought will ultimately be engaged in an extensive irrigation problem to reclaim thousands of acres now arid and barren. The warm climate of these low Bandy lands has already been proven to be immensely advantageous to the gardener and fruit-grower, and the lands wonderfully productive when the magic influence of plenty of water renders the sources of plant life soluble. The wheat crops now being produced come from the bench lands without irrigation. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway passes diagonally through the county and crosses the Columbia river near Pasco. The Oregon Railroad & [Page 58] Navigation railway taps the wheat belt in the northern part of the county and the North Coast is projected through it, while the Portland & Seattle follows the north bank of the Snake river along its southwestern boundary, thus giving the county four systems of railroad, besides the Columbia river steamboats. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. PASCO is the county seat, in the extreme southern portion of the county, near the Columbia river, and is more noted as a railroad center than as a shipping point, on account of the fact that the surrounding lands are as yet unirrigated. It has a population of about 1,800, and is just now enjoying new vigor and much building in anticipation of its future usefulness as a commercial center for distribution of both merchandise and agricultural products. CONNELL, in the northern part of the county, is a shipping point of importance, and has two railroad lines and a third one coming. In addition to the cereals, many sheep and horses are being raised and shipped out of the county from this vicinity. GARFIELD COUNTY Garfield county is the second from the southeast corner of the state, and extends from the Snake river on the north to the state boundary on the south. It has 627 square miles of territory and a population of about 7,000. The southern portion is included in the Wenaha forest reserve, and is quite heavily timbered. The northern portion is an extremely prolific farming region, made up of undulating lands with deep rich soil, composed of clays and volcanic ash. No irrigation is necessary, and very heavy crops of grain are annually matured. RESOURCES. As already intimated, the chief source of income for the county comes from the tillage of the soil. Of the crops raised, barley is in the lead, having furnished 1,800,000 bushels in 1907, which places this county second of all counties in the state in the production of this cereal. Wheat and oats are also largely produced. Stock-raising in the southern ranges of the county is very profitable, and much fruit is of late years being produced. Indeed, Garfield county is well up to the front in the per capita wealth of its citizens. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. POMEROY is the county seat and chief distributing center of the county. It is situated in the north central part of the county, on the Pataha river and the Oregon Railroad & Navigation railway. It has a population of nearly 2,000. It is lighted with electricity, has a gravity water system, and all the machinery for doing all the business naturally coming to a town [Page 59] of its size. It has a fine high school and graded schools, churches, newspapers, banks, warehouses, big stocks of goods, fire department, cet. GRANT COUNTY Grant county occupies about 2,700 square miles of what was formerly Douglas county, comprising the lands southeast of the Grand and Moses coulees, bordering on the southwest on the Columbia river, with Adams and Lincoln counties on its eastern border. Ephrata is the county seat, on the Great Northern railway. The northern part of the county is traversed by the Great Northern railroad, and has developed into a vast region of grain production without irrigation, although originally supposed to be valueless for cereal-raising. The southern part is new and comparatively undeveloped, but is crossed by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway, just now giving this new county great impetus. The southern portion of the county has long been a grazing ground for herds of cattle and horses, but it is thought now it will be turned into a prosperous region of small farms. While the county is cut by several coulees, it is chiefly composed of large areas of bench lands, comparatively level, barring a range of hills in its southwestern corner called Saddle mountains. There is considerable water in the county, Moses lake being quite a large body of water with bordering swampy lands, about in the center, and Wilson creek, in the northern and Crab creek, in the southern part, furnishing considerable stock water. LANDS. The lands tributary to the Great Northern railway already produce great quantities of grain and livestock, and these will continue to be its staple crops until irrigation may come in and stimulate fruit production, for which it is thought much of the lands will be suitable. TRANSPORTATION. Both the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway systems are in the grain fields of the northern part of the county. The Milwaukee road crosses the southern part, the N. & S. is projected along its western border, paralleling the Columbia river, which is navigable, thus affording all the county, excepting the central portion, good facilities for marketing its products. As the county develops, beyond question branch lines will penetrate this portion, and Grant county will become as well supplied as any other portion of the state with facilities for commerce. CITIES AND TOWNS. EPHRATA, the county seat, is a small village on the Great Northern railway about midway of the county and the center of a large wheat-growing section. Its transformation into an important town is rapidly [Page 60] going on, the new county government calling for a variety of new occupations to center here. WILSON CREEK, near the eastern border of the county, is a larger town whose chief industry is marketing grain. It is an important distributing point, with prospects of larger growth. QUINCY is a station on the Great Northern and is also an important wheat-shipping point. SOAP LAKE, on a lake of the same name, is noted as a resort for the rheumatic. BACON, COULEE CITY, and HARTLINE are stations on the Northern Pacific railway in the northeastern part of the county. Grant county is new, but has large undeveloped resources, and is awaiting the newcomer with abundant offerings for his energy and labor. ISLAND COUNTY Island county is entirely composed of a group of islands in Puget sound, the largest two being Whidby and Camano. It has a land area of 227 square miles and a population of about 5,000. RESOURCES. Lumber, agricultural products and fish make up the county's resources. Considerable of the timber, particularly from Whidby island, has been removed, and wheat, oats, hay, potatoes, fruits, poultry, butter, eggs, etc., are now shipped out to the splendid nearby markets at the chief seaport towns on Puget Sound. The soils in the northern part of Whidby island are of remarkable fertility, some of them producing as much as 100 bushels of wheat per acre and immense crops of potatoes. In season the waters of the county abound in salmon and other salt water fish, and many of the citizens of the county find profitable employment in connection with the fishing industry. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. COUPEVILLE is a town of some 400 people and the county seat, situated on a beautiful bay in the northern part of Whidby island. It is chief distributing point for the county, has a sawmill, shingle mill, fruit-drying establishment, stores, churches, schools, a newspaper, etc. OAK HARBOR, further north, is the center of a large farming and logging district. Two canneries are in successful operation. UTSALADY, SAN DE FUCA, CAMANO, CLINTON, and LANGLEY are smaller villages gradually becoming summer resorts for people from the large cities of the sound. Steamboats furnish good transportation from all parts of the county. [Illustration: Plate No. 53.--An Okanogan County Orchard in Bloom.] [Illustration: Plate No. 54.--A View of the Country Along the Okanogan River in the Vicinity of the Okanogan Irrigation Project.] [Page 61] JEFFERSON COUNTY Jefferson county is the second county south of the entrance of Puget sound, stretching from the Pacific ocean eastward over the peaks of the Olympic mountains to Hood's canal, and turning north gets a long waterfront also on Puget sound, and taps the Straits of Fuca. It has a population of 11,000 people and 2,000 square miles of territory. RESOURCES. The resources of this county are largely undeveloped, and yet it is one of the oldest settled counties in the state. Originally its entire area, barring a few small patches, was heavily timbered, and it is estimated that the county still has twenty billion feet of standing timber. Its soil is remarkably fertile, and the products of its farms have long been famous. The Olympic mountains contain veins of precious metals, iron and manganese, none of which have as yet been thoroughly developed. Fishing for salmon, sardines, shrimps, clams and crabs is a very important industry. SOILS, CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS. The soils of the county are largely sedimentary, having been washed down from the mountains for ages, assisted by the decomposition of vegetable matter accumulated through centuries. In the valleys, where most of the farming is being done, these soils produce remarkable crops under the influence of the charming climate the county affords. The rainfall in the eastern part of the county is moderate, but ample for all purposes; the average rainfall is about 20 inches. The temperature rarely exceeds 80 degrees in summer, while the winter months average about 45 degrees. Such soils and such climatic conditions combine to force wealth upon every industrious tiller of the soil. Clover yields from four to six tons per acre. Oats and vetches for ensilage purposes yield five to seven tons per acre. Fifty to seventy-five tons of cabbage or mangles per acre are not uncommon, and onions and potatoes produce from six to ten tons. The fruit trees, particularly cherries, apples, and pears, produce wonderful crops. Cattle can graze ten months in the year or more, and the products of the dairies of Jefferson county cannot be excelled. Because of the light rainfall and moderate weather, this county is admirably suited to poultry-raising. Green food can be had twelve months in the year. Runs can always be open, and with proper care hens can be made to pay $3.00 per year each. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. PORT TOWNSEND, at the entrance of Puget sound, is the county seat and chief commercial center of the county. It has a population of [Page 62] about 6,000. It is the headquarters for many government institutions, including the U. S. customs service, U. S. revenue cutter service, marine hospital service, hydrographic service, quarantine service, and U. S. artillery for the Puget sound district. Three great forts; Worden, Flagler, and Casey, are located here, forming the chief defense to Puget sound. Fort Worden joins the city limits. The present garrison force is 2,000. The scenery from the city is grand and beyond compare. Its business interests are varied and extensive. Two canneries for salmon and sardines are here located, boiler works, a machine shop for building electric and gasoline engines, a shipyard, sash and door factory, lumber mills, and shingle mills, a by-product plant producing wood alcohol, turpentine, etc. The city is substantially built and its homes are artistically created. The harbor has twenty-five miles of waterfront and fine anchorage of from nine to eighteen fathoms, and is an ideal refuge for all seagoing craft. The city has gas and electric lights, paid fire department, fine churches, splendid schools, and a magnificent gravity water system furnishes the town of Irondale, Hadlock and Forts Worden and Flagler, having plenty of water to spare for thousands mote. IRONDALE is practically a suburb of Port Townsend, having the only pig iron plant in the state. It is an extensive and growing concern, using bog iron from the vicinity and other ores from different sources. PORT LUDLOW, DUCKABUSH, BOGACHIEL, PORT DISCOVERY, QUILCENE, and CHIMACUM are small villages scattered about the county and are centers of agricultural activity. KING COUNTY King county is distinguished by having Seattle for its county seat. The county is an empire in itself, stretching from the shores of Puget sound to the peaks of the Cascade mountains, and containing more than 2,000 square miles of territory. It also includes Vashon, one of the large islands of the sound. RESOURCES. King county's sources of revenue are varied and extensive. Its lumber industry, growing out of the vast forests within its borders not only, but from the cutting of logs brought in from other sections of the state, is immense. Its agricultural lands are not surpassed in fertility by any, and include not only the alluvial deposits in its river bottoms, but great areas of shot clay and other soils splendidly adapted to fruit culture. Its mining industries include not only very great acreage of coal measures, which have been producing coal for commercial purposes for local and foreign trade for thirty years and are scarcely scratched as yet, but also fissure veins of the precious metals--gold, silver, lead, [Page 63] copper, antimony, arsenic, and also iron, asbestos, fire clays, kaolin, granite, sandstones, lime ledges, and others. Its fishing industries in its own waters and from the ocean give employment to a large number of men and its fish are shipped even as far east as Boston, Massachusetts. Its power capacity, in addition to its wood and coal, includes great falls and rapids and many large streams which are already harnessed, but only in part, and driving vast quantities of machinery in this and adjoining counties. In commercial possibilities King county is unrivaled. Its combination of lakes, rivers and salt water harbors have no superior on the globe, and the fact of its supremacy is demonstrated by the tabulated statistics of state officers, which show that King county possesses one-fifth of the population of the state and has more than one-quarter in value of taxable property of the state, and pays one-fourth of taxes collected within the state borders. In scenery, which is no mean asset of the county, it is also unsurpassed. Vast ranges of mountains, sheets of fresh and salt water, rivers, hills and plains, forests, and grassy fields combine and interlace in a thousand directions to entrance and delight the artistic eye. In game, including bear, deer, mountain goats, cougar, grouse, pheasants, quail, mountain trout, salmon and other fishes, make many a paradise for the sportsman. TRANSPORTATION. In addition to its salt waterways, with 75 miles of shore lands, and its navigable fresh water lakes, there are centering in the county coming in from all directions seven transcontinental lines of railroads, making King county and its metropolis a great distributing center for the commerce between the American continent and the continents of Asia and the islands of the Pacific. Besides these steam roads, electric trolley lines are making a network of inter-communication between all parts of King county not only, but reaching out into the adjoining counties. CITIES AND TOWNS. SEATTLE is the county seat and great metropolis of King county and the state, with a population crowding, if not exceeding, 275,000 people. It covers the hills and lowlands surrounding Elliot bay, an indentation of Puget sound, and a part of the land between the sound and Lake Washington, a freshwater lake of great beauty paralleling the sound for 23 miles and from one to three miles wide. It also includes two smaller lakes, whose sloping shores are covered with the homes of its citizens. From its hills the snow-capped mountains of the Cascade and Olympic ranges and Mount Rainier's towering peak are visions of surpassing beauty. A constant stream of coming and going water craft from all quarters of the globe frequent its harbor. Its business buildings of brick, stone, iron and concrete tower heavenward over four avenues, and many cross streets and miles of its low lands are [Page 64] covered with railroad tracks, warehouses and manufacturing plants. Its grammar schools, high schools, and State University are equipped with magnificent buildings and grounds. Its streets and homes are brilliantly lighted with electricity from its own power plants, while the purest water, sufficient for a million people, flows through its water mains, all owned and controlled by the city. A multitude of factories are providing a small part of the merchandise and composes the groundwork of her commerce. The shores of Elliot bay are lined with wharves accommodating the largest sea-going ships. Its last assessed valuation of property was $203,168,680, and its tax to be raised $975,210. More than 150 miles of street-car tracks are within her borders and a nickel pays for a 15-mile ride. GEORGETOWN, in the southern part of Seattle, but not a part of it as yet, has a population of about 5,000, and is an important manufacturing center. Here are the car shops of Seattle Electric Company, gas works, foundries, breweries, machine shops, brick and tile works and many other industries. RENTON, ISSAQUAH, RAVENSDALE, BLACK DIAMOND, and NEW CASTLE are coal mining towns. KENT, AUBURN, KIRKLAND, VASHON, NORTH BEND, TOLT, FALL CITY, and MAPLE VALLEY are agricultural towns of importance. KITSAP COUNTY Kitsap county is nearly surrounded by the waters of Puget sound and Hood's canal, forming the larger part of the great peninsula which these waters would make an island were a six-mile ridge in Mason county opened up to them. It has extensive and numerous bays and inlets, with magnificent anchorage, and contains in its center the great Port Orchard navy yard, destined to become one of the largest seats in the United States for Uncle Sam's naval activities. RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES. The chief resource of the county is in the lumber. Some of the largest mills of the state are located within its borders. It is estimated that there are yet 200,000 acres of uncut timber in its borders, and its mills are turning out 600,000 feet of lumber daily, besides vast quantities of shingles. The fishing industry now includes oyster culture, which is rapidly becoming very important. About the county are located many villages supported by the tillage of the soil from its reclaimed forest lands. TRANSPORTATION. Kitsap county has no railroads, but its waterways are so vast and intricate that all its corners are reached by steamers, and travel is cheap and freight conveniently handled in all parts of the county. [Illustration: Plate No. 55.--An Okanogan County Valley, Palmer Lake.] [Illustration: Plate No. 56.--McGowan Seining Grounds, Sand Island, Pacific County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 57.--Oyster Culture in Willapa Harbor, Pacific County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 58.--View of the Waterfront at Raymond, Pacific County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 59.--A View of a Portion of Tacoma's Harbor, Showing Ships Waiting to Load Lumber and Wheat for Foreign Ports.] [Illustration: Plate No. 60.--Railroad Yards and a Corner of the Business Section, Tacoma.] [Page 65] PRINCIPAL TOWNS. PORT ORCHARD, the county seat, is on the bay of the same name and opposite the navy yard. It is the chief distributing point for a larger part of the cultivated lands of the county, and exports not only agricultural products, but also shingles. The surrounding lands are well suited for dairying, fruit-growing and poultry-raising, which is also true of the entire county. BREMERTON, adjoining the navy yard, is the largest town in the county, having about 4,000 people and rapidly growing. It has a fire department, electric light and water systems, newspapers, banks, about 1,000 or more wage-earners and is a hustling town. CHARLESTON is another smaller town adjoining the navy yard on the west and rapidly growing. PORT BLAKELEY is an important milling and shipbuilding town of nearly 2,000 people, opposite Seattle. Its lumber goes to all parts of the world. PORT GAMBLE is a sawmill town of importance contributing to swell the large output of lumber shipped out of the county. CHICO, TRACYTON, KEYPORT, PAULSBO, SEABECK, CRYSTAL SPRINGS, COLBY, BANGOR, BURLEY, PORT MADISON, and OLALLA are all small villages, making progress as agricultural centers and as furnishing summer homes for business men. KITTITAS COUNTY Kittitas county is located about in the center of the state, and takes in the upper reaches and most of the watershed of the Yakima river. It has a population of about 20,000 in an area of 2,400 square miles. On its northwestern side it is bordered by two ranges of the Cascade mountains, while its southwestern side lies on the Columbia river. Among the sources of the Yakima river are three large lakes, Keechelus, Kachess and Cle-Elum, most beautiful bodies of mountain water and the sources of the great irrigation systems now fathered by the national government and making the Yakima valley a veritable garden pot of orchards and vegetables, grasses and flowers. RESOURCES. The central portion of the county is a valley comprising 250,000 acres, about one-fourth of which is under irrigation, and has long been noted for its prolific crops of hay and many herds of dairy cows. The foothills of the mountains have precious metals, coal and iron. The streams abound in trout and much game is in the mountains. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific and Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroads, coming into the county from the south and west, cross at Ellensburg [Page 66] and then follow the valley of the Yakima to the crest of the Cascades giving abundant facilities for making markets east and west to all parts of the country. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. ELLENSBURG, the county seat, is situated on a level bench in the Yakima valley and on the railroads. It is a town of upwards of 5,500 people, and is substantially built, chiefly of brick. There are creameries, flourmills, sawmills, and warehouses, banks, breweries newspapers, electric lights, and gravity water system, churches, schools, among which is one of the state normal schools. It is also a division point on the Northern Pacific railway, and is the chief distributing point in the county for farm products and merchandise. ROSLYN is the chief coal-mining town, situated on the railroad well up in the foothills of the mountains. It has about 4,500 people. It has gravity water and electric lights, and is a substantial, thriving and growing town. From the coal mines in the vicinity the best coals of the state are mined in large quantities and shipped all over the state. CLE_ELUM is another coal mining town, on the Northern Pacific railway, with a population of about 2,500. Tributary to Cle-Elum is a wide mining territory, for which it is the chief distributing point. THORPE is a smaller village likely to develop into an important trading point. KLICKTAT COUNTY Klickitat county is central among the southern tier of counties of the state, bordering 80 miles on the Columbia river, with an average width of 20 miles. It has a population of about 14,000 and an area of 1,800 square miles. There is a great variety in its climate, the elevation varying from 100 to 3,500 feet above the sea level. The soil is chiefly volcanic ash, disintegrated basalt and alluvium. It is deep and much of it sub-irrigated. The principal crops are wheat, barley, rye, oats, and corn. The wheat lands yield from 15 to 40 bushels per acre. Among the fruits raised are apples, peaches, pears, cherries, English walnuts, almonds, plums, prunes, grapes, apricots, and all the small fruits. Wheat lands vary in price from $10 to $50 per acre. It is estimated that 7,000 acres will be planted to fruit and nut trees this current year, while last year 75,385 apple trees, 14,675 peach trees, and 17,345 grape vines were planted. RESOURCES. As already indicated, the strength of the county is in its soil and agriculture is its great source of wealth. Stock-raising is a chief industry, the slopes of the mountains on its northern boundary furnishing [Page 67] abundant pasturage. The southeastern part is fast developing into a fruit-growing region, while agriculture and grain-growing is more general in the central and southern portion. TRANSPORTATION. The Columbia river, with a railroad on each side of it and numerous ferries, makes ample provision for transportation, while the Goldendale branch reaches well up into the center of the county. CITIES AND TOWNS. GOLDENDALE, the county seat and metropolis, is located in the center of the county, 120 miles east of Portland. It is the terminus of the Goldendale branch of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railway, making connection with the main line at Lyle. It is located in the heart of a splendid agricultural section and at the edge of the great timber belt. WHITE SALMON, located in the splendid fruit section, is a thriving town. It is an important railroad point on the North Bank and is the outlet for the products of an extensive fruit, timber and dairying region. CLIFFS, the division point of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railway, is the trading center of many square miles of territory. The best nut land in the county is located near here. BICKLETON, the trading point of an extensive wheat section, is in the eastern part of the county. An electric road has been surveyed, which will, when completed, give this town railway connection. LYLE, ROOSEVELT, COLUMBUS, BINGEN, and CENTERVILLE are growing trading points. LEWIS COUNTY Lewis county is one of the largest counties in western Washington, having an area of 2,593 square miles of territory and about 40,000 people. It occupies a large part of the drainage basins of two large rivers, the Cowlitz and Chehalis--one emptying its waters into the Columbia river and the other into Grays harbor. It reaches from the peaks of the Cascades 100 miles toward the ocean, but is cut off 30 miles from the coast, and is about 30 miles wide. Mount Rainier is just north of its extreme eastern portion and about one-fourth of the county is within the Rainier forest reserve. RESOURCES. At present the chief industry of the county consists of manufacturing its forests into the various forms of lumber and its products, the lumber cut aggregating four hundred million feet and two hundred million shingles. Next in importance probably are the precious metal and coal deposits of the county, which have, however, been but little developed. The coal measures include bituminous, lignite and anthracite, and are of great extent in the foothills of the eastern part of the county. Two systems of railroads have been projected into these fields, and the nearest, carrying lignite and bituminous coals, are being commercially developed. [Page 68] Agriculture, including especially dairying and fruit culture, takes the place of the forests as they are removed and bids fair to reach in importance, in time, the lumber and coal resources. To this end, the soil fertility, the mild climate and cool mountain waters conspire. TRANSPORTATION. Lewis county is in the path of all railroads coming in from the south or through the Columbia gap in the Cascades. Already the Northern Pacific railway and the Union Pacific railway cross the county, and the North Coast contemplates traversing the entire Cowlitz valley, while the Tacoma Eastern is already into the northwestern part of the county on its way toward the same goal. The county cannot be too well supplied, for its vast treasures when developed will furnish immense products for transportation. CITIES AND TOWNS. CHEHALIS and CENTRALIA are the two twin cities of the county--less than five miles apart and of about equal importance. From Chehalis the Northern Pacific railway branches off, following the upper reaches of Chehalis river and ending on Willapa bay, while from Centralia the same road branches, following the lower Chehalis river, to Grays harbor. CHEHALIS is the county seat, with a population of 5,000 and rapidly growing, and has electric lights, sanitary sewerage system, paved streets, fine business blocks, and a large and growing trade. Near the city is located the State Training School. CENTRALIA has a population of about 7,000 people, chiefly engaged in running sawmills, shingle mills, sash and door factories, and other woodworking plants. It has a large city hall, ten churches, fine schools, banks, business houses, water systems, fire department, and is a hustling, thriving town. WINLOCK is a town of 1,200 people on the railroad in the southern part of the county, and a distributing point of much importance. PE ELL is a town of 1,000 people on the South Bend branch of the Northern Pacific railway, chiefly engaged in milling and agricultural pursuits. MCCORMICK, LITTELL, KOSMOS, LITTLE FALLS, ADNA, DRYAD, DOTY, and KOPIAH, are all centers of industry in various parts of the county. Lewis county as a whole offers wonderful opportunities for newcomers in all pursuits--commercial, agricultural, and mining. [Illustration: Plate No. 61.--Tacoma High School and Stadium. Rose Arbor in Point Defiance Park, Tacoma.] [Illustration: Plate No. 62.--A Red Raspberry Field in the Puyallup Valley, Pierce County.] [Page 69] LINCOLN COUNTY Lincoln county, adjoining Spokane county on the west, is one of eastern Washington's great granaries. Its northern boundary is defined by the Columbia and Spokane rivers. The bulk of its lands are rolling prairies of great fertility. It has about 2,300 square miles of territory and about 25,000 people. TOPOGRAPHY. The bulk of the county consists of the rolling prairie land characteristic of the great wheat belt of the state. There are some mineral lands in the northern part of the county and here and there will be found considerable stretches of timber. In its northern portion the county is well watered by the Columbia and Spokane rivers, while in the southwestern section and elsewhere numerous small creeks and lakes occur. RESOURCES. The great resource of Lincoln county is its wheat fields, which in 1907 produced to exceed 8,000,000 bushels. Other cereals and hay are important crops. Along its northern part, particularly on the bottom lands of the rivers, much fruit is grown, including peaches and all the small fruits. Diversified farming is growing in favor among the farmers. Compared with other counties of the state, Lincoln county ranks as follows in the number of its stock: Horses, second place; hogs, second place; cattle, sixth place. The county also stands fourth in the number of its school houses and spends annually $100,000 for school support. In wealth per capita, Lincoln county leads the state, showing for assessment purposes an average holding of real estate of $1,163 and $226 in personalty. TRANSPORTATION. The county is traversed from west to east its entire length by the Great Northern and the central Washington branch of the Northern Pacific railroads, some distance from its side lines, so that very little of the county is more than 12 miles from a railroad shipping point. There are 170 miles of railroad tracks in the county. CITIES AND TOWNS. DAVENPORT, the county seat and largest town in the county, is situated on the central Washington branch of the Northern Pacific railway near the middle eastern portion of the county, and has a population of about 2,800 people. Its business blocks are chiefly built of brick. It owns its own water system, is lighted with electricity, has fine school buildings and churches. Its court house cost about $80,000. It is surrounded by splendid farms and annually ships out about 1,250,000 bushels of wheat. [Page 70] WILBUR, a town of 1,500 people, on the Northern Pacific railway, is a very important shipping and distributing center. It has large flour mills, warehouses, five churches, and schools, electric lights, and water system, bank, newspaper, parks, and important commercial institutions. ALMIRA, in the western part of the county, on the Northern Pacific railway, is another prosperous and growing grain center with about 600 people. HARRINGTON, on the Great Northern railway, is a town of some 1,200 people. It has a beautiful location, commands the trade of a large farming county, ships grain and livestock, and is a prosperous and growing town. CRESTON, EGYPT, and BLUESTEM are smaller growing commercial centers. MASON COUNTY Mason county lies on the upper reaches of Puget sound, having the Olympic mountains at its north, where about one-fourth of the county is in the Olympic forest reserve. Its total area is about 900 square miles, and it has a population of about 6,000. Hood's canal penetrates well into the center of the county in its great bend, giving it a very long salt-water shore line. From the Olympic mountains numerous streams flow into the Puget sound, while others empty their waters into Gray's harbor. The county is a great forest of splendid timber, which has been only to a limited degree cut out. The soil of the foothills and valleys Is composed chiefly of shot clays and alluvial deposits, making good farming, stock-raising and fruit-growing lands. RESOURCES. Logging and its allied industries constitute the main industries of the county, Much of the logs are shipped out of the county to feed sawmills in other parts of the Sound. Raising and marketing oysters is an important source of wealth to the county. There is already considerable acreage for farming and stock-raising, stock finding pasturage the year round. This industry will grow as the land is cleared. The county affords splendid hunting and fishing in season. TRANSPORTATION. The county is so cut into by the inlets and bays of the sound that it has splendid transportation facilities by steamer to all the sound ports. The Northern Pacific railway reaches its southern boundary. No other railroads traverse the county but its logging railroads, which can give only a limited service. [Page 71] PRINCIPAL TOWNS. SHELTON is the county seat, situated on an arm of the sound at the terminus of the logging railroad, and has about 1,200 inhabitants. Steamers from its wharves reach all the parts of the sound directly or by connection with others. The logging industry, manufacturing lumber, cultivating oysters, fishing and farming are the chief industries of its people. It has four churches, good schools, a newspaper, good stocks of goods, volunteer fire department, electric lights, gravity water system. The logging industry, which centers here, employs 2,000 men and pays out $120,000 a month. LAKE CUSHMAN is a summer resort in the mountains famous for its big trout catches. ALLYN, on an arm of the sound, is central to much oyster lands, logging camps and fruit orchards. ARCADIA, also on the sound, is central to considerable stock-raising and lumbering. DETROIT is a prosperous village, proud of the grapes grown on some of its logged-off lands. MATLOCK is a town on the logging railroad and central to large logging operations. OKANOGAN COUNTY. Okanogan, the largest county in the state, lies on the northern boundary just east of the Cascade peaks. It has an area of 4,500 square miles and a population estimated at 13,000. About one-fourth of the county, a district of great latent resources, is still within the Colville Indian reservation, but is soon to be thrown open to settlement. RESOURCES. This county is endowed with great natural resources and a delightful climate, and is destined to become thickly populated. The mountains and their foothills have large and numerous veins of metals and are covered also with extensive forests. The rolling hills of the south and center are rich in agricultural possibilities, suitable for stock, and great crops of cereals and fruits. The Okanogan river and its branches drain the greater portion of the county, rising in British Columbia and flowing south through the center of the county and joining the Columbia river on the south boundary. The Methow river drains a large portion of the western part and makes a paradise for the frontiersman along its sloping sides. TRANSPORTATION. Until now the rivers and wagon roads are the only paths of commerce. But into this blossoming empire the railroads are looking with longing eyes. The Great Northern, however, has already tapped the [Page 72] northern boundary and projected a line down the Okanogan and Columbia rivers to Wenatchee. Other railroads will follow, as the prize is too great not to be divided. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. CONCONULLY, the county seat, is situated among the foothills and mines west of the Okanogan river. In addition to the mining industry, the raising of sheep and cattle is followed by the citizens. The town has a population of about 500 people. OROVILLE is the chief town on the railroad, near the northern border, and is the terminus of the road. It has about 500 people and is growing. It is an important ore-shipping point, surrounded also by good fruit-raising and agricultural lands, yet unirrigated. BREWSTER, at the junction of the Columbia and Okanogan rivers, has a population of about 200, and is an important grain and fruit-shipping point. OKANOGAN is on the river of the same name, about midway between Brewster and Conconully, and to this point the steamers ply in the higher waters of the river. TWISP is a growing village in the Methow valley, devoted chiefly to fruit-growing and mining. It is an important distributing center. PATEROS has steamer connection with Wenatchee, and is an importing, growing center. BECK, BONAPARTE, ANGLIN and BODIE are other new and growing commercial centers. CHESAW, in the northern part, and NESPELIM, in the southeastern part, are important locations. PACIFIC COUNTY. Pacific county is the extreme southern county, which borders on the ocean at the mouth of the Columbia river. Although a small county with only 900 square miles, it has about 100 miles of salt-water frontage. Willapa harbor, at the northwest, is capable of being made accessible to all ocean ships, while Shoalwater bay, a body of water 20 miles long and separated from the ocean by a long slim peninsula, furnishes probably the best breeding ground In the state for oyster culture. The county at large is an immense forest, in the center of which is a range of hills dividing the watershed so that some of the streams flow into the Columbia river at the south, some west into Willapa harbor, and others, through the Chehalis river, reach Grays harbor. [Illustration: Plate No. 63.--Modern Sanitary Dairy Barn, on Farm of Hon. W. H. Paulhamus, Sumner, Pierce County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 64.--Views in Rainier National Park, Reached by Railroad and Driveway from Tacoma.] [Illustration: Plate No. 65.--San Juan County Views.] [Illustration: Plate No. 66.--Purse Seiners' Camp at Eagle Gorge, San Juan County.] RESOURCES. As already indicated, its timber and its fisheries are the great sources of wealth for the county, although stock-raising, dairying, fruit-growing and general farming are constantly growing in importance. [Page 73] The county probably has eleven billion feet of standing timber, and daily cuts with its 64 sawmills about 775,000 feet of lumber and one million shingles. Both native and cultivated oysters are largely marketed, as are also clams, crabs, shrimp and fish. A splendid market for all farm products is afforded by the mills and lumber camps and summer campers on the beach. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway reaches Willapa harbor, cutting the county centrally east and west. On the long ocean beach from the mouth of the Columbia river northward is a railroad about 20 miles long, made profitable by the extensive patronage of the summer campers. Added to these are the water crafts which frequent the harbor and the Columbia river, and altogether make access to all parts of the county easy. CITIES AND TOWNS. SOUTH BEND, the county seat, situated near the mouth of the Willapa river, is a rapidly growing town of 3,000 people and destined to become an important ocean port. The harbor is capacious, well protected, has fine anchorage, and is handicapped only by a few feet of mud at the bottom, which Uncle Sam will soon remove. At low tide there is now from 20 to 30 feet of water in the channel of the river and at South Bend it is 1,000 feet wide. South Bend is the terminus of the Northern Pacific railway. It has electric lights, water works, good schools, fine churches, bank, sawmills, planing-mills, sash and door factories, fish canneries, newspapers, etc., and is about to build a $50,000 courthouse. RAYMOND, a new manufacturing town on the harbor and railroad, a few miles from South Bend, has 2,500 people and is rapidly growing in importance. Raymond is not yet five years old; has a monthly payroll of $100,000; sawmills and factories representing an invested capital of $4,900,000, employing 1,200 men; an electric light plant; a city telephone system, owned by local capital; a salt-water fire protection system; is about to build two bridges, costing $30,000 each, and is adding new manufacturing plants at the rate of one a month. The city gives free factory sites, and has both rail and ocean transportation from factory locations to the markets of the world. ILWACO is a fishing post of importance near the southwest shore of the county, with 900 population. CHINOOK, FRANKFORT and KNABTON are other fishing points on the Columbia river of importance. NAHCOTTA is an ocean summer resort. [Page 74] PIERCE COUNTY. Pierce county, though not the largest, is one of the most important counties in the state. Its area of 1,800 square miles occupies much of the upper reaches of Puget sound on both sides and extends southeasterly, taking in the Rainier National Park of 2,225,000 acres, and Mount Rainier (Tacoma) 14,526 feet above sea level and less than 60 miles from salt water, covered with eternal snow, an endless scene of majestic grandeur, giving the county a greater variety of elevations and more beautiful and startling scenery than any other county in the United States. Its northeastern boundary is the White river, its southwestern boundary the Nisqually river. It has about 125 miles of salt-water shore lands, with innumerable bays and inlets and several important islands. Originally one vast forest, much of it now is covered with fruitful fields of grain, grass and orchards. Its climate is mild and salubrious, its soils of great variety and fertility, and its mountains and foothills full of coal and precious metals. RESOURCES. The resources of Pierce county are varied and of great value. Its central part is one great coal field, covered with forests, producing annually about 1,000,000 tons of coal. Gold, silver and copper are among its precious metals, but not extensively mined as yet. Its rivers possess almost immeasurable water power. One plant on the Puyallup river at Electron has an ultimate capacity of 40,000 horse-power, 20,000 horse-power of which is now in use. The city of Tacoma is engaged in the construction of a plant on the Nisqually for municipal use, the capacity of which will be 20,000 horse-power. The 12,000 horse-power plant at Snoqualmie Falls also furnishes current for city lighting, street railway and manufacturing purposes in Tacoma. All the cereals are successfully raised; dairying is one of the most important industries; fruit-growing, particularly in small fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, etc., is very profitable and is engaging a great deal of attention. Fish are caught in quantities and shipped to eastern markets, but Pierce county's greatest natural wealth is in its vast forests. An idea of the value can be had when it is said that $6,000,000 worth of lumber was cut in 1908 in Tacoma alone. In addition to these great natural resources, Pierce county's commercial industries are so great as to place it in the front rank of counties of the Northwest. The great sawmills, woodworking plants and factories of various kinds in the city of Tacoma alone employ 11,800 people, and the value of their output last year amounted to over $43,000,000.00. TRANSPORTATION. Pierce county is fast becoming a network of transcontinental railroads centering in Tacoma, which, coupled with the steamboat traffic on the Sound, gives the county splendid traffic facilities. Pierce county [Page 75] for years was a non-competitive railroad point, the Northern Pacific being the only road to enter its vast fields of wealth. Within the last two years, however, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the Union Pacific system, and the Great Northern, realizing the wealth of the county and the importance of Tacoma as a manufacturing center, the value of her perfect harbor for shipping, the vastness of her great stretch of level tidelands for factory sites and terminal yards, and the low cost at which freight can be transferred from the rails to the sails or _vice versa_, have entered the field and are now spending $11,000,000 on construction and terminal work in the city of Tacoma. The addition of these new roads means a wonderful impetus to the trade of Tacoma. The Tacoma Eastern railroad, a beautiful scenic route, beginning at Tacoma, runs in a southeasterly direction through a wonderfully fertile country and vast forests of splendid timber, to Rainier National Park and Mount Rainier (Mt. Tacoma). Several trolley lines are in operation, reaching all the near-by towns and connecting Tacoma and Seattle. In addition to these lines, many steamboats and crafts of all kinds, plying the waters of Puget Sound and the Pacific ocean, find abundant wharfage and anchorage in the harbor of Tacoma. The products of the world in large quantities pass through Tacoma in process of distribution. A constant stream of small crafts, running about the waters of the county, accommodate the local traffic. CITIES AND TOWNS. TACOMA, with a population of about 125,000, is the county seat of Pierce county, and situated on Commencement bay. Its harbor, one of the finest in the world, and its railroad terminals, unexcelled on the Pacific Coast, as already indicated, are the center of a vast commerce by rail and water. At its door is an immense amount of water power, already developed, driving her street cars and the machinery in many of her factories. Coal and coke are in abundance within a few miles of the city, the coal being used extensively for steam and conveyed from the trains to the boats by immense electric bunkers. The coke is largely utilized in the largest lead and copper reduction plant on the coast. The great Guggenheim smelter at Tacoma reduces and turns out annually lead, copper, gold and silver worth about $10,000,000. Along her wharves are immense elevators, grain warehouses and flouring mills. Tacoma yearly ships out more grain than any other city on Puget sound. In and around the city are large saw and shingle mills, which last year cut 527,604,000 feet of lumber and 434,000,000 Shingles. Her factories and shops have $24,000,000 invested and employ 11,800 wage-earners, and her large flour mills ship their products to all parts of the world. Her packing-house products amounted to $5,000,000 in 1908. The largest car shops west of the Mississippi are located here. Her downtown streets are lined by large business blocks; she has 185 miles of street and suburban railway, and over 75 miles of paved streets. [Page 76] There are four daily newspapers, 8 banks, 1,120 acres in parks, and many beautiful and expensive public buildings. The city hall cost $200,000; the court house, $500,000; her high school building, the most beautiful on the coast, cost a half million dollars, and the United States government is completing a $500,000 federal building. PUYALLUP is one of Pierce county's prosperous towns, having about 7,000 population, in the wealthy Puyallup valley. This is the center or a great fruit-growing district, in which the farmers have combined and market their crops through an association, sending their berries in patent refrigerator cars into far-away markets. It is also quite a large manufacturing center, with a payroll of $45,000 per month. BUCKLEY, with a population of 1,500, is the center of large sawmilling, farming and mining industries. ORTING is a town with 800 people, chiefly engaged in gardening and farming. The State Soldiers' Home is located near, and adds considerable trade to the town. SUMNER has a population of 1,000, is located in the Puyallup valley, and its people form a part of the farmers' association, engaged in fruit-growing, dairying and gardening. STEILACOOM is one of the most beautiful little summer resort towns on Puget sound and is connected with Tacoma by two electric lines. SYLVAN, GIG HARBOR, ROSEDALE, ELGIN, LONG BRANCH, BLANCHARD, and BEE are very prosperous villages of Pierce county, and are located on the shores of Puget sound. SPANAWAY, EATONVILLE, ALDERTON, ELBE, MERIDIAN, KAPOWSIN, and MCMILLAN are villages in the interior, on the railroads. WILKESON, SOUTH PRARIE, CARBONADO, FAIRFAX, PITTSBURG, and MELMONT are coal-mining towns of importance. SAN JUAN COUNTY. San Juan county is a group of islands lying between the waters of the Straits of Fuca and the Gulf of Georgia, off the southeast shore of Vancouver island. It has about 200 square miles of territory and about 4,500 people. There are three large islands and several smaller ones. The islands are covered with soil and timber not different from the main land adjoining. Heavy timber in the forests, fine clay loams in the bottom lands, shot clay on the hillsides, big ledges of lime rock and other minerals and great shoals of fish in the waters are the foundations for prosperity for the citizens of the county. RESOURCES. The soils of the islands yield generously to good tillage, and wheat, oats, barley, potatoes and hay yield large crops. Dairying is profitable. Poultry-raising and fruit-growing, are especially attractive. Sheep and [Page 77] cattle find splendid pasture. Great quantities of salmon and other fish are taken in the waters, and game-deer and wild fowl--are abundant. [Illustration: Plate No. 67.--Two Views of the Lime Works at Roche Harbor, San Juan County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 68.--A Typical Farm Scene in Skagit County.] TRANSPORTATION. There is no transportation save by water, but the islands are in the way of traffic from so many different directions that all parts are well served by steamboats. ISLANDS AND TOWNS. SAN JUAN ISLAND is the largest of the group, and its chief industries are farming, raising stock, salmon-fishing, and manufacturing lime. FRIDAY HARBOR, on this island, is the county seat and largest town, with about 500 people. A telephone system is in operation throughout the island. ROCHE HARBOR is the home of great lime kilns. ORCAS ISLAND is the leading fruit-growing district of the county. EAST SOUND, near the center of the island, at the foot of Mount Constitution, is a picturesque and charming fruit-growing section and summer resort. ORCAS is an important center of the fruit and sheep raising industries. LOPEZ ISLAND is a beautiful stretch of fertile agricultural land, much of it under tillage, and is the home of a prosperous community of farmers and stock-growers. LOPEZ is the chief commercial center, with a cannery and creamery. SKAGIT COUNTY. Skagit county is the next county to the northwest corner of the state, stretching from Rosario straits to the peaks of the Cascades--about 100 miles east and west and 24 miles north and south. Its area is 1,800 square miles, with a population of about 35,000. It is a county of great diversities in climate, topography and resources. The Skagit river and its branches drain nearly the entire county from the mountains to the saltwater. Its deltas are great flat fields of wonderful fertility. Its valleys also, where cleared of forests, are very rich alluvial lands. Its upper lands carry a great burden of forests and are full of hidden treasures. RESOURCES. The resources of the county are its forests and minerals, its agricultural products, and fishes. Its great cereal crop is of oats; hops, fruits, hay and barley follow in the order named in importance, while the products of the dairy are rapidly multiplying. Its minerals include the precious metals, iron, lead, coal, marble, limestone, granite, sandstone, etc. [Page 78] TRANSPORTATION. Aside from its water transportation, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railways cross its westerly end and send a branch line through the valley of the Skagit river well up towards the mountains and to the salt water at Anacortes. And other roads are building, while there are 168 miles of modern graveled wagon roads. The facilities for getting about are excellent. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. MT. VERNON is the county seat, with about 4,000 people. It is on the Great Northern railway, on the navigable Skagit river, and is a city of much commercial importance to the agricultural district around it. The soil in the vicinity is renowned for its great fertility and astonishing crops of oats, hay and grass. Creameries and a milk-condensing plant are supported profitably to all concerned. ANACORTES is the chief town of the county, on the salt water. It has about 6,000 people, and is a center of lumbering and fishing. Factories for drying, salting, and canning salmon, halibut, and cod are increasing industries. There is also a fertilizing plant and a plant producing charcoal and the by-products of combustion, wood alcohol, turpentine, etc. SEDRO-WOOLLEY, on both the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways, has a population of 4,000, engaged in lumber industries, fruit, and vegetables, canning, dairying and gardening. It has a monthly payroll of $125,000. BURLINGTON, on the Great Northern railway, has 1,800 people, and factories for making various wood products, concrete blocks, lumber, shingles and condensed milk. LA CONNER is a great oat and hay shipping point. It is at the mouth of the Skagit river and on tide water, and has 800 people. HAMILTON, at the head of navigation on the Skagit river, is a mining and lumbering town of 300 people. BAY VIEW, SAMMISH, MINKLER, PRAIRIE, FIR, and BIRDSVIEW are other shipping points. BAKER, on a branch of the Great Northern railway, has 400 people, and is a center of cement factories. [Page 79] SKAMANIA COUNTY. Skamania county, in the south central part of the state, has its southern boundary on the Columbia river, with Lewis county to the north. It is chiefly within the forest reserve, and includes Mount St. Helens on the west and Mount Adams on its eastern border. Altogether it has an area of 1,636 square miles, chiefly mountainous, and about 3,000 people. The north fork of the Lewis river drains the most of the mountainous region, while a lot of small streams drain the southern part, emptying into the Columbia river. The climate is a mean between that of eastern and western Washington, and is very mild and salubrious. The soil of the valleys in the region of the Columbia river is very fertile. RESOURCES. The chief resource of the county is in its timber and lumber, yet its mineral and agricultural wealth is becoming better known and appreciated yearly. The fruit raised in its valleys is of excellent flavor, early in season, and the soil is generous in its yield. Splendid pasturage in the foothills encourages stock-raising, and fishing in the Columbia river is profitably followed by some of the citizens. TRANSPORTATION. Boats on the Columbia river and a railroad on each side of it are the means of transportation, and ample for the residents of the county in its southern portion. The coming of the North Bank railroad has given a decided stimulus to the growth of the county. DEVELOPMENT. Skamania county has developed slowly and the bulk of its natural wealth is still practically untouched. Its minerals, well known to be valuable, are attracting the attention of prospectors, while the forests, fisheries and farming lands will furnish a competence to hundreds of additional familles. The scenery, combined with the fishing and hunting afforded, are additional attractions that will prove alluring to many newcomers. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. STEVENSON, a small town on the Columbia river and railroad, is the county seat and has a population of about 450. Tributary to Stevenson is considerable improved land, and the people are engaged in stock-raising, fruit-growing and farming. BUTLER is a town of about 300 people on the railroad and river. CARSON, CAPE HORN, MT. PLEASANT and BEAR PRAIRIE are smaller villages, destined to become centers of commercial distribution. [Page 80] SNOHOMISH COUNTY. Snohomish county extends 36 miles in width from the Sound to the peaks of the Cascade mountains, adjoining King county on the north. It has an area of some 2,500 square miles of territory, a population of about 63,000 people, and a great storehouse of wealth in its natural resources. It is one of the largest and richest counties in the state, with a mild and healthful climate, magnificent scenery, great diversity of landscape, innumerable water falls and plenty of game. RESOURCES. The forests of Snohomish are very extensive and but little depleted. Fir, cedar, hemlock and spruce are its chief trees. Nearly one-half of the area of the county is heavily mineralized with veins of gold, silver, copper, lead, nickel, iron, and other ores. There are also vast ledges of marble, granite and other building stones. In diversified agricultural possibilities, few counties can excel Snohomish. Its general soils in its valleys are alluvial, and produce astonishing crops; about the deltas of its rivers, the riches of the salt water and the mountains have combined to make a soil that will endure for ages and annually astonish the husbandman with its generosity. Upon its uplands, its clay and decaying herbage have combined for ages to create a soil wonderfully adapted to produce grass and fruits, and the industrious are luxuriating in nature's prodigality. Rainfall is abundant, but not excessive, and crops of the cereals and fruits are never failures. TRANSPORTATION. This county is splendidly provided with transportation facilities; many steamboats ply its salt waters and part way up the three great rivers that flow into the Sound. Two transcontinental railroads cut the western part of the county in two. The trunk line of the Great Northern follows the valley of one river from the southeast to the coast, while two branch lines run up the other two great valleys, past the center of the state, toward the mountains, while a dozen spurs and short logging and coal roads act as feeders to the main lines, thus giving all the towns of the county access to all the Sound markets, and those of the east and the ports of the Pacific ocean. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. EVERETT, situated upon a fine harbor on the shores of Puget Sound near the mouth of the Snohomish river, is the county seat and metropolis of the county. It has a population of 35,000, and is fast developing into a commercial and manufacturing center of importance. The largest steamers afloat can find wharfage at her docks and safe anchorage in her waters. It has upwards of 3,000 men employed in its factories and mills, with a monthly payroll aggregating $230,000. [Illustration: Plate No. 69.--Codfish and Salmon Packing Plants at Anacortes, Skagit County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 70.--Plant for the Manufacture of Portland Cement, Located in Skagit County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 71.--Snohomish County Views.] [Illustration: Plate No. 72.--Snohomish County Industrial Scenes.] [Illustration: Plate No. 73.--Street Scene in Stanwood, Snohomish County. A Pony Farm at Everett, Snohomish County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 74.--City and Town Views, Snohomish County.] [Page 81] They are engaged in the manufacture of lumber, shingles, sash and doors; in railroad shops, pulp and paper mills, and smelters; in running tug boats, driving piles, making iron castings, and tanning hides; packing meats and fish; making turpentine, charcoal, flour, butter, and many other commodities. Its banks have $4,000,000 on deposit. Its paper mills produce 26 tons of paper daily. Its smelter is a constant producer of the precious metals and their by-products. The city is substantially built, having all the conveniences of a modern city, with wide streets and wide sidewalks; has both gas and electricity for lights, and a good water system. Some of its streets are paved with preserved wooden blocks and some with asphalt. Everett is a sub-port of entry of the Puget sound country. The United States has spent half a million dollars improving the mouth of the Snohomish river for a fresh-water harbor. SNOHOMISH is a city of 4,000 people, on the Snohomish river, which is navigable, and is connected with Everett by a street car line. It is also on the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways, and is the distributing center for a large agricultural district. It has a number of shingle and sawmills, and is headquarters for a good deal of the mining industry of the county. STANWOOD is a town of about 800 people, on the Sound and railway, in the northwestern part of the county. It is a center of farming interests and lumber industries. ARLINGTON is a mining and lumbering town on the Northern Pacific railway, well up toward the mountains. It has a population of 2,000 and is growing. MONROE is a town of 2,400 people, on the line of the Great Northern railway, in the center of a large farming and milling industry. EDMONDS, a town of 2,000 people, is on the Sound and Great Northern railway, near the King county line; chiefly engaged in sawing lumber and making shingles. SULTAN, GRANITE FALLS, GOLD BAR, DARRINGTON, and MONTE CRISTO are all centers of mining and other industries. MARYSVILLE, MUKILTEO, SILVANA, GETCHELL, and PILCHUCK are centers of lumbering and farming. SPOKANE COUNTY Spokane county lies in the extreme eastern section of the state. The area of the county is 1,680 square miles. TRANSPORTATION. The transportation facilities are the best of the Inland Pacific Northwest. Three transcontinental railroads--the Northern Pacific, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, and Great Northern--traverse the County from east to west; a fourth transcontinental line, the Oregon Railway & Navigation company, enters from the southwest, and a fifth transcontinental road, the Spokane International (C. P. R.), enters [Page 82] the county from the northeast and terminates at Spokane. The Spokane Falls & Northern extends north into British Columbia and to Republic and Oroville, Wash. Electric trolley lines connect Spokane with the outlying towns in every direction. The total railway mileage in the county is approximately 429 miles. TOPOGRAPHY AND INDUSTRIES. The northern portion of the county is somewhat mountainous, and is covered with a fine growth of pine and tamarack timber; much of this section is suitable for agriculture, while all is adapted to grazing. The central part of the county is rolling and is traversed by the Spokane river; the central section to the west of the city of Spokane is fine agricultural land, while to the east of Spokane is the Spokane valley, which is rapidly being brought into a high state of cultivation by means of irrigation. There are about 40,000 acres in this valley capable of irrigation; 3,000 acres are now irrigated and under cultivation. The southern portion of the county is rolling, and comprises some of the finest agricultural land in the state. Large areas of this section are utilized for wheat-raising, while here are grown the finest sugar beets in the world. Lumbering is a considerable industry, while stock-raising and dairying are also extensively engaged in. Over 1,000,000 bushels of wheat are grown annually. The flour mills of the county have a combined capacity of 3,600 barrels daily. In fruit-growing Spokane is one of the leading counties of the state. The value of the fruit produced in the county amounts to nearly $3,000,000 annually. The following table shows the distribution of the five important fruits. _Trees planted_ 1908-- _Total._ [*]Apples, 253,630 713,567 Pears, 15,470 39,232 Peaches, 59,323 94,769 Cherries, 56,405 106,909 Plums and Prunes, 11,815 29,128 Miscellaneous 2,910 10,000 ------- --------- 399,553 Total planted 1,003,615 [Footnote *: Is 25 percent. of the total number of apple trees planted in the state in 1908.] SCHOOLS. There are 165 school districts in the county and eighteen towns where graded schools are maintained. The total valuation of assessed property with improvements (1908) is $77,120,360; personal property, $10,527,030. [Illustration: Plate No. 75.--(1) Spokane Club Building, Spokane. (2)Riverside Avenue, Looking East from Post Street, Spokane.] [Illustration: Plate No. 76.--Spokane River and Bridge at Spokane, Showing Fill for New Concrete Structure to Cost $500,000.] PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. SPOKANE, situated on the Spokane river, is the county seat of Spokane county, and is the metropolis of eastern Washington, having a [Page 83] population estimated at 120,000. Spokane is the center of a great wheat-raising section and is the principal mining and commercial center between the Cascades and the Rocky mountains. A conservative estimate of the total value of manufactured products for 1908 is $17,000,000. There are over 12,000 wage-earners, receiving over $10,000,000 annually. The principal industrial establishments are lumber mills, flour mills, machine shops, agricultural machinery, brick plants, iron works, foundries, pottery, cereal food, furniture, etc. The industrial prosperity of the city is due largely to the mines in the vicinity, the great agricultural resources of the surrounding country, and to the extensive water power which offers special inducements to manufacturers. The Spokane river here has a total fall of 132 feet, which furnishes a minimum of 33,000 horse-power, of which 15,000 horse-power is developed. There are four national banks, with a combined capital of $3,425,000. The city owns its own water works, from which an annual revenue of more than $325,000 is derived. The educational facilities are excellent. There are twenty-three public school buildings, constructed of brick and stone, and costing $1,450,000. There are three daily newspapers, having a combined circulation of 45,000. Here is located the U. S. circuit court; the headquarters of the U. S. district court, eastern division; U. S. military post (Fort Wright); the government headquarters of the postal inspector service, known as the Spokane division, which includes the states of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and the territory of Alaska, and a U. S. land office. Postoffice receipts for 1908 amounted to $360,504. CHENEY, 10 miles southwest of Spokane, is a town of 1,500 people. Here is located one of the state normal schools, having about 400 students. MEDICAL LAKE is an important town, having the Eastern Washington Hospital for the Insane near-by, It is a noted health resort. ROCKFORD is an important agricultural town of 1,200 people. HILLYARD is an important place of 1,500 people, having the car shops of the Great Northern railway as its chief business. STEVENS COUNTY Stevens county, in the extreme northeastern corner of the state, has an area of 4,500 square miles and a population of about 24,000. It is a county of great and diverse resources, is splendidly watered with large rivers, the Columbia bounding it on the west, and the Spokane on part of its southern line. Three ranges of low mountains extend across the county nearly north and south. Between these the Colville river and the Pend d'Oreille flow generally northerly through grand and beautiful valleys. [Page 84] RESOURCES AND PRODUCTIONS. Agriculture in all its branches, lumbering and kindred pursuits, and the mining of precious metals and building stones make up its chief sources of wealth. AGRICULTURE. The farms in the Colville valley are noted for their heavy hay crops, producing abundantly all the cereals, including corn, the clovers, timothy and alfalfa. Dairying and stock-raising are important industries. To these the climate and soils are well adapted. Some lands have been irrigated with great benefit, but the bulk of the farming is successful without irrigation. Fruit-raising is receiving deep interest of late, and the county bids fair to compete for honors with the very best localities in the state for the hardier fruits. Lumbering and saw-milling engage the attention of a large number of the people, the product of the mills finding a ready market in the farming region, large cities and mining camps. Mining of the precious metals is a growing and an attractive industry. The ores include gold, silver, lead, copper, tungsten and iron, while quarries of limestone, marble, onyx, fire-clay, etc., abound. TRANSPORTATION. In addition to the navigable waters of the Columbia and Pend d'Oreille rivers, which traverse the outskirts of the county, the Great Northern railway through the Colville valley from the southern to the northern boundary, reaches most of the agricultural and mining centers and renders good service. The western part of the county, comparatively undeveloped, deserves much more attention. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. COLVILLE is both the county seat and principal town in the county, having a population of 1,600 people, and is a growing town, a distributing center on the railroad, surrounded by prosperous farming communities. NORTHPORT is the center of much mining activity and has a large smelter for the reduction of ores of the precious metals. It has a population of 1,200. CHEWELAH is a center of agriculture, mining and lumbering industries in the center of the county, having about 1,000 people. NEWPORT, in the southeastern part of the county, is an important agricultural distributing center. A dozen other smaller towns offer great opportunities to the homeseeker. [Illustration: Plate No. 77.--Raising Potatoes in Young Orchard, Spokane County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 78.--Basalt Columns, Spokane River at Spokane.] [Illustration: Plate No. 79.--STEVENS COUNTY VIEWS. "Where the Elephant Drinks," a Remarkable Crag on the Bank of the Pend d'Oreille River. A Typical Fruit Ranch. Flume Creek Falls.] [Illustration: Plate No. 80.--Stevens County Timber. Cedar Forest. White Pine Forest. Yellow Pine Forest.] [Page 85] THURSTON COUNTY Thurston county is known as having the state capital, Olympia, within its borders, and as including the extreme southern reaches of Puget sound. It is a county of wooded hills and valleys with a few open prairies well watered by mountain streams, chief of which is the Nisqually, which forms its dividing line from Pierce county, and the Des Chutes river, which makes a splendid waterfall of some 85 feet, a few miles south of Olympia. It has an area of about 700 square miles, 100 miles of salt-water shore, a population of about 20,000, and a delightful climate and magnificent scenery of lofty mountains; great expanse of inland salt water, and green-clad islands and fields in every direction. RESOURCES. The county is one of the oldest settled portions of the state, and has a great variety of natural resources, among which are its timber areas, its agricultural fields, its coal mines, its fisheries, including clam and oyster beds, gray sandstone quarries, and a great variety of clays. INDUSTRIES. The sawmills of the county are still a very important industry and shiploads of lumber are sent out from its wharves. All the cereals and grasses yield abundant crops; root crops are extensive; fruit of great variety and fine flavor is very prominent. Dairying is flourishing, the county having more dairies than any other in the state. Coal mining is in its infancy, but has progressed far enough to demonstrate the existence of vast areas of lignite coal, having some six veins and having a combined thickness of 61 feet of coal. About 50,000 sacks of oysters are annually marketed. TRANSPORTATION. The Northern Pacific railway connects Olympia with all the important Sound ports and the east, and all the transcontinental roads coming to the Sound from the south will pass through the county. Together with its salt-water deep harbors, these give the county splendid competition and variety of commercial facilities. PRINCIPAL CITIES. OLYMPIA, the chief town of the county, at once the county seat, state capital and county metropolis, is situated on one of the deep-water inlets of Puget sound. Its population is about 12,000. While it has a beautiful sandstone structure, now used for capitol purposes, the state is about to erect a new capitol building, to cost $1,000,000. The foundation is already built. Olympia has one of the U. S. land offices and the U. S. surveyor-general's office. It is lighted and furnished with power for street-car and other purposes from the power of Tumwater falls. The city is a beautiful one of fine homes, shaded streets and parks, surrounded by a very prosperous agricultural community, [Page 86] producing great quantities of fruit, dairy and poultry products. Several other smaller towns on the railroads are local centers of commercial activity. WAHKIAKUM COUNTY Wahkiakum is a small county, having only 275 square miles of territory, located on the Columbia river in the southwestern corner of the state, near the ocean. Its population is about 4,000. The county is heavily timbered and well watered. In many parts of the county the soil is exceptionally fertile. The climate is mild, but somewhat humid. In the northern part are some low mountains, from which the drainage is south through the county to the Columbia river. RESOURCES. The resources of the county consist in its timber, its fertile soil, and the fish in the river and ocean. INDUSTRIES. Logging, saw-milling, and industries growing out of these; agriculture, dairying, and fishing are the chief occupation of its people. There are several logging concerns in the county and large saw-mills. Fish canneries dot its river shores; several creameries and dairies are manufacturing butter, while its farms produce hay, potatoes, fruits, cattle, hogs, poultry, eggs, and other products, chiefly for the Portland market. Many of its citizens are fishermen and some make considerable sums trapping fur animals in the winters. TRANSPORTATION. The Columbia river is the great highway of the county; no railroads are within its borders or near. Owing to the small area of the county, this condition is no great drawback, as all the people have ready access to the river wharves. PRINCIPAL TOWNS. CATHLAMET, on the Columbia, is the county seat, with about 500 people, and is the chief distributing center of the county. ROSBURG, DEEP RIVER, BROOKFIELD, ALTOONA, and SKAMOKAWA are centers of industry. This county offers exceptional opportunities for the frontiersman. WALLA WALLA COUNTY Walla Walla is the county of many waters. It is the most western of the southeastern counties of the state, and is bounded north and west by the Snake and Columbia rivers. It has 1,296 square miles and a population of about 30,000. The elevation varies from 350 feet at the Columbia river to 2,500 feet along its eastern border. It is a succession of plains and rolling hills, covered with bunch-grass, with some trees along the streams. Its soil varies from quite sandy volcanic ash in the low lands near the Columbia to a [Page 87] heavier clay loam in the eastern parts. In common with much of eastern Washington, these lands increase in fertility with successive cultivations. The climate is mild, healthful and vigorous. [Illustration: Plate No. 81.--Farm Scene Near Colville, Stevens County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 82.--View of Calispell Valley and Pend d'Oreille River, Stevens County.] RESOURCES. Walla Walla county is essentially agricultural. Its chief resource is its soil fertility. This is such that few farmers can be found who have not bank accounts. PRODUCTS. The annual production of wheat in Walla Walla county is about 5,000,000 bushels. Barley is also a profitable crop. Oats and some corn are also raised. Large crops of alfalfa hay are annually marketed, chiefly from irrigated lands. Fruit of all kinds is abundant. There are 2,500 acres devoted to orchards. Market gardening is an important and growing industry. TRANSPORTATION. There are 310 miles of railroads in this county, both the Northern Pacific and Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company railroads competing for the traffic. In addition to the railroads, steamboats are plying the rivers around the edge of the county, giving additional facilities for transportation. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. WALLA WALLA, the county seat, has a population of about 22,000 and is the commercial center for the southeastern part of the state. Its streets are paved. The city owns its own system of water, at a cost of $600,000. It is lighted with electricity and gas, has large banks and business houses, U. S. land office, U. S. courts, U. S. cavalry post, an Odd Fellows' home, and a Home for Widows and Orphans. There are manufacturing industries employing 400 men, turning out $2,000,000 of productions annually. An electric system of street cars traverses the streets and is projected into several other near-by towns. WAITSBURG is an important agricultural town of about 1,600 people, in the western part of the county, having both railroad systems, and ships great quantities of grain. It has large flouring mills, warehouses, fine schools and churches, and is a prosperous, thriving town. A large number of shipping points on both systems of railroads are growing commercial centers. WHATCOM COUNTY Whatcom county lies on the boundary of British Columbia, stretching from the Straits of Georgia to the peaks of the Cascade mountains--24 miles wide and 100 miles long, The eastern half or more of the county is included in the national forest reserve, with Mount Baker, 10,827 feet high, in the center of the county. It is one of the important counties on tide water, and has an area of 2,226 square miles and a population of about 70,000. [Page 88] The climate is not different from the general Puget sound climate being mild and healthful. There are no severe storms, no sultry heat and no severe cold. RESOURCES. It is estimated that Whatcom county has three billion feet of standing timber. This is its greatest source of wealth. The western half of the county, outside of the lumbering, etc., is blessed with a wealth of soil responding to the farmer's labor generously. The eastern half of the county is essentially a mountainous, forest-covered mining region, and has in store many veins of nearly all the metals. Game of great variety of animals and fowls and fish are abundant. INDUSTRIES. The people of Whatcom county are engaged in lumbering and running saw-mills, one of the largest of the state being in this county; manufacturing of various kinds from the raw products in the county, including shingle mills and shingle machinery factory, salmon canneries, planing mills, barrel factories, Portland cement factory, and many others. Of no small importance is farming, fruit-growing and dairying. Prospecting and mining engage the attention and labor of a large number of citizens. TRANSPORTATION. Aside from having a long salt-water coast, open to traffic from the ocean, with splendid harbors, the county is traversed in all its agricultural half by a network of railroads, by the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, B. B. and B. C. railroads. These furnish exceptional means of traffic to all industries excepting the mining. The county has also an admirable system of wagon roads, some planked, some graveled and some graded and drained, covering about 700 miles. [Illustration: Plate No. 83.--Products of Thurston County Waters.] [Illustration: Plate No. 84.--Thurston County Stick. 14,000 Feet. Sandstone Quarry, Tenino, Thurston County. Logging with Oxen. Early Days in Thurston County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 84.--Five Combined Harvesters at Work on a Walla Walla County Wheat Farm.] [Illustration: Plate No. 86.--Ploughing the Ground for Wheat-Growing, Walla Walla County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 87.--Bird's-Eye View of a Portion of Bellingham, Whatcom County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 88.--Typical Farm Scenes in Whatcom County.] PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. BELLINGHAM, on a salt-water bay of the same name, is the county seat, and commercial metropolis not only for this county but much other territory. It has a population of about 40,000 people. Into it all the railroads center, while the harbor is one of the best in Washington. It is largely a manufacturing town, having plants for the production of sash, doors, columns, tin cans, boilers, engines, flour and feed, canned fish, condensed milk, and many others. It is a substantial, live business community of wide-awake people, and growing rapidly. It has a gravity water system, electric lights, and gas plant. BLAINE is a city of about 3,000 inhabitants, situated close to the Canadian line and on the Great Northern railway. Timber and lumber manufactures are the chief sources of its prosperity. Fishing and the canning of salmon are also important industries. The railroad [Page 89] company has recently expended considerable sums in improving its facilities. Blaine is a growing community. SUMAS, on the Canadian border, is a lumbering town of 1,100 people. LYNDEN is an agricultural center of 1,200 citizens. FERNDALE is a lumber center of 1,000 people. Besides, there are a dozen smaller business centers in the county, growing and prosperous. WHITMAN COUNTY Whitman county is one of the chief agricultural counties of the state, lying immediately south of Spokane county and on the Idaho state line, having the Snake river for its southern boundary. The county is a plateau of rolling prairie lands, a large portion of which is farmed, watered by a number of streams, which are utilized for irrigation purposes in some of the bottom lands--although the rainfall is sufficient to mature crops, and no irrigation is had on the great bulk of the farms. The area is about 2,000 square miles. The population is about 40,000. The soil is a strong mixture of volcanic ash and clay of great fertility and permanence. Twenty years of wheat-growing still leaves the soil able to produce from 25 to 50 bushels per acre. RESOURCES. All the resources of the county originate in this splendid soil. For growing all the cereals and fruits and vegetables it has no superior. The county is well settled, and probably no county can excel Whitman county in the per capita wealth of its farmers. The products of the county are varied, and include wheat, oats, barley and hay, all giving splendid yields--wheat from 30 to 50 bushels, oats 60 to 100 bushels, barley from 50 to 80 bushels, and hay from 4 to 6 tons per acre. Potatoes, sugar beets and other vegetables produce fine crops. The hardier fruits, such as apples, pears, plums and cherries, are successfully raised in all parts of the county, while on the bottom lands, along the Snake river, peaches, melons, etc., are produced in abundance. Seventy-five carloads of fruit go out annually from one orchard. Wheat gives up five and one-half million bushels to the farmers each year. Oats one and three-fourths million and barley about one-half million bushels. Whitman county has more banks than any county in eastern Washington besides Spokane. TRANSPORTATION. Whitman county is as well, or better, provided with railroads than any agricultural county in the state. The Northern Pacific, O. R. & N., Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul and the S. & I. railroads are all interlaced about its grain-fields. These all connect with Spokane, and give access to all eastern and western markets. [Page 90] PRINCIPAL TOWNS. COLFAX, the county seat, situated near the center of the county, on the railroads and Palouse river, is the largest town in the county, with about 3,600 population. The town owns its own water system, has electric lights, fine court-house, banks, mills, warehouses, etc. PULLMAN is a town of 3,000 people, near which is located the Washington State College, a large educational institution supported by the state, having about 1,000 students. It is an important grain-shipping point. It has a public water system, electric lights, and is a thriving and growing commercial center. PALOUSE is a railroad center of 2,500 people, a large shipping point for grain, live stock, fruits and pottery. OAKESDALE is a town of 1,500 people, having three railroads, and is an important shipping point. TEKOA has a population of about 1,400, is a railroad center, and is a large shipper of fruits and grain. GARFIELD has a population of 1,000, and ships much grain and other produce. ROSALIA has 1,000 population, and is an important grain center. This county has a dozen other shipping points where from 300 to 700 people are supported by the business originating on the tributary farms. YAKIMA COUNTY Yakima county is one of the large and important counties in the state, having the Yakima Indian reservation included within its boundaries. Its area is 3,222 square miles and it has a population of about 38,000. It is watered by the Yakima river and its tributaries, and through its valleys the railroads from the east find their easiest grade toward the Cascade passes. It is a county of level valleys and plateaus, having a soil made up chiefly of volcanic ash and disintegrated basaltic rocks, of great depth, which yields fabulously in cereal and grass crops, fruits and vegetables with the magic touch of irrigation. Artificial watering is 30 years old in this valley, and yet only a very small area was thus treated until the matter was taken up by the national government. But now vast areas are being provided with water, and the consequent growth and development of the county is wonderful. A series of lakes in the mountains are being utilized as reservoirs, and from these lakes the waters are being distributed in many directions in the large irrigating canals. When the projects now under way are completed, more than 200,000 acres will be under ditches. RESOURCES. Yakima's wealth consists in the combination of its soil and water and climate. The county, lying east of the Cascade mountains, in [Page 91] large part at a low elevation, receives somewhat severe heat in the summer, which gives the opportunity successfully to ripen the less hardy fruits--peaches, apricots, grapes, etc. The county has half a million bearing trees and two and one-half million young trees growing in its orchards. INDUSTRIES. Naturally the industries of the county consist in exploiting its natural resources, and so we find Yakima citizens busy in raising fruits, hay, grain, and garden vegetables, to supply the big cities of the Sound. Its last year's contribution will probably exceed ten million dollars in value. Of the items which compose this large sum, fruit is probably chief in importance. Alfalfa and grain-hay is an important item, as is also the crop of melons and potatoes. The combined fields of alfalfa and orchards make ideal bee pasturage, and Yakima honey is a constant factor of barter in the Sound cities. The upland farms produce quantities of all grains--wheat, oats, and barley--and some field corn is successfully raised in the warmer parts. Sheep, cattle and horses are also exported. Hops are a large crop. PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. NORTH YAKIMA is at once the county seat and chief metropolis of the entire Yakima valley, having a population of about 12,000. It is situated on the Northern Pacific railway and Yakima river, and is the distributing center for both merchandise and farm products for a large surrounding territory. The State Fair, supported by the state, holds annual exhibits here. It has extensive fruit canneries, flour mills, lumber mills, other woodworking factories, large warehouses, paved streets, big business blocks, fine churches, schools, banks, newspapers, etc. SUNNYSIDE, a town built up among the irrigated farms, has a population of 1,500. Here are a cannery, pulp mill, creameries, etc. TOPPENISH and MABTON are commercial centers of importance of about 700 inhabitants each, and growing. [Page 92] STATISTICAL APPENDIX. STATISTICS OF THE INCORPORATED CITIES AND TOWNS OF WASHINGTON. ======================================================================= NAME. | County. | Mayor. | Clerk. -------------|-------------|------------------|------------------------ Aberdeen | Chehalis | E. B. Benn | P. F. Clarke Almira | Lincoln | J. C. Johnson | Peter Wallerich Anacortes | Skagit | W. V. Wells | M. C. Baker Arlington | Snohomish | Peter Larson | Homer L. Huddle ASOTIN | Asotin | J. B. Jones | J. P. Fulton Auburn | King | L. C. Smith | Geo. C. Meade BELLINGHAM | Whatcom | J. P. De Mattos | F. B. Graves Blaine | Whatcom | T. J. Quirt | J. W. G. Merritt Bremerton | Kitsap | L. E. Mallette | Paul Mehner Buckley | Pierce | D. S. Morris | W. B. Osbourn Burlington | Skagit | P. M. Moody | I. A. Marchant Camas | Clarke | John Cowan | F. B. Barnes Cashmere | Chelan | C. A. Huston | A. J. Amos Castle Rock | Cowlitz | T. W. Robin | G. F. McClane CATHLAMET | Wahkiakum | J. T. Nassa | T. M. Nassa Centralia | Lewis | J. P. Guerrier | W. H. Hodge Charleston | Kitsap | N. A. Palmer | M. M. Bausman CHEHALIS | Lewis | Wm. West | W. A. Westover Chelan | Chelan | C. C. Jackson | W. M. Emerson Cheney | Spokane | L. Walter | J. W. Minnick Chewelah | Stevens | W. H. Brownlow | T. L. Montgomery Clarkston | Asotin | D. B. Parks | E. A. Bass Cle Elum | Kittitas | L. R. Thomas | S. E. Willis COLFAX | Whitman | Wm. Lippitt | H. Bramwell Colton | Whitman | W. H Renfro | L. F. Gibbs COLVILLE | Stevens | L. B Harvey | A. B. Sansburn CONCONNULLY | Okanogan | C. H. Lovejoy | Wm. Baines Cosmopolis | Chehalis | L. B. Hogan | W. S. McLaughlin Coulee City | Grant | F. W. McCann | A. Kirkpatrick Creston | Lincoln | F. A. Duncan | D. F. Peffley Cunningham | Adams | F. W. Parker | A. J. Haile DAVENPORT | Lincoln | W. C. Graham | Lee Odgers DAYTON | Columbia | H. C. Benbow | R. O. Dyer Deer Park | Spokane | W. D. Phillips | R. G. Cole Edmonds | Snohomish | Jas Brady | G. M. Leyda Elberton | Whitman | R. A. Cox | J. W. Berkstresser ELLENSBURG | Kittitas | W. J. Peed | J. J. Poyser Elma | Chehalis | C. E. Gouty | E. S. Avey Endicott | Whitman | C. L. Wakefield | M. A. Sherman, Jr. EPHRATA | Grant | Dr. Chaffee | Lee Tolliver EVERETT | Snohomish | Newton Jones | C. C. Gilman Fairfield | Spokane | C. A. Loy | M. Walser Farmington | Whitman | E. E. Paddock | C. H. Bass Ferndale | Whatcom | J. B. Wilson | C. Kelley Garfield | Whitman | H. S. McClure | J. L. Rogers Georgetown | King | John Mueller | John Beek GOLDENDALE | Klickitat | Allen Bonebrake | J. R. Putman Granite Falls| Snohomish | C. E. Willoughby | C. T. Smith Hamilton | Skagit | H. I. Bratlie | S. H. Sprinkle Harrington | Lincoln | A. G. Mitchum | W. W. Gwinn Hartline | Grant | E. A. Whitney | T. E. Jenkins Hatton | Adams | J. M. Batten | W. C. Sallee Hillyard | Spokane | M. H. Gordon | J. L. Cramer Hoquiam | Chehalis | Dr. T. C. Frary | Z. T. Wllson Ilwaco | Pacific | W. P. Rowe | J. A. Howerton Index | Snohomish | H. L. Bartlett | H. F. Wilcox Kahlotus | Franklin | E. R. Doughty | E. L. Chittenden KALAMA | Cowlitz | A. L. Watson | E. N. Howe Kelso | Cowlitz | M. J. Lord | Max Whittlesey Kennewick | Benton | L. E. Johnson | G. N. Calhoun Kent | King | M. M. Morrill | L. E. Price Kettle Falls | Stevens | H. L. Childs | A. R. Squire Kirkland | King | R. H. Collins | J. S. Courtright LaConner | Skagit | J. F. Dwelley | J. S. Church Lakeside | Chelan | Jos. Darnell | S. B. Russell Latah | Spokane | W. H. Taylor | Chas. White Leavenworth | Chelan | Lewis J. Nelson | G. A. Hamilton Lind | Adams | J. T. Dirstine | Day Imus Little Falls | Lewis | E. C. Brown | G. E. Grow Lynden | Whatcom | Walter Elder | F. W. Bixby Mabton | Yakima | T. W. Howell | W. H. Ashton Marysville | Snohomish | W. H. Roberts | B. D. Curtiss Medical Lake | Spokane | M. J. Grady | R. R. McCorkell Milton | Pierce | C. H. Weekes | W. J. Keller Monroe | Snohomish | J. H. Campbell | Arthur Root MONTESANO | Chehalis | Geo. W. Winemire | R. H. Fleet MT. VERNON | Skagit | Wm. Dale | J. S. Bowen Newport | Stevens | E. S. Appel | Ed Beitton NORTH YAKIMA | Yakima | P. M. Armbruster | J. G. Brooker ========================================================= | Sec'y Commercial | Pop. U. S. | Est. Pop. NAME. | Organization. | Cens. 1900 | 1909 -------------|------------------|------------|----------- Aberdeen | E. Beinfohr | 3,747 | 15,000 Almira | | | 500 Anacortes | Gus Hensler | 1,476 | 6,000 Arlington | Lot Davis | | 2,400 ASOTIN | E. H. Dammarell | 470 | 1,500 Auburn | Geo. C. Meade | 489 | 1,500 BELLINGHAM | L. Baldrey | 11,062 | 41,000 Blaine | J. J. Pinckney | 1,592 | 3,500 Bremerton | R. S. Hayward | | 4,000 Buckley | W. B. Osbourn | 1,014 | 1,500 Burlington | I. A. Marchant | | 1,800 Camas | | | 1,200 Cashmere | C. M. Banker | | 1,000 Castle Rock | G. F. McClane. | 750 | 1,300 CATHLAMET | | | 500 Centralia | F. W. Thomas | 1,600 | 7,000 Charleston | A. F. Shepherd | | 1,000 CHEHALIS | H. C. Coffman | 1,775 | 5,000 Chelan | C. E. Rusk | | 900 Cheney | L. R. Houck | 781 | 1,600 Chewelah | E. D. Germain | | 1,500 Clarkston | R. B. Hooper | | 2,500 Cle Elum | | | 2,500 COLFAX | C. R. Lorne | 2,121 | 3,500 Colton | J. B. Ellsworth | 251 | 500 COLVILLE | L. E. Jesseph | 594 | 2,000 CONCONNULLY | W. S. McClure | | 500 Cosmopolis | | 1,004 | 1,200 Coulee City | G. T. Walter | | 300 Creston | | | 500 Cunningham | A. J. Haile | | 350 DAVENPORT | F. W. Anderson | 1,000 | 2,800 DAYTON | F. W. Guernsy | 2,216 | 3,500 Deer Park | W. D. Phillips | | 1,100 Edmonds | E. M. Allen | 474 | 2,000 Elberton | A. B. Metz | 297 | 600 ELLENSBURG | Wayne Murray | 1,737 | 5,500 Elma | E. S. Avey | 894 | 2,700 Endicott | | | 600 EPHRATA | | | EVERETT | E. E. Johnston | 7,838 | 35,000 Fairfield | O. H. Loe | | 500 Farmington | C. H. Bass | 434 | 780 Ferndale | Percy Hood | | Garfield | F. H. Michaelson | 697 | 1,350 Georgetown | C. A. Thorndyke | | 5,500 GOLDENDALE | C. W. Ramsay | 788 | 1,200 Granite Falls| W. R. Moore | | 800 Hamilton | Thos. Conby | 392 | 500 Harrington | | | 1,200 Hartline | | | 300 Hatton | | | 600 Hillyard | J. L. Cramer | | 2,500 Hoquiam | W. C. Gregg | 2,608 | 11,000 Ilwaco | A. A. Seaborg | 584 | 900 Index | | | 500 Kahlotus | | | 300 KALAMA | E. N. Howe | 554 | 1,250 Kelso | W. M. Signor | 694 | 2,500 Kennewick | S. Z. Hendersen | | 1,500 Kent | B. A. Bowen | 755 | 3,000 Kettle Falls | E. A. Blakeley | | 600 Kirkland | W. R. Stevens | | 750 LaConner | W. E. Schreeker | 564 | 800 Lakeside | | | 400 Latah | Chas. White | 253 | 500 Leavenworth | | | 1,500 Lind | R. S. Hamilton | | 1,400 Little Falls | W. A. Willis | | 800 Lynden | R. W. Green | 365 | 1,500 Mabton | G. T. Morgan | | 1,200 Marysville | P. E. Coffin | 728 | 1,500 Medical Lake | W. H. Mills | 516 | 1,400 Milton | J. S. Williams | | 650 Monroe | L. P. Tallman | | 2,500 MONTESANO | | 1,194 | 3,500 MT. VERNON | Frank Pickering | 1,120 | 4,000 Newport | R. S. Anderson | | 1,500 NORTH YAKIMA | H. P. James | 3,124 | 12,000 ==================================================== NAME. | Transportation Lines. -------------|-------------------------------------- Aberdeen | N. P. Ry. and steamship lines. Almira | Northern Pacific railway. Anacortes | G. N. Ry. and two lines of steamers. Arlington | Northern Pacific railway. ASOTIN | River steamers. Auburn | N. P. and Mil. Rys.; P. S. Elec. Ry. BELLINGHAM | G. N., N. P., B. B. & B. C. railways; | steamers to all Sound ports. Blaine | Great Northern railway. Bremerton | Steamers to Seattle and Tacoma. Buckley | Northern Pacific railway. Burlington | Great Northern railway. Camas | Portland & Seattle Ry.; river st'rs. Cashmere | Great Northern railway. Castle Rock | Northern Pacific railway. CATHLAMET | Steamboats. Centralia | Northern Pacific railway. Charleston | Steamers to Seattle. CHEHALIS | Northern Pacific railway. Chelan | Steamers on river and lake. Cheney | N. P. Ry.; Spokane Electric Ry. Chewelah | S. F. & N. branch G. N. Ry. Clarkston | O. R. & N. and N. P. Rys.; steamers. Cle Elum | Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Ris. COLFAX | O. R. & N.; S. & I. Electricity. Colton | Branch Northern Pacific railway. COLVILLE | Spokane Falls & Northern railway. CONCONNULLY | Stage. Cosmopolis | N. P. Ry. and steamship lines. Coulee City | Northern Pacific railway. Creston | W. C. branch N. P. Ry. Cunningham | Northern Pacific railway. DAVENPORT | Central Washington railway. DAYTON | N. P. and O. R. & N. railways. Deer Park | Great Northern railway. Edmonds | Great Northern Ry. and steamers Elberton | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co.'s Ry. ELLENSBURG | Northern Pac. and Milwaukee Rys. Elma | N. P. Ry., two branches. Endicott | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co.'s Ry. EPHRATA | Great Northern railway. EVERETT | N. P. and G. N. Rys. and steamers. Fairfield | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co.'s Ry. Farmington | O. R. & N. and N. P. railways. Ferndale | Great Northern railway. Garfield | O. R. & N., N. P. and S. & I. Rys. Georgetown | One Interurban, 3 steam railways. GOLDENDALE | Spokane, Portland & Seattle Ry. Granite Falls| Branch of Northern Pacific railway. Hamilton | G. N. Ry.; Skagit river steamers. Harrington | Great Northern railway. Hartline | Northern Pacific railway. Hatton | Northern Pacific railway. Hillyard | Elec. interurb.; G. N. and S. F. & N. Hoquiam | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. Ilwaco | O. R. & N. railway and steamers. Index | Great Northern railway. Kahlotus | O. R. & N. and S. P. & S. railways. KALAMA | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. Kelso | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. Kennewick | N. P. Ry.; P. & S. Ry. and steamers. Kent | N. P. and Mil. Rys.; P. S. Elec. Ry. Kettle Falls | N. P. and O. R. & N. railways. Kirkland | N. P. Ry. and ferry to Seattle. LaConner | Boat and stage. Lakeside | Stage and steamer. Latah | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. Leavenworth | Great Northern railway. Lind | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. Little Falls | Northern Pacific railway. Lynden | B. B. & B. C. railway. Mabton | Northern Pacific railway. Marysville | Great Northern Ry. and steamers. Medical Lake | N. P. and W. W. P. Electric Rys. Milton | Puget Sound Electric railway. Monroe | Great Northern railway. MONTESANO | Northern Pacific railway. MT. VERNON | Great Northern railway. Newport | Great Northern Ry. and steamers. NORTH YAKIMA | Northern Pacific railway. NOTE 1.--County seats in black face type. NOTE 2.--Population estimates for 1909 were supplied by local authorities, the school census, upon which the estimates of this Bureau are usually based, not being available at the time this publication was compiled. [Illustration: Plate No. 89.--Dairying, a Growing Industry in Whatcom County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 90.--Whatcom County Bulb Gardens.] [Page 94] ======================================================================= NAME. | County. | Mayor. | Clerk. -------------|-------------|------------------|------------------------ Oakesdale | Whitman | R. J. Neergaard | F. S. Baer Oakville | Chehalis | J. E. Fitzgerald | J. W. Scott Ocosta | Chehalis | C. C. Flowers | Andrew Wallace Odessa | Lincoln | F. J. Guth | W. M. Nevins Okanogan | Okanogan | H. J. Kerr | T. B. Collins OLYMPIA | Thurston | Mitchell Harris | J. R. Dever Oroville | Okanogan | E. A. McMahon | C. S. Taylor Orting | Pierce | Frank Lotz | C. W. Van Scoyoc Palouse City | Whitman | C. H. Farnsworth | G. D. Kincaid PASCO | Franklin | C. S. O'Brien | L. D. Conrad Pataha | Garfield | D. Evens | Chas. Ward Paulsbo | Kitsap | A. B. Moe | Paul Paulson Pe Ell | Lewis | August Mayer | C. W. Boynton POMEROY | Garfield | H. C. Krouse | H. St. George PORT ANGELES | Clallam | E. E. Seevers | C. W. Fields PT. ORCHARD | Kitsap | R. E. Bucklin | Wm. C. Bading PT. TOWNSEND | Jefferson | Max Gerson | Geo. Anderson Prescott | Walla Walla | Jos. Utter | R. B. Smith PROSSER | Benton | Albert Smith | Lon Boyle Pullman | Whitman | H. V. Carpenter | Geo. N. Henry Puyallup | Pierce | J. P. Melrose | J. L. La Plante Quincy | Grant | F. T. Campbell | R. C. Wightmar Raymond | Pacific | A. C. Little | J. H. Callahan Reardan | Lincoln | W. S. Bliss | W. H. Padley Renton | King | Benj. Ticknor | A. W. Ticknor REPUBLIC | Ferry | Jno. Stack | M. H. Joseph RITZVILLE | Adams | W. R. Peters | J. L. Cross Rockford | Spokane | J. Kindschuh | A. B. McDaniel Rosalia | Whitman | R. P. Turnley | F. S. Chetal Roslyn | Kittitas | J. G. Green | Thos. Ray Roy | Pierce | A. W. Wert | C. W. Elder Ruston | Pierce | J. P. Garrison | V. D. Goss SEATTLE | King | Jno. F. Miller | H. W. Carroll Sedro-Woolley| Skagit | C. E. Bingham | T. J. Morrow SHELTON | Mason | G. W. Draham | F. C. Mathewson Snohomish | Snohomish | C. H. Lamprey | E. Thistlewaite Snoqualmie | King | Otto Reinig | SOUTH BEND | Pacific | W. P. Cressy | C. H. Mills Spangle | Spokane | J. H. Gruenwald | M. H. Sullivan SPOKANE | Spokane | C. H. Moore | C. A. Fleming Sprague | Lincoln | J. W. Shearer | J. V. Muzzy Springdale | Stevens | Jacob Keller | A. E. Bidgood Stanwood | Snohomish | A. B. Klaeboe | G. M. Mitchell Starbuck | Columbia | H. A. Johnson | B. A. Whiting Steilacoom | Pierce | E. Church | M. P. Potter STEVENSON | Skamania | A. Fleischhauer | R. C. Sly St. John | Whitman | W. S. Ridenour | W. S. Mott Sultan | Snohomish | W. W. Morgan | T. W. Musgrove Sumas | Whatcom | R. S. Lambert | L. Van Valkenburg Sumner | Pierce | R. R. White | E. D. Swezey Sunnyside | Yakima | H. W. Turner | H. F. Wright TACOMA | Pierce | J. W. Linck | L. W. Roys Tekoa | Whitman | T. H. Follett | J. S. Woods Tenino | Thurston | L. J. Miller | S. M. Peterson Toledo | Lewis | J. H. Douge | W. H. Carpenter Toppenish | Yakima | C. W. Grant | T. W. Johnston Tukwila | King | Joel Shomaker | E. F. Greene Tumwuter | Thurston | A. Whitemarsh | A. J. Colby Uniontown | Whitman | Peter Friesoh | J. J. Gans VANCOUVER | Clarke | J. P. Kiggins | F. W. Bier Waitsburg | Walla Walla | R. M. Breeze | J. B. Lowndagin WALLA WALLA | Walla Walla | Eugene Tausick | T. D. S. Hart Wuputo | Yakima | J. F. Douglas | H. E. Trimble Washtucna | Adams | G. W. Bassett | C. E. Wilson WATERVILLE | Douglas | J. M. Hunter | J. E. Walker Waverley | Spokane | Fred Dashiell | A. L. Robinson WENATCHEE | Chelan | J. A. Gellatly | S. R. Sumner White Salmon | Klickitat | G. F. Jewett | W. C. Manly Wilbur | Lincoln | W. W. Foley | T. W. Maxwell Wilson Creek | Grant | W. H. O'Larey | F. E. Snedicor Winlock | Lewis | H. A. Baldwin | C. E. Leonard Woodland | Cowlitz | L. M. Love | D. W. Whitlow Yacolt | Clarke | W. J. Hoag | Wm. W. Eaton ========================================================= | Sec'y Commercial | Pop. U. S. | Est. Pop. NAME. | Organization. | Cens. 1900 | 1909 -------------|------------------|------------|----------- Oakesdale | | 928 | 1,200 Oakville | O. H. Fry | | 600 Ocosta | | | 150 Odessa | H. L. Cole | | 1,200 Okanogan | T. B. Collins | | 600 OLYMPIA | John M. Wilson | 4,082 | 12,000 Oroville | F. A. De Vos | | 800 Orting | M. C. Hopkins | 728 | 1,000 Palouse City | G. D. Kincaid | 929 | 3,000 PASCO | W. D. Fales | 254 | 1,800 Pataha | | | 250 Paulsbo | Paul Paulson | | 800 Pe Ell | P. M. Watson | | 1,000 POMEROY | | 953 | 1,800 PORT ANGELES | J. M. Davis | 2,321 | 2,500 PT. ORCHARD | | 754 | 900 PT. TOWNSEND | P. C. Peterson | 3,443 | 5,000 Prescott | T. B. Grumwell | | 650 PROSSER | H. W. Carnahan | 229 | 2,000 Pullman | B. F. Campbell | 1,308 | 3,000 Puyallup | J. P. Leavitt | 1,884 | 7,000 Quincy | Geo. W. Downer | | 400 Raymond | W. R. Struble | | 2,500 Reardan | H. G. Burns | | 800 Renton | P. W. Houser | | 3,000 REPUBLIC | M. H. Joseph | 2,500 | 1,250 RITZVILLE | J. L. Cross | 761 | 2,600 Rockford | J. W. Lowe | 433 | 1,200 Rosalla | A. A. Wonnell | 379 | 1,400 Roslyn | | 2,786 | 4,500 Roy | | | 400 Ruston | | | 800 SEATTLE | C. B. Yandell | 80,671 | 275,000 | Geo. E. Boos | | Sedro-Woolley| M. B. Holbrook | 885 | 3,450 SHELTON | G. C. Angle | 883 | 1,200 Snohomish | W. W. Reed | 2,101 | 4,000 Snoqualmie | | | 400 SOUTH BEND | F. G. McIntosh | 711 | 3,000 Spangle | E. C. Rohweder | 431 | 450 SPOKANE | L. G. Monroe | 36,848 | 120,000 | A. W. Jones | | Sprague | J. S. Freese | 695 | 1,500 Springdale | | | 500 Stanwood | L. Livingstone | | 1,000 Starbuck | J. B. Atkinson | | 750 Steilacoom | Mr. Annis | | 1,000 STEVENSON | R. C. Sly | | 400 St. John | G. W. Case, Jr | | 700 Sultan | T. W. Musgrove | | 500 Sumas | Lars Barbo | 319 | 1,500 Sumner | R. R. White | 531 | 1,000 Sunnyside | J. A. Vince | | 1,600 TACOMA | P. L. Sinclair | 37,714 | 125,000 | O. F. Cosper | | Tekoa | J. P. Burson | 717 | 1,200 Tenino | | | 1,000 Toledo | H. H. Hurst | 285 | 500 Toppenish | J. G. Hillyer | | 2,000 Tukwila | E. F. Greene | | 700 Tumwuter | | 270 | 1,500 Uniontown | W. H. Oyler | 404 | 500 VANCOUVER | H. S. Bartow | 4,006 | 8,000 Waitsburg | W. S. Guntle | 1,011 | 1,600 WALLA WALLA | A. C. Moore | 10,049 | 22,000 Wuputo | | | 500 Washtucna | | | 400 WATERVILLE | Jas. G. Tuttle | 482 | 1,200 Waverley | Jno. Reycraft | | 500 WENATCHEE | D. N. Gellatly | 451 | 5,000 White Salmon | J. M. Lewis | | 600 Wilbur | T. W. Maxwell | | 1,500 Wilson Creek | F. E. Snedicor | | 500 Winlock | C. E. Leonard | | 1,600 Woodland | E. F. Bryant | | 800 Yacolt | C. J. Dorsey | | 500 ==================================================== NAME. | Transportation Lines. -------------|-------------------------------------- Oakesdale | N. P. and O. R. & N. railways. Oakville | Northern Pacific railway. Ocosta | Steamers and railway. Odessa | Great Northern railway. Okanogan | River steamers. OLYMPIA | N. P. Ry.; P. T. & S. Ry.; steamers. Oroville | Great Northern railway. Orting | Northern Pacific railway. Palouse City | Four railroads. PASCO | N. P. Ry.: P. & S. Ry.; steamers. Pataha | Oregon Railway & Nav. Co's Ry. Paulsbo | Steamers to Seattle. Pe Ell | Northern Pacific railway. POMEROY | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. PORT ANGELES | Steamer and stage lines. PT. ORCHARD | Steamers, Seattle and Tacoma. PT. TOWNSEND | P. T. & S. Ry. and Sound steamer. Prescott | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. PROSSER | Northern Pacific railway. Pullman | N. P. and O. R. & N. railways. Puyallup | N. P. and Mil. Rys.; Elec. line Tac. Quincy | Great Northern railway. Raymond | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. Reardan | Central Washington railway. Renton | Steam and electric railways. REPUBLIC | Great Northern branch line. RITZVILLE | Northern Pacific railway. Rockford | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. Rosalla | Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Rys. Roslyn | Northern Pacific railway. Roy | Northern Pacific and Tac. East. Rys. Ruston | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. SEATTLE | N. P.; G. N.; Mil.; C. P. R.; Bur.; C. | & P. S.; P. S. E. Rys.; S. S. lines. Sedro-Woolley| N. P. and G. N. Rys. and steamers. SHELTON | Steamers to Olympia. Snohomish | G. N., N. P. and C. P. Rys.; steamers. Snoqualmie | Northern Pacific railway. SOUTH BEND | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers. Spangle | Branch Northern Pacific railway. SPOKANE | N. P.; G. N.; O. R. & N.; P. & S.; Spok. | Int.; W. W. P. and S. & I. Rys. Sprague | Northern Pacific railway. Springdale | Spokane Falls & Northern railway. Stanwood | Rail and steamer. Starbuck | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. Steilacoom | Electric railway and steamers. STEVENSON | Portland & Seattle railway. St. John | Oregon Railroad & Nav. Co's Ry. Sultan | Great Northern railway. Sumas | C. P. Ry.; N. P. Ry. G. N. Ry. Sumner | Northern Pacific railway. Sunnyside | Northern Pacific railway. TACOMA | N. P.; Mil.; T. & E.; U. P. and G. N. | Rys.; Electric and S. S. lines. Tekoa | O. R. & N. and Milwaukee Rys. Tenino | Northern Pacific and P. T. & S. Rys. Toledo | Northern Pacific Ry.; River steamer. Toppenish | Northern Pacific railway. Tukwila | Puget Sound Electric railway. Tumwuter | Port Townsend & Southern railway. Uniontown | Northern Pacific railway. VANCOUVER | N. P., P. & S. Rys. and steamers. Waitsburg | O. R. & N. and N. P. railways. WALLA WALLA | N. P. and O. R. & N. railways. Wuputo | Northern Pacific railway. Washtucna | O. R. & N.; S., P. & S. railways. WATERVILLE | Stage and steamer. Waverley | O. R. & N. and Electric railways. WENATCHEE | Great Northern Ry.; Col. river strs. White Salmon | S. P. & S. Ry., and river steamer. Wilbur | Northern Pacific railway. Wilson Creek | Great Northern railway. Winlock | Northern Pacific railway. Woodland | Northern Pacific Ry. and steamers Yacolt | Northern Pacific railway. [Page 96] STATE OFFICERS, COMMISIONS, BOARDS AND PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS OF WASHINGTON. =========================================================================== OFFICE. | Name. | P. O. Address. -----------------------------|--------------------------|------------------ Governor | M. E. Hay | Olympia. Governor's Private Secretary | Frank M. Dallam, Jr | Olympia. Secretary of State | I. M. Howell | Olympia. Assistant Secretary of State | Ben R. Fish | Olympia. Auditor | C. W. Clausen | Olympia. Deputy Auditor | F. P. Jameson | Olympia. Treasurer | John G. Lewis | Olympia. Deputy Treasurer | W. W. Sherman | Olympia. Attorney General | W. P. Bell | Olympia. Assistant Attorney General | W. V. Tanner | Olympia. " " " | W. F. McGill | Olympia. " " " | Geo. A. Lee | Spokane. Commissioner of Public Lands | E. W. Ross | Olympia. Assistant Comm'r of Public | Frank C. Morse | Olympia. Lands | | Insurance Commissioner | John H. Shively | Olympia. Deputy Insurance Commissioner| S. A. Madge | Olympia. Superintendent Public | Henry B. Dewey | Olympia. Instruction | | Assistant Supt. Public | J. M. Layhue | Olympia. Instruction | | Deputy Supt. Public | F. F. Nalder | Olympia. Instruction | | Adjutant General | Geo. B. Lamping | Seattle. Commissioner of Labor | Chas. F. Hubbard | Olympia. State Librarian | J. M. Hitt | Olympia. Law Librarian | C. W. Shaffer | Olympia. Traveling Library | Mrs. Lou J. Diven, Supt. | Olympia. Board of Control | Eugene Lorton | Walla Walla. | H. T. Jones | Olympia. | H. E. Gilham | Olympia. State Grain Inspector | E. C. Armstrong | Colfax. Dairy and Food Commissioner | L. Davies | Davenport. State Fish Commissioner | Jno. L. Riseland | Bellingham. Commissioner of Statistics | I. M. Howell, Ex-Officio | Olympia. Deputy Commissioner of | Geo. M. Allen | Seattle. Statistics | | Horticultural Commissioner | F. A. Huntley | Tacoma. Coal Mine Inspector | D. C. Botting | Seattle. Inspector of Oils | F. A. Clark | Seattle. Public Printer | E. L. Boardman | Olympia. Bank Examiner | J. L. Mohundro | Seattle. Hotel Inspector | J. H. Munger | Seattle. A.-Y.-P. E. Commission | Geo. E. Dickson. | Ellensburg. | Chairman | | L. P. Hornberger, Sec. | Seattle. | W. A. Halteman, | Seattle. | Exec. Commis. | | M. M. Godman | Seattle. | R. W. Condon | Port Gamble. | J. W. Slayden | Steilacoom. | L. H. Burnett | Aberdeen. Railway Commission | H. A. Fairchild, Chairman| Olympia. Tax Commission | T. D. Rockwell, Chairman | Olympia. Fire Warden and Forester | J. R. Welty | Olympia. Highway Commissioner | J. M. Snow | Olympia. Board of Accountancy | Alfred Lister, Sec'y | Tacoma. Bureau Inspection Public | C. W. Clausen, | Olympia. Offices | Ex-officio Chief | Board of Health | E. E. Hegg, Sec'y | Seattle. Board of Barber Examiners | Chas. W. Whisler | Seattle. Board of Medical Examiners | Dr. J. Clinton McFadden, | Seattle. | Secy. | Board of Pharmacy | P. Jensen, Sec'y | Tacoma. Board of Dental Examiners | E. B. Edgars | Seattle. | | EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. | | | | University of Washington | Thomas Franklin Kane, | Seattle. | Pres. | State College | E. A. Bryan, Pres. | Pullman. State Normal School | H. C. Sampson, Principal | Cheney. State Normal School | E. C. Mathes, Principal | Bellingham. State Normal School | W. E. Wilson, Principal | Ellensburg. School for Deaf | Thos. P. Clark, | Vancouver. | Superintendent | School for Blind | Geo. H. Mullin, Principal| Vancouver. State Training School | C. C. Aspinwall | Chehalis. | | OTHER STATE INSTITUTIONS. | | | | Soldiers' Home | Gen. Geo. W. T. | Orting. | Tibbetts, Com. | " " | Willis L. Ames, Com. | Port Orchard. Insane Asylum | A. P. Calhoun. Supt. | Fort Steilacoom. " " | J. M. Semple, Supt. | Medical Lake. State Penitentiary | C. S. Reed, Warden | Walla Walla. State Reformatory | Cleon B. Roe, Supt. | Monroe. Institution for Feeble Minded| S. C. Woodruff, Supt. | Medical Lake. [Illustration: Plate No. 91.--Overflow Wheat Warehouse, at Pullman, Whitman County.] [Illustration: Plate No. 92.--A Yakima County Vineyard.] [Illustration: Plate No. 93.--Yakima County Potatoes--600 Bushels to the Acre.] [Illustration: Plate No. 94.--A Yakima County Orchard Scene.] [Page 97] STATEMENT SHOWING AREA OF STATE SCHOOL AND GRANTED LANDS IN EACH COUNTY. AREA SOLD BY DEEDS AND CONTRACTS OF SALE. COMPILED FOR PERIOD UP TO AND INCLUDING SEPTEMBER 30, 1908. ========================================================================== | | | | Total | | Total area | Total | Area | area sold | Remaining COUNTIES. | of school | area | under | by deed | area | and granted| deeded. | contract | and under | unsold. | lands. | | of sale. | contract. | ------------|------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|------------ Adams | 85,632.25 | 1,063.30 | 12,320.00 | 13,383.30 | 72,248.95 Asotin | 26,906.56 | 161.90 | 1,360.00 | 1,521.90 | 25,384.66 Benton | 92,937.68 | 1,626.75 | 8,629.90 | 10,256.65 | 82,681.03 Chehalis | 77,064.41 | 7,883.93 | 1,823.85 | 9,707.78 | 67,356.63 Chelan | 52,526.50 | 212.34 | 1,074.70 | 1,287.04 | 51,239.46 Clallam | 77,514.28 | 2,914.42 | 320.00 | 3,234.42 | 74,279.86 Clarke | 36,972.16 | 3,694.27 | 1,585.85 | 5,280.12 | 31,692.04 Columbia | 24,640.00 | 5,084.00 | 1,620.00 | 6,704.00 | 17,936.00 Cowlitz | 85,373.80 | 6,364.43 | 1,063.73 | 7,428.16 | 77,945.00 Douglas | 313,235.66 | 3,416.62 | 64,211.62 | 67,628.52 | 245,607.14 Ferry | 21,219.51 | | | | 21,219.51 Franklin | 40,731.85 | 101.83 | 3,720.00 | 3,821.83 | 36,910.02 Garfield | 21,298.47 | 2,179.21 | 1,760.00 | 3,939.21 | 17,359.26 Island | 16,202.70 | 4,679.93 | 1,350.25 | 6,030.18 | 10,172.52 Jefferson | 87,358.34 | 12,760.91 | 1,306.77 | 14,067.68 | 73,290.66 King | 86,020.13 | 15,667.80 | 5,195.95 | 20,863.75 | 65,156.38 Kitsap | 27,157.40 | 12,178.10 | 1,794.70 | 13,972.80 | 13,184.60 Kittitas | 129,590.97 | 4,648.01 | 1,840.00 | 6,488.01 | 123,102.96 Klickitat | 77,280.86 | 2,340.84 | 4,143.17 | 6,484.01 | 70,796.85 Lewis | 86,566.86 | 4,328.31 | 2,106.01 | 6,434.32 | 80,132.54 Lincoln | 84,088.45 | 4,818.00 | 12,620.00 | 17,438.00 | 66,650.45 Mason | 48,057.72 | 4,750.53 | 651.98 | 5,402.51 | 42,655.21 Okanogan | 90,517.34 | 399.55 | 12,487.62 | 12,887.17 | 77,630.17 Pacific | 60,529.29 | 2,187.81 | 1,401.90 | 3,589.71 | 56,939.58 Pierce | 62,118.55 | 8,899.98 | 2,056.82 | 10,956.80 | 51,161.75 San Juan | 4,765.63 | 366.35 | 205.25 | 571.60 | 4,194.03 Skagit | 92,191.75 | 4,551.83 | 1,718.17 | 6,270.00 | 85,921.75 Skamania | 44,699.55 | 5,690.08 | 988.50 | 6,678.58 | 38,020.97 Snohomish | 47,937.99 | 7,545.13 | 5,392.45 | 12,927.58 | 35,000.41 Spokane | 67,457.64 | 6,943.59 | 15,360.20 | 22,303.79 | 45,153.85 Stevens | 164,063.72 | 561.19 | 4,748.50 | 5,309.69 | 158,754.03 Thurston | 33,443.79 | 4,286.82 | 1,636.87 | 5,923.69 | 27,520.10 Wahkiakum | 26,053.26 | 1,795.95 | 451.55 | 2,257.50 | 23,795.76 Walla Walla | 50,536.97 | 6,785.98 | 7,219.46 | 14,005.44 | 36,531.53 Whatcom | 41,196.49 | 2,729.50 | 4,591.52 | 7,321.02 | 33,875.47 Whitman | 80,351.82 | 14,583.47 | 21,322.96 | 35,906.43 | 44,445.39 Yakima | 143,102.97 | 3,927.59 | 5,169.50 | 9,097.09 | 134,005.88 |------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|------------ Totals |2,607,343.32|172,130.53 |215,259.75 |387,390.28 |2,219,953.04 NOTE:--The statement of total area of school and granted lands by counties includes only approved indemnity selected, approved granted lands, and school sections 16 and 36 in place. [Page 98] UNAPPROPRIATED FEDERAL LANDS OF WASHINGTON. =========================================================================== | Area unappropriated | LAND | and unreserved | Brief description of DISTRICT |-----------------------------| character of unappropriated AND | | Unsur- | | and unreserved land. COUNTRY. |Surveyed.| veyed. | Total. | -------------|---------|---------|---------|------------------------------- North Yakima:| _Acres._| _Acres._| _Acres._| Benton | 27,062| | 27,062| Rolling prairie, hilly, | | | | grazing. Douglas | 15,003| | 15,003| Grazing, prairie, hilly, | | | | and timber. Kittitas | 149,351| 245,967| 395,318| Grazing, arid prairie, | | | | and timber. Yakima | 126,072| 274,500| 400,572| |---------|---------|---------| Total | 317,488| 520,467| 837,955| |=========|=========|=========| Olympia: | | | | Chehalis | 1,491| | 1,491| Mountainous timbered lands. Jefferson | 860| | 860| Do. King | 560| | 560| Do. Kitsap | 40| | 40| Do. Lewis | 40| | 40| Do. Mason | 2,537| | 2,537| Do. Pacific | 80| | 80| Do. Pierce | 571| | 571| Do. Thurston | 207| | 207| Do. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 6,886| | 6,386| |=========|=========|=========| Seattle: | | | | Clallam | 1,240| 1,840| 3,080| Mountainous and broken; good | | | | supply of excellent timber. King | 680| 11,680| 12,360| Broken and mountainous. San Juan | 324| | 324| Broken, with little timber. Skagit | 2,475| 25,540| 28,015| Broken, heavily timbered, and | | | | mountainous. Snohomish | 320| 5,484| 5,804| Do. Whatcom | 840| 8,923| 9,768| Do. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 5,879| 53,467| 59,346| |=========|=========|=========| Spokane: | | | | Adams | 26,512| | 26,512| Arid lands, valuable for fruit | | | | and grain. Douglas | | l,500| l,500| Arid lands. Ferry | 165,526| 379,732| 545,258| Farming, grazing, timber, and | | | | mineral. Lincoln | 35,632| 4,448| 40,080| Farming and grazing. Okanogan | 13,343| 114,756| 128,099| Farming, grazing, and mineral. Spokane | 2,896| 3,094| 5,990| Do. Stevens | 409,093| 711,981|1,121,044| Mountainous, farming, and | | | | mineral. Whitman | 2,053| | 2,053| Grazing lands. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 655,055|1,215,511|1,870,566| |=========|=========|=========| Vancouver: | | | | Clarke | 4,787| | 4,787| Timbered and agricultural. Cowlitz | 16,703| 7,080| 23,783| Do. Klickitat | 61,553| 2,600| 64,153| Timbered, agricultural, | | | | grazing Lewis | 8,013| 4,995| 13,008| Timbered and agricultural. Pacific | 1,981| | 1,981| Do. Skamania | 7,418| | 7,418| Do. Wahkiakum | 316| | 316| Timbered. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 100,771| 14,675| 115,446| |=========|=========|=========| Walla Walla: | | | | Adams | 15,188| | 15,188| Prairie, farming, and | | | | grazing lands. Asotin | 83,631| 13,293| 96,924| Mountainous, some timber, and | | | | prairie. Benton | 40,395| | 40,395| Desert, grazing, some timber, | | | | prairie, and farming. Columbia | 15,203| 152,279| 167,482| Mountainous, some timber, | | | | and prairie. Franklin | 42,363| | 42,368| Prairie, grazing lands; | | | | no timber. Garfield | 45,468| 44,539| 90,007| Farming, grazing, and timber. Klickitat | 24,926| | 24,926| Grazing and farming; some | | | | timber. Walla Walla| 15,522| | 15,522| Do. Whitman | 15,835| | 15,835| Prairie, farming, and grazing | | | | lands. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 298,531| 210,111| 508,642| |=========|=========|=========| [Page 99] Waterville: | | | | Chelan | 321,518| 9,880| 331,398| Mountainous, timber, farming. Douglas | 435,207| 44,890| 480,097| Prairie, farming, and grazing. Okanogan | 206,990| 218,175| 425,165| Mountainous, timber, and | | | | farming. |---------|---------|---------| Total | 963,715| 272,945|1,236,660| |=========|=========|=========| State total |2,347,825|2,287,176|4,635,001| CLIMATIC SUMMARY FOR WASHINGTON. PREPARED BY GEO. N. SALISBURY, Of the Weather Bureau at Seattle. The following tables represent averages of observations, covering ten years or more. The stations included in the list are so distributed as to indicate the climatic conditions in every portion of the state. SOUTHWESTERN WASHINGTON. STATION: ABERDEEN. ======================================================================== | | | | |_Number of_| | | | _Precip-_| | _days--_| | _Temperature_ | | _itation_| |-----------| | _in degrees_ | | _in_ | | _With Pre-_ MONTH. | _Fahrenheit_ | | _inches._| | _cipitation_ | | | | | Cloudy | |-----------------------| |----------| | Partly | |_Prevailing_ |Highest | Lowest | | | Snowfall | | Cloudy | |_direction_ |---- |----- | | |----- | Clear | | | _of the_ |Mean| | Date| |Date| |Total| | | | | | | _wind_ ----------|----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- January |39.9| 61| 1900| 10|1893| |10.56| 4.8| | 3|13|15|19| W February |40.6| 73| 1905| 13|1899| |10.43| 3.5| | 3|11|14|20| SW March |43.7| 82| 1905| 22|1896| | 7.89| 1.6| | 5|19| 7|20| W April |48.2| 88| 1905| 28|1899| | 7.66| T| | 6|16| 8|17| W May |53.0| 91| 1897| 29|1901| | 4.58| 0| | 6|17| 8|15| W June |56.8|100| 1903| 34|1901| | 3.72| 0| | 6|15| 9|13| W July |60.8|105| 1891| 37|1901| | 1.02| 0| | 9|17| 5| 7| W August |62.1| 96| 1898| 40|1902| | 1.06| 0| |11|17| 3| 5| W September |57.5| 88| 1894| 30|1901| | 4.98| 0| | 9|15| 6| 9| W October |52.3| 85| 1891| 29|1893| | 6.71| 0| | 6|14|10|14| W November |45.1| 73| 1904| 22|1900| |15.28| 0.5| | 2|10|18|22| W December |40.9| 60| 1892| 20|1901| |14.66| 0.5| | 4|11|16|20| SW & W |----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- Sums | | | | | | |88.55|10.9| | 6|14|10|15| Means or\|50.0|105|July,| 10|Jan.| | | | | | | | | Extremes/| | |1891 | |1893| | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Page 100] PUGET SOUND DISTRICT. STATION: TACOMA AND ASHFORD. ======================================================================== | | | | |_Number of_| | | | _Precip-_| | _days--_| | _Temperature_ | | _itation_| |-----------| | _in degrees_ | | _in_ | | _With Pre-_ MONTH. | _Fahrenheit_ | | _inches._| | _cipitation_ | | | | | Cloudy | |-----------------------| |----------| | Partly | |_Prevailing_ |Highest | Lowest | | | Snowfall | | Cloudy | |_direction_ |---- |----- | | |----- | Clear | | | _of the_ |Mean| | Date| |Date| |Total| | | | | | | _wind_ ----------|----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- January |38.0| 64| 1891| 0|1888| | 7.20|11.0| | 4| 6|21|20| SW February |38.9| 66| 1905| 5|1887| | 6.68|12.4| | 4| 7|18|17| SW March |44.4| 74| 1900| 16|1897| | 4.82| 8.0| | 6| 8|17|18| SW April |48.9| 84| 1897| 28|1896| | 4.40| 2.8| | 6|12|12|14| SW May |54.1| 90| 1892| 33|1894| | 4.11| 0.2| | 6|12|13|14| SW June |58.2| 97| 1903| 39|1895| | 2.62| T| | 8|10|12|11| N July |62.0| 99| 1891| 42|1894| | 1.20| 0| |15| 9| 7| 6| N August |61.6| 92| 1898| 40|1895| | 1.28| 0| |15| 8| 8| 5| N September |56.2| 87| 1894| 36|1902| | 2.74| 0| |12| 8|10|10| N October |50.6| 82| 1892| 25|1893| | 4.51| 0| | 8| 8|15|12| SW November |44.2| 70| 1892| 8|1896| | 9.11| 5.2| | 2| 5|23|21| SW December |40.9| 61| 1900| 19|1894| | 9.55| 4.4| | 4| 7|20|18| SW |----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- Sums | | | | | | |58.22|44.0| | 7| 8|15|14| Means or\|49.8| 99|July,| 0|Jan.| | | | | | | | | Extremes/| | |1891 | |1888| | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EASTERN WASHINGTON. STATION: SPOKANE. ======================================================================== | | | | |_Number of_| | | | _Precip-_| | _days--_| | _Temperature_ | | _itation_| |-----------| | _in degrees_ | | _in_ | | _With Pre-_ MONTH. | _Fahrenheit_ | | _inches._| | _cipitation_ | | | | | Cloudy | |-----------------------| |----------| | Partly | |_Prevailing_ |Highest | Lowest | | | Snowfall | | Cloudy | |_direction_ |---- |----- | | |----- | Clear | | | _of the_ |Mean| | Date| |Date| |Total| | | | | | | _wind_ ----------|----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- January |24.5| 55| 1893|-30|1888| | 2.54| 9.4| | 4| 4|23|14| S February |28.5| 59| 1896|-23|1890| | 2.02| 8.1| | 4| 7|17|13| E & SW March |39.7| 72| 1889|-10|1891| | 1.40| 3.0| | 7| 8|16|12| S April |48.0| 86| 1890| 22|1890| | 1.38| 0.2| | 6|10|14| 9| S & SW May |57.0| 95| 1897| 29|1905| | 1.39| T| | 6|10|15|10| S June |62.4| 96| 1896| 34|1891| | 1.67| T| | 9|12|10| 9| SW July |69.0|102| 1890| 39|1893| | 0.71| 0| |15| 8| 8| 5| SW August |69.0|104| 1898| 40|1902| | 0.46| 0| |17| 8| 6| 5| S September |58.1| 98| 1888| 26|1889| | 1.04| 0| |12| 7|11| 7| NE October |48.0| 86| 1892| 12|1887| | 1.39| T| | 8| 9|14| 7| NE November |37.8| 70| 1903|-13|1896| | 1.67| 2.9| | 1| 5|24|15| S December |31.3| 57| 1886|-18|1884| | 2.56| 4.9| | 3| 4|24|13| SW |----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- Sums | | | | | | |18.23|29.4| | 7| 8|15|10| Means or\|47.8|104|Aug. |-30|Jan.| | | | | | | | | Extremes/| | |1898 | |1888| | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Page 101] SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON. STATION: WALLA WALLA. ======================================================================== | | | | |_Number of_| | | | _Precip-_| | _days--_| | _Temperature_ | | _itation_| |-----------| | _in degrees_ | | _in_ | | _With Pre-_ MONTH. | _Fahrenheit_ | | _inches._| | _cipitation_ | | | | | Cloudy | |-----------------------| |----------| | Partly | |_Prevailing_ |Highest | Lowest | | | Snowfall | | Cloudy | |_direction_ |---- |----- | | |----- | Clear | | | _of the_ |Mean| | Date| |Date| |Total| | | | | | | _wind_ ----------|----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- January |32.6| 67| 1902|-17|1888| | 2.17| 6.1| | 3|11|17|12| S February |37.0| 69| 1896|-15|1893| | 1.55| 5.1| | 6|13| 9|12| S March |45.2| 74| 1905| 2|1891| | 1.73| 2.7| | 8|16| 7|13| S April |52.6| 89| 1890| 29|1890| | 1.76| 2| |10|17| 3| 9| S May |60.1|100| 1897| 34|1905| | 1.72| 0| |12|16| 3|11| S June |65.8|105| 1896| 40|1901| | 1.13| 0| |15|14| 1| 8| S July |73.8|108| 1891| 45|1891| | 0.37| 0| |24| 6| 1| 4| S August |73.8|113| 1898| 47|1899| | 0.43| 0| |23| 7| 1| 4| S September |63.6|100| 1888| 36|1900| | 0.97| 0| |17| 9| 4| 7| S October |54.4| 87| 1904| 24|1887| | 1.50| T| |15|12| 4| 8| S November |42.8| 76| 1891| -9|1896| | 2.17| 2.0| | 4|13| 3|13| S December |37.3| 65| 1890| -2|1898| | 2.07| 3.5| | 3|11|17|14| S |----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- Sums | | | | | | |17.58|19.6| |12|12| 6|10| Means or\|53.2|113|Aug. |-17|Jan.| | | | | | | | | Extremes/| | |1898 | |1888| | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE IRRIGATED WASHINGTON. STATION: NORTH YAKIMA, SUNNYSIDE, FT. SIMCOE. ======================================================================== | | | | |_Number of_| | | | _Precip-_| | _days--_| | _Temperature_ | | _itation_| |-----------| | _in degrees_ | | _in_ | | _With Pre-_ MONTH. | _Fahrenheit_ | | _inches._| | _cipitation_ | | | | | Cloudy | |-----------------------| |----------| | Partly | |_Prevailing_ |Highest | Lowest | | | Snowfall | | Cloudy | |_direction_ |---- |----- | | |----- | Clear | | | _of the_ |Mean| | Date| |Date| |Total| | | | | | | _wind_ ----------|----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- January |30.4| 62| 1899|-16|1899| | 1.82| 9.2| | 7|13|11| 7| W February |35.2| 71| 1901|-22|1893| | 1.14| 5.6| | 8|12| 9| 6| W March |42.5| 78| 1895| 2|1896| | 0.57| 0.4| |12|14| 5| 3| W April |51.1| 90| 1897| 18|1896| | 0.47| T| |12|13| 5| 3| W May |59.1|101| 1897| 24|1896| | 0.74| 0| |11|14| 6| 5| W June |65.4|106| 1896| 30|1901| | 0.32| 0| |15|10| 5| 4| W July |71.6|112| 1896| 36|1905| | 0.11| 0| |24| 5| 2| 2| W August |71.1|109| 1897| 35|1895| | 0.21| 0| |19| 9| 3| 3| W September |61.1| 98| 1896| 24|1891| | 0.44| 0| |17| 8| 5| 4| W October |51.0| 89| 1891| 13|1893| | 0.50| 0| |15|10| 6| 4| W November |39.4| 73| 1897|-23|1896| | 1.56| 4.4| | 4|12|14| 9| W December |32.3| 67| 1898| -8|1895| | 1.47| 6.2| | 7|10|14| 7| SW |----|---|-----|---|----| |-----|----| |--|--|--|--|---------- Sums | | | | | | | 9.35|25.8| |12|11| 7| 5| Means or\|50.9|112|July,|-23|Nov.| | | | | | | | | Extremes/| | |1896 | |1896| | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Page 102] TOTAL ASSESSMENT OF ALL PROPERTY IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON AS EQUALIZED BY THE STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION FOR THE YEAR 1908. ============================================================== | _Total Real and Personal Property,_ |------------------------------------------------- | | | Ratio | | | Assessed | |assessed| | COUNTIES. | value | Actual | to | *Exemp- | | returned | value. | actual | tions. | | by county. | | value. | | ------------|------------|--------------|--------|-----------| Adams | $12,934,270| $32,730,750| $39.51|* $347,380| Asotin | 3,186,570| 6,346,110| 50.21| 73,600| Benton | 5,900,630| 13,967,229| 42.24| 201,105| Chehalis | 14,832,671| 63,320,298| 23.42|* 897,053| Chelan | 7,510,825| 17,903,363| 41.95| 317,510| Clallam | 7,045,161| 14,294,907| 49.28| 148,017| Clarke | 9,548,965| 22,951,958| 41.60|* 552,000| Columbia | 6,677,175| 12,916,674| 51.69| 164,855| Cowlitz | 7,506,911| 18,774,621| 39.98|* 258,305| Douglas | 13,714,378| 32,623,076| 42.03|* 792,735| Ferry | 1,323,524| 2,205,873| 60.00|* 132,674| Franklin | 4,029,979| 12,053,842| 33.43|* 121,309| Garfield | 4,230,446| 9,466,437| 44.68| 123,027| Island | 1,296,572| 3,706,168| 34.98| 100,545| Jefferson | 4,566,042| 9,932,771| 45.96| 92,864| King |*204,852,223| 437,905,564| 46.78| 5,011,716| Kitsap | 4,145,045| 9,133,183| 45.38|* 271,777| Kittitas | 8,853,102| 20,145,643| 43.98| 421,605| Klickitat | 5,869,515| 14,199,834| 41.33| 366,835| Lewis | 17,959,730| 39,028,152| 46.01| 673,137| Lincoln | 18,046,865| 44,933,712| 40.16|* 844,061| Mason | 3,030,375| 10,744,059| 28.20| 97,386| Okanogan | 3,750,417| 6,540,821| 57.33| 421,615| Pacific | 7,036,354| 22,947,129| 30.66| 95,700| Pierce | 76,828,090| 181,499,746| 42.33| 2,903,450| San Juan | 1,553,856| 3,789,892| 41.00|* 126,818| Skagit | 10,867,150| 38,346,941| 28.33| 297,600| Skamania | 4,063,188| 6,375,330| 63.73| 66,300| Snohomish |* 25,699,461| 54,494,192| 47.16| 1,221,570| Spokane | 80,038,409| 154,967,786| 51.64| 2,956,265| Stevens | 6,675,908| 17,811,897| 37.48|* 654,238| Thurston | 8,325,065| 23,882,038| 34.85| 518,971| Wahkiakum | 1,668,376| 4,319,197| 38.62| 69,616| Walla Walla | 19,434,380| 45,866,287| 42.37| 369,000| Whatcom | 19,853,046| 48,038,017| 41.32|* 1,460,250| Whitman | 19,098,175| 60,560,413| 31.53| 1,160,290| Yakima | 23,625,355| 48,428,184| 48.78|* 1,517,390| |------------|--------------|--------|-----------| Totals |$675,578,199|$1,567,152,094| $43.11|$25,902,569| ======================================== _Exclusive of Railroad and Telegraph._ | ------------|-------------|------------| | Aggregate | Aggregate | |value of tax-| value as | COUNTIES. |able property| equalized | | as returned | by state | | by county. | board. | ------------|-------------|------------| Adams | $12,586,890| $13,762,846| Asotin | 3,112,970| 2,662,208| Benton | 5,699,525| 5,820,167| Chehalis | 13,935,618| 26,400,327| Chelan | 7,193,315| 7,400,630| Clallam | 6,897,144| 6,014,517| Clarke | 8,996,965| 9,342,589| Columbia | 6,512,320| 5,403,523| Cowlitz | 7,248,606| 7,835,434| Douglas | 12,921,643| 13,271,073| Ferry | 1,190,850| 818,278| Franklin | 3,908,670| 5,075,102| Garfield | 4,107,419| 3,957,954| Island | 1,196,027| 1,497,184| Jefferson | 4,473,178| 4,189,154| King | 199,840,507| 183,769,507| Kitsap | 3,873,268| 3,665,538| Kittitas | 8,431,497| 8,263,182| Klickitat | 5,502,680| 5,754,713| Lewis | 17,286,593| 16,151,899| Lincoln | 17,202,804| 18,526,862| Mason | 2,932,989| 4,534,378| Okanogan | 3,328,802| 2,398,133| Pacific | 6,940,654| 9,796,807| Pierce | 73,924,640| 75,341,091| San Juan | 1,427,038| 1,507,004| Skagit | 10,569,550| 16,233,766| Skamania | 3,996,883| 2,682,105| Snohomish | 24,477,891| 22,270,886| Spokane | 77,082,144| 63,850,348| Stevens | 6,021,670| 7,024,471| Thurston | 7,806,094| 9,776,576| Wahkiakum | 1,598,760| 1,792,390| Walla Walla | 19,065,380| 19,403,957| Whatcom | 18,392,796| 19,248,939| Whitman | 17,937,885| 24,947,304| Yakima | 22,053,965| 19,306,001| |-------------|------------| Totals | $649,675,630|$649,696,709| ================================================================== |_Railroads._| _Electric_ |_Telegraph._| TOTAL. | | | _Rys._ | | Aggregate | | Value as | Value as | Value as |value as real| | corrected, | corrected, | corrected, |and personal | COUNTIES. |revised and |revised and |revised and | property as | |equalized by|equalized by|equalized by|equalized by | |state board.|state board.|state board.|state board. | ------------|------------|------------|------------|-------------| Adams | $2,445,703| | $10,499| $16,219,048| Asotin | | | | 2,662,208| Benton | 2,595,331| | 5,477| 8,420,975| Chehalis | 798,828| 165,258| 2,212| 27,366,625| Chelan | 2,860,892| | 9,058| 10,270,580| Clallam | | | 4,073| 6,018,590| Clarke | 891,275| | 87| 10,233,951| Columbia | 908,202| | 6,775| 6,318,500| Cowlitz | 1,363,089| | 11,016| 9,209,539| Douglas | 3,703,546| | 9,650| 16,984,269| Ferry | 1,359,278| | | 2,177,641| Franklin | 1,852,025| | 7,975| 6,935,102| Garfield | 144,067| | 555| 4,102,576| Island | | | | 1,497,184| Jefferson | 417,464| | 3,695| 4,610,313| King | 11,882,802| 7,477,860| 38,645| 203,168,680| Kitsap | | | 2,325| 3,667,863| Kittitas | 3,674,706| | 10,194| 11,948,082| Klickitat | 1,108,683| | | 6,863,396| Lewis | 2,050,492| | 12,186| 18,214,576| Lincoln | 4,456,845| | 12,648| 22,996,355| Mason | 7,791| | | 4,542,169| Okanogan | 834,844| | | 3,232,977| Pacific | 418,310| | 1,438| 10,216,555| Pierce | 4,589,415| 1,900,370| 22,077| 81,852,953| San Juan | | | | 1,507,004| Skagit | 2,177,605| | 7,518| 18,418,889| Skamania | 332,926| | | 3,015,031| Snohomish | 8,064,368| 910,195| 18,950| 31,264,399| Spokane | 8,402,563| 2,131,611| 31,075| 74,415,597| Stevens | 1,994,897| | 6,353| 9,025,721| Thurston | 1,561,390| 76,530| 10,096| 11,424,592| Wahkiakum | | | | 1,792,390| Walla Walla | 3,797,744| 131,082| 14,574| 23,347,357| Whatcom | 3,372,306| 630,373| 7,457| 23,259,075| Whitman | 3,296,322| 528,248| 19,897| 28,791,771| Yakima | 3,278,556| 10,000| 6,852| 22,601,409| |------------|------------|------------|-------------| Totals | $84,642,349| $13,961,527| $293,357| $748,593,942| *Exception includes the amount returned by these counties under the item "Moneys on hand" allowed by the Board. [Page 103] ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Distribution of this publication at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition has been made possible through financial assistance extended by the State A.-Y.-P. E. Commission. An edition of a few thousand copies only was originally contemplated, but funds provided by the State Commission have enabled us to increase the quantity to 25,000. This help thus given in extending the field of usefulness of this report is herewith gratefully acknowledged. STATE BUREAU OF STATISTICS AND IMMIGRATION. I. M. HOWELL, Secretary of State, _Ex-Officio Commissioner._ GEO. M. ALLEN, _Deputy Commissioner._ [Page 104] INDEX TO DESCRIPTIVE MATTER. Acknowledgment 103 Adams County 46 Agriculture 22 Asotin County 47 Bee Culture 26 Benton County 48 Coal Fields 10 Coal Mining 19 Chehalis County 49 Chelan County 50 Clallam County 51 Clarke County 52 Columbia County 53 Cowlitz County 54 Dairying 25 Douglas County 55 Educational System 32-33 Ferry County 56 Forests 9 Fisheries 12 Franklin County 57 Game 16 Garfield County 58 Government Lands 14 Grant County 59 Horticulture 24 Indian Lands 14 Industries of Washington 18-28 Introduction 3-4 Irrigation 40-41 Island County 60 Jefferson County 61 King County 62 Kitsap County 64 Kittitas County 65 Klickitat County 66 Lands 14 Letter of Transmittal 2 Lewis County 67 Lincoln County 69 Logged-off Lands 33-39 Lumbering 18 Manufacturing 26 Mason County 70 Mineral Ores 11 Natural Division 5 Okanogan County 71 Opportunities in Washington 29-31 Pacific County 72 Pierce County 74 Poultry 26 Resources of Washington 8-17 San Juan County 76 Scenery 16 Skagit County 77 Skamania County 79 Snohomish County 80 Soils 13 Spokane County 81 State Lands 14 Stevens County 83 Stock Raising 24 Thurston County 85 Title Page 1 Transportation 27 Wahkiakum County 86 Walla Walla County 87 Water Power 15 Whatcom County 87 Whitman County 89 Yakima County 90 INDEX TO STATISTICAL APPENDIX. Assessed valuations by counties 102 Climatic tables 99-101 Federal lands, distribution by counties 98-99 State officers, boards and commissions 96 State lands, distribution by counties 97 Statistics of incorporated cities and towns 92-95 
47657	----	REPORT California Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Commission GOVERNOR J. N. GILLETT, Commissioner. J. A. FILCHER, FRANK WIGGINS, Governor's Representatives. 1910 [Illustration: CALIFORNIA STATE BUILDING, SEATTLE EXPOSITION, 1909] Report of GOVERNOR'S REPRESENTATIVES for California at Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition SACRAMENTO, CAL., DECEMBER 27, 1910. _To Hon. James N. Gillett, Governor of California, and Ex-Officio Commissioner Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition._ _Dear Sir_:-- As your Representatives, charged with the details of California's representation at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held at Seattle, Washington, from June 1st to October 15th, 1909, inclusive, we take pleasure in submitting to you the following report of our work. It was right that California should aid and participate in a Western Exposition, and it was wise to make the appropriation for the purpose sufficient to insure a creditable representation of the State's resources. Accordingly, on your recommendation, the Legislature of 1907, set apart from the General Fund the sum of $100,000, and authorized you, as Commissioner for California, through such Representatives as it might be your pleasure to appoint, to supervise the general expenditure of the appropriation in the erection of a suitable building on the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition grounds, and the collection and installation therein of such an exhibit as would do credit to the State, and exemplify in as striking and effective manner as possible the great variety and superior quality of California's products. REPRESENTATIVES. In accordance with the authority thus conferred it was your pleasure to appoint the undersigned to represent you in this work. You acted promptly and gave your Representatives ample time to take advantage of the seasons to secure samples of everything necessary for a complete display of the State's resources. To this one fact is due largely the greater completeness of the Seattle exhibit than any California had previously made. You also relieved your Representatives of possible embarrassment by allowing them to appoint their own assistants and fix their compensation and term of service. In the exercise of this authority preference was given to those best qualified to perform the work required, and the term of employment depended on efficiency and good behavior. No help was hired that was not absolutely necessary, and no one was kept on the pay-roll a moment longer than his or her services were required. In short, it was our determined purpose from the start to try and secure maximum results at a minimum cost in every department of the work, to the end that the final outcome might be an improvement on any previous effort made by California of a similar character. We considered this to be necessary, not only in deference to our own reputation, but more particularly for the credit and benefit of the State. You can understand if the display made at Seattle had been less complete or in any way less attractive than the one made at Portland, for instance, the impression created would be that those in charge were becoming careless, or that California was retrograding, a condition that would probably have resulted in as much harm as good, and largely or entirely neutralized the object of the Legislature in making the appropriation. IMPROVEMENT IMPERATIVE. We felt that we must improve on previous showings made by the State at other Expositions, or resign and ask that the responsibility be placed in other hands, or that the money be allowed to remain in the State Treasury. With a larger appropriation, corresponding with the larger expenditures in freight and numerous other items at Seattle as compared to Portland, the effort for an improved display would not have been difficult; but with the appropriation practically the same, considering the salvage benefit realized for Portland from California's exhibit the previous year at St. Louis, the planning, the economizing, the denials and the extra personal labor imposed in order to accomplish the desired result can never be fully appreciated, except by those who had immediate charge of the work. Those efforts were made the more difficult by reason of California's reputation for open handed hospitality, and the ever present consciousness that nothing must be done or left undone that might tend to impair that reputation. You can understand it is no easy task to maintain a show of generous hospitality all day, and then set up at night to figure out how you can do the same thing to-morrow without unduly impairing a limited revenue. BUILDING AND EXHIBITS SUPERIOR. But we did it. We built the best and second largest State Building ever erected at a World's Fair; we collected and installed the most complete and most attractive exhibit of California's resources that the State ever made; we maintained stereoptican lectures, gave out verbal information to all inquirers, and distributed attractive literature; we gave frequent receptions and dispensed true California hospitality; we filled the measure of our aim; we did what we believe the State expected us to do, and it is a proud moment now the work is ended and we are able to record the fact that we did it without exceeding the appropriation. THE CALIFORNIA BUILDING. The California building was of the Spanish renaissance style of architecture. The broad steps that led up to the five large arches which opened on to the wide portico or colonnade were eighty feet long, and through any of the five broad doors that fronted the arches visitors entered the main exhibition hall. This hall was one hundred and forty feet square with gallery on all four sides twenty-one feet high and thirty feet wide. Four flights of easy stairs, one at either corner, led to the spacious gallery. Light was diffused from side windows under the gallery and in the gallery high enough from the floor so as not to interfere with the wall for exhibit purposes, and from an iron-framed skylight sixty-four feet square. On either side of the main building and in line with the front there were wings thirty-two feet wide and thirty-five feet long. This gave a total frontage to the building of two hundred and ten feet, or a little more than two-thirds of an average city block. The wings were so arranged as to provide a lecture hall, offices, parlor, reception room, buffet, and living rooms for the Representatives and some of the employees. The structure as a whole presented an imposing appearance and was ideal for the purpose intended. It was designed and built by the State Engineering Department, with an occasional inspection by one of the Representatives. Builders figured on the plans and variously estimated the cost at from $50,000 to $56,000. We had asked for a building to cost not exceeding one-third of the appropriation. For a time we feared the dimensions would have to be reduced, but State Engineer Ellery, after figuring carefully on the job, expressed the opinion that he could erect the structure as planned for an amount pretty close to our figures. He was finally requested to go ahead with the work. He put one of his trusted superintendents in charge, hired his help by the day, and when completed as nearly as desired for exposition purposes, it was found to have cost, including preparation of grounds and finishing of lecture room, just $40,333.84, and it was better finished outside and more substantially constructed than Exposition buildings usually are. NOW A MUSEUM. As you are aware it has been deeded to the Washington University, on whose grounds the Exposition was held, and, barring accidents, will remain for many years as the University Museum building. THE GENERAL DISPLAY. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, CALIFORNIA EXHIBIT, SEATTLE, 1909 Center Piece or Fruit Palace] The installation would be tedious to describe, and we will not attempt it further than to say that harmony in color and arrangement was maintained throughout the building, all balancing from an imposing center-piece, or Product Palace, which was covered entirely with natural products of the State, including dried fruits, seeds, cereals, raisins, nuts, etc., so artistically arranged as to give the whole a very attractive appearance. This center-piece or palace was admitted to be not only the most beautiful feature of the California Building, but the most original, elaborate and artistic feature of the entire Exposition. The editor of _Illustrated Northwest Farm and Home_ visited the California Building during the early part of the Fair, and returning home gave expression to his impressions through the columns of his paper in these words: "In the California Building there is everything to delight the eye and the entertainers can talk English. The statuary and ornaments in fruits and nuts surpasses anything that the eye of man ever beheld. For instance; the representation of carvings over the finished woods are created of various kinds of fruits; at the entrance to the center-piece within the main building, are two life-size mountain lions made of peaches; a black knight mounted on a black horse, are made of California prunes; an elephant, full size, is made of California walnuts; a life-size cow is created of California almonds; a large black bear has California raisins for a robe; a lemon as large as a hogshead, is composed of California lemons." These were some of the fruit features designed to set off the general display and emphasize the products that composed them. But these were only incidental to the strong and imposing exhibit of all of California's material products. There was a generous display of processed fruits, including all varieties known to the State. The dried fruit department was strong and attractive, embracing three separate features, one of miscellaneous dried fruits, one of raisins and one of prunes. There were separate stands or features of wines, olive oil, pickled olives, mineral water, canned fruit, preserved fruit, vegetables, flowers, oranges, nuts, honey, beans, cereals, seeds, sugar, silk, wool, ostrich feathers, fibers, canned milk, canned fish, etc., etc., besides many suitable show cases containing samples of other products more delicate and less in quantity. There was a strong show of incubators and an attractive feature of borax. Models were shown, and in operation where practicable, of such articles or machinery as could not be accommodated otherwise, as for instance the working model of a complete gold dredge, manufactured especially for this exhibit by the Risdon Iron Works of San Francisco. MINING EXHIBIT. The Mining Department of the display on the main floor of the California Building was attractively installed and as complete as the State has ever made, being strong in the minerals in which we are strong, but embracing in all forty-four separate commercial varieties, including a strong showing of mineral oils and structural materials. A beautiful illuminated case of gold specimens and free gold ores from Siskiyou County, and an equally beautiful illuminated case of rough and cut gems from San Diego County, including gem jewelry, constituted very attractive features of the mineral department. The onyx and onyx ware from San Diego made a fine showing, as did also the large display of slate in all forms of utility from El Dorado. FORESTRY. The Forestry Department included all the commercial woods of the State and many that have a prospective value for cabinet purposes. The variety displayed in this feature was so great, the installation so attractive, and the quality of the raw and manufactured samples so superior, that the Jury readily awarded to it a Grand Prize, the highest recognition possible, and this in a State where forestry is a leading industry, and by a Jury composed largely of Washingtonians. This was a victory to be proud of. All the available space on the walls of the main exhibition hall was covered with enlarged views of California scenes and industries. THE GALLERY. [Illustration: SECTION OF ART GALLERY, CALIFORNIA EXHIBIT, SEATTLE, 1909] On the upper floor, one gallery (the front) was reserved for display pictures, a hotel information bureau and receptions, one for an exhibit of manufacturers' samples, one for Art, and one for Education. THE MANUFACTURERS' SAMPLES, while largely a new departure, constituted a very interesting and instructive feature. Even many Californians were surprised to learn that all of the articles found there were made in this State. Leather and leather goods, silk and silk fabrics and nautical instruments in this department, each were awarded the highest prize it was possible to obtain. FINE ARTS. The Art Display collected largely by Miss Evelyn Almond Withrow of San Francisco, as a labor of love, her services being gratuitous, as was her time in superintending the installation of the exhibit later, was freely admitted by those informed on such things to be the best and most complete representation of California art and handicraft ever brought together on any previous occasion either at home or abroad. It comprised nearly three hundred pictures, all the best work of the best artists in the State, besides busts of statuary, samples of modeling and eight large and specially designed show cases filled with beautiful samples of all classes of handiwork known to art. EDUCATION. Our Educational Display was the best and most complete ever made, and was very much the best exhibit of the kind at the Seattle Exposition. It was collected and superintended by Mr. Robert Furlong of San Rafael, an expert in this line of work, and embraced a representative showing of every department of California's educational system from the kindergarten to the university, not omitting the libraries and private educational institutions. There could be only one criticism to this department and that was its crowded condition, as there was too much material for the space that could be allowed for it. In an exhibit of products, quantity can be reduced without material detriment, but if one sample of an educational exhibit is left out, the work perhaps of some fond son or daughter whose parents may come looking for it, there is likely to be trouble. Nearly all portions of California contributed to this Department, making the display representative in every sense. OUR LOCATION AND GROUNDS. The California building, though some distance back from the main entrance, was on high ground and eligibly located as to attractive surroundings and accessibility. The grounds for so large a structure were necessarily extensive, and the work of clearing, leveling, sodding and planting these grounds involved an expenditure much greater than at previous expositions, where the grounds were smaller and required less preparatory work. Mr. Geo. C. Roeding of Fresno, our Superintendent of Horticulture, giving his talents and time, as did Miss Withrow, for the love of the work and the good he could do the State, collected from different nurseries in California two car loads of fruiting trees, flowering plants, palms and shrubs, and traveled to Seattle to personally superintend the work of converting these grounds into a typical California park, with clusters of palms, geranium beds and orange groves. It gave to the Exposition a semi-tropic feature which visitors greatly enjoyed, and which was highly appreciated by the Exposition management as a rare and valuable acquisition to their already beautiful landscape effects. It might be said, however, that the citrus trees and other tender plants did not thrive well even in the Seattle summer, and though the grounds thus planted, as a side attraction and subject of favorable comment, were perhaps worth all they cost, yet they were not so beautiful as they would have been under more favorable climatic conditions. Mr. Roeding's work in the department was prompted by love of his art and pride in his State. He contributed liberally from his own nurseries and gave time and technical assistance that money could hardly have bought, and for his unstinted services, not only your Representatives, but all Californians, owe him a debt of lasting gratitude. COUNTY AID. Striving to obtain the best exhibit possible with the means available, your Representatives early solicited the co-operation of all the counties of California, offering in return for their efforts such distinctive representation as the merits of their respective products would warrant, consistent with a general harmonious plan of installation. Some responded very generously, others modestly and some not at all. On the whole, however, the help from counties was very material, particularly the services of their respective representatives in entertaining visitors to the California building and answering the constant flow of questions provoked by an inspection of the exhibits. Those counties that supported one or more representatives at the Exposition and which contributed more or less to the general display were, San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Alameda, San Francisco, Tulare, Sacramento and Siskiyou. Material was contributed by Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin, Monterey, Santa Clara, and here and there a little from others, but none of these latter maintained a representative, while some of those first named had at least two people with us all the time. It can be readily understood that with the regular State employees, reenforced by all the county representatives indicated, selected generally by reason of their especial qualifications for the position, the California force was very strong, and if any one visited the building and left without learning all he or she wanted to know about our State, or any part or industry thereof, it was because they did not make the desire for such information known. The work of the able floor representatives and lecturers was strongly reenforced by a well equipped LITERATURE BUREAU. A neat booth with spacious counter was provided at a prominent and convenient place in the building and well supplied with attractive literature all the time, free to all comers. In addition to the State book, a large edition of which was compiled and published at the expense of the appropriation, and which, we desire to say here, was as comprehensive a publication on California as was ever gotten out, nearly every progressive county contributed to the supply, thus making it possible to meet the eager demand that always exists for information regarding this State. Altogether from first to last we estimate that more than a car load of literature was handed out from our literature booth or given to visitors by those on the floor, and yet no one was ever asked to take a line who had not previously expressed a desire for it. If you force literature on people much of it is thrown away as soon as they are out of your sight. If put within convenient reach people take what they want and no more, and what they want they keep. No California literature was thrown away. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, CALIFORNIA EXHIBIT, SEATTLE, 1909] THE FREE ILLUSTRATED LECTURES were a strong reenforcement to the literature. These lectures were given by the different County Representatives in a hall built and equipped by the State especially for the purpose, and which opened off the main exhibition room. The number of lectures varied from nine to twelve a day, each occupying half an hour, twenty-five minutes for the talk and five minutes to empty and re-fill the hall. They were a popular feature and always well patronized, and their far-reaching and convincing lessons will be realized in benefits to California, and especially to the sections represented, for many years to come. A new departure in Exposition work was the maintenance in the California building of a California HOTEL INFORMATION BUREAU. Room and accommodations were gladly given for this feature, which, however, was maintained at the expense of certain contributing hotels that represented practically all important centers of the State. It relieved your Representatives of the duty of supplying information in this particular line of inquiry and insured the work being done better than it could have been otherwise. DEMONSTRATING BOOTHS were maintained in the California Building by a number of exhibitors to whom we were pleased to give space for the purpose, as experience teaches that one of the most effective ways of impressing the merits of any particular article is to prove its value by sample. Our preserved fruits, our canned mackerel and our borax products were shown and sampled from artistic booths, while beans, wine, olive oil and other products were demonstrated as occasion required but in a more modest way. HOSTESSES. Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Filcher who had served so successfully as hostesses at the St. Louis Exposition and at the Portland Exposition, were installed as hostesses of the California Building at Seattle, the compensation to be determined after the close of the Exposition when our financial condition would be better understood, they agreeing in advance to abide by the outcome. This arrangement was an incentive to extra economy on their part, and it may be said they seconded every effort of your Representatives in that direction, and yet they maintained California's reputation for hospitality admirably, and became favorites in the large Hostesses' Association of the Exposition, of which Mrs. Wiggins was one of the leading officials. SECRETARY. Mr. Geo. A. Dennison, who had a long prior record with the State Board of Trade, and who served us so efficiently as Secretary at St. Louis and at Portland, was appointed Secretary at Seattle, and remained with us to the close of our work. In this connection it may be said that other State Representatives had as their office force a secretary, a bookkeeper and a stenographer. Mr. Dennison, possessing the qualifications, filled all three of those positions for California, and being an expert in each branch filled them all with marked efficiency. ATTENDANCE. The splendid exhibit made by California proved one of the principal attractions of the Exposition. It became to be the general remark that if you did not see the Government exhibit and the California exhibit you did not see the show. As a consequence all who attended the Exposition visited the California building, and as may be supposed, we had a crowd passing through the exhibits all the time the building was open. The average attendance at the Exposition was close to 25,000 a day; allowing that each visitor spent two days on the grounds, and that in one of the two days practically all visited our building, it may be estimated that the number who inspected the California exhibits daily was about 12,000. This we believe is a fair estimate. CALIFORNIA VISITORS. We had a separate card register for visitors from this State, and it will surprise you perhaps to learn that the number of Californians who registered with us averaged nearly two hundred a day, or twelve hundred a week. In one day during the height of the season we registered 372 people from our home State. It is not only possible, but very probable, that many come and went without registering; making allowance for these, and figuring those who did register at 1,200 a week, and counting twenty weeks for the Fair (19 weeks and 5 days to be exact), we estimate the number of Californians who attended the Seattle Exposition at 25,000. AWARDS. If other evidence were wanting to establish the claim that the Seattle exhibit was the best and most complete ever made by California, it would be found in the record of prizes won by this State. In proportion to the number of entries we not only beat all the other States in the number of high awards, but we beat all past records made by California, and this in face of the fact that the juries as a rule set a high standard and were very critical in their examinations. California's greatest total premiums at any previous Exposition was 518, while at Seattle the total was 800. To win gold medals or higher on half the entries is considered a remarkable record, and yet out of the total of 800 at Seattle, 90 were grand prizes, an award only made in case of extraordinary excellence, 414 were gold medals, 155 silver medals, 108 bronze medals and 33 honorable mentions. A careful analysis by one who understands what is required to win a high award at an International Exposition and what it stands for, will show at once that this is a most extraordinary record, one which we confidently believe has never been equalled by any State or country at any Exposition in the world, and one which is not likely to be equalled except possibly by California itself, for many years to come. It will be noticed from the detailed list of the awards, which follows in this report, that they are well distributed throughout the State, nearly every locality and every industry sharing in the honors, a further evidence of the representative character of the exhibit. SALVAGE. At the close of the Exposition we took sufficient time to safely pack all material that had to be returned and to label it carefully so as to facilitate its distribution in California. In the meantime we sold some of the edible goods and some on order we turned over to local agents of the owners. All money received therefor has been remitted to the parties who furnished the articles and receipts received for the same. The furniture, fixtures and other material which belonged to the State and which we deemed it advisable to sell, was disposed of to the best advantage possible, considering the great quantity of this class of goods that were being thrown on the market. From this source we realized the sum of $5,135.16. From rent of soft drink stand in the building we realized the sum of $300.00, and from the sale of building $750.00, making the total salvage exclusive of building $5,435.16, which is fully accounted for in the financial statement which follows in this report. The $750.00 received for the building was turned over to the State Printer on account and never passed through our hands. [Illustration: THE ALMOND COW, LIFE SIZE, CALIFORNIA EXHIBIT, SEATTLE, 1909] MATERIAL ON HAND. There was certain office furniture which it was deemed unwise to sacrifice, and some permanent exhibition material that is worth more to the State for future expositions than any amount that could be realized from it at a forced sale. Consequently this material was returned and the furniture has been turned over to the State Agricultural Society and the exhibition material has been stored in a shed which we built for the purpose on the grounds of the State Agricultural Society. The latter consists of eight mineral show cases, a collection of California ores and mineral specimens, a large assortment of California woods, including burls and rare specimens, a lot of framed and unframed pictures of California scenes and industries, and about 500 glass jars, most of which are filled with seeds, cereals, sugar or processed fruits. The furniture returned at 50 cents on the dollar, the usual selling price at an Exposition of good material, is worth $75.00, the showcases $425.00, exhibit material, estimated at half what it would cost to collect it, $2,000.00, and the glass jars $1,000.00. This totals a heritage to the State from the Seattle Exposition of $3,500.00. This will be available and worth even more than the sum stated whenever the State desires to make another exhibition. BENEFITS TO CALIFORNIA. Summing up the benefits of an exhibit is a good deal like a merchant trying to estimate the good derived from a sign over his door. Occasionally a patron may say, "I saw your sign and came in," and occasionally a party may say, "I saw your exhibit and it prompted me to come to California." The money dropped from travelers alone who passed through this State going to or returning from the Exposition, has probably recompensed California for its outlay, but this is only the beginning of the harvest. Many people from the eastern and central States who visited the Exposition with a view of ascertaining in which part of the Northwest it would be best to settle, changed their minds after seeing the exhibits made by the different States and came on to California. Besides, thousands of others already settled, after inspecting the exhibits made by this State, openly declared that if they ever moved again they would land in California. The tons of literature on this State carried away by visitors to supplement and strengthen their impressions, both impressions and literature to be disseminated among their neighbors, will have an effect that cannot be estimated, but which must inevitably bear fruit for California for many years to come. Then again, the seeing of our splendid products naturally excites a desire to try them, and the increased demand for our fruits, oil, wines, etc., growing out of such a display, is far-reaching. But more than all this, the greater intercourse, the better acquaintance, the more friendly feeling between the people of the different sections of the country, and particularly of the west, and more particularly between the people of this State and Washington, or Oregon and Washington, if you please, is bound to lead to a better understanding in regard to trade relations and result in commercial benefits that cannot be estimated. That the participation of California was wise there is no doubt, and that the benefits received and to be received will be many fold greater than the cost is as certain as the future. The follow-up letters that have already come to your Representatives from people of the Northwest and other sections who saw and inspected our exhibit, is further proof that an interest in this State has been awakened among them that will not soon die out. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We are under obligations to so many that it would be tedious to enumerate them. The higher officials of the Exposition, President J. E. Chilberg, Director-General I. A. Nadeau and Director of Exhibits H. E. Dosch, showed us every courtesy and manifested a desire to do all they could to facilitate our work; while from the other departments, and even from the subordinates in all departments, a request from California was promptly considered and always conceded when not inconsistent with the Exposition rules. There were differences at first, as is always the case, but on a better understanding these were adjusted to the satisfaction of all concerned. [Illustration: WALNUT ELEPHANT, LIFE SIZE, CALIFORNIA EXHIBIT, SEATTLE, 1909] The Southern Pacific Company and the Northern Pacific Company carried our freight at a one-way rate, and their respective agents were prompt and accommodating, setting a new mark for railroad efficiency at Expositions. The Southern Pacific Passenger Department also loaned us some very fine pictures of California scenes which were valuable not only as wall decorations but as object lessons on certain features of our State. To the Golden Gate Park officials of San Francisco, and also the officials of the Stockton State Hospital, we are under obligations for liberal contributions of ornamental plants and shrubs for the decoration of the California building and grounds. Mr. R. M. Teague of San Dimas and the Fancher Creek Nursery of Fresno, also contributed liberally of their choicest stock, for which we owe them a debt of gratitude. The same is true of J. Dietrich, Howard & Smith, Elysian Park and Edward H. Rust, all of Los Angeles, and of the Orange County Nursery & Land Co., of Fullerton. To the counties and other subdivisions of the State that through organized effort and at their own expense collected valuable exhibition material, prepared descriptive literature and sent representatives to Seattle, thereby strengthening the exhibit and adding to the force of California workers, we are under obligations. To their efforts and to the efficiency of the people they sent much of California's success at the Seattle Exposition is due, and we want them to know and feel that their efforts and co-operation are fully appreciated. To producers, manufacturers and packers, to lumbermen and miners, who responded to our request for samples of their output we owe a debt which we tried to pay in part by caring for their goods as they would have cared for them, and by looking out for their interests in the matter of awards as carefully as they could have done had they been there. In this connection we wish to express our obligation to the Niles-Pease Furniture Company for the generous loan of the finest art mission furniture for our reception room, to Byron Mauzy of San Francisco, the Star Piano Company and Salyer-Baumeister of Los Angeles, for the loan of pianos for the use of our guests, and to the Eilers Piano Company for the free use of a pianola for our lecture room. To Arthur Harris, designer, and to C. L. Wilson, Superintendent of Installation, both experts in their line, is due largely the attractive character of California's exhibit, admitted to be the most beautiful in arrangement and display, as well as the most comprehensive ever put up by this or any other State, at Seattle or any other Exposition. CONCLUSION. We do not hesitate to affirm that California's participation at the Seattle Exposition was a success from every point of view, and knowing our trust was conscientiously performed, and that our best efforts were exerted in the interest of our State, we dare to hope that you who trusted us are not disappointed, and that the people of California who generously advanced the money for the work are satisfied with the showing made, and that they will reap substantial and lasting benefit as the result of their enterprise and liberality. We want to thank you sincerely for the confidence reposed in us, for your kindly co-operation and advise, and particularly for the generous rein given to us in carrying out a work for which you, in the eyes of the law, were primarily responsible. Our studied efforts were continually directed toward trying to get the greatest results at the least cost, for, though handling a generous appropriation, we never lost sight of the fact that it was the people's money, and consequently we consented to the expenditure of a dollar only where in our judgement a dollar's worth or more benefit would accrue to California; neither did we lose sight of the high standard which has characterized your course in the handling of public affairs. We acted on the principle that public office is a public trust, and that public money should be handled with greater care than one would handle his own. The following pages contain a complete list of the awards made to California exhibitors and a statement of all moneys received and expended, and accompanying this report we hand you the vouchers showing all our transactions and just how the money was expended. We have settled every honorable claim, we have concluded the work in full, even to the distribution of the awards, and if there is a dollar left to go back into the Treasury it is because that dollar was not needed for the full satisfaction of the duties imposed. Respectfully, J. A. FILCHER, FRANK WIGGINS, Governor's Representatives. FINANCIAL STATEMENT CALIFORNIA ALASKA-YUKON-PACIFIC EXPOSITION COMMISSION October 1, 1907, to December 27, 1910. State of California $99,500.00 Salvage 5,435.16 Office Supplies $ 487.23 Postage 321.45 Telephone and Telegraph 248.04 Drayage 2,173.44 Express and Freight 5,579.11 Building Maintenance 3,250.96 Printing 1,639.30 Furniture and Fixture 4,294.74 Miscellaneous 3,361.95 J. A. Filcher, Salary 3,930.00 J. A. Filcher, Expense 1,319.99 Frank Wiggins, Salary 1,625.00 Frank Wiggins, Expense 705.87 G. A. Dennison, Salary 3,100.00 G. A. Dennison, Expense 838.35 Employees' Salary 10,264.60 Employees' Expense 1,570.66 Rent 763.03 Exhibit Material 8,205.03 Installation 10,829.55 California Building 40,333.84 Returned to A. B. Nye, State Controller 93.02 ----------- ----------- $104,935.16 $104,935.16 LIST OF AWARDS MADE TO CALIFORNIA EXHIBITORS Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, 1909 GRAND PRIZES EXHIBITOR ADDRESS AWARD ON-- A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Brandy 3 star. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Chateau Cresta Blanca. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine Co. San Francisco Mesa Blanca Wine. The Rosenblatt Company San Francisco Apricot Brandy. Italian Swiss Colony San Francisco Asti Special Wine. St. Elmo Cigar Co. Los Angeles Cigars. F. L. Hogue Santa Barbara Beans. F. L. Hogue Santa Barbara Mustard Seed. Lovdal Bros. Co. Sacramento Hops. San Joaquin Co. Stockton Grains and milling products. State of California Sacramento Assorted cereals. Ventura County Lima beans. John J. Sommans Pasadena Cut glass. San Francisco Keramic San Francisco Display hand decorated Club china. Bertha and Ellen Berkeley Hand decorated china. Kleinschmidt State of California Sacramento Gen'l collection woods and burls. State of California Sacramento Gen'l collection commercial and cabinet woods. Cawston Ostrich Farm Pasadena Ostrich feathers. Carlson-Currier Silk Co. San Francisco General display silks. Los Angeles Silk Works Los Angeles "Yard wide" silk. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Silk and cocoon exhibit. Alameda County Oakland Processed vegetables. California Nursery Niles 78 varieties nuts, grown in one nursery. San Diego County San Diego Processed fruit in glass. W. D. Nichols Oakland Processed flowers. Sacramento Valley Gen'l display processed fruits and vegetables. Fred L. Hilmer Co. San Francisco Eggs. Petaluma Incubator Co. Petaluma Gen'l display incubators and brooders. State of California Sacramento Installation mineral exhibit. State of California Sacramento Gen'l installation of State bldg. State of California Sacramento Installation of fruit palace. Brawley Cantaloupe Ass'n Cantaloupes. Los Nietos Ranchito Rivera Walnuts. Walnut Growers Ass'n C. W. Leffingwell Whittier Lemons. Los Angeles Chamber Processed fruit in glass. of Com Tulare County Board Fruits through season. of Trade Cal. Fruit Growers Los Angeles Oranges. Exchange E. B. Leach Lemons. State of California Sacramento Fruit and vegetables in glass. State of California Sacramento Almonds. California Cotton Oakland Raw and manufactured cotton. Mills Co. Johnston Fruits Co. Santa Barbara Lemons. Pacific Electric Los Angeles Hot point electric iron. Heating Co. State of California Sacramento Processed fruit and vegetables. Holmes Disappearing Los Angeles Sanitary conditions. Bed Co. San Diego County San Diego Gem exhibit. Cal. Public School System General education display. Santa Barbara County English walnuts. San Diego County Display of nuts. Raymond Glove Co. Stockton Manufactured gloves. Wagner Leather Co. Stockton Tanned leather. Champion Manufacturing Oakland Aut-O-Lac leather dressing. Co. Walsh-Richardson Co. Sacramento Saddles. Gertrude Boyle San Francisco Sculpture. Clara Hill San Francisco Sculpture. A. Stirling Calder Los Angeles Sculpture. Rosa G. Taussig San Francisco Bookbinding. Western Art Tile Co. Los Angeles Art tile. State of California Sacramento Beet sugar. California Dried Fruit Fresno Dried fruits. Agency Santa Clara Co. Fruit Assorted dried fruits. Exchange Fresno Chamber of Commerce Seeded raisins. Fresno County Artistic display of raisins. Alpine Evaporated Cream Hollister Evaporated milk. Co. Roeding Fig Packing Co. Fresno Dried figs and preserved figs in glass. American Olive Co. Los Angeles Ripe olives. Ehmann Olive Co. Oroville Ripe olives. American Olive Co. Los Angeles Olive oil. Griffin & Skelly Co. San Francisco Assorted canned and preserved fruits. Cal. Fruit Canners San Francisco Assorted canned and Association preserved fruits. The J. H. Flickinger Co. San Jose Assorted canned fruits. Central California Sacramento Assorted canned fruits. Canneries Ewell & Russell Santa Cruz Jellies, preserves & marmalades. Bishop & Co. Los Angeles Preserved fruits. G. H. Waters & Co. Ramona Canned fruits. Octavia Holden San Francisco Bookbinding. State of California Sacramento General collection of gold ores. State of California Sacramento General display minerals. New Pedrara Mexican San Diego Onyx display. Onyx Co. Siskiyou County Gold ores, placer and leaf gold and gold specimens. A. Lietz Co. San Francisco Surveying and nautical instruments. Pacific Coast Borax Co. Oakland Borax, raw and refined, and its product for medical and domestic use. Hicks-Judd Co. San Francisco Display bookbinding & printing. State of California Sacramento California Public Schools System. Los Angeles Pressed Pressed and glazed brick. Brick Co. State of California Sacramento Variety of woods and finish. Ehmann Olive Co. Oroville Olive oil. Siskiyou County Yreka Indian basketry & Indian relics. State of California Sacramento Display of arts and crafts. Chas. Frederick Eaton Santa Barbara Arts and crafts. Chas. Frank Ingerson San Francisco Modeled leather screen. G. Kellogg Claxton San Francisco Metal art work and jewelry. State of California Sacramento Collective display oil paintings. Goddard Gale Oakland Water colors. Rose Hooper Plottner San Francisco Miniatures. GOLD MEDALS EXHIBITOR ADDRESS AWARD ON-- El Quito Olive & Vine Santa Clara Claret. Farm C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Lomas Azules (Chateau Yquem). C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Semillon. C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Burgundy. C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Cabernet Sauvignon. C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Sherry. C. Shilling & Co. San Francisco Cabernet. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Burgundy. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Zinfandel. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Riesling. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco White Tipo. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Chablis. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Haut Sauterne. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Sauterne. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Cabernet. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Claret. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Tipo Red. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Tokay. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Sherry. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Port. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Muscat. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Madeira. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Angelica. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Isco Grape Juice, white. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Isco Grape Juice, red. Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Sparkling wine (Burgundy). Italian-Swiss Colony San Francisco Grape brandy. George Bram Santa Cruz Zinfandel. George Bram Santa Cruz Riesling. George Bram Santa Cruz Burgundy. To-Kalon Vineyard Co. Oakville Riesling. To-Kalon Vineyard Co. Oakville Burgundy. To-Kalon Vineyard Co. Oakville Zinfandel. To-Kalon Vineyard Co. Oakville Sauterne. To-Kalon Vineyard Co. Oakville Chablis. H. Jevene Los Angeles Sauterne. H. Jevene Los Angeles Sherry. H. Jevene Los Angeles Port. A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Cavaliera (Moselle). A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Sauterne. A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Mirando (Burgundy). A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Rubi Bueno (St. Julien). A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Chablis. A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Sparkling wine (Burgundy). A. Repsold & Co. San Francisco Sparkling wine (Sauterne). Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Sauterne. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Haut Sauterne. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Margaux Souvenir. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco St. Julien. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Sparkling Cresta Blanca, Saut. Wetmore-Bowen Co. San Francisco Sparkling Cresta Blanca, Burg. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Cabinet Riesling. Co. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Rodensteiner wine. Co. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Cabinet Gutedel. Co. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Santa Maria (Burgundy). Co. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Chateau Gundlach Co. (St. Julien). Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Loma Prieta (Medoc). Co. Gundlach-Bundschu Wine San Francisco Bacchus Chambertin Co. (Burg'dy). The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Zinfandel. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Port. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Blackberry Cordial. Sunset Wine Co. Los Angeles Tokay. Sunset Wine Co. Los Angeles Port. Sunset Wine Co. Los Angeles Madeira. Sunset Wine Co. Los Angeles Angelica. Italian Vineyard Co. Los Angeles Port. Italian Vineyard Co. Los Angeles Sherry. Italian Vineyard Co. Los Angeles Angelica. Italian Vineyard Co. Los Angeles Muscat. Italian Vineyard Co. Los Angeles Claret. Lachman & Jacobi San Francisco Sherry. Lachman & Jacobi San Francisco Port. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Zinfandel. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Haut Sauterne. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Cerrito (Sauterne). California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Claret. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Burgundy. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco La Loma (Burgundy). California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Hillcrest. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Port. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Sherry. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Muscat. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Malaga. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Madeira. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Angelica. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Brandy. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco California Wine. California Wine Ass'n San Francisco Sauterne Type. California Winery Sacramento Cala-Sauterne. California Winery Sacramento Cala-Claret. California Winery Sacramento Cordova Burgundy. California Winery Sacramento Zinfandel. California Winery Sacramento Angelica. California Winery Sacramento Sherry. California Winery Sacramento Port. Theodore Gier Oakland Riesling. Theodore Gier Oakland Sauterne. Theodore Gier Oakland Burgundy. Theodore Gier Oakland Zinfandel. Theodore Gier Oakland Port. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Sauterne. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Sherry. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Port. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Cognac. Geo. West & Sons Stockton Sauterne. Geo. West & Sons Stockton Claret. Edward Germain Wine Co. Los Angeles Sherry. Edward Germain Wine Co. Los Angeles Tokay. Edward Germain Wine Co. Los Angeles Port. Sierra Madre Vintage Co. Lamanda Port. Buffalo Brewing Co. Sacramento Beer. S. Martinelli Watsonville Apple cider. Upper Soda Mineral Dunsmuir Mineral water. Springs Co. Bartlett Springs Co. Bartlett Springs Mineral water. Meander Bros Yreka Mineral water. Aetna Springs Co. Aetna Springs Mineral water. Shasta Water Co. Shasta Springs Mineral water. Cooks Springs Min'l Williams Mineral water. Water Co. Thos. P. Converse & Co. San Diego Mineral water. Witter Medical Springs San Francisco Mineral water. Co. G. Russo Los Angeles Tortoise shells. Mrs. Clarence Berry Los Angeles 2 Alaska Moose head chairs. Gibbs & Harris Los Angeles Leather suitcases. Mrs. Clarence Berry Los Angeles Beaver robe. Clarence J. Berry Los Angeles One mounted Moose head. Geo. Griffith Los Angeles Smudge pots and smudge fuel. Chamber of Commerce Santa Cruz 5 pieces of redwood tree. State of California Sacramento Industrial work. C. C. Morse & Co. San Francisco Assorted flower and garden seeds. J. R. Newberry Los Angeles Citron. I. V. Ralph & Co. Oakland Flavoring extracts, spices & coffee. Jones Bros. & Co. Santa Cruz Vinegar. Krieger Vinegar Co. Santa Cruz Vinegar. Royal Packing Co. Los Angeles Canned Chili peppers. Pioneer Green Chili Los Angeles Chili peppers. Pack'g Co. California Fish Co. Los Angeles Canned fish. Monterey Packing Co. San Francisco Canned fish. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Comb honey. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Extracted honey. I. W. Myers Oak Park Strained honey. L. D. Walker Sacramento Honey in jars. Bert Peters Sacramento Honey. Casper Hauser San Diego Honey. Sacramento Valley Sugar Hamilton Beet sugar. Co. American Sugar Co. Oxnard Beet sugar. Los Alamitos Sugar Co. Los Alamitos Beet sugar. Spreckels Sugar Co. San Francisco Beet sugar. Fairoaks Fruit Co. Fairoaks Pickled olives. C. M. Clifford San Diego Ripe olives. Akerman & Tuffley San Diego Ripe olives. Roeding Olive Co. Fresno Olive oil. J. C. Kubias Redlands Olive oil. Sanitary Fruit Co. Red Bluff Assorted dried fruits. Rosenberg Bros & Co. San Francisco Assorted dried fruits. J. K. Armsby & Co. San Francisco Assorted dried fruits. Castle Bros San Francisco Assorted dried fruits. Griffin & Skelly Co. San Francisco Assorted dried fruits. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Assorted dried fruits. Chico Packing Co. Chico Assorted dried fruits. Santa Clara Co. Fruit Prunes. Exchange Ewell & Russell Santa Cruz Dried apples. Fresno Home Packing Co. Fresno Raisins. Guggenhime & Co. Fresno Raisins. Griffin & Skelly Co. Fresno Raisins. J. B. Inderrieden Fresno Raisins. Willis Pike Fresno Raisins. Phoenix Packing Co. Fresno Seeded raisins. Castle Brothers Fresno Seeded raisins. Rosenberg Bros & Co. Fresno Seeded raisins. S. Hassli Lincoln Zante currants. F. F. Stetson & Co. Los Angeles Canned fruits. Mrs. M. Wagstaff Orloff Assorted fruit jams. Code-Portwood Canning Co. Fruitvale Fruit, jellies, jams in glass & tins. H. P. D. Kingsbury Redlands Marmalade, jams, etc. Cal. Fruit Canners San Francisco Canned asparagus. Association Central California Sacramento Canned asparagus. Canneries I. V. Ralph & Co. Oakland Olive oil. Los Angeles Olive Olive oil. Growers Ass'n H. Jevene Los Angeles Olive oil. C. M. Gifford San Diego Olive oil. Fairoaks Fruit Co. Fairoaks Olive oil. El Quito Olive & Vine Santa Clara Olive oil. Farm Akerman & Tuffley San Diego Olive oil. Birdsall Olive Co. Auburn Olive oil. J. T. Bears Tulare Grapes. H. R. Shoemaker Tulare Oranges. C. E. Berg Tulare Grapes. Cal. Fruit Growers Los Angeles Grapes. Exchange Limoneira Company Santa Paula Lemons. Ventura Co. Walnut Walnuts. Growers Ass'n Maywood Colony Corning Peaches. J. A. Davidson Vegetables. J. M. Eddy Stockton Fruit in season. Lemon Grove Fruit Oranges. Growers Ass'n San Diego County Nuts. W. L. Detrick Julian Apples. B. F. Miller Apples. Loveless Fruit Co. Escondido Citrus fruits and grapes. Sweetwater Fruit Co. San Diego Citrus fruit. Arlington Heights Fruit Arlington H'ts Lemons. Exchange E. W. Brewer Orange Peanuts. J. C. Ostegard Burbank Melons. J. J. H. Jarchow San Gabriel Oranges. Rivers Bros Los Angeles Grapes. Azusa Covina Glendora Glendora Oranges. Fruit Exchange Chas. Rosquenish Clearwater Onions. A. P. Griffiths Azusa Citrus fruits. F. C. Anderson Newcastle Fruit in season. State of California Sacramento 4 paintings showing the four important industries of the State. Pioneer Fruit Co. Sacramento Fruit. Chamber of Commerce Watsonville Apples. A. McGee Orangevale Grapes. California Vineyards Co. Florin Grapes. J. P. Dargitz Acampo Grapes. Warren Cozzens Fairoaks Citrus fruit. Arlington Heights Fruit Arlington H'ts Lemons. Exchange Byron Mauzy San Francisco Pianos. Starr Piano Co. Los Angeles Pianos. Pacific Vinegar & Pickle Oakland Vinegar, pickles, catsup and Works relishes. Pacific Manifold Book Co. Emeryville Blank books for mercantile use. W. D. Nichols Oakland Installation Alameda Co. exhibit. Harper & Emig Santa Clara Polished and unpolished beach pebbles from California. Fancher Creek Nursery Fresno Fig and citrus trees. H. Peterson San Francisco Model ranch. University of California Berkeley Assortment of seeds. C. S. Riley Visalia Spineless cactus. R. M. Teague San Dimas Citrus fruit trees. Ways Pocket Smelter Co. South Pasadena Ways pocket smelter. Chico Packing Co. Chico Assorted dried fruits. Los Angeles Pressed Los Angeles Pressed brick. Brick Co. Mrs. Harvey San Francisco Hand decorated china. Mrs. G. Dorn San Francisco Hand decorated china. Helen O'Malley San Francisco Hand decorated china. R. V. Bateman San Francisco Hand decorated china. S. V. Culp San Francisco Hand decorated china. O'Malley & Taylor San Francisco Hand decorated china. A. Haynes San Francisco Hand decorated china. Mrs. J. Peltier San Francisco Hand decorated china. A. Hinze San Francisco Hand decorated china. Emily Hesselmeyer San Francisco Hand decorated china. Minnie C. Taylor San Francisco Hand decorated china. Mrs. Harry Upton Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. C. P. Pailsback Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Isabella Hampton Los Angeles Hand decorated china. M. E. Perley Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Los Angeles Keramic Club Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. Elenor Kohler Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mary Leicester Wagner Santa Barbara Hand decorated china. Elwood Cooper Santa Barbara Olive oil. Indian Crafts Exhibit Los Angeles Indian crafts and blankets. Dr. Jarvis Barlow Los Angeles Sanatorium cottage. Santa Barbara County English walnut show. Tulare Co. Board of Trade Gen'l collection processed deciduous, citrus fruits, grapes and vegetables. Johnson, Musier & Co. Los Angeles Assortment beans, fresh cured. Tulare Co. Board of Trade Jar Phillips cling peaches; jar matured dates & bartlett pears. Alameda County Processed fruit. Santa Barbara County Processed fruit. W. B. Filcher Pacific Grove Processed fish. I. L. Ettlinger Sacramento Hemp in stalk and fiber. Eucalyptus Timber Co. Los Angeles Collection eucalyptus woods. International Eucalyptus Sacramento Eucalyptus finished woods. Ass'n Mr. McAbee Redwood burl table top. Chamber of Commerce Santa Cruz Redwood burls. Chamber of Commerce Santa Cruz Sequoia Semper Virens tree. National Wood Pipe Co. Los Ang. & S. F. Redwood water and sewer pipe. State of California Sacramento Collection woods and burls. Hughes Manufacturing Co. Los Angeles Inlaid eucalyptus wood. Cooper Fly Book Co. San Francisco Handy fly books. Washington Creamery Co. Yreka Fresh butter. Edgewood Creamery Co. Yreka Fresh butter. Peerless Hone Co. Los Angeles Hones. Sacramento Ostrich Farm Sacramento Ostrich feathers. Co. Smith Bros. Los Angeles Fan lawn sprinkler. State of California Sacramento Installation of art exhibit. California Fruit Growers Los Angeles Installation of citrus Exchange fruits. State of California Sacramento Installation educational exhibit. State of California Sacramento Installation forestry and woods. Siskiyou Co. Yreka Installation Indian work & relics. California Nursery Co. Niles Loquats. Fancher Creek Nursery Fresno Grapes and figs. Chas. L. Wilson Los Angeles Lemons. James Slauson Los Angeles Oranges. Lemon Cove Ass'n Lemoncove Pomelos. Capital Paste Co. Sacramento Macaroni. Citrus Product Co. San Diego Citric acid and lemon oil. Dento Table Salt Co. Stockton Dento salt. Bishop & Co. Los Angeles Condiments. Bishop & Co. Los Angeles Crystallized fruits. Bishop & Co. Los Angeles Peanut butter. Cal. Fruit Canners San Francisco Tomato catsup. Association Walsh-Richardson Co. Sacramento Carved leather goods. Gibbs & Harris Los Angeles Rattan and leather suitcases. Zuver Bros. & Davison Oakland Manufactured leather gloves. Allen C. Rush Los Angeles Oil burners. Waltz Safe & Lock Co. San Francisco Fireproof safe. Julius Harkell San Diego Showcases. International Eucalyptus Sacramento Manuf'd eucalyptus Ass'n furniture. Pacific Coast Rattan Co. Oakland Rattan furniture. Pease Brothers Los Angeles Mission furniture. Arthur Harris Los Angeles Combina'n settee & library desk. Beach-Robinson Co. San Francisco Fine handmade chair. Idah Meacham Strobridge Los Angeles Bookbinding. Douglas Tilden San Francisco Sculpture. Florence Manor San Francisco Sculpture. Emilie S. Perry Los Angeles Sculpture. Frank F. Stone Los Angeles Sculpture. Pacific Shade Cloth Co. Oakland Eureka handmade shade cloth. Reese Water Proof Co. Fruitvale Waterproof garments. Dolge Manufacturing Co. Dolgeville Manufactured felt and felt goods. Pioneer Hosiery Mills Los Angeles Knitted products. State of California Sacramento Crude petroleum. State of California Sacramento Quicksilver ores. Woodstone Flooring Co. Los Angeles Woodstone. Siskiyou County Ores and minerals, and free milling, including copper and cinnabar. Phoenix Refining Mineral oils. & Mfg. Co. Eureka Slate Co. Slatington Slate roofing and tiling, slate and manufactured articles. Risdon Iron Works San Francisco Gold dredger. F. W. Braun & Co. Los Angeles Assayers appliances. Champion Manufacturing Oakland Washing tablets. Co. Try-Me-Meade Brass San Diego "Try-Me-Meade" brass polish. Polish Co. Smith Bros. Hardware Co. Oakland Metal polish. Diamond Match Co. Chico Assorted matches. Los Angeles Soap Co. Los Angeles Toilet soap. Lemola Soap Co. Los Angeles Lemola soap. Citrus Soap Co. San Diego Citrus washing powder. Hills Brothers San Francisco Canned butter. Patto Creamery Co. Yreka Full cream cheese. W. D. Nickels San Diego El Cajon raisin display. John C. Dickson San Diego Raisins. Chas. Galloway San Diego Raisins. A. S. Hopkins Sacramento Brooms. Gladding, McBean & Co. San Francisco Colored terra cotta supports. Foard A. Carpenter San Diego Climatological exhibit. Sugar & White Pine Agency San Francisco Assorted & manufactured doors in sugar pine. Diamond Match Co. Chico Assorted veneers. State of California Sacramento Ornamental tiling. Redwood Manufacturers San Francisco Manufactured doors, Ass'n commercial redwood, planks and bark. Diamond Match Co. Chico Finished doors. Allen C. Rush Los Angeles Oil burner for railway locomotives. Vesta Smith Los Angeles Arts and crafts. Milward Holden San Francisco Carved wood. Mrs. Elizabeth Burton Santa Barbara Arts and crafts. R. G. Kiesling Los Angeles Carved wood. Fred Lueders Pasadena Arts and crafts. Kathryn Rucker Los Angeles Table mat. Mrs. A. C. Perkins San Francisco Pin cushion top. The Campaneros Santa Rosa Modeled leather. Bertha and Ellen Berkeley Modeled leather. Kleinschmidt Chas. Frank Ingerson San Francisco Modeled leather. Van Erp & Robertson Oakland Arts and crafts. Eulora M. Jennings Berkeley Hand wrought jewelry. Katharine B. Gorrill Berkeley Metal art work and jewelry. Henry Busse Los Angeles Leather and metal work. Arnold Genthe San Francisco Art photography. State of California Sacramento Collection scenic and industrial photographs and bromide enlargements. Putnam & Valentine Los Angeles Photographs. C. C. Pierce & Co. Los Angeles Photographs. Board of Trade Pasadena Photographs. San Diego County San Diego Photographs. Siskiyou Co. Yreka Panoramic photographs. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Scenic album. California Hotel Exhibit San Francisco Display hotel pictures. C. I. Ishiguro Tri-colored photography. Allen C. Rush Los Angeles System burning crude oil. E. A. Meacham Riverside Security ladders--strength and utility. State of California Sacramento Lithograph stone. Anna Brigman Berkeley Art photography. C. P. Bailey & Sons San Jose Angora goat rugs, gloves, etc. Santa Barbara County Grains. Marysville Wool Marysville Wool in cleaning process. Scouring Co. Ennis Brown Co. Sacramento Beans. Pacific Fertilizer Co. Oakland Fertilizer, bone meal, chemicals, poultry food. Riverside County Model of irrigated orchard. Sacramento Valley Japanese rice. Los Angeles Farming Los Angeles Wheat and barley. & Milling Co. Imperial Chamber Wheat and barley. of Commerce E. Clemens Horst Co. San Francisco Hops. Thompson & Barnes Santa Rosa Hops. F. W. Braun Los Angeles Hand fumigating outfit. Ventura County Lima beanstraw. Electric Iron Co. Shasta County Pig iron smelted by electricity. State of California Sacramento Lithia ore. Simpson & Poinie San Diego Granite. San Francisco School art work. Public Schools California School of San Francisco Drawing and industrial work. Mechanical Arts California Polytechnic San Francisco Industrial work. School Cogswell Polytechnical San Francisco Industrial work College & photographs. University of California Berkeley Transparencies showing University building activities, etc. Oakland Public High Oakland School art and industrial Schools work. Oakland Public Oakland School art and industrial Elementary Schools work. San Rafael High School San Rafael Relief map. Palo Alto Public Schools Palo Alto Display art and industrial work. State Normal School San Jose Model of Parthenon, students work. Stockton Public Elementary Schools General school exhibit. Stockton Public High Schools General school exhibit. Fresno Public Schools School, industrial and art work. Kern County Public Schools School photographs, drawings and botanical collections. Los Angeles Public Schools School, art and industrial work. Los Angeles Polytechnic School Art and industrial work. Long Beach High School Art and industrial work. Santa Ana Public Schools School, art and industrial work. Redlands Public Schools Drawing and industrial work. State Normal School San Diego School, art and industrial work. State of California Sacramento Installation art exhibit. William Keith Berkeley Oil paintings. Bruce Porter San Francisco Oil paintings. Joseph Greenebaum Los Angeles Oil paintings. J. Bond Francisco Los Angeles Oil paintings. Edwin Deakin Berkeley Oil paintings. Chris Jorgenson San Francisco Oil paintings. John M. Gamble Santa Barbara Oil paintings. R. L. Partington Berkeley Oil paintings. G. Cadanasso San Francisco Oil paintings. Jean Mannheim Los Angeles Oil paintings. Oscar Kunath Los Angeles Oil paintings. Mme. H. Heynsen-Jahn Los Angeles Oil paintings. Alexander Harmer Santa Barbara Oil paintings. Theodore Wores San Francisco Oil paintings. Fred Yates San Francisco Oil paintings. H. J. Breuer San Francisco Oil paintings. Chas. Rollo Peters San Francisco Oil paintings. Henry Raschen San Francisco Oil paintings. Niels Hagerup San Francisco Oil paintings. Wm. L. Judson Los Angeles Oil paintings. Emil Carlsen San Francisco Oil paintings. Francis E. Duval Los Angeles Oil paintings. Helen Hyde San Francisco Japanese prints. Fannie E. Nute Los Angeles Miniatures. L. Prather Waterbury Redlands Miniatures. Lillie V. O'Ryan San Francisco Miniatures. SILVER MEDALS EXHIBITOR ADDRESS AWARD ON-- State of California Sacramento Topographical map of San Francisco bay. State of California Sacramento Plan of traveling libraries and photographs. Sacramento Public Schools Display industrial training. State Normal School Chico Art and industrial work. Berkeley Public Schools School art work. State Institute for Berkeley Industrial work. Deaf & Blind Sonoma County Public Santa Rosa School, industrial and art Schools work. Monterey Public Schools School, art and industrial work, and elementary science collection. Ventura County Public Schools School, industrial and art work. Wilmerding School of Industrial Art School, art and industrial work. State Normal School Los Angeles Statistical chart, photographs and catalogues. Whittier State School Industrial work. Pasadena Public Schools School, art and industrial work. San Diego County Relief map of San Diego County. San Diego Co. Public Schools Photographs and elementary science collections. San Bernardino Co. Pub. Schools School, industrial and art work. F. Thompson Santa Cruz Yellow calla lillies. Justinian Caire Co. San Francisco Assayers' laboratory supplies. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Zinfandel. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco El Molino. Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. San Francisco Johannisburg Riesling. Lachman & Jacobi San Francisco Sauterne. Lachman & Jacobi San Francisco Riesling. Lachman & Jacobi San Francisco Cabernet. H. Jevene Los Angeles Riesling. California Wine San Francisco Gutedel. Association California Wine San Francisco Hock. Association California Winery Sacramento Riesling. Sunset Wine Co. Los Angeles Sauterne. Edward Germain Wine Co. Los Angeles Sauterne. Edward Germain Wine Co. Los Angeles Claret. C. Schilling & Co. San Francisco Sauterne. San Diego Brewing Co. San Diego Beer. Alhambra Natural Martinez Mineral water. Water Co. Caliente Mineral Agua Caliente Mineral water. Water Co. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Sauterne, Sierra Campo. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Claret. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Burgundy, Royal type. The Rosenblatt Co. San Francisco Grape juice. Calwa Products Co. San Francisco Unfermented grape juice. California Grape Juice Los Angeles Unfermented grape juice. Co. California Mission Cucamonga Unfermented grape juice. Imp. Co. Lodi Fruit Products Co. Lodi Unfermented grape juice. O. J. Steinwand Fresno Unfermented grape juice. California Wire Cloth Co. Oakland Assorted wire cloth. T. J. Hammond Fresno Dried figs. Los Angeles Olive Ripe olives. Growers Ass'n Pioneer Pickle Works Sacramento Pickles. Point Lobos Canning Co. Monterey Canned abalone. Annie S. Hatch San Francisco Sculpture. Bertha Boye San Francisco Sculpture. Elizabeth Ferrea San Francisco Sculpture. Mrs. C. S. Sargent San Francisco Bookbinding. Frances Brewster San Francisco Bookbinding. Belle McMurty San Francisco Bookbinding. M. Meade San Francisco Bookbinding. State of California Sacramento Iron ores. State of California Sacramento Obicular diorite. State of California Sacramento Magnesite ores. State of California Sacramento Manganese ores. State of California Sacramento Building stone, granite, etc. State of California Sacramento Lubricating oil. State of California Sacramento Crude and refined borax. State of California Sacramento Fire clay. State of California Sacramento Asbestos. State of California Sacramento Fuller's earth. San Diego County Minerals. Siskiyou County Tufa. Sacramento County Hemp. A. Weed Lumber Co. Weed Manufactured doors & shingles. California Paint Co. Oakland Paints, rubber, graphite, roofing, leads and colors. Pacific Plating Co. Los Angeles Bungalow hardware. Fred Nichols Oakland Fire proof art metal doors. Bakewell & Brown San Francisco Perspectives, residence, bank, exterior and interior. Allen C. Rush Los Angeles Railway tie. Miss Rutherford Los Angeles Carved wood. United Studios Inc. San Francisco Cement garden pots. Mrs. Addie Pell Pacific Grove Hammered copper and brass. Elizabeth Waggoner Los Angeles Metal work. O'Hara & Livermore San Francisco Leather and water color screens. Louis Fleckenstein Los Angeles Art photography. Lucy R. Lamb San Francisco Hand decorated china. M. E. Griffin San Francisco Hand decorated china. L. O. Willits San Francisco Hand decorated china. Mrs. B. J. Arthur Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. E. Elliott Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. Harry Andrews Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. H. G. Simpson Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Agnes Peterson Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Mrs. L. S. Guest Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Olive Newcomb Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Bess Edwards Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Margaret Clapp Los Angeles Hand decorated china. Laura Adams Armer Berkeley Art photography. Brugierre & Eisen San Francisco Art & commercial photography. John R. Loftus Co. Meloland Raw cotton. Knox Mfg. Co. Pasadena Gophergo. University of California Berkeley Seeds and grain in glass. State of California Sacramento Redwood facade. McCloud River Lumber Co. Display lumber in planks, etc. Siskiyou County Yreka Installation gold, gold quartz and mineral ores. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Installation silk and cocoons. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Installation gems and crystals. Sugar & White Pine Agency San Francisco Yellow pine planks. Chamber of Commerce Santa Cruz Processed fruits. Pruner & Ostrander Grapes. Vacaville Fruit Co. Vacaville Plums. Chamber of Commerce Stockton Fruits and vegetables. T. J. Bryan Lemoncove Oranges. C. W. Fox San Diego Lemons. Arthur Jack Julian Apples. H. F. Wilcox Julian Apples. Silva-Bergtholdt Co. Newcastle Plums. A. Martin Little Rock Almonds. Geo. D. Lee Compton Grapes. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Peanuts. Frank Johnson Peaches. W. O. Davies Florin Grapes. Cutter Bros Sacramento Vegetables. F. W. Barkhaus Newcastle Peaches. Penryn Fruit Co. Penryn Plums. Earl Fruit Co. Sacramento Cherries. E. J. Camp Florin Grapes. Salyer-Baumeister Co. Los Angeles Pianos. Dolge-Posey Co. Los Angeles Piano sounding board. Segnogram Print Los Angeles Display job print work, leaflets, circulars, artistic notices, etc. Oscar Maurer Berkeley Art photography. Wm. Luch Marysville Shield for stallions. Grace Nicholson Pasadena Ethnological collection. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego General display gems & crystals. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Case of minerals. Eugen Neuhaus San Francisco Oil painting. Gordon Coutts Berkeley Oil painting. Benjamin Brown Los Angeles Oil painting. Lydia S. Price Los Angeles Oil painting. Florine Hyer Los Angeles Oil painting. Annie Harmon San Francisco Oil painting. L. M. Carpenter Berkeley Oil painting. Elizabeth Borglum Santa Barbara Oil painting. Caroline Callahan San Francisco Oil painting. W. F. Jackson Sacramento Oil painting. Della Vernon Oakland Oil painting. Martin J. Jackson Los Angeles Oil painting. Robert Wagner Santa Barbara Oil painting. William Cole Los Angeles Oil painting. Granville Redmond Los Angeles Oil painting. Elizabeth Strong Berkeley Oil painting. C. A. Fries San Diego Oil painting. Grace Hudson Ukiah Oil painting. A. B. Chittenden San Francisco Oil painting. H. Heynsen-Jahn Los Angeles Pastelle. A. Romers Shawhan San Francisco Pastelle. L. P. Latimer San Francisco Water color. Susan S. Looseley San Francisco Water color. M. Fancher Pettis Berkeley Water color. Eugene Torrey Los Angeles Water color. E. B. Currier San Francisco Water color and oils. Mary Harland Los Angeles Miniatures. Alice Ludovici Pasadena Miniatures. BRONZE MEDALS EXHIBITOR ADDRESS AWARD ON-- State of California Sacramento Nitre. State of California Sacramento Lead ores. State of California Sacramento Lime and limestone. State of California Sacramento Copper ores. State of California Sacramento Sulphur ores. State of California Sacramento Gypsum ores. State of California Sacramento Natural salt. Automatic Safety Pulley San Diego Pulley blocks. Block Co. California Magnesite Co. Products of magnesite. Santa Cruz Portland Davenport Cement and products. Cement Co. Siskiyou County Building stones. Siskiyou County Marbles. Roeding Olive Co. Fresno Ripe olives. J. C. Kubias Redlands Ripe olives. O'Hara & Livermore San Francisco Bookbinding. Napa County Public Schools School art work & photographs. Bakersfield Public Schools School industrial work. Harvard School Los Angeles School, art and industrial work. Santa Barbara Co. Public Schools Photographs of school buildings and school work. Whittier Public High School School, art and industrial work. Redwood Mfrs. San Francisco Manufactured doors. Association Meyers & Ward San Francisco Perspective of hotel & interior. L. C. Mullhardt San Francisco Perspective of office building, residence, landscape work. Emily Pritchford Berkeley Art photography. American Leather Co. Los Angeles Burned leather articles. W. E. Dassonville San Francisco Art photography. Limoneira Company Santa Paula Installation lemon exhibit. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Installation Old Mission olives and olive oil. Santa Barbara County Assorted varieties pickled olives. Williams & Newberry Porterville Pomegranates. J. C. Naylor Peaches. J. H. Kite Manson Peaches. W. B. Jennings Visalia Peaches. J. E. Lebon Visalia Peaches. G. H. Reynolds Orosi Grapes. E. Barnard Ventura Beans. F. M. Mayes Orosi Plums. C. Scrivner Tulare Peaches. Harry Thompson Tulare Peaches. Lee Gates Tulare Apricots. F. B. McKevitt Vacaville Fruits in season. William Quigley Oak Bar Fruits in season. Thomas Hegler Walker Vegetables. S. H. Soule Shasta Apples. J. Cone Stockton Fruits in season. F. W. Leffler Lodi Grapes. Mrs. J. Ridley Lodi Grapes. J. P. Dargitz Acampo Prunes. Rialto Citrus Fruit Union Tomatoes. Robert Clifford Julian Apples. Rex B. Clark Julian Apples. C. R. Willington Julian Apples. Chester Gunn Julian Apples. J. R. Williams Julian Apples. Schnabel Bros Co. Newcastle Plums. W. J. Wilson & Son Newcastle Plums. Tokayano Rancho Colfax Grapes. J. A. Burns Toluca Peaches. J. W. Batchelor Fruitland Quinces. D. H. Baldwin Mangana Apples. T. W. Backus Fruitland Pears. A. Gast Fruitland Peppers. H. Atkinson Watsonville Fruits. Peters & Evans Riverside Apples. F. M. Parrish Oak Glen Apples. I. Ford Redlands Apples. Oak Glen Ranch Redlands Apples. F. Radovan Watsonville Apples. Ed Thompson Watsonville Apples. J. W. Watters Watsonville Apples. R. H. Goodrich Watsonville Apples. Mr. Goodchild Apricots. Watsonville Land & Fruit Co. Apricots. Mrs. A. E. Lewis Florin Peaches. J. F. Elliott Courtland Plums. Mr. Strickland Newcastle Plums. Daleland Rancho Mecca Grapes. B. G. Johnson Mecca Dates. J. A. Filcher Sacramento Miniature stamp mill. Blanche Cummings San Francisco Art photographs. Peterson Rapid Wrench Co. San Francisco Rapid vise. John L. Russell Albion Tubular level. Chas. L. Wilson Los Angeles Installation peanut portiers. Marian M. Williams Los Angeles Water color. Helen Coan Los Angeles Water color. L. Maynard Dixon San Francisco Water color. Ada F. Lathrop Santa Monica Water color. Marie A. Ney Los Angeles Water color. Mary Harland Los Angeles Water color. O. Hansen San Francisco Water color. Alice Best San Francisco Pastelles. N. Danely Brooker Los Angeles Colored etchings. Caroline Rixford Johnson San Francisco Oil paintings. Blanche D. Cole Los Angeles Oil paintings. William Coulter San Francisco Oil paintings. Helen Maude Raeburn San Francisco Oil paintings. Chas. A. Rogers Los Angeles Oil paintings. Perham Nahl Berkeley Oil paintings. Charles Louis Turner San Francisco Oil paintings. D. L. Kooreman Berkeley Oil paintings. A. W. Best San Francisco Oil paintings. Blanche Letcher Berkeley Oil paintings. Carl Jonnevold San Francisco Oil paintings. Alice Best Berkeley Oil paintings. Geo. W. Kegg Berkeley Oil paintings. H. G. Villa Los Angeles Oil paintings. Helen Coan Los Angeles Oil paintings. Sarah Bender DeWolfe San Francisco Oil paintings. Bertha Stringer Lee San Francisco Oil paintings. Langdon Smith Los Angeles Oil paintings. Mary Hinkson Sacramento Oil paintings. HONORABLE MENTION EXHIBITOR ADDRESS AWARD ON-- State of California Sacramento Mineral paints. State of California Sacramento Chalk. Maud Daggett Los Angeles Sculpture. Western Creameries Co. San Francisco Empty butter cartons. Napa Business College Napa Photographs and drawings. Mills College Oakland Photographs. Miss Harker's School Palo Alto Photographs of school for Girls buildings and grounds. Los Angeles Co. Public Schools Photographs of school buildings. Riverside Co. Public Schools School photographs. Castilleja School School photographs. J. Walter Dolliver San Francisco Model of Santa Rosa courthouse. George Peterson San Francisco Ceiling decorations. John C. Austin San Francisco Perspective liberal arts building. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Installation fresh fruit exhibit. Jas. A. Jasper San Diego Installation onyx and climatic displays. State of California Sacramento Installation plant and shrub exhibit around building. H. C. Parkinson Berkeley Cold knob pot covers. S. J. Davis Eureka Curios and pictures. Jennie D. Parker Los Angeles Oil painting. Sara White Isaman Los Angeles Oil painting. Hanna T. Jenkins Clairmont Oil painting. Mary Stewart Dunlap Pasadena Oil painting. Hanson Puthoff Los Angeles Oil painting. J. W. Nicoll Los Angeles Oil painting. Kate Cory Los Angeles Oil painting. Joseph J. Mora San Francisco Oil painting. R. Hamilton Mohler Los Angeles Oil painting. Ralph Mocine Los Angeles Oil painting. F. P. Brackett Los Angeles Oil painting. Josephine W. Culbertson San Francisco Water color. Lillian Drain Los Angeles Monotypes. H. Hammerstrom San Francisco Monotypes and oil paintings. C. M. Moore Los Angeles Pen and ink sketches. E. A. Burbank San Francisco Pencil drawings. Ried Bros San Francisco Architecture. [Illustration] 
3037	----	University, and Alev Akman THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS, A CHRONICLE OF THE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY By Burton J. Hendrick New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1919 CONTENTS I. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR II. THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN TRUST III. THE EPIC OF STEEL IV. THE TELEPHONE: AMERICA'S MOST POETICAL ACHIEVEMENT V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES VI. MAKING THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY VII. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS CHAPTER I. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR A comprehensive survey of the United States, at the end of the Civil War, would reveal a state of society which bears little resemblance to that of today. Almost all those commonplace fundamentals of existence, the things that contribute to our bodily comfort while they vex us with economic and political problems, had not yet made their appearance. The America of Civil War days was a country without transcontinental railroads, without telephones, without European cables, or wireless stations, or automobiles, or electric lights, or sky-scrapers, or million-dollar hotels, or trolley cars, or a thousand other contrivances that today supply the conveniences and comforts of what we call our American civilization. The cities of that period, with their unsewered and unpaved streets, their dingy, flickering gaslights, their ambling horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches, and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier business and economic organization. But only by talking with the business leaders of that time could we have understood the changes that have taken place in fifty years. For the most part we speak a business language which our fathers and grandfathers would not have comprehended. The word "trust" had not become a part of their vocabulary; "restraint of trade" was a phrase which only the antiquarian lawyer could have interpreted; "interlocking directorates," "holding companies," "subsidiaries," "underwriting syndicates," and "community of interest"--all this jargon of modern business would have signified nothing to our immediate ancestors. Our nation of 1865 was a nation of farmers, city artisans, and industrious, independent business men, and small-scale manufacturers. Millionaires, though they were not unknown, did not swarm all over the land. Luxury, though it had made great progress in the latter years of the war, had not become the American standard of well-being. The industrial story of the United States in the last fifty years is the story of the most amazing economic transformation that the world has ever known; a change which is fitly typified in the evolution of the independent oil driller of western Pennsylvania into the Standard Oil Company, and of the ancient open air forge on the banks of the Allegheny into the United States Steel Corporation. The slow, unceasing ages had been accumulating a priceless inheritance for the American people. Nearly all of their natural resources, in 1865, were still lying fallow, and even undiscovered in many instances. Americans had begun, it is true, to exploit their more obvious, external wealth, their forests and their land; the first had made them one of the world's two greatest shipbuilding nations, while the second had furnished a large part of the resources that had enabled the Federal Government to fight what was, up to that time, the greatest war in history. But the extensive prairie plains whose settlement was to follow the railroad extensions of the sixties and the seventies--Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, the Dakotas--had been only slightly penetrated. This region, with a rainfall not too abundant and not too scanty, with a cultivable soil extending from eight inches to twenty feet under the ground, with hardly a rock in its whole extent, with scarcely a tree, except where it bordered on the streams, has been pronounced by competent scientists the finest farming country to which man has ever set the plow. Our mineral wealth was likewise lying everywhere ready to the uses of the new generation. The United States now supplies the world with half its copper, but in 1865 it was importing a considerable part of its own supply. It was not till 1859 that the first "oil gusher" of western Pennsylvania opened up an entirely new source of wealth. Though we had the largest coal deposits known to geologists, we were bringing large supplies of this indispensable necessity from Nova Scotia. It has been said that coal and iron are the two mineral products that have chiefly affected modern civilization. Certainly the nations that have made the greatest progress industrially and commercially--England, Germany, America--are the three that possess these minerals in largest amount. From sixty to seventy per cent of all the known coal deposits in the world were located in our national domain. Nature had given no other nation anything even remotely comparable to the four hundred and eighty square miles of anthracite in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Enormous fields of bituminous lay in those Appalachian ranges extending from Pennsylvania to Alabama, in Michigan, in the Rocky Mountains, and in the Pacific regions. In speaking of our iron it is necessary to use terms that are even more extravagant. From colonial times Americans had worked the iron ore plentifully scattered along the Atlantic coast, but the greatest field of all, that in Minnesota, had not been scratched. From the settlement of the country up to 1869 it had mined only 50,000,000 tons of iron ore, while up to 1910 we had produced 685,000,000 tons. The streams and waterfalls that, in the next sixty years, were to furnish the power that would light our cities, propel our street-cars, drive our transcontinental trains across the mountains, and perform numerous domestic services, were running their useless courses to the sea. Industrial America is a product of the decades succeeding the Civil War; yet even in 1865 we were a large manufacturing nation. The leading characteristic of our industries, as compared with present conditions, was that they were individualized. Nearly all had outgrown the household stage, the factory system had gained a foothold in nearly every line, even the corporation had made its appearance, yet small-scale production prevailed in practically every field. In the decade preceding the War, vans were still making regular trips through New England and the Middle States, leaving at farmhouses bundles of straw plait, which the members of the household fashioned into hats. The farmers' wives and daughters still supplemented the family income by working on goods for city dealers in ready-made clothing. We can still see in Massachusetts rural towns the little shoe shops in which the predecessors of the existing factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the early days of the Civil War. Every city and town had its own slaughter house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad stations, hotels, and the highest class of retail establishments. In this period before the Civil War comparatively small single owners, or frequently copartnerships, controlled practically every industrial field. Individual proprietors, not uncommonly powerful families which were almost feudal in character, owned the great cotton and woolen mills of New England. Separate proprietors, likewise, controlled the iron and steel factories of New York State and Pennsylvania. Indeed it was not until the War that corporations entered the iron industry, now regarded as the field above all others adapted to this kind of organization. The manufacture of sewing machines, firearms, and agricultural implements started on a great scale in the Civil War; still, the prevailing unit was the private owner or the partnership. In many manufacturing lines, the joint stock company had become the prevailing organization, but even in these fields the element that so characterizes our own age, that of combination, was exerting practically no influence. Competition was the order of the day: the industrial warfare of the sixties was a free-for-all. A mere reference to the status of manufactures in which the trust is now the all-prevailing fact will make the contrast clear. In 1865 thousands of independent companies were drilling oil in Pennsylvania and there were more than two hundred which were refining the product. Nearly four hundred and fifty operators were mining coal, not even dimly foreseeing the day when their business would become a great railroad monopoly. The two hundred companies that were making mowers and reapers, seventy-five of them located in New York State, had formed no mental picture of the future International Harvester Company. One of our first large industrial combinations was that which in the early seventies absorbed the manufacturers of salt; yet the close of the Civil War found fifty competing companies making salt in the Saginaw Valley of Michigan. In the same State, about fifty distinct ownerships controlled the copper mines, while in Nevada the Comstock Lode had more than one hundred proprietors. The modern trust movement has now absorbed even our lumber and mineral lands, but in 1865 these rich resources were parceled out among a multiplicity of owners: No business has offered greater opportunities to the modern promoter of combinations than our street railways. In 1865 most of our large cities had their leisurely horse-car systems, yet practically every avenue had its independent line. New York had thirty separate companies engaged in the business of local transportation. Indeed the Civil War period developed only one corporation that could be described as a "trust" in the modern sense. This was the Western Union Telegraph Company. Incredible as it may seem, more than fifty companies, ten years before the Civil War, were engaged in the business of transmitting telegraphic messages. These companies had built their telegraph lines precisely as the railroads had laid their tracks; that is, independent lines were constructed connecting two given points. It was inevitable, of course, that all these scattered lines should come under a single control, for the public convenience could not be served otherwise. This combination was effected a few years before the War, when the Western Union Telegraph Company, after a long and fierce contest, succeeded in absorbing all its competitors. Similar forces were bringing together certain continuous lines of railways, but the creation of huge trunk systems had not yet taken place. How far our industrial era is removed from that of fifty years ago is apparent when we recall that the proposed capitalization of $15,000,000, caused by the merging of the Boston and Worcester and the Western railroads, was widely denounced as "monstrous" and as a corrupting force that would destroy our Republican institutions. Naturally this small-scale ownership was reflected in the distribution of wealth. The "swollen fortunes" of that period rested upon the same foundation that had given stability for centuries to the aristocracies of Europe. Social preeminence in large cities rested almost entirely upon the ownership of land. The Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders, the Beekmans, the Brevoorts, and practically all the mighty families that ruled the old Knickerbocker aristocracy in New York were huge land proprietors. Their fortunes thus had precisely the same foundation as that of the Prussian Junkers today. But their accumulations compared only faintly with the fortunes that are commonplace now. How many "millionaires" there were fifty years ago we do not precisely know. The only definite information we have is a pamphlet published in 1855 by Moses Yale Beach, proprietor of the New York Sun, on the "Wealthy Men of New York." This records the names of nineteen citizens who, in the estimation of well-qualified judges, possessed more than a million dollars each. The richest man in the list was William B. Astor, whose estate is estimated at $6,000,000. The next richest man was Stephen Whitney, also a large landowner, whose fortune is listed at $5,000,000. Then comes James Lenox, again a land proprietor, with $3,000,000. The man who was to accumulate the first monstrous American fortune, Cornelius Vanderbilt, is accredited with a paltry $1,500,000. Mr. Beach's little pamphlet sheds the utmost light upon the economic era preceding the Civil War. It really pictures an industrial organization that belongs as much to ancient history as the empire of the Caesars. His study lists about one thousand of New York's "wealthy citizens." Yet the fact that a man qualified for entrance into this Valhalla who had $100,000 to his credit and that nine-tenths of those so chosen possessed only that amount shows the progress concentrated riches have made in sixty years. How many New Yorkers of today would look upon a man with $100,000 as "wealthy"? The sources of these fortunes also show the economic changes our country has undergone. Today, when we think of our much exploited millionaires, the phrase "captains of industry" is the accepted description; in Mr. Beach's time the popular designation was "merchant prince." His catalogue contains no "oil magnates" or "steel kings" or "railroad manipulators"; nearly all the industrial giants of ante-bellum times--as distinguished from the socially prominent whose wealth was inherited--had heaped together their accumulations in humdrum trade. Perhaps Peter Cooper, who had made a million dollars in the manufacture of isinglass and glue, and George Law, whose gains, equally large, represented fortunate speculations in street railroads, faintly suggest the approaching era; yet the fortunes which are really typical are those of William Aspinwall, who made $4,000,000 in the shipping business, of A. T. Stewart, whose $2,000,000 represented his earnings as a retail and wholesale dry goods merchant, and of Peter Harmony, whose $1,000,000 had been derived from happy trade ventures in Cuba and Spain. Many of the reservoirs of this ante-bellum wealth sound strangely in our modern ears. John Haggerty had made $1,000,000 as an auctioneer; William L. Coggeswell had made half as much as a wine importer; Japhet Bishop had rounded out an honest $600,000 from the profits of a hardware store; while Phineas T. Barnum ranks high in the list by virtue of $800,000 accumulated in a business which it is hardly necessary to specify. Indeed his name and that of the great landlords are almost the only ones in this list that have descended to posterity. Yet they were the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Harrimans, the Fricks, and the Henry Fords of their day. Before the Civil War had ended, however, the transformation of the United States from a nation of farmers and small-scale manufacturers to a highly organized industrial state had begun. Probably the most important single influence was the War itself. Those four years of bitter conflict illustrate, perhaps more graphically than any similar event in history, the power which military operations may exercise in stimulating all the productive forces of a people. In thickly settled nations, with few dormant resources and with practically no areas of unoccupied land, a long war usually produces industrial disorganization and financial exhaustion. The Napoleonic wars had this effect in Europe; in particular they caused a period of social and industrial distress in England. The few years immediately following Waterloo marked a period when starving mobs rioted in the streets of London, setting fire to the houses of the aristocracy and stoning the Prince Regent whenever he dared to show his head in public, when cotton spindles ceased to turn, when collieries closed down, when jails and workhouses were overflowing with a wretched proletariat, and when gaunt and homeless women and children crowded the country highways. No such disorders followed the Civil War in this country, at least in the North and West. Spiritually the struggle accomplished much in awakening the nation to a consciousness of its great opportunities. The fact that we could spend more than a million dollars a day--expenditures that hardly seem startling in amount now, but which were almost unprecedented then--and that soon after hostilities ceased we rapidly paid off our large debt, directed the attention of foreign capitalists to our resources, and gave them the utmost confidence in this new investment field. Immigration, too, started after the war at a rate hitherto without parallel in our annals. The Germans who had come in the years preceding the Civil War had been largely political refugees and democratic idealists, but now, in much larger numbers, began the influx of north and south Germans whose dominating motive was economic. These Germans began to find their way to the farms of the Mississippi Valley; the Irish began once more to crowd our cities; the Slavs gravitated towards the mines of Pennsylvania; the Scandinavians settled whole counties of certain northwestern States; while the Jews began that conquest of the tailoring industries that was ultimately to make them the clothiers of a hundred million people. For this industrial development, America supplied the land, the resources, and the business leaders, while Europe furnished the liquid capital and the laborers. Even more directly did the War stimulate our industrial development. Perhaps the greatest effect was the way in which it changed our transportation system. The mere necessity of constantly transporting hundreds of thousands of troops and war supplies demanded reconstruction and reequipment on an extensive scale. The American Civil War was the first great conflict in which railroads played a conspicuous military part, and their development during those four years naturally left them in a strong position to meet the new necessities of peace. One of the first effects of the War was to close the Mississippi River; consequently the products of the Western farms had to go east by railroad, and this fact led to that preeminence of the great trunk lines which they retain to this day. Almost overnight Chicago became the great Western shipping center, and though the river boats lingered for a time on the Ohio and the Mississippi they grew fewer year by year. Prosperity, greater than the country had ever known, prevailed everywhere in the North throughout the last two years of the War. So, too, feeding and supplying an army of millions of men laid the foundation of many of our greatest industries. The Northern soldiers in the early days of the war were clothed in garments so variegated that they sometimes had trouble in telling friend from foe, and not infrequently they shot at one another; so inadequately were our woolen mills prepared to supply their uniforms! But larger government contracts enabled the proprietors to reconstruct their mills, install modern machines, and build up an organization and a prosperous business that still endures. Making boots and shoes for Northern soldiers laid the foundation of America's great shoe industry. Machinery had already been applied to shoe manufacture, but only to a limited extent; under the pressure of war conditions, however, American inventive skill found ways of performing mechanically almost all the operations that had formerly been done by hand. The McKay sewing machine, one of the greatest of our inventions, which was perfected in the second year of the war, did as much perhaps as any single device to keep our soldiers well shod and comfortable. The necessity of feeding these same armies created our great packing plants. Though McCormick had invented his reaper several years before the war, the new agricultural machinery had made no great headway. Without this machinery, however, our Western farmers could never have harvested the gigantic crops which not only fed our soldiers but laid the basis of our economic prosperity. Thus the War directly established one of the greatest, and certainly one of the most romantic, of our industries--that of agricultural machinery. Above all, however, the victory at Appomattox threw upon the country more than a million unemployed men. Our European critics predicted that their return to civil life would produce dire social and political consequences. But these critics were thinking in terms of their own countries; they failed to consider that the United States had an immense unoccupied domain which was waiting for development. The men who fought the Civil War had demonstrated precisely the adventurous, hardy instincts which were most needed in this great enterprise. Even before the War ended, a great immigration started towards the mines and farms of the trans-Mississippi country. There was probably no important town or district west of the Alleghanies that did not absorb a considerable number. In most instances, too, our ex-soldiers became leaders in these new communities. Perhaps this movement has its most typical and picturesque illustration in the extent to which the Northern soldiers opened up the oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania. Venango County, where this great development started, boasted that it had more ex-soldiers than any similar section of the United States. The Civil War period also forced into prominence a few men whose methods and whose achievements indicated, even though roughly and indistinctly, a new type of industrial leadership. Every period has its outstanding figure and, when the Civil War was approaching its end, one personality had emerged from the humdrum characters of the time--one man who, in energy, imagination, and genius, displayed the forces that were to create a new American world. Although this man employed his great talents in a field, that of railroad transportation, which lies outside the scope of the present volume, yet in this comprehensive view I may take Cornelius Vanderbilt as the symbol that links the old industrial era with the new. He is worthy of more detailed study than he has ever received, for in personality and accomplishments Vanderbilt is the most romantic figure in the history of American finance. We must remember that Vanderbilt was born in 1794 and that at the time we are considering he was seventy-one years old. In the matter of years, therefore, his career apparently belongs to the ante-bellum days, yet the most remarkable fact about this remarkable man is that his real life work did not begin until he had passed his seventieth year. In 1865 Vanderbilt's fortune, consisting chiefly of a fleet of steamboats, amounted to about $10,000,000; he died twelve years later, in 1877, leaving $104,000,000, the first of those colossal American fortunes that were destined to astound the world. The mere fact that this fortune was the accumulated profit of only ten years shows perhaps more eloquently than any other circumstance that the United States had entered a new economic age. That new factor in the life of America and the world, the railroad, explains his achievement. Vanderbilt was one of the most astonishing characters in our history. His physical exterior made him perhaps the most imposing figure in New York. In his old age, at seventy-three, Vanderbilt married his second wife, a beautiful Southern widow who had just turned her thirtieth year, and the appearance of the two, sitting side by side in one of the Commodore's smartest turnouts, driving recklessly behind a pair of the fastest trotters of the day, was a common sight in Central Park. Nor did Vanderbilt look incongruous in this brilliant setting. His tall and powerful frame was still erect, and his large, defiant head, ruddy cheeks, sparkling, deep-set black eyes, and snowy white hair and whiskers, made him look every inch the Commodore. These public appearances lent a pleasanter and more sentimental aspect to Vanderbilt's life than his intimates always perceived. For his manners were harsh and uncouth; he was totally without education and could write hardly half a dozen lines without outraging the spelling-book. Though he loved his race-horses, had a fondness for music, and could sit through long winter evenings while his young wife sang old Southern ballads, Vanderbilt's ungovernable temper had placed him on bad terms with nearly all his children--he had had thirteen, of whom eleven survived him--who contested his will and exposed all his eccentricities to public view on the ground that the man who created the New York Central system was actually insane. Vanderbilt's methods and his temperament presented such a contrast to the commonplace minds which had previously dominated American business that this explanation of his career is perhaps not surprising. He saw things in their largest aspects and in his big transactions he seemed to act almost on impulse and intuition. He could never explain the mental processes by which he arrived at important decisions, though these decisions themselves were invariably sound. He seems to have had, as he himself frequently said, almost a seer-like faculty. He saw visions, and he believed in dreams and in signs. The greatest practical genius of his time was a frequent attendant at spiritualistic seances; he cultivated personally the society of mediums, and in sickness he usually resorted to mental healers, mesmerists, and clairvoyants. Before making investments or embarking in his great railroad ventures, Vanderbilt visited spiritualists; we have one circumstantial account of his summoning the wraith of Jim Fiske to advise him in stock operations. His excessive vanity led him to print his picture on all the Lake Shore bonds; he proposed to New York City the construction in Central Park of a large monument that would commemorate, side by side, the names of Vanderbilt and Washington; and he actually erected a large statue to himself in his new Hudson River station in St. John's Park. His attitude towards the public was shown in his remark when one of his associates told him that "each and every one" of certain transactions which he had just forced through "is absolutely forbidden by the statutes of the State of New York." "My God, John!" said the Commodore, "you don't suppose you can run a railroad in accordance with the statutes of the State of New York, do you?" "Law!" he once roared on a similar occasion, "What do I care about law? Hain't I got the power?" These things of course were the excrescences of an extremely vital, overflowing, imaginative, energetic human being; they are traits that not infrequently accompany genius. And the work which Vanderbilt did remains an essential part of our economic organization today. Before his time a trip to Chicago meant that the passenger changed trains seventeen times, and that all freight had to be unloaded at a similar number of places, carted across towns, and reloaded into other trains. The magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the Hudson, through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie--a water line route nearly the entire distance--was all but useless. It is true that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's work. In 1853 certain millionaires and politicians had linked together the several separate lines extending from Albany to Buffalo, but they had managed the new road so wretchedly that the largest stockholders in 1867 begged Vanderbilt to take over the control. By 1873 the Commodore had acquired the Hudson River, extending from New York to Albany, the New York Central extending from Albany to Buffalo, and the Lake Shore which ran from Buffalo to Chicago. In a few years these roads had been consolidated into a smoothly operating system. If, in transforming these discordant railroads into one, Vanderbilt bribed legislatures and corrupted courts, if he engaged in the largest stock-watering operations on record up to that time, and took advantage of inside information to make huge winnings on the stock exchange, he also ripped up the old iron rails and relaid them with steel, put down four tracks where formerly there had been two, replaced wooden bridges with steel, discarded the old locomotives for new and more powerful ones, built splendid new terminals, introduced economies in a hundred directions, cut down the hours required in a New York-Chicago trip from fifty to twenty-four, made his highway an expeditious line for transporting freight, and transformed railroads that had formerly been the playthings of Wall Street and that frequently could not meet their pay-rolls into exceedingly profitable, high dividend paying properties. In this operation Vanderbilt typified the era that was dawning--an era of ruthlessness, of personal selfishness, of corruption, of disregard of private rights, of contempt for law and legislatures, and yet of vast and beneficial achievement. The men of this time may have traveled roughshod to their goal, but after all, they opened up, in an amazingly short time, a mighty continent to the uses of mankind. The triumph of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad under Vanderbilt, a triumph which dazzled European investors as well as our own, and which represented an entirely different business organization from anything the nation had hitherto seen, appropriately ushered in the new business era whose outlines will be sketched in the succeeding pages. CHAPTER II. THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN TRUST When Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877, America's first great industrial combination had become an established fact. In that year the Standard Oil Company of Ohio controlled at least ninety per cent of the business of refining and marketing petroleum. A new portent had appeared in our economic life, a phenomenon that was destined to affect not only the social and business existence of the every-day American but even his political and legal institutions. It seems natural enough at the present time to refer to petroleum as an indispensable commodity. At the beginning of the Civil War, however, any such description would have been absurd. Though petroleum was not unknown, millions of American households were still burning candles, whale oil, and other illuminants. Not until 1859 did our ancestors realize that, concealed in the rocky of western Pennsylvania, lay apparently inexhaustible quantities of a liquid which, when refined, would give a light exceeding in brilliancy anything they had hitherto known. The mere existence of petroleum, it is true, had been a familiar fact for centuries. Herodotus mentions the oil pits of Babylon, and Pliny informs us that this oil was actually used for lighting in certain parts of Sicily. It had never become an object of universal use, simply because no one had discovered how to obtain it in sufficient quantities. No one had suspected, indeed, that petroleum existed practically in the form of great subterranean rivers, lakes, or even seas. For ages this great natural treasure had been seeking to advertise its presence by occasionally seeping through the rocks and appearing on the surface of watercourses. It had been doing this all over the world--in China, in Russia, in Germany, in England, in our own country. Yet our obtuse ancestors had for centuries refused to take the hint. We can find much cause for self-congratulation in that it was apparently the American mind that first acted upon this obvious suggestion. In Venango County, Pennsylvania, petroleum floated in such quantities on the surface of a branch of the Allegheny River that this small watercourse had for generations been known as Oil Creek. The neighboring farmers used to collect the oil and use it to grease their wagon axles; others, more enterprising, made a business of gathering the floating substance, packing it in bottles, and selling it broadcast as a medicine. The most famous of these concoctions, "Seneca Oil," was widely advertised as a sure cure for rheumatism, and had an extensive sale in this country. "Kier's Rock Oil" afterwards had an even more extended use. Samuel M. Kier, who exploited this comprehensive cure-all, made no lasting contributions to medical science, but his method of obtaining his medicament led indirectly to the establishment of a great industry. In this western Pennsylvania region salt manufacture had been a thriving business for many years; the salt was obtained from salt water by means of artesian wells. This salt water usually came to the surface contaminated with that same evil-smelling oil which floated so constantly on top of the rivers and brooks. The salt makers spent much time and money "purifying" their water from this substance, never apparently suspecting that the really valuable product of their wells was not the salt water they so carefully preserved, but the petroleum which they threw away. Samuel M. Kier was originally a salt manufacturer; more canny than his competitors, he sold the oil which came up with his water as a patent medicine. In order to give a mysterious virtue to this remedy, Kier printed on his labels the information that it had been "pumped up with salt water about four hundred feet below the earth's surface." His labels also contained the convincing picture of an artesian well--a rough woodcut which really laid the foundation of the Standard Oil Company. In the late fifties Mr. George H. Bissell had become interested in rock oil, not as an embrocation and as a cure for most human ills, but as a light-giving material. A professor at Dartmouth had performed certain experiments with this substance which had sunk deeply into Bissell's imagination. So convinced was this young man that he could introduce petroleum commercially that he leased certain fields in western Pennsylvania and sent a specimen of the oil to Benjamin Silliman, Jr., Professor of Chemistry at Yale. Professor Silliman gave the product a more complete analysis than it had ever previously received and submitted a report which is still the great classic in the scientific literature of petroleum. This report informed Bissell that the substance, could be refined cheaply and easily, and that, when refined, it made a splendid illuminant, besides yielding certain byproducts, such as paraffin and naphtha, which had a great commercial value. So far, Bissell's enterprise seemed to promise success, yet the great problem still remained: how could he obtain this rock oil in amounts large enough to make his enterprise a practical one? A chance glimpse of Kier's label, with its picture of an artesian well, supplied Bissell with his answer. He at once sent E. L. Drake into the oil-fields with a complete drilling equipment, to look, not for saltwater, but for oil. Nothing seems quite so obvious today as drilling a well into the rock to discover oil, yet so strange was the idea in Drake's time that the people of Titusville, where he started work, regarded him as a lunatic and manifested a hostility to his enterprise that delayed operations for several months. Yet one day in August, 1859, the coveted liquid began flowing from "Drake's folly" at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day. Because of this performance Drake has gone down to fame as the man who "discovered oil." In the sense that his operation made petroleum available to the uses of mankind, Drake was its discoverer, and his achievement seems really a greater one than that of the men who first made apparent our beds of coal, iron, copper, or even gold. For Drake really uncovered an entirely new substance. And the country responded spontaneously to Drake's success. For anything approaching the sudden rush to the oil-fields we shall have to go to the discovery of gold in California ten years before. Men flocked into western Pennsylvania by the thousands; fortunes were made and lost almost instantaneously. Oil flowed so plentifully in this region that it frequently ran upon the ground, and the "gusher," which threw a stream of the precious liquid sometimes a hundred feet and more into the air, became an almost every-day occurrence. The discovery took the whole section by surprise; there were no towns, no railways, and no wagon roads except a few almost impassable lumber trails. Yet, almost in a twinkling, the whole situation changed; towns sprang up overnight, roads were built, over which teamsters could carry the oil to the nearest shipping points, and the great trunk lines began to extend branches into the regions. The one thing, next to Drake's well, that made the oil available, was the discovery, which was made by Samuel Van Syckel, that a two-inch pipe, starting at the well, could convey the oil for several miles to the nearest railway station. In a few years the whole oil region of Venango County was an inextricable tangle of these primitive pipelines. Thus, before the Civil war had ended, the western Pennsylvania wilderness had been transformed into the busy headquarters of a new industry. Companies had been formed, many of them the wildest stock-jobbing operations, refineries had been started, in a few years the whalers of New England had almost lost their occupation, but millions of American homes, that had hitherto had to spend the long winter evenings almost in darkness, suddenly found themselves flooded with light. In Cleveland, in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia, in New York, and in the oil regions, the business of refining and selling petroleum had reached extensive proportions. Europe, although it had great undeveloped oil-fields of its own, drew upon this new American enterprise to such an extent that, eleven years after Drake's "discovery," petroleum had taken fourth place among our exported articles. The very year that Bissell had organized his petroleum company a boy of sixteen had obtained his first job in a produce commission office on a dock in Cleveland. As the curtain rises on the career of John D. Rockefeller, we see him perched upon a high stool, adding up figures and casting accounts, faithfully doing every odd office job that came his way, earning his employer's respect for his industry, his sobriety, and his unmistakable talents for business. Nor does this picture inadequately visualize Rockefeller's whole after-life, and explain the business qualities that made possible his unexampled success. It is, indeed, the scene to which Mr. Rockefeller himself most frequently reverts when, in his famous autobiographical discourses to his Cleveland Sunday School, he calls our attention to the rules that inevitably lead to industrial prosperity. "Thrift, thrift, Horatio," is the one idea upon which the great captain of the oil business has always insisted. Many have detected in these habits of mind only the cheese-paring activities of a naturally narrow spirit. Rockefeller's old Cleveland associates remember him as the greatest bargainer they had ever known, as a man who had an eye for infinite details and an unquenchable patience and resource in making economies. Yet Rockefeller was clearly more than a pertinacious haggler over trifles. Certainly such a diagnosis does not explain a man who has built up one of the world's greatest organizations and accumulated the largest fortune which has ever been placed at the disposal of one man. Indeed, Rockefeller displayed unusual business ability even before he entered the oil business. A young man who, at the age of nineteen, could start a commission house and do a business of nearly five hundred thousand the first year must have had commercial capacity to an extraordinary degree. Fate had placed Rockefeller in Cleveland in the days when the oil business had got well under way. In the early sixties a score or so of refineries had started in this town, many of which were making large profits. It is not surprising that Rockefeller, gazing at these black and evil-smelling buildings from the vantage point of his commission office, should have felt an impulse to join in the gamble. He plunged into this new activity at the age of twenty-three. He possessed two great advantages over most of his adventurous competitors; one was a heavy bank account, representing his earnings in the commission business, and the other a partner, Samuel Andrews, who was generally regarded as a mechanical genius in the production of illuminating oil. At the beginning, therefore, Rockefeller had the two essentials which largely explain his subsequent career; an adequate liquid capital and high technical resources. In the first few years the Rockefeller houses--he rapidly organized three, one after another--competed with a large number of other units in the oil business on somewhat more than even terms. At this time Rockefeller was merely one of a large number of successful oil refiners, yet during these early days a grandiose scheme was taking shape in that quiet, insinuating, far-reaching brain. He said nothing about it, even to his closest associates, yet it filled his every waking hour. For this young man was taking a comprehensive sweep of the world and he saw millions of people, in the Americas, in Europe, and in Asia, whose need for the article in which he dealt would grow more insistent every day. He saw that he was handling a product which was becoming as much a necessity of life as the air itself. The young man reached out to grasp this business. "All of it," we can picture Rockefeller saying to himself, "all of it shall be mine." Any study of Rockefeller's career must lead to the conclusion that, before he had reached his thirtieth year, he had determined to monopolize this growing necessity. The mere fact that this young man could form such a stupendous plan indicates that in him we are meeting for the first time a new type of industrial leader. At that time monopolies were unknown in the United States. That certain old English Kings had frequently granted exclusive trading privileges to favored merchants most educated Americans knew; and their knowledge of monopolies extended little further than this. Yet about 1868 John D. Rockefeller started consciously to revive this ancient practice, and to bring under one ownership the magnificent industry to which Drake's sensational discovery had given rise. Daring as was this conception, the resourcefulness and the skill with which Rockefeller executed it were more startling still. Merely to catalogue, one by one, the achievements of the ten succeeding fruitful years, almost takes one's breath away. Indeed the whole operation proceeded with such a Napoleonic rapidity of action that the outside world had hardly grasped Rockefeller's intention before the monopoly had been made complete. We catch one glimpse of Rockefeller, in 1868, as head of the prosperous house of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler, and eight years afterwards we see him once more, this time the man who controlled practically the entire petroleum business of the world. His career of conquest began in 1870, when the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler, joining hands with several large capitalists in Cleveland and New York, was incorporated under the name of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. In 1870 about twenty-five independent refineries, many of them prosperous and powerful, were manufacturing oil in the city of Cleveland; two years afterward this new Standard Oil Company had absorbed all of them except five: In these two critical years the oil business of the largest refining center in the United States had thus passed into Rockefeller's hands. By 1874 the greatest refineries in New York and Philadelphia had likewise merged their identity with his own. When Rockefeller began his acquisition, there were thirty independent refineries operating in Pittsburgh, all of which, in four or five years, passed one by one under his control. The largest refineries of Baltimore surrendered in 1875. These capitulations left only one important refining headquarters in the United States which the Standard had not absorbed. This was that section of western Pennsylvania where the oil business had had its origin. The mere fact that this area was the headquarters of the oil supply gave it great advantages as a place for manufacturing the finished product. The oil regions regarded these advantages as giving them the right to dominate the growing industry, and they had frequently proclaimed the doctrine that the business belonged to them. They hated Rockefeller as much as they feared him, yet at the very moment when the Titusville operators were hanging him in effigy and posting the hoardings with cabalistic signs against his corporation, this mysterious, almost uncanny power was encircling them: Men who one night were addressing public meetings denouncing the Standard influence would suddenly sell out their holdings the next day. In 1875 John D. Archbold, a brilliant young refiner who had grown up in the oil regions and who had gained much local fame as opponent of the Standard, appeared in Titusville as the President of the Acme Oil Company. At that time there were twenty-seven independent refineries in this section. Archbold began buying and leasing these establishments for his Acme Company, and in about four years practically every one had passed under his control. The Acme Company was merely a subsidiary of the Standard Oil. These rapid purchasing campaigns gave the Standard ninety per cent of all the refineries in the United States, but Rockefeller's scheme comprehended more than the acquisition of refineries. In the main the Rockefeller group left the production of crude oil in the hands of the private drillers, but practically every other branch of the business passed ultimately into their hands. Both the New York Central and the Erie railroads surrendered to the Standard the large oil terminal stations which they had maintained for years in New York. As a consequence, the Standard obtained complete supervision of all oil sent by railroad into New York, and it also secured the machinery of a complete espionage system over the business of competitors. The Standard acquired companies which had built up a large business in marketing oil. Even more dramatic was its success in gathering up, one after another, these pipe lines which represented the circulatory system of the oil industry. In the early days these pipe lines were small and comparatively simple affairs. They merely carried the crude oil from the wells to railroad centers; from these stations the railroads transported it to the refineries at Cleveland, New York, and other places. At an early day the construction and management of these pipe lines became a separate industry. And now, in 1873, the Standard Oil Company secured possession of a one-third interest in the largest of these privately owned companies, the American Transfer Company. Soon afterward the United Pipe Line Company went under their control. In 1877 the Empire Transportation Company, a large pipe line and refining corporation which the Pennsylvania Railroad had controlled for many years, became a Standard subsidiary. Meanwhile certain hardy spirits in the oil regions had conceived a much more ambitious plan. Why not build great underground mains directly from the oil regions to the seaboard, pump the crude oil directly to the city refineries, and thus free themselves from dependence on the railroads? At first the idea of pumping oil through pipes over the Alleghany Mountains seemed grotesque, but competent engineers gave their indorsement to the plan. A certain "Dr." Hostetter built for the Columbia Conduit Company a trunk pipe line that extended thirty miles from the oil regions to Pittsburgh. Hardly had Hostetter completed his splendid project when the Standard Oil capitalists quietly appeared and purchased it! For four years another group struggled with an even more ambitious scheme, the construction of a conduit, five hundred miles long, from the oil regions to Baltimore. The American people looked on admiringly at the splendid enterprise whose projectors, led by General Haupt, the builder of the Hoosac Tunnel, struggled against bankruptcy, strikes, railroad opposition, and hostile legislatures, in their attempts to push their pipe line to the sea. In 1879 the Tidewater Company first began to pump their oil, and the American press hailed their achievement as something that ranked with the laying of the Atlantic Cable and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But in less than two years the Rockefeller interest had entered into agreements with the Tidewater Company that practically placed this great seaboard pipe line in its hands. Thus in less than ten years Rockefeller had realized his ambitious dream; he now controlled practically everything concerned in the manufacture and sale of petroleum. The change had come about so stealthily, so secretly, and even so remorselessly that it impressed the public almost as the work of some uncanny genius. What were the forces, personal and economic, that had produced this new phenomenon in our business life? In certain particulars the Standard Oil monopoly was the product of well-understood principles. From his earliest days John D. Rockefeller had struggled to eliminate the middleman. He established factories to build his own barrels, to make his own acids; he created his own selling firms, and, instead of paying large storage charges, he constructed his own warehouses in New York. From his earliest days as a refiner, he had adopted the principle of paying no man a profit, and of performing all the intermediate acts that had formerly resulted in large tribute to middlemen. Moreover, the Standard Oil Company was apparently the first great American industrial enterprise that realized the necessity of operating with an abundant capital. Not the least of Mr. Rockefeller's achievements was his success in associating with the new company men having great financial standing--Amasa Stone, Benjamin Brewster, Oliver Jennings, and the like, capitalists whose banking resources, placed at the disposition of the Standard, gave it an immense advantage over its rivals. While his competitors were "kiting" checks and waiting, hat in hand, on the good nature of the money lenders, Rockefeller always had a large bank balance, upon which he could instantly draw for his operations. Nor must we overlook the fact that the Standard group contained a large number of exceedingly able men. "They are mighty smart men," said the despairing W. H. Vanderbilt, in 1879, when pressed to give his reasons for granting rebates to the Rockefeller group. "I guess if you ever had to deal with them you would find that out." In Rockefeller the corporation possessed a man of tireless industry and unshakable determination. Nothing could turn him aside from the work to which he had put his hand. Public criticism and even denunciation, while he resented it as unjust and regarded it as the product of a general misunderstanding, never caused the leader of Standard Oil even momentarily to flinch. He was a man of one idea, and he worked at it day and night, taking no rest or recreation, skillfully turning to his purpose every little advantage that came his way. His associates--men like Flagler, Archbold, and Rogers--also had unusual talents, and together they built up the splendid organization that still exists. They exacted from their subordinates the last ounce of attention and energy and they rewarded generously everybody who served them well. They showed great judgment in establishing refineries at the most strategic points and in giving up localities, such as Boston and Portland, which were too far removed from their supplies. They established a marketing system which enabled them to bring their oil directly from their own refineries to the retailer, all in their own tank cars and tank wagons. They extended their markets in foreign countries, so that now the Standard sells the larger part of its products outside the United States. They established chemical research laboratories which devised new and inexpensive methods for refining the product and developed invaluable byproducts, such as paraffin, naphtha, vaseline, and lubricating oils. It is impossible to study the career of the Standard Oil Company without concluding that we have here an example of a supreme business intelligence working in a field which gave the widest possible scope of action. A high quality of organization, however, does not completely explain the growth of this monopoly. The Standard Oil Company was the beneficiary of methods that have deservedly received great public opprobrium. Of these the one that stands forth most conspicuously is the railroad rebate. Those who have attempted to trace the very origin of the Rockefeller preeminence to railroad discrimination have not entirely succeeded. Only the most hazy evidence exists that the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler greatly profited from rebates. In fact, refined oil was not transported from Cleveland to the seaboard by railroad until 1870, the year that this firm dissolved; practically all of the product then went by way of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Possibly the Rockefeller firm did get occasional rebates on crude oil from the oil regions to the refineries, but so did their competitors. It is therefore not likely that such favors had great influence in making this single firm the most successful in the largest refining center. With the organization of the Standard Oil Company, however, rebates became a more important consideration. The turning-point in the history of the oil industry came when the Rockefeller interests acquired the Cleveland refineries. The details concerning this act of generalship are fairly well known. The South Improvement Company is a corporation that necessarily bulks large in the history of the Standard Oil. Mr. Rockefeller and his associates have always disclaimed the parentage of this organization. They assert--and their assertion is doubtless true--that the only responsible begetters were Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and certain refineries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia which, though they were afterwards absorbed by the Standard, were at that time their competitors. These refiners and the Pennsylvania, over which the Standard Oil then was making no shipments, thus represented a group, composed of railroads and refiners, which was antagonistic to the Rockefeller interests. The South Improvement Company was an association of refiners with which the railroads, chiefly the Pennsylvania, the New York Central, and the Erie, made exclusive contracts for shipping oil. Under these contracts rates to the seaboard were to be generally raised, though the members of the South Improvement Company were to receive liberal rebates. The refiners of Cleveland and Pittsburgh were to get lower rates than the refiners located in the oil regions. But the clause in these contracts that caused the greatest amazement and indignation was one which gave the inside group rebates on every barrel of oil shipped by its competitors. It would be difficult to imagine any transaction more wicked than these contracts. Carried into execution they inevitably meant the extinction of every refiner who had not been admitted into the inside ring. Of the two thousand shares of the South Improvement Company, the gentlemen who were at that time most conspicuously identified with the Standard Oil Company subscribed to five hundred and forty. Mr. Rockefeller has always protested that he did not favor the scheme and that he became a party to it simply because he could not afford to antagonize the powerful Pennsylvania Railroad, which had originated it. When the details became public property, a wave of indignation swept from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the oil regions, which would have been the heaviest sufferers, shut down their wells and so cut off the supply of crude oil; the New York newspapers started a "crusade" against the South Improvement group and Congress ordered an investigation. So fiercely was the public wrath aroused that the railroads ran to cover, abrogated the contracts, signed an agreement promising never more to grant rebates to any one, while the Pennsylvania Legislature repealed the charter of the South Improvement Company. This particular scheme, therefore, never came to maturity. Before the South Improvement Company ended its corporate existence, however, a great change had taken place in the oil situation. Practically all the refineries in Cleveland had passed into the control of the Standard Oil Company. The Standard has always denied that there was any connection between the purchase of these great refineries and the organization of the South Improvement Company. But there is much evidence sustaining a contrary view, for many of these refiners afterward went on the witness stand and told circumstantial stories, all of which made precisely the same point. This was that the Standard men had come to them, shown the contracts which had been made by the South Improvement Company, and argued that, under these new conditions, the refineries left outside the combination could not long survive. The Standard's rivals were therefore urged to "come in," to take Standard stock in return for their refineries, or, if they preferred, to sell outright. Practically all saw the force in this argument and sold--in most cases taking cash. The acquisition of these Cleveland refineries made inevitable the Rockefeller conquest of the oil industry. Up to that time the Standard had refined about fifteen hundred barrels a day, and now suddenly its capacity jumped to more than twelve thousand barrels. This one strategic move had made Rockefeller master of about one-third of all the oil business in the United States, and this fact explains the rapidity with which the other citadels fell. There is no evidence that the Standard exercised any pressure upon the great refineries in New York, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. Indeed these concerns manifested an eagerness to join. The fact that, unlike the Cleveland refiners, many of the firms in these other cities took Standard stock, and so became parts of the new organization, is in itself significant. They evidently realized that they were casting their fortunes with the winning side. The huge shipments which the Standard now controlled explain this change in front. Every day Mr. Rockefeller could send from Cleveland to the seaboard a train, sixty cars long, loaded with the blue barrels containing his celebrated liquid. That was a consideration for which any railroad would at that time sell its soul. And the New York Central road promptly made this sacrifice. Hardly had the ink dried on its written promise not to grant any rebates when it began granting them to the Standard Oil Company. In those days the railroad rate was not the sacred, immutable thing which it subsequently became, although the argument for equal treatment of shippers existed theoretically just as strongly forty years ago as it does today. The rebate was just as illegal then as it is at present; there was no precise statute, it is true, which made it unlawful until the Interstate Commerce Act was passed in 1887; but the common law had always prohibited such discriminations. In the seventies and eighties, however, railroad men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Thomas A. Scott were less interested in legal formalities than in getting freight. They regarded transportation as a commodity to be bought and sold, like so much sugar or wheat or coal, and they believed that the ordinary principles which regulated private bargaining should also regulate the sale of the article in which they dealt. According to this reasoning, which was utterly false and iniquitous, but generally prevalent at the time, the man who shipped the largest quantities of oil should get the lowest rate. The purchase of the Cleveland refineries made the Standard Oil group the largest shippers and therefore they obtained the most advantageous terms for transporting their product. Under these conditions they naturally obtained the monopoly, the extent of which has been already described. Their competitors could rage, hold public meetings, start riots, threaten to lynch Mr. Rockefeller and all his associates, but they could not long survive in face of these advantages. The only way in which the smaller shippers could overcome this handicap was by acquiring new methods of transportation. It was this necessity that inspired the construction of pipe lines; but the Standard, as already described, succeeded in absorbing these just about as rapidly as they were constructed. Not only did the Standard obtain railroad rebates but it developed the most death-dealing methods in its system of marketing its oil. In these campaigns it certainly overstepped the boundaries of legitimate business, even according to the prevailing morals of its own or of any other time. While it probably did not set fire to rival refineries, as it has sometimes been accused of doing, it undoubtedly did resort to somewhat Prussian methods of destroying the foe. This great corporation divided the United States into several sections, over each of which it appointed an agent, who in turn subdivided his territory into smaller divisions, each one of which likewise had its captain. The order imperatively issued to each agent was, "Sell all the oil that is sold in your district." To these instructions he was rigidly held; success in accomplishing his task meant advancement and an increased salary, with a liberal pension in his old age, whereas failure meant a pitiless dismissal. He was expected to supervise not only his own business, but that of his rivals as well, to obtain access to their accounts, their shipments, and their customers. It has been asserted, and the assertion has been supported by considerable evidence, that these agents did not hesitate to bribe railroad employees and in this way get access to their competitors' bills of lading and records of their shipments, and that they would even bribe dealers to cancel such orders and take the oil from them at a lower price. This information laid the foundation for those price-cutting campaigns that have brought the name of the Standard Oil into such disfavor. And when the Standard cut, it cut to kill; the only purpose was to drive the competitor from the field, and, when this had been accomplished, the price of oil would promptly go up again. The organization of "bogus companies," started purely for the purpose of eliminating competitors, seems to have been a not infrequent practice. This latter method emphasizes another quality that accompanied the Standard's operations and so largely explains its unpopularity--the secrecy with which it so commonly worked. Though the independent oil refiners were combating the most powerful financial power of the time, they were frequently fighting in the dark, never knowing where to deliver their blows. This same characteristic was manifested in the form of corporate existence which the Standard adopted. The first great "trust" was a trust not only in name but in fact. The Standard introduced not only a new economic development into our national organization; it introduced a new word into our language and an issue into American politics that provided sustenance for the presidential campaigns of twenty-five years. From the beginning the Standard Oil had always been a close corporation. Originally it had had only ten stockholders, and this number had gradually grown until, in 1881, there were forty-one. These men had adopted a new and secretive method of combining their increasing possessions into a single ownership. In 1873 the Standard Company had increased its capital stock (originally $1,000,000) to $3,500,000, the new certificates being exchanged for interests in the great New York and Philadelphia refineries The Standard Oil Company of Ohio never had a larger capital stock than that. As additional properties were acquired, the interests were placed in the hands of trustees, who held them for the joint benefit of the stockholders in the original company. In 1882 this idea was carried further, for then the Standard Oil Trust was organized. The fact that the properties lay in so many different States, many of which had laws intended to curb corporations, was evidently what led to this form of consolidation. A trust was formed, consisting of nine trustees, who held, for the benefit of the Standard Oil stockholders, all the stock in the Standard and in the subsidiary companies. Instead of certificates of stock the trustees issued certificates of trust amounting to $70,000,000. Each Standard stockholder received twenty of these certificates for each share which he held of Standard stock. These certificates could be bought and sold and passed on by inheritance precisely the same as stocks. Ingenious as was this legal device, it did not stand the test of the courts. In 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court declared the Standard Oil Trust a violation of the law and demanded its dissolution. The persistent attempts of the Standard to disregard this order increased its reputation for lawlessness. Finally, in 1899, after Ohio had brought another action, the trust was dissolved. The Standard interests now reorganized all their holdings under the name of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Again, in 1911, the United States Supreme Court declared this combination a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and ordered its dissolution. By this time the Standard capitalists had learned the value of public opinion as a corporate asset, and made no attempt to evade the order of the court. The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey proceeded to apportion among its stockholders the stock which it held in thirty-seven other companies--refineries, pipe lines, producing companies, marketing companies, and the like. Chief Justice White, in rendering his decision, specifically ordered that, in dissolving their combination, the Standard should make no agreement, contractual or implied, which was intended still to retain their properties in one ownership. As less than a dozen men owned a majority interest in the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, these same men naturally continued to own a majority interest in the subsidiary companies. Though the immediate effect of this famous decision therefore was not to cause a separation in fact, this does not signify that, as time goes on, such a real dissolution will not take place. It is not unlikely that, in a few years, the transfers of the stock by inheritance or sale will weaken the consolidated interest to a point where the companies that made up the Standard Company will be distinct and competitive. This is more likely to be the case since, long before the decision of 1911, the Standard Oil Company had ceased to be a monopoly. In the early nineties there came to the front in the oil regions a man whose organizing ability and indomitable will suggested the Standard Oil leaders themselves. This man's soul burned with an intense hatred of the Rockefeller group, and this sentiment, as much as his love of success, inspired all his efforts. There is nothing finer in American business history than the fifteen years' battle which Lewis Emery, Jr., fought against the greatest financial power of the day. In 1901 this long struggle met with complete success. Its monuments were the two great trunk pipe lines which Emery had built from the Pennsylvania regions to Marcus Hook, near Philadelphia, one for pumping refined and one for pumping crude. The Pure Oil Company, Emery's creation, has survived all its trials and has done an excellent business. And meanwhile other independents sprang up with the discovery of oil in other parts of the country. This discovery first astonished the Standard Oil men themselves; when someone suggested to Archbold, thirty-five years ago, that the midcontinent field probably contained large oil supplies, he laughed, and said that he would drink all the oil ever discovered outside of Pennsylvania. In these days a haunting fear pursued the oil men that the Pennsylvania field would be exhausted and that their business would be ended. This fear, as developments showed, had a substantial basis; the Pennsylvania yield began to fail in the eighties and nineties, until now it is an inconsiderable element in this gigantic industry. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, California, and other states in turn became the scene of the same exciting and adventurous events that had followed the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania. The Standard promptly extended its pipe lines into these new areas, but other great companies also took part in the development. These companies, such as the Gulf Refining Company and the Texas Refining Company, have their gathering pipe lines, their great trunk lines, their marketing stations, and their export trade, like the Standard; the Pure Oil Company has its tank cars, its tank ships, and its barges on the great rivers of Europe. The ending of the rebate system has stimulated the growth of independents, and the production of crude oil and the market demand in a thousand directions has increased the business to an extent which is now far beyond the ability of any one corporation to monopolize. The Standard interests refine perhaps something more than fifty per cent of the crude oil produced in this country. But in recent years, Standard Oil has meant more than a corporation dealing in this natural product. It has become the synonym of a vast financial power reaching in all directions. The enormous profits made by the Rockefeller group have found investments in other fields. The Rockefellers became the owners of the great Mesaba iron ore range in Minnesota and of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the chief competitor of United States Steel. It is the largest factor in several of the greatest American banks. Above all, it is the single largest railroad power in America today. CHAPTER III. THE EPIC OF STEEL It was the boast of a Roman Emperor that he had found the Eternal City brick and left it marble. Similarly the present generation of Americans inherited a country which was wood and have transformed it into steel. That which chiefly distinguishes the physical America of today from that of forty years ago is the extensive use of this metal. Our fathers used steel very little in railway transportation; rails and locomotives were usually made of iron, and wood was the prevailing material for railroad bridges. Steel cars, both for passengers and for freight, are now everywhere taking the place of the more flimsy substance. We travel today in steel subways, transact our business in steel buildings, and live in apartments and private houses which are made largely of steel. The steel automobile has long since supplanted the wooden carriage; the steel ship has displaced the iron and wooden vessel. The American farmer now encloses his lands with steel wire, the Southern planter binds his cotton with steel ties, and modern America could never gather her abundant harvests without her mighty agricultural implements, all of which are made of steel. Thus it is steel that shelters us, that transports us, that feeds us, and that even clothes us. This substance is such a commonplace element in our lives that we take it for granted, like air and water and the soil itself; yet the generation that fought the Civil War knew practically nothing of steel. They were familiar with this metal only as a curiosity or as a material used for the finer kinds of cutlery. How many Americans realize that steel was used even less in 1865 than aluminum is used today? Nearly all the men who have made the American Steel Age--such as Carnegie, Phipps, Frick, and Schwab--are still living and some of them are even now extremely active. Thirty-five years ago steel manufacture was regarded, even in this country, as an almost exclusively British industry. In 1870 the American steel maker was the parvenu of the trade. American railroads purchased their first steel rails in England, and the early American steel makers went to Sheffield for their expert workmen. Yet, in little more than ten years, American mills were selling agricultural machinery in that same English town, American rails were displacing the English product in all parts of the world, American locomotives were drawing English trains on English railways, and American steel bridges were spanning the Ganges and the Nile. Indeed, the United States soon surpassed England. In the year before the World War the United Kingdom produced 7,500,000 tons of steel a year, while the United States produced 32,000,000 tons. Since the outbreak of the Great War, the United States has probably made more steel than all the rest of the world put together. "The nation that makes the cheapest steel," says Mr. Carnegie, "has the other nations at its feet." When some future Buckle analyzes the fundamental facts in the World War, he may possibly find that steel precipitated it and that steel determined its outcome. Three circumstances contributed to the rise of this greatest of American industries: a new process for cheaply converting molten pig iron into steel, the discovery of enormous deposits of ore in several sections of the United States, and the entrance into the business of a hardy and adventurous group of manufacturers and business men. Our steel industry is thus another triumph of American inventive skill, made possible by the richness of our mineral resources and the racial energy of our people. An elementary scientific discovery introduced the great steel age. Steel, of course, is merely iron which has been refined--freed from certain impurities, such as carbon, sulphur, and phosphorus. We refine our iron and turn it into steel precisely as we refine our sugar and petroleum. From the days of Tubal Cain the iron worker had known that heat would accomplish this purification; but heat, up to almost 1865, was an exceedingly expensive commodity. For ages iron workers had obtained the finer metal by applying this heat in the form of charcoal, never once realizing that unlimited quantities of another fuel existed on every hand. The man who first suggested that so commonplace a substance as air, blown upon molten pig iron, would produce the intensest heat and destroy its impurities, made possible our steel railroads, our steel ships, and our steel cities. When William Kelly, an owner of iron works near Eddyville, Kentucky, first proposed this method in 1847, he met with the ridicule which usually greets the pioneer inventor. When Henry Bessemer, several years afterward, read a paper before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he advocated the same principle, he was roared down as "a crazy Frenchman," and the savants were so humiliated by the suggestion that they voted to make no record of his "silly paper" in their official minutes. Yet these two men, the American Kelly and the Englishman Bessemer, were the creators of modern steel. The records of the American Patent Office clearly show that Kelly made "Bessemer" steel many years before Bessemer. In 1870 the American Government refused to extend Bessemer's patent in this country on the ground that William Kelly had a prior claim; in spite of this, Bessemer was undoubtedly the man who developed the mechanical details and gave the process a universal standing. Though the Bessemer process made possible the production of steel by tons instead of by pounds, it would never in itself have given the nation its present preeminence in the steel industry. Iron had been mined in the United States for two centuries on a small scale, the main deposits being located in the Lake Champlain region of New York and in western Pennsylvania. But these, and a hundred other places located along the Atlantic coast, could not have produced ore in quantities sufficient to satisfy the yawning jaws of the Bessemer converters. As this new method poured out the liquid in thousands of tons, and as the commercial demand extended in a dozen different directions, the cry went up from the furnace's for more ore. And again Nature, which has favored America in so many directions, came to her assistance. Manufacturers in the steel regions began to recall strange stories which had been floating down for many years from the wilderness surrounding Lake Superior. The recollection of a famous voyage made in this region by Philo M. Everett, as far back as 1845, now laid siege to the imagination of the new generation of ironmasters. For years the Indians had told Everett of the "mountains of iron" that lay on the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior and had described their wonders in words that finally impelled this hardy adventurer to make a voyage of exploration. For six weeks, in company with two Indian guides, Everett had navigated a small boat along the shores of the Lake, covering a distance that now takes only a few hours. The Indians had long regarded this silent, red iron region with a superstitious reverence, and now, as the little party approached, they refused to complete the journey. "Iron Mountain!" they said, pointing northward along the trail--"Indian not go near; white man go!" The sight which presently met Everett's eyes repaid him well for his solitary tramp in the forest. He found himself face to face with a "mountain a hundred and fifty feet high, of solid ore, which looked as bright as a bar of iron just broken." Other explorations subsequently laid open the whole of the Minnesota fields, including the Mesaba, which developed into the world's greatest iron range. America has other regions rich in ore, particularly in Alabama, located alongside the coal and limestone so necessary in steel production; yet it has drawn two-thirds of its whole supply from these Lake Superior fields. Not only the quantity, which is apparently limitless, but the quality explains America's leadership in steel making. Mining in Minnesota has a character which is not duplicated elsewhere. When we think of an iron mine, we naturally picture subterranean caverns and galleries, and strange, gnome-like creatures prowling about with pick and shovel and drill. But mining in this section is a much simpler proceeding. The precious mineral does not lie concealed deep within the earth; it lies practically upon the surface. Removing it is not a question of blasting with dynamite; it is merely a matter of lifting it from the surface of the earth with a huge steam shovel. "Miners" in Minnesota have none of the conventional aspects of their trade. They operate precisely as did those who dug the Panama Canal. The railroad cars run closely to the gigantic red pit. A huge steam shovel opens its jaws, descends into an open amphitheater, licks up five tons at each mouthful, and, swinging sideways over the open cars, neatly deposits its booty. It is not surprising that ore can be produced at lower cost in the United States than even in those countries where the most wretched wages are paid. Evidently this one iron field, to say nothing of others already worked, gives a permanence to our steel industry. Not only did America have the material resources; what is even more important, she had also the men. American industrial history presents few groups more brilliant, more resourceful, and more picturesque than that which, in the early seventies, started to turn these Minnesota ore fields into steel--and into gold. These men had all the dash, all the venturesomeness, all the speculative and even the gambling instinct, needed for one of the greatest industrial adventures in our annals. All had sprung from the simplest and humblest origins. They had served their business apprenticeships as grocery clerks, errand boys, telegraph messengers, and newspaper gamins. For the most part they had spent their boyhood together, had played with each other as children, had attended the same Sunday schools, had sung in the same church choirs, and, as young men, had quarreled with each other over their sweethearts. The Pittsburgh group comprised about forty men, most of whom retired as millionaires, though their names for the most part signify little to the present-day American. Kloman, Coleman, McCandless, Shinn, Stewart, Jones, Vandervoort--are all important men in the history of American steel. Thomas A. Scott and J. Edgar Thompson, men associated chiefly with the creation of the Pennsylvania Railroad, also made their contributions. But three or four men towered so preeminently above their associates that today when we think of the human agencies that constructed this mighty edifice, the names that insistently come to mind are those of Carnegie, Phipps, Frick, and Schwab. Books have been written to discredit Carnegie's work and to picture him as the man who has stolen success from the labor of greater men. Yet Carnegie is the one member of a brilliant company who had the indispensable quality of genius. He had none of the plodding, painstaking qualities of a Rockefeller; he had the fire, the restlessness, the keen relish for adventure, and the imagination that leaped far in advance of his competitors which we find so conspicuous in the older Vanderbilt. Carnegie showed these qualities from his earliest days. Driven as a child from his Scottish home by hunger, never having gone to school after twelve, he found himself, at the age of thirteen, living in a miserable hut in Allegheny, earning a dollar and twenty cents a week as bobbin-boy in a cotton mill, while his mother augmented the family income by taking in washing. Half a dozen years later Thomas Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, made Carnegie his private secretary. How well the young man used his opportunities in this occupation appeared afterward when he turned his wide acquaintanceship among railroad men to practical use in the steel business. It was this personal adaptability, indeed, that explains Carnegie's success. In the narrow, methodical sense he was not a business man at all; he knew and cared nothing for its dull routine and its labyrinthine details. As a practical steel man his position is a negligible one. Though he was profoundly impressed by his first sight of a Bessemer converter, he had little interest in the every-day process of making steel. He had also many personal weaknesses: his egotism was marked, he loved applause, he was always seeking opportunities for self-exploitation, and he even aspired to fame as an author and philosopher. The staid business men of Pittsburgh early regarded Carnegie with disfavor; his daring impressed them as rashness and his bold adventures as the plunging of the speculator. Yet in all its aspects Carnegie's triumph was a personal one. He was perhaps the greatest commercial traveler this country has ever known. While his more methodical associates plodded along making steel, Carnegie went out upon the highway, bringing in orders by the millions. He showed this same personal quality in the organization of his force. As a young man, entirely new to the steel industry, he selected as the first manager of his works Captain Bill Jones; his amazing judgment was justified when Jones developed into America's greatest practical genius in making steel. "Here lies the man"--Carnegie once suggested this line for his epitaph--"who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself." Carnegie inspired these men with his own energy and restlessness; the spirit of the whole establishment automatically became that of the pushing spirit of its head. This little giant became the most remorseless pace-maker in the steel regions. However astounding might be the results obtained by the Carnegie works the captain at the head was never satisfied. As each month's output surpassed that which had gone before, Carnegie always came back with the same cry of "More." "We broke all records for making steel last week!" a delighted superintendent once wired him and immediately he received his answer, "Congratulations. Why not do it every week?" This spirit explains the success of the Carnegie Company in outdistancing all its competitors and gaining a worldwide preeminence for the Pittsburgh district. But Carnegie did not make the mistake of capitalizing all this prosperity for himself; his real greatness as an American business man consists in the fact that he liberally shared the profits with his associates. Ruthless he might be in appropriating their last ounce of energy, yet he rewarded the successful men with golden partnerships. Nothing delighted Carnegie more than to see the man whom he had lifted from a puddler's furnace develop into a millionaire. Henry Phipps, still living at the age of seventy-eight, was the only one of Carnegie's early associates who remained with him to the end. Like many of the others, Phipps had been Carnegie's playmate as a boy, so far as any of them, in those early days, had opportunity to play; like all his contemporaries also, Phipps had been wretchedly poor, his earliest business opening having been as messenger boy for a jeweler. Phipps had none of the dash and sparkle of Carnegie. He was the plodder, the bookkeeper, the economizer, the man who had an eye for microscopic details. "What we most admired in young Phipps," a Pittsburgh banker once remarked, "is the way in which he could keep a check in the air for three or four days." His abilities consisted mainly in keeping the bankers complaisant, in smoothing the ruffled feelings of creditors, in cutting out unnecessary expenditures, and in shaving prices. Carnegie's other two more celebrated associates, Henry C. Frick and Charles M. Schwab, were younger men. Frick was cold and masterful, as hard, unyielding, and effective as the steel that formed the staple of his existence. Schwab was enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and happy-go-lucky; a man who ruled his employees and obtained his results by appealing to their sympathies. The men of the steel yards feared Frick as much as they loved "Charlie" Schwab. The earliest glimpses which we get of these remarkable men suggest certain permanent characteristics: Frick is pictured as the sober, industrious bookkeeper in his grandfather's distillery; Schwab as the rollicking, whistling driver of a stage between Loretto and Cresson. Frick came into the steel business as a matter of deliberate choice, whereas Schwab became associated with the Pittsburgh group more or less by accident. The region of Connellsville contains almost 150 square miles underlaid with coal that has a particular heat value when submitted to the process known as coking. As early as the late eighties certain operators had discovered this fact and were coking this coal on a small scale. It is the highest tribute to Frick's intelligence that he alone foresaw the part which this Connellsville coal was to play in building up the Pittsburgh steel district. The panic of 1873, which laid low most of the Connellsville operators, proved Frick's opportunity. Though he was only twenty-four years old he succeeded, by his intelligence and earnestness, in borrowing money to purchase certain Connellsville mines, then much depreciated in price. From that moment, coke became Frick's obsession, as steel had been Carnegie's. With his early profits he purchased more coal lands until, by 1889, he owned ten thousand coke ovens and was the undisputed "coke king" of Connellsville. Several years before this, Carnegie had made Frick one of his marshals, coke having become indispensable to the manufacture of steel, and in 1889 the former distiller's accountant became Carnegie's commander-in-chief. Probably the popular mind associates Frick chiefly with the importation of Slavs as workmen, with the terrible strikes that followed in consequence at Homestead, with the murderous attack made upon him by Berkman, the anarchist, and with his bitter, long drawn-out quarrel with Andrew Carnegie. Frick's stormy career was naturally the product of his character. On the other hand, temperamental pliability and lovableness were the directing traits of the man who, in his way, made contributions quite as solid to the extension of the Pittsburgh steel industry. Schwab worked with the human material quite as successfully as other men worked with iron ore, Bessemer furnaces, and coal. He handled successfully what was perhaps the greatest task in management ever presented to a manufacturer when to him fell the job of reorganizing the Homestead Works after the strike of 1892 and of transforming thousands of riotous workmen into orderly and interested producers of steel. In three or four years practically every man on the premises had become "Charlie" Schwab's personal friend, and the Homestead property which, until the day he took charge, had been a colossal failure, had developed into one of the most profitable holdings of the Carnegie Company. As his reward Schwab, at the age of thirty-four, was made President of the Carnegie corporation. Only sixteen years before he had entered the steel works as a stake driver at a dollar a day. When the Carnegie group began operations in the early seventies, American steel, as a British writer remarked, was a "hot-house product"; yet in 1900 the Carnegie partners divided $40,000,000 as the profits of a single year. They had demonstrated that the United States, despite the high prices that prevailed everywhere, could make steel more cheaply than any other country. Foreign observers have offered several explanations for this achievement. American makers had an endless supply of cheap and high-grade ore, cheaper coke, cheaper transportation, and workmen of a superior skill. We must give due consideration to the fact that their organization was more flexible than those of older countries, and that it regulated promotion exclusively by merit and gave exceptional opportunities to young men. American steel makers also had scrap heaps whose size astounded the foreign observers; they never hesitated to discard the most expensive plants if by so doing they could reduce the cost of steel rails by a dollar a ton. Machinery for steel making had a more extensive development in this country than in England or Germany. Mr. Carnegie also enjoyed the advantages of a high protective tariff, though about 1900 he discovered that his extremely healthy infant no longer demanded this form of coddling. But probably the Carnegie Company's greatest achievement was the abolition of the middleman. In a few years it assembled all the essential elements of steel making in its own hands. Frick's entrance into the combination gave the concern an unlimited supply of the highest grade of coking coal. In a few years, the Carnegie interests had acquired great holdings in the Minnesota ore regions. At first glance, the Pittsburgh region seems hardly the ideal place for the making of steel. Fortune first placed the industry there because all the raw materials, especially iron ore and coal, seemed to exist in abundance. But the discovery of the Minnesota ore field, which alone could supply this essential product in the amounts which the furnaces demanded, immediately deprived the Pittsburgh region of its chief advantage. As a result of this sudden development, the manufacturers of Pittsburgh awoke one morning and discovered that their ore was located a thousand miles away. To bring it to their converters necessitated a long voyage by water and rail, with several reloadings. They overcame these obstacles by developing machinery for handling ore and by acquiring the raw materials and the connecting links of transportation. Ore which had been lying in the wilds of Minnesota on Monday morning was thus brought to Pittsburgh and made into steel rails or bridges or structural shapes by Saturday night. The Carnegie Company first acquired sufficient mineral lands to furnish ore for several generations and organized an ore fleet which transported the products of the mines through the lakes to ports on Lake Erie, particularly Ashtabula and Conneaut. The purchase of the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad, which extended from Conneaut to Pittsburgh, made this great transportation route complete. Besides freeing their business from uncertainty, this elimination of middlemen naturally produced great economies. Probably Andrew Carnegie's shrewdness in naming his first plant the J. Edgar Thompson Steel Works, after the powerful President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in making Thompson and his associate Scott partners, had much to do with his early success. These two gentlemen conferred two priceless favors upon the struggling enterprise. They became large purchasers of steel rails and their influence in this direction extended far beyond the Pennsylvania Railroad. What was perhaps even more important, they gave the Carnegie concerns railroad rebates. The use of rebates, as a method of stifling competition and building up a great industrial prosperity, is an offense which the popular mind associates almost exclusively with the Standard Oil Company, yet the Carnegie fortune, as well as that of John D. Rockefeller, received an artificial stimulation of this kind. Though incomparably the greatest of the American steel companies, the Carnegie Steel Company by no means monopolized the field. In forty years, indeed, an enormous steel area had grown up, including western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, practically all of it drawing its raw materials from those same teeming ore lands in the Lake Superior region. Johnstown, Youngstown, Cleveland, Lorain, Chicago, and Joliet, became headquarters of steel production almost as important as Pittsburgh itself. Two entirely new steel kingdoms, each with its own natural reservoirs of ore, grew up in Colorado and Alabama. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which possessed apparently inexhaustible mineral lands in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and California, itself produces not far from three million tons a year, almost half the present production of Great Britain. The Alabama steel country has developed in even more spectacular fashion. Birmingham, a hive of southern industry placed almost as if by magic in the leisurely cotton lands of the South, had no existence in 1870, when the Pittsburgh prosperity began. In the Civil War, the present site of a city with a population of 140,000 was merely a blacksmith shop in the fork of the roads. Yet this district has advantages for the manufacture of steel that have no parallel elsewhere. The steel companies which are located here do not have to bring their materials laboriously from a distance but possess, immediately at hand, apparently endless store of the three things needful for making steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone. All these territories have their personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as picturesque as those of the Pittsburgh group. It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure quite as astonishing and variegated as that of John W. Gates, the man who educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire fencing. Half charlatan, half enthusiast, speculator, gambler, a man who created great enterprises and who also destroyed them, at times an upbuilding force and at other times a sinister influence, Gates completely typified a period in American history that, along with much that was heroic and splendid, had much also that was grotesque and sordid. The opera-bouffe performance that laid the foundations of Gates's great industry was in every way characteristic of this period. In 1871 Gates, then a clerk in a hardware store at twenty-five dollars a week, made his first attempt to sell barbed wire in the great cattle countries of the southwestern States. When the cattle men in Texas first saw this barbed wire, they ridiculed the idea that it could ever hold their steers. Gates selected a plaza in San Antonio, fenced it in with his new product, and invited the enemies to bring along their wildest specimens About thirty of Texas' most ferocious cattle, placed within the enclosure, spent a whole afternoon plunging at the barbs in a useless and tormenting attempt to escape. This spectacular demonstration of efficiency launched Gates fairly upon his career. He immediately began to sell his new fencing on an enormous scale; in a few years the whole world was demanding it, and it has become, as recent events have disclosed, a particularly formidable munition of war. The American Steel and Wire Company, one of the greatest of American corporations, was the ultimate outgrowth of that lively afternoon in San Antonio. In 1900 the Carnegie Steel Company was making one-quarter of all the Bessemer steel produced in the United States. It owned in abundance all the properties which were essential to its completed output--coal, limestone, steel ships, railroads, and steel mills. In twenty-five years, from 1875 to 1900, this manufacturing enterprise had paid the Carnegie group profits aggregating $133,000,000, profits which, in the closing years of the century, had increased at a stupendous rate. In 1898 Carnegie and his associates had divided $11,500,000, in 1899 their earnings had grown to $25,000,000, and in 1900 the aggregate had suddenly jumped to $40,000,000. Of this latter sum Carnegie received $25,000,000, Phipps $5,500,000, Frick $2,600,000, and Schwab $1,300,000. And Carnegie's little group could see no limit to the growth of their business and the expansion of their personal fortunes. Yet at that very moment Carnegie was planning to play the part of a Charles V with the large empire which he had pieced together--to abdicate his throne, retire from business life, and spend his remaining days in quiet. Many influences were impelling him to this decision. His triumph, stupendous as it had been, also had had its alloy of sorrow. Indeed this little Scotsman, now at the crowning of his glory, was one of the loneliest figures in the world. Practically all the forty men with whom he had been closely associated had vanished from the scene. He had quarreled with his playmate and lifelong partner, Henry Phipps, and was in the worst possible business and personal relations with Frick. He had no son to carry on his work. He had become greatly interested in his philanthropies, and he had declared that the man who died rich died disgraced. Moreover, new influences were rising in the steel trade with which Carnegie had little sympathy. Its national capital seemed to be shifting from Pittsburgh to Wall Street. New men who knew nothing about steel but who possessed an intimate acquaintance with stocks and bonds--J. Pierpont Morgan, George W. Perkins, and their associates--were branching out as controllers of large steel interests. Carnegie had no interest in Wall Street; he has declared that he never speculated in his life and that he would immediately dissociate himself from any partner who would do so. This Wall Street coterie, in the years from 1898 to 1900, had made several large combinations in the steel trade. That was the era when the trust mania had gained possession of the American mind and when its worst features displayed themselves. The Federal Steel Company, the American Bridge Company, the American Steel and Wire, the National Tube Company, all representing the assembling of large works which had been engaged as rivals in similar enterprises, were launched, with the usual accompaniments of "underwriting syndicates," watered stock, and Wall Street speculation. This sort of thing made no appeal to Andrew Carnegie. His huge enterprise had always remained essentially a copartnership, and he had frequently expressed his abhorrence of trusts. Yet, in spite of his wish to retire from business and in spite of his avowed intention to die poor, Carnegie now adopted the policy of the Sibylline leaves to all prospective purchasers. Moore and Reid would have purchased his interest for $157,000,000; when Rockefeller came along the price had risen to $250,000,000; when the oil man shook his head and retired, Carnegie immediately raised his price to $500,000,000. It is doubtful whether he would have sold at all had not his Wall Street competitors begun to encroach on a field which the little Scotsman understood quite as well as they--the production and merchandising of steel. The newly organized combinations were completing elaborate plans to go after Carnegie's business. Then Carnegie, who had practically retired from active life, again arrayed himself in his shirt-sleeves, abandoned his career of authorship, and resumed his early trade. His first attacks produced an immense reverberation in the House of Morgan. He purchased a huge tract at Conneaut and began building a gigantic plant for the manufacture of steel tubes, a business in which he had not hitherto engaged. This was a blow aimed at one of Morgan's pet new creations, the National Tube Company. Should Carnegie finish his works, there was no doubt the Morgan enterprise would be ruined, for the new plant would be far more modern and so could manufacture the product at a much lower price; and, with Charles M. Schwab as active manager, what possible chance would the older corporation have? But Carnegie struck his enemy at an even more vulnerable point. The Pennsylvania Railroad had a practical monopoly of traffic in and out of Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh "created" more freight business than any other city in the world. Carnegie lent his powerful support to George J. Gould, who was then extending his railroad system into the preempted field and was also making surveys and had financed a company to build an entirely new railroad from Pittsburgh to the Atlantic Coast. As Carnegie himself controlled the larger part of the freight that made Pittsburgh such an essential feeder to railroads, his new enterprise caused the greatest alarm. At the same time Carnegie equipped a new and splendid fleet of ore ships, his purpose being to enter a field of transportation which John D. Rockefeller had found extremely profitable. Such were the circumstances and such were the motives that gave birth to the world's largest corporation. All one night, so the story goes, Charles M. Schwab and John W. Gates discussed the steel situation with J. Pierpont Morgan. There was only one possible solution, they said--Andrew Carnegie must be bought out. By the time the morning sun came through the windows Morgan had been convinced. "Go and ask him what he will sell for," he said to Schwab. In a brief period Schwab came back to Morgan with a letter which contained the following figures--five per cent gold bonds $303,450,000; preferred stock $98,277,100; common stock $90,279,000--a total of over $492,000,000. Carnegie demanded no cash; he preferred to hold a huge first mortgage on a business whose golden opportunities he knew so well. Morgan, who had been accustomed all his life to dictate to other men, had now met a man who was able to dictate to him. And he capitulated. The man who fifty-three years before had started life in a new country as a bobbin-boy at a dollar and twenty cents a week, now at the age of sixty-six retired from business the second richest man in the world. With him retired a miscellaneous assortment of millionaires whose fortunes he had made and whose subsequent careers in the United States and in Europe have given a peculiar significance to the name "Pittsburgh Millionaires." The United States Steel Corporation, the combination that included not only the Carnegie Company but seventy per cent of all the steel concerns in the country, was really a trust made up of trusts. It had a capitalization of a billion and a half, of which about $700,000,000 was composed of the commodity usually known as "water"; but so greatly has its business grown and so capably has it been managed that all this liquid material has since been converted into more solid substance. The disappearance of Andrew Carnegie and his coworkers and the emergence of this gigantic enterprise completed the great business cycle in the steel trade. The age of individual enterprise and competition had passed--that of corporate control had arrived. CHAPTER IV. THE TELEPHONE: "AMERICA'S MOST POETICAL ACHIEVEMENT" A distinguished English journalist, who was visiting the United States, in 1917, on an important governmental mission, had an almost sublime illustration of the extent to which the telephone had developed on the North American Continent. Sitting at a desk in a large office building in New York, Lord Northcliffe took up two telephone receivers and placed one at each ear. In the first he heard the surf beating at Coney Island, New York, and in the other he heard, with equal distinctness, the breakers pounding the beach at the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Certainly this demonstration justified the statement made a few years before by another English traveler. "What startles and frightens the backward European in the United States," said Mr. Arnold Bennett, "is the efficiency and fearful universality of the telephone. To me it was the proudest achievement and the most poetical achievement of the American people." Lord Northcliffe's experience had a certain dramatic justice which probably even he did not appreciate. He is the proprietor of the London Times, a newspaper which, when the telephone was first introduced, denounced it as the "latest American humbug" and declared that it "was far inferior to the well-established system of speaking tubes." The London Times delivered this solemn judgment in 1877. A year before, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, picked up, almost accidentally, a queer cone-shaped instrument and put it to his ear, "My God! It talks!" was his exclamation; an incident which, when widely published in the press, first informed the American people that another of the greatest inventions of all times had had its birth on their own soil. Yet the initial judgment of the American people did not differ essentially from the opinion which had been more coarsely expressed by the leading English newspaper. Our fathers did not denounce the telephone as an "American humbug," but they did describe it as a curious electric "toy" and ridiculed the notion that it could ever have any practical value. Even after Alexander Graham Bell and his associates had completely demonstrated its usefulness, the Western Union Telegraph Company refused to purchase all their patent rights for $100,000! Only forty years have passed since the telephone made such an inauspicious beginning. It remains now, as it was then, essentially an American achievement. Other nations have their telephone systems, but it is only in the United States that its possibilities have been even faintly realized. It is not until Americans visit foreign countries that they understand that, imperfect as in certain directions their industrial and social organization may be, in this respect at least their nation is preeminent. The United States contains nearly all the telephones in existence, to be exact, about seventy-five per cent. We have about ten million telephones, while Canada, Central America, South America, Great Britain, Europe, Asia, and Africa all combined have only about four million. In order to make an impressive showing, however, we need not include the backward peoples, for a comparison with the most enlightened nations emphasizes the same point. Thus New York City has more telephones than six European countries taken together--Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands. Chicago, with a population of 2,000,000, has more telephones than the whole of France, with a population of 40,000,000. Philadelphia, with 1,500,000, has more than the Russian Empire, with 166,000,000. Boston has more telephones than Austria-Hungary, Los Angeles more than the Netherlands, and Kansas City more than Belgium. Several office buildings and hotels in New York City have more instruments than the kingdoms of Greece or Bulgaria. The whole of Great Britain and Ireland has about 650,000 telephones, which is only about 200,000 more, than the city of New York. Mere numbers, however, tell only half the story. It is when we compare service that American superiority stands most manifest. The London newspapers are constantly filled with letters abusing the English telephone system. If these communications describe things accurately, there is apparently no telephone vexation that the Englishman does not have to endure. Delays in getting connections are apparently chronic. At times it seems impossible to get connections at all, especially from four to five in the afternoon--when the operators are taking tea. Suburban connections, which in New York take about ninety seconds, average half an hour in London, and many of the smaller cities have no night service. An American thinks nothing of putting in a telephone; he notifies his company and in a few days the instrument is installed. We take a thing like this for granted. But there are places where a mere telephone subscription, the privilege of having an instrument installed, is a property right of considerable value and where the telephone service has a "waiting list," like an exclusive club. In Japan one can sell a telephone privilege at a good price, its value being daily quoted on the Stock Exchange. Americans, by constantly using the telephone, have developed what may be called a sixth sense, which enables them to project their personalities over an almost unlimited area. In the United States the telephone has become the one all-prevailing method of communication. The European writes or telegraphs while the American more frequently telephones. In this country the telephone penetrates to places which even the mails never reach. The rural free delivery and other forms of the mail service extend to 58,000 communities, while our 10,000,000 telephones encompass 70,000. We use this instrument for all the varied experiences of life, domestic, social, and commercial. There are residences in New York City that have private branch exchanges, like a bank or a newspaper office. Hostesses are more and more falling into the habit of telephoning invitations for dinner and other diversions. Many people find telephone conversations more convenient than personal interviews, and it is every day displacing the stenographer and the traveling salesman. Perhaps the most noteworthy achievement of the telephone is its transformation of country life. In Europe, rural telephones are almost unknown, while in the United States one-third of all our telephone stations are in country districts. The farmer no longer depends upon the mails; like the city man, he telephones. This instrument is thus the greatest civilizing force we have, for civilization is very largely a matter of intercommunication. Indeed, the telephone and other similar agencies, such as the parcel post, the rural free delivery, better roads, and the automobile, are rapidly transforming rural life in this country. In several regions, especially in the Mississippi Valley, a farmer who has no telephone is in a class by himself, like one who has no mowing-machine. Thus the latest returns from Iowa, taken by the census as far back as 1907, showed that seventy-three per cent of all the farms--160,000 out of 220,000--had telephones and the proportion is unquestionably greater now. Every other farmhouse from the Atlantic to the Pacific contains at least one instrument. These statistics clearly show that the telephone has removed half the terrors and isolation of rural life. Many a lonely farmer's wife or daughter, on the approach of a suspicious-looking character, has rushed to the telephone and called up the neighbors, so that now tramps notoriously avoid houses that shelter the protecting wires. In remote sections, insanity, especially among women, is frequently the result of loneliness, a calamity which the telephone is doing much to mitigate. In the United States today there is one telephone to every nine persons. This achievement represents American invention, genius, industrial organization, and business enterprise at their best. The story of American business contains many chapters and episodes which Americans would willingly forget. But the American Telephone and Telegraph Company represents an industry which has made not a single "swollen fortune," whose largest stockholder is the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor (a woman who, being totally deaf, has never talked over the telephone); which has not corrupted legislatures or courts; which has steadily decreased the prices of its products as business and profits have increased; which has never issued watered stock or declared fictitious dividends; and which has always manifested a high sense of responsibility in its dealings with the public. Two forces, American science and American business capacity, have accomplished this result. As a mechanism, this American telephone system is the product not of one but of many minds. What most strikes the imagination is the story of Alexander Graham Bell, yet other names--Carty, Scribner, Pupin--play a large part in the story. The man who discovered that an electric current had the power of transmitting sound over a copper wire knew very little about electricity. Had he known more about this agency and less about acoustics, Bell once said himself, he would never have invented the telephone. His father and grandfather had been teachers of the deaf and dumb and had made important researches in acoustics. Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in March, 1847, and educated there and in London, followed the ancestral example. This experience gave Bell an expert knowledge of phonetics that laid the foundation for his life work. His invention, indeed, is clearly associated with his attempts to make the deaf and dumb talk. He was driven to America by ill-health, coming first to Canada, and in 1871 he settled in Boston, where he accepted a position in Boston University to introduce his system of teaching deaf-mutes. He opened a school of "Vocal Physiology," and his success in his chosen field brought him into association with the people who afterward played an important part in the development of the telephone. Not a single element of romance was lacking in Bell's experience; his great invention even involved the love story of his life. Two influential citizens of Boston, Thomas Sanders and Gardiner G. Hubbard, had daughters who were deaf and dumb, and both engaged Bell's services as teacher. Bell lived in Sanders's home for a considerable period, dividing his time between teaching his little pupil how to talk and puttering away at a proposed invention which he called a "harmonic telegraph." Both Sanders and Hubbard had become greatly interested in this contrivance and backed Bell financially while he worked. It was Bell's idea that, by a system of tuning different telegraphic receivers to different pitches, several telegraphic messages could be sent simultaneously over the same wire. The idea was not original with Bell, although he supposed that it was and was entirely unaware that, at the particular moment when he started work, about twenty other inventors were struggling with the same problem. It was one of these other twenty experimenters, Elisha Gray, who ultimately perfected this instrument. Bell's researches have an interest only in that they taught him much about sound transmission and other kindred subjects and so paved the way for his great conception. One day Hubbard and Sanders learned that Bell had abandoned his "harmonic telegraph" and was experimenting with an entirely new idea. This was the possibility of transmitting the human voice over an electric wire. While working in Sanders's basement, Bell had obtained from a doctor a dead man's ear, and it is said that while he was minutely studying and analyzing this gruesome object, the idea of the telephone first burst upon his mind. For years Bell had been engaged in a task that seemed hopeless to most men--that of making deaf-mutes talk. "If I can make a deaf-mute talk, I can make iron talk," he declared. "If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity as the air varies in density," he said at another time, "I could transmit sound telegraphically." Many others, of course, had dreamed of inventing such an instrument. The story of the telephone concerns many men who preceded Bell, one of whom, Philip Reis, produced, in 1861, a mechanism that could send a few discordant sounds, though not the human voice, over an electric wire. Reis seemed to have based his work upon an article published in "The American Journal of Science" by Dr. C.G. Page, of Salem, Mass., in 1837, in which he called attention to the sound given out by an electric magnet when the circuit is opened or closed. The work of these experimenters involves too many technicalities for discussion in this place. The important facts are that they all involved different principles from those worked out by Bell and that none of them ever attained any practical importance. Reis, in particular, never grasped the essential principles that ultimately made the telephone a reality. His work occupies a place in telephone history only because certain financial interests, many years after his death, brought it to light in an attempt to discredit Bell's claim to priority as the inventor. An investigator who seems to have grasped more clearly the basic idea was the distinguished American inventor Elisha Gray, already mentioned as the man who had succeeded in perfecting the "harmonic telegraph." On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office, setting forth pretty accurately the conception of the electric telephone. The tragedy in Gray's work consists in the fact that, two hours before his caveat had been put in, Bell had filed his application for a patent on the completed instrument. The champions of Bell and Gray may dispute the question of priority to their heart's content; the historic fact is that the telephone dates from a dramatic moment in the year 1876. Sanders and Hubbard, much annoyed that Bell had abandoned his harmonic telegraph for so visionary an idea as a long distance talking machine, refused to finance him further unless he returned to his original quest. Disappointed and disconsolate, Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, had started work on the top floor of the Williams Manufacturing Company's shop in Boston. And now another chance happening turned Bell back once more to the telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room to another located in a remote part of the building. One day Watson accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near this telegraph wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the twang. A few seconds later Watson was startled when an excited and somewhat disheveled figure burst into his room. "What was that?" shouted Bell. What had happened was clearly manifest; a sound had been sent distinctly over an electric wire. Bell's harmonic telegraph immediately went into the discard, and the young inventor--Bell was then only twenty-nine--became a man of one passionate idea. Yet final success did not come easily; the inventor worked day and night for forty weeks before he had obtained satisfactory results. It was on March 10, 1876, that Watson, in a distant room, picked up the first telephone receiver and heard these words, the first that had ever passed over a magnetized wire, "Come here, Watson; I want you." The speaking instrument had become a reality, and the foundation of the telephone, in all its present development, had been laid. When the New York and San Francisco line was opened in January, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell spoke these same words to his old associate, Thomas Watson, located in San Francisco, both men using the same instruments that had served so well on that historic occasion forty years before. Though Bell's first invention comprehended the great basic idea that made it a success, the instrument itself bore few external resemblances to that which has become so commonplace today. If one could transport himself back to this early period and undergo the torture of using this primitive telephone, he would appreciate somewhat the labor, the patience, the inventive skill, and the business organization that have produced the modern telephone. In the first place you would have no separate transmitter and receiver. You would talk into a funnel-shaped contrivance and then place it against your ear to get the returning message. In order to make yourself heard, you would have to shout like a Gloucester sea captain at the height of a storm. More than the speakers' voices would come over the wire. It seemed to have become the playground of a million devils; moanings, shriekings, mutterings, and noises of all kinds would constantly interrupt the flow of speech. To call up your "party" you would not merely lift the receiver as today; you would tap with a lead pencil, or some other appliance, upon the diaphragm of your transmitter. There were no separate telephone wires. The talking at first was done over the telegraph lines. The earliest "centrals" reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite, soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived. Instead, boys were rushing around with the ends of wires which they were frantically attempting to peg into the holes of the primitive switchboard and so establish "connections." When not knocking down and fighting each other, these boys were swearing into transmitters at the customers; and it is said that the incurable profanity of these early "telephone boys" had much to do with their supersession by girls. In the early days of the telephone, each instrument had to carry its own battery, usually installed in a little box under the transmitter. The early telephone wires, even in the largest cities, were strung on poles, as they are in country and suburban districts today. In places like New York and Chicago, these thousands of overhanging wires not only destroyed the attractiveness of the thoroughfare, but constantly interfered with the fire department and proved to be public nuisances in other ways. A telephone wire, however, loses much of its transmitting power when placed under ground, and it took many years of experimenting before the engineers perfected these subways. In these early days, of course, the telephone was purely a local matter. Certain visionary enthusiasts had foreseen the possibility of a national, long distance system, but a large amount of labor, both in the laboratory and out, was to be expended before these aspirations could become realities. The transformation of this rudimentary means of communication into the beautiful mechanism which we have today forms a splendid chapter in the history of American invention. Of all the details in Bell's apparatus the receiver is almost the only one that remains now what it was forty years ago. The story of the transmitter in itself would fill a volume. Edison's success in devising a transmitter which permitted talk in ordinary conversational tones--an invention that became the property of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which early embarked in the telephone business--at one time seemed likely to force the Bell Company out of business. But Emile Berliner and Francis Blake finally came to the rescue with an excellent instrument, and the suggestion of an English clergyman, the Reverend Henry Hummings, that carbon granules be used on the diaphragm, made possible the present perfect instrument. The magneto call bell--still used in certain backward districts--for many years gave fair results for calling purposes, but the automatic switch, which enables us to get central by merely picking up the receiver, has made possible our great urban service. It was several years before the telephone makers developed so essential a thing as a satisfactory wire. Silver, which gave excellent results, was obviously too costly, and copper, the other metal which had many desirable qualities, was too soft. Thomas B. Doolittle solved this problem by inventing a hard-drawn copper wire. A young man of twenty-two, John J. Carty, suggested a simple device for exorcising the hundreds of "mysterious noises" that had made the use of the telephone so agonizing. It was caused, Carty pointed out, by the circumstance that the telephone, like the telegraph, used a ground circuit for the return wire; the resultant scrapings and moanings and howlings were merely the multitudinous voices of mother earth herself. Mr. Carty began installing the metallic circuit in his lines that is, he used wire, instead of the ground, to complete the circuit. As a result of this improvement the telephone was immediately cleared of these annoying interruptions. Mr. Carty, who is now Chief Engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the man who has superintended all its extensions in recent years, is one of the three or four men who have done most to create the present system. Another is Charles E. Scribner, who, by his invention of that intricate device, the multiple switchboard, has converted the telephone exchange into a smoothly working, orderly place. Scribner's multiple switchboard dates from about 1890. It was Mr. Scribner also who replaced the individual system of dry cells with one common battery located at the central exchange, an improvement which saved the Company 4,000,000 dry cells a year. Then Barrett discovered a method of twisting fifty pairs of wires--since grown to 2400 pairs-into a cable, wrapping them in paper and molding them in lead, and the wires were now taken from poles and placed in conduits underground. But perhaps the most romantic figure in telephone history, next to Bell, is that of a humble Servian immigrant who came to this country as a boy and obtained his first employment as a rubber in a Turkish bath. Michael I. Pupin was graduated from Columbia, studied afterward in Germany, and became absorbed in the new subject of electromechanics. In particular he became interested in a telephone problem that had bothered the greatest experts for years. One thing that had prevented the great extension of the telephone, especially for long distance work, was the size of the wire. Long distance lines up to 1900 demanded wire about one-eighth of an inch thick--as thick as a fairsized lead pencil; and, for this reason, the New York-Chicago line, built in 1893, consumed 870,000 pounds of copper wire of this size. Naturally the enormous expense stood in the way of any extended development. The same thickness also interfered with cable extension. Only about a hundred wires could be squeezed into one cable, against the eighteen hundred now compressed in the same area. Because of these shortcomings, telephone progress, about 1900, was marking time, awaiting the arrival of a thin wire that would do the work of a thick one. The importance of the problem is shown by the fact that one-fourth of all the capital invested in the telephone has been spent in copper. Professor Pupin, who had been a member of the faculty of Columbia University since 1888, solved this problem in his quiet laboratory and, by doing so, won the greatest prize in modern telephone art. His researches resulted in the famous "Pupin coil" by the expedient now known as "loading." When the scientists attempt to explain this invention, they have to use all kinds of mathematical formulas and curves and, in fact, they usually get to quarreling among themselves over the points involved. What Professor Pupin has apparently done is to free the wire from those miscellaneous disturbances known as "induction." This Pupin invention involved another improvement unsuspected by the inventor, which shows us the telephone in all its mystery and beauty and even its sublimity. Soon after the Pupin coil was introduced, it was discovered that, by crossing the wires of two circuits at regular intervals, another unexplainable circuit was induced. Because this third circuit travels apparently without wires, in some manner which the scientists have not yet discovered, it is appropriately known as the phantom circuit. The practical result is that it is now possible to send three telephone messages and eight telegraph messages over two pairs of wires--all at the same time. Professor Pupin's invention has resulted in economies that amount to millions of dollars, and has made possible long distance lines to practically every part of the United States. Thus many great inventive minds have produced the physical telephone. We can point to several men--Bell, Blake, Carty, Scribner, Barrett, Pupin--and say of each one, "Without his work the present telephone system could not exist." But business genius, as well as mechanical genius, explains this achievement. For the first four or five years of its existence, the new invention had hard sailing. Bell and Thomas Watson, in order to fortify their finances, were forced to travel around the country, giving a kind of vaudeville entertainment. Bell made a speech explaining the new invention, while a cornet player, located in another part of the town, played solos, the music reaching the audience through several telephone instruments placed against the walls. Watson, also located at a distance, varied the program by singing songs via telephone. These lecture tours not only gave Bell the money which he sorely needed but advertised the innovation. There followed a few scattering attempts to introduce the telephone into every-day use and telephone exchanges were established in New York, Boston, Bridgeport, and New Haven. But these pioneers had the hostility of the most powerful corporation of the day--the Western Union Telegraph Company--and they lacked aggressive leaders. In 1878, Mr. Gardiner Hubbard, Bell's earliest backer, and now his father-in-law, became acquainted with a young man who was then serving in Washington as General Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service. This young man was Theodore N. Vail. His energy and enterprise so impressed Hubbard that he immediately asked Vail to become General Manager of the company which he was then forming to exploit the telephone. Viewed from the retrospection of forty years this offer certainly looks like one of the greatest prizes in American business. What it signified at that time, however, is apparent from the fact that the office paid a salary of $3500 a year and that for the first ten years Vail did not succeed in collecting a dollar of this princely remuneration. Yet it was a happy fortune, not only for the Bell Company but for the nation, that placed Vail at the head of this struggling enterprise. There was a certain appropriateness in his selection, even then. His granduncle, Stephen Vail, had built the engines for the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. A cousin had worked with Morse while he was inventing the telegraph. Vail, who was born in Carroll County, Ohio, in 1845, after spending two years as a medical student, suddenly shifted his plans and became a telegraph operator. Then he entered the Railway Mail service; in this service he completely revolutionized the system and introduced reforms that exist at the present time. A natural bent had apparently directed Vail's mind towards methods of communication, a fact that may perhaps explain the youthful enthusiasm with which he took up the new venture and the vision with which he foresaw and planned its future. For the chief fact about Vail is that he was a business man with an imagination. The crazy little machine which he now undertook to exploit did not interest him as a means of collecting tolls, floating stock, and paying dividends. He saw in it a new method of spreading American civilization and of contributing to the happiness and comfort of millions of people. Indeed Vail had hardly seen the telephone when a picture portraying the development which we are familiar with today unfolded before his eyes. That the telephone has had a greater development in America than elsewhere and that the United States has avoided all those mistakes of organization that have so greatly hampered its growth in other lands, is owing to the fact that Vail, when he first took charge, mapped out the comprehensive policies which have guided his corporation since. Vail early adopted the "slogan" which has directed the Bell activities for forty years--"One System! One Policy! Universal Service." In his mind a telephone company was not a city affair, or even a state affair; it was a national affair. His aim has been from the first a universal, national service, all under one head, and reaching every hamlet, every business house, factory, and home in the nation. The idea that any man, anywhere, should be able to take down a receiver and talk to anyone, anywhere else in the United States, was the conception which guided Vail's labors from the first. He did not believe that a mass of unrelated companies could give a satisfactory service; if circumstances had ever made a national monopoly, that monopoly was certainly the telephone. Having in view this national, universal, articulating monopoly, Vail insisted on his second great principle, the standardization of equipment. Every man's telephone must be precisely like every other man's, and that must be the best which mechanical skill and inventive genius could produce. To make this a reality and to secure perfect supervision and upkeep, it was necessary that telephones should not be sold but leased. By enforcing these ideas Vail saved the United States from the chaos which exists in certain other countries, such as France, where each subscriber purchases his own instrument, making his selection from about forty different varieties. That certain dangers were inherent in this universal system Vail understood. Monopoly all too likely brings in excessive charges, poor service, and inside speculation; but it was Vail's plan to justify his system by its works. To this end he established a great engineering department which should study all imaginable mechanical improvements, with the results which have been described. He gave the greatest attention to every detail of the service and particularly insisted on the fairest and most courteous treatment of the public. The "please" which invariably accompanies the telephone girl's request for a number--the familiar "number, please"--is a trifle, but it epitomizes the whole spirit which Vail inspired throughout his entire organization. Though there are plenty of people who think that the existing telephone charges are too high, the fact remains that the rate has steadily declined with the extension of the business. Vail has also kept his company clear from the financial scandals that have disgraced so many other great corporations. He has never received any reward himself except his salary, such fortune as he possesses being the result of personal business ventures in South America during the twenty years from 1887 to 1907 that he was not associated with the Bell interests. Vail's first achievement was to rescue this invention from the greatest calamity which would have befallen it. The Western Union Telegraph Company, which in the early days had looked upon the telephone as negligible, suddenly awoke one morning to a realization of its importance. This Corporation had recently introduced its "printing telegraph," a device that made it possible to communicate without the intermediary operator. When news reached headquarters that subscribers were dropping this new contrivance and subscribing to telephones, the Western Union first understood that a competitor had entered their field. Promptly organizing the American Speaking Telephone Company, the Western Union, with all its wealth and prestige, proceeded to destroy this insolent pigmy. Its methods of attack were unscrupulous and underhanded, the least discreditable one being the use of its political influence to prevent communities from giving franchises to the Bell Company. But this corporation mainly relied for success upon the wholesale manner in which it infringed the Bell patents. It raked together all possible claimants to priority, from Philip Reis to Elisha Gray, in its attempts to discredit Bell as the inventor. The Western Union had only one legitimate advantage--the Edison transmitter--which was unquestionably much superior to anything which the Bell Company then possessed. Many Bell stockholders were discouraged in face of this fierce opposition and wished to abandon the fight. Not so Vail. The mere circumstance that the great capitalists of the Western Union had taken up the telephone gave the public a confidence in its value which otherwise it would not have had, a fact which Vail skillfully used in attracting influential financial support. He boldly sued the Western Union in 1878 for infringement of the Bell patents. The case was a famous one; the whole history of the telephone was reviewed from the earliest days, and the evidence as to rival claimants was placed on record for all time. After about a year, Mr. George Clifford, perhaps the best patent attorney of the day, who was conducting the case for the Western Union, quietly informed his clients that they could never win, for the records showed that Bell was the inventor. He advised the Western Union to settle the case out of court and his advice was taken. This great corporation war was concluded by a treaty (November 10, 1879) in which the Western Union acknowledged that Bell was the inventor, that his patents were valid, and agreed to retire from the telephone business. The Bell Company, on its part, agreed to buy the Western Union Telephone System, to pay the Western Union a royalty of twenty per cent on all telephone rentals, and not to engage in the telegraph business. Had this case been decided against the Bell Company it is almost certain that the telephone would have been smothered in the interest of the telegraph and its development delayed for many years. Soon after the settlement of the Western Union suit, the original group which had created the telephone withdrew from the scene. Bell went back to teaching deaf-mutes. He has since busied himself with the study of airplanes and wireless, and has invented an instrument for transmitting sound by light. The new telephone company offered him $10,000 a year as chief inventor, but he replied that he could not invent to order. Thomas Sanders received somewhat less than $1,000,000 and lost most of it exploiting a Colorado gold mine. Gardiner Hubbard withdrew from business and devoted the last years of his life to the National Geographic Society. Thomas Watson, after retiring from the telephone business, bought a ship-building yard near Boston, which has been successful. In making this settlement with the Western Union, the Bell interests not only eliminated a competitor but gained great material advantages. They took over about 56,000 telephone stations located in 55 cities and towns. They also soon acquired the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, which under the control of the Western Union had developed into an important concern for the manufacture of telephone supplies. Under the management of the Bell Company this corporation, which now has extensive factories in Hawthorne, Ill., produces two-thirds of the world's telephone apparatus. With the Western Electric Vail has realized the fundamental conception underlying his ideal telephone system--the standardization of equipment. For the accomplishment of his idea of a national telephone system, instead of a parochial one, Mr. Vail organized, in 1881, the American Bell Telephone Company, a corporation that really represented the federalization of all the telephone activities of the subsidiary companies. The United States was divided into several sections, in each of which a separate company was organized to develop the telephone possibilities of that particular area. In 1899 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company took over the business and properties of the American Bell Company. The larger corporation built toll lines, connected these smaller systems with one another, and thus made it possible for Washington to talk to New York, New York to Chicago, and ultimately--Boston to San Francisco. An enlightened policy led the Bell Company frequently to establish exchanges in places where there was little chance of immediate profit. Under this stimulation the use of this instrument extended rapidly, yet it is in the last twenty years that the telephone has grown with accelerated momentum. In 1887 there were 170,000 subscribers in the United States, and in 1900 there were 610,000; but in 1906 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was furnishing its service to 2,550,000 stations, and in 1916 to 10,000,000. Clearly it is only since 1900 that the telephone has become a commonplace of American existence. Up to 1900 it had grown at the rate of about 13,000 a year; whereas since 1900 it has grown at the rate of 700,000 a year. The explanation is that charges have been so reduced that the telephone has been brought within the reach of practically every business house and every family. Until the year 1900 every telephone subscriber had to pay $240 a year, and manifestly only families in affluent circumstances could afford such a luxury. About that time a new system of charges known as the "message rate" plan was introduced, according to which the subscriber paid a moderate price for a stipulated number of calls, and a pro rata charge for all calls in excess of that number. Probably no single change in any business has had such an instantaneous effect. The telephone, which had hitherto been an external symbol of prosperity, suddenly became the possession of almost every citizen. Other companies than the Bell interests have participated in this development. The only time the Bell Company has had no competitor, Mr. Vail has said, was at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. Some of this competition has benefited the public but much of it has accomplished little except to enrich many not over-scrupulous promoters. Groups of farmers who frequently started companies to furnish service at cost did much to extend the use of the telephone. Many of the companies which, when the Bell patents expired in 1895, sprang up in the Middle West, also manifested great enterprise and gave excellent service. These companies have made valuable contributions, of which perhaps the automatic telephone, an instrument which enables a subscriber to call up his "party" directly, without the mediation of "central," is the most ingenious. Although due acknowledgment must be made of the honesty and enterprise with which hundreds of the independents are managed, the fact remains that they are a great economic waste. Most of them give only a local service, no company having yet arisen which aims to duplicate the comprehensive national plans of the greater corporation. As soon as an independent obtains a foothold, the natural consequence is that every business house and private household must either be contented with half service, or double the cost of the telephone by subscribing to two companies. It is not unlikely that the "independents" have exercised a wholesome influence upon the Bell Corporation, but, as the principle of government regulation rather than individual competition has now become the established method of controlling monopoly, this influence will possess less virtue in the future. In addition to these independent enterprises, the telephone has unfortunately furnished an opportunity for stockjobbing schemes on a considerable scale. The years from 1895 to 1905 witnessed the growth of many bubbles of this kind; one group of men organized not far from two hundred telephone companies. They would go into selected communities, promise a superior service at half the current rates, enlist the cooperation of "leading" business men, sell the stock largely in the city or town to be benefited, make large profits in the construction of the lines and the sale of equipment--and then decamp for pastures new. The multitudinous bankruptcies that followed in the wake of such exploiters at length brought their activities to an end. CHAPTER V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES The streets of practically all American cities, as they appeared in 1870 and as they appear today, present one of the greatest contrasts in our industrial development. Fifty years ago only a few flickering gas lamps lighted the most traveled thoroughfares. Only the most prosperous business houses and homes had even this expensive illumination; most obtained their artificial light from the new illuminant known as kerosene. But it was the mechanism of city transportation that would have looked the strangest in our eyes. New York City had built the world's first horse-car line in 1832, and since that year this peculiarly American contrivance has had the most extended development. In 1870, indeed, practically every city of any importance had one or more railways of this type. New York possessed thirty different companies, each operating an independent system. In Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco the growth of urban transportation had been equally haphazard. The idea of combining the several street railways into one comprehensive corporation had apparently occurred to no one. The passengers, in their peregrinations through the city, had frequently to pay three or four fares; competition was thus the universal rule. The mechanical equipment similarly represented a primitive state of organization. Horses and mules, in many cases hideous physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed themselves by pulling their coat collars and furs closely about their necks and thrusting their lower members into a heap of straw, piled almost a foot deep on the floor. Who would have thought, forty years ago, that the lighting of these dark and dirty streets and the modernization of these local railway systems would have given rise to one of the most astounding chapters in our financial history and created hundreds, perhaps thousands, of millionaires? When Thomas A. Edison invented the incandescent light, and when Frank J. Sprague in 1887 constructed the first practicable urban trolley line, in Richmond, Virginia, they liberated forces that powerfully affected not only our social and economic life but our political institutions. These two inventions introduced anew phrase--"Public Utilities." Combined with the great growth and prosperity of the cities they furnished a fruitful opportunity to several particularly famous groups of financial adventurers. They led to the organization of "syndicates" which devoted all their energies, for a quarter of a century, to exploiting city lighting and transportation systems. These syndicates made a business of entering city after city, purchasing the scattered street railway lines and lighting companies, equipping them with electricity, combining them into unified systems, organizing large corporations, and floating huge issues of securities. A single group of six men--Yerkes, Widener, Elkins, Dolan, Whitney, and Ryan--combined the street railways, and in many cases the lighting companies, of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and at least a hundred towns and cities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Maine. Either jointly or separately they controlled the gas and electric lighting companies of Philadelphia, Reading, Harrisburg, Atlanta, Vicksburg, St. Augustine, Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City, Sioux City, Syracuse, and about seventy other communities. A single corporation developed nearly all the trolley lines and lighting companies of New Jersey; another controlled similar utilities in San Francisco and other cities on the Pacific Coast. In practically all instances these syndicates adopted precisely the same plan of operation. In so far as their activities resulted in cheap, comfortable, rapid, and comprehensive transit systems and low-priced illumination, their activities greatly benefited the public. The future historian of American society will probably attribute enormous influence to the trolley car in linking urban community with urban community, in extending the radius of the modern city, in freeing urban workers from the demoralizing influences of the tenement, in offering the poorer classes comfortable homes in the surrounding country, and in extending general enlightenment by bringing about a closer human intercourse. Indeed, there is probably no single influence that has contributed so much to the pleasure and comfort of the masses as the trolley car. Yet the story that I shall have to tell is not a pleasant one. It is impossible to write even a brief outline of this development without plunging deeply into the two phases of American life of which we have most cause to be ashamed; these are American municipal politics and the speculative aspects of Wall Street. The predominating influences in American city life have been the great franchise corporations. Practically all the men that have had most to do with developing our public utilities have also had the greatest influence in city politics. In New York, Thomas F. Ryan and William C. Whitney were the powerful, though invisible, powers in Tammany Hall. In Chicago, Charles T. Yerkes controlled mayors and city councils; he even extended his influence into the state government, controlling governors and legislatures. In Philadelphia, Widener and Elkins dominated the City Hall and also became part of the Quay machine of Pennsylvania. Mark Hanna, the most active force in Cleveland railways, was also the political boss of the State. Roswell P. Flower, chief agent in developing Brooklyn Rapid Transit, had been Governor of New York; Patrick Calhoun, who monopolized the utilities of San Francisco and other cities, presided likewise over the city's inner politics. The Public Service Corporation of New Jersey also comprised a large political power in city and state politics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the most active period, that from 1880 to 1905, the powers that developed city railway and lighting companies in American cities were identically the same owners that had the most to do with city government. In the minds of these men politics was necessarily as much a part of their business as trolley poles and steel rails. This type of capitalist existed only on public franchises--the right to occupy the public streets with their trolley cars, gas mains, and electric light conduits; they could obtain these privileges only from complaisant city governments, and the simplest way to obtain them was to control these governments themselves. Herein we have the simple formula which made possible one of the most profitable and one of the most adventurous undertakings of our time. An attempt to relate the history of all these syndicates would involve endless repetition. If we have the history of one we have the history of practically all. I have therefore selected, as typical, the operations of the group that developed the street railways and, to a certain extent, the public lighting companies, in our three greatest American cities--New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. One of the men who started these enterprises actually had a criminal record. William H. Kemble, an early member of the Philadelphia group, had been indicted for attempting to bribe the Pennsylvania Legislature; he had been convicted and sentenced to one year in the county jail and had escaped imprisonment only by virtue of a pardon obtained through political influence. Charles T. Yerkes, one of his partners in politics and street railway enterprises, had been less fortunate, for he had served seven months for assisting in the embezzlement of Philadelphia funds in 1873. It was this circumstance in Yerkes's career which impelled him to leave Philadelphia and settle in Chicago where, starting as a small broker, he ultimately acquired sufficient resources and influence to embark in that street railway business at which he had already served an extensive apprenticeship. Under his domination, the Chicago aldermen attained a gravity that made them notorious all over the world. They openly sold Yerkes the use of the streets for cash and constantly blocked the efforts which an infuriated populace made for reform. Yerkes purchased the old street railway lines, lined his pockets by making contracts for their reconstruction, issued large flotations of watered stock, heaped securities upon securities and reorganization upon reorganization and diverted their assets to business in a hundred ingenious ways. In spite of the crimes which Yerkes perpetrated in American cities, there was something refreshing and ingratiating about the man. Possibly this is because he did not associate any hypocrisy with his depredations. "The secret of success in my business," he once frankly said, "is to buy old junk, fix it up a little, and unload it upon other fellows." Certain of his epigrams--such as, "It is the strap-hanger who pays the dividends"--have likewise given him a genial immortality. The fact that, after having reduced the railway system of Chicago to financial pulp and physical dissolution, he finally unloaded the whole useless mass, at a handsome personal profit, upon his old New York friends, Whitney and Ryan, and decamped to London, where he carried through huge transit enterprises, clearly demonstrated that Yerkes was a buccaneer of no ordinary caliber. Yerkes's difficulties in Philadelphia indirectly made possible the career of Peter A. B. Widener. For Yerkes had become involved in the defalcation of the City Treasurer, Joseph P. Mercer, whose translation to the Eastern Penitentiary left vacant a municipal office into which Mr. Widener now promptly stepped. Thus Mr. Widener, as is practically the case with all these street railway magnates, was a municipal politician before he became a financier. The fact that he attained the city treasurership shows that he had already gone far, for it was the most powerful office in Philadelphia. He had all those qualities of suavity, joviality, firmness, and personal domination that made possible success in American local politics a generation ago. His occupation contributed to his advancement. In recent years Mr. Widener, as the owner of great art galleries and the patron of philanthropic and industrial institutions, has been a national figure of the utmost dignity. Had you dropped into the Spring Garden Market in Philadelphia forty years ago, you would have found a portly gentleman, clad in a white apron, and armed with a cleaver, presiding over a shop decorated with the design--"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening he was accustomed to foregather with a group of well-chosen spirits who had been long famous in Philadelphia as the "all-night poker players." A successful butcher shop in Philadelphia in those days played about the same part in local politics as did the saloon in New York City. Such a station became the headquarters of political gossip and the meeting ground of a political clique; and so Widener, the son of a poor German bricklayer, rapidly became a political leader in the Twentieth Ward, and soon found his power extending even to Harrisburg. A few years ago Widener presided over a turbulent meeting of Metropolitan shareholders in Newark, New Jersey. The proposal under consideration was the transference of all the Metropolitan's visible assets to a company of which the stockholders knew nothing. When several of these stockholders arose and demanded that they be given an opportunity to discuss the projected lease, Widener turned to them and said, in his politest and blandest manner: "You can vote first and discuss afterward." Widener displayed precisely these same qualities of ingratiating arrogance and good-natured contempt as a Philadelphia politician. He was a man of big frame, alert and decisive in his movements, and a ready talker; in business he was given much to living in the clouds--a born speculator--emphatically a "boomer." His sympathies were generous, at times emotional; it is said that he has even been known to weep when discussing his fine collection of Madonnas. He showed this personal side in his lifelong friendship and business association with William L. Elkins, a man much inferior to him in ability. Indeed, Elkins's great fortune was little more than a free gift from Widener, who carried him as a partner in all his deals. Elkins became Widener's bondsman when the latter entered the City Treasurer's office; the two men lived near each other on the same street, and this association was cemented when Widener's oldest son married Elkins's daughter. Elkins had started life as an entry clerk in a grocery store, had made money in the butter and egg business, had "struck oil" at Titusville in 1862, and had succeeded in exchanging his holdings for a block of Standard Oil stock. He too became a Philadelphia politician, but he had certain hard qualities--he was close-fisted, slow, plodding--that prevented him from achieving much success. For the other members of this group we must now change the scene to New York City. In the early eighties certain powerful interests had formed plans for controlling the New York transit fields. Prominent among them was William Collins Whitney, a very different type of man from the Philadelphians. Born in Conway, Massachusetts, in 1841, he came from a long line of distinguished and intellectual New Englanders. At Yale his wonderful mental gifts raised him far above his fellows; he divided all scholastic honors there with his classmate, William Graham Sumner, afterwards Yale's great political economist. Soon after graduation Whitney came to New York and rapidly forged ahead as a lawyer. Brilliant, polished, suave, he early displayed those qualities which afterward made him the master mind of presidential Cabinets and the maker of American Presidents. Physically handsome, loved by most men and all women, he soon acquired a social standing that amounted almost to a dictatorship. His early political activities had greatly benefited New York. He became a member of that group which, under the leadership of Joseph H. Choate and Samuel J. Tilden, accomplished the downfall of William M. Tweed. Whitney remained Tilden's political protege for several years. Though highbred and luxury-loving, as a young man he was not averse to hard political work, and many old-timers still remember the days when "Bill" Whitney delivered cart-tail harangues on the lower east side. By 1884 he had become the most prominent Democrat in New York--always a foe to Tammany--and as such he contributed largely to Cleveland's first election, became Secretary of the Navy in Cleveland's cabinet and that great President's close friend and adviser. As Secretary of the Navy, Whitney, who found the fleet composed of a few useless hulks left over from the days of Farragut, created the fighting force that did such efficient service in the Spanish War. The fact that the United States is now the third naval power is largely owing to these early activities of Whitney. Certainly all this national service forms a strange prelude to Whitney's activities in the public utilities of New York and other cities. Had he died, indeed, in his fiftieth year, his name would be renowned today as a worker for the highest ideals of American citizenship. What suddenly made him turn his back upon his past, join his former enemies in Tammany Hall, and engage in these great speculative enterprises? The simplest explanation is that, with his ability and ambition, Whitney had the luxurious tastes of a Medici. At the height of his career his financial success found expression in a magnificent house which he established on Fifth Avenue. Its furnishings were one of the wonders of New York. Whitney ransacked the art treasures of Europe, stripped medieval castles of their carvings and tapestries, ripped whole staircases and ceilings from the repose of centuries, and relaid them in this abode of splendor, and here he entertained with a lavishness that astounded New York. This single exploit pictures the man. Everything that Whitney did and was his house, his financial transactions, his Wall Street speculations, the rewards which he gave his friends assumed heroic proportions. But these things all demanded money. The dilapidated horse railways of New York offered him his most convenient opportunity for amassing it. But Whitney had not proceeded far when he came face to face with a quiet and energetic young man who had already made considerable progress in the New York transit field. This was a Virginian of South Irish descent who had started life as a humble broker's clerk twelve or fourteen years before. His name was Thomas Fortune Ryan. Few men have wielded greater power in American finance, but in 1884 Ryan was merely a ruddy-faced, cleancut, and clean-living Irishman of thirty-three, who could be depended on to execute quickly and faithfully orders on the New York Stock Exchange--even though they were small ones--and who, in unostentatious fashion, had already acquired much influence in Tammany Hall. With his six feet of stature, his extremely slender figure, his long legs, his long arms, his raiment--which always represented the height of fashion and tended slightly toward the flashy--Ryan made a conspicuous figure wherever he went. He was born in 1851, on a small farm in Nelson County, Virginia. The Civil War, which broke out when Ryan was a boy of ten, destroyed the family fortune and in 1868, when seventeen, he began life as a dry-goods clerk in Baltimore, fulfilling the tradition of the successful country boy in the large city by marrying his employer's daughter. When his father-in-law failed, in 1870, Ryan came to New York, went to work in a broker's office, and succeeded so well that, in a few years, he was able to purchase a seat on the Stock Exchange. He was sufficiently skillful as a broker to number Jay Gould among his customers and to inspire a prophecy by William C. Whitney that, if he retained his health, he would become one of the richest men in the country. Afterwards, when he knew him more intimately, Whitney elaborated this estimate by saying that Ryan was "the most adroit, suave, and noiseless man he had ever known." Ryan had two compelling traits that soon won for him these influential admirers. First of all was his marvelous industry. His genius was not spasmodic. He worked steadily, regularly, never losing a moment, never getting excited, going, day after day, the same monotonous dog-trot, easily outdistancing scores of apparently stronger men. He also had the indispensable faculty of silence. He has always been the least talkative man in Wall Street, but, with all his reserve, he has remained the soul of courtesy and outward good nature. Here, then, we have the characters of this great impending drama--Yerkes in Chicago, Widener and Elkins in Philadelphia, Whitney and Ryan in New York. These five men did not invariably work as a unit. Yerkes, though he had considerable interest in Philadelphia, which had been the scene of his earliest exploits, limited his activities largely to Chicago. Widener and Elkins, however, not only dominated Philadelphia traction but participated in all of Yerkes's enterprises in Chicago and held an equal interest with Whitney and Ryan in New York. The latter Metropolitan pair, though they confined their interest chiefly to their own city, at times transferred their attention to Chicago. Thus, for nearly thirty years, these five men found their oyster in the transit systems of America's three greatest cities--and, for that matter, in many others also. An attempt to trace the convolutions of America's street railway and public lighting finance would involve a puzzling array of statistics and an inextricable complexity of stocks, bonds, leases, holding companies, operating companies, construction companies, reorganizations, and the like. Difficult and apparently impenetrable as is this financial morass, the essential facts still stand out plainly enough. As already indicated, the fundamental basis upon which the whole system rested was the control of municipal politics. The story of the Metropolitan's manipulation of the New York street railways starts with one of the most sordid episodes in the municipal annals of America's largest city. Somewhat more than thirty years ago, a group of New York city fathers acquired an international fame as the "boodle aldermen." These men had finally given way to the importunities of a certain Jacob Sharp, an eccentric New York character, who had for many years operated New York City railways, and granted a franchise for the construction of a horse-car line on lower Broadway. Soon after voting this franchise, regarded as perhaps the most valuable in the world, these same aldermen had begun to wear diamonds, to purchase real estate, and give other outward evidences of unexpected prosperity. Presently, however, these city fathers started a migration to Canada, Mexico, Spain, and other countries where the processes of extradition did not work smoothly. Sharp's enemies had succeeded in precipitating a legislative investigation under the very capable leadership of Roscoe Conkling, who had little difficulty in showing that Sharp had purchased his aldermen for $500,000 cash. In a short time, such of the aldermen as were accessible to the police were languishing in prison, and Sharp had been arrested on twenty-one indictments for bribery and sentenced to four years' hard labor--a sentence which he was saved from serving by his lonely and miserable death in Ludlow Street Jail. In the delirium preceding his dissolution Sharp raved constantly about his Broadway railroad and his enemies; it was apparently his belief that the investigation which had uncovered his rascality and the subsequent "persecutions" had been engineered by certain of his rivals, either to compel Sharp to disgorge his franchise or to produce the facts that would justify the legislature in annulling it on the ground of fraud. Though the complete history of this transaction can never be written, we do possess certain facts that lend some color to this diagnosis. Up to the time that Sharp had captured this franchise, Ryan, Whitney, and the Philadelphians--not as partners, but as rivals--had competed with him for this prize. At the trial of Arthur J. McQuade in 1886, a fellow conspirator, who bore the somewhat suggestive name of Fullgraff, related certain details which, if true, would indicate that Sharp's methods differed from those of his rivals only in that they had proved more successful. Thirteen members of the Board of Aldermen, said Fullgraff, had formed a close corporation, elected a chairman, and adopted a policy of "business unity in all important matters," which meant that they proposed to keep together in order to secure the highest price for the Broadway franchise. The cable railroad, which was the one with which Mr. Ryan was identified, offered $750,000, half in bonds and half in cash. Mr. Sharp, however, offered $500,000 all in cash. The aldermen voted in favor of Sharp because cash was not only a more valuable commodity than the bonds but, to use Alderman Fullgraff's own words--"less easily traced." That Whitney financed lawsuits against the validity of Sharp's franchise appears upon the record, and that Ryan was actively promoting the Conkling investigation, is likewise a matter of evidence. Sharp's victory had the great result of bringing together the three forces--Ryan, Whitney, and the Philadelphians--who had hitherto combated one another as rivals; that is, it caused the organization of the famous Whitney-Ryan-Widener-Elkins syndicate. If these men had inspired all those attacks on Sharp, their maneuver proved successful; for when the investigation had attained its climax and public indignation against Sharp had reached its most furious stage, that venerable corruptionist, worn down by ill health, and almost crazed by the popular outcry, sold his Broadway railroad to Peter A. B. Widener, William L. Elkins, and William H. Kemble. Thomas F. Ryan became secretary of the new corporation, and William C. Whitney an active participant in its affairs. This Broadway franchise formed the vertebral column of the New York transit system; with it as a basis, the operators formed the Metropolitan Street Railway Company in 1893, commonly known as the "Metropolitan." They organized also the Metropolitan Traction Company, an organization which enjoys an historic position as the first "holding company" ever created in this country. Its peculiar attribute was that it did not construct and operate street railways itself, but merely owned other corporations that did so. Its only assets, that is, were paper securities representing the ownership and control of other companies. This "holding company," which has since become almost a standardized form of corporation control in this country, was the invention of Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, one of America's greatest corporation lawyers. "Mr. Stetson," Ryan is said to have remarked, "do you know what you did when you drew up the papers of the Metropolitan Traction Company? You made us a great big tin box." The plan which Whitney and his associates now followed was to obtain control, in various ways, of all the surface railways in New York and place them under the leadership of the Metropolitan. Through their political influences they obtained franchises of priceless value, organized subsidiary street railway companies, and exchanged the stock of these subsidiary companies for that of the Metropolitan. A few illustrations will show the character of these transactions. They thus acquired, practically as a free gift, a franchise to build a cable railroad on Lexington Avenue. At an extremely liberal estimate, this line cost perhaps $2,500,000 to construct, yet the syndicate turned this over to the Metropolitan for $10,000,000 of Metropolitan securities. They similarly acquired a franchise for a line on Columbus Avenue, spending perhaps $500,000 in construction, and handing the completed property over to the Metropolitan for $6,000,000. In exchange for these two properties, representing a real investment, it has been maintained, of $3,000,000, the inside syndicates received securities which had a face value of $16,000,000 and which, as will appear subsequently, had a market cash value of not far from $25,000,000. They purchased an old horse-car line on Fulton Street, a line whose assets consisted of one-third of a mile of tracks, ten little box cars, thirty horses, and an operating deficit of $40,000 a year. At auction, its visible assets might have brought $15,000; yet the syndicate turned this over to the Metropolitan for $1,000,000. They spent $50,000 in constructing and equipping a horse railroad on Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets and turned this over to the Metropolitan for $3,000,000. For two and a half miles of railroad on Thirty-fourth Street, which represented a cash expenditure of perhaps $100,000, they received $2,000,000 of Metropolitan stock. But it is hardly necessary to catalogue more instances; the plan of operations must now be fairly evident. It was for the members of the syndicate, as individuals, to collect all the properties and new franchises that were available and to transfer them to the Metropolitan at enormously inflated values. So far, all these deals were purely stock transactions--no cash had yet changed hands. When the amalgamation was complete, the insiders found themselves in possession of large amounts of Metropolitan stock. Their scheme for transforming this paper into more tangible property forms the concluding chapter of this Metropolitan story. * * In 1897 the Traction Company dissolved, after distributing $6,000,000 as "a voluntary dividend" among its stockholders. Nearly all the properties actually purchased and transferred in the manner described above, had little earning capacity, and therefore little value; they were decrepit horse-car lines in unprofitable territory. The really valuable roads were those that traversed the great north and south thoroughfares--Lenox, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Avenues. Many old New York families and estates had held these properties for years and had collected large annual dividends from them. Naturally they had no desire to sell, yet their acquisition was essential to the monopoly which the Whitney-Ryan syndicate aspired to construct. They finally leased all these roads, under agreements which guaranteed large annual rentals. In practically all these cases the Metropolitan, in order to secure physical possession, agreed to pay rentals that far exceeded the earning capacity of the road. What is the explanation of such insane finance? We do not have the precise facts in the matter of the New York railways; but similar operations in Chicago, which have been officially made public, shed the utmost light upon the situation. In order to get possession of a single road in Chicago, Widener and Elkins guaranteed a thirty-five per cent dividend; to get one Philadelphia line, they guaranteed 65 1/2 per cent on capital paid in. This, of course, was not business; the motives actuating the syndicate were purely speculative. In Chicago, Widener and Elkins quietly made large purchases of the stock in these roads before they leased them to the parent company. The exceedingly profitable lease naturally gave such stocks a high value, in case they preferred to sell; if they held them, they reaped huge rewards from the leases which they had themselves decreed. Perhaps their most remarkable exploit was the lease of the West Division Railway Company of Chicago to the West Chicago Street Railroad. Widener and Elkins controlled the West Division Railway; their partner, Charles T. Yerkes, controlled the latter corporation. The negotiation of a lease, therefore, was a purely informal matter; the partners were merely dealing with one another; yet Widener and Elkins received a fee of $5,000,000 as personal compensation for negotiating this lease! But this whole leasing system, both in New York and Chicago, entailed scandals perhaps even more reprehensible. All these leased properties, when taken over, were horse-car lines, and their transformation into electrically propelled systems involved reconstruction operations on an extensive scale. It seems perfectly clear that the chief motive which inspired these extravagant leases was the determination of the individuals who made up the syndicate to obtain physical possession and to make huge profits on construction. The "construction accounts" of the Metropolitan in New York form the most mysterious and incredible chapter in its history. The Metropolitan reports show that they spent anywhere from $500,000 to $600,000 a mile building underground trolley lines which, at their own extravagant estimate, should have cost only $150,000. In a few years untold millions, wasted in this way, disappeared from the Metropolitan treasury. In 1907 the Public Service Commission of New York began investigating these "construction accounts," but it had not proceeded far when the discovery was made that all the Metropolitan books containing the information desired had been destroyed. All the ledgers, journals, checks, and vouchers containing the financial history of the Metropolitan since its organization in 1893 had been sold for $117 to a junkman, who had agreed in writing to grind them into pulp, so that they would be safe from "prying eyes." We shall therefore never know precisely how this money was spent. But here again the Chicago transactions help us to an understanding. In 1898 Charles T. Yerkes, with that cynical frankness which some people have regarded as a redeeming trait in his character, opened his books for the preceding twenty-five years to the Civic Federation of Chicago. These books disclosed that Mr. Yerkes and his associates, Widener and Elkins, had made many millions in reconstructing the Chicago lines at prices which represented gross overcharges to the stockholders. For this purpose Yerkes, Widener, and Elkins organized the United States Construction Company and made contracts for installing the new electric systems on the lines which they controlled by lease or stock ownership. It seems a not unnatural suspicion that the vanished Metropolitan books would have disclosed similar performances in New York. The concluding chapter of this tragedy has its setting in the Stock Exchange. These inside gentlemen, as already said, received no cash as their profits from these manipulations--only stock. But in the eyes of the public this stock represented an enormous value. Metropolitan securities, for example, represented the control and ownership of all the surface transit business in the city of New York. Naturally, it had a great investment value. When it began to pay regularly seven per cent dividends, the public appetite for Metropolitan became insatiable. The eager purchasers did not know, what we know now, that the Metropolitan did not earn these dividends and never could have earned them. The mere fact that it was paying, as rentals on its leased lines, annual sums far in excess of their earning capacity, necessarily prevented anything in the nature of profitable operation. The unpleasant fact is that these dividends were paid with borrowed money merely to make the stock marketable. It is not unlikely that the padded construction accounts, already described, may have concealed large disbursements of money for unearned dividends. When the Metropolitan was listed in 1897, it immediately went beyond par. The excitement that followed forms one of the most memorable chapters in the history of Wall Street. The investing public, egged on by daring and skillful stock manipulators, simply went mad and purchased not only Metropolitan but street railway shares that were then even more speculative. It was in these bubble days that Brooklyn Rapid Transit soared to heights from which it subsequently descended precipitately. Under this stimulus, Metropolitan stock ultimately sold at $269 a share. While the whole investing public was scrambling for Metropolitan, the members of the exploiting syndicate found ample opportunity to sell. The real situation became apparent when William C. Whitney died in 1904 leaving an estate valued at $40,000,000. Not a single share of Metropolitan was found among his assets! The final crash came in 1907, when the Metropolitan, a wrecked and plundered shell, confessed insolvency and went into a receivership. Those who had purchased its stock found their holdings as worthless as the traditional western gold mine. The story of the Chicago and Philadelphia systems, as well as that of numerous other cities, had been essentially the same. The transit facilities of millions of Americans had merely become the instruments of a group of speculators who had made huge personal fortunes and had left, as a monument of their labors, street railway lines whose gross overcapitalization was apparent to all and whose physical dilapidation in many cases revealed the character of their management. It seems perhaps an exaggeration to say that the enterprises which have resulted in equipping our American cities and suburbs with trolley lines and electric lighting facilities have followed the plan of campaign sketched above. Perhaps not all have repeated the worst excesses of the syndicate that so remorselessly exploited New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Yet in most cases these elaborate undertakings have been largely speculative in character. Huge issues of fictitious stock, created purely for the benefit of inner rings, have been almost the prevailing rule. Stock speculation and municipal corruption have constantly gone hand in hand everywhere with the development of the public utilities. The relation of franchise corporations to municipalities is probably the thing which has chiefly opened the eyes of Americans to certain glaring defects in their democratic organization. The popular agitation which has resulted has led to great political reforms. The one satisfaction which we can derive from such a relation as that given above is that, after all, it is representative of a past era in our political and economic life. No new "Metropolitan syndicate" can ever repeat the operations of its predecessors. Practically every State now has utility commissions which regulate the granting of franchises, the issue of securities, the details of construction and equipment and service. An awakened public conscience has effectively ended the alliance between politics and franchise corporations and the type of syndicate described in the foregoing pages belongs as much to our American past as that rude frontier civilization with which, after all, it had many characteristics in common. CHAPTER VI. MAKING THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY The Civil War in America did more than free the negro slave: it freed the white man as well. In the Civil War agriculture, for the first time in history, ceased to be exclusively a manual art. Up to that time the typical agricultural laborer had been a bent figure, tending his fields and garnering his crops with his own hands. Before the war had ended the American farmer had assumed an erect position; the sickle and the scythe had given way to a strange red chariot, which, with practically no expenditure of human labor, easily did the work of a dozen men. Many as have been America's contributions to civilization, hardly any have exerted greater influence in promoting human welfare than her gift of agricultural machinery. It seems astounding that, until McCormick invented his reaper, in 1831, agricultural methods, in both the New and the Old World, differed little from those that had prevailed in the days of the Babylonians. The New England farmer sowed his fields and reaped his crops with almost identically the same instruments as those which had been used by the Roman farmer in the time of the Gracchi. Only a comparatively few used the scythe; the great majority, with crooked backs and bended knees, cut the grain with little hand sickles precisely like those which are now dug up in Etruscan and Egyptian tombs. Though McCormick had invented his reaper in 1831, and though many rival machines had appeared in the twenty years preceding the Civil War, only the farmers on the great western plains had used the new machinery to any considerable extent. The agricultural papers and agricultural fairs had not succeeded in popularizing these great laborsaving devices. Labor was so abundant and so cheap that the farmer had no need of them. But the Civil War took one man in three for the armies, and it was under this pressure that the farmers really discovered the value of machinery. A small boy or girl could mount a McCormick reaper and cut a dozen acres of grain in a day. This circumstance made it possible to place millions of soldiers in the field and to feed the armies from farms on which mature men did very little work. But the reaper promoted the Northern cause in other ways. Its use extended so in the early years of the war that the products of the farms increased on an enormous scale, and the surplus, exported to Europe, furnished the liquid capital that made possible the financing of the war. Europe gazed in astonishment at a new spectacle in history; that of a nation fighting the greatest war which had been known up to that time, employing the greater part of her young and vigorous men in the armies, and yet growing infinitely richer in the process. The Civil War produced many new implements of warfare, such as the machine gun and the revolving turret for battleships, but, so far as determining the result was concerned, perhaps the most important was the reaper. Extensive as the use of agricultural machinery became in the Civil War, that period only faintly foreshadowed the development that has taken place since. The American farm is today like a huge factory; the use of the hands has almost entirely disappeared; there are only a few operations of husbandry that are not performed automatically. In Civil War days the reaper merely cut the grain; now machinery rakes it up and binds it into sheaves and threshes it. Similar mechanisms bind corn and rice. Machinery is now used to plant potatoes; grain, cotton, and other farm products are sown automatically. The husking bees that formed one of our social diversions in Civil War days have disappeared, for particular machines now rip the husks off the ears. Horse hay-forks and horse hayrakes have supplanted manual labor. The mere names of scores of modern instruments of farming, all unknown in Civil War days--hay carriers, hay loaders, hay stackers, manure spreaders, horse corn planters, corn drills, disk harrows, disk ploughs, steam ploughs, tractors, and the like--give some suggestion of the extent to which America has made mechanical the most ancient of occupations. In thus transforming agriculture, we have developed not only our own Western plains, but we have created new countries. Argentina could hardly exist today except for American agricultural machinery. Ex-President Loubet declared, a few years ago, that France would starve to death except for the farming machines that were turned out in Chicago. There is practically no part of the world where our self-binders are not used. In many places America is not known as the land of freedom and opportunity, but merely as "the place from which the reapers come." The traveler suddenly comes upon these familiar agents in every European country, in South America, in Egypt, China, Algiers, Siberia, India, Burma, and Australia. For agricultural machinery remains today, what it has always been, almost exclusively an American manufacture. It is practically the only native American product that our European competitors have not been able to imitate. Tariff walls, bounty systems, and all the other artificial aids to manufacturing have not developed this industry in foreign lands, and today the United States produces four-fifths of all the agricultural machinery used in the world. The International Harvester Company has its salesmen in more than fifty countries, and has established large American factories in many nations of Europe. One day, a few years before his death, Prince Bismarck was driving on his estate, closely following a self-binder that had recently been put to work. The venerable statesman, bent and feeble, seemed to find a deep melancholy interest in the operation. "Show me the thing that ties the knot," he said. It was taken to pieces and explained to him in detail. "Can these machines be made in Germany?" he asked. "No, your Excellency," came the reply. "They can be made only in America." The old man gave a sigh. "Those Yankees are ingenious fellows," he said. "This is a wonderful machine." In this story of American success, four names stand out preeminently. The men who made the greatest contributions were Cyrus H. McCormick, C. W. Marsh, Charles B. Withington, and John F. Appleby. The name that stands foremost, of course, is that of McCormick, but each of the others made additions to his invention that have produced the present finished machine. It seems like the stroke of an ironical fate which decreed that since it was the invention of a Northerner, Eli Whitney, that made inevitable the Civil War, so it was the invention of a Southerner, Cyrus McCormick, that made inevitable the ending of that war in favor of the North. McCormick was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on a farm about eighteen miles from Staunton. He was a child of that pioneering Scotch-Irish race which contributed so greatly to the settlement of this region and which afterward made such inestimable additions to American citizenship. The country in which he grew up was rough and, so far as the conventionalities go, uncivilized; the family homestead was little more than a log cabin; and existence meant a continual struggle with a not particularly fruitful soil. The most remarkable figure in the McCormick home circle, and the one whose every-day life exerted the greatest influence on the boy, was his father. The older McCormick had one obsessing idea that made him the favorite butt of the local humorists. He believed that the labor spent in reaping grain was a useless expenditure of human effort and that machinery might be made to do the work. Other men, in this country and in Europe, had nourished similar notions. Several Englishmen had invented reaping machines, all of which had had only a single defect--they would not reap. An ingenious English actor had developed a contrivance which would cut imitation wheat on the stage, but no one had developed a machine that would work satisfactorily in real life. Robert McCormick spent the larger part of his days and nights tinkering at a practical machine. He finally produced a horrific contrivance, made up of whirling sickles, knives, and revolving rods, pushed from behind by two horses; when he tried this upon a grain-field, however, it made a humiliating failure. Evidently Robert McCormick had ambitions far beyond his powers; yet without his absurd experiments the development of American agriculture might have waited many years. They became the favorite topics of conversation in the evening gatherings that took place about the family log fire. Robert McCormick had several sons, and one manifested a particular interest in his repeated failures. From the time he was seven years old Cyrus Hall McCormick became his father's closest companion. Others might ridicule and revile, but this chubby, bright-eyed, intelligent little boy was always the keenest listener, the one comfort which the father had against his jeering neighbors. He also became his father's constant associate in his rough workshop. Soon, however, the older man noticed a change in their relations. The boy was becoming the teacher, and the father was taught. By the time Cyrus was eighteen, indeed, he had advanced so far beyond his father that the latter had become merely a proud observer. Young McCormick threw into the discard all his father's ideas and struck out on entirely new lines. By the time he had reached his twenty-second birthday he had constructed a machine which, in all its essential details, is the one which we have today. He had introduced seven principles, all of which are an indispensable part of every reaper constructed now. One afternoon he drove his unlovely contraption upon his father's farm, with no witnesses except his own family. This group now witnessed the first successful attempt ever made to reap with machinery. A few days later young McCormick gave a public exhibition at Steele's Tavern, cutting six acres of oats in an afternoon. The popular ridicule soon changed into acclaim; the new invention was exhibited in a public square and Cyrus McCormick became a local celebrity. Perhaps the words that pleased him most, however, were those spoken by his father. "I am proud," said the old man, "to have a son who can do what I failed to do." This McCormick reaper dates from 1831; but it represented merely the beginnings of the modern machine. It performed only a single function; it simply cut the crop. When its sliding blade had performed this task, the grain fell back upon a platform, and a farm hand, walking alongside, raked this off upon the ground. A number of human harvesters followed, picked up the bundles, and tied a few strips of grain around them, making the sheaf. The work was exceedingly wearying and particularly hard upon the women who were frequently impressed into service as farm-hands. About 1858 two farmers named Marsh, who lived near De Kalb, Illinois, solved this problem. They attached to their McCormick reaper a moving platform upon which the cut grain was deposited. A footboard was fixed to the machine upon which two men stood. As the grain came upon this moving platform these men seized it, bound it into sheaves, and threw it upon the field. Simple as this procedure seemed it really worked a revolution in agriculture; for the first time since the pronouncement of the primal curse, the farmer abandoned his hunchback attitude and did his work standing erect. Yet this device also had its disqualifications, the chief one being that it converted the human sheaf-binder into a sweat-shop worker. It was necessary to bind the grain as rapidly as the platform brought it up; the worker was therefore kept in constant motion; and the consequences were frequently distressing and nerve racking. Yet this "Marsh Harvester" remained the great favorite with farmers from about 1860 to 1874. All this time, however, there was a growing feeling that even the Marsh harvester did not represent the final solution of the problem; the air was full of talk and prophecies about self-binders, something that would take the loose wheat from the platform and transform it into sheaves. Hundreds of attempts failed until, in 1874, Charles B. Withington of Janesville, Wisconsin, brought to McCormick a mechanism composed of two steel arms which seized the grain, twisted a wire around it, cut the wire, and tossed the completed sheaf to the earth. In actual practice this contrivance worked with the utmost precision. Finally American farmers had a machine that cut the grain, raked it up, and bound it into sheaves ready for the mill. Human labor had apparently lost its usefulness; a solitary man or woman, perched upon a seat and driving a pair of horses, now performed all these operations of husbandry. By this time, scores of manufacturers had entered the field in opposition to McCormick, but his acquisition of Withington's invention had apparently made his position secure. Indeed, for the next ten years he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself. Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual annoyance. It mingled with the straw and killed the cattle--at least so the farmers complained; it cut their hands and even found its way, with disastrous results, into the flour mills. Deering now appeared as the owner of a startling invention by John F. Appleby. This did all that the Withington machine did and did it better and quicker; and it had the great advantage that it bound with twine instead of wire. The new machine immediately swept aside all competitors; McCormick, to save his reaper from disaster, presently perfected a twine binder of his own. The appearance of Appleby's improvement in 1884 completes the cycle of the McCormick reaper on its mechanical side The harvesting machine of fifty nations today is the one to which Appleby put the final touches in 1884. Since then nothing of any great importance has been added. This outline of invention, however, comprises only part of the story. The development of the reaper business presents a narrative quite as adventurous as that of the reaper itself. Cyrus McCormick was not only a great inventor; he was also a great businessman. So great was his ability in this direction, indeed, that there has been a tendency to discredit his achievements as a creative genius and to attribute his success to his talents as an organizer and driver of industry. "I may make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits, many of them almost as commanding personalities as himself, disputed the empire. Not far from 12,000 patents on harvesting machines were granted in this country in the fifty years following McCormick's invention, and more than two hundred companies were formed to compete for the market. McCormick always regarded these competitors as highwaymen who had invaded a field which had been almost divinely set apart for himself. A man of covenanting antecedents, heroic in his physical proportions, with a massive, Jove-like head and beard, tirelessly devoted to his work, watching every detail with a microscopic eye, marshaling a huge force of workers who were as possessed by this one overruling idea as was McCormick himself, he certainly presented an almost unassailable battlefront to his antagonists. The competition that raged between McCormick and the makers of rival machines was probably the fiercest that has prevailed in any American industry. For marketing his machine McCormick developed a system almost as ingenious as the machine itself. The popularization of so ungainly and expensive a contrivance as the harvester proved a slow and difficult task. McCormick at first attempted to build his product on his Virginia farm and for many years it was known as the Virginia Reaper. Nearly ten years passed, however, before he sold his first machine. The farmer first refused to take it seriously. "It's a great invention," he would say, "but I'm running a farm, not a circus." About 1847 McCormick decided that the Western prairies offered the finest field for its activities, and established his factory at Chicago, then an ugly little town on the borders of a swamp. This selection proved to be a stroke of genius, for it placed the harvesting factory right at the door of its largest market. The price of the harvester, however, seemed an insurmountable obstacle to its extensive use. The early settlers of the Western plains had little more than their brawny hands as capital, and the homestead law furnished them their land practically free. In the eyes of a large-seeing pioneer like McCormick this was capital enough. He determined that his reaper should develop this extensive domain, and that the crops themselves should pay the cost. Selling expensive articles on the installment plan now seems a commonplace of business, but in those days it was practically unknown. McCormick was the first to see its possibilities. He established an agent, usually the general storekeeper, in every agricultural center. Any farmer who had a modicum of cash and who bore a reputation for thrift and honesty could purchase a reaper. In payment he gave a series of notes, so timed that they fell due at the end of harvesting seasons. Thus, as the money came in from successive harvests, the pioneer paid off the notes, taking two, three, or four years in the process. In the sixties and seventies immigrants from the Eastern States and from Europe poured into the Mississippi Valley by the hundreds of thousands. Almost the first person who greeted the astonished Dane, German, or Swede was an agent of the harvester company, offering to let him have one of these strange machines on these terms. Thus the harvester, under McCormick's comprehensive selling plans, did as much as the homestead act in opening up this great farming region. McCormick covered the whole agricultural United States with these agents. In this his numerous competitors followed suit, and the liveliest times ensued. From that day to this the agents of harvesting implements have lent much animation and color to rural life in this country. Half a dozen men were usually tugging away at one farmer at the same time. The mere fact that the farmer had closed a contract did not end his troubles, for "busting up competitors' sales" was part of the agent's business. The situation frequently reached a point where there was only one way to settle rival claims and that was by a field contest. At a stated time two or three or four rival harvesters would suddenly appear on the farmer's soil, each prepared to show, by actual test, its superiority over the enemy. Farmers and idlers for miles around would gather to witness the Homeric struggle. At a given signal the small army of machines would spring savagely at a field of wheat. The one that could cut the allotted area in the shortest time was regarded as the winner. The harvester would rush on all kinds of fields, flat and hilly, dry and wet, and would cut all kinds of crops, and even stubble. All manner of tests were devised to prove one machine stronger than its rival; a favorite idea was to chain two back to back, and have them pulled apart by frantic careering horses; the one that suffered the fewest breakdowns would be generally acclaimed from town to town. Sometimes these field tests were the most exciting and spectacular events at country fairs. Thus the harvesting machine "pushed the frontier westward at the rate of thirty miles a year," according to William H. Seward. It made American and Canadian agriculture the most efficient in the world. The German brags that his agriculture is superior to American, quoting as proof the more bushels of wheat or potatoes he grows to an acre. But the comparison is fallacious. The real test of efficiency is, not the crops that are grown per acre, but the crops that are grown per man employed. German efficiency gets its results by impressing women as cultivators--depressing bent figures that are in themselves a sufficient criticism upon any civilization. America gets its results by using a minimum of human labor and letting machinery do the work. Thus America's methods are superior not only from the standpoint of economics but of social progress. All nations, including Germany, use our machinery, but none to the extent that prevails on the North American Continent. Perhaps McCormick's greatest achievement is that his machine has banished famine wherever it is extensively used, at least in peace times. Before the reaper appeared existence, even in the United States, was primarily a primitive struggle for bread. The greatest service of the harvester has been that it has freed the world--unless it is a world distracted by disintegrating war--from a constant anxiety concerning its food supply. The hundreds of thousands of binders, active in the fields of every country, have made it certain that humankind shall not want for its daily bread. When McCormick exhibited his harvester at the London Exposition of 1851, the London Times ridiculed it as "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheel barrow, and a flying machine." Yet this same grotesque object, widely used in Canada, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, and India, becomes an engine that really holds the British Empire together. For the forty years succeeding the Civil War the manufacture of harvesting machinery was a business in which many engaged, but in which few survived. The wildest competition ruthlessly destroyed all but half a dozen powerful firms. Cyrus McCormick died in 1884, but his sons proved worthy successors; the McCormick factory still headed the list, manufacturing, in 1900, one-third of all the self-binders used in the world. The William Deering Company came next and then D. M. Osborne, J. J. Glessner, and W. H. Jones, established factories that made existence exceedingly uncomfortable for the pioneers. Whatever one may think of the motives which caused so many combinations in the early years of the twentieth century, there is no question that irresistible economic forces compelled these great harvester companies to get together. Quick profits in the shape of watered stock had nothing to do with the formation of the International Harvester Company. All the men who controlled these enterprises were individualists, with a natural loathing for trusts, combinations, and pools. They wished for nothing better than to continue fighting the Spartan battle that had made existence such an exciting pastime for more than half a century. But the simple fact was that these several concerns were destroying one another; it was a question of joining hands, ending the competition that was eating so deeply into their financial resources, or reducing the whole business to chaos. When Mr. George W. Perkins, of J. P. Morgan and Company, first attempted to combine these great companies, the antagonisms which had been accumulated in many years of warfare constantly threatened to defeat his end. He early discovered that the only way to bring these men together was to keep them apart. The usual way of creating such combinations is to collect the representative leaders, place them around a table, and persuade them to talk the thing over. Such an amicable situation, however, was impossible in the present instance. Even when the four big men--McCormick, Deering, Glessner, and Jones--were finally brought for the final treaty of peace to J. P. Morgan's office, Mr. Perkins had to station them in four separate rooms and flit from one to another arranging terms. Had these four men been brought face to face, the Harvester Company would probably never have been formed. Having once signed their names, however, these once antagonistic interests had little difficulty in forming a strong combination. The company thus brought together manufactured 85 per cent of all the farm machinery used in this country. It owned its own coal-fields and iron mines and its own forests, and it produces most of the implements used by 10,000,000 farmers. In 1847 Cyrus McCormick made 100 reapers and sold them for $10,000; by 1902 the annual production of the corporation amounted to hundreds of thousands of harvesters--besides an almost endless assortment of other agricultural tools, ploughs, drills, rakes, gasoline engines, tractors, threshers, cream separators, and the like--and the sales had grown to about $75,000,000. This is merely the financial measure of progress; the genuine achievements of McCormick's invention are millions of acres of productive land and a farming population which is without parallel elsewhere for its prosperity, intelligence, manfulness, and general contentment. CHAPTER VII. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE In many manufacturing lines, American genius for organization and large scale production has developed mammoth industries. In nearly all the tendency to combination and concentration has exercised a predominating influence. In the early years of the twentieth century the public realized, for the first time, that one corporation, the American Sugar Refining Company, controlled ninety-eight per cent of the business of refining sugar. Six large interests--Armour, Swift, Morris, the National Packing Company, Cudahy, and Schwarzschild and Sulzberger--had so concentrated the packing business that, by 1905, they slaughtered practically all the cattle shipped to Western centers and furnished most of the beef consumed in the large cities east of Pittsburgh. The "Tobacco Trust" had largely monopolized both the wholesale and retail trade in this article of luxury and had also made extensive inroads into the English market. The textile industry had not only transformed great centers of New England into an American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to spin their own cotton and to send the finished product to all parts of the world. American shoe manufacturers had developed their art to a point where "American shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in practically every European country. It is hardly necessary to describe in detail each of these industries. In their broad outlines they merely repeat the story of steel, of oil, of agricultural machinery; they are the product of the same methods, the same initiative. There is one branch of American manufacture, however, that merits more detailed attention. If we scan the manufacturing statistics of 1917, one amazing fact stares us in the face. There are only three American industries whose product has attained the billion mark; one of these is steel, the other food products, while the third is an industry that was practically unknown in the United States fifteen years ago. Superlatives come naturally to mind in discussing American progress, but hardly any extravagant phrases could do justice to the development of American automobiles. In 1899 the United States produced 3700 motor vehicles; in 1916 we made 1,500,000. The man who now makes a personal profit of not far from $50,000,000 a year in this industry was a puttering mechanic when the twentieth century came in. If we capitalized Henry Ford's income, he is probably a richer man than Rockefeller; yet, as recently as 1905 his possessions consisted of a little shed of a factory which employed a dozen workmen. Dazzling as is this personal success, its really important aspects are the things for which it stands. The American automobile has had its wildcat days; for the larger part, however, its leaders have paid little attention to Wall Street, but have limited their activities exclusively to manufacturing. Moreover, the automobile illustrates more completely than any other industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our industrial progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and the use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other manufacturers adapted these principles to making the automobile that the American motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions. A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three cars from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these cars, and they immediately started down the road and made a long journey just as acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret of American success with automobiles. The one word "standardization" explained the mystery. Yet when, a few years before, the English referred to the American automobile as a "glorified perambulator," the characterization was not unjust. This new method of transportation was slow in finding favor on our side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and practically devoted to the horse as the motive power for vehicles; and the fact that we had so few good roads also worked against the introduction of the automobile. Yet here, as in Europe, the mechanically propelled wagon made its appearance in early times. This vehicle, like the bicycle, is not essentially a modern invention; the reason any one can manufacture it is that practically all the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed, the automobile is really older than the railroad. In the twenties and thirties, steam stage coaches made regular trips between certain cities in England and occasionally a much resounding power-driven carriage would come careering through New York and Philadelphia, scaring all the horses and precipitating the intervention of the authorities. The hardy spirits who devised these engines, all of whose names are recorded in the encyclopedias, deservedly rank as the "fathers" of the automobile. The responsibility as the actual "inventor" can probably be no more definitely placed. However, had it not been for two developments, neither of them immediately related to the motor car, we should never have had this efficient method of transportation. The real "fathers" of the automobile are Gottlieb Daimler, the German who made the first successful gasoline engine, and Charles Goodyear, the American who discovered the secret of vulcanized rubber. Without this engine to form the motive power and the pneumatic tire to give it four air cushions to run on, the automobile would never have progressed beyond the steam carriage stage. It is true that Charles Baldwin Selden, of Rochester, has been pictured as the "inventor of the modern automobile" because, as long ago as 1879, he applied for a patent on the idea of using a gasoline engine as motive power, securing this basic patent in 1895, but this, it must be admitted, forms a flimsy basis for such a pretentious claim. The French apparently led all nations in the manufacture of motor vehicles, and in the early nineties their products began to make occasional appearances on American roads. The type of American who owned this imported machine was the same that owned steam yachts and a box at the opera. Hardly any new development has aroused greater hostility. It not only frightened horses, and so disturbed the popular traffic of the time, but its speed, its glamour, its arrogance, and the haughty behavior of its proprietor, had apparently transformed it into a new badge of social cleavage. It thus immediately took its place as a new gewgaw of the rich; that it had any other purpose to serve had occurred to few people. Yet the French and English machines created an entirely different reaction in the mind of an imaginative mechanic in Detroit. Probably American annals contain no finer story than that of this simple American workman. Yet from the beginning it seemed inevitable that Henry Ford should play this appointed part in the world. Born in Michigan in 1863, the son of an English farmer who had emigrated to Michigan and a Dutch mother, Ford had always demonstrated an interest in things far removed from his farm. Only mechanical devices interested him. He liked getting in the crops, because McCormick harvesters did most of the work; it was only the machinery of the dairy that held him enthralled. He developed destructive tendencies as a boy; he had to take everything to pieces. He horrified a rich playmate by resolving his new watch into its component parts--and promptly quieted him by putting it together again. "Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," he recently said. He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, and built a small steam engine that could make ten miles an hour. He spent his winter evenings reading mechanical and scientific journals; he cared little for general literature, but machinery in any form was almost a pathological obsession. Some boys run away from the farm to join the circus or to go to sea; Henry Ford at the age of sixteen ran away to get a job in a machine shop. Here one anomaly immediately impressed him. No two machines were made exactly alike; each was regarded as a separate job. With his savings from his weekly wage of $2.50, young Ford purchased a three dollar watch, and immediately dissected it. If several thousand of these watches could be made, each one exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven cents apiece. "Then," said Ford to himself, "everybody could have one." He had fairly elaborated his plans to start a factory on this basis when his father's illness called him back to the farm. This was about 1880; Ford's next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled and lurched through her thoroughfares, making as much disturbance as a freight train. In reading his technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted his evenings to the production of a gasoline engine. His young wife was exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors' snap judgment was that he was insane. Only two other Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Ellwood Haynes, were attempting to construct an automobile at that time. Long before Ford was ready with his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea turned out his first one in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in considerable numbers. But the Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive inspiration. He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered and beautifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. "Anything that isn't good for everybody is no good at all," he said. Precisely as it was Vail's ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's to make every farmer a user of his harvester, so it was Ford's determination that every family should have an automobile. He was apparently the only man in those times who saw that this new machine was not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? Frenchmen and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined and called for the highest grade of steel; the clever Americans might use their labor-saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand work could turn out a motor car. European manufacturers regarded each car as a separate problem; they individualized its manufacture almost as scrupulously as a painter paints his portrait or a poet writes his poem. The result was that only a man with several thousand dollars could purchase one. But Henry Ford--and afterward other American makers--had quite a different conception. Henry Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch wagon at which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after his hard evening's work in the shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided his hopes and aspirations on these occasions, was the only man with available cash who had any faith in his ideas. Capital in more substantial form, however, came in about 1902. With money advanced by "Coffee Jim," Ford had built a machine which he entered in the Grosse Point races that year. It was a hideous-looking affair, but it ran like the wind and outdistanced all competitors. From that day Ford's career has been an uninterrupted triumph. But he rejected the earliest offers of capital because the millionaires would not agree to his terms. They were looking for high prices and quick profits, while Ford's plans were for low prices, large sales, and use of profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his machine. Henry Ford's greatness as a manufacturer consists in the tenacity with which he has clung to this conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile industry he maintained that a high sale price was not necessary for large profits; indeed he declared that the lower the price, the larger the net earnings would be. Nor did he believe that low wages meant prosperity. The most efficient labor, no matter what the nominal cost might be, was the most economical. The secret of success was the rapid production of a serviceable article in large quantities. When Ford first talked of turning out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates asked him where he was going to sell them. Ford's answer was that that was no problem at all; the machines would sell themselves. He called attention to the fact that there were millions of people in this country whose incomes exceeded $1800 a year; all in that class would become prospective purchasers of a low-priced automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers; what more receptive market could one ask? His only problem was the technical one--how to produce his machine in sufficient quantities. The bicycle business in this country had passed through a similar experience. When first placed on the market bicycles were expensive; it took $100 or $150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent machine was selling for $25 or $30. What explained this drop in price? The answer is that the manufacturers learned to standardize their product. Bicycle factories became not so much places where the articles were manufactured as assembling rooms for putting them together. The several parts were made in different places, each establishment specializing in a particular part; they were then shipped to centers where they were transformed into completed machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive factories had developed on similar lines. Europeans had always marveled that Americans could build these costly articles so cheaply that they could undersell European makers. When they obtained a glimpse of an American locomotive factory, the reason became plain. In Europe each locomotive was a separate problem; no two, even in the same shop, were exactly alike. But here locomotives are built in parts, all duplicates of one another; the parts are then sent by machinery to assembling rooms and rapidly put together. American harvesting machines are built in the same way; whenever a farmer loses a part, he can go to the country store and buy its duplicate, for the parts of the same machine do not vary to the thousandth of an inch. The same principle applies to hundreds of other articles. Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he merely applied this great American idea to a product to which, because of the delicate labor required, it seemed at first unadapted. He soon found that it was cheaper to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to ship ten completed cars. There would therefore be large savings in making his parts in particular factories and shipping them to assembling establishments. In this way the completed cars would always be near their markets. Large production would mean that he could purchase his raw materials at very low prices; high wages meant that he could get the efficient labor which was demanded by his rapid fire method of campaign. It was necessary to plan the making of every part to the minutest detail, to have each part machined to its exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar precisely interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford factory was systematized on this basis. In that twelvemonth it produced 10,000 machines, each one the absolute counterpart of the other 9999. American manufacturers until then had been content with a few hundred a year! From that date the Ford production has rapidly increased; until, in 1916, there were nearly 4,000,000 automobiles in the United States--more than in all the rest of the world put together--of which one-sixth were the output of the Ford factories. Many other American manufacturers followed the Ford plan, with the result that American automobiles are duplicating the story of American bicycles; because of their cheapness and serviceability, they are rapidly dominating the markets of the world. In the Great War American machines have surpassed all in the work done under particularly exacting circumstances. A glimpse of a Ford assembling room--and we can see the same process in other American factories--makes clear the reasons for this success. In these rooms no fitting is done; the fragments of automobiles come in automatically and are simply bolted together. First of all the units are assembled in their several departments. The rear axles, the front axles, the frames, the radiators, and the motors are all put together with the same precision and exactness that marks the operation of the completed car. Thus the wheels come from one part of the factory and are rolled on an inclined plane to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some mysterious force to the same spot; as the two elements coincide, workmen quickly put them together. In a long room the bodies are slowly advanced on moving platforms at the rate of about a foot per minute. At the side stand groups of men, each prepared to do his bit, their materials being delivered at convenient points by chutes. As the tops pass by these men quickly bolt them into place, and the completed body is sent to a place where it awaits the chassis. This important section, comprising all the machinery, starts at one end of a moving platform as a front and rear axle bolted together with the frame. As this slowly advances, it passes under a bridge containing a gasoline tank, which is quickly adjusted. Farther on the motor is swung over by a small hoist and lowered into position on the frame. Presently the dash slides down and is placed in position behind the motor. As the rapidly accumulating mechanism passes on, different workmen adjust the mufflers, exhaust pipes, the radiator, and the wheels which, as already indicated, arrive on the scene completely tired. Then a workman seats himself on the gasoline tank, which contains a small quantity of its indispensable fuel, starts the engine, and the thing moves out the door under its own power. It stops for a moment outside; the completed body drops down from the second floor, and a few bolts quickly put it securely in place. The workman drives the now finished Ford to a loading platform, it is stored away in a box car, and is started on its way to market. At the present time about 2000 cars are daily turned out in this fashion. The nation demands them at a more rapid rate than they can be made. Herein we have what is probably America's greatest manufacturing exploit. And this democratization of the automobile comprises more than the acme of efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in the foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements, represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part of the fifty years following the war. He was always seeking his own advantage, and he never regarded the public interest as anything worth a moment's consideration. With Ford, however, the spirit of service has been the predominating motive. His earnings have been immeasurably greater than Vanderbilt's; his income for two years amounts to nearly Vanderbilt's total fortune at his death; but the piling up of riches has been by no means his exclusive purpose. He has recognized that his workmen are his partners and has liberally shared with them his increasing profits. His money is not the product of speculation; Ford is a stranger to Wall Street and has built his business independently of the great banking interest. He has enjoyed no monopoly, as have the Rockefellers; there are more than three hundred makers of automobiles in the United States alone. He has spurned all solicitations to join combinations. Far from asking tariff favors he has entered European markets and undersold English, French, and German makers on their own ground. Instead of taking advantage of a great public demand to increase his prices, Ford has continuously lowered them. Though his idealism may have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as a business man he may be taken as the full flower of American manufacturing genius. Possibly America, as a consequence of universal war, is advancing to a higher state of industrial organization; but an economic system is not entirely evil that produces such an industry as that which has made the automobile the servant of millions of Americans. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The materials are abundant for the history of American industry in the last fifty years. They exist largely in the form of official documents. Any one ambitious of studying this subject in great detail should consult, first of all, the catalogs issued by that very valuable institution, the Government Printing Office. The Bureau of Corporations has published elaborate reports on such industries as petroleum (Standard Oil Company), beef, tobacco, steel, and harvesting machinery, which are indispensable in studying these great basic enterprises. The American habit of legislative investigation and trust-fighting in the courts, whatever its public value may have been, has at least had the result of piling up mountains of material for the historian of American industry. For one single corporation, the Standard Oil Company, a great library of such literature exists. The nearly twenty volumes of testimony, exhibits, and briefs assembled in the course of the Federal suit which led to its dissolution is the ultimate source of material on America's greatest trust. As most of our other great corporations--the Steel Trust, the Harvester Company, the Tobacco Company, and the like--have passed through similar ordeals, all the information the student could ask concerning them exists in the same form. The archives of such bodies as the Interstate Commerce Commission and Public Utility Commissions of the States are also bulging with documentary evidence. Thus all the material contained in this volume--and much more--concerning the New York traction situation will be found in the investigation conducted in 1907 by the Public Service Commission of New York, Second District. American business has also developed a great talent for publicity. Nearly all our big corporations have assembled much material about their own history, all of which is public property. Thus the American Telephone and Telegraph Company can furnish detailed information on every phase of its business and history. Indeed, one's respect for the achievements of American industry is increased by the praiseworthy curiosity which it displays about its own past and the readiness with which it makes such material accessible to the public. Despite the abundance of data, there is not a great amount of popular writing on these subjects that has much fascination as literature or much value as history. The only book that is really important is Miss Ida M. Tarbell's "History of the Standard Oil Company," 2 vols. (new edition 1911). Of other popular volumes the present writer has found most useful Herbert N. Casson's "Romance of Steel" (1907), "History of the Telephone" (1910), and "Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work" (1909); J.H. Bridge's "Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company" (1903); "Henry Ford's Own Story" as told to Rose Wildes Lane (1917). For Chapter V, the author has drawn from articles contributed by him in 1907-8 to "McClure's Magazine" on "Great American Fortunes and their Making;" and for Chapter IV, from an article contributed to the same magazine in 1914, on "Telephones for the Millions." 
33741	----	THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY BY R. H. TAWNEY FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD; LATE MEMBER OF THE COAL INDUSTRY COMMISSION NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY II RIGHTS AND FUNCTIONS III THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY IV THE NEMESIS OF INDUSTRIALISM V PROPERTY AND CREATIVE WORK VI THE FUNCTIONAL SOCIETY VII INDUSTRY AS A PROFESSION VIII THE "VICIOUS CIRCLE" IX THE CONDITION OF EFFICIENCY X THE POSITION OF THE BRAIN WORKER XI PORRO UNUM NECESSARIUM _The author desires to express his acknowledgments to the Editor of the_ Hibbert Journal _for permission to reprint an article which appeared in it_. {1} THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY I INTRODUCTORY It is a commonplace that the characteristic virtue of Englishmen is their power of sustained practical activity, and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles. They are incurious as to theory, take fundamentals for granted, and are more interested in the state of the roads than in their place on the map. And it might fairly be argued that in ordinary times that combination of intellectual tameness with practical energy is sufficiently serviceable to explain, if not to justify, the equanimity with which its possessors bear the criticism of more mentally adventurous nations. It is the mood of those who have made their bargain with fate and are content to take what it offers without re-opening the deal. It leaves the mind free to concentrate undisturbed upon profitable activities, because it is not distracted by a taste for unprofitable speculations. Most generations, it might be said, walk in a path which they neither make, nor discover, but accept; the main thing is that they should march. The blinkers worn by Englishmen enable them to trot all the more steadily along the beaten {2} road, without being disturbed by curiosity as to their destination. But if the medicine of the constitution ought not to be made its daily food, neither can its daily food be made its medicine. There are times which are not ordinary, and in such times it is not enough to follow the road. It is necessary to know where it leads, and, if it leads nowhere, to follow another. The search for another involves reflection, which is uncongenial to the bustling people who describe themselves as practical, because they take things as they are and leave them as they are. But the practical thing for a traveler who is uncertain of his path is not to proceed with the utmost rapidity in the wrong direction: it is to consider how to find the right one. And the practical thing for a nation which has stumbled upon one of the turning-points of history is not to behave as though nothing very important were involved, as if it did not matter whether it turned to the right or to the left, went up hill or down dale, provided that it continued doing with a little more energy what it has done hitherto; but to consider whether what it has done hitherto is wise, and, if it is not wise, to alter it. When the broken ends of its industry, its politics, its social organization, have to be pieced together after a catastrophe, it must make a decision; for it makes a decision even if it refuses to decide. If it is to make a decision which will wear, it must travel beyond the philosophy momentarily in favor with the proprietors of its newspapers. Unless it is to move with the energetic futility of a squirrel in a revolving cage, it must have a clear apprehension both of the {3} deficiency of what is, and of the character of what ought to be. And to obtain this apprehension it must appeal to some standard more stable than the momentary exigencies of its commerce or industry or social life, and judge them by it. It must, in short, have recourse to Principles. Such considerations are, perhaps, not altogether irrelevant at a time when facts have forced upon Englishmen the reconsideration of their social institutions which no appeal to theory could induce them to undertake. An appeal to principles is the condition of any considerable reconstruction of society, because social institutions are the visible expression of the scale of moral values which rules the minds of individuals, and it is impossible to alter institutions without altering that moral valuation. Parliament, industrial organizations, the whole complex machinery through which society expresses itself, is a mill which grinds only what is put into it, and when nothing is put into it grinds air. There are many, of course, who desire no alteration, and who, when it is attempted, will oppose it. They have found the existing economic order profitable in the past. They desire only such changes as will insure that it is equally profitable in the future. _Quand le Roi avait bu, la Pologne était ivre_. They are genuinely unable to understand why their countrymen cannot bask happily by the fire which warms themselves, and ask, like the French farmer-general:--"When everything goes so happily, why trouble to change it?" Such persons are to be pitied, for they lack the social quality which is {4} proper to man. But they do not need argument; for Heaven has denied them one of the faculties required to apprehend it. There are others, however, who are conscious of the desire for a new social order, but who yet do not grasp the implications of their own desire. Men may genuinely sympathize with the demand for a radical change. They may be conscious of social evils and sincerely anxious to remove them. They may set up a new department, and appoint new officials, and invent a new name to express their resolution to effect something more drastic than reform, and less disturbing than revolution. But unless they will take the pains, not only to act, but to reflect, they end by effecting nothing. For they deliver themselves bound to those who think they are practical, because they take their philosophy so much for granted as to be unconscious of its implications, and directly they try to act, that philosophy re-asserts itself, and serves as an overruling force which presses their action more deeply into the old channels. "Unhappy man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" When they desire to place their economic life on a better foundation, they repeat, like parrots, the word "Productivity," because that is the word that rises first in their minds; regardless of the fact that productivity is the foundation on which it is based already, that increased productivity is the one characteristic achievement of the age before the war, as religion was of the Middle Ages or art of classical Athens, and that it is precisely in the century which has seen the greatest increase in {5} productivity since the fall of the Roman Empire that economic discontent has been most acute. When they are touched by social compunction, they can think of nothing more original than the diminution of poverty, because poverty, being the opposite of the riches which they value most, seems to them the most terrible of human afflictions. They do not understand that poverty is a symptom and a consequence of social disorder, while the disorder itself is something at once more fundamental and more incorrigible, and that the quality in their social life which causes it to demoralize a few by excessive riches, is also the quality which causes it to demoralize many by excessive poverty. "But increased production is important." Of course it is! That plenty is good and scarcity evil--it needs no ghost from the graves of the past five years to tell us that. But plenty depends upon co-operative effort, and co-operation upon moral principles. And moral principles are what the prophets of this dispensation despise. So the world "continues in scarcity," because it is too grasping and too short-sighted to seek that "which maketh men to be of one mind in a house." The well-intentioned schemes for social reorganization put forward by its commercial teachers are abortive, because they endeavor to combine incompatibles, and, if they disturb everything, settle nothing. They are like a man who, when he finds that his shoddy boots wear badly, orders a pair two sizes larger instead of a pair of good leather, or who makes up for putting a bad sixpence in the plate on Sunday by putting in a bad shilling the next. And when their fit of feverish energy {6} has spent itself, and there is nothing to show for it except disillusionment, they cry that reform is impracticable, and blame human nature, when what they ought to blame is themselves. Yet all the time the principles upon which industry should be based are simple, however difficult it may be to apply them; and if they are overlooked it is not because they are difficult, but because they are elementary. They are simple because industry is simple. An industry, when all is said, is, in its essence, nothing more mysterious than a body of men associated, in various degrees of competition and co-operation, to win their living by providing the community with some service which it requires. Organize it as you will, let it be a group of craftsmen laboring with hammer and chisel, or peasants plowing their own fields, or armies of mechanics of a hundred different trades constructing ships which are miracles of complexity with machines which are the climax of centuries of invention, its function is service, its method is association. Because its function is service, an industry as a whole has rights and duties towards the community, the abrogation of which involves privilege. Because its method is association, the different parties within it have rights and duties towards each other; and the neglect or perversion of these involves oppression. The conditions of a right organization of industry are, therefore, permanent, unchanging, and capable of being apprehended by the most elementary intelligence, provided it will read the nature of its countrymen in the large outlines of history, not in the bloodless {7} abstractions of experts. The first is that it should be subordinated to the community in such a way as to render the best service technically possible, that those who render no service should not be paid at all, because it is of the essence of a function that it should find its meaning in the satisfaction, not of itself, but of the end which it serves. The second is that its direction and government should be in the hands of persons who are responsible to those who are directed and governed, because it is the condition of economic freedom that men should not be ruled by an authority which they cannot control. The industrial problem, in fact, is a problem of right, not merely of material misery, and because it is a problem of right it is most acute among those sections of the working classes whose material misery is least. It is a question, first of Function, and secondly of Freedom. {8} II RIGHTS AND FUNCTIONS A function may be defined as an activity which embodies and expresses the idea of social purpose. The essence of it is that the agent does not perform it merely for personal gain or to gratify himself, but recognizes that he is responsible for its discharge to some higher authority. The purpose of industry is obvious. It is to supply man with things which are necessary, useful or beautiful, and thus to bring life to body or spirit. In so far as it is governed by this end, it is among the most important of human activities. In so far as it is diverted from it, it may be harmless, amusing, or even exhilarating to those who carry it on, but it possesses no more social significance than the orderly business of ants and bees, the strutting of peacocks, or the struggles of carnivorous animals over carrion. Men have normally appreciated this fact, however unwilling or unable they may have been to act upon it; and therefore from time to time, in so far as they have been able to control the forces of violence and greed, they have adopted various expedients for emphasizing the social quality of economic activity. It is not easy, however, to emphasize it effectively, because to do so requires a constant effort of will, against which egotistical instincts are in rebellion, and because, if that will is to prevail, it must be embodied in some social {9} and political organization, which may itself become so arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt as to thwart the performance of function instead of promoting it. When this process of degeneration has gone far, as in most European countries it had by the middle of the eighteenth century, the indispensable thing is to break the dead organization up and to clear the ground. In the course of doing so, the individual is emancipated and his rights are enlarged; but the idea of social purpose is discredited by the discredit justly attaching to the obsolete order in which it is embodied. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the new industrial societies which arose on the ruins of the old régime the dominant note should have been the insistence upon individual rights, irrespective of any social purpose to which their exercise contributed. The economic expansion which concentrated population on the coal-measures was, in essence, an immense movement of colonization drifting from the south and east to the north and west; and it was natural that in those regions of England, as in the American settlements, the characteristic philosophy should be that of the pioneer and the mining camp. The change of social quality was profound. But in England, at least, it was gradual, and the "industrial revolution," though catastrophic in its effects, was only the visible climax of generations of subtle moral change. The rise of modern economic relations, which may be dated in England from the latter half of the seventeenth century, was coincident with the growth of a political theory which replaced the conception of purpose by that of mechanism. During a great part of history men had {10} found the significance of their social order in its relation to the universal purposes of religion. It stood as one rung in a ladder which stretched from hell to Paradise, and the classes who composed it were the hands, the feet, the head of a corporate body which was itself a microcosm imperfectly reflecting a larger universe. When the Reformation made the Church a department of the secular government, it undermined the already enfeebled spiritual forces which had erected that sublime, but too much elaborated, synthesis. But its influence remained for nearly a century after the roots which fed it had been severed. It was the atmosphere into which men were born, and from which, however practical, or even Machiavellian, they could not easily disengage their spirits. Nor was it inconvenient for the new statecraft to see the weight of a traditional religious sanction added to its own concern in the subordination of all classes and interests to the common end, of which it conceived itself, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century was commonly conceived, to be the guardian. The lines of the social structure were no longer supposed to reproduce in miniature the plan of a universal order. But common habits, common traditions and beliefs, common pressure from above gave them a unity of direction, which restrained the forces of individual variation and lateral expansion; and the center towards which they converged, formerly a Church possessing some of the characteristics of a State, was now a State that had clothed itself with many of the attributes of a Church. The difference between the England of Shakespeare, {11} still visited by the ghosts of the Middle Ages, and the England which merged in 1700 from the fierce polemics of the last two generations, was a difference of social and political theory even more than of constitutional and political arrangements. Not only the facts, but the minds which appraised them, were profoundly modified. The essence of the change was the disappearance of the idea that social institutions and economic activities were related to common ends, which gave them their significance and which served as their criterion. In the eighteenth century both the State and the Church had abdicated that part of the sphere which had consisted in the maintenance of a common body of social ethics; what was left of it was repression of a class, not the discipline of a nation. Opinion ceased to regard social institutions and economic activity as amenable, like personal conduct, to moral criteria, because it was no longer influenced by the spectacle of institutions which, arbitrary, capricious, and often corrupt in their practical operation, had been the outward symbol and expression of the subordination of life to purposes transcending private interests. That part of government which had been concerned with social administration, if it did not end, became at least obsolescent. For such democracy as had existed in the Middle Ages was dead, and the democracy of the Revolution was not yet born, so that government passed into the lethargic hand of classes who wielded the power of the State in the interests of an irresponsible aristocracy. And the Church was even more remote from the daily life of mankind than the State. Philanthropy abounded; but religion, {12} once the greatest social force, had become a thing as private and individual as the estate of the squire or the working clothes of the laborer. There were special dispensations and occasional interventions, like the acts of a monarch who reprieved a criminal or signed an order for his execution. But what was familiar, and human and lovable--what was Christian in Christianity had largely disappeared. God had been thrust into the frigid altitudes of infinite space. There was a limited monarchy in Heaven, as well as upon earth. Providence was the spectator of the curious machine which it had constructed and set in motion, but the operation of which it was neither able nor willing to control. Like the occasional intervention of the Crown in the proceedings of Parliament, its wisdom was revealed in the infrequency of its interference. The natural consequence of the abdication of authorities which had stood, however imperfectly, for a common purpose in social organization, was the gradual disappearance from social thought of the idea of purpose itself. Its place in the eighteenth century was taken by the idea of mechanism. The conception of men as united to each other, and of all mankind as united to God, by mutual obligations arising from their relation to a common end, which vaguely conceived and imperfectly realized, had been the keystone holding together the social fabric, ceased to be impressed upon men's minds, when Church and State withdrew from the center of social life to its circumference. What remained when the keystone of the arch was removed, was private rights and private interests, the materials of a society rather {13} than a society itself. These rights and interests were the natural order which had been distorted by the ambitions of kings and priests, and which emerged when the artificial super-structure disappeared, because they were the creation, not of man, but of Nature herself. They had been regarded in the past as relative to some public end, whether religion or national welfare. Henceforward they were thought to be absolute and indefeasible, and to stand by their own virtue. They were the ultimate political and social reality; and since they were the ultimate reality, they were not subordinate to other aspects of society, but other aspects of society were subordinate to them. The State could not encroach upon these rights, for the State existed for their maintenance. They determined the relation of classes, for the most obvious and fundamental of all rights was property--property absolute and unconditioned--and those who possessed it were regarded as the natural governors of those who did not. Society arose from their exercise, through the contracts of individual with individual. It fulfilled its object in so far as, by maintaining contractual freedom, it secured full scope for their unfettered exercise. It failed in so far as, like the French monarchy, it overrode them by the use of an arbitrary authority. Thus conceived, society assumed something of the appearance of a great joint-stock company, in which political power and the receipt of dividends were justly assigned to those who held the most numerous shares. The currents of social activity did not converge upon common ends, but were dispersed through a multitude of channels, {14} created by the private interests of the individuals who composed society. But in their very variety and spontaneity, in the very absence of any attempt to relate them to a larger purpose than that of the individual, lay the best security of its attainment. There is a mysticism of reason as well as of emotion, and the eighteenth century found, in the beneficence of natural instincts, a substitute for the God whom it had expelled from contact with society, and did not hesitate to identify them. "Thus God and nature planned the general frame And bade self-love and social be the same." The result of such ideas in the world of practice was a society which was ruled by law, not by the caprice of Governments, but which recognized no moral limitation on the pursuit by individuals of their economic self-interest. In the world of thought, it was a political philosophy which made rights the foundation of the social order, and which considered the discharge of obligations, when it considered it at all, as emerging by an inevitable process from their free exercise. The first famous exponent of this philosophy was Locke, in whom the dominant conception is the indefeasibility of private rights, not the pre-ordained harmony between private rights and public welfare. In the great French writers who prepared the way for the Revolution, while believing that they were the servants of an enlightened absolutism, there is an almost equal emphasis upon the sanctity of rights and upon the infallibility of the {15} alchemy by which the pursuit of private ends is transmuted into the attainment of public good. Though their writings reveal the influence of the conception of society as a self-adjusting mechanism, which afterwards became the most characteristic note of the English individualism, what the French Revolution burned into the mind of Europe was the former not the latter. In England the idea of right had been negative and defensive, a barrier to the encroachment of Governments. The French leapt to the attack from trenches which the English had been content to defend, and in France the idea became affirmative and militant, not a weapon of defense, but a principle of social organization. The attempt to refound society upon rights, and rights springing not from musty charters, but from the very nature of man himself, was at once the triumph and the limitation of the Revolution. It gave it the enthusiasm and infectious power of religion. What happened in England might seem at first sight to have been precisely the reverse. English practical men, whose thoughts were pitched in a lower key, were a little shocked by the pomp and brilliance of that tremendous creed. They had scanty sympathy with the absolute affirmations of France. What captured their imagination was not the right to liberty, which made no appeal to their commercial instincts, but the expediency of liberty, which did; and when the Revolution had revealed the explosive power of the idea of natural right, they sought some less menacing formula. It had been offered them first by Adam Smith and his precursors, who showed how the mechanism of economic life {16} converted "as with an invisible hand," the exercise of individual rights into the instrument of public good. Bentham, who despised metaphysical subtleties, and thought the Declaration of the Rights of Man as absurd as any other dogmatic religion, completed the new orientation by supplying the final criterion of political institutions in the principle of Utility. Henceforward emphasis was transferred from the right of the individual to exercise his freedom as he pleased to the expediency of an undisturbed exercise of freedom to society. The change is significant. It is the difference between the universal and equal citizenship of France, with its five million peasant proprietors, and the organized inequality of England established solidly upon class traditions and class institutions; the descent from hope to resignation, from the fire and passion of an age of illimitable vistas to the monotonous beat of the factory engine, from Turgot and Condorcet to the melancholy mathematical creed of Bentham and Ricardo and James Mill. Mankind has, at least, this superiority over its philosophers, that great movements spring from the heart and embody a faith; not the nice adjustments of the hedonistic calculus. So in the name of the rights of property France abolished in three years a great mass of property rights which, under the old régime had robbed the peasant of part of the produce of his labor, and the social transformation survived a whole world of political changes. In England the glad tidings of democracy were broken too discreetly to reach the ears of the hind in the furrow or the shepherd on the hill; {17} there were political changes without a social transformation. The doctrine of Utility, though trenchant in the sphere of politics, involved no considerable interference with the fundamentals of the social fabric. Its exponents were principally concerned with the removal of political abuses and legal anomalies. They attacked sinecures and pensions and the criminal code and the procedure of the law courts. But they touched only the surface of social institutions. They thought it a monstrous injustice that the citizen should pay one-tenth of his income in taxation to an idle Government, but quite reasonable that he should pay one-fifth of it in rent to an idle landlord. The difference, neverthelesss, was one of emphasis and expression, not of principle. It mattered very little in practice whether private property and unfettered economic freedom were stated, as in France, to be natural rights, or whether, as in England, they were merely assumed once for all to be expedient. In either case they were taken for granted as the fundamentals upon which social organization was to be based, and about which no further argument was admissible. Though Bentham argued that rights were derived from utility, not from nature, he did not push his analysis so far as to argue that any particular right was relative to any particular function, and thus endorsed indiscriminately rights which were not accompanied by service as well as rights which were. While eschewing, in short, the phraseology of natural rights, the English Utilitarians retained something not unlike the substance of them. For they assumed that private property in {18} land, and the private ownership of capital, were natural institutions, and gave them, indeed, a new lease of life, by proving to their own satisfaction that social well-being must result from their continued exercise. Their negative was as important as their positive teaching. It was a conductor which diverted the lightning. Behind their political theory, behind the practical conduct, which as always, continues to express theory long after it has been discredited in the world of thought, lay the acceptance of absolute rights to property and to economic freedom as the unquestioned center of social organization. The result of that attitude was momentous. The motive and inspiration of the Liberal Movement of the eighteenth century had been the attack on Privilege. But the creed which had exorcised the specter of agrarian feudalism haunting village and _château_ in France, was impotent to disarm the new ogre of industrialism which was stretching its limbs in the north of England. When, shorn of its splendors and illusions, liberalism triumphed in England in 1832, it carried without criticism into the new world of capitalist industry categories of private property and freedom of contract which had been forged in the simpler economic environment of the pre-industrial era. In England these categories are being bent and twisted till they are no longer recognizable, and will, in time, be made harmless. In America, where necessity compelled the crystallization of principles in a constitution, they have the rigidity of an iron jacket. The magnificent formulæ in which a society of farmers {19} and master craftsmen enshrined its philosophy of freedom are in danger of becoming fetters used by an Anglo-Saxon business aristocracy to bind insurgent movements on the part of an immigrant and semi-servile proletariat. {20} III THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY This doctrine has been qualified in practice by particular limitations to avert particular evils and to meet exceptional emergencies. But it is limited in special cases precisely because its general validity is regarded as beyond controversy, and, up to the eve of the present war, it was the working faith of modern economic civilization. What it implies is, that the foundation of society is found, not in functions, but in rights; that rights are not deducible from the discharge of functions, so that the acquisition of wealth and the enjoyment of property are contingent upon the performances of services, but that the individual enters the world equipped with rights to the free disposal of his property and the pursuit of his economic self-interest, and that these rights are anterior to, and independent of, any service which he may render. True, the service of society will, in fact, it is assumed, result from their exercise. But it is not the primary motive and criterion of industry, but a secondary consequence, which emerges incidentally through the exercise of rights, a consequence which is attained, indeed, in practice, but which is attained without being sought. It is not the end at which economic activity aims, or the standard by which it is judged, but a by-product, as coal-tar is a by-product of the {21} manufacture of gas; whether that by-product appears or not, it is not proposed that the rights themselves should be abdicated. For they are regarded, not as a conditional trust, but as a property, which may, indeed, give way to the special exigencies of extraordinary emergencies, but which resumes its sway when the emergency is over, and in normal times is above discussion. That conception is written large over the history of the nineteenth century, both in England and in America. The doctrine which it inherited was that property was held by an absolute right on an individual basis, and to this fundamental it added another, which can be traced in principle far back into history, but which grew to its full stature only after the rise of capitalist industry, that societies act both unfairly and unwisely when they limit opportunities of economic enterprise. Hence every attempt to impose obligations as a condition of the tenure of property or of the exercise of economic activity has been met by uncompromising resistance. The story of the struggle between humanitarian sentiment and the theory of property transmitted from the eighteenth century is familiar. No one has forgotten the opposition offered in the name of the rights of property to factory legislation, to housing reform, to interference with the adulteration of goods, even to the compulsory sanitation of private houses. "May I not do what I like with my own?" was the answer to the proposal to require a minimum standard of safety and sanitation from the owners of mills and houses. Even to {22} this day, while an English urban landlord can cramp or distort the development of a whole city by withholding land except at fancy prices, English municipalities are without adequate powers of compulsory purchase, and must either pay through the nose or see thousands of their members overcrowded. The whole body of procedure by which they may acquire land, or indeed new powers of any kind, has been carefully designed by lawyers to protect owners of property against the possibility that their private rights may be subordinated to the public interest, because their rights are thought to be primary and absolute and public interests secondary and contingent. No one needs to be reminded, again, of the influence of the same doctrine in the sphere of taxation. Thus the income tax was excused as a temporary measure, because the normal society was conceived to be one in which the individual spent his whole income for himself and owed no obligations to society on account of it. The death duties were denounced as robbery, because they implied that the right to benefit by inheritance was conditional upon a social sanction. The Budget of 1909 created a storm, not because the taxation of land was heavy--in amount the land-taxes were trifling--but because it was felt to involve the doctrine that property is not an absolute right, but that it may properly be accompanied by special obligations, a doctrine which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would destroy its sanctity by making ownership no longer absolute but conditional. {23} Such an implication seems intolerable to an influential body of public opinion, because it has been accustomed to regard the free disposal of property and the unlimited exploitation of economic opportunities, as rights which are absolute and unconditioned. On the whole, until recently, this opinion had few antagonists who could not be ignored. As a consequence the maintenance of property rights has not been seriously threatened even in those cases in which it is evident that no service is discharged, directly or indirectly, by their exercise. No one supposes, that the owner of urban land, performs _qua_ owner, any function. He has a right of private taxation; that is all. But the private ownership of urban land is as secure to-day as it was a century ago; and Lord Hugh Cecil, in his interesting little book on Conservatism, declares that whether private property is mischievous or not, society cannot interfere with it, because to interfere with it is theft, and theft is wicked. No one supposes that it is for the public good that large areas of land should be used for parks and game. But our country gentlemen are still settled heavily upon their villages and still slay their thousands. No one can argue that a monopolist is impelled by "an invisible hand" to serve the public interest. But over a considerable field of industry competition, as the recent Report on Trusts shows, has been replaced by combination, and combinations are allowed the same unfettered freedom as individuals in the exploitation of economic opportunities. No one really believes that the production of coal depends upon the payment of {24} mining royalties or that ships will not go to and fro unless ship-owners can earn fifty per cent. upon their capital. But coal mines, or rather the coal miner, still pay royalties, and ship-owners still make fortunes and are made Peers. At the very moment when everybody is talking about the importance of increasing the output of wealth, the last question, apparently, which it occurs to any statesman to ask is why wealth should be squandered on futile activities, and in expenditure which is either disproportionate to service or made for no service at all. So inveterate, indeed, has become the practice of payment in virtue of property rights, without even the pretense of any service being rendered, that when, in a national emergency, it is proposed to extract oil from the ground, the Government actually proposes that every gallon shall pay a tax to landowners who never even suspected its existence, and the ingenuous proprietors are full of pained astonishment at any one questioning whether the nation is under moral obligation to endow them further. Such rights are, strictly speaking, privileges. For the definition of a privilege is a right to which no corresponding function is attached. The enjoyment of property and the direction of industry are considered, in short, to require no social justification, because they are regarded as rights which stand by their own virtue, not functions to be judged by the success with which they contribute to a social purpose. To-day that doctrine, if intellectually discredited, is still the practical foundation of social {25} organization. How slowly it yields even to the most insistent demonstration of its inadequacy is shown by the attitude which the heads of the business world have adopted to the restrictions imposed on economic activity during the war. The control of railways, mines and shipping, the distribution of raw materials through a public department instead of through competing merchants, the regulation of prices, the attempts to check "profiteering"--the detailed application of these measures may have been effective or ineffective, wise or injudicious. It is evident, indeed, that some of them have been foolish, like the restriction of imports when the world has five years' destruction to repair, and that others, if sound in conception, have been questionable in their execution. If they were attacked on the ground that they obstruct the efficient performance of function--if the leaders of industry came forward and said generally, as some, to their honor, have:--"We accept your policy, but we will improve its execution; we desire payment for service and service only and will help the state to see that it pays for nothing else"--there might be controversy as to the facts, but there could be none as to the principle. In reality, however, the gravamen of the charges brought against these restrictions appears generally to be precisely the opposite. They are denounced by most of their critics not because they limit the opportunity of service, but because they diminish the opportunity for gain, not because they prevent the trader enriching the community, but because they make it {26} more difficult for him to enrich himself; not, in short, because they have failed to convert economic activity into a social function, but because they have come too near succeeding. If the financial adviser to the Coal Controller may be trusted, the shareholders in coal mines would appear to have done fairly well during the war. But the proposal to limit their profits to 1/2 per ton is described by Lord Gainford as "sheer robbery and confiscation." With some honorable exceptions, what is demanded is that in the future as in the past the directors of industry should be free to handle it as an enterprise conducted for their own convenience or advancement, instead of being compelled, as they have been partially compelled during the war, to subordinate it to a social purpose. For to admit that the criterion of commerce and industry is its success in discharging a social purpose is at once to turn property and economic activity from rights which are absolute into rights which are contingent and derivative, because it is to affirm that they are relative to functions and that they may justly be revoked when the functions are not performed. It is, in short, to imply that property and economic activity exist to promote the ends of society, whereas hitherto society has been regarded in the world of business as existing to promote them. To those who hold their position, not as functionaries, but by virtue of their success in making industry contribute to their own wealth and social influence, such a reversal of means and ends appears little less than a revolution. For it means that they must justify before a social tribunal {27} rights which they have hitherto taken for granted as part of an order which is above criticism. During the greater part of the nineteenth century the significance of the opposition between the two principles of individual rights and social functions was masked by the doctrine of the inevitable harmony between private interests and public good. Competition, it was argued, was an effective substitute for honesty. To-day that subsidiary doctrine has fallen to pieces under criticism; few now would profess adherence to the compound of economic optimism and moral bankruptcy which led a nineteenth century economist to say: "Greed is held in check by greed, and the desire for gain sets limits to itself." The disposition to regard individual rights as the center and pivot of society is still, however, the most powerful element in political thought and the practical foundation of industrial organization. The laborious refutation of the doctrine that private and public interests are co-incident, and that man's self-love is God's Providence, which was the excuse of the last century for its worship of economic egotism, has achieved, in fact, surprisingly small results. Economic egotism is still worshiped; and it is worshiped because that doctrine was not really the center of the position. It was an outwork, not the citadel, and now that the outwork has been captured, the citadel is still to win. What gives its special quality and character, its toughness and cohesion, to the industrial system built up in the last century and a half, is not its exploded theory of economic harmonies. It is the doctrine that {28} economic rights are anterior to, and independent of economic functions, that they stand by their own virtue, and need adduce no higher credentials. The practical result of it is that economic rights remain, whether economic functions are performed or not. They remain to-day in a more menacing form than in the age of early industrialism. For those who control industry no longer compete but combine, and the rivalry between property in capital and property in land has long since ended. The basis of the New Conservatism appears to be a determination so to organize society, both by political and economic action, as to make it secure against every attempt to extinguish payments which are made, not for service, but because the owners possess a right to extract income without it. Hence the fusion of the two traditional parties, the proposed "strengthening" of the second chamber, the return to protection, the swift conversion of rival industrialists to the advantages of monopoly, and the attempts to buy off with concessions the more influential section of the working classes. Revolutions, as a long and bitter experience reveals, are apt to take their color from the régime which they overthrow. Is it any wonder that the creed which affirms the absolute rights of property should sometimes be met with a counter-affirmation of the absolute rights of labor, less anti-social, indeed, and inhuman, but almost as dogmatic, almost as intolerant and thoughtless as itself? A society which aimed at making the acquisition of wealth contingent upon the discharge of social {29} obligations, which sought to proportion remuneration to service and denied it to those by whom no service was performed, which inquired first not what men possess but what they can make or create or achieve, might be called a Functional Society, because in such a society the main subject of social emphasis would be the performance of functions. But such a society does not exist, even as a remote ideal, in the modern world, though something like it has hung, an unrealized theory, before men's minds in the past. Modern societies aim at protecting economic rights, while leaving economic functions, except in moments of abnormal emergency, to fulfil themselves. The motive which gives color and quality to their public institutions, to their policy and political thought, is not the attempt to secure the fulfilment of tasks undertaken for the public service, but to increase the opportunities open to individuals of attaining the objects which they conceive to be advantageous to themselves. If asked the end or criterion of social organization, they would give an answer reminiscent of the formula the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But to say that the end of social institutions is happiness, is to say that they have no common end at all. For happiness is individual, and to make happiness the object of society is to resolve society itself into the ambitions of numberless individuals, each directed towards the attainment of some personal purpose. Such societies may be called Acquisitive Societies, because their whole tendency and interest and preoccupation is to promote the acquisition of wealth. The {30} appeal of this conception must be powerful, for it has laid the whole modern world under its spell. Since England first revealed the possibilities of industrialism, it has gone from strength to strength, and as industrial civilization invades countries hitherto remote from it, as Russia and Japan and India and China are drawn into its orbit, each decade sees a fresh extension of its influence. The secret of its triumph is obvious. It is an invitation to men to use the powers with which they have been endowed by nature or society, by skill or energy or relentless egotism or mere good fortune, without inquiring whether there is any principle by which their exercise should be limited. It assumes the social organization which determines the opportunities which different classes shall in fact possess, and concentrates attention upon the right of those who possess or can acquire power to make the fullest use of it for their own self-advancement. By fixing men's minds, not upon the discharge of social obligations, which restricts their energy, because it defines the goal to which it should be directed, but upon the exercise of the right to pursue their own self-interest, it offers unlimited scope for the acquisition of riches, and therefore gives free play to one of the most powerful of human instincts. To the strong it promises unfettered freedom for the exercise of their strength; to the weak the hope that they too one day may be strong. Before the eyes of both it suspends a golden prize, which not all can attain, but for which each may strive, the enchanting vision of infinite expansion. It assures men that there are no ends other {31} than their ends, no law other than their desires, no limit other than that which they think advisable. Thus it makes the individual the center of his own universe, and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediences. And it immensely simplifies the problems of social life in complex communities. For it relieves them of the necessity of discriminating between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the fruits of labor and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune, because it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that excess or defect, waste or superfluity, require no conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces. Under the impulse of such ideas men do not become religious or wise or artistic; for religion and wisdom and art imply the acceptance of limitations. But they become powerful and rich. They inherit the earth and change the face of nature, if they do not possess their own souls; and they have that appearance of freedom which consists in the absence of obstacles between opportunities for self-advancement and those whom birth or wealth or talent or good fortune has placed in a position to seize them. It is not difficult either for individuals or for societies to achieve their object, if that object be sufficiently limited and immediate, and if they are not distracted from its {32} pursuit by other considerations. The temper which dedicates itself to the cultivation of opportunities, and leaves obligations to take care of themselves, is set upon an object which is at once simple and practicable. The eighteenth century defined it. The twentieth century has very largely attained it. Or, if it has not attained it, it has at least grasped the possibilities of its attainment. The national output of wealth per head of population is estimated to have been approximately $200 in 1914. Unless mankind chooses to continue the sacrifice of prosperity to the ambitions and terrors of nationalism, it is possible that by the year 2000 it may be doubled. {33} IV THE NEMESIS OF INDUSTRIALISM Such happiness is not remote from achievement. In the course of achieving it, however, the world has been confronted by a group of unexpected consequences, which are the cause of its _malaise_, as the obstruction of economic opportunity was the cause of social _malaise_ in the eighteenth century. And these consequences are not, as is often suggested, accidental mal-adjustments, but flow naturally from its dominant principle: so that there is a sense in which the cause of its perplexity is not its failure, but the quality of its success, and its light itself a kind of darkness. The will to economic power, if it is sufficiently single-minded, brings riches. But if it is single-minded it destroys the moral restraints which ought to condition the pursuit of riches, and therefore also makes the pursuit of riches meaningless. For what gives meaning to economic activity, as to any other activity is, as we have said, the purpose to which it is directed. But the faith upon which our economic civilization reposes, the faith that riches are not a means but an end, implies that all economic activity is equally estimable, whether it is subordinated to a social purpose or not. Hence it divorces gain from service, and justifies rewards for which no function is performed, or which are out of all proportion to it. Wealth in modern societies is distributed according to {34} opportunity; and while opportunity depends partly upon talent and energy, it depends still more upon birth, social position, access to education and inherited wealth; in a word, upon property. For talent and energy can create opportunity. But property need only wait for it. It is the sleeping partner who draws the dividends which the firm produces, the residuary legatee who always claims his share in the estate. Because rewards are divorced from services, so that what is prized most is not riches obtained in return for labor but riches the economic origin of which, being regarded as sordid, is concealed, two results follow. The first is the creation of a class of pensioners upon industry, who levy toll upon its product, but contribute nothing to its increase, and who are not merely tolerated, but applauded and admired and protected with assiduous care, as though the secret of prosperity resided in them. They are admired because in the absence of any principle of discrimination between incomes which are payment for functions and incomes which are not, all incomes, merely because they represent wealth, stand on the same level of appreciation, and are estimated solely by their magnitude, so that in all societies which have accepted industrialism there is an upper layer which claims the enjoyment of social life, while it repudiates its responsibilities. The _rentier_ and his ways, how familiar they were in England before the war! A public school and then club life in Oxford and Cambridge, and then another club in town; London in June, when London is pleasant, the moors in August, and pheasants in October, Cannes in {35} December and hunting in February and March; and a whole world of rising bourgeoisie eager to imitate them, sedulous to make their expensive watches keep time with this preposterous calendar! The second consequence is the degradation of those who labor, but who do not by their labor command large rewards; that is of the great majority of mankind. And this degradation follows inevitably from the refusal of men to give the purpose of industry the first place in their thought about it. When they do that, when their minds are set upon the fact that the meaning of industry is the service of man, all who labor appear to them honorable, because all who labor serve, and the distinction which separates those who serve from those who merely spend is so crucial and fundamental as to obliterate all minor distinctions based on differences of income. But when the criterion of function is forgotten, the only criterion which remains is that of wealth, and an Acquisitive Society reverences the possession of wealth, as a Functional Society would honor, even in the person of the humblest and most laborious craftsman, the arts of creation. So wealth becomes the foundation of public esteem, and the mass of men who labor, but who do not acquire wealth, are thought to be vulgar and meaningless and insignificant compared with the few who acquire wealth by good fortune, or by the skilful use of economic opportunities. They come to be regarded, not as the ends for which alone it is worth while to produce wealth at all, but as the instruments of its {36} acquisition by a world that declines to be soiled by contact with what is thought to be the dull and sordid business of labor. They are not happy, for the reward of all but the very mean is not merely money, but the esteem of their fellow-men, and they know they are not esteemed, as soldiers, for example, are esteemed, though it is because they give their lives to making civilization that there is a civilization which it is worth while for soldiers to defend. They are not esteemed, because the admiration of society is directed towards those who get, not towards those who give; and though workmen give much they get little. And the _rentiers_ whom they support are not happy; for in discarding the idea of function, which sets a limit to the acquisition of riches, they have also discarded the principle which alone give riches their meaning. Hence unless they can persuade themselves that to be rich is in itself meritorious, they may bask in social admiration, but they are unable to esteem themselves. For they have abolished the principle which makes activity significant, and therefore estimable. They are, indeed, more truly pitiable than some of those who envy them. For like the spirits in the Inferno, they are punished by the attainment of their desires. A society ruled by these notions is necessarily the victim of an irrational inequality. To escape such inequality it is necessary to recognize that there is some principle which ought to limit the gains of particular classes and particular individuals, because gains drawn from certain sources or exceeding certain amounts are illegitimate. But such a limitation implies a {37} standard of discrimination, which is inconsistent with the assumption that each man has a right to what he can get, irrespective of any service rendered for it. Thus privilege, which was to have been exorcised by the gospel of 1789, returns in a new guise, the creature no longer of unequal legal rights thwarting the natural exercise of equal powers of hand and brain, but of unequal powers springing from the exercise of equal rights in a world where property and inherited wealth and the apparatus of class institutions have made opportunities unequal. Inequality, again, leads to the mis-direction of production. For, since the demand of one income of £50,000 is as powerful a magnet as the demand of 500 incomes of £100, it diverts energy from the creation of wealth to the multiplication of luxuries, so that, for example, while one-tenth of the people of England are overcrowded, a considerable part of them are engaged, not in supplying that deficiency, but in making rich men's hotels, luxurious yachts, and motorcars like that used by the Secretary of State for War, "with an interior inlaid with silver in quartered mahogany, and upholstered in fawn suede and morocco," which was recently bought by a suburban capitalist, by way of encouraging useful industries and rebuking public extravagance with an example of private economy, for the trifling sum of $14,000. Thus part of the goods which are annually produced, and which are called wealth, is, strictly speaking, waste, because it consists of articles which, though reckoned as part of the income of the nation, either should not have been produced until other articles had already {38} been produced in sufficient abundance, or should not have been produced at all. And some part of the population is employed in making goods which no man can make with happiness, or indeed without loss of self-respect, because he knows that they had much better not be made; and that his life is wasted in making them. Everybody recognizes that the army contractor who, in time of war, set several hundred navvies to dig an artificial lake in his grounds, was not adding to, but subtracting from, the wealth of the nation. But in time of peace many hundred thousand workmen, if they are not digging ponds, are doing work which is equally foolish and wasteful; though, in peace, as in war, there is important work, which is waiting to be done, and which is neglected. It is neglected because, while the effective demand of the mass of men is only too small, there is a small class which wears several men's clothes, eats several men's dinners, occupies several families' houses, and lives several men's lives. As long as a minority has so large an income that part of it, if spent at all, must be spent on trivialities, so long will part of the human energy and mechanical equipment of the nation be diverted from serious work, which enriches it, to making trivialities, which impoverishes it, since they can only be made at the cost of not making other things. And if the peers and millionaires who are now preaching the duty of production to miners and dock laborers desire that more wealth, not more waste, should be produced, the simplest way in which they can achieve their aim is to transfer to the public their whole incomes over (say) $5,000 a year, in order that it may {39} be spent in setting to work, not gardeners, chauffeurs, domestic servants and shopkeepers in the West End of London, but builders, mechanics and teachers. So to those who clamor, as many now do, "Produce! Produce!" one simple question may be addressed:--"Produce what?" Food, clothing, house-room, art, knowledge? By all means! But if the nation is scantily furnished with these things had it not better stop producing a good many others which fill shop windows in Regent Street? If it desires to re-equip its industries with machinery and its railways with wagons, had it not better refrain from holding exhibitions designed to encourage rich men to re-equip themselves with motor-cars? What can be more childish than to urge the necessity that productive power should be increased, if part of the productive power which exists already is misapplied? Is not _less_ production of futilities as important as, indeed a condition of, _more_ production of things of moment? Would not "Spend less on private luxuries" be as wise a cry as "produce more"? Yet this result of inequality, again, is a phenomenon which cannot be prevented, or checked, or even recognized by a society which excludes the idea of purpose from its social arrangements and industrial activity. For to recognize it is to admit that there is a principle superior to the mechanical play of economic forces, which ought to determine the relative importance of different occupations, and thus to abandon the view that all riches, however composed, are an end, and that all economic activity is equally justifiable. {40} The rejection of the idea of purpose involves another consequence which every one laments, but which no one can prevent, except by abandoning the belief that the free exercise of rights is the main interest of society and the discharge of obligations a secondary and incidental consequence which may be left to take care of itself. It is that social life is turned into a scene of fierce antagonisms and that a considerable part of industry is carried on in the intervals of a disguised social war. The idea that industrial peace can be secured merely by the exercise of tact and forbearance is based on the idea that there is a fundamental identity of interest between the different groups engaged in it, which is occasionally interrupted by regrettable misunderstandings. Both the one idea and the other are an illusion. The disputes which matter are not caused by a misunderstanding of identity of interests, but by a better understanding of diversity of interests. Though a formal declaration of war is an episode, the conditions which issue in a declaration of war are permanent; and what makes them permanent is the conception of industry which also makes inequality and functionless incomes permanent. It is the denial that industry has any end or purpose other than the satisfaction of those engaged in it. That motive produces industrial warfare, not as a regrettable incident, but as an inevitable result. It produces industrial war, because its teaching is that each individual or group has a right to what they can get, and denies that there is any principle, other than the mechanism of the market, which determines what {41} they ought to get. For, since the income available for distribution is limited, and since, therefore, when certain limits have been passed, what one group gains another group must lose, it is evident that if the relative incomes of different groups are not to be determined by their functions, there is no method other than mutual self-assertion which is left to determine them. Self-interest, indeed, may cause them to refrain from using their full strength to enforce their claims, and, in so far as this happens, peace is secured in industry, as men have attempted to secure it in international affairs, by a balance of power. But the maintenance of such a peace is contingent upon the estimate of the parties to it that they have more to lose than to gain by an overt struggle, and is not the result of their acceptance of any standard of remuneration as an equitable settlement of their claims. Hence it is precarious, insincere and short. It is without finality, because there can be no finality in the mere addition of increments of income, any more than in the gratification of any other desire for material goods. When demands are conceded the old struggle recommences upon a new level, and will always recommence as long as men seek to end it merely by increasing remuneration, not by finding a principle upon which all remuneration, whether large or small, should be based. Such a principle is offered by the idea of function, because its application would eliminate the surpluses which are the subject of contention, and would make it evident that remuneration is based upon service, {42} not upon chance or privilege or the power to use opportunities to drive a hard bargain. But the idea of function is incompatible with the doctrine that every person and organization have an unlimited right to exploit their economic opportunities as fully as they please, which is the working faith of modern industry; and, since it is not accepted, men resign themselves to the settlement of the issue by force, or propose that the State should supersede the force of private associations by the use of its force, as though the absence of a principle could be compensated by a new kind of machinery. Yet all the time the true cause of industrial warfare is as simple as the true cause of international warfare. It is that if men recognize no law superior to their desires, then they must fight when their desires collide. For though groups or nations which are at issue with each other may be willing to submit to a principle which is superior to them both, there is no reason why they should submit to each other. Hence the idea, which is popular with rich men, that industrial disputes would disappear if only the output of wealth were doubled, and every one were twice as well off, not only is refuted by all practical experience, but is in its very nature founded upon an illusion. For the question is one not of amounts but of proportions; and men will fight to be paid $120 a week, instead of $80, as readily as they will fight to be paid $20 instead of $16, as long as there is no reason why they should be paid $80 instead of $120, and as long as other men who do not work are paid anything {43} at all. If miners demanded higher wages when every superfluous charge upon coal-getting had been eliminated, there would be a principle with which to meet their claim, the principle that one group of workers ought not to encroach upon the livelihood of others. But as long as mineral owners extract royalties, and exceptionally productive mines pay thirty per cent. to absentee shareholders, there is no valid answer to a demand for higher wages. For if the community pays anything at all to those who do not work, it can afford to pay more to those who do. The naïve complaint, that workmen are never satisfied, is, therefore, strictly true. It is true, not only of workmen, but of all classes in a society which conducts its affairs on the principle that wealth, instead of being proportioned to function, belongs to those who can get it. They are never satisfied, nor can they be satisfied. For as long as they make that principle the guide of their individual lives and of their social order, nothing short of infinity could bring them satisfaction. So here, again, the prevalent insistence upon rights, and prevalent neglect of functions, brings men into a vicious circle which they cannot escape, without escaping from the false philosophy which dominates them. But it does something more. It makes that philosophy itself seem plausible and exhilarating, and a rule not only for industry, in which it had its birth, but for politics and culture and religion and the whole compass of social life. The possibility that one aspect of human life may be so exaggerated as to overshadow, {44} and in time to atrophy, every other, has been made familiar to Englishmen by the example of "Prussian militarism." Militarism is the characteristic, not of an army, but of a society. Its essence is not any particular quality or scale of military preparation, but a state of mind, which, in its concentration on one particular element in social life, ends finally by exalting it until it becomes the arbiter of all the rest. The purpose for which military forces exist is forgotten. They are thought to stand by their own right and to need no justification. Instead of being regarded as an instrument which is necessary in an imperfect world, they are elevated into an object of superstitious veneration, as though the world would be a poor insipid place without them, so that political institutions and social arrangements and intellect and morality and religion are crushed into a mold made to fit one activity, which in a sane society is a subordinate activity, like the police, or the maintenance of prisons, or the cleansing of sewers, but which in a militarist state is a kind of mystical epitome of society itself. Militarism, as Englishmen see plainly enough, is fetich worship. It is the prostration of men's souls before, and the laceration of their bodies to appease, an idol. What they do not see is that their reverence for economic activity and industry and what is called business is also fetich worship, and that in their devotion to that idol they torture themselves as needlessly and indulge in the same meaningless antics as the Prussians did in their worship of militarism. For what the military tradition and spirit have done for Prussia, {45} with the result of creating militarism, the commercial tradition and spirit have done for England, with the result of creating industrialism. Industrialism is no more a necessary characteristic of an economically developed society than militarism is a necessary characteristic of a nation which maintains military forces. It is no more the result of applying science to industry than militarism is the result of the application of science to war, and the idea that it is something inevitable in a community which uses coal and iron and machinery, so far from being the truth, is itself a product of the perversion of mind which industrialism produces. Men may use what mechanical instruments they please and be none the worse for their use. What kills their souls is when they allow their instruments to use _them_. The essence of industrialism, in short, is not any particular method of industry, but a particular estimate of the importance of industry, which results in it being thought the only thing that is important at all, so that it is elevated from the subordinate place which it should occupy among human interests and activities into being the standard by which all other interests and activities are judged. When a Cabinet Minister declares that the greatness of this country depends upon the volume of its exports, so that France, with exports comparatively little, and Elizabethan England, which exported next to nothing, are presumably to be pitied as altogether inferior civilizations, that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of one minor department of life with the {46} whole of life. When manufacturers cry and cut themselves with knives, because it is proposed that boys and girls of fourteen shall attend school for eight hours a week, and the President of the Board of Education is so gravely impressed by their apprehensions, that he at once allows the hours to be reduced to seven, that is Industrialism. It is fetich worship. When the Government obtains money for a war, which costs $28,000,000 a day, by closing the Museums, which cost $80,000 a year, that is Industrialism. It is a contempt for all interests which do not contribute obviously to economic activity. When the Press clamors that the one thing needed to make this island an Arcadia is productivity, and more productivity, and yet more productivity, that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of means with ends. Men will always confuse means with ends if they are without any clear conception that it is the ends, not the means, which matter--if they allow their minds to slip from the fact that it is the social purpose of industry which gives it meaning and makes it worth while to carry it on at all. And when they do that, they will turn their whole world upside down, because they do not see the poles upon which it ought to move. So when, like England, they are thoroughly industrialized, they behave like Germany, which was thoroughly militarized. They talk as though man existed for industry, instead of industry existing for man, as the Prussians talked of man existing for war. They resent any activity which is not colored by the predominant interest, because it seems a rival to it. So they {47} destroy religion and art and morality, which cannot exist unless they are disinterested; and having destroyed these, which are the end, for the sake of industry, which is a means, they make their industry itself what they make their cities, a desert of unnatural dreariness, which only forgetfulness can make endurable, and which only excitement can enable them to forget. Torn by suspicions and recriminations, avid of power, and oblivious of duties, desiring peace, but unable to "seek peace and ensue it," because unwilling to surrender the creed which is the cause of war, to what can one compare such a society but to the international world, which also has been called a society and which also is social in nothing but name? And the comparison is more than a play upon words. It is an analogy which has its roots in the facts of history. It is not a chance that the last two centuries, which saw the new growth of a new system of industry, saw also the growth of the system of international politics which came to a climax in the period from 1870 to 1914. Both the one and the other are the expression of the same spirit and move in obedience to similar laws. The essence of the former was the repudiation of any authority superior to the individual reason. It left men free to follow their own interests or ambitions or appetites, untrammeled by subordination to any common center of allegiance. The essence of the latter was the repudiation of any authority superior to the sovereign state, which again was conceived as a compact self-contained unit--a unit {48} which would lose its very essence if it lost its independence of other states. Just as the one emancipated economic activity from a mesh of antiquated traditions, so the other emancipated nations from arbitrary subordination to alien races or Governments, and turned them into nationalities with a right to work out their own destiny. Nationalism is, in fact, the counterpart among nations of what individualism is within them. It has similar origins and tendencies, similar triumphs and defects. For nationalism, like individualism, lays its emphasis on the rights of separate units, not on their subordination to common obligations, though its units are races or nations, not individual men. Like individualism it appeals to the self-assertive instincts, to which it promises opportunities of unlimited expansion. Like individualism it is a force of immense explosive power, the just claims of which must be conceded before it is possible to invoke any alternative principle to control its operations. For one cannot impose a supernational authority upon irritated or discontented or oppressed nationalities any more than one can subordinate economic motives to the control of society, until society has recognized that there is a sphere which they may legitimately occupy. And, like individualism, if pushed to its logical conclusion, it is self-destructive. For as nationalism, in its brilliant youth, begins as a claim that nations, because they are spiritual beings, shall determine themselves, and passes too often into a claim that they shall dominate others, so individualism begins by asserting the right of men to {49} make of their own lives what they can, and ends by condoning the subjection of the majority of men to the few whom good fortune or special opportunity or privilege have enabled most successfully to use their rights. They rose together. It is probable that, if ever they decline, they will decline together. For life cannot be cut in compartments. In the long run the world reaps in war what it sows in peace. And to expect that international rivalry can be exorcised as long as the industrial order within each nation is such as to give success to those whose existence is a struggle for self-aggrandizement is a dream which has not even the merit of being beautiful. So the perversion of nationalism is imperialism, as the perversion of individualism is industrialism. And the perversion comes, not through any flaw or vice in human nature, but by the force of the idea, because the principle is defective and reveals its defects as it reveals its power. For it asserts that the rights of nations and individuals are absolute, which is false, instead of asserting that they are absolute in their own sphere, but that their sphere itself is contingent upon the part which they play in the community of nations and individuals, which is true. Thus it constrains them to a career of indefinite expansion, in which they devour continents and oceans, law, morality and religion, and last of all their own souls, in an attempt to attain infinity by the addition to themselves of all that is finite. In the meantime their rivals, and their subjects, and they themselves are conscious of the danger of opposing forces, and seek to {50} purchase security and to avoid a collision by organizing a balance of power. But the balance, whether in international politics or in industry, is unstable, because it reposes not on the common recognition of a principle by which the claims of nations and individuals are limited, but on an attempt to find an equipoise which may avoid a conflict without adjuring the assertion of unlimited claims. No such equipoise can be found, because, in a world where the possibilities of increasing military or industrial power are illimitable, no such equipoise can exist. Thus, as long as men move on this plane, there is no solution. They can obtain peace only by surrendering the claim to the unfettered exercise of their rights, which is the cause of war. What we have been witnessing, in short, during the past five years, both in international affairs and in industry, is the breakdown of the organization of society on the basis of rights divorced from obligations. Sooner or later the collapse was inevitable, because the basis was too narrow. For a right is simply a power which is secured by legal sanctions, "a capacity," as the lawyers define it, "residing in one man, of controlling, with the assistance of the State, the action of others," and a right should not be absolute for the same reason that a power should not be absolute. No doubt it is better that individuals should have absolute rights than that the State or the Government should have them; and it was the reaction against the abuses of absolute power by the State which led in the eighteenth century to the declaration of the absolute rights of individuals. {51} The most obvious defense against the assertion of one extreme was the assertion of the other. Because Governments and the relics of feudalism had encroached upon the property of individuals it was affirmed that the right of property was absolute; because they had strangled enterprise, it was affirmed that every man had a natural right to conduct his business as he pleased. But, in reality, both the one assertion and the other are false, and, if applied to practice, must lead to disaster. The State has no absolute rights; they are limited by its commission. The individual has no absolute rights; they are relative to the function which he performs in the community of which he is a member, because, unless they are so limited, the consequences must be something in the nature of private war. All rights, in short, are conditional and derivative, because all power should be conditional and derivative. They are derived from the end or purpose of the society in which they exist. They are conditional on being used to contribute to the attainment of that end, not to thwart it. And this means in practice that, if society is to be healthy, men must regard themselves not as the owners of rights, but as trustees for the discharge of functions and the instruments of a social purpose. {52} V PROPERTY AND CREATIVE WORK The application of the principle that society should be organized upon the basis of functions, is not recondite, but simple and direct. It offers in the first place, a standard for discriminating between those types of private property which are legitimate and those which are not. During the last century and a half, political thought has oscillated between two conceptions of property, both of which, in their different ways, are extravagant. On the one hand, the practical foundation of social organization has been the doctrine that the particular forms of private property which exist at any moment are a thing sacred and inviolable, that anything may properly become the object of property rights, and that, when it does, the title to it is absolute and unconditioned. The modern industrial system took shape in an age when this theory of property was triumphant. The American Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man both treated property as one of the fundamental rights which Governments exist to protect. The English Revolution of 1688, undogmatic and reticent though it was, had in effect done the same. The great individualists from Locke to Turgot, Adam Smith and Bentham all repeated, in different language, a similar conception. Though what gave the Revolution its {53} diabolical character in the eyes of the English upper classes was its treatment of property, the dogma of the sanctity of private property was maintained as tenaciously by French Jacobins as by English Tories; and the theory that property is an absolute, which is held by many modern Conservatives, is identical, if only they knew it, with that not only of the men of 1789, but of the Convention itself. On the other hand, the attack has been almost as undiscriminating as the defense. "Private property" has been the central position against which the social movement of the last hundred years has directed its forces. The criticism of it has ranged from an imaginative communism in the most elementary and personal of necessaries, to prosaic and partially realized proposals to transfer certain kinds of property from private to public ownership, or to limit their exploitation by restrictions imposed by the State. But, however varying in emphasis and in method, the general note of what may conveniently be called the Socialist criticism of property is what the word Socialism itself implies. Its essence is the statement that the economic evils of society are primarily due to the unregulated operation, under modern conditions of industrial organization, of the institution of private property. The divergence of opinion is natural, since in most discussions of property the opposing theorists have usually been discussing different things. Property is the most ambiguous of categories. It covers a multitude of rights which have nothing in common except that they are exercised by persons and enforced by the State. {54} Apart from these formal characteristics, they vary indefinitely in economic character, in social effect, and in moral justification. They may be conditional like the grant of patent rights, or absolute like the ownership of ground rents, terminable like copyright, or permanent like a freehold, as comprehensive as sovereignty or as restricted as an easement, as intimate and personal as the ownership of clothes and books, or as remote and intangible as shares in a gold mine or rubber plantation. It is idle, therefore, to present a case for or against private property without specifying the particular forms of property to which reference is made, and the journalist who says that "private property is the foundation of civilization" agrees with Proudhon, who said it was theft, in this respect at least that, without further definition, the words of both are meaningless. Arguments which support or demolish certain kinds of property may have no application to others; considerations which are conclusive in one stage of economic organization may be almost irrelevant in the next. The course of wisdom is neither to attack private property in general nor to defend it in general; for things are not similar in quality, merely because they are identical in name. It is to discriminate between the various concrete embodiments of what, in itself, is, after all, little more than an abstraction. The origin and development of different kinds of proprietary rights is not material to this discussion. Whatever may have been the historical process by which they have been established and recognized, the {55} _rationale_ of private property traditional in England is that which sees in it the security that each man will reap where he has sown. "If I despair of enjoying the fruits of labor," said Bentham, repeating what were in all essentials the arguments of Locke, "I shall only live from day to day; I shall not undertake labors which will only benefit my enemies." Property, it is argued, is a moral right, and not merely a legal right, because it insures that the producer will not be deprived by violence of the result of his efforts. The period from which that doctrine was inherited differed from our own in three obvious, but significant, respects. Property in land and in the simple capital used in most industries was widely distributed. Before the rise of capitalist agriculture and capitalist industry, the ownership, or at any rate the secure and effective occupation, of land and tools by those who used them, was a condition precedent to effective work in the field or in the workshop. The forces which threatened property were the fiscal policy of Governments and in some countries, for example France, the decaying relics of feudalism. The interference both of the one and of the other involved the sacrifice of those who carried on useful labor to those who did not. To resist them was to protect not only property but industry, which was indissolubly connected with it. Too often, indeed, resistance was ineffective. Accustomed to the misery of the rural proprietor in France, Voltaire remarked with astonishment that in England the peasant may be rich, and "does not fear to increase the number of his beasts or to cover his roof with tiles." And {56} the English Parliamentarians and the French philosophers who made the inviolability of property rights the center of their political theory, when they defended those who owned, were incidentally, if sometimes unintentionally, defending those who labored. They were protecting the yeoman or the master craftsman or the merchant from seeing the fruits of his toil squandered by the hangers-on at St. James or the courtly parasites of Versailles. In such circumstances the doctrine which found the justification of private property in the fact that it enabled the industrious man to reap where he had sown, was not a paradox, but, as far as the mass of the population was concerned, almost a truism. Property was defended as the most sacred of rights. But it was defended as a right which was not only widely exercised, but which was indispensable to the performance of the active function of providing food and clothing. For it consisted predominantly of one of two types, land or tools which were used by the owner for the purpose of production, and personal possessions which were the necessities or amenities of civilized existence. The former had its _rationale_ in the fact that the land of the peasant or the tools of the craftsman were the condition of his rendering the economic services which society required; the latter because furniture and clothes are indispensable to a life of decency and comfort. The proprietary rights--and, of course, they were numerous--which had their source, not in work, but in predatory force, were protected from criticism by the wide distribution of some kind {57} of property among the mass of the population, and in England, at least, the cruder of them were gradually whittled down. When property in land and what simple capital existed were generally diffused among all classes of society, when, in most parts of England, the typical workman was not a laborer but a peasant or small master, who could point to the strips which he had plowed or the cloth which he had woven, when the greater part of the wealth passing at death consisted of land, household furniture and a stock in trade which was hardly distinguishable from it, the moral justification of the title to property was self-evident. It was obviously, what theorists said that it was, and plain men knew it to be, the labor spent in producing, acquiring and administering it. Such property was not a burden upon society, but a condition of its health and efficiency, and indeed, of its continued existence. To protect it was to maintain the organization through which public necessities were supplied. If, as in Tudor England, the peasant was evicted from his holding to make room for sheep, or crushed, as in eighteenth century France, by arbitrary taxation and seigneurial dues, land went out of cultivation and the whole community was short of food. If the tools of the carpenter or smith were seized, plows were not repaired or horses shod. Hence, before the rise of a commercial civilization, it was the mark of statesmanship, alike in the England of the Tudors and in the France of Henry IV, to cherish the small property-owner even to the point of offending the great. Popular sentiment idealized the {58} yeoman--"the Joseph of the country who keeps the poor from starving"--not merely because he owned property, but because he worked on it, denounced that "bringing of the livings of many into the hands of one," which capitalist societies regard with equanimity as an inevitable, and, apparently, a laudable result of economic development, cursed the usurer who took advantage of his neighbor's necessities to live without labor, was shocked by the callous indifference to public welfare shown by those who "not having before their eyes either God or the profit and advantage of the realm, have enclosed with hedges and dykes towns and hamlets," and was sufficiently powerful to compel Governments to intervene to prevent the laying of field to field, and the engrossing of looms--to set limits, in short, to the scale to which property might grow. When Bacon, who commended Henry VII for protecting the tenant right of the small farmer, and pleaded in the House of Commons for more drastic land legislation, wrote "Wealth is like muck. It is not good but if it be spread," he was expressing in an epigram what was the commonplace of every writer on politics from Fortescue at the end of the fifteenth century to Harrington in the middle of the seventeenth. The modern conservative, who is inclined to take _au pied de la lettre_ the vigorous argument in which Lord Hugh Cecil denounces the doctrine that the maintenance of proprietary rights ought to be contingent upon the use to which they are put, may be reminded that Lord Hugh's own theory is of a kind to make his ancestors turn in their graves. Of the two members of the {59} family who achieved distinction before the nineteenth century, the elder advised the Crown to prevent landlords evicting tenants, and actually proposed to fix a pecuniary maximum to the property which different classes might possess, while the younger attacked enclosing in Parliament, and carried legislation compelling landlords to build cottages, to let them with small holdings, and to plow up pasture. William and Robert Cecil were sagacious and responsible men, and their view that the protection of property should be accompanied by the enforcement of obligations upon its owners was shared by most of their contemporaries. The idea that the institution of private property involves the right of the owner to use it, or refrain from using it, in such a way as he may please, and that its principal significance is to supply him with an income, irrespective of any duties which he may discharge, would not have been understood by most public men of that age, and, if understood, would have been repudiated with indignation by the more reputable among them. They found the meaning of property in the public purposes to which it contributed, whether they were the production of food, as among the peasantry, or the management of public affairs, as among the gentry, and hesitated neither to maintain those kinds of property which met these obligations nor to repress those uses of it which appeared likely to conflict with them. Property was to be an aid to creative work, not an alternative to it. The patentee was secured protection for a new invention, in order to secure him the fruits of his own brain, but the monopolist who grew {60} fat on the industry of others was to be put down. The law of the village bound the peasant to use his land, not as he himself might find most profitable, but to grow the corn the village needed. Long after political changes had made direct interference impracticable, even the higher ranks of English landowners continued to discharge, however capriciously and tyrannically, duties which were vaguely felt to be the contribution which they made to the public service in virtue of their estates. When as in France, the obligations of ownership were repudiated almost as completely as they have been by the owner of to-day, nemesis came in an onslaught upon the position of a _noblesse_ which had retained its rights and abdicated its functions. Property reposed, in short, not merely upon convenience, or the appetite for gain, but on a moral principle. It was protected not only for the sake of those who owned, but for the sake of those who worked and of those for whom their work provided. It was protected, because, without security for property, wealth could not be produced or the business of society carried on. Whatever the future may contain, the past has shown no more excellent social order than that in which the mass of the people were the masters of the holdings which they plowed and of the tools with which they worked, and could boast, with the English freeholder, that "it is a quietness to a man's mind to live upon his own and to know his heir certain." With this conception of property and its practical expression in social institutions those who urge that society should be {61} organized on the basis of function have no quarrel. It is in agreement with their own doctrine, since it justifies property by reference to the services which it enables its owner to perform. All that they need ask is that it should be carried to its logical conclusion. For the argument has evidently more than one edge. If it justifies certain types of property, it condemns others; and in the conditions of modern industrial civilization, what it justifies is less than what it condemns. The truth is, indeed, that this theory of property and the institutions in which it is embodied have survived into an age in which the whole structure of society is radically different from that in which it was formulated, and which made it a valid argument, if not for all, at least for the most common and characteristic kinds of property. It is not merely that the ownership of any substantial share in the national wealth is concentrated to-day in the hands of a few hundred thousand families, and that at the end of an age which began with an affirmation of the rights of property, proprietary rights are, in fact, far from being widely distributed. Nor is it merely that what makes property insecure to-day is not the arbitrary taxation of unconstitutional monarchies or the privileges of an idle _noblesse_, but the insatiable expansion and aggregation of property itself, which menaces with absorption all property less than the greatest, the small master, the little shopkeeper, the country bank, and has turned the mass of mankind into a proletariat working under the agents and for the profit of those who own. The characteristic fact, which differentiates most {62} modern property from that of the pre-industrial age, and which turns against it the very reasoning by which formerly it was supported, is that in modern economic conditions ownership is not active, but passive, that to most of those who own property to-day it is not a means of work but an instrument for the acquisition of gain or the exercise of power, and that there is no guarantee that gain bears any relation to service, or power to responsibility. For property which can be regarded as a condition of the performance of function, like the tools of the craftsman, or the holding of the peasant, or the personal possessions which contribute to a life of health and efficiency, forms an insignificant proportion, as far as its value is concerned, of the property rights existing at present. In modern industrial societies the great mass of property consists, as the annual review of wealth passing at death reveals, neither of personal acquisitions such as household furniture, nor of the owner's stock-in-trade, but of rights of various kinds, such as royalties, ground-rents, and, above all, of course shares in industrial undertakings which yield an income irrespective of any personal service rendered by their owners. Ownership and use are normally divorced. The greater part of modern property has been attenuated to a pecuniary lien or bond on the product of industry which carries with it a right to payment, but which is normally valued precisely because it relieves the owner from any obligation to perform a positive or constructive function. Such property may be called passive property, or property for acquisition, for exploitation, or for power, {63} to distinguish it from the property which is actively used by its owner for the conduct of his profession or the upkeep of his household. To the lawyer the first is, of course, as fully property as the second. It is questionable, however, whether economists shall call it "Property" at all, and not rather, as Mr. Hobson has suggested, "Improperty," since it is not identical with the rights which secure the owner the produce of his toil, but is opposite of them. A classification of proprietary rights based upon this difference would be instructive. If they were arranged according to the closeness with which they approximate to one or other of these two extremes, it would be found that they were spread along a line stretching from property which is obviously the payment for, and condition of, personal services, to property which is merely a right to payment from the services rendered by others, in fact a private tax. The rough order which would emerge, if all details and qualification were omitted, might be something as follows:-- 1. Property in payments made for personal services. 2. Property in personal possessions necessary to health and comfort. 3. Property in land and tools used by their owners. 4. Property in copyright and patent rights owned by authors and inventors. 5. Property in pure interest, including much agricultural rent. 6. Property in profits of luck and good fortune: "quasi-rents." 7. Property in monopoly profits. {64} 8. Property in urban ground rents. 9. Property in royalties. The first four kinds of property obviously accompany, and in some sense condition, the performance of work. The last four obviously do not. Pure interest has some affinities with both. It represents a necessary economic cost, the equivalent of which must be born, whatever the legal arrangements under which property is held, and is thus unlike the property represented by profits (other than the equivalent of salaries and payment for necessary risk), urban ground-rents and royalties. It relieves the recipient from personal services, and thus resembles them. The crucial question for any society is, under which each of these two broad groups of categories the greater part (measured in value) of the proprietary rights which it maintains are at any given moment to be found. If they fall in the first group creative work will be encouraged and idleness will be depressed; if they fall in the second, the result will be the reverse. The facts vary widely from age to age and from country to country. Nor have they ever been fully revealed; for the lords of the jungle do not hunt by daylight. It is probable, at least, that in the England of 1550 to 1750, a larger proportion of the existing property consisted of land and tools used by their owners than either in contemporary France, where feudal dues absorbed a considerable proportion of the peasants' income, or than in the England of 1800 to 1850, where the new capitalist manufacturers made hundreds per cent. while manual workers were goaded by starvation into ineffectual {65} revolt. It is probable that in the nineteenth century, thanks to the Revolution, France and England changed places, and that in this respect not only Ireland but the British Dominions resemble the former rather than the latter. The transformation can be studied best of all in the United States, in parts of which the population of peasant proprietors and small masters of the early nineteenth century were replaced in three generations by a propertyless proletariat and a capitalist plutocracy. The abolition of the economic privileges of agrarian feudalism, which, under the name of equality, was the driving force of the French Revolution, and which has taken place, in one form or another, in all countries touched by its influence, has been largely counter-balanced since 1800 by the growth of the inequalities springing from Industrialism. In England the general effect of recent economic development has been to swell proprietary rights which entitle the owners to payment without work, and to diminish those which can properly be described as functional. The expansion of the former, and the process by which the simpler forms of property have been merged in them, are movements the significance of which it is hardly possible to over-estimate. There is, of course, a considerable body of property which is still of the older type. But though working landlords, and capitalists who manage their own businesses, are still in the aggregate a numerous body, the organization for which they stand is not that which is most representative of the modern economic world. The general tendency for the ownership and administration of {66} property to be separated, the general refinement of property into a claim on goods produced by an unknown worker, is as unmistakable as the growth of capitalist industry and urban civilization themselves. Villages are turned into towns and property in land changes from the holding worked by a farmer or the estate administered by a landlord into "rents," which are advertised and bought and sold like any other investment. Mines are opened and the rights of the landowner are converted into a tribute for every ton of coal which is brought to the surface. As joint-stock companies take the place of the individual enterprise which was typical of the earlier years of the factory system, organization passes from the employer who both owns and manages his business, into the hands of salaried officials, and again the mass of property-owners is swollen by the multiplication of _rentiers_ who put their wealth at the disposal of industry, but who have no other connection with it. The change is taking place in our day most conspicuously, perhaps, through the displacement in retail trade of the small shopkeeper by the multiple store, and the substitution in manufacturing industry of combines and amalgamations for separate businesses conducted by competing employers. And, of course, it is not only by economic development that such claims are created. "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." It is probable that war, which in barbarous ages used to be blamed as destructive of property, has recently created more titles to property than almost all other causes put together. Infinitely diverse as are these proprietary rights, they {67} have the common characteristic of being so entirely separated from the actual objects over which they are exercised, so rarified and generalized, as to be analogous almost to a form of currency rather than to the property which is so closely united to its owner as to seem a part of him. Their isolation from the rough environment of economic life, where the material objects of which they are the symbol are shaped and handled, is their charm. It is also their danger. The hold which a class has upon the future depends on the function which it performs. What nature demands is work: few working aristocracies, however tyrannical, have fallen; few functionless aristocracies have survived. In society, as in the world of organic life, atrophy is but one stage removed from death. In proportion as the landowner becomes a mere _rentier_ and industry is conducted, not by the rude energy of the competing employers who dominated its infancy, but by the salaried servants of shareholders, the argument for private property which reposes on the impossibility of finding any organization to supersede them loses its application, for they are already superseded. Whatever may be the justification of these types of property, it cannot be that which was given for the property of the peasant or the craftsman. It cannot be that they are necessary in order to secure to each man the fruits of his own labor. For if a legal right which gives $200,000 a year to a mineral owner in the North of England and to a ground landlord in London "secures the fruits of labor" at all, the fruits are the proprietor's and the labor that of some one else. Property {68} has no more insidious enemies than those well-meaning anarchists who, by defending all forms of it as equally valid, involve the institution in the discredit attaching to its extravagances. In reality, whatever conclusion may be drawn from the fact, the greater part of modern property, whether, like mineral rights and urban ground-rents, it is merely a form of private taxation which the law allows certain persons to levy on the industry of others, or whether, like property in capital, it consists of rights to payment for instruments which the capitalist cannot himself use but puts at the disposal of those who can, has as its essential feature that it confers upon its owners income unaccompanied by personal service. In this respect the ownership of land and the ownership of capital are normally similar, though from other points of view their differences are important. To the economist rent and interest are distinguished by the fact that the latter, though it is often accompanied by surplus elements which are merged with it in dividends, is the price of an instrument of production which would not be forthcoming for industry if the price were not paid, while the former is a differential surplus which does not affect the supply. To the business community and the solicitor land and capital are equally investments, between which, since they possess the common characteristic of yielding income without labor, it is inequitable to discriminate; and though their significance as economic categories may be different, their effect as social institutions is the same. It is to separate property from creative ability, and to divide society into two classes, of which one has its {69} primary interest in passive ownership, while the other is mainly dependent upon active work. Hence the real analogy to many kinds of modern property is not the simple property of the small land-owner or the craftsman, still less the household goods and dear domestic amenities, which is what the word suggests to the guileless minds of clerks and shopkeepers, and which stampede them into displaying the ferocity of terrified sheep when the cry is raised that "Property" is threatened. It is the feudal dues which robbed the French peasant of part of his produce till the Revolution abolished them. How do royalties differ from _quintaines_ and _lods et ventes_? They are similar in their origin and similar in being a tax levied on each increment of wealth which labor produces. How do urban ground-rents differ from the payments which were made to English sinecurists before the Reform Bill of 1832? They are equally tribute paid by those who work to those who do not. If the monopoly profits of the owner of _banalités_, whose tenant must grind corn at his mill and make wine at his press, were an intolerable oppression, what is the sanctity attaching to the monopoly profits of the capitalists, who, as the Report of the Government Committee on trusts tells us, "in soap, tobacco, wallpaper, salt, cement and in the textile trades ... are in a position to control output and prices" or, in other words, can compel the consumer to buy from them, at the figure they fix, on pain of not buying at all? All these rights--royalties, ground-rents, monopoly profits--are "Property." The criticism most fatal to them is not that of Socialists. It is contained in the {70} arguments by which property is usually defended. For if the meaning of the institution is to encourage industry by securing that the worker shall receive the produce of his toil, then precisely in proportion as it is important to preserve the property which a man has in the results of his own efforts, is it important to abolish that which he has in the results of the efforts of some one else. The considerations which justify ownership as a function are those which condemn it as a tax. Property is not theft, but a good deal of theft becomes property. The owner of royalties who, when asked why he should be paid £50,000 a year from minerals which he has neither discovered nor developed nor worked but only owned, replies "But it's Property!" may feel all the awe which his language suggests. But in reality he is behaving like the snake which sinks into its background by pretending that it is the dead branch of a tree, or the lunatic who tried to catch rabbits by sitting behind a hedge and making a noise like a turnip. He is practising protective--and sometimes aggressive--mimicry. His sentiments about property are those of the simple toiler who fears that what he has sown another may reap. His claim is to be allowed to continue to reap what another has sown. It is sometimes suggested that the less attractive characteristics of our industrial civilization, its combination of luxury and squalor, its class divisions and class warfare, are accidental maladjustments which are not rooted in the center of its being, but are excrescences which economic progress itself may in time be expected to correct. That agreeable optimism will not survive an {71} examination of the operation of the institution of private property in land and capital in industrialized communities. In countries where land is widely distributed, in France or in Ireland, its effect may be to produce a general diffusion of wealth among a rural middle class who at once work and own. In countries where the development of industrial organization has separated the ownership of property and the performance of work, the normal effect of private property is to transfer to functionless owners the surplus arising from the more fertile sites, the better machinery, the more elaborate organization. No clearer exemplifications of this "law of rent" has been given than the figures supplied to the Coal Industry Commission by Sir Arthur Lowes Dickenson, which showed that in a given quarter the costs per ton of producing coal varied from $3.12 to $12 per ton, and the profits from nil to $4.12. The distribution in dividends to shareholders of the surplus accruing from the working of richer and more accessible seams, from special opportunities and access to markets, from superior machinery, management and organization, involves the establishment of Privilege as a national institution, as much as the most arbitrary exactions of a feudal _seigneur_. It is the foundation of an inequality which is not accidental or temporary, but necessary and permanent. And on this inequality is erected the whole apparatus of class institutions, which make not only the income, but the housing, education, health and manners, indeed the very physical appearance of different classes of Englishmen almost as different from each other as though the minority were {72} alien settlers established amid the rude civilization of a race of impoverished aborigines. So the justification of private property traditional in England, which saw in it the security that each man would enjoy the fruits of his own labor, though largely applicable to the age in which it was formulated, has undergone the fate of most political theories. It has been refuted not by the doctrines of rival philosophers, but by the prosaic course of economic development. As far as the mass of mankind are concerned, the need which private property other than personal possessions does still often satisfy, though imperfectly and precariously, is the need for security. To the small investors, who are the majority of property-owners, though owning only an insignificant fraction of the property in existence, its meaning is simple. It is not wealth or power, or even leisure from work. It is safety. They work hard. They save a little money for old age, or for sickness, or for their children. They invest it, and the interest stands between them and all that they dread most. Their savings are of convenience to industry, the income from them is convenient to themselves. "Why," they ask, "should we not reap in old age the advantage of energy and thrift in youth?" And this hunger for security is so imperious that those who suffer most from the abuses of property, as well as those who, if they could profit by them, would be least inclined to do so, will tolerate and even defend them, for fear lest the knife which trims dead matter should cut into the quick. They have seen too many men drown to be {73} critical of dry land, though it be an inhospitable rock. They are haunted by the nightmare of the future, and, if a burglar broke it, would welcome a burglar. This need for security is fundamental, and almost the gravest indictment of our civilization is that the mass of mankind are without it. Property is one way of organizing it. It is quite comprehensible therefore, that the instrument should be confused with the end, and that any proposal to modify it should create dismay. In the past, human beings, roads, bridges and ferries, civil, judicial and clerical offices, and commissions in the army have all been private property. Whenever it was proposed to abolish the rights exercised over them, it was protested that their removal would involve the destruction of an institution in which thrifty men had invested their savings, and on which they depended for protection amid the chances of life and for comfort in old age. In fact, however, property is not the only method of assuring the future, nor, when it is the way selected, is security dependent upon the maintenance of all the rights which are at present normally involved in ownership. In so far as its psychological foundation is the necessity for securing an income which is stable and certain, which is forthcoming when its recipient cannot work, and which can be used to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, what is really demanded is not the command over the fluctuating proceeds of some particular undertaking, which accompanies the ownership of capital, but the security which is offered by an annuity. Property is the instrument, security is the object, and when some alternative way is forthcoming {74} of providing the latter, it does not appear in practice that any loss of confidence, or freedom or independence is caused by the absence of the former. Hence not only the manual workers, who since the rise of capitalism, have rarely in England been able to accumulate property sufficient to act as a guarantee of income when their period of active earning is past, but also the middle and professional classes, increasingly seek security to-day, not in investment, but in insurance against sickness and death, in the purchase of annuities, or in what is in effect the same thing, the accumulation of part of their salary towards a pension which is paid when their salary ceases. The professional man may buy shares in the hope of making a profit on the transaction. But when what he desires to buy is security, the form which his investment takes is usually one kind or another of insurance. The teacher, or nurse, or government servant looks forward to a pension. Women, who fifty years ago would have been regarded as dependent almost as completely as if femininity were an incurable disease with which they had been born, and whose fathers, unless rich men, would have been tormented with anxiety for fear lest they should not save sufficient to provide for them, now receive an education, support themselves in professions, and save in the same way. It is still only in comparatively few cases that this type of provision is made; almost all wage-earners outside government employment, and many in it, as well as large numbers of professional men, have nothing to fall back upon in sickness or old age. But that does not alter the fact {75} that, when it is made, it meets the need for security, which, apart, of course, from personal possessions and household furniture, is the principal meaning of property to by far the largest element in the population, and that it meets it more completely and certainly than property itself. Nor, indeed, even when property is the instrument used to provide for the future, is such provision dependent upon the maintenance in its entirety of the whole body of rights which accompany ownership to-day. Property is not simple but complex. That of a man who has invested his savings as an ordinary shareholder comprises at least three rights, the right to interest, the right to profits, the right to control. In so far as what is desired is the guarantee for the maintenance of a stable income, not the acquisition of additional wealth without labor--in so far as his motive is not gain but security--the need is met by interest on capital. It has no necessary connection either with the right to residuary profits or the right to control the management of the undertaking from which the profits are derived, both of which are vested to-day in the shareholder. If all that were desired were to use property as an instrument for purchasing security, the obvious course--from the point of view of the investor desiring to insure his future the safest course--would be to assimilate his position as far as possible to that of a debenture holder or mortgagee, who obtains the stable income which is his motive for investment, but who neither incurs the risks nor receives the profits of the speculator. To insist that the elaborate apparatus of proprietary rights which {76} distributes dividends of thirty per cent to the shareholders in Coats, and several thousands a year to the owner of mineral royalties and ground-rents, and then allows them to transmit the bulk of gains which they have not earned to descendants who in their turn will thus be relieved from the necessity of earning, must be maintained for the sake of the widow and the orphan, the vast majority of whom have neither and would gladly part with them all for a safe annuity if they had, is, to say the least of it, extravagantly _mal-à-propos_. It is like pitching a man into the water because he expresses a wish for a bath, or presenting a tiger cub to a householder who is plagued with mice, on the ground that tigers and cats both belong to the genus _felis_. The tiger hunts for itself not for its masters, and when game is scarce will hunt them. The classes who own little or no property may reverence it because it is security. But the classes who own much prize it for quite different reasons, and laugh in their sleeve at the innocence which supposes that anything as vulgar as the savings of the _petite bourgeoisie_ have, except at elections, any interest for them. They prize it because it is the order which quarters them on the community and which provides for the maintenance of a leisure class at the public expense. "Possession," said the Egoist, "without obligation to the object possessed, approaches felicity." Functionless property appears natural to those who believe that society should be organized for the acquisition of private wealth, and attacks upon it perverse or malicious, because the question which they ask of any institution is, "What does it yield?" And such property yields much {77} to those who own it. Those, however, who hold that social unity and effective work are possible only if society is organized and wealth distributed on the basis of function, will ask of an institution, not, "What dividends does it pay?" but "What service does it perform?" To them the fact that much property yields income irrespective of any service which is performed or obligation which is recognized by its owners will appear not a quality but a vice. They will see in the social confusion which it produces, payments disproportionate to service here, and payments without any service at all there, and dissatisfaction everywhere, a convincing confirmation of their argument that to build on a foundation of rights and of rights alone is to build on a quicksand. From the portentous exaggeration into an absolute of what once was, and still might be, a sane and social institution most other social evils follow the power of those who do not work over those who do, the alternate subservience and rebelliousness of those who work towards those who do not, the starving of science and thought and creative effort for fear that expenditure upon them should impinge on the comfort of the sluggard and the _fainéant_, and the arrangement of society in most of its subsidiary activities to suit the convenience not of those who work usefully but of those who spend gaily, so that the most hideous, desolate and parsimonious places in the country are those in which the greatest wealth is produced, the Clyde valley, or the cotton towns of Lancashire, or the mining villages of Scotland and Wales, and the gayest and most luxurious {78} those in which it is consumed. From the point of view of social health and economic efficiency, society should obtain its material equipment at the cheapest price possible, and after providing for depreciation and expansion should distribute the whole product to its working members and their dependents. What happens at present, however, is that its workers are hired at the cheapest price which the market (as modified by organization) allows, and that the surplus, somewhat diminished by taxation, is distributed to the owners of property. Profits may vary in a given year from a loss to 100 per cent. But wages are fixed at a level which will enable the marginal firm to continue producing one year with another; and the surplus, even when due partly to efficient management, goes neither to managers nor manual workers, but to shareholders. The meaning of the process becomes startlingly apparent when, as in Lancashire to-day, large blocks of capital change hands at a period of abnormal activity. The existing shareholders receive the equivalent of the capitalized expectation of future profits. The workers, as workers, do not participate in the immense increment in value; and when, in the future, they demand an advance in wages, they will be met by the answer that profits, which before the transaction would have been reckoned large, yield shareholders after it only a low rate of interest on their investment. The truth is that whereas in earlier ages the protection of property was normally the protection of work, the relationship between them has come in the course of the economic development of the last two centuries to {79} be very nearly reversed. The two elements which compose civilization are active effort and passive property, the labor of human things and the tools which human beings use. Of these two elements those who supply the first maintain and improve it, those who own the second normally dictate its character, its development and its administration. Hence, though politically free, the mass of mankind live in effect under rules imposed to protect the interests of the small section among them whose primary concern is ownership. From this subordination of creative activity to passive property, the worker who depends upon his brains, the organizer, inventor, teacher or doctor suffers almost as much embarrassment as the craftsman. The real economic cleavage is not, as is often said, between employers and employed, but between all who do constructive work, from scientist to laborer, on the one hand, and all whose main interest is the preservation of existing proprietary rights upon the other, irrespective of whether they contribute to constructive work or not. If, therefore, under the modern conditions which have concentrated any substantial share of property in the hands of a small minority of the population, the world is to be governed for the advantages of those who own, it is only incidentally and by accident that the results will be agreeable to those who work. In practice there is a constant collision between them. Turned into another channel, half the wealth distributed in dividends to functionless shareholders, could secure every child a good education up to 18, could re-endow English Universities, and (since more efficient production is {80} important) could equip English industries for more efficient production. Half the ingenuity now applied to the protection of property could have made most industrial diseases as rare as smallpox, and most English cities into places of health and even of beauty. What stands in the way is the doctrine that the rights of property are absolute, irrespective of any social function which its owners may perform. So the laws which are most stringently enforced are still the laws which protect property, though the protection of property is no longer likely to be equivalent to the protection of work, and the interests which govern industry and predominate in public affairs are proprietary interests. A mill-owner may poison or mangle a generation of operatives; but his brother magistrates will let him off with a caution or a nominal fine to poison and mangle the next. For he is an owner of property. A landowner may draw rents from slums in which young children die at the rate of 200 per 1000; but he will be none the less welcome in polite society. For property has no obligations and therefore can do no wrong. Urban land may be held from the market on the outskirts of cities in which human beings are living three to a room, and rural land may be used for sport when villagers are leaving it to overcrowd them still more. No public authority intervenes, for both are property. To those who believe that institutions which repudiate all moral significance must sooner or later collapse, a society which confuses the protection of property with the preservation of its functionless perversions will appear as precarious as that which has left the memorials of its {81} tasteless frivolity and more tasteless ostentation in the gardens of Versailles. Do men love peace? They will see the greatest enemy of social unity in rights which involve no obligation to co-operate for the service of society. Do they value equality? Property rights which dispense their owners from the common human necessity of labor make inequality an institution permeating every corner of society, from the distribution of material wealth to the training of intellect itself. Do they desire greater industrial efficiency? There is no more fatal obstacle to efficiency than the revelation that idleness has the same privileges as industry, and that for every additional blow with the pick or hammer an additional profit will be distributed among shareholders who wield neither. Indeed, functionless property is the greatest enemy of legitimate property itself. It is the parasite which kills the organism that produced it. Bad money drives out good, and, as the history of the last two hundred years shows, when property for acquisition or power and property for service or for use jostle each other freely in the market, without restrictions such as some legal systems have imposed on alienation and inheritance, the latter tends normally to be absorbed by the former, because it has less resisting power. Thus functionless property grows, and as it grows it undermines the creative energy which produced property and which in earlier ages it protected. It cannot unite men, for what unites them is the bond of service to a common purpose, and that bond it repudiates, since its very {82} essence is the maintenance of rights irrespective of service. It cannot create; it can only spend, so that the number of scientists, inventors, artists or men of letters who have sprung in the course of the last century from hereditary riches can be numbered on one hand. It values neither culture nor beauty, but only the power which belongs to wealth and the ostentation which is the symbol of it. So those who dread these qualities, energy and thought and the creative spirit--and they are many--will not discriminate, as we have tried to discriminate, between different types and kinds of property, in order that they may preserve those which are legitimate and abolish those which are not. They will endeavor to preserve all private property, even in its most degenerate forms. And those who value those things will try to promote them by relieving property of its perversions, and thus enabling it to return to its true nature. They will not desire to establish any visionary communism, for they will realize that the free disposal of a sufficiency of personal possessions is the condition of a healthy and self-respecting life, and will seek to distribute more widely the property rights which make them to-day the privilege of a minority. But they will refuse to submit to the naïve philosophy which would treat all proprietary rights as equal in sanctity merely because they are identical in name. They will distinguish sharply between property which is used by its owner for the conduct of his profession or the upkeep of his household, and property which is merely a claim on wealth produced by another's labor. They will insist that {83} property is moral and healthy only when it is used as a condition not of idleness but of activity, and when it involves the discharge of definite personal obligations. They will endeavor, in short, to base it upon the principle of function. {84} VI THE FUNCTIONAL SOCIETY The application to property and industry of the principle of function is compatible with several different types of social organization, and is as unlikely as more important revelations to be the secret of those who cry "Lo here!" and "Lo there!" The essential thing is that men should fix their minds upon the idea of purpose, and give that idea pre-eminence over all subsidiary issues. If, as is patent, the purpose of industry is to provide the material foundation of a good social life, then any measure which makes that provision more effective, so long as it does not conflict with some still more important purpose, is wise, and any institution which thwarts or encumbers it is foolish. It is foolish, for example, to cripple education, as it is crippled in England for the sake of industry; for one of the uses of industry is to provide the wealth which may make possible better education. It is foolish to maintain property rights for which no service is performed, for payment without service is waste; and if it is true, as statisticians affirm, that, even were income equally divided, income per head would be small, then it is all the more foolish, for sailors in a boat have no room for first-class passengers, and it is all the more important that none of the small national income should be misapplied. It is foolish to leave the direction of industry {85} in the hands of servants of private property-owners who themselves know nothing about it but its balance sheets, because this is to divert it from the performance of service to the acquisition of gain, and to subordinate those who do creative work to those who do not. The course of wisdom in the affairs of industry is, after all, what it is in any other department of organized life. It is to consider the end for which economic activity is carried on and then to adapt economic organization to it. It is to pay for service and for service only, and when capital is hired to make sure that it is hired at the cheapest possible price. It is to place the responsibility for organizing industry on the shoulders of those who work and use, not of those who own, because production is the business of the producer and the proper person to see that he discharges his business is the consumer for whom, and not for the owner of property, it ought to be carried on. Above all it is to insist that all industries shall be conducted in complete publicity as to costs and profits, because publicity ought to be the antiseptic both of economic and political abuses, and no man can have confidence in his neighbor unless both work in the light. As far as property is concerned, such a policy would possess two edges. On the one hand, it would aim at abolishing those forms of property in which ownership is divorced from obligations. On the other hand, it would seek to encourage those forms of economic organization under which the worker, whether owner or not, is free to carry on his work without sharing its control or its profits with the mere _rentier_. Thus, if in certain {86} spheres it involved an extension of public ownership, it would in others foster an extension of private property. For it is not private ownership, but private ownership divorced from work, which is corrupting to the principle of industry; and the idea of some socialists that private property in land or capital is necessarily mischievous is a piece of scholastic pedantry as absurd as that of those conservatives who would invest all property with some kind of mysterious sanctity. It all depends what sort of property it is and for what purpose it is used. Provided that the State retains its eminent domain, and controls alienation, as it does under the Homestead laws of the Dominions, with sufficient stringency to prevent the creation of a class of functionless property-owners, there is no inconsistency between encouraging simultaneously a multiplication of peasant farmers and small masters who own their own farms or shops, and the abolition of private ownership in those industries, unfortunately to-day the most conspicuous, in which the private owner is an absentee shareholder. Indeed, the second reform would help the first. In so far as the community tolerates functionless property it makes difficult, if not impossible, the restoration of the small master in agriculture or in industry, who cannot easily hold his own in a world dominated by great estates or capitalist finance. In so far as it abolishes those kinds of property which are merely parasitic, it facilitates the restoration of the small property-owner in those kinds of industry for which small ownership is adapted. A socialistic policy towards the former is not {87} antagonistic to the "distributive state," but, in modern economic conditions, a necessary preliminary to it, and if by "Property" is meant the personal possessions which the word suggests to nine-tenths of the population, the object of socialists is not to undermine property but to protect and increase it. The boundary between large scale and small scale production will always be uncertain and fluctuating, depending, as it does, on technical conditions which cannot be foreseen: a cheapening of electrical power, for example, might result in the decentralization of manufactures, as steam resulted in their concentration. The fundamental issue, however, is not between different scales of ownership, but between ownership of different kinds, not between the large farmer or master and the small, but between property which is used for work and property which yields income without it. The Irish landlord was abolished, not because he owned a large scale, but because he was an owner and nothing more; if, and when English land-ownership has been equally attenuated, as in towns it already has been, it will deserve to meet the same fate. Once the issue of the character of ownership has been settled, the question of the size of the economic unit can be left to settle itself. The first step, then, towards the organization of economic life for the performance of function is to abolish those types of private property in return for which no function is performed. The man who lives by owning without working is necessarily supported by the industry of some one else, and is, therefore, too expensive a luxury to be encouraged. Though he deserves to be {88} treated with the leniency which ought to be, and usually is not, shown to those who have been brought up from infancy to any other disreputable trade, indulgence to individuals must not condone the institution of which both they and their neighbors are the victims. Judged by this standard, certain kinds of property are obviously anti-social. The rights in virtue of which the owner of the surface is entitled to levy a tax, called a royalty, on every ton of coal which the miner brings to the surface, to levy another tax, called a way-leave, on every ton of coal transported under the surface of his land though its amenity and value may be quite unaffected, to distort, if he pleases, the development of a whole district by refusing access to the minerals except upon his own terms, and to cause some 3,500 to 4,000 million tons to be wasted in barriers between different properties, while he in the meantime contributes to a chorus of lamentation over the wickedness of the miners in not producing more tons of coal for the public and incidentally more private taxes for himself--all this adds an agreeable touch of humor to the drab quality of our industrial civilization for which mineral owners deserve perhaps some recognition, though not the $400,000 odd a year which is paid to each of the four leading players, or the $24,000,000 a year which is distributed among the crowd. The alchemy by which a gentleman who has never seen a coal mine distills the contents of that place of gloom into elegant chambers in London and a place in the country is not the monopoly of royalty owners. A similar feat of prestidigitation is performed by the {89} owner of urban ground-rents. In rural districts some landlords, perhaps many landlords, are partners in the hazardous and difficult business of agriculture, and, though they may often exercise a power which is socially excessive, the position which they hold and the income which they receive are, in part at last, a return for the functions which they perform. The ownership of urban land has been refined till of that crude ore only the pure gold is left. It is the perfect sinecure, for the only function it involves is that of collecting its profits, and in an age when the struggle of Liberalism against sinecures was still sufficiently recent to stir some chords of memory, the last and greatest of liberal thinkers drew the obvious deduction. "The reasons which form the justification ... of property in land," wrote Mill in 1848, "are valid only in so far as the proprietor of land is its improver.... In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Urban ground-rents and royalties are, in fact, as the Prime Minister in his unregenerate days suggested, a tax which some persons are permitted by the law to levy upon the industry of others. They differ from public taxation only in that their amount increases in proportion not to the nation's need of revenue but to its need of the coal and space on which they are levied, that their growth inures to private gain not to public benefit, and that if the proceeds are wasted on frivolous expenditure no one has any right to complain, because the arrangement by which Lord Smith spends wealth produced by Mr. Brown on objects which do no good to either is part {90} of the system which, under the name of private property, Mr. Brown as well as Lord Smith have learned to regard as essential to the higher welfare of mankind. But if we accept the principle of function we shall ask what is the _purpose_ of this arrangement, and for what end the inhabitants of, for example, London pay $64,000,000 a year to their ground landlords. And if we find that it is for no purpose and no end, but that these things are like the horseshoes and nails which the City of London presents to the Crown on account of land in the Parish of St. Clement Danes, then we shall not deal harshly with a quaint historical survival, but neither shall we allow it to distract us from the business of the present, as though there had been history but there were not history any longer. We shall close these channels through which wealth leaks away by resuming the ownership of minerals and of urban land, as some communities in the British Dominions and on the Continent of Europe have resumed it already. We shall secure that such large accumulations as remain change hands at least once in every generation, by increasing our taxes on inheritance till what passes to the heir is little more than personal possessions, not the right to a tribute from industry which, though qualified by death-duties, is what the son of a rich man inherits to-day. We shall treat mineral owners and land-owners, in short, as Plato would have treated the poets, whom in their ability to make something out of nothing and to bewitch mankind with words they a little resemble, and crown them with flowers and usher them politely out of the State. {91} VII INDUSTRY AS A PROFESSION Rights without functions are like the shades in Homer which drank blood but scattered trembling at the voice of a man. To extinguish royalties and urban ground-rents is merely to explode a superstition. It needs as little--and as much--resolution as to put one's hand through any other ghost. In all industries except the diminishing number in which the capitalist is himself the manager, property in capital is almost equally passive. Almost, but not quite. For, though the majority of its owners do not themselves exercise any positive function, they appoint those who do. It is true, of course, that the question of how capital is to be owned is distinct from the question of how it is to be administered, and that the former can be settled without prejudice to the latter. To infer, because shareholders own capital which is indispensable to industry, that therefore industry is dependent upon the maintenance of capital in the hands of shareholders, to write, with some economists, as though, if private property in capital were further attenuated or abolished altogether, the constructive energy of the managers who may own capital or may not, but rarely, in the more important industries, own more than a small fraction of it, must necessarily be impaired, is to be guilty of a robust _non-sequitur_ and to ignore the most obvious facts of {92} contemporary industry. The less the mere capitalist talks about the necessity for the consumer of an efficient organization of industry, the better; for, whatever the future of industry may be, an efficient organization is likely to have no room for _him_. But though shareholders do not govern, they reign, at least to the extent of saying once a year "_le roy le veult_." If their rights are pared down or extinguished, the necessity for some organ to exercise them will still remain. And the question of the ownership of capital has this much in common with the question of industrial organization, that the problem of the constitution under which industry is to be conducted is common to both. That constitution must be sought by considering how industry can be organized to express most perfectly the principle of purpose. The application to industry of the principle of purpose is simple, however difficult it may be to give effect to it. It is to turn it into a Profession. A Profession may be defined most simply as a trade which is organized, incompletely, no doubt, but genuinely, for the performance of function. It is not simply a collection of individuals who get a living for themselves by the same kind of work. Nor is it merely a group which is organized exclusively for the economic protection of its members, though that is normally among its purposes. It is a body of men who carry on their work in accordance with rules designed to enforce certain standards both for the better protection of its members and for the better service of the public. The standards which it maintains may be high or low: all professions have some rules which protect the interests {93} of the community and others which are an imposition on it. Its essence is that it assumes certain responsibilities for the competence of its members or the quality of its wares, and that it deliberately prohibits certain kinds of conduct on the ground that, though they may be profitable to the individual, they are calculated to bring into disrepute the organization to which he belongs. While some of its rules are trade union regulations designed primarily to prevent the economic standards of the profession being lowered by unscrupulous competition, others have as their main object to secure that no member of the profession shall have any but a purely professional interest in his work, by excluding the incentive of speculative profit. The conception implied in the words "unprofessional conduct" is, therefore, the exact opposite of the theory and practice which assume that the service of the public is best secured by the unrestricted pursuit on the part of rival traders of their pecuniary self-interest, within such limits as the law allows. It is significant that at the time when the professional classes had deified free competition as the arbiter of commerce and industry, they did not dream of applying it to the occupations in which they themselves were primarily interested, but maintained, and indeed, elaborated machinery through which a professional conscience might find expression. The rules themselves may sometimes appear to the layman arbitrary and ill-conceived. But their object is clear. It is to impose on the profession itself the obligation of maintaining the quality of the service, and to prevent its common purpose being frustrated through {94} the undue influence of the motive of pecuniary gain upon the necessities or cupidity of the individual. The difference between industry as it exists to-day and a profession is, then, simple and unmistakable. The essence of the former is that its only criterion is the financial return which it offers to its shareholders. The essence of the latter, is that, though men enter it for the sake of livelihood, the measure of their success is the service which they perform, not the gains which they amass. They may, as in the case of a successful doctor, grow rich; but the meaning of their profession, both for themselves and for the public, is not that they make money but that they make health, or safety, or knowledge, or good government or good law. They depend on it for their income, but they do not consider that any conduct which increases their income is on that account good. And while a boot-manufacturer who retires with half a million is counted to have achieved success, whether the boots which he made were of leather or brown paper, a civil servant who did the same would be impeached. So, if they are doctors, they recognize that there are certain kinds of conduct which cannot be practised, however large the fee offered for them, because they are unprofessional; if scholars and teachers, that it is wrong to make money by deliberately deceiving the public, as is done by makers of patent medicines, however much the public may clamor to be deceived; if judges or public servants, that they must not increase their incomes by selling justice for money; if soldiers, that the service comes first, and their private inclinations, {95} even the reasonable preference of life to death, second. Every country has its traitors, every army its deserters, and every profession its blacklegs. To idealize the professional spirit would be very absurd; it has its sordid side, and, if it is to be fostered in industry, safeguards will be needed to check its excesses. But there is all the difference between maintaining a standard which is occasionally abandoned, and affirming as the central truth of existence that there is no standard to maintain. The meaning of a profession is that it makes the traitors the exception, not as they are in industry, the rule. It makes them the exception by upholding as the criterion of success the end for which the profession, whatever it may be, is carried on, and subordinating the inclination, appetites and ambitions of individuals to the rules of an organization which has as its object to promote the performance of function. There is no sharp line between the professions and the industries. A hundred years ago the trade of teaching, which to-day is on the whole an honorable public service, was rather a vulgar speculation upon public credulity; if Mr. Squeers was a caricature, the Oxford of Gibbon and Adam Smith was a solid port-fed reality; no local authority could have performed one-tenth of the duties which are carried out by a modern municipal corporation every day, because there was no body of public servants to perform them, and such as there were took bribes. It is conceivable, at least, that some branches of medicine might have developed on the lines of industrial capitalism, with hospitals as factories, {96} doctors hired at competitive wages as their "hands," large dividends paid to shareholders by catering for the rich, and the poor, who do not offer a profitable market, supplied with an inferior service or with no service at all. The idea that there is some mysterious difference between making munitions of war and firing them, between building schools and teaching in them when built, between providing food and providing health, which makes it at once inevitable and laudable that the former should be carried on with a single eye to pecuniary gain, while the latter are conducted by professional men who expect to be paid for service but who neither watch for windfalls nor raise their fees merely because there are more sick to be cured, more children to be taught, or more enemies to be resisted, is an illusion only less astonishing than that the leaders of industry should welcome the insult as an honor and wear their humiliation as a kind of halo. The work of making boots or building a house is in itself no more degrading than that of curing the sick or teaching the ignorant. It is as necessary and therefore as honorable. It should be at least equally bound by rules which have as their object to maintain the standards of professional service. It should be at least equally free from the vulgar subordination of moral standards to financial interests. If industry is to be organized as a profession, two changes are requisite, one negative and one positive. The first, is that it should cease to be conducted by the agents of property-owners for the advantage of property-owners, {97} and should be carried on, instead, for the service of the public. The second, is that, subject to rigorous public supervision, the responsibility for the maintenance of the service should rest upon the shoulders of those, from organizer and scientist to laborer, by whom, in effect, the work is conducted. The first change is necessary because the conduct of industry for the public advantage is impossible as long as the ultimate authority over its management is vested in those whose only connection with it, and interest in it, is the pursuit of gain. As industry is at present organized, its profits and its control belong by law to that element in it which has least to do with its success. Under the joint-stock organization which has become normal in all the more important industries except agriculture, it is managed by the salaried agents of those by whom the property is owned. It is successful if it returns large sums to shareholders, and unsuccessful if it does not. If an opportunity presents itself to increase dividends by practices which deteriorate the service or degrade the workers, the officials who administer industry act strictly within their duty if they seize it, for they are the servants of their employers, and their obligation to their employers is to provide dividends not to provide service. But the owners of the property are, _qua_ property-owners functionless, not in the sense, of course, that the tools of which they are proprietors are not useful, but in the sense that since work and ownership are increasingly separated, the efficient use of the tools is not dependent on the maintenance of the proprietary rights exercised over them. {98} Of course there are many managing directors who both own capital and administer the business. But it is none the less the case that most shareholders in most large industries are normally shareholders and nothing more. Nor is their economic interest identical, as is sometimes assumed, with that of the general public. A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and human beings dear: indeed the word "riches" has no other meaning. The interest of those who own the property used in industry, though not, of course, of the managers who administer industry and who themselves are servants, and often very ill-paid servants at that, is that their capital should be dear and human beings cheap. Hence, if the industry is such as to yield a considerable return, or if one unit in the industry, owing to some special advantage, produces more cheaply than its neighbors, while selling at the same price, or if a revival of trade raises prices, or if supplies are controlled by one of the combines which are now the rule in many of the more important industries, the resulting surplus normally passes neither to the managers, nor to the other employees, nor to the public, but to the shareholders. Such an arrangement is preposterous in the literal sense of being the reverse of that which would be established by considerations of equity and common sense, and gives rise (among other things) to what is called "the struggle between labor and capital." The phrase is apposite, since it is as absurd as the relations of which it is intended to be a description. To deplore "ill-feeling" or to advocate {99} "harmony" between "labor and capital" is as rational as to lament the bitterness between carpenters and hammers or to promote a mission for restoring amity between mankind and its boots. The only significance of these _clichés_ is that their repetition tends to muffle their inanity, even to the point of persuading sensible men that capital "employs" labor, much as our pagan ancestors imagined that the other pieces of wood and iron, which they deified in their day, sent their crops and won their battles. When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that some one broke them. Labor consists of persons, capital of things. The only use of things is to be applied to the service of persons. The business of persons is to see that they are there to use, and that no more than need be is paid for using them. Thus the application to industry of the principle of function involves an alteration of proprietary rights, because those rights do not contribute, as they now are, to the end which industry exists to serve. What gives unity to any activity, what alone can reconcile the conflicting claims of the different groups engaged in it, is the purpose for which it is carried on. If men have no common goal it is no wonder that they should fall out by the way, nor are they likely to be reconciled by a redistribution of their provisions. If they are not content both to be servants, one or other must be master, and it is idle to suppose that mastership can be held in a state of suspense between the two. There can be a division of functions between different grades of workers, or between worker and consumer, and each can {100} have in his own sphere the authority needed to enable him to fill it. But there cannot be a division of functions between the worker and the owner who is owner and nothing else, for what function does such an owner perform? The provision of capital? Then pay him the sum needed to secure the use of his capital, but neither pay him more nor admit him to a position of authority over production for which merely as an owner he is not qualified. For this reason, while an equilibrium between worker and manager is possible, because both are workers, that which it is sought to establish between worker and owner is not. It is like the proposal of the Germans to negotiate with Belgium from Brussels. Their proposals may be excellent: but it is not evident why they are where they are, or how, since they do not contribute to production, they come to be putting forward proposals at all. As long as they are in territory where they have no business to be, their excellence as individuals will be overlooked in annoyance at the system which puts them where they are. It is fortunate indeed, if nothing worse than this happens. For one way of solving the problem of the conflict of rights in industry is not to base rights on functions, as we propose, but to base them on force. It is to re-establish in some veiled and decorous form the institution of slavery, by making labor compulsory. In nearly all countries a concerted refusal to work has been made at one time or another a criminal offense. There are to-day parts of the world in which European capitalists, unchecked by any public opinion or authority {101} independent of themselves, are free to impose almost what terms they please upon workmen of ignorant and helpless races. In those districts of America where capitalism still retains its primitive lawlessness, the same result appears to be produced upon immigrant workmen by the threat of violence. In such circumstances the conflict of rights which finds expression in industrial warfare does not arise, because the rights of one party have been extinguished. The simplicity of the remedy is so attractive that it is not surprising that the Governments of industrial nations should coquet from time to time with the policy of compulsory arbitration. After all, it is pleaded, it is only analogous to the action of a supernational authority which should use its common force to prevent the outbreak of war. In reality, compulsory arbitration is the opposite of any policy which such an authority could pursue either with justice or with hope of success. For it takes for granted the stability of existing relationships and intervenes to adjust incidental disputes upon the assumption that their equity is recognized and their permanence desired. In industry, however, the equity of existing relationships is precisely the point at issue. A League of Nations which adjusted between a subject race and its oppressors, between Slavs and Magyars, or the inhabitants of what was once Prussian Poland and the Prussian Government, on the assumption that the subordination of Slavs to Magyars and Poles to Prussians was part of an unchangeable order, would rightly be resisted by all those who think liberty more precious than peace. A State which, in the {102} name of peace, should make the concerted cessation of work a legal offense would be guilty of a similar betrayal of freedom. It would be solving the conflict of rights between those who own and those who work by abolishing the rights of those who work. So here again, unless we are prepared to re-establish some form of forced labor, we reach an impasse. But it is an impasse only in so long as we regard the proprietary rights of those who own the capital used in industry as absolute and an end in themselves. If, instead of assuming that all property, merely because it is property, is equally sacred, we ask what is the _purpose_ for which capital is used, what is its _function_, we shall realize that it is not an end but a means to an end, and that its function is to serve and assist (as the economists tell us) the labor of human beings, not the function of human beings to serve those who happen to own it. And from this truth two consequences follow. The first is that since capital is a thing, which ought to be used to help industry as a man may use a bicycle to get more quickly to his work, it ought, when it is employed, to be employed on the cheapest terms possible. The second is that those who own it should no more control production than a man who lets a house controls the meals which shall be cooked in the kitchen, or the man who lets a boat the speed at which the rowers shall pull. In other words, capital should always be got at cost price, which means, unless the State finds it wise, as it very well may, to own the capital used in certain industries, it should be paid the lowest interest {103} for which it can be obtained, but should carry no right either to residuary dividends or to the control of industry. There are, in theory, five ways by which the control of industry by the agents of private property-owners can be terminated. They may be expropriated without compensation. They may voluntarily surrender it. They may be frozen out by action on the part of the working _personnel_, which itself undertakes such functions, if any, as they have performed, and makes them superfluous by conducting production without their assistance. Their proprietary interest may be limited or attenuated to such a degree that they become mere _rentiers_, who are guaranteed a fixed payment analogous to that of the debenture-holder, but who receive no profits and bear no responsibility for the organization of industry. They may be bought out. The first alternative is exemplified by the historical confiscations of the past, such as, for instance, by the seizure of ecclesiastical property by the ruling classes of England, Scotland and most other Protestant states. The second has rarely, if ever, been tried--the nearest approach to it, perhaps, was the famous abdication of August 4th, 1789. The third is the method apparently contemplated by the building guilds which are now in process of formation in Great Britain. The fourth method of treating the capitalist is followed by the co-operative movement. It is also that proposed by the committee of employers and trade-unionists in the building industry over which Mr. Foster presided, and which proposed that employers should be paid a fixed salary, and a fixed rate of {104} interest on their capital, but that all surplus profits should be pooled and administered by a central body representing employers and workers. The fifth has repeatedly been practised by municipalities, and somewhat less often by national governments. Which of these alternative methods of removing industry from the control of the property-owner is adopted is a matter of expediency to be decided in each particular case. "Nationalization," therefore, which is sometimes advanced as the only method of extinguishing proprietary rights, is merely one species of a considerable genus. It can be used, of course, to produce the desired result. But there are some industries, at any rate, in which nationalization is not necessary in order to bring it about, and since it is at best a cumbrous process, when other methods are possible, other methods should be used. Nationalization is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Properly conceived its object is not to establish state management of industry, but to remove the dead hand of private ownership, when the private owner has ceased to perform any positive function. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the abolition of obstructive property rights, which is indispensable, should have been identified with a single formula, which may be applied with advantage in the special circumstances of some industries, but need not necessarily be applied in all. Ownership is not a right, but a bundle of rights, and it is possible to strip them off piecemeal as well as to strike them off simultaneously. The ownership of capital involves, as we have said, three main claims; the right to interest as the price of capital, the right to {105} profits, and the right to control, in virtue of which managers and workmen are the servants of shareholders. These rights in their fullest degree are not the invariable accompaniment of ownership, nor need they necessarily co-exist. The ingenuity of financiers long ago devised methods of grading stock in such a way that the ownership of some carries full control, while that of others does not, that some bear all the risk and are entitled to all the profits, while others are limited in respect to both. All are property, but not all carry proprietary rights of the same degree. As long as the private ownership of industrial capital remains, the object of reformers should be to attenuate its influence by insisting that it shall be paid not more than a rate of interest fixed in advance, and that it should carry with it no right of control. In such circumstances the position of the ordinary shareholder would approximate to that of the owner of debentures; the property in the industry would be converted into a mortgage on its profits, while the control of its administration and all profits in excess of the minimum would remain to be vested elsewhere. So, of course, would the risks. But risks are of two kinds, those of the individual business and those of the industry. The former are much heavier than the latter, for though a coal mine is a speculative investment, coal mining is not, and as long as each business is managed as a separate unit, the payments made to shareholders must cover both. If the ownership of capital in each industry were unified, which does not mean centralized, those risks which are incidental to individual competition would be {106} eliminated, and the credit of each unit would be that of the whole. Such a change in the character of ownership would have three advantages. It would abolish the government of industry by property. It would end the payment of profits to functionless shareholders by turning them into creditors paid a fixed rate of interest. It would lay the only possible foundations for industrial peace by making it possible to convert industry into a profession carried on by all grades of workers for the service of the public, not for the gain of those who own capital. The organization which it would produce will be described, of course, as impracticable. It is interesting, therefore, to find it is that which experience has led practical men to suggest as a remedy for the disorders of one of the most important of national industries, that of building. The question before the Committee of employers and workmen, which issued last August a Report upon the Building Trade, was "Scientific Management and the Reduction of Costs."[1] These are not phrases which suggest an economic revolution; but it is something little short of a revolution that the signatories of the report propose. For, as soon as they came to grips with the problem, they found that it was impossible to handle it effectively without reconstituting the general fabric of industrial relationships which is its setting. Why is the service supplied by the industry ineffective? Partly because the workers do not give their full energies to the performance of their part in production. {107} Why do they not give their best energies? Because of "the fear of unemployment, the disinclination of the operatives to make unlimited profit for private employers, the lack of interest evinced by operatives owing to their non-participation in control, inefficiency both managerial and operative." How are these psychological obstacles to efficiency to be counteracted? By increased supervision and speeding up, by the allurements of a premium bonus system, or the other devices by which men who are too ingenious to have imagination or moral insight would bully or cajole poor human nature into doing what--if only the systems they invent would let it!--it desires to do, simple duties and honest work? Not at all. By turning the building of houses into what teaching now is, and Mr. Squeers thought it could never be, an honorable profession. "We believe," they write, "that the great task of our Industrial Council is to develop an entirely new system of industrial control by the members of the industry itself--the actual producers, whether by hand or brain, and to bring them into co-operation with the State as the central representative of the community whom they are organized to serve." Instead of unlimited profits, so "indispensable as an incentive to efficiency," the employer is to be paid a salary for his services as manager, and a rate of interest on his capital which is to be both fixed and (unless he fails to earn it through his own inefficiency) guaranteed; anything in excess of it, any "profits" in fact, which in other industries are distributed as dividends to shareholders, he is to {108} surrender to a central fund to be administered by employers and workmen for the benefit of the industry as a whole. Instead of the financial standing of each firm being treated as an inscrutable mystery to the public, with the result that it is sometimes a mystery to itself, there is to be a system of public costing and audit, on the basis of which the industry will assume a collective liability for those firms which are shown to be competently managed. Instead of the workers being dismissed in slack times to struggle along as best they can, they are to be maintained from a fund raised by a levy on employers and administered by the trade unions. There is to be publicity as to costs and profits, open dealing and honest work and mutual helpfulness, instead of the competition which the nineteenth century regarded as an efficient substitute for them. "Capital" is not to "employ labor." Labor, which includes managerial labor, is to employ capital; and to employ it at the cheapest rate at which, in the circumstances of the trade, it can be got. If it employs it so successfully that there is a surplus when it has been fairly paid for its own services, then that surplus is not to be divided among shareholders, for, when they have been paid interest, they have been paid their due; it is to be used to equip the industry to provide still more effective service in the future. So here we have the majority of a body of practical men, who care nothing for socialist theories, proposing to establish "organized Public Service in the Building Industry," recommending, in short, that their industry shall be turned into a profession. And they do it, it {109} will be observed, by just that functional organization, just that conversion of full proprietary rights into a mortgage secured (as far as efficient firms are concerned) on the industry as a whole, just that transference of the control of production from the owner of capital to those whose business is production, which we saw is necessary if industry is to be organized for the performance of service, not for the pecuniary advantage of those who hold proprietary rights. Their Report is of the first importance as offering a policy for attenuating private property in capital in the important group of industries in which private ownership, in one form or another, is likely for some considerable time to continue, and a valuable service would be rendered by any one who would work out in detail the application of its principle to other trades. Not, of course, that this is the only way, or in highly capitalized industries the most feasible way, in which the change can be brought about. Had the movement against the control of production by property taken place before the rise of limited companies, in which ownership is separated from management, the transition to the organization of industry as a profession might also have taken place, as the employers and workmen in the building trade propose that it should, by limiting the rights of private ownership without abolishing it. But that is not what has actually happened, and therefore the proposals of the building trade are not of universal application. It is possible to retain private ownership in building and in industries like building, {110} while changing its character, precisely because in building the employer is normally not merely an owner, but something else as well. He is a manager; that is, he is a workman. And because he is a workman, whose interests, and still more whose professional spirit as a workman may often outweigh his interests and merely financial spirit as an owner, he can form part of the productive organization of the industry, after his rights as an owner have been trimmed and limited. But that dual position is abnormal, and in the highly organized industries is becoming more abnormal every year. In coal, in cotton, in ship-building, in many branches of engineering the owner of capital is not, as he is in building, an organizer or manager. His connection with the industry and interest in it is purely financial. He is an owner and nothing more. And because his interest is merely financial, so that his concern is dividends and production only as a means to dividends, he cannot be worked into an organization of industry which vests administration in a body representing all grades of producers, or producers and consumers together, for he has no purpose in common with them; so that while joint councils between workers and managers may succeed, joint councils between workers and owners or agents of owners, like most of the so-called Whitley Councils, will not, because the necessity for the mere owner is itself one of the points in dispute. The master builder, who owns the capital used, can be included, not _qua_ capitalist, but _qua_ builder, if he surrenders some of the rights of ownership, as the Building Industry Committee proposed that he should. But {111} if the shareholder in a colliery or a shipyard abdicates the control and unlimited profits to which, _qua_ capitalist, he is at present entitled, he abdicates everything that makes him what he is, and has no other standing in the industry. He cannot share, like the master builder, in its management, because he has no qualifications which would enable him to do so. His object is profit; and if industry is to become, as employers and workers in the building trade propose, an "organized public service," then its subordination to the shareholder whose object is profit, is, as they clearly see, precisely what must be eliminated. The master builders propose to give it up. They can do so because they have their place in the industry in virtue of their function as workmen. But if the shareholder gave it up, he would have no place at all. Hence in coal mining, where ownership and management are sharply separated, the owners will not admit the bare possibility of any system in which the control of the administration of the mines is shared between the management and the miners. "I am authorized to state on behalf of the Mining Association," Lord Gainford, the chief witness on behalf of the mine-owners, informed the Coal Commission, "that if the owners are not to be left complete executive control they will decline to accept the responsibility for carrying on the industry."[2] So the mine-owners blow away in a sentence the whole body of plausible make-believe which rests on the idea that, while private ownership remains {112} unaltered, industrial harmony can be produced by the magic formula of joint control. And they are right. The representatives of workmen and shareholders, in mining and in other industries, can meet and negotiate and discuss. But joint administration of the shareholders' property by a body representing shareholders and workmen is impossible, because there is no purpose in common between them. For the only purpose which could unite all persons engaged in industry, and overrule their particular and divergent interests, is the provision of service. And the object of shareholders, the whole significance and _métier_ of industry to them, is not the provision of service but the provision of dividends. In industries where management is divorced from ownership, as in most of the highly organized trades it is to-day, there is no obvious halfway house, therefore, between the retention of the present system and the complete extrusion of the capitalist from the control of production. The change in the character of ownership, which is necessary in order that coal or textiles and ship-building may be organized as professions for the service of the public, cannot easily spring from within. The stroke needed to liberate them from the control of the property-owner must come from without. In theory it might be struck by action on the part of organized workers, who would abolish residuary profits and the right of control by the mere procedure of refusing to work as long as they were maintained, on the historical analogy offered by peasants who have destroyed {113} predatory property in the past by declining to pay its dues and admit its government, in which case Parliament would intervene only to register the community's assent to the _fait accompli_. In practice, however, the conditions of modern industry being what they are, that course, apart from its other disadvantages, is so unlikely to be attempted, or, if attempted, to succeed, that it can be neglected. The alternative to it is that the change in the character of property should be affected by legislation in virtue of which the rights of ownership in an industry are bought out simultaneously. In either case, though the procedure is different, the result of the change, once it is accomplished, is the same. Private property in capital, in the sense of the right to profits and control, is abolished. What remains of it is, at most, a mortgage in favor of the previous proprietors, a dead leaf which is preserved, though the sap of industry no longer feeds it, as long as it is not thought worth while to strike it off. And since the capital needed to maintain and equip a modern industry could not be provided by any one group of workers, even were it desirable on other grounds that they should step completely into the position of the present owners, the complex of rights which constitutes ownership remains to be shared between them and whatever organ may act on behalf of the general community. The former, for example, may be the heir of the present owners as far as the control of the routine and administration of industry is concerned: the latter may succeed to their right to dispose of residuary profits. The elements composing property, have, in fact, to be {114} disentangled: and the fact that to-day, under the common name of ownership, several different powers are vested in identical hands, must not be allowed to obscure the probability that, once private property in capital has been abolished, it may be expedient to re-allocate those powers in detail as well as to transfer them _en bloc_. The essence of a profession is, as we have suggested, that its members organize themselves for the performance of function. It is essential therefore, if industry is to be professionalized, that the abolition of functionless property should not be interpreted to imply a continuance under public ownership of the absence of responsibility on the part of the _personnel_ of industry, which is the normal accompaniment of private ownership working through the wage-system. It is the more important to emphasize that point, because such an implication has sometimes been conveyed in the past by some of those who have presented the case for some such change in the character of ownership as has been urged above. The name consecrated by custom to the transformation of property by public and external action is nationalization. But nationalization is a word which is neither very felicitous nor free from ambiguity. Properly used, it means merely ownership by a body representing the nation. But it has come in practice to be used as equivalent to a particular method of administration, under which officials employed by the State step into the position of the present directors of industry, and exercise all the power which they exercised. So those who desire to maintain the system under which industry is carried on, not as a profession {115} serving the public, but for the advantage of shareholders, attack nationalization on the ground that state management is necessarily inefficient, and tremble with apprehension whenever they post a letter in a letter-box; and those who desire to change it reply that state services are efficient and praise God whenever they use a telephone; as though either private or public administration had certain peculiar and unalterable characteristics, instead of depending for its quality, like an army or railway company or school, and all other undertakings, public and private alike, not on whether those who conduct it are private officials or state officials, but on whether they are properly trained for their work and can command the good will and confidence of their subordinates. The arguments on both sides are ingenious, but in reality nearly all of them are beside the point. The merits of nationalization do not stand or fall with the efficiency or inefficiency of existing state departments as administrators of industry. For nationalization, which means public ownership, is compatible with several different types of management. The constitution of the industry may be "unitary," as is (for example) that of the post-office. Or it may be "federal," as was that designed by Mr. Justice Sankey for the Coal Industry. Administration may be centralized or decentralized. The authorities to whom it is intrusted may be composed of representatives of the consumers, or of representatives of professional associations, or of state officials, or of all three in several different proportions. Executive work may be placed in the hands of civil {116} servants, trained, recruited and promoted as in the existing state departments, or a new service may be created with a procedure and standards of its own. It may be subject to Treasury control, or it may be financially autonomous. The problem is, in fact, of a familiar, though difficult, order. It is one of constitution-making. It is commonly assumed by controversialists that the organization and management of a nationalized industry must, for some undefined reason, be similar to that of the post-office. One might as reasonably suggest that the pattern exemplar of private enterprise must be the Steel Corporation or the Imperial Tobacco Company. The administrative systems obtaining in a society which has nationalized its foundation industries will, in fact, be as various as in one that resigns them to private ownership; and to discuss their relative advantages without defining what particular type of each is the subject of reference is to-day as unhelpful as to approach a modern political problem in terms of the Aristotelian classification of constitutions. The highly abstract dialectics as to "enterprise," "initiative," "bureaucracy," "red tape," "democratic control," "state management," which fill the press of countries occupied with industrial problems, really belong to the dark ages of economic thought. The first task of the student, whatever his personal conclusions, is, it may be suggested, to contribute what he can to the restoration of sanity by insisting that instead of the argument being conducted with the counters of a highly inflated and rapidly depreciating verbal currency, the exact situation, {117} in so far as is possible, shall be stated as it is; uncertainties (of which there are many) shall be treated as uncertain, and the precise meaning of alternative proposals shall be strictly defined. Not the least of the merits of Mr. Justice Sankey's report was that, by stating in great detail the type of organization which he recommended for the Coal Industry, he imparted a new precision and reality into the whole discussion. Whether his conclusions are accepted or not, it is from the basis of clearly defined proposals such as his that the future discussion of these problems must proceed. It may not find a solution. It will at least do something to create the temper in which alone a reasonable solution can be sought. Nationalization, then, is not an end, but a means to an end, and when the question of ownership has been settled the question of administration remains for solution. As a means it is likely to be indispensable in those industries in which the rights of private proprietors cannot easily be modified without the action of the State, just as the purchase of land by county councils is a necessary step to the establishment of small holders, when landowners will not voluntarily part with their property for the purpose. But the object in purchasing land is to establish small holders, not to set up farms administered by state officials; and the object of nationalizing mining or railways or the manufacture of steel should not be to establish any particular form of state management, but to release those who do constructive work from the control of those whose sole interest is pecuniary gain, in order that they may be free to {118} apply their energies to the true purpose of industry, which is the provision of service, not the provision of dividends. When the transference of property has taken place, it will probably be found that the necessary provision for the government of industry will involve not merely the freedom of the producers to produce, but the creation of machinery through which the consumer, for whom he produces, can express his wishes and criticize the way in which they are met, as at present he normally cannot. But that is the second stage in the process of reorganizing industry for the performance of function, not the first. The first is to free it from subordination to the pecuniary interests of the owner of property, because they are the magnetic pole which sets all the compasses wrong, and which causes industry, however swiftly it may progress, to progress in the wrong direction. Nor does this change in the character of property involve a breach with the existing order so sharp as to be impracticable. The phraseology of political controversy continues to reproduce the conventional antitheses of the early nineteenth century; "private enterprise" and "public ownership" are still contrasted with each other as light with darkness or darkness with light. But, in reality, behind the formal shell of the traditional legal system the elements of a new body of relationship have already been prepared, and find piece-meal application through policies devised, not by socialists, but by men who repeat the formulæ of individualism, at the very moment when they are undermining it. The Esch-Cummins Act in America, the {119} Act establishing a Ministry of Transport in England, Sir Arthur Duckham's scheme for the organization of the coal mines, the proposals with regard to the coal industry of the British Government itself, appear to have the common characteristic of retaining private ownership in name, while attenuating it in fact, by placing its operators under the supervision, accompanied sometimes by a financial guarantee, of a public authority. Schemes of this general character appear, indeed, to be the first instinctive reaction produced by the discovery that private enterprise is no longer functioning effectively; it is probable that they possess certain merits of a technical order analogous to those associated with the amalgamation of competing firms into a single combination. It is questionable, however, whether the compromise which they represent is permanently tenable. What, after all, it may be asked, are the advantages of private ownership when it has been pared down to the point which policies of this order propose? May not the "owner" whose rights they are designed to protect not unreasonably reply to their authors, "Thank you for nothing"? Individual enterprise has its merits: so also, perhaps, has public ownership. But, by the time these schemes have done with it, not much remains of "the simple and obvious system of natural liberty," while their inventors are precluded from appealing to the motives which are emphasized by advocates of nationalization. It is one thing to be an entrepreneur with a world of adventure and unlimited profits--if they can be achieved--before one. It is quite another to be a director of a railway company or coal {120} corporation with a minimum rate of profit guaranteed by the State, and a maximum rate of profit which cannot be exceeded. Hybrids are apt to be sterile. It may be questioned whether, in drawing the teeth of private capitalism, this type of compromise does not draw out most of its virtues as well. So, when a certain stage of economic development has been reached, private ownership, by the admission of its defenders, can no longer be tolerated in the only form in which it is free to display the characteristic, and quite genuine, advantages for the sake of which it used to be defended. And, as step by step it is whittled down by tacit concessions to the practical necessity of protecting the consumer, or eliminating waste, or meeting the claims of the workers, public ownership becomes, not only on social grounds, but for reasons of economic efficiency, the alternative to a type of private ownership which appears to carry with it few rights of ownership and to be singularly devoid of privacy. Inevitably and unfortunately the change must be gradual. But it should be continuous. When, as in the last few years, the State has acquired the ownership of great masses of industrial capital, it should retain it, instead of surrendering it to private capitalists, who protest at once that it will be managed so inefficiently that it will not pay and managed so efficiently that it will undersell them. When estates are being broken up and sold, as they are at present, public bodies should enter the market and acquire them. Most important of all, the ridiculous barrier, inherited from an age in which municipal corporations were corrupt oligarchies, which {121} at present prevents England's Local Authorities from acquiring property in land and industrial capital, except for purposes specified by Act of Parliament, should be abolished, and they should be free to undertake such services as the citizens may desire. The objection to public ownership, in so far as it is intelligent, is in reality largely an objection to over-centralization. But the remedy for over-centralization, is not the maintenance of functionless property in private hands, but the decentralized ownership of public property, and when Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds are the little republics which they should be, there is no reason to anticipate that they will tremble at a whisper from Whitehall. These things should be done steadily and continuously quite apart from the special cases like that of the mines and railways, where the private ownership of capital is stated by the experts to have been responsible for intolerable waste, or the manufacture of ornaments [Transcriber's note: armaments?] and alcoholic liquor, which are politically and socially too dangerous to be left in private hands. They should be done not in order to establish a single form of bureaucratic management, but in order to release the industry from the domination of proprietary interests, which, whatever the form of management, are not merely troublesome in detail but vicious in principle, because they divert it from the performance of function to the acquisition of gain. If at the same time private ownership is shaken, as recently it has been, by action on the part of particular groups of workers, so much the better. There are more ways of killing a cat than {122} drowning it in cream, and it is all the more likely to choose the cream if they are explained to it. But the two methods are complementary, not alternative, and the attempt to found rival schools on an imaginary incompatibility between them is a bad case of the _odium sociologicum_ which afflicts reformers. [1] Reprinted in _The Industrial Council for the Building Industry_. [2] _Coal Industry Commission, Minutes of Evidence_, Vol. I, p. 2506. {123} VIII THE "VICIOUS CIRCLE" What form of management should replace the administration of industry by the agents of shareholders? What is most likely to hold it to its main purpose, and to be least at the mercy of predatory interests and functionless supernumeraries, and of the alternations of sullen dissatisfaction and spasmodic revolt which at present distract it? Whatever the system upon which industry is administered, one thing is certain. Its economic processes and results must be public, because only if they are public can it be known whether the service of industry is vigilant, effective and honorable, whether its purpose is being realized and its function carried out. The defense of secrecy in business resembles the defense of adulteration on the ground that it is a legitimate weapon of competition; indeed it has even less justification than that famous doctrine, for the condition of effective competition is publicity, and one motive for secrecy is to prevent it. Those who conduct industry at the present time and who are most emphatic that, as the Duke of Wellington said of the unreformed House of Commons, they "have never read or heard of any measure up to the present moment which can in any degree satisfy the mind" that the method of conducting it can in any way be improved, are also those apparently who, with some {124} honorable exceptions, are most reluctant that the full facts about it should be known. And it is crucial that they should be known. It is crucial not only because, in the present ignorance of the real economic situation, all industrial disagreements tend inevitably to be battles in the dark, in which "ignorant armies clash by night," but because, unless there is complete publicity as to profits and costs, it is impossible to form any judgment either of the reasonableness of the prices which are charged or of the claims to remuneration of the different parties engaged in production. For balance sheets, with their opportunities for concealing profits, give no clear light upon the first, and no light at all upon the second. And so, when the facts come out, the public is aghast at revelations which show that industry is conducted with bewildering financial extravagance. If the full facts had been published, as they should have been, quarter by quarter, these revelations would probably not have been made at all, because publicity itself would have been an antiseptic and there would have been nothing sensational to reveal. The events of the last few years are a lesson which should need no repetition. The Government, surprised at the price charged for making shells at a time when its soldiers were ordered by Headquarters not to fire more than a few rounds per day, whatever the need for retaliation, because there were not more than a few to fire, establishes a costing department to analyze the estimates submitted by manufacturers and to compare them, item by item, with the costs in its own factories. It finds that, through the mere pooling of knowledge, {125} "some of the reductions made in the price of shells and similar munitions," as the Chartered Accountant employed by the Department tells us, "have been as high as 50% of the original price." The household consumer grumbles at the price of coal. For once in a way, amid a storm of indignation from influential persons engaged in the industry, the facts are published. And what do they show? That, after 2/6 has been added to the already high price of coal because the poorer mines are alleged not to be paying their way, 21% of the output examined by the Commission was produced at a profit of 1/- to 3/- per ton, 32% at a profit of 3/- to 5/-, 13% at a profit of 5/- to 7/-, and 14% at a profit of 7/- per ton and over, while the profits of distributors in London alone amount in the aggregate to over $3,200,000, and the co-operative movement, which aims not at profit, but at service, distributes household coal at a cost of from 2/- to 4/- less per ton than is charged by the coal trade![1] "But these are exceptions." They may be. It is possible that in the industries, in which, as the recent Committee on Trusts has told us, "powerful Combinations or Consolidations of one kind or another are in a position effectively to control output and prices," not only costs are cut to the bare minimum but profits are inconsiderable. But then why insist on this humiliating tradition of secrecy with regard to them, when every one who uses their products, and every one who renders honest service to production, stands to gain by publicity? If industry is to become a profession, whatever its {126} management, the first of its professional rules should be, as Sir John Mann told the Coal Commission, that "all cards should be placed on the table." If it were the duty of a Public Department to publish quarterly exact returns as to costs of production and profits in all the firms throughout an industry, the gain in mere productive efficiency, which should appeal to our enthusiasts for output, would be considerable; for the organization whose costs were least would become the standard with which all other types of organization would be compared. The gain in _morale_, which is also, absurd though it may seem, a condition of efficiency, would be incalculable. For industry would be conducted in the light of day. Its costs, necessary or unnecessary, the distribution of the return to it, reasonable or capricious, would be a matter of common knowledge. It would be held to its purpose by the mere impossibility of persuading those who make its products or those who consume them to acquiesce, as they acquiesce now, in expenditure which is meaningless because it has contributed nothing to the service which the industry exists to perform. The organization of industry as a profession does not involve only the abolition of functionless property, and the maintenance of publicity as the indispensable condition of a standard of professional honor. It implies also that those who perform its work should undertake that its work is performed effectively. It means that they should not merely be held to the service of the public by fear of personal inconvenience or penalties, but that they should treat the discharge of professional {127} responsibilities as an obligation attaching not only to a small _élite_ of intellectuals, managers or "bosses," who perform the technical work of "business management," but as implied by the mere entry into the industry and as resting on the corporate consent and initiative of the rank and file of workers. It is precisely, indeed, in the degree to which that obligation is interpreted as attaching to all workers, and not merely to a select class, that the difference between the existing industrial order, collectivism and the organization of industry as a profession resides. The first involves the utilization of human beings for the purpose of private gain; the second their utilization for the purpose of public service; the third the association in the service of the public of their professional pride, solidarity and organization. The difference in administrative machinery between the second and third might not be considerable. Both involve the drastic limitation or transference to the public of the proprietary rights of the existing owners of industrial capital. Both would necessitate machinery for bringing the opinion of the consumers to bear upon the service supplied them by the industry. The difference consists in the manner in which the obligations of the producer to the public are conceived. He may either be the executant of orders transmitted to him by its agents; or he may, through his organization, himself take a positive part in determining what those orders should be. In the former case he is responsible for his own work, but not for anything else. If he hews his stint of coal, it is no business of his whether the pit is a {128} failure; if he puts in the normal number of rivets, he disclaims all further interest in the price or the sea-worthiness of the ship. In the latter his function embraces something more than the performance of the specialized piece of work allotted to him. It includes also a responsibility for the success of the undertaking as a whole. And since responsibility is impossible without power, his position would involve at least so much power as is needed to secure that he can affect in practice the conduct of the industry. It is this collective liability for the maintenance of a certain quality of service which is, indeed, the distinguishing feature of a profession. It is compatible with several different kinds of government, or indeed, when the unit of production is not a group, but an individual, with hardly any government at all. What it does involve is that the individual, merely by entering the profession should have committed himself to certain obligations in respect of its conduct, and that the professional organization, whatever it may be, should have sufficient power to enable it to maintain them. The demand for the participation of the workers in the control of industry is usually advanced in the name of the producer, as a plea for economic freedom or industrial democracy. "Political freedom," writes the Final Report of the United States Commission of Industrial Relations, which was presented in 1916, "can exist only where there is industrial freedom.... There are now within the body of our Republic industrial communities which are virtually Principalities, oppressive to those dependent upon them for a livelihood {129} and a dreadful menace to the peace and welfare of the nation." The vanity of Englishmen may soften the shadows and heighten the lights. But the concentration of authority is too deeply rooted in the very essence of Capitalism for differences in the degree of the arbitrariness with which it is exercised to be other than trivial. The control of a large works does, in fact, confer a kind of private jurisdiction in matters concerning the life and livelihood of the workers, which, as the United States' Commission suggests, may properly be described as "industrial feudalism." It is not easy to understand how the traditional liberties of Englishmen are compatible with an organization of industry which, except in so far as it has been qualified by law or trade unionism, permits populations almost as large as those of some famous cities of the past to be controlled in their rising up and lying down, in their work, economic opportunities, and social life by the decisions of a Committee of half-a-dozen Directors. The most conservative thinkers recognize that the present organization of industry is intolerable in the sacrifice of liberty which it entails upon the producer. But each effort which he makes to emancipate himself is met by a protest that if the existing system is incompatible with freedom, it at least secures efficient service, and that efficient service is threatened by movements which aim at placing a greater measure of industrial control in the hands of the workers. The attempt to drive a wedge between the producer and the consumer is obviously the cue of all the interests which are conscious that by themselves they are unable to hold back {130} the flood. It is natural, therefore, that during the last few months they should have concentrated their efforts upon representing that every advance in the demands and in the power of any particular group of workers is a new imposition upon the general body of the public. Eminent persons, who are not obviously producing more than they consume, explain to the working classes that unless they produce more they must consume less. Highly syndicated combinations warn the public against the menace of predatory syndicalism. The owners of mines and minerals, in their new role as protectors of the poor, lament the "selfishness" of the miners, as though nothing but pure philanthropy had hitherto caused profits and royalties to be reluctantly accepted by themselves. The assumption upon which this body of argument rests is simple. It is that the existing organization of industry is the safeguard of productive efficiency, and that from every attempt to alter it the workers themselves lose more as consumers than they can gain as producers. The world has been drained of its wealth and demands abundance of goods. The workers demand a larger income, greater leisure, and a more secure and dignified status. These two demands, it is argued, are contradictory. For how can the consumer be supplied with cheap goods, if, as a worker, he insists on higher wages and shorter hours? And how can the worker secure these conditions, if as a consumer, he demands cheap goods? So industry, it is thought, moves in a vicious circle of shorter hours and higher wages and less production, which in time must mean {131} longer hours and lower wages; and every one receives less, because every one demands more. The picture is plausible, but it is fallacious. It is fallacious not merely in its crude assumption that a rise in wages necessarily involves an increase in costs, but for another and more fundamental reason. In reality the cause of economic confusion is not that the demands of producer and consumer meet in blunt opposition; for, if they did, their incompatibility, when they were incompatible, would be obvious, and neither could deny his responsibility to the other, however much he might seek to evade it. It is that they do not, but that, as industry is organized to-day, what the worker foregoes the general body of consumers does not necessarily gain, and what the consumer pays the general body of workers does not necessarily receive. If the circle is vicious, its vice is not that it is closed, but that it is always half open, so that part of production leaks away in consumption which adds nothing to productive energies, and that the producer, because he knows this, does not fully use even the productive energy which he commands. It is the consciousness of this leak which sets every one at cross purposes. No conceivable system of industrial organization can secure industrial peace, if by "peace" is meant a complete absence of disagreement. What could be secured would be that disagreements should not flare up into a beacon of class warfare. If every member of a group puts something into a common pool on condition of taking something out, they may still quarrel about the size of the shares, as children quarrel {132} over cake; but if the total is known and the claims admitted, that is all they can quarrel about, and, since they all stand on the same footing, any one who holds out for more than his fellows must show some good reason why he should get it. But in industry the claims are not all admitted, for those who put nothing in demand to take something out; both the total to be divided and the proportion in which the division takes place are sedulously concealed; and those who preside over the distribution of the pool and control what is paid out of it have a direct interest in securing as large a share as possible for themselves and in allotting as small a share as possible to others. If one contributor takes less, so far from it being evident that the gain will go to some one who has put something in and has as good a right as himself, it may go to some one who has put in nothing and has no right at all. If another claims more, he may secure it, without plundering a fellow-worker, at the expense of a sleeping partner who is believed to plunder both. In practice, since there is no clear principle determining what they ought to take, both take all that they can get. In such circumstances denunciations of the producer for exploiting the consumer miss the mark. They are inevitably regarded as an economic version of the military device used by armies which advance behind a screen of women and children, and then protest at the brutality of the enemy in shooting non-combatants. They are interpreted as evidence, not that a section of the producers are exploiting the remainder, but that a minority of property-owners, which is in opposition to {133} both, can use its economic power to make efforts directed against those who consume much and produce little rebound on those who consume little and produce much. And the grievance, of which the Press makes so much, that some workers may be taking too large a share compared with others, is masked by the much greater grievance, of which it says nothing whatever, that some idlers take any share at all. The abolition of payments which are made without any corresponding economic service is thus one of the indispensable conditions both of economic efficiency and industrial peace, because their existence prevents different classes of workers from restraining each other, by uniting them all against the common enemy. Either the principle of industry is that of function, in which case slack work is only less immoral than no work at all; or it is that of grab, in which case there is no morality in the matter. But it cannot be both. And it is useless either for property-owners or for Governments to lament the mote in the eye of the trade unions as long as, by insisting on the maintenance of functionless property, they decline to remove the beam in their own. The truth is that only workers can prevent the abuse of power by workers, because only workers are recognized as possessing any title to have their claims considered. And the first step to preventing the exploitation of the consumer by the producer is simple. It is to turn all men into producers, and thus to remove the temptation for particular groups of workers to force their claims at the expense of the public, by removing the valid excuse that such gains as they may get are {134} taken from those who at present have no right to them, because they are disproportionate to service or obtained for no service at all. Indeed, if work were the only title to payment, the danger of the community being exploited by highly organized groups of producers would largely disappear. For, when no payments were made to non-producers, there would be no debatable ground for which to struggle, and it would become evident that if any one group of producers took more, another must put up with less. Under such conditions a body of workers who used their strong strategic position to extort extravagant terms for themselves at the expense of their fellow-workers might properly be described as exploiting the community. But at present such a statement is meaningless. It is meaningless because before the community can be exploited the community must exist, and its existence in the sphere of economics is to-day not a fact but only an aspiration. The procedure by which, whenever any section of workers advance demands which are regarded as inconvenient by their masters, they are denounced as a band of anarchists who are preying on the public may be a convenient weapon in an emergency, but, once it is submitted to analysis, it is logically self-destructive. It has been applied within recent years, to the postmen, to the engineers, to the policemen, to the miners and to the railway men, a population with their dependents, of some eight million persons; and in the case of the last two the whole body of organized labor made common cause with those of whose exorbitant demands it was alleged to be the victim. But when these {135} workers and their sympathizers are deducted, what is "the community" which remains? It is a naïve arithmetic which produces a total by subtracting one by one all the items which compose it; and the art which discovers the public interest by eliminating the interests of successive sections of the public smacks of the rhetorician rather than of the statesman. The truth is that at present it is idle to seek to resist the demands of any group of workers by appeals to "the interests of society," because to-day, as long as the economic plane alone is considered, there is not one society but two, which dwell together in uneasy juxtaposition, like Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea, but which in spirit, in ideals, and in economic interest, are worlds asunder. There is the society of those who live by labor, whatever their craft or profession, and the society of those who live on it. All the latter cannot command the sacrifices or the loyalty which are due to the former, for they have no title which will bear inspection. The instinct to ignore that tragic division instead of ending it is amiable, and sometimes generous. But it is a sentimentality which is like the morbid optimism of the consumptive who dares not admit even to himself the virulence of his disease. As long as the division exists, the general body of workers, while it may suffer from the struggles of any one group within it, nevertheless supports them by its sympathy, because all are interested in the results of the contest carried on by each. Different sections of workers will exercise mutual restraint only when the termination of the {136} struggle leaves them face to face with each other, and not as now, with the common enemy. The ideal of a united society in which no one group uses its power to encroach upon the standards of another is, in short, unattainable, except through the preliminary abolition of functionless property. Those to whom a leisure class is part of an immutable order without which civilization is inconceivable, dare not admit, even to themselves, that the world is poorer, not richer, because of its existence. So, when, as now it is important that productive energy should be fully used, they stamp and cry, and write to _The Times_ about the necessity for increased production, though all the time they themselves, their way of life and expenditure, and their very existence as a leisure class, are among the causes why production is not increased. In all their economic plans they make one reservation, that, however necessitous the world may be, it shall still support them. But men who work do not make that reservation, nor is there any reason why they should; and appeals to them to produce more wealth because the public needs it usually fall upon deaf ears, even when such appeals are not involved in the ignorance and misapprehensions which often characterize them. For the workman is not the servant of the consumer, for whose sake greater production is demanded, but of shareholders, whose primary aim is dividends, and to whom all production, however futile or frivolous, so long as it yields dividends, is the same. It is useless to urge that he should produce more wealth for the {137} community, unless at the same time he is assured that it is the community which will benefit in proportion as more wealth is produced. If every unnecessary charge upon coal-getting had been eliminated, it would be reasonable that the miners should set a much needed example by refusing to extort better terms for themselves at the expense of the public. But there is no reason why they should work for lower wages or longer hours as long as those who are to-day responsible for the management of the industry conduct it with "the extravagance and waste" stigmatized by the most eminent official witness before the Coal Commission, or why the consumer should grumble at the rapacity of the miner as long as he allows himself to be mulcted by swollen profits, the costs of an ineffective organization, and unnecessary payments to superfluous middlemen. If to-day the miner or any other workman produces more, he has no guarantee that the result will be lower prices rather than higher dividends and larger royalties, any more than, as a workman, he can determine the quality of the wares which his employer supplies to customers, or the price at which they are sold. Nor, as long as he is directly the servant of a profit-making company, and only indirectly the servant of the community, can any such guarantee be offered him. It can be offered only in so far as he stands in an immediate and direct relation to the public for whom industry is carried on, so that, when all costs have been met, any surplus will pass to it, and not to private individuals. It will be accepted only in so far as the workers in each industry are not merely servants executing orders, but {138} themselves have a collective responsibility for the character of the service, and can use their organizations not merely to protect themselves against exploitation, but to make positive contributions to the administration and development of their industry. [1] _Coal Industry Commission, Minutes of Evidence_, pp. 9261-9. {139} IX THE CONDITION OF EFFICIENCY Thus it is not only for the sake of the producers, on whom the old industrial order weighed most heavily, that a new industrial order is needed. It is needed for the sake of the consumers, because the ability on which the old industrial order prided itself most and which is flaunted most as an argument against change, the ability to serve them effectively, is itself visibly breaking down. It is breaking down at what was always its most vulnerable point, the control of the human beings whom, with characteristic indifference to all but their economic significance, it distilled for its own purposes into an abstraction called "Labor." The first symptom of its collapse is what the first symptom of economic collapses has usually been in the past--the failure of customary stimuli to evoke their customary response in human effort. Till that failure is recognized and industry reorganized so that new stimuli may have free play, the collapse will not correct itself, but, doubtless with spasmodic revivals and flickerings of energy, will continue and accelerate. The cause of it is simple. It is that those whose business it is to direct economic activity are increasingly incapable of directing the men upon whom economic activity depends. The fault is not that of individuals, but of a system, of Industrialism itself. {140} During the greater part of the nineteenth century industry was driven by two forces, hunger and fear, and the employer commanded them both. He could grant or withhold employment as he pleased. If men revolted against his terms he could dismiss them, and if they were dismissed what confronted them was starvation or the workhouse. Authority was centralized; its instruments were passive; the one thing which they dreaded was unemployment. And since they could neither prevent its occurrence nor do more than a little to mitigate its horrors when it occurred, they submitted to a discipline which they could not resist, and industry pursued its course through their passive acquiescence in a power which could crush them individually if they attempted to oppose it. That system might be lauded as efficient or denounced as inhuman. But, at least, as its admirers were never tired of pointing out, it worked. And, like the Prussian State, which alike in its virtues and deficiencies it not a little resembled, as long as it worked it survived denunciations of its methods, as a strong man will throw off a disease. But to-day it is ceasing to have even the qualities of its defects. It is ceasing to be efficient. It no longer secures the ever-increasing output of wealth which it offered in its golden prime, and which enabled it to silence criticism by an imposing spectacle of material success. Though it still works, it works unevenly, amid constant friction and jolts and stoppages, without the confidence of the public and without full confidence even in itself, a tyrant who must intrigue and cajole where formerly he commanded, a gaoler who, if not yet {141} deprived of whip, dare only administer moderate chastisement, and who, though he still protests that he alone can keep the treadmill moving and get the corn ground, is compelled to surrender so much of his authority as to make it questionable whether he is worth his keep. For the instruments through which Capitalism exercised discipline are one by one being taken from it. It cannot pay what wages it likes or work what hours it likes. In well-organized industries the power of arbitrary dismissal, the very center of its authority, is being shaken, because men will no longer tolerate a system which makes their livelihood dependent on the caprices of an individual. In all industries alike the time is not far distant when the dread of starvation can no longer be used to cow dissatisfied workers into submission, because the public will no longer allow involuntary unemployment to result in starvation. And if Capitalism is losing its control of men's bodies, still more has it lost its command of their minds. The product of a civilization which regarded "the poor" as instruments, at worst of the luxuries, at best of the virtues, of the rich, its psychological foundation fifty years ago was an ignorance in the mass of mankind which led them to reverence as wisdom the very follies of their masters, and an almost animal incapacity for responsibility. Education and experience have destroyed the passivity which was the condition of the perpetuation of industrial government in the hands of an oligarchy of private capitalists. The workman of to-day has as little belief in the intellectual superiority of many of those who direct industry as he has in the morality of {142} the system. It appears to him to be not only oppressive, but wasteful, unintelligent and inefficient. In the light of his own experience in the factory and the mine, he regards the claim of the capitalist to be the self-appointed guardian of public interests as a piece of sanctimonious hypocrisy. For he sees every day that efficiency is sacrificed to shortsighted financial interests; and while as a man he is outraged by the inhumanity of the industrial order, as a professional who knows the difference between good work and bad he has a growing contempt at once for its misplaced parsimony and its misplaced extravagance, for the whole apparatus of adulteration, advertisement and quackery which seems inseparable from the pursuit of profit as the main standard of industrial success. So Capitalism no longer secures strenuous work by fear, for it is ceasing to be formidable. And it cannot secure it by respect, for it has ceased to be respected. And the very victories by which it seeks to reassert its waning prestige are more disastrous than defeats. Employers may congratulate themselves that they have maintained intact their right to freedom of management, or opposed successfully a demand for public ownership, or broken a movement for higher wages and shorter hours. But what is success in a trade dispute or in a political struggle is often a defeat in the workshop: the workmen may have lost, but it does not follow that their employers, still less that the public, which is principally composed of workmen, have won. For the object of industry is to produce goods, and to produce them at the lowest cost in human effort. {143} But there is no alchemy which will secure efficient production from the resentment or distrust of men who feel contempt for the order under which they work. It is a commonplace that credit is the foundation of industry. But credit is a matter of psychology, and the workman has his psychology as well as the capitalist. If confidence is necessary to the investment of capital, confidence is not less necessary to the effective performance of labor by men whose sole livelihood depends upon it. If they are not yet strong enough to impose their will, they are strong enough to resist when their masters would impose theirs. They may work rather than strike. But they will work to escape dismissal, not for the greater glory of a system in which they do not believe; and, if they are dismissed, those who take their place will do the same. That this is one cause of a low output has been stated both by employers and workers in the building industry, and by the representatives of the miners before the Coal Commission. It was reiterated with impressive emphasis by Mr. Justice Sankey. Nor is it seriously contested by employers themselves. What else, indeed, do their repeated denunciations of "restriction of output" mean except that they have failed to organize industry so as to secure the efficient service which it is their special function to provide? Nor is it appropriate to the situation to indulge in full-blooded denunciations of the "selfishness" of the working classes. "To draw an indictment against a whole nation" is a procedure which is as impossible in industry as it is in politics. Institutions must be adapted to human nature, not {144} human nature to institutions. If the effect of the industrial system is such that a large and increasing number of ordinary men and women find that it offers them no adequate motive for economic effort, it is mere pedantry to denounce men and women instead of amending the system. Thus the time has come when absolutism in industry may still win its battles, but loses the campaign, and loses it on the very ground of economic efficiency which was of its own selection. In the period of transition, while economic activity is distracted by the struggle between those who have the name and habit of power, but no longer the full reality of it, and those who are daily winning more of the reality of power but are not yet its recognized repositories, it is the consumer who suffers. He has neither the service of docile obedience, nor the service of intelligent co-operation. For slavery will work--as long as the slaves will let it; and freedom will work when men have learned to be free; but what will not work is a combination of the two. So the public goes short of coal not only because of the technical deficiencies of the system under which it is raised and distributed, but because the system itself has lost its driving force--because the coal owners can no longer persuade the miners into producing more dividends for them and more royalties for the owners of minerals, while the public cannot appeal to them to put their whole power into serving itself, because it has chosen that they should be the servants, not of itself, but of shareholders. And, this dilemma is not, as some suppose, temporary, {145} the aftermath of war, or peculiar to the coal industry, as though the miners alone were the children of sin which in the last few months they have been described to be. It is permanent; it has spread far; and, as sleeping spirits are stirred into life by education and one industry after another develops a strong corporate consciousness, it will spread further. Nor will it be resolved by lamentations or menaces or denunciations of leaders whose only significance is that they say openly what plain men feel privately. For the matter at bottom is one of psychology. What has happened is that the motives on which the industrial system relied for several generations to secure efficiency, secure it no longer. And it is as impossible to restore them, to revive by mere exhortation the complex of hopes and fears and ignorance and patient credulity and passive acquiescence, which together made men, fifty years ago, plastic instruments in the hands of industrialism, as to restore innocence to any others of those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge. The ideal of some intelligent and respectable business men, the restoration of the golden sixties, when workmen were docile and confiding, and trade unions were still half illegal, and foreign competition meant English competition in foreign countries, and prices were rising a little and not rising too much, is the one Utopia which can never be realized. The King may walk naked as long as his courtiers protest that he is clad; but when a child or a fool has broken the spell a tailor is more important than all their admiration. If the public, which suffers from the slackening of economic activity, {146} desires to end its _malaise_, it will not laud as admirable and all-sufficient the operation of motives which are plainly ceasing to move. It will seek to liberate new motives and to enlist them in its service. It will endeavor to find an alternative to incentives which were always degrading, to those who used them as much as to those upon whom they were used, and which now are adequate incentives no longer. And the alternative to the discipline which Capitalism exercised through its instruments of unemployment and starvation is the self-discipline of responsibility and professional pride. So the demand which aims at stronger organization, fuller responsibility, larger powers for the sake of the producer as a condition of economic liberty, the demand for freedom, is not antithetic to the demand for more effective work and increased output which is being made in the interests of the consumer. It is complementary to it, as the insistence by a body of professional men, whether doctors or university teachers, on the maintenance of their professional independence and dignity against attempts to cheapen the service is not hostile to an efficient service, but, in the long run, a condition of it. The course of wisdom for the consumer would be to hasten, so far as he can, the transition. For, as at present conducted, industry is working against the grain. It is compassing sea and land in its efforts to overcome, by ingenious financial and technical expedients, obstacles which should never have existed. It is trying to produce its results by conquering professional feeling instead of using it. It is carrying not only its inevitable economic burdens, but an ever increasing {147} load of ill will and skepticism. It has in fact "shot the bird which caused the wind to blow" and goes about its business with the corpse round its neck. Compared with that psychological incubus, the technical deficiencies of industry, serious though they often are, are a bagatelle, and the business men who preach the gospel of production without offering any plan for dealing with what is now the central fact in the economic situation, resemble a Christian apologist who should avoid disturbing the equanimity of his audience by carefully omitting all reference either to the fall of man or the scheme of salvation. If it is desired to increase the output of wealth, it is not a paradox, but the statement of an elementary economic truism to say that active and constructive co-operation on the part of the rank and file of workers would do more to contribute to that result than the discovery of a new coal-field or a generation of scientific invention. The first condition of enlisting on the side of constructive work the professional feeling which is now apathetic, or even hostile to it, is to secure that when it is given its results accrue to the public, not to the owner of property in capital, in land, or in other resources. For this reason the attenuation of the rights at present involved in the private ownership of industrial capital, or their complete abolition, is not the demand of idealogues, but an indispensable element in a policy of economic efficiency, since it is the condition of the most effective functioning of the human beings upon whom, though, like other truisms, it is often forgotten, {148} economic efficiency ultimately depends. But it is only one element. Co-operation may range from mere acquiescence to a vigilant and zealous initiative. The criterion of an effective system of administration is that it should succeed in enlisting in the conduct of industry the latent forces of professional pride to which the present industrial order makes little appeal, and which, indeed, Capitalism, in its war upon trade union organization, endeavored for many years to stamp out altogether. Nor does the efficacy of such an appeal repose upon the assumption of that "change in human nature," which is the triumphant _reductio ad absurdum_ advanced by those who are least satisfied with the working of human nature as it is. What it does involve is that certain elementary facts should be taken into account, instead of, as at present, being ignored. That all work is distasteful and that "every man desires to secure the largest income with the least effort" may be as axiomatic as it is assumed to be. But in practice it makes all the difference to the attitude of the individual whether the collective sentiment of the group to which he belongs is on the side of effort or against it, and what standard of effort it sets. That, as employers complain, the public opinion of considerable groups of workers is against an intensification of effort as long as part of its result is increased dividends for shareholders, is no doubt, as far as mere efficiency is concerned, the gravest indictment of the existing industrial order. But, even when public ownership has taken the place of private capitalism, its ability to command {149} effective service will depend ultimately upon its success in securing not merely that professional feeling is no longer an opposing force, but that it is actively enlisted upon the side of maintaining the highest possible standard of efficiency which can reasonably be demanded. To put the matter concretely, while the existing ownership of mines is a positive inducement to inefficient work, public ownership administered by a bureaucracy, if it would remove the technical deficiencies emphasized by Sir Richard Redmayne as inseparable from the separate administration of 3,000 pits by 1,500 different companies, would be only too likely to miss a capital advantage which a different type of administration would secure. It would lose both the assistance to be derived from the technical knowledge of practical men who know by daily experience the points at which the details of administration can be improved, and the stimulus to efficiency springing from the corporate pride of a profession which is responsible for maintaining and improving the character of its service. Professional spirit is a force like gravitation, which in itself is neither good nor bad, but which the engineer uses, when he can, to do his work for him. If it is foolish to idealize it, it is equally shortsighted to neglect it. In what are described _par excellence_ as "the services" it has always been recognized that _esprit de corps_ is the foundation of efficiency, and all means, some wise and some mischievous, are used to encourage it: in practice, indeed, the power upon which the country relied as its main safeguard in an emergency was the professional zeal of the navy and nothing else. Nor is {150} that spirit peculiar to the professions which are concerned with war. It is a matter of common training, common responsibilities, and common dangers. In all cases where difficult and disagreeable work is to be done, the force which elicits it is normally not merely money, but the public opinion and tradition of the little society in which the individual moves, and in the esteem of which he finds that which men value in success. To ignore that most powerful of stimuli as it is ignored to-day, and then to lament that the efforts which it produces are not forthcoming, is the climax of perversity. To aim at eliminating from industry the growth and action of corporate feeling, for fear lest an organized body of producers should exploit the public, is a plausible policy. But it is short-sighted. It is "to pour away the baby with the bath," and to lower the quality of the service in an attempt to safeguard it. A wise system of administration would recognize that professional solidarity can do much of its work for it more effectively than it can do it itself, because the spirit of his profession is part of the individual and not a force outside him, and would make it its object to enlist that temper in the public service. It is only by that policy, indeed, that the elaboration of cumbrous regulations to prevent men doing what they should not, with the incidental result of sometimes preventing them from doing what they should--it is only by that policy that what is mechanical and obstructive in bureaucracy can be averted. For industry cannot run without laws. It must either control itself by professional standards, or it must be controlled by officials who are not of the {151} craft and who, however zealous and well-meaning, can hardly have the feel of it in their fingers. Public control and criticism are indispensable. But they should not be too detailed, or they defeat themselves. It would be better that, once fair standards have been established, the professional organization should check offenses against prices and quality than that it should be necessary for the State to do so. The alternative to minute external supervision is supervision from within by men who become imbued with the public obligations of their trade in the very process of learning it. It is, in short, professional in industry. For this reason collectivism by itself is too simple a solution. Its failure is likely to be that of other rationalist systems. "Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band." If industrial reorganization is to be a living reality, and not merely a plan upon paper, its aim must be to secure not only that industry is carried on for the service of the public, but that it shall be carried on with the active co-operation of the organizations of producers. But co-operation involves responsibility, and responsibility involves power. It is idle to expect that men will give their best to any system which they do not trust, or that they will trust any system in the control of which they do not share. Their ability to carry professional obligations depends upon the power which they possess to remove the obstacles which prevent those obligations from being discharged, and upon their willingness, when they possess the power, to use it. {152} Two causes appear to have hampered the committees which were established in connection with coal mines during the war to increase the output of coal. One was the reluctance of some of them to discharge the invidious task of imposing penalties for absenteeism on their fellow-workmen. The other was the exclusion of faults of management from the control of many committees. In some cases all went well till they demanded that, if the miners were penalized for absenteeism which was due to them, the management should be penalized similarly when men who desired to work were sent home because, as a result of defective organization, there was no work for them to do. Their demand was resisted as "interference with the management," and the attempt to enforce regularity of attendance broke down. Nor, to take another example from the same industry, is it to be expected that the weight of the miners' organization will be thrown on to the side of greater production, if it has no power to insist on the removal of the defects of equipment and organization, the shortage of trams, rails, tubs and timber, the "creaming" of the pits by the working of easily got coal to their future detriment, their wasteful layout caused by the vagaries of separate ownership, by which at present the output is reduced. The public cannot have it both ways. If it allows workmen to be treated as "hands" it cannot claim the service of their wills and their brains. If it desires them to show the zeal of skilled professionals, it must secure that they have sufficient power to allow of their discharging professional responsibilities. In order that workmen may abolish any restrictions on output which {153} may be imposed by them, they must be able to insist on the abolition of the restrictions, more mischievous because more effective, which, as the Committee on Trusts has recently told us, are imposed by organizations of employers. In order that the miners' leaders, instead of merely bargaining as to wages, hours and working conditions, may be able to appeal to their members to increase the supply of coal, they must be in a position to secure the removal of the causes of low output which are due to the deficiencies of the management, and which are to-day a far more serious obstacle than any reluctance on the part of the miner. If the workmen in the building trade are to take combined action to accelerate production, they must as a body be consulted as to the purpose to which their energy is to be applied, and must not be expected to build fashionable houses, when what are required are six-roomed cottages to house families which are at present living with three persons to a room. It is deplorable, indeed, that any human beings should consent to degrade themselves by producing the articles which a considerable number of workmen turn out to-day, boots which are partly brown paper, and furniture which is not fit to use. The revenge of outraged humanity is certain, though it is not always obvious; and the penalty paid by the consumer for tolerating an organization of industry which, in the name of efficiency, destroyed the responsibility of the workman, is that the service with which he is provided is not even efficient. He has always paid it, though he has not seen it, in quality. To-day he is beginning to {154} realize that he is likely to pay it in quantity as well. If the public is to get efficient service, it can get it only from human beings, with the initiative and caprices of human beings. It will get it, in short, in so far as it treats industry as a responsible profession. The collective responsibility of the workers for the maintenance of the standards of their profession is, then, the alternative to the discipline which Capitalism exercised in the past, and which is now breaking down. It involves a fundamental change in the position both of employers and of trade unions. As long as the direction of industry is in the hands of property-owners or their agents, who are concerned to extract from it the maximum profit for themselves, a trade union is necessarily a defensive organization. Absorbed, on the one hand, in the struggle to resist the downward thrust of Capitalism upon the workers' standard of life, and denounced, on the other, if it presumes, to "interfere with management," even when management is most obviously inefficient, it is an opposition which never becomes a government and which has neither the will nor the power to assume responsibility for the quality of the service offered to the consumer. If the abolition of functionless property transferred the control of production to bodies representing those who perform constructive work and those who consume the goods produced, the relation of the worker to the public would no longer be indirect but immediate, and associations which are now purely defensive would be in a position not merely to criticize and oppose but to advise, to initiate and to enforce upon their own members the obligations of the craft. {155} It is obvious that in such circumstances the service offered the consumer, however carefully safeguarded by his representation on the authorities controlling each industry, would depend primarily upon the success of professional organizations in finding a substitute for the discipline exercised to-day by the agents of property-owners. It would be necessary for them to maintain by their own action the zeal, efficiency and professional pride which, when the barbarous weapons of the nineteenth century have been discarded, would be the only guarantee of a high level of production. Nor, once this new function has been made possible for professional organizations, is there any extravagance in expecting them to perform it with reasonable competence. How far economic motives are balked to-day and could be strengthened by a different type of industrial organization, to what extent, and under what conditions, it is possible to enlist in the services of industry motives which are not purely economic, can be ascertained only after a study of the psychology of work which has not yet been made. Such a study, to be of value, must start by abandoning the conventional assumptions, popularized by economic textbooks and accepted as self-evident by practical men, that the motives to effort are simple and constant in character, like the pressure of steam in a boiler, that they are identical throughout all ranges of economic activity, from the stock exchange to the shunting of wagons or laying of bricks, and that they can be elicited and strengthened only by directly economic incentives. In so far as motives in industry have been considered hitherto, it has usually been done {156} by writers who, like most exponents of scientific management, have started by assuming that the categories of business psychology could be offered with equal success to all classes of workers and to all types of productive work. Those categories appear to be derived from a simplified analysis of the mental processes of the company promoter, financier or investor, and their validity as an interpretation of the motives and habits which determine the attitude to his work of the bricklayer, the miner, the dock laborer or the engineer, is precisely the point in question. Clearly there are certain types of industry to which they are only partially relevant. It can hardly be assumed, for example, that the degree of skill and energy brought to his work by a surgeon, a scientific investigator, a teacher, a medical officer of health, an Indian civil servant and a peasant proprietor are capable of being expressed precisely and to the same degree in terms of the economic advantage which those different occupations offer. Obviously those who pursue them are influenced to some considerable, though uncertain, extent by economic incentives. Obviously, again, the precise character of each process or step in the exercise of their respective avocations, the performance of an operation, the carrying out of a piece of investigation, the selection of a particular type of educational method, the preparation of a report, the decision of a case or the care of live stock, is not immediately dependent upon an exact calculation of pecuniary gain or loss. What appears to be the case is that in certain walks of life, while the occupation is chosen after a consideration of {157} its economic advantages, and while economic reasons exact the minimum degree of activity needed to avert dismissal from it or "failure," the actual level of energy or proficiency displayed depend largely upon conditions of a different order. Among them are the character of the training received before and after entering the occupation, the customary standard of effort demanded by the public opinion of one's fellows, the desire for the esteem of the small circle in which the individual moves and to be recognized as having "made good" and not to have "failed," interest in one's work, ranging from devotion to a determination to "do justice" to it, the pride of the craftsman, the "tradition of the service." It would be foolish to suggest that any considerable body of men are uninfluenced by economic considerations. But to represent them as amenable to such incentives only is to give a quite unreal and bookish picture of the actual conditions under which the work of the world is carried on. How large a part such considerations play varies from one occupation to another, according to the character of the work which it does and the manner in which it is organized. In what is called _par excellence_ industry, calculations of pecuniary gain and loss are more powerful than in most of the so-called professions, though even in industry they are more constantly present to the minds of the business men who "direct" it, than to those of the managers and technicians, most of whom are paid fixed salaries, or to the rank and file of wage-workers. In the professions of teaching and medicine, in many branches of the {158} public service, the necessary qualities are secured, without the intervention of the capitalist employer, partly by pecuniary incentives, partly by training and education, partly by the acceptance on the part of those entering them of the traditional obligations of their profession as part of the normal framework of their working lives. But this difference is not constant and unalterable. It springs from the manner in which different types of occupation are organized, on the training which they offer, and the _morale_ which they cultivate among their members. The psychology of a vocation can in fact be changed; new motives can be elicited, provided steps are taken to allow them free expression. It is as feasible to turn building into an organized profession, with a relatively high code of public honor, as it was to do the same for medicine or teaching. The truth is that we ought radically to revise the presuppositions as to human motives on which current presentations of economic theory are ordinarily founded and in terms of which the discussion of economic question is usually carried on. The assumption that the stimulus of imminent personal want is either the only spur, or a sufficient spur, to productive effort is a relic of a crude psychology which has little warrant either in past history or in present experience. It derives what plausibility it possesses from a confusion between work in the sense of the lowest _quantum_ of activity needed to escape actual starvation, and the work which is given, irrespective of the fact that elementary wants may already have been satisfied, through the natural disposition of ordinary men to maintain, and of extraordinary {159} men to improve upon, the level of exertion accepted as reasonable by the public opinion of the group of which they are members. It is the old difference, forgotten by society as often as it is learned, between the labor of the free man and that of the slave. Economic fear may secure the minimum effort needed to escape economic penalties. What, however, has made progress possible in the past, and what, it may be suggested, matters to the world to-day, is not the bare minimum which is required to avoid actual want, but the capacity of men to bring to bear upon their tasks a degree of energy, which, while it can be stimulated by economic incentives, yields results far in excess of any which are necessary merely to avoid the extremes of hunger or destitution. That capacity is a matter of training, tradition and habit, at least as much as of pecuniary stimulus, and the ability of a professional association representing the public opinion of a group of workers to raise it is, therefore, considerable. Once industry has been liberated from its subservience to the interests of the functionless property-owner, it is in this sphere that trade unions may be expected increasingly to find their function. Its importance both for the general interests of the community and for the special interests of particular groups of workers can hardly be exaggerated. Technical knowledge and managerial skill are likely to be available as readily for a committee appointed by the workers in an industry as for a committee appointed, as now, by the shareholders. But it is more and more evident to-day that the crux of the economic situation is not {160} the technical deficiencies of industrial organization, but the growing inability of those who direct industry to command the active good will of the _personnel_. Their co-operation is promised by the conversion of industry into a profession serving the public, and promised, as far as can be judged, by that alone. Nor is the assumption of the new and often disagreeable obligations of internal discipline and public responsibility one which trade unionism can afford, once the change is accomplished, to shirk, however alien they may be to its present traditions. For ultimately, if by slow degrees, power follows the ability to wield it; authority goes with function. The workers cannot have it both ways. They must choose whether to assume the responsibility for industrial discipline and become free, or to repudiate it and continue to be serfs. If, organized as professional bodies, they can provide a more effective service than that which is now, with increasing difficulty, extorted by the agents of capital, they will have made good their hold upon the future. If they cannot, they will remain among the less calculable instruments of production which many of them are to-day. The instinct of mankind warns it against accepting at their face value spiritual demands which cannot justify themselves by practical achievements. And the road along which the organized workers, like any other class, must climb to power, starts from the provision of a more effective economic service than their masters, as their grip upon industry becomes increasingly vacillating and uncertain, are able to supply. {161} X THE POSITION OF THE BRAIN WORKER The conversion of industry into a profession will involve at least as great a change in the position of the management as in that of the manual workers. As each industry is organized for the performance of function, the employer will cease to be a profit maker and become what, in so far as he holds his position by a reputable title, he already is, one workman among others. In some industries, where the manager is a capitalist as well, the alteration may take place through such a limitation of his interest as a capitalist as it has been proposed by employers and workers to introduce into the building industry. In others, where the whole work of administration rests on the shoulders of salaried managers, it has already in part been carried out. The economic conditions of this change have, indeed, been prepared by the separation of ownership from management, and by the growth of an intellectual proletariat to whom the scientific and managerial work of industry is increasingly intrusted. The concentration of businesses, the elaboration of organization, and the developments springing from the application of science to industry have resulted in the multiplication of a body of industrial brain workers who make the old classifications into "employers and workmen," which is still current in common speech, an absurdly {162} misleading description of the industrial system as it exists to-day. To complete the transformation all that is needed is that this new class of officials, who fifty years ago were almost unknown, should recognize that they, like the manual workers, are the victims of the domination of property, and that both professional pride and economic interest require that they should throw in their lot with the rest of those who are engaged in constructive work. Their position to-day is often, indeed, very far from being a happy one. Many of them, like some mine managers, are miserably paid. Their tenure of their posts is sometimes highly insecure. Their opportunities for promotion may be few, and distributed with a singular capriciousness. They see the prizes of industry awarded by favoritism, or by the nepotism which results in the head of a business unloading upon it a family of sons whom it would be economical to pay to keep out of it, and which, indignantly denounced on the rare occasions on which it occurs in the public service, is so much the rule in private industry that no one even questions its propriety. During the war they have found that, while the organized workers have secured advances, their own salaries have often remained almost stationary, because they have been too genteel to take part in trade unionism, and that to-day they are sometimes paid less than the men for whose work they are supposed to be responsible. Regarded by the workmen as the hangers-on of the masters, and by their employers as one section among the rest of the "hands," they have the odium of capitalism without its power or its profits. {163} From the conversion of industry into a profession those who at present do its intellectual work have as much to gain as the manual workers. For the principle of function, for which we have pleaded as the basis of industrial organization, supplies the only intelligible standard by which the powers and duties of the different groups engaged in industry can be determined. At the present time no such standard exists. The social order of the pre-industrial era, of which faint traces have survived in the forms of academic organization, was marked by a careful grading of the successive stages in the progress from apprentice to master, each of which was distinguished by clearly defined rights and duties, varying from grade to grade and together forming a hierarchy of functions. The industrial system which developed in the course of the nineteenth century did not admit any principle of organization other than the convenience of the individual, who by enterprise, skill, good fortune, unscrupulous energy or mere nepotism, happened at any moment to be in a position to wield economic authority. His powers were what he could exercise; his rights were what at any time he could assert. The Lancashire mill-owner of the fifties was, like the Cyclops, a law unto himself. Hence, since subordination and discipline are indispensable in any complex undertaking, the subordination which emerged in industry was that of servant to master, and the discipline such as economic strength could impose upon economic weakness. The alternative to the allocation of power by the struggle of individuals for self-aggrandizement is its {164} allocation according to function, that each group in the complex process of production should wield so much authority as, and no more authority than, is needed to enable it to perform the special duties for which it is responsible. An organization of industry based on this principle does not imply the merging of specialized economic functions in an undifferentiated industrial democracy, or the obliteration of the brain workers beneath the sheer mass of artisans and laborers. But it is incompatible with the unlimited exercise of economic power by any class or individual. It would have as its fundamental rule that the only powers which a man can exercise are those conferred upon him in virtue of his office. There would be subordination. But it would be profoundly different from that which exists to-day. For it would not be the subordination of one man to another, but of all men to the purpose for which industry is carried on. There would be authority. But it would not be the authority of the individual who imposes rules in virtue of his economic power for the attainment of his economic advantage. It would be the authority springing from the necessity of combining different duties to attain a common end. There would be discipline. But it would be the discipline involved in pursuing that end, not the discipline enforced upon one man for the convenience or profit of another. Under such an organization of industry the brain worker might expect, as never before, to come to his own. He would be estimated and promoted by his capacity, not by his means. He would be less likely than at present to find doors closed to him because of poverty. His {165} judges would be his colleagues, not an owner of property intent on dividends. He would not suffer from the perversion of values which rates the talent and energy by which wealth is created lower than the possession of property, which is at best their pensioner and at worst the spend-thrift of what intelligence has produced. In a society organized for the encouragement of creative activity those who are esteemed most highly will be those who create, as in a world organized for enjoyment they are those who own. Such considerations are too general and abstract to carry conviction. Greater concreteness may be given them by comparing the present position of mine-managers with that which they would occupy were effect given to Mr. Justice Sankey's scheme for the nationalization of the Coal Industry. A body of technicians who are weighing the probable effects of such a reorganization will naturally consider them in relation both to their own professional prospects and to the efficiency of the service of which they are the working heads. They will properly take into account questions of salaries, pensions, security of status and promotion. At the same time they will wish to be satisfied as to points which, though not less important, are less easily defined. Under which system, private or public ownership, will they have most personal discretion or authority over the conduct of matters within their professional competence? Under which will they have the best guarantees that their special knowledge will carry due weight, and that, when handling matters of art, they will not be overridden or obstructed by amateurs? {166} As far as the specific case of the Coal Industry is concerned the question of security and salaries need hardly be discussed. The greatest admirer of the present system would not argue that security of status is among the advantages which it offers to its employees. It is notorious that in some districts, at least, managers are liable to be dismissed, however professionally competent they may be, if they express in public views which are not approved by the directors of their company. Indeed, the criticism which is normally made on the public services, and made not wholly without reason, is that the security which they offer is excessive. On the question of salaries rather more than one-half of the colliery companies of Great Britain themselves supplied figures to the Coal Industry Commission.[1] If their returns may be trusted, it would appear that mine-managers are paid, as a class, salaries the parsimony of which is the more surprising in view of the emphasis laid, and quite properly laid, by the mine-owners on the managers' responsibilities. The service of the State does not normally offer, and ought not to offer, financial prizes comparable with those of private industry. But it is improbable, had the mines been its property during {167} the last ten years, that more than one-half the managers would have been in receipt of salaries of under £301 per year, and of less than £500 in 1919, by which time prices had more than doubled, and the aggregate profits of the mine-owners (of which the greater part was, however, taken by the State in taxation) had amounted in five years to £160,000,000. It would be misleading to suggest that the salaries paid to mine-managers are typical of private industry, nor need it be denied that the probable effect of turning an industry into a public service would be to reduce the size of the largest prizes at present offered. What is to be expected is that the lower and medium salaries would be raised, and the largest somewhat diminished. It is hardly to be denied, at any rate, that the majority of brain workers in industry have nothing to fear on financial grounds from such a change as is proposed by Mr. Justice Sankey. Under the normal organization of industry, profits, it cannot be too often insisted, do not go to them but to shareholders. There does not appear to be any reason to suppose that the salaries of managers in the mines making more than 5/- profit a ton were any larger than those making under 3/-. The financial aspect of the change is not, however, the only point which a group of managers or technicians have to consider. They have also to weigh its effect on their professional status. Will they have as much freedom, initiative and authority in the service of the community as under private ownership? How that question is answered depends upon the form given to the administrative system through which a public service is {168} conducted. It is possible to conceive an arrangement under which the life of a mine-manager would be made a burden to him by perpetual recalcitrance on the part of the men at the pit for which he is responsible. It is possible to conceive one under which he would be hampered to the point of paralysis by irritating interference from a bureaucracy at headquarters. In the past some managers of "co-operative workshops" suffered, it would seem, from the former: many officers of Employment Exchanges are the victims, unless common rumor is misleading, of the latter. It is quite legitimate, indeed it is indispensable, that these dangers should be emphasized. The problem of reorganizing industry is, as has been said above, a problem of constitution making. It is likely to be handled successfully only if the defects to which different types of constitutional machinery are likely to be liable are pointed out in advance. Once, however, these dangers are realized, to devise precautions against them appears to be a comparatively simple matter. If Mr. Justice Sankey's proposals be taken as a concrete example of the position which would be occupied by the managers in a nationalized industry, it will be seen that they do not involve either of the two dangers which are pointed out above. The manager will, it is true, work with a Local Mining Council or pit committee, which is to "meet fortnightly, or oftener if need be, to advise the manager on all questions concerning the direction and safety of the mine," and "if the manager refuses to take the advice of the Local Mining Council on any question concerning the safety and health of the mine, such question shall be referred to {169} the District Mining Council." It is true also that, once such a Local Mining Council is formally established, the manager will find it necessary to win its confidence, to lead by persuasion, not by mere driving, to establish, in short, the same relationships of comradeship and good will as ought to exist between the colleagues in any common undertaking. But in all this there is nothing to undermine his authority, unless "authority" be understood to mean an arbitrary power which no man is fit to exercise, and which few men, in their sober moments, would claim. The manager will be appointed by, and responsible to, not the men whose work he supervises, but the District Mining Council, which controls all the pits in a district, and on that council he will be represented. Nor will he be at the mercy of a distant "clerkocracy," overwhelming him with circulars and overriding his expert knowledge with impracticable mandates devised in London. The very kernel of the schemes advanced both by Justice Sankey and by the Miners' Federation is decentralized administration within the framework of a national system. There is no question of "managing the industry from Whitehall." The characteristics of different coal-fields vary so widely that reliance on local knowledge and experience are essential, and it is to local knowledge and experience that it is proposed to intrust the administration of the industry. The constitution which is recommended is, in short, not "Unitary" but "Federal." There will be a division of functions and power between central authorities and district authorities. The former will lay down general rules as to those matters which must necessarily {170} be dealt with on a national basis. The latter will administer the industry within their own districts, and, as long as they comply with those rules and provide their quota of coal, will possess local autonomy and will follow the method of working the pits which they think best suited to local conditions. Thus interpreted, public ownership does not appear to confront the brain worker with the danger of unintelligent interference with his special technique, of which he is, quite naturally, apprehensive. It offers him, indeed, far larger opportunities of professional development than are open to all but a favored few to-day, when the considerations of productive efficiency, which it is his special _métier_ to promote, are liable to be overridden by short-sighted financial interests operating through the pressure of a Board of Directors who desire to show an immediate profit to their shareholders, and who, to obtain it, will "cream" the pit, or work it in a way other than considerations of technical efficiency would dictate. And the interest of the community in securing that the manager's professional skill is liberated for the service of the public, is as great as his own. For the economic developments of the last thirty years have made the managerial and technical _personnel_ of industry the repositories of public responsibilities of quite incalculable importance, which, with the best will in the world, they can hardly at present discharge. The most salient characteristic of modern industrial organization is that production is carried on under the general direction of business men, who do not themselves necessarily know anything of productive processes. "Business" {171} and "industry" tend to an increasing extent to form two compartments, which, though united within the same economic system, employ different types of _personnel_, evoke different qualities and recognize different standards of efficiency and workmanship. The technical and managerial staff of industry is, of course, as amenable as other men to economic incentives. But their special work is production, not finance; and, provided they are not smarting under a sense of economic injustice, they want, like most workmen, to "see the job done properly." The business men who ultimately control industry are concerned with the promotion and capitalization of companies, with competitive selling and the advertisement of wares, the control of markets, the securing of special advantages, and the arrangement of pools, combines and monopolies. They are preoccupied, in fact, with financial results, and are interested in the actual making of goods only in so far as financial results accrue from it. The change in organization which has, to a considerable degree, specialized the spheres of business and management is comparable in its importance to that which separated business and labor a century and a half ago. It is specially momentous for the consumer. As long as the functions of manager, technician and capitalist were combined, as in the classical era of the factory system, in the single person of "the employer," it was not unreasonable to assume that profits and productive efficiency ran similarly together. In such circumstances the ingenuity with which economists proved {172} that, in obedience to "the law of substitution," he would choose the most economical process, machine, or type of organization, wore a certain plausibility. True, the employer might, even so, adulterate his goods or exploit the labor of a helpless class of workers. But as long as the person directing industry was himself primarily a manager, he could hardly have the training, ability or time, even if he had the inclination, to concentrate special attention on financial gains unconnected with, or opposed to, progress in the arts of production, and there was some justification for the conventional picture which represented "the manufacturer" as the guardian of the interests of the consumer. With the drawing apart of the financial and technical departments of industry--with the separation of "business" from "production"--the link which bound profits to productive efficiency is tending to be snapped. There are more ways than formerly of securing the former without achieving the latter; and when it is pleaded that the interests of the captain of industry stimulate the adoption of the most "economical" methods and thus secure industrial progress, it is necessary to ask "economical for whom"? Though the organization of industry which is most efficient, in the sense of offering the consumer the best service at the lowest real cost, may be that which is most profitable to the firm, it is also true that profits are constantly made in ways which have nothing to do with efficient production, and which sometimes, indeed, impede it. The manner in which "business" may find that the methods which pay itself best are those which a truly {173} scientific "management" would condemn may be illustrated by three examples. In the first place, the whole mass of profits which are obtained by the adroit capitalization of a new business, or the reconstruction of one which already exists, have hardly any connection with production at all. When, for instance, a Lancashire cotton mill capitalized at £100,000 is bought by a London syndicate which re-floats it with a capital of £500,000--not at all an extravagant case--what exactly has happened? In many cases the equipment of the mill for production remains, after the process, what it was before it. It is, however, valued at a different figure, because it is anticipated that the product of the mill will sell at a price which will pay a reasonable profit not only upon the lower, but upon the higher, capitalization. If the apparent state of the market and prospects of the industry are such that the public can be induced to believe this, the promoters of the reconstruction find it worth while to recapitalize the mill on the new basis. They make their profit not as manufacturers, but as financiers. They do not in any way add to the productive efficiency of the firm, but they acquire shares which will entitle them to an increased return. Normally, if the market is favorable, they part with the greater number of them as soon as they are acquired. But, whether they do so or not, what has occurred is a process by which the business element in industry obtains the right to a larger share of the product, without in any way increasing the efficiency of the service which is offered to the consumer. Other examples of the manner in which the control of {174} production by "business" cuts across the line of economic progress are the wastes of competitive industry and the profits of monopoly. It is well known that the price paid by the consumer includes marketing costs, which to a varying, but to a large, extent are expenses not of supplying the goods, but of supplying them under conditions involving the expenses of advertisement and competitive distribution. For the individual firm such expenses, which enable it to absorb part of a rival's trade, may be an economy: to the consumer of milk or coal--to take two flagrant instances--they are pure loss. Nor, as is sometimes assumed, are such wastes confined to distribution. Technical reasons are stated by railway managers to make desirable a unification of railway administration and by mining experts of mines. But, up to the war, business considerations maintained the expensive system under which each railway company was operated as a separate system, and still prevent collieries, even collieries in the same district, from being administered as parts of a single organization. Pits are drowned out by water, because companies cannot agree to apportion between them the costs of a common drainage system; materials are bought, and products sold, separately, because collieries will not combine; small coal is left in to the amount of millions of tons because the most economical and technically efficient working of the seams is not necessarily that which yields the largest profit to the business men who control production. In this instance the wide differences in economic strength which exist between different mines discourage the unification which is economically desirable; naturally the {175} directors of a company which owns "a good thing" do not desire to merge interests with a company working coal that is poor in quality or expensive to mine. When, as increasingly happens in other industries, competitive wastes, or some of them, are eliminated by combination, there is a genuine advance in technical efficiency, which must be set to the credit of business motives. In that event, however, the divergence between business interests and those of the consumers is merely pushed one stage further forward; it arises, of course, over the question of prices. If any one is disposed to think that this picture of the economic waste which accompanies the domination of production by business interests is overdrawn, he may be invited to consider the criticisms upon the system passed by the "efficiency engineers," who are increasingly being called upon to advise as to industrial organization and equipment. "The higher officers of the corporation," writes Mr. H. L. Gantt of a Public Utility Company established in America during the war, "have all without exception been men of the 'business' type of mind, who have made their success through financiering, buying, selling, etc.... As a matter of fact it is well known that our industrial system has not measured up as we had expected.... _The reason for its falling short is undoubtedly that the men directing it had been trained in a business system operated for profits, and did not understand one operated solely for production_. This is no criticism of the men as individuals; they simply did not know the job, and, what is worse, they did not know that they did not know it." {176} In so far, then, as "Business" and "Management" are separated, the latter being employed under the direction of the former, it cannot be assumed that the direction of industry is in the hands of persons whose primary concern is productive efficiency. That a considerable degree of efficiency will result incidentally from the pursuit of business profits is not, of course, denied. What seems to be true, however, is that the main interest of those directing an industry which has reached this stage of development is given to financial strategy and the control of markets, because the gains which these activities offer are normally so much larger than those accruing from the mere improvement of the processes of production. It is evident, however, that it is precisely that improvement which is the main interest of the consumer. He may tolerate large profits as long as they are thought to be the symbol of efficient production. But what he is concerned with is the supply of goods, not the value of shares, and when profits appear to be made, not by efficient production, but by skilful financiering or shrewd commercial tactics, they no longer appear meritorious. If, in disgust at what he has learned to call "profiteering," the consumer seeks an alternative to a system under which product is controlled by "Business," he can hardly find it except by making an ally of the managerial and technical _personnel_ of industry. They organize the service which he requires; they are relatively little implicated, either by material interest or by psychological bias, in the financial methods which he distrusts; they often find the control of their professions by business men who are {177} primarily financiers irritating in the obstruction which it offers to technical efficiency, as well as sharp and close-fisted in the treatment of salaries. Both on public and professional grounds they belong to a group which ought to take the initiative in promoting a partnership between the producers and the public. They can offer the community the scientific knowledge and specialized ability which is the most important condition of progress in the arts of production. It can offer them a more secure and dignified status, larger opportunities for the exercise of their special talents, and the consciousness that they are giving the best of their work and their lives, not to enriching a handful of uninspiring, if innocuous, shareholders, but to the service of the great body of their fellow-countrymen. If the last advantage be dismissed as a phrase--if medical officers of health, directors of education, directors of the co-operative wholesale be assumed to be quite uninfluenced by any consciousness of social service--the first two, at any rate, remain. And they are considerable. It is this gradual disengagement of managerial technique from financial interests which would appear the probable line along which "the employer" of the future will develop. The substitution throughout industry of fixed salaries for fluctuating profits would, in itself, deprive his position of half the humiliating atmosphere of predatory enterprise which embarrasses to-day any man of honor who finds himself, when he has been paid for his services, in possession of a surplus for which there is no assignable reason. Nor, once large incomes from profits have been extinguished, need his salary be large, {178} as incomes are reckoned to-day. It is said that among the barbarians, where wealth is still measured by cattle, great chiefs are described as hundred-cow men. The manager of a great enterprise who is paid $400,000 a year, might similarly be described as a hundred-family man, since he receives the income of a hundred families. It is true that special talent is worth any price, and that a payment of $400,000 a year to the head of a business with a turnover of millions is economically a bagatelle. But economic considerations are not the only considerations. There is also "the point of honor." And the truth is that these hundred-family salaries are ungentlemanly. When really important issues are at stake every one realizes that no decent man can stand out for his price. A general does not haggle with his government for the precise pecuniary equivalent of his contribution to victory. A sentry who gives the alarm to a sleeping battalion does not spend next day collecting the capital value of the lives he has saved; he is paid 1/- a day and is lucky if he gets it. The commander of a ship does not cram himself and his belongings into the boats and leave the crew to scramble out of the wreck as best they can; by the tradition of the service he is the last man to leave. There is no reason why the public should insult manufacturers and men of business by treating them as though they were more thick-skinned than generals and more extravagant than privates. To say that they are worth a good deal more than even the exorbitant salaries which a few of them get is often true. But it is beside the point. No one has any business to {179} expect to be paid "what he is worth," for what he is worth is a matter between his own soul and God. What he has a right to demand, and what it concerns his fellow-men to see that he gets, is enough to enable him to perform his work. When industry is organized on a basis of function, that, and no more than that, is what he will be paid. To do the managers of industry justice, this whining for more money is a vice to which they (as distinct from their shareholders) are not particularly prone. There is no reason why they should be. If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam. [1] The Coal Mines Department supplied the following figures to the Coal Industry Commission (Vol. III, App. 66). They relate to 57 per cent. of the collieries of the United Kingdom. Salary, including bonus and Number of Managers value of house and coal 1913 1919 £100 or less ............................... 4 2 £101 to £200 ............................... 134 3 £201 to £300 ............................... 280 29 £301 to £400 ............................... 161 251 £401 to £500 ............................... 321 213 £501 to £600 ............................... 57 146 £601 and over .............................. 50 152 {180} XI PORRO UNUM NECESSARIUM So the organization of society on the basis of function, instead of on that of rights, implies three things. It means, first, that proprietary rights shall be maintained when they are accompanied by the performance of service and abolished when they are not. It means, second, that the producers shall stand in a direct relation to the community for whom production is carried on, so that their responsibility to it may be obvious and unmistakable, not lost, as at present, through their immediate subordination to shareholders whose interest is not service but gain. It means, in the third place, that the obligation for the maintenance of the service shall rest upon the professional organization of those who perform it, and that, subject to the supervision and criticism of the consumer, those organizations shall exercise so much voice in the government of industry as may be needed to secure that the obligation is discharged. It is obvious, indeed, that no change of system or machinery can avert those causes of social _malaise_ which consist in the egotism, greed, or quarrelsomeness of human nature. What it can do is to create an environment in which those are not the qualities which are encouraged. It cannot secure that men live up to their principles. What it can do is to establish their social order upon principles to which, if they please, they can {181} live up and not live down. It cannot control their actions. It can offer them an end on which to fix their minds. And, as their minds are, so, in the long run and with exceptions, their practical activity will be. The first condition of the right organization of industry is, then, the intellectual conversion which, in their distrust of principles, Englishmen are disposed to place last or to omit altogether. It is that emphasis should be transferred from the opportunities which it offers individuals to the social functions which it performs; that they should be clear as to its end and should judge it by reference to that end, not by incidental consequences which are foreign to it, however brilliant or alluring those consequences may be. What gives its meaning to any activity which is not purely automatic is its purpose. It is because the purpose of industry, which is the conquest of nature for the service of man, is neither adequately expressed in its organization nor present to the minds of those engaged in it, because it is not regarded as a function but as an opportunity for personal gain or advancement or display, that the economic life of modern societies is in a perpetual state of morbid irritation. If the conditions which produce that unnatural tension are to be removed, it can only be effected by the growth of a habit of mind which will approach questions of economic organization from the standpoint of the purpose which it exists to serve, and which will apply to it something of the spirit expressed by Bacon when he said that the work of man ought to be carried on "for the glory of God and the relief of men's estate." {182} Viewed from that angle issues which are insoluble when treated on the basis of rights may be found more susceptible of reasonable treatment. For a purpose, is, in the first place a principle of limitation. It determines the end for which, and therefore the limits within which, an activity is to be carried on. It divided what is worth doing from what is not, and settles the scale upon which what is worth doing ought to be done. It is in the second place, a principle of unity, because it supplies a common end to which efforts can be directed, and submits interests, which would otherwise conflict, to the judgment of an over-ruling object. It is, in the third place, a principle of apportionment or distribution. It assigns to the different parties of groups engaged in a common undertaking the place which they are to occupy in carrying it out. Thus it establishes order, not upon chance or power, but upon a principle, and bases remuneration not upon what men can with good fortune snatch for themselves nor upon what, if unlucky, they can be induced to accept, but upon what is appropriate to their function, no more and no less, so that those who perform no function receive no payment, and those who contribute to the common end receive honourable payment for honourable service. Frate, la nostra volontà quieta Virtù di carità, che fa volerne Sol quel ch'avemo, e d'altro non ci asseta. Si disiassimo esse più superne, Foran discordi li nostri disiri Dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne. * * * * * {183} Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse Tenersi dentro alla divina vogli, Per ch'una fansi nostre vogli e stesse. * * * * * Chiaro mi fu allor com' ogni dove In Cielo è paradiso, e sì la grazia Del sommo ben d'un modo non vi piove. The famous lines in which Piccarda explains to Dante the order of Paradise are a description of a complex and multiform society which is united by overmastering devotion to a common end. By that end all stations are assigned and all activities are valued. The parts derive their quality from their place in the system, and are so permeated by the unity which they express that they themselves are glad to be forgotten, as the ribs of an arch carry the eye from the floor from which they spring to the vault in which they meet and interlace. Such a combination of unity and diversity is possible only to a society which subordinates its activities to the principle of purpose. For what that principle offers is not merely a standard for determining the relations of different classes and groups of producers, but a scale of moral values. Above all, it assigns to economic activity itself its proper place as the servant, not the master, of society. The burden of our civilization is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is ill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by embittered disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the provision of the {184} material means of existence, is fit to occupy. Like a hypochondriac who is so absorbed in the processes of his own digestion that he goes to his grave before he has begun to live, industrialized communities neglect the very objects for which it is worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with the means by which riches can be acquired. That obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears to-day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which it is concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer. Society will not solve the particular problems of industry which afflict it, until that poison is expelled, and it has learned to see industry itself in the right perspective. If it is to do that, it must rearrange its scale of values. It must regard economic interests as one element in life, not as the whole of life. It must persuade its members to renounce the opportunity of gains which accrue without any corresponding service, because the struggle for them keeps the whole community in a fever. It must so organize industry that the instrumental character of economic activity is emphasized by its subordination to the social purpose for which it is carried on. {185} INDEX Abolition of private ownership, 147 Absenteeism, 152 Absolute rights, 50-51 Absolutism in industry, 144 Acquisitive societies, 29-32 Administration, 115-116 Allocation of power, 163-164 American Constitution, 18-19, 52 Annuities, 74 Arbitration, compulsory, 101 Bacon, quoted, 58, 181 Bentham, 16, 52, 55 Brain workers, position of the, 161-171 British Coal Industry, reorganization of, 166-171 Building Guilds, 103 Building Trade Report, 106-110 Bureaucracy, 116, 149 Capitalism, and production, 173-176; downward thrust of, 154; in America, 101; losing control, 141-142, 148 Cecil, Lord Hugh, 23, 58 Cecil, Robert, 59 Cecil, William, 59 Church and State, 10-13 Coal Industry Commission, 71, 126, 137, 143; report of, 166-167 Coal Mines Committees, 152 Combinations, 125, 130 Committee on Trusts, 153 Competition, 27 Compulsory arbitration, 101 Confiscations, 103 Conservatism, the New, 28 Consumer, exploitation of the, 133-134 Co-operative Movement and cost of coal, 125 Dante, quoted, 182-183 Death Duties, 22 Democratic control, 116 Dickenson, Sir Arthur Lowes, 71 Directorate control, 129 Duckham, Sir Arthur, 119 Duke of Wellington, quoted, 123 Economic confusion, cause of, 131-132 Economic discontent, increase of, 5 Economic egotism, 27, Economic expansion, 9 Efficiency, the condition of, 139-160; through _Esprit de Corps_, 149-150 Employer, waning power of the, 140 England, and natural right, 15-16; and France contrasted, 16-17; Industrialism in, 44-47; Liberal Movement in, 18; over-crowding of population in, 37; proprietary rights in, 64 _et seq._ English landlordism, 22-23 Englishmen, characteristics of, 1-3; vanity of, 129 English Revolution of 1688, 52 Esch-Cummins Act, 118 Expediency, rule of, 16 Feudalism, 18 Fixed salaries, 177-178 Forced labor, 102 France, social and industrial conditions in, 16-17; Feudalism in, 18; Revolution in, 15, 65, 69 French Revolution, 15, 65, 69 Function, definition of, 8; as a basis for remuneration, 41-42; as a basis of social reorganization, 180; Function and Freedom, 7 Functional Society, 29, 84-90 Functionless property-owners, 79, 86; abolishment of, 87-88; an expensive luxury, 87 Gainford, Lord, quoted, 26, 111 Gantt, H. L., 175 Government control in war time, 25-26 Ground-rents, 89-90, 91 Hobson, Mr., 63 "Hundred-Family Man," 178 Imperial Tobacco Company, 116 Incomes, 41 Income Tax, 22 Income without service, 68 Individualism, 48-49 Individual rights, 9 Individual rights _vs._ social functions, 27 Industrial problems, 7 Industrial reorganization, 151, 155 Industrial revolution, 9 Industrial societies, 9 Industrial warfare, cause of, and remedy for, 40-42 Industrialism, 18; a poison, 184; compared to Militarism, 44-46; exaggerated estimate of its importance, 45-46; failure of present system, 139-141; nemesis of, 33-51; spread of, 30; tendency of, 31-32 Industry, and a profession, 94, 97; as a profession, 91 _et seq._, 125-126; deficiencies of, 147; definition of, 6; how private control of may be terminated, 103-104; and the advantages of such a change, 106; Building Trades' Plan for, 108, 111; motives in, 155-159; nationalization of, 104, 114-118; present organization of intolerable, 129; purpose of, 8, 46, 181; right organization of, 6-7; the means not the end, 46-47 Inheritance taxes, 90 Insurance, 74 Joint control, 111-112 Joint-stock companies, 66 Joint-stock organizations, 97 Labor, absolute rights of, 28; and capital, 98-100, 108; compulsory, 100; control of breaking down, 139 _et seq._; degradation of, 35; forced, 102 League of Nations, 101 Liberal Movement, 18 Locke, 14, 52, 55 Management divorced from ownership, 112-113 Mann, Sir John, 126 Militarism, 44-45 Mill, quoted, 89 Mine managers, position of, 162, 166-168 Mining royalties, 23-24, 88 Nationalism, 48-49 Nationalization, 114, 117; of the Coal Industry, 115, 165, 168-169 Natural right in France, 15; in England, 15-16; doctrine of, 21 Officials, position under the present economic system, 162 Old industrial order a failure, 139; its effect on the consumer, 144 Organization, for public service instead of private gains, 127 Over-centralization, 121 Ownership, a new system of, 112-114 Pensioners, 34 Poverty a symptom of social disorder, 5 Private enterprise and public ownership, 118-120 Private ownership, 120; abolition of, 147; of industrial capital, 105-106 Private rights and public welfare, 14-15 Privileges, 24 Producer, obligation of the, 127-128; responsibility of, 128 Production, increased, 5; large scale and small scale, 87; misdirection of, 37-39; why not increased, 136 Productivity, 4, 46 Professional Spirit, the, 149-150 Profits, and production, 173-176; division of, 133 Proletariat, 19, 65 Property, absolute rights of, 52, 80; and creative work, 52 _et seq._; classification of, 63, 64; complexity of, 75; functionless, 76-77, 81; in land, 56-60; in rights and royalties, 62; minority ownership of, 79; most ambiguous of categories, 53-54; passive ownership of, 62; private, 70-72; protection of, 78-70; rights, 50-51; security in, 72-73; socialist fallacy regarding, 86 Proudhon, 54 Publicity of costs and profits, 85, 123-124, 126, 132 Redmayne, Sir Richard, 149 Reformation the, 10-13; effect on society, 12-14 Reform Bill of 1832, 69 Religion, 10; changes in, 11-12 Report of the United States Industrial Commission, 1916, 128-129 Riches, meaning of, 98 Rights of Man, French Declaration of, the, 16, 52 Rights, and Functions, 8-19; doctrine of, 21 _et seq._, 43-44; without functions, 61 Rights of the shareholder, 75 Royalties, 23-24, 62 Royalties, and property, 70; from coal mining properties, 88; a tax upon the industry of others, 89 Sankey, Justice, 115, 117, 143, 165, 167, 168, 169 Security of income, 73-75 Service as a basis of remuneration, 25, 41-42, 85, 133 Shareholders, 91-92 Shells, cost of making, 124-125 Smith, Adam, 15, 52, 95 Social inequality, 36-37 Social reorganizations, schemes for, 5 Social war, 40 Socialism, 53 Society, duality of modern, 135 Society, functional organization of, 52 State management, 116, 117 Steel Corporation, 116 Supervision from within, 151 Syndicalism, 130 Taxation, 22 Trusts, Report on, 23 United States, transformation in, 65 Utilitarians, the English, 17 Utility, 16-17 "Vicious Circle," the, 43, 123-138 Voltaire, quoted, 55 Wages and costs, 131 Wages and profits, 78 Wealth, acquisition of, 20 _et seq._; as foundation for public esteem, 35-36; distribution of on basis of function, 77; fallacy of increased, 42-45; how to increase output of, 147; inequality of, 37-38; limitation of, 36-37; output of, 37-38; production and consumption of--a contrast, 77-78; waste of, 37-39 Whitley Councils, 110 Women self-supporting, 74 Worker and Spender, 77-78 Workers, collective responsibility of, 154 Workers' control, 128 Workmen, as "hands," 152; present independence of, 145-146; responsibility of destroyed, 153-154; servants of shareholders, 136-137; treatment of, 152-153 
16964	----	+------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: Some very obvious typos | | were corrected in this text. For a list please | | see the bottom of the document. | +------------------------------------------------+ WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION Charles E. Adams, Chairman Thomas G. Fitzsimons Myrta L. Jones Bascom Little Victor W. Sincere Arthur D. Baldwin, Secretary James R. Garfield, Counsel Allen T. Burns, Director THE EDUCATION SURVEY Leonard P. Ayres, Director CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION BY R.R. LUTZ THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION CLEVELAND · OHIO 1916 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION WM. F. FELL CO. PRINTERS PHILADELPHIA FOREWORD This summary volume, entitled "Wage Earning and Education," is one of the 25 sections of the report of the Education Survey of Cleveland conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1915 and 1916. Copies of all the publications may be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. They may also be obtained from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. A complete list will be found in the back of this volume, together with prices. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Foreword 5 List of Tables 10 List of Diagrams 12 CHAPTER I. THE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION SURVEY 13 Types of occupations studied 13 The Survey staff and methods of work 14 II. FORECASTING FUTURE PROBABILITIES 18 The popular concept of industrial education 19 The importance of relative numbers 20 A constructive program must fit the facts 23 An actuarial basis for industrial education 24 III. THE WAGE EARNERS OF CLEVELAND 25 IV. THE FUTURE WAGE EARNERS OF CLEVELAND 29 The public schools 29 Ages of pupils 32 Education at the time of leaving school 34 V. INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR BOYS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 38 What the boys in school will do 40 Organization and costs 44 What the elementary schools can do 45 VI. THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 47 Specialized training not practicable 48 A general industrial course 49 Industrial mathematics 52 Mechanical Drawing 54 Industrial science 55 Shop work 56 Vocational information 58 VII. TRADE TRAINING DURING THE LAST YEARS IN SCHOOL 60 The technical high schools 62 A two-year trade course 66 VIII. TRADE-PREPARATORY AND TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING FOR BOYS AND MEN AT WORK 69 Continuation training from 15 to 18 74 The technical night schools 76 A combined program of continuation and trade-extension training 80 IX. VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS 83 Differentiation in the junior high school 86 Specialized training for the sewing trades 88 Other occupations 90 X. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 92 The work of the vocational counselor 92 The Girls' Vocation Bureau 94 XI. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 97 SUMMARIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS XII. BOYS AND GIRLS IN COMMERCIAL WORK 101 A general view of commercial work 106 Bookkeeping 108 Stenography 108 Clerks' positions 109 Wages and regularity of employment 110 The problem of training 111 XIII. DEPARTMENT STORE OCCUPATIONS 115 Department stores 115 Neighborhood stores 116 Five and ten cent stores 117 Wages 118 Regularity of employment 122 Opportunities for advancement 123 The problem of training 124 Character of the instruction 129 XIV. THE GARMENT TRADES 131 Characteristics of the working force 132 Earnings 135 Regularity of employment 139 Training and promotion 140 Educational needs 143 Sewing courses in the public schools 145 Elective sewing courses in the junior high school 147 A one year trade course for girls 148 Trade extension training 149 XV. DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY 151 Dressmaking 151 Millinery 153 The problem of training 156 XVI. THE METAL TRADES 158 Foundry and machine shop products 159 Automobile manufacturing 169 Steel works, rolling mills, and related industries 170 XVII. THE BUILDING TRADES 173 Sources of labor supply 173 Apprenticeship 174 Union organization 176 Earnings 176 Hours 178 Regularity of employment 179 Health conditions 179 Opportunities for advancement 180 The problem of training 181 XVIII. RAILROAD AND STREET TRANSPORTATION 187 Railroad transportation 187 Motor and wagon transportation 192 Street railroad transportation 193 XIX. THE PRINTING TRADES 195 The composing room 198 The pressroom 201 The bindery 203 Other occupations 204 The problem of training 206 LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 1. Occupational distribution of the working population of Cleveland 26 2. Nativity of the working population in Cleveland 27 3. Pupils enrolled in the different grades of the public day schools in June, 1915 30 4. Enrollment of high school pupils, second semester, 1914-15 31 5. Ages of pupils enrolled in public elementary, high, and normal schools in June, 1915 33 6. Educational equipment of the children who drop out of the public schools each year, as indicated by the grades from which they leave 35 7. Per cent of total male working population engaged in specified occupations, 1900 and 1910 40 8. Distribution of native born men between the ages of 21 and 45 in the principal occupational groups 41 9. Distribution of third and fourth year students in trade courses in the Cleveland technical high schools, first semester, 1915-16 63 10. Distribution by occupations of Cleveland's technical school graduates 64 11. Time allotment in the apprentice course given by the Warner and Swasey Company, Cleveland 70 12. Course and number enrolled in the technical night schools, January, 1915 77 13. Per cent of total population engaged in gainful occupations during three different age periods 84 14. Number employed in the principal wage earning occupations among each 1,000 women from 16 to 21 years of age 85 15. Per cent of women employees over 18 years of age earning $12 a week and over 120 16. Wages for full-time working week, women's clothing, Cleveland, 1915 139 17. Average wages for full-time working week for similar workers, in men's and women's clothing, Cleveland, 1915 139 18. Proportions and estimated numbers employed in machine tool occupations, 1915 161 19. Average, highest, and lowest earnings, in cents per hour, and per cent employed on piece work and day work, 1915 162 20. Estimated time required to learn machine tool work 164 21. Average earnings per hour in pattern making, molding, core making, blacksmithing, and boiler making 166 22. Estimated number of men engaged in building trades, 1915 174 23. Union regulations as to entering age of apprentice 175 24. Union regulations as to length of apprenticeship period 175 25. Union scale of wages in cents per hour, May 1, 1915 177 26. Usual weekly wages of apprentices in three building trades 178 27. Average daily earnings of job and newspaper composing room workers, 1915 199 28. Average daily earnings of pressroom workers, 1915 202 29. Average daily earnings of bindery workers, 1915 203 30. Average daily earnings in photoengraving, stereotyping, electrotyping, and lithographing occupations, 1915 205 LIST OF DIAGRAMS DIAGRAM PAGE 1. Boys and girls under 18 years of age in office work 103 2. Men and women 18 years of age and over in clerical and administrative work in offices 104 3. Per cent of women earning each class of weekly wages in each of six occupations 119 4. Per cent of salesmen and of men clerical workers in stores, receiving each class of weekly wage 121 5. Per cent of male workers in non-clerical positions in six industries earning $18 per week and over 122 6. Per cent that the average number of women employed during the year is of the highest number employed in each of six industries 123 7. Distribution of 8,337 clothing workers by sex in the principal occupations in the garment industry 134 8. Percentage of women in men's and women's clothing and seven other important women employing industries receiving under $8, $8 to $12, and $12 and over per week 136 9. Percentage of men in men's and women's clothing and seven other manufacturing industries receiving under $18, $18 to $25, and $25 and over per week 138 10. Average number of unemployed among each 100 workers, men's clothing, women's clothing, and fifteen other specified industries 141 11. Percentages of unemployment in each of nine building industries 180 12. Number of men in each 100 in printing and five other industries earning each class of weekly wage 196 13. Number of women in each 100 in printing and six other industries earning each class of weekly wage 198 WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION CHAPTER I THE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION SURVEY The education survey of Cleveland was undertaken in April, 1915, at the invitation of the Cleveland Board of Education and the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, and continued until June, 1916. As a part of the work detailed studies were made of the leading industries of the city for the purpose of determining what measures should be taken by the public school system to prepare young people for wage-earning occupations and to provide supplementary trade instruction for those already in employment. The studies also dealt with all forms of vocational education conducted at that time under public school auspices. TYPES OF OCCUPATIONS STUDIED Separate studies were made of the metal industry, building and construction, printing and publishing, railroad and street transportation, clothing manufacture, department store work, and clerical occupations. The wage-earners in these fields of employment constitute nearly 60 per cent of the total number of persons engaged in gainful occupations and include 95 per cent of the skilled workmen in the city. The survey also gave considerable attention to the various types of semi-skilled work found in the principal industries. Each separate study was assigned to a particular member of the Survey Staff who personally carried on the field investigations and later submitted a report to the director of the survey. Each report was also subjected to careful analysis and criticism from other members of the Survey Staff before it was finally passed upon by the Survey Committee. Mimeographed copies were sent to representatives of the industry and to the superintendent of schools and members of the school board and their criticisms and suggestions were given careful consideration before the Committee and the director of the survey gave their final approval to the publication of the report. The value of the work was greatly enhanced through the ample discussion of the different studies from widely diverse points of view secured in this way. The industrial studies were carried through under the direction of the author of this summary volume. THE SURVEY STAFF AND METHODS OF WORK The reports of the studies relating to vocational education were published in a series of eight separate monograph volumes. The names of the reports and the previous experience in educational and investigational work of each member of the Survey Staff are as follows: "Boys and Girls in Commercial Work"--Bertha M. Stevens; teacher in elementary and secondary schools; agent of Associated Charities; secretary of Consumers' League of Ohio; director of Girls' Bureau of Cleveland; author of "Women's Work in Cleveland"; co-author of "Commercial Work and Training for Girls." "Department Store Occupations"--Iris P. O'Leary; head of manual training department, First Pennsylvania Normal School; head of vocational work for girls and women, New Bedford Industrial School; head of girls' department, Boardman Apprentice Shops, New Haven, Conn.; special investigator of department stores for New York State Factory Investigating Commission; three years' trade experience as employer and employee; author of books on household arts and department stores; Special Assistant for Vocational Education, State Department of Public Instruction, New Jersey. "The Garment Trades" and "Dressmaking and Millinery"--Edna Bryner; teacher in grades, high school, and state normal college; eugenic research worker New Jersey State Hospital; statistical expert in United States Bureau of Labor Investigation of women and child labor; statistical agent United States Post Office Department; Special Agent Russell Sage Foundation. "The Building Trades," and "The Printing Trades"--Frank L. Shaw; teacher in grades and high school; principal of high school; assistant superintendent of schools; superintendent of schools; special agent United States Immigration Commission; special agent United States Census; industrial secretary North American Civic League for Immigrants; author of reports on immigration legislation. "The Metal Trades"--R.R. Lutz; teacher in rural and graded schools; superintendent of schools; secretary of Department of Education of Porto Rico; took part in school surveys of Greenwich, Conn., Bridgeport, Conn., Springfield, Ill., Richmond, Va.; Special Agent Division of Education, Russell Sage Foundation. "Railroad and Street Transportation"--Ralph D. Fleming; special agent and investigator for United States Immigration Commission, the Federal Census of Manufacturers, the United States Tariff Board, the Minimum Wage Commission of Massachusetts, the National Civic Federation, and the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. The work began in April, 1915, and ended in the same month of the following year. Two members of the staff, with one stenographer and a clerk, were employed during the entire period. One member of the staff was employed 11 months, one nine months, one approximately five months, and one two months. The field investigations consisted largely of visits to industrial establishments for the purpose of securing first-hand information as to industrial conditions and the nature and educational content of particular occupations. Over 400 visits of this kind were made by members of the Survey Staff. Many conferences were held with employers and employees with the object of securing their views as to the needs and possibilities of industrial training. The task of tabulating and classifying the data obtained by the individual investigators in their visits to the local industrial establishments involved much time and labor. Although it was not found practicable to maintain complete uniformity in the different inquiries, the members of the staff kept in close touch with each other, so that with respect to the points of principal importance, the results of their investigations are comparable. Practically every recommendation made in the reports was discussed in conferences with school principals and with other members of the teaching force engaged in the teaching of vocational subjects. Throughout the survey the objective held constantly in mind was the formulation of a constructive program of vocational training in the public schools. In outlining the field of inquiry a clear distinction was drawn between those kinds of general education which have a more or less indirect vocational significance, and vocational training for specific occupations in which the controlling purpose is direct preparation for wage-earning. The studies were purposely limited to this latter type of vocational training. The survey did not concern itself with manual training conducted for general educational ends, with the art work of the schools, or with courses in domestic science and household arts. These subjects in the curriculum were dealt with in different sections of the education survey, but were considered as being outside the legitimate field of the vocational survey. CHAPTER II FORECASTING FUTURE PROBABILITIES The industrial education survey of Cleveland differs from other studies conducted elsewhere in that it bases its educational program on a careful study of the probable future occupational distribution of the young people now in school. It does not claim to foretell the specific positions that individual boys and girls will hold when they are adults but it does claim very definitely that our safest guide in foretelling their future vocational distribution is to be found in the official figures of the present occupational census of the city. One of the most familiar and time-worn platitudes of educational speakers and writers is that "The children of today are the citizens of tomorrow." In the field of industrial education it is quite as true that the school children of today are the workers of tomorrow. Moreover, since occupational distributions change but slowly even in these modern times, it is unquestionably true that the boys and girls now studying in the public schools will soon be scattered among the different gainful occupations of Cleveland's industrial, commercial, and professional life in just about the same proportions as their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters are now distributed. The plan of the survey in advocating types of present preparation based on studies of future prospects seems at first sight so obvious a mode of procedure as hardly to warrant extended explanation. This is far from being the case. The reader who proposes to follow the working-out of the principle and to scrutinize the evidence underlying it must be prepared to scan many a detailed table of statistics and to arrive at most unforeseen conclusions. THE POPULAR CONCEPT OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION For many years past the public has given respectful attention to the arguments of the champions of industrial education. There has been general assent to the proposition that the schools should train for and not away from the industrial age in which we live. We have come to think of the carpenter shop, the machine shop, the forge shop, and the cooking room as necessary and desirable adjuncts of the modern school and to our minds these shops have typified industrial education. All of these have come to be almost synonymous with progressive thought and action in public education. Very generally it has been felt that the problems of industrial education were to be solved through the wider extension of these shop facilities in our public schools. When these familiar generalizations are submitted to careful analysis their whole structure begins to totter. In Cleveland about 3,700 boys leave school each year and go to work. They represent various stages of advancement from the 4th grade of the elementary school to the 4th year of the high school. They are scattered through more than 100 school buildings. The problem of industrial education is to give these boys with their differing ages, their widely varied school preparation, and their scattered geographical distribution, the best possible preparation for taking their places in the work-a-day world. They represent every grade of intelligence, every stratum of social and economic life, and it is extremely difficult to bring them together for instructional purposes. They are scattered in little groups through more than a thousand classrooms. THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIVE NUMBERS Now it is possible to foretell with some certainty what these young people will be doing a few years from now. Almost all of them are of American birth and it is certain that in a few years they will be engaged in doing just about the same sorts of work as are now done in the city of Cleveland by adults of American birth. The data of the United States Census of Occupations show us that among every 100 American born men in Cleveland there are eight who are clerks, seven who are machinists, four who are salesmen, and so on through the list of hundreds of occupations. The number of American born men in each 100 engaged in each of the 10 leading sorts of occupations is approximately as follows: Clerks 8 Machinists 7 Salesmen 4 Laborers and porters 4 Retail dealers 4 Draymen, teamsters, etc. 4 Bookkeepers 3 Carpenters 3 Commercial travelers 2 Manufacturers 2 ---- 41 This simple list at once calls into question all the standard assumptions about the extension of industrial education depending on greatly increasing the number of carpenter shops and machine shops in the public schools. The figures show that among each 100 American born men in Cleveland only seven are machinists and only three are carpenters. Clearly we should not be justified in training all the boys in our public schools to enter the machinist's trade or the carpenter's trade when nine out of each 10 will in all probability engage in entirely different sorts of future work. The more the figures of the little table given above are studied, the clearer it appears that our conventional ideas about industrial education need critical scrutiny and careful challenge. These 10 leading occupations include only 41 out of each 100 American born men. Moreover, more than half of these 41 are engaged in mental work rather than in manual work. From these considerations one definite conclusion inevitably emerges. It is that the safest guide for thinking and planning for industrial education is to be found in a study of the occupational distribution of the present adults. From the very outset such a study indicates that the most difficult and important problems which must be met and coped with are not those relating to methods of instruction but rather those of organization and administration. The future carpenters and machinists cannot be taught until we can get them together in fair sized classes. They represent the most numerous of the industrial groups and yet their numbers are relatively so few that the average Cleveland school sends out into the world each year only two or three future machinists and perhaps one future carpenter. The trouble with present thinking about this matter has been that we have noted the very large numbers of machinists and carpenters in the population and have failed to realize that while these groups are numerous in the aggregate they are after all quite small when relatively considered and compared with the total number of workers. Another important fact that has been almost invariably overlooked is that many of the present carpenters and machinists are foreigners by birth and that there is every prospect that this same condition will maintain in the future. Hence these trades and most other industrial occupations are not recruited from our public schools to anything like the degree that has been assumed. A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM MUST FIT THE FACTS The simple principle which underlies the method employed by the survey is the same on which all large business undertakings are conducted. The results of its application in the field of industrial education are, however, fundamentally different from those commonly arrived at on the assumption that nine-tenths of the rising generation will earn their living in industrial pursuits. The fact is that no such proportion of the children in school will become industrial workers. All the native born labor now employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries constitutes only 44 per cent of the total number of native born workers in the city. Moreover, nearly half of the industrial workers are employed in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations for which no training is required beyond a few days' or weeks' practice on the job. Such training calls for a mechanical equipment far more extensive than the resources of the school system can provide, and can be given by the factory more effectively and much more cheaply than by the schools. In the final analysis, the problem of industrial training narrows down to the skilled industrial trades. Approximately 22 per cent of the total number of American workers in the city are employed in skilled manual occupations. This does not mean that a constructive program of industrial education would affect 22 per cent of the present school enrollment. All the weight of educational opinion and experience is on the side of excluding the children of the lower and middle age groups as too young to profit by any sort of industrial training, while the evidence collected by the survey goes to show that of the remainder less than one-fifth of the girls and one-fourth of the boys are likely to become skilled industrial workers. AN ACTUARIAL BASIS FOR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION Considerations like the foregoing have determined the fundamental method of the Cleveland Industrial Survey. Plans for the present generation have been formulated on the basis of future prospects as foretold by state and federal census data. The methods used were characterized by a member of the Cleveland Foundation Survey Committee as "the actuarial basis of vocational education." This is accurately descriptive, because the method of forecasting the number of men the community will need for each wage-earning occupation closely resembles that employed by life insurance actuaries in foretelling how long men of different ages are likely to live. Such methods are similar to those commonly used in commerce and industry. They deal with mass data rather than with individual figures, and with relative values rather than with absolute ones. CHAPTER III THE WAGE EARNERS OF CLEVELAND In 1910 Cleveland ranked sixth among the cities of the United States as to number of inhabitants, with a population of approximately 561,000. The city is growing rapidly. From 1900 to 1910 the increase in the total number of inhabitants was over 46 per cent. The Census Bureau estimate of the population in 1914 is approximately 639,000. Of the 10 largest cities in the country only one--Detroit--had in 1910 a greater proportion of its wage earners engaged in industrial employment than Cleveland. Relatively Cleveland has one and one-fourth times as many industrial workers as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, or Baltimore, and one and two-fifths times as many as Boston. On the other hand a smaller proportion of the adult workers of the city earn their living in professional, clerical, and commercial work, or in domestic and personal service employments than in most large cities. Table 1 shows by large occupational groups the distribution in 1910 of the working population in Cleveland. The classification is that adopted by the federal census. More than 56 per cent of the male workers of the city and about 33 per cent of the women workers were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical occupations. The trade group ranks next, about 14 per cent of the men and approximately 11 per cent of the women being engaged in commercial occupations. Of each 100 women in employment 30 are servants, laundresses, housekeepers, or are engaged in some other form of personal service, while only five men of each 100 earn their living in this kind of work. Railroad and street transportation, with the telegraph and telephone and mail systems of communication, requires the services of 11 per cent of the male working population, but uses very few women. About seven per cent of the men and 15 per cent of the women are employed in clerical work. A slightly larger ratio of women to men is found in the professional occupations, due mainly to the large number of women in the teaching profession. The whole professional group constitutes less than five per cent of the total working population. TABLE 1.--OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORKING POPULATION OF CLEVELAND, CENSUS OF OCCUPATIONS, 1910 ----------------------------------------+---------+--------+--------- Occupational group | Men | Women | Total ----------------------------------------+---------+--------+--------- Manufacturing and mechanical industries | 109,644 | 18,201 | 127,845 Trade | 27,229 | 5,942 | 33,171 Domestic and personal service | 9,546 | 16,467 | 26,063 Transportation | 21,530 | 1,110 | 22,640 Clerical occupations | 14,047 | 8,100 | 22,147 Professional service | 7,204 | 4,869 | 12,073 Public service | 3,461 | 39 | 3,500 Agricultural and extraction of minerals | 1,367 | 80 | 1,447 ----------------------------------------+---------+--------+--------- Total | 194,078 | 54,808 | 248,886 ----------------------------------------+---------+--------+--------- From the standpoint of vocational training one of the most striking facts about Cleveland wage-earners is that a large majority of them are not Clevelanders. Almost exactly half of the men in gainful employment were born outside the United States and, due to the rapid growth of the city, there has been a considerable influx of workers from the surrounding country in recent years, so that a large proportion even of the American working population was born, brought up, and educated in some other place. The number and per cent of foreign born, of foreign or mixed parentage but born in this country, and of native parentage is shown in Table 2. TABLE 2.--NATIVITY OF THE WORKING POPULATION IN CLEVELAND. U.S. CENSUS, 1910 ----------------------------+-------------------+----------------- | Men | Women +--------+----------+--------+-------- Nativity | Number | Per cent | Number |Per cent ----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+-------- Foreign born | 96,291 | 50 | 16,673 | 31 Foreign or mixed parentage | 55,074 | 28 | 24,275 | 44 Native parentage | 42,713 | 22 | 13,860 | 25 ----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+-------- Total |194,078 | 100 | 54,808 | 100 ----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+-------- More than three-fourths are foreign or of foreign or mixed parentage. The proportion of those born in this country of American parentage is approximately the same for both sexes, but the number of women workers of mixed parentage is relatively much larger than among the men. Roughly, of each 10 men employed in gainful occupations, five, and of each 10 working women, three, were born abroad. The large proportion of foreigners in the trades has an important bearing on the problem of vocational training. Some of the skilled occupations are monopolized by foreign labor to such an extent that they offer a very limited field of employment for native workmen. Cabinet making, tailoring, molding, blacksmithing, baking, and shoe making, are examples. Some of these trades have practically ceased to recruit from American labor. This condition has to be constantly borne in mind in planning training courses to prepare boys for the skilled trades, because of the marked disparity which often exists between the size of a trade and the field of opportunity it presents for boys of native birth. CHAPTER IV THE FUTURE WAGE-EARNERS OF CLEVELAND In 1915 there were in Cleveland approximately 50,000 boys between the ages of six and 15, and 56,000 girls between the ages of six and 16, the age period during which school attendance is required by law. Of these 106,000 children approximately 37,000 boys and 38,000 girls were enrolled in the public schools. Exact data as to those attending private and parochial schools are not available. The total enrollment in such schools has been variously estimated as between 25,000 and 30,000. THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS The public school system in 1915 enrolled approximately 82,000 children of all ages, of whom about half were boys and half girls. They are taught in 98 elementary schools and 10 high schools. The elementary course comprises eight grades. At the beginning of the school year 1915-16 two junior high schools were opened for pupils of the seventh and eighth grades. It is to be expected that this plan will soon be extended throughout the city, so that the enrollment in elementary schools will be made up of pupils of the first six grades only. The distribution by grade is given in Table 3. The kindergarten grades and the special ungraded classes are omitted. TABLE 3.--PUPILS ENROLLED IN THE DIFFERENT GRADES OF THE PUBLIC DAY SCHOOLS IN JUNE, 1915 -------------------+-------------------- Grade | Pupils -------------------+-------------------- 1 | 13,108 2 | 10,857 3 | 10,562 4 | 9,323 5 | 8,902 6 | 7,259 7 | 6,429 8 | 4,903 | I | 3,122 II | 2,100 III | 1,534 IV | 1,399 -------------------+-------------------- About 77 per cent of the children are enrolled in the grades below the seventh, about 13 per cent in the seventh and eighth grades, a little over six per cent in the first two years of the high school, and less than three and one-half per cent in the third and fourth. There are eight academic high schools, two technical high schools, and two commercial high schools. The technical high schools are steadily growing in favor. The registration of boys in these schools increased about 33 per cent from 1913 to 1915, and of girls about 77 per cent. During the same period the registration of boys in the academic high schools decreased slightly, while the increase of girl students was only eight per cent; in the commercial high schools the number of girl students increased 20 per cent, while the enrollment of boys fell off more than 10 per cent. The enrollment by individual schools is shown in Table 4. TABLE 4.--ENROLLMENT OF HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS, SECOND SEMESTER, 1914-1915 ----------------------------------+-----------------------------+ | Enrollment | Schools +---------+---------+---------+ | Boys | Girls | Total | ----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+ | | | | Academic high schools | | | | Central | 804 | 711 | 1,515 | East | 607 | 688 | 1,295 | Glenville | 405 | 611 | 1,016 | West | 246 | 377 | 623 | Lincoln | 277 | 329 | 606 | South | 213 | 238 | 451 | | | | | Total | 2,552 | 2,954 | 5,506 | ----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+ | | | | Technical high schools | | | | East Technical | 1,161 | 548 | 1,709 | West Technical | 515 | 242 | 757 | | | | | Total | 1,676 | 790 | 2,466 | ----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+ | | | | Commercial high schools | | | | West Commercial | 249 | 528 | 777 | East Commercial | 49 | 96 | 145 | | | | | Total | 298 | 624 | 922 | ----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+ | | | | All high schools | 4,526 | 4,368 | 8,894 | | | | | ----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+ About three-eighths of the high school pupils of the city are in the technical and commercial schools. Of the boys 56 per cent are enrolled in the academic high schools, 37 per cent in the technical schools, and seven per cent in the commercial schools. Of the girls 68 per cent attend the academic high schools, 18 per cent the technical schools, and 14 per cent the commercial schools. In the commercial high school approximately two-thirds of the enrollment is made up of girls. In the technical high schools the opposite condition prevails, the girls constituting less than one-third of the total enrollment, while in the academic high schools the girls outnumber the boys by nearly one-sixth. AGES OF PUPILS The distribution as to ages is shown in Table 5. The largest group is made up of children seven years old. Between 14 and 15 over 30 per cent leave school. The loss from 16 to 17 is approximately 43 per cent, from 17 to 18 about 44 per cent, and from 18 to 19 nearly 62 per cent. The compulsory attendance law requires boys to attend school until they are 15 and girls until they are 16. That the law is not adequately enforced is demonstrated by the heavy loss between the ages of 14 and 15, and the fact that the loss between 15 and 16 is approximately the same for both boys and girls, although girls are required to attend one year longer than boys. Additional evidence as to the laxity in the enforcement of the compulsory law is found in the results of an inquiry conducted by the Consumers' League of Cleveland in the spring of 1916, in cooperation with the survey. TABLE 5.--AGES OF PUPILS ENROLLED IN PUBLIC ELEMENTARY, HIGH, AND NORMAL SCHOOLS IN JUNE, 1915 ------------------------------------------------- Age | Boys | Girls | Total -------------+-----------+-----------+----------- 6 | 4,255 | 4,180 | 8,435 7 | 5,012 | 4,815 | 9,827 8 | 4,496 | 4,407 | 8,903 9 | 4,268 | 4,103 | 8,371 10 | 4,093 | 3,951 | 8,044 | | | 11 | 3,747 | 3,593 | 7,340 12 | 3,700 | 3,646 | 7,346 13 | 3,676 | 3,631 | 7,307 14 | 3,445 | 3,271 | 6,716 15 | 2,358 | 2,291 | 4,649 | | | 16 | 1,190 | 1,163 | 2,353 17 | 672 | 680 | 1,352 18 | 403 | 358 | 761 19 | 135 | 156 | 291 20 | 41 | 52 | 93 | | | Over 20 | ... | 22 | 22 -------------+-----------+-----------+----------- Total | 41,491 | 40,319 | 81,810 ------------------------------------------------- An attempt was made to follow up the cases of all the children who had left one public elementary school during the period of one year preceding the study. The work was done by the case method and the homes of the children were visited. The total number of cases studied was 117, of whom 89 were girls. It was found that one-third of these children had graduated and gone on to high school. Another third had gone to work, and of these, 40 per cent had done so without graduating. The children constituting the remaining third were staying at home, and among these a majority had dropped out without graduating. Of the eighth grade graduates one-half were found to be illegally employed, as they were less than 16 years of age. Among those who dropped out and went to work before completing the course 80 per cent were illegally employed. The fact that many girls drop out without graduating and before the end of the legal attendance period and remain at home indicates that most of them do not leave on account of financial necessity. This conclusion is substantiated by the testimony of the girls and their parents, many of whom say that the girls left simply because they grew tired of attending and did not see the value of remaining. These facts point to the necessity for much more effective work in enforcing the compulsory attendance laws, for far better inspection of shops and factories to detect violations of the child labor laws, and above all to such a reform of the schooling opportunities provided for older girls as will make them and their parents see the value of securing the advantages of the training provided. EDUCATION AT THE TIME OF LEAVING SCHOOL About 3,700 boys and an approximately equal number of girls drop out of the public schools each year. Most of the boys and a considerable number of the girls enter wage-earning at once. Their educational equipment at the time of leaving school is indicated in Table 6. TABLE 6.--EDUCATIONAL EQUIPMENT OF THE CHILDREN WHO DROP OUT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS EACH YEAR, AS INDICATED BY THE GRADES FROM WHICH THEY LEAVE --------------+--------------------- Grade | Number leaving --------------+--------------------- 4 | 70 5 | 440 6 | 960 7 | 1260 8 | 1630 | I | 890 II | 590 III | 150 IV | 1410 --------------+--------------------- Total | 7400 --------------+--------------------- Slightly less than one-fifth finish the high school course. Nearly three-fifths drop out before entering the high school, and approximately three-eighths before reaching the eighth grade. Under the present compulsory attendance law a boy who enters school at the age of six and afterwards advances at the rate of one grade per year until the end of the compulsory attendance period should cover nine grades--eight in the elementary school and one in high school--by the time he is 15 years old. In actual fact, however, only about two-fifths get any high school training. Nearly all of the rest take the eight to nine years' attendance required by law to complete eight, seven, six, or even a smaller number of grades. It is from this body of pupils that most of the wage-earners are recruited. In the course of the survey several investigations were made for the purpose of finding out what educational preparation workers in various industries had received. One of the most extensive of these was conducted in connection with the study of the printing industry. Educationally the printing trades rank higher than most other factory occupations, yet the average journeyman printer possesses less than a complete elementary education. Composing-room employees, such as compositors, linotypers, stonemen, proof-readers, etc., undoubtedly stand at the head of the skilled trades as to educational training, but it was found that only eight per cent were high school graduates. Six per cent had left school before reaching the seventh grade, and 16 per cent before reaching the eighth grade. The other departments of the printing industry made a much less favorable showing. An investigation conducted by the Survey in the spring of 1915, covering 5,000 young people at work under 21 years of age, indicated that only about 13 per cent of these young workers had received any high school training and that less than four per cent had completed a high school course. Over one-fifth reported the sixth grade as the last completed before leaving school, and nearly half had dropped out before completing the elementary course. Less than seven per cent of the boys engaged in industrial pursuits had received any high school training and only 42 per cent had got beyond the seventh grade. The educational preparation of the boys engaged in commercial and clerical occupations was somewhat better, nearly 22 per cent having attended high school one year or more; about one-half had left school after completing the eighth grade and nearly one-third had not completed the elementary course. These facts have a vital relation to the problem of vocational training. If the great majority of the children who will later enter wage-earning occupations do not remain in school beyond the end of the compulsory attendance period, and in addition over half fail to complete even the elementary course, vocational training, to reach them at all, must begin not later than the seventh grade, and if possible, before the pupils reach the age of 14. CHAPTER V INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR BOYS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS In Chapter III the distribution of the wage-earners of the city was outlined, mainly for the purpose of establishing a basis on which to make a forecast of the future occupations of the children in the public schools. Such a forecast is essential as the preliminary step in any plan of vocational training to be carried out during the school period, for the reason that without it a clear understanding of the principal factors of the problem is impossible. The kinds of vocational training needed by children in school, and how and where such training should be given, must always depend in the first instance on what they are going to do when they grow up. The average elementary school in Cleveland enrolls between 350 and 400 boys. When they leave school these boys will scatter into many different kinds of work. With respect to the future vocations of the pupils, the average school represents in a sense a cross section of the occupational activities of the city. It contains a certain number of recruits for each of the principal types of wage-earning pursuits. A few of the boys will later enter professional life; many will take up some sort of clerical work; a still larger number will be employed in commercial occupations; and the largest group of all will become wage-earners in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. The future occupation cannot be foretold accurately with respect to any particular boy, but we do know that, whatever their individual tastes and abilities, the boys must finally engage in activities similar to those in which the adult born native male population is engaged, and in approximately the same proportions. We do not know, for example, whether Johnny Jones will become a doctor or a carpenter, but we do know that of each 1,000 boys in the public schools about seven will become doctors and about 25 will become carpenters, because for many years about those proportions of the boys of native birth in Cleveland have become doctors and carpenters. One of the most impressive facts which comes to light in the study of occupational statistics is the constancy in these proportions. The business of any community requires certain kinds of work to be performed and the relative amount of work required and consequently the relative number of workers vary but slightly over a long period of time. This principle is illustrated in a striking way by the list of occupations selected at random presented in Table 7, showing the number of persons engaged in the occupations specified among each 100 male workers at two successive census years. TABLE 7--PER CENT OF TOTAL MALE WORKING POPULATION ENGAGED IN SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS, 1900 AND 1910 ----------------------------+--------------------- | Per cent of total Occupation | working population +----------+---------- | 1900 | 1910 ----------------------------+----------+---------- Machinists | 4.7 | 5.8 Saloon keepers | 1.1 | .7 Tailors | 2.1 | 1.7 Commercial travelers | .8 | 1.1 Lawyers | .5 | .4 Barbers | .8 | .7 Bakers | .6 | .5 Physicians | .6 | .5 Carpenters | 3.4 | 3.3 Cabinet makers | .5 | .4 Plumbers | .9 | .9 Stenographers and typists | .3 | .3 ----------------------------+----------+---------- With the exception of plumbers and stenographers there was either an increase or a decrease from 1900 to 1910 in the relative number employed in each of these occupations. In only one occupation, however, that of machinist, did the change amount to as much as one per cent. In all the others the shift during the decade was less than one-half of one per cent, and in more than three-fifths of them it did not exceed one-tenth of one per cent of the total number of male workers. WHAT THE BOYS IN SCHOOL WILL DO The figures in this table, presented for illustrative purposes, do not accurately represent the proportions of boys now attending the public schools who are likely to enter the occupations named, because they do not take into account the fact that a considerable number of the workers in Cleveland came to this country after they reached adult manhood and that a disproportionate number of these foreign born workers enter the industrial occupations. For this reason the total adult working population is not strictly comparable with the school enrollment, which is approximately nine-tenths native born. When the boys in the public schools grow up they will be distributed among the different trades, professions, and industries in about the same proportions as are the American born men in the city at the present time. This distribution is shown for the different occupational groups in Table 8. TABLE 8.--DISTRIBUTION OF NATIVE BORN MEN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 21 AND 45 IN THE PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONAL GROUPS Approximate Occupational group per cent Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 44 Commercial occupations 20 Clerical occupations 16 Transportation occupations 11 Domestic and personal service occupations 5 Professional occupations 3 Public service occupations 1 ---- Total 100 The figures in the column at the right of the table represent the number of native born men between the ages of 21 and 45 among each hundred native born male inhabitants engaged in the occupations comprehended in the various groups. In the case of the industrial group the figure is too high, as the census data relative to the distribution of foreign and native born include all ages, and there is a smaller proportion of American born adult men employed in industry than is found in the lower age groups. Extensive computations have shown, however, that the inaccuracies due to this cause are not serious enough to affect the use of the figures for our purpose. Let us now consider what these proportions mean in establishing vocational courses to prepare boys for wage-earning pursuits. The future expectations of the boys in a large elementary school enrolling say 1,000 pupils of both sexes would be about as follows: _Number of boys who will enter_ Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 220 Commercial occupations 100 Clerical occupations 80 Transportation occupations 55 Domestic and personal service occupations 25 Professional occupations 15 Public service occupations 5 ---- Total 500 This distribution includes all pupils, from the beginners in the first grade to the older boys in the seventh and eighth grades. It is certain, however, that differentiated instruction for vocational purposes is not possible or advisable for the younger children. According to the commonly accepted view among educators, vocational training should not be undertaken before the age of 12 years, and many believe that this is too early. In an elementary school of 1,000 pupils there would be about 80 boys 12 years old and over. Applying to this number the ratios given in the previous table we obtain the following: _Number of boys who will enter_ Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 35 Commercial occupations 16 Clerical occupations 13 Transportation occupations 9 Domestic and personal service occupations 4 Professional occupations 2 Public service occupations 1 --- Total 80 The industrial group includes all of the skilled trades and most of the semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations. The skilled trades are usually grouped in four main classifications: metal trades, building trades, printing trades, and "other" trades, these last comprising a number of small trades in each of which relatively few men are employed. With respect to their future occupations the 35 boys in the industrial group are likely to be distributed about as follows: _Number of boys who will enter_ Metal trades 8 Building trades 7 Printing trades 1 Other trades 2 Semi-skilled and unskilled industrial occupations 17 --- 35 The analysis can be carried still further, for these trade groups are by no means homogeneous. The building trades, for example, include over 20 distinct trades, a number of which have little in common with the others as to methods of work and technical content. ORGANIZATION AND COSTS At this point it becomes necessary to take cognizance of certain administrative factors which have a marked bearing on the problem. They relate to the organization of classes in elementary schools and the cost of teaching. In a school of 1,000 pupils there would be at least five separate classes for the seventh and eighth grades. The 35 boys who need industrial training are not all found in a single class, but are distributed more or less evenly throughout the five classrooms, that is, there are approximately seven in each class. A differentiated course under these conditions is difficult if not impossible. In a few of the Cleveland elementary schools the departmental system of teaching is in use. Under this plan something might be done, were it not that the total number of pupils requiring instruction relating specifically to the industrial trades is too small to justify the expense necessary for equipment, material, and special instruction required for such training. This is true as regards even an industrial course of the most general kind, while provision for particular trades is entirely out of the question. The machinist's trade employs more men than any other occupation in the city, yet the number of seventh and eighth grade boys in the average elementary school who will probably become machinists does not exceed five or six. Not over two boys are likely to enter employment in the printing industry. The smaller trades, such as pattern making, cabinet making, molding, and blacksmithing are represented by not more than one boy each. A possible alternative is the plan now followed in the teaching of manual training whereby the boys of the upper grades in various elementary schools are sent to one centrally located for a short period of instruction each week. The principal objection to this plan is that the amount of time now given is insufficient to accomplish much in an industrial course, nor can it be materially increased without seriously interfering with the work in other subjects. The first condition for successful industrial training is the concentration of a large number of pupils old enough to benefit by such training in a single school plant. Only in this way is it possible to bring the cost of teaching, equipment, and material within reasonable limits and provide facilities for differentiating the work on the basis of the vocational needs of the pupils. The fact that this condition cannot be met in elementary schools is one of the strongest arguments in favor of conducting the seventh and eighth grade work under the junior high school form of organization. WHAT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS CAN DO The most important contribution to vocational education the elementary school can make consists in getting the children through the lower grades fast enough so that they will reach the junior high school by the time they are 13 years old, in order that before the end of the compulsory attendance period they may spend at least two years in a school where some kind of industrial training is possible. That this is not being done at the present time the data presented in Chapter IV amply demonstrate. In recent years there has been a tendency to regard vocational training as a remedy for retardation. The fact is that the cure of retardation is not a subsequent but a preliminary condition to successful training for wage-earning. Vocational training is not a means for the prevention of retardation, but retardation is a most effective means for the prevention of vocational training. CHAPTER VI THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL In 1915 the Board of Education authorized the establishment of a system of junior high schools in the city, and at the beginning of the school year of 1915-16 the new plan was inaugurated in two schools. The Empire Junior High School, situated in the eastern part of the city, had an enrollment of about 700 children made up of seventh and eighth grade pupils formerly accommodated in the elementary schools of that section. The Detroit Junior High School on the west side had an enrollment of about 400 pupils. No decision has yet been reached as to whether the course shall include only two years' work, or three years, as in other cities of the country where the junior high school plan has been adopted. A comparison of the course with that for corresponding grades of the elementary schools shows some marked differences. Less time is devoted to English in the junior high school and considerably more to arithmetic, geography, and history. Mechanical drawing, not taught in the elementary schools except incidentally in the manual training classes, is given an hour each week. All boys receive one hour of manual training a week against slightly less than one and one-half hours in the seventh and eighth elementary grades, but they may elect an additional two and one-half hours a week in this subject, together with applied arithmetic during the first year, or with bookkeeping during the second. Girls may elect an additional two and one-half hours a week of domestic science, with bookkeeping. The manual training for boys comprises woodwork and bookbinding. SPECIALIZED TRAINING NOT PRACTICABLE In the junior high school, as in the elementary school, the greatest difficulty in the way of trade training for specific occupations lies in the small number of pupils who can be expected, within the bounds of reasonable probability, to enter a single trade. Hand and machine composition, the largest of the printing trades, will serve as an example. In a junior high school of 1,000 pupils, boys and girls, the number of boys who are likely to become compositors is about five. But to teach this trade printing equipment occupying considerable space is necessary, together with a teacher who has had some experience or training as a printer. The expense per pupil for equipment, for the space it occupies, and for instruction renders special training for such small classes impracticable. All of the skilled occupations, with the exception perhaps of the machinist's trade, are in the same case. An attempt to form separate classes for each of the eight largest trades in the city would result in two classes of not over five pupils, three classes of not over 10 pupils, and only one of over 13 pupils. The following table shows the number of boys, in a school of this size, who are likely to enter each of these trades. _Number of boys who will probably become:_ Machinists 36 Carpenters 13 Steam engineers 11 Painters 10 Electricians 9 Plumbers 7 Compositors 5 Molders 5 A GENERAL INDUSTRIAL COURSE The members of the Survey Staff were, however, of the opinion that through the system of electives in the junior high school, industrial training of a more general type, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes, would be of considerable benefit to those boys who, on the basis of their own selection or that of their parents, are likely to enter industrial pursuits. A course of this kind is outlined in following sections of this chapter. The objections which may be brought against this plan are frankly recognized. It takes into account only the interests of the industrial group, comprising less than one-half of the boys in the school. Unquestionably it would tend to vitalize the teaching of mathematics, drawing, and science for the boys who enroll in the industrial course, but it leaves unsolved the question of method and content of instruction in these subjects for the boys in the non-industrial or so-called academic course. Very possibly future experience may demonstrate that the plan recommended for the general industrial course affords the best medium for teaching science and mathematics at this period to all pupils, in which case a differentiated course would be unnecessary. The organization of vocational training in junior high school grades presents many difficulties which cannot be solved by a more or less abstract study of educational and industrial needs. Experimentation on an extensive scale, covering a considerable period of time, is necessary before definite conclusions can be drawn as to the limitations and possibilities of such work. It is with a full appreciation of this fact that the following suggestive outline is presented. The purpose of the general industrial course is to afford to boys who wish to enter industrial occupations the opportunity to secure knowledge and training that will be of direct or indirect value to them in industrial employment. It is not expected that by this means they can be given much practical training in hand work for any particular trade. The most the school can do for the boy at this period is to bridge over for him the gap that exists between the knowledge he obtains from books and the rôle which this knowledge plays in the working world. It must not be assumed that the transition can be effected merely by the introduction of shop work, even if it were possible to provide the wide variety of manual training necessary to make up a fair representation of the principal occupations into which the boys will enter when they leave school. It is doubtful whether, so far as its vocational value is concerned, shop work isolated from other subjects of the curriculum is worth any more per unit of time devoted to it than several of the so-called academic subjects. This is particularly true of the two most common types of manual training--cabinet making and forge work. Both represent dying trades. During the decade 1900-1910 the increase in the number of cabinet makers in Cleveland fell far below the general increase in population. The blacksmiths made a still poorer showing. Both trades are recruited mainly from abroad and the relative number of Americans employed in them is steadily declining. In the opinion of the Survey Staff a general industrial course should cover instruction in at least the following five subjects: Industrial mathematics, mechanical drawing, industrial science, shop work, and the study of economic and working conditions in wage earning pursuits. These may be offered as independent electives or they may be required of all pupils who elect the industrial course. The details of organization must, of course, be worked out by trial and experiment. They will probably vary in different schools and from year to year. INDUSTRIAL MATHEMATICS Of the hundreds of employers who were interviewed by members of the Survey Staff as to the technical equipment needed by beginners in the various trades, nearly all emphasized the ability to apply the principles of simple arithmetic quickly, correctly, and accurately to industrial problems. Many employers criticized the present methods of teaching this subject in the public schools. In the main their criticisms were to the effect that the teaching was not "practical." "The boys I get may know arithmetic," said one, "but they haven't any mathematical sense." Another cited his experience with an apprentice who was told to cut a bar eight and one-half feet long into five pieces of equal length. He was not told the length of the bar, but was given the direct order: "Cut that bar into five pieces all of the same size." The boy was unable to lay out the work, although when asked by the foreman, "Don't you know how to divide 81/2 by 5?", he performed the arithmetical operation without difficulty. The employer gave this instance as an illustration of what to his mind constituted one of the principal defects of public school teaching. "Mere knowledge of mathematical principles and the ability to solve abstract problems is not enough," he said. "What the boys get in the schools is mathematical skill, but what they need in their work is mathematical intelligence. The first does not necessarily imply the second." This mathematical intelligence can be developed only through practice in the solution of practical problems, that is, problems which are stated in the every day terms of the working world and which require the student to go through the successive mental steps in the same way that he would if he were working in a shop. The problem referred to above is one of division of fractions. If we state it thus: "81/2÷5," the pupil takes pencil and paper, performs the operation and announces the result. If we say, "A bar 81/2 feet long is to be cut into five pieces of equal length; how long should each piece be?", the problem calls for the exercise of greater intelligence, as the pupil must determine which process to use in order to obtain the correct result. It becomes still more difficult if we merely show him the bar and say: "This bar must be cut into five pieces of equal length; how long will each piece be?" Several additional preliminary steps are required, none of which was involved in the problem in its original form. Before the length of the pieces can be computed he must find out the length of the bar. He must know what to measure it with, and in what terms, whether feet or inches, the problem should be stated. Again, if we say: "Lay this bar out to be cut in five equal lengths," another step--the measurement and marking for each cut--is added. Many variations might be introduced, each involving additional opportunities for the exercise of thought. It is through practice in solving problems of this kind that the pupil acquires what the employer called mathematical intelligence. It consists in the ability to note what elements are involved in the problems and to decide which process of arithmetic should be used in dealing with them. Once these decisions are made the succeeding arithmetical calculations are simple and easy. In technical terms the ability that is needed is the ability to generalize one's experiences. In every-day terms it is the ability to use what one knows. The work in applied mathematics should cover a wide range of problems worded in the language of the trades and constantly varied in order to establish as many points of contact as possible between the pupil's knowledge of mathematics and the use of mathematics in industrial life. Practical shop work is one of the best means to this end. The trouble with much of the shop work given in the schools is that it runs to hand craftmanship in which the object is to "make something" by methods long ago discarded in the industrial world, rather than to give the pupil exercise in the sort of thinking he will need to do after he goes to work. Successful teaching does not depend so much on the use of tools and materials as on the teacher's knowledge of the conditions surrounding industrial work and his ability to originate methods for vitalizing the instruction in its relation to industrial needs. MECHANICAL DRAWING At the present time the junior high school course provides for one hour a week of mechanical drawing. All the boys who may be expected to elect the industrial course can well afford to devote more time to drawing. For such boys no other subject in the curriculum, except perhaps applied mathematics, is of greater importance. In many of the trades the ability to work from drawings is indispensable and the man who does not possess it is not likely to rise above purely routine work. In a drawing course for future industrial workers the emphasis should be placed on giving the pupil an understanding of the uses of drawing for industrial purposes, rather than on fine workmanship in making drawings. Seventh grade boys can't be made into draftsmen in three years and if they leave school at 15 they are not likely to become draftsmen. The ordinary skilled workman seldom has any need to make drawings or designs, beyond an occasional rough sketch, but he often has to work from drawings. To put it in another way, drawing to the average workman is like an additional language of which he needs a reading but not a writing knowledge. No doubt it would be well to teach him to write and read with equal skill, but in the two or three years most of these boys will remain in school there is not time enough to do both. INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE In many of the trades an introductory knowledge of physics and chemistry is of considerable advantage. Boys in the junior high school cannot be expected to take formal courses in these subjects, but they should not leave school without some acquaintance with them and a knowledge of their relations to industrial processes. A fair equipment should be provided for demonstrational and illustrative purposes. The subject matter should be correlated as closely as possible with the shop work, and the principal mechanical and chemical laws explained as the shop problems furnish examples of their application. In addition the boys should be taught the common technical terms used in trade hand books. The man who expects to advance in his trade will have to keep on learning after he leaves school. There are many avenues of information open to him, and the school can perform no more valuable service than to point the way to the sources of knowledge represented by reference books, trade journals, and other technical literature. Some of the popular magazines, such as "The Scientific American," "The Illustrated World," and "Popular Mechanics" can be used most effectively to bring home to the pupils the close connection existing between the class work and the outside world of science and invention. SHOP WORK It is difficult to determine the exact function of the manual training shop work in cabinet making and bookbinding which figures in the curriculum at present. That the work was not planned with vocational training in mind seems clear from the action of the school board in adding bookbinding to the course about the middle of the year. The bookbinding trade is one of the smallest in the city, and there is little probability that more than one boy among the total number enrolled in both junior high schools will enter it after leaving school. Fully three-fourths of the industrial group will later be employed in occupations where most of the work is done with machines or machine tools. Even in the hand tool trades, such as carpentry, sheet metal work, cabinet making, and blacksmithing, the use of machines is constantly increasing. It would seem, therefore, that some acquaintance with different types of machines would be of considerable value to the pupils who may later enter industrial employment. The number of boys who are likely to become machinists is large enough to warrant the installation of a small machine shop. Repairing, assembling, and taking apart machines should occupy an important place in the shop course. Most boys are intensely interested in getting at the "insides" of a machine, and the processes of assembling, with their attendant problems of adjustment and co-ordination of mechanical movements, afford opportunities for the best kind of practical instruction. One of the great advantages of this type of shop work lies in the fact that it consumes little or no material and is therefore inexpensive; another is that a fairly extensive equipment can be easily obtained, as any machine, old or new, will serve the purpose and may be used over and over again. The extent and variety of shop equipment will depend largely on the resources of the school system. The more the better, so long as the money is expended on the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number, which means that the kinds of tools and equipment used in the large trades should be preferred to those used only in the smaller trades. In order that the time devoted to shop work may yield its greatest results, it is necessary that every lesson center around knowledge and ability that will be of real subsequent use to the pupils. It must not run to "art" and it must not be mere tinkering. Its principal value as vocational training, in the last analysis, lies in its use as an objective medium for the teaching of industrial mathematics and science. VOCATIONAL INFORMATION During the second and third years all the boys who elect the industrial course or who expect to leave school at the end of the compulsory attendance period should be required to devote some time each week to the study of economic and working conditions in wage earning industrial and commercial occupations. A clear understanding of the comparative advantages of different kinds of employment is of the highest importance at this period of the boy's life. It seems to be generally assumed that an adequate basis of knowledge for the selection of an industrial vocation is an acquaintance with materials and processes. Such knowledge is valuable, but making a living is mainly an economic problem. What an occupation means in terms of income is more significant than what it means in terms of materials. The most important facts about the cabinet making trade, for example, are that it offers very few opportunities for employment to public school boys, and that it is one of the lowest paid skilled trades. The primary considerations in the intelligent selection of a vocation relate to wages, steadiness of employment, health risks, opportunities for advancement, apprenticeship conditions, union regulations, and the number of chances there are for getting into it. These things are fundamental, and any one of them may well take precedence over the matter of whether the tastes of the future wage-earner run to wood, brick, stone, or steel. CHAPTER VII TRADE TRAINING DURING THE LAST YEARS IN SCHOOL Between the end of the compulsory attendance period and the entering age in most of the trades there exists a gap of from one to two years which is not adequately covered by any of the present educational agencies of the school system. Two years ago the Ohio State legislature extended the compulsory attendance period from 14 to 15 for boys and from 14 to 16 for girls. The result has been to force into the first years of the high school course a considerable number of pupils who have no intention of taking the complete four year course, and who will leave as soon as they reach the end of the compulsory period. That these pupils are probably not getting all that they might out of the time they attend high school is no argument against the present compulsory attendance age limit, which should be raised rather than lowered. The study of industrial conditions conducted during the survey left every member of the Survey Staff firmly convinced that the industries of Cleveland have little or nothing worth while to offer to boys under 16. Very few of the skilled trades will accept an apprentice below this age. The general opinion among manufacturers was unfavorable to the employment of boys under 16. "They are more of a nuisance than a help," said one; "they are not old enough to understand the responsibilities of work." "They break more machinery and spoil more material than they are worth," said another. In several of the building trades apprentices must be 17 years old, as the law forbids boys under this age to work on scaffoldings. The new workmen's compensation law exerts a strong influence in favor of a higher working age limit, owing to the greater risk of accident among young workers. The fact is that the law is still about one year behind the requirements of industrial life. If a vote were taken among employers who can offer boys the opportunity to learn a trade it would be found that a large majority favor raising the working age to 16. Employment before this time usually leads nowhere, and the pittance the boy earns cannot be compared with the economic advantage he could derive from an additional year in a good vocational school. The average boy who leaves school at 15 spends a year or two loafing or working at odd jobs before he can obtain employment that offers any promise of future advancement. These years are often more than wasted, as he not only learns nothing of value from such casual jobs, but misses the healthy discipline of steady, orderly work, which is of so great importance during these formative years of his life. THE TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS The two technical high schools, the East Technical and West Technical, occupy an important place among the secondary schools of the city. At the present time the two schools enroll nearly two-fifths of the boys attending high school. The course comprises four years' work. In the East Technical the shopwork includes joinery and wood-turning during the first year, and pattern making and foundry work during the second year. In the West Technical the first year course includes pattern making and either forging or sheet metal work; and that of the second year, forging, pipe-fitting, brazing, riveting, and cabinet making. During the remaining two years of the course the student may elect a particular trade, devoting about 10 hours a week to practice in the shop during the last half of the third year, and from 11 to 15 hours during the fourth year. The proportion of pupils who graduate is small and the mortality during the first two years is very heavy. This is due in part to the fact that the type of pupil who leaves school early is more likely to elect a technical course than an academic course. About 25 per cent of each entering class drops out after attending one year, and 25 per cent of the remainder by the end of the second year. By the time the third year is reached the classes are greatly depleted and the survivors as a rule are of the more intelligent and prosperous type. Only a small proportion of them expect to enter skilled manual occupations. Table 9 shows the distribution of the third and fourth year students among the different trade courses during the first semester of 1915-16. TABLE 9.--DISTRIBUTION OF THIRD AND FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS IN TRADE COURSES IN THE CLEVELAND TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS, FIRST SEMESTER, 1915-1916 Trade courses Students Electrical construction 68 Machine work 52 Printing 28 Cabinet making 22 Pattern making 12 Foundry work 1 ---- Total 183 That relatively few of these students will ultimately become journeymen workmen is shown by the records of the boys graduated in the past. The principal of the East Technical High School recently sent a questionnaire to all the students graduated up to 1915, asking for information as to their present occupations and their earnings during the first four years after graduation. Of those who replied, over 60 per cent either were attending college, or employed as draftsmen or chemists. About 28 per cent were employed in the skilled trades. The distribution in detail is shown in Table 10. The data furnished by graduates as to their earnings during successive years after leaving school supply still more convincing evidence to the effect that the technical school graduate seldom remains in manual work more than two or three years. The complete course gives them an equipment of practical and theoretical knowledge that speedily takes them out of the handwork class. The technical high schools are primarily training schools for future civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers. To the student who cannot afford a college course they offer excellent preparation for rapid advancement to supervisory and executive industrial positions, and for drafting and office work in manufacturing plants. TABLE 10.--DISTRIBUTION BY OCCUPATION OF CLEVELAND TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES Occupation Number Attending college 111 Draftsmen 51 Electricians 33 Machinists 32 Chemists 8 Pattern makers 7 Cabinet makers 6 Printers 3 Foundrymen 1 Unclassified 32 ---- Total 284 The output of the schools falls into two main divisions: those who leave at the end of the second year or earlier, and those who graduate. The records show that most of the pupils who reach the third year complete the course, but nearly half drop out during the first and second years. The benefit they obtain from these two years' attendance is problematical. The course was designed on the basis of four years' attendance, and the work of the first two years is to a considerable degree a preparation for that of the last two. The principals of both schools are fully alive to the disadvantages of the course for the large number of pupils who drop out within a year or two, and admit that such students would derive greater benefit from more practical instruction aimed directly toward preparation for the industrial trades. Both believe that the only practicable solution is a two-year trade course in a separate school, covering a much wider range of shop activities than the present high school course. To the only alternative--the institution of a short course within the technical schools to be conducted either as a part of or simultaneously with the four year course--they present objections of considerable weight. They point out that a preparatory course for the trades and a preparatory course with college as the goal differ not only in length but in kind. The work in mathematics for the future civil engineer, for example, must conform to college entrance standards and involves an amount of study that is quite unnecessary for the boy whose aim is to become a carpenter or machinist. The first needs a thorough course in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; the second needs industrial arithmetic, with only such applications of higher mathematics as may be of use to him in his trade. The same principle holds with respect to other subjects. What boys who expect to enter industrial occupations most need at this period is instruction that will be of practical value to them for future wage earning. It is doubtful whether high school courses which have been formulated in the first instance to prepare pupils for a college course can furnish such instruction and it is still more doubtful whether the trade training required by the future mechanic and the broader preparation required for the professions can be given effectively in the same school. A TWO-YEAR TRADE COURSE It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that a separate school in which direct training for the industrial trades is emphasized would result in more profitable use of the pupils' time and probably induce many of them to remain in school up to the apprentice entering age. Such a school, with a curriculum embracing vocational training for all the principal trades, would easily command an enrollment sufficient to justify the installation of a good shop equipment and the employment of a corps of teachers qualified by special training and experience for this kind of work. Even if only one-half the number who enter the skilled trades each year attended the school, the enrollment would reach at least 800 boys. A trade school of this kind would relieve the first and second year classes of many pupils that the technical high schools do not want and cannot adequately provide for. The minimum entering age should be not less than 14, and no requirement other than age should be imposed. This would draw part of the over-age pupils from the grades and take from the junior high school a certain number of boys who could profit by the greater amount of time given to shop work in the trade school. A good many will stay only one year, and every effort should be made at the time of entrance to learn the intentions of the pupil. If it seems fairly certain that he will not remain longer than a year he may well omit such studies as have no direct bearing on the trade he wishes to learn. The courses should follow the lines laid down in the general industrial course recommended for the junior high school, but with a greater proportion of the time devoted to practical shopwork. As the number of pupils for each trade class would be relatively large, a closer correlation could be effected between the academic subjects and the work in the shops than is possible in the junior high school. Both general and special courses should be provided. Many of the pupils will wish to specialize on a particular trade. Others who have not yet reached a decision need a general course that will give them a wide range of experience with materials and processes. The organization of classes should be planned so as to permit transfers, whenever desirable, from the general to the special courses, or vice-versa. By the time the pupil has reached the second year he usually will settle down to steady work on the trade he selects, although here again the organization should be sufficiently elastic to allow transfers when there seems to be good reason for making them. It is to be expected, however, that nearly all the pupils will devote their time during the second year to practice and study limited to single trades. The success of the school in holding boys to the age of 16 or 17 will depend on its ability to convince them that the extra time in school is a paying investment, and this cannot be done unless they stick to one line of work. CHAPTER VIII TRADE-PREPARATORY AND TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING FOR BOYS AND MEN AT WORK Several forms of trade-preparatory and trade-extension training for apprentices and journeymen workmen are carried on in the city. Probably the most effective work done in the teaching of boys after they have entered employment is found in manufacturing establishments which maintain apprentice schools in connection with their shops. There are two excellent examples of this type of instruction in Cleveland--the apprentice schools conducted by the New York Central Railroad and by the Warner and Swasey Company, manufacturers of astronomical instruments and machine tools. The Warner and Swasey Company school was established in 1911. The course covers a total of 560 hours, extending over a period of four years. The apprentices attend the school four hours a week for 35 weeks each year. The time allotment for the various subjects included in the course is shown in Table 11. In 1915 there were 65 apprentices enrolled in the school, most of them from the machinist's trade. The sessions are held during working hours in a room in the factory fitted up with drawing tables and blackboards. No shop equipment is used. The purpose of the course is to develop a body of trained workmen competent to take positions in the factory as foremen or heads of departments. Less than one-tenth of the total time of the course is devoted to the study of shop practice. Standard textbooks are used in the teaching of mathematics. TABLE 11.--TIME ALLOTMENT IN THE APPRENTICE COURSE GIVEN BY THE WARNER AND SWASEY COMPANY, CLEVELAND Subject Hours Arithmetic 35 English 65 Mechanical drawing 70 Shop practice 40 Algebra 70 Geometry 40 Trigonometry 30 Physics 70 Materials 35 Industrial history 35 Mechanics, strength of materials, and mechanical design 70 --- Total 560 The enrollment in the school conducted by the New York Central Railroad is about 140 boys, nearly all of whom are machinists' apprentices. They are divided into three classes, the members of each class attending the school four hours a week. About two-thirds of the time is devoted to mechanical drawing and one-third to mathematics and shop practice. The instruction in these two latter subjects is based on a series of graded mimeographed or blue print lesson sheets, containing a wide variety of shop problems, with a condensed and simplified explanation of the mathematical principles involved. In the main the work is limited to the application of simple arithmetic to problems of shop practice. No textbooks are used, but the booklets on machine shop practice published by the International Correspondence Schools are studied in connection with the course. In addition to the required classroom work in mechanical drawing, each apprentice serves four or five months of his term in the regular drafting rooms of the company. The classroom is equipped with models of railway appliances and machinery, together with laboratory apparatus for teaching the laws of mechanics. No machine tools or other shop equipment are used in the classes. The course covers about 700 hours of instruction exclusive of the time spent in regular drafting room work. About 20 apprentices finished the course in 1915. Several of the building and printing trades' labor unions take an active interest in the training of apprentices, and in at least two instances the unions maintain evening classes for teaching trade theory. The Electrical Workers' Union, made up principally of inside wiremen, conducts apprentice classes taught by journeymen. The International Typographical Union course for compositors and compositors' apprentices is undoubtedly the best yet devised for giving supplementary training in hand composition. It is taught by journeymen in evening classes, under the supervision of the central office of the Typographical Union Commission, to which all the work must be submitted. In February, 1916, about 100 students were enrolled, of whom approximately one-third were apprentices and two-thirds journeymen. The course consists of 46 lessons in English, lettering, design, color harmony, job composition, and imposition for machine and hand folding. The classes are held at the headquarters of the union. As the students' daily practice in the shop provides plenty of opportunity for the acquisition of manual skill, no apparatus or shop equipment is used in connection with the course. The apprentice school conducted by the Y.M.C.A. represents another type of apprentice training. The instruction is given during the day. The apprentices are sent to the school by various firms in the city under an arrangement whereby the boys attend four and one-half hours each week during regular shop time. In February, 1916, the enrollment consisted of 46 apprentices, practically all from the metal trades. The employers pay the tuition fee, which amounts to $20 a year. The course requires four years' work of 40 weeks each, a total of 720 hours. It comprises instruction in shop mathematics, drawing, English, physics, and industrial hygiene. No shop equipment is used. Fifteen boys were graduated from the course this year. The factory apprentice school of the Warner and Swasey Company and New York Central Railroad type possesses many advantages over any kind of continuation instruction carried on outside of the plants where the boys are employed. A better correlation between the class and shop work is possible together with a more personal relation between teacher and pupils than is usually found when the pupils are drawn from a number of different establishments. It must be admitted, however, that this method of training apprentices is not feasible except in very large plants, as in small classes the teaching cost becomes prohibitive. There is little probability that it will ever be adopted by enough employers to take care of more than an insignificant proportion of the boys who enter the skilled trades. The results obtained, here and in other cities, through coöperative schemes, such as the Y.M.C.A. continuation school, are in the main disappointing. Their failure to reach more than a few of the boys who need trade-extension training is due partly to the fact that they operate under a condition that is fundamentally unjust. One employer interviewed during the survey stated the case very clearly: "I can see no good reason why I should make pecuniary sacrifices for the benefit of my competitors. Very few of my apprentices remain until the end of their term, because by the time they have completed their second year other firms which make no effort to train their quota of skilled workmen for the trade steal them away from me. Any plan for the training of apprentices which does not apportion the burden among the different establishments in direct proportion to the number of men they have, simply penalizes those public-spirited employers who participate in it." CONTINUATION TRAINING FROM 15 TO 18 The years between 15 and 18 are among the most important in the life of the young worker. If left to his own devices during this period, he is very likely to lose much of vocational value of his earlier education, because he does not grasp the relation which the knowledge he acquired in school bears to his daily work. As a result the problem of supplementary instruction at a later age, when he wakes up to his need for it, becomes much more difficult than if trade-extension training had been taken up at once when he entered employment. The vocational interests of young workers and the social interests of the community are both opposed to the current practice of "graduating" boys from the public schools at the ages of 15 or 16 and then losing sight of them. The fact that the large number who go into industrial occupations will not or cannot remain in school beyond these ages does not absolve the school system from further responsibility for their educational future. There should not be a complete severance between the boy and the school until he has reached a relatively mature age. In other words, the school system should maintain, as long as possible, such a relation with him as will help to round out his education and lead him to continue it after reaching manhood. It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that the only practicable solution of this problem lies in the day continuation school, backed by a compulsory law which will bring every boy and girl at work under the age of 18 into school for a certain number of hours per week. Only through a comprehensive plan that will reach large numbers of young workers can the difficulties inherent in the administration of small classes be overcome. The night schools have never been successful in holding boys long enough to make more than a beginning in trade-extension training. It is certain that growing boys should not be expected to add two hours of study to their nine or 10 hours of unaccustomed labor in the shop. Both individual and community interests demand that this problem be taken up in such a way as to obviate the sharp cleavage between the boy's school life and his working life. From every point of view it is unwise to permit him to lose all contact with the educational agencies of the city during his first years at work. The compulsory continuation school avoids the difficulties which are responsible for the common failure of those schemes which depend for their success on the initiative of individuals or the voluntary coöperation of employers and trade unions. One of its great advantages is that the principle on which it is based makes for equal justice to all. There can be no doubt that the decline of apprentice training in the shops is due partly to the fact that employers find that much of the time and money it costs goes toward providing a skilled labor force for competitors who make no effort to train young workers. The cooperation of employers on a comprehensive scale will be secured only when the burden is equally shared. THE TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS Night classes are conducted in both of the technical high schools for two terms a year of 10 weeks each, the pupils attending four hours a week. A tuition fee of $5 a term is collected, of which $3.50 is refunded to those who maintain an average attendance of 75 per cent. No special provision is made for apprentices as distinct from journeymen, and the trade classes are attended by a considerable number of wage-earners employed in occupations unrelated to industrial work. The list of courses offered during the past year, with the number enrolled in each course at the beginning of the second term, is shown in Table 12. A glance at the list of courses shows at once that while the vocational motive is given first importance, the schools also aim to provide instruction in cultural subjects which have only an indirect vocational application. Less than one-third of the students are pursuing courses which are directly related to their daily work. The remainder are enrolled in courses which have little or no connection with their daily occupations. In but four of the courses--machine shop, architectural drawing, printing, and sheet metal work--are more than half of the students employed in directly related occupations. TABLE 12.--COURSES AND NUMBER ENROLLED IN THE TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS, JANUARY, 1915 Number Course enrolled Mechanical drawing 328 Machine shop 222 Electrical construction 159 Sewing 103 Mathematics 89 Architectural drawing 83 Pattern making 73 Woodworking 67 Chemistry 59 Sheet metal drawing 52 Cooking 46 Foundry work 36 Agriculture 31 Printing 27 Sheet metal shop 23 Business English 20 Electric motors 19 Arts and crafts 18 Millinery 18 Electricity and magnetism 16 ------ Total 1,489 The policy of the schools is to form a class in any subject for which a sufficient number of students make application. Only a small proportion of the pupils attend more than one year, and the mortality from term to term is very high, although the tuition fee plan insures fairly good attendance during the term. The data collected by the survey indicate that the average length of attendance is approximately two terms--the equivalent in student hours of less than three weeks in the ordinary day school. Most of the men who enroll in night school classes need a course of at least two or three years. All but a few, however, insist on having their supplementary training in small doses. Frequently they want only specific instruction about a specific thing, such as how to lay out a certain piece of work or how to set up a particular machine tool. They want to secure this knowledge in the shortest possible time, and very few want the same thing. A course of two or three years does not appeal to them. Another difficulty is that their previous educational equipment varies widely, and some are not capable of assimilating even the specialized bit of trade knowledge they need without a preliminary course in arithmetic. As the personnel of the classes changes to a marked degree from term to term, the courses undergo frequent modifications. Apparently the teachers and principals have made a sincere effort to adapt the instruction to the demands of the men who attend the schools, but the fact is that the difficulties inherent in such work make it impossible to organize the classes on any basis except that of subject matter, which means fitting students into courses, rather than adapting courses to the needs of particular groups of workers. The enrollment is far below what should be expected in a city of nearly three-quarters of a million inhabitants. The total number of journeymen, apprentices, and helpers from the skilled manual occupations, receiving trade instruction in the night schools, is considerably less than one per cent of the total number in the city. A large enrollment is necessary for efficient administration. Success in specializing courses in night schools, as in day schools, requires a large administrative unit. The possible variety of courses is in direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a class of 200 carpenters there would probably be, for example, 10 or 15 men who need specialized instruction in stair-building. On the basis of the present enrollment of 40 or 50 carpenters the class would dwindle to three or four, with the result that the per capita teaching cost becomes prohibitive. The relatively small result now obtained is not the fault of the schools, but is due principally to the fact that the great field of evening vocational instruction is treated by the school system as a mere side line of the technical high schools. The evening classes are taught by teachers who have already given their best in the day classes. The enrollment cannot be greatly increased so long as this type of education is handled as one of the marginal activities of the school system, manned by tired teachers and directed by tired principals. It is a totally different kind of job from regular day instruction and requires a different administrative organization, with a responsible head vested with sufficient authority to meet quickly and effectively the widely varying demands of its students. This will require the speeding-up of administrative methods in the establishment of courses and the employment of teachers, a freer hand for the principals as regards both expenditures and policy, and most important of all, the organization of all forms of continuation and night school instruction under a separate department. A COMBINED PROGRAM OF CONTINUATION AND TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING In considering the general conclusions of the survey as to what should be done in the matter of trade preparatory and trade-extension training in both day and night schools, it must be borne in mind that these two types of vocational training are still in the experimental stage. Their future development will probably involve a wide departure from conventional school methods and the evolution of a special technique through trial and experiment. At the present time we can only formulate certain of the main conditions to which future advance in these fields must conform. First of all, it must be recognized that such work is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to teach, but who possess a firm conviction of the value and utility of this kind of instruction. In the hands of teachers who bring to it only the margin of interest and energy remaining after a hard day's work in the high school, or who are unable to comprehend the radical difference between teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a week and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or evening class, the full measure of success cannot be expected. The employment of day teachers for night school work has never been other than a makeshift, and the insignificant results attained in night schools throughout the country have been due in great measure to this cause. Apart from the fact that the interests of adolescent workers imperatively demand the establishment of day continuation schools, an additional argument in favor of such schools is that they would provide a means for making the night trade-extension work effective, through the use of continuation day school teachers for night school work. Such a plan would mean that teachers employed on this basis would have charge of a day continuation class during one session of four hours, and a night class of two hours, making a total of six hours' work per day. A plan of this kind would make possible the establishment of the fundamental conditions for successful trade--preparatory and trade-extension training in the night schools. The present system is unjust to both teachers and students;--to the students because the man or boy who sacrifices his recreation time to attend night school has a right to the best the schools can give; to the teachers because no teacher can work a two-hour night shift in addition to seven or eight hours in the technical high school without seriously impairing his efficiency. The development of this plan would necessitate the establishment of two centers, one located in the eastern and one in the western section of the city. In these centers should be housed the day vocational school, the day continuation classes, and the night vocational classes. This would relieve the technical high schools of a task which does not belong to them, and which by overloading the teachers seriously interferes with the work they were originally employed to do. At present a considerable number of the technical high school teachers are devoting from one-fifth to one-fourth of their total working day to elementary teaching, as most of the work in the night schools is below high school grade. By bringing together all the trade preparatory and trade-extension work under one roof, it is possible to secure the highest efficiency in the use of equipment. Expensive shops can be justified only on the basis of constant use. If the suggestion for the establishment of a vocational school is acted upon, such future contingencies as the continuation school should be borne in mind in planning the buildings and equipment, so as to permit of extensions as they may be required. It is practically certain that universal continuation training for young workers up to the age of 17 or 18 will be made compulsory in all the progressive states of the country within the next decade. The Ohio school authorities should get ready to handle the continuation school problem before the example of other states and the overwhelming pressure of public opinion forces it upon them. CHAPTER IX VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS The discussions in the preceding chapters have been limited intentionally to a consideration of the needs and possibilities of training for wage-earning pursuits in which men predominate. The conditions which surround vocational training for girls are so fundamentally unlike those encountered in the vocational training of boys that a combined treatment leads to needless complexity and confusion. Cleveland uses a relatively smaller amount of woman labor than most other large cities. In only one of the 10 largest cities in the country--Pittsburgh--is the proportion of women and girls at work smaller as compared with the total number of persons in gainful occupations than in Cleveland. In 1900, 20.4 per cent of the workers in the city were women; by 1910 the proportion of women workers had increased to 22 per cent, a shift of less than two per cent for the decade. A consideration of the occupational future of boys and girls shows at once how widely their problems differ. The typical boy in Cleveland attends school until he reaches the age of 15 or 16. About this period he becomes a wage-earner and for the next 30 or 40 years devotes most of his time and energy to making a living. The typical girl leaves school about the same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years, then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping house and rearing children. To the man wage-earning is the real business of life. To the woman it is a means for filling in the gap between school and marriage, a little journey into the world previous to settling down to her main job. The most radical and important difference between the two sexes with respect to wage-earning is found in the length of the working life. The transitory character of the wage-earning phase in the life of most women is clearly seen in the contrasted age distribution shown in Table 13. TABLE 13.--PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE PERIODS ----------------------+-------------+------------+ Age period | Women | Men | ----------------------+-------------+------------+ 16 to 21 | 60 | 85 | 21 to 45 | 26 | 98 | 45 and over | 12 | 85 | ----------------------+-------------+------------+ Approximately 85 per cent of the boys and slightly less than 60 per cent of the girls between the ages of 16 and 21 are at work. In the next age group--21 to 45--given by the census, 98 per cent of the men are at work, but the proportion of women employed in gainful occupations drops to 26 per cent, or about one in four; in the next age group--45 and over--it falls to about 12 per cent, as compared with 85 per cent of the men. Of the women still at work in the older age group, over one-half are engaged in domestic and personal service as servants, laundresses, housekeepers, etc. TABLE 14.--NUMBER EMPLOYED IN THE PRINCIPAL WAGE-EARNING OCCUPATIONS AMONG EACH 1,000 WOMEN FROM 16 TO 21 YEARS OF AGE Manufacturing and mechanical industries: Apprentices to dressmakers and milliners 4 Dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory) 20 Milliners and millinery dealers 17 Semi-skilled operatives: Candy factories 6 Cigar and tobacco factories 15 Electrical supply factories 10 Knitting mills 11 Printing and publishing 8 Woolen and worsted mills: Weavers 5 Other occupations 7 Sewers and sewing machine operators (factory) 53 Tailoresses 25 Transportation: Telephone operators 19 Trade: Clerks in stores 28 Saleswomen (stores) 35 Professional service: Musicians and teachers of music 6 Teachers (school) 4 Domestic and personal service: Charwomen and cleaners 5 Laundry operatives 13 Servants 81 Waitresses 9 Clerical occupations: Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants 26 Clerks (except clerks in stores) 20 Stenographers and typewriters 62 The occupations in which the girls now in the public schools will later engage can be determined with a relative degree of accuracy by employing a method in general similar to that utilized in forecasting the occupations of boys. It must be taken into account, however, that the wage-earning period for women, except in the professional occupations, usually begins before the age of 21. For this reason the 16 to 21 age group probably offers the best basis for determining the future occupational distribution of girls in school. If all women at work up to the age of 25 were included the figures would be more nearly exact, but unfortunately data for the period between 21 and 25 are not available. The figures at the right of Table 14 show the number engaged in each specified occupation among each thousand women in the city between the ages of 16 and 21. The proportions given for the professional occupations, particularly teaching, are too small, because of the fact that few women enter the professions before the age of 21. Applying these proportions to the average elementary school unit, it will be seen at once that the number of girls old enough to profit by special training is too small in any single occupation to form a class of workable size. In such a school there would be about 80 girls 12 years old and over. Of the skilled occupations listed in the table stenography and typewriting offers the largest field of employment, yet the number who are likely to take up this kind of work does not exceed five or six. DIFFERENTIATION IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL The organization of the junior high school, where the enrollment is made up entirely of older pupils, obviates this difficulty to some extent. Instead of 80 girls there are from 300 to 500, with a corresponding increase in the number who will enter any given wage-earning occupation. Not less than one-eighth and probably not more than one-fifth of these girls will become needleworkers of some kind. They will need a more practical and intensive training in the fundamentals of sewing than is now provided by the household arts course. The skill required in trade work cannot be obtained in the amount of time now devoted to this subject. It should be made possible for a girl who expects to make a living with her needle to elect a thoroughly practical course in sewing in which the aim is to prepare for wage earning rather than merely to teach the girl how to make and mend her own garments. As proficiency in trade sewing requires first of all ample opportunity for practice, provision should be made for extending the time now given to sewing for those girls who wish to become needle workers. This can easily be done through the system of electives now in use. The establishment of classes in power machine operating during the junior high school period appears to be impracticable, due to the immaturity of the girls and the small number who could profit by such instruction. A discussion of the present sewing courses in the public schools will be found in Chapters XIV and XV, which summarize the special reports on the Garment Trades and Dressmaking and Millinery. In the present chapter the consideration of these occupations is limited to an examination of the administrative questions connected with training for the sewing trades. SPECIALIZED TRAINING FOR THE SEWING TRADES The compulsory attendance law requires all girls to attend school until they are 16 years old. This forces a considerable number into the high schools for one or two years before they go to work. As a rule the type of girl who is likely to enter the needle trades selects the technical high school course, not because she has any idea of finishing it, but because she believes it offers a less tiresome way of getting through her last one or two years in school than the academic course. The technical course requires three and three-quarter hours a week of sewing during the first two years. The student may elect trade dressmaking and millinery during the third and fourth years. Very few girls who can afford to spend four years in high school ever become dressmakers or factory operatives. If the school system is to do anything of direct vocational value for them it will have to begin further down. Most of them leave school before the age of 17 and the years between 14 and 16 represent the last chance the school will have to give them any direct aid towards preparation for immediate wage-earning. For successful work in machine operating the class must be large enough to warrant the purchase and operation of sufficient equipment to give the pupils an opportunity for intensive practice. The only way this condition can be secured is by concentrating in large groups the girls who need such training. Little will be accomplished in training for the sewing trades without specialization, and specialization in small administrative units is impossible. The teaching and operating cost in a school enrolling, say 200 girls, who want the same kind of work, can be brought within reasonable bounds. In a school where the total number who need specialized training does not exceed 10 or 15 the cost is prohibitive. In the opinion of the Survey Staff a one or two year vocational course in the sewing trades should be established. The entrance age should not be less than 15. Courses should be provided for intensive work in trade dressmaking, power machine operating, and trade millinery. A conservative estimate of the number of girls who could be expected to enroll for courses in these subjects is 500. A trade school might be established where only this type of vocational training would be carried on, or it might be conducted in the same building with the trade courses for boys recommended in a previous chapter. In either case the number of pupils would be sufficient to warrant up-to-date equipment and a corps of specially trained teachers. Training for the sewing trades consumes more material than any other kind of vocational training. For this reason economical administration requires some arrangement for marketing the product. During the latter part of the course the school should be able to turn out first-class work. The familiarity with trade standards the pupils obtain through practice on garments which must meet the exacting demands of the buying public has a distinct educational value. The Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City and other successful schools in the country operate on this basis. There is reason to believe that there would be little difficulty in making arrangements with the clothing manufacturers in Cleveland to furnish a good trade school as much contract work as the classes could handle. OTHER OCCUPATIONS From one-fourth to one-fifth of the girls in the school will later enter employment in commercial and clerical occupations, as stenographers, typists, clerks, cashiers, bookkeepers, saleswomen, and so on. Their needs will be considered in Chapters XII and XIII, in which the findings of the special reports on Boys and Girls in Commercial Work and Department Store Occupations are summarized. A relatively small number will become semi-skilled operatives in industrial establishments, such as job printing houses, knitting mills, and factories making electrical supplies, metal products, and so on. As a rule such work requires only a small amount of manual skill or deftness. Not much training is needed and it can be given quickly and effectively in the factories. About one-ninth of the girls in the school will enter paid domestic or personal service of some kind. The household arts courses probably meet the needs of girls who may be employed in such occupations as far as they can be met under present conditions. The woman domestic servant occupies about the same social level as the male common laborer, and a course which openly sets out to train girls to be servants is not likely to prosper. The load of social stigma such work carries is too heavy. At some time in the future it may be possible to ignore the traditional and universal attitude of our public toward the so-called menial occupations sufficiently to consider training servants. At present such a possibility seems remote. CHAPTER X VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE Very few of the army of young people who become wage earners each year take up the occupations in which they engage as the result of any conscious selection of their own or of their parents. They drift into some job aimlessly and ignorantly, following the line of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little future beyond a bare livelihood. THE WORK OF THE VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR The plan now followed in the technical high schools of the city, by which one teacher in the school specially qualified for such work is charged with the duty of advising pupils who leave school and aiding them in securing desirable employment, could be adapted to the junior high school, where the need for service of this kind is even greater than in the technical high schools. Such work requires men who have had some contact with industrial conditions, and who possess sound judgment, common sense, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the local industries. If the curriculum embraces the course in "Industrial Information" suggested in a previous chapter, the teacher of this subject might well be designated as vocational counselor for the boys in the school. A course similar in nature should be provided for the girls and a woman teacher selected to advise them when they leave school. Considerable difficulty probably will be experienced in securing women teachers competent to assume this task, but any wide-awake teacher who will devote some attention to published studies of industrial conditions and get in touch with the local organizations engaged in the investigation of wage earning employments, such as the Consumers' League and the Girls' Vocation Bureau, can soon acquire a fund of information that will enable her to offer valuable suggestions and advice to girls who expect to become wage earners. The vocational counselor must guard against conventional thinking and the mass of "inspirational" nonsense which forms the main contribution to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first, "Be good;" and second, "Get ahead." The pupils are told about well-known men who became famous or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules. Occasionally there is some prattle about the "dignity of labor," as a rule meaningless in the light of our current ideas of success. We do not think of a well-paid artisan as "successful." His success begins when he is promoted to office work, or becomes a foreman. The inherent difficulty with ideals of success which demand that the worker become a boss of somebody else is that the world of industry needs only a relatively small number of bosses. Theoretically it is possible for any individual to reach the eminence of boss-ship. In real life less than one-tenth of the boys who enter industrial employment can rise above the level of the journeyman artisan, at least before later middle age, because only about that proportion of bosses are needed. The task of the vocational counselor will consist in putting the pupil's feet on the first steps of the ladder rather than showing him rosy pictures of the top of it. For the great majority the top means no more than decent wages. This, after all, is a worthy ambition, frequently requiring the worker's best efforts for its realization. THE GIRLS' VOCATION BUREAU The Girls' Vocation Bureau, for the placement of girls and women in wage-earning employment, has been in operation about six years. At present it is under the general charge of the state and municipal employment bureau, although part of the funds for the support of the bureau is raised through private subscription. From July, 1914, to July, 1915, the Bureau secured positions for nearly 11,000 girls and women. Of these approximately 12 per cent were girls under 21. In many instances only temporary employment is secured, although efforts are made to place the girls in permanent positions. More girls are placed in office positions than in any other line of work, but a considerable proportion take employment in factories, domestic service, restaurants, and stores. A careful record is kept of each applicant's qualifications, home conditions, the names of employers, etc. The Bureau endeavors to keep in touch with the girls after they are placed through follow-up reports and visits by members of the office staff or by volunteer investigators. This spring every school in the city was visited by representatives of the Bureau in the endeavor to interest principals in the work of placement, and arrangements were made for sending to the Bureau lists of the girls who were expected to leave school permanently. This effort met with slight success, as only about 100 girls were reported from all the schools in the city, although the number of girls leaving school each year from the elementary grades alone is over 2,000. In all cases the girls were visited by a representative of the Bureau and urged to return to school, or if they were determined to seek employment the advantages of registering in the Bureau were brought to their attention. It is to be hoped that more effective coöperation between the Bureau and the schools can be established and that plans for a placement bureau for boys similar in method and aim to the Girls' Bureau may be realized. The matter of placement is the most difficult part of the vocational counselor's duties, and an arrangement whereby the vocational guidance departments of the various schools might serve as feeders to a central placement bureau would probably in the long run give the best results. Both guidance and placement are new things in the public schools and efficient methods of administration can be worked out only through trial and experiment. CHAPTER XI CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1. The future occupations of the children in school will correspond very closely to those of the native-born adult population. The occupational distribution of the city's working population therefore constitutes the best guide as to the kinds of industrial training which can be undertaken profitably by the school system. 2. Industrial training in school has to do chiefly with preparation for work in the skilled trades. Training for semi-skilled occupations can be given more effectively and cheaply in the factories than in the schools. 3. As a rule, industrial training is not practicable in elementary schools, for the reason that the number of boys in the average elementary school who are likely to enter the skilled trades and who are also old enough to profit by industrial training is too small to permit the organization of classes. 4. The most important contribution to vocational education the elementary schools can make consists in getting the children through the course fast enough so that two or three years before the end of the compulsory attendance period they will enter an intermediate or vocational school where some kind of industrial training is possible. 5. The survey recommends the establishment of a general industrial course in the junior high school, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes. The course should also include the study of economic and working conditions in the principal industrial occupations. 6. One or two vocational schools equipped to offer specialized trade training for boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are needed. At present a gap of from one to two years exists between the end of the compulsory attendance period and the entrance age in practically all the skilled trades, which could well be employed in direct preparation for trade work. Such schools would relieve the first and second year classes of the technical high schools of many pupils these schools do not want and cannot adequately provide for. General as well as special courses should be offered, although pupils should be encouraged to select a particular occupation and devote at least one year to intensive preparation for it. 7. The survey favors the extension of the compulsory attendance period for boys to the age of 16. The industries of Cleveland have little or nothing worth while to offer boys below this age. 8. The best form of trade-extension training is that provided in a few establishments which maintain apprentice schools in their plants. This plan is feasible only in large establishments. It will never take care of more than a small proportion of the young workers who need supplementary technical training. 9. Plans for trade-extension training of apprentices depending on the coöperation of employers have met with slight success. The principle difficulty is that the sacrifices they involve are borne by a relatively small number of employers while the benefits are reaped by the industry in general. Either the industry as a whole or the community should bear the cost of such training. 10. The vocational interests of young workers and the social interests of the community demand the establishment of a system of continuation training for all young people in employment, up to the age of 18 years. The classes should be held during working hours and attendance should be compulsory. 11. The enrollment in the trade classes of the night schools is far below what it should be in a city as large as Cleveland. The relatively small result now obtained is not the fault of the schools, but is due mainly to the fact that the field of vocational evening instruction is treated by the school system as a mere side line of the technical high schools. 12. The survey recommends the organization of all forms of continuation, night vocational, and day vocational training under centralized full-time leadership. Only in this way can there be secured a type of organization and administration sufficiently elastic and adaptable to meet the widely varying needs of the working classes. 13. Industrial training for girls will consist in the main of preparation for the sewing trades. Practically no other industrial occupations in which large numbers of women are employed possess sufficient technical content to warrant the establishment of training courses in the schools. The survey recommends a practical course of needle instruction in the junior high school and the introduction in the vocational schools of specialized courses in dressmaking, power machine operating, and trade millinery for the older girls who wish to enter these trades. 14. The present experiment in vocational guidance and placement should be extended as rapidly as possible. Courses in vocational information should be offered in the junior high school and vocational counsellors appointed to advise pupils in the selection of their future vocations and aid them in securing desirable employment when they leave school. The full measure of success in this work demands better coöperation with outside agencies on the part of teachers and principals than has been secured up to the present time. CHAPTER XII SUMMARY OF REPORT ON BOYS AND GIRLS IN COMMERCIAL WORK Particular attention is given throughout this report to the differences which exist between boys and girls in commercial employment with respect to the conditions which govern success and advancement. The majority of boys begin as messengers or office boys and subsequently become clerks or do bookkeeping work. As men they remain in these latter positions or, in at least an equal number of cases, pass on into the productive or administrative end of business. The majority of girls are stenographers, or to a less extent, assistants in bookkeeping or clerical work. Boys' work may be expected to take on the characteristics of the business that employs them; girls' work remains in essentials unchanged even in totally changed surroundings. Boys' work within limits is progressive; girls' work in its general type--with individual exceptions--is static. Boys as a rule cannot stay at the same kind of work and advance; girls as a rule stay at the same kind of work whether or not they advance. Boys in any position are expected to be qualifying themselves for "the job ahead," but for girls that is not the case. Boys may expect to make a readjustment with every step in advancement. Each new position brings them to a new situation and into a new relation to the business. Girls receive salary advancement for increasingly responsible work, but any change in work is likely to be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible if they remain in the same place of employment. If they change to another place, those who are stenographers have a slight readjustment to make in getting accustomed to new terms and to the peculiarities of the new persons who dictate to them. Bookkeeping assistants may encounter different systems, but their part of the work will be so directed and planned that it cannot be said to necessitate difficult adaptation on their part. The work of clerical assistants is so simple and so nearly mechanical that the question of adjustment does not enter. These girl workers do not find that the change of position or firm brings them necessarily into a new relation to the business. Even moderate success is denied to a boy if he has not adaptability and the capacity to grasp business ideas and methods; but a comparatively high degree of success could be attained by a girl who possessed neither of these qualifications. A boy, however, who has no specific training which he can apply directly and definitely at work would be far more likely to obtain a good opening and promotion than a girl without it would be. The range of a boy's possible future occupations is as wide as the field of business. He cannot at first be trained specifically as a girl can be because he does not know what business will do with him or what he wants to do with business. The girl's choice is limited by custom. She can prepare herself definitely for stenography, bookkeeping, and machine operating and be sure that she is preparing for just the opportunity--and the whole opportunity--that business offers to her. Her very limitation of opportunity makes preliminary choice and training a definitely possible thing. [Illustration: Diagram 1.--Boys and girls under 18 years of age in office work in Cleveland. Data from report of Ohio Industrial Commission, 1915] The difference between boys and girls begins at the beginning. Boys are given a larger share of the positions which the youngest worker can fill. Diagram 1 illustrates this and the figures of the United States Census for 1910 clearly corroborate it. Boys are taken for such work and taken younger than girls, not merely because the law permits them to go to work at an earlier age, but also because business itself intends to round their training. Girls, on the contrary, are expected to enter completely trained for definite positions. This fact alone would in most cases compel them to be older. Furthermore, because boys in first positions are looked upon as potential clerks, miscellaneous jobs about the office have for them a two-fold value. They give the employer a chance to weed out unpromising material; and they give boys an opportunity to find themselves and to gather ideas about the business and methods which they may be able to make use of in later adjustments. [Illustration: Diagram 2.--Men and women 18 years of age and over in clerical and administrative work in offices in Cleveland. U.S. Census, 1910] Diagram 2 shows that girls' training, if it is to meet the present situation, must prepare for a future in specialized clerical work; boys' future must apparently be thought of as in mostly the clerical and administrative fields. The term "clerical" as here used, covers bookkeepers, cashiers and accountants, stenographers and typists, clerks and a miscellaneous group of younger workers such as messengers, office boys, etc. "Administrative" covers proprietors, officials, managers, supervisors, and agents, but it does not include salespeople. The usual commercial course gives impartially to boys and girls two traditional "subjects" which they are to apply in wage earning whatever part of the wage earning field they may enter. These are stenography and bookkeeping. The evidence collected during the survey shows that these are rarely found in combination except in small offices. Of the men employed who are stenographers, the majority are of two kinds: (1) those who use stenography incidentally with their other and more important work as clerks, and (2) those for whom stenography is but a stepping-stone to another kind of position. The only firms which make a practice of offering ordinary stenographic positions for boys are those which restrict themselves to male employees for every kind of work. Independent stenographic work of various kinds is of course open to the sexes alike. In Cleveland there are a few women in court stenography. The 10 public stenographers' offices were found upon inquiry to include two men and 10 women. No figures regarding convention reporters were obtainable. In the positions of the bookkeeping group also there was some sex difference. The accountants, bookkeepers, cashiers, pay-masters and other persons of responsibility are, in large offices where both sexes work together, much more likely to be men than women; the assistants who work with these may be of either sex, but girls and women are likely to make up the greater portion. Of the small office this is less generally true. Boys who do machine operating are usually clerks whose machine work, as in the case of stenography, is merely an adjunct to other work; with girls machine operating is either the whole of the position or the most important part of it. The essential difference between the clerkship which boys for the most part hold and the general clerical work which girls do is that the boys' work is unified and is a definite, separate responsible part of the business, usually in line for promotion to some other clerkship; the girls' is a miscellany of more or less unrelated jobs and is not a preparation for specific promotion. A GENERAL VIEW OF COMMERCIAL WORK All commercial occupations may be roughly divided into two classes: those which have to do with administrative, merchandising, or productive work, and those which carry on the clerical routine which the others necessitate. The first class of occupations may be designated by the term "administrative work" and the second by "clerical work." A varying relation exists between the two which depends chiefly upon the kind of business represented. In some kinds clerical work is the stepping stone by which administrative work is reached; in others employment in clerical work side-tracks away from the administrative work. There is, of course, a future of promotion within the limits of clerical work without reference to its relation to administrative work. The practical aspect of it is, in most kinds of business, that the subordinate clerical positions far outnumber the chief ones. Promotion of any sort depends largely upon individual capacity; but this general distinction may be made between promotion in clerical work and in administrative work; in the clerical field it tends to be automatic but limited; in administrative work it comes more often through a worker's initiative or individuality than through automatic progression and it has no arbitrary limits. Obviously one kind of person will be adapted to an administrative career; another to a clerical one. Even a beginner in wage earning might be able to classify himself on a basis like this; yet it is not essential, for in many cases it is possible that his first positions recognize this choice. He needs fundamental experience in business methods whatever he is going to do; and for most administrative positions he needs maturity. He can achieve both by serving an apprenticeship in some form of clerical work. The important things for him in the early part of his career are to understand the distinction between the two classes of occupations; to sense the relation he holds to the business as a whole; and to act intelligently in the matter of making a change. BOOKKEEPING The bookkeeping which modern business, except in the small establishment, demands of young workers is certainly not the journal and ledger bookkeeping of the commercial schools. A modern office organization may have in its bookkeeping department of 20 persons only one "bookkeeper." This person is responsible for the system and he supervises the keeping of records and the preparation of statements. A minority of his assistants will need to be able to distinguish debits from credits; the rest will be occupied in making simple entries or in posting, in verifying and checking, or in finding totals with the aid of machines. The bookkeeping systems employed show wide variation, not only in different kinds of business, but in different establishments in the same kinds of business. Many firms are using a loose-leaf system; some use ledgers; and others have a system of record keeping which calls for neither of these devices. Bookkeeping work, especially in the positions held by girls, is frequently combined with comptometer or adding machine work, with typing, billing, filing, or statistical work; but rarely, except in the small office, are bookkeeping and stenography--the Siamese Twins of traditional and commercial training--found linked together. STENOGRAPHY Stenography is used throughout business chiefly in correspondence; to a less extent for report and statement work, for legal work, and for printer's copy. The stenographer in any business office, more than other clerical workers, is supposed to look after a variety of unorganized details including the use of office appliances, the filing of letters, and sometimes dealing with patrons or visitors in the absence of the employer. She is more important to the employer in his personal business relations than any other employee, except in the case of those few employers who have private secretaries. CLERKS' POSITIONS In the case of large corporations, which are by far the largest employers of clerks, this work has been standardized to a marked degree. The organization of the office work of the telegraph, telephone, and express companies, the railroads, and the occasional large wholesale company in Cleveland is a nearly exact duplication of that of other district or division offices controlled by these companies in other cities. The same is true of the Civil Service. Whatever effects standardization may have upon opportunity, it obviously makes for definiteness in regard to training requirements. All the positions are graded on the basis of experience and responsibility and a logical line of promotion from one to another has been worked out. The report contains detailed studies of different kinds of clerical work in the offices of transportation and public utility corporations, retail and wholesale stores, manufacturing establishments, banks, the civil service, and small offices employing relatively few people. In each of these such matters as character of the work, opportunities for advancement, kind of training needed and special qualifications are taken up. WAGES AND REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT Stated briefly the conclusions of the report with respect to wages and regularity of employment in office positions are as follows: The wage opportunities for clerical workers, especially men, lie in business positions outside the limits of clerical work. Men clerical workers average about the same pay as salesmen and more pay than industrial workers. Women clerical workers receive more than either saleswomen or industrial workers. Employment is much more regular in clerical work than it is in salesmanship or industrial work. For men clerical workers the wage opportunity is better in manufacturing and trade than in some kinds of transportation business. For women it is better in manufacturing and transportation than it is in trade. Men's wages tend to be higher than women's in all branches of clerical work. Among the clerical positions, bookkeeping shows the highest wage average for men; clerks' positions show the lowest. Stenography shows the highest for women; machine work the lowest. Men bookkeepers show their best wage average in the wholesale business, clerks in transportation, and stenographers in manufacturing. The small office gives better wage opportunity to women bookkeepers and men stenographers; the large office favors women stenographers and men clerks. For boys, there is some indication that advanced education and commercial training, in their present status, are less closely related to high wages than are personal qualities and experience. For girls, the combination of high school education and business training is the best preparation for wage advancement. A general high school education and usually, business training, are essential to the assurance of even a living wage. Business training based upon less than high school education is almost futile. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING Six chapters of the report are devoted to a consideration of the needs and possibilities of training. The work now being done in the public schools of the city is discussed in detail, with suggestions for a better adaptation of the courses of study and methods and content of instruction to the needs of boys and girls who wish to prepare themselves to enter clerical occupations. The observations on training for such work may be summarized as follows: Commercial training should be open to all students whom commercial subjects and methods can serve best; but graduation should depend upon a high standard of efficiency. Statistics show that commercial training is not to be looked upon, in a wholesale way, as a successful means of taking care of backward academic students. Commercial students' need for cultural and other supplementary education may be even greater than that of academic students. The graduation rate of commercial students in public schools has been increased since the organization of a separate commercial high school and the number of students entering has been decreased. Commercial high schools receive a grade of children who are about medium in scholarship and normal in age. Commercial and academic high school teachers are similar in scholastic preparation and in the salaries they are paid. The Cleveland Normal School does not prepare definitely for the teaching of commercial subjects. Commercial teachers are nominally supervised by the district superintendents. Public schools receive 29 per cent of the city's day commercial students. The private schools receive a few more than the sum of public, parochial, and philanthropic schools. Public schools receive 22 per cent of the city's night commercial students. The private schools receive more than twice as many as the public and philanthropic schools. There are no night commercial classes in parochial schools. The length of the day course in most private schools is eight months or less; in public schools it is four years. The public school, if it believes in longer preparation for commercial work than most private schools give, should demonstrate the reason to parents and children. Training for boys and girls should be different in content and in emphasis. The usual course of study in commercial schools is suitable for girls and unsuitable for boys. A girl needs, chiefly, specific training in some one line of work. She has a choice among stenography, bookkeeping, and machine operating. A boy needs, chiefly, general education putting emphasis on writing, figuring, and spelling; general information; and the development of certain qualities and standards. For students electing to go into commercial work, general education may be taught more effectively through the medium of commercial subjects than through academic ones. Boys' training looks forward to both clerical work and business administration; but as clerical work is a preparation for business and is likely to occupy the first few years of wage earning, training should aim especially to meet the needs of clerical positions. Clerical positions for boys cover a variety of work which cannot be definitely anticipated and cannot therefore be specifically trained for. But certain fundamental needs are common to all. Most of the specialized training for boys should be given in night continuation classes. Girl stenographers need a full high school course for its educational value and for maturity. Girls going into other clerical positions can qualify with a year or two less of education; but immaturity in any case puts them at a disadvantage. Boys' training, for those who cannot remain in school, should be compressed into fewer than four years. Immaturity in the case of boys is not a great disadvantage. Bookkeeping has general value in the information it gives about business methods and for its drill in accuracy. To some extent it may aid in the development of reasoning. Much of the bookkeeping in actual use in business consists in making entries of one kind only and in checking and verifying. Understanding of debit and credit, posting, and trial balance, is the maximum practical need of the younger workers. Penmanship demands compactness, legibility, neatness, and ease in writing; also, the correct writing and placing of figures. The chief demand of business in arithmetic is for fundamental operations--adding and multiplying--also for ability to make calculations and to verify results mentally. Undergraduate experience in school or business offices may be a valuable method of acquainting students with office practice and routine and with business organization and business standards. CHAPTER XIII SUMMARY OF REPORT ON DEPARTMENT STORE OCCUPATIONS The field covered in this volume is limited to the business of retail selling as carried on in the department stores and some other stores of Cleveland. The retail stores considered can all be assigned to one of the three following classes: (1) The department store of the first rank which draws trade not only from the whole city and the suburbs but also from the towns and smaller cities of a large surrounding district; (2) the neighborhood store which does a smaller business within narrower limits, drawing its trade, as the name indicates, from the immediate neighborhood; (3) the five and ten cent store, well known by syndicate names, where no merchandise which must be sold above 10 cents is carried. DEPARTMENT STORES The five largest department stores in Cleveland employ about 5,800 people distributed among several mercantile departments, and in a variety of occupations that find a place in the industry. Of these 5,800 people approximately seven-tenths are women and three-tenths are men; 90 per cent are over 18 years of age and 10 per cent are under 18. The entire force of a store is sometimes arbitrarily divided by the management into "productive," and "non-productive" help. From 40 to 60 per cent of the employees were reported as actually taking in money, while the remainder, the "non-producers," were engaged in keeping the business going and making it possible for the "producers" to sell goods. The greatest number of opportunities either for employment or promotion are in the selling force. This is often spoken as being "on the floor." Both boys and girls may find employment here, though a large majority of the sales force is made up of them. Speaking in general terms, men are only employed to sell men's furnishings, sporting goods, bulky merchandise, such as rugs, furniture, blankets, etc., and yard goods which are difficult to handle, such as household linens and dress goods. Positions as buyers and buyer's assistants are not restricted by sex and boys and girls may both consider them as a possible goal. NEIGHBORHOOD STORES A neighborhood store is that type of department store which draws its trade from a comparatively limited area of which the store is the center. The kind of goods carried are practically the same as in the large department store and the variety of merchandise may be nearly as great; but the selection is more limited because of the small stock. Promotion to selling positions is more rapid in the neighborhood stores than in regular department stores. One reason for this is that a larger proportion of the force is "productive," _i.e._, selling. This proportion may run as high as 80 or even 90 per cent, as compared with the 40 to 60 per cent of "productive" help in large department stores. Employment in these stores is looked upon as desirable preliminary training for service in larger department stores. This is the general opinion held by those who hire the employees in the larger stores. The selling experience gained in neighborhood stores is looked upon as general, in that it gives an acquaintance with a variety of merchandise rather than an extensive knowledge of any line of stock. This experience makes the employee adaptable and resourceful. Another advantage of neighborhood training for sales people is the fact that they are brought into closer human relations with the customer and thus learn the value of personality as a factor in making sales. FIVE AND TEN CENT STORES Cleveland had in the fall of 1915 six large stores where nothing costing over 10 cents is sold. These belong to three syndicates or chains. To show the extent to which this business has developed it may be stated that the largest of these syndicates, which controls three of the six Cleveland stores, has 747 branches in different parts of the country. The number of saleswomen in a single store ranges from 12 to 70. The total number in the six stores was approximately 226. The shift in this branch of retail trade is large, as there are continual changes in the selling force. One store reported the number of new employees hired in six months as being about equal to the average selling force. The managers of the five and ten cent stores without exception stated that they preferred to hire beginners who were without store experience. The hours of work are longer and the conditions under which the work is done are more trying than is usually the case in the larger department stores. The girl who expects her application for employment in the five and ten cent store to be accepted must be 18 years old in order that she may legally work after six o'clock. It is better for her to be without previous selling experience (unless in other five and ten cent stores), as employers in these stores prefer to train help according to their own methods. WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT The wages paid beginners in the department stores are fair as compared with other industries employing the same grade of help. Boys and girls when they first enter employment receive from $3.50 to $7, depending on the store where they get their first job. In addition to the salary most department stores give bonuses or commissions through which the members of the sales force may increase their compensation. The Survey Staff worked out comparisons on the basis of data supplied by the State Industrial Commission between the earnings of workers in department store occupations and those in other industries. Diagram 3 shows graphically a comparison of the wages of women workers in six different industries. An interesting point brought out by this graphic comparison is that retail trade constitutes a much better field for women's employment as compared with the great majority of positions open to them in other lines than is commonly assumed to be the case. This is brought out even more clearly in Table 15, which compares, on a percentage basis, those who earn $12 a week and over, in all of the industries of the city employing as many as 500 women in 1914. [Illustration: Diagram 3.--Per cent of women earning each class of weekly wages in each of six occupations] TABLE 15.--PER CENT OF WOMEN EMPLOYEES OVER 18 YEARS OF AGE EARNING $12 A WEEK AND OVER Office employees, in retail and wholesale stores 31.8 Employees in women's clothing factories 22.5 Saleswomen in retail and wholesale stores 21.0 Employees in men's clothing factories 13.3 Employees in hosiery and knit goods factories 7.9 Employees in printing and publishing establishments 7.7 Employees in telephone and telegraph offices 6.3 Employees in laundries and dry cleaning establishments 4.4 Employees in cigar and tobacco factories 3.9 Employees in gas and electric fixtures concerns 3.2 If the data were for retail stores only and did not include wholesale stores, then office work, which now stands at the head of the list, would probably not make so good a showing, although the superiority over the selling positions is, from the wage-earning standpoint, so marked that there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that on the whole women office workers are better paid than women in the sales force. On the other hand the proportion of saleswomen earning $12 and over is from nearly seven times as great to not far from twice as great as it is in the factory industries, if we except the workers in women's clothing factories, whose earnings per week are better than those of the saleswomen. With respect to the men employed on the sales force of the department stores a somewhat different situation exists. In Diagram 4 a comparison is made of the wages paid in sales positions with the wages paid in clerical positions. Here it will be noted that men who sell goods in retail and wholesale stores earn more on the average than men occupying clerical positions, such as bookkeepers, stenographers, and office clerks. This comparison does not include traveling salesmen. A further comparison of the earnings of the men in stores with the earnings of male workers (omitting office clerks) in the different industries of the city employing the largest number of men is given in Diagram 5, which shows the per cent in each industry earning $18 a week and over. [Illustration: Diagram 4.--Per cent of salesmen and of men clerical workers in stores receiving each class of weekly wage] In comparing wages in stores with those in the manufacturing industries it must be not forgotten that the working day and week in the larger stores is shorter than in most of the factories. Hence a comparison of earnings on the basis of wage per hour would show a still greater advantage in favor of both sales persons and clerical workers. [Illustration: Diagram 5.--Per cent of male workers in non-clerical positions in six industries earning $18 per week and over] REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT In department store work and in nearly all branches of retail selling there is a marked fluctuation in the number employed during the year. Sales work in the department stores is seasonal in the sense that a large number of extra sales women are taken on during the Christmas season for a period of temporary employment, usually lasting from one to two months. The proportion of the total working force for the whole year employed in such transient jobs is approximately one-fourth. How selling positions in retail and wholesale stores compare with other fields of employment in this respect is seen in Diagram 6. [Illustration: Diagram 6.--Per cent that the average number of women employed during the year is of the highest number employed in each of six industries] OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCEMENT In regard to promotion in department stores it should be noted that as a rule the executives are made in the business and are not, as in some industries, brought in from the outside because they must have some special training which the organization itself does not provide. Not only in Cleveland but in other cities where studies of the same kind have been made it has been found that practically all the people holding important floor positions have come up from the ranks. The various lines of promotion through the different departments are analyzed in detail in the report. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING That vocational training for department store employees is both desirable and possible is proved by the fact that most of the large stores in Cleveland make some provision for the instruction of their workers. Some of these classes are carefully organized and excellently taught with every promise of increasing in usefulness. Others employ methods of instruction which belong to the academic school of an earlier decade and give evidence that the problem of vocational training with which they are presumably concerned is not even understood. From the standpoint of the school there are two well recognized kinds of training possible for department store employees: trade preparatory and trade extension training. Eventually it may prove practicable to organize instruction of both kinds, but it is the opinion of the author of the report that under present conditions the surest results can be expected from trade extension training. In trade extension instruction the members of the group to be dealt with have already secured their foothold in the industry; and having mastered at least the rudiments of their job they have acquired a basis of experience which may be utilized for purposes of instruction. These people are responsive to teaching organized with regard to their needs, for daily experience is demonstrating to them their deficiencies. The success of the proposed training will largely depend upon the employment of simple and direct methods that shall place this knowledge in the hands and head of the person or group needing it. The application of this instruction must be immediate and practical and must not be dependent upon the working out of a complicated course or schedule. The organization must be flexible enough to admit of bringing together a group having a common need, although they may come from different departments of the business. Since the unit of class organization is not previous school experience or similar employment, it will be seen that this class should be held only until the need is fully supplied and should then give place to another organized on the same basis. As in all vocational teaching, the size of the class should be limited. To make this work really effective, the instructor should come in sufficiently close contact with all pupils to enable him to obtain a personal knowledge of their needs and capabilities. A further necessity for small classes and individual instruction is found in the fact that there is a constant shift of employees in the industry as well as frequent accessions from the outside. It readily can be seen that this is not a problem of the regular school and that it cannot be met by ordinary classroom methods. Part time or continuation classes, such as have already proved feasible for other kinds of trade instruction, are the most practicable methods of doing this work. Classes for the instruction of employees are already maintained in the majority of large stores. The extension of this plan of separate responsibility is one way of meeting the problem. But this method has certain obvious faults. The unequal opportunity which it affords to department store employees as a body is a conspicuous drawback. The value of the instruction so given, moreover, will always depend to a large extent on the comprehension of the problem by the firm maintaining the classes. The method involves much duplication of effort, which is particularly wasteful when the instruction of small groups is involved. Another possible method would be for the several department stores to get together and coöperate in providing instruction. There would seem to be no reason why stores should not unite for this purpose as well as for any other. The advantages of this method are economy of maintenance and administration, the ability to command expert service, and the possibility of securing and sharing the results of a great variety of such experiences as does not consist of exclusive trade secrets. The number of people whom it would be necessary to employ exclusively for the purpose of conducting these classes would be small as compared with the results accomplished. Collectively these stores now have in their employ a body of highly paid experts in all lines of merchandise. A large amount of the most accurate technical knowledge covering the work of all departments is already available in the several stores. These are valuable resources which should be utilized by a coöperative school of this kind. For the head of such a school, it would be desirable to secure a man or woman of more than usual ability and discernment who, above all else, could sense the business and routine of each contributing store from the standpoint of the employee and of store organization. It would be the business of this person to become familiar with the available sources of knowledge in the different stores and then arrange for the presentation of this knowledge to the various classes. By coöperation with the floor men, heads of sections and departments, as well as with the employees themselves, he should come into close contact with the requirements of the workers and should gather from the different stores those who, because of their common need, can be made into a "school unit." It would also be necessary to employ assistants of practical experience who would attend to the details of routine teaching, and act as interpreters for those experts who have the knowledge but not the ability to impart it even to a small class. It is realized that a scheme of this kind would involve the overcoming of many objections and difficulties of adjustment before it could be put into actual operation. It would necessitate mutual concessions and forbearance on the part of everybody concerned, but the results would unquestionably justify the labor. A third method, already in operation in Boston, New York, and Buffalo, calls for the coöperation of the stores and the schools. This partnership, it is claimed, makes certain that the needs of the pupil are considered before the demands of the business. It insures equal opportunity for all employees so far as instruction is concerned and it divides the expense of maintenance between the industry and the school. It is to be regretted that this scheme frequently results in the employment of teachers who, although certificated for regular school work, have no other qualifications, instead of persons of practical experience. The employment of such teachers too often leads to the following of ordinary school practices and academic traditions rather than the methods and practice of business. In some quarters it is maintained that this instruction should be entirely taken over by the public schools, thus relieving the store of any responsibility in the matter. It is probably not now advisable for the school to assume full responsibility for such training. The heavy expense involved and the physical limitations of the schools would make it difficult, without the coöperation of the store, to reproduce the trade atmosphere necessary for real vocational training. As a result, the instruction would become abstract and theoretical, with the major portion of the effort limited to a continuation of elementary school subjects taught with reference to their application to department store work. CHARACTER OF THE INSTRUCTION The analysis of the industry shows that in each occupation or job there is a definite amount of knowledge which must be acquired by the efficient worker. A study of this analysis and of the examples of technical knowledge needed by the worker at different points in the industry will show that no such thing as a general course is possible. In every case the character of the instruction should be such that it will answer a definite need of the employee. What this instruction should be in specific cases can be settled only, on the one hand, by a thorough analysis of the occupation to determine what demands it makes upon the workers, and on the other, by a careful study of the workers themselves to ascertain how far they have been unable to meet these demands without assistance. Lessons can then be organized dealing with such subject matter as individuals or groups have failed to grasp, the lack of which limits their efficiency or restricts their usefulness. It can readily be seen that this instruction will cover a wide range of subjects, from the use of fractions needed by checkers and salesgirls in yard goods sections, to the special technical knowledge of fine furs required by the salesperson who handles this merchandise. The method by which this instruction can best be given is in a series of short unit courses. In every case the length of the course is to be determined by the subject matter. For instance, two one-half hour lessons may be a "course," when this time is sufficient for the necessary teaching. The group or class to which this instruction is given might be made up of those who need the same technical knowledge, although they might expect to make a different application of this instruction. For instance, the unit course on silks might be given to a group composed of salespeople from the silk section, the waists and gowns section, and the section of men's neckwear. The report gives detailed examples of the kinds of technical knowledge needed in the different departments of the store. It maintains that such instruction cannot be successfully given by regular school teachers. As in other industries the teacher needs actual experience in the occupation for which training is given. Academic training and teaching experience are desirable and valuable, but among the qualifications demanded of a teacher of this kind they are of secondary importance. The final chapter of the report contains valuable instructions for young persons who desire to secure positions in retail trade. These instructions cover such matters as work papers, methods of securing a position, and requirements for employment in various kinds of department store work. CHAPTER XIV SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE GARMENT TRADES The clothing industry in Cleveland has grown very rapidly in recent years. During the 10 year period from 1900-10 the number of persons employed in the industry increased approximately 100 per cent. This increase was much greater than the increase throughout the country as a whole and was more than twice as large as the increase in the population of the city. There is every indication that this rapid growth is still continuing. It is estimated that approximately 10,000 workers are employed in the industry at the present time. The distribution of men and women in the industry is most interesting. The making of men's garments has been more fully standardized and is subject to fewer changes than the making of women's garments. In this standardized and systematized branch of the industry the women now outnumber the men. In the manufacture of women's garments, where the styles change more frequently and the work is of a more varied character, more men than women are employed. The methods of work are of three general types: The old tailoring system known as "team work," or a slight modification of it; piece operating; and section work. Under the team system, used extensively in the making of women's coats, a head tailor hires his own helpers (operators and finishers), supervises them and pays them by the week out of the lump sum he receives for the garments from the clothing establishment. Under the piece operating system each operator sews up all the seams on one "piece," or garment, and each finisher does all the hand sewing on one garment. Each operator and each finisher is an independent worker. The whole body of finishers keeps pace with the whole body of operators. Piece operating is used almost entirely in dress and skirt making, and to some extent in coat making. The section system is based on the subdivision of processes into a number of minor operations. The workers are divided into groups, each group making a certain part of the garment. The various operations are divided into as many minor operations as the number of workers and quantity and kind of materials will warrant. Each of these minor operations is performed by operators who do nothing else. This specialization has been carried to a high degree in the manufacture of men's clothing, and section work is increasingly used on women's coats. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORKING FORCE One of the objects of the study was to find how many positions there are for men and women in each occupation in the industry. Through the coöperation of employers data were obtained from the records of 50 establishments employing a total of 8,337 garment workers, approximately four-fifths of the total number in the city. The distribution of workers by sex in the various occupations is shown in Diagram 7. The apportioning of work to the two sexes seems to depend partly upon the weight of materials and partly upon previous training. The men are mostly foreign born tailors who have had the kind of training necessary for the more complicated work. The women are largely American born of foreign parentage, trained in American shops and employed chiefly upon operations that may be learned in a relatively short time. Cutting and pressing are practically monopolized by men. Nearly all hand sewers are women, except for a few basters on men's clothing. Most designers are men, although a few women designers are found in dress and waist shops. In the largest trade,--machine operating,--about two-thirds of the workers are women. In no trade in which both sexes are employed is the difference in their work more apparent. The weight of materials decides to some extent the division of operating between men and women. Some employers are of the opinion that garments made of such thick materials as plush, corduroys, and cheviots are too heavy to be manipulated under needle machinery by women and consequently employ only men operators. Where light weight materials are used, as in the manufacture of dresses and waists, delicacy in handling is required, and nearly all the operators are women. [Illustration: Diagram 7.--Distribution of 8,337 clothing workers by sex in the principal occupations in the garment industry] Four-fifths of the men and two-fifths of the women employed in the industry are of foreign birth and the majority of the native born workers are of foreign parentage. There is an increasing demand for workers who understand English, due to the fact that they are able to follow directions more intelligently. There are relatively few workers under the age of 18. Many firms will employ no one under this age because of various complications which arise in connection with the age and schooling certification of girls between the ages of 16 and 18. Of 25 women's clothing factories visited during the Survey only nine had any workers under 18. According to the report of the Industrial Commission of Ohio for 1914 only eight per cent of the workers employed in making men's clothing, and less than two per cent of the workers employed in making women's clothing were under 18 years of age. EARNINGS In general the wages paid in garment making compare favorably with those of other manufacturing industries. This is particularly true with respect to the earnings of women workers. A considerably larger proportion of the women employed in the garment industry earn what may be considered high wages for industrial workers than in any of the larger factory industries of the city. This is clearly shown in Diagram 8 which lists nine of the principal fields of industrial employment for women. The proportions of women receiving under $8 a week are lower in men's and women's clothing than in the other seven industries. In the proportion of women receiving $12 and over, women's clothing ranks first and men's clothing third. [Illustration: Diagram 8.--Percentage of women in men's and women's clothing and seven other important women employing industries receiving under $8, $8 to $12, and $12 and over per week.] The comparison of the wages paid men employees shown in Diagram 9 is somewhat less favorable. Women's clothing ranks with printing and publishing as to the proportion of male workers receiving the highest specified earnings per week. Men's clothing ranks sixth among the industries compared. The various kinds of work do not command fixed wage rates, as do many other types of industrial employment. Quantity of output as well as quality of workmanship is an important factor in the determination of wages. Men generally turn out a greater output than women on the same kind of work and piece workers usually earn more than those paid by the week. The lowest, average, and highest wages for each of the principal occupations in the two branches of the industry are shown in Tables 16 and 17. One reason often given for the higher earnings received by workers on women's garments is the greater irregularity of employment in this branch of the industry. This, however, does not sufficiently account for the difference. The most weighty reason is that a higher degree of adaptability is required of workers than is the case in the manufacture of men's clothing. [Illustration: Diagram 9.--Percentage of men in men's and women's clothing and seven other manufacturing industries receiving under $18, $18 to $25, and $25 and over per week] TABLE 16.--WAGES FOR FULL-TIME WORKING WEEK, WOMEN'S CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915 ---------------------------------------+--------+----------+---------+ Workers | Lowest | Average | Highest | ---------------------------------------+--------+----------+---------+ Assorters, women | $6.00 | $8.75 | $14.00 | Hand sewers, women | 6.00 | 10.00 | 20.00 | Trimming girls | 7.00 | 10.25 | 15.00 | Operators,* women | 6.00 | 12.00 | 30.00 | Sample makers, women | 10.00 | 12.75 | 15.00 | Examiners, women | 8.00 | 13.50 | 18.00 | Models, suit and cloak | 10.00 | 15.25 | 21.00 | Forewomen | 9.00 | 16.25 | 25.00 | Operators,* men | 7.00 | 17.75 | 50.00 | Pressers, men | 9.00 | 18.25 | 35.00 | Cutters,§ men | 8.00 | 19.25 | 30.00 | Pattern graders, suit and cloak, men | 13.00 | 22.00 | 27.50 | Sample makers, men | 13.00 | 22.50 | 25.00 | Examiners, men | 16.00 | 25.00 | 45.00 | Head tailors, men | 18.00 | 25.00 | ... | Foremen | 14.00 | 30.00 | 75.00 | ---------------------------------------+--------+----------+---------+ *: Includes piece and section operators and helpers to head tailors §: Includes all cutters except foremen, apprentices, and pattern graders TABLE 17.--AVERAGE WAGES FOR FULL-TIME WORKING WEEK FOR SIMILAR WORKERS, MEN'S AND WOMEN'S CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915 ---------------------------------------+--------------+--------------+ Workers | Men's | Women's | | clothing | clothing | ---------------------------------------+--------------+--------------+ Hand sewers, women | $9.50 | $10.00 | Section operators, women | 9.25 | 11.25 | Examiners, women | 7.00 | 13.50 | Section operators, men | 16.50 | 15.25 | Pressers, under | 12.00 | 15.75 | Forewomen | 11.00 | 16.25 | Pressers, upper | 18.50 | 19.50 | Cutters, cloth | 18.75 | 20.00 | Examiners, men | 17.75 | 25.00 | Foremen | 29.25 | 30.00 | ---------------------------------------+--------------+--------------+ REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT The making of women's clothing is seasonal, to meet a seasonal purchasing demand. Most people purchase their summer clothes in April and May, and their winter clothes in October and November. During the months previous to these purchasing seasons a large number of workers are needed, but after the height of the purchasing period employment becomes less and less steady until the first demands of the new season are felt. During the rush season a greater number of workers is employed, or the output may be augmented by increasing the speed at which the work is performed or the number of hours in the working day. A combination of these methods is frequently used. During dull periods the workers may be busy from a few hours a week to full working time; while in rush periods they may work not only the regular working hours, but in addition a good deal of over-time. Compared with other manufacturing industries as regards regularity of employment men's clothing makes an excellent showing while women's clothing ranks low. In Diagram 10 the average number of unemployed among each 100 workers is shown for men's and women's clothing and for 15 other large manufacturing industries in the city. Men's clothing leads the list, with an average unemployment of four among each 100 workers, while women's clothing ranks 14th, with 15 among each 100. TRAINING AND PROMOTION Designers learn their work through apprenticeships to custom tailors and cutters and by taking supplementary courses in drafting and grading of patterns in a designing school. Most designers in Cleveland have had training in designing schools in New York or Chicago. [Illustration: Diagram 10.--The black portions of the bars show the average number of unemployed among each 100 workers in men's clothing, women's clothing and 15 other specified industries] With but few exceptions organized training for machine operating is found only in the largest establishments. There is general agreement among employers that it takes a girl who has never operated a machine before about four weeks to learn an easy operation well enough to be taken on at regular piece rates. A much longer time is required to become a first class worker on a single operation, and to acquire skill in a group of operations takes from one to two years. Girls are not usually employed as hand sewers unless they know how to do plain sewing. A girl who starts with this knowledge should be able to learn factory sewing well enough to earn fair wages within from six months to a year. In cutting, which has a so-called apprenticeship lasting from two to six years, there is no formal system of instruction. Boys must pick up the trade from observation and practice. Beginners start as errand boys, cloth boys, bundlers, or helpers. Pressing is usually learned in cleaning and pressing shops. It takes about eight weeks for a green hand to become a good seam presser. To become a final presser on skirts and dresses requires from six months to a year, and on jackets and cloaks from two to three years. Examiners have usually had considerable previous experience as machine operators or finishers. The length of experience depends on the kinds of garments and ranges from three to eight years. Trimmers and assorters learn their work as helpers to experienced employees. A year or so of experience is required before they can be entrusted with responsible work. Foremen are selected from the working force or, in a few cases, trained especially for their positions. Although there are few opportunities each year for advancement to foremanship, employers declare they cannot get enough persons of ability to fill vacancies. A study of the previous experience of foremen and forewomen made by the survey shows that they come from nearly every department of the factory. The length of previous experience among the cases studied ranged from three months to nine years. EDUCATIONAL NEEDS The quality which proprietors of garment making establishments value above all others in their employees is adaptability. The reason for this is that the manufacturing of clothing differs from almost all other kinds of industrial work in the frequency with which changes take place in the size and shape of the product and in the range of materials which must be handled by the same workers. There is an annual change in the weight of cloth used for the different seasons, from light to heavy and from heavy to light. The size and shape of the pieces which compose the finished garment are determined by changes in style which vary from the minor modifications occurring yearly in men's clothing to the radical changes in the style of women's clothing. A wide variety of fabrics is employed, ranging from thick to thin, smooth to rough, closely woven to loosely woven and from plain weave to fancy weave. In one season a single establishment will make garments from as many as 200 different fabrics, and each operator is likely to work upon 60 or more different kinds of cloth. In view of the fact that many of the workers are foreigners or of foreign parentage, and that the frequent changes in styles and materials require the giving of detailed instructions by foremen, instruction in English is of more importance in the garment trades than in occupations where there is a larger proportion of native born and where the products and processes are more uniformly standardized. All clothing workers should have a practical knowledge of the fundamental operations of arithmetic. Where the piece and section systems are in operation it is important for the worker to keep account of what she has accomplished and to know enough arithmetic to check her own record with the tally kept by the foreman or payroll girl. Some of the occupations, such as cutting, involve a considerable amount of arithmetical computation. As in other trades, all workers and prospective workers need a general knowledge of industrial conditions. They would greatly benefit from a better understanding of the supply of labor, factors affecting prices, organization of workers, industrial legislation, the relative importance of the field of employment in different industries, the nature of important industrial processes, and the like. At the present time there is little opportunity for gaining such information either before entering any specific line of work or afterwards. For certain small groups within the clothing industry there are needs in the way of technical training that are important and at present unsupplied. Training in applied mathematics, drafting and design would be of benefit to a considerable number of employees who are occupying or working towards advanced positions. A large proportion of the women workers need skill in hand sewing. Before girls enter the industry they should have careful and systematic training in plain sewing stitches, sewing on buttons and other fasteners, and button hole making. Machine operating is the most important occupation in the industry, and employs more women than any other occupation in the city, except perhaps dressmaking. After a careful study of the characteristics of this occupation and the various conditions affecting it, the survey reached the conclusion that there should be established by the school system a trade course for prospective power machine operators. SEWING COURSES IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS In the elementary schools manual training sewing is given in the fifth and sixth grades. It consists of one hour a week of hand sewing taught by a regular grade teacher or sometimes by teachers of domestic science or other special subjects. The aim is to give the girls a knowledge of practical sewing which may be of use to them in the home. In five of the elementary schools hand and machine sewing is taught by special sewing teachers. About four per cent of all the seventh and eighth grade girls in the elementary schools receive this instruction. In the technical high schools the sewing course covers four years work. During the first two years all girls are required to take plain hand and machine sewing three and three-quarter hours a week. In the third and fourth years they may elect either millinery or dressmaking, and special courses in these subjects are provided for girls who wish to prepare for trade work. The aim of the sewing course as stated in the outline of the East Technical High School is "(1) Preparation for efficiency in the selection of the materials used in sewing and the construction of articles relating to the home and family sewing: (2) laying the foundation for courses in college, normal school, or business school." A two year elective course in sewing is provided in the academic high school as a part of the home economic course. The aim of this sewing, which is called domestic art, is stated thus: "Problem--my personal appearance is one of my chief assets. What can I do to improve it?" Dressmaking and millinery classes are conducted in the night technical high schools to teach girls how to make their own clothes and hats. The manual training sewing in the fifth and sixth grades cannot be considered as furnishing any important contribution in the training of those who will make their living in the sewing trades. Much the same must be said of the work in the technical high schools. It is taught not for the purpose of securing quick, accurate hand or machine stitching, but to enable the girls to make a few garments for their personal use. Due to the fact that very few of the girls who become wage earners in these trades remain in school after the completion of the elementary course it is doubtful whether the technical high school offers a hopeful field for practical training. The work in the elementary schools is so hampered by lack of equipment that the results, from the standpoint of trade preparation, amount to very little. ELECTIVE SEWING COURSES IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL The reduction of retardation all through the grades is of fundamental importance to any plan of vocational training. The age of 15 is the final compulsory attendance age for girls, and those who enter at six and seven and make regular progress should be in the first or second high school year by the time they reach this age. Last year there were, however, 1,170 fifteen-year-old girls in the Cleveland schools who were from one to seven grades below normal. Instead of being in the high school, they were scattered from the second grade to the eighth, and they constituted more than half of all the girls of that age in the school system. It is clear that unless the schools can carry them through more nearly on schedule time there is no hope of providing industrial training for a large proportion of them, because they reach the end of the compulsory period before entering the grades in which industrial training can be given effectively and economically. The report recommends that during the junior high school period girls who expect to enter the sewing trades should be given work in mechanical drawing, elementary science, industrial conditions, elementary mechanics and hand and machine sewing. The fundamentals of sewing can be thoroughly taught in two years. The work during the first year might well be limited to hand sewing. Machine sewing should be taken up in the second year, and the girls given an opportunity during the third year to specialize somewhat broadly in a trade school on the kind of work in which they may wish to engage--power operating, dressmaking, or millinery. A ONE YEAR TRADE COURSE FOR GIRLS Specialized training must be conducted under conditions closely resembling those found in the industry. This involves equipment similar to that used in the factory, an ample supply of materials, and a corps of teachers who have had practical experience. It might seem that on the score of adequate equipment the factory itself would be the place for such training. But the fact is that the main object of the factory is to turn out as large a quantity as possible of saleable product. In the school the main object should be to turn out as large a quantity of saleable skill and knowledge as possible, with the saleable product as a secondary, although necessary, feature. The junior high school is not the place for specialized trade training, since it is reasonably certain that there would not be a sufficient number of girls in each junior high school desiring to enter a single trade to warrant the provision of special equipment and special teachers. For this reason the report favors a trade course in a separate school plant where girls who wish to specialize in any of the sewing trades can be taught in fairly large classes. The work done during the past few years in such institutions as the Boston Trade School for Girls and the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City gives evidence of the practicability of this plan. TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING The only instruction offered by the public school system at the present time which can be considered as trade-extension training for the garment industries is that given in the sewing classes in the technical night schools. The enrollment in these classes during the second term of 1915-16 was 229. Only a small proportion of the girls and women enrolled in the night sewing classes make their living by sewing. The students employed by day in clothing factories or in any of the sewing trades constitute somewhat less than 15 per cent of the total number enrolled. Nearly half of the enrollment is made up of workers in commercial, clerical or professional pursuits and approximately one-third are not employed in any gainful occupation. In both technical night schools the emphasis is laid on training for home sewing rather than on training for wage earning. The courses now given are not planned for workers in the garment trades, but to help women and girls who want to learn how to make, alter, and repair their own garments. If a trade school of the kind described in the previous section were established it would be possible to give at night short unit courses in machine or hand sewing to those workers who wish to extend their experience and prepare themselves for advancement, utilizing in the night classes the equipment of the day school. It is probable also that special day classes could be organized during the dull season to give beginners the opportunity to learn new processes and extend their knowledge of trade theory. CHAPTER XV SUMMARY OF REPORT ON DRESSMAKING AND MILLINERY At the time of the last census the total number of women in Cleveland employed as milliners or dressmakers was approximately 5,000, of whom about seven-tenths were dressmakers and about three-tenths milliners. For the most part they were of native birth. The proportion of young girls engaged in these occupations was relatively small, the age distribution showing that only about one-third of the milliners and less than one-fifth of the dressmakers were under 21 years of age. DRESSMAKING Four distinctive lines of work are done by those who are classified by the census as dressmakers and seamstresses: dressmaking proper, usually carried on in shops; alteration work in stores; general sewing done by seamstresses at home or in the homes of customers; and the work of the so-called dressmaking "school," in which the dressmaker helps her customers do their general sewing. Shop dressmaking is in the main confined to the making of afternoon and evening gowns and fancy blouses. Nearly uniform processes of work are maintained and the workers in the different establishments need about the same kinds of abilities and degrees of skill. There is a strong and increasing tendency towards specialization of the work. Among each 100 workers in dressmaking shops about 13 are head girls, 55 are finishers or makers, 16 are helpers, eight are apprentices, and the rest are lining makers, cutters, embroiderers, errand girls, shoppers, and stock girls. Alteration work constitutes a separate sewing trade and consists of the adjustment of ready-made garments to individual peculiarities. It furnishes employment to several hundred workers in Cleveland. The weekly wages most commonly paid to each class of workers in dressmaking shops may be roughly stated as follows: apprentices, $2 to $4; helpers $6 to $9; finishers or makers $10 to $12; and drapers $18 to $20. Lining making, done in most shops by apprentices or helpers, pays from $4 to $6 a week. In one shop a specialist on linings received $12. Women cutters, found in two shops, and doing supervisory work similar to that done by drapers, earned from $15 to $25. Hemstitchers earn $10 to $14 and a guimpe maker in one shop earned $12. Errand girls were found at $3 and $6; stock girls at $8, $12, and $13; and shoppers at from $3.50 to $10. Beginners in alteration departments are started at from $5 to $7. Regular alteration hands earn from $7 to $18, the average being $9 or $10. Fitters earn about the same as drapers in dressmaking shops, averaging from $15 to $18, with a range of from $10 to $25. As a rule comparatively little time is lost through irregularity of employment. Workers average from 10 to 11 months' work out of the year. Establishments usually close during the month of August and for one or two weeks in the spring. Workers in alteration department average 11 months of work. Dress alteration work is steady, while suit and coat alteration is irregular. Apprenticeship in dressmaking comprehends a trying-out period of from six months to a year. Most shops take apprentices, the proportion in the trade being one to every 12 workers; and an effort is made to keep these new workers if they are at all satisfactory. There is no standardized apprenticeship wage. Girls may serve without pay for six months, or may start at from 50 cents to $4 a week. At the end of six months they may be earning from $1.50 to $6. The lack of any wage standard in apprenticeship probably accounts for the fact that it is difficult to get girls to enter this trade. MILLINERY Millinery requires the handling of small pieces of the most varied sorts of material, most of it perishable. The materials must be measured, cut, turned, twisted, and draped into innumerable designs and color combinations, and sewed with various kinds of stitching. The main processes are making, trimming, and designing. Making consists in fashioning a specified shape from wire or buckram and covering it with such materials as straw or velvet. The covering may be put on plain, or may be shirred or draped. Trimming consists in placing and sewing on all sorts of decorative materials. A combination of the two processes of making and trimming, known as copying, consists in making a hat from the beginning exactly like a specified model. Designing is the creation of original models. The increase in the use of the factory-made hat has decreased the number of workers in custom millinery, and has also had an effect in diverting business from small retail shops to millinery departments in stores. The number of millinery workers constantly fluctuates, not only from season to season, but from year to year. According to a close estimate not more than 2,000 workers were actually engaged in millinery occupations during the busiest part of 1915. Between 1,200 and 1,400 were in retail shops; about 300 were in millinery departments in stores; and about 300 more were in wholesale houses. The data collected indicate that the wages of workers in retail shops are lower in general than the wages of workers in millinery departments in stores and in wholesale houses. Makers in retail shops earn from $3 to $16 a week, the average being about $8. Trimmers earn from $10 to $40, with an average of about $18. Out of 45 retail shops, only 22 paid as high as $10 to any maker; 15 paid as high as $12; six paid as high as $15; and only one paid over $15. In millinery departments in stores, trimmers, who are generally designers, earn from $15 to $50 a week or more. The rate most commonly received is $25. Makers are started at from $4 to $6 and may advance to $15, with an average of about $10. In wholesale houses designers earn from $25 to $60, or more. Makers start at about $5, and the usual range is from $10 to $15. Those employed in straight copying may earn between $15 and $20. The 1914 report of the Industrial Commission of Ohio presents data showing that of the women 18 years of age and over employed in wholesale houses 37 per cent receive under $8, about 22 per cent receive between $8 and $12, while 41 per cent receive $12 and over. The girls under 18 years of age were, with one exception, receiving less than $4 per week. Employment in retail shops averages about 32 weeks during the year; in the millinery departments of stores from 32 to 42 weeks; and in wholesale houses about 40 weeks. The proportion of workers employed the year round is very small. The majority of millinery workers are faced with the problem of tiding themselves over two dull seasons, aggregating from 12 to 28 weeks each year. The millinery apprenticeship period lasts for two seasons of 12 weeks each. Almost all retail shops take apprentices in large numbers, there being one apprentice to every three or four workers in the trade. Few apprentices are found in stores and wholesale houses. The apprenticeship wage is extremely low. The usual rate is $1 a week during the first season and from $1.50 to $2 during the second. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING The needs of girls who are soon to leave school and go to work can best be met by a modification of the junior high school course and by the establishment of a one-year trade school for girls. Before a re-organization of the junior high school work is made to meet the needs of these girls an effort should be made to reduce retardation so that more girls will reach the junior high school before the end of the compulsory attendance period. The present courses should be reorganized so as to give basic preparation for wage earning and should be as concrete and real as a thorough understanding of the requirements of the gainful occupations can make them. Thorough sewing courses planned from the standpoint of the sewing trades should be offered, extending over two years. The program suggested closely resembles that recommended for the garment trades. It is also recommended that a one-year trade school be established for preparing girls to enter employment in dressmaking and millinery. The history of trade schools for girls, both private and public, indicates that such a school, if properly conducted, would be highly successful in Cleveland. The classes in sewing and millinery in the evening technical high schools do not offer trade-extension training for workers and it is not likely that they could be easily reorganized to furnish such training. It is recommended that if a trade school is established in Cleveland, short unit courses in sewing and related subjects, such as design, be given in evening classes. CHAPTER XVI SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE METAL TRADES Approximately one-half of the total number of persons in Cleveland engaged in manufacturing are found in the metal industries. When the last federal census was taken nearly one-seventh of the entire male population was employed in establishments engaged in the manufacture of crude or finished metal products. Pittsburgh only, among the 10 largest cities in the country, has a higher proportion of its industrial population working in such establishments. In relation to its total population, Cleveland has twice as many people working in these industries as Chicago, three times as many as Philadelphia, and four times as many as New York. It is estimated that at the present time the number of wage earners in the city engaged in this kind of work is between 70,000 and 80,000. The report deals with the three leading industries of the city,--foundry and machine shop products, automobile manufacturing, and steel works and rolling mills. The study of this last group also includes several related industries, such as blast furnaces, wire mills, nail mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet factories. About three-fourths of the total number of wage earners in the city engaged in the manufacture of metal products are found in these three industries. The field investigations consisted of personal visits to the manufacturing establishments for the purpose of securing first hand data as to industrial conditions, and conferences with employers, superintendents, foremen, and workmen as to the need and possibilities of training for metal working occupations. In all, 60 establishments, employing approximately 35,000 men, were visited. The conclusions as to vocational training were based on an analysis of educational needs in the various metal industries, together with an extended study of the social and economic factors which condition the training of all workers. Particular attention was given to the administrative problems involved in such training in public schools. FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOP PRODUCTS According to the United States Census, foundries and factories making machine shop products gave employment in 1909 to nearly 18,000 Cleveland wage-earners. This industrial group ranks first in the city, employing more than twice as many workers as the next largest industry,--automobile manufacturing,--and approximately two-fifths of the total working force in all metal industries. Its growth during the previous five years, from the standpoint of number of workers employed, showed an increase of about 33 per cent, and it is estimated that the total number of wage-earners in 1914 was approximately 25,000. At the present time, due to the impetus given to this branch of manufacturing by the European war, the working force is undoubtedly in excess of this figure. The report gives extended consideration to the machinist's trade, which constitutes by far the largest body of skilled workers in the city. This trade has been affected more than any other by the progress of invention and the modern tendency towards specialization. In many establishments the all-round machinist, competent to do independent work and operate the wide variety of machine tools now used in the trade, had practically disappeared. In his place are found "specialist" machine hands who have learned the operation of a single machine tool, but have no general knowledge of the trade, and who if called on to perform work requiring the use of a machine tool different from the one on which they are employed are unable to do so. There are hundreds of drill press hands who cannot operate a milling machine, lathe hands who know nothing of planer work, and so on. The subdivision of these occupations follows closely the advance in invention, so that employers advertising for help frequently specify not only the machine tool to be used but add the name of the firm which manufactures that particular type of machine, with the result that there are about as many kinds of machinists as there are manufacturers of machine tools. Table 18 shows the estimated number of men employed, with their distribution in the various branches of the trade. TABLE 18.--PROPORTIONS AND ESTIMATED NUMBERS EMPLOYED IN MACHINE TOOL OCCUPATIONS, 1915 --------------------------------+------------+-------------+ | | Estimated | Workers | Per cent | number | --------------------------------+------------+-------------+ Lathe hands | 18.8 | 3,384 | Drill press operators | 17.9 | 3,222 | Bench hands | 13.4 | 2,412 | Machinists | 12.7 | 2,286 | Screw machine operators | 9.4 | 1,692 | Milling machine operators | 8.6 | 1,548 | Tool makers | 8.3 | 1,494 | Grinding machine operators | 6.2 | 1,116 | Planer hands | 2.2 | 396 | Turret lathe operators | 1.8 | 324 | Gear cutter operators | .7 | 126 | --------------------------------+------------+-------------+ Total | 100.0 | 18,000 | --------------------------------+------------+-------------+ Specialization has operated to lower standards of skill and keep down wages. The average wage of the "all-round" machinist is very nearly the lowest found among the skilled trades. The union scale is but 14 cents an hour above that paid unskilled labor, while the average earnings of machine operators range from four to 12 cents above laborers' wages. Only among the highly skilled tool makers do the wages approach those received by skilled labor in most other industries. Table 19 shows the average, highest, and lowest rates per hour for all branches of the machine trades in the establishments from which data were collected during the survey, with the per cent employed on piece work and day work. TABLE 19.--AVERAGE, HIGHEST, AND LOWEST EARNINGS, IN CENTS PER HOUR, AND PER CENT EMPLOYED ON PIECE WORK AND DAY WORK, 1915 ---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+ | | | |Per cent|Per cent| | | | |on piece| on day | Workers |Lowest |Average|Highest| work | work | ---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+ Tool makers | 25.0 | 39.0 | 50.0 | .. | 100 | Machinists | 25.0 | 33.2 | 50.0 | .. | 100 | Planer hands | 20.0 | 32.2 | 42.0 | .. | 100 | Grinding machine operators | 20.0 | 32.0 | 50.0 | 70 | 30 | Bench hands | 17.5 | 29.6 | 45.0 | 48 | 52 | Screw machine operators | 17.5 | 29.5 | 63.8 | 79 | 21 | Lathe hands | 19.0 | 29.1 | 40.0 | 40 | 60 | Turret lathe operators | 25.0 | 29.0 | 47.5 | 80 | 20 | Gear cutter operators | 20.0 | 26.7 | 40.0 | 96 | 4 | Milling machine operators | 15.0 | 25.9 | 40.0 | 53 | 47 | Drill press operators | 15.0 | 23.5 | 35.0 | 35 | 65 | Machinists' helpers | 20.0 | 22.2 | 25.0 | .. | 100 | ---------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+ On the basis of weekly or yearly earnings, the trade makes a better showing. Work is steady throughout the year, and the time lost through unemployment on account of seasonal changes is slight. Also, as the usual working day is from nine to 10 hours, that is, from one to two hours longer than in the higher paid building trades, the difference in daily wages is really less marked than a comparison of hourly rates would seem to indicate. Little attempt has been made to adapt the apprentice system to modern conditions. The term of service and rates of pay have changed but slightly over a long period of years. As a result only a small proportion of the boys who begin as apprentices finish the apprenticeship term of three or four years. Employers attribute this to the relatively high wages paid for machine operating, and the slight advantage, from a wage standpoint, of the "all-round" man over the machine operator. After a year or two the apprentice finds that he can double his pay by taking a job as operator, and the inducement for learning the trade thoroughly is too small to hold him. The report gives a comparison of the earnings of an apprentice and a machine operator, both starting at the same age, the first becoming a journeyman machinist at the end of three years and the second specializing on a particular machine. Assuming that both boys go to work at the age of 16 their total earnings up to the age of 25 years will be approximately equal. The lack of thoroughly trained workmen is beginning to be felt, but the efforts made by industrial establishments to meet it have small prospects of success unless the economic factors of the problem are given greater consideration. Inasmuch as no regular apprenticeship period is served for machine operating, a special effort was made to secure data relating to the time usually required for the worker to learn the operation of each tool well enough to earn average wages. In this matter the individual opinions of foremen and superintendents differed widely, but when the reports from all the establishments visited were compared, a sufficient degree of uniformity was found to serve as a basis for estimating the amount of experience workers of average intelligence would need, under normal shop conditions, in order to become fairly proficient. There was practical unanimity in fixing the period at four years for tool makers and three to four years for machinists. Higher estimates were received from the superintendents of plants doing a jobbing business or manufacturing high grade machine tools than from the specialized shops making a single product. The superintendents of automobile manufacturing plants, where the standard of quality in production is necessarily high, gave the lowest estimates of all. Table 20 shows the estimated time required to learn the various types of machine work. TABLE 20.--ESTIMATED TIME REQUIRED TO LEARN MACHINE TOOL WORK ------------------------------------+----------------------+ Workers | Time required | ------------------------------------+----------------------+ Grinding machine operators | 12 to 15 months | Lathe hands | 6 to 9 months | Planer hands | 6 months | Gear cutter operators | 6 months | Turret lathe operators | 4 to 6 months | Screw machine operators | 3 to 6 months | Bench hands | 3 to 6 months | Milling machine operators | 2 to 4 months | Drilling machine operators | 2 weeks to 4 months | ------------------------------------+----------------------+ The weakness of specialization, with its constant tendency towards the substitution of semi-skilled operatives for trained workmen, lies in its failure to provide a body of workers from whom to recruit the large directive force needed in any scheme of production based on semi-skilled labor. This condition is regarded by many employers with grave concern, and in a few plants apprentice schools designed primarily to train future foremen have been established. Practically all the foremen in the shops visited had received an all-round training as machinists, and there are few opportunities for promotion open to men who have not a general knowledge of the trade. On the other hand, such general knowledge is only one of the requisites for advancement. Others are initiative, resourcefulness, tact, self-control, ability to get along with men, and a disposition to subordinate personal interests to the interests of the business. To these should be added the quality of patience, for there must be vacancies before there can be promotions, and vacancies among the better positions are not frequent. Ten of the establishments visited, employing a total working force of over 5,000 men, reported but eight vacancies among foremen's positions over a period of one year. These same establishments had in their employ a total of 618 all-round machinists and tool makers. Assuming that only the machinists and tool makers were eligible for promotion, the mathematical chance per man of becoming a foreman during the year was about one in 77. Other occupations studied in detail were pattern making, molding, core making, blacksmithing, and boiler making. Pattern making offers the most interesting work and the highest wages among the metal trades, but the total number of American born pattern makers in the city does not exceed seven or eight hundred, so the field of employment is relatively limited. Molding and core making, in which between 4,000 and 5,000 men are engaged, have practically become foreign trades. Less than 20 per cent of the molders in the city were born in this country. These trades offer few opportunities for employment to boys of native birth. Somewhat similar conditions exist in the blacksmithing trade. Changed methods of production have largely done away with the old-time blacksmith, who survives only in horse-shoeing and repair shops. The proportion of native blacksmiths is steadily declining, and it is unlikely that any considerable number of boys from the public schools will enter the trade. The boiler making trade employs relatively few men, the total number of native born boiler makers at the time of the last census being less than 600. The trade seems to be at a standstill. The increase during the previous decade was less than five per cent against a total population increase of 46 per cent. The average earnings per hour for these trades in the establishments visited by members of the Survey Staff are shown in Table 21. TABLE 21.--AVERAGE EARNINGS PER HOUR IN PATTERN MAKING, MOLDING, CORE MAKING, BLACKSMITHING, AND BOILER MAKING Average earnings Workers Per Hour Pattern makers .44 Skilled molders .39 Semi-skilled molders .27 Skilled core makers .39 Semi-skilled core makers .27 Blacksmiths .33 Boiler makers .32 The findings and recommendations as to training emphasize the fact that the vast majority of boys who become workers in the metal trades leave school by the time they are 15 with at most a common school education, so that any vocational training before they go to work must be given between the ages of 12 and 15 and before the end of the eighth grade. The report points out the impossibility of effective vocational instruction in elementary schools on account of the prohibitive cost per pupil for both equipment and teaching, and endorses the recently adopted junior high school plan. This form of organization has the great advantage of concentrating in large groups the boys who are old enough to make a beginning in prevocational training, and through the departmental system of teaching offers facilities for differentiation of courses to meet their varying needs. Whatever their cultural value, the present manual training courses in woodwork have little relation to the requirements of any metal working trade, except pattern making, in which some of the same tools are used. No manual training work in metal is offered in the elementary and junior high schools. The course recommended for the junior high school lays especial emphasis on applied mathematics, mechanical drawings, practice in assembling and taking apart machines, and the utilization of the shop as a laboratory for teaching industrial science. The report maintains that the object of such a course should be the development of industrial intelligence through the application of mathematical and mechanical principles to the solution of concrete problems, rather than the teaching of specific operations and skill in the use of tools. In mechanical drawing the ability to understand and interpret drawings should be given more importance than the ability to make drawings. Few workmen are ever called on to draw, while the ability to read plans and sketches is always in demand. It is also recommended that boys who do not expect to take a full high school course or who intend to leave at the end of the compulsory period should devote at least a period each week to the study of economic and working conditions in industrial and commercial occupations. With respect to the technical high schools the report holds that these schools are primarily training schools for the higher positions of industry. They undoubtedly offer the best instruction obtainable in the city for the ambitious boy who wishes to prepare himself for supervisory and managerial positions in industry or for a college engineering course. The establishment of a separate two-year vocational school, equipped for giving instruction in all the larger industrial trades, is recommended. The number of boys in the public schools between the ages of 14 and 16 who are likely to enter the metal trades is between 700 and 800, of whom from 500 to 600 will become machinists or machine tool operators. An enrollment of much less than this number is sufficient to justify the installation of good shop equipment and the employment of a corps of teachers who have had the special training necessary for this kind of work. It should be possible to form a class in pattern making and foundry work of from 80 to 100 boys, and one of at least 30 in blacksmithing. Boiler making could be taught in connection with sheet metal work. Various changes are recommended in the present evening school classes for machinists, molders, and pattern makers now given by the technical high schools. It is claimed that the courses as now organized are not elastic enough to meet the varying needs of the journeymen, helpers, machine operators, and apprentices employed in these trades. The great need is for short unit courses in which the instruction is limited to a particular machine or a special branch of the trade. The long course tends to discourage the student, especially when it embraces an amount of theory out of all proportion to his working needs. AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING Due to the large number and specialized character of the occupations in this industry, they are taken up in a more general way than the "foundries and machine shop" group. The productive departments of the automobile factories utilize in the main the same equipment as other machinery manufacturing plants, but specialization has been carried to a degree found in few other metal industries. The "all-round" workman is a rara avis. The machine shops are manned by machine "specialists" most of whom know how to operate a single machine tool or perform a single operation made up of relatively simple elements. From one-half to two-thirds of the working force is recruited from immigrant labor which is "broken in" under skilful foremen within a period varying from a few days to a few weeks. In the simpler assembling operations the jobs are so subdivided that any man who is not actually feebleminded can learn the work in a few days. Production is on a large scale, permitting the maintenance of high-grade engineering and experimental departments, where all of the work is planned to the last detail. As a result the automobile manufacturers are turning out one of the most complicated and most efficient machines known to modern industry with a working force composed chiefly of semi-skilled labor. For the machine shop workers the training suggested is similar to that recommended for the same class of workmen in other machine shops. The necessity of short unit courses adapted for teaching parts of the trade rather than the whole trade is obvious, as most automobile workers are employed on specialized operations. Short unit evening courses for motor and transmission assemblers, and testers and inspectors, are recommended. STEEL WORKS, ROLLING MILLS, AND RELATED INDUSTRIES A somewhat similar treatment is followed with respect to the iron and steel group of industries--blast furnaces, steel mills, rolling mills, wire mills, nail mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet factories. These industries are characterized by a high proportion of common and semi-skilled labor in the working force. Between 75 and 90 per cent of the workers are of foreign birth. In the operating department of one mill only two Americans were found among a total of 600 employees. As a rule the native born workers are mechanics employed in the power and maintenance departments. With scarcely an exception the occupations are of a nature that require the worker to learn through actual experience in the mills. Theory and practice must be learned at the same time. Even the supervisory and executive positions in which a technical education is of considerable value require a long and arduous apprenticeship on the job before the worker can compete with men who have started with the scantiest educational equipment, but have picked up a knowledge of the processes by experience and observation. Below these positions the work rapidly grades off to various kinds of machine operating in which not even the ability to read or understand English is required. No plan of vocational training is presented, because at present the mills recruit almost exclusively from foreign labor, and only a very small number of boys from the public schools are likely to seek employment in them. The technical content of the work which might conceivably be given in evening classes, except in the case of the few directive and supervisory positions, is so small that continuation instruction offers but meager hopes of success. Under present conditions the long working day and the necessity of changing from the day to the night shift, or vice-versa every two weeks, constitutes an insuperable obstacle to the organization of night classes. The principal need of the rank and file is a speaking and reading knowledge of the English language, so that the workers can be taught to avoid and prevent accidents, and give themselves the necessary care when they occur. Instruction in English with possibly courses in accident prevention and personal hygiene represent about the only training possible that can be said to have any real vocational significance. CHAPTER XVII SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE BUILDING TRADES A careful estimate places the number of men engaged in building construction in Cleveland at the present time at about 30,000, comprising more than one-fifth of the total number employed in manufacturing and mechanical occupations. About two-thirds of these workmen are skilled artisans, distributed among some 20 different trades. The estimated number in each trade is shown in Table 22. SOURCES OF LABOR SUPPLY The building trades get their workers from four principal sources: immigration, native journeymen from outside the city, helpers, and apprentices. Immigration contributes the largest proportion in both skilled and unskilled work, practically monopolizing the latter. Over four-fifths of all cabinet makers, more than two-thirds of all brick and stone masons, and nearly two-thirds of all carpenters are foreign born. Plumbers and steam-fitters show the smallest proportion of foreign labor. TABLE 22.--ESTIMATED NUMBER OF MEN ENGAGED IN BUILDING TRADES, 1915 ----------------------------------------+------------------+ Workers in trade | Number employed | ----------------------------------------+------------------+ Carpenters | 7,105 | Painters, glaziers, varnishers | 2,746 | Plumbers, gas- and steam-fitters | 2,014 | Bricklayers | 1,800 | Machine woodworkers | 1,198 | Sheet metal workers or tinsmiths | 1,069 | Cabinet-makers | 895 | Inside wiremen and fixture hangers | 750 | Plasterers | 638 | Paperhangers | 379 | Structural iron workers | 356 | Roofers and slaters | 315 | Stone-cutters | 292 | Lathers | 275 | Stone masons and marble setters | 250 | Ornamental iron workers | 200 | Cement finishers | 200 | Hoisting engineers | 150 | Elevator constructors | 100 | Parquet floor layers | 100 | Tile-layer | 100 | Asbestos workers | 75 | Wood carvers | 63 | Helpers | 926 | Apprentices | 306 | ----------------------------------------+------------------+ Total | 22,302 | ----------------------------------------+------------------+ APPRENTICESHIP The general decline of the apprenticeship system which began with the invention of modern labor-saving machinery has affected the building trades least of all. Here it survives in an active state and is steadily gaining ground. It is in favor with many employers and with all unions. The best apprenticeship systems are found in the strongly organized trades. It is true that in some of the trades apprenticeship is little more than a name, meaning simply that permission has been granted to learn the trade. The apprentice is left free to pick up what experience he can between the odd jobs that are given him. What meager instruction he receives comes from a journeyman worker who is none too eager to give up what he considers the secrets of his trade. The union regulations provide that boys shall not enter the trades as apprentices or helpers below the age of 16. The limits set by the various trades and the union regulations as to length of apprenticeship are shown in Tables 23 and 24. TABLE 23.--UNION REGULATIONS AS TO ENTERING AGE OF APPRENTICES ----------------------------------------+------------------------+ Asbestos workers | Enter at any age | Bricklayers | Between 16 and 23 | Carpenters | Between 17 and 22 | Cement finishers | Must be full grown | Elevator constructors | Must be full grown | Lathers | Must be 18 years old | Inside wiremen | Between 16 and 21 | Painters and paperhangers | Before 21 years old | Plumbers and gas-fitters | Must be 16 years old | Sheet metal workers | Must be over 16 years | Slate and tile roofers | Must enter before 25 | Steam-fitters | Must be full grown | Structural and ornamental iron workers | Between 18 and 25 | ----------------------------------------+------------------------+ TABLE 24.--UNION REGULATIONS AS TO LENGTH OF APPRENTICESHIP PERIOD _Trades in which indentures are usually signed_ Bricklayer 4 years Plasterers 4 years Sheet metal workers 4 years _Trades in which indentures are seldom signed_ Steam-fitters 5 years Carpenters 4 years Inside wiremen 4 years Plumbers and gas-fitter 4 years Cement finishers 3 years Asbestos workers 3 years Painters and paperhangers 3 years Slate and tile roofers 3 years Lathers 2 years Structural and ornamental iron workers 11/2 years Elevator constructors varies All obtainable information points to the conclusion that the number of apprentices employed in the city is far below the maximum permitted by the unions. Many large contractors have no apprentices and say they will not bother with them. Others state that they have been unable to get or keep good apprentices and have therefore given up the plan. UNION ORGANIZATION The building trades are among the most strongly organized in the city. It is estimated that their unions at the present time include about 90 per cent of all the men engaged in building work. Practically all the large contracting firms employ only union labor. The few non-union workers are employed by small contractors. Requirements for admission to the different unions vary to a marked degree. If the union is strong and has a good control over the labor supply, admission fees are higher and regulations as to apprentices and helpers are more stringent than if the union is fighting to gain a foothold. EARNINGS No industrial workers in the city are paid better wages than those employed in the building trades. More than one-half of the skilled workers are in trades that pay an hourly wage of 50 cents or over. The hourly rate in each occupation is shown in Table 25. TABLE 25.--UNION SCALE OF WAGES IN CENTS PER HOUR MAY 1, 1915 _70 Cents_ Bricklayers 70.00 Hoisting engineers on boom derricks, etc. 70.00 Stone masons 70.00 Structural iron workers 70.00 _From 60 to 70 Cents_ Marble setters 68.75 Inside wiremen 68.75 Plasterers 68.75 Slate and tile roofers 67.50 Parquet floor layers (carpenters) 62.50 Lathers, first class 62.50 Plumbers 62.50 Steam-fitters 62.50 Stone-cutters 62.50 Hoisting engineers, brick hoists 60.00 Elevator constructors 60.00 _From 50 to 60 Cents_ Tile layers 59.38 Lathers, second class 56.25 Carpenters 55.00 Cement workers, finishers 55.00 Sheet metal workers 50.00 Painters 50.00 Paperhangers 50.00 _From 40 to 50 Cents_ Asbestos workers 47.50 Composition roofers 42.50 _Under 40 Cents_ Cabinet-makers and bench hands 37.50 Machine woodworkers 37.50 Electrical fixture hangers 37.50 Hod-carriers 35.00 Union organization is a more powerful factor in determining wages in these trades than technical knowledge and skill. A high degree of skill in a given trade brings little advantage in the matter of wages. By establishing a minimum scale below which no journeyman shall work, the union secures practically a flat rate of pay for most of the men in the trade. When there is much building work and good men are scarce, contractors sometimes pay higher wages to highly skilled workmen in order to secure their services. As a rule, however, their reward comes in the form of steadier employment. The less skilled man is the first to be laid off when business is slack, while the first-class workman, for the reason that he is so hard to replace, is the last to be discharged. Many unions, among them those of the carpenters, bricklayers, and painters, make no provision as to the wages of apprentices. Table 26 shows the wages in three of the building trades that have established a uniform scale for apprentices. Sheet metal apprentices are paid a bonus of $1 extra for each week served. TABLE 26.--USUAL WEEKLY WAGES OF APPRENTICES IN THREE BUILDING TRADES -------------+----------------+----------------+--------------+ | | | Sheet metal | Year | Inside wiremen | Plasterers | workers | -------------+----------------+----------------+--------------+ First year | $5.50 | $5.50 to $6.25 | $5.00 | Second year | 13.20 | 8.25 to 11.02 | 5.50 to 6.00 | Third year | 17.60 | 13.75 to 16.00 | 6.50 to 7.00 | Fourth year | 22.00 | 19.25 | 8.00 to 9.00 | -------------+----------------+----------------+--------------+ HOURS The usual working day is eight hours. Many of the trades work only a half day on Saturdays throughout the year; practically all have this half holiday during the four summer months. For holiday or over-time work the men receive either pay and a half or double pay. REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT Due to the seasonal character of building work, it is next to impossible for a building contractor to keep a large force employed all the year. One result of this situation is that the men change employers more than any other workers in industry. Irregularity of employment is greater in building construction than in any other of the principal industries of the city. A comparison between the different branches of building work as to regularity of employment is presented in Diagram 11. The best showing is made by electrical contracting, in which the average number employed is 93 per cent of the maximum working force, and the poorest by plastering in which the average is only 66 per cent of the maximum. HEALTH CONDITIONS Nearly all of the building trades are open air occupations, much even of the inside work being done before the buildings are closed in. For the most part the materials used are not injurious to health if reasonable precautions are taken and ordinary habits of cleanliness observed. In general, health conditions are better than those found in the factory industries. [Illustration: Diagram 11.--Sections in outline represent percentage of men employed, and sections in black percentage of men unemployed in each of nine building industries at the time when each industry showed the largest percentage of unemployment] OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCEMENT The building trades offer many opportunities for advancement. One reason for this is the large number of supervisory positions made necessary by the wide range of building activities. A foreman in almost any of the trades must be able to read plans, as he must lay out the work. It is not necessary for him to be the most skilled mechanic in the force. Employers and superintendents say that in selecting foremen they lay about equal weight on skill and on ability to handle men. As a rule, foremanship carries with it higher wages, although in some cases the pay is the same as that of the regular journeymen. The reward for the added responsibility comes in the form of steadier employment. It is not uncommon for a foreman to be hired on a salary basis and carried on the payroll throughout the entire year. Small contracting offers another form of advancement. It requires but little initial investment to make a modest beginning, because individual workmen in the various building trades provide their own tools and no expensive machines are required. Comparatively little working capital is necessary, as provision is made in most contracts for part payments as the work progresses. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING The recommendations of the report relating to training for the building trades may be summarized under five headings: 1. _Reduce retardation._ The first step in improving the educational preparation of workers entering the building trades is to reduce retardation or slow progress in the elementary grades. At present it is approximately true of the men entering the building trades that one-third drop out of school by the sixth grade, two-thirds by the seventh grade, and three-thirds by the eighth grade. Now according to law a boy cannot go to work until he is 16, and if he has made normal progress he will have completed the eight grades of the elementary course before he has reached that age. In point of fact, many of these boys do not make normal progress through the grades and hence they reach the age of 15 before completing the elementary course. As a result they fall out of school without having had those portions of the work in reading, drawing, mathematics, and elementary science which would be of most direct use to them in their future work. 2. _General industrial courses in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades._ If retardation could be largely reduced in the elementary grades, industrialized courses could be properly introduced in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades for boys intending to enter the building trades. The specific changes recommended include as their most important elements: a. Increased training in industrial arithmetic beginning in the seventh grade. b. Courses in industrial drawing. c. Courses in elementary science relating to industry. d. Courses in industrial information. e. General courses in industrial shop work. These are general industrial courses and it is recommended that they be introduced as prominent features of the work of the junior high school. They are not intended to take the place of specialized courses in the building trades, but they are proposed as courses valuable for all future industrial workers and within which certain adaptations should be made for those who are intending to enter the building trades. 3. _A two year industrial trade school._ In addition to the general industrial courses in junior high schools that have been recommended in the previous section, there should be established a two year industrial trade school for boys. It should receive boys 14 to 16 years of age who desire direct trade-preparatory training. There are good reasons why the present elementary schools, the proposed junior high schools, and the existing technical high schools cannot satisfactorily take the place of a specialized two year course in giving boys direct trade-preparatory education. Boys who go through the technical high schools do not remain in the building trades as artisans. This is shown by the fact that less than two per cent of the graduates of these schools are working in the building trades. The elementary schools and the junior high schools cannot conduct satisfactory trade-preparatory courses for the building industry for the reason that they do not bring together at any one point a sufficient number of these future workers to make it possible to teach them economically. This is a consideration which conditions every plan for the organization of industrial education. It is a question of the community's capacity to absorb workmen trained for any given occupation. In Cleveland about 4,000 boys leave the public elementary schools each year. Approximately 2,400 of them drop out of the elementary schools or leave after graduating from them, while the remaining 1,600 go on to high school. The future workers in the building trades will be largely recruited from the 2,400 boys who leave the elementary schools each year. Most of them range in age from 14 to 16 and in school advancement from the fifth to the eighth grades. They represent a cross-section of a large part of the city's adult manhood of a few years hence. Now the census figures tell us that if present conditions maintain in the future only about 100 of the 4,000 boys leaving school each year will be carpenters. For the purposes of the present inquiry we may assume that these 100 future carpenters are to be found among the 2,400 boys who do not go on to high school. But Cleveland has 108 elementary schools and these 100 future carpenters are widely scattered among them. Even if we knew which boys were destined to become carpenters, and even if we knew when they would leave school, and even if we should decide to give them all trade preparatory education for the last two years of their school life, we should still have an average class in carpentry of only two boys in each elementary school. This is administratively and educationally impossible. For similar reasons specialized trade preparatory classes in junior high schools would prove exceedingly difficult to organize. The whole situation is changed, however, when we gather in a central school all these future artisans who have decided that they wish to prepare for specific trades. Under these conditions classes would be sufficiently large so that specialized training could be given and special equipment provided. This work would best be undertaken in a school entirely devoted to the purpose, but such courses might be organized in connection with the present technical high schools. This arrangement would be less desirable and probably give inferior results. The important point, however, is not so much the organization or curriculum for these classes, it is the fundamental fact that trade classes can be wisely organized only when a sufficiently large number of pupils can be gathered in one place so as to make the work efficient and economical. The effectiveness of the trade-preparatory training recommended would be greatly increased if the upper limit of the compulsory attendance period for boys should be placed at 16 years instead of at 15 as it is now. 4. _Trade-Extension Classes for Apprentices._ At the present time the technical high schools offer evening classes for apprentices in the building trades. About one-seventh of the apprentices of the city are enrolled in these classes. In the main they are full grown men. In general they do not want shop work related to their own trades, but prefer instead to enroll in courses in drawing. The considerations already presented bear in minor degree on the problem of providing evening instruction for trade apprentices. The essential for efficient work is that a sufficient number of pupils be brought together so as to make it possible to organize specialized classes in different kinds of work that the pupils want and need. So long as there are only 50 apprentices enrolled in the entire city, and these represent a number of trades, many different stages of advancement, and a variety of needs, truly efficient work will be impossible. Better conditions can be brought about only through the coöperation of the unions, the employers, and the school people. 5. _Trade-Extension Work for Journeymen._ The evening technical schools now maintain shop classes and drawing classes for workers in the building trades. Less than one per cent of the workers in these trades are enrolled in these classes. There is little differentiation in the school work offered to helpers, apprentices, and journeymen. The result is that the work is much less efficient than it might well be. It cannot be rendered much more efficient than it is until the classes are increased in size and as a result the work differentiated and specialized. This type of improvement will result only from putting the night school work in the hands of skilful and well paid directors and teachers who bring to it a degree of energy, enterprise, ingenuity, and adaptability that it is unreasonable to expect and impossible to get from day school teachers who have already given the best that is in them to their regular classes and are giving a fatigued margin of work and attention to their night school pupils. CHAPTER XVIII SUMMARY OF REPORT ON RAILROAD AND STREET TRANSPORTATION The report on railroad and street transportation takes up a class of wage earning occupations that give employment in Cleveland to approximately 15,000 men. A much larger proportion than is found in most other industrial manual occupations are natives of the city. Although some of the work is relatively unskilled, all of the different occupations have one common characteristic--the necessity for a knowledge of the English language and some acquaintance with local customs and conditions. For this reason comparatively few foreigners are employed. The report takes up separately three types of workers, those employed in railroad train service, those engaged in wagon or automobile transportation, and the car service employees of the street railroad. RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION The study covered only those railroad occupations that are directly concerned with the actual operation of trains, such as those of engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen. These occupations have many points in common and bring into play many similar mental and physical characteristics. The requirements for entrance are strict and examinations for the higher positions are obligatory. In all of them the hazards are great. Each occupation is firmly intrenched in trade unionism. Differences with employers relating to such matters as promotion, hours of labor, wages, and overtime are settled by collective bargaining or, in case of failure to agree, by arbitration proceedings. The estimated number of men in Cleveland employed in these occupations in 1915 is approximately 4,500. Of these about one-fourth are switchmen and flagmen, one-fourth enginemen, one-fifth brakemen, one-sixth conductors, and one-eighth firemen. The requirements for entrance call for a high degree of physical fitness. The applicant for employment must pass a severe examination as to vision and hearing, and in addition furnish certain data as to his family history, as it relates to insanity, tuberculosis, and certain other diseases. The high standard maintained insures a type of employees which for physical fitness, mental alertness, and ability to handle difficult situations is unsurpassed in any industry. Frequent examinations, which are compulsory, are the stepping stones to the higher positions. In this way a brakeman qualifies for the position of freight conductor, a freight conductor for that of passenger conductor, and a fireman for a position as engineer. Each of the two services, passenger and freight, has its advantages. In the passenger service the working day is short, with little overtime. Freight service requires a longer working day and a considerable amount of overtime. Promotions in both services and from one to the other are made on the basis of seniority. Violation of the strict rules laid down for the operation of trains on the part of employees may result in reprimand, suspension, or dismissal, according to the gravity of the offense. The penalty of suspension has practically superseded the others except in extreme cases, such as drunkenness, theft, or other serious violations of the rules, for which offenders are summarily dismissed. On some railroads, a graded system of demerits is used. When an employee has received a certain number of demerits he is dismissed from the service. The railroad unions are among the strongest and most aggressive in the country. The total union membership among train operating employees alone in the country is approximately 350,000. The unions are all modeled upon the same general plan. They are quite independent of each other, keep strictly to their agreements and oppose the sympathetic strike. They all maintain some form of life insurance. Four organizations have underwritten over $500,000,000 of insurance and one of them in a single year paid claims amounting to $1,135,000. The influence of these unions has been particularly effective in securing the passage of protective state and national legislation such as full crew laws, standardization of train equipment, employers' liability laws, car limit laws, etc. The hazardous nature of the work is indicated by a statement made by a prominent union official to the effect that the Trainmen's Brotherhood paid a claim for death or disability every seven hours. A report to the Interstate Commerce Commission states that there is one case of injury in train or yard service every nine minutes. With the invention of safety devices the risk of accident has been greatly lessened, but railroading is still one of the most dangerous industrial occupations. There is little chance of employment for applicants under the age of 21 years. In fact, many roads refuse to employ men below this age. Physical or sense defects which often accompany advancing years, and which would not disqualify a man in other occupations do so in railroad work. The average length of the working life is a little over 12 years. Railroad employees are among the best paid workers in the country. A close estimate based on extensive wage investigations places the annual earnings of engineers at from $1,200 to $2,400 a year, with an average of $1,600. Conductors average about $1,350, firemen a little over $900, and other trainmen about $950. The usual working day is 10 hours, although this is often exceeded. Overtime is paid on a regular scale agreed upon by the companies and the union. The educational requirements are not very exacting. A thorough grounding in the "three R's" is usually all that is necessary. A large amount of trade knowledge is obtained through contact and participation after entering employment and can be gained in no other way. The examinations for promotion are of a thorough-going character. One of the roads in Cleveland requires an examination of its firemen and trainmen six months after employment, as to vision, color-sense, and hearing. They must also pass an oral examination on the characteristics of their division and a written examination on certain set questions furnished them in advance. Two years later they are examined again, the fireman for engineman, and the brakeman for conductor. The scope of these examinations covers the whole range of train operating. Each of the five large railroads entering Cleveland has air-brake cars equipped with various forms of air brakes, air signals, pumps, valves, and injectors for the purpose of giving instruction to trainmen. A competent instructor is put in charge of these cars to explain the theory and practice of the apparatus and also to give instruction in any new type of engine or train equipment. The conclusions of the report are in the main negative with respect to specialized vocational training in the public schools. There is no doubt that the general industrial course recommended for the junior high school period in previous chapters would be of some value to boys who may enter this line of work. Problems of railroad transportation might well be included as part of the work in applied mathematics. What workers in these occupations need most, however, is a thorough elementary education. MOTOR AND WAGON TRANSPORTATION This section of the report takes up such occupations as those of teamsters, chauffeurs, and repairmen. There are no reliable data as to the number of men in the city employed in these occupations, but it is certain that it does not fall below 9,000. Notwithstanding the great increase in the use of automobiles and auto trucks in recent years the number of teamsters at the present time is in excess of 4,000 men. A very large proportion of the men employed in these occupations are of American birth. The general conditions of labor such as wages, hours of labor, and so on, are the same for teamsters and chauffeurs. They earn about the same wages, belong to the same union, and work about the same hours. The wages range from 25 to 37 cents an hour. Earnings in the better paid jobs compare favorably with those in several of the skilled trades. Automobile repairmen earn from 30 to 45 cents an hour, and work from nine to 10 hours a day. The working day for teamsters and chauffeurs is somewhat longer, ranging from 10 to 12 hours. At the present time these occupations are only partially organized in trade unions. The report recommends the establishment of a course in automobile construction and operation in the technical high schools. In view of the constantly increasing use of automobiles such a course would be of value to many boys besides those who enter employment as chauffeurs and truck drivers. STREET RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION There are employed in Cleveland at present approximately 2,500 motormen and street car conductors. Almost all of them are of American birth, and the majority are natives of the city. As in railroad work each applicant for employment must pass an examination, although the requirements are less exacting than those demanded in railroad work. The preliminary training occupies about 10 days, during which the motorman is taught by actual car operation how to operate the controller, how to apply and release the brakes, and other duties connected with the careful running of the car through crowded streets. The conductor is taught the names of the streets, how and when to call them, where stops are to be made, when to turn lights on and off, how to act in case of accidents, and the various duties which deal with the sale, collection, and reporting of transfers and tickets. No one is admitted into the service before the age of 21 or after 35. Promotion usually comes in the form of better runs. The chances of promotion to positions above the grade of conductor or motorman are very slight. About 90 per cent of the men belong to the local union. Union rates of pay for motormen and conductors are higher in Cleveland than in most cities in the country, in spite of the fact that this is the only large city in the country with a three cent street car fare. The wages of both motormen and conductors are 29 cents an hour for the first year and 32 in succeeding years. The hours of labor are very irregular. The usual working day is from 10 to 12 hours. The author of the report is of the opinion that no special instruction for this type of workers can be given by the public schools. CHAPTER XIX SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE PRINTING TRADES A smaller proportion of the industrial population in Cleveland is engaged in printing than in most large cities. The number of persons employed in printing occupations in 1915 is estimated at approximately 3,900, made up chiefly of skilled workmen. Little common labor is used in any department of the industry. The business of printing is usually conducted in small establishments. There are not more than six plants in the city which employ over 75 wage earners. Data collected from 44 local printing shops, showed an average working force of only 36 persons. Due largely to this characteristic printing affords an unusual number of opportunities for advancement to the skilled workers in the industry. The smaller the establishments are the greater is the proportion of proprietors, superintendents, managers and foremen to the total number of wage earners. Ten per cent of the total working force in the printing industry is employed in supervisory and directive positions. In many of the large manufacturing industries of the city the proportion in such work is less than three per cent. [Illustration: Diagram 12.--Number of men in each 100 in printing and five other industries earning each class of weekly wage. Black indicates less than $18, hatching, $18 to $25, and outline $25 and over] No other manufacturing industry employs so large a proportion of American born workers. In recent years many of the skilled industrial trades have been recruited to a very large extent from foreign labor, but in printing the American worker has so far held his own remarkably well. This is due in part to the relatively high wages and desirable working conditions and to the necessity in all branches of printing for a working knowledge of English. Practically all of the trades are thoroughly organized. The unions are united in a body called the Council of the Allied Printing Trades. Although only about half of the shops in the city employ union labor exclusively, the union regulations as to wages and hours of labor are observed in both open and closed shops. Printing workers are among the best paid industrial wage earners in the city. A comparison of the weekly earnings in the various manufacturing industries is shown in Diagram 12. This comparison is based upon the 1914 report of the Ohio Industrial Commission. The comparison of the earnings of women in various industries, shown in Diagram 13, is less favorable to printing. On the basis of the proportion of women that earn $12 and over per week this industry takes third place. It should be noted, however, that nearly all the women employed are engaged in semi-skilled work in binderies,--a lower grade of work than that done by most women workers in clothing factories, where wages are higher. Compared with other occupations that require about the same amount of experience and training, in textile, tobacco, and confectionery manufacturing establishments, the wages of women employed in the printing industry are relatively high. Wage earners in printing establishments lose less time through irregularity of employment than do those in most other factory industries. The kind of work done by women is more seasonal than that done by men, although less so than in other manufacturing industries which employ large numbers of women. [Illustration: Diagram 13.--Number of women in each 100 in printing and six other industries earning each class of weekly wage. Black indicates less than $8, hatching $8 to $12, and outline $12 and over] COMPOSING ROOM WORKERS Nearly all the workers in this department of the industry are hand or machine compositors. Until about 30 years ago, before practical type-setting machines were invented, all type was set by hand. Today the hand compositor, except in very small shops, works only on jobs requiring special type and special arrangement, such as advertisements, title covers of books, letter heads, and so on. In the city there are about 1,200 people employed in composing room occupations, or about 30 per cent of the total number of workers in the industry. This number includes some 50 women employed as proof-readers and copy-holders. Nine-tenths of the composing room workers are members of the International Typographical Union, although the number of shops that employ union men exclusively, called closed shops, approximates only one-half of the total number in the city. The remainder, while employing union labor, observing union hours, and paying union wages, reserve the right to hire non-union workmen. Composing room workers are the best paid in the industry. A comparison of average wages in newspaper and job establishments is shown in Table 27. TABLE 27.--AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF JOB AND NEWSPAPER COMPOSING-ROOM WORKERS, 1915 -------------------------+---------------+------------+ | | Newspaper | Workers in trade | Job offices | offices | -------------------------+---------------+------------+ Foremen | $5.19 | $6.65 | Linotype machinists | 4.66 | 4.84 | Proof-readers | 4.63 | 3.98 | Monotype operators | 4.57 | .. | Linotypers | 4.28 | 4.65 | Monotype casters | 3.96 | 4.30 | Stonemen | 3.94 | 4.89 | Hand-compositors | 3.48 | 4.58 | Copy-holders | 2.30 | 2.93 | Apprentices | 1.64 | 1.30 | -------------------------+---------------+------------+ Compositors suffer most from the diseases that are common to indoor workers. The stooping position in which much of the work is done, together with insufficient ventilation and the presence of gases from the molten metal used in monotype and linotype machines, favors the development of lung diseases. The number of deaths from consumption among compositors is more than double that in most outdoor occupations. The apprenticeship system has held its own in the compositor's trade better than in most industrial occupations. In the establishments visited by the Survey Staff there were approximately 15 apprentices to each 100 hand and machine compositors. As a rule there is no real system or method of instruction. The points principally insisted upon by the union, which strongly favors the apprenticeship system, are that the number of apprentices employed shall not exceed that stipulated in the agreement between the employers and the union, and that each apprentice shall be required to serve the full term of five years. During the first and second years the apprentice is required to perform general work in the composing room under the direction of the foreman. In the third year he joins the union as an apprentice. The apprenticeship agreement stipulates that during this year he must be employed four hours each day at composition and distribution. In the fourth and fifth years the number of hours per day on such work is increased to six and seven respectively. During the last two years of his term he must take the evening trade course given by the International Typographical Union, the expense of tuition being met by the local union. The agreement contains no stipulation as to wages for the first and second years. The wage for the third year is $9 a week, for the fourth year $12, and for the fifth, $15. Apprentices in newspaper composing rooms are permitted to spend the last six months of their period working on type-setting machines. THE PRESSROOM The pressroom occupations include platen and cylinder pressmen, web or newspaper pressmen, platen and cylinder pressfeeders, plate printers, cutters, flyboys and apprentices. Approximately 15 per cent of the men employed are cylinder pressmen, about 10 per cent platen pressmen, and less than three per cent web pressmen. Pressfeeders comprise over 40 per cent of the whole group. Nearly nine-tenths of all pressroom workers are employed in job establishments. Five occupations--those of cutters, floormen, flyboys, plate printers, and web pressmen--give employment to fewer than 40 men each. The average daily earnings of pressroom workers in the establishments from which wage data were collected during the survey are shown in Table 28. The hourly rates of pay are high as compared with those in other occupations requiring an equal or greater amount of skill and knowledge. Cylinder pressmen earn more per hour than do tool and die makers--the most highly skilled of the metal trades--and platen pressmen in charge of five or more presses earn more than all-round machinists and boiler makers. The rate for cylinder pressfeeders is about three cents an hour higher than that received for specialized machine work in the metal trades. TABLE 28.--AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF PRESSROOM WORKERS, 1915 _Job pressroom workers_ Foremen $4.78 Cylinder pressmen 3.63 Cutters 3.41 Platen pressmen 2.97 Floormen 2.91 Cylinder pressfeeders, men 2.54 Cylinder pressfeeders, women 1.77 Platen pressfeeders, men 1.83 Platen pressfeeders, women 1.70 Flyboys 1.56 _Newspaper pressroom workers_ Foremen 6.11 Web pressmen 4.33 Web pressmen's assistants 2.95 Formal apprenticeship is practically unknown. The boy begins as a pressfeeder, usually on a platen press, and in the course of time gets to be a platen pressman. A knowledge of platen presswork does not qualify a man to run a cylinder press, and as a rule the platen pressman who wants to change must serve some time as a cylinder pressfeeder and cylinder pressman's assistant. There is no organized system for training beginners. The boy who wants to become a pressman must pick up the trade through experience and practice, the length of time required depending chiefly on how frequently changes occur among the force of pressmen employed in the shop. THE BINDERY The bindery is the only department of the industry in which any considerable number of women are employed. Some of the occupations, such as gathering, sewing, and stitching, are practically monopolized by women. They are also employed extensively in hand and machine folding. About one-fifth are gatherers and one-fifth sewers and stitchers. The other three-fifths are distributed among a number of occupations usually classed as general bindery work. The occupations in which men predominate are forwarding, ruling, and finishing, and cutting. The forwarders comprise more than one-fourth of the total number of men engaged in bindery work. The other two skilled trades--ruling and finishing--give employment to about 35 men each. The average daily earnings in the various occupations, based on returns from 44 establishments, were as shown in Table 29. TABLE 29.--AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF BINDERY WORKERS, 1915 ------------------------------+-----------+-----------+ Workers in trade | Men | Women | ------------------------------+-----------+-----------+ Foremen | $4.78 | $2.05 | Rulers | 3.56 | .. | Finishers | 3.51 | .. | Forwarders | 3.23 | .. | Cutters | 3.21 | .. | Machine-folders | 2.81 | 1.49 | Wire-stitchers | .. | 1.57 | Apprentices | 1.53 | .. | Gatherers | .. | 1.52 | Sewers | .. | 1.52 | Other bindery operatives | 1.40 | 1.51 | ------------------------------+-----------+-----------+ On account of the seasonal character of the work considerable time is lost through unemployment, particularly in those occupations in which women predominate. Beginners in these occupations in which the majority of the women are employed, start on folding or pasting, and as opportunity presents, gradually acquire practice in the higher grades of work, such as gathering and machine operating. There are some traces of the apprenticeship system in forwarding, ruling, and finishing, but these trades are so small that all of them combined require only a very few new workers each year. OTHER OCCUPATIONS Other departments of the printing industry are photoengraving, stereotyping, electrotyping, and lithographing. They give employment to approximately 700 workers, distributed among more than 20 distinct trades, requiring the most diverse sorts of skill, knowledge, and training. There are about 100 men in the city engaged in the different processes of photoengraving. Nearly all of the stereotypers, numbering from 60 to 70, are employed in newspaper offices. There are about 125 electrotypers and 400 lithographers. The labor conditions closely approximate those found in other departments of the industry. Average wages for the different occupations are shown in Table 30. TABLE 30.--AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS IN PHOTOENGRAVING, STEREOTYPING, ELECTROTYPING, AND LITHOGRAPHING OCCUPATIONS, 1915 Average Workers in trade daily earnings Photoengraving Artists $6.32 Photographers 4.69 Etchers 4.52 Routers 4.25 Finishers 4.21 Proofers 3.69 Strippers 3.61 Blockers 2.36 Apprentices 1.49 Art apprentices 1.27 Stereotyping 4.00 Electrotyping Molders 4.41 Finishers 4.01 Casters 3.18 Routers 3.17 Builders 3.13 Blockers 2.05 Batterymen 1.97 Case fillers 1.59 Apprentices 1.10 Lithographing Lettermen 6.63 Artists 6.41 Pressroom foremen 5.80 Grainers 4.73 Engravers 4.35 Pressmen 3.91 Transferers and proofers 3.41 Pressroom apprentices 2.80 Tracers 2.63 Stone polishers 2.53 Pressfeeders 1.72 Other apprentices 1.59 Artist apprentices 1.23 Flyboys 1.10 There is no well organized system for training apprentices in photoengraving, stereotyping, and electrotyping, or in any of the lithographic trades, except that of poster artist, in which an efficient and strictly regulated system of apprenticeship is maintained. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING The report maintains that up to the end of the compulsory attendance period school training preparatory to entering the printing trades must be of the most general sort, due to the fact that in the average elementary school the number of boys who are likely to become printers is too small to form special classes. For example, in an elementary school of 1,000 pupils the number of boys 12 years old and over to whom instruction in printing would be of value from the standpoint of future vocational utility, would probably not exceed two. While admitting the advantages of the junior high school for the purposes of vocational training, the report points out that even in a school where only pupils of the upper grades are admitted, the number who are likely to become printers is still too small to warrant special instruction. In a junior high school of 1,000 pupils not more than nine boys are likely to become printers. The report recommends a general industrial course during the junior high school period. What the boys need at this time is practice in the application of mathematics, drawing, and elementary science to industrial problems. Shop equipment should be selected with this object in mind. It is doubtful whether it should include a printing shop, for while such a shop would be useful to the few boys who will become printers, it would be of little value in training for other industries. The report suggests as subjects which should be included in the general industrial course practice in handling and assembling machinery, the study of color harmony, and the principles of design in connection with the work in drawing, the use of printing shop problems in applied mathematics, and thorough instruction in spelling, punctuation, and the division of words. It also recommends the course of industrial information referred to in previous chapters. The establishment of a two year printing course in a separate vocational school is recommended to meet the need for specialized instruction from the end of the compulsory period to the apprentice entering age. The printing trades are relatively small and it is only by concentrating in a single school plant all the boys who may wish to enter them that specialized training can be made practicable. In this way it would be possible to secure classes of from 60 to 100 boys each for such trades as composition and presswork. The report emphasizes the need for instruction in trade theory as against practice on specific operations. It points out that the boys will have plenty of opportunity after they go to work to acquire speed and manual skill, while they have little chance, under modern shop conditions, to obtain an understanding of the relation of drawing, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and art to their work. The only trade extension training offered by the public schools at the present time is that given in the technical night schools. During the second term of 1915-16 there were 28 persons enrolled in the technical night school printing class. Of these 28 persons three were journeymen printers, five described themselves as "helpers," 11 were apprentices, one was employed in the office of a printing establishment, and eight were engaged in occupations unrelated to printing. No special provision is made for the apprentices. The course, which includes hand composition, a little press work, and lectures on trade subjects, is planned "to help broaden the shop training of those working at the trade." That it does so to any considerable extent is doubtful. Too much of the time is devoted to hand work and practice on operations which the boys can easily learn in the shops. It is believed that the plan followed in the evening apprentice course prescribed by the International Typographical Union, in which no shop equipment or apparatus is used, is better adapted to the needs of boys employed in the trade. The course consists of 46 lessons in English, lettering, design, color harmony, job composition, and imposition for machine, and hand folding. The classes are taught by journeymen teachers. In February 1916 about 100 students were enrolled, of whom approximately one-third were apprentices and two-thirds journeymen. CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be sent postpaid for 25 cents per volume with the exception of "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools" by Judd, "The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and "Wage Earning and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured at the same rates from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. Child Accounting in the Public Schools--Ayres. Educational Extension--Perry. Education through Recreation--Johnson. Financing the Public Schools--Clark. Health Work in the Public Schools--Ayres. Household Arts and School Lunches--Boughton. Measuring the Work of the Public Schools--Judd. Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan--Hartwell. School Buildings and Equipment--Ayres. Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children--Mitchell. School Organization and Administration--Ayres. The Public Library and the Public Schools--Ayres and McKinnie. The School and the Immigrant--Miller. The Teaching Staff--Jessup. What the Schools Teach and Might Teach--Bobbitt. The Cleveland School Survey (Summary)--Ayres. * * * * * Boys and Girls in Commercial Work--Stevens. Department Store Occupations--O'Leary. Dressmaking and Millinery--Bryner. Railroad and Street Transportation--Fleming. The Building Trades--Shaw. The Garment Trades--Bryner. The Metal Trades--Lutz. The Printing Trades--Shaw. Wage Earning and Education (Summary)--Lutz. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Typos Corrected In Text: Table 15 on page 120: establishments for estabments page 194: "car fare" for "car far" page 15: employee for employe * * * * * 
38367	----	KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: A VIEW OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES OF MODERN SOCIETY, AND THE RESULTS OF LABOUR, CAPITAL, AND SKILL. BY CHARLES KNIGHT. Illustrated with numerous Woodcuts. "The empire of man over material things has for its only foundation the sciences and the arts."--BACON. _THE SECOND EDITION._ WITH TWENTY-FOUR ADDITIONAL CUTS OF MANUFACTURING PROCESSES. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1859. _The right of Translation is reserved._ EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION. "Without attempting to give this volume the formal shape of a treatise on _Political Economy_, it is the wish of the author to convey the broad parts of that science in a somewhat desultory manner, but one which is not altogether devoid of logical arrangement. He desires especially to be understood by _the young_; for upon their right appreciation of the principles which govern society will depend much of the security and happiness of our own and the coming time." LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD-STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. TO NEIL ARNOTT, ESQ., M.D., WITH SINCERE ADMIRATION OF THE DISINTERESTED SPIRIT IN WHICH HE HAS DEVOTED HIS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE TO THE PUBLIC GOOD; AND IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS NEVER-FAILING KINDNESS DURING A LONG FRIENDSHIP, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION Page 1 CHAPTER I. Feeble resources of civilized man in a desert--Ross Cox, Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron--A Moskito Indian on Juan Fernandez--Conditions necessary for the production of utility 6 CHAPTER II. Society a system of exchanges--Security of individual property the principle of exchange--Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe--Imperfect appropriation and unprofitable labour 14 CHAPTER III. Adventures of John Tanner--Habits of the American Indians--Their sufferings from famine, and from the absence among them of the principle of division of labour--Evils of irregular labour--Respect to property--Their present improved condition--Hudson's Bay Indians 23 CHAPTER IV. The Prodigal--Advantages of the poorest man in civilized life over the richest savage--Savings-banks, deposits, and interest--Progress of accumulation--Insecurity of capital, its causes and results--Property, its constituents-- Accumulation of capital 38 CHAPTER V. Common interests of Capital and Labour--Labour directed by Accumulation--Capital enhanced by Labour--Balance of rights and duties--Relation of demand and supply--Money exchanges--Intrinsic and representative value of money 49 CHAPTER VI. Importance of capital to the profitable employment of labour--Contrast between the prodigal and the prudent man: the Dukes of Buckingham and Bridgewater--Making good for trade--Unprofitable consumption--War against capital in the middle ages--Evils of corporate privileges--Condition of the people under Henry VIII. 60 CHAPTER VII. Rights of labour--Effects of slavery on production--Condition of the Anglo Saxons--Progress of freedom in England--Laws regulating labour--Wages and prices--Poor-law--Law of settlement 71 CHAPTER VIII. Possessions of the different classes in England--Condition of Colchester in 1301--Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture, &c.--Supply of food--Comparative duration of human life--Want of facilities for commerce--Plenty and civilization not productive of effeminacy--Colchester in the present day 82 CHAPTER IX. Certainty the stimulus to industry--Effects of insecurity--Instances of unprofitable labour--Former notions of commerce--National and class prejudices, and their remedy 96 CHAPTER X. Employment of machinery in manufactures and agriculture--Erroneous notions formerly prevalent on this subject--Its advantages to the labourer--Spade-husbandry--The principle of machinery--Machines and tools--Change in the condition of England consequent on the introduction of machinery--Modern New Zealanders and ancient Greeks-- Hand-mills and water-mills 106 CHAPTER XI. Present and former condition of the country--Progress of cultivation--Evil influence of feudalism--State of agriculture in the sixteenth century--Modern improvements--Prices of wheat--Increased breadth of land under cultivation--Average consumption of wheat--Implements of agriculture now in use--Number of agriculturists in Great Britain 124 CHAPTER XII. Production of a knife--Manufacture of iron--Raising coal--The hot-blast--Iron bridges--Rolling bar-iron--Making steel--Sheffield manufactures--Mining in Great Britain--Numbers engaged in mines and metal manufactures 139 CHAPTER XIII. Conveyance and extended use of coal--Consumption at various periods--Condition of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Advantages of good roads--Want of roads in Australia--Turnpike-roads--Canals--Railway of 1680--Railway statistics 157 CHAPTER XIV. Houses--The Pyramids--Mechanical power--Carpenters' tools--American machinery for building--Bricks--Slate-- Household fittings and furniture--Paper-hangings--Carpets-- Glass--Pottery--Improvements effected through the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements 174 CHAPTER XV. Dwellings of the people--Oberlin--The Highlander's candlesticks--Supply of water--London waterworks-- Street-lights--Sewers 199 CHAPTER XVI. Early intercourse with foreign nations--Progress of the cotton manufacture--Hand-spinning--Arkwright--Crompton-- Power-loom--Cartwright--Especial benefits of machinery in this manufacture 213 CHAPTER XVII. The woollen manufacture--Divisions of employment--Early history--Prohibitory laws--The Jacquard loom--Middle-age legislation--Sumptuary laws--The silk manufacture-- Ribbon-weaving--The linen manufacture--Cloth-printing-- Bleaching 233 CHAPTER XVIII. Hosiery manufacture--The stocking-frame--The circular hosiery-machine--Hats--Gloves--Boots and shoes--Straw-plat-- Artificial flowers--Fans--Lace--Bobbin-net machine--Pins-- Needles--Buttons--Toys--Lucifer-matches--Envelopes 255 CHAPTER XIX. Labour-saving contrivances--The nick in Types--Tags of laces--Casting shot--Candle-dipping--Tiring a wheel-- Globe-making--Domestic aids to labour--Aids to mental labour--Effects of severe bodily labour on health and duration of life 276 CHAPTER XX. Influences of knowledge in the direction of labour and capital--Astronomy: Chronometer--Mariner's compass-- Scientific travellers--New materials of manufactures-- India-rubber--Gutta-percha--Palm-oil--Geology--Inventions that diminish risk--Science raising up new employments-- Electricity--Galvanism--Sun-light--Mental labourers-- Enlightened public sentiment 295 CHAPTER XXI. Invention of printing--Effects of that art--A daily newspaper--Provincial newspapers--News-writing of former periods--Changes in the character of newspapers--Steam conveyance--Electric telegraph--Organization of a London newspaper-office--The printing-machine--The paper-machine--Bookbinding--Paper-duty 323 CHAPTER XXII. Power of skill--Cheap production--Population and production--Partial and temporary evils--Intelligent labour--Division of labour--General knowledge--'The Lowell Offering'--Union of forces 344 CHAPTER XXIII. Accumulation--Productive and unproductive consumption--Use of capital--Credit--Security of property--Production applied to the satisfaction of common wants--Increase of comforts--Relations of capitalist and labourer 361 CHAPTER XXIV. Natural law of wages--State-laws regulating wages--Enactments regulating consumption--The labour-fund and the want-fund--Ratio of capital to population--State of industry at the end of the seventeenth century--Rise of manufactures--Wages and prices--Turning over capital 381 CHAPTER XXV. What political economy teaches--Skilled labour and trusted labour--Competition of unskilled labour--Competition of uncapitalled labour--Itinerant traders--The contrast of organized industry--Factory-labour and garret-labour-- Communism--Proposals for state organization of labour-- Social Publishing Establishment--Practical co-operation 398 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 1. African Hut 12 2. Robinson Crusoe (from a design by Stothard) 20 3. Dying lion 25 4. Penn's treaty with the Indians 33 5. Pine-marten 37 6. Treasure-finding 45 7. Brindley 63 8. The hock-cart 66 9. Adam Smith 71 10. "Under his own vine" 100 11. Centre of gravity 113 12. A tool made a machine 115 13. Spinning a rope 118 14. Analysis of a cable 119 15. Mill at Guy's Cliff 122 16. Oriental plough 126 17. Clod-crusher 132 18. Scarifier 133 19. Horse-hoe 134 20. Moveable steam-engine and thrashing-machine 135 21. Thrashing-machine with horse-power 136 22. Draining-tile machine 137 23. The first iron bridge, Colebrook Dale 147 24. Rolling bar-iron 149 25. File-cutters 152 26. Cupids forging arrows (from Albani) 156 27. Telford 162 28. Modern Syrian cart 165 29. Brindley's aqueduct over the Irwell 168 30. Railway locomotive 171 31. Reindeer 173 32. Beaver 174 33. Pyramid and sphinx 176 34. Boulton 179 35. Carpenters and their tools (from an old German woodcut) 181 36. Egyptian labour in the brick-field 183 37. Scotch carpet-loom 188 38. Sheet-glass making 192 39. Potter's wheel of modern Egypt 195 40. Moulds for porcelain, and casts 196 41. Wedgwood 197 42. Ancient shadoof 202 43. Conduit in Westcheap 206 44. Old water-carrier of London 208 45. Plug in a frost 209 46. London street-lights, 1760 211 47. Cotton; showing a pod bursting 214 48. Distaff 216 49. A Hindoo woman spinning cotton 217 50. Sir Richard Arkwright 219 51. Arkwright's original spinning-machine 220 52. Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning-mule 222 53. Hindoo weaver at work in a field 228 54. Dr. Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom 229 55. Flemish weaver (from a print of 1568) 230 56. Mechanism of power-loom 242 57. Jacquard cards 243 58. Hanks of silk 247 59. Egyptian winding-reel 247 60. Silk-winding machine 248 61. Indigo-harvest In the West Indies 252 62. Gloves for the great 260 63. Cobbler's stall, about 1760 261 64. Men'seg, or Egyptian embroidery frame 263 65. Bobbin-net meshes 264 66. Essential parts of the bobbin-net machine 265 67. Stamping the eye of a needle 269 68. Stamping, pressing, and punching buttons.--Elliott's factory 271 69. Envelope-making machine 275 70. Compositor at work 277 71. Machine for fixing tags to laces 278 72. Inclined plane for separating shot 279 73. Candle-dipping machine 281 74. Tiring a wheel 281 75. Harrison 298 76. Greenwich Observatory 299 77. Linnæus in his Lapland dress 302 78. Elæis Guineensis, and Cocoa butyracea, yielding palm-oil 306 79. Franklin medal 310 80. Newton 313 81. Ambrose Paré 314 82. Sir Walter Scott (from Sir F. Chantrey's bust) 319 83. Statue of Bacon 322 84. Old hand-gunner 330 85. Carrier-pigeon 332 86. Cowper's printing-machine 335 87. The 'Times' printing-machine 338 88. Papyrus 343 89. Medal to Locke 380 90. Vision of Henry I 381 91. Irish mud cabin 393 92. "Feed the hungry" (from Flaxman) 401 93. Costermonger 407 94. "Pots to mend" 411 95. Statue of Watt 424 * * * * * THE PRESENT EDITION IS ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY-FOUR ADDITIONAL CUTS, ON SEPARATE PAGES, OF MANUFACTURING PROCESSES, &C., WHICH ARE TO BE PLACED AS FOLLOWS:-- Bursting of Dykes. The forces of Nature overcoming the industry of Man 99 Making ropes by machinery 119 Steam-boiler making 145 Shear and tilt-hammers--Steel Manufacture 151 Ancient lead-mine in Derbyshire 154 Coal-railway 157 Locomotive-engine factory 170 Stone quarry, Portland 177 Timber rafts of the Tyrol 178 Glass-cutting 191 Plate-glass factory 192 The English potter 194 Mill-room of a pottery 196 Cotton mule-spinning 222 Power-looms 229 Jacquard power-looms 241 Interior of Marshall's flax-mill, Leeds 250 Calico-printing by cylinder 252 Bleaching-ground at Glasgow 254 Electro-gilding 311 Pianoforte manufactory 320 Bas-relief on Gutenberg's monument 323 Paper-making by hand 341 Processes of bookbinding 342 KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. INTRODUCTION. It has been wisely said by a French writer who has scattered abroad sound and foolish opinions with a pretty equal hand, that "it requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what is seen every day."[1] To no branch of human knowledge can this remark be more fitly applied than to that which relates to the commonest things of the world,--namely, the Wants of Man and the Means of satisfying them. Man, it has been maintained, has greater natural wants and fewer natural means than any other animal. That his wants are greater, even in the rudest state of the species, than the wants of any quadruped--to say nothing of animals lower in the scale of being--there can be no doubt. But that his natural means are feebler and fewer we cannot believe; for the exercise of his understanding, in a variety of ways which no brute intelligence can reach, is the greatest of his natural means,--and that power enables him to subdue all things to his use. It is the almost unlimited extent of the wants of man in the social state, and the consequent multiplicity and complexity of his means--both his wants and means proceeding from the range of his mental faculties--which have rendered it so difficult to observe and explain the laws which govern the production, distribution, and consumption of those articles of utility, essential to the subsistence and comfort of the human race, which we call Wealth. It is not more than a century ago that even those who had "a great deal of philosophy" first began to apply themselves to observe "what is seen every day" exercising, in the course of human industry, the greatest influence on the condition and character of individuals and nations. The properties of light were ascertained by Sir Isaac Newton long before men were agreed upon the circumstances which determined the production of a loaf of bread; and the return of a comet after an interval of seventy-six years was pretty accurately foretold by Dr. Halley, when legislators were in almost complete ignorance of the principle which regularly brought as many cabbages to Covent Garden as there were purchasers to demand them. Since those days immense efforts have been made to determine the great circumstances of our social condition, which have such unbounded influence on the welfare of mankind. But, unhappily for themselves and for others, many of every nation still remain in comparative darkness, with regard even to the elementary truths which the labours of some of the most acute and benevolent inquirers that the world has produced have succeeded in establishing. Something of this defect may be attributed to the fact that subjects of this nature are considered difficult of comprehension. Even the best educated sometimes shrink from the examination of questions of political economy when presented in their scientific form. Charles Fox said that he could not understand Adam Smith. And yet Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' is essentially an amusing book in many parts. Matters affecting the interests of every human being, and involving a variety of facts having relation to the condition of mankind in every age and country, are not necessarily, as has been supposed, dry and difficult to understand, and consequently only to be approached by systematic students. In this belief it is proposed in this volume to exhibit the natural operation of the principles by which Industry, as well as every other exchangeable property, must be governed. The writer has to apply all the universal laws which regulate the exchanges of mankind to the direction of that exchange which the great bulk of the people are most interested in carrying forward rapidly, certainly, and uninterruptedly--the exchange of Labour for Capital. But he has also to regard those laws with especial reference to that mighty Power which has become so absorbing and controlling in our own day--the Power of Science applied to the Arts, or, in other words, Knowledge. It is not too much to assert that, henceforth, Labour must take its absolute direction from that Power. It is now the great instrument of Capital. In time it will be understood universally to be the best partner of Labour. "Wherever education and an unrestricted press are allowed full scope to exercise their united influence, progress and improvement are the certain results, and among the many benefits which arise from their joint co-operation may be ranked most prominently the value which they teach men to place upon intelligent contrivance; the readiness with which they cause new improvements to be received; and the impulse which they thus unavoidably give to that inventive spirit which is gradually emancipating man from the rude forms of labour, and making what were regarded as the luxuries of one age to be looked upon in the next as the ordinary and necessary conditions of human existence."[2] The present volume is founded upon two little works which the author wrote more than twenty years ago, and which were widely circulated. One of these books, 'The Results of Machinery,' was published, in connexion with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, at a period of great national alarm, when a blind rage against a power supposed to interfere with the claims of labour was generally prevalent, and led, in the southern agricultural districts especially, to many acts of daring violence. Happily that spirit is passed away. The spirit of knowledge has arisen; and we are told now, by an unquestionable authority, that labourers themselves begin to regard the tedious work of the flail as too irksome[3]--the same class that in 1830 broke the thrashing machines. In remodelling that portion of the present volume it is unnecessary to deprecate the evils of hostility to machinery; but rather to look forward to its more complete union with skilled labour as the triumph of the productive forces of modern society. In the other little book upon which this volume is founded, 'Capital and Labour,' the general subject of the _Production_ of wealth was popularly treated, and the argument is here carried forward. But in the present work it will be the further endeavour of the writer not to overlook the general relations of Capital and Labour in the _Distribution_ of wealth. As the mistakes about Production have yielded, in a great degree, to improved education, so may those which belong to Distribution also yield to the progress of Knowledge. These are not mistakes which are confined to one class, and that the most numerous. The freedom of Industry has as much claim to be regarded as the security of Capital. We have distinct evidence that in another country these principles are better understood. "The results which have been obtained in the United States, by the application of machinery wherever it has been practicable to manufactures, are rendered still more remarkable by the fact that combinations to resist its introduction there are unheard of. The workmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements, the importance and value of which, as releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate. With the comparatively superabundant supply of hands in this country, and therefore a proportionate difficulty in obtaining remunerative employment, the working classes have less sympathy with the progress of invention. Their condition is a less favourable one than that of their American brethren for forming a just and unprejudiced estimate of the influence which the introduction of machinery is calculated to exercise on their state and prospects. I cannot resist the conclusion, however, that the different views taken by our operatives and those of the United States upon this subject are determined by other and powerful causes, besides those dependent on the supply of labour in the two countries. The principles which ought to regulate the relations between the employer and the employed seem to be thoroughly understood and appreciated in the United States; and while the law of limited liability affords the most ample facilities for the investment of capital in business, the intelligent and educated artisan is left equally free to earn all that he can, by making the best use of his hands, without let or hindrance by his fellows."[4] Without attempting to give this volume the formal shape of a treatise on Political Economy, it is the wish of the author to convey the broad parts of his subject in a somewhat desultory manner, but one which is not altogether devoid of logical arrangement. He desires especially to be understood by _the young_; for upon their right appreciation of the principles which govern society will depend much of the security and happiness of our own and the coming time. The danger of our present period of transition is, that theory should expect too much, and that practice should do too little, in the amelioration of the condition of the people. A great number of woodcuts have been for the first time introduced into this volume, which illustrate mechanical inventions. But the author begs distinctly to be understood that his object here is not to _describe_ processes. His notices of them, more or less extended, are simply to illustrate the course of his argument; and in that way to make the book more useful, because more attractive, for purposes of education. [1] J. J. Rousseau. [2] Special Report of Mr. Joseph Whitworth on the New York Industrial Exhibition. [3] Mr. Pusey's Report on Agricultural Implements. [4] Mr. Whitworth's Special Report. CHAPTER I. Feeble resources of civilized man in a desert--Ross Cox, Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron--A Moskito Indian on Juan Fernandez--Conditions necessary for the production of utility. Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land--without food, without clothes, without fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the knowledge he had acquired would be worse than useless; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new position. Let the land upon which he is thrown produce spontaneous fruits--let it be free from ferocious animals--let the climate be most genial--still the man would be exceedingly powerless and wretched. The first condition of his lot, to enable him to maintain existence at all, would be that he should labour. He must labour to gather the berries from the trees--he must labour to obtain water from the rivulets--he must labour to form a garment of leaves, or of some equally accessible material, to shield his body from the sun--he must labour to render some cave or hollow tree a secure place of shelter from the dews of night. There would be no intermission of the labour necessary to provide a supply of food from hand to mouth, even in the season when wild fruits were abundant. If this labour, in the most favourable season, were interrupted for a single day, or at most for two or three days, by sickness, he would in all probability perish. But, when the autumn was past, and the wild fruits were gone, he must prolong existence as some savage tribes are reported to do--by raw fish and undressed roots. The labour of procuring these would be infinitely greater than that of climbing trees for fruit. To catch fish without nets, and scratch up roots with naked hands, is indeed painful toil. The helplessness of this man's condition would principally be the effect of one circumstance;--he would possess no accumulation of former labour by which his present labour might be profitably directed. _The power of labour would in his case be in its least productive state._ He would partly justify the assertion that man has the feeblest natural means of any animal;--because he would be utterly unpossessed of those means which the reason of man has accumulated around every individual in the social state. We asked the reader to _suppose_ a civilized man in the very lowest state in which the power of labour may be exercised, because there is no record of any civilized man being for any length of time in such a state. Ross Cox, a Hudson's Bay trader, whose adventures were given to the world some twenty years ago, was in this state for a fortnight; and his sufferings may furnish some idea of the greater miseries of a continuance in such a powerless condition. Having fallen asleep in the woods of the north-west of America, which he had been traversing with a large party, he missed the traces of his companions. The weather being very hot, he had left nearly all his clothes with his horse when he rambled from his friends. He had nothing to defend himself against the wolves and serpents but a stick; he had nothing of which to make his bed but long grass and rushes; he had nothing to eat but hips and wild cherries. The man would doubtless have perished, unless he had met with some Indians, who knew better how to avail themselves of the spontaneous productions around them. But this is not an instance of the continuance of Labour in the lowest state of its power. The few individuals, also, who have been found exposed in forests, such as Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron,--who were discovered, the one about a century ago, in Germany, the other about forty years since, in France,--differed from the civilized man cast naked upon a desert shore in this particular--their _wants_ were of the lowest nature. They were not raised above the desires of the most brutish animals. They supplied those desires after the fashion of brutes. Peter was enticed from the woods by the sight of two apples, which the man who found him displayed. He did not like bread, but he eagerly peeled green sticks, and chewed the rind. He had, doubtless, subsisted in this way in the woods. He would not, at first, wear shoes, and delighted to throw the hat which was given him into the river. He was brought to England, and lived many years with a farmer in Hertfordshire. During the Scotch Rebellion, in 1745, he wandered into Norfolk; and having been apprehended as a suspicious character, was sent to prison. The gaol was on fire; and Peter was found in a corner, enjoying the warmth of the flames without any fear. The Savage of Aveyron, in the same manner, had the lowest desires and the feeblest powers. He could use his hands, for instance, for no other purpose than to seize upon an object; and his sense of touch was so defective, that he could not distinguish a raised surface, such as a carving, from a painting. This circumstance of the low physical and intellectual powers of these unfortunate persons prevents us exhibiting them as examples of the state which we asked the reader to suppose. Let us advance another step in our view of the power of Labour. Let us take a man in one respect in the same condition that we supposed--left upon a desert land, without any direct social aid; but with some help to his labour by a small Accumulation of former industry. We have instances on record of this next state. In the year 1681 a Moskito Indian was left by accident on the island of Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific Ocean; the English ship in which he was a sailor having been chased off the coast by some hostile Spanish vessels. Captain Dampier describes this man's condition in the following words:-- "This Indian lived here alone above three years; and although he was several times sought after by the Spaniards, who knew he was left on the island, yet they could never find him. He was in the woods hunting for goats, when Captain Watlin drew off his men, and the ship was under sail before he came back to shore. He had with him his gun, and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot; which being spent, he contrived a way, by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife; heating the pieces first in the fire, which he struck with his gun-flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun, which he hardened, having learnt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife, or grind them to an edge by long labour, and harden them to a good temper as there was occasion.[5] With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provisions as the island afforded, either goats or fish. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house, or hut, half a mile from the sea, which was lined with goat's skin; his couch, or barbecu of sticks, lying along about two feet distance from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no clothes left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English; and therefore killed three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and dressed them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ashore." Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an uninhabited island. He had a regular supply of goats and fish; he had the means of cooking this food; he had a house lined with goats' skins, and bedding of the same; his body was clothed with skins; he had provisions in abundance to offer, properly cooked, when his old companions came to him after three years' absence. What gave him this power to labour profitably?--to maintain existence in tolerable comfort? Simply, the gun, the knife, and the flint, which he accidentally had with him when the ship sailed away. The flint and the bit of steel which he hardened out of the gun-barrel gave him the means of procuring fire; the gun became the material for making harpoons, lances, and hooks, with which he could obtain fish and flesh. Till he had these tools, he was compelled to eat seal's flesh. The instant he possessed the tools, he could make a selection of what was most agreeable to his taste. It is almost impossible to imagine a human being with less accumulation about him. His small stock of powder and shot was soon spent, and he had only an iron gun-barrel and a knife left, with the means of changing the form of the gun-barrel by fire. Yet this single accumulation enabled him to direct his labour, as all labour is directed even in its highest employment, to the change of form and change of place of the natural supplies by which he was surrounded. He created nothing; he only gave his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured, the things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned; when he did obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley--he changed its place; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a lining for his bed--he changed its form. Change of form and change of place are the beginning and end of all human labour; and the Moskito Indian only employed the same principle for the supply of his wants which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the channels of manufactures or commerce. But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the condition of the man without any accumulation of former labour--that is, of the man without any capital about him--was only _in the second stage in which the power of labour can be exercised_, and in which it is comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured--he laboured with accumulation--but he laboured without that other power which gives the last and highest direction to profitable labour. Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human life:-- 1. _That there shall be Labour._ The man thrown upon a desert island without accumulation,--the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind,--were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded command of the spontaneous productions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as compared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end. [Illustration: African Hut.] The second condition in the production of utility is,-- 2. _That there shall be accumulation of former labour, or Capital._ Without accumulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the lowest in the scale of animal existence. The reason is obvious. Man requires some accumulation to aid his natural powers of labouring; for he is not provided with instruments of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadrupeds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Providence which presides over such manifold contrivances. He must, therefore, to work profitably, accumulate instruments of work. But he must do more, even in the unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty to direct his industry as he pleases, uncontrolled by the rights of other men. He must accumulate stores of covering and of shelter. He must have a hut and a bed of skins, which are all accumulations, or capital. He must, further, have a stock of food, which stock, being the most essential for human wants, is called _provisions_, or things provided. He would require this provision against the accidents which may occur to his own health, and the obstacles of weather, which may prevent him from fishing or hunting. The lowest savages have some stores. Many of the inferior animals display an equal care to provide for the exigencies of the future. But still, all such labour is extremely limited. When a man is occupied only in providing immediately for his own wants--doing everything for himself, consuming nothing but what he produces himself,--his labour must have a very narrow range. The supply of the lowest necessities of our nature can only be attended to, and these must be very ill supplied. The Moskito Indian had fish, and goats' flesh, and a rude hut, and a girdle of skins; and his power of obtaining this wealth was insured to him by the absence of other individuals who would have been his competitors for what the island spontaneously produced. Had other Indians landed in numbers on the island, and had each set about procuring everything for himself, as the active Moskito did, they would have soon approached the point of starvation; and then each would have begun to plunder from the other, unless they had found out the principle that would have given them all plenty. There wanted, then, another power to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction, besides that of accumulation. It is a power which can only exist where man is social, as it is his nature to be;--and where the principles of civilization are in a certain degree developed. It is, indeed, the beginning and the end of all civilization. It is itself civilization, partial or complete. It is the last and the most important condition in the production of useful commodities,-- 3. _That there shall be exchanges._ There can be no exchanges without accumulation--there can be no accumulation without labour. Exchange is that step beyond the constant labour and the partial accumulation of the lower animals, which makes man the lord of the world. [5] It is difficult to understand how the Indian could convert the iron gun-barrel into steel, which it appears from Dampier's account that he did. Steel is produced by a scientific admixture of carbon with iron. But we assume that the statement is correct, and that a conversion, partial doubtless, of iron into steel did take place. CHAPTER II. Society a system of exchanges--Security of individual property the principle of exchange--Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe--Imperfect appropriation and unprofitable labour. Society, both in its rudest form and in its most refined and complicated relations, is nothing but a system of Exchanges. An exchange is a transaction in which both the parties who make the exchange are benefited;--and, consequently, society is a state presenting an uninterrupted succession of advantages for all its members. Every time that we make a free exchange we have a greater desire for the thing which we receive than for the thing which we give;--and the person with whom we make the exchange has a greater desire for that which we offer him than for that which he offers us. When one gives his labour for wages, it is because he has a higher estimation of the wages than of the profitless ease and freedom of remaining unemployed;--and, on the contrary, the employer who purchases his labour feels that he shall be more benefited by the results of that labour than by retaining the capital which he exchanges for it. In a simple state of society, when one man exchanges a measure of wheat for the measure of wine which another man possesses, it is evident that the one has got a greater store of wheat than he desires to consume himself, and that the other, in the same way, has got a greater store of wine;--the one exchanges something to eat for something to drink, and the other something to drink for something to eat. In a refined state of society, when money represents the value of the exchanges, the exchange between the abundance beyond the wants of the possessor of one commodity and of another is just as real as the barter of wheat for wine. The only difference is, that the exchange is not so direct, although it is incomparably more rapid. But, however the system of exchange be carried on,--whether the value of the things exchanged be determined by barter or by a price in money,--all the exchangers are benefited, because all obtain what they want, through the store which they possess of what they do not want. It has been well said that "Man might be defined to be an animal that makes exchanges."[6] There are other animals, indeed, such as bees and ants amongst insects, and beavers amongst quadrupeds, which to a certain extent are social; that is, they concur together in the execution of a common work for a common good: but as to their individual possessions, each labours to obtain what it desires from sources accessible to all, or plunders the stores of others. Not one insect or quadruped, however wonderful may be its approaches to rationality, has the least idea of making a formal exchange with another. The modes by which the inferior animals communicate their thoughts are probably not sufficiently determinate to allow of any such agreement. The very foundation of that agreement is a complicated principle, which man alone can understand. It is the Security of individual Property. Immediately that this principle is established, labour begins to work profitably, for it works with exchange. If the principle of appropriation were not acted upon at all, there could be no exchange, and consequently no production. The scanty bounty of nature might be scrambled for by a few miserable individuals--and the strongest would obtain the best share; but this insecurity would necessarily destroy all accumulation. Each would of course live from hand to mouth, when the means of living were constantly exposed to the violence of the more powerful. This is the state of the lowest savages, and as it is an extreme state it is a rare one,--no security, no exchange, no capital, no labour, no production. Let us apply the principle to an individual case. The poet who has attempted to describe the feelings of a man suddenly cut off from human society, in "Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez," represents him as saying, "I am monarch of all I survey."[7] Alexander Selkirk was left upon the same island as the Moskito Indian; and his adventures there have formed the groundwork of the beautiful romance of "Robinson Crusoe." The meaning of the poet is, that the unsocial man had the same right over all the natural productive powers of the country in which he had taken up his abode, as we each have over light and air. He was alone; and therefore he exercised an absolute although a barren sovereignty, over the wild animals by which he was surrounded--over the land and over the water. He was, in truth, the one proprietor--the one capitalist, and the one labourer--of the whole island. His absolute property in the soil, and his perfect freedom of action, were both dependent upon one condition--that he should remain alone. If the Moskito Indian, for instance, had remained in the island, Selkirk's entire sovereignty must have been instantly at an end. Some more definite principle of appropriation must have been established, which would have given to Selkirk, as well as to the Moskito Indian, the right to appropriate distinct parts of the island each to his particular use. Selkirk, for example, might have agreed to remain on the eastern coast, while the Indian might have established himself on the western; and then the fruits, the goats, and the fish of the eastern part would have been appropriated to Selkirk, as distinctly as the clothes, the musket, the iron pot, the can, the hatchet, the knife, the mathematical instruments, and the Bible which he brought on shore.[8] If the Indian's territory had produced something which Selkirk had not, and if Selkirk's land had also something which the Indian's had not, they might have become exchangers. They would have passed into that condition naturally enough;--imperfectly perhaps, but still as easily as any barbarous people who do not cultivate the earth, but exchange her spontaneous products. The poet goes on to make the solitary man say, "My right there is none to dispute." The condition of Alexander Selkirk was unquestionably one of absolute liberty. His rights were not measured by his duties. He had all rights and no duties. Many writers on the origin of society have held that man, upon entering into union with his fellow-men, and submitting, as a necessary consequence of this union, to the restraints of law and government, sacrifices a portion of his liberty, or natural power, for the security of that power which remains to him. No such agreement amongst mankind could ever have possibly taken place; for man is by his nature, and without any agreement, a social being. He is a being whose rights are balanced by the uncontrollable force of their relation to the rights of others. The succour which the infant man requires from its parents, to an extent, and for a duration, so much exceeding that required for the nurture of other creatures, is the natural beginning of the social state, established insensibly and by degrees. The liberty which the social man is thus compelled by the force of circumstances to renounce amounts only to a restraint upon his brute power of doing injury to his fellow-men: and for this sacrifice, in itself the cause of the highest individual and therefore general good, he obtains that dominion over every other being, and that control over the productive forces of nature, which alone can render him the monarch of all he surveys. The poor sailor, who for four years was cut off from human aid, and left alone to struggle for the means of supporting existence, was an exception, and a very rare one, to the condition of our species all over the world. His absolute rights placed him in the condition of uncontrolled feebleness; if he had become social, he would have put on the regulated strength of rights balanced by duties. Alexander Selkirk was originally left upon the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez at his own urgent desire. He was unhappy on board his ship, in consequence of disputes with his captain; and he resolved to rush into a state which might probably have separated him for ever from the rest of mankind. In the belief that he should be so separated, he devoted all his labour and all his ingenuity to the satisfaction of his own wants alone. By continual exercise, he was enabled to run down the wild goat upon the mountains; and by persevering search, he knew where to find the native roots that would render his goat's flesh palatable. He never thought, however, of providing any store beyond the supply of his own personal necessities. He had no motive for that thought; because there was no human being within his reach with whom he might exchange that store for other stores. The very instant, however, that the English ships, which finally gave him back to society, touched upon his shores,--before he communicated by speech with any of his fellow-men, or was discovered by them,--he became social. He saw that he must be an exchanger. Before the boat's crew landed he had killed several goats, and prepared a meal for his expected guests. He knew that he possessed a commodity which they did not possess. He had fresh meat, whilst they had only salt. Of course what he had to offer was acceptable to the sailors; and he received in exchange protection, and a place amongst them. He renounced his sovereignty, and became once more a subject. It was better for him, he thought, to be surrounded with the regulated power of civilization, than to wield at his own will the uncertain strength of solitary uncivilization. But, had he chosen to remain upon his island, as in after-years he regretted he had not done, although a solitary man he would not have been altogether cut off from the hopes and the duties of the social state. If he had chosen to remain after that visit from his fellow-men, he would have said to them, before they had left him once more alone, "I have hunted for you my goats, I have dug for you my roots, I have shown you the fountains which issue out of my rocks;--these are the resources of my dominion: give me in exchange for them a fresh supply of gunpowder and shot, some of your clothes, some of the means of repairing these clothes, some of your tools and implements of cookery, and more of your books to divert my solitary hours." Having enjoyed the benefits which he had bestowed, they would, as just men, have paid the debt which they had incurred, and the exchange would have been completed. Immediately that they had quitted his shores, Selkirk would have looked at his resources with a new eye. His hut was rudely fashioned and wretchedly furnished. He had fashioned, and furnished it as well as he could by his own labour, working upon his own materials. The visit which he had received from his fellow-men, after he had abandoned every hope of again looking upon their faces, would have led him to think that other ships would come, with whose crews he might make other exchanges,--new clothes, new tools, new materials, received as the price of his own accumulations. To make the best of his circumstances when that day should arrive, he must redouble his efforts to increase his stock of commodities,--some for himself, and some to exchange for other commodities, if the opportunity for exchange should ever come. He must therefore transplant his vegetables, so as to be within instant reach when they should be wanted. He must render his goats domestic, instead of chasing them upon the hills. He must go forward from the hunting state, into the pastoral and agricultural. [Illustration: Robinson Crusoe. (From a design by Stothard.)] In Defoe's story, Robinson Crusoe is represented as going into this pastoral and agricultural state. But he had more resources than Selkirk; and he at last obtained one resource which carried him back, however incompletely, into the social condition. He acquired a fellow-labourer. He made a boat by his own unassisted labour; but he could not launch it. When Friday came, and was henceforth his faithful friend and willing servant, he could launch his boat. Crusoe ultimately left his island; for the boat had given him a greater command over his circumstances. But had he continued there in companionship with Friday, there must have been such a compact as would have prevented either struggling for the property which had been created. The course of improvement that we have imagined for Selkirk supposes that he should continue in his state of exclusive proprietor--that there should be none to dispute his right. If other ships had come to his shores--if they had trafficked with him from time to time--exchanged clothes and household conveniences, and implements of cultivation, for his goats' flesh and roots--it is probable that other sailors would in time have desired to partake his plenty;--that a colony would have been founded--that the island would have become populous. It is perfectly clear that, whether for exchange amongst themselves, or for exchange with others, the members of this colony could not have stirred a step in the cultivation of the land without appropriating its produce;--and they could not have appropriated its produce without appropriating the land itself. Cultivation of the land for a common stock would have gone to the establishment precisely of the same principle;--they would still have been exchangers amongst themselves, and the partnership would not have lasted a day, unless each man's share of what the partnership produced had been rendered perfectly secure to him. Without security they could not have accumulated--without accumulations they could not have exchanged--without exchanges they could not have carried forward their labours with any compensating productiveness. Imperfect appropriation--that is, an appropriation which respects personal wealth, such as the tools and conveniences of an individual, and even secures to him the fruits of the earth when he has gathered them, but which has not reached the last step of a division of land--imperfect appropriation such as this raises up the same invincible obstacles to the production of utility; because, with this original defect, there must necessarily be unprofitable labour, small accumulation, limited exchange. Let us exemplify this by another individual case. We have seen, in the instances of the Moskito Indian and of Selkirk, how little a solitary man can do for himself, although he may have the most unbounded command of natural supplies--although not an atom of those natural supplies, whether produced by the earth or the water, is appropriated by others--when, in fact, he is monarch of all he surveys. Let us trace the course of another man, advanced in the ability to subdue all things to his use by association with his fellow-men; but carrying on that association in the rude and unproductive relations of savage life;--not desiring to "replenish the earth" by cultivation, but seeking only to appropriate the means of existence which it has spontaneously produced;--labouring, indeed, and exchanging, but not labouring and exchanging in a way that will permit the accumulation of wealth, and therefore remaining poor and miserable. We are not about to draw any fanciful picture, but merely to select some facts from a real narrative. [6] Dr. Whately's Lectures on Political Economy. [7] Cowper's Miscellaneous Poems. [8] These circumstances are recorded in Captain Woodes Rogers' Cruising Voyage round the World, 1712. CHAPTER III. Adventures of John Tanner--Habits of the American Indians--Their sufferings from famine, and from the absence among them of the principle of division of labour--Evils of irregular labour--Respect to property--Their present improved condition--Hudson's Bay Indians. In the year 1828 there came to New York a white man named John Tanner, who had been thirty years a captive amongst the Indians in the interior of North America. He was carried off by a band of these people when he was a little boy, from a settlement on the Ohio river, which was occupied by his father, who was a clergyman. The boy was brought up in all the rude habits of the Indians, and became inured to the abiding miseries and uncertain pleasures of their wandering life. He grew in time to be a most skilful huntsman, and carried on large dealings with the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, in the skins of beavers and other animals which he and his associates had shot or entrapped. The history of this man was altogether so curious, that he was induced to furnish the materials for a complete narrative of his adventures; and, accordingly, a book, fully descriptive of them, was prepared for the press by Dr. Edwin James, and printed at New York, in 1830. It is of course not within the intent of our little work to furnish any regular abridgment of John Tanner's story; but it is our wish to direct attention to some few particulars, which appear to us strikingly to illustrate some of the positions which we desire to enforce, by thus exhibiting their practical operation. The country in which this man lived so many years is that immense territory belonging to the United States, which at that period was covered by boundless forests which the progress of civilization had not then cleared away. In this region a number of scattered Indian tribes maintained a precarious existence by hunting the moose-deer and the buffalo for their supply of food, and by entrapping the foxes and martens of the woods and the beavers of the lakes, whose skins they generally exchanged with the white traders of Europe for articles of urgent necessity, such as ammunition and guns, traps, axes, and woollen blankets; but too often for ardent spirits, equally the curse of savage and of civilized life. The contact of savage man with the outskirts of civilization perhaps afflicts him with the vices of both states. But the principle of exchange, imperfectly and irregularly as it operated amongst the Indians, furnished some excitement to their ingenuity and their industry. Habits of providence were thus to a certain degree created; it became necessary to accumulate some capital of the commodities which could be rendered valuable by their own labour, to exchange for commodities which their own labour, without exchange, was utterly unable to procure. The principle of exchange, too, being recognised amongst them in their dealings with foreigners, the security of property--without which, as we have shown, that principle cannot exist at all--was one of the great rules of life amongst themselves. But still these poor Indians, from the mode which they proposed to themselves for the attainment of property, which consisted only in securing what nature had produced, without directing the course of her productions, were very far removed from the regular attainment of those blessings which civilized society alone offers. We shall exemplify these statements by a few details. [Illustration: Dying Lion] The country over which these people ranged occupies a surface that may be roughly described as five or six times as large as all England. They had the unbounded command of all the natural resources of that country; and yet their entire numbers did not equal the population of a moderately sized English county. It may be fairly said that each Indian required a thousand acres for his maintenance. The supplies of food were so scanty--a scantiness which would at once have ceased to exist had there been any cultivation--that if a large number of these Indians assembled together to co-operate in their hunting expeditions, they were very soon dispersed by the urgent desire of satisfying hunger. Tanner says, "We all went to hunt beavers in concert. In hunts of this kind the proceeds are sometimes equally divided; but in this instance every man retained what he had killed. In three days I collected as many skins as I could carry. But in these distant and hasty hunts little meat could be brought in; and the whole band was soon suffering with hunger. Many of the hunters, and I among others, for want of food became extremely weak, and unable to hunt far from home." What an approach is this to the case of the lower animals; and how forcibly it reminds us of the passage in Job (c. iv., v. 11), "The fierce lion perisheth for lack of prey."[9] In another place he says, "I began to be dissatisfied at remaining with large bands of Indians, as was usual for them, after having remained a short time in a place, to suffer from hunger." These sufferings were not, in many cases, of short duration, or of trifling intensity. Tanner describes one instance of famine in the following words:--"The Indians gathered around, one after another, until we became a considerable band, and then we began to suffer from hunger. The weather was very severe, and our suffering increased. A young woman was the first to die of hunger. Soon after this, a young man, her brother, was taken with that kind of delirium or madness which precedes death in such as die of starvation. In this condition he had left the lodge of his debilitated and desponding parents; and when, at a late hour in the evening, I returned from my hunt, they could not tell what had become of him. I left the camp about the middle of the night, and, following his track, I found him at some distance, lying dead in the snow." This worst species of suffering equally existed at particular periods, whether food was sought for by large or by small parties, by bands or by individuals. Tanner was travelling with the family of the woman who had adopted him. He says, "We had now a short season of plenty; but soon became hungry again. It often happened that for two or three days we had nothing to eat; then a rabbit or two, or a bird, would afford us a prospect of protracting the sufferings of hunger a few days longer." Again he says, "Having subsisted for some time almost entirely on the inner bark of trees, and particularly of a climbing vine found there, our strength was much reduced." The misery which is thus so strikingly described proceeded from the circumstance that the labour of the Indians did not take a profitable direction; and that this waste of labour (for unprofitable applications of labour are the greatest of all wastes) arose from the one fact, that in certain particulars these Indians laboured without appropriation. They depended upon the chance productions of nature, without compelling her to produce; and they did not compel her to produce, because there was no appropriation of the soil, the most efficient natural instrument of production. If the Indians had directed the productive powers of the earth to the growth of corn, instead of to the growth of foxes' skins, they would have become rich. But they could not have reached this point without appropriation of the soil. They had learnt the necessity of appropriating the products of the soil, when they had bestowed labour upon obtaining them; but the last step towards productiveness was not taken. The Indians therefore were poor; the European settlers who had taken this last step were rich. The imperfect appropriation which existed amongst the Indians, preventing, as it did, the accumulation of capital, prevented the application of that skill and knowledge which is preserved and accumulated by the Division of employment. Tanner describes a poor fellow who was wounded in the arm by the accidental discharge of a gun. As there was little surgical skill amongst the community, because no one could devote himself to the business of surgery, the Indian, as the only chance of saving his life, resolved to cut off his own arm; "and taking two knives, the edge of one of which he had hacked into a sort of saw, he with his right hand and arm cut off his left, and threw it from him as far as he could." The labour which an individual must go through when the state of society is so rude that there is scarcely any division of employment, and consequently scarcely any exchanges, is exhibited in many passages of Tanner's narrative. We select one. "I had no pukkavi, or mats for a lodge, and therefore had to build one of poles and long grass. I dressed more skins, made my own mocassins and leggings, and those for my children; cut wood and cooked for myself and family, made my snow-shoes, &c. &c. All the attention and labour I had to bestow about home sometimes kept me from hunting, and I was occasionally distressed for want of provisions. I busied myself about my lodge in the night-time. When it was sufficiently light I would bring wood, and attend to other things without; at other times I was repairing my snow-shoes, or my own or my children's clothes. For nearly all the winter I slept but a very small part of the night." Tanner was thus obliged to do everything for himself, and consequently to work at very great disadvantage, because the principle of exchange was so imperfectly acted upon by the people amongst whom he lived. This principle of exchange was imperfectly acted upon, because the principle of appropriation was imperfectly acted upon. The occupation of all, and of each, was to hunt game, to prepare skins, to sell them to the traders, to make sugar from the juice of maple-trees, to build huts, and to sew the skins which they dressed and the blankets which they bought into rude coverings for their bodies. Every one of them did all of these things for himself, and of course he did them very imperfectly. The people were not divided into hunters, and furriers, and dealers, and sugar-makers, and builders, and tailors. Every man was his own hunter, furrier, dealer, sugar-maker, builder, and tailor; and consequently, every man, like Tanner, was so occupied by many things, that want of food and want of rest were ordinary sufferings. He describes a man who was so borne down and oppressed by these manifold wants, that, in utter despair of being able to surmount them, he would lie still till he was at the point of starvation, replying to those who tried to rouse him to kill game, that he was too poor and sick to set about it. By describing himself as poor, he meant to say that he was destitute of all the necessaries and comforts whose possession would encourage him to add to the store. He had little capital. The skill which he possessed of hunting game gave him a certain command over the spontaneous productions of the forest; but, as his power of hunting depended upon chance supplies of game, his labour necessarily took so irregular a direction, and was therefore so unproductive, that he never accumulated sufficient for his support in times of sickness, or for his comfortable support at any time. He became, therefore, despairing; and had that perfect apathy, that indifference to the future, which is the most pitiable evidence of extreme wretchedness. This man felt his powerless situation more keenly than his companions; but with all savage tribes there is a want of steady and persevering exertion, proceeding from the same cause. Severe labour is succeeded by long fits of idleness, because their labour takes a chance direction. This is a universal case. Habits of idleness, of irregularity, of ferocity, are the characteristics of all those who maintain existence by the pursuit of the unappropriated productions of nature; while constant application, orderly arrangement of time, and civility to others, result from systematic industry. The savage and the poacher are equally the slaves of violent impulses--equally disgusted at the prospect of patient application. When the support of life depends upon chance supplies, the reckless spirit of a gambler is sure to take possession of the whole man; and the misery which results from these chance supplies produces either dejection or ferocity. The author of this book used to observe the habits of a class of such persons, who frequent the Thames at Eton; and he thus described them in verses of his boyhood:-- What boat is this which creeps so lazily Up the still stream? How quietly falls the drip Of the slow paddle! Now it shoots along, As if that lone man fear'd us. Well I ken His rough and dangerous trade. He knows each hole Where the quick-sighted eel delights to swim When clouds obscure the moon; and there he lays His traps and gins, and then he sleeps awhile; But rouses up before the prying dawn Betrays his course; and out he cautiously glides To try his doubtful luck. Perchance he finds Stores that may buy him bread; but oft'ner still His toil is fruitless, and deject he comes Home to his emberless hearth, and sits him down, Idle and starving through the busy day. Mungo Park describes the wretched condition of the inhabitants of countries in Africa where small particles of gold are found in the rivers. Their lives were spent in hunting for the gold to exchange for useful commodities, instead of raising the commodities themselves; and they were consequently poor and miserable, listless and unsteady. Their fitful industry had too much of chance mixed up with it to afford a certain and general profit. The accounts which of late years we have received from the gold-diggings of California and Australia exhibit the same suffering from the same cause. The natives of Cape de la Hogue, in Normandy, were the most wretched and ferocious people in all France, because they depended principally for support on the wrecks that were frequent on their coasts. When there were no tempests, they made an easy transition from the character of wreckers to that of robbers. A benefactor of his species taught these unhappy people to collect a marine plant to make potash. They immediately became profitable labourers and exchangers; they obtained a property in the general intelligence of civilized life; the capital of society raised them from misery to wealth, from being destroyers to being producers. The Indians, as we thus see, were poor and wretched, because they had no appropriation beyond articles of domestic use; because they had no property in land, and consequently no cultivation. Yet even they were not insensible to the importance of the principle, for the preservation of the few advantages that belonged to their course of life. Tanner says, "I have often known a hunter leave his traps for many days in the woods, without visiting them, or feeling any anxiety about their safety." The Indians even carried the principle of appropriation almost to a division of land; for each tribe, and sometimes each individual, had an allotted hunting-ground--imperfectly appropriated, indeed, by the first comer, and often contested with violence by other hunters, but still showing that they approached the limit which divides the savage from the civilized state, and that, if cultivation were introduced amongst them, there would be a division of land, as a matter of necessity. The security of individual property is the foundation of all social improvement. It is impossible to speak of the productive power of labour in the civilized state, without viewing it in connexion with that great principle of society which considers all capital as appropriated. When 'Capital and Labour' was written twenty years ago, the Indian tribes who were abiding in the territory of the United States were principally in the condition which has been described by Tanner. The want of resources in the country of the Indians was so manifest, that, when commissioners from the government of the United States, in 1802, gathered together the chiefs of the various tribes of the Creek Indians in their own country, to propose to them a plan for their civilization, it became necessary to provide for the support of the people so assembled by conveying food into the forests from the stores of the American towns. The Indians have now vanished from their old hunting-grounds. Where they so recently maintained a precarious existence, there are populous cities, navigable rivers, roads, railways. The clink of the hammer is heard in the forge, and the rush of the stream from the mill-dam tells of agriculture and commerce. But even the Indians themselves have become labourers. They have been removed to a large tract of country, far away from the settled parts of the United States, and have been raised into the dignity of cultivators. The Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Choctaws, with many smaller tribes, now breed cattle instead of hunting martens. They have houses in the place of huts; they have schools and churches. Instead of being extirpated by famine or the sword, they have been adopted into the great family of civilized man. [Illustration: Penn's Treaty with the Indians.] But this wise and humane arrangement of the United States has not wholly removed the Indians from the wide regions of North America. In the Hudson's Bay territories the life which Tanner described still goes forward. The wants of civilized society--the desire to possess the earth--have transported the Indians from the banks of the Ohio to the lands watered by the Arkansas. The opposite principle has retained them on the shores of Hudson's Bay. They are wanted there as hunters, and are not encouraged as cultivators. They are kept out of the pale of civilization, and not received within it. The rude industry of the Hudson's Bay Indians is stimulated by the luxury of Europe into an employ which would cease to exist if the people became civilized. If agriculture were introduced amongst them--if they were to grow corn and keep domestic animals--they would cease to be hunters of foxes and martens, because their wants would be much better supplied by other modes of labour, involving less suffering and less uncertainty. As it is, the traders, who want skins, do not think of giving the Indians tools to work the ground, and seeds to put in it, and cows and sheep to breed other cows and sheep. They avail themselves of the uncivilized state of these poor tribes, to render them the principal agents in the manufacture of fur, to supply the luxuries of another hemisphere. But still the exchange which the hunters carry on with the European traders, imperfect as it is in all cases, and unjust as it is in many, is better for the Indians than no exchange; although we fear that ardent spirits take away from the Indians the greater number of the advantages which would otherwise remain with them as exchangers. If the Indians had no skins to give to Europe, Europe would have no blankets and ammunition to give to them. They would obtain their food and clothing by the use of the bow alone. They would live entirely from hand to mouth. They would have no motive for accumulation, because there would be no exchanges; and they would consequently be even poorer and more helpless than they are now as exchangers of skins. They are suffering from the effects of small accumulations and imperfect exchange; but these are far better than no accumulation and no exchange. If the course of their industry were to be changed by perfect appropriation--if they were consequently to become cultivators and manufacturers, instead of wanderers in the woods to hunt for wild and noxious animals--they would, in the course of years, have abundance of profitable labour, because they would have abundance of capital. This is the better lot of the tribes with whom the government of the United States has made a far nobler treaty than Penn made with his Indians. As it is, their accumulations are so small, that they cannot proceed with their own uncertain labour of hunting without an advance of capital on the part of the traders; and thus, even in the rude tradings of these poor Indians, credit, that complicated instrument of commercial exchange, operates upon the direction of their labour. Of course credit would not exist at all without appropriation. Their rights of property are perfect as far as they go; but they are not carried far enough to direct their labour into channels which would ensure sufficient production for the labourers. Their labour is unproductive because they have small accumulations;--their accumulations are small because they have imperfect exchange;--their exchange is imperfect because they have limited appropriation. We may illustrate this state of imperfect production by another passage from Tanner's story:-- "The Hudson's Bay Company had now no post in that part of the country, and the Indians were soon made conscious of the advantage which had formerly resulted to them from the competition between rival trading companies. Mr. Wells, at the commencement of winter, called us all together, gave the Indians a ten-gallon keg of rum and some tobacco, telling them at the same time he would not credit one of them the value of a single needle. When they brought skins he would buy them, and give in exchange such articles as were necessary for their comfort and subsistence during the winter. I was not with the Indians when this talk was held. When it was reported to me, and a share of the presents offered me, I not only refused to accept anything, but reproached the Indians for their pusillanimity in submitting to such terms. They had been accustomed for many years to receive credits in the fall; they were now entirely destitute not of clothing merely, but of ammunition, and many of them of guns and traps. How were they, without the accustomed aid from the traders, to subsist themselves and their families during the ensuing winter? A few days afterwards I went to Mr. Wells, and told him that I was poor, with a large family to support by my own exertions; and that I must unavoidably suffer, and perhaps perish, unless he would give me such a credit as I had always in the fall been accustomed to receive. He would not listen to my representation, and told me roughly to be gone from his house. I then took eight silver beavers, such as are worn by the women as ornaments on their dress, and which I had purchased the year before at just twice the price that was commonly given for a capote;[10] I laid them before him on the table, and asked him to give me a capote for them, or retain them as a pledge for the payment of the price of the garment, as soon as I could procure the peltries.[11] He took up the ornaments, threw them in my face, and told me never to come inside of his house again. The cold weather of the winter had not yet set in, and I went immediately to my hunting-ground, killed a number of moose, and set my wife to make the skins into such garments as were best adapted to the winter season, and which I now saw we should be compelled to substitute for the blankets and woollen clothes we had been accustomed to receive from the traders." This incident at once shows us that the great blessing of the civilized state is its increase of the powers of production. Here we see the Indians, surrounded on all sides by wild animals whose skins might be made into garments, reduced to the extremity of distress because the traders refused to advance them blankets and other necessaries, to be used during the months when they were employed in catching the animals from which they might obtain the skins. It is easy to see that the Indians were a long way removed from the power of making blankets themselves. Before they could reach this point, their forests must have been converted into pasture-grounds;--they must have raised flocks of sheep, and learnt all the various complicated arts, and possessed all the ingenious machinery, for converting wool into cloth. By their exchange of furs for blankets, they obtained a share in the productiveness of civilization;--they obtained comfortable clothing with much less labour than they could have made it out of the furs. If Tanner had not considered the capote which he desired to obtain from the traders, better, and less costly, than the garment of moose-skins, he would not have carried on any exchange of the two articles with the traders. The skins of martens and foxes were only valuable to the Indians, without exchange, for the purpose of sewing together to make covering. They had a different value in Europe as articles of luxury; and therefore the Indians by exchange obtained a greater plenty of superior clothing than if they had used the skins themselves. But the very nature of the trade, depending upon chance supplies, rendered it impossible that they should accumulate. They had such pressing need of ammunition, traps, and blankets, that the produce of the labour of one hunting season was not more than sufficient to procure the commodities which they required to consume in the same season. But supposing the Indians could have bred foxes and martens and beavers, as we breed rabbits, for the supply of the European demand for fur, doubtless they would have then advanced many steps in the character of producers. The thing is perhaps impossible; but were it possible, and were the Indians to have practised it, they would immediately have become capitalists, to an extent that would have soon rendered them independent of the credit of the traders. They must, however, have previously established a more perfect appropriation. Each must have enclosed his own hunting-ground; and each must have raised some food for the maintenance of his own stock of beavers, foxes, and martens. It would be easier, doubtless, to raise the food for themselves, and ultimately to exchange corn for clothing, instead of furs for clothing. When this happens--and it will happen sooner or later, unless the remnant of the hunting Indians are extirpated by their poverty, which proceeds from their imperfect production--Europe must go without the brilliant variety of skins which we procure at the cost of so much labour, accompanied with so much wretchedness, because the labour is so unproductive to the labourers. When the ladies of London and Paris are compelled to wear boas of rabbits instead of sables, and when the hair of the beaver ceases to be employed in the manufacture of our hats, the wooded regions of Hudson's Bay will have been cleared--the fur-bearing animals will have perished--corn will be growing in the forest and the marsh--the inhabitants will be building houses instead of trapping foxes;--there will be appropriation and capital, profitable labour and comfort. Three hundred thousand mink and marten-skins will no longer be sent from those shores to London in one year; but Liverpool may send to those shores woven cottons and worsteds, pottery and tools, in exchange for products whose cultivation will have exterminated the minks and martens. [Illustration: Pine-Marten.] [9] The authorized version has _old_; the more correct translation is _fierce_. [10] A sort of great-coat. [11] Skins. CHAPTER IV. The Prodigal--Advantages of the poorest man in civilized life over the richest savage--Savings-banks, deposits, and interest--Progress of accumulation--Insecurity of capital, its causes and results--Property, its constituents--Accumulation of capital. There is an account in Foster's Essays of a man who, having by a short career of boundless extravagance dissipated every shilling of a large estate which he inherited from his fathers, obtained possession again of the whole property by a course which the writer well describes as a singular illustration of decision of character. The unfortunate prodigal, driven forth from the home of his early years by his own imprudence, and reduced to absolute want, wandered about for some time in a state of almost unconscious despair, meditating self-destruction, till he at last sat down upon a hill which overlooked the fertile fields that he once called his own. "He remained," says the narrative, "fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute." We shall show, by and by, how this plan worked in detail;--it will be sufficient, just now, to examine the principles upon which it was founded. He looked to no freak of fortune to throw into his lap by chance what he had cast from him by wilfulness. He neither trusted to inherit those lands from their present possessor by his favour, nor to wring them from him by a course of law. He was not rash and foolish enough to dream of obtaining again by force those possessions which he had exchanged for vain superfluities. But he resolved to become once more their master by the operation of the only principle which could give them to him in a civilized society. He resolved to obtain them again by the same agency through which he had lost them--by exchange. But what had he to exchange? His capital was gone, even to the uttermost farthing; he must labour to obtain new capital. With a courage worthy of imitation he resolved to accept the very first work that should be offered to him, and, however low the wages of that work, to spend only a part of those wages, leaving something for a store. The day that he made this resolution he carried it into execution. He found some service to be performed--irksome, doubtless, and in many eyes degrading. But he had a purpose which made every occupation appear honourable, as every occupation truly is that is productive of utility. Incessant labour and scrupulous parsimony soon accumulated for him a capital; and the store, gathered together with such energy, was a rapidly increasing one. In no very great number of years the once destitute labourer was again a rich proprietor. He had earned again all that he had lost. The lands of his fathers were again his. He had accomplished his plan. A man so circumstanced--one who possesses no capital, and is only master of his own natural powers--if suddenly thrown down from a condition of ease, must look upon the world, at the first view, with deep apprehension. He sees everything around him appropriated. He is in the very opposite condition of Alexander Selkirk, when he is made to exclaim "I am monarch of all I survey." Instead of feeling that his "right there is none to dispute," he knows that every blade of corn that covers the fields, every animal that grazes in the pastures, is equally numbered as the property of some individual owner, and can only pass into his possession by exchange. In the towns it is the same as in the country. The dealer in bread and in clothes,--the victualler from whom he would ask a cup of beer and a night's lodging,--will give him nothing, although they will exchange everything. He cannot exist, except as a beggar, unless he puts himself in the condition to become an exchanger. But still, with all these apparent difficulties, his prospects of subsisting, and of subsisting comfortably, are far greater than in any other situation in which he must labour to live. As we have already seen, the condition of by far the greater number of the millions that constitute the exchangers of civilized society is greatly superior to that of the few thousands who exist upon the precarious supplies of the unappropriated productions of nature in the savage life. Although an exchange must always be made--although in very few cases "the fowl and the brute" offer themselves to the wayfaring man for his daily food--although no herbs worth the gathering can be found for the support of life in the few uncultivated parts of a highly cultivated country--the aggregate riches are so abundant, and the facilities which exist for exchanging capital for labour are therefore so manifold, that the poorest man in a state of civilization has a much greater certainty of supplying all his wants, and of supplying them with considerably more ease, than the richest man in a state of uncivilization. The principle upon which he has to rely is, that in a highly civilized country there is large production. There is large production because there is profitable labour;--there is profitable labour because there is large accumulation;--there is large accumulation because there is unlimited exchange;--there is unlimited exchange because there is universal appropriation. John Tanner was accounted a rich man by the Indians--doubtless because he was more industrious than the greater number of them; but we have seen what privations he often suffered. He suffered privations because there was no capital, no accumulation of the products of labour, in the country in which he lived. Where such a store exists, the poorest man has a tolerable certainty that he may obtain his share of it as an exchanger; and the greater the store the greater the certainty that his labour, or power of adding to the store, will obtain a full proportion of what previous labour has gathered together. In 1853 the amount of stock vested to the account of depositors in savings-banks in the United Kingdom was 34,546,434_l._ Since the establishment of savings-banks, 68,885,283_l._ had been so invested; and the gross amount of interest paid to the depositors had been 25,733,771_l._ This large capital, which had so fructified as to produce more than twenty-five millions as interest, was an accumulation, penny by penny, shilling by shilling, and pound by pound, of the savings of that class of persons who, in every country, have the greatest difficulty in accumulating. Habitual efforts of self-denial, and a rigid determination to postpone temporary gratification to permanent good, could alone have enabled these accumulators to retain so much of what they had produced beyond the amount of what they consumed. The capital sum of more than thirty-four millions now belonging to the depositors in 575 savings-banks, represents as many products of industry as could be bought by that sum. It is a capital which remains for the encouragement of _productive_ consumption; that is, it is now applied as a fund for setting others to produce,--to enable them to consume while they produce,--and in like manner to accumulate some part of their productions beyond what they consume. The millions of interest which the depositors have received is the price paid for the use of the capital by others who require its employment. The whole amount of our national riches--the capital of this and of every other country--has been formed by the same slow but certain process of individual savings, and the accumulations of savings, stimulating new industry, and yielding new accumulations. The consumption of any production is the destruction of its value. The production was created by industry to administer to individual wants, to be consumed, to be destroyed. When a thing capable of being consumed is produced, a value is created; when it is consumed, that value is destroyed. The general mass of riches then remains the same as it was before that production took place. If the power to produce, and the disposition to consume, were equal and constant, there could be no saving, no accumulation, no capital. If mankind, by their intelligence, their skill, their division of employments, their union of forces, had not put themselves in a condition to produce more than is consumed while the great body of industrious undertakings is in progress, society would have been stationary,--civilization could never have advanced. It may assist us in making the value of capital more clear, if we take a rapid view of the most obvious features of the accumulation of a highly civilized country. The first operation in a newly settled country is what is termed to clear it. Look at a civilized country, such as England. It _is_ cleared. The encumbering woods are cut down, the unhealthy marshes are drained. The noxious animals which were once the principal inhabitants of the land are exterminated; and their place is supplied with useful creatures, bred, nourished, and domesticated by human art, and multiplied to an extent exactly proportioned to the wants of the population. Forests remain for the produce of timber, but they are confined within the limits of their utility;--mountains "where the nibbling flocks do stray," have ceased to be barriers between nations and districts. Every vegetable that the diligence of man has been able to transplant from the most distant regions is raised for food. The fields are producing a provision for the coming year; while the stock for immediate consumption is ample, and the laws of demand and supply are so perfectly in action, and the facilities of communication with every region so unimpeded, that scarcity seldom occurs, and famine never. Rivers have been narrowed to bounds which limit their inundations, and they have been made navigable wherever their navigation could be profitable. The country is covered with roads, with canals, and now, more especially, with railroads, which render distant provinces as near to each other for commercial purposes as neighbouring villages in less advanced countries. Science has created the electric telegraph, by which prices are equalized through every district, by an instant communication between producers and consumers. Houses, all possessing some comforts which were unknown even to the rich a few centuries ago, cover the land, in scattered farm-houses and mansions, in villages, in towns, in cities, in capitals. These houses are filled with an almost inconceivable number of conveniences and luxuries--furniture, glass, porcelain, plate, linen, clothes, books, pictures. In the stores of the merchants and traders the resources of human ingenuity are displayed in every variety of substances and forms that can exhibit the multitude of civilized wants; and in the manufactories are seen the wonderful adaptations of science for satisfying those wants at the cheapest cost. The people who inhabit such a civilized land have not only the readiest communication with each other by the means of roads and canals, but can trade by the agency of ships with all parts of the world. To carry on their intercourse amongst themselves they speak one common language, reduced to certain rules, and not broken into an embarrassing variety of unintelligible dialects. Their written communications are convoyed to the obscurest corners of their own country, and even to the most remote lands, with prompt and unfailing regularity, and now with a cheapness which makes the poorest and the richest equal in their power to connect the distant with their thoughts by mutual correspondence. Whatever is transacted in such a populous hive, the knowledge of which can afford profit or amusement to the community, is recorded with a rapidity which is not more astonishing than the general accuracy of the record. What is more important, the discoveries of science, the elegancies of literature, and all that can advance the general intelligence, are preserved and diffused with the utmost ease, expedition, and security, so that the public stock of knowledge is constantly increasing. Lastly, the general well-being of all is sustained by laws--sometimes indeed imperfectly devised and expensively administered, but on the whole of infinite value to every member of the community; and the property of all is defended from external invasion and from internal anarchy by the power of government, which will be respected only in proportion as it advances the general good of the humblest of its subjects, by securing their capital from plunder and defending their industry from oppression. This capital is ready to be won by the power of every man capable of work. But he must exercise this power in complete subjection to the natural laws by which every exchange of society is regulated. These laws sometimes prevent labour being instantly exchanged with capital, for an exchange necessarily requires a balance to be preserved between what one man has to supply and what another man has to demand; but in their general effect they secure to labour the certainty that there shall be abundance of capital to exchange with; and that, if prudence and diligence go together, the labourer may himself become a capitalist, and even pass out of the condition of a labourer into that of a proprietor, or one who lives upon accumulated produce. The experience of every day shows this process going forward--not in a solitary instance, as in that of the ruined and restored man whose tale we have just told, but in the case of thriving tradesmen all around us, who were once servants. But if the labourer or the great body of labourers were to imagine that they could obtain such a proportion of the capital of a civilized country except as exchangers, the store would instantly vanish. They might perhaps divide by force the crops in barns and the clothes in warehouses--but there would be no more crops or clothes. The principle upon which all accumulation depends, that of security of property, being destroyed, the accumulation would be destroyed. Whatever tends to make the state of society insecure, tends to prevent the employment of capital. In despotic countries, that insecurity is produced by the tyranny of one. In other countries, where the people, having been misgoverned, are badly educated, that insecurity is produced by the tyranny of many. In either case, the bulk of the people themselves are the first to suffer, whether by the outrages of a tyrant, or by their own outrages. They prevent labour, by driving away to other channels the funds which support labour. In some eastern countries, where, when a man becomes rich, his property is seized upon by the one tyrant, nobody dares to avow that he has any property. Capital is not employed; it is hidden: and the people who have capital live not upon its profits, but by the diminution of the capital itself. In the very earliest times we hear of concealed riches. In the book of Job those who "long for death" are said to "dig for it more than for hid treasures." The tales of the East are full of allusions to money buried and money dug up. The poor woodman, in making up his miserable faggot, discovers a trap-door, and becomes rich. In India, where the rule of Mohammedan princes was usually one of tyranny, even now the search after treasure goes on. The popular mind is filled with the old traditions; and so men dream of bags of gold to be discovered in caves and places of desolation, and they forthwith dig, till hope is banished, and the real treasure is found in systematic industry. It was the same in the feudal times in England, when the lord tyrannized over his vassals, and no property was safe but in the hands of the strongest. In those times people who had treasure buried it. Who thinks of burying treasure now in England? In the plays and story-books which depict the manners of our own early times, we constantly read of people finding bags of money. We never find bags of money now, except when a very old hoard, hidden in some time of national trouble, comes to light. So little time ago as the reign of Charles II. we read of the Secretary to the Admiralty going down from London to his country-house, with all his money in his carriage, to bury it in his garden. What Samuel Pepys records of his doings with his own money, was a natural consequence of the practices of a previous time. He also chronicles, in several places of his curious Diary, his laborious searches, day by day, for 7000_l._ hid in butter firkins in the cellars of the Tower of London. Why is money not hidden and not sought for now? Because people have security for the employment of it, and by the employment of it in creating new produce the nation's stock of capital goes on hourly increasing. When we read in Blackstone's 'Commentaries on the Laws of England,' that the concealment of treasure-trove, or found treasure, from the king, is a misdemeanour punishable by fine and imprisonment, and that it was formerly a capital offence, we at once see that this is a law no longer for our time; and we learn from this instance, as from many others, how the progress of civilization silently repeals laws which belong to another condition of the people. [Illustration: Treasure-finding.] When we look at the nature of the accumulated wealth of society, it is easy to see that the poorest member of it who dedicates himself to profitable labour is in a certain sense rich--rich, as compared with the unproductive and therefore poor individuals of any uncivilized tribe. The very scaffolding, if we may so express it, of the social structure, and the moral forces by which that structure was reared, and is upheld, are to him riches. To be rich is to possess the means of supplying our wants--to be poor is to be destitute of those means. Riches do not consist only of money and lands, of stores of food or clothing, of machines and tools. The particular knowledge of any art--the general understanding of the laws of nature--the habit from experience of doing any work in the readiest way--the facility of communicating ideas by written language--the enjoyment of institutions conceived in the spirit of social improvement--the use of the general conveniences of civilized life, such as roads--these advantages, which the poorest man in England possesses or may possess, constitute individual property. They are means for the supply of wants, which in themselves are essentially more valuable for obtaining his full share of what is appropriated, than if all the productive powers of nature were unappropriated, and if, consequently, these great elements of civilization did not exist. Society obtains its almost unlimited command over riches by the increase and preservation of knowledge, and by the division of employments, including union of power. In his double capacity of a consumer and a producer, the humblest man has the full benefit of these means of wealth--of these great instruments by which the productive power of labour is carried to its highest point. But if these common advantages, these public means of society, offering so many important agents to the individual for the gratification of his wants, alone are worth more to him than all the precarious power of the savage state--how incomparably greater are his advantages when we consider the wonderful accumulations, in the form of private wealth, which are ready to be exchanged with the labour of all those who are in a condition to add to the store. It has been truly said by M. Say, a French economist, "It is a great misfortune to be poor, but it is a much greater misfortune for the poor man to be surrounded only with other poor like himself." The reason is obvious. The productive power of labour can be carried but a very little way without accumulation of capital. In a highly civilized country, capital is heaped up on every side by ages of toil and perseverance. A succession, during a long series of years, of small advantages to individuals unceasingly renewed and carried forward by the principle of exchanges, has produced this prodigious amount of the aggregate capital of a country whose civilization is of ancient date. This accumulation of the means of existence, and of all that makes existence comfortable, is principally resulting from the labours of those who have gone before us. It is a stock which was beyond their own immediate wants, and which was not extinguished with their lives. It is our capital. It has been produced by labour alone, physical and mental. It can be kept up only by the same power which has created it, carried to the highest point of productiveness by the arrangements of society. CHAPTER V. Common interests of Capital and Labour--Labour directed by Accumulation--Capital enhanced by Labour--Balance of rights and duties--Relation of demand and supply--Money exchanges--Intrinsic and representative value of money. There is an old proverb, that "When two men ride on one horse, one man must ride behind." Capital and Labour are, as we think, destined to perform a journey together to the end of time. We have shown how they proceed on this journey. We have shown that, although Labour is the parent of all wealth, its struggles for the conversion of the rude supplies of nature into objects of utility are most feeble in their effects till they are assisted by accumulation. Before the joint interests of Labour and Capital were at all understood, they kept separate; when they only began to be understood, as we shall show, they were constantly pulling different ways, instead of giving "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether;" and even now, when these interests in many respects are still imperfectly understood, they occasionally quarrel about the conditions upon which they will continue to travel in company. In the very outset of the journey, Labour, doubtless, took the lead. In the dim morning of society Labour was up and stirring before Capital was awake. Labour did not then ride; he travelled slowly on foot through very dirty ways. Capital, at length, as slowly followed after, through the same mire, but at an humble distance from his parent. But when Capital grew into strength, he saw that there were quicker and more agreeable modes of travelling for both, than labour had found out. He procured that fleet and untiring horse Exchange; and when he proposed to Labour that they should mount together, he claimed the right, and kept it, for their mutual benefit, of taking the direction of the horse. For this reason, as it appears to us, we are called upon to assign to one of the companions, according to the practice of the old Knights Templars, the privilege of sitting before the other--holding the reins, indeed, but in all respects having a community of interests, and an equality of duties, as well as rights, with his fellow-traveller. Let us endeavour to advance another step in the illustration of these positions, by going back to the prodigal who had spent all his substance. Let us survey him at the moment when he had made the wise, and in many respects heroic, resolution to pass from the condition of a consumer into that of a producer. The story says, "The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of a cart on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed." Here, then, we see that the labour of this man was wholly and imperatively directed by accumulation. It was directed as absolutely by the accumulation of others as the labour of Dampier's Moskito Indian was directed by his own accumulation. The Indian could not labour profitably--he could not obtain fish and goats for his food, instead of seal's flesh--till he had called into action the power which he possessed in his knife and his gun-barrel. The prodigal had no accumulation whatever of his own. He had not even the accumulation of peculiar skill in any mode of labour;--for a continual process of waste enlarges neither the mental nor physical faculties, and generally leaves the wretched being who has to pass into the new condition of a producer as helpless as the weakest child. He had nothing but the lowest power, of labouring without peculiar knowledge or skill. He had, however, an intensity and consistency of purpose which raised this humble power into real strength. He was determined never to go backward--always to go on. He knew, too, his duties as well as his rights; and he saw that he must wholly accommodate his power to the greater power which was in action around him. When he passed into the condition of a producer, he saw that his powers and rights were wholly limited and directed by the principles necessary to advance production; and that his own share of what he assisted in producing must be measured by the laws which enabled him to produce at all. He found himself in a position where his labour was absolutely governed by the system of exchanges. No other system could operate around him, because he was in a civilized country. Had he been thrown upon a desert land without food and shelter, his labour must have been instantly and directly applied to procuring food and shelter. He was equally without food and shelter in a civilized country. But the system of exchanges being in action, he did not apply his labour directly to the production of food and lodging for himself. He added by his labour a new value to a heap of coals; he enabled another man more readily to acquire the means of warmth; and by this service, which he exchanged for "a few pence" and "a small gratuity of meat and drink," he indirectly obtained food and lodging. He conferred an additional value upon a heap of coals; and that additional value was represented by the "few pence" and "a small gratuity of meat and drink." Had the system of exchange been less advanced, that is, had society been less civilized, he would probably have exchanged his labour for some object of utility, by another and a ruder mode. He would have received a portion of the coals as the price of the labour by which he gave an additional value to the whole heap. But mark the inconvenience of such a mode of exchange. His first want was food; his next, shelter: had he earned the coals, he must have carried them about till he had found some other person ready to exchange food and lodging for coals. Such an occurrence might have happened, but it would have been a lucky accident. He could find all persons ready to exchange food and clothes for money--because money was ready again to exchange for other articles of utility which they might require, and which they would more readily obtain by the money than by the food and clothes which our labourer had received for them. During the course of the unprofitable labour of waiting till he had found an exchanger who wanted coals, he might have perished. What then gave him the means of profitable labour, and furnished him with an article which every one was ready to receive in exchange for articles of immediate necessity? Capital in two forms. The heap of coals was capital. The coals represented a very great and various accumulation of former labour that had been employed in giving them value. The coals were altogether valueless till labour had been employed to raise them from the pit, and to convey them to the door of the man who was about to consume them. But with what various helps had this labour worked! Mere manual labour could have done little or nothing with the coals in the pit. Machines had raised them from the pit. Machines had transported them from the pit to the door of the consumer. They would have remained buried in the earth but for large accumulations of knowledge, and large accumulations of pecuniary wealth to set that knowledge in action by exchanging with it. The heap of coals represented all this accumulation; and it more immediately represented the Circulating Capital of consumable articles of utility, which had been paid in the shape of wages, at every stage of the labour exercised in raising the coals from the mine, and conveying them to the spot in which the prodigal found them laid. The coals had almost attained their highest value by a succession of labour; but one labour was still wanting to give them the highest value. They were at their lowest value when they remained unbroken in the coal-pit; they were at their highest value when they were deposited in the cellar of the consumer. For that last labour there was circulating capital ready to be exchanged. The man whose course of production we have been tracing imparted to them this last value, and for this labour he received a "few pence" and a "gratuity of meat and drink." These consumable commodities, and the money which might be exchanged for other consumable commodities, were circulating capital. They supplied his most pressing wants with incomparably more readiness and certainty than if he had been turned loose amongst the unappropriated productions of nature, with unlimited freedom and absolute rights. In the state in which he was actually placed his rights were limited by his duties,--but this balance of rights and duties was the chief instrument in the satisfaction of his wants. Let us examine the principle a little more in detail. An exchange was to be carried on between the owner of the coals and the man who was willing to shovel them into the owner's cellar. The labourer did not want any distinct portion of the coals, but he wanted some articles of more urgent necessity in exchange for the new value which he was ready to bestow upon the coals. The object of each exchanger was, that labour should be exchanged with capital. That object could not have been accomplished, or it would have been accomplished slowly, imperfectly, and therefore unprofitably, unless there had been interchangeable freedom and security for both exchangers,--for the exchanger of capital, and the exchanger of labour. The first right of the labourer was, that his labour should be free;--the first right of the capitalist was, that his capital should be free. The rights of each were built upon the security of property. Could this security have been violated, it might have happened, either that the labourer should have been compelled to shovel in the coals--or, that the capitalist should have been compelled to employ the labourer to shovel them in. Had the lot of the unfortunate prodigal been cast in such a state of society as would have allowed this violation of the natural rights of the labourer and the capitalist, he would have found little accumulation to give a profitable direction to his labour. He would have found production suspended, or languishing. There would probably have been no heap of coals wanting his labour to give them the last value;--for the engines would have been idle that raised them from the pit, and the men would have been idle that directed the engines. The circulating capital that found wages for the men, and fuel for the engines, would have been idle, because it could not have worked with security. Accumulation, therefore, would have been suspended;--and all profitable labour would, in consequence, have been suspended. It was the unquestionable right of the labourer that his labour should be free; but it was balanced by the right of the capitalist that his accumulation should be secure. Could the labour have seized upon the capital, or the capital upon the labour, production would have been stopped altogether, or in part. The mutual freedom and security of labour and capital compel production to go forward; and labour and capital take their respective stations, and perform their respective duties, altogether with reference to the laws which govern production. These laws are founded upon the natural action of the system of exchange, carrying forward all its operations by the natural action of the great principle of demand and supply. When capital and labour know how to accommodate themselves to the direction of these natural laws, they are in a healthy state with respect to their individual rights, and the rights of industry generally. They are in that state in which each is working to the greatest profit in carrying forward the business of production. The story of the prodigal goes on to say, "He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer; and went with indefatigable industry through a succession of servile employments, in different places, of longer and shorter duration." Here we see the principle of Demand and Supply still in active operation. "He _looked out_ for the next thing that might chance to offer." He was ready with his supply of labour immediately that he saw a demand for it. Doubtless, the "indefatigable industry" with which he was ready with his supply created a demand, and thus he had in some degree a control over the demand. But in most cases the demand went before the supply, and he had thus to watch and wait upon the demand. In many instances demand and supply exercise a joint influence and control, each with regard to the other. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, relates that in the year 454 of the building of Rome (300 years before Christ) a number of barbers came over from Sicily to shave the Romans, who till that time had worn long beards. But the barbers came in consequence of being sent for by a man in authority. The demand here distinctly went before the supply; but the supply, doubtless, acted greatly upon the demand. During a time of wild financial speculation in Paris, created by what is called the Mississippi bubble, a hump-backed man went daily into the street where the stock-jobbers were accustomed to assemble, and earned money by allowing them to sign their contracts upon the natural desk with which he was encumbered. The hump-back was doubtless a shrewd fellow, and saw the difficulty under which the stock-jobbers laboured. He supplied what they appeared to want; and a demand was instantly created for his hump. He was well paid, says the story. That was because the supply was smaller than the demand. If other men with humps had been attracted by the demand, or if persons had come to the street with portable desks more convenient than the hump, the reward of his service would naturally have become less. He must have yielded to the inevitable law by which the amount of circulating capital, as compared with the number of labourers, prescribes the terms upon which capital and labour are united. By following the direction which capital gave to his industry, the prodigal, whose course we have traced up to the point when he went into the condition of a labourer, became at length a capitalist. "He had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily, but cautiously, turned his first gains into second advantages; retained, without a single deviation, his extreme parsimony; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. The final result was that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth 60,000_l._" He gained "money," and he "purchased" cattle. In the simple transaction which has been recorded of the first exchange of the prodigal's labour for capital, we find the circumstances which represent every exchange of labour for capital. The prodigal wanted meat and drink, and he gave labour in exchange for meat and drink; the capitalist wanted the produce of labour--he wanted a new value bestowed upon his coals by labour--and he gave meat and drink in exchange for the labour which the prodigal had to give. But the prodigal wanted something beyond the meat and drink which was necessary for the supply of the day. He had other immediate necessities beyond food; and he had determined to accumulate capital. He therefore required "a few pence" in addition to the "meat and drink." The capitalist held that the labour performed had conferred a value upon his property, which would be fairly exchanged for the pence in addition to the food, and he gave, therefore, in exchange, that portion of his capital which was represented by the money and by the food. This blending of one sort of consumable commodity, and of the money which represented any other consumable commodity which the money could be exchanged with, was an accident arising out of the peculiar circumstances in which the prodigal happened to be placed. In ordinary cases he would have received the money alone,--that is, he would have received a larger sum of money to enable him to exchange for meat and drink, instead of receiving them in direct payment. It is clear, therefore, that as the money represented one portion of the consumable commodities which were ready to pay for the labour employed in giving a new value to the coals, it might represent another portion--the meat, for instance, without the drink; or it might represent all the consumable commodities, meat, drink, lodging, clothes, fuel, which that particular labourer might want; and even represent the accumulation which he might extract out of his self-denial as to the amount of meat, drink, lodging, clothes, and fuel which he might require as a consumer; and the farthing saved out of his money-payment might be the nest-egg which was to produce the increase out of which he purchased cattle, and died a rich miser. We may be excused for calling attention to the fact, which is a very obvious one, that if the labourer, whose story we have told, had received a portion of the coals upon which he had conferred a new value in exchange for the labour which produced that value, he would have been paid in a way very unfavourable for production. It would have required a new labour before the coals could have procured him the meat, and drink, and lodging of which he had an instant want; and he therefore must have received a larger portion of coals to compensate for his new labour, or otherwise his labour must have been worse paid. There would have been unprofitable labour, whose loss must have fallen somewhere,--either upon the capitalist or the labourer in the first instance, but upon both ultimately, because there would have been less production. All the unprofitable labour employed in bringing the exchange of the first labour for capital to maturity would have been so much power withdrawn from the efficiency of the next labour to be performed; and therefore production would have been impeded to the extent of that unprofitable labour. The same thing would have happened if, advancing a step forward in the science of exchange, the labourer had received an entire payment in meat and drink, instead of a portion of the coals, which he could have exchanged for meat and drink. Wanting lodging, he would have had to seek a person who wanted meat and drink in exchange for lodging, before he could have obtained lodging. But he had a few pence,--he had money. He had a commodity to exchange that he might divide and subdivide as long as he pleased, whilst he was carrying on an exchange,--that is, he might obtain as much lodging as he required for an equivalent portion of his money. If he kept his money, it would not injure by keeping as the food would. He might carry it from place to place more easily than he could carry the food. He would have a commodity to exchange, whose value could not be made matter of dispute, as the value of meat and drink would unquestionably have been. This commodity would represent the same value, with little variation, whether he kept it a day, or a week, or a month, or a year; and therefore would be the only commodity whose retention would advance his design of accumulating capital with certainty and steadiness. It is evident that a commodity possessing all these advantages must have some intrinsic qualities which all exchangers would recognise--that it must be a standard of value--at once a commodity possessing real value, and a measure of all other values. This commodity exists in all commercial or exchanging nations in the shape of coined metal. The metal itself possesses a real value, which represents the labour employed in producing it; and, in the shape of coin, represents also a measure of other value, because the value of the coin has been determined by the sanction of some authority which all admit. That authority is most conveniently expressed by a Government, as the representative of the aggregate power of society. The metal itself, unless in the shape of coined money, would not represent a definite value; because the metal might be depreciated in value by the admixture of baser or inferior metals, unless it bore the impress of authority to determine its value. The exchangers of the metal for other articles of utility could not, without great loss of labour, be constantly employed in reducing it to the test of value, even if they had the knowledge requisite for so ascertaining its value. It used to cost 1000_l._ a year to the Bank of England for the wages of those who weighed the gold coin brought to the Bank; and it has been estimated that 30,000 sovereigns pass over the Bank counter daily. A machine is now used at the Bank, which separates the full-weight sovereigns and the light ones, at the rate of 10,000 an hour. In Greece a piece of gold in the rude times was stamped with the figure of an ox, to indicate that it would exchange for an ox. In modern England, a piece of gold, called a sovereign, represents a certain weight in gold uncoined, and the Government stamp indicates its purity; whilst the perpetual separation of the light sovereigns from those of full-weight affords a security that very few light ones are in general circulation. A sovereign purchases so many pounds weight of an ox, and a whole ox purchases so many sovereigns. The great use of the coined metal is to save labour in exchanging the ox for other commodities. The money purchases the ox, and a portion of the ox again purchases some other commodity, such as a loaf of bread from the baker, who obtains a portion of the ox through the medium of the money, which is a standard of value between the bread and the beef. Our great poetical satirist, Pope, in conducting his invective against the private avarice and political corruption of his day, imagines a state of things in which, money and credit being abolished, ministers would bribe and be bribed in kind. It is a true picture of what would be universal, if the exchanges of men resolved themselves into barter: "A statesman's slumbers how this speech would spoil! 'Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil; Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door; A hundred oxen at your levee roar.'" CHAPTER VI. Importance of capital to the profitable employment of labour--Contrast between the prodigal and the prudent man: the Dukes of Buckingham and Bridgewater--Making good for trade--Unprofitable consumption--War against capital in the middle ages--Evils of corporate privileges--Condition of the people under Henry VIII. If we have succeeded in making our meaning clear, by stating a general truth, not in an abstract form, but as brought out by various instances of the modes in which it is exhibited, we shall have led the reader to the conclusion that accumulation, or capital, is absolutely essential to the profitable employment of labour; and that the greater the accumulation the greater the extent of that profitable employment. This truth, however, has been denied altogether by some speculative writers;--and, what is more important, has been practically denied by the conduct of nations and individuals in the earlier state of society,--and is still denied by existing prejudices, derived from the current maxims of former days of ignorance and half-knowledge. With the speculative writers we have little to do. When Rousseau, for instance, advises governments not to secure property to its possessors, but to deprive them of all means of accumulating, it is sufficient to know that the same writer advocated the savage state, in which there should be no property, in preference to the social, which is founded on appropriation. Knowing this, and being convinced that the savage state, even with imperfect appropriation, is one of extreme wretchedness, we may safely leave such opinions to work their own cure. For it is not likely that any individual, however disposed to think that accumulation is an evil, would desire, by destroying accumulation, to pass into the condition, described by John Tanner, of a constant encounter with hunger in its most terrific forms: and seeing, therefore, the fallacy of such an opinion, he will also see that, if he partially destroys accumulation, he equally impedes production, and equally destroys his share in the productive power of capital and labour working together for a common good in the social state. But, without going the length of wishing to destroy capital, there are many who think that accumulation is a positive evil, and that consumption is a positive benefit; and, therefore, that economy is an evil, and waste a benefit. The course of a prodigal man is by many still viewed with considerable admiration. He sits up all night in frantic riot--he consumes whatever can stimulate his satiated appetite--he is waited upon by a crowd of unproductive and equally riotous retainers--he breaks and destroys everything around him with an unsparing hand--he rides his horses to death in the most extravagant attempts to wrestle with time and space; and when he has spent all his substance in these excesses, and dies an outcast and a beggar, he is said to have been a hearty fellow, and to have "made good for trade." When, on the contrary, a man of fortune economizes his revenue--lives like a virtuous and reasonable being, whose first duty is the cultivation of his understanding--eats and drinks with regard to his health--keeps no more retainers than are sufficient for his proper comfort and decency--breaks and destroys nothing--has respect to the inferior animals, as well from motives of prudence as of mercy--and dies without a mortgage on his lands; _he_ is said to have been a stingy fellow who did not know how to "circulate his money." To "circulate money," to "make good for trade," in the once common meaning of the terms, is for _one_ to consume unprofitably what, if economized, would have stimulated production in a way that would have enabled _hundreds_, instead of one, to consume profitably. Let us offer two historical examples of these two opposite modes of making good for trade, and circulating money. The Duke of Buckingham, "having been possessed of about 50,000_l._ a year, died in 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the utmost misery."[12] After a life of the most wanton riot, which exhausted all his princely resources, he was left at the last hour, under circumstances which are well described in the following lines by Pope:-- "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock bed, but repair'd with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red; Great Villiers lies.... No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." Contrast the course of this unhappy man with that of the Duke of Bridgewater, who devoted his property to really "making good for trade," by constructing the great canals which connect Manchester with the coal countries and with Liverpool. The Duke of Buckingham lived in a round of sensual folly: the Duke of Bridgewater limited his personal expenditure to 400_l._ a-year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility. The one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockeys: the other called into action the labour of thousands, and employed in the direction of that labour the skill of Brindley, one of the greatest engineers that any country has produced. The one died without a penny, loaded with debt, leaving no trace behind him but the ruin which his waste had produced: the other bequeathed almost the largest property in Europe to his descendants, and opened a channel for industry which afforded, and still affords, employment to thousands. [Illustration: Brindley.] When a mob amused themselves by breaking windows, as was once a common recreation on an illumination night, by way of showing the amount of popular intelligence, some were apt to say they have "made good for trade." Is it not evident that the capital which was represented by the unbroken windows was really so much destroyed of the national riches when the windows were broken?--for if the windows had remained unbroken, the capital would have remained to stimulate the production of some new object of utility. The glaziers, indeed, replaced the windows; but there having been a destruction of windows, there must have been a necessary retrenchment in some other outlay, that would have afforded benefit to the consumer. Doubtless, when the glazier is called into activity by a mob breaking windows, some other trade suffers; for the man who has to pay for the broken windows must retrench somewhere, and, if he has less to lay out, some other person has less to lay out. The glass-maker, probably, makes more glass at the moment; but he does so to exchange with the capital that would otherwise have gone to the maker of clothes or of furniture: and, there being an absolute destruction of the funds for the maintenance of labour, by an unnecessary destruction of what former labour has produced, trade generally is injured to the extent of the destruction. Some now say that a fire makes good for trade. The only difference of evil between the fire which destroys a house, and the mob which breaks the windows, is, that the fire absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a hundred to one when compared with the mob. Some say that war makes good for trade. The only difference of pecuniary evil (the moral evils admit of no comparison) between the fire and the war is, that the war absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a million to a hundred when compared with the fire. If the incessant energy of production were constantly repressed by mobs, and fires, and wars, the end would be that consumption would altogether exceed production; and that then the producers and the consumers would both be starved into wiser courses, and perceive that nothing makes good for trade but profitable industry and judicious expenditure. Prodigality devotes itself too much to the satisfaction of present wants: avarice postpones too much the present wants to the possible wants of the future. Real economy is the happy measure between the two extremes; and that only "makes good for trade," because, while it carries on a steady demand for industry, it accumulates a portion of the production of a country to stimulate new production. That judicious expenditure consists in "The sense to value riches, with the art T' enjoy them." The fashion of "making good for trade" by unprofitable consumption is a relic of the barbarous ages. In the twelfth century a count of France commanded his vassals to plough up the soil round his castle, and he sowed the ground with coins of gold, to the amount of fifteen hundred guineas, that he might have all men talk of his magnificence. Piqued at the lordly prodigality of his neighbour, another noble ordered thirty of his most valuable horses to be tied to a stake and burnt alive, that he might exhibit a more striking instance of contempt for accumulation. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, a Scotch noble, Colin Campbell, on receiving a visit from the O'Neiles of Ireland, ostentatiously burnt down his house at Inverary upon their departure; and an Earl of Athol pursued the same course in 1528, after having entertained the papal legate, upon the pretence that it was "the constant habitude of the high-landers to set on fire in the morning the place which had lodged them the night before." When the feudal lords had so little respect for their own property, it was not likely that they would have much regard for the accumulation of others. The Jews, who were the great capitalists of the middle ages, and who really merit the gratitude of Europeans for their avarice, as that almost alone enabled any accumulation to go forward, and any production to increase, were, as it is well known, persecuted in every direction by the crown, by the nobles, by the people. When a solitary farmer or abbot attempted to accumulate corn, which accumulation could alone prevent the dreadful famines invariably resulting from having no stock that might be available upon a bad harvest, the people burnt the ricks of the provident men, by way of lessening the evils of scarcity. The consequence was, that no person thought of accumulating at all, and that the price of wheat often rose, just before the harvest, from five shillings a quarter to five pounds. We are accustomed to read and talk of "merry England," but we sometimes fail to think how much real suffering lay beneath the surface of the merriment. Herrick, one of our charming old lyric poets, has sung the glories of the hock-cart--the cart that bore the full sheaves to the empty barn:-- "The harvest swains and wenches bound For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd; About the cart hear how the rout Of rural younglings raise the shout, Pressing before, some coming after, Those with a shout, and these with laughter. Some bless the cart, some kiss the sheaves, Some prank them up with oaken leaves; Some cross the fill-horse, some with great Devotion stroke the home-borne wheat." Assuredly there was joy and there was devotion; for the laden cart made the difference between plenty and starvation. Before that harvest-home came there had been many an aching heart in the village hovels, for there was no store to equalize prices, and no communication to make the abundance of one district--much less of one country--mitigate the scarcity of another. It was not a question of the rise or the fall of a penny or two in the price of a loaf of bread; it was a question of bread or no bread. [Illustration: The Hock-Cart.] During those dark periods the crown carried on the war against capital with an industry that could not be exceeded by that of the nobles or the people. Before the great charter the Commons complained that King Henry seized upon whatever was suited to his royal pleasure--horses, implements, food, anything that presented itself in the shape of accumulated labour. In the reign of Henry III. a statute was passed to remedy excessive distresses; from which it appeared that it was no unfrequent practice for the king's officers to take the opportunity of seizing the farmer's oxen at the moment when they were employed in ploughing, or, as the statute says, "winning the earth,"--taking them off, and starving them to death, or only restoring them with new and enormous exactions for their keep. Previous to the Charter of the Forest no man could dig a marl-pit on his own ground, lest the king's horses should fall into it when he was hunting. As late as the time of James I. we find, from a speech of the great Lord Bacon, that it was a pretty constant practice of the king's purveyors to extort large sums of money by threatening to cut down favourite trees which grew near a mansion-house or in avenues. Despotism, in all ages, has depopulated the finest countries, by rendering capital insecure, and therefore unproductive; insomuch that Montesquieu lays it down as a maxim, that lands are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but in proportion to their freedom. In the fifteenth century, in England, we find sums of money voted for the restoration of decayed towns and villages. Just laws would have restored them much more quickly and effectually. The state of agriculture was so low that the most absurd enactments were made to compel farmers to till and sow their own lands, and calling upon every man to plant at least forty beans. All the laws for the regulation of labourers, at the same period, assumed that they should be _compelled_ to work, and not wander about the country,--just in the same way that farmers should be compelled to sow and till. It is perfectly clear that the towns would not have been depopulated, and gone to decay, if the accumulation of capital had not been obstructed by insecurity and wasted by ignorance, and that the same insecurity and the same waste rendered it necessary to assume that the farmer would not till and sow, and the labourer would not labour, without compulsion. The natural stimulus to industry was wanting, and therefore there was no industry, or only unprofitable industry. The towns decayed, the country was uncultivated--production languished--the people were all poor and wretched; and the government dreamt that acts of parliament and royal ordinances could rebuild the houses and cultivate the land, when the means of building and cultivation, namely, the capital of the country, was exhausted by injustice producing insecurity. But if the king, the nobles, and the people of the middle ages conspired together, or acted at least as if they conspired, to prevent the accumulation of capital, the few capitalists themselves, by their monstrous regulations, which still throw some dark shadows over our own days, prevented that freedom of industry without which capital could not accumulate. Undoubtedly the commercial privileges of corporations originally offered some barriers against the injustice of the crown and of the nobility; but the good was always accompanied with an evil, which rendered it to a certain extent valueless. Where these privileges gave security, they were a good; where they destroyed freedom, they were an injury. Instead of encouraging the intercourse between one trade and another, they encircled every trade with the most absurd monopolies and exclusive privileges. Instead of rendering commerce free between one district and another, they, even in the same country, encompassed commerce with the most harassing restrictions, which separated county from county, and town from town, as if seas ran between them. If a man of Coventry came to London with his wares, he was encountered at every step with the privileges of companies; if the man of London sought to trade at Coventry, he was obstructed by the same corporate rights, preventing either the Londoner or the Coventry man trading with advantage. The revenues of every city were derived from forfeitures upon trades, almost all established upon the principle that, if one trade became too industrious or too clever, it would be the ruin of another trade. Every trade was fenced round with secrets; and the commonest trade, as we know from the language of an apprentice's indenture, was called an "art and mystery." All these follies went upon the presumption that "one man's gain is another man's loss," instead of vanishing before the truth, that, in proportion as the industry of all men is free, so will it be productive; and that production on all sides ensures a state of things in which every exchanger is a gainer, and no one a loser. It is not to be wondered at that, while such opinions existed, the union of capital and labour should have been very imperfect; and that, while the capitalists oppressed the labourers, in the same way that they oppressed each other, the labourers should have thought it not unreasonable to plunder the capitalists. It is stated by Harrison, an old writer of credit,[13] that during the single reign of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand thieves were hanged in England. No fact can exhibit in a stronger light the universal misery that must have existed in those days. The whole kingdom did not contain half a million grown-up males, so that, considering that the reign of Henry VIII. extended over two generations, about one man in ten must have been, to use the words of the same historian, "devoured and eaten up by the gallows." In the same reign the first statute against Egyptians (gipsies) was passed. These people went from place to place in great companies--spoke a cant language, which Harrison calls Pedler's French--and were subdivided into fifty-two different classes of thieves. The same race of people prevailed throughout Europe. Cervantes, the author of 'Don Quixote,' says of the Egyptians or Bohemians, that they seem to have been born for no other purpose than that of pillaging. While this universal plunder went forward, it is evident that the insecurity of property must have been so great that there could have been little accumulation, and therefore little production. Capital was destroyed on every side; and because profitable labour had become so scarce by the destruction of capital, one-half of the community sought to possess themselves of the few goods of the other half, not as exchangers but as robbers. As the robbers diminished the capital, the diminution of capital increased the number of robbers; and if the unconquerable energy of human industry had not gone on producing, slowly and painfully indeed, but still producing, the country would have soon fallen back to the state in which it was a thousand years before, when wolves abounded more than men. One great cause of all this plunder and misery was the oppression of the labourers. [12] Ruffhead's Pope. [13] Preface to the Chronicles of Holinshed. [Illustration: Adam Smith.] CHAPTER VII. Rights of labour--Effects of slavery on production-- Condition of the Anglo-Saxons--Progress of freedom in England--Laws regulating labour--Wages and prices--Poor-law--Law of settlement. Adam Smith, in his great work, 'The Wealth of Nations,' says, "The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property." The right of property, in general, has been defined by another writer, M. Say, to be "the exclusive faculty guaranteed to a man, or body of men, to dispose, at their own pleasure, of that which belongs to them." There can be no doubt that labour is entitled to the same protection as a property that capital is entitled to. There can be no doubt that the labourer has rights over his labour which no government and no individual should presume to interfere with. There can be no doubt that, as an exchanger of labour for capital, the labourer ought to be assured that the exchange shall in all respects be as free as the exchanges of any other description of property. His rights as an exchanger are, that he shall not be compelled to part with his property, by any arbitrary enactments, without having as ample an equivalent as the general laws of exchange will afford him; that he shall be free to use every just means, either by himself or by union with others, to obtain such an equivalent; that he shall be at full liberty to offer that property in the best market that he can find, without being limited to any particular market; that he may give to that property every modification which it is capable of receiving from his own natural or acquired skill, without being narrowed to any one form of producing it. In other words, natural justice demands that the working-man shall work when he please, and be idle when he please, always providing that, if he make a contract to work, he shall not violate that engagement by remaining idle; that no labour shall be forced from him, and no rate of payment for that labour prescribed by statutes or ordinances; that he shall be free to obtain as high wages as he can possibly get, and unite with others to obtain them, always providing that in his union he does not violate that freedom of industry in others which is the foundation of his own attempts to improve his condition; that he may go from place to place to exchange his labour without being interfered with by corporate rights or monopolies of any sort, whether of masters or workmen; and that he may turn from one employment to the other, if he so think fit, without being confined to the trade he originally learnt, or may strike into any line of employment without having regularly learnt it at all. When the working-man has these rights secured to him by the sanction of the laws, and the concurrence of the institutions and customs of the country in which he lives, he is in the condition of a free exchanger. He has the full, uninterrupted, absolute possession of his property. He is upon a perfect legal equality with the capitalist. He may labour cheerfully with the well-founded assurance that his labour will be profitably exchanged for the goods which he desires for the satisfaction of his wants, as far as laws and institutions can so provide. In a word, he may assure himself that, if he possesses anything valuable to offer in exchange for capital, the capital will not be fenced round with any artificial barriers, or invested with any unnatural preponderance, to prevent the exchange being one of perfect equality, and therefore a real benefit to both exchangers. We are approaching this desirable state in England. Indeed, there is scarcely any legal restriction acted upon which prevents the exchange of labour with capital being completely unembarrassed. Yet it is only within a few centuries that the working-men of this country have emerged from the condition of actual slaves into that of free labourers; it is only a few hundred years ago since the cultivator of the ground, the domestic servant, and sometimes even the artisan, was the absolute property of another man--bought, sold, let, without any will of his own, like an ox or a horse--producing nothing for himself--and transmitting the miseries of his lot to his children. The progress of civilization destroyed this monstrous system, in the same way that at the present day it is destroying it in Russia and other countries where slavery still exists. But it was by a very slow process that the English slave went forward to the complete enjoyment of the legal rights of a free exchanger. The transition exhibits very many years of gross injustice, of bitter suffering, of absurd and ineffectual violations of the natural rights of man; and of struggles between the capitalist and the labourer, for exclusive advantages, perpetuated by ignorant lawgivers, who could not see that the interest of all classes of producers is one and the same. We may not improperly devote a little space to the description of this dark and evil period. We shall see that while such a struggle goes forward--that is, while security of property and freedom of industry are not held as the interchangeable rights of the capitalist and the labourer--there can be little production and less accumulation. Wherever positive slavery exists--wherever the labourers are utterly deprived of their property in their labour, and are compelled to dispose of it without retaining any part of the character of voluntary exchangers--there are found idleness, ignorance, and unskilfulness; industry is enfeebled--the oppressor and the oppressed are both poor--there is no national accumulation. The existence of slavery amongst the nations of antiquity was a great impediment to their progress in the arts of life. The community, in such nations, was divided into a caste of nobles called citizens, and a caste of labourers called slaves. The Romans were rich, in the common sense of the word, because they plundered other nations; but they could not produce largely when the individual spirit to industry was wanting. The industry of the freemen was rapine: the slaves were the producers. No man will work willingly when he is to be utterly deprived of the power of disposing at his own will of the fruits of his labour; no man will work skilfully when the same scanty pittance is doled out to each and all, whatever be the difference in their talents and knowledge. Wherever the freedom of industry is thus violated, property cannot be secure. If Rome had encouraged free labourers, instead of breeding menial slaves, it could not have happened that the thieves, who were constantly hovering round the suburbs of the city, like vultures looking out for carrion, should have been so numerous that, during the insurrection of Catiline, they formed a large accession to his army. But Rome had to encounter a worse evil than that of the swarms of highwaymen who were ready to plunder whatever had been produced. Production itself was so feeble when carried on by the labour of slaves, that Columella, a writer on rural affairs, says the crops continued so gradually to fall off that there was a general opinion that the earth was growing old and losing its power of productiveness. Wherever slavery exists at the present day, there we find feeble production and national weakness. Poland, the most prolific corn-country in Europe, is unquestionably the poorest country. Poland has been partitioned, over and over again, by governments that knew her weakness; and she has been said to have fallen "without a crime." That is not correct. Her "crime" was, and is, the slavery of her labourers. There is no powerful class between the noble and the serf or slave; and whilst this state of things endures, Poland can never be independent, because she can never be industrious, and therefore never wealthy. England, as we have said, once groaned under the evils of positive slavery. The Anglo-Saxons had what they called "live money," such as sheep and slaves. To this cause may be doubtless attributed the easy conquest of the country by the Norman invaders, and the oppression that succeeded that conquest. If the people had been free, no king could have swept away the entire population of a hundred thousand souls that dwelt in the country between the Humber and the Tees, and converted a district of sixty miles in length into a dreary desert, which remained for years without houses and without inhabitants. This the Conqueror did. In the reign of Henry II. the slaves of England were exported in large numbers to Ireland. These slaves, or villeins, as is the case in Russia and Poland at the present day, differed in the degree of the oppression which was exercised towards them. Some, called "villeins in gross," were at the absolute disposal of the lord--transferable from one owner to another, like a horse or a cow. Others, called "villeins regardant," were annexed to particular estates, and were called upon to perform whatever agricultural offices the lord should demand from them, not having the power of acquiring any property, and their only privilege being that they were irremoveable except with their own consent. These distinctions are not of much consequence, for, by a happy combination of circumstances, the bondmen of every kind, in the course of a century or two after the Conquest, were rapidly passing into the condition of free labourers. But still capital was accumulated so slowly, and labour was so unproductive, that the land did not produce the tenth part of a modern crop; and the country was constantly exposed to the severest inflictions of famine, whenever a worse than usual harvest occurred. In the reign of Edward III. the woollen manufacture was introduced into England. It was at first carried on exclusively by foreigners; but as the trade extended, new hands were wanting, and the bondmen of the villages began to run away from their masters, and take refuge in the towns. If the slave could conceal himself successfully from the pursuit of his lord for a year and a day, he was held free for ever. The constant attraction of the bondmen to the towns, where they could work for hire, gradually emboldened those who remained as cultivators to assert their own natural rights. The nobility complained that the villeins refused to perform their accustomed services; and that corn remained uncut upon the ground. At length, in 1351, the 25th year of Edward III., the class of free labourers was first recognised by the legislature; and a statute was passed, oppressive indeed, and impolitic, but distinctly acknowledging the right of the labourer to assume the character of a free exchanger. Slavery, in England, was not wholly abolished by statute till the time of Charles II.: it was attempted in vain to be abolished in 1526. As late as the year 1775, the colliers of Scotland were accounted _ascripti glebæ_--that is, as belonging to the estate or colliery where they were born and continued to work. It is not necessary for us further to notice the existence of villeinage or slavery in these kingdoms. Our business is with the slow progress of the establishment of the rights of free labourers--and this principally to show that, during the long period when a contest was going forward between the capitalists and the labourers, industry was comparatively unproductive. It was not so unproductive, indeed, as during the period of absolute slavery; but as long as any man was compelled to work, or to continue at work, or to receive a fixed price, or to remain in one place, or to follow one employment, labour could not be held to be free--property could not be held to be secure--capital and labour could not have cordially united for production--accumulation could not have been certain and rapid. In the year 1349 there was a dreadful pestilence in England, which swept off large numbers of the people. Those of the labourers that remained, following the natural course of the great principle of demand and supply, refused to serve, unless they were paid double the wages which they had received five years before. Then came the 'Statute of Labourers,' of 1351, to regulate wages; and this statute enacted what should be paid to haymakers, and reapers, and thrashers; to carpenters, and masons, and tilers, and plasterers. No person was to quit his own village, if he could get work at these wages; and labourers and artificers flying from one district to another in consequence of these regulations, were to be imprisoned. Good laws, it has been said, execute themselves. When legislators make bad laws, there requires a constant increase of vigilance and severity, and constant attempts at reconciling impossibilities, to allow such laws to work at all. In 1360 the Statute of Labourers was confirmed with new penalties, such as burning in the forehead with the letter F those workmen who left their usual abodes. Having controlled the wages of industry, the next step was for these blind lawgivers to determine how the workmen should spend their scanty pittance; and accordingly, in 1363, a statute was passed to compel workmen and all persons not worth forty shillings to wear the coarsest cloth called russet, and to be served once a day with meat, or fish, and the offal of other victuals. We were not without imitations of such absurdities in other nations. An ordinance of the King of France, in 1461, determined that good and fat meat should be sold to the rich, while the poor should be allowed only to buy the lean and stinking. While the wages of labour were fixed by statute, the price of wheat was constantly undergoing the most extraordinary fluctuations, ranging from 2_s._ a quarter to 1_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ It was perfectly impossible that any profitable industry could go forward in the face of such unjust and ridiculous laws. In 1376 the Commons complained that masters were _obliged_ to give their servants higher wages to prevent their running away; and that the country was covered with _staf-strikers_ and _sturdy rogues_, who robbed in every direction. The villages were deserted by the labourers resorting to the towns, where commerce knew how to evade the destroying regulations of the statutes; and to prevent the total decay of agriculture, labourers were not allowed to move from place to place without letters patent:--any labourer, not producing such a letter, was to be imprisoned and put in the stocks. If a lad had been brought up to the plough till he was twelve years of age, he was compelled to continue in husbandry all his life; and in 1406 it was enacted that all children of parents not possessed of land should be brought up in the occupation of their parents. While the legislature, however, was passing these abominable laws, it was most effectually preparing the means for their extermination. Children were allowed to be sent to school in any part of the kingdom. When the light of education dawned upon the people, they could not long remain in the "darkness visible" that succeeded the night of slavery. When the industry of the country was nearly annihilated by the laws regulating wages, it was found out that something like a balance should be preserved between wages and prices; and the magistrates were therefore empowered twice a year to make proclamation, according to the price of provisions, how much every workman should receive. The system, however, would not work well. In 1496 a new statute of wages was passed, the preamble of which recited that the former statutes had not been executed, because "the remedy by the said statutes is not very perfect." Then came a new remedy: that is, a new scale of wages for all trades; regulations for the hours of work and of rest; and penalties to prevent labour being transported from one district to another. As a necessary consequence of a fixed scale for wages, came another fixed scale for regulating the prices of provisions; till at last, in the reign of Henry VIII., lawgivers began to open their eyes to the folly of their proceedings, and the preamble of a statute says "that dearth, scarcity, good cheap, and plenty of cheese, butter, capons, hens, chickens, and other victuals necessary for man's sustenance, happeneth, riseth, and chanceth, of so many and divers occasions, that it is very hard and difficile to put any certain prices to any such things." Yet they went on with new scales, in spite of the hardness of the task; till at last some of the worst of these absurd laws were swept from the statute-book. The justices, whose principal occupation was to balance the scale of wages and labour, complained incessantly of the difficulty of the attempt; and the statute of the 5th Elizabeth acknowledged that these old laws "could not be carried into execution without the great grief and burden of the poor labourer and hired man." Still new laws were enacted to prevent the freedom of industry working out plenty for capitalists as well as labourers; and at length, in 1601, a general assessment was directed for the support of the impotent poor, and for setting the unemployed poor to work. The capitalists at length paid a grievous penalty for their two centuries of oppression; and had to maintain a host of paupers, that had gradually filled the land during these unnatural contests. It would be perhaps incorrect to say, that these contests alone produced the paupers that required this legislative protection in the reign of Elizabeth; but certainly the number of those paupers would have been far less, if the laws of industry had taken their healthy and natural course,--if capital and labour had gone hand in hand to produce abundance for all, and fairly to distribute that abundance in the form of profits and wages, justly balanced by the steady operation of demand and supply in a free and extensive market. The whole of these absurd and iniquitous laws, which had succeeded the more wicked laws of absolute slavery, proceeded from a struggle on the part of the capitalists in land against the growing power and energy of free labour. If the capitalists had rightly understood their interests, they would have seen that the increased production of a thriving and happy peasantry would have amply compensated them for all the increase of wages to which they were compelled to submit; and that at every step by which the condition of their labourers was improved their own condition was also improved. If then capital had worked naturally and honestly for the encouragement of labour, there would have been no lack of labourers; and it would not have been necessary to pass laws to compel artificers, under the penalty of the stocks, to assist in getting in the harvest (5 Eliz.). If the labourers in agriculture had been adequately paid, they would not have fled to the towns; and if they had not been liable to cruel punishments for the exercise of this their natural right, the country would not have been covered with "valiant rogues and sturdy beggars." The Law of Settlement, which, however modified, yet remains upon our statute-book, has been the curse of industry for nearly two centuries. All the best men of past times have cried out against its oppression. Roger North, soon after its enactment, in the time of Charles II., clearly enough showed its general operation:--"Where most work is, there are fewest people, and _è contra_. In Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, a labourer hath 12_d._ a day; in Oxfordshire, 8_d._; in the North, 6_d._, or less; and I have been credibly informed that in Cornwall a poor man will be thankful for 2_d._ a day and poor diet: and the value of provisions in all these places is much the same. Whence should the difference proceed? Even from plenty and scarcity of work and men, which happens crossgrainedly, so that one cannot come to the other." When men honestly went from home to seek work, they were called vagrants, and were confounded with the common beggars, for whom every severity was provided by the law--the stocks, the whip, the pillory, the brand. It was all in vain. Happy would it have been for the land if the law had left honest industry free, and in the case of dishonesty had applied itself to more effectual work than punishments and terror. One of our great judges, Sir Matthew Hale, said, long ago, what we even now too often forget--"The prevention of poverty, idleness, and a loose and disorderly education, even of poor children, would do more good to this kingdom than all the gibbets, and cauterizations, and whipping-posts, and jails in this kingdom." The whole scheme of legislation for the poor was to set the poor to work by forced contributions from capital. If the energy of the people had not found out how to set themselves to work in spite of bad laws, we might have remained a nation of slaves and paupers. CHAPTER VIII. Possessions of the different classes in England--Condition of Colchester in 1301--Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture, &c.--Supply of food--Comparative duration of human life--Want of facilities for commerce--Plenty and civilization not productive of effeminacy--Colchester in the present day. It will be desirable to exhibit something like an average view of the extent of the possessions of all classes of society, and especially of the middling and labouring classes, in this country, at a period when the mutual rights of capitalists and labourers were so little understood as in the fourteenth century. We have shown how, at that time, there was a general round of oppression, resulting from ignorance of the proper interests of the productive classes; and it would be well also to show that during this period of disunion and contest between capital and labour, each plundering the other, and both plundered by arbitrary power, whether of the nobles or the crown, production went on very slowly and imperfectly, and that there was little to plunder and less to exchange. It is difficult to find the materials for such an inquiry. There is no very accurate record of the condition of the various classes of society before the invention of printing; and even after that invention we must be content to form our conclusions from a few scattered facts not recorded for any such purpose as we have in view, but to be gathered incidentally from slight observations which have come down to us. Yet enough remains to enable us to form a picture of tolerable accuracy; and in some points to establish conclusions which cannot be disputed. It is in the same way that our knowledge of the former state of the physical world must be derived from relics of that former state, to which the inquiries and comparisons of the present times have given an historical value. We know, for instance, that the animals of the southern countries once abounded in these islands, because we occasionally find their bones in quantities which could not have been accumulated unless such animals had been once native to these parts; and the remains of sea-shells upon the tops of hills now under the plough show us that even these heights have been heaved up from the bosom of the ocean. In the same way, although we have no complete picture of the state of property at the period to which we allude, we have evidence enough to describe that state from records which may be applied to this end, although preserved for a very different object. In the reign of Edward III., Colchester, in Essex, was considered the tenth city in England in point of population. It then paid a poll-tax for 2955 lay persons. In 1301, about half a century before, the number of inhabitant housekeepers was 390; and the whole household furniture, utensils, clothes, money, cattle, corn, and every other property found in the town, was valued at 518_l._ 16_s._ 0-3/4_d._ This valuation took place on occasion of a subsidy or tax to the crown, to carry on a war against France; and the particulars, which are preserved in the Rolls of Parliament, exhibit with great minuteness the classes of persons then inhabiting that town, and the sort of property which each respectively possessed. The trades exercised in Colchester were the following:--baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass-seller, glover, linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes seller, saddler, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. If we look at a small town of the present day, where such a variety of occupations are carried on, we shall find that each tradesman has a considerable stock of commodities, abundance of furniture and utensils, clothes in plenty, some plate, books, and many articles of convenience and luxury to which the most wealthy dealers and mechanics of Colchester of the fourteenth century were utter strangers. That many places at that time were much poorer than Colchester there can be no doubt: for here we see the division of labour was pretty extensive, and that is always a proof that production is going forward, however imperfectly. We see, too, that the tradesmen were connected with manufactures in the ordinary use of the term; or there would not have been the dyer, the glover, the linen-draper, the tanner, the weaver, and the wool-comber. There must have been a demand for articles of foreign commerce, too, in this town, or we should not have had the spice-seller. Yet, with all these various occupations, indicating considerable profitable industry when compared with earlier stages in the history of this country, the whole stock of the town was valued at little more than 500_l._ Nor let it be supposed that this smallness of capital can be accounted for by the difference in the standard of money; although that difference is considerable. We may indeed satisfy ourselves of the small extent of the capital of individuals at that day, by referring to the inventory of the articles upon which the tax we have mentioned was laid at Colchester. The whole stock of a carpenter's tools was valued at one shilling. They altogether consisted of two broad axes, an adze, a square, and a navegor or spoke-shave. Rough work must the carpenter have been able to perform with these humble instruments; but then let it be remembered that there was little capital to pay him for finer work, and that very little fine work was consequently required. The three hundred and ninety housekeepers of Colchester then lived in mud huts, with a rough door and no chimney. Harrison, speaking of the manners of a century later than the period we are describing, says, "There were very few chimneys even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued out at the roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over with clay; and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow." When this old historian wrote, he mentions the erection of chimneys as a modern luxury. We had improved little upon our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the article of chimneys. In their time Alcuin, an abbot who had ten thousand vassals, writes to the emperor at Rome that he preferred living in his smoky house to visiting the palaces of Italy. This was in the ninth century. Five hundred years had made little difference in the chimneys of Colchester. The nobility had hangings against the walls to keep out the wind, which crept in through the crevices which the builder's bungling art had left: the middle orders had no hangings. Shakspere alludes to this rough building of houses even in his time:-- "Imperial Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." Even the nobility went without glass to their windows in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Of old time," says Harrison, "our country houses, instead of glass, did use much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak, in checkerwise." When glass was introduced, it was for a long time so scarce that at Alnwick Castle, in 1567, the glass was ordered to be taken out of the windows, and laid up in safety, when the lord was absent. The mercer's stock-in-trade at Colchester was much upon a level with the carpenter's tools. It was somewhat various, but very limited in quantity. The whole comprised a piece of woollen cloth, some silk and fine linen, flannel, silk purses, gloves, girdles, leather purses, and needle-work; and it was altogether valued at 3_l._ There appears to have been another dealer in cloth and linen in the town, whose store was equally scanty. We were not much improved in the use of linen a century later. We learn from the Earl of Northumberland's household book, whose family was large enough to consume one hundred and sixty gallons of mustard during the winter with their salt meat, that only seventy ells of linen were allowed for a year's consumption. In the fourteenth century none but the clergy and nobility wore white linen. As industry increased, and the cleanliness of the middle classes increased with it, the use of white linen became more general; but even at the end of the next century, when printing was invented, the paper-makers had the greatest difficulty in procuring rags for their manufacture; and so careful were the people of every class to preserve their linen, that night-clothes were never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspere makes Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to generation; and even the wives of the nobility did not disdain to mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked." The household furniture found in use amongst the families of Colchester consisted, in the more wealthy, of an occasional bed, a brass pot, a brass cup, a gridiron, and a rug or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs and tables we hear nothing. We learn from the Chronicles of Brantôme, a French historian of these days, that even the nobility sat upon chests in which they kept their clothes and linen. Harrison, whose testimony we have already given to the poverty of these times, affirms, that if a man in seven years after marriage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself as well lodged as the lord of the town, "who peradventure lay seldom on a bed entirely of feathers." An old tenure in England, before these times, binds the vassal to find straw even for the king's bed. The beds of flock, the few articles of furniture, the absence of chairs and tables, would have been of less consequence to the comfort and health of the people, if they had been clean; but cleanliness never exists without a certain possession of domestic conveniences. The people of England, in the days of which we are speaking, were not famed for their attention to this particular. Thomas à Becket was reputed extravagantly nice, because he had his parlour strewed every day with clean straw. As late as the reign of Henry VIII., Erasmus, a celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited England, complains that the nastiness of the people was the cause of the frequent plagues that destroyed them; and he says, "their floors are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested a collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and of everything that is nauseous." The elder Scaliger, another scholar who came to England, abuses the people for giving him no convenience to wash his hands. Glass vessels were scarce, and pottery was almost wholly unknown. The Earl of Northumberland, whom we have mentioned, breakfasted on trenchers and dined on pewter. While such universal slovenliness prevailed as Erasmus has described, it is not likely that much attention was generally paid to the cultivation of the mind. Before the invention of printing, at the time of the valuation of Colchester, books in manuscript, from their extreme costliness, could be purchased only by princes. The royal library of Paris, in 1378, consisted of nine hundred and nine volumes,--an extraordinary number. The same library now comprises upwards of four hundred thousand volumes. But it may fairly be assumed that, where one book could be obtained in the fourteenth century by persons of the working classes, four hundred thousand may be as easily obtained now. Here then was a privation which existed five hundred years ago, which debarred our ancestors from more profit and pleasure than the want of beds, and chairs, and linen; and probably, if this privation had continued, and men therefore had not cultivated their understandings, they would not have learnt to give any really profitable direction to their labour, and we should still have been as scantily supplied with furniture and clothes as the good people of Colchester of whom we have been speaking. Let us see what accumulated supply, or capital, of food the inhabitants of England had five centuries ago. Possessions in cattle are the earliest riches of most countries. We have seen that cattle was called "live money;" and it is supposed that the word capital, which means stock generally, was derived from the Latin word "capita," or heads of beasts. The law-term "chattels" is also supposed to come from cattle. These circumstances show that cattle were the chief property of our ancestors. Vast herds of swine constituted the great provision for the support of the people; and these were principally fed, as they are even now in the New Forest, upon acorns and beech-mast. In Domesday Book, a valuation of the time of William the Conqueror, it is always mentioned how many hogs each estate can maintain. Hume the historian, in his Essays, alluding to the great herds of swine described by Polybius as existing in Italy and Greece, concludes that the country was thinly peopled and badly cultivated; and there can be no doubt that the same argument may be applied to England in the fourteenth century, although many swine were maintained in forests preserved for fuel. The hogs wandered about the country in a half-wild state, destroying, probably, more than they profitably consumed; and they were badly fed, if we may judge from a statute of 1402, which alleges the great decrease of fish in the Thames and other rivers, by the practice of feeding hogs with the fry caught at the weirs. The hogs' flesh of England was constantly salted for the winter's food. The people had little fodder for cattle in the winter, and therefore they only tasted fresh meat in the summer season. The mustard and vinegar seller formed a business at Colchester, to furnish a relish for the pork. Stocks of salted meat are mentioned in the inventory of many houses there, and live hogs as commonly. But salted flesh is not food to be eaten constantly, and with little vegetable food, without severe injury to the health. In the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root, grew in England. Two or three centuries before, certainly, the monasteries had gardens with a variety of vegetables; but nearly all the gardens of the laity were destroyed in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. Harrison speaks of wheaten bread as being chiefly used by the gentry for their own tables; and adds that the artificer and labourer are "driven to content themselves with horse-corn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." There is no doubt that the average duration of human life was at that period not one-half as long as at the present day. The constant use of salted meat, with little or no vegetable addition, doubtless contributed to the shortening of life, to say nothing of the large numbers constantly swept away by pestilence and famine. Till lemon-juice was used as a remedy for scurvy amongst our seamen, who also are compelled to eat salted meat without green vegetables, the destruction of life in the navy was something incredible. Admiral Hosier buried his ships' companies twice during a West India voyage in 1726, partly from the unhealthiness of the Spanish coast, but chiefly from the ravages of scurvy. Bad food and want of cleanliness swept away the people of the middle ages, by ravages upon their health that the limited medical skill of those days could never resist. Matthew Paris, an historian of that period, states that there were in his time twenty thousand hospitals for lepers in Europe. The slow accumulation of capital in the early stages of the civilization of a country is in a great measure caused by the indisposition of the people to unite for a common good in public works, and the inability of governments to carry on these works, when their principal concern is war, foreign or domestic. The foundations of the civilization of this country were probably laid by our Roman conquerors, who carried roads through the island, and taught us how to cultivate our soil. Yet improvement went on so slowly that, even a hundred years after the Romans were settled here, the whole country was described as marshy. For centuries after the Romans made the Watling-street and a few other roads, one district was separated from another by the general want of these great means of communication. Bracton, a law-writer of the period we have been so constantly mentioning, holds that, if a man being at Oxford engage to pay money the same day in London, he shall be discharged of his contract, as he undertakes a physical impossibility. We find, as late as the time of Elizabeth, that her Majesty would not stay to breakfast at Cambridge because she had to travel twelve miles before she could come to the place, Hinchinbrook, where she desired to sleep. Where there were no roads, there could be few or no markets. An act of parliament of 1272 says that the religious houses should not be compelled to _sell_ their provisions--a proof that there were no considerable stores except in the religious houses. The difficulty of navigation was so great, that William Longsword, son of Henry II., returning from France, was during three months tossed upon the sea before he could make a port in Cornwall. Looking, therefore, to the want of commerce proceeding from the want of communication--looking to the small stock of property accumulated to support labour--and looking, as we have previously done, to the incessant contests between the small capital and the misdirected labour, both feeble, because they worked without skill--we cannot be surprised that the poverty of which we have exhibited a faint picture should have endured for several centuries, and that the industry of our forefathers must have had a long and painful struggle before it could have bequeathed to us such magnificent accumulations as we now enjoy. The writers who lived at the periods when Europe was slowly emerging from ignorance and poverty, through the first slight union of capital and labour as voluntary exchangers, complain of the increase of comforts as indications of the growing luxury and effeminacy of the people. Harrison says, "In times past men were contented to dwell in houses builded of sallow, willow, plum-tree, or elm; so that the use of oak was dedicated to churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, noblemen's lodgings, and navigation. But now, these are rejected, and nothing but oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, through Persian delicacy crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration. In those days, the courage of the owner was a sufficient defence to keep the house in safety; but now, the assurance of the timber, double doors, locks, and bolts, must defend the man from robbing. Now have we many chimneys, and our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then had we none but rere-dosses, and our heads did never ache." These complaints go upon the same principle that made it a merit in Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, to have had no door to his hovel. We think he would have been a wiser man if he had contrived to have had a door. A story is told of a Highland chief, Sir Evan Cameron, that himself and a party of his followers being benighted, and compelled to sleep in the open air, when his son rolled up a ball of snow and laid his head upon it for a pillow, the rough old man kicked it away, exclaiming, "What, sir! are you turning effeminate?" We doubt whether Sir Evan Cameron and his men were braver than the English officers who fought at Waterloo; and yet many of these marched from the ball-room at Brussels in their holiday attire, and won the battle in silk stockings. It is an old notion that plenty of the necessaries and conveniences of life renders a nation feeble. We are told that the Carthaginian soldiers whom Hannibal carried into Italy were suddenly rendered effeminate by the abundance which they found around them at Capua. The commissariat of modern nations goes upon another principle; and believes that unless the soldier has plenty of food and clothing he will not fight with alacrity and steadiness. The half-starved soldiers of Henry V. won the battle of Agincourt; but it was not because they were half-starved, but because they roused their native courage to cut their way out of the peril by which they were surrounded. The Russians of our time had a notion that the English could not fight on land, because for forty years we had been a commercial instead of a military nation. The battle of the Alma corrected their mistake. When we hear of ancient nations being enervated by abundance, we may be sure that the abundance was almost entirely devoured by a few tyrants, and that the bulk of the people were rendered weak by the destitution which resulted from the unnatural distribution of riches. We read of the luxury of the court of Persia--the pomp of the seraglios, and of the palaces--the lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, the silks, the gold, and the diamonds. The people are held to be effeminate. The Russians, from the hardy north, can lay the Persian monarchy any day at their feet. Is this national weakness caused by the excess of production amongst the people, giving them so extravagant a command over the necessaries and luxuries of life that they have nothing to do but drink of the full cup of enjoyment? Mr. Fraser, an English traveller, thus describes the appearance of a part of the country which he visited in 1821:--"The plain of Yezid-Khaust presented a truly lamentable picture of the general decline of prosperity in Persia. Ruins of large villages thickly scattered about with the skeleton-like walls of caravansaries and gardens, all telling of better times, stood like _memento moris_ (remembrances of death) to kingdoms and governments; and the whole plain was dotted over with small mounds, which indicate the course of cannauts (artificial streams for watering the soil), once the source of riches and fertility, now all choked up and dry; for there is neither man nor cultivation to require their aid." Was it the luxury of the people which produced this decay--the increase of their means of production--their advancement in skill and capital; or some external cause which repressed production, and destroyed accumulation both of outward wealth and knowledge? "Such is the character of their rulers," says Mr. Fraser, "that the only measure of their demands is the power to extort on one hand, and the ability to give or retain on the other." Where such a system prevails, all accumulated labour is concealed, for it would otherwise be plundered. It does not freely and openly work to encourage new labour. Burckhardt, the traveller of Nubia, saw a farmer who had been plundered of everything by the pacha, because it came to the ears of the savage ruler that the unhappy man was in the habit of eating wheaten bread; and that, he thought, was too great a luxury for a subject. If such oppressions had not long ago been put down in England, we should still have been in the state of Colchester in the fourteenth century. When these iniquities prevailed, and there was neither freedom of industry nor security of property--when capital and labour were not united--when all men consequently worked unprofitably, because they worked without division of labour, accumulation of knowledge, and union of forces--there was universal poverty, because there was feeble production. Slow and painful were the steps which capital and labour had to make before they could emerge, even in part, from this feeble and degraded state. But that they have made a wonderful advance in five hundred years will not be difficult to show. It may assist us in this view if we compare the Colchester of the nineteenth century with the Colchester of the fourteenth, in a few particulars. In the reign of Edward III. Colchester numbered 359 houses of mud, without chimneys, and with latticed windows. In the reign of Queen Victoria, according to the census of 1851, it has 4145 inhabited houses, containing a population of 19,443 males and females. The houses of the better class, those rented at ten pounds a year and upwards, are commonly built of brick, and slated or tiled; secured against wind and weather; with glazed windows and with chimneys; and generally well ventilated. The worst of these houses are supplied, as fixtures, with a great number of conveniences, such as grates, and cupboards, and fastenings. To many of such houses gardens are attached, wherein are raised vegetables and fruits that kings could not command two centuries ago. Houses such as these are composed of several rooms--not of one room only, where the people are compelled to eat and sleep and perform every office, perhaps in company with pigs and cattle--but of a kitchen, and often a parlour, and several bedrooms. These rooms are furnished with tables, and chairs, and beds, and cooking-utensils. There is ordinarily, too, something for ornament and something for instruction;--a piece or two of china, silver spoons, books, and not unfrequently a watch or clock. The useful pottery is abundant and of really elegant forms and colours; drinking-vessels of glass are universal. The inhabitants are not scantily supplied with clothes. The females are decently dressed, having a constant change of linen, and gowns of various patterns and degrees of fineness. Some, even of the humbler classes, are not thought to exceed the proper appearance of their station if they wear silk. The men have decent working habits, strong shoes and hats, and a respectable suit for Sundays, of cloth often as good as is worn by the highest in the land. Every one is clean; for no house above the few hovels which still deform the country is without soap and bowls for washing, and it is the business of the females to take care that the linen of the family is constantly washed. The children, very generally, receive instruction in some public establishment; and when the labour of the day is over, the father thinks the time unprofitably spent unless he burns a candle to enable him to read a book or the newspaper. The food which is ordinarily consumed is of the best quality. Wheaten bread is no longer confined to the rich; animal food is not necessarily salted, and salt meat is used principally as a variety; vegetables of many sorts are plenteous in every market, and these by a succession of care are brought to higher perfection than in the countries of more genial climate from which we have imported them; the productions too of distant regions, such as spices, and coffee, and tea, and sugar, are universally consumed almost by the humblest in the land. Fuel, also, of the best quality, is abundant and comparatively cheap. If we look at the public conveniences of a modern English town, we shall find the same striking contrast. Water is brought not only into every street, but into every house; the dust and dirt of a family is regularly removed without bustle or unpleasantness; the streets are paved, and lighted at night; roads in the highest state of excellence connect the town with the whole kingdom, and by means of railroads a man can travel several hundred miles in a few hours, and more readily than he could ten miles in the old time; and canal and sea navigation transport the weightiest goods with the greatest facility from each district to the other, and from each town to the other, so that all are enabled to apply their industry to what is most profitable for each and all. Every man, therefore, may satisfy his wants, according to his means, at the least possible expense of the transport of commodities. Every tradesman has a stock ready to meet the demand; and thus the stock of a very moderately wealthy tradesman of the Colchester of the present day is worth more than all the stock of all the different trades that were carried on in the same place in the fourteenth century. The condition of a town like Colchester--a flourishing market-town in an agricultural district--offers a fair point of comparison with a town of the time of Edward III. CHAPTER IX. Certainty the stimulus to industry--Effects of insecurity--Instances of unprofitable labour--Former notions of commerce--National and class prejudices, and their remedy. Two of the most terrific famines that are recorded in the history of the world occurred in Egypt--a country where there is greater production, with less labour, than is probably exhibited in any other region. The principal labourer in Egypt is the river Nile, whose periodical overflowings impart fertility to the thirsty soil, and produce in a few weeks that abundance which the labour of the husbandman might not hope to command if employed during the whole year. But the Nile is a workman that cannot be controlled and directed, even by capital, the great controller and director of all work. The influences of heat, and light, and air, are pretty equal in the same places. Where the climate is most genial, the cultivators have least labour to perform in winning the earth; where it is least genial, the cultivators have most labour. The increased labour balances the small natural productiveness. But the inundation of a great river cannot be depended upon like the light and heat of the sun. For two seasons the Nile refused to rise, and labour was not prepared to compensate for this refusal; the ground refused to produce; the people were starved. We mention these famines of Egypt to show that _certainty_ is the most encouraging stimulus to every operation of human industry. We know that production as invariably follows a right direction of labour, as day succeeds to night. We believe that it will be dark to-night and light again to-morrow, because we know the general laws which govern light and darkness, and because our experience shows us that those laws are constant and uniform. We know that if we plough, and manure, and sow the ground, a crop will come in due time, varying indeed in quantity according to the season, but still so constant upon an average of years, that we are justified in applying large accumulations and considerable labour to the production of this crop. It is this certainty that we have such a command of the productive powers of nature as will abundantly compensate us for the incessant labour of directing those forces, which has during a long course of industry heaped up our manifold accumulations, and which enables production annually to go forward to an extent which even half a century ago would have been thought impossible. The long succession of labour, which has covered this country with wealth, has been applied to the encouragement of the productive forces of nature, and the restraint of the destroying. No one can doubt that, the instant the labour of man ceases to direct those productive natural forces, the destroying forces immediately come into action. Take the most familiar instance--a cottage whose neat thatch was never broken, whose latticed windows were always entire, whose whitewashed walls were ever clean, round whose porch the honeysuckle was trained in regulated luxuriance, whose garden bore nothing but what the owner planted. Remove that owner. Shut up the cottage for a year, and leave the garden to itself. The thatched roof is torn off by the wind and devoured by mice, the windows are driven in by storms, the walls are soaked through with damp and are crumbling to ruin, the honeysuckle obstructs the entrance which it once adorned, the garden is covered with weeds which years of after-labour will have difficulty to destroy:-- "It was a plot Of garden-ground run wild, its matted weeds Mark'd with the steps of those whom, as they pass'd, The gooseberry-trees that shot in long lank slips, Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap The broken wall." Apply this principle upon a large scale. Let the productive energy of a country be suspended through some great cause which prevents its labour continuing in a profitable direction. Let it be overrun by a conqueror, or plundered by domestic tyranny of any kind, so that capital ceases to work with security. The fields suddenly become infertile, the towns lose their inhabitants, the roads grow to be impassable, the canals are choked up, the rivers break down their banks, the sea itself swallows up the land. Shakspere, a great political reasoner as well as a great poet, has described such effects in that part of 'Henry V.' when the Duke of Burgundy exhorts the rival kings to peace:-- "Let it not disgrace me, If I demand, before this royal view, What rub, or what impediment, there is, Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births, Should not, in this best garden of the world, Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage? Alas! she hath from France too long been chas'd; And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, Corrupting in its own fertility. Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned, dies; her hedges even-pleach'd, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas, The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory Doth root upon; while that the coulter rusts, That should deracinate such savagery: The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility: And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness; Even so our houses, and ourselves and children, Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time, The sciences that should become our country." [Illustration: Dykes of Holland: destruction by bursting.] We have heard it said that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands. The meaning of the saying is, that the capital which was appropriated to keep out the sea from that part of the Kentish coast was diverted to the building of Tenterden steeple; and there being no funds to keep out the sea, it washed over the land.[14] The Goodwin Sands remain to show that man must carry on a perpetual contest to keep in subjection the forces of nature, which, as is said of fire, one of the forces, are good servants but bad masters. But these examples show, also, that in the social state our control of the physical forces of nature depends upon the right control of our own moral forces. There was injustice, doubtless, in misappropriating the funds which restrained the sea from devouring the land. Till men know that they shall work with justice on every side, they work feebly and unprofitably. England did not begin to accumulate largely and rapidly till the rights both of the poor man and the rich were to a certain degree established--till industry was free and property secure. Our great dramatic poet has described this security as the best characteristic of the reign of Queen Elizabeth:-- "In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants." [Illustration: "Under his own vine"] Shakspere derived his image from the Bible, where a state of security is frequently indicated by direct allusion to a man sitting under the shade of his own fig-tree or his own vine. In the days of Elizabeth, as compared with previous eras, there was safety, and a man might "sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours." We have gone on constantly improving these blessings. But let any circumstances again arise which may be powerful enough to destroy, or even molest, the freedom of industry and the security of property, and we should work once more without certainty. The elements of prosperity would not be constant and uniform. We should work with the apprehension that some hurricane of tyranny, no matter from what power, would arise, which would sweep away accumulation. When that hurricane did not rise, we might have comparative abundance, like the people of Egypt during the inundation of the Nile. We then should have an inundation of tranquillity. But if the tranquillity were not present--if lawless violence stood in the place of justice and security--we should be like the people of Egypt when the Nile did not overflow. We should suffer the extremity of misery; and that possible extremity would produce an average misery, even if tranquillity did return, because security had not returned. We should, if this state of things long abided, by degrees go back to the condition of Colchester in the fourteenth century, and thence to the universal marsh of two thousand years ago. The place where London stands would be, as it once was, a wilderness for howling wolves. The few that produced would again produce laboriously and painfully, without skill and without division of labour, because without accumulation; and it would probably take another thousand years, if men again saw the absolute need of security, to re-create what security has accumulated for our present use. From the moment that the industry of this country began to work with security, and capital and labour applied themselves in union--perhaps not a perfect union, but still in union--to the great business of production, they worked with less and less expenditure of unprofitable labour. They continued to labour more and more profitably, as they laboured with knowledge. The labour of all rude nations, and of all uncultivated individuals, is labour with ignorance. Peter the wild boy, whom we have already mentioned, could never be made to perceive the right direction of labour, because he could not trace it through its circuitous courses for the production of utility. He would work under control, but, if left to himself, he would not work profitably. Having been trusted to fill a cart with manure, he laboured with diligence till the work was accomplished; but no one being at hand to direct him, he set to work as diligently to unload the cart again. He thought, as too many think even now, that the good was in the labour, and not in the results of the labour. The same ignorance exhibits itself in the unprofitable labour and unprofitable application of capital, even of persons far removed beyond the half-idiocy of Peter the wild boy. In the thirteenth century many of the provinces of France were overrun with rats, and the people, instead of vigorously hunting the rats, were persuaded to carry on a process against them in the ecclesiastical courts; and there, after the cause of the injured people and the injuring rats was solemnly debated, the rats were declared cursed and excommunicated if they did not retire in six days. The historian does not add that the rats obeyed the injunction; and doubtless the farmers were less prepared to resort to the profitable labour of chasing them to death when they had paid the ecclesiastics for the unprofitable labour of their excommunication. There is a curious instance of unprofitable labour given in a book on the Coal Trade of Scotland, written as recently as 1812. The people of Edinburgh had a passion for buying their coals in immense lumps, and, to gratify this passion, the greatest care was taken not to break the coals in any of the operations of conveying them from the pit to the cellar of the consumer. A wall of coals was first built within the pit, another wall under the pit's mouth, another wall when they were raised from the pit, another wall in the waggon which conveyed them to the port where they were shipped, another wall in the hold of the ship, another wall in the cart which conveyed them to the consumer, and another wall in the consumer's cellar; and the result of these seven different buildings-up and takings-down was, that after the consumer had paid thirty per cent. more for these square masses of coal than for coal shovelled together in large and small pieces, his servant had daily to break the large coals to bits to enable him to make any use of them. It seems extraordinary that such waste of labour and capital should have existed amongst a highly acute and refined community within the last forty years. They, perhaps, thought they were making good for trade, and therefore submitted to the evil; while the Glasgow people, on the contrary, by saving thirty per cent. in their coals, had that thirty per cent. to bestow upon new enterprises of industry, and for new encouragements to labour. The unprofitable applications of capital and labour which the early history of the civilization of every people has to record, and which, amongst many, have subsisted even whilst they held themselves at the height of refinement, have been fostered by the ignorance of the great, and even of the learned, as to the causes which, advancing production or retarding it, advanced or retarded their own interests, and the interests of all the community. Princes and statesmen, prelates and philosophers, were equally ignorant of "What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so; What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat." It was enough for them to consume; they thought it beneath them to observe even, much less to assist in, the direction of production. This was ignorance as gross as that of Peter the wild boy, or the excommunication of rats. It has always been the fashion of ignorant greatness to despise the mechanical arts. The pride of the Chinese mandarins was to let their nails grow as long as their fingers, to show that they never worked. Even European nobles once sought the same absurd distinction. In France, under the old monarchy, no descendant of a nobleman could embark in trade without the highest disgrace; and the principle was so generally recognised as just, that a French writer, even as recently as 1758, reproaches the sons of the English nobility for the contrary practice, and asks, with an air of triumph, how can a man be fit to serve his country in Parliament after having meddled with such paltry concerns as those of commerce? Montesquieu, a writer in most respects of enlarged views, holds that it is beneath the dignity of governments to interfere with such trumpery things as the regulation of weights and measures. Society might have well spared the interference of governments with weights and measures if they had been content to leave all commerce equally free. But, in truth, the regulation of weights and measures is almost a solitary exception to the great principle which governments ought to practise, of not interfering, or interfering little, with commerce. Louis XIV. did not waste more capital and labour by his ruinous wars, and by his covering France with fortifications and palaces, than by the perpetual interferences of himself and his predecessors with the freedom of trade, which compelled capital and labour to work unprofitably. The naturally slow progress of profitable industry is rendered more slow by the perpetual inclination of those in authority to divert industry from its natural and profitable channels. It was therefore wisely said by a committee of merchants to Colbert, the prime minister of France in the reign of Louis XIV., when he asked them what measures government could adopt to promote the interests of commerce,--"Let us alone, permit us quietly to manage our own business." It is undeniable that the interests of all are best promoted when each is left free to attend to his own interests, under the necessary social restraints which prevent him doing a positive injury to his neighbour. It is thus that agriculture and manufactures are essentially allied in their interests; that unrestrained commerce is equally essential to the real and permanent interests of agriculture and manufactures; that capital and labour are equally united in their interests, whether applied to agriculture, manufactures, or commerce; that the producer and the consumer are equally united in their most essential interest, which is, that there should be cheap production. While these principles are not understood at all, and while they are imperfectly understood, as they still are by many classes and individuals, there must be a vast deal of unprofitable expenditure of capital, a vast deal of unprofitable labour, a vast deal of bickering and heart-burning between individuals who ought to be united, and classes who ought to be united, and nations who ought to be united; and as long as it is not felt by all that their mutual rights are understood and will be respected, there is a feeling of insecurity which more or less affects the prosperity of all. The only remedy for these evils is the extension of knowledge. Louis XV. proclaimed to the French that the English were their "véritables ennemis," their true enemies. When knowledge is triumphant it will be found that there are no "véritables ennemis," either among nations, or classes, or individuals. The prejudices by which nations, classes, and individuals are led to believe that the interest of one is opposed to the interest of another, are, nine times out of ten, as utterly absurd as the reason which a Frenchman once gave for hating the English--which was, "that they poured melted butter on their roast veal;" and this was not more ridiculous than the old denunciation of the English against the French, that "they ate frogs, and wore wooden shoes." When the world is disabused of the belief that the wealth of one nation, class, or individual must be created by the loss of another's wealth, then, and then only, will all men steadily and harmoniously apply to produce and to enjoy--to acquire prosperity and happiness--lifting themselves to the possession of good "By Reason's light, on Resolution's wings." [14] Grey's Notes to Hudibras. CHAPTER X. Employment of machinery in manufactures and agriculture--Erroneous notions formerly prevalent on this subject--Its advantages to the labourer--Spade-husbandry-- The _principle_ of machinery--Machines and tools--Change in the condition of England consequent on the introduction of machinery--Modern New Zealanders and ancient Greeks--Hand-mills and water-mills. One of the most striking effects of the want of knowledge producing disunions amongst mankind that are injurious to the interests of each and all, is the belief which still exists amongst many well-meaning but unreflecting persons, that the powers and arrangements which Capital has created and devised for the advancement of production are injurious to the great body of working-men in their character of producers. The great forces by which capital and labour now work,--forces which are gathering strength every day,--are accumulation of skill and division of employments. It will be for us to show that the applications of science to the manufacturing arts have the effect of ensuring cheap production and increased employment. These applications of science are principally displayed in the use of MACHINERY; and we shall endeavour to prove that, although individual labour may be partially displaced, or unsettled for a time, by the use of this cheaper and better power than unassisted manual labour, all are great gainers by the general use of that power. Through that power all principally possess, however poor they may be, many of the comforts which make the difference between man in a civilized and man in a savage state; and further, that, in consequence of machinery having rendered productions of all sorts cheaper, and therefore caused them to be more universally purchased, it has really increased the demand for that manual labour, which it appears to some, reasoning only from a few instances, it has a tendency to diminish. In the year 1827 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to examine into the subject of Emigration. The first person examined before that Committee was Joseph Foster, a working weaver of Glasgow. He told the Committee that he and many others, who had formed themselves into a society, were in great distress; that numbers of them worked at the _hand-loom_ from eighteen to nineteen hours a day, and that their earnings, at the utmost, did not amount to more than seven shillings a-week, and that sometimes they were as low as four shillings. That twenty years before that time they could readily earn a pound a-week by the same industry; and that as _power-loom_ weaving had increased, the distress of the hand-weavers also had increased in the same proportion. The Committee then put to Joseph Foster the following questions, and received the following answers:-- "_Q._ Are the Committee to understand that you attribute the insufficiency of your remuneration for your labour to the introduction of machinery? "_A._ Yes. "_Q._ Do you consider, therefore, that the introduction of machinery is objectionable? "_A._ We do not. The weavers in general, of Glasgow and its vicinity, do not consider that machinery can or ought to be stopped, or put down. They know perfectly well that machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it. They are aware that every implement of agriculture or manufacture is a portion of machinery, and, indeed, everything that goes beyond the teeth and nails (if I may use the expression) is a machine. I am authorized, by the majority of our society, to say that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in stating this." It is worthy of note how the common sense of this working-man, a quarter of a century ago, saw clearly the great principle which overthrows, in the outset, all unreasoning hostility to machinery. Let us follow out his principle. Amongst the many accounts which the newspapers in December, 1830, gave of the destruction of machinery by agricultural labourers, we observed that in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury a band of mistaken and unfortunate men destroyed all the machinery of many farms, _down even to the common drills_. The men conducted themselves, says the county newspaper, with civility; and such was their consideration, that they moved the machines out of the farm-yards, to prevent injury arising to the cattle from the nails and splinters that flew about while the machinery was being destroyed. They _could not make up their minds_ as to the propriety of destroying a horse-churn, and therefore that machine was passed over. A quarter of a century has made a remarkable difference in the feelings, even in the least informed, with regard to machinery. The majority of the people now know, as the weavers of Glasgow knew in 1827, that "machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it." We therefore, adapting this volume to the improved times in which it is now published, think it needless to urge, as fully as we once did, any of the notions of the labourers of Aylesbury to their inevitable conclusions. It is sufficient briefly to show, that, if the labourers had been successful in their career, had broken all those ingenious implements which have aided in rendering British agriculture the most perfect in the world, they would not have advanced a single step in obtaining more employment, or being better paid. We will suppose, then, that the farmer has yielded to this violence; that the violence has had the effect which it was meant to have upon him; and that he takes on all the hands which were out of employ, to thrash and winnow, to cut chaff, to plant with a dibber instead of with a drill, to do all the work, in fact, by the dearest mode instead of the cheapest. But he employs _just as many people as are absolutely necessary_, and no more, for getting his corn ready for market, and for preparing, in a slovenly way, for the seed-time. In a month or two the victorious destroyers find that not a single hand the more of them is really employed. And why not? There are no drainings going forward, the hedges and ditches are neglected, the dung-heap is not turned over, the chalk is not fetched from the pit; in fact, all those labours are neglected which belong to a state of agricultural industry which is brought to perfection. _The farmer has no funds to employ in such labours_; he is paying a great deal more than he paid before for the same, or a less, amount of work, because his labourers choose to do certain labours with rude tools instead of perfect ones. We will imagine that this state of things continues till the next spring. All this while the price of grain has been rising. Many farmers have ceased to employ capital at all upon the land. The neat inventions, which enabled them to make a living out of their business, being destroyed, they have abandoned the business altogether. A day's work will now no longer purchase as much bread as before. The horse, it might be probably found out, was as great an enemy as the drill-plough; for, as a horse will do the field-work of six men, there must be six men employed, without doubt, instead of one horse. But how would the fact turn out? If the farmer still went on, in spite of all these losses and crosses, he might employ men in the place of horses, but not a single man more than the number that would work at the price of the keep of one horse. To do the work of each horse turned adrift, he would require six men; but he would only have about a shilling a-day to divide between these six--the amount which the horse consumed. As the year advanced, and the harvest approached, it would be discovered that not one-tenth of the land was sown: for although the ploughs were gone, because the horses were turned off, and there was plenty of _labour_ for those who chose to labour for its own sake, or at the price of horse-labour, this amazing employment for human hands, somehow or other, would not quite answer the purpose. It has been calculated that the power of horses, oxen, &c., employed in husbandry in Great Britain is ten times the amount of human power. If the human power insisted upon doing all the work with the worst tools, the certainty is that not even one-tenth of the land could be cultivated. Where, then, would all this madness end? In the starvation of the labourers themselves, even if they were allowed to eat up all they had produced by such imperfect means. They would be just in the condition of any other barbarous people, that were ignorant of the inventions that constitute the power of civilization. They would eat up the little corn which they raised themselves, and have nothing to give in exchange for clothes, and coals, and candles, and soap, and tea, and sugar, and all the many comforts which those who are even the worst off are not wholly deprived of. All this may appear as an extreme statement; and certainly we believe that no such evils could have happened: for if the laws had been passive, the most ignorant of the labourers themselves would, if they had proceeded to carry their own principle much farther than they had done, see in their very excesses the real character of the folly and wickedness to which it had led, and would lead them. Why should the labourers of Aylesbury not have destroyed the harrows as well as the drills? Why leave a machine which separates the clods of the earth, and break one which puts seed into it? Why deliberate about a horse-churn, when they were resolved against a winnowing-machine? The truth is, these poor men perceived, even in the midst of their excesses, the gross deception of the reasons which induced them to commit them. Their motive was a natural, and, if lawfully expressed, a proper impatience, under a condition which had certainly many hardships, and those hardships in great part produced by the want of profitable labour. But in imputing those hardships to machinery, they were at once embarrassed when they came to draw distinctions between one sort of machine and another. This embarrassment decidedly shows that there were fearful mistakes at the bottom of their furious hostility to machinery. It has been said, by persons whose opinions are worthy attention, that spade-husbandry is, in some cases, better than plough-husbandry;--that is, that the earth, under particular circumstances of soil and situation, may be more fitly prepared for the influences of the atmosphere by digging than by ploughing. It is not our business to enter into a consideration of this question. The growth of corn is a manufacture, in which man employs the chemical properties of the soil and of the air in conjunction with his own labour, aided by certain tools or machines, for the production of a crop; and that power, whether of chemistry or machinery,--whether of the salt, or the chalk, or the dung, or the guano, which he puts upon the earth, or the spade or the plough which he puts into it,--that power which does the work easiest is necessarily the best, _because it diminishes the cost of production_. If the plough does not do the work so well as the spade, it is a less perfect machine; but the less perfect machine may be preferred to the more perfect, because, taking other conditions into consideration, it is a cheaper machine. If the spade, applied in a peculiar manner by the strength and judgment of the man using it, more completely turns up the soil, breaks the clods, and removes the weeds than the plough, which receives one uniform direction from man with the assistance of other animal power, then the spade is a more perfect machine in its combination with human labour than the plough is, worked with a lesser degree of the same combination. But still it may be a machine which cannot be used with advantage to the producer, and is therefore not desirable for the consumer. All such questions must be determined by the cost of production; and that cost in agriculture is made up of the rent of land, the profit of capital, and the wages of labour--or the portions of the produce belonging to the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer. Where rent is high, as in the immediate neighbourhood of large towns, it is important to have the labour performed as carefully as possible, and the succession of crops stimulated to the utmost extent by manure and labour. It is economy to turn the soil to the greatest account, and the land is cultivated as a garden. Where rent is low, it is important to have the labour performed upon other principles, because one acre cultivated by hand may cost more than two cultivated by the plough; and though it may be the truest policy to carry the productiveness of the earth as far as possible, field cultivation and garden cultivation must have essential differences. In one case, the machine called a spade is used; in the other, the machine called a plough is employed. The use of the one or the other belongs to practical agriculture, and is a question only of relative cost. [Illustration: Centre of gravity] And this brings us to the great _principle_ of all machinery. A tool of the simplest construction is a machine; a machine of the most curious construction is only a complicated tool. There are many cases in the arts, and there may be cases in agriculture, in which the human arm and hand, with or without a tool, may do work that no machine can so well perform. There are processes in polishing, and there is a process in copper-plate printing, in which no substance has been found to stand in the place of the human hand. And, if therefore the man with a spade alone does a certain agricultural work more completely than a man guiding a plough, and a team of horses dragging it (which we do not affirm or deny), the only reason for this is, that the man with the spade is a better machine than the man with the plough and the horses. The most stupid man that ever existed is, beyond all comparison, a machine more cunningly made by the hands of his Creator, more perfect in all his several parts, and with all his parts more exquisitely adapted to the regulated movement of the whole body, less liable to accidents, and less injured by wear and tear, than the most beautiful machine that ever was, or ever will be, invented. There is no possibility of supplying in many cases a substitute for the simplest movements of a man's body, by the most complicated movements of the most ingenious machinery. The laws of mechanism are the same whether applied to a man, or to a lever, or a wheel; but the man has more pliability than any combination of wheels and levers. "When a porter carries a burden, the attitude of the body must accommodate itself to the position of the common centre of gravity of himself and his load. Thus, in the accompanying figures it will be observed that when the man stands upright the centre of gravity of the man G falls within the base of support; and if his load L falls without the base, as does likewise _g_, the common centre of gravity of the man and load, the consequence would be that he would fall backwards; but this is prevented, or, which is the same thing, the point _g_ is brought within the base by the man bending his body forward."[15] What is called the lay figure of the painter--a wooden image with many joints--may be bent here and there; but the artist who wanted to draw a porter with a load could not put a hundredweight upon the back of his image and keep it upon its legs. The natural machinery by which a man even lifts his hand to his head is at once so complex and so simple, so apparently easy and yet so entirely dependent upon the right adjustment of a great many contrary forces, that no automaton, or machine imitating the actions of man, could ever be made to effect this seemingly simple motion, without showing that the contrivance was imperfect,--that it was a mere imitation, and a very clumsy one. What an easy thing it appears to be for a farming man to thrash his corn with a flail; and yet what an expensive arrangement of wheels is necessary to produce the same effects with a thrashing-machine! The truth is, that the man's arm and the flail form a much more curious machine than the other machine of wheels, which does the same work; and the real question as regards the value of the two machines is, which machine in the greater degree lessens the cost of production? We state this principle broadly, in our examination into the value of machinery in diminishing the cost of producing human food. A machine is not perfect because it is made of wheels or cylinders, employs the power of the screw or the lever, is driven by wind or water or steam, but because it best assists the labour of man, by calling into action some power which he does not possess in himself. If we could imagine a man entirely dispossessed of this power, we should see the feeblest of animal beings. He has no tools which are a part of himself, to build houses like the beaver, or cells like the bee. He has not even learnt from nature to build, instinctively, by certain and unchangeable rules. His power is in his mind; and that mind teaches him to subject all the physical world to his dominion, by availing himself of the forces which nature has spread around him. To act upon material objects he arms his weakness with tools and with machines. As we have before said, tools and machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in nature--the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a tool, and the other a machine. Neither the tool nor the machine has any force of itself. In one case the force is in the arm, in the other in the weight of water which turns the wheel. The distinctions which have been taken between a tool and a machine are really so trivial, and the line of separation between the one and the other is so slight, that we can only speak of both as common instruments for adding to the efficiency of labour. The simplest application of a principle of mechanics to an every-day hand-tool may convert it into what is called a machine. Take a three-pronged fork--one of the universal tools;--fasten a rope to the end of the handle; put a log under the fork as a fulcrum; and we have a lever, when pulled down by the rope, which will grub up a strongly-rooted large shrub in a few minutes. The labourer has called in a powerful ally. The tool has become a machine. [Illustration: A tool made a machine] The chief difference between man in a rude, and man in a civilized state of society is, that the one wastes his force, whether natural or acquired,--the other economizes, that is, saves it. The man in a rude state has very rude instruments; he therefore wastes his force: the man in a civilized state has very perfect ones; he therefore economizes it. Should we not laugh at the gardener who went to hoe his potatoes with a stick having a short crook at the end? It would be a tool, we should say, fit only for children to use. Yet such a tool was doubtless employed by some very ancient nations; for there is an old medal of Syracuse which represents this very tool. The common hoe of the English gardener is a much more perfect tool, because it saves labour. Could we have any doubt of the madness of the man who would propose that all iron hoes should be abolished, to furnish more extensive employ to labourers who should be provided only with a crooked stick cut out of a hedge? The truth is, if the working men of England had no better tools than crooked sticks, they would be in a state of actual starvation. One of the chiefs of New Zealand, before that country had been colonized by us, told Mr. Marsden, a missionary, that his wooden spades were all broken, and he had not an axe to make any more;--his canoes were all broken, and he had not a nail or a gimlet to mend them with;--his potato-grounds were uncultivated, and he had not a hoe to break them up with;--and that _for want of cultivation_ he and his people would have nothing to eat. This shows the state of a people without tools. The man had seen English tools, and knew their value. About three or four hundred years ago, from the times of king Henry IV. to those of king Henry VI., and, indeed, long before these reigns, there were often, as we have already mentioned, grievous famines in this country, because the land was very wretchedly cultivated. Men, women, and children perished of actual hunger by thousands; and those who survived kept themselves alive by eating the bark of trees, acorns, and pig-nuts. There were no machines then; but the condition of the labourers was so bad, that they could not be kept to work upon the land without those very severe and tyrannical laws noticed in Chap. VII., which absolutely forbade them to leave the station in which they were born as labourers, for any hope of bettering their condition in the towns. There were not labourers enough to till the ground, for they worked without any skill, with weak ploughs and awkward hoes. They were just as badly off as some of the people of Portugal and Spain, who are miserably poor, _because_ they have bad machines; or as the Chinese labourers, who have scarcely any machines, and are the poorest in the world. There was plenty of labour to be performed, but the tools were so bad, and the want of agricultural knowledge so universal, that the land was never half cultivated, and therefore all classes were poorly off. They had little corn to exchange for manufactures, and in consequence the labourer was badly clothed, badly lodged, and had a very indifferent share of the scanty crop which he raised. The condition of the labourer would have proceeded from bad to worse, had agricultural improvement not gone forward to improve the general condition of all classes. Commons were enclosed; arable land was laid down to pasture; sheep were kept upon grass-land where wretched crops had before been growing. This was superseding labour to a great extent, and much clamour was raised about this plan, and probably a large amount of real distress was produced. But mark the consequence. Although the money wages of labour were lowered, because there were more labourers in the market, the real amount of wages was higher, for better food was created by pasturage at a cheaper rate. The labourer then got meat who had never tasted it before; and when the use of animal food became general, there were cattle and corn enough to be exchanged for manufactured goods, and the labourer got a coat and a pair of shoes, who had formerly gone half naked. Step by step have we been going in the same direction for two centuries; and the agricultural industry of Great Britain is now as much directed to the production of meat, milk, butter, cheese, as to the growth of corn and other cereals. The once simple husbandry of our forefathers has become a scientific manufacture. [Illustration: Spinning.] There may be some persons still who object to machinery, because, having grown up surrounded with the benefits it has conferred upon them, without understanding the source of these benefits, they are something like the child who sees nothing but evil in a rainy day. The people of New Zealand very rarely came to us; but when they did come they were acute enough to perceive the advantages which machinery has conferred upon us, and the great distance in point of comfort between their state and ours, principally for the reason that they have no machinery, while we have a great deal. One of these men burst into tears when he saw a rope-walk; because he perceived the immense superiority which the process of spinning ropes gave us over his own countrymen. He was ingenious enough, and so were many of his fellow islanders, to have twisted threads together after a rude fashion; but he knew that he was a long way off from making a rope. The New Zealander saw the spinner in the rope-walk, moving away from a wheel, and gradually forming the hemp round his body into a strong cord. By the operation of the wheel he is enabled so to twine together a number of separate fibres, that no one fibre can be separated from the mass, but forms part of a hard and compact body. A series of these operations produces a cable, such as may hold a barge at anchor. The twisted fibres of hemp become yarn; many yarns become a strand; three strands make a rope; and three ropes make a cablet, or small cable. By carefully untwisting all its separate parts, the principle upon which it is constructed is evident. The operation is a complex one; and the rope-maker is a skilled workman. Rope-making machinery is now carried much farther. But the wheel that twisted the hemp into yarn was a prodigy to the inquiring savage. [Illustration: Making Ropes by Huddart's Machinery.] [Illustration: Analysis of a Cablet.] Another of these New Zealanders, and he was a very shrewd and intelligent person, carried back to his country a small hand-mill for grinding corn, which he prized as the greatest of all earthly possessions. And well might he prize it! He had no machine for converting corn into meal, but two stones, such as were used in the remote parts of the highlands of Scotland some years ago. And to beat the grain into meal by these two stones (a machine, remember, however imperfect) would occupy the labour of one-fourth of his family, to procure subsistence for the other three-fourths. The ancient Greeks, three thousand years ago, had improved upon the machinery of the hand-stones, for they had hand-mills. But Homer, the old Greek poet, describes the unhappy condition of the slave who was always employed in using this mill. The groans of the slave were unheeded by those who consumed the produce of his labour; and such was the necessity for meal, that the women were compelled to turn these mills when there were not slaves enough taken in war to perform this irksome office. There was plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By and bye the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes. Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence? We answer, labour is worth nothing without results. Its value is only to be measured by what it produces. If, in a country where hand-mills could be had, the people were to go on beating grain between two stones, all would pronounce them fools, because they could obtain an equal quantity of meal with a much less expenditure of labour. Some have a general prejudice against that sort of machinery which does its work with very little human assistance; it is not quite so certain, therefore, that they would agree that a people would be equal fools to use the hand-mill when they could employ the wind-mill or the water-mill. But we believe they would think that, if flour could drop from heaven, or be had like water by whoever chose to seek it, it would be the height of folly to have stones, or hand-mills, or water-mills, or wind-mills, or any machine whatever for manufacturing flour. Does any one ever think of _manufacturing_ water? The cost of water is only the cost of the labour which brings it to the place in which it is consumed. Yet this admission overturns all objections against machinery. _We admit that it is desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all; can we therefore doubt that it is desirable to obtain it with the least possible labour?_ The only difference between no labour and a little labour is the difference of the cost of production. And the only difference between little labour and much labour is precisely the same. In procuring anything that administers to his necessities, man makes an exchange of his labour for the thing produced, and the less he gives of his labour the better of course is his bargain. To return to the hand-mill and the water-mill. An ordinary water-mill for grinding corn will grind about thirty-six sacks a day. To do the same work with a hand-mill would require 150 men. At two shillings a day the wages of these men would amount to 15_l._, which, reckoning six working days, is 90_l._ a week, or 4680_l._ a year. The rent and taxes of a mill would be about 150_l._ a year, or 10_s._ a working day. The cost of machinery would be certainly more for the hand-mills than the water-mill, therefore we will not take the cost of machinery into calculation. To produce, therefore, thirty-six sacks of flour by hand we should pay 15_l._; by the water-mill we should pay 10_s._: that is, we should pay thirty times as much by the one process as by the other. The actual saving is something about the price of the flour in the market; that is, the consumer, if the corn were ground by hand, would pay double what he pays now for flour ground at a mill. But if the system of grinding corn by hand were a very recent system of society, and the introduction of so great a benefit as the water-mill had all at once displaced the hand-grinders, as the spinning machinery displaced the spinning-wheel, what must become, it is said, of the one hundred and fifty men who earned the 15_l._ a-day, of which sum the consumer has now got 14_l._ 10_s._ in his pocket? They must go to other work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14_l._ 10_s._; which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes, and of a better quality; a better house than his hand-labouring ancestors used to have, much as his house might yet be improved; better furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils; and books. To produce these things there must be more labourers employed than before. The quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods; we are each of us elevated in the scale of society; and all these things happen because machinery has diminished the cost of production. [Illustration: Mill at Guy's Cliff.] The water-mill is, however, a simple machine compared with some mills of modern times. We are familiar with the village-mill. As we walk by the side of some gentle stream, such as that which turns the mill at Guy's Cliff, in Warwickshire, we hear at a distance the murmur of water and the growl of wheels. We come upon the old mill, such as it has stood for a couple of centuries. No peasant quarrels with the mill. It is an object almost of his love; for he knows that it cheapens his food. It seems a part of the natural scenery amidst which he has been reared. But let a more efficient machine for grinding corn be introduced, such as the Americans have at Pittsburgh, and the peasant might think that the working millers would be ruined. And yet the mill at Pittsburgh is making flour cheaper in England, by that competition which here forces onward improvement in mill-machinery; and by increasing the consumption of flour calls into action more superintending labour for its production. That particular American mill produces 500 barrels of flour per day, each containing 196 lbs., and it employs forty managing persons. It produces cheap flour by saving labour in all its processes. It stands on the bank of a navigable river--a high building into which the corn for grinding must be removed from boats alongside. Is the grain necessary to produce these 500 barrels of flour per day, amounting to 98,000 lbs., carried by man's labour to the topmost floor of that high mill? It is "raised by an elevator consisting of an endless band, to which are fixed a series of metal cans revolving in a long wooden trough, which is lowered through the respective hatchways into the boat, and is connected at its upper end with the building where its belt is driven. The lower end of the trough is open, and, as the endless band revolves, six or eight men shovel the grain into the ascending cans, which raise it so rapidly that 4000 bushels can be lifted and deposited in the mill in an hour."[16] The drudging and unskilled labourers who would have toiled in carrying up the grain are free to do some skilled labour, of which the amount required is constantly increasing; and the cost saved by the elevator goes towards the great universal fund, out of which more labour and better labour are to find the means of employment. [15] See an article by Mr. Bishop, on 'Locomotion of Animals,' in 'English Cyclopædia.' [16] Whitworth's Special Report. CHAPTER XI. Present and former condition of the country--Progress of cultivation--Evil influence of feudalism--State of agriculture in the sixteenth century--Modern improvements--Prices of wheat--Increased breadth of land under cultivation--Average consumption of wheat--Implements of agriculture now in use--Number of agriculturists in Great Britain. It is the remark of foreigners, as they travel from the sea-coast to London, that the country is a garden. It has taken nineteen centuries to make it such a garden. The marshes in which the legions of Julius Cæsar had to fight, up to their loins, with the Britons, to whom these swamps were habitual, are now drained. The dense woods in which the Druids worshipped are now cleared. Populous towns and cheerful villages offer themselves on every side. Wherever the eye reaches there is cultivation. Instead of a few scattered families painfully earning a subsistence by the chace, or by tilling the land without the knowledge and the instruments that science has given to the aid of manual labour,--that cultivation is carried on with a systematic routine that improves the fertility of a good season, and diminishes the evils of a bad. Instead of the country being divided amongst hostile tribes, who have little communication, the whole territory is covered with a network of roads, and canals, and navigable rivers, and railroads, through which means there is an universal market, and wherever there is demand there is instant supply. Rightly considered, there is no branch of production which has so largely benefited by the power of knowledge as that of agriculture. It was ages before the great physical changes were accomplished which we now behold on every side; and we are still in a state of progress towards the perfection of those results which an over-ruling Providence had in store for the human race, in the gradual manifestation of those discoveries which have already so changed our condition and the condition of the world. The history of cultivation in Great Britain is full of instruction as regards the inefficiency of mere traditional practice and the slowness with which scientific improvement establishes its dominion. It is no part of our plan to follow out this history; but a few scattered facts may not be without their value. [Illustration: 1. The plough. 2. The pole. 3. The share (various). 4. The handle, or plough-tail. 5. Yokes.] The oppressions of tenants that were perpetrated under the feudal system, when ignorant lords of manors impeded production by every species of extortion, may be estimated by one or two circumstances. There can be no doubt that the prosperity of a tenant is the best security for the landlord's due share of the produce of the land. Without manure, in some form or other, the land cannot be fertilized: the landlords knew this, but they required to have a monopoly of the fertility. Their tenants kept a few sheep, but the landlords reserved to themselves the exclusive privilege of having a sheepfold; so that the little tenants could not fold their own sheep on their own lands, but were obliged to let them be folded with those of their lord, or pay a fine.[17] The flour-mill was the exclusive property of the manorial lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical; and whatever the distance, or however bad the road, the tenant could grind nowhere but at the lord's mill. No doubt the rent of land was exceedingly low, and the lord was obliged to maintain himself and his dependents by adding something considerable to his means by many forms of legalized extortion. The rent of land was so low because the produce was inconsiderable, to an extent which will be scarcely comprehended by modern husbandmen. In the law-commentary called 'Fleta,' written about the end of the thirteenth century, the author says the farmer will be a loser unless corn be dear, if he obtains from an acre of wheat only three times the seed sown. He calculated the low produce at six bushels an acre: the average produce was perhaps little higher; we have distinct records of its being no higher a century afterwards. In 1390, at Hawsted, near Bury, the produce of the manor-farm was forty-two quarters of wheat, or three hundred and thirty-six bushels, from fifty-seven acres; and upon an average of three years sixty-one acres produced only seventy quarters, or five hundred and sixty bushels. Sir John Cullum, who collected these details from the records of his own property, says, "no particular dearness of corn followed, so that, probably, those very scanty crops were the usual and ordinary effects of the imperfect husbandry then practised." The husbandry was so imperfect that an unfavourable season for corn-crops, which in our days would have been compensated by a greater production of green crops, was followed by famine. When the ground was too hard, the seed could not be sown for want of the sufficient machine-power of plough and harrow. The chief instrument used was as weak and imperfect as the plough which we see depicted in Egyptian monuments, and which is still found in parts of Syria. The Oriental ploughman was with such an instrument obliged to bend over his plough, and load it with all the weight of his body, to prevent it merely scratching the ground instead of turning it up. His labour was great and his care incessant, as we may judge from the words of our Saviour,--"No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Latimer, the Protestant martyr, in his 'Sermon of the Plough,' in which he holds that "preaching of the Gospel is one of God's plough-works, and the preacher is one of God's ploughmen," describes the labour upon which he raises his parallel: "For as the ploughman first setteth forth his plough, and then tilleth his land and breaketh it in furrows, and sometimes ridgeth it up again; and at another time harroweth it and clotteth it, and sometimes dungeth it and hedgeth it, diggeth it and weedeth it, purgeth it and maketh it clean,--so the prelate, the preacher, hath many divers offices to do." Latimer was the son of a Liecestershire farmer, and knew practically what he was talking about. He knew that the land would not bear an adequate crop without all this various and often-repeated labour. And yet the labour was so inadequately performed, that a few years after he had preached this famous sermon, we are told by a credible writer of the times of Queen Mary--William Bulleyn, a physician and botanist--that in 1555 "bread was so scant, insomuch that the plain poor people did make very much of acorns." A few years onward a great impulse was given to husbandry through various causes, amongst which the increased abundance of the precious metals through the opening of the mines of South America had no inconsiderable influence. The industrious spirit of England was fairly roused from a long sleep in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Harrison, in his 'Description of Britain,' says, "The soil is even now in these our days grown to be much more fruitful than it hath been in times past." This historian of manners saw the reason. "In times past" there was "idle and negligent occupation;" but when he wrote (1593) "our countrymen are grown to be more painful, skilful, and careful, through recompense of gain." The cultivators had their share of the benefits of cultivation; they had their "recompense of gain." Capital had been spread amongst the class of tenants: they were no longer miserable dependents upon their grasping lords. For a century or so onward the improvements in agriculture were not very decided. The rotation of crops was unknown; and winter food for sheep and cattle not being raised, the greater number were slaughtered and salted at Martinmas. The fleeces were wretchedly small, for the few sheep nibbled the stubbles and commons bare till the spring-time. The carcases of beef were not half their present size. At the beginning of the last century the turnip cultivation was introduced, and in the middle of the century the horse-hoeing husbandry came into use. Our agricultural revolution was fairly begun a hundred years ago; and yet for many years the value of manure was very imperfectly understood, and even up to our own time it has been wasted in every direction. There is given in Sir John Cullum's book an abstract of the lease of a farm in 1753. The tenant was to be allowed two shillings for every load of manure that he brought from Bury, about four miles distant. During twenty-one years the landlord was charged with only one load. At that period all agriculture was in a great degree traditional. There were no agricultural societies--no special journals for this great branch of national industry. Arthur Young applied his shrewd and observing talent to the dissemination of farming knowledge; but the agricultural mind, with very few exceptions, rejected book-knowledge as vain and impertinent. Chemistry applied to the soil was as unknown to the cultivator as the perturbations of the planets. Geology was an affair of conjecture, and had assumed no form of utility. Meteorology entered into no farmer's mode of estimating the comparative value of one site and another. Sir John Cullum made a most curious and instructive estimate of the science of the Suffolk farmers in 1784, when he wrote,--"The farm-houses are in general well furnished with every convenient accommodation. Into many of them a _barometer_ has of late years been introduced--a most useful instrument for the husbandman, and which is mentioned here as _a striking instance of the intelligence of this period_." The wars of the French Revolution, and the high prices consequent upon the almost utter absence of foreign supplies, gave a stimulus to agriculture, which principally displayed itself in the effort to bring waste lands into cultivation. From 1790 to 1819, a period of thirty years, there were two thousand one hundred and sixty-nine Inclosure Bills passed by Parliament. In the first ten years of this period the average price of wheat had increased ten shillings above the average of the ten years from 1780 to 1789. In the second ten years it had increased thirty-six shillings above that average. In the third ten years it was very nearly double, being 88_s._ 8_d._ from 1810 to 1819, and 45_s._ 9_d._ from 1780 to 1789. A portion of these prices, however, must be attributed to a depreciated currency. During that period of thirty years, very few of the great scientific improvements which have cheapened production had been introduced, although better modes of cultivation unquestionably prevailed. During the twenty years from 1820 to 1839 there were only three hundred and thirty-one Inclosure Bills passed; and the price of wheat had fallen to about the average of the ten years from 1790 to 1799, and it continued at that average for another ten years. In the ten years from 1840 to 1849, we cannot gather the amount of land brought into new cultivation from the number of Inclosure Bills, as there was a General Inclosure Act passed in 1835, to prevent the expense of particular bills for small tracts of land. But it has been calculated that, while more than three million acres were brought into cultivation in the twenty years from 1800 to 1819, about one million acres only were inclosed in the thirty years from 1820 to 1849.[18] If we look then, as we shall briefly do, at the wonderfully increased production of Great Britain, we shall be naturally led to the conclusion that some cause, much more efficient than the inclosure of waste lands, has given us the means of feeding a population which has doubled since the beginning of the century. This production is the result of the whole course of improvement effected by science, and stimulated by capital. The Bedford Level was drained by our ancestors. The fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire have been drained effectually in our time. That luxuriant flat now rejoices in waving corn-crops over many a mile. A few years ago it was a land of stagnant ditches; where little wind-mills, that looked to the solitary traveller through that cold district like the toys of children, lifted the water out of the trenches, and left an isolated acre or two of dry earth for man to toil in. Now mighty steam-pumps carry the water into artificial rivers, and the whole region is unrivalled for fertility. It is estimated by some statists that the average consumption of wheat for each individual of the population is eight bushels. Others estimate that consumption at six bushels. It will be sufficient for a broad view of the increase of production, as compared with the increase of population, to take the consumption at eight bushels, or a quarter of wheat per head. In the ten years from 1801 to 1810, deducting an annual average of 600,000 quarters of foreign wheat and flour imported, the population in 1811 being 11,769,725, the number fed by wheat of home growth was somewhat above eleven millions. In the ten years from 1841 to 1850, deducting an annual average of 3,000,000 quarters of foreign wheat and flour, the population in 1851 being 21,121,967, the number fed by wheat of home growth was somewhat above eighteen millions. The productive power of the country had increased, in the course of fifty years, to the enormous extent of giving subsistence, in one article of agricultural produce alone, to seven millions of people. The population in 1751 was estimated at little more than seven millions. It has trebled in a century; and we may be perfectly sure that the production of the land has far more than trebled in that period. The probability is that it has quadrupled; for there is no doubt that the great bulk of the people are better fed than in 1751, when rye-bread was the common sustenance of the great body of labourers throughout the country. Let us endeavour to take a rapid view of the implements of agriculture in common use at the present time--implements which have been described as "intended not to bring about new conditions of soil, nor to yield new products of any kind, but to do with more certainty and cheapness what had been done hitherto by employing the rude implements of former centuries." Such are the words of Mr. Pusey's admirable Report on the Agricultural Implements in the 'Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations.' We cannot do better than furnish a few slight notices of the leading subjects of this report. The plough and the harrow were the sole instruments of tillage at the beginning of this century. Bloomfield, in his 'Farmer's Boy,' describes them:-- "The ploughs move heavily, and strong the soil, And clogging harrows with augmented toil Dive deep." The old plough used to be drawn with four horses; and they were needed. It was a cumbrous instrument, "adapted to the clay soils when those soils were the chief source of corn to the country, and had been handed down from father to son, after the heavy lands had been widely laid down to grazing-ground, and the former downs had become our principal arable land." The modern plough is an implement constructed on mathematical principles, which, by its mould-board, "raising each slice of earth (furrow-slice) from its flat position, through an upright one, lays it over half inclined on the preceding slice." The perfect instrument produces the skilled labourer. A good ploughman will set up a pole a quarter of a mile distant, and trace a furrow so true up to that goal that no eye can detect any divergence from absolute straightness. Mr. Pusey justly says that this is a triumph of art. With an agriculture that permits no waste, much of the picturesque has fled from our fields. Bloomfield describes the repose of the ploughman after he has driven his team to the boundary of his furrow:-- "Welcome green headland! firm beneath his feet; Welcome the friendly bank's refreshing seat; There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs." Gone is the green headland; gone the cowslip bank; gone the pendent boughs. The furrow runs up to the extremest point of a vast field without hedges. Gone, too, are the green slips between the lands of common fields. Their very names of "balk" and "feather" are obsolete. These adornments of the landscape are inconsistent with the demands of a population that doubles itself in half a century. The labourer has small rest, and the soil has less. Under the old husbandry, before the culture of the green crops, one-third of the arable land was always idle. Two years of grain-crop, and one year of fallow, was the invariable rule. Look how the land is worked now. The plough and the harrow turn up and pulverize the soil, but they do it much more effectually than of old. The roller is a noble iron instrument, instead of an old pollard. Modern ingenuity has added the clod-crusher. But something was still wanting for the better preparation of land for seed--this is the scarifier or cultivator; which, according to Mr. Pusey, will save one half of the horse-labour employed upon the plough. Into the details of this saving it is no part of our purpose to enter.[19] We give a cut of the implement, covering as much ground in width as 8-1/2 ploughs. [Illustration: Clod-crusher.] [Illustration: Scarifier.] We proceed to "Instruments used in the Cultivation of Crops." Mr. Pusey tells us that "the sower with his seed-lip has almost vanished from southern England, driven out by a complicated machine, the drill, depositing the seed in rows, and drawn by several horses." We miss the sower; and the next generation may require a commentary upon the many religious and moral images that arose out of his primitive occupation. When James Montgomery says of the seed of knowledge, "broadcast it o'er the land," some may one day ask what "broadcast" means. But the drill does not only sow the seed; it deposits artificial manures for the reception of the seed. The bones that were thrown upon the dunghill are now crushed. The mountains of fertilizing matter that have been accumulated through ages on islands of the Pacific, from the deposits of birds resting in their flight upon rocks of that ocean, and which we call guano, now form a great article of commerce. Superphosphate, prepared from bones, or from the animal remains of geological ages, is another of the precious dusts which the drill economizes. There are even drills for dropping water combined with superphosphate. "Such," says Mr. Pusey, "is the elastic yet accurate pliability with which, in agriculture, mechanism has seconded chemistry." The system of horse-hoeing, which is the great principle of modern husbandry, entirely depends upon the use of the drill. The horse-hoe cannot be worked unless the plants are in rows. Such a hoe as this will clean at once nine rows of wheat, six of beans, and four of turnips. To manage such an instrument requires "a steady and cool hand." The skilled labourer is as essential as the beautiful machine. [Illustration: Horse-hoe.] Of instruments for gathering the harvest, the most important are reaping-machines. In the United States they are sold to a great extent. Mr. M'Cormick, who completed his invention in 1845, states that the demand reaches to a thousand annually. Mr. Pusey says of this machine that, "in bad districts and late seasons, it may often enable the farmer to save the crop." In Scotland and the north of England Mr. Bell's reaping-machine is coming into extensive use. The Americans have also their mowing-machines, drawn by two horses, which mow, upon an average, six acres of grass per day. The haymaking machines, as labour-saving instruments, are not uncommon in England. Machines for preparing corn for market are amongst the most important inventions of modern times. Here, indeed, agriculture assumes many of the external features of a manufacture. Steam comes prominently into action. In many large farms there is fixed steam-power; and most efficient it is. But the moveable steam-engine comes to the aid of the small farmer; and in some districts that power is let out to those who want it. By this little engine applied to a thrashing-machine, corn is thrashed at once from the rick, instead of being carried into the barn. Here is a representation of the combined steam-engine and thrashing-machine. The thrashing-machine with horse-power is that generally used in England. Rarely, now, can the beautiful description of Cowper be realized:-- "Thump after thump resounds the constant flail, That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear." [Illustration: Moveable steam-engine and thrashing-machine.] Few now wield that ancient instrument. Nor is the chaff now separated from the corn by the action of the wind, which was called winnowing, but we have the winnowing-machine, by which forty quarters of wheat can be taken from the thrashing-machine and prepared for the market in five hours. But machinery does not end here. The food of stock is prepared by machines. First, there is the turnip-cutter. Our 'Farmer's Boy' will tell us how his sheep and kine were fed in the winter fifty years ago:-- [Illustration: Thrashing-machine with horse-power.] "No tender ewe can break her nightly fast, Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast, Till Giles with ponderous beetle foremost go, And scattering splinters fly at every blow; When, pressing round him, eager for the prize, From their mix'd breath warm exhalations rise." We are told that "lambs fed with a turnip-cutter would be worth more at the end of a winter by eight shillings a head than lambs fed on whole turnips." The chaff-cutter is an instrument equally valuable. The last machine which we shall mention is connected with the greatest of all improvements in the crop-producing power of British land--the system of tile-draining. Pipes are now made by machinery; and land may be effectually drained at a cost of 4_l._ per acre. [Illustration: Draining-tile machine.] The farmers of England have made what we may fairly call heroic efforts to meet foreign competition; but their efforts would have been comparatively vain had science not come to the aid of production. According to the Census of 1851, the total population of Great Britain is 20,959,477--in round numbers, twenty-one millions. In the 'Return of Occupations,' one-half of this entire population is found under the family designation--such as child at home, child at school, wife, daughter, sister, niece, with no particular occupation attributed to them. They are important members of the state; they are growing into future producers, or they preside over the household comforts, without which there is little systematic industry. But they are not direct producers. Of this half of the entire population, one-fifth belong to the class of cultivators, viz.:-- Male. Female. Holders of farms 275,676 28,044 Farmers' relatives, in-door 137,446 Out-door labourers 1,006,728 70,899 Farm-servants, in-door 235,943 128,251 Shepherds, out-door 19,075 Woodmen 9,832 Gardeners 78,462 2,484 Farm bailiffs 12,805 Graziers 3,036 ____________ __________ 1,779,003 229,678 This total (in which we omit the farmers' wives and daughters, amounting to about 240,000) shows that one-fifth of the working population provide food, with the exception of foreign produce, for themselves and families and the other four-fifths of the population. Such a result could not be accomplished without the appliances of scientific power which we have described in this chapter. In the early steps of British society a very small proportion of labour could be spared for other purposes than the cultivation of the soil. It has been held that a community is considerably advanced when it can spare one man in three from working upon the land. Only twenty-six per cent of our adult males are agricultural--that is, three men labour at some other employment, while one cultivates the land. During the last forty years the proportion of agricultural employment, in comparison with manufacturing and commercial, has been constantly decreasing; and is now about twenty per cent., whereas in 1811 it was thirty-five per cent. of all occupations. [17] Cullum's 'History of Hawsted.' [18] See various tables in Porter's 'Progress of the Nation.' [19] See 'Journal of Royal Agricultural Society,' vol. xii. p. 595. CHAPTER XII. Production of a knife--Manufacture of iron--Raising coal--The hot-blast--Iron bridges--Rolling bar-iron--Making steel--Sheffield manufactures--Mining in Great Britain--Numbers engaged in mines and metal manufactures. We have been speaking somewhat fully of agricultural instruments and agricultural labour, because they are at the root of all other profitable industry. Bread and beef make the bone and sinew of the workman. Ploughs and harrows and drills and thrashing-machines are combinations of wood and iron. Rude nations have wooden ploughs. Unless the English labourer made a plough out of two pieces of stick, and carried it upon his shoulder to the field, as the toil-worn and poor people of India do, he must have some iron about it. He cannot get iron without machinery. He cannot get even his knife, his tool of all-work, without machinery. From the first step to the last in the production of a knife, machinery and scientific appliances have done the chief work. People that have no science and no machinery sharpen a stone, or bit of shell or bone, and cut or saw with it in the best way they can; and after they have become very clever, they fasten it to a wooden handle with a cord of bark. An Englishman examines two or three dozens of knives, selects which he thinks the best, and pays a shilling for it, the seller thanking him for his custom. The man who has nothing but the bone or the shell would gladly toil a month for that which does not cost an English labourer half a day's wages. And how does the Englishman obtain his knife upon such easy terms? From the very same cause that he obtains all his other accommodations cheaper, in comparison with the ordinary wages of labour, than the inhabitant of most other countries--that is, from the operations of science, either in the making of the thing itself, or in procuring that without which it could not be made. We must always remember that, if we could not get the materials without scientific application, it would be impossible for us to get what is made of those materials--even if we had the power of fashioning those materials by the rudest labour. Keeping this in mind, let us see how a knife could be obtained by a man who had nothing to depend upon but his hands. Ready-made, without the labour of some other man, a knife does not exist; but the iron, of which the knife is made, is to be had. Very little iron has ever been found in a native state, or fit for the blacksmith. The little that has been found in that state has been found only very lately; and if human art had not been able to procure any in addition to that, gold would have been cheap as compared with iron. Iron is, no doubt, very abundant in nature; but it is always mixed with some other substance that not only renders it unfit for use, but hides its qualities. It is found in the state of what is called _iron-stone_, or _iron-ore_. Sometimes it is mixed with clay, at other times with lime or with the earth of flint; and there are also cases in which it is mixed with sulphur. In short, in the state in which iron is frequently met with, it is a much more likely substance to be chosen for paving a road, or building a wall, than for making a knife. But suppose that the man knows the particular ore or stone that contains the iron, how is he to get it out? Mere force will not do, for the iron and the clay, or other substance, are so nicely mixed, that, though the ore were ground to the finest powder, the grinder is no nearer the iron than when he had a lump of a ton weight. A man who has a block of wood has a wooden bowl in the heart of it; and he can get it out too by labour. The knife will do it for him in time; and if he take it to the turner, the turner with his machinery, his lathe, and his gouge, will work it out for him in half an hour. The man who has a lump of iron-ore has just as certainly a knife in the heart of it; but no mere labour can work it out. Shape it as he may, it is not a knife, or steel, or even iron--it is iron-ore; and dress it as he will, it would not cut better than a brickbat--certainly not so well as the shell or bone of the savage. There must be knowledge before anything can be done in this case. We must know what is mixed with the iron, and how to separate it. We cannot do it by mere labour, as we can chip away the wood and get out the bowl; and therefore we have recourse to fire. In the ordinary mode of using it, fire would make matters worse. If we put the material into the fire as a stone, we should probably receive it back as slag or dross. We must, therefore, prepare our fuel. Our fire must be hot, very hot; but if our fuel be wood we must burn it into charcoal, or if it be coal into coke. The charcoal, or coke, answers for one purpose; but we have still the clay or other earth mixed with our iron, and how are we to get rid of that? Pure clay, or pure lime, or pure earth of flint, remains stubborn in our hottest fires; but when they are mixed in a proper proportion, the one melts the other. So charcoal or coke, and iron-stone or iron-ore, and limestone, are put into a furnace; the charcoal or coke is lighted at the bottom, and wind is blown into the furnace, at the bottom also. If that wind is not sent in by machinery, and very powerful machinery too, the effect will be little, and the work of the man great; but still it can be done. In this furnace the lime and clay, or earth of flint, unite, and form a sort of glass, which floats upon the surface. At the same time the carbon, or pure charcoal, of the fuel, with the assistance of the limestone, mixes with the stone, or ore, and melts the iron, which, being heavier than the other matters, runs down to the bottom of the furnace, and remains there till the workman lets it out by a hole made at the bottom of the furnace for that purpose, and plugged with sand. When the workman knows there is enough melted, or when the appointed time arrives, he displaces the plug of sand with an iron rod, and the melted iron runs out like water, and is conveyed into furrows made in sand, where it cools, and the pieces formed in the principal furrows are called "sows," and those in the furrows branching from them "pigs." We are now advanced a considerable way towards the production of a knife. We have the materials of a knife. We have the iron extracted out of the iron-ore. Before we trace the progress of a knife to its final polish, let us see what stupendous efforts of machinery have been required to produce the cast iron. In every part of the operation of making iron--in smelting the iron out of the ore; in moulding cast iron into those articles for which it is best adapted; in working malleable iron, and in applying it to use after it is made; nothing can be done without fire, and the fuel that is used in almost every stage of the business is coal. The coal trade and the iron trade are thus so intimately connected, so very much dependent upon each other, that neither of them could be carried on to any extent without the other. The coal-mines supply fuel, and the iron-works give mining tools, pumps, railroads, wheels, and steam-engines, in return. A little coal might be got without the iron engines, and a little iron might be made without coals, by the charcoal of wood. But the quantity of both would be trifling in comparison. The wonderful amount of the production of iron in Great Britain, and the cheapness of iron, as compared with the extent of capital required for its manufacture, arises from the fact that the coal-beds and the beds of iron-ore lie in juxta-position. The iron-stones alternate with the beds of coal in almost all our coal-fields; and thus the same mining undertakings furnish the ore out of which iron is made and the fuel by which it is smelted. If the coal were in the north, and the fuel in the south, the carriage of the one to the other would double the cost. There was a time when iron was made in this country with very little machinery. Iron was manufactured here in the time of the Romans; but it was made with great manual labour, and was consequently very dear. Hutton, in his 'History of Birmingham,' tells us that there is a large heap of cinders near that town which have been produced by an ancient iron-furnace; and that from the quantity of cinders, as compared with the mechanical powers possessed by our forefathers, the furnace must have been constantly at work from the time of Julius Cæsar. A furnace with a steam blast would produce as large a heap in a few years. At present a cottager in the south of England, where there is no coal in the earth, may have a bushel of good coals delivered at the door of his cottage for eighteen pence; although that is far more than the price of coal at the pit's mouth. If he had even the means of transporting himself and his family to the coal district, he could not, without machinery, get a bushel of coals at the price of a year's work. Let us see how a resolute man would proceed in such an undertaking. The machinery, we will say, is gone. The mines are filled up, which the greater part of them would be, with water, if the machinery were to stop a single week. Let us suppose that the adventurous labourer knows exactly the spot where the coal is to be found. This knowledge, in a country that has never been searched for coals before, is no easy matter, even to those who understand the subject best: it is the province of geology to give that knowledge. But we shall suppose that he gets over that difficulty too, for after it there is plenty of difficulty before him. Well, he comes to the exact spot that he seeks, and places himself right over the seam of coal. That seam is only a hundred fathoms below the surface, which depth he will, of course, reach in good time. To work he goes; pares off the green sod with his shovel, loosens the earth with his pickaxe, and, in the course of a week, is twenty feet down into the loose earth and gravel, and clears the rock at the bottom. He rests during the Sunday, and comes refreshed to his work on Monday morning; when, behold, there are twelve feet of water in his pit. Suppose he now calls in the aid of a bucket and rope, and that he bales away, till, as night closes, he has lowered the water three feet. Next morning it is up a foot and a half: but no matter; he has done something, and next day he redoubles his efforts, and brings the water down to only four feet. That is encouraging; but, from the depth, he now works his bucket with more difficulty, and it is again a week before his pit is dry. The weather changes; the rain comes down heavily; the surface on which it falls is spongy; the rock which he has reached is water-tight; and in twelve hours his pit is filled to the brim. It is in vain to go on. The sinking of a pit, even to a less depth than a hundred fathoms, sometimes demands, notwithstanding all the improvements by machinery, a sum of not less than a hundred pounds a fathom, or ten thousand pounds for the whole pit; and therefore, supposing it possible for a single man to do it at the rate of eighteen pence a day, the time which he would require would be between four hundred and five hundred years. Whence comes it that the labour of between four hundred and five hundred years is reduced to a single day? and that which, independently of the carriage, would have cost ten thousand pounds, is got for eighteen pence? It is because man joins with man, and machinery is employed to do the drudgery. Nations that have no machinery have no coal fires, and are ignorant that there is hidden under the earth a substance which contributes more, perhaps, to the health and comfort of the inhabitants of Britain than any other commodity which they enjoy. No nations have worked coal to anything approaching the extent in which it has been worked by our countrymen. It has been calculated that France, Belgium, Spain, Prussia, Bohemia, and the United States of America, do not annually produce more than seventeen million tons of coal, which is about half of our annual produce.[20] [Illustration: Steam-Boiler making.] The greater part of the coal now raised in Britain is produced by the employment of the most enormous mechanical power. There are in some places shallow and narrow pits, where coals may be raised to the surface by a windlass; and there are others where horse-power is employed. But the number of men that can work at a windlass, or the number of horses that can be yoked to a gin, is limited. The power of the steam-engine is limited only by the strength of the materials of which it is formed. The power of a hundred horses, or of five hundred men, may be very easily made by the steam-engine to act constantly, and on a single point; and thus there is scarcely anything in the way of mere force which the engine cannot be made to do. We have seen a pit in Staffordshire, which hardly gave coal enough to maintain a cottager and his family, for he worked the pit with imperfect machinery--with a half-starved ass applied to a windlass. A mile off was a steam-engine of 200-horse power, raising tons of coals and pumping out rivers of water with a force equal to at least a thousand men. This vast force acted upon a point; and therefore no advantage was gained over the machine by the opposing force of water, or the weight of the material to be raised. Before the steam-engine was invented, the produce of the coal-mines barely paid the expense of working and keeping them dry; and had it not been for the steam-engines and other machinery, the supply would long before now have dwindled into a very small quantity, and the price would have become ten or twenty times its present amount. The quantity of coal raised in Great Britain was estimated by Professor Ansted in 1851 at thirty-five million tons; and the value at nine millions sterling at the pit-mouth, and eighteen millions at the place of consumption. The capital engaged in the coal trade was then valued at ten millions. In 1847 the annual value of all the precious metals raised throughout the world was estimated at thirteen millions sterling. That value has been increased within a few years. But the coal of Great Britain, as estimated by the cost at the pit's mouth, is above two-thirds of this value of the precious metals seven years ago; and the mean annual value, at the furnace, of iron smelted by British coal being eight millions sterling, the value together of our iron and our coal exceeds the value of all the gold and silver of South America, and California, and Australia, however large that amount has now become. How the value of our cast iron has been increased by modern science may be in some degree estimated by a consideration of what the hot-blast has accomplished. The hot-blast blows hot air into the iron-furnace instead of cold air. The notion seems simple, but the results are wonderful. The inventor, Mr. Neilson, has seen since 1827 the production of iron raised from less than seven hundred thousand tons to two million two hundred thousand tons. The iron is greatly cheaper than a quarter of a century ago, for only about one-half the coal formerly used is necessary for its production. That production is almost unlimited in amount. In 1788 we produced only sixty thousand tons, or one-thirty-sixth part of what we now produce. The beautiful iron bridge of Colebrook-dale, erected in 1779, consumed three hundred and seventy-eight tons of cast iron. The wonderful Britannia Bridge which has been carried over the Menai Strait, hung in mid air at the height of a hundred feet above the stream, has required ten thousand tons of iron for its completion. If chemistry and machinery had not been at work to produce more iron and cheaper iron, how would our great modern improvements have stopped short--our railroads, our water-pipes, our gas-pipes, our steam-ships! How should we have lacked the great material of every useful implement, from the gigantic anchor that holds the man-of-war firm in her moorings, and the mighty gun that, in the last resort, asserts a spirit without which all material improvement cannot avert a nation's decay,--to the steel pen with which thoughts are exchanged between friends at the opposite ends of the earth, and the needle by which the poor seamstress in her garret maintains her place amongst competing numbers. [Illustration: The first iron bridge, Colebrook Dale.] Nearly all the people now engaged in iron-works are supported by the improvements that have been made in the manufacture, _by machinery_, since 1788. Yes, wholly by the machinery; for before then the quantity made by the charcoal of wood had fallen off one-fourth in forty-five years. The wood for charcoal was becoming exhausted, and nothing but the powerful blast of a machine will make iron with coke. Without the aid of machinery the trade would have become extinct. The iron and the coal employed in making it would have remained useless in the mines. And now, having seen what is required to produce a "pig" of cast iron, let us return to the knife, whose course of manufacture we traced a little way. The lump of cast iron as it leaves the furnace has many processes to go through before it becomes fit for making a knife. It cannot be worked by the hammer, or sharpened to a cutting edge; and so it must be made into malleable iron,--into a kind of iron which, instead of melting in the fire, will soften, and admit of being hammered into shape, or united by the process of welding. The methods by which this is accomplished vary; but they in general consist in keeping the iron melted in a furnace, and stirring it with an iron rake, till the blast of air in the furnace burns the greater part of the carbon out of it. By this means it becomes tough; and, without cooling, is taken from the furnace and repeatedly beaten by large hammers, or squeezed through large rollers, until it becomes the bar-iron of which so much use is made in every art of life. [Illustration: Rolling bar-iron.] About the close of the last century the great improvement in the manufacture of bar-iron was introduced by passing it through grooved rollers, instead of hammering it on the anvil; but in our own time the invention has become most important. The inventor, Mr. Coet, spent a fortune on the enterprise and died poor. His son, in 1812, petitioned Parliament to assign him some reward for the great gift that his father had bestowed upon the nation. He asked in vain. It is the common fate of the ingenious and the learned; and it is well that life has some other consolations for the man that has exercised his intellect more profitably for the world than for himself, than the pride of the mere capitalist, who thinks accumulation, and accumulation only, the chief business of existence. Rolling bar-iron is one of the great labour-saving principles that especially prevail in every branch of manufacture in metals. The unaided strength of all the men in Britain could not make all the iron which is at present made, though they did nothing else. Machinery is therefore resorted to; and water-wheels, steam-engines, and all sorts of powers are set to work in moving hammers, turning rollers, and drawing rods and wires through holes, till every workman can have the particular form which he wants. If it were not for the machinery that is employed in the manufacture, no man could obtain a spade for less than the price of a year's labour; the yokes of a horse would cost more than the horse himself; and the farmer would have to return to wooden plough-shares, and hoes made of sticks with crooked ends. After all this, the iron is not yet fit for a knife, at least for such a knife as an Englishman may buy for a shilling. Many nations would, however, be thankful for a little bit of it, and nations too in whose countries there is no want of iron-ore. But they have no knowledge of the method of making iron, and have no furnaces or machinery. When our ships sail among the people of the eastern islands, those people do not ask for gold. "Iron, iron!" is the call; and he who can exchange his best commodity for a rusty nail or a bit of iron hoop is a fortunate individual. We are not satisfied with that in the best form, which is a treasure to those people in the worst. We must have a knife, not of iron, but of _steel_,--a substance that will bear a keen edge without either breaking or bending. In order to get that, we must again change the nature of our material. How is that to be done? The oftener that iron is heated and hammered, it becomes the softer and more ductile; and as the heating and hammering forced the carbon out of it, if we give it the carbon back again, we shall harden it; but it happens that we also give it other properties, by restoring its carbon, when the iron has once been in a ductile state. For this purpose, bars or pieces of iron are buried in powdered charcoal, covered up in a vessel, and kept at a red heat for a greater or less number of hours, according to the object desired. There are niceties in the process, which it is not necessary to explain, that produce the peculiar quality of steel, as distinguished from cast iron. If the operation of heating the iron in charcoal is continued too long, or the heat is too great, the iron becomes cast steel, and cannot be welded; but if it is not melted in the operation, it can be worked with the hammer in the same manner as iron. In each case, however, it has acquired the property upon which the keenness of the knife depends; and the chief difference between the cast steel, and the steel that can bear to be hammered is, that cast steel takes a keener edge, but is more easily broken. [Illustration: Shear and Tilt Hammers: Steel-manufacture.] The property which it has acquired is that of bearing to be tempered. If it be made very hot, and plunged into cold water, and kept there till it is quite cooled, it is so hard that it will cut iron, but it is brittle. In this state the workman brightens the surface, and lays the steel upon a piece of hot iron, and holds it to the fire till it becomes of a colour which he knows from experience is a test of the proper state of the process. Then he plunges it again into water, and it has the degree of hardness that he wants. The grinding a knife, and the polishing it, even when it has acquired the requisite properties of steel, if they were not done by machinery, would cost more than the whole price of a knife upon which machinery is used. A travelling knife-grinder, with his treadle and wheels, has a machine, but not a very perfect one. The Sheffield knife-maker grinds the knife at first upon wheels of immense size, turned by water or steam, and moving so quickly that they appear to stand still--the eye cannot follow the motion. With these aids the original grinding and polishing cost scarcely anything; while the travelling knife-grinder charges two pence for the labour of himself and his wheel in just sharpening it. [Illustration: File-cutters.] The "Sheffield whittle" is as old as the time of Edward III., as we know from the poet Chaucer. Sheffield is still the metropolis of steel. It is in the change of iron into steel by a due admixture of carbon--by hammering, by casting, by melting--that the natural powers of Sheffield, her water and her coal, have become of such value. Wherever there is a stream with a fall, there is the grinding-wheel at work: and in hundreds of workshops the nicer labour of the artificer is fashioning the steel into every instrument which the art of man can devise, from the scythe of the mower to the lancet of the surgeon. The machinery that made the steel has called into action the skill that makes the file-cutter. No machine can make a file. The file-cutter with a small hammer can cut notch after notch in a piece of softened steel, without a guide or gauge,--even to the number of a hundred notches in an inch. It is one out of many things in which skilled labour triumphs over the uniformity of operation which belongs to a machine. The cutting of files alone in Great Britain gives employment to more than six thousand persons. This is one of the many instances in which it is evident that the application of machinery to the arts calls into action an almost infinite variety of handicrafts. An ordinary workman can obtain a knife for the price of a few hours' labour. The causes are easily seen. Every part of the labour that can be done by machinery is so done. One turn of a wheel, one stroke of a steam-engine, one pinch of a pair of rollers, or one blow of a die, will do more in a second than a man could do in a month. One man, also, has but one thing to do in connexion with the machinery; and when the work of the hand succeeds to the work of the wheel or the roller, the one man, like the file-cutter, has still but one thing to do. In course of time he comes to do twenty times as much as if he were constantly shifting from one thing to another. The value of the work that a man does is not to be measured in all cases by the time and trouble that it cost him individually, but by the market value of what he produces; which value is determined, as far as labour is concerned, by the price paid for doing it in the best and most expeditious mode. And does not all this machinery, and this economy of labour, it may still be said, deprive many workmen of employment? No. By these means the iron trade gives bread to hundreds, where otherwise it would not have given bread to one. There are more hands employed at the iron-works than there would have been if there had been no machinery; because without machinery men could not produce iron cheap enough to be generally used. The machinery that is now employed in the iron trade, not only enables the people to be supplied cheaply with all sorts of articles of iron, but it enables a great number of people to find employment, not in the iron trade only, but in all other trades, who otherwise could not have been employed; and it enables everybody to do more work with the same exertion by giving them better tools; while it makes all more comfortable by furnishing them with more commodious domestic utensils. There are thousands of families on the face of the earth, that would be glad to exchange all they have for a tin kettle, or an iron pot, which can be bought anywhere in the three kingdoms for a shilling or two. And could the poor man in this country but once see how even the rich man in some other places must toil day after day before he can scrape or grind a stone so as to be able to boil a little water in it, or make it serve for a lamp, he would account himself a poor man no more. An English gipsy carries about with him more of the conveniences of life than are enjoyed by the chiefs or rulers in countries which naturally have much finer climates than that of England. But they have no machinery, and therefore they are wretched. Great Britain is a country rich in other minerals than iron-stone and coal. Our earliest ancestors are recorded to have exchanged tin with maritime people who came to our shores. They had lead also, which was cast into oblong blocks during the Roman occupation of the island, and which bear the imperial stamp. At the beginning of the eighteenth century we worked tin into pewter, which, in the shape of plates, had superseded wooden trenchers. But we raised and smelted no copper, importing it unwrought. The valuable tin and copper mines of Cornwall were imperfectly worked in the middle of the last century, because the water which overflowed them was only removed by hydraulic engines, the best of which was introduced in 1700. When Watt had reconstructed the steam-engine, steam-power began to be employed in draining the Cornwall mines. In 1780, 24,443 tons of copper-ore were raised, producing 2932 tons of copper. In 1850, 155,025 tons of ore were obtained, producing 12,254 tons of copper. The tin-mines produced 1600 tons in 1750, and 10,719 tons in 1849. The produce of the lead-mines has not been accurately estimated. [Illustration: Entrance to the Mine of Odin, an ancient Lead-mine in Derbyshire.] In all mining operations, conducted as they are in modern times, and in our own country, we must either go without the article produced, whether coal, or iron, or lead, or copper, if the machines were abolished,--or we must employ human labour, in works the most painful, at a price which would not only render existence unbearable, but destroy it altogether. The people, in that case, would be in the condition of the unhappy natives of South America, when the Spaniards resolved to get gold at any cost of human suffering. The Spaniards had no machines but pickaxes and spades to put in the hands of the poor Indians. They compelled them to labour incessantly with these, and half the people were destroyed. Without machinery, in places where people can obtain even valuable ore for nothing, the collection and preparation of metals is hardly worth the labour. Mungo Park describes the sad condition of the Africans who are always washing gold-dust;--and we have seen in Derbyshire a poor man separating small particles of lead from the limestone, or spar, of that country, and unable to earn a shilling a day by the process. A man of capital erects lead-works, and in a year or two obtains an adequate profit, and employs many labourers. It may enable us, in addition to our slight notices of quantities produced, to form something like an accurate conception of the vast mineral industry of this country, if we give the aggregate of men employed as miners and metal-workers, according to the census of 1851. Of coal-miners there were 216,366; of iron-miners, 27,098; of copper-miners, 18,468; of tin-miners, 12,912; of lead-miners, 21,617. This is a total of 296,461. In the manufacture of various articles of iron and steel, in addition to the iron and coal miners, who cannot be accurately distinguished, there are employed 281,578 male workers, and 18,807 female; and in the manufacture of articles of brass and other mixed metals, 46,076; of which number 8370 are females. The workers in metal thus enumerated amount to 542,922. We may add, from the class of persons engaged in mechanic productions, in which we find 48,050 engine and machine makers, and 7429 gunsmiths, a number that will raise the aggregate of miners and workers in metals to 600,000 persons. The boldness of some of the operations which are conducted in this department of industry, the various skill of the labourers, and the vastness of the aggregate results, impress the mind with a sense of power that almost belongs to the sublime. The fables of mythology are tame when compared with these realities of science. Vulcan, with his anvils in Ætna, is a feeble instrument by the side of the steam-hammer that forges an anchor, or the hydraulic press that lifts a bridge. A knot of Cupids co-operating for the fabrication of their barbed arrows is the poetry of painting applied to the arts. But there is higher poetry in that triumph of knowledge, and skill, and union of forces, which fills a furnace with fifty thousand pounds of molten iron, and conducts the red-hot stream to the enormous mould which is to produce a cylinder without a flaw. [Illustration: Cupids forging arrows. From Albani.] [Illustration: Coal-Railway from South Hetton to Seaham Harbour, with the ascending and descending Trains.] [20] See a table by Professor Ansted in the Great Exhibition Catalogue, vol. i. p. 181. CHAPTER XIII. Conveyance and extended use of coal--Consumption at various periods--Condition of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Advantages of good roads--Want of roads in Australia--Turnpike-roads--Canals--Railway of 1680--Railway statistics. We have seen how by machinery more than thirty-five million tons of coal--now become one of the very first necessaries of life--are obtained, which without machinery could not be obtained at all in the thousandth part of the quantity; and which, consequently, would be a thousand times the price--would, in fact, be precious stones, instead of common fuel. Engines or machines, of some kind or other, not only keep the pits dry and raise the coals to the surface, but convey them to the ship upon railroads; the ship, itself a machine, carries them round all parts of the coast; barges and boats convey them along the rivers and canals; and, within these few years, railways have carried the coals of the north into remote places in the southern and other counties, where what was called "sea-coal," from its being carried coastwise, was scarcely known as an article of domestic use. The inhabitants of such places had no choice but to consume wood and turf for every domestic purpose. Through the general consumption of wood instead of coal, a fire for domestic use in France is a great deal dearer than a fire in England; because, although the coal-pits are not to be found at every man's door, nor within many miles of the doors of some men, machinery at the pits, and ships and barges, and railways, which are also machinery, enable most men to enjoy the blessings of a coal fire at a much cheaper rate than a fire of wood, which is not limited in its growth to any particular district. Without the machinery to bring coals to his door, not one man out of fifty of the present population of England could have had the power of warming himself in winter; any more than without the machines and implements of farming he could obtain food, or without those of the arts he could procure clothing. The sufferings produced by a want of fuel cannot be estimated by those who have abundance. In Normandy, very recently, such was the scarcity of wood, that persons engaged in various works of hand, as lace-making by the pillow, absolutely sat up through the winter nights in the barns of the farmers, where cattle were littered down, that they might be kept warm by the animal heat around them. They slept in the day, and were warmed by being in the same outhouse with cows and horses at night;--and thus they worked under every disadvantage, because fuel was scarce and very dear. Coals were consumed in London in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but their use was, no doubt, very limited. Shakspere, who always refers to the customs of his own time, makes Dame Quickly speak of "sitting in my Dolphin-chamber at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week." But Mrs. Quickly was a luxurious person, who had plate and tapestry and gilt goblets. Harrison, in his 'Description of Britain,' at the same period, says, that coal is "used in the cities and towns that lie about the coast;" but he adds, "I marvel not a little that there is no trade of these into Sussex and Southamptonshire; for want thereof the smiths do work their iron with charcoal." He adds, with great truth, "I think that far carriage be the only cause." The consumption of coal in London in the last year of Charles II. (1685) amounted to three hundred and fifty thousand tons. This was really a large consumption, however insignificant it may sound when compared with the modern demand of the metropolis. In 1801 there were imported into London about a million tons of coals. In 1850, three million six hundred thousand tons were brought to the London market. The average contract price in the ten years ending 1810 was 45_s._ 6_d._; in the ten years ending 1850 it was 18_s._ 6_d._ But in 1824 the oppressive duty of 7_s._ 6_d._ per ton on seaborne coals was reduced to 4_s._; and in 1831 the duty was wholly repealed. It is the boast of our present fiscal system that the chief materials of manufacture, and the great necessaries and conveniences of life, are no longer made dear by injudicious taxation. The chief power which produces coal and iron cheap is that of machinery. It is the same power which distributes these bulky articles through the country, and equalizes the cost in a considerable degree to the man who lives in London and the man who lives in Durham or Staffordshire. The difference in cost is the price of transport; and machinery, applied in various improved ways, is every year lessening the cost of conveyance, and thus equalizing prices throughout the British Islands. The same applications of mechanical power enable a man to move from one place to another with equal ease, cheapness, and rapidity. Quick travelling has become cheaper than slow travelling. The time saved remains for profitable labour. About a hundred and ninety years ago, when the first turnpike-road was formed in England, a mob broke the toll-gates, because they thought an unjust tax was being put upon them. They did not perceive that this small tax for the use of a road would confer upon them innumerable comforts, and double and treble the means of employment. If there were no road, and no bridge, a man would take six months in finding his way from London to Edinburgh, if indeed he found it at all. He would have to keep the line of the hills, in order that he might come upon the rivers at particular spots, where he would be able to jump over them with ease, or wade through them without danger. When a man has gone up the bank of a river for twelve miles in one direction, in order to be able to cross it, he may find that, before he proceeds one mile in the line of his journey, he has to go along the bank of another river for twelve miles in the opposite direction; and the courses of the rivers may be so crooked that he is really farther from his journey's end at night than he was in the morning. He may come to the side of a lake, and not know the end at which the river, too broad and deep for him to cross, runs out; and he may go twenty miles the wrong way, and thus lose forty. Difficulties such as these are felt by every traveller in an uncivilized country. In reading books of travels, in Africa for instance, we sometimes wonder how it is that the adventurer proceeds a very few miles each day. We forget that he has no roads. Two hundred years ago--even one hundred years ago--in some places fifty years ago--the roads of England were wholly unfit for general traffic and the conveyance of heavy goods. Pack-horses mostly carried on the communication in the manufacturing districts. The roads were as unfit for moving commodities of bulk, such as coal, wool, and corn, as the sandy roads of Poland were thirty years ago, and as many still are. Mr. Jacob, who went upon the continent to see what stores of wheat existed, found that in many parts the original price of wheat was doubled by the price of land conveyance for a very few miles. In 1663 the first turnpike act, which was so offensive to some of the people, was carried through Parliament. It was for the repair of the "ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York," which was declared to be "very ruinous, and become almost impassable." This was, on many accounts, one of the most important lines of the country. Let us see in what state it was seventeen years after the passing of the act. In the 'Diary of Ralph Thoresby,' under the date of October, 1680, we have this entry:--"To Ware, twenty-miles from London, a most pleasant road in summer, and as bad in winter, because of the depth of the cart-ruts." Take another road a little later. In December, 1703, Charles III., King of Spain, slept at Petworth on his way from Portsmouth to Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there by desire of the Queen. The distance from Windsor to Petworth is about forty miles. In the relation of the journey given by one of the prince's attendants, he states,--"We set out at six in the morning, by torchlight, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the Prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways I over saw in my life. We were thrown but once indeed in going, but our coach, which was the leading one, and his Highness's body-coach, would have suffered very much, if the nimble poors of Sussex had not frequently poised it, or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth, and the nearer we approached the duke's house the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours' time to conquer them." From Horsham, the county-town of Sussex, about the beginning of the reign of George III., the roads were never in such a condition as to allow sheep or cattle to be driven on them to the London market; and consequently, there not being sufficient demand at home to give a remunerating price, the beef and mutton were sold at a rate far below the average to the small population in the country, which was thus isolated from the common channels of demand and supply. [Illustration: Telford.] In the Highlands of Scotland, at the beginning of the present century, the communication from one district to another was attended with such difficulty and danger, that some of the counties were excused from sending jurors to the circuit to assist in the administration of justice. The poor people inhabiting these districts were almost entirely cut off from intercourse with the rest of mankind. The Highlands were of less advantage to the British empire than the most distant colony. Parliament resolved to remedy the evil; and, accordingly, from 1802 to 1817, the sum of two hundred thousand pounds was laid out in making roads and bridges in these mountainous districts. Mark the important consequences to the people of the Highlands, as described by Mr. Telford, the engineer of the roads:-- "Since these roads were made accessible, wheelwrights and cartwrights have been established, the plough has been introduced, and improved tools and utensils are used. The plough was not previously used in general; in the interior and mountainous parts they frequently used crooked sticks with iron on them, drawn or pushed along. The moral habits of the great mass of the working classes are changed; they see that they may depend on their own exertions for support. This goes on silently, and is scarcely perceived until apparent by the results. I consider these improvements one of the greatest blessings ever conferred upon any country. About two hundred thousand pounds has been granted in fifteen years. It has been the means of advancing the country at least one hundred years." There are many parts of Ireland which sustained the same miseries and inconveniences from the want of roads as the Highlands of Scotland did at the beginning of the present century. In 1823 Mr. Nimmo, the engineer, stated to parliament, that the fertile plains of Limerick, Cork, and Kerry, were separated from each other by a deserted country, presenting an impassable barrier between them. This region was the retreat of smugglers, robbers, and culprits of every description; for the tract was a wild, neglected, and deserted country, without roads, culture, or civilization. The government ordered roads to be made through this barren district. We will take one example of the immediate effect of this road-making, as described by a witness before Parliament:--"A hatter, at Castle-island, had a small field through which the new road passed; this part next the town was not opened until 1826. In making arrangements with him for his damages, he said that he ought to make me (the engineer) a present of all the land he had, for that the second year I was at the roads he sold more hats to the people of the mountains alone than he did for seven years before to the high and low lands together. Although he never worked a day on the roads, he got comfort and prosperity by them." The hatter of Castle-island got comfort and prosperity by the roads, because the man who had to sell and the man who had to buy were brought closer to each other by means of the roads. When there were no roads, the hatter kept his goods upon the shelf, and the labourer in the mountains went without a hat. When the labourer and the hatter were brought together by the roads, the hatter soon sold off his stock, and the manufacturer of hats went to work to produce him a new stock; while the labourer, who found the advantage of having a hat, also went to work to earn more money, that he might pay for another when he should require it. It became a fashion to wear hats, and of course a fashion to work hard, and to save time, to be able to pay for them. Thus the road created industry on both sides,--on the side of the producer of hats and that of the consumer. Instances such as these of the want of communication between one district and another are now very rare indeed in these islands. But if we look to countries intimately connected with our own, we shall find no lack of examples of a state of commercial intercourse attending a want of roads. The gold-fields of Australia have largely stimulated the export of manufactured goods from Great Britain. One of the colonists at Sydney writes thus to the chief organ of intelligence in England:--"The roads throughout the colony, bad as they were, are now worse than ever. The inland mails cannot run by night, and stick fast and upset in all directions by day. Communication with the interior towns is possible only at enormous cost. The price of conveying a ton of goods from Sydney to Bathurst, about 130 miles, is eight times the freight of the same quantity from London to Sydney. In cost of conveyance London and Liverpool are, in fact, only sixteen miles from Sydney by land, though the distance by sea is 16,000. We here see daily the most striking illustration of the truth that 'Seas but join the regions they divide.' Cargoes are poured into the seaports with the greatest facility, and then the distribution is suddenly checked. Hence the enormous rents of stores, cessation of demand, and the necessity of forced sales, with the natural consequence--heavy losses to the exporters, who perhaps wonder how trade with Australia can be so unprofitable, scarcely suspecting one of the main causes of its uncertainty. English merchants might do worse than help to open up the internal communications of this continent." The city of Sydney has a wharfage two miles in extent. The communication from the port to the interior is thus described:--"Imagine the Great Western Railroad, instead of terminating in a splendid station, with every means of conveying and removing goods to roads in every direction, ending suddenly in swamp, forest, and sand, through which, by dint of lashing, and swearing, and unloading, and reloading, a team of bullocks and a dray drag their Manchester goods ten miles _per diem_, at 50_l._ or 80_l._ per ton for the journey. The channel of trade is all that civilization, science, and capital can make it, from the threshold of the Manchester factory to the edge of the Sydney wharf. There it breaks suddenly, and beyond all is primitive, rude, and barbarous in the means of conveyance. The bale of goods last unloaded from the railway train is transferred to the bullock dray, to begin its 'crawl' up the country, costing all its freight from England for every twenty miles. It cannot be otherwise. There are no passable roads." [Illustration: Modern Syrian Cart.] It is impossible to have a more vivid picture than this of the sudden impediment which the commercial enterprise of one country receives from the want of the commonest means of communication in another. The bullock-cart of Syria, and the Australian bullock-cart, would be useful instruments if they had roads to work in. But there must be general civilization before there are extensive roads. Carts and bullocks are of readier creation than roads. It has taken eighteen centuries to make our English roads, and the Romans, the kings of the world, were our great road-makers, whose works still remain:-- "labouring pioneers, A multitude with spades and axes arm'd, To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill, Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke."--PARADISE REGAINED. What the Romans were to England, the colonized English must be to Australia. But the discovery of great natural wealth, the vigour of the race, the intercourse with commercial nations of the old and new world, the free institutions which have been transplanted there without any arbitrary meddling or chilling patronage, will effect in a quarter of a century what the parent people, struggling with ignorant rulers and feeble resources, have been ages in accomplishing. It is encouraging to all nations to see what we have accomplished in this direction. In 1839 the turnpike-roads of England and Wales amounted to 21,962 miles, and in Scotland to 3666 miles; while in England and Wales the other highways amounted to 104,772 miles. The turnpike-roads were maintained at a cost of a million a year; and the parish highways at a cost of about twelve hundred thousand pounds. There were at that time nearly eight thousand toll-gates in England and Wales. There had been two thousand miles of turnpike-roads, and ten thousand miles of other highways, added to the number existing in 1814. But the improvements of all our roads during that period had been enormous. Science was brought to bear upon the turnpike lines. Common sense changed their form and re-organized their material. The most beautiful engineering was applied to raise valleys and lower hills. Mountains were crossed with ease; rivers were spanned over by massive piers, or by bridges which hung in the air like fairy platforms. The names of M'Adam and Telford became "household words;" and even parish surveyors, stimulated by example, took thought how to mend their ways. The Canals of England date only for a hundred years back. The first Act of Parliament for the construction of a canal was passed in 1755. The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his first Act of Parliament in 1759, for the construction of those noble works which will connect his memory with those who have been the greatest benefactors of their country. The great manufacturing prosperity of England dates from this period; and it will be for ever associated with the names of Watt, the improver and almost the inventor of the steam-engine,--of Arkwright, the presiding genius of cotton-spinning,--and of Brindley, the great engineer of canals. In the conception of the vast works which Brindley undertook for the Duke of Bridgewater, there was an originality and boldness which may have been carried further in recent engineering, but which a century ago were the creators of works which were looked upon as marvels. To cut tunnels through hills--to carry mounds across valleys--to build aqueducts over navigable rivers--were regarded then as wild and impracticable conceptions. Another engineer, at Brindley's desire, was called in to give an opinion as to a proposed aqueduct over the river Irwell. He looked at the spot where the aqueduct was to be built, and exclaimed, "I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to be erected." Brindley's castle in the air still stands firm; and his example, and that of his truly illustrious employer, have covered our land with many such fabrics, which owe their origin not to the government but to the people. [Illustration: Brindley's Aqueduct over the Irwell.] The navigable canals of England are more than two thousand miles in length. For the slow transport of heavy goods they hold their place against the competition of railroads, and continue to be important instruments of internal commerce. When railways were first projected it is said that an engineer, being asked what would become of the canals if the new mode of transit were adopted, answered that they would be drained and become the beds of railways. Like many other predictions connected with the last great medium of internal communication, the engineer was wholly mistaken in his prophecy. The great principle of exchange between one part of this empire and another part, which has ceased to be an affair of restrictions and jealousies, has covered the island with good roads, with canals, and finally with railways. The railway and the steam-carriage have carried the principle of diminishing the price of conveyance, and therefore of commodities, by machinery, to an extent which makes all other illustrations almost unnecessary. A road with a waggon moving on it is a mechanical combination; a canal, with its locks, and towing-paths, and boats gliding along almost without effort, is a higher mechanical combination; a railway, with its locomotive engine, and carriage after carriage dragged along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, is the highest of such mechanical combinations. The force applied upon a level turnpike-road, which is required to move 1800 lbs., if applied to drag a canal-boat will move 55,500 lbs., both at the rate of 2-1/2 miles per hour. But we want economy in time as well as economy in the application of motive power. It has been attempted to apply speed to canal travelling. Up to four miles an hour the canal can convey an equal weight more economically than a railroad; but after a certain velocity is exceeded, that is 13-1/2 miles an hour, the horse on the turnpike-road can drag as much as the canal-team. Then comes in the great advantage of the railroad. The same force that is required to draw 1900 lbs. upon a canal, at a rate above 13-1/2 miles an hour, will draw 14,400 lbs. upon a railway, at the rate of 13-1/2 miles an hour. The producers and consumers are thus brought together, not only at the least cost of transit, but at the least expenditure of time. The road, the canal, and the railway have each their distinctive advantages; and it is worthy of note how they work together. From every railway station there must be a road to the adjacent towns and villages, and a better road than was once thought necessary. Horses are required as much as ever, although mails and post-chaises are no longer the glories of the road; and the post finds its way into every hamlet by the united agency of the road and the railway. Roger North described a Newcastle railway in 1680:--"Another thing that is remarkable is their way-leaves; for when men have pieces of ground between the colliery and the river, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground; and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect 20_l._ per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber, from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails; whereby the carriage is so easy that the horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal-merchant." Who would have thought that this contrivance would have led to no large results till a hundred and fifty years had passed away? Who could have believed that "the rails of timber, exactly straight and parallel," and the "bulky carts with four rowlets exactly fitting the rails," would have changed the face, and to a great degree the destinies, of the world? If we add to the road, the canal, and the railway, the steam-boat traffic of our own coasts, we cannot hesitate to believe that the whole territory of Great Britain and Ireland is more compact, more closely united, more accessible, than was a single county two centuries ago. It may be said, without exaggeration, that it would now be impossible for a traveller in England to set himself down in any accessible situation where the post from London would not reach him in twelve hours. When the first edition of the 'Results of Machinery' was published in 1831, we said that the post from London would reach any part of England in three days; and that, "fifty years before, such a quickness of communication would have been considered beyond the compass of human means." In twenty-four years we have so diminished the practical amount of distance between one part of Great Britain and another, that the post from London to Aberdeen is carried five hundred and forty miles in little more than twenty hours. It is this wonderful rapidity of communication, in connection with the cheapness of postage, which has multiplied letters five-fold since 1839, when the penny rate was introduced. In that year the number of chargeable and franked letters distributed in the United Kingdom was eighty-two millions; in 1853 it was four hundred and ten millions. [Illustration: Locomotive-Engine Factory.] The annual returns of our railways furnish some of the most astounding figures of modern statistics. On the 1st of January 1854 there were open in England 5811 miles of railway; in Scotland, 995 miles; in Ireland, 834 miles. In 1853 there were one hundred and two million passengers conveyed, who travelled one billion five hundred million miles, being an average of nearly fifteen miles to each passenger. In England considerably less than one-half of the passengers were by penny-a-mile and other third-class trains; in Ireland one-half; and in Scotland two-thirds. The receipts from goods traffic exceed those of the passenger traffic in England and Scotland, but are less in Ireland. These are indeed wonderful results from a system which was wholly experimental twenty-five years ago. [Illustration: Railway Locomotive.] When William Hutton, in the middle of last century, started from Nottingham (where he earned a scanty living as a bookbinder) and walked to London and back for the purpose of buying tools, he was nine days from home, six of which were spent in going and returning. He travelled on foot, dreading robbers, and still more dreading the cost of food and lodging at public-houses. His whole expenses during this toilsome expedition were only ten shillings and eight pence; but he contented himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools sewed up in his shirt-collar. If William Hutton had lived in these days, he would, upon sheer principles of economy, have gone to London by the Nottingham train at a cost of twenty shillings for his transit, in one forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty shillings would have been sacrificed for his conveyance, but he would have had a week's labour free to go to work with his new tools; he need not have sewed his money in his shirt-collar for fear of thieves; and his shoes would not have been worn out and his feet blistered in his toilsome march of two hundred and fifty miles. A very few years ago it was not uncommon to hear men say that this wonderful communication, the greatest triumph of modern skill, was not a blessing;--for the machinery had put somebody out of employ. Baron Humboldt, a traveller in South America, tells us that, upon a road being made over a part of the great chain of mountains called the Andes, the government was petitioned against the road by a body of men who for centuries had gained a living by carrying travellers in baskets strapped upon their backs over the fearful rocks, which only these guides could cross. Which was the better course--to make the road, and create the thousand employments belonging to freedom of intercourse, for these very carriers of travellers, and for all other men; or to leave the mountains without a road, that the poor guides might gain a premium for risking their lives in an unnecessary peril? But, looking at their direct results, we have no doubt that railroads have greatly multiplied the employments connected with the conveyance of goods and passengers. In 1853 there were eighty thousand persons employed upon the railroads of the United Kingdom in various capacities. We do not include those employed in working upon lines that are not open for traffic, which class in England amounted to twenty-five thousand persons in 1853. But the indirect occupations called into activity by railroads are so numerous as to defy all attempts at calculating the numbers engaged in them. No doubt many occupations were changed by railroads;--there were fewer coachmen, guards, postboys, waggoners, and others, on such a post-road as that from London to York. But it is equally certain that throughout the kingdom there are far more persons employed in conducting the internal communication of the country, effecting that great addition to its productive powers, without which all other production would languish and decay. The census returns of 1851 give the number of three hundred and eighty-six thousand males so employed, including those engaged on our rivers, canals, and coast traffic. [Illustration: Reindeer.] The vast extension, and the new channels, of our foreign commerce have been greatly affected by the prodigious facilities of our internal communication. They have created, in a measure, special departments of industry, which can be most advantageously pursued in particular localities; but which railways and steam-vessels have united with the whole kingdom, with its colonies, with the habitable globe. The reindeer connects the Laplander with the markets of Sweden, and draws his sledge over the frozen wilds at a speed and power of continuance only rivalled by the locomotive. The same beneficent Providence which has given this animal to the inhabitant of the polar regions,--not only for food, for clothing, but for transport to associate him with some civilization,--has bestowed upon us the mighty power of steam, to connect us with the entire world, from which we were once held to be wholly separated. [Illustration: Beaver.] CHAPTER XIV. Houses--The pyramids--Mechanical power--Carpenters' tools--American machinery for building--Bricks--Slate-- Household fittings and furniture--Paper-hangings-- Carpets--Glass--Pottery--Improvements effected through the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements. The beaver builds his huts with the tools which nature has given him. He gnaws pieces of wood in two with his sharp teeth, so sharp that the teeth of a similar animal, the agouti, form the only cutting-tool which some rude nations possess. When the beavers desire to move a large piece of wood, they join in a body to drag it along. Man has not teeth that will cut wood: but he has reason, which directs him to the choice of much more perfect tools. [Illustration: Pyramid and sphinx] Some of the great monuments of antiquity, such as the pyramids of Egypt, are constructed of enormous blocks of stone brought from distant quarries. We have no means of estimating, with any accuracy, the mechanical knowledge possessed by the people engaged in these works. It was, probably, very small, and, consequently, the human labour employed in such edifices was not only enormous in quantity, but exceedingly painful to the workmen. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, hated the memory of the kings who built the pyramids. He tells us that the great pyramid occupied a hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection, without counting the workmen who were employed in hewing the stones, and in conveying them to the spot where the pyramid was built. Herodotus speaks of this work as a torment to the people; and doubtless the labour engaged in raising huge masses of stone, that was extensive enough to employ a hundred thousand men for twenty years, which is equal to two millions of men for one year, must have been fearfully tormenting without machinery, or with very imperfect machinery. It has been calculated that about half the steam-engines of England, worked by thirty-six thousand men, would raise the same quantity of stones from the quarry, and elevate them to the same height as the great pyramid, in the short time of eighteen hours. The people of Egypt groaned for twenty years under this enormous work. The labourers groaned because they were sorely taxed; and the rest of the people groaned because they had to pay the labourers. The labourers lived, it is true, upon the wages of their labour, that is, they were paid in food--kept like horses--as the reward of their work. Herodotus says that it was recorded on the pyramid that the onions, radishes, and garlic which the labourers consumed, cost sixteen hundred talents of silver: an immense sum, equivalent to several million pounds. But the onions, radishes, and garlic, the bread, and clothes of the labourer, were wrung out of the profitable labour of the rest of the people. The building of the pyramid was an unprofitable labour. There was no immediate or future source of produce in the pyramid; it produced neither food, nor fuel, nor clothes, nor any other necessary. The labour of a hundred thousand men for twenty years, stupidly employed upon this monument, without an object beyond that of gratifying the pride of the tyrant who raised it, was a direct tax upon the profitable labour of the rest of the people. "Instead of useful works, like nature great, Enormous cruel wonders crush'd the land." But admitting that it is sometimes desirable for nations and governments to erect monuments which are not of direct utility,--which may have an indirect utility in recording the memory of great exploits, or in producing feelings of reverence or devotion,--it is clearly an advantage that these works, as well as all other works, should be performed in the cheapest manner; that is, that human labour should derive every possible assistance from mechanical aid. We will give an illustration of the differences of the application of mechanical aid in one of the first operations of building, the moving a block of stone. The following statements are the result of actual experiment upon a stone weighing ten hundred and eighty pounds. [Illustration: Portland Quarry.] To drag this stone along the smoothed floor of the quarry required a force equal to seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds. The same stone dragged over a floor of planks required six hundred and fifty-two pounds. The same stone placed on a platform of wood, and dragged over the same floor of planks, required six hundred and six pounds. When the two surfaces of wood were soaped as they slid over each other, the force required to drag the stone was reduced to one hundred and eighty-two pounds. When the same stone was placed upon rollers three inches in diameter, it required, to put it in motion along the floor of the quarry, a force only of thirty-four pounds; and by the same rollers upon a wooden floor, a force only of twenty-eight pounds. Without any mechanical aid, it would require the force of four or five men to set that stone in motion. With the mechanical aid of two surfaces of wood soaped, the same weight might be moved by one man. With the more perfect mechanical aid of rollers, the same weight might be moved by a very little child. From these statements it must be evident that the cost of a block of stone very much depends upon the quantity of labour necessary to move it from the quarry to the place where it is wanted to be used. We have seen that with the simplest mechanical aid labour may be reduced sixty-fold. With more perfect mechanical aid, such as that of water-carriage, the labour may be reduced infinitely lower. Thus, the streets of London are paved with granite from Scotland at a moderate expense. The cost of timber, which enters so largely into the cost of a house, is in a great degree the cost of transport. In countries where there are great forests, timber-trees are worth nothing where they grow, except there are ready means of transport. In many parts of North America, the great difficulty which the people find is in clearing the land of the timber. The finest trees are not only worthless, but are a positive incumbrance, except when they are growing upon the banks of a great river; in which case the logs are thrown into the water, or formed into rafts, being floated several hundred miles at scarcely any expense. The same stream which carries them to a seaport turns a mill to saw the logs into planks; and when sawn into planks the timber is put on shipboard, and carried to distant countries where timber is wanted. Thus mechanical aid alone gives a value to the timber, and by so doing employs human labour. The stream that floats the tree, the sawing-mill that cuts it, the ship that carries it across the sea, enable men profitably to employ themselves in working it. Without the stream, the mill, and the ship, those men would have no labour, because none could afford to bring the timber to their own doors. [Illustration: Timber Rafts of the Tyrol.] What an infinite variety of machines, in combination with the human hand, is found in a carpenter's chest of tools! The skilful hand of the workman is the _power_ which sets these machines in motion; just as the wind or the water is the power of a mill, or the elastic force of vapour the power of a steam-engine. When Mr. Boulton, the partner of the great James Watt, waited upon George III. to explain one of the improvements of the steam-engine which they had effected, the king said to him, "What do you sell, Mr. Boulton?" and the honest engineer answered, "What kings, sire, are all fond of--_power_." There are people at Birmingham who let out _power_, that is, there are people who have steam-engines who will lend the use of them, by the day or the hour, to persons who require that saving of labour in their various trades; so that a person who wants the strength of a horse, or half a horse, to turn a wheel for grinding, or for setting a lathe in motion, hires a room, or part of a room, in a mill, and has just as much as he requires. The _power_ of a carpenter is in his hand, and the machines moved by that power are in his chest of tools. Every tool which he possesses has for its object to reduce labour, to save material, and to ensure accuracy--the objects of all machines. What a quantity of waste both of time and stuff is saved by his foot-rule! and when he chalks a bit of string and stretches it from one end of a plank to the other, to jerk off the chalk from the string, and thus produce an unerring line upon the face of the plank, he makes a little machine which saves him great labour. Every one of his hundreds of tools, capable of application to a vast variety of purposes, is an invention to save labour. Without some tool the carpenter's work could not be done at all by the human hand. A knife would do very laboriously what is done very quickly by a hatchet. The labour of using a hatchet, and the material which it wastes, are saved twenty times over by the saw. But when the more delicate operations of carpentry are required--when the workman uses his planes, his rabbet-planes, his fillisters, his bevels, and his centre-bits--what an infinitely greater quantity of labour is economized, and how beautifully that work is performed, which, without them, would be rough and imperfect! Every boy of mechanical ingenuity has tried with his knife to make a boat; and with a knife only it is the work of weeks. Give him a chisel, and a gouge, and a vice to hold his wood, and the little boat is the work of a day. Let a boy try to make a round wooden box, with a lid, having only his knife, and he must be expert indeed to produce anything that will be neat and serviceable. Give him a lathe and chisels, and he will learn to make a tidy box in half an hour. Nothing but absolute necessity can render it expedient to use an imperfect tool instead of a perfect. We sometimes see exhibitions of carving, "all done with the common penknife." Professor Willis has truly said, with reference to such weak boasting, "So far from admiring, we should pity the vanity and folly of such a display; and the more, if the work should show a natural aptitude in the workman: for it is certain that, if he has made good work with a bad tool, he would make better with a good one." [Illustration: Boulton.] The Emperor Maximilian, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, ordered a woodcut to be engraved that should represent the carpentry operations of his time and country. This prince was, no doubt, proud of the advance of Germany in the useful arts. If the President of the United States were thus to record the advance of the republic of which he is the chief, he would show us his saw-mills and his planing-mills. The German carpenters, as we see, are reducing a great slab of wood into shape by the saw and the adze. The Americans have planing-mills, with cutters that make 4000 revolutions, and which plane boards eighteen feet long at the rate of fifty feet, per minute; and while the face of the board is planed, it is tongued and grooved at the same time--that is, one board is made to fit closely into another. But the Americans carry machinery much farther into the business of carpentry. Mr. Whitworth tells us that "many works in various towns are occupied exclusively in making doors, window-frames, or staircases, by means of self-acting machinery, such as planing, tenoning, morticing, and jointing machines. They are able to supply builders with various parts of the wood-work required in building at a much cheaper rate than they can produce them in their own workshops without the aid of such machinery." [Illustration: Carpenters and their tools. (From an old German woodcut.)] By the use of those machines we are told that twenty men can make panelled doors at the rate of a hundred a day--that is, one man can make five doors. A panelled door is a very expensive part of an English house; and so are window-frames and staircases. If doors and windows and staircases can be made cheaper, more houses and better houses will be built; and thus more carpenters will be employed in building than if those parts of a house were made by hand. The same principle applies to machines as to tools. If carpenters had not tools to make houses, there would be few houses made; and those that were made would be as rough as the hut of the savage who has no tools. The people would go without houses, and the carpenter would go without work,--to say nothing of the people, who would also go without work, that now make tools for the carpenter. We build in this country more of brick than of stone, because brick-earth is found almost everywhere, and stone fit for building is found only in particular districts. Bricks used to pay the state a duty of five shillings and ten pence a thousand; and yet at the kilns they were to be bought under forty shillings a thousand, which is less than a halfpenny apiece. The government wisely resolved, in 1850, to repeal the excise-duty on bricks. In 1845 the duty on glass was repealed. In 1847 the timber-duties were reduced; and in 1848 they were further reduced. The ever-present necessities of the people--the absolute want of house-accommodation for a population increasing so rapidly--rendered it a paramount duty of the government no longer to let tax interfere with the cheap building of houses. Every invention that adds to cheapness acts in the same direction; for although the direct taxes cease to press upon the various trades of building, the constant demand keeps bricks and timber at a price almost as high as before the removal or mitigation of the tax. But bricks, regarded as the production of a vast amount of labour, are intrinsically cheap. And why? Because they are made by what is truly machinery; as they were made three thousand years ago by the Egyptians. The clay is ground in a horse-mill; the wooden mould, in which every brick is made singly, is a copying machine. One brick is exactly like another brick. Every brick is of the form of the mould in which it is made. Without the mould the workman could not make the brick of uniform dimensions; and without this uniformity the after labour of putting bricks together would be greatly increased. Without the mould the workman could not form the bricks quickly;--his own labour would be increased ten-fold. The simple machine of the mould not only gives employment to a great many brickmakers who would not be employed at all, but also to a great many bricklayers who would also want employment if the original cost of production were so enormously increased. [Illustration: Egyptian labour in the brick-field.] There is another material for building which was little used at the beginning of the century. The consumption of slate in London alone was, in 1851, from thirty thousand to forty thousand tons per annum. The quarries of Wales principally supply this immense quantity; but some slates are shipped from Lancashire and Westmorland, and from Scotland and Ireland. In the production of this one material, eight thousand quarriers are employed in Great Britain. Slates are not only used for roofing houses, but in slabs for cisterns and chimney-pieces. The great increase of the supply of water to houses by machinery led to a demand for a safer and cheaper material than lead for cisterns; and slate supplied the want. How great a variety of things are contained in an ironmonger's shop! Half his store consists of tools of one sort or another to save labour; and the other half consists of articles of convenience or elegance most perfectly adapted to every possible want of the builder or the maker of furniture. The uncivilized man is delighted when he obtains a nail,--any nail. A carpenter and joiner, who supply the wants of a highly civilized community, are not satisfied unless they have a choice of nails, from the finest brad to the largest clasp-nail. A savage thinks a nail will hold two pieces of wood together more completely than anything else in the world. It is seldom, however, that he can afford to put it to such a use. If it is large enough, he makes it into a chisel. An English joiner knows that screws will do the work more perfectly in some cases than any nail; and therefore we have as great a variety of screws as of nails. The commonest house built in England has hinges, and locks, and bolts. A great number are finished with ornamented knobs to door-handles, with bells and bell-pulls, and a thousand other things that have grown up into necessities, because they save domestic labour, and add to domestic comfort. And many of these things really are necessities. M. Say, a French writer, gives us an example of this; and as his story is an amusing one, besides having a moral, we may as well copy it:-- "Being in the country," says he, "I had an example of one of those small losses which a family is exposed to through negligence. For the want of a latchet of small value, the wicket of a barn-yard leading to the fields was often left open. Every one who went through drew the door to: but as there was nothing to fasten the door with, it was always left flapping; sometimes open, and sometimes shut. So the cocks and hens, and the chickens, got out, and were lost. One day a fine pig got out, and ran off into the woods; and after the pig ran all the people about the place,--the gardener, and the cook, and the dairymaid. The gardener first caught sight of the runaway, and, hastening after it, sprained his ankle; in consequence of which the poor man was not able to get out of the house again for a fortnight. The cook found, when she came back from pursuing the pig, that the linen she had left by the fire had fallen down and was burning; and the dairymaid having, in her haste, neglected to tie up the legs of one of her cows, the cow had kicked a colt, which was in the same stable, and broken its leg. The gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns, to say nothing of the pain he suffered. The linen which was burned, and the colt which was spoiled, were worth as much more. Here, then, was caused a loss of forty crowns, as well as much trouble, plague, and vexation, for the want of a latch which would not have cost three-pence." M. Say's story is one of the many examples of the truth of the old proverb--"for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the man was lost." Nearly all the great variety of articles in an ironmonger's shop are made by machinery. Without machinery they could not be made at all, or they would be sold at a price which would prevent them being commonly used. Some of the finer articles, such as a Bramah lock, or a Chubb's lock, could not be made at all, unless machinery had been called in to produce that wonderful accuracy, through which no one of a hundred thousand locks and keys shall be exactly like another lock and key. With machinery, the manufacture of ironmongery employs large numbers of artisans who would be otherwise unemployed. There are hundreds of ingenious men at Birmingham who go into business with a capital acquired by their savings as workmen, for the purpose of manufacturing some one single article used in finishing a house, such as the knob of a lock. All the heavy work of their trade is done by machinery. The cheapness of the article creates workmen; and the savings of the workmen accumulate capital to be expended in larger works, and to employ more workmen. The furniture of a house, some may say--the chairs, and tables, and bedsteads--is made nearly altogether by hand. True. But tools are machines; and further, we owe it to what men generally call machinery, that such furniture, even in the house of a very poor man, is more tasteful in its construction, and of finer material, than that possessed by a nobleman a hundred years ago. How is this? Machinery (that is ships) has brought us much finer woods than we grow ourselves; and other machinery (the sawing-mill) has taught us how to render that fine wood very cheap, by economising the use of it. At a veneering-mill, that is, a mill which cuts a mahogany log into thin plates, much more delicately and truly, and in infinitely less time, than they could be cut by the hand, two hundred and forty square feet of mahogany are cut by one circular saw in one hour. A veneer, or thin plate, is cut off a piece of mahogany, six feet six inches long, by twelve inches wide, in twenty-five seconds. What is the consequence of this? A mahogany table is made almost as cheap as a deal one; and thus the humblest family in England may have some article of mahogany, if it be only a tea-caddy. And let it not be said that deal furniture would afford as much happiness; for a desire for comfort, and even for some degree of elegance, gives a refinement to the character, and, in a certain degree, raises our self-respect. Diogenes, who is said to have lived in a tub, was a great philosopher; but it is not necessary to live in a tub to be wise and virtuous. Nor is that the likeliest plan for becoming so. The probability is, that a man will be more wise and virtuous in proportion as he strives to surround himself with the comforts and decent ornaments of his station. It is a circumstance worthy to be borne in mind by all who seek the improvement of the people, that whatever raises not only the standard of comfort, but of taste, has direct effects of utility which might not at first be perceived. We will take the case of paper-hangings. Their very name shows that they were a substitute for the arras, or hangings, of former times, which were suspended from the ceilings to cover the imperfections of the walls. This was the case in the houses of the rich. The poor man in his hut had no such device, but must needs "patch a hole to keep the wind away." Till 1830, what, in the language of the excise, was called stained paper, was enormously dear, for a heavy tax greatly impeded its production. When it was dear, many walls were stencilled or daubed over with a rude pattern. The paper-hangings themselves were not only dear, but offensive to the eye, from their want of harmony in colour and of beauty in design. The old papers remained on walls for half a century; and it was not till paper-hangings became a penny a yard, or even a halfpenny, that the landlord or tenant of a small house thought of re-papering. The eye at length got offended by the dirty and ugly old paper. The walls were recovered with neat patterns. But what had offended the eye had been prejudicial to the health. The old papers, that were saturated with damp from without and bad air from within, were recipients and holders of fever. When the bed-room became neat it also became healthful. The duty on paper was 1-3/4_d._ per yard, when the paper-hanger used to paste together yard after yard, made by hand at the paper-mill, and stamped by block. The paper-machine which gave long rolls of paper enabled hangings to be printed by cylinder, as calico is printed. The absence of tax, and the improvement of the manufacture by machinery, have enabled every man to repaper his filthy and noxious room for almost as little as its whitewashing or colouring will cost him. Look, again, at the carpet. Contrast it in all its varieties, from the gorgeous Persian to the neat Kidderminster, with the rushes of our forefathers, amidst which the dogs hunted for the bones that had been thrown upon the floor. The clean rushes were a rare luxury, never thought of but upon some festive occasion. The carpet manufacture was little known in England at the beginning of the last century; as we may judge from our still calling one of the most commonly-woven English carpets by the name of "Brussels." There are twelve thousand persons now employed in the manufacture of carpets in Great Britain. The Scotch carpet is the cheapest of the produce of the carpet-loom; and it may be sufficient to show the connection of machinery with the commonest as well as the finest of these productions by an engraving of the loom. One of the most beautiful inventions of man, the Jacquard apparatus (so called from the name of its inventor), is extensively used in every branch of the carpet manufacture. [Illustration: Scotch carpet-loom.] Let us see what mechanical ingenuity can effect in producing the most useful and ornamental articles of domestic life from the common earth which may be had for digging. Without chemical and mechanical skill we should neither have Glass nor Pottery; and without these articles, how much lowered beneath his present station, in point of comfort and convenience, would be the humblest peasant in the land! The cost of glass is almost wholly the wages of labour, as the materials are very abundant, and may be said to cost almost nothing; and glass is much more easily worked than any other substance. Hard and brittle as it is, it has only to be heated, and any form that the workman pleases may be given to it. It melts; but when so hot as to be more susceptible of form than wax or clay, or anything else that we are acquainted with, it still, retains a degree of toughness and capability of extension superior to that of many solids, and of every liquid; when it has become red-hot all its brittleness is gone, and a man may do with it as he pleases. He may press it into a mould; he may take a lump of it upon the end of an iron tube, and, by blowing into the tube with his mouth (keeping the glass hot all the time), he may swell it out into a hollow ball. He may mould that ball into a bottle; he may draw it out lengthways into a pipe; he may cut it open into a cup; he may open it with shears, whirl it round with the edge in the fire, and thus make it into a circular plate. He may also roll it out into sheets, and spin it into threads as fine as a cobweb. In short, so that he keeps it hot, and away from substances by which it may be destroyed, he can do with it just as he pleases. All this, too, may be done, and is done with large quantities every day, in less time than any one would take to give an account of it. In the time that the readiest speaker and clearest describer were telling how one quart bottle is made, an ordinary set of workmen would make some dozens of bottles. But though the materials of glass are among the cheapest of all materials, and the substance the most obedient to the hand of the workman, there is a great deal of knowledge necessary before glass can be made. It can be made profitably only at large manufactories, and those manufactories must be kept constantly at work night and day. Glass does not exist in a natural form in many places. The sight of native crystal, probably, led men to think originally of producing a similar substance by art. The fabrication of glass is of high antiquity. The historians of China, Japan, and Tartary speak of glass manufactories existing there more than two thousand years ago. An Egyptian mummy two or three thousand years old, which was exhibited in London, was ornamented with little fragments of coloured glass. The writings of Seneca, a Roman author who lived about the time of our Saviour, and of St. Jerome, who lived five hundred years afterwards, speak of glass being used in windows. It is recorded that the Prior of the convent of Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, in the year 674, sent for French workmen to glaze the windows of his chapel. In the twelfth century the art of making glass was known in this country. Yet it is very doubtful whether glass was employed in windows, excepting those of churches and the houses of the very rich, for several centuries afterwards; and it is quite certain that the period is comparatively recent, as we have shown,[21] when glass windows were used for excluding cold and admitting light in the houses of the great body of the people, or that glass vessels were to be found amongst their ordinary conveniences. The manufacture of glass in England now employs twelve thousand people, because the article, being cheap, is of universal use. The government has wisely taken off the duty on glass; and as the article becomes still cheaper, so will the people employed in its manufacture become more numerous. Machinery, as we commonly understand the term, is not much employed in the manufacture of glass; but chemistry, which saves as much labour as machinery, and performs work which no machinery could accomplish, is very largely employed. The materials of which glass is made are sand, or earth, and vegetable matter, such as kelp or burnt seaweed, which yield alkali. For the finest glass, sand is brought from great distances, even from Australia. These materials are put in a state of fusion by the heat of an immense furnace. It requires a red heat of sixty hours to prepare the material of a common bottle. Nearly all glass, except glass for mirrors, is what is called blown. The machinery is very simple, consisting only of an iron pipe and the lungs of the workman; and the process is perfected in all its stages by great subdivision of labour, producing extreme neatness and quickness in all persons employed in it. For instance, a wine-glass is made thus:--One man (the blower) takes up the proper quantity of glass on his pipe, and blows it to the size wanted for the bowl; then he whirls it round on a reel, and draws out the stalk. Another man (the footer) blows a smaller and thicker ball, sticks it to the end of the stalk of the blower's glass, and breaks his pipe from it. The blower opens that ball, and whirls the whole round till the foot is formed. Then a boy dips a small rod in the glass-pot, and sticks it to the very centre of the foot. The blower, still turning the glass round, takes a bit of iron, wets it in his mouth, and touches the ball at the place where he wishes the mouth of the glass to be. The glass separates, and the boy takes it to the finisher, who turns the mouth of it; and, by a peculiar swing that he gives it round his head, makes it perfectly circular, at the same time that it is so hardened as to be easily snapped from the rod. Lastly, the boy takes it on a forked iron to the annealing furnace, where it is cooled gradually. [Illustration: Glass-cutting.] All these operations require the greatest nicety in the workmen; and would take a long time in the performance, and not be very neatly done after all, if they were all done by one man. But the quickness with which they are done by the division of labour is perfectly wonderful. The cheapness of glass for common use, which cheapness is produced by chemical knowledge and the division of labour, has set the ingenuity of man to work to give greater beauty to glass as an article of luxury. The employment of sharp-grinding wheels, put in motion by a treadle, and used in conjunction with a very nice hand, produces _cut_ glass. Cut glass is now comparatively so cheap, that scarcely a family of the middle ranks is without some beautiful article of this manufacture. [Illustration: Sheet-glass making.] But the repeal of the duty on glass, and of the tax upon windows, has had the effect of improving the architecture of our houses to a degree which no one would have thought possible who had not studied how the operation of a tax impedes production. We have now plate-glass of the largest dimensions, giving light and beauty to our shops; and sheet-glass, nearly as effective as plate, adorning our private dwellings. Sheet-glass, in the making of which an amount of ingenuity is exercised which would have been thought impossible in the early stages of glass-making, is doing for the ordinary purposes of building what plate-glass did formerly for the rich. A portion of melted glass, weighing twelve or fourteen pounds, is, by the exercise of this skill, converted into a ball, and then into a cylinder, and then into a flat plate; and thus two crystal palaces have been built, which have consumed as much glass, weight by weight, as was required for all the houses in one-fourth of the area of Great Britain in the beginning of the century. [Illustration: Plate-glass Factory.] There are two kinds of pottery--common potters' ware, and porcelain. The first is a pure kind of brick; and the second a mixture of very fine brick and glass. Almost all nations have some knowledge of pottery; and those of the very hot countries are sometimes satisfied with dishes formed by their fingers without any tool, and dried by the heat of the sun. In England pottery of every sort, and in all countries good pottery, must be baked or burnt in a kiln of some kind or other. Vessels for holding meat and drink are almost as indispensable as the meat and drink themselves; and the two qualities in them that are most valuable are, that they shall be cheap, and easily cleaned. Pottery, as it is now produced in England, possesses both of these qualities in the very highest degree. A white basin, having all the useful properties of the most costly vessels, may be purchased for twopence at the door of any cottage in England. There are very few substances used in human food that have any effect upon these vessels; and it is only rinsing them in hot water, and wiping them with a cloth, and they are clean. The making of an earthen bowl would be to a man who made a first attempt no easy matter. Let us see how it is done so that it can be carried two or three hundred miles and sold for twopence, leaving a profit to the maker, and the wholesale and retail dealer. The common pottery is made of pure clay and pure flint. The flint is found only in the chalk counties, and the fine clays in Devonshire and Dorsetshire; so that, with the exception of some clay for coarse ware, the materials out of which the pottery is made have to be carried from the South of England to Staffordshire, where the potteries are situated. The great advantage that Staffordshire possesses is abundance of coal to burn the ware and supply the engines that grind the materials. The clay is worked in water by various machinery till it contains no single piece large enough to be visible to the eye. It is like cream in consistence. The flints are burned. They are first ground in a mill, and then worked in water in the same manner as the clay, the large pieces being returned a second time to the mill. When both are fine enough, one part of flint is mixed with five or six of clay; the whole is worked to a paste, after which it is kneaded either by the hands or a machine; and when the kneading is completed, it is ready for the potter. He has a little wheel which lies horizontally. He lays a portion of clay on the centre of the wheel, puts one hand, or finger if the vessel is to be a small one, in the middle, and his other hand on the outside, and, as the wheel turns rapidly round, draws up a hollow vessel in an instant. With his hands, or with very simple tools, he brings it to the shape he wishes, cuts it from the wheel with a wire, and a boy carries it off. The potter makes vessel after vessel, as fast as they can be carried away. [Illustration: The English Potter.] The potter's wheel is an instrument of the highest antiquity. In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read--"So doth the potter, sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number: he fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over, and is diligent to make clean the furnace."--(c. xxxix., v. 29, 30.) At the present day the oriental potter stands in a pit, in which the lower machinery of his wheel is placed. He works as the potter of the ancient Hebrews. As the potter produces the vessels they are partially dried; after which they are turned on a lathe and smoothed with a wet sponge when necessary. Only round vessels can be made on the wheel; those of other shapes are made in moulds of plaster. Handles and other solid parts are pressed in moulds, and stuck on while they and the vessels are still wet. [Illustration: Potter's wheel of modern Egypt.] The vessels thus formed are first dried in a stove, and, when dry, burnt in a kiln. They are in this state called biscuit. If they are finished white, they are glazed by another process. If they are figured, the patterns are engraved on copper, and printed on coarse paper rubbed with soft soap. The ink is made of some colour that will stand the fire, ground with earthy matter. These patterns are moistened and applied to the porous biscuit, which absorbs the colour, and the paper is washed off, leaving the pattern on the biscuit. [Illustration: Moulds for porcelain, and casts.] The employment of machinery to do all the heavy part of the work, the division of labour, by which each workman acquires wonderful dexterity in his department, and the conducting of the whole upon a large scale, give bread to a vast number of people, make the pottery cheap, and enable it to be sold at a profit in almost every market in the world. It is not ninety years since the first pottery of a good quality was extensively made in England; and before that time what was used was imported,--the common ware from Delft, in Holland (from which it acquired its name), and the porcelain from China. [Illustration: Mill-room, where the Ingredients for Pottery are mixed.] The history of the manufacture of porcelain affords us two examples of persevering ingenuity--of intense devotion to one object--which have few parallels in what some may consider the higher walks of art. Palissy and Wedgwood are names that ought to be venerated by every artisan. The one bestowed upon France her manufacture of porcelain, so long the almost exclusive admiration of the wealthy and the tasteful. The other gave to England her more extensive production of earthenware, combining with great cheapness the imitation of the most beautiful forms of ancient art. The potteries of Staffordshire may be almost said to have been created by Josiah Wedgwood. In his workshops we may trace the commencement of a system of improved design which made his ware so superior to any other that had been produced in Europe for common uses. In other branches of manufacture this system found few imitators; and we were too long contented, in our textile fabrics especially, with patterns that were unequalled for ugliness--miserable imitations of foreign goods, or combinations of form and colour outraging every principle of art. We have seen higher things attempted in the present day; but for the greater part of a century the wares of the Staffordshire potter were the only attempts to show that taste was as valuable a quality in association with the various articles which are required for domestic use, as good materials and clean workmanship. It was long before we discovered that taste had an appreciable commercial value. [Illustration: Wedgwood.] We think that, with regard to buildings and the furniture of buildings, it will be admitted that machinery, in the largest sense of the word, has increased the means of every man to procure a shelter from the elements, and to give him a multitude of conveniences within that shelter. Most will agree that a greater number of persons are profitably employed in affording this shelter and these conveniences, with tools and machines, than if they possessed no such mechanical aids to their industry. In 1851 there were a hundred and eighty-two thousand carpenters and joiners; thirty-one thousand brickmakers; sixty-eight thousand bricklayers; sixty-two thousand painters, plumbers, and glaziers; eighteen thousand plasterers; a hundred thousand masons (some of whom were paviours); forty-two thousand glass and earthenware makers; besides an almost innumerable variety of subordinate trades--engaged in the production of houses, their fittings, and their utensils. [21] Chapter viii. pp. 85 and 87. CHAPTER XV. Dwellings of the people--Oberlin--The Highlander's candlesticks--Supply of water--London waterworks-- Street-lights--Sewers. It is satisfactory to observe that the increase of houses has kept pace with the increase of population. In 1801, in Great Britain, there was a population of ten million five hundred thousand persons, and one million eight hundred thousand inhabited houses. In 1851 there were twenty million eight hundred thousand persons, and three million eight hundred thousand inhabited houses. The numbers, in each case, had, as nearly as may be, doubled. But it is not equally satisfactory to know that the improvement in the quality of the houses in which the great body of those who labour for wages abide is not commensurate with the increase in their quantity. It is not fitting, that, whilst the general progress of science is raising, as unquestionably it is raising, the average condition of the people--and that whilst education is going forward, slowly indeed, but still advancing--the bulk of those so progressing should be below their proper standard of physical comfort, from the too common want of decent houses to surround them with the sanctities of home. In the great business of the improvement of their dwellings the working-men require leaders--not demagogues, whose business is to subvert, and not to build up--but leaders like the noble pastor, Oberlin, who converted a barren district into a fruitful, by the example of his unremitting energy. This district was cut off from the rest of the world by the want of roads. Close at hand was Strasburg, full of all the conveniences of social life. There was no money to make roads--but there was abundant power of labour. There were rocks to be blasted, embankments to be raised, bridges to be built. The undaunted clergyman took a pickaxe, and went to work himself. He worked alone, till the people were ashamed of seeing him so work. They came at last to perceive that the thing was to be done, and that it was worth the doing. In three years the road was made. If there were an Oberlin to lead the inhabitants of every filthy street, and the families of every wretched house, to their own proper work of improvement, a terrible evil would be soon removed, which is as great an impediment to the productive powers of a country, and therefore to the happiness of its people, as the want of ready communication, or any other appliance of civilization. The enormity of the evil would be appalling, if the capability of its removal in some degree were not equally certain. Whatever a government may attempt--whatever municipalities or benevolent associations--there can be nothing so effectual in the upholding to a proper mark the domestic comfort of the working-men of this country, as their firm resolve to uphold themselves. Still, unhappily, it is an undoubted fact that the most industrious men in large cities are too often unable to procure a fit dwelling, however able to pay for it and desirous to procure it. The houses have been built with no reference to such increasing wants. The idle and the diligent, the profligate and the prudent, the criminal and the honest, the diseased and the healthful, are therefore thrust into close neighbourhood. There is no escape. Is this terrible evil incapable of remedy? To discover that remedy, and apply it, is truly a national concern; for assuredly there is no capital of a country so worth preserving in the highest state of efficiency as the capital it possesses in an industrious population. There is a noble moral in a passage of Scott's romance, 'The Legend of Montrose.' A Highland chief had betted with a more luxurious English baronet whom he had visited, that he had better candlesticks at home than the six silver ones which the richer man had put upon his dinner-table. The Englishman went to the chief's castle in the hills, where the owner was miserable about the issue of his bragging bet. But his brother had a device which saved the honour of the clan. The attendant announced that the dinner was ready, and the candles lighted. Behind each chair for the guests stood a gigantic Highlander with his drawn sword in his right hand, and a blazing torch in his left, made of the bog-pine; and the brother exclaimed to the startled company--'Would you dare to compare to THEM in value the richest ore that ever was dug out of the mine?' We may naturally pass from these considerations to a most important branch of the great subject of the expenditure of capital for public objects. * * * * * The people who live in small villages, or in scattered habitations in the country, have certainly not so many _direct_ benefits from machinery as the inhabitants of towns. They have the articles at a cheap rate which machines produce, but there are not so many machines at work for them as for dense populations. From want of knowledge they may be unable to perceive the connexion between a cheap coat, or a cheap tool, and the machines which make them plentiful, and therefore cheap. But even they, when the saving of labour by a machine is a saving which immediately affects them, are not slow to acknowledge the benefits they derive from that best of economy. The Scriptures allude to the painful condition of the "hewers of wood" and the "drawers of water;" and certainly--in a state of society where there are no machines at all, or very rude machines--to cut down a tree and cleave it into logs, and to raise a bucket from a well, are very laborious occupations, the existence of which, to any extent, amongst a people, would mark them as remaining in a wretched condition. Immediately that the people have the simplest mechanical contrivance, such as the loaded lever, to raise water from a well, which is found represented in Egyptian sculpture, and also in our own Anglo-Saxon drawings, they are advancing to the condition of raising water by machinery. The oriental _shadoof_ is a machine. In our own country, at the present day, there are not many houses, in situations where water is at hand, that have not the windlass, or, what is better, the pump, to raise this great necessary of life from the well. Some cottagers, however, have no such machines, and bitterly do they lament the want of them. We once met an old woman in a country district tottering under the weight of a bucket, which she was labouring to carry up a hill. We asked her how she and her family were off in the world. She replied, that she could do pretty well with them, for they could all work, if it were not for one thing--it was one person's labour to fetch water from the spring; but, said she, if we had a pump handy, we should not have much to complain of. This old woman very wisely had no love of labour for its own sake; she saw no advantage in the labour of one of her family being given for the attainment of a good which she knew might be attained by a very common invention. She wanted a machine to save that labour. Such a machine would have set at liberty a certain quantity of labour which was previously employed unprofitably; in other words, it would have left her or her children more time for more profitable work, and then the family earnings would have been increased. [Illustration: Ancient Shadoof.] But there is another point of view in which this machine would have benefited the good woman and her family. Water is not only necessary to drink and to prepare food with, but it is necessary for cleanliness, and cleanliness is necessary for health. If there is a scarcity of water, or if it requires a great deal of labour to obtain it, (which comes to the same thing as a scarcity,) the uses of water for cleanliness will be wholly or in part neglected. If the neglect becomes a habit, which it is sure to do, disease, and that of the worst sort, cannot be prevented. When men gather together in large bodies, and inhabit towns or cities, a plentiful supply of water is the first thing to which they direct their attention. If towns are built in situations where pure water cannot be readily obtained, the inhabitants, and especially the poorer sort, suffer even more misery than results from the want of bread or clothes. In some cities of Spain, for instance, where the people understand very little about machinery, water, at particular periods of the year, is as dear as wine; and the labouring classes are consequently in a most miserable condition. In London, on the contrary, water is so plentiful, that, as it appears from a return of the various water companies, the daily average of water-supply is sixty-two million gallons, being an average of about two hundred and two gallons to each house and other buildings, which amount to three hundred and ten thousand. This seems an enormous supply; but there are reasons for thinking that the quantity ought to be increased, and the arrangements made so perfect, that there should be a perpetual stream of water through the pipes of each house, like that through the arteries from the heart. The condition upon which the present water companies are allowed to continue their functions is, that they shall, before the expiration of another year, provide a larger and a purer supply. Yet, incomplete as these arrangements are, they are wondrous when compared with the water-supply of other times; and it is satisfactory to know that there are very few of our great towns which are not supplied as well as, and many much better than, London. There are very few large places in Great Britain where, by machinery, water is not only delivered to the kitchens and washhouses on the ground-floors, where it is most wanted, but is sent up to the very tops of the houses, to save even the comparatively little labour of fetching it from the bottom. The cost of this greatly varies in particular localities; and in most places the supply is afforded more cheaply than in the metropolis. There are natural difficulties in London, as in other vast cities, which have been chiefly created through the unexampled increase of the people. The sanitary arrangements of our great towns--the supply of water, the drainage--have followed the growth of the population and not preceded it. As the necessity has arisen for such a ministration to the absolute wants of a community, it has inevitably become a system of expedients. We are wiser now when we build upon new ground. We first construct our lines of street, with sewers, and water-pipes, and gas-pipes, and then we build our houses. What a different affair is it to manage these matters effectually when the houses have been previously built with very slight reference to such conditions of social existence! As long ago as the year 1236, when a great want of water was felt in London, the little springs being blocked up and covered over by buildings, the ruling men of the city caused water to be brought from Tyburn, which was then a distant village, by means of pipes; and they laid a tax upon particular branches of trade to pay the expense of this great blessing to all. In succeeding times more pipes and conduits, that is, more machinery, were established for the same good purpose; and two centuries afterwards, King Henry the Sixth gave his aid to the same sort of works, in granting particular advantages in obtaining lead for making pipes. The reason for this aid to such works was, as the royal decree set forth, that they were "for the common utility and decency of all the city, and _for the universal advantage_," and a very true reason this was. As this great town more and more increased, more waterworks were found necessary; till at last, in the reign of James the First, which was nearly two hundred years after that of Henry the Sixth, a most ingenious and enterprising man, and a great benefactor to his country, Hugh Myddleton, undertook to bring a river of pure water above thirty-eight miles out of its natural course, for the supply of London. He persevered in this immense undertaking, in spite of every difficulty, till he at last accomplished that great good which he had proposed, of bringing wholesome water to every man's door. At the present time, the New River, which was the work of Hugh Myddleton, supplies more than seventeen millions of gallons of water every day; and though the original projector was ruined, by the undertaking, in consequence of the difficulty which he had in procuring proper support, such is now the general conviction of the advantage which he procured for his fellow-citizens, and so desirous are the people to possess that advantage, that a share in the New River Company, which was at first sold at one hundred pounds, is now worth three thousand pounds. Before the people of London had water brought to their own doors, and even into their very houses, and into every room of their houses where it is desirable to bring it, they were obliged to send for this great article of life--first, to the few springs which were found in the city and its neighbourhood, and, secondly, to the conduits and fountains, which were imperfect mechanical contrivances for bringing it. [Illustration: Conduit in Westcheap.] The service-pipes to each house are more perfect mechanical contrivances; but they could not have been rendered so perfect without engines, which force the water above the level of the source from which it is taken. When the inhabitants fetched their water from the springs and conduits there was a great deal of human labour employed; and as in every large community there are always people ready to perform labour for money, many persons obtained a living by carrying water. When the New River had been dug, and the pipes had been laid down, and the engines had been set up, it is perfectly clear that there would have been no further need for these water-carriers. When the people of London could obtain two hundred gallons of water for twopence, they would not employ a man to fetch a single bucket from the river or fountain at the same price. They would not, for the mere love of employing human labour directly, continue to buy an article very dear, which, by mechanical aid, they could buy very cheap. If they had resolved, from any mistaken notions about machinery, to continue to employ the water-carriers, they must have been contented with one gallon of water a day instead of two hundred gallons. Or if they had consumed a larger quantity, and continued to pay the price of bringing it to them by hand, they must have denied themselves other necessaries and comforts. They must have gone without a certain portion of food, or clothing, or fuel, which they are now enabled to obtain by the saving in the article of water. To have had for each house two hundred gallons of water, and, in having this two hundred gallons of water, to have had the cleanliness and health which result from its use, would have been utterly impossible. The supply of one gallon, instead of two hundred gallons to each house, would at present amount to 310,000 gallons daily; which at a penny a gallon would cost 1291_l._ per day; or 9037_l._ per week; or 469,724_l._, or very nearly half a million, per year. Upon the assumption that one man, without any mechanical arrangement besides his can, could carry twenty gallons a day, thus earning ten shillings a week, this would employ no fewer than 18,074 persons--a very army of water-carriers. To supply ten gallons a day to each house would cost nearly five millions a year, and would employ 180,740 persons. To supply two hundred gallons a day would require 3,614,800 persons--a number exceeding the total population of London. The whole number of persons engaged in the waterworks' service of all Great Britain is under 1000. [Illustration: Old water-carrier of London.] There is now, certainly, no labour to be performed by water-carriers. But suppose that five hundred years ago, when there were a small number of persons who gained their living by such drudgery, they had determined to prevent the bringing of water by pipes into London. Suppose also that they had succeeded; and that up to the present day we had no pipes or other mechanical aids for supplying the water. It is quite evident that if this misfortune had happened--if the welfare of the many had been retarded (for it never could have been finally stopped) by the ignorance of the few--London, as we have already shown, would not have had a twentieth part of its present population; and the population of every other town, depending as population does upon the increase of _profitable_ labour, could never have gone forward. How then would the case have stood as to the amount of labour engaged in the supply of water? A few hundred, at the utmost a few thousand, carriers of water would have been employed throughout the kingdom; while the smelters and founders of iron of which water-pipes are made, the labourers who lay down these pipes, the founders of lead who make the service-pipes, and the plumbers who apply them; the carriers, whether by water or land, who are engaged in bringing them to the towns, the manufacturers of the engines which raise the water, the builders of the houses in which the engines stand--these, and many other labourers and mechanics who directly and indirectly contribute to the same public advantage, could never have been called into employment. To have continued to use the power of the water-carriers would have rendered the commodity two hundred times dearer than it is supplied by mechanical power. The present cheapness of production, by mechanical power, supplies employment to an infinitely greater number of persons than could have been required by a perseverance in the rude and wasteful system which belonged to former ages of ignorance and wretchedness. When a severe frost chokes up the small water-pipes that conduct the useful stream into each house, what anxiety and trouble is there in every thoroughfare! The main pipes are not frozen; and the supply is to be got in pails and pitchers from a plug in the pavement, where a temporary cock is inserted. How gladly is this device resorted to! But imagine it to be the labour of every day, and what an amount of profitable time would be deducted from domestic employ! [Illustration: Plug in a frost.] When society is more perfectly organized than it is at present, and when the great body of the people understand the value of co-operation for procuring advantages that individuals cannot attain, public baths will be established in every town, and in every district of a town. The great Roman people had public baths for all ranks; and remains of their baths still exist in this country. The great British people have only thought within these few years that public baths were a necessity. The establishment of public washhouses, in connexion with baths, having every advantage of machinery and economical arrangements, are real blessings to the few who now use them. It is little more than thirty years since London was lighted with gas. Pall Mall was thus lighted in 1807, by a chartered company, to whose claims for support the majority of householders were utterly opposed. They had their old oil-lamps, which were thought absolute perfection. The main pipes which convey gas to the London houses are now fifteen hundred miles in length. There are, we believe, nearly a thousand proprietory gas-works in Great Britain. The noblest prospect in the world is London from Hampstead Heath on a bright winter's evening. The stars are shining in heaven, but there are thousands of earthly stars glittering in the city there spread before us: and as we look into any small space of that wondrous illumination, we can trace long lines of light losing themselves in the general splendor of the distance, and we can see dim shapes of mighty buildings afar off, showing their dark masses amidst the glowing atmosphere that hangs over the capital for miles, with the edges of flickering clouds gilded as if they were touched by the first sunlight. This is a spectacle that men look not upon, because it is common; and so we walk amidst the nightly splendours of the Strand, and forget what it was in the middle of the last century--the days of "darkness visible," under the combined efforts of the twinkling lamp, the watchman's lantern, and the vagabond's link. The last, but in many respects one of the most useful of public works in Great Britain, to which a large amount of capital has been devoted, is the construction of sewers in our cities and towns. Popular intelligence and official power have been very slowly awakened to the performance of this duty. And yet the consequences of neglect have been felt for centuries. In 1290 the monks of White Friars and of Black Friars complained to the king that the exhalations from the Fleet River overcame the pleasant odour of the frankincense which burned on their altars, and occasioned the deaths of the brethren. This was the polluted stream that in time came to be known as Fleet Ditch, which Pope described as "The king of dykes, than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood." [Illustration: London street-lights, 1760.] Fleet Ditch became such a nuisance that it was partly filled up by act of parliament soon after these lines were written. The Londoners had then their reservoirs of filth, called laystalls, in various parts near the river; and the pestilent accumulations spread disease all over the city. The system of sewers was begun in 1756, and from that time to the present several hundreds of miles of sewers have been constructed. But, alas, the Thames itself is now "the king of dykes," and the metropolis, healthy as it is, will never attain the sanitary state of which it is capable till the whole system of the outfall of the sewers is changed. The necessary work would involve the expenditure of millions. But the millions must be spent. In the mean time it is satisfactory to know that in towns of smaller population, where the evil is far less vast, and the natural difficulties of removal greatly less, the work of purification is going on rapidly. Public opinion has gone so strongly in the direction of a thorough reformation, that the duty can no longer be neglected. Every thousand pounds of public capital so expended is an addition to one of the best accumulations of national wealth. CHAPTER XVI. Early intercourse with foreign nations--Progress of the cotton manufacture--Hand-spinning--Arkwright--Crompton-- Power-loom--Cartwright--Especial benefits of machinery in this manufacture. There was a time when the people of England were very inferior to those of the Low Countries, of France, and of Germany, in various productions of manufacturing industry. We first gave an impulse to our woollen trade, which for several centuries was the great staple of the country; by procuring foreign workmen to teach our people their craft. Before that period the nations on the Continent had a proverb against us. They said, "the stranger buys of the Englishman the skin of the fox for a groat, and sells him the tail again for a shilling." The proverb meant that we had not skill to convert the raw material into an article of use, and that we paid a large price for the labour and ingenuity which made our native material available to ourselves. But still our intercourse, such as it was then, with "the stranger" was better than no intercourse. We gave the rough and stinking fox's skin for a groat, and we got the nicely dressed tippet for a shilling. The next best thing to dressing the skin ourselves was to pay other people for dressing it. Without foreign communication we should not have got that article of clothing at all. All nations that have made any considerable advance in civilization have been commercial nations. The arts of life are very imperfectly understood in countries which have little communication with the rest of the world, and consequently the inhabitants are poor and wretched;--their condition is not bettered by the exchange with other countries, either of goods or of knowledge. They have the fox's skin, but they do not know how to convert it into value, by being furriers themselves, or by communication with "stranger" furriers. [Illustration: Cotton; showing a pod bursting.] The people of the East, amongst whom a certain degree of civilization has existed from high antiquity, were not only the growers of many productions which were unsuited to the climate and soil of Europe, but they were the manufacturers also. Cotton, for instance, was cultivated from time immemorial in Hindustan, in China, in Persia, and in Egypt. Cotton was a material easily grown and collected; and the patient industry of the people by whom it was cultivated, their simple habits, and their few wants, enabled them to send into Europe their manufactured stuffs of a fine and durable quality, under every disadvantage of land-carriage, even from the time of the ancient Greeks. Before the discovery, however, of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, cotton goods in Europe were articles of great price and luxury. M. Say well observes that, although cotton stuffs were cheaper than silk (which was formerly sold for its weight in gold), they were still articles which could only be purchased by the most opulent; and that, if a Grecian lady could awake from her sleep of two thousand years, her astonishment would be unbounded to see a simple country girl clothed with a gown of printed cotton, a muslin kerchief, and a coloured shawl. When India was open to the ships of Europe, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English sold cotton goods in every market, in considerable quantities. These stuffs bore their Indian names of calicoes and muslins; and, whether bleached or dyed, were equally valued as amongst the most useful and ornamental articles of European dress. In the seventeenth century France began to manufacture into stuffs the _raw_ cotton imported from India, as Italy had done a century before. A cruel act of despotism drove the best French workmen, who were Protestants, into England, and we learned the manufacture. The same act of despotism, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, caused the settlement of silk-manufacturers in Spitalfields. We did not make any considerable progress in the art, nor did we use the material of cotton exclusively in making up the goods. The warp, or longitudinal threads of the cloth, were of flax, the weft only was of cotton; for we could not twist it hard enough by hand to serve both purposes. This weft was spun entirely by hand with a distaff and spindle--the same process in which the women of England had been engaged for centuries; and which we see represented in ancient drawings. Our manufacture, in spite of all these disadvantages, continued to increase; so that about 1760, although there were fifty thousand spindles at work in Lancashire alone, the weaver found the greatest difficulty in procuring a sufficient supply of thread. Neither weaving nor spinning was then carried on in large factories. They were domestic occupations. The women of a family worked at the distaff or the hand-wheel, and there were two operations necessary in this department; roving, or coarse spinning, reduced the carded cotton to the thickness of a quill, and the spinner afterwards drew out and twisted the roving into weft fine enough for the weaver. The spinsters of England were carrying on the same operation as the spinsters of India. In the middle of the last century, according to Mr. Guest, a writer on the cotton-manufacture, very few weavers could procure weft enough to keep themselves constantly employed. "It was no uncommon thing," he says, "for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day; and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon or gown was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner." [Illustration: Distaff.] That the manufacture should have flourished in England at all under these difficulties is honourable to the industry of our country; for the machinery used in weaving was also of the rudest sort, so that, if the web was more than three feet wide, the labour of two men was necessary to throw the shuttle. English cotton goods, of course, were very dear, and there was little variety in them. The cloth made of flax and cotton was called fustian; for which article Manchester was famous, as well as for laces. We still, received the calicoes and printed cottons from India. [Illustration: A Hindoo woman spinning Cotton.] In a country like ours, where men have learned to think, and where ingenuity therefore is at work, a deficiency in material or in labour to meet the demand of a market is sure to call forth invention. It is a century ago since it was perceived that spinning by machinery might give the supply which human labour was inadequate to produce, because, doubtless, the remuneration for that labour was very small. The work of the distaff, as it was carried on at that period, in districts partly agricultural and partly commercial, was, generally, an employment for the spare hours of the young women, and the easy industry of the old. It was a labour that was to assist in maintaining the family,--not a complete means for their maintenance. The supply of yarn was therefore insufficient, and ingenious men applied themselves to remedy that insufficiency. Spinning-mills were built at Northampton in 1733, in which, it is said, although we have no precise account of it, that an apparatus for spinning was erected. A Mr. Lawrence Earnshaw, of Mottram, in Cheshire, is recorded to have invented a machine, in 1753, to spin and reel cotton at one operation; which he showed to his neighbours and then destroyed it, through the generous apprehension that he might deprive the poor of bread. We must admire the motive of this good man, although we are now enabled to show that his judgment was mistaken. Richard Arkwright, a barber of Preston, invented, in 1769, the principal part of the machinery for spinning cotton, and by so doing he gave bread to about two millions of people instead of fifty thousand; and, assisted by subsequent inventions, raised the importation of cotton-wool from less than two million pounds per annum to a thousand million pounds; has enabled us to supply other nations with cotton manufactures to the enormous amount of thirty-three million pounds sterling, in one year, 1853; has raised the annual produce of the manufacture from two hundred thousand pounds sterling to at least sixty million pounds sterling; and has given direct employment to half a million of men, women, and young persons. [Illustration: Sir Richard Arkwright.] And how did Arkwright effect this great revolution? He asked himself whether it was not possible, instead of a wheel which spins a single thread of cotton at a time, and by means of which the spinner could obtain in twenty-four hours about two ounces of thread,--whether it might not be possible to spin the same material upon a great number of wheels, from which many hundreds of threads might issue at the same moment. The difficulty was in giving to these numerous wheels, spinning so many threads, the peculiar action of two hands when they pinch, at a little distance from each other, a lock of cotton, rendering it finer as it is drawn out. It was necessary, also, at the same time, to imitate the action of the spindle, which twisted together the filaments at the moment they had attained the necessary degree of fineness. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to give an adequate idea, by words, of the complex machinery by which Arkwright accomplished his object. Since Arkwright's time prodigious improvements have been made in the machinery for cotton-spinning; but the principle remains the same, namely, to enable rollers to do the work of human fingers, with much greater precision, and incomparably cheaper. We will attempt briefly to describe this chief portion of the great invention. We must suppose that, by the previous operation of carding, the cotton-wool has been so combed and prepared as to be formed into a long untwisted line of about the thickness of a man's finger. This line so formed (after it has been introduced into the spinning-machine) is called a _roving_, the old name in hand-spinning. [Illustration: Arkwright's original spinning-machine.] In order to convert this roving into a thread, it is necessary that the fibres, which are for the most part curled up, and which lie in all directions, should be stretched out and laid lengthwise, side by side; that they should be pressed together so as to give them a more compact form; and that they should be twisted, so as to unite them all firmly together. In the original method of spinning by the distaff, those operations were performed by the finger and thumb, and they were afterwards effected with greater rapidity, but less perfectly, by means of the long wheel and spindle. For the same purpose, Arkwright employed two pairs of small rollers, the one pair being placed at a little distance in front of the other. The lower roller in each pair is furrowed or fluted lengthwise, and the upper one is covered with leather; so that, as they revolve in contact with each other, they take fast hold of the cotton which passes between them. Both pairs of rollers are turned by machinery, which is so contrived that the second pair shall turn round with much more swiftness than the first. Now suppose that a roving is put between the first pair of rollers. The immediate effect is merely to press it together into a more compact form. But the roving has but just passed through the first pair of rollers, when it is received between the second pair; and as the rollers of the second pair revolve with greater velocity than those of the first, they draw the roving forwards with greater rapidity than it is given out by the first pair. Consequently, the roving will be lengthened in passing from one pair to the other; and the fibres of which it is composed will be drawn out and laid lengthwise side by side. The increase of length will be exactly in proportion to the increased velocity of the second pair of rollers. Two or more rovings are generally united in this operation. Thus, suppose that two rovings are introduced together between the first pair of rollers, and that the second pair of rollers moves with twice the velocity of the first. The new roving thus formed by the union of the two will then be of exactly twice the length of either of the original ones. It will therefore contain exactly the same quantity of cotton per yard. But its parts will be very differently arranged, and its fibres will be drawn out longitudinally, and will be thus much better fitted for forming a thread. This operation of doubling and drawing is repeated as often as is found necessary, and the requisite degree of twist is given by a machine similar to the spindle and fly of the common flax-wheel. The spinning-mule, invented by Samuel Crompton, carried the mechanism of the cotton-factory many steps in advance. Long after Crompton, came the self-acting mule. It is a carriage some twenty or thirty feet long, travelling to and fro, and drawing out the most delicate threads through hundreds of spindles, whirling at a rate which scarcely permits the eye to trace their motion. Mr. Whitworth says,--"So great are the improvements effected in spinning machinery, that one man can attend to a mule containing 1088 spindles, each spinning 3 hanks, or 3264 hanks in the aggregate per day. In Hindustan, where they still spin by hand, it would be extravagant to expect a spinner to accomplish one hank per day; so that in the United States [and in Great Britain also] we find the same amount of manual labour, by improved machinery, doing more than 3000 times the work." [Illustration: Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning-mule.] Of the rapidity with which some portions of the machinery operate, we may form an idea from the fact that the very finest thread which is used in making lace is passed through the strong flame of a lamp, which burns off the fibres without burning the thread itself. The velocity with which the thread moves is so great, that we cannot perceive any motion at all. The line of thread, passing off a wheel through the flame, looks as if were perfectly at rest; and it appears a miracle that it is not burnt. [Illustration: Cotton Mule-spinning.] The invention of Arkwright--the substitution of rollers for fingers--changed the commerce of the world. The machinery by which a man, or woman, or even child, could produce two hundred threads where one was produced before, caused a cheapness of production much greater than that of India, where human labour is scarcely worth anything. But the fabric of cotton was also infinitely improved by the machinery. The hand of the spinner was unequal to its operations. It sometimes produced a fine thread, and sometimes a coarse one; and therefore the quality of the cloth could not be relied upon. The yarn which is spun by machinery is sorted with the greatest exactness, and numbered according to its quality. This circumstance alone, which could only result from machinery, has a direct tendency to diminish the cost of production. Machinery not only adds to human power, and economizes human time, but it works up the most common materials into articles of value, and equalizes the use of valuable materials. Thus, in linen of which the thread is spun by the hand, a thick thread and a thin thread will be found side by side; and, therefore, not only is material wasted, but the fabric is less durable, because it wears unequally. These circumstances--the diminished cost of cotton goods, and the added value to the quality--have rendered it impossible for the cheap labour of India to come into the market against the machinery of Europe. The trade in Indian cotton goods is gone for ever. Not even the caprices of fashion can have an excuse for purchasing the dearer commodity. We make it cheaper, and we make it better. The trade in cotton, as it exists in the present day, is the great triumph of human ingenuity. We bring the raw material from the country of the people who grow it, on the other side of our globe; we manufacture it by our machines into articles which we used to buy from them ready-made; and taking back those articles to their own markets, encumbered with the cost of transport for fourteen thousand miles, we sell the cotton to these very people cheaper than they can produce it themselves, and they buy it therefore with eagerness. Nearly twenty years after Arkwright had begun to spin by machinery, that is in 1786, the price of a particular sort of cotton-yarn much used in the manufacture of calico was thirty-eight shillings a pound. That same yarn in 1832 was two shillings and eleven pence a pound. In 1814 the selling price of a piece of calico distinguished by the trade as 72-7/8 was twenty-eight shillings; in 1844 it was six shillings and nine pence. It is probably less at this day. If cotton goods were worn only by the few rich, as they were worn in ancient times, and even in the latter half of the last century, that difference of price would not be a great object; but the price is a very important object when every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom has to pay it. Calico is four times as cheap as it was forty years ago. There are no very certain data for the produce of our looms, for, happily, no tax exists upon the great necessaries of life which they produce. But it has been calculated that the home consumption of cotton cloth is equal to twenty-six yards for every individual of the population; and taking the total number at twenty-seven millions, the quantity required would be seven hundred million yards. At five pence a yard, the seven hundred million yards of cloth amount to above fourteen million pounds sterling. At half-a-crown a yard, which we will take as the average price about forty years ago, they would amount to eighty-four millions of pounds sterling. At twelve or fourteen times the present price, or six shillings a yard, which proportion we get by knowing the price of yarn seventy years ago and at the present day, the cost of seven hundred million yards of cotton cloth would be one hundred and seventy-five millions of pounds sterling. It is perfectly clear that no such sum of money could be paid for cotton goods, and that in fact, instead of between fourteen and fifteen millions being spent in this article of clothing by persons of all classes, in consequence of the cheapness of the commodity, we should go back to very nearly the same consumption that existed before Arkwright's invention, that is, to the consumption of the year 1750, when the whole amount of the cotton manufacture of the kingdom did not exceed the annual value of two hundred thousand pounds. At that rate of value, the quantity of cloth manufactured could not have been equal to one five-hundredth part of that which is now manufactured for home consumption. Where one person a century ago consumed one yard, the consumption per head has risen to about twenty-six yards. This vast difference in the comforts of every family, by the ability which they now possess of easily acquiring warm and healthful clothing, is a clear gain to all society, and to every one as a portion of society. It is more especially a gain to the females and the children of families, whose condition is always degraded when clothing is scanty. The power of procuring cheap clothing for themselves, and for their children, has a tendency to raise the condition of females more than any other addition to their stock of comfort. It cultivates habits of cleanliness and decency; and those are little acquainted with the human character who can doubt whether cleanliness and decency are not only great aids to virtue, but virtues themselves. John Wesley said that cleanliness was next to godliness. There is little self-respect amidst dirt and rags, and without self-respect there can be no foundation for those qualities which most contribute to the good of society. The power of procuring useful clothing at a cheap price has raised the condition of women amongst us, and the influence of the condition of women upon the welfare of a community can never be too highly estimated. That the manufacture of cotton by machinery has produced one of the great results for which machinery is to be desired, namely, cheapness of production, cannot, we think, be doubted. If increased employment of human labour has gone along with that cheapness of production, even the most prejudiced can have no doubt of the advantages of this machinery to all classes of the community. At the time that Arkwright commenced his machinery, a man named Hargreave, who had set up a less perfect invention, was driven out of Lancashire, at the peril of his life, by a combination of the old spinners by the wheel. In 1789, when the spinning machinery was introduced into Normandy, the hand-spinners there also destroyed the mills, and put down the manufacture for a time. Lancashire and Normandy are now, in England and France, the great seats of the cotton manufacture. The people of Lancashire and Normandy had not formerly the means, as we have now, of knowing that cheap production produces increased employment. There were many examples of this principle formerly to be found in arts and manufactures; but the people were badly educated upon such subjects, principally because studious and inquiring men had thought such matters beneath their attention. We live in times more favourable for these researches. The people of Lancashire and Normandy, at the period we mention, being ignorant of what would conduce to their real welfare, put down the machines. In both countries they were a very small portion of the community that attempted such an illegal act. The weavers were interested in getting cotton yarn cheap, so the combination was opposed to their interests; and the spinners were chiefly old women and girls, very few in number, and of little influence. Yet they and their friends, both in England and France, made a violent clamour; and but for the protection of the laws, the manufactories in each country would never have been set up. What was the effect upon the condition of this very population? M. Say, in his 'Complete Course of Political Economy,' states, upon the authority of an English manufacturer of fifty years' experience, that, in ten years after the introduction of the machines, the people employed in the trade, spinners and weavers, were more than forty times as many as when the spinning was done by hand. The spinning machinery of Lancashire alone now produces as much yarn as would require more than the entire population of the United Kingdom to produce with the distaff and spindle. This immense power might be supposed to have superseded human labour altogether in the production of cotton yarn. It did no such thing. It gave a now direction to the labour that was formerly employed at the distaff and spindle; but it increased the quantity of labour altogether employed in the manufacture of cotton, at least a hundred fold. It increased it too where an increase of labour was most desirable. It gave constant, easy, and not unpleasant occupation to women and children. In all the departments of cotton spinning, and in many of those of weaving by the power-loom, women and children are employed. There are degrees, of course, in the agreeable nature of the employment, particularly as to its being more or less cleanly. But there are extensive apartments in large cotton-factories, where great numbers of females are daily engaged in processes which would not soil the nicest fingers, dressed with the greatest neatness, and clothed in materials (as all women are now clothed) that were set apart for the highest in the land a century ago. And yet there are some who regret that the aged crones no longer sit in the cottage chimney, earning a few pence daily by their rude industry at the wheel! [Illustration: Hindoo weaver at work in a field.] The creation of employment amongst ourselves by the cheapness of cotton goods produced by machinery, is not to be considered as a mere change from the labour of India to the labour of England. It is a creation of employment, operating just in the same manner as the machinery did for printing books. The Indian, it is true, no longer sends us his calicoes and his coloured stuffs; we make them ourselves. But he sends us fifty times the amount of raw cotton that he sent when the machinery was first set up. The workman on the banks of the Ganges is no longer weaving calicoes for us, in his loom of reeds under the shadow of a palm-tree; but he is gathering for us fifty times as much cotton as he gathered before, and making fifty times as much indigo for us to colour it with. [Illustration: Power-looms.] [Illustration: Dr. Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom.] The change that has been produced upon the labour of India by the machinery employed for spinning and weaving cotton, has a parallel in the altered condition of the hand-loom weavers in Great Britain. In 1785 Dr. Cartwright produced his first _power loom_. It was a rude machine compared with the refinements that have successively carried on his principle. Every resistance was made to the introduction to this new power. The mill owners were slow to perceive its advantages; the first mills in which these looms were introduced were burnt. The hand-loom weavers worked at a machine which little varied from that with which their Flemish instructors had worked three centuries before. But no prejudice and no violence could prevent the progress of the new machine. The object for which machines are established, and the object which they do effect, is cheapness of production. Machines either save material, or diminish labour, or both. "Which is the cheapest," said the committee to Joseph Foster, "a piece of goods made by a power-loom, or a piece of goods made by a hand-loom?" He answered, "a power-loom is the cheapest."[22] This answer was decisive. The hand-loom weavers have continued to struggle, even up to this time, with the greater productive power of the power-loom; but the struggle is nearly over. It would have been terminated long ago, if the miserable wages which the hand-loom weaver obtained, had not been eked out by parochial contributions. It was the duty of society to break the fall of the workmen who were thrust out of their place by the invention; but had society attempted to interpose between the new machines and the old, so as to have kept the old workers to their less profitable employment, there would have been far more derangements of labour to mitigate. Upon the introduction of the spinning machinery there was great temporary distress of the hand-spinners, with rioting and destruction of spinning-mills. If these modes of resistance to invention had gone on to prevent altogether the manufacture of cotton thread by the spinning machinery, the consumption of cotton cloth would have been little increased, and the number of persons engaged in the manufacture would have been twenty, thirty or even forty times less than the present number. But there would have been another result. Would the great body of the people of Europe have chosen to wear for many years _dear_ cloth instead of _cheap_ cloth, that a few thousand spinners might have been kept at their ancient wheels in Lancashire? Capital can easily shift its place, and invention follows where capital goes before. The people of France, and Germany, and America, would have employed the cheap machine instead of the dear one; and the people of England would have had cheap cloth instead of dear cloth from thence. We cannot build a wall of brass round our islands; and the thin walls of prohibitive duties are very easily broken through. A profit of from twenty to thirty per cent. will pour in any given quantity of smuggled goods that a nation living under prohibitive laws can demand. Bonaparte, in the height of his power, passed the celebrated Berlin decree for the exclusion of all English produce from the continent of Europe. But our merchants laughed at him. The whole coast of France, and Holland, and Italy, became one immense receiving place for smuggled goods. If he had lined the whole coast with all the six hundred thousand soldiers that he marched to Russia, instead of a few custom-house officers, he could not have stopped the introduction of English produce. It was against the nature of things that the people who had been accustomed to cheap goods should buy dear ones; or that they should go without any article, whether of necessity or luxury, whose use had become general. Mark, therefore, if the cotton-spinners of Lancashire had triumphed eighty years ago over Arkwright's machinery, there would not have been a single man, woman, or child of those spinners employed _at all_, within twenty years after that most fatal triumph. The manufacture of cotton would have gone to other countries; cotton spinning in England would have been at an end. The same thing would have happened if the power-loom, fifty years ago, had been put down by combination; other countries would have used the invention which we should have been foolish enough to reject. Thirty years ago America had adopted the power-loom. [Illustration: Flemish weaver. From a print of 1568.] In the cotton manufacture, which from its immense amount possesses the means of rewarding the smallest improvement, invention has been at work, and most successfully, to make machines, that make machines, that make the cotton thread. There is a part of the machinery used in cotton-spinning called a reed. It consists of a number of pieces of wire, set side by side in a frame, resembling, as far as such things admit of comparison, a comb with two backs. These reeds are of various lengths and degrees of fineness; but they all consist of cross pieces of wire, fastened at regular intervals between longitudinal pieces of split cane, into which they are tied with waxed thread. A machine now does the work of reed-making. The materials enter the machine in the shape of two or three yards of cane, and many yards of wire and thread; and the machine cuts the wire, places each small piece with unfailing regularity between the canes, twists the thread round the cane with a knot that cannot slip, every time a piece of wire is put in, and does several yards of this extraordinary work in less time than we have taken to write the description. There is another machine for making a part of the machine for cotton-spinning, even more wonderful. The cotton wool is combed by circular cards of every degree of fineness; and the card-making machine, receiving only a supply of leather and wire, does its own work without the aid of hands. It punches the leather--cuts the wire--passes it through the leather--clinches it behind--and gives it the proper form of the tooth in front--producing a complete card of several feet in circumference in a wonderfully short time. All men feel the benefit of such inventions, because they lessen the cost of production. The necessity for them always precedes their use. There were not reed-makers and card-makers enough in England to supply the demands of the cotton machinery; so invention went to work to see how machines could make machines; and the consequent diminished cost of machinery has diminished the price of clothing. [22] See p. 107. CHAPTER XVII. The woollen manufacture--Divisions of employment--Early history--Prohibitory laws--The Jacquard loom--Middle-age legislation--Sumptuary laws--The silk manufacture-- Ribbon-weaving--The linen manufacture--Cloth-printing-- Bleaching. Those who have not taken the trouble to witness, or to inquire into, the processes by which they are surrounded with the conveniences and comforts of civilized life, can have no idea of the vast variety of ways in which invention is at work to lessen the cost of production. The people of India, who spin their cotton wholly by hand, and weave their cloth in a rude loom, would doubtless be astonished when they first saw the effects of machinery, in the calico which is returned to their own shores, made from the material brought from their own shores, cheaper than they themselves could make it. But their indolent habits would not permit them to inquire how machinery produced this wonder. There are many amongst us who only know that the wool grows upon the sheep's back, and that it is converted into a coat by labour and machinery. They do not estimate the prodigious power of thought--the patient labour--the unceasing watchfulness--the frequent disappointment--the uncertain profit--which many have had to encounter in bringing this machinery to perfection, and in organizing the modes of its working, in connection with labour. Further, their knowledge of history may have been confined to learning by rote the dates when kings began to reign, with the names of the battles they fought or the rebels they executed. Of the progress of commerce and the arts they may have been taught little. The records of wool constitute a real part of the history of England; and form, in our opinion, a subject of far more permanent importance than the scandalous annals of the wives of Henry VIII., or the mistresses of Charles II. Let us first take a broad view of the more prominent facts that belong to our woollen manufacture; and then proceed to notice those of other textile fabrics. The reader will remember that when the fur-traders refused to advance to John Tanner a supply of blankets for his winter consumption, he applied himself to make garments out of moose-skins. The skin was ready manufactured to his hands when he had killed and stripped the moose; but still the blanket brought from England across the Atlantic was to him a cheaper and a better article of clothing than the moose-skin which he had at hand; and he felt it a privation when the trader refused it to him upon the accustomed credit. It never occurred to him to think of manufacturing a blanket; although he was in some respects a manufacturer. He was a manufacturer of sugar, amongst the various trades which he followed. He used to travel about the country till he had found a grove of maple-trees; and here he would sit down for a month or two till he had extracted sugar from the maples. Why did he not attempt to make blankets? He had not that Accumulated Knowledge, and he did not work with that _Division of Labour_, which are essential to the manufacture of blankets--both of which principles are carried to their highest perfection when capital enables the manufacture of woollen cloth, or any other article, to be carried forward upon a large scale. We will endeavour to trace what accumulations of skill, and what divisions of employment, were necessary to enable Tanner to clothe himself with a piece of woollen cloth. We shall not stop to inquire whether the skill has produced the division of employment, or the division of employment has produced the skill. It is sufficient for us to show, that the two principles are in joint operation, unitedly carrying forward the business of production in the most profitable manner. It is enough for us to know, that where there is no skill there is no division of employment, and where there is no division of employment there is no skill. Skill and division of employment are inseparably wedded. If they could be separated, they would in their separation cease to work profitably. They are kept together by the constant energy of capital, devising the most profitable direction for labour. Before a blanket can be made, we must have the material for making a blanket. Tanner had not the material, because he was not a cultivator. Before wool can be grown there must be, as we have shown, appropriation of land. When this appropriation takes place, the owner of the land either cultivates it himself, which is the earliest stage in the division of agricultural employment,--or he obtains a portion of the produce in the shape of corn or cattle, or in a money payment. Hence a tenantry. But the tenant, to manufacture wool at the greatest advantage, must possess capital, and carry forward the principle of the division of employment by hiring labourers. We use the word _manufacture_ of wool advisedly; for all farming processes are manufacturing processes, and invariably reduce themselves to change of form, as all commercial processes reduce themselves to change of place. If the capital of the farmer is sufficient to enable him to farm upon a large scale, he divides his labourers; and one becomes a shepherd, one a ploughman,--one sows the ground, and one washes and shears the sheep, more skilfully than another. If he has a considerable farm, he divides his land, also, upon the same principle, and has pasture, and arable, and rotation of crops. By these divisions he is enabled to manufacture wool cheaper than the farmer upon a small scale, who employs one man to do everything, and has not a proper proportion of pasture and arable, or a due rotation of crops. At every division of employment skill must be called forth in a higher perfection than when two or more employments were joined together; and the chief director of the skill, the capitalist himself, or farmer, must require more skill to make all the parts which compose his manufactury work together harmoniously. But we have new divisions of employment to trace before the wool can be got to the manufacturer. These employments are created by what may be called the _local_ division of labour. It is convenient to rear the sheep upon the mountains of Wales, because there the short and thymy pastures are fitted for the growth of wool. It is convenient to manufacture the wool into cloth at Leeds, because coals are there at hand to give power to the steam-engines, with which the manufacture is carried on. The farmer in Wales, and the manufacturer of cloth at Leeds, must be brought into connection. In the infancy of commerce one or both of them would make a journey to establish this connection; but the cost of that journey would add to the cost of the wool, and therefore lessen the consumption of woollen cloth. The division of employment goes on to the creation of a wool-factor, or dealer in wool, who either purchases directly from the grower, or sells to the manufacturer for a commission from the grower. The grower, therefore, sends the wool direct to the factor, whose business it is to find out what manufacturer is in want of wool. If the factor did not exist, the manufacturer would have to find out, by a great deal of personal exertion, what farmer had wool to sell; or the farmer would have to find out, with the same exertion, what manufacturer wanted to buy wool. The factor receives a commission, which the seller and buyer ultimately unite in paying. They co-operate to establish a wool-factor, just as we all co-operate to establish a postman; and just as the postman, who delivers a number of letters to a great many individuals, does that service at little more cost to all, than each individual would pay for the delivery of a single letter, so does the wool-factor exchange the wool between the grower and the manufacturer, at little more cost to a large number of the growers who employ him, than each would be obliged to pay in expenses and loss of time to travel from Wales to Leeds to sell his wool. We have, however, a great many more divisions of employment to follow out before the wool is conveyed from Wales to Leeds or Bradford. If the packs are taken on shipboard, and carried down the Mersey to Liverpool, we have all the variety of occupations, involving different degrees of skill, which make up the life of a mariner; if they go forward upon the railroad to Manchester, we have all the higher degrees of skill involved in their transport which belong to the business of an engineer; or if they finally reach their destination by canal, we have another division of labour that adjusts itself to the management of boats in canals. But the ship, the railroad, the canal, which are created by the necessity of transporting commodities from place to place, have been formed after the most laborious exercise of the highest science, working with the greatest mechanical skill; and they exist only through the energy of prodigious accumulations of capital, the growth of centuries of patient and painful labour and economy. We have at length the wool in a manufactury at Leeds or Bradford. The first class of persons who prepare the wool, are the sorters and pickers. It is their business to separate the fine from the coarse locks, so that each may be suited to different fabrics. There is judgment required, which could not exist without division of labour; and the business, too, must be done rapidly, or the cost of sorting and picking would outweigh the advantage. The second principal operation is scouring. Here the men are constantly employed in washing the wool, to free it from all impurities. It is evident that the same man could not profitably pass from the business of sorting to that of scouring, and back again,--from dry work to wet, and from wet to dry. When the wool is out of the hands of the scourers it comes into those of the dyers, who colour it with the various chemical agents applied to the manufacture. The carders next receive it, who tear it with machines till it attains the requisite fineness. From the carders it passes to the slubbers, who form it into tough loose threads; and thence to spinners, who make the threads finer and stronger. There are subdivisions of employment which are not essential for us to notice, to give an idea of the great division of employment, and the consequent accumulation of peculiar skill, required to prepare wool to be made into yarn, to be made into woollen cloth. The next stages in the manufacture are the spinning, the warping, the sizing, and the weaving. These are all distinct operations, and are all carried forward with the most elaborate machinery, adapted to the division of labour which it enforces, and by which it is enforced. But there is a great deal still to be done before the cloth is fit to be worn. The cloth, now woven, has to be scoured as the wool was. There is a subsequent process called burling, at which females are constantly employed. The boiling and milling come next, in which the cloth is again exposed to the action of water, and beaten so as to give it toughness and consistency. Dressers, called giggers, next take it in hand, who also work with machinery upon the wet cloth. It has then to be dried in houses where the temperature is sometimes as high as 130 degrees, and where the men work almost naked. It is evident that the boilers and dressers could not profitably work in the dry-houses: and that there must be division of employment to prevent those sudden transitions which would destroy the human frame much more quickly than a regular exposure to cold or heat, to damp or dryness. The cloth must be next cropped or cut upon the face, to remove the shreds of wool which deform the surface in every direction. When cut, it has to be brushed dry by machinery, to get out the croppings which remain in its texture. This done, it is dyed in the shape of cloth, as it was formerly dyed in the shape of wool. Then come a variety of processes, to increase the delicacy of the fabric:--singeing, by passing the cloth within a burning distance of red-hot cylinders; frizing, to raise a nap upon the cloth; glossing, by carrying over it heavy heated plates of iron; pressing, in which operation of the press red-hot plates are also employed; and drawing, in which men, with fine needles, draw up minute holes in the cloth when it has passed through the last operation. Then comes the packing; and after all these processes it must be bought by a wholesale dealer, and again by a retailer, before it reaches the consumer. Between the growth of the fleece of wool, and the completion of a coat by a skilful tailor,--who, it is affirmed, puts five-and-twenty thousand stitches into it,--what an infinite division of employments! what inventions of science! what exercises of ingenuity! what unwearied application! what painful, and too often unhealthy labour! And yet if men are to be clothed well and cheaply, all these manifold processes are not in vain; and the individual injury in some branches of the employ is not to be compared to the suffering that would ensue if cloth were not made at all, or if it were made at such a cost that the most wealthy only could afford to wear it. But for the accumulation of knowledge, and the division of employments, engaged in the manufacture of cloth, and set in operation by large capital, we should each be obliged to be contented with a blanket such as John Tanner desired, and very few indeed would even obtain that blanket: for if skill and division of labour were, not to go on in one branch, they would not go on in another, and then we should have nothing to give in exchange for the blanket. The individual injury to health, also, produced by the division of labour, is not so great, upon the average, as if there were no division. All the returns of human life in this country show an extremely little difference in the effect upon life, even of what we consider the most unhealthy trades; and this proceeds from that extraordinary power of the human body to adapt itself to a habit, however apparently injurious, which is one of the most beautiful evidences of the compensating principle which prevails throughout the moral world. The wool manufacture of Great Britain employs very nearly three hundred thousand persons; in the various processes connected with the production of cloth, worsted, flannel, blankets, and carpets. What a contrast to all this variety of labour is the history of the earlier stages of the manufacture of woollen cloth. It is unnecessary to go back to the time of Henry III., when the production of wool was in such an imperfect state through flocks of sheep being scattered over immense tracts of waste land, that a manor in Surrey was held under the crown by the tenure of gathering wool for the Queen. According to the record, Peter de Baldewyn was to gather the wool from the thorns that had torn it from the sheep's back; and if he did not choose to gather it he was to forfeit twenty shillings.[23] In the time of Edward III., according to Fuller, in his 'Church History,' the English clothiers were wholly unskilful; "knowing no more what to do with their wool than the sheep which wear it, as to any artificial and curious drapery, their best cloth being no better than frieze, such their coarseness for want of skill in the making." When the Flemish clothiers came into England, the manufacture improved; in spite of the regulating power of the state, which was perpetually interfering with material, quality, and wages. In time wool became the chief commodity of England. The woolsack of the House of Lords was typical of this staple industry; and of the mode also in which the majesty of legislation sat heavy upon the produce. To encourage the manufacture nothing was to be woven but wool. From the cradle to the grave all were to be wrapt in wool. The genius of prohibition prevented the exchange of wool with other manufactured commodities; and, therefore, to keep up rents, Narcissa was "odious in woollen," and a Holland shirt--for British linen did not exist--was a rare commodity, cheap at "eight shillings an ell," as in the days of Dame Quickly. This was the state of things at the end of the 17th century, and somewhat later. The manufacturers clamoured against the exportation of wool; and the agriculturists at the same time resisted the importation of Irish and Scotch cattle. The parliament listened to both sets of clamourers. It said to the people:--You of trade shall not be ruined by the land selling wool to foreigners--there shall be no competition; you shall buy the wool at the lowest price. And then parliament turned round to the complaining grazier, and said,--the cloth-maker and his men shall not ruin you by buying meat cheap--no Irish cattle or Scotch sheep shall come here to lower your prices. From 1664 to 1824 the exportation of wool was strictly prohibited. The importation was sometimes prevented by high duties--sometimes encouraged by low. The manufacture was constantly struggling with these attempts of the state to hold a balance between what were so universally considered as conflicting interests. In 1844 the whole system was abandoned. In 1853, we imported one hundred and seventeen million lbs. of sheep and lamb's wool--of which three-fifths came from Australia--and two million of alpaca and llama wool. The wool-growers at home still found a ready market; the great body of the population had good coats and flannels and blankets; and, in addition, we exported ten million pounds sterling of woollen manufactures. [Illustration: Jacquard Power-looms: Stuff-manufacture.] [Illustration: Mechanism of power-loom.] The employment of wool in the manufacture of broadcloth and flannel was, a few years ago, almost the entire business of the woollen factories. The novel uses to which wool is now applied, and the almost innumerable varieties of articles of clothing which are produced from long wool and short wool--from combinations of alpaca wool and coarse wool, of wool with cotton, of wool with silk--together with the introduction of brilliant dyes and tasteful designs, formerly unknown--have established vast seats of manufacture which are almost peculiar to our country, and have converted, in a few years, humble villages into great cities. The finest Paisley shawls rival the elaborate handicraft of Hindustan; and, what is of more importance, the humblest female may purchase a tasteful article of dress at a price which a few years ago would have been thought fabulous. The wonderful variety of patterns which we see in these and other productions of modern skill are effected by the Jacquard apparatus, in which the pattern depends upon the disposition of holes pierced in separate bits of pasteboard. In common weaving, the weft threads pass alternately under and over the entire warp threads, which are lifted up to allow the weft in the shuttle to traverse from one side to the other. The Jacquard apparatus determines, by the number and arrangement of the holes in the cards, which of the separate warp threads shall be so lifted; for at every throw of the shuttle the blank part of each card moves a series of levers which raise certain warp threads; while other levers, passing into the holes in the card, do not affect the other warp threads. In this way, patterns of the greatest complexity are woven in cotton, and worsted, and silk; so that even a minute work of art, such as a portrait or a landscape, may be produced from the loom. Every pattern requires a separate set of cards. We do not expect this brief notice to be readily understood. Those who would comprehend the extent of ingenuity involved in the principle of this invention, and the beautiful results of which it is capable, should witness its operation in a Halifax power-loom. In a bobbin-net machine the cards are connected with a revolving pentagonal bar, each side of which is pierced with holes, corresponding with the pins or levers above. When a card comes over the topmost side of the pentagon the levers drop; but those pins only which enter through the holes in the card affect the pattern which is being worked. Any one who views this complicated arrangement in a Nottingham lace-machine, requires no small amount of attention to comprehend its mysterious movements; and when the connection is perceived between that chain of dropping cards, and the flower that is being worked in the lace, a vague sense of the manifold power of invention comes over the mind--we had almost said an awful sense. [Illustration: Jacquard cards.] * * * * * If there be one thing more remarkable than another in the visible condition of the people of Great Britain, it is the universality of useful, elegant, and cheap clothing. There is very small distinction in the ordinary coat and trowsers of the peer and the best dress of the artisan; and not a great deal more in the gown and shawl of the high-born lady and those of the handmaid of her toilet. Perhaps the absence of mere finery, and the taste which is an accompaniment of superior education, constitute the chief difference in the dress of various ranks. This feature of the present times is a part of our social history. For several centuries the domestic trade of the country was hemmed round and fettered by laws against extravagance in dress, which had always been a favourite subject for the experimentalizing of barbarous legislation. An act of 1463, recites that the Commons pray their lord the king to remember that in the times of his noble progenitors, ordinances and statutes were made for the apparel and array of the commons, as well of men as of women, so that none of them should use or wear any inordinate or excessive apparel, but only according to their degrees. However, we find that all these ordinances had been utterly fruitless. The parliament makes new ordinances. The nobles, according to these, may wear whatever they please; knights and their wives were to wear no cloth of gold, or fur of sables; no person under the state of a lord to wear any purple silk; no esquires or gentlemen and their wives any silk at all; no persons not having possessions of the yearly value of forty pounds, any fur; and, what is cruel indeed, no widow but such as hath possessions of the value of forty pounds, shall wear any fur, any gold or silver girdle, or any kerchief that had cost more than three shillings and four-pence; persons not having forty shillings a-year were denied the enjoyment of fustian and scarlet cloth; the yeoman was to have no stuffing in his doublet; nor servants in husbandry, broadcloth of a higher price than two shillings a yard. The length of gowns, jackets, and cloaks, was prescribed by the same statute; and the unhappy tailor who exceeded the length by the breadth of his nail, was to be mulcted in the same penalties as those who flaunted in skirts of more than needful longitude. The men and women of the mystery and workmanship of silk prefer their piteous complaint to parliament, that silk-work ready wrought is brought into the realm. If it had occurred to them to petition that the gentlemen and their wives might be permitted to wear satin, as well as the lords, their piteous complaint of want of occupation might have been more easily redressed than by foreign prohibition. Sumptuary laws have long been abolished; but to them succeeded the laws of custom, which prescribed one sort of dress to one condition of people, and another to another. We cannot doubt which state gives most employment to manufacturers, the law of exclusiveness or the law of universality. If the labourer and artificer were still restricted, by enactment or by custom, to the wearing of cloth of a certain price per yard, we may be quite sure that the manufacture of the finer cloths would be in no flourishing condition; and if the servant-maid could not put on her Sunday gown of silk, we may be equally clear that the silk-trade would continue to be the small thing that it was half a century ago, when it had the full benefit of restriction, instead of being, as it is now, one of the great staple trades of the country. When the frame-work knitters of silk stockings petitioned Oliver Cromwell for a charter, they said, "the Englishman buys silk of the stranger for twenty marks, and sells him the same again for one hundred pounds." The higher pride of the present day is that we buy seven million pounds of raw silk from the stranger, employ a hundred and fourteen thousand of our own people in the manufacture of it by the aid of machinery, and sell it to the stranger, and our own people, at a price as low as that of the calico of half a century ago. In 1853 the exports of silk manufactures, including those of silk mixed with other materials, silk-yarn and silk-twist, amounted to the enormous sum of two millions sterling, having doubled since 1849. In 1826, when the ruin of our silk-trade was boldly prophesied as the sure result of the reduction of the prohibitive duties on foreign silk, the exports of our silk manufactures did not reach two hundred thousand pounds. William Huskisson, the great statesman who produced this mighty change, was then denounced in parliament as "an insensible and hard-hearted metaphysician." [Illustration: Hanks of silk. _a_, Bengal; _b_, Italian; _c_, Persian; _d_, Broussa.] [Illustration: Egyptian winding-reel.] When a boy who keeps silk-worms upon mulberry leaves, puts a spinning-worm into a little paper bag, and finally obtains an oval ball of silk,--he does, upon a small scale, what is done in the silk-growing countries upon a large scale. When he winds off his cocoon of silk upon a little reel, he is engaged in the first process of silk making. There must be myriads of silk-worms reared to produce the seven million pounds of raw silk that Great Britain manufactures. The school-boy, from three or four silk-worms, can obtain a little skein of silk, which he carefully puts between the leaves of a book, and looks at it again and again, in delight at its glossy beauty. Perhaps he does not take the trouble to think how many such skeins would be required to produce a pair of silk stockings. As the school-boy puts his skein into a book, so the silk-producers of India, Italy, Persia, and Turkey, send us their hanks of silk, which we call by various names, made up as shown in the opposite page. In Egypt, a silk-producing country, a woman has a simple machine for preparing the hanks of silk for the purposes of commerce. She winds the silk upon a reel. She has no moving power but that of her hand and arm. In England a woman also attends to a winding-machine, by which the silk is transferred to bobbins, for the purpose of being spun to various degrees of fineness. She has no labour to perform, beyond providing a supply of material to be wound, removing a bobbin when it is filled, placing an empty one in its place, and occasionally piecing a broken thread. She is doing what the machine cannot do--adjusting her operations to many varying circumstances. The machine is moved by the steam-engine; but the steam-engine, the reels, and the bobbins would work unavailingly, without the guidance of the mind that waits upon and watches them. [Illustration: Silk winding-machine.] The peculiarity in the manufacture of silk-twist, or thread, as distinguished from that of cotton, or flax, or wool, is that it is produced naturally in one uninterrupted length. The object of the machinery of a silk-mill is, not to combine short fibres in a continuous thread by spinning, but to wind and twist, so as to unite many slight threads already formed into one thread of sufficient strength for the purpose of weaving, or of sewing. The subsequent processes are the same as with the fibrous substances. The machinery by which these processes are carried on has been improved, by successive degrees, since Thomas Lombe erected the first silk-mill at Derby, in the beginning of the 18th century. He obtained a patent which expired in 1732; and parliament, refusing to renew his patent, granted him a compensation, upon the condition that he should deposit an exact model of his machinery in the Tower of London. That model was shown to the visitors of the Tower in the present century; and, by comparison with the vast array of spindles in a modern silk-mill, would seem as inefficient as the flail compared with the thrashing-machine. Ribbon-weaving is a branch of the silk manufacture, in which our country is rapidly attaining an excellence as regards beauty of design, which may fairly compete with the best productions of the French looms. * * * * * Thomas Firmin, a philanthropic writer, who published 'Proposals for the Employment of the Poor,' in 1681, says, "It is a thing greatly to be wished that we could make linen cloth here as cheap as they send it us from abroad." He thought the poor might then be employed; but he despairingly adds, "if that cannot be done, nor any other way found out to employ our poor people, we had much better lose something by the labour of our poor, than lose all their labour;" and so he proposes to give those who were idle flax and hemp to spin in spacious workhouses. The notion was a benevolent one; and it was the favourite scheme, for half a century, to destroy idleness and beggary in England, by setting up manufactories at the public cost. Defoe saw the fallacy of the principle, and resisted it with his strong common sense: "Suppose now a workhouse for the employment of poor children sets them to spinning of worsted. For every skein of worsted these poor children spin, there must be a skein the less spun by some poor person or family that spun it before." Defoe saw that there could be no profitable increase of labour without increase of consumption; and he argues that if the Czar of Muscovy would order his people to wear stockings, and we could supply them, the poor might then be set to work. The increase of consumption, all over the world, is produced by the inventions which diminish the cost of production. We now make linen cloth here cheaper than it is sent to us from abroad; and the result is that in 1853 we exported our linen manufactures to the extent of six million pounds sterling; and employed a hundred thousand persons in the manufacture. In the flax-mill of Messrs. Marshall, at Leeds, where all the operations of spinning are carried on in one enormous room, five times as large as Westminster-hall, seventy thousand lbs. of flax are worked up weekly into yarn. The question of flax-cultivation in these kingdoms has been agitated of late years; and the course of political events has rendered the consideration of an increased home supply, a matter of pressing importance. It is not an easy matter to provide for the demand. The great flax-mill at Leeds would require the flax-cultivation of six thousand acres, to keep its spindles at work for one year. [Illustration: Interior of Marshall's Flax-Mill, Leeds.] Having thus noticed the leading processes of the manufacture of cotton, of wool, of silk, of linen, we may conclude this chapter with a brief mention of the art that gives to many of the fabrics produced their chief beauty--the art of printing cloth in colours. This art applies to the finest as well as the commonest productions of the loom; and the science of the British dyer, the beauty of his patterns, and the perfection of his machinery, have now given us an eminence in this department of industry which can only be preserved by constant efforts towards perfection of design and durable brilliancy of colour. [Illustration: Indigo-harvest in West Indies.] There is a striking, although natural parallel, between printing a piece of cloth and printing a sheet of a book, or a newspaper. Block-printing is the impress of the pattern by hand; as block-books were made four centuries ago. We have no block-books now; for machinery has banished that tedious process. But block-printing is used for costly shawls and velvets, which require to have many colours produced by repeated impress from a large number of blocks, each carrying a different colour. Except for expensive fabrics, this mode is superseded by block-printing with a sort of press, in which several blocks are set in a frame. Here again is somewhat of a similarity to the operation of the book-press. Lastly, we have cylinder-printing, resembling the rapid working of the book-printing machine, each producing the same cheapness. As the pattern has to be obtained from several cylinders, each having its own colour, there is great nicety in the operation; and the most beautiful mechanism is necessary for feeding the cylinder with colour; moving the cloth to meet the revolving cylinder; and giving to the cylinder its power of impression. But those who witness the operation see little of the ultimate effect to be obtained in the subsequent processes of dyeing. Fast colours are produced by the use in the pattern of substances called mordants; which may be colourless themselves but receive the colour of the dye-bath, which colour is only fixed in the parts touched by the mordant, and is washed out from the parts not touched. When what is called a substantive colour is at once impressed upon the white cloth, much of the beauty is also derived from subsequent processes. The chemist, the machinist, the designer, and the engraver--science and art--set the calico-printing works in activity; and the carrying on these complicated processes can only be profitably done upon a large scale. In the earlier days of our cotton manufacture there were small print-works in the neighbourhood of London, where the imperfect machinery was turned by water-power. The steam-engine of one Lancashire factory now produces more printed cottons and muslins than all the rivers of southern England in the last century. The calico-printers now number about twenty-seven thousand persons. But no direct enumeration can be made of the employments that are required merely to produce the dyes with which the calico-printer works. The mineral and vegetable kingdoms, and even the animal kingdom, combine their natural productions in the colours of a lady's dress. The sulphur-miner of Sicily, the salt-worker of Cheshire, the hewer of wood in the Brazils, the Negro in the indigo plantations of the East and West Indies, the cultivator of madder in France, and the gatherer of the cochineal insect in Mexico, are all labourers for the print-works of England and Scotland. The discoveries of science, in combination with the experience of practice, has set all this industry in motion, and has given a value to innumerable productions of nature which would otherwise be useless and unemployed. But these demands of manufactures do more--they create modes of cultivation which are important sources of national prosperity. Jean Althen, a Persian of great family, bred up in every luxury, became a slave in Anatolia, when Kouli-Khan overthrew the Persian empire. For fourteen years he worked in the cotton and madder-fields. He then escaped to France, carrying with him some madder-seeds. Long did he labour in vain to attract the attention of the government of Louis XV. to his plans. At length, having spent all the fortune which he had acquired by marriage with a French heiress, he obtained the patronage of the Marquis de Caumont, in his attempts to introduce the cultivation of madder into the department of Vaucluse. His life was closing in comparative indigence when a new branch of industry was developed in his adopted country. The district in which he created a new industry has increased a hundred-fold in value. The debt of gratitude was paid by a tablet to his memory, erected sixty years after he was insensible to human rewards. We starve our benefactors when they are living; and satisfy our consciences by votive monuments. Althen's daughter died as poor as her father. The tablet was erected at Avignon when the family was extinct. [Illustration: Calico-printing by Cylinder.] There is a process connected with the production of clothing which we must briefly refer to, as one of the signal examples of the axiom of our title--'Knowledge is Power.' Let us suppose that chemistry had not discovered and organised the modes in which bleaching is performed; and that the thousands of millions of yards of calico and linen which we weave in this country had still to be bleached, as bleaching was accomplished in the last century. We knew nothing about the matter, and our linen was then sent over to Holland to go through this operation. The Dutch steeped the bundles of cloth in ley made by water poured upon wood ashes--then soaked them in buttermilk--and finally spread them upon the grass for several months. These were all natural agencies which discharged the colouring matter without any chemical science. It was at length found out that sulphuric acid would do the same work in one day which the buttermilk did in six weeks; but the sun and the air had still to be the chief bleaching powers. A French chemist then found out that a new gas, chlorine, would supersede the necessity for spreading out the linen for several months; and so the acres of bleaching ground which we were using in England and Scotland--for we had left off sending the brown and yellow cloth to Holland--were free for cultivation. But the chlorine was poisonous to the workmen, and imparted a filthy odour to the cloth. Chemistry again went to work, and finally obtained the chloride of lime, which is the universal bleaching powder of modern manufactures. What used to be the work of eight months is now accomplished in an hour or two; and so a bag of dingy raw cotton may be in New York on the first day of the month, and be converted into the whitest calico before the month is at an end. [Illustration: Bleaching-ground at Glasgow.] [23] Blount's 'Ancient Tenures,' ed. 1784, p. 183. CHAPTER XVIII. Hosiery manufacture--The stocking-frame--The circular hosiery-machine--Hats--Gloves--Boots and shoes-- Straw-plait--Artificial flowers--Fans--Lace--Bobbin-net machine--Pins--Needles--Buttons--Toys--Lucifer-matches-- Envelopes. Before the invention of the first stocking-machine, in the year 1589, by William Lee, a clergyman, none but the very rich wore stockings, and many of the most wealthy went without stockings at all, that part of dress being sewn together by the tailor, or their legs being covered with bandages of cloth. The covering for the leg was called a "nether-stock," or lower stocking. Philip Stubbes, a tremendous declaimer against every species of luxury, thus describes the expensive stockings of his time, 1585:-- "Then have they nether-stocks to these hosen, not of cloth (though never so fine), for that is thought too base, but of jarnsey, worsted, crewell, silk, thread, and such like, or else at the least of the finest yarn that can be got, and so curiously knit with open seam down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ancles, and sometime, haply, interlaced with gold or silver threads, as is wonderful to behold. And to such impudent insolency and shameful outrage it is now grown, that every one, almost, though otherwise very poor, having scarce forty shillings of wages by the year, will not stick to have two or three pair of these silk nether-stocks, or else of the finest yarn that may be got, though the price of them be a ryall, or twenty shillings, or more, as commonly it is; for how can they be less, when as the very knitting of them is worth a noble or a ryall, and some much more? The time hath been when one might have clothed his body well for less than a pair of these nether-stocks will cost." It is difficult to understand how those who had only forty shillings a year wages could expend twenty shillings upon a pair of knit stockings. It is quite clear they were for the rich only; and that very few persons were employed in knitting and embroidering stockings. William Lee struggled to make stockings cheap. He made a pair of stockings by the frame, in the presence of King James I.; but such was the prejudice of those times, that he could get no encouragement for his invention. His invention was discountenanced, upon the plea that it would deprive the industrious poor of their subsistence. He went to France, where he met with no better success, and died at last of a broken heart. The great then _could_ discountenance an invention, because its application was limited to themselves. _They_ only wore stockings: the poor who made them had none to wear. Stockings were not cheap enough for the poor to wear, and therefore they went without. Of the millions of people now in this country, how few are without stockings! What a miserable exception to the comfort of the rest of the English people does it appear when we see a beggar in the streets without stockings! We consider such a person to be in the lowest stage of want and suffering. Two centuries ago, not one person in a thousand wore stockings;--one century ago, not one person in five hundred wore them;--now, not one person in a thousand is without them. Who made this great change in the condition of the people of England, and, indeed, of the people of almost all civilized countries? William Lee--who died at Paris of a broken heart. And why did he die of grief and penury? Because the people of his own days were too ignorant to accept the blessings he had prepared for them. We ask with confidence, had the terror of the stocking-frame any real foundation? Were any people thrown out of employment by the stocking-frame? "The knitters in the sun, And the free maids who weave their thread with bones," as Shakspere describes the country lasses of his day, had to _change_ their employment; but there was far more employment for the makers of stockings, for then every one began to wear stockings. The hosiery manufacture furnishes employment to many persons besides those who work at the stocking-machine. The frame-worker, in many cases, makes the knit-work in a piece adapted for a stocking, and does not make a finished stocking; the seamer makes the stocking out of the piece so produced. When we speak of the stocking-frame, we speak of a machine which knits every article of hosiery. In this manufacture there were employed, in 1851, sixty-five thousand five hundred persons, of whom thirty thousand were females. Suppose that the ignorance and prejudice which prevailed at the time of James I. upon the subject of machinery had continued to the present day; and that not only the first stocking-frame of William Lee had never been used, but that all machines employed in the manufacture of hosiery had never been thought of; and they could not have been thought of if the first machines had been put down. The greater number of us, in that case, would have been without stockings. But there would have been a greater evil than even this. We might all have found substitutes for stockings, or have gone without them. But the progress of ingenuity would have been stopped. The inventive principle would have been destroyed. We have not reached the end of our career of improvement. Civilization is not destined to run a backward race. William Lee's stocking-frame worked well for two centuries and a half. One of the most beautiful contrivances of our time has now greatly superseded it. The circular hosiery machine--more properly called a machine for manufacturing "looped fabrics"--works at such a rate that one girl attending upon the revolutions of this wonderful instrument can produce in one day the material for two hundred and forty pairs of stockings. She turns a little handle, with the ease with which she would turn a barrel-organ; and, as the machine revolves, hundreds of needles catch the thread and loop it into the chain which forms the stocking-cloth, or it makes the fashioned stocking. The new hosiery-machines have doubled the employment of the stocking-makers, by enabling us to meet the competition of foreign countries. The English were working upon the old slow stocking-frame, while the French and Belgians were using the rapid circular machine. The markets of the world would have been soon closed to us if we had clung to the old machine, through the force of any popular prejudice against a new machine. There is no portion of the export trade of this country which has increased with such extraordinary rapidity within the last six years as that of hosiery. The following abstract of the declared value of stockings exported since 1848 will sufficiently indicate the effects of improved machinery in cheapening production:-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stockings exported. | 1848. 1850. 1852. 1853. -------------------------------|---------------------------------------- | £ £ £ £ Cotton | 77,095 104,434 243,994 461,494 Silk | 24,324 20,256 25,140 23,579 Worsted | 40,413 74,482 117,349 261,140 Silk mixed with other material | 39 3,327 4,705 10,464 |---------------------------------------- | 141,871 202,499 391,188 756,677 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The hosiery of Saxony was superseding, a few years ago, from its extreme cheapness, the shipment to the United States of goods made at Nottingham. The cheapness in Saxony was produced, not by the employment of large capital and the application of the most expensive machinery, but by the miserably low wages of labour. It is stated by Mr. Porter that, in 1837, a man of Saxony, with his wife and three children, working incessantly at the stocking-loom, could only earn 5_s._ 4d. weekly. In the principal manufacturing districts of that country, the food of the artisans is of the coarsest kind, and of the most limited supply. The comparative ease and comfort of the workers in our hosiery districts is one of the most satisfactory proofs that invention is as great a benefit to the labourer as to the capitalist. As the nether-stocks of our ancestors were for the great and wealthy, so were their Hats. Old Stubbes writes, "Sometimes they use them sharp on the crown, pearking up like the spear or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crown of their heads, some more, some less, as please the phantasies of their inconstant minds. Other some be flat and broad on the crown, like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crowns, sometimes with one kind of band, sometimes with another, now black, now white, now russet, now red, now green, now yellow, now this, now that, never content with one colour or fashion two days to an end. And thus in vanity they spend the Lord his treasure, consuming their golden years and silver days in wickedness and sin. And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are of silk, some of velvet, some of taffeta, some of sarsenet, some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain kind of fine hair; these they call beaver hats, of 20, 30, or 40 shillings price, fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other vanities do come besides." Here, then, we see that the beaver hat was in those days an article of great price. The commonalty had their "plain statute caps" of wool. In our time the beaver hat was the common wear of the middle classes until the last few years, when the cheaper silk hat became almost universal. We import from France some plush for making hats; but much of this silk material is also prepared in our own factories. Hats have therefore become intimately associated with the material produced by the loom. The manufacture of Gloves is connected, in a very large department, with the hosiery manufactory. The use of thread gloves and cotton gloves has had the effect, in some degree, of lessening the consumption of leather gloves. The importation of leather gloves and mitts was prohibited until 1825. We now import three million pairs annually; and the home manufacture, instead of being ruined as was predicted, was never more prosperous. The French gloves, once so superior to our own, have improved the English, by the natural force of competition; and the manufacturers not only purchase better leather than formerly, but the cottage-workwomen that labour in the glove districts have become neater and more careful sewers. The consumption of gloves has ceased to be exclusively for the rich. The perfumed and embroidered glove of the 16th century is no longer required. The use of gloves has become universal amongst both sexes of the middle classes. The female domestic would think it unbecoming to go to church without her gloves; and the well-dressed artisan holds it nothing effeminate to use a covering for his hands, which his forefathers thought a distinguishing appurtenance of the high-born and luxurious. [Illustration: Gloves for the great.] Our home-manufacture of Boots and Shoes has received an immense impulse from foreign competition. The number of men's and women's boots and shoes which we import is not much above two hundred thousand. But we also import six hundred thousand boot-fronts from France, which our own people work up. Although the boot and shoe manufacture can scarcely be considered a factory process, it has now adapted itself to certain localities, such as Northampton. The articles made in the provinces were originally distinguished for their cheapness merely. They now unite the characters of goodness and cheapness. This chiefly arises from the trade being carried on, at Northampton especially, upon a large scale--upon a principle the very reverse of the old familiar spectacle of the cobbler in his stall. [Illustration: Cobbler's stall, about 1760.] The Straw-plat is a domestic manufacture, chiefly carried on in the midland and eastern counties. It employs thirty-two thousand persons, of whom twenty-eight thousand are females. The straw hat and bonnet makers amount to twenty-two thousand, of whom more than twenty thousand are females. The art of straw-platting has been greatly improved amongst us of late years; but the Italian straw, being of a finer nature, is in greater demand for the higher priced bonnets. The beautiful production of Artificial Flowers has, in very recent years, been much increased in England. France, with its superior taste, long supplied us with these ornaments, which had the brilliancy of natural flowers without their perishableness. But three thousand females, and five hundred males, are now engaged with us in this branch. The Fan-makers of England are only thirty in number. In France this is a large branch of manufacture. In the Jury Report on the Exhibition of Industry in 1851 there is a notice of the fan-trade of Paris, which is curious as showing the joint influences upon cheapness, of machinery, and of the multiplication of works of art by engraving. The fan-makers of Paris in 1847 employed five hundred and seventy-five work-people--the number of the sexes being pretty equally divided. "The men were for the most part copper-plate engravers and printers, lithographic draughtsmen and printers, painters, and colourers; the women were mounters, illuminators, painters, colourers, and overlookers. In twenty years it appears that the produce in fans had increased in value nearly threefold, whilst the number of work-people had diminished one-half. This change is attributed to the employment of machinery, especially of the fly press, in stamping out and embossing the ribs, and the extensive employment of chromo-lithography, an art not practised at the former period. By these means the French have been enabled greatly to increase their exports by the production of cheap fans, to compete with those made by the Chinese." Dekker, in his 'Gull's Hornbook,' printed in 1609, advises the gallant of his day to exhibit a "wrought handkerchief." A "handkerchief, spotted with strawberries," was Othello's first gift to Desdemona. It was an embroidered handkerchief, such as is produced in the present day at Cairo by the Egyptian ladies in their private apartments. The embroidered shirts of the time of Elizabeth are thus noticed by Stubbes:-- "These shirts (sometimes it happeneth) are wrought throughout with needle-work of silk, and such like, and curiously stitched with open seam, and many other knacks besides, more than I can describe; in so much as I have heard of shirts that have cost some ten shillings, some twenty, some forty, some five pound, some twenty nobles, and (which is horrible to hear) some ten pound apiece." [Illustration: Men'seg, or Egyptian embroidery-frame.] The embroidery-frame was in time superseded by the lace-pillow, which is stated to have been first used in Saxony in the sixteenth century. The production of Lace extended to Belgium and France; and we are still familiar with the names of Brussels, Mechlin, Lisle, Valenciennes, and Alençon lace. Until the present century no lace was heard of but pillow-lace,--a domestic manufacture, of which Honiton was the most famous seat. A stocking-weaver of Nottingham adapted his stocking-frame to the making of lace about 1770; and the bobbin-frame was invented in 1809. It was never extensively used till the expiration of the patent; and the produce of this machine was kept at so high a price by the patentees that it interfered little with the labour of the lace-makers in the cottages of the midland counties. [Illustration: Bobbin-net meshes.] But a time was coming when as much bobbin-net as the patentees of the first frame charged five pounds for would be sold for half-a-crown; and when, as a necessary consequence of this cheapness, lace-making as a domestic employment would wholly cease, or be confined to the production of an expensive article, supposed to be superior to machine-made lace. That the old hand-labour could compete with the machine was an impossibility. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made on the pillow at the rate of about three meshes per minute. A bobbin-net machine will produce similar lace at the rate of twenty-four thousand meshes per minute, one person only being required to wait upon the machine. Those who have watched the cottage lace-maker, working with her bobbins and pins, were unable, without long observation, to understand the principle upon which she intertwined the threads. But to explain the more rapid working of the bobbin-net machine would require such a minute acquaintance with all its parts as belongs to the business of the practical machinist, and which words are inadequate to exhibit. The accompanying engraving offers the best notion we can furnish. [Illustration: Essential parts of the bobbin-net machine. The warp, ascending from the beam A, passes through small holes in a guide-bar B, and thence to the point C, where the bobbins in their respective combs, driven by the ledges on the two bars beneath, traverse the warp to and fro, and interlace the threads as shown at D; the points E assisting to maintain the forms of the meshes.] Instead of England being now supplied with lace from France and Belgium, we are now an exporting lace-country. In 1848 we exported cotton lace and net to the amount of 363,255_l._; in 1853 to the amount of 596,578_l._ According to the census of 1851, the number of persons employed in the lace manufacture was 63,660; of whom 54,080 were females. The same returns give the number of 4658 embroiderers. There is an article employed in dress which is at once so necessary and so beautiful that the highest lady in the land uses it, and yet so cheap that the poorest peasant's wife is enabled to procure it. The quality of the article is as perfect as art can make it; and yet, from the enormous quantities consumed by the great mass of the people, it is made so cheap that the poor can purchase the best kind, as well as the rich. It is an article of universal use. United with machinery, many hundreds, and even thousands, are employed in making it. But if the machinery were to stop, and the article were made by human hands alone, it would become so dear that the richest only could afford to use it; and it would become at the same time so rough in its appearance, that those very rich would be ashamed of using it. The article we mean is a Pin. It is not necessary for us to describe the machinery used in pin-making, to make the reader comprehend its effects. A pin is made of brass. We have seen how metal is obtained from ore by machinery; and therefore we will not go over that ground. But suppose the most skilful workman has a lump of brass ready by his side, to make it into pins with common tools,--with a hammer and with a file. He heats it upon an anvil, till it becomes nearly thin enough for his purpose. A very fine hammer, and a very fine touch, must he have to produce a pin of any sort,--even a large corking-pin! But the pin made by machinery is a perfect cylinder. To make a metal, or even a wooden cylinder, of a considerable size, with files and polishing, is an operation so difficult that it is never attempted; but with a lathe and a sliding rest it is done every hour by a great many workmen. How much more difficult would it be to make a perfect cylinder the size of a pin? A pin hammered out by hand would present a number of rough edges that would tear the clothes, as well as hold them together. It would not be much more useful or ornamental than the skewer of bone with which the woman of the Sandwich Islands fastens her mats. But the wire of which pins are made acquires a perfectly cylindrical form by the simplest machinery. It is forcibly drawn through the circular holes of a steel plate; and the hole being smaller and smaller each time it is drawn through, it is at length reduced to the size required. The head of a pin is a more difficult thing to make even than the body. It is formed of a small piece of wire twisted round so as to fit upon the other wire. It is said that by a machine fifty thousand heads can be made in an hour. We should think that a man would be very skilful to make fifty in an hour by hand, in the roughest manner; if so, the machine does the work of a thousand men. The machine, however, does not do all the work. The head is attached to the body of a pin by the fingers of a child, while another machine rivets it on. The operations of cutting and pointing the pins are also done by machinery; and they are polished by a chemical process. It is by these processes,--by these combinations of human labour with mechanical power,--that it occurs that fifty pins can be bought for one halfpenny, and that therefore four or five thousand pins may be consumed in a year by the most economical housewife, at a much less price than fifty pins of a rude make cost two or three centuries ago. A woman's allowance was formerly called her _pin-money_,--a proof that the pins were a sufficiently dear article to make a large item in her expenses. If pins now were to cost a halfpenny apiece instead of being fifty for a halfpenny, the greater number of females would adopt other modes of fastening their dress, which would probably be less neat and convenient than pins. No such circumstance could happen while the machinery of pin-making was in use. Needles are not so cheap as pins, because the material of which they are made is more expensive, and the processes cannot be executed so fully by machinery. But without machinery how could that most beautiful article, a _fine_ needle, be sold at the rate of six for a penny? As in the case of pins, machinery is at work at the first formation of the material. Without the tilt-hammer, which beats out the bar of steel, first at the rate of ten strokes a minute, and lastly at that of five hundred, how could that bar be prepared for needle-making at anything like a reasonable price? In all the processes of needle-making, labour is saved by contrivance and machinery. What human touch, without a machine, would be accurate enough to make the eye of the finest needle, through which the most delicate silk is with difficulty passed? There are two needles to be formed out of one piece of wire; in the previous preparation of which the eyes are marked. The workman, holding in his hand several wires, drops one at a time on the bed-iron of the machine, adjusts it to the die, brings down the upper die upon it by the action of the foot, and allows it to fall into a little dish when done. This he does with such rapidity that one stamper can stamp four thousand wires, equivalent to eight thousand needles, in an hour. [Illustration: Stamping the eye of a needle.] Needles are made in such large quantities, that it is even important to save the time of the child who lays them all one way when they are completed. Mr. Babbage, who is equally distinguished for his profound science and his mechanical ingenuity, has described this process as an example of one of the simplest contrivances which can come under the denomination of a tool. "It is necessary to separate the needles into two parcels, in order that their points may be all in one direction. This is usually done by women and children. The needles are placed sideways in a heap, on a table, in front of each operator. From five to ten are rolled towards this person by the forefinger of the left hand; this separates them a very small space from each other, and each in its turn is pushed lengthways to the right or to the left, according as its eye is on the right or the left hand. This is the usual process, and in it every needle passes individually under the finger of the operator. A small alteration expedites the process considerably; the child puts on the forefinger of its right hand a small cloth cap or finger-stall, and, rolling from the heap from six to twelve needles, it keeps them down by the forefinger of the left hand; whilst it presses the forefinger of the right hand gently against the ends of the needles, those which have their points towards the right hand stick into the finger-stall; and the child, removing the finger of the left hand, allows the needles sticking into the cloth to be slightly raised, and then pushes them towards the left side. Those needles which had their eyes on the right hand do not stick into the finger-cover, and are pushed to the heap on the right side previous to the repetition of the process. By means of this simple contrivance, each movement of the finger, from one side to the other, carries five or six needles to their proper heap; whereas, in the former method, frequently only one was moved, and rarely more than two or three were transported at one movement to their place." A large number of people are employed, at Birmingham chiefly, in the manufacture of buttons. The census return gives about seven thousand. In the manufacture of a single button there is great division of labour amongst piercers, cutters, stampers, gilders, and burnishers. The engraving exhibits the operations of stamping, pressing, and punching, as carried on in a great factory. The shank of a button is made by very complicated machinery as a distinct class of manufacture, and the button-makers buy the shanks. It has been stated that three firms in Birmingham annually make six hundred million of button-shanks. [Illustration: Stamping, pressing, and punching buttons.--Elliott's factory.] The application of machinery, or of peculiar scientific modes of working, to such apparently trifling articles as pins, needles, buttons, and trinkets, may appear of little importance. But let it be remembered, that the manufacture of such articles furnishes employment to many thousands of our fellow-countrymen; and, enabling us to supply other nations with these products, affords us the means of receiving articles of more intrinsic value in exchange. In 1853 our exports of hardware and cutlery amounted to more than three millions and a half sterling. No article of ready attainment, and therefore of general consumption, whether it be a labourer's spade or a child's marble, is unimportant in a commercial point of view. The wooden figures of horses and sheep that may be bought for twopence in the toy-shops furnish employment to cut them, during the long winter nights, to a large portion of the peasantry of the Tyrol. The Swiss peasant cuts a piece of white wood into a boy or a cottage, as he is tending his herd on the side of a mountain. These become considerable articles of export. In the town of Sonneberg, near the forest of Thuringia, four thousand inhabitants are principally employed in the toy-trade, and also find employment for the neighbouring villagers. Mr. Osler, of Birmingham, some years ago, addressing a Committee of the House of Commons upon the subject of his beads and trinkets, said,--"On my first journey to London, a respectable-looking man in the City asked me if I could supply him with dolls' eyes; and I was foolish enough to feel half offended. I thought it derogatory to my new dignity as a manufacturer to make dolls' eyes. He took me into a room quite as wide and perhaps twice the length of this (one of the large rooms for Committees in the House of Commons), and we had just room to walk between stacks, from the floor to the ceiling, of parts of dolls. He said, 'These are only the legs and arms--the trunks are below.' But I saw enough to convince me that he wanted a great many eyes; and as the article appeared quite in my own line of business, I said I would take an order by way of experiment; and he showed me several specimens. I copied the order. He ordered various quantities and of various sizes and qualities. On returning to the Tavistock Hotel, I found that the order amounted to upwards of five hundred pounds." Mr. Osler tells this story to show the importance of trifles. The making of dolls' eyes afforded subsistence to many ingenious workmen in glass toys; and in the same way the most minute and apparently insignificant article of general use, when rendered cheap by chemical science or machinery, produces a return of many thousand pounds, and sets in motion labour and labourers. Without the science and the machinery, which render the article cheap, the labourers would have had _no_ employ, for the article would not have been consumed. What a pretty article is a common tobacco-pipe, of which millions are used! It is made cheap and beautiful in a mould--a machine for copying pipes. If the pipe were made without the mould, and other contrivances, it would cost at least a shilling instead of a halfpenny:--the tobacco-smoker would go without his pipe, and the pipe-maker without his employment. Amongst articles of great demand that have become of importance, though apparently insignificant, in our own day, there is nothing more worthy of notice than the Lucifer-Match. About twenty years ago chemistry abolished the tinder-box; and the burnt rag that made the tinder went to make paper. Slowly did the invention spread. The use of the lucifer-match is now so established that machines are invented to prepare the splints. In London one saw-mill annually cuts up four hundred large timber-trees for matches. The English matches are generally square, and thus thirty thousand splints are cut in a minute. The American matches are round; and the process of shaping being more elaborate, four thousand five hundred splints are cut in a minute. We will follow a bundle of eighteen hundred of the square splints, each four inches long, through its conversion into three thousand six hundred lucifer-matches. Without being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur. When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur, must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy, sitting on the floor with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of mallet on the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. They have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash, the sharp cracking illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance, the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity, and are taken to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this cutting-process and that which is connected with it. The boy stands before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half-opened empty boxes on his left. The matches are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by this boy. A bundle is opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame, knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage. The halves lie projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and thrusts it into a half-open box, which slides into an outer case; and he repeats the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled, in a day, by one boy. It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer than in the winter. The increased summer demand for the lucifer-matches shows that the great consumption is among the masses--the labouring population--those who make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the lucifer-match to supply the want--to light the candle to look in the dark cupboard--to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate resource, to work at the tinder-box. The lucifer-matches sometimes fail, but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest. Their value was sufficiently shown when an officer in camp at Balaclava wrote home that no want was greater than that of the ready means of procuring fire and light, and that he should hold a box of lucifer-matches cheap at half-a-crown. [Illustration: Envelope-making machine.] We may notice one other article of almost universal use, which is of very recent introduction--the Envelope. It is a labour-saving contrivance for the writer of letters. The use of the envelope has been mainly created by the penny postage. We find, in the census, that seven hundred persons, chiefly females, are employed in making envelopes. But there is a beautiful machine also for making them, at the rate of twenty-five thousand a day. The envelope-making machine was one of the most attractive objects in the Great Exhibition. CHAPTER XIX. Labour-saving contrivances--The nick in types--Tags of laces--Casting shot--Candle-dipping--Tiring a wheel--Globe-making--Domestic aids to labour--Aids to mental labour--Effects of severe bodily labour on health and duration of life. We drew attention in the last chapter to a particular process in needle-making--the sorter's sheath--to show that great saving of labour may be effected by what is not popularly called machinery. In modern times, wherever work is carried on upon a large scale, the division of labour is applied; by which one man attending to one thing learns to perform that one thing more perfectly than if he had attended to many things. He thus saves a considerable portion of the whole amount of labour. Every skilful workman has individually some mode of working peculiar to himself, by which he lessens his labour. An expert blacksmith, for instance, will not strike one more blow upon the anvil than is necessary to produce the effect he desires. A compositor, or printer who arranges the types, is a swift workman when he makes no unnecessary movement of his arms or fingers in lifting a single type into what is called his composing-stick, where the types are arranged in lines. There is a very simple contrivance to lessen the labour of the compositor, by preventing him putting the type into his composing-stick the wrong side outwards. It is a nick, or two or three nicks, on the side of the type which corresponds with the lower side of the face of the letter. By this nick or nicks he is enabled to see by one glance of his eye on which side the letter is first to be grasped, and then to be arranged. If the nick were not there he would have to look at the face of every letter before he could properly place it. This is a labour-saving contrivance; and if the labour were not thus saved, two compositors would certainly be required to do the work of one; and the natural and inevitable effect would be that, as the funds for the payment of the compositor's labours would not be increased, the wages of each compositor would be diminished by one-half. The new labour that would be required would enter into competition with the old labour, and depreciate its value, because each individual labourer had lost one-half of his efficiency. [Illustration: Compositor at work.] Contrivances to economize labour, such as that of the needle-sorter's sheath, and the nicks in the type of the compositor, are constantly occurring in manufactures. The tags of laces, which are made of thin tin, are sometimes bent into their requisite form by the same movement of the arm that cuts them. A piece of steel, adapted to the side of the shears, gives them at once their proper shape. The writer can remember that when he was a boy, and was fitted with a pair of laced boots, he used to wait with patience in the shoemaker's shop, whilst he clumsily bent a piece of tin into the form of a tag, and then as clumsily hammered it round the lace. In a silk manufactory boot-laces are now prepared with tags made by machinery. One machine cuts and hollows the tags much more efficiently than the shears mentioned above; and at another machine, worked by a boy, the tags are fitted to the laces with a rapidity which is acquired by continued practice. [Illustration: Machine for fixing tags to laces.] If the small shot which is used by sportsmen were each cast in a mould, the price would be enormous; but by pouring the melted lead, of which the shot is made, through a sort of cullender, placed at the top of a tower, high enough for the lead to cool in its passage through the air, before it reaches the ground, the shot is formed in a spherical or round shape by the mere act of passing through the atmosphere. Some of the shots thus formed are not perfectly spherical--they are pear-shaped. If the selection of the perfect from the imperfect shots were made by the eye, or the touch, the process would be very tedious and insufficient, and the price of the article much increased. The simplest contrivance in the world divides the bad from the good. The shots are poured down an inclined plane, and, without any trouble of selection, the spherical ones run straight to the bottom, while the pear-shaped ones tumble off on one side or the other of the plane. [Illustration: Inclined plane for separating shot.] In speaking of such contrivances we are constantly passing over the narrow line which separates them from what we popularly term machinery. Let us take an example of the readiness with which a small aid to manual labour gradually becomes perfected into a machine, requiring little impulse from human action. The dippers of candles have gradually, in small establishments, made several improvements in their art for the purpose of diminishing labour. They used to hold the rods between their fingers, dipping three at a time; they next connected six or eight rods together by a piece of wood at each end, having holes to receive the rods; and they now suspend the rods so arranged upon a sort of balance, rising and falling with a pulley and a weight, so as to relieve the arms of the workman almost entirely, while the work is done more quickly and with more precision. But in large candle-factories the principle is carried much further. The wicks, having been cut by machinery of the requisite length, instead of being cut one at a time, are arranged upon a rod. For the sort of candle called "twelves," or twelve to a pound, twenty-four wicks are suspended on one of these rods. Thirty rods are connected together in a frame, which thus holds seven hundred and twenty wicks. Attached to the machine are thirty-six of these frames. The whole number of wicks is therefore twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty. The machine, as it revolves, dips one frame into a vessel of melted tallow; and so on till the thirty-six frames have each been once dipped,--and the process is continued till the candles are fully formed. One man and a boy complete this number of candles in a working-day of ten hours. [Illustration: Dipping-machine.] Walking by a wheelwright's shop in some quiet village, did our readers ever see the operation of "tiring" a wheel? The wood-work of the wheel is entirely formed; but the joints of the felloes are imperfectly fitted together. They used to be drawn close by separate straps of iron applied with great labour. The wheel rests upon some raised bricks. Out from the forge rush three or four men bearing a red-hot iron hoop. It is laid upon the outer rim of the wood-work, burning its way as it is hammered down with the united force of the wheelwrights. When it is nearly fitted, floods of water are thrown upon it, till it no longer burns. The knowledge of the simple fact that the iron shrinks as it cools, and thus knits the whole wheel into a firm body, taught the wheelwright how to accomplish the difficult task of giving the last strength to his wheel with the least possible labour. [Illustration: Tiring a wheel.] The manufacture of a globe offers an example of the production of a most beautiful piece of work by the often repeated application of a series of processes, each requiring very little labour. A globe is not a ball of wood; but a hollow sphere of papers and plaster. The mould, if we may so express it, of a globe is turned out of a piece of wood. This sphere need not be mathematically accurate. It is for rough work, and flaws and cracks are of little consequence. This wooden ball has an axis, a piece of iron wire at each pole. And here we may remark, that, at every stage of the process, the revolution of a sphere upon its axis, under the hands of the workman, is the one great principle which renders every operation one of comparative ease and simplicity. The labour would be enormously multiplied if the same class of operations had to be performed upon a cube. The solid mould, then, of the embryo globe is placed on its axis in a wooden frame. In a very short time a boy will form a pasteboard globe upon its surface. He first covers it entirely with strips of strong paper, thoroughly wet, which are in a tub of water at his side. The slight inequalities produced by the over-lapping of the strips are immaterial. The saturated paper is not suffered to dry; but is immediately covered over with a layer of pasted paper, also cut in long narrow slips. A third layer of similarly pasted paper--brown paper and white being used alternately--is applied; and then, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. Here the pasting process ends for globes of moderate size. For the large ones it is carried further. This wet pasteboard ball has now to be dried--placed upon its axis in a rack. If we were determined to follow the progress of this individual ball through all its stages, we should have to wait a fortnight before it advanced another step. But in a large factory there are many scores of globes all rolling onward to perfection; and thus we may witness the next operation performed upon a pasteboard sphere that began to exist some weeks earlier, and is now hard to the core. The wooden ball, with its solid paper covering, is placed on its axis. A sharp cutting instrument, fixed on a bench, is brought into contact with the surface of the sphere, which is made to revolve. In less time than we write the pasteboard ball is cut in half. There is no adhesion to the wooden mould, for the first coating of paper was simply _wetted_. Two bowls of thick card now lie before us, with a small hole in each, made by the axis of the wooden ball. But a junction is very soon effected. Within every globe there is a piece of wood--we may liken it to a round ruler--of the exact length of the inner surface of the sphere from pole to pole. A thick wire runs through this wood, and originally projected some two or three inches at each end. This stick is placed upright in a vice. The semi-globe is nailed to one end of the stick, upon which it rests, when the wire is passed through its centre. It is now reversed, and the edges of the card rapidly covered with glue. The edges of the other semi-globe are instantly brought into contact, the other end of the wire passing through its centre in the same way, and a similar nailing to the stick taking place. We have now a paper globe, with its own axis, which will be its companion for the whole term of its existence. The paper globe is next placed on its axis in a frame, of which one side is a semicircular piece of metal;--the horizon of a globe cut in half would show its form. A tub of white composition, a compound of whiting, glue, and oil, is on the bench. The workman dips his hand into this "gruel thick and slab," and rapidly applies it to the paper sphere with tolerable evenness; but as it revolves, the semicircle of metal clears off the superfluous portions. The ball of paper is now a ball of plaster externally. Time again enters largely into the manufacture. The first coating must thoroughly dry before the next is applied, and so again till the process has been repeated four or five times. Thus, when we visit a globe-workshop, we are at first surprised at the number of white balls, from three inches in diameter to three feet, which occupy a large space. They are all steadily advancing towards completion; and as they advance to the dignity of perfect spheres, increased pains are taken in the application of the plaster. At last they are polished. Their surface is as fine and hard as ivory. But beautiful as they are, they may, like many other beautiful things, want a due equipoise. They must be perfectly balanced. They must move upon their poles with the utmost exactness. A few shot, let in here and there, correct all irregularities. And now the paper and plaster sphere is to be endued with intelligence. The sphere is marked with lines of direction for the purpose of covering it with engraved slips. We have now a globe with a plain map. An artist colours it by hand. We have given these examples of several modes of production, in which knowledge and skill have diminished labour, for the purpose of showing that not only machinery and scientific applications are constantly tending to the same end, but that the mere practice of the mechanical arts necessarily leads to labour-saving inventions. Every one of us who thinks at all is constantly endeavouring to diminish his individual labour by the use of some little contrivance which experience has suggested. Men who carry water in buckets, in places where water is scarce, put a circular piece of wood to float on the water, which prevents its spilling, and consequently lessens the labour. A boy who makes paper bags in a grocer's shop so arranges them that he pastes the edges of twenty at a time, to diminish the labour. The porters of Amsterdam, who draw heavy goods upon a sort of sledge, every now and then throw a greased rope under the sledge, to diminish its friction, and therefore to lessen the labour of dragging it. Other porters, in the same city, have a little barrel containing water, attached to each side of the sledge, out of which the water slowly drips like the water upon a stone-cutter's saw, to diminish the friction. In the domestic arrangements of a well-regulated household, whether of a poor man or of a rich man, one of the chief cares is to save labour. Every contrivance to save labour that ingenuity can suggest is eagerly adopted when a country becomes highly civilized. In former times, in our own country, when such contrivances were little known, and materials as well as time were constantly wasted in every direction, a great Baron was surrounded with a hundred menial servants; but he had certainly less real and useful labour performed for him than a tradesman of the present day obtains from three servants. Are there fewer servants now employed than in those times of barbarous state? Certainly not. The middle classes amongst us can get a great deal done for them in the way of domestic service, at a small expense, because servants are assisted by manifold contrivances which do much of the work for them. The contrivances render the article of service cheaper, and therefore there are more servants. The work being done by fewer servants, in consequence of the contrivances, the servants themselves are better paid than if there was no cost saved by the contrivance. The common jack by which meat is roasted is described by Mr. Babbage as "a contrivance to enable the cook in a few minutes to exert a force (in winding up the jack) which the machine retails out during the succeeding hour in turning the loaded spit, thus enabling her to bestow her undivided attention on her other duties." We have seen, years ago, in farm-houses, a man employed to turn a spit with a handle; dogs have been used to run in a wheel for the same purpose, and hence a particular breed so used are called "turnspits." When some ingenious servant-girl discovered that, if she put a skewer through the meat and hung it before the fire by a skein of worsted, it would turn with very little attention, she made an approach to the principle of the bottle-jack. All these contrivances diminish labour, and ensure regularity of movement;--and therefore they are valuable contrivances. A bell which is pulled in one room and rings in another, and which therefore establishes a ready communication between the most distant parts of a house, is a contrivance to save labour. In a large family the total want of bells would add a fourth at least to the labour of servants. Where three servants are kept now, four servants would be required to be kept then. Would the destruction of all the bells therefore add one-fourth to the demand for servants? Certainly not. The funds employed in paying for service would not be increased a single farthing; and, therefore, by the destruction of bells, all the families of the kingdom would have some work left undone, to make up for the additional labour required through the want of this useful contrivance: or all the servants in the kingdom would be more hardly worked,--would have to work sixteen hours a day instead of twelve. In some parts of India the natives have a very rude contrivance to mark the progress of time. A thin metal cup, with a small hole in its bottom, is put to float in a vessel of water; and as the water rises through the hole the cup sinks in a given time--in 24 minutes. A servant is set to watch the sinking of the cup, and when this happens he strikes upon a bell. Half a century ago, almost every cottage in England had its hour-glass--an imperfect instrument for registering the progress of time, because it only indicated its course between hour and hour; and an instrument which required a very watchful attention, and some labour, to be of any use at all. The universal use of watches or clocks, in India, would wholly displace the labour of the servants who note the progress of time by the filling of the cup; and the same cause has displaced, amongst us, the equally unprofitable labour employed in turning the hour-glass, and watching its movement. Almost every house in England has now a clock or watch of some sort; and every house in India would have the same, if the natives were more enlightened, and were not engaged in so many modes of unprofitable labour to keep them poor. His profitable labour has given the English mechanic the means of getting a watch. Machinery, used in every possible way, has made this watch cheap. The labour formerly employed in turning the hour-glass, or in running to look at the church clock, is transferred to the making of watches. The user of the watch obtains an accurate register of time, which teaches him to know the value of that most precious possession, and to economize it; and the producers of the watch have abundant employment in the universal demand for this valuable machine. A watch or clock is an instrument for assisting an operation of the mind. Without some instrument for registering time, the mind could very imperfectly attain the end which the watch attains, not requiring any mental labour. The observation of the progress of time, by the situation of the sun in the day, or of particular stars at night, is a labour requiring great attention, and various sorts of accurate knowledge. It is therefore never attempted, except when men have no machines for registering time. In the same manner the labours of the mind have been saved, in a thousand ways, by other contrivances of science. The foot-rule of the carpenter not only gives him the standard of a foot measure, which he could not exactly ascertain by any experience, or any mental process, but it is also a scale of the proportions of an inch, or several inches, to a foot, and of the parts of an inch to an inch. What a quantity of calculations, and of dividing by compasses, does this little instrument save the carpenter, besides ensuring a much greater degree of accuracy in all his operations! The common rules of arithmetic, which almost every boy in England now learns, are parts of a great invention for saving mental labour. The higher branches of mathematics, of which science arithmetic is a portion, are also inventions for saving labour, and for doing what could never be done without these inventions. There are instruments, and very curious ones, for lessening the labour of all arithmetical calculations; and tables, that is, the results of certain calculations, which are of practical use, are constructed for the same purpose. When we buy a joint of meat, we often see the butcher turn to a little book, before he tells us how much a certain number of pounds and ounces amounts to, at a certain price per pound. This book is his 'Ready Reckoner,' and a very useful book it is to him; for it enables him to despatch his customers in half the time that he would otherwise require, and thus to save himself a great deal of labour, and a great deal of inaccuracy. The inventions for saving mental labour, in calculations of arithmetic, have been carried so far, that Mr. Babbage had almost perfected a calculating machine, which not only did its work of calculation without the possibility of error, but absolutely was to arrange printing types of figures, in a frame, so that no error could be produced in copying the calculations before they are printed. We mention this curious machine, to show how far science may go in diminishing mental labour, and ensuring accuracy. The want of government funds prevented its completion. To all who read this book it is no difficulty to count a hundred; and most know the relation which a hundred bears to a thousand, and a thousand bears to a million. Most are able, also, to read off those numbers, or parts of those numbers, when they see them marked down in figures. There are many uncivilized people in the world who cannot count twenty. They have no idea whatever of numbers, beyond perhaps as far as the number of their fingers, or their fingers and their toes. How have we obtained this great superiority over these poor savages? Because science has been at work, for many centuries, to diminish the amount of our mental labour, by teaching us the easiest modes of calculation. And how did we learn these modes? We learnt them from our schoolmasters. If any follow up the false reasoning which has led some to think that whatever diminishes labour diminishes the number of labourers, they might conclude, that, as there is less mental work to be done, because science has diminished the labour of that work, there would, therefore, be fewer mental workmen. Thank God, the greater facilities that have been given to the cultivation of the mind, the greater is the number of those who exert themselves in that cultivation. The effects of saving unprofitable labour are the same in all cases. The use of machinery in aid of _bodily_ labour has set that bodily labour to a thousand new employments; and has raised the character of the employments, by transferring the lowest of the drudgery to wheels and pistons. The use of science in the assistance of _mental_ labour has conducted that labour to infinitely more numerous fields of exertion; and has elevated all intellectual pursuits, by making their commoner processes the play of childhood, instead of the toil of manhood. We cannot doubt that any invention which gives assistance to the thinking powers of mankind, and, therefore, by dispensing with much mental drudgery, leads the mind forward to nobler exertions, is a benefit to all. It is not more than four hundred years ago, that the use of Arabic numerals, or figures, began to be generally known in this country. The first date in those numerals said to exist in England, is upon a brass plate in Ware church, 1454. The same date in Roman numerals, which were in use before the Arabic ones, would be expressed by eight letters, MCCCCLIV. The introduction of figures, therefore, was an immense saving of time in the commonest operations of arithmetic. How puzzled we should be, and what a quantity of labour we should lose, if we were compelled to reckon earnings and marketings by the long mode of notation, instead of the short one! This book is easily read, because it is written in words composed of twenty-four letters. In China, where there are no letters in use, every word in the language is expressed by a different character. Few people in China write or read; and those who do, acquire very little knowledge, except the mere knowledge of writing and reading. All the time of their learned men is occupied in acquiring the means of knowledge, and not knowledge itself; and the bulk of the people get very little knowledge at all. It would be just the same thing if there were no machines or engines for diminishing manual labour. Those who had any property would occupy all their time, and the time of their immediate dependents, in raising food and making clothes for themselves, and the rest of the people would go without any food or clothes at all; or rather, which comes to the same thing, there would be _no_ "rest of the people;" the lord and his vassals would have all the produce;--there would be half a million of people in the United Kingdom instead of twenty-seven millions. When a boy has got hold of what we call the rudiments of learning, he has possessed himself of the most useful tools and machines which exist in the world. He has obtained the means of doing that with extreme ease, which, without these tools, is done only with extreme labour. He has earned the time which, if rightly employed, will elevate his mind, and therefore improve his condition. Just so is it with all tools and machines for diminishing bodily exertion. They give us the means of doing that with comparative ease, which, without them, can only be done with extreme drudgery. They set at liberty a great quantity of mere animal power, which, having then leisure to unite with mental power, produces ingenious and skilful workmen in every trade. But they do more than this. They diminish human suffering--they improve the health--they increase the term of life--they render all occupations less painful and laborious;--and, by doing all this, they elevate man in the scale of existence. A late Pasha of Egypt, in one of those fits of caprice which it is the nature of tyrants to exhibit, ordered, a few years ago, that the male population of a district should be set to clear out one of the ancient canals which was then filled up with mud. The people had no tools, and the Pasha gave them no tools; but the work was required to be done. So to work the poor wretches went, to the number of fifty thousand. They had to plunge up to their necks in the filthiest slime, and to bale it out with their hands, and their hands alone. They were fed, it is true, during the operation; but their food was of a quality proportioned to the little _profitable_ labour which they performed. They were fed on horse-beans and water. In the course of one year, more than thirty thousand of these unhappy people perished. If the tyrant, instead of giving labour to fifty thousand people, had possessed the means of setting up steam-engines to pump out the water, and scoop out the mud,--or if he had provided the pump, which is called Archimedes' screw, and was invented by that philosopher for the very purpose of draining land in Egypt,--or if the people had even had scoops and shovels, instead of being degraded like beasts, to the employment of their unassisted hands,--the work might have been done at a fiftieth of the cost, even of the miserable pittance of horse-beans and water; and the money that was saved by the tools and machines, might have gone to furnish _profitable_ labour to the thousands who perished amidst the misery and degradation of their _unprofitable_ labour. Some may say that this is a case which does not apply to us; because we are free men, and cannot be compelled to perish, up to our necks in mud, upon a pittance of horse-beans, doled out by a tyrant. Exactly so. But what has made us free? Knowledge. Knowledge,--which, in raising the moral and intellectual character of every Englishman, has raised up barriers to oppression which no power can ever break down. Knowledge,--which has set ingenious men thinking in every way how to increase the profitable labour of the nation, and therefore to increase the comforts of every man in the nation. The people of England have gone on increasing very rapidly during the last fifty years; and the average length of life has also gone on increasing in the same remarkable manner. Men who have attended to subjects of political economy have always been desirous to procure accurate returns of the average duration of life at particular places, and they could pretty well estimate the condition of the people from these returns. Savages, it is well known, are not long livers; that is, although there may be a few old people, the majority of savages die very young. Why is this? Many of the savage nations that we know have much finer climates than our own; but then, on the other hand, they sustain privations which the poorest man amongst us never feels. Their supply of food is uncertain, they want clothing, they are badly sheltered from the weather, or not sheltered at all, they undergo very severe labour when they are labouring. From all these causes savages die young. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to infer that if in any particular country the average duration of life goes on increasing; that is, if fewer people, in a given number and a given time, die now than formerly, the condition of that people is improved; that they have more of the necessaries and comforts of life, and labour less severely to procure them? Now let us see how the people of England stand in this respect. The average mortality in a year about a century ago was reckoned to be one in thirty, and now it is one in forty-six. This result is, doubtless, produced in some degree by improvement in the science of medicine, and particularly by the use of vaccination. But making every allowance for these benefits, the fact furnishes the most undeniable truth, that the people of England are much better fed, clothed, and lodged than they were a century ago, and that the labour which they perform is far less severe. The effect of continued violent bodily exertion upon the duration of life might be illustrated by many instances; we shall mention one. The late Mr. Edgeworth, in his Memoirs, repeatedly speaks of a boatman whom he knew at Lyons, as an old man. "His hair," says Mr. Edgeworth, "was grey, his face wrinkled, his back bent, and all his limbs and features had the appearance of those of a man of sixty; yet his real age was but twenty-seven years. He told me that he was the oldest boatman on the Rhone, that his younger brothers had been worn out before they were twenty-five years old; such were the effects of the hardships to which they were subject from the nature of their employment." That employment was, by intense bodily exertion, and with the daily chance of being upset, to pull a boat across one of the most rapid rivers in the world,-- "The swift and arrowy Rhone," as one of our poets calls it. How much happier would these boatmen have been during their lives, and how much longer would they have lived, could their labour have been relieved by some mechanical contrivance! and without doubt, the same contrivance would have doubled the number of boatmen, by causing the passage to be more used. As it was, they were few in number, they lived only a few years, and the only gratification of those few years was an inordinate stimulus of brandy. This is the case in all trades where immense efforts of bodily power are required. The exertion itself wears out the people, and the dram, which gives a momentary impulse to the exertion, wears them out still more. The coal-heavers of London, healthy as they look, are but a short-lived people. The heavy loads which they carry, and the quantity of liquor which they drink, both together make sad havoc with them. Violent bodily labour, in which the muscular power of the body is unequally applied, generally produces some peculiar disease. Nearly all the pressmen who were accustomed to print newspapers of a large size, by hand, were ruptured. The printing-machine now does the same description of work. What is the effect upon the condition of pressmen generally by the introduction of the printing-machine to do the heaviest labour of printing? That the trade of a pressman is daily becoming one more of _skill_ than of _drudgery_. At the same time that the printing-machine was invented, one of the principles of that machine, that of inking the types with a roller instead of two large cushions, called balls, was introduced into hand-printing. The pressmen were delighted with this improvement. "Ay," said they, "this saves our labour; we are relieved from the hard work of distributing the ink upon the balls." What the roller did for the individual pressman, the machine, which can only be beneficially applied to rapid and to very heavy printing, does for the great body of pressmen. It removes a certain portion of the drudgery, which degraded the occupation, and rendered it painful and injurious to health. We have seen two pressmen working a daily paper against time: it was always necessary, before the introduction of the machines, to put an immense quantity of bodily energy into the labour of working a newspaper, that it might be published at the proper hour. Time, in this case, was driving the pressman as fast as the rapid stream drove the boatman of the Rhone; and the speed with which they worked was killing them as quickly. CHAPTER XX. Influences of knowledge in the direction of labour and capital--Astronomy--Chronometer--Mariner's compass--Scientific travellers--New materials of manufactures--India-rubber--Gutta-percha--Palm-oil-- Geology--Inventions that diminish risk--Science raising up new employments--Electricity--Galvanism--Sun-light-- Mental labourers--Enlightened public sentiment. Lord Bacon, the great master of practical wisdom, has said that "the effort to extend the dominion of man over nature is the most healthy and most noble of all ambitions." "The empire of man," he adds, "over material things has for its only foundation the sciences and the arts."[24] A great deal of the knowledge which constitutes this dominion has been the property of society, handed down from the earliest ages. No one can tell, for instance, how the art of leavening bread was introduced amongst mankind; and yet this process, now so familiar to all, contributes as much, if not more, than any other art to the wholesome and agreeable preparation of our food. Leavening bread is a branch of chemistry, and, like that process, many other processes of chemistry have been the common property of civilized man from time immemorial. Within a few centuries, however, science has applied its discoveries to the perfection of the arts; and in proportion as capital has been at hand to encourage science, has the progress of the application been certain and rapid. The old Alchemists, or hunters after the philosopher's stone, sought to create capital by their discoveries. They could not make gold, but they discovered certain principles which have done as much for the creation of utility in a few hundred years as the rude manual labour of all mankind during the same period. Let it not be supposed that we wish to depreciate manual labour. We only wish to show that labour is incomparably more prolific when directed by science. Mahomet Bey, the ruler of Tunis, was dethroned by his subjects. He had the reputation of possessing the philosopher's stone, or the art of turning common metals into gold. The Dey of Algiers restored him to his throne upon condition that the secret should be communicated to him. Mahomet, with great pomp and solemnity, sent the Dey of Algiers a plough. This was so far well. He intimated that to compel production by labour is to make a nation rich. But had he been able to transmit some of the science which now controls and guides the operations of the plough--the chemical knowledge which teaches the proper application of manures to soils--the rotation of crops introduced by the turnip-husbandry, which renders it unnecessary that the ground should ever be idle,--he would have gone farther towards communicating the real philosopher's stone. The indirect influence, too, of a general advance in knowledge upon the particular advance of any branch of labour, is undeniable;--for the inquiring spirit of an age spreads itself on all sides, and improvement is carried into the most obscure recesses, the darkest chinks and corners of a nation. It has been wisely and beautifully said, "We cannot reasonably expect that a piece of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected."[25] The positive influence of science in the direction of labour is chiefly exhibited in the operations of mechanics and chemistry applied to the arts, in the shape of machines for saving materials and labour, and of processes for attaining the same economy. We have described the effects of some of these manifold inventions in the improvement of the condition both of producers and consumers. But there are many particulars in which knowledge has laboured, and is still labouring, for the advance of the physical and moral condition of us all, which may have escaped attention; because these labours operate remotely and indirectly, though not without the highest ultimate certainty and efficiency, in aiding the great business of production. These are the influences of science upon labour, not so direct as the mechanical skill which has contrived the steam-engine, or so indirect as the operation of ethics upon the manufacture of a piece of woollen cloth; but which confer a certain and in some instances enormous benefit upon production, by the operation of causes which, upon a superficial view, appear to be only matters of laborious but unprofitable speculation. If we succeed in pointing out the extent and importance of those aids which production derives from the labours of men, who have not been ordinarily classed amongst "working men," but who have been truly the hardest and most profitable workers which society has ever possessed, we shall show what an intimate union subsists amongst those classes of society who appear the most separated, and that these men really labour with all others most effectually in the advancement of the great interests of mankind. [Illustration: Harrison.] When Hume thought that a nation would be behind in the manufacture of cloth that had not studied astronomy, he perhaps did not mean to go the length of saying, that the study of astronomy has a real influence in making cloth cheaper, in lessening the cost of production, and in therefore increasing the number of consumers. But look at the direct influence of astronomy upon navigation. A seaman, by the guidance of principles laid down by the great minds that have directed their mathematical powers to the study of astronomy--such minds as those of Newton and La Place--measures the moon's apparent distance from a particular star. He turns to a page in the 'Nautical Almanac,' and, by a calculation directed principally by this table, can determine whereabout he is upon the broad ocean, although he may not have seen land for three months. Sir John Herschel, who unites to the greatest scientific reputation the rare desire to make the vast possessions of the world of science accessible to all, has given, in his 'Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,' an instance of the accuracy of such lunar observations, in an account of a voyage of eight thousand miles, by Captain Basil Hall, who, without a single landmark during eighty-nine days, ran his ship into the harbour of Rio as accurately, and with as little deviation, as a coachman drives his stage into an inn-yard. But navigation not only depends upon lunar distances, but upon an instrument which shall keep perfect time under every change of temperature produced by variety of climate. That instrument is a chronometer. Every one who possesses a watch, however good, must have experienced the effects of heat or cold upon its accuracy, in making it go faster or slower--perhaps a minute in a week. Now if there were not an instrument that would measure time so exactly that between London and New York not a minute, or large fraction of a minute, would be lost or gained, the voyage would be one of difficulty and uncertainty. A Yorkshire joiner, John Harrison, at the beginning of the last century, found out the principle of the chronometer, which consists in the union in the balance-spring of two metals, one which contracts under increased temperature, and one which expands; and on the contrary under diminished temperature. Harrison worked for fifty years at his discovery; and he obtained a parliamentary reward of 20,000_l._ [Illustration: Greenwich Observatory.] The English chronometers are set by what is called Greenwich time. At the Greenwich Observatory a ball falls from a staff exactly at one o'clock; and by the application of electricity, a similar ball falls at the same instant at Charing Cross. The beautiful instruments that are constantly at work, and the laborious calculations which are daily proceeding, at the Observatory, are essentially necessary for the maintenance of a commerce that embraces the whole habitable globe. But what has this, it may be said, to do with the price of clothing? Exactly this: part of the price arises from the cost of transport. If there were no "lunar distances" in the 'Nautical Almanac,' or chronometers, the voyage from New York to Liverpool might require three months instead of a fortnight. But go a step farther back in the influence of science upon navigation. There was a time when ships could hardly venture to leave the shore. In the days of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, a merchant who went three times over sea with his own craft, was entitled to rank as a thegn, or nobleman. Long after this early period of England's navigation, voyages across the Atlantic could never have been attempted. That was before the invention of the mariner's compass; but even after that invention, when astronomy was not scientifically applied to navigation, long voyages were considered in the highest degree dangerous. The crews both of Vasco de Gama, who discovered the passage to India, and of Columbus, principally consisted of criminals, who were pardoned on condition of undertaking a service of such peril. The discovery of magnetism, however, changed the whole principle of navigation, and raised seamanship to a science. If the mariner's compass had not been invented, America could never have been discovered; and if America, and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, had never been discovered, cotton would never have been brought to England; and if cotton had never been brought to England, we should have been as badly off for clothing as the people of the middle ages, and the million of working men and women, manufacturers of cotton, and dealers in cotton goods, would have been without employment. Astronomy, therefore, and navigation, both sciences the results of long ages of patient inquiry, have opened a communication between the uttermost ends of the earth; and therefore have had a slow, but certain effect upon the production of wealth, and the consequent diffusion of all the necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of civilized life. The connexion between manufactures and science, practical commerce and abstract speculation, is so intimate that it might be traced in a thousand striking instances. Columbus, the discoverer of America, satisfied his mind that the earth was round; and when he had got this abstract idea firmly in his head, he next became satisfied that he should find a new continent by sailing in a westerly course. The abstract notion which filled the mind of Columbus that the earth was a sphere, ultimately changed the condition of every living being in the Old World that then existed, or has since existed. In the year 1488, the first geographical maps and charts that had been seen in England were brought hither by the brother of Christopher Columbus. If these maps had not been constructed by the unceasing labours of men in their closets, Columbus would never have thought of discovering "the unknown land" which occupied his whole soul. If the scanty knowledge of geography which existed in the time of Columbus had not received immense additions from the subsequent labours of other students of geography, England would not have twenty-seven thousand merchant ships ready to trade wherever men have anything to exchange,--that is, wherever men are enabled to give of their abundance for our abundance, each being immensely benefited by the intercourse. A map now appears a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the extent of the accumulated observations that go to make up a map. An almanac seems a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the prodigious accumulations of science that go to make up an almanac. With these accumulations, it is now no very difficult matter to construct a map or an almanac. But if society could be deprived of the accumulations, and we had to re-create and remodel everything for the formation of our map and our almanac, it would perhaps require many centuries before these accumulations could be built up again; and all the arts of life would go backward, for want of the guidance of the principles of which the map and the almanac are the interpreters for popular use. [Illustration: Linnæus in his Lapland dress.] There never was a time when man had so complete possession of the planet which he inhabits as the present. Much of the globe has yet to be explored; but how much is familiar to us that was comparatively unknown even at the beginning of the present century. How thoroughly during that period have we acclimated many of the plants of distant lands, which are now the common beauties of our gardens and greenhouses. There are thousands of timber-trees coming to rapid maturity in our parks and pleasure-grounds which thirty years ago grew only in the solitudes of California and Australia. One enterprising man, James Douglas, whose father was a working mason at Scone, bestowed upon this country, about twenty-five years ago, two hundred new species of plants which are now of common culture, and he gave us a tree of the pine-tribe, called after his name, which will in all probability become one of the most valuable of our timbers, from its strength, its rapid growth, and its enormous size. What impelled James Douglas, and hundreds of other travellers of a similar character, to encounter the perils of travel in desert regions, but the abstract love of science, which made them naturalists in their closets before they were explorers and discoverers? We are familiar with the name of Linnæus, and the Linnean system of botany; and some may think that this great naturalist was not doing much for knowledge when he classified and arranged what we call the vegetable kingdom. When very young, Linnæus underwent many hardships in travelling through Lapland, in search of plants. So far, some may say, he was well employed. He was equally well employed when he made such an inventory, to use a familiar term, of all the known plants of his time, as would enable succeeding naturalists to know a distinct species from an accidental variety, and to give a precision to all future botanical investigation. Other naturalists have produced other systems, which may be more simple and convenient; but the impulse which Linnæus gave to botanical discovery, and thence to the increase of the vegetable wealth of Europe, can never be too highly appreciated. In every branch of natural history the study of the science, in its manifold forms of classification, is constantly leading to the most valuable discoveries connected with our means of existence. Some twenty years ago all the timber of the Hartz Forest in Germany was destroyed by a species of beetle, which, gnawing completely round the bark, prevented the sap from rising. This destructive animal made its appearance in England; and science very soon discovered the cause of the evil, and provided for its removal. If there had been no knowledge of natural history here, not a tree would have been left in our woods: and what then would have been the cost of timber. The naturalist is now carrying his investigations, with the aid of the microscope, into the lowest departments of animal life. He finds the causes of blight and mildew, and knows the species of the minutest insect that mars the hopes of the farmer and the gardener. The chemist steps in; and the ravager is destroyed or rendered less noxious. It is to the scientific travellers that we owe the successive introduction of new materials of manufactures. Of the enormous extent in which such new materials affect production, we may form some adequate notion from the mention of three--India-rubber, Gutta Percha, and Palm-oil. In 1853 we imported 1,940,000 lbs. of caoutchouc or India-rubber. The gum of a Brazilian-tree, discovered by some scientific Frenchman in 1735, had been employed for nearly a century for no higher purpose than rubbing out pencil-marks. After 1820 the mode of applying the substance for the production of water-proof garments was discovered. But even in 1830 we only imported 50,000 lbs. Since then caoutchouc has become one of our great materials of manufacture, applied, not only to clothing, but to useful articles of every description. Its great property of elasticity has rendered it available in numberless instances beyond those of making cloth water-proof and air-tight. When we discovered how to make India-rubber soluble by spirit, we obtained our water-proof clothes, our air-cushions, and water-beds. When machinery drew out the lump of gum into the finest threads, and connected them with cotton, flax, silk, or worsted, in a braiding-machine, we became provided with every species of elastic web that can render dress at once tight and easy. But chemistry has carried the use of India-rubber further than the spirit which dissolves it, or the machinery which splits it into minute threads. Chemistry has combined it with sulphur, and thus added in a remarkable degree to its strength and its elasticity. It has made it independent of temperature. It has doubled its utility. "Vulcanized India-rubber" is one of the most valuable of recent inventions. It is a striking characteristic of our age, and particularly as compared with the period when India-rubber was first sent to Europe, that the application of gutta percha to the arts immediately followed the discovery of the substance. In 1842, Dr. Montgomerie was observing a wood-cutter at Singapore at his ordinary labour. Looking at the man's axe he saw that the handle was not of wood, but of some material that he had not previously known. The woodman told Dr. Montgomerie that, hard as the handle was, it became quite soft in boiling water, and could be moulded into any form, when it would again become hard. It was a gum from a tree growing in various islands of the Eastern archipelago, called _pertsha_. Specimens were immediately sent to the Society of Arts; and the inquiring surgeon to the Presidency at Singapore received the Society's gold-medal. In 1842-3, Mr. Lobb, visiting these islands to collect botanical specimens, also discovered the same tree, and the gum which issues from it. In twelve years the wonderful utility of this new material has been established in very various applications. But the gum would have remained comparatively useless but for the inventive spirit which has subdued every difficulty of a new manufacture. The substance is now applied to the humblest as well as the highest purposes. It is a clothes' line defying the weather; it is a buffer for a railway carriage. It is a stopping for a hollow tooth; it is a sheathing for the wire that conveys the electric spark across the Channel. It is a cricket-ball; it is a life-boat in the Arctic seas. It is a noiseless curtain-ring; it is a sanitary water-pipe. It resists the action of many chemical substances, and is thus largely employed for vessels in bleaching and dyeing factories; it is capable of being moulded into the most beautiful forms, and thus becomes one of the most efficient materials for multiplying works of ornamental art. The collection of gutta percha has given a new stimulus to the feeble industry of the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra, and Borneo, and a new direction to the commerce of Singapore. It has brought the people of the Indian archipelago into more direct contact with European civilization. [Illustration: Elæis Guineensis, and Cocos butyracea, yielding Palm-oil.] What the use of gutta percha is doing for the Malays, the use of palm-oil is doing for the Africans. A great commerce has sprung up on the African coasts, in which statesmen and philanthropists see the coming destruction of the slave-trade. In 1853 we imported seventy-one million lbs. of palm-oil and eighteen million lbs. of cocoa-nut oil. The greater part of this oil is for making candles. It is equal to three-fourths of all the tallow we import. What has created this enormous manufacture of one of the most improved articles of domestic utility? Knowledge. The palm-oil candles have been brought to their present perfection by chemical and mechanical appliances, working with the most complete division of labour, carried through by the nicest economy resulting from great administrative skill. 'Price's Candle Company' is a factory, or rather a number of factories, in which, in the exact proportion that the health, the comfort, and the intelligence of the workers is maintained in the highest efficiency, the profits of the capitalist are increased. The superior quality of the products of the oil-candle factories is the result of chemistry. A French chemist discovered that fats, such as oil, were composed of three inflammable acids--two of which, called stearic and margaric, are solid; and one called oleic, fluid. Another substance called glycerine is also present. The oil is now freed from the oleic acid and the glycerine, which interfere with its power of producing light, and the two solid acids are crystalized. What are called stearine and composite candles are thus produced, at a cost which is really less than that of the old tallow-candles, when we consider that they burn longer and with greater brilliancy, besides being freed from a disagreeable smell and from a tendency to gutter. Candles from animal fat have also been greatly improved by chemical appliances in the preparation of the tallow. Science, we thus see, connects distant regions, and renders the world one great commercial market. Science is, therefore, a chief instrument in the production of commercial wealth. But we have a world beneath our feet which science has only just now begun to explore. We want fuel and metallic ore to be raised from the bowels of the earth; and, till within a very few years, we used to dig at random when we desired to dig a mine, or confided the outlay of thousands of pounds to be used in digging, to some quack whose pretensions to knowledge were even more deceptive than a reliance upon chance. The science of geology, almost within the last quarter of a century, has been able, upon certain principles, to determine where coal especially can be found, by knowing in what strata of earth coal is formed; and thus the expense of digging through earth to search for coal, when science would, at once pronounce that no coal was there, has been altogether withdrawn from the amount of capital to be expended in the raising of coal. That this saving has not been small, we may know from the fact, that eighty thousand pounds were expended fruitlessly in digging for coal at Bexhill, in Sussex, not many years ago, which expense geology would have instantly prevented; and have thus accumulated capital, and given a profitable stimulus to labour, by saving their waste. But geological science has not only prevented the expensive search for coal where it does not exist, but has shown that it does exist where, a few years ago, it was held impossible to find it. The practical men, as they are called, maintained that coal could not be found beneath the magnesian limestone. A scientific geologist, Dr. William Smith, held a contrary opinion; and the result of his abstract conviction is, that the great Hetton collieries have been called into action, which supply a vast amount of coal to the London market, found beneath this dreaded barrier of magnesian limestone. Geology--however scanty its facts at present are, compared with what they will be when miners have been accustomed to look at their operations from the scientific point of view--geology can tell pretty accurately in which strata of the earth the various metals are likely to be found; and knowing, to some extent, the strata of different countries, can judge of the probability of finding the precious metals as well as the more common. Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1844, expressed his belief, in a public address, that gold existed in the great Eastern Chain of Australia. In 1849, an iron-worker in Australia, reading this opinion, searched for gold, and found it. The discovery was neglected, till an enterprising man came from California, and completed the realization of the scientific prediction. The gold-diggings of Australia are producing, by their attraction to emigrants, changes in the amount and value of labour in the United Kingdom, which may materially affect the condition of every worker in the parent-land; and they have given an immense impulse to our home industry. The importance of gold, merely as a material of manufacture, may be estimated from the fact that in Birmingham alone a thousand ounces of fine gold are worked up every week; and that ten thousand ounces are annually used in the porcelain works of Staffordshire. Whatever diminishes the risk to life or health, in any mechanical operation, or any exertion of bodily labour, lessens the cost of production, by diminishing the premium which is charged by the producers to cover the risk. The safety-lamp of Sir Humphry Davy, by diminishing the waste of human life employed in raising coals, diminished the price of coals. The contrivance is a very simple one, though it was no doubt the result of anxious and patient thought. It is a common oil-lamp, in which the flame is surrounded with a fine wire-gauze. The flame cannot pass through the gauze; and thus if the destructive gas of a coal-mine enters the gauze and ignites, the flame cannot pass again out of the gauze, and ignite the surrounding gas. Sometimes the inner flame burns with a terrible blue light. It is the symptom of danger. If the lamp were an open flame the fire-damp would shake the pit with one dreadful explosion. The safety-lamp yields a feeble light; and thus, unfortunately, the miner sometimes exposes the flame, and perishes. The magnetic mask, which prevents iron-filings escaping down the throats of grinders and polishers, and thus prevents the consumption of the lungs, to which these trades are peculiarly obnoxious, would diminish the price of steel goods, if the workmen did not prefer receiving the premium in the shape of higher wages, to the health and long life which they would get, without the premium, by the use of the mask. This is not wisdom on the part of the workmen. But whether they are wise or not, the natural and inevitable influence of the discovery, sooner or later, to lessen the cost of production in that trade, by lessening the risk of the labourers, must be established. The lightning conductor of Franklin, which is used very generally on the Continent, and almost universally in shipping, diminishes the risk of property, in the same way that the safety-lamp diminishes the risk of life; and, by this diminution, the rate of insurance is lessened, and the cost of production therefore lessened. [Illustration: Franklin medal.] We have given many examples of labour-saving processes produced by science. We may regard it as a compensating principle that science is constantly raising up new employments. In 1798, Galvani, an Italian physician, accidentally discovered that the muscles of a dead frog were convulsed by the body coming in contact with two metals. Soon after, Volta, another Italian physician, produced electric currents by a combination of metals in what was called the voltaic-pile. Who could have imagined that the patient working-out of the scientific principle that was evolved in the movement of Galvani's dead frog, should have raised up new branches of human industry, of the most extensive and varied utility? Galvanic batteries used to be considered amongst the toys of science. They now send an instantaneous message from London to Paris; and fill our houses with the most beautiful articles of metallic manufacture, electro-plate. About sixteen years ago it was discovered that a piece of metal might receive a fine permanent coating of another metal by the agency of galvanism. The discovery created a strong interest in men of science, and many small experiments were tried to fix a coating of copper to some other metal. Manufacturing enterprize saw the value of the discovery; which has been simply described in a popular work:-- "Diluted sulphuric acid is poured into a porous vessel; this is placed in a larger vessel containing a solution of sulphate of copper; a piece of zinc is placed in the former, and a piece of silver or of copper in the latter, and both pieces are connected by a wire. Then does the wondrous agent, electricity, begin its work; a current sets in from the zinc to the acid, thence through the porous vessel to the sulphate, thence to the silver or copper, and thence to the conducting wire back again to the zinc; and so on in an endless circuit. But electricity never makes such a circuit without disturbing the chemical relations of the bodies through which it passes; the zinc, the silver or copper, the sulphuric acid, the oxygen, and the hydrogen--all are so far affected that the zinc becomes eaten away, while a beautiful deposit of metallic copper, derived from the decomposition of the sulphate, appears on the surface of the silver or copper. Copper is not the only metal which can be thus precipitated; gold, silver, platinum, and other metals may be similarly treated."[26] [Illustration: Electro-gilding.] When experiment had proved that every imaginable form of cheap metal could be coated with silver or gold, by the agency of electro-chemistry, an immediate demand was created for designers, modellers, and moulders. Vases of the most beautiful forms were to be produced in metal which should have the properties of solid silver without its costliness. The common metal vase is dipped into a tank containing a solution of silver. It is placed in connection with the wires of the galvanic battery. Atom after atom of the silver in solution clings to the vase, which soon comes out perfectly silvered. The burnisher completes its beauty. It is the same with a solution of gold. The pride of riches may boast the value of the solid plate, which tempts thieves to "break in and steal." The nobler gratification of taste may secure the beauty without the expense or risk of loss. But the great principle thus brought into practical use is carried farther in the realms of art. It becomes a copying process. It can multiply copies of the most minute engraving without in the slightest degree deteriorating the beauty of the engraver's work. The copy is as good as the original. The same principle of depositing one metal upon another in minute atoms has produced galvanized tinned-iron--iron which will not rust upon exposure to weather, and thus applicable to many purposes of building--and iron which can be applied to many objects of utility with greater advantage than tin-plate. There are few houses now without their daguerreotype portraits of some member of the family. This is a portrait copied from the human face by a sunbeam. The name daguerreotype is derived from the Frenchman Daguerre, who announced his discovery at the time when our countryman, Mr. Fox Talbot, was engaged in working out the same wonderful problem. We notice this branch of recent invention merely to point out how science and art call forth mechanical labour. When every house has its little portrait, there will naturally be a great demand for frames. The manufacture of daguerreotype-frames, both here, and in the United States, has furnished a new field of employment. Every scientific discovery, such as photography, is a step in advance of preceding discovery. If Newton had not discovered the fundamental properties of light, in the seventeenth century, we should, in all likelihood, have had no photography in the nineteenth. Abstract science is the parent of practical art. [Illustration: Newton.] It has been said by an American writer, who has published several treatises well-calculated to give the workman an elevated idea of his rights and duties, that the "man who will go into a cotton-mill,--who will observe the parts of the machinery, and the various processes of the fabric, till he reaches the hydraulic press, with which it is made into a bale, and the canal or railroad by which it is sent to market, may find every branch of trade, and every department of science, literally crossed, intertwined, interwoven with every other, like the woof and the warp of the article manufactured."[27] This crossing and intertwining of the abstract and practical sciences, the mechanic skill and the manual labour, which are so striking in the manufacture of a piece of calico, prevail throughout every department of industry in a highly-civilized community. Every one who labours at all profitably labours for the production of utility, and sets in motion the labour of others. Look at the labour of the medical profession. In the fourteenth century, John de Gaddesden treated a son of Edward II. for the small-pox by wrapping him up in scarlet cloth, and hanging scarlet curtains round his bed; and, as a remedy for epilepsy, the same physician carried his patients to church to hear mass. The medical art was so little understood in those days, that the professors of medicine had made no impression upon the understanding of the people; and they consequently trusted not to medicine, but to vain charms, which superstitions the ignorance of the practitioners themselves kept alive. The surgical practitioners of Europe, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, put their unhappy patients to the most dreadful torture by their mode of treating wounds and broken limbs. When they amputated a leg or an arm they applied the actual cautery, or red-hot iron, to stop the effusion of blood. Ambrose Paré, one of the most eminent of the French surgeons of that period, who accompanied the army to the siege of Turin, in 1536, thus describes the mode in which he found his surgical brethren dealing with gun-shot wounds: [Illustration: Ambrose Paré.] "I was then very raw and inexperienced, having never seen the treatment of gun-shot wounds. It is true that I had read in the Treatise of Jean de Vigo on wounds in general, that those inflicted by fire-arms partake of a poisonous nature on account of the powder, and that they should be treated with hot oil of elder, mixed with a little theriacum. Seeing, therefore, that such an application must needs put the patient to extreme pain, to assure myself before I should make use of this boiling oil, I desired to see how it was employed by the other surgeons. I found their method was to apply it at the first dressing, as hot as possible, within the wound, with tents and setons; and this I made bold to do likewise. At length my oil failed me, and I was fain to substitute a digestive, made of the yolk of eggs, rose-oil, and turpentine. At night I could not rest in my bed in peace, fearing that I should find the wounded, in whose cases I had been compelled to abstain from using this cautery, dead of poison: this apprehension made me rise very early in the morning to visit them; but beyond all my hopes, I found those to whom I had applied the digestive, suffering little pain, and their wounds free from inflammation; and they had been refreshed by sleep in the night. On the contrary, I found those to whom the aforesaid oil had been applied, feverish, in great pain; and with swelling and inflammation round their wounds. I resolved, therefore, that I would never burn unfortunate sufferers from gun-shot in that cruel manner again." Francis I., king of France, having a persuasion that, because the Jews were the most skilful physicians of that day, the virtue was in the Jew, and not in the science which he professed, sent to Charles V. of Spain for a Jewish physician; but finding that the man who arrived had been converted to Christianity, he refused to employ him, thinking the virtue of healing had therefore departed from him. A statute of Henry VIII. says, "For as much as the science and cunning of physic and surgery is daily within this realm exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part have no insight in the same, nor in any other kind of learning: some, also, con no letters on the book, so far forth, that common artificers, as smiths, and weavers, and women, boldly and accustomably, take upon them great cures, in which they partly use sorcery and witchcraft, partly apply such medicines to the disease as be very noxious, and nothing meet, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy to the faculty, and the grievous damage and destruction of diverse of the king's people." When such ignorance prevailed, diseases of the slightest kind must have been very often fatal; and the power of all men to labour profitably must have been greatly diminished by the ravages of sickness. These ravages are now checked by medical science and medical labour. But even within our own times how greatly has general ignorance retarded the exertions of medical science to diminish suffering and to reduce the amount of mortality! The prejudices against vaccination have rendered it extremely difficult to eradicate small-pox, however certain the result of the great discovery of Jenner. According to the present law, all children, born in England and Wales after August 1, 1853, _must_ be vaccinated at the public expense. Such a law would have been very difficult of execution twenty years ago. The people had then seen the scarred faces from small-pox disappearing amongst them. They had learnt that, at the beginning of this century, vaccination, or the puncture of the skin with matter originally obtained from the cow, was rooting out the small-pox, which used to destroy, not more than a hundred years ago, thirty-six thousand persons annually, in this kingdom. But yet they had prejudices. No medical man would practise inoculation--a great blessing in its day--because the disease was thus kept amongst us. But still many ignorant persons did not avail themselves of the law passed fourteen years ago, under which their children _might_ be vaccinated at the public cost. The undoubted testimony of the whole medical profession proves that vaccination in almost all cases prevents small-pox, and in all cases mitigates its evil. But that testimony further proves that if vaccination were universal, small-pox would wholly disappear; and that is the reason why vaccination is now compulsory. But we may regard the influences of knowledge upon the direction and aid of profitable labour, even from a higher point of view. The sciences and arts cannot be carried forward except in a country where the laws of God are respected, where justice is upheld; where intellect generally is cultivated, and taste is diffused. The religious and moral teacher, therefore, who lifts the mind to a contemplation of the duties of man, as they are founded upon a belief in the Providence of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator, is a profitable labourer. The instructor of the young, who dedicates his time to advancing the formation of right principles, and the acquirement of sound knowledge, by his pupils, is a profitable labourer. The writer who applies his understanding to the discovery and dissemination of moral and political truth, is a profitable labourer. The interpreter and administrator of the laws, who upholds the reign of order and security, defending the innocent, punishing the guilty, and vindicating the rights of all from outrage and oppression, is a profitable labourer. These labourers, it may be said, are still direct producers of utility, but that those who address themselves to the imagination--the poets, the novelists, the painters, and the musicians--in every polished society, are unprofitable labourers. One word is sufficient for an answer. These men advance the general intellect of a country, and they therefore indirectly advance the production of articles of necessity. We have already shown how the study of the higher mathematics, upon which astronomy is founded, has an influence upon the production of a piece of woollen cloth; and we beg our readers to bear this connection in mind when they hear it said, as they sometimes may, that an abstract student, or an elegant writer, is not a producer,--is, in fact, an idler. The most illustrious writers of every country, the great poets, "High notions and high passions best describing," have, next to the inspirations of religion, lifted mankind, more than any other class of intellectual workmen, to their noblest pursuits of knowledge and virtue. Even those who especially devote themselves to give pleasure and amusement, call into action some of the highest and purest sources of enjoyment. They lead the mind to seek its recreations in more ennobling pursuits than those of sensuality; their arts connect themselves by a thousand associations with all that is beautiful in the natural world; they are as useful for the promotion of pure and innocent delight as the flowers that gladden us by their beauty and fragrance by the side of the corn that nourishes us. An entire community of poets and artists would be as unprofitable as if an entire country were dedicated to the cultivation of violets and roses; but the poets and the artists may, as the roses and the violets, furnish the graces and ornaments of life, without injury, and indeed with positive benefit, to the classes who more especially dedicate themselves to what is somewhat exclusively called the production of utility. The right direction of the talents which are dedicated to art and literature is all that is required from those who address themselves to these pursuits. He, therefore, who beguiles a vacant hour of its tediousness, by some effort of intellect which captivates the imagination without poisoning the morals,--and he who by the exercise of his art produces forms of beauty which awaken in the mind that principle of taste which, more than any other faculty, requires cultivation,--have each bestowed benefits upon the world which may be accurately enough measured even by the severe limitations of political economy;--they are profitable labourers and benefactors of their species. The positive influence of the labours of the poet and the artist upon the advance of other labour might be easily shown. In their productions, especially, supply goes before demand, and creates demand. It has been calculated by an American writer, that the number of workmen who have been set in action--paper-makers, printers, binders--by the writings of Sir Walter Scott alone, in all countries, would, if gathered together, form a community that would fill a large town. The Potteries of Etruria, in Staffordshire, could not have existed unless Mr. Wedgwood had introduced into our manufacture of china the forms of Grecian art, bequeathed to us by the taste of two thousand years ago, and thus created a demand which has furnished profitable labour to thousands. There are four thousand musical-instrument makers in Great Britain. What has given their industry its chief impulse? The divine art of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, Mendelsohn. If these great composers, and many others, had not raised music into something higher and more capable of producing enjoyment than the rude melodies of uncivilized tribes, there would have been no trade in pianofortes. [Illustration: Sir Walter Scott. From Sir F. Chantrey's Bust.] We have entered into these details, principally to show that there are other and higher producers in society than the mere manual labourers. It was an ignorant fashion amongst the mental labourers of other days to despise the class of the physical labourers. They have learnt to know their value; and there should be a reciprocal knowledge. Both classes are working-classes. No one can say that the mental labourers are not workers. They are, we may truly affirm, taken as a class, the hardest workers in the community. No one ever reached eminence in these pursuits without unwearied industry: the most eminent have been universally despisers of ease and sloth, and have felt their highest pleasures in the absorbing devotion of their entire minds to the duties of their high calling. They have wooed Knowledge as a mistress that could not be won without years of unwearied assiduity. The most eminent, too, have been practical men, despising no inquiry, however trifling it might appear to common eyes, and shrinking from no occupation, however tedious, as long as it was connected with their higher duties. [Illustration: Pianoforte Manufactory.] There is no higher duty than that of endeavouring so to lead public opinion, as that the general mind of the community shall be directed to noble and unselfish ends. The poet, the historian, the essayist, the novelist, have the responsibility of keeping alive the love of freedom, the hatred of oppression, the cultivation of Christian charity. There never was a truly great nation that had a low literature. It is the glory of our nation that its literature is amongst its best possessions; and that the general scope and tendency of that literature are calculated to raise and cherish an enlightened public sentiment. Whatever be the amount of national wealth--however various the comforts and luxuries which private riches may command--it is quite certain that without that courage and intelligence which make a people free and keep them so, the public and private accumulations are comparatively worthless. There is a beautiful Eastern story which may better illustrate this position than any lengthened argument.[28] [Illustration: Statue of Bacon.] "It is related that a man of the pilgrims slept a long sleep, and then awoke, and saw no trace of the other pilgrims. So he arose and walked on; but he wandered from the way, and he proceeded until he saw a tent, and an old woman at its door, and he found by her a dog asleep. He approached the tent, saluted the old woman, and begged of her some food; whereupon she said to him, Go to yon valley, and catch as many serpents as will suffice thee, that I may broil some of them for thee. The man replied, I dare not catch serpents, and I never ate them. The old woman therefore said, I will go with thee, and catch some of them, and fear thou not. Then she went with him, and the dog followed her, and she caught as many of the serpents as would suffice, and proceeded to broil some of them. The pilgrim could not refrain from eating; for he feared hunger and emaciation: so he ate of those serpents. And after this, being thirsty, he demanded of the old woman some water to drink; and she said to him, Go to the spring, and drink of it. Accordingly he went to the spring; but he found its water bitter; yet he could not refrain from drinking of it, notwithstanding its exceeding bitterness, on account of the violence of his thirst. He therefore drank, and then returned to the old woman, and said to her, I wonder at thee, O thou old woman, and at thy residing in this place, and thy feeding thyself with this food, and thy drinking of this water.--How then, said the old woman, is your country? He answered her, Verily, in our country are spacious and ample houses, and ripe and delicious fruits, and abundant sweet waters, and excellent viands, and fat meats, and numerous sheep, and everything good, and blessings of which the like exist not save in the Paradise that God (whose name be exalted!) hath described to his just servants.--All this, replied the old woman, I have heard; but tell me, have you any Sultan who ruleth over you, and oppresseth in his rule while ye are under his authority; and who, if any one of you committeth an offence, taketh his wealth, and destroyeth him, and who, if he desire, turneth you out from your houses, and eradicateth you utterly? The man answered her, That doth sometimes happen. And the old woman rejoined, If so, by Allah, that dainty food and elegant life, and those delightful comforts, with oppression and tyranny, are penetrating poison; and our food, with safety, is a salutary antidote." [Illustration: Bas-Relief on Gutenberg's Monument: Comparing a printed Sheet with a Manuscript.] [24] We have taken this sentence as a motto which may point to the general scope of this volume. [25] Hume's Essays. [26] 'Curiosities of Industry.' By George Dodd. [27] 'Everett's Working Man's Party.' Printed in the American Library of Useful Knowledge, 1831. [28] Note in Mr. Lane's admirable translation of the 'Thousand and One Nights,' original edition, vol. ii. p. 635. CHAPTER XXI. Invention of printing--Effects of that art--A daily newspaper--Provincial newspapers--News-writing of former periods--Changes in the character of newspapers--Steam conveyance--Electric telegraph--Organization of a London newspaper-office--The printing-machine--The paper-machine--Bookbinding--Paper-duty. The art of printing offers one of the readiest and most forcible illustrations of the advantages that have been bestowed upon the world by scientific discovery and by mechanical power. Although there is, happily, little occasion now to combat any wide-spread hostility to machinery, the argument for its use derived from printing may be very briefly stated. It is nearly four hundred years since the art of printing books was invented. Before that time all books were written by the hand. There were many persons employed to copy out books, but they were very dear, although the copiers had small wages. A Bible was sold for thirty pounds in the money of that day, which was equal to a great deal more of our money. Of course, very few people had Bibles or any other books. A mode was invented of imitating the written books by cutting the letters on wood, and taking off copies from the wooden blocks by rubbing the sheet on the back. Soon after, the idea was carried farther by casting metal types or letters, which could be arranged in words, and sentences, and pages, and volumes; and then a machine, called a printing-press, upon the principle of a screw, was made to stamp impressions of these types so arranged. There was an end, then, at once to the trade of the pen-and-ink copiers; because the copiers in types, who could press off several hundred books while the writers were producing one, drove them out of the market. A single printer could do the work of at least two hundred writers. At first sight this seems a hardship, for a hundred and ninety-nine people might have been, and probably were, thrown out of their accustomed employment. But what was the consequence in a year or two? Where one written book was sold, a thousand printed books were required. The old books were multiplied in all countries, and new books were composed by men of talent and learning, because they could then find numerous readers. The printing press did the work more neatly and more correctly than the writer, and it did it infinitely cheaper. What then? The writers of books had to turn their hands to some other trade, it is true; but type-founders, paper-makers, printers, and bookbinders, were set to work, by the new art or machine, to at least a hundred times greater number of persons than the old way of making books employed. But there is a far more important mode of viewing this matter than any consideration resulting out of the increased employment that the art of printing unquestionably has created. If printing, which is a cheap and a rapid process, could by possibility be superseded by writing, which is an expensive and a slow operation, no book, no newspaper, could be produced for the use of the people. Knowledge, upon which every hope of bettering their condition must ultimately rest, would again become the property of a very few; and mankind would lose the greater part of that power which constitutes the essential difference between civilization and barbarism. The art of printing has gone on more and more adapting itself to the increase of our population, during the three centuries and a half in which it has been exercised in this country. Herein consists, perhaps, one of the mightiest differences between our condition and that of every generation which has preceded us. Through that art, no idea can now perish. Through that art, knowledge is fast becoming the common possession of all. Through that art, what the people have gained in the past is secured for the future. It has established the empire of public opinion. There is possibly no more striking example of the manifold combinations of mental labour, of scientific power, of mechanical invention, and of the use of rapid means of communication, than the forces now called into action for the issue of a London daily newspaper. Nor is there any production of literary industry which more pointedly illustrates the distinctive qualities of printing as compared with writing--the rapidity, the cheapness, and the general diffusion. Let us endeavour to supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to produce this great necessary of modern society. The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be philosophical, or critical, or imaginative--it may pour forth treasures of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too readily forgotten--but no amount of ability will give it currency if it be deficient in news. It is the imperative demand for news, embracing every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. They are in the Bow-street police-office, watching the effrontery of the detected felon;--they are on the heights of Inkermann, to stir our hearts "as with a trumpet," and fill our eyes with tears as they tell us "How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest." They are at the city feast, where all is blandishment and turtle;--they are at the coroner's inquest upon a street-starved pauper. They furnish news to all the world; and they receive news from all the world. But there are similar organizations going forward through the country. The increase in number of the provincial papers, and their efforts to procure intelligence, are equally remarkable. The London editors have the not very easy task of glancing over the five hundred local papers of the United Kingdom. These are, in ordinary cases, the vehicles from which they obtain their home intelligence. If any local matter of general interest is to be specially attended to, their own correspondent, or their own reporter, furnishes the details. Some unexpected event puts, occasionally, the electric telegraph in motion, to tell the world of London, on Saturday morning, what occurred at Liverpool on Friday night; and the Liverpool merchant reads on the Exchange at noon of that Saturday, in the newspaper printed at a distance of two hundred miles, some notice of an arrival in his own port during the hours when he was sleeping. Even the state of the weather at different parts of the kingdom is thus daily transmitted. But the London editors, and some of the provincial, have to look out for news at a greater distance than is comprised in our "nook-shotten isle of Albion." They have to search the papers of every land and every people--whether written in English, French, German, Italian, Greek, or Turkish. Of course translators are always at hand. For the London daily papers the electric telegraph is "throwing its shadows" before the authentic heralds of "coming events." For them is the steamer bringing the special correspondence from the gold-diggings in Australia, and from the camp in the Crimea. For them do the people's representatives make long speeches to empty benches, secure that there is a medium of communication for unnumbered eyes, although the ears be shut of those who listen not to the voice of the charmers. For them do great ministers go into obscure places, and, addressing an enthusiastic dinner-table, or a solemn corporation, speak to the world. For them does every discoverer of a private grievance claim public redress. For them is produced, in letters "to the editor," that great chaotic accumulation of fact and theory, of wisdom and folly, of calculation and impulse, whose atoms finally resolve themselves into a solid mass called public opinion. The mental labours attendant upon the provincial newspapers are more narrowed. But they are nevertheless very important; and the extension of their functions by the enormous extension of the facilities for obtaining intelligence is equally striking. The old county papers, circulating steadily through the rural districts, and duly chronicling session and assize, markets and misdemeanours, have been stirred into activity by newspapers issuing from great commercial and manufacturing centres, which have arisen with the immense development of our industry. Liverpool had two papers in 1803,--it has now ten; Manchester, Birmingham, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, which had each one at that period, have now each four. Many towns that had one paper at the beginning of the century have now two. There are about eighty provincial English papers now published in towns which had no journal at that period. Some belong to manufacturing districts which then contained a small population; such as Bolton, Bradford, Hanley, Kidderminster, Macclesfield, Stockport, Sunderland, Wakefield, Wolverhampton. Others, to places of fashion and luxury which have grown up out of changes of society, such as Brighton and Cheltenham. Others, to new local centres, which, through the great modern facilities of communication, can circulate their weekly sheets at little expense, instead of sending their own messengers throughout the small towns and villages. The local changes in these vehicles of intelligence are strikingly connected with the other great social changes which have been noticed in this volume. It is satisfactory to know that the provincial press is no imperfect representative of an age of progress. The history of news-writing and news-publishing is a mirror of many of the changes in social necessities and conveniences. In 1625, Ben Jonson's play of 'The Staple of News' exhibited a countrywoman going to an office of news, and saying to the manager, who sits in state with his registers and examiners,-- "I would have, sir, A groatsworth of any news, I care not what, To carry down this Saturday to our vicar." This was written news. In London, before a newspaper existed, there were private gazetteers, who made a living by picking up scraps of intelligence in taverns and barbers' shops. This class of persons continued even when there were newspapers; for the news-letter, as it was called, is thus described in the first number of the 'Evening Post,' issued in 1709:--"There must be 3_l._ or 4_l._ per ann. paid by those gentlemen that are out of town for written news, which is so far generally from having any probability or matter of fact in it, that it is frequently stuffed up with a 'We hear,' or 'An eminent Jew merchant has received a letter.'" The same 'Evening Post' adds,--"We read more of our own affairs in the Dutch papers than in any of our own." Sir Roger L'Estrange, who published 'The Intelligencer,' with privilege, in 1663, says that he shall publish once a week, "to be published every Thursday, and finished upon the Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday entire for the printing it off." The first advertisement in an English paper appeared in 1649. At the beginning of the present century the public used to look with wonder upon their "folio of four pages," and contrast it with the scanty chronicles of the days of Charles II. and Anne. We of the present time, in the same way, contrast our newspapers with the meagre records of the beginning of the century. The essential difference has been produced by steam navigation, by railways, by the extension of the post, dependent upon both applications of steam, and by the electric telegraph. The same scientific forces and administrative organization that bring the written news from every region of the earth, re-convey the printed news to every region. It is sufficient to glance at the lists of foreign mails, and the low rates of postage from the United Kingdom, to see the enormous extent of that intercourse which enables our government, by the packet service, to transmit a letter for sixpence to the British West Indies, to Hong-kong to our North American colonies, to Belgium; to nearly all the German States, by an uniform British and foreign rate, for eightpence; to France, Algeria, Spain, and Portugal, for ten pence; to the Italian States for a trifle more; to Turkey in Europe for one shilling and five pence; and to India for one shilling and ten pence. With this certain and rapid intercourse, it is not likely that the least enterprising newspaper editor would have to repeat the doubt of L'Estrange, who says, "Once a week may do the business; yet if I shall find, when my hand is in, and after the planting and securing my correspondents, that the matter will fairly furnish more, I shall keep myself free to double at pleasure." It is the external communication so wonderful in our own times, we repeat, which has chiefly changed the character of our newspapers. When we read in a London daily paper the one line,--"The Overland Mail--by electric telegraph,"--we have two facts of the highest significance. "The Overland Mail" would appear, of itself, a marvel great enough for one age. The Overland Mail has brought London within a month of Bombay. It has joined India most effectually to England for all commercial and state purposes. It gives us the news of India, by the aid of the electric telegraph, in as little time as we ordinarily received news from Vienna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The steamer and the electric telegraph made the blood of England beat quicker in every heart, when our newspapers recorded, on the 13th of November, the most sanguinary and heroic battle of modern times, fought in the Crimea only a week previous. When Marlborough was setting out for his campaign of 1709, and so many political, if not patriotic, hopes, were fixed upon the probable issue, 'The Tatler,' then a newspaper, had the following paragraph:--"We learn from Brussels, by letters dated the 20th, that on the 14th, in the evening, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene arrived at Courtray, with a design to proceed the day following to Lisle, in the neighbourhood of which city the confederate army was to arrive the same day." The account of the movement of the great allied generals was transmitted from Brussels six days after the movement had taken place, Courtray being only distant forty-six miles; and the important news from Brussels, of the 20th May, was published in London on the 28th, London being distant some two hundred and fifty miles. The distance from Balaclava to London is about three thousand miles. [Illustration: Old hand-gunner.] The function of a great newspaper, in connexion with the positions of armies and the events of siege and battle, is as different from the function of the journalist of fifty years ago, as the rapid firing of the soldier of the Alma with his Minié rifle contrasts with the slow evolutions of the old hand-gunner. In the war with Russia the presence of the newspaper reporter gives a new feature, strikingly characteristic of our times and our country. It is necessary to have the earliest and the most detailed accounts of this eventful contest; for the people, one and all, understand that they are deeply interested in its issue, and that, if their country fails to assert the superiority of freedom and intelligence over slavery and barbarism, the material prosperity of that country can be of no long duration. Wisely, therefore, did the London daily papers each send their active, fearless, and eloquent correspondents, to endure some of the hardships of the march and the bivouac--to observe the battle-field, not secure from its dangers--to write of victories, surrounded by the dead and dying--to be the historians of a day, and thus to furnish the best materials for all future historians. The life of a London reporter, although a life of constant labour, is generally accompanied by much ease and comfort. The senate does not acknowledge his presence; but it provides the "stranger" with the best seat. He takes his place at the public dinner as an honoured guest--one whose absence would be more regretted than that of the city's mayor or the borough's patron. But in a campaign, where his duties are new, he must fight his way through every difficulty. His function is recognised in an age when it would be useless to suppress intelligence, even if it were possible. He finds a ready mess in every tent where a scanty meal is set out; he stands by the side of the commander, and gazes with him upon "the currents of the heady fight." How he wears after two months of unusual service we have some slight notion, when we read, in a letter to '_The Times_' of November 30, that the writer had seen an officer who had lately parted from the special correspondent. "The chances of war had deprived him of nearly all his garments; and when last seen he was walking about in a rifleman's jacket, much too small for his portly person; and his nether garments had been converted into breeches by a constant scrambling amongst rocks and briers." Let us not forget our obligations to the men who, in peril and suffering, have made heroic action more familiar to us; and have contributed no mean part in giving a moral impulse to our country, as essential to future safety and honour as the material wealth which has made us a people amongst the foremost of the earth. [Illustration: Carrier-pigeon.] What the carrier-pigeon was in the conveyance of intelligence in the middle ages, and even within a few years, the electric telegraph is in the present day. The carrier-pigeon went out from a besieged castle, to ask for succour, in eastern countries, five centuries ago. The electric telegraph, land and submarine, brings the tidings of slaughter and sickness from Sebastopol, and England and France send instant reinforcements. The carrier-pigeon, in the last century, was despatched by the merchants of the English factory, from Scanderoon to Aleppo, to announce the arrival of the company's ships. The electric telegraph communicates to London the arrival of an Australian packet at Southampton. Within the last ten years one of the annual expenses of a London newspaper was 1800_l._ for pigeon expresses. The pigeons have lost their employment. The price of stocks and shares in 'Change-alley is known every quarter of an hour upon the exchanges of our great commercial marts; and the closing price of the French funds is in type before midnight at our daily newspaper-offices. The carrier-pigeon travelled sixty miles an hour. The time which it takes to transmit a message by the electric telegraph is inappreciable. The newspapers of the United States employ the electric telegraph far more extensively than our English papers; for the distances between one State and one city and another State and another city are so great, that steam travelling would not accomplish the object of communication with sufficient rapidity. The density of our population renders the employment of the telegraph less necessary for the ordinary transmission of intelligence. But private curiosity, in a time of great public interest, steps in; and one of the most remarkable exhibitions of our provincial towns at the time at which we are writing--when an agonizing anxiety for the fortunes of our heroic defenders in the Black Sea is the chief thought of millions--is the crowd about the telegraph-office to know something more than the morning paper, brought by railway speed, can furnish to this universal excitement. In America the distance between Quebec and New Orleans, a distance of three thousand miles, is overleaped by the electric telegraph. Two lines, each two thousand miles long, connect New York with New Orleans; and over this space messages are transmitted, and answers received, in three hours. When we read long paragraphs in the London morning papers, received by electric telegraph after midnight from Paris, we wonder how this is accomplished. Eighteen words, which are equal to about two newspaper lines, are transmitted every minute; and the full message from Dover, carefully transcribed, is in the hands of the newspaper editor in half an hour. To carry out all this scientific conquest of time and space, by the most perfect mental and mechanical arrangements in the newspaper-office itself, appears, at first sight, almost as great a wonder as the rapid communication. Nothing but the most perfect organization of the division of labour could accomplish the feat. There is, after midnight, in the office of a morning paper, a constant necessity for adapting the labour of every quarter of an hour to the requirements of the instant time. Much of the newspaper matter may have been in type in the evening; some portion may be quite ready for printing off. But new necessities may derange much of this preparation. Say that the Parliament is sitting. The reporters are in the gallery at the meeting of the House, and each arrives at the office with his assigned portion of the debate. A heavy night is not expected, and the early reporters write with comparative fulness. Suddenly an unexpected turn is given to the proceedings. A great debate springs up, out of a ministerial statement or an opposition objection. Then come reply and rejoinder. Column after column is poured in. Smaller matters must give way to greater. The intelligence that will keep is put aside for the information that is pressing. The debate is prolonged till one or two o'clock, and the paper is approaching its completion. But an electric telegraph communication has arrived--perhaps an important express. Away goes more news. Advertisements, law reports, police reports, correspondence--all retire into obscurity for one day. There is plenty of manipulating power in the great body of compositors to effect these changes. But not in any department is there any apparent bustle. Nor is there any neglect in the labours that wait upon the work of the compositors. One word is not put for another. The readers are as vigilant to correct every error--to have no false spelling and no inaccurate punctuation--as if they were bestowing their vigilance upon a book to be published next season. The reporters are as careful to make no slips which would indicate a want of knowledge, as if they were calmly writing in their libraries after breakfast. The one-presiding mind of the editor is watchful over all. At four or five o'clock the morning paper goes to press. [Illustration: Cowper's machine.] But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails. Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety, if the daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London merchant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if he had not had one passing glance at the division in the House, the state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and London will not be kept without that illumination which has become almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could have anticipated. In 1814, Koenig, a German, erected the first printing-machine at the "Times Office," and produced eighteen hundred impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder-machine, which effected a revolution in the commerce of books; and, in connexion with the paper-machine, enabled the principle of cheapness to contend against an impolitic and oppressive tax. This is still the machine in general use for many newspapers and much book-printing. We will briefly describe the operation of printing a sheet of paper on both sides by this instrument. Upon the solid steel table at each end of the machine lie the pages which print one side of the sheet. At the top of the machine, where the laying-on boy stands, is a heap of wet paper. The signal being given by the director of the work, the laying-on boy turns a small handle, and the moving-power of the strap connected with a steam-engine is immediately communicated. Some ten or twenty spoiled sheets are first passed over the types to remove any dirt or moisture. If the director is satisfied, the boy begins to lay on the white paper. He places the sheet upon a flat table before him, with its edge ready to be seized by the apparatus for conveying it upon the drum. At the first movement of the great wheel, the inking-apparatus at each end has been set in motion. The steel cylinder attached to the reservoir of ink has begun slowly to move,--the "doctor," or more properly "ductor," has risen to touch that cylinder for an instant, and thus receive a supply of ink,--the inking-table has passed under the "doctor" and carried off that supply,--and the distributing-rollers have spread it equally over the surface of the table. This surface, having passed under the inking-rollers, communicates the supply to them; and they in turn impart it to the _form_ which is to be printed. All these beautiful operations are accomplished in the sixteenth part of a minute, by the travelling backward and forward of the carriage or table upon which the _form_ rests. Each roller revolves upon an axis which is fixed. At the moment when the _form_ at the back of the machine is passing under the inking-roller, the sheet, which the boy has carefully laid upon the table before him, is caught in the web-roller and conveyed to the endless bands or tapes which pass it over the first impressing cylinder. It is here seized tightly by the bands, which fall between the pages and on the outer margin. The moment after the sheet is seized upon the first cylinder, the _form_ passes under that cylinder, and the paper being brought in contact with it receives an impression on one side. To give the impression on the other side the sheet is to be turned over, and this is effected by the two drums in the centre of the machine. The endless tapes never lose their grasp of the sheet, although they allow it to be reversed. While the impression has been given by the first cylinder, the second _form_ of types at the other end of the table has been inked. The drums have conveyed the sheet during this inking upon the second cylinder; it is brought in contact with the types, and the operation is complete. Koenig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, was supplanted at the '_Times_' office by a modification of Applegath's and Cowper's machine, which printed four thousand sheets an hour on one side. But that has been superseded by a vertical machine, which prints ten thousand copies an hour, on one side. The separate columns of type are fixed on a large type-drum, two hundred inches in circumference. The drum is surrounded by eight impressing cylinders; the ink is applied to the surface of the type by rollers which work between these cylinders; and the sheets are laid on upon eight tables, (_h_, _h_, _h_,) which, by a most ingenious mechanism, carry each sheet to a point where its position is suddenly changed, and it is impressed between the type and the cylinder; the paper being then suspended by tapes, from which it is released as it passes forward, to be laid upon the heap which will be scattered, in a few hours, to every corner of the kingdom. [Illustration: Times Printing-Machine.] The printing machines, which have been in full operation for little more than twenty years, have called into action an amount of employment which was almost wholly unknown when knowledge was for the few. Paper-makers, type-founders, wood-engravers, bookbinders, booksellers, have been raised up by this extension of the art of printing, in numbers which far exceed those of any former period. But the printing machine would have worked feebly and imperfectly without the paper machine. That most complete invention has not only cheapened paper itself, but it has cheapened the subsequent operations of printing, in a remarkable degree. It has enabled one revolution of the cylinder of the printing machine to produce four sheets instead of one, or a surface of print equal to four sheets. When paper was altogether made by hand, the usual paper for books was called demy; and a sheet of demy produced sixteen octavo pages of a book. The paper could not have been economically made larger by hand. A sheet of paper equal to four sheets of demy is now worked at the newspaper machine; and sixty-four pages of an octavo book might be so worked, if it were needful for cheapening production. Double demy is constantly worked for books. Thus, one economical arrangement of science produces another contrivance; and machines in one direction combine with machines having a different object, to produce legitimate cheapness, injurious to no one, but beneficial to all. Let us attempt to convey a notion of the beautiful operations of the paper-machine. In the whole range of machinery, there is, perhaps, no series of contrivances which so forcibly address themselves to the senses. There is nothing mysterious in the operation; we at once see the beginning and the end of it. At one extremity of the long range of wheels and cylinders we are shown a stream of pulp, not thicker than milk and water, flowing over a moving plane; at the other extremity the same stream has not only become perfectly solid, but is wound upon a reel in the form of hard and smooth paper. This is, at first sight, as miraculous as any of the fancies of an Arabian tale. Aladdin's wonderful lamp, by which a palace was built in a night, did not in truth produce more extraordinary effects than science has done with the paper-machine. [Illustration: Paper-making by Hand.] At one extremity of the machine is a chest, full of stuff or pulp. We mount the steps by its side, and see a long beam rolling incessantly round this capacious vessel, and thus keeping the fibres of linen, which look like snow flakes, perpetually moving, and consequently equally suspended, in the water. At the bottom of the chest, and above the vat, there is a cock through which we observe a continuous stream of pulp flowing into the vat; which is, always, therefore, filled to a certain height. From the upper to the lower part of this vat a portion of the pulp flows upon a narrow wire frame, which constantly jumps up and down with a noise resembling a cherry-clack. Having passed through the sifter, the pulp flows still onward to a ledge, over which it falls in a regular stream, like a sheet of water over a smooth dam. Here we see it caught upon a plane, which presents an uninterrupted surface of five or six feet, upon which the pulp seems evenly spread, as a napkin upon a table. A more accurate inspection shows us that this plane is constantly moving onwards with a gradual pace; that it has also a shaking motion from side to side; and that it is perforated all over with little holes--in fact, that it is an endless web of the finest wire. If we touch the pulp at the end of the plane, upon which it first descends, we find it fluid; if we draw the finger over its edge at the other end, we perceive that it is still soft--not so hard, perhaps, as wet blotting-paper,--but so completely formed, that the touch will leave a hole, which we may trace forward till the paper is perfectly made. The pulp does not flow over the sides of the plane, we observe, because a strap, on each side, constantly moving and passing upon its edges, regulates the width. After we pass the wheels upon which these straps terminate, we perceive that the paper is sufficiently formed not to require any further boundary to define its size;--the pulp has ceased to be fluid. But it is yet tender and wet. The paper is not yet completely off the plane of wire; before it quits it, another roller, which is clothed with felt, and upon which a stream of cold water is constantly flowing subjects it to pressure. The paper has at length left what may be called the region of wire, and has entered that of cloth. A tight surface of flannel, or felt, is moving onwards with the same regular march as the web of wire. Like the wire, the felt is what is called endless,--that is, united at the extremities, as a jack-towel is. We see the sheet travelling up an inclined plane of this stretched flannel, which gradually absorbs its moisture. It is now seized between two rollers, which powerfully squeeze it. It goes travelling up another inclined plane of flannel, and then passes through a second pair of pressing-rollers. It has now left the region of cloth, and has entered that of heat. The paper, up to this point, is quite formed; but it is fragile and damp. It is in the state in which, if the machinery were to stop here, as it did upon its first invention, it would require (having been wound upon a reel) to be parted and dried as hand-made paper is. But in a few seconds more it is subjected to a process by which all this labour and time is saved. From the last pair of cloth-pressing rollers, the paper is received upon a small roller which is guided over the polished surface of a large heated cylinder. The soft pulp tissue now begins to smoke; but the heat is proportioned to its increasing power of resistance. From the first cylinder, or drum, it is received upon a second, considerably larger, and much hotter. As it rolls over this polished surface, we see all the roughness of its appearance, when in the cloth region, gradually vanishing. At length, having passed over a third cylinder, still hotter than the second, and having been subjected to the pressure of a blanket, which confines it on one side, while the cylinder smooths it on the other, it is caught upon the last roller, which hands it over to the reel. The last process of the machine is to cut the roll of paper into sheets. [Illustration: Various processes of Bookbinding.] In consequence of the cheaper production of the press, and the consequent extension of the demand for books, bookbinding has become a large manufacture, carried on with many scientific applications. We have rolling-machines, to make the book solid; cutting-machines, to supersede the hand-labour of the little instrument called a plough; embossing machines, to produce elaborate raised patterns on leather or cloth; embossing presses, to give the gilt ornament and lettering. These contrivances, and other similar inventions, have not only cheapened books, but have enabled the publisher to give them a permanent instead of a temporary cover, ornamental as well as useful. There are eleven thousand bookbinders now employed, of which one-third are females. The number employed has been quadrupled by these inventions. In 1830, the journeymen bookbinders of London opposed the introduction of the rolling-machine. Books were formerly beat with large hammers upon a stone, to give them solidity. The workmen were relieved from the drudgery of the beating-hammer by the easy operation of the rolling-machine. They soon discovered the weak foundation of their objection to an instrument which, in truth, had a tendency, above all other things, to elevate their trade, and to make that an art which in one division of it was a mere labour. If the painter were compelled to grind his own colours and make his own frames, he would no longer follow an art, but a trade; and he would receive the wages of a labourer instead of the wages of an artist, not only so far as related to the grinding and frame-making, but as affecting all his occupations, by the drudgery attending a portion of them. [Illustration: Papyrus.] The commerce of literature has been doubled in twenty years. But it would be scarcely too much to assert that the influence of the press, in forming public opinion, and causing it to operate upon legislation, has doubled almost every other employment. To that public opinion, chiefly so formed, we owe the successive removals of restrictions upon trade, which have carried forward our exports from thirty-six millions sterling in 1831 to ninety millions in 1853. To that public opinion we owe the abolition of prohibitive duties upon foreign produce, which has given us a far wider range of beneficial consumption. To that public opinion we owe the repeal of the oppressive excise duties upon salt, leather, candles, glass, bricks--which duties impeded production even more effectually than the extortions and tyrannies of the middle ages. Strange it is, that the power of the press, which has done so much for the removal of other fiscal impediments to industry, should have been able to effect so little for itself;--that the tax upon paper should still interfere with the commerce of literature, when general education has no longer to encounter any misgivings in the minds of those who govern an earnest and patriotic people. The difficulty of procuring the material of paper has become a serious impediment to the cheap diffusion of knowledge; and the paper-tax works in the same evil direction. There have been innumerable obstacles to the extension of knowledge since the days when books were written on the papyrus--obstacles equally raised up by despotic blindness and popular ignorance. But it is not fitting that either of such causes should still be in action in the days of the printing-machine. CHAPTER XXII. Power of skill--Cheap production--Population and production--Partial and temporary evils--Intelligent labour--Division of labour--General knowledge--The Lowell Offering--Union of forces. We have thus, without pretending to any approach to completeness, taken a rapid view of many of the great branches of industry in this country. We have exhibited capital working with accumulation of knowledge; we have shown labour working with skill. We desire to show that the counter-control to the absorbing power of capital is the rapidly developing power of skill--for that, also, is capital. Knowledge is power, because knowledge is property. Mr. Whitworth, whose Report on American Manufactures we have several times quoted, says that the workmen of the United States, being educated, perform their duty "with less supervision than is required when dependence is to be placed upon uneducated hands." He adds, "It rarely happens that a workman, who possesses peculiar skill in his craft, is disqualified to take the responsible position of superintendent, by the want of education and general knowledge, _as is frequently the case in this country_." This is a reproach which every young person in our land ought, as speedily as possible, to wipe out. The means of education may not be quite so universal here as in the United States; but they are ample to produce a large increase of that skill and that trustworthiness which are the most efficient powers which those who work for their living can possibly command, for elevating their individual positions, and for elevating the great body of workers throughout the realm. One of the most essential steps towards the attainment of this elevation is the conviction that manual labour, to be effective, must adapt itself almost wholly to the direction of science; and that under that direction unskilled labour necessarily becomes skilled, and limited trust enlarges into influential responsibility. Those who have taken a superficial view of the question of scientific application say, that, only whenever there is a greater demand than the existing means can supply, is any new discovery in mechanics a benefit to society, because it gives the means of satisfying the existing wants; but that, on the contrary, whenever the things produced are sufficient for the consumers, the discovery is a calamity, because it does not add to the enjoyments of the consumers; it only gives them a better market, which better market is bought at the price of the existence of the producers. All such reasoning is false in principle, and unsupported by experience. There is no such thing, nor, if machines went on improving for five hundred years at the rate they have done for the last century, could there be any such thing, as a limit to the wants of the consumers. The great mass of facts which we have brought together in this book must have shown, that the cheaper an article of necessity becomes, the more of it is used; that when the most pressing wants are supplied, and supplied amply by cheapness, the consumer has money to lay out upon new wants; that when these new wants are supplied cheaply, he goes on again and again to other new wants; that there are no limits, in fact, to his wants as long as he has any capital to satisfy them. Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers,--to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double character; he is both a producer and a consumer. But we will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of production is a much more important question to be decided in his favour as a consumer, than the question of dearness of production to be decided in his favour as a producer. The truth is, every man tries to get as much as he can for his own labour, and to pay as little as he can for the labour of others. If a mechanic, succeeding in stopping the machine used in his own trade, by any strange deviation from the natural course of things were to get higher wages for a time, he himself would be the most injured by the extension of the principle. When he found his loaf cost him two shillings instead of sixpence; when he was obliged to go to the river with his bucket for his supply of water; when his coals cost a guinea a bushel instead of eighteen pence; when he was told by the hosier that his worsted stockings were advanced from a shilling a pair to five shillings; when, in fact, the price of every article that he uses should be doubled, trebled, and, in nine cases out of ten, put beyond the possibility of attainment;--what, we ask, would be the use to him of his advance in wages? Let us never forget that it is not for the employment of labourers, but for the benefit of consumers, that labour is employed at all. The steam-engines are not working in the coal-pits of Northumberland, and the ships sailing from the Tyne to the Thames, to give employment to colliers and to sailors, but to make coals cheap in London. If the people of London could have the coals without the steam-engines and the ships, it would be better for them, and better for the rest of the world. If they could get coals for nothing, they would have more produce to exchange for money to spend upon other things; and the comforts, therefore, of every one of us would be increased. This increase of comfort, some may say, is a question that more affects the rich than it affects the great mass. This again is a mistake. The whole tendency of the improvements of the last four hundred years has not only been to lift the meanest, in regard to a great many comforts, far above the condition of the rich four hundred years ago, but absolutely to place them, in many things, upon a level with the rich of their own day. They are surrounded, as we have constantly shown throughout this book, with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago; and those comforts and conveniences are not used only by a few, but are within the reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to our comforts. Our houses are better built--our clothes are cheaper--we have a number of domestic utensils, whose use even was unknown to our ancestors--we can travel cheaply from place to place, and not only travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than the richest man could travel two hundred years ago. The bulk of society is not only advancing steadily to the same level in point of many comforts with the rich, but is gaining that knowledge which was formerly their exclusive possession. Let all of us who are producers keep fast hold of that last and best power. We have endeavoured to show throughout this book that the one great result of machinery, and of every improvement in art, is to lessen the cost of production; to increase the benefit to the consumer. But it is a most fortunate arrangement of the social state, as we have also shown, that cheap production gives increased employment. The same class of false reasoners who consider that the wants of society are limited, cry out, it is better to have a population of men than of steam-engines. That might be true, if the steam-engines _did_ put out the men; but inasmuch as they increase the productions by which men are maintained, they increase the men. What has increased the population of England nearly ten-fold during the last five hundred years, but the improvement of the arts of life, which has enabled more men to live within the land? There is no truth so clear, that as the productions of industry multiply, the means of acquiring those productions multiply also. The productions which are created by one producer furnish the means of purchasing the productions created by another producer; and, in consequence of this double production, the necessities of both the one and the other are better supplied. The multiplication of produce multiplies the consumers of produce. There are, probably, upon the average, no more hats made in the year than there are heads to wear them; but as there are twenty-one millions of heads of the British subjects of Queen Victoria, and there were only five millions of the British subjects of Queen Anne, it is self-evident that the hat-makers have four times as much work as they had a century and a half ago. What has given the hat-makers four times as much work? The quadrupling of the population. And what has quadrupled the population? The quadrupling of produce--the quadrupling of the means of maintaining that population. It is a remarkable fact, derived from the official returns, that whilst our exports of home produce and manufactures have increased about twofold in price since the commencement of the century, they have increased eight-fold in quantity. Their real or declared value indicates the price. What is called the official value indicates the quantity. What is true of our exports is also true of our home-consumption. The great multiplication of produce is accompanied, proportionately, with a far greater diminution of price. There is a just and eloquent passage in the Registrar-General's Report upon the Census of 1851, which we gladly copy:-- "With all that we now see around us, it is difficult to place ourselves in the position of the people of 1751; and to understand either the simplicity of the means, or the greatness of the task which has since been achieved by the people of England and Scotland. It is evident, however, that if the whole that they have accomplished had been proposed as a project, or been held out as the policy of the greatest minister then living, its difficulty and grandeur would have overwhelmed him with confusion. If in the height of power he had thus addressed the people of Britain, would he not have been heard with justifiable incredulity?--'These islands and Ireland are occupied by the men of many separate states that are now happily united. After the settlement on the land of tribes, fleets, and armies of Celts, of Saxons, of Danes, and of Normans--and after centuries of patient culture, its fertile soil sustains _seven millions_ of people in its whole length from the Isle of Wight to the Shetland Islands. We cannot--for the mighty power is not given us--say, let there be on the European shores of the Atlantic ocean--_three_ Great Britains. But the means exist for creating on this land, in less than a hundred years, two more nations, each in number equal to the existing population, and of distributing them, over its fields, in cottages, farms, and towns, by the banks of its rivers, and around its immemorial hills: and they will thus be neither separated by longer roads, nor wider seas, but be neighbours, fellow-workers, and fellow-countrymen on the old territory; wielding by machines the forces of nature, that shall serve them with the strength of thousands of horses, on roads, and seas,--in mines, manufactories, and ships. Subsistence shall be as abundant as it is now, and luxuries, which are confined to the few, shall be enjoyed by multitudes. The wealth of the country--its stock and its produce--shall increase in a faster ratio than the people. All this shall be accomplished without any miraculous agency, by the progress of society,--by the diffusion of knowledge and morals,--by improvements,--and improvements chiefly in the institution of marriage--'that true source of human offspring,' whence, 'Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known.'" If the reader has rightly considered the various facts which we have presented, he will long before this have come to the conclusion, that it, is for the general interests of society that every invention, which has a tendency to diminish the cost of production, shall have the most perfect freedom to go forward. He will also have perceived, that the exercise of this natural right, this proud distinction, of man, to carry on the work of improvement to the fullest extent of his capacity and knowledge, can never be wholly stopped, however it may be opposed. It may be suspended by the ignorance of a government--it may be clamoured down by the prejudice of a people; but the living principle which is in it can never be destroyed. To deny that this blessing, as well as many other blessings which we enjoy, is not productive of any particular evil, would be uncandid and unwise. Every change produced by the substitution of a perfect machine instead of an imperfect one, of a cheap machine instead of a dear one, is an inconvenience to those who have been associated with the imperfect and the dear machines. It is a change that more or less affects the interests of capitalists as well as of workmen. In a commercial country, in a highly civilized community, improvement is hourly producing some change which affects some interests. Every new pattern which is introduced in hardware deranges for a moment the interests of the proprietors of the old moulds. Every new book, upon any specific subject upon which books have formerly been written, lessens the value of the copyright of those existing books. What then? Is every improvement, which thus produces a slight partial injury, to be discountenanced, because of this inevitable condition which we find at every step in the march of society? Or rather, ought we not to feel that every improvement brings healing upon its wings, even to those for whom it is a momentary evil;--that if it displaces their labour or their capital for a season, it gives new springs to the general industry, and calls forth all labour and all capital to higher and more successful exertions? At every advance which improvement makes, the partial and temporary evils of improvement are more and more lessened. In the early stages of social refinement, when a machine for greatly diminishing labour is for the first time introduced, its effects in displacing labour for an instant may be seen in the condition of great masses of people. It is the first step which is the most trying. Thus, when printing superseded the copies of books by writing, a large body of people were put out of employ;--they had to seek new employ. It was the same with the introduction of the spinning machinery,--the same with the power-loom. It would be presumptuous to say that no such great changes could again happen in any of the principal branches of human industry; but it may be said, that the difficulty of superseding our present expeditious and cheap modes of manufacture is daily increasing. The more machines are multiplied, that is, the more society approaches towards perfection, the less room is there for those great inventions which change the face of the world. We shall still go on improving, doubtless; but ingenuity will have a much narrower range to work in. It may perfect the machines which we have got, but it will invent fewer original machines. And who can doubt, that the nearer we approach to this state, the better will it be for the general condition of mankind? Who can doubt whether, instead of a state of society where the labourers were few and wretched, wasting human strength, unaided by art, in labours which could be better performed by wind, and water, and steam,--by the screw and the lever,--it would not be better to approach as nearly as we can to a state of society where the labourers would be many and lightly tasked, exerting human power in its noblest occupation, that of giving a direction by its intelligence to the mere physical power which it had conquered? Surely, a nation so advanced as to apply the labour of its people to occupations where a certain degree of intelligence was required, leaving all that was purely mechanical to machines and to inferior animals, would produce for itself the greatest number of articles of necessity and convenience, of luxury and taste, at the cheapest cost. But it would do more. It would have its population increasing with the increase of those productions; and that population employed in those labours alone which could not be carried on without that great power of man by which he subdues all other power to his use,--his reason. But it is not only science which has determined, and is more and more determining, the condition of the great body of operatives, but the organization of industry upon the factory principle, so universal and so powerful, has rendered it impossible for the future that the larger amount of the labour of a country should be regarded as an insulated force. It must work in conjunction with higher and more powerful forces. In France, which, as a commercial and manufacturing country, was considerably behind the advance of England, it was a common practice, in many villages and small towns, not very long ago, for the weavers to make the looms and other implements of their trade. In the fifteenth century, in the same country, before an apprentice could be admitted to the privilege of a master-weaver, it was not only necessary for him to prove that he understood his trade as a weaver, but that he was able to construct all the machines and tools with which he carried on his craft. Those who know anything of the business of weaving will very readily come to the conclusion that the apprentice of the fifteenth century, whose skill was put to such a proof, was both an indifferent weaver and an indifferent mechanician;--that in the attempt to unite two such opposite trades, he must have excelled in neither;--and that in fact the regulation was one of those monstrous violations of the freedom of industry, which our ancestors chose to devise for the support of industry. Carrying the principle of a division of labour to the other extreme point, we have seen that a vast number of persons are engaged in the manufacture of a piece of cloth,[29] who, if individually set to carry the workmanship of that piece of cloth through all its stages, would be utterly incompetent to produce it at all, much less to produce it as durable and beautiful as the cloth which we all daily consume. How would the sorter of the wool, for example, know how to perform the business of the scourer, or of the dyer, or of the carder? or the carder that of the spinner or the weaver? or the weaver that of the miller, or boiler, or dyer, or brusher, or cutter, or presser? We must be quite sure that, if any arbitrary power or regulation, such as compelled the weaver of the fifteenth century to make his own loom, were, on the other hand, to compel a man engaged in any one branch of the manufacture of woollen cloth to carry that manufacture through all its stages, the production of cloth would be utterly suspended; and that the workmen being incompetent to go on, the wages of the workmen could no longer be paid;--for the wages of labour are paid by the consumer of the produce of labour, and here there would be nothing to consume. The great principle, therefore, which keeps the division of labour in full activity is, that the principle is necessary to production upon a scale that will maintain the number of labourers engaged in working in the cheapest, because most economical manner, through the application of that mode of working. The labourers, even if the principle were injurious to their individual prosperity and happiness, which we think it is not, could not dispense with the principle, because it is essential to economical production; and if dear production were to take the place of economical production, there would be a proportionately diminished demand for products, and a proportionate diminution of the number of producers. The same laws of necessity which render it impossible for the working men to contend against the operation of the division of labour,--even if it were desirable that they should contend against it, as far as their individual interests are concerned,--render it equally impossible that they should contend against the operation of accumulation of knowledge in the direction of their labour. The mode in which accumulation of knowledge influences the direction of their labour is, that it furnishes mechanical and chemical aids to the capitalist for carrying on the business of production. The abandonment of those mechanical and chemical aids would suspend production, and not in the slightest degree increase, but greatly diminish, and ultimately destroy, the power of manual labour, seeking to work without those mechanical and chemical aids. The abandonment of the division of labour would work the same effects. There would be incomparably less produced on all sides; and the workmen on all sides, experiencing in their fullest extent the evils which result from diminished production, would all fall back in their condition, and day by day have less command of the necessaries and comforts of life, till they sank into utter destitution. We dwell principally on the effects of accumulation of knowledge and division of labour on the working man as a consumer, because it is the more immediate object of this volume to consider such questions with reference to production. But the condition of the working man as a producer is, taking the average of all ranks of producers, greatly advanced by the direction which capital gives to labour, by calling in accumulation of knowledge and division of labour. If the freedom of labour were not established upon the same imperishable basis as the security of property, we might, indeed, think that it was a pitiable thing for a man to labour through life at one occupation, and believe that it was debasing to the human intellect and morals to make for ever the eye of a needle, or raise a nap upon woollen cloth. The Hindoos, when they instituted their castes, which compelled a man to follow, without a possibility of emerging from it, the trade of his fathers, saw the general advantage of the division of labour; but they destroyed the principle which could make it endurable to the individual. They destroyed the Freedom of Industry. "To limit industry or genius, and narrow the field of individual exertion by any artificial means, is an injury to human nature of the same kind as that brought on by a community of possessions. Where there is no stimulus to industry, things are worst; where industry is circumscribed, they cannot prosper; and are then only in a healthy state, when every avenue to personal advantage is open to every talent and disposition. A state of equality is an instance of the first case; the division of the people into castes, as among the Ancient Egyptians, and still among the Hindoos, of the second. This division has been considered by all intelligent travellers as one powerful cause of the stationary character of the inhabitants of that country: and the effect would have been still more pernicious, if time or necessity had not introduced some relaxation into the rigorous restrictions originally established, and so ancient as to be attributed to Siva. As long, however, as the rule is generally adhered to, that a man of a lower class is restricted from the business of a higher class, so long, we may safely predict, India will continue what it is in point of civilization. An approach to the same effect may be witnessed in the limitation of honours, privileges, and immunities in some countries of Europe."[30] In those manufactures and trades where the division of labour is carried to the greatest extent, such as the cotton and silk trades, workmen readily change from one branch to the other, without molestation, and without any great difficulty of adapting themselves to a new occupation. The simpler the process in which a workman has been engaged--and every process is rendered more simple by the division of labour--the easier the transition: and the principal quality which is required to make the transition is, that stock of general knowledge which the division of labour enables a man to attain: and which, in point of fact, is attained in much higher perfection in a large manufactory, than in that rude state where one man is more or less compelled to do everything for his body, and therefore has no leisure to do anything for his mind. There are evils, undoubtedly, in carrying the division of labour to an extreme point; but we think that those very evils correct themselves, because they destroy the great object of the principle, and give imperfect instead of perfect production. The moral evils which some have dreaded may assuredly be corrected by general education, and in fact are corrected by the union of numbers in one employment. What sharpens the intellect ought, undoubtedly, to elevate the morals; and, indeed, it is only false knowledge which debases the morals. Knowledge and virtue, we believe, are the closest allies; and wisdom is the fruit of knowledge and virtue. The same principles as to the course which the division of labour should lead the labourer to pursue, apply to the higher occupations of industry. No man of learning has ever very greatly added to the stock of human knowledge, without devoting himself, if not exclusively, with something like an especial dedication of his time and talents, to one branch of science or literature. In the study of nature we have the mathematician, the astronomer, the chemist, the botanist, the zoologist, and the physician engaged, each in his different department. In the exposition of moral and political truths, we have the metaphysician, the theologian, the statesman, the lawyer, occupied each in his peculiar study or profession. A mental labourer, to excel in any one of these branches, must know something of every other branch. He must direct indeed the power of his mind to one department of human knowledge; but he cannot conquer that department without a general, and, in many respects, accurate knowledge of every other department. The same principle produces the same effects, whether applied to the solution of the highest problem in geometry, or the polishing of a pin. The division of labour must be regulated by the acquisition of general knowledge. There was probably no more striking example ever given of the union of factory labour with a taste for knowledge and an ardour for mental improvement, than was presented by the young women working in the cotton-manufactories of Lowell, in the United States. They wrote and published for their own amusement, a magazine, called 'The Lowell Offering,' in which the writers exhibited remarkable attainments, and no common facility of composition. The author of the present volume made a selection from 'The Lowell Offering,' which he introduced to English notice by a preface, one passage of which may be extracted as an illustration of the argument before us:-- "In dwelling upon the thoughts of others, in fixing their own thoughts upon some definite object, these factory girls have lifted themselves up into a higher region than is attained by those, whatever be their rank, whose minds are not filled with images of what is natural and beautiful and true. They have raised themselves out of the sphere of the partial and the temporary, into the broad expanse of the universal and the eternal. During their twelve hours of daily labour, when there were easy but automatic services to perform, waiting upon a machine--with that slight degree of skill which no machine can ever attain--for the repair of the accidents of its unvarying progress, they may, without a neglect of their duty, have been elevating their minds in the scale of being by cheerful lookings-out upon nature; by pleasant recollections of books; by imaginary converse with the just and wise who have lived before them; by consoling reflections upon the infinite goodness and wisdom which regulates this world, so unintelligible without such a dependence. These habits have given them cheerfulness and freedom amidst their uninterrupted toils. We see no repinings against their twelve hours' labour, for it has had its solace. Even during the low wages of 1842, which they mention with sorrow but without complaint, the same cultivation goes on; 'The Lowell Offering' is still produced. To us of England these things ought to be encouraging. To the immense body of our factory operatives the example of what the girls of Lowell have done should be especially valuable. It should teach them that their strength, as well as their happiness, lies in the cultivation of their minds. To the employers of operatives, and to all of wealth and influence amongst us, this example ought to manifest that a strict and diligent performance of daily duties, in work prolonged even more than in our own factories, is no impediment to the exercise of those faculties, and the gratification of those tastes, which, whatever was once thought, can no longer be held to be limited by station. There is a contest going on amongst us, as it is going on all over the world, between the hard imperious laws which regulate the production of wealth, and the aspirations of benevolence for the increase of human happiness. We do not deplore the contest; for out of it must come a gradual subjection of the iron necessity to the holy influences of love and charity. Such a period cannot, indeed, be rashly anticipated by legislation against principles which are secondary laws of nature; but one thing nevertheless is certain--that such an improvement of the operative classes, as all good men--and we sincerely believe amongst them the great body of manufacturing capitalists,--ardently pray for, and desire to labour in their several spheres to attain, will be brought about in a parallel progression with the elevation of the operatives themselves in mental cultivation, and consequently in moral excellence."[31] The division of labour in carrying forward the work of production is invariably commanded, because it is perfected, by the union of forces, or co-operation. The process of manufacturing a piece of woollen cloth is carried on by division of labour, and by union of forces, working together. In fact, if there were not that ultimate co-operation, the division of labour would be not only less productive than labour without division, but it would not be productive at all. The power of large capital is the power which, as society is arranged, compels this division of parts for the more complete production of a whole. A large cloth manufactory, as we have seen, exhibits itself to the eye chiefly in the division of labour; but all that division ends in a co-operation for the production of a piece of cloth. A ship, with five hundred men on board, each engaged in various duties, and holding different ranks, is an example of the division of labour; but the division ends in a co-operation to carry the ship from one port to another, and, if it be a ship of war, to defend it from the attacks of an enemy. Those who would direct the principle of co-operation into a different channel, by remodelling society into large partnerships, do not, because they cannot, depart, in the least degree, from the principles we have laid down. They must have production, and therefore they must have division of labour; the division of labour involves degrees of skill; the whole requires to be carried on with accumulation of former labour or capital, or it could not exist. The only difference proposed is, that the labourers shall be the capitalists, and that each shall derive a share in the production, partly from what now is represented as his profits as a capitalist, and partly from what is represented as his wages as a labourer; but that all separate property shall be swallowed up in joint property. But we mention this subject here to show that even those who aspire to remodel society cannot change the elements with which it is now constructed, and must work with the same principles, however different may be the names of those principles, and however varied in their application. This is in favour even of the ultimate success of the principles of co-operation, if they should be found practically to work for the increase of the happiness of mankind; which would not be effected by equalizing the distribution of wealth, if, at the same time, its production were materially checked. This view of the subject goes to show that no sudden or violent change is necessary. In many things society has always acted on the principles of co-operation. As civilization extends, the number of instances has hitherto increased; and if there is no natural maximum to the adoption of these principles (which remains to be seen), men may gradually slide more and more into them, and realize all sane expectations, without any reconstruction of their social system,--any pulling down and building up again of their morals or their houses.[32] It is this union of forces which, whether it prevail in a single manufactory, in a manufacturing town viewed in connexion with that manufactory, in an agricultural district viewed in connexion with a manufacturing town, in a capital viewed in connexion with both, in a kingdom viewed in connexion with all its parts, and in the whole world viewed in connexion with particular kingdoms;--it is this union of forces which connects the humblest with the highest in the production of utility. The poor lad who tends sheep upon the downs, and the capitalist who spends thousands of pounds for carrying forward a process to make the wool of these sheep into cloth, though at different extremities of the scale, are each united for the production of utility. The differences of power and enjoyment (and the differences of enjoyment are much less than appear upon the surface) between the shepherd boy and the great cloth-manufacturer, are apparently necessary for the end of enabling both the shepherd boy and the capitalist to be fed, and clothed, and lodged, by exchanges with other producers. They are also necessary for keeping alive that universal, and, therefore, as it would appear, natural desire for the improvement of our condition, which, independently of the necessity for the satisfaction of immediate wants, more or less influences the industry of every civilized being as to the hopes of the future. It is this union which constitutes the real dignity of all useful employments, and may make the poorest labourer feel that he is advancing the welfare of mankind as well as the richest capitalist; and that, standing upon the solid foundation of free exchange, the rights of the one are as paramount as the rights of the other, and that the rights of each have no control but the duties of each. We believe that the interests of each are also inseparably united, and that the causes which advance or retard the prosperity of each are one and the same. [29] See Chapter XVII. [30] Sumner's 'Records of the Creation.' [31] 'Mind amongst the Spindles;' in the series called 'Knight's Weekly Volume.' [32] The subject is examined more fully in Chapters XXV. and XXVI. CHAPTER XXIII. Accumulation--Productive and unproductive consumption--Use of capital--Credit--Security of property--Production applied to the satisfaction of common wants--Increase of comforts--Relations of capitalist and labourer. Dr. William Bulleyn, who lived three centuries ago, first gave currency to the saying, that great riches were "like muckhills, a burthen to the land, and offensive to the inhabitants thereof, till their heaps are cast abroad, to the profit of many." The worthy physician belonged to an age when the class called misers extensively prevailed; and when those who lent out money upon interest were denominated usurers. They were generally objects of public obloquy, and their function was not understood. There are plenty of men still amongst us who, in Dr. Bulleyn's view of the matter, are impersonations of the muck that is not spread. The muck-spreaders, according to the old notion, were those whose consumption was always endeavouring to outstrip the production that was going forward around them. The latter is by far the larger class at the present day; the former, the more powerful. Let us endeavour, somewhat more with reference to practical results than we have already attempted, to look at some of the general principles existing in modern society which determine the existence, and regulate the employment, of capital. Whatever is saved and accumulated is a saving and accumulation of commodities which have been produced. The value of the accumulation is most conveniently expressed by an equivalent in money; but only a very small part of the accumulation is actually money. A few millions of bullion are sufficient to carry on the transactions of this country. Its accumulations, or capital, which have been considered to amount to twenty-two hundred million pounds sterling, could not be purchased by several times the amount of all the bullion that exists in the world. A great part of what is saved, therefore, is an accumulation of products suitable for consumption. The moment that they are applied to the encouragement of production, they begin to be consumed. They encourage production only as far as they enable the producers to consume while they are in the act of producing. Accumulation, therefore, is no hindrance to consumption. It encourages consumption as much as expenditure of revenue unaccompanied by accumulation. It enables the things consumed to be replaced, instead of being utterly destroyed. Whatever is consumed by those who are carrying forward the business of production has been called productive consumption. Whatever, on the other hand, is consumed by those who are not engaged in re-producing, has been called unproductive consumption. The difference may be thus illustrated:--A shoemaker, we will say, rents a shop, works up leather and other materials, uses various tools, burns out candles, and is himself fed and clothed while in the act of producing a pair of shoes. This is productive consumption;--for the pair of shoes represents the value of the materials employed in them, the commodities consumed by the shoemaker during their production, and the wear and tear of the tools applied in making them. If the shoes represent a higher value than what has been consumed, in consequence of the productiveness of the labour of the shoemaker, the difference is net produce, which may be saved, and, with other savings, become capital. But further:--The shoemaker, we will suppose, accumulates profits sufficient to enable him to live without making shoes, or applying himself to any other branch of industry. He now uses no materials, he employs no tools, but he consumes for the support and enjoyment of existence, without adding anything to the gross produce of society; this is called unproductive consumption. The differences, however, between productive and unproductive consumption admit of considerable qualification. We have already described the course of a spendthrift, and of a man of fortune who lives virtuously and economically.[33] Whatever may be the scientific definition, no one can say that these, even viewed from the industrial point, can be classed together as unproductive consumers. Productive consumption, according to the strict definition of the earlier economists, is consumption directly applied to the creation of some material product. But a new element was introduced into the question by Mr. Mill's definition--that labour and expenditure are also productive, "which, without having for their direct object the creation of any useful natural product, or bodily or mental faculty or quality, yet lead indirectly to promote one or other of those ends." On the other hand, unproductive consumption consists of labour and expenditure exerted or incurred "uselessly, or in pure waste, and yielding neither direct enjoyment nor permanent sources of enjoyment." It has been suggested by Dr. Cooper, an American professor, that the parable of "the ten talents," in St. Matthew's Gospel, points to the employment of capital for future production. "For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one, went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money." The last was the "wicked and slothful," because unprofitable, servant. His was the sin of omission. He ought to have put out the money to "the exchangers," even if he had been afraid to trade with it. Adam Smith has laid it down as an axiom that the proprietor who encroaches upon his capital by extravagance and waste, is a positive destroyer of the funds destined for the employment of productive labour. No doubt this is, in many respects, true. He, also, has buried his "one talent." But the common opinion of what are called "the money-making classes" of our time goes somewhat further than this. It is said that, amongst "the middle class" of this country, "the life of a man who leaves no property or family provision, of his own acquiring, at his death, is felt to have been _a failure_."[34] There are many modes in which the life of an industrious, provident, and able man may have been far other than "a failure," even in a commercial point of view, when he leaves his family with no greater money inheritance than that with which he began the world himself. He may have preserved his family, during the years in which he has lived amongst them, in the highest point of efficiency for future production. He may have consumed to the full extent of his income, producing, but accumulating no money capital for reproductive consumption; and, indirectly, but not less certainly, he may have accumulated whilst he has consumed, so as to enable others to consume profitably. If he have had sons, whom he has trained to manhood, bestowing upon them a liberal education; bringing them up, by honest example, in all trustworthiness; and causing them to be diligently instructed in some calling which requires skill and experience--he is an accumulator. If he have had daughters, whom he has brought up in habits of order and frugality--apt for all domestic employments--instructed themselves, and capable of carrying forward the duties of instruction--he has reared those who in the honourable capacity of wife, mother, and mistress of a family, influence the industrial powers of the more direct labourers in no small degree; and, being the great promoters of all social dignity and happiness, create a noble and virtuous nation. By the capital thus spent in enabling his children to be valuable members of society, he has accumulated a fund out of his consumption which may be productive at a future day. He has postponed his money contribution to the general stock; but he has not withheld it altogether. He has not been "the wicked and slothful servant." On the other hand, many a man, whose life, according to the mere capitalist doctrine, has not been "a failure," and who has taught his family to attach only a money-value to every object of creation, bequeaths to the world successors whose rapacity, ignorance, unskilfulness, and improvidence, will be so many charges upon the capital of the nation. The "muckhill" will by them be "cast abroad," but it will be devoted to the mere pursuit of sensual indulgence, losing half its fertilizing power, and too often burning up the soil that its judicious application would stimulate. He that has been weak enough, according to this "middle-class" doctrine, not to believe that the whole business of man is to make "a muckhill," may have spent existence in labours, public or private, for the benefit of his fellow creatures; but his life is "a failure!" The greater part of the clergy, of the bar, of the medical profession, of the men of science and literature, of the defenders of their country, of the resident gentry, of the aristocracy, devote their minds to high duties, and some to heroic exertions, without being inordinately anxious to guard themselves against such "a failure." It would perhaps be well if some of those who believe that all virtue is to be resolved into pounds sterling, were to consider that society demands from "the money-making classes" a more than ordinary contribution--not to indiscriminate benevolence, but to those public instruments of production--educational institutions--improved sanitary arrangements--which are best calculated to diminish the interval between the very rich and the very poor. Whatever tends to enlighten the great body of the people facilitates individual accumulation. A large portion of the productions of industry, especially amongst the humbler classes of the community, is wasted, in addition to that portion which is enjoyed. Every consumption that is saved by habits of order, by knowing the best way of setting about a thing, by economy in the use of materials, is so much saved of the national capital; and what is saved remains to give new encouragement to the labour of the producer, and to bestow an increase of comforts upon the consumer. Again, the more that professional skill of every sort is based upon real knowledge, the more productive will be the industry of every class of labourers. Above all, sound morals, and pure and simple tastes, are the best preservatives from wasteful expenditure, both in the rich, and in the poor; and he that limits his individual gratification to objects worthy of a rational being, has the best chance of acquiring a sufficiency for his wants, and of laying by something to provide a fund for that productive consumption by which the wants of others are supplied. With these general remarks upon accumulation and consumption, let us proceed to consider some points connected with the application of capital. The use of capital consists in its advance. It goes before all operations of labour and trade. It is the power that sets labour and trade in motion; just as the power of wind, or water, or steam, gives movement to wheels and pistons. Let us briefly see how capital operates upon the three great branches of human industry, namely, upon agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. A farmer having acquired capital, either by the former savings of himself or his fathers, or by borrowing from the savings of others, takes a certain number of acres of land. He changes his capital of money into other things which are equally capital;--into horses, and cows, and sheep, and agricultural instruments, and seed. He makes an advance in the hope of producing a profit. He therefore sets his horses to work;--he gets milk from his cows;--he shears his sheep;--he fattens his oxen;--and he put his tools into the hands of labourers, to prepare the ground for the reception of his seed. He is paying money away on every side, which he would not do if he did not expect a return, with a profit. By all these operations--by the work of his horses and his labourers--by the increase in number, and the increase in value of his flocks and herds,--and by the harvest after the seed-time,--new produce is created which produces a return of capital, and ought to produce a profit if that capital is properly expended. The hope of profit sets the capital to work, and the capital sets the labour to work. If there were no capital there would be no labour. Capital gives the labourer the power, which he has not in himself, of working for a profit. A capitalist desires to set up a cotton manufactory. He erects buildings, he purchases machines, he buys cotton-wool, he engages workmen. The annual value of the buildings and of the machines,--that is the interest upon their cost, added to their loss by wear and tear--the price of the raw material, and the wages of the workmen, are all calculated to be paid out of the price at which the cotton thread will be sold. To engage in such large undertakings, in which the returns are slow, there must be great accumulation of capital. To engage in such large undertakings, in which the risk is considerable, there must be abundant enterprise. Without extensive accumulations of capital, which produce enterprise, they could not be engaged in at all. Capital employed in commerce circulates through the world in a thousand forms; but it all comes back in produce to the country that sends it out. Nations that have no accumulated stock, that is no capital, have no commerce; and where there is no commerce there are no ships and no sailors; and there are no comforts besides those which spring up at the feet of the more fortunate individuals of such nations. In all these operations of capital upon the enterprises of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, another power, which is the result of accumulation, is more or less, in most cases, called into action. That power is Credit. Credit, upon a large scale, arose from the difficulty of transmitting coined money from place to place, and particularly from one country to another; and hence the invention of bills of exchange. A bill of exchange is an order by one person on another, to pay to a specified person, or his order, a sum of money specified, at a certain time and a certain place. It is evident that the bill of exchange travels as much more conveniently than a bag of money, as the bag of money travels more conveniently than the goods which it represents. For instance a box of hardware from Birmingham might be exchanged for a case of wine from Bordeaux, by a direct barter between the tradesman at Birmingham and the tradesman at Bordeaux; but this sort of operation must be a very limited one. Through the agency of merchants, the hardware finds it way to Bordeaux, and the wine to Birmingham, without any direct exchange between either place, or without either having more of the commodity wanted than is required by the market,--that is, the supply proportioned to the demand of each town. Through the division of labour, the merchant who exports the hardware to Bordeaux, and the merchant who imports the wine from Bordeaux, are different people; and there are other people engaged in carrying on other transactions at and with Bordeaux, with whom these merchants come in contact. When, therefore, the merchant at Bordeaux has to pay for the hardware in England, he obtains a bill of exchange from some other merchant who has to receive money from England, for the wine which he has sent there. And thus not only is there no direct barter between the grower of the wine and the manufacturer of the hardware, but the wine and the hardware are each paid for without any direct remittance of coined money from France to England, but by a transfer of the debt due from one person to another in each country. By this transfer, the transaction between the buyer and the seller is at once brought to maturity; and by this operation the buyer and seller are each benefited, because the exchange which each desires is rendered incomparably more easy, because more speedy and complete. The same principle applies to transactions between commercial men in the same country. The order for payment, which stands in the place of coined money in one case, is called a Foreign bill of exchange; in the other an Inland bill of exchange. The operation of credit in a country whose industry is in an advanced state of activity, is extended over all its commercial transactions, by the necessity of obtaining circulating capital for the carrying forward the production of any commodity, from its first to its last stages. A manufacturer has a large sum expended in workshops, warehouses, machinery, tools. This is called his plant, or fixed capital. He has capital invested also in the raw material which he intends to convert into some article of utility. He works up his raw material; he makes advances for the labour required in working it up. The article is at length ready for the market. The wholesale dealer, who purchases of the manufacturer, sells to a retailer, who is in the habit of buying upon credit, long or short, because the article remains a certain time in his hands before it reaches the consumer, who ultimately pays for it. From the time when a fleece of wool is taken from the sheep's back in Australia, till it is purchased in the shape of a coat in London, there are extensive outlays in every department, which could not be carried on steadily unless there were facilities of credit from one person concerned in the production to another person concerned in the production,--the whole credit being grounded upon the belief that the debt contracted in so many stages will be repaid by the sale of the cloth to the consumer. The larger operations of this credit are represented by bills of exchange, or engagements to pay at a given date; and these bills being converted into cash by a banker, furnish a constant supply of consumable commodities to all parties concerned in advancing the production, till the produce arrives in the hands of the consumer. To judge of the extent to which credit is carried in this country, it is only necessary to mention, that five millions sterling are daily paid in bills and cheques by the London bankers alone; that the Bank of England alone, in 1853, discounted bills to the amount of twenty-five millions sterling; and that the note circulation of the United Kingdom is about forty millions. Credit, undoubtedly, if conducted upon fair principles, represents some capital actually in existence, and therefore does not really add to the accumulation or capital of the producers. But it enables men in trade at once to have stock and circulating capital--to use even their houses and shops and manufactories and implements; and to give, at the same time, a security to others upon that fixed capital. This process is, as it were, as if they coined that fixed capital. The credit, which is rendered as secure as possible in all its stages by the accumulating securities of the drawer, acceptor, and endorsers of a bill of exchange, brings capital into activity,--it carries it directly to those channels in which it may be profitably employed,--it conducts it to those channels by a systematic mode of payment for its use, which we call interest, or discount;--and it therefore carries forward accumulation to its highest point of productiveness. If the reader will turn to the passage in our third chapter, where Tanner describes the refusal of the traders to give him credit, he will see how capital, advanced upon credit, sets industry in motion. The Indians had accumulated no store of skins to exchange for the trader's store of guns, ammunition, traps, and blankets. The trader, although he possessed the articles which the Indians wanted, refused to advance them upon the usual credit; and they were consequently as useless to the Indians as if they had remained in a warehouse at Liverpool or Glasgow. When the credit was taken away from the Indians, they could no longer be exchangers. Their own necessities for clothing were too urgent to enable them to turn their attention from that supply to accumulate capital for exchange, after the winter had passed away. They hunted only for themselves. The trader went without his skins, and the Indians without their blankets. Doubtless, the keenness of commercial activity soon saw that this state of things was injurious even to the more powerful party, for the accustomed credit was presently restored to the Indians. It was the only means by which that balance of power could be quickly restored which would enable the parties again to become exchangers. Every exchange presupposes a certain equality in the exchangers; and credit, therefore, from the capitalist to the non-capitalist, must, in many cases, be the first step towards any transaction of mutual profit. If the Indians had adopted the resolution of Tanner, to do without the blankets for the winter, and had substituted the more imperfect clothing of skins,--and if the traders had persevered in their system of refusing credit, that is, of advancing capital,--the exchange of furs must have been suspended, until, by incessant industry, and repeated self-denial, the Indians had become capitalists themselves. They probably, after a long series of laborious accumulations, might have done without the credit--that is, have not consumed the goods which they received before they were in a condition to give their own goods as equivalents; and then, as it usually happens in the exchanges of civilized society, they would have ensured a higher reward for their labour. The credit rendered the labour of the Indians loss severe, inasmuch as it allowed them to work with the aid of the accumulations of others, instead of with their own accumulations. But it doubtless gave the traders advantage, and justly so, in the terms of the exchange. If the Indians had brought their furs to the mart where the dealers had brought their blankets, there would have been exchange of capital for capital. As the Indians had not accumulated any furs, and were only hoping to accumulate, there was, on the part of the white traders, an advance of a present good for a remote equivalent. The traders had doubtless suffered by the casualties which prevented the Indians completing their engagements. They made a sudden, and therefore an unjust, change in their system. The forbearance of the Indians shows their respect for the rights of property, and their consequent appreciation of their own interests. They might, possessing the physical superiority, have seized the blankets and ammunition of the traders. If so, their exchanges would have been at an end; the capital would have gone to stimulate other industry; the Indians would have ripped up the goose with the golden eggs. It is easy to see that the employment of capital, through the agency of credit, in all the minute channels of advanced commerce, must wholly depend upon the faith which one man has in the stability and the honesty of another; and also upon the certainty of the protection of the laws which establish security of property, to enforce the fulfilment of the contract. It is necessary to establish this point of the security of property, as one of the rights, and we may add as the greatest right, of industry;--and therefore, at the risk of being thought tedious, we may call attention to the general state of the argument in reply to some who hold that the rights of property, and the rights of labour, are antagonistic. The value of an article produced is the labour required for its production. Capital, the accumulation of past labour, represents the entire amount of that labour which is not consumed;--it is the old labour stored up for exchange with new labour. Those who attach an exclusive value to new labour as distinguished from old labour--or labour as distinguished from capital--say that the new production shall be stimulated by the old production, without allowing the old production to be exchanged against the new;--that is, that the old production shall be an instrument for the reward of new labour, but not a profitable one to its possessor. The doctrine therefore amounts to this; that labour shall be exchanged with labour, but not with the produce of labour,--or that there shall be no exchange whatever;--for if the present labourers are to have the sole benefit of the capital, the principle of exchange, in which both exchangers benefit, is destroyed. There must be an end of all exchanges when the things to be exchanged are not equally desired by both parties. If the capitalist is to lend or give the capital to the labourer without a profit, or without a perfect freedom which would entitle him to withhold it if no profit could be obtained, the balance is destroyed between capital and labour. Accumulation is then at an end; because the security of the thing accumulated to the accumulator is at an end. The security is at an end, because if the new labour is to have the advantage of the old labour without compensation or exchange, the new labour must take the old labour by force or fraud; for the new cannot proceed without the old;--labour cannot stir without capital. Accumulation, therefore, being at an end, labour for an object beyond the wants of an hour is at an end. Society resolves itself into its first elements. Strabo, the ancient geographer, has described a tribe amongst whom the title of the priest to the priesthood was acquired by having murdered his predecessor; and consequently the business of the priest in possession was not to discharge the duties of the priesthood, but to watch sword in hand, to defend himself against the new claimant to the office. If the principle were to be recognized, that the accumulation of _former_ labour belongs to the _present_ labourers; and that the best title to the accumulation is to have added nothing towards it, but only to be willing to add,--the title of the labourers in possession would require to be maintained by a constant encounter with new claimants; as the priest of Strabo, who had dispossessed the previous priest, had to dread a similar expulsion from his office, by a new violence. The course of national misery resulting from national disorders always begins with financial embarrassment; by the destruction of capital, or its withdrawal from all useful works. Capital was circulated only because it could be circulated with security. If the present capitalists were driven away, as some reasoners would imply might easily be done, and the labourers were left to work the tools and steam-engines--to labour in the manufactories, and to inhabit the houses of the present capitalists,--production could not go on an hour, unless the appropriation of the plunder were secured to the individual plunderers. In speaking of credit, then, we naturally turn to the only foundation upon which credit rests--the security of property. Commercial men, who know how easily credit is destroyed by individual guilt or imprudence, also know how easily it is interrupted, generally by a combination of circumstances over which an individual, apart from a nation, has no control. The instant that any circumstances take place which weaken the general confidence in the security of property, credit is withdrawn. The plant remains--the tools and warehouses stand--the shops are open; but production languishes, labour is suspended. The stocks of consumable commodities for the maintenance of labour may still in part exist, but they do not reach the labourer through the usual channels. Then men say, and say truly, confidence is shaken; the usual relations of society are disturbed. Capital fences itself round with prudence--hesitates to go on accumulating--refuses to put its existence in peril--withdraws in great part from production-- "Spreads its light wings, and in a moment flies." Within these six years we have had before our eyes a fearful example of the universal evil created by the sudden loss of confidence in the security of property; The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the government of Louis Philippe, was associated with a general belief that the whole fabric of society was about to be shaken in the overthrow of capital. The capital was instantly withdrawn from circulation; there was no exchange; there was no labour. The more immediate sufferers were the workmen themselves; and the mode in which the ruling power relieved them by giving forced employment was wholly unavailing, except as a temporary expedient. After several dreadful months of tumult and bloodshed, a little confidence was restored by the pressure of an armed force; and when at length a government was established that rested upon security of property, it was hailed as the greatest of all blessings, although accompanied with some evils to which Englishmen, especially, cannot shut their eyes. When capital and labour could once more work in a safe union, France quickly developed those great natural resources with which she is blessed; and the ingenuity of her people was again called into activity, to carry forward and perfect those resources by higher and higher exertions of science and skill. When the great body of the people of a country are so generally educated as to know that it is the interest of the humblest and the poorest that property shall be secure, there will be little occasion for fencing round property with guards, against the secret violence of the midnight robber, or the open daring of the noonday mob. "It is an enlightened moral public sentiment that must spread its wings over our dwellings, and plant a watchman at our doors."[35] A very little insecurity destroys the working of capital. The cloth trade of Verviers, a town in France, was utterly ruined, because the morals of the people in the town were so bad, and the police so ineffectual, that the thefts in the various stages of the manufacture amounted to eight per cent. upon the whole quantity produced. The trade of the place, therefore, was destroyed; and the capital went to encourage labour in places where the rights of property were better respected. But, generally speaking, the security of property is not so much weakened by plunder, as by those incessant contentions which harass the march of capital and labour; and keep up an irritation between the classes of the capitalists and the labourers, who ought to be united in the most intimate compact for a common good. These irritations most frequently exhibit themselves in the shape of combinations for the advance of wages. We have no hesitation in declaring our opinion that it is the positive duty of the working-man to obtain as high wages as he can extract out of the joint products of capital and labour; and that he has an equal right to unite with other workmen in making as good a bargain as he can, consistently with the rights of others, for his contribution of industry to the business of production. But it is also necessary for us to declare our conviction that, in too many cases, the working men attempt an object which no single exertion, and no union however formidable or complete, can ever accomplish. They attempt to force wages beyond the point at which they could be maintained, with reference to the demand for the article produced;--and if they succeed they extinguish the demand, and therefore extinguish the power of working at any wages. They drive the demand, and therefore the supply, into new channels;--and they thrust out capital from amongst them, to work in other places where it can work with freedom and security. Above all, such combinations, and the resistance which they call up, have a tendency to loosen the bonds of mutual regard which ought to subsist between capitalists and labourers. Their real interests are one and the same. All men are united in one bond of interests, and rights, and duties; and although each of us have particular interests, the parts which we play in society are so frequently changing, that under one aspect we have each an interest contrary to that which we have under another aspect. It is in this way that we find ourselves suddenly bound closely with those against whom we thought ourselves opposed a moment before; and thus no class can ever be said to be inimical to another class. In the midst, too, of all these instantaneous conflicts and unions, we are all interchangeably related in the double interest of capitalists and consumers,--that is, we have each and all an interest that property shall be respected, and that production shall be carried forward to its utmost point of perfection, so as to make its products accessible to all. The power of production, in its greatest developments of industry, is really addressed to the satisfaction of the commonest wants. If production, as in despotic countries, were principally labouring that some men might wear cloth of gold whilst others went naked, then we should say that production was exclusively for the rich oppressor. But, thank God, the man who _exclusively_ wears "purple and fine linen every day" has ceased to exist. The looms do not work for him alone, but for the great mass of the people. It is to the staple articles of consumption that the capitals of manufactures and commerce address their employment. Their employment depends upon the ability of the great body of the people to purchase what they produce. The courtiers of the fifteenth century in France carried boxes of sugar-plums in their pockets, which they offered to each other as a constant compliment; the courtiers of the next age carried gingerbread in the same way; and lastly, the luxury of snuff drove out the sugar-plums and the gingerbread. But the consumption of tobacco would never have furnished employment to thousands, and a large revenue to the state, if the use of snuff had rested with the courtiers. The producers, consequently, having found the largest, and therefore the most wealthy class of consumers amongst the working men, care little whether the Peer wears a silk or a velvet coat, so that the Peasant has a clean shirt. When capital and labour work with freedom and security, the wants of all are supplied, because there is cheap production. It is a bad state of society where "One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade." Those who like the brocade may still wear it in a state of things where the rights of industry are understood; but the rags, taking the average condition of the members of society, are banished to the lands from which capital is driven,--while those who labour with skill, and therefore with capital, have decent clothes, comfortable dwellings, wholesome food, abundant fuel, medical aid in sickness, the comfort and amusement of books in health. These goods, we have no hesitation in saying, all depend upon the security of property; and he that would destroy that security by force or fraud is the real destroyer of the comforts of those humbler classes whose rights he pretends to advocate. The principles which _we_ maintain, that the interests of all men, and of the poorer classes especially, are necessarily advanced in a constantly increasing measure by the increase of capital and skill, have been put so strikingly by a philosophical writer, that we cannot forbear quoting so valuable an authority in support and illustration of our opinions:-- "The advantage conferred by the augmentation of our physical resources, through the medium of increased knowledge and improved art, have this peculiar and remarkable property,--that they are in their nature diffusive, and cannot be enjoyed in any exclusive manner by a few. An eastern despot may extort the riches and monopolize the art of his subjects for his own personal use; he may spread around him an unnatural splendour and luxury, and stand in strange and preposterous contrast with the general penury and discomfort of his people; he may glitter in jewels of gold and raiment of needle-work; but the wonders of well-contrived and executed manufacture which we use daily, and the comforts which have been invented, tried, and improved upon by thousands, in every form of domestic convenience, and for every ordinary purpose of life, can never be enjoyed by him. To produce a state of things in which the physical advantages of civilized life can exist in a high degree, the stimulus of _increasing comforts and constantly elevated desires_ must have been felt by millions; since it is not in the power of a few individuals to create that wide demand for useful and ingenious applications, which alone can lead to great and rapid improvements, unless backed by that arising from the speedy diffusion of the same advantages among the mass of mankind."[36] * * * * * In looking back upon all the various circumstances which we have exhibited as necessary for carrying industry to the greatest point of productiveness, we think that we must have established satisfactorily that the two great elements which concur in rendering labour in the highest degree beneficial, are, 1st, the accumulated results of past labour, and 2nd, the contrivances by which manual labour is assisted,--those contrivances being derived from the accumulations of knowledge. Capital and skill, therefore, are essential to the productive power of labour. The different degrees in which each possesses capital and skill make the difference between an English manufacturer and a North American savage; and the less striking gradations in the productive power of the English manufacturer of the present time, and the English manufacturer of five hundred years ago, may be all resolved into the fact that the one has at his command a very large amount of capital and skill, and that the other could only command a very small amount of the same great elements of production. We think, also, that we have shown that the accumulation of former labour in the shape of tangible wealth, and the accumulation of former labour in the shape of the no less real wealth of knowledge, are processes which go on together, each supporting, directing, and regulating the other. Knowledge is the offspring of some leisure resulting from a more easy supply of the physical wants; and that leisure cannot exist unless capital exists; which allows some men to live upon former accumulations. Capital, therefore, may be said to be the parent of skill, as capital and skill united are the encouragers and directors of profitable labour. We have shown that the only foundation of accumulation is security of property--we have shown, too, that labour is the most sacred of properties. It results, therefore, that in any state of society in which the laws did not equally protect the capitalist and the labourer as free exchangers, each having the most absolute command over his property, compatible with a due regard to the rights of the other,--in such a state, where there was no real freedom and no real security, there would be very imperfect production; and production being imperfect, all men, the capitalists and the labourers, would be equally destitute, weak, ignorant, and miserable. It is under these several conditions, all working together with united force, that the entire labour of this country, and indeed of all other countries advanced in civilization, must now be directed. The enormous increase of productiveness which we have exhibited, in so many operations of industry, is chiefly the result of production carried on upon a large scale, and working with every possible application of science. It is in this sense that Knowledge is Power; and skilled labour is a part of that power. [Illustration: Medal to Locke] The mode in which the respective proportions of capitalist and labourer are assigned in the division of the products of industry, are called by one Profit, by the other Wages. If we were writing a treatise on Political Economy, we should have to regard Rent as distinct from the profits of capital. But for our purpose this is unnecessary. We proceed, then, to consider the practical relations of Profit and Wages, as they exist amongst us. Unquestionably the only solid foundation for these relations must be equal justice; without which there can be neither permanent prosperity nor increasing intelligence. A medal to our great philosopher, Locke, exhibits Justice and Plenty enthroned together. [33] See p. 61. [34] An Essay on the 'Relations between Labour and Capital.' By C. Morison, p. 34. [35] Everett's 'Address to the Working Man's Party.' [36] Sir John Herschel's 'Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy.' CHAPTER XXIV. Natural law of wages--State-laws regulating wages--Enactments regulating consumption--The labour-fund and the want-fund--Ratio of capital to population--State of industry at the end of the seventeenth century--Rise of manufactures--Wages and prices--Turning over capital. [Illustration: Vision of Henry I.] The old chroniclers relate that our Norman king, Henry I., had once a terrible vision, of soldiers, and priests, and peasants, surrounding his bed, one band succeeding another, and threatening to kill him. The legend became the subject of illuminated drawings in an ancient MS. preserved at Oxford, and one of these represented the tillers of the land, with spade, and fork, and scythe, demanding justice. The cultivators were loaded with heavy exactions, so great that the tenants of the crown even offered to give up their ploughs to the king. They ploughed, but they reaped not themselves. In such a state of things there could be no accumulation, and no profitable labour. The funds for supplying the wages of labour were exhausted. The country was depopulated. During the next two centuries, the condition of the people had been materially improved. Capital had increased, and so had population. But capital had increased faster than population, and hence the improvement. The class of free labourers had for the most part succeeded to the old class of villeins. Labourers for hire, without understanding the great principles which govern the rate of wages, any more than did their masters, would practically seek to measure their earnings according to those principles. The lawgivers determined the contrary.[37] The Statute of Labourers, 23rd Edward III., says:--"Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they receive excessive wages." They were therefore to be compelled to serve, and they were to serve at the same wages which they had received three years before. The ratio of population, in consequence of the pestilence, had fallen considerably below the ratio of accumulated capital seeking to employ labour. Under the natural laws of demand and supply, the scarcity of labourers and the excess of capital would have raised the wages of labour. These laws were not to operate. Forty years after this enactment of Edward III., comes the statute of Richard II., which says that "Servants and labourers will not, nor by a long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rents, nor scarcely live upon their lands." Here was a distinct conflict between the capitalists seeking profits and the labourers seeking wages. The law-makers resolved that the hires of the servants and labourers should be "put in certainty;" and they fixed the rate of wages throughout the land. They settled the contest in favour of profits, arbitrarily. To avoid this interference with the due payments of their labour in proportion to the ratio of capital and labour, the husbandmen might have fled to the towns, and some did so. But they were met there by the enactment that the artificers should be subject to the same controlling power, and that the boy who had laboured at the plough and cart till he was twelve years old should continue so to labour for the rest of his life. This state of things was truly slavery without the name. Some such marvellous folly and injustice went on for several centuries. But, regulating wages, the laws also undertook to regulate the cost of food and of clothing--their quality, and their consumption--how much people should eat, and what coats they should wear. These absurdities also went on for centuries--of course under a perpetual system of open violation or secret evasion. The people, we may safely conclude, never fully believed what their rulers told them of their prodigious kindness in managing private affairs so much better than individuals could themselves. Mr. Sergeant Thorpe, judge of assize for the northern circuit, in a charge to the grand jury in 1648, tells them to be vigilant against servants taking higher wages than those allowed by the justices,--to enforce the laws against everybody who bought every thing for the sustenance of man, with intent to make a profit by it--against every tradesman who did not produce his wares in conformity with the statutes;--wonderful laws, which would not permit the tanner to sell a piece of leather that had not been kept twelve months in the tan-pit, and which forbade the cloth-maker to use lime in whitening linen cloth. "And thus you see," says solemn Mr. Sergeant Thorpe, "how the wisdom of the common laws of this nation, and of the parliaments, from time to time, hath provided for the security and ease of the people; and hath furnished us with a salve for every sore; and gives us rules and instructions how to govern ourselves, that we may be helpful and useful to one another."[38] Instead of providing the salve, it probably would have been better not to have made the sore. But, after all, it is scarcely candid to laugh at the wisdom of "the good old times" in regulating trades, when in our own day, we have had excise laws which interfered in the most absurd way with production, and some of which still interfere. Nor can we look with perfect complacency at the manifest impolicy and injustice of fixing the rate of wages, when, within the last quarter of a century, we have had justices at work all over the country to keep down the wages of labour, by paying labourers not in proportion to their earnings, but according to their necessities; and raising up a fund for the encouragement of idleness and improvidence, by a diversion of the real funds for the maintenance of labour. The Poor Laws, as they were administered in the beginning and middle of the last half century, did this evil, and a great deal more; and persons of influence, with the most benevolent intentions, could see no difference between the parish allowance to able-bodied labourers, and the wages which they could have really commanded for their labour if this opposing fund had not been called into action. In those times, and even after a strenuous effort had been made to bring about an improvement, educated gentlemen used to say--"something must be done to give the labourers employment upon fair wages;" and they were accustomed to believe that "some plan should be devised whereby work should be at hand."[39] These gentlemen, and many others, did not understand that there is a natural fund for the maintenance of labour which is to produce such beneficial results; that this fund cannot be increased but by the addition of the results of _more_ profitable labour; that whatever is paid out of the fund for the support of unprofitable labour has a direct tendency to lower the rate at which the profitable labour is paid,--to prevent the payment of "fair wages;" and that there is a "plan" which requires no devising, because our necessities are constantly calling it into operation,--the natural law of exchange, which makes "work at hand" wherever there is capital to pay for it. Such reasoners also held that the labourers were not to seek for the fund "about the country on an uncertainty;" but that the work for the labourers "should be at hand"--"it should be certain." This clearly was not the ordinary labour-fund. That is neither always at hand, nor is it always certain. It shifts its place according to its necessity for use; it is uncertain in its distribution in proportion to the demand upon it. The fund which was to work this good was clearly not the labour-fund--it was the _want_-fund; and the mistake that these gentlemen and many others fell into was that the want-fund had qualities of far greater powers of usefulness than the labour-fund; that the parish purse was the purse of Fortunatus, always full; that the parish labour field was like the tent of the Indian queen in the Arabian tale--you could carry it in the palm of your hand, and yet it would give shelter to an army of thousands. All these fallacies are now, happily, as much exploded as the laws for the regulation of wages and the price of commodities. The real labour-fund--the accumulation of a portion of the results of past labour--is the only fund which can find profitable work and pay fair wages. It is extremely difficult to ascertain the ratio of Capital to Population at any particular period; yet some approximations may be made, which, in a degree, may indicate the activity or the inertness of the labour-fund, in regard to the condition of the labourer. At the end of the seventeenth century, about half the land of England and Wales was, according to the best authorities, held to be under cultivation, either as arable or pasture. As the whole area of England and Wales is about thirty-seven millions of acres, this would show a cultivation of eighteen million five hundred thousand acres. The entire quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats, pease, beans, and vetches, grown upon these eighteen million and a half acres, was estimated at less than ten millions of quarters, wheat being little more than a sixth of the whole produce. The quantity of stock annually fattened for food was even more inconsiderable. We may safely assume that in a century and a half the amount of agricultural produce in England has increased five-fold. Two-thirds of the whole area of England and Wales are now under cultivation; for in the census returns of 1851 we have twenty-five million acres of farm holdings, occupied by two hundred and twenty-five thousand farmers. In the calculations of Gregory King, in 1688, the number of farmers was given at a hundred and fifty thousand; but the number of lesser freeholders, who were doubtless cultivators, was also a hundred and twenty thousand. The produce of the land has increased at a greater rate than the increase of population. According to the commonly received estimates, the population of England and Wales was about five millions and a half, perhaps six millions, at the end of the seventeenth century; it is now eighteen millions. The inhabited houses, according to the hearth-books of 1690,[40] were one million three hundred and twenty thousand. In 1851 they were three million two hundred and seventy-eight thousand. The hearth-books of 1685 show that, of the houses of the kingdom, five hundred and fifty-four thousand had only one chimney--they were mere hovels. Gregory King has given 'A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the several Families in England, calculated for the year 1688.' He considers that, in the aggregate, there were five hundred thousand families who were accumulators--that is to say, whose annual expense was less than their income. He values this accumulation at three millions. The number of persons comprised in the accumulating families was two million six hundred and seventy-five thousand. Of this number only one-fifth belonged to the trading classes--merchants, shopkeepers and tradesmen, artisans and handicrafts. The remainder were the landholders, farmers, lawyers, clergy, holders of office, and persons in liberal arts and sciences. But there was a large non-accumulating class, consisting of two million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand, whom he puts down as "decreasing the wealth of the kingdom,"--that is to say, that their annual expense exceeded their income; and this excess he computes at six hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds, which reduces the annual national accumulation to two million four hundred thousand pounds. The positive plunderers of the national capital were thirty thousand vagrants, such as gipsies, thieves, and beggars. We were in a happier condition than Scotland at the same period; where, according to Fletcher of Saltoun, there were two hundred thousand "people begging from door to door," out of a population of one million, for whose suppression he saw no remedy but slavery. We were more favoured, too, than France; where, as Vauban records, in 1698, more than a tenth part of the population of sixteen millions were beggars, in the extremity of hunger and nakedness.[41] But we may be sure that in England the two million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand "labouring people, out-servants, cottagers, and paupers," who are put down by Gregory King as non-accumulators, were working upon very insufficient means, and that they were constantly pressing upon the fund for the maintenance of profitable labour. It is a curious fact that he classes "cottagers and paupers" together; but we can account for it when we consider how much of the land of the country was uninclosed, and how many persons derived a scanty subsistence from the commons, upon which they were "squatters," living in mean huts with "one chimney." The small number of "artisans and handicrafts," comprising only sixty thousand families, is of itself a sufficient indication that our manufactures, properly so called, were of very trifling amount. In various parts of this volume we have incidentally mentioned how slowly the great industries of this country grew into importance. At the period of which we are now speaking, nearly every article of clothing was, in many districts, of domestic production, and was essentially connected with the tillage of the land. The flax and the wool were spun at home; the stockings were knit; the shoes were often untanned hide nailed upon heavy clogs. Furniture there was little beyond the rough bench and the straw bed. The fuel came from the woods and hedges. About forty thousand of the cottages mentioned in the hearth-books had some land belonging to them; and, to prevent the growth of a "squatter" population, it was the business of the Grand Jury to present, as a nuisance, all newly-erected cottages that had not four acres of land attached to them. There was a contest perpetually going on between the more favoured portion who had regular means of subsistence, and the unhappy many who were pressing upon those means, in all the various forms of pauperism. One of the means of keeping down this class was to prevent them having dwellings. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, then, we see that there was some accumulation of capital, however small. There was then a vague feeling amongst the accumulators that something might be saved by setting the unemployed and the starving to other work than was provided for them in the fields. Population was pressing hard upon Capital. It pressed, chiefly, in the shape of increasing demands upon the poor-rate. The remedy universally proposed was "to set the poor to work." The notion was extremely crude as to the mode in which this was to be effected; but there was a sort of universal agreement expressed by sober economists as well as visionary projectors, that the more general introduction of manufactures would remedy the evil. Of course, the first thing to be done was to prohibit foreign manufactures by enormous duties; and then we were to go to work vigorously at home, knowing very little of the arts in which foreigners were greatly our superiors. But we were to go to work, not in the ordinary way of profitable industry, by the capitalist working for profit employing the labourer for wages, but by withholding from the poor the greater part of the want-fund, and converting it into a labour-fund, by setting up manufactures under the management of the poor-law administrators. Here, in these "workhouses" was the linen trade to be cultivated. Mr. Firmin set up a workhouse in Aldersgate Street, of the results of which, after four years, he thus speaks:--"This, I am sure, is the worst that can be said of it, that it hath not been yet brought to bear its own charges." Sir Matthew Hale was for setting up a public manufactory of coarse cloth, of which the charges for materials and labour in producing thirty-two yards would be 11_l._ 15_s._ He calculated that the cloth, if sold, would only yield 12_l._ The excellent Judge does not make any calculation of the cost of implements, or rent, or superintendence. He desires to employ fifty-six poor people, who are paid by the parish 400_l._ per annum, and by this cloth manufacture he will give them the 400_l._ for their work, and save the parish their cost. One thing is forgotten. The pauper labour yielding no profit, and consequently preventing any accumulation, the labourers must be kept down to the minimum of subsistence, which appears to be about seven pounds per annum for each labourer. The earnings of the artisan and handicraft are estimated by Gregory King at thirty-eight pounds per annum. These were the wages of skilled labourers. The pauper labourers were unskilled. If these schemes had not broken down by their own weight, and workhouse manufactories had gone on producing a competition of unskilled labourers with skilled, the rate of wages would have been more and more deteriorated, and the amount of poor seeking workhouse employment as a last resource more and more increased. Experience has very satisfactorily demonstrated that these schemes for employing the poor ought to be strictly limited to the production of articles of necessity for their own consumption. Even the production of such articles is scarcely remunerating,--that is, the produce scarcely returns the cost of materials and superintendence. Even the boasted Free and Pauper Colonies of Holland have turned out to be commercial failures. They are not self-sustaining. The want of skill in the colonists, and their disinclination to labour, having no immediate individual benefit from their labours, have combined to produce the result that one good day-labourer is worth five colonists working in common. There are also tenants of small colonial farms, at a low rent, and having many advantages. They are not so prosperous as the little farmers out of the colony, who pay a higher rent, and have no incidental benefits. The solution of the question is thus given:--"The certainty that the society will maintain them, whether they save or not, has an unfavourable influence on their habits."[42] The increase of population was very small during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century. It absolutely declined at one period. The two million four hundred thousand pounds that were calculated by Gregory King as annual savings, were probably more and more trenched upon by pauperism and war, by "malice domestic, foreign levy," under a disputed succession. The upper classes were licentious and extravagant; the labourers in towns were drunkards to an excess that now seems hardly credible. Hogarth's 'Gin Lane' was scarcely an exaggeration of the destitution and misery that attended this national vice. About the middle of the century, or soon after, sprang up many of the great mechanical improvements which made us a manufacturing people; and which, in half a century, added a third to the population. In spite of the most expensive war in which England had ever been engaged, the accumulated capital, chiefly in consequence of these discoveries and improvements, had increased as fast as the population in the second fifty years of the eighteenth century. In the present century the population has doubled in fifty years; and the accumulated capital has more than doubled. Population has been recently increasing at the rate of one and a half per cent.; capital has been increasing at the rate of two and a half per cent.[43] It is this accumulation which has been steadily raising the rate of wages in many employments of industry; whilst the chemical and mechanical arts, the abundant means of rapid transit, the abolition or reduction of duties upon great articles of consumption, and the freedom of commercial intercourse, have given all the receivers of wages a greatly increased command of articles of necessity, and even of what used to be thought luxuries. There is nothing more difficult in economical inquiries than the attempt to ascertain what was the actual rate of wages at any given period. The fluctuations in the value of money enter into this question, more or less, at every period of our history. We find the nominal rate of wages constantly increasing, from one generation to another, but we cannot at all be certain that the real rate is increasing. That nominal rate always requires to be compared with the prices of the necessaries of life. What pertains to wages pertains to all fixed money-payments. A Fellow of a college applied to Bishop Fleetwood to know if he could conscientiously hold his fellowship, when the statutes of the college, made in the time of Henry VI., say that no one shall so hold who has an estate of 5_l._ a year. The Fellow had an estate of much larger nominal amount. The Bishop made a very valuable collection of the prices of commodities, and he thus answers the conscientious inquirer:-- "If for 20 years together (from 1440 to 1460) the common price of wheat were 6_s._ 8_d._ the quarter; and if from 1686 to 1706 the common price of wheat were 40_s._ the quarter; 'tis plain that 5_l._ in H. VI. time would have purchased 15 quarters of wheat; for which you must have paid, for these last 20 years, 30 pound. So that 30 pound _now_, would be no more than equivalent to 5 pound in the reign of H. VI. Thus if oats, from 1440 to 1460, were generally at 2_s._ the quarter, and from 1686 to 1706 were at 12_s._ the quarter, 'tis manifest that 12_s._ _now_ would be no more than equivalent to 2_s._ _then_, which is but a sixth part of it. Thus, if beans were _then_ 5_s._ and _now_ 30_s._ the quarter, the same proportion would be found betwixt 5_l._ and 30_l._ But you must not expect that everything will answer thus exactly. Ale, for instance, was, during the time of your founder, at three-halfpence the gallon; but it has been, ever since you were born, at 8_d._ at the least: which is but five times more, and a little over. So that 5_l._ heretofore (betwixt 1440 and 1460) would purchase no more ale than somewhat above 25_l._ would _now_. Again, good cloth, such as was to serve the best doctor in your University for his gown, was (between 1440 and 1460) at 3_s._ 7_d._ the yard; at which rate, 5_l._ would have purchased 29 yards, or thereabouts. _Now_ you may purchase that quantity of fine cloth at somewhat less, I think, than 25_l._ So that 25_l._ _now_ would be an equivalent to your 5_l._ _then_, 250 years since, if you pay about 18_s._ the yard for your cloth. I think I have good reason to believe that beef, mutton, bacon, and other common provisions of life, were six times as cheap in H. VI. reign as they have been for these last 20 years. And therefore I can see no cause why 28 or 30_l._ per ann. should now be accounted a greater estate than 5_l._ was heretofore betwixt 1440 and 1460."[44] But we are not to infer from these considerations that the wages of labour ought to fluctuate with the prices of commodities, or that practically they do so fluctuate. If this were the principle of wages, every improvement which lowers the price of commodities would lower the rewards of labour. Almost every article of necessity is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, taking the average of years; and the larger amount of this cheapness has been produced by improvements in manufactures, by facilities of communication, and by the removal of taxation. At the same time, taking the average of years and of employments, wages have risen. There must be some general cause in operation to produce this result. [Illustration: Irish Mud-cabin.] The wages of labour cannot be reduced below the standard necessary to support the labourer and his family whilst he produces. If he cannot obtain this support he ceases to be a producer. He is starved out of existence; or he falls upon the public fund for the support of want; or he becomes a beggar or a thief. In states of society where there is no accumulating capital, the labourer necessarily receives low wages, because he maintains himself at the minimum of subsistence. Our poet Spenser, writing nearly three centuries ago upon the miseries of Ireland, describes the cottiers as inhabiting "swine-sties rather than houses." Swift, long after, describes the same state of things:--"There are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation." This condition of society unhappily lasted up to our own day. If the Irish cottier had been a labourer for wages instead of deriving his miserable living direct from the land, he would have been no better off, unless his desire for something higher than the coarsest food, and the most wretched lodging, had set some limit to the increase of population beyond the increase of capital. Population necessarily increases faster than subsistence when there is no restraint upon the increase by the disposition to accumulate on the part of the labourer. There may be accumulation in the form of his money-savings; and there may be accumulation in an increase of the conveniences of life by which he is surrounded. When there is neither money saved nor comforts increased--when there is no accumulation for the gratification of other wants than that of food--competition is driving the labourers to the lowest point of misery. The competition in Ireland was for the possession of land, at an extravagant rent, out of the labour upon which the cottier could only obtain the very lowest amount of necessaries for his subsistence. If, in the habits of the whole body of the peasantry, clothes and furniture had been as necessary as potatoes, the oppressive exactions of the landlords must have yielded to what then would have been the natural rate, whether we call it profit or wages, necessary for the maintenance of that peasantry; and the necessity, on their part, for maintaining the average _status_ of their class, would in a considerable degree have kept down the inordinate increase of the people. A century ago the great body of the working-people of England ate rye bread, which is cheaper than wheaten. If all the workers were to come back to rye-bread, the rate at which they could be comfortably maintained would be somewhat less; and unless the accumulation from the economy were expended universally in some improved accommodation, labourers would gradually arise who would be contented with the smaller amount necessary for subsistence, and the greater number of labourers seeking for wages would depress the amount paid to each individual labourer. "In England and Scotland," says Mr. Morison, "the classes living by wages form the majority of the population." It has been estimated by Mr. Greg that the annual amount paid in wages is a hundred and forty millions sterling; to which may be added twenty millions for the board of domestic servants. The profits of all the operations of industry to the capitalists are estimated by Mr. Morison at ninety millions. The census returns show that there were three hundred and fifty-four thousand masters in trades, and farmers, employing fourteen hundred thousand men. This gives a proportion of about four men employed to one employer. Compared with the estimate of profits it shows that each employer, assuming the calculation to be correct, would derive a revenue of two hundred and fifty pounds a year as the recompense of his capital, skill, and risk. This is not so large an aggregate profit as is ordinarily supposed. The men employed would each receive a revenue of one hundred a year. But we must add a large number to the men receiving wages, who would not be returned by their employers; and the calculation of payments must be further diminished by the consideration that in many branches of industry, and in factory labour especially, a very large number of females are employed, as well as boys. But the fact of the general proportion of wages to profits is sufficiently striking to show that the inequality of the condition of the labourer and the employer is not so extravagantly great as we have been accustomed of late years to hear asserted. In looking back upon the historical evidence which we possess, imperfect as it is, of the condition of society at various periods of our industrial progress, we cannot doubt that there has been a process constantly going forward by which the circumstances of all classes have been steadily raised. In the table of Gregory King, which we have several times referred to, the average income of ten thousand merchants is put down at three hundred a year; of shopkeepers and tradesmen at forty-five pounds; of farmers at forty-two pounds; and of labouring people at fifteen pounds. The income of gentlemen is taken at two hundred and eighty pounds a year. The increase of the means of these various classes at the present day as compared with the end of the seventeenth century, has certainly been threefold. If we turn to the passage which we have quoted from the 'Chronicon Preciosum,' originally published in 1707, we may at once compare the advantages which a threefold increase of means will procure. Wheat is not six pounds a quarter, nor broadcloth two pounds fourteen shillings a yard,--which would be the case if we trebled the prices of 1707. We have abundance of conveniences and comforts of which the people of Queen Anne's reign had no notion, which have been bestowed upon us by manufactures, and commerce, and scientific agriculture. We have already stated and illustrated the general principle that the wages of labour are determined by the accumulations of capital, compared with the number of labourers. Hence it necessarily results that, as has been forcibly expressed, "the additional capital, whenever it is productively employed, will tend as certainly to the benefit of the working population at large as if the owner were a trustee for their benefit."[45] But the profitable employment of capital depends very greatly upon activity, knowledge, and foresight on the part of the capitalist. It was for the want of these qualities that all the old schemes for providing labour out of a common stock chiefly broke down. Sir Matthew Hale, in his plans for employing paupers in spinning flax and weaving cloth, knew theoretically the truth that the amount of capital available for the payment of labour would be largely increased by the rapidity with which it might be turned over. He says, "If it could be supposed that the cloth could be sold as soon as made,--which is not, I confess, reasonably to be expected--then a stock of 24_l._ would, by its continual return, provide materials and pay the workmen for one loom's work in perpetuity." The "if" expresses the difference between individual commercial activity and knowledge, and official sluggishness and incapacity. But it also expresses the difference between the commerce of our days, and that of the end of the seventeenth century. Without roads, or canals, or railroads, how difficult was it to bring the seller and the buyer together! All manufactures would be, for the most part, local. The cloths of Kendal might go to the neighbouring fairs on packhorses; and thence slowly spread through the country by pedlers and other small dealers; and the proceeds might return to the manufacturer at the end of a year. But the rapid turning over of capital which begins with buying a bale of cotton at New York, and having it in Sydney in the shape of calico in three months, with the bill that is to pay for it drawn at Manchester, accepted in Sydney, and discounted in London in another three months, is a turning over of capital which was scarcely imagined by the projectors and practical traders of a century ago. This rapid turning over of capital, and the consequent more rapid accumulation of the labour-fund, depends upon the confidence of the capitalist that his capital will work to a profit. It will not so work if he is to be undersold. If wages could press upon profit beyond a certain ascertained limit, he would be undersold. The home competition of localities and individuals is perpetually forcing on the most economical arrangements in production. The foreign competition is doing so still more. If we have increased productiveness here, through scientific application, the same increased productiveness, from the same causes, is going forward elsewhere. 'Price-Currents' supply a perpetual barometer of industrial cloud or sunshine; and the manufacturer and merchant have constantly to unfurl or furl their sails according to the indications. Whenever there is shipwreck, the ship's crew and the captain partake of a common calamity; and the calamity is always precipitated and made more onerous when, from any cause, there is not cordial sympathy and agreement. [37] We have already noticed the ancient oppressive laws for the regulation of labour, in Chap. VII. We recur to them here more particularly, as illustrating the principle of Wages. [38] See the full 'Charge' in the 'Harleian Miscellany.' [39] See the Evidence on Poor-laws before a Committee of House of Commons, 1837. [40] Hearth-money was a tax upon houses according to the number of chimneys, at the rate of two shillings a chimney, for every house having more than two chimneys. [41] See the passage in Dunoyer, 'Liberté du Travail,' tom. i. p. 416. [42] Sir John M'Neill's 'Report on Free and Pauper Colonies in Holland.' 1853. [43] Morison, 'Labour and Capital,' Appendix B. [44] Chronicon Preciosum, 1745, p. 136. [45] Morison, 'Labour and Capital,' p. 24. CHAPTER XXV. What political economy teaches--Skilled labour and trusted labour--Competition of unskilled labour--Competition of uncapitalled labour--Itinerant traders--The contrast of organised industry--Factory-labour and garret-labour-- Communism--Proposals for state organisation of labour-- Social publishing establishment--Practical co-operation. There is a passage in Wordsworth's 'Excursion' in which he describes the benevolent and philosophical hero of his poem, a pedler, listening to the complaints of poverty, and searching into the causes of the evil:-- "Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts, Huts where his charity was blest; his voice Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. And, sometimes, where the poor man held dispute With his own mind, unable to subdue Impatience, through inaptness to perceive General distress in his particular lot; Or cherishing resentment, or in vain Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd And finding in herself no steady power To draw the line of comfort that divides Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, From the injustice of our brother men; To him appeal was made as to a judge; Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; Resolv'd the dubious point; and sentence gave So grounded, so applied, that it was heard With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd." The poor man is accustomed to hold dispute with his own mind; he thinks his particular lot is worse than the general lot; his soul is perplexed in considering whether his condition is produced by a common law of society, or by the injustice of his fellow-men; the experienced friend listens, discusses, argues,--but he argues in a temper that produces a softened spirit. The adviser soothes rather than inflames, by dealing with such questions with "an understanding heart." He unites the sympathising heart with the reasoning understanding. Now, we may fairly inquire if, during the many unfortunate occasions that are constantly arising of contests for what are called the rights of labour against what is called the tyranny of capital, those who are the most immediate sufferers in the contest are addressed with the "understanding heart?" If argument be used at all, the principles which govern the relations between capital and labour are put too often dictatorially or patronisingly before them, as dry, abstract propositions. They are not set forth as matters of calm inquiry, whose truths, when dispassionately examined, may be found to lead to the conclusion that a steadily-increasing rate of wages, affording the employed a greater amount of comforts and conveniences, is the inevitable result of increasing capital, under conditions which depend upon the workers themselves. The result is generally such as took place in a recent Lancashire strike, where one of the leaders exclaimed, "The sooner we can rout political economy from the world, the better it will be for the working-classes." It might, indeed, as well be said, the sooner we can rout acoustics from the world, the better it will be for those who have ears to hear; but the absurdity would not be corrected by a mathematical demonstration to those who did not comprehend mathematics. The same person held that political economy was incompatible with the gospel precept of doing unto others as we would be done unto, because it encourages buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest; and he necessarily assumed that political economy recommends the capitalist to buy labour cheap and sell it dear. We have not learnt that calmly and kindly he was told, in the real spirit of political economy, that it is impossible that, by any individual or local advantage the capitalist may possess, he can long depress wages below the rate of the whole country, because other capitalists would enter into competition for the employment of labour, and raise the average rate. If Wordsworth's experienced friend had heard this perversion of the meaning of the axiom about markets, he would have said, we think, that to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest simply means, in commerce, to buy an article where its cheapness represents abundance, and to sell it in a place where its dearness represents a want of it and a consequent demand,--even as he, the pedler, bought a piece of cloth at Kendal, where there was plenty of cloth, and sold it for a profit at Grasmere, where there was little cloth. The business of mercantile knowledge and enterprise is to discover and apply these conditions; so that, if a trader were to buy hides in Smithfield and carry them to Buenos Ayres, he would reverse these conditions,--he would buy in the dearest market and sell in the cheapest. Political economy--the declaimer against it might have been told--says that to produce cheap is essential to large demand, and constantly-increasing demand; but it does not say that cheap production necessarily implies diminished wages. It says that cheap production, as a consequence of increased production, depends upon the constantly-increasing use of capital in production, and the constantly-diminishing amount of mere manual labour compared with the quantity produced--which result is effected by the successive application of all the appliances of science to the means of production. At every step of scientific improvement there is a demand for labour of a higher character than existed without the science. At every extended organization of industry, resulting from an extended demand, not only skilled labour, but trusted labour, becomes more and more in request; and the average amount of all labour is better paid. A bricklayer is paid more than the man who mixes his mortar, because one is a skilled labourer, and has learnt his art by some expenditure of time, which is capital. The merchant's bookkeeper is paid more than his porter, because the one has an office of high trust and responsibility, and the other a duty to perform of less importance, and for which a far greater number of men wanting hire are fitted. We could wish that not only "in ragged huts," but in well-appointed houses, were the things better understood that political economy really does say. [Illustration: Feed the hungry.] The process which has been steadily going on amongst us for increasing the demand for skill and trustworthiness has no doubt produced a diminution of the funds for employ in which neither skill nor trust is required. Thus a great amount of suffering is constantly presented to our view, which benevolence has set about relieving, in our time, with a zeal which shows how fully it is acknowledged that the great principle, to "Love one another," is not to evaporate in sentiment, but is to be ripened in action. As a nation, England was never indifferent to the command, "Feed the hungry." The art of Flaxman has shown this "act of mercy" in its most direct form. But the "understanding heart" has discovered that many of the miseries of society may be relieved by other modes as effectually as by alms-giving, and perhaps much more effectually. Whether some of these efforts may be misdirected, in no degree detracts from the value of the principle which seeks the prevention of misery rather than the relief. One of the most obvious forms in which misery has presented itself in our large cities, and especially in London, has arisen from the competition amongst labour which may be called unskilled, because there are a numerous unemployed body of labourers at hand to do the same work, in which there is no special skill. This was the case with the sempstresses of London; and the famous 'Song of the Shirt' struck a note to which there was a responding chord in every bosom. But the terrible evils of the low wages of shirt-making would not have been relieved by an universal agreement of the community to purchase none but shirts that, by their price, could afford to give higher wages to the shirt-makers. The higher wages would have infallibly attracted more women and more children to the business of shirt-making. The straw-platters, the embroiderers, the milliners would have rushed to shirt-making; and, unless there had been a constantly-increasing rate of price charged to the wearers of shirts, and therefore a constant forced contribution to the capital devoted to shirt-making, the payment to one shirt-maker would have come to be divided amongst two; and the whole body, thus doubled by a rate of wages disproportioned to the rate of other labour requiring little peculiar skill, would have been in a worse condition in the end than in the beginning. Whatever suffering may arise out of the competition that must exist between mere manual labour, and also between that labour which is displayed in the practice of some art easily learnt, capable of exercise by both sexes, and in which very young children may readily engage--it is scarcely fair that those who witness the suffering of the employed at very low wages should instantly conclude that the employers are extortioners and oppressors. A branch of trade which seems inconsiderable as regards the article produced is often found in a particular locality, and furnishes employment to large numbers. In the London parish of Cripplegate there are great quantities of toothbrushes made. The handle is formed by the lathe, in which skilled labour is employed. The hair is cut by machinery. The holes in the handle in which the hair is inserted are also pierced by machines. But the insertion of the hair, and the fastening it by wire, are done by hand. Excellent people, who, with a strong sense of Christian duty, enter "ragged huts" to relieve and to advise, see a number of women and children daily labouring at the one task of fastening the hair in toothbrushes; and they learn that the wages paid are miserably low. They immediately conclude that the wages should be higher; because in the difference between the retail price of a toothbrush and the manufacturing cost there must necessarily be large profits. They say, therefore, that the wholesale manufacturer is unjust in not giving higher wages. But the retail price of toothbrushes, however high, does not enable the manufacturer, necessarily, to give a payment more considerable than the average of such labour to the women and children who very quickly learn the art of fastening the hair. The price he can pay is to be measured by the average price of such labour all over the country. It is not in the least unlikely that the manufacturer in Cripplegate may not receive a fourth of the price at which a toothbrush is sold in Saint James's. The profits are determined by the average of all his transactions. He has to sell as cheaply as possible for the export trade. If he sell dear, the export-trader will see if he cannot buy a hundred thousand toothbrushes at Havre instead of London. It is nothing to the exporter whether he obtain a profit out of French or English toothbrushes. Again. The manufacturer sends a hundred thousand toothbrushes to a wholesale dealer at Glasgow, who supplies the retailers throughout Scotland. But before the Scotch warehouseman will repeat the order, he will ascertain whether he can buy the article cheaper at Birmingham; and one per cent. lower will decide against Cripplegate. Now, in all these domestic labours involving small skill, the question is whether the miserably-paid workers can do anything more profitable. Mr. Mayhew says that some large classes "do not obtain a fair living price for their work, because, as in the case of the needle-workers and other domestic manufacturers, their livelihood is supposed to be provided for them by the husband or father; and hence the remuneration is viewed rather as an aid to the family income than as an absolute means of support." It is not what is "supposed," or what is "viewed," that determines the question. It is what really is. Such employ may, unhappily, be sought by many as "an absolute means of support." But if there be an almost unlimited number who seek it as "an aid to the family income," there is no possibility of preventing a competition, perfectly equal as regards the wages of labour, but wretchedly unequal in the application of those wages. The miseries that are so frequently resulting from the competition of unskilled labour are also results from what we will venture to call uncapitalled labour, attempting to unite wages with profits. Upon a large scale, the miseries of Ireland, which finally collapsed in the terrible famine, were produced by labour trenching upon the functions of capital without possessing capital. In 1847 there were in Ireland five hundred thousand acres of land in more than three hundred thousand holdings, thus supplying the only means of maintenance to three hundred thousand male labourers and their families, but averaging little more than an acre and a half to each tenant. There are not more than nine hundred thousand labourers and farmers to the twenty-five million cultivated acres in England and Wales--about one labourer to every thirty-eight acres, and about one farmer capitalist to every hundred and ten acres. Nor is the effect of uncapitalled and unskilled labour--for uncapitalled labour is for the most part unskilled--less remarkable in manufactures than in agriculture. Many are familiar with the minute details of low wages and suffering--of the oppressions attributed to masters and middle-men--which are contained in a series of papers by Mr. Henry Mayhew, published in '_The Morning Chronicle_' in 1849-50, under the title of 'London Labour, and London Poor.' Nothing could be more laudable than the general object of these papers, which, in the preface to a collected edition of a portion of them, was "to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under these sufferings, of the poor;" and to cause those "of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve their condition." But, at the same time, it would be difficult to say how the condition of particular classes of these sufferers was to be improved, except by such general efforts as would raise up the whole body of the people in knowledge and virtue, and by directing the labours of those who, without skill or capital, were struggling against skill and capital, into courses of industry more consonant with the great modes of productiveness all around them. One example may illustrate our meaning--that of "the garret-masters of the cabinet-trade." The writer we have mentioned says that wages had fallen 400 per cent. in that trade, between 1831 and 1850; but he also says that the trade was "depressed by the increase of small masters--that is to say, by a class of workmen possessed of just sufficient capital to buy their own materials, and to support themselves while making them up." Taking the whole rate of wages,--the payment to the unskilled as well as the skilled workmen--it would be difficult not to believe that the average reduction was quite as great as represented. A cabinet-maker tells this tale:-- "One of the inducements," he said, "for men to take to making up for themselves is to get a living when thrown out of work until they can hear of something better. If they could get into regular journeywork there a'n't one man as wouldn't prefer it--it would pay them a deal better. Another of the reasons for the men turning small masters is the little capital that it requires for them to start themselves. If a man has got his tools he can begin as a master-man with a couple of shillings. If he goes in for making large tables, then from 30_s._ to 35_s._ will do him, and it's the small bit of money it takes to start with in our line that brings many into the trade who wouldn't be there if more tin was wanted to begin upon. Many works for themselves, because nobody else won't employ them, their work is so bad. Many weavers has took to our business of late. That's quite common now--their own's so bad; and some that used to hawk hearthstones about is turned Pembroke tablemakers." Whether the mode in which this workman expresses himself correctly indicates, or not, the amount of his education, it is quite certain that he had got to the root of the evil of which he complains. The competition that is only limited by the capacity of endurance between the unskilled workman and the uncapitalled workman--each striving against the other, and striving, in vain against capital and skill--has been going on for centuries in the distribution of commodities. The retailer with small capital has always had to carry on an unequal contest with the retailer with large capital. In our time, small shops are swallowed up in magnificent warehouses, in which every article of dress especially can be purchased under one roof--from a penny yard of ribbon to a hundred-guinea shawl. In splendour these bazaars, with one proprietor, rival the oriental with many competitors. But their distinguishing characteristic is the far-seeing organization, by which the capital is turned over with unexampled rapidity, and no unsaleable stock is kept on hand. It is easy to understand that the larger profits of the small retailer have very little chance of accumulation against the smaller profits of the large retailer. But this contest of small capital against large was formerly carried on in the struggle of the itinerant traders against the shopkeepers. It is now carried on in a struggle amongst themselves. The census returns show seven thousand costermongers, hucksters, and general-dealers. Mr. Mayhew says there are ten thousand in London.[46] [Illustration: Costermonger.] The costermonger is a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand: in the neighbourhood of the great markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in some silent streets stretching into the suburbs; and there his donkey-cart stands at the door, as the dingy servant-maid cheapens a bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were anciently represented by such "London cries" as "_Buy my artichokes, mistress_;" "_Ripe cowcumbers_;" "_White onions, white St. Thomas' onions_;" "_White radish_;" "_Ripe young beans_;" "_Any baking pears_;" "_Ripe speragas_." He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen interfering with his wholesale operations. Mr. Mayhew says that "the regular or thoroughbred costermongers repudiate the numerous persons who only sell nuts or oranges in the streets." No doubt they rail against these inferior competitors, as the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries railed against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth, they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the common highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlers, and hagglers, to stand and sit to sell their wares in, and to pass from street to street hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and the like, as "unruly people;" and they charge them, somewhat unjustly as it must appear, with "framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more easy life than by labour." "How busy is the man the world calls idle!" The evil, as the citizens term it, seems to have increased; for in 1694 the common council threatened the pedlers and petty chapmen with the terrors of the laws against rogues and sturdy beggars, the least penalty being whipping, whether for male or female. The reason for this terrible denunciation is very candidly put: the citizens and shopkeepers are greatly hindered and prejudiced in their trades by the hawkers and pedlers. Such denunciations as these had little share in putting down the itinerant traders. They continued to flourish, because society required them; and they vanished from our view when society required them no longer. In the middle of the last century they were fairly established as rivals to the shopkeepers. Dr. Johnson, than whom no man knew London better, thus writes in the 'Adventurer:' "The attention of a newcomer is generally first struck by the multiplicity of cries that stun him in the streets, and the variety of merchandise and manufactures which the shopkeepers expose on every hand." The shopkeepers have now ruined the itinerants--not by putting them down by fiery penalties, but by the competition amongst themselves to have every article at hand, for every man's use, which shall be better and cheaper than the wares of the itinerant. A curious parallel might be carried out between the itinerant occupations which the progress of society has imperfectly suspended, and those which even the most advanced civilization is compelled to retain. For example,--the water-carrier is gone. It is impossible that London can ever again see a man bent beneath the weight of a yoke and two enormous pails, vociferating "_New River Water_." But the cry of "_Milk_," or the rattle of the milk-pail, will never cease to be heard in our streets. There can be no reservoirs of milk, no pipes through which it flows into the houses. The more extensive the great capital becomes, the more active must be the individual exertion to carry about this article of food. The old cry was, "_Any milk here_?" and it was sometimes mingled with the sound of "_Fresh cheese and cream_;" and it then passed into "_Milk, maids, below_;" and it was then shortened into "_Milk below_;" and was finally corrupted into "_Mio_," which some wag interpreted into _mi-eau--demi-eau_--half-water. But it must still be cried, whatever be the cry. The supply of milk to the metropolis is perhaps one of the most beautiful combinations of industry we have. The days are long since past when Finsbury had its pleasant groves, and Clerkenwell was a village, and there were green pastures in Holborn, and St. Pancras boasted only a little church standing in meadows, and St. Martin's was literally in the fields. Slowly but surely does the baked clay stride over the clover and the buttercup; and yet every family in London may be supplied with milk by eight o'clock every morning at their own doors. Where do the cows abide? They are congregated in wondrous masses in the suburbs; and though in spring-time they go out to pasture in the fields which lie under the Hampstead and Highgate hills, or in the vales of Dulwich and Sydenham, and there crop the tender blade, "When proud pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything," yet for the rest of the year the coarse grass is carted to their stalls, or they devour what the breweries and distilleries cannot extract from the grain-harvest. Long before "the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd" are the London cows milked; and the great wholesale venders of the commodity bear it in carts to every part of the town, and distribute it to hundreds of itinerants, who are waiting like the water-carriers at the old conduits. But the wholesale venders have ceased to depend upon the suburban cows. The railways bring milk in enormous cans to every station. The suburb has extended, practically, to a circle of fifty miles instead of five. It is evident that a perishable commodity which every one requires at a given hour must be rapidly distributed. The distribution has lost its romance. Misson, in his 'Travels,' published at the beginning of the last century, tell us of the May-games of "the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk." Alas! the May-games and pretty young country girls have both departed, and a milkwoman has become a very unpoetical personage. There are few indeed of milkwomen who remain. So it is with most of the occupations that associate London with the country. The cry of "_Water-cresses_" used to be heard from some barefoot nymph of the brook, who at sunrise had dipped her feet into the bubbling runnel, to carry the green luxury to the citizens' breakfast-tables. Water-cresses are now grown like cabbages in gardens. Of the street trades that are past and forgotten, the small-coal man was one of the most remarkable. He tells a tale of a city with few fires; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling "_Small coals_" from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry was, however, a rival with "_Wood to cleave_." In a metropolis full of haberdashers, large and small, what chance would an aged man now have with his flattering solicitation of "_Pretty pins_, _pretty women_?" He who carries a barrel on his back, with a measure and funnel at his side, bawling "_Fine writing-ink_," is wanted neither by clerks nor authors. There is a grocer's shop at every turn; and who therefore needs him who salutes us with "_Lily-white vinegar_?" The history of "cries" is a history of social changes. The _working_ trades, as well as the venders of things that can be bought in every street, are now banished from our thoroughfares. "_Old chairs to mend_" still salutes us in some retired suburb; and we still see the knife-grinder's wheel; but who vociferates "_Any work for John Cooper_?" or "_A brass pot or an iron pot to mend_?" The trades are gone to those who pay scot and lot. [Illustration: Pots to mend.] There are some occupations of the streets, however, which remain essentially the same, though the form be somewhat varied. The sellers of food are of course amongst these. "Hot peascods," and hot sheep's-feet, are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. "_Hot wardens_," and "_Hot codlings_," are not the "cries" which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire; and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the "fruit" when it is cut; and chestnuts roasted; and greasy sausages, redolent of onions and marjoram; and crisp brown flounders; and the mutton-pie-man, with his "toss for a penny." Rice-milk, furmety, barley-broth, and saloop are no longer in request. The greatest improvement of London in our own day has been the establishment of coffee-shops, where the artisan may take his breakfast with comfort, and even with luxury; where a good breakfast may be had for three-pence; where no intoxicating liquors are sold; and where the newspapers and the best periodical works may be regularly found. If we lament over the general decay of the itinerant traders--their uncertain gains, their privations from constant exposure, their want of home comforts, their temptation to drive their children into the streets to make more sales--we lament over what is an inevitable consequence of the general progress of society. Can we correct these evils by saying that the profits of the itinerant traders ought to be raised? Their low condition is a necessary consequence of their carrying on a system of industry which is at variance with the general system of civilization. They may have their uses in districts with a scattered population, because they bring articles of consumption to the door of the consumer. But in densely populated districts they must inevitably be superseded by the shopkeepers. They carry on their industry by a series of individual efforts, which are interfered with by numerous chances and accidents. We are told that the class is extending yearly. But it cannot extend profitably. In many cases it assumes only another form of mendicity. It is a precarious occupation. It can count upon no regular returns. Its gains, such as they are, are like all other uncertain gains--the impulse to occasional profligacy in connection with habitual misery. The costermongers, according to Mr. Mayhew, are drunkards and gamblers,--living without religion or the family ties. Their children are wholly uneducated. These are brought up to assist very early in obtaining their precarious living; and they cleave to a wandering in place of a settled life. Dissociated, thus, from all regular industry, they become the outcasts of the people; and go on swelling the number of those who, in France, are called "the dangerous classes." All classes are dangerous in whom there is none of that self-respect which goes along with domestic comfort--with sobriety, with cleanliness, with a taste for some pursuit that has a tincture of the intellectual. How is such a class to be dealt with? The adult are almost past hope; the young, taken early enough, may be trained into something better. But the very last thing that society has to do is to encourage, by any forced and unnatural process, the accession of numbers to the body, always deriving new competitors from the unfortunate and the idle who have fallen out of regular occupation. Those who learn the necessity of being provident cease to be costermongers. With some, indeed, the profitable sale of an article in the streets may be the first step in an accumulation which will lead to the more profitable sale of an article at a stall, and thence, onward, to the possession of a shop. There have been such instances; and we knew of a remarkable one in a boy who went to a tea-dealer, and said if he could be trusted with one pound of tea he could make a living. He was trusted. In time he wanted no credit, and was a regular and valuable customer to his first patron. He passed out of the itinerant life into the settled; and ultimately became a flourishing shopkeeper. In striking contrast to the various forms of unskilled labour and irregular trading which we have noticed, may be mentioned an industry which in London has a very perfect organization. In Clerkenwell and the neighbouring parish of Saint Luke's, there are sixteen hundred watchmakers. These are not the artisans whom we see as we pass along the streets of the metropolis, and of the provincial towns, sitting in front of the shop-window diligently repairing or putting together the works of a watch, by the light of day or of a brilliant lamp, each with a magnifying glass pressed under his eyebrow. Nor are they the workers in metal who manufacture the movements,--that is, the wheels--of a watch, for these chiefly dwell in Lancashire. The London watchmakers, thus closely packed in a district which is small compared with the whole area of the metropolis, are those who put the movements together, and supply all the delicate parts of the mechanism, such as the spring and the escapement. They provide also the case and the dial-plate. The degree of the skilled labour employed in these several branches necessarily varies, according to the quality of the instrument to be produced, from the ordinary metal watch to the most luxurious repeater. With some exceptions, the artisans do not work in large factories. They are subdivided according to their respective qualities, amongst small establishments, where a master has several men receiving wages for performing one particular branch of work; or the artisan himself, in his own home, may be an escapement-maker, a spring-maker, a fusee-maker, a maker of hands, an enameller, an engine-turner, a jewelled pivot-hole maker. All this beautiful subdivision of employments has been found necessary for the perfection and the cheapness of watches. The capitalist, who is essentially the watch manufacturer, organizes all these departments of industry. English watches, by this economical system of production, keep their place against the competition of foreign watches; of which we imported, in 1853, fifty-four thousand. The skilled workmen, in all the various subdivisions of the manufacture, are well paid, and take their due rank amongst the great and increasing body of intelligent mechanics. Within these few years American clocks have been extensively sold in this country. People would once have thought that the business of clockmaking in England would be at an end, if it had been predicted that in 1853 we should import, as we did, a hundred and forty thousand clocks. The goodness and cheapness of American clocks have carried a clock into many a house, that without them would have been deficient of this instrument for keeping all industry in accordance with the extraordinary punctuality which has been forced upon us as an indispensable quality. We owe the general exercise of this virtue to the post and the railroads. No one needs now to be told, as our grandfathers were somewhat roughly told by the sun-dial in the Temple, "Be gone about thy business." The American clocks are produced by factory labour. In Connecticut two hundred and fifty men are employed in one establishment, in making six hundred clocks a-day, the price varying from one dollar to ten, and the average price being three dollars. Each clock passes through sixty different hands; but in every stage the most scientific applications of machinery chiefly produce the excellence and the cheapness. Between the factory-labour required to produce an American clock, which labour affords ample wages to every labourer employed, and ample security to the capitalist that he will not establish expensive machinery, and pay constant wages, without profit,--between this factory-labour, and the "garret-labour" which produces a rickety Pembroke-table, with bad materials and imperfect tools, at the lowest rate of profit to the workman,--the difference really consists in the application or non-application of capital. The theorist then steps in at this stage of the evidence, and says that the garret-labourer ought to be provided with capital. His theory resolves itself into what is called Communism; and it seeks to be maintained by exhibiting the aggregate evils of Competition. The theorist does not deny that competition has produced an immense development of wealth; but he affirms that the result of the struggle has been, to fill the hands that were already too full, and to take away from the hands that were already nearly empty. He maintains that the labouring classes have been more and more declining with every increase of the general riches; and that, at every stop in which industry advances, the proportion of the wretched to the great mass of the population as certainly increases. We shall not attempt to reply to these declamations by any counter declamation. We point to the great body of facts contained in this volume; and upon them rests our unqualified assertion that the doctrines of Communism are wholly untrue, and are opposed to the whole body of evidence that enables us to judge of the average condition of the people, past and present. To remedy the evils which it alleges to exist, Communism proposes associations working upon a common capital, and dividing the produce of all the labour of the community. To make a whole country labour in this way, by a confiscation of all the capital of the country, presents, necessarily, great difficulties; and therefore there must be smaller communities in particular localities. But these communities must produce everything within themselves, or they must deal with other communities. There would be competition in these communistic dealings between one community and another. Even if the whole world were to become communistic, there would be competition between one nation and another nation. The main objection to the theory of Communism (the objections to its application are obvious enough) is that, in proposing to have a common fund for all labour, it wars against the natural principle of individuality, and destroys the efficiency of production, by confounding the distinctions between the various degrees of skill and industry. If it give higher rewards to skilled labour than to unskilled, it does exactly what is done in the present state of society. If the unskilled and idle were the larger number under a system of Communism, they would soon degrade the skilled and the industrious to their own level. If they were the less powerful number, the skilled and the industrious would soon bring back the law of competition, and drive the unskilled and idle to the minimum point of subsistence. But Communism, to meet such difficulties, sets up a system of expedients. It invokes the aid of the State as a regulating power; and, having maintained that the State is bound to find employ for every one willing to labour, however inefficiently, and to supply the necessary funds for all labour, it makes the State the great healer of differences, even as Mr. Sergeant Thorpe held that the State could provide "a salve for every sore." Let us take one example of the mode in which Communism proposes to discharge its functions. There is a little treatise, in Italian, by Count Pecchio, on the Application of the General Laws of Production to Literary and Scientific Publications. It considers that literary-labour is governed by the same laws as any other labour; that the capital of a man of letters consists in his stores of acquired knowledge; that, as there is no equality in literary talent--as there is a great range of talent between the most skilled and the least skilled literary labourer--so the rewards of literary industry are proportionally unequal; that the wages of literary labour depend upon the usual conditions of demand and supply; that, under a system of competition in an open market, the literary labourer is more sure of his reward, however large may be the number of labourers, than in the old days of patronage for the few; that State encouragement is not necessary to the establishment of a high and enduring literature; that when literary industry is free--when it is neither fostered by bounties, nor cramped and annihilated by prohibitions--when there is neither patronage nor censorship--it is in the most favourable condition for its prosperous development. These principles, applied to literary production, are in many respects applicable to all production. Every one has heard of the 'Organization of Labour,' which some philosophers of a neighbouring country were attempting to transfer from the theories of the closet to the experiments of the workshop, in 1848. It is not our object, as we have said, to discuss whether a vast system of national co-operation for universal production be a wise thing or a practical thing. Let us state only a small part of that system, as exhibited in the 'Organisation du Travail,' by Monsieur Louis Blanc, the second part of which is devoted to the question of literary property. All the beneficial results contemplated by the organizers of a universal social industry are to be obtained for literary industry, according to this system, by the foundation of a Social Publishing Establishment, which is thus described: It would be a literary manufacture belonging to the State without being subject to the State. This institution would govern itself, and divide amongst its members the profits obtained by the common labour. According to its original laws, which would be laid down by the State, the Social Publishing Establishment would not have to purchase any author's right in his works. The price of books would be determined by the State, with a view to the utmost possible cheapness; all the expenses of the impression would be at the charge of the Social Establishment. A committee of enlightened men, chosen and remunerated by the Social Establishment, would receive the works. The writers whose works the Social Establishment would publish would acquire, in exchange for their rights as authors, which they would wholly resign, the right of exclusively competing for national recompenses. There would be in the annual national budget, a fund provided for such recompense, for authors in every sphere of thought. Every time the first work of an author was deemed worthy of a national recompense, a premium would also be given to the Social Establishment, that it might be indemnified for the possible loss which it had sustained in giving its support to youthful talent. Every year the representatives of the people would name, for every branch of intellectual exertion, a citizen who would examine the works issuing from the social presses. He would have a whole year to examine them thoroughly; to read all the criticisms upon them; to study the influence which they had produced upon society; to interrogate public opinion through its organs, and not judge by the blind multitude of buyers; and finally to prepare a report. The national rewards would then be distributed in the most solemn manner. We thus state briefly but fairly the plan which is to put an end to that literary competition which it is proclaimed "commences in dishonour and ends in misery;" which is to destroy bad books and encourage good; which, it is affirmed, is "no longer to make the publication of good books depend upon the speculators, who have rarely any other intelligence than a commercial aptitude, but upon competent men, whom it interests in the success of every useful and commendable work." We truly believe that this would be a practicable plan--provided two conditions were secured, which at present seem to be left out of the account. They are simply these--that there should be unlimited funds at hand for the purpose of rewarding authors, and unlimited wisdom and honesty in their administrators. But unhappily, as we understand it, the entire plan is a confusion of principle--rejecting much that is valuable in competition, and adopting much that is positively harmful in co-operation. Those authors who are profiting largely by the competitive system are to give up their profits to the common fund, which is to support those who could not make profits under that system. This is the social workshop notion of equality. But in the literary workshop the State is to step in and restore the ancient condition of inequality, by exclusive rewards to the most deserving of the competitors. It is a practical satire upon the whole scheme of a new social arrangement. With a sincere disposition to speak favourably of every plan for promoting the welfare of our fellow-creatures which is not founded upon a destruction of the security of property, we have no desire to maintain that all the denouncers of competition are weak and dangerous advisers of the great body of working people. We believe that the entire system of any proposed co-operation that would set aside competition is a delusion,--out of which, indeed, some small good might be slowly and painfully evoked, but which can never mainly affect the great workings of individual industry, whilst its futile attempts may relax the springs of all just and honest action. But we do not in any degree seek to oppose any practical form of co-operation that is built upon the natural and inevitable workings of capital, tending to produce, in a manner not less favourable for production than a system entirely competitive. Co-operation is not a new thing in England. Two centuries and a half ago, Shakspere became a considerable land-proprietor at Stratford, out of his share of the profits of a co-operative enterprise; and, in the same profession of a player, Allen acquired a sufficient fortune to found Dulwich College. In those companies of players of the Elizabethan era there were shareholders with varying interests--some having a capital in the building and properties of a theatre, combined with their other capital of histrionic skill. The joint proprietors lived in great harmony together, and treated each other with affection as friends and fellows. The co-operation which many earnest thinkers hold to be desirable to establish in England is precisely this sort of united industry. They have no desire to attempt the introduction of a fallacious equality, such as communism proposes; but they ask to have the legal power of combining men in common labours, according to their respective degrees and qualifications. He who brought to the undertaking capital only should receive a share of profits proportioned to its value and hazard--the wear and tear of implements--the deterioration of stock. He who brought great administrative skill, and took the higher office of trust and responsibility, should also receive a share in proportion to the rarity of these qualities; and so of those who were skilful and trustworthy in a lesser degree. The great body of the workers would receive their due shares under a scale founded upon experience. But capitalist, inventor, manager, and labourers,--all would have some ultimate interest in reference to profits. The Queen, in opening the Session of Parliament in 1856, announced that a measure would be brought forward for amending the law relating to Partnership. During that Session "The Joint-Stock Companies Act" was passed, by which it was provided that seven or more associated persons, by complying with the forms of the Act with regard to Registration, might form themselves into an Incorporated Company, with or without limited liability. Under this act many Companies have been formed; and, as might have been expected, various crude projects have thus been born--quickly to die. A bill for amending the law of Partnership was brought forward; but it met with so much opposition that it was withdrawn. Without the machinery of a Joint-Stock Company, partnership liability remains as before. What is risked by the continued existence of the law of Partnership, and what might be gained by its modification, are clearly put by Mr. J. M. Ludlow, an eminent barrister:--"The example of those strikes which have been first agitating and then desolating the country for the last half-year (1853) is surely most instructive on this head. It cannot be doubted that, from the energies of the working classes having been hitherto directed, it may be said, to the sole economic object of high wages, both the best paid and most prudent workmen have often been dragged, willingly or unwillingly, into these conflicts, of which some at least of the most benevolent employers have in like manner had to bear the brunt. But suppose a power given to the working men, by a relaxation of the laws of partnership, to invest their savings as _commandite_ partners in their employer's concern, how different might have been the result! Whenever an employer had really deserved the confidence of his work-people, all the most industrious amongst them might have grown bound up as _commandite_ partners with the interests of the establishment, having no longer for their object the raising of their own wages, but the prosperity of that business in the profits of which they would have a share--able on the one hand, as receivers of wages, to counsel the employer, their managing partner, as to any wise advance; able, on the other, as receivers of profits, to dissuade their fellow-workers from any injurious demand."[47] Let us also hear the opinion of a practical merchant--Mr. George Warde Norman, a Director of the Bank of England: "The extreme difficulty, if not the legal impossibility in England, of giving clerks or workmen a salary proportioned to the profits of an employer, without making them partners in the widest sense, I consider a vast practical evil. It seems to me that the system thus checked is of so highly beneficial a nature, that it merits every encouragement that the law can give it. It would at once enable an earnest wish on the part of a portion of the operative class to be met in a way most satisfactory to their feelings."[48] However earnest and thinking men may differ as to the legislative means of effecting a more perfect union of skill and capital, it is a prayer in which all good men unite, that the condition of the working-classes may be more and more improved,--that their outward circumstances may be made better and better. But those who labour the steadiest, and the most zealously, in the endeavour to realize this hope, feel that the day of this amelioration is far removed by perpetual contests between the employed and the employers, which impede production and diminish the funds for the support of labour. They know that every improvement in the arts of life improves also the condition of the humblest working-man in the land; and they also know that every successive improvement has a tendency to lessen the inequality in the distribution of wealth. But, if the condition of the working-men of these kingdoms is to be permanently improved,--if they are to obtain a full share of the blessings which science and industry confer upon mankind,--they must win those blessings by their own moral elevation. They cannot snatch them by violence; they cannot accomplish them suddenly by clamour; they cannot overthrow a thousand opposing circumstances to a great and rapid rise of wages; they must win them by peaceful and steady exertion. When the working-men of this country shall feel, as the larger portion of them already feel, that Knowledge is Power, they will next set about to see how that power shall be exercised. The first tyranny which that power must hold in check is the tyranny of evil habits--those habits which, looking only to the present hour, at one time plunge some into all the thoughtless extravagance which belongs to a state of high wages--at another, throw them prostrate before their employers, in all the misery and degradation which accompany a state of low wages, without a provision for that state. It is for them, and for them alone, to equalize the two conditions. The changes of trade, in a highly commercial country like this, must be incessant. It is for the workmen themselves to put a "_governor_" on the commercial machine, as far as they are concerned; in a season of prosperity to accumulate the power of capital--in a season of adversity to use effectively, because temperately, that power which they have won for themselves. But there are other duties to be performed, in another direction--the duties of employers. That duty does not consist in making servants partners, if the employers have no inclination thereto. It does not consist in attempting any private benevolence, by raising the rate of wages paid by their own firms beyond the average rate, which attempt would be ruinous to both classes interested. But it does consist in exercising the means within their power to benefit the condition of all in their employ, by cultivating every sympathy with them that may be the real expression of a community of interests. Such sympathy is manifested when large firms devote a considerable portion of their profits to the education of the young persons employed in their factories; when they cultivate the intelligent pleasures of their adult work-people; when, in a word, they make the factory system a beautiful instrument for raising the whole body of their labourers into a real equality, in all the moral and intellectual conditions of our nature, with themselves the captains of industry. When those duties are attended to, there may be common misfortunes; demand may fall off; the machinery, whether of steam or of mind, may be imperfectly in action; the season of adversity may bring discomfort. But it will not bring animosity. There may be deep anxieties on one part, and severe privations on the other, but there will not be hatreds and jealousies,--the cold neglect, and the grim despair. "We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws, To which the triumph of all good is given: High sacrifice, and labour without pause, Even to the death." [46] The subject of itinerant traders is treated fully in an article by the author of 'Knowledge is Power,' in a paper in 'London,' vol. i. A portion of that article is here reprinted, with some alterations. [47] First Report of Mercantile Law Commission, 1854. [48] Ibid. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER NOTES: Page x: illustration #95 was not included in this edition. Page 61: "seing" changed to "seeing" (and seeing, therefore, the fallacy). Page 83: "cobler" changed to "cobbler" (carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook). Page 155: "Parke" changed to "Park" (Mungo Park describes the sad condition). Page 196: "Delf" changed to "Delft" (the common ware from Delft). Page 227 two places: "calicos" changed to "calicoes" (no longer sends us his calicoes) and (is not longer weaving calicoes for us). Page 248: deleted "the" (beyond providing a supply of material). Illustration caption preceding page 321: "Manufctory" changed to "Manufactory" (Pianoforte Manufactory). Page 392: "an." changed to "ann." (30 per ann. should now be). Page 396: "diference" changed to "difference" (it also expresses the difference between). 
21660	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 21660-h.htm or 21660-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/6/6/21660/21660-h/21660-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/6/6/21660/21660-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained. Bolded font has been represented encased between asterisks. The following sentence has been changed, from: the spring crop was taken now IT its turn would enjoy a fallow year. to: the spring crop was taken now IN its turn would enjoy a fallow year. An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England [Illustration: New Sixteenth Century Manor House with Fields still Open, Gidea Hall, Essex. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.] AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND by EDWARD P. CHEYNEY Professor of European History in the University of Pennsylvania New York The MacMillan Company London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1916 All rights reserved Copyright, 1901, By The MacMillan Company. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1901. Reprinted January, October, 1905; November, 1906; October, 1907; July, 1908; February, 1909; January, 1910; April, December, 1910; January, August, December, 1911; July, 1912; January, 1913; February, August, 1914; January, November, 1915; April, 1916. PREFACE This text-book is intended for college and high-school classes. Most of the facts stated in it have become, through the researches and publications of recent years, such commonplace knowledge that a reference to authority in each case has not seemed necessary. Statements on more doubtful points, and such personal opinions as I have had occasion to express, although not supported by references, are based on a somewhat careful study of the sources. To each chapter is subjoined a bibliographical paragraph with the titles of the most important secondary authorities. These works will furnish a fuller account of the matters that have been treated in outline in this book, indicate the original sources, and give opportunity and suggestions for further study. An introductory chapter and a series of narrative paragraphs prefixed to other chapters are given with the object of correlating matters of economic and social history with other aspects of the life of the nation. My obligation and gratitude are due, as are those of all later students, to the group of scholars who have within our own time laid the foundations of the study of economic history, and whose names and books will be found referred to in the bibliographical paragraphs. EDWARD P. CHEYNEY. University of Pennsylvania, January, 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Growth Of The Nation To The Middle Of The Fourteenth Century Page 1. The Geography of England................................. 1 2. Prehistoric Britain...................................... 4 3. Roman Britain............................................ 5 4. Early Saxon England...................................... 8 5. Danish and Late Saxon England........................... 12 6. The Period following the Norman Conquest................ 15 7. The Period of the Early Angevin Kings, 1154-1338........ 22 CHAPTER II Rural Life and Organization 8. The Mediæval Village.................................... 31 9. The Vill as an Agricultural System...................... 33 10. Classes of People on the Manor.......................... 39 11. The Manor Courts........................................ 45 12. The Manor as an Estate of a Lord........................ 49 13. Bibliography............................................ 52 CHAPTER III Town Life And Organization 14. The Town Government..................................... 57 15. The Gild Merchant....................................... 59 16. The Craft Gilds......................................... 64 17. Non-industrial Gilds.................................... 71 18. Bibliography............................................ 73 CHAPTER IV Mediæval Trade And Commerce 19. Markets and Fairs....................................... 75 20. Trade Relations between Towns........................... 79 21. Foreign Trading Relations............................... 81 22. The Italian and Eastern Trade........................... 84 23. The Flanders Trade and the Staple....................... 87 24. The Hanse Trade......................................... 89 25. Foreigners settled in England........................... 90 26. Bibliography............................................ 94 CHAPTER V The Black Death And The Peasants' Rebellion _Economic Changes of the Later Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries_ 27. National Affairs from 1338 to 1461...................... 96 28. The Black Death and its Effects......................... 99 29. The Statutes of Laborers............................... 106 30. The Peasants' Rebellion of 1381........................ 111 31. Commutation of Services................................ 125 32. The Abandonment of Demesne Farming..................... 128 33. The Decay of Serfdom................................... 129 34. Changes in Town Life and Foreign Trade................. 133 35. Bibliography........................................... 134 CHAPTER VI The Breaking Up Of The Mediæval System _Economic Changes of the Later Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries_ 36. National Affairs from 1461 to 1603..................... 136 37. Enclosures............................................. 141 38. Internal Divisions in the Craft Gilds.................. 147 39. Change of Location of Industries....................... 151 40. The Influence of the Government on the Gilds........... 154 41. General Causes and Evidences of the Decay of the Gilds. 159 42. The Growth of Native Commerce.......................... 161 43. The Merchants Adventurers.............................. 164 44. Government Encouragement of Commerce................... 167 45. The Currency........................................... 169 46. Interest............................................... 171 47. Paternal Government.................................... 173 48. Bibliography........................................... 176 CHAPTER VII The Expansion Of England _Economic Changes of the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries_ 49. National Affairs from 1603 to 1760..................... 177 50. The Extension of Agriculture........................... 183 51. The Domestic System of Manufactures.................... 185 52. Commerce under the Navigation Acts..................... 189 53. Finance................................................ 193 54. Bibliography........................................... 198 CHAPTER VIII The Period Of The Industrial Revolution _Economic Changes of the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries_ 55. National Affairs from 1760 to 1830..................... 199 56. The Great Mechanical Inventions........................ 203 57. The Factory System..................................... 212 58. Iron, Coal, and Transportation......................... 214 59. The Revival of Enclosures.............................. 216 60. Decay of Domestic Manufacture.......................... 220 61. The _Laissez-faire_ Theory............................. 224 62. Cessation of Government Regulation..................... 228 63. Individualism.......................................... 232 64. Social Conditions at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century................................................ 235 65. Bibliography........................................... 239 CHAPTER IX The Extension Of Government Control _Factory Laws, the Modification of Land Ownership, Sanitary Regulations, and New Public Services_ 66. National Affairs from 1830 to 1900..................... 240 67. The Beginning of Factory Legislation................... 244 68. Arguments for and against Factory Legislation.......... 249 69. Factory Legislation to 1847............................ 254 70. The Extension of Factory Legislation................... 256 71. Employers' Liability Acts.............................. 260 72. Preservation of Remaining Open Lands................... 262 73. Allotments............................................. 267 74. Small Holdings......................................... 269 75. Government Sanitary Control............................ 271 76. Industries Carried on by Government.................... 273 77. Bibliography........................................... 276 CHAPTER X The Extension Of Voluntary Association _Trade Unions, Trusts, and Coöperation_ 78. The Rise of Trade Unions............................... 277 79. Opposition of the Law and of Public Opinion. The Combination Acts....................................... 279 80. Legalization and Popular Acceptance of Trade Unions.... 281 81. The Growth of Trade Unions............................. 288 82. Federation of Trade Unions............................. 289 83. Employers' Organizations............................... 293 84. Trusts and Trade Combinations.......................... 294 85. Coöperation in Distribution............................ 295 86. Coöperation in Production.............................. 300 87. Coöperation in Farming................................. 302 88. Coöperation in Credit.................................. 306 89. Profit Sharing......................................... 307 90. Socialism.............................................. 310 91. Bibliography........................................... 311 An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND CHAPTER I GROWTH OF THE NATION To The Middle Of The Fourteenth Century *1. The Geography of England.*--The British Isles lie northwest of the Continent of Europe. They are separated from it by the Channel and the North Sea, at the narrowest only twenty miles wide, and at the broadest not more than three hundred. The greatest length of England from north to south is three hundred and sixty-five miles, and its greatest breadth some two hundred and eighty miles. Its area, with Wales, is 58,320 square miles, being somewhat more than one-quarter the size of France or of Germany, just one-half the size of Italy, and somewhat larger than either Pennsylvania or New York. The backbone of the island is near the western coast, and consists of a body of hard granitic and volcanic rock rising into mountains of two or three thousand feet in height. These do not form one continuous chain but are in several detached groups. On the eastern flank of these mountains and underlying all the rest of the island is a series of stratified rocks. The harder portions of these strata still stand up as long ridges,--the "wolds," "wealds," "moors," and "downs" of the more eastern and south-eastern parts of England. The softer strata have been worn away into great broad valleys, furnishing the central and eastern plains or lowlands of the country. The rivers of the south and of the far north run for the most part by short and direct courses to the sea. The rivers of the midlands are much longer and larger. As a result of the gradual sinking of the island, in recent geological periods the sea has extended some distance up the course of these rivers, making an almost unbroken series of estuaries along the whole coast. The climate of England is milder and more equable than is indicated by the latitude, which is that of Labrador in the western hemisphere and of Prussia and central Russia on the Continent of Europe. This is due to the fact that the Gulf Stream flows around its southern and western shores, bringing warmth and a superabundance of moisture from the southern Atlantic. These physical characteristics have been of immense influence on the destinies of England. Her position was far on the outskirts of the world as it was known to ancient and mediæval times, and England played a correspondingly inconspicuous part during those periods. In the habitable world as it has been known since the fifteenth century, on the other hand, that position is a distinctly central one, open alike to the eastern and the western hemisphere, to northern and southern lands. [Illustration: Physiographic Map of *England And Wales*. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.] Her situation of insularity and at the same time of proximity to the Continent laid her open to frequent invasion in early times, but after she secured a navy made her singularly safe from subjugation. It made the development of many of her institutions tardy, yet at the same time gave her the opportunity to borrow and assimilate what she would from the customs of foreign nations. Her separation by water from the Continent favored a distinct and continuous national life, while her nearness to it allowed her to participate in all the more important influences which affected the nations of central Europe. Within the mountainous or elevated regions a variety of mineral resources, especially iron, copper, lead, and tin, exist in great abundance, and have been worked from the earliest ages. Potter's clay and salt also exist, the former furnishing the basis of industry for an extensive section of the midlands. By far the most important mineral possession of England, however, is her coal. This exists in the greatest abundance and in a number of sections of the north and west of the country. Practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and only slightly utilized in early modern times, within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries her coal supply has come to be the principal foundation of England's great manufacturing and commercial development. The lowlands, which make up far the larger part of the country, are covered with soil which furnishes rich farming areas, though in many places this soil is a heavy and impervious clay, expensive to drain and cultivate. The hard ridges are covered with thin soil only. Many of them therefore remained for a long time covered with forest, and they are devoted even yet to grazing or to occasional cultivation only. The abundance of harbors and rivers, navigable at least to the small vessels of the Middle Ages, has made a seafaring life natural to a large number of the people, and commercial intercourse comparatively easy with all parts of the country bordering on the coast or on these rivers. Thus, to sum up these geographical characteristics, the insular situation of England, her location on the earth's surface, and the variety of her material endowments gave her a tolerably well-balanced if somewhat backward economic position during the Middle Ages, and have enabled her since the fifteenth century to pass through a continuous and rapid development, until she has obtained within the nineteenth century, for the time at least, a distinct economic precedency among the nations of the world. *2. Prehistoric Britain.*--The materials from which to construct a knowledge of the history of mankind before the time of written records are few and unsatisfactory. They consist for the most part of the remains of dwelling-places, fortifications, and roadways; of weapons, implements, and ornaments lost or abandoned at the time; of burial places and their contents; and of such physical characteristics of later populations as have survived from an early period. Centuries of human habitation of Britain passed away, leaving only such scanty remains and the obscure and doubtful knowledge that can be drawn from them. Through this period, however, successive races seem to have invaded and settled the country, combining with their predecessors, or living alongside of them, or in some cases, perhaps, exterminating them. When contemporary written records begin, just before the beginning of the Christian era, one race, the Britons, was dominant, and into it had merged to all appearances all others. The Britons were a Celtic people related to the inhabitants of that part of the Continent of Europe which lies nearest to Britain. They were divided into a dozen or more separate tribes, each occupying a distinct part of the country. They lived partly by the pasturing of sheep and cattle, partly by a crude agriculture. They possessed most of the familiar grains and domestic animals, and could weave and dye cloth, make pottery, build boats, forge iron, and work other metals, including tin. They had, however, no cities, no manufactures beyond the most primitive, and but little foreign trade to connect them with the Continent. At the head of each tribe was a reigning chieftain of limited powers, surrounded by lesser chiefs. The tribes were in a state of incessant warfare one with the other. *3. Roman Britain.*--This condition of insular isolation and barbarism was brought to a close in the year 55 B.C. by the invasion of the Roman army. Julius Cæsar, the Roman general who was engaged in the conquest and government of Gaul, or modern France, feared that the Britons might bring aid to certain newly subjected and still restless Gallic tribes. He therefore transported a body of troops across the Channel and fought two campaigns against the tribes in the southeast of Britain. His success in the second campaign was, however, not followed up, and he retired without leaving any permanent garrison in the country. The Britons were then left alone, so far as military invasion was concerned, for almost a century, though in the meantime trade with the adjacent parts of the Continent became more common, and Roman influence showed itself in the manners and customs of the people. In the year 44 A.D., just ninety years after Cæsar's campaigns, the conquest of Britain was resumed by the Roman armies and completed within the next thirty years. Britain now became an integral part of the great, well-ordered, civilized, and wealthy Roman Empire. During the greater part of that long period, Britain enjoyed profound peace, internal and external trade were safe, and much of the culture and refinement of Italy and Gaul must have made their way even to this distant province. A part of the inhabitants adopted the Roman language, dress, customs, and manner of life. Discharged veterans from the Roman legions, wealthy civil officials and merchants, settled permanently in Britain. Several bodies of turbulent tribesmen who had been defeated on the German frontier were transported by the government into Britain. The population must, therefore, have become very mixed, containing representatives of most of the races which had been conquered by the Roman armies. A permanent military force was maintained in Britain with fortified stations along the eastern and southern coast, on the Welsh frontier, and along a series of walls or dikes running across the island from the Tyne to Solway Firth. Excellent roads were constructed through the length and breadth of the land for the use of this military body and to connect the scattered stations. Along these highways population spread and the remains of spacious villas still exist to attest the magnificence of the wealthy provincials. The roads served also as channels of trade by which goods could readily be carried from one part of the country to another. Foreign as well as internal trade became extensive, although exports were mostly of crude natural products, such as hides, skins, and furs, cattle and sheep, grain, pig-iron, lead and tin, hunting-dogs and slaves. The rapid development of towns and cities was a marked characteristic of Roman Britain. Fifty-nine towns or cities of various grades of self-government are named in the Roman survey, and many of these must have been populous, wealthy, and active, judging from the extensive ruins that remain, and the enormous number of Roman coins that have since been found. Christianity was adopted here as in other parts of the Roman Empire, though the extent of its influence is unknown. During the Roman occupation much waste land was reclaimed. Most of the great valley regions and many of the hillsides had been originally covered with dense forests, swamps spread along the rivers and extended far inland from the coast; so that almost the only parts capable of tillage were the high treeless plains, the hill tops, and certain favored stretches of open country. The reduction of these waste lands to human habitation has been an age-long task. It was begun in prehistoric times, it has been carried further by each successive race, and brought to final completion only within our own century. A share in this work and the great roads were the most permanent results of the Roman period of occupation and government. Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era the Roman administration and society in Britain were evidently disintegrating. Several successive generals of the Roman troops stationed in Britain rose in revolt with their soldiers, declared their independence of Rome, or passed over to the Continent to enter into a struggle for the control of the whole Empire. In 383 and 407 the military forces were suddenly depleted in this way and the provincial government disorganized, while the central government of the Empire was so weak that it was unable to reëstablish a firm administration. During the same period barbarian invaders were making frequent inroads into Britain. The Picts and Scots from modern Scotland, Saxon pirates, and, later, ever increasing swarms of Angles, Jutes, and Frisians from across the North Sea ravaged and ultimately occupied parts of the borders and the coasts. The surviving records of this period of disintegration and reorganization are so few that we are left in all but total ignorance as to what actually occurred. For more than two hundred years we can only guess at the course of events, or infer it from its probable analogy to what we know was occurring in the other parts of the Empire, or from the conditions we find to have been in existence as knowledge of succeeding times becomes somewhat more full. It seems evident that the government of the province of Britain gradually went to pieces, and that that of the different cities or districts followed. Internal dissensions and the lack of military organization and training of the mass of the population probably added to the difficulty of resisting marauding bands of barbarian invaders. These invading bands became larger, and their inroads more frequent and extended, until finally they abandoned their home lands entirely and settled permanently in those districts in which they had broken the resistance of the Roman-British natives. Even while the Empire had been strong the heavy burden of taxation and the severe pressure of administrative regulations had caused a decline in wealth and population. Now disorder, incessant ravages of the barbarians, isolation from other lands, probably famine and pestilence, brought rapid decay to the prosperity and civilization of the country. Cities lost their trade, wealth, and population, and many of them ceased altogether for a time to exist. Britain was rapidly sinking again into a land of barbarism. *4. Early Saxon England.*--An increasing number of contemporary records give a somewhat clearer view of the condition of England toward the close of the sixth century. The old Roman organization and civilization had disappeared entirely, and a new race, with a new language, a different religion, another form of government, changed institutions and customs, had taken its place. A number of petty kingdoms had been formed during the fifth and early sixth centuries, each under a king or chieftain, as in the old Celtic times before the Roman invasion, but now of Teutonic or German race. The kings and their followers had come from the northwestern portions of Germany. How far they had destroyed the earlier inhabitants, how far they had simply combined with them or enslaved them, has been a matter of much debate, and one on which discordant opinions are held, even by recent students. It seems likely on the whole that the earlier races, weakened by defeat and by the disappearance of the Roman control, were gradually absorbed and merged into the body of their conquerors; so that the petty Angle and Saxon kings of the sixth and seventh centuries ruled over a mixed race, in which their own was the most influential, though not necessarily the largest element. The arrival from Rome in 597 of Augustine, the first Christian missionary to the now heathen inhabitants of Britain, will serve as a point to mark the completion of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the country. By this time the new settlers had ceased to come in, and there were along the coast and inland some seven or eight different kingdoms. These were, however, so frequently divided and reunited that no fixed number remained long in existence. The Jutes had established the kingdom of Kent in the south-eastern extremity of the island; the South and the West Saxons were established on the southern coast and inland to the valley of the Thames; the East Saxons had a kingdom just north of the mouth of the Thames, and the Middle Saxons held London and the district around. The rest of the island to the north and inland exclusive of what was still unconquered was occupied by various branches of the Angle stock grouped into the kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria. During the seventh and eighth centuries there were constant wars of conquest among these kingdoms. Eventually, about 800 A.D., the West Saxon monarchy made itself nominally supreme over all the others. Notwithstanding this political supremacy of the West Saxons, it was the Angles who were the most numerous and widely spread, and who gave their name, England, to the whole land. Agriculture was at this time almost the sole occupation of the people. The trade and commerce that had centred in the towns and flowed along the Roman roads and across the Channel had long since come to an end with the Roman civilization of which it was a part. In Saxon England cities scarcely existed except as fortified places of defence. The products of each rural district sufficed for its needs in food and in materials for clothing, so that internal trade was but slight. Manufactures were few, partly from lack of skill, partly from lack of demand or appreciation; but weaving, the construction of agricultural implements and weapons, ship-building, and the working of metals had survived from Roman times, or been brought over as part of the stock of knowledge of the invaders. Far the greater part of the population lived in villages, as they probably had done in Roman and in prehistoric times. The village with the surrounding farming lands, woods, and waste grounds made up what was known in later times as the "township." The form of government in the earlier separate kingdoms, as in the united monarchy after its consolidation, gave limited though constantly increasing powers to the king. A body of nobles known as the "witan" joined with the king in most of the actions of government. The greater part of the small group of government functions which were undertaken in these barbarous times were fulfilled by local gatherings of the principal men. A district formed from a greater or less number of townships, with a meeting for the settlement of disputes, the punishment of crimes, the witnessing of agreements, and other purposes, was known as a "hundred" or a "wapentake." A "shire" was a grouping of hundreds, with a similar gathering of its principal men for judicial, military, and fiscal purposes. Above the shire came the whole kingdom. The most important occurrences of the early Saxon period were the general adoption of Christianity and the organization of the church. Between A.D. 597 and 650 Christianity gained acceptance through the preaching and influence of missionaries, most of whom were sent from Rome, though some came from Christian Scotland and Ireland. The organization of the church followed closely. It was largely the work of Archbishop Theodore, and was practically complete before the close of the seventh century. By this organization England was divided into seventeen dioceses or church districts, religious affairs in each of these districts being under the supervision of a bishop. The bishop's church, called a "cathedral," was endowed by religious kings and nobles with extensive lands, so that the bishop was a wealthy landed proprietor, in addition to having control of the clergy of his diocese, and exercising a powerful influence over the consciences and actions of its lay population. The bishoprics were grouped into two "provinces," those of Canterbury and York, the bishops of these two dioceses having the higher title of archbishop, and having a certain sort of supervision over the other bishops of their province. Churches were gradually built in the villages, and each township usually became a parish with a regularly established priest. He was supported partly by the produce of the "glebe," or land belonging to the parish church, partly by tithe, a tax estimated at one-tenth of the income of each man's land, partly by the offerings of the people. The bishops, the parish priests, and others connected with the diocese, the cathedral, and the parish churches made up the ordinary or "secular" clergy. There were also many religious men and women who had taken vows to live under special "rules" in religious societies withdrawn from the ordinary life of the world, and were therefore known as "regular" clergy. These were the monks and nuns. In Anglo-Saxon England the regular clergy lived according to the rule of St. Benedict, and were gathered into groups, some smaller, some larger, but always established in one building, or group of buildings. These monasteries, like the bishoprics, were endowed with lands which were increased from time to time by pious gifts of kings, nobles, and other laymen. Ecclesiastical bodies thus came in time to hold a very considerable share of the land of the country. The wealth and cultivation of the clergy and the desire to adorn and render more attractive their buildings and religious services fostered trade with foreign countries. The intercourse kept up with the church on the Continent also did something to lessen the isolation of England from the rest of the world. To these broadening influences must be added the effect which the Councils made up of churchmen from all England exerted in fostering the tardy growth of the unity of the country. *5. Danish and Late Saxon England.*--At the end of the eighth century the Danes or Northmen, the barbarous and heathen inhabitants of the islands and coast-lands of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, began to make rapid forays into the districts of England which lay near enough to the coasts or rivers to be at their mercy. Soon they became bolder or more numerous and established fortified camps along the English rivers, from which they ravaged the surrounding country. Still later, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, under their own kings as leaders, they became conquerors and permanent settlers of much of the country, and even for a time put a Danish dynasty on the throne to govern English and Danes alike. A succession of kings of the West Saxon line had struggled with varying success to drive the Danes from the country or to limit that portion of it which was under their control; but as a matter of fact the northern, eastern, and central portions of England were for more than a century and a half almost entirely under Danish rule. The constant immigration from Scandinavia during this time added an important element to the population--an element which soon, however, became completely absorbed in the mixed stock of the English people. The marauding Danish invaders were early followed by fellow-countrymen who were tradesmen and merchants. The Scandinavian countries had developed an early and active trade with the other lands bordering on the Baltic and North seas, and England under Danish influence was drawn into the same lines of commerce. The Danes were also more inclined to town life than the English, so that advantageously situated villages now grew into trading towns, and the sites of some of the old Roman cities began again to be filled with a busy population. With trading came a greater development of handicrafts, so that the population of later Anglo-Saxon England had somewhat varied occupations and means of support, instead of being exclusively agricultural, as in earlier centuries. During these later centuries of the Saxon period, from 800 to 1066, the most conspicuous and most influential ruler was King Alfred. When he became king, in 871, the Danish invaders were so completely triumphant as to force him to flee with a few followers to the forest as a temporary refuge. He soon emerged, however, with the nucleus of an army and, during his reign, which continued till 901, defeated the Danes repeatedly, obtained their acceptance of Christianity, forced upon them a treaty which restricted their rule to the northeastern shires, and transmitted to his son a military and naval organization which enabled him to win back much even of this part of England. He introduced greater order, prosperity, and piety into the church, and partly by his own writing, partly by his patronage of learned men, reawakened an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature and in learning which the ravages of the Danes and the demoralization of the country had gone far to destroy. Alfred, besides his actual work as king, impressed the recognition of his fine nature and strong character deeply on the men of his time and the memory of all subsequent times. The power of the kingship in the Anglo-Saxon system of government was strengthened by the life and work of such kings as Alfred and some of his successors. There were other causes also which were tending to make the central government more of a reality. A national taxation, the Danegeld, was introduced for the purpose of ransoming the country from the Danes; the grant of lands by the king brought many persons through the country into closer relations with him; the royal judicial powers tended to increase with the development of law and civilization; the work of government was carried on by better-trained officials. On the other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers, which would seem more properly to belong to government officials. The result was that although the central government as compared with the local government of shires and hundreds was growing more active, the king's power as compared with the personal power of the great nobles was becoming less strong. Violence was common, and there were but few signs of advancing prosperity or civilization, when an entirely new set of influences came into existence with the conquest by the duke of Normandy in the year 1066. *6. The Period following the Norman Conquest.*--Normandy was a province of France lying along the shore of the English Channel. Its line of dukes and at least a considerable proportion of its people were of the same Scandinavian or Norse race which made up such a large element in the population of England. They had, however, learned more of the arts of life and of government from the more successfully preserved civilization of the Continent. The relations between England and Normandy began to be somewhat close in the early part of the eleventh century; the fugitive king of England, Ethelred, having taken refuge there, and marrying the sister of the duke. Edward the Confessor, their son, who was subsequently restored to the English throne, was brought up in Normandy, used the French language, and was accompanied on his return by Norman followers. Nine years after the accession of Edward, in 1051, William, the duke of Normandy, visited England and is said to have obtained a promise that he should receive the crown on the death of Edward, who had no direct heir. Accordingly, in 1065, when Edward died and Harold, a great English earl, was chosen king, William immediately asserted his claim and made strenuous military preparations for enforcing it. He took an army across the Channel in 1066, as Cæsar had done more than a thousand years before, and at the battle of Hastings or Senlac defeated the English army, King Harold himself being killed in the engagement. William then pressed on toward London, preventing any gathering of new forces, and obtained his recognition as king. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. During the next five years he put down a series of rebellions on the part of the native English, after which he and his descendants were acknowledged as sole kings of England. The Norman Conquest was not, however, a mere change of dynasty. It led to at least three other changes of the utmost importance. It added a new element to the population, it brought England into contact with the central and southern countries of the Continent, instead of merely with the northern as before, and it made the central government of the country vastly stronger. There is no satisfactory means of discovering how many Normans and others from across the Channel migrated into England with the Conqueror or in the wake of the Conquest, but there is no doubt that the number was large and their influence more than proportionate to their numbers. Within the lifetime of William, whose death occurred in 1087, of his two sons, William II and Henry I, and the nominal reign of Stephen extending to 1154, the whole body of the nobility, the bishops and abbots, and the government officials had come to be of Norman or other continental origin. Besides these the architects and artisans who built the castles and fortresses, and the cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches, whose erection throughout the land was such a marked characteristic of the period, were immigrants from Normandy. Merchants from the Norman cities of Rouen and Caen came to settle in London and other English cities, and weavers from Flanders were settled in various towns and even rural districts. For a short time these newcomers remained a separate people, but before the twelfth century was over they had become for the most part indistinguishable from the great mass of the English people amongst whom they had come. They had nevertheless made that people stronger, more vigorous, more active-minded, and more varied in their occupations and interests. King William and his successors retained their continental dominions and even extended them after their acquisition of the English kingdom, so that trade between the two sides of the Channel was more natural and easy than before. The strong government of the Norman kings gave protection and encouragement to this commerce, and by keeping down the violence of the nobles favored trade within the country. The English towns had been growing in number, size, and wealth in the years just before the Conquest. The contests of the years immediately following 1066 led to a short period of decay, but very soon increasing trade and handicraft led to still greater progress. London, especially, now made good its position as one of the great cities of Europe, and that preëminence among English towns which it has never since lost. The fishing and seaport towns along the southern and eastern coast also, and even a number of inland towns, came to hold a much more influential place in the nation than they had possessed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The increased power of the monarchy arose partly from its military character as based upon a conquest of the country, partly from the personal character of William and his immediate successors, partly from the more effective machinery for administration of the affairs of government, which was either brought over from Normandy or developed in England. A body of trained, skilful government officials now existed, who were able to carry out the wishes of the king, collect his revenues, administer justice, gather armies, and in other ways make his rule effective to an extent unknown in the preceding period. The sheriffs, who had already existed as royal representatives in the shires in Anglo-Saxon times, now possessed far more extensive powers, and came up to Westminster to report and to present their financial accounts to the royal exchequer twice a year. Royal officials acting as judges not only settled an increasingly large number of cases that were brought before them at the king's court, but travelled through the country, trying suits and punishing criminals in the different shires. The king's income was vastly larger than that of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs had been. The old Danegeld was still collected from time to time, though under a different name, and the king's position as landlord of the men who had received the lands confiscated at the Conquest was utilized to obtain additional payments. Perhaps the greatest proof of the power and efficiency of the government in the Norman period was the compilation of the great body of statistics known as "Domesday Book." In 1085 King William sent commissioners to every part of England to collect a variety of information about the financial conditions on which estates were held, their value, and fitness for further taxation. The information obtained from this investigation was drawn up in order and written in two large manuscript volumes which still exist in the Public Record Office at London. It is a much more extensive body of information than was collected for any other country of Europe until many centuries afterward. Yet its statements, though detailed and exact and of great interest from many points of view, are disappointing to the student of history. They were obtained for the financial purposes of government, and cannot be made to give the clear picture of the life of the people and of the relations of different classes to one another which would be so welcome, and which is so easily obtained from the great variety of more private documents which came into existence a century and a half later. The church during this period was not relatively so conspicuous as during Saxon times, but the number of the clergy, both secular and regular, was very large, the bishops and abbots powerful, and the number of monasteries and nunneries increasing. The most important ecclesiastical change was the development of church courts. The bishops or their representatives began to hold courts for the trial of churchmen, the settlement of such suits as churchmen were parties to, and the decision of cases in certain fields of law. This gave the church a new influence, in addition to that which it held from its spiritual duties, from its position as landlord over such extensive tracts, and from the superior enlightenment and mental ability of its prominent officials, but it also gave greater occasion for conflict with the civil government and with private persons. After the death of Henry I in 1135 a miserable period of confusion and violence ensued. Civil war broke out between two claimants for the crown, Stephen the grandson, and Matilda the granddaughter, of William the Conqueror. The organization of government was allowed to fall into disorder, and but little effort was made to collect the royal revenue, to fulfil the newly acquired judicial duties, or to insist upon order being preserved in the country. The nobles took opposite sides in the contest for the crown, and made use of the weakness of government to act as if they were themselves sovereigns over their estates and the country adjacent to their castles with no ruler above them. Private warfare, oppression of less powerful men, seizure of property, went on unchecked. Every baron's castle became an independent establishment carried on in accordance only with the unbridled will of its lord, as if there were no law and no central authority to which he must bow. The will of the lord was often one of reckless violence, and there was more disorder and suffering in England than at any time since the ravages of the Danes. In Anglo-Saxon times, when a weak king appeared, the shire moots, or the rulers of groups of shires, exercised the authority which the central government had lost. In the twelfth century, when the power of the royal government was similarly diminished through the weakness of Stephen and the confusions of the civil war, it was a certain class of men, the great nobles, that fell heir to the lost strength of government. This was because of the development of feudalism during the intervening time. The greater landholders had come to exercise over those who held land from them certain powers which in modern times belong to the officers of government only. A landlord could call upon his tenants for military service to him, and for the contribution of money for his expenses; he held a court to decide suits between one tenant and another, and frequently to punish their crimes and misdemeanors; in case of the death of a tenant leaving a minor heir, his landlord became guardian and temporary holder of the land, and if there were no heirs, the land reverted to him, not to the national government. These relations which the great landholders held toward their tenants, the latter, who often themselves were landlords over whole townships or other great tracts of land with their population, held toward their tenants. Sometimes these subtenants granted land to others below them, and over these the last landlord also exercised feudal rights, and so on till the actual occupants and cultivators of the soil were reached. The great nobles had thus come to stand in a middle position. Above them was the king, below them these successive stages of tenants and subtenants. Their tenants owed to them the same financial and political services and duties as they owed to the king. From the time of the Norman Conquest, all land in England was looked upon as being held from the king directly by a comparatively few, and indirectly through them by all others who held land at all. Moreover, from a time at least soon after the Norman Conquest, the services and payments above mentioned came to be recognized as due from all tenants to their lords, and were gradually systematized and defined. Each person or ecclesiastical body that held land from the king owed him the military service of a certain number of knights or armed horse soldiers. The period for which this service was owed was generally estimated as forty days once a year. Subtenants similarly owed military service to their landlords, though in the lesser grades this was almost invariably commuted for money. "Wardship and marriage" was the expression applied to the right of the lord to the guardianship of the estate of a minor heir of his tenant, and to the choice of a husband or wife for the heir when he came of proper age. This right also was early turned into the form of a money consideration. There were a number of money payments pure and simple. "Relief" was a payment to the landlord, usually of a year's income of the estate, made by an heir on obtaining his inheritance. There were three generally acknowledged "aids" or payments of a set sum in proportion to the amount of land held. These were on the occasion of the knighting of the lord's son, of the marriage of his daughter, and for his ransom in case he was captured in war. Land could be confiscated if the tenant violated his duties to his landlord, and it "escheated" to the lord in case of failure of heirs. Every tenant was bound to attend his landlord to help form a court for judicial work, and to submit to the judgment of a court of his fellow-tenants for his own affairs. In addition to the relations of landlord and tenant and to the power of jurisdiction, taxation, and military service which landlords exercised over their tenants, there was considered to be a close personal relationship between them. Every tenant on obtaining his land went through a ceremony known as "homage," by which he promised faithfulness and service to his lord, vowing on his knees to be his man. The lord in return promised faithfulness, protection, and justice to his tenant. It was this combination of landholding, political rights, and sworn personal fidelity that made up feudalism. It existed in this sense in England from the later Saxon period till late in the Middle Ages, and even in some of its characteristics to quite modern times. The conquest by William of Normandy through the wholesale confiscation and regrant of lands, and through his military arrangements, brought about an almost sudden development and spread of feudalism in England, and it was rapidly systematized and completed in the reigns of his two sons. By its very nature feudalism gives great powers to the higher ranks of the nobility, the great landholders. Under the early Norman kings, however, their strength was kept in tolerably complete check. The anarchy of the reign of Stephen was an indication of the natural tendencies of feudalism without a vigorous king. This time of confusion when, as the contemporary chronicle says, "every man did that which was good in his own eyes," was brought to an end by the accession to the throne of Henry II, a man whose personal abilities and previous training enabled him to bring the royal authority to greater strength than ever, and to put an end to the oppressions of the turbulent nobles. *7. The Period of the Early Angevin Kings, 1154-1338.*--The two centuries which now followed saw either the completion or the initiation of most of the characteristics of the English race with which we are familiar in historic times. The race, the language, the law, and the political organization have remained fundamentally the same as they became during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. No considerable new addition was made to the population, and the elements which it already contained became so thoroughly fused that it has always since been practically a homogeneous body. The Latin language remained through this whole period and till long afterward the principal language of records, documents, and the affairs of the church. French continued to be the language of the daily intercourse of the upper classes, of the pleadings in the law courts, and of certain documents and records. But English was taking its modern form, asserting itself as the real national language, and by the close of this period had come into general use for the vast majority of purposes. Within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge grew up, and within the fourteenth took their later shape of self-governing groups of colleges. Successive orders of religious men and women were formed under rules intended to overcome the defects which had appeared in the early Benedictine rule. The organized church became more and more powerful, and disputes constantly arose as to the limits between its power and that of the ordinary government. The question was complicated from the fact that the English Church was but one branch of the general church of Western Christendom, whose centre and principal authority was vested in the Pope at Rome. One of the most serious of these conflicts was between King Henry II and Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, principally on the question of how far clergymen should be subject to the same laws as laymen. The personal dispute ended in the murder of the archbishop, in 1170, but the controversy itself got no farther than a compromise. A contest broke out between King John and the Pope in 1205 as to the right of the king to dictate the selection of a new archbishop of Canterbury. By 1213 the various forms of influence which the church could bring to bear were successful in forcing the king to give way. He therefore made humble apologies and accepted the nominee of the Pope for the office. Later in the thirteenth century there was much popular opposition to papal taxation of England. In the reign of Henry II, the conquest of Ireland was begun. In 1283 Edward I, great-grandson of Henry, completed the conquest of Wales, which had remained incompletely conquered from Roman times onward. In 1292 Edward began that interference in the affairs of Scotland which led on to long wars and a nominal conquest. For a while therefore it seemed that England was about to create a single monarchy out of the whole of the British Islands. Moreover, Henry II was already count of Anjou and Maine by inheritance from his father when he became duke of Normandy and king of England by inheritance from his mother. He also obtained control of almost all the remainder of the western and southern provinces of France by his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine. It seemed, therefore, that England might become the centre of a considerable empire composed partly of districts on the Continent, partly of the British Islands. As a matter of fact, Wales long remained separated from England in organization and feeling, little progress was made with the real conquest of Ireland till in the sixteenth century, and the absorption of Scotland failed entirely. King John, in 1204, lost most of the possessions of the English kings south of the Channel and they were not regained within this period. The unification of the English government and people really occurred during this period, but it was only within the boundaries which were then as now known as England. Henry II was a vigorous, clear-headed, far-sighted ruler. He not only put down the rebellious barons with a strong hand, and restored the old royal institutions, as already stated, but added new powers of great importance, especially in the organization of the courts of justice. He changed the occasional visits of royal officials to different parts of the country to regular periodical circuits, the kingdom being divided into districts in each of which a group of judges held court at least once in each year. In 1166, by the Assize of Clarendon, he made provision for a sworn body of men in each neighborhood to bring accusations against criminals, thus making the beginning of the grand jury system. He also provided that a group of men should be put upon their oath to give a decision in a dispute about the possession of land, if either one of the claimants asked for it, thus introducing the first form of the trial by jury. The decisions of the judges within this period came to be so consistent and so well recorded as to make the foundation of the Common Law the basis of modern law in all English-speaking countries. Henry's successor was his son Richard I, whose government was quite unimportant except for the romantic personal adventures of the king when on a crusade, and in his continental dominions. Henry's second son John reigned from 1199 to 1216. Although of good natural abilities, he was extraordinarily indolent, mean, treacherous, and obstinate. By his inactivity during a long quarrel with the king of France he lost all his provinces on the Continent, except those in the far south. His contest with the Pope had ended in failure and humiliation. He had angered the barons by arbitrary taxation and by many individual acts of outrage or oppression. Finally he had alienated the affections of the mass of the population by introducing foreign mercenaries to support his tyranny and permitting to them unbridled excess and violence. As a result of this widespread unpopularity, a rebellion was organized, including almost the whole of the baronage of England, guided by the counsels of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and supported by the citizens of London. The indefiniteness of feudal relations was a constant temptation to kings and other lords to carry their exactions and demands upon their tenants to an unreasonable and oppressive length. Henry I, on his accession in 1100, in order to gain popularity, had voluntarily granted a charter reciting a number of these forms of oppression and promising to put an end to them. The rebellious barons now took this old charter as a basis, added to it many points which had become questions of dispute during the century since it had been granted, and others which were of special interest to townsmen and the middle and even lower classes. They then demanded the king's promise to issue a charter containing these points. John resisted for a while, but at last gave way and signed the document which has since been known as the "Great Charter," or Magna Carta. This has always been considered as, in a certain sense, the guarantee of English liberties and the foundation of the settled constitution of the kingdom. The fact that it was forced from a reluctant king by those who spoke for the whole nation, that it placed definite limitations on his power, and that it was confirmed again and again by later kings, has done more to give it this position than its temporary and in many cases insignificant provisions, accompanied only by a comparatively few statements of general principles. The beginnings of the construction of the English parliamentary constitution fall within the next reign, that of John's son, Henry III, 1216-1272. He was a child at his accession, and when he became a man proved to have but few qualities which would enable him to exercise a real control over the course of events. Conflicts were constant between the king and confederations of the barons, for the greater part of the time under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. The special points of difference were the king's preference for foreign adventurers in his distribution of offices, his unrestrained munificence to them, their insolence and oppression relying on the king's support, the financial demands which were constantly being made, and the king's encouragement of the high claims and pecuniary exactions of the Pope. At first these conflicts took the form of disputes in the Great Council, but ultimately they led to another outbreak of civil war. The Great Council of the kingdom was a gathering of the nobles, bishops, and abbots summoned by the king from time to time for advice and participation in the more important work of government. It had always existed in one form or another, extending back continuously to the "witenagemot" of the Anglo-Saxons. During the reign of Henry the name "Parliament" was coming to be more regularly applied to it, its meetings were more frequent and its self-assertion more vigorous. But most important of all, a new class of members was added to it. In 1265, in addition to the nobles and great prelates, the sheriffs were ordered to see that two knights were selected from each of their shires, and two citizens from each of a long list of the larger towns, to attend and take part in the discussions of Parliament. This plan was not continued regularly at first, but Henry's successor, Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, adopted it deliberately, and from 1295 forward the "Commons," as they came to be called, were always included in Parliament. Within the next century a custom arose according to which the representatives of the shires and the towns sat in a separate body from the nobles and churchmen, so that Parliament took on its modern form of two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Until this time and long afterward the personal character and abilities of the king were far the most important single factor in the growth of the nation. Edward I was one of the greatest of English kings, ranking with Alfred, William the Conqueror, and Henry II. His conquests of Wales and of Scotland have already been mentioned, and these with the preparation they involved and a war with France into which he was drawn necessarily occupied the greater part of his time and energy. But he found the time to introduce good order and control into the government in all its branches; to make a great investigation into the judicial and administrative system, the results of which, commonly known as the "Hundred Rolls," are comparable to Domesday Book in extent and character; to develop the organization of Parliament, and above all to enact through it a series of great reforming statutes. The most important of these were the First and Second Statutes of Westminster, in 1275 and 1285, which made provisions for good order in the country, for the protection of merchants, and for other objects; the Statute of Mortmain, passed in 1279, which put a partial stop to injurious gifts of land to the church, and the Statute _Quia Emptores_, passed in 1290, which was intended to prevent the excessive multiplication of subtenants. This was done by providing that whenever in the future any landholder should dispose of a piece of land it should be held from the same lord the grantor had held it from, not from the grantor himself. He also gave more liberal charters to the towns, privileges to foreign merchants, and constant encouragement to trade. The king's firm hand and prudent judgment were felt in a wide circle of regulations applying to taxes, markets and fairs, the purchase of royal supplies, the currency, the administration of local justice, and many other fields. Yet after all it was the organization of Parliament that was the most important work of Edward's reign. This completed the unification of the country. The English people were now one race, under one law, with one Parliament representing all parts of the country. It was possible now for the whole nation to act as a unit, and for laws to be passed which would apply to the whole country and draw its different sections continually more closely together. National growth was now possible in a sense in which it had not been before. The reign of Edward II, like his own character, was insignificant compared with that of his father. He was deposed in 1327, and his son, Edward III, came to the throne as a boy of fourteen years. The first years of his reign were also relatively unimportant. By the time he reached his majority, however, other events were imminent which for the next century or more gave a new direction to the principal interests and energies of England. A description of these events will be given in a later chapter. For the greater part of the long period which has now been sketched in outline it is almost solely the political and ecclesiastical events and certain personal experiences which have left their records in history. We can obtain but vague outlines of the actual life of the people. An important Anglo-Saxon document describes the organization of a great landed estate, and from Domesday Book and other early Norman records may be drawn certain inferences as to the degree of freedom of the masses of the people and certain facts as to agriculture and trade. From the increasing body of public records in the twelfth century can be gathered detached pieces of information as to actual social and economic conditions, but the knowledge that can be obtained is even yet slight and uncertain. With the thirteenth century, however, all this is changed. During the latter part of the period just described, that is to say the reigns of Henry III and the three Edwards, we have almost as full knowledge of economic as of political conditions, of the life of the mass of the people as of that of courtiers and ecclesiastics. From a time for which 1250 may be taken as an approximate date, written documents began to be so numerous, so varied, and so full of information as to the affairs of private life, that it becomes possible to obtain a comparatively full and clear knowledge of the methods of agriculture, handicraft, and commerce, of the classes of society, the prevailing customs and ideas, and in general of the mode of life and social organization of the mass of the people, this being the principal subject of economic and social history. The next three chapters will therefore be devoted respectively to a description of rural life, of town life, and of trading relations, as they were during the century from 1250 to 1350, while the succeeding chapters will trace the main lines of economic and social change during succeeding periods down to the present time. CHAPTER II RURAL LIFE AND ORGANIZATION *8. The Mediæval Village.*--In the Middle Ages in the greater part of England all country life was village life. The farmhouses were not isolated or separated from one another by surrounding fields, as they are so generally in modern times, but were gathered into villages. Each village was surrounded by arable lands, meadows, pastures, and woods which spread away till they reached the confines of the similar fields of the next adjacent village. Such an agricultural village with its population and its surrounding lands is usually spoken of as a "vill." The word "manor" is also applied to it, though this word is also used in other senses, and has differed in meaning at different periods. The word "hamlet" means a smaller group of houses separated from but forming in some respects a part of a vill or manor. The village consisted of a group of houses ranging in number from ten or twelve to as many as fifty or perhaps even more, grouped around what in later times would be called a "village green," or along two or three intersecting lanes. The houses were small, thatch-roofed, and one-roomed, and doubtless very miserable. Such buildings as existed for the protection of cattle or the preservation of crops were closely connected with the dwelling portions of the houses. In many cases they were under the same roof. Each vill possessed its church, which was generally, though by no means always, close to the houses of the village. There was usually a manor house, which varied in size from an actual castle to a building of a character scarcely distinguishable from the primitive houses of the villagers. This might be occupied regularly or occasionally by the lord of the manor, but might otherwise be inhabited by the steward or by a tenant, or perhaps only serve as the gathering place of the manor courts. Connected with the manor house was an enclosure or courtyard commonly surrounded by buildings for general farm purposes and for cooking or brewing. A garden orchard was often attached. [Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Millichope, Shropshire. (Wright, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments_.)] The location of the vill was almost invariably such that a stream with its border meadows passed through or along its confines, the mill being often the only building that lay detached from the village group. A greater or less extent of woodland is also constantly mentioned. The vill was thus made up of the group of houses of the villagers including the parish church and the manor house, all surrounded by a wide tract of arable land, meadow, pasture, and woods. Where the lands were extensive there might perhaps be a small group of houses forming a separate hamlet at some distance from the village, and occasionally a detached mill, grange, or other building. Its characteristic appearance, however, must have been that of a close group of buildings surrounded by an extensive tract of open land. [Illustration: Thirteenth Century Manor House, Boothby Pagnell, Lincolnshire. (Turner, _Domestic Architecture in England_.)] *9. The Vill as an Agricultural System.*--The support of the vill was in its agriculture. The plan by which the lands of the whole group of cultivators lay together in a large tract surrounding the village is spoken of as the "open field" system. The arable portions of this were ploughed in pieces equalling approximately acres, half-acres, or quarter-acres. [Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Nörtershausen, near Coblentz. Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)] The mediæval English acre was a long narrow strip forty rods in length and four rods in width, a half-acre or quarter-acre being of the same length, but of two rods or one rod in width. The rod was of different lengths in different parts of the country, depending on local custom, but the most common length was that prescribed by statute, that is to say, sixteen and a half feet. The length of the acre, forty rods, has given rise to one of the familiar units of length, the furlong, that is, a "furrow-long," or the length of a furrow. A rood is a piece of land one rod wide and forty rods long, that is, the fourth of an acre. A series of such strips were ploughed up successively, being separated from each other either by leaving the width of a furrow or two unploughed, or by marking the division with stones, or perhaps by simply throwing the first furrow of the next strip in the opposite direction when it was ploughed. When an unploughed border was left covered with grass or stones, it was called a "balk." A number of such acres or fractions of acres with their slight dividing ridges thus lay alongside of one another in a group, the number being defined by the configuration of the ground, by a traditional division among a given number of tenants, or by some other cause. Other groups of strips lay at right angles or inclined to these, so that the whole arable land of the village when ploughed or under cultivation had, like many French, German, or Swiss landscapes at the present time, something of the appearance of a great irregular checker-board or patchwork quilt, each large square being divided in one direction by parallel lines. Usually the cultivated open fields belonging to a village were divided into three or more large tracts or fields and these were cultivated according to some established rotation of crops. The most common of these was the three-field system, by which in any one year all the strips in one tract or field would be planted with wheat, rye, or some other crop which is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer; a second great field would be planted with oats, barley, peas, or some such crop as is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall; the third field would be fallow, recuperating its fertility. The next year all the acres in the field which had lain fallow the year before might be planted with a fall crop, the wheat field of the previous year being planted with a spring crop, and the oats field in its turn now lying uncultivated for a year. The third year a further exchange would be made by which a fall crop would succeed the fallow of that year and the spring crop of the previous year, a spring crop would succeed the last year's fall crop and the field from which the spring crop was taken now in its turn would enjoy a fallow year. In the fourth year the rotation would begin over again. [Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Udenhausen, near Coblentz, Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)] Agriculture was extremely crude. But eight or nine bushels of wheat or rye were expected from an acre, where now in England the average is thirty. The plough regularly required eight draught animals, usually oxen, in breaking up the ground, though lighter ploughs were used in subsequent cultivation. The breed of all farm animals was small, carts were few and cumbrous, the harvesting of grain was done with a sickle, and the mowing of grass with a short, straight scythe. The distance of the outlying parts of the fields from the farm buildings of the village added its share to the laboriousness of agricultural life. [Illustration: Modern Ploughing with Six Oxen in Sussex. (Hudson, W. H.: _Nature in Downland_. Published by Longmans, Green & Co.)] [Illustration: Open Fields of Hayford Bridge, Oxfordshire, 1607. (Facsimile map published by the University of Oxford.)] The variety of food crops raised was small. Potatoes were of course unknown, and other root crops and fresh vegetables apparently were little cultivated. Wheat and rye of several varieties were raised as bread-stuff, barley and some other grains for the brewing of beer. Field peas and beans were raised, sometimes for food, but generally as forage for cattle. The main supply of winter forage for the farm animals had, however, to be secured in the form of hay, and for this reliance was placed entirely on the natural meadows, as no clover or grasses which could be artificially raised on dry ground were yet known. Meadow land was constantly estimated at twice the value of arable ground or more. To obtain a sufficient support for the oxen, horses, and breeding animals through the winter required, therefore, a constant struggle. Owing to this difficulty animals that were to be used for food purposes were regularly killed in the fall and salted down. Much of the unhealthiness of medieval life is no doubt attributable to the use of salt meat as so large a part of what was at best a very monotonous diet. Summer pasture for the horses, cattle, sheep, and swine of the village was found partly on the arable land after the grain crops had been taken off, or while it was lying fallow. Since all the acres in any one great field were planted with the same crop, this would be taken off from the whole expanse at practically the same time, and the animals of the whole village might then wander over it, feeding on the stubble, the grass of the balks, and such other growth as sprung up before the next ploughing, or before freezing weather. Pasturage was also found on the meadows after the hay had been cut. But the largest amount of all was on the "common pasture," the uncultivated land and woods which in the thirteenth century was still sufficiently abundant in most parts of England to be found in considerable extent on almost every manor. Pasturage in all these forms was for the most part common for all the animals of the vill, which were sent out under the care of shepherds or other guardians. There were, however, sometimes enclosed pieces of pasture land in the possession of the lord of the manor or of individual villagers. The land of the vill was held and cultivated according to a system of scattered acres. That is to say, the land held by any one man was not all in one place, but scattered through various parts of the open fields of the vill. He would have an acre or two, or perhaps only a part of an acre, in one place, another strip not adjacent to it, but somewhere else in the fields, still another somewhere else, and so on for his whole holding, while the neighbor whose house was next to his in the village would have pieces of land similarly scattered through the fields, and in many cases probably have them adjacent to his. The result was that the various acres or other parts of any one man's holding were mingled apparently inextricably with those of other men, customary familiarity only distinguishing which pieces belonged to each villager. In some manors there was total irregularity as to the number of acres in the occupation of any one man; in others there was a striking regularity. The typical holding, the group of scattered acres cultivated by one man or held by some two or three in common, was known as a "virgate," or by some equivalent term, and although of no universal equality, was more frequently of thirty acres than of any other number. Usually one finds on a given manor that ten or fifteen of the villagers have each a virgate of a given number of acres, several more have each a half virgate or a quarter. Occasionally, on the other hand, each of them has a different number of acres. In almost all cases, however, the agricultural holdings of the villagers were relatively small. For instance, on a certain manor in Norfolk there were thirty-six holdings, twenty of them below ten acres, eight between ten and twenty, six between twenty and thirty, and two between thirty and forty. On another, in Essex, there were nine holdings of five acres each, two of six, twelve of ten, three of twelve, one of eighteen, four of twenty, one of forty, and one of fifty. Sometimes larger holdings in the hands of individual tenants are to be found, rising to one hundred acres or more. Still these were quite exceptional and the mass of the villagers had very small groups of acres in their possession. It is to be noted next that a large proportion of the cultivated strips were not held in virgates or otherwise by the villagers at all, but were in the direct possession and cultivation of the lord of the manor. This land held directly by the lord of the manor and cultivated for him was called the "demesne," and frequently included one-half or even a larger proportion of all the land of the vill. Much of the meadow and pasture land, and frequently all of the woods, was included in the demesne. Some of the demesne land was detached from the land of the villagers, enclosed and separately cultivated or pastured; but for the most part it lay scattered through the same open fields and was cultivated by the same methods and according to the same rotation as the land of the small tenants of the vill, though it was kept under separate management. *10. Classes of People on the Manor.*--Every manor was in the hands of a lord. He might be a knight, esquire, or mere freeman, but in the great majority of cases the lord of the manor was a nobleman, a bishop, abbot, or other ecclesiastical official, or the king. But whether the manor was the whole estate of a man of the lesser gentry, or merely one part of the possessions of a great baron, an ecclesiastical corporation, or the crown, the relation between its possessor as lord of the manor and the other inhabitants as his tenants was the same. In the former case he was usually resident upon the manor; in the latter the individual or corporate lord was represented by a steward or other official who made occasional visits, and frequently, on large manors, by a resident bailiff. There was also almost universally a reeve, who was chosen from among the tenants and who had to carry on the demesne farm in the interests of the lord. [Illustration: Seal, with Representation of a Manor House. (Turner, _Domestic Architecture in England_.)] The tenants of the manor, ranging from holders of considerable amounts of land, perhaps as much as a hundred acres, through various gradations down to mere cotters, who held no more than a cottage with perhaps a half-acre or a rood of land, or even with no land at all, are usually grouped in the "extents" or contemporary descriptions of the manors and their inhabitants into several distinct classes. Some are described as free tenants, or tenants holding freely. Others, and usually the largest class, are called villains, or customary tenants. Some, holding only a half or a quarter virgate, are spoken of as half or quarter villains. Again, a numerous class are described by some name indicating that they hold only a dwelling-house, or at least that their holding of land is but slight. These are generally spoken of as cotters. All these tenants hold land from the lord of the manor and make payments and perform services in return for their land. The free tenants most commonly make payments in money only. At special periods in the year they give a certain number of shillings or pence to the lord. Occasionally they are required to make some payment in kind, a cock or a hen, some eggs, or other articles of consumption. These money payments and payments of articles of money value are called "rents of assize," or established rents. Not unusually, however, the free tenant has to furnish _precariæ_ or "boon-works" to the lord. That is, he must, either in his own person or through a man hired for the purpose, furnish one or more days' labor at the specially busy seasons of the year, at fall and spring ploughing, at mowing or harvest time. Free tenants were also frequently bound to pay relief and heriot. Relief was a sum of money paid to the lord by an heir on obtaining land by inheritance. Custom very generally established the amount to be paid as the equivalent of one year's ordinary payments. Heriot was a payment made in kind or in money from the property left by a deceased tenant, and very generally consisted by custom of the best animal which had been in the possession of the man, or its equivalent in value. On many manors heriot was not paid by free tenants, but only by those of lower rank. The services and payments of the villains or customary tenants were of various descriptions. They had usually to make some money payments at regular periods of the year, like the free tenants, and, even more frequently than they, some regular payments in kind. But the fine paid on the inheritance of their land was less definitely restricted in amount, and heriot was more universally and more regularly collected. The greater part of their liability to the lord of the manor was, however, in the form of personal, corporal service. Almost universally the villain was required to work for a certain number of days in each week on the demesne of the lord. This "week-work" was most frequently for three days a week, sometimes for two, sometimes for four; sometimes for one number of days in the week during a part of the year, for another number during the remainder. In addition to this were usually the _precariæ_ or boon-works already referred to. Sometimes as part of, sometimes in addition to, the week-work and the boon-work, the villain was required to plough so many acres in the fall and spring; to mow, toss, and carry in the hay from so many acres; to haul and scatter so many loads of manure; carry grain to the barn or the market, build hedges, dig ditches, gather brush, weed grain, break clods, drive sheep or swine, or any other of the forms of agricultural labor as local custom on each manor had established his burdens. Combining the week-work, the regular boon-works, and the extra specified services, it will be seen that the labor required from the customary tenant was burdensome in the extreme. Taken on the average, much more than half of the ordinary villain's time must have been given in services to the lord of the manor. The cotters made similar payments and performed similar labors, though less in amount. A widespread custom required them to work for the lord one day a week throughout the year, with certain regular payments, and certain additional special services. Besides the possession of their land and rights of common pasture, however, there were some other compensations and alleviations of the burdens of the villains and cotters. At the boon-works and other special services performed by the tenants, it was a matter of custom that the lord of the manor provide food for one or two meals a day, and custom frequently defined the kind, amount, and value of the food for each separate meal; as where it is said in a statement of services: "It is to be known that all the above customary tenants ought to reap one day in autumn at one boon-work of wheat, and they shall have among them six bushels of wheat for their bread, baked in the manor, and broth and meat, that is to say, two men have one portion of beef and cheese, and beer for drinking. And the aforesaid customary tenants ought to work in autumn at two boon-works of oats. And they shall have six bushels of rye for their bread as described above, broth as before, and herrings, viz. six herrings for each man, and cheese as before, and water for drinking." Thus the payments and services of the free tenants were principally of money, and apparently not burdensome; those of the villains were largely in corporal service and extremely heavy; while those of the cotters were smaller, in correspondence with their smaller holdings of land and in accordance with the necessity that they have their time in order to make their living by earning wages. The villains and cotters were in bondage to the lord of the manor. This was a matter of legal status quite independent of the amount of land which the tenant held or of the services which he performed, though, generally speaking, the great body of the smaller tenants and of the laborers were of servile condition. In general usage the words _villanus_, _nativus_, _servus_, _custumarius_, and _rusticus_ are synonymous, and the cotters belonged legally to the same servile class. The distinction between free tenants and villains, using this word, as is customary, to include all those who were legally in servitude, was not a very clearly marked one. Their economic position was often so similar that the classes shaded into one another. But the villain was, as has been seen, usually burdened with much heavier services. He was subject to special payments, such as "merchet," a payment made to the lord of the manor when a woman of villain rank was married, and "leyr," a payment made by women for breach of chastity. He could be "tallaged" or taxed to any extent the lord saw fit. He was bound to the soil. He could not leave the manor to seek for better conditions of life elsewhere. If he ran away, his lord could obtain an order from a court and have him brought back. When permission was obtained to remain away from the manor as an inhabitant of another vill or of a town, it was only upon payment of a periodical sum, frequently known as "chevage" or head money. He could not sell his cattle without paying the lord for permission. He had practically no standing in the courts of the country. In any suit against his lord the proof of his condition of villainage was sufficient to put him out of court, and his only recourse was the local court of the manor, where the lord himself or his representative presided. Finally, in the eyes of the law, the villain had no property of his own, all his possessions being, in the last resort, the property of his lord. This legal theory, however, apparently had but little application to real life; for in the ordinary course of events the customary tenant, if only by custom, not by law, yet held and bequeathed to his descendants his land and his chattels quite as if they were his own. Serfdom, as it existed in England in the thirteenth century, can hardly be defined in strict legal terms. It can be described most correctly as a condition in which the villain tenant of the manor was bound to the locality and to his services and payments there by a legal bond, instead of merely by an economic bond, as was the case with the small free tenant. There were commonly a few persons in the vill who were not in the general body of cultivators of the land and were not therefore in the classes so far described. Since the vill was generally a parish also, the village contained the parish priest, who, though he might usually hold some acres in the open fields, and might belong to the peasant class, was of course somewhat set apart from the villagers by his education and his ordination. The mill was a valued possession of the lord of the manor, for by an almost universal custom the tenants were bound to have their grain ground there, and this monopoly enabled the miller to pay a substantial rent to the lord while keeping enough profit for himself to become proverbially well-to-do. There was often a blacksmith, whom we find sometimes exempted from other services on condition of keeping the demesne ploughs and other iron implements in order. A chance weaver or other craftsman is sometimes found, and when the vill was near sea or river or forest some who made their living by industries dependent on the locality. In the main, however, the whole life of the vill gathered around the arable, meadow, and pasture land, and the social position of the tenants, except for the cross division of serfdom, depended upon the respective amounts of land which they held. *11. The Manor Courts.*--The manor was the sphere of operations of a manor court. On every manor the tenants gathered at frequent periods for a great amount of petty judicial and regulative work. The most usual period for the meeting of the manor court was once every three weeks, though in some manors no trace of a meeting is found more frequently than three times, or even twice, a year. In these cases, however, it is quite probable that less formal meetings occurred of which no regular record was kept. Different kinds of gatherings of the tenants are usually distinguished according to the authority under which they were held, or the class of tenants of which they were made up. If the court was held by the lord simply because of his feudal rights as a landholder, and was busied only with matters of the inheritance, transfer, or grant of lands, the fining of tenants for the breach of manorial custom, or failure to perform their duties to the lord of the manor, the election of tenants to petty offices on the manor, and such matters, it was described in legal language as a court baron. If a court so occupied was made up of villain tenants only, it was called a customary court. If, on the other hand, the court also punished general offences, petty crimes, breaches of contract, breaches of the assize, that is to say, the established standard of amount, price, or quality of bread or beer, the lord of the manor drawing his authority to hold such a court either actually or supposedly from a grant from the king, such a court was called a court leet. With the court leet was usually connected the so-called view of frank pledge. Frank pledge was an ancient system, according to which all men were obliged to be enrolled in groups, so that if any one committed an offence, the other members of the group would be obliged to produce him for trial. View of frank pledge was the right to punish by fine any who failed to so enroll themselves. In the court baron and the customary court it was said by lawyers that the body of attendants were the judges, and the steward, representing the lord of the manor, only a presiding official; while in the court leet the steward was the actual judge of the tenants. In practice, however, it is probable that not much was made of these distinctions, and that the periodic gatherings were made to do duty for all business of any kind that needed attention, while the procedure was that which had become customary on that special manor, irrespective of the particular form of authority for the court. [Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth Century._)] The manor court was presided over by a steward or other officer representing the lord of the manor. Apparently all adult male tenants were expected to be present, and any inhabitant was liable to be summoned. A court was usually held in each manor, but sometimes a lord of several neighboring manors would hold the court for all of these in some one place. As most manors belonged to lords who had many manors in their possession, the steward or other official commonly proceeded from one manor or group of manors to another, holding the courts in each. Before the close of the thirteenth century the records of the manor courts, or at least of the more important of them, began to be kept with very great regularity and fulness, and it is to the mass of these manor court rolls which still remain that we owe most of our detailed knowledge of the condition of the body of the people in the later Middle Ages. The variety and the amount of business transacted at the court were alike considerable. When a tenant had died it was in the meeting of the manor court that his successor obtained a regrant of the land. The required relief was there assessed, and the heriot from the property of the deceased recorded. New grants of land were made, and transfers, leases, and abandonments by one tenant and assignments to another announced. For each of these processes of land transfer a fine was collected for the lord of the manor. Such entries as the following are constantly found: "John of Durham has come into court and taken one bond-land which Richard Avras formerly held but gave up because of his poverty; to have and hold for his lifetime, paying and doing the accustomed services as Richard paid and did them. He gives for entrance 6_s._ 8_d._;" "Agnes Mabeley is given possession of a quarter virgate of land which her mother held, and gives the lord 33_s._ 4_d._ for entrance." Disputes as to the right of possession of land and questions of dowry and inheritance were decided, a jury being granted in many cases by the lord at the petition of a claimant and on payment of a fee. Another class of cases consisted in the imposition of fines or amerciaments for the violation of the customs of the manor, of the rules of the lord, or of the requirements of the culprit's tenure; such as a villain marrying without leave, failure to perform boon-works or bad performance of work, failure to place the tenant's sheep in the lord's fold, cutting of wood or brush, making unlawful paths across the fields, the meadows, or the common, encroachment in ploughing upon other men's land or upon the common, or failure to send grain to the lord's mill for grinding. Sometimes the offence was of a more general nature, such as breach of assize, breach of contract, slander, assault, or injury to property. Still another part of the work of the court was the election of petty manorial officers; a reeve, a reaper, ale-tasters, and perhaps others. The duty of filling such offices when elected by the tenants and approved by the lord or his steward was, as has been said, one of the burdens of villainage. However, when a villain was fulfilling the office of reeve, it was customary for him to be relieved of at least a part of the payments and services to which he would otherwise be subject. Finally the manor court meetings were employed for the adoption of general regulations as to the use of the commons and other joint interests, and for the announcement of the orders of the steward in the keeping of the peace. *12. The Manor as an Estate of a Lord.*--The manor was profitable to the lord in various ways. He received rents in money and kind. These included the rents of assize from free and villain land tenants, rent from the tenant of the mill, and frequently from other sources. Then came the profits derived from the cultivation of the demesne land. In this the lord of the manor was simply a large farmer, except that he had a supply of labor bound to remain at hand and to give service without wages almost up to his needs. Finally there were the profits of the manor courts. As has been seen, these consisted of a great variety of fees, fines, amerciaments, and collections made by the steward or other official. Such varied payments and profits combined to make up the total value of the manor to the landowner. Not only the slender income of the country squire or knight whose estate consisted of a single manor of some ten or twenty pounds yearly value, but the vast wealth of the great noble or of the rich monastery or powerful bishopric was principally made up of the sum of such payments from a considerable number of manors. An appreciable part of the income of the government even was derived from the manors still in the possession of the crown. The mediæval manor was a little world in itself. The large number of scattered acres which made up the demesne farm cultivated in the interests of the lord of the manor, the small groups of scattered strips held by free holders or villain tenants who furnished most of the labor on the demesne farm, the little patches of ground held by mere laborers whose living was mainly gained by hired service on the land of the lord or of more prosperous tenants, the claims which all had to the use of the common pasture for their sheep and cattle and of the woods for their swine, all these together made up an agricultural system which secured a revenue for the lord, provided food and the raw material for primitive manufactures for the inhabitants of the vill, and furnished some small surplus which could be sold. [Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Great Malvern, Worcestershire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth Century._)] Life on the mediæval manor was hard. The greater part of the population was subject to the burdens of serfdom, and all, both free and serf, shared in the arduousness of labor, coarseness and lack of variety of food, unsanitary surroundings, and liability to the rigor of winter and the attacks of pestilence. Yet the average condition of comfort of the mass of the rural inhabitants of England was probably as high as at any subsequent time. Food in proportion to wages was very cheap, and the almost universal possession of some land made it possible for the very poorest to avoid starvation. Moreover, the great extent to which custom governed all payments, services, and rights must have prevented much of the extreme depression which has occasionally existed in subsequent periods in which greater competition has distinguished more clearly the capable from the incompetent. From the social rather than from the economic point of view the life of the mediæval manor was perhaps most clearly marked by this predominance of custom and by a second characteristic nearly related. This was the singularly close relationship in which all the inhabitants of the manor were bound to one another, and their correspondingly complete separation from the outside world. The common pasture, the intermingled strips of the holdings in the open fields, the necessary coöperation in the performance of their daily labor on the demesne land, the close contiguity of their dwellings, their universal membership in the same parish church, their common attendance and action in the manor courts, all must have combined to make the vill an organization of singular unity. This self-centred life, economically, judicially, and ecclesiastically so nearly independent of other bodies, put obstacles in the way of change. It prohibited intercourse beyond the manor, and opposed the growth of a feeling of common national life. The manorial life lay at the base of the stability which marked the mediæval period. *13. BIBLIOGRAPHY* GENERAL WORKS Certain general works which refer to long periods of economic history will be mentioned here and not again referred to, excepting in special cases. It is to be understood that they contain valuable matter on the subject, not only of this, but of succeeding chapters. They should therefore be consulted in addition to the more specific works named under each chapter. Cunningham, William: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, two volumes. The most extensive and valuable work that covers the whole field of English economic history. Ashley, W. J.: _English Economic History_, two volumes. The first volume is a full and careful analysis of mediæval economic conditions, with detailed notes and references to the primary sources. The second volume is a work of original investigation, referring particularly to conditions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it does not give such a clear analysis of the conditions of its period as the first volume. Traill, H. D.: _Social England_, six volumes. A composite work including a great variety of subjects, but seldom having the most satisfactory account of any one of them. Rogers, J. E. T.: _History of Agriculture and Prices_; _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_; _Economic Interpretation of History_. Professor Rogers' work is very extensive and detailed, and his books were largely pioneer studies. His statistical and other facts are useful, but his general statements are not very valuable, and his conclusions are not convincing. Palgrave, R. H. I.: _Dictionary of Political Economy_. Many of the articles on subjects of economic history are the best and most recent studies on their respective subjects, and the bibliographies contained in them are especially valuable. Four single-volume text-books have been published on this general subject:-- Cunningham, William, and McArthur, E. A.: _Outlines of English Industrial History_. Gibbins, H. de B.: _Industry in England_. Warner, George Townsend: _Landmarks in English Industrial History_. Price, L. L.: _A Short History of English Commerce and Industry_. SPECIAL WORKS Seebohm, Frederic: _The English Village Community_. Although written for another purpose,--to suggest a certain view of the origin of the medieval manor,--the first five chapters of this book furnish the clearest existing descriptive account of the fundamental facts of rural life in the thirteenth century. Its publication marked an era in the recognition of the main features of manorial organization. Green, for instance, the historian of the English people, seems to have had no clear conception of many of those characteristics of ordinary rural life which Mr. Seebohm has made familiar. Vinogradoff, Paul: _Villainage in England_. Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F. W.: _History of English Law_, Vol. 1. These two works are of especial value for the organization of the manor courts and the legal condition of the population. SOURCES Much that can be explained only with great difficulty becomes clear to the student immediately when he reads the original documents. Concrete illustrations of general statements moreover make the work more interesting and real. It has therefore been found desirable by many teachers to bring their students into contact with at least a few typical illustrative documents. The sources for the subject generally are given in the works named above. An admirable bibliography has been recently published by Gross, Charles: _The Sources and Literature of English History from the Earliest Times to about 1485_. References to abundant material for the illustration or further investigation of the subject of this chapter will be found in the following pamphlet:-- Davenport, Frances G.: _A Classified List of Printed Original Materials for English Manorial and Agrarian History_. Sources for the mediæval period are almost all in Latin or French. Some of them, however, have been more accessible by being translated into English and reprinted in convenient form. A few of these are given in C. W. Colby: _Selections from the Sources of English History_, and G. C. Lee: _Source Book of English History_. In the _Series of Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History_, published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania, several numbers include documents in this field. Vol. III, No. 5, is devoted entirely to manorial documents. DISCUSSIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MANOR The question of the origin of the mediæval manorial organization, whether it is principally of native English or of Roman origin, or hewn from still other materials, although not treated in this text-book, has been the subject of much interest and discussion. One view of the case is the thesis of Seebohm's book, referred to above. Other books treating of it are the following:-- Earle, John: _Land Charters and Saxonic Documents_, Introduction. Gomme, G. L.: _The Village Community_. Ashley, W. J.: A translation of Fustel de Coulanges, _Origin of Property in Land_, Introduction. Andrews, Charles M.: _The Old English Manor_, Introduction. Maitland, F. W.: _Domesday Book and Beyond_. Meitzen, August: _Siedelung und Agrarwesen_, Vol. II, Chap. 7. The writings of Kemble and of Sir Henry Maine belong rather to a past period of study and speculation, but their ideas still lie at the base of discussions on the subject. CHAPTER III TOWN LIFE AND ORGANIZATION [Illustration: Town Wall of Southampton, Built in the Thirteenth Century. (Turner: _Domestic Architecture in England_.)] *14. The Town Government.*--In the middle of the thirteenth century there were some two hundred towns in England distinguishable by their size, form of government, and the occupations of their inhabitants, from the rural agricultural villages which have just been described. London probably had more than 25,000 inhabitants; York and Bristol may each have had as many as 10,000. The population of the others varied from as many as 6000 to less than 1000. Perhaps the most usual population of an English mediæval town lay between 1500 and 4000. They were mostly walled, though such protection was hardly necessary, and the military element in English towns was therefore but slightly developed. Those towns which contained cathedrals, and were therefore the seats of bishoprics, were called cities. All other organized towns were known as boroughs, though this distinction in the use of the terms city and borough was by no means always preserved. The towns differed widely in their form of government; but all had charters from the king or from some nobleman, abbey, or bishopric on whose lands they had grown up. Such a charter usually declared the right of the town to preserve the ancient customs which had come to be recognized among its inhabitants, and granted to it certain privileges, exemptions, and rights of self-government. The most universal and important of these privileges were the following: the town paid the tolls and dues owed to the king or other lord by its inhabitants in a lump sum, collecting the amount from its own citizens as the latter or their own authorities saw fit; the town courts had jurisdiction over most suits and offences, relieving the townsmen from answering at hundred and county court suits which concerned matters within their own limits; the townsmen, where the king granted the charter, were exempt from the payment of tolls of various kinds throughout his dominions; they could pass ordinances and regulations controlling the trade of the town, the administration of its property, and its internal affairs generally, and could elect officials to carry out such regulations. These officials also corresponded and negotiated in the name of the town with the authorities of other towns and with the government. From the close of the thirteenth century all towns of any importance were represented in Parliament. These elements of independence were not all possessed by every town, and some had special privileges not enumerated in the above list. The first charter of a town was apt to be vague and inadequate, but from time to time a new charter was obtained giving additional privileges and defining the old rights more clearly. Nor had all those who dwelt within the town limits equal participation in its advantages. These were usually restricted to those who were known as citizens or burgesses; full citizenship depending primarily on the possession of a house and land within the town limits. In addition to the burgesses there were usually some inhabitants of the town--strangers, Jews, fugitive villains from the rural villages, or perhaps only poorer natives of the town--who did not share in these privileges. Those who did possess all civil rights of the townsmen were in many ways superior in condition to men in the country. In addition to the advantages of the municipal organization mentioned above, all burgesses were personally free, there was entire exemption from the vexatious petty payments of the rural manors, and burgage tenure was thee nearest to actual land ownership existent during the Middle Ages. [Illustration: Charter of Henry II to the Borough of Nottingham. (_Records of Borough of Nottingham_. Published by the Corporation.)] *15. The Gild Merchant.*--The town was most clearly marked off from the country by the occupations by which its people earned their living. These were, in the first place, trading; secondly, manufacturing or handicrafts. Agriculture of course existed also, since most townsmen possessed some lands lying outside of the enclosed portions of the town. On these they raised crops and pastured their cattle. Of these varied occupations, however, it was trade which gave character and, indeed, existence itself to the town. Foreign goods were brought to the towns from abroad for sale, the surplus products of rural manors found their way there for marketing; the products of one part of the country which were needed in other parts were sought for and purchased in the towns. Men also sold the products of their own labor, not only food products, such as bread, meat, and fish, but also objects of manufacture, as cloth, arms, leather, and goods made of wood, leather, or metal. For the protection and regulation of this trade the organization known as the gild merchant had grown up in each town. The gild merchant seems to have included all of the population of the town who habitually engaged in the business of selling, whether commodities of their own manufacture or those they had previously purchased. Membership in the gild was not exactly coincident with burgess-ship; persons who lived outside of the town were sometimes admitted into that organization, and, on the other hand, some inhabitants of the town were not included among its members. Nevertheless, since practically all of the townsmen made their living by trade in some form or another, the group of burgesses and the group of gild members could not have been very different. The authority of the gild merchant within its field of trade regulation seems to have been as complete as that of the town community as a whole in its field of judicial, financial, and administrative jurisdiction. The gild might therefore be defined as that form of organization of the inhabitants of the town which controlled its trade and industry. The principal reason for the existence of the gild was to preserve to its own members the monopoly of trade. No one not in the gild merchant of the town could buy or sell there except under conditions imposed by the gild. Foreigners coming from other countries or traders from other English towns were prohibited from buying or selling in any way that might interfere with the interests of the gildsmen. They must buy and sell at such times and in such places and only such articles as were provided for by the gild regulations. They must in all cases pay the town tolls, from which members of the gild were exempt. At Southampton, for instance, we find the following provisions: "And no one in the city of Southampton shall buy anything to sell again in the same city unless he is of the gild merchant or of the franchise." Similarly at Leicester, in 1260, it was ordained that no gildsman should form a partnership with a stranger, allowing him to join in the profits of the sale of wool or other merchandise. [Illustration: Hall of Merchants' Company of York. (Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)] [Illustration: Interior of Hall of Merchants' Company of York. (Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)] As against outsiders the gild merchant was a protective body, as regards its own members it was looked upon and constantly spoken of as a fraternity. Its members must all share in the common expenditures, they are called brethren of the society, their competition with one another is reduced to its lowest limits. For instance, we find the provision that "any one who is of the gild merchant may share in all merchandise which another gildsman shall buy." [Illustration: Earliest Merchant Gild Roll of the Borough of Leicester. (Bateson: _Records of the Borough of Leicester_. Published by C. J. Clay & Sons, Cambridge.)] The presiding officer was usually known as the alderman, while the names given to other officials, such as stewards, deans, bailiffs, chaplains, skevins, and ushers, and the duties they performed, varied greatly from time to time. Meetings were held at different periods, sometimes annually, in many cases more frequently. At these meetings new ordinances were passed, officers elected, and other business transacted. It was also a convivial occasion, a gild feast preceding or following the other labors of the meeting. In some gilds the meeting was regularly known as "the drinking." There were likewise frequent sittings of the officials of the fraternity, devoted to the decision of disputes between brethren, the admission of new members, the fining or expulsion of offenders against the gild ordinances, and other routine work. These meetings were known as "morrowspeches". The greater part of the activity of the gild merchant consisted in the holding of its meetings with their accompanying feasts, and in the enforcement of its regulations upon its members and upon outsiders. It fulfilled, however, many fraternal duties for its members. It is provided in one set of statutes that, "If a gildsman be imprisoned in England in time of peace, the alderman, with the steward and with one of the skevins, shall go, at the cost of the gild, to procure the deliverance of the one who is in prison." In another, "If any of the brethren shall fall into poverty or misery, all the brethren are to assist him by common consent out of the chattels of the house or fraternity, or of their proper own." The funeral rites, especially, were attended by the man's gild brethren. "And when a gildsman dies, all those who are of the gild and are in the city shall attend the service for the dead, and gildsmen shall bear the body and bring it to the place of burial." The gild merchant also sometimes fulfilled various religious, philanthropic, and charitable duties, not only to its members, but to the public generally, and to the poor. The time of the fullest development of the gild merchant varied, of course, in different towns, but its widest expansion was probably in the early part of the period we are studying, that is, during the thirteenth century. Later it came to be in some towns indistinguishable from the municipal government in general, its members the same as the burgesses, its officers represented by the officers of the town. In some other towns the gild merchant gradually lost its control over trade, retaining only its fraternal, charitable, and religious features. In still other cases the expression gradually lost all definite significance and its meaning became a matter for antiquarian dispute. *16. The Craft Gilds.*--By the fourteenth century the gild merchant of the town was a much less conspicuous institution than it had previously been. Its decay was largely the result of the growth of a group of organizations in each town which were spoken of as crafts, fraternities, gilds, misteries, or often merely by the name of their occupation, as "the spurriers," "the dyers," "the fishmongers." These organizations are usually described in later writings as craft gilds. It is not to be understood that the gild merchant and the craft gilds never existed contemporaneously in any town. The former began earlier and decayed before the craft gilds reached their height, but there was a considerable period when it must have been a common thing for a man to be a member both of the gild merchant of the town and of the separate organization of his own trade. The later gilds seem to have grown up in response to the needs of handicraft much as the gild merchant had grown up to regulate trade, though trading occupations also were eventually drawn into the craft gild form of organization. The weavers seem to have been the earliest occupation to be organized into a craft gild; but later almost every form of industry which gave employment to a handful of craftsmen in any town had its separate fraternity. Since even nearly allied trades, such as the glovers, girdlers, pocket makers, skinners, white tawyers, and other workers in leather; or the fletchers, the makers of arrows, the bowyers, the makers of bows, and the stringers, the makers of bowstrings, were organized into separate bodies, the number of craft gilds in any one town was often very large. At London there were by 1350 at least as many as forty, at York, some time later, more than fifty. [Illustration: Old Townhall of Leicester, Formerly Hall of Corpus Christi Gild. (Drawing made in 1826.)] The craft gilds existed usually under the authority of the town government, though frequently they obtained authorization or even a charter from the crown. They were formed primarily to regulate and preserve the monopoly of their own occupations in their own town, just as the gild merchant existed to regulate the trade of the town in general. No one could carry on any trade without being subject to the organization which controlled that trade. Membership, however, was not intentionally restricted. Any man who was a capable workman and conformed to the rules of the craft was practically a member of the organization of that industry. It is a common requirement in the earliest gild statutes that every man who wishes to carry on that particular industry should have his ability testified to by some known members of the craft. But usually full membership and influence in the gild was reached as a matter of course by the artisans passing through the successive grades of apprentice, journeyman, and master. As an apprentice he was bound to a master for a number of years, living in his house and learning the trade in his shop. There was usually a signed contract entered into between the master and the parents of the apprentice, by which the former agreed to provide all necessary clothing, food, and lodging, and teach to the apprentice all he himself knew about his craft. The latter, on the other hand, was bound to keep secret his master's affairs, to obey all his commandments, and to behave himself properly in all things. After the expiration of the time agreed upon for his apprenticeship, which varied much in individual cases, but was apt to be about seven years, he became free of the trade as a journeyman, a full workman. The word "journeyman" may refer to the engagement being by the day, from the French word _journée_, or to the habit of making journeys from town to town in search of work, or it may be derived from some other origin. As a journeyman he served for wages in the employ of a master. In many cases he saved enough money for the small requirements of setting up an independent shop. Then as full master artisan or tradesman he might take part in all the meetings and general administration of the organized body of his craft, might hold office, and would himself probably have one or more journeymen in his employ and apprentices under his guardianship. As almost all industries were carried on in the dwelling-houses of the craftsmen, no establishments could be of very considerable size, and the difference of position between master, journeyman, and apprentice could not have been great. The craft gild was organized with its regular rules, its officers, and its meetings. The rules or ordinances of the fraternity were drawn up at some one time and added to or altered from time to time afterward. The approval of the city authorities was frequently sought for such new statutes as well as for the original ordinances, and in many towns appears to have been necessary. The rules provided for officers and their powers, the time and character of meetings, and for a considerable variety of functions. These varied of course in different trades and in different towns, but some characteristics were almost universal. Provisions were always either tacitly or formally included for the preservation of the monopoly of the crafts in the town. The hours of labor were regulated. Night work was very generally prohibited, apparently because of the difficulty of oversight at that time, as was work on Saturday afternoons, Sundays, and other holy days. Provisions were made for the inspection of goods by the officers of the gild, all workshops and goods for sale being constantly subject to their examination, if they should wish it. In those occupations that involved buying and selling the necessities of life, such as those of the fishmongers and the bakers, the officers of the fraternity, like the town authorities, were engaged in a continual struggle with "regrators," "forestallers," and "engrossers," which were appellations as odious as they were common in the mediæval town. Regrating meant buying to sell again at a higher price without having made any addition to the value of the goods; forestalling was going to the place of production to buy, or in any other way trying to outwit fellow-dealers by purchasing things before they came into the open market where all had the same opportunity; engrossing was buying up the whole supply, or so much of it as not to allow other dealers to get what they needed, the modern "cornering of the market." These practices, which were regarded as so objectionable in the eyes of mediæval traders, were frequently nothing more than what would be considered commendable enterprise in a more competitive age. Another class of rules was for mutual assistance, for kindliness among members, and for the obedience and faithfulness of journeymen and apprentices. There were provisions for assistance to members of the craft when in need, or to their widows and orphans, for the visitation of those sick or in prison, for common attendance at the burial services of deceased members, and for other charitable and philanthropic objects. Thus the craft gild, like the gild merchant, combined close social relationship with a distinctly recognized and enforced regulation of the trade. This regulation provided for the protection of members of the organization from outside competition, and it also prevented any considerable amount of competition among members; it supported the interests of the full master members of the craft as against those in the journeyman stage, and enforced the custom of the trade in hours, materials, methods of manufacture, and often in prices. [Illustration: Table of Assize of Bread in Record Book of City of Hull. (Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)] The officers were usually known as masters, wardens, or stewards. Their powers extended to the preservation of order among the master members of the craft at the meetings, and among the journeymen and apprentices of the craft at all times; to the supervision, either directly or through deputies, of the work of the members, seeing that it conformed to the rules and was not false in any way; to the settlement, if possible, of disputes among members of the craft; to the administration of its charitable work; and to the representation of the organized body of the craft before town or other authorities. Common religious observances were held by the craftsmen not only at the funerals of members, but on the day of the saint to which the gild was especially dedicated. Most fraternities kept up a shrine or chapel in some parish church. Fines for the breach of gild rules were often ordered to be paid in wax that the candles about the body of dead brethren and in the gild chapel should never be wanting. All the brethren of the gild, dressed in common suits of livery, walked in procession from their hall or meeting room to the church, performed their devotions and joined in the services in commemoration of the dead. Members of the craft frequently bequeathed property for the partial support of a chaplain and payment of other expenses connected with their "obits," or masses for the repose of their souls and those of their relatives. Closely connected with the religious observances was the convivial side of the gild's life. On the annual gild day, or more frequently, the members all gathered at their hall or some inn to a feast, which varied in luxuriousness according to the wealth of the fraternity, from bread, cheese, and ale to all the exuberance of which the Middle Ages were capable. Somewhat later, we find the craft gilds taking entire charge of the series or cycles of "mystery plays," which were given in various towns. The words of the plays produced at York, Coventry, Chester, and Woodkirk have come down to us and are of extreme interest as embryonic forms of the drama and examples of purely vernacular language. It is quite certain that such groups of plays were given by the crafts in a number of other towns. They were generally given on Corpus Christi day, a feast which fell in the early summer time, when out-door pleasures were again enjoyable after the winter's confinement. A cycle consisted of a series of dialogues or short plays, each based upon some scene of biblical story, so arranged that the whole Bible narrative should be given consecutively from the Creation to the Second Advent. One of the crafts, starting early in the morning, would draw a pageant consisting of a platform on wheels, to a regularly appointed spot in a conspicuous part of the town, and on this platform, with some rude scenery, certain members of the gild or men employed by them would proceed to recite a dialogue in verse representative of some early part of the Bible story. After they had finished, their pageant would be dragged to another station, where they repeated their performance. In the meantime a second company had taken their former place, and recited a dialogue representative of a second scene. So the whole day would be occupied by the series of performances. The town and the craftsmen valued the celebration because it was an occasion for strangers visiting their city and thus increasing the volume of trade, as well as because it furnished an opportunity for the gratification of their social and dramatic instincts. It was not only at the periodical business meetings, or on the feast days, or in the preparation for the dramatic shows, that the gildsmen were thrown together. Usually all the members of one craft lived on the same street or in the same part of the town, and were therefore members of the same parish church and constantly brought under one another's observation in all the daily concerns of life. All things combined to make the craft a natural and necessary centre for the interest of each of its members. *17. Non-industrial Gilds.*--Besides the gilds merchant, which included persons of all industrial occupations, and the craft gilds, which were based upon separate organizations of each industry, there were gilds or fraternities in existence which had no industrial functions whatever. These are usually spoken of as "religious" or "social" gilds. It would perhaps be better to describe them simply as non-industrial gilds; for their religious and social functions they had in common, as has been seen, both with the gild merchant and the craft organizations. They only differed from these in not being based upon or interested in the monopoly or oversight of any kind of trade or handicraft. They differed also from the craft gilds in that all their members were on an equal basis, there being no such industrial grades as apprentice, journeyman, and master; and from both of the organizations already discussed in the fact that they existed in small towns and even in mere villages, as well as in industrial centres. In these associations the religious, social, and charitable elements were naturally more prominent than in those fraternities which were organized primarily for some kind of economic regulation. They were generally named after some saint. The ordinances usually provided for one or more solemn services in the year, frequently with a procession in livery, and sometimes with a considerable amount of pantomime or symbolic show. For instance, the gild of St. Helen at Beverly, in their procession to the church of the Friars Minors on the day of their patron saint, were preceded by an old man carrying a cross; after him a fair young man dressed as St. Helen; then another old man carrying a shovel, these being intended to typify the finding of the cross. Next came the sisters two and two, after them the brethren of the gild, and finally the officers. There were always provisions for solemnities at the funerals of members, for burial at the expense of the gild if the member who had died left no means for a suitable ceremony, and for prayers for deceased members. What might be called the insurance feature was also much more nearly universal than in the case of the industrial fraternities. Help was given in case of theft, fire, sickness, or almost any kind of loss which was not chargeable to the member's own misdoing. Finally it was very customary for such gilds to provide for the support of a certain number of dependents, aged men or women, cripples, or lepers, for charity's sake; and occasionally educational facilities were also provided by them from their regular income or from bequests made for the purpose. The social-religious gilds were extremely numerous, and seem frequently to have existed within the limits of a craft, including some of its members and not others, or within a certain parish, including some of the parishioners, but not all. Thus if there were men in the mediæval town who were not members of some trading or craft body, they would in all probability be members of some society based merely on religious or social feeling. The whole tendency of mediæval society was toward organization, combination, close union with one's fellows. It might be said that all town life involved membership in some organization, and usually in that one into which a man was drawn by the occupation in which he made his living. These gilds or the town government itself controlled even the affairs of private economic life in the city, just as the customary agriculture of the country prevented much freedom of action there. Methods of trading, or manufacture, the kind and amount of material to be used, hours of labor, conditions of employment, even prices of work, were regulated by the gild ordinances. The individual gildsman had as little opportunity to emancipate himself from the controlling force of the association as the individual tenant on the rural manor had to free himself from the customary agriculture and the customary services. Whether we study rural or urban society, whether we look at the purely economic or at the broader social side of existence, life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was corporate rather than individual. *18. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Gross, Charles: _The Gild Merchant_, two volumes. The first volume consists of a full account and discussion of the character and functions of the gild merchant, with a number of appendices on cognate subjects. The second volume contains the documents on which the first is based. Seligman, E. R. A.: _Two Chapters on Mediæval Gilds_. Brentano, L.: _The History and Development of English Gilds_. An essay prefixed to a volume of ordinances of English Gilds, edited by T. Smith. Brentano's essay is only referred to because of the paucity of works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily accessible in English, as in the following works:-- Riley: _Memorials of London and London Life_. Smith, Toulmin: _English Gilds_. Various documents illustrative of town and gild history will also be found in Vol. II, No. 1, of the _Translations and Reprints_, published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania. Better descriptions exist for the position of the gilds in special towns than for their general character, especially in London by Herbert, in Hull by Lambert, in Shrewsbury by Hibbert, and in Coventry by Miss Harris. CHAPTER IV MEDIÆVAL TRADE AND COMMERCE *19. Markets and Fairs.*--Within the towns, in addition to the ordinary trading described in the last chapter, much buying and selling was done at the weekly or semi-weekly markets. The existence of a market in a town was the result of a special grant from the king, sometimes to the burgesses themselves, sometimes to a neighboring nobleman or abbey. In the latter case the tolls paid by outsiders who bought or sold cattle or victuals in the market did not go to the town or gild authorities, but to the person who was said to "own" the market. Many places which differed in scarcely any other way from agricultural villages possessed markets, so that "market towns" became a descriptive term for small towns midway in size between the larger boroughs or cities and mere villages. The sales at markets were usually of the products of the surrounding country, especially of articles of food consumption, so that the fact of the existence of a market on one or more days of the week in a large town was of comparatively little importance from the point of view of more general trade. Far more important was the similar institution of periodical fairs. Fairs, like markets, existed only by grant from the king. They differed from markets, however, in being held only once a year or at most semi-annually or quarterly, in being invariably in the possession of private persons, never of town governments, and in the fact that during their continuance as a rule all buying and selling except at the fairs was suspended within a considerable circuit. Several hundred grants of fairs are recorded on the rolls of royal charters, most of them to abbeys, bishoprics, and noblemen; but comparatively few of them were of sufficient size or importance to play any considerable part in the trade and commerce of the country. Moreover, the development of the towns with their continuous trade tended to draw custom away from all the fairs except those which had obtained some especial importance and an international reputation. Of these, however, there was still a considerable number whose influence was very great. The best known were those of Winchester, of Stourbridge near Cambridge, of St. Ives belonging to the abbot of Ramsay, and of Boston. In early times fairs were frequently held in the churchyards, but this came to be looked upon as a scandal, and was prohibited by a law of 1285. The fairs were in many cases held just beyond the limits of a town in an open field or on a smooth hillside. Each year, some time before the opening day of the fair, this ground was formally occupied by the servants of the owner of the fair, wooden booths were erected or ground set apart for those who should put up their own tents or prefer to sell in the open. Then as merchants appeared from foreign or English towns they chose or were assigned places which they were bound to retain during the continuance of the fair. By the time of the opening of the fair those who expected to sell were arranged in long rows or groups, according to the places they came from, or the kind of goods in which they dealt. After the opening had been proclaimed no merchant of the nearby town could buy or sell, except within the borders of the fair. The town authorities resigned their functions into the hands of the officials whom the lord of the fair had placed in charge of it, and for the time for which the fair was held, usually from six to twelve days, everything within the enclosure of the fair, within the town, and in the surrounding neighborhood was under their control. [Illustration: Location of Some of the Principal Fairs in the Thirteenth Century.] Tolls were collected for the advantage of the lord of the fair from all goods as they were brought into or taken out from the bounds of the fair, or at the time of their sale; stallage was paid for the rent of booths, fees were charged for the use of space, and for using the lord's weights and scales. Good order was preserved and fair dealing enforced by the officials of the lord. To prevent offences and settle disputes arising in the midst of the busy trading the officials of the lord formed a court which sat continually and followed a summary procedure. This was known as a court of "pie-powder," that is _pied poudré_, or _dusty foot_, so called, no doubt, from its readiness to hear the suits of merchants and wayfarers, as they were, without formality or delay. At this court a great variety of cases came up, such as disputes as to debts, failure to perform contracts of sale or purchase, false measurements, theft, assault, defamation, and misdemeanors of all kinds. Sometimes the court decided offhand, sometimes compurgation was allowed immediately or on the next day, sometimes juries were formed and gave decisions. The law which the court of pie-powder administered was often referred to as the "law merchant," a somewhat less rigid system than the common law, and one whose rules were generally defined, in these courts and in the king's courts, by juries chosen from among the merchants themselves. At these fairs, even more than in the towns, merchants from a distance gathered to buy the products peculiar to the part of England where the fair was held, and to sell their own articles of importation or production. The large fairs furnished by far the best markets of the time. We find mention made in the records of one court of pie-powder of men from a dozen or twenty English towns, from Bordeaux, and from Rouen. The men who came from any one town, whether of England or the Continent, acted and were treated as common members of the gild merchant of that town, as forming a sort of community, and being to a certain extent responsible for one another. They did their buying and selling, it is true, separately, but if disputes arose, the whole group were held responsible for each member. For example, the following entry was made in the roll of the fair of St. Ives in the year 1275: "William of Fleetbridge and Anne his wife complain of Thomas Coventry of Leicester for unjustly withholding from them 55_s._ 2-1/2_d._ for a sack of wool.... Elias is ordered to attach the community of Leicester to answer ... and of the said community Allan Parker, Adam Nose and Robert Howell are attached by three bundles of ox-hides, three hundred bundles of sheep skins and six sacks of wool." *20. Trade Relations between Towns.*--The fairs were only temporary selling places. When the time for which the fair was held had expired the booths were removed, the merchants returned to their native cities or travelled away to some other fair, and the officials were withdrawn. The place was deserted until the next quarter or year. But in the towns, as has been already stated, more or less continuous trade went on; not only petty retail trade and that of the weekly or semi-weekly markets between townsmen or countrymen coming from the immediate vicinity, but a wholesale trade between the merchants of that town and those from other towns in England or on the Continent. It was of this trade above all that the gild merchant of each town possessed the regulation. Merchants from another town were treated much the same, whether that town was English or foreign. In fact, "foreigner" or "alien," as used in the town records, of Bristol, for instance, may apply to citizens of London or Oxford just as well as to those of Paris or Cologne. Such "foreign" merchants could deal when they came to a town only with members of the gild, and only on the conditions required by the gild. Usually they could buy or sell only at wholesale, and tolls were collected from them upon their sales or purchases. They were prohibited from dealing in some kinds of articles altogether, and frequently the duration of their stay in the town was limited to a prescribed period. Under such circumstances the authorities of various towns entered into trade agreements with those of other towns providing for mutual concessions and advantages. Correspondence was also constantly going on between the officials of various towns for the settlement of individual points of dispute, for the return of fugitive apprentices, asking that justice might be done to aggrieved citizens, and on occasion threatening reprisal. Southampton had formal agreements with more than seventy towns or other trading bodies. During a period of twenty years the city authorities of London sent more than 300 letters on such matters to the officials of some 90 other towns in England and towns on the Continent. The merchants from any one town did not therefore trade or act entirely as separate individuals, but depended on the prestige of their town, or the support of the home authorities, or the privileges already agreed upon by treaty. The non-payment of a debt by a merchant of one town usually made any fellow-townsman liable to seizure where the debt was owed, until the debtor could be made to pay. In 1285, by a law of Edward I, this was prohibited as far as England was concerned, but a merchant from a French town might still have his person and property seized for a debt of which he may have had no previous knowledge. External trade was thus not so much individual, between some Englishmen and others; or international, between Englishmen and Frenchmen, Flemings, Spaniards, or Germans, as it was intermunicipal, as it has been well described. Citizens of various towns, London, Bristol, Venice, Ghent, Arras, or Lubeck, for instance, carried on their trade under the protection their city had obtained for them. *21. Foreign Trading Relations.*--The regulations and restrictions of fairs and town markets and gilds merchant must have tended largely to the discouragement of foreign trade. Indeed, the feeling of the body of English town merchants was one of strong dislike to foreigners and a desire to restrict their trade within the narrowest limits. In addition to the burdens and limitations placed upon all traders not of their own town, it was very common in the case of merchants from abroad to require that they should only remain within the town for the purpose of selling for forty days, and that they should board not at an inn but in the household of some town merchant, who could thus keep oversight of their movements, and who would be held responsible if his guest violated the law in any way. This was called the custom of "hostage." The king, on the other hand, and the classes most influential in the national government, the nobility and the churchmen, favored foreign trade. A series of privileges, guarantees, and concessions were consequently issued by the government to individual foreign merchants, to foreign towns, and even to foreigners generally, the object of which was to encourage their coming to England to trade. The most remarkable instance of this was the so-called _Carta Mercatoria_ issued by Edward I in 1303. It was given according to its own terms, for the peace and security of merchants coming to England from Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Tuscany, Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Quercy, Flanders, Brabant, and all other foreign lands. It allowed such merchants to bring in and sell almost all kinds of goods, and freed them from the payment of many tolls and payments habitually exacted by the towns; it gave them permission to sell to strangers as well as to townsmen, and to retail as well as sell by wholesale. It freed them from the necessity of dwelling with native merchants, and of bringing their stay to a close within a restricted time. Town and market authorities were required by it to give prompt justice to foreigners according to the law merchant, and it was promised that a royal judge would be specially appointed to listen to appeals. It is quite evident that if this charter had been enforced some of the most familiar and valued customs of the merchants of the various English towns would have been abrogated. In consequence of vigorous protests and bitter resistance on the part of the townsmen its provisions were partly withdrawn, partly ignored, and the position of foreign merchants in England continued to depend on the tolerably consistent support of the crown. Even this was modified by the steady policy of hostility, limitation, and control on the part of the native merchants. With the exception of some intercourse between the northern towns and the Scandinavian countries, the foreign trade of England was carried on almost entirely by foreigners. English merchants, until after the fourteenth century, seem to have had neither the ability, the enterprise, nor the capital to go to continental cities in any numbers to sell the products of their own country or to buy goods which would be in demand when imported into England. Foreigners were more enterprising. From Flemish, French, German, Italian, and even Spanish cities merchants came over as traders. The product of England which was most in demand was wool. Certain parts of England were famous throughout all Europe for the quality and quantity of the wool raised there. The relative good order of England and its exemption from civil war made it possible to raise sheep more extensively than in countries where foraging parties from rival bodies of troops passed frequently to and fro. Many of the monasteries, especially in the north and west, had large outlying wastes of land which were regularly used for the raising of sheep. The product of these northern and western pastures as well as the surplus product of the demesnes and larger holdings of the ordinary manors was brought to the fairs and towns for sale and bought up readily by foreign merchants. Sheepskins, hides, and tanned leather were also exported, as were certain coarse woven fabrics. Tin and lead were well-known products, at that time almost peculiar to England, and in years of plentiful production, grain, salt meat, and dairy products were exported. England was far behind most of the Continent in industrial matters, so that there was much that could be brought into the country that would be in demand, both of the natural productions of foreign countries and of their manufactured articles. Trade relations existed between England and the Scandinavian countries, northern Germany, southern Germany, the Netherlands, northeastern, northwestern, and southern France, Spain and Portugal, and various parts of Italy. Of these lines of trade the most important were the trade with the Hanse cities of northern Germany, with the Flemish cities, and with those in Italy, especially Venice. *22. The Italian and Eastern Trade.*--The merchandise which Venice had to offer was of an especially varied nature. Her prosperity had begun with a coastwise trade along the shores of the Adriatic. Later, especially during the period of the Crusades, her training had been extended to the eastern Mediterranean, where she obtained trading concessions from the Greek Emperor and formed a half commercial, half political empire of her own among the island cities and coast districts of the Ionian Sea, along the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, and finally in the Black Sea. From these regions she brought the productions peculiar to the eastern Mediterranean: wines, sugar, dried fruits and nuts, cotton, drugs, dyestuffs, and certain kinds of leather and other manufactured articles. [Illustration: Trade Routes between England and the Continent in the Fourteenth Century. Engraved by Bormay and Co., N.Y.] Eventually Venice became the special possessor of a still more distant trade, that of the far East. The products of Arabia and Persia, India and the East Indian Islands, and even of China, all through the Middle Ages, as in antiquity, made their way by long and difficult routes to the western countries of Europe. Silk and cotton, both raw and manufactured into fine goods, indigo and other dyestuffs, aromatic woods and gums, narcotics and other drugs, pearls, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, turquoises, and other precious stones, gold and silver, and above all the edible spices, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, could be obtained only in Asia. There were three principal routes by which these goods were brought into Europe: first, along the Red Sea and overland across Egypt; second, up the Persian Gulf to its head, and then either along the Euphrates to a certain point whence the caravan route turned westward to the Syrian coast, or along the Tigris to its upper waters, and then across to the Black Sea at Trebizond; third, by caravan routes across Asia, then across the Caspian Sea, and overland again, either to the Black Sea or through Russia to the Baltic. A large part of this trade was gathered up by the Italian cities, especially Venice, at its various outlets upon the Mediterranean or adjacent waters. She had for exportation therefore, in addition to her own manufactures, merchandise which had been gathered from all parts of the then known world. The Venetian laws regulated commerce with the greatest minuteness. All goods purchased by Venetian traders must as a rule be brought first to the city and unloaded and stored in the city warehouses. A certain amount of freedom of export by land or water was then allowed, but by far the greater proportion of the goods remained under the partial control of the government. When conditions were considered favorable, the Senate voted a certain number of government galleys for a given voyage. There were several objective points for these voyages, but one was regularly England and Flanders, and the group of vessels sent to those countries was known as the "Flanders Fleet." Such an expedition was usually ordered about once a year, and consisted of two to five galleys. These were put under the charge of an admiral and provided with sailing masters, crews of rowers, and armed men to protect them, all at the expense of the merchants who should send goods in the vessels. Stringent regulations were also imposed upon them by the government, defining the length of their stay and appointing a series of stopping places, usually as follows: Capo d'Istria, Corfu, Otranto, Syracuse, Messina, Naples, Majorca, certain Spanish ports, Lisbon; then across the Bay of Biscay to the south coast of England, where usually the fleet divided, part going to Sluys, Middleburg, or Antwerp, in the Netherlands; the remainder going to Southampton, Sandwich, London, or elsewhere in England. At one or other of the southern ports of England the fleet would reassemble on its return, the whole outward and return voyage usually taking about a year. The merchants who had come with the fleet thereupon proceeded to dispose of their goods in the southern towns and fairs of England and to buy wool or other goods which might be taken back to Venice or disposed of on the way. A somewhat similar trade was kept up with other Italian cities, especially with Genoa and Florence, though these lines of trade were more extensive in the fifteenth century than in the fourteenth. *23. The Flanders Trade and the Staple.*--A trade of greater bulk and greater importance, though it did not include articles from such a distance as that of Italy, was the trade with the Flemish cities. This was more closely connected with English wool production than was that with any other country. Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Courtrai, Arras, and a number of other cities in Flanders and the adjacent provinces of the Netherlands and France had become populous and rich, principally from their weaving industry. For their manufacture of fine fabrics they needed the English wool, and in turn their fine woven goods were in constant demand for the use of the wealthier classes in England. English skill was not yet sufficient to produce anything more than the crudest and roughest of textile fabrics. The fine cloths, linens, cambrics, cloth of gold and silver, tapestries and hangings, were the product of the looms of the Flemish cities. Other fine manufactured goods, such as armor and weapons, glass and furniture, and articles which had been brought in the way of trade to the Netherlands, were all exported thence and sold in England. The Flemish dealers who habitually engaged in the English trade were organized among themselves in a company or league known as the "Flemish Hanse of London." A considerable number of towns held such membership in the organization that their citizens could take part in the trade and share in the benefits and privileges of the society, and no citizen of these towns could trade in England without paying the dues and submitting himself to the rules of the Hanse. The export trade from England to the Netherlands was controlled from the English side by the system known as the "Staple." From early times it had been customary to gather English standard products in certain towns in England or abroad for sale. These towns were known as "staples" or "staple towns," and wool, woolfells, leather, tin, and lead, the goods most extensively exported, were known as "staple goods." Subsequently the government took control of the matter, and appointed a certain town in the Netherlands to which staple goods must be sent in the first place when they were exported from England. Later certain towns in England were appointed as staple towns, where all goods of the kinds mentioned above should be taken to be registered, weighed, and taxed before exportation. Just at the close of the period under discussion, in 1354, a careful organization was given to the system of staple towns in England, by which in each of the ten or twelve towns to which staple goods must be brought for exportation, a Mayor of the Staple and two Constables were elected by the "merchants of the staple," native and foreign. These officials had a number of duties, some of them more particularly in the interest of the king and treasury, others in the interest of the foreign merchants, still others merely for the preservation of good order and the enforcement of justice. The law merchant was made the basis of judgment, and every effort made to grant protection to foreigners and at the same time secure the financial interests of the government. But the policy of the government was by no means consistent. Both before and after this date, the whole system of staples was repeatedly abolished for a time and the whole trade in these articles thrown open. Again, the location of the staple towns was shifted from England to the continent and again back to England. Eventually, in 1363, the staple came to be established at Calais, and all "staplers," or exporters of staple goods from England, were forced to give bonds that their cargoes would be taken direct to Calais to be sold. *24. The Hanse Trade.*--The trade with Germany was at this time almost all with the group of citizens which made up the German Hanse or League. This was a union of a large number of towns of northern Germany, such as Lubeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Dantzig, Brunswick, and perhaps sixty or eighty others. By a series of treaties and agreements among themselves, these towns had formed a close confederation which acted as a single whole in obtaining favorable trading concessions and privileges in various countries. There had been a considerable trade between the merchants of these towns and England from an early time. They brought the products of the Baltic lands, such as lumber, tar, salt, iron, silver, salted and smoked fish, furs, amber, certain coarse manufactures, and goods obtained by Hanseatic merchants through their more distant trade connections, such as fine woven goods, armor and other metal goods, and even spices and other Eastern goods, obtained from the great Russian fairs. The Hanse cities had entered into treaties with the English government, and possessed valuable concessions and privileges, and imported and exported quite extensively. The term "sterling," as applied to standard English money, is derived from the word "Easterling," which was used as synonymous with "German," "Hansard," "Dutch," and several other names descriptive of these traders. The trade with the cities of northwestern France was similar to that with the neighboring towns of Flanders. That with northwestern France consisted especially of salt, sail-cloth, and wine. The trade with Poitou, Gascony, and Guienne was more extensive, as was natural from their long political connection with England. The chief part of the export from southern France was wine, though a variety of other articles, including fruits and some manufactured articles, were sent to England. A trade of quite a varied character also existed between England and the various countries of the Spanish Peninsula, including Portugal. Foreign trade with all of these countries was destined to increase largely during the later fourteenth and the fifteenth century, but its foundations were well laid within the first half of the fourteenth. Vessels from all these countries appeared from time to time in the harbors of England, and their merchants traded under government patronage and support in many English towns and fairs. *25. Foreigners settled in England.*--The fact that almost all of the foreign trade of England was in the hands of aliens necessarily involved their presence in the country temporarily or permanently in considerable numbers. The closely related fact that the English were distinctly behind the people of the Continent in economic knowledge, skill, and wealth also led foreigners to seek England as a field for profitable exercise of their abilities in finance, in trade, and manufactures. The most conspicuous of these foreigners at the close of the thirteenth century and during the early part of the fourteenth were the Italian bankers. Florence was not only a great trading and manufacturing city, but a money centre, a capitalist city. The Bardi, Peruzzi, Alberti, Frescobaldi, and other banking companies received deposits from citizens of Florence and other Italian cities, and loaned the money, as well as their own capital, to governments, great nobles, and ecclesiastical corporations in other countries. When the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, there being no considerable amount of money among native Englishmen, the Italian bankers were the only source from which the government could secure ready money. When a tax had been authorized by Parliament, but the product of it could be obtained only after a year or more spent in its collection, the Florentines were at hand to offer the money at once, receiving security for repayment when the receipts from the tax should come in. Government monopolies like the Cornwall tin mines were leased to them for a lump sum; arrangements were made by which the bankers furnished a certain amount of money each day during a campaign or a royal progress. The immediate needs of an impecunious king were regularly satisfied with money borrowed to be repaid some months afterward. The equipment for all of the early expeditions of the Hundred Years' War was obtained with money borrowed from the Florentines. Payments abroad were also made by means of bills of exchange negotiated by the same money-lenders. Direct payment of interest was forbidden by law, but they seem to have been rewarded by valuable government concessions, by the profits on exchange, and no doubt by the indirect payment of interest, notwithstanding its illegality. The Italian bankers evidently loaned to others besides the king, for in 1327 the Knights Hospitallers in England repaid to the Society of the Bardi £848 5_d._, and to the Peruzzi £551 12_s._ 11_d._ They continued to loan freely to the king, till in 1348 he was indebted to one company alone to the extent of more than £50,000, a sum equal in modern value to about $3,000,000. The king now failed to repay what he had promised, and the banking companies fell into great straits. Defalcations having occurred in other countries also, some of them failed, and after the middle of the century they never held so conspicuous a place, though some Italians continued to act as bankers and financiers through the remainder of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Many Italian merchants who were not bankers, especially Venetians and Genoese, were settled in England, but their occupation did not make them so conspicuous as the financiers of the same nation. [Illustration: The Steelyard in the Seventeenth Century. (Herbert: _History of London Livery Companies_.)] The German or Hanse merchants had a settlement of their own in London, known as the "Steelyard," "Gildhall of the Dutch," or the "Easterling's House." They had similar establishments on a smaller scale in Boston and Lynn, and perhaps in other towns. Their permission to own property and to live in their own house instead of in the houses of native merchants, as was the usual custom, was derived, like most privileges of foreigners, from the gift of the king. Little by little they had purchased property surrounding their original grants until they had a great group of buildings, including a meeting and dining hall, tower, kitchen, storage house, offices and other warehouses, and a considerable number of dwelling-houses, all enclosed by a wall and fences. It was located immediately on the Thames just above London Bridge so that their vessels unloaded at their own wharf. The merchants or their agents lived under strict rules, the gates being invariably closed at nine o'clock, and all discords among their own nation were punished by their own officers. Their trade was profitable to the king through payment of customs, and after the failure of the Italian bankers the merchants of the Steelyard made considerable loans to the English government either directly or acting for citizens at home. In 1343, when the king had been granted a tax of 40_s._ a sack on all wool exported, he immediately borrowed the value of it from Tiedemann van Limberg and Johann van Wolde, Easterlings. Similarly in 1346 the Easterlings loaned the king money for three years, holding his second crown as security. Like the Florentines, at one time they took the Cornwall tin mines at farm. They had many privileges not accorded generally to foreigners, but were exceedingly unpopular alike with the population and the authorities of the city of London. There were some other Germans domiciled in England, but nowhere else were they so conspicuous or influential as at the Steelyard. [Illustration: Ground Plan of the Steelyard in the Seventeenth Century. (Lappenberg. _Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes_.)] The trade with Flanders brought Flemish merchants into England temporarily, but they do not seem to have formed any settlement or located permanently in any one place. Flemish artisans, on the other hand, had migrated to England from early times and were scattered here and there in several towns and villages. In the early part of the fourteenth century Edward III made it a matter of deliberate policy to encourage the immigration of Flemish weavers and other handicraftsmen, with the expectation that they would teach their art to the more backward native English. In 1332 he issued a charter of protection and privilege to a Fleming named John Kempe, a weaver of woollen cloth, offering the same privilege and protection to all other weavers, dyers, and fullers who should care to come to England to live. In 1337 a similar charter was given to a body of weavers coming from Zealand to England. It is believed that a considerable number of immigrants from the Netherlands came in at this period, settled largely in the smaller towns and rural villages, and taking English apprentices brought about a great improvement in the character of English manufactures. Flemings are also met with in local records in various occupations, even in agriculture. There were other foreigners resident in England, especially Gascons from the south of France, and Spaniards; but the main elements of alien population in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were those which have just been described, Italians, Germans from the Hanse towns, and Flemings. These were mainly occupied as bankers, merchants, and handicraftsmen. *26. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Dr. Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ is particularly full and valuable on this subject. He has given further details on one branch of it in his _Alien Immigrants in England_. Schanz, Georg: _Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters_. This work refers to a later period than that included in this chapter, but the summaries which the author gives of earlier conditions are in many cases the best accounts that we have. Ashley, W. J.: _Early History of the Woolen Industry in England_. Pauli, R.: _Pictures from Old England_. Contains an interesting account of the Steelyard. Pirenne, Henri: _La Hanse flamande de Londres_. Von Ochenkowski, W.: _England's Wirthsschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters_. CHAPTER V THE BLACK DEATH AND THE PEASANTS' REBELLION Economic Changes Of The Later Fourteenth And Early Fifteenth Centuries *27. National Affairs from 1338 to 1461.*--For the last century or more England had been standing with her back to the Continent. Deprived of most of their French possessions, engaged in the struggle to bring Wales, Scotland, and Ireland under the English crown, occupied with repeated conflicts with their barons or with the development of the internal organization of the country, John, Henry III, and the two Edwards had had less time and inclination to interest themselves in continental affairs than had Henry II and Richard. But after 1337 a new influence brought England for the next century into close connection with the rest of Europe. This was the "Hundred Years' War" between England and France. Several causes had for years combined to make this war unavoidable: the interference of France in the dispute with Scotland, the conflicts between the rising fishing and trading towns on the English and the French side of the Channel, the desire of the French king to drive the English kings from their remaining provinces in the south of France, and the reluctance of the English kings to accept their dependent position in France. Edward III commenced the war in 1338 with the invasion of France, and it was continued with comparatively short intervals of peace until 1452. During its progress the English won three of the most brilliant military victories in their history, at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, in 1346, 1356, and 1415. But most of the campaigns were characterized by brutality, destructive ravaging, and the reduction of cities by famine. The whole contest indeed often degenerated into desultory, objectless warfare. A permanent settlement was attempted at Bretigny in 1360. The English required the dismemberment of France by the surrender of almost one-third of the country and the payment by the French of a large ransom for their king, who had been captured by the English. In return King Edward withdrew any other claims he might have to territory, or the French crown. These terms were, however, so humiliating to the French that they did not adhere to them, the war soon broke out again, and finally terminated in the driving out of the English from all of France except the city of Calais, in the middle years of the next century. The many alliances, embassies, exchanges of visits, and other international intercourse which the prosecution of the Hundred Years' War involved brought England into a closer participation in the general life of Europe than ever before, and caused the ebb and flow of a tide of influences between England and the Continent which deeply affected economic, political, and religious life on both sides of the Channel. The Universities continued to flourish during almost the whole of this period. It was from Oxford as a centre, under the influence of John Wycliffe, a lecturer there, that a great revival and reforming movement in the church emanated. From about 1370 Wycliffe and others began to agitate for a more earnest religious life. They translated the Bible into English, wrote devotional and polemic tracts, preached throughout the country, spoke and wrote against the evils in the church at the time, then against its accepted form of organization, and finally against its official teachings. They thus became heretics. Thousands were influenced by their teachings, and a wave of religious revival and ecclesiastical rebellion spread over the country. The powers of the church and the civil government were ultimately brought to bear to crush out the "Lollards," as those who held heretical beliefs at that time were called. New and stringent laws were passed in 1401 and 1415, several persons were burned at the stake, and a large number forced to recant, or frightened into keeping their opinions secret. This religious movement gradually died out, and by the middle of the fifteenth century nothing more is heard of Lollardry. Wycliffe had been not only a religious innovator, but a writer of much excellent English. Contemporary with him or slightly later were a number of writers who used the native language and created permanent works of literature. _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ is the longest and best of a number of poems written by otherwise unknown men. Geoffrey Chaucer, one of England's greatest poets, wrote at first in French, then in English; his _Canterbury Tales_ showing a perfected English form, borrowed originally, like so much of what was best in England at the time, from Italy or France, but assimilated, improved, and reconstructed until it seemed a purely English production. During the reign of Edward III English became the official language of the courts and the usual language of conversation, even among the higher classes. Edward III lived until 1377. Through his long reign of half a century, during which he was entirely dependent on the grants of Parliament for the funds needed to carry on the war against France, this body obtained the powers, privileges, and organization which made it thereafter such an influential part of the government. His successor, Richard II, after a period of moderate government tried to rule with a high hand, but in 1399 was deposed through the influence of his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, who was crowned as Henry IV. Henry's title to the throne, according to hereditary principles, was defective, for the son of an older brother was living. He was, however, a mere child, and there was no considerable opposition to Henry's accession. Under the Lancastrian line, as Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, who now reigned successively, are called, Parliament reached the highest position which it had yet attained, a position higher in fact than it held for several centuries afterward. Henry VI was a child at the death of his father in 1422. On coming to be a man he proved too mild in temper to control the great nobles who, by the chances of inheritance, had become almost as powerful as the great feudal barons of early Norman times. The descendants of the older branch of the royal family were now represented by a vigorous and capable man, the duke of York. An effort was therefore made about 1450 by one party of the nobles to depose Henry VI in favor of the duke of York. A number of other nobles took the side of the king, and civil war broke out. After a series of miserable contests known as the "Wars of the Roses" the former party was successful, at least temporarily, and the duke of York became king in 1461 as Edward IV. *28. The Black Death and its Effects.*--During the earlier mediæval centuries the most marked characteristic of society was its stability. Institutions continued with but slight changes during a long period. With the middle of the fourteenth century changes become more prominent. Some of the most conspicuous of these gather around a series of attacks of epidemic disease during the latter half of the century. [Illustration: Distribution of Population According to the Poll-tax of 1377. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.] From the autumn of 1348 to the spring of 1350 a wave of pestilence was spreading over England from the southwest northward and eastward, progressively attacking every part of the country. The disease was new to Europe. Its course in the individual case, like its progress through the community, was very rapid. The person attacked either died within two or three days or even less, or showed signs of recovery within the same period. The proportion of cases which resulted fatally was extremely large; the infectious character of the disease quite remarkable. It was, in fact, an extremely violent epidemic attack, the most violent in history, of the bubonic plague, with which we have unfortunately become again familiar within recent years. From much careful examination of several kinds of contemporary evidence it seems almost certain that as each locality was successively attacked in 1348 and 1349 something like a half of the population died. In other words, whereas in an ordinary year at that time perhaps one-twentieth of the people died, in the plague year one-half died. Such entries as the following are frequent in the contemporary records. At the abbey of Newenham, "in the time of this mortality or pestilence there died in this house twenty monks and three lay brothers, whose names are entered in other books. And Walter, the abbot, and two monks were left alive there after the sickness." At Leicester, "in the little parish of St. Leonard there died more than 380, in the parish of Holy Cross more than 400, in that of St. Margaret more than 700; and so in every parish great numbers." The close arrangement of houses in the villages, the crowding of dwellings along narrow streets in the towns, the promiscuous life in the monasteries and in the inns, the uncleanly habits of living universally prevalent, all helped to make possible this sweeping away of perhaps a majority of the population by an attack of epidemic disease. It had devastated several of the countries of Europe before appearing in England, having been introduced into Europe apparently along the great trade routes from the far East. Within a few months the attack in each successive district subsided, the disease in the southwestern counties of England having run its course between August, 1348, and May, 1349, in and about London between November, 1348, and July, 1349, in the eastern counties in the summer of 1349, and in the more northern counties through the last months of that year or within the spring of 1350. Pestilence was frequent throughout the Middle Ages, but this attack was not only vastly more destructive and general than any which had preceded it, but the disease when once introduced became a frequent scourge in subsequent times, especially during the remainder of the fourteenth century. In 1361, 1368, and 1396 attacks are noticed as occurring more or less widely through the country, but none were so extensive as that which is usually spoken of as the "Black Death" of 1348-1349. The term "Black Death" was not used contemporaneously, nor until comparatively modern times. The occurrence of the pestilence, however, made an extremely strong impression on men's minds, and as "the great mortality," "the great pestilence," or "the great death," it appears widely in the records and the literature of the time. Such an extensive and sudden destruction of life could not take place without leaving its mark in many directions. Monasteries were depopulated, and the value of their property and the strictness of their discipline diminished. The need for priests led to the ordination of those who were less carefully prepared and selected. The number of students at Oxford and Cambridge was depleted; the building and adornment of many churches suspended. The war between England and France, though promptly renewed, involved greater difficulty in obtaining equipment, and ultimately required new devices to meet its expense. Many of the towns lost numbers and property that were never regained, and the distribution of population throughout England was appreciably changed. But the most evident and far-reaching results of the series of pestilences occurring through the last half of the fourteenth century were those connected with rural life and the arrangement of classes described in Chapter II. The lords of manors might seem at first thought to have reaped advantage from the unusually high death rate. The heriots collected on the death of tenants were more numerous; reliefs paid by their successors on obtaining the land were repeated far more frequently than usual; much land escheated to the lord on the extinction of the families of free tenants, or fell into his hands for redisposal on the failure of descendants of villains or cotters. But these were only temporary and casual results. In other ways the diminution of population was distinctly disadvantageous to the lords of manors. They obtained much lower rents for mills and other such monopolies, because there were fewer people to have their grain ground and the tenants of the mills could therefore not make as much profit. The rents of assize or regular periodical payments in money and in kind made by free and villain tenants were less in amount, since the tenants were fewer and much land was unoccupied. The profits of the manor courts were less, for there were not so many suitors to attend, to pay fees, and to be fined. The manor court rolls for these years give long lists of vacancies of holdings, often naming the days of the deaths of the tenants. Their successors are often children, and in many cases whole families were swept away and the land taken into the hands of the lord of the manor. Juries appointed at one meeting of the manor court are sometimes all dead by the time of the next meeting. There are constant complaints by the stewards that certain land "is of no value because the tenants are all dead;" in one place that a water-mill is worthless because "all the tenants who used it are dead," in another that the rents are £7 14_s._ less than in the previous year because fourteen holdings, consisting of 102 acres of land, are in the hands of the lord, in still another that the rents of assize which used to be £20 are now only £2 and the court fees have fallen from 40 to 5 shillings "because the tenants there are dead." There was also less required service performed on the demesne lands, for many of the villain holdings from which it was owed were now vacant. Last, and most seriously of all, the lords of manors suffered as employers of labor. It had always been necessary to hire additional labor for the cultivation of the demesne farm and for the personal service of the manor, and through recent decades somewhat more had come to be hired because of a gradual increase of the practice of commutation of services. That is, villain tenants were allowed to pay the value of their required days' work in money instead of in actual service. The bailiff or reeve then hired men as they were wanted, so that quite an appreciable part of the work of the manor had come to be done by laborers hired for wages. After the Black Death the same demesne lands were to be cultivated, and in most cases the larger holdings remained or descended or were regranted to those who would expect to continue their cultivation. Thus the demand for laborers remained approximately as great as it had been before. The number of laborers, on the other hand, was vastly diminished. They were therefore eagerly sought for by employers. Naturally they took advantage of their position to demand higher wages, and in many cases combined to refuse to work at the old accustomed rates. A royal ordinance of 1349 states that, "because a great part of the people, especially of workmen and servants, have lately died in the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages." A contemporary chronicler says that "laborers were so elated and contentious that they did not pay any attention to the command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire them he was bound to pay them what they asked, and so he had his choice either to lose his harvest and crops or give in to the proud and covetous desires of the workmen." Thus, because of this rise in wages, at the very time that many of the usual sources of income of the lords of manors were less remunerative, the expenses of carrying on their farming operations were largely increased. On closer examination, therefore, it becomes evident that the income of the lords of manors, whether individuals or corporations, was not increased, but considerably diminished, and that their position was less favorable than it had been before the pestilence. The freeholders of land below lords of manors were disadvantageously affected in as far as they had to hire laborers, but in other ways were in a more favorable position. The rent which they had to pay was often reduced. Land was everywhere to be had in plenty, and a threat to give up their holdings and go to where more favorable terms could be secured was generally effective in obtaining better terms where they were. The villain holders legally of course did not have this opportunity, but practically they secured many of its advantages. It is probable that many took up additional land, perhaps on an improved tenure. Their payments and their labor, whether done in the form of required "week-work," or, if this were commuted, done for hire, were much valued, and concessions made to them accordingly. They might, as they frequently did, take to flight, giving up their land and either obtaining a new grant somewhere else or becoming laborers without lands of their own. This last-named class, made up of those who depended entirely on agricultural labor on the land of others for their support, was a class which had been increasing in numbers, and which was the most distinctly favored by the demand for laborers and the rise of wages. They were the representatives of the old cotter class, recruited from those who either inherited no land or found it more advantageous to work for wages than to take up small holdings with their burdens. But the most important social result of the Black Death and the period of pestilence which followed it was the general shock it gave to the old settled life and established relations of men to one another. It introduced many immediate changes, and still more causes of ultimate change; but above all it altered the old stability, so that change in future would be easy. *29. The Statutes of Laborers.*--The change which showed itself most promptly, the rise in the prevailing rate of wages, was met by the strenuous opposition of the law. In the summer of 1349, while the pestilence was still raging in the north of England, the king, acting on the advice of his Council, issued a proclamation to all the sheriffs and the officials of the larger towns, declaring that the laborers were taking advantage of the needs of their lords to demand excessive wages, and prohibiting them from asking more than had been due and accustomed in the year before the outbreak of the pestilence or for the preceding five or six years. Every laborer when offered service at these wages must accept it; the lords of manors having the first right to the labor of those living on their manors, provided they did not insist on retaining an unreasonable number. If any laborers, men or women, bond or free, should refuse to accept such an offer of work, they were to be imprisoned till they should give bail to serve as required. Commissioners were then appointed by the king in each county to inquire into and punish violations of this ordinance. [Illustration: The Stocks at Shalford, near Guildford. Present State. (Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)] When Parliament next met, in February, 1351, the Commons sent a petition to the king stating that his ordinance had not been obeyed and that laborers were claiming double and treble what they had received in the years before the pestilence. In response to the petition what is usually called the "First Statute of Laborers" was enacted. It repeated the requirement that men must accept work when it was offered to them, established definite rates of wages for various classes of laborers, and required all such persons to swear twice a year before the stewards, bailiffs, or other officials that they would obey this law. If they refused to swear or disobeyed the law, they were to be put in the stocks for three days or more and then sent to the nearest jail till they should agree to serve as required. It was ordered that stocks should be built in each village for this purpose, and that the judges should visit each county twice a year to inquire into the enforcement of the law. In 1357 the law was reënacted, with some changes of the destination of the fines collected for its breach. In 1361 there was a further reënactment of the law with additional penalties. If laborers will not work unless they are given higher wages than those established by law, they can be taken and imprisoned by lords of manors for as much as fifteen days, and then be sent to the next jail to await the coming of the justices. If any one after accepting service leaves it, he is to be arrested and sued before the justices. If he cannot be found, he is to be outlawed and a writ sent to every sheriff in England ordering that he should be arrested, sent back, and imprisoned till he pays his fine and makes amends to the party injured; "and besides for the falsity he shall be burnt in the forehead with an iron made and formed to this letter F in token of Falsity, if the party aggrieved shall ask for it." This last provision, however, was probably intended as a threat rather than an actual punishment, for its application was suspended for some months, and even then it was to be inflicted only on the advice of the judges, and the iron was to remain in the custody of the sheriff. The statute was reënacted with slight variations thirteen times within the century after its original introduction; namely, in addition to the dates already mentioned, in 1362, 1368, 1378, 1388, 1402, 1406, 1414, 1423, 1427, 1429, and 1444. [Illustration: Laborers Reaping. From a Fourteenth Century Manuscript. (Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)] The necessity for these repeated reissues of the statutes of laborers indicates that the general rise of wages was not prevented. Forty years after the pestilence the law of 1388 is said to be passed, "because that servants and laborers are not, nor by a long time have been willing to serve and labor without outrageous and excessive hire." Direct testimony also indicates that the prevailing rate of wages was much higher, probably half as much again, as it had been before the pestilence. Nevertheless, the enforcement of the law in individual cases must have been a very great hardship. The fines which were collected from breakers of the law were of sufficient amount to be estimated at one time as part payment of a tax, at another as a valuable source of income to the lords of manors. Their enforcement was intrusted at different times to the local justices of the peace, the royal judges on circuit, and special commissioners. The inducement to the passage of the laws prohibiting a rise in wages was no doubt partly the self-interest of the employing classes who were alone represented in Parliament, but partly also the feeling that the laboring class were taking advantage of an abnormal condition of affairs to change the well established customary rates of remuneration of labor. The most significant fact indicated by the laws, however, was the existence of a distinct class of laborers. In earlier times when almost all rural dwellers held some land this can hardly have been the case; it is quite evident that there was now an increasing class who made their living simply by working for wages. Another fact frequently referred to in the laws is the frequent passage of laborers from one district to another; it is evident that the population was becoming somewhat less stationary. Therefore while the years following the great pestilence were a period of difficulty for the lords of manors and the employing classes, for the lower classes the same period was one of increasing opportunity and a breaking down of old restrictions. Whether or not the statutes had any real effect in keeping the rate of wages lower than it would have otherwise become is hard to determine, but there is no doubt that the efforts to enforce the law and the frequent punishment of individuals for its violation embittered the minds of the laborers and helped to throw them into opposition to the government and to the upper classes generally. The statutes of laborers thus became one of the principal causes of the growth of that hostility which culminated in the Peasants' Rebellion. *30. The Peasants' Rebellion of 1381.*--From the scanty contemporary records still remaining we can obtain glimpses of a widespread restlessness among the masses of the English people during the latter half of the fourteenth century. According to a petition submitted to Parliament in 1377 the villains were refusing to pay their customary services to their lords and to acknowledge the requirements of their serfdom. They were also gathering together in great bodies to resist the efforts of the lords to collect from them their dues and to force them to submit to the decisions of the manor courts. The ready reception given to the religious revival preached by the Lollards throughout the country indicates an attitude of independence and of self-assertion on the part of the people of which there had been no sign during earlier times. The writer who represents most nearly popular feeling, the author of the _Vision of Piers Plowman_, reflects a certain restless and questioning mysticism which has no particular plan of reform to propose, but is nevertheless thoroughly dissatisfied with the world as it is. Lastly, a series of vague appeals to revolt, written in the vernacular, partly in prose, partly in doggerel rhyme, have been preserved and seem to testify to a deliberate propaganda of lawlessness. Some of the general causes of this rising tide of discontent are quite apparent. The efforts to enforce the statutes of laborers, as has been said, kept continual friction between the employing and the employed class. Parliament, which kept petitioning for reënactments of these laws, the magistrates and special commissioners who enforced them, and the landowners who appealed to them for relief, were alike engaged in creating class antagonism and multiplying individual grievances. Secondly, the very improvement in the economic position of the lower classes, which was undoubtedly in progress, made them doubly impatient of the many burdens which still pressed upon them. Another cause for the prevalent unrest may have lain in the character of much of the teaching of the time. Undisguised communism was preached by a wandering priest, John Ball, and the injustice of the claims of the property-holding classes was a very natural inference from much of the teachings of Wycliffe and his "poor priests." Again, the corruption of the court, the incapacity of the ministers, and the failure of the war in France were all reasons for popular anger, if the masses of the people can be supposed to have had any knowledge of such distant matters. [Illustration: Adam and Eve. From a Fourteenth Century Manuscript. (Jusserand: _English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century_. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.)] But the most definite and widespread cause of discontent was probably the introduction of a new form of taxation, the general poll tax. Until this time taxes had either been direct taxes laid upon land and personal property, or indirect taxes laid upon various objects of export and import. In 1377, however, Parliament agreed to the imposition of a tax of four pence a head on all laymen, and Convocation soon afterward taxed all the clergy, regular and secular, the same amount. Notwithstanding this grant and increased taxes of the old forms, the government still needed more money for the expenses of the war with France, and in April, 1379, a graduated poll tax was laid on all persons above sixteen years of age. This was regulated according to the rank of the payer from mere laborers, who were to pay four pence, up to earls, who must pay £4. But this only produced some £20,000, while more than £100,000 were needed; therefore in November of 1380 a third poll tax was laid in the following manner. The tax was to be collected at the rate of three groats or one shilling for each person over fifteen years of age. But although the total amount payable from any town or manor was to be as many shillings as there were inhabitants over fourteen years of age, it was to be assessed in each manor upon individuals in proportion to their means, the more well-to-do paying more, the poorer paying less; but with the limits that no one should have to pay more than £1 for himself and his wife, and no one less than four pence for himself and his wife. The poll tax was extremely unpopular. In the first place, it was a new tax, and to all appearances an additional weight given to the burden of contributing to the never ending expenses of the government of which the people were already weary. Moreover, it fell upon everybody, even upon those who from their lack of property had probably never before paid any tax. The inhabitants of every cottage were made to realize, by the payment of what amounted to two or three days' wages, that they had public and political as well as private and economic burdens. Lastly, the method of assessing the tax gave scope for much unfairness and favoritism. In addition to this general unpopularity of the poll tax there was a special reason for opposition in the circumstances of that imposed in 1380. As the returns began to come in they were extremely disappointing to the government. Therefore in March, 1381, the king, suspecting negligence on the part of the collectors, appointed groups of commissioners for a number of different districts who were directed to go from place to place investigating the former collection and enforcing payment from any who had evaded it before. This no doubt seemed to many of the ignorant people the imposition of a second tax. The first rumors of disorder came in May from some of the villages of Essex, where the tax-collectors and the commissioners who followed them were driven away violently by the people. Finally, during the second week in June, rioting began in several parts of England almost simultaneously. In Essex those who had refused to pay the poll tax and driven out the collectors now went from village to village persuading or compelling the people to join them. In Kent the villagers seized pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and forced them to take an oath to resist any tax except the old taxes, to be faithful to "King Richard and the Commons," to join their party when summoned, and never to allow John of Gaunt to become king. A riot broke out at Dartford in Kent, then Canterbury was overrun and the sheriff was forced to give up the tax rolls to be destroyed. They proceeded to break into Maidstone jail and release the prisoners there, and subsequently entered Rochester. These Kentish insurgents then set out toward London, wishing no doubt to obtain access to the young king, who was known to be there, but also directed by an instinctive desire to strike at the capital of the kingdom. By Wednesday, the 12th of June, they had formed a rendezvous at Blackheath some five miles below the city. Some of the Essex men had crossed the river and joined them, others had also taken their way toward London, marching along the northern side of the Thames. At the same time, or by the next day, another band was approaching London from Hertfordshire on the north. The body of insurgents gathered at Blackheath, who were stated by contemporary chroniclers, no doubt with the usual exaggeration, to have numbered 60,000, succeeded in communicating with King Richard, a boy of fourteen years, who was residing at the Tower of London with his mother and principal ministers and several great nobles, asking him to come to meet them. On the next day, Corpus Christi day, June 12th, he was rowed with a group of nobles to the other bank of the river, where the insurgents were crowding to the water side. The confusion and danger were so great that the king did not land, and the conference amounted to nothing. During the same day, however, the rebels pressed on to the city, and a part of the populace of London having left the drawbridge open for them, they made their way in. The evening of the same day the men from Essex entered through one of the city gates which had also been opened for them by connivance from within. There had already been much destruction of property and of life. As the rebels passed along the roads, the villagers joined them and many of the lower classes of the town population as well. In several cases they burned the houses of the gentry and of the great ecclesiastics, destroyed tax and court rolls and other documents, and put to death persons connected with the law. When they had made their way into London they burned and pillaged the Savoy palace, the city house of the duke of Lancaster, and the houses of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell and at Temple Bar. By this time leaders had arisen among the rebels. Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw were successful in keeping their followers from stealing and in giving some semblance of a regular plan to their proceedings. On the morning of Friday, the 14th, the king left the Tower, and while he was absent the rebels made their way in, ransacked the rooms, seized and carried out to Tower Hill Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, who was Lord Chancellor, Robert Hales, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, who was then Lord Treasurer, and some lower officials. These were all put through the hasty forms of an irregular trial and then beheaded. There were also many murders throughout the city. Foreigners especially were put to death, probably by Londoners themselves or by the rural insurgents at their instigation. A considerable number of Flemings were assassinated, some being drawn from one of the churches where they had taken refuge. The German merchants of the Steelyard were attacked and driven through the streets, but took refuge in their well-defended buildings. During the same three days, insurrection had broken out in several other parts of England. Disorders are mentioned in Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Hampshire, Sussex, Somerset, Leicester, Lincoln, York, Bedford, Northampton, Surrey, and Wiltshire. There are also indications of risings in nine other counties. In Suffolk the leadership was taken by a man named John Wrawe, a priest like John Ball. On June 12th, the same day that the rendezvous was held on Blackheath, a great body of peasants under Wrawe attacked and pillaged a manor house belonging to Richard Lyons, an unpopular minister of the last days of Edward III. The next day they looted a parish church where were stored the valuables of Sir John Cavendish, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench and Chancellor of the town of Cambridge. On the 14th they occupied Bury, where they sacked the houses of unpopular men and finally captured and put to death Cavendish himself, John of Cambridge, prior of the St. Edmund's Abbey, and John of Lakenheath, an officer of the king. The rioters also forced the monks of the abbey to hand over to them all the documents giving to the monastery power over the townsmen. There were also a large number of detached attacks on persons and on manor houses, where manor court rolls and other documents were destroyed and property carried off. There was more theft here than in London; but much of the plundering was primarily intended to settle old disputes rather than for its own sake. In Norfolk the insurrection broke out a day or two later than in Suffolk, and is notable as having among its patrons a considerable number of the lesser gentry and other well-to-do persons. The principal leader, however, was a certain Geoffrey Lister. This man had issued a proclamation calling in all the people to meet on the 17th of June on Mushold Heath, just outside the city of Norwich. A great multitude gathered, and they summoned Sir Robert Salle, who was in the military service of the king, but was living at Norwich, and who had risen from peasant rank to knighthood, to come out for a conference. When he declined their request to become their leader they assassinated him, and subsequently made their way into the city, of which they kept control for several days. Throughout Norfolk and Cambridgeshire we hear of the same murders of men who had obtained the hatred of the lower classes in general, or that of individuals who were temporarily influential with the insurgents. There were also numerous instances of the destruction of court rolls found at the manor houses of lay lords of manors or obtained from the muniment rooms of the monasteries. It seems almost certain that there was some agreement beforehand among the leaders of the revolt in the eastern districts of England, and probably also with the leaders in Essex and Kent. Another locality where we have full knowledge of the occurrences during the rebellion is the town and monastery of St. Albans, just north of London. The rising here was either instigated by, or, at least, drew its encouragement from, the leaders who gathered at London. The townsmen and villains from surrounding manors invaded the great abbey, opened the prison, demanded and obtained all the charters bearing on existing disputes, and reclaimed a number of millstones which were kept by the abbey as a testimony to the monopoly of all grinding by the abbey mill. In many other places disorders were in progress. For a few days in the middle of June a considerable part of England was at the mercy of the revolted peasants and artisans, under the leadership partly of men who had arisen among their own class, partly of certain persons of higher position who had sufficient reason for throwing in their lot with them. [Illustration: Extension of the Peasant's Insurrection of 1381. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.] The culmination of the revolt was at the time of the execution of the great ministers of government on Tower Hill on the morning of the 14th. At that very time the young king had met a body of the rebels, mostly made up of men from Essex and Hertfordshire at Mile End, just outside of one of the gates of London. In a discussion in which they stated their grievances, the king apparently in good faith, but as it afterward proved in bad, promised to give them what they demanded, begged them to disperse and go to their homes, only leaving representatives from each village to take back the charters of emancipation which he proceeded to have prepared and issued to them. There had been no intentional antagonism to the king himself, and a great part of the insurgents took him at his word and scattered to their homes. The charters which they took with them were of the following form:-- "Richard, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to all his bailiffs and faithful ones, to whom these present letters shall come, greeting. Know that of our special grace, we have manumitted all of our lieges and each of our subjects and others of the County of Hertford; and them and each of them have made free from all bondage, and by these presents make them quit. And moreover we pardon our same lieges and subjects for all kinds of felonies, treasons, transgressions, and extortions, however done or perpetrated by them or any of them, and also outlawry, if any shall have been promulgated on this account against them or any of them; and our most complete peace to them and each of them we concede in these matters. In testimony of which things we have caused these our letters to be made patent. Witness, myself, at London, on the fifteenth day of June, in the fourth year of our reign." The most prominent leaders remained behind, and a large body of rioters spent the rest of Friday and the following night in London. The king, after the interview at Mile End, had returned to the Tower, then to the Queen's Wardrobe, a little palace at the other side of London, where he spent the night with his mother. In the morning he mounted his horse, and with a small group of attendants rode toward the Tower. As he passed through the open square of Smithfield he met Wat Tyler, also on horseback, accompanied by the great body of rebels. Tyler rode forward to confer with the king, but an altercation having broken out between him and some of the king's attendants, the mayor of London, Sir William Walworth, suddenly dashed forward, struck him from his horse with the blow of a sword, and while on the ground he was stabbed to death by the other attendants of the king. There was a moment of extreme danger of an attack by the leaderless rebels on the king and his companions, but the ready promises of the king, his natural gifts of pretence, and the strange attachment which the peasants showed to him through all the troubles, tided over a little time until they had been led outside of the city gates, and the armed forces which many gentlemen had in their houses in the city had at last been gathered together and brought to where they had the disorganized body of rebels at their mercy. These were then disarmed, bidden to go to their homes, and a proclamation issued that if any stranger remained in London over Sunday he would pay for it with his life. The downfall of Tyler and the dispersion of the insurgents at London turned the tide of the whole revolt. In the various districts where disorders were in progress the news of that failure came as a blow to all their own hopes of success. The revolt had been already disintegrating rather than gaining in strength and unity; and now its leaders lost heart, and local bodies of gentry proportionately took courage to suppress revolt in their own localities. The most conspicuous and influential of such efforts was that of Henry de Spencer, bishop of Norwich. This warlike prelate was in Rutlandshire when the news of the revolt came. He hastened toward Norwich; on his way met an embassy from the rioters to the king; seized and beheaded two of its peasant members, and still pushing on met the great body of the rebels near Walsham, where after a short conflict and some parleying the latter were dispersed, and their leaders captured and hung without any ceremony other than the last rites of religion. As a matter of fact the rising had no cohesion sufficient to withstand attack from any constituted authority or from representatives of the dominant classes. The king's government acted promptly. On the 17th of June, two days after the death of Tyler, a proclamation was issued forbidding unauthorized gatherings of people; on the 23d a second, requiring all tenants, villains, and freemen alike to perform their usual services to their lords; and on the 2d of July a third, withdrawing the charters of pardon and manumission which had been granted on the 15th of June. Special sessions of the courts were organized in the rebellious districts, and the leaders of the revolt were searched out and executed by hanging or decapitation. On the 3d of November Parliament met. The king's treasurer explained that he had issued the charters under constraint, and recognizing their illegality, with the expectation of withdrawing them as soon as possible, which he had done. The suggestion of the king that the villains should be regularly enfranchised by a statute was declined in vigorous terms by Parliament. Laws were passed relieving all those who had made grants under compulsion from carrying them out, enabling those whose charters had been destroyed to obtain new ones under the great seal, granting exemption from prosecution to all who had exercised illegal violence in putting down the late insurrection, and finally granting a general pardon, though with many exceptions, to the late insurgents. Thus the rising of June, 1381, had become a matter of the past by the close of the year. The general conditions which brought about a popular uprising have already been discussed. The specific objects which the rioters had in view in each part of the country are a much more obscure and complicated question. There is no reason to believe that there was any general political object, other than opposition to the new and burdensome taxation, and disgust with the existing ministry. Nor was there any religious object in view. No doubt a large part of the disorder had no general purpose whatever, but consisted in an attempt, at a period of confusion and relaxation of the law, to settle by violence purely local or personal disputes and grievances. Apart from these considerations the objects of the rioters were of an economic nature. There was a general effort to destroy the rolls of the manor courts. These rolls, kept either in manor houses, or in the castles of great lords, or in the monasteries, were the record of the burdens and payments and disabilities of the villagers. Previous payments of heriot, relief, merchet, and fines, acknowledgments of serfdom, the obtaining of their land on burdensome conditions, were all recorded on the rolls and could be produced to prove the custom of the manor to the disadvantage of the tenant. It is true that these same rolls showed who held each piece of ground and defined the succession to it, and that they were long afterward to be recognized in the national courts as giving to the customary holder the right of retaining and of inheriting the land, so that it might seem an injury to themselves to destroy the manor court records. But in that period when tenants were in such demand their hold on their land had been in no danger of being disturbed. If these records were destroyed, the villains might well expect that they could claim to be practically owners of the houses and little groups of acres which they and their ancestors had held from time immemorial; and this without the necessity for payments and reservations to which the rolls testified. Again, lawyers and all connected with the law were the objects of special hostility on the part of insurgents. This must have been largely from the same general cause as that just mentioned. It was lawyers who acted as stewards for the great lords, it was through lawyers that the legal claims of lords of manors were enforced in the king's courts. It was also the judges and lawyers who put in force the statutes of laborers, and who so generally acted as collectors of the poll tax. More satisfactory relations with their lords were demanded by insurgents who were freeholders, as well as by those who were villains. Protests are recorded against the tolls on sales and purchases, and against attendance at the manorial courts, and a maximum limit to the rent of land is asked for. Finally, the removal of the burdens of serfdom was evidently one of the general objects of the rebels, though much of the initiative of the revolt was taken by men from Kent, where serfdom did not exist. The servitude of the peasantry is the burden of the sermon of John Ball at Blackheath, its abolition was demanded in several places by the insurgents, and the charters of emancipation as given by the king professed to make them "free from all bondage." These objects were in few if any cases obtained. It is extremely difficult to trace any direct results from the rising other than those involved in its failure, the punishment of the leaders, and the effort to restore everything to its former condition. There was indeed a conservative reaction in several directions. The authorities of London forbade the admission of any former villain to citizenship, and the Commons in Parliament petitioned the king to reduce the rights of villains still further. On the whole, the revolt is rather an illustration of the general fact that great national crises have left but a slight impress on society, while the important changes have taken place slowly and by an almost imperceptible development. The results of the rising are rather to be looked for in giving increased rapidity and definite direction to changes already in progress, than in starting any new movement or in obtaining the results which the insurgents may have wished. *31. Commutation of Services.*--One of these changes, already in progress long before the outbreak of the revolt, has already been referred to. A silent transformation was going on inside of the manorial life in the form of a gradual substitution of money payments by the villain tenants for the old labor for two, three, or four days a week, and at special times during the year. This was often described as "selling to the tenants their services." They "bought" their exemption from furnishing actual work by paying the value of it in money to the official representing the lord of the manor. This was a mutually advantageous arrangement. The villain's time would be worth more to himself than to his lord; for if he had sufficient land in his possession he could occupy himself profitably on it, or if he had not so much land he could choose his time for hiring himself out to the best advantage. The lord, on the other hand, obtained money which could be spent in paying men whose services would be more willing and interested, and who could be engaged at more available times. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that the practice of allowing tenants to pay for their services arose early. Commutation is noticeable as early as the thirteenth century and not very unusual in the first half of the fourteenth. After the pestilence, however, there was a very rapid substitution of money payments for labor payments. The process continued through the remainder of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth, and by the middle of that century the enforcement of regular labor services had become almost unknown. The boon-works continued to be claimed after the week-work had disappeared, since labor was not so easy to obtain at the specially busy seasons of the year, and the required few days' services at ploughing or mowing or harvesting were correspondingly valuable. But even these were extremely unusual after the middle of the fifteenth century. This change was dependent on at least two conditions, an increased amount of money in circulation and an increased number of free laborers available for hire. These conditions were being more and more completely fulfilled. Trade at fairs and markets and in the towns was increasing through the whole fourteenth century. The increase of weaving and other handicrafts produced more wealth and trade. Money coming from abroad and from the royal mints made its way into circulation and came into the hands of the villain tenants, through the sale of surplus products or as payment for their labor. The sudden destruction of one-half of the population by the Black Death while the amount of money in the country remained the same, doubled the circulation _per capita_. Tenants were thus able to offer regular money payments to their lords in lieu of their personal services. During the same period the number of free laborers who could be hired to perform the necessary work on the demesne was increasing. Even before the pestilence there were men and women on every manor who held little or no land and who could be secured by the lord for voluntary labor if the compulsory labor of the villains was given up. Some of these laborers were fugitive villains who had fled from one manor to another to secure freedom, and this class became much more numerous under the circumstance of disorganization after the Black Death. Thus the second condition requisite for the extensive commutation was present also. It might be supposed that after the pestilence, when wages were high and labor was so hard to procure, lords of manors would be unwilling to allow further commutation, and would even try to insist on the performance of actual labor in cases where commutation had been previously allowed. Indeed, it has been very generally stated that there was such a reaction. The contrary, however, was the case. Commutation was never more rapid than in the generation immediately after the first attack of the pestilence. The laborers seem to have been in so favorable a position, that the dread of their flight was a controlling inducement to the lords to allow the commutation of their services if they desired it. The interest of the lords in their labor services was also, as will be seen, becoming less. When a villain's labor services had been commuted into money, his position must have risen appreciably. One of the main characteristics of his position as a villain tenant had been the uncertainty of his services, the fact that during the days in which he must work for his lord he could be put to any kind of labor, and that the number of days he must serve was itself only restricted by the custom of the manor His services once commuted into a definite sum of money, all uncertainty ceased. Moreover, his money payments to the lord, although rising from an entirely different source, were almost indistinguishable from the money rents paid by the freeholder. Therefore, serf though he might still be in legal status, his position was much more like that of a freeman. *32. The Abandonment of Demesne Farming.*--A still more important change than the commutation of services was in progress during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was the gradual withdrawal of the lords of manors from the cultivation of the demesne farms. From very early times it had been customary for lords of manors to grant out small portions of the demesne, or of previously uncultivated land, to tenants at a money rent. The great demesne farm, however, had been still kept up as the centre of the agricultural system of the vill. But now even this was on many manors rented out to a tenant or group of tenants. The earliest known instances are just at the beginning of the fourteenth century, but the labor troubles of the latter half of the century made the process more usual, and within the next hundred years the demesne lands seem to have been practically all rented out to tenants. In other words, whereas, during the earlier Middle Ages lords of manors had usually carried on the cultivation of the demesne lands themselves, under the administration of their bailiffs and with the labor of the villains, making their profit by obtaining a food supply for their own households or by selling the surplus products, now they gave up their cultivation and rented them out to some one else, making their profit by receiving a money payment as rent. They became therefore landlords of the modern type. A typical instance of this change is where the demesne land of the manor of Wilburton in Cambridgeshire, consisting of 246 acres of arable land and 42 acres of meadow, was rented in 1426 to one of the villain tenants of the manor for a sum of £8 a year. The person who took the land was usually either a free or a villain tenant of the same or a neighboring manor. The land was let only for a certain number of years, but afterward was usually relet either to the same or to another tenant. The word _farmer_ originally meant one of these tenants who took the demesne or some other piece of land, paying for it a "farm" or _firma_, that is, a settled established sum, in place of the various forms of profit that might have been secured from it by the lord of the manor. The free and villain holdings which came into the hands of the lord by failure of heirs in those times of frequent extinction of families were also granted out very generally at a money rent, so that a large number of the cultivators of the soil came to be tenants at a money rent, that is, lease-holders or "farmers." These free renting farmers, along with the smaller freeholders, made up the "yeomen" of England. *33. The Decay of Serfdom.*--It is in the changes discussed in the last two paragraphs that is to be found the key to the disappearance of serfdom in England. Men had been freed from villainage in individual cases by various means. Manumission of serfs had occurred from time to time through all the mediæval centuries. It was customary in such cases either to give a formal charter granting freedom to the man himself and to his descendants, or to have entered on the manor court roll the fact of his obtaining his enfranchisement. Occasionally men were manumitted in order that they might be ordained as clergymen. In the period following the pestilences of the fourteenth century the difficulty in recruiting the ranks of the priesthood made the practice more frequent The charters of manumission issued by the king to the insurgents of 1381 would have granted freedom on a large scale had they not been disowned and subsequently withdrawn. Still other villains had obtained freedom by flight from the manors where they had been born. When a villain who had fled was discovered he could be reclaimed by the lord of the manor by obtaining a writ from the court, but many obstacles might be placed in the way of obtaining this writ, and it must always have involved so much difficulty as to make it doubtful whether it was worth while. So long as a villain was anywhere else than on the manor to which he belonged, he was practically a free man, but few of the disabilities of villainage existing except as between him and his own lord. Therefore, if a villain was willing to sacrifice his little holding and make the necessary break with his usual surroundings, he might frequently escape into a veritable freedom. The attitude of the common law was favorable to liberty as against servitude, and in cases of doubt the decisions of the royal courts were almost invariably favorable to the freedom of the villain. But all these possibilities of liberty were only for individual cases. Villainage as an institution continued to exist and to characterize the position of the mass of the peasantry. The number of freemen through the country was larger, but the serfdom of the great majority can scarcely have been much influenced by these individual cases. The commutation of services, however, and still more the abandonment of demesne farming by the lords of manors, were general causes conducive to freedom. The former custom indicated that the lords valued the money that could be paid by the villains more than they did their compulsory services. That is, villains whose services were paid for in money were practically renters of land from the lords, no longer serfs on the land of the lords. The lord of the manor could still of course enforce his claim to the various payments and restrictions arising from the villainage of his tenants, but their position as payers of money was much less servile than as performers of forced labor. The willingness of the lords to accept money instead of service showed as before stated that there were other persons who could be hired to do the work. The villains were valued more as tenants now that there were others to serve as laborers. The occupants of customary holdings were a higher class and a class more worth the lord's consideration and favor than the mere laborers. The villains were thus raised into partial freedom by having a free class still below them. [Illustration: An Old Street in Worcester. (Britton: _Picturesque Antiquities of English Cities_.)] The effect of the relinquishment of the old demesne farms by the lords of the manors was still more influential in destroying serfdom. The lords had valued serfdom above all because it furnished an adequate and absolutely certain supply of labor. The villains had to stay on the manor and provide the labor necessary for the cultivation of the demesne. But if the demesne was rented out to a farmer or divided among several holders, the interest of the lord in the labor supply on the manor was very much diminished. Even if he agreed in his lease of the demesne to the new farmer that the villains should perform their customary services in as far as these had not been commuted, yet the farmer could not enforce this of himself, and the lord of the manor was probably languid or careless or dilatory in doing so. The other payments and burdens of serfdom were not so lucrative, and as the ranks of the old villain class were depleted by the extinction of families, and fewer inhabitants were bound to attend the manor courts, they became less so. It became, therefore, gradually more common, then quite universal, for the lords of manors to cease to enforce the requirements of serfdom. A legal relation of which neither party is reminded is apt to become obsolete; and that is what practically happened to serfdom in England. It is true that many persons were still legally serfs, and occasionally the fact of their serfdom was asserted in the courts or inferred by granting them manumission. These occasional enfranchisements continued down into the second half of the sixteenth century, and the claim that a certain man was a villain was pleaded in the courts as late as 1618. But long before this time serfdom had ceased to have much practical importance. It may be said that by the middle of the fifteenth century the mass of the English rural population were free men and no longer serfs. With their labor services commuted to money and the other conditions of their villainage no longer enforced, they became an indistinguishable part either of the yeomanry or of the body of agricultural laborers. [Illustration: Town Houses in the Fifteenth Century. (Wright, T.: _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments_.)] *34. Changes in Town Life and Foreign Trade.*--The changes discussed in the last three sections apply in the main to rural life. The economic and social history of the towns during the same period, except in as far as it was part of the general national experience, consisted in a still more complete adoption of those characteristics which have already been described in Chapter III. Their wealth and prosperity became greater, they were still more independent of the rural districts and of the central government, the intermunicipal character of their dealings, the closeness of connection between their industrial interests and their government, the completeness with which all occupations were organized under the "gild system," were all of them still more marked in 1450 than they had been in 1350. It is true that far-reaching changes were beginning, but they were only beginning, and did not reach an important development until a time later than that included in this chapter. The same thing is true in the field of foreign trade. The latter part of the fourteenth and the early fifteenth century saw a considerable increase and development of the trade of England, but it was still on the same lines and carried on by the same methods as before. The great proportion of it was in the hands of foreigners, and there was the same inconsistency in the policy of the central government on the occasions when it did intervene or take any action on the subject. The important changes in trade and in town life which have their beginning in this period will be discussed in connection with those of the next period in Chapter VI. *35. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Jessop, Augustus: _The Coming of the Friars and other Essays_. Two interesting essays in this volume are on _The Black Death in East Anglia_. Gasquet, F. A.: _The Great Pestilence of 1349_. Creighton, C.: _History of Epidemics in Britain_, two volumes. This gives especial attention to the nature of the disease. Trevelyan, G. M.: _England in the Age of Wycliffe_. This book, published in 1899, gives by far the fullest account of the Peasant Rising which has so far appeared in English. Petit-Dutaillis, C., et Reville, A.: _Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs d'Angleterre en 1381_. The best account of the Rebellion. Powell, Edgar: _The Peasant Rising in East Anglia in 1381_. Especially valuable for its accounts of the poll tax. Powell, Edgar, and Trevelyan, G. M.: _Documents Illustrating the Peasants' Rising and the Lollards_. Page, Thomas Walker: _The End of Villainage in England_. This monograph, published in 1900, is particularly valuable for the new facts which it gives concerning the rural changes of the fourteenth century. CHAPTER VI THE BREAKING UP OF THE MEDIÆVAL SYSTEM Economic Changes Of The Later Fifteenth And The Sixteenth Centuries *36. National Affairs from 1461 to 1603.*--The close of the fifteenth and the opening of the sixteenth century has been by universal consent settled upon as the passage from one era to another, from the Middle Ages to modern times. This period of transition was marked in England by at least three great movements: a new type of intellectual life, a new ideal of government, and the Reformation. The greatest changes in English literature and intellectual interests are traceable to foreign influence. In the fifteenth century the paramount foreign influence was that of Italy. From the middle of the fifteenth century an increasing number of young Englishmen went to Italy to study, and brought back with them an interest in the study of Greek and of other subjects to which this led. Somewhat later the social intercourse of Englishmen with Italy exercised a corresponding influence on more courtly literature. In 1491 the teaching of Greek was begun at Oxford by Grocyn, and after this time the passion for classical learning became deep, widespread, and enthusiastic. But not only were the subjects of intellectual interest different, but the attitude of mind in the study of these subjects was much more critical than it had been in the Middle Ages. The discoveries of new routes to the far East and of America, as well as the new speculations in natural science which came at this time, reacted on the minds of men and broadened their whole mental outlook. The production of works of pure literature had suffered a decline after the time of Wycliffe and Chaucer, from which there was no considerable revival till the early part of the sixteenth century. Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_, written in Latin in 1514, was a philosophical work thrown into the form of a literary dialogue and description of an imaginary commonwealth. But writing became constantly more abundant and more varied through the reigns of Henry VIII, 1509-1547, Edward VI, 1547-1553, and Mary, 1553-1558, until it finally blossomed out into the splendid Elizabethan literature, just at the close of our period. A stronger royal government had begun with Edward IV. The conclusion of the war with France made the king's need for money less, and at the same time new sources of income appeared. Edward, therefore, from 1461, neglected to call Parliament annually, as had been usual, and frequently allowed three or more years to go by without any consultation with it. He also exercised very freely what was called the dispensing power, that is, the power to suspend the law in certain cases, and in other ways asserted the royal prerogative as no previous king had done for two hundred years. But the true founder of the almost absolute monarchy of this period was Henry VII, who reigned from 1485 to 1509. He was not the nearest heir to the throne, but acted as the representative of the Lancastrian line, and by his marriage with the lady who represented the claim of the York family joined the two contending factions. He was the first of the Tudor line, his successors being his son, Henry VIII, and the three children of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. Henry VII was an able, shrewd, far-sighted, and masterful man. During his reign he put an end to the disorders of the nobility; made Parliament relatively insignificant by calling it even less frequently than Edward IV had done, and by initiating its legislation when it did meet. He also increased and regulated the income of the crown, and rendered its expenditures subject to control. He was able to keep ambassadors regularly abroad, for the first time, and in many other ways to support a more expensive administration, though often by unpopular and illegal means of extortion from the people. He formed foreign political and commercial treaties in all directions, and encouraged the voyages of the Cabots to America. He brought a great deal of business constantly before the Royal Council, but chose its members for their ability rather than for their high rank. In these various ways he created a strong personal government, which left but little room for Parliament or people to do anything except carry out his will. In these respects Henry's immediate successors and their ministers followed the same policy. In fact, the Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII, and new internal and foreign difficulties in the reign of Elizabeth, brought the royal power into a still higher and more independent position. The need for a general reformation of the church had long been recognized. More than one effort had been made by the ecclesiastical authorities to insist on higher intellectual and moral standards for the clergy and to rid the church of various evil customs and abuses. Again, there had been repeated efforts to clothe the king, who was at the head of all civil government, with extensive control and oversight of church affairs also. Men holding different views on questions of church government and religious belief from those held by the general Christian church in the Middle Ages, had written and taught and found many to agree with them. Thus efforts to bring about changes in the established church had not been wanting, but they had produced no permanent result. In the early years of the sixteenth century, however, several causes combined to bring about a movement of this nature extending over a number of years and profoundly affecting all subsequent history. This is known as the Reformation. The first steps of the Reformation in England were taken as the result of a dispute between King Henry VIII and the Pope. In the first place, several laws were passed through Parliament, beginning with the year 1529, abolishing a number of petty evils and abusive practices in the church courts. The Pope's income from England was then cut off, and his jurisdiction and all other forms of authority in England brought to an end. Finally, the supremacy of the king over the church and clergy and over all ecclesiastical affairs was declared and enforced. By the year 1535 the ancient connection between the church in England and the Pope was severed. Thus in England, as in many continental countries at about the same time, a national church arose independent of Rome. Next, changes began to be made in the doctrine and practices of the church. The organization under bishops was retained, though they were now appointed by the king. Pilgrimages and the worship of saints were forbidden, the Bible translated into English, and other changes gradually introduced. The monastic life came under the condemnation of the reformers. The monasteries were therefore dissolved and their property confiscated and sold, between the years 1536 and 1542. In the reign of Edward VI, 1547-1553, the Reformation was carried much further. An English prayerbook was issued which was to be used in all religious worship, the adornments of the churches were removed, the services made more simple, and doctrines introduced which assimilated the church of England to the contemporary Protestant churches on the Continent. Queen Mary, who had been brought up in the Roman faith, tried to make England again a Roman Catholic country, and in the later years of her reign encouraged severe persecutions, causing many to be burned at the stake, in the hope of thus crushing out heresy. After her death, however, in 1558, Queen Elizabeth adopted a more moderate position, and the church of England was established by law in much the form it had possessed at the death of Henry VIII. In the meantime, however, there had been growing up a far more spontaneous religious movement than the official Reformation which has just been described. Many thousands of persons had become deeply interested in religion and enthusiastic in their faith, and had come to hold different views on church government, doctrines, and practices from those approved of either by the Roman Catholic church or by the government of England. Those who held such views were known as Puritans, and throughout the reign of Elizabeth were increasing in numbers and making strenuous though unsuccessful efforts to introduce changes in the established church. The reign of Elizabeth was marked not only by the continuance of royal despotism, by brilliant literary production, and by the struggle of the established church against the Catholics on the one side and the Puritans on the other, but by difficult and dangerous foreign relations. More than once invasion by the continental powers was imminent. Elizabeth was threatened with deposition by the English adherents of Mary, Queen of Scots, supported by France and Spain. The English government pursued a policy of interference in the internal conflicts of other countries that brought it frequently to the verge of war with their governments and sometimes beyond. Hostility bordering on open warfare was therefore the most frequent condition of English foreign relations. Especially was this true of the relations with Spain. The most serious contest with that country was the war which culminated in the battle of the Armada in 1588. Spain had organized an immense fleet which was intended to go to the Netherlands and convoy an army to be taken thence for the invasion of England. While passing through the English Channel, a storm broke upon them, they were attacked and harried by the English and later by the Dutch, and the whole fleet was eventually scattered and destroyed. The danger of invasion was greatly reduced after this time and until the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1603. *37. Enclosures.*--The century and a half which extends from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth was, as has been shown, a period remarkable for the extent and variety of its changes in almost every aspect of society. In the political, intellectual, and religious world the sixteenth century seemed far removed from the fifteenth. It is not therefore a matter of surprise that economic changes were numerous and fundamental, and that social organization in town and country alike was completely transformed. During the period last discussed, the fourteenth and the early fifteenth century, the manorial system had changed very considerably from its mediæval form. The demesne lands had been quite generally leased to renting farmers, and a new class of tenants was consequently becoming numerous; serfdom had fallen into decay; the old manorial officers, the steward, the bailiff, and the reeve had fallen into unimportance; the manor courts were not so active, so regular, or so numerously attended. These changes were gradual and were still uncompleted at the middle of the fifteenth century; but there was already showing itself a new series of changes, affecting still other parts of manorial life, which became steadily more extensive during the remainder of the fifteenth and through much of the sixteenth century. These changes are usually grouped under the name "enclosures." The enclosure of land previously open was closely connected with the increase of sheep-raising. The older form of agriculture, grain-raising, labored under many difficulties. The price of labor was high, there had been no improvement in the old crude methods of culture, nor, in the open fields and under the customary rules, was there opportunity to introduce any. On the other hand, the inducements to sheep-raising were numerous. There was a steady demand at good prices for wool, both for export, as of old, and for the manufactures within England, which were now increasing. Sheep-raising required fewer hands and therefore high wages were less an obstacle, and it gave opportunity for the investment of capital and for comparative freedom from the restrictions of local custom. Therefore, instead of raising sheep simply as a part of ordinary farming, lords of manors, freeholders, farming tenants, and even customary tenants began here and there to raise sheep for wool as their principal or sole production. Instances are mentioned of five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand, and even twenty-four thousand sheep in the possession of a single person. This custom spread more and more widely, and so attracted the attention of observers as to be frequently mentioned in the laws and literature of the time. [Illustration: Partially enclosed Fields of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, 1767. (Facsimile map, published by the University of Oxford.)] But sheep could not be raised to any considerable extent on land divided according to the old open field system. In a vill whose fields all lay open, sheep must either be fed with those of other men on the common pasture, or must be kept in small groups by shepherds within the confines of the various acres or other small strips of the sheep-raiser's holding. No large number could of course be kept in this way, so the first thing to be done by the sheep-raiser was to get enough strips together in one place to make it worth while to put a hedge or other fence around them, or else to separate off in the same way a part or the whole of the open pastures or meadows. This was the process known as enclosing. Separate enclosed fields, which had existed only occasionally in mediæval farming, became numerous in this time, as they have become practically universal in modern farming in English-speaking countries. But it was ordinarily impracticable to obtain groups of adjacent acres or sufficiently extensive rights on the common pasture for enclosing without getting rid of some of the other tenants. In this way enclosing led to evictions. Either the lord of the manor or some one or more of the tenants enclosed the lands which they had formerly held and also those which were formerly occupied by some other holders, who were evicted from their land for this purpose. Some of the tenants must have been protected in their holdings by the law. As early as 1468 Chief Justice Bryan had declared that "tenant by the custom is as well inheritor to have his land according to the custom as he which hath a freehold at the common law." Again, in 1484, another chief justice declared that a tenant by custom who continued to pay his service could not be ejected by the lord of the manor. Such tenants came to be known as copyholders, because the proof of their customary tenure was found in the manor court rolls, from which a copy was taken to serve as a title. Subsequently copyhold became one of the most generally recognized forms of land tenure in England, and gave practically as secure title as did a freehold. At this time, however, notwithstanding the statements just given, the law was probably not very definite or not very well understood, and customary tenants may have had but little practical protection of the law against eviction. Moreover, the great body of the small tenants were probably no longer genuine customary tenants. The great proportion of small farms had probably not been inherited by a long line of tenants, but had repeatedly gone back into the hands of the lords of the manors and been subsequently rented out again, with or without a lease, to farmers or rent-paying tenants. These were in most cases probably the tenants who were now evicted to make room for the new enclosed sheep farms. By these enclosures and evictions in some cases the open lands of whole vills were enclosed, the old agriculture came to an end, and as the enclosers were often non-residents, the whole farming population disappeared from the village. Since sheep-raising required such a small number of laborers, the farm laborers also had to leave to seek work elsewhere, and the whole village, therefore, was deserted, the houses fell into ruin, and the township lost its population entirely. This was commonly spoken of at the time as "the decaying of towns," and those who were responsible for it were denounced as enemies of their country. In most cases, however, the enclosures and depopulation were only partial. A number of causes combined to carry this movement forward. England was not yet a wealthy country, but such capital as existed, especially in the towns, was utilized and made remunerative by investment in the newly enclosed farms and in carrying on the expenses of enclosure. The dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1542 brought the lands which they had formerly held into the possession of a class of men who were anxious to make them as remunerative as possible, and who had no feeling against enclosures. Nevertheless, the changes were much disapproved. Sir Thomas More condemns them in the _Utopia_, as do many other writers of the same period and of the reign of Elizabeth. The landlords, the enclosers, the city merchants who took up country lands, were preached against and inveighed against by such preachers as Latimer, Lever, and Becon, and in a dozen or more pamphlets still extant. The government also put itself into opposition to the changes which were in progress. It was believed that there was danger of a reduction of the population and thus of a lack of soldiers; it was feared that not enough grain would be raised to provide food for the people; the dangerous masses of wandering beggars were partly at least recruited from the evicted tenants; there was a great deal of discontent in the country due to the high rents, lack of occupation, and general dislike of change. A series of laws were therefore carried through Parliament and other measures taken, the object of which was to put a stop to the increase of sheep-farming and its results. In 1488 a statute was enacted prohibiting the turning of tillage land into pasture. In 1514 a new law was passed reënacting this and requiring the repair by their owners of any houses which had fallen into decay because of the substitution of pasture for tillage, and their reoccupation with tenants. In 1517 a commission of investigation into enclosures was appointed by the government. In 1518 the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, issued a proclamation requiring all those who had enclosed lands since 1509 to throw them open again, or else give proof that their enclosure was for the public advantage. In 1534 the earlier laws were reënacted and a further provision made that no person holding rented lands should keep more than twenty-four hundred sheep. In 1548 a new commission on enclosures was appointed which made extensive investigations, instituted prosecutions, and recommended new legislation. A law for more careful enforcement was passed in 1552, and the old laws were reënacted in 1554 and 1562. This last law was repealed in 1593, but in 1598 others were enacted and later extended. In 1624, however, all the laws on the subject were repealed. As a matter of fact, the laws seem to have been generally ineffective. The nobility and gentry were in the main in favor of the enclosures, as they increased their rents even when they were not themselves the enclosers; and it was through these classes that legislation had to be enforced at this time if it was to be effective. [Illustration: Sixteenth Century Manor House and Village, Maddingley, Cambridgeshire. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.] Besides the official opposition of the government, there were occasional instances of rioting or violent destruction of hedges and other enclosures by the people who felt themselves aggrieved by them. Three times these riots rose to the height of an insurrection. In 1536 the so-called "Pilgrimage of Grace" was a rising of the people partly in opposition to the introduction of the Reformation, partly in opposition to enclosures. In 1549 a series of risings occurred, the most serious of which was the "camp" under Kett in Norfolk, and in 1552 again there was an insurrection in Buckinghamshire. These risings were harshly repressed by the government. The rural changes, therefore, progressed steadily, notwithstanding the opposition of the law, of certain forms of public opinion, and of the violence of mobs. Probably enclosures more or less complete were made during this period in as many as half the manors of England. They were at their height in the early years of the sixteenth century, during its latter half they were not so numerous, and by its close the enclosing movement had about run its course, at least for the time. *38. Internal Divisions in the Craft Gilds.*--Changes in town life occurred during this period corresponding quite closely to the enclosures and their results in the country. These consisted in the decay of the gilds, the dispersion of certain town industries through the rural districts, and the loss of prosperity of many of the old towns. In the earlier craft gilds each man had normally been successively an apprentice, a journeyman, and a full master craftsman, with a little establishment of his own and full participation in the administration of the fraternity. There was coming now to be a class of artisans who remained permanently employed and never attained to the position of master craftsmen. This was sometimes the result of a deliberate process of exclusion on the part of those who were already masters. In 1480, for instance, a new set of ordinances given to the Mercers' Gild of Shrewsbury declares that the fines assessed on apprentices at their entry to be masters had been excessive and should be reduced. Similarly, the Oxford Town Council in 1531 restricts the payment required from any person who should come to be a full brother of any craft in that town to twenty shillings, a sum which would equal perhaps fifty dollars in modern value. In the same year Parliament forbade the collection of more than two shillings and sixpence from any apprentice at the time of his apprenticeship, and of more than three shillings and fourpence when he enters the trade fully at the expiration of his time. This indicates that the fines previously charged must have been almost prohibitive. In some trades the masters required apprentices at the time of indenture to take an oath that they would not set up independent establishments when they had fulfilled the years of their apprenticeship, a custom which was forbidden by Parliament in 1536. In other cases it was no doubt the lack of sufficient capital and enterprise which kept a large number of artisans from ever rising above the class of journeymen. Under these circumstances the journeymen evidently ceased to feel that they enjoyed any benefits from the organized crafts, for they began to form among themselves what are generally described as "yeomen gilds" or "journeymen gilds." At first the masters opposed such bodies and the city officials supported the old companies by prohibiting the journeymen from holding assemblies, wearing a special livery, or otherwise acting as separate bodies. Ultimately, however, they seem to have made good their position, and existed in a number of different crafts in more or less subordination to the organizations of the masters. The first mention of such bodies is soon after the Peasants' Rebellion, but in most cases the earliest rise of a journeyman gild in any industry was in the latter part of the fifteenth or in the sixteenth century. They were organizations quite similar to the older bodies from which they were a split, except that they had of course no general control over the industry. They had, however, meetings, officers, feasts, and charitable funds. In addition to these functions there is reason to believe that they made use of their organization to influence the rate of wages and to coerce other journeymen. Their relations to the masters' companies were frequently defined by regular written agreements between the two parties. Journeymen gilds existed among the saddlers, cordwainers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, drapers, ironmongers, founders, fishmongers, cloth-workers, and armorers in London, among the weavers in Coventry, the tailors in Exeter and in Bristol, the shoemakers in Oxford, and no doubt in some other trades in these and other towns. Among the masters also changes were taking place in the same direction. Instead of all master artisans or tradesmen in any one industry holding an equal position and taking an equal part in the administration of affairs of the craft, there came, at least in some of the larger companies, to be quite distinct groups usually described as those "of the livery" and those "not of the livery." The expression no doubt arose from the former class being the more well-to-do and active masters who had sufficient means to purchase the suits of livery worn on state occasions, and who in other ways were the leading and controlling members of the organization. This came, before the close of the fifteenth century, in many crafts to be a recognized distinction of class or station in the company. A statement of the members in one of the London fraternities made in 1493 gives a good instance of this distinction of classes, as well as of the subordinate body last described. There were said to be at that date in the Drapers' Company of the craft of drapers in the clothing, including the masters and four wardens, one hundred and fourteen, of the brotherhood out of the clothing one hundred and fifteen, of the bachelors' company sixty. It was from this prominence of the liveried gildsmen, that the term "Livery Companies" came to be applied to the greater London gilds. It was the wealthy merchants and the craftsmen of the livery of the various fraternities who rode in procession to welcome kings or ambassadors at their entrance into the city, to add lustre to royal wedding ceremonies, or give dignity to other state occasions. In 1483 four hundred and six members of livery companies riding in mulberry colored coats attended the coronation procession of Richard III. The mayors and sheriffs and aldermen of London were almost always livery men in one or another of the companies. A substantial fee had usually to be paid when a member was chosen into the livery, which again indicates that they were the wealthier members. Those of the livery controlled the policy of the gild to the exclusion of the less conspicuous members, even though these were also independent masters with journeymen and apprentices of their own. But the practical administration of the affairs of the wealthier companies came in many cases to be in the hands of a still smaller group of members. This group was often known as the "Court of Assistants," and consisted of some twelve, twenty, or more members who possessed higher rights than the others, and, with the wardens or other officials, decided disputes, negotiated with the government or other authorities, disposed of the funds, and in other ways governed the organized craft or trade. At a general meeting of the members of the Mercers of London, for instance, on July 23, 1463, the following resolution was passed: "It is accorded that for the holding of many courts and congregations of the fellowship, it is odious and grievous to the body of the fellowship and specially for matters of no great effect, that hereafter yearly shall be chosen and associated to the wardens for the time being twelve other sufficient persons to be assistants to the said wardens, and all matters by them finished to be holden firm and stable, and the fellowship to abide by them." Sixteen years later these assistants with the wardens were given the right to elect their successors. Thus before the close of the sixteenth century the craft and trading organizations had gone through a very considerable internal change. In the fourteenth century they had been bodies of masters of approximately equal position, in which the journeymen participated in some of the elements of membership, and would for the most part in due time become masters and full members. Now the journeymen had become for the most part a separate class, without prospect of mastership. Among the masters themselves a distinct division between the more and the less wealthy had taken place, and an aristocratic form of government had grown up which put the practical control of each of the companies in the hands of a comparatively small, self-perpetuating ruling body. These developments were all more marked, possibly some of them were only true, in the case of the London companies. London, also, so far as known, is the only English town in which the companies were divided into two classes, the twelve "Greater Companies," and the fifty or more "Lesser Companies"; the former having practical control of the government of the city, the latter having no such influence. *39. Change of Location of Industries.*--The changes described above were, as has been said, the result of development from within the craft and trading organizations themselves, resulting probably in the main from increasing wealth. There were other contemporary changes in these companies which were rather the result of external influences. One of these external factors was the old difficulty which arose from artisans and traders who were not members of the organized companies. There had always been men who had carried on work surreptitiously outside of the limits of the authorized organizations of their respective industries. They had done this from inability or unwillingness to conform to the requirements of gild membership, or from a desire to obtain more employment by underbidding in price, or additional profit by using unapproved materials or methods. Most of the bodies of ordinances mention such workmen and traders, men who have not gone through a regular apprenticeship, "foreigners" who have come in from some other locality and are not freemen of the city where they wish to work, irresponsible men who will not conform to the established rules of the trade. This class of persons was becoming more numerous through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, notwithstanding the efforts of the gilds, supported by municipal and national authority. The prohibition of any workers setting up business in a town unless they had previously obtained the approval of the officials of their trade was more and more vigorous in the later ordinances; the fines imposed upon masters who engaged journeymen who had not paid the dues, newcomers into the town, were higher. The complaints of the intrusion of outsiders were more loud and frequent. There was evidently more unsupervised, unregulated labor. But the increase in the number of these unorganized laborers, these craftsmen and traders not under the control of the gilds, was most marked in the rural districts, that is to say, in market towns and in villages entirely outside of the old manufacturing and trading centres. Even in the fourteenth century there were a number of weavers, and probably of other craftsmen, who worked in the villages in the vicinity of the larger towns, such as London, Norwich, and York, and took their products to be sold on fair or market days in these towns. But toward the end of the fifteenth century this rural labor received a new kind of encouragement and a corresponding extension far beyond anything before existing. The English cloth-making industry at this period was increasing rapidly. Whereas during the earlier periods, as we have seen, wool was the greatest of English exports, now it was coming to be manufactured within the country. In connection with this manufacture a new kind of industrial organization began to show itself which, when it was completed, became known as the "domestic system." A class of merchants or manufacturers arose who are spoken of as "clothiers," or "merchant clothiers," who bought the wool or other raw material, and gave it out to carders or combers, spinners, weavers, fullers, and other craftsmen, paying them for their respective parts in the process of manufacture, and themselves disposing of the product at home or for export. The clothiers were in this way a new class of employers, putting the master weavers or other craftsmen to work for wages. The latter still had their journeymen and apprentices, but the initiative in their industry was taken by the merchants, who provided the raw material and much of the money capital, and took charge of the sale of the completed goods. The craftsmen who were employed in this form of industry did not usually dwell in the old populous and wealthy towns. It is probable that the restrictions of the gild ordinances were disadvantageous both to the clothiers and to the small master craftsmen, and that the latter, as well as journeymen who had no chance to obtain an independent position, now that the town craft organizations were under the control of the more wealthy members, were very ready to migrate to rural villages. Thus, in as far as the weaving industry was growing up under the management of the employing clothiers, it was slipping out from under the control of the town gilds by its location in the country. The same thing occurred in other cases, even without the intermediation of a new employing class. We hear of mattress makers, of rope makers, of tile makers, and other artisans establishing themselves in the country villages outside of the towns, where, as a law of 1495 says, "the wardens have no power or authority to make search." In certain parts of England, in the southwest, the west, and the northwest, independent weavers now set up for themselves in rural districts as those of the eastern counties had long done, buying their own raw materials, bringing their manufactures to completion, and then taking them to the neighboring towns and markets to sell, or hawking them through the rural districts. These changes, along with others occurring simultaneously, led to a considerable diminution of the prosperity of many of the large towns. They were not able to pay their usual share of taxation, the population of some of them declined, whole streets or quarters, when destroyed by fire or other catastrophe, were left unbuilt and in ruins. Many of the largest and oldest towns of England are mentioned in the statutes of the reign of Henry VIII as being more or less depleted in population. The laws and literature of the time are ringing with complaints of the "decay of the towns," where the reference is to cities, as well as where it is to rural villages. Certain new towns, it is true, were rising into greater importance, and certain rural districts were becoming populous with this body of artisans whose living was made partly by their handicraft, partly by small farming. Nevertheless the old city craft organizations were permanently weakened and impoverished by thus losing control of such a large proportion of their various industries. The occupations which were carried on in the country were pursued without supervision by the gilds. They retained control only of that part of industry which was still carried on in the towns. *40. The Influence of the Government on the Gilds.*--Internal divisions and external changes in the distribution of industry were therefore alike tending to weaken the gild organization. It had to suffer also from the hostility or intrusion of the national government. Much of the policy of the government tended, it is true, as in the case of the enclosures, to check the changes in progress, and thus to protect the gild system. It has been seen that laws were passed to prohibit the exclusion of apprentices and journeymen from full membership in the crafts. As early as 1464 a law was passed to regulate the growing system of employment of craftsmen by clothiers. This was carried further in a law of 1511, and further still in 1551 and 1555. The manufacture of rope in the country parts of Dorsetshire was prohibited and restricted to the town of Bridport in 1529; the cloth manufacture which was growing up through the "hamlets, thorps, and villages" in Worcestershire was forbidden in 1553 to be carried on except in the five old towns of Worcester, Evesham, Droitwich, Kidderminster, and Bromsgrove; in 1543 it was enacted that coverlets were not to be manufactured in Yorkshire outside of the city of York, and there was still further legislation in the same direction. Numerous acts were also passed for the purpose of restoring the populousness of the towns. There is, however, little reason to believe that these laws had much more effect in preventing the narrowing of the control of the gilds and the scattering of industries from the towns to the country than the various laws against enclosures had, and the latter object was practically surrendered by the numerous exceptions to it in laws passed in 1557, 1558, and 1575. All the laws favoring the older towns were finally repealed in 1623. Another class of laws may seem to have favored the craft organizations. These were the laws regulating the carrying on of various industries, in some of which the enforcement of the laws was intrusted to the gild authorities. The statute book during the sixteenth century is filled with laws "for the true making of pins," "for the making of friezes and cottons in Wales," "for the true currying of leather," "for the making of iron gads," "for setting prices on wines," for the regulation of the coopers, the tanners, the makers of woollen cloth, the dyers, the tallow chandlers, the saddlers and girdlers, and dozens of other occupations. But although in many of these laws the wardens of the appropriate crafts are given authority to carry out the requirements of the statute, either of themselves or along with the town officials or the justices of the peace; yet, after all, it is the rules established by government that they are to carry out, not their own rules, and in many of the statutes the craft authorities are entirely ignored. This is especially true of the "Statute of Apprentices," passed in the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1563. This great industrial code, which remained on the statute book for two hundred and fifty years, being repealed only in 1813, was primarily a reënactment of the statutes of laborers, which had been continued from time to time ever since their introduction in 1349. It made labor compulsory and imposed on the justices of the peace the duty of meeting in each locality once a year to establish wages for each kind of industry. It required a seven years' apprenticeship for every person who should engage in any trade; established a working day of twelve hours in summer and during daylight in winter; and enacted that all engagements, except those for piece work, should be by the year, with six months' notice of a close of the contract by either employer or employee. By this statute all the relations between master and journeyman and the rules of apprenticeship were regulated by the government instead of by the individual craft gilds. It is evident that the old trade organizations were being superseded in much of their work by the national government. Freedom of action was also restricted by the same power in other respects also. As early as 1436 a law had been passed, declaring that the ordinances made by the gilds were in many cases unreasonable and injurious, requiring them to submit their existing ordinances to the justices at Westminster, and prohibiting them from issuing any new ones until they had received the approval of these officials. There is no indication of the enforcement of this law. In 1504, however, it was reënacted with the modification that approval might be sought from the justices on circuit. In 1530 the same requirement was again included in the law already referred to prohibiting excessive entrance fees. As the independent legislation of the gilds for their industries was already much restricted by the town governments, their remaining power to make rules for themselves must now have been very slight. Their power of jurisdiction was likewise limited by a law passed in 1504, prohibiting the companies from making any rule forbidding their members to appeal to the ordinary national courts in trade disputes. [Illustration: Residence of Chantry Priests of Altar of St. Nicholas, near Lincoln Cathedral. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth Century._)] But the heaviest blow to the gilds on the part of the government came in 1547, as a result of the Reformation. Both the organizations formed for the control of the various industries, the craft gilds, and those which have been described in Chapter III as non-industrial, social, or religious gilds, had property in their possession which had been bequeathed or given to them by members on condition that the gild would always support or help to support a priest, should see that mass was celebrated for the soul of the donor and his family, should keep a light always burning before a certain shrine, or for other religious objects. These objects were generally looked upon as superstitious by the reformers who became influential under Edward VI, and in the first year of his reign a statute was passed which confiscated to the crown, to be used for educational or other purposes, all the properly of every kind of the purely religious and social gilds, and that part of the property of the craft gilds which was employed by them for religious purposes. One of the oldest forms of voluntary organization in England therefore came to an end altogether, and one of the strongest bonds which had held the members of the craft gilds together as social bodies was removed. After this time the companies had no religious functions, and were besides deprived of a considerable proportion of their wealth. This blow fell, moreover, just at a time when all the economic influences were tending toward their weakening or actual disintegration. [Illustration: Monastery turned into a Farmhouse, Dartford Priory, Kent. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.] The trade and craft companies of London, like those of other towns, were called upon at first to pay over to the government annually the amount which they had before used for religious purposes. Three years after the confiscation they were required to pay a lump sum representing the capitalized value of this amount, estimated for the London companies at £20,000. In order to do so they were of course forced to sell or mortgage much of their land. That which they succeeded in retaining, however, or bought subsequently was relieved of all government charges, and being situated for the most part in the heart of London, ultimately became extremely valuable and is still in their possession. So far have the London companies, however, departed from their original purpose that their members have long ceased to have any connection with the occupations from which the bodies take their names. *41. General Causes and Evidences of the Decay of the Gilds.*--An analogous narrowing of the interests of the crafts occurred in the form of a cessation of the mystery plays. Dramatic shows continued to be brought out yearly by the crafts in many towns well into the sixteenth century. It is to be noticed, however, that this was no longer done spontaneously. The town governments insisted that the pageants should be provided as of old, and on the approach of Corpus Christi day, or whatever festival was so celebrated in the particular town, instructions were given for their production, pecuniary help being sometimes provided to assist the companies in their expense. The profit which came to the town from the influx of visitors to see the pageants was a great inducement to the town government to insist on their continuance. On the other hand, the competition of dramas played by professional actors tended no doubt to hasten the effect of the impoverishment and loss of vitality of the gilds. In the last half of the sixteenth century the mystery plays seem to have come finally to an end. Thus the gilds lost the unity of their membership, were weakened by the growth of industry outside of their sphere of control, superseded by the government in many of their economic functions, deprived of their administrative, legislative, and jurisdictional freedom, robbed of their religious duties and of the property which had enabled them to fulfil them, and no longer possessed even the bond of their dramatic interests. So the fraternities which had embodied so much of the life of the people of the towns during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries now came to include within their organization fewer and fewer persons and to affect a smaller and smaller part of their interests. Although the companies continued to exist into later times, yet long before the close of the period included in this chapter they had become relatively inconspicuous and insignificant. One striking evidence of their diminished strength, and apparently a last effort to keep the gild organization in existence, is the curious combination or consolidation of the companies under the influence of the city governments. Numerous instances of the combination of several trades are to be found in the records of every town, as for instance the "company of goldsmiths and smiths and others their brethren," at Hull in 1598, which consisted of goldsmiths, smiths, pewterers, plumbers and glaziers, painters, cutlers, musicians, stationers and bookbinders, and basket-makers. A more striking instance is to be found in Ipswich in 1576, where the various occupations were all drawn up into four companies, as follows: (1) The Mercers; including the mariners, shipwrights, bookbinders, printers, fishmongers, sword-setters, cooks, fletchers, arrowhead-makers, physicians, hatters, cappers, mercers, merchants, and several others. (2) The Drapers; including the joiners, carpenters, innholders, freemasons, bricklayers, tilers, carriers, casket-makers, surgeons, clothiers, and some others. (3) The Tailors; including the cutlers, smiths, barbers, chandlers, pewterers, minstrels, peddlers, plumbers, pinners, millers, millwrights, coopers, shearmen, glaziers, turners, tinkers, tailors, and others. (4) The Shoemakers; including the curriers, collar-makers, saddlers, pointers, cobblers, skinners, tanners, butchers, carters, and laborers. Each of these four companies was to have an alderman and two wardens, and all outsiders who came to the town and wished to set up trade were to be placed by the town officials in one or the other of the four companies. The basis of union in some of these combinations was evidently the similarity of their occupations, as the various workers in leather among the "Shoemakers." In other cases there is no such similarity, and the only foundation that can be surmised for the particular grouping is the contiguity of the streets where the greatest number of particular artisans lived, or their proportionate wealth. Later, this process reached its culmination in such a case as that of Preston in 1628, where all the tradesmen of the town were organized as one company or fraternity called "The Wardens and Company of Drapers, Mercers, Grocers, Salters, Ironmongers, and Haberdashers." The craft and trading gilds in their mediæval character had evidently come to an end. *42. The Growth of Native Commerce.*--The most distinctive characteristic of English foreign trade down to the middle of the fifteenth century consisted in the fact that it had been entirely in the hands of foreigners. The period under discussion saw it transferred with quite as great completeness to the hands of Englishmen. Even before 1450 trading vessels had occasionally been sent out from the English seaport towns on more or less extensive voyages, carrying out English goods, and bringing back those of other countries or of other parts of England. These vessels sometimes belonged to the town governments, sometimes to individual merchants. This kind of enterprise became more and more common. Individual merchants grew famous for the number and size of their ships and the extent of their trade; as for instance, William Canynges of Bristol, who in 1461 had ten vessels at sea, or Sturmys of the same town, who at about the same time sent the first English vessel to trade with the eastern Mediterranean, or John Taverner of Hull, who built in 1449 a new type of vessel modelled on the carracks of Genoa and the galleys of Venice. In the middle of the fourteenth century the longest list of merchants of any substance that could be drawn up contained only 169 names. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were at least 3000 merchants engaged in foreign trade, and in 1601 there were about 3500 trading to the Netherlands alone. These merchants exported the old articles of English production and to a still greater extent textile goods, the manufacture of which was growing so rapidly in England. The export of wool came to an end during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but the export of woven cloth was more than enough to take its place. There was not so much cloth now imported, but a much greater variety and quantity of food-stuffs and wines, of articles of fine manufacture, and of the special products of the countries to which English trade extended. The entrance of English vessels into ports of towns or countries whose own vessels had been accustomed to the control of the trade with England, or where the old commercial towns of the Hanseatic League, of Flanders, or of Italy had valuable trading concessions, was not obtained without difficulty, and there was a constant succession of conflicts more or less violent, and of disputes between English and foreign sailors and merchants. The progress of English commerce was, however, facilitated by the decay in the prosperity of many of these older trading towns. The growth of strong governments in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Russia resulted in a withdrawal of privileges which the Hanseatic League had long possessed, and internal dissensions made the League very much weaker in the later fifteenth century than it had been during the century and a half before. The most important single occurrence showing this tendency was the capture of Novgorod by the Russian Czar and his expulsion of the merchants of the Hanse from their settlement in that commercial centre. In the same way most of the towns along the south coast of the Baltic came under the control of the kingdom of Poland. A similar change came about in Flanders, where the semi-independent towns came under the control of the dukes of Burgundy. These sovereigns had political interests too extensive to be subordinated to the trade interests of individual towns in their dominions. Thus it was that Bruges now lost much of its prosperity, while Antwerp became one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe. Trading rights could now be obtained from centralized governments, and were not dependent on the interest or the antagonism of local merchants. In Italy other influences were leading to much the same results. The advance of Turkish conquests was gradually increasing the difficulties of the Eastern trade, and the discovery of the route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 finally diverted that branch of commerce into new lines. English merchants gained access to some of this new Eastern trade through their connection with Portugal, a country advantageously situated to inherit the former trade of Italy and southern Germany. English commerce also profited by the predominance which Florence obtained over Pisa, Genoa, and other trading towns. Thus conditions on the Continent were strikingly favorable to the growing commercial enterprise of England. *43. The Merchants Adventurers.*--English merchants who exported and imported goods in their own vessels were, with the exception of the staplers or exporters of wool and other staple articles, usually spoken of as "adventurers," "venturers," or "merchants adventurers." This term is used in three different senses. Sometimes it simply means merchants who entered upon adventure or risk by sending their goods outside of the country to new or unrecognized markets, as the "adventurers to Iceland," "adventurers to Spain." Again, it is applied to groups of merchants in various towns who were organized for mutual protection or other advantage, as the "fishmongers adventurers" who brought their complaints before the Royal Council in 1542, "The Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of Merchant Venturers, of Bristol," existing apparently in the fourteenth century, fully organized by 1467, and incorporated in 1552, "The Society of Merchants Adventurers of Newcastle upon Tyne," or the similar bodies at York and Exeter. But by far the most frequent use of the term is that by which it was applied to those merchants who traded to the Netherlands and adjacent countries, especially as exporters of cloth, and who came within this period to be recognized and incorporated as the "Merchants Adventurers" in a special sense, with headquarters abroad, a coat of arms of their own, extensive privileges, great wealth, influence, and prominence. These English merchants, trading to the Netherlands in other articles than those controlled by the Staplers, apparently received privileges of trade from the duke of Brabant as early as the thirteenth century, and the right of settling their own disputes before their own "consul" in the fourteenth. But their commercial enterprises must have been quite insignificant, and it was only during the fifteenth century that they became numerous and their trade in English cloth extensive. Just at the beginning of this century, in 1407, the king of England gave a general charter to all merchants trading beyond seas to assemble in definite places and choose for themselves consuls or governors to arrange for their common trade advantage. After this time, certainly by the middle of the century, the regular series of governors of the English merchants in the Netherlands was established, one of the earliest being William Caxton, afterward the founder of printing in England. On the basis of these concessions and of the privileges and charters granted by the home government the "Merchants Adventurers" gradually became a distinct organization, with a definite membership which was obtained by payment of a sum which gradually rose from 6_s._ 8_d._ to £20, until it was reduced by a law of Parliament in 1497 to £6 13_s._ 4_d._ They had local branches in England and on the Continent. In 1498 they were granted a coat of arms by Henry VII, and in 1503 by royal charter a distinct form of government under a governor and twenty-four assistants. In 1564 they were incorporated by a royal charter by the title of "The Merchants Adventurers of England." Long before that time they had become by far the largest and most influential company of English exporting merchants. It is said that the Merchants Adventurers furnished ten out of the sixteen London ships sent to join the fleet against the Armada. Most of their members were London mercers, though there were also in the society members of other London companies, and traders whose homes were in other English towns than London. The meetings of the company in London were held for a long while in the Mercers' hall, and their records were kept in the same minute book as those of the Mercers until 1526. On the Continent their principal office, hall, or gathering place, the residence of their Governor and location of the "Court,", or central government of the company, was at different times at Antwerp, Bruges, Calais, Hamburg, Stade, Groningen and Middleburg; for the longest time probably at the first of these places. The larger part of the foreign trade of England during the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth century was carried on and extended as well as controlled and regulated by this great commercial company. [Illustration: Hall of the Merchants Adventurers at Bruges. (Blade: _Life of Caxton_. Published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.)] During the latter half of the sixteenth century, however, other companies of merchants were formed to trade with various countries, most of them receiving a government charter and patronage. Of these the Russia or Muscovy Company obtained recognition from the government in 1554, and in 1557, when an ambassador from that country came to London, a hundred and fifty merchants trading to Russia received him in state. In 1581 the Levant or Turkey Company was formed, and its members carried their merchandise as far as the Persian Gulf. In 1585 the Barbary or Morocco Company was formed, but seems to have failed. In 1588, however, a Guinea Company began trading, and in 1600 the greatest of all, the East India Company, was chartered. The expeditions sent out by the Bristol merchants and then by the king under the Cabots, those other voyages so full of romance in search of a northwest or a northeast passage to the Orient, and the no less adventurous efforts to gain entrance to the Spanish possessions in the west, were a part of the same effort of commercial companies or interests to carry their trading into new lands. *44. Government Encouragement of Commerce.*--Before the accession of Henry VII it is almost impossible to discover any deliberate or continuous policy of the government in commercial matters. From this time forward, however, through the whole period of the Tudor monarchs a tolerably consistent plan was followed of favoring English merchants and placing burdens and restrictions upon foreign traders. The merchants from the Hanse towns, with their dwellings, warehouses, and offices at the Steelyard in London, were subjected to a narrower interpretation of the privileges which they possessed by old and frequently renewed grants. In 1493 English customs officers began to intrude upon their property; in 1504 especially heavy penalties were threatened if they should send any cloth to the Netherlands during the war between the king and the duke of Burgundy. During the reign of Henry VIII the position of the Hansards was on the whole easier, but in 1551 their special privileges were taken away, and they were put in the same position as all other foreigners. There was a partial regrant of advantageous conditions in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, but finally, in 1578, they lost their privileges forever. As a matter of fact, German traders now came more and more rarely to England, and their settlement above London Bridge was practically deserted. The fleet from Venice also came less and less frequently. Under Henry VIII for a period of nine years no fleet came to English ports; then after an expedition had been sent out from Venice in 1517, and again in 1521, another nine years passed by. The fleet came again in 1531, 1532, and 1533, and even afterward from time to time occasional private Venetian vessels came, till a group of them suffered shipwreck on the southern coast in 1587, after which the Venetian flag disappeared entirely from those waters. In the meantime a series of favorable commercial treaties were made in various directions by Henry VII and his successors. In 1490 he made a treaty with the king of Denmark by which English merchants obtained liberty to trade in that country, in Norway, and in Iceland. Within the same year a similar treaty was made with Florence, by which the English merchants obtained a monopoly of the sale of wool in the Florentine dominions, and the right to have an organization of their own there, which should settle trade disputes among themselves, or share in the settlement of their disputes with foreigners. In 1496 the old trading relations with the Netherlands were reëstablished on a firmer basis than ever by the treaty which has come in later times to be known as the _Intercursus Magnus_. In the same year commercial advantages were obtained from France, and in 1499 from Spain. Few opportunities were missed by the government during this period to try to secure favorable conditions for the growing English trade. Closely connected as commercial policy necessarily was with political questions, the former was always a matter of interest to the government, and in all the ups and downs of the relations of England with the Continental countries during the sixteenth century the foothold gained by English merchants was always preserved or regained after a temporary loss. The closely related question of English ship-building was also a matter of government encouragement. In 1485 a law was passed declaring that wines of the duchies of Guienne and Gascony should be imported only in vessels which were English property and manned for the most part by Englishmen. In 1489 woad, a dyestuff from southern France, was included, and it was ordered that merchandise to be exported from England or imported into England should never be shipped in foreign vessels if sufficient English vessels were in the harbor at the time. Although this policy was abandoned during the short reign of Edward VI it was renewed and made permanent under Elizabeth. By indirect means also, as by the encouragement of fisheries, English seafaring was increased. As a result of these various forms of commercial influence, the enterprise of individual English merchants, the formation of trading companies, the assistance given by the government through commercial treaties and favoring statutes, English commerce became vastly greater than it had ever been before, reaching to Scandinavia and Russia, to Germany and the Netherlands, to France and Spain, to Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, and even occasionally to America. Moreover, it had come almost entirely into the hands of Englishmen; and the goods exported and imported were carried for the most part in ships of English build and ownership, manned by English sailors. *45. The Currency.*--The changes just described were closely connected with contemporary changes in the gold and silver currency. Shillings were coined for the first time in the reign of Henry VII, a pound weight of standard silver being coined into 37 shillings and 6 pence. In 1527 Henry VIII had the same amount of metal coined into 40 shillings, and later in the year, into 45 shillings. In 1543 coin silver was changed from the old standard of 11 ounces 2 pennyweights of pure silver to 18 pennyweights of alloy, so as to consist of 10 ounces of silver to 2 ounces of alloy; and this was coined into 48 shillings. In 1545 the coin metal was made one-half silver, one-half alloy; in 1546, one-third silver, two-thirds alloy; and in 1550, one-fourth silver, three-fourths alloy. The gold coinage was correspondingly though not so excessively debased. The lowest point of debasement for both silver and gold was reached in 1551. In 1560 Queen Elizabeth began the work of restoring the currency to something like its old standard. The debased money was brought to the mints, where the government paid the value of the pure silver in it. Money of a high standard and permanently established weight was then issued in its place. Much of the confusion and distress prevalent during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI was doubtless due to this selfish and unwise monetary policy. At about the same time a new influence on the national currency came into existence. Strenuous but not very successful efforts had long been made to draw bullion into England and prevent English money from being taken out. Now some of the silver and gold which was being extorted from the natives and extracted from the mines of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards began to make its way into England, as into other countries of Europe. These American sources of supply became productive by about 1525, but very little of this came into general European circulation or reached England till the middle of the century. After about 1560, however, through trade, and sometimes by even more direct routes, the amount of gold and silver money in circulation in England increased enormously. No reliable statistics exist, but there can be little doubt that the amount of money in England, as in Europe at large, was doubled, trebled, quadrupled, or perhaps increased still more largely within the next one hundred years. This increase of money produced many effects. One of the most important was its effect on prices. These had begun to rise in the early part of the century, principally as a result of the debasement of the coinage. In the latter part of the century the rise was much greater, due now, no doubt, to the influx of new money. Most commodities cost quite four times as much at the end of the sixteenth century as they did at its beginning. Another effect of the increased amount of currency appeared in the greater ease with which the use of money capital was obtained. Saving up and borrowing were both more practicable. More capital was now in existence and more persons could obtain the use of it. As a result, manufacturing, trade, and even agriculture could now be conducted on a more extensive scale, changes could be introduced, and production was apt to be profitable, as prices were increasing and returns would be greater even than those calculated upon. *46. Interest.*--Any extensive and varied use of capital is closely connected with the payment of interest. In accord with a strict interpretation of certain passages in both the Old and the New Testament, the Middle Ages regarded the payment of interest for the use of money as wicked. Interest was the same as usury and was illegal. As a matter of fact, most regular occupations in the Middle Ages required very little capital, and this was usually owned by the agriculturists, handicraftsmen, or merchants themselves; so that borrowing was only necessary for personal expenses or in occasional exigencies. With the enclosures, sheep farming, consolidation of farms, and other changes in agriculture, with the beginning of manufacturing under the control of capitalist manufacturers, with the more extensive foreign trading and ship owning, and above all with the increase in the actual amount of money in existence, these circumstances were changed. It seemed natural that money which one person had in his possession, but for which he had no immediate use, should be loaned to another who could use it for his own enterprises. These enterprises might be useful to the community, advantageous to himself, and yet profitable enough to allow him to pay interest for the use of the money to the capitalist who loaned it to him. As a matter of fact much money was loaned and, legally or illegally, interest or usury was paid for it. Moreover, a change had been going on in legal opinion parallel to these economic changes, and in 1545 a law was passed practically legalizing interest if it was not at a higher rate than ten per cent. This was, however, strongly opposed by the religious opinion of the time, especially among men of Puritan tendencies. They seemed, indeed, to be partially justified by the fact that the control of capital was used by the rich men of the time in such a way as to cause great hardship. In 1552, therefore, the law of 1545 was repealed, and interest, except in the few forms in which it had always been allowed, was again prohibited. But the tide soon turned, and in 1571 interest up to ten per cent was again made lawful. From that time forward the term usury was restricted to excessive interest, and this alone was prohibited. Yet the practice of receiving interest for the loan of money was still generally condemned by writers on morals till quite the end of this period; though lawyers, merchants, and popular opinion no longer disapproved of it if the rate was moderate. *47. Paternal Government.*--In many of the changes which have been described in this chapter, the share which government took was one of the most important influences. In some cases, as in the laws against enclosures, against the migration of industry from the towns to the rural districts, and against usury, the policy of King and Parliament was not successful in resisting the strong economic forces which were at work. In others, however, as in the oversight of industry, in the confiscation of the property of the gilds devoted to religious uses, in the settlement of the relations between employers and employees, in the control of foreign commerce, the policy of the government really decided what direction changes should take. As has been seen in this chapter, after the accession of Henry VII there was a constant extension of the sphere of government till it came to pass laws upon and provide for and regulate almost all the economic interests of the nation. This was a result, in the first place, of the breaking down of those social institutions which had been most permanent and stable in earlier periods. The manor system in the country, landlord farming, the manor courts, labor dues, serfdom, were passing rapidly away; the old type of gilds, city regulations, trading at fairs, were no longer so general; it was no longer foreigners who brought foreign goods to England to be sold, or bought English goods for exportation. When these old Customs were changing or passing away, the national government naturally took charge to prevent the threatened confusion of the process of disintegration. Secondly, the government itself, from the latter part of the fifteenth century onward, became abler and more vigorous, as has been pointed out in the first paragraph of this chapter. The Privy Council of the king exercised larger functions, and extended its jurisdiction into new fields. Under these circumstances, when the functions of the central government were being so widely extended, it was altogether natural that they should come to include the control of all forms of industrial life, including agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, internal trade, labor, and other social and economic relations. Thirdly, the control of economic and social matters by the government was in accordance with contemporary opinions and feelings. An enlightened absolutism seems to have commended itself to the most thoughtful men of that time. A paternalism which regulated a very wide circle of interests was unhesitatingly accepted and approved. As a result of the decay of mediæval conditions, the strengthening of national government, and the prevailing view of the proper functions of government, almost all economic conditions were regulated by the government to a degree quite unknown before. In the early part of the period this regulation was more minute, more intrusive, more evidently directed to the immediate advantage of government; but by the close of Elizabeth's reign a systematic regulation was established, which, while not controlling every detail of industrial life, yet laid down the general lines along which most of industrial life must run. Some parts of this regulation have already been analyzed. Perhaps the best instance and one of the most important parts of it is the Statute of Apprentices of 1563, already described in paragraph 40. In the same year, 1563, a statute was passed full of minute regulations for the fishing and fish-dealing trades. Foreign commerce was carried on by regulated companies; that is, companies having charters from the government, giving them a monopoly of the trade with certain countries, and laying down at least a part of the rules under which that trade should be carried on. The importation of most kinds of finished goods and the exportation of raw materials were prohibited. New industries were encouraged by patents or other government concessions. Many laws were passed, of which that of 1571, to encourage the industry of making caps, is a type. This law laid down the requirement that every person of six years old and upward should wear on every Sunday and holy day a woollen cap made in England. The conformity to standard of manufactures was enforced either by the officers of companies which were established under the authority of the government or by government officials or patentees, and many of the methods and standards of manufacture were themselves defined by statutes or proclamation. In agriculture, while the policy was less consistent, government regulation was widely applied. There were laws, as has been noted, forbidding the possession of more than two thousand sheep by any one landholder and of more than two farms by any one tenant; laws requiring the keeping of one cow and one calf for every sixty sheep, and the raising a quarter of an acre of flax or hemp for every sixty acres devoted to other crops. The most characteristic laws for the regulation of agriculture, however, were those controlling the export of grain. In order to prevent an excessive price, grain-raisers were not allowed to export wheat or other grain when it was scarce in England. When it was cheap and plenty, they were permitted to do so, the conditions under which it was to be allowed or forbidden being decided, according to a law of 1571, by the justices of the peace of each locality, with the restriction that none should be exported when the prevailing price was more than 1_s._ 3_d._ a bushel, a limit which was raised to 2_s._ 6_d._ in 1592. Thus, instead of industrial life being controlled and regulated by town governments, merchant and craft gilds, lords of fairs, village communities, lords of manors and their stewards, or other local bodies, it was now regulated in its main features by the all-powerful national government. *48. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Professor Ashley's second volume is of especial value for this period. Green, Mrs. J. R.: _Town Life in England in the Fifteenth Century_, two volumes. Cheyney, E. P.: _Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century, Part I, Rural Changes_. A discussion of the legal character of villain tenure in the sixteenth century will be found in articles by Mr. I. S. Leadam, in _The English Historical Review_, for October, 1893, and in the _Transactions of the English Royal Historical Society_ for 1892, 1893, and 1894; and by Professor Ashley in the _English Historical Review_ for April, 1893, and _Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_ for January, 1891. (Reprinted in _English Economic History_, Vol. II, Chap. 4.) Bourne, H. R. F.: _English Merchants_. Froude, J. A.: _History of England_. Many scattered passages of great interest refer to the economic and social changes of this period, but they are frequently exaggerated, and in some cases incorrect. Almost the same remark applies to Professor Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_ and _Industrial and Commercial History of England_. Busch, Wilhelm: _A History of England under the Tudors_. For the economic policy of Henry VII. CHAPTER VII THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND Economic Changes Of The Seventeenth And Early Eighteenth Centuries *49. National Affairs from 1603 to 1760.*--The last three rulers of the Tudor family had died childless. James, king of Scotland, their cousin, therefore inherited the throne and became the first English king of the Stuart family. James reigned from 1603 to 1625. Many of the political and religious problems which had been created by the policy of the Tudor sovereigns had now to come up for solution. Parliament had long been restive under the almost autocratic government of Queen Elizabeth, but the danger of foreign invasion and internal rebellion, long-established habit, Elizabeth's personal popularity, her age, her sex, and her occasional yielding, all combined to prevent any very outspoken opposition. Under King James all these things were changed. Yet he had even higher ideas of his personal rights, powers, and duties as king than any of his predecessors. Therefore during the whole of the reign dispute and ill feeling existed between the king, his ministers, and many of the judges and other officials, on the one hand, and the majority of the House of Commons and among the middle and upper classes of the country, on the other. James would willingly have avoided calling Parliament altogether and would have carried on the government according to his own judgment and that of the ministers he selected, but it was absolutely necessary to assemble it for the passing of certain laws, and above all for the authorization of taxes to obtain the means to carry on the government. The fall in the value of gold and silver and the consequent rise of prices, and other economic changes, had reduced the income of the government just at a time when its necessary expenses were increasing, and when a spendthrift king was making profuse additional outlays. Finances were therefore a constant difficulty during his reign, as in fact they remained during the whole of the seventeenth century. In religion James wished to maintain the middle course of the established church as it had been under Elizabeth. He was even less inclined to harsh treatment of the Roman Catholics. On the other hand, the tide of Puritan feeling appealing for greater strictness and earnestness in the church and a more democratic form of church government was rising higher and higher, and with this a desire to expel the Roman Catholics altogether. The House of Commons represented this strong Protestant feeling, so that still another cause of conflict existed between King and Parliament. Similarly, in foreign affairs and on many other questions James was at cross purposes with the main body of the English nation. This reign was the period of foundation of England's great colonial empire. The effort to establish settlements on the North American coast were at last successful in Virginia and New England, and soon after in the West Indies. Still other districts were being settled by other European nations, ultimately to be absorbed by England. On the other side of the world the East India Company began its progress toward the subjugation of India. Nearer home, a new policy was carried out in Ireland, by which large numbers of English and Scotch immigrants were induced to settle in Ulster, the northernmost province. Thus that process was begun by which men of English race and language, living under English institutions and customs, have established centres of population, wealth, and influence in so many parts of the world. Charles I came to the throne in 1625. Most of the characteristics of the period of James continued until the quarrels between King and Parliament became so bitter that in 1642 civil war broke out. The result of four years of fighting was the defeat and capture of the king. After fruitless attempts at a satisfactory settlement Charles was brought to trial by Parliament in 1649, declared guilty of treason, and executed. A republican form of government was now established, known as the "Commonwealth," and kingship and the House of Lords were abolished. The army, however, had come to have a will of its own, and quarrels between its officers and the majority of Parliament were frequent. Both Parliament and army had become unpopular, taxation was heavy, and religious disputes troublesome. The majority in Parliament had carried the national church so far in the direction of Puritanism that its excesses had brought about a strong reactionary feeling. Parliament had already sat for more than ten years, hence called the "Long Parliament," and had become corrupt and despotic. Under these circumstances, one modification after another was made in the form of government until in 1653 Oliver Cromwell, the commander of the army and long the most influential man in Parliament, dissolved that body by military force and was made Lord Protector, with powers not very different from those of a king. There was now a period of good order and great military and naval success for England; Scotland and Ireland, both of which had declared against the Commonwealth, were reduced to obedience, and successful foreign wars were waged. But at home the government did not succeed in obtaining either popularity or general acceptance. Parliament after Parliament was called, but could not agree with the Protector. In 1657 Cromwell was given still higher powers, but in 1658 he died. His son, Richard Cromwell, was installed as Protector. The republican government had, however, been gradually drifting back toward the old royal form and spirit, so when the new Lord Protector proved to be unequal to the position, when the army became rebellious again, and the country threatened to fall into anarchy, Monk, an influential general, brought about the reassembling of the Long Parliament, and this body recalled the son of Charles I to take his hereditary seat as king. This event occurred in 1660, and is known as the Restoration. Charles II reigned for twenty-five years. His reign was in one of its aspects a time of reaction in manners and morals against the over-strictness of the former Puritan control. In government, notwithstanding the independent position of the king, it was the period when some of the most important modern institutions came into existence. Permanent political parties were formed then for the first time. It was then that the custom arose by which the ministers of the government are expected to resign when there proves to be a majority in Parliament against them. It was then that a "cabinet," or group of ministers acting together and responsible for the policy of the king, was first formed. The old form of the established church came again into power, and harsh laws were enacted against Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and members of the other sects which had grown up during the earlier part of the century. It was to escape these oppressive laws that many emigrated to the colonies in America and established new settlements. Not only was the stream of emigration kept up by religious persecutions, but the prosperity and abundant opportunity for advancement furnished by the colonies attracted great numbers. The government of the Stuart kings, as well as that of the Commonwealth, constantly encouraged distant settlements for the sake of commerce, shipping, the export of English manufactured goods, and the import of raw materials. The expansion of the country through its colonial settlements therefore still continued. The great literature which reached its climax in the reign of Elizabeth continued in equal variety and abundance throughout the reigns of James and Charles. The greater plays of Shakespeare were written after the accession of James. Milton belonged to the Commonwealth period, and Bunyan, the famous author of _Pilgrim's Progress_, was one of those non-conformists in religion who were imprisoned under Charles II. With this reign, however, quite a new literary type arose, whose most conspicuous representative was Dryden. In 1685 James II succeeded his brother. Instead of carrying on the government in a spirit of concession to national feeling, he adopted such an unpopular policy that in 1688 he was forced to flee from England, and his son-in-law and daughter, William and Mary, were elected to the throne. On their accession Parliament passed and the king and queen accepted a "Bill of Rights." This declared the illegality of a number of actions which recent sovereigns had claimed the right to do, and guaranteed to Englishmen a number of important individual rights, which have since been included in many other documents, especially in the constitutions of several of the American states and the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights is often grouped with the Great Charter, and these two documents, along with several of the Acts of the Parliaments of Charles I accepted by the king, make the principal written elements of the English constitution. The form and powers attained by the English government have been, however, rather the result of slight changes from time to time, often without intention of influencing the constitution, than of any deliberate action. Important examples of this are certain customs of legislation which grew up under William and Mary. The Mutiny Act, by which the army is kept up, was only passed for one year at a time. The grant of taxes was also only made annually. Parliament must therefore be called every year in order to obtain money to carry on the work of government, and in order to keep up the military organization. As a result of the Revolution of 1688, as the deposition of James II. and the appointment of William and Mary are called, and of the changes which succeeded it, Parliament gradually became the most powerful part of government, and the House of Commons the strongest part of Parliament. The king's ministers came more and more to carry out the will of Parliament rather than that of the king. Somewhat later the custom grew up by which one of the ministers by presiding over the whole Cabinet, nominating its members to the king, representing it in interviews with the king, and in other ways giving unity to its action, created the position of prime minister. Thus the modern Parliamentary organization of the government was practically complete before the middle of the eighteenth century. William and Mary died childless, and Anne, Mary's sister, succeeded, and reigned till 1714. She also left no heir. In the meantime arrangements had been made to set aside the descendants of James II, who were Roman Catholics, and to give the succession to a distant line of Protestant descendants of James I. In this way George I, Elector of Hanover, of the house of Brunswick, became king, reigned till 1727, and was succeeded by George II, who reigned till 1760. The sovereigns of England have been of this family ever since. The years following the Revolution of 1688 were a time of almost constant warfare on the Continent, in the colonies, and at sea. In many of these wars the real interests of England were but slightly concerned. In others her colonial and native dependencies were so deeply affected as to make them veritable national wars. Just at the close of the period, in 1763, the war known in Europe as the Seven Years' War and in America as the French and Indian War was brought to an end by the peace of Paris. This peace drew the outlines of the widespread empire of Great Britain, for it handed over to her Canada, the last of the French possessions in America, and guaranteed her the ultimate predominance in India. *50. The Extension of Agriculture.*--During the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century there are no such fundamental changes in social organization to chronicle as during the preceding century and a half. During the first hundred years of the period the whole energy of the nation seems to have been thrown into political and religious contests. Later there was development and increase of production, but they were in the main an extension or expansion of the familiar forms, not such a change of form as would cause any alteration in the position of the mass of the people. The practice of enclosing open land had almost ceased before the death of Elizabeth. There was some enclosing under James I, but it seems to have been quite exceptional. In the main, those common pastures and open fields which had not been enclosed by the beginning of this period, probably one-half of all England, remained unenclosed till the recommencement of the process long afterward. Sheep farming gradually ceased to be so exclusively practised, and mixed agriculture became general, though few if any of those fields which had been surrounded with hedges, and come into the possession of individual farmers, were thrown open or distributed again into scattered holdings. Much new land came into cultivation or into use for pasture through the draining of marshes and fens, and the clearing of forests. This work had been begun for the extensive swampy tracts in the east of England in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by private purchasers, assisted by an act of Parliament passed in 1601, intended to remove legal difficulties. It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense and difficulty of putting up lasting embarkments, and partly because of the opposition of the fenmen, or dwellers in the marshy districts, whose livelihood was obtained by catching the fish and water fowl that the improvements would drive away. With the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, largely through the skill of Dutch engineers and laborers, many thousands of acres of fertile land were reclaimed and devoted to grazing, and even grain raising. Great stretches of old forest and waste land covered with rough underbrush were also reduced to cultivation. There was much writing on agricultural subjects, and methods of farming were undoubtedly improved, especially in the eighteenth century. Turnips, which could be grown during the remainder of the season after a grain crop had been harvested, and which would provide fresh food for the cattle during the winter, were introduced from the Continent and cultivated to some extent, as were clover and some improved grasses. But these improvements progressed but slowly, and farming on the whole was carried on along very much the same old lines till quite the middle of the eighteenth century. The raising of grain was encouraged by a system of government bounties, as already stated in another connection. From 1689 onward a bounty was given on all grain exported, when the prevailing price was less than six shillings a bushel. The result was that England exported wheat in all but famine years, that there was a steady encouragement even if without much result to improve methods of agriculture, and that landlords were able to increase their rents. In the main, English agriculture and the organization of the agricultural classes of the population did not differ very much at the end of this period from that at the beginning except in the one point of quantity, the amount of produce and the number of the population being both largely increased. *51. The Domestic System of Manufactures.*--Much greater skill in manufacturing was acquired, principally, as in earlier periods, through the immigration of foreign artisans. In Queen Elizabeth's time a great number of such men with their families, who had been driven from the Netherlands by the persecutions of the duke of Alva, came to England for refuge. In Sandwich in 1561 some twenty families of Flemings settled and began their manufactures of various kinds of cloth; in 1565 some thirty Dutch and Walloon families settled in Norwich as weavers, in Maidstone a body of similar artisans who were thread-makers settled in 1567; in 1570 a similar group carrying on various forms of manufacture settled at Colchester; and still others settled in some five or six other towns. After 1580 a wave of French Huguenots, principally silk-weavers, fled from their native country and were allowed to settle in London, Canterbury, and Coventry. The renewed persecutions of the Huguenots, culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, sent many thousands more into exile, large numbers of silk and linen weavers and manufacturers of paper, clocks, glass, and metal goods coming from Normandy and Brittany into England, and settling not only in London and its suburbs, but in many other towns of England. These foreigners, unpopular as they often were among the populace, and supported in their opportunities of carrying on their industry only by royal authority, really taught new and higher industries to the native population and eventually were absorbed into it as a more gifted and trained component. There were also some inventions of new processes or devices for manufacture. The "stocking frame," or machine knitting, was invented in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but did not get into actual use until the next century. It then became for the future an extensive industry, especially in London and Nottingham and their vicinity. The weaving of cotton goods was introduced and spread especially in the northwest, in the neighborhood of Manchester and Bolton. A machine for preparing silk thread was invented in 1719. The printing of imported white cotton goods, as calicoes and lawns, was begun, but prohibited by Parliament in the interest of woven goods manufacturers, though the printing of linens was still allowed. Stoneware was also improved. These and other new industries introduced by foreigners or developed by English inventors or enterprising artisans added to the variety and total amount of English manufacture. The old established industries, like the old coarser woollen goods and linen manufacture, increased but slowly in amount and went through no great changes of method. [Illustration: Hand-loom Weaving. (Hogarth: _The Industrious and the Lazy Apprentice_.)] These industries old and new were in some cases regulated and supervised as to the quality of ware and methods of manufacture, by the remaining gilds or companies, with the authority which they possessed from the national government. Indeed, there were within the later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries some new companies organized or old ones renewed especially for this oversight, and to guard the monopoly of their members over certain industries in certain towns. In other cases rules were established for the carrying on of a certain industry, and a patent or monopoly was then granted by the king by which the person or company was given the sole right to carry on a certain industry according to those rules, or to enforce the rules when it was carried on by other people. In still other industries a government official had the oversight and control of quality and method of manufacture. Much production, however, especially such as went on in the country, was not supervised at all. [Illustration: Old Cloth-hall at Halifax.] Far the greater part of manufacturing industry in this period was organized according to the "domestic system," the beginnings of which have been already noticed within the previous period. That is to say, manufacturing was carried on in their own houses by small masters with a journeyman and apprentice or two. Much of it was done in the country villages or suburbs of the larger towns, and such handicraft was very generally connected with a certain amount of cultivation of the soil. A small master weaver or nail manufacturer, or soap boiler or potter, would also have a little farm and divide his time between the two occupations. The implements of manufacture almost always belonged to the small master himself, though in the stocking manufacture and the silk manufacture they were often owned by employing capitalists and rented out to the small manufacturers, or even to journeymen. In some cases the raw material--wool, linen, metal, or whatever it might be--was purchased by the small manufacturer, and the goods were either manufactured for special customers or taken when completed to a neighboring town on market days, there to be sold to a local dealer, or to a merchant who would transport it to another part of the country or export it to other countries. In other cases the raw material, especially in the case of cotton, was the property of a town merchant or capitalist, who distributed it to the small domestic manufacturers in their houses in the villages, paying them for the processes of production, and himself collecting the completed product and disposing of it by sale or export. This domestic manufacture was especially common in the southwest, centre, and northwest of England, and manufacturing towns like Birmingham, Halifax, Sheffield, Leeds, Bolton, and Manchester were growing up as centres around which it gathered. Little or no organization existed among such small manufacturers, though their apprentices were of course supposed to be taken and their journeymen hired according to the provisions of the Statute of Apprentices, and their products were sometimes subjected to some governmental or other supervision. Thus in manufacturing and artisan life as in agricultural the period was marked by an extension and increase of the amount of industry, on the same general lines as had been reached by 1600, rather than by any considerable changes. *52. Commerce under the Navigation Acts.*--The same thing is true of commerce, although its vast extension was almost in the nature of a revolution. As far back as the reign of Elizabeth most of the imports into England were brought in English vessels by English importers, and the goods which were exported were sent out by English exporters. The goods which were manufactured in scattered villages or town suburbs by the domestic manufacturers were gathered by these merchants and sent abroad in ever increasing amounts. The total value of English exports in 1600 was about 10 million dollars, at the close of the century it was some 34 millions, and in 1750 about 63 millions. This trade was carried on largely by merchants who were members of those chartered trading companies which have been mentioned as existing already in the sixteenth century. Some of these were "regulated companies"; that is, they had certain requirements laid down in their charters and power to adopt further rules and regulations, to which their members must conform. Others had similar chartered rights, but all their members invested funds in a common capital and traded as a joint stock company. In both kinds of cases each company possessed a monopoly of some certain field of trade, and was constantly engaged in the exclusion of interlopers from its trade. Of these companies the Merchants Adventurers, the oldest and one of the wealthiest, controlled the export of manufactured cloth to the Netherlands and northwestern Germany and remained prominent and active into the eighteenth century. The Levant, the Eastland, the Muscovy, and the Guinea or Royal African, and, greatest of all, the East India Company, continued to exist under various forms, and carried on their distant commerce through the whole of this period. With some of the nearer parts of Europe--France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy--there was much trading by private merchants not organized as companies or only organized among themselves. The "Methuen treaty," negotiated with Portugal in 1703, gave free entry of English manufactured goods into that country in return for a decreased import duty on Portuguese wines brought into England. [Illustration: Principal English Trade Routes About 1700.] The foreign lands with which these companies traded furnished at the beginning of this period the only places to which goods could be exported and from which goods could be brought; but very soon that series of settlements of English colonists was begun, one of the principal inducements for which was that they would furnish an outlet for English goods. The "Plantation of Ulster," or introduction of English and Scotch settlers into the north of Ireland between 1610 and 1620, was the beginning of a long process of immigration into that country. But far the most important plantations as an outlet for trade as in every respect were those made on the coast of North America and in the West Indies. The Virginia and the Plymouth Companies played a part in the early settlement of these colonies, but they were soon superseded by the crown, single proprietaries, or the settlers themselves. Virginia, New England, Maryland, the Carolinas, and ultimately New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia on the mainland; the islands of Bermudas, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, and ultimately Canada, came to be populous colonies inhabited by Englishmen and demanding an ever increasing supply of English manufactured goods. These colonies were controlled by the English government largely for their commercial and other forms of economic value. The production of goods needed in England but not produced there, such as sugar, tobacco, tar, and lumber, was encouraged, but the manufacture of such goods as could be exported from England was prohibited. The purchase of slaves in Africa and their exportation to the West Indies was encouraged, partly because they were paid for in Africa by English manufactured goods, partly because their use in the colonies made the supply of sugar and some other products plentiful and cheap. Closely connected with commerce and colonies as a means of disposing of England's manufactured goods and of obtaining those things which were needed from abroad was commerce for its own sake, for the profits which it brought to those engaged in it, and for the indirect value to the nation of having a large mercantile navy. The most important provision for this end was the passage of the "Navigation Acts." We have seen that as early as 1485 certain kinds of goods could be imported only in English vessels. But in 1651 a law was passed, and in 1660 under a more regular government reënacted in still more vigorous form, which carried this policy to its fullest extent. By these laws all importation of goods into England from any ports of Asia, Africa, or America was forbidden, except in vessels belonging to English owners, built in England and manned by English seamen; and there was the same requirement for goods exported from England to those countries. From European ports goods could be brought to England only in English vessels or in vessels the property of merchants of the country in which the port lay; and similarly for export. These acts were directed especially against the Dutch merchants, who were fast getting control of the carrying trade. The result of the policy of the Navigation Acts was to secure to English merchants and to English shipbuilders a monopoly of all the trade with the East Indies and Africa and with the American colonies, and to prevent the Dutch from competing with English merchants for the greater part of the trade with the Continent of Europe. The characteristics of English commerce in this period, therefore, were much the same as in the last. It was, however, still more completely controlled by English merchants and was vastly extended in amount. Moreover, this extension bid fair to be permanent, as it was largely brought about by the growth of populous English colonies in Ireland and America, and by the acquisition of great spheres of influence in India. *53. Finance.*--The most characteristic changes of the period now being studied were in a field to which attention has been but slightly called before; that is, in finance. Capital had not existed in any large amounts in mediæval England, and even in the later centuries there had not been any considerable class of men whose principal interest was in the investment of saved-up capital which they had in their hands. Agriculture, manufacturing, and even commerce were carried on with very small capital and usually with such capital as each farmer, artisan, or merchant might have of his own; no use of credit to obtain money from individual men or from banks for industrial purposes being ordinarily possible. Questions connected with money, capital, borrowing, and other points of finance came into somewhat greater prominence with the sixteenth century, but they now attained an altogether new and more important notice. Taxation, which had been looked upon as abnormal and occasional during earlier times, and only justifiable when some special need for large expenditure by the government arose, such as war, a royal marriage, or the entertainment of some foreign visitor, now, after long conflicts between King and Parliament, which are of still greater constitutional than financial importance, came to be looked upon as a regular normal custom. In 1660, at the Restoration, a whole system of excise duties, taxes on imports and exports, and a hearth tax were established as a permanency for paying the expenses of government, besides special taxes of various kinds for special demands. Borrowing, by merchants and others for ordinary purposes of business, became much more usual. During most of the seventeenth century the goldsmiths were the only bankers. On account of the strong vaults of these merchants, their habitual possession of valuable material and articles, and perhaps of their reputation for probity, persons who had money beyond their immediate needs deposited it with the goldsmiths, receiving from them usually six per cent. The goldsmiths then loaned it to merchants or to the government, obtaining for it interest at the rate of eight per cent or more. This system gradually became better established and the high rates decreased. Payments came to be made by check, and promissory notes were regularly discounted by the goldsmiths. The greatest extension in the use of credit, however, came from the establishment of the Bank of England. In 1691 the original proposition for the Bank was made to the government by William Patterson. In 1694 a charter for the Bank was finally carried through Parliament by the efforts of the ministry. The Bank consisted of a group of subscribers who agreed to loan to the government £1,200,000, the government to pay them an annual interest of eight and one-half per cent, or £100,000 in cash, guaranteed by the product of a certain tax. The subscribers were at the same time incorporated and authorized to carry on a general business of receiving deposits and lending out money at interest. The capital which was to be loaned to the government was subscribed principally by London merchants, and the Bank began its career in the old Grocers' Hall. The regular income of £100,000 a year gave it a nucleus of strength, and enabled it to discount notes even beyond its actual deposits and to issue its own notes or paper money. Thus money could be borrowed to serve as capital for all kinds of enterprises, and there was an inducement also for persons to save money and thus create capital, since it could always bring them in a return by lending it to the Bank even if they were not in a position to put it to use themselves. Along with the normal effect of such financial inventions in developing all forms of trade and industry, there arose a remarkable series of projects and schemes of the wildest and most unstable character, and the early eighteenth century saw many losses and constant fluctuations in the realm of finance. The most famous instance of this was the "South Sea Bubble," a speculative scheme by which a regulated company, the South Sea Company, was chartered in 1719 to carry on the slave-trade to the West Indies and whale-fishing, and incidentally to loan money to the government. Its shares rose to many fold their par value and fell to almost nothing again within a few months, and the government and vast numbers of investors and speculators were involved in its failure. The same period saw the creation of the permanent national debt. In earlier times kings and ministers had constantly borrowed money from foreign or native lenders, but it was always provided and anticipated that it would be repaid at a certain period, with the interest. With the later years of the seventeenth century, however, it became customary for the government to borrow money without any definite contract or expectation as to when it should be paid back, only making an agreement to pay a certain rate of interest upon it. This was satisfactory to all parties. The government obtained a large sum at the time, with the necessity of only paying a small sum every year for interest; investors obtained a remunerative use for their money, and if they should need the principal, some one else was always ready to pay its value to them for the sake of receiving the interest. The largest single element of the national debt in its early period was the loan of £1,200,000 which served as the basis for the Bank; but after that time, as for a short time before, sums were borrowed from time to time which were not repaid, but became a permanent part of the debt: the total rising to more than £75,000,000 by the middle of the century. Incidentally, this, like the deposits at the goldsmiths and the Bank, became an opportunity for the investment of savings and an inducement to create more capital. Fire insurance and life insurance both seem to have had their origin in the later decades of the seventeenth century. Thus in the realm of finance there was much more of novelty, of actually new development, during this period than in agriculture, manufacturing, or commerce. Yet all these forms of economic life and of the social organization which corresponded to them were alike in one respect, that they were quite minutely regulated by the national government. The fabric of paternal government which we saw rising in the time of the Tudor sovereigns remained almost intact through the whole of this period. The regulation of the conditions of labor, of trade, of importation and exportation, of finance, of agriculture, of manufacture, in more or less detail, was part of the regular work of legislation or administrative action. Either in order to reach certain ulterior ends, such as government power, a large navy, or a large body of money within the country, or simply as a part of what were looked upon at the time as the natural functions of government, laws were constantly being passed, charters formulated, treaties entered into, and other action taken by government, intended to encourage one kind of industry and discourage another, to determine rates of wages and hours of labor, prescribe rules for agriculture, or individual trades or forms of business, to support some kind of industry which was threatened with decay, to restrict certain actions which were thought to be disadvantageous, to regulate the whole economic life of the nation. It is true that much of this regulation was on the books rather than in actual existence. It would have required a much more extensive and efficient civil service, national and local, than England then possessed to enforce all or any considerable part of the provisions that were made by act of Parliament or ordered by the King and Council. Again, new industries were generally declared to be free from much of the more minute regulation, so that enterprise where it arose was not so apt to be checked, as conservatism where it already existed was apt to be perpetuated. Such regulation and control, moreover, were quite in accord with the feeling and with the economic and political theories of the time, so there was but little sense of interference or tyranny felt by the governed. A regulated industrial organization slowly expanding on well-established lines was as characteristic of the theory as it was of the practice of the period. *54. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Gardiner, S. R.: _The History of England, 1603-1642_, ten volumes. Many scattered passages in this work and in its continuations, like those in Froude's history, referred to in the last chapter, apply to the economic and social history of the period, and they are always judicious and valuable. Hewins, W. A. S.: _English Trade and Finance, chiefly in the Seventeenth Century_. For this period Cunningham, Rogers, and Palgrave, in the books already referred to, are almost the only secondary authorities, except such as go into great detail on individual points. Cunningham's second volume, which includes this period, is extremely full and satisfactory. Macpherson, D.: _Annals of Commerce_ is, however, a book of somewhat broader interest. CHAPTER VIII THE PERIOD OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Economic Changes Of The Later Eighteenth And Early Nineteenth Centuries *55. National Affairs from 1760 to 1830.*--The seventy years lying between these two dates were covered by the long reign of George III and that of his successor George IV. In the political world this period had by no means the importance that it possessed in the field of economic development. Parliament had already obtained its permanent form and powers, and when George III tried to "be a king," as his mother urged him, the effort to restore personal government was an utter failure. Between 1775 and 1783 occurred the American Revolution, by which thirteen of England's most valued colonies were lost to her and began their progress toward a greater destiny. The breach between the American colonies and the mother country was brought about largely by the obstinacy of the king and his ministers in adopting an arbitrary and unpopular policy. Other political causes no doubt contributed to the result. Yet the greater part of the alienation of feeling which underlay the Revolution was due not to political causes, but to the economic policy already described, by which American commerce and industry were bent to the interests of England. In the American war France joined the rebellious colonies against England, and obtained advantageous terms at the peace. Within ten years the two countries had again entered upon a war, this time of vastly greater extent, and continuing almost unbroken for more than twenty years. This was a result of the outbreak of the French Revolution. In 1789 the Estates General of France, a body corresponding in its earlier history to the English Parliament, was called for the first time for almost two hundred years. This assembly and its successors undertook to reorganize French government and society. In the course of this radical process principles were enunciated proclaiming the absolute liberty and equality of men, demanding the participation of all in government, the abolition of aristocratic privileges, and finally of royalty itself. In following out these ideas, so different from those generally accepted in Europe, France was brought into conflict with all the other European states, including Great Britain. War broke out in 1793. Fighting took place on sea and land and in various parts of the world. France in her new enthusiasm developed a strength, vigor, and capacity which enabled her to make head against the alliances of almost all the other countries of Europe, and even to gain victories and increase her territory at their expense. No peace seemed practicable. In her successive internal changes of government one of the generals of the army, Napoleon Bonaparte, obtained a more and more influential position, until in 1804 he took the title of Emperor. The wars of the French Revolution therefore were merged in the wars of Napoleon. Alliance after alliance was made against Napoleon, England commonly taking the initiative in the formation of them and paying large monthly subsidies to some of the continental governments to enable them to support their armies. The English navy won several brilliant victories, especially under Nelson, although her land forces played a comparatively small part until the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The naval supremacy thus obtained made the war a matter of pecuniary profit to the English nation, notwithstanding its enormous expense; for it gave to her vessels almost a complete monopoly of the commerce and the carrying trade of the world, and to her manufactures extended markets which would otherwise have been closed to her or shared with other nations. The cutting off of continental and other sources of supply of grain and the opening of new markets greatly increased the demand for English grain and enhanced the price paid for it. This caused higher rents and further enclosure of open land. Thus the war which had been entered upon reluctantly and with much opposition in 1793, became popular, partly because of the feeling of the English people that it had become a life and death struggle with France, but largely also because English industries were flourishing under it. The wars came to an end with the downfall of Napoleon in 1815, and an unwonted period of peace for England set in and lasted for almost forty years. The French Revolution produced another effect in England. It awakened a certain amount of admiration for its principles of complete liberty and equality and a desire to apply them to English aristocratic society and government. In 1790 societies began to be formed, meetings held, and pamphlets issued by men who sympathized with the popular movements in France. Indeed, some of these reformers were suspected of wishing to introduce a republic in England. After the outbreak of the war the ministry determined to put down this agitation, and between 1793 and 1795 all public manifestation of sympathy with such principles was crushed out, although at the cost of considerable interference with what had been understood to be established personal rights. Much discontent continued through the whole period of the war, especially among the lower classes, though it did not take the form of organized political agitation. It was a period, as will be seen, of violent economic and social changes, which, although they enriched England as a whole and made it possible for her to support the unprecedented expenses of the long war, were very hard upon the working classes, who were used to the old ways. After the peace of 1815, however, political agitation began again. The Whig party seemed inclined to resume the effort to carry certain moderate reforms which had been postponed on account of the war, and down below this movement there was a more radical agitation for universal suffrage and for a more democratic type of government generally. On the other hand, the Tory government, which had been in power during almost the whole war period, was determined to oppose everything in the nature of reform or change, on the ground that the outrages accompanying the French Revolution arose from just such efforts to make reforming alterations in the government. The radical agitation was supported by the discontented masses of the people who were suffering under heavy taxes, high prices, irregular employment, and many other evils which they felt to be due to their exclusion from any share in the government. The years intervening between 1815 and 1830 were therefore a period of constant bitterness and contention between the higher and the lower classes. Mass meetings which were called by the popular leaders were dissolved by the government, radical writers were prosecuted by the government for libel, the habeas corpus act was suspended repeatedly, and threatened rioting was met with severe measures. The actions of the ministers, while upheld by the higher classes, were bitterly attacked by others as being unconstitutional and tyrannical. In 1800 the union of the group of British Islands under one government was completed, at least in form. Scotland had come under the same crown as England in 1603, and the two Parliaments had been united in 1707, the title Great Britain having been adopted for the combined nations. The king of England had held the title of Lord of Ireland from the time of the first conquest, and of King of Ireland since the adoption of the title by Henry VIII. The union which now took place consisted in the abolition of the separate Irish Parliament and the election of Irish members to the combined or "Imperial" Parliament of the three kingdoms sitting at Westminster. The official title of the united countries has since been "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." *56. The Great Mechanical Inventions.*--As the eighteenth century progressed one form of economic growth seems to have been pressing on the general economic organization. This was the constant expansion of commerce, the steadily increasing demand for English manufactured goods for export. [Illustration: Distribution of Population According to the Hearth-tax of 1750. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.] The great quantities of goods which were every year sent abroad in English ships to the colonies, to Ireland, to the Continent, to Asia and Africa, as well as those used at home, continued to be manufactured in most cases by methods, with instruments, under an organization of labor the same as that which had been in existence for centuries. The cotton and woollen goods which were sold in the West Indies and America were still carded, spun, and woven in the scattered cottages of domestic weavers and weaver-farmers in the rural districts of the west and north of England, by the hand cards, the spinning-wheel, the cumbrous, old-fashioned loom. The pieces of goods were slowly gathered from the hamlets to the towns, from the towns to the seaports, over the poorest of roads, and by the most primitive of conveyances. And these antiquated methods of manufacture and transportation were all the more at variance with the needs and possibilities of the time because there had been, as already pointed out, a steady accumulation of capital, and much of it was not remuneratively employed. The time had certainly come for some improvement in the methods of manufacture. A closer examination into the process of production in England's principal industry, cloth-making, shows that this pressure on old methods was already felt. The raw material for such uses, as it comes from the back of the sheep, the boll of the cotton plant, or the crushed stems of the flax, is a tangled mass of fibre. The first necessary step is to straighten out the threads of this fibre, which is done in the case of wool by combing, in the others by carding, both being done at that time by hand implements. The next step is spinning, that is drawing out the fibres, which have been made parallel by carding, into a slender cord, and at the same time twisting this sufficiently to cause the individual fibres to take hold one of another and thus make a thread of some strength. This was sometimes done on the old high wheel, which was whirled around by hand and then allowed to come to rest while another section of the cotton, wool, or flax was drawn from the carded mass by hand, then whirled again, twisting this thread and winding it up on the spindle, and so on. Or it was done by the low wheel, which was kept whirling continuously by the use of a treadle worked by the foot, while the material was being drawn out all the time by the two hands, and twisted and wound continuously by the horseshoe-shaped device known as the "flyer." When the thread had been spun it was placed upon the loom; strong, firmly spun material being necessary for the "warp" of upright threads, softer and less tightly spun material for the "woof" or "weft," which was wrapped on the shuttle and thrown horizontally by hand between the two diverging lines of warp threads. After weaving, the fabric was subjected to a number of processes of finishing, fulling, shearing, dyeing, if that had not been done earlier, and others, according to the nature of the cloth or the kind of surface desired. In these successive stages of manufacture it was the spinning that was apt to interpose the greatest obstacle, as it took the most time. From time immemorial spinning had been done, as explained, on some form of the spinning-wheel, and by women. One weaver continuously at work could easily use up the product of five or six spinners. In the domestic industry the weaving was of course carried on in the dwelling-house by the father of the family with the grown sons or journeymen, while the spinning was done for the most part by the women and younger children of the family. As it could hardly be expected that there would always be as large a proportion as six of the latter class to one of the former, outside help must be obtained and much delay often submitted to. Many a small master who had agreed to weave up the raw material sent him by the master clothier within a given time, or a cloth weaver who had planned to complete a piece by next market day, was obliged to leave his loom and search through the neighborhood for some disengaged laborer's wife or other person who would spin the weft for which he was waiting. One of the very few inventions of the early part of the century intensified this difficulty. Kay's drop box and flying shuttle, invented in 1738, made it possible for a man to sit still and by pulling two cords alternately throw the shuttle to and fro. One man could therefore weave broadcloth instead of its requiring two as before, and consequently weaving was more rapid, while no corresponding change had been introduced into the process of spinning. [Illustration: Spinning-Jenny. (Byrn, _Invention in the Nineteenth Century_. Published by the Scientific American Company.)] Indeed, this particular difficulty was so clearly recognized that the Royal Society offered a prize for the invention of a machine that would spin several threads at the same time. [Illustration: Arkwright's First Spinning-machine. (Ure: _History of the Cotton Manufacture_.)] No one claimed this reward, but the spirit of invention was nevertheless awake, and experiments in more than one mechanical device were being made about the middle of the century. The first to be brought to actual completion was Hargreaves' spinning-jenny, invented in 1764. According to the traditional story James Hargreaves, a small master weaver living near Blackburn, on coming suddenly into the house caused his wife, who was spinning with the old high wheel, to spring up with a start and overset the wheel, which still continued whirling, but horizontally, and with its spindle in a vertical position. He was at once struck with the idea of using one wheel to cause a number of spindles to revolve by means of a continuous band, and by the device of substituting for the human hand a pair of bars which could be successively separated and closed, and which could be brought closer to or removed from the spindles on wheels, to spin several threads at the same time. On the basis of this idea and with the help of a neighboring mechanic he constructed a machine by which a man could spin eight threads at the same time. In honor of his wife he named it the "Spinning-jenny." The secret of this device soon came out and jennies spinning twenty or thirty or more threads at a time came into use here and there through the old spinning districts. At the same time a much more effective method was being brought to perfection by Richard Arkwright, who followed out some old experiments of Wyatt of Northampton. According to this plan the carded material was carried through successive pairs of rollers, each pair running more rapidly than the previous pair, thus stretching it out, while it was spun after leaving the last pair by flyers adapted from the old low or treadle spinning-wheel. Arkwright's first patent was taken out in 1769, and from that time forward he invented, patented, and manufactured a series of machines which made possible the spinning of a number of threads at the same time very much more rapidly than even the spinning-jenny. Great numbers of Arkwright's spinning-machines were manufactured and sold by him and his partners. He made others for use in cotton mills carried on by himself with various partners in different parts of the country. His patent was eventually set aside as having been unfairly obtained, and the machines were soon generally manufactured and used. Improvements followed. An ingenious weaver named Samuel Crompton, perceiving that the roller spinning was more rapid but that the jennies would spin the finer thread, combined the two devices into one machine, known from its hybrid origin as the "mule." This was invented in 1779, and as it was not patented it soon came into general use. These inventions in spinning reacted on the earlier processes and led to a rapid development of carding and combing machines. A carding cylinder had been invented by Paul as far back as 1748, and now came into general use, while several wool-combing machines were invented in 1792 and 1793. [Illustration: Sir Richard Arkwright. (Portrait by Wright.)] So far all these inventions had been in the earlier textile processes. Use for the spun thread was found in giving fuller employment to the old hand looms, in the stocking manufacture, and for export; but no corresponding improvement had taken place in weaving. From 1784 onward a clergyman from the south of England, Dr. Edward Cartwright, was gradually bringing to perfection a power loom which by the beginning of the nineteenth century began to come into general use. The value put upon Cartwright's invention may be judged from the fact that Parliament voted him a gift of £10,000 in 1809. Arkwright had already won a large fortune by his invention, and in 1786 was knighted in recognition of his services to the national industry. [Illustration: Rev. Edmund Cartwright. (Portrait by Robert Fulton.)] While Cartwright was experimenting on the power loom, an invention was made far from England which was in reality an essential part of the improvement in the manufacture of cotton goods. This was the American cotton gin, for the removal of the seeds from the fibre of the boll, invented by Eli Whitney in 1792. Cotton had been introduced into the Southern states during the Revolutionary war. Its cultivation and export now became profitable, and a source of supply became available at the very time that the inventions for its manufacture were being perfected. Spinning-jennies could be used in the household of the weaver; but the later spinning-machines were so large and cumbrous that they could not be used in a dwelling-house, and required so much power and rapidity of motion that human strength was scarcely available. Horse power was used to some extent, but water power was soon applied and special buildings came to be put up along streams where water power was available. The next stage was the application of steam power. Although the possibility of using steam for the production of force had long been familiar, and indeed used to some extent in the pumping out of mines, it did not become available for general uses until the improvements of James Watt, patented in 1769 and succeeding years. In partnership with a man named Boulton, Watt began the manufacture of steam-engines in 1781. In 1785 the first steam-engine was used for power in a cotton mill. After that time the use of steam became more and more general and by the end of the century steam power was evidently superseding water power. *57. The Factory System.*--But other things were needed to make this new machinery available. It was much too expensive for the old cottage weavers to buy and use. Capital had, therefore, to be brought into manufacturing which had been previously used in trade or other employments. Capital was in reality abundant relatively to existing opportunities for investment, and the early machine spinners and weavers drew into partnership moneyed men from the towns who had previously no connection with manufacturing. Again, the new industry required bodies of laborers working regular hours under the control of their employers and in the buildings where the machines were placed and the power provided. Such groups of laborers or "mill hands" were gradually collected where the new kind of manufacturing was going on. Thus factories, in the modern sense, came into existence--a new phenomenon in the world. [Illustration: Mule-spinning in 1835.] [Illustration: Power-loom Weaving in 1835. (Baines: _History of Cotton Manufacture_.)] These changes in manufacturing and in the organization of labor came about earliest in the manufacture of cotton goods, but the new machinery and its resulting changes were soon introduced into the woollen manufacture, then other textile lines, and ultimately into still other branches of manufacturing, such as the production of metal, wooden, and leather goods, and, indeed, into nearly all forms of production. Manufacturing since the last decades of the eighteenth century is therefore usually described as being done by the "factory system," as contrasted with the domestic system and the gild system of earlier times. The introduction of the factory system involved many changes: the adoption of machinery and artificial power, the use of a vastly greater amount of capital, and the collection of scattered laborers into great strictly regulated establishments. It was, comparatively speaking, sudden, all its main features having been developed within the period between 1760 and 1800; and it resulted in the raising of many new and difficult social problems. For these reasons the term "Industrial Revolution," so generally applied to it, is not an exaggerated nor an unsuitable term. Almost all other forms of economic occupation have subsequently taken on the main characteristics of the factory system, in utilizing improved machinery, in the extensive scale on which they are administered, in the use of large capital, and in the organization of employees in large bodies. The industrial revolution may therefore be regarded as the chief characteristic distinguishing this period and the times since from all earlier ages. [Illustration: A Canal and Factory Town in 1827.] *58. Iron, Coal, and Transportation.*--A vast increase in the production of iron and coal was going on concurrently with the rise of the factory system. The smelting of iron ore was one of the oldest industries of England, but it was a declining rather than an advancing industry. This was due to the exhaustion of the woods and forests that provided fuel, or to their retention for the future needs of ship-building and for pleasure parks. In 1760, however, Mr. Roebuck introduced at the Carron iron-works a new kind of blast furnace by which iron ore could be smelted with coal as fuel. In 1790 the steam-engine was introduced to cause the blast. Production had already begun to advance before the latter date, and it now increased by thousands of tons a year till far into the present century. Improvements were introduced in puddling, rolling, and other processes of the manufacture of iron at about the same time. The production of coal increased more than proportionately. New devices in mining were introduced, such as steam pumps, the custom of supporting the roofs of the veins with timber instead of pillars of coal, and Sir Humphry Davy's safety lamp of 1815. The smelting of iron and the use of the steam-engine made such a demand for coal that capital was applied in large quantities to its production, and more than ten million tons a year were mined before the century closed. [Illustration: "The Rocket" Locomotive, 1825. (Smiles: _Life of George Stephenson_.)] Some slight improvements in roads and canals had been made and others projected during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; but in the last quarter of the century the work of Telford, Macadam, and other engineers, and of the private turnpike companies or public authorities who engaged them, covered England with good roads. The first canal was that from Worsley to Manchester, built by Brindley for the duke of Bridgewater in 1761. Within a few years a system of canals had been constructed which gave ready transportation for goods through all parts of the country. The continuance of this development of transportation and its fundamental modification by the introduction of railways and steamboats has been one of the most striking characteristics of the nineteenth century. *59. The Revival of Enclosures.*--The changes which the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth brought were as profound in the occupation and use of the land as they were in the production and transportation of manufactured goods. An agricultural revolution was in progress as truly as was the industrial. The improvements in the methods of farming already referred to as showing themselves earlier in the century became much more extensive. The raising of turnips and other root crops spread from experimental to ordinary farms so that a fallow year with no crop at all in the ground came to be almost unknown. Clover and artificial grasses for hay came to be raised generally, so that the supply of forage for the winter was abundant. New breeds of sheep and cattle were obtained by careful crossing and plentiful feeding, so that the average size was almost doubled, while the meat, and in some cases the wool, was improved in quality in even greater proportion. The names of such men as Jethro Tull, who introduced the "drill husbandry," Bakewell, the great improver of the breeds of cattle, and Arthur Young, the greatest agricultural observer and writer of the century, have become almost as familiar as those of Crompton, Arkwright, Watt, and other pioneers of the factory system. The general improvement in agricultural methods was due, not so much to new discoveries or inventions, as it was to the large amount of capital which was introduced into their practice. Expensive schemes of draining, marling, and other forms of fertilizing were carried out, long and careful investigations were entered upon, and managers of large farms were trained in special processes by landlords and farmers who had the command of large sums of money; and with the high prices prevalent they were abundantly remunerated for the outlay. Great numbers of "gentlemen farmers," such as Lord Townshend, the duke of Bedford, and George III himself, who wrote articles for the agricultural papers signed "Farmer George," were leaders in this agricultural progress. In 1793 a government Board of Agriculture was established, and through the whole latter part of the century numerous societies for the encouragement of scientific tillage and breeding were organized. In the early years of the eighteenth century there had been signs of a revival of the old process of enclosures, which had been suspended for more than a hundred years. This was brought about by private acts of Parliament. An act would be passed by Parliament giving legal authority to the inhabitants of some parish to throw together the scattered strips, and to redivide these and the common meadows and pastures in such a way that each person with any claim on the land should receive a proportionate share, and should have it separated from all others and entirely in his own control. It was the usual procedure for the lord of the manor, the rector of the parish, and other large landholders and persons of influence to agree on the general conditions of enclosure and draw up a bill appointing commissioners, and providing for survey, compensation, redistribution, and other requirements. They then submitted this bill to Parliament, where, unless there was some special reason to the contrary, it was passed. Its provisions were then carried out, and although legal and parliamentary fees and the expenses of survey and enclosure were large, yet as a result each inhabitant who had been able to make out a legal claim to any of the land of the parish received either some money compensation or a stretch of enclosed land. Such private enclosure acts increased slowly in number till about the middle of the century, when the increase became much more rapid. The number of enclosure acts passed by Parliament and the approximate extent of land enclosed under their provisions were as follows:-- 1700-1759 244 Enclosure Bills 337,877 Acres 1760-1769 385 " " 704,550 " 1770-1779 660 " " 1,207,800 " 1780-1789 246 " " 450,180 " 1790-1799 469 " " 858,270 " 1800-1809 847 " " 1,550,010 " 1810-1819 853 " " 1,560,990 " 1820-1829 205 " " 375,150 " 1830-1839 136 " " 248,880 " 1840-1849 66 " " 394,747 " In 1756, 1758, and 1773 general acts were passed encouraging the enclosure for common use of open pastures and arable fields, but not enclosing or dividing them permanently, and not providing for any separate ownership. In 1801 an act was passed to make simpler and easier the passage of private bills for enclosure; and in 1836 another to make possible, with the consent of two-thirds of the persons interested, the enclosing of certain kinds of common fields even without appealing to Parliament in each particular case. Finally, in 1845, the general Enclosure Act of that year carried the policy of 1836 further and appointed a body of Enclosure Commissioners, to determine on the expediency of any proposed enclosure and to attend to carrying it out if approved. Six years afterward, however, an amendment was passed making it necessary that even after an enclosure had been approved by the Commissioners it should go to Parliament for final decision. By measures such as these the greater part of the lands which had remained unenclosed to modern times were transformed into enclosed fields for separate cultivation or pasture. This process of enclosure was intended to make possible, and no doubt did bring about, much improved agriculture. It exerted incidentally a profound effect on the rural population. Many persons had habitually used the common pastures and open fields for pasture purposes, when they had in reality no legal claim whatever to such use. A poor man whose cow, donkey, or flock of geese had picked up a precarious livelihood on land of undistinguished ownership now found the land all enclosed and his immemorial privileges withdrawn without compensation. Naturally there was much dissatisfaction. A popular piece of doggerel declared that:-- "The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common; But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose." Again, a small holder was frequently given compensation in the form of money instead of allotting to him a piece of land which was considered by the commissioners too small for effective use. The money was soon spent, whereas his former claim on the land had lasted because it could not readily be alienated. A more important effect, however, was the introduction on these enclosed lands of a kind of agriculture which the small landholder was ill fitted to follow. Improved cultivation, a careful rotation of crops, better fertilizers, drainage, farm stock, and labor were the characteristics of the new farming, and these were ordinarily practicable only to the man who had some capital, knowledge, and enterprise. Therefore, coincidently with the enclosures began a process by which the smaller tenants began to give up their holdings to men who could pay more rent for them by consolidating them into larger farms. The freeholders also who owned small farms from time to time sold them to neighboring landowners when difficulties forced them or high prices furnished inducements. *60. Decay of Domestic Manufacture.*--This process would have been a much slower one but for the contemporaneous changes that were going on in manufacturing. As has been seen, many small farmers in the rural districts made part of their livelihood by weaving or other domestic manufacture, or, as more properly described, the domestic manufacturers frequently eked out their resources by carrying on some farming. But the invention of machinery for spinning not only created a new industry, but destroyed the old. Cotton thread could be produced vastly more cheaply by machinery. In 1786 a certain quantity of a certain grade of spun yarn was worth 38 shillings; ten years later, in 1796, it was worth only 19 shillings; in 1806 it was worth but 7 shillings 2 pence, and so on down till, in 1832, it was worth but 3 shillings. Part of this reduction in price was due to the decrease in the cost of raw cotton, but far the most of it to the cheapening of spinning. It was the same a few years later with weaving. Hand-loom weavers in Bolton, who received 25 shillings a week as wages in 1800, received only 19 shillings and 6 pence in 1810, 9 shillings in 1820, and 5 shillings 6 pence in 1830. Hand work in other lines of manufacture showed the same results. Against such reductions in wages resistance was hopeless. Hand work evidently could not compete with machine work. No amount of skill or industry or determination could enable the hand workers to make their living in the same way as of old. As a matter of fact, a long, sad, desperate struggle was kept up by a whole generation of hand laborers, especially by the hand-loom weavers, but the result was inevitable. The rural domestic manufacturers were, as a matter of fact, devoting themselves to two inferior forms of industry. As far as they were handicraftsmen, they were competing with a vastly cheaper and better form of manufacture; as far as they were farmers, they were doing the same thing with regard to agriculture. Under these circumstances some of them gave up their holdings of land and drifted away to the towns to keep up the struggle a little longer as hand-loom weavers, and then to become laborers in the factories; others gave up their looms and devoted themselves entirely to farming for a while, but eventually sold their holdings or gave up their leases, and dropped into the class of agricultural laborers. The result was the same in either case. The small farms were consolidated, the class of yeomanry or small farmers died out, and household manufacture gave place to that of the factory. Before the end of the century the average size of English farms was computed at three hundred acres, and soon afterward domestic spinning and weaving were almost unknown. There was considerable shifting of population. Certain parts of the country which had been quite thickly populated with small farmers or domestic manufacturers now lost the greater part of their occupants by migration to the newer manufacturing districts or to America. As in the sixteenth century, some villages disappeared entirely. Goldsmith in the _Deserted Village_ described changes that really occurred, however opposed to the facts may have been his description of the earlier idyllic life whose destruction he deplored. The existence of unenclosed commons and common fields had been accompanied by very poor farming, very thriftless and shiftless habits. The improvement of agriculture, the application of capital to that occupation, the disappearance of the domestic system of industry, and other changes made the enclosure of common land and the accompanying changes inevitable. None the less it was a relatively sudden and complete interference with the established character of rural life, and not only was the process accompanied with much suffering, but the form which took its place was marked by some serious disadvantages. This form was brought about through the rapid culmination of old familiar tendencies. The classes connected with the land came to be quite clearly distinguished into three groups: the landlords, the tenant farmers, and the farm laborers. The landlord class was a comparatively small body of nobility and gentry, a few thousand persons, who owned by far the greater portion of the land of the country. Their estates were for the most part divided up into farms, to the keeping of which in productive condition they contributed the greater part of the expense, to the administration of which trained stewards applied themselves, and in the improvement of which their owners often took a keen and enlightened interest. They received high rents, possessed unlimited local influence, and were the favored governing class of the country. The class of farmers were men of some capital, and frequently of intelligence and enterprise, though rarely of education, who held on lease from the landlords farms of some one, two, or three or more hundred acres, paying relatively large rents, and yet by the excellence of their farming making for themselves a liberal income. The farm laborers were the residuum of the changes which have been traced in the history of landholding; a large class living for the most part miserably in cottages grouped in villages, holding no land, and receiving day wages for working on the farms just described. Notwithstanding the improvements in agriculture and the increase in the extent of cultivated land, England ceased within the eighteenth century to be a self-supporting country in food products. The form which the "corn laws" had taken in 1689 had been as follows: the raising of wheat was encouraged by prohibiting its importation and paying a bounty of about eightpence a bushel for its exportation so long as the prevailing price was less than six shillings a bushel. When it was between six shillings and six shillings eightpence a bushel its importation was forbidden, but there was no bounty paid for exportation. Between the last price and ten shillings a bushel it could be imported by paying a duty of a shilling a bushel. Above the last price it could be imported free. Nevertheless, during the latter half of the eighteenth century it became evident that there was no longer a sufficient amount of wheat raised for the needs of the English people. Between 1770 and 1790 exports and imports about balanced one another, but after the latter year the imports always exceeded the exports. This was of course due to the great increase of population and to its employment in the field of manufactures. The population in England in 1700 was about five millions, in 1750 about six millions and a half, in 1800 about nine millions, and in 1850 about eighteen millions. That is to say, its progress was slow during the first half of the eighteenth century, more rapid during the latter half, and vastly more rapid during the nineteenth century. *61. The Laissez-faire Theory.*--A scarcely less complete change than that which had occurred in manufactures, in agriculture, and in social life as based upon these, was that which was in progress at the same time in the realm of ideas, especially as applied to questions of economic and social life. The complete acceptance of the view that it was a natural and desirable part of the work of government to regulate the economic life of the people had persisted well past the middle of the eighteenth century. But very different tendencies of thought arose in the latter part of the century. One of these was the prevailing desire for greater liberty. The word liberty was defined differently by different men, but for all alike it meant a resistance to oppression, a revulsion against interference with personal freedom of action, a disinclination to be controlled any more than absolutely necessary, a belief that men had a right to be left free to do as they chose, so far as such freedom was practicable. As applied to economic interests this liberty meant freedom for each person to make his living in the way he might see fit, and without any external restriction. Adam Smith says: "The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the other from employing whom they think proper." Government regulation, therefore, in as far as it restricted men's freedom of action in working, employing, buying, selling, etc., was an interference with their natural liberty. A second influence in the same direction was the prevalent belief that most of the evils that existed in society were due to the mistakes of civilization, that if men could get back to a "state of nature" and start again, things might be much better. It was felt that there was too much artificiality, too much interference with natural development. Arthur Young condemned the prevailing policy of government, "because it consists of prohibiting the natural course of things. All restrictive forcible measures in domestic policy are bad." Regulation was unwise because it forced men's actions into artificial lines when it would have been much better to let them follow natural lines. Therefore it was felt not only that men had a right to carry on their economic affairs as they chose, but that it was wise to allow them to do so, because interference or regulation had been tried and found wanting. It had produced evil rather than good. A third and by far the most important intellectual influence which tended toward the destruction of the system of regulation was the development of a consistent body of economic teaching, which claimed to have discovered natural laws showing the futility and injuriousness of any such attempts. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published in 1776, the year of the invention of Crompton's mule, and in the decade when enclosures were more rapid than at any other time, except in the middle years of the Napoleonic wars. This was, therefore, one of the earliest, as it was far the most influential, of a series of books which represent the changes in ideas correlative to the changes in actual life already described. It has been described as having for its main object "to demonstrate that the most effectual plan for advancing a people to greatness is to maintain that order of things which nature has pointed out, by allowing every man, as long as he observes the rules of justice, to pursue his own interests in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into the freest competition with those of his fellow-citizens." But the most distinct influence exercised by the writings of Adam Smith and his successors was not so much in pointing out that it was unjust or unwise to interfere with men's natural liberty in the pursuit of their interests, as in showing, as it was believed, that there were natural laws which made all interference incapable of reaching the ends it aimed at. A series of works were published in the latter years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century by Malthus, Ricardo, Macculloch, James Mill, and others, in which principles were enunciated and laws formulated which were believed to explain why all interference with free competition was useless or worse. Not only was the whole subject of economic relations clarified, much that had been regarded as wise brought into doubt, and much that had been only doubted shown to be absurd, but the attainment of many objects previously sought for was, apparently, shown to be impossible, and to lie outside of the realm of human control. It was pointed out, for instance, that because of the limited amount of capital in existence at any one time, "a demand for commodities is not a demand for labor;" and therefore a law like that which required burial in a woollen shroud did not give added occupation to the people, but only diverted them from one occupation to another. Ricardo developed a law of wages to the effect that they always tend to the amount "necessary to enable the laborer to subsist, and to perpetuate his race without either increase or diminution," and that any artificial raising or lowering of wages is impossible, or else causes an increase or diminution in their number which, through competition, soon brings back the old rate. Rent was also explained by Ricardo as arising from the differences of quality between different pieces of land, and as measured by the difference in the productivity of the land under consideration and that of the poorest land under cultivation at the time; and therefore being in its amount independent of direct human control. The Malthusian law of population showed that population tended to increase in a geometrical ratio, subsistence for the population, on the other hand, only in an arithmetical ratio, and that poverty was, therefore, the natural and inevitable result in old countries of a pressure of population on subsistence. The sanction of science was thus given alike to the desires of the lovers of freedom and to the regrets of those who deplored man's departure from the state of nature. All these intellectual tendencies and reasonings of the later eighteenth century, therefore, combined to discredit the minute regulation of economic society, which had been the traditional policy of the immediately preceding centuries. The movement of thought was definitely opposed to the continuance or extension of the supervision of the government over matters of labor, wages, hours, industry, commerce, agriculture, or other phenomena of production, distribution, exchange, or consumption. This set of opinions is known as the _laissez-faire_ theory of the functions of government, the view that the duties of government should be reduced to the smallest possible number, and that it should keep out of the economic sphere altogether. Adam Smith would have restricted the functions of government to three: to protect the nation from the attacks of other nations, to protect each person in the nation from the injustice or violence of other individuals, and to carry on certain educational or similar institutions which were of general utility, but not to any one's private interest. Many of his successors would have cut off the last duty altogether. *62. Cessation of Government Regulation*--These theoretical opinions came to be more and more widely held, more and more influential over the most thoughtful of English statesmen and other men of prominence, until within the first half of the nineteenth century it may be said that their acceptance was general and their influence dominant. They fell in with the actual tendencies of the times, and as a result of the natural breaking down of old conditions, the rise of new, and the general acceptance of this attitude of _laissez-faire_, a rapid and general decay of the system of government regulation took place. The old regulation had never been so complete in reality as it was on the statute book, and much of it had died out of itself. Some of the provisions of the Statute of Apprentices were persistently disregarded, and when appeals were made for its application to farm work in the latter part of the eighteenth century Parliament refused to enforce it, as they did in the case of discharged soldiers in 1726 and of certain dyers in 1777. The assize of bread was very irregularly enforced, and that of other victuals had been given up altogether. Many commercial companies were growing up without regulation by government, and in the world of finance the hand of government was very light. The new manufactures and the new agriculture grew up to a large extent apart from government control or influence; while the forms to which the old regulation did apply were dying out. In the new factory industry practically the whole body of the employees were without the qualifications required by the Statute of Apprentices, as well as many of the hand-loom weavers who were drawn into the industry by the abundance and cheapness of machine-spun thread. In the early years of the nineteenth century a strenuous effort was made by the older weavers to have the law enforced against them. The whole matter was investigated by Parliament, but instead of enforcing the old law they modified it by acts passed in 1803 and 1809, so as to allow of greater liberty. The old prohibition of using fulling mills passed in 1553 was also repealed in 1809. The Statute of Apprentices after being weakened piecemeal as just mentioned, and by a further amendment removing the wages clauses in 1813, and after being referred to by Lord Mansfield as "against the natural rights and contrary to the common law rights of the land," was finally removed from the statute book in 1814. Even the "Combination Acts," which had forbidden laborers to unite to settle wages and hours, were repealed in 1824. Similar changes took place in other fields than those of the relations between employers and employees. The leading characteristics of legislation on questions of commerce, manufactures, and agriculture during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth consist in the fact that it almost wholly tended toward freedom from government control. The proportions in which the influence of the natural breaking down of an outgrown system, of the new conditions which were arising, and of pure theory were combined cannot of course be distinguished. All were present. Besides this there is always a large number of persons in the community who would be primarily benefited by a change, and who therefore take the initiative or exercise a special pressure in favor of it. The Navigation Acts began to go to pieces in 1796, when the old rule restricting importations from America, Asia, and Africa to British vessels was withdrawn in favor of the United States; in 1811 the same permission to send goods to England in other than British vessels was given to Brazil, and in 1822 to the Spanish-American countries. The whole subject was investigated by a Parliamentary Commission in 1820, at the request of the London Chamber of Commerce, and a policy of withdrawal from control determined upon. In 1823 a measure was passed by which the crown was empowered to form reciprocity treaties with any other country so far as shipping was concerned, and agreements were immediately entered into with Prussia, Denmark, Hamburg, Sweden, and within the next twenty years with most other important countries. The old laws of 1660 were repealed in 1826, and a freer system substituted, while in 1849 the Navigation Acts were abolished altogether. In the meantime the monopoly of the old regulated companies was being withdrawn, the India trade being thrown open in 1813 and given up entirely by the Company in 1833. Gradually the commerce of England and of all the English colonies was opened equally to the vessels of all nations. A beginning of removal of the import and export duties, which had been laid for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging or otherwise influencing certain lines of production or trade, was made in a commercial treaty entered into by Pitt with France in 1786. The work was seriously taken up again in 1824 and 1825 by Mr. Huskisson, and in 1842 by Sir Robert Peel. In 1845 the duty was removed from four hundred and thirty articles, partly raw materials, partly manufactures. But the most serious struggle in the movement for free trade was that for the repeal of the corn laws. A new law had been passed at the close of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, by which the importation of wheat was forbidden so long as the prevailing price was not above ten shillings a bushel. This was in pursuance of the old traditional policy of encouraging the production of grain in order that England might be at least partially self-supporting, and was further justified on the ground that the landowners paid the great bulk of the taxes, which they could not do if the price of grain were allowed to be brought down by foreign competition. Nevertheless an active propaganda for the abolition of this law was begun by the formation of the "Anti-Corn Law League," in 1839. Richard Cobden became the president and the most famous representative of this society, which carried on an active agitation for some years. The chief interest in the abolition of the law would necessarily be taken by the manufacturing employers, the wages of whose employees could thus be made lower and more constant, but there were abundant other arguments against the laws, and their abandonment was entirely in conformity with the spirit of the age. At the close of 1845, therefore, Peel proposed their repeal, the matter was brought up in Parliament in the early months of 1846, and a sliding scale was adopted by which a slight temporary protection should continue until 1849, when any protective tariff on wheat was to cease altogether, though a nominal duty of about one and a half pence a bushel was still to be collected. This is known as the "adoption of free trade." It remains to be noted in this connection that "free trade in land" was an expression often used during the same period, and consisted in an effort marked by a long series of acts of Parliament and regulations of the courts to simplify the title to land, the processes of buying and selling it, and in other ways making its use and disposal as simple and uncontrolled by external regulation as was commerce or any form of industry. Thus the structure of regulation of industry, which had been built up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or which had survived from the Middle Ages, was now torn down; the use of the powers of government to make men carry on their economic life in a certain way, to buy and sell, labor and hire, manufacture and cultivate, export and import, only in such ways as were thought to be best for the nation, seemed to be entirely abandoned. The _laissez-faire_ view of government was to all appearances becoming entirely dominant. *63. Individualism.*--But the prevailing tendencies of thought and the economic teaching of the period were not merely negative and opposed to government regulation; they contained a positive element also. If there was to be no external control, what incentive would actuate men in their industrial existence? What force would hold economic society together? The answer was a plain one. Enlightened self-interest was the incentive, universal free competition was the force. James Anderson, in his _Political Economy_, published in 1801, says, "Private interest is the great source of public good, which, though operating unseen, never ceases one moment to act with unabating power, if it be not perverted by the futile regulations of some short-sighted politician." Again, Malthus, in his _Essay on Population_, in 1817, says: "By making the passion of self-love beyond comparison stronger than the passion of benevolence, the more ignorant are led to pursue the general happiness, an end which they would have totally failed to attain if the moving principle of their conduct had been benevolence. Benevolence, indeed, as the great and constant source of action, would require the most perfect knowledge of causes and effects, and therefore can only be the attribute of the Deity. In a being so short-sighted as man it would lead to the grossest errors, and soon transform the fair and cultivated soil of human society into a dreary scene of want and confusion." In other words, a natural and sufficient economic force was always tending to act and to produce the best results, except in as far as it was interfered with by external regulation. If a man wishes to earn wages, to receive payment, he must observe what work another man wants done, or what goods another man desires, and offer to do that work or furnish those goods, so that the other man may be willing to remunerate him. In this way both obtain what they want, and if all others are similarly occupied all wants will be satisfied so far as practicable. But men must be entirely free to act as they think best, to choose what and when and how they will produce. The best results will be obtained where the greatest freedom exists, where men may compete with one another freed from all trammels, at liberty to pay or ask such wages, to demand or offer such prices, to accept or reject such goods, as they wish or can agree upon. If everybody else is equally free the man who offers the best to his neighbor will be preferred. Effort will thus be stimulated, self-reliance encouraged, production increased, improvement attained, and economy guaranteed. Nor should there be any special favor or encouragement given by government or by any other bodies to any special individuals or classes of persons or kinds of industry, for in this way capital and labor will be diverted from the direction which they would naturally take, and the self-reliance and energy of such favored persons diminished. Therefore complete individualism, universal freedom of competition, was the ideal of the age, as far as there is ever any universal ideal. There certainly was a general belief among the greater number of the intelligent and influential classes, that when each person was freely seeking his own best interest he was doing the best for himself and for all. Economic society was conceived of as a number of freely competing units held in equilibrium by the force of competition, much as the material universe is held together by the attraction of gravitation. Any hindrance to this freedom of the individual to compete freely with all others, any artificial support or encouragement that gives him an advantage over others, is against his own real interest and that of society. This ideal was necessarily as much opposed to voluntary combinations, and to restrictions imposed by custom or agreement, as it was to government regulation. Individualism is much more than a mere _laissez-faire_ policy of government. It believes that every man should remain and be allowed to remain free, unrestricted, undirected, unassisted, so that he may be in a position at any time to direct his labor, ability, capital, enterprise, in any direction that may seem to him most desirable, and may be induced to put forth his best efforts to attain success. The arguments on which it was based were drawn from the domain of men's natural right to economic as to other freedom; from experience, by which it was believed that all regulation had proved to be injurious; and from economic doctrine, which was believed to have discovered natural laws that proved the necessary result of interference to be evil, or at best futile. The changes of the time were favorable to this ideal. Men had never been so free from external control by government or any other power. The completion of the process of enclosure left every agriculturist at liberty to plant and raise what he chose, and when and how he chose. The reform of the poor law in 1834 abolished the act of settlement of 1662, by which the authorities of each parish had the power to remove to the place from which they came any laborers who entered it, and so far as the law was concerned, farm laborers were now free to come and go where they chose to seek for work. In the new factories, systems of transportation, and other large establishments that were taking the places of small ones, employees were at liberty to leave their engagements at any time they chose, to go to another employer or another occupation; and the employer had the same liberty of discharging at a moment's notice. Manufacturers were at liberty to make anything they chose, and hire laborers in whatever proportion they chose. And just as early modern regulation had been given up, so the few fragments of mediæval restrictive institutions that had survived the intervening centuries were now rapidly abandoned in the stress of competitive society. Later forms of restriction, such as trade unions and trusts, had not yet grown up. Actual conditions and the theoretical statement of what was desirable approximated to one another more nearly than they usually have in the world's history. *64. Social Conditions at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century.*--Yet somehow the results were disappointing. More and better manufactured goods were produced and foreign goods sold, and at vastly lower prices. The same result would probably have been true in agriculture had not the corn laws long prevented this consummation, and instead distributed the surplus to paupers and the holders of government bonds through the medium of taxes. There was no doubt of English wealth and progress. England held the primacy of the world in commerce, in manufactures, in agriculture. Her rapid increase in wealth had enabled her to bear the burden, not only of her own part in the Napoleonic wars, but of much of the expense of the armament of the continental countries. Population also was increasing more rapidly than ever before. She stood before the world as the most prominent and successful modern nation in all material respects. Yet a closer examination into her internal condition shows much that was deeply unsatisfactory. The period of transition from the domestic to the factory system of industry and from the older to the new farming conditions was one of almost unrelieved misery to great masses of those who were wedded to the old ways, who had neither the capital, the enterprise, nor the physical nor mental adaptability to attach themselves to the new. The hand-loom weavers kept up a hopeless struggle in the garrets and cellars of the factory towns, while their wages were sinking lower and lower till finally the whole generation died out. The small farmers who lost the support of spinning and other by-industries succumbed in the competition with the larger producers. The cottagers whose commons were lost to them by enclosures frequently failed to find a niche for themselves in their own part of the country, and became paupers or vagabonds. Many of the same sad incidents which marked the sixteenth century were characteristic of this period of analogous change, when ultimate improvement was being bought at the price of much immediate misery. [Illustration: Carding, Drawing, and Roving in 1835. (Baines: _History of Cotton Manufacture_.)] Even among those who were supposed to have reaped the advantages of the changes of the time many unpleasant phenomena appeared. The farm laborers were not worse, perhaps were better off on the average, in the matter of wages, than those of the previous generation, but they were more completely separated from the land than they had ever been before, more completely deprived of those wholesome influences which come from the use of even a small portion of land, and of the incitement to thrift that comes from the possibility of rising. Few classes of people have ever been more utterly without enjoyment or prospects than the modern English farm laborers. And one class, the yeomen, somewhat higher in position and certainly in opportunities, had disappeared entirely, recruited into the class of mere laborers. In the early factories, women and children were employed more extensively and more persistently than in earlier forms of industry. Their labor was in greater demand than that of men. In 1839, of 31,632 employees in worsted mills, 18,416, or considerably more than half, were under eighteen years of age, and of the 13,216 adults, 10,192 were women, leaving only 3024 adult men among more than 30,000 laborers. In 1832, in a certain flax spinning mill near Leeds, where about 1200 employees were engaged, 829 were below eighteen, only 390 above; and in the flax spinning industry generally, in 1835, only about one-third were adults, and only about one-third of these were men. In the still earlier years of the factory system the proportion of women and children was even greater, though reliable general statistics are not available. The cheaper wages, the easier control, and the smaller size of women and children, now that actual physical power was not required, made them more desirable to employers, and in many families the men clung to hand work while the women and children went into the factories. The early mills were small, hot, damp, dusty, and unhealthy. They were not more so perhaps than the cottages where domestic industry had been carried on; but now the hours were more regular, continuous, and prolonged in which men, women, and children were subjected to such labor. All had to conform alike to the regular hours, and these were in the early days excessive. Twelve, thirteen, and even fourteen hours a day were not unusual. Regular hours of work, when they are moderate in length, and a systematized life, when it is not all labor, are probably wholesome, physically and morally; but when the summons to cease from work and that to begin it again are separated by such a short interval, the factory bell or whistle represents mere tyranny. Wages were sometimes higher than under the old conditions, but they were even more irregular. Greater ups and downs occurred. Periods of very active production and of restriction of production alternated more decidedly than before, and introduced more irregularity into industry for both employers and employees. The town laborer engaged in a large establishment was, like the rural laborer on a large farm, completely separated from the land, from capital, from any active connection with the administration of industry, from any probable opportunity of rising out of the laboring class. His prospects were, therefore, as limited as his position was laborious and precarious. The rapid growth of the manufacturing towns, especially in the north, drawing the scattered population of other parts of the country into their narrow limits, caused a general breakdown in the old arrangements for providing water, drainage, and fresh air; and made rents high, and consequently living in crowded rooms necessary. The factory towns in the early part of the century were filthy, crowded, and demoralizing, compared alike with their earlier and their present condition. [Illustration: Cotton Factories in Manchester. (Baines: _History of Cotton Manufacture_.)] In the higher grades of economic society the advantages of the recent changes were more distinct, the disadvantages less so. The rise of capital and business enterprise into greater importance, and the extension of the field of competition, gave greater opportunity to employing farmers, merchants, and manufacturers, as well as to the capitalists pure and simple. But even for them the keenness of competition and the exigencies of providing for the varying conditions of distant markets made the struggle for success a harder one, and many failed in it. In many ways therefore it might seem that the great material advances which had been made, the removal of artificial restrictions, the increase of liberty of action, the extension of the field of competition, the more enlightened opinions on economic and social relations, had failed to increase human happiness appreciably; indeed, for a time had made the condition of the mass of the people worse instead of better. It will not, therefore, be unexpected if some other lines of economic and social development, especially those which have become more and more prominent during the later progress of the nineteenth century, prove to be quite different in direction from those that have been studied in this chapter. *65. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Toynbee, Arnold: _The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England_. Lecky, W. E. H.: _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, Vol. VI, Chap. 23. Baines, E.: _History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain_. Cooke-Taylor, R. W.: _The Modern Factory System_. Levi, L.: _History of British Commerce and of the Economic Progress of the British Nation_. Prothero, R. E.: _The Pioneers and Progress of English Farming_. Rogers, J. E. T.: _Industrial and Commercial History_. Smith, Adam: _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_. CHAPTER IX THE EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENT CONTROL Factory Laws, The Modification Of Land Ownership, Sanitary Regulations, And New Public Services *66. National Affairs from 1830 to 1900.*--The English government in the year 1830 might be described as a complete aristocracy. The king had practically no powers apart from his ministers, and they were merely the representatives of the majority in Parliament. Parliament consisted of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The first of these Houses was made up for the most part of an hereditary aristocracy. The bishops and newly created peers, the only element which did not come in by inheritance, were appointed by the king and usually from the families of those who already possessed inherited titles. The House of Commons had originally been made up of two members from each county, and two from each important town. But the list of represented towns was still practically the same as it had been in the fifteenth century, while intervening economic and other changes had, as has been seen, made the most complete alteration in the distribution of population. Great manufacturing towns had grown up as a result of changes in commerce and of the industrial revolution, and these had no representation in Parliament separate from the counties in which they lay. On the other hand, towns once of respectable size had dwindled until they had only a few dozen inhabitants, and in some cases had reverted to open farming country; but these, or the landlords who owned the land on which they had been built, still retained their two representatives in Parliament. The county representatives were voted for by all "forty shilling freeholders," that is, landowners whose farms would rent for forty shillings a year. But the whole tendency of English landholding, as has been seen, had been to decrease the number of landowners in the country, so that the actual number of voters was only a very small proportion of the rural population. Such great irregularities of representation had thus grown up that the selection of more than a majority of the members of the House of Commons was in the hands of a very small number of men, many of them already members of the House of Lords, and all members of the aristocracy. Just as Parliament represented only the higher classes, so officers in the army and to a somewhat less extent the navy, the officials of the established church, the magistrates in the counties, the ambassadors abroad, and the cabinet ministers at home, the holders of influential positions in the Universities and endowed institutions generally, were as a regular thing members of the small class of the landed or mercantile aristocracy of England. Perhaps one hundred thousand out of the fourteen millions of the people of England were the veritable governing classes. They alone had any control of the national and local government, or of the most important political and social institutions. The "Reform of Parliament," which meant some degree of equalization of the representation of districts, an extension of the franchise, and the abolition of some of the irregularities in elections, had been proposed from time to time, but had awakened little interest until it was advocated by the Radicals under the influence of the French Revolution, along with some much more far-reaching propositions. Between the years 1820 and 1830, however, a moderate reform of Parliament had been advocated by the leaders of the Whig party. In 1830 this party rather unexpectedly obtained a majority in Parliament, for the first time for a long while, and the ministry immediately introduced a reform bill. It proposed to take away the right of separate representation from fifty-six towns, and to reduce the number of representatives from two to one in thirty-one others; to transfer these representatives to the more populous towns and counties; to extend the franchise to a somewhat larger number and to equalize it; and finally to introduce lists of voters, to keep the polls open for only two days, and to correct a number of such minor abuses. There was a bitter contest in Parliament and in the country at large on the proposed change, and the measure was only carried after it had been rejected by one House of Commons, passed by a new House elected as a test of the question, then defeated by the House of Lords, and only passed by them when submitted a second time with the threat by the ministry of requiring the king to create enough new peers to pass it, if the existing members refused to do so. Its passage was finally secured in 1832. It was carried by pressure from below through all its stages. The king signed it reluctantly because it had been sent to him by Parliament, the House of Lords passed it under threats from the ministry, who based their power on the House of Commons. This body in turn had to be reconstructed by a new election before it would agree to it, and there is no doubt that the voters as well as Parliament itself were much influenced by the cry of "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," raised by mobs, associations, and meetings, consisting largely of the masses of the people who possessed no votes at all. In the last resort, therefore, it was a victory won by the masses, and, little as they profited by it immediately, it proved to be the turning point, the first step from aristocracy toward democracy. In 1867 a second Reform Bill was passed, mainly on the lines of the first, but giving what amounted to almost universal suffrage to the inhabitants of the town constituencies, which included the great body of the workingmen. Finally, in 1884 and 1885, the third Reform Bill was passed which extended the right of voting to agricultural laborers as well, and did much toward equalizing the size of the districts represented by each member of the House of Commons. Other reforms have been adopted during the same period, and Parliament has thus come to represent the whole population instead of merely the aristocracy. But there have been even greater changes in local government. By laws passed in 1835 and 1882 the cities and boroughs have been given a form of government in which the power is in the hands of all the taxpayers. In 1888 an act was passed through Parliament forming County Councils, elected by universal suffrage and taking over many of the powers formerly exercised by the magistrates and large landholders. In 1894 this was followed by a Parish Council Bill creating even more distinctly local bodies, by which the people in each locality, elected by universal suffrage, including that of women, may take charge of almost all their local concerns under the general legislation of Parliament. Corresponding to these changes in general and local government the power of the old ruling classes has been diminished in all directions, until it has become little more than that degree of prominence and natural leadership which the national sentiment or their economic and intellectual advantages give to them. It may be said that England, so far as its government goes, has come nearer to complete democracy than any other modern country. In the rapidity of movement, the activity, the energy, the variety of interests, the thousand lines of economic, political, intellectual, literary, artistic, philanthropic, or religious life which characterize the closing years of the nineteenth century, it seems impossible to choose a few facts to typify or describe the period, as is customary for earlier times. Little can be done except to point out the main lines of political movement, as has been done in this paragraph, or of economic and social development, as will be done in the remaining paragraphs of this and the next chapter. The great mass of recent occurrences and present conditions are as yet rather the human atmosphere in which we are living, the problem which we are engaged in solving, than a proper subject for historical description and analysis. [Illustration: Distribution of Population in England and Wales 1891. Engraved By Bormay & Co., N.Y.] *67. The Beginning of Factory Legislation.*--One of the greatest difficulties with which the early mill owners had to contend was the insufficient supply of labor for their factories. Since these had to be run by water power, they were placed along the rapid streams in the remote parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, which were sparsely populated, and where such inhabitants as there were had a strong objection to working in factories. However abundant population might be in some other parts of England, in the northwest where the new manufacturing was growing up, and especially in the hilly rural districts, there were but few persons available to perform the work which must be done by human hands in connection with the mill machinery. There was, however, in existence a source of supply of laborers which could furnish almost unlimited numbers and at the lowest possible cost. The parish poorhouses or workhouses of the large cities were overcrowded with children. The authorities always had difficulty in finding occupation for them when they came to an age when they could earn their own living, and any plan of putting them to work would be received with welcome. This source of supply was early discovered and utilized by the manufacturers, and it soon became customary for them to take as apprentices large numbers of the poorhouse children. They signed indentures with the overseers of the poor by which they agreed to give board, clothing, and instruction for a certain number of years to the children who were thus bound to them. In return they put them to work in the factories. Children from seven years of age upward were engaged by hundreds from London and the other large cities, and set to work in the cotton spinning factories of the north. Since there were no other facilities for boarding them, "apprentice houses" were built for them in the vicinity of the factories, where they were placed under the care of superintendents or matrons. The conditions of life among these pauper children were, as might be expected, very hard. They were remotely situated, apart from the observation of the community, left to the burdens of unrelieved labor and the harshness of small masters or foremen. Their hours of labor were excessive. When the demands of trade were active they were often arranged in two shifts, each shift working twelve hours, one in the day and another in the night, so that it was a common saying in the north that "their beds never got cold," one set climbing into bed as the other got out. When there was no night work the day work was the longer. They were driven at their work and often abused. Their food was of the coarsest description, and they were frequently required to eat it while at their work, snatching a bite as they could while the machinery was still in motion. Much of the time which should have been devoted to rest was spent in cleaning the machinery, and there seems to have been absolutely no effort made to give them any education or opportunity for recreation. The sad life of these little waifs, overworked, underfed, neglected, abused, in the factories and barracks in the remote glens of Yorkshire and Lancashire, came eventually to the notice of the outside world. Correspondence describing their condition began to appear in the newspapers, a Manchester Board of Health made a presentment in 1796 calling attention to the unsanitary conditions in the cotton factories where they worked, contagious fevers were reported to be especially frequent in the apprentice houses, and in 1802 Sir Robert Peel, himself an employer of nearly a thousand such children, brought the matter to the attention of Parliament. An immediate and universal desire was expressed to abolish the abuses of the system, and as a result the "Health and Morals Act to regulate the Labor of Sound Children in Cotton Factories" was passed in the same year. It prohibited the binding out for factory labor of children younger than nine years, restricted the hours of labor to twelve actual working hours a day, and forbade night labor. It required the walls of the factories to be properly whitewashed and the buildings to be sufficiently ventilated, insisted that the apprentices should be furnished with at least one new suit of clothes a year, and provided that they should attend religious service and be instructed in the fundamental English branches. This was the first of the "Factory Acts," for, although its application was so restricted, applying only to cotton factories, and for the most part only to bound children, the subsequent steps in the formation of the great code of factory legislation were for a long while simply a development of the same principle, that factory labor involved conditions which it was desirable for government to regulate. At the time of the passage of this law the introduction of steam power was already causing a transfer of the bulk of factory industry from the rural districts to which the need for water power had confined it to the towns where every other requisite for carrying on manufacturing was more easily obtainable. Here the children of families resident in the town could be obtained, and the practice of using apprentice children was largely given up. Many of the same evils, however, continued to exist here. The practice of beginning to work while extremely young, long hours, night work, unhealthy surroundings, proved to be as common among these children to whom the law did not apply as they had been among the apprentice children. These evils attracted the attention of several persons of philanthropic feeling. Robert Owen, especially, a successful manufacturer who had introduced many reforms in his own mills, collected a large body of evidence as to the excessive labor and early age of employees in the factories even where no apprentice labor was engaged. He tried to awaken an interest in the matter by the publication of a pamphlet on the injurious consequences of the factory system, and to influence various members of Parliament to favor the passage of a law intended to improve the condition of laboring children and young people. In 1815 Sir Robert Peel again brought the matter up in Parliament. A committee was appointed to investigate the question, and a legislative agitation was thus begun which was destained to last for many years and to produce a series of laws which have gradually taken most of the conditions of employment in large establishments under the control of the government. In debates in Parliament, in testimony before government commissions of investigation, in petitions, pamphlets, and newspapers, the conditions of factory labor were described and discussed. Successive laws to modify these conditions were introduced into Parliament, debated at great length, amended, postponed, reintroduced, and in some cases passed, in others defeated. *68. Arguments for and against Factory Legislation.*--The need for regulation which was claimed to exist arose from the long hours of work which were customary, from the very early age at which many children were sent to be employed in the factories, and from various incidents of manufacturing which were considered injurious, or as involving unnecessary hardship. The actual working hours in the factories in the early part of the century were from twelve and a half to fourteen a day. That is to say, factories usually started work in the morning at 6 o'clock and continued till 12, when a period from a half-hour to an hour was allowed for dinner, then the work began again and continued till 7.30 or 8.30 in the evening. It was customary to eat breakfast after reaching the mill, but this was done while attending the machinery, there being no general stoppage for the purpose. Some mills ran even longer hours, opening at 5 A.M. and not closing till 9 P.M. In some exceptional cases the hours were only 12; from 6 to 12 and from 1 to 7. The inducements to long hours were very great. The profits were large, the demand for goods was constantly growing, the introduction of gas made it possible to light the factories, and the use of artificial power, either water or steam, seemed to make the labor much less severe than when the power had been provided by human muscles. Few or no holidays were regarded, except Sunday, so that work went on in an unending strain of protracted, exhausting labor, prolonged for much of the year far into the night. To these long hours all the hands alike conformed, the children commencing and stopping work at the same time as the grown men and women. Moreover, the children often began work while extremely young. There was a great deal of work in the factories which they could do just as well, in some cases even better, than adults. They were therefore commonly sent into the mills by their parents at about the age of eight years, frequently at seven or even six. As has been before stated, more than half of the employees in many factories were below eighteen years, and of these a considerable number were mere children. Thirdly, there were certain other evils of factory labor that attracted attention and were considered by the reformers to be remediable. Many accidents occurred because the moving machinery was unprotected, the temperature in the cotton mills had to be kept high, and ventilation and cleanliness were often entirely neglected. The habit of keeping the machinery in motion while meals were being eaten was a hardship, and in many ways the employees were practically at the mercy of the proprietors of the factories so long as there was no form of oversight or of united action to prevent harshness or unfairness. In the discussions in Parliament and outside there were of course many contradictory statements concerning the facts of the case, and much denial of general and special charges. The advocates of factory laws drew an extremely sombre picture of the evils of the factory system. The opponents of such legislation, on the other hand, declared that their statements were exaggerated or untrue, and that the condition of the factory laborer was not worse than that of other workingmen, or harder than that of the domestic worker and his family had been in earlier times. But apart from these recriminations and contradictions, there were certain general arguments used in the debates which can be grouped into three classes on each side. For the regulating laws there was in the first place the purely sentimental argument, repulsion against the hard, unrelieved labor, the abuse, the lack of opportunity for enjoyment or recreation of the children of the factory districts; the feeling that in wealthy, humane, Christian England, it was unendurable that women and little children should work longer hours, be condemned to greater hardships, and more completely cut off from the enjoyments of life than were the slaves of tropical countries. This is the argument of Mrs. Browning's _Cry of the Children_:-- "Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers. And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west; But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the play-time of the others In the country of the free. * * * * * 'For oh!' say the children, 'we are weary, And we cannot run or leap: If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep.' * * * * * They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity. 'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?'" Secondly, it was argued that the long hours for the children cut them off from all intellectual and moral training, that they were in no condition after such protracted labor to profit by any opportunities of education that should be supplied, that with the diminished influence of the home, and the demoralizing effects that were supposed to result from factory labor, ignorance and vice alike would continue to be its certain accompaniments, unless the age at which regular work was begun should be limited, and the number of hours of labor of young persons restricted. Thirdly, it was claimed that there was danger of the physical degeneracy of the factory population. Certain diseases, especially of the joints and limbs, were discovered to be very prevalent in the factory districts. Children who began work so early in life and were subjected to such long hours of labor did not grow so rapidly, nor reach their full stature, nor retain their vigor so late in life, as did the population outside of the factories. Therefore, for the very physical preservation of the race, it was declared to be necessary to regulate the conditions of factory labor. On the other hand, apart from denials as to the facts of the case, there were several distinct arguments used against the adoption of factory laws. In the first place, in the interests of the manufacturers, such laws were opposed as an unjust interference with their business, an unnecessary and burdensome obstacle to their success, and a threat of ruin to a class who by giving employment to so many laborers and furnishing so much of the material for commerce were of the greatest advantage to the country. Secondly, from a somewhat broader point of view, it was declared that if such laws were adopted England would no longer be able to compete with other countries and would lose her preëminence in manufactures. The factory system was being introduced into France, Belgium, the United States, and other countries, and in none of these was there any legal restriction on the hours of labor or the age of the employees. If English manufacturers were forced to reduce the length of the day in which production was carried on, they could not produce as cheaply as these other countries, and English exports would decrease. This would reduce the national prosperity and be especially hard on the working classes themselves, as many would necessarily be thrown out of work. Thirdly, as a matter of principle it was argued that the policy of government regulation had been tried and found wanting, that after centuries of existence it had been deliberately given up, and should not be reintroduced. Laws restricting hours would interfere with the freedom of labor, with the freedom of capital, with the freedom of contract. If the employer and the employee were both satisfied with the conditions of their labor, why should the government interfere? The reason also why such regulation had failed in the past and must again, if tried now, was evident. It was an effort to alter the action of the natural laws which controlled employment, wages, profits, and other economic matters, and was bad in theory, and would therefore necessarily be injurious in practice. These and some other less general arguments were used over and over again in the various forms of the discussion through almost half a century. The laws that were passed were carried because the majority in Parliament were either not convinced by these reasonings or else determined that, come what might, the evils and abuses connected with factory labor should be abolished. As a matter of fact, the factory laws were carried by the rank and file of the voting members of Parliament, not only against the protests of the manufacturers especially interested, but in spite of the warnings of those who spoke in the name of established teaching, and frequently against the opposition of the political leaders of both parties. The greatest number of those who voted for them were influenced principally by their sympathies and feelings, and yielded to the appeals of certain philanthropic advocates, the most devoted and influential of whom was Lord Ashley, afterward earl of Shaftesbury, who devoted many years to investigation and agitation on the subject both inside and out of Parliament. *69. Factory Legislation to 1847.*--The actual course of factory legislation was as follows. The bill originally introduced in 1815, after having been subjected to a series of discussions, amendments, and postponements, was passed in June, 1819, being the second "Factory Act." It applied only to cotton mills, and was in the main merely an extension of the act of 1802 to the protection of children who were not pauper apprentices. It forbade the employment of any child under nine years of age, and prohibited the employment of those between nine and sixteen more than twelve hours a day, or at night. In addition to the twelve hours of actual labor, at least a half-hour must be allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner. Other minor acts amending or extending this were passed from time to time, till in 1833, after two successive commissions had made investigations and reports on the subject, an important law was passed. It applied practically to all textile mills, not merely to those for the spinning of cotton. The prohibition of employment of all below nine years was continued, children between nine and thirteen were to work only eight hours per day, and young persons between thirteen and eighteen only twelve hours, and none of these at night. Two whole and eight half holidays were required to be given within the year, and each child must have a surgeon's certificate of fitness for labor. There were also clauses for the education of the children and the cleanliness of the factories. But the most important clause of this statute was the provision of a corps of four inspectors with assistants who were sworn to their duties, salaried, and provided with extensive powers of making rules for the execution of the act, of enforcing it, and prosecuting for its violation. The earlier laws had not been efficiently carried out. Under this act numerous prosecutions and convictions took place, and factory regulation began to become a reality. The inspectors calculated during their first year of service that there were about 56,000 children between nine and thirteen, and about 108,000 young persons between thirteen and eighteen, in the factories under their supervision. The decade lying between 1840 and 1850 was one of specially great activity in social and economic agitation. Chartism, the abolition of the corn laws, the formation of trade unions, mining acts, and further extensions of the factory acts were all alike under discussion, and they all created the most intense antagonism between parties and classes. In 1844 the law commonly known as the "Children's Half-time Act" was passed. It contained a large number of general provisions for the fencing of dangerous machinery, for its stoppage while being cleaned, for the report of accidents to inspectors and district surgeons, for the public prosecution for damages of the factory owner when he should seem to be responsible for an accident, and for the enforcement of the act. Its most distinctive clause, however, was that which restricted the labor of children to a half-day, or the whole of alternate days, and required their attendance at school for the other half of their time. All women were placed by this act in the same category as young persons between thirteen and eighteen, so far as the restriction of hours of labor to twelve per day and the prohibition of night work extended. The next statute to be passed was an extension of this regulation, though it contained the provision which had long been the most bitterly contested of any during the whole factory law agitation. This was the "Ten-hour Act" of 1847. From an early period in the century there had been a strong agitation in favor of restricting by law the hours of young persons, and from somewhat later, of women, to ten hours per day, and this proposition had been repeatedly introduced and defeated in Parliament. It was now carried. By this time the more usual length of the working day even when unrestricted had been reduced to twelve hours, and in some trades to eleven. It was now made by law half-time for children, and ten hours for young persons and women, or as rearranged by another law passed three years afterward, ten and a half hours for five days of the week and a half-day on Saturday. The number of persons to whom the Ten-hour Act applied was estimated at something over 360,000. That is, including the children, at least three-fourths of all persons employed in textile industries had their hours and some other conditions of labor directly regulated by law. Moreover, the work of men employed in the same factories was so dependent on that of the women and the children, that many of these restrictions applied practically to them also. Further minor changes in hours and other details were made from time to time, but there was no later contest on the principle of factory legislation. The evil results which had been feared had not shown themselves, and many of its strongest opponents had either already, or did eventually, acknowledge the beneficial results of the laws. *70. The Extension of Factory Legislation.*--By the successive acts of 1819, 1833, 1844, and 1847, a normal length of working day and regulated conditions generally had been established by government for the factories employing women and children. The next development was an extension of the regulation of hours and conditions of labor from factories proper to other allied fields. Already in 1842 a law had been passed regulating labor in mines. This act was passed in response to the needs shown by the report of a commission which had been appointed in 1840. They made a thorough investigation of the obscure conditions of labor underground, and reported a condition of affairs which was heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the surface, carrying half a hundred weight of coal in wooden buckets on their backs at each journey. Young women appeared before the commissioners, when summoned from their work, dressed merely in a pair of trousers, dripping wet from the water of the mine, and already weary with the labor of a day scarcely more than begun. A common form of labor consisted of drawing on hands and knees over the inequalities of a passageway not more than two feet or twenty-eight inches high a car or tub filled with three or four hundred weight of coal, attached by a chain and hook to a leather band around the waist. The mere recital of the testimony taken precluded all discussion as to the desirability of reform, and a law was immediately passed, almost without dissent, which prohibited for the future all work underground by females or by boys under thirteen years of age. Inspectors were appointed, and by subsequent acts a whole code of regulation of mines as regards age, hours, lighting, ventilation, safety, licensing of engineers, and in other respects has been created. [Illustration: Children's Labor in Coal Mines. _Report of Children's Employment Commission of 1842._] [Illustration: Women's Labor in Coal Mines. (_Report of Children's Employment Commission, 1842._)] In 1846 a bill was passed applying to calico printing works regulations similar to the factory laws proper. In 1860, 1861, and 1863 similar laws were passed for bleaching and dyeing for lace works, and for bakeries. In 1864 another so-called factory act was passed applying to at least six other industries, none of which had any connection with textile factories. Three years later, in 1867, two acts for factories and workshops respectively took a large number of additional industries under their care; and finally, in 1878, the "Factory and Workshop Consolidation Act" repealed all the former special laws and substituted a veritable factory code containing a vast number of provisions for the regulation of industrial establishments. This law covered more than fifty printed pages of the statute book. Its principle provisions were as follows: The limit of prohibited labor was raised from nine to ten years, children in the terms of the statute being those between ten and fourteen, and "young persons" those between fourteen and eighteen years of age. For all such the day's work must begin either at six or seven, and close at the same hour respectively in the evening, two hours being allowed for meal-times. All Saturdays and eight other days in the year must be half-holidays, while the whole of Christmas Day and Good Friday, or two alternative days, must be allowed as holidays. Children could work for only one-half of each day or on the whole of alternate days, and must attend school on the days or parts of days on which they did not work. There were minute provisions governing sanitary conditions, safety from machinery and in dangerous occupations, meal-times, medical certificates of fitness for employment, and reports of accidents. Finally there were the necessary body of provisions for administration, enforcement, penalties, and exceptions. Since 1878 there have been a number of extensions of the principle of factory legislation, the most important of which are the following. In 1891 and 1895, amending acts were passed bringing laundries and docks within the provisions of the law, making further rules against overcrowding and other unsanitary conditions, increasing the age of prohibited labor to eleven years, and making a beginning of the regulation of "outworkers" or those engaged by "sweaters." "Sweating" is manufacturing carried on by contractors or subcontractors on a small scale, who usually have the work done in their own homes or in single hired rooms by members of their families, or by poorly paid employees who by one chance or another are not in a free and independent relation to them. Many abuses exist in these "sweatshops." The law so far is scarcely more than tentative, but in these successive acts provisions have been made by which all manufacturers or contractors must keep lists of outworkers engaged by them, and submit these to the factory inspectors for supervision. In 1892 a "Shop-hours Act" was passed prohibiting the employment of any person under eighteen years of age more than seventy-four hours in any week in any retail or wholesale store, shop, eating-house, market, warehouse, or other similar establishment; and in 1893 the "Railway Regulation Act" gave power to the Board of Trade to require railway companies to provide reasonable and satisfactory schedules of hours for all their employees. In 1894 a bill for a compulsory eight-hour day for miners was introduced, but was withdrawn before being submitted to a vote. In 1899 a bill was passed requiring the provision of a sufficient number of seats for all female assistants in retail stores. In 1900 a government bill was presented to Parliament carrying legislation somewhat farther on the lines of the acts of 1891 and 1893, but it did not reach its later stages before the adjournment. *71. Employers' Liability Acts.*--Closely allied to the problems involved in the factory laws is the question of the liability of employers to make compensation for personal injuries suffered by workmen in their service. With the increasing use of machinery and of steam power for manufacturing and transportation, and in the general absence of precaution, accidents to workmen became much more numerous. Statistics do not exist for earlier periods, but in 1899 serious or petty accidents to the number of 70,760 were reported from such establishments. By Common Law, in the case of negligence on the part of the proprietor or servant of an establishment, damages for accident could be sued for and obtained by a workman, not guilty of contributory negligence, as by any other person, except in one case. If the accident was the result of the negligence of a fellow-employee, no compensation for injuries would be allowed by the courts; the theory being that in the implied contract between employer and employee, the latter agreed to accept the risks of the business, at least so far as these arose from the carelessness of his fellow-employees. In the large establishments of modern times, however, vast numbers of men were fellow-employees in the eyes of the law, and the doctrine of "common employment," as it was called, prevented the recovery of damages in so many cases as to attract widespread attention. From 1865 forward this provision of the law was frequently complained of by leaders of the workingmen and others, and as constantly upheld by the courts. In 1876 a committee of the House of Commons on the relations of master and servant took evidence on this matter and recommended in its report that the common law be amended in this respect. Accordingly in 1880 an Employers' Liability Act was passed which abolished the doctrine of "common employment" as to much of its application, and made it possible for the employee to obtain compensation for accidental injury in the great majority of cases. In 1893 a bill was introduced in Parliament by the ministry of the time to abolish all deductions from the responsibility of employers, except that of contributory negligence on the part of workmen, but it was not passed. In 1897, however, the "Workmen's Compensation Act" was passed, changing the basis of the law entirely. By this Act it was provided that in case of accident to a workman causing death or incapacitating him for a period of more than two weeks, compensation in proportion to the wages he formerly earned should be paid by the employer as a matter of course, unless "serious and wilful misconduct" on the part of the workman could be shown to have existed. The liability of employers becomes, therefore, a matter of insurance of workmen against accidents arising out of their employment, imposed by the law upon employers. It is no longer damages for negligence, but a form of compulsory insurance. In other words, since 1897 a legal, if only an implied part of the contract between employer and employee in all forms of modern industry in which accidents are likely to occur is that the employer insures the employee against the dangers of his work. *72. Preservation of Remaining Open Lands.*--Turning from the field of manufacturing labor to that of agriculture and landholding it will be found that there has been some legislation for the protection of the agricultural laborer analogous to the factory laws. The Royal Commission of 1840-1844 on trades then unprotected by law included a report on the condition of rural child labor, but no law followed until 1873, when the "Agricultural Children's Act" was passed, but proved to be ineffective. The evils of "agricultural gangs," which were bodies of poor laborers, mostly children, engaged by a contractor and taken from place to place to be hired out to farmers, were reported on by a commission in 1862, and partly overcome by the "Agricultural Gangs Act" of 1867. There is, however, but little systematic government oversight of the farm-laboring class. Government regulation in the field of landholding has taken a somewhat different form. The movement of enclosing which had been in progress from the middle of the eighteenth century was brought to an end, and a reversal of tendency took place, by which the use and occupation of the land was more controlled by the government in the interest of the masses of the rural population. By the middle of the century the process of enclosing was practically complete. There had been some 3954 private enclosure acts passed, and under their provisions or those of the Enclosure Commissioners more than seven million acres had been changed from mediæval to modern condition. But now a reaction set in. Along with the open field farming lands it was perceived that open commons, village greens, gentlemen's parks, and the old national forest lands were being enclosed, and frequently for building or railroad, not for agricultural uses, to the serious detriment of the health and of the enjoyment of the people, and to the destruction of the beauty of the country. The dread of interference by the government with matters that might be left to private settlement was also passing away. In 1865 the House of Commons appointed a commission to investigate the question of open spaces near the city of London, and the next year on their recommendation passed a law by which the Enclosure Commissioners were empowered to make regulations for the use of all commons within fifteen miles of London as public parks, except so far as the legal rights of the lords of the manors in which the commons lay should prevent. A contest had already arisen between many of these lords of manors having the control of open commons, whose interest it was to enclose and sell them, and other persons having vague rights of pasturage and other use of them, whose interest it was to preserve them as open spaces. To aid the latter in their legal resistance to proposed enclosures, the "Commons Preservation Society" was formed in 1865. As a result a number of the contests were decided in the year 1866 in favor of those who opposed enclosures. The first case to attract attention was that of Wimbledon Common, just west of London. Earl Spencer, the lord of the manor of Wimbledon, had offered to give up his rights on the common to the inhabitants of the vicinity in return for a nominal rent and certain privileges; and had proposed that a third of the common should be sold, and the money obtained for it used to fence, drain, beautify, and keep up the remainder. The neighboring inhabitants, however, preferred the spacious common as it stood, and when a bill to carry out Lord Spencer's proposal had been introduced into Parliament, they contended that they had legal rights on the common which he could not disregard, and that they objected to its enclosure. The parliamentary committee practically decided in their favor, and the proposition was dropped. An important decision in a similar case was made by the courts in 1870. Berkhamstead Common, an open stretch some three miles long and half a mile wide, lying near the town of Berkhamstead, twenty-five miles north of London, had been used for pasturing animals, cutting turf, digging gravel, gathering furze, and as a place of general recreation and enjoyment by the people of the two manors in which it lay, from time immemorial. In 1866 Lord Brownlow, the lord of these two manors, began making enclosures upon it, erecting two iron fences across it so as to enclose 434 acres and to separate the remainder into two entirely distinct parts. The legal advisers of Lord Brownlow declared that the inhabitants had no rights which would prevent him from enclosing parts of the common, although to satisfy them he offered to give to them the entire control over one part of it. The Commons Preservation Society, however, advised the inhabitants differently, and encouraged them to make a legal contest. One of their number, Augustus Smith, a wealthy and obstinate man, a member of Parliament, and a possessor of rights on the common both as a freeholder and a copyholder, was induced to take action in his own name and as a representative of other claimants of common rights. He engaged in London a force of one hundred and twenty laborers, sent them down at night by train, and before morning had broken down Lord Brownlow's two miles of iron fences, on which he had spent some £5000, and piled their sections neatly up on another part of the common. Two lawsuits followed: one by Lord Brownlow against Mr. Smith for trespass, the other a cross suit in the Chancery Court by Mr. Smith to ascertain the commoner's rights, and prevent the enclosure of the common. After a long trial the decision was given in Mr. Smith's favor, and not only was Berkhamstead Common thus preserved as an open space, but a precedent set for the future decision of other similar cases. Within the years between 1866 and 1874 dispute after dispute analogous to this arose, and decision after decision was given declaring the illegality of enclosures by a lord of a manor where there were claims of commoners which they still asserted and valued and which could be used as an obstacle to enclosure. Hampstead Heath, Ashdown Forest, Malvern Hills, Plumstead, Tooting, Wandsworth, Coulston, Dartford, and a great many other commons, village greens, roadside wastes, and other open spaces were saved from enclosure, and some places were partly opened up again, as a result either of lawsuits, of parliamentary action, or of voluntary agreements and purchase. Perhaps the most conspicuous instance was that of Epping Forest. This common consisted of an open tract about thirteen miles long and one mile wide, containing in 1870 about three thousand acres of open common land. Enclosure was being actively carried on by some nineteen lords of manors, and some three thousand acres had been enclosed by rather high-handed means within the preceding twenty years. Among the various landowners who claimed rights of common upon a part of the Forest was, however, the City of London, and in 1871 this body began suit against the various lords of manors under the claim that it possessed pasture rights, not only in the manor of Ilford, in which its property of two hundred acres was situated, but, since the district was a royal forest, over the whole of it. The City asked that the lords of manors should be prevented from enclosing any more of it, and required to throw open again what they had enclosed during the last twenty years. After a long and expensive legal battle and a concurrent investigation by a committee of Parliament, both extending over three years, a decision was given in favor of the City of London and other commoners, and the lords of manors were forced to give back about three thousand acres. The whole was made permanently into a public park. The old forest rights of the crown proved to be favorable to the commoners, and thus obtained at least one tardy justification to set against their long and dark record in the past. In 1871, in one of the cases which had been appealed, the Lord Chancellor laid down a principle indicating a reaction in the judicial attitude on the subject, when he declared that no enclosure should be made except when there was a manifest advantage in it; as contrasted with the policy of enclosing unless there was some strong reason against it, as had formerly been approved. In 1876 Parliament passed a law amending the acts of 1801 and 1845, and directing the Enclosure Commissioners to reverse their rule of action in the same direction. That is to say, they were not to approve any enclosure unless it could be shown to be to the manifest advantage of the neighborhood, as well as to the interest of the parties directly concerned. Finally, in 1893, by the Commons Law Amendment Act, it was required that every proposed enclosure of any kind should first be advertised and opportunity given for objection, then submitted to the Board of Agriculture for its approval, and this approval should only be given when such an enclosure was for the general benefit of the public. No desire of a lord of a manor to enclose ground for his private park or game preserve, or to use it for building ground, would now be allowed to succeed. The interest of the community at large has been placed above the private advantage and even liberty of action of landholders. The authorities do not merely see that justice is done between lord and commoners on the manor, but that both alike shall be restrained from doing what is not to the public advantage. Indeed, Parliament went one step further, and by an order passed in 1893 set a precedent for taking a common entirely out of the hands of the lord of the manor, and putting it in the hands of a board to keep it for public uses. Thus not only had the enclosing movement diminished for lack of open farming land to enclose, but public opinion and law between 1864 and 1893 interposed to preserve such remaining open land as had not been already divided. Whatever land remained that was not in individual ownership and occupancy was to be retained under control for the community at large. *73. Allotments.*--But this change of attitude was not merely negative. There were many instances of government interposition for the encouragement of agriculture and for the modification of the relations between landlord and tenant. In 1875, 1882, and 1900 the "Agricultural Holdings Acts" were passed, by which, when improvements are made by the tenant during the period in which he holds the land, compensation must be given by the landlord to the tenant when the latter retires. No agreement between the landlord and tenant by which the latter gives up this right is valid. This policy of controlling the conditions of landholding with the object of enforcing justice to the tenant has been carried to very great lengths in the Irish Land Bills and the Scotch Crofters' Acts, but the conditions that called for such legislation in those countries have not existed in England itself. There has been, however, much effort in England to bring at least some land again into the use of the masses of the rural population. In 1819, as part of the administration of the poor law, Parliament passed an act facilitating the leasing out by the authorities of common land belonging to the parishes to the poor, in small "allotments," as they were called, by the cultivation of which they might partially support themselves. Allotments are small pieces of land, usually from an eighth of an acre to an acre in size, rented out for cultivation to poor or working-class families. In 1831 parish authorities were empowered to buy or enclose land up to as much as five acres for this purpose. Subsequently the formation of allotments began to be advocated, not only as part of the system of supporting paupers, but for its own sake, in order that rural laborers might have some land in their own occupation to work on during their spare times, as their forefathers had during earlier ages. To encourage this plan of giving the mass of the people again an interest in the land the "Allotments and Small Holdings Association" was formed in 1885. Laws which were passed in 1882 and 1887 made it the duty of the authorities of parishes, when there seemed to be a demand for allotments, to provide all the land that was needed for the purpose, giving them, if needed, and under certain restrictions, the right of compulsory purchase of any particular piece of land which they should feel to be desirable. This was to be divided up and rented out in allotments from one quarter of an acre to an acre in size. By laws passed in 1890 and 1894 this plan of making it the bounden duty of the local government to provide sufficient allotments for the demand, and giving them power to purchase land even without the consent of its owners, was carried still further and put in the hands of the parish council. The growth in numbers of such allotments was very rapid and has not yet ceased. The approximate numbers at several periods are as follows:-- 1873 246,398 1888 357,795 1890 455,005 1895 579,133 In addition to those formed and granted out by the public local authorities, many large landowners, railroad companies, and others have made allotments to their tenants or employees. Large tracts of land subdivided into such small patches are now a common sight in England, simulating in appearance the old open fields of the Middle Ages and early modern times. *74. Small Holdings.*--Closely connected with the extension of allotments is the movement for the creation of "small holdings," or the reintroduction of small farming. One form of this is that by which the local authorities in 1892 were empowered to buy land for the purpose of renting it out in small holdings of not more than fifteen acres each to persons who would themselves cultivate it. A still further and much more important development in the same direction is the effort to introduce "peasant proprietorship," or the ownership of small amounts of farming land by persons who would otherwise necessarily be mere laborers on other men's land. There has been an old dispute as to the relative advantages of a system of large farms, rented by men who have some considerable capital, knowledge, and enterprise, as in England; and of a system of small farms, owned and worked by men who are mere peasants, as in France. The older economists generally advocated the former system as better in itself, and also pointed out that a policy of withdrawal by government from any regulation was tending to make it universal. Others have been more impressed with the good effects of the ownership of land on the mental and moral character of the population, and with the desirability of the existence of a series of steps by which a thrifty and ambitious workingman could rise to a higher position, even in the country. There has, therefore, since the middle of the century, been a widespread agitation in favor of the creation of smaller farms, of giving assistance in their purchase, and of thus introducing a more mixed system of rural land occupancy, and bringing back something of the earlier English yeoman farming. This movement obtained recognition by Parliament in the Small Holdings Act of 1892, already referred to. This law made it the duty of each county council, when there seemed to be any sufficient demand for small farms from one to fifty acres in size, to acquire in any way possible, though not by compulsory purchase, suitable land, to adapt it for farming purposes by fencing, making roads, and, if necessary, erecting suitable buildings; and then to dispose of it by sale, or, as a matter of exception, as before stated, on lease, to such parties as will themselves cultivate it. The terms of sale were to be advantageous to the purchaser. He must pay at least as much as a fifth of the price down, but one quarter of it might be left on perpetual ground-rent, and the remainder, slightly more than one-half, might be repaid in half-yearly instalments during any period less than fifty years. The county council was also given power to loan money to tenants of small holdings to buy from their landlords, where they could arrange terms of purchase but had not the necessary means. Through the intervention of government, therefore, the strict division of those connected with the land into landlords, tenant farmers, and farm laborers has been to a considerable extent altered, and it is generally possible for a laborer to obtain a small piece of land as an allotment, or, if more ambitious and able, a small farm, on comparatively easy terms. In landholding and agriculture, as in manufacturing and trade, government has thus stepped in to prevent what would have been the effect of mere free competition, and to bring about a distribution and use of the land which have seemed more desirable. *75. Government Sanitary Control.*--In the field of buying and selling the hand of government has been most felt in provisions for the health of the consumer of various articles. Laws against adulteration have been passed, and a code of supervision, registry, and enforcement constructed. Similarly in broader sanitary lines, by the "Housing of the Working Classes Act" of 1890, when it is brought to the attention of the local authorities that any street or district is in such a condition that its houses or alleys are unfit for human habitation, or that the narrowness, want of light or air, or bad drainage makes the district dangerous to the health of the inhabitants or their neighbors, and that these conditions cannot be readily remedied except by an entire rearrangement of the district, then it becomes the duty of the local authorities to take the matter in hand. They are bound to draw up and, on approval by the proper superior authorities, to carry out a plan for widening the streets and approaches to them, providing proper sanitary arrangements, tearing down the old houses, and building new ones in sufficient number and suitable character to provide dwelling accommodation for as many persons of the working class as were displaced by the changes. Private rights or claims are not allowed to stand in the way of any such public action in favor of the general health and well-being, as the local authorities are clothed by the law with the right of purchase of the land and buildings of the locality at a valuation, even against the wishes of the owners, though they must obtain parliamentary confirmation of such a compulsory purchase. Several acts have been passed to provide for the public acquisition or building of workingmen's dwellings. In 1899 the "Small Dwellings Acquisition Act" gave power to any local authority to loan four-fifths of the cost of purchase of a small house, to be repaid by the borrower by instalments within thirty years. Laws for the stamping out of cattle disease have been passed on the same principle. In 1878, 1886, 1890, 1893, and 1896 successive acts were passed which have given to the Board of Agriculture the right to cause the slaughter of any cattle or swine which have become infected or been subjected to contagious diseases; Parliament has also set apart a sufficient sum of money and appointed a large corps of inspectors to carry out the law. Official analysts of fertilizers and food-stuffs for cattle have also since 1893 been regularly appointed by the government in each county. Adulteration has been taken under control by the "Sale of Food and Drugs Act" of 1875, with its later amendments and extensions, especially that of 1899. *76. Industries Carried on by Government.*--In addition to the regulation in these various respects of industries carried on by private persons, and intervention for the protection of the public health, the government has extended its functions very considerably by taking up certain new duties or services, which it carries out itself instead of leaving to private hands. The post-office is such an old and well-established branch of the government's activity as not in itself to be included among newly adopted functions, but its administration has been extended since the middle of the century over at least four new fields of duty: the telegraph, the telephone, the parcels post, and the post-office savings-bank. The telegraph system of England was built up in the main and in its early stages by private persons and companies. After more than twenty-five years of competitive development, however, there was widespread public dissatisfaction with the service. Messages were expensive and telegraphing inconvenient. Many towns with populations from three thousand to six thousand were without telegraphic facilities nearer than five or ten miles, while the offices of competing companies were numerous in busy centres. In 1870, therefore, all private telegraph companies were bought up by the government at an expense of £10,130,000. A strict telegraphic monopoly in the hands of the government was established, and the telegraph made an integral part of the post-office system. In 1878 the telephone began to compete with the telegraph, and its relation to the government telegraphic monopoly became a matter of question. At first the government adopted the policy of collecting a ten per cent royalty on all messages, but allowed telephones to be established by private companies. In the meantime the various companies were being bought up successively by the National Telephone Company which was thus securing a virtual monopoly. In 1892 Parliament authorized the Postmaster General to spend £1,000,000, subsequently raised to £1,300,000, in the purchase of telephone lines, and prohibited any private construction of new lines. As a result, by 1897 the government had bought up all the main or trunk telephone lines and wires, leaving to the National Telephone Company its monopoly of all telephone communication inside of the towns. This monopoly was supposed to be in its legal possession until 1904, when it was anticipated that the government would buy out its property at a valuation. In 1898, however, there was an inquiry by Parliament, and a new "Telegraph Act" was passed in 1899. The monopoly of the National Company was discredited and the government began to enter into competition with it within the towns, and to authorize local governments and private companies under certain circumstances to do the same. It was provided that every extension of an old company and every new company must obtain a government license and that on the expiring of this license the plant could be bought by the government. In the meantime the post-office authorities have power to restrict rates. An appropriation of £2,000,000 was put in the hands of the Postmaster General to extend the government telephone system. It seems quite certain that by 1925, at latest, all telephones will be in the hands of the government. The post-office savings-bank was established in 1861. Any sum from one shilling upward is accepted from any depositor until his deposits rise to £50 in any one year, or a total of £200 in all. It presents great attractions from its security and its convenience. The government through the post-office pays two and one-half per cent interest. In 1870 there was deposited in the post-office savings-banks approximately £14,000,000, in 1880 £31,000,000, and ten years later £62,000,000. In 1880 arrangements were made by which government bonds and annuities can be bought through the post-office. In 1890 some £4,600,000 was invested in government stock in this way. The parcels post was established in 1883. This branch of the post-office does a large part of the work that would otherwise be done by private express companies. It takes charge of packages up to eleven pounds in weight and under certain circumstances up to twenty-one pounds, presented at any branch post-office, and on prepayment of regular charges delivers them to their consignees. In these and other forms each year within recent times has seen some extension of the field of government control for the good of the community in general, or for the protection of some particular class in the community, and there is at the same time a constant increase in the number and variety of occupations that the government undertakes. Instead of withdrawing from the field of intervention in economic concerns, and restricting its activity to the narrowest possible limits, as was the tendency in the last period, the government is constantly taking more completely under its regulation great branches of industry, and even administering various lines of business that formerly were carried on by private hands. *77. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Jevons, Stanley: _The State in Relation to Labor_. "Alfred" (Samuel Kydd): _The History of the Factory Movement from the Year 1802 to the Enactment of the Ten Hours Bill in 1847_. Von Plener, E.: _A History of English Factory Legislation_. Cooke-Taylor, R. W.: _The Factory System and the Factory Acts_. Redgrave, Alexander: _The Factory Acts_. Shaftesbury, The Earl of: _Speeches on Labour Questions_. Birrell, Augustine: _Law of Employers' Liability_. Shaw-Lefevre, G.: _English Commons and Forests_. Far the best sources of information for the adoption of the factory laws, as for other nineteenth-century legislation, are the debates in Parliament and the various reports of Parliamentary Commissions, where access to them can be obtained. The early reports are enumerated in the bibliography in Cunningham's second volume. The later can be found in the appropriate articles in Palgrave's _Dictionary_. For recent legislation, the action of organizations, and social movements generally, the articles in _Hazell's Annual_, in its successive issues since 1885, are full, trustworthy, and valuable. CHAPTER X THE EXTENSION OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION Trade Unions, Trusts, And Coöperation *78. The Rise of Trade Unions.*--One of the most manifest effects of the introduction of the factory system was the intensification of the distinction between employers and employees. When a large number of laborers were gathered together in one establishment, all in a similar position one to the other and with common interests as to wages, hours of labor, and other conditions of their work, the fact that they were one homogeneous class could hardly escape their recognition. Since these common interests were in so many respects opposed to those of their employers, the advantages of combination to obtain added strength in the settlement of disputed questions was equally evident. As the Statute of Apprentices was no longer in force, and freedom of contract had taken its place, a dispute between an employer and a single employee would result in the discharge of the latter. If the dispute was between the employer and his whole body of employees, each one of the latter would be in a vastly stronger position, and there would be something like equality in the two sides of the contest. Under the old gild conditions, when each man rose successively from apprentice to journeyman, and from journeyman to employer, when the relations between the employing master and his journeymen and apprentices were very close, and the advantages of the gild were participated in by all grades of the producing body, organizations of the employed against the employers could hardly exist. It has been seen that the growth of separate combinations was one of the indications of a breaking down of the gild system. Even in the later times, when establishments were still small and scattered, when the government required that engagements should be made for long periods, and that none should work in an industry except those who had been apprenticed to it, and when rates of wages and hours of labor were supposed to be settled by law, the opposition between the interests of employers and employees was not very strongly marked. The occasion or opportunity for union amongst the workmen in most trades still hardly existed. Unions had been formed, it is true, during the first half of the eighteenth century and spasmodically in still earlier times. These were, however, mostly in trades where the employers made up a wealthy merchant class and where the prospect of the ordinary workman ever reaching the position of an employer was slight. The changes of the Industrial Revolution, however, made a profound difference. With the growth of factories and the increase in the size of business establishments the employer and employee came to be farther apart, while at the same time the employees in any one establishment or trade were thrown more closely together. The hand of government was at about the same time entirely withdrawn from the control of wages, hours, length of engagements, and other conditions of labor. Any workman was at liberty to enter or leave any occupation under any circumstances that he chose, and an employer could similarly hire or discharge any laborer for any cause or at any time he saw fit. Under these circumstances of homogeneity of the interests of the laborers, of opposition of their interests to those of the employer, and of the absence of any external control, combinations among the workmen, or trade unions, naturally sprang up. *79. Opposition of the Law and of Public Opinion. The Combination Acts.*--Their growth, however, was slow and interrupted. The poverty, ignorance, and lack of training of the laborers interposed a serious obstacle to the formation of permanent unions; and a still more tangible difficulty lay in the opposition of the law and of public opinion. A trade union may be defined as a permanent organized society, the object of which is to obtain more favorable conditions of labor for its members. In order to retain its existence a certain amount of intelligence and self-control and a certain degree of regularity of contributions on the part of its members are necessary, and these powers were but slightly developed in the early years of this century. In order to obtain the objects of the union a "strike," or concerted refusal to work except on certain conditions, is the natural means to be employed. But such action, or in fact the existence of a combination contemplating such action, was against the law. A series of statutes known as the "Combination Acts" had been passed from time to time since the sixteenth century, the object of which had been to prevent artisans, either employers or employees, from combining to change the rate of wages or other conditions of labor, which should be legally established by the government. The last of the combination acts were passed in 1799 and 1800, and were an undisguised exercise of the power of the employing class to use their membership in Parliament to legislate in their own interest. It provided that all agreements whatever between journeymen or other workmen for obtaining an advance in wages for themselves or for other workmen, or for decreasing the number of hours of labor, or for endeavoring to prevent any employer from engaging any one whom he might choose, or for persuading any other workmen not to work, or for refusing to work with any other men, should be illegal. Any justice of the peace was empowered to convict by summary process and sentence to two months' imprisonment any workmen who entered into such a combination. The ordinary and necessary action of trade unions was illegal by the Common Law also, under the doctrine that combined attempts to influence wages, hours, prices, or apprenticeship were conspiracies in restraint of trade, and that such conspiracies had been repeatedly declared to be illegal. In addition to their illegality, trade unions were extremely unpopular with the most influential classes of English society. The employers, against whose power they were organized, naturally antagonized them for fear they would raise wages and in other ways give the workmen the upper hand; they were opposed by the aristocratic feeling of the country, because they brought about an increase in the power of the lower classes; the clergy deprecated their growth as a manifestation of discontent, whereas contentment was the virtue then most regularly inculcated upon the lower classes; philanthropists, who had more faith in what should be done for than by the workingmen, distrusted their self-interested and vaguely directed efforts. Those who were interested in England's foreign trade feared that they would increase prices, and thus render England incapable of competing with other nations, and those who were influenced by the teachings of political economy opposed them as being harmful, or at best futile efforts to interfere with the free action of those natural forces which, in the long run, must govern all questions of labor and wages. If the average rate of wages at any particular time was merely the quotient obtained by dividing the number of laborers into the wages fund, an organized effort to change the rate of wages would necessarily be a failure, or could at most only result in driving some other laborers out of employment or reducing their wages. Finally, there was a widespread feeling that trade unions were unscrupulous bodies which overawed the great majority of their fellow-workmen, and then by their help tyrannized over the employers and threw trade into recurring conditions of confusion. That same great body of uninstructed public opinion, which, on the whole, favored the factory laws, was quite clearly opposed to trade unions. With the incompetency of their own class, the power of the law, and the force of public opinion opposed to their existence and actions, it is not a matter of wonder that the development of these working-class organizations was only very gradual. Nevertheless these obstacles were one by one removed, and the growth of trade unions became one of the most characteristic movements of modern industrial history. *80. Legalization and Popular Acceptance of Trade Unions.*--During the early years of the century combinations, more or less long lived, existed in many trades, sometimes secretly because of their illegality, sometimes openly, until it became of sufficient interest to some one to prosecute them or their officers, sometimes making the misleading claim of being benefit societies. Prosecutions under the combination laws were, however, frequent. In the first quarter of the century there were many hundred convictions of workmen or their delegates or officers. Yet these laws were clear instances of interference with the perfect freedom which ought theoretically to be allowed to each person to employ his labor or capital in the manner he might deem most advantageous. Their inconsistency with the general movement of abolition of restrictions then in progress could hardly escape observation. Thus the philosophic tendencies of the time combined with the aspirations of the leaders of the working classes to rouse an agitation in favor of the repeal of the combination laws. The matter was brought up in Parliament in 1822, and two successive committees were appointed to investigate the questions involved. As a result, a thoroughgoing repeal law was passed in 1824, but this in turn was almost immediately repealed, and another substituted for it in 1825, a great series of strikes having impressed the legislature with the belief that the former had gone too far. The law, as finally adopted, repealed all the combination acts which stood upon the statute book, and relieved from punishment men who met together for the sole purpose of agreeing on the rate of wages or the number of hours they would work, so long as this agreement referred to the wages or hours of those only who were present at the meeting. It declared, however, the illegality of any violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, or obstruction, used to induce any other workmen to strike or to join their association or take any other action in regard to hours or wages. Any attempt to bring pressure to bear upon an employer to make any change in his business was also forbidden, and the common law opposition was left unrepealed. The effect of the legislation of 1824 and 1825 was to enable trade unions to exist if their activity was restricted to an agreement upon their own wages or hours. Any effort, however, to establish wages and hours for other persons than those taking part in their meetings, or any strike on questions of piecework or number of apprentices or machinery or non-union workmen, was still illegal, both by this statute and by Common Law. The vague words, "molestation," "obstruction," and "intimidation," used in the law were also capable of being construed, as they actually were, in such a way as to prevent any considerable activity on the part of trade unions. Nevertheless a great stimulus was given to the formation of organizations among workingmen, and the period of their legal growth and development now began, notwithstanding the narrow field of activity allowed them by the law as it then stood. Combinations were continually formed for further objects, and prosecutions, either under the statute or under Common Law, were still very numerous. In 1859 a further change in the law was made, by which it became lawful to combine to demand a change of wages or hours, even if the action involved other persons than those taking part in the agreement, and to exercise peaceful persuasion upon others to join the strikers in their action. Within the bounds of the limited legal powers granted by the laws of 1825 and 1859, large numbers of trade unions were formed, much agitation carried on, strikes won and lost, pressure exerted upon Parliament, and the most active and capable of the working classes gradually brought to take an interest in the movement. This growth was unfortunately accompanied by much disorder. During times of industrial struggle non-strikers were beaten, employers were assaulted, property was destroyed, and in certain industrial communities confusion and outrage occurred every few years. The complicity of the trade unions as such in these disorders was constantly asserted and as constantly denied; but there seems little doubt that while by far the greatest amount of disorder was due to individual strikers or their sympathizers, and would have occurred, perhaps in even more intense form, if there had been no trade unions, yet there were cases where the organized unions were themselves responsible. The frequent recurrence of rioting and assault, the losses from industrial conflicts, and the agitation of the trade unionists for further legalization, all combined to bring the matter to attention, and four successive Parliamentary commissions of investigation, in addition to those of 1824 and 1825, were appointed in 1828, 1856, 1860, and 1867, respectively. The last of these was due to a series of prolonged strikes and accompanying outrages in Sheffield, Nottingham, and Manchester. The committee consisted of able and influential men. It made a full investigation and report, and finally recommended, somewhat to the public surprise, that further laws for the protection and at the same time for the regulation of trade unions be passed. As a result, two laws were passed in the year 1871, the Trade Union Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act. By the first of these it was declared that trade unions were not to be declared illegal because they were "in restraint of trade," and that they might be registered as benefit societies, and thereby become quasi-corporations, to the extent of having their funds protected by law, and being able to hold property for the proper uses of their organization. At the same time the Liberal majority in Parliament, who had only passed this law under pressure, and were but half hearted in their approval of trade unions, by the second law of the same year, made still more clear and vigorous the prohibition of "molesting," "obstructing," "threatening," "persistently following," "watching or besetting" any workmen who had not voluntarily joined the trade union. As these terms were still undefined, the law might be, and it was, still sufficiently elastic to allow magistrates or judges who disapproved of trade unionism to punish men for the most ordinary forms of persuasion or pressure used in industrial conflicts. An agitation was immediately begun for the repeal or modification of this later law. This was accomplished finally by the Trade Union Act of 1875, by which it was declared that no action committed by a group of workmen was punishable unless the same act was criminal if committed by a single individual. Peaceful persuasion of non-union workmen was expressly permitted, some of the elastic words of disapproval used in previous laws were omitted altogether, other offences especially likely to occur in such disputes were relegated to the ordinary criminal law, and a new act was passed, clearing up the whole question of the illegality of conspiracy in such a way as not to treat trade unions in any different way from other bodies, or to interfere with their existence or normal actions. Thus, by the four steps taken in 1825, 1859, 1871, and 1875, all trace of illegality has been taken away from trade unions and their ordinary actions. They have now the same legal right to exist, to hold property, and to carry out the objects of their organization that a banking or manufacturing company or a social or literary club has. The passing away of the popular disapproval of trade unions has been more gradual and indefinite, but not less real. The employers, after many hard-fought battles in their own trades, in the newspapers, and in Parliament, have come, in a great number of cases, to prefer that there should be a well-organized trade union in their industry rather than a chaotic body of restless and unorganized laborers. The aristocratic dread of lower-class organizations and activity has become less strong and less important, as political violence has ceased to threaten and as English society as a whole has become more democratic. The Reform Bill of 1867 was a voluntary concession by the higher and middle classes to the lower, showing that political dread of the working classes and their trade unions had disappeared. The older type of clergymen of the established church, who had all the sympathies and prejudices of the aristocracy, has been largely superseded, since the days of Kingsley and Maurice, by men who have taken the deepest interest in working-class movements, and who teach struggle and effort rather than acceptance and contentment. The formation of trade unions, even while it has led to higher wages, shorter hours, and a more independent and self-assertive body of laborers, has made labor so much more efficient that, taken in connection with other elements of English economic activity, it has led to no resulting loss of her industrial supremacy. As to the economic arguments against trade unions, they have become less influential with the discrediting of much of the theoretical teaching on which they were based. In 1867 a book by W. T. Thornton, _On Labor, its Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues_, successfully attacked the wages-fund theory, since which time the belief that the rate of wages was absolutely determined by the amount of that fund and the number of laborers has gradually been given up. The belief in the possibility of voluntary limitation of the effect of the so-called "natural laws" of the economic teachers of the early and middle parts of the century has grown stronger and spread more widely. Finally, the general popular feeling of dislike of trade unions has much diminished within the last twenty-five years, since their lawfulness has been acknowledged, and since their own policy has become more distinctly orderly and moderate. Much of this change in popular feeling toward trade unions was so gradual as not to be measurable, but some of its stages can be distinguished. Perhaps the first very noticeable step in the general acceptance of trade unions, other than their mere legalization, was the interest and approval given to the formation of boards of conciliation or arbitration from 1867 forward. These were bodies in which representatives elected by the employers and representatives elected by trade unions met on equal terms to discuss differences, the unions thus being acknowledged as the normal form of organization of the working classes. In 1885 the Royal Commission on the depression of trade spoke with favor cf trade unions. In 1889 the great London Dockers' strike called forth the sympathy and the moral and pecuniary support of representatives of classes which had probably never before shown any favor to such organizations. More than $200,000 was subscribed by the public, and every form of popular pressure was brought to bear on the employers. In fact, the Dock Laborers' Union was partly created and almost entirely supported by outside public influence. In the same year the London School Board and County Council both declared that all contractors doing their work must pay "fair wages," an expression which was afterward defined as being union wages. Before 1894 some one hundred and fifty town and county governments had adopted a rule that fair wages must be paid to all workmen employed directly or indirectly by them. In 1890 and 1893 and subsequently the government has made the same declaration in favor of the rate of wages established by the unions in each industry. In 1890 the report of the House of Lords Committee on the sweating system recommends in certain cases "well-considered combinations among the laborers." Therefore public opinion, like the formal law of the country, has passed from its early opposition to the trade unions, through criticism and reluctant toleration, to an almost complete acceptance and even encouragement. Trade unions have become a part of the regularly established institutions of the country, and few persons probably would wish to see them go out of existence or be seriously weakened. *81. The Growth of Trade Unions.*--The actual growth of trade unionism has been irregular, interrupted, and has spread from many scattered centres. Hundreds of unions have been formed, lived for a time, and gone out of existence; others have survived from the very beginning of the century to the present; some have dwindled into insignificance and then revived in some special need. The workmen in some parts of the country and in certain trades were early and strongly organized, in others they have scarcely even yet become interested or made the effort to form unions. In the history of the trade-union movement as a whole there have been periods of active growth and multiplication and strengthening of organizations. Again, there have been times when trade unionism was distinctly losing ground, or when internal dissension seemed likely to deprive the whole movement of its vigor. There have been three periods when progress was particularly rapid, between 1830 and 1834, in 1873 and 1874, and from 1889 to the present time. But before the middle of the century trade unions existed in almost every important line of industry. By careful computation it is estimated that there were in Great Britain and Ireland in 1892 about 1750 distinct unions or separate branches of unions, with some million and a half members. This would be about twenty per cent of the adult male working-class population, or an average of about one man who is a member of a trade union out of five who might be. But the great importance and influence of the trade unionists arises not from this comparatively small general proportion, but from the fact that the organizations are strongest in the most highly skilled and best-paid industries, and in the most thickly settled, highly developed parts of the country, and that they contain the picked and ablest men in each of the industries where they do exist. In some occupations, as cotton spinning in Lancashire, boiler making and iron ship building in the seaport towns, coal mining in Northumberland, glass making in the Midland counties, and others, practically every operative is a member of a trade union. Similarly in certain parts of the country much more than half of all workingmen are trade unionists. Their influence also is far more than in proportion to their numbers, since from their membership are chosen practically all workingmen representatives in Parliament and local governments and in administrative positions. The unions also furnish all the most influential leaders of opinion among the working classes. *82. Federation of Trade Unions.*--From the earliest days of trade-union organization there have been efforts to extend the unions beyond the boundaries of the single occupation or the single locality. The earliest form of union was a body made up of the workmen of some one industry in some one locality, as the gold beaters of London, or the cutlers of Sheffield, or the cotton spinners of Manchester. Three forms of extension or federation soon took place: first, the formation of national societies composed of men of the same trade through the whole country; secondly, the formation of "trades councils,"--bodies representing all the different trades in any one locality; and, thirdly, the formation of a great national organization of workingmen or trade unionists. The first of these forms of extension dates from the earliest years of the century, though such bodies had often only a transitory existence. The Manchester cotton spinners took the initiative in organizing a national body in that industry in 1829; in 1831 a National Potters' Union is heard of, and others in the same decade. The largest and most permanent national bodies, however, such as the compositors, the flint-glass makers, miners, and others were formed after 1840; the miners in 1844 numbering 70,000 voting members. Several of these national bodies were formed by an amalgamation of a number of different but more or less closely allied trades. The most conspicuous example of this was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the formation of which was completed in 1850, and which, beginning in that year with 5000 members, had more than doubled them in the next five years, doubled them again by 1860, and since then has kept up a steady increase in numbers and strength, having 67,928 members in 1890. The increasing ease of travel and cheapness of postage, and the improved education and intelligence of the workingmen, made the formation of national societies more practicable, and since the middle of the century most of the important societies have become national bodies made up of local branches. The second form of extension, the trades council, dates from a somewhat later period. Such a body arose usually when some matter of common interest had happened in the labor world, and delegates from the various unions in each locality were called upon to organize and to subscribe funds, prepare a petition to Parliament, or take other common action. In this temporary form they had existed from a much earlier date. The first permanent local board, made up of representatives of the various local bodies, was that of Liverpool, formed in 1848 to protect trade unionists from prosecutions for illegal conspiracy. In 1857 a permanent body was formed in Sheffield, and in the years immediately following in Glasgow, London, Bristol, and other cities. They have since come into existence in most of the larger industrial towns, 120 local trades councils existing in 1892. Their influence has been variable and limited. The formation of a general body of organized workingmen of all industries and from all parts of the country is an old dream. Various such societies were early formed only to play a more or less conspicuous rôle for a few years and then drop out of existence. In 1830 a "National Association for the Protection of Labor" was formed, in 1834 a "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union," in 1845 a "National Association of United Trades for the Protection of Labor," and in 1874 a "Federation of Organized Trade Societies," each of which had a short popularity and influence, and then died. In the meantime, however, a more practicable if less ambitious plan of unification of interests had been discovered in the form of an "Annual Trade Union Congress." This institution grew out of the trades councils. In 1864 the Glasgow Trades Council called a meeting of delegates from all trade unions to take action on the state of the law of employment, and in 1867 the Sheffield Trades Council called a similar meeting to agree upon measures of opposition to lockouts. The next year, 1868, the Manchester Trades Council issued a call for "a Congress of the Representatives of Trades Councils, Federations of Trades, and Trade Societies in general." Its plan was based on the annual meetings of the Social Science Association, and it was contemplated that it should meet each year in a different city and sit for five or six days. This first general Congress was attended by 34 delegates, who claimed to represent some 118,000 trade unionists. The next meeting, at Birmingham, in 1869, was attended by 48 delegates, representing 40 separate societies, with some 250,000 members. With the exception of the next year, 1870, the Congress has met annually since, the meetings taking place at Nottingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and other cities, with an attendance varying between one and two hundred delegates, representing members ranging from a half-million to eight or nine hundred thousand. It elects each year a Parliamentary Committee consisting of ten members and a secretary, whose duty is to attend in London during the sittings of Parliament and exert what influence they can on legislation or appointments in the interests of the trade unionists whom they represent. In fact, most of the activity of the Congress was for a number of years represented by the Parliamentary Committee, the meetings themselves being devoted largely to commonplace discussions, points of conflict between the unions being intentionally ruled out. In recent years there have been some heated contests in the Congress on questions of general policy, but on the whole it and its Parliamentary Committee remain a somewhat loose and ineffective representation of the unity and solidarity of feeling of the great army of trade unionists. As a result, however, of the efforts of the unions in their various forms of organization there have always, since 1874, been a number of "labor members" of Parliament, usually officers of the great national trade unions, and many trade unionist members of local government bodies and school boards. Representative trade unionists have been appointed as government inspectors and other officials, and as members of government investigating commissions. Many changes in the law in which as workingmen the trade unionists are interested have been carried through Parliament or impressed upon the ministry through the influence of the organized bodies or their officers. The trade-union movement has therefore resulted in the formation of a powerful group of federated organizations, including far the most important and influential part of the working classes, acknowledged by the law, more or less fully approved by public opinion, and influential in national policy. It is to be noticed that while the legalization of trade unions was at first carried out under the claim and with the intention that the workingmen would thereby be relieved from restrictions and given a greater measure of freedom, yet the actual effect of the formation of trade unions has been a limitation of the field of free competition as truly as was the passage of the factory laws. The control of the government was withdrawn, but the men voluntarily limited their individual freedom of action by combining into organizations which bound them to act as groups, not as individuals. The basis of the trade unions is arrangement by the collective body of wages, hours, and other conditions of labor for all its members instead of leaving them to individual contract between the employer and the single employee. The workman who joins a trade union therefore divests himself to that extent of his individual freedom of action in order that he may, as he believes, obtain a higher good and a more substantial liberty through collective or associated action. Just in as far, therefore, as the trade-union movement has extended and been approved of by law and public opinion, just so far has the ideal of individualism been discredited and its sphere of applicability narrowed. Trade unions therefore represent the same reaction from complete individual freedom of industrial action as do factory laws and the other extensions of the economic functions of government discussed in the last chapter. *83. Employers' Organizations.*--From this point of view there has been a very close analogy between the actions of workingmen and certain recent action among manufacturers and other members of the employing classes. In the first place, employers' associations have been formed from time to time to take common action in resistance to trade unions or for common negotiations with them. As early as 1814 the master cutlers formed, notwithstanding the combination laws, the "Sheffield Mercantile and Manufacturing Union," for the purpose of keeping down piecework wages to their existing rate. In 1851 the "Central Association of Employers of Operative Engineers" was formed to resist the strong union of the "Amalgamated Engineers." They have also had their national bodies, such as the "Iron Trade Employers' Association," active in 1878, and their general federations, such as the "National Federation of Associated Employers of Labor," which was formed in 1873, and included prominent shipbuilders, textile manufacturers, engineers, iron manufacturers, and builders. Many of these organizations, especially the national or district organizations of the employers in single trades, exist for other and more general purposes, but incidentally the representatives of the masters' associations regularly arrange wages and other labor conditions with the representatives of the workingmen's associations. There is, therefore, in these cases no more competition among employers as to what wages they shall pay than among the workmen as to what wages they shall receive. In both cases it is a matter of arrangement between the two associations, each representing its own membership. The liberty both of the individual manufacturer and of the workman ceases in this respect when he joins his association. *84. Trusts and Trade Combinations.*--But the competition among the great producers, traders, transportation companies, and other industrial leaders has been diminished in recent times in other ways than in their relation to their employees. In manufacturing, mining, and many wholesale trades, employers' associations have held annual or more frequent meetings at which agreements have been made as to prices, amount of production, terms of sale, length of credit, and other such matters. In some cases formal combinations have been made of all the operators in one trade, with provisions for enforcing trade agreements. In such a case all competition comes to an end in that particular trade, so far as the subjects of agreement extend. The culminating stage in this development has been the formation of "trusts," by which the stock of all or practically all the producers in some one line is thrown together, and a company formed with regular officers or a board of management controlling the whole trade. An instance of this is the National Telephone Company, already referred to. In all these fields unrestricted competition has been tried and found wanting, and has been given up by those most concerned, in favor of action which is collective or previously agreed upon. In the field of transportation, boards of railway presidents or other combinations have been formed, by which rates of fares and freight rates have been established, "pooling" or the proportionate distribution of freight traffic made, "car trusts" formed, and other non-competitive arrangements made. In banking, clearing-house agreements have been made, a common policy adopted in times of financial crisis, and through gatherings of bankers a common influence exerted on legislation and opinion. Thus in the higher as in the lower stages of industrial life, in the great business interests, as among workingmen, recent movements have all been away from a competitive organization of economic society, and in the direction of combination, consolidation, and union. Where competition still exists it is probably more intense than ever before, but its field of application is much smaller than it has been in the past. Government control and voluntary regulation have alike limited the field in which competition acts. *85. Coöperation in Distribution.*--Another movement in the same direction is the spread of coöperation in its various forms. Numerous coöperative societies, with varying objects and methods, formed part of the seething agitation, experimentation, and discussion characteristic of the early years of the nineteenth century; but the coöperative movement as a definite, continuous development dates from the organization of the "Rochdale Equitable Pioneers" in 1844. This society was composed of twenty-eight working weavers of that town, who saved up one pound each, and thus created a capital of twenty-eight pounds, which they invested in flour, oatmeal, butter, sugar, and some other groceries. They opened a store in the house of one of their number in Toad Lane, Rochdale, for the sale of these articles to their own members under a plan previously agreed to. The principal points of their scheme, afterward known as the "Rochdale Plan," were as follows: sale of goods at regular market prices, division of profits to members at quarterly intervals in proportion to purchases, subscription to capital in instalments by members, and payment of five per cent interest. There were also various provisions of minor importance, such as absolute purity and honesty of goods, insistance on cash payments, devoting a part of their earnings to educational or other self-improvement, settling all questions by equal vote. These arrangements sprang naturally from the fact that they proposed carrying on their store for their own benefit, alike as proprietors, shareholders, and consumers of their goods. The source of the profits they would have to divide among their members was the same as in the case of any ordinary store. The difference between the wholesale price, at which they would buy, and the retail market price, at which they would sell, would be the gross profits. From this would have to be paid, normally, rent for their store, wages for their salesmen, and interest on their capital. But after these were paid there should still remain a certain amount of net profit, and this it was which they proposed to divide among themselves as purchasers, instead of leaving it to be taken by an ordinary store proprietor. The capital they furnished themselves, and consequently paid themselves the interest. The first two items also amounted to nothing at first, though naturally they must be accounted for if their store rose to any success. As a matter of fact, their success was immediate and striking. They admitted new members freely, and at the end of the first year of their existence had increased in numbers to seventy-four with £187 capital. During the year they had done a business of £710, and distributed profits of £22. A table of the increase of this first successful coöperative establishment at succeeding ten years' periods is as follows:-- ------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------- | | | | Date | Members | Capital | Business | Profits | | | | ------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------- 1855 | 1,400 | £ 11,032 | £ 44,902 | £ 3,109 1865 | 5,326 | 78,778 | 196,234 | 25,156 1875 | 8,415 | 225,682 | 305,657 | 48,212 1885 | 11,084 | 324,645 | 252,072 | 45,254 1898 | 12,719 | -------- | 292,335 | ------- ------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------- They soon extended their business in variety as well as in total amount. In 1847 they added the sale of linen and woollen goods, in 1850 of meat, in 1867 they began baking and selling bread to their customers. They opened eventually a dozen or more branch stores in Rochdale, the original Toad Lane house being superseded by a great distributing building or central store, with a library and reading room. They own much property in the town, and have spread their activity into many lines. The example of the Rochdale society was followed by many others, especially in the north of England and south of Scotland. A few years after its foundation two large and successful societies were started in Oldham, having between them by 1860 more than 3000 members, and doing a business of some £80,000 a year. In Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other cities similar societies grew up at the same period. In 1863 there were some 454 coöperative societies of this kind in existence, 381 of them together having 108,000 members and doing an annual business of about £2,600,000. One hundred and seventeen of the total number of societies were in Lancashire and 96 in Yorkshire. Many of these eventually came to have a varied and extensive activity. The Leeds Coöperative Society, for instance, had in 1892 a grist mill, 69 grocery and provision stores, 20 dry goods and millinery shops, 9 boot and shoe shops, and 40 butcher shops. It had 12 coal depots, a furnishing store, a bakery, a tailoring establishment, a boot and shoe factory, a brush factory, and acted as a builder of houses and cottages. It had at that time 29,958 members. The work done by these coöperative stores is known as "distributive coöperation," or "coöperation in distribution." It combines the seller and the buyer into one group. From one point of view the society is a store-keeping body, buying goods at wholesale and selling them at retail. From another point of view, exactly the same group of persons, the members of the society, are the customers of the store, the purchasers and consumers of the goods. Whenever any body of men form an association to carry on an establishment which sells them the goods they need, dividing the profits of the buying and selling among the members of the association, it is a society for distributive coöperation. A variation from the Rochdale plan is that used in three or perhaps more societies organized in London between 1856 and 1875 by officials and employees of the government. These are the Civil Service Supply Association, the Civil Service Coöperative Society, and the Army and Navy Stores. In these, instead of buying at wholesale and selling at retail rates, sharing the profits at the end of a given term, they sell as well as buy at wholesale rates, except for the slight increase necessary to pay the expenses of carrying on the store. In other words, the members obtain their goods for use at cheap rates instead of dividing up a business profit. But these and still other variations have had only a slight connection with the working-class coöperative movement just described. A more direct development of it was the formation, in 1864, of the Wholesale Coöperative Society, at Manchester, a body holding much the same relation to the coöperative societies that each of them does to its individual members. The shareholders are the retail coöperative societies, which supply the capital and control its actions. During its first year the Wholesale Society possessed a capital of £2456 and did a business of £51,858. In 1865 its capital was something over £7000 and business over £120,000. Ten years later, in 1875, its capital was £360,527 and yearly business £2,103,226. In 1889 its sales were £7,028,994. Its purchasing agents have been widely distributed in various parts of the world. In 1873 it purchased and began running a cracker factory, shortly afterward a boot and shoe factory, the next year a soap factory. Subsequently it has taken up a woollen goods factory, cocoa works, and the manufacture of ready-made clothing. It employs something over 5000 persons, has large branches in London, Newcastle, and Leicester, agencies and depots in various countries, and runs six steamships. It possesses also a banking department. Coöperative stores, belonging to wholesale and retail distributive coöperative societies, are thus a well-established and steadily, if somewhat slowly, extending element in modern industrial society. *86. Coöperation in Production.*--But the greatest problems in the relations of modern industrial classes to one another are not connected with buying and selling, but with employment and wages. The competition between employer and employee is more intense than that between buyer and seller and has more influence on the constitution of society. This opposition of employer and employee is especially prominent in manufacturing, and the form of coöperation which is based on a combination or union of these two classes is therefore commonly called "coöperation in production," as distinguished from coöperation in distribution. Societies have been formed on a coöperative basis to produce one or another kind of goods from the earliest years of the century, but their real development dates from a period somewhat later than that of the coöperative stores, that is, from about 1850. In this year there were in existence in England bodies of workmen who were carrying on, with more or less outside advice, assistance, or control, a coöperative tailoring establishment, a bakery, a printing shop, two building establishments, a piano factory, a shoe factory, and several flour mills. These companies were all formed on the same general plan. The workmen were generally the members of the company. They paid themselves the prevailing rate of wages, then divided among themselves either equally or in proportion to their wages the net profits of the business, when there were any, having first reserved a sufficient amount to pay interest on capital. As a matter of fact, the capital and much of the direction was contributed from outside by persons philanthropically interested in the plans, but the ideal recognized and desired was that capital should be subscribed, interest received, and all administration carried on by the workmen-coöperators themselves. In this way, in a coöperative productive establishment, there would not be two classes, employer and employee. The same individuals would be acting in both capacities, either themselves or through their elected managers. All of these early companies failed or dissolved, sooner or later, but in the meantime others had been established. By 1862 some 113 productive societies had been formed, including 28 textile manufacturing companies, 8 boot and shoe factories, 7 societies of iron workers, 4 of brush makers, and organizations in various other trades. Among the most conspicuous of these were three which were much discussed during their period of prosperity. They were the Liverpool Working Tailors' Association, which lasted from 1850 to 1860, the Manchester Working Tailors' Association, which flourished from 1850 to 1872, and the Manchester Working Hatters' Association, 1851-1873. These companies had at different times from 6 to 30 members each. After the great strike of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, in 1852, a series of iron workers' coöperative associations were formed. In the next twenty years, between 1862 and 1882, some 163 productive societies were formed, and in 1892 there were 143 societies solely for coöperative production in existence, with some 25,000 members. Coöperative production has been distinctly less prosperous than coöperative distribution. Most purely coöperative productive societies have had a short and troubled existence, though their dissolution has in many cases been the result of contention rather than ordinary failure and has not always involved pecuniary loss. In addition to the usual difficulties of all business, insufficiency of capital, incompetency of buying and selling agents and of managers, dishonesty of trusted officials or of debtors, commercial panics, and other adversities to which coöperative, quite as much as or even more than individual companies have been subject, there are peculiar dangers often fatal to their coöperative principles. For instance, more than one such association, after going through a period of struggle and sacrifice, and emerging into a period of prosperity, has yielded to the temptation to hire additional employees just as any other employer might, at regular wages, without admitting them to any share in the profits, interest, or control of the business. Such a concern is little more than an ordinary joint-stock company with an unusually large number of shareholders. As a matter of fact, plain, clear-cut coöperative production makes up but a small part of that which is currently reported and known as such. A fairer statement would be that there is a large element of coöperation in a great many productive establishments. Nevertheless, productive societies more or less consistent to coöperative principles exist in considerable numbers and have even shown a distinct increase of growth in recent years. *87. Coöperation in Farming.*--Very much the same statements are true of another branch of coöperative effort,--coöperation in farming. Experiments were made very early, they have been numerous, mostly short-lived, and yet show a tendency to increase within the last decade. Sixty or more societies have engaged in coöperative farming, but only half a dozen are now in existence. The practicability and desirability of the application of coöperative ideals to agriculture is nevertheless a subject of constant discussion among those interested in coöperation, and new schemes are being tried from time to time. The growth of coöperation, like that of trade unions, has been dependent on successive modifications of the law; though it was rather its defects than its opposition that caused the difficulty in this case. When coöperative organizations were first formed it was found that by the common law they could not legally deal as societies with non-members; that they could not hold land for investment, or for any other purpose than the transaction of their own business, or more than one acre even for this purpose; that they could not loan money to other societies; that the embezzlement or misuse of their funds by their officers was not punishable; and that each member was responsible for the debts of the whole society. Eight or ten statutes have been passed to cure the legal defects from which coöperative associations suffered. The most important of these were the "Frugal Investment Clause" in the Friendly Societies Act of 1846, by which such associations were allowed to be formed and permitted to hold personal property for the purposes of a society for savings; the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, of 1852, by which coöperative societies were definitely authorized and obtained the right to sue as if they were corporations; the Act of 1862, which repealed the former acts, gave them the right of incorporation, made each member liable for debt only to the extent of his own investment, and allowed them greater latitude for investments; the third Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1876, which again repealed previous acts and established a veritable code for their regulation and extension; and the act of 1894, which amends the law in some further points in which it had proved defective. All the needs of the coöperative movement, so far as they have been discovered and agreed upon by those interested in its propagation, have thus been provided for, so far as the law can do so. Coöperation has always contained an element of philanthropy, or at least of enthusiastic belief on the part of those especially interested in it, that it was destined to be of great service to humanity, and to solve many of the problems of modern social organization. Advocates of coöperation have not therefore been content simply to organize societies which would conduce to their own profit, but have kept up a constant propaganda for their extension. There was a period of about twenty years, from 1820 to 1840, before coöperation was placed on a solid footing, when it was advocated and tried in numerous experiments as a part of the agitation begun by Robert Owen for the establishment of socialistic communities. Within this period a series of congresses of delegates of coöperative associations was held in successive years from 1830 to 1846, and numerous periodicals were published for short periods. In 1850 a group of philanthropic and enthusiastic young men, including such able and prominent men as Thomas Hughes, Frederick D. Maurice, and others who have since been connected through long lives with coöperative effort, formed themselves into a "Society for promoting Working Men's Associations," which sent out lecturers, published tracts and a newspaper, loaned money, promoted legislation, and took other action for the encouragement of coöperation. Its members were commonly known as the "Christian Socialists." They had but scant success, and in 1854 dissolved the Association and founded instead a "Working Men's College" in London, which long remained a centre of coöperative and reformatory agitation. So far, this effort to extend and regulate the movement came rather from outside sympathizers than from coöperators themselves. With 1869, however, began a series of annual Coöperative Congresses which, like the annual Trade Union Congresses, have sprung from the initiative of workingmen themselves and which are still continued. Papers are read, addresses made, experiences compared, and most important of all a Central Board and a Parliamentary Committee elected for the ensuing year. At the thirty-first annual Congress, held in Liverpool in 1899, there were 1205 delegates present, representing over a million members of coöperative societies. Since 1887 a "Coöperative Festival," or exhibition of the products of coöperative workshops and factories, has been held each year in connection with the Congress. This exhibition is designed especially to encourage coöperative production. At the first Congress, in 1869, a Coöperative Union was formed which aims to include all the coöperative societies of the country, and as a matter of fact does include about three-fourths of them. The Central Coöperative Board represents this Union. It is divided into seven sections, each having charge of the affairs of one of the seven districts into which the country is divided for coöperative work. The Board issues a journal, prints pamphlets, keeps up correspondence, holds public examinations on auditing, book-keeping, and the principles of coöperation, and acts as a statistical, propagandist, and regulative body. There is also a "Coöperative Guild" and a "Women's Coöperative Guild," the latter with 262 branches and a membership of 12,537, in 1898. The total number of recognized coöperative societies in existence at the beginning of the year 1900 has been estimated at 1640, with a combined membership of 1,640,078, capital of £19,759,039, and investments of £11,681,296. The sale of goods in the year 1898 was £65,460,871, and net profits had amounted to £7,165,753. During the year 1898, 181 new societies of various kinds were formed. *88. Coöperation in Credit.*--In England building societies are not usually recognized as a form of coöperation, but they are in reality coöperative in the field of credit in the same way as the associations already discussed are in distribution, in production, or in agriculture. Building societies are defined in one of the statutes as bodies formed "for the purpose of raising by the subscription of the members a stock or fund for making advances to members out of the funds of the society." The general plan of one of these societies is as follows: A number of persons become members, each taking one or more shares. Each shareholder is required to pay into the treasury a certain sum each month. There is thus created each month a new capital sum which can be loaned to some member who may wish to borrow it and be able and willing to give security and to pay interest. The borrower will afterward have to pay not only his monthly dues, but the interest on his loan. The proportionate amount of the interest received is credited to each member, borrower and non-borrower alike, so that after a certain number of months, by the receipts from dues and interest, the borrower will have repaid his loan, whilst the members who have not borrowed will receive a corresponding sum in cash. Borrowers and lenders are thus the same group of persons, just as sellers and consumers are in distributive, and employers and employees in productive coöperation. The members of such societies are enabled to obtain loans when otherwise they might not be able to; the periodical dues create a succession of small amounts to be loaned, when otherwise this class of persons could hardly save up a sufficient sum to be used as capital; and finally by paying the interest to their collective group, so that a proportionate part of it is returned to the borrower, and by the continuance of the payment of dues, the repayment of the loan is less of a burden than in ordinary loans obtained from a bank or a capitalist. Loans to their members have been usually restricted to money to be used for the building of a dwelling-house or store or the purchase of land; whence their name of "building societies." Their formation dates from 1815, their extension, from about 1834. The principal laws authorizing and regulating their operations were passed in 1836, 1874, and 1894. The total number of building societies in England to-day is estimated at about 3000, their membership at about 600,000 members with £52,000,000 of funds. The history of these societies has been marked by a large number of failures, and they have lacked the moral elevation of the coöperative movement in its other phases. The codifying act of 1894 established a minute oversight and control over these societies on the part of the government authorities while at the same time it extended their powers and privileges. The one feature common to all forms of coöperation is the union of previously competing economic classes. In a coöperative store, competition between buyer and seller does not exist; and the same is true for borrower and lender in a building and loan association and for employer and employee in a coöperative factory. Coöperation is therefore in line with other recent movements in being a reaction from competition. *89. Profit Sharing.*--There is a device which has been introduced into many establishments which stands midway between simple competitive relations and full coöperation. It diminishes, though it does not remove, the opposition between employer and employee. This is "*profit sharing.*" In the year 1865 Henry Briggs, Son and Co., operators of collieries in Yorkshire, after long and disastrous conflicts with the miners' trade unions, offered as a measure of conciliation to their employees that whenever the net profit of the business should be more than ten per cent on their investment, one-half of all such surplus profit should be divided among the workmen in proportion to the wages they had earned in the previous year. The expectation was that the increased interest and effort and devotion put into the work by the men would be such as to make the total earnings of the employers greater, notwithstanding their sacrifice to the men of the half of the profits above ten per cent. This anticipation was justified. After a short period of suspicion on the part of the men, and doubt on the part of the employers, both parties seemed to be converted to the advantages of profit sharing, a sanguine report of their experience was made by a member of the firm to the Social Science Association in 1868, sums between one and six thousand pounds were divided yearly among the employees, while the percentage of profits to the owners rose to as much as eighteen per cent. This experiment split on the rock of dissension in 1875, but in the meantime others, either in imitation of their plan or independently, had introduced the same or other forms of profit sharing. Another colliery, two iron works, a textile factory, a millinery firm, a printing shop, and some others admitted their employees to a share in the profits within the years 1865 and 1866. The same plan was then introduced into certain retail stores, and into a considerable variety of occupations, including several large farms where a share of all profits was offered to the laborers as a "bonus" in addition to their wages. The results were very various, ranging all the way from the most extraordinary success to complete and discouraging failure. Up to 1897 about 170 establishments had introduced some form of profit sharing, 75 of which had subsequently given it up, or had gone out of business. In that year, however, the plan was still in practice in almost a hundred concerns, in some being almost twenty years old. A great many other employers, corporate or individual, provide laborers' dwellings at favorable rents, furnish meals at cost price, subsidize insurance funds, offer easy means of becoming shareholders in their firms, support reading rooms, music halls, and gymnasiums, or take other means of admitting their employees to advantages other than the simple receipt of competitive wages. But, after all, the entire control of capital and management in the case of firms which share profits with their employees remains in the hands of the employers, so that there is in these cases an enlightened fulfilment of the obligations of the employing class rather than a combination of two classes in one. With the exception of profit sharing, however, all the economic and social movements described in this chapter are as truly collective and as distinctly opposed to individualism, voluntary though they may be, as are the various forms of control exercised by government, described in the preceding chapter. In as far as men have combined in trade unions, in business trusts, in coöperative organizations, they have chosen to seek their prosperity and advantage in united, collective action, rather than in unrestricted individual freedom. And in as far as such organizations have been legalized, regulated by government, and encouraged by public opinion, the confidence of the community at large has been shown to rest rather in associative than in competitive action. Therefore, whether we look at the rapidly extending sphere of government control and service, or at the spread of voluntary combinations which restrict individual liberty, it is evident that the tendencies of social development at the close of the nineteenth century are as strongly toward association and regulation as they were at its beginning toward individualism and freedom from all control. *90. Socialism.*--All of these changes are departures from the purely competitive ideal of society. Together they constitute a distinct movement toward a quite different ideal of society--that which is described as socialistic. Socialism in this sense means the adoption of measures directed to the general advantage, even though they diminish individual freedom and restrict enterprise. It is the tendency to consider the general good first, and to limit individual rights or introduce collective action wherever this will subserve the general good. Socialism thus understood, the process of limiting private action and introducing public control, has gone very far, as has been seen in this and the preceding chapter. How far it is destined to extend, to what fields of industry collective action is to be applied, and which fields are to be left to individual action can only be seen as time goes on. Many further changes in the same direction have been advocated in Parliament and other public bodies in recent years and failed of being agreed to by very small majorities only. It seems almost certain from the progress of opinion that further socialistic measures will be adopted within the near future. The views of those who approve this socialistic tendency and would extend it still further are well indicated in the following expressions used in the minority report of the Royal Commission on Labor of 1895. "The whole force of democratic statesmanship must, in our opinion, henceforth be directed to the substitution as fast as possible of public for capitalist enterprise, and where the substitution is not yet practicable, to the strict and detailed regulation of all industrial operations so as to secure to every worker the conditions of efficient citizenship." There is a somewhat different use of the word socialism, according to which it means the deliberate adoption of such an organization of society as will rid it of competition altogether. This is a complete social and philosophic ideal, involving the consistent reorganization of all society, and is very different from the mere socialistic tendency described above. In the early part of the century, Robert Owen developed a philosophy which led him to labor for the introduction of communities in which competition should be entirely superseded by joint action. He had many adherents then, and others since have held similar views. There has, indeed, been a series of more or less short-lived attempts to found societies or communities on this socialistic basis. Apart from these efforts, however, socialism in this sense belongs to the history of thought or philosophic speculation, not of actual economic and social development. Professed socialists, represented by the Fabyan Society, the Socialist League, the Social Democratic Federation, and other bodies, are engaged in the spread of socialistic doctrines and the encouragement of all movements of associative, anti-individualistic character rather than in efforts to introduce immediate practical socialism. *91. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Webb, Sidney and Beatrice: _The History of Trade Unionism_. This excellent history contains, as an Appendix, an extremely detailed bibliography on its own subject and others closely allied to it. Howell, George: _Conflicts of Labor and Capital_. Rousiers, P. de: _The Labour Question in Britain_. Holyoake, G. I.: _History of Coöperation_, two volumes. This is the classical work on the subject, but its plan is so confused, its style so turgid, and its information so scattered, that, however amusing it may be, it is more interesting and valuable as a history of the period than as a clear account of the movement for which it is named. Mr. Holyoake has written two other books on the same subject: _A History of the Rochdale Pioneers_ and _The Coöperative Movement of To-day_. Pizzamiglio, L.: _Distributing Coöperative Societies_. Jones, Benjamin: _Coöperative Production_. Gilman, N. P.: _Profit Sharing between Employer and Employee_; and _A Dividend to Labor_. Webb, Sidney and Beatrice: _Problems of Modern Industry_. Verhaegen, P.: _Socialistes Anglais_. A series of small modern volumes known as the Social Science Series, most of which deal with various phases of the subject of this chapter, is published by Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., London, and the list of its eighty or more numbers gives a characteristic view of recent writing on the subject, as well as further references. INDEX Acres, 33. Adventurers, 164. Agincourt, 97. Agricultural Children's Act, 262. Agricultural Gangs Act, 262. Agricultural Holdings Acts, 268. Alderman, 63. Ale-taster, 49. Alfred, 13. Alien immigrants, 90. Allotments and Small Holdings Association, 269. Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 290. Angevin period, 22. Anti-Corn Law League, 231. Apprentice, 65. Apprentice houses, 246. Apprentices, Statute of, 156, 228. Arkwright, Sir Richard, 209. Armada, 141. Army and navy stores, 299. Arras, 81, 87. Ashley, Lord, 254. Assize of Bread and Beer, 68, 228. Assize, rents of, 41, 49. Bailiff, 40, 141. Balk, 35. Ball, John, 112. Bank of England, 194. Barbary Company, 166. Bardi, 91. Berkhamstead Common, 264. Beverly, 71. Birmingham, 189. Black Death, 99. Blackheath, 115. Bolton, 189. Boon-works, 41. Boston, 76. Bridgewater Canal, 216. Bristol, 80, 148, 162. Britons, 4. Bryan, Chief-Justice, 143. Building Societies, 306. Burgage Tenure, 59. Burgesses, 59. Calais, 89, 97. Cambridge, 117. Canterbury, 11, 115. Canynges, William, 162. Carding, 205, 210. _Carta Mercatoria_, 81. Cartwright, Edmund, 210. Cavendish, John, 117. Chaucer, 98. Chester, 70. Chevage, 44. Children's Half-time Act, 255. Children's labor, 237, 246. Church, organization of the, 11. Civil Service Supply Association, 299. Climate, 2. Clothiers, 153. Coal, 3, 214. Coal mines, labor in, 257. Cobden, Richard, 231. Cologne, 80. Colonies, 178, 190. Combination Acts, 279. Combinations, legalization of, 282. Commerce, 81, 134, 161, 189. Common employment, doctrine of, 261. Commons, 37, 263. Commons Preservation Society, 264. Commutation of services, 125. Competition, 226, 233, 311. Coöperation in credit, 306. Coöperation in distribution, 295. Coöperation in farming, 302. Coöperation in production, 300. Coöperative congresses, 305. Coöperative legislation, 303. Copyholders, 143. Corn Laws, 185, 223, 230. Corpus Christi day, 70. Cotters, 40. Cotton gin, 211. Cotton manufacture, 188, 203. County councils, 243. Court of Assistants, 150. Court rolls, 46. Coventry, 70, 148. Craft gilds, 64, 147. Crafts, 64, 147. Crafts, combination of, 160. Crécy, 97. Crompton, Samuel, 210. Cromwell, 179. _Cry of the Children_, 251. Currency, 169. Customary tenants, 41, 143. Danes, 12. Dartford, 115. Davy, Sir Humphry, 215. Dean, 63. Decaying of towns, 144, 154. Demesne farming, abandonment of, 128, 141. Demesne lands, 39, 104, 131. Dockers' strike, 287. Domesday Book, 18, 29. Domestic system, 153, 185, 188, 220. Drapers, 149, 161. Droitwich, 155. Eastern trade, 84, 164. East India Company, 166, 190. Employer's Liability Acts, 260. Enclosure commissioners, 218, 263. Enclosures, 141, 216. Engrossers, 68. Epping Forest, 266. _Essay on Population_, 232. Essex, 114. Evesham, 155. Fabyan Society, 311. Factory Acts, 244. Factory and Workshop Consolidation Act, 258. Factory system, 212. Fairs, 75. Farmers, 129, 144. Federation of trade unions, 289. Fens, 184. Feudalism, 20. Finance, 169, 193. Flanders, 163. Flanders fleet, 86, 167. Flanders trade, 87, 168. Flemish artisans in England, 94, 116. Flemish Hanse of London, 88. Florence, 90, 168. Forestallers, 68. Foreign artisans in England, 94. Foreign trade, 81, 134, 161, 189, 203, 230. Forty-shilling freeholders, 241. Frank pledge, 46. Fraternities, 62, 71. Freeholders, 41, 124, 241. Free-tenants, 41. Free trade in land, 231. French Revolution, 200. Fugitive villains, 59, 130. Fulling mills, 229. Furlong, 34. Gascony, 90, 94, 169. Geography of England, 1. Ghent, 87. Gildhall, 69, 92. Gild merchant, 59. Gilds, craft, 64. Gilds, non-industrial, 71. Government policy toward gilds, 65, 154. Greater Companies of London, 153. Grocyn, 136. Groningen, 166. Guienne, 90, 169. Guinea Company, 166. Hales, Robert, 116. Hamburg, 89, 166, 230. Hamlet, 31. Hand-loom weavers, 188, 203, 220. Hanseatic League, 89, 163. Hanse trade, 89, 167. Hargreaves, James, 207. Health and Morals Act, 247. Heriot, 41. Hospitallers, 91, 116. Hostage, 81. Houses of the Working Classes Act, 271. Huguenots, 185. Hull, 160. Hundred Years' War, 96. Iceland, 168. Individualism, 232. Industrial revolution, 213. Insular situation of England, 2. Insurance, 196. _Intercursus Magnus_, 168. Interest, 171. Ireland, conquest of, 24. Irish union, 203. Iron, 3, 214. Italian trade, 84, 164, 167. Italians in England, 90. Jack Straw, 116. Jews, 59, 91. John of Gaunt, 114. Journeymen, 66, 147. Journeymen gilds, 148. Kay, 206. Kempe, John, 94. Kent, 9, 114. Kidderminster, 155. Laborers, Statutes of, 106. Laissez-faire, 224, 228. Land, reclamation of, 6. Latimer, Hugh, 145. Law merchant, 78. Law of wages, 226. Lawyers, hostility to, 124. Lead, 3, 83, 88. Leather, 83, 88. Leeds, 189. Leet, 46. Leicester, 62, 79. Lesser Companies of London, 151. Levant Company, 166. Leyr, 44. Lister, Geoffrey, 117. Livery Companies, 149. Location of industries, change of, 151. Lollards, 98, 111. London, 149. Lord of manor, 39, 103, 125, 143. Lubeck, 89. Lynn, 93. Lyons, Richard, 117. Macadam, 215. _Magna Carta_, 26. Malthus, 232. Manchester, 189, 247, 284. Manor, 31. Manor-courts, 123, 141. Manor-house, 31, 123. Manufacturing towns, 189, 238. Manumissions, 120, 129. Markets, 75. Market towns, 75. Masters, 65. Mechanical inventions, 203. Mercers, 147, 150, 166. Merchant gilds, 59. Merchants adventurers, 164. Merchet, 44. Methuen Treaty, 190. Mile End, 120. Mill-hands, 213, 221. Misteries, 64. Monopolies, 187. More, Sir Thomas, 145. Morocco Company, 166. Morrowspeche, 63. Mule spinning, 210. Muscovy Company, 166. Mushold Heath, 117. Mutiny Act, 182. Mystery plays, 70. Napoleon, 200. National debt, 196. Native commerce, 161. _Nativus_, 43. Navigation laws, 169, 189, 192, 229. Newcastle-on-Tyne, 164. Non-industrial gilds, 71. Norman Conquest, 15. Norway, 163. Norwich, 117. Novgorod, 163. Open-fields, 33, 142, 217. Origin of the manor, 55. Owen, Robert, 248, 311. Oxford, 102, 147. Pageants, 159. Parcels post, 275. Parish councils, 243, 269. Parliament, foundation of, 26. Paternal government, 173. Peasant proprietorship, 270. Peasants' rebellion, 111. Peel, Sir Robert (the elder), 247. Peel, Sir Robert (the younger), 230. Peruzzi, 91. Pie Powder Courts, 78. Pilgrimage of Grace, 146. Plymouth Company, 190. Poitiers, 97. Poll tax, 113. Poor Priests, 112. Portugal, 83, 190. Post-office Savings Bank, 274. Power-loom, 210. Prehistoric Britain, 4. Private Enclosure Acts, 217. Privy Council, 138. Profit-sharing, 307. Puritans, 140, 178. Railway Regulation Act, 260. Reaper, 49. Reeve, 40. Reformation, 138. Reform of Parliament, 241. Regrators, 68. Regulated Companies, 174. Relief, 21, 41. Religious gilds, 71, 158. Rents of Assize, 41. Reorganized Companies, 187. Restoration, 180. Revolution, Industrial, 213. Revolution of 1688, 181. Ricardo, David, 226. Rochdale Pioneers, 296. Rochdale plan, 296. Romans in Britain, 5. Roses, Wars of the, 99. Russia Company, 166. _Rusticus_, 43. St. Albans, 118. St. Edmund's Abbey, 117. St. Helen of Beverly, 71. St. Ives' Fair, 76, 79. Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 273. Savoy Palace, 116. Saxon invasion, 8. Scattered strips, 38. Scotland, contest with, 24. Serfdom, 43, 120, 124. Serfdom, decay of, 129. _Servus_, 43. Sheep-raising, 142. Sheffield, 189, 284. Shop Hours Act, 260. Shrewsbury, 147. Skevin, 63. Sliding scale, 231. Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, 272. Small holdings, 269. Smith, Adam, 224. Smithfield, 121. Social Democratic Federation, 311. Social gilds, 71, 158. Socialism, 310. Socialist League, 311. Sources, 54. Southampton, 61. South Sea Bubble, 195. Spain, 82, 168. Spencer, Henry de, 122. Spices, 84. Spinning, 205. Spinning-jenny, 207. Stade, 166. Staple, 87. Statute of Apprentices, 156, 228. Statutes of Laborers, 106. Steelyard, 92, 167. Sterling, 89. Steward, 40, 46. Stourbridge Fair, 76. Sturmys, 162. Sudbury, 116. Sweating, 260. Tallage, 44. Taverner, John, 162. Taxation, 194. Telegraph, government, 273. Telephone, government, 273. Telford, 215. Temple Bar, 116. Ten-hour Act, 256. Three-field system, 36. Tin, 3, 83, 88, 91, 93. Tolls, 57, 78, 82. Town government, 57. Towns, 57, 79, 154. Trade combinations, 294. Trade routes, 84. Trade unions, 279. Trades councils, 289. Transportation, 214. Trusts, 294. Turkey Company, 166. Ulster, Plantation of, 190. Usury, 171. Utopia, 145. Venice, 84. Venturers, 164. Vill, 31. Village community, 54. Villages, 31, 114. Villain, 40, 111, 125. Villainage, 130. _Villanus_, 43. Virgate, 38. Virginia Company, 190. _Vision of Piers Plowman_, 98, 111. Wages in hand occupations, 220. Wages, law of, 226. Wales, conquest of, 24. Walloons, 185. Walworth, Sir William, 121. Wardens, 69, 161. Watt, James, 212. Wat Tyler, 116, 121. _Wealth of Nations_, 225. Weavers, 65, 152, 188. Weaving, 205. Week-work, 42. Whitney, Eli, 211. Wholesale Coöperative Society, 299. Wilburton, 128. Wimbledon Common, 264. Winchester Fair, 76. Wolsey, Cardinal, 145. Women's labor, 237. Woodkirk, 70. Wool, 83, 87, 142, 205, 210, 216. Worcester, 155. Wycliffe, 97. Yeomen, 129, 221, 237. Yeomen gilds, 148. York, 65, 70. Young, Arthur, 225. Ypres, 87. Printed in the United States of America. * * * * * A HISTORY OF GREECE For High Schools and Academies By *GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD*, Ph.D. _Instructor in the History of Greece and Rome in Harvard University_ 8vo. Half Leather. $1.10 "Dr. Botsford's 'History of Greece' has the conspicuous merits which only a text-book can possess which is written by a master of the original sources. 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1349	----	RUSSIA by Donald Mackenzie Wallace Copyright 1905 Contents Preface CHAPTER I TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA Railways--State Interference--River Communications--Russian "Grand Tour"--The Volga--Kazan--Zhigulinskiya Gori--Finns and Tartars--The Don--Difficulties of Navigation--Discomforts--Rats--Hotels and Their Peculiar Customs--Roads--Hibernian Phraseology Explained--Bridges--Posting--A Tarantass--Requisites for Travelling--Travelling in Winter--Frostbitten--Disagreeable Episodes--Scene at a Post-Station. CHAPTER II IN THE NORTHERN FORESTS Bird's-eye View of Russia--The Northern Forests--Purpose of my Journey--Negotiations--The Road--A Village--A Peasant's House--Vapour-Baths--Curious Custom--Arrival. CHAPTER III VOLUNTARY EXILE Ivanofka--History of the Place--The Steward of the Estate--Slav and Teutonic Natures--A German's View of the Emancipation--Justices of the Peace--New School of Morals--The Russian Language--Linguistic Talent of the Russians--My Teacher--A Big Dose of Current History. CHAPTER IV THE VILLAGE PRIEST Priests' Names--Clerical Marriages--The White and the Black Clergy--Why the People do not Respect the Parish Priests--History of the White Clergy--The Parish Priest and the Protestant Pastor--In What Sense the Russian People are Religious--Icons--The Clergy and Popular Education--Ecclesiastical Reform--Premonitory Symptoms of Change--Two Typical Specimens of the Parochial Clergy of the Present Day. CHAPTER V A MEDICAL CONSULTATION Unexpected Illness--A Village Doctor--Siberian Plague--My Studies--Russian Historians--A Russian Imitator of Dickens--A ci-devant Domestic Serf--Medicine and Witchcraft--A Remnant of Paganism--Credulity of the Peasantry--Absurd Rumours--A Mysterious Visit from St. Barbara--Cholera on Board a Steamer--Hospitals--Lunatic Asylums--Amongst Maniacs. CHAPTER VI A PEASANT FAMILY OF THE OLD TYPE Ivan Petroff--His Past Life--Co-operative Associations--Constitution of a Peasant's Household--Predominance of Economic Conceptions over those of Blood-relationship--Peasant Marriages--Advantages of Living in Large Families--Its Defects--Family Disruptions and their Consequences. CHAPTER VII THE PEASANTRY OF THE NORTH Communal Land--System of Agriculture--Parish Fetes--Fasting--Winter Occupations--Yearly Migrations--Domestic Industries--Influence of Capital and Wholesale Enterprise--The State Peasants--Serf-dues--Buckle's "History of Civilisation"--A precocious Yamstchik--"People Who Play Pranks"--A Midnight Alarm--The Far North. CHAPTER VIII THE MIR, OR VILLAGE COMMUNITY Social and Political Importance of the Mir--The Mir and the Family Compared--Theory of the Communal System--Practical Deviations from the Theory--The Mir a Good Specimen of Constitutional Government of the Extreme Democratic Type--The Village Assembly--Female Members--The Elections--Distribution of the Communal Land. CHAPTER IX HOW THE COMMUNE HAS BEEN PRESERVED, AND WHAT IT IS TO EFFECT IN THE FUTURE Sweeping Reforms after the Crimean War--Protest Against the Laissez Faire Principle--Fear of the Proletariat--English and Russian Methods of Legislation Contrasted--Sanguine Expectations--Evil Consequences of the Communal System--The Commune of the Future--Proletariat of the Towns--The Present State of Things Merely Temporary. CHAPTER X FINNISH AND TARTAR VILLAGES A Finnish Tribe--Finnish Villages--Various Stages of Russification--Finnish Women--Finnish Religions--Method of "Laying" Ghosts--Curious Mixture of Christianity and Paganism--Conversion of the Finns--A Tartar Village--A Russian Peasant's Conception of Mahometanism--A Mahometan's View of Christianity--Propaganda--The Russian Colonist--Migrations of Peoples During the Dark Ages. CHAPTER XI LORD NOVGOROD THE GREAT Departure from Ivanofka and Arrival at Novgorod--The Eastern Half of the Town--The Kremlin--An Old Legend--The Armed Men of Rus--The Northmen--Popular Liberty in Novgorod--The Prince and the Popular Assembly--Civil Dissensions and Faction-fights--The Commercial Republic Conquered by the Muscovite Tsars--Ivan the Terrible--Present Condition of the Town--Provincial Society--Card-playing--Periodicals--"Eternal Stillness." CHAPTER XII THE TOWNS AND THE MERCANTILE CLASSES General Character of Russian Towns--Scarcity of Towns in Russia--Why the Urban Element in the Population is so Small--History of Russian Municipal Institutions--Unsuccessful Efforts to Create a Tiers-etat--Merchants, Burghers, and Artisans--Town Council--A Rich Merchant--His House--His Love of Ostentation--His Conception of Aristocracy--Official Decorations--Ignorance and Dishonesty of the Commercial Classes--Symptoms of Change. CHAPTER XIII THE PASTORAL TRIBES OF THE STEPPE A Journey to the Steppe Region of the Southeast--The Volga--Town and Province of Samara--Farther Eastward--Appearance of the Villages--Characteristic Incident--Peasant Mendacity--Explanation of the Phenomenon--I Awake in Asia--A Bashkir Aoul--Diner la Tartare--Kumyss--A Bashkir Troubadour--Honest Mehemet Zian--Actual Economic Condition of the Bashkirs Throws Light on a Well-known Philosophical Theory--Why a Pastoral Race Adopts Agriculture--The Genuine Steppe--The Kirghiz--Letter from Genghis Khan--The Kalmyks--Nogai Tartars--Struggle between Nomadic Hordes and Agricultural Colonists. CHAPTER XIV THE MONGOL DOMINATION The Conquest--Genghis Khan and his People--Creation and Rapid Disintegration of the Mongol Empire--The Golden Horde--The Real Character of the Mongol Domination--Religious Toleration--Mongol System of Government--Grand Princes--The Princes of Moscow--Influence of the Mongol Domination--Practical Importance of the Subject. CHAPTER XV THE COSSACKS Lawlessness on the Steppe--Slave-markets of the Crimea--The Military Cordon and the Free Cossacks--The Zaporovian Commonwealth Compared with Sparta and with the Mediaeval Military Orders--The Cossacks of the Don, of the Volga, and of the Ural--Border Warfare--The Modern Cossacks--Land Tenure among the Cossacks of the Don--The Transition from Pastoral to Agriculture Life--"Universal Law" of Social Development--Communal versus Private Property--Flogging as a Means of Land-registration. CHAPTER XVI FOREIGN COLONISTS ON THE STEPPE The Steppe--Variety of Races, Languages, and Religions--The German Colonists--In What Sense the Russians are an Imitative People--The Mennonites--Climate and Arboriculture--Bulgarian Colonists--Tartar-Speaking Greeks--Jewish Agriculturists--Russification--A Circassian Scotchman--Numerical Strength of the Foreign Element. CHAPTER XVII AMONG THE HERETICS The Molokanye--My Method of Investigation--Alexandrof-Hai--An Unexpected Theological Discussion--Doctrines and Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Molokanye--Moral Supervision and Mutual Assistance--History of the Sect--A False Prophet--Utilitarian Christianity--Classification of the Fantastic Sects--The "Khlysti"--Policy of the Government towards Sectarianism--Two Kinds of Heresy--Probable Future of the Heretical Sects--Political Disaffection. CHAPTER XVIII THE DISSENTERS Dissenters not to be Confounded with Heretics--Extreme Importance Attached to Ritual Observances--The Raskol, or Great Schism in the Seventeenth Century--Antichrist Appears!--Policy of Peter the Great and Catherine II.--Present Ingenious Method of Securing Religious Toleration--Internal Development of the Raskol--Schism among the Schismatics--The Old Ritualists--The Priestless People--Cooling of the Fanatical Enthusiasm and Formation of New Sects--Recent Policy of the Government towards the Sectarians--Numerical Force and Political Significance of Sectarianism. CHAPTER XIX CHURCH AND STATE The Russian Orthodox Church--Russia Outside of the Mediaeval Papal Commonwealth--Influence of the Greek Church--Ecclesiastical History of Russia--Relations between Church and State--Eastern Orthodoxy and the Russian National Church--The Synod--Ecclesiastical Grumbling--Local Ecclesiastical Administration--The Black Clergy and the Monasteries--The Character of the Eastern Church Reflected in the History of Religious Art--Practical Consequences--The Union Scheme. CHAPTER XX THE NOBLESSE The Nobles In Early Times--The Mongol Domination--The Tsardom of Muscovy--Family Dignity--Reforms of Peter the Great--The Nobles Adopt West-European Conceptions--Abolition of Obligatory Service--Influence of Catherine II.--The Russian Dvoryanstvo Compared with the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy--Russian Titles--Probable Future of the Russian Noblesse. CHAPTER XXI LANDED PROPRIETORS OF THE OLD SCHOOL Russian Hospitality--A Country-House--Its Owner Described--His Life, Past and Present--Winter Evenings--Books---Connection with the Outer World--The Crimean War and the Emancipation--A Drunken, Dissolute Proprietor--An Old General and his Wife--"Name Days"--A Legendary Monster--A Retired Judge--A Clever Scribe--Social Leniency--Cause of Demoralisation. CHAPTER XXII PROPRIETORS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL A Russian Petit Maitre--His House and Surroundings--Abortive Attempts to Improve Agriculture and the Condition of the Serfs--A Comparison--A "Liberal" Tchinovnik--His Idea of Progress--A Justice of the Peace--His Opinion of Russian Literature, Tchinovniks, and Petits Maitres--His Supposed and Real Character--An Extreme Radical--Disorders in the Universities--Administrative Procedure--Russia's Capacity for Accomplishing Political and Social Evolutions--A Court Dignitary in his Country House. CHAPTER XXIII SOCIAL CLASSES Do Social Classes or Castes Exist in Russia?--Well-marked Social Types--Classes Recognised by the Legislation and the Official Statistics--Origin and Gradual Formation of these Classes--Peculiarity in the Historical Development of Russia--Political Life and Political Parties. CHAPTER XXIV THE IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION AND THE OFFICIALS The Officials in Norgorod Assist Me in My Studies--The Modern Imperial Administration Created by Peter the Great, and Developed by his Successors--A Slavophil's View of the Administration--The Administration Briefly Described--The Tchinovniks, or Officials--Official Titles, and Their Real Significance--What the Administration Has Done for Russia in the Past--Its Character Determined by the Peculiar Relation between the Government and the People--Its Radical Vices--Bureaucratic Remedies--Complicated Formal Procedure--The Gendarmerie: My Personal Relations with this Branch of the Administration; Arrest and Release--A Strong, Healthy Public Opinion the Only Effectual Remedy for Bad Administration. CHAPTER XXV MOSCOW AND THE SLAVOPHILS Two Ancient Cities--Kief Not a Good Point for Studying Old Russian National Life--Great Russians and Little Russians--Moscow--Easter Eve in the Kremlin--Curious Custom--Anecdote of the Emperor Nicholas--Domiciliary Visits of the Iberian Madonna--The Streets of Moscow--Recent Changes in the Character of the City--Vulgar Conception of the Slavophils--Opinion Founded on Personal Acquaintance--Slavophil Sentiment a Century Ago--Origin and Development of the Slavophil Doctrine--Slavophilism Essentially Muscovite--The Panslavist Element--The Slavophils and the Emancipation. CHAPTER XXVI ST. PETERSBURG AND EUROPEAN INFLUENCE St. Petersburg and Berlin--Big Houses--The "Lions"--Peter the Great--His Aims and Policy--The German Regime--Nationalist Reaction--French Influence--Consequent Intellectual Sterility--Influence of the Sentimental School--Hostility to Foreign Influences--A New Period of Literary Importation--Secret Societies--The Catastrophe--The Age of Nicholas--A Terrible War on Parnassus--Decline of Romanticism and Transcendentalism--Gogol--The Revolutionary Agitation of 1848--New Reaction--Conclusion. CHAPTER XXVII THE CRIMEAN WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES The Emperor Nicholas and his System--The Men with Aspirations and the Apathetically Contented--National Humiliation--Popular Discontent and the Manuscript Literature--Death of Nicholas--Alexander II.--New Spirit--Reform Enthusiasm--Change in the Periodical Literature--The Kolokol--The Conservatives--The Tchinovniks--First Specific Proposals--Joint-Stock Companies--The Serf Question Comes to the Front. CHAPTER XXVIII THE SERFS The Rural Population in Ancient Times--The Peasantry in the Eighteenth Century--How Was This Change Effected?--The Common Explanation Inaccurate--Serfage the Result of Permanent Economic and Political Causes--Origin of the Adscriptio Glebae--Its Consequences--Serf Insurrection--Turning-point in the History of Serfage--Serfage in Russia and in Western Europe--State Peasants--Numbers and Geographical Distribution of the Serf Population--Serf Dues--Legal and Actual Power of the Proprietors--The Serfs' Means of Defence--Fugitives--Domestic Serfs--Strange Advertisements in the Moscow Gazette--Moral Influence of Serfage. CHAPTER XXIX THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS The Question Raised--Chief Committee--The Nobles of the Lithuanian Provinces--The Tsar's Broad Hint to the Noblesse--Enthusiasm in the Press--The Proprietors--Political Aspirations--No Opposition--The Government--Public Opinion--Fear of the Proletariat--The Provincial Committees--The Elaboration Commission--The Question Ripens--Provincial Deputies--Discontent and Demonstrations--The Manifesto--Fundamental Principles of the Law--Illusions and Disappointment of the Serfs--Arbiters of the Peace--A Characteristic Incident--Redemption--Who Effected the Emancipation? CHAPTER XXX THE LANDED PROPRIETORS SINCE THE EMANCIPATION Two Opposite Opinions--Difficulties of Investigation--The Problem Simplified--Direct and Indirect Compensation--The Direct Compensation Inadequate--What the Proprietors Have Done with the Remainder of Their Estates--Immediate Moral Effect of the Abolition of Serfage--The Economic Problem--The Ideal Solution and the Difficulty of Realising It--More Primitive Arrangements--The Northern Agricultural Zone--The Black-earth Zone--The Labour Difficulty--The Impoverishment of the Noblesse Not a New Phenomenon--Mortgaging of Estates--Gradual Expropriation of the Noblesse-Rapid Increase in the Production and Export of Grain--How Far this Has Benefited the Landed Proprietors. CHAPTER XXXI THE EMANCIPATED PEASANTRY The Effects of Liberty--Difficulty of Obtaining Accurate Information--Pessimist Testimony of the Proprietors--Vague Replies of the Peasants--My Conclusions in 1877--Necessity of Revising Them--My Investigations Renewed in 1903--Recent Researches by Native Political Economists--Peasant Impoverishment Universally Recognised--Various Explanations Suggested--Demoralisation of the Common People--Peasant Self-government--Communal System of Land Tenure--Heavy Taxation--Disruption of Peasant Families--Natural Increase of Population--Remedies Proposed--Migration--Reclamation of Waste Land--Land-purchase by Peasantry--Manufacturing Industry--Improvement of Agricultural Methods--Indications of Progress. CHAPTER XXXII THE ZEMSTVO AND THE LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT Necessity of Reorganising the Provincial Administration--Zemstvo Created in 1864--My First Acquaintance with the Institution--District and Provincial Assemblies--The Leading Members--Great Expectations Created by the Institution--These Expectations Not Realised--Suspicions and Hostility of the Bureaucracy--Zemstvo Brought More Under Control of the Centralised Administration--What It Has Really Done--Why It Has Not Done More---Rapid Increase of the Rates--How Far the Expenditure Is Judicious--Why the Impoverishment of the Peasantry Was Neglected--Unpractical, Pedantic Spirit--Evil Consequences--Chinese and Russian Formalism--Local Self-Government of Russia Contrasted with That of England--Zemstvo Better than Its Predecessors--Its Future. CHAPTER XXXIII THE NEW LAW COURTS Judicial Procedure in the Olden Times--Defects and Abuses--Radical Reform--The New System--Justices of the Peace and Monthly Sessions--The Regular Tribunals--Court of Revision--Modification of the Original Plan--How Does the System Work?--Rapid Acclimatisation--The Bench--The Jury--Acquittal of Criminals Who Confess Their Crimes--Peasants, Merchants, and Nobles as Jurymen--Independence and Political Significance of the New Courts. CHAPTER XXXIV REVOLUTIONARY NIHILISM AND THE REACTION The Reform-enthusiasm Becomes Unpractical and Culminates in Nihilism--Nihilism, the Distorted Reflection of Academic Western Socialism--Russia Well Prepared for Reception of Ultra-Socialist Virus--Social Reorganisation According to Latest Results of Science--Positivist Theory--Leniency of Press-censure--Chief Representatives of New Movement--Government Becomes Alarmed--Repressive Measures--Reaction in the Public--The Term Nihilist Invented--The Nihilist and His Theory--Further Repressive Measures--Attitude of Landed Proprietors--Foundation of a Liberal Party--Liberalism Checked by Polish Insurrection--Practical Reform Continued--An Attempt at Regicide Forms a Turning-point of Government's Policy--Change in Educational System--Decline of Nihilism. CHAPTER XXXV SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA, REVOLUTIONARY AGITATION, AND TERRORISM Closer Relations with Western Socialism--Attempts to Influence the Masses--Bakunin and Lavroff--"Going in among the People"--The Missionaries of Revolutionary Socialism--Distinction between Propaganda and Agitation--Revolutionary Pamphlets for the Common People--Aims and Motives of the Propagandists--Failure of Propaganda--Energetic Repression--Fruitless Attempts at Agitation--Proposal to Combine with Liberals--Genesis of Terrorism--My Personal Relations with the Revolutionists--Shadowers and Shadowed--A Series of Terrorist Crimes--A Revolutionist Congress--Unsuccessful Attempts to Assassinate the Tsar--Ineffectual Attempt at Conciliation by Loris Melikof--Assassination of Alexander II.--The Executive Committee Shows Itself Unpractical--Widespread Indignation and Severe Repression--Temporary Collapse of the Revolutionary Movement--A New Revolutionary Movement in Sight. CHAPTER XXXVI INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS AND THE PROLETARIAT Russia till Lately a Peasant Empire--Early Efforts to Introduce Arts and Crafts--Peter the Great and His Successors--Manufacturing Industry Long Remains an Exotic--The Cotton Industry--The Reforms of Alexander II.--Protectionists and Free Trade--Progress under High Tariffs--M. Witte's Policy--How Capital Was Obtained--Increase of Exports--Foreign Firms Cross the Customs Frontier--Rapid Development of Iron Industry--A Commercial Crisis--M. Witte's Position Undermined by Agrarians and Doctrinaires--M. Plehve a Formidable Opponent--His Apprehensions of Revolution--Fall of M. Witte--The Industrial Proletariat CHAPTER XXXVII THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN ITS LATEST PHASE Influence of Capitalism and Proletariat on the Revolutionary Movement--What is to be Done?--Reply of Plekhanof--A New Departure--Karl Marx's Theories Applied to Russia--Beginnings of a Social Democratic Movement--The Labour Troubles of 1894-96 in St. Petersburg--The Social Democrats' Plan of Campaign--Schism in the Party--Trade-unionism and Political Agitation--The Labour Troubles of 1902--How the Revolutionary Groups are Differentiated from Each Other--Social Democracy and Constitutionalism--Terrorism--The Socialist Revolutionaries--The Militant Organisation--Attitude of the Government--Factory Legislation--Government's Scheme for Undermining Social Democracy--Father Gapon and His Labour Association--The Great Strike in St. Petersburg--Father Gapon goes over to the Revolutionaries. CHAPTER XXXVIII TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND FOREIGN POLICY Rapid Growth of Russia--Expansive Tendency of Agricultural Peoples--The Russo-Slavonians--The Northern Forest and the Steppe--Colonisation--The Part of the Government in the Process of Expansion--Expansion towards the West--Growth of the Empire Represented in a Tabular Form--Commercial Motive for Expansion--The Expansive Force in the Future--Possibilities of Expansion in Europe--Persia, Afghanistan, and India--Trans-Siberian Railway and Weltpolitik--A Grandiose Scheme--Determined Opposition of Japan--Negotiations and War--Russia's Imprudence Explained--Conclusion. CHAPTER XXXIX THE PRESENT SITUATION Reform or Revolution?--Reigns of Alexander II. and Nicholas II. Compared and Contrasted--The Present Opposition--Various Groups--The Constitutionalists--Zemski Sobors--The Young Tsar Dispels Illusions--Liberal Frondeurs--Plehve's Repressive Policy--Discontent Increased by the War--Relaxation and Wavering under Prince Mirski--Reform Enthusiasm--The Constitutionalists Formulate their Demands--The Social Democrats--Father Gapon's Demonstration--The Socialist-Revolutionaries--The Agrarian Agitators--The Subject-Nationalities--Numerical Strength of the Various Groups--All United on One Point--Their Different Aims--Possible Solutions of the Crisis--Difficulties of Introducing Constitutional Regime--A Strong Man Wanted--Uncertainty of the Future. PREFACE The first edition of this work, published early in January, 1877, contained the concentrated results of my studies during an uninterrupted residence of six years in Russia--from the beginning of 1870 to the end of 1875. Since that time I have spent in the European and Central Asian provinces, at different periods, nearly two years more; and in the intervals I have endeavoured to keep in touch with the progress of events. My observations thus extend over a period of thirty-five years. When I began, a few months ago, to prepare for publication the results of my more recent observations and researches, my intention was to write an entirely new work under the title of "Russia in the Twentieth Century," but I soon perceived that it would be impossible to explain clearly the present state of things without referring constantly to events of the past, and that I should be obliged to embody in the new work a large portion of the old one. The portion to be embodied grew rapidly to such proportions that, in the course of a few weeks, I began to ask myself whether it would not be better simply to recast and complete my old material. With a view to deciding the question I prepared a list of the principal changes which had taken place during the last quarter of a century, and when I had marshalled them in logical order, I recognised that they were neither so numerous nor so important as I had supposed. Certainly there had been much progress, but it had been nearly all on the old lines. Everywhere I perceived continuity and evolution; nowhere could I discover radical changes and new departures. In the central and local administration the reactionary policy of the latter half of Alexander II.'s reign had been steadily maintained; the revolutionary movement had waxed and waned, but its aims were essentially the same as of old; the Church had remained in its usual somnolent condition; a grave agricultural crisis affecting landed proprietors and peasants had begun, but it was merely a development of a state of things which I had previously described; the manufacturing industry had made gigantic strides, but they were all in the direction which the most competent observers had predicted; in foreign policy the old principles of guiding the natural expansive forces along the lines of least resistance, seeking to reach warm-water ports, and pegging out territorial claims for the future were persistently followed. No doubt there were pretty clear indications of more radical changes to come, but these changes must belong to the future, and it is merely with the past and the present that a writer who has no pretensions to being a prophet has to deal. Under these circumstances it seemed to me advisable to adopt a middle course. Instead of writing an entirely new work I determined to prepare a much extended and amplified edition of the old one, retaining such information about the past as seemed to me of permanent value, and at the same time meeting as far as possible the requirements of those who wish to know the present condition of the country. In accordance with this view I have revised, rearranged, and supplemented the old material in the light of subsequent events, and I have added five entirely new chapters--three on the revolutionary movement, which has come into prominence since 1877; one on the industrial progress, with which the latest phase of the movement is closely connected; and one on the main lines of the present situation as it appears to me at the moment of going to press. During the many years which I have devoted to the study of Russia, I have received unstinted assistance from many different quarters. Of the friends who originally facilitated my task, and to whom I expressed my gratitude in the preface and notes of the early editions, only three survive--Mme. de Novikoff, M. E. I. Yakushkin, and Dr. Asher. To the numerous friends who have kindly assisted me in the present edition I must express my thanks collectively, but there are two who stand out from the group so prominently that I may be allowed to mention them personally: these are Prince Alexander Grigorievitch Stcherbatof, who supplied me with voluminous materials regarding the agrarian question generally and the present condition of the peasantry in particular, and M. Albert Brockhaus, who placed at my disposal the gigantic Russian Encyclopaedia recently published by his firm (Entsiklopeditcheski Slovar, Leipzig and St. Petersburg, 1890-1904). This monumental work, in forty-one volumes, is an inexhaustible storehouse of accurate and well-digested information on all subjects connected with the Russian Empire, and it has often been of great use to me in matters of detail. With regard to the last chapter of this edition I must claim the reader's indulgence, because the meaning of the title, "the present situation," changes from day to day, and I cannot foresee what further changes may occur before the work reaches the hands of the public. LONDON, 22nd May, 1905. RUSSIA CHAPTER I TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA Railways--State Interference--River Communications--Russian "Grand Tour"--The Volga--Kazan--Zhigulinskiya Gori--Finns and Tartars--The Don--Difficulties of Navigation--Discomforts--Rats--Hotels and Their Peculiar Customs--Roads--Hibernian Phraseology Explained--Bridges--Posting--A Tarantass--Requisites for Travelling--Travelling in Winter--Frostbitten--Disagreeable Episodes--Scene at a Post-Station. Of course travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last half century a vast network of railways has been constructed, and one can now travel in a comfortable first-class carriage from Berlin to St. Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the Lower Volga, the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Eastern Siberia. Until the outbreak of the war there was a train twice a week, with through carriages, from Moscow to Port Arthur. And it must be admitted that on the main lines the passengers have not much to complain of. The carriages are decidedly better than in England, and in winter they are kept warm by small iron stoves, assisted by double windows and double doors--a very necessary precaution in a land where the thermometer often descends to 30 degrees below zero. The train never attains, it is true, a high rate of speed--so at least English and Americans think--but then we must remember that Russians are rarely in a hurry, and like to have frequent opportunities of eating and drinking. In Russia time is not money; if it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real life. In conveying passengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty miles an hour, the railway companies do at least all that they promise; but in one very important respect they do not always strictly fulfil their engagements. The traveller takes a ticket for a certain town, and on arriving at what he imagines to be his destination, he may find merely a railway-station surrounded by fields. On making inquiries, he discovers, to his disappointment, that the station is by no means identical with the town bearing the same name, and that the railway has fallen several miles short of fulfilling the bargain, as he understood the terms of the contract. Indeed, it might almost be said that as a general rule railways in Russia, like camel-drivers in certain Eastern countries, studiously avoid the towns. This seems at first a strange fact. It is possible to conceive that the Bedouin is so enamoured of tent life and nomadic habits that he shuns a town as he would a man-trap; but surely civil engineers and railway contractors have no such dread of brick and mortar. The true reason, I suspect, is that land within or immediately beyond the municipal barrier is relatively dear, and that the railways, being completely beyond the invigorating influence of healthy competition, can afford to look upon the comfort and convenience of passengers as a secondary consideration. Gradually, it is true, this state of things is being improved by private initiative. As the railways refuse to come to the towns, the towns are extending towards the railways, and already some prophets are found bold enough to predict that in the course of time those long, new, straggling streets, without an inhabited hinterland, which at present try so severely the springs of the ricketty droshkis, will be properly paved and kept in decent repair. For my own part, I confess I am a little sceptical with regard to this prediction, and I can only use a favourite expression of the Russian peasants--dai Bog! God grant it may be so! It is but fair to state that in one celebrated instance neither engineers nor railway contractors were directly to blame. From St. Petersburg to Moscow the locomotive runs for a distance of 400 miles almost as "the crow" is supposed to fly, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. For twelve weary hours the passenger in the express train looks out on forest and morass, and rarely catches sight of human habitation. Only once he perceives in the distance what may be called a town; it is Tver which has been thus favoured, not because it is a place of importance, but simply because it happened to be near the bee-line. And why was the railway constructed in this extraordinary fashion? For the best of all reasons--because the Tsar so ordered it. When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas I. learned that the officers entrusted with the task--and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number--were being influenced more by personal than technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style. When the Minister laid before him the map with the intention of explaining the proposed route, he took a ruler, drew a straight line from the one terminus to the other, and remarked in a tone that precluded all discussion, "You will construct the line so!" And the line was so constructed--remaining to all future ages, like St. Petersburg and the Pyramids, a magnificent monument of autocratic power. Formerly this well-known incident was often cited in whispered philippics to illustrate the evils of the autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, over-ride grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should be constructed to the towns lying to the right and left. Evidently there is a good deal to be said in favour of this view. In the development of the railway system there has been another disturbing cause, which is not likely to occur to the English mind. In England, individuals and companies habitually act according to their private interests, and the State interferes as little as possible; private initiative does as it pleases, unless the authorities can prove that important bad consequences will necessarily result. In Russia, the onus probandi lies on the other side; private initiative is allowed to do nothing until it gives guarantees against all possible bad consequences. When any great enterprise is projected, the first question is--"How will this new scheme affect the interests of the State?" Thus, when the course of a new railway has to be determined, the military authorities are among the first to be consulted, and their opinion has a great influence on the ultimate decision. The natural consequence is that the railway-map of Russia presents to the eye of the strategist much that is quite unintelligible to the ordinary observer--a fact that will become apparent even to the uninitiated as soon as a war breaks out in Eastern Europe. Russia is no longer what she was in the days of the Crimean War, when troops and stores had to be conveyed hundreds of miles by the most primitive means of transport. At that time she had only 750 miles of railway; now she has over 36,000 miles, and every year new lines are constructed. The water-communication has likewise in recent years been greatly improved. On the principal rivers there are now good steamers. Unfortunately, the climate puts serious obstructions in the way of navigation. For nearly half of the year the rivers are covered with ice, and during a great part of the open season navigation is difficult. When the ice and snow melt the rivers overflow their banks and lay a great part of the low-lying country under water, so that many villages can only be approached in boats; but very soon the flood subsides, and the water falls so rapidly that by midsummer the larger steamers have great difficulty in picking their way among the sandbanks. The Neva alone--that queen of northern rivers--has at all times a plentiful supply of water. Besides the Neva, the rivers commonly visited by the tourist are the Volga and the Don, which form part of what may be called the Russian grand tour. Englishmen who wish to see something more than St. Petersburg and Moscow generally go by rail to Nizhni-Novgorod, where they visit the great fair, and then get on board one of the Volga steamers. For those who have mastered the important fact that Russia is not a country of fine scenery, the voyage down the river is pleasant enough. The left bank is as flat as the banks of the Rhine below Cologne, but the right bank is high, occasionally well wooded, and not devoid of a certain tame picturesqueness. Early on the second day the steamer reaches Kazan, once the capital of an independent Tartar khanate, and still containing a considerable Tartar population. Several metchets (as the Mahometan houses of prayer are here termed), with their diminutive minarets in the lower part of the town, show that Islamism still survives, though the khanate was annexed to Muscovy more than three centuries ago; but the town, as a whole, has a European rather than an Asiatic character. If any one visits it in the hope of getting "a glimpse of the East," he will be grievously disappointed, unless, indeed, he happens to be one of those imaginative tourists who always discover what they wish to see. And yet it must be admitted that, of all the towns on the route, Kazan is the most interesting. Though not Oriental, it has a peculiar character of its own, whilst all the others--Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof--are as uninteresting as Russian provincial towns commonly are. The full force and solemnity of that expression will be explained in the sequel. Probably about sunrise on the third day something like a range of mountains will appear on the horizon. It may be well to say at once, to prevent disappointment, that in reality nothing worthy of the name of mountain is to be found in that part of the country. The nearest mountain-range in that direction is the Caucasus, which is hundreds of miles distant, and consequently cannot by any possibility be seen from the deck of a steamer. The elevations in question are simply a low range of hills, called the Zhigulinskiya Gori. In Western Europe they would not attract much attention, but "in the kingdom of the blind," as the French proverb has it, "the one-eyed man is king"; and in a flat region like Eastern Russia these hills form a prominent feature. Though they have nothing of Alpine grandeur, yet their well-wooded slopes, coming down to the water's edge--especially when covered with the delicate tints of early spring, or the rich yellow and red of autumnal foliage--leave an impression on the memory not easily effaced. On the whole--with all due deference to the opinions of my patriotic Russian friends--I must say that Volga scenery hardly repays the time, trouble and expense which a voyage from Nizhni to Tsaritsin demands. There are some pretty bits here and there, but they are "few and far between." A glass of the most exquisite wine diluted with a gallon of water makes a very insipid beverage. The deck of the steamer is generally much more interesting than the banks of the river. There one meets with curious travelling companions. The majority of the passengers are probably Russian peasants, who are always ready to chat freely without demanding a formal introduction, and to relate--with certain restrictions--to a new acquaintance the simple story of their lives. Often I have thus whiled away the weary hours both pleasantly and profitably, and have always been impressed with the peasant's homely common sense, good-natured kindliness, half-fatalistic resignation, and strong desire to learn something about foreign countries. This last peculiarity makes him question as well as communicate, and his questions, though sometimes apparently childish, are generally to the point. Among the passengers are probably also some representatives of the various Finnish tribes inhabiting this part of the country; they may be interesting to the ethnologist who loves to study physiognomy, but they are far less sociable than the Russians. Nature seems to have made them silent and morose, whilst their conditions of life have made them shy and distrustful. The Tartar, on the other hand, is almost sure to be a lively and amusing companion. Most probably he is a peddler or small trader of some kind. The bundle on which he reclines contains his stock-in-trade, composed, perhaps, of cotton printed goods and especially bright-coloured cotton handkerchiefs. He himself is enveloped in a capacious greasy khalat, or dressing-gown, and wears a fur cap, though the thermometer may be at 90 degrees in the shade. The roguish twinkle in his small piercing eyes contrasts strongly with the sombre, stolid expression of the Finnish peasants sitting near him. He has much to relate about St. Petersburg, Moscow, and perhaps Astrakhan; but, like a genuine trader, he is very reticent regarding the mysteries of his own craft. Towards sunset he retires with his companions to some quiet spot on the deck to recite evening prayers. Here all the good Mahometans on board assemble and stroke their beards, kneel on their little strips of carpet and prostrate themselves, all keeping time as if they were performing some new kind of drill under the eve of a severe drill-sergeant. If the voyage is made about the end of September, when the traders are returning home from the fair at Nizhni-Novgorod, the ethnologist will have a still better opportunity of study. He will then find not only representatives of the Finnish and Tartar races, but also Armenians, Circassians, Persians, Bokhariots, and other Orientals--a motley and picturesque but decidedly unsavoury cargo. However great the ethnographical variety on board may be, the traveller will probably find that four days on the Volga are quite enough for all practical and aesthetic purposes, and instead of going on to Astrakhan he will quit the steamer at Tsaritsin. Here he will find a railway of about fifty miles in length, connecting the Volga and the Don. I say advisedly a railway, and not a train, because trains on this line are not very frequent. When I first visited the locality, thirty years ago, there were only two a week, so that if you inadvertently missed one train you had to wait about three days for the next. Prudent, nervous people preferred travelling by the road, for on the railway the strange jolts and mysterious creakings were very alarming. On the other hand the pace was so slow that running off the rails would have been merely an amusing episode, and even a collision could scarcely have been attended with serious consequences. Happily things are improving, even in this outlying part of the country. Now there is one train daily, and it goes at a less funereal pace. From Kalatch, at the Don end of the line, a steamer starts for Rostoff, which is situated near the mouth of the river. The navigation of the Don is much more difficult than that of the Volga. The river is extremely shallow, and the sand-banks are continually shifting, so that many times in the course of the day the steamer runs aground. Sometimes she is got off by simply reversing the engines, but not unfrequently she sticks so fast that the engines have to be assisted. This is effected in a curious way. The captain always gives a number of stalwart Cossacks a free passage on condition that they will give him the assistance he requires; and as soon as the ship sticks fast he orders them to jump overboard with a stout hawser and haul her off! The task is not a pleasant one, especially as the poor fellows cannot afterwards change their clothes; but the order is always obeyed with alacrity and without grumbling. Cossacks, it would seem, have no personal acquaintance with colds and rheumatism. In the most approved manuals of geography the Don figures as one of the principal European rivers, and its length and breadth give it a right to be considered as such; but its depth in many parts is ludicrously out of proportion to its length and breadth. I remember one day seeing the captain of a large, flat-bottomed steamer slacken speed, to avoid running down a man on horseback who was attempting to cross his bows in the middle of the stream. Another day a not less characteristic incident happened. A Cossack passenger wished to be set down at a place where there was no pier, and on being informed that there was no means of landing him, coolly jumped overboard and walked ashore. This simple method of disembarking cannot, of course, be recommended to those who have no local knowledge regarding the exact position of sand-banks and deep pools. Good serviceable fellows are those Cossacks who drag the steamer off the sand-banks, and are often entertaining companions. Many of them can relate from their own experience, in plain, unvarnished style, stirring episodes of irregular warfare, and if they happen to be in a communicative mood they may divulge a few secrets regarding their simple, primitive commissariat system. Whether they are confidential or not, the traveller who knows the language will spend his time more profitably and pleasantly in chatting with them than in gazing listlessly at the uninteresting country through which he is passing. Unfortunately, these Don steamers carry a large number of free passengers of another and more objectionable kind, who do not confine themselves to the deck, but unceremoniously find their way into the cabin, and prevent thin-skinned travellers from sleeping. I know too little of natural history to decide whether these agile, bloodthirsty parasites are of the same species as those which in England assist unofficially the Sanitary Commissioners by punishing uncleanliness; but I may say that their function in the system of created things is essentially the same, and they fulfil it with a zeal and energy beyond all praise. Possessing for my own part a happy immunity from their indelicate attentions, and being perfectly innocent of entomological curiosity, I might, had I been alone, have overlooked their existence, but I was constantly reminded of their presence by less happily constituted mortals, and the complaints of the sufferers received a curious official confirmation. On arriving at the end of the journey I asked permission to spend the night on board, and I noticed that the captain acceded to my request with more readiness and warmth than I expected. Next morning the fact was fully explained. When I began to express my thanks for having been allowed to pass the night in a comfortable cabin, my host interrupted me with a good-natured laugh, and assured me that, on the contrary, he was under obligations to me. "You see," he said, assuming an air of mock gravity, "I have always on board a large body of light cavalry, and when I have all this part of the ship to myself they make a combined attack on me; whereas, when some one is sleeping close by, they divide their forces!" On certain steamers on the Sea of Azof the privacy of the sleeping-cabin is disturbed by still more objectionable intruders; I mean rats. During one short voyage which I made on board the Kertch, these disagreeable visitors became so importunate in the lower regions of the vessel that the ladies obtained permission to sleep in the deck-saloon. After this arrangement had been made, we unfortunate male passengers received redoubled attention from our tormentors. Awakened early one morning by the sensation of something running over me as I lay in my berth, I conceived a method of retaliation. It seemed to me possible that, in the event of another visit, I might, by seizing the proper moment, kick the rat up to the ceiling with such force as to produce concussion of the brain and instant death. Very soon I had an opportunity of putting my plan into execution. A significant shaking of the little curtain at the foot of the berth showed that it was being used as a scaling-ladder. I lay perfectly still, quite as much interested in the sport as if I had been waiting, rifle in hand, for big game. Soon the intruder peeped into my berth, looked cautiously around him, and then proceeded to walk stealthily across my feet. In an instant he was shot upwards. First was heard a sharp knock on the ceiling, and then a dull "thud" on the floor. The precise extent of the injuries inflicted I never discovered, for the victim had sufficient strength and presence of mind to effect his escape; and the gentleman at the other side of the cabin, who had been roused by the noise, protested against my repeating the experiment, on the ground that, though he was willing to take his own share of the intruders, he strongly objected to having other people's rats kicked into his berth. On such occasions it is of no use to complain to the authorities. When I met the captain on deck I related to him what had happened, and protested vigorously against passengers being exposed to such annoyances. After listening to me patiently, he coolly replied, entirely overlooking my protestations, "Ah! I did better than that this morning; I allowed my rat to get under the blanket, and then smothered him!" Railways and steamboats, even when their arrangements leave much to be desired, invariably effect a salutary revolution in hotel accommodation; but this revolution is of necessity gradual. Foreign hotelkeepers must immigrate and give the example; suitable houses must be built; servants must be properly trained; and, above all, the native travellers must learn the usages of civilised society. In Russia this revolution is in progress, but still far from being complete. The cities where foreigners most do congregate--St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa--already possess hotels that will bear comparison with those of Western Europe, and some of the more important provincial towns can offer very respectable accommodation; but there is still much to be done before the West-European can travel with comfort even on the principal routes. Cleanliness, the first and most essential element of comfort, as we understand the term, is still a rare commodity, and often cannot be procured at any price. Even in good hotels, when they are of the genuine Russian type, there are certain peculiarities which, though not in themselves objectionable, strike a foreigner as peculiar. Thus, when you alight at such an hotel, you are expected to examine a considerable number of rooms, and to inquire about the respective prices. When you have fixed upon a suitable apartment, you will do well, if you wish to practise economy, to propose to the landlord considerably less than he demands; and you will generally find, if you have a talent for bargaining, that the rooms may be hired for somewhat less than the sum first stated. You must be careful, however, to leave no possibility of doubt as to the terms of the contract. Perhaps you assume that, as in taking a cab, a horse is always supplied without special stipulation, so in hiring a bedroom the bargain includes a bed and the necessary appurtenances. Such an assumption will not always be justified. The landlord may perhaps give you a bedstead without extra charge, but if he be uncorrupted by foreign notions, he will certainly not spontaneously supply you with bed-linen, pillows, blankets, and towels. On the contrary, he will assume that you carry all these articles with you, and if you do not, you must pay for them. This ancient custom has produced among Russians of the old school a kind of fastidiousness to which we are strangers. They strongly dislike using sheets, blankets, and towels which are in a certain sense public property, just as we should strongly object to putting on clothes which had been already worn by other people. And the feeling may be developed in people not Russian by birth. For my own part, I confess to having been conscious of a certain disagreeable feeling on returning in this respect to the usages of so-called civilised Europe. The inconvenience of carrying about the essential articles of bedroom furniture is by no means so great as might be supposed. Bedrooms in Russia are always heated during cold weather, so that one light blanket, which may be also used as a railway rug, is quite sufficient, whilst sheets, pillow-cases, and towels take up little space in a portmanteau. The most cumbrous object is the pillow, for air-cushions, having a disagreeable odour, are not well suited for the purpose. But Russians are accustomed to this encumbrance. In former days--as at the present time in those parts of the country where there are neither railways nor macadamised roads--people travelled in carts or carriages without springs and in these instruments of torture a huge pile of cushions or pillows is necessary to avoid contusions and dislocations. On the railways the jolts and shaking are not deadly enough to require such an antidote; but, even in unconservative Russia, customs outlive the conditions that created them; and at every railway-station you may see men and women carrying about their pillows with them as we carry wraps. A genuine Russian merchant who loves comfort and respects tradition may travel without a portmanteau, but he considers his pillow as an indispensable article de voyage. To return to the old-fashioned hotel. When you have completed the negotiations with the landlord, you will notice that, unless you have a servant with you, the waiter prepares to perform the duties of valet de chambre. Do not be surprised at his officiousness, which seems founded on the assumption that you are three-fourths paralysed. Formerly, every well-born Russian had a valet always in attendance, and never dreamed of doing for himself anything which could by any possibility be done for him. You notice that there is no bell in the room, and no mechanical means of communicating with the world below stairs. That is because the attendant is supposed to be always within call, and it is so much easier to shout than to get up and ring the bell. In the good old times all this was quite natural. The well-born Russian had commonly a superabundance of domestic serfs, and there was no reason why one or two of them should not accompany their master when his Honour undertook a journey. An additional person in the tarantass did not increase the expense, and considerably diminished the little unavoidable inconveniences of travel. But times have changed. In 1861 the domestic serfs were emancipated by Imperial ukaz. Free servants demand wages; and on railways or steamers a single ticket does not include an attendant. The present generation must therefore get through life with a more modest supply of valets, and must learn to do with its own hands much that was formerly performed by serf labour. Still, a gentleman brought up in the old conditions cannot be expected to dress himself without assistance, and accordingly the waiter remains in your room to act as valet. Perhaps, too, in the early morning you may learn in an unpleasant way that other parts of the old system are not yet extinct. You may hear, for instance, resounding along the corridors such an order as--"Petrusha! Petrusha! Stakan vody!" ("Little Peter, little Peter, a glass of water!") shouted in a stentorian voice that would startle the Seven Sleepers. When the toilet operations are completed, and you order tea--one always orders tea in Russia--you will be asked whether you have your own tea and sugar with you. If you are an experienced traveller you will be able to reply in the affirmative, for good tea can be bought only in certain well-known shops, and can rarely be found in hotels. A huge, steaming tea-urn, called a samovar--etymologically, a "self-boiler"--will be brought in, and you will make your tea according to your taste. The tumbler, you know of course, is to be used as a cup, and when using it you must be careful not to cauterise the points of your fingers. If you should happen to have anything eatable or drinkable in your travelling basket, you need not hesitate to take it out at once, for the waiter will not feel at all aggrieved or astonished at your doing nothing "for the good of the house." The twenty or twenty-five kopeks that you pay for the samovar--teapot, tumbler, saucer, spoon, and slop-basin being included under the generic term pribor--frees you from all corkage and similar dues. These and other remnants of old customs are now rapidly disappearing, and will, doubtless, in a very few years be things of the past--things to be picked up in out-of-the-way corners, and chronicled by social archaeology; but they are still to be found in towns not unknown to Western Europe. Many of these old customs, and especially the old method of travelling, may be studied in their pristine purity throughout a great part of the country. Though railway construction has been pushed forward with great energy during the last forty years, there are still vast regions where the ancient solitudes have never been disturbed by the shrill whistle of the locomotive, and roads have remained in their primitive condition. Even in the central provinces one may still travel hundreds of miles without ever encountering anything that recalls the name of Macadam. If popular rumour is to be trusted, there is somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland, by the side of a turnpike, a large stone bearing the following doggerel inscription: "If you had seen this road before it was made, You'd lift up your hands and bless General Wade." Any educated Englishman reading this strange announcement would naturally remark that the first line of the couplet contains a logical contradiction, probably of Hibernian origin; but I have often thought, during my wanderings in Russia, that the expression, if not logically justifiable, might for the sake of vulgar convenience be legalised by a Permissive Bill. The truth is that, as a Frenchman might say, "there are roads and roads"--roads made and roads unmade, roads artificial and roads natural. Now, in Russia, roads are nearly all of the unmade, natural kind, and are so conservative in their nature that they have at the present day precisely the same appearance as they had many centuries ago. They have thus for imaginative minds something of what is called "the charm of historical association." The only perceptible change that takes place in them during a series of generations is that the ruts shift their position. When these become so deep that fore-wheels can no longer fathom them, it becomes necessary to begin making a new pair of ruts to the right or left of the old ones; and as the roads are commonly of gigantic breadth, there is no difficulty in finding a place for the operation. How the old ones get filled up I cannot explain; but as I have rarely seen in any part of the country, except perhaps in the immediate vicinity of towns, a human being engaged in road repairing, I assume that beneficent Nature somehow accomplishes the task without human assistance, either by means of alluvial deposits, or by some other cosmical action only known to physical geographers. On the roads one occasionally encounters bridges; and here, again, I have discovered in Russia a key to the mysteries of Hibernian phraseology. An Irish member once declared to the House of Commons that the Church was "the bridge that separated the two great sections of the Irish people." As bridges commonly connect rather than separate, the metaphor was received with roars of laughter. If the honourable members who joined in the hilarious applause had travelled much in Russia, they would have been more moderate in their merriment; for in that country, despite the laudable activity of the modern system of local administration created in the sixties, bridges often act still as a barrier rather than a connecting link, and to cross a river by a bridge may still be what is termed in popular phrase "a tempting of Providence." The cautious driver will generally prefer to take to the water, if there is a ford within a reasonable distance, though both he and his human load may be obliged, in order to avoid getting wet feet, to assume undignified postures that would afford admirable material for the caricaturist. But this little bit of discomfort, even though the luggage should be soaked in the process of fording, is as nothing compared to the danger of crossing by the bridge. As I have no desire to harrow unnecessarily the feelings of the reader, I refrain from all description of ugly accidents, ending in bruises and fractures, and shall simply explain in a few words how a successful passage is effected. When it is possible to approach the bridge without sinking up to the knees in mud, it is better to avoid all risks by walking over and waiting for the vehicle on the other side; and when this is impossible, a preliminary survey is advisable. To your inquiries whether it is safe, your yamstchik (post-boy) is sure to reply, "Nitchevo!"--a word which, according to the dictionaries, means "nothing" but which has, in the mouths of the peasantry, a great variety of meanings, as I may explain at some future time. In the present case it may be roughly translated. "There is no danger." "Nitchevo, Barin, proyedem" ("There is no danger, sir; we shall get over"), he repeats. You may refer to the generally rotten appearance of the structure, and point in particular to the great holes sufficient to engulf half a post-horse. "Ne bos', Bog pomozhet" ("Do not fear. God will help"), replies coolly your phlegmatic Jehu. You may have your doubts as to whether in this irreligious age Providence will intervene specially for your benefit; but your yamstchik, who has more faith or fatalism, leaves you little time to solve the problem. Making hurriedly the sign of the cross, he gathers up his reins, waves his little whip in the air, and, shouting lustily, urges on his team. The operation is not wanting in excitement. First there is a short descent; then the horses plunge wildly through a zone of deep mud; next comes a fearful jolt, as the vehicle is jerked up on to the first planks; then the transverse planks, which are but loosely held in their places, rattle and rumble ominously, as the experienced, sagacious animals pick their way cautiously and gingerly among the dangerous holes and crevices; lastly, you plunge with a horrible jolt into a second mud zone, and finally regain terra firma, conscious of that pleasant sensation which a young officer may be supposed to feel after his first cavalry charge in real warfare. Of course here, as elsewhere, familiarity breeds indifference. When you have successfully crossed without serious accident a few hundred bridges of this kind you learn to be as cool and fatalistic as your yamstchik. The reader who has heard of the gigantic reforms that have been repeatedly imposed on Russia by a paternal Government may naturally be astonished to learn that the roads are still in such a disgraceful condition. But for this, as for everything else in the world, there is a good and sufficient reason. The country is still, comparatively speaking, thinly populated, and in many regions it is difficult, or practically impossible, to procure in sufficient quantity stone of any kind, and especially hard stone fit for road-making. Besides this, when roads are made, the severity of the climate renders it difficult to keep them in good repair. When a long journey has to be undertaken through a region in which there are no railways, there are several ways in which it may be effected. In former days, when time was of still less value than at present, many landed proprietors travelled with their own horses, and carried with them, in one or more capacious, lumbering vehicles, all that was required for the degree of civilisation which they had attained; and their requirements were often considerable. The grand seigneur, for instance, who spent the greater part of his life amidst the luxury of the court society, naturally took with him all the portable elements of civilisation. His baggage included, therefore, camp-beds, table-linen, silver plate, a batterie de cuisine, and a French cook. The pioneers and part of the commissariat force were sent on in advance, so that his Excellency found at each halting-place everything prepared for his arrival. The poor owner of a few dozen serfs dispensed, of course, with the elaborate commissariat department, and contented himself with such modest fare as could be packed in the holes and corners of a single tarantass. It will be well to explain here, parenthetically, what a tarantass is, for I shall often have occasion to use the word. It may be briefly defined as a phaeton without springs. The function of springs is imperfectly fulfilled by two parallel wooden bars, placed longitudinally, on which is fixed the body of the vehicle. It is commonly drawn by three horses--a strong, fast trotter in the shafts, flanked on each side by a light, loosely-attached horse that goes along at a gallop. The points of the shafts are connected by the duga, which looks like a gigantic, badly formed horseshoe rising high above the collar of the trotter. To the top of the duga is attached the bearing-rein, and underneath the highest part of it is fastened a big bell--in the southern provinces I found two, and sometimes even three bells--which, when the country is open and the atmosphere still, may be heard a mile off. The use of the bell is variously explained. Some say it is in order to frighten the wolves, and others that it is to avoid collisions on the narrow forest-paths. But neither of these explanations is entirely satisfactory. It is used chiefly in summer, when there is no danger of an attack from wolves; and the number of bells is greater in the south, where there are no forests. Perhaps the original intention was--I throw out the hint for the benefit of a certain school of archaeologists--to frighten away evil spirits; and the practice has been retained partly from unreasoning conservatism, and partly with a view to lessen the chances of collisions. As the roads are noiselessly soft, and the drivers not always vigilant, the dangers of collision are considerably diminished by the ceaseless peal. Altogether, the tarantass is well adapted to the conditions in which it is used. By the curious way in which the horses are harnessed it recalls the war-chariot of ancient times. The horse in the shafts is compelled by the bearing-rein to keep his head high and straight before him--though the movement of his ears shows plainly that he would very much like to put it somewhere farther away from the tongue of the bell--but the side horses gallop freely, turning their heads outwards in classical fashion. I believe that this position is assumed not from any sympathy on the part of these animals for the remains of classical art, but rather from the natural desire to keep a sharp eye on the driver. Every movement of his right hand they watch with close attention, and as soon as they discover any symptoms indicating an intention of using the whip they immediately show a desire to quicken the pace. Now that the reader has gained some idea of what a tarantass is, we may return to the modes of travelling through the regions which are not yet supplied with railways. However enduring and long-winded horses may be, they must be allowed sometimes, during a long journey, to rest and feed. Travelling long distances with one's own horses is therefore necessarily a slow operation, and is now quite antiquated. People who value their time prefer to make use of the Imperial Post organisation. On all the principal lines of communication there are regular post-stations, at from ten to twenty miles apart, where a certain number of horses and vehicles are kept for the convenience of travellers. To enjoy the privilege of this arrangement, one has to apply to the proper authorities for a podorozhnaya--a large sheet of paper stamped with the Imperial Eagle, and bearing the name of the recipient, the destination, and the number of horses to be supplied. In return, a small sum is paid for imaginary road-repairs; the rest of the sum is paid by instalments at the respective stations. Armed with this document you go to the post-station and demand the requisite number of horses. Three is the number generally used, but if you travel lightly and are indifferent to appearances, you may content yourself with a pair. The vehicle is a kind of tarantass, but not such as I have just described. The essentials in both are the same, but those which the Imperial Government provides resemble an enormous cradle on wheels rather than a phaeton. An armful of hay spread over the bottom of the wooden box is supposed to play the part of seats and cushions. You are expected to sit under the arched covering, and extend your legs so that the feet lie beneath the driver's seat; but it is advisable, unless the rain happens to be coming down in torrents, to get this covering unshipped, and travel without it. When used, it painfully curtails the little freedom of movement that you enjoy, and when you are shot upwards by some obstruction on the road it is apt to arrest your ascent by giving you a violent blow on the top of the head. It is to be hoped that you are in no hurry to start, otherwise your patience may be sorely tried. The horses, when at last produced, may seem to you the most miserable screws that it was ever your misfortune to behold; but you had better refrain from expressing your feelings, for if you use violent, uncomplimentary language, it may turn out that you have been guilty of gross calumny. I have seen many a team composed of animals which a third-class London costermonger would have spurned, and in which it was barely possible to recognise the equine form, do their duty in highly creditable style, and go along at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, under no stronger incentive then the voice of the yamstchik. Indeed, the capabilities of these lean, slouching, ungainly quadrupeds are often astounding when they are under the guidance of a man who knows how to drive them. Though such a man commonly carries a little harmless whip, he rarely uses it except by waving it horizontally in the air. His incitements are all oral. He talks to his cattle as he would to animals of his own species--now encouraging them by tender, caressing epithets, and now launching at them expressions of indignant scorn. At one moment they are his "little doves," and at the next they have been transformed into "cursed hounds." How far they understand and appreciate this curious mixture of endearing cajolery and contemptuous abuse it is difficult to say, but there is no doubt that it somehow has upon them a strange and powerful influence. Any one who undertakes a journey of this kind should possess a well-knit, muscular frame and good tough sinews, capable of supporting an unlimited amount of jolting and shaking; at the same time he should be well inured to all the hardships and discomforts incidental to what is vaguely termed "roughing it." When he wishes to sleep in a post-station, he will find nothing softer than a wooden bench, unless he can induce the keeper to put for him on the floor a bundle of hay, which is perhaps softer, but on the whole more disagreeable than the deal board. Sometimes he will not get even the wooden bench, for in ordinary post-stations there is but one room for travellers, and the two benches--there are rarely more--may be already occupied. When he does obtain a bench, and succeeds in falling asleep, he must not be astonished if he is disturbed once or twice during the night by people who use the apartment as a waiting-room whilst the post-horses are being changed. These passers-by may even order a samovar, and drink tea, chat, laugh, smoke, and make themselves otherwise disagreeable, utterly regardless of the sleepers. Then there are the other intruders, smaller in size but equally objectionable, of which I have already spoken when describing the steamers on the Don. Regarding them I desire to give merely one word of advice: As you will have abundant occupation in the work of self-defence, learn to distinguish between belligerents and neutrals, and follow the simple principle of international law, that neutrals should not be molested. They may be very ugly, but ugliness does not justify assassination. If, for instance, you should happen in awaking to notice a few black or brown beetles running about your pillow, restrain your murderous hand! If you kill them you commit an act of unnecessary bloodshed; for though they may playfully scamper around you, they will do you no bodily harm. Another requisite for a journey in unfrequented districts is a knowledge of the language. It is popularly supposed that if you are familiar with French and German you may travel anywhere in Russia. So far as the great cities and chief lines of communication are concerned, this may be true, but beyond that it is a delusion. The Russian has not, any more than the West-European, received from Nature the gift of tongues. Educated Russians often speak one or two foreign languages fluently, but the peasants know no language but their own, and it is with the peasantry that one comes in contact. And to converse freely with the peasant requires a considerable familiarity with the language--far more than is required for simply reading a book. Though there are few provincialisms, and all classes of the people use the same words--except the words of foreign origin, which are used only by the upper classes--the peasant always speaks in a more laconic and more idiomatic way than the educated man. In the winter months travelling is in some respects pleasanter than in summer, for snow and frost are great macadamisers. If the snow falls evenly, there is for some time the most delightful road that can be imagined. No jolts, no shaking, but a smooth, gliding motion, like that of a boat in calm water, and the horses gallop along as if totally unconscious of the sledge behind them. Unfortunately, this happy state of things does not last all through the winter. The road soon gets cut up, and deep transverse furrows (ukhaby) are formed. How these furrows come into existence I have never been able clearly to comprehend, though I have often heard the phenomenon explained by men who imagined they understood it. Whatever the cause and mode of formation may be, certain it is that little hills and valleys do get formed, and the sledge, as it crosses over them, bobs up and down like a boat in a chopping sea, with this important difference, that the boat falls into a yielding liquid, whereas the sledge falls upon a solid substance, unyielding and unelastic. The shaking and jolting which result may readily be imagined. There are other discomforts, too, in winter travelling. So long as the air is perfectly still, the cold may be very intense without being disagreeable; but if a strong head wind is blowing, and the thermometer ever so many degrees below zero, driving in an open sledge is a very disagreeable operation, and noses may get frostbitten without their owners perceiving the fact in time to take preventive measures. Then why not take covered sledges on such occasions? For the simple reason that they are not to be had; and if they could be procured, it would be well to avoid using them, for they are apt to produce something very like seasickness. Besides this, when the sledge gets overturned, it is pleasanter to be shot out on to the clean, refreshing snow than to be buried ignominiously under a pile of miscellaneous baggage. The chief requisite for winter travelling in these icy regions is a plentiful supply of warm furs. An Englishman is very apt to be imprudent in this respect, and to trust too much to his natural power of resisting cold. To a certain extent this confidence is justifiable, for an Englishman often feels quite comfortable in an ordinary great coat when his Russian friends consider it necessary to envelop themselves in furs of the warmest kind; but it may be carried too far, in which case severe punishment is sure to follow, as I once learned by experience. I may relate the incident as a warning to others: One day in mid-winter I started from Novgorod, with the intention of visiting some friends at a cavalry barracks situated about ten miles from the town. As the sun was shining brightly, and the distance to be traversed was short, I considered that a light fur and a bashlyk--a cloth hood which protects the ears--would be quite sufficient to keep out the cold, and foolishly disregarded the warnings of a Russian friend who happened to call as I was about to start. Our route lay along the river due northward, right in the teeth of a strong north wind. A wintry north wind is always and everywhere a disagreeable enemy to face; let the reader try to imagine what it is when the Fahrenheit thermometer is at 30 degrees below zero--or rather let him refrain from such an attempt, for the sensation produced cannot be imagined by those who have not experienced it. Of course I ought to have turned back--at least, as soon as a sensation of faintness warned me that the circulation was being seriously impeded--but I did not wish to confess my imprudence to the friend who accompanied me. When we had driven about three-fourths of the way we met a peasant-woman, who gesticulated violently, and shouted something to us as we passed. I did not hear what she said, but my friend turned to me and said in an alarming tone--we had been speaking German--"Mein Gott! Ihre Nase ist abgefroren!" Now the word "abgefroren," as the reader will understand, seemed to indicate that my nose was frozen off, so I put up my hand in some alarm to discover whether I had inadvertently lost the whole or part of the member referred to. It was still in situ and entire, but as hard and insensible as a bit of wood. "You may still save it," said my companion, "if you get out at once and rub it vigorously with snow." I got out as directed, but was too faint to do anything vigorously. My fur cloak flew open, the cold seemed to grasp me in the region of the heart, and I fell insensible. How long I remained unconscious I know not. When I awoke I found myself in a strange room, surrounded by dragoon officers in uniform, and the first words I heard were, "He is out of danger now, but he will have a fever." These words were spoken, as I afterwards discovered, by a very competent surgeon; but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The promised fever never came. The only bad consequences were that for some days my right hand remained stiff, and for a week or two I had to conceal my nose from public view. If this little incident justifies me in drawing a general conclusion, I should say that exposure to extreme cold is an almost painless form of death; but that the process of being resuscitated is very painful indeed--so painful, that the patient may be excused for momentarily regretting that officious people prevented the temporary insensibility from becoming "the sleep that knows no waking." Between the alternate reigns of winter and summer there is always a short interregnum, during which travelling in Russia by road is almost impossible. Woe to the ill-fated mortal who has to make a long road-journey immediately after the winter snow has melted; or, worse still, at the beginning of winter, when the autumn mud has been petrified by the frost, and not yet levelled by the snow! At all seasons the monotony of a journey is pretty sure to be broken by little unforeseen episodes of a more or less disagreeable kind. An axle breaks, or a wheel comes off, or there is a difficulty in procuring horses. As an illustration of the graver episodes which may occur, I shall make here a quotation from my note-book: Early in the morning we arrived at Maikop, a small town commanding the entrance to one of the valleys which run up towards the main range of the Caucasus. On alighting at the post-station, we at once ordered horses for the next stage, and received the laconic reply, "There are no horses." "And when will there be some?" "To-morrow!" This last reply we took for a piece of playful exaggeration, and demanded the book in which, according to law, the departure of horses is duly inscribed, and from which it is easy to calculate when the first team should be ready to start. A short calculation proved that we ought to get horses by four o'clock in the afternoon, so we showed the station-keeper various documents signed by the Minister of the Interior and other influential personages, and advised him to avoid all contravention of the postal regulations. These documents, which proved that we enjoyed the special protection of the authorities, had generally been of great service to us in our dealings with rascally station-keepers; but this station-keeper was not one of the ordinary type. He was a Cossack, of herculean proportions, with a bullet-shaped head, short-cropped bristly hair, shaggy eyebrows, an enormous pendent moustache, a defiant air, and a peculiar expression of countenance which plainly indicated "an ugly customer." Though it was still early in the day, he had evidently already imbibed a considerable quantity of alcohol, and his whole demeanour showed clearly enough that he was not of those who are "pleasant in their liquor." After glancing superciliously at the documents, as if to intimate he could read them were he so disposed, he threw them down on the table, and, thrusting his gigantic paws into his capacious trouser-pockets, remarked slowly and decisively, in something deeper than a double-bass voice, "You'll have horses to-morrow morning." Wishing to avoid a quarrel we tried to hire horses in the village, and when our efforts in that direction proved fruitless, we applied to the head of the rural police. He came and used all his influence with the refractory station-keeper, but in vain. Hercules was not in a mood to listen to officials any more than to ordinary mortals. At last, after considerable trouble to himself, our friend of the police contrived to find horses for us, and we contented ourselves with entering an account of the circumstances in the Complaint Book, but our difficulties were by no means at an end. As soon as Hercules perceived that we had obtained horses without his assistance, and that he had thereby lost his opportunity of blackmailing us, he offered us one of his own teams, and insisted on detaining us until we should cancel the complaint against him. This we refused to do, and our relations with him became what is called in diplomatic language "extremement tendues." Again we had to apply to the police. My friend mounted guard over the baggage whilst I went to the police office. I was not long absent, but I found, on my return, that important events had taken place in the interval. A crowd had collected round the post-station, and on the steps stood the keeper and his post-boys, declaring that the traveller inside had attempted to shoot them! I rushed in and soon perceived, by the smell of gunpowder, that firearms had been used, but found no trace of casualties. My friend was tramping up and down the little room, and evidently for the moment there was an armistice. In a very short time the local authorities had assembled, a candle had been lit, two armed Cossacks stood as sentries at the door, and the preliminary investigation had begun. The Chief of Police sat at the table and wrote rapidly on a sheet of foolscap. The investigation showed that two shots had been fired from a revolver, and two bullets were found imbedded in the wall. All those who had been present, and some who knew nothing of the incident except by hearsay, were duly examined. Our opponents always assumed that my friend had been the assailant, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, and more than once the words pokyshenie na ubiistvo (attempt to murder) were pronounced. Things looked very black indeed. We had the prospect of being detained for days and weeks in the miserable place, till the insatiable demon of official formality had been propitiated. And then? When things were thus at their blackest they suddenly took an unexpected turn, and the deus ex machina appeared precisely at the right moment, just as if we had all been puppets in a sensation novel. There was the usual momentary silence, and then, mixed with the sound of an approaching tarantass, a confused murmur: "There he is! He is coming!" The "he" thus vaguely and mysteriously indicated turned out to be an official of the judicial administration, who had reason to visit the village for an entirely different affair. As soon as he had been told briefly what had happened he took the matter in hand and showed himself equal to the occasion. Unlike the majority of Russian officials he disliked lengthy procedure, and succeeded in making the case quite clear in a very short time. There had been, he perceived, no attempt to murder or anything of the kind. The station-keeper and his two post-boys, who had no right to be in the traveller's room, had entered with threatening mien, and when they refused to retire peaceably, my friend had fired two shots in order to frighten them and bring assistance. The falsity of their statement that he had fired at them as they entered the room was proved by the fact that the bullets were lodged near the ceiling in the wall farthest away from the door. I must confess that I was agreeably surprised by this unexpected turn of affairs. The conclusions arrived at were nothing more than a simple statement of what had taken place; but I was surprised at the fact that a man who was at once a lawyer and a Russian official should have been able to take such a plain, commonsense view of the case. Before midnight we were once more free men, driving rapidly in the clear moonlight to the next station, under the escort of a fully-armed Circassian Cossack; but the idea that we might have been detained for weeks in that miserable place haunted us like a nightmare. CHAPTER II IN THE NORTHERN FORESTS Bird's-eye View of Russia--The Northern Forests--Purpose of my Journey--Negotiations--The Road--A Village--A Peasant's House--Vapour-Baths--Curious Custom--Arrival. There are many ways of describing a country that one has visited. The simplest and most common method is to give a chronological account of the journey; and this is perhaps the best way when the journey does not extend over more than a few weeks. But it cannot be conveniently employed in the case of a residence of many years. Did I adopt it, I should very soon exhaust the reader's patience. I should have to take him with me to a secluded village, and make him wait for me till I had learned to speak the language. Thence he would have to accompany me to a provincial town, and spend months in a public office, whilst I endeavoured to master the mysteries of local self-government. After this he would have to spend two years with me in a big library, where I studied the history and literature of the country. And so on, and so on. Even my journeys would prove tedious to him, as they often were to myself, for he would have to drive with me many a score of weary miles, where even the most zealous diary-writer would find nothing to record beyond the names of the post-stations. It will be well for me, then, to avoid the strictly chronological method, and confine myself to a description of the more striking objects and incidents that came under my notice. The knowledge which I derived from books will help me to supply a running commentary on what I happened to see and hear. Instead of beginning in the usual way with St. Petersburg, I prefer for many reasons to leave the description of the capital till some future time, and plunge at once into the great northern forest region. If it were possible to get a bird's-eye view of European Russia, the spectator would perceive that the country is composed of two halves widely differing from each other in character. The northern half is a land of forest and morass, plentifully supplied with water in the form of rivers, lakes, and marshes, and broken up by numerous patches of cultivation. The southern half is, as it were, the other side of the pattern--an immense expanse of rich, arable land, broken up by occasional patches of sand or forest. The imaginary undulating line separating those two regions starts from the western frontier about the 50th parallel of latitude, and runs in a northeasterly direction till it enters the Ural range at about 56 degrees N.L. Well do I remember my first experience of travel in the northern region, and the weeks of voluntary exile which formed the goal of the journey. It was in the summer of 1870. My reason for undertaking the journey was this: a few months of life in St. Petersburg had fully convinced me that the Russian language is one of those things which can only be acquired by practice, and that even a person of antediluvian longevity might spend all his life in that city without learning to express himself fluently in the vernacular--especially if he has the misfortune of being able to speak English, French, and German. With his friends and associates he speaks French or English. German serves as a medium of communication with waiters, shop keepers, and other people of that class. It is only with isvoshtchiki--the drivers of the little open droshkis which fulfil the function of cabs--that he is obliged to use the native tongue, and with them a very limited vocabulary suffices. The ordinal numerals and four short, easily-acquired expressions--poshol (go on), na pravo (to the right), na lyevo (to the left), and stoi (stop)--are all that is required. Whilst I was considering how I could get beyond the sphere of West-European languages, a friend came to my assistance, and suggested that I should go to his estate in the province of Novgorod, where I should find an intelligent, amiable parish priest, quite innocent of any linguistic acquirements. This proposal I at once adopted, and accordingly found myself one morning at a small station of the Moscow Railway, endeavouring to explain to a peasant in sheep's clothing that I wished to be conveyed to Ivanofka, the village where my future teacher lived. At that time I still spoke Russian in a very fragmentary and confused way--pretty much as Spanish cows are popularly supposed to speak French. My first remark therefore being literally interpreted, was--"Ivanofka. Horses. You can?" The point of interrogation was expressed by a simultaneous raising of the voice and the eyebrows. "Ivanofka?" cried the peasant, in an interrogatory tone of voice. In Russia, as in other countries, the peasantry when speaking with strangers like to repeat questions, apparently for the purpose of gaining time. "Ivanofka," I replied. "Now?" "Now!" After some reflection the peasant nodded and said something which I did not understand, but which I assumed to mean that he was open to consider proposals for transporting me to my destination. "Roubles. How many?" To judge by the knitting of the brows and the scratching of the head, I should say that that question gave occasion to a very abstruse mathematical calculation. Gradually the look of concentrated attention gave place to an expression such as children assume when they endeavour to get a parental decision reversed by means of coaxing. Then came a stream of soft words which were to me utterly unintelligible. I must not weary the reader with a detailed account of the succeeding negotiations, which were conducted with extreme diplomatic caution on both sides, as if a cession of territory or the payment of a war indemnity had been the subject of discussion. Three times he drove away and three times returned. Each time he abated his pretensions, and each time I slightly increased my offer. At last, when I began to fear that he had finally taken his departure and had left me to my own devices, he re-entered the room and took up my baggage, indicating thereby that he agreed to my last offer. The sum agreed upon would have been, under ordinary circumstances, more than sufficient, but before proceeding far I discovered that the circumstances were by no means ordinary, and I began to understand the pantomimic gesticulation which had puzzled me during the negotiations. Heavy rain had fallen without interruption for several days, and now the track on which we were travelling could not, without poetical license, be described as a road. In some parts it resembled a water-course, in others a quagmire, and at least during the first half of the journey I was constantly reminded of that stage in the work of creation when the water was not yet separated from the dry land. During the few moments when the work of keeping my balance and preventing my baggage from being lost did not engross all my attention, I speculated on the possibility of inventing a boat-carriage, to be drawn by some amphibious quadruped. Fortunately our two lean, wiry little horses did not object to being used as aquatic animals. They took the water bravely, and plunged through the mud in gallant style. The telega in which we were seated--a four-wheeled skeleton cart--did not submit to the ill-treatment so silently. It creaked out its remonstrances and entreaties, and at the more difficult spots threatened to go to pieces; but its owner understood its character and capabilities, and paid no attention to its ominous threats. Once, indeed, a wheel came off, but it was soon fished out of the mud and replaced, and no further casualty occurred. The horses did their work so well that when about midday we arrived at a village, I could not refuse to let them have some rest and refreshment--all the more as my own thoughts had begun to turn in that direction. The village, like villages in that part of the country generally, consisted of two long parallel rows of wooden houses. The road--if a stratum of deep mud can be called by that name--formed the intervening space. All the houses turned their gables to the passerby, and some of them had pretensions to architectural decoration in the form of rude perforated woodwork. Between the houses, and in a line with them, were great wooden gates and high wooden fences, separating the courtyards from the road. Into one of these yards, near the farther end of the village, our horses turned of their own accord. "An inn?" I said, in an interrogative tone. The driver shook his head and said something, in which I detected the word "friend." Evidently there was no hostelry for man and beast in the village, and the driver was using a friend's house for the purpose. The yard was flanked on the one side by an open shed, containing rude agricultural implements which might throw some light on the agriculture of the primitive Aryans, and on the other side by the dwelling-house and stable. Both the house and stable were built of logs, nearly cylindrical in form, and placed in horizontal tiers. Two of the strongest of human motives, hunger and curiosity, impelled me to enter the house at once. Without waiting for an invitation, I went up to the door--half protected against the winter snows by a small open portico--and unceremoniously walked in. The first apartment was empty, but I noticed a low door in the wall to the left, and passing through this, entered the principal room. As the scene was new to me, I noted the principal objects. In the wall before me were two small square windows looking out upon the road, and in the corner to the right, nearer to the ceiling than to the floor, was a little triangular shelf, on which stood a religious picture. Before the picture hung a curious oil lamp. In the corner to the left of the door was a gigantic stove, built of brick, and whitewashed. From the top of the stove to the wall on the right stretched what might be called an enormous shelf, six or eight feet in breadth. This is the so-called palati, as I afterwards discovered, and serves as a bed for part of the family. The furniture consisted of a long wooden bench attached to the wall on the right, a big, heavy, deal table, and a few wooden stools. Whilst I was leisurely surveying these objects, I heard a noise on the top of the stove, and, looking up, perceived a human face, with long hair parted in the middle, and a full yellow beard. I was considerably astonished by this apparition, for the air in the room was stifling, and I had some difficulty in believing that any created being--except perhaps a salamander or a negro--could exist in such a position. I looked hard to convince myself that I was not the victim of a delusion. As I stared, the head nodded slowly and pronounced the customary form of greeting. I returned the greeting slowly, wondering what was to come next. "Ill, very ill!" sighed the head. "I'm not astonished at that," I remarked, in an "aside." "If I were lying on the stove as you are I should be very ill too." "Hot, very hot?" I remarked, interrogatively. "Nitchevo"--that is to say, "not particularly." This remark astonished me all the more as I noticed that the body to which the head belonged was enveloped in a sheep-skin! After living some time in Russia I was no longer surprised by such incidents, for I soon discovered that the Russian peasant has a marvellous power of bearing extreme heat as well as extreme cold. When a coachman takes his master or mistress to the theatre or to a party, he never thinks of going home and returning at an appointed time. Hour after hour he sits placidly on the box, and though the cold be of an intensity such as is never experienced in our temperate climate, he can sleep as tranquilly as the lazzaroni at midday in Naples. In that respect the Russian peasant seems to be first-cousin to the polar bear, but, unlike the animals of the Arctic regions, he is not at all incommoded by excessive heat. On the contrary, he likes it when he can get it, and never omits an opportunity of laying in a reserve supply of caloric. He even delights in rapid transitions from one extreme to the other, as is amply proved by a curious custom which deserves to be recorded. The reader must know that in the life of the Russian peasantry the weekly vapour-bath plays a most important part. It has even a certain religious signification, for no good orthodox peasant would dare to enter a church after being soiled by certain kinds of pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of the bath. In the weekly arrangements it forms the occupation for Saturday afternoon, and care is taken to avoid thereafter all pollution until after the morning service on Sunday. Many villages possess a public or communal bath of the most primitive construction, but in some parts of the country--I am not sure how far the practice extends--the peasants take their vapour-bath in the household oven in which the bread is baked! In all cases the operation is pushed to the extreme limit of human endurance--far beyond the utmost limit that can be endured by those who have not been accustomed to it from childhood. For my own part, I only made the experiment once; and when I informed my attendant that my life was in danger from congestion of the brain, he laughed outright, and told me that the operation had only begun. Most astounding of all--and this brings me to the fact which led me into this digression--the peasants in winter often rush out of the bath and roll themselves in the snow! This aptly illustrates a common Russian proverb, which says that what is health to the Russian is death to the German. Cold water, as well as hot vapour, is sometimes used as a means of purification. In the villages the old pagan habit of masquerading in absurd costumes at certain seasons--as is done during the carnival in Roman Catholic countries with the approval, or at least connivance, of the Church--still survives; but it is regarded as not altogether sinless. He who uses such disguises places himself to a certain extent under the influence of the Evil One, thereby putting his soul in jeopardy; and to free himself from this danger he has to purify himself in the following way: When the annual mid-winter ceremony of blessing the waters is performed, by breaking a hole in the ice and immersing a cross with certain religious rites, he should plunge into the hole as soon as possible after the ceremony. I remember once at Yaroslavl, on the Volga, two young peasants successfully accomplished this feat--though the police have orders to prevent it--and escaped, apparently without evil consequences, though the Fahrenheit thermometer was below zero. How far the custom has really a purifying influence, is a question which must be left to theologians; but even an ordinary mortal can understand that, if it be regarded as a penance, it must have a certain deterrent effect. The man who foresees the necessity of undergoing this severe penance will think twice before putting on a disguise. So at least it must have been in the good old times; but in these degenerate days--among the Russian peasantry as elsewhere--the fear of the Devil, which was formerly, if not the beginning, at least one of the essential elements, of wisdom, has greatly decreased. Many a young peasant will now thoughtlessly disguise himself, and when the consecration of the water is performed, will stand and look on passively like an ordinary spectator! It would seem that the Devil, like his enemy the Pope, is destined to lose gradually his temporal power. But all this time I am neglecting my new acquaintance on the top of the stove. In reality I did not neglect him, but listened most attentively to every word of the long tale that he recited. What it was all about I could only vaguely guess, for I did not understand more than ten per cent of the words used, but I assumed from the tone and gestures that he was relating to me all the incidents and symptoms of his illness. And a very severe illness it must have been, for it requires a very considerable amount of physical suffering to make the patient Russian peasant groan. Before he had finished his tale a woman entered, apparently his wife. To her I explained that I had a strong desire to eat and drink, and that I wished to know what she would give me. By a good deal of laborious explanation I was made to understand that I could have eggs, black bread, and milk, and we agreed that there should be a division of labour: my hostess should prepare the samovar for boiling water, whilst I should fry the eggs to my own satisfaction. In a few minutes the repast was ready, and, though not very delicate, was highly acceptable. The tea and sugar I had of course brought with me; the eggs were not very highly flavoured; and the black rye-bread, strongly intermixed with sand, could be eaten by a peculiar and easily-acquired method of mastication, in which the upper molars are never allowed to touch those of the lower jaw. In this way the grating of the sand between the teeth is avoided. Eggs, black bread, milk, and tea--these formed my ordinary articles of food during all my wanderings in Northern Russia. Occasionally potatoes could be got, and afforded the possibility of varying the bill of fare. The favourite materials employed in the native cookery are sour cabbage, cucumbers, and kvass--a kind of very small beer made from black bread. None of these can be recommended to the traveller who is not already accustomed to them. The remainder of the journey was accomplished at a rather more rapid pace than the preceding part, for the road was decidedly better, though it was traversed by numerous half-buried roots, which produced violent jolts. From the conversation of the driver I gathered that wolves, bears, and elks were found in the forest through which we were passing. The sun had long since set when we reached our destination, and I found to my dismay that the priest's house was closed for the night. To rouse the reverend personage from his slumbers, and endeavour to explain to him with my limited vocabulary the object of my visit, was not to be thought of. On the other hand, there was no inn of any kind in the vicinity. When I consulted the driver as to what was to be done, he meditated for a little, and then pointed to a large house at some distance where there were still lights. It turned out to be the country-house of the gentleman who had advised me to undertake the journey, and here, after a short explanation, though the owner was not at home, I was hospitably received. It had been my intention to live in the priest's house, but a short interview with him on the following day convinced me that that part of my plan could not be carried out. The preliminary objections that I should find but poor fare in his humble household, and much more of the same kind, were at once put aside by my assurance, made partly by pantomime, that, as an old traveller, I was well accustomed to simple fare, and could always accommodate myself to the habits of people among whom my lot happened to be cast. But there was a more serious difficulty. The priest's family had, as is generally the case with priests' families, been rapidly increasing during the last few years, and his house had not been growing with equal rapidity. The natural consequence of this was that he had not a room or a bed to spare. The little room which he had formerly kept for occasional visitors was now occupied by his eldest daughter, who had returned from a "school for the daughters of the clergy," where she had been for the last two years. Under these circumstances, I was constrained to accept the kind proposal made to me by the representative of my absent friend, that I should take up my quarters in one of the numerous unoccupied rooms in the manor-house. This arrangement, I was reminded, would not at all interfere with my proposed studies, for the priest lived close at hand, and I might spend with him as much time as I liked. And now let me introduce the reader to my reverend teacher and one or two other personages whose acquaintance I made during my voluntary exile. CHAPTER III VOLUNTARY EXILE Ivanofka--History of the Place--The Steward of the Estate--Slav and Teutonic Natures--A German's View of the Emancipation--Justices of the Peace--New School of Morals--The Russian Language--Linguistic Talent of the Russians--My Teacher--A Big Dose of Current History. This village, Ivanofka by name, in which I proposed to spend some months, was rather more picturesque than villages in these northern forests commonly are. The peasants' huts, built on both sides of a straight road, were colourless enough, and the big church, with its five pear-shaped cupolas rising out of the bright green roof and its ugly belfry in the Renaissance style, was not by any means beautiful in itself; but when seen from a little distance, especially in the soft evening twilight, the whole might have been made the subject of a very pleasing picture. From the point that a landscape-painter would naturally have chosen, the foreground was formed by a meadow, through which flowed sluggishly a meandering stream. On a bit of rising ground to the right, and half concealed by an intervening cluster of old rich-coloured pines, stood the manor-house--a big, box-shaped, whitewashed building, with a verandah in front, overlooking a small plot that might some day become a flower-garden. To the left of this stood the village, the houses grouping prettily with the big church, and a little farther in this direction was an avenue of graceful birches. On the extreme left were fields, bounded by a dark border of fir-trees. Could the spectator have raised himself a few hundred feet from the ground, he would have seen that there were fields beyond the village, and that the whole of this agricultural oasis was imbedded in a forest stretching in all directions as far as the eye could reach. The history of the place may be told in a few words. In former times the estate, including the village and all its inhabitants, had belonged to a monastery, but when, in 1764, the Church lands were secularised by Catherine, it became the property of the State. Some years afterwards the Empress granted it, with the serfs and everything else which it contained, to an old general who had distinguished himself in the Turkish wars. From that time it had remained in the K---- family. Some time between the years 1820 and 1840 the big church and the mansion-house had been built by the actual possessor's father, who loved country life, and devoted a large part of his time and energies to the management of his estate. His son, on the contrary, preferred St. Petersburg to the country, served in one of the public offices, loved passionately French plays and other products of urban civilisation, and left the entire management of the property to a German steward, popularly known as Karl Karl'itch, whom I shall introduce to the reader presently. The village annals contained no important events, except bad harvests, cattle-plagues, and destructive fires, with which the inhabitants seem to have been periodically visited from time immemorial. If good harvests were ever experienced, they must have faded from the popular recollection. Then there were certain ancient traditions which might have been lessened in bulk and improved in quality by being subjected to searching historical criticism. More than once, for instance, a leshie, or wood-sprite, had been seen in the neighbourhood; and in several households the domovoi, or brownie, had been known to play strange pranks until he was properly propitiated. And as a set-off against these manifestations of evil powers, there were well-authenticated stories about a miracle-working image that had mysteriously appeared on the branch of a tree, and about numerous miraculous cures that had been effected by means of pilgrimages to holy shrines. But it is time to introduce the principal personages of this little community. Of these, by far the most important was Karl Karl'itch, the steward. First of all I ought, perhaps, to explain how Karl Schmidt, the son of a well-to-do Bauer in the Prussian village of Schonhausen, became Karl Karl'itch, the principal personage in the Russian village of Ivanofka. About the time of the Crimean War many of the Russian landed proprietors had become alive to the necessity of improving the primitive, traditional methods of agriculture, and sought for this purpose German stewards for their estates. Among these proprietors was the owner of Ivanofka. Through the medium of a friend in Berlin he succeeded in engaging for a moderate salary a young man who had just finished his studies in one of the German schools of agriculture--the institution at Hohenheim, if my memory does not deceive me. This young man had arrived in Russia as plain Karl Schmidt, but his name was soon transformed into Karl Karl'itch, not from any desire of his own, but in accordance with a curious Russian custom. In Russia one usually calls a man not by his family name, but by his Christian name and patronymic--the latter being formed from the name of his father. Thus, if a man's name is Nicholas, and his father's Christian name is--or was--Ivan, you address him as Nikolai Ivanovitch (pronounced Ivan'itch); and if this man should happen to have a sister called Mary, you will address her--even though she should be married--as Marya Ivanovna (pronounced Ivanna). Immediately on his arrival young Schmidt had set himself vigorously to reorganise the estate and improve the method of agriculture. Some ploughs, harrows, and other implements which had been imported at a former period were dragged out of the obscurity in which they had lain for several years, and an attempt was made to farm on scientific principles. The attempt was far from being completely successful, for the serfs--this was before the Emancipation--could not be made to work like regularly trained German labourers. In spite of all admonitions, threats, and punishments, they persisted in working slowly, listlessly, inaccurately, and occasionally they broke the new instruments from carelessness or some more culpable motive. Karl Karl'itch was not naturally a hard-hearted man, but he was very rigid in his notions of duty, and could be cruelly severe when his orders were not executed with an accuracy and punctuality that seemed to the Russian rustic mind mere useless pedantry. The serfs did not offer him any open opposition, and were always obsequiously respectful in their demeanour towards him, but they invariably frustrated his plans by their carelessness and stolid, passive resistance. Thus arose that silent conflict and that smouldering mutual enmity which almost always result from the contact of the Teuton with the Slav. The serfs instinctively regretted the good old times, when they lived under the rough-and-ready patriarchal rule of their masters, assisted by a native "burmister," or overseer, who was one of themselves. The burmister had not always been honest in his dealings with them, and the master had often, when in anger, ordered severe punishments to be inflicted; but the burmister had not attempted to make them change their old habits, and had shut his eyes to many little sins of omission and commission, whilst the master was always ready to assist them in difficulties, and commonly treated them in a kindly, familiar way. As the old Russian proverb has it, "Where danger is, there too is kindly forgiveness." Karl Karl'itch, on the contrary, was the personification of uncompassionate, inflexible law. Blind rage and compassionate kindliness were alike foreign to his system of government. If he had any feeling towards the serfs, it was one of chronic contempt. The word durak (blockhead) was constantly on his lips, and when any bit of work was well done, he took it as a matter of course, and never thought of giving a word of approval or encouragement. When it became evident, in 1859, that the emancipation of the serfs was at hand, Karl Karl'itch confidently predicted that the country would inevitably go to ruin. He knew by experience that the peasants were lazy and improvident, even when they lived under the tutelage of a master, and with the fear of the rod before their eyes. What would they become when this guidance and salutary restraint should be removed? The prospect raised terrible forebodings in the mind of the worthy steward, who had his employer's interests really at heart; and these forebodings were considerably increased and intensified when he learned that the peasants were to receive by law the land which they occupied on sufferance, and which comprised about a half of the whole arable land of the estate. This arrangement he declared to be a dangerous and unjustifiable infraction of the sacred rights of property, which savoured strongly of communism, and could have but one practical result: the emancipated peasants would live by the cultivation of their own land, and would not consent on any terms to work for their former master. In the few months which immediately followed the publication of the Emancipation Edict in 1861, Karl Karl'itch found much to confirm his most gloomy apprehensions. The peasants showed themselves dissatisfied with the privileges conferred upon them, and sought to evade the corresponding duties imposed on them by the new law. In vain he endeavoured, by exhortations, promises, and threats, to get the most necessary part of the field-work done, and showed the peasants the provision of the law enjoining them to obey and work as of old until some new arrangement should be made. To all his appeals they replied that, having been freed by the Tsar, they were no longer obliged to work for their former master; and he was at last forced to appeal to the authorities. This step had a certain effect, but the field-work was executed that year even worse than usual, and the harvest suffered in consequence. Since that time things had gradually improved. The peasants had discovered that they could not support themselves and pay their taxes from the land ceded to them, and had accordingly consented to till the proprietor's fields for a moderate recompense. "These last two years," said Karl Karl'itch to me, with an air of honest self-satisfaction, "I have been able, after paying all expenses, to transmit little sums to the young master in St. Petersburg. It was certainly not much, but it shows that things are better than they were. Still, it is hard, uphill work. The peasants have not been improved by liberty. They now work less and drink more than they did in the times of serfage, and if you say a word to them they'll go away, and not work for you at all." Here Karl Karl'itch indemnified himself for his recent self-control in the presence of his workers by using a series of the strongest epithets which the combined languages of his native and of his adopted country could supply. "But laziness and drunkenness are not their only faults. They let their cattle wander into our fields, and never lose an opportunity of stealing firewood from the forest." "But you have now for such matters the rural justices of the peace," I ventured to suggest. "The justices of the peace!" . . . Here Karl Karl'itch used an inelegant expression, which showed plainly that he was no unqualified admirer of the new judicial institutions. "What is the use of applying to the justices? The nearest one lives six miles off, and when I go to him he evidently tries to make me lose as much time as possible. I am sure to lose nearly a whole day, and at the end of it I may find that I have got nothing for my pains. These justices always try to find some excuse for the peasant, and when they do condemn, by way of exception, the affair does not end there. There is pretty sure to be a pettifogging practitioner prowling about--some rascally scribe who has been dismissed from the public offices for pilfering and extorting too openly--and he is always ready to whisper to the peasant that he should appeal. The peasant knows that the decision is just, but he is easily persuaded that by appealing to the Monthly Sessions he gets another chance in the lottery, and may perhaps draw a prize. He lets the rascally scribe, therefore, prepare an appeal for him, and I receive an invitation to attend the Session of Justices in the district town on a certain day. "It is a good five-and-thirty miles to the district town, as you know, but I get up early, and arrive at eleven o'clock, the hour stated in the official notice. A crowd of peasants are hanging about the door of the court, but the only official present is the porter. I enquire of him when my case is likely to come on, and receive the laconic answer, 'How should I know?' After half an hour the secretary arrives. I repeat my question, and receive the same answer. Another half hour passes, and one of the justices drives up in his tarantass. Perhaps he is a glib-tongued gentleman, and assures me that the proceedings will commence at once: 'Sei tchas! sei tchas!' Don't believe what the priest or the dictionary tells you about the meaning of that expression. The dictionary will tell you that it means 'immediately,' but that's all nonsense. In the mouth of a Russian it means 'in an hour,' 'next week,' 'in a year or two,' 'never'--most commonly 'never.' Like many other words in Russian, 'sei tchas' can be understood only after long experience. A second justice drives up, and then a third. No more are required by law, but these gentlemen must first smoke several cigarettes and discuss all the local news before they begin work. "At last they take their seats on the bench--a slightly elevated platform at one end of the room, behind a table covered with green baize--and the proceedings commence. My case is sure to be pretty far down on the list--the secretary takes, I believe, a malicious pleasure in watching my impatience--and before it is called the justices have to retire at least once for refreshments and cigarettes. I have to amuse myself by listening to the other cases, and some of them, I can assure you, are amusing enough. The walls of that room must be by this time pretty well saturated with perjury, and many of the witnesses catch at once the infection. Perhaps I may tell you some other time a few of the amusing incidents that I have seen there. At last my case is called. It is as clear as daylight, but the rascally pettifogger is there with a long-prepared speech, he holds in his hand a small volume of the codified law, and quotes paragraphs which no amount of human ingenuity can make to bear upon the subject. Perhaps the previous decision is confirmed; perhaps it is reversed; in either case, I have lost a second day and exhausted more patience than I can conveniently spare. And something even worse may happen, as I know by experience. Once during a case of mine there was some little informality--someone inadvertently opened the door of the consulting-room when the decision was being written, or some other little incident of the sort occurred, and the rascally pettifogger complained to the Supreme Court of Revision, which is a part of the Senate. The case was all about a few roubles, but it was discussed in St. Petersburg, and afterwards tried over again by another court of justices. Now I have paid my Lehrgeld, and go no more to law." "Then you must expose yourself to all kinds of extortion?" "Not so much as you might imagine. I have my own way of dispensing justice. When I catch a peasant's horse or cow in our fields, I lock it up and make the owner pay a ransom." "Is it not rather dangerous," I inquired, "to take the law thus into your own hands? I have heard that the Russian justices are extremely severe against any one who has recourse to what our German jurists call Selbsthulfe." "That they are! So long as you are in Russia, you had much better let yourself be quietly robbed than use any violence against the robber. It is less trouble, and it is cheaper in the long run. If you do not, you may unexpectedly find yourself some fine morning in prison! You must know that many of the young justices belong to the new school of morals." "What is that? I have not heard of any new discoveries lately in the sphere of speculative ethics." "Well, to tell you the truth, I am not one of the initiated, and I can only tell you what I hear. So far as I have noticed, the representatives of the new doctrine talk chiefly about Gumannost' and Tchelovetcheskoe dostoinstvo. You know what these words mean?" "Humanity, or rather humanitarianism and human dignity," I replied, not sorry to give a proof that I was advancing in my studies. "There, again, you allow your dictionary and your priest to mislead you. These terms, when used by a Russian, cover much more than we understand by them, and those who use them most frequently have generally a special tenderness for all kinds of malefactors. In the old times, malefactors were popularly believed to be bad, dangerous people; but it has been lately discovered that this is a delusion. A young proprietor who lives not far off assures me that they are the true Protestants, and the most powerful social reformers! They protest practically against those imperfections of social organisation of which they are the involuntary victims. The feeble, characterless man quietly submits to his chains; the bold, generous, strong man breaks his fetters, and helps others to do the same. A very ingenious defence of all kinds of rascality, isn't it?" "Well, it is a theory that might certainly be carried too far, and might easily lead to very inconvenient conclusions; but I am not sure that, theoretically speaking, it does not contain a certain element of truth. It ought at least to foster that charity which we are enjoined to practise towards all men. But perhaps 'all men' does not include publicans and sinners?" On hearing these words Karl Karl'itch turned to me, and every feature of his honest German face expressed the most undisguised astonishment. "Are you, too, a Nihilist?" he inquired, as soon as he had partially recovered his breath. "I really don't know what a Nihilist is, but I may assure you that I am not an 'ist' of any kind. What is a Nihilist?" "If you live long in Russia you'll learn that without my telling you. As I was saying, I am not at all afraid of the peasants citing me before the justice. They know better now. If they gave me too much trouble I could starve their cattle." "Yes, when you catch them in your fields," I remarked, taking no notice of the abrupt turn which he had given to the conversation. "I can do it without that. You must know that, by the Emancipation Law, the peasants received arable land, but they received little or no pasturage. I have the whip hand of them there!" The remarks of Karl Karl'itch on men and things were to me always interesting, for he was a shrewd observer, and displayed occasionally a pleasant, dry humour. But I very soon discovered that his opinions were not to be accepted without reserve. His strong, inflexible Teutonic nature often prevented him from judging impartially. He had no sympathy with the men and the institutions around him, and consequently he was unable to see things from the inside. The specks and blemishes on the surface he perceived clearly enough, but he had no knowledge of the secret, deep-rooted causes by which these specks and blemishes were produced. The simple fact that a man was a Russian satisfactorily accounted, in his opinion, for any kind of moral deformity; and his knowledge turned out to be by no means so extensive as I had at first supposed. Though he had been many years in the country, he knew very little about the life of the peasants beyond that small part of it which concerned directly his own interests and those of his employer. Of the communal organisation, domestic life, religious beliefs, ceremonial practices, and nomadic habits of his humble neighbours, he knew little, and the little he happened to know was far from accurate. In order to gain a knowledge of these matters it would be better, I perceived, to consult the priest, or, better still, the peasants themselves. But to do this it would be necessary to understand easily and speak fluently the colloquial language, and I was still very far from having, acquired the requisite proficiency. Even for one who possesses a natural facility for acquiring foreign tongues, the learning of Russian is by no means an easy task. Though it is essentially an Aryan language like our own, and contains only a slight intermixture of Tartar words,--such as bashlyk (a hood), kalpak (a night-cap), arbuz (a water-melon), etc.--it has certain sounds unknown to West-European ears, and difficult for West-European tongues, and its roots, though in great part derived from the same original stock as those of the Graeco-Latin and Teutonic languages, are generally not at all easily recognised. As an illustration of this, take the Russian word otets. Strange as it may at first sight appear, this word is merely another form of our word father, of the German vater, and of the French pere. The syllable ets is the ordinary Russian termination denoting the agent, corresponding to the English and German ending er, as we see in such words as--kup-ets (a buyer), plov-ets (a swimmer), and many others. The root ot is a mutilated form of vot, as we see in the word otchina (a paternal inheritance), which is frequently written votchina. Now vot is evidently the same root as the German vat in Vater, and the English fath in father. Quod erat demonstrandum. All this is simple enough, and goes to prove the fundamental identity, or rather the community of origin, of the Slav and Teutonic languages; but it will be readily understood that etymological analogies so carefully disguised are of little practical use in helping us to acquire a foreign tongue. Besides this, the grammatical forms and constructions in Russian are very peculiar, and present a great many strange irregularities. As an illustration of this we may take the future tense. The Russian verb has commonly a simple and a frequentative future. The latter is always regularly formed by means of an auxiliary with the infinitive, as in English, but the former is constructed in a variety of ways, for which no rule can be given, so that the simple future of each individual verb must be learned by a pure effort of memory. In many verbs it is formed by prefixing a preposition, but it is impossible to determine by rule which preposition should be used. Thus idu (I go) becomes poidu; pishu (I write) becomes napishu; pyu (I drink) becomes vuipyu, and so on. Closely akin to the difficulties of pronunciation is the difficulty of accentuating the proper syllable. In this respect Russian is like Greek; you can rarely tell a priori on what syllable the accent falls. But it is more puzzling than Greek, for two reasons: firstly, it is not customary to print Russian with accents; and secondly, no one has yet been able to lay down precise rules for the transposition of the accent in the various inflections of the same word, Of this latter peculiarity, let one illustration suffice. The word ruka (hand) has the accent on the last syllable, but in the accusative (ruku) the accent goes back to the first syllable. It must not, however, be assumed that in all words of this type a similar transposition takes place. The word beda (misfortune), for instance, as well as very many others, always retains the accent on the last syllable. These and many similar difficulties, which need not be here enumerated, can be mastered only by long practice. Serious as they are, they need not frighten any one who is in the habit of learning foreign tongues. The ear and the tongue gradually become familiar with the peculiarities of inflection and accentuation, and practice fulfils the same function as abstract rules. It is commonly supposed that Russians have been endowed by Nature with a peculiar linguistic talent. Their own language, it is said, is so difficult that they have no difficulty in acquiring others. This common belief requires, as it seems to me, some explanation. That highly educated Russians are better linguists than the educated classes of Western Europe there can be no possible doubt, for they almost always speak French, and often English and German also. The question, however, is whether this is the result of a psychological peculiarity, or of other causes. Now, without venturing to deny the existence of a natural faculty, I should say that the other causes have at least exercised a powerful influence. Any Russian who wishes to be regarded as civilised must possess at least one foreign language; and, as a consequence of this, the children of the upper classes are always taught at least French in their infancy. Many households comprise a German nurse, a French tutor, and an English governess; and the children thus become accustomed from their earliest years to the use of these three languages. Besides this, Russian is phonetically very rich and contains nearly all the sounds which are to be found in West-European tongues. Perhaps on the whole it would be well to apply here the Darwinian theory, and suppose that the Russian Noblesse, having been obliged for several generations to acquire foreign languages, have gradually developed a hereditary polyglot talent. Several circumstances concurred to assist me in my efforts, during my voluntary exile, to acquire at least such a knowledge of the language as would enable me to converse freely with the peasantry. In the first place, my reverend teacher was an agreeable, kindly, talkative man, who took a great delight in telling interminable stories, quite independently of any satisfaction which he might derive from the consciousness of their being understood and appreciated. Even when walking alone he was always muttering something to an imaginary listener. A stranger meeting him on such occasions might have supposed that he was holding converse with unseen spirits, though his broad muscular form and rubicund face militated strongly against such a supposition; but no man, woman, or child living within a radius of ten miles would ever have fallen into this mistake. Every one in the neighbourhood knew that "Batushka" (papa), as he was familiarly called, was too prosaical, practical a man to see things ethereal, that he was an irrepressible talker, and that when he could not conveniently find an audience he created one by his own imagination. This peculiarity of his rendered me good service. Though for some time I understood very little of what he said, and very often misplaced the positive and negative monosyllables which I hazarded occasionally by way of encouragement, he talked vigorously all the same. Like all garrulous people, he was constantly repeating himself; but to this I did not object, for the custom--however disagreeable in ordinary society--was for me highly beneficial, and when I had already heard a story once or twice before, it was much easier for me to assume at the proper moment the requisite expression of countenance. Another fortunate circumstance was that at Ivanofka there were no distractions, so that the whole of the day and a great part of the night could be devoted to study. My chief amusement was an occasional walk in the fields with Karl Karl'itch; and even this mild form of dissipation could not always be obtained, for as soon as rain had fallen it was difficult to go beyond the verandah--the mud precluding the possibility of a constitutional. The nearest approach to excitement was mushroom-gathering; and in this occupation my inability to distinguish the edible from the poisonous species made my efforts unacceptable. We lived so "far from the madding crowd" that its din scarcely reached our ears. A week or ten days might pass without our receiving any intelligence from the outer world. The nearest post-office was in the district town, and with that distant point we had no regular system of communication. Letters and newspapers remained there till called for, and were brought to us intermittently when some one of our neighbours happened to pass that way. Current history was thus administered to us in big doses. One very big dose I remember well. For a much longer time than usual no volunteer letter-carrier had appeared, and the delay was more than usually tantalising, because it was known that war had broken out between France and Germany. At last a big bundle of a daily paper called the Golos was brought to me. Impatient to learn whether any great battle had been fought, I began by examining the latest number, and stumbled at once on an article headed, "Latest Intelligence: the Emperor at Wilhelmshohe!!!" The large type in which the heading was printed and the three marks of exclamation showed plainly that the article was very important. I began to read with avidity, but was utterly mystified. What emperor was this? Probably the Tsar or the Emperor of Austria, for there was no German Emperor in those days. But no! It was evidently the Emperor of the French. And how did Napoleon get to Wilhelmshohe? The French must have broken through the Rhine defences, and pushed far into Germany. But no! As I read further, I found this theory equally untenable. It turned out that the Emperor was surrounded by Germans, and--a prisoner! In order to solve the mystery, I had to go back to the preceding numbers of the paper, and learned, at a sitting, all about the successive German victories, the defeat and capitulation of Macmahon's army at Sedan, and the other great events of that momentous time. The impression produced can scarcely be realised by those who have always imbibed current history in the homeopathic doses administered by the morning and evening daily papers. By the useful loquacity of my teacher and the possibility of devoting all my time to my linguistic studies, I made such rapid progress in the acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths from his own intuition. As my powers of comprehension increased, my long conversations with the priest became more and more instructive. At first his remarks and stories had for me simply a philological interest, but gradually I perceived that his talk contained a great deal of solid, curious information regarding himself and the class to which he belonged--information of a kind not commonly found in grammatical exercises. Some of this I now propose to communicate to the reader. CHAPTER IV THE VILLAGE PRIEST Priests' Names--Clerical Marriages--The White and the Black Clergy--Why the People do not Respect the Parish Priests--History of the White Clergy--The Parish Priest and the Protestant Pastor--In What Sense the Russian People are Religious--Icons--The Clergy and Popular Education--Ecclesiastical Reform--Premonitory Symptoms of Change--Two Typical Specimens of the Parochial Clergy of the Present Day. In formal introductions it is customary to pronounce in a more or less inaudible voice the names of the two persons introduced. Circumstances compel me in the present case to depart from received custom. The truth is, I do not know the names of the two people whom I wish to bring together! The reader who knows his own name will readily pardon one-half of my ignorance, but he may naturally expect that I should know the name of a man with whom I profess to be acquainted, and with whom I daily held long conversations during a period of several months. Strange as it may seem, I do not. During all the time of my sojourn in Ivanofka I never heard him addressed or spoken of otherwise than as "Batushka." Now "Batushka" is not a name at all. It is simply the diminutive form of an obsolete word meaning "father," and is usually applied to all village priests. The ushka is a common diminutive termination, and the root Bat is evidently the same as that which appears in the Latin pater. Though I do not happen to know what Batushka's family name was, I can communicate two curious facts concerning it: he had not possessed it in his childhood, and it was not the same as his father's. The reader whose intuitive powers have been preternaturally sharpened by a long course of sensation novels will probably leap to the conclusion that Batushka was a mysterious individual, very different from what he seemed--either the illegitimate son of some great personage, or a man of high birth who had committed some great sin, and who now sought oblivion and expiation in the humble duties of a parish priest. Let me dispel at once all delusions of this kind. Batushka was actually as well as legally the legitimate son of an ordinary parish priest, who was still living, about twenty miles off, and for many generations all his paternal and maternal ancestors, male and female, had belonged to the priestly caste. He was thus a Levite of the purest water, and thoroughly Levitical in his character. Though he knew by experience something about the weakness of the flesh, he had never committed any sins of the heroic kind, and had no reason to conceal his origin. The curious facts above stated were simply the result of a peculiar custom which exists among the Russian clergy. According to this custom, when a boy enters the seminary he receives from the Bishop a new family name. The name may be Bogoslafski, from a word signifying "Theology," or Bogolubof, "the love of God," or some similar term; or it may be derived from the name of the boy's native village, or from any other word which the Bishop thinks fit to choose. I know of one instance where a Bishop chose two French words for the purpose. He had intended to call the boy Velikoselski, after his native place, Velikoe Selo, which means "big village"; but finding that there was already a Velikoselski in the seminary, and being in a facetious frame of mind, he called the new comer Grandvillageski--a word that may perhaps sorely puzzle some philologist of the future. My reverend teacher was a tall, muscular man of about forty years of age, with a full dark-brown beard, and long lank hair falling over his shoulders. The visible parts of his dress consisted of three articles--a dingy-brown robe of coarse material buttoned closely at the neck and descending to the ground, a wideawake hat, and a pair of large, heavy boots. As to the esoteric parts of his attire, I refrained from making investigations. His life had been an uneventful one. At an early age he had been sent to the seminary in the chief town of the province, and had made for himself the reputation of a good average scholar. "The seminary of that time," he used to say to me, referring to that part of his life, "was not what it is now. Nowadays the teachers talk about humanitarianism, and the boys would think that a crime had been committed against human dignity if one of them happened to be flogged. But they don't consider that human dignity is at all affected by their getting drunk, and going to--to--to places that I never went to. I was flogged often enough, and I don't think that I am a worse man on that account; and though I never heard then anything about pedagogical science that they talk so much about now, I'll read a bit of Latin yet with the best of them. "When my studies were finished," said Batushka, continuing the simple story of his life, "the Bishop found a wife for me, and I succeeded her father, who was then an old man. In that way I became a priest of Ivanofka, and have remained here ever since. It is a hard life, for the parish is big, and my bit of land is not very fertile; but, praise be to God! I am healthy and strong, and get on well enough." "You said that the Bishop found a wife for you," I remarked. "I suppose, therefore, that he was a great friend of yours." "Not at all. The Bishop does the same for all the seminarists who wish to be ordained: it is an important part of his pastoral duties." "Indeed!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Surely that is carrying the system of paternal government a little too far. Why should his Reverence meddle with things that don't concern him?" "But these matters do concern him. He is the natural protector of widows and orphans, especially among the clergy of his own diocese. When a parish priest dies, what is to become of his wife and daughters?" Not perceiving clearly the exact bearing of these last remarks, I ventured to suggest that priests ought to economise in view of future contingencies. "It is easy to speak," replied Batushka: "'A story is soon told,' as the old proverb has it, 'but a thing is not soon done.' How are we to economise? Even without saving we have the greatest difficulty to make the two ends meet." "Then the widow and daughters might work and gain a livelihood." "What, pray, could they work at?" asked Batushka, and paused for a reply. Seeing that I had none to offer him, he continued, "Even the house and land belong not to them, but to the new priest." "If that position occurred in a novel," I said, "I could foretell what would happen. The author would make the new priest fall in love with and marry one of the daughters, and then the whole family, including the mother-in-law, would live happily ever afterwards." "That is exactly how the Bishop arranges the matter. What the novelist does with the puppets of his imagination, the Bishop does with real beings of flesh and blood. As a rational being he cannot leave things to chance. Besides this, he must arrange the matter before the young man takes orders, because, by the rules of the Church, the marriage cannot take place after the ceremony of ordination. When the affair is arranged before the charge becomes vacant, the old priest can die with the pleasant consciousness that his family is provided for." "Well, Batushka, you certainly put the matter in a very plausible way, but there seem to be two flaws in the analogy. The novelist can make two people fall in love with each other, and make them live happily together with the mother-in-law, but that--with all due respect to his Reverence, be it said--is beyond the power of a Bishop." "I am not sure," said Batushka, avoiding the point of the objection, "that love-marriages are always the happiest ones; and as to the mother-in-law, there are--or at least there were until the emancipation of the serfs--a mother-in-law and several daughters-in-law in almost every peasant household." "And does harmony generally reign in peasant households?" "That depends upon the head of the house. If he is a man of the right sort, he can keep the women-folks in order." This remark was made in an energetic tone, with the evident intention of assuring me that the speaker was himself "a man of the right sort"; but I did not attribute much importance to it, for I have occasionally heard henpecked husbands talk in this grandiloquent way when their wives were out of hearing. Altogether I was by no means convinced that the system of providing for the widows and orphans of the clergy by means of mariages de convenance was a good one, but I determined to suspend my judgment until I should obtain fuller information. An additional bit of evidence came to me a week or two later. One morning, on going into the priest's house, I found that he had a friend with him--the priest of a village some fifteen miles off. Before we had got through the ordinary conventional remarks about the weather and the crops, a peasant drove up to the door in his cart with a message that an old peasant was dying in a neighbouring village, and desired the last consolations of religion. Batushka was thus obliged to leave us, and his friend and I agreed to stroll leisurely in the direction of the village to which he was going, so as to meet him on his way home. The harvest was already finished, so that our road, after emerging from the village, lay through stubble-fields. Beyond this we entered the pine forest, and by the time we had reached this point I had succeeded in leading the conversation to the subject of clerical marriages. "I have been thinking a good deal on this subject," I said, "and I should very much like to know your opinion about the system." My new acquaintance was a tall, lean, black-haired man, with a sallow complexion and vinegar aspect--evidently one of those unhappy mortals who are intended by Nature to take a pessimistic view of all things, and to point out to their fellows the deep shadows of human life. I was not at all surprised, therefore, when he replied in a deep, decided tone, "Bad, very bad--utterly bad!" The way in which these words were pronounced left no doubt as to the opinion of the speaker, but I was desirous of knowing on what that opinion was founded--more especially as I seemed to detect in the tone a note of personal grievance. My answer was shaped accordingly. "I suspected that; but in the discussions which I have had I have always been placed at a disadvantage, not being able to adduce any definite facts in support of my opinion." "You may congratulate yourself on being unable to find any in your own experience. A mother-in-law living in the house does not conduce to domestic harmony. I don't know how it is in your country, but so it is with us." I hastened to assure him that this was not a peculiarity of Russia. "I know it only too well," he continued. "My mother-in-law lived with me for some years, and I was obliged at last to insist on her going to another son-in-law." "Rather selfish conduct towards your brother-in-law," I said to myself, and then added audibly, "I hope you have thus solved the difficulty satisfactorily." "Not at all. Things are worse now than they were. I agreed to pay her three roubles a month, and have regularly fulfilled my promise, but lately she has thought it not enough, and she made a complaint to the Bishop. Last week I went to him to defend myself, but as I had not money enough for all the officials in the Consistorium, I could not obtain justice. My mother-in-law had made all sorts of absurd accusations against me, and consequently I was laid under an inhibition for six weeks!" "And what is the effect of an inhibition?" "The effect is that I cannot perform the ordinary rites of our religion. It is really very unjust," he added, assuming an indignant tone, "and very annoying. Think of all the hardship and inconvenience to which it gives rise." As I thought of the hardship and inconvenience to which the parishioners must be exposed through the inconsiderate conduct of the old mother-in-law, I could not but sympathise with my new acquaintance's indignation. My sympathy was, however, somewhat cooled when I perceived that I was on a wrong tack, and that the priest was looking at the matter from an entirely different point of view. "You see," he said, "it is a most unfortunate time of year. The peasants have gathered in their harvest, and can give of their abundance. There are merry-makings and marriages, besides the ordinary deaths and baptisms. Altogether I shall lose by the thing more than a hundred roubles!" I confess I was a little shocked on hearing the priest thus speak of his sacred functions as if they were an ordinary marketable commodity, and talk of the inhibition as a pushing undertaker might talk of sanitary improvements. My surprise was caused not by the fact that he regarded the matter from a pecuniary point of view--for I was old enough to know that clerical human nature is not altogether insensible to pecuniary considerations--but by the fact that he should thus undisguisedly express his opinions to a stranger without in the least suspecting that there was anything unseemly in his way of speaking. The incident appeared to me very characteristic, but I refrained from all audible comments, lest I should inadvertently check his communicativeness. With the view of encouraging it, I professed to be very much interested, as I really was, in what he said, and I asked him how in his opinion the present unsatisfactory state of things might be remedied. "There is but one cure," he said, with a readiness that showed he had often spoken on the theme already, "and that is freedom and publicity. We full-grown men are treated like children, and watched like conspirators. If I wish to preach a sermon--not that I often wish to do such a thing, but there are occasions when it is advisable--I am expected to show it first to the Blagotchinny, and--" "I beg your pardon, who is the Blagotchinny?" "The Blagotchinny is a parish priest who is in direct relations with the Consistory of the Province, and who is supposed to exercise a strict supervision over all the other parish priests of his district. He acts as the spy of the Consistory, which is filled with greedy, shameless officials, deaf to any one who does not come provided with a handful of roubles. The Bishop may be a good, well-intentioned man, but he always sees and acts through these worthless subordinates. Besides this, the Bishops and heads of monasteries, who monopolise the higher places in the ecclesiastical Administration, all belong to the Black Clergy--that is to say, they are all monks--and consequently cannot understand our wants. How can they, on whom celibacy is imposed by the rules of the Church, understand the position of a parish priest who has to bring up a family and to struggle with domestic cares of every kind? What they do is to take all the comfortable places for themselves, and leave us all the hard work. The monasteries are rich enough, and you see how poor we are. Perhaps you have heard that the parish priests extort money from the peasants--refusing to perform the rites of baptism or burial until a considerable sum has been paid. It is only too true, but who is to blame? The priest must live and bring up his family, and you cannot imagine the humiliations to which he has to submit in order to gain a scanty pittance. I know it by experience. When I make the periodical visitation I can see that the peasants grudge every handful of rye and every egg that they give me. I can overbear their sneers as I go away, and I know they have many sayings such as--'The priest takes from the living and from the dead.' Many of them fasten their doors, pretending to be away from home, and do not even take the precaution of keeping silent till I am out of hearing." "You surprise me," I said, in reply to the last part of this long tirade; "I have always heard that the Russians are a very religious people--at least the lower classes." "So they are; but the peasantry are poor and heavily taxed. They set great importance on the sacraments, and observe rigorously the fasts, which comprise nearly a half of the year; but they show very little respect for their priests, who are almost as poor as themselves." "But I do not see clearly how you propose to remedy this state of things." "By freedom and publicity, as I said before." The worthy man seemed to have learned this formula by rote. "First of all, our wants must be made known. In some provinces there have been attempts to do this by means of provincial assemblies of the clergy, but these efforts have always been strenuously opposed by the Consistories, whose members fear publicity above all things. But in order to have publicity we must have more freedom." Here followed a long discourse on freedom and publicity, which seemed to me very confused. So far as I could understand the argument, there was a good deal of reasoning in a circle. Freedom was necessary in order to get publicity, and publicity was necessary in order to get freedom; and the practical result would be that the clergy would enjoy bigger salaries and more popular respect. We had only got thus far in the investigation of the subject when our conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of a peasant's cart. In a few seconds our friend Batushka appeared, and the conversation took a different turn. Since that time I have frequently spoken on this subject with competent authorities, and nearly all have admitted that the present condition of the clergy is highly unsatisfactory, and that the parish priest rarely enjoys the respect of his parishioners. In a semi-official report, which I once accidentally stumbled upon when searching for material of a different kind, the facts are stated in the following plain language: "The people"--I seek to translate as literally as possible--"do not respect the clergy, but persecute them with derision and reproaches, and feel them to be a burden. In nearly all the popular comic stories the priest, his wife, or his labourer is held up to ridicule, and in all the proverbs and popular sayings where the clergy are mentioned it is always with derision. The people shun the clergy, and have recourse to them not from the inner impulse of conscience, but from necessity. . . . And why do the people not respect the clergy? Because it forms a class apart; because, having received a false kind of education, it does not introduce into the life of the people the teaching of the Spirit, but remains in the mere dead forms of outward ceremonial, at the same time despising these forms even to blasphemy; because the clergy itself continually presents examples of want of respect to religion, and transforms the service of God into a profitable trade. Can the people respect the clergy when they hear how one priest stole money from below the pillow of a dying man at the moment of confession, how another was publicly dragged out of a house of ill-fame, how a third christened a dog, how a fourth whilst officiating at the Easter service was dragged by the hair from the altar by the deacon? Is it possible for the people to respect priests who spend their time in the gin-shop, write fraudulent petitions, fight with the cross in their hands, and abuse each other in bad language at the altar? "One might fill several pages with examples of this kind--in each instance naming the time and place--without overstepping the boundaries of the province of Nizhni-Novgorod. Is it possible for the people to respect the clergy when they see everywhere amongst them simony, carelessness in performing the religious rites, and disorder in administering the sacraments? Is it possible for the people to respect the clergy when they see that truth has disappeared from it, and that the Consistories, guided in their decisions not by rules, but by personal friendship and bribery, destroy in it the last remains of truthfulness? If we add to all this the false certificates which the clergy give to those who do not wish to partake of the Eucharist, the dues illegally extracted from the Old Ritualists, the conversion of the altar into a source of revenue, the giving of churches to priests' daughters as a dowry, and similar phenomena, the question as to whether the people can respect the clergy requires no answer." As these words were written by an orthodox Russian,* celebrated for his extensive and intimate knowledge of Russian provincial life, and were addressed in all seriousness to a member of the Imperial family, we may safely assume that they contain a considerable amount of truth. The reader must not, however, imagine that all Russian priests are of the kind above referred to. Many of them are honest, respectable, well-intentioned men, who conscientiously fulfil their humble duties, and strive hard to procure a good education for their children. If they have less learning, culture, and refinement than the Roman Catholic priesthood, they have at the same time infinitely less fanaticism, less spiritual pride, and less intolerance towards the adherents of other faiths. * Mr. Melnikof, in a "secret" Report to the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievitch. Both the good and the bad qualities of the Russian priesthood at the present time can be easily explained by its past history, and by certain peculiarities of the national character. The Russian White Clergy--that is to say, the parish priests, as distinguished from the monks, who are called the Black Clergy--have had a curious history. In primitive times they were drawn from all classes of the population, and freely elected by the parishioners. When a man was elected by the popular vote, he was presented to the Bishop, and if he was found to be a fit and proper person for the office, he was at once ordained. But this custom early fell into disuse. The Bishops, finding that many of the candidates presented were illiterate peasants, gradually assumed the right of appointing the priests, with or without the consent of the parishioners; and their choice generally fell on the sons of the clergy as the men best fitted to take orders. The creation of Bishops' schools, afterwards called seminaries, in which the sons of the clergy were educated, naturally led, in the course of time, to the total exclusion of the other classes. The policy of the civil Government led to the same end. Peter the Great laid down the principle that every subject should in some way serve the State--the nobles as officers in the army or navy, or as officials in the civil service; the clergy as ministers of religion; and the lower classes as soldiers, sailors, or tax-payers. Of these three classes the clergy had by far the lightest burdens, and consequently many nobles and peasants would willingly have entered its ranks. But this species of desertion the Government could not tolerate, and accordingly the priesthood was surrounded by a legal barrier which prevented all outsiders from entering it. Thus by the combined efforts of the ecclesiastical and the civil Administration the clergy became a separate class or caste, legally and actually incapable of mingling with the other classes of the population. The simple fact that the clergy became an exclusive caste, with a peculiar character, peculiar habits, and peculiar ideals, would in itself have had a prejudicial influence on the priesthood; but this was not all. The caste increased in numbers by the process of natural reproduction much more rapidly than the offices to be filled, so that the supply of priests and deacons soon far exceeded the demand; and the disproportion between supply and demand became every year greater and greater. In this way was formed an ever-increasing clerical Proletariat, which--as is always the case with a Proletariat of any kind--gravitated towards the towns. In vain the Government issued ukazes prohibiting the priests from quitting their places of domicile, and treated as vagrants and runaways those who disregarded the prohibition; in vain successive sovereigns endeavoured to diminish the number of these supernumeraries by drafting them wholesale into the army. In Moscow, St. Petersburg, and all the larger towns the cry was, "Still they come!" Every morning, in the Kremlin of Moscow, a large crowd of them assembled for the purpose of being hired to officiate in the private chapels of the rich nobles, and a great deal of hard bargaining took place between the priests and the lackeys sent to hire them--conducted in the same spirit, and in nearly the same forms, as that which simultaneously took place in the bazaar close by between extortionate traders and thrifty housewives. "Listen to me," a priest would say, as an ultimatum, to a lackey who was trying to beat down the price: "if you don't give me seventy-five kopeks without further ado, I'll take a bite of this roll, and that will be an end to it!" And that would have been an end to the bargaining, for, according to the rules of the Church, a priest cannot officiate after breaking his fast. The ultimatum, however, could be used with effect only to country servants who had recently come to town. A sharp lackey, experienced in this kind of diplomacy, would have laughed at the threat, and replied coolly, "Bite away, Batushka; I can find plenty more of your sort!" Amusing scenes of this kind I have heard described by old people who professed to have been eye-witnesses. The condition of the priests who remained in the villages was not much better. Those of them who were fortunate enough to find places were raised at least above the fear of absolute destitution, but their position was by no means enviable. They received little consideration or respect from the peasantry, and still less from the nobles. When the church was situated not on the State Domains, but on a private estate, they were practically under the power of the proprietor--almost as completely as his serfs; and sometimes that power was exercised in a most humiliating and shameful way. I have heard, for instance, of one priest who was ducked in a pond on a cold winter day for the amusement of the proprietor and his guests--choice spirits, of rough, jovial temperament; and of another who, having neglected to take off his hat as he passed the proprietor's house, was put into a barrel and rolled down a hill into the river at the bottom! In citing these incidents, I do not at all mean to imply that they represent the relations which usually existed between proprietors and village priests, for I am quite aware that wanton cruelty was not among the ordinary vices of Russian serf-owners. My object in mentioning the incidents is to show how a brutal proprietor--and it must be admitted that they were not a few brutal individuals in the class--could maltreat a priest without much danger of being called to account for his conduct. Of course such conduct was an offence in the eyes of the criminal law; but the criminal law of that time was very shortsighted, and strongly disposed to close its eyes completely when the offender was an influential proprietor. Had the incidents reached the ears of the Emperor Nicholas he would probably have ordered the culprit to be summarily and severely punished but, as the Russian proverb has it, "Heaven is high, and the Tsar is far off." A village priest treated in this barbarous way could have little hope of redress, and, if he were a prudent man, he would make no attempt to obtain it; for any annoyance which he might give the proprietor by complaining to the ecclesiastical authorities would be sure to be paid back to him with interest in some indirect way. The sons of the clergy who did not succeed in finding regular sacerdotal employment were in a still worse position. Many of them served as scribes or subordinate officials in the public offices, where they commonly eked out their scanty salaries by unblushing extortion and pilfering. Those who did not succeed in gaining even modest employment of this kind had to keep off starvation by less lawful means, and not unfrequently found their way into the prisons or to Siberia. In judging of the Russian priesthood of the present time, we must call to mind this severe school through which it has passed, and we must also take into consideration the spirit which has been for centuries predominant in the Eastern Church--I mean the strong tendency both in the clergy and in the laity to attribute an inordinate importance to the ceremonial element of religion. Primitive mankind is everywhere and always disposed to regard religion as simply a mass of mysterious rites which have a secret magical power of averting evil in this world and securing felicity in the next. To this general rule the Russian peasantry are no exception, and the Russian Church has not done all it might have done to eradicate this conception and to bring religion into closer association with ordinary morality. Hence such incidents as the following are still possible: A robber kills and rifles a traveller, but he refrains from eating a piece of cooked meat which he finds in the cart, because it happens to be a fast-day; a peasant prepares to rob a young attache of the Austrian Embassy in St. Petersburg, and ultimately kills his victim, but before going to the house he enters a church and commends his undertaking to the protection of the saints; a housebreaker, when in the act of robbing a church, finds it difficult to extract the jewels from an Icon, and makes a vow that if a certain saint assists him he will place a rouble's-worth of tapers before the saint's image! These facts are within the memory of the present generation. I knew the young attache, and saw him a few days before his death. All these are of course extreme cases, but they illustrate a tendency which in its milder forms is only too general amongst the Russian people--the tendency to regard religion as a mass of ceremonies which have a magical rather than a spiritual significance. The poor woman who kneels at a religious procession in order that the Icon may be carried over her head, and the rich merchant who invites the priests to bring some famous Icon to his house, illustrates this tendency in a more harmless form. According to a popular saying, "As is the priest, so is the parish," and the converse proposition is equally true--as is the parish, so is the priest. The great majority of priests, like the great majority of men in general, content themselves with simply striving to perform what is expected of them, and their character is consequently determined to a certain extent by the ideas and conceptions of their parishioners. This will become more apparent if we contrast the Russian priest with the Protestant pastor. According to Protestant conceptions, the village pastor is a man of grave demeanour and exemplary conduct, and possesses a certain amount of education and refinement. He ought to expound weekly to his flock, in simple, impressive words, the great truths of Christianity, and exhort his hearers to walk in the paths of righteousness. Besides this, he is expected to comfort the afflicted, to assist the needy, to counsel those who are harassed with doubts, and to admonish those who openly stray from the narrow path. Such is the ideal in the popular mind, and pastors generally seek to realise it, if not in very deed, at least in appearance. The Russian priest, on the contrary, has no such ideal set before him by his parishioners. He is expected merely to conform to certain observances, and to perform punctiliously the rites and ceremonies prescribed by the Church. If he does this without practising extortion his parishioners are quite satisfied. He rarely preaches or exhorts, and neither has nor seeks to have a moral influence over his flock. I have occasionally heard of Russian priests who approach to what I have termed the Protestant ideal, and I have even seen one or two of them, but I fear they are not numerous. In the above contrast I have accidentally omitted one important feature. The Protestant clergy have in all countries rendered valuable service to the cause of popular education. The reason of this is not difficult to find. In order to be a good Protestant it is necessary to "search the Scriptures," and to do this, one must be able at least to read. To be a good member of the Greek Orthodox Church, on the contrary, according to popular conceptions, the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary, and therefore primary education has not in the eyes of the Greek Orthodox priest the same importance which it has in the eyes of the Protestant pastor. It must be admitted that the Russian people are in a certain sense religions. They go regularly to church on Sundays and holy-days, cross themselves repeatedly when they pass a church or Icon, take the Holy Communion at stated seasons, rigorously abstain from animal food--not only on Wednesdays and Fridays, but also during Lent and the other long fasts--make occasional pilgrimages to holy shrines, and, in a word, fulfil punctiliously the ceremonial observances which they suppose necessary for salvation. But here their religiousness ends. They are generally profoundly ignorant of religious doctrine, and know little or nothing of Holy Writ. A peasant, it is said, was once asked by a priest if he could name the three Persons of the Trinity, and replied without a moment's hesitation, "How can one not know that, Batushka? Of course it is the Saviour, the Mother of God, and Saint Nicholas the miracle-worker!" That answer represents fairly enough the theological attainments of a very large section of the peasantry. The anecdote is so often repeated that it is probably an invention, but it is not a calumny of theology and of what Protestants term the "inner religious life" the orthodox Russian peasant--of Dissenters, to whom these remarks do not apply, I shall speak later--has no conception. For him the ceremonial part of religion suffices, and he has the most unbounded, childlike confidence in the saving efficacy of the rites which he practises. If he has been baptised in infancy, has regularly observed the fasts, has annually partaken of the Holy Communion, and has just confessed and received extreme unction, he feels death approach with the most perfect tranquillity. He is tormented with no doubts as to the efficacy of faith or works, and has no fears that his past life may possibly have rendered him unfit for eternal felicity. Like a man in a sinking ship who has buckled on his life-preserver, he feels perfectly secure. With no fear for the future and little regret for the present or the past, he awaits calmly the dread summons, and dies with a resignation which a Stoic philosopher might envy. In the above paragraph I have used the word Icon, and perhaps the reader may not clearly understand the word. Let me explain then, briefly, what an Icon is--a very necessary explanation, for the Icons play an important part in the religious observances of the Russian people. Icons are pictorial, usually half-length, representations of the Saviour, of the Madonna, or of a saint, executed in archaic Byzantine style, on a yellow or gold ground, and varying in size from a square inch to several square feet. Very often the whole picture, with the exception of the face and hands of the figure, is covered with a metal plaque, embossed so as to represent the form of the figure and the drapery. When this plaque is not used, the crown and costume are often adorned with pearls and other precious stones--sometimes of great price. In respect of religions significance, Icons are of two kinds: simple, and miraculous or miracle-working (tchudotvorny). The former are manufactured in enormous quantities--chiefly in the province of Vladimir, where whole villages are employed in this kind of work--and are to be found in every Russian house, from the hut of the peasant to the palace of the Emperor. They are generally placed high up in a corner facing the door, and good orthodox Christians on entering bow in that direction, making at the same time the sign of the cross. Before and after meals the same short ceremony is always performed. On the eve of fete-days a small lamp is kept burning before at least one of the Icons in the house. The wonder-working Icons are comparatively few in number, and are always carefully preserved in a church or chapel. They are commonly believed to have been "not made with hands," and to have appeared in a miraculous way. A monk, or it may be a common mortal, has a vision, in which he is informed that he may find a miraculous Icon in such a place, and on going to the spot indicated he finds it, sometimes buried, sometimes hanging on a tree. The sacred treasure is then removed to a church, and the news spreads like wildfire through the district. Thousands flock to prostrate themselves before the heaven-sent picture, and some are healed of their diseases--a fact that plainly indicates its miracle-working power. The whole affair is then officially reported to the Most Holy Synod, the highest ecclesiastical authority in Russia, in order that the existence of the miracle-working power may be fully and regularly proved. The official recognition of the fact is by no means a mere matter of form, for the Synod is well aware that wonder-working Icons are always a rich source of revenue to the monasteries where they are kept, and that zealous Superiors are consequently apt in such cases to lean to the side of credulity, rather than that of over-severe criticism. A regular investigation is therefore made, and the formal recognition is not granted till the testimony of the finder is thoroughly examined and the alleged miracles duly authenticated. If the recognition is granted, the Icon is treated with the greatest veneration, and is sure to be visited by pilgrims from far and near. Some of the most revered Icons--as, for instance, the Kazan Madonna--have annual fete-days instituted in their honour; or, more correctly speaking, the anniversary of their miraculous appearance is observed as a religions holiday. A few of them have an additional title to popular respect and veneration: that of being intimately associated with great events in the national history. The Vladimir Madonna, for example, once saved Moscow from the Tartars; the Smolensk Madonna accompanied the army in the glorious campaign against Napoleon in 1812; and when in that year it was known in Moscow that the French were advancing on the city, the people wished the Metropolitan to take the Iberian Madonna, which may still be seen near one of the gates of the Kremlin, and to lead them out armed with hatchets against the enemy. If the Russian priests have done little to advance popular education, they have at least never intentionally opposed it. Unlike their Roman Catholic brethren, they do not hold that "a little learning is a dangerous thing," and do not fear that faith may be endangered by knowledge. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the Russian Church regards with profound apathy those various intellectual movements which cause serious alarm to many thoughtful Christians in Western Europe. It considers religion as something so entirely apart that its votaries do not feel the necessity of bringing their theological beliefs into logical harmony with their scientific conceptions. A man may remain a good orthodox Christian long after he has adopted scientific opinions irreconcilable with Eastern Orthodoxy, or, indeed, with dogmatic Christianity of any kind. In the confessional the priest never seeks to ferret out heretical opinions; and I can recall no instance in Russian history of a man being burnt at the stake on the demand of the ecclesiastical authorities, as so often happened in the Roman Catholic world, for his scientific views. This tolerance proceeds partly, no doubt, from the fact that the Eastern Church in general, and the Russian Church in particular, have remained for centuries in a kind of intellectual torpor. Even such a fervent orthodox Christian as the late Ivan Aksakof perceived this absence of healthy vitality, and he did not hesitate to declare his conviction that, "neither the Russian nor the Slavonic world will be resuscitated . . . so long as the Church remains in such lifelessness (mertvennost'), which is not a matter of chance, but the legitimate fruit of some organic defect."* * Solovyoff, "Otcherki ig istorii Russkoi Literaturi XIX. veka." St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 269. Though the unsatisfactory condition of the parochial clergy is generally recognised by the educated classes, very few people take the trouble to consider seriously how it might be improved. During the Reform enthusiasm which raged for some years after the Crimean War ecclesiastical affairs were entirely overlooked. Many of the reformers of those days were so very "advanced" that religion in all its forms seemed to them an old-world superstition which tended to retard rather than accelerate social progress, and which consequently should be allowed to die as tranquilly as possible; whilst the men of more moderate views found they had enough to do in emancipating the serfs and reforming the corrupt civil and judicial Administration. During the subsequent reactionary period, which culminated in the reign of the late Emperor, Alexander III., much more attention was devoted to Church matters, and it came to be recognised in official circles that something ought to be done for the parish clergy in the way of improving their material condition so as to increase their moral influence. With this object in view, M. Pobedonostsef, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, induced the Government in 1893 to make a State-grant of about 6,500,000 roubles, which should be increased every year, but the sum was very inadequate, and a large portion of it was devoted to purposes of political propaganda in the form of maintaining Greek Orthodox priests in districts where the population was Protestant or Roman Catholic. Consequently, of the 35,865 parishes which Russia contains, only 18,936, or a little more than one-half, were enabled to benefit by the grant. In an optimistic, semi-official statement published as late as 1896 it is admitted that "the means for the support of the parish clergy must even now be considered insufficient and wanting in stability, making the priests dependent on the parishioners, and thereby preventing the establishment of the necessary moral authority of the spiritual father over his flock." In some places the needs of the Church are attended to by voluntary parish-curatorships which annually raise a certain sum of money, and the way in which they distribute it is very characteristic of the Russian people, who have a profound veneration for the Church and its rites, but very little consideration for the human beings who serve at the altar. In 14,564 parishes possessing such curatorships no less than 2,500,000 roubles were collected, but of this sum 2,000,000 were expended on the maintenance and embellishment of churches, and only 174,000 were devoted to the personal wants of the clergy. According to the semi-official document from which these figures are taken the whole body of the Russian White Clergy in 1893 numbered 99,391, of whom 42,513 were priests, 12,953 deacons, and 43,925 clerks. In more recent observations among the parochial clergy I have noticed premonitory symptoms of important changes. This may be illustrated by an entry in my note-book, written in a village of one of the Southern provinces, under date of 30th September, 1903: "I have made here the acquaintance of two good specimens of the parish clergy, both excellent men in their way, but very different from each other. The elder one, Father Dmitri, is of the old school, a plain, practical man, who fulfils his duties conscientiously according to his lights, but without enthusiasm. His intellectual wants are very limited, and he devotes his attention chiefly to the practical affairs of everyday life, which he manages very successfully. He does not squeeze his parishioners unduly, but he considers that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and insists on his flock providing for his wants according to their means. At the same time he farms on his own account and attends personally to all the details of his farming operations. With the condition and doings of every member of his flock he is intimately acquainted, and, on the whole, as he never idealised anything or anybody, he has not a very high opinion of them. "The younger priest, Father Alexander, is of a different type, and the difference may be remarked even in his external appearance. There is a look of delicacy and refinement about him, though his dress and domestic surroundings are of the plainest, and there is not a tinge of affectation in his manner. His language is less archaic and picturesque. He uses fewer Biblical and semi-Slavonic expressions--I mean expressions which belong to the antiquated language of the Church Service rather than to modern parlance--and his armoury of terse popular proverbs which constitute such a characteristic trait of the peasantry, is less frequently drawn on. When I ask him about the present condition of the peasantry, his account does not differ substantially from that of his elder colleague, but he does not condemn their sins in the same forcible terms. He laments their shortcomings in an evangelical spirit and has apparently aspirations for their future improvement. Admitting frankly that there is a great deal of lukewarmness among them, he hopes to revive their interest in ecclesiastical affairs and he has an idea of constituting a sort of church committee for attending to the temporal affairs of the village church and for works of charity, but he looks to influencing the younger rather than the older generation. "His interest in his parishioners is not confined to their spiritual welfare, but extends to their material well-being. Of late an association for mutual credit has been founded in the village, and he uses his influence to induce the peasants to take advantage of the benefits it offers, both to those who are in need of a little ready money and to those who might invest their savings, instead of keeping them hidden away in an old stocking or buried in an earthen pot. The proposal to create a local agricultural society meets also with his sympathy." If the number of parish priests of this type increase, the clergy may come to exercise great moral influence on the common people. CHAPTER V A MEDICAL CONSULTATION Unexpected Illness--A Village Doctor--Siberian Plague--My Studies--Russian Historians--A Russian Imitator of Dickens--A ci-devant Domestic Serf--Medicine and Witchcraft--A Remnant of Paganism--Credulity of the Peasantry--Absurd Rumours--A Mysterious Visit from St. Barbara--Cholera on Board a Steamer--Hospitals--Lunatic Asylums--Amongst Maniacs. In enumerating the requisites for travelling in the less frequented parts of Russia, I omitted to mention one important condition: the traveller should be always in good health, and in case of illness be ready to dispense with regular medical attendance. This I learned by experience during my stay at Ivanofka. A man who is accustomed to be always well, and has consequently cause to believe himself exempt from the ordinary ills that flesh is heir to, naturally feels aggrieved--as if some one had inflicted upon him an undeserved injury--when he suddenly finds himself ill. At first he refuses to believe the fact, and, as far as possible, takes no notice of the disagreeable symptoms. Such was my state of mind on being awakened early one morning by peculiar symptoms which I had never before experienced. Unwilling to admit to myself the possibility of being ill, I got up, and endeavoured to dress as usual, but very soon discovered that I was unable to stand. There was no denying the fact; not only was I ill, but the malady, whatever it was, surpassed my powers of diagnosis; and when the symptoms increased steadily all that day and the following night, I was constrained to take the humiliating decision of asking for medical advice. To my inquiries whether there was a doctor in the neighbourhood, the old servant replied, "There is not exactly a doctor, but there is a Feldsher in the village." "And what is a Feldsher?" "A Feldsher is . . . . is a Feldsher." "I am quite aware of that, but I would like to know what you mean by the word. What is this Feldsher?" "He's an old soldier who dresses wounds and gives physic." The definition did not predispose me in favour of the mysterious personage, but as there was nothing better to be had I ordered him to be sent for, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the old servant, who evidently did not believe in feldshers. In about half an hour a tall, broad-shouldered man entered, and stood bolt upright in the middle of the room in the attitude which is designated in military language by the word "Attention." His clean-shaven chin, long moustache, and closely-cropped hair confirmed one part of the old servant's definition; he was unmistakably an old soldier. "You are a Feldsher," I said, making use of the word which I had recently added to my vocabulary. "Exactly so, your Nobility!" These words, the ordinary form of affirmation used by soldiers to their officers, were pronounced in a loud, metallic, monotonous tone, as if the speaker had been an automaton conversing with a brother automaton at a distance of twenty yards. As soon as the words were pronounced the mouth of the machine closed spasmodically, and the head, which had been momentarily turned towards me, reverted to its former position with a jerk as if it had received the order "Eyes front!" "Then please to sit down here, and I'll tell you about my ailment." Upon this the figure took three paces to the front, wheeled to the right-about, and sat down on the edge of the chair, retaining the position of "Attention" as nearly as the sitting posture would allow. When the symptoms had been carefully described, he knitted his brows, and after some reflection remarked, "I can give you a dose of . . . ." Here followed a long word which I did not understand. "I don't wish you to give me a dose of anything till I know what is the matter with me. Though a bit of a doctor myself, I have no idea what it is, and, pardon me, I think you are in the same position." Noticing a look of ruffled professional dignity on his face, I added, as a sedative, "It is evidently something very peculiar, so that if the first medical practitioner in the country were present he would probably be as much puzzled as ourselves." The sedative had the desired effect. "Well, sir, to tell you the truth," he said, in a more human tone of voice, "I do not clearly understand what it is." "Exactly; and therefore I think we had better leave the cure to Nature, and not interfere with her mode of treatment." "Perhaps it would be better." "No doubt. And now, since I have to lie here on my back, and feel rather lonely, I should like to have a talk with you. You are not in a hurry, I hope?" "Not at all. My assistant knows where I am, and will send for me if I am required." "So you have an assistant, have you?" "Oh, yes; a very sharp young fellow, who has been two years in the Feldsher school, and has now come here to help me and learn more by practice. That is a new way. I never was at a school of the kind myself, and had to pick up what I could when a servant in the hospital. There were, I believe, no such schools in my time. The one where my assistant learned was opened by the Zemstvo." "The Zemstvo is the new local administration, is it not?" "Exactly so. And I could not do without the assistant," continued my new acquaintance, gradually losing his rigidity, and showing himself, what he really was, a kindly, talkative man. "I have often to go to other villages, and almost every day a number of peasants come here. At first I had very little to do, for the people thought I was an official, and would make them pay dearly for what I should give them; but now they know that they don't require to pay, and come in great numbers. And everything I give them--though sometimes I don't clearly understand what the matter is--seems to do them good. I believe that faith does as much as physic." "In my country," I remarked, "there is a sect of doctors who get the benefit of that principle. They give their patients two or three little balls no bigger than a pin's head, or a few drops of tasteless liquid, and they sometimes work wonderful cures." "That system would not do for us. The Russian muzhik would have no faith if he swallowed merely things of that kind. What he believes in is something with a very bad taste, and lots of it. That is his idea of a medicine; and he thinks that the more he takes of a medicine the better chance he has of getting well. When I wish to give a peasant several doses I make him come for each separate dose, for I know that if I did not he would probably swallow the whole as soon as he was out of sight. But there is not much serious disease here--not like what I used to see on the Sheksna. You have been on the Sheksna?" "Not yet, but I intend going there." The Sheksna is a river which falls into the Volga, and forms part of the great system of water-communication connecting the Volga with the Neva. "When you go there you will see lots of diseases. If there is a hot summer, and plenty of barges passing, something is sure to break out--typhus, or black small-pox, or Siberian plague, or something of the kind. That Siberian plague is a curious thing. Whether it really comes from Siberia, God only knows. So soon as it breaks out the horses die by dozens, and sometimes men and women are attacked, though it is not properly a human disease. They say that flies carry the poison from the dead horses to the people. The sign of it is a thing like a boil, with a dark-coloured rim. If this is cut open in time the person may recover, but if it is not, the person dies. There is cholera, too, sometimes." "What a delightful country," I said to myself, "for a young doctor who wishes to make discoveries in the science of disease!" The catalogue of diseases inhabiting this favoured region was apparently not yet complete, but it was cut short for the moment by the arrival of the assistant, with the announcement that his superior was wanted. This first interview with the feldsher was, on the whole, satisfactory. He had not rendered me any medical assistance, but he had helped me to pass an hour pleasantly, and had given me a little information of the kind I desired. My later interviews with him were equally agreeable. He was naturally an intelligent, observant man, who had seen a great deal of the Russian world, and could describe graphically what he had seen. Unfortunately the horizontal position to which I was condemned prevented me from noting down at the time the interesting things which he related to me. His visits, together with those of Karl Karl'itch and of the priest, who kindly spent a great part of his time with me, helped me to while away many an hour which would otherwise have been dreary enough. During the intervals when I was alone I devoted myself to reading--sometimes Russian history and sometimes works of fiction. The history was that of Karamzin, who may fairly be called the Russian Livy. It interested me much by the facts which it contained, but irritated me not a little by the rhetorical style in which it is written. Afterwards, when I had waded through some twenty volumes of the gigantic work of Solovyoff--or Solovief, as the name is sometimes unphonetically written--which is simply a vast collection of valuable but undigested material, I was much less severe on the picturesque descriptions and ornate style of his illustrious predecessor. The first work of fiction which I read was a collection of tales by Grigorovitch, which had been given to me by the author on my departure from St. Petersburg. These tales, descriptive of rural life in Russia, had been written, as the author afterwards admitted to me, under the influence of Dickens. Many of the little tricks and affectations which became painfully obtrusive in Dickens's later works I had no difficulty in recognising under their Russian garb. In spite of these I found the book very pleasant reading, and received from it some new notions--to be afterwards verified, of course--about Russian peasant life. One of these tales made a deep impression upon me, and I still remember the chief incidents. The story opens with the description of a village in late autumn. It has been raining for some time heavily, and the road has become covered with a deep layer of black mud. An old woman--a small proprietor--is sitting at home with a friend, drinking tea and trying to read the future by means of a pack of cards. This occupation is suddenly interrupted by the entrance of a female servant, who announces that she has discovered an old man, apparently very ill, lying in one of the outhouses. The old woman goes out to see her uninvited guest, and, being of a kindly nature, prepares to have him removed to a more comfortable place, and properly attended to; but her servant whispers to her that perhaps he is a vagrant, and the generous impulse is thereby checked. When it is discovered that the suspicion is only too well founded, and that the man has no passport, the old woman becomes thoroughly alarmed. Her imagination pictures to her the terrible consequences that would ensue if the police should discover that she had harboured a vagrant. All her little fortune might be extorted from her. And if the old man should happen to die in her house or farmyard! The consequences in that case might be very serious. Not only might she lose everything, but she might even be dragged to prison. At the sight of these dangers the old woman forgets her tender-heartedness, and becomes inexorable. The old man, sick unto death though he be, must leave the premises instantly. Knowing full well that he will nowhere find a refuge, he walks forth into the cold, dark, stormy night, and next morning a dead body is found at a short distance from the village. Why this story, which was not strikingly remarkable for artistic merit, impressed me so deeply I cannot say. Perhaps it was because I was myself ill at the time, and imagined how terrible it would be to be turned out on the muddy road on a cold, wet October night. Besides this, the story interested me as illustrating the terror which the police inspired during the reign of Nicholas I. The ingenious devices which they employed for extorting money formed the subject of another sketch, which I read shortly afterwards, and which has likewise remained in my memory. The facts were as follows: An officer of rural police, when driving on a country road, finds a dead body by the wayside. Congratulating himself on this bit of good luck, he proceeds to the nearest village, and lets the inhabitants know that all manner of legal proceedings will be taken against them, so that the supposed murderer may be discovered. The peasants are of course frightened, and give him a considerable sum of money in order that he may hush up the affair. An ordinary officer of police would have been quite satisfied with this ransom, but this officer is not an ordinary man, and is very much in need of money; he conceives, therefore, the brilliant idea of repeating the experiment. Taking up the dead body, he takes it away in his tarantass, and a few hours later declares to the inhabitants of a village some miles off that some of them have been guilty of murder, and that he intends to investigate the matter thoroughly. The peasants of course pay liberally in order to escape the investigation, and the rascally officer, emboldened by success, repeats the trick in different villages until he has gathered a large sum. Tales and sketches of this kind were very much in fashion during the years which followed the death of the great autocrat, Nicholas I., when the long-pent-up indignation against his severe, repressive regime was suddenly allowed free expression, and they were still much read during the first years of my stay in the country. Now the public taste has changed. The reform enthusiast has evaporated, and the existing administrative abuses, more refined and less comical than their predecessors, receive comparatively little attention from the satirists. When I did not feel disposed to read, and had none of my regular visitors with me, I sometimes spent an hour or two in talking with the old man-servant who attended me. Anton was decidedly an old man, but what his age precisely was I never could discover; either he did not know himself, or he did not wish to tell me. In appearance he seemed about sixty, but from certain remarks which he made I concluded that he must be nearer seventy, though he had scarcely a grey hair on his head. As to who his father was he seemed, like the famous Topsy, to have no very clear ideas, but he had an advantage over Topsy with regard to his maternal ancestry. His mother had been a serf who had fulfilled for some time the functions of a lady's maid, and after the death of her mistress had been promoted to a not very clearly defined position of responsibility in the household. Anton, too, had been promoted in his time. His first function in the household had been that of assistant-keeper of the tobacco-pipes, from which humble office he had gradually risen to a position which may be roughly designated as that of butler. All this time he had been, of course, a serf, as his mother had been before him; but being naturally a man of sluggish intellect, he had never thoroughly realised the fact, and had certainly never conceived the possibility of being anything different from what he was. His master was master, and he himself was Anton, obliged to obey his master, or at least conceal disobedience--these were long the main facts in his conception of the universe, and, as philosophers generally do with regard to fundamental facts or axioms, he had accepted them without examination. By means of these simple postulates he had led a tranquil life, untroubled by doubts, until the year 1861, when the so-called freedom was brought to Ivanofka. He himself had not gone to the church to hear Batushka read the Tsar's manifesto, but his master, on returning from the ceremony, had called him and said, "Anton, you are free now, but the Tsar says you are to serve as you have done for two years longer." To this startling announcement Anton had replied coolly, "Slushayus," or, as we would say, "Yes, sir," and without further comment had gone to fetch his master's breakfast; but what he saw and heard during the next few weeks greatly troubled his old conceptions of human society and the fitness of things. From that time must be dated, I suppose, the expression of mental confusion which his face habitually wore. The first thing that roused his indignation was the conduct of his fellow-servants. Nearly all the unmarried ones seemed to be suddenly attacked by a peculiar matrimonial mania. The reason of this was that the new law expressly gave permission to the emancipated serfs to marry as they chose without the consent of their masters, and nearly all the unmarried adults hastened to take advantage of their newly-acquired privilege, though many of them had great difficulty in raising the capital necessary to pay the priest's fees. Then came disorders among the peasantry, the death of the old master, and the removal of the family first to St. Petersburg, and afterwards to Germany. Anton's mind had never been of a very powerful order, and these great events had exercised a deleterious influence upon it. When Karl Karl'itch, at the expiry of the two years, informed him that he might now go where he chose, he replied, with a look of blank, unfeigned astonishment, "Where can I go to?" He had never conceived the possibility of being forced to earn his bread in some new way, and begged Karl Karl'itch to let him remain where he was. This request was readily granted, for Anton was an honest, faithful servant, and sincerely attached to the family, and it was accordingly arranged that he should receive a small monthly salary, and occupy an intermediate position between those of major-domo and head watch-dog. Had Anton been transformed into a real watch-dog he could scarcely have slept more than he did. His power of sleeping, and his somnolence when he imagined he was awake, were his two most prominent characteristics. Out of consideration for his years and his love of repose, I troubled him as little as possible; but even the small amount of service which I demanded he contrived to curtail in an ingenious way. The time and exertion required for traversing the intervening space between his own room and mine might, he thought, be more profitably employed; and accordingly he extemporised a bed in a small ante-chamber, close to my door, and took up there his permanent abode. If sonorous snoring be sufficient proof that the performer is asleep, then I must conclude that Anton devoted about three-fourths of his time to sleeping and a large part of the remaining fourth to yawning and elongated guttural ejaculations. At first this little arrangement considerably annoyed me, but I bore it patiently, and afterwards received my reward, for during my illness I found it very convenient to have an attendant within call. And I must do Anton the justice to say that he served me well in his own somnolent fashion. He seemed to have the faculty of hearing when asleep, and generally appeared in my room before he had succeeded in getting his eyes completely open. Anton had never found time, during his long life, to form many opinions, but he had somehow imbibed or inhaled a few convictions, all of a decidedly conservative kind, and one of these was that feldshers were useless and dangerous members of society. Again and again he had advised me to have nothing to do with the one who visited me, and more than once he recommended to me an old woman of the name of Masha, who lived in a village a few miles off. Masha was what is known in Russia as a znakharka--that is to say, a woman who is half witch, half medical practitioner--the whole permeated with a strong leaven of knavery. According to Anton, she could effect by means of herbs and charms every possible cure short of raising from the dead, and even with regard to this last operation he cautiously refrained from expressing an opinion. The idea of being subjected to a course of herbs and charms by an old woman who probably knew very little about the hidden properties of either, did not seem to me inviting, and more than once I flatly refused to have recourse to such unhallowed means. On due consideration, however, I thought that a professional interview with the old witch would be rather amusing, and then a brilliant idea occurred to me! I would bring together the feldsher and the znakharka, who no doubt hated each other with a Kilkenny-cat hatred, and let them fight out their differences before me for the benefit of science and my own delectation. The more I thought of my project, the more I congratulated myself on having conceived such a scheme; but, alas! in this very imperfectly organised world of ours brilliant ideas are seldom realised, and in this case I was destined to be disappointed. Did the old woman's black art warn her of approaching danger, or was she simply actuated by a feeling of professional jealousy and considerations of professional etiquette? To this question I can give no positive answer, but certain it is that she could not be induced to pay me a visit, and I was thus balked of my expected amusement. I succeeded, however, in learning indirectly something about the old witch. She enjoyed among her neighbours that solid, durable kind of respect which is founded on vague, undefinable fear, and was believed to have effected many remarkable cures. In the treatment of syphilitic diseases, which are fearfully common among the Russian peasantry, she was supposed to be specially successful, and I have no doubt, from the vague descriptions which I received, that the charm which she employed in these cases was of a mercurial kind. Some time afterward I saw one of her victims. Whether she had succeeded in destroying the poison I know not, but she had at least succeeded in destroying most completely the patient's teeth. How women of this kind obtain mercury, and how they have discovered its medicinal properties, I cannot explain. Neither can I explain how they have come to know the peculiar properties of ergot of rye, which they frequently employ for illicit purposes familiar to all students of medical jurisprudence. The znakharka and the feldsher represent two very different periods in the history of medical science--the magical and the scientific. The Russian peasantry have still many conceptions which belong to the former. The great majority of them are already quite willing, under ordinary circumstances, to use the scientific means of healing; but as soon as a violent epidemic breaks out, and the scientific means prove unequal to the occasion, the old faith revives, and recourse is had to magical rites and incantations. Of these rites many are very curious. Here, for instance, is one which had been performed in a village near which I afterwards lived for some time. Cholera had been raging in the district for several weeks. In the village in question no case had yet occurred, but the inhabitants feared that the dreaded visitor would soon arrive, and the following ingenious contrivance was adopted for warding off the danger. At midnight, when the male population was supposed to be asleep, all the maidens met in nocturnal costume, according to a preconcerted plan, and formed a procession. In front marched a girl, holding an Icon. Behind her came her companions, dragging a sokha--the primitive plough commonly used by the peasantry--by means of a long rope. In this order the procession made the circuit of the entire village, and it was confidently believed that the cholera would not be able to overstep the magical circle thus described. Many of the males probably knew, or at least suspected, what was going on; but they prudently remained within doors, knowing well that if they should be caught peeping indiscreetly at the mystic ceremony, they would be unmercifully beaten by those who were taking part in it. This custom is doubtless a survival of old pagan superstitions. The introduction of the Icon is a modern innovation, which illustrates that curious blending of paganism and Christianity which is often to be met with in Russia, and of which I shall have more to say in another chapter. Sometimes, when an epidemic breaks out, the panic produced takes a more dangerous form. The people suspect that it is the work of the doctors, or that some ill-disposed persons have poisoned the wells, and no amount of reasoning will convince them that their own habitual disregard of the most simple sanitary precautions has something to do with the phenomenon. I know of one case where an itinerant photographer was severely maltreated in consequence of such suspicions; and once, in St. Petersburg, during the reign of Nicholas I., a serious riot took place. The excited populace had already thrown several doctors out of the windows of the hospital, when the Emperor arrived, unattended, in an open carriage, and quelled the disturbance by his simple presence, aided by his stentorian voice. Of the ignorant credulity of the Russian peasantry I might relate many curious illustrations. The most absurd rumours sometimes awaken consternation throughout a whole district. One of the most common reports of this kind is that a female conscription is about to take place. About the time of the Duke of Edinburgh's marriage with the daughter of Alexander II. this report was specially frequent. A large number of young girls were to be kidnapped and sent to England in a red ship. Why the ship was to be red I can easily explain, because in the peasants' language the conceptions of red and beautiful are expressed by the same word (krasny), and in the popular legends the epithet is indiscriminately applied to everything connected with princes and great personages; but what was to be done with the kidnapped maidens when they arrived at their destination, I never succeeded in discovering. The most amusing instance of credulity which I can recall was the following, related to me by a peasant woman who came from the village where the incident had occurred. One day in winter, about the time of sunset, a peasant family was startled by the entrance of a strange visitor, a female figure, dressed as St. Barbara is commonly represented in the religious pictures. All present were very much astonished by this apparition; but the figure told them, in a low, soft voice, to be of good cheer, for she was St. Barbara, and had come to honour the family with a visit as a reward for their piety. The peasant thus favoured was not remarkable for his piety, but he did not consider it necessary to correct the mistake of his saintly visitor, and requested her to be seated. With perfect readiness she accepted the invitation, and began at once to discourse in an edifying way. Meanwhile the news of this wonderful apparition spread like wildfire, and all the inhabitants of the village, as well as those of a neighbouring village about a mile distant, collected in and around the house. Whether the priest was among those who came my informant did not know. Many of those who had come could not get within hearing, but those at the outskirts of the crowd hoped that the saint might come out before disappearing. Their hopes were gratified. About midnight the mysterious visitor announced that she would go and bring St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker, and requested all to remain perfectly still during her absence. The crowd respectfully made way for her, and she passed out into the darkness. With breathless expectation all awaited the arrival of St. Nicholas, who is the favourite saint of the Russian peasantry; but hours passed, and he did not appear. At last, toward sunrise, some of the less zealous spectators began to return home, and those of them who had come from the neighbouring village discovered to their horror that during their absence their horses had been stolen! At once they raised the hue-and-cry; and the peasants scoured the country in all directions in search of the soi-disant St. Barbara and her accomplices, but they never recovered the stolen property. "And serve them right, the blockheads!" added my informant, who had herself escaped falling into the trap by being absent from the village at the time. It is but fair to add that the ordinary Russian peasant, though in some respects extremely credulous, and, like all other people, subject to occasional panics, is by no means easily frightened by real dangers. Those who have seen them under fire will readily credit this statement. For my own part, I have had opportunities of observing them merely in dangers of a non-military kind, and have often admired the perfect coolness displayed. Even an epidemic alarms them only when it attains a certain degree of intensity. Once I had a good opportunity of observing this on board a large steamer on the Volga. It was a very hot day in the early autumn. As it was well known that there was a great deal of Asiatic cholera all over the country, prudent people refrained from eating much raw fruit; but Russian peasants are not generally prudent men, and I noticed that those on board were consuming enormous quantities of raw cucumbers and water-melons. This imprudence was soon followed by its natural punishment. I refrain from describing the scene that ensued, but I may say that those who were attacked received from the others every possible assistance. Had no unforeseen accident happened, we should have arrived at Kazan on the following morning, and been able to send the patients to the hospital of that town; but as there was little water in the river, we had to cast anchor for the night, and next morning we ran aground and stuck fast. Here we had to remain patiently till a smaller steamer hove in sight. All this time there was not the slightest symptom of panic, and when the small steamer came alongside there was no frantic rush to get away from the infected vessel, though it was quite evident that only a few of the passengers could be taken off. Those who were nearest the gangway went quietly on board the small steamer, and those who were less fortunate remained patiently till another steamer happened to pass. The old conceptions of disease, as something that may be most successfully cured by charms and similar means, are rapidly disappearing. The Zemstvo--that is to say, the new local self-government--has done much towards this end by enabling the people to procure better medical attendance. In the towns there are public hospitals, which generally are--or at least seem to an unprofessional eye--in a very satisfactory condition. The resident doctors are daily besieged by a crowd of peasants, who come from far and near to ask advice and receive medicines. Besides this, in some provinces feldshers are placed in the principal villages, and the doctor makes frequent tours of inspection. The doctors are generally well-educated men, and do a large amount of work for a very small remuneration. Of the lunatic asylums, which are generally attached to the larger hospitals, I cannot speak very favourably. Some of the great central ones are all that could be desired, but others are badly constructed and fearfully overcrowded. One or two of those I visited appeared to me to be conducted on very patriarchal principles, as the following incident may illustrate. I had been visiting a large hospital, and had remained there so long that it was already dark before I reached the adjacent lunatic asylum. Seeing no lights in the windows, I proposed to my companion, who was one of the inspectors, that we should delay our visit till the following morning, but he assured me that by the regulations the lights ought not to be extinguished till considerably later, and consequently there was no objection to our going in at once. If there was no legal objection, there was at least a physical obstruction in the form of a large wooden door, and all our efforts to attract the attention of the porter or some other inmate were unavailing. At last, after much ringing, knocking, and shouting, a voice from within asked us who we were and what we wanted. A brief reply from my companion, not couched in the most polite or amiable terms, made the bolts rattle and the door open with surprising rapidity, and we saw before us an old man with long dishevelled hair, who, as far as appearance went, might have been one of the lunatics, bowing obsequiously and muttering apologies. After groping our way along a dark corridor we entered a still darker room, and the door was closed and locked behind us. As the key turned in the rusty lock a wild scream rang through the darkness! Then came a yell, then a howl, and then various sounds which the poverty of the English language prevents me from designating--the whole blending into a hideous discord that would have been at home in some of the worst regions of Dante's Inferno. As to the cause of it I could not even form a conjecture. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and I could dimly perceive white figures flitting about the room. At the same time I felt something standing near me, and close to my shoulder I saw a pair of eyes and long streaming hair. On my other side, equally close, was something very like a woman's night-cap. Though by no means of a nervous temperament, I felt uncomfortable. To be shut up in a dark room with an indefinite number of excited maniacs is not a comfortable position. How long the imprisonment lasted I know not--probably not more than two or three minutes, but it seemed a long time. At last a light was procured, and the whole affair was explained. The guardians, not expecting the visit of an inspector at so late an hour, had retired for the night much earlier than usual, and the old porter had put us into the nearest ward until he could fetch a light--locking the door behind us lest any of the lunatics should escape. The noise had awakened one of the unfortunate inmates of the ward, and her hysterical scream had terrified the others. By the influence of asylums, hospitals, and similar institutions, the old conceptions of disease, as I have said, are gradually dying out, but the znakharka still finds practice. The fact that the znakharka is to be found side by side not only with the feldsher, but also with the highly trained bacteriologist, is very characteristic of Russian civilisation, which is a strange conglomeration of products belonging to very different periods. The enquirer who undertakes the study of it will sometimes be scarcely less surprised than would be the naturalist who should unexpectedly stumble upon antediluvian megatheria grazing tranquilly in the same field with prize Southdowns. He will discover the most primitive institutions side by side with the latest products of French doctrinairism, and the most childish superstitions in close proximity with the most advanced free-thinking. CHAPTER VI A PEASANT FAMILY OF THE OLD TYPE Ivan Petroff--His Past Life--Co-operative Associations--Constitution of a Peasant's Household--Predominance of Economic Conceptions over those of Blood-relationship--Peasant Marriages--Advantages of Living in Large Families--Its Defects--Family Disruptions and their Consequences. My illness had at least one good result. It brought me into contact with the feldsher, and through him, after my recovery, I made the acquaintance of several peasants living in the village. Of these by far the most interesting was an old man called Ivan Petroff. Ivan must have been about sixty years of age, but was still robust and strong, and had the reputation of being able to mow more hay in a given time than any other peasant in the village. His head would have made a line study for a portrait-painter. Like Russian peasants in general, he wore his hair parted in the middle--a custom which perhaps owes its origin to the religious pictures. The reverend appearance given to his face by his long fair beard, slightly tinged with grey, was in part counteracted by his eyes, which had a strange twinkle in them--whether of humour or of roguery, it was difficult to say. Under all circumstances--whether in his light, nondescript summer costume, or in his warm sheep-skin, or in the long, glossy, dark-blue, double-breasted coat which he put on occasionally on Sundays and holidays--he always looked a well-fed, respectable, prosperous member of society; whilst his imperturbable composure, and the entire absence of obsequiousness or truculence in his manner, indicated plainly that he possessed no small amount of calm, deep-rooted self-respect. A stranger, on seeing him, might readily have leaped to the conclusion that he must be the Village Elder, but in reality he was a simple member of the Commune, like his neighbour, poor Zakhar Leshkof, who never let slip an opportunity of getting drunk, was always in debt, and, on the whole, possessed a more than dubious reputation. Ivan had, it is true, been Village Elder some years before. When elected by the Village Assembly, against his own wishes, he had said quietly, "Very well, children; I will serve my three years"; and at the end of that period, when the Assembly wished to re-elect him, he had answered firmly, "No, children; I have served my term. It is now the turn of some one who is younger, and has more time. There's Peter Alekseyef, a good fellow, and an honest; you may choose him." And the Assembly chose the peasant indicated; for Ivan, though a simple member of the Commune, had more influence in Communal affairs than any other half-dozen members put together. No grave matter was decided without his being consulted, and there was at least one instance on record of the Village Assembly postponing deliberations for a week because he happened to be absent in St. Petersburg. No stranger casually meeting Ivan would ever for a moment have suspected that that big man, of calm, commanding aspect, had been during a great part of his life a serf. And yet a serf he had been from his birth till he was about thirty years of age--not merely a serf of the State, but the serf of a proprietor who had lived habitually on his property. For thirty years of his life he had been dependent on the arbitrary will of a master who had the legal power to flog him as often and as severely as he considered desirable. In reality he had never been subjected to corporal punishment, for the proprietor to whom he had belonged had been, though in some respects severe, a just and intelligent master. Ivan's bright, sympathetic face had early attracted the master's attention, and it was decided that he should learn a trade. For this purpose he was sent to Moscow, and apprenticed there to a carpenter. After four years of apprenticeship he was able not only to earn his own bread, but to help the household in the payment of their taxes, and to pay annually to his master a fixed yearly sum--first ten, then twenty, then thirty, and ultimately, for some years immediately before the Emancipation, seventy roubles. In return for this annual sum he was free to work and wander about as he pleased, and for some years he had made ample use of his conditional liberty. I never succeeded in extracting from him a chronological account of his travels, but I could gather from his occasional remarks that he had wandered over a great part of European Russia. Evidently he had been in his youth what is colloquially termed "a roving blade," and had by no means confined himself to the trade which he had learned during his four years of apprenticeship. Once he had helped to navigate a raft from Vetluga to Astrakhan, a distance of about two thousand miles. At another time he had been at Archangel and Onega, on the shores of the White Sea. St. Petersburg and Moscow were both well known to him, and he had visited Odessa. The precise nature of Ivan's occupations during these wanderings I could not ascertain; for, with all his openness of manner, he was extremely reticent regarding his commercial affairs. To all my inquiries on this topic he was wont to reply vaguely, "Lesnoe dyelo"--that is to say, "Timber business"; and from this I concluded that his chief occupation had been that of a timber merchant. Indeed, when I knew him, though he was no longer a regular trader, he was always ready to buy any bit of forest that could be bought in the vicinity for a reasonable price. During all this nomadic period of his life Ivan had never entirely severed his connection with his native village or with agricultural life. When about the age of twenty he had spent several months at home, taking part in the field labour, and had married a wife--a strong, healthy young woman, who had been selected for him by his mother, and strongly recommended to him on account of her good character and her physical strength. In the opinion of Ivan's mother, beauty was a kind of luxury which only nobles and rich merchants could afford, and ordinary comeliness was a very secondary consideration--so secondary as to be left almost entirely out of sight. This was likewise the opinion of Ivan's wife. She had never been comely herself, she used to say, but she had been a good wife to her husband. He had never complained about her want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward, then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she knew that--reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time he employed it he was called an "old scarecrow," or something of the kind. Perhaps, however, Ivan's jocular remark had more significance in it than his wife cared to admit, for during the first years of their married life they had seen very little of each other. A few days after the marriage, when according to our notions the honeymoon should be at its height, Ivan had gone to Moscow for several months, leaving his young bride to the care of his father and mother. The young bride did not consider this an extraordinary hardship, for many of her companions had been treated in the same way, and according to public opinion in that part of the country there was nothing abnormal in the proceeding. Indeed, it may be said in general that there is very little romance or sentimentality about Russian peasant marriages. In this as in other respects the Russian peasantry are, as a class, extremely practical and matter-of-fact in their conceptions and habits, and are not at all prone to indulge in sublime, ethereal sentiments of any kind. They have little or nothing of what may be termed the Hermann and Dorothea element in their composition, and consequently know very little about those sentimental, romantic ideas which we habitually associate with the preliminary steps to matrimony. Even those authors who endeavour to idealise peasant life have rarely ventured to make their story turn on a sentimental love affair. Certainly in real life the wife is taken as a helpmate, or in plain language a worker, rather than as a companion, and the mother-in-law leaves her very little time to indulge in fruitless dreaming. As time wore on, and his father became older and frailer, Ivan's visits to his native place became longer and more frequent, and when the old man was at last incapable of work, Ivan settled down permanently and undertook the direction of the household. In the meantime his own children had been growing up. When I knew the family it comprised--besides two daughters who had married early and gone to live with their parents-in-law--Ivan and his wife, two sons, three daughters-in-law, and an indefinite and frequently varying number of grandchildren. The fact that there were three daughters-in-law and only two sons was the result of the Conscription, which had taken away the youngest son shortly after his marriage. The two who remained spent only a small part of the year at home. The one was a carpenter and the other a bricklayer, and both wandered about the country in search of employment, as their father had done in his younger days. There was, however, one difference. The father had always shown a leaning towards commercial transactions, rather than the simple practice of his handicraft, and consequently he had usually lived and travelled alone. The sons, on the contrary, confined themselves to their handicrafts, and were always during the working season members of an artel. The artel in its various forms is a curious institution. Those to which Ivan's sons belonged were simply temporary, itinerant associations of workmen, who during the summer lived together, fed together, worked together, and periodically divided amongst themselves the profits. This is the primitive form of the institution, and is now not very often met with. Here, as elsewhere, capital has made itself felt, and destroyed that equality which exists among the members of an artel in the above sense of the word. Instead of forming themselves into a temporary association, the workmen now generally make an engagement with a contractor who has a little capital, and receive from him fixed monthly wages. The only association which exists in this case is for the purchase and preparation of provisions, and even these duties are very often left to the contractor. In some of the larger towns there are artels of a much more complex kind--permanent associations, possessing a large capital, and pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members. Of these, by far the most celebrated is that of the Bank Porters. These men have unlimited opportunities of stealing, and are often entrusted with the guarding or transporting of enormous sums; but the banker has no cause for anxiety, because he knows that if any defalcations occur they will be made good to him by the artel. Such accidents very rarely happen, and the fact is by no means so extraordinary as many people suppose. The artel, being responsible for the individuals of which it is composed, is very careful in admitting new members, and a man when admitted is closely watched, not only by the regularly constituted office-bearers, but also by all his fellow-members who have an opportunity of observing him. If he begins to spend money too freely or to neglect his duties, though his employer may know nothing of the fact, suspicions are at once aroused among his fellow-members, and an investigation ensues--ending in summary expulsion if the suspicions prove to have been well founded. Mutual responsibility, in short, creates a very effective system of mutual supervision. Of Ivan's sons, the one who was a carpenter visited his family only occasionally, and at irregular intervals; the bricklayer, on the contrary, as building is impossible in Russia during the cold weather, spent the greater part of the winter at home. Both of them paid a large part of their earnings into the family treasury, over which their father exercised uncontrolled authority. If he wished to make any considerable outlay, he consulted his sons on the subject; but as he was a prudent, intelligent man, and enjoyed the respect and confidence of the family, he never met with any strong opposition. All the field work was performed by him with the assistance of his daughters-in-law; only at harvest time he hired one or two labourers to help him. Ivan's household was a good specimen of the Russian peasant family of the old type. Previous to the Emancipation in 1861 there were many households of this kind, containing the representatives of three generations. All the members, young and old, lived together in patriarchal fashion under the direction and authority of the Head of the House, called usually the Khozain--that is to say, the Administrator; or, in some districts, the Bolshak, which means literally "the Big One." Generally speaking, this important position was occupied by the grandfather, or, if he was dead, by the eldest brother, but the rule was not very strictly observed. If, for instance, the grandfather became infirm, or if the eldest brother was incapacitated by disorderly habits or other cause, the place of authority was taken by some other member--it might be by a woman--who was a good manager, and possessed the greatest moral influence. The relations between the Head of the Household and the other members depended on custom and personal character, and they consequently varied greatly in different families. If the Big One was an intelligent man, of decided, energetic character, like my friend Ivan, there was probably perfect discipline in the household, except perhaps in the matter of female tongues, which do not readily submit to the authority even of their owners; but very often it happened that the Big One was not thoroughly well fitted for his post, and in that case endless quarrels and bickerings inevitably took place. Those quarrels were generally caused and fomented by the female members of the family--a fact which will not seem strange if we try to realise how difficult it must be for several sisters-in-law to live together, with their children and a mother-in-law, within the narrow limits of a peasant's household. The complaints of the young bride, who finds that her mother-in-law puts all the hard work on her shoulders, form a favourite motive in the popular poetry. The house, with its appurtenances, the cattle, the agricultural implements, the grain and other products, the money gained from the sale of these products--in a word, the house and nearly everything it contained--were the joint property of the family. Hence nothing was bought or sold by any member--not even by the Big One himself, unless he possessed an unusual amount of authority--without the express or tacit consent of the other grown-up males, and all the money that was earned was put into the common purse. When one of the sons left home to work elsewhere, he was expected to bring or send home all his earnings, except what he required for food, lodgings, and other necessary expenses; and if he understood the word "necessary" in too lax a sense, he had to listen to very plain-spoken reproaches when he returned. During his absence, which might last for a whole year or several years, his wife and children remained in the house as before, and the money which he earned could be devoted to the payment of the family taxes. The peasant household of the old type is thus a primitive labour association, of which the members have all things in common, and it is not a little remarkable that the peasant conceives it as such rather than as a family. This is shown by the customary terminology, for the Head of the Household is not called by any word corresponding to Paterfamilias, but is termed, as I have said, Khozain, or Administrator--a word that is applied equally to a farmer, a shopkeeper or the head of an industrial undertaking, and does not at all convey the idea of blood-relationship. It is likewise shown by what takes place when a household is broken up. On such occasions the degree of blood-relationship is not taken into consideration in the distribution of the property. All the adult male members share equally. Illegitimate and adopted sons, if they have contributed their share of labour, have the same rights as the sons born in lawful wedlock. The married daughter, on the contrary--being regarded as belonging to her husband's family--and the son who has previously separated himself from the household, are excluded from the succession. Strictly speaking, the succession or inheritance is confined to the wearing apparel and any little personal effects of a deceased member. The house and all that it contains belong to the little household community; and, consequently, when it is broken up, by the death of the Khozain or other cause, the members do not inherit, but merely appropriate individually what they had hitherto possessed collectively. Thus there is properly no inheritance or succession, but simply liquidation and distribution of the property among the members. The written law of inheritance founded on the conception of personal property, is quite unknown to the peasantry, and quite inapplicable to their mode of life. In this way a large and most important section of the Code remains a dead letter for about four-fifths of the population. This predominance of practical economic considerations is exemplified also by the way in which marriages are arranged in these large families. In the primitive system of agriculture usually practised in Russia, the natural labour-unit--if I may use such a term--comprises a man, a woman, and a horse. As soon, therefore, as a boy becomes an able-bodied labourer he ought to be provided with the two accessories necessary for the completion of the labour-unit. To procure a horse, either by purchase or by rearing a foal, is the duty of the Head of the House; to procure a wife for the youth is the duty of "the female Big One" (Bolshukha). And the chief consideration in determining the choice is in both cases the same. Prudent domestic administrators are not to be tempted by showy horses or beautiful brides; what they seek is not beauty, but physical strength and capacity for work. When the youth reaches the age of eighteen he is informed that he ought to marry at once, and as soon as he gives his consent negotiations are opened with the parents of some eligible young person. In the larger villages the negotiations are sometimes facilitated by certain old women called svakhi, who occupy themselves specially with this kind of mediation; but very often the affair is arranged directly by, or through the agency of, some common friend of the two houses. Care must of course be taken that there is no legal obstacle, and these obstacles are not always easily avoided in a small village, the inhabitants of which have been long in the habit of intermarrying. According to Russian ecclesiastical law, not only is marriage between first-cousins illegal, but affinity is considered as equivalent to consanguinity--that is to say a mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are regarded as a mother and a sister--and even the fictitious relationship created by standing together at the baptismal font as godfather and godmother is legally recognised, and may constitute a bar to matrimony. If all the preliminary negotiations are successful, the marriage takes place, and the bridegroom brings his bride home to the house of which he is a member. She brings nothing with her as a dowry except her trousseau, but she brings a pair of good strong arms, and thereby enriches her adopted family. Of course it happens occasionally--for human nature is everywhere essentially the same--that a young peasant falls in love with one of his former playmates, and brings his little romance to a happy conclusion at the altar; but such cases are very rare, and as a rule it may be said that the marriages of the Russian peasantry are arranged under the influence of economic rather than sentimental considerations. The custom of living in large families has many economic advantages. We all know the edifying fable of the dying man who showed to his sons by means of a piece of wicker-work the advantages of living together and assisting each other. In ordinary times the necessary expenses of a large household of ten members are considerably less than the combined expenses of two households comprising five members each, and when a "black day" comes a large family can bear temporary adversity much more successfully than a small one. These are principles of world-wide application, but in the life of the Russian peasantry they have a peculiar force. Each adult peasant possesses, as I shall hereafter explain, a share of the Communal land, but this share is not sufficient to occupy all his time and working power. One married pair can easily cultivate two shares--at least in all provinces where the peasant allotments are not very large. Now, if a family is composed of two married couples, one of the men can go elsewhere and earn money, whilst the other, with his wife and sister-in-law, can cultivate the two combined shares of land. If, on the contrary a family consists merely of one pair with their children, the man must either remain at home--in which case he may have difficulty in finding work for the whole of his time--or he must leave home, and entrust the cultivation of his share of the land to his wife, whose time must be in great part devoted to domestic affairs. In the time of serfage the proprietors clearly perceived these and similar advantages, and compelled their serfs to live together in large families. No family could be broken up without the proprietor's consent, and this consent was not easily obtained unless the family had assumed quite abnormal proportions and was permanently disturbed by domestic dissension. In the matrimonial affairs of the serfs, too, the majority of the proprietors systematically exercised a certain supervision, not necessarily from any paltry meddling spirit, but because their own material interests were thereby affected. A proprietor would not, for instance, allow the daughter of one of his serfs to marry a serf belonging to another proprietor--because he would thereby lose a female labourer--unless some compensation were offered. The compensation might be a sum of money, or the affair might be arranged on the principle of reciprocity by the master of the bridegroom allowing one of his female serfs to marry a serf belonging to the master of the bride. However advantageous the custom of living in large families may appear when regarded from the economic point of view, it has very serious defects, both theoretical and practical. That families connected by the ties of blood-relationship and marriage can easily live together in harmony is one of those social axioms which are accepted universally and believed by nobody. We all know by our own experience, or by that of others, that the friendly relations of two such families are greatly endangered by proximity of habitation. To live in the same street is not advisable; to occupy adjoining houses is positively dangerous; and to live under the same roof is certainly fatal to prolonged amity. There may be the very best intentions on both sides, and the arrangement may be inaugurated by the most gushing expressions of undying affection and by the discovery of innumerable secret affinities, but neither affinities, affection, nor good intentions can withstand the constant friction and occasional jerks which inevitably ensue. Now the reader must endeavour to realise that Russian peasants, even when clad in sheep-skins, are human beings like ourselves. Though they are often represented as abstract entities--as figures in a table of statistics or dots on a diagram--they have in reality "organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions." If not exactly "fed with the same food," they are at least "hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means," and liable to be irritated by the same annoyances as we are. And those of them who live in large families are subjected to a kind of probation that most of us have never dreamed of. The families comprising a large household not only live together, but have nearly all things in common. Each member works, not for himself, but for the household, and all that he earns is expected to go into the family treasury. The arrangement almost inevitably leads to one of two results--either there are continual dissensions, or order is preserved by a powerful domestic tyranny. It is quite natural, therefore, that when the authority of the landed proprietors was abolished in 1861, the large peasant families almost all crumbled to pieces. The arbitrary rule of the Khozain was based on, and maintained by, the arbitrary rule of the proprietor, and both naturally fell together. Households like that of our friend Ivan were preserved only in exceptional cases, where the Head of the House happened to possess an unusual amount of moral influence over the other members. This change has unquestionably had a prejudicial influence on the material welfare of the peasantry, but it must have added considerably to their domestic comfort, and may perhaps produce good moral results. For the present, however, the evil consequences are by far the most prominent. Every married peasant strives to have a house of his own, and many of them, in order to defray the necessary expenses, have been obliged to contract debts. This is a very serious matter. Even if the peasants could obtain money at five or six per cent., the position of the debtors would be bad enough, but it is in reality much worse, for the village usurers consider twenty or twenty-five per cent. a by no means exorbitant rate of interest. A laudable attempt has been made to remedy this state of things by village banks, but these have proved successful only in certain exceptional localities. As a rule the peasant who contracts debts has a hard struggle to pay the interest in ordinary times, and when some misfortune overtakes him--when, for instance, the harvest is bad or his horse is stolen--he probably falls hopelessly into pecuniary embarrassments. I have seen peasants not specially addicted to drunkenness or other ruinous habits sink to a helpless state of insolvency. Fortunately for such insolvent debtors, they are treated by the law with extreme leniency. Their house, their share of the common land, their agricultural implements, their horse--in a word, all that is necessary for their subsistence, is exempt from sequestration. The Commune, however, may bring strong pressure to bear on those who do not pay their taxes. When I lived among the peasantry in the seventies, corporal punishment inflicted by order of the Commune was among the means usually employed; and though the custom was recently prohibited by an Imperial decree of Nicholas II, I am not at all sure that it has entirely disappeared. CHAPTER VII THE PEASANTRY OF THE NORTH Communal Land--System of Agriculture--Parish Fetes--Fasting--Winter Occupations--Yearly Migrations--Domestic Industries--Influence of Capital and Wholesale Enterprise--The State Peasants--Serf-dues--Buckle's "History of Civilisation"--A precocious Yamstchik--"People Who Play Pranks"--A Midnight Alarm--The Far North. Ivanofka may be taken as a fair specimen of the villages in the northern half of the country, and a brief description of its inhabitants will convey a tolerably correct notion of the northern peasantry in general. Nearly the whole of the female population, and about one-half of the male inhabitants, are habitually engaged in cultivating the Communal land, which comprises about two thousand acres of a light sandy soil. The arable part of this land is divided into three large fields, each of which is cut up into long narrow strips. The first field is reserved for the winter grain--that is to say, rye, which forms, in the shape of black bread, the principal food of the rural population. In the second are raised oats for the horses, and buckwheat, which is largely used for food. The third lies fallow, and is used in the summer as pasturage for the cattle. All the villagers in this part of the country divide the arable land in this way, in order to suit the triennial rotation of crops. This triennial system is extremely simple. The field which is used this year for raising winter grain will be used next year for raising summer grain, and in the following year will lie fallow. Before being sown with winter grain it ought to receive a certain amount of manure. Every family possesses in each of the two fields under cultivation one or more of the long narrow strips or belts into which they are divided. The annual life of the peasantry is that of simple husbandman, inhabiting a country where the winter is long and severe. The agricultural year begins in April with the melting of the snow. Nature has been lying dormant for some months. Awaking now from her long sleep, and throwing off her white mantle, she strives to make up for lost time. No sooner has the snow disappeared than the fresh young grass begins to shoot up, and very soon afterwards the shrubs and trees begin to bud. The rapidity of this transition from winter to spring astonishes the inhabitants of more temperate climes. On St. George's Day (April 23rd*) the cattle are brought out for the first time, and sprinkled with holy water by the priest. They are never very fat, but at this period of the year their appearance is truly lamentable. During the winter they have been cooped up in small unventilated cow-houses, and fed almost exclusively on straw; now, when they are released from their imprisonment, they look like the ghosts of their former emaciated selves. All are lean and weak, many are lame, and some cannot rise to their feet without assistance. * With regard to saints' days, I always give the date according to the old style. To find the date according to our calendar, thirteen days must be added. Meanwhile the peasants are impatient to begin the field labour. An old proverb which they all know says: "Sow in mud and you will be a prince"; and they always act in accordance with this dictate of traditional wisdom. As soon as it is possible to plough they begin to prepare the land for the summer grain, and this labour occupies them probably till the end of May. Then comes the work of carting out manure and preparing the fallow field for the winter grain, which will last probably till about St. Peter's Day (June 29th), when the hay-making generally begins. After the hay-making comes the harvest, by far the busiest time of the year. From the middle of July--especially from St. Elijah's Day (July 20th), when the saint is usually heard rumbling along the heavens in his chariot of fire*--until the end of August, the peasant may work day and night, and yet he will find that he has barely time to get all his work done. In little more than a month he has to reap and stack his grain--rye, oats, and whatever else he may have sown either in spring or in the preceding autumn--and to sow the winter grain for next year. To add to his troubles, it sometimes happens that the rye and the oats ripen almost simultaneously, and his position is then still more difficult. * It is thus that the peasants explain the thunder, which is often heard at that season. Whether the seasons favour him or not, the peasant has at this time a hard task, for he can rarely afford to hire the requisite number of labourers, and has generally the assistance merely of his wife and family; but he can at this season work for a short time at high pressure, for he has the prospect of soon obtaining a good rest and an abundance of food. About the end of September the field labour is finished, and on the first day of October the harvest festival begins--a joyous season, during which the parish fetes are commonly celebrated. To celebrate a parish fete in true orthodox fashion it is necessary to prepare beforehand a large quantity of braga--a kind of home-brewed small beer--and to bake a plentiful supply of piroghi or meat pies. Oil, too, has to be procured, and vodka (rye spirit) in goodly quantity. At the same time the big room of the izba, as the peasant's house is called, has to be cleared, the floor washed, and the table and benches scrubbed. The evening before the fete, while the piroghi are being baked, a little lamp burns before the Icon in the corner of the room, and perhaps one or two guests from a distance arrive in order that they may have on the morrow a full day's enjoyment. On the morning of the fete the proceedings begin by a long service in the church, at which all the inhabitants are present in their best holiday costumes, except those matrons and young women who remain at home to prepare the dinner. About mid-day dinner is served in each izba for the family and their friends. In general the Russian peasant's fare is of the simplest kind, and rarely comprises animal food of any sort--not from any vegetarian proclivities, but merely because beef, mutton, and pork are too expensive; but on a holiday, such as a parish fete, there is always on the dinner table a considerable variety of dishes. In the house of a well-to-do family there will be not only greasy cabbage-soup and kasha--a dish made from buckwheat--but also pork, mutton, and perhaps even beef. Braga will be supplied in unlimited quantities, and more than once vodka will be handed round. When the repast is finished, all rise together, and, turning towards the Icon in the corner, bow and cross themselves repeatedly. The guests then say to their host, "Spasibo za khelb za sol"--that is to say, "Thanks for your hospitality," or more literally, "Thanks for bread and salt"; and the host replies, "Do not be displeased, sit down once more for good luck"--or perhaps he puts the last part of his request into the form of a rhyming couplet to the following effect: "Sit down, that the hens may brood, and that the chickens and bees may multiply!" All obey this request, and there is another round of vodka. After dinner some stroll about, chatting with their friends, or go to sleep in some shady nook, whilst those who wish to make merry go to the spot where the young people are singing, playing, and amusing themselves in various ways. As the sun sinks towards the horizon, the more grave, staid guests wend their way homewards, but many remain for supper; and as evening advances the effects of the vodka become more and more apparent. Sounds of revelry are heard more frequently from the houses, and a large proportion of the inhabitants and guests appear on the road in various degrees of intoxication. Some of these vow eternal affection to their friends, or with flaccid gestures and in incoherent tones harangue invisible audiences; others stagger about aimlessly in besotted self-contentment, till they drop down in a state of complete unconsciousness. There they will lie tranquilly till they are picked up by their less intoxicated friends, or more probably till they awake of their own accord next morning. As a whole, a village fete in Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a new proof--where, alas! no new proof was required--that we northern nations, who know so well how to work, have not yet learned the art of amusing ourselves. If the Russian peasant's food were always as good and plentiful as at this season of the year, he would have little reason to complain; but this is by no means the case. Gradually, as the harvest-time recedes, it deteriorates in quality, and sometimes diminishes in quantity. Besides this, during a great part of the year the peasant is prevented, by the rules of the Church, from using much that he possesses. In southern climes, where these rules were elaborated and first practised, the prescribed fasts are perhaps useful not only in a religious, but also in a sanitary sense. Having abundance of fruit and vegetables, the inhabitants do well to abstain occasionally from animal food. But in countries like Northern and Central Russia the influence of these rules is very different. The Russian peasant cannot get as much animal food as he requires, whilst sour cabbage and cucumbers are probably the only vegetables he can procure, and fruit of any kind is for him an unattainable luxury. Under these circumstances, abstinence from eggs and milk in all their forms during several months of the year seems to the secular mind a superfluous bit of asceticism. If the Church would direct her maternal solicitude to the peasant's drinking, and leave him to eat what he pleases, she might exercise a beneficial influence on his material and moral welfare. Unfortunately she has a great deal too much inherent immobility to attempt anything of the kind, so the muzhik, while free to drink copiously whenever he gets the chance, must fast during the seven weeks of Lent, during two or three weeks in June, from the beginning of November till Christmas, and on all Wednesdays and Fridays during the remainder of the year. From the festival time till the following spring there is no possibility of doing any agricultural work, for the ground is hard as iron, and covered with a deep layer of snow. The male peasants, therefore, who remain in the villages, have very little to do, and may spend the greater part of their time in lying idly on the stove, unless they happen to have learned some handicraft that can be practised at home. Formerly, many of them were employed in transporting the grain to the market town, which might be several hundred miles distant; but now this species of occupation has been greatly diminished by the extension of railways. Another winter occupation which was formerly practised, and has now almost fallen into disuse, was that of stealing wood in the forest. This was, according to peasant morality, no sin, or at most a very venial offence, for God plants and waters the trees, and therefore forests belong properly to no one. So thought the peasantry, but the landed proprietors and the Administration of the Domains held a different theory of property, and consequently precautions had to be taken to avoid detection. In order to ensure success it was necessary to choose a night when there was a violent snowstorm, which would immediately obliterate all traces of the expedition; and when such a night was found, the operation was commonly performed with success. During the hours of darkness a tree would be felled, stripped of its branches, dragged into the village, and cut up into firewood, and at sunrise the actors would be tranquilly sleeping on the stove as if they had spent the night at home. In recent years the judicial authorities have done much towards putting down this practice and eradicating the loose conceptions of property with which it was connected. For the female part of the population the winter used to be a busy time, for it was during these four or five months that the spinning and weaving had to be done, but now the big factories, with their cheap methods of production, are rapidly killing the home industries, and the young girls are not learning to work at the jenny and the loom as their mothers and grandmothers did. In many of the northern villages, where ancient usages happen to be preserved, the tedium of the long winter evenings is relieved by so-called Besedy, a word which signifies literally conversazioni. A Beseda, however, is not exactly a conversazione as we understand the term, but resembles rather what is by some ladies called a Dorcas meeting, with this essential difference, that those present work for themselves and not for any benevolent purposes. In some villages as many as three Besedy regularly assemble about sunset; one for the children, the second for the young people, and the third for the matrons. Each of the three has its peculiar character. In the first, the children work and amuse themselves under the superintendence of an old woman, who trims the torch* and endeavours to keep order. The little girls spin flax in a primitive way without the aid of a jenny, and the boys, who are, on the whole, much less industrious, make simple bits of wicker-work. Formerly--I mean within my own recollection--many of them used to make rude shoes of plaited bark, called lapty, but these are being rapidly supplanted by leather boots. These occupations do not prevent an almost incessant hum of talk, frequent discordant attempts to sing in chorus, and occasional quarrels requiring the energetic interference of the old woman who controls the proceedings. To amuse her noisy flock she sometimes relates to them, for the hundredth time, one of those wonderful old stories that lose nothing by repetition, and all listen to her attentively, as if they had never heard the story before. * The torch (lutchina) has now almost entirely disappeared and been replaced by the petroleum lamp. The second Beseda is held in another house by the young people of a riper age. Here the workers are naturally more staid, less given to quarrelling, sing more in harmony, and require no one to look after them. Some people, however, might think that a chaperon or inspector of some kind would be by no means out of place, for a good deal of flirtation goes on, and if village scandal is to be trusted, strict propriety in thought, word, and deed is not always observed. How far these reports are true I cannot pretend to say, for the presence of a stranger always acts on the company like the presence of a severe inspector. In the third Beseda there is always at least strict decorum. Here the married women work together and talk about their domestic concerns, enlivening the conversation occasionally by the introduction of little bits of village scandal. Such is the ordinary life of the peasants who live by agriculture; but many of the villagers live occasionally or permanently in the towns. Probably the majority of the peasants in this region have at some period of their lives gained a living elsewhere. Many of the absentees spend yearly a few months at home, whilst others visit their families only occasionally, and, it may be, at long intervals. In no case, however, do they sever their connection with their native village. Even the peasant who becomes a rich merchant and settles permanently with his family in Moscow or St. Petersburg remains probably a member of the Village Commune, and pays his share of the taxes, though he does not enjoy any of the corresponding privileges. Once I remember asking a rich man of this kind, the proprietor of several large houses in St. Petersburg, why he did not free himself from all connection with his native Commune, with which he had no longer any interests in common. His answer was, "It is all very well to be free, and I don't want anything from the Commune now; but my old father lives there, my mother is buried there, and I like to go back to the old place sometimes. Besides, I have children, and our affairs are commercial (nashe dyelo torgovoe). Who knows but my children may be very glad some day to have a share of the Commune land?" In respect to these non-agricultural occupations, each district has its specialty. The province of Yaroslavl, for instance, supplies the large towns with waiters for the traktirs, or lower class of restaurants, whilst the best hotels in Petersburg are supplied by the Tartars of Kasimof, celebrated for their sobriety and honesty. One part of the province of Kostroma has a special reputation for producing carpenters and stove-builders, whilst another part, as I once discovered to my surprise, sends yearly to Siberia--not as convicts, but as free laborours--a large contingent of tailors and workers in felt! On questioning some youngsters who were accompanying as apprentices one of these bands, I was informed by a bright-eyed youth of about sixteen that he had already made the journey twice, and intended to go every winter. "And you always bring home a big pile of money with you?" I inquired. "Nitchevo!" replied the little fellow, gaily, with an air of pride and self-confidence; "last year I brought home three roubles!" This answer was, at the moment, not altogether welcome, for I had just been discussing with a Russian fellow-traveller as to whether the peasantry can fairly be called industrious, and the boy's reply enabled my antagonist to score a point against me. "You hear that!" he said, triumphantly. "A Russian peasant goes all the way to Siberia and back for three roubles! Could you get an Englishman to work at that rate?" "Perhaps not," I replied, evasively, thinking at the same time that if a youth were sent several times from Land's End to John o' Groat's House, and obliged to make the greater part of the journey in carts or on foot, he would probably expect, by way of remuneration for the time and labour expended, rather more than seven and sixpence! Very often the peasants find industrial occupations without leaving home, for various industries which do not require complicated machinery are practised in the villages by the peasants and their families. Wooden vessels, wrought iron, pottery, leather, rush-matting, and numerous other articles are thus produced in enormous quantities. Occasionally we find not only a whole village, but even a whole district occupied almost exclusively with some one kind of manual industry. In the province of Vladimir, for example, a large group of villages live by Icon-painting; in one locality near Nizhni-Novgorod nineteen villages are occupied with the manufacture of axes; round about Pavlovo, in the same province, eighty villages produce almost nothing but cutlery; and in a locality called Ouloma, on the borders of Novgorod and Tver, no less than two hundred villages live by nail-making. These domestic industries have long existed, and were formerly an abundant source of revenue--providing a certain compensation for the poverty of the soil. But at present they are in a very critical position. They belong to the primitive period of economic development, and that period in Russia, as I shall explain in a future chapter, is now rapidly drawing to a close. Formerly the Head of a Household bought the raw material, had it worked up at home, and sold with a reasonable profit the manufactured articles at the bazaars, as the local fairs are called, or perhaps at the great annual yarmarkt* of Nizhni-Novgorod. This primitive system is now rapidly becoming obsolete. Capital and wholesale enterprise have come into the field and are revolutionising the old methods of production and trade. Already whole groups of industrial villages have fallen under the power of middle-men, who advance money to the working households and fix the price of the products. Attempts are frequently made to break their power by voluntary co-operative associations, organised by the local authorities or benevolent landed proprietors of the neighbourhood--like the benevolent people in England who try to preserve the traditional cottage industries--and some of the associations work very well; but the ultimate success of such "efforts to stem the current of capitalism" is extremely doubtful. At the same time, the periodical bazaars and yarmarki, at which producers and consumers transacted their affairs without mediation, are being replaced by permanent stores and by various classes of tradesmen--wholesale and retail. * This term is a corruption of the German word Jahrmarkt. To the political economist of the rigidly orthodox school this important change may afford great satisfaction. According to his theories it is a gigantic step in the right direction, and must necessarily redound to the advantage of all parties concerned. The producer now receives a regular supply of raw material, and regularly disposes of the articles manufactured; and the time and trouble which he formerly devoted to wandering about in search of customers he can now employ more profitably in productive work. The creation of a class between the producers and the consumers is an important step towards that division and specialisation of labour which is a necessary condition of industrial and commercial prosperity. The consumer no longer requires to go on a fixed day to some distant point, on the chance of finding there what he requires, but can always buy what he pleases in the permanent stores. Above all, the production is greatly increased in amount, and the price of manufactured goods is proportionally lessened. All this seems clear enough in theory, and any one who values intellectual tranquillity will feel disposed to accept this view of the case without questioning its accuracy; but the unfortunate traveller who is obliged to use his eyes as well as his logical faculties may find some little difficulty in making the facts fit into the a priori formula. Far be it from me to question the wisdom of political economists, but I cannot refrain from remarking that of the three classes concerned--small producers, middle-men, and consumers--two fail to perceive and appreciate the benefits which have been conferred upon them. The small producers complain that on the new system they work more and gain less; and the consumers complain that the manufactured articles, if cheaper and more showy in appearance, are far inferior in quality. The middlemen, who are accused, rightly or wrongly, of taking for themselves the lion's share of the profits, alone seem satisfied with the new arrangement. Interesting as this question undoubtedly is, it is not of permanent importance, because the present state of things is merely transitory. Though the peasants may continue for a time to work at home for the wholesale dealers, they cannot in the long run compete with the big factories and workshops, organised on the European model with steam-power and complicated machinery, which already exist in many provinces. Once a country has begun to move forward on the great highway of economic progress, there is no possibility of stopping halfway. Here again the orthodox economists find reason for congratulation, because big factories and workshops are the cheapest and most productive form of manufacturing industry; and again, the observant traveller cannot shut his eyes to ugly facts which force themselves on his attention. He notices that this cheapest and most productive form of manufacturing industry does not seem to advance the material and moral welfare of the population. Nowhere is there more disease, drunkenness, demoralisation and misery than in the manufacturing districts. The reader must not imagine that in making these statements I wish to calumniate the spirit of modern enterprise, or to advocate a return to primitive barbarism. All great changes produce a mixture of good and evil, and at first the evil is pretty sure to come prominently forward. Russia is at this moment in a state of transition, and the new condition of things is not yet properly organised. With improved organisation many of the existing evils will disappear. Already in recent years I have noticed sporadic signs of improvement. When factories were first established no proper arrangements were made for housing and feeding the workmen, and the consequent hardships were specially felt when the factories were founded, as is often the case, in rural districts. Now, the richer and more enterprising manufacturers build large barracks for the workmen and their families, and provide them with common kitchens, wash-houses, steam-baths, schools, and similar requisites of civilised life. At the same time the Government appoints inspectors to superintend the sanitary arrangements and see that the health and comfort of the workers are properly attended to. On the whole we must assume that the activity of these inspectors tends to improve the condition of the working-classes. Certainly in some instances it has that effect. I remember, for example, some thirty years ago, visiting a lucifer-match factory in which the hands employed worked habitually in an atmosphere impregnated with the fumes of phosphorus, which produce insidious and very painful diseases. Such a thing is hardly possible nowadays. On the other hand, official inspection, like Factory Acts, everywhere gives rise to a good deal of dissatisfaction and does not always improve the relations between employers and employed. Some of the Russian inspectors, if I may credit the testimony of employers, are young gentlemen imbued with socialist notions, who intentionally stir up discontent or who make mischief from inexperience. An amusing illustration of the current complaints came under my notice when, in 1903, I was visiting a landed proprietor of the southern provinces, who has a large sugar factory on his estate. The inspector objected to the traditional custom of the men sleeping in large dormitories and insisted on sleeping-cots being constructed for them individually. As soon as the change was made the workmen came to the proprietor to complain, and put their grievance in an interrogative form: "Are we cattle that we should be thus couped up in stalls?" To return to the northern agricultural region, the rural population have a peculiar type, which is to be accounted for by the fact that they never experienced to its full extent the demoralising influence of serfage. A large proportion of them were settled on State domains and were governed by a special branch of the Imperial administration, whilst others lived on the estates of rich absentee landlords, who were in the habit of leaving the management of their properties to a steward acting under a code of instructions. In either case, though serfs in the eye of the law, they enjoyed practically a very large amount of liberty. By paying a small sum for a passport they could leave their villages for an indefinite period, and as long as they sent home regularly the money required for taxes and dues, they were in little danger of being molested. Many of them, though officially inscribed as domiciled in their native communes, lived permanently in the towns, and not a few succeeded in amassing large fortunes. The effect of this comparative freedom is apparent even at the present day. These peasants of the north are more energetic, more intelligent, more independent, and consequently less docile and pliable than those of the fertile central provinces. They have, too, more education. A large proportion of them can read and write, and occasionally one meets among them men who have a keen desire for knowledge. Several times I encountered peasants in this region who had a small collection of books, and twice I found in such collections, much to my astonishment, a Russian translation of Buckle's "History of Civilisation." How, it may be asked, did a work of this sort find its way to such a place? If the reader will pardon a short digression, I shall explain the fact. Immediately after the Crimean War there was a curious intellectual movement--of which I shall have more to say hereafter--among the Russian educated classes. The movement assumed various forms, of which two of the most prominent were a desire for encyclopaedic knowledge, and an attempt to reduce all knowledge to a scientific form. For men in this state of mind Buckle's great work had naturally a powerful fascination. It seemed at first sight to reduce the multifarious conflicting facts of human history to a few simple principles, and to evolve order out of chaos. Its success, therefore, was great. In the course of a few years no less than four independent translations were published and sold. Every one read, or at least professed to have read, the wonderful book, and many believed that its author was the greatest genius of his time. During the first year of my residence in Russia (1870), I rarely had a serious conversation without hearing Buckle's name mentioned; and my friends almost always assumed that he had succeeded in creating a genuine science of history on the inductive method. In vain I pointed out that Buckle had merely thrown out some hints in his introductory chapter as to how such a science ought to be constructed, and that he had himself made no serious attempt to use the method which he commended. My objections had little or no effect: the belief was too deep-rooted to be so easily eradicated. In books, periodicals, newspapers, and professional lectures the name of Buckle was constantly cited--often violently dragged in without the slightest reason--and the cheap translations of his work were sold in enormous quantities. It is not, then, so very wonderful after all that the book should have found its way to two villages in the province of Yaroslavl. The enterprising, self-reliant, independent spirit which is often to be found among those peasants manifests itself occasionally in amusing forms among the young generation. Often in this part of the country I have encountered boys who recalled young America rather than young Russia. One of these young hopefuls I remember well. I was waiting at a post-station for the horses to be changed, when he appeared before me in a sheep-skin, fur cap, and gigantic double-soled boots--all of which articles had been made on a scale adapted to future rather than actual requirements. He must have stood in his boots about three feet eight inches, and he could not have been more than twelve years of age; but he had already learned to look upon life as a serious business, wore a commanding air, and knitted his innocent little brows as if the cares of an empire weighed on his diminutive shoulders. Though he was to act as yamstchik he had to leave the putting in of the horses to larger specimens of the human species, but he took care that all was done properly. Putting one of his big boots a little in advance, and drawing himself up to his full shortness, he watched the operation attentively, as if the smallness of his stature had nothing to do with his inactivity. When all was ready, he climbed up to his seat, and at a signal from the station-keeper, who watched with paternal pride all the movements of the little prodigy, we dashed off at a pace rarely attained by post-horses. He had the faculty of emitting a peculiar sound--something between a whirr and a whistle--that appeared to have a magical effect on the team and every few minutes he employed this incentive. The road was rough, and at every jolt he was shot upwards into the air, but he always fell back into his proper position, and never lost for a moment his self-possession or his balance. At the end of the journey I found we had made nearly fourteen miles within the hour. Unfortunately this energetic, enterprising spirit sometimes takes an illegitimate direction. Not only whole villages, but even whole districts, have in this way acquired a bad reputation for robbery, the manufacture of paper-money, and similar offences against the criminal law. In popular parlance, these localities are said to contain "people who play pranks" (narod shalit). I must, however, remark that, if I may judge by my own experience, these so-called "playful" tendencies are greatly exaggerated. Though I have travelled hundreds of miles at night on lonely roads, I was never robbed or in any way molested. Once, indeed, when travelling at night in a tarantass, I discovered on awaking that my driver was bending over me, and had introduced his hand into one of my pockets; but the incident ended without serious consequences. When I caught the delinquent hand, and demanded an explanation from the owner, he replied, in an apologetic, caressing tone, that the night was cold, and he wished to warm his fingers; and when I advised him to use for that purpose his own pockets rather than mine, he promised to act in future according to my advice. More than once, it is true, I believed that I was in danger of being attacked, but on every occasion my fears turned out to be unfounded, and sometimes the catastrophe was ludicrous rather than tragical. Let the following serve as an illustration. I had occasion to traverse, in company with a Russian friend, the country lying to the east of the river Vetluga--a land of forest and morass, with here and there a patch of cultivation. The majority of the population are Tcheremiss, a Finnish tribe; but near the banks of the river there are villages of Russian peasants, and these latter have the reputation of "playing pranks." When we were on the point of starting from Kozmodemiansk a town on the bank of the Volga, we received a visit from an officer of rural police, who painted in very sombre colours the habits and moral character--or, more properly, immoral character--of the people whose acquaintance we were about to make. He related with melodramatic gesticulation his encounters with malefactors belonging to the villages through which we had to pass, and ended the interview with a strong recommendation to us not to travel at night, and to keep at all times our eyes open and our revolver ready. The effect of his narrative was considerably diminished by the prominence of the moral, which was to the effect that there never had been a police-officer who had shown so much zeal, energy, and courage in the discharge of his duty as the worthy man before us. We considered it, however, advisable to remember his hint about keeping our eyes open. In spite of our intention of being very cautious, it was already dark when we arrived at the village which was to be our halting-place for the night, and it seemed at first as if we should be obliged to spend the night in the open air. The inhabitants had already retired to rest, and refused to open their doors to unknown travellers. At length an old woman, more hospitable than her neighbours, or more anxious to earn an honest penny, consented to let us pass the night in an outer apartment (seni), and this permission we gladly accepted. Mindful of the warnings of the police officer, we barricaded the two doors and the window, and the precaution was evidently not superfluous, for almost as soon as the light was extinguished we could hear that an attempt was being made stealthily to effect an entrance. Notwithstanding my efforts to remain awake, and on the watch, I at last fell asleep, and was suddenly aroused by some one grasping me tightly by the arm. Instantly I sprang to my feet and endeavoured to close with my invisible assailant. In vain! He dexterously eluded my grasp, and I stumbled over my portmanteau, which was lying on the floor; but my prompt action revealed who the intruder was, by producing a wild flutter and a frantic cackling! Before my companion could strike a light the mysterious attack was fully explained. The supposed midnight robber and possible assassin was simply a peaceable hen that had gone to roost on my arm, and, on finding her position unsteady, had dug her claws into what she mistook for a roosting-pole! When speaking of the peasantry of the north I have hitherto had in view the inhabitants of the provinces of Old-Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl, Nizhni-Novgorod, Kostroma, Kazan, and Viatka, and I have founded my remarks chiefly on information collected on the spot. Beyond this lies what may be called the Far North. Though I cannot profess to have the same personal acquaintance with the peasantry of that region, I may perhaps be allowed to insert here some information regarding them which I collected from various trustworthy sources. If we draw a wavy line eastward from a point a little to the north of St. Petersburg, as is shown in the map facing page 1 of this volume, we shall have between that line and the Polar Ocean what may be regarded as a distinct, peculiar region, differing in many respects from the rest of Russia. Throughout the whole of it the climate is very severe. For about half of the year the ground is covered by deep snow, and the rivers are frozen. By far the greater part of the land is occupied by forests of pine, fir, larch, and birch, or by vast, unfathomable morasses. The arable land and pasturage taken together form only about one and a half per cent, of the area. The population is scarce--little more than one to the English square mile--and settled chiefly along the banks of the rivers. The peasantry support themselves by fishing, hunting, felling and floating timber, preparing tar and charcoal, cattle-breeding, and, in the extreme north, breeding reindeer. These are their chief occupations, but the people do not entirely neglect agriculture. They make the most of their short summer by means of a peculiar and ingenious mode of farming, well adapted to the peculiar local conditions. The peasant knows of course nothing about agronomical chemistry, but he, as well as his forefathers, have observed that if wood be burnt on a field, and the ashes be mixed with the soil, a good harvest may be confidently expected. On this simple principle his system of farming is based. When spring comes round and the leaves begin to appear on the trees, a band of peasants, armed with their hatchets, proceed to some spot in the woods previously fixed upon. Here they begin to make a clearing. This is no easy matter, for tree-felling is hard and tedious work; but the process does not take so much time as might be expected, for the workmen have been brought up to the trade, and wield their axes with marvellous dexterity. When they have felled all the trees, great and small, they return to their homes, and think no more about their clearing till the autumn, when they return, in order to strip the fallen trees of the branches, to pick out what they require for building purposes or firewood, and to pile up the remainder in heaps. The logs for building or firewood are dragged away by horses as soon as the first fall of snow has made a good slippery road, but the piles are allowed to remain till the following spring, when they are stirred up with long poles and ignited. The flames rapidly spread in all directions till they join together and form a gigantic bonfire, such as is never seen in more densely-populated countries. If the fire does its work properly, the whole of the space is covered with a layer of ashes; and when these have been slightly mixed with soil by means of a light plough, the seed is sown. On the field prepared in this original fashion is sown barley, rye, or flax, and the harvests, nearly always good, sometimes border on the miraculous. Barley or rye may be expected to produce about sixfold in ordinary years, and they may produce as much as thirty-fold under peculiarly favourable circumstances. The fertility is, however, short-lived. If the soil is poor and stony, not more than two crops can be raised; if it is of a better quality, it may give tolerable harvests for six or seven successive years. In most countries this would be an absurdly expensive way of manuring, for wood is much too valuable a commodity to be used for such a purpose; but in this northern region the forests are boundless, and in the districts where there is no river or stream by which timber may be floated, the trees not used in this way rot from old age. Under these circumstances the system is reasonable, but it must be admitted that it does not give a very large return for the amount of labour expended, and in bad seasons it gives almost no return at all. The other sources of revenue are scarcely less precarious. With his gun and a little parcel of provisions the peasant wanders about in the trackless forests, and too often returns after many days with a very light bag; or he starts in autumn for some distant lake, and comes back after five or six weeks with nothing better than perch and pike. Sometimes he tries his luck at deep-sea fishing. In this case he starts in February--probably on foot--for Kem, on the shore of the White Sea, or perhaps for the more distant Kola, situated on a small river which falls into the Arctic Ocean. There, in company with three or four comrades, he starts on a fishing cruise along the Murman coast, or, it may be, off the coast of Spitzbergen. His gains will depend on the amount caught, for it is a joint-venture; but in no case can they be very great, for three-fourths of the fish brought into port belongs to the owner of the craft and tackle. Of the sum realised, he brings home perhaps only a small part, for he has a strong temptation to buy rum, tea, and other luxuries, which are very dear in those northern latitudes. If the fishing is good and he resists temptation, he may save as much as 100 roubles--about 10 pounds--and thereby live comfortably all winter; but if the fishing season is bad, he may find himself at the end of it not only with empty pockets, but in debt to the owner of the boat. This debt he may pay off, if he has a horse, by transporting the dried fish to Kargopol, St. Petersburg, or some other market. It is here in the Far North that the ancient folk-lore--popular songs, stories, and fragments of epic poetry--has been best preserved; but this is a field on which I need not enter, for the reader can easily find all that he may desire to know on the subject in the brilliant writings of M. Rambaud and the very interesting, conscientious works of the late Mr. Ralston,* which enjoy a high reputation in Russia. * Rambaud, "La Russie Epique," Paris, 1876; Ralston, "The Songs of the Russian People," London, 1872; and "Russian Folk-tales," London, 1873. CHAPTER VIII THE MIR, OR VILLAGE COMMUNITY Social and Political Importance of the Mir--The Mir and the Family Compared--Theory of the Communal System--Practical Deviations from the Theory--The Mir a Good Specimen of Constitutional Government of the Extreme Democratic Type--The Village Assembly--Female Members--The Elections--Distribution of the Communal Land. When I had gained a clear notion of the family-life and occupations of the peasantry, I turned my attention to the constitution of the village. This was a subject which specially interested me, because I was aware that the Mir is the most peculiar of Russian institutions. Long before visiting Russia I had looked into Haxthausen's celebrated work, by which the peculiarities of the Russian village system were first made known to Western Europe, and during my stay in St. Petersburg I had often been informed by intelligent, educated Russians that the rural Commune presented a practical solution of many difficult social problems with which the philosophers and statesmen of the West had long been vainly struggling. "The nations of the West"--such was the substance of innumerable discourses which I had heard--"are at present on the high-road to political and social anarchy, and England has the unenviable distinction of being foremost in the race. The natural increase of population, together with the expropriation of the small landholders by the great landed proprietors, has created a dangerous and ever-increasing Proletariat--a great disorganised mass of human beings, without homes, without permanent domicile, without property of any kind, without any stake in the existing institutions. Part of these gain a miserable pittance as agricultural labourers, and live in a condition infinitely worse than serfage. The others have been forever uprooted from the soil, and have collected in the large towns, where they earn a precarious living in the factories and workshops, or swell the ranks of the criminal classes. In England you have no longer a peasantry in the proper sense of the term, and unless some radical measures be very soon adopted, you will never be able to create such a class, for men who have been long exposed to the unwholesome influences of town life are physically and morally incapable of becoming agriculturists. "Hitherto," the disquisition proceeded, "England has enjoyed, in consequence of her geographical position, her political freedom, and her vast natural deposits of coal and iron, a wholly exceptional position in the industrial world. Fearing no competition, she has proclaimed the principles of Free Trade, and has inundated the world with her manufactures--using unscrupulously her powerful navy and all the other forces at her command for breaking down every barrier tending to check the flood sent forth from Manchester and Birmingham. In that way her hungry Proletariat has been fed. But the industrial supremacy of England is drawing to a close. The nations have discovered the perfidious fallacy of Free-Trade principles, and are now learning to manufacture for their own wants, instead of paying England enormous sums to manufacture for them. Very soon English goods will no longer find foreign markets, and how will the hungry Proletariat then be fed? Already the grain production of England is far from sufficient for the wants of the population, so that, even when the harvest is exceptionally abundant, enormous quantities of wheat are imported from all quarters of the globe. Hitherto this grain has been paid for by the manufactured goods annually exported, but how will it be procured when these goods are no longer wanted by foreign consumers? And what then will the hungry Proletariat do?"* * This passage was written, precisely as it stands, long before the fiscal question was raised by Mr. Chamberlain. It will be found in the first edition of this work, published in 1877. (Vol. I., pp. 179-81.) This sombre picture of England's future had often been presented to me, and on nearly every occasion I had been assured that Russia had been saved from these terrible evils by the rural Commune--an institution which, in spite of its simplicity and incalculable utility, West Europeans seemed utterly incapable of understanding and appreciating. The reader will now easily conceive with what interest I took to studying this wonderful institution, and with what energy I prosecuted my researches. An institution which professes to solve satisfactorily the most difficult social problems of the future is not to be met with every day, even in Russia, which is specially rich in material for the student of social science. On my arrival at Ivanofka my knowledge of the institution was of that vague, superficial kind which is commonly derived from men who are fonder of sweeping generalisations and rhetorical declamation than of serious, patient study of phenomena. I knew that the chief personage in a Russian village is the Selski Starosta, or Village Elder, and that all important Communal affairs are regulated by the Selski Skhod, or Village Assembly. Further, I was aware that the land in the vicinity of the village belongs to the Commune, and is distributed periodically among the members in such a way that every able-bodied peasant possesses a share sufficient, or nearly sufficient, for his maintenance. Beyond this elementary information I knew little or nothing. My first attempt at extending my knowledge was not very successful. Hoping that my friend Ivan might be able to assist me, and knowing that the popular name for the Commune is Mir, which means also "the world," I put to him the direct, simple question, "What is the Mir?" Ivan was not easily disconcerted, but for once he looked puzzled, and stared at me vacantly. When I endeavoured to explain to him my question, he simply knitted his brows and scratched the back of his head. This latter movement is the Russian peasant's method of accelerating cerebral action; but in the present instance it had no practical result. In spite of his efforts, Ivan could not get much further than the "Kak vam skazat'?" that is to say, "How am I to tell you?" It was not difficult to perceive that I had adopted an utterly false method of investigation, and a moment's reflection sufficed to show me the absurdity of my question. I had asked from an uneducated man a philosophical definition, instead of extracting from him material in the form of concrete facts, and constructing therefrom a definition for myself. These concrete facts Ivan was both able and willing to supply; and as soon as I adopted a rational mode of questioning, I obtained from him all I wanted. The information he gave me, together with the results of much subsequent conversation and reading, I now propose to present to the reader in my own words. The peasant family of the old type is, as we have just seen, a kind of primitive association in which the members have nearly all things in common. The village may be roughly described as a primitive association on a larger scale. Between these two social units there are many points of analogy. In both there are common interests and common responsibilities. In both there is a principal personage, who is in a certain sense ruler within and representative as regards the outside world: in the one case called Khozain, or Head of the Household, and in the other Starosta, or Village Elder. In both the authority of the ruler is limited: in the one case by the adult members of the family, and in the other by the Heads of Households. In both there is a certain amount of common property: in the one case the house and nearly all that it contains, and in the other the arable land and possibly a little pasturage. In both cases there is a certain amount of common responsibility: in the one case for all the debts, and in the other for all the taxes and Communal obligations. And both are protected to a certain extent against the ordinary legal consequences of insolvency, for the family cannot be deprived of its house or necessary agricultural implements, and the Commune cannot be deprived of its land, by importunate creditors. On the other hand, there are many important points of contrast. The Commune is, of course, much larger than the family, and the mutual relations of its members are by no means so closely interwoven. The members of a family all farm together, and those of them who earn money from other sources are expected to put their savings into the common purse; whilst the households composing a Commune farm independently, and pay into the common treasury only a certain fixed sum. From these brief remarks the reader will at once perceive that a Russian village is something very different from a village in our sense of the term, and that the villagers are bound together by ties quite unknown to the English rural population. A family living in an English village has little reason to take an interest in the affairs of its neighbours. The isolation of the individual families is never quite perfect, for man, being a social animal, takes necessarily a certain interest in the affairs of those around him, and this social duty is sometimes fulfilled by the weaker sex with more zeal than is absolutely indispensable for the public welfare; but families may live for many years in the same village without ever becoming conscious of common interests. So long as the Jones family do not commit any culpable breach of public order, such as putting obstructions on the highway or habitually setting their house on fire, their neighbour Brown takes probably no interest in their affairs, and has no ground for interfering with their perfect liberty of action. Amongst the families composing a Russian village, such a state of isolation is impossible. The Heads of Households must often meet together and consult in the Village Assembly, and their daily occupation must be influenced by the Communal decrees. They cannot begin to mow the hay or plough the fallow field until the Village Assembly has passed a resolution on the subject. If a peasant becomes a drunkard, or takes some equally efficient means to become insolvent, every family in the village has a right to complain, not merely in the interests of public morality, but from selfish motives, because all the families are collectively responsible for his taxes.* For the same reason no peasant can permanently leave the village without the consent of the Commune, and this consent will not be granted until the applicant gives satisfactory security for the fulfilment of his actual and future liabilities. If a peasant wishes to go away for a short time, in order to work elsewhere, he must obtain a written permission, which serves him as a passport during his absence; and he may be recalled at any moment by a Communal decree. In reality he is rarely recalled so long as he sends home regularly the full amount of his taxes--including the dues which he has to pay for the temporary passport--but sometimes the Commune uses the power of recall for purposes of extortion. If it becomes known, for instance, that an absent member is receiving a good salary or otherwise making money, he may one day receive a formal order to return at once to his native village, but he is probably informed at the same time, unofficially, that his presence will be dispensed with if he will send to the Commune a certain specified sum. The money thus sent is generally used by the Commune for convivial purposes. ** * This common responsibility for the taxes was abolished in 1903 by the Emperor, on the advice of M. Witte, and the other Communal fetters are being gradually relaxed. A peasant may now, if he wishes, cease to be a member of the Commune altogether, as soon as he has defrayed all his outstanding obligations. ** With the recent relaxing of the Communal fetters, referred to in the foregoing note, this abuse should disappear. In all countries the theory of government and administration differs considerably from the actual practice. Nowhere is this difference greater than in Russia, and in no Russian institution is it greater than in the Village Commune. It is necessary, therefore, to know both theory and practice; and it is well to begin with the former, because it is the simpler of the two. When we have once thoroughly mastered the theory, it is easy to understand the deviations that are made to suit peculiar local conditions. According, then, to theory, all male peasants in every part of the Empire are inscribed in census-lists, which form the basis of the direct taxation. These lists are revised at irregular intervals, and all males alive at the time of the "revision," from the newborn babe to the centenarian, are duly inscribed. Each Commune has a list of this kind, and pays to the Government an annual sum proportionate to the number of names which the list contains, or, in popular language, according to the number of "revision souls." During the intervals between the revisions the financial authorities take no notice of the births and deaths. A Commune which has a hundred male members at the time of the revision may have in a few years considerably more or considerably less than that number, but it has to pay taxes for a hundred members all the same until a new revision is made for the whole Empire. Now in Russia, so far at least as the rural population is concerned, the payment of taxes is inseparably connected with the possession of land. Every peasant who pays taxes is supposed to have a share of the land belonging to the Commune. If the Communal revision lists contain a hundred names, the Communal land ought to be divided into a hundred shares, and each "revision soul" should enjoy his share in return for the taxes which he pays. The reader who has followed my explanations up to this point may naturally conclude that the taxes paid by the peasants are in reality a species of rent for the land which they enjoy. Such a conclusion would not be altogether justified. When a man rents a bit of land he acts according to his own judgment, and makes a voluntary contract with the proprietor; but the Russian peasant is obliged to pay his taxes whether he desires to enjoy land or not. The theory, therefore, that the taxes are simply the rent of the land will not bear even superficial examination. Equally untenable is the theory that they are a species of land-tax. In any reasonable system of land-dues the yearly sum imposed bears some kind of proportion to the quantity and quality of the land enjoyed; but in Russia it may be that the members of one Commune possess six acres of bad land, and the members of the neighbouring Commune seven acres of good land, and yet the taxes in both cases are the same. The truth is that the taxes are personal, and are calculated according to the number of male "souls," and the Government does not take the trouble to inquire how the Communal land is distributed. The Commune has to pay into the Imperial Treasury a fixed yearly sum, according to the number of its "revision souls," and distributes the land among its members as it thinks fit. How, then, does the Commune distribute the land? To this question it is impossible to reply in brief, general terms, because each Commune acts as it pleases!* Some act strictly according to the theory. These divide their land at the time of the revision into a number of portions or shares corresponding to the number of revision souls, and give to each family a number of shares corresponding to the number of revision souls which it contains. This is from the administrative point of view by far the simplest system. The census-list determines how much land each family will enjoy, and the existing tenures are disturbed only by the revisions which take place at irregular intervals.** But, on the other hand, this system has serious defects. The revision-list represents merely the numerical strength of the families, and the numerical strength is often not at all in proportion to the working power. Let us suppose, for example, two families, each containing at the time of the revision five male members. According to the census-list these two families are equal, and ought to receive equal shares of the land; but in reality it may happen that the one contains a father in the prime of life and four able-bodies sons, whilst the other contains a widow and five little boys. The wants and working power of these two families are of course very different; and if the above system of distribution be applied, the man with four sons and a goodly supply of grandchildren will probably find that he has too little land, whilst the widow with her five little boys will find it difficult to cultivate the five shares alloted to her, and utterly impossible to pay the corresponding amount of taxation--for in all cases, it must be remembered, the Communal burdens are distributed in the same proportion as the land. * A long list of the various systems of allotment to be found in individual Communes in different parts of the country is given in the opening chapter of a valuable work by Karelin, entitled "Obshtchinnoye Vladyenie v Rossii" (St. Petersburg, 1893). As my object is to convey to the reader merely a general idea of the institution, I refrain from confusing him by an enumeration of the endless divergencies from the original type. ** Since 1719 eleven revisions have been made, the last in 1897. The intervals varied from six to forty-one years. But why, it may be said, should the widow not accept provisionally the five shares, and let to others the part which she does not require? The balance of rent after payment of the taxes might help her to bring up her young family. So it seems to one acquainted only with the rural economy of England, where land is scarce, and always gives a revenue more than sufficient to defray the taxes. But in Russia the possession of a share of Communal land is often not a privilege, but a burden. In some Communes the land is so poor and abundant that it cannot be let at any price. In others the soil will repay cultivation, but a fair rent will not suffice to pay the taxes and dues. To obviate these inconvenient results of the simpler system, many Communes have adopted the expedient of allotting the land, not according to the number of revision souls, but according to the working power of the families. Thus, in the instance above supposed, the widow would receive perhaps two shares, and the large household, containing five workers, would receive perhaps seven or eight. Since the breaking-up of the large families, such inequality as I have supposed is, of course, rare; but inequality of a less extreme kind does still occur, and justifies a departure from the system of allotment according to the revision-lists. Even if the allotment be fair and equitable at the time of the revision, it may soon become unfair and burdensome by the natural fluctuations of the population. Births and deaths may in the course of a very few years entirely alter the relative working power of the various families. The sons of the widow may grow up to manhood, whilst two or three able-bodied members of the other family may be cut off by an epidemic. Thus, long before a new revision takes place, the distribution of the land may be no longer in accordance with the wants and capacities of the various families composing the Commune. To correct this, various expedients are employed. Some Communes transfer particular lots from one family to another, as circumstances demand; whilst others make from time to time, during the intervals between the revisions, a complete redistribution and reallotment of the land. Of these two systems the former is now more frequently employed. The system of allotment adopted depends entirely on the will of the particular Commune. In this respect the Communes enjoy the most complete autonomy, and no peasant ever dreams of appealing against a Communal decree.* The higher authorities not only abstain from all interference in the allotment of the Communal lands, but remain in profound ignorance as to which system the Communes habitually adopt. Though the Imperial Administration has a most voracious appetite for symmetrically constructed statistical tables--many of them formed chiefly out of materials supplied by the mysterious inner consciousness of the subordinate officials--no attempt has yet been made, so far as I know, to collect statistical data which might throw light on this important subject. In spite of the systematic and persistent efforts of the centralised bureaucracy to regulate minutely all departments of the national life, the rural Communes, which contain about five-sixths of the population, remain in many respects entirely beyond its influence, and even beyond its sphere of vision! But let not the reader be astonished overmuch. He will learn in time that Russia is the land of paradoxes; and meanwhile he is about to receive a still more startling bit of information. In "the great stronghold of Caesarian despotism and centralised bureaucracy," these Village Communes, containing about five-sixths of the population, are capital specimens of representative Constitutional government of the extreme democratic type! * This has been somewhat modified by recent legislation. According to the Emancipation Law of 1861, redistribution of the land could take place at any time provided it was voted by a majority of two-thirds at the Village Assembly. By a law of 1893 redistribution cannot take place oftener than once in twelve years, and must receive the sanction of certain local authorities. When I say that the rural Commune is a good specimen of Constitutional government, I use the phrase in the English, and not in the Continental sense. In the Continental languages a Constitutional regime implies the existence of a long, formal document, in which the functions of the various institutions, the powers of the various authorities, and the methods of procedure are carefully defined. Such a document was never heard of in Russian Village Communes, except those belonging to the Imperial Domains, and the special legislation which formerly regulated their affairs was repealed at the time of the Emancipation. At the present day the Constitution of all the Village Communes is of the English type--a body of unwritten, traditional conceptions, which have grown up and modified themselves under the influence of ever-changing practical necessity. No doubt certain definitions of the functions and mutual relations of the Communal authorities might be extracted from the Emancipation Law and subsequent official documents, but as a rule neither the Village Elder nor the members of the Village Assembly ever heard of such definitions; and yet every peasant knows, as if by instinct, what each of these authorities can do and cannot do. The Commune is, in fact, a living institution, whose spontaneous vitality enables it to dispense with the assistance and guidance of the written law, and its constitution is thoroughly democratic. The Elder represents merely the executive power. The real authority resides in the Assembly, of which all Heads of Households are members.* * An attempt was made by Alexander III. in 1884 to bring the rural Communes under supervision and control by the appointment of rural officials called Zemskiye Natchalniki. Of this so-called reform I shall have occasion to speak later. The simple procedure, or rather the absence of all formal procedure, at the Assemblies, illustrates admirably the essentially practical character of the institution. The meetings are held in the open air, because in the village there is no building--except the church, which can be used only for religious purposes--large enough to contain all the members; and they almost always take place on Sundays or holidays, when the peasants have plenty of leisure. Any open space may serve as a Forum. The discussions are occasionally very animated, but there is rarely any attempt at speech-making. If any young member should show an inclination to indulge in oratory, he is sure to be unceremoniously interrupted by some of the older members, who have never any sympathy with fine talking. The assemblage has the appearance of a crowd of people who have accidentally come together and are discussing in little groups subjects of local interest. Gradually some one group, containing two or three peasants who have more moral influence than their fellows, attracts the others, and the discussion becomes general. Two or more peasants may speak at a time, and interrupt each other freely--using plain, unvarnished language, not at all parliamentary--and the discussion may become a confused, unintelligible din; but at the moment when the spectator imagines that the consultation is about to be transformed into a free fight, the tumult spontaneously subsides, or perhaps a general roar of laughter announces that some one has been successfully hit by a strong argumentum ad hominem, or biting personal remark. In any case there is no danger of the disputants coming to blows. No class of men in the world are more good-natured and pacific than the Russian peasantry. When sober they never fight, and even when under the influence of alcohol they are more likely to be violently affectionate than disagreeably quarrelsome. If two of them take to drinking together, the probability is that in a few minutes, though they may never have seen each other before, they will be expressing in very strong terms their mutual regard and affection, confirming their words with an occasional friendly embrace. Theoretically speaking, the Village Parliament has a Speaker, in the person of the Village Elder. The word Speaker is etymologically less objectionable than the term President, for the personage in question never sits down, but mingles in the crowd like the ordinary members. Objection may be taken to the word on the ground that the Elder speaks much less than many other members, but this may likewise be said of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Whatever we may call him, the Elder is officially the principal personage in the crowd, and wears the insignia of office in the form of a small medal suspended from his neck by a thin brass chain. His duties, however, are extremely light. To call to order those who interrupt the discussion is no part of his functions. If he calls an honourable member "Durak" (blockhead), or interrupts an orator with a laconic "Moltchi!" (hold your tongue!), he does so in virtue of no special prerogative, but simply in accordance with a time-honoured privilege, which is equally enjoyed by all present, and may be employed with impunity against himself. Indeed, it may be said in general that the phraseology and the procedure are not subjected to any strict rules. The Elder comes prominently forward only when it is necessary to take the sense of the meeting. On such occasions he may stand back a little from the crowd and say, "Well, orthodox, have you decided so?" and the crowd will probably shout, "Ladno! ladno!" that is to say, "Agreed! agreed!" Communal measures are generally carried in this way by acclamation; but it sometimes happens that there is such a diversity of opinion that it is difficult to tell which of the two parties has a majority. In this case the Elder requests the one party to stand to the right and the other to the left. The two groups are then counted, and the minority submits, for no one ever dreams of opposing openly the will of the Mir. During the reign of Nicholas I. an attempt was made to regulate by the written law the procedure of Village Assemblies amongst the peasantry of the State Domains, and among other reforms voting by ballot was introduced; but the new custom never struck root. The peasants did not regard with favour the new method, and persisted in calling it, contemptuously, "playing at marbles." Here, again, we have one of those wonderful and apparently anomalous facts which frequently meet the student of Russian affairs: the Emperor Nicholas I., the incarnation of autocracy and the champion of the Reactionary Party throughout Europe, forces the ballot-box, the ingenious invention of extreme radicals, on several millions of his subjects! In the northern provinces, where a considerable portion of the male population is always absent, the Village Assembly generally includes a good many female members. These are women who, on account of the absence or death of their husbands, happen to be for the moment Heads of Households. As such they are entitled to be present, and their right to take part in the deliberations is never called in question. In matters affecting the general welfare of the Commune they rarely speak, and if they do venture to enounce an opinion on such occasions they have little chance of commanding attention, for the Russian peasantry are as yet little imbued with the modern doctrines of female equality, and express their opinion of female intelligence by the homely adage: "The hair is long, but the mind is short." According to one proverb, seven women have collectively but one soul, and, according to a still more ungallant popular saying, women have no souls at all, but only a vapour. Woman, therefore, as woman, is not deserving of much consideration, but a particular woman, as Head of a Household, is entitled to speak on all questions directly affecting the household under her care. If, for instance, it be proposed to increase or diminish her household's share of the land and the burdens, she will be allowed to speak freely on the subject, and even to indulge in personal invective against her male opponents. She thereby exposes herself, it is true, to uncomplimentary remarks; but any which she happens to receive she is pretty sure to repay with interest--referring, perhaps, with pertinent virulence to the domestic affairs of those who attack her. And when argument and invective fail, she can try the effect of pathetic appeal, supported by copious tears. As the Village Assembly is really a representative institution in the full sense of the term, it reflects faithfully the good and the bad qualities of the rural population. Its decisions are therefore usually characterised by plain, practical common sense, but it is subject to occasional unfortunate aberrations in consequence of pernicious influences, chiefly of an alcoholic kind. An instance of this fact occurred during my sojourn at Ivanofka. The question under discussion was whether a kabak, or gin-shop, should be established in the village. A trader from the district town desired to establish one, and offered to pay to the Commune a yearly sum for the necessary permission. The more industrious, respectable members of the Commune, backed by the whole female population, were strongly opposed to the project, knowing full well that a kabak would certainly lead to the ruin of more than one household; but the enterprising trader had strong arguments wherewith to seduce a large number of the members, and succeeded in obtaining a decision in his favour. The Assembly discusses all matters affecting the Communal welfare, and, as these matters have never been legally defined, its recognised competence is very wide. It fixes the time for making the hay, and the day for commencing the ploughing of the fallow field; it decrees what measures shall be employed against those who do not punctually pay their taxes; it decides whether a new member shall be admitted into the Commune, and whether an old member shall be allowed to change his domicile; it gives or withholds permission to erect new buildings on the Communal land; it prepares and signs all contracts which the Commune makes with one of its own members or with a stranger; it interferes whenever it thinks necessary in the domestic affairs of its members; it elects the Elder--as well as the Communal tax-collector and watchman, where such offices exist--and the Communal herd-boy; above all, it divides and allots the Communal land among the members as it thinks fit. Of all these various proceedings the English reader may naturally assume that the elections are the most noisy and exciting. In reality this is a mistake. The elections produce little excitement, for the simple reason that, as a rule, no one desires to be elected. Once, it is said, a peasant who had been guilty of some misdemeanor was informed by an Arbiter of the Peace--a species of official of which I shall have occasion to speak in the sequel--that he would be no longer capable of filling any Communal office; and instead of regretting this diminution of his civil rights, he bowed very low, and respectfully expressed his thanks for the new privilege which he had acquired. This anecdote may not be true, but it illustrates the undoubted fact that the Russian peasant regards office as a burden rather than as an honour. There is no civic ambition in those little rural commonwealths, whilst the privilege of wearing a bronze medal, which commands no respect, and the reception of a few roubles as salary afford no adequate compensation for the trouble, annoyance, and responsibility which a Village Elder has to bear. The elections are therefore generally very tame and uninteresting. The following description may serve as an illustration: It is a Sunday afternoon. The peasants, male and female, have turned out in Sunday attire, and the bright costumes of the women help the sunshine to put a little rich colour into the scene, which is at ordinary times monotonously grey. Slowly the crowd collects on the open space at the side of the church. All classes of the population are represented. On the extreme outskirts are a band of fair-haired, merry children--some of them standing or lying on the grass and gazing attentively at the proceedings, and others running about and amusing themselves. Close to these stand a group of young girls, convulsed with half-suppressed laughter. The cause of their merriment is a youth of some seventeen summers, evidently the wag of the village, who stands beside them with an accordion in his hand, and relates to them in a half-whisper how he is about to be elected Elder, and what mad pranks he will play in that capacity. When one of the girls happens to laugh outright, the matrons who are standing near turn round and scowl; and one of them, stepping forward, orders the offender, in a tone of authority, to go home at once if she cannot behave herself. Crestfallen, the culprit retires, and the youth who is the cause of the merriment makes the incident the subject of a new joke. Meanwhile the deliberations have begun. The majority of the members are chatting together, or looking at a little group composed of three peasants and a woman, who are standing a little apart from the others. Here alone the matter in hand is being really discussed. The woman is explaining, with tears in her eyes, and with a vast amount of useless repetition, that her "old man," who is Elder for the time being, is very ill, and cannot fulfil his duties. "But he has not yet served a year, and he'll get better," remarks one peasant, evidently the youngest of the little group. "Who knows?" replies the woman, sobbing. "It is the will of God, but I don't believe that he'll ever put his foot to the ground again. The Feldsher has been four times to see him, and the doctor himself came once, and said that he must be brought to the hospital." "And why has he not been taken there?" "How could he be taken? Who is to carry him? Do you think he's a baby? The hospital is forty versts off. If you put him in a cart he would die before he had gone a verst. And then, who knows what they do with people in the hospital?" This last question contained probably the true reason why the doctor's orders had been disobeyed. "Very well, that's enough; hold your tongue," says the grey-beard of the little group to the woman; and then, turning to the other peasants, remarks, "There is nothing to be done. The Stanovoi [officer of rural police] will be here one of these days, and will make a row again if we don't elect a new Elder. Whom shall we choose?" As soon as this question is asked several peasants look down to the ground, or try in some other way to avoid attracting attention, lest their names should be suggested. When the silence has continued a minute or two, the greybeard says, "There is Alexei Ivanof; he has not served yet!" "Yes, yes, Alexei Ivanof!" shout half-a-dozen voices, belonging probably to peasants who fear they may be elected. Alexei protests in the strongest terms. He cannot say that he is ill, because his big ruddy face would give him the lie direct, but he finds half-a-dozen other reasons why he should not be chosen, and accordingly requests to be excused. But his protestations are not listened to, and the proceedings terminate. A new Village Elder has been duly elected. Far more important than the elections is the redistribution of the Communal land. It can matter but little to the Head of a Household how the elections go, provided he himself is not chosen. He can accept with perfect equanimity Alexei, or Ivan, or Nikolai, because the office-bearers have very little influence in Communal affairs. But he cannot remain a passive, indifferent spectator when the division and allotment of the land come to be discussed, for the material welfare of every household depends to a great extent on the amount of land and of burdens which it receives. In the southern provinces, where the soil is fertile, and the taxes do not exceed the normal rent, the process of division and allotment is comparatively simple. Here each peasant desires to get as much land as possible, and consequently each household demands all the land to which it is entitled--that is to say, a number of shares equal to the number of its members inscribed in the last revision list. The Assembly has therefore no difficult questions to decide. The Communal revision list determines the number of shares into which the land must be divided, and the number of shares to be allotted to each family. The only difficulty likely to arise is as to which particular shares a particular family shall receive, and this difficulty is commonly obviated by the custom of drawing lots. There may be, it is true, some difference of opinion as to when a redistribution should be made, but this question is easily decided by a vote of the Assembly. Very different is the process of division and allotment in many Communes of the northern provinces. Here the soil is often very unfertile and the taxes exceed the normal rent, and consequently it may happen that the peasants strive to have as little land as possible. In these cases such scenes as the following may occur: Ivan is being asked how many shares of the Communal land he will take, and replies in a slow, contemplative way, "I have two sons, and there is myself, so I'll take three shares, or somewhat less, if it is your pleasure." "Less!" exclaims a middle-aged peasant, who is not the Village Elder, but merely an influential member, and takes the leading part in the proceedings. "You talk nonsense. Your two sons are already old enough to help you, and soon they may get married, and so bring you two new female labourers." "My eldest son," explains Ivan, "always works in Moscow, and the other often leaves me in summer." "But they both send or bring home money, and when they get married, the wives will remain with you." "God knows what will be," replies Ivan, passing over in silence the first part of his opponent's remark. "Who knows if they will marry?" "You can easily arrange that!" "That I cannot do. The times are changed now. The young people do as they wish, and when they do get married they all wish to have houses of their own. Three shares will be heavy enough for me!" "No, no. If they wish to separate from you, they will take some land from you. You must take at least four. The old wives there who have little children cannot take shares according to the number of souls." "He is a rich muzhik!" says a voice in the crowd. "Lay on him five souls!" (that is to say, give him five shares of the land and of the burdens). "Five souls I cannot! By God, I cannot!" "Very well, you shall have four," says the leading spirit to Ivan; and then, turning to the crowd, inquires, "Shall it be so?" "Four! four!" murmurs the crowd; and the question is settled. Next comes one of the old wives just referred to. Her husband is a permanent invalid, and she has three little boys, only one of whom is old enough for field labour. If the number of souls were taken as the basis of distribution, she would receive four shares; but she would never be able to pay four shares of the Communal burdens. She must therefore receive less than that amount. When asked how many she will take, she replies with downcast eyes, "As the Mir decides, so be it!" "Then you must take three." "What do you say, little father?" cries the woman, throwing off suddenly her air of submissive obedience. "Do you hear that, ye orthodox? They want to lay upon me three souls! Was such a thing ever heard of? Since St. Peter's Day my husband has been bedridden--bewitched, it seems, for nothing does him good. He cannot put a foot to the ground--all the same as if he were dead; only he eats bread!" "You talk nonsense," says a neighbour; "he was in the kabak [gin-shop] last week." "And you!" retorts the woman, wandering from the subject in hand; "what did YOU do last parish fete? Was it not you who got drunk and beat your wife till she roused the whole village with her shrieking? And no further gone than last Sunday--pfu!" "Listen!" says the old man, sternly cutting short the torrent of invective. "You must take at least two shares and a half. If you cannot manage it yourself, you can get some one to help you." "How can that be? Where am I to get the money to pay a labourer?" asks the woman, with much wailing and a flood of tears. "Have pity, ye orthodox, on the poor orphans! God will reward you!" and so on, and so on. I need not worry the reader with a further description of these scenes, which are always very long and sometimes violent. All present are deeply interested, for the allotment of the land is by far the most important event in Russian peasant life, and the arrangement cannot be made without endless talking and discussion. After the number of shares for each family has been decided, the distribution of the lots gives rise to new difficulties. The families who have plentifully manured their land strive to get back their old lots, and the Commune respects their claims so far as these are consistent with the new arrangement; but often it happens that it is impossible to conciliate private rights and Communal interests, and in such cases the former are sacrificed in a way that would not be tolerated by men of Anglo-Saxon race. This leads, however, to no serious consequences. The peasants are accustomed to work together in this way, to make concessions for the Communal welfare, and to bow unreservedly to the will of the Mir. I know of many instances where the peasants have set at defiance the authority of the police, of the provincial governor, and of the central Government itself, but I have never heard of any instance where the will of the Mir was openly opposed by one of its members. In the preceding pages I have repeatedly spoken about "shares of the Communal land." To prevent misconception I must explain carefully what this expression means. A share does not mean simply a plot or parcel of land; on the contrary, it always contains at least four, and may contain a large number of distinct plots. We have here a new point of difference between the Russian village and the villages of Western Europe. Communal land in Russia is of three kinds: the land on which the village is built, the arable land, and the meadow or hay-field, if the village is fortunate enough to possess one. On the first of these each family possesses a house and garden, which are the hereditary property of the family, and are never affected by the periodical redistributions. The other two kinds are both subject to redistribution, but on somewhat different principles. The whole of the Communal arable land is first of all divided into three fields, to suit the triennial rotation of crops already described, and each field is divided into a number of long narrow strips--corresponding to the number of male members in the Commune--as nearly as possible equal to each other in area and quality. Sometimes it is necessary to divide the field into several portions, according to the quality of the soil, and then to subdivide each of these portions into the requisite number of strips. Thus in all cases every household possesses at least one strip in each field; and in those cases where subdivision is necessary, every household possesses a strip in each of the portions into which the field is subdivided. It often happens, therefore, that the strips are very narrow, and the portions belonging to each family very numerous. Strips six feet wide are by no means rare. In 124 villages of the province of Moscow, regarding which I have special information, they varied in width from 3 to 45 yards, with an average of 11 yards. Of these narrow strips a household may possess as many as thirty in a single field! The complicated process of division and subdivision is accomplished by the peasants themselves, with the aid of simple measuring-rods, and the accuracy of the result is truly marvellous. The meadow, which is reserved for the production of hay, is divided into the same number of shares as the arable land. There, however, the division and distribution take place, not at irregular intervals, but annually. Every year, on a day fixed by the Assembly, the villagers proceed in a body to this part of their property, and divide it into the requisite number of portions. Lots are then cast, and each family at once mows the portion allotted to it. In some Communes the meadow is mown by all the peasants in common, and the hay afterwards distributed by lot among the families; but this system is by no means so frequently used. As the whole of the Communal land thus resembles to some extent a big farm, it is necessary to make certain rules concerning cultivation. A family may sow what it likes in the land allotted to it, but all families must at least conform to the accepted system of rotation. In like manner, a family cannot begin the autumn ploughing before the appointed time, because it would thereby interfere with the rights of the other families, who use the fallow field as pasturage. It is not a little strange that this primitive system of land tenure should have succeeded in living into the twentieth century, and still more remarkable that the institution of which it forms an essential part should be regarded by many intelligent people as one of the great institutions of the future, and almost as a panacea for social and political evils. The explanation of these facts will form the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER IX HOW THE COMMUNE HAS BEEN PRESERVED, AND WHAT IT IS TO EFFECT IN THE FUTURE Sweeping Reforms after the Crimean War--Protest Against the Laissez Faire Principle--Fear of the Proletariat--English and Russian Methods of Legislation Contrasted--Sanguine Expectations--Evil Consequences of the Communal System--The Commune of the Future--Proletariat of the Towns--The Present State of Things Merely Temporary. The reader is probably aware that immediately after the Crimean War Russia was subjected to a series of sweeping reforms, including the emancipation of the serfs and the creation of a new system of local self-government, and he may naturally wonder how it came to pass that a curious, primitive institution like the rural Commune succeeded in weathering the bureaucratic hurricane. This strange phenomena I now proceed to explain, partly because the subject is in itself interesting, and partly because I hope thereby to throw some light on the peculiar intellectual condition of the Russian educated classes. When it became evident, in 1857, that the serfs were about to be emancipated, it was at first pretty generally supposed that the rural Commune would be entirely abolished, or at least radically modified. At that time many Russians were enthusiastic, indiscriminate admirers of English institutions, and believed, in common with the orthodox school of political economists, that England had acquired her commercial and industrial superiority by adopting the principle of individual liberty and unrestricted competition, or, as French writers term it, the "laissez faire" principle. This principle is plainly inconsistent with the rural Commune, which compels the peasantry to possess land, prevents an enterprising peasant from acquiring the land of his less enterprising neighbours, and places very considerable restrictions on the freedom of action of the individual members. Accordingly it was assumed that the rural Commune, being inconsistent with the modern spirit of progress, would find no place in the new regime of liberty which was about to be inaugurated. No sooner had these ideas been announced in the Press than they called forth strenuous protests. In the crowd of protesters were two well-defined groups. On the one hand there were the so-called Slavophils, a small band of patriotic, highly educated Moscovites, who were strongly disposed to admire everything specifically Russian, and who habitually refused to bow the knee to the wisdom of Western Europe. These gentlemen, in a special organ which they had recently founded, pointed out to their countrymen that the Commune was a venerable and peculiarly Russian institution, which had mitigated in the past the baneful influence of serfage, and would certainly in the future confer inestimable benefits on the emancipated peasantry. The other group was animated by a very different spirit. They had no sympathy with national peculiarities, and no reverence for hoary antiquity. That the Commune was specifically Russian or Slavonic, and a remnant of primitive times, was in their eyes anything but a recommendation in its favour. Cosmopolitan in their tendencies, and absolutely free from all archaeological sentimentality, they regarded the institution from the purely utilitarian point of view. They agreed, however, with the Slavophils in thinking that its preservation would have a beneficial influence on the material and moral welfare of the peasantry. For the sake of convenience it is necessary to designate this latter group by some definite name, but I confess I have some difficulty in making a choice. I do not wish to call these gentlemen Socialists, because many people habitually and involuntarily attach a stigma to the word, and believe that all to whom the term is applied must be first-cousins to the petroleuses. To avoid misconceptions of this kind, it will be well to designate them simply by the organ which most ably represented their views, and to call them the adherents of The Contemporary. The Slavophils and the adherents of The Contemporary, though differing widely from each other in many respects, had the same immediate object in view, and accordingly worked together. With great ingenuity they contended that the Communal system of land tenure had much greater advantages, and was attended with much fewer inconveniences, than people generally supposed. But they did not confine themselves to these immediate practical advantages, which had very little interest for the general reader. The writers in The Contemporary explained that the importance of the rural Commune lies, not in its actual condition, but in its capabilities of development, and they drew, with prophetic eye, most attractive pictures of the happy rural Commune of the future. Let me give here, as an illustration, one of these prophetic descriptions: "Thanks to the spread of primary and technical education the peasants have become well acquainted with the science of agriculture, and are always ready to undertake in common the necessary improvements. They no longer exhaust the soil by exporting the grain, but sell merely certain technical products containing no mineral ingredients. For this purpose the Communes possess distilleries, starch-works, and the like, and the soil thereby retains its original fertility. The scarcity induced by the natural increase of the population is counteracted by improved methods of cultivation. If the Chinese, who know nothing of natural science, have succeeded by purely empirical methods in perfecting agriculture to such an extent that a whole family can support itself on a few square yards of land, what may not the European do with the help of chemistry, botanical physiology, and the other natural sciences?" Coming back from the possibilities of the future to the actualities of the present, these ingenious and eloquent writers pointed out that in the rural Commune, Russia possessed a sure preventive against the greatest evil of West-European social organisation, the Proletariat. Here the Slavophils could strike in with their favourite refrain about the rotten social condition of Western Europe; and their temporary allies, though they habitually scoffed at the Slavophil jeremiads, had no reason for the moment to contradict them. Very soon the Proletariat became, for the educated classes, a species of bugbear, and the reading public were converted to the doctrine that the Communal institutions should be preserved as a means of excluding the monster from Russia. This fear of what is vaguely termed the Proletariat is still frequently to be met with in Russia, and I have often taken pains to discover precisely what is meant by the term. I cannot, however, say that my efforts have been completely successful. The monster seems to be as vague and shadowy as the awful forms which Milton placed at the gate of the infernal regions. At one moment he seems to be simply our old enemy Pauperism, but when we approach a little nearer we find that he expands to colossal dimensions, so as to include all who do not possess inalienable landed property. In short, he turns out to be, on examination, as vague and undefinable as a good bugbear ought to be; and this vagueness contributed probably not a little to his success. The influence which the idea of the Proletariat exercised on the public mind and on the legislation at the time of the Emancipation is a very notable fact, and well worthy of attention, because it helps to illustrate a point of difference between Russians and Englishmen. Englishmen are, as a rule, too much occupied with the multifarious concerns of the present to look much ahead into the distant future. We profess, indeed, to regard with horror the maxim, Apres nous le deluge! and we should probably annihilate with our virtuous indignation any one who should boldly profess the principle. And yet we often act almost as if we were really partisans of that heartless creed. When called upon to consider the interests of the future generations, we declared that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and stigmatise as visionaries and dreamers all who seek to withdraw our attention from the present. A modern Cassandra who confidently predicts the near exhaustion of our coal-fields, or graphically describes a crushing national disaster that must some day overtake us, may attract some public attention; but when we learn that the misfortune is not to take place in our time, we placidly remark that future generations must take care of themselves, and that we cannot reasonably be expected to bear their burdens. When we are obliged to legislate, we proceed in a cautious, tentative way, and are quite satisfied with any homely, simple remedies that common sense and experience may suggest, without taking the trouble to inquire whether the remedy adopted is in accordance with scientific theories. In short, there is a certain truth in those "famous prophetick pictures" spoken of by Stillingfleet, which "represent the fate of England by a mole, a creature blind and busy, continually working under ground." In Russia we find the opposite extreme. There reformers have been trained, not in the arena of practical politics, but in the school of political speculation. As soon, therefore, as they begin to examine any simple matter with a view to legislation, it at once becomes a "question," and flies up into the region of political and social science. Whilst we have been groping along an unexplored path, the Russians have--at least in recent times--been constantly mapping out, with the help of foreign experience, the country that lay before them, and advancing with gigantic strides according to the newest political theories. Men trained in this way cannot rest satisfied with homely remedies which merely alleviate the evils of the moment. They wish to "tear up evil by the roots," and to legislate for future generations as well as for themselves. This tendency was peculiarly strong at the time of the Emancipation. The educated classes were profoundly convinced that the system of Nicholas I. had been a mistake, and that a new and brighter era was about to dawn upon the country. Everything had to be reformed. The whole social and political edifice had to be reconstructed on entirely new principles. Let us imagine the position of a man who, having no practical acquaintance with building, suddenly finds himself called upon to construct a large house, containing all the newest appliances for convenience and comfort. What will his first step be? Probably he will proceed at once to study the latest authorities on architecture and construction, and when he has mastered the general principles he will come down gradually to the details. This is precisely what the Russians did when they found themselves called upon to reconstruct the political and social edifice. They eagerly consulted the most recent English, French, and German writers on social and political science, and here it was that they made the acquaintance of the Proletariat. People who read books of travel without ever leaving their own country are very apt to acquire exaggerated notions regarding the hardships and dangers of uncivilised life. They read about savage tribes, daring robbers, ferocious wild beasts, poisonous snakes, deadly fevers, and the like; and they cannot but wonder how a human being can exist for a week among such dangers. But if they happen thereafter to visit the countries described, they discover to their surprise that, though the descriptions may not have been exaggerated, life under such conditions is much easier than they supposed. Now the Russians who read about the Proletariat were very much like the people who remain at home and devour books of travel. They gained exaggerated notions, and learned to fear the Proletariat much more than we do, who habitually live in the midst of it. Of course it is quite possible that their view of the subject is truer than ours, and that we may some day, like the people who live tranquilly on the slopes of a volcano, be rudely awakened from our fancied security. But this is an entirely different question. I am at present not endeavouring to justify our habitual callousness with regard to social dangers, but simply seeking to explain why the Russians, who have little or no practical acquaintance with pauperism, should have taken such elaborate precautions against it. But how can the preservation of the Communal institutions lead to this "consummation devoutly to be wished," and how far are the precautions likely to be successful? Those who have studied the mysteries of social science have generally come to the conclusion that the Proletariat has been formed chiefly by the expropriation of the peasantry or small land-holders, and that its formation might be prevented, or at least retarded, by any system of legislation which would secure the possession of land for the peasants and prevent them from being uprooted from the soil. Now it must be admitted that the Russian Communal system is admirably adapted for this purpose. About one-half of the arable land has been reserved for the peasantry, and cannot be encroached on by the great landowners or the capitalists, and every adult peasant, roughly speaking, has a right to a share of this land. When I have said that the peasantry compose about five-sixths of the population, and that it is extremely difficult for a peasant to sever his connection with the rural Commune, it will be at once evident that, if the theories of social philosophers are correct, and if the sanguine expectations entertained in many quarters regarding the permanence of the present Communal institutions are destined to be realised, there is little or no danger of a numerous Proletariat being formed, and the Russians are justified in maintaining, as they often do, that they have successfully solved one of the most important and most difficult of social problems. But is there any reasonable chance of these sanguine expectations being realised? This is, doubtless, a most complicated and difficult question, but it cannot be shirked. However sceptical we may be with regard to social panaceas of all sorts, we cannot dismiss with a few hackneyed phrases a gigantic experiment in social science involving the material and moral welfare of many millions of human beings. On the other hand, I do not wish to exhaust the reader's patience by a long series of multifarious details and conflicting arguments. What I propose to do, therefore, is to state in a few words the conclusions at which I have arrived, after a careful study of the question in all its bearings, and to indicate in a general way how I have arrived at these conclusions. If Russia were content to remain a purely agricultural country of the Sleepy Hollow type, and if her Government were to devote all its energies to maintaining economic and social stagnation, the rural Commune might perhaps prevent the formation of a large Proletariat in the future, as it has tended to prevent it for centuries in the past. The periodical redistributions of the Communal land would secure to every family a portion of the soil, and when the population became too dense, the evils arising from inordinate subdivision of the land might be obviated by a carefully regulated system of emigration to the outlying, thinly populated provinces. All this sounds very well in theory, but experience is proving that it cannot be carried out in practice. In Russia, as in Western Europe, the struggle for life, even among the conservative agricultural classes, is becoming yearly more and more intense, and is producing both the desire and the necessity for greater freedom of individual character and effort, so that each man may make his way in the world according to the amount of his intelligence, energy, spirit of enterprise, and tenacity of purpose. Whatever institutions tend to fetter the individual and maintain a dead level of mediocrity have little chance of subsisting for any great length of time, and it must be admitted that among such institutions the rural Commune in its present form occupies a prominent place. All its members must possess, in principle if not always in practice, an equal share of the soil and must practice the same methods of agriculture, and when a certain inequality has been created by individual effort it is in great measure wiped out by a redistribution of the Communal land. Now, I am well aware that in practice the injustice and inconveniences of the system, being always tempered and corrected by ingenious compromises suggested by long experience, are not nearly so great as the mere theorist might naturally suppose; but they are, I believe, quite great enough to prevent the permanent maintenance of the institution, and already there are ominous indications of the coming change, as I shall explain more fully when I come to deal with the consequences of serf-emancipation. On the other hand there is no danger of a sudden, general abolition of the old system. Though the law now permits the transition from Communal to personal hereditary tenure, even the progressive enterprising peasants are slow to avail themselves of the permission; and the reason I once heard given for this conservative tendency is worth recording. A well-to-do peasant who had been in the habit of manuring his land better than his neighbours, and who was, consequently, a loser by the existing system, said to me: "Of course I want to keep the allotment I have got. But if the land is never again to be divided my grandchildren may be beggars. We must not sin against those who are to come after us." This unexpected reply gave me food for reflection. Surely those muzhiks who are so often accused of being brutally indifferent to moral obligations must have peculiar deep-rooted moral conceptions of their own which exercise a great influence on their daily life. A man who hesitates to sin against his grandchildren still unborn, though his conceptions of the meum and the tuum in the present may be occasionally a little confused, must possess somewhere deep down in his nature a secret fund of moral feeling of a very respectable kind. Even among the educated classes in Russia the way of looking at these matters is very different from ours. We should naturally feel inclined to applaud, encourage, and assist the peasants who show energy and initiative, and who try to rise above their fellows. To the Russian this seems at once inexpedient and immoral. The success of the few, he explains, is always obtained at the expense of the many, and generally by means which the severe moralist cannot approve of. The rich peasants, for example, have gained their fortune and influence by demoralising and exploiting their weaker brethren, by committing all manner of illegalities, and by bribing the local authorities. Hence they are styled Miroyedy (Commune-devourers) or Kulaki (fists), or something equally uncomplimentary. Once this view is adopted, it follows logically that the Communal institutions, in so far as they form a barrier to the activity of such persons, ought to be carefully preserved. This idea underlies nearly all the arguments in favour of the Commune, and explains why they are so popular. Russians of all classes have, in fact, a leaning towards socialistic notions, and very little sympathy with our belief in individual initiative and unrestricted competition. Even if it be admitted that the Commune may effectually prevent the formation of an agricultural Proletariat, the question is thereby only half answered. Russia aspires to become a great industrial and commercial country, and accordingly her town population is rapidly augmenting. We have still to consider, then, how the Commune affects the Proletariat of the towns. In Western Europe the great centres of industry have uprooted from the soil and collected in the towns a great part of the rural population. Those who yielded to this attractive influence severed all connection with their native villages, became unfit for field labour, and were transformed into artisans or factory-workers. In Russia this transformation could not easily take place. The peasant might work during the greater part of his life in the towns, but he did not thereby sever his connection with his native village. He remained, whether he desired it or not, a member of the Commune, possessing a share of the Communal land, and liable for a share of the Communal burdens. During his residence in the town his wife and family remained at home, and thither he himself sooner or later returned. In this way a class of hybrids--half-peasants, half-artisans--has been created, and the formation of a town Proletariat has been greatly retarded. The existence of this hybrid class is commonly cited as a beneficent result of the Communal institutions. The artisans and factory labourers, it is said, have thus always a home to which they can retire when thrown out of work or overtaken by old age, and their children are brought up in the country, instead of being reared among the debilitating influences of overcrowded cities. Every common labourer has, in short, by this ingenious contrivance, some small capital and a country residence. In the present transitional state of Russian society this peculiar arrangement is at once natural and convenient, but amidst its advantages it has many serious defects. The unnatural separation of the artisan from his wife and family leads to very undesirable results, well known to all who are familiar with the details of peasant life in the northern provinces. And whatever its advantages and defects may be, it cannot be permanently retained. At the present time native industry is still in its infancy. Protected by the tariff from foreign competition, and too few in number to produce a strong competition among themselves, the existing factories can give to their owners a large revenue without any strenuous exertion. Manufacturers can therefore allow themselves many little liberties, which would be quite inadmissible if the price of manufactured goods were lowered by brisk competition. Ask a Lancashire manufacturer if he could allow a large portion of his workers to go yearly to Cornwall or Caithness to mow a field of hay or reap a few acres of wheat or oats! And if Russia is to make great industrial progress, the manufacturers of Moscow, Lodz, Ivanovo, and Shui will some day be as hard pressed as are those of Bradford and Manchester. The invariable tendency of modern industry, and the secret of its progress, is the ever-increasing division of labour; and how can this principle be applied if the artisans insist on remaining agriculturists? The interests of agriculture, too, are opposed to the old system. Agriculture cannot be expected to make progress, or even to be tolerably productive, if it is left in great measure to women and children. At present it is not desirable that the link which binds the factory-worker or artisan with the village should be at once severed, for in the neighbourhood of the large factories there is often no proper accommodation for the families of the workers, and agriculture, as at present practised, can be carried on successfully though the Head of the Household happens to be absent. But the system must be regarded as simply temporary, and the disruption of large families--a phenomenon of which I have already spoken--renders its application more and more difficult. CHAPTER X FINNISH AND TARTAR VILLAGES A Finnish Tribe--Finnish Villages--Various Stages of Russification--Finnish Women--Finnish Religions--Method of "Laying" Ghosts--Curious Mixture of Christianity and Paganism--Conversion of the Finns--A Tartar Village--A Russian Peasant's Conception of Mahometanism--A Mahometan's View of Christianity--Propaganda--The Russian Colonist--Migrations of Peoples During the Dark Ages. When talking one day with a landed proprietor who lived near Ivanofka, I accidentally discovered that in a district at some distance to the northeast there were certain villages the inhabitants of which did not understand Russian, and habitually used a peculiar language of their own. With an illogical hastiness worthy of a genuine ethnologist, I at once assumed that these must be the remnants of some aboriginal race. "Des aborigenes!" I exclaimed, unable to recall the Russian equivalent for the term, and knowing that my friend understood French. "Doubtless the remains of some ancient race who formerly held the country, and are now rapidly disappearing. Have you any Aborigines Protection Society in this part of the world?" My friend had evidently great difficulty in imagining what an Aborigines Protection Society could be, and promptly assured me that there was nothing of the kind in Russia. On being told that such a society might render valuable services by protecting the weaker against the stronger race, and collecting important materials for the new science of Social Embryology, he looked thoroughly mystified. As to the new science, he had never heard of it, and as to protection, he thought that the inhabitants of the villages in question were quite capable of protecting themselves. "I could invent," he added, with a malicious smile, "a society for the protection of ALL peasants, but I am quite sure that the authorities would not allow me to carry out my idea." My ethnological curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and I endeavoured to awaken a similar feeling in my friend by hinting that we had at hand a promising field for discoveries which might immortalise the fortunate explorers; but my efforts were in vain. The old gentleman was a portly, indolent man, of phlegmatic temperament, who thought more of comfort than of immortality in the terrestrial sense of the term. To my proposal that we should start at once on an exploring expedition, he replied calmly that the distance was considerable, that the roads were muddy, and that there was nothing to be learned. The villages in question were very like other villages, and their inhabitants lived, to all intents and purposes, in the same way as their Russian neighbours. If they had any secret peculiarities they would certainly not divulge them to a stranger, for they were notoriously silent, gloomy, morose, and uncommunicative. Everything that was known about them, my friend assured me, might be communicated in a few words. They belonged to a Finnish tribe called Korelli, and had been transported to their present settlements in comparatively recent times. In answer to my questions as to how, when, and by whom they had been transported thither my informant replied that it had been the work of Ivan the Terrible. Though I knew at that time little of Russian history, I suspected that the last assertion was invented on the spur of the moment, in order to satisfy my troublesome curiosity, and accordingly I determined not to accept it without verification. The result showed how careful the traveller should be in accepting the testimony of "intelligent, well-informed natives." On further investigation I discovered, not only that the story about Ivan the Terrible was a pure invention--whether of my friend or of the popular imagination, which always uses heroic names as pegs on which to hang traditions, I know not--but also that my first theory was correct. These Finnish peasants turned out to be a remnant of the aborigines, or at least of the oldest known inhabitants of the district. Men of the same race, but bearing different tribal names, such as Finns, Korelli, Tcheremiss, Tchuvash, Mordva, Votyaks, Permyaks, Zyryanye, Voguls, are to be found in considerable numbers all over the northern provinces, from the Gulf of Bothnia to Western Siberia, as well as in the provinces bordering the Middle Volga as far south as Penza, Simbirsk, and Tamboff.* The Russian peasants, who now compose the great mass of the population, are the intruders. * The semi-official "Statesman's Handbook for Russia," published in 1896, enumerates fourteen different tribes, with an aggregate of about 4,650,000 souls, but these numbers must not be regarded as having any pretensions to accuracy. The best authorities differ widely in their estimates. I had long taken a deep interest in what learned Germans call the Volkerwanderung--that is to say, the migrations of peoples during the gradual dissolution of the Roman Empire, and it had often occurred to me that the most approved authorities, who had expended an infinite amount of learning on the subject, had not always taken the trouble to investigate the nature of the process. It is not enough to know that a race or tribe extended its dominions or changed its geographical position. We ought at the same time to inquire whether it expelled, exterminated, or absorbed the former inhabitants, and how the expulsion, extermination, or absorption was effected. Now of these three processes, absorption may have been more frequent than is commonly supposed, and it seemed to me that in Northern Russia this process might be conveniently studied. A thousand years ago the whole of Northern Russia was peopled by Finnish pagan tribes, and at the present day the greater part of it is occupied by peasants who speak the language of Moscow, profess the Orthodox faith, present in their physiognomy no striking peculiarities, and appear to the superficial observer pure Russians. And we have no reason to suppose that the former inhabitants were expelled or exterminated, or that they gradually died out from contact with the civilisation and vices of a higher race. History records no wholesale Finnish migrations like that of the Kalmyks, and no war of extermination; and statistics prove that among the remnants of those primitive races the population increases as rapidly as among the Russian peasantry.* From these facts I concluded that the Finnish aborigines had been simply absorbed, or rather, were being absorbed, by the Slavonic intruders. * This latter statement is made on the authority of Popoff ("Zyryanye i zyryanski krai," Moscow, 1874) and Tcheremshanski ("Opisanie Orenburgskoi Gubernii," Ufa, 1859). This conclusion has since been confirmed by observation. During my wanderings in these northern provinces I have found villages in every stage of Russification. In one, everything seemed thoroughly Finnish: the inhabitants had a reddish-olive skin, very high cheek-bones, obliquely set eyes, and a peculiar costume; none of the women, and very few of the men, could understand Russian, and any Russian who visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. In a second, there were already some Russian inhabitants; the others had lost something of their pure Finnish type, many of the men had discarded the old costume and spoke Russian fluently, and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a third, the Finnish type was still further weakened: all the men spoke Russian, and nearly all the women understood it; the old male costume had entirely disappeared, and the old female costume was rapidly following it; while intermarriage with the Russian population was no longer rare. In a fourth, intermarriage had almost completely done its work, and the old Finnish element could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of physiognomy and pronunciation.* * One of the most common peculiarities of pronunciation is the substitution of the sound of ts for that of tch, which I found almost universal over a large area. The process of Russification may be likewise observed in the manner of building the houses and in the methods of farming, which show plainly that the Finnish races did not obtain rudimentary civilisation from the Slavs. Whence, then, was it derived? Was it obtained from some other race, or is it indigenous? These are questions which I have no means of answering. A Positivist poet--or if that be a contradiction in terms, let us say a Positivist who wrote verses--once composed an appeal to the fair sex, beginning with the words: "Pourquoi, O femmes, restez-vous en arriere?" The question might have been addressed to the women in these Finnish villages. Like their sisters in France, they are much more conservative than the men, and oppose much more stubbornly the Russian influence. On the other hand, like women in general, when they do begin to change, they change more rapidly. This is seen especially in the matter of costume. The men adopt the Russian costume very gradually; the women adopt it at once. As soon as a single woman gets a gaudy Russian dress, every other woman in the village feels envious and impatient till she has done likewise. I remember once visiting a Mordva village when this critical point had been reached, and a very characteristic incident occurred. In the preceding villages through which I had passed I had tried in vain to buy a female costume, and I again made the attempt. This time the result was very different. A few minutes after I had expressed my wish to purchase a costume, the house in which I was sitting was besieged by a great crowd of women, holding in their hands articles of wearing apparel. In order to make a selection I went out into the crowd, but the desire to find a purchaser was so general and so ardent that I was regularly mobbed. The women, shouting "Kupi! kupi!" ("Buy! buy!"), and struggling with each other to get near me, were so importunate that I had at last to take refuge in the house, to prevent my own costume from being torn to shreds. But even there I was not safe, for the women followed at my heels, and a considerable amount of good-natured violence had to be employed to expel the intruders. It is especially interesting to observe the transformation of nationality in the sphere of religious conceptions. The Finns remained pagans long after the Russians had become Christians, but at the present time the whole population, from the eastern boundary of Finland proper to the Ural Mountains, are officially described as members of the Greek Orthodox Church. The manner in which this change of religion was effected is well worthy of attention. The old religion of the Finnish tribes, if we may judge from the fragments which still remain, had, like the people themselves, a thoroughly practical, prosaic character. Their theology consisted not of abstract dogmas, but merely of simple prescriptions for the ensuring of material welfare. Even at the present day, in the districts not completely Russified, their prayers are plain, unadorned requests for a good harvest, plenty of cattle, and the like, and are expressed in a tone of childlike familiarity that sounds strange in our ears. They make no attempt to veil their desires with mystic solemnity, but ask, in simple, straightforward fashion, that God should make the barley ripen and the cow calve successfully, that He should prevent their horses from being stolen, and that he should help them to gain money to pay their taxes. Their religious ceremonies have, so far as I have been able to discover, no hidden mystical signification, and are for the most part rather magical rites for averting the influence of malicious spirits, or freeing themselves from the unwelcome visits of their departed relatives. For this latter purpose many even of those who are officially Christians proceed at stated seasons to the graveyards and place an abundant supply of cooked food on the graves of their relations who have recently died, requesting the departed to accept this meal, and not to return to their old homes, where their presence is no longer desired. Though more of the food is eaten at night by the village dogs than by the famished spirits, the custom is believed to have a powerful influence in preventing the dead from wandering about at night and frightening the living. If it be true, as I am inclined to believe, that tombstones were originally used for keeping the dead in their graves, then it must be admitted that in the matter of "laying" ghosts the Finns have shown themselves much more humane than other races. It may, however, be suggested that in the original home of the Finns--"le berceau de la race," as French ethnologists say--stones could not easily be procured, and that the custom of feeding the dead was adopted as a pis aller. The decision of the question must be left to those who know where the original home of the Finns was. As the Russian peasantry, knowing little or nothing of theology, and placing implicit confidence in rites and ceremonies, did not differ very widely from the pagan Finns in the matter of religious conceptions, the friendly contact of the two races naturally led to a curious blending of the two religions. The Russians adopted many customs from the Finns, and the Finns adopted still more from the Russians. When Yumala and the other Finnish deities did not do as they were desired, their worshippers naturally applied for protection or assistance to the Madonna and the "Russian God." If their own traditional magic rites did not suffice to ward off evil influences, they naturally tried the effect of crossing themselves, as the Russians do in moments of danger. All this may seem strange to us who have been taught from our earliest years that religion is something quite different from spells, charms, and incantations, and that of all the various religions in the world one alone is true, all the others being false. But we must remember that the Finns have had a very different education. They do not distinguish religion from magic rites, and they have never been taught that other religions are less true than their own. For them the best religion is the one which contains the most potent spells, and they see no reason why less powerful religions should not be blended therewith. Their deities are not jealous gods, and do not insist on having a monopoly of devotion; and in any case they cannot do much injury to those who have placed themselves under the protection of a more powerful divinity. This simple-minded eclecticism often produces a singular mixture of Christianity and paganism. Thus, for instance, at the harvest festivals, Tchuvash peasants have been known to pray first to their own deities, and then to St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker, who is the favourite saint of the Russian peasantry. Such dual worship is sometimes even recommended by the Yomzi--a class of men who correspond to the medicine-men among the Red Indians--and the prayers are on these occasions couched in the most familiar terms. Here is a specimen given by a Russian who has specially studied the language and customs of this interesting people:* "Look here, O Nicholas-god! Perhaps my neighbour, little Michael, has been slandering me to you, or perhaps he will do so. If he does, don't believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a still more curious blending of the two religions. Thus a Tcheremiss, on one occasion, in consequence of a serious illness, sacrificed a young foal to our Lady of Kazan! * Mr. Zolotnitski, "Tchuvasko-russki slovar," p. 167. Though the Finnish beliefs affected to some extent the Russian peasantry, the Russian faith ultimately prevailed. This can be explained without taking into consideration the inherent superiority of Christianity over all forms of paganism. The Finns had no organised priesthood, and consequently never offered a systematic opposition to the new faith; the Russians, on the contrary, had a regular hierarchy in close alliance with the civil administration. In the principal villages Christian churches were built, and some of the police-officers vied with the ecclesiastical officials in the work of making converts. At the same time there were other influences tending in the same direction. If a Russian practised Finnish superstitions he exposed himself to disagreeable consequences of a temporal kind; if, on the contrary, a Finn adopted the Christian religion, the temporal consequences that could result were all advantageous to him. Many of the Finns gradually became Christians almost unconsciously. The ecclesiastical authorities were extremely moderate in their demands. They insisted on no religious knowledge, and merely demanded that the converts should be baptised. The converts, failing to understand the spiritual significance of the ceremony, commonly offered no resistance, so long as the immersion was performed in summer. So little repugnance, indeed, did they feel, that on some occasions, when a small reward was given to those who consented, some of the new converts wished the ceremony to be repeated several times. The chief objection to receiving the Christian faith lay in the long and severe fasts imposed by the Greek Orthodox Church; but this difficulty was overcome by assuming that they need not be strictly observed. At first, in some districts, it was popularly believed that the Icons informed the Russian priests against those who did not fast as the Church prescribed; but experience gradually exploded this theory. Some of the more prudent converts, however, to prevent all possible tale-telling, took the precaution of turning the face of the Icon to the wall when prohibited meats were about to be eaten! This gradual conversion of the Finnish tribes, effected without any intellectual revolution in the minds of the converts, had very important temporal consequences. Community of faith led to intermarriage, and intermarriage led rapidly to the blending of the two races. If we compare a Finnish village in any stage of Russification with a Tartar village, of which the inhabitants are Mahometans, we cannot fail to be struck by the contrast. In the latter, though there may be many Russians, there is no blending of the two races. Between them religion has raised an impassable barrier. There are many villages in the eastern and north-eastern provinces of European Russia which have been for generations half Tartar and half Russian, and the amalgamation of the two nationalities has not yet begun. Near the one end stands the Christian church, and near the other stands the little metchet, or Mahometan house of prayer. The whole village forms one Commune, with one Village Assembly and one Village Elder; but, socially, it is composed of two distinct communities, each possessing its peculiar customs and peculiar mode of life. The Tartar may learn Russian, but he does not on that account become Russianised. It must not, however, be supposed that the two races are imbued with fanatical hatred towards each other. On the contrary, they live in perfect good-fellowship, elect as Village Elder sometimes a Russian and sometimes a Tartar, and discuss the Communal affairs in the Village Assembly without reference to religious matters. I know one village where the good-fellowship went even a step farther: the Christians determined to repair their church, and the Mahometans helped them to transport wood for the purpose! All this tends to show that under a tolerably good Government, which does not favour one race at the expense of the other, Mahometan Tartars and Christian Slavs can live peaceably together. The absence of fanaticism and of that proselytising zeal which is one of the most prolific sources of religious hatred, is to be explained by the peculiar religious conceptions of these peasants. In their minds religion and nationality are so closely allied as to be almost identical. The Russian is, as it were, by nature a Christian, and the Tartar a Mahometan; and it never occurs to any one in these villages to disturb the appointed order of nature. On this subject I had once an interesting conversation with a Russian peasant who had been for some time living among Tartars. In reply to my question as to what kind of people the Tartars were, he replied laconically, "Nitchevo"--that is to say, "nothing in particular"; and on being pressed for a more definite expression of opinion, he admitted that they were very good people indeed. "And what kind of faith have they?" I continued. "A good enough faith," was the prompt reply. "Is it better than the faith of the Molokanye?" The Molokanye are Russian sectarians--closely resembling Scotch Presbyterians--of whom I shall have more to say in the sequel. "Of course it is better than the Molokan faith." "Indeed!" I exclaimed, endeavouring to conceal my astonishment at this strange judgment. "Are the Molokanye, then, very bad people?" "Not at all. The Molokanye are good and honest." "Why, then, do you think their faith is so much worse than that of the Mahometans?" "How shall I tell you?" The peasant here paused as if to collect his thoughts, and then proceeded slowly, "The Tartars, you see, received their faith from God as they received the colour of their skins, but the Molokanye are Russians who have invented a faith out of their own heads!" This singular answer scarcely requires a commentary. As it would be absurd to try to make Tartars change the colour of their skins, so it would be absurd to try to make them change their religion. Besides this, such an attempt would be an unjustifiable interference with the designs of Providence, for, in the peasant's opinion, God gave Mahometanism to the Tartars just as he gave the Orthodox faith to the Russians. The ecclesiastical authorities do not formally adopt this strange theory, but they generally act in accordance with it. There is little official propaganda among the Mahometan subjects of the Tsar, and it is well that it is so, for an energetic propaganda would lead merely to the stirring up of any latent hostility which may exist deep down in the nature of the two races, and it would not make any real converts. The Tartars cannot unconsciously imbibe Christianity as the Finns have done. Their religion is not a rude, simple paganism without theology in the scholastic sense of the term, but a monotheism as exclusive as Christianity itself. Enter into conversation with an intelligent man who has no higher religious belief than a rude sort of paganism, and you may, if you know him well and make a judicious use of your knowledge, easily interest him in the touching story of Christ's life and teaching. And in these unsophisticated natures there is but one step from interest and sympathy to conversion. Try the same method with a Mussulman, and you will soon find that all your efforts are fruitless. He has already a theology and a prophet of his own, and sees no reason why he should exchange them for those which you have to offer. Perhaps he will show you more or less openly that he pities your ignorance and wonders that you have not been able to ADVANCE from Christianity to Mahometanism. In his opinion--I am supposing that he is a man of education--Moses and Christ were great prophets in their day, and consequently he is accustomed to respect their memory; but he is profoundly convinced that however appropriate they were for their own times, they have been entirely superseded by Mahomet, precisely as we believe that Judaism was superseded by Christianity. Proud of his superior knowledge, he regards you as a benighted polytheist, and may perhaps tell you that the Orthodox Christians with whom he comes in contact have three Gods and a host of lesser deities called saints, that they pray to idols called Icons, and that they keep their holy days by getting drunk. In vain you endeavour to explain to him that saints and Icons are not essential parts of Christianity, and that habits of intoxication have no religious significance. On these points he may make concessions to you, but the doctrine of the Trinity remains for him a fatal stumbling-block. "You Christians," he will say, "once had a great prophet called Jisous, who is mentioned with respect in the Koran, but you falsified your sacred writings and took to worshipping him, and now you declare that he is the equal of Allah. Far from us be such blasphemy! There is but one God, and Mahomet is His prophet." A worthy Christian missionary, who had laboured long and zealously among a Mussulman population, once called me sharply to account for having expressed the opinion that Mahometans are very rarely converted to Christianity. When I brought him down from the region of vague general statements and insisted on knowing how many cases he had met with in his own personal experience during sixteen years of missionary work, he was constrained to admit that he had know only one: and when I pressed him farther as to the disinterested sincerity of the convert in question his reply was not altogether satisfactory. The policy of religious non-intervention has not always been practised by the Government. Soon after the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in the sixteenth century, the Tsars of Muscovy attempted to convert their new subjects from Mahometanism to Christianity. The means employed were partly spiritual and partly administrative, but the police-officers seem to have played a more important part than the clergy. In this way a certain number of Tartars were baptised; but the authorities were obliged to admit that the new converts "shamelessly retain many horrid Tartar customs, and neither hold nor know the Christian faith." When spiritual exhortations failed, the Government ordered its officials to "pacify, imprison, put in irons, and thereby UNTEACH and frighten from the Tartar faith those who, though baptised, do not obey the admonitions of the Metropolitan." These energetic measures proved as ineffectual as the spiritual exhortations; and Catherine II. adopted a new method, highly characteristic of her system of administration. The new converts--who, be it remembered, were unable to read and write--were ordered by Imperial ukaz to sign a written promise to the effect that "they would completely forsake their infidel errors, and, avoiding all intercourse with unbelievers, would hold firmly and unwaveringly the Christian faith and its dogmas"*--of which latter, we may add, they had not the slightest knowledge. The childlike faith in the magical efficacy of stamped paper here displayed was not justified. The so-called "baptised Tartars" are at the present time as far from being Christians as they were in the sixteenth century. They cannot openly profess Mahometanism, because men who have been once formally admitted into the National Church cannot leave it without exposing themselves to the severe pains and penalties of the criminal code, but they strongly object to be Christianised. * "Ukaz Kazanskoi dukhovnoi Konsistorii." Anno 1778. On this subject I have found a remarkable admission in a semiofficial article, published as recently as 1872.* "It is a fact worthy of attention," says the writer, "that a long series of evident apostasies coincides with the beginning of measures to confirm the converts in the Christian faith. There must be, therefore, some collateral cause producing those cases of apostasy precisely at the moment when the contrary might be expected." There is a delightful naivete in this way of stating the fact. The mysterious cause vaguely indicated is not difficult to find. So long as the Government demanded merely that the supposed converts should be inscribed as Christians in the official registers, there was no official apostasy; but as soon as active measures began to be taken "to confirm the converts," a spirit of hostility and fanaticism appeared among the Mussulman population, and made those who were inscribed as Christians resist the propaganda. * "Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshtcheniya." June, 1872. It may safely be said that Christians are impervious to Islam, and genuine Mussulmans impervious to Christianity; but between the two there are certain tribes, or fractions of tribes, which present a promising field for missionary enterprise. In this field the Tartars show much more zeal than the Russians, and possess certain advantages over their rivals. The tribes of Northeastern Russia learn Tartar much more easily than Russian, and their geographical position and modes of life bring them in contact with Russians much less than with Tartars. The consequence is that whole villages of Tcheremiss and Votiaks, officially inscribed as belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, have openly declared themselves Mahometans; and some of the more remarkable conversions have been commemorated by popular songs, which are sung by young and old. Against this propaganda the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities do little or nothing. Though the criminal code contains severe enactments against those who fall away from the Orthodox Church, and still more against those who produce apostasy,* the enactments are rarely put in force. Both clergy and laity in the Russian Church are, as a rule, very tolerant where no political questions are involved. The parish priest pays attention to apostasy only when it diminishes his annual revenues, and this can be easily avoided by the apostate's paying a small yearly sum. If this precaution be taken, whole villages may be converted to Islam without the higher ecclesiastical authorities knowing anything of the matter. * A person convicted of converting a Christian to Islamism is sentenced, according to the criminal code (§184), to the loss of all civil rights, and to imprisonment with hard labour for a term varying from eight to ten years. Whether the barrier that separates Christians and Mussulmans in Russia, as elsewhere, will ever be broken down by education, I do not know; but I may remark that hitherto the spread of education among the Tartars has tended rather to imbue them with fanaticism. If we remember that theological education always produces intolerance, and that Tartar education is almost exclusively theological, we shall not be surprised to find that a Tartar's religious fanaticism is generally in direct proportion to the amount of his intellectual culture. The unlettered Tartar, unspoiled by learning falsely so called, and knowing merely enough of his religion to perform the customary ordinances prescribed by the Prophet, is peaceable, kindly, and hospitable towards all men; but the learned Tartar, who has been taught that the Christian is a kiafir (infidel) and a mushrik (polytheist), odious in the sight of Allah, and already condemned to eternal punishment, is as intolerant and fanatical as the most bigoted Roman Catholic or Calvinist. Such fanatics are occasionally to be met with in the eastern provinces, but they are few in number, and have little influence on the masses. From my own experience I can testify that during the whole course of my wanderings I have nowhere received more kindness and hospitality than among the uneducated Mussulman Bashkirs. Even here, however, Islam opposes a strong barrier to Russification. Though no such barrier existed among the pagan Finnish tribes, the work of Russification among them is still, as I have already indicated, far from complete. Not only whole villages, but even many entire districts, are still very little affected by Russian influence. This is to be explained partly by geographical conditions. In regions which have a poor soil, and are intersected by no navigable river, there are few or no Russian settlers, and consequently the Finns have there preserved intact their language and customs; whilst in those districts which present more inducements to colonisation, the Russian population is more numerous, and the Finns less conservative. It must, however, be admitted that geographical conditions do not completely explain the facts. The various tribes, even when placed in the same conditions, are not equally susceptible to foreign influence. The Mordva, for instance, are infinitely less conservative than the Tchuvash. This I have often noticed, and my impression has been confirmed by men who have had more opportunities of observation. For the present we must attribute this to some occult ethnological peculiarity, but future investigations may some day supply a more satisfactory explanation. Already I have obtained some facts which appear to throw light on the subject. The Tchuvash have certain customs which seem to indicate that they were formerly, if not avowed Mahometans, at least under the influence of Islam, whilst we have no reason to suppose that the Mordva ever passed through that school. The absence of religious fanaticism greatly facilitated Russian colonisation in these northern regions, and the essentially peaceful disposition of the Russian peasantry tended in the same direction. The Russian peasant is admirably fitted for the work of peaceful agricultural colonisation. Among uncivilised tribes he is good-natured, long-suffering, conciliatory, capable of bearing extreme hardships, and endowed with a marvellous power of adapting himself to circumstances. The haughty consciousness of personal and national superiority habitually displayed by Englishmen of all ranks when they are brought in contact with races which they look upon as lower in the scale of humanity than themselves, is entirely foreign to his character. He has no desire to rule, and no wish to make the natives hewers of wood and drawers of water. All he desires is a few acres of land which he and his family can cultivate; and so long as he is allowed to enjoy these he is not likely to molest his neighbours. Had the colonists of the Finnish country been men of Anglo-Saxon race, they would in all probability have taken possession of the land and reduced the natives to the condition of agricultural labourers. The Russian colonists have contented themselves with a humbler and less aggressive mode of action; they have settled peaceably among the native population, and are rapidly becoming blended with it. In many districts the so-called Russians have perhaps more Finnish than Slavonic blood in their veins. But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with the aforementioned Volkerwanderung, or migration of peoples, during the Dark Ages? More than may at first sight appear. Some of the so-called migrations were, I suspect, not at all migrations in the ordinary sense of the term, but rather gradual changes, such as those which have taken place, and are still taking place, in Northern Russia. A thousand years ago what is now known as the province of Yaroslavl was inhabited by Finns, and now it is occupied by men who are commonly regarded as pure Slays. But it would be an utter mistake to suppose that the Finns of this district migrated to those more distant regions where they are now to be found. In reality they formerly occupied, as I have said, the whole of Northern Russia, and in the province of Yaroslavl they have been transformed by Slav infiltration. In Central Europe the Slavs may be said in a certain sense to have retreated, for in former times they occupied the whole of Northern Germany as far as the Elbe. But what does the word "retreat" mean in this case? It means probably that the Slays were gradually Teutonised, and then absorbed by the Teutonic race. Some tribes, it is true, swept over a part of Europe in genuine nomadic fashion, and endeavoured perhaps to expel or exterminate the actual possessors of the soil. This kind of migration may likewise be studied in Russia. But I must leave the subject till I come to speak of the southern provinces. CHAPTER XI LORD NOVGOROD THE GREAT Departure from Ivanofka and Arrival at Novgorod--The Eastern Half of the Town--The Kremlin--An Old Legend--The Armed Men of Rus--The Northmen--Popular Liberty in Novgorod--The Prince and the Popular Assembly--Civil Dissensions and Faction-fights--The Commercial Republic Conquered by the Muscovite Tsars--Ivan the Terrible--Present Condition of the Town--Provincial Society--Card-playing--Periodicals--"Eternal Stillness." Country life in Russia is pleasant enough in summer or in winter, but between summer and winter there is an intermediate period of several weeks when the rain and mud transform a country-house into something very like a prison. To escape this durance vile I determined in the month of October to leave Ivanofka, and chose as my headquarters for the next few months the town of Novgorod--the old town of that name, not to be confounded with Nizhni Novgorod--i.e., Lower Novgorod, on the Volga--where the great annual fair is held. For this choice there were several reasons. I did not wish to go to St. Petersburg or Moscow, because I foresaw that in either of those cities my studies would certainly be interrupted. In a quiet, sleepy provincial town I should have much more chance of coming in contact with people who could not speak fluently any West-European languages, and much better opportunities for studying native life and local administration. Of the provincial capitals, Novgorod was the nearest, and more interesting than most of its rivals; for it has had a curious history, much older than that of St. Petersburg or even of Moscow, and some traces of its former greatness are still visible. Though now a town of third-rate importance--a mere shadow of its former self--it still contains about 21,000 inhabitants, and is the administrative centre of the large province in which it is situated. About eighty miles before reaching St. Petersburg the Moscow railway crosses the Volkhof, a rapid, muddy river which connects Lake Ilmen with Lake Ladoga. At the point of intersection I got on board a small steamer and sailed up stream towards Lake Ilmen for about fifty miles.* The journey was tedious, for the country was flat and monotonous, and the steamer, though it puffed and snorted inordinately, did not make more than nine knots. Towards sunset Novgorod appeared on the horizon. Seen thus at a distance in the soft twilight, it seemed decidedly picturesque. On the east bank lay the greater part of the town, the sky line of which was agreeably broken by the green roofs and pear-shaped cupolas of many churches. On the opposite bank rose the Kremlin. Spanning the river was a long, venerable stone bridge, half hidden by a temporary wooden one, which was doing duty for the older structure while the latter was being repaired. A cynical fellow-passenger assured me that the temporary structure was destined to become permanent, because it yielded a comfortable revenue to certain officials, but this sinister prediction has not been verified. * The journey would now be made by rail, but the branch line which runs near the bank of the river had not been constructed at that time. That part of Novgorod which lies on the eastern bank of the river, and in which I took up my abode for several months, contains nothing that is worthy of special mention. As is the case in most Russian towns, the streets are straight, wide, and ill-paved, and all run parallel or at right angles to each other. At the end of the bridge is a spacious market-place, flanked on one side by the Town-house. Near the other side stand the houses of the Governor and of the chief military authority of the district. The only other buildings of note are the numerous churches, which are mostly small, and offer nothing that is likely to interest the student of architecture. Altogether this part of the town is unquestionably commonplace. The learned archaeologist may detect in it some traces of the distant past, but the ordinary traveller will find little to arrest his attention. If now we cross over to the other side of the river, we are at once confronted by something which very few Russian towns possess--a kremlin, or citadel. This is a large and slightly-elevated enclosure, surrounded by high brick walls, and in part by the remains of a moat. Before the days of heavy artillery these walls must have presented a formidable barrier to any besieging force, but they have long ceased to have any military significance, and are now nothing more than an historical monument. Passing through the gateway which faces the bridge, we find ourselves in a large open space. To the right stands the cathedral--a small, much-venerated church, which can make no pretensions to architectural beauty--and an irregular group of buildings containing the consistory and the residence of the Archbishop. To the left is a long symmetrical range of buildings containing the Government offices and the law courts. Midway between this and the cathedral, in the centre of the great open space, stands a colossal monument, composed of a massive circular stone pedestal and an enormous globe, on and around which cluster a number of emblematic and historical figures. This curious monument, which has at least the merit of being original in design, was erected in 1862, in commemoration of Russia's thousandth birthday, and is supposed to represent the history of Russia in general and of Novgorod in particular during the last thousand years. It was placed here because Novgorod is the oldest of Russian towns, and because somewhere in the surrounding country occurred the incident which is commonly recognised as the foundation of the Russian Empire. The incident in question is thus described in the oldest chronicle: "At that time, as the southern Slavonians paid tribute to the Kozars, so the Novgorodian Slavonians suffered from the attacks of the Variags. For some time the Variags exacted tribute from the Novgorodian Slavonians and the neighbouring Finns; then the conquered tribes, by uniting their forces, drove out the foreigners. But among the Slavonians arose strong internal dissensions; the clans rose against each other. Then, for the creation of order and safety, they resolved to call in princes from a foreign land. In the year 862 Slavonic legates went away beyond the sea to the Variag tribe called Rus, and said, 'Our land is great and fruitful, but there is no order in it; come and reign and rule over us.' Three brothers accepted the invitation, and appeared with their armed followers. The eldest of these, Rurik, settled in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, at Byelo-ozero; and the third, Truvor, in Isborsk. From them our land is called Rus. After two years the brothers of Rurik died. He alone began to rule over the Novgorod district, and confided to his men the administration of the principal towns." This simple legend has given rise to a vast amount of learned controversy, and historical investigators have fought valiantly with each other over the important question, Who were those armed men of Rus? For a long time the commonly received opinion was that they were Normans from Scandinavia. The Slavophils accepted the legend literally in this sense, and constructed upon it an ingenious theory of Russian history. The nations of the West, they said, were conquered by invaders, who seized the country and created the feudal system for their own benefit; hence the history of Western Europe is a long tale of bloody struggles between conquerors and conquered, and at the present day the old enmity still lives in the political rivalry of the different social classes. The Russo-Slavonians, on the contrary, were not conquered, but voluntarily invited a foreign prince to come and rule over them! Hence the whole social and political development of Russia has been essentially peaceful, and the Russian people know nothing of social castes or feudalism. Though this theory afforded some nourishment for patriotic self-satisfaction, it displeased extreme patriots, who did not like the idea that order was first established in their country by men of Teutonic race. These preferred to adopt the theory that Rurik and his companions were Slavonians from the shores of the Baltic. Though I devoted to the study of this question more time and labour than perhaps the subject deserved, I have no intention of inviting the reader to follow me through the tedious controversy. Suffice it to say that, after careful consideration, and with all due deference to recent historians, I am inclined to adopt the old theory, and to regard the Normans of Scandinavia as in a certain sense the founders of the Russian Empire. We know from other sources that during the ninth century there was a great exodus from Scandinavia. Greedy of booty, and fired with the spirit of adventure, the Northmen, in their light, open boats, swept along the coasts of Germany, France, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, pillaging the towns and villages near the sea, and entering into the heart of the country by means of the rivers. At first they were mere marauders, and showed everywhere such ferocity and cruelty that they came to be regarded as something akin to plagues and famines, and the faithful added a new petition to the Litany, "From the wrath and malice of the Normans, O Lord, deliver us!" But towards the middle of the century the movement changed its character. The raids became military invasions, and the invaders sought to conquer the lands which they had formerly plundered, "ut acquirant sibi spoliando regna quibus possent vivere pace perpetua." The chiefs embraced Christianity, married the daughters or sisters of the reigning princes, and obtained the conquered territories as feudal grants. Thus arose Norman principalities in the Low Countries, in France, in Italy, and in Sicily; and the Northmen, rapidly blending with the native population, soon showed as much political talent as they had formerly shown reckless and destructive valour. It would have been strange indeed if these adventurers, who succeeded in reaching Asia Minor and the coasts of North America, should have overlooked Russia, which lay, as it were, at their very doors. The Volkhof, flowing through Novgorod, formed part of a great waterway which afforded almost uninterrupted water-communication between the Baltic and the Black Sea; and we know that some time afterwards the Scandinavians used this route in their journeys to Constantinople. The change which the Scandinavian movement underwent elsewhere is clearly indicated by the Russian chronicles: first, the Variags came as collectors of tribute, and raised so much popular opposition that they were expelled, and then they came as rulers, and settled in the country. Whether they really came on invitation may be doubted, but that they adopted the language, religion, and customs of the native population does not militate against the assertion that they were Normans. On the contrary, we have here rather an additional confirmation, for elsewhere the Normans did likewise. In the North of France they adopted almost at once the French language and religion, and the son and successor of the famous Rollo was sometimes reproached with being more French than Norman.* *Strinnholm, "Die Vikingerzuge" (Hamburg, 1839), I., p. 135. Though it is difficult to decide how far the legend is literally true, there can be no possible doubt that the event which it more or less accurately describes had an important influence on Russian history. From that time dates the rapid expansion of the Russo-Slavonians--a movement that is still going on at the present day. To the north, the east, and the south new principalities were formed and governed by men who all claimed to be descendants of Rurik, and down to the end of the sixteenth century no Russian outside of this great family ever attempted to establish independent sovereignty. For six centuries after the so-called invitation of Rurik the city on the Volkhof had a strange, checkered history. Rapidly it conquered the neighbouring Finnish tribes, and grew into a powerful independent state, with a territory extending to the Gulf of Finland, and northwards to the White Sea. At the same time its commercial importance increased, and it became an outpost of the Hanseatic League. In this work the descendants of Rurik played an important part, but they were always kept in strict subordination to the popular will. Political freedom kept pace with commercial prosperity. What means Rurik employed for establishing and preserving order we know not, but the chronicles show that his successors in Novgorod possessed merely such authority as was freely granted them by the people. The supreme power resided, not in the prince, but in the assembly of the citizens called together in the market-place by the sound of the great bell. This assembly made laws for the prince as well as for the people, entered into alliances with foreign powers, declared war, and concluded peace, imposed taxes, raised troops, and not only elected the magistrates, but also judged and deposed them when it thought fit. The prince was little more than the hired commander of the troops and the president of the judicial administration. When entering on his functions he had to take a solemn oath that he would faithfully observe the ancient laws and usages, and if he failed to fulfil his promise he was sure to be summarily deposed and expelled. The people had an old rhymed proverb, "Koli khud knyaz, tak v gryaz!" "If the prince is bad, into the mud with him!", and they habitually acted according to it. So unpleasant, indeed, was the task of ruling those sturdy, stiff-necked burghers, that some princes refused to undertake it, and others, having tried it for a time, voluntarily laid down their authority and departed. But these frequent depositions and abdications--as many as thirty took place in the course of a single century--did not permanently disturb the existing order of things. The descendants of Rurik were numerous, and there were always plenty of candidates for the vacant post. The municipal republic continued to grow in strength and in riches, and during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it proudly styled itself "Lord Novgorod the Great" (Gospodin Velilki Novgorod). "Then came a change, as all things human change." To the east arose the principality of Moscow--not an old, rich municipal republic, but a young, vigorous State, ruled by a line of crafty, energetic, ambitious, and unscrupulous princes of the Rurik stock, who were freeing the country from the Tartar yoke and gradually annexing by fair means and foul the neighbouring principalities to their own dominions. At the same time, and in a similar manner, the Lithuanian Princes to the westward united various small principalities and formed a large independent State. Thus Novgorod found itself in a critical position. Under a strong Government it might have held its own against these rivals and successfully maintained its independence, but its strength was already undermined by internal dissensions. Political liberty had led to anarchy. Again and again on that great open space where the national monument now stands, and in the market-place on the other side of the river, scenes of disorder and bloodshed took place, and more than once on the bridge battles were fought by contending factions. Sometimes it was a contest between rival families, and sometimes a struggle between the municipal aristocracy, who sought to monopolise the political power, and the common people, who wished to have a large share in the administration. A State thus divided against itself could not long resist the aggressive tendencies of powerful neighbours. Artful diplomacy could but postpone the evil day, and it required no great political foresight to predict that sooner or later Novgorod must become Lithuanian or Muscovite. The great families inclined to Lithuania, but the popular party and the clergy, disliking Roman Catholicism, looked to Moscow for assistance, and the Grand Princes of Muscovy ultimately won the prize. The barbarous way in which the Grand Princes effected the annexation shows how thoroughly they had imbibed the spirit of Tartar statesmanship. Thousands of families were transported to Moscow, and Muscovite families put in their places; and when, in spite of this, the old spirit revived, Ivan the Terrible determined to apply the method of physical extermination which he had found so effectual in breaking the power of his own nobles. Advancing with a large army, which met with no resistance, he devastated the country with fire and sword, and during a residence of five weeks in the town he put the inhabitants to death with a ruthless ferocity which has perhaps never been surpassed even by Oriental despots. If those old walls could speak they would have many a horrible tale to tell. Enough has been preserved in the chronicles to give us some idea of this awful time. Monks and priests were subjected to the Tartar punishment called pravezh, which consisted in tying the victim to a stake, and flogging him daily until a certain sum of money was paid for his release. The merchants and officials were tortured with fire, and then thrown from the bridge with their wives and children into the river. Lest any of them should escape by swimming, boatfuls of soldiers despatched those who were not killed by the fall. At the present day there is a curious bubbling immediately below the bridge, which prevents the water from freezing in winter, and according to popular belief this is caused by the spirits of the terrible Tsar's victims. Of those who were murdered in the villages there is no record, but in the town alone no less than 60,000 human beings are said to have been butchered--an awful hecatomb on the altar of national unity and autocratic power! This tragic scene, which occurred in 1570, closes the history of Novgorod as an independent State. Its real independence had long since ceased to exist, and now the last spark of the old spirit was extinguished. The Tsars could not suffer even a shadow of political independence to exist within their dominions. In the old days, when many Hanseatic merchants annually visited the city, and when the market-place, the bridge, and the Kremlin were often the scene of violent political struggles, Novgorod must have been an interesting place to live in; but now its glory has departed, and in respect of social resources it is not even a first-rate provincial town. Kief, Kharkof, and other towns which are situated at a greater distance from the capital, in districts fertile enough to induce the nobles to farm their own land, are in their way little semi-independent centres of civilisation. They contain a theatre, a library, two or three clubs, and large houses belonging to rich landed proprietors, who spend the summer on their estates and come into town for the winter months. These proprietors, together with the resident officials, form a numerous society, and during the winter, dinner-parties, balls, and other social gatherings are by no means infrequent. In Novgorod the society is much more limited. It does not, like Kief, Kharkof, and Kazan, possess a university, and it contains no houses belonging to wealthy nobles. The few proprietors of the province who live on their estates, and are rich enough to spend part of the year in town, prefer St. Petersburg for their winter residence. The society, therefore, is composed exclusively of the officials and of the officers who happen to be quartered in the town or the immediate vicinity. Of all the people whose acquaintance I made at Novgorod, I can recall only two men who did not occupy some official position, civil or military. One of these was a retired doctor, who was attempting to farm on scientific principles, and who, I believe, soon afterwards gave up the attempt and migrated elsewhere. The other was a Polish bishop who had been compromised in the insurrection of 1863, and was condemned to live here under police supervision. This latter could scarcely be said to belong to the society of the place; though he sometimes appeared at the unceremonious weekly receptions given by the Governor, and was invariably treated by all present with marked respect, he could not but feel that he was in a false position, and he was rarely or never seen in other houses. The official circle of a town like Novgorod is sure to contain a good many people of average education and agreeable manners, but it is sure to be neither brilliant nor interesting. Though it is constantly undergoing a gradual renovation by the received system of frequently transferring officials from one town to another, it preserves faithfully, in spite of the new blood which it thus receives, its essentially languid character. When a new official arrives he exchanges visits with all the notables, and for a few days he produces quite a sensation in the little community. If he appears at social gatherings he is much talked to, and if he does not appear he is much talked about. His former history is repeatedly narrated, and his various merits and defects assiduously discussed. If he is married, and has brought his wife with him, the field of comment and discussion is very much enlarged. The first time that Madame appears in society she is the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes." Her features, her complexion, her hair, her dress, and her jewellery are carefully noted and criticised. Perhaps she has brought with her, from the capital or from abroad, some dresses of the newest fashion. As soon as this is discovered she at once becomes an object of special curiosity to the ladies, and of envious jealousy to those who regard as a personal grievance the presence of a toilette finer or more fashionable than their own. Her demeanour, too, is very carefully observed. If she is friendly and affable in manner, she is patronised; if she is distant and reserved, she is condemned as proud and pretentious. In either case she is pretty sure to form a close intimacy with some one of the older female residents, and for a few weeks the two ladies are inseparable, till some incautious word or act disturbs the new-born friendship, and the devoted friends become bitter enemies. Voluntarily or involuntarily the husbands get mixed up in the quarrel. Highly undesirable qualities are discovered in the characters of all parties concerned, and are made the subject of unfriendly comment. Then the feud subsides, and some new feud of a similar kind comes to occupy the public attention. Mrs. A. wonders how her friends Mr. and Mrs. B. can afford to lose considerable sums every evening at cards, and suspects that they are getting into debt or starving themselves and their children; in her humble opinion they would do well to give fewer supper-parties, and to refrain from poisoning their guests. The bosom friend to whom this is related retails it directly or indirectly to Mrs. B., and Mrs. B. naturally retaliates. Here is a new quarrel, which for some time affords material for conversation. When there is no quarrel, there is sure to be a bit of scandal afloat. Though Russian provincial society is not at all prudish, and leans rather to the side of extreme leniency, it cannot entirely overlook les convenances. Madame C. has always a large number of male admirers, and to this there can be no reasonable objection so long as her husband does not complain, but she really parades her preference for Mr. X. at balls and parties a little too conspicuously. Then there is Madame D., with the big dreamy eyes. How can she remain in the place after her husband was killed in a duel by a brother officer? Ostensibly the cause of the quarrel was a trifling incident at the card-table, but every one knows that in reality she was the cause of the deadly encounter. And so on, and so on. In the absence of graver interests society naturally bestows inordinate attention on the private affairs of its members; and quarrelling, backbiting, and scandal-mongery help indolent people to kill the time that hangs heavily on their hands. Potent as these instruments are, they are not sufficient to kill all the leisure hours. In the forenoons the gentlemen are occupied with their official duties, whilst the ladies go out shopping or pay visits, and devote any time that remains to their household duties and their children; but the day's work is over about four o'clock, and the long evening remains to be filled up. The siesta may dispose of an hour or an hour and a half, but about seven o'clock some definite occupation has to be found. As it is impossible to devote the whole evening to discussing the ordinary news of the day, recourse is almost invariably had to card-playing, which is indulged in to an extent that we had no conception of in England until Bridge was imported. Hour after hour the Russians of both sexes will sit in a hot room, filled with a constantly-renewed cloud of tobacco-smoke--in the production of which most of the ladies take part--and silently play "Preference," "Yarolash," or Bridge. Those who for some reason are obliged to be alone can amuse themselves with "Patience," in which no partner is required. In the other games the stakes are commonly very small, but the sittings are often continued so long that a player may win or lose two or three pounds sterling. It is no unusual thing for gentlemen to play for eight or nine hours at a time. At the weekly club dinners, before coffee had been served, nearly all present used to rush off impatiently to the card-room, and sit there placidly from five o'clock in the afternoon till one or two o'clock in the morning! When I asked my friends why they devoted so much time to this unprofitable occupation, they always gave me pretty much the same answer: "What are we to do? We have been reading or writing official papers all day, and in the evening we like to have a little relaxation. When we come together we have very little to talk about, for we have all read the daily papers and nothing more. The best thing we can do is to sit down at the card-table, where we can spend our time pleasantly, without the necessity of talking." In addition to the daily papers, some people read the monthly periodicals--big, thick volumes, containing several serious articles on historical and social subjects, sections of one or two novels, satirical sketches, and a long review of home and foreign politics on the model of those in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Several of these periodicals are very ably conducted, and offer to their readers a large amount of valuable information; but I have noticed that the leaves of the more serious part often remain uncut. The translation of a sensation novel by the latest French or English favourite finds many more readers than an article by an historian or a political economist. As to books, they seem to be very little read, for during all the time I lived in Novgorod I never discovered a bookseller's shop, and when I required books I had to get them sent from St. Petersburg. The local administration, it is true, conceived the idea of forming a museum and circulating library, but in my time the project was never realised. Of all the magnificent projects that are formed in Russia, only a very small percentage come into existence, and these are too often very short-lived. The Russians have learned theoretically what are the wants of the most advanced civilisation, and are ever ready to rush into the grand schemes which their theoretical knowledge suggests; but very few of them really and permanently feel these wants, and consequently the institutions artificially formed to satisfy them very soon languish and die. In the provincial towns the shops for the sale of gastronomic delicacies spring up and flourish, whilst shops for the sale of intellectual food are rarely to be met with. About the beginning of December the ordinary monotony of Novgorod life is a little relieved by the annual Provincial Assembly, which sits daily for two or three weeks and discusses the economic wants of the province.* During this time a good many landed proprietors, who habitually live on their estates or in St. Petersburg, collect in the town, and enliven a little the ordinary society. But as Christmas approaches the deputies disperse, and again the town becomes enshrouded in that "eternal stillness" (vetchnaya tishina) which a native poet has declared to be the essential characteristic of Russian provincial life. * Of these Assemblies I shall have more to say when I come to describe the local self-government. CHAPTER XII THE TOWNS AND THE MERCANTILE CLASSES General Character of Russian Towns--Scarcity of Towns in Russia--Why the Urban Element in the Population is so Small--History of Russian Municipal Institutions--Unsuccessful Efforts to Create a Tiers-etat--Merchants, Burghers, and Artisans--Town Council--A Rich Merchant--His House--His Love of Ostentation--His Conception of Aristocracy--Official Decorations--Ignorance and Dishonesty of the Commercial Classes--Symptoms of Change. Those who wish to enjoy the illusions produced by scene painting and stage decorations should never go behind the scenes. In like manner he who wishes to preserve the delusion that Russian provincial towns are picturesque should never enter them, but content himself with viewing them from a distance. However imposing they may look when seen from the outside, they will be found on closer inspection, with very few exceptions, to be little more than villages in disguise. If they have not a positively rustic, they have at least a suburban, appearance. The streets are straight and wide, and are either miserably paved or not paved at all. Trottoirs are not considered indispensable. The houses are built of wood or brick, generally one-storied, and separated from each other by spacious yards. Many of them do not condescend to turn their facades to the street. The general impression produced is that the majority of the burghers have come from the country, and have brought their country-houses with them. There are few or no shops with merchandise tastefully arranged in the window to tempt the passer-by. If you wish to make purchases you must go to the Gostinny Dvor,* or Bazaar, which consists of long, symmetrical rows of low-roofed, dimly-lighted stores, with a colonnade in front. This is the place where merchants most do congregate, but it presents nothing of that bustle and activity which we are accustomed to associate with commercial life. The shopkeepers stand at their doors or loiter about in the immediate vicinity waiting for customers. From the scarcity of these latter I should say that when sales are effected the profits must be enormous. * These words mean literally the Guests' Court or Yard. The Ghosti--a word which is etymologically the same as our "host" and "guest"--were originally the merchants who traded with other towns or other countries. In the other parts of the town the air of solitude and languor is still more conspicuous. In the great square, or by the side of the promenade--if the town is fortunate enough to have one--cows or horses may be seen grazing tranquilly, without being at all conscious of the incongruity of their position. And, indeed, it would be strange if they had any such consciousness, for it does not exist in the minds either of the police or of the inhabitants. At night the streets may be lighted merely with a few oil-lamps, which do little more than render the darkness visible, so that cautious citizens returning home late often provide themselves with lanterns. As late as the sixties the learned historian, Pogodin, then a town-councillor of Moscow, opposed the lighting of the city with gas on the ground that those who chose to go out at night should carry their lamps with them. The objection was overruled, and Moscow is now fairly well lit, but the provincial towns are still far from being on the same level. Some retain their old primitive arrangements, while others enjoy the luxury of electric lighting. The scarcity of large towns in Russia is not less remarkable than their rustic appearance. According to the last census (1897) the number of towns, officially so-called, is 1,321, but about three-fifths of them have under 5,000 inhabitants; only 104 have over 25,000, and only 19 over 100,000. These figures indicate plainly that the urban element of the population is relatively small, and it is declared by the official statisticians to be only 14 per cent., as against 72 per cent. in Great Britain, but it is now increasing rapidly. When the first edition of this work was published, in 1877, European Russia in the narrower sense of the term--excluding Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Lithuania, Poland, and the Caucasus--had only 11 towns with a population of over 50,000, and now there are 34; that is to say, the number of such towns has more than trebled. In the other portions of the country a similar increase has taken place. The towns which have become important industrial and commercial centres have naturally grown most rapidly. For example, in a period of twelve years (1885-97) the populations of Lodz, of Ekaterinoslaf, of Baku, of Yaroslavl, and of Libau, have more than doubled. In the five largest towns of the Empire--St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa and Lodz--the aggregate population rose during the same twelve years from 2,423,000 to 3,590,000, or nearly 50 per cent. In ten other towns, with populations varying from 50,000 to 282,000, the aggregate rose from 780,000 to 1,382,000, or about 77 per cent. That Russia should have taken so long to assimilate herself in this respect to Western Europe is to be explained by the geographical and political conditions. Her population was not hemmed in by natural or artificial frontiers strong enough to restrain their expansive tendencies. To the north, the east, and the southeast there was a boundless expanse of fertile, uncultivated land, offering a tempting field for emigration; and the peasantry have ever shown themselves ready to take advantage of their opportunities. Instead of improving their primitive system of agriculture, which requires an enormous area and rapidly exhausts the soil, they have always found it easier and more profitable to emigrate and take possession of the virgin land beyond. Thus the territory--sometimes with the aid of, and sometimes in spite of, the Government--has constantly expanded, and has already reached the Polar Ocean, the Pacific, and the northern offshoots of the Himalayas. The little district around the sources of the Dnieper has grown into a mighty empire, comprising one-seventh of the land surface of the globe. Prolific as the Russian race is, its power of reproduction could not keep pace with its territorial expansion, and consequently the country is still very thinly peopled. According to the latest census (1897) in the whole empire there are under 130 millions of inhabitants, and the average density of population is only about fifteen to the English square mile. Even the most densely populated provinces, including Moscow with its 988,610 inhabitants, cannot show more than 189 to the English square mile, whereas England has about 400. A people that has such an abundance of land, and can support itself by agriculture, is not naturally disposed to devote itself to industry, or to congregate in large cities. For many generations there were other powerful influences working in the same direction. Of these the most important was serfage, which was not abolished till 1861. That institution, and the administrative system of which it formed an essential part, tended to prevent the growth of the towns by hemming the natural movements of the population. Peasants, for example, who learned trades, and who ought to have drifted naturally into the burgher class, were mostly retained by the master on his estate, where artisans of all sorts were daily wanted, and the few who were sent to seek work in the towns were not allowed to settle there permanently. Thus the insignificance of the Russian towns is to be attributed mainly to two causes. The abundance of land tended to prevent the development of industry, and the little industry which did exist was prevented by serfage from collecting in the towns. But this explanation is evidently incomplete. The same causes existed during the Middle Ages in Central Europe, and yet, in spite of them, flourishing cities grew up and played an important part in the social and political history of Germany. In these cities collected traders and artisans, forming a distinct social class, distinguished from the nobles on the one hand, and the surrounding peasantry on the other, by peculiar occupations, peculiar aims, peculiar intellectual physiognomy, and peculiar moral conceptions. Why did these important towns and this burgher class not likewise come into existence in Russia, in spite of the two preventive causes above mentioned? To discuss this question fully it would be necessary to enter into certain debated points of mediaeval history. All I can do here is to indicate what seems to me the true explanation. In Central Europe, all through the Middle Ages, a perpetual struggle went on between the various political factors of which society was composed, and the important towns were in a certain sense the products of this struggle. They were preserved and fostered by the mutual rivalry of the Sovereign, the Feudal Nobility, and the Church; and those who desired to live by trade or industry settled in them in order to enjoy the protection and immunities which they afforded. In Russia there was never any political struggle of this kind. As soon as the Grand Princes of Moscow, in the sixteenth century, threw off the yoke of the Tartars, and made themselves Tsars of all Russia, their power was irresistible and uncontested. Complete masters of the situation, they organised the country as they thought fit. At first their policy was favourable to the development of the towns. Perceiving that the mercantile and industrial classes might be made a rich source of revenue, they separated them from the peasantry, gave them the exclusive right of trading, prevented the other classes from competing with them, and freed them from the authority of the landed proprietors. Had they carried out this policy in a cautious, rational way, they might have created a rich burgher class; but they acted with true Oriental short-sightedness, and defeated their own purpose by imposing inordinately heavy taxes, and treating the urban population as their serfs. The richer merchants were forced to serve as custom-house officers--often at a great distance from their domiciles*--and artisans were yearly summoned to Moscow to do work for the Tsars without remuneration. * Merchants from Yaroslavl, for instance, were sent to Astrakhan to collect the custom-dues. Besides this, the system of taxation was radically defective, and the members of the local administration, who received no pay and were practically free from control, were merciless in their exactions. In a word, the Tsars used their power so stupidly and so recklessly that the industrial and trading population, instead of fleeing to the towns to secure protection, fled from them to escape oppression. At length this emigration from the towns assumed such dimensions that it was found necessary to prevent it by administrative and legislative measures; and the urban population was legally fixed in the towns as the rural population was fixed to the soil. Those who fled were brought back as runaways, and those who attempted flight a second time were ordered to be flogged and transported to Siberia.* * See the "Ulozhenie" (i.e. the laws of Alexis, father of Peter the Great), chap. xix. 13. With the eighteenth century began a new era in the history of the towns and of the urban population. Peter the Great observed, during his travels in Western Europe, that national wealth and prosperity reposed chiefly on the enterprising, educated middle classes, and he attributed the poverty of his own country to the absence of this burgher element. Might not such a class be created in Russia? Peter unhesitatingly assumed that it might, and set himself at once to create it in a simple, straightforward way. Foreign artisans were imported into his dominions and foreign merchants were invited to trade with his subjects; young Russians were sent abroad to learn the useful arts; efforts were made to disseminate practical knowledge by the translation of foreign books and the foundation of schools; all kinds of trade were encouraged, and various industrial enterprises were organised. At the same time the administration of the towns was thoroughly reorganised after the model of the ancient free-towns of Germany. In place of the old organisation, which was a slightly modified form of the rural Commune, they received German municipal institutions, with burgomasters, town councils, courts of justice, guilds for the merchants, trade corporations (tsekhi) for the artisans, and an endless list of instructions regarding the development of trade and industry, the building of hospitals, sanitary precautions, the founding of schools, the dispensation of justice, the organisation of the police, and similar matters. Catherine II. followed in the same track. If she did less for trade and industry, she did more in the way of legislating and writing grandiloquent manifestoes. In the course of her historical studies she had learned, as she proclaims in one of her manifestoes, that "from remotest antiquity we everywhere find the memory of town-builders elevated to the same level as the memory of legislators, and we see that heroes, famous for their victories, hoped by town-building to give immortality to their names." As the securing of immortality for her own name was her chief aim in life, she acted in accordance with historical precedent, and created 216 towns in the short space of twenty-three years. This seems a great work, but it did not satisfy her ambition. She was not only a student of history, but was at the same time a warm admirer of the fashionable political philosophy of her time. That philosophy paid much attention to the tiers-etat, which was then acquiring in France great political importance, and Catherine thought that as she had created a Noblesse on the French model, she might also create a bourgeoisie. For this purpose she modified the municipal organisation created by her great predecessor, and granted to all the towns an Imperial Charter. This charter remained without essential modification until the publication of the new Municipality Law in 1870. The efforts of the Government to create a rich, intelligent tiers-etat were not attended with much success. Their influence was always more apparent in official documents than in real life. The great mass of the population remained serfs, fixed to the soil, whilst the nobles--that is to say, all who possessed a little education--were required for the military and civil services. Those who were sent abroad to learn the useful arts learned little, and made little use of the knowledge which they acquired. On their return to their native country they very soon fell victims to the soporific influence of the surrounding social atmosphere. The "town-building" had as little practical result. It was an easy matter to create any number of towns in the official sense of the term. To transform a village into a town, it was necessary merely to prepare an izba, or log-house, for the district court, another for the police-office, a third for the prison, and so on. On an appointed day the Governor of the province arrived in the village, collected the officials appointed to serve in the newly-constructed or newly-arranged log-houses, ordered a simple religious ceremony to be performed by the priest, caused a formal act to be drawn up, and then declared the town to be "opened." All this required very little creative effort; to create a spirit of commercial and industrial enterprise among the population was a more difficult matter and could not be effected by Imperial ukaz. To animate the newly-imported municipal institutions, which had no root in the traditions and habits of the people, was a task of equal difficulty. In the West these institutions had been slowly devised in the course of centuries to meet real, keenly-felt, practical wants. In Russia they were adopted for the purpose of creating those wants which were not yet felt. Let the reader imagine our Board of Trade supplying the masters of fishing-smacks with accurate charts, learned treatises on navigation, and detailed instructions for the proper ventilation of ships' cabins, and he will have some idea of the effect which Peter's legislation had upon the towns. The office-bearers, elected against their will, were hopelessly bewildered by the complicated procedure, and were incapable of understanding the numerous ukazes which prescribed to them their multifarious duties and threatened the most merciless punishments for sins of omission and commission. Soon, however, it was discovered that the threats were not nearly so dreadful as they seemed; and accordingly those municipal authorities who were to protect and enlighten the burghers, "forgot the fear of God and the Tsar," and extorted so unblushingly that it was found necessary to place them under the control of Government officials. The chief practical result of the efforts made by Peter and Catherine to create a bourgeoisie was that the inhabitants of the towns were more systematically arranged in categories for the purpose of taxation, and that the taxes were increased. All those parts of the new administration which had no direct relation to the fiscal interests of the Government had very little vitality in them. The whole system had been arbitrarily imposed on the people, and had as motive only the Imperial will. Had that motive power been withdrawn and the burghers left to regulate their own municipal affairs, the system would immediately have collapsed. Rathhaus, burgomasters, guilds, aldermen, and all the other lifeless shadows which had been called into existence by Imperial ukaz would instantly have vanished into space. In this fact we have one of the characteristic traits of Russian historical development compared with that of Western Europe. In the West monarchy had to struggle with municipal institutions to prevent them from becoming too powerful; in Russia, it had to struggle with them to prevent them from committing suicide or dying of inanition. According to Catherine's legislation, which remained in force until 1870, and still exists in some of its main features, the towns were divided into three categories: (1) Government towns (gubernskiye goroda)--that is to say, the chief towns of provinces, or governments (gubernii)--in which are concentrated the various organs of provincial administration; (2) district towns (uyezdniye goroda), in which resides the administration of the districts (uyezdi) into which the provinces are divided; and (3) supernumerary towns (zashtatniye goroda), which have no particular significance in the territorial administration. In all these the municipal organisation is the same. Leaving out of consideration those persons who happen to reside in the towns, but in reality belong to the Noblesse, the clergy, or the lower ranks of officials, we may say that the town population is composed of three groups: the merchants (kuptsi), the burghers in the narrower sense of the term (meshtchanye), and the artisans (tsekhoviye). These categories are not hereditary castes, like the nobles, the clergy, and the peasantry. A noble may become a merchant, or a man may be one year a burgher, the next year an artisan, and the third year a merchant, if he changes his occupation and pays the necessary dues. But the categories form, for the time being, distinct corporations, each possessing a peculiar organisation and peculiar privileges and obligations. Of these three groups the first in the scale of dignity is that of the merchants. It is chiefly recruited from the burghers and the peasantry. Any one who wishes to engage in commerce inscribes himself in one of the three guilds, according to the amount of his capital and the nature of the operations in which he wishes to embark, and as soon as he has paid the required dues he becomes officially a merchant. As soon as he ceases to pay these dues he ceases to be a merchant in the legal sense of the term, and returns to the class to which he formerly belonged. There are some families whose members have belonged to the merchant class for several generations, and the law speaks about a certain "velvet-book" (barkhatnaya kniga) in which their names should be inscribed, but in reality they do not form a distinct category, and they descend at once from their privileged position as soon as they cease to pay the annual guild dues. The artisans form the connecting link between the town population and the peasantry, for peasants often enrol themselves in the trades-corporations, or tsekhi, without severing their connection with the rural Communes to which they belong. Each trade or handicraft constitutes a tsekh, at the head of which stands an elder and two assistants, elected by the members; and all the tsekhi together form a corporation under an elected head (remeslenny golova) assisted by a council composed of the elders of the various tsekhi. It is the duty of this council and its president to regulate all matters connected with the tsekhi, and to see that the multifarious regulations regarding masters, journeymen, and apprentices are duly observed. The nondescript class, composed of those who are inscribed as permanent inhabitants of the towns, but who do not belong to any guild or tsekh, constitutes what is called the burghers in the narrower sense of the term. Like the other two categories, they form a separate corporation, with an elder and an administrative bureau. Some idea of the relative numerical strength of these three categories may be obtained from the following figures. Thirty years ago in European Russia the merchant class (including wives and children) numbered about 466,000, the burghers about 4,033,000, and the artisans about 260,000. The numbers according to the last census are not yet available. In 1870 the entire municipal administration was reorganised on modern West-European principles, and the Town Council (gorodskaya duma), which formed under the previous system the connecting link between the old-fashioned corporations, and was composed exclusively of members of these bodies, became a genuine representative body composed of householders, irrespective of the social class to which they might belong. A noble, provided he was a house-proprietor, could become Town Councillor or Mayor, and in this way a certain amount of vitality and a progressive spirit were infused into the municipal administration. As a consequence of this change the schools, hospitals, and other benevolent institutions were much improved, the streets were kept cleaner and somewhat better paved, and for a time it seemed as if the towns in Russia might gradually rise to the level of those of Western Europe. But the charm of novelty, which so often works wonders in Russia, soon wore off. After a few years of strenuous effort the best citizens no longer came forward as candidates, and the office-bearers selected no longer displayed zeal and intelligence in the discharge of their duties. In these circumstances the Government felt called upon again to intervene. By a decree dated June 11, 1892, it introduced a new series of reforms, by which the municipal self-government was placed more under the direction and control of the centralised bureaucracy, and the attendance of the Town Councillors at the periodical meetings was declared to be obligatory, recalcitrant members being threatened with reprimands and fines. This last fact speaks volumes for the low vitality of the institutions and the prevalent popular apathy with regard to municipal affairs. Nor was the unsatisfactory state of things much improved by the new reforms; on the contrary, the increased interference of the regular officials tended rather to weaken the vitality of the urban self government, and the so-called reform was pretty generally condemned as a needlessly reactionary measure. We have here, in fact, a case of what has often occurred in the administrative history of the Russian Empire since the time of Peter the Great, and to which I shall again have occasion to refer. The central authority, finding itself incompetent to do all that is required of it, and wishing to make a display of liberalism, accords large concessions in the direction of local autonomy; and when it discovers that the new institutions do not accomplish all that was expected of them, and are not quite so subservient and obsequious as is considered desirable, it returns in a certain measure to the old principles of centralised bureaucracy. The great development of trade and industry in recent years has of course enriched the mercantile classes, and has introduced into them a more highly educated element, drawn chiefly from the Noblesse, which formerly eschewed such occupations; but it has not yet affected very deeply the mode of life of those who have sprung from the old merchant families and the peasantry. When a merchant, contractor, or manufacturer of the old type becomes wealthy, he builds for himself a fine house, or buys and thoroughly repairs the house of some ruined noble, and spends money freely on parquetry floors, large mirrors, malachite tables, grand pianos by the best makers, and other articles of furniture made of the most costly materials. Occasionally--especially on the occasion of a marriage or a death in the family--he will give magnificent banquets, and expend enormous sums on gigantic sterlets, choice sturgeons, foreign fruits, champagne, and all manner of costly delicacies. But this lavish, ostentatious expenditure does not affect the ordinary current of his daily life. As you enter those gaudily furnished rooms you can perceive at a glance that they are not for ordinary use. You notice a rigid symmetry and an indescribable bareness which inevitably suggest that the original arrangements of the upholsterer have never been modified or supplemented. The truth is that by far the greater part of the house is used only on state occasions. The host and his family live down-stairs in small, dirty rooms, furnished in a very different, and for them more comfortable, style. At ordinary times the fine rooms are closed, and the fine furniture carefully covered. If you make a visite de politesse after an entertainment, you will probably have some difficulty in gaining admission by the front door. When you have knocked or rung several times, some one will come round from the back regions and ask you what you want. Then follows another long pause, and at last footsteps are heard approaching from within. The bolts are drawn, the door is opened, and you are led up to a spacious drawing-room. At the wall opposite the windows there is sure to be a sofa, and before it an oval table. At each end of the table, and at right angles to the sofa, there will be a row of three arm-chairs. The other chairs will be symmetrically arranged round the room. In a few minutes the host will appear, in his long double-breasted black coat and well-polished long boots. His hair is parted in the middle, and his beard shows no trace of scissors or razor. After the customary greetings have been exchanged, glasses of tea, with slices of lemon and preserves, or perhaps a bottle of champagne, are brought in by way of refreshments. The female members of the family you must not expect to see, unless you are an intimate friend; for the merchants still retain something of that female seclusion which was in vogue among the upper classes before the time of Peter the Great. The host himself will probably be an intelligent, but totally uneducated and decidedly taciturn, man. About the weather and the crops he may talk fluently enough, but he will not show much inclination to go beyond these topics. You may, perhaps, desire to converse with him on the subject with which he is best acquainted--the trade in which he is himself engaged; but if you make the attempt, you will certainly not gain much information, and you may possibly meet with such an incident as once happened to my travelling companion, a Russian gentleman who had been commissioned by two learned societies to collect information regarding the grain trade. When he called on a merchant who had promised to assist him in his investigation, he was hospitably received; but when he began to speak about the grain trade of the district the merchant suddenly interrupted him, and proposed to tell him a story. The story was as follows: Once on a time a rich landed proprietor had a son, who was a thoroughly spoilt child; and one day the boy said to his father that he wished all the young serfs to come and sing before the door of the house. After some attempts at dissuasion the request was granted, and the young people assembled; but as soon as they began to sing, the boy rushed out and drove them away. When the merchant had told this apparently pointless story at great length, and with much circumstantial detail, he paused a little, poured some tea into his saucer, drank it off, and then inquired, "Now what do you think was the reason of this strange conduct?" My friend replied that the riddle surpassed his powers of divination. "Well," said the merchant, looking hard at him, with a knowing grin, "there was no reason; and all the boy could say was, 'Go away, go away! I've changed my mind; I've changed my mind'" (poshli von; otkhotyel). There was no possibility of mistaking the point of the story. My friend took the hint and departed. The Russian merchant's love of ostentation is of a peculiar kind--something entirely different from English snobbery. He may delight in gaudy reception-rooms, magnificent dinners, fast trotters, costly furs; or he may display his riches by princely donations to churches, monasteries, or benevolent institutions: but in all this he never affects to be other than he really is. He habitually wears a costume which designates plainly his social position; he makes no attempt to adopt fine manners or elegant tastes; and he never seeks to gain admission to what is called in Russia la societe. Having no desire to seem what he is not, he has a plain, unaffected manner, and sometimes a quiet dignity which contrasts favourably with the affected manner of those nobles of the lower ranks who make pretensions to being highly educated and strive to adopt the outward forms of French culture. At his great dinners, it is true, the merchant likes to see among his guests as many "generals"--that is to say, official personages--as possible, and especially those who happen to have a grand cordon; but he never dreams of thereby establishing an intimacy with these personages, or of being invited by them in return. It is perfectly understood by both parties that nothing of the kind is meant. The invitation is given and accepted from quite different motives. The merchant has the satisfaction of seeing at his table men of high official rank, and feels that the consideration which he enjoys among people of his own class is thereby augmented. If he succeeds in obtaining the presence of three generals, he obtains a victory over a rival who cannot obtain more than two. The general, on his side, gets a first-rate dinner, a la russe, and acquires an undefined right to request subscriptions for public objects or benevolent institutions. Of course this undefined right is commonly nothing more than a mere tacit understanding, but in certain cases the subject is expressly mentioned. I know of one case in which a regular bargain was made. A Moscow magnate was invited by a merchant to a dinner, and consented to go in full uniform, with all his decorations, on condition that the merchant should subscribe a certain sum to a benevolent institution in which he was particularly interested. It is whispered that such bargains are sometimes made, not on behalf of benevolent institutions, but simply in the interest of the gentleman who accepts the invitation. I cannot believe that there are many official personages who would consent to let themselves out as table decorations, but that it may happen is proved by the following incident, which accidentally came to my knowledge. A rich merchant of the town of T---- once requested the Governor of the Province to honour a family festivity with his presence, and added that he would consider it a special favour if the "Governoress" would enter an appearance. To this latter request his Excellency made many objections, and at last let the petitioner understand that her Excellency could not possibly be present, because she had no velvet dress that could bear comparison with those of several merchants' wives in the town. Two days after the interview a piece of the finest velvet that could be procured in Moscow was received by the Governor from an unknown donor, and his wife was thus enabled to be present at the festivity, to the complete satisfaction of all parties concerned. It is worthy of remark that the merchants recognise no aristocracy but that of official rank. Many merchants would willingly give twenty pounds for the presence of an "actual State Councillor" who perhaps never heard of his grandfather, but who can show a grand cordon; whilst they would not give twenty pence for the presence of an undecorated Prince without official rank, though he might be able to trace his pedigree up to the half-mythical Rurik. Of the latter they would probably say, "Kto ikh znact?" (Who knows what sort of a fellow he is?) The former, on the contrary, whoever his father and grandfather may have been, possesses unmistakable marks of the Tsar's favour, which, in the merchant's opinion, is infinitely more important than any rights or pretensions founded on hereditary titles or long pedigrees. Some marks of Imperial favour the old-fashioned merchants strive to obtain for themselves. They do not dream of grand cordons--that is far beyond their most sanguine expectations--but they do all in their power to obtain those lesser decorations which are granted to the mercantile class. For this purpose the most common expedient is a liberal subscription to some benevolent institution, and occasionally a regular bargain is made. I know of at least one instance where the kind of decoration was expressly stipulated. The affair illustrates so well the commercial character of these transactions that I venture to state the facts as related to me by the official chiefly concerned. A merchant subscribed to a society which enjoyed the patronage of a Grand Duchess a considerable sum of money, under the express condition that he should receive in return a St. Vladimir Cross. Instead of the desired decoration, which was considered too much for the sum subscribed, a cross of St. Stanislas was granted; but the donor was dissatisfied with the latter and demanded that his money should be returned to him. The demand had to be complied with, and, as an Imperial gift cannot be retracted, the merchant had his Stanislas Cross for nothing. This traffic in decorations has had its natural result. Like paper money issued in too large quantities, the decorations have fallen in value. The gold medals which were formerly much coveted and worn with pride by the rich merchants--suspended by a ribbon round the neck--are now little sought after. In like manner the inordinate respect for official personages has considerably diminished. Fifty years ago the provincial merchants vied with each other in their desire to entertain any great dignitary who honoured their town with a visit, but now they seek rather to avoid this expensive and barren honour. When they do accept the honour, they fulfil the duties of hospitality in a most liberal spirit. I have sometimes, when living as an honoured guest in a rich merchant's house, found it difficult to obtain anything simpler than sterlet, sturgeon, and champagne. The two great blemishes on the character of the Russian merchants as a class are, according to general opinion, their ignorance and their dishonesty. As to the former of these there cannot possibly be any difference of opinion. Many of them can neither read nor write, and are forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious hieroglyphics, intelligible only to the inventor. Others can decipher the calendar and the lives of the saints, can sign their names with tolerable facility, and can make the simpler arithmetical calculations with the help of the stchety, a little calculating instrument, composed of wooden balls strung on brass wires, which resembles the "abaca" of the old Romans, and is universally used in Russia. It is only the minority who understand the mysteries of regular book-keeping, and of these very few can make any pretensions to being educated men. All this, however, is rapidly undergoing a radical change. Children are now much better educated than their parents, and the next generation will doubtless make further progress, so that the old-fashioned type above described is destined to disappear. Already there are not a few of the younger generation--especially among the wealthy manufacturers of Moscow--who have been educated abroad, who may be described as tout a fait civilises, and whose mode of life differs little from that of the richer nobles; but they remain outside fashionable society, and constitute a "set" of their own. As to the dishonesty which is said to be so common among the Russian commercial classes, it is difficult to form an accurate judgment. That an enormous amount of unfair dealing does exist there can be no possible doubt, but in this matter a foreigner is likely to be unduly severe. We are apt to apply unflinchingly our own standard of commercial morality, and to forget that trade in Russia is only emerging from that primitive condition in which fixed prices and moderate profits are entirely unknown. And when we happen to detect positive dishonesty, it seems to us especially heinous, because the trickery employed is more primitive and awkward than that to which we are accustomed. Trickery in weighing and measuring, for instance, which is by no means uncommon in Russia, is likely to make us more indignant than those ingenious methods of adulteration which are practised nearer home, and are regarded by many as almost legitimate. Besides this, foreigners who go to Russia and embark in speculations without possessing any adequate knowledge of the character, customs, and language of the people positively invite spoliation, and ought to blame themselves rather than the people who profit by their ignorance. All this, and much more of the same kind, may be fairly urged in mitigation of the severe judgments which foreign merchants commonly pass on Russian commercial morality, but these judgments cannot be reversed by such argumentation. The dishonesty and rascality which exist among the merchants are fully recognised by the Russians themselves. In all moral affairs the lower classes in Russia are very lenient in their judgments, and are strongly disposed, like the Americans, to admire what is called in Transatlantic phraseology "a smart man," though the smartness is known to contain a large admixture of dishonesty; and yet the vox populi in Russia emphatically declares that the merchants as a class are unscrupulous and dishonest. There is a rude popular play in which the Devil, as principal dramatis persona, succeeds in cheating all manner and conditions of men, but is finally overreached by a genuine Russian merchant. When this play is acted in the Carnival Theatre in St. Petersburg the audience invariably agrees with the moral of the plot. If this play were acted in the southern towns near the coast of the Black Sea it would be necessary to modify it considerably, for here, in company with Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, the Russian merchants seem honest by comparison. As to Greeks and Armenians, I know not which of the two nationalities deserves the palm, but it seems that both are surpassed by the Children of Israel. "How these Jews do business," I have heard a Russian merchant of this region exclaim, "I cannot understand. They buy up wheat in the villages at eleven roubles per tchetvert, transport it to the coast at their own expense, and sell it to the exporters at ten roubles! And yet they contrive to make a profit! It is said that the Russian trader is cunning, but here 'our brother' [i.e., the Russian] can do nothing." The truth of this statement I have had abundant opportunities of confirming by personal investigations on the spot. If I might express a general opinion regarding Russian commercial morality, I should say that trade in Russia is carried on very much on the same principle as horse-dealing in England. A man who wishes to buy or sell must trust to his own knowledge and acuteness, and if he gets the worst of a bargain or lets himself be deceived, he has himself to blame. Commercial Englishmen on arriving in Russia rarely understand this, and when they know it theoretically they are too often unable, from their ignorance of the language, the laws, and the customs of the people, to turn their theoretical knowledge to account. They indulge, therefore, at first in endless invectives against the prevailing dishonesty; but gradually, when they have paid what Germans call Lehrgeld, they accommodate themselves to circumstances, take large profits to counterbalance bad debts, and generally succeed--if they have sufficient energy, mother-wit, and capital--in making a very handsome income. The old race of British merchants, however, is rapidly dying out, and I greatly fear that the rising generation will not be equally successful. Times have changed. It is no longer possible to amass large fortunes in the old easy-going fashion. Every year the conditions alter, and the competition increases. In order to foresee, understand, and take advantage of the changes, one must have far more knowledge of the country than the men of the old school possessed, and it seems to me that the young generation have still less of that knowledge than their predecessors. Unless some change takes place in this respect, the German merchants, who have generally a much better commercial education and are much better acquainted with their adopted country, will ultimately, I believe, expel their British rivals. Already many branches of commerce formerly carried on by Englishmen have passed into their hands. It must not be supposed that the unsatisfactory organisation of the Russian commercial world is the result of any radical peculiarity of the Russian character. All new countries have to pass through a similar state of things, and in Russia there are already premonitory symptoms of a change for the better. For the present, it is true, the extensive construction of railways and the rapid development of banks and limited liability companies have opened up a new and wide field for all kinds of commercial swindling; but, on the other hand, there are now in every large town a certain number of merchants who carry on business in the West-European manner, and have learnt by experience that honesty is the best policy. The success which many of these have obtained will doubtless cause their example to be followed. The old spirit of caste and routine which has long animated the merchant class is rapidly disappearing, and not a few nobles are now exchanging country life and the service of the State for industrial and commercial enterprises. In this way is being formed the nucleus of that wealthy, enlightened bourgeoisie which Catherine endeavoured to create by legislation; but many years must elapse before this class acquires sufficient social and political significance to deserve the title of a tiers-etat. CHAPTER XIII THE PASTORAL TRIBES OF THE STEPPE A Journey to the Steppe Region of the Southeast--The Volga--Town and Province of Samara--Farther Eastward--Appearance of the Villages--Characteristic Incident--Peasant Mendacity--Explanation of the Phenomenon--I Awake in Asia--A Bashkir Aoul--Diner la Tartare--Kumyss--A Bashkir Troubadour--Honest Mehemet Zian--Actual Economic Condition of the Bashkirs Throws Light on a Well-known Philosophical Theory--Why a Pastoral Race Adopts Agriculture--The Genuine Steppe--The Kirghiz--Letter from Genghis Khan--The Kalmyks--Nogai Tartars--Struggle between Nomadic Hordes and Agricultural Colonists. When I had spent a couple of years or more in the Northern and North-Central provinces--the land of forests and of agriculture conducted on the three-field system, with here and there a town of respectable antiquity--I determined to visit for purposes of comparison and contrast the Southeastern region, which possesses no forests nor ancient towns, and corresponds to the Far West of the United States of America. My point of departure was Yaroslavl, a town on the right bank of the Volga to the northeast of Moscow--and thence I sailed down the river during three days on a large comfortable steamer to Samara, the chief town of the province or "government" of the name. Here I left the steamer and prepared to make a journey into the eastern hinterland. Samara is a new town, a child of the last century. At the time of my first visit, now thirty years ago, it recalled by its unfinished appearance the new towns of America. Many of the houses were of wood. The streets were still in such a primitive condition that after rain they were almost impassable from mud, and in dry, gusty weather they generated thick clouds of blinding, suffocating dust. Before I had been many days in the place I witnessed a dust-hurricane, during which it was impossible at certain moments to see from my window the houses on the other side of the street. Amidst such primitive surroundings the colossal new church seemed a little out of keeping, and it occurred to my practical British mind that some of the money expended on its construction might have been more profitably employed. But the Russians have their own ideas of the fitness of things. Religious after their own fashion, they subscribe money liberally for ecclesiastical purposes--especially for the building and decoration of their churches. Besides this, the Government considers that every chief town of a province should possess a cathedral. In its early days Samara was one of the outposts of Russian colonisation, and had often to take precautions against the raids of the nomadic tribes living in the vicinity; but the agricultural frontier has since been pushed far forward to the east and south, and the province was until lately, despite occasional droughts, one of the most productive in the Empire. The town is the chief market of this region, and therein lies its importance. The grain is brought by the peasants from great distances, and stored in large granaries by the merchants, who send it to Moscow or St. Petersburg. In former days this was a very tedious operation. The boats containing the grain were towed by horses or stout peasants up the rivers and through the canals for hundreds of miles. Then came the period of "cabestans"--unwieldly machines propelled by means of anchors and windlasses. Now these primitive methods of transport have disappeared. The grain is either despatched by rail or put into gigantic barges, which are towed up the river by powerful tug-steamers to some point connected with the great network of railways. When the traveller has visited the Cathedral and the granaries he has seen all the lions--not very formidable lions, truly--of the place. He may then inspect the kumyss establishments, pleasantly situated near the town. He will find there a considerable number of patients--mostly consumptive--who drink enormous quantities of fermented mare's-milk, and who declare that they receive great benefit from this modern health-restorer. What interested me more than the lions of the town or the suburban kumyss establishments were the offices of the local administration, where I found in the archives much statistical and other information of the kind I was in search of, regarding the economic condition of the province generally, and of the emancipated peasantry in particular. Having filled my note-book with material of this sort, I proceeded to verify and complete it by visiting some characteristic villages and questioning the inhabitants. For the student of Russian affairs who wishes to arrive at real, as distinguished from official, truth, this is not an altogether superfluous operation. When I had thus made the acquaintance of the sedentary agricultural population in several districts I journeyed eastwards with the intention of visiting the Bashkirs, a Tartar tribe which still preserved--so at least I was assured--its old nomadic habits. My reasons for undertaking this journey were twofold. In the first place I was desirous of seeing with my own eyes some remnants of those terrible nomadic tribes which had at one time conquered Russia and long threatened to overrun Europe--those Tartar hordes which gained, by their irresistible force and relentless cruelty, the reputation of being "the scourge of God." Besides this, I had long wished to study the conditions of pastoral life, and congratulated myself on having found a convenient opportunity of doing so. As I proceeded eastwards I noticed a change in the appearance of the villages. The ordinary wooden houses, with their high sloping roofs, gradually gave place to flat-roofed huts, built of a peculiar kind of unburnt bricks, composed of mud and straw. I noticed, too, that the population became less and less dense, and the amount of fallow land proportionately greater. The peasants were evidently richer than those near the Volga, but they complained--as the Russian peasant always does--that they had not land enough. In answer to my inquiries why they did not use the thousands of acres that were lying fallow around them, they explained that they had already raised crops on that land for several successive years, and that consequently they must now allow it to "rest." In one of the villages through which I passed I met with a very characteristic little incident. The village was called Samovolnaya Ivanofka--that is to say, "Ivanofka the Self-willed" or "the Non-authorised." Whilst our horses were being changed my travelling companion, in the course of conversation with a group of peasants, inquired about the origin of this extraordinary name, and discovered a curious bit of local history. The founders of the village had settled on the land without the permission of the absentee owner, and obstinately resisted all attempts at eviction. Again and again troops had been sent to drive them away, but as soon as the troops retired these "self-willed" people returned and resumed possession, till at last the proprietor, who lived in St. Petersburg or some other distant place, became weary of the contest and allowed them to remain. The various incidents were related with much circumstantial detail, so that the narration lasted perhaps half an hour. All this time I listened attentively, and when the story was finished I took out my note-book in order to jot down the facts, and asked in what year the affair had happened. No answer was given to my question. The peasants merely looked at each other in a significant way and kept silence. Thinking that my question had not been understood, I asked it a second time, repeating a part of what had been related. To my astonishment and utter discomfiture they all declared that they had never related anything of the sort! In despair I appealed to my friend, and asked him whether my ears had deceived me--whether I was labouring under some strange hallucination. Without giving me any reply he simply smiled and turned away. When we had left the village and were driving along in our tarantass the mystery was satisfactorily cleared up. My friend explained to me that I had not at all misunderstood what had been related, but that my abrupt question and the sight of my note-book had suddenly aroused the peasants' suspicions. "They evidently suspected," he continued, "that you were a tchinovnik, and that you wished to use to their detriment the knowledge you had acquired. They thought it safer, therefore, at once to deny it all. You don't yet understand the Russian muzhik!" In this last remark I was obliged to concur, but since that time I have come to know the muzhik better, and an incident of the kind would now no longer surprise me. From a long series of observations I have come to the conclusion that the great majority of the Russian peasants, when dealing with the authorities, consider the most patent and barefaced falsehoods as a fair means of self-defence. Thus, for example, when a muzhik is implicated in a criminal affair, and a preliminary investigation is being made, he probably begins by constructing an elaborate story to explain the facts and exculpate himself. The story may be a tissue of self-evident falsehoods from beginning to end, but he defends it valiantly as long as possible. When he perceives that the position which he has taken up is utterly untenable, he declares openly that all he has said is false, and that he wishes to make a new declaration. This second declaration may have the same fate as the former one, and then he proposes a third. Thus groping his way, he tries various stories till he finds one that seems proof against all objections. In the fact of his thus telling lies there is of course nothing remarkable, for criminals in all parts of the world have a tendency to deviate from the truth when they fall into the hands of justice. The peculiarity is that he retracts his statements with the composed air of a chess-player who requests his opponent to let him take back an inadvertent move. Under the old system of procedure, which was abolished in the sixties, clever criminals often contrived by means of this simple device to have their trial postponed for many years. Such incidents naturally astonish a foreigner, and he is apt, in consequence, to pass a very severe judgment on the Russian peasantry in general. The reader may remember Karl Karl'itch's remarks on the subject. These remarks I have heard repeated in various forms by Germans in all parts of the country, and there must be a certain amount of truth in them, for even an eminent Slavophil once publicly admitted that the peasant is prone to perjury.* It is necessary, however, as it seems to me, to draw a distinction. In the ordinary intercourse of peasants among themselves, or with people in whom they have confidence, I do not believe that the habit of lying is abnormally developed. It is only when the muzhik comes in contact with authorities that he shows himself an expert fabricator of falsehoods. In this there is nothing that need surprise us. For ages the peasantry were exposed to the arbitrary power and ruthless exactions of those who were placed over them; and as the law gave them no means of legally protecting themselves, their only means of self-defence lay in cunning and deceit. * Kireyefski, in the Russakaya Beseda. We have here, I believe, the true explanation of that "Oriental mendacity" about which Eastern travellers have written so much. It is simply the result of a lawless state of society. Suppose a truth-loving Englishman falls into the hands of brigands or savages. Will he not, if he have merely an ordinary moral character, consider himself justified in inventing a few falsehoods in order to effect his escape? If so, we have no right to condemn very severely the hereditary mendacity of those races which have lived for many generations in a position analogous to that of the supposed Englishman among brigands. When legitimate interests cannot be protected by truthfulness and honesty, prudent people always learn to employ means which experience has proved to be more effectual. In a country where the law does not afford protection, the strong man defends himself by his strength, the weak by cunning and duplicity. This fully explains the fact that in Turkey the Christians are less truthful than the Mahometans. But we have wandered a long way from the road to Bashkiria. Let us therefore return at once. Of all the journeys which I made in Russia this was one of the most agreeable. The weather was bright and warm, without being unpleasantly hot; the roads were tolerably smooth; the tarantass, which had been hired for the whole journey, was nearly as comfortable as a tarantass can be; good milk, eggs, and white bread could be obtained in abundance; there was not much difficulty in procuring horses in the villages through which we passed, and the owners of them were not very extortionate in their demands. But what most contributed to my comfort was that I was accompanied by an agreeable, intelligent young Russian, who kindly undertook to make all the necessary arrangements, and I was thereby freed from those annoyances and worries which are always encountered in primitive countries where travelling is not yet a recognised institution. To him I left the entire control of our movements, passively acquiescing in everything, and asking no questions as to what was coming. Taking advantage of my passivity, he prepared for me one evening a pleasant little surprise. About sunset we had left a village called Morsha, and shortly afterwards, feeling drowsy, and being warned by my companion that we should have a long, uninteresting drive, I had lain down in the tarantass and gone to sleep. On awaking I found that the tarantass had stopped, and that the stars were shining brightly overhead. A big dog was barking furiously close at hand, and I heard the voice of the yamstchik informing us that we had arrived. I at once sat up and looked about me, expecting to see a village of some kind, but instead of that I perceived a wide open space, and at a short distance a group of haystacks. Close to the tarantass stood two figures in long cloaks, armed with big sticks, and speaking to each other in an unknown tongue. My first idea was that we had been somehow led into a trap, so I drew my revolver in order to be ready for all emergencies. My companion was still snoring loudly by my side, and stoutly resisted all my efforts to awaken him. "What's this?" I said, in a gruff, angry voice, to the yamstchik. "Where have you taken us to?" "To where I was ordered, master!" For the purpose of getting a more satisfactory explanation I took to shaking my sleepy companion, but before he had returned to consciousness the moon shone out brightly from behind a thick bank of clouds, and cleared up the mystery. The supposed haystacks turned out to be tents. The two figures with long sticks, whom I had suspected of being brigands, were peaceable shepherds, dressed in the ordinary Oriental khalat, and tending their sheep, which were grazing close by. Instead of being in an empty hay-field, as I had imagined, we had before us a regular Tartar aoul, such as I had often read about. For a moment I felt astonished and bewildered. It seemed to me that I had fallen asleep in Europe and woke up in Asia! In a few minutes we were comfortably installed in one of the tents, a circular, cupola-shaped erection, of about twelve feet in diameter, composed of a frame-work of light wooden rods covered with thick felt. It contained no furniture, except a goodly quantity of carpets and pillows, which had been formed into a bed for our accommodation. Our amiable host, who was evidently somewhat astonished at our unexpected visit, but refrained from asking questions, soon bade us good-night and retired. We were not, however, left alone. A large number of black beetles remained and gave us a welcome in their own peculiar fashion. Whether they were provided with wings, or made up for the want of flying appliances by crawling up the sides of the tent and dropping down on any object they wished to reach, I did not discover, but certain it is that they somehow reached our heads--even when we were standing upright--and clung to our hair with wonderful tenacity. Why they should show such a marked preference for human hair we could not conjecture, till it occurred to us that the natives habitually shaved their heads, and that these beetles must naturally consider a hair-covered cranium a curious novelty deserving of careful examination. Like all children of nature they were decidedly indiscreet and troublesome in their curiosity, but when the light was extinguished they took the hint and departed. When we awoke next morning it was broad daylight, and we found a crowd of natives in front of the tent. Our arrival was evidently regarded as an important event, and all the inhabitants of the aoul were anxious to make our acquaintance. First our host came forward. He was a short, slimly-built man, of middle age, with a grave, severe expression, indicating an unsociable disposition. We afterwards learned that he was an akhun*--that is to say, a minor officer of the Mahometan ecclesiastical administration, and at the same time a small trader in silken and woollen stuffs. With him came the mullah, or priest, a portly old gentleman with an open, honest face of the European type, and a fine grey beard. The other important members of the little community followed. They were all swarthy in colour, and had the small eyes and prominent cheek-bones which are characteristic of the Tartar races, but they had little of that flatness of countenance and peculiar ugliness which distinguish the pure Mongol. All of them, with the exception of the mullah, spoke a little Russian, and used it to assure us that we were welcome. The children remained respectfully in the background, and the women, with faces veiled, eyed us furtively from the doors of the tents. * I presume this is the same word as akhund, well known on the Northwest frontier of India, where it was applied specially to the late ruler of Svat. The aoul consisted of about twenty tents, all constructed on the same model, and scattered about in sporadic fashion, without the least regard to symmetry. Close by was a watercourse, which appears on some maps as a river, under the name of Karalyk, but which was at that time merely a succession of pools containing a dark-coloured liquid. As we more than suspected that these pools supplied the inhabitants with water for culinary purposes, the sight was not calculated to whet our appetites. We turned away therefore hurriedly, and for want of something better to do we watched the preparations for dinner. These were decidedly primitive. A sheep was brought near the door of our tent, and there killed, skinned, cut up into pieces, and put into an immense pot, under which a fire had been kindled. The dinner itself was not less primitive than the manner of preparing it. The table consisted of a large napkin spread in the middle of the tent, and the chairs were represented by cushions, on which we sat cross-legged. There were no plates, knives, forks, spoons, or chopsticks. Guests were expected all to eat out of a common wooden bowl, and to use the instruments with which Nature had provided them. The service was performed by the host and his son. The fare was copious, but not varied--consisting entirely of boiled mutton, without bread or other substitute, and a little salted horse-flesh thrown in as an entree. To eat out of the same dish with half-a-dozen Mahometans who accept their Prophet's injunction about ablutions in a highly figurative sense, and who are totally unacquainted with the use of forks and spoons, is not an agreeable operation, even if one is not much troubled with religious prejudices; but with these Bashkirs something worse than this has to be encountered, for their favourite method of expressing their esteem and affection for one with whom they are eating consists in putting bits of mutton, and sometimes even handfuls of hashed meat, into his month! When I discovered this unexpected peculiarity in Bashkir manners and customs, I almost regretted that I had made a favourable impression upon my new acquaintances. When the sheep had been devoured, partly by the company in the tent and partly by a nondescript company outside--for the whole aoul took part in the festivities--kumyss was served in unlimited quantities. This beverage, as I have already explained, is mare's milk fermented; but what here passed under the name was very different from the kumyss I had tasted in the establissements of Samara. There it was a pleasant effervescing drink, with only the slightest tinge of acidity; here it was a "still" liquid, strongly resembling very thin and very sour butter-milk. My Russian friend made a wry face on first tasting it, and I felt inclined at first to do likewise, but noticing that his grimaces made an unfavourable impression on the audience, I restrained my facial muscles, and looked as if I liked it. Very soon I really came to like it, and learned to "drink fair" with those who had been accustomed to it from their childhood. By this feat I rose considerably in the estimation of the natives; for if one does not drink kumyss one cannot be sociable in the Bashkir sense of the term, and by acquiring the habit one adopts an essential principle of Bashkir nationality. I should certainly have preferred having a cup of it to myself, but I thought it well to conform to the habits of the country, and to accept the big wooden bowl when it was passed round. In return my friends made an important concession in my favour: they allowed me to smoke as I pleased, though they considered that, as the Prophet had refrained from tobacco, ordinary mortals should do the same. Whilst the "loving-cup" was going round I distributed some small presents which I had brought for the purpose, and then proceeded to explain the object of my visit. In the distant country from which I came--far away to the westward--I had heard of the Bashkirs as a people possessing many strange customs, but very kind and hospitable to strangers. Of their kindness and hospitality I had already learned something by experience, and I hoped they would allow me to learn something of their mode of life, their customs, their songs, their history, and their religion, in all of which I assured them my distant countrymen took a lively interest. This little after-dinner speech was perhaps not quite in accordance with Bashkir etiquette, but it made a favourable impression. There was a decided murmur of approbation, and those who understood Russian translated my words to their less accomplished brethren. A short consultation ensued, and then there was a general shout of "Abdullah! Abdullah!" which was taken up and repeated by those standing outside. In a few minutes Abdullah appeared, with a big, half-picked bone in his hand, and the lower part of his face besmeared with grease. He was a short, thin man, with a dark, sallow complexion, and a look of premature old age; but the suppressed smile that played about his mouth and a tremulous movement of his right eye-lid showed plainly that he had not yet forgotten the fun and frolic of youth. His dress was of richer and more gaudy material, but at the same time more tawdry and tattered, than that of the others. Altogether he looked like an artiste in distressed circumstances, and such he really was. At a word and a sign from the host he laid aside his bone and drew from under his green silk khalat a small wind-instrument resembling a flute or flageolet. On this he played a number of native airs. The first melodies which he played reminded me of a Highland pibroch--at one moment low, solemn, and plaintive, then gradually rising into a soul-stirring, martial strain, and again descending to a plaintive wail. The amount of expression which he put into his simple instrument was truly marvellous. Then, passing suddenly from grave to gay, he played a series of light, merry airs, and some of the younger onlookers got up and performed a dance as boisterous and ungraceful as an Irish jig. This Abdullah turned out to be for me a most valuable acquaintance. He was a kind of Bashkir troubadour, well acquainted not only with the music, but also with the traditions, the history, the superstitions, and the folk-lore of his people. By the akhun and the mullah he was regarded as a frivolous, worthless fellow, who had no regular, respectable means of gaining a livelihood, but among the men of less rigid principles he was a general favourite. As he spoke Russian fluently I could converse with him freely without the aid of an interpreter, and he willingly placed his store of knowledge at my disposal. When in the company of the akhun he was always solemn and taciturn, but as soon as he was relieved of that dignitary's presence he became lively and communicative. Another of my new acquaintances was equally useful to me in another way. This was Mehemet Zian, who was not so intelligent as Abdullah, but much more sympathetic. In his open, honest face, and kindly, unaffected manner there was something so irresistibly attractive that before I had known him twenty-four hours a sort of friendship had sprung up between us. He was a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man, with features that suggested a mixture of European blood. Though already past middle age, he was still wiry and active--so active that he could, when on horseback, pick a stone off the ground without dismounting. He could, however, no longer perform this feat at full gallop, as he had been wont to do in his youth. His geographical knowledge was extremely limited and inaccurate--his mind being in this respect like those old Russian maps in which the nations of the earth and a good many peoples who had never more than a mythical existence are jumbled together in hopeless confusion--but his geographical curiosity was insatiable. My travelling-map--the first thing of the kind he had ever seen--interested him deeply. When he found that by simply examining it and glancing at my compass I could tell him the direction and distance of places he knew, his face was like that of a child who sees for the first time a conjuror's performance; and when I explained the trick to him, and taught him to calculate the distance to Bokhara--the sacred city of the Mussulmans of that region--his delight was unbounded. Gradually I perceived that to possess such a map had become the great object of his ambition. Unfortunately I could not at once gratify him as I should have wished, because I had a long journey before me and I had no other map of the region, but I promised to find ways and means of sending him one, and I kept my word by means of a native of the Karalyk district whom I discovered in Samara. I did not add a compass because I could not find one in the town, and it would have been of little use to him: like a true child of nature he always knew the cardinal points by the sun or the stars. Some years later I had the satisfaction of learning that the map had reached its destination safely, through no less a personage than Count Tolstoy. One evening at the home of a friend in Moscow I was presented to the great novelist, and as soon as he heard my name he said: "Oh! I know you already, and I know your friend Mehemet Zian. When I passed a night this summer in his aoul he showed me a map with your signature on the margin, and taught me how to calculate the distance to Bokhara!" If Mehemet knew little of foreign countries he was thoroughly well acquainted with his own, and repaid me most liberally for my elementary lessons in geography. With him I visited the neighbouring aouls. In all of them he had numerous acquaintances, and everywhere we were received with the greatest hospitality, except on one occasion when we paid a visit of ceremony to a famous robber who was the terror of the whole neighbourhood. Certainly he was one of the most brutalised specimens of humanity I have ever encountered. He made no attempt to be amiable, and I felt inclined to leave his tent at once; but I saw that my friend wanted to conciliate him, so I restrained my feelings and eventually established tolerably good relations with him. As a rule I avoided festivities, partly because I knew that my hosts were mostly poor and would not accept payment for the slaughtered sheep, and partly because I had reason to apprehend that they would express to me their esteem and affection more Bashkirico; but in kumyss-drinking, the ordinary occupation of these people when they have nothing to do, I had to indulge to a most inordinate extent. On these expeditions Abdullah generally accompanied us, and rendered valuable service as interpreter and troubadour. Mehemet could express himself in Russian, but his vocabulary failed him as soon as the conversation ran above very ordinary topics; Abdullah, on the contrary, was a first-rate interpreter, and under the influence of his musical pipe and lively talkativeness new acquaintances became sociable and communicative. Poor Abdullah! He was a kind of universal genius; but his faded, tattered khalat showed only too plainly that in Bashkiria, as in more civilised countries, universal genius and the artistic temperament lead to poverty rather than to wealth. I have no intention of troubling the reader with the miscellaneous facts which, with the assistance of these two friends, I succeeded in collecting--indeed, I could not if I would, for the notes I then made were afterwards lost--but I wish to say a few words about the actual economic condition of the Bashkirs. They are at present passing from pastoral to agricultural life; and it is not a little interesting to note the causes which induce them to make this change, and the way in which it is made. Philosophers have long held a theory of social development according to which men were at first hunters, then shepherds, and lastly agriculturists. How far this theory is in accordance with reality we need not for the present inquire, but we may examine an important part of it and ask ourselves the question, Why did pastoral tribes adopt agriculture? The common explanation is that they changed their mode of life in consequence of some ill-defined, fortuitous circumstances. A great legislator arose amongst them and taught them to till the soil, or they came in contact with an agricultural race and adopted the customs of their neighbours. Such explanations must appear unsatisfactory to any one who has lived with a pastoral people. Pastoral life is so incomparably more agreeable than the hard lot of the agriculturist, and so much more in accordance with the natural indolence of human nature, that no great legislator, though he had the wisdom of a Solon and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, could possibly induce his fellow-countrymen to pass voluntarily from the one to the other. Of all the ordinary means of gaining a livelihood--with the exception perhaps of mining--agriculture is the most laborious, and is never voluntarily adopted by men who have not been accustomed to it from their childhood. The life of a pastoral race, on the contrary, is a perennial holiday, and I can imagine nothing except the prospect of starvation which could induce men who live by their flocks and herds to make the transition to agricultural life. The prospect of starvation is, in fact, the cause of the transition--probably in all cases, and certainly in the case of the Bashkirs. So long as they had abundance of pasturage they never thought of tilling the soil. Their flocks and herds supplied them with all that they required, and enabled them to lead a tranquil, indolent existence. No great legislator arose among them to teach them the use of the plough and the sickle, and when they saw the Russian peasants on their borders laboriously ploughing and reaping, they looked on them with compassion, and never thought of following their example. But an impersonal legislator came to them--a very severe and tyrannical legislator, who would not brook disobedience--I mean Economic Necessity. By the encroachments of the Ural Cossacks on the east, and by the ever-advancing wave of Russian colonisation from the north and west, their territory had been greatly diminished. With diminution of the pasturage came diminution of the live stock, their sole means of subsistence. In spite of their passively conservative spirit they had to look about for some new means of obtaining food and clothing--some new mode of life requiring less extensive territorial possessions. It was only then that they began to think of imitating their neighbours. They saw that the neighbouring Russian peasant lived comfortably on thirty or forty acres of land, whilst they possessed a hundred and fifty acres per male, and were in danger of starvation. The conclusion to be drawn from this was self-evident--they ought at once to begin ploughing and sowing. But there was a very serious obstacle to the putting of this principle in practice. Agriculture certainly requires less land than sheep-farming, but it requires very much more labour, and to hard work the Bashkirs were not accustomed. They could bear hardships and fatigues in the shape of long journeys on horseback, but the severe, monotonous labour of the plough and the sickle was not to their taste. At first, therefore, they adopted a compromise. They had a portion of their land tilled by Russian peasants, and ceded to these a part of the produce in return for the labour expended; in other words, they assumed the position of landed proprietors, and farmed part of their land on the metayage system. The process of transition had reached this point in several aouls which I visited. My friend Mehemet Zian showed me at some distance from the tents his plot of arable land, and introduced me to the peasant who tilled it--a Little-Russian, who assured me that the arrangement satisfied all parties. The process of transition cannot, however, stop here. The compromise is merely a temporary expedient. Virgin soil gives very abundant harvests, sufficient to support both the labourer and the indolent proprietor, but after a few years the soil becomes exhausted and gives only a very moderate revenue. A proprietor, therefore, must sooner or later dispense with the labourers who take half of the produce as their recompense, and must himself put his hand to the plough. Thus we see the Bashkirs are, properly speaking, no longer a purely pastoral, nomadic people. The discovery of this fact caused me some little disappointment, and in the hope of finding a tribe in a more primitive condition I visited the Kirghiz of the Inner Horde, who occupy the country to the southward, in the direction of the Caspian. Here for the first time I saw the genuine Steppe in the full sense of the term--a country level as the sea, with not a hillock or even a gentle undulation to break the straight line of the horizon, and not a patch of cultivation, a tree, a bush, or even a stone, to diversify the monotonous expanse. Traversing such a region is, I need scarcely say, very weary work--all the more as there are no milestones or other landmarks to show the progress you are making. Still, it is not so overwhelmingly wearisome as might be supposed. In the morning you may watch the vast lakes, with their rugged promontories and well-wooded banks, which the mirage creates for your amusement. Then during the course of the day there are always one or two trifling incidents which arouse you for a little from your somnolence. Now you descry a couple of horsemen on the distant horizon, and watch them as they approach; and when they come alongside you may have a talk with them if you know the language or have an interpreter; or you may amuse yourself with a little pantomime, if articulate speech is impossible. Now you encounter a long train of camels marching along with solemn, stately step, and speculate as to the contents of the big packages with which they are laden. Now you encounter the carcass of a horse that has fallen by the wayside, and watch the dogs and the steppe eagles fighting over their prey; and if you are murderously inclined you may take a shot with your revolver at these great birds, for they are ignorantly brave, and will sometimes allow you to approach within twenty or thirty yards. At last you perceive--most pleasant sight of all--a group of haystack-shaped tents in the distance; and you hurry on to enjoy the grateful shade, and quench your thirst with "deep, deep draughts" of refreshing kumyss. During my journey through the Kirghiz country I was accompanied by a Russian gentleman, who had provided himself with a circular letter from the hereditary chieftain of the Horde, a personage who rejoiced in the imposing name of Genghis Khan,* and claimed to be a descendant of the great Mongol conqueror. This document assured us a good reception in the aouls through which we passed. Every Kirghis who saw it treated it with profound respect, and professed to put all his goods and chattels at our service. But in spite of this powerful recommendation we met with none of the friendly cordiality and communicativeness which I had found among the Bashkirs. A tent with an unlimited quantity of cushions was always set apart for our accommodation; the sheep were killed and boiled for our dinner, and the pails of kumyss were regularly brought for our refreshment; but all this was evidently done as a matter of duty and not as a spontaneous expression of hospitality. When we determined once or twice to prolong our visit beyond the term originally announced, I could perceive that our host was not at all delighted by the change of our plans. The only consolation we had was that those who entertained us made no scruples about accepting payment for the food and shelter supplied. * I have adopted the ordinary English spelling of this name. The Kirghiz and the Russians pronounce it "Tchinghiz." From all this I have no intention of drawing the conclusion that the Kirghiz are, as a people, inhospitable or unfriendly to strangers. My experience of them is too limited to warrant any such inference. The letter of Genghis Khan insured us all the accommodation we required, but it at the same time gave us a certain official character not at all favourable to the establishment of friendly relations. Those with whom we came in contact regarded us as Russian officials, and suspected us of having some secret designs. As I endeavoured to discover the number of their cattle, and to form an approximate estimate of their annual revenue, they naturally feared--having no conception of disinterested scientific curiosity--that these data were being collected for the purpose of increasing the taxes, or with some similar intention of a sinister kind. Very soon I perceived clearly that any information we might here collect regarding the economic conditions of pastoral life would not be of much value, and I postponed my proposed studies to a more convenient season. The Kirghiz are, ethnographically speaking, closely allied to the Bashkirs, but differ from them both in physiognomy and language. Their features approach much nearer the pure Mongol type, and their language is a distinct dialect, which a Bashkir or a Tartar of Kazan has some difficulty in understanding. They are professedly Mahometans, but their Mahometanism is not of a rigid kind, as may be seen by the fact that their women do not veil their faces even in the presence of Ghiaours--a laxness of which the Ghiaour will certainly not approve if he happen to be sensitive to female beauty and ugliness. Their mode of life differs from that of the Bashkirs, but they have proportionately more land and are consequently still able to lead a purely pastoral life. Near their western frontier, it is true, they annually let patches of land to the Russian peasants for the purpose of raising crops; but these encroachments can never advance very far, for the greater part of their territory is unsuited to agriculture, on account of a large admixture of salt in the soil. This fact will have an important influence on their future. Unlike the Bashkirs, who possess good arable land, and are consequently on the road to become agriculturists, they will in all probability continue to live exclusively by their flocks and herds. To the southwest of the Lower Volga, in the flat region lying to the north of the Caucasus, we find another pastoral tribe, the Kalmyks, differing widely from the two former in language, in physiognomy, and in religion. Their language, a dialect of the Mongolian, has no close affinity with any other language in this part of the world. In respect of religion they are likewise isolated, for they are Buddhists, and have consequently no co-religionists nearer than Mongolia or Thibet. But it is their physiognomy that most strikingly distinguishes them from the surrounding peoples, and stamps them as Mongols of the purest water. There is something almost infra-human in their ugliness. They show in an exaggerated degree all those repulsive traits which we see toned down and refined in the face of an average Chinaman; and it is difficult, when we meet them for the first time, to believe that a human soul lurks behind their expressionless, flattened faces and small, dull, obliquely set eyes. If the Tartar and Turkish races are really descended from ancestors of that type, then we must assume that they have received in the course of time a large admixture of Aryan or Semitic blood. But we must not be too hard on the poor Kalmyks, or judge of their character by their unprepossessing appearance. They are by no means so unhuman as they look. Men who have lived among them have assured me that they are decidedly intelligent, especially in all matters relating to cattle, and that they are--though somewhat addicted to cattle-lifting and other primitive customs not tolerated in the more advanced stages of civilisation--by no means wanting in some of the better qualities of human nature. Formerly there was a fourth pastoral tribe in this region--the Nogai Tartars. They occupied the plains to the north of the Sea of Azof, but they are no longer to be found there. Shortly after the Crimean war they emigrated to Turkey, and their lands are now occupied by Russian, German, Bulgarian, and Montenegrin colonists. Among the pastoral tribes of this region the Kalmyks are recent intruders. They first appeared in the seventeenth century, and were long formidable on account of their great numbers and compact organisation; but in 1771 the majority of them suddenly struck their tents and retreated to their old home in the north of the Celestial Empire. Those who remained were easily pacified, and have long since lost, under the influence of unbroken peace and a strong Russian administration, their old warlike spirit. Their latest military exploits were performed during the last years of the Napoleonic wars, and were not of a very serious kind; a troop of them accompanied the Russian army, and astonished Western Europe by their uncouth features, their strange costume, and their primitive accoutrements, among which their curious bows and arrows figured conspicuously. The other pastoral tribes which I have mentioned--Bashkirs, Kirghiz, and Nogai Tartars--are the last remnants of the famous marauders who from time immemorial down to a comparatively recent period held the vast plains of Southern Russia. The long struggle between them and the agricultural colonists from the northwest, closely resembling the long struggle between the Red-skins and the white settlers on the prairies of North America, forms an important page of Russian history. For centuries the warlike nomads stoutly resisted all encroachments on their pasture-grounds, and considered cattle-lifting, kidnapping, and pillage as a legitimate and honorable occupation. "Their raids," says an old Byzantine writer, "are as flashes of lightning, and their retreat is at once heavy and light--heavy from booty and light from the swiftness of their movements. For them a peaceful life is a misfortune, and a convenient opportunity for war is the height of felicity. Worst of all, they are more numerous than bees in spring, their numbers are uncountable." "Having no fixed place of abode," says another Byzantine authority, "they seek to conquer all lands and colonise none. They are flying people, and therefore cannot be caught. As they have neither towns nor villages, they must be hunted like wild beasts, and can be fitly compared only to griffins, which beneficent Nature has banished to uninhabited regions." As a Persian distich, quoted by Vambery, has it-- "They came, conquered, burned, pillaged, murdered, and went." Their raids are thus described by an old Russian chronicler: "They burn the villages, the farmyards, and the churches. The land is turned by them into a desert, and the overgrown fields become the lair of wild beasts. Many people are led away into slavery; others are tortured and killed, or die from hunger and thirst. Sad, weary, stiff from cold, with faces wan from woe, barefoot or naked, and torn by the thistles, the Russian prisoners trudge along through an unknown country, and, weeping, say to one another, 'I am from such a town, and I from such a village.'" And in harmony with the monastic chroniclers we hear the nameless Slavonic Ossian wailing for the fallen sons of Rus: "In the Russian land is rarely heard the voice of the husbandman, but often the cry of the vultures, fighting with each other over the bodies of the slain; and the ravens scream as they fly to the spoil." In spite of the stubborn resistance of the nomads the wave of colonisation moved steadily onwards until the first years of the thirteenth century, when it was suddenly checked and thrown back. A great Mongolian horde from Eastern Asia, far more numerous and better organized than the local nomadic tribes, overran the whole country, and for more than two centuries Russia was in a certain sense ruled by Mongol Khans. As I wish to speak at some length of this Mongol domination, I shall devote to it a separate chapter. CHAPTER XIV THE MONGOL DOMINATION The Conquest--Genghis Khan and his People--Creation and Rapid Disintegration of the Mongol Empire--The Golden Horde--The Real Character of the Mongol Domination--Religious Toleration--Mongol System of Government--Grand Princes--The Princes of Moscow--Influence of the Mongol Domination--Practical Importance of the Subject. The Tartar invasion, with its direct and indirect consequences, is a subject which has more than a mere antiquarian interest. To the influence of the Mongols are commonly attributed many peculiarities in the actual condition and national character of the Russians of the present day, and some writers would even have us believe that the men whom we call Russians are simply Tartars half disguised by a thin varnish of European civilisation. It may be well, therefore, to inquire what the Tartar or Mongol domination really was, and how far it affected the historical development and national character of the Russian people. The story of the conquest may be briefly told. In 1224 the chieftains of the Poloftsi--one of those pastoral tribes which roamed on the Steppe and habitually carried on a predatory warfare with the Russians of the south--sent deputies to Mistislaf the Brave, Prince of Galicia, to inform him that their country had been invaded from the southeast by strong, cruel enemies called Tartars*--strange-looking men with brown faces, eyes small and wide apart, thick lips, broad shoulders, and black hair. "Today," said the deputies, "they have seized our country, and tomorrow they will seize yours if you do not help us." * The word is properly "Tatar," and the Russians write and pronounce it in this way, but I have preferred to retain the better known form. Mistislaf had probably no objection to the Poloftsi being annihilated by some tribe stronger and fiercer than themselves, for they gave him a great deal of trouble by their frequent raids; but he perceived the force of the argument about his own turn coming next, and thought it wise to assist his usually hostile neighbours. For the purpose of warding off the danger he called together the neighbouring Princes, and urged them to join him in an expedition against the new enemy. The expedition was undertaken, and ended in disaster. On the Kalka, a small river falling into the Sea of Azof, the Russian host met the invaders, and was completely routed. The country was thereby opened to the victors, but they did not follow up their advantage. After advancing for some distance they suddenly wheeled round and disappeared. Thus ended unexpectedly the first visit of these unwelcome strangers. Thirteen years afterwards they returned, and were not so easily got rid of. An enormous horde crossed the River Ural and advanced into the heart of the country, pillaging, burning, devastating, and murdering. Nowhere did they meet with serious resistance. The Princes made no attempt to combine against the common enemy. Nearly all the principal towns were laid in ashes, and the inhabitants were killed or carried off as slaves. Having conquered Russia, they advanced westward, and threw all Europe into alarm. The panic reached even England, and interrupted, it is said, for a time the herring fishing on the coast. Western Europe, however, escaped their ravages. After visiting Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Servia, and Dalmatia, they retreated to the Lower Volga, and the Russian Princes were summoned thither to do homage to the victorious Khan. At first the Russians had only very vague notions as to who this terrible enemy was. The old chronicler remarks briefly: "For our sins unknown peoples have appeared. No one knows who they are or whence they have come, or to what race and faith they belong. They are commonly called Tartars, but some call them Tauermen, and others Petchenegs. Who they really are is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men deeply read in books." Some of these "wise men deeply read in books" supposed them to be the idolatrous Moabites who had in Old Testament times harassed God's chosen people, whilst others thought that they must be the descendants of the men whom Gideon had driven out, of whom a revered saint had prophesied that they would come in the latter days and conquer the whole earth, from the East even unto the Euphrates, and from the Tigris even unto the Black Sea. We are now happily in a position to dispense with such vague ethnographical speculations. From the accounts of several European travellers who visited Tartary about that time, and from the writings of various Oriental historians, we know a great deal about these barbarians who conquered Russia and frightened the Western nations. The vast region lying to the east of Russia, from the basin of the Volga to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, was inhabited then, as it is still, by numerous Tartar and Mongol tribes. These two terms are often regarded as identical and interchangeable, but they ought, I think, to be distinguished. From the ethnographic, the linguistic, and the religious point of view they differ widely from each other. The Kazan Tartars, the Bashkirs, the Kirghiz, in a word, all the tribes in the country stretching latitudinally from the Volga to Kashgar, and longitudinally from the Persian frontier, the Hindu Kush and the Northern Himalaya, to a line drawn east and west through the middle of Siberia, belong to the Tartar group; whereas those further eastward, occupying Mongolia and Manchuria, are Mongol in the stricter sense of the term. A very little experience enables the traveller to distinguish between the two. Both of them have the well-known characteristics of the Northern Asiatic--the broad flat face, yellow skin, small, obliquely set eyes, high cheekbones, thin, straggling beard; but these traits are more strongly marked, more exaggerated, if we may use such an expression, in the Mongol than in the Tartar. Thus the Mongol is, according to our conceptions, by far the uglier of the two, and the man of Tartar race, when seen beside him, appears almost European by comparison. The distinction is confirmed by a study of their languages. All the Tartar languages are closely allied, so that a person of average linguistic talent who has mastered one of them, whether it be the rude Turki of Central Asia or the highly polished Turkish of Stambul, can easily acquire any of the others; whereas even an extensive acquaintance with the Tartar dialects will be of no practical use to him in learning a language of the Mongol group. In their religions likewise the two races differ. The Mongols are as a rule Shamanists or Buddhists, while the Tartars are Mahometans. Some of the Mongol invaders, it is true, adopted Mahometanism from the conquered Tartar tribes, and by this change of religion, which led naturally to intermarriage, their descendants became gradually blended with the older population; but the broad line of distinction was not permanently effaced. It is often supposed, even by people who profess to be acquainted with Russian history, that Mongols and Tartars alike first came westward to the frontiers of Europe with Genghis Khan. This is true of the Mongols, but so far as the Tartars are concerned it is an entire mistake. From time immemorial the Tartar tribes roamed over these territories. Like the Russians, they were conquered by the Mongol invaders and had long to pay tribute, and when the Mongol empire crumbled to pieces by internal dissensions and finally disappeared before the victorious advance of the Russians, the Tartars reappeared from the confusion without having lost, notwithstanding an intermixture doubtless of Mongol blood, their old racial characteristics, their old dialects, and their old tribal organisation. The germ of the vast horde which swept over Asia and advanced into the centre of Europe was a small pastoral tribe of Mongols living in the hilly country to the north of China, near the sources of the Amur. This tribe was neither more warlike nor more formidable than its neighbours till near the close of the twelfth century, when there appeared in it a man who is described as "a mighty hunter before the Lord." Of him and his people we have a brief description by a Chinese author of the time: "A man of gigantic stature, with broad forehead and long beard, and remarkable for his bravery. As to his people, their faces are broad, flat, and four-cornered, with prominent cheek-bones; their eyes have no upper eyelashes; they have very little hair in their beards and moustaches; their exterior is very repulsive." This man of gigantic stature was no other than Genghis Khan. He began by subduing and incorporating into his army the surrounding tribes, conquered with their assistance a great part of Northern China, and then, leaving one of his generals to complete the conquest of the Celestial Empire, he led his army westward with the ambitious design of conquering the whole world. "As there is but one God in heaven," he was wont to say, "so there should be but one ruler on earth"; and this one universal ruler he himself aspired to be. A European army necessarily diminishes in force and its existence becomes more and more imperilled as it advances from its base of operations into a foreign and hostile country. Not so a horde like that of Genghis Khan in a country such as that which it had to traverse. It needed no base of operations, for it took with it its flocks, its tents, and all its worldly goods. Properly speaking, it was not an army at all, but rather a people in movement. The grassy Steppes fed the flocks, and the flocks fed the warriors; and with such a simple commissariat system there was no necessity for keeping up communications with the point of departure. Instead of diminishing in numbers, the horde constantly increased as it moved forwards. The nomadic tribes which it encountered on its way, composed of men who found a home wherever they found pasture and drinking-water, required little persuasion to make them join the onward movement. By means of this terrible instrument of conquest Genghis succeeded in creating a colossal Empire, stretching from the Carpathians to the eastern shores of Asia, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Himalayas. Genghis was no mere ruthless destroyer; he was at the same time one of the greatest administrators the world has ever seen. But his administrative genius could not work miracles. His vast Empire, founded on conquest and composed of the most heterogeneous elements, had no principle of organic life in it, and could not possibly be long-lived. It had been created by him, and it perished with him. For some time after his death the dignity of Grand Khan was held by some one of his descendants, and the centralised administration was nominally preserved; but the local rulers rapidly emancipated themselves from the central authority, and within half a century after the death of its founder the great Mongol Empire was little more than "a geographical expression." With the dismemberment of the short-lived Empire the danger for Eastern Europe was by no means at an end. The independent hordes were scarcely less formidable than the Empire itself. A grandson of Genghis formed on the Russian frontier a new State, commonly known as Kiptchak, or the Golden Horde, and built a capital called Serai, on one of the arms of the Lower Volga. This capital, which has since so completely disappeared that there is some doubt as to its site, is described by Ibn Batuta, who visited it in the fifteenth century, as a very great, populous, and beautiful city, possessing many mosques, fine market-places, and broad streets, in which were to be seen merchants from Babylon, Egypt, Syria, and other countries. Here lived the Khans of the Golden Horde, who kept Russia in subjection for two centuries. In conquering Russia the Mongols had no wish to possess themselves of the soil, or to take into their own hands the local administration. What they wanted was not land, of which they had enough and to spare, but movable property which they might enjoy without giving up their pastoral, nomadic life. They applied, therefore, to Russia the same method of extracting supplies as they had used in other countries. As soon as their authority had been formally acknowledged they sent officials into the country to number the inhabitants and to collect an amount of tribute proportionate to the population. This was a severe burden for the people, not only on account of the sum demanded, but also on account of the manner in which it was raised. The exactions and cruelty of the tax-gatherers led to local insurrections, and the insurrections were of course always severely punished. But there was never any general military occupation of the country or any wholesale confiscations of land, and the existing political organisation was left undisturbed. The modern method of dealing with annexed provinces was totally unknown to the Mongols. The Khans never thought of attempting to denationalise their Russian subjects. They demanded simply an oath of allegiance from the Princes* and a certain sum of tribute from the people. The vanquished were allowed to retain their land, their religion, their language, their courts of justice, and all their other institutions. * During the Mongol domination Russia was composed of a large number of independent principalities. The nature of the Mongol domination is well illustrated by the policy which the conquerors adopted towards the Russian Church. For more than half a century after the conquest the religion of the Tartars was a mixture of Buddhism and Paganism, with traces of Sabaeism or fire-worship. During this period Christianity was more than simply tolerated. The Grand Khan Kuyuk caused a Christian chapel to be erected near his domicile, and one of his successors, Khubilai, was in the habit of publicly taking part in the Easter festivals. In 1261 the Khan of the Golden Horde allowed the Russians to found a bishopric in his capital, and several members of his family adopted Christianity. One of them even founded a monastery, and became a saint of the Russian Church! The Orthodox clergy were exempted from the poll-tax, and in the charters granted to them it was expressly declared that if any one committed blasphemy against the faith of the Russians he should be put to death. Some time afterwards the Golden Horde was converted to Islam, but the Khans did not on that account change their policy. They continued to favour the clergy, and their protection was long remembered. Many generations later, when the property of the Church was threatened by the autocratic power, refractory ecclesiastics contrasted the policy of the Orthodox Sovereign with that of the "godless Tartars," much to the advantage of the latter. At first there was and could be very little mutual confidence between the conquerors and the conquered. The Princes anxiously looked for an opportunity of throwing off the galling yoke, and the people chafed under the exactions and cruelty of the tribute-collectors, whilst the Khans took precautions to prevent insurrection, and threatened to devastate the country if their authority was not respected. But in the course of time this mutual distrust and hostility greatly lessened. When the Princes found by experience that all attempts at resistance were fruitless, they became reconciled to their new position, and instead of seeking to throw off the Khan's authority, they tried to gain his favour, in the hope of forwarding their personal interests. For this purpose they paid frequent visits to the Tartar Suzerain, made rich presents to his wives and courtiers, received from him charters confirming their authority, and sometimes even married members of his family. Some of them used the favour thus acquired for extending their possessions at the expense of neighbouring Princes of their own race, and did not hesitate to call in Tartar hordes to their assistance. The Khans, in their turn, placed greater confidence in their vassals, entrusted them with the task of collecting the tribute, recalled their own officials who were a constant eyesore to the people, and abstained from all interference in the internal affairs of the principalities so long as the tribute was regularly paid. The Princes acted, in short, as the Khan's lieutenants, and became to a certain extent Tartarised. Some of them carried this policy so far that they were reproached by the people with "loving beyond measure the Tartars and their language, and with giving them too freely land, and gold, and goods of every kind." Had the Khans of the Golden Horde been prudent, far-seeing statesmen, they might have long retained their supremacy over Russia. In reality they showed themselves miserably deficient in political talent. Seeking merely to extract from the country as much tribute as possible, they overlooked all higher considerations, and by this culpable shortsightedness prepared their own political ruin. Instead of keeping all the Russian Princes on the same level and thereby rendering them all equally feeble, they were constantly bribed or cajoled into giving to one or more of their vassals a pre-eminence over the others. At first this pre-eminence consisted in little more than the empty title of Grand Prince; but the vassals thus favoured soon transformed the barren distinction into a genuine power by arrogating to themselves the exclusive right of holding direct communications with the Horde, and compelling the minor Princes to deliver to them the Mongol tribute. If any of the lesser Princes refused to acknowledge this intermediate authority, the Grand Prince could easily crush them by representing them at the Horde as rebels. Such an accusation would cause the accused to be summoned before the Supreme Tribunal, where the procedure was extremely summary and the Grand Prince had always the means of obtaining a decision in his own favour. Of the Princes who strove in this way to increase their influence, the most successful were the Grand Princes of Moscow. They were not a chivalrous race, or one with which the severe moralist can sympathise, but they were largely endowed with cunning, tact, and perseverance, and were little hampered by conscientious scruples. Having early discovered that the liberal distribution of money at the Tartar court was the surest means of gaining favour, they lived parsimoniously at home and spent their savings at the Horde. To secure the continuance of the favour thus acquired, they were ready to form matrimonial alliances with the Khan's family, and to act zealously as his lieutenants. When Novgorod, the haughty, turbulent republic, refused to pay the yearly tribute, they quelled the insurrection and punished the leaders; and when the inhabitants of Tver rose against the Tartars and compelled their Prince to make common cause with them, the wily Muscovite hastened to the Tartar court and received from the Khan the revolted principality, with 50,000 Tartars to support his authority. Thus those cunning Moscow Princes "loved the Tartars beyond measure" so long as the Khan was irresistibly powerful, but as his power waned they stood forth as his rivals. When the Golden Horde, like the great Empire of which it had once formed a part, fell to pieces in the fifteenth century, these ambitious Princes read the signs of the times, and put themselves at the head of the liberation movement, which was at first unsuccessful, but ultimately freed the country from the hated yoke. From this brief sketch of the Mongol domination the reader will readily understand that it did not leave any deep, lasting impression on the people. The invaders never settled in Russia proper, and never amalgamated with the native population. So long as they retained their semi-pagan, semi-Buddhistic religion, a certain number of their notables became Christians and were absorbed by the Russian Noblesse; but as soon as the Horde adopted Islam this movement was arrested. There was no blending of the two races such as has taken place--and is still taking place--between the Russian peasantry and the Finnish tribes of the North. The Russians remained Christians, and the Tartars remained Mahometans; and this difference of religion raised an impassable barrier between the two nationalities. It must, however, be admitted that the Tartar domination, though it had little influence on the life and habits of the people, had a considerable influence on the political development of the nation. At the time of the conquest Russia was composed of a large number of independent principalities, all governed by descendants of Rurik. As these principalities were not geographical or ethnographical units, but mere artificial, arbitrarily defined districts, which were regularly subdivided or combined according to the hereditary rights of the Princes, it is highly probable that they would in any case have been sooner or later united under one sceptre; but it is quite certain that the policy of the Khans helped to accelerate this unification and to create the autocratic power which has since been wielded by the Tsars. If the principalities had been united without foreign interference we should probably have found in the united State some form of political organisation corresponding to that which existed in the component parts--some mixed form of government, in which the political power would have been more or less equally divided between the Tsar and the people. The Tartar rule interrupted this normal development by extinguishing all free political life. The first Tsars of Muscovy were the political descendants, not of the old independent Princes, but of the Mongol Khans. It may be said, therefore, that the autocratic power, which has been during the last four centuries out of all comparison the most important factor in Russian history, was in a certain sense created by the Mongol domination. CHAPTER XV THE COSSACKS Lawlessness on the Steppe--Slave-markets of the Crimea--The Military Cordon and the Free Cossacks--The Zaporovian Commonwealth Compared with Sparta and with the Mediaeval Military Orders--The Cossacks of the Don, of the Volga, and of the Ural--Border Warfare--The Modern Cossacks--Land Tenure among the Cossacks of the Don--The Transition from Pastoral to Agriculture Life--"Universal Law" of Social Development--Communal versus Private Property--Flogging as a Means of Land-registration. No sooner had the Grand Princes of Moscow thrown off the Mongol yoke and become independent Tsars of Muscovy than they began that eastward territorial expansion which has been going on steadily ever since, and which culminated in the occupation of Talienwan and Port Arthur. Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan (1552-54) and reduced to nominal subjection the Bashkir and Kirghiz tribes in the vicinity of the Volga, but he did not thereby establish law and order on the Steppe. The lawless tribes retained their old pastoral mode of life and predatory habits, and harassed the Russian agricultural population of the outlying provinces in the same way as the Red Indians in America used to harass the white colonists of the Far West. A large section of the Horde, inhabiting the Crimea and the Steppe to the north of the Black Sea, escaped annexation by submitting to the Ottoman Turks and becoming tributaries of the Sultan. The Turks were at that time a formidable power, with which the Tsars of Muscovy were too weak to cope successfully, and the Khan of the Crimea could always, when hard pressed by his northern neighbours, obtain assistance from Constantinople. This potentate exercised a nominal authority over the pastoral tribes which roamed on the Steppe between the Crimea and the Russian frontier, but he had neither the power nor the desire to control their aggressive tendencies. Their raids in Russian and Polish territory ensured, among other advantages, a regular and plentiful supply of slaves, which formed the chief article of export from Kaffa--the modern Theodosia--and from the other seaports of the coast. Of this slave trade, which flourished down to 1783, when the Crimea was finally conquered and annexed by Russia, we have a graphic account by an eye-witness, a Lithuanian traveller of the sixteenth century. "Ships from Asia," he says, "bring arms, clothes, and horses to the Crimean Tartars, and start on the homeward voyage laden with slaves. It is for this kind of merchandise alone that the Crimean markets are remarkable. Slaves may be always had for sale as a pledge or as a present, and every one rich enough to have a horse deals in them. If a man wishes to buy clothes, arms, or horses, and does not happen to have at the moment any slaves, he takes on credit the articles required, and makes a formal promise to deliver at a certain time a certain number of people of our blood--being convinced that he can get by that time the requisite number. And these promises are always accurately fulfilled, as if those who made them had always a supply of our people in their courtyards. A Jewish money-changer, sitting at the gate of Tauris and seeing constantly the countless multitude of our countrymen led in as captives, asked us whether there still remained any people in our land, and whence came such a multitude of them. The stronger of these captives, branded on the forehead and cheeks and manacled or fettered, are tortured by severe labour all day, and are shut up in dark cells at night. They are kept alive by small quantities of food, composed chiefly of the flesh of animals that have died--putrid, covered with maggots, disgusting even to dogs. Women, who are more tender, are treated in a different fashion; some of them who can sing and play are employed to amuse the guests at festivals. "When the slaves are led out for sale they walk to the marketplace in single file, like storks on the wing, in whole dozens, chained together by the neck, and are there sold by auction. The auctioneer shouts loudly that they are 'the newest arrivals, simple, and not cunning, lately captured from the people of the kingdom (Poland), and not from Muscovy'; for the Muscovite race, being crafty and deceitful, does not bring a good price. This kind of merchandise is appraised with great accuracy in the Crimea, and is bought by foreign merchants at a high price, in order to be sold at a still higher rate to blacker nations, such as Saracens, Persians, Indians, Arabs, Syrians, and Assyrians. When a purchase is made the teeth are examined, to see that they are neither few nor discoloured. At the same time the more hidden parts of the body are carefully inspected, and if a mole, excrescence, wound, or other latent defect is discovered, the bargain is rescinded. But notwithstanding these investigations the cunning slave-dealers and brokers succeed in cheating the buyers; for when they have valuable boys and girls, they do not at once produce them, but first fatten them, clothe them in silk, and put powder and rouge on their cheeks, so as to sell them at a better price. Sometimes beautiful and perfect maidens of our nation bring their weight in gold. This takes place in all the towns of the peninsula, but especially in Kaffa."* * Michalonis Litvani, "De moribus Tartarorum Fragmina," X., Basilliae, 1615. To protect the agricultural population of the Steppe against the raids of these thieving, cattle-lifting, kidnapping neighbours, the Tsars of Muscovy and the Kings of Poland built forts, constructed palisades, dug trenches, and kept up a regular military cordon. The troops composing this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the "Free Cossacks" best known to history and romance. These latter lived beyond the frontier on the debatable land which lay between the two hostile races, and there they formed self-governing military communities. Each one of the rivers flowing southwards--the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik or Ural--was held by a community of these Free Cossacks, and no one, whether Christian or Tartar, was allowed to pass through their territory without their permission. Officially the Free Cossacks were Russians, for they professed to be champions of Orthodox Christianity, and--with the exception of those of the Dnieper--loyal subjects of the Tsar; but in reality they were something different. Though they were Russian by origin, language, and sympathy, the habit of kidnapping Tartar women introduced among them a certain admixture of Tartar blood. Though self-constituted champions of Christianity and haters of Islam, they troubled themselves very little with religion, and did not submit to the ecclesiastical authorities. As to their religious status, it cannot be easily defined. Whilst professing allegiance and devotion to the Tsar, they did not think it necessary to obey him, except in so far as his orders suited their own convenience. And the Tsar, it must be confessed, acted towards them in a similar fashion. When he found it convenient he called them his faithful subjects; and when complaints were made to him about their raids in Turkish territory, he declared that they were not his subjects, but runaways and brigands, and that the Sultan might punish them as he saw fit. At the same time, the so-called runaways and brigands regularly received supplies and ammunition from Moscow, as is amply proved by recently-published documents. Down to the middle of the seventeenth century the Cossacks of the Dnieper stood in a similar relation to the Polish kings; but at that time they threw off their allegiance to Poland, and became subjects of the Tsars of Muscovy. Of these semi-independent military communities, which formed a continuous barrier along the southern and southeastern frontier, the most celebrated were the Zaporovians* of the Dnieper, and the Cossacks of the Don. * The name "Zaporovians," by which they are known in the West, is a corruption of the Russian word Zaporozhtsi, which means "Those who live beyond the rapids." The Zaporovian Commonwealth has been compared sometimes to ancient Sparta, and sometimes to the mediaeval Military Orders, but it had in reality quite a different character. In Sparta the nobles kept in subjection a large population of slaves, and were themselves constantly under the severe discipline of the magistrates. These Cossacks of the Dnieper, on the contrary, lived by fishing, hunting, and marauding, and knew nothing of discipline, except in time of war. Amongst all the inhabitants of the Setch--so the fortified camp was called--there reigned the most perfect equality. The common saying, "Bear patiently, Cossack; you will one day be Ataman!" was often realised; for every year the office-bearers laid down the insignia of office in presence of the general assembly, and after thanking the brotherhood for the honour they had enjoyed, retired to their former position of common Cossack. At the election which followed this ceremony any member could be chosen chief of his kuren, or company, and any chief of a kuren could be chosen Ataman. The comparison of these bold Borderers with the mediaeval Military Orders is scarcely less forced. They call themselves, indeed, Lytsars--a corruption of the Russian word Ritsar, which is in its turn a corruption of the German Ritter--talked of knightly honour (lytsarskaya tchest'), and sometimes proclaimed themselves the champions of Greek Orthodoxy against the Roman Catholicism of the Poles and the Mahometanism of the Tartars; but religion occupied in their minds a very secondary place. Their great object in life was the acquisition of booty. To attain this object they lived in intermittent warfare with the Tartars, lifted their cattle, pillaged their aouls, swept the Black Sea in flotillas of small boats, and occasionally sacked important coast towns, such as Varna and Sinope. When Tartar booty could not be easily obtained, they turned their attention to the Slavonic populations; and when hard pressed by Christian potentates, they did not hesitate to put themselves under the protection of the Sultan. The Cossacks of the Don, of the Volga, and of the Ural had a somewhat different organisation. They had no fortified camp like the Setch, but lived in villages, and assembled as necessity demanded. As they were completely beyond the sphere of Polish influence, they knew nothing about "knightly honour" and similar conceptions of Western chivalry; they even adopted many Tartar customs, and loved in time of peace to strut about in gorgeous Tartar costumes. Besides this, they were nearly all emigrants from Great Russia, and mostly Old Ritualists or Sectarians, whilst the Zaporovians were Little Russians and Orthodox. These military communities rendered valuable service to Russia. The best means of protecting the southern frontier was to have as allies a large body of men leading the same kind of life and capable of carrying on the same kind of warfare as the nomadic marauders; and such a body of men were the Free Cossacks. The sentiment of self-preservation and the desire of booty kept them constantly on the alert. By sending out small parties in all directions, by "procuring tongues"--that is to say, by kidnapping and torturing straggling Tartars with a view to extracting information from them--and by keeping spies in the enemy's territory, they were generally apprised beforehand of any intended incursion. When danger threatened, the ordinary precautions were redoubled. Day and night patrols kept watch at the points where the enemy was expected, and as soon as sure signs of his approach were discovered a pile of tarred barrels prepared for the purpose was fired to give the alarm. Rapidly the signal was repeated at one point of observation after another, and by this primitive system of telegraphy in the course of a few hours the whole district was up in arms. If the invaders were not too numerous, they were at once attacked and driven back. If they could not be successfully resisted, they were allowed to pass; but a troop of Cossacks was sent to pillage their aouls in their absence, whilst another and larger force was collected, in order to intercept them when they were returning home laden with booty. Thus many a nameless battle was fought on the trackless Steppe, and many brave men fell unhonoured and unsung: "Illacrymabiles Urgentur ignotique longa Nocte, carent quia vate sacro." Notwithstanding these valuable services, the Cossack communities were a constant source of diplomatic difficulties and political dangers. As they paid very little attention to the orders of the Government, they supplied the Sultan with any number of casi belli, and were often ready to turn their arms against the power to which they professed allegiance. During "the troublous times," for example, when the national existence was endangered by civil strife and foreign invasion, they overran the country, robbing, pillaging, and burning as they were wont to do in the Tartar aouls. At a later period the Don Cossacks twice raised formidable insurrections--first under Stenka Razin (1670), and secondly under Pugatchef (1773)--and during the war between Peter the Great and Charles XII. of Sweden the Zaporovians took the side of the Swedish king. The Government naturally strove to put an end to this danger, and ultimately succeeded. All the Cossacks were deprived of their independence, but the fate of the various communities was different. Those of the Volga were transfered to the Terek, where they had abundant occupation in guarding the frontier against the incursions of the Eastern Caucasian tribes. The Zaporovians held tenaciously to their "Dnieper liberties," and resisted all interference, till they were forcibly disbanded in the time of Catherine II. The majority of them fled to Turkey, where some of their descendants are still to be found, and the remainder were settled on the Kuban, where they could lead their old life by carrying on an irregular warfare with the tribes of the Western Caucasus. Since the capture of Shamyl and the pacification of the Caucasus, this Cossack population of the Kuban and the Terek, extending in an unbroken line from the Sea of Azof to the Caspian, have been able to turn their attention to peaceful pursuits, and now raise large quantities of wheat for exportation; but they still retain their martial bearing, and some of them regret the good old times when a brush with the Circassians was an ordinary occurrence and the work of tilling the soil was often diversified with a more exciting kind of occupation. The Cossacks of the Ural and the Don have been allowed to remain in their old homes, but they have been deprived of their independence and self-government, and their social organisation has been completely changed. The boisterous popular assemblies which formerly decided all public affairs have been abolished, and the custom of choosing the Ataman and other office-bearers by popular election has been replaced by a system of regular promotion, according to rules elaborated in St. Petersburg. The officers and their families now compose a kind of hereditary aristocracy which has succeeded in appropriating, by means of Imperial grants, a large portion of the land which was formerly common property. As the Empire expanded in Asia the system of protecting the parties by Cossack colonists was extended eastwards, so now there is a belt of Cossack territory stretching almost without interruption from the banks of the Don to the coast of the Pacific. It is divided into eleven sections, in each of which is settled a Cossack corps with a separate administration. When universal military service was introduced, in 1873, the Cossacks were brought under the new law, but in order to preserve their military traditions and habits they were allowed to retain, with certain modifications, their old organisation, rights, and privileges. In return for a large amount of fertile land and exemption from direct taxation, they have to equip themselves at their own expense, and serve for twenty years, of which three are spent in preparatory training, twelve in the active army, and five in the reserve. This system gives to the army a contingent of about 330,000 men--divided into 890 squadrons and 108 infantry companies--with 236 guns. The Cossacks in active service are to be met with in all parts of the Empire, from the Prussian to the Chinese frontier. In the Asiatic Provinces their services are invaluable. Capable of enduring an incredible amount of fatigue and all manner of privations, they can live and thrive in conditions which would soon disable regular troops. The capacity of self-adaptation, which is characteristic of the Russian people generally, is possessed by them in the highest degree. When placed on some distant Asiatic frontier they can at once transform themselves into squatters--building their own houses, raising crops of grain, and living as colonists without neglecting their military duties. I have sometimes heard it asserted by military men that the Cossack organisation is an antiquated institution, and that the soldiers which it produces, however useful they may be in Central Asia, would be of little service in regular European warfare. Whether this view, which received some confirmation in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, is true or false I cannot pretend to say, for it is a subject on which a civilian has no right to speak; but I may remark that the Cossacks themselves are not by any means of that opinion. They regard themselves as the most valuable troops which the Tsar possesses, believing themselves capable of performing anything within the bounds of human possibility, and a good deal that lies beyond that limit. More than once Don Cossacks have assured me that if the Tsar had allowed them to fit out a flotilla of small boats during the Crimean War they would have captured the British fleet, as their ancestors used to capture Turkish galleys on the Black Sea! In old times, throughout the whole territory of the Don Cossacks, agriculture was prohibited on pain of death. It is generally supposed that this measure was adopted with a view to preserve the martial spirit of the inhabitants, but it may be explained otherwise. The great majority of the Cossacks, averse to all regular, laborious occupations, wished to live by fishing, hunting, cattle-breeding, and marauding, but there was always amongst them a considerable number of immigrants--runaway serfs from the interior--who had been accustomed to live by agriculture. These latter wished to raise crops on the fertile virgin soil, and if they had been allowed to do so they would to some extent have spoiled the pastures. We have here, I believe, the true reason for the above-mentioned prohibition, and this view is strongly confirmed by analogous facts which I have observed in another locality. In the Kirghiz territory the poorer inhabitants of the aouls near the frontier, having few or no cattle, wish to let part of the common land to the neighbouring Russian peasantry for agricultural purposes; but the richer inhabitants, who possess flocks and herds, strenuously oppose this movement, and would doubtless prohibit it under pain of death if they had the power, because all agricultural encroachments diminish the pasture-land. Whatever was the real reason of the prohibition, practical necessity proved in the long run too strong for the anti-agriculturists. As the population augmented and the opportunities for marauding decreased, the majority had to overcome their repugnance to husbandry; and soon large patches of ploughed land or waving grain were to be seen in the vicinity of the stanitsas, as the Cossack villages are termed. At first there was no attempt to regulate this new use of the ager publicus. Each Cossack who wished to raise a crop ploughed and sowed wherever he thought fit, and retained as long as he chose the land thus appropriated; and when the soil began to show signs of exhaustion he abandoned his plot and ploughed elsewhere. But this unregulated use of the Communal property could not long continue. As the number of agriculturists increased, quarrels frequently arose, and sometimes terminated in bloodshed. Still worse evils appeared when markets were created in the vicinity, and it became possible to sell the grain for exportation. In some stanitsas the richer families appropriated enormous quantities of the common land by using several teams of oxen, or by hiring peasants in the nearest villages to come and plough for them; and instead of abandoning the land after raising two or three crops they retained possession of it, and came to regard it as their private property. Thus the whole of the arable land, or at least the best part of it, became actually, if not legally, the private property of a few families, whilst the less energetic or less fortunate inhabitants of the stanitsa had only parcels of comparatively barren soil, or had no land whatever, and became mere agricultural labourers. After a time this injustice was remedied. The landless members justly complained that they had to bear the same burdens as those who possessed the land, and that therefore they ought to enjoy the same privileges. The old spirit of equality was still strong amongst them, and they ultimately succeeded in asserting their rights. In accordance with their demands the appropriated land was confiscated by the Commune, and the system of periodical redistributions was introduced. By this system each adult male possesses a share of the land. These facts tend to throw light on some of the dark questions of social development in its early stages. So long as a village community leads a purely pastoral life, and possesses an abundance of land, there is no reason why the individuals or the families of which it is composed should divide the land into private lots, and there are very potent reasons why they should not adopt such a course. To give the division of the land any practical significance, it would be necessary to raise fences of some kind, and these fences, requiring for their construction a certain amount of labour, would prove merely a useless encumbrance, for it is much more convenient that all the sheep and cattle should graze together. If there is a scarcity of pasture, and consequently a conflict of interest among the families, the enjoyment of the common land will be regulated not by raising fences, but by simply limiting the number of sheep and cattle which each family is entitled to put upon the pasturage, as is done in many Russian villages at the present day. When any one desires to keep more sheep and cattle than the maximum to which he is entitled, he pays to the others a certain compensation. Thus, we see, in pastoral life the dividing of the common land is unnecessary and inexpedient, and consequently private property in land is not likely to come into existence. With the introduction of agriculture appears a tendency to divide the land among the families composing the community, for each family living by husbandry requires a definite portion of the soil. If the land suitable for agricultural purposes be plentiful, each head of a family may be allowed to take possession of as much of it as he requires, as was formerly done in the Cossack stanitsas; if, on the contrary, the area of arable land is small, as is the case in some Bashkir aouls, there will probably be a regular allotment of it among the families. With the tendency to divide the land into definite portions arises a conflict between the principle of communal and the principle of private property. Those who obtain definite portions of the soil are in general likely to keep them and transmit them to their descendants. In a country, however, like the Steppe--and it is only of such countries that I am at present speaking--the nature of the soil and the system of agriculture militate against this conversion of simple possession into a right of property. A plot of land is commonly cultivated for only three or four years in succession. It is then abandoned for at least double that period, and the cultivators remove to some other portion of the communal territory. After a time, it is true, they return to the old portion, which has been in the meantime lying fallow; but as the soil is tolerably equal in quality, the families or individuals have no reason to desire the precise plots which they formerly possessed. Under such circumstances the principle of private property in the land is not likely to strike root; each family insists on possessing a certain QUANTITY rather than a certain PLOT of land, and contents itself with a right of usufruct, whilst the right of property remains in the hands of the Commune; and it must not be forgotten that the difference between usufruct and property here is of great practical importance, for so long as the Commune retains the right of property it may re-allot the land in any way it thinks fit. As the population increases and land becomes less plentiful, the primitive method of agriculture above alluded to gives place to a less primitive method, commonly known as "the three-field system," according to which the cultivators do not migrate periodically from one part of the communal territory to another, but till always the same fields, and are obliged to manure the plots which they occupy. The principle of communal property rarely survives this change, for by long possession the families acquire a prescriptive right to the portions which they cultivate, and those who manure their land well naturally object to exchange it for land which has been held by indolent, improvident neighbours. In Russia, however, this change has not destroyed the principle of communal property. Though the three-field system has been in use for many generations in the central provinces, the communal principle, with its periodical re-allotment of the land, still remains intact. For the student of sociology the past history and actual condition of the Don Cossacks present many other features equally interesting and instructive. He may there see, for instance, how an aristocracy can be created by military promotion, and how serfage may originate and become a recognised institution without any legislative enactment. If he takes an interest in peculiar manifestations of religious thought and feeling, he will find a rich field of investigation in the countless religious sects; and if he is a collector of quaint old customs, he will not lack occupation. One curious custom, which has very recently died out, I may here mention by way of illustration. As the Cossacks knew very little about land-surveying, and still less about land-registration, the precise boundary between two contiguous yurts--as the communal land of a stanitsa was called--was often a matter of uncertainty and a fruitful source of disputes. When the boundary was once determined, the following method of registering it was employed. All the boys of the two stanitsas were collected and driven in a body like sheep to the intervening frontier. The whole population then walked along the frontier that had been agreed upon, and at each landmark a number of boys were soundly whipped and allowed to run home! This was done in the hope that the victims would remember, as long as they lived, the spot where they had received their unmerited castigation.* The device, I have been assured, was generally very effective, but it was not always quite successful. Whether from the castigation not being sufficiently severe, or from some other defect in the method, it sometimes happened that disputes afterwards arose, and the whipped boys, now grown up to manhood, gave conflicting testimony. When such a case occurred the following expedient was adopted. One of the oldest inhabitants was chosen as arbiter, and made to swear on the Scriptures that he would act honestly to the best of his knowledge; then taking an Icon in his hand, he walked along what he believed to be the old frontier. Whether he made mistakes or not, his decision was accepted by both parties and regarded as final. This custom existed in some stanitsas down to the year 1850, when the boundaries were clearly determined by Government officials. * A custom of this kind, I am told, existed not very long ago in England and is still spoken of as "the beating of the bounds." CHAPTER XVI FOREIGN COLONISTS ON THE STEPPE The Steppe--Variety of Races, Languages, and Religions--The German Colonists--In What Sense the Russians are an Imitative People--The Mennonites--Climate and Arboriculture--Bulgarian Colonists--Tartar-Speaking Greeks--Jewish Agriculturists--Russification--A Circassian Scotchman--Numerical Strength of the Foreign Element. In European Russia the struggle between agriculture and nomadic barbarism is now a thing of the past, and the fertile Steppe, which was for centuries a battle-ground of the Aryan and Turanian races, has been incorporated into the dominions of the Tsar. The nomadic tribes have been partly driven out and partly pacified and parked in "reserves," and the territory which they so long and so stubbornly defended is now studded with peaceful villages and tilled by laborious agriculturists. In traversing this region the ordinary tourist will find little to interest him. He will see nothing which he can possibly dignify by the name of scenery, and he may journey on for many days without having any occasion to make an entry in his note-book. If he should happen, however, to be an ethnologist and linguist, he may find occupation, for he will here meet with fragments of many different races and a variety of foreign tongues. This ethnological variety is the result of a policy inaugurated by Catherine II. So long as the southern frontier was pushed forward slowly, the acquired territory was regularly filled up by Russian peasants from the central provinces who were anxious to obtain more land and more liberty than they enjoyed in their native villages; but during "the glorious age of Catherine" the frontier was pushed forward so rapidly that the old method of spontaneous emigration no longer sufficed to people the annexed territory. The Empress had recourse, therefore, to organised emigration from foreign countries. Her diplomatic representatives in Western Europe tried to induce artisans and peasants to emigrate to Russia, and special agents were sent to various countries to supplement the efforts of the diplomatists. Thousands accepted the invitation, and were for the most part settled on the land which had been recently the pasture-ground of the nomadic hordes. This policy was adopted by succeeding sovereigns, and the consequence of it has been that Southern Russia now contains a variety of races such as is to be found, perhaps, nowhere else in Europe. The official statistics of New Russia alone--that is to say, the provinces of Ekaterinoslaf, Tauride, Kherson, and Bessarabia--enumerate the following nationalities: Great Russians, Little Russians, Poles, Servians, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Moldavians, Germans, English, Swedes, Swiss, French, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Tartars, Mordwa, Jews, and Gypsies. The religions are almost equally numerous. The statistics speak of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Gregorians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Mennonites, Separatists, Pietists, Karaim Jews, Talmudists, Mahometans, and numerous Russian sects, such as the Molokanye and the Skoptsi or Eunuchs. America herself could scarcely show a more motley list in her statistics of population. It is but fair to state that the above list, though literally correct, does not give a true idea of the actual population. The great body of the inhabitants are Russian and Orthodox, whilst several of the nationalities named are represented by a small number of souls--some of them, such as the French, being found exclusively in the towns. Still, the variety even in the rural population is very great. Once, in the space of three days, and using only the most primitive means of conveyance, I visited colonies of Greeks, Germans, Servians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins, and Jews. Of all the foreign colonists the Germans are by far the most numerous. The object of the Government in inviting them to settle in the country was that they should till the unoccupied land and thereby increase the national wealth, and that they should at the same time exercise a civilising influence on the Russian peasantry in their vicinity. In this latter respect they have totally failed to fulfil their mission. A Russian village, situated in the midst of German colonies, shows generally, so far as I could observe, no signs of German influence. Each nationality lives more majorum, and holds as little communication as possible with the other. The muzhik observes carefully--for he is very curious--the mode of life of his more advanced neighbours, but he never thinks of adopting it. He looks upon Germans almost as beings of a different world--as a wonderfully cunning and ingenious people, who have been endowed by Providence with peculiar qualities not possessed by ordinary Orthodox humanity. To him it seems in the nature of things that Germans should live in large, clean, well-built houses, in the same way as it is in the nature of things that birds should build nests; and as it has probably never occurred to a human being to build a nest for himself and his family, so it never occurs to a Russian peasant to build a house on the German model. Germans are Germans, and Russians are Russians--and there is nothing more to be said on the subject. This stubbornly conservative spirit of the peasantry who live in the neighbourhood of Germans seems to give the lie direct to the oft-repeated and universally believed assertion that Russians are an imitative people strongly disposed to adopt the manners and customs of any foreigners with whom they may come in contact. The Russian, it is said, changes his nationality as easily as he changes his coat, and derives great satisfaction from wearing some nationality that does not belong to him; but here we have an important fact which appears to prove the contrary. The truth is that in this matter we must distinguish between the Noblesse and the peasantry. The nobles are singularly prone to adopt foreign manners, customs, and institutions; the peasants, on the contrary, are as a rule decidedly conservative. It must not, however, be supposed that this proceeds from a difference of race; the difference is to be explained by the past history of the two classes. Like all other peoples, the Russians are strongly conservative so long as they remain in what may be termed their primitive moral habitat--that is to say, so long as external circumstances do not force them out of their accustomed traditional groove. The Noblesse were long ago violently forced out of their old groove by the reforming Tsars, and since that time they have been so constantly driven hither and thither by foreign influences that they have never been able to form a new one. Thus they easily enter upon any new path which seems to them profitable or attractive. The great mass of the people, on the contrary, too heavy to be thus lifted out of the guiding influence of custom and tradition, are still animated with a strongly conservative spirit. In confirmation of this view I may mention two facts which have often attracted my attention. The first is that the Molokanye--a primitive Evangelical sect of which I shall speak at length in the next chapter--succumb gradually to German influence; by becoming heretics in religion they free themselves from one of the strongest bonds attaching them to the past, and soon become heretics in things secular. The second fact is that even the Orthodox peasant, when placed by circumstances in some new sphere of activity, readily adopts whatever seems profitable. Take, for example, the peasants who abandon agriculture and embark in industrial enterprises; finding themselves, as it were, in a new world, in which their old traditional notions are totally inapplicable, they have no hesitation in adopting foreign ideas and foreign inventions. And when once they have chosen this new path, they are much more "go-ahead" than the Germans. Freed alike from the trammels of hereditary conceptions and from the prudence which experience generates, they often give a loose rein to their impulsive character, and enter freely on the wildest speculations. The marked contrast presented by a German colony and a Russian village in close proximity with each other is often used to illustrate the superiority of the Teutonic over the Slavonic race, and in order to make the contrast more striking, the Mennonite colonies are generally taken as the representatives of the Germans. Without entering here on the general question, I must say that this method of argumentation is scarcely fair. The Mennonites, who formerly lived in the neighbourhood of Danzig and emigrated from Prussia in order to escape the military conscription, brought with them to their new home a large store of useful technical knowledge and a considerable amount of capital, and they received a quantity of land very much greater than the Russian peasants possess. Besides this, they enjoyed until very recently several valuable privileges. They were entirely exempted from military service and almost entirely exempted from taxation. Altogether their lines fell in very pleasant places. In material and moral well-being they stand as far above the majority of the ordinary German colonists as these latter do above their Russian neighbours. Even in the richest districts of Germany their prosperity would attract attention. To compare these rich, privileged, well-educated farmers with the poor, heavily taxed, uneducated peasantry, and to draw from the comparison conclusions concerning the capabilities of the two races, is a proceeding so absurd that it requires no further comment. To the wearied traveller who has been living for some time in Russian villages, one of these Mennonite colonies seems an earthly paradise. In a little hollow, perhaps by the side of a watercourse, he suddenly comes on a long row of high-roofed houses half concealed in trees. The trees may be found on closer inspection to be little better than mere saplings; but after a long journey on the bare Steppe, where there is neither tree nor bush of any kind, the foliage, scant as it is, appears singularly inviting. The houses are large, well arranged, and kept in such thoroughly good repair that they always appear to be newly built. The rooms are plainly furnished, without any pretensions to elegance, but scrupulously clean. Adjoining the house are the stable and byre, which would not disgrace a model farm in Germany or England. In front is a spacious courtyard, which has the appearance of being swept several times a day, and behind there is a garden well stocked with vegetables. Fruit trees and flowers are not very plentiful, for the climate is not favourable to them. The inhabitants are honest, frugal folk, somewhat sluggish of intellect and indifferent to things lying beyond the narrow limits of their own little world, but shrewd enough in all matters which they deem worthy of their attention. If you arrive amongst them as a stranger you may be a little chilled by the welcome you receive, for they are exclusive, reserved, and distrustful, and do not much like to associate with those who do not belong to their own sect; but if you can converse with them in their mother tongue and talk about religious matters in an evangelical tone, you may easily overcome their stiffness and exclusiveness. Altogether such a village cannot be recommended for a lengthened sojourn, for the severe order and symmetry which everywhere prevail would soon prove irksome to any one having no Dutch blood in his veins;* but as a temporary resting-place during a pilgrimage on the Steppe, when the pilgrim is longing for a little cleanliness and comfort, it is very agreeable. * The Mennonites were originally Dutchmen. Persecuted for their religious views in the sixteenth century, a large number of them accepted an invitation to settle in West Prussia, where they helped to drain the great marshes between Danzig, Elbing, and Marienburg. Here in the course of time they forgot their native language. Their emigration to Russia began in 1789. The fact that these Mennonites and some other German colonies have succeeded in rearing a few sickly trees has suggested to some fertile minds the idea that the prevailing dryness of the climate, which is the chief difficulty with which the agriculturist of that region has to contend, might be to some extent counteracted by arboriculture on a large scale. This scheme, though it has been seriously entertained by one of his Majesty's ministers, must seem hardly practicable to any one who knows how much labour and money the colonists have expended in creating that agreeable shade which they love to enjoy in their leisure hours. If climate is affected at all by the existence or non-existence of forests--a point on which scientific men do not seem to be entirely agreed--any palpable increase of the rainfall can be produced only by forests of enormous extent, and it is hardly conceivable that these could be artificially produced in Southern Russia. It is quite possible, however, that local ameliorations may be effected. During a visit to the province of Voronezh in 1903 I found that comparatively small plantations diminished the effects of drought in their immediate vicinity by retaining the moisture for a time in the soil and the surrounding atmosphere. After the Mennonites and other Germans, the Bulgarian colonists deserve a passing notice. They settled in this region much more recently, on the land that was left vacant by the exodus of the Nogai Tartars after the Crimean War. If I may judge of their condition by a mere flying visit, I should say that in agriculture and domestic civilisation they are not very far behind the majority of German colonists. Their houses are indeed small--so small that one of them might almost be put into a single room of a Mennonite's house; but there is an air of cleanliness and comfort about them that would do credit to a German housewife. In spite of all this, these Bulgarians were, I could easily perceive, by no means delighted with their new home. The cause of their discontent, so far as I could gather from the few laconic remarks which I extracted from them, seemed to be this: Trusting to the highly coloured descriptions furnished by the emigration agents who had induced them to change the rule of the Sultan for the authority of the Tsar, they came to Russia with the expectation of finding a fertile and beautiful Promised Land. Instead of a land flowing with milk and honey, they received a tract of bare Steppe on which even water could be obtained only with great difficulty--with no shade to protect them from the heat of summer and nothing to shelter them from the keen northern blasts that often sweep over those open plains. As no adequate arrangements had been made for their reception, they were quartered during the first winter on the German colonists, who, being quite innocent of any Slavophil sympathies, were probably not very hospitable to their uninvited guests. To complete their disappointment, they found that they could not cultivate the vine, and that their mild, fragrant tobacco, which is for them a necessary of life, could be obtained only at a very high price. So disconsolate were they under this cruel disenchantment that, at the time of my visit, they talked of returning to their old homes in Turkey. As an example of the less prosperous colonists, I may mention the Tartar-speaking Greeks in the neighbourhood of Mariupol, on the northern shore of the Sea of Azof. Their ancestors lived in the Crimea, under the rule of the Tartar Khans, and emigrated to Russia in the time of Catherine II., before Crim Tartary was annexed to the Russian Empire. They have almost entirely forgotten their old language, but have preserved their old faith. In adopting the Tartar language they have adopted something of Tartar indolence and apathy, and the natural consequence is that they are poor and ignorant. But of all the colonists of this region the least prosperous are the Jews. The Chosen People are certainly a most intelligent, industrious, frugal race, and in all matters of buying, selling, and bartering they are unrivalled among the nations of the earth, but they have been too long accustomed to town life to be good tillers of the soil. These Jewish colonies were founded as an experiment to see whether the Israelite could be weaned from his traditionary pursuits and transferred to what some economists call the productive section of society. The experiment has failed, and the cause of the failure is not difficult to find. One has merely to look at these men of gaunt visage and shambling gait, with their loop-holed slippers, and black, threadbare coats reaching down to their ankles, to understand that they are not in their proper sphere. Their houses are in a most dilapidated condition, and their villages remind one of the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet. A great part of their land is left uncultivated or let to colonists of a different race. What little revenue they have is derived chiefly from trade of a more or less clandestine nature.* * Mr. Arnold White, who subsequently visited some of these Jewish Colonies in connection with Baron Hirsch's colonisation scheme, assured me that he found them in a much more prosperous condition. As Scandinavia was formerly called officina gentium--a workshop in which new nations were made--so we may regard Southern Russia as a workshop in which fragments of old nations are being melted down to form a new, composite whole. It must be confessed, however, that the melting process has as yet scarcely begun. National peculiarities are not obliterated so rapidly in Russia as in America or in British colonies. Among the German colonists in Russia the process of assimilation is hardly perceptible. Though their fathers and grandfathers may have been born in the new country, they would consider it an insult to be called Russians. They look down upon the Russian peasantry as poor, ignorant, lazy, and dishonest, fear the officials on account of their tyranny and extortion, preserve jealously their own language and customs, rarely speak Russian well--sometimes not at all--and never intermarry with those from whom they are separated by nationality and religion. The Russian influence acts, however, more rapidly on the Slavonic colonists--Servians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins--who profess the Greek Orthodox faith, learn more easily the Russian language, which is closely allied to their own, have no consciousness of belonging to a Culturvolk, and in general possess a nature much more pliable than the Teutonic. The Government has recently attempted to accelerate the fusing process by retracting the privileges granted to the colonists and abolishing the peculiar administration under which they were placed. These measures--especially the universal military service--may eventually diminish the extreme exclusiveness of the Germans; the youths, whilst serving in the army, will at least learn the Russian language, and may possibly imbibe something of the Russian spirit. But for the present this new policy has aroused a strong feeling of hostility and greatly intensified the spirit of exclusiveness. In the German colonies I have often overheard complaints about Russian tyranny and uncomplimentary remarks about the Russian national character. The Mennonites consider themselves specially aggrieved by the so-called reforms. They came to Russia in order to escape military service and with the distinct understanding that they should be exempted from it, and now they are forced to act contrary to the religious tenets of their sect. This is the ground of complaint which they put forward in the petitions addressed to the Government, but they have at the same time another, and perhaps more important, objection to the proposed changes. They feel, as several of them admitted to me, that if the barrier which separates them from the rest of the population were in any way broken down, they could no longer preserve that stern Puritanical discipline which at present constitutes their force. Hence, though the Government was disposed to make important concessions, hundreds of families sold their property and emigrated to America. The movement, however, did not become general. At present the Russian Mennonites number, male and female, about 50,000, divided into 160 colonies and possessing over 800,000 acres of land. It is quite possible that under the new system of administration the colonists who profess in common with the Russians the Greek Orthodox faith may be rapidly Russianised; but I am convinced that the others will long resist assimilation. Greek orthodoxy and Protestant sectarianism are so radically different in spirit that their respective votaries are not likely to intermarry; and without intermarriage it is impossible that the two nationalities should blend. As an instance of the ethnological curiosities which the traveller may stumble upon unawares in this curious region, I may mention a strange acquaintance I made when travelling on the great plain which stretches from the Sea of Azof to the Caspian. One day I accidentally noticed on my travelling-map the name "Shotlandskaya Koldniya" (Scottish Colony) near the celebrated baths of Piatigorsk. I was at that moment in Stavropol, a town about eighty miles to the north, and could not gain any satisfactory information as to what this colony was. Some well-informed people assured me that it really was what its name implied, whilst others asserted as confidently that it was simply a small German settlement. To decide the matter I determined to visit the place myself, though it did not lie near my intended route, and I accordingly found myself one morning in the village in question. The first inhabitants whom I encountered were unmistakably German, and they professed to know nothing about the existence of Scotsmen in the locality either at the present or in former times. This was disappointing, and I was about to turn away and drive off, when a young man, who proved to be the schoolmaster, came up, and on hearing what I desired, advised me to consult an old Circassian who lived at the end of the village and was well acquainted with local antiquities. On proceeding to the house indicated, I found a venerable old man, with fine, regular features of the Circassian type, coal-black sparkling eyes, and a long grey beard that would have done honour to a patriarch. To him I explained briefly, in Russian, the object of my visit, and asked whether he knew of any Scotsmen in the district. "And why do you wish to know?" he replied, in the same language, fixing me with his keen, sparkling eyes. "Because I am myself a Scotsman, and hoped to find fellow-countrymen here." Let the reader imagine my astonishment when, in reply to this, he answered, in genuine broad Scotch, "Od, man, I'm a Scotsman tae! My name is John Abercrombie. Did ye never hear tell o' John Abercrombie, the famous Edinburgh doctor?" I was fairly puzzled by this extraordinary declaration. Dr. Abercrombie's name was familiar to me as that of a medical practitioner and writer on psychology, but I knew that he was long since dead. When I had recovered a little from my surprise, I ventured to remark to the enigmatical personage before me that, though his tongue was certainly Scotch, his face was as certainly Circassian. "Weel, weel," he replied, evidently enjoying my look of mystification, "you're no' far wrang. I'm a Circassian Scotsman!" This extraordinary admission did not diminish my perplexity, so I begged my new acquaintance to be a little more explicit, and he at once complied with my request. His long story may be told in a few words: In the first years of the present century a band of Scotch missionaries came to Russia for the purpose of converting the Circassian tribes, and received from the Emperor Alexander I. a large grant of land in this place, which was then on the frontier of the Empire. Here they founded a mission, and began the work; but they soon discovered that the surrounding population were not idolaters, but Mussulmans, and consequently impervious to Christianity. In this difficulty they fell on the happy idea of buying Circassian children from their parents and bringing them up as Christians. One of these children, purchased about the year 1806, was a little boy called Teoona. As he had been purchased with money subscribed by Dr. Abercrombie, he had received in baptism that gentleman's name, and he considered himself the foster-son of his benefactor. Here was the explanation of the mystery. Teoona, alias Mr. Abercrombie, was a man of more than average intelligence. Besides his native tongue, he spoke English, German, and Russian perfectly; and he assured me that he knew several other languages equally well. His life had been devoted to missionary work, and especially to translating and printing the Scriptures. He had laboured first in Astrakhan, then for four years and a half in Persia--in the service of the Bale mission--and afterwards for six years in Siberia. The Scottish mission was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas about the year 1835, and all the missionaries except two returned home. The son of one of these two (Galloway) was the only genuine Scotsman remaining at the time of my visit. Of the "Circassian Scotsmen" there were several, most of whom had married Germans. The other inhabitants were German colonists from the province of Saratof, and German was the language commonly spoken in the village. After hearing so much about foreign colonists, Tartar invaders, and Finnish aborigines, the reader may naturally desire to know the numerical strength of this foreign element. Unfortunately we have no accurate data on this subject, but from a careful examination of the available statistics I am inclined to conclude that it constitutes about one-sixth of the population of European Russia, including Poland, Finland, and the Caucasus, and nearly a third of the population of the Empire as a whole. CHAPTER XVII AMONG THE HERETICS The Molokanye--My Method of Investigation--Alexandrof-Hai--An Unexpected Theological Discussion--Doctrines and Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Molokanye--Moral Supervision and Mutual Assistance--History of the Sect--A False Prophet--Utilitarian Christianity--Classification of the Fantastic Sects--The "Khlysti"--Policy of the Government towards Sectarianism--Two Kinds of Heresy--Probable Future of the Heretical Sects--Political Disaffection. Whilst travelling on the Steppe I heard a great deal about a peculiar religious sect called the Molokanye, and I felt interested in them because their religious belief, whatever it was, seemed to have a beneficial influence on their material welfare. Of the same race and placed in the same conditions as the Orthodox peasantry around them, they were undoubtedly better housed, better clad, more punctual in the payment of their taxes, and, in a word, more prosperous. All my informants agreed in describing them as quiet, decent, sober people; but regarding their religious doctrines the evidence was vague and contradictory. Some described them as Protestants or Lutherans, whilst others believed them to be the last remnants of a curious heretical sect which existed in the early Christian Church. Desirous of obtaining clear notions on the subject, I determined to investigate the matter for myself. At first I found this to be no easy task. In the villages through which I passed I found numerous members of the sect, but they all showed a decided repugnance to speak about their religious beliefs. Long accustomed to extortion and persecution at the hands of the Administration, and suspecting me to be a secret agent of the Government, they carefully avoided speaking on any subject beyond the state of the weather and the prospects of the harvest, and replied to my questions on other topics as if they had been standing before a Grand Inquisitor. A few unsuccessful attempts convinced me that it would be impossible to extract from them their religious beliefs by direct questioning. I adopted, therefore, a different system of tactics. From meagre replies already received I had discovered that their doctrine had at least a superficial resemblance to Presbyterianism, and from former experience I was aware that the curiosity of intelligent Russian peasants is easily excited by descriptions of foreign countries. On these two facts I based my plan of campaign. When I found a Molokan, or some one whom I suspected to be such, I talked for some time about the weather and the crops, as if I had no ulterior object in view. Having fully discussed this matter, I led the conversation gradually from the weather and crops in Russia to the weather and crops in Scotland, and then passed slowly from Scotch agriculture to the Scotch Presbyterian Church. On nearly every occasion this policy succeeded. When the peasant heard that there was a country where the people interpreted the Scriptures for themselves, had no bishops, and considered the veneration of Icons as idolatry, he invariably listened with profound attention; and when he learned further that in that wonderful country the parishes annually sent deputies to an assembly in which all matters pertaining to the Church were freely and publicly discussed, he almost always gave free expression to his astonishment, and I had to answer a whole volley of questions. "Where is that country?" "Is it to the east, or the west?" "Is it very far away?" "If our Presbyter could only hear all that!" This last expression was precisely what I wanted, because it gave me an opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Presbyter, or pastor, without seeming to desire it; and I knew that a conversation with that personage, who is always an uneducated peasant like the others, but is generally more intelligent and better acquainted with religious doctrine, would certainly be of use to me. On more than one occasion I spent a great part of the night with a Presbyter, and thereby learned much concerning the religious beliefs and practices of the sect. After these interviews I was sure to be treated with confidence and respect by all the Molokanye in the village, and recommended to the brethren of the faith in the neighbouring villages through which I intended to pass. Several of the more intelligent peasants with whom I spoke advised me strongly to visit Alexandrof-Hai, a village situated on the borders of the Kirghiz Steppe. "We are dark [i.e., ignorant] people here," they were wont to say, "and do not know anything, but in Alexandrof-Hai you will find those who know the faith, and they will discuss with you." This prediction was fulfilled in a somewhat unexpected way. When returning some weeks later from a visit to the Kirghiz of the Inner Horde, I arrived one evening at this centre of the Molokan faith, and was hospitably received by one of the brotherhood. In conversing casually with my host on religious subjects I expressed to him a desire to find some one well read in Holy Writ and well grounded in the faith, and he promised to do what he could for me in this respect. Next morning he kept his promise with a vengeance. Immediately after the tea-urn had been removed the door of the room was opened and twelve peasants were ushered in! After the customary salutations with these unexpected visitors, my host informed me to my astonishment that his friends had come to have a talk with me about the faith; and without further ceremony he placed before me a folio Bible in the old Slavonic tongue, in order that I might read passages in support of my arguments. As I was not at all prepared to open a formal theological discussion, I felt not a little embarrassed, and I could see that my travelling companions, two Russian friends who cared for none of these things, were thoroughly enjoying my discomfiture. There was, however, no possibility of drawing back. I had asked for an opportunity of having a talk with some of the brethren, and now I had got it in a way that I certainly did not expect. My friends withdrew--"leaving me to my fate," as they whispered to me--and the "talk" began. My fate was by no means so terrible as had been anticipated, but at first the situation was a little awkward. Neither party had any clear ideas as to what the other desired, and my visitors expected that I was to begin the proceedings. This expectation was quite natural and justifiable, for I had inadvertently invited them to meet me, but I could not make a speech to them, for the best of all reasons--that I did not know what to say. If I told them my real aims, their suspicions would probably be aroused. My usual stratagem of the weather and the crops was wholly inapplicable. For a moment I thought of proposing that a psalm should be sung as a means of breaking the ice, but I felt that this would give to the meeting a solemnity which I wished to avoid. On the whole it seemed best to begin at once a formal discussion. I told them, therefore, that I had spoken with many of their brethren in various villages, and that I had found what I considered grave errors of doctrine. I could not, for instance, agree with them in their belief that it was unlawful to eat pork. This was perhaps an abrupt way of entering on the subject, but it furnished at least a locus standi--something to talk about--and an animated discussion immediately ensued. My opponents first endeavoured to prove their thesis from the New Testament, and when this argument broke down they had recourse to the Pentateuch. From a particular article of the ceremonial law we passed to the broader question as to how far the ceremonial law is still binding, and from this to other points equally important. If the logic of the peasants was not always unimpeachable, their knowledge of the Scriptures left nothing to be desired. In support of their views they quoted long passages from memory, and whenever I indicated vaguely any text which I needed, they at once supplied it verbatim, so that the big folio Bible served merely as an ornament. Three or four of them seemed to know the whole of the New Testament by heart. The course of our informal debate need not here be described; suffice it to say that, after four hours of uninterrupted conversation, we agreed to differ on questions of detail, and parted from each other without a trace of that ill-feeling which religious discussion commonly engenders. Never have I met men more honest and courteous in debate, more earnest in the search after truth, more careless of dialectical triumphs, than these simple, uneducated muzhiks. If at one or two points in the discussion a little undue warmth was displayed, I must do my opponents the justice to say that they were not the offending party. This long discussion, as well as numerous discussions which I had had before and since have had with Molokanye in various parts of the country, confirmed my first impression that their doctrines have a strong resemblance to Presbyterianism. There is, however, an important difference. Presbyterianism has an ecclesiastical organisation and a written creed, and its doctrines have long since become clearly defined by means of public discussion, polemical literature, and general assemblies. The Molokanye, on the contrary, have had no means of developing their fundamental principles and forming their vague religious beliefs into a clearly defined logical system. Their theology is therefore still in a half-fluid state, so that it is impossible to predict what form it will ultimately assume. "We have not yet thought about that," I have frequently been told when I inquired about some abstruse doctrine; "we must talk about it at the meeting next Sunday. What is your opinion?" Besides this, their fundamental principles allow great latitude for individual and local differences of opinion. They hold that Holy Writ is the only rule of faith and conduct, but that it must be taken in the spiritual, and not in the literal, sense. As there is no terrestrial authority to which doubtful points can be referred, each individual is free to adopt the interpretation which commends itself to his own judgment. This will no doubt ultimately lead to a variety of sects, and already there is a considerable diversity of opinion between different communities; but this diversity has not yet been recognised, and I may say that I nowhere found that fanatically dogmatic, quibbling spirit which is usually the soul of sectarianism. For their ecclesiastical organisation the Molokanye take as their model the early Apostolic Church, as depicted in the New Testament, and uncompromisingly reject all later authorities. In accordance with this model they have no hierarchy and no paid clergy, but choose from among themselves a Presbyter and two assistants--men well known among the brethren for their exemplary life and their knowledge of the Scriptures--whose duty it is to watch over the religious and moral welfare of the flock. On Sundays they hold meetings in private houses--they are not allowed to build churches--and spend two or three hours in psalm singing, prayer, reading the Scriptures, and friendly conversation on religious subjects. If any one has a doctrinal difficulty which he desires to have cleared up, he states it to the congregation, and some of the others give their opinions, with the texts on which the opinions are founded. If the question seems clearly solved by the texts, it is decided; if not, it is left open. As in many young sects, there exists among the Molokanye a system of severe moral supervision. If a member has been guilty of drunkenness or any act unbecoming a Christian, he is first admonished by the Presbyter in private or before the congregation; and if this does not produce the desired effect, he is excluded for a longer or shorter period from the meetings and from all intercourse with the members. In extreme cases expulsion is resorted to. On the other hand, if any one of the members happens to be, from no fault of his own, in pecuniary difficulties, the others will assist him. This system of mutual control and mutual assistance has no doubt something to do with the fact that the Molokanye are distinguished from the surrounding population by their sobriety, uprightness, and material prosperity. Of the history of the sect my friends in Alexandrof-Hai could tell me very little, but I have obtained from other quarters some interesting information. The founder was a peasant of the province of Tambof called Uklein, who lived in the reign of Catherine II., and gained his living as an itinerant tailor. For some time he belonged to the sect of the Dukhobortsi--who are sometimes called the Russian Quakers, and who have recently become known in Western Europe through the efforts of Count Tolstoy on their behalf--but he soon seceded from them, because he could not admit their doctrine that God dwells in the human soul, and that consequently the chief source of religious truth is internal enlightenment. To him it seemed that religious truth was to be found only in the Scriptures. With this doctrine he soon made many converts, and one day he unexpectedly entered the town of Tambof, surrounded by seventy "Apostles" chanting psalms. They were all quickly arrested and imprisoned, and when the affair was reported to St. Petersburg the Empress Catherine ordered that they should be handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and that in the event of their proving obdurate to exhortation they should be tried by the Criminal Courts. Uklein professed to recant, and was liberated; but he continued his teaching secretly in the villages, and at the time of his death he was believed to have no less than five thousand followers. As to the actual strength of the sect it is difficult to form even a conjecture. Certainly it has many thousand members--probably several hundred thousand. Formerly the Government transported them from the central provinces to the thinly populated outlying districts, where they had less opportunity of contaminating Orthodox neighbours; and accordingly we find them in the southeastern districts of Samara, on the north coast of the Sea of Azof, in the Crimea, in the Caucasus, and in Siberia. There are still, however, very many of them in the central region, especially in the province of Tambof. The readiness with which the Molokanye modify their opinions and beliefs in accordance with what seems to them new light saves them effectually from bigotry and fanaticism, but it at the same time exposes them to evils of a different kind, from which they might be preserved by a few stubborn prejudices. "False prophets arise among us," said an old, sober-minded member to me on one occasion, "and lead many away from the faith." In 1835, for example, great excitement was produced among them by rumours that the second advent of Christ was at hand, and that the Son of Man, coming to judge the world, was about to appear in the New Jerusalem, somewhere near Mount Ararat. As Elijah and Enoch were to appear before the opening of the Millennium, they were anxiously awaited by the faithful, and at last Elijah appeared, in the person of a Melitopol peasant called Belozvorof, who announced that on a given day he would ascend into heaven. On the day appointed a great crowd collected, but he failed to keep his promise, and was handed over to the police as an impostor by the Molokanye themselves. Unfortunately they were not always so sensible as on that occasion. In the very next year many of them were persuaded by a certain Lukian Petrof to put on their best garments and start for the Promised Land in the Caucasus, where the Millennium was about to begin. Of these false prophets the most remarkable in recent times was a man who called himself Ivan Grigorief, a mysterious personage who had at one time a Turkish and at another an American passport, but who seemed in all other respects a genuine Russian. Some years previously to my visit he appeared at Alexandrof-Hai. Though he professed himself to be a good Molokan and was received as such, he enounced at the weekly meetings many new and startling ideas. At first he simply urged his hearers to live like the early Christians, and have all things in common. This seemed sound doctrine to the Molokanye, who profess to take the early Christians as their model, and some of them thought of at once abolishing personal property; but when the teacher intimated pretty plainly that this communism should include free love, a decided opposition arose, and it was objected that the early Church did not recommend wholesale adultery and cognate sins. This was a formidable objection, but "the prophet" was equal to the occasion. He reminded his friends that in accordance with their own doctrine the Scriptures should be understood, not in the literal, but in the spiritual, sense--that Christianity had made men free, and every true Christian ought to use his freedom. This account of the new doctrine was given to me by an intelligent Molokan, who had formerly been a peasant and was now a trader, as I sat one evening in his house in Novo-usensk, the chief town of the district in which Alexandrof-Hai is situated. It seemed to me that the author of this ingenious attempt to conciliate Christianity with extreme Utilitarianism must be an educated man in disguise. This conviction I communicated to my host, but he did not agree with me. "No, I think not," he replied; "in fact, I am sure he is a peasant, and I strongly suspect he was at some time a soldier. He has not much learning, but he has a wonderful gift of talking; never have I heard any one speak like him. He would have talked over the whole village, had it not been for an old man who was more than a match for him. And then he went to Orloff-Hai and there he did talk the people over." What he really did in this latter place I never could clearly ascertain. Report said that he founded a communistic association, of which he was himself president and treasurer, and converted the members to an extraordinary theory of prophetic succession, invented apparently for his own sensual gratification. For further information my host advised me to apply either to the prophet himself, who was at that time confined in the gaol on a charge of using a forged passport, or to one of his friends, a certain Mr. I----, who lived in the town. As it was a difficult matter to gain admittance to the prisoner, and I had little time at my disposal, I adopted the latter alternative. Mr. I---- was himself a somewhat curious character. He had been a student in Moscow, and in consequence of some youthful indiscretions during the University disturbances had been exiled to this place. After waiting in vain some years for a release, he gave up the idea of entering one of the learned professions, married a peasant girl, rented a piece of land, bought a pair of camels, and settled down as a small farmer.* He had a great deal to tell about the prophet. * Here for the first time I saw camels used for agricultural purposes. When yoked to a small four-wheeled cart, the "ships of the desert" seemed decidedly out of place. Grigorief, it seemed, was really simply a Russian peasant, but he had been from his youth upwards one of those restless people who can never long work in harness. Where his native place was, and why he left it, he never divulged, for reasons best known to himself. He had travelled much, and had been an attentive observer. Whether he had ever been in America was doubtful, but he had certainly been in Turkey, and had fraternised with various Russian sectarians, who are to be found in considerable numbers near the Danube. Here, probably, he acquired many of his peculiar religious ideas, and conceived his grand scheme of founding a new religion--of rivalling the Founder of Christianity! He aimed at nothing less than this, as he on one occasion confessed, and he did not see why he should not be successful. He believed that the Founder of Christianity had been simply a man like himself, who understood better than others the people around him and the circumstances of the time, and he was convinced that he himself had these qualifications. One qualification, however, for becoming a prophet he certainly did not possess: he had no genuine religious enthusiasm in him--nothing of the martyr spirit about him. Much of his own preaching he did not himself believe, and he had a secret contempt for those who naively accepted it all. Not only was he cunning, but he knew he was cunning, and he was conscious that he was playing an assumed part. And yet perhaps it would be unjust to say that he was merely an impostor exclusively occupied with his own personal advantage. Though he was naturally a man of sensual tastes, and could not resist convenient opportunities of gratifying them, he seemed to believe that his communistic schemes would, if realised, be beneficial not only to himself, but also to the people. Altogether a curious mixture of the prophet, the social reformer, and the cunning impostor! Besides the Molokanye, there are in Russia many other heretical sects. Some of them are simply Evangelical Protestants, like the Stundisti, who have adopted the religious conceptions of their neighbours, the German colonists; whilst others are composed of wild enthusiasts, who give a loose rein to their excited imagination, and revel in what the Germans aptly term "der hohere Blodsinn." I cannot here attempt to convey even a general idea of these fantastic sects with their doctrinal and ceremonial absurdities, but I may offer the following classification of them for the benefit of those who may desire to study the subject: 1. Sects which take the Scriptures as the basis of their belief, but interpret and complete the doctrines therein contained by means of the occasional inspiration or internal enlightenment of their leading members. 2. Sects which reject interpretation and insist on certain passages of Scripture being taken in the literal sense. In one of the best known of these sects--the Skoptsi, or Eunuchs--fanaticism has led to physical mutilation. 3. Sects which pay little or no attention to Scripture, and derive their doctrine from the supposed inspiration of their living teachers. 4. Sects which believe in the re-incarnation of Christ. 5. Sects which confound religion with nervous excitement, and are more or less erotic in their character. The excitement necessary for prophesying is commonly produced by dancing, jumping, pirouetting, or self-castigation; and the absurdities spoken at such times are regarded as the direct expression of divine wisdom. The religious exercises resemble more or less closely those of the "dancing dervishes" and "howling dervishes's" with which all who have visited Constantinople are familiar. There is, however, one important difference: the dervishes practice their religious exercises in public, and consequently observe a certain decorum, whilst these Russian sects assemble in secret, and give free scope to their excitement, so that most disgusting orgies sometimes take place at their meetings. To illustrate the general character of the sects belonging to this last category, I may quote here a short extract from a description of the "Khlysti" by one who was initiated into their mysteries: "Among them men and women alike take upon themselves the calling of teachers and prophets, and in this character they lead a strict, ascetic life, refrain from the most ordinary and innocent pleasures, exhaust themselves by long fasting and wild, ecstatic religious exercises, and abhor marriage. Under the excitement caused by their supposed holiness and inspiration, they call themselves not only teachers and prophets, but also 'Saviours,' 'Redeemers,' 'Christs,' 'Mothers of God.' Generally speaking, they call themselves simply Gods, and pray to each other as to real Gods and living Christs or Madonnas. When several of these teachers come together at a meeting, they dispute with each other in a vain boasting way as to which of them possesses most grace and power. In this rivalry they sometimes give each other lusty blows on the ear, and he who bears the blows most patiently, turning the other cheek to the smiter, acquires the reputation of having most holiness." Another sect belonging to this category is the Jumpers, among whom the erotic element is disagreeably prominent. Here is a description of their religious meetings, which are held during summer in the forest, and during winter in some out-house or barn: "After due preparation prayers are read by the chief teacher, dressed in a white robe and standing in the midst of the congregation. At first he reads in an ordinary tone of voice, and then passes gradually into a merry chant. When he remarks that the chanting has sufficiently acted on the hearers, he begins to jump. The hearers, singing likewise, follow his example. Their ever-increasing excitement finds expression in the highest possible jumps. This they continue as long as they can--men and women alike yelling like enraged savages. When all are thoroughly exhausted, the leader declares that he hears the angels singing"--and then begins a scene which cannot be here described. It is but fair to add that we know very little of these peculiar sects, and what we do know is furnished by avowed enemies. It is very possible, therefore, that some of them are not nearly so absurd as they are commonly represented, and that many of the stories told are mere calumnies. The Government is very hostile to sectarianism, and occasionally endeavours to suppress it. This is natural enough as regards these fantastic sects, but it seems strange that the peaceful, industrious, honest Molokanye and Stundisti should be put under the ban. Why is it that a Russian peasant should be punished for holding doctrines which are openly professed, with the sanction of the authorities, by his neighbours, the German colonists? To understand this the reader must know that according to Russian conceptions there are two distinct kinds of heresy, distinguished from each other, not by the doctrines held, but by the nationality of the holder, it seems to a Russian in the nature of things that Tartars should be Mahometans, that Poles should be Roman Catholics, and that Germans should be Protestants; and the mere act of becoming a Russian subject is not supposed to lay the Tartar, the Pole, or the German under any obligation to change his faith. These nationalities are therefore allowed the most perfect freedom in the exercise of their respective religions, so long as they refrain from disturbing by propagandism the divinely established order of things. This is the received theory, and we must do the Russians the justice to say that they habitually act up to it. If the Government has sometimes attempted to convert alien races, the motive has always been political, and the efforts have never awakened much sympathy among the people at large, or even among the clergy. In like manner the missionary societies which have sometimes been formed in imitation of the Western nations have never received much popular support. Thus with regard to aliens this peculiar theory has led to very extensive religious toleration. With regard to the Russians themselves the theory has had a very different effect. If in the nature of things the Tartar is a Mahometan, the Pole a Roman Catholic, and the German a Protestant, it is equally in the nature of things that the Russian should be a member of the Orthodox Church. On this point the written law and public opinion are in perfect accord. If an Orthodox Russian becomes a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, he is amenable to the criminal law, and is at the same time condemned by public opinion as an apostate and renegade--almost as a traitor. As to the future of these heretical sects it is impossible to speak with confidence. The more gross and fantastic will probably disappear as primary education spreads among the people; but the Protestant sects seem to possess much more vitality. For the present, at least, they are rapidly spreading. I have seen large villages where, according to the testimony of the inhabitants, there was not a single heretic fifteen years before, and where one-half of the population had already become Molokanye; and this change, be it remarked, had taken place without any propagandist organisation. The civil and ecclesiastical authorities were well aware of the existence of the movement, but they were powerless to prevent it. The few efforts which they made were without effect, or worse than useless. Among the Stundisti corporal punishment was tried as an antidote--without the concurrence, it is to be hoped, of the central authorities--and to the Molokanye of the province of Samara a learned monk was sent in the hope of converting them from their errors by reason and eloquence. What effect the birch-twigs had on the religious convictions of the Stundisti I have not been able to ascertain, but I assume that they were not very efficacious, for according to the latest accounts the numbers of the sect are increasing. Of the mission in the province of Samara I happen to know more, and can state on the evidence of many peasants--some of them Orthodox--that the only immediate effect was to stir up religious fanaticism, and to induce a certain number of Orthodox to go over to the heretical camp. In their public discussions the disputants could find no common ground on which to argue, for the simple reason that their fundamental conceptions were different. The monk spoke of the Church as the terrestrial representative of Christ and the sole possessor of truth, whilst his opponents knew nothing of a Church in this sense, and held simply that all men should live in accordance with the dictates of Scripture. Once the monk consented to argue with them on their own ground, and on that occasion he sustained a signal defeat, for he could not produce a single passage recommending the veneration of Icons--a practice which the Russian peasants consider an essential part of Orthodoxy. After this he always insisted on the authority of the early Ecumenical Councils and the Fathers of the Church--an authority which his antagonists did not recognise. Altogether the mission was a complete failure, and all parties regretted that it had been undertaken. "It was a great mistake," remarked to me confidentially an Orthodox peasant; "a very great mistake. The Molokanye are a cunning people. The monk was no match for them; they knew the Scriptures a great deal better than he did. The Church should not condescend to discuss with heretics." It is often said that these heretical sects are politically disaffected, and the Molokanye are thought to be specially dangerous in this respect. Perhaps there is a certain foundation for this opinion, for men are naturally disposed to doubt the legitimacy of a power that systematically persecutes them. With regard to the Molokanye, I believe the accusation to be a groundless calumny. Political ideas seemed entirely foreign to their modes of thought. During my intercourse with them I often heard them refer to the police as "wolves which have to be fed," but I never heard them speak of the Emperor otherwise than in terms of filial affection and veneration. CHAPTER XVIII THE DISSENTERS Dissenters not to be Confounded with Heretics--Extreme Importance Attached to Ritual Observances--The Raskol, or Great Schism in the Seventeenth Century--Antichrist Appears!--Policy of Peter the Great and Catherine II.--Present Ingenious Method of Securing Religious Toleration--Internal Development of the Raskol--Schism among the Schismatics--The Old Ritualists--The Priestless People--Cooling of the Fanatical Enthusiasm and Formation of New Sects--Recent Policy of the Government towards the Sectarians--Numerical Force and Political Significance of Sectarianism. We must be careful not to confound those heretical sects, Protestant and fantastical, of which I have spoken in the preceding chapter, with the more numerous Dissenters or Schismatics, the descendants of those who seceded from the Russian Church--or more correctly from whom the Russian Church seceded--in the seventeenth century. So far from regarding themselves as heretics, these latter consider themselves more orthodox than the official Orthodox Church. They are conservatives, too, in the social as well as the religious sense of the term. Among them are to be found the last remnants of old Russian life, untinged by foreign influences. The Russian Church, as I have already had occasion to remark, has always paid inordinate attention to ceremonial observances and somewhat neglected the doctrinal and moral elements of the faith which it professes. This peculiarity greatly facilitated the spread of its influence among a people accustomed to pagan rites and magical incantations, but it had the pernicious effect of confirming in the new converts their superstitious belief in the virtue of mere ceremonies. Thus the Russians became zealous Christians in all matters of external observance, without knowing much about the spiritual meaning of the rites which they practised. They looked upon the rites and sacraments as mysterious charms which preserved them from evil influences in the present life and secured them eternal felicity in the life to come, and they believed that these charms would inevitably lose their efficacy if modified in the slightest degree. Extreme importance was therefore attached to the ritual minutiae, and the slightest modification of these minutiae assumed the importance of an historical event. In the year 1476, for instance, the Novgorodian Chronicler gravely relates: "This winter some philosophers (!) began to sing, 'O Lord, have mercy,' and others merely, 'Lord, have mercy.'" And this attaching of enormous importance to trifles was not confined to the ignorant multitude. An Archbishop of Novgorod declared solemnly that those who repeat the word "Alleluia" only twice at certain points in the liturgy "sing to their own damnation," and a celebrated Ecclesiastical Council, held in 1551, put such matters as the position of the fingers when making the sign of the cross on the same level as heresies--formally anathematising those who acted in such trifles contrary to its decisions. This conservative spirit in religious concerns had a considerable influence on social life. As there was no clear line of demarcation between religious observances and simple traditional customs, the most ordinary act might receive a religious significance, and the slightest departure from a traditional custom might be looked upon as a deadly sin. A Russian of the olden time would have resisted the attempt to deprive him of his beard as strenuously as a Calvinist of the present day would resist the attempt to make him abjure the doctrine of Predestination--and both for the same reason. As the doctrine of Predestination is for the Calvinist, so the wearing of a beard was for the old Russian--an essential of salvation. "Where," asked one of the Patriarchs of Moscow, "will those who shave their chins stand at the Last Day?--among the righteous adorned with beards, or among the beardless heretics?" The question required no answer. In the seventeenth century this superstitious, conservative spirit reached its climax. The civil wars and foreign invasions, accompanied by pillage, famine, and plagues with which that century opened, produced a wide-spread conviction that the end of all things was at hand. The mysterious number of the Beast was found to indicate the year 1666, and timid souls began to discover signs of that falling away from the Faith which is spoken of in the Apocalypse. The majority of the people did not perhaps share this notion, but they believed that the sufferings with which they had been visited were a Divine punishment for having forsaken the ancient customs. And it could not be denied that considerable changes had taken place. Orthodox Russia was now tainted with the presence of heretics. Foreigners who shaved their chins and smoked the accursed weed had been allowed to settle in Moscow, and the Tsars not only held converse with them, but had even adopted some of their "pagan" practises. Besides this, the Government had introduced innovations and reforms, many of which were displeasing to the people. In short, the country was polluted with "heresy"--a subtle, evil influence lurking in everything foreign, and very dangerous to the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Faithful--something of the nature of an epidemic, but infinitely more dangerous; for disease kills merely the body, whereas "heresy" kills the soul, and causes both soul and body to be cast into hell-fire. Had the Government introduced the innovations slowly and cautiously, respecting as far as possible all outward forms, it might have effected much without producing a religious panic; but, instead of acting circumspectly as the occasion demanded, it ran full-tilt against the ancient prejudices and superstitious fears, and drove the people into open resistance. When the art of printing was introduced, it became necessary to choose the best texts of the Liturgy, Psalter, and other religious books, and on examination it was found that, through the ignorance and carelessness of copyists, numerous errors had crept into the manuscripts in use. This discovery led to further investigation, which showed that certain irregularities had likewise crept into the ceremonial. The chief of the clerical errors lay in the orthography of the word "Jesus," and the chief irregularity in the ceremonial regarded the position of the fingers when making the sign of the cross. To correct these errors the celebrated Nikon, who was Patriarch in the time of Tsar Alexis, father of Peter the Great, ordered all the old liturgical books and the old Icons to be called in, and new ones to be distributed; but the clergy and the people resisted. Believing these "Nikonian novelties" to be heretical, they clung to their old Icons, their old missals and their old religious customs as the sole anchors of safety which could save the Faithful from drifting to perdition. In vain the Patriarch assured the people that the change was a return to the ancient forms still preserved in Greece and Constantinople. "The Greek Church," it was replied, "is no longer free from heresy. Orthodoxy has become many-coloured from the violence of the Turkish Mahomet; and the Greeks, under the sons of Hagar, have fallen away from the ancient traditions." An anathema, formally pronounced by an Ecclesiastical Council against these Nonconformists, had no more effect than the admonitions of the Patriarch. They persevered in their obstinacy, and refused to believe that the blessed saints and holy martyrs who had used the ancient forms had not prayed and crossed themselves aright. "Not those holy men of old, but the present Patriarch and his counsellors must be heretics." "Woe to us! Woe to us!" cried the monks of Solovetsk when they received the new Liturgies. "What have you done with the Son of God? Give him back to us! You have changed Isus [the old Russian form of Jesus] into Iisus! It is fearful not only to commit such a sin, but even to think of it!" And the sturdy monks shut their gates, and defied Patriarch, Council, and Tsar for seven long years, till the monastery was taken by an armed force. The decree of excommunication pronounced by the Ecclesiastical Council placed the Nonconformists beyond the pale of the Church, and the civil power undertook the task of persecuting them. Persecution had of course merely the effect of confirming the victims in their belief that the Church and the Tsar had become heretical. Thousands fled across the frontier and settled in the neighbouring countries--Poland, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Siberia. Others concealed themselves in the northern forests and the densely wooded region near the Polish frontier, where they lived by agriculture or fishing, and prayed, crossed themselves and buried their dead according to the customs of their forefathers. The northern forests were their favourite place of refuge. Hither flocked many of those who wished to keep themselves pure and undefiled. Here the more learned men among the Nonconformists--well acquainted with Holy Writ, with fragmentary translations from the Greek Fathers, and with the more important decisions of the early Ecumenical Councils--wrote polemical and edifying works for the confounding of heretics and the confirming of true believers. Hence were sent out in all directions zealous missionaries, in the guise of traders, peddlers, and labourers, to sow what they called the living seed, and what the official Church termed "Satan's tares." When the Government agents discovered these retreats, the inmates generally fled from the "ravenous wolves"; but on more than one occasion a large number of fanatical men and women, shutting themselves up, set fire to their houses, and voluntarily perished in the flames. In Paleostrofski Monastery, for instance, in the year 1687, no less than 2,700 fanatics gained the crown of martyrdom in this way; and many similar instances are on record.* As in all periods of religious panic, the Apocalypse was carefully studied, and the Millennial ideas rapidly spread. The signs of the time were plain: Satan was being let loose for a little season. Men anxiously looked for the reappearance of Antichrist--and Antichrist appeared! * A list of well-authenticated cases is given by Nilski, "Semeinaya zhizn v russkom Raskole," St. Petersburg, 1869; part I., pp. 55-57. The number of these self-immolators certainly amounted to many thousands. The man in whom the people recognised the incarnate spirit of evil was no other than Peter the Great. From the Nonconformist point of view, Peter had very strong claims to be considered Antichrist. He had none of the staid, pious demeanour of the old Tsars, and showed no respect for many things which were venerated by the people. He ate, drank, and habitually associated with heretics, spoke their language, wore their costume, chose from among them his most intimate friends, and favoured them more than his own people. Imagine the horror and commotion which would be produced among pious Catholics if the Pope should some day appear in the costume of the Grand Turk, and should choose Pashas as his chief counsellors! The horror which Peter's conduct produced among a large section of his subjects was not less great. They could not explain it otherwise than by supposing him to be the Devil in disguise, and they saw in all his important measures convincing proofs of his Satanic origin. The newly invented census, or "revision," was a profane "numbering of the people," and an attempt to enrol in the service of Beëlzebub those whose names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The new title of Imperator was explained to mean something very diabolical. The passport bearing the Imperial arms was the seal of Antichrist. The order to shave the beard was an attempt to disfigure "the image of God," after which man had been created, and by which Christ would recognise His own at the Last Day. The change in the calendar, by which New Year's Day was transferred from September to January, was the destruction of "the years of our Lord," and the introduction of the years of Satan in their place. Of the ingenious arguments by which these theses were supported, I may quote one by way of illustration. The world, it was explained, could not have been created in January as the new calendar seemed to indicate, because apples are not ripe at that season, and consequently Eve could not have been tempted in the way described!* * I found this ingenious argument in one of the polemical treatises of the Old Believers. These ideas regarding Peter and his reforms were strongly confirmed by the vigorous persecutions which took place during the earlier years of his reign. The Nonconformists were constantly convicted of political disaffection--especially of "insulting the Imperial Majesty"--and were accordingly flogged, tortured, and beheaded without mercy. But when Peter had succeeded in putting down all armed opposition, and found that the movement was no longer dangerous for the throne, he adopted a policy more in accordance with his personal character. Whether he had himself any religious belief whatever may be doubted; certainly he had not a spark of religious fanaticism in his nature. Exclusively occupied with secular concerns, he took no interest in subtle questions of religious ceremonial, and was profoundly indifferent as to how his subjects prayed and crossed themselves, provided they obeyed his orders in worldly matters and paid their taxes regularly. As soon, therefore, as political considerations admitted of clemency, he stopped the persecutions, and at last, in 1714, issued ukazes to the effect that all Dissenters might live unmolested, provided they inscribed themselves in the official registers and paid a double poll-tax. Somewhat later they were allowed to practise freely all their old rites and customs, on condition of paying certain fines. With the accession of Catherine II., "the friend of philosophers," the Raskol,* as the schism had come to be called, entered on a new phase. Penetrated with the ideas of religious toleration then in fashion in Western Europe, Catherine abolished the disabilities to which the Raskolniks were subjected, and invited those of them who had fled across the frontier to return to their homes. Thousands accepted the invitation, and many who had hitherto sought to conceal themselves from the eyes of the authorities became rich and respected merchants. The peculiar semi-monastic religious communities, which had up till that time existed only in the forests of the northern and western provinces, began to appear in Moscow, and were officially recognised by the Administration. At first they took the form of hospitals for the sick, or asylums for the aged and infirm, but soon they became regular monasteries, the superiors of which exercised an undefined spiritual authority not only over the inmates, but also over the members of the sect throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. * The term is derived from two Russian words--ras, asunder; and kolot, to split. Those who belong to the Raskol are called Raskolniki. They call themselves Staro-obriadtsi (Old Ritualists) or Staroveri (Old Believers). From that time down to the present the Government has followed a wavering policy, oscillating between complete tolerance and active persecution. It must, however, be said that the persecution has never been of a very searching kind. In persecution, as in all other manifestations, the Russian Church directs its attention chiefly to external forms. It does not seek to ferret out heresy in a man's opinions, but complacently accepts as Orthodox all who annually appear at confession and communion, and who refrain from acts of open hostility. Those who can make these concessions to convenience are practically free from molestation, and those who cannot so trifle with their conscience have an equally convenient method of escaping persecution. The parish clergy, with their customary indifference to things spiritual and their traditional habit of regarding their functions from the financial point of view, are hostile to sectarianism chiefly because it diminishes their revenues by diminishing the number of parishioners requiring their ministrations. This cause of hostility can easily be removed by a certain pecuniary sacrifice on the part of the sectarians, and accordingly there generally exists between them and their parish priest a tacit contract, by which both parties are perfectly satisfied. The priest receives his income as if all his parishioners belonged to the State Church, and the parishioners are left in peace to believe and practise what they please. By this rude, convenient method a very large amount of toleration is effectually secured. Whether the practise has a beneficial moral influence on the parish clergy is, of course, an entirely different question. When the priest has been satisfied, there still remains the police, which likewise levies an irregular tax on heterodoxy; but the negotiations are generally not difficult, for it is in the interest of both parties that they should come to terms and live in good-fellowship. Thus practically the Raskolniki live in the same condition as in the time of Peter: they pay a tax and are not molested--only the money paid does not now find its way into the Imperial Exchequer. These external changes in the history of the Raskol have exercised a powerful influence on its internal development. When formally anathematised and excluded from the dominant Church the Nonconformists had neither a definite organisation nor a positive creed. The only tie that bound them together was hostility to the "Nikonian novelties," and all they desired was to preserve intact the beliefs and customs of their forefathers. At first they never thought of creating any permanent organisation. The more moderate believed that the Tsar would soon re-establish Orthodoxy, and the more fanatical imagined that the end of all things was at hand.* In either case they had only to suffer for a little season, keeping themselves free from the taint of heresy and from all contact with the kingdom of Antichrist. * Some had coffins made, and lay down in them at night, in the expectation that the Second Advent might take place before the morning. But years passed, and neither of these expectations was fulfilled. The fanatics awaited in vain the sound of the last trump and the appearance of Christ, coming with His angels to judge the world. The sun continued to rise, and the seasons followed each other in their accustomed course, but the end was not yet. Nor did the civil power return to the old faith. Nikon fell a victim to Court intrigues and his own overweening pride, and was formally deposed. Tsar Alexis in the fulness of time was gathered unto his fathers. But there was no sign of a re-establishment of the old Orthodoxy. Gradually the leading Raskolniki perceived that they must make preparations, not for the Day of Judgment, but for a terrestrial future--that they must create some permanent form of ecclesiastical organisation. In this work they encountered at the very outset not only practical, but also theoretical difficulties. So long as they confined themselves simply to resisting the official innovations, they seemed to be unanimous; but when they were forced to abandon this negative policy and to determine theoretically their new position, radical differences of opinion became apparent. All were convinced that the official Russian Church had become heretical, and that it had now Antichrist instead of Christ as its head; but it was not easy to determine what should be done by those who refused to bow the knee to the Son of Destruction. According to Protestant conceptions there was a very simple solution of the difficulty: the Nonconformists had simply to create a new Church for themselves, and worship God in the way that seemed good to them. But to the Russians of that time such notions were still more repulsive than the innovations of Nikon. These men were Orthodox to the backbone--"plus royalistes que le roi"--and according to Orthodox conceptions the founding of a new Church is an absurdity. They believed that if the chain of historic continuity were once broken, the Church must necessarily cease to exist, in the same way as an ancient family becomes extinct when its sole representative dies without issue. If, therefore, the Church had already ceased to exist, there was no longer any means of communication between Christ and His people, the sacraments were no longer efficacious, and mankind was forever deprived of the ordinary means of grace. Now, on this important point there was a difference of opinion among the Dissenters. Some of them believed that, though the ecclesiastical authorities had become heretical, the Church still existed in the communion of those who had refused to accept the innovations. Others declared boldly that the Orthodox Church had ceased to exist, that the ancient means of grace had been withdrawn, and that those who had remained faithful must thenceforth seek salvation, not in the sacraments, but in prayer and such other religious exercises as did not require the co-operation of duly consecrated priests. Thus took place a schism among the Schismatics. The one party retained all the sacraments and ceremonial observances in the older form; the other refrained from the sacraments and from many of the ordinary rites, on the ground that there was no longer a real priesthood, and that consequently the sacraments could not be efficacious. The former party are termed Staro-obriadsti, or Old Ritualists; the latter are called Bezpopoftsi--that is to say, people "without priests" (bez popov). The succeeding history of these two sections of the Nonconformists has been widely different. The Old Ritualists, being simply ecclesiastical Conservatives desirous of resisting all innovations, have remained a compact body little troubled by differences of opinion. The Priestless People, on the contrary, ever seeking to discover some new effectual means of salvation, have fallen into an endless number of independent sects. The Old Ritualists had still, however, one important theoretical difficulty. At first they had amongst themselves plenty of consecrated priests for the celebration of the ordinances, but they had no means of renewing the supply. They had no bishops, and according to Orthodox belief the lower degrees of the clergy cannot be created without episcopal consecration. At the time of the schism one bishop had thrown in his lot with the Schismatics, but he had died shortly afterwards without leaving a successor, and thereafter no bishop had joined their ranks. As time wore on, the necessity of episcopal consecration came to be more and more felt, and it is not a little interesting to observe how these rigorists, who held to the letter of the law and declared themselves ready to die for a jot or a tittle, modified their theory in accordance with the changing exigencies of their position. When the priests who had kept themselves "pure and undefiled"--free from all contact with Antichrist--became scarce, it was discovered that certain priests of the dominant Church might be accepted if they formally abjured the Nikonian novelties. At first, however, only those who had been consecrated previous to the supposed apostasy of the Church were accepted, for the very good reason that consecration by bishops who had become heretical could not be efficacious. When these could no longer be obtained it was discovered that those who had been baptised previous to the apostasy might be accepted; and when even these could no longer be found, a still further concession was made to necessity, and all consecrated priests were received on condition of their solemnly abjuring their errors. Of such priests there was always an abundant supply. If a regular priest could not find a parish, or if he was deposed by the authorities for some crime or misdemeanour, he had merely to pass over to the Old Ritualists, and was sure to find among them a hearty welcome and a tolerable salary. By these concessions the indefinite prolongation of Old Ritualism was secured, but many of the Old Ritualists could not but feel that their position was, to say the least, extremely anomalous. They had no bishops of their own, and their priests were all consecrated by bishops whom they believed to be heretical! For many years they hoped to escape from this dilemma by discovering "Orthodox"--that is to say, Old Ritualist--bishops somewhere in the East; but when the East had been searched in vain, and all their efforts to obtain native bishops proved fruitless, they conceived the design of creating a bishopric somewhere beyond the frontier, among the Old Ritualists who had in times of persecution fled to Prussia, Austria, and Turkey. There were, however, immense difficulties in the way. In the first place it was necessary to obtain the formal permission of some foreign Government; and in the second place an Orthodox bishop must be found, willing to consecrate an Old Ritualist or to become an Old Ritualist himself. Again and again the attempt was made, and failed; but at last, after years of effort and intrigue, the design was realised. In 1844 the Austrian Government gave permission to found a bishopric at Belaya Krinitsa, in Galicia, a few miles from the Russian frontier; and two years later the deposed Metropolitan of Bosnia consented, after much hesitation, to pass over to the Old Ritualist confession and accept the diocese.* From that time the Old Ritualists have had their own bishops, and have not been obliged to accept the runaway priests of the official Church. * An interesting account of these negotiations, and a most curious picture of the Orthodox ecclesiastical world in Constantinople, is given by Subbotiny, "Istoria Belokrinitskoi Ierarkhii," Moscow, 1874. The Old Ritualists were naturally much grieved by the schism, and were often sorely tried by persecution, but they have always enjoyed a certain spiritual tranquillity, proceeding from the conviction that they have preserved for themselves the means of salvation. The position of the more extreme section of the Schismatics was much more tragical. They believed that the sacraments had irretrievably lost their efficacy, that the ordinary means of salvation were forever withdrawn, that the powers of darkness had been let loose for a little season, that the authorities were the agents of Satan, and that the personage who filled the place of the old God-fearing Tsars was no other than Antichrist. Under the influence of these horrible ideas they fled to the woods and the caves to escape from the rage of the Beast, and to await the second coming of Our Lord. This state of things could not continue permanently. Extreme religious fanaticism, like all other abnormal states, cannot long exist in a mass of human beings without some constant exciting cause. The vulgar necessities of everyday life, especially among people who have to live by the labour of their hands, have a wonderfully sobering influence on the excited brain, and must always, sooner or later, prove fatal to inordinate excitement. A few peculiarly constituted individuals may show themselves capable of a lifelong enthusiasm, but the multitude is ever spasmodic in its fervour, and begins to slide back to its former apathy as soon as the exciting cause ceases to act. All this we find exemplified in the history of the Priestless People. When it was found that the world did not come to an end, and that the rigorous system of persecution was relaxed, the less excitable natures returned to their homes, and resumed their old mode of life; and when Peter the Great made his politic concessions, many who had declared him to be Antichrist came to suspect that he was really not so black as he was painted. This idea struck deep root in a religious community near Lake Onega (Vuigovski Skit) which had received special privileges on condition of supplying labourers for the neighbouring mines; and here was developed a new theory which opened up a way of reconciliation with the Government. By a more attentive study of Holy Writ and ancient books it was discovered that the reign of Antichrist would consist of two periods. In the former, the Son of Destruction would reign merely in the spiritual sense, and the Faithful would not be much molested; in the latter, he would reign visibly in the flesh, and true believers would be subjected to the most frightful persecution. The second period, it was held, had evidently not yet arrived, for the Faithful now enjoyed "a time of freedom, and not of compulsion or oppression." Whether this theory is strictly in accordance with Apocalyptic prophecy and patristic theology may be doubted, but it fully satisfied those who had already arrived at the conclusion by a different road, and who sought merely a means of justifying their position. Certain it is that very many accepted it, and determined to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's, or, in secular language, to pray for the Tsar and to pay their taxes. This ingenious compromise was not accepted by all the Priestless People. On the contrary, many of them regarded it as a woeful backsliding--a new device of the Evil One; and among these irreconcilables was a certain peasant called Theodosi, a man of little education, but of remarkable intellectual power and unusual strength of character. He raised anew the old fanaticism by his preaching and writings--widely circulated in manuscript--and succeeded in founding a new sect in the forest region near the Polish frontier. The Priestless Nonconformists thus fell into two sections; the one, called Pomortsi,* accepted at least a partial reconciliation with the civil power; the other, called Theodosians, after their founder, held to the old opinions, and refused to regard the Tsar otherwise than as Antichrist. *The word Pomortsi means "those who live near the seashore." It is commonly applied to the inhabitants of the Northern provinces--that is, those who live near the shore of the White Sea, the only maritime frontier that Russia possessed previous to the conquests of Peter the Great. These latter were at first very wild in their fanaticism, but ere long they gave way to the influences which had softened the fanaticism of the Pomortsi. Under the liberal, conciliatory rule of Catherine they lived in contentment, and many of them enriched themselves by trade. Their fanatical zeal and exclusiveness evaporated under the influence of material well-being and constant contact with the outer world, especially after they were allowed to build a monastery in Moscow. The Superior of this monastery, a man of much shrewdness and enormous wealth, succeeded in gaining the favour not only of the lower officials, who could be easily bought, but even of high-placed dignitaries, and for many years he exercised a very real, if undefined, authority over all sections of the Priestless People. "His fame," it is said, "sounded throughout Moscow, and the echoes were heard in Petropol (St. Petersburg), Riga, Astrakhan, Nizhni-Novgorod, and other lands of piety"; and when deputies came to consult him, they prostrated themselves in his presence, as before the great ones of the earth. Living thus not only in peace and plenty, but even in honour and luxury, "the proud Patriarch of the Theodosian Church" could not consistently fulminate against "the ravenous wolves" with whom he was on friendly terms, or excite the fanaticism of his followers by highly coloured descriptions of "the awful sufferings and persecution of God's people in these latter days," as the founder of the sect had been wont to do. Though he could not openly abandon any fundamental doctrines, he allowed the ideas about the reign of Antichrist to fall into the background, and taught by example, if not by precept, that the Faithful might, by prudent concessions, live very comfortably in this present evil world. This seed fell upon soil already prepared for its reception. The Faithful gradually forgot their old savage fanaticism, and they have since contrived, while holding many of their old ideas in theory, to accommodate themselves in practice to the existing order of things. The gradual softening and toning down of the original fanaticism in these two sects are strikingly exemplified in their ideas of marriage. According to Orthodox doctrine, marriage is a sacrament which can only be performed by a consecrated priest, and consequently for the Priestless People the celebration of marriage was an impossibility. In the first ages of sectarianism a state of celibacy was quite in accordance with their surroundings. Living in constant fear of their persecutors, and wandering from one place of refuge to another, the sufferers for the Faith had little time or inclination to think of family ties, and readily listened to the monks, who exhorted them to mortify the lusts of the flesh. The result, however, proved that celibacy in the creed by no means ensures chastity in practice. Not only in the villages of the Dissenters, but even in those religious communities which professed a more ascetic mode of life, a numerous class of "orphans" began to appear, who knew not who their parents were; and this ignorance of blood-relationship naturally led to incestuous connections. Besides this, the doctrine of celibacy had grave practical inconveniences, for the peasant requires a housewife to attend to domestic concerns and to help him in his agricultural occupations. Thus the necessity of re-establishing family life came to be felt, and the feeling soon found expression in a doctrinal form both among the Pomortsi and among the Theodsians. Learned dissertations were written and disseminated in manuscript copies, violent discussions took place, and at last a great Council was held in Moscow to discuss the question.* The point at issue was never unanimously decided, but many accepted the ingenious arguments in favour of matrimony, and contracted marriages which were, of course, null and void in the eye of the law and of the Church, but valid in all other respects. * I cannot here enter into the details of this remarkable controversy, but I may say that in studying it I have been frequently astonished by the dialectical power and logical subtlety displayed by the disputants, some of them simple peasants. This new backsliding of the unstable multitude produced a new outburst of fanaticism among the stubborn few. Some of those who had hitherto sought to conceal the origin of the "orphan" class above referred to now boldly asserted that the existence of this class was a religious necessity, because in order to be saved men must repent, and in order to repent men must sin! At the same time the old ideas about Antichrist were revived and preached with fervour by a peasant called Philip, who founded a new sect called the Philipists. This sect still exists. They hold fast to the old belief that the Tsar is Antichrist, and that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities are the servants of Satan--an idea that was kept alive by the corruption and extortion for which the Administration was notorious. They do not venture on open resistance to the authorities, but the bolder members take little pains to conceal their opinions and sentiments, and may be easily recognised by their severe aspect, their Puritanical manner, and their Pharisaical horror of everything which they suppose heretical and unclean. Some of them, it is said, carry this fastidiousness to such an extent that they throw away the handle of a door if it has been touched by a heretic! It may seem that we have here reached the extreme limits of fanaticism, but in reality there were men whom even the Pharisaical Puritanism of the Philipists did not satisfy. These new zealots, who appeared in the time of Catherine II., but first became known to the official world in the reign of Nicholas I., rebuked the lukewarmness of their brethren, and founded a new sect in order to preserve intact the asceticism practised immediately after the schism. This sect still exists. They call themselves "Christ's people" (Christoviye Lyudi), but are better known under the popular name of "Wanderers" (Stranniki), or "Fugitives" (Beguny). Of all the sects they are the most hostile to the existing political and social organisation. Not content with condemning the military conscription, the payment of taxes, the acceptance of passports, and everything connected with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, they consider it sinful to live peaceably among an orthodox--that is, according to their belief, a heretical--population, and to have dealings with any who do not share their extreme views. Holding the Antichrist doctrine in the extreme form, they declare that Tsars are the vessels of Satan, that the Established Church is the dwelling-place of the Father of Lies, and that all who submit to the authorities are children of the Devil. According to this creed, those who wish to escape from the wrath to come must have neither houses nor fixed places of abode, must sever all ties that bind them to the world, and must wander about continually from place to place. True Christians are but strangers and pilgrims in the present life, and whoso binds himself to the world will perish with the world. Such is the theory of these Wanderers, but among them, as among the less fanatical sects, practical necessities have produced concessions and compromises. As it is impossible to lead a nomadic life in Russian forests, the Wanderers have been compelled to admit into their ranks what may be called lay-brethren--men who nominally belong to the sect, but who live like ordinary mortals and have some rational way of gaining a livelihood. These latter live in the villages or towns, support themselves by agriculture or trade, accept passports from the authorities, pay their taxes regularly, and conduct themselves in all outward respects like loyal subjects. Their chief religious duty consists in giving food and shelter to their more zealous brethren, who have adopted a vagabond life in practise as well as in theory. It is only when they feel death approaching that they consider it necessary to separate themselves from the heretical world, and they effect this by having themselves carried out to some neighbouring wood--or into a garden if there is no wood at hand--where they may die in the open air. Thus, we see, there is among the Russian Nonconformist sects what may be called a gradation of fanaticism, in which is reflected the history of the Great Schism. In the Wanderers we have the representatives of those who adopted and preserved the Antichrist doctrine in its extreme form--the successors of those who fled to the forests to escape from the rage of the Beast and to await the second coming of Christ. In the Philipists we have the representatives of those who adopted these ideas in a somewhat softer form, and who came to recognise the necessity of having some regular means of subsistence until the last trump should be heard. The Theodosians represent those who were in theory at one with the preceding category, but who, having less religious fanaticism, considered it necessary to yield to force and make peace with the Government without sacrificing their convictions. In the Pomortsi we see those who preserved only the religious ideas of the schism, and became reconciled with the civil power. Lastly we have the Old Ritualists, who differed from all the other sects in retaining the old ordinances, and who simply rejected the spiritual authority of the dominant Church. Besides these chief sections of the Nonconformists there are a great many minor denominations (tolki), differing from each other on minor points of doctrine. In certain districts, it is said, nearly every village has one or two independent sects. This is especially the case among the Don Cossacks and the Cossacks of the Ural, who are in part descendants of the men who fled from the early persecutions. Of all the sects the Old Ritualists stand nearest to the official Church. They hold the same dogmas, practise the same rites, and differ only in trifling ceremonial matters, which few people consider essential. In the hope of inducing them to return to the official fold the Government created at the beginning of last century special churches, in which they were allowed to retain their ceremonial peculiarities on condition of accepting regularly consecrated priests and submitting to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As yet the design has not met with much success. The great majority of the Old Ritualists regard it as a trap, and assert that the Church in making this concession has been guilty of self-contradiction. "The Ecclesiastical Council of Moscow," they say, "anathematised our forefathers for holding to the old ritual, and declared that the whole course of nature would be changed sooner than the curse be withdrawn. The course of nature has not been changed, but the anathema has been cancelled." This argument ought to have a certain weight with those who believe in the infallibility of Ecclesiastical Councils. Towards the Priestless People the Government has always acted in a much less conciliatory spirit. Its severity has been sometimes justified on the ground that sectarianism has had a political as well as a religious significance. A State like Russia cannot overlook the existence of sects which preach the duty of systematic resistance to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities and hold doctrines which lead to the grossest immorality. This argument, it must be admitted, is not without a certain force, but it seems to me that the policy adopted tended to increase rather than diminish the evils which it sought to cure. Instead of dispelling the absurd idea that the Tsar was Antichrist by a system of strict and evenhanded justice, punishing merely actual crimes and delinquencies, the Government confirmed the notion in the minds of thousands by persecuting those who had committed no crime and who desired merely to worship God according to their conscience. Above all it erred in opposing and punishing those marriages which, though legally irregular, were the best possible means of diminishing fanaticism, by leading back the fanatics to healthy social life. Fortunately these errors have now been abandoned. A policy of greater clemency and conciliation has been adopted, and has proved much more efficacious than persecution. The Dissenters have not returned to the official fold, but they have lost much of their old fanaticism and exclusiveness. In respect of numbers the sectarians compose a very formidable body. Of Old Ritualists and Priestless People there are, it is said, no less than eleven millions; and the Protestant and fantastical sects comprise probably about five millions more. If these numbers be correct, the sectarians constitute about an eighth of the whole population of the Empire. They count in their ranks none of the nobles--none of the so-called enlightened class--but they include in their number a respectable proportion of the peasants, a third of the rich merchant class, the majority of the Don Cossacks, and nearly all the Cossacks of the Ural. Under these circumstances it is important to know how far the sectarians are politically disaffected. Some people imagine that in the event of an insurrection or a foreign invasion they might rise against the Government, whilst others believe that this supposed danger is purely imaginary. For my own part I agree with the latter opinion, which is strongly supported by the history of many important events, such as the French invasion in 1812, the Crimean War, and the last Polish insurrection. The great majority of the Schismatics and heretics are, I believe, loyal subjects of the Tsar. The more violent sects, which are alone capable of active hostility against the authorities, are weak in numbers, and regard all outsiders with such profound mistrust that they are wholly impervious to inflammatory influences from without. Even if all the sects were capable of active hostility, they would not be nearly so formidable as their numbers seem to indicate, for they are hostile to each other, and are wholly incapable of combining for a common purpose. Though sectarianism is thus by no means a serious political danger, it has nevertheless a considerable political significance. It proves satisfactorily that the Russian people is by no means so docile and pliable as is commonly supposed, and that it is capable of showing a stubborn, passive resistance to authority when it believes great interests to be at stake. The dogged energy which it has displayed in asserting for centuries its religious liberty may perhaps some day be employed in the arena of secular politics. CHAPTER XIX CHURCH AND STATE The Russian Orthodox Church--Russia Outside of the Mediaeval Papal Commonwealth--Influence of the Greek Church--Ecclesiastical History of Russia--Relations between Church and State--Eastern Orthodoxy and the Russian National Church--The Synod--Ecclesiastical Grumbling--Local Ecclesiastical Administration--The Black Clergy and the Monasteries--The Character of the Eastern Church Reflected in the History of Religious Art--Practical Consequences--The Union Scheme. From the curious world of heretics and Dissenters let us pass now to the Russian Orthodox Church, to which the great majority of the Russian people belong. It has played an important part in the national history, and has exercised a powerful influence in the formation of the national character. Russians are in the habit of patriotically and proudly congratulating themselves on the fact that their forefathers always resisted successfully the aggressive tendencies of the Papacy, but it may be doubted whether, from a worldly point of view, the freedom from Papal authority has been an unmixed blessing for the country. If the Popes failed to realise their grand design of creating a vast European empire based on theocratic principles, they succeeded at least in inspiring with a feeling of brotherhood and a vague consciousness of common interest all the nations which acknowledged their spiritual supremacy. These nations, whilst remaining politically independent and frequently coming into hostile contact with each other, all looked to Rome as the capital of the Christian world, and to the Pope as the highest terrestrial authority. Though the Church did not annihilate nationality, it made a wide breach in the political barriers, and formed a channel for international communication by which the social and intellectual progress of each nation became known to all the other members of the great Christian confederacy. Throughout the length and breadth of the Papal Commonwealth educated men had a common language, a common literature, a common scientific method, and to a certain extent a common jurisprudence. Western Christendom was thus all through the Middle Ages not merely an abstract conception or a geographical expression: if not a political, it was at least a religious and intellectual unit, and all the countries of which it was composed benefited more or less by the connection. For centuries Russia stood outside of this religious and intellectual confederation, for her Church connected her not with Rome, but with Constantinople, and Papal Europe looked upon her as belonging to the barbarous East. When the Mongol hosts swept over her plains, burnt her towns and villages, and finally incorporated her into the great empire of Genghis khan, the so-called Christian world took no interest in the struggle except in so far as its own safety was threatened. And as time wore on, the barriers which separated the two great sections of Christendom became more and more formidable. The aggressive pretensions and ambitious schemes of the Vatican produced in the Greek Orthodox world a profound antipathy to the Roman Catholic Church and to Western influence of every kind. So strong was this aversion that when the nations of the West awakened in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from their intellectual lethargy and began to move forward on the path of intellectual and material progress, Russia not only remained unmoved, but looked on the new civilisation with suspicion and fear as a thing heretical and accursed. We have here one of the chief reasons why Russia, at the present day, is in many respects less civilised than the nations of Western Europe. But it is not merely in this negative way that the acceptance of Christianity from Constantinople has affected the fate of Russia. The Greek Church, whilst excluding Roman Catholic civilisation, exerted at the same time a powerful positive influence on the historical development of the nation. The Church of the West inherited from old Rome something of that logical, juridical, administrative spirit which had created the Roman law, and something of that ambition and dogged, energetic perseverance that had formed nearly the whole known world into a great centralised empire. The Bishops of Rome early conceived the design of reconstructing that old empire on a new basis, and long strove to create a universal Christian theocratic State, in which kings and other civil authorities should be the subordinates of Christ's Vicar upon earth. The Eastern Church, on the contrary, has remained true to her Byzantine traditions, and has never dreamed of such lofty pretensions. Accustomed to lean on the civil power, she has always been content to play a secondary part, and has never strenuously resisted the formation of national churches. For about two centuries after the introduction of Christianity--from 988 to 1240--Russia formed, ecclesiastically speaking, part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The metropolitans and the bishops were Greek by birth and education, and the ecclesiastical administration was guided and controlled by the Byzantine Patriarchs. But from the time of the Mongol invasion, when communication with Constantinople became more difficult and educated native priests had become more numerous, this complete dependence on the Patriarch of Constantinople ceased. The Princes gradually arrogated to themselves the right of choosing the Metropolitan of Kief--who was at that time the chief ecclesiastical dignitary in Russia--and merely sent their nominees to Constantinople for consecration. About 1448 this formality came to be dispensed with, and the Metropolitan was commonly consecrated by a Council of Russian bishops. A further step in the direction of ecclesiastical autonomy was taken in 1589, when the Tsar succeeded in procuring the consecration of a Russian Patriarch, equal in dignity and authority to the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. In all matters of external form the Patriarch of Moscow was a very important personage. He exercised a certain influence in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs, bore the official title of "Great Lord" (Veliki Gosudar), which had previously been reserved for the civil head of the State, and habitually received from the people scarcely less veneration than the Tsar himself. But in reality he possessed very little independent power. The Tsar was the real ruler in ecclesiastical as well as in civil affairs.* * As this is frequently denied by Russians, it may be well to quote one authority out of many that might be cited. Bishop Makarii, whose erudition and good faith are alike above suspicion, says of Dmitri of the Don: "He arrogated to himself full, unconditional power over the Head of the Russian Church, and through him over the whole Russian Church itself." ("Istoriya Russkoi Tserkvi," V., p. 101.) This is said of a Grand Prince who had strong rivals and had to treat the Church as an ally. When the Grand Princes became Tsars and had no longer any rivals, their power was certainly not diminished. Any further confirmation that may be required will be found in the Life of the famous Patriarch Nikon. The Russian Patriarchate came to an end in the time of Peter the Great. Peter wished, among other things, to reform the ecclesiastical administration, and to introduce into his country many novelties which the majority of the clergy and of the people regarded as heretical; and he clearly perceived that a bigoted, energetic Patriarch might throw considerable obstacles in his way, and cause him infinite annoyance. Though such a Patriarch might be deposed without any flagrant violation of the canonical formalities, the operation would necessarily be attended with great trouble and loss of time. Peter was no friend of roundabout, tortuous methods, and preferred to remove the difficulty in his usual thorough, violent fashion. When the Patriarch Adrian died, the customary short interregnum was prolonged for twenty years, and when the people had thus become accustomed to having no Patriarch, it was announced that no more Patriarchs would be elected. Their place was supplied by an ecclesiastical council, or Synod, in which, as a contemporary explained, "the mainspring was Peter's power, and the pendulum his understanding." The great autocrat justly considered that such a council could be much more easily managed than a stubborn Patriarch, and the wisdom of the measure has been duly appreciated by succeeding sovereigns. Though the idea of re-establishing the Patriarchate has more than once been raised, it has never been carried into execution. The Holy Synod remains the highest ecclesiastical authority. But the Emperor? What is his relation to the Synod and to the Church in general? This is a question about which zealous Orthodox Russians are extremely sensitive. If a foreigner ventures to hint in their presence that the Emperor seems to have a considerable influence in the Church, he may inadvertently produce a little outburst of patriotic warmth and virtuous indignation. The truth is that many Russians have a pet theory on this subject, and have at the same time a dim consciousness that the theory is not quite in accordance with reality. They hold theoretically that the Orthodox Church has no "Head" but Christ, and is in some peculiar undefined sense entirely independent of all terrestrial authority. In this respect it is often contrasted with the Anglican Church, much to the disadvantage of the latter; and the supposed differences between the two are made a theme for semi-religious, semi-patriotic exultation. Khomiakof, for instance, in one of his most vigorous poems, predicts that God will one day take the destiny of the world out of the hands of England in order to give it to Russia, and he adduces as one of the reasons for this transfer the fact that England "has chained, with sacrilegious hand, the Church of God to the pedestal of the vain earthly power." So far the theory. As to the facts, it is unquestionable that the Tsar exercises a much greater influence in ecclesiastical affairs than the King and Parliament in England. All who know the internal history of Russia are aware that the Government does not draw a clear line of distinction between the temporal and the spiritual, and that it occasionally uses the ecclesiastical organisation for political purposes. What, then, are the relations between Church and State? To avoid confusion, we must carefully distinguish between the Eastern Orthodox Church as a whole and that section of it which is known as the Russian Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church* is, properly speaking, a confederation of independent churches without any central authority--a unity founded on the possession of a common dogma and on the theoretical but now unrealisable possibility of holding Ecumenical Councils. The Russian National Church is one of the members of this ecclesiastical confederation. In matters of faith it is bound by the decisions of the ancient Ecumenical Councils, but in all other respects it enjoys complete independence and autonomy. * Or Greek Orthodox Church, as it is sometimes called. In relation to the Orthodox Church as a whole the Emperor of Russia is nothing more than a simple member, and can no more interfere with its dogmas or ceremonial than a King of Italy or an Emperor of the French could modify Roman Catholic theology; but in relation to the Russian National Church his position is peculiar. He is described in one of the fundamental laws as "the supreme defender and preserver of the dogmas of the dominant faith," and immediately afterwards it is said that "the autocratic power acts in the ecclesiastical administration by means of the most Holy Governing Synod, created by it."* This describes very fairly the relations between the Emperor and the Church. He is merely the defender of the dogmas, and cannot in the least modify them; but he is at the same time the chief administrator, and uses the Synod as an instrument. * Svod Zakonov I., 42, 43. Some ingenious people who wish to prove that the creation of the Synod was not an innovation represent the institution as a resuscitation of the ancient local councils; but this view is utterly untenable. The Synod is not a council of deputies from various sections of the Church, but a permanent college, or ecclesiastical senate, the members of which are appointed and dismissed by the Emperor as he thinks fit. It has no independent legislative authority, for its legislative projects do not become law till they have received the Imperial sanction; and they are always published, not in the name of the Church, but in the name of the Supreme Power. Even in matters of simple administration it is not independent, for all its resolutions require the consent of the Procureur, a layman nominated by his Majesty. In theory this functionary protests only against those resolutions which are not in accordance with the civil law of the country; but as he alone has the right to address the Emperor directly on ecclesiastical concerns, and as all communications between the Emperor and the Synod pass through his hands, he possesses in reality considerable power. Besides this, he can always influence the individual members by holding out prospects of advancement and decorations, and if this device fails, he can make refractory members retire, and fill up their places with men of more pliant disposition. A Council constituted in this way cannot, of course, display much independence of thought or action, especially in a country like Russia, where no one ventures to oppose openly the Imperial will. It must not, however, be supposed that the Russian ecclesiastics regard the Imperial authority with jealousy or dislike. They are all most loyal subjects, and warm adherents of autocracy. Those ideas of ecclesiastical independence which are so common in Western Europe, and that spirit of opposition to the civil power which animates the Roman Catholic clergy, are entirely foreign to their minds. If a bishop sometimes complains to an intimate friend that he has been brought to St. Petersburg and made a member of the Synod merely to append his signature to official papers and to give his consent to foregone conclusions, his displeasure is directed, not against the Emperor, but against the Procureur. He is full of loyalty and devotion to the Tsar, and has no desire to see his Majesty excluded from all influence in ecclesiastical affairs; but he feels saddened and humiliated when he finds that the whole government of the Church is in the hands of a lay functionary, who may be a military man, and who looks at all matters from a layman's point of view. This close connection between Church and State and the thoroughly national character of the Russian Church is well illustrated by the history of the local ecclesiastical administration. The civil and the ecclesiastical administration have always had the same character and have always been modified by the same influences. The terrorism which was largely used by the Muscovite Tsars and brought to a climax by Peter the Great appeared equally in both. In the episcopal circulars, as in the Imperial ukazes, we find frequent mention of "most cruel corporal punishment," "cruel punishment with whips, so that the delinquent and others may not acquire the habit of practising such insolence," and much more of the same kind. And these terribly severe measures were sometimes directed against very venial offences. The Bishop of Vologda, for instance, in 1748 decrees "cruel corporal punishment" against priests who wear coarse and ragged clothes,* and the records of the Consistorial courts contain abundant proof that such decrees were rigorously executed. When Catherine II. introduced a more humane spirit into the civil administration, corporal punishment was at once abolished in the Consistorial courts, and the procedure was modified according to the accepted maxims of civil jurisprudence. But I must not weary the reader with tiresome historical details. Suffice it to say that, from the time of Peter the Great downwards, the character of all the more energetic sovereigns is reflected in the history of the ecclesiastical administration. * Znamenski, "Prikhodskoe Dukhovenstvo v Rossii so vremeni reformy Petra," Kazan, 1873. Each province, or "government," forms a diocese, and the bishop, like the civil governor, has a Council which theoretically controls his power, but practically has no controlling influence whatever. The Consistorial Council, which has in the theory of ecclesiastical procedure a very imposing appearance, is in reality the bishop's chancellerie, and its members are little more than secretaries, whose chief object is to make themselves agreeable to their superior. And it must be confessed that, so long as they remain what they are, the less power they possess the better it will be for those who have the misfortune to be under their jurisdiction. The higher dignitaries have at least larger aims and a certain consciousness of the dignity of their position; but the lower officials, who have no such healthy restraints and receive ridiculously small salaries, grossly misuse the little authority which they possess, and habitually pilfer and extort in the most shameless manner. The Consistories are, in fact, what the public offices were in the time of Nicholas I. The higher ecclesiastical administration has always been in the hands of the monks, or "Black Clergy," as they are commonly termed, who form a large and influential class. The monks who first settled in Russia were, like those who first visited north-western Europe, men of the earnest, ascetic, missionary type. Filled with zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, they took little or no thought for the morrow, and devoutly believed that their Heavenly Father, without whose knowledge no sparrow falls to the ground, would provide for their humble wants. Poor, clad in rags, eating the most simple fare, and ever ready to share what they had with any one poorer than themselves, they performed faithfully and earnestly the work which their Master had given them to do. But this ideal of monastic life soon gave way in Russia, as in the West, to practices less simple and austere. By the liberal donations and bequests of the faithful the monasteries became rich in gold, in silver, in precious stones, and above all in land and serfs. Troitsa, for instance, possessed at one time 120,000 serfs and a proportionate amount of land, and it is said that at the beginning of the eighteenth century more than a fourth of the entire population had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Church. Many of the monasteries engaged in commerce, and the monks were, if we may credit Fletcher, who visited Russia in 1588, the most intelligent merchants of the country. During the eighteenth century the Church lands were secularised, and the serfs of the Church became serfs of the State. This was a severe blow for the monasteries, but it did not prove fatal, as many people predicted. Some monasteries were abolished and others were reduced to extreme poverty, but many survived and prospered. These could no longer possess serfs, but they had still three sources of revenue: a limited amount of real property, Government subsidies, and the voluntary offerings of the faithful. At present there are about 500 monastic establishments, and the great majority of them, though not wealthy, have revenues more than sufficient to satisfy all the requirements of an ascetic life. Thus in Russia, as in Western Europe, the history of monastic institutions is composed of three chapters, which may be briefly entitled: asceticism and missionary enterprise; wealth, luxury, and corruption; secularisation of property and decline. But between Eastern and Western monasticism there is at least one marked difference. The monasticism of the West made at various epochs of its history a vigorous, spontaneous effort at self-regeneration, which found expression in the foundation of separate Orders, each of which proposed to itself some special aim--some special sphere of usefulness. In Russia we find no similar phenomenon. Here the monasteries never deviated from the rules of St. Basil, which restrict the members to religious ceremonies, prayer, and contemplation. From time to time a solitary individual raised his voice against the prevailing abuses, or retired from his monastery to spend the remainder of his days in ascetic solitude; but neither in the monastic population as a whole, nor in any particular monastery, do we find at any time a spontaneous, vigorous movement towards reform. During the last two hundred years reforms have certainly been effected, but they have all been the work of the civil power, and in the realisation of them the monks have shown little more than the virtue of resignation. Here, as elsewhere, we have evidence of that inertness, apathy, and want of spontaneous vigour which form one of the most characteristic traits of Russian national life. In this, as in other departments of national activity, the spring of action has lain not in the people, but in the Government. It is only fair to the monks to state that in their dislike to progress and change of every kind they merely reflect the traditional spirit of the Church to which they belong. The Russian Church, like the Eastern Orthodox Church generally, is essentially conservative. Anything in the nature of a religious revival is foreign to her traditions and character. Quieta non movere is her fundamental principle of conduct. She prides herself as being above terrestrial influences. The modifications that have been made in her administrative organisation have not affected her inner nature. In spirit and character she is now what she was under the Patriarchs in the time of the Muscovite Tsars, holding fast to the promise that no jot or tittle shall pass from the law till all be fulfilled. To those who talk about the requirements of modern life and modern science she turns a deaf ear. Partly from the predominance which she gives to the ceremonial element, partly from the fact that her chief aim is to preserve unmodified the doctrine and ceremonial as determined by the early Ecumenical Councils, and partly from the low state of general culture among the clergy, she has ever remained outside of the intellectual movements. The attempts of the Roman Catholic Church to develop the traditional dogmas by definition and deduction, and the efforts of Protestants to reconcile their creeds with progressive science and the ever-varying intellectual currents of the time, are alike foreign to her nature. Hence she has produced no profound theological treatises conceived in a philosophical spirit, and has made no attempt to combat the spirit of infidelity in its modern forms. Profoundly convinced that her position is impregnable, she has "let the nations rave," and scarcely deigned to cast a glance at their intellectual and religious struggles. In a word, she is "in the world, but not of it." If we wish to see represented in a visible form the peculiar characteristics of the Russian Church, we have only to glance at Russian religious art, and compare it with that of Western Europe. In the West, from the time of the Renaissance downwards, religious art has kept pace with artistic progress. Gradually it emancipated itself from archaic forms and childish symbolism, converted the lifeless typical figures into living individuals, lit up their dull eyes and expressionless faces with human intelligence and human feeling, and finally aimed at archaeological accuracy in costume and other details. Thus in the West the Icon grew slowly into the naturalistic portrait, and the rude symbolical groups developed gradually into highly-finished historical pictures. In Russia the history of religious art has been entirely different. Instead of distinctive schools of painting and great religious artists, there has been merely an anonymous traditional craft, destitute of any artistic individuality. In all the productions of this craft the old Byzantine forms have been faithfully and rigorously preserved, and we can see reflected in the modern Icons--stiff, archaic, expressionless--the immobility of the Eastern Church in general, and of the Russian Church in particular. To the Roman Catholic, who struggles against science as soon as it contradicts traditional conceptions, and to the Protestant, who strives to bring his religious beliefs into accordance with his scientific knowledge, the Russian Church may seem to resemble an antediluvian petrifaction, or a cumbrous line-of-battle ship that has been long stranded. It must be confessed, however, that the serene inactivity for which she is distinguished has had very valuable practical consequences. The Russian clergy have neither that haughty, aggressive intolerance which characterises their Roman Catholic brethren, nor that bitter, uncharitable, sectarian spirit which is too often to be found among Protestants. They allow not only to heretics, but also to members of their own communion, the most complete intellectual freedom, and never think of anathematising any one for his scientific or unscientific opinions. All that they demand is that those who have been born within the pale of Orthodoxy should show the Church a certain nominal allegiance; and in this matter of allegiance they are by no mean very exacting. So long as a member refrains from openly attacking the Church and from going over to another confession, he may entirely neglect all religious ordinances and publicly profess scientific theories logically inconsistent with any kind of dogmatic religious belief without the slightest danger of incurring ecclesiastical censure. This apathetic tolerance may be partly explained by the national character, but it is also to some extent due to the peculiar relations between Church and State. The government vigilantly protects the Church from attack, and at the same time prevents her from attacking her enemies. Hence religious questions are never discussed in the Press, and the ecclesiastical literature is all historical, homiletic, or devotional. The authorities allow public oral discussions to be held during Lent in the Kremlin of Moscow between members of the State Church and Old Ritualists; but these debates are not theological in our sense of the term. They turn exclusively on details of Church history, and on the minutiae of ceremonial observance. A few years ago there was a good deal of vague talk about a possible union of the Russian and Anglican Churches. If by "union" is meant simply union in the bonds of brotherly love, there can be, of course, no objection to any amount of such pia desideria; but if anything more real and practical is intended, the project is an absurdity. A real union of the Russian and Anglican Churches would be as difficult of realisation, and is as undesirable, as a union of the Russian Council of State and the British House of Commons.* * I suppose that the more serious partisans of the union scheme mean union with the Eastern Orthodox, and not with the Russian, Church. To them the above remarks are not addressed. Their scheme is, in my opinion, unrealisable and undesirable, but it contains nothing absurd. CHAPTER XX THE NOBLESSE The Nobles In Early Times--The Mongol Domination--The Tsardom of Muscovy--Family Dignity--Reforms of Peter the Great--The Nobles Adopt West-European Conceptions--Abolition of Obligatory Service--Influence of Catherine II.--The Russian Dvoryanstvo Compared with the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy--Russian Titles--Probable Future of the Russian Noblesse. Hitherto I have been compelling the reader to move about among what we should call the lower classes--peasants, burghers, traders, parish priests, Dissenters, heretics, Cossacks, and the like--and he feels perhaps inclined to complain that he has had no opportunity of mixing with what old-fashioned people call gentle-folk and persons of quality. By way of making amends to him for this reprehensible conduct on my part, I propose now to present him to the whole Noblesse* in a body, not only those at present living, but also their near and distant ancestors, right back to the foundation of the Russian Empire a thousand years ago. Thereafter I shall introduce him to some of the country families and invite him to make with me a few country-house visits. * I use here a foreign, in preference to an English, term, because the word "Nobility" would convey a false impression. Etymologically the Russian word "Dvoryanin" means a Courtier (from Dvor=court); but this term is equally objectionable, because the great majority of the Dvoryanstvo have nothing to do with the Court. In the old times, when Russia was merely a collection of some seventy independent principalities, each reigning prince was surrounded by a group of armed men, composed partly of Boyars, or large landed proprietors, and partly of knights, or soldiers of fortune. These men, who formed the Noblesse of the time, were to a certain extent under the authority of the Prince, but they were by no means mere obedient, silent executors of his will. The Boyars might refuse to take part in his military expeditions, and the "free-lances" might leave his service and seek employment elsewhere. If he wished to go to war without their consent, they could say to him, as they did on one occasion, "You have planned this yourself, Prince, so we will not go with you, for we knew nothing of it." Nor was this resistance to the princely will always merely passive. Once, in the principality of Galitch, the armed men seized their prince, killed his favourites, burned his mistress, and made him swear that he would in future live with his lawful wife. To his successor, who had married the wife of a priest, they spoke thus: "We have not risen against YOU, Prince, but we will not do reverence to a priest's wife: we will put her to death, and then you may marry whom you please." Even the energetic Bogolubski, one of the most remarkable of the old Princes, did not succeed in having his own way. When he attempted to force the Boyars he met with stubborn opposition, and was finally assassinated. From these incidents, which might be indefinitely multiplied from the old chronicles, we see that in the early period of Russian history the Boyars and knights were a body of free men, possessing a considerable amount of political power. Under the Mongol domination this political equilibrium was destroyed. When the country had been conquered, the Princes became servile vassals of the Khan and arbitrary rulers towards their own subjects. The political significance of the nobles was thereby greatly diminished. It was not, however, by any means annihilated. Though the Prince no longer depended entirely on their support, he had an interest in retaining their services, to protect his territory in case of sudden attack, or to increase his possessions at the expense of his neighbours when a convenient opportunity presented itself. Theoretically, such conquests were impossible, for all removing of the ancient landmarks depended on the decision of the Khan; but in reality the Khan paid little attention to the affairs of his vassals so long as the tribute was regularly paid; and much took place in Russia without his permission. We find, therefore, in some of the principalities the old relations still subsisting under Mongol rule. The famous Dmitri of the Don, for instance, when on his death-bed, speaks thus to his Boyars: "You know my habits and my character; I was born among you, grew up among you, governed with you--fighting by your side, showing you honour and love, and placing you over towns and districts. I loved your children, and did evil to no one. I rejoiced with you in your joy, mourned with you in your grief, and called you the princes of my land." Then, turning to his children, he adds, as a parting advice: "Love your Boyars, my children; show them the honour which their services merit, and undertake nothing without their consent." When the Grand Princes of Moscow brought the other principalities under their power, and formed them into the Tsardom of Muscovy, the nobles descended another step in the political scale. So long as there were many principalities they could quit the service of a Prince as soon as he gave them reason to be discontented, knowing that they would be well received by one of his rivals; but now they had no longer any choice. The only rival of Moscow was Lithuania, and precautions were taken to prevent the discontented from crossing the Lithuanian frontier. The nobles were no longer voluntary adherents of a Prince, but had become subjects of a Tsar; and the Tsars were not as the old Princes had been. By a violent legal fiction they conceived themselves to be the successors of the Byzantine Emperors, and created a new court ceremonial, borrowed partly from Constantinople and partly from the Mongol Horde. They no longer associated familiarly with the Boyars, and no longer asked their advice, but treated them rather as menials. When the nobles entered their august master's presence they prostrated themselves in Oriental fashion--occasionally as many as thirty times--and when they incurred his displeasure they were summarily flogged or executed, according to the Tsar's good pleasure. In succeeding to the power of the Khans, the Tsars had adopted, we see, a good deal of the Mongol system of government. It may seem strange that a class of men which had formerly shown a proud spirit of independence should have submitted quietly to such humiliation and oppression without making a serious effort to curb the new power, which had no longer a Tartar Horde at its back to quell opposition. But we must remember that the nobles, as well as the Princes, had passed in the meantime through the school of the Mongol domination. In the course of two centuries they had gradually become accustomed to despotic rule in the Oriental sense. If they felt their position humiliating and irksome, they must have felt, too, how difficult it was to better it. Their only resource lay in combining against the common oppressor; and we have only to glance at the motley, disorganised group, as they cluster round the Tsar, to perceive that combination was extremely difficult. We can distinguish there the mediatised Princes, still harbouring designs for the recovery of their independence; the Moscow Boyars, jealous of their family honour and proud of Muscovite supremacy; Tartar Murzi, who have submitted to be baptised and have received land like the other nobles; the Novgorodian magnate, who cannot forget the ancient glory of his native city; Lithuanian nobles, who find it more profitable to serve the Tsar than their own sovereign; petty chiefs who have fled from the opposition of the Teutonic order; and soldiers of fortune from every part of Russia. Strong, permanent political factors are not easily formed out of such heterogeneous material. At the end of the sixteenth century the old dynasty became extinct, and after a short period of political anarchy, commonly called "the troublous times" (smutnoe vremya), the Romanof family were raised to the throne by the will of the people, or at least by those who were assumed to be its representatives. By this change the Noblesse acquired a somewhat better position. They were no longer exposed to capricious tyranny and barbarous cruelty, such as they had experienced at the hands of Ivan the Terrible, but they did not, as a class, gain any political influence. There were still rival families and rival factions, but there were no political parties in the proper sense of the term, and the highest aim of families and factions was to gain the favour of the Tsar. The frequent quarrels about precedence which took place among the rival families at this period form one of the most curious episodes of Russian history. The old patriarchal conception of the family as a unit, one and indivisible, was still so strong among these men that the elevation or degradation of one member of a family was considered to affect deeply the honour of all the other members. Each noble family had its rank in a recognised scale of dignity, according to the rank which it held, or had previously held, in the Tsar's service; and a whole family would have considered itself dishonoured if one of its members accepted a post lower than that to which he was entitled. Whenever a vacant place in the service was filled up, the subordinates of the successful candidate examined the official records and the genealogical trees of their families, in order to discover whether some ancestor of their new superior had not served under one of their own ancestors. If the subordinate found such a case, he complained to the Tsar that it was not becoming for him to serve under a man who had less family honour than himself. Unfounded complaints of this kind often entailed imprisonment or corporal punishment, but in spite of this the quarrels for precedence were very frequent. At the commencement of a campaign many such disputes were sure to arise, and the Tsar's decision was not always accepted by the party who considered himself aggrieved. I have met at least with one example of a great dignitary voluntarily mutilating his hand in order to escape the necessity of serving under a man whom he considered his inferior in family dignity. Even at the Tsar's table these rivalries sometimes produced unseemly incidents, for it was almost impossible to arrange the places so as to satisfy all the guests. In one recorded instance a noble who received a place lower than that to which he considered himself entitled openly declared to the Tsar that he would rather be condemned to death than submit to such an indignity. In another instance of a similar kind the refractory guest was put on his chair by force, but saved his family honour by slipping under the table! The next transformation of the Noblesse was effected by Peter the Great. Peter was by nature and position an autocrat, and could brook no opposition. Having set before himself a great aim, he sought everywhere obedient, intelligent, energetic instruments to carry out his designs. He himself served the State zealously--as a common artisan, when he considered it necessary--and he insisted on all his subjects doing likewise, under pain of merciless punishment. To noble birth and long pedigrees he habitually showed a most democratic, or rather autocratic, indifference. Intent on obtaining the service of living men, he paid no attention to the claims of dead ancestors, and gave to his servants the pay and honour which their services merited, irrespectively of birth or social position. Hence many of his chief coadjutors had no connection with the old Russian families. Count Yaguzhinski, who long held one of the most important posts in the State, was the son of a poor sacristan; Count Devier was a Portuguese by birth, and had been a cabin-boy; Baron Shafirof was a Jew; Hannibal, who died with the rank of Commander in Chief, was a negro who had been bought in Constantinople; and his Serene Highness Prince Menshikof had begun life, it was said, as a baker's apprentice! For the future, noble birth was to count for nothing. The service of the State was thrown open to men of all ranks, and personal merit was to be the only claim to promotion. This must have seemed to the Conservatives of the time a most revolutionary and reprehensible proceeding, but it did not satisfy the reforming tendencies of the great autocrat. He went a step further, and entirely changed the legal status of the Noblesse. Down to his time the nobles were free to serve or not as they chose, and those who chose to serve enjoyed land on what we should call a feudal tenure. Some served permanently in the military or civil administration, but by far the greater number lived on their estates, and entered the active service merely when the militia was called out in view of war. This system was completely changed when Peter created a large standing army and a great centralised bureaucracy. By one of those "fell swoops" which periodically occur in Russian history, he changed the feudal into freehold tenures, and laid down the principle that all nobles, whatever their landed possessions might be, should serve the State in the army, the fleet, or the civil administration, from boyhood to old age. In accordance with this principle, any noble who refused to serve was not only deprived of his estate, as in the old times, but was declared to be a traitor and might be condemned to capital punishment. The nobles were thus transformed into servants of the State, and the State in the time of Peter was a hard taskmaster. They complained bitterly, and with reason, that they had been deprived of their ancient rights, and were compelled to accept quietly and uncomplainingly whatever burdens their master chose to place upon them. "Though our country," they said, "is in no danger of invasion, no sooner is peace concluded than plans are laid for a new war, which has generally no other foundation than the ambition of the Sovereign, or perhaps merely the ambition of one of his Ministers. To please him our peasants are utterly exhausted, and we ourselves are forced to leave our homes and families, not as formerly for a single campaign, but for long years. We are compelled to contract debts and to entrust our estates to thieving overseers, who commonly reduce them to such a condition that when we are allowed to retire from the service, in consequence of old age or illness, we cannot to the end of our lives retrieve our prosperity. In a word, we are so exhausted and ruined by the keeping up of a standing army, and by the consequences flowing therefrom, that the most cruel enemy, though he should devastate the whole Empire, could not cause us one-half of the injury."* * These complaints have been preserved by Vockerodt, a Prussian diplomatic agent of the time. This Spartan regime, which ruthlessly sacrificed private interests to considerations of State policy, could not long be maintained in its pristine severity. It undermined its own foundations by demanding too much. Draconian laws threatening confiscation and capital punishment were of little avail. Nobles became monks, inscribed themselves as merchants, or engaged themselves as domestic servants, in order to escape their obligations. "Some," says a contemporary, "grow old in disobedience and have never once appeared in active service. . . . There is, for instance, Theodore Mokeyef. . . . In spite of the strict orders sent regarding him no one could ever catch him. Some of those sent to take him he belaboured with blows, and when he could not beat the messengers, he pretended to be dangerously ill, or feigned idiocy, and, running into the pond, stood in the water up to his neck; but as soon as the messengers were out of sight he returned home and roared like a lion." * * Pososhkof, "O skudosti i bogatstve." After Peter's death the system was gradually relaxed, but the Noblesse could not be satisfied by partial concessions. Russia had in the meantime moved, as it were, out of Asia into Europe, and had become one of the great European Powers. The upper classes had been gradually learning something of the fashions, the literature, the institutions, and the moral conceptions of Western Europe, and the nobles naturally compared the class to which they belonged with the aristocracies of Germany and France. For those who were influenced by the new foreign ideas the comparison was humiliating. In the West the Noblesse was a free and privileged class, proud of its liberty, its rights, and its culture; whereas in Russia the nobles were servants of the State, without privileges, without dignity, subject to corporal punishment, and burdened with onerous duties from which there was no escape. Thus arose in that section of the Noblesse which had some acquaintance with Western civilisation a feeling of discontent, and a desire to gain a social position similar to that of the nobles in France and Germany. These aspirations were in part realised by Peter III., who in 1762 abolished the principle of obligatory service. His consort, Catherine II., went much farther in the same direction, and inaugurated a new epoch in the history of the Dvoryanstvo, a period in which its duties and obligations fell into the background, and its rights and privileges came to the front. Catherine had good reason to favour the Noblesse. As a foreigner and a usurper, raised to the throne by a Court conspiracy, she could not awaken in the masses that semi-religious veneration which the legitimate Tsars have always enjoyed, and consequently she had to seek support in the upper classes, who were less rigid and uncompromising in their conceptions of legitimacy. She confirmed, therefore, the ukaz which abolished obligatory service of the nobles, and sought to gain their voluntary service by honours and rewards. In her manifestoes she always spoke of them in the most flattering terms; and tried to convince them that the welfare of the country depended on their loyalty and devotion. Though she had no intention of ceding any of her political power, she formed the nobles of each province into a corporation, with periodical assemblies, which were supposed to resemble the French Provincial Parliaments, and entrusted to each of these corporations a large part of the local administration. By these and similar means, aided by her masculine energy and feminine tact, she made herself very popular, and completely changed the old conceptions about the public service. Formerly service had been looked on as a burden; now it came to be looked on as a privilege. Thousands who had retired to their estates after the publication of the liberation edict now flocked back and sought appointments, and this tendency was greatly increased by the brilliant campaigns against the Turks, which excited the patriotic feelings and gave plentiful opportunities of promotion. "Not only landed proprietors," it is said in a comedy of the time,* "but all men, even shopkeepers and cobblers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has passed his whole life without official rank seems to be not a human being." * Knyazhnina, "Khvastun." And Catherine did more than this. She shared the idea--generally accepted throughout Europe since the brilliant reign of Louis XIV.--that a refined, pomp-loving, pleasure-seeking Court Noblesse was not only the best bulwark of Monarchy, but also a necessary ornament of every highly civilised State; and as she ardently desired that her country should have the reputation of being highly civilised, she strove to create this national ornament. The love of French civilisation, which already existed among the upper classes of her subjects, here came to her aid, and her efforts in this direction were singularly successful. The Court of St. Petersburg became almost as brilliant, as galant, and as frivolous as the Court of Versailles. All who aimed at high honours adopted French fashions, spoke the French language, and affected an unqualified admiration for French classical literature. The Courtiers talked of the point d'honneur, discussed the question as to what was consistent with the dignity of a noble, sought to display "that chivalrous spirit which constitutes the pride and ornament of France"; and looked back with horror on the humiliating position of their fathers and grandfathers. "Peter the Great," writes one of them, "beat all who surrounded him, without distinction of family or rank; but now, many of us would certainly prefer capital punishment to being beaten or flogged, even though the castigation were applied by the sacred hands of the Lord's Anointed." The tone which reigned in the Court circle of St. Petersburg spread gradually towards the lower ranks of the Dvoryanstvo, and it seemed to superficial observers that a very fair imitation of the French Noblesse had been produced; but in reality the copy was very unlike the model. The Russian Dvoryanin easily learned the language and assumed the manners of the French gentilhomme, and succeeded in changing his physical and intellectual exterior; but all those deeper and more delicate parts of human nature which are formed by the accumulated experience of past generations could not be so easily and rapidly changed. The French gentilhomme of the eighteenth century was the direct descendant of the feudal baron, with the fundamental conceptions of his ancestors deeply embedded in his nature. He had not, indeed, the old haughty bearing towards the Sovereign, and his language was tinged with the fashionable democratic philosophy of the time; but he possessed a large intellectual and moral inheritance that had come down to him directly from the palmy days of feudalism--an inheritance which even the Great Revolution, which was then preparing, could not annihilate. The Russian noble, on the contrary, had received from his ancestors entirely different traditions. His father and grandfather had been conscious of the burdens rather than the privileges of the class to which they belonged. They had considered it no disgrace to receive corporal punishment, and had been jealous of their honour, not as gentlemen or descendants of Boyars, but as Brigadiers, College Assessors, or Privy Counsellors. Their dignity had rested not on the grace of God, but on the will of the Tsar. Under these circumstances even the proudest magnate of Catherine's Court, though he might speak French as fluently as his mother tongue, could not be very deeply penetrated with the conception of noble blood, the sacred character of nobility, and the numerous feudal ideas interwoven with these conceptions. And in adopting the outward forms of a foreign culture the nobles did not, it seems, gain much in true dignity. "The old pride of the nobles has fallen!" exclaims one who had more genuine aristocratic feeling than his fellows.* "There are no longer any honourable families; but merely official rank and personal merits. All seek official rank, and as all cannot render direct services, distinctions are sought by every possible means--by flattering the Monarch and toadying the important personages." There was considerable truth in this complaint, but the voice of this solitary aristocrat was as of one crying in the wilderness. The whole of the educated classes--men of old family and parvenus alike--were, with few exceptions, too much engrossed with place-hunting to attend to such sentimental wailing. * Prince Shtcherbatof. If the Russian Noblesse was thus in its new form but a very imperfect imitation of its French model, it was still more unlike the English aristocracy. Notwithstanding the liberal phrases in which Catherine habitually indulged, she never had the least intention of ceding one jot or tittle of her autocratic power, and the Noblesse as a class never obtained even a shadow of political influence. There was no real independence under the new airs of dignity and hauteur. In all their acts and openly expressed opinions the courtiers were guided by the real or supposed wishes of the Sovereign, and much of their political sagacity was employed in endeavouring to discover what would please her. "People never talk politics in the salons," says a contemporary witness,* "not even to praise the Government. Fear has produced habits of prudence, and the Frondeurs of the Capital express their opinions only in the confidence of intimate friendship or in a relationship still more confidential. Those who cannot bear this constraint retire to Moscow, which cannot be called the centre of opposition, for there is no such thing as opposition in a country with an autocratic Government, but which is the capital of the discontented." And even there the discontent did not venture to show itself in the Imperial presence. "In Moscow," says another witness, accustomed to the obsequiousness of Versailles, "you might believe yourself to be among republicans who have just thrown off the yoke of a tyrant, but as soon as the Court arrives you see nothing but abject slaves."** * Segur, long Ambassador of France at the Court of Catherine. ** Sabathier de Cabres, "Catherine II. et la Cour de Russie en 1772." Though thus excluded from direct influence in political affairs the Noblesse might still have acquired a certain political significance in the State, by means of the Provincial Assemblies, and by the part they took in local administration; but in reality they had neither the requisite political experience nor the requisite patience, nor even the desire to pursue such a policy. The majority of the proprietors preferred the chances of promotion in the Imperial service to the tranquil life of a country gentleman; and those who resided permanently on their estates showed indifference or positive antipathy to everything connected with the local administration. What was officially described as "a privilege conferred on the nobles for their fidelity, and for the generous sacrifice of their lives in their country's cause," was regarded by those who enjoyed it as a new kind of obligatory service--an obligation to supply judges and officers of rural police. If we require any additional proof that the nobles amidst all these changes were still as dependent as ever on the arbitrary will or caprice of the Monarch, we have only to glance at their position in the time of Paul I., the capricious, eccentric, violent son and successor of Catherine. The autobiographical memoirs of the time depict in vivid colours the humiliating position of even the leading men in the State, in constant fear of exciting by act, word, or look the wrath of the Sovereign. As we read these contemporary records we seem to have before us a picture of ancient Rome under the most despotic and capricious of her Emperors. Irritated and embittered before his accession to the throne by the haughty demeanour of his mother's favourites, Paul lost no opportunity of showing his contempt for aristocratic pretensions, and of humiliating those who were supposed to harbour them. "Apprenez, Monsieur," he said angrily on one occasion to Dumouriez, who had accidentally referred to one of the "considerable" personages of the Court, "Apprenez qu'il n'y a pas de considerable ici, que la personne a laquelle je parle et pendant le temps que je lui parle!"* * This saying is often falsely attributed to Nicholas. The anecdote is related by Segur. From the time of Catherine down to the accession of Alexander II. in 1855 no important change was made in the legal status of the Noblesse, but a gradual change took place in its social character by the continual influx of Western ideas and Western culture. The exclusively French culture in vogue at the Court of Catherine assumed a more cosmopolitan colouring, and permeated downwards till all who had any pretensions to being civilises spoke French with tolerable fluency and possessed at least a superficial acquaintance with the literature of Western Europe. What chiefly distinguished them in the eye of the law from the other classes was the privilege of possessing "inhabited estates"--that is to say, estates with serfs. By the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 this valuable privilege was abolished, and about one-half of their landed property passed into the hands of the peasantry. By the administrative reforms which have since taken place, any little significance which the provincial corporations may have possessed has been annihilated. Thus at the present day the nobles are on a level with the other classes with regard to the right of possessing landed property and the administration of local affairs. From this rapid sketch the reader will easily perceive that the Russian Noblesse has had a peculiar historical development. In Germany, France, and England the nobles were early formed into a homogeneous organised body by the political conditions in which they were placed. They had to repel the encroaching tendencies of the Monarchy on the one hand, and of the bourgeoisie on the other; and in this long struggle with powerful rivals they instinctively held together and developed a vigorous esprit de corps. New members penetrated into their ranks, but these intruders were so few in number that they were rapidly assimilated without modifying the general character or recognised ideals of the class, and without rudely disturbing the fiction of purity of blood. The class thus assumed more and more the nature of a caste with a peculiar intellectual and moral culture, and stoutly defended its position and privileges till the ever-increasing power of the middle classes undermined its influence. Its fate in different countries has been different. In Germany it clung to its feudal traditions, and still preserves its social exclusiveness. In France it was deprived of its political influence by the Monarchy and crushed by the Revolution. In England it moderated its pretensions, allied itself with the middle classes, created under the disguise of constitutional monarchy an aristocratic republic, and conceded inch by inch, as necessity demanded, a share of its political influence to the ally that had helped it to curb the Royal power. Thus the German baron, the French gentilhomme, and the English nobleman represent three distinct, well-marked types; but amidst all their diversities they have much in common. They have all preserved to a greater or less extent a haughty consciousness of innate inextinguishable superiority over the lower orders, together with a more or less carefully disguised dislike for the class which has been, and still is, an aggressive rival. The Russian Noblesse has not these characteristics. It was formed out of more heterogeneous materials, and these materials did not spontaneously combine to form an organic whole, but were crushed into a conglomerate mass by the weight of the autocratic power. It never became a semi-independent factor in the State. What rights and privileges it possesses it received from the Monarchy, and consequently it has no deep-rooted jealousy or hatred of the Imperial prerogative. On the other hand, it has never had to struggle with the other social classes, and therefore it harbours towards them no feelings of rivalry or hostility. If we hear a Russian noble speak with indignation of autocracy or with acrimony of the bourgeoisie, we may be sure that these feelings have their source, not in traditional conceptions, but in principles learned from the modern schools of social and political philosophy. The class to which he belongs has undergone so many transformations that it has no hoary traditions or deep-rooted prejudices, and always willingly adapts itself to existing conditions. Indeed, it may be said in general that it looks more to the future than the past, and is ever ready to accept any new ideas that wear the badge of progress. Its freedom from traditions and prejudices makes it singularly susceptible of generous enthusiasm and capable of vigorous spasmodic action, but calm moral courage and tenacity of purpose are not among its prominent attributes. In a word, we find in it neither the peculiar virtues nor the peculiar vices which are engendered and fostered by an atmosphere of political liberty. However we may explain the fact, there is no doubt that the Russian Noblesse has little or nothing of what we call aristocratic feeling--little or nothing of that haughty, domineering, exclusive spirit which we are accustomed to associate with the word aristocracy. We find plenty of Russians who are proud of their wealth, of their culture, or of their official position, but we rarely find a Russian who is proud of his birth or imagines that the fact of his having a long pedigree gives him any right to political privileges or social consideration. Hence there is a certain amount of truth in the oft-repeated saying that there is in reality no aristocracy in Russia. Certainly the Noblesse as a whole cannot be called an aristocracy. If the term is to be used at all, it must be applied to a group of families which cluster around the Court and form the highest ranks of the Noblesse. This social aristocracy contains many old families, but its real basis is official rank and general culture rather than pedigree or blood. The feudal conceptions of noble birth, good family, and the like have been adopted by some of its members, but do not form one of its conspicuous features. Though habitually practising a certain exclusiveness, it has none of those characteristics of a caste which we find in the German Adel, and is utterly unable to understand such institutions as Tafelfähigkeit, by which a man who has not a pedigree of a certain length is considered unworthy to sit down at a royal table. It takes rather the English aristocracy as its model, and harbours the secret hope of one day obtaining a social and political position similar to that of the nobility and gentry of England. Though it has no peculiar legal privileges, its actual position in the Administration and at Court gives its members great facilities for advancement in the public service. On the other hand, its semi-bureaucratic character, together with the law and custom of dividing landed property among the children at the death of their parents, deprives it of stability. New men force their way into it by official distinction, whilst many of the old families are compelled by poverty to retire from its ranks. The son of a small proprietor, or even of a parish priest, may rise to the highest offices of State, whilst the descendants of the half-mythical Rurik may descend to the position of peasants. It is said that not very long ago a certain Prince Krapotkin gained his living as a cabman in St. Petersburg! It is evident, then, that this social aristocracy must not be confounded with the titled families. Titles do not possess the same value in Russia as in Western Europe. They are very common--because the titled families are numerous, and all the children bear the titles of the parents even while the parents are still alive--and they are by no means always associated with official rank, wealth, social position, or distinction of any kind. There are hundreds of princes and princesses who have not the right to appear at Court, and who would not be admitted into what is called in St. Petersburg la societe, or indeed into refined society in any country. The only genuine Russian title is Knyaz, commonly translated "Prince." It is borne by the descendants of Rurik, of the Lithuanian Prince Ghedimin, and of the Tartar Khans and Murzi officially recognised by the Tsars. Besides these, there are fourteen families who have adopted it by Imperial command during the last two centuries. The titles of count and baron are modern importations, beginning with the time of Peter the Great. From Peter and his successors about seventy families have received the title of count and ten that of baron. The latter are all, with two exceptions, of foreign extraction, and are mostly descended from Court bankers.* * Besides these, there are of course the German counts and barons of the Baltic Provinces, who are Russian subjects. There is a very common idea that Russian nobles are as a rule enormously rich. This is a mistake. The majority of them are poor. At the time of the Emancipation, in 1861, there were 100,247 landed proprietors, and of these, more than 41,000 were possessors of less than twenty-one male serfs--that is to say, were in a condition of poverty. A proprietor who was owner of 500 serfs was not considered as by any means very rich, and yet there were only 3,803 proprietors belonging in that category. There were a few, indeed, whose possessions were enormous. Count Sheremetief, for instance, possessed more than 150,000 male serfs, or in other words more than 300,000 souls; and thirty years ago Count Orloff-Davydof owned considerably more than half a million of acres. The Demidof family derive colossal revenues from their mines, and the Strogonofs have estates which, if put together, would be sufficient in extent to form a good-sized independent State in Western Europe. The very rich families, however, are not numerous. The lavish expenditure in which Russian nobles often indulge indicates too frequently not large fortune, but simply foolish ostentation and reckless improvidence. Perhaps, after having spoken so much about the past history of the Noblesse, I ought to endeavour to cast its horoscope, or at least to say something of its probable future. Though predictions are always hazardous, it is sometimes possible, by tracing the great lines of history in the past, to follow them for a little distance into the future. If it be allowable to apply this method of prediction in the present matter, I should say that the Russian Dvoryanstvo will assimilate with the other classes, rather than form itself into an exclusive corporation. Hereditary aristocracies may be preserved--or at least their decomposition may be retarded--where they happen to exist, but it seems that they can no longer be created. In Western Europe there is a large amount of aristocratic sentiment, both in the nobles and in the people; but it exists in spite of, rather than in consequence of, actual social conditions. It is not a product of modern society, but an heirloom that has come down to us from feudal times, when power, wealth, and culture were in the hands of a privileged few. If there ever was in Russia a period corresponding to the feudal times in Western Europe, it has long since been forgotten. There is very little aristocratic sentiment either in the people or in the nobles, and it is difficult to imagine any source from which it could now be derived. More than this, the nobles do not desire to make such an acquisition. In so far as they have any political aspirations, they aim at securing the political liberty of the people as a whole, and not at acquiring exclusive rights and privileges for their own class. In that section which I have called a social aristocracy there are a few individuals who desire to gain exclusive political influence for the class to which they belong, but there is very little chance of their succeeding. If their desires were ever by chance realised, we should probably have a repetition of the scene which occurred in 1730. When in that year some of the great families raised the Duchess of Courland to the throne on condition of her ceding part of her power to a supreme council, the lower ranks of the Noblesse compelled her to tear up the constitution which she had signed! Those who dislike the autocratic power dislike the idea of an aristocratic oligarchy infinitely more. Nobles and people alike seem to hold instinctively the creed of the French philosopher, who thought it better to be governed by a lion of good family than by a hundred rats of his own species. Of the present condition of the Noblesse I shall again have occasion to speak when I come to consider the consequences of the Emancipation. CHAPTER XXI LANDED PROPRIETORS OF THE OLD SCHOOL Russian Hospitality--A Country-House--Its Owner Described--His Life, Past and Present--Winter Evenings--Books---Connection with the Outer World--The Crimean War and the Emancipation--A Drunken, Dissolute Proprietor--An Old General and his Wife--"Name Days"--A Legendary Monster--A Retired Judge--A Clever Scribe--Social Leniency--Cause of Demoralisation. Of all the foreign countries in which I have travelled, Russia certainly bears off the palm in the matter of hospitality. Every spring I found myself in possession of a large number of invitations from landed proprietors in different parts of the country--far more than I could possibly accept--and a great part of the summer was generally spent in wandering about from one country-house to another. I have no intention of asking the reader to accompany me in all these expeditions--for though pleasant in reality, they might be tedious in description--but I wish to introduce him to some typical examples of the landed proprietors. Among them are to be found nearly all ranks and conditions of men, from the rich magnate, surrounded with the refined luxury of West-European civilisation, to the poor, ill-clad, ignorant owner of a few acres which barely supply him with the necessaries of life. Let us take, first of all, a few specimens from the middle ranks. In one of the central provinces, near the bank of a sluggish, meandering stream, stands an irregular group of wooden constructions--old, unpainted, blackened by time, and surmounted by high, sloping roofs of moss-covered planks. The principal building is a long, one-storied dwelling-house, constructed at right angles to the road. At the front of the house is a spacious, ill-kept yard, and at the back an equally spacious shady garden, in which art carries on a feeble conflict with encroaching nature. At the other side of the yard, and facing the front door--or rather the front doors, for there are two--stand the stables, hay-shed, and granary, and near to that end of the house which is farthest from the road are two smaller houses, one of which is the kitchen, and the other the Lyudskaya, or servants' apartments. Beyond these we can perceive, through a single row of lime-trees, another group of time-blackened wooden constructions in a still more dilapidated condition. That is the farmyard. There is certainly not much symmetry in the disposition of these buildings, but there is nevertheless a certain order and meaning in the apparent chaos. All the buildings which do not require stoves are built at a considerable distance from the dwelling-house and kitchen, which are more liable to take fire; and the kitchen stands by itself, because the odour of cookery where oil is used is by no means agreeable, even for those whose olfactory nerves are not very sensitive. The plan of the house is likewise not without a certain meaning. The rigorous separation of the sexes, which formed a characteristic trait of old Russian society, has long since disappeared, but its influence may still be traced in houses built on the old model. The house in question is one of these, and consequently it is composed of three sections--at the one end the male apartments, at the other the female apartments, and in the middle the neutral territory, comprising the dining-room and the salon. This arrangement has its conveniences, and explains the fact that the house has two front doors. At the back is a third door, which opens from the neutral territory into a spacious verandah overlooking the garden. Here lives, and has lived for many years, Ivan Ivanovitch K----, a gentleman of the old school, and a very worthy man of his kind. If we look at him as he sits in his comfortable armchair, with his capacious dressing-gown hanging loosely about him, we shall be able to read at a glance something of his character. Nature endowed him with large bones and broad shoulders, and evidently intended him to be a man of great muscular power, but he has contrived to frustrate this benevolent intention, and has now more fat than muscle. His close-cropped head is round as a bullet, and his features are massive and heavy, but the heaviness is relieved by an expression of calm contentment and imperturbable good-nature, which occasionally blossoms into a broad grin. His face is one of those on which no amount of histrionic talent could produce a look of care and anxiety, and for this it is not to blame, for such an expression has never been demanded of it. Like other mortals, he sometimes experiences little annoyances, and on such occasions his small grey eyes sparkle and his face becomes suffused with a crimson glow that suggests apoplexy; but ill-fortune has never been able to get sufficiently firm hold of him to make him understand what such words as care and anxiety mean. Of struggle, disappointment, hope, and all the other feelings which give to human life a dramatic interest, he knows little by hearsay and nothing by experience. He has, in fact, always lived outside of that struggle for existence which modern philosophers declare to be the law of nature. Somewhere about seventy years ago Ivan Ivan'itch was born in the house where he still lives. His first lessons he received from the parish priest, and afterwards he was taught by a deacon's son, who had studied in the ecclesiastical seminary to so little purpose that he was unable to pass the final examination. By both of these teachers he was treated with extreme leniency, and was allowed to learn as little as he chose. His father wished him to study hard, but his mother was afraid that study might injure his health, and accordingly gave him several holidays every week. Under these circumstances his progress was naturally not very rapid, and he was still very slightly acquainted with the elementary rules of arithmetic, when his father one day declared that he was already eighteen years of age, and must at once enter the service. But what kind of service? Ivan had no natural inclination for any kind of activity. The project of entering him as a Junker in a cavalry regiment, the colonel of which was an old friend of the family, did not at all please him. He had no love for military service, and positively disliked the prospect of an examination. Whilst seeming, therefore, to bow implicitly to the paternal authority, he induced his mother to oppose the scheme. The dilemma in which Ivan found himself was this: in deference to his father he wished to be in the service and gain that official rank which every Russian noble desires to possess, and at the same time, in deference to his mother and his own tastes, he wished to remain at home and continue his indolent mode of life. The Marshal of the Noblesse, who happened to call one day, helped him out of the difficulty by offering to inscribe him as secretary in the Dvoryanskaya Opeka, a bureau which acts as curator for the estates of minors. All the duties of this office could be fulfilled by a paid secretary, and the nominal occupant would be periodically promoted as if he were an active official. This was precisely what Ivan required. He accepted eagerly the proposal, and obtained, in the course of seven years, without any effort on his part, the rank of "collegiate secretary," corresponding to the "capitaine-en-second" of the military hierarchy. To mount higher he would have had to seek some place where he could not have fulfilled his duty by proxy, so he determined to rest on his laurels, and sent in his resignation. Immediately after the termination of his official life his married life began. Before his resignation had been accepted he suddenly found himself one morning on the high road to matrimony. Here again there was no effort on his part. The course of true love, which is said never to run smooth for ordinary mortals, ran smooth for him. He never had even the trouble of proposing. The whole affair was arranged by his parents, who chose as bride for their son the only daughter of their nearest neighbour. The young lady was only about sixteen years of age, and was not remarkable for beauty, talent, or any other peculiarity, but she had one very important qualification--she was the daughter of a man who had an estate contiguous to their own, and who might give as a dowry a certain bit of land which they had long desired to add to their own property. The negotiations, being of a delicate nature, were entrusted to an old lady who had a great reputation for diplomatic skill in such matters, and she accomplished her mission with such success that in the course of a few weeks the preliminaries were arranged and the day fixed for the wedding. Thus Ivan Ivan'itch won his bride as easily as he had won his tchin of "collegiate secretary." Though the bridegroom had received rather than taken to himself a wife, and did not imagine for a moment that he was in love, he had no reason to regret the choice that was made for him. Maria Petrovna was exactly suited by character and education to be the wife of a man like Ivan Ivan'itch. She had grown up at home in the society of nurses and servant-maids, and had never learned anything more than could be obtained from the parish priest and from "Ma'mselle," a personage occupying a position midway between a servant-maid and a governess. The first events of her life were the announcement that she was to be married and the preparations for the wedding. She still remembers the delight which the purchase of her trousseau afforded her, and keeps in her memory a full catalogue of the articles bought. The first years of her married life were not very happy, for she was treated by her mother-in-law as a naughty child who required to be frequently snubbed and lectured; but she bore the discipline with exemplary patience, and in due time became her own mistress and autocratic ruler in all domestic affairs. From that time she has lived an active, uneventful life. Between her and her husband there is as much mutual attachment as can reasonably be expected in phlegmatic natures after half a century of matrimony. She has always devoted her energies to satisfying his simple material wants--of intellectual wants he has none--and securing his comfort in every possible way. Under this fostering care he "effeminated himself" (obabilsya), as he is wont to say. His love of shooting died out, he cared less and less to visit his neighbours, and each successive year he spent more and more time in his comfortable arm-chair. The daily life of this worthy couple is singularly regular and monotonous, varying only with the changing seasons. In summer Ivan Ivan'itch gets up about seven o'clock, and puts on, with the assistance of his valet de chambre, a simple costume, consisting chiefly of a faded, plentifully stained dressing-gown. Having nothing particular to do, he sits down at the open window and looks into the yard. As the servants pass he stops and questions them, and then gives them orders, or scolds them, as circumstances demand. Towards nine o'clock tea is announced, and he goes into the dining-room--a long, narrow apartment with bare wooden floor and no furniture but a table and chairs, all in a more or less rickety condition. Here he finds his wife with the tea-urn before her. In a few minutes the grandchildren come in, kiss their grandpapa's hand, and take their places round the table. As this morning meal consists merely of bread and tea, it does not last long; and all disperse to their several occupations. The head of the house begins the labours of the day by resuming his seat at the open window. When he has smoked some cigarettes and indulged in a proportionate amount of silent contemplation, he goes out with the intention of visiting the stables and farmyard, but generally before he has crossed the court he finds the heat unbearable, and returns to his former position by the open window. Here he sits tranquilly till the sun has so far moved round that the verandah at the back of the house is completely in the shade, when he has his arm-chair removed thither, and sits there till dinner-time. Maria Petrovna spends her morning in a more active way. As soon as the breakfast table has been cleared she goes to the larder, takes stock of the provisions, arranges the menu du jour, and gives to the cook the necessary materials, with detailed instructions as to how they are to be prepared. The rest of the morning she devotes to her other household duties. Towards one o'clock dinner is announced, and Ivan Ivan'itch prepares his appetite by swallowing at a gulp a wineglassful of home-made bitters. Dinner is the great event of the day. The food is abundant and of good quality, but mushrooms, onions, and fat play a rather too important part in the repast, and the whole is prepared with very little attention to the recognised principles of culinary hygiene. Many of the dishes, indeed, would make a British valetudinarian stand aghast, but they seem to produce no bad effect on those Russian organisms which have never been weakened by town life, nervous excitement, or intellectual exertion. No sooner has the last dish been removed than a deathlike stillness falls upon the house: it is the time of the after-dinner siesta. The young folks go into the garden, and all the other members of the household give way to the drowsiness naturally engendered by a heavy meal on a hot summer day. Ivan Ivan'itch retires to his own room, from which the flies have been carefully expelled. Maria Petrovna dozes in an arm-chair in the sitting-room, with a pocket-handkerchief spread over her face. The servants snore in the corridors, the garret, or the hay-shed; and even the old watch-dog in the corner of the yard stretches himself out at full length on the shady side of his kennel. In about two hours the house gradually re-awakens. Doors begin to creak; the names of various servants are bawled out in all tones, from bass to falsetto; and footsteps are heard in the yard. Soon a man-servant issues from the kitchen bearing an enormous tea-urn, which puffs like a little steam-engine. The family assembles for tea. In Russia, as elsewhere, sleep after a heavy meal produces thirst, so that the tea and other beverages are very acceptable. Then some little delicacies are served--such as fruit and wild berries, or cucumbers with honey, or something else of the kind, and the family again disperses. Ivan Ivan'itch takes a turn in the fields on his begovuiya droshki--an extremely light vehicle composed of two pairs of wheels joined together by a single board, on which the driver sits stride-legged; and Maria Petrovna probably receives a visit from the Popadya (the priest's wife), who is the chief gossipmonger of the neighbourhood. There is not much scandal in the district, but what little there is the Popadya carefully collects, and distributes among her acquaintances with undiscriminating generosity. In the evening it often happens that a little group of peasants come into the court, and ask to see the "master." The master goes to the door, and generally finds that they have some favour to request. In reply to his question, "Well, children, what do you want?" they tell their story in a confused, rambling way, several of them speaking at a time, and he has to question and cross-question them before he comes to understand clearly what they desire. If he tells them he cannot grant it, they probably do not accept a first refusal, but endeavour by means of supplication to make him reconsider his decision. Stepping forward a little, and bowing low, one of the group begins in a half-respectful, half-familiar, caressing tone: "Little Father, Ivan Ivan'itch, be gracious; you are our father, and we are your children"--and so on. Ivan Ivan'itch good-naturedly listens, and again explains that he cannot grant what they ask; but they have still hopes of gaining their point by entreaty, and continue their supplications till at last his patience is exhausted and he says to them in a paternal tone, "Now, enough! enough! you are blockheads--blockheads all round! There's no use talking; it can't be done." And with these words he enters the house, so as to prevent all further discussion. A regular part of the evening's occupation is the interview with the steward. The work that has just been done, and the programme for the morrow, are always discussed at great length; and much time is spent in speculating as to the weather during the next few days. On this latter point the calendar is always carefully consulted, and great confidence is placed in its predictions, though past experience has often shown that they are not to be implicitly trusted. The conversation drags on till supper is announced, and immediately after that meal, which is an abridged repetition of dinner, all retire for the night. Thus pass the days and weeks and months in the house of Ivan Ivan'itch, and rarely is there any deviation from the ordinary programme. The climate necessitates, of course, some slight modifications. When it is cold, the doors and windows have to be kept shut, and after heavy rains those who do not like to wade in mud have to remain in the house or garden. In the long winter evenings the family assembles in the sitting-room, and all kill time as best they can. Ivan Ivan'itch smokes and meditates or listens to the barrel-organ played by one of the children. Maria Petrovna knits a stocking. The old aunt, who commonly spends the winter with them, plays Patience, and sometimes draws from the game conclusions as to the future. Her favourite predictions are that a stranger will arrive, or that a marriage will take place, and she can determine the sex of the stranger and the colour of the bridegroom's hair; but beyond this her art does not go, and she cannot satisfy the young ladies' curiosity as to further details. Books and newspapers are rarely seen in the sitting-room, but for those who wish to read there is a book-case full of miscellaneous literature, which gives some idea of the literary tastes of the family during several generations. The oldest volumes were bought by Ivan Ivan'itch's grandfather--a man who, according to the family traditions, enjoyed the confidence of the great Catherine. Though wholly overlooked by recent historians, he was evidently a man who had some pretensions to culture. He had his portrait painted by a foreign artist of considerable talent--it still hangs in the sitting-room--and he bought several pieces of Sevres ware, the last of which stands on a commode in the corner and contrasts strangely with the rude home-made furniture and squalid appearance of the apartment. Among the books which bear his name are the tragedies of Sumarokof, who imagined himself to be "the Russian Voltaire"; the amusing comedies of Von-Wisin, some of which still keep the stage; the loud-sounding odes of the courtly Derzhavin; two or three books containing the mystic wisdom of Freemasonry as interpreted by Schwarz and Novikoff; Russian translations of Richardson's "Pamela," "Sir Charles Grandison," and "Clarissa Harlowe"; Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise," in Russian garb; and three or four volumes of Voltaire in the original. Among the works collected at a somewhat later period are translations of Ann Radcliffe, of Scott's early novels, and of Ducray Dumenil, whose stories, "Lolotte et Fanfan" and "Victor," once enjoyed a great reputation. At this point the literary tastes of the family appear to have died out, for the succeeding literature is represented exclusively by Kryloff's Fables, a farmer's manual, a handbook of family medicine, and a series of calendars. There are, however, some signs of a revival, for on the lowest shelf stand recent editions of Pushkin, Lermontof, and Gogol, and a few works by living authors. Sometimes the monotony of the winter is broken by visiting neighbours and receiving visitors in return, or in a more decided way by a visit of a few days to the capital of the province. In the latter case Maria Petrovna spends nearly all her time in shopping, and brings home a large collection of miscellaneous articles. The inspection of these by the assembled family forms an important domestic event, which completely throws into the shade the occasional visits of peddlers and colporteurs. Then there are the festivities at Christmas and Easter, and occasionally little incidents of less agreeable kind. It may be that there is a heavy fall of snow, so that it is necessary to cut roads to the kitchen and stables; or wolves enter the courtyard at night and have a fight with the watch-dogs; or the news is brought that a peasant who had been drinking in a neighbouring village has been found frozen to death on the road. Altogether the family live a very isolated life, but they have one bond of connection with the great outer world. Two of the sons are officers in the army and both of them write home occasionally to their mother and sisters. To these two youths is devoted all the little stock of sentimentality which Maria Petrovna possesses. She can talk of them by the hour to any one who will listen to her, and has related to the Popadya a hundred times every trivial incident of their lives. Though they have never given her much cause for anxiety, and they are now men of middle age, she lives in constant fear that some evil may befall them. What she most fears is that they may be sent on a campaign or may fall in love with actresses. War and actresses are, in fact, the two bug-bears of her existence, and whenever she has a disquieting dream she asks the priest to offer up a moleben for the safety of her absent ones. Sometimes she ventures to express her anxiety to her husband, and recommends him to write to them; but he considers writing a letter a very serious bit of work, and always replies evasively, "Well, well, we must think about it." During the Crimean War Ivan Ivan'itch half awoke from his habitual lethargy, and read occasionally the meagre official reports published by the Government. He was a little surprised that no great victories were reported, and that the army did not at once advance on Constantinople. As to causes he never speculated. Some of his neighbours told him that the army was disorganised, and the whole system of Nicholas had been proved to be utterly worthless. That might all be very true, but he did not understand military and political matters. No doubt it would all come right in the end. All did come right, after a fashion, and he again gave up reading newspapers; but ere long he was startled by reports much more alarming than any rumours of war. People began to talk about the peasant question, and to say openly that the serfs must soon be emancipated. For once in his life Ivan Ivan'itch asked explanations. Finding one of his neighbours, who had always been a respectable, sensible man, and a severe disciplinarian, talking in this way, he took him aside and asked what it all meant. The neighbour explained that the old order of things had shown itself bankrupt and was doomed, that a new epoch was opening, that everything was to be reformed, and that the Emperor, in accordance with a secret clause of the Treaty with the Allies, was about to grant a Constitution! Ivan Ivan'itch listened for a little in silence, and then, with a gesture of impatience, interrupted the speaker: "Polno duratchitsya! enough of fun and tomfoolery. Vassili Petrovitch, tell me seriously what you mean." When Vassili Petrovitch vowed that he spoke in all seriousness, his friend gazed at him with a look of intense compassion, and remarked, as he turned away, "So you, too, have gone out of your mind!" The utterances of Vassili Petrovitch, which his lethargic, sober-minded friend regarded as indicating temporary insanity in the speaker, represented fairly the mental condition of very many Russian nobles at that time, and were not without a certain foundation. The idea about a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris was purely imaginary, but it was quite true that the country was entering on an epoch of great reforms, among which the Emancipation question occupied the chief place. Of this even the sceptical Ivan Ivan'itch was soon convinced. The Emperor formally declared to the Noblesse of the province of Moscow that the actual state of things could not continue forever, and called on the landed proprietors to consider by what means the condition of their serfs might be ameliorated. Provincial committees were formed for the purpose of preparing definite projects, and gradually it became apparent that the emancipation of the serfs was really at hand. Ivan Ivan'itch was alarmed at the prospect of losing his authority over his serfs. Though he had never been a cruel taskmaster, he had not spared the rod when he considered it necessary, and he believed birch twigs to be a necessary instrument in the Russian system of agriculture. For some time he drew consolation from the thought that peasants were not birds of the air, that they must under all circumstances require food and clothing, and that they would be ready to serve him as agricultural labourers; but when he learned that they were to receive a large part of the estate for their own use, his hopes fell, and he greatly feared that he would be inevitably ruined. These dark forebodings have not been by any means realised. His serfs were emancipated and received about a half of the estate, but in return for the land ceded they paid him annually a considerable sum, and they were always ready to cultivate his fields for a fair remuneration. The yearly outlay was considerably greater, but the price of grain rose, and this counterbalanced the additional yearly expenditure. The administration of the estate has become much less patriarchal; much that was formerly left to custom and tacit understanding is now regulated by express agreement on purely commercial principles; a great deal more money is paid out and a great deal more received; there is much less authority in the hands of the master, and his responsibilities are proportionately diminished; but in spite of all these changes, Ivan Ivan'itch would have great difficulty in deciding whether he is a richer or a poorer man. He has fewer horses and fewer servants, but he has still more than he requires, and his mode of life has undergone no perceptible alteration. Maria Petrovna complains that she is no longer supplied with eggs, chickens, and homespun linen by the peasants, and that everything is three times as dear as it used to be; but somehow the larder is still full, and abundance reigns in the house as of old. Ivan Ivan'itch certainly does not possess transcendent qualities of any kind. It would be impossible to make a hero out of him, even though his own son should be his biographer. Muscular Christians may reasonably despise him, an active, energetic man may fairly condemn him for his indolence and apathy. But, on the other hand, he has no very bad qualities. His vices are of the passive, negative kind. He is a respectable if not a distinguished member of society, and appears a very worthy man when compared with many of his neighbours who have been brought up in similar conditions. Take, for instance, his younger brother Dimitri, who lives a short way off. Dimitri Ivanovitch, like his brother Ivan, had been endowed by nature with a very decided repugnance to prolonged intellectual exertion, but as he was a man of good parts he did not fear a Junker's examination--especially when he could count on the colonel's protection--and accordingly entered the army. In his regiment were a number of jovial young officers like himself, always ready to relieve the monotony of garrison life by boisterous dissipation, and among these he easily acquired the reputation of being a thoroughly good fellow. In drinking bouts he could hold his own with the best of them, and in all mad pranks invariably played the chief part. By this means he endeared himself to his comrades, and for a time all went well. The colonel had himself sown wild oats plentifully in his youth, and was quite disposed to overlook, as far as possible, the bacchanalian peccadilloes of his subordinates. But before many years had passed, the regiment suddenly changed its character. Certain rumours had reached headquarters, and the Emperor Nicholas appointed as colonel a stern disciplinarian of German origin, who aimed at making the regiment a kind of machine that should work with the accuracy of a chronometer. This change did not at all suit the tastes of Dimitri Ivan'itch. He chafed under the new restraints, and as soon as he had gained the rank of lieutenant retired from the service to enjoy the freedom of country life. Shortly afterwards his father died, and he thereby became owner of an estate, with two hundred serfs. He did not, like his elder brother, marry, and "effeminate himself," but he did worse. In his little independent kingdom--for such was practically a Russian estate in the good old times--he was lord of all he surveyed, and gave full scope to his boisterous humour, his passion for sport, and his love of drinking and dissipation. Many of the mad pranks in which he indulged will long be preserved by popular tradition, but they cannot well be related here. Dimitri Ivan'itch is now a man long past middle age, and still continues his wild, dissipated life. His house resembles an ill-kept, disreputable tavern. The floor is filthy, the furniture chipped and broken, the servants indolent, slovenly, and in rags. Dogs of all breeds and sizes roam about the rooms and corridors. The master, when not asleep, is always in a more or less complete state of intoxication. Generally he has one or two guests staying with him--men of the same type as himself--and days and nights are spent in drinking and card-playing. When he cannot have his usual boon-companions he sends for one or two small proprietors who live near--men who are legally nobles, but who are so poor that they differ little from peasants. Formerly, when ordinary resources failed, he occasionally had recourse to the violent expedient of ordering his servants to stop the first passing travellers, whoever they might be, and bring them in by persuasion or force, as circumstances might demand. If the travellers refused to accept such rough, undesired hospitality, a wheel would be taken off their tarantass, or some indispensable part of the harness would be secreted, and they might consider themselves fortunate if they succeeded in getting away next morning.* * This custom has fortunately gone out of fashion even in outlying districts, but an incident of the kind happened to a friend of mine as late as 1871. He was detained against his will for two whole days by a man whom he had never seen before, and at last effected his escape by bribing the servants of his tyrannical host. In the time of serfage the domestic serfs had much to bear from their capricious, violent master. They lived in an atmosphere of abusive language, and were subjected not unfrequently to corporal punishment. Worse than this, their master was constantly threatening to "shave their forehead"--that is to say, to give them as recruits--and occasionally he put his threat into execution, in spite of the wailings and entreaties of the culprit and his relations. And yet, strange to say, nearly all of them remained with him as free servants after the Emancipation. In justice to the Russian landed proprietors, I must say that the class represented by Dimitri Ivan'itch has now almost disappeared. It was the natural result of serfage and social stagnation--of a state of society in which there were few legal and moral restraints, and few inducements to honourable activity. Among the other landed proprietors of the district, one of the best known is Nicolai Petrovitch B----, an old military man with the rank of general. Like Ivan Ivan'itch, he belongs to the old school; but the two men must be contrasted rather than compared. The difference in their lives and characters is reflected in their outward appearance. Ivan Ivan'itch, as we know, is portly in form and heavy in all his movements, and loves to loll in his arm-chair or to loaf about the house in a capacious dressing-gown. The General, on the contrary, is thin, wiry, and muscular, wears habitually a close-buttoned military tunic, and always has a stern expression, the force of which is considerably augmented by a bristly moustache resembling a shoe-brush. As he paces up and down the room, knitting his brows and gazing at the floor, he looks as if he were forming combinations of the first magnitude; but those who know him well are aware that this is an optical delusion, of which he is himself to some extent a victim. He is quite innocent of deep thought and concentrated intellectual effort. Though he frowns so fiercely he is by no means of a naturally ferocious temperament. Had he passed all his life in the country he would probably have been as good-natured and phlegmatic as Ivan Ivan'itch himself, but, unlike that worshipper of tranquillity, he had aspired to rise in the service, and had adopted the stern, formal bearing which the Emperor Nicholas considered indispensable in an officer. The manner which he had at first put on as part of his uniform became by the force of habit almost a part of his nature, and at the age of thirty he was a stern disciplinarian and uncompromising formalist, who confined his attention exclusively to drill and other military duties. Thus he rose steadily by his own merit, and reached the goal of his early ambition--the rank of general. As soon as this point was reached he determined to leave the service and retire to his property. Many considerations urged him to take this step. He enjoyed the title of Excellency which he had long coveted, and when he put on his full uniform his breast was bespangled with medals and decorations. Since the death of his father the revenues of his estate had been steadily decreasing, and report said that the best wood in his forest was rapidly disappearing. His wife had no love for the country, and would have preferred to settle in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but they found that with their small income they could not live in a large town in a style suitable to their rank. The General determined to introduce order into his estate, and become a practical farmer; but a little experience convinced him that his new functions were much more difficult than the commanding of a regiment. He has long since given over the practical management of the property to a steward, and he contents himself with exercising what he imagines to be an efficient control. Though he wishes to do much, he finds small scope for his activity, and spends his days in pretty much the same way as Ivan Ivan'itch, with this difference, that he plays cards whenever he gets an opportunity, and reads regularly the Moscow Gazette and Russki Invalid, the official military paper. What specially interests him is the list of promotions, retirements, and Imperial rewards for merit and seniority. When he sees the announcement that some old comrade has been made an officer of his Majesty's suite or has received a grand cordon, he frowns a little more than usual, and is tempted to regret that he retired from the service. Had he waited patiently, perhaps a bit of good fortune might have fallen likewise to his lot. This idea takes possession of him, and during the remainder of the day he is taciturn and morose. His wife notices the change, and knows the reason of it, but has too much good sense and tact to make any allusion to the subject. Anna Alexandrovna--as the good lady is called--is an elderly dame who does not at all resemble the wife of Ivan Ivan'itch. She was long accustomed to a numerous military society, with dinner-parties, dancing, promenades, card-playing, and all the other amusements of garrison life, and she never contracted a taste for domestic concerns. Her knowledge of culinary affairs is extremely vague, and she has no idea of how to make preserves, nalivka, and other home-made delicacies, though Maria Petrovna, who is universally acknowledged to be a great adept in such matters, has proposed a hundred times to give her some choice recipes. In short, domestic affairs are a burden to her, and she entrusts them as far as possible to the housekeeper. Altogether she finds country life very tiresome, but, possessing that placid, philosophical temperament which seems to have some casual connection with corpulence, she submits without murmuring, and tries to lighten a little the unavoidable monotony by paying visits and receiving visitors. The neighbours within a radius of twenty miles are, with few exceptions, more or less of the Ivan Ivan'itch and Maria Petrovna type--decidedly rustic in their manners and conceptions; but their company is better than absolute solitude, and they have at least the good quality of being always able and willing to play cards for any number of hours. Besides this, Anna Alexandrovna has the satisfaction of feeling that amongst them she is almost a great personage, and unquestionably an authority in all matters of taste and fashion; and she feels specially well disposed towards those of them who frequently address her as "Your Excellency." The chief festivities take place on the "name-days" of the General and his spouse--that is to say, the days sacred to St. Nicholas and St. Anna. On these occasions all the neighbours come to offer their congratulations, and remain to dinner as a matter of course. After dinner the older visitors sit down to cards, and the young people extemporise a dance. The fete is specially successful when the eldest son comes home to take part in it, and brings a brother officer with him. He is now a general like his father.* In days gone by one of his comrades was expected to offer his hand to Olga Nekola'vna, the second daughter, a delicate young lady who had been educated in one of the great Instituts--gigantic boarding-schools, founded and kept up by the Government, for the daughters of those who are supposed to have deserved well of their country. Unfortunately the expected offer was never made, and she and her sister live at home as old maids, bewailing the absence of "civilised" society, and killing time in a harmless, elegant way by means of music, needlework, and light literature. * Generals are much more common in Russia than in other countries. A few years ago there was an old lady in Moscow who had a family of ten sons, all of whom were generals! The rank may be obtained in the civil as well as the military service. At these "name-day" gatherings one used to meet still more interesting specimens of the old school. One of them I remember particularly. He was a tall, corpulent old man, in a threadbare frock-coat, which wrinkled up about his waist. His shaggy eyebrows almost covered his small, dull eyes, his heavy moustache partially concealed a large mouth strongly indicating sensuous tendencies. His hair was cut so short that it was difficult to say what its colour would be if it were allowed to grow. He always arrived in his tarantass just in time for the zakuska--the appetising collation that is served shortly before dinner--grunted out a few congratulations to the host and hostess and monosyllabic greetings to his acquaintances, ate a copious meal, and immediately afterwards placed himself at a card-table, where he sat in silence as long as he could get any one to play with him. People did not like, however, to play with Andrei Vassil'itch, for his society was not agreeable, and he always contrived to go home with a well-filled purse. Andrei Vassil'itch was a noted man in the neighbourhood. He was the centre of a whole cycle of legends, and I have often heard that his name was used with effect by nurses to frighten naughty children. I never missed an opportunity of meeting him, for I was curious to see and study a legendary monster in the flesh. How far the numerous stories told about him were true I cannot pretend to say, but they were certainly not without foundation. In his youth he had served for some time in the army, and was celebrated, even in an age when martinets had always a good chance of promotion, for his brutality to his subordinates. His career was cut short, however, when he had only the rank of captain. Having compromised himself in some way, he found it advisable to send in his resignation and retire to his estate. Here he organised his house on Mahometan rather than Christian principles, and ruled his servants and peasants as he had been accustomed to rule his soldiers--using corporal punishment in merciless fashion. His wife did not venture to protest against the Mahometan arrangements, and any peasant who stood in the way of their realisation was at once given as a recruit, or transported to Siberia, in accordance with his master's demand.* At last his tyranny and extortion drove his serfs to revolt. One night his house was surrounded and set on fire, but he contrived to escape the fate that was prepared for him, and caused all who had taken part in the revolt to be mercilessly punished. This was a severe lesson, but it had no effect upon him. Taking precautions against a similar surprise, he continued to tyrannise and extort as before, until in 1861 the serfs were emancipated, and his authority came to an end. * When a proprietor considered any of his serfs unruly he could, according to law, have them transported to Siberia without trial, on condition of paying the expenses of transport. Arrived at their destination, they received land, and lived as free colonists, with the single restriction that they were not allowed to leave the locality where they settled. A very different sort of man was Pavel Trophim'itch, who likewise came regularly to pay his respects and present his congratulations to the General and "Gheneralsha."* It was pleasant to turn from the hard, wrinkled, morose features of the legendary monster to the soft, smooth, jovial face of this man, who had been accustomed to look at the bright side of things, till his face had caught something of their brightness. "A good, jovial, honest face!" a stranger might exclaim as he looked at him. Knowing something of his character and history, I could not endorse such an opinion. Jovial he certainly was, for few men were more capable of making and enjoying mirth. Good he might be also called, if the word were taken in the sense of good-natured, for he never took offence, and was always ready to do a kindly action if it did not cost him any trouble. But as to his honesty, that required some qualification. Wholly untarnished his reputation certainly could not be, for he had been a judge in the District Court before the time of the judicial reforms; and, not being a Cato, he had succumbed to the usual temptations. He had never studied law, and made no pretensions to the possession of great legal knowledge. To all who would listen to him he declared openly that he knew much more about pointers and setters than about legal formalities. But his estate was very small, and he could not afford to give up his appointment. * The female form of the word General. Of these unreformed Courts, which are happily among the things of the past, I shall have occasion to speak in the sequel. For the present I wish merely to say that they were thoroughly corrupt, and I hasten to add that Pavel Trophim'itch was by no means a judge of the worst kind. He had been known to protect widows and orphans against those who wished to despoil them, and no amount of money would induce him to give an unjust decision against a friend who had privately explained the case to him; but when he knew nothing of the case or of the parties he readily signed the decision prepared by the secretary, and quietly pocketed the proceeds, without feeling any very disagreeable twinges of conscience. All judges, he knew, did likewise, and he had no pretension to being better than his fellows. When Pavel Trophim'itch played cards at the General's house or elsewhere, a small, awkward, clean-shaven man, with dark eyes and a Tartar cast of countenance, might generally be seen sitting at the same table. His name was Alexei Petrovitch T----. Whether he really had any Tartar blood in him it is impossible to say, but certainly his ancestors for one or two generations were all good orthodox Christians. His father had been a poor military surgeon in a marching regiment, and he himself had become at an early age a scribe in one of the bureaux of the district town. He was then very poor, and had great difficulty in supporting life on the miserable pittance which he received as a salary; but he was a sharp, clever youth, and soon discovered that even a scribe had a great many opportunities of extorting money from the ignorant public. These opportunities Alexei Petrovitch used with great ability, and became known as one of the most accomplished bribe-takers (vzyatotchniki) in the district. His position, however, was so very subordinate that he would never have become rich had he not fallen upon a very ingenious expedient which completely succeeded. Hearing that a small proprietor, who had an only daughter, had come to live in the town for a few weeks, he took a room in the inn where the newcomers lived, and when he had made their acquaintance he fell dangerously ill. Feeling his last hours approaching, he sent for a priest, confided to him that he had amassed a large fortune, and requested that a will should be drawn up. In the will he bequeathed large sums to all his relations, and a considerable sum to the parish church. The whole affair was to be kept a secret till after his death, but his neighbour--the old gentleman with the daughter--was called in to act as a witness. When all this had been done he did not die, but rapidly recovered, and now induced the old gentleman to whom he had confided his secret to grant him his daughter's hand. The daughter had no objections to marry a man possessed of such wealth, and the marriage was duly celebrated. Shortly after this the father died--without discovering, it is to be hoped, the hoax that had been perpetrated--and Alexei Petrovitch became virtual possessor of a very comfortable little estate. With the change in his fortunes he completely changed his principles, or at least his practice. In all his dealings he was strictly honest. He lent money, it is true, at from ten to fifteen per cent., but that was considered in these parts not a very exorbitant rate of interest, nor was he unnecessarily hard upon his debtors. It may seem strange that an honourable man like the General should receive in his house such a motley company, comprising men of decidedly tarnished reputation; but in this respect he was not at all peculiar. One constantly meets in Russian society persons who are known to have been guilty of flagrant dishonesty, and we find that men who are themselves honourable enough associate with them on friendly terms. This social leniency, moral laxity, or whatever else it may be called, is the result of various causes. Several concurrent influences have tended to lower the moral standard of the Noblesse. Formerly, when the noble lived on his estate, he could play with impunity the petty tyrant, and could freely indulge his legitimate and illegitimate caprices without any legal or moral restraint. I do not at all mean to assert that all proprietors abused their authority, but I venture to say that no class of men can long possess such enormous arbitrary power over those around them without being thereby more or less demoralised. When the noble entered the service he had not the same immunity from restraint--on the contrary, his position resembled rather that of the serf--but he breathed an atmosphere of peculation and jobbery, little conducive to moral purity and uprightness. If an official had refused to associate with those who were tainted with the prevailing vices, he would have found himself completely isolated, and would have been ridiculed as a modern Don Quixote. Add to this that all classes of the Russian people have a certain kindly, apathetic good-nature which makes them very charitable towards their neighbours, and that they do not always distinguish between forgiving private injury and excusing public delinquencies. If we bear all this in mind, we may readily understand that in the time of serfage and maladministration a man could be guilty of very reprehensible practises without incurring social excommunication. During the period of moral awakening, after the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I., society revelled in virtuous indignation against the prevailing abuses, and placed on the pillory the most prominent delinquents; but the intensity of the moral feeling has declined, and something of the old apathy has returned. This might have been predicted by any one well acquainted with the character and past history of the Russian people. Russia advances on the road of progress, not in that smooth, gradual, prosaic way to which we are accustomed, but by a series of unconnected, frantic efforts, each of which is naturally followed by a period of temporary exhaustion. CHAPTER XXII PROPRIETORS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL A Russian Petit Maitre--His House and Surroundings--Abortive Attempts to Improve Agriculture and the Condition of the Serfs--A Comparison--A "Liberal" Tchinovnik--His Idea of Progress--A Justice of the Peace--His Opinion of Russian Literature, Tchinovniks, and Petits Maitres--His Supposed and Real Character--An Extreme Radical--Disorders in the Universities--Administrative Procedure--Russia's Capacity for Accomplishing Political and Social Evolutions--A Court Dignitary in his Country House. Hitherto I have presented to the reader old-fashioned types which were common enough thirty years ago, when I first resided in Russia, but which are rapidly disappearing. Let me now present a few of the modern school. In the same district as Ivan Ivan'itch and the General lives Victor Alexandr'itch L----. As we approach his house we can at once perceive that he differs from the majority of his neighbours. The gate is painted and moves easily on its hinges, the fence is in good repair, the short avenue leading up to the front door is well kept, and in the garden we can perceive at a glance that more attention is paid to flowers than to vegetables. The house is of wood, and not large, but it has some architectural pretensions in the form of a great, pseudo-Doric wooden portico that covers three-fourths of the façade. In the interior we remark everywhere the influence of Western civilisation. Victor Alexandr'itch is by no means richer than Ivan Ivan'itch, but his rooms are much more luxuriously furnished. The furniture is of a lighter model, more comfortable, and in a much better state of preservation. Instead of the bare, scantily furnished sitting-room, with the old-fashioned barrel-organ which played only six airs, we find an elegant drawing-room, with a piano by one of the most approved makers, and numerous articles of foreign manufacture, comprising a small buhl table and two bits of genuine old Wedgwood. The servants are clean, and dressed in European costume. The master, too, is very different in appearance. He pays great attention to his toilette, wearing a dressing-gown only in the early morning, and a fashionable lounging coat during the rest of the day. The Turkish pipes which his grandfather loved he holds in abhorrence, and habitually smokes cigarettes. With his wife and daughters he always speaks French, and calls them by French or English names. But the part of the house which most strikingly illustrates the difference between old and new is "le cabinet de monsieur." In the cabinet of Ivan Ivan'itch the furniture consists of a broad sofa which serves as a bed, a few deal chairs, and a clumsy deal table, on which are generally to be found a bundle of greasy papers, an old chipped ink-bottle, a pen, and a calendar. The cabinet of Victor Alexandr'itch has an entirely different appearance. It is small, but at once comfortable and elegant. The principal objects which it contains are a library-table, with ink-stand, presse-papier, paper-knives, and other articles in keeping, and in the opposite corner a large bookcase. The collection of books is remarkable, not from the number of volumes or the presence of rare editions, but from the variety of the subjects. History, art, fiction, the drama, political economy, and agriculture are represented in about equal proportions. Some of the works are in Russian, others in German, a large number in French, and a few in Italian. The collection illustrates the former life and present occupations of the owner. The father of Victor Alexandr'itch was a landed proprietor who had made a successful career in the civil service, and desired that his son should follow the same profession. For this purpose Victor was first carefully trained at home, and then sent to the University of Moscow, where he spent four years as a student of law. From the University he passed to the Ministry of the Interior in St. Petersburg, but he found the monotonous routine of official life not at all suited to his taste, and very soon sent in his resignation. The death of his father had made him proprietor of an estate, and thither he retired, hoping to find there plenty of occupation more congenial than the writing of official papers. At the University of Moscow he had attended lectures on history and philosophy, and had got through a large amount of desultory reading. The chief result of his studies was the acquisition of many ill-digested general principles, and certain vague, generous, humanitarian aspirations. With this intellectual capital he hoped to lead a useful life in the country. When he had repaired and furnished the house he set himself to improve the estate. In the course of his promiscuous reading he had stumbled on some descriptions of English and Tuscan agriculture, and had there learned what wonders might be effected by a rational system of farming. Why should not Russia follow the example of England and Tuscany? By proper drainage, plentiful manure, good ploughs, and the cultivation of artificial grasses, the production might be multiplied tenfold; and by the introduction of agricultural machines the manual labour might be greatly diminished. All this seemed as simple as a sum in arithmetic, and Victor Alexandr'itch, more scholarum rei familiaris ignarus, without a moment's hesitation expended his ready money in procuring from England a threshing-machine, ploughs, harrows, and other implements of the newest model. The arrival of these was an event that was long remembered. The peasants examined them with attention, not unmixed with wonder, but said nothing. When the master explained to them the advantages of the new instruments, they still remained silent. Only one old man, gazing at the threshing-machine, remarked, in an audible "aside," "A cunning people, these Germans!"* On being asked for their opinion, they replied vaguely, "How should we know? It OUGHT to be so." But when their master had retired, and was explaining to his wife and the French governess that the chief obstacle to progress in Russia was the apathetic indolence and conservative spirit of the peasantry, they expressed their opinions more freely. "These may be all very well for the Germans, but they won't do for us. How are our little horses to drag these big ploughs? And as for that [the threshing-machine], it's of no use." Further examination and reflection confirmed this first impression, and it was unanimously decided that no good would come of the new-fangled inventions. * The Russian peasant comprehends all the inhabitants of Western Europe under the term Nyemtsi, which in the language of the educated designates only Germans. The rest of humanity is composed of Pravoslavniye (Greek Orthodox), Busurmanye (Mahometans), and Poliacki (Poles). These apprehensions proved to be only too well founded. The ploughs were much too heavy for the peasants' small horses, and the threshing-machine broke down at the first attempt to use it. For the purchase of lighter implements or stronger horses there was no ready money, and for the repairing of the threshing-machine there was not an engineer within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles. The experiment was, in short, a complete failure, and the new purchases were put away out of sight. For some weeks after this incident Victor Alexandr'itch felt very despondent, and spoke more than usual about the apathy and stupidity of the peasantry. His faith in infallible science was somewhat shaken, and his benevolent aspirations were for a time laid aside. But this eclipse of faith was not of long duration. Gradually he recovered his normal condition, and began to form new schemes. From the study of certain works on political economy he learned that the system of communal property was ruinous to the fertility of the soil, and that free labour was always more productive than serfage. By the light of these principles he discovered why the peasantry in Russia were so poor, and by what means their condition could he ameliorated. The Communal land should be divided into family lots, and the serfs, instead of being forced to work for the proprietor, should pay a yearly sum as rent. The advantages of this change he perceived clearly--as clearly as he had formerly perceived the advantages of English agricultural implements--and he determined to make the experiment on his own estate. His first step was to call together the more intelligent and influential of his serfs, and to explain to them his project; but his efforts at explanation were eminently unsuccessful. Even with regard to ordinary current affairs he could not express himself in that simple, homely language with which alone the peasants are familiar, and when he spoke on abstract subjects he naturally became quite unintelligible to his uneducated audience. The serfs listened attentively, but understood nothing. He might as well have spoken to them, as he often did in another kind of society, about the comparative excellence of Italian and German music. At a second attempt he had rather more success. The peasants came to understand that what he wished was to break up the Mir, or rural Commune, and to put them all on obrok--that is to say, make them pay a yearly sum instead of giving him a certain amount of agricultural labour. Much to his astonishment, his scheme did not meet with any sympathy. As to being put on obrok, the serfs did not much object, though they preferred to remain as they were; but his proposal to break up the Mir astonished and bewildered them. They regarded it as a sea-captain might regard the proposal of a scientific wiseacre to knock a hole in the ship's bottom in order to make her sail faster. Though they did not say much, he was intelligent enough to see that they would offer a strenuous passive resistance, and as he did not wish to act tyrannically, he let the matter drop. Thus a second benevolent scheme was shipwrecked. Many other schemes had a similar fate, and Victor Alexandr'itch began to perceive that it was very difficult to do good in this world, especially when the persons to be benefited were Russian peasants. In reality the fault lay less with the serfs than with their master. Victor Alexandr'itch was by no means a stupid man. On the contrary, he had more than average talents. Few men were more capable of grasping a new idea and forming a scheme for its realisation, and few men could play more dexterously with abstract principles. What he wanted was the power of dealing with concrete facts. The principles which he had acquired from University lectures and desultory reading were far too vague and abstract for practical use. He had studied abstract science without gaining any technical knowledge of details, and consequently when he stood face to face with real life he was like a student who, having studied mechanics in text-books, is suddenly placed in a workshop and ordered to construct a machine. Only there was one difference: Victor Alexandr'itch was not ordered to do anything. Voluntarily, without any apparent necessity, he set himself to work with tools which he could not handle. It was this that chiefly puzzled the peasants. Why should he trouble himself with these new schemes, when he might live comfortably as he was? In some of his projects they could detect a desire to increase the revenue, but in others they could discover no such motive. In these latter they attributed his conduct to pure caprice, and put it into the same category as those mad pranks in which proprietors of jovial humour sometimes indulged. In the last years of serfage there were a good many landed proprietors like Victor Alexandr'itch--men who wished to do something beneficent, and did not know how to do it. When serfage was being abolished the majority of these men took an active part in the great work and rendered valuable service to their country. Victor Alexandr'itch acted otherwise. At first he sympathised warmly with the proposed emancipation and wrote several articles on the advantages of free labour, but when the Government took the matter into its own hands he declared that the officials had deceived and slighted the Noblesse, and he went over to the opposition. Before the Imperial Edict was signed he went abroad, and travelled for three years in Germany, France, and Italy. Shortly after his return he married a pretty, accomplished young lady, the daughter of an eminent official in St. Petersburg, and since that time he has lived in his country-house. Though a man of education and culture, Victor Alexandr'itch spends his time in almost as indolent a way as the men of the old school. He rises somewhat later, and instead of sitting by the open window and gazing into the courtyard, he turns over the pages of a book or periodical. Instead of dining at midday and supping at nine o'clock, he takes dejeuner at twelve and dines at five. He spends less time in sitting in the verandah and pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, for he can vary the operation of time-killing by occasionally writing a letter, or by standing behind his wife at the piano while she plays selections from Mozart and Beethoven. But these peculiarities are merely variations in detail. If there is any essential difference between the lives of Victor Alexandr'itch and of Ivan Ivan'itch, it is in the fact that the former never goes out into the fields to see how the work is done, and never troubles himself with the state of the weather, the condition of the crops, and cognate subjects. He leaves the management of his estate entirely to his steward, and refers to that personage all peasants who come to him with complaints or petitions. Though he takes a deep interest in the peasant as an impersonal, abstract entity, and loves to contemplate concrete examples of the genus in the works of certain popular authors, he does not like to have any direct relations with peasants in the flesh. If he has to speak with them he always feels awkward, and suffers from the odour of their sheepskins. Ivan Ivan'itch is ever ready to talk with the peasants, and give them sound, practical advice or severe admonitions; and in the old times he was apt, in moments of irritation, to supplement his admonitions by a free use of his fists. Victor Alexandr'itch, on the contrary, never could give any advice except vague commonplace, and as to using his fist, he would have shrunk from that, not only from respect to humanitarian principles, but also from motives which belong to the region of aesthetic sensitiveness. This difference between the two men has an important influence on their pecuniary affairs. The stewards of both steal from their masters; but that of Ivan Ivan'itch steals with difficulty, and to a very limited extent, whereas that of Victor Alexandr'itch steals regularly and methodically, and counts his gains, not by kopecks, but by roubles. Though the two estates are of about the same size and value, they give a very different revenue. The rough, practical man has a much larger income than his elegant, well-educated neighbour, and at the same time spends very much less. The consequences of this, if not at present visible, must some day become painfully apparent. Ivan Ivan'itch will doubtless leave to his children an unencumbered estate and a certain amount of capital. The children of Victor Alexandr'itch have a different prospect. He has already begun to mortgage his property and to cut down the timber, and he always finds a deficit at the end of the year. What will become of his wife and children when the estate comes to be sold for payment of the mortgage, it is difficult to predict. He thinks very little of that eventuality, and when his thoughts happen to wander in that direction he consoles himself with the thought that before the crash comes he will have inherited a fortune from a rich uncle who has no children. The proprietors of the old school lead the same uniform, monotonous life year after year, with very little variation. Victor Alexandr'itch, on the contrary, feels the need of a periodical return to "civilised society," and accordingly spends a few weeks every winter in St. Petersburg. During the summer months he has the society of his brother--un homme tout a fait civilise--who possesses an estate a few miles off. This brother, Vladimir Alexandr'itch, was educated in the School of Law in St. Petersburg, and has since risen rapidly in the service. He holds now a prominent position in one of the Ministries, and has the honourary court title of "Chambellan de sa Majeste." He is a marked man in the higher circles of the Administration, and will, it is thought, some day become Minister. Though an adherent of enlightened views, and a professed "Liberal," he contrives to keep on very good terms with those who imagine themselves to be "Conservatives." In this he is assisted by his soft, oily manner. If you express an opinion to him he will always begin by telling you that you are quite right; and if he ends by showing you that you are quite wrong, he will at least make you feel that your error is not only excusable, but in some way highly creditable to your intellectual acuteness or goodness of heart. In spite of his Liberalism he is a staunch Monarchist, and considers that the time has not yet come for the Emperor to grant a Constitution. He recognises that the present order of things has its defects, but thinks that, on the whole, it acts very well, and would act much better if certain high officials were removed, and more energetic men put in their places. Like all genuine St. Petersburg tchinovniks (officials), he has great faith in the miraculous power of Imperial ukazes and Ministerial circulars, and believes that national progress consists in multiplying these documents, and centralising the Administration, so as to give them more effect. As a supplementary means of progress he highly approves of aesthetic culture, and he can speak with some eloquence of the humanising influence of the fine arts. For his own part he is well acquainted with French and English classics, and particularly admires Macaulay, whom he declares to have been not only a great writer, but also a great statesman. Among writers of fiction he gives the palm to George Eliot, and speaks of the novelists of his own country, and, indeed, of Russian literature as a whole, in the most disparaging terms. A very different estimate of Russian literature is held by Alexander Ivan'itch N----, formerly arbiter in peasant affairs, and afterwards justice of the peace. Discussions on this subject often take place between the two. The admirer of Macaulay declares that Russia has, properly speaking, no literature whatever, and that the works which bear the names of Russian authors are nothing but a feeble echo of the literature of Western Europe. "Imitators," he is wont to say, "skilful imitators, we have produced in abundance. But where is there a man of original genius? What is our famous poet Zhukofski? A translator. What is Pushkin? A clever pupil of the romantic school. What is Lermontoff? A feeble imitator of Byron. What is Gogol?" At this point Alexander Ivan'itch invariable intervenes. He is ready to sacrifice all the pseudo-classic and romantic poetry, and, in fact, the whole of Russian literature anterior to about the year 1840, but he will not allow anything disrespectful to be said of Gogol, who about that time founded the Russian realistic school. "Gogol," he holds, "was a great and original genius. Gogol not only created a new kind of literature; he at the same time transformed the reading public, and inaugurated a new era in the intellectual development of the nation. By his humorous, satirical sketches he swept away the metaphysical dreaming and foolish romantic affectation then in fashion, and taught men to see their country as it was, in all its hideous ugliness. With his help the young generation perceived the rottenness of the Administration, and the meanness, stupidity, dishonesty, and worthlessness of the landed proprietors, whom he made the special butt of his ridicule. The recognition of defects produced a desire for reform. From laughing at the proprietors there was but one step to despising them, and when we learned to despise the proprietors we naturally came to sympathise with the serfs. Thus the Emancipation was prepared by the literature; and when the great question had to be solved, it was the literature that discovered a satisfactory solution." This is a subject on which Alexander Ivan'itch feels very strongly, and on which he always speaks with warmth. He knows a good deal regarding the intellectual movement which began about 1840, and culminated in the great reforms of the sixties. As a University student he troubled himself very little with serious academic work, but he read with intense interest all the leading periodicals, and adopted the doctrine of Belinski that art should not be cultivated for its own sake, but should be made subservient to social progress. This belief was confirmed by a perusal of some of George Sand's earlier works, which were for him a kind of revelation. Social questions engrossed his thoughts, and all other subjects seemed puny by comparison. When the Emancipation question was raised he saw an opportunity of applying some of his theories, and threw himself enthusiastically into the new movement as an ardent abolitionist. When the law was passed he helped to put it into execution by serving for three years as an Arbiter of the Peace. Now he is an old man, but he has preserved some of his youthful enthusiasm, attends regularly the annual assemblies of the Zemstvo, and takes a lively interest in all public affairs. As an ardent partisan of local self-government he habitually scoffs at the centralised bureaucracy, which he proclaims to be the great bane of his unhappy country. "These tchinovniks," he is wont to say in moments of excitement, "who live in St. Petersburg and govern the Empire, know about as much of Russia as they do of China. They live in a world of official documents, and are hopelessly ignorant of the real wants and interests of the people. So long as all the required formalities are duly observed they are perfectly satisfied. The people may be allowed to die of starvation if only the fact do not appear in the official reports. Powerless to do any good themselves, they are powerful enough to prevent others from working for the public good, and are extremely jealous of all private initiative. How have they acted, for instance, towards the Zemstvo? The Zemstvo is really a good institution, and might have done great things if it had been left alone, but as soon as it began to show a little independent energy the officials at once clipped its wings and then strangled it. Towards the Press they have acted in the same way. They are afraid of the Press, because they fear above all things a healthy public opinion, which the Press alone can create. Everything that disturbs the habitual routine alarms them. Russia cannot make any real progress so long as she is ruled by these cursed tchinovniks." Scarcely less pernicious than the tchinovnik, in the eyes of our would-be reformer, is the baritch--that is to say, the pampered, capricious, spoiled child of mature years, whose life is spent in elegant indolence and fine talking. Our friend Victor Alexandr'itch is commonly selected as a representative of this type. "Look at him!" exclaims Alexander Ivan'itch. "What a useless, contemptible member of society! In spite of his generous aspirations he never succeeds in doing anything useful to himself or to others. When the peasant question was raised and there was work to be done, he went abroad and talked liberalism in Paris and Baden-Baden. Though he reads, or at least professes to read, books on agriculture, and is always ready to discourse on the best means of preventing the exhaustion of the soil, he knows less of farming than a peasant-boy of twelve, and when he goes into the fields he can hardly distinguish rye from oats. Instead of babbling about German and Italian music, he would do well to learn a little about practical farming, and look after his estate." Whilst Alexander Ivan'itch thus censures his neighbours, he is himself not without detractors. Some staid old proprietors regard him as a dangerous man, and quote expressions of his which seem to indicate that his notions of property are somewhat loose. Many consider that his liberalism is of a very violent kind, and that he has strong republican sympathies. In his decisions as Justice he often leaned, it is said, to the side of the peasants against the proprietors. Then he was always trying to induce the peasants of the neighbouring villages to found schools, and he had wonderful ideas about the best method of teaching children. These and similar facts make many people believe that he has very advanced ideas, and one old gentleman habitually calls him--half in joke and half in earnest--"our friend the communist." In reality Alexander Ivan'itch has nothing of the communist about him. Though he loudly denounces the tchinovnik spirit--or, as we should say, red-tape in all its forms--and is an ardent partisan of local self-government, he is one of the last men in the world to take part in any revolutionary movement, he would like to see the Central Government enlightened and controlled by public opinion and by a national representation, but he believes that this can only be effected by voluntary concessions on the part of the autocratic power. He has, perhaps, a sentimental love of the peasantry, and is always ready to advocate its interests; but he has come too much in contact with individual peasants to accept those idealised descriptions in which some popular writers indulge, and it may safely be asserted that the accusation of his voluntarily favouring peasants at the expense of the proprietors is wholly unfounded. Alexander Ivan'itch is, in fact, a quiet, sensible man, who is capable of generous enthusiasm, and is not at all satisfied with the existing state of things; but he is not a dreamer and a revolutionnaire, as some of his neighbours assert. I am afraid I cannot say as much for his younger brother Nikolai, who lives with him. Nikolai Ivan'itch is a tall, slender man, about sixty years of age, with emaciated face, bilious complexion and long black hair--evidently a person of excitable, nervous temperament. When he speaks he articulates rapidly, and uses more gesticulation than is common among his countrymen. His favourite subject of conversation, or rather of discourse, for he more frequently preaches than talks, is the lamentable state of the country and the worthlessness of the Government. Against the Government he has a great many causes for complaint, and one or two of a personal kind. In 1861 he was a student in the University of St. Petersburg. At that time there was a great deal of public excitement all over Russia, and especially in the capital. The serfs had just been emancipated, and other important reforms had been undertaken. There was a general conviction among the young generation--and it must be added among many older men--that the autocratic, paternal system of government was at an end, and that Russia was about to be reorganised according to the most advanced principles of political and social science. The students, sharing this conviction, wished to be freed from all academical authority, and to organise a kind of academic self-government. They desired especially the right of holding public meetings for the discussion of their common affairs. The authorities would not allow this, and issued a list of rules prohibiting meetings and raising the class-fees, so as practically to exclude many of the poorer students. This was felt to be a wanton insult to the spirit of the new era. In spite of the prohibition, indignation meetings were held, and fiery speeches made by male and female orators, first in the class-rooms, and afterwards in the courtyard of the University. On one occasion a long procession marched through the principal streets to the house of the Curator. Never had such a spectacle been seen before in St. Petersburg. Timid people feared that it was the commencement of a revolution, and dreamed about barricades. At last the authorities took energetic measures; about three hundred students were arrested, and of these, thirty-two were expelled from the University. Among those who were expelled was Nicolai Ivan'itch. All his hopes of becoming a professor, as he had intended, were thereby shipwrecked, and he had to look out for some other profession. A literary career now seemed the most promising, and certainly the most congenial to his tastes. It would enable him to gratify his ambition of being a public man, and give him opportunities of attacking and annoying his persecutors. He had already written occasionally for one of the leading periodicals, and now he became a regular contributor. His stock of positive knowledge was not very large, but he had the power of writing fluently and of making his readers believe that he had an unlimited store of political wisdom which the Press-censure prevented him from publishing. Besides this, he had the talent of saying sharp, satirical things about those in authority, in such a way that even a Press censor could not easily raise objections. Articles written in this style were sure at that time to be popular, and his had a very great success. He became a known man in literary circles, and for a time all went well. But gradually he became less cautious, whilst the authorities became more vigilant. Some copies of a violent seditious proclamation fell into the hands of the police, and it was generally believed that the document proceeded from the coterie to which he belonged. From that moment he was carefully watched, till one night he was unexpectedly roused from his sleep by a gendarme and conveyed to the fortress. When a man is arrested in this way for a real or supposed political offence, there are two modes of dealing with him. He may be tried before a regular tribunal, or he may be dealt with "by administrative procedure" (administrativnym poryadkom). In the former case he will, if convicted, be condemned to imprisonment for a certain term; or, if the offence be of a graver nature, he may be transported to Siberia either for a fixed period or for life. By the administrative procedure he is simply removed without a trial to some distant town, and compelled to live there under police supervision during his Majesty's pleasure. Nikolai Ivan'itch was treated "administratively," because the authorities, though convinced that he was a dangerous character, could not find sufficient evidence to procure his conviction before a court of justice. For five years he lived under police supervision in a small town near the White Sea, and then one day he was informed, without any explanation, that he might go and live anywhere he pleased except in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Since that time he has lived with his brother, and spends his time in brooding over his grievances and bewailing his shattered illusions. He has lost none of that fluency which gained him an ephemeral literary reputation, and can speak by the hour on political and social questions to any one who will listen to him. It is extremely difficult, however, to follow his discourses, and utterly impossible to retain them in the memory. They belong to what may be called political metaphysics--for though he professes to hold metaphysics in abhorrence, he is himself a thorough metaphysician in his modes of thought. He lives, indeed, in a world of abstract conceptions, in which he can scarcely perceive concrete facts, and his arguments are always a kind of clever juggling with such equivocal, conventional terms as aristocracy, bourgeoisie, monarchy, and the like. At concrete facts he arrives, not directly by observation, but by deductions from general principles, so that his facts can never by any possibility contradict his theories. Then he has certain axioms which he tacitly assumes, and on which all his arguments are based; as, for instance, that everything to which the term "liberal" can be applied must necessarily be good at all times and under all conditions. Among a mass of vague conceptions which it is impossible to reduce to any clearly defined form he has a few ideas which are perhaps not strictly true, but which are at least intelligible. Among these is his conviction that Russia has let slip a magnificent opportunity of distancing all Europe on the road of progress. She might, he thinks, at the time of the Emancipation, have boldly accepted all the most advanced principles of political and social science, and have completely reorganised the political and social structure in accordance with them. Other nations could not take such a step, because they are old and decrepit, filled with stubborn, hereditary prejudices, and cursed with an aristocracy and a bourgeoisie; but Russia is young, knows nothing of social castes, and has no deep-rooted prejudices to contend with. The population is like potter's clay, which can be made to assume any form that science may recommend. Alexander II. began a magnificent sociological experiment, but he stopped half-way. Some day, he believes, the experiment will be completed, but not by the autocratic power. In his opinion autocracy is "played out," and must give way to Parliamentary institutions. For him a Constitution is a kind of omnipotent fetish. You may try to explain to him that a Parliamentary regime, whatever its advantages may be, necessarily produces political parties and political conflicts, and is not nearly so suitable for grand sociological experiments as a good paternal despotism. You may try to convince him that, though it may be difficult to convert an autocrat, it is infinitely more difficult to convert a House of Commons. But all your efforts will be in vain. He will assure you that a Russian Parliament would be something quite different from what Parliaments commonly are. It would contain no parties, for Russia has no social castes, and would be guided entirely by scientific considerations--as free from prejudice and personal influences as a philosopher speculating on the nature of the Infinite! In short, he evidently imagines that a national Parliament would be composed of himself and his friends, and that the nation would calmly submit to their ukazes, as it has hitherto submitted to the ukazes of the Tsars. Pending the advent of this political Millennium, when unimpassioned science is to reign supreme, Nikolai Ivan'itch allows himself the luxury of indulging in some very decided political animosities, and he hates with the fervour of a fanatic. Firstly and chiefly, he hates what he calls the bourgeoisie--he is obliged to use the French word, because his native language does not contain an equivalent term--and especially capitalists of all sorts and dimensions. Next, he hates aristocracy, especially a form of aristocracy called Feudalism. To these abstract terms he does not attach a very precise meaning, but he hates the entities which they are supposed to represent quite as heartily as if they were personal enemies. Among the things which he hates in his own country, the Autocratic Power holds the first place. Next, as an emanation from the Autocratic Power, come the tchinovniks, and especially the gendarmes. Then come the landed proprietors. Though he is himself a landed proprietor, he regards the class as cumberers of the ground, and thinks that all their land should be confiscated and distributed among the peasantry. All proprietors have the misfortune to come under his sweeping denunciations, because they are inconsistent with his ideal of a peasant Empire, but he recognises amongst them degrees of depravity. Some are simply obstructive, whilst others are actively prejudicial to the public welfare. Among these latter a special object of aversion is Prince S----, because he not only possesses very large estates, but at the same time has aristocratic pretensions, and calls himself Conservative. Prince S---- is by far the most important man in the district. His family is one of the oldest in the country, but he does not owe his influence to his pedigree, for pedigree pure and simple does not count for much in Russia. He is influential and respected because he is a great land-holder with a high official position, and belongs by birth to that group of families which forms the permanent nucleus of the ever-changing Court society. His father and grandfather were important personages in the Administration and at Court, and his sons and grandsons will probably in this respect follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. Though in the eye of the law all nobles are equal, and, theoretically speaking, promotion is gained exclusively by personal merit, yet, in reality, those who have friends at Court rise more easily and more rapidly. The Prince has had a prosperous but not very eventful life. He was educated, first at home, under an English tutor, and afterwards in the Corps des Pages. On leaving this institution he entered a regiment of the Guards, and rose steadily to high military rank. His activity, however, has been chiefly in the civil administration, and he now has a seat in the Council of State. Though he has always taken a certain interest in public affairs, he did not play an important part in any of the great reforms. When the peasant question was raised he sympathised with the idea of Emancipation, but did not at all sympathise with the idea of giving land to the emancipated serfs and preserving the Communal institutions. What he desired was that the proprietors should liberate their serfs without any pecuniary indemnity, and should receive in return a certain share of political power. His scheme was not adopted, but he has not relinquished the hope that the great landed proprietors may somehow obtain a social and political position similar to that of the great land-owners in England. Official duties and social relations compel the Prince to live for a large part of the year in the capital. He spends only a few weeks yearly on his estate. The house is large, and fitted up in the English style, with a view to combining elegance and comfort. It contains several spacious apartments, a library, and a billiard-room. There is an extensive park, an immense garden with hot houses, numerous horses and carriages, and a legion of servants. In the drawing-room is a plentiful supply of English and French books, newspapers, and periodicals, including the Journal de St. Petersbourg, which gives the news of the day. The family have, in short, all the conveniences and comforts which money and refinement can procure, but it cannot be said that they greatly enjoy the time spent in the country. The Princess has no decided objection to it. She is devoted to a little grandchild, is fond of reading and correspondence, amuses herself with a school and hospital which she has founded for the peasantry, and occasionally drives over to see her friend, the Countess N----, who lives about fifteen miles off. The Prince, however, finds country life excessively dull. He does not care for riding or shooting, and he finds nothing else to do. He knows nothing about the management of his estate, and holds consultations with the steward merely pro forma--this estate and the others which he possesses in different provinces being ruled by a head-steward in St. Petersburg, in whom he has the most complete confidence. In the vicinity there is no one with whom he cares to associate. Naturally he is not a sociable man, and he has acquired a stiff, formal, reserved manner that is rarely met with in Russia. This manner repels the neighbouring proprietors--a fact that he does not at all regret, for they do not belong to his monde, and they have in their manners and habits a free-and-easy rusticity which is positively disagreeable to him. His relations with them are therefore confined to formal calls. The greater part of the day he spends in listless loitering, frequently yawning, regretting the routine of St. Petersburg life--the pleasant chats with his colleagues, the opera, the ballet, the French theatre, and the quiet rubber at the Club Anglais. His spirits rise as the day of his departure approaches, and when he drives off to the station he looks bright and cheerful. If he consulted merely his own tastes he would never visit his estates at all, and would spend his summer holidays in Germany, France, or Switzerland, as he did in his bachelor days; but as a large landowner he considers it right to sacrifice his personal inclinations to the duties of his position. There is, by the way, another princely magnate in the district, and I ought perhaps to introduce him to my readers, because he represents worthily a new type. Like Prince S----, of whom I have just spoken, he is a great land-owner and a descendant of the half-mythical Rurik; but he has no official rank, and does not possess a single grand cordon. In that respect he has followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had something of the frondeur spirit, and preferred the position of a grand seigneur and a country gentleman to that of a tchinovnik and a courtier. In the Liberal camp he is regarded as a Conservative, but he has little in common with the Krepostnik, who declares that the reforms of the last half-century were a mistake, that everything is going to the bad, that the emancipated serfs are all sluggards, drunkards, and thieves, that the local self-government is an ingenious machine for wasting money, and that the reformed law-courts have conferred benefits only on the lawyers. On the contrary, he recognises the necessity and beneficent results of the reforms, and with regard to the future he has none of the despairing pessimism of the incorrigible old Tory. But in order that real progress should be made, he thinks that certain current and fashionable errors must be avoided, and among these errors he places, in the first rank, the views and principles of the advanced Liberals, who have a blind admiration for Western Europe, and for what they are pleased to call the results of science. Like the Liberals of the West, these gentlemen assume that the best form of government is constitutionalism, monarchical or republican, on a broad democratic basis, and towards the realisation of this ideal all their efforts are directed. Not so our Conservative friend. While admitting that democratic Parliamentary institutions may be the best form of government for the more advanced nations of the West, he maintains that the only firm foundation for the Russian Empire, and the only solid guarantee of its future prosperity, is the Autocratic Power, which is the sole genuine representative of the national spirit. Looking at the past from this point of view, he perceives that the Tsars have ever identified themselves with the nation, and have always understood, in part instinctively and in part by reflection, what the nation really required. Whenever the infiltration of Western ideas threatened to swamp the national individuality, the Autocratic Power intervened and averted the danger by timely precautions. Something of the kind may be observed, he believes, at present, when the Liberals are clamouring for a Parliament and a Constitution; but the Autocratic Power is on the alert, and is making itself acquainted with the needs of the people by means far more effectual than could be supplied by oratorical politicians. With the efforts of the Zemstvo in this direction, and with the activity of the Zemstvo generally, the Prince has little sympathy, partly because the institution is in the hands of the Liberals and is guided by their unpractical ideas, and partly because it enables some ambitious outsiders to acquire the influence in local affairs which ought to be exercised by the old-established noble families of the neighbourhood. What he would like to see is an enlightened, influential gentry working in conjunction with the Autocratic Power for the good of the country. If Russia could produce a few hundred thousand men like himself, his ideal might perhaps be realised. For the present, such men are extremely rare--I should have difficulty in naming a dozen of them--and aristocratic ideas are extremely unpopular among the great majority of the educated classes. When a Russian indulges in political speculation, he is pretty sure to show himself thoroughly democratic, with a strong leaning to socialism. The Prince belongs to the highest rank of the Russian Noblesse. If we wish to get an idea of the lowest rank, we can find in the neighbourhood a number of poor, uneducated men, who live in small, squalid houses, and are not easily to be distinguished from peasants. They are nobles, like his Highness; but, unlike him, they enjoy no social consideration, and their landed property consists of a few acres of land which barely supply them with the first necessaries of life. If we went to other parts of the country we might find men in this condition bearing the title of Prince! This is the natural result of the Russian law of inheritance, which does not recognise the principle of primogeniture with regard to titles and estates. All the sons of a Prince are Princes, and at his death his property, movable and immovable, is divided amongst them. CHAPTER XXIII SOCIAL CLASSES Do Social Classes or Castes Exist in Russia?--Well-marked Social Types--Classes Recognised by the Legislation and the Official Statistics--Origin and Gradual Formation of these Classes--Peculiarity in the Historical Development of Russia--Political Life and Political Parties. In the preceding pages I have repeatedly used the expression "social classes," and probably more than once the reader has felt inclined to ask, What are social classes in the Russian sense of the term? It may be well, therefore, before going farther, to answer this question. If the question were put to a Russian it is not at all unlikely that he would reply somewhat in this fashion: "In Russia there are no social classes, and there never have been any. That fact constitutes one of the most striking peculiarities of her historical development, and one of the surest foundations of her future greatness. We know nothing, and have never known anything, of those class distinctions and class enmities which in Western Europe have often rudely shaken society in past times, and imperil its existence in the future." This statement will not be readily accepted by the traveller who visits Russia with no preconceived ideas and forms his opinions from his own observations. To him it seems that class distinctions form one of the most prominent characteristics of Russian society. In a few days he learns to distinguish the various classes by their outward appearance. He easily recognises the French-speaking nobles in West-European costume; the burly, bearded merchant in black cloth cap and long, shiny, double-breasted coat; the priest with his uncut hair and flowing robes; the peasant with his full, fair beard and unsavoury, greasy sheepskin. Meeting everywhere those well-marked types, he naturally assumes that Russian society is composed of exclusive castes; and this first impression will be fully confirmed by a glance at the Code. On examining that monumental work, he finds that an entire volume--and by no means the smallest--is devoted to the rights and obligations of the various classes. From this he concludes that the classes have a legal as well as an actual existence. To make assurance doubly sure he turns to official statistics, and there he finds the following table: Hereditary nobles........652,887 Personal nobles..........374,367 Clerical classes.........695,905 Town classes...........7,196,005 Rural classes.........63,840,291 Military classes.......4,767,703 Foreigners...............153,185 ---------- 77,680,293* * Livron: "Statistitcheskoe Obozrenie Rossiiskoi Imperii," St. Petersburg, 1875. The above figures include the whole Empire. The figures according to the latest census (1897) are not yet available. Armed with these materials, the traveller goes to his Russian friends who have assured him that their country knows nothing of class distinctions. He is confident of being able to convince them that they have been labouring under a strange delusion, but he will be disappointed. They will tell him that these laws and statistics prove nothing, and that the categories therein mentioned are mere administrative fictions. This apparent contradiction is to be explained by the equivocal meaning of the Russian terms Sosloviya and Sostoyaniya, which are commonly translated "social classes." If by these terms are meant "castes" in the Oriental sense, then it may be confidently asserted that such do not exist in Russia. Between the nobles, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasants there are no distinctions of race and no impassable barriers. The peasant often becomes a merchant, and there are many cases on record of peasants and sons of parish priests becoming nobles. Until very recently the parish clergy composed, as we have seen, a peculiar and exclusive class, with many of the characteristics of a caste; but this has been changed, and it may now be said that in Russia there are no castes in the Oriental sense. If the word Sosloviya be taken to mean an organised political unit with an esprit de corps and a clearly conceived political aim, it may likewise be admitted that there are none in Russia. As there has been for centuries no political life among the subjects of the Tsars, there have been no political parties. On the other hand, to say that social classes have never existed in Russia and that the categories which appear in the legislation and in the official statistics are mere administrative fictions, is a piece of gross exaggeration. From the very beginning of Russian history we can detect unmistakably the existence of social classes, such as the Princes, the Boyars, the armed followers of the Princes, the peasantry, the slaves, and various others; and one of the oldest legal documents which we possess--the "Russian Right" (Russkaya Pravda) of the Grand Prince Yaroslaff (1019-1054)--contains irrefragable proof, in the penalties attached to various crimes, that these classes were formally recognised by the legislation. Since that time they have frequently changed their character, but they have never at any period ceased to exist. In ancient times, when there was very little administrative regulation, the classes had perhaps no clearly defined boundaries, and the peculiarities which distinguished them from each other were actual rather than legal--lying in the mode of life and social position rather than in peculiar obligations and privileges. But as the autocratic power developed and strove to transform the nation into a State with a highly centralised administration, the legal element in the social distinctions became more and more prominent. For financial and other purposes the people had to be divided into various categories. The actual distinctions were of course taken as the basis of the legal classification, but the classifying had more than a merely formal significance. The necessity of clearly defining the different groups entailed the necessity of elevating and strengthening the barriers which already existed between them, and the difficulty of passing from one group to another was thereby increased. In this work of classification Peter the Great especially distinguished himself. With his insatiable passion for regulation, he raised formidable barriers between the different categories, and defined the obligations of each with microscopic minuteness. After his death the work was carried on in the same spirit, and the tendency reached its climax in the reign of Nicholas, when the number of students to be received in the universities was determined by Imperial ukaz! In the reign of Catherine a new element was introduced into the official conception of social classes. Down to her time the Government had thought merely of class obligations; under the influence of Western ideas she introduced the conception of class rights. She wished, as we have seen, to have in her Empire a Noblesse and tiers-etat like those which existed in France, and for this purpose she granted, first to the Dvoryanstvo and afterwards to the towns, an Imperial Charter, or Bill of Rights. Succeeding sovereigns have acted in the same spirit, and the Code now confers on each class numerous privileges as well as numerous obligations. Thus, we see, the oft-repeated assertion that the Russian social classes are simply artificial categories created by the legislature is to a certain extent true, but is by no means accurate. The social groups, such as peasants, landed proprietors, and the like, came into existence in Russia, as in other countries, by the simple force of circumstances. The legislature merely recognised and developed the social distinctions which already existed. The legal status, obligations, and rights of each group were minutely defined and regulated, and legal barriers were added to the actual barriers which separated the groups from each other. What is peculiar in the historical development of Russia is this: until lately she remained an almost exclusively agricultural Empire with abundance of unoccupied land. Her history presents, therefore, few of those conflicts which result from the variety of social conditions and the intensified struggle for existence. Certain social groups were, indeed, formed in the course of time, but they were never allowed to fight out their own battles. The irresistible autocratic power kept them always in check and fashioned them into whatever form it thought proper, defining minutely and carefully their obligations, their rights, their mutual relations, and their respective positions in the political organisation. Hence we find in the history of Russia almost no trace of those class hatreds which appear so conspicuously in the history of Western Europe.* * This is, I believe, the true explanation of an important fact, which the Slavophils endeavoured to explain by an ill-authenticated legend (vide supra p.151). The practical consequence of all this is that in Russia at the present day there is very little caste spirit or caste prejudice. Within half-a-dozen years after the emancipation of the serfs, proprietors and peasants, forgetting apparently their old relationship of master and serf, were working amicably together in the new local administration, and not a few similar curious facts might be cited. The confident anticipation of many Russians that their country will one day enjoy political life without political parties is, if not a contradiction in terms, at least a Utopian absurdity; but we may be sure that when political parties do appear they will be very different from those which exist in Germany, France, and England. Meanwhile, let us see how the country is governed without political parties and without political life in the West-European sense of the term. This will form the subject of our next chapter. CHAPTER XXIV THE IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION AND THE OFFICIALS The Officials in Norgorod Assist Me in My Studies--The Modern Imperial Administration Created by Peter the Great, and Developed by his Successors--A Slavophil's View of the Administration--The Administration Briefly Described--The Tchinovniks, or Officials--Official Titles, and Their Real Significance--What the Administration Has Done for Russia in the Past--Its Character Determined by the Peculiar Relation between the Government and the People--Its Radical Vices--Bureaucratic Remedies--Complicated Formal Procedure--The Gendarmerie: My Personal Relations with this Branch of the Administration; Arrest and Release--A Strong, Healthy Public Opinion the Only Effectual Remedy for Bad Administration. My administrative studies were begun in Novgorod. One of my reasons for spending a winter in that provincial capital was that I might study the provincial administration, and as soon as I had made the acquaintance of the leading officials I explained to them the object I had in view. With the kindly bonhomie which distinguishes the Russian educated classes, they all volunteered to give me every assistance in their power, but some of them, on mature reflection, evidently saw reason to check their first generous impulse. Among these was the Vice-Governor, a gentleman of German origin, and therefore more inclined to be pedantic than a genuine Russian. When I called on him one evening and reminded him of his friendly offer, I found to my surprise that he had in the meantime changed his mind. Instead of answering my first simple inquiry, he stared at me fixedly, as if for the purpose of detecting some covert, malicious design, and then, putting on an air of official dignity, informed me that as I had not been authorised by the Minister to make these investigations, he could not assist me, and would certainly not allow me to examine the archives. This was not encouraging, but it did not prevent me from applying to the Governor, and I found him a man of a very different stamp. Delighted to meet a foreigner who seemed anxious to study seriously in an unbiassed frame of mind the institutions of his much-maligned native country, he willingly explained to me the mechanism of the administration which he directed and controlled, and kindly placed at my disposal the books and documents in which I could find the historical and practical information which I required. This friendly attitude of his Excellency towards me soon became generally known in the town, and from that moment my difficulties were at an end. The minor officials no longer hesitated to initiate me into the mysteries of their respective departments, and at last even the Vice-Governor threw off his reserve and followed the example of his colleagues. The elementary information thus acquired I had afterwards abundant opportunities of completing by observation and study in other parts of the Empire, and I now propose to communicate to the reader a few of the more general results. The gigantic administrative machine which holds together all the various parts of the vast Empire has been gradually created by successive generations, but we may say roughly that it was first designed and constructed by Peter the Great. Before his time the country was governed in a rude, primitive fashion. The Grand Princes of Moscow, in subduing their rivals and annexing the surrounding principalities, merely cleared the ground for a great homogeneous State. Wily, practical politicians, rather than statesmen of the doctrinaire type, they never dreamed of introducing uniformity and symmetry into the administration as a whole. They developed the ancient institutions so far as these were useful and consistent with the exercise of autocratic power, and made only such alterations as practical necessity demanded. And these necessary alterations were more frequently local than general. Special decisions, instruction to particular officials, and charters for particular communes of proprietors were much more common than general legislative measures. In short, the old Muscovite Tsars practised a hand-to-mouth policy, destroying whatever caused temporary inconvenience, and giving little heed to what did not force itself upon their attention. Hence, under their rule the administration presented not only territorial peculiarities, but also an ill-assorted combination of different systems in the same district--a conglomeration of institutions belonging to different epochs, like a fleet composed of triremes, three-deckers, and iron-clads. This irregular system, or rather want of system, seemed highly unsatisfactory to the logical mind of Peter the Great, and he conceived the grand design of sweeping it away, and putting in its place a symmetrical bureaucratic machine. It is scarcely necessary to say that this magnificent project, so foreign to the traditional ideas and customs of the people, was not easily realised. Imagine a man, without technical knowledge, without skilled workmen, without good tools, and with no better material than soft, crumbling sandstone, endeavouring to build a palace on a marsh! The undertaking would seem to reasonable minds utterly absurd, and yet it must be admitted that Peter's project was scarcely more feasible. He had neither technical knowledge, nor the requisite materials, nor a firm foundation to build on. With his usual Titanic energy he demolished the old structure, but his attempts to construct were little more than a series of failures. In his numerous ukazes he has left us a graphic description of his efforts, and it is at once instructive and pathetic to watch the great worker toiling indefatigably at his self-imposed task. His instruments are constantly breaking in his hands. The foundations of the building are continually giving way, and the lower tiers crumbling under the superincumbent weight. Now and then a whole section is found to be unsuitable, and is ruthlessly pulled down, or falls of its own accord. And yet the builder toils on, with a perseverance and an energy of purpose that compel admiration, frankly confessing his mistakes and failures, and patiently seeking the means of remedying them, never allowing a word of despondency to escape him, and never despairing of ultimate success. And at length death comes, and the mighty builder is snatched away suddenly in the midst of his unfinished labours, bequeathing to his successors the task of carrying on the great work. None of these successors possessed Peter's genius and energy--with the exception perhaps of Catherine II.--but they were all compelled by the force of circumstances to adopt his plans. A return to the old rough-and-ready rule of the local Voyevods was impossible. As the Autocratic Power became more and more imbued with Western ideas, it felt more and more the need of new means for carrying them out, and accordingly it strove to systematise and centralise the administration. In this change we may perceive a certain analogy with the history of the French administration from the reign of Philippe le Bel to that of Louis XIV. In both countries we see the central power bringing the local administrative organs more and more under its control, till at last it succeeds in creating a thoroughly centralised bureaucratic organisation. But under this superficial resemblance lie profound differences. The French kings had to struggle with provincial sovereignties and feudal rights, and when they had annihilated this opposition they easily found materials with which to build up the bureaucratic structure. The Russian sovereigns, on the contrary, met with no such opposition, but they had great difficulty in finding bureaucratic material amongst their uneducated, undisciplined subjects, notwithstanding the numerous schools and colleges which were founded and maintained simply for the purpose of preparing men for the public service. The administration was thus brought much nearer to the West-European ideal, but some people have grave doubts as to whether it became thereby better adapted to the practical wants of the people for whom it was created. On this point a well-known Slavophil once made to me some remarks which are worthy of being recorded. "You have observed," he said, "that till very recently there was in Russia an enormous amount of official peculation, extortion, and misgovernment of every kind, that the courts of law were dens of iniquity, that the people often committed perjury, and much more of the same sort, and it must be admitted that all this has not yet entirely disappeared. But what does it prove? That the Russian people are morally inferior to the German? Not at all. It simply proves that the German system of administration, which was forced upon them without their consent, was utterly unsuited to their nature. If a young growing boy be compelled to wear very tight boots, he will probably burst them, and the ugly rents will doubtless produce an unfavourable impression on the passers-by; but surely it is better that the boots should burst than that the feet should be deformed. Now, the Russian people was compelled to put on not only tight boots, but also a tight jacket, and, being young and vigorous, it burst them. Narrow-minded, pedantic Germans can neither understand nor provide for the wants of the broad Slavonic nature." In its present form the Russian administration seems at first sight a very imposing edifice. At the top of the pyramid stands the Emperor, "the autocratic monarch," as Peter the Great described him, "who has to give an account of his acts to no one on earth, but has power and authority to rule his States and lands as a Christian sovereign according to his own will and judgment." Immediately below the Emperor we see the Council of State, the Committee of Ministers, and the Senate, which represent respectively the legislative, the administrative, and the judicial power. An Englishman glancing over the first volume of the great Code of Laws might imagine that the Council of State is a kind of Parliament, and the Committee of Ministers a cabinet in our sense of the term, but in reality both institutions are simply incarnations of the Autocratic Power. Though the Council is entrusted by law with many important functions--such as discussing Bills, criticising the annual budget, declaring war and concluding peace--it has merely a consultative character, and the Emperor is not in any way bound by its decisions. The Committee is not at all a cabinet as we understand the word. The Ministers are directly and individually responsible to the Emperor, and therefore the Committee has no common responsibility or other cohesive force. As to the Senate, it has descended from its high estate. It was originally entrusted with the supreme power during the absence or minority of the monarch, and was intended to exercise a controlling influence in all sections of the administration, but now its activity is restricted to judicial matters, and it is little more than a supreme court of appeal. Immediately below these three institutions stand the Ministries, ten in number. They are the central points in which converge the various kinds of territorial administration, and from which radiates the Imperial will all over the Empire. For the purpose of territorial administration Russia proper--that is to say, European Russia, exclusive of Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland and the Caucasus--is divided into forty-nine provinces or "Governments" (gubernii), and each Government is subdivided into Districts (uyezdi). The average area of a province is about the size of Portugal, but some are as small as Belgium, whilst one at least is twenty-five times as big. The population, however, does not correspond to the amount of territory. In the largest province, that of Archangel, there are only about 350,000 inhabitants, whilst in two of the smaller ones there are over three millions. The districts likewise vary greatly in size. Some are smaller than Oxfordshire or Buckingham, and others are bigger than the whole of the United Kingdom. Over each province is placed a Governor, who is assisted in his duties by a Vice-Governor and a small council. According to the legislation of Catherine II., which still appears in the Code and has only been partially repealed, the Governor is termed "the steward of the province," and is entrusted with so many and such delicate duties, that in order to obtain qualified men for the post it would be necessary to realise the great Empress's design of creating, by education, "a new race of people." Down to the time of the Crimean War the Governors understood the term "stewards" in a very literal sense, and ruled in a most arbitrary, high-handed style, often exercising an important influence on the civil and criminal tribunals. These extensive and vaguely defined powers have now been very much curtailed, partly by positive legislation, and partly by increased publicity and improved means of communication. All judicial matters have been placed theoretically beyond the Governor's control, and many of his former functions are now fulfilled by the Zemstvo--the new organ of local self-government. Besides this, all ordinary current affairs are regulated by an already big and ever-growing body of instructions, in the form of Imperial orders and ministerial circulars, and as soon as anything not provided for by the instructions happens to occur, the minister is consulted through the post-office or by telegraph. Even within the sphere of their lawful authority the Governors have now a certain respect for public opinion and occasionally a very wholesome dread of casual newspaper correspondents. Thus the men who were formerly described by the satirists as "little satraps" have sunk to the level of subordinate officials. I can confidently say that many (I believe the majority) of them are honest, upright men, who are perhaps not endowed with any unusual administrative capacities, but who perform their duties faithfully according to their lights. If any representatives of the old "satraps" still exist, they must be sought for in the outlying Asiatic provinces. Independent of the Governor, who is the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior, are a number of resident officials, who represent the other ministries, and each of them has a bureau, with the requisite number of assistants, secretaries, and scribes. To keep this vast and complex bureaucratic machine in motion it is necessary to have a large and well-drilled army of officials. These are drawn chiefly from the ranks of the Noblesse and the clergy, and form a peculiar social class called Tchinovniks, or men with Tchins. As the Tchin plays an important part in Russia, not only in the official world, but also to some extent in social life, it may be well to explain its significance. All offices, civil and military, are, according to a scheme invented by Peter the Great, arranged in fourteen classes or ranks, and to each class or rank a particular name is attached. As promotion is supposed to be given according to personal merit, a man who enters the public service for the first time must, whatever be his social position, begin in the lower ranks, and work his way upwards. Educational certificates may exempt him from the necessity of passing through the lowest classes, and the Imperial will may disregard the restrictions laid down by law; but as general rule a man must begin at or near the bottom of the official ladder, and he must remain on each step a certain specified time. The step on which he is for the moment standing, or, in other words, the official rank or tchin which he possesses determines what offices he is competent to hold. Thus rank or tchin is a necessary condition for receiving an appointment, but it does not designate any actual office, and the names of the different ranks are extremely apt to mislead a foreigner. We must always bear this in mind when we meet with those imposing titles which Russian tourists sometimes put on their visiting cards, such as "Conseiller de Cour," "Conseiller d'Etat," "Conseiller prive de S. M. l'Empereur de toutes les Russies." It would be uncharitable to suppose that these titles are used with the intention of misleading, but that they do sometimes mislead there cannot be the least doubt. I shall never forget the look of intense disgust which I once saw on the face of an American who had invited to dinner a "Conseiller de Cour," on the assumption that he would have a Court dignitary as his guest, and who casually discovered that the personage in question was simply an insignificant official in one of the public offices. No doubt other people have had similar experiences. The unwary foreigner who has heard that there is in Russia a very important institution called the "Conseil d'Etat," naturally supposes that a "Conseiller d'Etat" is a member of that venerable body; and if he meets "Son Excellence le Conseiller prive," he is pretty sure to assume--especially if the word "actuel" has been affixed--that he sees before him a real living member of the Russian Privy Council. When to the title is added, "de S. M. l'Empereur de toutes les Russies," a boundless field is opened up to the non-Russian imagination. In reality these titles are not nearly so important as they seem. The soi-disant "Conseiller de Cour" has probably nothing to do with the Court. The Conseiller d'Etat is so far from being a member of the Conseil d'Etat that he cannot possibly become a member till he receives a higher tchin.* As to the Privy Councillor, it is sufficient to say that the Privy Council, which had a very odious reputation in its lifetime, died more than a century ago, and has not since been resuscitated. The explanation of these anomalies is to be found in the fact that the Russian tchins, like the German honorary titles--Hofrath, Staatsrath, Geheimrath--of which they are a literal translation, indicate not actual office, but simply official rank. Formerly the appointment to an office generally depended on the tchin; now there is a tendency to reverse the old order of things and make the tchin depend upon the office actually held. * In Russian the two words are quite different; the Council is called Gosudarstvenny sovet, and the title Statski sovetnik. The reader of practical mind who is in the habit of considering results rather than forms and formalities desires probably no further description of the Russian bureaucracy, but wishes to know simply how it works in practice. What has it done for Russia in the past, and what is it doing in the present? At the present day, when faith in despotic civilisers and paternal government has been rudely shaken, and the advantages of a free, spontaneous national development are fully recognised, centralised bureaucracies have everywhere fallen into bad odour. In Russia the dislike to them is particularly strong, because it has there something more than a purely theoretical basis. The recollection of the reign of Nicholas I., with its stern military regime, and minute, pedantic formalism, makes many Russians condemn in no measured terms the administration under which they live, and most Englishmen will feel inclined to endorse this condemnation. Before passing sentence, however, we ought to know that the system has at least an historical justification, and we must not allow our love of constitutional liberty and local self-government to blind us to the distinction between theoretical and historical possibility. What seems to political philosophers abstractly the best possible government may be utterly inapplicable in certain concrete cases. We need not attempt to decide whether it is better for humanity that Russia should exist as a nation, but we may boldly assert that without a strongly centralised administration Russia would never have become one of the great European Powers. Until comparatively recent times the part of the world which is known as the Russian Empire was a conglomeration of independent or semi-independent political units, animated with centrifugal as well as centripetal forces; and even at the present day it is far from being a compact homogeneous State. It was the autocratic power, with the centralised administration as its necessary complement, that first created Russia, then saved her from dismemberment and political annihilation, and ultimately secured for her a place among European nations by introducing Western civilisation. Whilst thus recognising clearly that autocracy and a strongly centralised administration were necessary first for the creation and afterwards for the preservation of national independence, we must not shut our eyes to the evil consequences which resulted from this unfortunate necessity. It was in the nature of things that the Government, aiming at the realisation of designs which its subjects neither sympathised with nor clearly understood, should have become separated from the nation; and the reckless haste and violence with which it attempted to carry out its schemes aroused a spirit of positive opposition among the masses. A considerable section of the people long looked on the reforming Tsars as incarnations of the spirit of evil, and the Tsars in their turn looked upon the people as raw material for the realisation of their political designs. This peculiar relation between the nation and the Government has given the key-note to the whole system of administration. The Government has always treated the people as minors, incapable of understanding its political aims, and only very partially competent to look after their own local affairs. The officials have naturally acted in the same spirit. Looking for direction and approbation merely to their superiors, they have systematically treated those over whom they were placed as a conquered or inferior race. The State has thus come to be regarded as an abstract entity, with interests entirely different from those of the human beings composing it; and in all matters in which State interests are supposed to be involved, the rights of individuals are ruthlessly sacrificed. If we remember that the difficulties of centralised administration must be in direct proportion to the extent and territorial variety of the country to be governed, we may readily understand how slowly and imperfectly the administrative machine necessarily works in Russia. The whole of the vast region stretching from the Polar Ocean to the Caspian, and from the shores of the Baltic to the confines of the Celestial Empire, is administered from St. Petersburg. The genuine bureaucrat has a wholesome dread of formal responsibility, and generally tries to avoid it by taking all matters out of the hands of his subordinates, and passing them on to the higher authorities. As soon, therefore, as affairs are caught up by the administrative machine they begin to ascend, and probably arrive some day at the cabinet of the minister. Thus the ministries are flooded with papers--many of the most trivial import--from all parts of the Empire; and the higher officials, even if they had the eyes of an Argus and the hands of a Briareus, could not possibly fulfil conscientiously the duties imposed on them. In reality the Russian administrators of the higher ranks recall neither Argus nor Briareus. They commonly show neither an extensive nor a profound knowledge of the country which they are supposed to govern, and seem always to have a fair amount of leisure time at their disposal. Besides the unavoidable evils of excessive centralisation, Russia has had to suffer much from the jobbery, venality, and extortion of the officials. When Peter the Great one day proposed to hang every man who should steal as much as would buy a rope, his Procurator-General frankly replied that if his Majesty put his project into execution there would be no officials left. "We all steal," added the worthy official; "the only difference is that some of us steal larger amounts and more openly than others." Since these words were spoken nearly two centuries have passed, and during all that time Russia has been steadily making progress, but until the accession of Alexander II. in 1855 little change took place in the moral character of the administration. Some people still living can remember the time when they could have repeated, without much exaggeration, the confession of Peter's Procurator-General. To appreciate aright this ugly phenomenon we must distinguish two kinds of venality. On the one hand there was the habit of exacting what are vulgarly termed "tips" for services performed, and on the other there were the various kinds of positive dishonesty. Though it might not be always easy to draw a clear line between the two categories, the distinction was fully recognised in the moral consciousness of the time, and many an official who regularly received "sinless revenues" (bezgreshniye dokhodi), as the tips were sometimes called, would have been very indignant had he been stigmatised as a dishonest man. The practice was, in fact, universal, and could be, to a certain extent, justified by the smallness of the official salaries. In some departments there was a recognised tariff. The "brandy farmers," for example, who worked the State Monopoly for the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors, paid regularly a fixed sum to every official, from the Governor to the policeman, according to his rank. I knew of one case where an official, on receiving a larger sum than was customary, conscientiously handed back the change! The other and more heinous offences were by no means so common, but were still fearfully frequent. Many high officials and important dignitaries were known to receive large revenues, to which the term "sinless" could not by any means be applied, and yet they retained their position, and were received in society with respectful deference. The Sovereigns were well aware of the abuses, and strove more or less to root them out, but the success which attended their efforts does not give us a very exalted idea of the practical omnipotence of autocracy. In a centralised bureaucratic administration, in which each official is to a certain extent responsible for the sins of his subordinates, it is always extremely difficult to bring an official culprit to justice, for he is sure to be protected by his superiors; and when the superiors are themselves habitually guilty of malpractices, the culprit is quite safe from exposure and punishment. The Tsar, indeed, might do much towards exposing and punishing offenders if he could venture to call in public opinion to his assistance, but in reality he is very apt to become a party to the system of hushing up official delinquencies. He is himself the first official in the realm, and he knows that the abuse of power by a subordinate has a tendency to produce hostility towards the fountain of all official power. Frequent punishment of officials might, it is thought, diminish public respect for the Government, and undermine that social discipline which is necessary for the public tranquillity. It is therefore considered expedient to give to official delinquencies as little publicity as possible. Besides this, strange as it may seem, a Government which rests on the arbitrary will of a single individual is, notwithstanding occasional outbursts of severity, much less systematically severe than authority founded on free public opinion. When delinquencies occur in very high places the Tsar is almost sure to display a leniency approaching to tenderness. If it be necessary to make a sacrifice to justice, the sacrificial operation is made as painless as may be, and illustrious scapegoats are not allowed to die of starvation in the wilderness--the wilderness being generally Paris or the Riviera. This fact may seem strange to those who are in the habit of associating autocracy with Neapolitan dungeons and the mines of Siberia, but it is not difficult to explain. No individual, even though he be the Autocrat of all the Russias, can so case himself in the armour of official dignity as to be completely proof against personal influences. The severity of autocrats is reserved for political offenders, against whom they naturally harbour a feeling of personal resentment. It is so much easier for us to be lenient and charitable towards a man who sins against public morality than towards one who sins against ourselves! In justice to the bureaucratic reformers in Russia, it must be said that they have preferred prevention to cure. Refraining from all Draconian legislation, they have put their faith in a system of ingenious checks and a complicated formal procedure. When we examine the complicated formalities and labyrinthine procedure by which the administration is controlled, our first impression is that administrative abuses must be almost impossible. Every possible act of every official seems to have been foreseen, and every possible outlet from the narrow path of honesty seems to have been carefully walled up. As the English reader has probably no conception of formal procedure in a highly centralised bureaucracy, let me give, by way of illustration, an instance which accidentally came to my knowledge. In the residence of a Governor-General one of the stoves is in need of repairs. An ordinary mortal may assume that a man with the rank of Governor-General may be trusted to expend a few shillings conscientiously, and that consequently his Excellency will at once order the repairs to be made and the payment to be put down among the petty expenses. To the bureaucratic mind the case appears in a very different light. All possible contingencies must be carefully provided for. As a Governor-General may possibly be possessed with a mania for making useless alterations, the necessity for the repairs ought to be verified; and as wisdom and honesty are more likely to reside in an assembly than in an individual, it is well to entrust the verification to a council. A council of three or four members accordingly certifies that the repairs are necessary. This is pretty strong authority, but it is not enough. Councils are composed of mere human beings, liable to error and subject to be intimidated by a Governor-General. It is prudent, therefore, to demand that the decision of the council be confirmed by the Procureur, who is directly subordinated to the Minister of Justice. When this double confirmation has been obtained, an architect examines the stove, and makes an estimate. But it would be dangerous to give carte blanche to an architect, and therefore the estimate has to be confirmed, first by the aforesaid council and afterwards by the Procureur. When all these formalities--which require sixteen days and ten sheets of paper--have been duly observed, his Excellency is informed that the contemplated repairs will cost two roubles and forty kopecks, or about five shillings of our money. Even here the formalities do not stop, for the Government must have the assurance that the architect who made the estimate and superintended the repairs has not been guilty of negligence. A second architect is therefore sent to examine the work, and his report, like the estimate, requires to be confirmed by the council and the Procureur. The whole correspondence lasts thirty days, and requires no less than thirty sheets of paper! Had the person who desired the repairs been not a Governor-General, but an ordinary mortal, it is impossible to say how long the procedure might have lasted.* * In fairness I feel constrained to add that incidents of this kind occasionally occur--or at least occurred as late as 1886--in our Indian Administration. I remember an instance of a pane of glass being broken in the Viceroy's bedroom in the Viceregal Lodge at Simla, and it would have required nearly a week, if the official procedure had been scrupulously observed, to have it replaced by the Public Works Department. It might naturally be supposed that this circuitous and complicated method, with its registers, ledgers, and minutes of proceedings, must at least prevent pilfering; but this a priori conclusion has been emphatically belied by experience. Every new ingenious device had merely the effect of producing a still more ingenious means of avoiding it. The system did not restrain those who wished to pilfer, and it had a deleterious effect on honest officials by making them feel that the Government reposed no confidence in them. Besides this, it produced among all officials, honest and dishonest alike, the habit of systematic falsification. As it was impossible for even the most pedantic of men--and pedantry, be it remarked, is a rare quality among Russians--to fulfil conscientiously all the prescribed formalities, it became customary to observe the forms merely on paper. Officials certified facts which they never dreamed of examining, and secretaries gravely wrote the minutes of meetings that had never been held! Thus, in the case above cited, the repairs were in reality begun and ended long before the architect was officially authorised to begin the work. The comedy was nevertheless gravely played out to the end, so that any one afterwards revising the documents would have found that everything had been done in perfect order. Perhaps the most ingenious means for preventing administrative abuses was devised by the Emperor Nicholas I. Fully aware that he was regularly and systematically deceived by the ordinary officials, he formed a body of well-paid officers, called the gendarmerie, who were scattered over the country, and ordered to report directly to his Majesty whatever seemed to them worthy of attention. Bureaucratic minds considered this an admirable expedient; and the Tsar confidently expected that he would, by means of these official observers who had no interest in concealing the truth, be able to know everything, and to correct all official abuses. In reality the institution produced few good results, and in some respects had a very pernicious influence. Though picked men and provided with good salaries, these officers were all more or less permeated with the prevailing spirit. They could not but feel that they were regarded as spies and informers--a humiliating conviction, little calculated to develop that feeling of self-respect which is the main foundation of uprightness--and that all their efforts could do but little good. They were, in fact, in pretty much the same position as Peter's Procurator-General, and, with true Russian bonhomie, they disliked ruining individuals who were no worse than the majority of their fellows. Besides this, according to the received code of official morality insubordination was a more heinous sin than dishonesty, and political offences were regarded as the blackest of all. The gendarmerie officers shut their eyes, therefore, to the prevailing abuses, which were believed to be incurable, and directed their attention to real or imaginary political delinquencies. Oppression and extortion remained unnoticed, whilst an incautious word or a foolish joke at the expense of the Government was too often magnified into an act of high treason. This force still exists under a slightly modified form. Towards the close of the reign of Alexander II. (1880), when Count Loris Melikof, with the sanction and approval of his august master, was preparing to introduce a system of liberal political reforms, it was intended to abolish the gendarmerie as an organ of political espionage, and accordingly the direction of it was transferred from the so-called Third Section of his Imperial Majesty's Chancery to the Ministry of the Interior; but when the benevolent monarch was a few months afterwards assassinated by revolutionists, the project was naturally abandoned, and the Corps of Gendarmes, while remaining nominally under the Minister of the Interior, was practically reinstated in its former position. Now, as then, it serves as a kind of supplement to the ordinary police, and is generally employed for matters in which secrecy is required. Unfortunately it is not bound by those legal restrictions which protect the public against the arbitrary will of the ordinary authorities. In addition to its regular duties it has a vaguely defined roving commission to watch and arrest all persons who seem to it in any way dangerous or suspectes, and it may keep such in confinement for an indefinite time, or remove them to some distant and inhospitable part of the Empire, without making them undergo a regular trial. It is, in short, the ordinary instrument for punishing political dreamers, suppressing secret societies, counteracting political agitations, and in general executing the extra-legal orders of the Government. My relations with this anomalous branch of the administration were somewhat peculiar. After my experience with the Vice-Governor of Novgorod I determined to place myself above suspicion, and accordingly applied to the "Chef des Gendarmes" for some kind of official document which would prove to all officials with whom I might come in contact that I had no illicit designs. My request was granted, and I was furnished with the necessary documents; but I soon found that in seeking to avoid Scylla I had fallen into Charybdis. In calming official suspicions, I inadvertently aroused suspicions of another kind. The documents proving that I enjoyed the protection of the Government made many people suspect that I was an emissary of the gendarmerie, and greatly impeded me in my efforts to collect information from private sources. As the private were for me more important than the official sources of information, I refrained from asking for a renewal of the protection, and wandered about the country as an ordinary unprotected traveller. For some time I had no cause to regret this decision. I knew that I was pretty closely watched, and that my letters were occasionally opened in the post-office, but I was subjected to no further inconvenience. At last, when I had nearly forgotten all about Scylla and Charybdis, I one night unexpectedly ran upon the former, and, to my astonishment, found myself formally arrested! The incident happened in this wise. I had been visiting Austria and Servia, and after a short absence returned to Russia through Moldavia. On arriving at the Pruth, which there forms the frontier, I found an officer of gendarmerie, whose duty it was to examine the passports of all passers-by. Though my passport was completely en regle, having been duly vise by the British and Russian Consuls at Galatz, this gentleman subjected me to a searching examination regarding my past life, actual occupation, and intentions for the future. On learning that I had been for more than two years travelling in Russia at my own expense, for the simple purpose of collecting miscellaneous information, he looked incredulous, and seemed to have some doubts as to my being a genuine British subject; but when my statements were confirmed by my travelling companion, a Russian friend who carried awe-inspiring credentials, he countersigned my passport, and allowed us to depart. The inspection of our luggage by the custom-house officers was soon got over; and as we drove off to the neighbouring village where we were to spend the night we congratulated ourselves on having escaped for some time from all contact with the official world. In this we were "reckoning without the host." As the clock struck twelve that night I was roused by a loud knocking at my door, and after a good deal of parley, during which some one proposed to effect an entrance by force, I drew the bolt. The officer who had signed my passport entered, and said, in a stiff, official tone, "I must request you to remain here for twenty-four hours." Not a little astonished by this announcement, I ventured to inquire the reason for this strange request. "That is my business," was the laconic reply. "Perhaps it is; still you must, on mature consideration, admit that I too have some interest in the matter. To my extreme regret I cannot comply with your request, and must leave at sunrise." "You shall not leave. Give me your passport." "Unless detained by force, I shall start at four o'clock; and as I wish to get some sleep before that time, I must request you instantly to retire. You had the right to stop me at the frontier, but you have no right to come and disturb me in this fashion, and I shall certainly report you. My passport I shall give to none but a regular officer of police." Here followed a long discussion on the rights, privileges, and general character of the gendarmerie, during which my opponent gradually laid aside his dictatorial tone, and endeavoured to convince me that the honourable body to which he belonged was merely an ordinary branch of the administration. Though evidently irritated, he never, I must say, overstepped the bounds of politeness, and seemed only half convinced that he was justified in interfering with my movements. When he found that he could not induce me to give up my passport, he withdrew, and I again lay down to rest; but in about half an hour I was again disturbed. This time an officer of regular police entered, and demanded my "papers." To my inquiries as to the reason of all this disturbance, he replied, in a very polite, apologetic way, that he knew nothing about the reason, but he had received orders to arrest me, and must obey. To him I delivered my passport, on condition that I should receive a written receipt, and should be allowed to telegraph to the British ambassador in St. Petersburg. Early next morning I telegraphed to the ambassador, and waited impatiently all day for a reply. I was allowed to walk about the village and the immediate vicinity, but of this permission I did not make much use. The village population was entirely Jewish, and Jews in that part of the world have a wonderful capacity for spreading intelligence. By the early morning there was probably not a man, woman, or child in the place who had not heard of my arrest, and many of them felt a not unnatural curiosity to see the malefactor who had been caught by the police. To be stared at as a malefactor is not very agreeable, so I preferred to remain in my room, where, in the company of my friend, who kindly remained with me and made small jokes about the boasted liberty of British subjects, I spent the time pleasantly enough. The most disagreeable part of the affair was the uncertainty as to how many days, weeks, or months I might be detained, and on this point the police-officer would not even hazard a conjecture. The detention came to an end sooner than I expected. On the following day--that is to say, about thirty-six hours after the nocturnal visit--the police-officer brought me my passport, and at the same time a telegram from the British Embassy informed me that the central authorities had ordered my release. On my afterwards pertinaciously requesting an explanation of the unceremonious treatment to which I had been subjected, the Minister for Foreign Affairs declared that the authorities expected a person of my name to cross the frontier about that time with a quantity of false bank-notes, and that I had been arrested by mistake. I must confess that this explanation, though official, seemed to me more ingenious than satisfactory, but I was obliged to accept it for what it was worth. At a later period I had again the misfortune to attract the attention of the secret police, but I reserve the incident till I come to speak of my relations with the revolutionists. From all I have seen and heard of the gendarmerie I am disposed to believe that the officers are for the most part polite, well-educated men, who seek to fulfil their disagreeable duties in as inoffensive a way as possible. It must, however, be admitted that they are generally regarded with suspicion and dislike, even by those people who fear the attempts at revolutionary propaganda which it is the special duty of the gendarmerie to discover and suppress. Nor need this surprise us. Though very many people believe in the necessity of capital punishment, there are few who do not feel a decided aversion to the public executioner. The only effectual remedy for administrative abuses lies in placing the administration under public control. This has been abundantly proved in Russia. All the efforts of the Tsars during many generations to check the evil by means of ingenious bureaucratic devices proved utterly fruitless. Even the iron will and gigantic energy of Nicholas I. were insufficient for the task. But when, after the Crimean War, there was a great moral awakening, and the Tsar called the people to his assistance, the stubborn, deep-rooted evils immediately disappeared. For a time venality and extortion were unknown, and since that period they have never been able to regain their old force. At the present moment it cannot be said that the administration is immaculate, but it is incomparably purer than it was in old times. Though public opinion is no longer so powerful as it was in the early sixties, it is still strong enough to repress many malpractices which in the time of Nicholas I. and his predecessors were too frequent to attract attention. On this subject I shall have more to say hereafter. If administrative abuses are rife in the Empire of the Tsars, it is not from any want of carefully prepared laws. In no country in the world, perhaps, is the legislation more voluminous, and in theory, not only the officials, but even the Tsar himself, must obey the laws he has sanctioned, like the meanest of his subjects. This is one of those cases, not infrequent in Russia, in which theory differs somewhat from practice. In real life the Emperor may at any moment override the law by means of what is called a Supreme Command (vysotchaishiye povelenie), and a minister may "interpret" a law in any way he pleases by means of a circular. This is a frequent cause of complaint even among those who wish to uphold the Autocratic Power. In their opinion law-respecting autocracy wielded by a strong Tsar is an excellent institution for Russia; it is arbitrary autocracy wielded by irresponsible ministers that they object to. As Englishmen may have some difficulty in imagining how laws can come into being without a Parliament or Legislative Chamber of some sort, I shall explain briefly how they are manufactured by the Russian bureaucratic machine without the assistance of representative institutions. When a minister considers that some institution in his branch of the service requires to be reformed, he begins by submitting to the Emperor a formal report on the matter. If the Emperor agrees with his minister as to the necessity for reform, he orders a Commission to be appointed for the purpose of considering the subject and preparing a definite legislative project. The Commission meets and sets to work in what seems a very thorough way. It first studies the history of the institution in Russia from the earliest times downwards--or rather, it listens to an essay on the subject, especially prepared for the occasion by some official who has a taste for historical studies, and can write in a pleasant style. The next step--to use a phrase which often occurs in the minutes of such commissions--consists in "shedding the light of science on the question" (prolit' na dyelo svet nauki). This important operation is performed by preparing a memorial containing the history of similar institutions in foreign countries, and an elaborate exposition of numerous theories held by French and German philosophical jurists. In these memorials it is often considered necessary to include every European country except Turkey, and sometimes the small German States and principal Swiss cantons are treated separately. To illustrate the character of these wonderful productions, let me give an example. From a pile of such papers lying before me I take one almost at random. It is a memorial relating to a proposed reform of benevolent institutions. First I find a philosophical disquisition on benevolence in general; next, some remarks on the Talmud and the Koran; then a reference to the treatment of paupers in Athens after the Peloponnesian War, and in Rome under the emperors: then some vague observations on the Middle Ages, with a quotation that was evidently intended to be Latin; lastly, comes an account of the poor-laws of modern times, in which I meet with "the Anglo-Saxon domination," King Egbert, King Ethelred, "a remarkable book of Icelandic laws, called Hragas"; Sweden and Norway, France, Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and nearly all the minor German States. The most wonderful thing is that all this mass of historical information, extending from the Talmud to the most recent legislation of Hesse-Darmstadt, is compressed into twenty-one octavo pages! The doctrinal part of the memorandum is not less rich. Many respected names from the literature of Germany, France, and England are forcibly dragged in; and the general conclusion drawn from this mass of raw, undigested materials is believed to be "the latest results of science." Does the reader suspect that I have here chosen an extremely exceptional case? If so, let us take the next paper in the file. It refers to a project of law regarding imprisonment for debt. On the first page I find references to "the Salic laws of the fifth century," and the "Assises de Jerusalem, A.D 1099." That, I think, will suffice. Let us pass, then, to the next step. When the quintessence of human wisdom and experience has thus been extracted, the commission considers how the valuable product may be applied to Russia, so as to harmonise with the existing general conditions and local peculiarities. For a man of practical mind this is, of course, the most interesting and most important part of the operation, but from Russian legislators it receives comparatively little attention. Very often have I turned to this section of official papers in order to obtain information regarding the actual state of the country, and in every case I have been grievously disappointed. Vague general phrases, founded on a priori reasoning rather than on observation, together with a few statistical tables--which the cautious investigator should avoid as he would an ambuscade--are too often all that is to be found. Through the thin veil of pseudo-erudition the real facts are clear enough. These philosophical legislators, who have spent their lives in the official atmosphere of St. Petersburg, know as much about Russia as the genuine cockney knows about Great Britain, and in this part of their work they derive no assistance from the learned German treatises which supply an unlimited amount of historical facts and philosophical speculation. From the commission the project passes to the Council of State, where it is certainly examined and criticised, and perhaps modified, but it is not likely to be improved from the practical point of view, because the members of the Council are merely ci-devant members of similar commissions, hardened by a few additional years of official routine. The Council is, in fact, an assembly of tchinovniks who know little of the practical, everyday wants of the unofficial classes. No merchant, manufacturer, or farmer ever enters its sacred precincts, so that its bureaucratic serenity is rarely disturbed by practical objections. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has been known to pass laws which were found at once to be absolutely unworkable. From the Council of State the Bill is taken to the Emperor, and he generally begins by examining the signatures. The "Ayes" are in one column and the "Noes" in another. If his Majesty is not specially acquainted with the matter--and he cannot possibly be acquainted with all the matters submitted to him--he usually signs with the majority, or on the side where he sees the names of officials in whose judgment he has special confidence; but if he has strong views of his own, he places his signature in whichever column he thinks fit, and it outweighs the signatures of any number of Councillors. Whatever side he supports, that side "has it," and in this way a small minority may be transformed into a majority. When the important question, for example, as to how far classics should be taught in the ordinary schools was considered by the Council, it is said that only two members signed in favour of classical education, which was excessively unpopular at the moment, but the Emperor Alexander III., disregarding public opinion and the advice of his Councillors, threw his signature into the lighter scale, and the classicists were victorious. CHAPTER XXV MOSCOW AND THE SLAVOPHILS Two Ancient Cities--Kief Not a Good Point for Studying Old Russian National Life--Great Russians and Little Russians--Moscow--Easter Eve in the Kremlin--Curious Custom--Anecdote of the Emperor Nicholas--Domiciliary Visits of the Iberian Madonna--The Streets of Moscow--Recent Changes in the Character of the City--Vulgar Conception of the Slavophils--Opinion Founded on Personal Acquaintance--Slavophil Sentiment a Century Ago--Origin and Development of the Slavophil Doctrine--Slavophilism Essentially Muscovite--The Panslavist Element--The Slavophils and the Emancipation. In the last chapter, as in many of the preceding ones, the reader must have observed that at one moment there was a sudden break, almost a solution of continuity, in Russian national life. The Tsardom of Muscovy, with its ancient Oriental costumes and Byzantine traditions, unexpectedly disappears, and the Russian Empire, clad in modern garb and animated with the spirit of modern progress, steps forward uninvited into European history. Of the older civilisation, if civilisation it can be called, very little survived the political transformation, and that little is generally supposed to hover ghostlike around Kief and Moscow. To one or other of these towns, therefore, the student who desires to learn something of genuine old Russian life, untainted by foreign influences, naturally wends his way. For my part I thought first of settling for a time in Kief, the oldest and most revered of Russian cities, where missionaries from Byzantium first planted Christianity on Russian soil, and where thousands of pilgrims still assemble yearly from far and near to prostrate themselves before the Holy Icons in the churches and to venerate the relics of the blessed saints and martyrs in the catacombs of the great monastery. I soon discovered, however, that Kief, though it represents in a certain sense the Byzantine traditions so dear to the Russian people, is not a good point of observation for studying the Russian character. It was early exposed to the ravages of the nomadic tribes of the Steppe, and when it was liberated from those incursions it was seized by the Poles and Lithuanians, and remained for centuries under their domination. Only in comparatively recent times did it begin to recover its Russian character--a university having been created there for that purpose after the Polish insurrection of 1830. Even now the process of Russification is far from complete, and the Russian elements in the population are far from being pure in the nationalist sense. The city and the surrounding country are, in fact, Little Russian rather than Great Russian, and between these two sections of the population there are profound differences--differences of language, costume, traditions, popular songs, proverbs, folk-lore, domestic arrangements, mode of life, and Communal organisation. In these and other respects the Little Russians, South Russians, Ruthenes, or Khokhly, as they are variously designated, differ from the Great Russians of the North, who form the predominant factor in the Empire, and who have given to that wonderful structure its essential characteristics. Indeed, if I did not fear to ruffle unnecessarily the patriotic susceptibilities of my Great Russian friends who have a pet theory on this subject, I should say that we have here two distinct nationalities, further apart from each other than the English and the Scotch. The differences are due, I believe, partly to ethnographical peculiarities and partly to historic conditions. As it was the energetic Great Russian empire-builders and not the half-dreamy, half-astute, sympathetic descendants of the Free Cossacks that I wanted to study, I soon abandoned my idea of settling in the Holy City on the Dnieper, and chose Moscow as my point of observation; and here, during several years, I spent regularly some of the winter months. The first few weeks of my stay in the ancient capital of the Tsars were spent in the ordinary manner of intelligent tourists. After mastering the contents of a guide-book I carefully inspected all the officially recognised objects of interest--the Kremlin, with its picturesque towers and six centuries of historical associations; the Cathedrals, containing the venerated tombs of martyrs, saints, and Tsars; the old churches, with their quaint, archaic, richly decorated Icons; the "Patriarchs' Treasury," rich in jewelled ecclesiastical vestments and vessels of silver and gold; the ancient and the modern palace; the Ethnological Museum, showing the costumes and physiognomy of all the various races in the Empire; the archaeological collections, containing many objects that recall the barbaric splendour of old Muscovy; the picture-gallery, with Ivanof's gigantic picture, in which patriotic Russian critics discover occult merits which place it above anything that Western Europe has yet produced! Of course I climbed up to the top of the tall belfry which rejoices in the name of "Ivan the Great," and looked down on the "gilded domes"* of the churches, and bright green roofs of the houses, and far away, beyond these, the gently undulating country with the "Sparrow Hills," from which Napoleon is said, in cicerone language, to have "gazed upon the doomed city." Occasionally I walked about the bazaars in the hope of finding interesting specimens of genuine native art-industry, and was urgently invited to purchase every conceivable article which I did not want. At midday or in the evening I visited the most noted traktirs, and made the acquaintance of the caviar, sturgeons, sterlets, and other native delicacies for which these institutions are famous--deafened the while by the deep tones of the colossal barrel-organ, out of all proportion to the size of the room; and in order to see how the common people spent their evenings I looked in at some of the more modest traktirs, and gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, at the enormous quantity of weak tea which the inmates consumed. * Allowance must be made here for poetical licence. In reality, very few of the domes are gilt. The great majority of them are painted green, like the roofs of the houses. Since these first weeks of my sojourn in Moscow more than thirty years have passed, and many of my early impressions have been blurred by time, but one scene remains deeply graven on my memory. It was Easter Eve, and I had gone with a friend to the Kremlin to witness the customary religious ceremonies. Though the rain was falling heavily, an immense number of people had assembled in and around the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd was of the most mixed kind. There stood the patient bearded muzhik in his well-worn sheepskin; the big, burly, self-satisfied merchant in his long black glossy kaftan; the noble with fashionable great-coat and umbrella; thinly clad old women shivering in the cold, and bright-eyed young damsels with their warm cloaks drawn closely round them; old men with long beard, wallet, and pilgrim's staff; and mischievous urchins with faces for the moment preternaturally demure. Each right hand, of old and young alike, held a lighted taper, and these myriads of flickering little flames produced a curious illumination, giving to the surrounding buildings a weird picturesqueness which they do not possess in broad daylight. All stood patiently waiting for the announcement of the glad tidings: "He is risen!" As midnight approached, the hum of voices gradually ceased, till, as the clock struck twelve, the deep-toned bell on "Ivan the Great" began to toll, and in answer to this signal all the bells in Moscow suddenly sent forth a merry peal. Each bell--and their name is legion--seemed frantically desirous of drowning its neighbour's voice, the solemn boom of the great one overhead mingling curiously with the sharp, fussy "ting-a-ting-ting" of diminutive rivals. If demons dwell in Moscow and dislike bell-ringing, as is generally supposed, then there must have been at that moment a general stampede of the powers of darkness such as is described by Milton in his poem on the Nativity, and as if this deafening din were not enough, big guns were fired in rapid succession from a battery of artillery close at hand! The noise seemed to stimulate the religious enthusiasm, and the general excitement had a wonderful effect on a Russian friend who accompanied me. When in his normal condition that gentleman was a quiet, undemonstrative person, devoted to science, an ardent adherent of Western civilisation in general and of Darwinism in particular, and a thorough sceptic with regard to all forms of religious belief; but the influence of the surroundings was too much for his philosophical equanimity. For a moment his orthodox Muscovite soul awoke from its sceptical, cosmopolitan lethargy. After crossing himself repeatedly--an act of devotion which I had never before seen him perform--he grasped my arm, and, pointing to the crowd, said in an exultant tone of voice, "Look there! There is a sight that you can see nowhere but in the 'White-stone City.'* Are not the Russians a religious people?" *Belokamenny, meaning "of white stone," is one of the popular names of Moscow. To this unexpected question I gave a monosyllabic assent, and refrained from disturbing my friend's new-born enthusiasm by any discordant note; but I must confess that this sudden outburst of deafening noise and the dazzling light aroused in my heretical breast feelings of a warlike rather than a religious kind. For a moment I could imagine myself in ancient Moscow, and could fancy the people being called out to repel a Tartar horde already thundering at the gates! The service lasted two or three hours, and terminated with the curious ceremony of blessing the Easter cakes, which were ranged--each one with a lighted taper stuck in it--in long rows outside of the cathedral. A not less curious custom practised at this season is that of exchanging kisses of fraternal love. Theoretically one ought to embrace and be embraced by all present--indicating thereby that all are brethren in Christ--but the refinements of modern life have made innovations in the practice, and most people confine their salutations to their friends and acquaintances. When two friends meet during that night or on the following day, the one says, "Christos voskres!" ("Christ hath risen!"); and the other replies, "Vo istine voskres!" ("In truth he hath risen!"). They then kiss each other three times on the right and left cheek alternately. The custom is more or less observed in all classes of society, and the Emperor himself conforms to it. This reminds me of an anecdote which is related of the Emperor Nicholas I., tending to show that he was not so devoid of kindly human feelings as his imperial and imperious exterior suggested. On coming out of his cabinet one Easter morning he addressed to the soldier who was mounting guard at the door the ordinary words of salutation, "Christ hath risen!" and received instead of the ordinary reply, a flat contradiction--"Not at all, your Imperial Majesty!" Astounded by such an unexpected answer--for no one ventured to dissent from Nicholas even in the most guarded and respectful terms--he instantly demanded an explanation. The soldier, trembling at his own audacity, explained that he was a Jew, and could not conscientiously admit the fact of the Resurrection. This boldness for conscience' sake so pleased the Tsar that he gave the man a handsome Easter present. A quarter of a century after the Easter Eve above mentioned--or, to be quite accurate, on the 26th of May, 1896--I again find myself in the Kremlin on the occasion of a great religious ceremony--a ceremony which shows that "the White-stone City" on the Moskva is still in some respects the capital of Holy Russia. This time my post of observation is inside the cathedral, which is artistically draped with purple hangings and crowded with the most distinguished personages of the Empire, all arrayed in gorgeous apparel--Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, Imperial Highnesses and High Excellencies, Metropolitans and Archbishops, Senators and Councillors of State, Generals and Court dignitaries. In the centre of the building, on a high, richly decorated platform, sits the Emperor with his Imperial Consort, and his mother, the widowed Consort of Alexander III. Though Nicholas II. has not the colossal stature which has distinguished so many of the Romanofs, he is well built, holds himself erect, and shows a quiet dignity in his movements; while his face, which resembles that of his cousin, the Prince of Wales, wears a kindly, sympathetic expression. The Empress looks even more than usually beautiful, in a low dress cut in the ancient fashion, her thick brown hair, dressed most simply without jewellery or other ornaments, falling in two long ringlets over her white shoulders. For the moment, her attire is much simpler than that of the Empress Dowager, who wears a diamond crown and a great mantle of gold brocade, lined and edged with ermine, the long train displaying in bright-coloured embroidery the heraldic double-headed eagle of the Imperial arms. Each of these august personages sits on a throne of curious workmanship, consecrated by ancient historic associations. That of the Emperor, the gift of the Shah of Persia to Ivan the Terrible, and commonly called the Throne of Tsar Michael, the founder of the Romanof dynasty, is covered with gold plaques, and studded with hundreds of big, roughly cut precious stones, mostly rubies, emeralds, and turquoises. Of still older date is the throne of the young Empress, for it was given by Pope Paul II. to Tsar Ivan III., grandfather of the Terrible, on the occasion of his marriage with a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. More recent but not less curious is that of the Empress Dowager. It is the throne of Tsar Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, covered with countless and priceless diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and surmounted by an Imperial eagle of solid gold, together with golden statuettes of St. Peter and St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker. Over each throne is a canopy of purple velvet fringed with gold, out of which rise stately plumes representing the national colours. Their Majesties have come hither, in accordance with time-honoured custom, to be crowned in this old Cathedral of the Assumption, the central point of the Kremlin, within a stone-throw of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, in which lie the remains of the old Grand Dukes and Tsars of Muscovy. Already the Emperor has read aloud, in a clear, unfaltering voice, from a richly bound parchment folio, held by the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, the Orthodox creed; and his Eminence, after invoking on his Majesty the blessing of the Holy Spirit, has performed the mystic rite of placing his hands in the form of a cross on the Imperial forehead. Thus all is ready for the most important part of the solemn ceremony. Standing erect, the Emperor doffs his small diadem and puts on with his own hands the great diamond crown, offered respectfully by the Metropolitan; then he reseats himself on his throne, holding in his right hand the Sceptre and in his left the Orb of Dominion. After sitting thus in state for a few minutes, he stands up and proceeds to crown his august spouse, kneeling before him. First he touches her forehead with his own crown, and then he places on her head a smaller one, which is immediately attached to her hair by four ladies-in-waiting, dressed in the old Muscovite Court-costume. At the same time her Majesty is invested with a mantle of heavy gold brocade, similar to those of the Emperor and Empress Dowager, lined and bordered with ermine. Thus crowned and robed their Majesties sit in state, while a proto-deacon reads, in a loud stentorian voice, the long list of sonorous hereditary titles belonging of right to the Imperator and Autocrat of all the Russias, and the choir chants a prayer invoking long life and happiness--"Many years! Many years! Many years!"--on the high and mighty possessor of the titles aforesaid. And now begins the Mass, celebrated with a pomp and magnificence that can be witnessed only once or twice in a generation. Sixty gorgeously robed ecclesiastical dignitaries of the highest orders fulfil their various functions with due solemnity and unction; but the magnificence of the vestments and the pomp of the ceremonial are soon forgotten in the exquisite solemnising music, as the deep double-bass tones of the adult singers in the background--carefully selected for the occasion in all parts of the Empire--peal forth as from a great organ, and blend marvellously with the clear, soft, gentle notes of the red-robed chorister boys in front of the Iconostase. Listening with intense emotion, I involuntarily recall to mind Fra Angelico's pictures of angelic choirs, and cannot help thinking that the pious old Florentine, whose soul was attuned to all that was sacred and beautiful, must have heard in imagination such music as this. So strong is the impression that the subsequent details of the long ceremony, including the anointing with the holy chrism, fail to engrave themselves on my memory. One incident, however, remains; and if it had happened in an earlier and more superstitious age it would doubtless have been chronicled as an omen full of significance. As the Emperor is on the point of descending from the dais, duly crowned and anointed, a staggering ray of sunshine steals through one of the narrow upper windows and, traversing the dimly lit edifice, falls full on the Imperial crown, lighting up for a moment the great mass of diamonds with a hundredfold brilliance. In a detailed account of the Coronation which I wrote on leaving the Kremlin, I find the following: "The magnificent ceremony is at an end, and now Nicholas II. is the crowned Emperor and anointed Autocrat of all the Russias. May the cares of Empire rest lightly on him! That must be the earnest prayer of every loyal subject and every sincere well-wisher, for of all living mortals he is perhaps the one who has been entrusted by Providence with the greatest power and the greatest responsibilities." In writing those words I did not foresee how heavy his responsibilities would one day weigh upon him, when his Empire would be sorely tried, by foreign war and internal discontent. One more of these old Moscow reminiscences, and I have done. A day or two after the Coronation I saw the Khodinskoye Polye, a great plain in the outskirts of Moscow, strewn with hundreds of corpses! During the previous night enormous crowds from the city and the surrounding districts had collected here in order to receive at sunrise, by the Tsar's command, a little memento of the coronation ceremony, in the form of a packet containing a metal cup and a few eatables; and as day dawned, in their anxiety to get near the row of booths from which the distribution was to be made, about two thousand had been crushed to death. It was a sight more horrible than a battlefield, because among the dead were a large proportion of women and children, terribly mutilated in the struggle. Altogether, "a sight to shudder at, not to see!" To return to the remark of my friend in the Kremlin on Easter Eve, the Russians in general, and the Muscovites in particular, as the quintessence of all that is Russian, are certainly a religious people, but their piety sometimes finds modes of expression which rather shock the Protestant mind. As an instance of these, I may mention the domiciliary visits of the Iberian Madonna. This celebrated Icon, for reasons which I have never heard satisfactorily explained, is held in peculiar veneration by the Muscovites, and occupies in popular estimation a position analogous to the tutelary deities of ancient pagan cities. Thus when Napoleon was about to enter the city in 1812, the populace clamorously called upon the Metropolitan to take the Madonna, and lead them out armed with hatchets against the hosts of the infidel; and when the Tsar visits Moscow he generally drives straight from the railway-station to the little chapel where the Icon resides--near one of the entrances to the Kremlin--and there offers up a short prayer. Every Orthodox Russian, as he passes this chapel, uncovers and crosses himself, and whenever a religious service is performed in it there is always a considerable group of worshippers. Some of the richer inhabitants, however, are not content with thus performing their devotions in public before the Icon. They like to have it from time to time in their houses, and the ecclesiastical authorities think fit to humour this strange fancy. Accordingly every morning the Iberian Madonna may be seen driving about the city from one house to another in a carriage and four! The carriage may be at once recognised, not from any peculiarity in its structure, for it is an ordinary close carriage such as may be obtained at livery stables, but by the fact that the coachman sits bare-headed, and all the people in the street uncover and cross themselves as it passes. Arrived at the house to which it has been invited, the Icon is carried through all the rooms, and in the principal apartment a short religious service is performed before it. As it is being brought in or taken away, female servants may sometimes be seen to kneel on the floor so that it may be carried over them. During its absence from its chapel it is replaced by a copy not easily distinguishable from the original, and thus the devotions of the faithful and the flow of pecuniary contributions do not suffer interruption. These contributions, together with the sums paid for the domiciliary visits, amount to a considerable yearly sum, and go--if I am rightly informed--to swell the revenues of the Metropolitan. A single drive or stroll through Moscow will suffice to convince the traveller, even if he knows nothing of Russian history, that the city is not, like its modern rival on the Neva, the artificial creation of a far-seeing, self-willed autocrat, but rather a natural product which has grown up slowly and been modified according to the constantly changing wants of the population. A few of the streets have been Europeanised--in all except the paving, which is everywhere execrably Asiatic--to suit the tastes of those who have adopted European culture, but the great majority of them still retain much of their ancient character and primitive irregularity. As soon as we diverge from the principal thoroughfares, we find one-storied houses--some of them still of wood--which appear to have been transported bodily from the country, with courtyard, garden, stables, and other appurtenances. The whole is no doubt a little compressed, for land has here a certain value, but the character is in no way changed, and we have some difficulty in believing that we are not in the suburbs but near the centre of a great town. There is nothing that can by any possibility be called street architecture. Though there is unmistakable evidence of the streets having been laid out according to a preconceived plan, many of them show clearly that in their infancy they had a wayward will of their own, and bent to the right or left without any topographical justification. The houses, too, display considerable individuality of character, having evidently during the course of their construction paid no attention to their neighbours. Hence we find no regularly built terraces, crescents, or squares. There is, it is true, a double circle of boulevards, but the houses which flank them have none of that regularity which we commonly associate with the term. Dilapidated buildings which in West-European cities would hide themselves in some narrow lane or back slum here stand composedly in the face of day by the side of a palatial residence, without having the least consciousness of the incongruity of their position, just as the unsophisticated muzhik, in his unsavoury sheepskin, can stand in the midst of a crowd of well-dressed people without feeling at all awkward or uncomfortable. All this incongruity, however, is speedily disappearing. Moscow has become the centre of a great network of railways, and the commercial and industrial capital of the Empire. Already her rapidly increasing population has nearly reached a million.* The value of land and property is being doubled and trebled, and building speculations, with the aid of credit institutions of various kinds, are being carried on with feverish rapidity. Well may the men of the old school complain that the world is turned upside down, and regret the old times of traditional somnolence and comfortable routine! Those good old times are gone now, never to return. The ancient capital, which long gloried in its past historical associations, now glories in its present commercial prosperity, and looks forward with confidence to the future. Even the Slavophils, the obstinate champions of the ultra-Muscovite spirit, have changed with the times, and descended to the level of ordinary prosaic life. These men, who formerly spent years in seeking to determine the place of Moscow in the past and future history of humanity, have--to their honour be it said--become in these latter days town-counsellors, and have devoted much of their time to devising ways and means of improving the drainage and the street-paving! But I am anticipating in a most unjustifiable way. I ought first to tell the reader who these Slavophils were, and why they sought to correct the commonly received conceptions of universal history. * According to the census of 1897 it was 988,610. The reader may have heard of the Slavophils as a set of fanatics who, about half a century ago, were wont to go about in what they considered the ancient Russian costume, who wore beards in defiance of Peter the Great's celebrated ukaz and Nicholas's clearly-expressed wish anent shaving, who gloried in Muscovite barbarism, and had solemnly "sworn a feud" against European civilisation and enlightenment. By the tourists of the time who visited Moscow they were regarded as among the most noteworthy lions of the place, and were commonly depicted in not very flattering colours. At the beginning of the Crimean War they were among the extreme Chauvinists who urged the necessity of planting the Greek cross on the desecrated dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and hoped to see the Emperor proclaimed "Panslavonic Tsar"; and after the termination of the war they were frequently accused of inventing Turkish atrocities, stirring up discontent among the Slavonic subjects of the Sultan, and secretly plotting for the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire. All this was known to me before I went to Russia, and I had consequently invested the Slavophils with a halo of romance. Shortly after my arrival in St. Petersburg I heard something more which tended to increase my interest in them--they had caused, I was told, great trepidation among the highest official circles by petitioning the Emperor to resuscitate a certain ancient institution, called Zemskiye Sobory, which might be made to serve the purposes of a parliament! This threw a new light upon them--under the disguise of archaeological conservatives they were evidently aiming at important liberal reforms. As a foreigner and a heretic, I expected a very cold and distant reception from these uncompromising champions of Russian nationality and the Orthodox faith; but in this I was agreeably disappointed. By all of them I was received in the most amiable and friendly way, and I soon discovered that my preconceived ideas of them were very far from the truth. Instead of wild fanatics I found quiet, extremely intelligent, highly educated gentlemen, speaking foreign languages with ease and elegance, and deeply imbued with that Western culture which they were commonly supposed to despise. And this first impression was amply confirmed by subsequent experience during several years of friendly intercourse. They always showed themselves men of earnest character and strong convictions, but they never said or did anything that could justify the appellation of fanatics. Like all philosophical theorists, they often allowed their logic to blind them to facts, but their reasonings were very plausible--so plausible, indeed, that, had I been a Russian they would have almost persuaded me to be a Slavophil, at least during the time they were talking to me. To understand their doctrine we must know something of its origin and development. The origin of the Slavophil sentiment, which must not be confounded with the Slavophil doctrine, is to be sought in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when the Tsars of Muscovy were introducing innovations in Church and State. These innovations were profoundly displeasing to the people. A large portion of the lower classes, as I have related in a previous chapter, sought refuge in Old Ritualism or sectarianism, and imagined that Tsar Peter, who called himself by the heretical title of "Imperator," was an emanation of the Evil Principle. The nobles did not go quite so far. They remained members of the official Church, and restricted themselves to hinting that Peter was the son, not of Satan, but of a German surgeon--a lineage which, according to the conceptions of the time, was a little less objectionable; but most of them were very hostile to the changes, and complained bitterly of the new burdens which these changes entailed. Under Peter's immediate successors, when not only the principles of administration but also many of the administrators were German, this hostility greatly increased. So long as the innovations appeared only in the official activity of the Government, the patriotic, conservative spirit was obliged to keep silence; but when the foreign influence spread to the social life of the Court aristocracy, the opposition began to find a literary expression. In the time of Catherine II., when Gallomania was at its height in Court circles, comedies and satirical journals ridiculed those who, "blinded by some externally brilliant gifts of foreigners, not only prefer foreign countries to their native land, but even despise their fellow-countrymen, and think that a Russian ought to borrow all--even personal character. As if nature arranging all things with such wisdom, and bestowing on all regions the gifts and customs which are appropriate to the climate, had been so unjust as to refuse to the Russians a character of their own! As if she condemned them to wander over all regions, and to adopt by bits the various customs of various nations, in order to compose out of the mixture a new character appropriate to no nation whatever!" Numerous passages of this kind might be quoted, attacking the "monkeyism" and "parrotism" of those who indiscriminately adopted foreign manners and customs--those who "Sauntered Europe round, And gathered ev'ry vice in ev'ry ground." Sometimes the terms and metaphors employed were more forcible than refined. One satirical journal, for instance, relates an amusing story about certain little Russian pigs that went to foreign lands to enlighten their understanding, and came back to their country full-grown swine. The national pride was wounded by the thought that Russians could be called "clever apes who feed on foreign intelligence," and many writers, stung by such reproaches, fell into the opposite extreme, discovering unheard-of excellences in the Russian mind and character, and vociferously decrying everything foreign in order to place these imagined excellences in a stronger light by contrast. Even when they recognised that their country was not quite so advanced in civilisation as certain other nations, they congratulated themselves on the fact, and invented by way of justification an ingenious theory, which was afterwards developed by the Slavophils. "The nations of the West," they said, "began to live before us, and are consequently more advanced than we are; but we have on that account no reason to envy them, for we can profit by their errors, and avoid those deep-rooted evils from which they are suffering. He who has just been born is happier than he who is dying." Thus, we see, a patriotic reaction against the introduction of foreign institutions and the inordinate admiration of foreign culture already existed in Russia more than a century ago. It did not, however, take the form of a philosophical theory till a much later period, when a similar movement was going on in various countries of Western Europe. After the overthrow of the great Napoleonic Empire a reaction against cosmopolitanism took place and a romantic enthusiasm for nationality spread over Europe like an epidemic. Blind, enthusiastic patriotism became the fashionable sentiment of the time. Each nation took to admiring itself complacently, to praising its own character and achievements, and to idealising its historical and mythical past. National peculiarities, "local colour," ancient customs, traditional superstitions--in short, everything that a nation believed to be specially and exclusively its own, now raised an enthusiasm similar to that which had been formerly excited by cosmopolitan conceptions founded on the law of nature. The movement produced good and evil results. In serious minds it led to a deep and conscientious study of history, national literature, popular mythology, and the like; whilst in frivolous, inflammable spirits it gave birth merely to a torrent of patriotic fervour and rhetorical exaggeration. The Slavophils were the Russian representatives of this nationalistic reaction, and displayed both its serious and its frivolous elements. Among the most important products of this movement in Germany was the Hegelian theory of universal history. According to Hegel's views, which were generally accepted by those who occupied themselves with philosophical questions, universal history was described as "Progress in the consciousness of freedom" (Fortschritt im Bewusstsein der Freiheit). In each period of the world's history, it was explained, some one nation or race had been intrusted with the high mission of enabling the Absolute Reason, or Weltgeist, to express itself in objective existence, while the other nations and races had for the time no metaphysical justification for their existence, and no higher duty than to imitate slavishly the favoured rival in which the Weltgeist had for the moment chosen to incorporate itself. The incarnation had taken place first in the Eastern Monarchies, then in Greece, next in Rome, and lastly in the Germanic race; and it was generally assumed, if not openly asserted, that this mystical Metempsychosis of the Absolute was now at an end. The cycle of existence was complete. In the Germanic peoples the Weltgeist had found its highest and final expression. Russians in general knew nothing about German philosophy, and were consequently not in any way affected by these ideas, but there was in Moscow a small group of young men who ardently studied German literature and metaphysics, and they were much shocked by Hegel's views. Ever since the brilliant reign of Catherine II., who had defeated the Turks and had dreamed of resuscitating the Byzantine Empire, and especially since the memorable events of 1812-15, when Alexander I. appeared as the liberator of enthralled Europe and the arbiter of her destinies, Russians were firmly convinced that their country was destined to play a most important part in human history. Already the great Russian historian Karamzin had declared that henceforth Clio must be silent or accord to Russia a prominent place in the history of the nations. Now, by the Hegelian theory, the whole of the Slav race was left out in the cold, with no high mission, with no new truths to divulge, with nothing better to do, in fact, than to imitate the Germans. The patriotic philosophers of Moscow could not, of course, adopt this view. Whilst accepting the fundamental principles, they declared the theory to be incomplete. The incompleteness lay in the assumption that humanity had already entered on the final stages of its development. The Teutonic nations were perhaps for the moment the leaders in the march of civilisation, but there was no reason to suppose that they would always retain that privileged position. On the contrary, there were already symptoms that their ascendency was drawing to a close. "Western Europe," it was said, "presents a strange, saddening spectacle. Opinion struggles against opinion, power against power, throne against throne. Science, Art, and Religion, the three chief motors of social life, have lost their force. We venture to make an assertion which to many at present may seem strange, but which will be in a few years only too evident: Western Europe is on the highroad to ruin! We Russians, on the contrary, are young and fresh, and have taken no part in the crimes of Europe. We have a great mission to fulfil. Our name is already inscribed on the tablets of victory, and now we have to inscribe our spirit in the history of the human mind. A higher kind of victory--the victory of Science, Art and Faith--awaits us on the ruins of tottering Europe!"* * These words were written by Prince Odoefski. This conclusion was supported by arguments drawn from history--or, at least, what was believed to be history. The European world was represented as being composed of two hemispheres--the Eastern or Graeco-Slavonic on the one hand, and the Western, or Roman Catholic and Protestant, on the other. These two hemispheres, it was said, are distinguished from each other by many fundamental characteristics. In both of them Christianity formed originally the basis of civilisation, but in the West it became distorted and gave a false direction to the intellectual development. By placing the logical reason of the learned above the conscience of the whole Church, Roman Catholicism produced Protestantism, which proclaimed the right of private judgment and consequently became split up into innumerable sects. The dry, logical spirit which was thus fostered created a purely intellectual, one-sided philosophy, which must end in pure scepticism, by blinding men to those great truths which lie above the sphere of reasoning and logic. The Graeco-Slavonic world, on the contrary, having accepted Christianity not from Rome, but from Byzantium, received pure orthodoxy and true enlightenment, and was thus saved alike from Papal tyranny and from Protestant free-thinking. Hence the Eastern Christians have preserved faithfully not only the ancient dogmas, but also the ancient spirit of Christianity--that spirit of pious humility, resignation, and brotherly love which Christ taught by precept and example. If they have not yet a philosophy, they will create one, and it will far surpass all previous systems; for in the writings of the Greek Fathers are to be found the germs of a broader, a deeper, and a truer philosophy than the dry, meagre rationalism of the West--a philosophy founded not on the logical faculty alone, but on the broader basis of human nature as a whole. The fundamental characteristics of the Graeco-Slavonic world--so runs the Slavophil theory--have been displayed in the history of Russia. Throughout Western Christendom the principal of individual judgment and reckless individual egotism have exhausted the social forces and brought society to the verge of incurable anarchy and inevitable dissolution, whereas the social and political history of Russia has been harmonious and peaceful. It presents no struggles between the different social classes, and no conflicts between Church and State. All the factors have worked in unison, and the development has been guided by the spirit of pure orthodoxy. But in this harmonious picture there is one big, ugly black spot--Peter, falsely styled "the Great," and his so-called reforms. Instead of following the wise policy of his ancestors, Peter rejected the national traditions and principles, and applied to his country, which belonged to the Eastern world, the principles of Western civilisation. His reforms, conceived in a foreign spirit, and elaborated by men who did not possess the national instincts, were forced upon the nation against its will, and the result was precisely what might have been expected. The "broad Slavonic nature" could not be controlled by institutions which had been invented by narrow-minded, pedantic German bureaucrats, and, like another Samson, it pulled down the building in which foreign legislators sought to confine it. The attempt to introduce foreign culture had a still worse effect. The upper classes, charmed and dazzled by the glare and glitter of Western science, threw themselves impulsively on the newly found treasures, and thereby condemned themselves to moral slavery and intellectual sterility. Fortunately--and herein lay one of the fundamental principles of the Slavophil doctrine--the imported civilisation had not at all infected the common people. Through all the changes which the administration and the Noblesse underwent the peasantry preserved religiously in their hearts "the living legacy of antiquity," the essence of Russian nationality, "a clear spring welling up living waters, hidden and unknown, but powerful."* To recover this lost legacy by studying the character, customs, and institutions of the peasantry, to lead the educated classes back to the path from which they had strayed, and to re-establish that intellectual and moral unity which had been disturbed by the foreign importations--such was the task which the Slavophils proposed to themselves. * This was one of the favourite themes of Khomiakof, the Slavophil poet and theologian. Deeply imbued with that romantic spirit which distorted all the intellectual activity of the time, the Slavophils often indulged in the wildest exaggerations, condemning everything foreign and praising everything Russian. When in this mood they saw in the history of the West nothing but violence, slavery, and egotism, and in that of their own country free-will, liberty, and peace. The fact that Russia did not possess free political institutions was adduced as a precious fruit of that spirit of Christian resignation and self-sacrifice which places the Russian at such an immeasurable height above the proud, selfish European; and because Russia possessed few of the comforts and conveniences of common life, the West was accused of having made comfort its God! We need not, however, dwell on these puerilities, which only gained for their authors the reputation of being ignorant, narrow-minded men, imbued with a hatred of enlightenment and desirous of leading their country back to its primitive barbarism. What the Slavophils really condemned, at least in their calmer moments, was not European culture, but the uncritical, indiscriminate adoption of it by their countrymen. Their tirades against foreign culture must appear excusable when we remember that many Russians of the upper ranks could speak and write French more correctly than their native language, and that even the great national poet Pushkin was not ashamed to confess--what was not true, and a mere piece of affectation--that "the language of Europe" was more familiar to him than his mother-tongue! The Slavophil doctrine, though it made a great noise in the world, never found many adherents. The society of St. Petersburg regarded it as one of those harmless provincial eccentricities which are always to be found in Moscow. In the modern capital, with its foreign name, its streets and squares on the European model, its palaces and churches in the Renaissance style, and its passionate love of everything French, any attempt to resuscitate the old Boyaric times would have been eminently ridiculous. Indeed, hostility to St. Petersburg and to "the Petersburg period of Russian history" is one of the characteristic traits of genuine Slavophilism. In Moscow the doctrine found a more appropriate home. There the ancient churches, with the tombs of Grand Princes and holy martyrs, the palace in which the Tsars of Muscovy had lived, the Kremlin which had resisted--not always successfully--the attacks of savage Tartars and heretical Poles, the venerable Icons that had many a time protected the people from danger, the block of masonry from which, on solemn occasions, the Tsar and the Patriarch had addressed the assembled multitude--these, and a hundred other monuments sanctified by tradition, have kept alive in the popular memory some vague remembrance of the olden time, and are still capable of awakening antiquarian patriotism. The inhabitants, too, have preserved something of the old Muscovite character. Whilst successive sovereigns have been striving to make the country a progressive European empire, Moscow has remained the home of passive conservatism and an asylum for the discontented, especially for the disappointed aspirants to Imperial favour. Abandoned by the modern Emperors, she can glory in her ancient Tsars. But even the Muscovites were not prepared to accept the Slavophil doctrine in the extreme form which it assumed, and were not a little perplexed by the eccentricities of those who professed it. Plain, sensible people, though they might be proud of being citizens of the ancient capital, and might thoroughly enjoy a joke at the expense of St. Petersburg, could not understand a little coterie of enthusiasts who sought neither official rank nor decorations, who slighted many of the conventionalities of the higher classes to which by birth and education they belonged, who loved to fraternise with the common people, and who occasionally dressed in the national costume which had been discarded by the nobles since the time of Peter the Great. The Slavophils thus remained merely a small literary party, which probably did not count more than a dozen members, but their influence was out of all proportion to their numbers. They preached successfully the doctrine that the historical development of Russia has been peculiar, that her present social and political organisation is radically different from that of the countries of Western Europe, and that consequently the social and political evils from which she suffers are not to be cured by the remedies which have proved efficacious in France and Germany. These truths, which now appear commonplace, were formerly by no means generally recognised, and the Slavophils deserve credit for directing attention to them. Besides this, they helped to awaken in the upper classes a lively sympathy with the poor, oppressed, and despised peasantry. So long as the Emperor Nicholas lived they had to confine themselves to a purely literary activity; but during the great reforms initiated by his successor, Alexander II., they descended into the arena of practical politics, and played a most useful and honourable part in the emancipation of the serfs. In the new local self-government, too--the Zemstvo and the new municipal institutions--they laboured energetically and to good purpose. Of all this I shall have occasion to speak more fully in future chapters. But what of their Panslavist aspirations? By their theory they were constrained to pay attention to the Slav race as a whole, but they were more Russian than Slav, and more Muscovite than Russian. The Panslavist element consequently occupied a secondary place in Slavophil doctrine. Though they did much to stimulate popular sympathy with the Southern Slavs, and always cherished the hope that the Serbs, Bulgarians, and cognate Slav nationalities would one day throw off the bondage of the German and the Turk, they never proposed any elaborate project for the solution of the Eastern Question. So far as I was able to gather from their conversation, they seemed to favour the idea of a grand Slavonic Confederation, in which the hegemony would, of course, belong to Russia. In ordinary times the only steps which they took for the realisation of this idea consisted in contributing money for schools and churches among the Slav population of Austria and Turkey, and in educating young Bulgarians in Russia. During the Cretan insurrection they sympathised warmly with the insurgents as co-religionists, but afterwards--especially during the crisis of the Eastern Question which culminated in the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin (1878)--their Hellenic sympathies cooled, because the Greeks showed that they had political aspirations inconsistent with the designs of Russia, and that they were likely to be the rivals rather than the allies of the Slavs in the struggle for the Sick Man's inheritance. Since the time when I was living in Moscow in constant intercourse with the leading Slavophils more than a quarter of a century has passed, and of those with whom I spent so many pleasant evenings discussing the past history and future destinies of the Slav races, not one remains alive. All the great prophets of the old Slavophil doctrine--Jun Samarin, Prince Tcherkaski, Ivan Aksakof, Kosheleff--have departed without leaving behind them any genuine disciples. The present generation of Muscovite frondeurs, who continue to rail against Western Europe and the pedantic officialism of St. Petersburg, are of a more modern and less academic type. Their philippics are directed not against Peter the Great and his reforms, but rather against recent Ministers of Foreign Affairs who are thought to have shown themselves too subservient to foreign Powers, and against M. Witte, the late Minister of Finance, who is accused of favouring the introduction of foreign capital and enterprise, and of sacrificing to unhealthy industrial development the interests of the agricultural classes. These laments and diatribes are allowed free expression in private conversation and in the Press, but they do not influence very deeply the policy of the Government or the natural course of events; for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to cultivate friendly relations with the Cabinets of the West, and Moscow is rapidly becoming, by the force of economic conditions, the great industrial and commercial centre of the Empire. The administrative and bureaucratic centre--if anything on the frontier of a country can be called its centre--has long been, and is likely to remain, Peter's stately city at the mouth of the Neva, to which I now invite the reader to accompany me. CHAPTER XXVI ST. PETERSBURG AND EUROPEAN INFLUENCE St. Petersburg and Berlin--Big Houses--The "Lions"--Peter the Great--His Aims and Policy--The German Regime--Nationalist Reaction--French Influence--Consequent Intellectual Sterility--Influence of the Sentimental School--Hostility to Foreign Influences--A New Period of Literary Importation--Secret Societies--The Catastrophe--The Age of Nicholas--A Terrible War on Parnassus--Decline of Romanticism and Transcendentalism--Gogol--The Revolutionary Agitation of 1848--New Reaction--Conclusion. From whatever side the traveller approaches St. Petersburg, unless he goes thither by sea, he must traverse several hundred miles of forest and morass, presenting few traces of human habitation or agriculture. This fact adds powerfully to the first impression which the city makes on his mind. In the midst of a waste howling wilderness, he suddenly comes on a magnificent artificial oasis. Of all the great European cities, the one that most resembles the capital of the Tsars is Berlin. Both are built on perfectly level ground; both have wide, regularly arranged streets; in both there is a general look of stiffness and symmetry which suggests military discipline and German bureaucracy. But there is at least one profound difference. Though Berlin is said by geographers to be built on the Spree, we might live a long time in the city without noticing the sluggish little stream on which the name of a river has been undeservedly conferred. St. Petersburg, on the contrary, is built on a magnificent river, which forms the main feature of the place. By its breadth, and by the enormous volume of its clear, blue, cold water, the Neva is certainly one of the noblest rivers of Europe. A few miles before reaching the Gulf of Finland it breaks up into several streams and forms a delta. It is here that St. Petersburg stands. Like the river, everything in St. Petersburg is on a colossal scale. The streets, the squares, the palaces, the public buildings, the churches, whatever may be their defects, have at least the attribute of greatness, and seem to have been designed for the countless generations to come, rather than for the practical wants of the present inhabitants. In this respect the city well represents the Empire of which it is the capital. Even the private houses are built in enormous blocks and divided into many separate apartments. Those built for the working classes sometimes contain, I am assured, more than a thousand inhabitants. How many cubic feet of air is allowed to each person, I do not know; not so many, I fear, as is recommended by the most advanced sanitary authorities. For a detailed description of the city I must refer the reader to the guide books. Among its numerous monuments, of which the Russians are justly proud, I confess that the one which interested me most was neither St. Isaac's Cathedral, with its majestic gilded dome, its colossal monolithic columns of red granite, and its gaudy interior; nor the Hermitage, with its magnificent collection of Dutch pictures; nor the gloomy, frowning fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, containing the tombs of the Emperors. These and other "sights" may deserve all the praise which enthusiastic tourists have lavished upon them, but what made a far deeper impression on me was the little wooden house in which Peter the Great lived whilst his future capital was being built. In its style and arrangement it looks more like the hut of a navvy than the residence of a Tsar, but it was quite in keeping with the character of the illustrious man who occupied it. Peter could and did occasionally work like a navvy without feeling that his Imperial dignity was thereby impaired. When he determined to build a new capital on a Finnish marsh, inhabited chiefly by wildfowl, he did not content himself with exercising his autocratic power in a comfortable arm chair. Like the Greek gods, he went down from his Olympus and took his place in the ranks of ordinary mortals, superintending the work with his own eyes, and taking part in it with his own hands. If he was as arbitrary and oppressive as any of the pyramid-building Pharaohs, he could at least say in self-justification that he did not spare himself any more than his people, but exposed himself freely to the discomforts and dangers under which thousands of his fellow-labourers succumbed. In reading the account of Peter's life, written in part by his own pen, we can easily understand how the piously Conservative section of his subjects failed to recognise in him the legitimate successor of the orthodox Tsars. The old Tsars had been men of grave, pompous demeanour, deeply imbued with the consciousness of their semi-religious dignity. Living habitually in Moscow or its immediate neighbourhood, they spent their time in attending long religious services, in consulting with their Boyars, in being present at ceremonious hunting-parties, in visiting the monasteries, and in holding edifying conversations with ecclesiastical dignitaries or revered ascetics. If they undertook a journey, it was probably to make a pilgrimage to some holy shrine; and, whether in Moscow or elsewhere, they were always protected from contact with ordinary humanity by a formidable barricade of court ceremonial. In short, they combined the characters of a Christian monk and of an Oriental potentate. Peter was a man of an entirely different type, and played in the calm, dignified, orthodox, ceremonious world of Moscow the part of the bull in the china shop, outraging ruthlessly and wantonly all the time-honored traditional conceptions of propriety and etiquette. Utterly regardless of public opinion and popular prejudices, he swept away the old formalities, avoided ceremonies of all kinds, scoffed at ancient usage, preferred foreign secular books to edifying conversations, chose profane heretics as his boon companions, travelled in foreign countries, dressed in heretical costume, defaced the image of God and put his soul in jeopardy by shaving off his beard, compelled his nobles to dress and shave like himself, rushed about the Empire as if goaded on by the demon of unrest, employed his sacred hands in carpentering and other menial occupations, took part openly in the uproarious orgies of his foreign soldiery, and, in short, did everything that "the Lord's anointed" might reasonably be expected not to do. No wonder the Muscovites were scandalised by his conduct, and that some of them suspected he was not the Tsar at all, but Antichrist in disguise. And no wonder he felt the atmosphere of Moscow oppressive, and preferred living in the new capital which he had himself created. His avowed object in building St. Petersburg was to have "a window by which the Russians might look into civilised Europe"; and well has the city fulfilled its purpose. From its foundation may be dated the European period of Russian history. Before Peter's time Russia belonged to Asia rather than to Europe, and was doubtless regarded by Englishmen and Frenchmen pretty much as we nowadays regard Bokhara or Kashgar; since that time she has formed an integral part of the European political system, and her intellectual history has been but a reflection of the intellectual history of Western Europe, modified and coloured by national character and by peculiar local conditions. When we speak of the intellectual history of a nation we generally mean in reality the intellectual history of the upper classes. With regard to Russia, more perhaps than with regard to any other country, this distinction must always carefully be borne in mind. Peter succeeded in forcing European civilisation on the nobles, but the people remained unaffected. The nation was, as it were, cleft in two, and with each succeeding generation the cleft has widened. Whilst the masses clung obstinately to their time-honoured customs and beliefs, the nobles came to look on the objects of popular veneration as the relics of a barbarous past, of which a civilised nation ought to be ashamed. The intellectual movement inaugurated by Peter had a purely practical character. He was himself a thorough utilitarian, and perceived clearly that what his people needed was not theological or philosophical enlightment, but plain, practical knowledge suitable for the requirements of everyday life. He wanted neither theologians nor philosophers, but military and naval officers, administrators, artisans, miners, manufacturers, and merchants, and for this purpose he introduced secular technical education. For the young generation primary schools were founded, and for more advanced pupils the best foreign works on fortification, architecture, navigation, metallurgy, engineering and cognate subjects were translated into the native tongue. Scientific men and cunning artificers were brought into the country, and young Russians were sent abroad to learn foreign languages and the useful arts. In a word, everything was done that seemed likely to raise the Russians to the level of material well-being already attained by the more advanced nations. We have here an important peculiarity in the intellectual development of Russia. In Western Europe the modern scientific spirit, being the natural offspring of numerous concomitant historical causes, was born in the natural way, and Society had, consequently, before giving birth to it, to endure the pains of pregnancy and the throes of prolonged labour. In Russia, on the contrary, this spirit appeared suddenly as an adult foreigner, adopted by a despotic paterfamilias. Thus Russia made the transition from mediaeval to modern times without any violent struggle between the old and the new conceptions such as had taken place in the West. The Church, effectually restrained from all active opposition by the Imperial power, preserved unmodified her ancient beliefs; whilst the nobles, casting their traditional conceptions and beliefs to the winds, marched forward unfettered on that path which their fathers and grandfathers had regarded as the direct road to perdition. During the first part of Peter's reign Russia was not subjected to the exclusive influence of any one particular country. Thoroughly cosmopolitan in his sympathies, the great reformer, like the Japanese of the present day, was ready to borrow from any foreign nation--German, Dutch, Danish, or French--whatever seemed to him to suit his purpose. But soon the geographical proximity to Germany, the annexation of the Baltic Provinces in which the civilisation was German, and intermarriages between the Imperial family and various German dynasties, gave to German influence a decided preponderance. When the Empress Anne, Peter's niece, who had been Duchess of Courland, entrusted the whole administration of the country to her favourite Biron, the German influence became almost exclusive, and the Court, the official world, and the schools were Germanised. The harsh, cruel, tyrannical rule of Biron produced a strong reaction, ending in a revolution, which raised to the throne the Princess Elizabeth, Peter's unmarried daughter, who had lived in retirement and neglect during the German regime. She was expected to rid the country of foreigners, and she did what she could to fulfil the expectations that were entertained of her. With loud protestations of patriotic feelings, she removed the Germans from all important posts, demanded that in future the members of the Academy should be chosen from among born Russians, and gave orders that the Russian youth should be carefully prepared for all kinds of official activity. This attempt to throw off the German bondage did not lead to intellectual independence. During Peter's violent reforms Russia had ruthlessly thrown away her own historic past with whatever germs it contained, and now she possessed none of the elements of a genuine national culture. She was in the position of a fugitive who has escaped from slavery, and, finding himself in danger of starvation, looks about for a new master. The upper classes, who had acquired a taste for foreign civilisation, no sooner threw off everything German than they sought some other civilisation to put in its place. And they could not long hesitate in making a choice, for at that time all who thought of culture and refinement turned their eyes to Paris and Versailles. All that was most brilliant and refined was to be found at the Court of the French kings, under whose patronage the art and literature of the Renaissance had attained their highest development. Even Germany, which had resisted the ambitious designs of Louis XIV., imitated the manners of his Court. Every petty German potentate strove to ape the pomp and dignity of the Grand Monarque; and the courtiers, affecting to look on everything German as rude and barbarous, adopted French fashions, and spoke a hybrid jargon which they considered much more elegant than the plain mother tongue. In a word, Gallomania had become the prevailing social epidemic of the time, and it could not fail to attack and metamorphose such a class as the Russian Noblesse, which possessed few stubborn deep-rooted national convictions. At first the French influence was manifested chiefly in external forms--that is to say, in dress, manners, language, and upholstery--but gradually, and very rapidly after the accession of Catherine II., the friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, it sank deeper. Every noble who had pretensions to being "civilised" learned to speak French fluently, and gained some superficial acquaintance with French literature. The tragedies of Corneille and Racine and the comedies of Moliere were played regularly at the Court theatre in presence of the Empress, and awakened a real or affected enthusiasm among the audience. For those who preferred reading in their native language, numerous translations were published, a simple list of which would fill several pages. Among them we find not only Voltaire, Rousseau, Lesage, Marmontel, and other favourite French authors, but also all the masterpieces of European literature, ancient and modern, which at that time enjoyed a high reputation in the French literary world--Homer and Demosthenes, Cicero and Virgil, Ariosto and Camoens, Milton and Locke, Sterne and Fielding. It is related of Byron that he never wrote a description whilst the scene was actually before him; and this fact points to an important psychological principle. The human mind, so long as it is compelled to strain the receptive faculties, cannot engage in that "poetic" activity--to use the term in its Greek sense--which is commonly called "original creation." And as with individuals, so with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture a nation inevitably condemns itself for a time to intellectual sterility. So long as it is occupied in receiving and assimilating a flood of new ideas, unfamiliar conceptions, and foreign modes of thought, it will produce nothing original, and the result of its highest efforts will be merely successful imitation. We need not be surprised therefore to find that the Russians, in becoming acquainted with foreign literature, became imitators and plagiarists. In this kind of work their natural pliancy of mind and powerful histrionic talent made them wonderfully successful. Odes, pseudo-classical tragedies, satirical comedies, epic poems, elegies, and all the other recognised forms of poetical composition, appeared in great profusion, and many of the writers acquired a remarkable command over their native language, which had hitherto been regarded as uncouth and barbarous. But in all this mass of imitative literature, which has since fallen into well-merited oblivion, there are very few traces of genuine originality. To obtain the title of the Russian Racine, the Russian Lafontaine, the Russian Pindar, or the Russian Homer, was at that time the highest aim of Russian literary ambition. Together with the fashionable literature the Russian educated classes adopted something of the fashionable philosophy. They were peculiarly unfitted to resist that hurricane of "enlightenment" which swept over Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century, first breaking or uprooting the received philosophical systems, theological conceptions, and scientific theories, and then shaking to their foundations the existing political and social institutions. The Russian Noblesse had neither the traditional conservative spirit, nor the firm, well-reasoned, logical beliefs which in England and Germany formed a powerful barrier against the spread of French influence. They had been too recently metamorphosed, and were too eager to acquire a foreign civilisation, to have even the germs of a conservative spirit. The rapidity and violence with which Peter's reforms had been effected, together with the peculiar spirit of Greek Orthodoxy and the low intellectual level of the clergy, had prevented theology from associating itself with the new order of things. The upper classes had become estranged from the beliefs of their forefathers without acquiring other beliefs to supply the place of those which had been lost. The old religious conceptions were inseparably interwoven with what was recognised as antiquated and barbarous, whilst the new philosophical ideas were associated with all that was modern and civilised. Besides this, the sovereign, Catherine II., who enjoyed the unbounded admiration of the upper classes, openly professed allegiance to the new philosophy, and sought the advice and friendship of its high priests. If we bear in mind these facts we shall not be surprised to find among the Russian nobles of that time a considerable number of so-called "Voltaireans" and numerous unquestioning believers in the infallibility of the Encyclopedie. What is a little more surprising is, that the new philosophy sometimes found its way into the ecclesiastical seminaries. The famous Speranski relates that in the seminary of St. Petersburg one of his professors, when not in a state of intoxication, was in the habit of preaching the doctrines of Voltaire and Diderot! The rise of the sentimental school in Western Europe produced an important change in Russian literature, by undermining the inordinate admiration for the French pseudo-classical school. Florian, Richardson, Sterne, Rousseau, and Bernardin de St. Pierre found first translators, and then imitators, and soon the loud-sounding declamation and wordy ecstatic despair of the stage heroes were drowned in the deep-drawn sighs and plaintive wailings of amorous swains and peasant-maids forsaken. The mania seems to have been in Russia even more severe than in the countries where it originated. Full-grown, bearded men wept because they had not been born in peaceful primitive times, "when all men were shepherds and brothers." Hundreds of sighing youths and maidens visited the scenes described by the sentimental writers, and wandered by the rivers and ponds in which despairing heroines had drowned themselves. People talked, wrote, and meditated about "the sympathy of hearts created for each other," "the soft communion of sympathetic souls," and much more of the same kind. Sentimental journeys became a favourite amusement, and formed the subject of very popular books, containing maudlin absurdities likely to produce nowadays mirth rather than tears. One traveller, for instance, throws himself on his knees before an old oak and makes a speech to it; another weeps daily on the grave of a favourite dog, and constantly longs to marry a peasant girl; a third talks love to the moon, sends kisses to the stars, and wishes to press the heavenly orbs to his bosom! For a time the public would read nothing but absurd productions of this sort, and Karamzin, the great literary authority of the time, expressly declared that the true function of Art was "to disseminate agreeable impressions in the region of the sentimental." The love of French philosophy vanished as suddenly as the inordinate admiration of the French pseudo-classical literature. When the great Revolution broke out in Paris the fashionable philosophic literature in St. Petersburg disappeared. Men who talked about political freedom and the rights of man, without thinking for a moment of limiting the autocratic power or of emancipating their serfs, were naturally surprised and frightened on discovering what the liberal principles could effect when applied to real life. Horrified by the awful scenes of the Terror, they hastened to divest themselves of the principles which led to such results, and sank into a kind of optimistic conservatism that harmonised well with the virtuous sentimentalism in vogue. In this the Empress herself gave the example. The Imperial disciple and friend of the Encyclopaedists became in the last years of her reign a decided reactionnaire. During the Napoleonic wars, when the patriotic feelings were excited, there was a violent hostility to foreign intellectual influence; and feeble intermittent attempts were made to throw off the intellectual bondage. The invasion of the country in 1812 by the Grande Armee, and the burning of Moscow, added abundant fuel to this patriotic fire. For some time any one who ventured to express even a moderate admiration for French culture incurred the risk of being stigmatised as a traitor to his country and a renegade to the national faith. But this patriotic fanaticism soon evaporated, and exaggerations of the ultra-national party became the object of satire and parody. When the political danger was past, and people resumed their ordinary occupations, those who loved foreign literature returned to their old favourites--or, as the ultra-patriots called it, to their "wallowing in the mire"--simply because the native literature did not supply them with what they desired. "We are quite ready," they said to their upbraiders, "to admire your great works as soon as they appear, but in the meantime please allow us to enjoy what we possess." Thus in the last years of the reign of Alexander I. the patriotic opposition to West European literature gradually ceased, and a new period of unrestricted intellectual importation began. The intellectual merchandise now brought into the country was very different from that which had been imported in the time of Catherine. The French Revolution, the Napoleonic domination, the patriotic wars, the restoration of the Bourbons, and the other great events of that memorable epoch, had in the interval produced profound changes in the intellectual as well as the political condition of Western Europe. During the Napoleonic wars Russia had become closely associated with Germany; and now the peculiar intellectual fermentation which was going on among the German educated classes was reflected in the society of St. Petersburg. It did not appear, indeed, in the printed literature, for the Press-censure had been recently organised on the principles laid down by Metternich, but it was none the less violent on that account. Whilst the periodicals were filled with commonplace meditations on youth, spring, the love of Art, and similar innocent topics, the young generation was discussing in the salons all the burning questions which Metternich and his adherents were endeavouring to extinguish. These discussions, if discussions they might be called, were not of a very serious kind. In true dilettante style the fashionable young philosophers culled from the newest books the newest thoughts and theories, and retailed them in the salon or the ballroom. And they were always sure to find attentive listeners. The more astounding the idea or dogma, the more likely was it to be favourably received. No matter whether it came from the Rationalists, the Mystics, the Freemasons, or the Methodists, it was certain to find favour, provided it was novel and presented in an elegant form. The eclectic minds of that curious time could derive equal satisfaction from the brilliant discourses of the reactionary jesuitical De Maistre, the revolutionary odes of Pushkin, and the mysticism of Frau von Krudener. For the majority the vague theosophic doctrines and the projects for a spiritual union of governments and peoples had perhaps the greatest charm, being specially commended by the fact that they enjoyed the protection and sympathy of the Emperor. Pious souls discovered in the mystical lucubrations of Jung-Stilling and Baader the final solution of all existing difficulties--political, social, and philosophical. Men of less dreamy temperament put their faith in political economy and constitutional theories, and sought a foundation for their favourite schemes in the past history of the country and in the supposed fundamental peculiarities of the national character. Like the young German democrats, who were then talking enthusiastically about Teutons, Cheruskers, Skalds, the shade of Arminius, and the heroes of the Niebelungen, these young Russian savants recognised in early Russian history--when reconstructed according to their own fancy--lofty political ideals, and dreamed of resuscitating the ancient institutions in all their pristine imaginary splendour. Each age has its peculiar social and political panaceas. One generation puts its trust in religion, another in philanthropy, a third in written constitutions, a fourth in universal suffrage, a fifth in popular education. In the Epoch of the Restoration, as it is called, the favourite panacea all over the Continent was secret political association. Very soon after the overthrow of Napoleon the peoples who had risen in arms to obtain political independence discovered that they had merely changed masters. The Princes reconstructed Europe according to their own convenience, without paying much attention to patriotic aspirations, and forgot their promises of liberal institutions as soon as they were again firmly seated on their thrones. This was naturally for many a bitter deception. The young generation, excluded from all share in political life and gagged by the stringent police supervision, sought to realise its political aspirations by means of secret societies, resembling more or less the Masonic brotherhoods. There were the Burschenschaften in Germany; the Union, and the "Aide toi et le ciel t'aidera," in France; the Order of the Hammer in Spain; the Carbonari in Italy; and the Hetairai in Greece. In Russia the young nobles followed the prevailing fashion. Secret societies were formed, and in December, 1825, an attempt was made to raise a military insurrection in St. Petersburg, for the purpose of deposing the Imperial family and proclaiming a republic; but the attempt failed, and the vague Utopian dreams of the romantic would-be reformers were swept away by grape-shot. This "December catastrophe," still vividly remembered, was for the society of St. Petersburg like the giving way of the floor in a crowded ball-room. But a moment before, all had been animated, careless, and happy; now consternation was depicted on every face. The salons, that but yesterday had been ringing with lively discussions on morals, aesthetics, politics, and theology, were now silent and deserted. Many of those who had been wont to lead the causeries had been removed to the cells of the fortress, and those who had not been arrested trembled for themselves or their friends; for nearly all had of late dabbled more or less in the theory and practice of revolution. The announcement that five of the conspirators had been condemned to the gallows and the others sentenced to transportation did not tend to calm the consternation. Society was like a discomfited child, who, amidst the delight and excitement of letting off fireworks, has had its fingers severely burnt. The sentimental, wavering Alexander I. had been succeeded by his stern, energetic brother Nicholas, and the command went forth that there should be no more fireworks, no more dilettante philosophising or political aspirations. There was, however, little need for such an order. Society had been, for the moment at least, effectually cured of all tendencies to political dreaming. It had discovered, to its astonishment and dismay, that these new ideas, which were to bring temporal salvation to humanity, and to make all men happy, virtuous, refined, and poetical, led in reality to exile and the scaffold! The pleasant dream was at an end, and the fashionable world, giving up its former habits, took to harmless occupations--card-playing, dissipation, and the reading of French light literature. "The French quadrille," as a writer of the time tersely expresses it, "has taken the place of Adam Smith." When the storm had passed, the life of the salons began anew, but it was very different from what it had been. There was no longer any talk about political economy, theology, popular education, administrative abuses, social and political reforms. Everything that had any relation to politics in the wider sense of the term was by tacit consent avoided. Discussions there were as of old, but they were now confined to literary topics, theories of art, and similar innocent subjects. This indifference or positive repugnance to philosophy and political science, strengthened and prolonged by the repressive system of administration adopted by Nicholas, was of course fatal to the many-sided intellectual activity which had flourished during the preceding reign, but it was by no means unfavourable to the cultivation of imaginative literature. On the contrary, by excluding those practical interests which tend to disturb artistic production and to engross the attention of the public, it fostered what was called in the phraseology of that time "the pure-hearted worship of the Muses." We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that the reign of Nicholas, which is commonly and not unjustly described as an epoch of social and intellectual stagnation, may be called in a certain sense the Golden Age of Russian literature. Already in the preceding reign the struggle between the Classical and the Romantic school--between the adherents of traditional aesthetic principles and the partisans of untrammelled poetic inspiration--which was being carried on in Western Europe, was reflected in Russia. A group of young men belonging to the aristocratic society of St. Petersburg embraced with enthusiasm the new doctrines, and declared war against "classicism," under which term they understood all that was antiquated, dry, and pedantic. Discarding the stately, lumbering, unwieldy periods which had hitherto been in fashion, they wrote a light, elastic, vigorous style, and formed a literary society for the express purpose of ridiculing the most approved classical writers. The new principles found many adherents, and the new style many admirers, but this only intensified the hostility of the literary Conservatives. The staid, respectable leaders of the old school, who had all their lives kept the fear of Boileau before their eyes and considered his precepts as the infallible utterances of aesthetic wisdom, thundered against the impious innovations as unmistakable symptoms of literary decline and moral degeneracy--representing the boisterous young iconoclasts as dissipated Don Juans and dangerous freethinkers. Thus for some time in Russia, as in Western Europe, "a terrible war raged on Parnassus." At first the Government frowned at the innovators, on account of certain revolutionary odes which one of their number had written; but when the Romantic Muse, having turned away from the present as essentially prosaic, went back into the distant past and soared into the region of sublime abstractions, the most keen-eyed Press Censors found no reason to condemn her worship, and the authorities placed almost no restrictions on free poetic inspiration. Romantic poetry acquired the protection of the Government and the patronage of the Court, and the names of Zhukofski, Pushkin, and Lermontof--the three chief representatives of the Russian Romantic school--became household words in all ranks of the educated classes. These three great luminaries of the literary world were of course attended by a host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists created heroes of immaculate character and angelic purity, endowed with all the cardinal virtues in the superlative degree; and, as a contrast to these, terrible Satanic personages with savage passions, gleaming daggers, deadly poisons, and all manner of aimless melodramatic villainy. These stilted productions, interspersed with light satirical essays, historical sketches, literary criticism, and amusing anecdotes, formed the contents of the periodical literature, and completely satisfied the wants of the reading public. Almost no one at that time took any interest in public affairs or foreign politics. The acts of the Government which were watched most attentively were the promotions in the service and the conferring of decorations. The publication of a new tale by Zagoskin or Marlinski--two writers now well-nigh forgotten--seemed of much greater importance than any amount of legislation, and such events as the French Revolution of 1830 paled before the publication of a new poem by Pushkin. The Transcendental philosophy, which in Germany went hand in hand with the Romantic literature, found likewise a faint reflection in Russia. A number of young professors and students in Moscow, who had become ardent admirers of German literature, passed from the works of Schiller, Goethe, and Hoffmann to the writing of Schelling and Hegel. Trained in the Romantic school, these young philosophers found at first a special charm in Schelling's mystical system, teeming with hazy poetical metaphors, and presenting a misty grandiose picture of the universe; but gradually they felt the want of some logical basis for their speculations, and Hegel became their favourite. Gallantly they struggled with the uncouth terminology and epigrammatic paradoxes of the great thinker, and strove to force their way through the intricate mazes of his logical formulae. With the ardour of neophytes they looked at every phenomenon--even the most trivial incident of common life--from the philosophical point of view, talked day and night about principles, ideas, subjectivity, Weltauffassung, and similar abstract entities, and habitually attacked the "hydra of unphilosophy" by analysing the phenomena presented and relegating the ingredient elements to the recognised categories. In ordinary life they were men of quiet, grave, contemplative demeanour, but their faces could flush and their blood boil when they discussed the all-important question, whether it is possible to pass logically from Pure Being through Nonentity to the conception of Development and Definite Existence! We know how in Western Europe Romanticism and Transcendentalism, in their various forms, sank into oblivion, and were replaced by a literature which had a closer connection with ordinary prosaic wants and plain everyday life. The educated public became weary of the Romantic writers, who were always "sighing like a furnace," delighting in solitude, cold eternity, and moonshine, deluging the world with their heart-gushings, and calling on the heavens and the earth to stand aghast at their Promethean agonising or their Wertherean despair. Healthy human nature revolted against the poetical enthusiasts who had lost the faculty of seeing things in their natural light, and who constantly indulged in that morbid self-analysis which is fatal to genuine feeling and vigorous action. And in this healthy reaction the philosophers fared no better than the poets, with whom, indeed, they had much in common. Shutting their eyes to the visible world around them, they had busied themselves with burrowing in the mysterious depths of Absolute Being, grappling with the ego and the non-ego, constructing the great world, visible and invisible, out of their own puny internal self-consciousness, endeavouring to appropriate all departments of human thought, and imparting to every subject they touched the dryness and rigidity of an algebraical formula. Gradually men with real human sympathies began to perceive that from all this philosophical turmoil little real advantage was to be derived. It became only too evident that the philosophers were perfectly reconciled with all the evil in the world, provided it did not contradict their theories; that they were men of the same type as the physician in Moliere's comedy, whose chief care was that his patients should die selon les ordonnances de la medicine. In Russia the reaction first appeared in the aesthetic literature. Its first influential representative was Gogol (b. 1808, d. 1852), who may be called, in a certain sense, the Russian Dickens. A minute comparison of those two great humourists would perhaps show as many points of contrast as of similarity, but there is a strong superficial resemblance between them. They both possessed an inexhaustible supply of broad humour and an imagination of singular vividness. Both had the power of seeing the ridiculous side of common things, and the talent of producing caricatures that had a wonderful semblance of reality. A little calm reflection would suffice to show that the characters presented are for the most part psychological impossibilities; but on first making their acquaintance we are so struck with one or two life-like characteristics and various little details dexterously introduced, and at the same time we are so carried away by the overflowing fun of the narrative, that we have neither time nor inclination to use our critical faculties. In a very short time Gogol's fame spread throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, and many of his characters became as familiar to his countrymen as Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp were to Englishmen. His descriptions were so graphic--so like the world which everybody knew! The characters seemed to be old acquaintances hit off to the life; and readers revelled in that peculiar pleasure which most of us derive from seeing our friends successfully mimicked. Even the Iron Tsar could not resist the fun and humour of "The Inspector" (Revizor), and not only laughed heartily, but also protected the author against the tyranny of the literary censors, who considered that the piece was not written in a sufficiently "well-intentioned" tone. In a word, the reading public laughed as it had never laughed before, and this wholesome genuine merriment did much to destroy the morbid appetite for Byronic heroes and Romantic affectation. The Romantic Muse did not at once abdicate, but with the spread of Gogol's popularity her reign was practically at an end. In vain some of the conservative critics decried the new favourite as talentless, prosaic, and vulgar. The public were not to be robbed of their amusement for the sake of any abstract aesthetic considerations; and young authors, taking Gogol for their model, chose their subjects from real life, and endeavoured to delineate with minute truthfulness. This new intellectual movement was at first purely literary, and affected merely the manner of writing novels, tales, and poems. The critics who had previously demanded beauty of form and elegance of expression now demanded accuracy of description, condemned the aspirations towards so-called high art, and praised loudly those who produced the best literary photographs. But authors and critics did not long remain on this purely aesthetic standpoint. The authors, in describing reality, began to indicate moral approval and condemnation, and the critics began to pass from the criticism of the representations to the criticism of the realities represented. A poem or a tale was often used as a peg on which to hang a moral lecture, and the fictitious characters were soundly rated for their sins of omission and commission. Much was said about the defence of the oppressed, female emancipation, honour, and humanitarianism; and ridicule was unsparingly launched against all forms of ignorance, apathy, and the spirit of routine. The ordinary refrain was that the public ought now to discard what was formerly regarded as poetical and sublime, and to occupy itself with practical concerns--with the real wants of social life. The literary movement was thus becoming a movement in favour of social and political reforms when it was suddenly arrested by political events in the West. The February Revolution in Paris, and the political fermentation which appeared during 1848-49 in almost every country of Europe, alarmed the Emperor Nicholas and his counsellors. A Russian army was sent into Austria to suppress the Hungarian insurrection and save the Hapsburg dynasty, and the most stringent measures were taken to prevent disorders at home. One of the first precautions for the preservation of domestic tranquillity was to muzzle the Press more firmly than before, and to silence the aspirations towards reform and progress; thenceforth nothing could be printed which was not in strict accordance with the ultra-patriotic theory of Russian history, as expressed by a leading official personage: "The past has been admirable, the present is more than magnificent, and the future will surpass all that the human imagination can conceive!" The alarm caused by the revolutionary disorders spread to the non-official world, and gave rise to much patriotic self-congratulation. "The nations of the West," it was said, "envy us, and if they knew us better--if they could see how happy and prosperous we are--they would envy us still more. We ought not, however, to withdraw from Europe our solicitude; its hostility should not deprive us of our high mission of saving order and restoring rest to the nations; we ought to teach them to obey authority as we do. It is for us to introduce the saving principle of order into a world that has fallen a prey to anarchy. Russia ought not to abandon that mission which has been entrusted to her by the heavenly and by the earthly Tsar."* * These words were written by Tchaadaef, who, a few years before, had vigorously attacked the Slavophils for enouncing similar views. Men who saw in the significant political eruption of 1848 nothing but an outburst of meaningless, aimless anarchy, and who believed that their country was destined to restore order throughout the civilised world, had of course little time or inclination to think of putting their own house in order. No one now spoke of the necessity of social reorganisation: the recently awakened aspirations and expectations seemed to be completely forgotten. The critics returned to their old theory that art and literature should be cultivated for their own sake and not used as a vehicle for the propagation of ideas foreign to their nature. It seemed, in short, as if all the prolific ideas which had for a time occupied the public attention had been merely "writ in water," and had now disappeared without leaving a trace behind them. In reality the new movement was destined to reappear very soon with tenfold force; but the account of its reappearance and development belongs to a future chapter. Meanwhile I may formulate the general conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing pages. Ever since the time of Peter the Great there has been such a close connection between Russia and Western Europe that every intellectual movement which has appeared in France and Germany has been reflected--albeit in an exaggerated, distorted form--in the educated society of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Thus the window which Peter opened in order to enable his subjects to look into Europe has well served its purpose. CHAPTER XXVII THE CRIMEAN WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES The Emperor Nicholas and his System--The Men with Aspirations and the Apathetically Contented--National Humiliation--Popular Discontent and the Manuscript Literature--Death of Nicholas--Alexander II.--New Spirit--Reform Enthusiasm--Change in the Periodical Literature--The Kolokol--The Conservatives--The Tchinovniks--First Specific Proposals--Joint-Stock Companies--The Serf Question Comes to the Front. The Russians frankly admit that they were beaten in the Crimean War, but they regard the heroic defence of Sebastopol as one of the most glorious events in the military annals of their country. Nor do they altogether regret the result of the struggle. Often in a half-jocular, half-serious tone they say that they had reason to be grateful to the Allies. And there is much truth in this paradoxical statement. The Crimean War inaugurated a new epoch in the national history. It gave the death-blow to the repressive system of the Emperor Nicholas, and produced an intellectual movement and a moral revival which led to gigantic results. "The affair of December," 1825--I mean the abortive attempt at a military insurrection in St. Petersburg, to which I have alluded in the foregoing chapter--gave the key-note to Nicholas's reign. The armed attempt to overthrow the Imperial power, ending in the execution or exile of many young members of the first families, struck terror into the Noblesse, and prepared the way for a period of repressive police administration. Nicholas had none of the moral limpness and vacillating character of his predecessor. His was one of those simple, vigorous, tenacious, straightforward natures--more frequently to be met with among the Teutonic than among the Slav races--whose conceptions are all founded on a few deep-rooted, semi-instinctive convictions, and who are utterly incapable of accommodating themselves with histrionic cleverness to the changes of external circumstances. From his early youth he had shown a strong liking for military discipline and a decided repugnance to the humanitarianism and liberal principles then in fashion. With "the rights of man," "the spirit of the age," and similar philosophical abstractions his strong, domineering nature had no sympathy; and for the vague, loud-sounding phrases of philosophic liberalism he had a most profound contempt. "Attend to your military duties," he was wont to say to his officers before his accession; "don't trouble your heads with philosophy. I cannot bear philosophers!" The tragic event which formed the prelude to his reign naturally confirmed and fortified his previous convictions. The representatives of liberalism, who could talk so eloquently about duty in the abstract, had, whilst wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard, openly disobeyed the repeated orders of their superior officers and attempted to shake the allegiance of the troops for the purpose of overthrowing the Imperial power! A man who was at once soldier and autocrat, by nature as well as by position, could of course admit no extenuating circumstances. The incident stereotyped his character for life, and made him the sworn enemy of liberalism and the fanatical defender of autocracy, not only in his own country, but throughout Europe. In European politics he saw two forces struggling for mastery--monarchy and democracy, which were in his opinion identical with order and anarchy; and he was always ready to assist his brother sovereigns in putting down democratic movements. In his own Empire he endeavoured by every means in his power to prevent the introduction of the dangerous ideas. For this purpose a stringent intellectual quarantine was established on the western frontier. All foreign books and newspapers, except those of the most harmless kind, were rigorously excluded. Native writers were placed under strict supervision, and peremptorily silenced as soon as they departed from what was considered a "well-intentioned" tone. The number of university students was diminished, the chairs for political science were suppressed, and the military schools multiplied. Russians were prevented from travelling abroad, and foreigners who visited the country were closely watched by the police. By these and similar measures it was hoped that Russia would be preserved from the dangers of revolutionary agitation. Nicholas has been called the Don Quixote of Autocracy, and the comparison which the term implies is true in many points. By character and aims he belonged to a time that had passed away; but failure and mishap could not shake his faith in his ideal, and made no change in his honest, stubborn nature, which was as loyal and chivalresque as that of the ill-fated Knight of La Mancha. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, he believed in the practical omnipotence of autocracy. He imagined that as his authority was theoretically unlimited, so his power could work miracles. By nature and training a soldier, he considered government a slightly modified form of military discipline, and looked on the nation as an army which might be made to perform any intellectual or economic evolutions that he might see fit to command. All social ills seemed to him the consequence of disobedience to his orders, and he knew only one remedy--more discipline. Any expression of doubt as to the wisdom of his policy, or any criticism of existing regulations, he treated as an act of insubordination which a wise sovereign ought not to tolerate. If he never said, "L'Etat--c'est moi!" it was because he considered the fact so self-evident that it did not need to be stated. Hence any attack on the administration, even in the person of the most insignificant official, was an attack on himself and on the monarchical principle which he represented. The people must believe--and faith, as we know, comes not by sight--that they lived under the best possible government. To doubt this was political heresy. An incautious word or a foolish joke against the Government was considered a serious crime, and might be punished by a long exile in some distant and inhospitable part of the Empire. Progress should by all means be made, but it must be made by word of command, and in the way ordered. Private initiative in any form was a thing on no account to be tolerated. Nicholas never suspected that a ruler, however well-intentioned, energetic, and legally autocratic he may be, can do but little without the co-operation of his people. Experience constantly showed him the fruitlessness of his efforts, but he paid no attention to its teachings. He had formed once for all his theory of government, and for thirty years he acted according to it with all the blindness and obstinacy of a reckless, fanatical doctrinaire. Even at the close of his reign, when the terrible logic of facts had proved his system to be a mistake--when his armies had been defeated, his best fleet destroyed, his ports blockaded, and his treasury well-nigh emptied--he could not recant. "My successor," he is reported to have said on his deathbed, "may do as he pleases, but I cannot change." Had Nicholas lived in the old patriarchal times, when kings were the uncontrolled "shepherds of the people," he would perhaps have been an admirable ruler; but in the nineteenth century he was a flagrant anachronism. His system of administration completely broke down. In vain he multiplied formalities and inspectors, and punished severely the few delinquents who happened by some accident to be brought to justice; the officials continued to pilfer, extort, and misgovern in every possible way. Though the country was reduced to what would be called in Europe "a state of siege," the inhabitants might still have said--as they are reported to have declared a thousand years before--"Our land is great and fertile, but there is no order in it." In a nation accustomed to political life and to a certain amount of self-government, any approach to the system of Nicholas would, of course, have produced wide-spread dissatisfaction and violent hatred against the ruling power. But in Russia at that time no such feelings were awakened. The educated classes--and a fortiori the uneducated--were profoundly indifferent not only to political questions, but also to ordinary public affairs, whether local or Imperial, and were quite content to leave them in the hands of those who were paid for attending to them. In common with the uneducated peasantry, the nobles had a boundless respect--one might almost say a superstitious reverence--not only for the person, but also for the will of the Tsar, and were ready to show unquestioning obedience to his commands, so long as these did not interfere with their accustomed mode of life. The Tsar desired them not to trouble their heads with political questions, and to leave all public matters to the care of the Administration; and in this respect the Imperial will coincided so well with their personal inclinations that they had no difficulty in complying with it. When the Tsar ordered those of them who held office to refrain from extortion and peculation, his orders were not so punctiliously obeyed, but in this disobedience there was no open opposition--no assertion of a right to pilfer and extort. As the disobedience proceeded, not from a feeling of insubordination, but merely from the weakness that official flesh is heir to, it was not regarded as very heinous. In the aristocratic circles of St. Petersburg and Moscow there was the same indifference to political questions and public affairs. All strove to have the reputation of being "well-intentioned," which was the first requisite for those who desired Court favour or advancement in the public service; and those whose attention was not entirely occupied with official duties, card-playing, and the ordinary routine of everyday life, cultivated belles-lettres or the fine arts. In short, the educated classes in Russia at that time showed a complete indifference to political and social questions, an apathetic acquiescence in the system of administration adopted by the Government, and an unreasoning contentment with the existing state of things. About the year 1845, when the reaction against Romanticism was awakening in the reading public an interest in the affairs of real life,* began to appear what may be called "the men with aspirations," a little band of generous enthusiasts, strongly resembling the youth in Longfellow's poem who carries a banner with the device "Excelsior," and strives ever to climb higher, without having any clear notion of where he was going or of what he is to do when he reaches the summit. At first they had little more than a sentimental enthusiasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good, and a certain Platonic love for free institutions, liberty, enlightenment, progress, and everything that was generally comprehended at that period under the term "liberal." Gradually, under the influence of current French literature, their ideas became a little clearer, and they began to look on reality around them with a critical eye. They could perceive, without much effort, the unrelenting tyranny of the Administration, the notorious venality of the tribunals, the reckless squandering of the public money, the miserable condition of the serfs, the systematic strangulation of all independent opinion or private initiative, and, above all, the profound apathy of the upper classes, who seemed quite content with things as they were. * Vide supra, p. 377 et seq. With such ugly facts staring them in the face, and with the habit of looking at things from the moral point of view, these men could understand how hollow and false were the soothing or triumphant phrases of official optimism. They did not, indeed, dare to express their indignation publicly, for the authorities would allow no public expression of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, but they disseminated their ideas among their friends and acquaintances by means of conversation and manuscript literature, and some of them, as university professors and writers in the periodical Press, contrived to awaken in a certain section of the young generation an ardent enthusiasm for enlightenment and progress, and a vague hope that a brighter day was about to dawn. Not a few sympathised with these new conceptions and aspirations, but the great majority of the nobles regarded them--especially after the French Revolution of 1848--as revolutionary and dangerous. Thus the educated classes became divided into two sections, which have sometimes been called the Liberals and the Conservatives, but which might be more properly designated the men with aspirations and the apathetically contented. These latter doubtless felt occasionally the irksomeness of the existing system, but they had always one consolation--if they were oppressed at home they were feared abroad. The Tsar was at least a thorough soldier, possessing an enormous and well-equipped army by which he might at any moment impose his will on Europe. Ever since the glorious days of 1812, when Napoleon was forced to make an ignominious retreat from the ruins of Moscow, the belief that the Russian soldiers were superior to all others, and that the Russian army was invincible, had become an article of the popular creed; and the respect which the voice of Nicholas commanded in Western Europe seemed to prove that the fact was admitted by foreign nations. In these and similar considerations the apathetically contented found a justification for their lethargy. When it became evident that Russia was about to engage in a trial of strength with the Western Powers, this optimism became general. "The heavy burdens," it was said, "which the people have had to bear were necessary to make Russia the first military Power in Europe, and now the nation will reap the fruits of its long-suffering and patient resignation. The West will learn that her boasted liberty and liberal institutions are of little service in the hour of danger, and the Russians who admire such institutions will be constrained to admit that a strong, all-directing autocracy is the only means of preserving national greatness." As the patriotic fervour and military enthusiasm increased, nothing was heard but praises of Nicholas and his system. The war was regarded by many as a kind of crusade--even the Emperor spoke about the defence of "the native soil and the holy faith"--and the most exaggerated expectations were entertained of its results. The old Eastern Question was at last to be solved in accordance with Russian aspirations, and Nicholas was about to realise Catherine II.'s grand scheme of driving the Turks out of Europe. The date at which the troops would arrive at Constantinople was actively discussed, and a Slavophil poet called on the Emperor to lie down in Constantinople, and rise up as Tsar of a Panslavonic Empire. Some enthusiasts even expected the speedy liberation of Jerusalem from the power of the Infidel. To the enemy, who might possibly hinder the accomplishment of these schemes, very little attention was paid. "We have only to throw our hats at them!" (Shapkami zakidaem) became a favourite expression. There were, however, a few men in whom the prospect of the coming struggle awoke very different thoughts and feelings. They could not share the sanguine expectations of those who were confident of success. "What preparations have we made," they asked, "for the struggle with civilisation, which now sends its forces against us? With all our vast territory and countless population we are incapable of coping with it. When we talk of the glorious campaign against Napoleon, we forget that since that time Europe has been steadily advancing on the road of progress while we have been standing still. We march not to victory, but to defeat, and the only grain of consolation which we have is that Russia will learn by experience a lesson that will be of use to her in the future."* * These are the words of Granovski. These prophets of evil found, of course, few disciples, and were generally regarded as unworthy sons of the Fatherland--almost as traitors to their country. But their predictions were confirmed by events. The Allies were victorious in the Crimea, and even the despised Turks made a successful stand on the line of the Danube. In spite of the efforts of the Government to suppress all unpleasant intelligence, it soon became known that the military organisation was little, if at all, better than the civil administration--that the individual bravery of soldiers and officers was neutralised by the incapacity of the generals, the venality of the officials, and the shameless peculation of the commissariat department. The Emperor, it was said, had drilled out of the officers all energy, individuality, and moral force. Almost the only men who showed judgment, decision, and energy were the officers of the Black Sea fleet, which had been less subjected to the prevailing system. As the struggle went on, it became evident how weak the country really was--how deficient in the resources necessary to sustain a prolonged conflict. "Another year of war," writes an eye-witness in 1855, "and the whole of Southern Russia will be ruined." To meet the extraordinary demands on the Treasury, recourse was had to an enormous issue of paper money; but the rapid depreciation of the currency showed that this resource would soon be exhausted. Militia regiments were everywhere raised throughout the country, and many proprietors spent large sums in equipping volunteer corps; but very soon this enthusiasm cooled when it was found that the patriotic efforts enriched the jobbers without inflicting any serious injury on the enemy. Under the sting of the great national humiliation, the upper classes awoke from their optimistic resignation. They had borne patiently the oppression of a semi-military administration, and for this! The system of Nicholas had been put to a crucial test, and found wanting. The policy which had sacrificed all to increase the military power of the Empire was seen to be a fatal error, and the worthlessness of the drill-sergeant regime was proved by bitter experience. Those administrative fetters which had for more than a quarter of a century cramped every spontaneous movement had failed to fulfil even the narrow purpose for which they had been forged. They had, indeed, secured a certain external tranquillity during those troublous times when Europe was convulsed by revolutionary agitation; but this tranquillity was not that of healthy normal action, but of death--and underneath the surface lay secret and rapidly spreading corruption. The army still possessed that dashing gallantry which it had displayed in the campaigns of Suvorof, that dogged, stoical bravery which had checked the advance of Napoleon on the field of Borodino, and that wondrous power of endurance which had often redeemed the negligence of generals and the defects of the commissariat; but the result was now not victory, but defeat. How could this be explained except by the radical defects of that system which had been long practised with such inflexible perseverance? The Government had imagined that it could do everything by its own wisdom and energy, and in reality it had done nothing, or worse than nothing. The higher officers had learned only too well to be mere automata; the ameliorations in the military organisation, on which Nicholas had always bestowed special attention, were found to exist for the most part only in the official reports; the shameful exploits of the commissariat department were such as to excite the indignation of those who had long lived in an atmosphere of official jobbery and peculation; and the finances, which people had generally supposed to be in a highly satisfactory condition, had become seriously crippled by the first great national effort. This deep and wide-spread dissatisfaction was not allowed to appear in the Press, but it found very free expression in the manuscript literature and in conversation. In almost every house--I mean, of course, among the educated classes--words were spoken which a few months before would have seemed treasonable, if not blasphemous. Philippics and satires in prose and verse were written by the dozen, and circulated in hundreds of copies. A pasquil on the Commander in Chief, or a tirade against the Government, was sure to be eagerly read and warmly approved of. As a specimen of this kind of literature, and an illustration of the public opinion of the time, I may translate here one of those metrical tirades. Though it was never printed, it obtained a wide circulation: "'God has placed me over Russia,' said the Tsar to us, 'and you must bow down before me, for my throne is His altar. Trouble not yourselves with public affairs, for I think for you and watch over you every hour. My watchful eye detects internal evils and the machinations of foreign enemies; and I have no need of counsel, for God inspires me with wisdom. Be proud, therefore, of being my slaves, O Russians, and regard my will as your law.' "We listened to these words with deep reverence, and gave a tacit consent; and what was the result? Under mountains of official papers real interests were forgotten. The letter of the law was observed, but negligence and crime were allowed to go unpunished. While grovelling in the dust before ministers and directors of departments in the hope of receiving tchins and decorations, the officials stole unblushingly; and theft became so common that he who stole the most was the most respected. The merits of officers were decided at reviews; and he who obtained the rank of General was supposed capable of becoming at once an able governor, an excellent engineer, or a most wise senator. Those who were appointed governors were for the most part genuine satraps, the scourges of the provinces entrusted to their care. The other offices were filled up with as little attention to the merits of the candidates. A stable-boy became Press censor! an Imperial fool became admiral! Kleinmichel became a count! In a word, the country was handed over to the tender mercies of a band of robbers. "And what did we Russians do all this time? "We Russians slept! With groans the peasant paid his yearly dues; with groans the proprietor mortgaged the second half of his estate; groaning, we all paid our heavy tribute to the officials. Occasionally, with a grave shaking of the head, we remarked in a whisper that it was a shame and a disgrace--that there was no justice in the courts--that millions were squandered on Imperial tours, kiosks, and pavilions--that everything was wrong; and then, with an easy conscience, we sat down to our rubber, praised the acting of Rachel, criticised the singing of Frezzolini, bowed low to venal magnates, and squabbled with each other for advancement in the very service which we so severely condemned. If we did not obtain the place we wished we retired to our ancestral estates, where we talked of the crops, fattened in indolence and gluttony, and lived a genuine animal life. If any one, amidst the general lethargy, suddenly called upon us to rise and fight for the truth and for Russia, how ridiculous did he appear! How cleverly the Pharisaical official ridiculed him, and how quickly the friends of yesterday showed him the cold shoulder! Under the anathema of public opinion, in some distant Siberian mine he recognised what a heinous sin it was to disturb the heavy sleep of apathetic slaves. Soon he was forgotten, or remembered as an unfortunate madman; and the few who said, 'Perhaps after all he was right,' hastened to add, 'but that is none of our business.' "But amidst all this we had at least one consolation, one thing to be proud of--the might of Russia in the assembly of kings. 'What need we care,' we said, 'for the reproaches of foreign nations? We are stronger than those who reproach us.' And when at great reviews the stately regiments marched past with waving standards, glittering helmets, and sparkling bayonets, when we heard the loud hurrah with which the troops greeted the Emperor, then our hearts swelled with patriotic pride, and we were ready to repeat the words of the poet-- "Strong is our native country, and great the Russian Tsar." "Then British statesmen, in company with the crowned conspirator of France, and with treacherous Austria, raised Western Europe against us, but we laughed scornfully at the coming storm. 'Let the nations rave,' we said; 'we have no cause to be afraid. The Tsar doubtless foresaw all, and has long since made the necessary preparations.' Boldly we went forth to fight, and confidently awaited the moment of the struggle. "And lo! after all our boasting we were taken by surprise, and caught unawares, as by a robber in the dark. The sleep of innate stupidity blinded our Ambassadors, and our Foreign Minister sold us to our enemies.* Where were our millions of soldiers? Where was the well-considered plan of defence? One courier brought the order to advance; another brought the order to retreat; and the army wandered about without definite aim or purpose. With loss and shame we retreated from the forts of Silistria, and the pride of Russia was humbled before the Hapsburg eagle. The soldiers fought well, but the parade-admiral (Menshikof)--the amphibious hero of lost battles--did not know the geography of his own country, and sent his troops to certain destruction. * Many people at that time imagined that Count Nesselrode, who was then Minister for Foreign Affairs, was a traitor to his adopted country. "Awake, O Russia! Devoured by foreign enemies, crushed by slavery, shamefully oppressed by stupid authorities and spies, awaken from your long sleep of ignorance and apathy! You have been long enough held in bondage by the successors of the Tartar Khan. Stand forward calmly before the throne of the despot, and demand from him an account of the national disaster. Say to him boldly that his throne is not the altar of God, and that God did not condemn us to be slaves. Russia entrusted to you, O Tsar, the supreme power, and you were as a God upon earth. And what have you done? Blinded by ignorance and passion, you have lusted after power and have forgotten Russia. You have spent your life in reviewing troops, in modifying uniforms, and in appending your signature to the legislative projects of ignorant charlatans. You created the despicable race of Press censors, in order to sleep in peace--in order not to know the wants and not to hear the groans of the people--in order not to listen to Truth. You buried Truth, rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, placed a strong guard over it, and said in the pride of your heart: For her there is no resurrection! But the third day has dawned, and Truth has arisen from the dead. "Stand forward, O Tsar, before the judgment-seat of history and of God! You have mercilessly trampled Truth under foot, you have denied Freedom, you have been the slave of your own passions. By your pride and obstinacy you have exhausted Russia and raised the world in arms against us. Bow down before your brethren and humble yourself in the dust! Crave pardon and ask advice! Throw yourself into the arms of the people! There is now no other salvation!" The innumerable tirades of which the above is a fair specimen were not very remarkable for literary merit or political wisdom. For the most part they were simply bits of bombastic rhetoric couched in doggerel rhyme, and they have consequently been long since consigned to well-merited oblivion--so completely that it is now difficult to obtain copies of them.* They have, however, an historical interest, because they express in a more or less exaggerated form the public opinion and prevalent ideas of the educated classes at that moment. In order to comprehend their real significance, we must remember that the writers and readers were not a band of conspirators, but ordinary, respectable, well-intentioned people, who never for a moment dreamed of embarking in revolutionary designs. It was the same society that had been a few months before so indifferent to all political questions, and even now there was no clear conception as to how the loud-sounding phrases could be translated into action. We can imagine the comical discomfiture of those who read and listened to these appeals, if the "despot" had obeyed their summons, and suddenly appeared before them. * I am indebted for the copies which I possess to friends who copied and collected these pamphlets at the time. Was the movement, then, merely an outburst of childish petulance? Certainly not. The public were really and seriously convinced that things were all wrong, and they were seriously and enthusiastically desirous that a new and better order of things should be introduced. It must be said to their honour that they did not content themselves with accusing and lampooning the individuals who were supposed to be the chief culprits. On the contrary, they looked reality boldly in the face, made a public confession of their past sins, sought conscientiously the causes which had produced the recent disasters, and endeavoured to find means by which such calamities might be prevented in the future. The public feeling and aspirations were not strong enough to conquer the traditional respect for the Imperial will and create an open opposition to the Autocratic Power, but they were strong enough to do great things by aiding the Government, if the Emperor voluntarily undertook a series of radical reforms. What Nicholas would have done, had he lived, in face of this national awakening, it is difficult to say. He declared, indeed, that he could not change, and we can readily believe that his proud spirit would have scorned to make concessions to the principles which he had always condemned; but he gave decided indications in the last days of his life that his old faith in his system was somewhat shaken, and he did not exhort his son to persevere in the path along which he himself had forced his way with such obstinate consistency. It is useless, however, to speculate on possibilities. Whilst the Government had still to concentrate all its energies on the defence of the country, the Iron Tsar died, and was succeeded by his son, a man of a very different type. Of a kind-hearted, humane disposition, sincerely desirous of maintaining the national honour, but singularly free from military ambition and imbued with no fanatical belief in the drill-sergeant system of government, Alexander II. was by no means insensible to the spirit of the time. He had, however, none of the sentimental enthusiasm for liberal institutions which had characterised his uncle, Alexander I. On the contrary, he had inherited from his father a strong dislike to sentimentalism and rhetoric of all kinds. This dislike, joined to a goodly portion of sober common-sense, a limited confidence in his own judgment, and a consciousness of enormous responsibility, prevented him from being carried away by the prevailing excitement. With all that was generous and humane in the movement he thoroughly sympathised, and he allowed the popular ideas and aspirations to find free utterance; but he did not at once commit himself to any definite policy, and carefully refrained from all exaggerated expressions of reforming zeal. As soon, however, as peace had been concluded, there were unmistakable symptoms that the rigorously repressive system of Nicholas was about to be abandoned. In the manifesto announcing the termination of hostilities the Emperor expressed his conviction that by the combined efforts of the Government and the people, the public administration would be improved, and that justice and mercy would reign in the courts of law. Apparently as a preparation for this great work, to be undertaken by the Tsar and his people in common, the ministers began to take the public into their confidence, and submitted to public criticism many official data which had hitherto been regarded as State secrets. The Minister of the Interior, for instance, in his annual report, spoke almost in the tone of a penitent, and confessed openly that the morality of the officials under his orders left much to be desired. He declared that the Emperor now showed a paternal confidence in his people, and as a proof of this he mentioned the significant fact that 9,000 persons had been liberated from police supervision. The other branches of the Administration underwent a similar transformation. The haughty, dictatorial tone which had hitherto been used by superiors to their subordinates, and by all ranks of officials to the public, was replaced by one of considerate politeness. About the same time those of the Decembrists who were still alive were pardoned. The restrictions regarding the number of students in each university were abolished, the difficulty of obtaining foreign passports was removed, and the Press censors became singularly indulgent. Though no decided change had been made in the laws, it was universally felt that the spirit of Nicholas was no more. The public, anxiously seeking after a sign, readily took these symptoms of change as a complete confirmation of their ardent hopes, and leaped at once to the conclusion that a vast, all-embracing system of radical reform was about to be undertaken--not secretly by the Administration, as had been the custom in the preceding reign when any little changes had to be made, but publicly, by the Government and the people in common. "The heart trembles with joy," said one of the leading organs of the Press, "in expectation of the great social reforms that are about to be effected--reforms that are thoroughly in accordance with the spirit, the wishes, and the expectations of the public." "The old harmony and community of feeling," said another, "which has always existed between the government and the people, save during short exceptional periods, has been fully re-established. The absence of all sentiment of caste, and the feeling of common origin and brotherhood which binds all classes of the Russian people into a homogeneous whole, will enable Russia to accomplish peacefully and without effort not only those great reforms which cost Europe centuries of struggle and bloodshed, but also many which the nations of the West are still unable to accomplish, in consequence of feudal traditions and caste prejudices." The past was depicted in the blackest colours, and the nation was called upon to begin a new and glorious epoch of its history. "We have to struggle," it was said, "in the name of the highest truth against egotism and the puny interests of the moment; and we ought to prepare our children from their infancy to take part in that struggle which awaits every honest man. We have to thank the war for opening our eyes to the dark sides of our political and social organisation, and it is now our duty to profit by the lesson. But it must not be supposed that the Government can, single-handed, remedy the defects. The destinies of Russia are, as it were, a stranded vessel which the captain and crew cannot move, and which nothing, indeed, but the rising tide of the national life can raise and float." Hearts beat quicker at the sound of these calls to action. Many heard this new teaching, if we may believe a contemporary authority, "with tears in their eyes"; then, "raising boldly their heads, they made a solemn vow that they would act honourably, perseveringly, fearlessly." Some of those who had formerly yielded to the force of circumstances now confessed their misdemeanours with bitterness of heart. "Tears of repentance," said a popular poet, "give relief, and call us to new exploits." Russia was compared to a strong giant who awakes from sleep, stretches his brawny limbs, collects his thoughts, and prepares to atone for his long inactivity by feats of untold prowess. All believed, or at least assumed, that the recognition of defects would necessarily entail their removal. When an actor in one of the St. Petersburg theatres shouted from the stage, "Let us proclaim throughout all Russia that the time has come for tearing up evil by the roots!" the audience gave way to the most frantic enthusiasm. "Altogether a joyful time," says one who took part in the excitement, "as when, after the long winter, the genial breath of spring glides over the cold, petrified earth, and nature awakens from her deathlike sleep. Speech, long restrained by police and censorial regulations, now flows smoothly, majestically, like a mighty river that has just been freed from ice." Under these influences a multitude of newspapers and periodicals were founded, and the current literature entirely changed its character. The purely literary and historical questions which had hitherto engaged the attention of the reading public were thrown aside and forgotten, unless they could be made to illustrate some principle of political or social science. Criticisms on style and diction, explanations of aesthetic principles, metaphysical discussions--all this seemed miserable trifling to men who wished to devote themselves to gigantic practical interests. "Science," it was said, "has now descended from the heights of philosophic abstraction into the arena of real life." The periodicals were accordingly filled with articles on railways, banks, free-trade, education, agriculture, communal institutions, local self-government, joint-stock companies, and with crushing philippics against personal and national vanity, inordinate luxury, administrative tyranny, and the habitual peculation of the officials. This last-named subject received special attention. During the preceding reign any attempt to criticise publicly the character or acts of an official was regarded as a very heinous offence; now there was a deluge of sketches, tales, comedies, and monologues, describing the corruption of the Administration, and explaining the ingenious devices by which the tchinovniks increased their scanty salaries. The public would read nothing that had not a direct or indirect bearing on the questions of the day, and whatever had such a bearing was read with interest. It did not seem at all strange that a drama should be written in defence of free-trade, or a poem in advocacy of some peculiar mode of taxation; that an author should expound his political ideas in a tale, and his antagonist reply by a comedy. A few men of the old school protested feebly against this "prostitution of art," but they received little attention, and the doctrine that art should be cultivated for its own sake was scouted as an invention of aristocratic indolence. Here is an ipsa pinxit of the literature of the time: "Literature has come to look at Russia with her own eyes, and sees that the idyllic romantic personages which the poets formerly loved to describe have no objective existence. Having taken off her French glove, she offers her hand to the rude, hard-working labourer, and observing lovingly Russian village life, she feels herself in her native land. The writers of the present have analysed the past, and, having separated themselves from aristocratic litterateurs and aristocratic society, have demolished their former idols." By far the most influential periodical at the commencement of the movement was the Kolokol, or Bell, a fortnightly journal published in London by Herzen, who was at that time an important personage among the political refugees. Herzen was a man of education and culture, with ultra-radical opinions, and not averse to using revolutionary methods of reform when he considered them necessary. His intimate relations with many of the leading men in Russia enabled him to obtain secret information of the most important and varied kind, and his sparkling wit, biting satire, and clear, terse, brilliant style secured him a large number of readers. He seemed to know everything that was done in the ministries and even in the Cabinet of the Emperor,* and he exposed most mercilessly every abuse that came to his knowledge. We who are accustomed to free political discussion can hardly form a conception of the avidity with which his articles were read, and the effect which they produced. Though strictly prohibited by the Press censure, the Kolokol found its way across the frontier in thousands of copies, and was eagerly perused and commented on by all ranks of the educated classes. The Emperor himself received it regularly, and high-priced delinquents examined it with fear and trembling. In this way Herzen was for some years, though an exile, an important political personage, and did much to awaken and keep up the reform enthusiasm. * As an illustration of this, the following anecdote is told: One number of the Kolokol contained a violent attack on an important personage of the court, and the accused, or some one of his friends, considered it advisable to have a copy specially printed for the Emperor without the objectionable article. The Emperor did not at first discover the trick, but shortly afterwards he received from London a polite note containing the article which had been omitted, and informing him how he had been deceived. But where were the Conservatives all this time? How came it that for two or three years no voice was raised and no protest made even against the rhetorical exaggerations of the new-born liberalism? Where were the representatives of the old regime, who had been so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Nicholas? Where were those ministers who had systematically extinguished the least indication of private initiative, those "satraps" who had stamped out the least symptom of insubordination or discontent, those Press censors who had diligently suppressed the mildest expression of liberal opinion, those thousands of well-intentioned proprietors who had regarded as dangerous free-thinkers and treasonable republicans all who ventured to express dissatisfaction with the existing state of things? A short time before, the Conservatives composed at least nine-tenths of the upper classes, and now they had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. It is scarcely necessary to say that in a country accustomed to political life, such a sudden, unopposed revolution in public opinion could not possibly take place. The key to the mystery lies in the fact that for centuries Russia had known nothing of political life or political parties. Those who were sometimes called Conservatives were in reality not at all Conservatives in our sense of the term. If we say that they had a certain amount of conservatism, we must add that it was of the latent, passive, unreasoned kind--the fruit of indolence and apathy. Their political creed had but one article: Thou shalt love the Tsar with all thy might, and carefully abstain from all resistance to his will--especially when it happens that the Tsar is a man of the Nicholas type. So long as Nicholas lived they had passively acquiesced in his system--active acquiescence had been neither demanded nor desired--but when he died, the system of which he was the soul died with him. What then could they seek to defend? They were told that the system which they had been taught to regard as the sheet-anchor of the State was in reality the chief cause of the national disasters; and to this they could make no reply, because they had no better explanation of their own to offer. They were convinced that the Russian soldier was the best soldier in the world, and they knew that in the recent war the army had not been victorious; the system, therefore, must be to blame. They were told that a series of gigantic reforms was necessary in order to restore Russia to her proper place among the nations; and to this they could make no answer, for they had never studied such abstract questions. And one thing they did know: that those who hesitated to admit the necessity of gigantic reforms were branded by the Press as ignorant, narrow-minded, prejudiced, and egotistical, and were held up to derision as men who did not know the most elementary principles of political and economic science. Freely expressed public opinion was such a new phenomenon in Russia that the Press was able for some time to exercise a "Liberal" tyranny scarcely less severe than the "Conservative" tyranny of the censors in the preceding reign. Men who would have stood fire gallantly on the field of battle quailed before the poisoned darts of Herzen in the Kolokol. Under such circumstances, even the few who possessed some vague Conservative convictions refrained from publicly expressing them. The men who had played a more or less active part during the preceding reign, and who might therefore be expected to have clearer and deeper convictions, were specially incapable of offering opposition to the prevailing Liberal enthusiasm. Their Conservatism was of quite as limp a kind as that of the landed proprietors who were not in the public service, for under Nicholas the higher a man was placed the less likely was he to have political convictions of any kind outside the simple political creed above referred to. Besides this, they belonged to that class which was for the moment under the anathema of public opinion, and they had drawn direct personal advantage from the system which was now recognised as the chief cause of the national disasters. For a time the name of tchinovnik became a term of reproach and derision, and the position of those who bore it was comically painful. They strove to prove that, though they held a post in the public service, they were entirely free from the tchinovnik spirit--that there was nothing of the genuine tchinovnik about them. Those who had formerly paraded their tchin (official rank) on all occasions, in season and out of season, became half ashamed to admit that they had the rank of General; for the title no longer commanded respect, and had become associated with all that was antiquated, formal, and stupid. Among the young generation it was used most disrespectfully as equivalent to "pompous blockhead." Zealous officials who had lately regarded the acquisition of Stars and Orders as among the chief ends of man, were fain to conceal those hard-won trophies, lest some cynical "Liberal" might notice them and make them the butt of his satire. "Look at the depth of humiliation to which you have brought the country"--such was the chorus of reproach that was ever ringing in their ears--"with your red tape, your Chinese formalism, and your principle of lifeless, unreasoning, mechanical obedience! You asserted constantly that you were the only true patriots, and branded with the name of traitor those who warned you of the insane folly of your conduct. You see now what it has all come to. The men whom you helped to send to the mines turn out to have been the true patriots."* * It was a common saying at that time that nearly all the best men in Russia had spent a part of their lives in Siberia, and it was proposed to publish a biographical dictionary of remarkable men, in which every article was to end thus: "Exiled to ---- in 18--." I am not aware how far the project was seriously entertained, but, of course, the book was never published. And to these reproaches what could they reply? Like a child who has in his frolics inadvertently set the house on fire, they could only look contrite, and say they did not mean it. They had simply accepted without criticism the existing order of things, and ranged themselves among those who were officially recognised as "the well-intentioned." If they had always avoided the Liberals, and perhaps helped to persecute them, it was simply because all "well-intentioned" people said that Liberals were "restless" and dangerous to the State. Those who were not convinced of their errors simply kept silence, but the great majority passed over to the ranks of the Progressists, and many endeavoured to redeem their past by showing extreme zeal for the Liberal cause. In explanation of this extraordinary outburst of reform enthusiasm, we must further remember that the Russian educated classes, in spite of the severe northern climate which is supposed to make the blood circulate slowly, are extremely impulsive. They are fettered by no venerable historical prejudices, and are wonderfully sensitive to the seductive influence of grandiose projects, especially when these excite the patriotic feelings. Then there was the simple force of reaction--the rebound which naturally followed the terrific compression of the preceding reign. Without disrespect, the Russians of that time may be compared to schoolboys who have just escaped from the rigorous discipline of a severe schoolmaster. In the first moments of freedom it was supposed that there would be no more discipline or compulsion. The utmost respect was to be shown to "human dignity," and every Russian was to act spontaneously and zealously at the great work of national regeneration. All thirsted for reforming activity. The men in authority were inundated with projects of reform--some of them anonymous, and others from obscure individuals; some of them practical, and very many wildly fantastic. Even the grammarians showed their sympathy with the spirit of the time by proposing to expel summarily all redundant letters from the Russian alphabet! The fact that very few people had clear, precise ideas as to what was to be done did not prevent, but rather tended to increase, the reform enthusiasm. All had at least one common feeling--dislike to what had previously existed. It was only when it became necessary to forsake pure negation, and to create something, that the conceptions became clearer, and a variety of opinions appeared. At the first moment there was merely unanimity in negation, and an impulsive enthusiasm for beneficent reforms in general. The first specific proposals were direct deductions from the lessons taught by the war. The war had shown in a terrible way the disastrous consequences of having merely primitive means of communication; the Press and the public began, accordingly, to speak about the necessity of constructing railways, roads and river-steamers. The war had shown that a country which has not developed its natural resources very soon becomes exhausted if it has to make a great national effort; accordingly the public and the Press talked about the necessity of developing the natural resources, and about the means by which this desirable end might be attained. It had been shown by the war that a system of education which tends to make men mere apathetic automata cannot produce even a good army; accordingly the public and the Press began to discuss the different systems of education and the numerous questions of pedagogical science. It had been shown by the war that the best intentions of a Government will necessarily be frustrated if the majority of the officials are dishonest or incapable; accordingly the public and the Press began to speak about the paramount necessity of reforming the Administration in all its branches. It must not, however, be supposed that in thus laying to heart the lessons taught by the war and endeavouring to profit by them, the Russians were actuated by warlike feelings, and desired to avenge themselves as soon as possible on their victorious enemies. On the contrary, the whole movement and the spirit which animated it were eminently pacific. Prince Gortchakof's saying, "La Russie ne boude pas, elle se recueille," was more than a diplomatic repartee--it was a true and graphic statement of the case. Though the Russians are very inflammable, and can be very violent when their patriotic feelings are aroused, they are, individually and as a nation, singularly free from rancour and the spirit of revenge. After the termination of hostilities they really bore little malice towards the Western Powers, except towards Austria, which was believed to have been treacherous and ungrateful to the country that had saved her in 1849. Their patriotism now took the form, not of revenge, but of a desire to raise their country to the level of the Western nations. If they thought of military matters at all, they assumed that military power would be obtained as a natural and inevitable result of high civilisation and good government. As a first step towards the realisation of the vast schemes contemplated, voluntary associations began to be formed for industrial and commercial purposes, and a law was issued for the creation of limited liability companies. In the space of two years forty-seven companies of this kind were founded, with a combined capital of 358 millions of roubles. To understand the full significance of these figures, we must know that from the founding of the first joint-stock company in 1799 down to 1853 only twenty-six companies had been formed, and their united capital amounted only to thirty-two millions of roubles. Thus in the space of two years (1857-58) eleven times as much capital was subscribed to joint-stock companies as had been subscribed during half a century previous to the war. The most exaggerated expectations were entertained as to the national and private advantages which must necessarily result from these undertakings, and it became a patriotic duty to subscribe liberally. The periodical literature depicted in glowing terms the marvellous results that had been obtained in other countries by the principle of co-operation, and sanguine readers believed that they had discovered a patriotic way of speedily becoming rich. These were, however, mere secondary matters, and the public were anxiously waiting for the Government to begin the grand reforming campaign. When the educated classes awoke to the necessity of great reforms, there was no clear conception as to how the great work should be undertaken. There was so much to be done that it was no easy matter to decide what should be done first. Administrative, judicial, social, economical, financial, and political reforms seemed all equally pressing. Gradually, however, it became evident that precedence must be given to the question of serfage. It was absurd to speak about progress, humanitarianism, education, self-government, equality in the eye of the law, and similar matters, so long as one half of the population was excluded from the enjoyment of ordinary civil rights. So long as serfage existed it was mere mockery to talk about re-organising Russia according to the latest results of political and social science. How could a system of even-handed justice be introduced when twenty millions of the peasantry were subject to the arbitrary will of the landed proprietors? How could agricultural or industrial progress be made without free labour? How could the Government take active measures for the spread of national education when it had no direct control over one-half of the peasantry? Above all, how could it be hoped that a great moral regeneration could take place, so long as the nation voluntarily retained the stigma of serfage and slavery? All this was very generally felt by the educated classes, but no one ventured to raise the question until it should be known what were the views of the Emperor on the subject. How the question was gradually raised, how it was treated by the nobles, and how it was ultimately solved by the famous law of February 19th (March 3d), 1861,* I now propose to relate. * February 19th according to the old style, which is still used in Russia, and March 3d according to our method of reckoning. CHAPTER XXVIII THE SERFS The Rural Population in Ancient Times--The Peasantry in the Eighteenth Century--How Was This Change Effected?--The Common Explanation Inaccurate--Serfage the Result of Permanent Economic and Political Causes--Origin of the Adscriptio Glebae--Its Consequences--Serf Insurrection--Turning-point in the History of Serfage--Serfage in Russia and in Western Europe--State Peasants--Numbers and Geographical Distribution of the Serf Population--Serf Dues--Legal and Actual Power of the Proprietors--The Serfs' Means of Defence--Fugitives--Domestic Serfs--Strange Advertisements in the Moscow Gazette--Moral Influence of Serfage. Before proceeding to describe the Emancipation, it may be well to explain briefly how the Russian peasants became serfs, and what serfage in Russia really was. In the earliest period of Russian history the rural population was composed of three distinct classes. At the bottom of the scale stood the slaves, who were very numerous. Their numbers were continually augmented by prisoners of war, by freemen who voluntarily sold themselves as slaves, by insolvent debtors, and by certain categories of criminals. Immediately above the slaves were the free agricultural labourers, who had no permanent domicile, but wandered about the country and settled temporarily where they happened to find work and satisfactory remuneration. In the third place, distinct from these two classes, and in some respects higher in the social scale, were the peasants properly so called.* * My chief authority for the early history of the peasantry has been Belaef, "Krestyanye na Rusi," Moscow, 1860; a most able and conscientious work. These peasants proper, who may be roughly described as small farmers or cottiers, were distinguished from the free agricultural labourers in two respects: they were possessors of land in property or usufruct, and they were members of a rural Commune. The Communes were free primitive corporations which elected their office-bearers from among the heads of families, and sent delegates to act as judges or assessors in the Prince's Court. Some of the Communes possessed land of their own, whilst others were settled on the estates of the landed proprietors or on the extensive domains of the monasteries. In the latter case the peasant paid a fixed yearly rent in money, in produce, or in labour, according to the terms of his contract with the proprietor or the monastery; but he did not thereby sacrifice in any way his personal liberty. As soon as he had fulfilled the engagements stipulated in the contract and had settled accounts with the owner of the land, he was free to change his domicile as he pleased. If we turn now from these early times to the eighteenth century, we find that the position of the rural population has entirely changed in the interval. The distinction between slaves, agricultural labourers, and peasants has completely disappeared. All three categories have melted together into a common class, called serfs, who are regarded as the property of the landed proprietors or of the State. "The proprietors sell their peasants and domestic servants not even in families, but one by one, like cattle, as is done nowhere else in the whole world, from which practice there is not a little wailing."* And yet the Government, whilst professing to regret the existence of the practice, takes no energetic measures to prevent it. On the contrary, it deprives the serfs of all legal protection, and expressly commands that if any serf shall dare to present a petition against his master, he shall be punished with the knout and transported for life to the mines of Nertchinsk. (Ukaz of August 22d, 1767.**) * These words are taken from an Imperial ukaz of April 15th, 1721. Polnoye Sobranye Zakonov, No. 3,770. ** This is an ukaz of the liberal and tolerant Catherine! How she reconciled it with her respect and admiration for Beccaria's humane views on criminal law she does not explain. How did this important change take place, and how is it to be explained? If we ask any educated Russian who has never specially occupied himself with historical investigations regarding the origin of serfage in Russia, he will probably reply somewhat in this fashion: "In Russia slavery has never existed (!), and even serfage in the West-European sense has never been recognised by law! In ancient times the rural population was completely free, and every peasant might change his domicile on St. George's Day--that is to say, at the end of the agricultural year. This right of migration was abolished by Tsar Boris Godunof--who, by the way, was half a Tartar and more than half a usurper--and herein lies the essence of serfage in the Russian sense. The peasants have never been the property of the landed proprietors, but have always been personally free; and the only legal restriction on their liberty was that they were not allowed to change their domicile without the permission of the proprietor. If so-called serfs were sometimes sold, the practice was simply an abuse not justified by legislation." This simple explanation, in which may be detected a note of patriotic pride, is almost universally accepted in Russia; but it contains, like most popular conceptions of the distant past, a curious mixture of fact and fiction. Serious historical investigation tends to show that the power of the proprietors over the peasants came into existence, not suddenly, as the result of an ukaz, but gradually, as a consequence of permanent economic and political causes, and that Boris Godunof was not more to blame than many of his predecessors and successors.* * See especially Pobedonostsef, in the Russki Vestnik, 1858, No. 11, and "Istoritcheskiya izsledovaniya i statyi" (St. Petersburg, 1876), by the same author; also Pogodin, in the Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4. Although the peasants in ancient Russia were free to wander about as they chose, there appeared at a very early period--long before the reign of Boris Godunof--a decided tendency in the Princes, in the proprietors, and in the Communes, to prevent migration. This tendency will be easily understood if we remember that land without labourers is useless, and that in Russia at that time the population was small in comparison with the amount of reclaimed and easily reclaimable land. The Prince desired to have as many inhabitants as possible in his principality, because the amount of his regular revenues depended on the number of the population. The landed proprietor desired to have as many peasants as possible on his estate, to till for him the land which he reserved for his own use, and to pay him for the remainder a yearly rent in money, produce, or labour. The free Communes desired to have a number of members sufficient to keep the whole of the Communal land under cultivation, because each Commune had to pay yearly to the Prince a fixed sum in money or agricultural produce, and the greater the number of able-bodied members, the less each individual had to pay. To use the language of political economy, the Princes, the landed proprietors, and the free Communes all appeared as buyers in the labour market; and the demand was far in excess of the supply. Nowadays when young colonies or landed proprietors in an outlying corner of the world are similarly in need of labour, they seek to supply the want by organising a regular system of importing labourers--using illegal violent means, such as kidnapping expeditions, merely as an exceptional expedient. In old Russia any such regularly organised system was impossible, and consequently illegal or violent measures were not the exception, but the rule. The chief practical advantage of the frequent military expeditions for those who took part in them was the acquisition of prisoners of war, who were commonly transformed into slaves by their captors. If it be true, as some assert, that only unbaptised prisoners were legally considered lawful booty, it is certain that in practice, before the unification of the principalities under the Tsars of Moscow, little distinction was made in this respect between unbaptised foreigners and Orthodox Russians.* A similar method was sometimes employed for the acquisition of free peasants: the more powerful proprietors organised kidnapping expeditions, and carried off by force the peasants settled on the land of their weaker neighbours. * On this subject see Tchitcherin, "Opyty po istorii Russkago prava," Moscow, 1858, p. 162 et seq.; and Lokhvitski, "O plennykh po drevnemu Russkomu pravu," Moscow, 1855. Under these circumstances it was only natural that those who possessed this valuable commodity should do all in their power to keep it. Many, if not all, of the free Communes adopted the simple measure of refusing to allow a member to depart until he had found some one to take his place. The proprietors never, so far as we know, laid down formally such a principle, but in practice they did all in their power to retain the peasants actually settled on their estates. For this purpose some simply employed force, whilst others acted under cover of legal formalities. The peasant who accepted land from a proprietor rarely brought with him the necessary implements, cattle, and capital to begin at once his occupations, and to feed himself and his family till the ensuing harvest. He was obliged, therefore, to borrow from his landlord, and the debt thus contracted was easily converted into a means of preventing his departure if he wished to change his domicile. We need not enter into further details. The proprietors were the capitalists of the time. Frequent bad harvests, plagues, fires, military raids, and similar misfortunes often reduced even prosperous peasants to beggary. The muzhik was probably then, as now, only too ready to accept a loan without taking the necessary precautions for repaying it. The laws relating to debt were terribly severe, and there was no powerful judicial organisation to protect the weak. If we remember all this, we shall not be surprised to learn that a considerable part of the peasantry were practically serfs before serfage was recognised by law. So long as the country was broken up into independent principalities, and each land-owner was almost an independent Prince on his estate, the peasants easily found a remedy for these abuses in flight. They fled to a neighbouring proprietor who could protect them from their former landlord and his claims, or they took refuge in a neighbouring principality, where they were, of course, still safer. All this was changed when the independent principalities were transformed into the Tsardom of Muscovy. The Tsars had new reasons for opposing the migration of the peasants and new means for preventing it. The old Princes had simply given grants of land to those who served them, and left the grantee to do with his land what seemed good to him; the Tsars, on the contrary, gave to those who served them merely the usufruct of a certain quantity of land, and carefully proportioned the quantity to the rank and the obligations of the receiver. In this change there was plainly a new reason for fixing the peasants to the soil. The real value of a grant depended not so much on the amount of land as on the number of peasants settled on it, and hence any migration of the population was tantamount to a removal of the ancient landmarks--that is to say, to a disturbance of the arrangements made by the Tsar. Suppose, for instance, that the Tsar granted to a Boyar or some lesser dignitary an estate on which were settled twenty peasant families, and that afterwards ten of these emigrated to neighbouring proprietors. In this case the recipient might justly complain that he had lost half of his estate--though the amount of land was in no way diminished--and that he was consequently unable to fulfil his obligations. Such complaints would be rarely, if ever, made by the great dignitaries, for they had the means of attracting peasants to their estates;* but the small proprietors had good reason to complain, and the Tsar was bound to remove their grievances. The attaching of the peasants to the soil was, in fact, the natural consequence of feudal tenures--an integral part of the Muscovite political system. The Tsar compelled the nobles to serve him, and was unable to pay them in money. He was obliged, therefore, to procure for them some other means of livelihood. Evidently the simplest method of solving the difficulty was to give them land, with a certain number of labourers, and to prevent the labourers from migrating. * There are plain indications in the documents of the time that the great dignitaries were at first hostile to the adscriptio glebae. We find a similar phenomenon at a much more recent date in Little Russia. Long after serfage had been legalised in that region by Catherine II., the great proprietors, such as Rumyantsef, Razumofski, Bezborodko, continued to attract to their estates the peasants of the smaller proprietors. See the article of Pogodin in the Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4, p. 154. Towards the free Communes the Tsar had to act in the same way for similar reasons. The Communes, like the nobles, had obligations to the Sovereign, and could not fulfil them if the peasants were allowed to migrate from one locality to another. They were, in a certain sense, the property of the Tsar, and it was only natural that the Tsar should do for himself what he had done for his nobles. With these new reasons for fixing the peasants to the soil came, as has been said, new means of preventing migration. Formerly it was an easy matter to flee to a neighbouring principality, but now all the principalities were combined under one ruler, and the foundations of a centralised administration were laid. Severe fugitive laws were issued against those who attempted to change their domicile and against the proprietors who should harbour the runaways. Unless the peasant chose to face the difficulties of "squatting" in the inhospitable northern forests, or resolved to brave the dangers of the steppe, he could nowhere escape the heavy hand of Moscow.* * The above account of the origin of serfage in Russia is founded on a careful examination of the evidence which we possess on the subject, but I must not conceal the fact that some of the statements are founded on inference rather than on direct, unequivocal documentary evidence. The whole question is one of great difficulty, and will in all probability not be satisfactorily solved until a large number of the old local Land-Registers (Pistsoviya Knigi) have been published and carefully studied. The indirect consequences of thus attaching the peasants to the soil did not at once become apparent. The serf retained all the civil rights he had hitherto enjoyed, except that of changing his domicile. He could still appear before the courts of law as a free man, freely engage in trade or industry, enter into all manner of contracts, and rent land for cultivation. But as time wore on, the change in the legal relation between the two classes became apparent in real life. In attaching the peasantry to the soil, the Government had been so thoroughly engrossed with the direct financial aim that it entirely overlooked, or wilfully shut its eyes to, the ulterior consequences which must necessarily flow from the policy it adopted. It was evident that as soon as the relation between proprietor and peasant was removed from the region of voluntary contract by being rendered indissoluble, the weaker of the two parties legally tied together must fall completely under the power of the stronger, unless energetically protected by the law and the Administration. To this inevitable consequence the Government paid no attention. So far from endeavouring to protect the peasantry from the oppression of the proprietors, it did not even determine by law the mutual obligations which ought to exist between the two classes. Taking advantage of this omission, the proprietors soon began to impose whatever obligations they thought fit; and as they had no legal means of enforcing fulfilment, they gradually introduced a patriarchal jurisdiction similar to that which they exercised over their slaves, with fines and corporal punishment as means of coercion. From this they ere long proceeded a step further, and began to sell their peasants without the land on which they were settled. At first this was merely a flagrant abuse unsanctioned by law, for the peasant had never been declared the private property of the landed proprietor; but the Government tacitly sanctioned the practice, and even exacted dues on such sales, as on the sale of slaves. Finally the right to sell peasants without land was formally recognised by various Imperial ukazes.* * For instance, the ukazes of October 13th, 1675, and June 25th, 1682. See Belaef, pp. 203-209. The old Communal organisation still existed on the estates of the proprietors, and had never been legally deprived of its authority, but it was now powerless to protect the members. The proprietor could easily overcome any active resistance by selling or converting into domestic servants the peasants who dared to oppose his will. The peasantry had thus sunk to the condition of serfs, practically deprived of legal protection and subject to the arbitrary will of the proprietors; but they were still in some respects legally and actually distinguished from the slaves on the one hand and the "free wandering people" on the other. These distinctions were obliterated by Peter the Great and his immediate successors. To effect his great civil and military reforms, Peter required an annual revenue such as his predecessors had never dreamed of, and he was consequently always on the look-out for some new object of taxation. When looking about for this purpose, his eye naturally fell on the slaves, the domestic servants, and the free agricultural labourers. None of these classes paid taxes--a fact which stood in flagrant contradiction with his fundamental principle of polity, that every subject should in some way serve the State. He caused, therefore, a national census to be taken, in which all the various classes of the rural population--slaves, domestic servants, agricultural labourers, peasants--should be inscribed in one category; and he imposed equally on all the members of this category a poll-tax, in lieu of the former land-tax, which had lain exclusively on the peasants. To facilitate the collection of this tax the proprietors were made responsible for their serfs; and the "free wandering people" who did not wish to enter the army were ordered, under pain of being sent to the galleys, to inscribe themselves as members of a Commune or as serfs to some proprietor. These measures had a considerable influence, if not on the actual position of the peasantry, at least on the legal conceptions regarding them. By making the proprietor pay the poll-tax for his serfs, as if they were slaves or cattle, the law seemed to sanction the idea that they were part of his goods and chattels. Besides this, it introduced the entirely new principle that any member of the rural population not legally attached to the land or to a proprietor should be regarded as a vagrant, and treated accordingly. Thus the principle that every subject should in some way serve the State had found its complete realisation. There was no longer any room in Russia for free men. The change in the position of the peasantry, together with the hardships and oppression by which it was accompanied, naturally increased fugitivism and vagrancy. Thousands of serfs ran away from their masters and fled to the steppe or sought enrolment in the army. To prevent this the Government considered it necessary to take severe and energetic measures. The serfs were forbidden to enlist without the permission of their masters, and those who persisted in presenting themselves for enrolment were to be beaten "cruelly" (zhestoko) with the knout, and sent to the mines.* The proprietors, on the other hand, received the right to transport without trial their unruly serfs to Siberia, and even to send them to the mines for life.** * Ukaz of June 2d, 1742. ** See ukaz of January 17th, 1765, and of January 28th, 1766. If these stringent measures had any effect it was not of long duration, for there soon appeared among the serfs a still stronger spirit of discontent and insubordination, which threatened to produce a general agrarian rising, and actually did create a movement resembling in many respects the Jacquerie in France and the Peasant War in Germany. A glance at the causes of this movement will help us to understand the real nature of serfage in Russia. Up to this point serfage had, in spite of its flagrant abuses, a certain theoretical justification. It was, as we have seen, merely a part of a general political system in which obligatory service was imposed on all classes of the population. The serfs served the nobles in order that the nobles might serve the Tsar. In 1762 this theory was entirely overturned by a manifesto of Peter III. abolishing the obligatory service of the Noblesse. According to strict justice this act ought to have been followed by the liberation of the serfs, for if the nobles were no longer obliged to serve the State they had no just claim to the service of the peasants. The Government had so completely forgotten the original meaning of serfage that it never thought of carrying out the measure to its logical consequences, but the peasantry held tenaciously to the ancient conceptions, and looked impatiently for a second manifesto liberating them from the power of the proprietors. Reports were spread that such a manifesto really existed, and was being concealed by the nobles. A spirit of insubordination accordingly appeared among the rural population, and local insurrections broke out in several parts of the Empire. At this critical moment Peter III. was dethroned and assassinated by a Court conspiracy. The peasants, who, of course, knew nothing of the real motives of the conspirators, supposed that the Tsar had been assassinated by those who wished to preserve serfage, and believed him to be a martyr in the cause of Emancipation. At the news of the catastrophe their hopes of Emancipation fell, but soon they were revived by new rumours. The Tsar, it was said, had escaped from the conspirators and was in hiding. Soon he would appear among his faithful peasants, and with their aid would regain his throne and punish the wicked oppressors. Anxiously he was awaited, and at last the glad tidings came that he had appeared in the Don country, that thousands of Cossacks had joined his standard, that he was everywhere putting the proprietors to death without mercy, and that he would soon arrive in the ancient capital! Peter III. was in reality in his grave, but there was a terrible element of truth in these reports. A pretender, a Cossack called Pugatchef, had really appeared on the Don, and had assumed the role which the peasants expected the late Tsar to play. Advancing through the country of the Lower Volga, he took several places of importance, put to death all the proprietors he could find, defeated on more than one occasion the troops sent against him, and threatened to advance into the heart of the Empire. It seemed as if the old troublous times were about to be renewed--as if the country was once more to be pillaged by those wild Cossacks of the southern steppe. But the pretender showed himself incapable of playing the part he had assumed. His inhuman cruelty estranged many who would otherwise have followed him, and he was too deficient in decision and energy to take advantage of favourable circumstances. If it be true that he conceived the idea of creating a peasant empire (muzhitskoe tsarstvo), he was not the man to realise such a scheme. After a series of mistakes and defeats he was taken prisoner, and the insurrection was quelled.* *Whilst living among the Bashkirs of the province of Samara in 1872 I found some interesting traditions regarding this pretender. Though nearly a century had elapsed since his death (1775), his name, his personal appearance, and his exploits were well known even to the younger generation. My informants firmly believed that he was not an impostor, but the genuine Tsar, dethroned by his ambitious consort, and that he never was taken prisoner, but "went away into foreign lands." When I asked whether he was still alive, and whether he might not one day return, they replied that they did not know. Meanwhile Peter III. had been succeeded by his consort, Catherine II. As she had no legal right to the throne, and was by birth a foreigner, she could not gain the affections of the people, and was obliged to court the favour of the Noblesse. In such a difficult position she could not venture to apply her humane principles to the question of serfage. Even during the first years of her reign, when she had no reason to fear agrarian disturbances, she increased rather than diminished the power of the proprietors over their serfs, and the Pugatchef affair confirmed her in this line of policy. During her reign serfage may be said to have reached its climax. The serfs were regarded by the law as part of the master's immovable property*--as part of the working capital of the estate--and as such they were bought, sold, and given as presents** in hundreds and thousands, sometimes with the land, and sometimes without it, sometimes in families, and sometimes individually. The only legal restriction was that they should not be offered for sale at the time of the conscription, and that they should at no time be sold publicly by auction, because such a custom was considered as "unbecoming in a European State." In all other respects the serfs might be treated as private property; and this view is to be found not only in the legislation, but also in the popular conceptions. It became customary--a custom that continued down to the year 1861--to compute a noble's fortune, not by his yearly revenue or the extent of his estate, but by the number of his serfs. Instead of saying that a man had so many hundreds or thousands a year, or so many acres, it was commonly said that he had so many hundreds or thousands of "souls." And over these "souls" he exercised the most unlimited authority. The serfs had no legal means of self-defence. The Government feared that the granting to them of judicial or administrative protection would inevitably awaken in them a spirit of insubordination, and hence it was ordered that those who presented complaints should be punished with the knout and sent to the mines.*** It was only in extreme cases, when some instance of atrocious cruelty happened to reach the ears of the Sovereign, that the authorities interfered with the proprietor's jurisdiction, and these cases had not the slightest influence on the proprietors in general.**** * See ukaz of October 7th, 1792. ** As an example of making presents of serfs, the following may be cited. Count Panin presented some of his subordinates for an Imperial recompense, and on receiving a refusal, made them a present of 4000 serfs from his own estates.--Belaef, p. 320. *** See the ukazes of August 22d, 1767, and March 30th, 1781. **** Perhaps the most horrible case on record is that of a certain lady called Saltykof, who was brought to justice in 1768. According to the ukaz regarding her crimes, she had killed by inhuman tortures in the course of ten or eleven years about a hundred of her serfs, chiefly of the female sex, and among them several young girls of eleven and twelve years of age. According to popular belief her cruelty proceeded from cannibal propensities, but this was not confirmed by the judicial investigation. Details in the Russki Arkhiv, 1865, pp. 644-652. The atrocities practised on the estate of Count Araktcheyef, the favourite of Alexander I. at the commencement of last century, have been frequently described, and are scarcely less revolting. The last years of the eighteenth century may be regarded as the turning-point in the history of serfage. Up till that time the power of the proprietors had steadily increased, and the area of serfage had rapidly expanded. Under the Emperor Paul (1796-1801) we find the first decided symptoms of a reaction. He regarded the proprietors as his most efficient officers of police, but he desired to limit their authority, and for this purpose issued an ukaz to the effect that the serfs should not be forced to work for their masters more than three days in the week. With the accession of Alexander I., in 1801, commenced a long series of abortive projects for a general emancipation, and endless attempts to correct the more glaring abuses; and during the reign of Nicholas no less than six committees were formed at different times to consider the question. But the practical result of these efforts was extremely small. The custom of giving grants of land with peasants was abolished; certain slight restrictions were placed on the authority of the proprietors; a number of the worst specimens of the class were removed from the administration of their estates; a few who were convicted of atrocious cruelty were exiled to Siberia;* and some thousands of serfs were actually emancipated; but no decisive radical measures were attempted, and the serfs did not receive even the right of making formal complaints. Serfage had, in fact, come to be regarded as a vital part of the State organisation, and the only sure basis for autocracy. It was therefore treated tenderly, and the rights and protection accorded by various ukazes were almost entirely illusory. *Speranski, for instance, when Governor of the province of Penza, brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who had caused one of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a lady who had murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife because he had neglected to take proper care of a tame rabbit committed to his charge!--Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago," II., p. 127, note. If we compare the development of serfage in Russia and in Western Europe, we find very many points in common, but in Russia the movement had certain peculiarities. One of the most important of these was caused by the rapid development of the Autocratic Power. In feudal Europe, where there was no strong central authority to control the Noblesse, the free rural Communes entirely, or almost entirely, disappeared. They were either appropriated by the nobles or voluntarily submitted to powerful landed proprietors or to monasteries, and in this way the whole of the reclaimed land, with a few rare exceptions, became the property of the nobles or of the Church. In Russia we find the same movement, but it was arrested by the Imperial power before all the land had been appropriated. The nobles could reduce to serfage the peasants settled on their estates, but they could not take possession of the free Communes, because such an appropriation would have infringed the rights and diminished the revenues of the Tsar. Down to the commencement of the last century, it is true, large grants of land with serfs were made to favoured individuals among the Noblesse, and in the reign of Paul (1796-1801) a considerable number of estates were affected to the use of the Imperial family under the name of appanages (Udyelniya imteniya); but on the other hand, the extensive Church lands, when secularised by Catherine II., were not distributed among the nobles, as in many other countries, but were transformed into State Domains. Thus, at the date of the Emancipation (1861), by far the greater part of the territory belonged to the State, and one-half of the rural population were so-called State Peasants (Gosudarstvenniye krestyanye). Regarding the condition of these State Peasants, or Peasants of the Domains, as they are sometimes called, I may say briefly that they were, in a certain sense, serfs, being attached to the soil like the others; but their condition was, as a rule, somewhat better than the serfs in the narrower acceptation of the term. They had to suffer much from the tyranny and extortion of the special administration under which they lived, but they had more land and more liberty than was commonly enjoyed on the estates of resident proprietors, and their position was much less precarious. It is often asserted that the officials of the Domains were worse than the serf-owners, because they had not the same interest in the prosperity of the peasantry; but this a priori reasoning does not stand the test of experience. It is not a little interesting to observe the numerical proportion and geographical distribution of these two rural classes. In European Russia, as a whole, about three-eighths of the population were composed of serfs belonging to the nobles;* but if we take the provinces separately we find great variations from this average. In five provinces the serfs were less than three per cent., while in others they formed more than seventy per cent. of the population! This is not an accidental phenomenon. In the geographical distribution of serfage we can see reflected the origin and history of the institution. * The exact numbers, according to official data, were--Entire Population 60,909,309 Peasantry of all Classes 49,486,665 Of these latter there were--State Peasants 23,138,191 Peasants on the Lands of Proprietors 23,022,390 Peasants of the Appanages and other Departments 3,326,084 ---------- 49,486,665 If we were to construct a map showing the geographical distribution of the serf population, we should at once perceive that serfage radiated from Moscow. Starting from that city as a centre and travelling in any direction towards the confines of the Empire, we find that, after making allowance for a few disturbing local influences, the proportion of serfs regularly declines in the successive provinces traversed. In the region representing the old Muscovite Tsardom they form considerably more than a half of the rural population. Immediately to the south and east of this, in the territory that was gradually annexed during the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century, the proportion varies from twenty-five to fifty per cent., and in the more recently annexed provinces it steadily decreases till it almost reaches zero. We may perceive, too, that the percentage of serfs decreases towards the north much more rapidly than towards the east and south. This points to the essentially agricultural nature of serfage in its infancy. In the south and east there was abundance of rich "black earth" celebrated for its fertility, and the nobles in quest of estates naturally preferred this region to the inhospitable north, with its poor soil and severe climate. A more careful examination of the supposed map* would bring out other interesting facts. Let me notice one by way of illustration. Had serfage been the result of conquest we should have found the Slavonic race settled on the State Domains, and the Finnish and Tartar tribes supplying the serfs of the nobles. In reality we find quite the reverse; the Finns and Tartars were nearly all State Peasants, and the serfs of the proprietors were nearly all of Slavonic race. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the Finnish and Tartar tribes inhabit chiefly the outlying regions, in which serfage never attained such dimensions as in the centre of the Empire. * Such a map was actually constructed by Troinitski ("Krepostnoe Naseleniye v Rossii," St. Petersburg, 1861), but it is not nearly so graphic as is might have been. The dues paid by the serfs were of three kinds: labour, money, and farm produce. The last-named is so unimportant that it may be dismissed in a few words. It consisted chiefly of eggs, chickens, lambs, mushrooms, wild berries, and linen cloth. The amount of these various products depended entirely on the will of the master. The other two kinds of dues, as more important, we must examine more closely. When a proprietor had abundance of fertile land and wished to farm on his own account, he commonly demanded from his serfs as much labour as possible. Under such a master the serfs were probably free from money dues, and fulfilled their obligations to him by labouring in his fields in summer and transporting his grain to market in winter. When, on the contrary, a land-owner had more serf labour at his disposal than he required for the cultivation of his fields, he put the superfluous serfs "on obrok,"--that is to say, he allowed them to go and work where they pleased on condition of paying him a fixed yearly sum. Sometimes the proprietor did not farm at all on his own account, in which case he put all the serfs "on obrok," and generally gave to the Commune in usufruct the whole of the arable land and pasturage. In this way the Mir played the part of a tenant. We have here the basis for a simple and important classification of estates in the time of serfage: (1) Estates on which the dues were exclusively in labour; (2) estates on which the dues were partly in labour and partly in money; and (3) estates on which the dues were exclusively in money. In the manner of exacting the labour dues there was considerable variety. According to the famous manifesto of Paul I., the peasant could not be compelled to work more than three days in the week; but this law was by no means universally observed, and those who did observe it had various methods of applying it. A few took it literally and laid down a rule that the serfs should work for them three definite days in the week--for example, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday--but this was an extremely inconvenient method, for it prevented the field labour from being carried on regularly. A much more rational system was that according to which one-half of the serfs worked the first three days of the week, and the other half the remaining three. In this way there was, without any contravention of the law, a regular and constant supply of labour. It seems, however, that the great majority of the proprietors followed no strict method, and paid no attention whatever to Paul's manifesto, which gave to the peasants no legal means of making formal complaints. They simply summoned daily as many labourers as they required. The evil consequences of this for the peasants' crops were in part counteracted by making the peasants sow their own grain a little later than that of the proprietor, so that the master's harvest work was finished, or nearly finished, before their grain was ripe. This combination did not, however, always succeed, and in cases where there was a conflict of interests, the serf was, of course, the losing party. All that remained for him to do in such cases was to work a little in his own fields before six o'clock in the morning and after nine o'clock at night, and in order to render this possible he economised his strength, and worked as little as possible in his master's fields during the day. It has frequently been remarked, and with much truth--though the indiscriminate application of the principle has often led to unjustifiable legislative inactivity--that the practical result of institutions depends less on the intrinsic abstract nature of the institutions themselves than on the character of those who work them. So it was with serfage. When a proprietor habitually acted towards his serfs in an enlightened, rational, humane way, they had little reason to complain of their position, and their life was much easier than that of many men who live in a state of complete individual freedom and unlimited, unrestricted competition. However paradoxical the statement may seem to those who are in the habit of regarding all forms of slavery from the sentimental point of view, it is unquestionable that the condition of serfs under such a proprietor as I have supposed was more enviable than that of the majority of English agricultural labourers. Each family had a house of its own, with a cabbage-garden, one or more horses, one or two cows, several sheep, poultry, agricultural implements, a share of the Communal land, and everything else necessary for carrying on its small farming operations; and in return for this it had to supply the proprietor with an amount of labour which was by no means oppressive. If, for instance, a serf had three adult sons--and the households, as I have said, were at that time generally numerous--two of them might work for the proprietor whilst he himself and the remaining son could attend exclusively to the family affairs. By the events which used to be called "the visitations of God" he had no fear of being permanently ruined. If his house was burnt, or his cattle died from the plague, or a series of "bad years" left him without seed for his fields, he could always count upon temporary assistance from his master. He was protected, too, against all oppression and exactions on the part of the officials; for the police, when there was any call for its interference, applied to the proprietor, who was to a certain extent responsible for his serfs. Thus the serf might live a tranquil, contented life, and die at a ripe old age, without ever having been conscious that serfage was a grievous burden. If all the serfs had lived in this way we might, perhaps, regret that the Emancipation was ever undertaken. In reality there was, as the French say, le revers de la medaille, and serfage generally appeared under a form very different from that which I have just depicted. The proprietors were, unfortunately, not all of the enlightened, humane type. Amongst them were many who demanded from their serfs an inordinate amount of labour, and treated them in a very inhuman fashion. These oppressors of their serfs may be divided into four categories. First, there were the proprietors who managed their own estates, and oppressed simply for the purpose of increasing their revenues. Secondly, there were a number of retired officers who wished to establish a certain order and discipline on their estates, and who employed for this purpose the barbarous measures which were at that time used in the army, believing that merciless corporal punishment was the only means of curing laziness, disorderliness and other vices. Thirdly, there were the absentees who lived beyond their means, and demanded from their steward, under pain of giving him or his son as a recruit, a much greater yearly sum than the estate could be reasonably expected to yield. Lastly, in the latter years of serfage, there were a number of men who bought estates as a mercantile speculation, and made as much money out of them as they could in the shortest possible space of time. Of all hard masters, the last-named were the most terrible. Utterly indifferent to the welfare of the serfs and the ultimate fate of the property, they cut down the timber, sold the cattle, exacted heavy money dues under threats of giving the serfs or their children as recruits, presented to the military authorities a number of conscripts greater than was required by law--selling the conscription receipts (zatchetniya kvitantsii) to the merchants and burghers who were liable to the conscription but did not wish to serve--compelled some of the richer serfs to buy their liberty at an enormous price, and, in a word, used every means, legal and illegal, for extracting money. By this system of management they ruined the estate completely in the course of a few years; but by that time they had realised probably the whole sum paid, with a very fair profit from the operation; and this profit could be considerably augmented by selling a number of the peasant families for transportation to another estate (na svoz), or by mortgaging the property in the Opekunski Sovet--a Government institution which lent money on landed property without examining carefully the nature of the security. As to the means which the proprietors possessed of oppressing their peasants, we must distinguish between the legal and the actual. The legal were almost as complete as any one could desire. "The proprietor," it is said in the Laws (Vol. IX, p. 1045, ed. an. 1857), "may impose on his serfs every kind of labour, may take from them money dues (obrok) and demand from them personal service, with this one restriction, that they should not be thereby ruined, and that the number of days fixed by law should be left to them for their own work."* Besides this, he had the right to transform peasants into domestic servants, and might, instead of employing them in his own service, hire them out to others who had the rights and privileges of Noblesse (pp. 1047-48). For all offences committed against himself or against any one under his jurisdiction he could subject the guilty ones to corporal punishment not exceeding forty lashes with the birch or fifteen blows with the stick (p. 1052); and if he considered any of his serfs as incorrigible, he could present them to the authorities to be drafted into the army or transported to Siberia as he might desire (pp. 1053-55). In cases of insubordination, where the ordinary domestic means of discipline did not suffice, he could call in the police and the military to support his authority. * I give here the references to the Code, because Russians commonly believe and assert that the hiring out of serfs, the infliction of corporal punishment, and similar practices were merely abuses unauthorised by law. Such were the legal means by which the proprietor might oppress his peasants, and it will be readily understood that they were very considerable and very elastic. By law he had the power to impose any dues in labour or money which he might think fit, and in all cases the serfs were ordered to be docile and obedient (p. 1027). Corporal punishment, though restricted by law, he could in reality apply to any extent. Certainly none of the serfs, and very few of the proprietors, were aware that the law placed any restriction on this right. All the proprietors were in the habit of using corporal punishment as they thought proper, and unless a proprietor became notorious for inhuman cruelty the authorities never thought of interfering. But in the eyes of the peasants corporal punishment was not the worst. What they feared infinitely more than the birch or the stick was the proprietor's power of giving them or their sons as recruits. The law assumed that this extreme means would be employed only against those serfs who showed themselves incorrigibly vicious or insubordinate; but the authorities accepted those presented without making any investigations, and consequently the proprietor might use this power as an effective means of extortion. Against these means of extortion and oppression the serfs had no legal protection. The law provided them with no means of resisting any injustice to which they might be subjected, or of bringing to punishment the master who oppressed and ruined them. The Government, notwithstanding its sincere desire to protect them from inordinate burdens and cruel treatment, rarely interfered between the master and his serfs, being afraid of thereby undermining the authority of the proprietors, and awakening among the peasantry a spirit of insubordination. The serfs were left, therefore, to their own resources, and had to defend themselves as best they could. The simplest way was open mutiny; but this was rarely employed, for they knew by experience that any attempt of the kind would be at once put down by the military and mercilessly punished. Much more favourite and efficient methods were passive resistance, flight, and fire-raising or murder. We might naturally suppose that an unscrupulous proprietor, armed with the enormous legal and actual power which I have just described, could very easily extort from his peasants anything he desired. In reality, however, the process of extortion, when it exceeded a certain measure, was a very difficult operation. The Russian peasant has a capacity of patient endurance that would do honour to a martyr, and a power of continued, dogged, passive resistance such as is possessed, I believe, by no other class of men in Europe; and these qualities formed a very powerful barrier against the rapacity of unconscientious proprietors. As soon as the serfs remarked in their master a tendency to rapacity and extortion, they at once took measures to defend themselves. Their first step was to sell secretly the live stock they did not actually require, and all their movable property except the few articles necessary for everyday use; then the little capital realised was carefully hidden. When this had been effected, the proprietor might threaten and punish as he liked, but he rarely succeeded in unearthing the treasure. Many a peasant, under such circumstances, bore patiently the most cruel punishment, and saw his sons taken away as recruits, and yet he persisted in declaring that he had no money to ransom himself and his children. A spectator in such a case would probably have advised him to give up his little store of money, and thereby liberate himself from persecution; but the peasants reasoned otherwise. They were convinced, and not without reason, that the sacrifice of their little capital would merely put off the evil day, and that the persecution would very soon recommence. In this way they would have to suffer as before, and have the additional mortification of feeling that they had spent to no purpose the little that they possessed. Their fatalistic belief in the "perhaps" (avos') came here to their aid. Perhaps the proprietor might become weary of his efforts when he saw that they led to no result, or perhaps something might occur which would remove the persecutor. It always happened, however, that when a proprietor treated his serfs with extreme injustice and cruelty, some of them lost patience, and sought refuge in flight. As the estates lay perfectly open on all sides, and it was utterly impossible to exercise a strict supervision, nothing was easier than to run away, and the fugitive might be a hundred miles off before his absence was noticed. But the oppressed serf was reluctant to adopt such an extreme measure. He had almost always a wife and family, and he could not possibly take them with him; flight, therefore, was expatriation for life in its most terrible form. Besides this, the life of a fugitive was by no means enviable. He was liable at any moment to fall into the hands of the police, and to be put into prison or sent back to his master. So little charm, indeed, did this life present that not infrequently after a few months or a few years the fugitive returned of his own accord to his former domicile. Regarding fugitives or passportless wanderers in general, I may here remark parenthetically that there were two kinds. In the first place, there was the young, able-bodied peasant, who fled from the oppression of his master or from the conscription. Such a fugitive almost always sought out for himself a new domicile--generally in the southern provinces, where there was a great scarcity of labourers, and where many proprietors habitually welcomed all peasants who presented themselves, without making any inquiries as to passports. In the second place, there were those who chose fugitivism as a permanent mode of life. These were, for the most part, men or women of a certain age--widowers or widows--who had no close family ties, and who were too infirm or too lazy to work. The majority of these assumed the character of pilgrims. As such they could always find enough to eat, and could generally even collect a few roubles with which to grease the palm of any zealous police-officer who should arrest them. For a life of this kind Russia presented peculiar facilities. There was abundance of monasteries, where all comers could live for three days without questions being asked, and where those who were willing to do a little work for the patron saint might live for a much longer period. Then there were the towns, where the rich merchants considered almsgiving as very profitable for salvation. And, lastly, there were the villages, where a professing pilgrim was sure to be hospitably received and entertained so long as he refrained from stealing and other acts too grossly inconsistent with his assumed character. For those who contented themselves with simple fare, and did not seek to avoid the usual privations of a wanderer's life, these ordinary means of subsistence were amply sufficient. Those who were more ambitious and more cunning often employed their talents with great success in the world of the Old Ritualists and Sectarians. The last and most desperate means of defense which the serfs possessed were fire-raising and murder. With regard to the amount of fire-raising there are no trustworthy statistics. With regard to the number of agrarian murders I once obtained some interesting statistical data, but unfortunately lost them. I may say, however, that these cases were not very numerous. This is to be explained in part by the patient, long-suffering character of the peasantry, and in part by the fact that the great majority of the proprietors were by no means such inhuman taskmasters as is sometimes supposed. When a case did occur, the Administration always made a strict investigation--punishing the guilty with exemplary severity, and taking no account of the provocation to which they had been subjected. The peasantry, on the contrary--at least, when the act was not the result of mere personal vengeance--secretly sympathised with "the unfortunates," and long cherished their memory as that of men who had suffered for the Mir. In speaking of the serfs I have hitherto confined my attention to the members of the Mir, or rural Commune--that is to say, the peasants in the narrower sense of the term; but besides these there were the Dvorovuye, or domestic servants, and of these I must add a word or two. The Dvorovuye were domestic slaves rather than serfs in the proper sense of the term. Let us, however, avoid wounding unnecessarily Russian sensibilities by the use of the ill-sounding word. We may call the class in question "domestics"--remembering, of course, that they were not quite domestic servants in the ordinary sense. They received no wages, were not at liberty to change masters, possessed almost no legal rights, and might be punished, hired out, or sold by their owners without any infraction of the written law. These "domestics" were very numerous--out of all proportion to the work to be performed--and could consequently lead a very lazy life;* but the peasant considered it a great misfortune to be transferred to their ranks, for he thereby lost his share of the Communal land and the little independence which he enjoyed. It very rarely happened, however, that the proprietor took an able-bodied peasant as domestic. The class generally kept up its numbers by the legitimate and illegitimate method of natural increase; and involuntary additions were occasionally made when orphans were left without near relatives, and no other family wished to adopt them. To this class belonged the lackeys, servant-girls, cooks, coachmen, stable-boys, gardeners, and a large number of nondescript old men and women who had no very clearly defined functions. If the proprietor had a private theatre or orchestra, it was from this class that the actors and musicians were drawn. Those of them who were married and had children occupied a position intermediate between the ordinary domestic servant and the peasant. On the one hand, they received from the master a monthly allowance of food and a yearly allowance of clothes, and they were obliged to live in the immediate vicinity of the mansion-house; but, on the other hand, they had each a separate house or apartment, with a little cabbage-garden, and commonly a small plot of flax. The unmarried ones lived in all respects like ordinary domestic servants. * Those proprietors who kept orchestras, large packs of hounds, &c., had sometimes several hundred domestic serfs. The number of these domestic serfs being generally out of all proportion to the amount of work they had to perform, they were imbued with a hereditary spirit of indolence, and they performed lazily and carelessly what they had to do. On the other hand, they were often sincerely attached to the family they served, and occasionally proved by acts their fidelity and attachment. Here is an instance out of many for which I can vouch. An old nurse, whose mistress was dangerously ill, vowed that, in the event of the patient's recovery, she would make a pilgrimage, first to Kief, the Holy City on the Dnieper, and afterwards to Solovetsk, a much revered monastery on an island in the White Sea. The patient recovered, and the old woman, in fulfilment of her vow, walked more than two thousand miles! This class of serfs might well be called domestic slaves, but I must warn the reader that he ought not to use the expression when speaking with Russians, because they are extremely sensitive on the point. Serfage, they say, was something quite different from slavery, and slavery never existed in Russia. The first part of this assertion is perfectly true, and the second part perfectly false. In old times, as I have said above, slavery was a recognised institution in Russia as in other countries. One can hardly read a few pages of the old chronicles without stumbling on references to slaves; and I distinctly remember--though I cannot at this moment give chapter and verse--that one of the old Russian Princes was so valiant and so successful in his wars that during his reign a slave might be bought for a few coppers. As late as the beginning of last century the domestic serfs were sold very much as domestic slaves used to be sold in countries where slavery was recognised as a legal institution. Here is an example of the customary advertisement; I take it almost at random from the Moscow Gazette of 1801:--"TO BE SOLD: three coachmen, well trained and handsome; and two girls, the one eighteen, and the other fifteen years of age, both of them good-looking, and well acquainted with various kinds of handiwork. In the same house there are for sale two hairdressers; the one, twenty-one years of age, can read, write, play on a musical instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can dress ladies' and gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos and organs." A little farther on in the same number of the paper, a first-rate clerk, a carver, and a lackey are offered for sale, and the reason assigned is a superabundance of the articles in question (za izlishestvom). In some instances it seems as if the serfs and the cattle were intentionally put in the same category, as in the following announcement: "In this house one can buy a coachman and a Dutch cow about to calve." The style of these advertisements, and the frequent recurrence of the same addresses, show that there was at this time in Moscow a regular class of slave-dealers. The humane Alexander I. prohibited advertisements of this kind, but he did not put down the custom which they represented, and his successor, Nicholas I., took no effective measures for its repression. Of the whole number of serfs belonging to the proprietors, the domestics formed, according to the census of 1857, no less than 6 3/4 per cent. (6.79), and their numbers were evidently rapidly increasing, for in the preceding census they represented only 4.79 per cent. of the whole. This fact seems all the more significant when we observe that during this period the number of peasant serfs had diminished. I must now bring this long chapter to an end. My aim has been to represent serfage in its normal, ordinary forms rather than in its occasional monstrous manifestations. Of these latter I have a collection containing ample materials for a whole series of sensation novels, but I refrain from quoting them, because I do not believe that the criminal annals of a country give a fair representation of its real condition. On the other hand, I do not wish to whitewash serfage or attenuate its evil consequences. No great body of men could long wield such enormous uncontrolled power without abusing it,* and no large body of men could long live under such power without suffering morally and materially from its pernicious influence. If serfage did not create that moral apathy and intellectual lethargy which formed, as it were, the atmosphere of Russian provincial life, it did much at least to preserve it. In short, serfage was the chief barrier to all material and moral progress, and in a time of moral awakening such as that which I have described in the preceding chapter, the question of Emancipation naturally came at once to the front. * The number of deposed proprietors--or rather the number of estates placed under curators in consequence of the abuse of authority on the part of their owners--amounted in 1859 to 215. So at least I found in an official MS. document shown to me by the late Nicholas Milutin. CHAPTER XXIX THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS The Question Raised--Chief Committee--The Nobles of the Lithuanian Provinces--The Tsar's Broad Hint to the Noblesse--Enthusiasm in the Press--The Proprietors--Political Aspirations--No Opposition--The Government--Public Opinion--Fear of the Proletariat--The Provincial Committees--The Elaboration Commission--The Question Ripens--Provincial Deputies--Discontent and Demonstrations--The Manifesto--Fundamental Principles of the Law--Illusions and Disappointment of the Serfs--Arbiters of the Peace--A Characteristic Incident--Redemption--Who Effected the Emancipation? It is a fundamental principle of Russian political organisation that all initiative in public affairs proceeds from the Autocratic Power. The widespread desire, therefore, for the Emancipation of the serfs did not find free expression so long as the Emperor kept silence regarding his intentions. The educated classes watched anxiously for some sign, and soon a sign was given to them. In March, 1856--a few days after the publication of the manifesto announcing the conclusion of peace with the Western Powers--his Majesty said to the Marshals of Noblesse in Moscow: "For the removal of certain unfounded reports I consider it necessary to declare to you that I have not at present the intention of annihilating serfage; but certainly, as you yourselves know, the existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfage from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to consider how this can be put into execution, and to submit my words to the Noblesse for their consideration." These words were intended to sound the Noblesse and induce them to make a voluntary proposal, but they had not the desired effect. Abolitionist enthusiasm was rare among the great nobles, and those who really wished to see serfage abolished considered the Imperial utterance too vague and oracular to justify them in taking the initiative. As no further steps were taken for some time, the excitement caused by the incident soon subsided, and many people assumed that the consideration of the problem had been indefinitely postponed. "The Government," it was said, "evidently intended to raise the question, but on perceiving the indifference or hostility of the landed proprietors, it became frightened and drew back." The Emperor was in reality disappointed. He had expected that his "faithful Moscow Noblesse," of which he was wont to say he was himself a member, would at once respond to his call, and that the ancient capital would have the honour of beginning the work. And if the example were thus given by Moscow, he had no doubt that it would soon be followed by the other provinces. He now perceived that the fundamental principles on which the Emancipation should be effected must be laid down by the Government, and for this purpose he created a secret committee composed of several great officers of State. This "Chief Committee for Peasant Affairs," as it was afterwards called, devoted six months to studying the history of the question. Emancipation schemes were by no means a new phenomenon in Russia. Ever since the time of Catherine II. the Government had thought of improving the condition of the serfs, and on more than one occasion a general emancipation had been contemplated. In this way the question had slowly ripened, and certain fundamental principles had come to be pretty generally recognised. Of these principles the most important was that the State should not consent to any project which would uproot the peasant from the soil and allow him to wander about at will; for such a measure would render the collection of the taxes impossible, and in all probability produce the most frightful agrarian disorders. And to this general principle there was an important corollary: if severe restrictions were to be placed on free migration, it would be necessary to provide the peasantry with land in the immediate vicinity of the villages; otherwise they must inevitably fall back under the power of the proprietors, and a new and worse kind of serfage would thus be created. But in order to give land to the peasantry it would be necessary to take it from the proprietors; and this expropriation seemed to many a most unjustifiable infringement of the sacred rights of property. It was this consideration that had restrained Nicholas from taking any decisive measures with regard to serfage; and it had now considerable weight with the members of the committee, who were nearly all great land-owners. Notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of the Grand Duke Constantine, who had been appointed a member for the express purpose of accelerating the proceedings, the committee did not show as much zeal and energy as was desired, and orders were given to take some decided step. At that moment a convenient opportunity presented itself. In the Lithuanian Provinces, where the nobles were Polish by origin and sympathies, the miserable condition of the peasantry had induced the Government in the preceding reign to limit the arbitrary power of the serf-owners by so-called Inventories, in which the mutual obligations of masters and serfs were regulated and defined. These Inventories had caused great dissatisfaction, and the proprietors now proposed that they should be revised. Of this the Government determined to take advantage. On the somewhat violent assumption that these proprietors wished to emancipate their serfs, an Imperial rescript was prepared approving of their supposed desire, and empowering them to form committees for the preparation of definite projects.* In the rescript itself the word emancipation was studiously avoided, but there could be no doubt as to the implied meaning, for it was expressly stated in the supplementary considerations that "the abolition of serfage must be effected not suddenly, but gradually." Four days later the Minister of the Interior, in accordance with a secret order from the Emperor, sent a circular to the Governors and Marshals of Noblesse all over Russia proper, informing them that the nobles of the Lithuanian Provinces "had recognised the necessity of liberating the peasants," and that "this noble intention" had afforded peculiar satisfaction to his Majesty. A copy of the rescript and the fundamental principles to be observed accompanied the circular, "in case the nobles of other provinces should express a similar desire." * This celebrated document is known as "The Rescript to Nazimof." More than once in the course of conversation I did all in my power, within the limits of politeness and discretion, to extract from General Nazimof a detailed account of this important episode, but my efforts were unsuccessful. This circular produced an immense sensation throughout the country. No one could for a moment misunderstand the suggestion that the nobles of other provinces MIGHT POSSIBLY express a desire to liberate their serfs. Such vague words, when spoken by an autocrat, have a very definite and unmistakable meaning, which prudent loyal subjects have no difficulty in understanding. If any doubted, their doubts were soon dispelled, for the Emperor, a few weeks later, publicly expressed a hope that, with the help of God and the co-operation of the nobles, the work would be successfully accomplished. The die was cast, and the Government looked anxiously to see the result. The periodical Press--which was at once the product and the fomenter of the liberal aspirations--hailed the raising of the question with boundless enthusiasm. The Emancipation, it was said, would certainly open a new and glorious epoch in the national history. Serfage was described as an ulcer that had long been poisoning the national blood; as an enormous weight under which the whole nation groaned; as an insurmountable obstacle, preventing all material and moral progress; as a cumbrous load which rendered all free, vigorous action impossible, and prevented Russia from rising to the level of the Western nations. If Russia had succeeded in stemming the flood of adverse fortune in spite of this millstone round her neck, what might she not accomplish when free and untrammelled? All sections of the literary world had arguments to offer in support of the foregone conclusion. The moralists declared that all the prevailing vices were the product of serfage, and that moral progress was impossible in an atmosphere of slavery; the lawyers held that the arbitrary authority of the proprietors over the peasants had no legal basis; the economists explained that free labour was an indispensable condition of industrial and commercial prosperity; the philosophical historians showed that the normal historical development of the country demanded the immediate abolition of this superannuated remnant of barbarism; and the writers of the sentimental, gushing type poured forth endless effusions about brotherly love to the weak and the oppressed. In a word, the Press was for the moment unanimous, and displayed a feverish excitement which demanded a liberal use of superlatives. This enthusiastic tone accorded perfectly with the feelings of a large section of the nobles. Nearly the whole of the Noblesse was more or less affected by the newborn enthusiasm for everything just, humanitarian, and liberal. The aspirations found, of course, their most ardent representatives among the educated youth; but they were by no means confined to the younger men, who had passed through the universities and had always regarded serfage as a stain on the national honour. Many a Saul was found among the prophets. Many an old man, with grey hairs and grandchildren, who had all his life placidly enjoyed the fruits of serf labour, was now heard to speak of serfage as an antiquated institution which could not be reconciled with modern humanitarian ideas; and not a few of all ages, who had formerly never thought of reading books or newspapers, now perused assiduously the periodical literature, and picked up the liberal and humanitarian phrases with which it was filled. This Abolitionist fervour was considerably augmented by certain political aspirations which did not appear in the newspapers, but which were at that time very generally entertained. In spite of the Press-censure a large section of the educated classes had become acquainted with the political literature of France and Germany, and had imbibed therefrom an unbounded admiration for Constitutional government. A Constitution, it was thought, would necessarily remove all political evils and create something like a political Millennium. And it was not to be a Constitution of the ordinary sort--the fruit of compromise between hostile political parties--but an institution designed calmly according to the latest results of political science, and so constructed that all classes would voluntarily contribute to the general welfare. The necessary prelude to this happy era of political liberty was, of course, the abolition of serfage. When the nobles had given up their power over their serfs they would receive a Constitution as an indemnification and reward. There were, however, many nobles of the old school who remained impervious to all these new feelings and ideas. On them the raising of the Emancipation question had a very different effect. They had no source of revenue but their estates, and they could not conceive the possibility of working their estates without serf labour. If the peasant was indolent and careless even under strict supervision, what would he become when no longer under the authority of a master? If the profits from farming were already small, what would they be when no one would work without wages? And this was not the worst, for it was quite evident from the circular that the land question was to be raised, and that a considerable portion of each estate would be transferred, at least for a time, to the emancipated peasants. To the proprietors who looked at the question in this way the prospect of Emancipation was certainly not at all agreeable, but we must not imagine that they felt as English land-owners would feel if threatened by a similar danger. In England a hereditary estate has for the family a value far beyond what it would bring in the market. It is regarded as one and indivisible, and any dismemberment of it would be looked upon as a grave family misfortune. In Russia, on the contrary, estates have nothing of this semi-sacred character, and may be at any time dismembered without outraging family feeling or traditional associations. Indeed, it is not uncommon that when a proprietor dies, leaving only one estate and several children, the property is broken up into fractions and divided among the heirs. Even the prospect of pecuniary sacrifice did not alarm the Russians so much as it would alarm Englishmen. Men who keep no accounts and take little thought for the morrow are much less averse to making pecuniary sacrifices--whether for a wise or a foolish purpose--than those who carefully arrange their mode of life according to their income. Still, after due allowance has been made for these peculiarities, it must be admitted that the feeling of dissatisfaction and alarm was very widespread. Even Russians do not like the prospect of losing a part of their land and income. No protest, however, was entered, and no opposition was made. Those who were hostile to the measure were ashamed to show themselves selfish and unpatriotic. At the same time they knew very well that the Emperor, if he wished, could effect the Emancipation in spite of them, and that resistance on their part would draw down upon them the Imperial displeasure, without affording any compensating advantage. They knew, too, that there was a danger from below, so that any useless show of opposition would be like playing with matches in a powder-magazine. The serfs would soon hear that the Tsar desired to set them free, and they might, if they suspected that the proprietors were trying to frustrate the Tsar's benevolent intentions, use violent measures to get rid of the opposition. The idea of agrarian massacres had already taken possession of many timid minds. Besides this, all classes of the proprietors felt that if the work was to be done, it should be done by the Noblesse and not by the bureaucracy. If it were effected by the nobles the interests of the land-owners would be duly considered, but if it were effected by the Administration without their concurrence and co-operation their interests would be neglected, and there would inevitably be an enormous amount of jobbery and corruption. In accordance with this view, the Noblesse corporations of the various provinces successively requested permission to form committees for the consideration of the question, and during the year 1858 a committee was opened in almost every province in which serfage existed. In this way the question was apparently handed over for solution to the nobles, but in reality the Noblesse was called upon merely to advise, and not to legislate. The Government had not only laid down the fundamental principles of the scheme; it continually supervised the work of construction, and it reserved to itself the right of modifying or rejecting the projects proposed by the committees. According to these fundamental principles the serfs should be emancipated gradually, so that for some time they would remain attached to the glebe and subject to the authority of the proprietors. During this transition period they should redeem by money payments or labour their houses and gardens, and enjoy in usufruct a certain quantity of land, sufficient to enable them to support themselves and to fulfil their obligations to the State as well as to the proprietor. In return for this land they should pay a yearly rent in money, produce or labour over and above the yearly sum paid for the redemption of their houses and gardens. As to what should be done after the expiry of the transition period, the Government seems to have had no clearly conceived intentions. Probably it hoped that by that time the proprietors and their emancipated serfs would have invented some convenient modus vivendi, and that nothing but a little legislative regulation would be necessary. But radical legislation is like the letting-out of water. These fundamental principles, adopted at first with a view to mere immediate practical necessity, soon acquired a very different significance. To understand this we must return to the periodical literature. Until the serf question came to be discussed, the reform aspirations were very vague, and consequently there was a remarkable unanimity among their representatives. The great majority of the educated classes were unanimously of opinion that Russia should at once adopt from the West all those liberal principles and institutions the exclusion of which had prevented the country from rising to the level of the Western nations. But very soon symptoms of a schism became apparent. Whilst the literature in general was still preaching the doctrine that Russia should adopt everything that was "liberal," a few voices began to be heard warning the unwary that much which bore the name of liberal was in reality already antiquated and worthless--that Russia ought not to follow blindly in the footsteps of other nations, but ought rather to profit by their experience, and avoid the errors into which they had fallen. The chief of these errors was, according to these new teachers, the abnormal development of individualism--the adoption of that principle of laissez faire which forms the basis of what may be called the Orthodox School of Political Economists. Individualism and unrestricted competition, it was said, have now reached in the West an abnormal and monstrous development. Supported by the laissez faire principle, they have led--and must always lead--to the oppression of the weak, the tyranny of capital, the impoverishment of the masses for the benefit of the few, and the formation of a hungry, dangerous Proletariat! This has already been recognised by the most advanced thinkers of France and Germany. If the older countries cannot at once cure those evils, that is no reason for Russia to inoculate herself with them. She is still at the commencement of her career, and it would be folly for her to wander voluntarily for ages in the Desert, when a direct route to the Promised Land has been already discovered. In order to convey some idea of the influence which this teaching exercised, I must here recall, at the risk of repeating myself, what I said in a former chapter. The Russians, as I have there pointed out, have a peculiar way of treating political and social questions. Having received their political education from books, they naturally attribute to theoretical considerations an importance which seems to us exaggerated. When any important or trivial question arises, they at once launch into a sea of philosophical principles, and pay less attention to the little objects close at hand than to the big ones that appear on the distant horizon of the future. And when they set to work at any political reform they begin ab ovo. As they have no traditional prejudices to fetter them, and no traditional principles to lead them, they naturally take for their guidance the latest conclusions of political philosophy. Bearing this in mind, let us see how it affected the Emancipation question. The Proletariat--described as a dangerous monster which was about to swallow up society in Western Europe, and which might at any moment cross the frontier unless kept out by vigorous measures--took possession of the popular imagination, and aroused the fears of the reading public. To many it seemed that the best means of preventing the formation of a Proletariat in Russia was the securing of land for the emancipated serfs and the careful preservation of the rural Commune. "Now is the moment," it was said, "for deciding the important question whether Russia is to fall a prey, like the Western nations, to this terrible evil, or whether she is to protect herself for ever against it. In the decision of this question lies the future destiny of the country. If the peasants be emancipated without land, or if those Communal institutions which give to every man a share of the soil and secure this inestimable boon for the generations still unborn be now abolished, a Proletariat will be rapidly formed, and the peasantry will become a disorganised mass of homeless wanderers like the English agricultural labourers. If, on the contrary, a fair share of land be granted to them, and if the Commune be made proprietor of the land ceded, the danger of a Proletariat is for ever removed, and Russia will thereby set an example to the civilised world! Never has a nation had such an opportunity of making an enormous leap forward on the road of progress, and never again will the opportunity occur. The Western nations have discovered their error when it is too late--when the peasantry have been already deprived of their land, and the labouring classes of the towns have already fallen a prey to the insatiable cupidity of the capitalists. In vain their most eminent thinkers warn and exhort. Ordinary remedies are no longer of any avail. But Russia may avoid these dangers, if she but act wisely and prudently in this great matter. The peasants are still in actual, if not legal, possession of the land, and there is as yet no Proletariat in the towns. All that is necessary, therefore, is to abolish the arbitrary authority of the proprietors without expropriating the peasants, and without disturbing the existing Communal institutions, which form the best barrier against pauperism." These ideas were warmly espoused by many proprietors, and exercised a very great influence on the deliberations of the Provincial Committees. In these committees there were generally two groups. The majorities, whilst making large concessions to the claims of justice and expediency, endeavoured to defend, as far as possible, the interests of their class; the minorities, though by no means indifferent to the interests of the class to which they belonged, allowed the more abstract theoretical considerations to be predominant. At first the majorities did all in their power to evade the fundamental principles laid down by the Government as much too favourable to the peasantry; but when they perceived that public opinion, as represented by the Press, went much further than the Government, they clung to these fundamental principles--which secured at least the fee simple of the estate to the landlord--as their anchor of safety. Between the two parties arose naturally a strong spirit of hostility, and the Government, which wished to have the support of the minorities, found it advisable that both should present their projects for consideration. As the Provincial Committees worked independently, there was considerable diversity in the conclusions at which they arrived. The task of codifying these conclusions, and elaborating out of them a general scheme of Emancipation, was entrusted to a special Imperial Commission, composed partly of officials and partly of landed proprietors named by the Emperor.* Those who believed that the question had really been handed over to the Noblesse assumed that this Commission would merely arrange the materials presented by the Provincial Committees, and that the Emancipation Law would thereafter be elaborated by a National Assembly of deputies elected by the nobles. In reality the Commission, working in St. Petersburg under the direct guidance and control of the Government, fulfilled a very different and much more important function. Using the combined projects merely as a storehouse from which it could draw the proposals it desired, it formed a new project of its own, which ultimately received, after undergoing modification in detail, the Imperial assent. Instead of being a mere chancellerie, as many expected, it became in a certain sense the author of the Emancipation Law. * Known as the Redaktsionnaya Komissiya, or Elaboration Commission. Strictly speaking, there were two, but they are commonly spoken of as one. There was, as we have seen, in nearly all the Provincial Committees a majority and a minority, the former of which strove to defend the interests of the proprietors, whilst the latter paid more attention to theoretical considerations, and endeavoured to secure for the peasantry a large amount of land and Communal self-government. In the Commission there were the same two parties, but their relative strength was very different. Here the men of theory, instead of forming a minority, were more numerous than their opponents, and enjoyed the support of the Government, which regulated the proceedings. In its instructions we see how much the question had ripened under the influence of the theoretical considerations. There is no longer any trace of the idea that the Emancipation should be gradual; on the contrary, it is expressly declared that the immediate effect of the law should be the complete abolition of the proprietor's authority. There is even evidence of a clear intention of preventing the proprietor as far as possible from exercising any influence over his former serfs. The sharp distinction between the land occupied by the village and the arable land to be ceded in usufruct likewise disappears, and it is merely said that efforts should be made to enable the peasants to become proprietors of the land they required. The aim of the Government had thus become clear and well defined. The task to be performed was to transform the serfs at once, and with the least possible disturbance of the existing economic conditions, into a class of small Communal proprietors--that is to say, a class of free peasants possessing a house and garden and a share of the Communal land. To effect this it was merely necessary to declare the serf personally free, to draw a clear line of demarcation between the Communal land and the rest of the estate, and to determine the price or rent which should be paid for this Communal property, inclusive of the land on which the village was built. The law was prepared in strict accordance with these principles. As to the amount of land to be ceded, it was decided that the existing arrangements, founded on experience, should, as a general rule, be preserved--in other words, the land actually enjoyed by the peasants should be retained by them; and in order to prevent extreme cases of injustice, a maximum and a minimum were fixed for each district. In like manner, as to the dues, it was decided that the existing arrangements should be taken as the basis of the calculation, but that the sum should be modified according to the amount of land ceded. At the same time facilities were to be given for the transforming of the labour dues into yearly money payments, and for enabling the peasants to redeem them, with the assistance of the Government, in the form of credit. This idea of redemption created, at first, a feeling of alarm among the proprietors. It was bad enough to be obliged to cede a large part of the estates in usufruct, but it seemed to be much worse to have to sell it. Redemption appeared to be a species of wholesale confiscation. But very soon it became evident that the redeeming of the land was profitable for both parties. Cession in perpetual usufruct was felt to be in reality tantamount to alienation of the land, whilst the immediate redemption would enable the proprietors, who had generally little or no ready money to pay their debts, to clear their estates from mortgages, and to make the outlays necessary for the transition to free labour. The majority of the proprietors, therefore, said openly: "Let the Government give us a suitable compensation in money for the land that is taken from us, so that we may be at once freed from all further trouble and annoyance." When it became known that the Commission was not merely arranging and codifying the materials, but elaborating a law of its own and regularly submitting its decisions for Imperial confirmation, a feeling of dissatisfaction appeared all over the country. The nobles perceived that the question was being taken out of their hands, and was being solved by a small body composed of bureaucrats and nominees of the Government. After having made a voluntary sacrifice of their rights, they were being unceremoniously pushed aside. They had still, however, the means of correcting this. The Emperor had publicly promised that before the project should become law deputies from the Provincial Committees should be summoned to St. Petersburg to make objections and propose amendments. The Commission and the Government would have willingly dispensed with all further advice from the nobles, but it was necessary to redeem the Imperial promise. Deputies were therefore summoned to the capital, but they were not allowed to form, as they hoped, a public assembly for the discussion of the question. All their efforts to hold meetings were frustrated, and they were required merely to answer in writing a list of printed questions regarding matters of detail. The fundamental principles, they were told, had already received the Imperial sanction, and were consequently removed from discussion. Those who desired to discuss details were invited individually to attend meetings of the Commission, where they found one or two members ready to engage with them in a little dialectical fencing. This, of course, did not give much satisfaction. Indeed, the ironical tone in which the fencing was too often conducted served to increase the existing irritation. It was only too evident that the Commission had triumphed, and some of the members could justly boast that they had drowned the deputies in ink and buried them under reams of paper. Believing, or at least professing to believe, that the Emperor was being deceived in this matter by the Administration, several groups of deputies presented petitions to his Majesty containing a respectful protest against the manner in which they had been treated. But by this act they simply laid themselves open to "the most unkindest cut of all." Those who had signed the petitions received a formal reprimand through the police. This treatment of the deputies, and, above all, this gratuitous insult, produced among the nobles a storm of indignation. They felt that they had been entrapped. The Government had artfully induced them to form projects for the emancipation of their serfs, and now, after having been used as a cat's-paw in the work of their own spoliation, they were being unceremoniously pushed aside as no longer necessary. Those who had indulged in the hope of gaining political rights felt the blow most keenly. A first gentle and respectful attempt at remonstrance had been answered by a dictatorial reprimand through the police! Instead of being called to take an active part in home and foreign politics, they were being treated as naughty schoolboys. In view of this insult all differences of opinion were for the moment forgotten, and all parties resolved to join in a vigorous protest against the insolence and arbitrary conduct of the bureaucracy. A convenient opportunity of making this protest in a legal way was offered by the triennial Provincial Assemblies of the Noblesse about to be held in several provinces. So at least it was thought, but here again the Noblesse was checkmated by the Administration. Before the opening of the Assemblies a circular was issued excluding the Emancipation question from their deliberations. Some Assemblies evaded this order, and succeeded in making a little demonstration by submitting to his Majesty that the time had arrived for other reforms, such as the separation of the administrative and judicial powers, and the creation of local self-government, public judicial procedure, and trial by jury. All these reforms were voluntarily effected by the Emperor a few years later, but the manner in which they were suggested seemed to savour of insubordination, and was a flagrant infraction of the principle that all initiative in public affairs should proceed from the central Government. New measures of repression were accordingly used. Some Marshals of Noblesse were reprimanded and others deposed. Of the conspicuous leaders, two were exiled to distant provinces and others placed under the supervision of the police. Worst of all, the whole agitation strengthened the Commission by convincing the Emperor that the majority of the nobles were hostile to his benevolent plans.* * This was a misinterpretation of the facts. Very many of those who joined in the protest sincerely sympathised with the idea of Emancipation, and were ready to be even more "liberal" than the Government. When the Commission had finished its labours, its proposals passed to the two higher instances--the Committee for Peasant Affairs and the Council of State--and in both of these the Emperor declared plainly that he could allow no fundamental changes. From all the members he demanded a complete forgetfulness of former differences and a conscientious execution of his orders; "For you must remember," he significantly added, "that in Russia laws are made by the Autocratic Power." From an historical review of the question he drew the conclusion that "the Autocratic Power created serfage, and the Autocratic Power ought to abolish it." On March 3d (February 19th, old style), 1861, the law was signed, and by that act more than twenty millions of serfs were liberated.* A Manifesto containing the fundamental principles of the law was at once sent all over the country, and an order was given that it should be read in all the churches. * It is sometimes said that forty millions of serfs have been emancipated. The statement is true, if we regard the State peasants as serfs. They held, as I have already explained, an intermediate position between serfage and freedom. The peculiar administration under which they lived was partly abolished by Imperial Orders of September 7th, 1859, and October 23d, 1861. In 1866 they were placed, as regards administration, on a level with the emancipated serfs of the proprietors. As a general rule, they received rather more land and had to pay somewhat lighter dues than the emancipated serfs in the narrower sense of the term. The three fundamental principles laid down by the law were:--1. That the serfs should at once receive the civil rights of the free rural classes, and that the authority of the proprietor should be replaced by Communal self-government. 2. That the rural Communes should as far as possible retain the land they actually held, and should in return pay to the proprietor certain yearly dues in money or labour. 3. That the Government should by means of credit assist the Communes to redeem these dues, or, in other words, to purchase the lands ceded to them in usufruct. With regard to the domestic serfs, it was enacted that they should continue to serve their masters during two years, and that thereafter they should be completely free, but they should have no claim to a share of the land. It might be reasonably supposed that the serfs received with boundless gratitude and delight the Manifesto proclaiming these principles. Here at last was the realisation of their long-cherished hopes. Liberty was accorded to them; and not only liberty, but a goodly portion of the soil--about half of all the arable land possessed by the proprietors. In reality the Manifesto created among the peasantry a feeling of disappointment rather than delight. To understand this strange fact we must endeavour to place ourselves at the peasant's point of view. In the first place it must be remarked that all vague, rhetorical phrases about free labour, human dignity, national progress, and the like, which may readily produce among educated men a certain amount of temporary enthusiasm, fall on the ears of the Russian peasant like drops of rain on a granite rock. The fashionable rhetoric of philosophical liberalism is as incomprehensible to him as the flowery circumlocutionary style of an Oriental scribe would be to a keen city merchant. The idea of liberty in the abstract and the mention of rights which lie beyond the sphere of his ordinary everyday life awaken no enthusiasm in his breast. And for mere names he has a profound indifference. What matters it to him that he is officially called, not a "serf," but a "free village-inhabitant," if the change in official terminology is not accompanied by some immediate material advantage? What he wants is a house to live in, food to eat, and raiment wherewithal to be clothed, and to gain these first necessaries of life with as little labour as possible. He looked at the question exclusively from two points of view--that of historical right and that of material advantage; and from both of these the Emancipation Law seemed to him very unsatisfactory. On the subject of historical right the peasantry had their own traditional conceptions, which were completely at variance with the written law. According to the positive legislation the Communal land formed part of the estate, and consequently belonged to the proprietor; but according to the conceptions of the peasantry it belonged to the Commune, and the right of the proprietor consisted merely in that personal authority over the serfs which had been conferred on him by the Tsar. The peasants could not, of course, put these conceptions into a strict legal form, but they often expressed them in their own homely laconic way by saying to their master, "Mui vashi no zemlya nasha"--that is to say. "We are yours, but the land is ours." And it must be admitted that this view, though legally untenable, had a certain historical justification.* * See preceding chapter. In olden times the Noblesse had held their land by feudal tenure, and were liable to be ejected as soon as they did not fulfil their obligations to the State. These obligations had been long since abolished, and the feudal tenure transformed into an unconditional right of property, but the peasants clung to the old ideas in a way that strikingly illustrates the vitality of deep-rooted popular conceptions. In their minds the proprietors were merely temporary occupants, who were allowed by the Tsar to exact labour and dues from the serfs. What, then, was Emancipation? Certainly the abolition of all obligatory labour and money dues, and perhaps the complete ejectment of the proprietors. On this latter point there was a difference of opinion. All assumed, as a matter of course, that the Communal land would remain the property of the Commune, but it was not so clear what would be done with the rest of the estate. Some thought that it would be retained by the proprietor, but very many believed that all the land would be given to the Communes. In this way the Emancipation would be in accordance with historical right and with the material advantage of the peasantry, for whose exclusive benefit, it was assumed, the reform had been undertaken. Instead of this the peasants found that they were still to pay dues, even for the Communal land which they regarded as unquestionably their own. So at least said the expounders of the law. But the thing was incredible. Either the proprietors must be concealing or misinterpreting the law, or this was merely a preparatory measure, which would be followed by the real Emancipation. Thus were awakened among the peasantry a spirit of mistrust and suspicion and a widespread belief that there would be a second Imperial Manifesto, by which all the land would be divided and all the dues abolished. On the nobles the Manifesto made a very different impression. The fact that they were to be entrusted with the putting of the law into execution, and the flattering allusions made to the spirit of generous self-sacrifice which they had exhibited, kindled amongst them enthusiasm enough to make them forget for a time their just grievances and their hostility towards the bureaucracy. They found that the conditions on which the Emancipation was effected were by no means so ruinous as they had anticipated; and the Emperor's appeal to their generosity and patriotism made many of them throw themselves with ardour into the important task confided to them. Unfortunately they could not at once begin the work. The law had been so hurried through the last stages that the preparations for putting it into execution were by no means complete when the Manifesto was published. The task of regulating the future relations between the proprietors and the peasantry was entrusted to local proprietors in each district, who were to be called Arbiters of the Peace (Mirovuiye Posredniki); but three months elapsed before these Arbiters could be appointed. During that time there was no one to explain the law to the peasants and settle the disputes between them and the proprietors; and the consequence of this was that many cases of insubordination and disorder occurred. The muzhik naturally imagined that, as soon as the Tsar said he was free, he was no longer obliged to work for his old master--that all obligatory labour ceased as soon as the Manifesto was read. In vain the proprietor endeavoured to convince him that, in regard to labour, the old relations must continue, as the law enjoined, until a new arrangement had been made. To all explanations and exhortations he turned a deaf ear, and to the efforts of the rural police he too often opposed a dogged, passive resistance. In many cases the simple appearance of the higher authorities sufficed to restore order, for the presence of one of the Tsar's servants convinced many that the order to work for the present as formerly was not a mere invention of the proprietors. But not infrequently the birch had to be applied. Indeed, I am inclined to believe, from the numerous descriptions of this time which I received from eye-witnesses, that rarely, if ever, had the serfs seen and experienced so much flogging as during these first three months after their liberation. Sometimes even the troops had to be called out, and on three occasions they fired on the peasants with ball cartridge. In the most serious case, where a young peasant had set up for a prophet and declared that the Emancipation Law was a forgery, fifty-one peasants were killed and seventy-seven were more or less seriously wounded. In spite of these lamentable incidents, there was nothing which even the most violent alarmist could dignify with the name of an insurrection. Nowhere was there anything that could be called organised resistance. Even in the case above alluded to, the three thousand peasants on whom the troops fired were entirely unarmed, made no attempt to resist, and dispersed in the utmost haste as soon as they discovered that they were being shot down. Had the military authorities shown a little more judgment, tact, and patience, the history of the Emancipation would not have been stained even with those three solitary cases of unnecessary bloodshed. This interregnum between the eras of serfage and liberty was brought to an end by the appointment of the Arbiters of the Peace. Their first duty was to explain the law, and to organise the new peasant self-government. The lowest instance, or primary organ of this self-government, the rural Commune, already existed, and at once recovered much of its ancient vitality as soon as the authority and interference of the proprietors were removed. The second instance, the Volost--a territorial administrative unit comprising several contiguous Communes--had to be created, for nothing of the kind had previously existed on the estates of the nobles. It had existed, however, for nearly a quarter of a century among the peasants of the Domains, and it was therefore necessary merely to copy an existing model. As soon as all the Volosts in his district had been thus organised the Arbiter had to undertake the much more arduous task of regulating the agrarian relations between the proprietors and the Communes--with the individual peasants, be it remembered, the proprietors had no direct relations whatever. It had been enacted by the law that the future agrarian relations between the two parties should be left, as far as possible, to voluntary contract; and accordingly each proprietor was invited to come to an agreement with the Commune or Communes on his estate. On the ground of this agreement a statute-charter (ustavnaya gramota) was prepared, specifying the number of male serfs, the quantity of land actually enjoyed by them, any proposed changes in this amount, the dues proposed to be levied, and other details. If the Arbiter found that the conditions were in accordance with the law and clearly understood by the peasants, he confirmed the charter, and the arrangement was complete. When the two parties could not come to an agreement within a year, he prepared a charter according to his own judgment, and presented it for confirmation to the higher authorities. The dissolution of partnership, if it be allowable to use such a term, between the proprietor and his serfs was sometimes very easy and sometimes very difficult. On many estates the charter did little more than legalise the existing arrangements, but in many instances it was necessary to add to, or subtract from, the amount of Communal land, and sometimes it was even necessary to remove the village to another part of the estate. In all cases there were, of course, conflicting interests and complicated questions, so that the Arbiter had always abundance of difficult work. Besides this, he had to act as mediator in those differences which naturally arose during the transition period, when the authority of the proprietor had been abolished but the separation of the two classes had not yet been effected. The unlimited patriarchal authority which had been formerly wielded by the proprietor or his steward now passed with certain restriction into the hands of the Arbiter, and these peacemakers had to spend a great part of their time in driving about from one estate to another to put an end to alleged cases of insubordination--some of which, it must be admitted, existed only in the imagination of the proprietors. At first the work of amicable settlement proceeded slowly. The proprietors generally showed a conciliatory spirit, and some of them generously proposed conditions much more favourable to the peasants than the law demanded; but the peasants were filled with vague suspicions, and feared to commit themselves by "putting pen to paper." Even the highly respected proprietors, who imagined that they possessed the unbounded confidence of the peasantry, were suspected like the others, and their generous offers were regarded as well-baited traps. Often I have heard old men, sometimes with tears in their eyes, describe the distrust and ingratitude of the muzhik at this time. Many peasants still believed that the proprietors were hiding the real Emancipation Law, and imaginative or ill-intentioned persons fostered this belief by professing to know what the real law contained. The most absurd rumours were afloat, and whole villages sometimes acted upon them. In the province of Moscow, for instance, one Commune sent a deputation to the proprietor to inform him that, as he had always been a good master, the Mir would allow him to retain his house and garden during his lifetime. In another locality it was rumoured that the Tsar sat daily on a golden throne in the Crimea, receiving all peasants who came to him, and giving them as much land as they desired; and in order to take advantage of the Imperial liberality a large body of peasants set out for the place indicated, and had to be stopped by the military. As an illustration of the illusions in which the peasantry indulged at this time, I may mention here one of the many characteristic incidents related to me by gentlemen who had served as Arbiters of the Peace. In the province of Riazan there was one Commune which had acquired a certain local notoriety for the obstinacy with which it refused all arrangements with the proprietor. My informant, who was Arbiter for the locality, was at last obliged to make a statute-charter for it without its consent. He wished, however, that the peasants should voluntarily accept the arrangement he proposed, and accordingly called them together to talk with them on the subject. After explaining fully the part of the law which related to their case, he asked them what objection they had to make a fair contract with their old master. For some time he received no answer, but gradually by questioning individuals he discovered the cause of their obstinacy: they were firmly convinced that not only the Communal land, but also the rest of the estate, belonged to them. To eradicate this false idea he set himself to reason with them, and the following characteristic dialogue ensued:--Arbiter: "If the Tsar gave all the land to the peasantry, what compensation could he give to the proprietors to whom the land belongs?" Peasant: "The Tsar will give them salaries according to their service." Arbiter: "In order to pay these salaries he would require a great deal more money. Where could he get that money? He would have to increase the taxes, and in that way you would have to pay all the same." Peasant: "The Tsar can make as much money as he likes." Arbiter: "If the Tsar can make as much money as he likes, why does he make you pay the poll-tax every year?" Peasant: "It is not the Tsar that receives the taxes we pay." Arbiter: "Who, then, receives them?" Peasant (after a little hesitation, and with a knowing smite): "The officials, of course!" Gradually, through the efforts of the Arbiters, the peasants came to know better their real position, and the work began to advance more rapidly. But soon it was checked by another influence. By the end of the first year the "liberal," patriotic enthusiasm of the nobles had cooled. The sentimental, idyllic tendencies had melted away at the first touch of reality, and those who had imagined that liberty would have an immediately salutary effect on the moral character of the serfs confessed themselves disappointed. Many complained that the peasants showed themselves greedy and obstinate, stole wood from the forest, allowed their cattle to wander on the proprietor's fields, failed to fulfil their legal obligations, and broke their voluntary engagements. At the same time the fears of an agrarian rising subsided, so that even the timid were tranquillised. From these causes the conciliatory spirit of the proprietors decreased. The work of conciliating and regulating became consequently more difficult, but the great majority of the Arbiters showed themselves equal to the task, and displayed an impartiality, tact and patience beyond all praise. To them Russia is in great part indebted for the peaceful character of the Emancipation. Had they sacrificed the general good to the interests of their class, or had they habitually acted in that stern, administrative, military spirit which caused the instances of bloodshed above referred to, the prophecies of the alarmists would, in all probability, have been realised, and the historian of the Emancipation would have had a terrible list of judicial massacres to record. Fortunately they played the part of mediators, as their name signified, rather than that of administrators in the bureaucratic sense of the term, and they were animated with a just and humane rather than a merely legal spirit. Instead of simply laying down the law, and ordering their decisions to be immediately executed, they were ever ready to spend hours in trying to conquer, by patient and laborious reasoning, the unjust claims of proprietors or the false conceptions and ignorant obstinacy of the peasants. It was a new spectacle for Russia to see a public function fulfilled by conscientious men who had their heart in their work, who sought neither promotion nor decorations, and who paid less attention to the punctilious observance of prescribed formalities than to the real objects in view. There were, it is true, a few men to whom this description does not apply. Some of these were unduly under the influence of the feelings and conceptions created by serfage. Some, on the contrary, erred on the other side. Desirous of securing the future welfare of the peasantry and of gaining for themselves a certain kind of popularity, and at the same time animated with a violent spirit of pseudo-liberalism, these latter occasionally forgot that their duty was to be, not generous, but just, and that they had no right to practise generosity at other people's expense. All this I am quite aware of--I could even name one or two Arbiters who were guilty of positive dishonesty--but I hold that these were rare exceptions. The great majority did their duty faithfully and well. The work of concluding contracts for the redemption of the dues, or, in other words, for the purchase of the land ceded in perpetual usufruct, proceeded slowly. The arrangement was as follows:--The dues were capitalised at six per cent., and the Government paid at once to the proprietors four-fifths of the whole sum. The peasants were to pay to the proprietor the remaining fifth, either at once or in installments, and to the Government six per cent. for forty-nine years on the sum advanced. The proprietors willingly adopted this arrangement, for it provided them with a sum of ready money, and freed them from the difficult task of collecting the dues. But the peasants did not show much desire to undertake the operation. Some of them still expected a second Emancipation, and those who did not take this possibility into their calculations were little disposed to make present sacrifices for distant prospective advantages which would not be realised for half a century. In most cases the proprietor was obliged to remit, in whole or in part, the fifth to be paid by the peasants. Many Communes refused to undertake the operation on any conditions and in consequence of this not a few proprietors demanded the so-called obligatory redemption, according to which they accepted the four-fifths from the Government as full payment, and the operation was thus effected without the peasants being consulted. The total number of male serfs emancipated was about nine millions and three-quarters,* and of these, only about seven millions and a quarter had, at the beginning of 1875, made redemption contracts. Of the contracts signed at that time, about sixty-three per cent, were "obligatory." In 1887 the redemption was made obligatory for both parties, so that all Communes are now proprietors of the land previously held in perpetual usufruct; and in 1932 the debt will have been extinguished by the sinking fund, and all redemption payments will have ceased. * This does not include the domestic serfs who did not receive land. The serfs were thus not only liberated, but also made possessors of land and put on the road to becoming Communal proprietors, and the old Communal institutions were preserved and developed. In answer to the question, Who effected this gigantic reform? we may say that the chief merit undoubtedly belongs to Alexander II. Had he not possessed a very great amount of courage he would neither have raised the question nor allowed it to be raised by others, and had he not shown a great deal more decision and energy than was expected, the solution would have been indefinitely postponed. Among the members of his own family he found an able and energetic assistant in his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, and a warm sympathiser with the cause in the Grand Duchess Helena, a German Princess thoroughly devoted to the welfare of her adopted country. But we must not overlook the important part played by the nobles. Their conduct was very characteristic. As soon as the question was raised a large number of them adopted the liberal ideas with enthusiasm; and as soon as it became evident that Emancipation was inevitable, all made a holocaust of their ancient rights and demanded to be liberated at once from all relations with their serfs. Moreover, when the law was passed it was the proprietors who faithfully put it into execution. Lastly, we should remember that praise is due to the peasantry for their patience under disappointment and for their orderly conduct as soon as they understood the law and recognised it to be the will of the Tsar. Thus it may justly be said that the Emancipation was not the work of one man, or one party, or one class, but of the nation as a whole.* * The names most commonly associated with the Emancipation are General Rostoftsef, Lanskoi (Minister of the Interior), Nicholas Milutin, Prince Tchererkassky, G. Samarin, Koshelef. Many others, such as I. A. Solovief, Zhukofski, Domontovitch, Giers--brother of M. Giers, afterwards Minister for Foreign Affairs--are less known, but did valuable work. To all of these, with the exception of the first two, who died before my arrival in Russia, I have to confess my obligations. The late Nicholas Milutin rendered me special service by putting at my disposal not only all the official papers in his possession, but also many documents of a more private kind. By his early and lamented death Russia lost one of the greatest statesmen she has yet produced. CHAPTER XXX THE LANDED PROPRIETORS SINCE THE EMANCIPATION Two Opposite Opinions--Difficulties of Investigation--The Problem Simplified--Direct and Indirect Compensation--The Direct Compensation Inadequate--What the Proprietors Have Done with the Remainder of Their Estates--Immediate Moral Effect of the Abolition of Serfage--The Economic Problem--The Ideal Solution and the Difficulty of Realising It--More Primitive Arrangements--The Northern Agricultural Zone--The Black-earth Zone--The Labour Difficulty--The Impoverishment of the Noblesse Not a New Phenomenon--Mortgaging of Estates--Gradual Expropriation of the Noblesse-Rapid Increase in the Production and Export of Grain--How Far this Has Benefited the Landed Proprietors. When the Emancipation question was raised there was a considerable diversity of opinion as to the effect which the abolition of serfage would have on the material interests of the two classes directly concerned. The Press and "the young generation" took an optimistic view, and endeavoured to prove that the proposed change would be beneficial alike to proprietors and to peasants. Science, it was said, has long since decided that free labour is immensely more productive than slavery or serfage, and the principle has been already proved to demonstration in the countries of Western Europe. In all those countries modern agricultural progress began with the emancipation of the serfs, and increased productivity was everywhere the immediate result of improvements in the method of culture. Thus the poor light soils of Germany, France, and Holland have been made to produce more than the vaunted "black earth" of Russia. And from these ameliorations the land-owning class has everywhere derived the chief advantages. Are not the landed proprietors of England--the country in which serfage was first abolished--the richest in the world? And is not the proprietor of a few hundred morgen in Germany often richer than the Russian noble who has thousands of dessyatins? By these and similar plausible arguments the Press endeavoured to prove to the proprietors that they ought, even in their own interest, to undertake the emancipation of the serfs. Many proprietors, however, showed little faith in the abstract principles of political economy and the vague teachings of history as interpreted by the contemporary periodical literature. They could not always refute the ingenious arguments adduced by the men of more sanguine temperament, but they felt convinced that their prospects were not nearly so bright as these men represented them to be. They believed that Russia was a peculiar country, and the Russians a peculiar people. The lower classes in England, France, Holland, and Germany were well known to be laborious and enterprising, while the Russian peasant was notoriously lazy, and would certainly, if left to himself, not do more work than was absolutely necessary to keep him from starving. Free labour might be more profitable than serfage in countries where the upper classes possessed traditional practical knowledge and abundance of capital, but in Russia the proprietors had neither the practical knowledge nor the ready money necessary to make the proposed ameliorations in the system of agriculture. To all this it was added that a system of emancipation by which the peasants should receive land and be made completely independent of the landed proprietors had nowhere been tried on such a large scale. There were thus two diametrically opposite opinions regarding the economic results of the abolition of serfage, and we have now to examine which of these two opinions has been confirmed by experience. Let us look at the question first from the point of view of the land-owners. The reader who has never attempted to make investigations of this kind may naturally imagine that the question can be easily decided by simply consulting a large number of individual proprietors, and drawing a general conclusion from their evidence. In reality I found the task much more difficult. After roaming about the country for five years (1870-75), collecting information from the best available sources, I hesitated to draw any sweeping conclusions, and my state of mind at that time was naturally reflected in the early editions of this work. As a rule the proprietors could not state clearly how much they had lost or gained, and when definite information was obtained from them it was not always trustworthy. In the time of serfage very few of them had been in the habit of keeping accurate accounts, or accounts of any kind, and when they lived on their estates there were a very large number of items which could not possibly be reduced to figures. Of course, each proprietor had a general idea as to whether his position was better or worse than it had been in the old times, but the vague statements made by individuals regarding their former and their actual revenues had little or no scientific value. So many considerations which had nothing to do with purely agrarian relations entered into the calculations that the conclusions did not help me much to estimate the economic results of the Emancipation as a whole. Nor, it must be confessed, was the testimony by any means always unbiassed. Not a few spoke of the great reform in an epic or dithyrambic tone, and among these I easily distinguished two categories: the one desired to prove that the measure was a complete success in every way, and that all classes were benefited by it, not only morally, but also materially; whilst the others strove to represent the proprietors in general, and themselves in particular, as the self-sacrificing victims of a great and necessary patriotic reform--as martyrs in the cause of liberty and progress. I do not for a moment suppose that these two groups of witnesses had a clearly conceived intention of deceiving or misleading, but as a cautious investigator I had to make allowance for their idealising and sentimental tendencies. Since that time the situation has become much clearer, and during recent visits to Russia I have been able to arrive at much more definite conclusions. These I now proceed to communicate to the reader. The Emancipation caused the proprietors of all classes to pass through a severe economic crisis. Periods of transition always involve much suffering, and the amount of suffering is generally in the inverse ratio of the precautions taken beforehand. In Russia the precautions had been neglected. Not one proprietor in a hundred had made any serious preparations for the inevitable change. On the eve of the Emancipation there were about ten millions of male serfs on private properties, and of these nearly seven millions remained under the old system of paying their dues in labour. Of course, everybody knew that Emancipation must come sooner or later, but fore-thought, prudence, and readiness to take time by the forelock are not among the prominent traits of the Russian character. Hence most of the land-owners were taken unawares. But while all suffered, there were differences of degree. Some were completely shipwrecked. So long as serfage existed all the relations of life were ill-defined and extremely elastic, so that a man who was hopelessly insolvent might contrive, with very little effort, to keep his bead above water for half a lifetime. For such men the Emancipation, like a crisis in the commercial world, brought a day of reckoning. It did not really ruin them, but it showed them and the world at large that they were ruined, and they could no longer continue their old mode of life. For others the crisis was merely temporary. These emerged with a larger income than they ever had before, but I am not prepared to say that their material condition has improved, because the social habits have changed, the cost of living has become much greater, and the work of administering estates is incomparably more complicated and laborious than in the old patriarchal times. We may greatly simplify the problem by reducing it to two definite questions: 1. How far were the proprietors directly indemnified for the loss of serf labour and for the transfer in perpetual usufruct of a large part of their estates to the peasantry? 2. What have the proprietors done with the remainder of their estates, and how far have they been indirectly indemnified by the economic changes which have taken place since the Emancipation? With the first of these questions I shall deal very briefly, because it is a controversial subject involving very complicated calculations which only a specialist can understand. The conclusion at which I have arrived, after much patient research, is that in most provinces the compensation was inadequate, and this conclusion is confirmed by excellent native authorities. M. Bekhteyev, for example, one of the most laborious and conscientious investigators in this field of research, and the author of an admirable work on the economic results of the Emancipation,* told me recently, in course of conversation, that in his opinion the peasant dues fixed by the Emancipation Law represented, throughout the Black-earth Zone, only about a half of the value of the labour previously supplied by the serfs. To this I must add that the compensation was in reality not nearly so great as it seemed to be according to the terms of the law. As the proprietors found it extremely difficult to collect the dues from the emancipated serfs, and as they required a certain amount of capital to reorganise the estate on the new basis of free labour, most of them were practically compelled to demand the obligatory redemption of the land (obiazatelny vuikup), and in adopting this expedient they had to make considerable sacrifices. Not only had they to accept as full payment four-fifths of the normal sum, but of this amount the greater portion was paid in Treasury bonds, which fell at once to 80 per cent. of their nominal value. * "Khozaistvenniye Itogi istekshago Sorokoletiya." St. Petersburg, 1902. Let us now pass to the second part of the problem: What have the proprietors done with the part of their estates which remained to them after ceding the required amount of land to the Communes? Have they been indirectly indemnified for the loss of serf labour by subsequent economic changes? How far have they succeeded in making the transition from serfage to free labour, and what revenues do they now derive from their estates? The answer to these questions will necessarily contain some account of the present economic position of the proprietors. On all proprietors the Emancipation had at least one good effect: it dragged them forcibly from the old path of indolence and routine and compelled them to think and calculate regarding their affairs. The hereditary listlessness and apathy, the traditional habit of looking on the estate with its serfs as a kind of self-acting machine which must always spontaneously supply the owner with the means of living, the inveterate practice of spending all ready money and of taking little heed for the morrow--all this, with much that resulted from it, was rudely swept away and became a thing of the past. The broad, easy road on which the proprietors had hitherto let themselves be borne along by the force of circumstances suddenly split up into a number of narrow, arduous, thorny paths. Each one had to use his judgement to determine which of the paths he should adopt, and, having made his choice, he had to struggle along as he best could. I remember once asking a proprietor what effect the Emancipation had had on the class to which he belonged, and he gave me an answer which is worth recording. "Formerly," he said, "we kept no accounts and drank champagne; now we keep accounts and content ourselves with kvass." Like all epigrammatic sayings, this laconic reply is far from giving a complete description of reality, but it indicates in a graphic way a change that has unquestionably taken place. As soon as serfage was abolished it was no longer possible to live like "the flowers of the field." Many a proprietor who had formerly vegetated in apathetic ease had to ask himself the question: How am I to gain a living? All had to consider what was the most profitable way of employing the land that remained to them. The ideal solution of the problem was that as soon as the peasant-land had been demarcated, the proprietor should take to farming the remainder of his estate by means of hired labour and agricultural machines in West European or American fashion. Unfortunately, this solution could not be generally adopted, because the great majority of the landlords, even when they had the requisite practical knowledge of agriculture, had not the requisite capital, and could not easily obtain it. Where were they to find money for buying cattle, horses, and agricultural implements, for building stables and cattle-sheds, and for defraying all the other initial expenses? And supposing they succeeded in starting the new system, where was the working capital to come from? The old Government institution in which estates could be mortgaged according to the number of serfs was permanently closed, and the new land-credit associations had not yet come into existence. To borrow from private capitalists was not to be thought of, for money was so scarce than ten per cent. was considered a "friendly" rate of interest. Recourse might be had, it is true, to the redemption operation, but in that case the Government would deduct the unpaid portion of any outstanding mortgage, and would pay the balance in depreciated Treasury bonds. In these circumstances the proprietors could not, as a rule, adopt what I have called the ideal solution, and had to content themselves with some simpler and more primitive arrangement. They could employ the peasants of the neighbouring villages to prepare the land and reap the crops either for a fixed sum per acre or on the metayage system, or they could let their land to the peasants for one, three or six years at a moderate rent. In the northern agricultural zone, where the soil is poor and primitive farming with free labour can hardly be made to pay, the proprietors had to let their land at a small rent, and those of them who could not find places in the rural administration migrated to the towns and sought employment in the public service or in the numerous commercial and industrial enterprises which were springing up at that time. There they have since remained. Their country-houses, if inhabited at all, are occupied only for a few months in summer, and too often present a melancholy spectacle of neglect and dilapidation. In the Black-earth Zone, on the contrary, where the soil still possesses enough of its natural fertility to make farming on a large scale profitable, the estates are in a very different condition. The owners cultivate at least a part of their property, and can easily let to the peasants at a fair rent the land which they do not wish to farm themselves. Some have adopted the metayage system; others get the field-work done by the peasants at so much per acre. The more energetic, who have capital enough at their disposal, organise farms with hired labourers on the European model. If they are not so well off as formerly, it is because they have adopted a less patriarchal and more expensive style of living. Their land has doubled and trebled in value during the last thirty years, and their revenues have increased, if not in proportion, at least considerably. In 1903 I visited a number of estates in this region and found them in a very prosperous condition, with agricultural machines of the English or American types, an increasing variety in the rotation of crops, greatly improved breeds of cattle and horses, and all the other symptoms of a gradual transition to a more intensive and more rational system of agriculture. It must be admitted, however, that even in the Black-earth Zone the proprietors have formidable difficulties to contend with, the chief of which are the scarcity of good farm-labourers, the frequent droughts, the low price of cereals, and the delay in getting the grain conveyed to the seaports. On each of these difficulties and the remedies that might be applied I could write a separate chapter, but I fear to overtax the reader's patience, and shall therefore confine myself to a few remarks about the labour question. On this subject the complaints are loud and frequent all over the country. The peasants, it is said, have become lazy, careless, addicted to drunkenness, and shamelessly dishonest with regard to their obligations, so that it is difficult to farm even in the old primitive fashion and impossible to introduce radical improvements in the methods of culture. In these sweeping accusations there is a certain amount of truth. That the muzhik, when working for others, exerts himself as little as possible; that he pays little attention to the quality of the work done; that he shows a reckless carelessness with regard to his employer's property; that he is capable of taking money in advance and failing to fulfil his contract; that he occasionally gets drunk; and that he is apt to commit certain acts of petty larceny when he gets the chance--all this is undoubtedly true, whatever biassed theorists and sentimental peasant-worshippers may say to the contrary.* It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the fault is entirely on the side of the peasants, and equally erroneous to believe that the evils might be remedied, as is often suggested, by greater severity on the part of the tribunals, or by an improved system of passports. Farming with free labour, like every other department of human activity, requires a fair amount of knowledge, judgment, prudence, and tact, which cannot be replaced by ingenious legislation or judicial severity. In engaging labourers or servants it is necessary to select them carefully and make such conditions that they feel it to be to their interest to fulfil their contract loyally. This is too often overlooked by the Russian land-owners. From false views of economy they are inclined to choose the cheapest labourer without examining closely his other qualifications, or they take advantage of the peasant's pecuniary embarrassments and make with him a contract which it is hardly possible for him to fulfil. In spring, for instance, when his store of provisions is exhausted and he is being hard pressed by the tax-collector, they supply him with rye-meal or advance him a small sum of money on condition of his undertaking to do a relatively large amount of summer work. He knows that the contract is unfair to him, but what is he to do? He must get food for himself and his family and a little ready money for his taxes, for the Communal authorities will probably sell his cow if he does not pay his arrears.** In desperation he accepts the conditions and puts off the evil day--consoling himself with the reflection that perhaps (avos') something may turn up in the meantime--but when the time comes for fulfilling his engagements the dilemma revives. According to the contract he ought to work nearly the whole summer for the proprietor; but he has his own land to attend to, and he has to make provision for the winter. In such circumstances the temptation to evade the terms of the contract is probably too strong to be resisted. * Amongst themselves the peasants are not addicted to thieving, as is proved by the fact that they habitually leave their doors unlocked when the inmates of the house are working in the fields; but if the muzhik finds in the proprietor's farmyard a piece of iron or a bit of rope, or any of those little things that he constantly requires and has difficulty in obtaining, he is very apt to pick it up and carry it home. Gathering firewood in the landlord's forest he does not consider as theft, because "God planted the trees and watered them," and in the time of serfage he was allowed to supply himself with firewood in this way. ** Until last year (1904) they could use also corporal punishment as a means of pressure, and I am not sure that they do not occasionally use it still, though it is no longer permitted by law. In Russia, as in other countries, the principle holds true that for good labour a fair price must be paid. Several large proprietors of my acquaintance who habitually act on this principle assure me that they always obtain as much good labour as they require. I must add, however, that these fortunate proprietors have the advantage of possessing a comfortable amount of working capital, and are therefore not compelled, as so many of their less fortunate neighbours are, to manage their estates on the hand-to-mouth principle. It is only, I fear, a minority of the landed proprietors that have grappled successfully with these and other difficulties of their position. As a class they are impoverished and indebted, but this state of things is not due entirely to serf-emancipation. The indebtedness of the Noblesse is a hereditary peculiarity of much older date. By some authorities it is attributed to the laws of Peter the Great, by which all nobles were obliged to spend the best part of their lives in the military or civil service, and to leave the management of their estates to incompetent stewards. However that may be, it is certain that from the middle of the eighteenth century downwards the fact has frequently occupied the attention of the Government, and repeated attempts have been made to alleviate the evil. The Empress Elizabeth, Catherine II., Paul, Alexander I., Nicholas I., Alexander II., and Alexander III. tried successively, as one of the older ukazes expressed it, "to free the Noblesse from debt and from greedy money-lenders, and to prevent hereditary estates from passing into the hands of strangers." The means commonly adopted was the creation of mortgage banks founded and controlled by the Government for the purpose of advancing money to landed proprietors at a comparatively low rate of interest. These institutions may have been useful to the few who desired to improve their estates, but they certainly did not cure, and rather tended to foster, the inveterate improvidence of the many. On the eve of the Emancipation the proprietors were indebted to the Government for the sum of 425 millions of roubles, and 69 per cent. of their serfs were mortgaged. A portion of this debt was gradually extinguished by the redemption operation, so that in 1880 over 300 millions had been paid off, but in the meantime new debts were being contracted. In 1873-74 nine private land-mortgage banks were created, and there was such a rush to obtain money from them that their paper was a glut in the market, and became seriously depreciated. When the prices of grain rose in 1875-80 the mortgage debt was diminished, but when they began to fall in 1880 it again increased, and in 1881 it stood at 396 millions. As the rate of interest was felt to be very burdensome there was a strong feeling among the landed proprietors at that time that the Government ought to help them, and in 1883 the nobles of the province of Orel ventured to address the Emperor on the subject. In reply to the address, Alexander III., who had strong Conservative leanings, was graciously pleased to declare in an ukaz that "it was really time to do something to help the Noblesse," and accordingly a new land-mortgage bank for the Noblesse was created. The favourable terms offered by it were taken advantage of to such an extent that in the first four years of its activity (1886-90) it advanced to the proprietors over 200 million roubles. Then came two famine years, and in 1894 the mortgage debt of the Noblesse in that and other credit establishments was estimated at 994 millions. It has since probably increased rather than diminished, for in that year the prices of grain began to fall steadily on all the corn-exchanges of the world, and they have never since recovered. By means of mortgages some proprietors succeeded in weathering the storm, but many gave up the struggle altogether, and settled in the towns. In the space of thirty years 20,000 of them sold their estates, and thus, between 1861 and 1892, the area of land possessed by the Noblesse diminished 30 per cent.--from 77,804,000 to 55,500,000 dessyatins. This expropriation of the Noblesse, as it is called, was evidently not the result merely of the temporary economic disturbance caused by the abolition of serfage, for as time went on it became more rapid. During the first twenty years the average annual amount of Noblesse land sold was 517,000 dessyatins, and it rose steadily until 1892-96, when it reached the amount of 785,000. As I have already stated, the townward movement of the proprietors was strongest in the barren Northern provinces. In the province of Olonetz, for example, they have already parted with 87 per cent. of their land. In the black-soil region, on the contrary, there is no province in which more than 27 per cent. of the Noblesse land has been alienated, and in one province (Tula) the amount is only 19 per cent. The habit of mortgaging and selling estates does not necessarily mean the impoverishment of the landlords as a class. If the capital raised in that way is devoted to agricultural improvements, the result may be an increase of wealth. Unfortunately, in Russia the realised capital was usually not so employed. A very large proportion of it was spent unproductively, partly in luxuries and living abroad, and partly in unprofitable commercial and industrial speculations. The industrial and railway fever which raged at the time induced many to risk and lose their capital, and it had indirectly an injurious effect on all by making money plentiful in the towns and creating a more expensive style of living, from which the landed gentry could not hold entirely aloof. So far I have dwelt on the dark shadows of the picture, but it is not all shadow. In the last forty years the production and export of grain, which constitute the chief source of revenue for the Noblesse, have increased enormously, thanks mainly to the improved means of transport. In the first decade after the Emancipation (1860-70) the average annual export did not exceed 88 million puds; in the second decade (1870-80) it leapt up to 218 millions; and so it went up steadily until in the last decade of the century it had reached 388 millions--i.e., over six million tons. At the same time the home trade had increased likewise in consequence of the rapidly growing population of the towns. All this must have enriched the land-proprietors. Not to such an extent, it is true, as the figures seem to indicate, because the old prices could not be maintained. Rye, for example, which in 1868 stood at 129 kopeks per pud, fell as low as 56, and during the rest of the century, except during a short time in 1881-82 and the famine years of 1891-92, when there was very little surplus to sell, it never rose above 80. Still, the increase in quantity more than counterbalanced the fall in price. For example: in 1881 the average price of grain per pud was 119, and in 1894 it had sunk to 59; but the amount exported during that time rose from 203 to 617 million puds, and the sum received for it had risen from 242 to 369 millions of roubles. Surely the whole of that enormous sum was not squandered on luxuries and unprofitable speculation! The pessimists, however--and in Russia their name is legion--will not admit that any permanent advantage has been derived from this enormous increase in exports. On the contrary, they maintain that it is a national misfortune, because it is leading rapidly to a state of permanent impoverishment. It quickly exhausted, they say, the large reserves of grain in the village, so that as soon as there was a very bad harvest the Government had to come to the rescue and feed the starving peasantry. Worse than this, it compromised the future prosperity of the country. Being in pecuniary difficulties, and consequently impatient to make money, the proprietors increased inordinately the area of grain-producing land at the expense of pasturage and forests, with the result that the live stock and the manuring of the land were diminished, the fertility of the soil impaired, and the necessary quantity of moisture in the atmosphere greatly lessened. There is some truth in this contention; but it would seem that the soil and climate have not been affected so much as the pessimists suppose, because in recent years there have been some very good harvests. On the whole, then, I think it may be justly said that the efforts of the landed proprietors to work their estates without serf labour have not as yet been brilliantly successful. Those who have failed are in the habit of complaining that they have not received sufficient support from the Government, which is accused of having systematically sacrificed the interests of agriculture, the mainstay of the national resources, to the creation of artificial and unnecessary manufacturing industries. How far such complaints and accusations are well founded I shall not attempt to decide. It is a complicated polemical question, into which the reader would probably decline to accompany me. Let us examine rather what influence the above-mentioned changes have had on the peasantry. CHAPTER XXXI THE EMANCIPATED PEASANTRY The Effects of Liberty--Difficulty of Obtaining Accurate Information--Pessimist Testimony of the Proprietors--Vague Replies of the Peasants--My Conclusions in 1877--Necessity of Revising Them--My Investigations Renewed in 1903--Recent Researches by Native Political Economists--Peasant Impoverishment Universally Recognised--Various Explanations Suggested--Demoralisation of the Common People--Peasant Self-government--Communal System of Land Tenure--Heavy Taxation--Disruption of Peasant Families--Natural Increase of Population--Remedies Proposed--Migration--Reclamation of Waste Land--Land-purchase by Peasantry--Manufacturing Industry--Improvement of Agricultural Methods--Indications of Progress. At the commencement of last chapter I pointed out in general terms the difficulty of describing clearly the immediate consequences of the Emancipation. In beginning now to speak of the influence which the great reform has had on the peasantry, I feel that the difficulty has reached its climax. The foreigner who desires merely to gain a general idea of the subject cannot be expected to take an interest in details, and even if he took the trouble to examine them attentively, he would derive from the labour little real information. What he wishes is a clear, concise, and dogmatic statement of general results. Has the material and moral condition of the peasantry improved since the Emancipation? That is the simple question which he has to put, and he naturally expects a simple, categorical answer. In beginning my researches in this interesting field of inquiry, I had no adequate conception of the difficulties awaiting me. I imagined that I had merely to question intelligent, competent men who had had abundant opportunities of observation, and to criticise and boil down the information collected; but when I put this method of investigation to the test of experience it proved unsatisfactory. Very soon I came to perceive that my authorities were very far from being impartial observers. Most of them were evidently suffering from shattered illusions. They had expected that the Emancipation would produce instantaneously a wonderful improvement in the life and character of the rural population, and that the peasant would become at once a sober, industrious, model agriculturist. These expectations were not realised. One year passed, five years passed, ten years passed, and the expected transformation did not take place. On the contrary, there appeared certain very ugly phenomena which were not at all in the programme. The peasants began to drink more and to work less,* and the public life which the Communal institutions produced was by no means of a desirable kind. The "bawlers" (gorlopany) acquired a prejudicial influence in the Village Assemblies, and in very many Volosts the peasant judges, elected by their fellow-villagers, acquired a bad habit of selling their decisions for vodka. The natural consequence of all this was that those who had indulged in exaggerated expectations sank into a state of inordinate despondency, and imagined things to be much worse than they really were. * I am not at all sure that the peasants really drank more, but such was, and still is, a very general conviction. For different reasons, those who had not indulged in exaggerated expectations, and had not sympathised with the Emancipation in the form in which it was effected, were equally inclined to take a pessimistic view of the situation. In every ugly phenomenon they found a confirmation of their opinions. The result was precisely what they had foretold. The peasants had used their liberty and their privileges to their own detriment and to the detriment of others! The extreme "Liberals" were also inclined, for reasons of their own, to join in the doleful chorus. They desired that the condition of the peasantry should be further improved by legislative enactments, and accordingly they painted the evils in as dark colours as possible. Thus, from various reasons, the majority of the educated classes were unduly disposed to represent to themselves and to others the actual condition of the peasantry in a very unfavourable light, and I felt that from them there was no hope of obtaining the lumen siccum which I desired. I determined, therefore, to try the method of questioning the peasants themselves. Surely they must know whether their condition was better or worse than it had been before their Emancipation. Again I was doomed to disappointment. A few months' experience sufficed to convince me that my new method was by no means so effectual as I had imagined. Uneducated people rarely make generalisations which have no practical utility, and I feel sure that very few Russian peasants ever put to themselves the question: Am I better off now than I was in the time of serfage? When such a question is put to them they feel taken aback. And in truth it is no easy matter to sum up the two sides of the account and draw an accurate balance, save in those exceptional cases in which the proprietor flagrantly abused his authority. The present money-dues and taxes are often more burdensome than the labour-dues in the old times. If the serfs had a great many ill-defined obligations to fulfil--such as the carting of the master's grain to market, the preparing of his firewood, the supplying him with eggs, chickens, home-made linen, and the like--they had, on the other hand, a good many ill-defined privileges. They grazed their cattle during a part of the year on the manor-land; they received firewood and occasionally logs for repairing their huts; sometimes the proprietor lent them or gave them a cow or a horse when they had been visited by the cattle-plague or the horse-stealer; and in times of famine they could look to their master for support. All this has now come to an end. Their burdens and their privileges have been swept away together, and been replaced by clearly defined, unbending, unelastic legal relations. They have now to pay the market-price for every stick of firewood which they burn, for every log which they require for repairing their houses, and for every rood of land on which to graze their cattle. Nothing is now to be had gratis. The demand to pay is encountered at every step. If a cow dies or a horse is stolen, the owner can no longer go to the proprietor with the hope of receiving a present, or at least a loan without interest, but must, if he has no ready money, apply to the village usurer, who probably considers twenty or thirty per cent, as a by no means exorbitant rate of interest. Besides this, from the economic point of view village life has been completely revolutionised. Formerly the members of a peasant family obtained from their ordinary domestic resources nearly all they required. Their food came from their fields, cabbage-garden, and farmyard. Materials for clothing were supplied by their plots of flax and their sheep, and were worked up into linen and cloth by the female members of the household. Fuel, as I have said, and torches wherewith to light the izba--for oil was too expensive and petroleum was unknown--were obtained gratis. Their sheep, cattle, and horses were bred at home, and their agricultural implements, except in so far as a little iron was required, could be made by themselves without any pecuniary expenditure. Money was required only for the purchase of a few cheap domestic utensils, such as pots, pans, knives, hatchets, wooden dishes, and spoons, and for the payment of taxes, which were small in amount and often paid by the proprietor. In these circumstances the quantity of money in circulation among the peasants was infinitesimally small, the few exchanges which took place in a village being generally effected by barter. The taxes, and the vodka required for village festivals, weddings, or funerals, were the only large items of expenditure for the year, and they were generally covered by the sums brought home by the members of the family who went to work in the towns. Very different is the present condition of affairs. The spinning, weaving, and other home industries have been killed by the big factories, and the flax and wool have to be sold to raise a little ready money for the numerous new items of expenditure. Everything has to be bought--clothes, firewood, petroleum, improved agricultural implements, and many other articles which are now regarded as necessaries of life, whilst comparatively little is earned by working in the towns, because the big families have been broken up, and a household now consists usually of husband and wife, who must both remain at home, and children who are not yet bread-winners. Recalling to mind all these things and the other drawbacks and advantages of his actual position, the old muzhik has naturally much difficulty in striking a balance, and he may well be quite sincere when, on being asked whether things now are on the whole better or worse than in the time of serfage, he scratches the back of his head and replies hesitatingly, with a mystified expression on his wrinkled face: "How shall I say to you? They are both better and worse!" ("Kak vam skazat'? I lûtche i khûdzhe!") If, however, you press him further and ask whether he would himself like to return to the old state of things, he is pretty sure to answer, with a slow shake of the head and a twinkle in his eye, as if some forgotten item in the account had suddenly recurred to him: "Oh, no!" What materially increases the difficulty of this general computation is that great changes have taken place in the well-being of the particular households. Some have greatly prospered, while others have become impoverished. That is one of the most characteristic consequences of the Emancipation. In the old times the general economic stagnation and the uncontrolled authority of the proprietor tended to keep all the households of a village on the same level. There was little opportunity for an intelligent, enterprising serf to become rich, and if he contrived to increase his revenue he had probably to give a considerable share of it to the proprietor, unless he had the good fortune to belong to a grand seigneur like Count Sheremetief, who was proud of having rich men among his serfs. On the other hand, the proprietor, for evident reasons of self-interest, as well as from benevolent motives, prevented the less intelligent and less enterprising members of the Commune from becoming bankrupt. The Communal equality thus artificially maintained has now disappeared, the restrictions on individual freedom of action have been removed, the struggle for life has become intensified, and, as always happens in such circumstances, the strong men go up in the world while the weak ones go to the wall. All over the country we find on the one hand the beginnings of a village aristocracy--or perhaps we should call it a plutocracy, for it is based on money--and on the other hand an ever-increasing pauperism. Some peasants possess capital, with which they buy land outside the Commune or embark in trade, while others have to sell their live stock, and have sometimes to cede to neighbours their share of the Communal property. This change in rural life is so often referred to that, in order to express it a new, barbarous word, differentsiatsia (differentiation) has been invented. Hoping to obtain fuller information with the aid of official protection, I attached myself to one of the travelling sections of an agricultural Commission appointed by the Government, and during a whole summer I helped to collect materials in the provinces bordering on the Volga. The inquiry resulted in a gigantic report of nearly 2,500 folio pages, but the general conclusions were extremely vague. The peasantry, it was said, were passing, like the landed proprietors, through a period of transition, in which the main features of their future normal life had not yet become clearly defined. In some localities their condition had decidedly improved, whereas in others it had improved little or not at all. Then followed a long list of recommendations in favour of Government assistance, better agronomic education, competitive exhibitions, more varied rotation of crops, and greater zeal on the part of the clergy in disseminating among the people moral principles in general and love of work in particular. Not greatly enlightened by this official activity, I returned to my private studies, and at the end of six years I published my impressions and conclusions in the first edition of this work. While recognising that there was much uncertainty as to the future, I was inclined, on the whole, to take a hopeful view of the situation. I was unable, however, to maintain permanently that comfortable frame of mind. After my departure from Russia in 1878, the accounts which reached me from various parts of the country became blacker and blacker, and were partly confirmed by short tours which I made in 1889-1896. At last, in the summer of 1903, I determined to return to some of my old haunts and look at things with my own eyes. At that moment some hospitable friends invited me to pay them a visit at their country-house in the province of Smolensk, and I gladly accepted the invitation, because Smolensk, when I knew it formerly, was one of the poorest provinces, and I thought it well to begin my new studies by examining the impoverishment, of which I had heard so much, at its maximum. From the railway station at Viazma, where I arrived one morning at sunrise, I had some twenty miles to drive, and as soon as I got clear of the little town I began my observations. What I saw around me seemed to contradict the sombre accounts I had received. The villages through which I passed had not at all the look of dilapidation and misery which I expected. On the contrary, the houses were larger and better constructed than they used to be, and each of them had a chimney! That latter fact was important because formerly a large proportion of the peasants of this region had no such luxury, and allowed the smoke to find its exit by the open door. In vain I looked for a hut of the old type, and my yamstchik assured me I should have to go a long way to find one. Then I noticed a good many iron ploughs of the European model, and my yamstchik informed me that their predecessor, the sokha with which I had been so familiar, had entirely disappeared from the district. Next I noticed that in the neighbourhood of the villages flax was grown in large quantities. That was certainly not an indication of poverty, because flax is a valuable product which requires to be well manured, and plentiful manure implies a considerable quantity of live stock. Lastly, before arriving at my destination, I noticed clover being grown in the fields. This made me open my eyes with astonishment, because the introduction of artificial grasses into the traditional rotation of crops indicates the transition to a higher and more intensive system of agriculture. As I had never seen clover in Russia except on the estates of very advanced proprietors, I said to my yamstchik: "Listen, little brother! That field belongs to the landlord?" "Not at all, Master; it is muzhik-land." On arriving at the country-house I told my friends what I had seen, and they explained it to me. Smolensk is no longer one of the poorer provinces; it has become comparatively prosperous. In two or three districts large quantities of flax are produced and give the cultivators a big revenue; in other districts plenty of remunerative work is supplied by the forests. Everywhere a considerable proportion of the younger men go regularly to the towns and bring home savings enough to pay the taxes and make a little surplus in the domestic budget. A few days afterwards the village secretary brought me his books, and showed me that there were practically no arrears of taxation. Passing on to other provinces I found similar proofs of progress and prosperity, but at the same time not a few indications of impoverishment; and I was rapidly relapsing into my previous state of uncertainty as to whether any general conclusions could be drawn, when an old friend, himself a first-rate authority with many years of practical experience, came to my assistance.* He informed me that a number of specialists had recently made detailed investigations into the present economic conditions of the rural population, and he kindly placed at my disposal, in his charming country-house near Moscow, the voluminous researches of these investigators. Here, during a good many weeks, I revelled in the statistical materials collected, and to the best of my ability I tested the conclusions drawn from them. Many of these conclusions I had to dismiss with the Scotch verdict of "not proven," whilst others seemed to me worthy of acceptance. Of these latter the most important were those drawn from the arrears of taxation. * I hope I am committing no indiscretion when I say that the old friend in question was Prince Alexander Stcherbatof of Vasilefskoe. The arrears in the payment of taxes may be regarded as a pretty safe barometer for testing the condition of the rural population, because the peasant habitually pays his rates and taxes when he has the means of doing so; when he falls seriously and permanently into arrears it may be assumed that he is becoming impoverished. If the arrears fluctuate from year to year, the causes of the impoverishment may be regarded as accidental and perhaps temporary, but if they steadily accumulate, we must conclude that there is something radically wrong. Bearing these facts in mind, let us hear what the statistics say. During the first twenty years after the Emancipation (1861-81) things went on in their old grooves. The poor provinces remained poor, and the fertile provinces showed no signs of distress. During the next twenty years (1881-1901) the arrears of the whole of European Russia rose, roughly speaking, from 27 to 144 millions of roubles, and the increase, strange to say, took place in the fertile provinces. In 1890, for example, out of 52 millions, nearly 41 millions, or 78 per cent., fell to the share of the provinces of the Black-earth Zone. In seven of these the average arrears per male, which had been in 1882 only 90 kopeks, rose in 1893 to 600, and in 1899 to 2,200! And this accumulation had taken place in spite of reductions of taxation to the extent of 37 million roubles in 1881-83, and successive famine grants from the Treasury in 1891-99 to the amount of 203 millions.* On the other hand, in the provinces with a poor soil the arrears had greatly decreased. In Smolensk, for example, they had sunk from 202 per cent, to 13 per cent. of the annual sum to be paid, and in nearly all the other provinces of the west and north a similar change for the better had taken place. These and many other figures which I might quote show that a great and very curious economic revolution has been gradually effected. The Black-earth Zone, which was formerly regarded as the inexhaustible granary of the Empire, has become impoverished, whilst the provinces which were formerly regarded as hopelessly poor are now in a comparatively flourishing condition. This fact has been officially recognised. In a classification of the provinces according to their degree of prosperity, drawn up by a special commission of experts in 1903, those with a poor light soil appear at the top, and those with the famous black earth are at the bottom of the list. In the deliberations of the commission many reasons for this extraordinary state of things are adduced. Most of them have merely a local significance. The big fact, taken as a whole, seems to me to show that, in consequence of certain changes of which I shall speak presently, the peasantry of European Russia can no longer live by the traditional modes of agriculture, even in the most fertile districts, and require for their support some subsidiary occupations such as are practised in the less fertile provinces. * In 1901 an additional famine grant of 33 1/2 million roubles had to be made by the Government. Another sign of impoverishment is the decrease in the quantity of live stock. According to the very imperfect statistics available, for every hundred inhabitants the number of horses has decreased from 26 to 17, the number of cattle from 36 to 25, and the number of sheep from 73 to 40. This is a serious matter, because it means that the land is not so well manured and cultivated as formerly, and is consequently not so productive. Several economists have attempted to fix precisely to what extent the productivity has decreased, but I confess I have little faith in the accuracy of their conclusions. M. Polenof, for example, a most able and conscientious investigator, calculates that between 1861 and 1895, all over Russia, the amount of food produced, in relation to the number of the population, has decreased by seven per cent. His methods of calculation are ingenious, but the statistical data with which he operates are so far from accurate that his conclusions on this point have, in my opinion, little or no scientific value. With all due deference to Russian economists, I may say parenthetically that they are very found of juggling with carelessly collected statistics, as if their data were mathematical quantities. Several of the Zemstvos have grappled with this question of peasant impoverishment, and the data which they have collected make a very doleful impression. In the province of Moscow, for example, a careful investigation gave the following results: Forty per cent. of the peasant households had no longer any horses, 15 per cent. had given up agriculture altogether, and about 10 per cent. had no longer any land. We must not, however, assume, as is often done, that the peasant families who have no live stock and no longer till the land are utterly ruined. In reality many of them are better off than their neighbours who appear as prosperous in the official statistics, having found profitable occupation in the home industries, in the towns, in the factories, or on the estates of the landed proprietors. It must be remembered that Moscow is the centre of one of the regions in which manufacturing industry has progressed with gigantic strides during the last half-century, and it would be strange indeed if, in such a region, the peasantry who supply the labour to the towns and factories remained thriving agriculturists. That many Russians are surprised and horrified at the actual state of things shows to what an extent the educated classes are still under the illusion that Russia can create for herself a manufacturing industry capable of competing with that of Western Europe without uprooting from the soil a portion of her rural population. It is only in the purely agricultural regions that families officially classed as belonging to the peasantry may be regarded as on the brink of pauperism because they have no live stock, and even with regard to them I should hesitate to make such an assumption, because the muzhiks, as I have already had occasion to remark, have strange nomadic habits unknown to the rural population of other countries. It is a mistake, therefore, to calculate the Russian peasant's budget exclusively on the basis of local resources. To the pessimists who assure me that according to their calculations the peasantry in general must be on the brink of starvation, I reply that there are many facts, even in the statistical tables on which they rely, which run counter to their deductions. Let me quote one by way of illustration. The total amount of deposits in savings banks, about one-fourth of which is believed to belong to the rural population, rose in the course of six years (1894-1900) from 347 to 680 millions of roubles. Besides the savings banks, there existed in the rural districts on 1st December, 1902, no less than 1,614 small-credit institutions, with a total capital (1st January, 1901) of 69 million roubles, of which only 4,653,000 had been advanced by the State Bank and the Zemstvo, the remainder coming in from private sources. This is not much for a big country like Russia, but it is a beginning, and it suggests that the impoverishment is not so severe and so universal as the pessimists would have us believe. There is thus room for differences of opinion as to how far the peasantry have become impoverished, but there is no doubt that their condition is far from satisfactory, and we have to face the important problem why the abolition of serfage has not produced the beneficent consequences which even moderate men so confidently predicted, and how the present unsatisfactory state of things is to be remedied. The most common explanation among those who have never seriously studied the subject is that it all comes from the demoralisation of the common people. In this view there is a modicum of truth. That the peasantry injure their material welfare by drunkenness and improvidence there can be no reasonable doubt, as is shown by the comparatively flourishing state of certain villages of Old Ritualists and Molokanye in which there is no drunkenness, and in which the community exercises a strong moral control over the individual members. If the Orthodox Church could make the peasantry refrain from the inordinate use of strong drink as effectually as it makes them refrain during a great part of the year from animal food, and if it could instil into their minds a few simple moral principles as successfully as it has inspired them with a belief in the efficacy of the Sacraments, it would certainly confer on them an inestimable benefit. But this is not to be expected. The great majority of the parish priests are quite unfit for such a task, and the few who have aspirations in that direction rarely acquire a perceptible moral influence over their parishioners. Perhaps more is to be expected from the schoolmaster than from the priest, but it will be long before the schools can produce even a partial moral regeneration. Their first influence, strange as the assertion may seem, is often in a diametrically opposite direction. When only a few peasants in a village can read and write they have such facilities for overreaching their "dark" neighbours that they are apt to employ their knowledge for dishonest purposes; and thus it occasionally happens that the man who has the most education is the greatest scoundrel in the Mir. Such facts are often used by the opponents of popular education, but in reality they supply a good reason for disseminating primary education as rapidly as possible. When all the peasants have learned to read and write they will present a less inviting field for swindling, and the temptations to dishonesty will be proportionately diminished. Meanwhile, it is only fair to state that the common assertions about drunkenness being greatly on the increase are not borne out by the official statistics concerning the consumption of spirituous liquors. After drunkenness, the besetting sin which is supposed to explain the impoverishment of the peasantry is incorrigible laziness. On that subject I feel inclined to put in a plea of extenuating circumstances in favour of the muzhik. Certainly he is very slow in his movements--slower perhaps than the English rustic--and he has a marvellous capacity for wasting valuable time without any perceptible qualms of conscience; but he is in this respect, if I may use a favourite phrase of the Social Scientists, "the product of environment." To the proprietors who habitually reproach him with time-wasting he might reply with a very strong tu quoque argument, and to all the other classes the argument might likewise be addressed. The St. Petersburg official, for example, who writes edifying disquisitions about peasant indolence, considers that for himself attendance at his office for four hours, a large portion of which is devoted to the unproductive labour of cigarette smoking, constitutes a very fair day's work. The truth is that in Russia the struggle for life is not nearly so intense as in more densely populated countries, and society is so constituted that all can live without very strenuous exertion. The Russians seem, therefore, to the traveller who comes from the West an indolent, apathetic race. If the traveller happens to come from the East--especially if he has been living among pastoral races--the Russians will appear to him energetic and laborious. Their character in this respect corresponds to their geographical position: they stand midway between the laborious, painstaking, industrious population of Western Europe and the indolent, undisciplined, spasmodically energetic populations of Central Asia. They are capable of effecting much by vigorous, intermittent effort--witness the peasant at harvest-time, or the St. Petersburg official when some big legislative project has to be submitted to the Emperor within a given time--but they have not yet learned regular laborious habits. In short, the Russians might move the world if it could be done by a jerk, but they are still deficient in that calm perseverance and dogged tenacity which characterise the Teutonic race. Without seeking further to determine how far the moral defects of the peasantry have a deleterious influence on their material welfare, I proceed to examine the external causes which are generally supposed to contribute largely to their impoverishment, and will deal first with the evils of peasant self-government. That the peasant self-government is very far from being in a satisfactory condition must be admitted by any impartial observer. The more laborious and well-to-do peasants, unless they wish to abuse their position directly or indirectly for their own advantage, try to escape election as office-bearers, and leave the administration in the hands of the less respectable members. Not unfrequently a Volost Elder trades with the money he collects as dues or taxes; and sometimes, when he becomes insolvent, the peasants have to pay their taxes and dues a second time. The Village Assemblies, too, have become worse than they were in the days of serfage. At that time the Heads of Households--who, it must be remembered, have alone a voice in the decisions--were few in number, laborious, and well-to-do, and they kept the lazy, unruly members under strict control. Now that the large families have been broken up and almost every adult peasant is Head of a Household, the Communal affairs are sometimes decided by a noisy majority; and certain Communal decisions may be obtained by "treating the Mir"--that is to say, by supplying a certain amount of vodka. Often I have heard old peasants speak of these things, and finish their recital by some such remark as this: "There is no order now; the people have been spoiled; it was better in the time of the masters." These evils are very real, and I have no desire to extenuate them, but I believe they are by no means so great as is commonly supposed. If the lazy, worthless members of the Commune had really the direction of Communal affairs we should find that in the Northern Agricultural Zone, where it is necessary to manure the soil, the periodical redistributions of the Communal land would be very frequent; for in a new distribution the lazy peasant has a good chance of getting a well-manured lot in exchange for the lot which he has exhausted. In reality, so far as my observations extend, these general distributions of the land are not more frequent than they were before. Of the various functions of the peasant self-government the judicial are perhaps the most frequently and the most severely criticised. And certainly not without reason, for the Volost Courts are too often accessible to the influence of alcohol, and in some districts the peasants say that he who becomes a judge takes a sin on his soul. I am not at all sure, however, that it would be well to abolish these courts altogether, as some people propose. In many respects they are better suited to peasant requirements than the ordinary tribunals. Their procedure is infinitely simpler, more expeditious, and incomparably less expensive, and they are guided by traditional custom and plain common-sense, whereas the ordinary tribunals have to judge according to the civil law, which is unknown to the peasantry and not always applicable to their affairs. Few ordinary judges have a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the minute details of peasant life to be able to decide fairly the cases that are brought before the Volost Courts; and even if a Justice had sufficient knowledge he could not adopt the moral and juridical notions of the peasantry. These are often very different from those of the upper classes. In cases of matrimonial separation, for instance, the educated man naturally assumes that, if there is any question of aliment, it should be paid by the husband to the wife. The peasant, on the contrary, assumes as naturally that it should be paid by the wife to the husband--or rather to the Head of the Household--as a compensation for the loss of labour which her desertion involves. In like manner, according to traditional peasant-law, if an unmarried son is working away from home, his earnings do not belong to himself, but to the family, and in Volost Court they could be claimed by the Head of the Household. Occasionally, it is true, the peasant judges allow their respect for old traditional conceptions in general and for the authority of parents in particular, to carry them a little too far. I was told lately of one affair which took place not long ago, within a hundred miles of Moscow, in which the judge decided that a respectable young peasant should be flogged because he refused to give his father the money he earned as groom in the service of a neighbouring proprietor, though it was notorious in the district that the father was a disreputable old drunkard who carried to the kabak (gin-shop) all the money he could obtain by fair means and foul. When I remarked to my informant, who was not an admirer of peasant institutions, that the incident reminded me of the respect for the patria potestas in old Roman times, he stared at me with a look of surprise and indignation, and exclaimed laconically, "Patria potestas? . . . Vodka!" He was evidently convinced that the disreputable father had got his respectable son flogged by "treating" the judges. In such cases flogging can no longer be used, for the Volost Courts, as we have seen, were recently deprived of the right to inflict corporal punishment. These administrative and judicial abuses gradually reached the ears of the Government, and in 1889 it attempted to remove them by creating a body of Rural Supervisors (Zemskiye Natchalniki). Under their supervision and control some abuses may have been occasionally prevented or corrected, and some rascally Volost secretaries may have been punished or dismissed, but the peasant self-government as a whole has not been perceptibly improved. Let us glance now at the opinions of those who hold that the material progress of the peasantry is prevented chiefly, not by the mere abuses of the Communal administration, but by the essential principles of the Communal institutions, and especially by the practice of periodically redistributing the Communal land. From the theoretical point of view this question is one of great interest, and it may acquire in the future an immense practical significance; but for the present it has not, in my opinion, the importance which is usually attributed to it. There can be no doubt that it is much more difficult to farm well on a large number of narrow strips of land, many of which are at a great distance from the farmyard, than on a compact piece of land which the farmer may divide and cultivate as he pleases; and there can be as little doubt that the husbandman is more likely to improve his land if his tenure is secure. All this and much more of the same kind must be accepted as indisputable truth, but it has little direct bearing on the practical question under consideration. We are not considering in the abstract whether it would be better that the peasant should be a farmer with abundant capital and all the modern scientific appliances, but simply the practical question, What are the obstructions which at present prevent the peasant from ameliorating his actual condition? That the Commune prevents its members from adopting various systems of high farming is a supposition which scarcely requires serious consideration. The peasants do not yet think of any such radical innovations; and if they did, they have neither the knowledge nor the capital necessary to effect them. In many villages a few of the richer and more intelligent peasants have bought land outside of the Commune and cultivate it as they please, free from all Communal restraints; and I have always found that they cultivate this property precisely in the same way as their share of the Communal land. As to minor changes, we know by experience that the Mir opposes to them no serious obstacles. The cultivation of beet for the production of sugar has greatly increased in the central and southwestern provinces, and flax is now largely produced in Communes in northern districts where it was formerly cultivated merely for domestic use. The Communal system is, in fact, extremely elastic, and may be modified as soon as the majority of the members consider modifications profitable. When the peasants begin to think of permanent improvements, such as drainage, irrigation, and the like, they will find the Communal institutions a help rather than an obstruction; for such improvements, if undertaken at all, must be undertaken on a larger scale, and the Mir is an already existing association. The only permanent improvements which can be for the present profitably undertaken consist in the reclaiming of waste land; and such improvements are already sometimes attempted. I know at least of one case in which a Commune in the province of Yaroslavl has reclaimed a considerable tract of waste land by means of hired labourers. Nor does the Mir prevent in this respect individual initiative. In many Communes of the northern provinces it is a received principle of customary law that if any member reclaims waste land he is allowed to retain possession of it for a number of years proportionate to the amount of labour expended. But does not the Commune, as it exists, prevent good cultivation according to the mode of agriculture actually in use? Except in the far north and the steppe region, where the agriculture is of a peculiar kind, adapted to the local conditions, the peasants invariably till their land according to the ordinary three-field system, in which good cultivation means, practically speaking, the plentiful use of manure. Does, then, the existence of the Mir prevent the peasants from manuring their fields well? Many people who speak on this subject in an authoritative tone seem to imagine that the peasants in general do not manure their fields at all. This idea is an utter mistake. In those regions, it is true, where the rich black soil still retains a large part of its virgin fertility, the manure is used as fuel, or simply thrown away, because the peasants believe that it would not be profitable to put it on their fields, and their conviction is, at least to some extent, well founded;* but in the Northern Agricultural Zone, where unmanured soil gives almost no harvest, the peasants put upon their fields all the manure they possess. If they do not put enough it is simply because they have not sufficient live stock. * As recently as two years ago (1903) I found that one of the most intelligent and energetic landlords of the province of Voronezh followed in this respect the example of the peasants, and he assured me that he had proved by experience the advantage of doing so. It is only in the southern provinces, where no manure is required, that periodical re-distributions take place frequently. As we travel northward we find the term lengthens; and in the Northern Agricultural Zone, where manure is indispensable, general re-distributions are extremely rare. In the province of Yaroslavl, for example, the Communal land is generally divided into two parts: the manured land lying near the village, and the unmanured land lying beyond. The latter alone is subject to frequent re-distribution. On the former the existing tenures are rarely disturbed, and when it becomes necessary to give a share to a new household, the change is effected with the least possible prejudice to vested rights. The policy of the Government has always been to admit redistributions in principle, but to prevent their too frequent recurrence. For this purpose the Emancipation Law stipulated that they could be decreed only by a three-fourths majority of the Village Assembly, and in 1893 a further obstacle was created by a law providing that the minimum term between two re-distributions should be twelve years, and that they should never be undertaken without the sanction of the Rural Supervisor. A certain number of Communes have made the experiment of transforming the Communal tenure into hereditary allotments, and its only visible effect has been that the allotments accumulate in the hands of the richer and more enterprising peasants, and the poorer members of the Commune become landless, while the primitive system of agriculture remains unimproved. Up to this point I have dealt with the so-called causes of peasant impoverishment which are much talked of, but which are, in my opinion, only of secondary importance. I pass now to those which are more tangible and which have exerted on the condition of the peasantry a more palpable influence. And, first, inordinate taxation. This is a very big subject, on which a bulky volume might be written, but I shall cut it very short, because I know that the ordinary reader does not like to be bothered with voluminous financial statistics. Briefly, then, the peasant has to pay three kinds of direct taxation: Imperial to the Central Government, local to the Zemstvo, and Commune to the Mir and the Volost; and besides these he has to pay a yearly sum for the redemption of the land-allotment which he received at the time of the Emancipation. Taken together, these form a heavy burden, but for ten or twelve years the emancipated peasantry bore it patiently, without falling very deeply into arrears. Then began to appear symptoms of distress, especially in the provinces with a poor soil, and in 1872 the Government appointed a Commission of Inquiry, in which I had the privilege of taking part unofficially. The inquiry showed that something ought to be done, but at that moment the Government was so busy with administrative reforms and with trying to develop industry and commerce that it had little time to devote to studying and improving the economic position of the silent, long-suffering muzhik. It was not till nearly ten years later, when the Government began to feel the pinch of the ever-increasing arrears, that it recognised the necessity of relieving the rural population. For this purpose it abolished the salt-tax and the poll-tax and repeatedly lessened the burden of the redemption-payments. At a later period (1899) it afforded further relief by an important reform in the mode of collecting the direct taxes. From the police, who often ruined peasant householders by applying distraint indiscriminately, the collection of taxes was transferred to special authorities who took into consideration the temporary pecuniary embarrassments of the tax-payers. Another benefit conferred on the peasantry by this reform is that an individual member of the Commune is no longer responsible for the fiscal obligations of the Commune as a whole. Since these alleviations have been granted the annual total demanded from the peasantry for direct taxation and land-redemption payments is 173 million roubles, and the average annual sum to be paid by each peasant household varies, according to the locality, from 11 1/2 to 20 roubles (21s. 6d. to 40s.). In addition to this annuity there is a heavy burden of accumulated arrears, especially in the central and eastern provinces, which amounted in 1899 to 143 millions. Of the indirect taxes I can say nothing definite, because it is impossible to calculate, even approximately, the share of them which falls on the rural population, but they must not be left out of account. During the ten years of M. Witte's term of office the revenue of the Imperial Treasury was nearly doubled, and though the increase was due partly to improvements in the financial administration, we can hardly believe that the peasantry did not in some measure contribute to it. In any case, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for them, under actual conditions, to improve their economic position. On that point all Russian economists are agreed. One of the most competent and sober-minded of them, M. Schwanebach, calculates that the head of a peasant household, after deducting the grain required to feed his family, has to pay into the Imperial Treasury, according to the district in which he resides, from 25 to 100 per cent, of his agricultural revenue. If that ingenious calculation is even approximately correct, we must conclude that further financial reforms are urgently required, especially in those provinces where the population live exclusively by agriculture. Heavy as the burden of taxation undoubtedly is, it might perhaps be borne without very serious inconvenience if the peasant families could utilise productively all their time and strength. Unfortunately in the existing economic organisation a great deal of their time and energy is necessarily wasted. Their economic life was radically dislocated by the Emancipation, and they have not yet succeeded in reorganising it according to the new conditions. In the time of serfage an estate formed, from the economic point of view, a co-operative agricultural association, under a manager who possessed unlimited authority, and sometimes abused it, but who was generally worldly-wise enough to understand that the prosperity of the whole required the prosperity of the component parts. By the abolition of serfage the association was dissolved and liquidated, and the strong, compact whole fell into a heap of independent units, with separate and often mutually hostile interests. Some of the disadvantages of this change for the peasantry I have already enumerated above. The most important I have now to mention. In virtue of the Emancipation Law each family received an amount of land which tempted it to continue farming on its own account, but which did not enable it to earn a living and pay its rates and taxes. The peasant thus became a kind of amphibious creature--half farmer and half something else--cultivating his allotment for a portion of his daily bread, and obliged to have some other occupation wherewith to cover the inevitable deficit in his domestic budget. If he was fortunate enough to find near his home a bit of land to be let at a reasonable rent, he might cultivate it in addition to his own and thereby gain a livelihood; but if he had not the good luck to find such a piece of land in the immediate neighbourhood, he had to look for some subsidiary occupation in which to employ his leisure time; and where was such occupation to be found in an ordinary Russian village? In former years he might have employed himself perhaps in carting the proprietor's grain to distant markets or still more distant seaports, but that means of making a little money has been destroyed by the extension of railways. Practically, then, he is now obliged to choose between two alternatives: either to farm his allotment and spend a great part of the year in idleness, or to leave the cultivation of his allotment to his wife and children and to seek employment elsewhere--often at such a distance that his earnings hardly cover the expenses of the journey. In either case much time and energy are wasted. The evil results of this state of things were intensified by another change which was brought about by the Emancipation. In the time of serfage the peasant families, as I have already remarked, were usually very large. They remained undivided, partly from the influence of patriarchal conceptions, but chiefly because the proprietors, recognising the advantage of large units, prevented them from breaking up. As soon as the proprietor's authority was removed, the process of disintegration began and spread rapidly. Every one wished to be independent, and in a very short time nearly every able-bodied married peasant had a house of his own. The economic consequences were disastrous. A large amount of money had to be expended in constructing new houses and farmsteadings; and the old habit of one male member remaining at home to cultivate the land allotment with the female members of the family whilst the others went to earn wages elsewhere had to be abandoned. Many large families, which had been prosperous and comfortable--rich according to peasant conceptions--dissolved into three or four small ones, all on the brink of pauperism. The last cause of peasant impoverishment that I have to mention is perhaps the most important of all: I mean the natural increase of population without a corresponding increase in the means of subsistence. Since the Emancipation in 1861 the population has nearly doubled, whilst the amount of Communal land has remained the same. It is not surprising, therefore, that when talking with peasants about their actual condition, one constantly hears the despairing cry, "Zemli malo!" ("There is not enough land"); and one notices that those who look a little ahead ask anxiously: "What is to become of our children? Already the Communal allotment is too small for our wants, and the land outside is doubling and trebling in price! What will it be in the future?" At the same time, not a few Russian economists tell us--and their apprehensions are shared by foreign observers--that millions of peasants are in danger of starvation in the near future. Must we, then, accept for Russia the Malthus doctrine that population increases more rapidly than the means of subsistence, and that starvation can be avoided only by plague, pestilence, war, and other destructive forces? I think not. It is quite true that, if the amount of land actually possessed by the peasantry and the present system of cultivating it remained unchanged, semi-starvation would be the inevitable result within a comparatively short space of time; but the danger can be averted, and the proper remedies are not far to seek. If Russia is suffering from over-population, it must be her own fault, for she is, with the exception of Norway and Sweden, the most thinly populated country in Europe, and she has more than her share of fertile soil and mineral resources. A glance at the map showing the density of population in the various provinces suggests an obvious remedy, and I am happy to say it is already being applied. The population of the congested districts of the centre is gradually spreading out, like a drop of oil on a sheet of soft paper, towards the more thinly populated regions of the south and east. In this way the vast region containing millions and millions of acres which lies to the north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, and Central Asia is yearly becoming more densely peopled, and agriculture is steadily encroaching on the pastoral area. Breeders of sheep and cattle, who formerly lived and throve in the western portion of that great expanse, are being pushed eastwards by the rapid increase in the value of land, and their place is being taken by enterprising tillers of the soil. Further north another stream of emigration is flowing into Central Siberia. It does not flow so rapidly, because in that part of the Empire, unlike the bare, fertile steppes of the south, the land has to be cleared before the seed can be sown, and the pioneer colonists have to work hard for a year or two before they get any return for their labour; but the Government and private societies come to their assistance, and for the last twenty years their numbers have been steadily increasing. During the ten years 1886-96 the annual contingent rose from 25,000 to 200,000, and the total number amounted to nearly 800,000. For the subsequent period I have not been able to obtain the official statistics, but a friend who has access to the official sources of information on this subject assures me that during the last twelve years about four millions of peasants from European Russia have been successfully settled in Siberia. Even in the European portion of the Empire millions of acres which are at present unproductive might be utilised. Any one who has travelled by rail from Berlin to St. Petersburg must have noticed how the landscape suddenly changes its character as soon as he has crossed the frontier. Leaving a prosperous agricultural country, he traverses for many weary hours a region in which there is hardly a sign of human habitation, though the soil and climate of that region resembles closely the soil and climate of East Prussia. The difference lies in the amount of labour and capital expended. According to official statistics the area of European Russia contains, roughly speaking, 406 millions of dessyatins, of which 78 millions, or 19 per cent., are classified as neudobniya, unfit for cultivation; 157 millions, or 39 per cent., as forest; 106 millions, or 26 per cent., as arable land; and 65 millions, or 16 per cent., as pasturage. Thus the arable and pasture land compose only 42 per cent., or considerably less than half the area. Of the land classed as unfit for cultivation--19 per cent. of the whole--a large portion, including the perennially frozen tundri of the far north, must ever remain unproductive, but in latitudes with a milder climate this category of land is for the most part ordinary morass or swamp, which can be transformed into pasturage, or even into arable land, by drainage at a moderate cost. As a proof of this statement I may cite the draining of the great Pinsk swamps, which was begun by the Government in 1872. If we may trust an official report of the progress of the works in 1897, an area of 2,855,000 dessyatins (more than seven and a half million acres) had been drained at an average cost of about three shillings an acre, and the price of land had risen from four to twenty-eight roubles per dessyatin. Reclamation of marshes might be undertaken elsewhere on a much more moderate scale. The observant traveller on the highways and byways of the northern provinces must have noticed on the banks of almost every stream many acres of marshy land producing merely reeds or coarse rank grass that no well-brought-up animal would look at. With a little elementary knowledge of engineering and the expenditure of a moderate amount of manual labour these marshes might be converted into excellent pasture or even into highly productive kitchen-gardens; but the peasants have not yet learned to take advantage of such opportunities, and the reformers, who deal only in large projects and scientific panaceas for the cure of impoverishment, consider such trifles as unworthy of their attention. The Scotch proverb that if the pennies be well looked after, the pounds will look after themselves, contains a bit of homely wisdom totally unknown to the Russian educated classes. After the morasses, swamps, and marshes come the forests, constituting 39 per cent. of the whole area, and the question naturally arises whether some portions of them might not be advantageously transformed into pasturage or arable land. In the south and east they have been diminished to such an extent as to affect the climate injuriously, so that the area of them should be increased rather than lessened; but in the northern provinces the vast expanses of forest, covering millions of acres, might perhaps be curtailed with advantage. The proprietors prefer, however, to keep them in their present condition because they give a modest revenue without any expenditure of capital. Therein lies the great obstacle to land-reclamation in Russia: it requires an outlay of capital, and capital is extremely scarce in the Empire of the Tsars. Until it becomes more plentiful, the area of arable land and pasturage is not likely to be largely increased, and other means of checking the impoverishment of the peasantry must be adopted. A less expensive means is suggested by the statistics of foreign trade. In the preceding chapter we have seen that from 1860 to 1900 the average annual export of grain rose steadily from under 1 1/2 millions to over 6 millions of tons. It is evident, therefore, that in the food supply, so far from there being a deficiency, there has been a large and constantly increasing surplus. If the peasantry have been on short rations, it is not because the quantity of food produced has fallen short of the requirements of the population, but because it has been unequally distributed. The truth is that the large landed proprietors produce more and the peasants less than they consume, and it has naturally occurred to many people that the present state of things might be improved if a portion of the arable land passed, without any socialistic, revolutionary measures, from the one class to the other. This operation began spontaneously soon after the Emancipation. Well-to-do peasants who had saved a little money bought from the proprietors bits of land near their villages and cultivated them in addition to their allotments. At first this extension of peasant land was confined within very narrow limits, because the peasants had very little capital at their disposal, but in 1882 the Government came to their aid by creating the Peasant Land Bank, the object of which was to advance money to purchasers of the peasant class on the security of the land purchased, at the rate of 7 1/2 per cent., including sinking fund.* From that moment the purchases increased rapidly. They were made by individual peasants, by rural Communes, and, most of all, by small voluntary associations composed of three, four, or more members. In the course of twenty years (1883-1903) the Bank made 47,791 advances, and in this way were purchased about eighteen million acres. This sounds a very big acquisition, but it will not do much to relieve the pressure on the peasantry as a whole, because it adds only about 6 per cent. to the amount they already possessed in virtue of the Emancipation Law. * This arrangement extinguishes the debt in 34 1/2 years; an additional 1 per cent, extinguishes it in 24 1/2 years. By recent legislation other arrangements are permitted. Nearly all of this land purchased by the peasantry comes directly or indirectly from the Noblesse, and much more will doubtless pass from the one class to the other if the Government continues to encourage the operation; but already symptoms of a change of policy are apparent. In the higher official regions it is whispered that the existing policy is objectionable from the political point of view, and one sometimes hears the question asked: Is it right and desirable that the Noblesse, who have ever done their duty in serving faithfully the Tsar and Fatherland, and who have ever been the representatives of civilisation and culture in Russian country life, should be gradually expropriated in favour of other and less cultivated social classes? Not a few influential personages are of opinion that such a change is unjust and undesirable, and they argue that it is not advantageous to the peasants themselves, because the price of land has risen much more than the rents. It is not at all uncommon, for example, to find that land can be rented at five roubles per dessyatin, whereas it cannot be bought under 200 roubles. In that case the peasant can enjoy the use of the land at the moderate rate of 2 1/2 per cent. of the capital value, whereas by purchasing the land with the assistance of the bank he would have to pay, without sinking fund, more than double that rate. The muzhik, however, prefers to be owner of the land, even at a considerable sacrifice. When he can be induced to give his reasons, they are usually formulated thus: "With my own land I can do as I like; if I hire land from the neighbouring proprietor, who knows whether, at the end of the term, he may not raise the rent or refuse to renew the contract at any price?" Even if the Government should continue to encourage the purchase of land by the peasantry, the process is too slow to meet all the requirements of the situation. Some additional expedient must be found, and we naturally look for it in the experience of older countries with a denser population. In the more densely populated countries of Western Europe a safety-valve for the inordinate increase of the rural population has been provided by the development of manufacturing industry. High wages and the attractions of town life draw the rural population to the industrial centres, and the movement has increased to such an extent that already complaints are heard of the rural districts becoming depopulated. In Russia a similar movement is taking place on a smaller scale. During the last forty years, under the fostering influence of a protective tariff, the manufacturing industry has made gigantic strides, as we shall see in a future chapter, and it has already absorbed about two millions of the redundant hands in the villages; but it cannot keep pace with the rapid increasing surplus. Two millions are less than two per cent. of the population. The great mass of the people has always been, and must long continue to be, purely agricultural; and it is to their fields that they must look for the means of subsistence. If the fields do not supply enough for their support under the existing primitive methods of cultivation, better methods must be adopted. To use a favourite semi-scientific phrase, Russia has now reached the point in her economic development at which she must abandon her traditional extensive system of agriculture and adopt a more intensive system. So far all competent authorities are agreed. But how is the transition, which requires technical knowledge, a spirit of enterprise, an enormous capital, and a dozen other things which the peasantry do not at present possess, to be effected? Here begin the well-marked differences of opinion. Hitherto the momentous problem has been dealt with chiefly by the theorists and doctrinaires who delight in radical solutions by means of panaceas, and who have little taste for detailed local investigation and gradual improvement. I do not refer to the so-called "Saviours of the Fatherland" (Spasiteli Otetchestva), well-meaning cranks and visionaries who discover ingenious devices for making their native country at once prosperous and happy. I speak of the great majority of reasonable, educated men who devote some attention to the problem. Their favourite method of dealing with it is this: The intensive system of agriculture requires scientific knowledge and a higher level of intellectual culture. What has to be done, therefore, is to create agricultural colleges supplied with all the newest appliances of agronomic research and to educate the peasantry to such an extent that they may be able to use the means which science recommends. For many years this doctrine prevailed in the Press, among the reading public, and even in the official world. The Government was accordingly urged to improve and multiply the agronomic colleges and the schools of all grades and descriptions. Learned dissertations were published on the chemical constitution of the various soils, the action of the atmosphere on the different ingredients, the necessity of making careful meteorological observations, and numerous other topics of a similar kind; and would-be reformers who had no taste for such highly technical researches could console themselves with the idea that they were advancing the vital interests of the country by discussing the relative merits of Communal and personal land-tenure--deciding generally in favour of the former as more in accordance with the peculiarities of Russian, as contrasted with West European, principles of economic and social development. While much valuable time and energy were thus being expended to little purpose, on the assumption that the old system might be left untouched until the preparations for a radical solution had been completed, disagreeable facts which could not be entirely overlooked gradually produced in influential quarters the conviction that the question was much more urgent than was commonly supposed. A sensitive chord in the heart of the Government was struck by the steadily increasing arrears of taxation, and spasmodic attempts have since been made to cure the evil. In the local administration, too, the urgency of the question has come to be recognised, and measures are now being taken by the Zemstvo to help the peasantry in making gradually the transition to that higher system of agriculture which is the only means of permanently saving them from starvation. For this purpose, in many districts well-trained specialists have been appointed to study the local conditions and to recommend to the villagers such simple improvements as are within their means. These improvements may be classified under the following heads: (1) Increase of the cereal crops by better seed and improved implements. (2) Change in the rotation of crops by the introduction of certain grasses and roots which improve the soil and supply food for live stock. (3) Improvement and increase of live stock, so as to get more labour-power, more manure, more dairy-produce, and more meat. (4) Increased cultivation of vegetables and fruit. With these objects in view the Zemstvo is establishing depots in which improved implements and better seed are sold at moderate prices, and the payments are made in installments, so that even the poorer members of the community can take advantage of the facilities offered. Bulls and stallions are kept at central points for the purpose of improving the breed of cattle and horses, and the good results are already visible. Elementary instruction in farming and gardening is being introduced into the primary schools. In some districts the exertions of the Zemstvo are supplemented by small agricultural societies, mutual credit associations, and village banks, and these are to some extent assisted by the Central Government. But the beneficent action in this direction is not all official. Many proprietors deserve great praise for the good influence which they exercise on the peasants of their neighbourhood and the assistance they give them; and it must be admitted that their patience is often sorely tried, for the peasants have the obstinacy of ignorance, and possess other qualities which are not sympathetic. I know one excellent proprietor who began his civilising efforts by giving to the Mir of the nearest village an iron plough as a model and a fine pedigree ram as a producer, and who found, on returning from a tour abroad, that during his absence the plough had been sold for vodka, and the pedigree ram had been eaten before it had time to produce any descendants! In spite of this he continues his efforts, and not altogether without success. It need hardly be said that the progress of the peasantry is not so rapid as could be wished. The muzhik is naturally conservative, and is ever inclined to regard novelties with suspicion. Even when he is half convinced of the utility of some change, he has still to think about it for a long time and talk it over again and again with his friends and neighbours, and this preparatory stage of progress may last for years. Unless he happens to be a man of unusual intelligence and energy, it is only when he sees with his own eyes that some humble individual of his own condition in life has actually gained by abandoning the old routine and taking to new courses, that he makes up his mind to take the plunge himself. Still, he is beginning to jog on. E pur si muove! A spirit of progress is beginning to move on the face of the long-stagnant waters, and progress once begun is pretty sure to continue with increasing rapidity. With starvation hovering in the rear, even the most conservative are not likely to stop or turn back. CHAPTER XXXII THE ZEMSTVO AND THE LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT Necessity of Reorganising the Provincial Administration--Zemstvo Created in 1864--My First Acquaintance with the Institution--District and Provincial Assemblies--The Leading Members--Great Expectations Created by the Institution--These Expectations Not Realised--Suspicions and Hostility of the Bureaucracy--Zemstvo Brought More Under Control of the Centralised Administration--What It Has Really Done--Why It Has Not Done More---Rapid Increase of the Rates--How Far the Expenditure Is Judicious--Why the Impoverishment of the Peasantry Was Neglected--Unpractical, Pedantic Spirit--Evil Consequences--Chinese and Russian Formalism--Local Self-Government of Russia Contrasted with That of England--Zemstvo Better than Its Predecessors--Its Future. After the emancipation of the serfs the reform most urgently required was the improvement of the provincial administration. In the time of serfage the Emperor Nicholas, referring to the landed proprietors, used to say in a jocular tone that he had in his Empire 50,000 most zealous and efficient hereditary police-masters. By the Emancipation Law the authority of these hereditary police-masters was for ever abolished, and it became urgently necessary to put something else in its place. Peasant self-government was accordingly organised on the basis of the rural Commune; but it fell far short of meeting the requirements of the situation. Its largest unit was the Volost, which comprises merely a few contiguous Communes, and its action is confined exclusively to the peasantry. Evidently it was necessary to create a larger administrative unit, in which the interests of all classes of the population could be attended to, and for this purpose Alexander II. in November, 1859, more than a year before the Emancipation Edict, instructed a special Commission to prepare a project for giving to the inefficient, dislocated provincial administration greater unity and independence. The project was duly prepared, and after being discussed in the Council of State it received the Imperial sanction in January, 1864. It was supposed to give, in the words of an explanatory memorandum attached to it, "as far as possible a complete and logical development to the principle of local self-government." Thus was created the Zemstvo,* which has recently attracted considerable attention in Western Europe, and which is destined, perhaps, to play a great political part in the future. * The term Zemstvo is derived from the word Zemlya, meaning land, and might be translated, if a barbarism were permissible, by Land-dom on the analogy of Kingdom, Dukedom, etc. My personal acquaintance with this interesting institution dates from 1870. Very soon after my arrival at Novgorod in that year, I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who was described to me as "the president of the provincial Zemstvo-bureau," and finding him amiable and communicative, I suggested that he might give me some information regarding the institution of which he was the chief local representative. With the utmost readiness he proposed to be my Mentor, introduced me to his colleagues, and invited me to come and see him at his office as often as I felt inclined. Of this invitation I made abundant use. At first my visits were discreetly few and short, but when I found that my new friend and his colleagues really wished to instruct me in all the details of Zemstvo administration, and had arranged a special table in the president's room for my convenience, I became a regular attendant, and spent daily several hours in the bureau, studying the current affairs, and noting down the interesting bits of statistical and other information which came before the members, as if I had been one of their number. When they went to inspect the hospital, the lunatic asylum, the seminary for the preparation of village schoolmasters, or any other Zemstvo institution, they invariably invited me to accompany them, and made no attempt to conceal from me the defects which they happened to discover. I mention all this because it illustrates the readiness of most Russians to afford every possible facility to a foreigner who wishes seriously to study their country. They believe that they have long been misunderstood and systematically calumniated by foreigners, and they are extremely desirous that the prevalent misconceptions regarding their country should be removed. It must be said to their honour that they have little or none of that false patriotism which seeks to conceal national defects; and in judging themselves and their institutions they are inclined to be over-severe rather than unduly lenient. In the time of Nicholas I. those who desired to stand well with the Government proclaimed loudly that they lived in the happiest and best-governed country of the world, but this shallow official optimism has long since gone out of fashion. During all the years which I spent in Russia I found everywhere the utmost readiness to assist me in my investigations, and very rarely noticed that habit of "throwing dust in the eyes of foreigners," of which some writers have spoken so much. The Zemstvo is a kind of local administration which supplements the action of the rural Communes, and takes cognizance of those higher public wants which individual Communes cannot possibly satisfy. Its principal duties are to keep the roads and bridges in proper repair, to provide means of conveyance for the rural police and other officials, to look after primary education and sanitary affairs, to watch the state of the crops and take measures against approaching famine, and, in short, to undertake, within certain clearly defined limits, whatever seems likely to increase the material and moral well-being of the population. In form the institution is Parliamentary--that is to say, it consists of an assembly of deputies which meets regularly once a year, and of a permanent executive bureau elected by the Assembly from among its members. If the Assembly be regarded as a local Parliament, the bureau corresponds to the Cabinet. In accordance with this analogy my friend the president was sometimes jocularly termed the Prime Minister. Once every three years the deputies are elected in certain fixed proportions by the landed proprietors, the rural Communes, and the municipal corporations. Every province (guberniya) and each of the districts (uyezdi) into which the province is subdivided has such an assembly and such a bureau. Not long after my arrival in Novgorod I had the opportunity of being present at a District Assembly. In the ball-room of the "Club de la Noblesse" I found thirty or forty men seated round a long table covered with green cloth. Before each member lay sheets of paper for the purpose of taking notes, and before the president--the Marshal of Noblesse for the district--stood a small hand-bell, which he rang vigorously at the commencement of the proceedings and on all the occasions when he wished to obtain silence. To the right and left of the president sat the members of the executive bureau (uprava), armed with piles of written and printed documents, from which they read long and tedious extracts, till the majority of the audience took to yawning and one or two of the members positively went to sleep. At the close of each of these reports the president rang his bell--presumably for the purpose of awakening the sleepers--and inquired whether any one had remarks to make on what had just been read. Generally some one had remarks to make, and not unfrequently a discussion ensued. When any decided difference of opinion appeared a vote was taken by handing round a sheet of paper, or by the simpler method of requesting the Ayes to stand up and the Noes to sit still. What surprised me most in this assembly was that it was composed partly of nobles and partly of peasants--the latter being decidedly in the majority--and that no trace of antagonism seemed to exist between the two classes. Landed proprietors and their ci-devant serfs, emancipated only ten years before, evidently met for the moment on a footing of equality. The discussions were carried on chiefly by the nobles, but on more than one occasion peasant members rose to speak, and their remarks, always clear, practical, and to the point, were invariably listened to with respectful attention. Instead of that violent antagonism which might have been expected, considering the constitution of the Assembly, there was too much unanimity--a fact indicating plainly that the majority of the members did not take a very deep interest in the matters presented to them. This assembly was held in the month of September. At the beginning of December the Assembly for the Province met, and during nearly three weeks I was daily present at its deliberations. In general character and mode of procedure it resembled closely the District Assembly. Its chief peculiarities were that its members were chosen, not by the primary electors, but by the assemblies of the ten districts which compose the province, and that it took cognisance merely of those matters which concerned more than one district. Besides this, the peasant deputies were very few in number--a fact which somewhat surprised me, because I was aware that, according to the law, the peasant members of the District Assemblies were eligible, like those of the other classes. The explanation is that the District Assemblies choose their most active members to represent them in the Provincial Assemblies, and consequently the choice generally falls on landed proprietors. To this arrangement the peasants make no objection, for attendance at the Provincial Assemblies demands a considerable pecuniary outlay, and payment to the deputies is expressly prohibited by law. To give the reader an idea of the elements composing this assembly, let me introduce him to a few of the members. A considerable section of them may be described in a single sentence. They are commonplace men, who have spent part of their youth in the public service as officers in the army, or officials in the civil administration, and have since retired to their estates, where they gain a modest competence by farming. Some of them add to their agricultural revenue by acting as justices of the peace.* A few may be described more particularly. * That is no longer possible. The institution of justices elected and paid by the Zemstvo was abolished in 1889. You see there, for instance, that fine-looking old general in uniform, with the St. George's Cross at his button-hole--an order given only for bravery in the field. That is Prince Suvorof, a grandson of the famous general. He has filled high posts in the Administration without ever tarnishing his name by a dishonest or dishonourable action, and has spent a great part of his life at Court without ceasing to be frank, generous, and truthful. Though he has no intimate knowledge of current affairs, and sometimes gives way a little to drowsiness, his sympathies in disputed points are always on the right side, and when he gets to his feet he always speaks in a clear soldierlike fashion. The tall gaunt man, somewhat over middle age, who sits a little to the left is Prince Vassiltchikof. He too, has an historic name, but he cherishes above all things personal independence, and has consequently always kept aloof from the Imperial Administration and the Court. The leisure thus acquired he has devoted to study, and he has produced several valuable works on political and social science. An enthusiastic but at the same time cool-headed abolitionist at the time of the Emancipation, he has since constantly striven to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry by advocating the spread of primary education, the rural credit associations in the village, the preservation of the Communal institutions, and numerous important reforms in the financial system. Both of these gentlemen, it is said, generously gave to their peasants more land than they were obliged to give by the Emancipation Law. In the Assembly Prince Vassiltchikof speaks frequently, and always commands attention; and in all important committees he is leading member. Though a warm defender of the Zemstvo institutions, he thinks that their activity ought to be confined to a comparatively narrow field, and he thereby differs from some of his colleagues, who are ready to embark in hazardous, not to say fanciful, schemes for developing the natural resources of the province. His neighbour, Mr. P----, is one of the ablest and most energetic members of the Assembly. He is president of the executive bureau in one of the districts, where he has founded many primary schools and created several rural credit associations on the model of those which bear the name of Schultze Delitsch in Germany. Mr. S----, who sits beside him, was for some years an arbiter between the proprietors and emancipated serfs, then a member of the Provincial Executive Bureau, and is now director of a bank in St. Petersburg. To the right and left of the president--who is Marshal of Noblesse for the province--sit the members of the bureau. The gentleman who reads the long reports is my friend "the Prime Minister," who began life as a cavalry officer, and after a few years of military service retired to his estate; he is an intelligent, able administrator, and a man of considerable literary culture. His colleague, who assists him in reading the reports, is a merchant, and director of the municipal bank. The next member is also a merchant, and in some respects the most remarkable man in the room. Though born a serf, he is already, at middle age, an important personage in the Russian commercial world. Rumour says that he laid the foundation of his fortune by one day purchasing a copper cauldron in a village through which he was passing on his way to St. Petersburg, where he hoped to gain a little money by the sale of some calves. In the course of a few years he amassed an enormous fortune; but cautious people think that he is too fond of hazardous speculations, and prophesy that he will end life as poor as he began it. All these men belong to what may be called the party of progress, which anxiously supports all proposals recognised as "liberal," and especially all measures likely to improve the condition of the peasantry. Their chief opponent is that little man with close-cropped, bullet-shaped head and small piercing eyes, who may be called the Leader of the opposition. He condemns many of the proposed schemes, on the ground that the province is already overtaxed, and that the expenditure ought to be reduced to the smallest possible figure. In the District Assembly he preaches this doctrine with considerable success, for there the peasantry form the majority, and he knows how to use that terse, homely language, interspersed with proverbs, which has far more influence on the rustic mind than scientific principles and logical reasoning; but here, in Provincial Assembly, his following composes only a respectable minority, and he confines himself to a policy of obstruction. The Zemstvo of Novgorod had at that time the reputation of being one of the most enlightened and energetic, and I must say that the proceedings were conducted in a business-like, satisfactory way. The reports were carefully considered, and each article of the annual budget was submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism. In several of the provinces which I afterwards visited I found that affairs were conducted in a very different fashion: quorums were formed with extreme difficulty, and the proceedings, when they at last commenced, were treated as mere formalities and despatched as speedily as possible. The character of the Assembly depends of course on the amount of interest taken in local public affairs. In some districts this interest is considerable; in others it is very near zero. The birth of this new institution was hailed with enthusiasm, and produced great expectations. At that time a large section of the Russian educated classes had a simple, convenient criterion for institutions of all kinds. They assumed as a self-evident axiom that the excellence of an institution must always be in proportion to its "liberal" and democratic character. The question as to how far it might be appropriate to the existing conditions and to the character of the people, and as to whether it might not, though admirable in itself, be too expensive for the work to be performed, was little thought of. Any organisation which rested on "the elective principle," and provided an arena for free public discussion, was sure to be well received, and these conditions were fulfilled by the Zemstvo. The expectations excited were of various kinds. People who thought more of political than economic progress saw in the Zemstvo the basis of boundless popular liberty. Prince Yassiltchikof, for example, though naturally of a phlegmatic temperament, became for a moment enthusiastic, and penned the following words: "With a daring unparalleled in the chronicles of the world, we have entered on the career of public life." If local self-government in England had, in spite of its aristocratic character, created and preserved political liberty, as had been proved by several learned Germans, what might be expected from institutions so much more liberal and democratic? In England there had never been county parliaments, and the local administration had always been in the hands of the great land-owners; whilst in Russia every district would have its elective assembly, in which the peasant would be on a level with the richest landed proprietors. People who were accustomed to think of social rather than political progress expected that they would soon see the country provided with good roads, safe bridges, numerous village schools, well-appointed hospitals, and all the other requisites of civilisation. Agriculture would become more scientific, trade and industry would be rapidly developed, and the material, intellectual, and moral condition of the peasantry would be enormously improved. The listless apathy of provincial life and the hereditary indifference to local public affairs were now, it was thought, about to be dispelled; and in view of this change, patriotic mothers took their children to the annual assemblies in order to accustom them from their early years to take an interest in the public welfare. It is hardly necessary to say that these inordinate expectations were not realised. From the very beginning there had been a misunderstanding regarding the character and functions of the new institutions. During the short period of universal enthusiasm for reform the great officials had used incautiously some of the vague liberal phrases then in fashion, but they never seriously intended to confer on the child which they were bringing into the world a share in the general government of the country; and the rapid evaporation of their sentimental liberalism, which began as soon as they undertook practical reforms, made them less and less conciliatory. When the vigorous young child, therefore, showed a natural desire to go beyond the humble functions accorded to it, the stern parents proceeded to snub it and put it into its proper place. The first reprimand was administered publicly in the capital. The St. Petersburg Provincial Assembly, having shown a desire to play a political part, was promptly closed by the Minister of the Interior, and some of the members were exiled for a time to their homes in the country. This warning produced merely a momentary effect. As the functions of the Imperial Administration and of the Zemstvo had never been clearly defined, and as each was inclined to extend the sphere of its activity, friction became frequent. The Zemstvo had the right, for example, to co-operate in the development of education, but as soon as it organised primary schools and seminaries it came into contact with the Ministry of Public Instruction. In other departments similar conflicts occurred, and the tchinovniks came to suspect that the Zemstvo had the ambition to play the part of a parliamentary Opposition. This suspicion found formal expression in at least one secret official document, in which the writer declares that "the Opposition has built itself firmly a nest in the Zemstvo." Now, if we mean to be just to both parties in this little family quarrel, we must admit that the Zemstvo, as I shall explain in a future chapter, had ambitions of that kind, and it would have been better perhaps for the country at the present moment if it had been able to realise them. But this is a West-European idea. In Russia there is, and can be, no such thing as "His Majesty's Opposition." To the Russian official mind the three words seem to contain a logical contradiction. Opposition to officials, even within the limits of the law, is equivalent to opposition to the Autocratic Power, of which they are the incarnate emanations; and opposition to what they consider the interests of autocracy comes within measurable distance of high treason. It was considered necessary, therefore, to curb and suppress the ambitious tendencies of the wayward child, and accordingly it was placed more and more under the tutelage of the provincial Governors. To show how the change was effected, let me give an illustration. In the older arrangements the Governor could suspend the action of the Zemstvo only on the ground of its being illegal or ultra vires, and when there was an irreconcilable difference of opinion between the two parties the question was decided judicially by the Senate; under the more recent arrangements his Excellency can interpose his veto whenever he considers that a decision, though it may be perfectly legal, is not conducive to the public good, and differences of opinion are referred, not to the Senate, but to the Minister of the Interior, who is always naturally disposed to support the views of his subordinate. In order to put an end to all this insubordination, Count Tolstoy, the reactionary Minister of the Interior, prepared a scheme of reorganisation in accordance with his anti-liberal views, but he died before he could carry it out, and a much milder reorganisation was adopted in the law of 12th (24th) June, 1890. The principal changes introduced by that law were that the number of delegates in the Assemblies was reduced by about a fourth, and the relative strength of the different social classes was altered. Under the old law the Noblesse had about 42 per cent., and the peasantry about 38 per cent, of the seats; by the new electoral arrangements the former have 57 per cent, and the latter about 30. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the Assemblies are more conservative or more subservient on that account. Liberalism and insubordination are much more likely to be found among the nobles than among the peasants. In addition to all this, as there was an apprehension in the higher official spheres of St. Petersburg that the opposition spirit of the Zemstvo might find public expression in a printed form, the provincial Governors received extensive rights of preventive censure with regard to the publication of the minutes of Zemstvo Assemblies and similar documents. What the bureaucracy, in its zeal to defend the integrity of the Autocratic Power, feared most of all was combination for a common purpose on the part of the Zemstvos of different provinces. It vetoed, therefore, all such combinations, even for statistical purposes; and when it discovered, a few years ago, that leading members of the Zemstvo from all parts of the country were holding private meetings in Moscow for the ostensible purpose of discussing economic questions, it ordered them to return to their homes. Even within its proper sphere, as defined by law, the Zemstvo has not accomplished what was expected of it. The country has not been covered with a network of macadamised roads, and the bridges are by no means as safe as could be desired. Village schools and infirmaries are still far below the requirements of the population. Little or nothing has been done for the development of trade or manufactures; and the villages remain very much what they were under the old Administration. Meanwhile the local rates have been rising with alarming rapidity; and many people draw from all this the conclusion that the Zemstvo is a worthless institution which has increased the taxation without conferring any corresponding benefit on the country. If we take as our criterion in judging the institution the exaggerated expectations at first entertained, we may feel inclined to agree with this conclusion, but this is merely tantamount to saying that the Zemstvo has performed no miracles. Russia is much poorer and much less densely populated than the more advanced nations which she takes as her model. To suppose that she could at once create for herself by means of an administrative reform all the conveniences which those more advanced nations enjoy, was as absurd as it would be to imagine that a poor man can at once construct a magnificent palace because he has received from a wealthy neighbour the necessary architectural plans. Not only years but generations must pass before Russia can assume the appearance of Germany, France, or England. The metamorphosis may be accelerated or retarded by good government, but it could not be effected at once, even if the combined wisdom of all the philosophers and statesmen in Europe were employed in legislating for the purpose. The Zemstvo has, however, done much more than the majority of its critics admit. It fulfils tolerably well, without scandalous peculation and jobbery, its commonplace, every-day duties, and it has created a new and more equitable system of rating, by which landed proprietors and house-owners are made to bear their share of the public burdens. It has done a very great deal to provide medical aid and primary education for the common people, and it has improved wonderfully the condition of the hospitals, lunatic asylums, and other benevolent institutions committed to its charge. In its efforts to aid the peasantry it has helped to improve the native breeds of horses and cattle, and it has created a system of obligatory fire-insurance, together with means for preventing and extinguishing fires in the villages--a most important matter in a country where the peasants live in wooden houses and big fires are fearfully frequent. After neglecting for a good many years the essential question as to how the peasants' means of subsistence can be increased, it has latterly, as I have mentioned in a foregoing chapter, helped them to obtain improved agricultural implements and better seed, encouraged the formation of small credit associations and savings banks, and appointed agricultural inspectors to teach them how they may introduce modest improvements within their limited means.* At the same time, in many districts it has endeavoured to assist the home industries which are threatened with annihilation by the big factories, and whenever measures have been proposed for the benefit of the rural population, such as the lowering of the land-redemption payments and the creation of the Peasant Land Bank, it has invariably given them its cordial support. * The amount expended for these objects in 1897, the latest year for which I have statistical data, was about a million and a half of roubles, or, roughly speaking, 150,000 pounds, distributed under the following heads:--1. Agricultural tuition 41,100 pounds. 2. Experimental stations, museums, etc 19,800 3. Scientific agriculturists 17,400 4. Agricultural industries 26,700 5. Improving breeds of horses and cattle 45,300 ------- 150,300 pounds. If you ask a zealous member of the Zemstvo why it has not done more he will probably tell you that it is because its activity has been constantly restricted and counteracted by the Government. The Assemblies were obliged to accept as presidents the Marshals of Noblesse, many of whom were men of antiquated ideas and retrograde principles. At every turn the more enlightened, more active members found themselves opposed, thwarted, and finally checkmated by the Imperial officials. When a laudable attempt was made to tax trade and industry more equitably the scheme was vetoed, and consequently the mercantile class, sure of being always taxed at a ridiculously low maximum, have lost all interest in the proceedings. Even with regard to the rating of landed and house property a low limit is imposed by the Government, because it is afraid that if the rates were raised much it would not be able to collect the heavy Imperial taxation. The uncontrolled publicity which was at first enjoyed by the Assemblies was afterwards curtailed by the bureaucracy. Under such restrictions all free, vigorous action became impossible, and the institutions failed to effect what was reasonably anticipated. All this is true in a certain sense, but it is not the whole truth. If we examine some of the definite charges brought against the institution we shall understand better its real character. The most common complaint made against it is that it has enormously increased the rates. On that point there is no possibility of dispute. At first its expenditure in the thirty-four provinces in which it existed was under six millions of roubles; in two years (1868) it had jumped up to fifteen millions; in 1875 it was nearly twenty-eight millions, in 1885 over forty-three millions, and at the end of the century it had attained the respectable figure of 95,800,000 roubles. As each province had the right of taxing itself, the increase varied greatly in different provinces. In Smolensk, for example, it was only about thirty per cent., whilst in Samara it was 436, and in Viatka, where the peasant element predominates, no less than 1,262 per cent.! In order to meet this increase, the rates on land rose from under ten millions in 1868 to over forty-seven millions in 1900. No wonder that the landowners who find it difficult to work their estates at a profit should complain! Though this increase is disagreeable to the rate-payers, it does not follow that it is excessive. In all countries rates and local taxation are on the increase, and it is in the backward countries that they increase most rapidly. In France, for example, the average yearly increase has been 2.7 per cent., while in Austria it has been 5.59. In Russia it ought to have been more than in Austria, whereas it has been, in the provinces with Zemstvo institutions, only about 4 per cent. In comparison with the Imperial taxation the local does not seem excessive when compared with other countries. In England and Prussia, for instance, the State taxation as compared with the local is as a hundred to fifty-four and fifty-one, whilst in Russia it is as a hundred to sixteen.* A reduction in the taxation as a whole would certainly contribute to the material welfare of the rural population, but it is desirable that it should be made in the Imperial taxes rather than in the rates, because the latter may be regarded as something akin to productive investments, whilst the proceeds of the former are expended largely on objects which have little or nothing to do with the wants of the common people. In speaking thus I am assuming that the local expenditure is made judiciously, and this is a matter on which, I am bound to confess, there is by no means unanimity of opinion. * These figures are taken from the best available authorities, chiefly Schwanebach and Scalon, but I am not prepared to guarantee their accuracy. Hostile critics can point to facts which are, to say the least, strange and anomalous. Out of the total of its revenue the Zemstvo spends about twenty-eight per cent. under the heading of public health and benevolent institutions; and about fifteen per cent. for popular education, whilst it devotes only about six per cent. to roads and bridges, and until lately it neglected, as I have said above, the means for improving agriculture and directly increasing the income of the peasantry. Before passing sentence with regard to these charges we must remember the circumstances in which the Zemstvo was founded and has grown up. In the early times its members were well-meaning men who had had very little experience in administration or in practical life of any sort except the old routine in which they had previously vegetated. Most of them had lived enough in the country to know how much the peasants were in need of medical assistance of the most elementary kind, and to this matter they at once turned their attention. They tried to organise a system of doctors, hospital assistants, and dispensaries by which the peasant would not have to go more than fifteen or twenty miles to get a wound dressed or to have a consultation or to obtain a simple remedy for ordinary ailments. They felt the necessity, too, of thoroughly reorganising the hospitals and the lunatic asylums, which were in a very unsatisfactory condition. Plainly enough, there was here good work to be done. Then there were the higher aims. In the absence of practical experience there were enthusiasms and theories. Amongst these was the enthusiasm for education, and the theory that the want of it was the chief reason why Russia had remained so far behind the nations of Western Europe. Give us education, it was said, and all other good things will be added thereto. Liberate the Russian people from the bonds of ignorance as you have liberated it from the bonds of serfage, and its wonderful natural capacities will then be able to create everything that is required for its material, intellectual, and moral welfare. If there was any one among the leaders who took a more sober, prosaic view of things he was denounced as an ignoramus and a reactionary. Willingly or unwillingly, everybody had to swim with the current. Roads and bridges were not entirely neglected, but the efforts in that direction were confined to the absolutely indispensable. For such prosaic concerns there was no enthusiasm, and it was universally recognised that in Russia the construction of good roads, as the term is understood in Western Europe, was far beyond the resources of any Administration. Of the necessity for such roads few were conscious. All that was required was to make it possible to get from one place to another in ordinary weather and ordinary circumstances. If a stream was too deep to be forded, a bridge had to be built or a ferry had to be established; and if the approach to a bridge was so marshy or muddy that vehicles often sank quite up to the axles and had to be dragged out by ropes, with the assistance of the neighbouring villagers, repairs had to be made. Beyond this the efforts of the Zemstvo rarely went. Its road-building ambition remained within very modest bounds. As for the impoverishment of the peasantry and the necessity of improving their system of agriculture, that question had hardly appeared above the horizon. It might have to be dealt with in the future, but there was no need for hurry. Once the rural population were educated, the question would solve itself. It was not till about the year 1885 that it was recognised to be more urgent than had been supposed, and some Zemstvos perceived that the people might starve before its preparatory education was completed. Repeated famines pushed the lesson home, and the landed proprietors found their revenues diminished by the fall in the price of grain on the European markets. Thus was raised the cry: "Agriculture in Russia is on the decline! The country has entered on an acute economic crisis! If energetic measures be not taken promptly the people will soon find themselves confronted by starvation!" To this cry of alarm the Zemstvo was neither deaf nor indifferent. Recognising that the danger could be averted only by inducing the peasantry to adopt a more intensive system of agriculture, it directed more and more of its attention to agricultural improvements, and tried to get them adopted.* It did, in short, all it could, according to its lights and within the limits of its moderate resources. Its available resources were small, unfortunately, for it was forbidden by the Government to increase the rates, and it could not well dismiss doctors and close dispensaries and schools when the people were clamouring for more. So at least the defenders of the Zemstvo maintain, and they go so far as to contend that it did well not to grapple with the impoverishment of the peasantry at an earlier period, when the real conditions of the problem and the means of solving it were only very imperfectly known: if it had begun at that time it would have made great blunders and spent much money to little purpose. * Vide supra, p. 489. However this may be, it would certainly be unfair to condemn the Zemstvo for not being greatly in advance of public opinion. If it endeavours strenuously to supply all clearly recognised wants, that is all that can reasonably be expected of it. What it may be more justly reproached with is, in my opinion, that it is, to a certain extent, imbued with that unpractical, pedantic spirit which is commonly supposed to reside exclusively in the Imperial Administration. But here again it simply reflects public opinion and certain intellectual peculiarities of the educated classes. When a Russian begins to write on a simple everyday subject, he likes to connect it with general principles, philosophy, or history, and begins, perhaps, by expounding his views on the intellectual and social developments of humanity in general and of Russia in particular. If he has sufficient space at his disposal he may even tell you something about the early period of Russian history previous to the Mongol invasion before he gets to the simple matter in hand. In a previous chapter I have described the process of "shedding on a subject the light of science" in Imperial legislation.* In Zemstvo activity we often meet with pedantry of a similar kind. * Vide supra, p. 343. If this pedantry were confined to the writing of Reports it might not do much harm. Unfortunately, it often appears in the sphere of action. To illustrate this I take a recent instance from the province of Nizhni-Novgorod. The Zemstvo of that province received from the Central Government in 1895 a certain amount of capital for road-improvement, with instructions from the Ministry of Interior that it should classify the roads according to their relative importance and improve them accordingly. Any intelligent person well acquainted with the region might have made, in the course of a week or two, the required classification accurately enough for all practical purposes. Instead of adopting this simple procedure, what does the Zemstvo do? It chooses one of the eleven districts of which the province is composed and instructs its statistical department to describe all the villages with a view of determining the amount of traffic which each will probably contribute to the general movement, and then it verifies its a priori conclusions by means of a detachment of specially selected "registrars," posted at all the crossways during six days of each month. These registrars doubtless inscribed every peasant cart as it passed and made a rough estimate of the weight of its load. When this complicated and expensive procedure was completed for one district it was applied to another; but at the end of three years, before all the villages of this second district had been described and the traffic estimated, the energy of the statistical department seems to have flagged, and, like a young author impatient to see himself in print, it published a volume at the public expense which no one will ever read. The cost entailed by this procedure is not known, but we may form some idea of the amount of time required for the whole operation. It is a simple rule-of-three sum. If it took three years for the preparatory investigation of a district and a half, how many years will be required for eleven districts? More than twenty years! During that period it would seem that the roads are to remain as they are, and when the moment comes for improving them it will be found that, unless the province is condemned to economic stagnation, the "valuable statistical material" collected at such an expenditure of time and money is in great part antiquated and useless. The statistical department will be compelled, therefore, like another unfortunate Sisyphus, to begin the work anew, and it is difficult to see how the Zemstvo, unless it becomes a little more practical, is ever to get out of the vicious circle. In this case the evil result of pedantry was simply unnecessary delay, and in the meantime the capital was accumulating, unless the interest was entirely swallowed up by the statistical researches; but there are cases in which the consequences are more serious. Let me take an illustration from the enlightened province of Moscow. It was observed that certain villages were particularly unhealthy, and it was pointed out by a local doctor that the inhabitants were in the habit of using for domestic purposes the water of ponds which were in a filthy condition. What was evidently wanted was good wells, and a practical man would at once have taken measures to have them dug. Not so the District Zemstvo. It at once transformed the simple fact into a "question" requiring scientific investigation. A commission was appointed to study the problem, and after much deliberation it was decided to make a geological survey in order to ascertain the depth of good water throughout the district as a preparatory step towards preparing a project which will some day be discussed in the District Assembly, and perhaps in the Assembly of the province. Whilst all this is being done according to the strict principles of bureaucratic procedure, the unfortunate peasants for whose benefit the investigation was undertaken continue to drink the muddy water of the dirty ponds. Incidents of that kind, which I might multiply almost to any extent, remind one of the proverbial formalism of the Chinese; but between Chinese and Russian pedantry there is an essential difference. In the Middle Kingdom the sacrifice of practical considerations proceeds from an exaggerated veneration of the wisdom of ancestors; in the Empire of the Tsars it is due to an exaggerated adoration of the goddess Nauka (Science) and a habit of appealing to abstract principles and scientific methods when only a little plain common-sense is required. On one occasion, I remember, in a District Assembly of the province of Riazan, when the subject of primary schools was being discussed, an influential member started up, and proposed that an obligatory system of education should at once be introduced throughout the whole district. Strange to say, the motion was very nearly carried, though all the members present knew--or at least might have known if they had taken the trouble to inquire--that the actual number of schools would have to be multiplied twenty-fold, and all were agreed that the local rates must not be increased. To preserve his reputation for liberalism, the honourable member further proposed that, though the system should be obligatory, no fines, punishments, or other means of compulsion should be employed. How a system could be obligatory without using some means of compulsion, he did not condescend to explain. To get out of the difficulty one of his supporters suggested that the peasants who did not send their children to school should be excluded from serving as office-bearers in the Communes; but this proposition merely created a laugh, for many deputies knew that the peasants would regard this supposed punishment as a valuable privilege. And whilst this discussion about the necessity of introducing an ideal system of obligatory education was being carried on, the street before the windows of the room was covered with a stratum of mud nearly two feet in depth! The other streets were in a similar condition; and a large number of the members always arrived late, because it was almost impossible to come on foot, and there was only one public conveyance in the town. Many members had, fortunately, their private conveyances, but even in these locomotion was by no means easy. One day, in the principal thoroughfare, a member had his tarantass overturned, and he himself was thrown into the mud! It is hardly fair to compare the Zemstvo with the older institutions of a similar kind in Western Europe, and especially with our own local self-government. Our institutions have all grown out of real, practical wants keenly felt by a large section of the population. Cautious and conservative in all that concerns the public welfare, we regard change as a necessary evil, and put off the evil day as long as possible, even when convinced that it must inevitably come. Thus our administrative wants are always in advance of our means of satisfying them, and we use vigorously those means as soon as they are supplied. Our method of supplying the means, too, is peculiar. Instead of making a tabula rasa, and beginning from the foundations, we utilise to the utmost what we happen to possess, and add merely what is absolutely indispensable. Metaphorically speaking, we repair and extend our political edifice according to the changing necessities of our mode of life, without paying much attention to abstract principles or the contingencies of the distant future. The building may be an aesthetic monstrosity, belonging to no recognised style of architecture, and built in defiance of the principles laid down by philosophical art critics, but it is well adapted to our requirements, and every hole and corner of it is sure to be utilised. Very different has been the political history of Russia during the last two centuries. It may be briefly described as a series of revolutions effected peaceably by the Autocratic Power. Each young energetic sovereign has attempted to inaugurate a new epoch by thoroughly remodelling the Administration according to the most approved foreign political philosophy of the time. Institutions have not been allowed to grow spontaneously out of popular wants, but have been invented by bureaucratic theorists to satisfy wants of which the people were still unconscious. The administrative machine has therefore derived little or no motive force from the people, and has always been kept in motion by the unaided energy of the Central Government. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the repeated attempts of the Government to lighten the burdens of centralised administration by creating organs of local self-government should not have been very successful. The Zemstvo, it is true, offered better chances of success than any of its predecessors. A large portion of the nobles had become alive to the necessity of improving the administration, and the popular interest in public affairs was much greater than at any former period. Hence there was at first a period of enthusiasm, during which great preparations were made for future activity, and not a little was actually effected. The institution had all the charm of novelty, and the members felt that the eyes of the public were upon them. For a time all went well, and the Zemstvo was so well pleased with its own activity that the satirical journals compared it to Narcissus admiring his image reflected in the pool. But when the charm of novelty had passed and the public turned its attention to other matters, the spasmodic energy evaporated, and many of the most active members looked about for more lucrative employment. Such employment was easily found, for at that time there was an unusual demand for able, energetic, educated men. Several branches of the civil service were being reorganised, and railways, banks, and joint-stock companies were being rapidly multiplied. With these the Zemstvo had great difficulty in competing. It could not, like the Imperial service, offer pensions, decorations, and prospects of promotion, nor could it pay such large salaries as the commercial and industrial enterprises. In consequence of all this, the quality of the executive bureaux deteriorated at the same time as the public interest in the institution diminished. To be just to the Zemstvo, I must add that, with all its defects and errors, it is infinitely better than the institutions which it replaced. If we compare it with previous attempts to create local self-government, we must admit that the Russians have made great progress in their political education. What its future may be I do not venture to predict. From its infancy it has had, as we have seen, the ambition to play a great political part, and at the beginning of the recent stirring times in St. Petersburg its leading representatives in conclave assembled took upon themselves to express what they considered the national demand for liberal representative institutions. The desire, which had previously from time to time been expressed timidly and vaguely in loyal addresses to the Tsar, that a central Zemstvo Assembly, bearing the ancient title of Zemski Sobor, should be convoked in the capital and endowed with political functions, was now put forward by the representatives in plain unvarnished form. Whether this desire is destined to be realised time will show. CHAPTER XXXIII THE NEW LAW COURTS Judicial Procedure in the Olden Times--Defects and Abuses--Radical Reform--The New System--Justices of the Peace and Monthly Sessions--The Regular Tribunals--Court of Revision--Modification of the Original Plan--How Does the System Work?--Rapid Acclimatisation--The Bench--The Jury--Acquittal of Criminals Who Confess Their Crimes--Peasants, Merchants, and Nobles as Jurymen--Independence and Political Significance of the New Courts. After serf-emancipation and local self-government, the subject which demanded most urgently the attention of reformers was the judicial organisation, which had sunk to a depth of inefficiency and corruption difficult to describe. In early times the dispensation of justice in Russia, as in other States of a primitive type, had a thoroughly popular character. The State was still in its infancy, and the duty of defending the person, the property, and the rights of individuals lay, of necessity, chiefly on the individuals themselves. Self-help formed the basis of the judicial procedure, and the State merely assisted the individual to protect his rights and to avenge himself on those who voluntarily infringed them. By the rapid development of the Autocratic Power all this was changed. Autocracy endeavoured to drive and regulate the social machine by its own unaided force, and regarded with suspicion and jealousy all spontaneous action in the people. The dispensation of justice was accordingly appropriated by the central authority, absorbed into the Administration, and withdrawn from public control. Themis retired from the market-place, shut herself up in a dark room from which the contending parties and the public gaze were rigorously excluded, surrounded herself with secretaries and scribes who put the rights and claims of the litigants into whatever form they thought proper, weighed according to her own judgment the arguments presented to her by her own servants, and came forth from her seclusion merely to present a ready-made decision or to punish the accused whom she considered guilty. This change, though perhaps to some extent necessary, was attended with very bad consequences. Freed from the control of the contending parties and of the public, the courts acted as uncontrolled human nature generally does. Injustice, extortion, bribery, and corruption assumed gigantic proportions, and against these evils the Government found no better remedy than a system of complicated formalities and ingenious checks. The judicial functionaries were hedged in by a multitude of regulations, so numerous and complicated that it seemed impossible for even the most unjust judge to swerve from the path of uprightness. Explicit, minute rules were laid down for investigating facts and weighing evidence; every scrap of evidence and every legal ground on which the decision was based were committed to writing; every act in the complicated process of coming to a decision was made the subject of a formal document, and duly entered in various registers; every document and register had to be signed and countersigned by various officials who were supposed to control each other; every decision might be carried to a higher court and made to pass a second time through the bureaucratic machine. In a word, the legislature introduced a system of formal written procedure of the most complicated kind, in the belief that by this means mistakes and dishonesty would be rendered impossible. It may be reasonably doubted whether this system of judicial administration can anywhere give satisfactory results. It is everywhere found by experience that in tribunals from which the healthy atmosphere of publicity is excluded justice languishes, and a great many ugly plants shoot up with wonderful vitality. Languid indifference, an indiscriminating spirit of routine, and unblushing dishonesty invariably creep in through the little chinks and crevices of the barrier raised against them, and no method of hermetically sealing these chinks and crevices has yet been invented. The attempt to close them up by increasing the formalities and multiplying the courts of appeal and revision merely adds to the tediousness of the procedure, and withdraws the whole process still more completely from public control. At the same time the absence of free discussion between the contending parties renders the task of the judge enormously difficult. If the system is to succeed at all, it must provide a body of able, intelligent, thoroughly-trained jurists, and must place them beyond the reach of bribery and other forms of corruption. In Russia neither of these conditions was fulfilled. Instead of endeavouring to create a body of well-trained jurists, the Government went further and further in the direction of letting the judges be chosen for a short period by popular election from among men who had never received a juridical education, or a fair education of any kind; whilst the place of judge was so poorly paid, and stood so low in public estimation, that the temptations to dishonesty were difficult to resist. The practice of choosing the judges by popular election was an attempt to restore to the courts something of their old popular character; but it did not succeed, for very obvious reasons. Popular election in a judicial organisation is useful only when the courts are public and the procedure simple; on the contrary, it is positively prejudicial when the procedure is in writing and extremely complicated. And so it proved in Russia. The elected judges, unprepared for their work, and liable to be changed at short intervals, rarely acquired a knowledge of law or procedure. They were for the most part poor, indolent landed proprietors, who did little more than sign the decisions prepared for them by the permanent officials. Even when a judge happened to have some legal knowledge he found small scope for its application, for he rarely, if ever, examined personally the materials out of which a decision was to be elaborated. The whole of the preliminary work, which was in reality the most important, was performed by minor officials under the direction of the secretary of the court. In criminal cases, for instance, the secretary examined the written evidence--all evidence was taken down in writing--extracted what he considered the essential points, arranged them as he thought proper, quoted the laws which ought in his opinion to be applied, put all this into a report, and read the report to the judges. Of course the judges, if they had no personal interest in the decision, accepted the secretary's view of the case. If they did not, all the preliminary work had to be done anew by themselves--a task that few judges were able, and still fewer willing, to perform. Thus the decision lay virtually in the hands of the secretary and the minor officials, and in general neither the secretary nor the minor officials were fit persons to have such power. There is no need to detail here the ingenious expedients by which they increased their meagre salaries, and how they generally contrived to extract money from both parties.* Suffice it to say that in general the chancelleries of the courts were dens of pettifogging rascality, and the habitual, unblushing bribery had a negative as well as a positive effect. If a person accused of some crime had no money wherewith to grease the palm of the secretary he might remain in prison for years without being brought to trial. A well-known Russian writer still living relates that when visiting a prison in the province of Nizhni-Novgorod he found among the inmates undergoing preliminary arrest two peasant women, who were accused of setting fire to a hayrick to revenge themselves on a landed proprietor, a crime for which the legal punishment was from four to eight months' imprisonment. One of them had a son of seven years of age, and the other a son of twelve, both of whom had been born in the prison, and had lived there ever since among the criminals. Such a long preliminary arrest caused no surprise or indignation among those who heard of it, because it was quite a common occurrence. Every one knew that bribes were taken not only by the secretary and his scribes, but also by the judges, who were elected by the local Noblesse from its own ranks. * Old book-catalogues sometimes mention a play bearing the significant title, "The Unheard-of Wonder; or, The Honest Secretary" (Neslykhannoe Dyelo ili Tchestny Sekretar). I have never seen this curious production, but I have no doubt that it referred to the peculiarities of the old judicial procedure. With regard to the scale of punishments, notwithstanding some humanitarian principles in the legislation, they were very severe, and corporal punishment played amongst them a disagreeably prominent part. Capital sentences were abolished as early as 1753-54, but castigation with the knout, which often ended fatally, continued until 1845, when it was replaced by flogging in the civil administration, though retained for the military and for insubordinate convicts. For the non-privileged classes the knout or the lash supplemented nearly all punishments of a criminal kind. When a man was condemned, for example, to penal servitude, he received publicly from thirty to one hundred lashes, and was then branded on the forehead and cheeks with the letters K. A. T.--the first three letters of katorzhnik (convict). If he appealed he received his lashes all the same, and if his appeal was rejected by the Senate he received some more castigation for having troubled unnecessarily the higher judicial authorities. For the military and insubordinate convicts there was a barbarous punishment called Spitsruten, to the extent of 5,000 or 6,000 blows, which often ended in the death of the unfortunate. The use of torture in criminal investigations was formally abolished in 1801, but if we may believe the testimony of a public prosecutor, it was occasionally used in Moscow as late as 1850. The defects and abuses of the old system were so flagrant that they became known even to the Emperor Nicholas I., and caused him momentary indignation, but he never attempted seriously to root them out. In 1844, for example, he heard of some gross abuses in a tribunal not far from the Winter Palace, and ordered an investigation. Baron Korff, to whom the investigation was entrusted, brought to light what he called "a yawning abyss of all possible horrors, which have been accumulating for years," and his Majesty, after reading the report, wrote upon it with his own hand: "Unheard-of disgrace! The carelessness of the authority immediately concerned is incredible and unpardonable. I feel ashamed and sad that such disorder could exist almost under my eyes and remain unknown to me." Unfortunately the outburst of Imperial indignation did not last long enough to produce any desirable consequences. The only result was that one member of the tribunal was dismissed from the service, and the Governor-General of St. Petersburg had to resign, but the latter subsequently received an honorary reward, and the Emperor remarked that he was himself to blame for having kept the Governor-General so long at his post. When his Majesty's habitual optimism happened to be troubled by incidents of this sort he probably consoled himself with remembering that he had ordered some preparatory work, by which the administration of justice might be improved, and this work was being diligently carried out in the legislative section of his own chancery by Count Bludof, one of the ablest Russian lawyers of his time. Unfortunately the existing state of things was not thereby improved, because the preparatory work was not of the kind that was wanted. On the assumption that any evil which might exist could be removed by improving the laws, Count Bludof devoted his efforts almost entirely to codification. In reality what was required was to change radically the organisation of the courts and the procedure, and above all to let in on their proceedings the cleansing atmosphere of publicity. This the Emperor Nicholas could not understand, and if he had understood it he could not have brought himself to adopt the appropriate remedies, because radical reform and control of officials by public opinion were his two pet bugbears. Very different was his son and successor, Alexander II., in the first years of his reign. In his accession manifesto a prominent place was given to his desire that justice and mercy should reign in the courts of law. Referring to these words in a later manifesto, he explained his wishes more fully as "the desire to establish in Russia expeditious, just, merciful, impartial courts of justice for all our subjects; to raise the judicial authority; to give it the proper independence, and in general to implant in the people that respect for the law which ought to be the constant guide of all and every one from the highest to the lowest." These were not mere vain words. Peremptory orders had been given that the great work should be undertaken without delay, and when the Emancipation question was being discussed in the Provincial Committees, the Council of State examined the question of judicial reform "from the historical, the theoretical, and the practical point of view," and came to the conclusion that the existing organisation must be completely transformed. The commission appointed to consider this important matter filed a lengthy indictment against the existing system, and pointed out no less than twenty-five radical defects. To remove these it proposed that the judicial organisation should be completely separated from all other branches of the Administration; that the most ample publicity, with trial by jury in criminal cases, should be introduced into the tribunals; that Justice of Peace Courts should be created for petty affairs; and that the procedure in the ordinary courts should be greatly simplified. These fundamental principles were published by Imperial command on September 29th, 1862--a year and a half after the publication of the Emancipation Manifesto--and on November 20th, 1864, the new legislation founded on these principles received the Imperial sanction. Like most institutions erected on a tabula rasa, the new system is at once simple and symmetrical. As a whole, the architecture of the edifice is decidedly French, but here and there we may detect unmistakable symptoms of English influence. It is not, however, a servile copy of any older edifice; and it may be fairly said that, though every individual part has been fashioned according to a foreign model, the whole has a certain originality. The lower part of the building in its original form was composed of two great sections, distinct from, and independent of, each other--on the one hand the Justice of Peace Courts, and on the other the Regular Tribunals. Both sections contained an Ordinary Court and a Court of Appeal. The upper part of the building, covering equally both sections, was the Senate as Supreme Court of Revision (Cour de Cassation). The distinctive character of the two independent sections may be detected at a glance. The function of the Justice of Peace Courts is to decide petty cases that involve no abstruse legal principles, and to settle, if possible by conciliation, those petty conflicts and disputes which arise naturally in the relations of everyday life; the function of the Regular Tribunals is to take cognisance of those graver affairs in which the fortune or honour of individuals or families is more or less implicated, or in which the public tranquillity is seriously endangered. The two kinds of courts were organised in accordance with these intended functions. In the former the procedure is simple and conciliatory, the jurisdiction is confined to cases of little importance, and the judges were at first chosen by popular election, generally from among the local inhabitants. In the latter there is more of "the pomp and majesty of the law." The procedure is more strict and formal, the jurisdiction is unlimited with regard to the importance of the cases, and the judges are trained jurists nominated by the Emperor. The Justice of Peace Courts received jurisdiction over all obligations and civil injuries in which the sum at stake was not more than 500 roubles--about 50 pounds--and all criminal affairs in which the legal punishment did not exceed 300 roubles--about 30 pounds--or one year of punishment. When any one had a complaint to make, he might go to the Justice of the Peace (Mirovoi Sudya) and explain the affair orally, or in writing, without observing any formalities; and if the complaint seemed well founded, the Justice at once fixed a day for hearing the case, and gave the other party notice to appear at the appointed time. When the time appointed arrived, the affair was discussed publicly and orally, either by the parties themselves, or by any representatives whom they might appoint. If it was a civil suit, the Justice began by proposing to the parties to terminate it at once by a compromise, and indicated what he considered a fair arrangement. Many affairs were terminated in this simple way. If, however, either of the parties refused to consent to a compromise, the matter was fully discussed, and the Justice gave a formal written decision, containing the grounds on which it was based. In criminal cases the amount of punishment was always determined by reference to a special Criminal Code. If the sum at issue exceeded thirty roubles--about 3 pounds--or if the punishment exceeded a fine of fifteen roubles--about 30s.--or three days of arrest, an appeal might be made to the Assembly of Justices (Mirovoi Syezd). This is a point in which English rather than French institutions were taken as a model. According to the French system, all appeals from a Juge de Paix are made to the "Tribunal d'Arrondissement," and the Justice of Peace Courts are thereby subordinated to the Regular Tribunals. According to the English system, certain cases may be carried on appeal from the Justice of the Peace to the Quarter Sessions. This latter principle was adopted and greatly developed by the Russian legislation. The Monthly Sessions, composed of all the Justices of the District (uyezd), considered appeals against the decisions of the individual Justices. The procedure was simple and informal, as in the lower court, but an assistant of the Procureur was always present. This functionary gave his opinion in some civil and in all criminal cases immediately after the debate, and the Court took his opinion into consideration in framing its judgment. In the other great section of the judicial organisation--the Regular Tribunals--there are likewise Ordinary Courts and Courts of Appeal, called respectively "Tribunaux d'Arrondissement" (Okruzhniye Sudy) and "Palais de Justice" (Sudebniya Palaty). Each Ordinary Court has jurisdiction over several Districts (uyezdy), and the jurisdiction of each Court of Appeals comprehends several Provinces. All civil cases are subject to appeal, however small the sum at stake may be, but criminal cases are decided FINALLY by the lower court with the aid of a jury. Thus in criminal affairs the "Palais de Justice" is not at all a court of appeal, but as no regular criminal prosecution can be raised without its formal consent, it controls in some measure the action of the lower courts. As the general reader cannot be supposed to take an interest in the details of civil procedure, I shall merely say on this subject that in both sections of the Regular Tribunals the cases are always tried by at least three judges, the sittings are public, and oral debates by officially recognised advocates form an important part of the proceedings. I venture, however, to speak a little more at length regarding the change which has been made in the criminal procedure--a subject that is less technical and more interesting for the uninitiated. Down to the time of the recent judicial reforms the procedure in criminal cases was secret and inquisitorial. The accused had little opportunity of defending himself, but, on the other hand, the State took endless formal precautions against condemning the innocent. The practical consequence of this system was that an innocent man might remain for years in prison until the authorities convinced themselves of his innocence, whilst a clever criminal might indefinitely postpone his condemnation. In studying the history of criminal procedure in foreign countries, those who were entrusted with the task of preparing projects of reform found that nearly every country of Europe had experienced the evils from which Russia was suffering, and that one country after another had come to the conviction that the most efficient means of removing these evils was to replace the inquisitorial by litigious procedure, to give a fair field and no favour to the prosecutor and the accused, and allow them to fight out their battle with whatever legal weapons they might think fit. Further, it was discovered that, according to the most competent foreign authorities, it was well in this modern form of judicial combat to leave the decision to a jury of respectable citizens. The steps which Russia had to take were thus clearly marked out by the experience of other nations, and it was decided that they should be taken at once. The organs for the prosecution of supposed criminals were carefully separated from the judges on the one hand, and from the police on the other; oral discussions between the Public Prosecutor and the prisoner's counsel, together with oral examination and cross-questioning of witnesses, were introduced into the procedure; and the jury was made an essential factor in criminal trials. When a case, whether civil or criminal, has been decided in the Regular Tribunals, there is no possibility of appeal in the strict sense of the term, but an application may be made for a revision of the case on the ground of technical informality. To use the French terms, there cannot be appel, but there may be cassation. If there has been any omission or transgression of essential legal formalities, or if the Court has overstepped the bounds of its legal authority, the injured party may make an application to have the case revised and tried again.* This is not, according to French juridical conceptions, an appeal. The Court of Revision** (Cour de Cassation) does not enter into the material facts of the case, but merely decides the question as to whether the essential formalities have been duly observed, and as to whether the law has been properly interpreted and applied; and if it be found on examination that there is some ground for invalidating the decision, it does not decide the case. According to the new Russian system, the sole Court of Revision is the Senate. * This is the procedure referred to by Karl Karl'itch, vide supra, p 37. ** I am quite aware that the term "Court of Revision" is equivocal, but I have no better term to propose, and I hope the above explanations will prevent confusion. The Senate thus forms the regulator of the whole judicial system, but its action is merely regulative. It takes cognisance only of what is presented to it, and supplies to the machine no motive power. If any of the lower courts should work slowly or cease to work altogether, the Senate might remain ignorant of the fact, and certainly could take no official notice of it. It was considered necessary, therefore, to supplement the spontaneous vitality of the lower courts, and for this purpose was created a special centralised judicial administration, at the head of which was placed the Minister of Justice. The Minister is "Procureur-General," and has subordinates in all the courts. The primary function of this administration is to preserve the force of the law, to detect and repair all infractions of judicial order, to defend the interests of the State and of those persons who are officially recognised as incapable of taking charge of their own affairs, and to act in criminal matters as Public Prosecutor. Viewed as a whole, and from a little distance, this grand judicial edifice seems perfectly symmetrical, but a closer and more minute inspection brings to light unmistakable indications of a change of plan during the process of construction. Though the work lasted only about half-a-dozen years, the style of the upper differs from the style of the lower parts, precisely as in those Gothic cathedrals which grew up slowly during the course of centuries. And there is nothing here that need surprise us, for a considerable change took place in the opinions of the official world during that short period. The reform was conceived at a time of uncritical enthusiasm for advanced liberal ideas, of boundless faith in the dictates of science, of unquestioning reliance on public spirit, public control, and public honesty--a time in which it was believed that the public would spontaneously do everything necessary for the common weal, if it were only freed from the administrative swaddling-clothes in which it had been hitherto bound. Still smarting from the severe regime of Nicholas, men thought more about protecting the rights of the individual than about preserving public order, and under the influence of the socialistic ideas in vogue malefactors were regarded as the unfortunate, involuntary victims of social inequality and injustice. Towards the end of the period in question all this had begun to change. Many were beginning to perceive that liberty might easily turn to license, that the spontaneous public energy was largely expended in empty words, and that a certain amount of hierarchical discipline was necessary in order to keep the public administration in motion. It was found, therefore, in 1864, that it was impossible to carry out to their ultimate consequences the general principles laid down and published in 1862. Even in those parts of the legislation which were actually put in force, it was found necessary to make modifications in an indirect, covert way. Of these, one may be cited by way of illustration. In 1860 criminal inquiries were taken out of the hands of the police and transferred to Juges d'instruction (Sudebniye Sledovateli), who were almost entirely independent of the Public Prosecutor, and could not be removed unless condemned for some legal transgression by a Regular Tribunal. This reform created at first much rejoicing and great expectations, because it raised a barrier against the tyranny of the police and against the arbitrary power of the higher officials. But very soon the defects of the system became apparent. Many Juges d'instruction, feeling themselves independent, and knowing that they would not be prosecuted except for some flagrantly illegal act, gave way to indolence, and spent their time in inactivity.* In such cases it was always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to procure a condemnation--for indolence must assume gigantic proportions in order to become a crime--and the minister had to adopt the practice of appointing, without Imperial confirmation, temporary Juges d'instruction whom he could remove at pleasure. * A flagrant case of this kind came under my own observation. It is unnecessary, however, to enter into these theoretical defects. The important question for the general public is: How do the institutions work in the local conditions in which they are placed? This is a question which has an interest not only for Russians, but for all students of social science, for it tends to throw light on the difficult subject as to how far institutions may be successfully transplanted to a foreign soil. Many thinkers hold, and not without reason, that no institution can work well unless it is the natural product of previous historical development. Now we have here an opportunity of testing this theory by experience; we have even what Bacon terms an experimentum crucis. This new judicial system is an artificial creation constructed in accordance with principles laid down by foreign jurists. All that the elaborators of the project said about developing old institutions was mere talk. In reality they made a tabula rasa of the existing organisation. If the introduction of public oral procedure and trial by jury was a return to ancient customs, it was a return to what had been long since forgotten by all except antiquarian specialists, and no serious attempt was made to develop what actually existed. One form, indeed, of oral procedure had been preserved in the Code, but it had fallen completely into disuse, and seems to have been overlooked by the elaborators of the new system.* * I refer to the so-called Sud po forme established by an ukaz of Peter the Great, in 1723. I was much astonished when I accidentally stumbled upon it in the Code. Having in general little confidence in institutions which spring ready-made from the brains of autocratic legislators, I expected to find that this new judicial organisation, which looks so well on paper, was well-nigh worthless in reality. Observation, however, has not confirmed my pessimistic expectations. On the contrary, I have found that these new institutions, though they have not yet had time to strike deep root, and are very far from being perfect even in the human sense of the term, work on the whole remarkably well, and have already conferred immense benefit on the country. In the course of a few years the Justice of Peace Courts, which may perhaps be called the newest part of the new institutions, became thoroughly acclimatised, as if they had existed for generations. As soon as they were opened they became extremely popular. In Moscow the authorities had calculated that under the new system the number of cases would be more than doubled, and that on an average each justice would have nearly a thousand cases brought before him in the course of the year. The reality far exceeded their expectations: each justice had on an average 2,800 cases. In St. Petersburg and the other large towns the amount of work which the justices had to get through was equally great. To understand the popularity of the Justice of Peace Courts, we must know something of the old police courts which they supplanted. The nobles, the military, and the small officials had always looked on the police with contempt, because their position secured them against interference, and the merchants acquired a similar immunity by submitting to blackmail, which often took the form of a fixed subsidy; but the lower classes in town and country stood, in fear of the humblest policeman, and did not dare to complain of him to his superiors. If two workmen brought their differences before a police court, instead of getting their case decided on grounds of equity, they were pretty sure to get scolded in language unfit for ears polite, or to receive still worse treatment. Even among the higher officers of the force many became famous for their brutality. A Gorodnitchi of the town of Tcherkassy, for example, made for himself in this respect a considerable reputation. If any humble individual ventured to offer an objection to him, he had at once recourse to his fists, and any reference to the law put him into a state of frenzy. "The town," he was wont to say on such occasions, "has been entrusted to me by his Majesty, and you dare to talk to me of the law? There is the law for you!"--the remark being accompanied with a blow. Another officer of the same type, long resident in Kief, had a somewhat different method of maintaining order. He habitually drove about the town with a Cossack escort, and when any one of the lower classes had the misfortune to displease him, he ordered one of his Cossacks to apply a little corporal punishment on the spot without any legal formalities. In the Justice of Peace Courts things were conducted in a very different style. The justice, always scrupulously polite without distinction of persons, listened patiently to the complaint, tried to arrange the affairs amicably, and when his efforts failed, gave his decision at once according to law and common-sense. No attention was paid to rank or social position. A general who would not attend to the police regulations was fined like an ordinary workingman, and in a dispute between a great dignitary and a man of the people the two were treated in precisely the same way. No wonder such courts became popular among the masses; and their popularity was increased when it became known that the affairs were disposed of expeditiously, without unnecessary formalities and without any bribes or blackmail. Many peasants regarded the justice as they had been wont to regard kindly proprietors of the old patriarchal type, and brought their griefs and sorrows to him in the hope that he would somehow alleviate them. Often they submitted most intimate domestic and matrimonial concerns of which no court could possibly take cognisance, and sometimes they demanded the fulfilment of contracts which were in flagrant contradiction not only with the written law, but also with ordinary morality.* * Many curious instances of this have come to my knowledge, but they are of such a kind that they cannot be quoted in a work intended for the general public. Of course, the courts were not entirely without blemishes. In the matter, for example, of making no distinction of persons some of the early justices, in seeking to avoid Scylla, came dangerously near to Charybdis. Imagining that their mission was to eradicate the conceptions and habits which had been created and fostered by serfage, they sometimes used their authority for giving lessons in philanthropic liberalism, and took a malicious delight in wounding the susceptibilities, and occasionally even the material interests, of those whom they regarded as enemies to the good cause. In disputes between master and servant, or between employer and workmen, the justice of this type considered it his duty to resist the tyranny of capital, and was apt to forget his official character of judge in his assumed character of social reformer. Happily these aberrations on the part of the justices are already things of the past, but they helped to bring about a reaction, as we shall see presently. The extreme popularity of the Justice of Peace Courts did not last very long. Their history resembled that of the Zemstvo and many other new institutions in Russia--at first, enthusiasm and inordinate expectations; then consciousness of defects and practical inconveniences; and, lastly, in an influential section of the public, the pessimism of shattered illusions, accompanied by the adoption of a reactionary policy on the part of the Government. The discontent appeared first among the so-called privileged classes. To people who had all their lives enjoyed great social consideration it seemed monstrous that they should be treated exactly in the same way as the muzhik; and when a general who was accustomed to be addressed as "Your Excellency," was accused of using abusive language to his cook, and found himself seated on the same bench with the menial, he naturally supposed that the end of all things was at hand; or perhaps a great civil official, who was accustomed to regard the police as created merely for the lower classes, suddenly found himself, to his inexpressible astonishment, fined for a contravention of police regulations! Naturally the justices were accused of dangerous revolutionary tendencies, and when they happened to bring to light some injustice on the part of the tchinovnik they were severely condemned for undermining the prestige of the Imperial authority. For a time the accusations provoked merely a smile or a caustic remark among the Liberals, but about the middle of the eighties criticisms began to appear even in the Liberal Press. No very grave allegations were made, but defects in the system and miscarriages of justice were put forward and severely commented upon. Occasionally it happened that a justice was indolent, or that at the Sessions in a small country town it was impossible to form a quorum on the appointed day. Overlooking the good features of the institution and the good services rendered by it, the critics began to propose partial reorganisation in the sense of greater control by central authorities. It was suggested, for example, that the President of Sessions should be appointed by the Government, that the justices should be subordinated to the Regular Tribunals, and that the principle of election by the Zemstvo should be abolished. These complaints were not at all unwelcome to the Government, because it had embarked on a reactionary policy, and in 1889 it suddenly granted to the critics a great deal more than they desired. In the rural districts of Central Russia the justices were replaced by the rural supervisors, of whom I have spoken in a previous chapter, and the part of their functions which could not well be entrusted to those new officials was transferred to judges of the Regular Courts. In some of the larger towns and in the rural districts of outlying provinces the justices were preserved, but instead of being elected by the Zemstvo they were nominated by the Government. The regular Tribunals likewise became acclimatised in an incredibly short space of time. The first judges were not by any means profound jurists, and were too often deficient in that dispassionate calmness which we are accustomed to associate with the Bench; but they were at least honest, educated men, and generally possessed a fair knowledge of the law. Their defects were due to the fact that the demand for trained jurists far exceeded the supply, and the Government was forced to nominate men who under ordinary circumstances would never have thought of presenting themselves as candidates. At the beginning of 1870, in the 32 "Tribunaux d'Arrondissement" which then existed, there were 227 judges, of whom 44 had never received a juridical education. Even the presidents had not all passed through a school of law. Of course the courts could not become thoroughly effective until all the judges were men who had received a good special education and had a practical acquaintance with judicial matters. This has now been effected, and the present generation of judges are better prepared and more capable than their predecessors. On the score of probity I have never heard any complaints. Of all the judicial innovations, perhaps the most interesting is the jury. At the time of the reforms the introduction of the jury into the judicial organisation awakened among the educated classes a great amount of sentimental enthusiasm. The institution had the reputation of being "liberal," and was known to be approved of by the latest authorities in criminal jurisprudence. This was sufficient to insure it a favourable reception, and to excite most exaggerated expectations as to its beneficent influence. Ten years of experience somewhat cooled this enthusiasm, and voices might be heard declaring that the introduction of the jury was a mistake. The Russian people, it was held, was not yet ripe for such an institution, and numerous anecdotes were related in support of this opinion. One jury, for instance, was said to have returned a verdict of "NOT guilty with extenuating circumstances"; and another, being unable to come to a decision, was reported to have cast lots before an Icon, and to have given a verdict in accordance with the result! Besides this, juries often gave a verdict of "not guilty" when the accused made a full and formal confession to the court. How far the comic anecdotes are true I do not undertake to decide, but I venture to assert that such incidents, if they really occur, are too few to form the basis of a serious indictment. The fact, however, that juries often acquit prisoners who openly confess their crime is beyond all possibility of doubt. To most Englishmen this fact will probably seem sufficient to prove that the introduction of the institution was at least premature, but before adopting this sweeping conclusion it will be well to examine the phenomenon a little more closely in connection with Russian criminal procedure as a whole. In England the Bench is allowed very great latitude in fixing the amount of punishment. The jury can therefore confine themselves to the question of fact and leave to the judge the appreciation of extenuating circumstances. In Russia the position of the jury is different. The Russian criminal law fixes minutely the punishment for each category of crimes, and leaves almost no latitude to the judge. The jury know that if they give a verdict of guilty, the prisoner will inevitably be punished according to the Code. Now the Code, borrowed in great part from foreign legislation, is founded on conceptions very different from those of the Russian people, and in many cases it attaches heavy penalties to acts which the ordinary Russian is wont to regard as mere peccadilloes, or positively justifiable. Even in those matters in which the Code is in harmony with the popular morality, there are many exceptional cases in which summum jus is really summa injuria. Suppose, for instance--as actually happened in a case which came under my notice--that a fire breaks out in a village, and that the Village Elder, driven out of patience by the apathy and laziness of some of his young fellow-villagers, oversteps the limits of his authority as defined by law, and accompanies his reproaches and exhortations with a few lusty blows. Surely such a man is not guilty of a very heinous crime--certainly he is not in the opinion of the peasantry--and yet if he be prosecuted and convicted he inevitably falls into the jaws of an article of the Code which condemns to transportation for a long term of years. In such cases what is the jury to do? In England they might safely give a verdict of guilty, and leave the judge to take into consideration all the extenuating circumstances; but in Russia they cannot act in this way, for they know that the judge must condemn the prisoner according to the Criminal Code. There remains, therefore, but one issue out of the difficulty--a verdict of acquittal; and Russian juries--to their honour be it said--generally adopt this alternative. Thus the jury, in those cases in which it is most severely condemned, provides a corrective for the injustice of the criminal legislation. Occasionally, it is true, they go a little too far in this direction and arrogate to themselves a right of pardon, but cases of that kind are, I believe, very rare. I know of only one well-authenticated instance. The prisoner had been proved guilty of a serious crime, but it happened to be the eve of a great religious festival, and the jury thought that in pardoning the prisoner and giving a verdict of acquittal they would be acting as good Christians! The legislation regards, of course, this practice as an abuse, and has tried to prevent it by concealing as far as possible from the jury the punishment that awaits the accused if he be condemned. For this purpose it forbids the counsel for the prisoner to inform the jury what punishment is prescribed by the Code for the crime in question. This ingenious device not only fails in its object, but has sometimes a directly opposite effect. Not knowing what the punishment will be, and fearing that it may be out of all proportion to the crime, the jury sometimes acquit a criminal whom they would condemn if they knew what punishment would be inflicted. And when a jury is, as it were, entrapped, and finds that the punishment is more severe than it supposed, it can take its revenge in the succeeding cases. I know at least of one instance of this kind. A jury convicted a prisoner of an offence which it regarded as very trivial, but which in reality entailed, according to the Code, seven years of penal servitude! So surprised and frightened were the jurymen by this unexpected consequence of their verdict, that they obstinately acquitted, in the face of the most convincing evidence, all the other prisoners brought before them. The most famous case of acquital when there was no conceivable doubt as to the guilt of the accused was that of Vera Zasulitch, who shot General Trepof, Prefect of St. Petersburg; but the circumstances were so peculiar that they will hardly support any general conclusion. I happened to be present, and watched the proceedings closely. Vera Zasulitch, a young woman who had for some time taken part in the revolutionary movement, heard that a young revolutionist called Bogoliubof, imprisoned in St. Petersburg, had been flogged by orders of General Trepof,* and though she did not know the victim personally she determined to avenge the indignity to which he had been subjected. With this intention she appeared at the Prefecture, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting a petition, and when she found herself in the presence of the Prefect she fired a revolver at him, wounding him seriously, but not mortally. At the trial the main facts were not disputed, and yet the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. This unexpected result was due, I believe, partly to a desire to make a little political demonstration, and partly to a strong suspicion that the prison authorities, in carrying out the Prefect's orders, had acted in summary fashion without observing the tedious formalities prescribed by the law. Certainly one of the prison officials, when under cross-examination, made on me, and on the public generally, the impression that he was prevaricating in order to shield his superiors. * The reason alleged by General Trepof for giving these orders was that, during a visit of inspection, Bogoliubof had behaved disrespectfully towards him, and had thereby committed an infraction of prison discipline, for which the law prescribes the use of corporal punishment. At the close of the proceedings, which were dexterously conducted by Counsel in such a way that, as the Emperor is reported to have said, it was not Vera Zasulitch but General Trepof who was being tried, an eminent Russian journalist rushed up to me in a state of intense excitement and said: "Is not this a great day for the cause of political freedom in Russia?" I could not agree with him and I ventured to predict that neither of us would ever again see a political case tried publicly by jury in an ordinary court. The prediction has proved true. Since that time political offenders have been tried by special tribunals without a jury or dealt with "by administrative procedure," that is to say, inquisitorially, without any regular trial. The defects, real and supposed, of the present system are commonly attributed to the predominance of the peasant element in the juries; and this opinion, founded on a priori reasoning, seems to many too evident to require verification. The peasantry are in many respects the most ignorant class, and therefore, it is assumed, they are least capable of weighing conflicting evidence. Plain and conclusive as this reasoning seems, it is in my opinion erroneous. The peasants have, indeed, little education, but they have a large fund of plain common-sense; and experience proves--so at least I have been informed by many judges and Public Prosecutors--that, as a general rule, a peasant jury is more to be relied on than a jury drawn from the educated classes. It must be admitted, however, that a peasant jury has certain peculiarities, and it is not a little interesting to observe what those peculiarities are. In the first place, a jury composed of peasants generally acts in a somewhat patriarchal fashion, and does not always confine its attention to the evidence and the arguments adduced at the trial. The members form their judgment as men do in the affairs of ordinary life, and are sure to be greatly influenced by any jurors who happen to be personally acquainted with the prisoner. If several of the jurors know him to be a bad character, he has little chance of being acquitted, even though the chain of evidence against him should not be quite perfect. Peasants cannot understand why a notorious scoundrel should be allowed to escape because a little link in the evidence is wanting, or because some little judicial formality has not been duly observed. Indeed, their ideas of criminal procedure in general are extremely primitive. The Communal method of dealing with malefactors is best in accordance with their conceptions of well-regulated society. The Mir may, by a Communal decree and without a formal trial, have any of its unruly members transported to Siberia! This summary, informal mode of procedure seems to the peasants very satisfactory. They are at a loss to understand how a notorious culprit is allowed to "buy" an advocate to defend him, and are very insensible to the bought advocate's eloquence. To many of them, if I may trust to conversations which I have casually overheard in and around the courts, "buying an advocate" seems to be very much the same kind of operation as bribing a judge. In the second place, the peasants, when acting as jurors, are very severe with regard to crimes against property. In this they are instigated by the simple instinct of self-defence. They are, in fact, continually at the mercy of thieves and malefactors. They live in wooden houses easily set on fire; their stables might be broken into by a child; at night the village is guarded merely by an old man, who cannot be in more than one place at a time, and in the one place he is apt to go to sleep; a police officer is rarely seen, except when a crime has actually been committed. A few clever horse-stealers may ruin many families, and a fire-raiser, in his desire to avenge himself on an enemy, may reduce a whole village to destitution. These and similar considerations tend to make the peasants very severe against theft, robbery, and arson; and a Public Prosecutor who desires to obtain a conviction against a man charged with one of these crimes endeavours to have a jury in which the peasant class is largely represented. With regard to fraud in its various forms, the peasants are much more lenient, probably because the line of demarcation between honest and dishonest dealing in commercial affairs is not very clearly drawn in their minds. Many, for instance, are convinced that trade cannot be successfully carried on without a little clever cheating; and hence cheating is regarded as a venial offence. If the money fraudulently acquired be restored to the owner, the crime is supposed to be completely condoned. Thus when a Volost Elder appropriates the public money, and succeeds in repaying it before the case comes on for trial, he is invariably acquitted--and sometimes even re-elected! An equal leniency is generally shown by peasants towards crimes against the person, such as assaults, cruelty, and the like. This fact is easily explained. Refined sensitiveness and a keen sympathy with physical suffering are the result of a certain amount of material well-being, together with a certain degree of intellectual and moral culture, and neither of these is yet possessed by the Russian peasantry. Any one who has had opportunities of frequently observing the peasants must have been often astonished by their indifference to suffering, both in their own persons and in the person of others. In a drunken brawl heads may be broken and wounds inflicted without any interference on the part of the spectators. If no fatal consequences ensue, the peasant does not think it necessary that official notice should be taken of the incident, and certainly does not consider that any of the combatants should be transported to Siberia. Slight wounds heal of their own accord without any serious loss to the sufferer, and therefore the man who inflicts them is not to be put on the same level as the criminal who reduces a family to beggary. This reasoning may, perhaps, shock people of sensitive nerves, but it undeniably contains a certain amount of plain, homely wisdom. Of all kinds of cruelty, that which is perhaps most revolting to civilised mankind is the cruelty of the husband towards his wife; but to this crime the Russian peasant shows especial leniency. He is still influenced by the old conceptions of the husband's rights, and by that low estimate of the weaker sex which finds expression in many popular proverbs. The peculiar moral conceptions reflected in these facts are evidently the result of external conditions, and not of any recondite ethnographical peculiarities, for they are not found among the merchants, who are nearly all of peasant origin. On the contrary, the merchants are more severe with regard to crimes against the person than with regard to crimes against property. The explanation of this is simple. The merchant has means of protecting his property, and if he should happen to suffer by theft, his fortune is not likely to be seriously affected by it. On the other hand, he has a certain sensitiveness with regard to such crimes as assault; for though he has commonly not much more intellectual and moral culture than the peasant, he is accustomed to comfort and material well-being, which naturally develop sensitiveness regarding physical pain. Towards fraud the merchants are quite as lenient as the peasantry. This may, perhaps, seem strange, for fraudulent practices are sure in the long run to undermine trade. The Russian merchants, however, have not yet arrived at this conception, and can point to many of the richest members of their class as a proof that fraudulent practices often create enormous fortunes. Long ago Samuel Butler justly remarked that we damn the sins we have no mind to. As the external conditions have little or no influence on the religious conceptions of the merchants and the peasantry, the two classes are equally severe with regard to those acts which are regarded as crimes against the Deity. Hence acquittals in cases of sacrilege, blasphemy, and the like never occur unless the jury is in part composed of educated men. In their decisions, as in their ordinary modes of thought, the jurors drawn from the educated classes are little, if at all, affected by theological conceptions, but they are sometimes influenced in a not less unfortunate way by conceptions of a different order. It may happen, for instance, that a juror who had passed through one of the higher educational establishments has his own peculiar theory about the value of evidence, or he is profoundly impressed with the idea that it is better that a thousand guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be punished, or he is imbued with sentimental pseudo-philanthropy, or he is convinced that punishments are useless because they neither cure the delinquent nor deter others from crime; in a word, he may have in some way or other lost his mental balance in that moral chaos through which Russia is at present passing. In England, France, or Germany such an individual would have little influence on his fellow-jurymen, for in these countries there are very few people who allow new paradoxical ideas to overturn their traditional notions and obscure their common-sense; but in Russia, where even the elementary moral conceptions are singularly unstable and pliable, a man of this type may succeed in leading a jury. More than once I have heard men boast of having induced their fellow-jurymen to acquit every prisoner brought before them, not because they believed the prisoners to be innocent or the evidence to be insufficient, but because all punishments are useless and barbarous. One word in conclusion regarding the independence and political significance of the new courts. When the question of judicial reform was first publicly raised many people hoped that the new courts would receive complete autonomy and real independence, and would thus form a foundation for political liberty. These hopes, like so many illusions of that strange time, have not been realised. A large measure of autonomy and independence was indeed granted in theory. The law laid down the principle that no judge could be removed unless convicted of a definite crime, and that the courts should present candidates for all the vacant places on the Bench; but these and similar rights have little practical significance. If the Minister cannot depose a judge, he can deprive him of all possibility of receiving promotion, and he can easily force him in an indirect way to send in his resignation; and if the courts have still the right to present candidates for vacant places, the Minister has also this right, and can, of course, always secure the nomination of his own candidate. By the influence of that centripetal force which exists in all centralised bureaucracies, the Procureurs have become more important personages than the Presidents of the courts. From the political point of view the question of the independence of the Courts has not yet acquired much practical importance, because the Government can always have political offenders tried by a special tribunal or can send them to Siberia for an indefinite term of years without regular trial by the "administrative procedure" to which I have above referred. CHAPTER XXXIV REVOLUTIONARY NIHILISM AND THE REACTION The Reform-enthusiasm Becomes Unpractical and Culminates in Nihilism--Nihilism, the Distorted Reflection of Academic Western Socialism--Russia Well Prepared for Reception of Ultra-Socialist Virus--Social Reorganisation According to Latest Results of Science--Positivist Theory--Leniency of Press-censure--Chief Representatives of New Movement--Government Becomes Alarmed--Repressive Measures--Reaction in the Public--The Term Nihilist Invented--The Nihilist and His Theory--Further Repressive Measures--Attitude of Landed Proprietors--Foundation of a Liberal Party--Liberalism Checked by Polish Insurrection--Practical Reform Continued--An Attempt at Regicide Forms a Turning-point of Government's Policy--Change in Educational System--Decline of Nihilism. The rapidly increasing enthusiasm for reform did not confine itself to practical measures such as the emancipation of the serfs, the creation of local self-government, and the thorough reorganisation of the law-courts and legal procedure. In the younger section of the educated classes, and especially among the students of the universities and technical colleges, it produced a feverish intellectual excitement and wild aspirations which culminated in what is commonly known as Nihilism. In a preceding chapter I pointed out that during the last two centuries all the important intellectual movements in Western Europe have been reflected in Russia, and that these reflections have generally been what may fairly be termed exaggerated and distorted reproductions of the originals.* Roughly speaking, the Nihilist movement in Russia may be described as the exaggerated, distorted reflection of the earlier Socialist movements of the West; but it has local peculiarities and local colouring which deserve attention. * See Chapter XXVI. The Russian educated classes had been well prepared by their past history for the reception and rapid development of the Socialist virus. For a century and a half the country had been subjected to a series of drastic changes, administrative and social, by the energetic action of the Autocratic Power, with little spontaneous co-operation on the part of the people. In a nation with such a history, Socialistic ideas naturally found favour, because all Socialist systems until quite recent times were founded on the assumption that political and social progress must be the result not of slow natural development, but rather of philosophic speculation, legislative wisdom, and administrative energy. This assumption lay at the bottom of the reform enthusiasm in St. Petersburg at the commencement of Alexander II.'s reign. Russia might be radically transformed, it was thought, politically and socially, according to abstract scientific principles, in the space of a few years, and be thereby raised to the level of West-European civilisation, or even higher. The older nations had for centuries groped in darkness, or stumbled along in the faint light of practical experience, and consequently their progress had been slow and uncertain. For Russia there was no necessity to follow such devious, unexplored paths. She ought to profit by the experience of her elder sisters, and avoid the errors into which they had fallen. Nor was it difficult to ascertain what these errors were, because they had been discovered, examined and explained by the most eminent thinkers of France and England, and efficient remedies had been prescribed. Russian reformers had merely to study and apply the conclusions at which these eminent authorities had arrived, and their task would be greatly facilitated by the fact that they could operate on virgin soil, untrammelled by the feudal traditions, religious superstitions, metaphysical conceptions, romantic illusions, aristocratic prejudices, and similar obstacles to social and political progress which existed in Western Europe. Such was the extraordinary intellectual atmosphere in which the Russian educated classes lived during the early years of the sixties. On the "men with aspirations," who had longed in vain for more light and more public activity under the obscurantist, repressive regime of the preceding reign, it had an intoxicating effect. The more excitable and sanguine amongst them now believed seriously that they had discovered a convenient short-cut to national prosperity, and that for Russia a grandiose social and political millennium was at hand.* * I was not myself in St. Petersburg at that period, but on arriving a few years afterwards I became intimately acquainted with men and women who had lived through it, and who still retained much of their early enthusiasm. In these circumstances it is not surprising that one of the most prominent characteristics of the time was a boundless, child-like faith in the so-called "latest results of science." Infallible science was supposed to have found the solution of all political and social problems. What a reformer had to do--and who was not a would-be reformer in those days?--was merely to study the best authorities. Their works had been long rigidly excluded by the Press censure, but now that it was possible to obtain them, they were read with avidity. Chief among the new, infallible prophets whose works were profoundly venerated was Auguste Comte, the inventor of Positivism. In his classification of the sciences the crowning of the edifice was sociology, which taught how to organise human society on scientific principles. Russia had merely to adopt the principles laid down and expounded at great length in the Cours de Philosophie Positive. There Comte explained that humanity had to pass through three stages of intellectual development--the religious, the metaphysical, and the positive--and that the most advanced nations, after spending centuries in the two first, were entering on the third. Russia must endeavour, therefore, to get into the positive stage as quickly as possible, and there was reason to believe that, in consequence of certain ethnographical and historical peculiarities, she could make the transition more quickly than other nations. After Comte's works, the book which found, for a time, most favour was Buckle's "History of Civilisation," which seemed to reduce history and progress to a matter of statistics, and which laid down the principle that progress is always in the inverse ratio of the influence of theological conceptions. This principle was regarded as of great practical importance, and the conclusion drawn from it was that rapid national progress was certain if only the influence of religion and theology could be destroyed. Very popular, too, was John Stuart Mill, because he was "imbued with enthusiasm for humanity and female emancipation"; and in his tract on Utilitarianism he showed that morality was simply the crystallised experience of many generations as to what was most conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number. The minor prophets of the time, among whom Buchner occupied a prominent place, are too numerous to mention. Strange to say, the newest and most advanced doctrines appeared regularly, under a very thin and transparent veil, in the St. Petersburg daily Press, and especially in the thick monthly magazines, which were as big as, or bigger than, our venerable quarterlies. The art of writing and reading "between the lines," not altogether unknown under the Draconian regime of Nicholas I., was now developed to such a marvellous extent that almost any thing could be written clearly enough to be understood by the initiated without calling for the thunderbolts of the Press censors, which was now only intermittently severe. Indeed, the Press censors themselves were sometimes carried away by the reform enthusiasm. One of them long afterwards related to me that during "the mad time," as he called it, in the course of a single year he had received from his superiors no less than seventeen reprimands for passing objectionable articles without remark. The movement found its warmest partisans among the students and young literary men, but not a few grey-beards were to be found among the youthful apostles. All who read the periodical literature became more or less imbued with the new spirit; but it must be presumed that many of those who discoursed most eloquently had no clear idea of what they were talking about; for even at a later date, when the novices had had time to acquaint themselves with the doctrines they professed, I often encountered the most astounding ignorance. Let me give one instance by way of illustration: A young gentleman who was in the habit of talking glibly about the necessity of scientifically reorganising human society, declared to me one day that not only sociology, but also biology should be taken into consideration. Confessing my complete ignorance of the latter science, I requested him to enlighten me by giving me an instance of a biological principle which could be applied to social regeneration. He looked confused, and tried to ride out of the difficulty on vague general phrases; but I persistently kept him to the point, and maliciously suggested that as an alternative he might cite to me a biological principle which could NOT be used for such a purpose. Again he failed, and it became evident to all present that of biology, about which he talked so often, he knew absolutely nothing but the name! After this I frequently employed the same pseudo-Socratic method of discussion, and very often with a similar result. Not one in fifty, perhaps, ever attempted to reduce the current hazy conceptions to a concrete form. The enthusiasm was not the less intense, however, on that account. At first the partisans of the movement seemed desirous of assisting, rather than of opposing or undermining the Government, and so long as they merely talked academically about scientific principles and similar vague entities, the Government felt no necessity for energetic interference; but as early as 1861 symptoms of a change in the character of the movement became apparent. A secret society of officers organised a small printing-press in the building of the Headquarters Staff and issued clandestinely three numbers of a periodical called the Velikoruss (Great Russian), which advocated administrative reform, the convocation of a constituent assembly, and the emancipation of Poland from Russian rule. A few months later (April, 1862) a seditious proclamation appeared, professing to emanate from a central revolutionary committee, and declaring that the Romanoffs must expiate with their blood the misery of the people. These symptoms of an underground revolutionary agitation caused alarm in the official world, and repressive measures were at once adopted. Sunday schools for the working classes, reading-rooms, students' clubs, and similar institutions which might be used for purposes of revolutionary propaganda were closed; several trials for political offences took place; the most popular of the monthly periodicals (Sovremennik) was suspended, and its editor, Tchernishevski, arrested. There was nothing to show that Tchernishevski was implicated in any treasonable designs, but he was undoubtedly the leader of a group of youthful writers whose aspirations went far beyond the intentions of the Government, and it was thought desirable to counteract his influence by shutting him up in prison. Here he wrote and published, with the permission of the authorities and the imprimatur of the Press censure, a novel called "Shto delat'?" ("What is to be Done?"), which was regarded at first as a most harmless production, but which is now considered one of the most influential and baneful works in the whole range of Nihilist literature. As a novel it had no pretensions to artistic merit, and in ordinary times it would have attracted little or no attention, but it put into concrete shape many of the vague Socialist and Communist notions that were at the moment floating about in the intellectual atmosphere, and it came to be looked upon by the young enthusiasts as a sort of informal manifesto of their new-born faith. It was divided into two parts; in the first was described a group of students living according to the new ideas in open defiance of traditional conventionalities, and in the second was depicted a village organised on the communistic principles recommended by Fourier. The first was supposed to represent the dawn of the new era; the second, the goal to be ultimately attained. When the authorities discovered the mistake they had committed in allowing the book to be published, it was at once confiscated and withdrawn from circulation, whilst the author, after being tried by the Senate, was exiled to Northeastern Siberia and kept there for nearly twenty years.* * Tchernishevski was a man of encyclopaedic knowledge and specially conversant with political economy. According to the testimony of those who knew him intimately, he was one of the ablest and most sympathetic men of his generation. During his exile a bold attempt was made to rescue him, and very nearly succeeded. A daring youth, disguised as an officer of gendarmes and provided with forged official papers, reached the place where he was confined and procured his release, but the officer in charge had vague suspicions, and insisted on the two travellers being escorted to the next post-station by a couple of Cossacks. The rescuer tried to get rid of the escort by means of his revolver, but he failed in the attempt, and the fugitives were arrested. In 1883 Tchernishevski was transferred to the milder climate of Astrakhan, and in 1889 he was allowed to return to his native town, Saratof, where he died a few months afterwards. With the arrest and exile of Tchernishevski the young would-be reformers were constrained to recognise that they had no chance of carrying the Government with them in their endeavours to realise their patriotic aspirations. Police supervision over the young generation was increased, and all kinds of association, whether for mutual instruction, mutual aid, or any other purpose, were discouraged or positively forbidden. And it was not merely in the mind of the police that suspicion was aroused. In the opinion of the great majority of moderate, respectable people the young enthusiasts were becoming discredited. The violently seditious proclamations with which they were supposed to sympathise, and a series of destructive fires in St. Petersburg, erroneously attributed to them, frightened timid Liberals and gave the Reactionaries, who had hitherto remained silent, an opportunity of preaching their doctrines with telling effect. The celebrated novelist, Turgeneif, long the idol of the young generation, had inadvertently in "Fathers and Children" invented the term Nihilist, and it at once came to be applied as an opprobrious epithet, notwithstanding the efforts of Pissaref, a popular writer of remarkable talent, to prove to the public that it ought to be regarded as a term of honour. Pissaref's attempt at rehabilitation made no impression outside of his own small circle. According to popular opinion the Nihilists were a band of fanatical young men and women, mostly medical students, who had determined to turn the world upside down and to introduce a new kind of social order, founded on the most advanced principles of social equality and Communism. As a first step towards the great transformation they had reversed the traditional order of things in the matter of coiffure: the males allowed their hair to grow long, and the female adepts cut their hair short, adding occasionally the additional badge of blue spectacles. Their unkempt appearance naturally shocked the aesthetic feelings of ordinary people, but to this they were indifferent. They had raised themselves above the level of popular notions, took no account of so-called public opinion, gloried in Bohemianism, despised Philistine respectability, and rather liked to scandalise old-fashioned people imbued with antiquated prejudices. This was the ridiculous side of the movement, but underneath the absurdities there was something serious. These young men and women, who were themselves terribly in earnest, were systematically hostile not only to accepted conventionalities in the matter of dress, but to all manner of shams, hypocrisy, and cant in the broad Carlylean sense of those terms. To the "beautiful souls" of the older generation, who had habitually, in conversation and literature, shed pathetic tears over the defects of Russian social and political organisation without ever moving a finger to correct them--especially the landed proprietors who talked and wrote about civilisation, culture, and justice while living comfortably on the revenues provided for them by their unfortunate serfs--these had the strongest aversion; and this naturally led them to condemn in strong language the worship of aesthetic culture. But here again they fell into exaggeration. Professing extreme utilitarianism, they explained that the humble shoemaker who practises his craft diligently is, in the true sense, a greater man than a Shakespeare, or a Goethe, because humanity has more need of shoes than of dramas and poetry. Such silly paradoxes provoked, of course, merely a smile of compassion; what alarmed the sensible, respectable "Philistine" was the method of cleansing the Augean stable recommended by these enthusiasts. Having discovered in the course of their desultory reading that most of the ills that flesh is heir to proceed directly or indirectly from uncontrolled sexual passion and the lust of gain, they proposed to seal hermetically these two great sources of crime and misery by abolishing the old-fashioned institutions of marriage and private property. When society, they argued, should be so organised that all the healthy instincts of human nature could find complete and untrammelled satisfaction, there would be no motive or inducement for committing crimes or misdemeanours. For thousands of years humanity had been sailing on a wrong tack. The great law-givers of the world, religious and civil, in their ignorance of physical science and positivist methods, had created institutions, commonly known as law and morality, which were utterly unfitted to human nature, and then the magistrate and the moralist had endeavoured to compel or persuade men and women to conform to them, but their efforts had failed most signally. In vain the police had threatened and punished and the priests had preached and admonished. Human nature had systematically and obstinately rebelled, and still rebels, against the unnatural constraint. It is time, therefore, to try a new system. Instead of continuing, as has been done for thousands of years, to force men and women, as it were, into badly fitting, unelastic clothes which cause intense discomfort and prevent all healthy muscular action, why not adapt the costume to the anatomy and physiology of the human frame? Then the clothes will no longer be rent, and those who wear them will be contented and happy. Unfortunately for the progress of humanity there are serious obstacles in the way of this radical change of system. The absurd, antiquated and pernicious institutions and customs are supported by abstruse metaphysical reasons and enshrined in mystical romantic sentiment, and in this way they may still be preserved for generations unless the axe be laid to the root of the tree. Now is the critical moment. Russia must be made to rise at once from the metaphysical to the positivist stage of intellectual development; metaphysical reasoning and romantic sentiment must be rigorously discarded; and everything must be brought to the touchstone of naked practical utility. One might naturally suppose that men holding such opinions must be materialists of the grossest type--and, indeed, many of them gloried in the name of materialist and atheist--but such an inference would be erroneous. While denouncing metaphysics, they were themselves metaphysicians in so far as they were constantly juggling with abstract conceptions, and letting themselves be guided in their walk and conversation by a priori deductions; while ridiculing romanticism, they had romantic sentiment enough to make them sacrifice their time, their property, and sometimes even their life, to the attainment of an unrealisable ideal; and while congratulating themselves on having passed from the religious to the positivist stage of intellectual development, they frequently showed themselves animated with the spirit of the early martyrs! Rarely have the strange inconsistencies of human nature been so strikingly exemplified as in these unpractical, anti-religious fanatics. In dealing with them I might easily, without very great exaggeration, produce a most amusing caricature, but I prefer describing them as they really were. A few years after the period here referred to I knew some of them intimately, and I must say that, without at all sharing or sympathising with their opinions, I could not help respecting them as honourable, upright, quixotic men and women who had made great sacrifices for their convictions. One of them whom I have specially in view at this moment suffered patiently for years from the utter shipwreck of his generous illusions, and when he could no longer hope to see the dawn of a brighter day, he ended by committing suicide. Yet that man believed himself to be a Realist, a Materialist, and a Utilitarian of the purest water, and habitually professed a scathing contempt for every form of romantic sentiment! In reality he was one of the best and most sympathetic men I have ever known. To return from this digression. So long as the subversive opinions were veiled in abstract language they raised misgivings in only a comparative small circle; but when school-teachers put them into a form suited to the juvenile mind, they were apt to produce startling effects. In a satirical novel of the time a little girl is represented as coming to her mother and saying, "Little mamma! Maria Ivan'na (our new school-mistress) says there is no God and no Tsar, and that it is wrong to marry!" Whether such incidents actually occurred in real life, as several friends assured me, I am not prepared to say, but certainly people believed that they might occur in their own families, and that was quite sufficient to produce alarm even in the ranks of the Liberals, to say nothing of the rapidly increasing army of the Reactionaries. To illustrate the general uneasiness produced in St. Petersburg, I may quote here a letter written in October, 1861, by a man who occupied one of the highest positions in the Administration. As he had the reputation of being an ultra-Liberal who sympathised overmuch with Young Russia, we may assume that he did not take an exceptionally alarmist view of the situation. "You have not been long absent--merely a few months; but if you returned now, you would be astonished by the progress which the Opposition, one might say the Revolutionary Party, has already made. The disorders in the university do not concern merely the students. I see in the affair the beginning of serious dangers for public tranquillity and the existing order of things. Young people, without distinction of costume, uniform and origin, take part in the street demonstrations. Besides the students of the university, there are the students of other institutions, and a mass of people who are students only in name. Among these last are certain gentlemen in long beards and a number of revolutionnaires in crinoline, who are of all the most fanatical. Blue collars--the distinguishing mark of the students' uniform--have become the signe de ralliement. Almost all the professors and many officers take the part of the students. The newspaper critics openly defend their colleagues. Mikhailof has been convicted of writing, printing and circulating one of the most violent proclamations that ever existed, under the heading, 'To the young generation!' Among the students and the men of letters there is unquestionably an organised conspiracy, which has perhaps leaders outside the literary circle. . . . The police are powerless. They arrest any one they can lay hands on. About eighty people have already been sent to the fortress and examined, but all this leads to no practical result, because the revolutionary ideas have taken possession of all classes, all ages, all professions, and are publicly expressed in the streets, in the barracks, and in the Ministries. I believe the police itself is carried away by them! What this will lead to, it is difficult to predict. I am very much afraid of some bloody catastrophe. Even if it should not go to such a length immediately, the position of the Government will be extremely difficult. Its authority is shaken, and all are convinced that it is powerless, stupid and incapable. On that point there is the most perfect unanimity among all parties of all colours, even the most opposite. The most desperate 'planter'* agrees in that respect with the most desperate socialist. Meanwhile those who have the direction of affairs do almost nothing and have no plan or definite aim in view. At present the Emperor is not in the Capital, and now, more than at any other time, there is complete anarchy in the absence of the master of the house. There is a great deal of bustle and talk, and all blame they know not whom."** * An epithet commonly applied, at the time of the Emancipation, to the partisans of serfage and the defenders of the proprietors' rights. ** I found this interesting letter (which might have been written today) thirty years ago among the private papers of Nicholas Milutin, who played a leading part as an official in the reforms of the time. It was first published in an article on "Secret Societies in Russia," which I contributed to the Fortnightly Review of 1st August, 1877. The expected revolution did not take place, but timid people had no difficulty in perceiving signs of its approach. The Press continued to disseminate, under a more or less disguised form, ideas which were considered dangerous. The Kolokol, a Russian revolutionary paper published in London by Herzen and strictly prohibited by the Press-censure, found its way in large quantities into the country, and, as is recorded in an earlier chapter, was read by thousands, including the higher officials and the Emperor himself, who found it regularly on his writing-table, laid there by some unknown hand. In St. Petersburg the arrest of Tchernishevski and the suspension of his magazine, The Contemporary, made the writers a little more cautious in their mode of expression, but the spirit of the articles remained unchanged. These energetic intolerant leaders of public opinion were novi homines not personally connected with the social strata in which moderate views and retrograde tenderness had begun to prevail. Mostly sons of priests or of petty officials, they belonged to a recently created literary proletariat composed of young men with boundless aspirations and meagre national resources, who earned a precarious subsistence by journalism or by giving lessons in private families. Living habitually in a world of theories and unrestrained by practical acquaintance with public life, they were ready, from the purest and most disinterested motives to destroy ruthlessly the existing order of things in order to realise their crude notions of social regeneration. Their heated imagination showed them in the near future a New Russia, composed of independent federated Communes, without any bureaucracy or any central power--a happy land in which everybody virtuously and automatically fulfilled his public and private duties, and in which the policeman and all other embodiments of material constraint were wholly superfluous. Governments are not easily converted to Utopian schemes of that idyllic type, and it is not surprising that even a Government with liberal humanitarian aspirations like that of Alexander II. should have become alarmed and should have attempted to stem the current. What is to be regretted is that the repressive measures adopted were a little too Oriental in their character. Scores of young students of both sexes--for the Nihilist army included a strong female contingent--were secretly arrested and confined for months in unwholesome prisons, and many of them were finally exiled, without any regular trial, to distant provinces in European Russia or to Siberia. Their exile, it is true, was not at all so terrible as is commonly supposed, because political exiles are not usually confined in prisons or compelled to labour in the mines, but are obliged merely to reside at a given place under police supervision. Still, such punishment was severe enough for educated young men and women, especially when their lot was cast among a population composed exclusively of peasants and small shop-keepers or of Siberian aborigines, and when there were no means of satisfying the most elementary intellectual wants. For those who had no private resources the punishment was particularly severe, because the Government granted merely a miserable monthly pittance, hardly sufficient to purchase food of the coarsest kind, and there was rarely an opportunity of adding to the meagre official allowance by intellectual or manual labour. In all cases the treatment accorded to the exiles wounded their sense of justice and increased the existing discontent among their friends and acquaintances. Instead of acting as a deterrent, the system produced a feeling of profound indignation, and ultimately transformed not a few sentimental dreamers into active conspirators. At first there was no conspiracy or regularly organised secret society and nothing of which the criminal law in Western Europe could have taken cognisance. Students met in each other's rooms to discuss prohibited books on political and social science, and occasionally short essays on the subjects discussed were written in a revolutionary spirit by members of the coterie. This was called mutual instruction. Between the various coteries or groups there were private personal relations, not only in the capital, but also in the provinces, so that manuscripts and printed papers could be transmitted from one group to another. From time to time the police captured these academic disquisitions, and made raids on the meetings of students who had come together merely for conversation and discussion; and the fresh arrests caused by these incidents increased the hostility to the Government. In the letter above quoted it is said that the revolutionary ideas had taken possession of all classes, all ages, and all professions. This may have been true with regard to St. Petersburg, but it could not have been said of the provinces. There the landed proprietors were in a very different frame of mind. They had to struggle with a multitude of urgent practical affairs which left them little time for idyllic dreaming about an imaginary millennium. Their serfs had been emancipated, and what remained to them of their estates had to be reorganised on the basis of free labour. Into the semi-chaotic state of things created by such far-reaching changes, legal and economic, they did not wish to see any more confusion introduced, and they did not at all feel that they could dispense with the Central Government and the policeman. On the contrary, the Central Government was urgently needed in order to obtain a little ready money wherewith to reorganise the estates in the new conditions, and the police organisation required to be strengthened in order to compel the emancipated serfs to fulfil their legal obligations. These men and their families were, therefore, much more conservative than the class commonly designated "the young generation," and they naturally sympathised with the "Philistines" in St. Petersburg, who had been alarmed by the exaggerations of the Nihilists. Even the landed proprietors, however, were not so entirely free from discontent and troublesome political aspirations as the Government would have desired. They had not forgotten the autocratic and bureaucratic way in which the Emancipation had been prepared, and their indignation had been only partially appeased by their being allowed to carry out the provisions of the law without much bureaucratic interference. So much for the discontent. As for the reform aspirations, they thought that, as a compensation for having consented to the liberation of their serfs and for having been expropriated from about a half of their land, they ought to receive extensive political rights, and be admitted, like the upper classes in Western Europe, to a fair share in the government of the country. Unlike the fiery young Nihilists of St. Petersburg, they did not want to abolish or paralyse the central power; what they wanted was to co-operate with it loyally and to give their advice on important questions by means of representative institutions. They formed a constitutional group which exists still at the present day, as we shall see in the sequel, but which has never been allowed to develop into an organised political party. Its aims were so moderate that its programme might have been used as a convenient safety-valve for the explosive forces which were steadily accumulating under the surface of Society, but it never found favour in the official world. When some of its leading members ventured to hint in the Press and in loyal addresses to the Emperor that the Government would do well to consult the country on important questions, their respectful suggestions were coldly received or bluntly rejected by the bureaucracy and the Autocratic Power. The more the revolutionary and constitutional groups sought to strengthen their position, the more pronounced became the reactionary tendencies in the official world, and these received in 1863 an immense impetus from the Polish insurrection, with which the Nihilists and even some of the Liberals sympathised.* That ill-advised attempt on the part of the Poles to recover their independence had a curious effect on Russian public opinion. Alexander II., with the warm approval of the more Liberal section of the educated classes, was in the course of creating for Poland almost complete administrative autonomy under the viceroyalty of a Russian Grand Duke; and the Emperor's brother Constantine was preparing to carry out the scheme in a generous spirit. Soon it became evident that what the Poles wanted was not administrative autonomy, but political independence, with the frontiers which existed before the first partition! Trusting to the expected assistance of the Western Powers and the secret connivance of Austria, they raised the standard of insurrection, and some trifling successes were magnified by the pro-Polish Press into important victories. As the news of the rising spread over Russia, there was a moment of hesitation. Those who had been for some years habitually extolling liberty and self-government as the normal conditions of progress, who had been sympathising warmly with every Liberal movement, whether at home or abroad, and who had put forward a voluntary federation of independent Communes as the ideal State organism, could not well frown on the political aspirations of the Polish patriots. The Liberal sentiment of that time was so extremely philosophical and cosmopolitan that it hardly distinguished between Poles and Russians, and liberty was supposed to be the birthright of every man and woman to whatever nationality they might happen to belong. But underneath these beautiful artificial clouds of cosmopolitan Liberal sentiment lay the volcano of national patriotism, dormant for the moment, but by no means extinct. Though the Russians are in some respects the most cosmopolitan of European nations, they are at the same time capable of indulging in violent outbursts of patriotic fanaticism; and events in Warsaw brought into hostile contact these two contradictory elements in the national character. The struggle was only momentary. Ere long the patriotic feelings gained the upper hand and crushed all cosmopolitan sympathy with political freedom. The Moscow Gazette, the first of the papers to recover its mental equilibrium, thundered against the pseudo-Liberal sentimentalism, which would, if unchecked, necessarily lead to the dismemberment of the Empire, and its editor, Katkoff, became for a time the most influential private individual in the country. A few, indeed, remained true to their convictions. Herzen, for instance, wrote in the Kolokol a glowing panegyric on two Russian officers who had refused to fire on the insurgents; and here and there a good Orthodox Russian might be found who confessed that he was ashamed of Muravieff's extreme severity in Lithuania. But such men were few, and were commonly regarded as traitors, especially after the ill-advised diplomatic intervention of the Western Powers. Even Herzen, by his publicly expressed sympathy with the insurgents, lost entirely his popularity and influence among his fellow-countrymen. The great majority of the public thoroughly approved of the severe energetic measures adopted by the Government, and when the insurrection was suppressed, men who had a few months previously spoken and written in magniloquent terms about humanitarian Liberalism joined in the ovations offered to Muravieff! At a great dinner given in his honour, that ruthless administrator of the old Muscovite type, who had systematically opposed the emancipation of the serfs and had never concealed his contempt for the Liberal ideas in fashion, could ironically express his satisfaction at seeing around him so many "new friends"!** This revulsion of public feeling gave the Moscow Slavophils an opportunity of again preaching their doctrine that the safety and prosperity of Russia were to be found, not in the Liberalism and Constitutionalism of Western Europe, but in patriarchal autocracy, Eastern Orthodoxy, and other peculiarities of Russian nationality. Thus the reactionary tendencies gained ground; but Alexander II., while causing all political agitation to be repressed, did not at once abandon his policy of introducing radical reforms by means of the Autocratic Power. On the contrary, he gave orders that the preparatory work for creating local self-government and reorganising the Law Courts should be pushed on energetically. The important laws for the establishment of the Zemstvo and for the great judicial reforms, which I have described in previous chapters, both date from the year 1864. * The students of the St. Petersburg University scandalised their more patriotic fellow-countrymen by making a pro-Polish demonstration. ** In fairness to Count Muravieff I must say that he was not quite so black as he was painted in the Polish and West-European Press. He left an interesting autobiographical fragment relating to the history of this time, but it is not likely to be printed for some years. As an historical document it is valuable, but must be used with caution by the future historian. A copy of it was for some time in my possession, but I was bound by a promise not to make extracts. These and other reforms of a less important kind made no impression on the young irreconcilables. A small group of them, under the leadership of a certain Ishutin, formed in Moscow a small secret society, and conceived the design of assassinating the Emperor, in the hope that his son and successor, who was erroneously supposed to be imbued with ultra-Liberal ideas, might continue the work which his father had begun and had not the courage to complete. In April, 1866, the attempt on the life of the Emperor was made by a youth called Karakozof as his Majesty was leaving a public garden in St. Petersburg, but the bullet happily missed its mark, and the culprit was executed. This incident formed a turning-point in the policy of the Government. Alexander II. began to fear that he had gone too far, or, at least, too quickly, in his policy of radical reform. An Imperial rescript announced that law, property, and religion were in danger, and that the Government would lean on the Noblesse and other conservative elements of Society. The two periodicals which advocated the most advanced views (Sovremennik and Russkoye Slovo) were suppressed permanently, and precautions were taken to prevent the annual assemblies of the Zemstvo from giving public expression to the aspirations of the moderate Liberals. A secret official inquiry showed that the revolutionary agitation proceeded in all cases from young men who were studying, or had recently studied, in the universities, the seminaries, or the technical schools, such as the Medical Academy and the Agricultural Institute. Plainly, therefore, the system of education was at fault. The semi-military system of the time of Nicholas had been supplanted by one in which discipline was reduced to a minimum and the study of natural science formed a prominent element. Here it was thought, lay the chief root of the evil. Englishmen may have some difficulty in imagining a possible connection between natural science and revolutionary agitation. To them the two things must seem wide as the poles asunder. Surely mathematics, chemistry, physiology, and similar subjects have nothing to do with politics. When a young Englishman takes to studying any branch of natural science he gets up his subject by means of lectures, text-books, and museums or laboratories, and when he has mastered it he probably puts his knowledge to some practical use. In Russia it is otherwise. Few students confine themselves to their speciality. The majority of them dislike the laborious work of mastering dry details, and, with the presumption which is often found in conjunction with youth and a smattering of knowledge, they aspire to become social reformers and imagine themselves specially qualified for such activity. But what, it may be asked, has social reform to do with natural science? I have already indicated the connection in the Russian mind. Though very few of the students of that time had ever read the voluminous works of Auguste Comte, they were all more or less imbued with the spirit of the Positive Philosophy, in which all the sciences are subsidiary to sociology, and social reorganisation is the ultimate object of scientific research. The imaginative Positivist can see with prophetic eye humanity reorganised on strictly scientific principles. Cool-headed people who have had a little experience of the world, if they ever indulge in such delightful dreams, recognise clearly that this ultimate goal of human intellectual activity, if it is ever to be reached, is still a long way off in the misty distance of the future; but the would-be social reformers among the Russian students of the sixties were too young, too inexperienced, and too presumptuously self-confident to recognise this plain, simple truth. They felt that too much valuable time had been already lost, and they were madly impatient to begin the great work without further delay. As soon as they had acquired a smattering of chemistry, physiology, and biology they imagined themselves capable of reorganising human society from top to bottom, and when they had acquired this conviction they were of course unfitted for the patient, plodding study of details. To remedy these evils, Count Dimitri Tolstoy, who was regarded as a pillar of Conservatism, was appointed Minister of Public Instruction, with the mission of protecting the young generation against pernicious ideas, and eradicating from the schools, colleges, and universities all revolutionary tendencies. He determined to introduce more discipline into all the educational establishments and to supplant to a certain extent the superficial study of natural science by the thorough study of the classics--that is to say, Latin and Greek. This scheme, which became known before it was actually put into execution, produced a storm of discontent in the young generation. Discipline at that time was regarded as an antiquated and useless remnant of patriarchal tyranny, and young men who were impatient to take part in social reorganisation resented being treated as naughty schoolboys. To them it seemed that the Latin grammar was an ingenious instrument for stultifying youthful intelligence, destroying intellectual development, and checking political progress. Ingenious speculations about the possible organisation of the working classes and grandiose views of the future of humanity are so much more interesting and agreeable than the rules of Latin syntax and the Greek irregular verbs! Count Tolstoy could congratulate himself on the efficacy of his administration, for from the time of his appointment there was a lull in the political excitement. During three or four years there was only one political trial, and that an insignificant one; whereas there had been twenty between 1861 and 1864, and all more or less important. I am not at all sure, however, that the educational reform which created much momentary irritation and discontent had anything to do with the improvement in the situation. In any case, there were other and more potent causes at work. The excitement was too intense to be long-lived, and the fashionable theories too fanciful to stand the wear and tear of everyday life. They evaporated, therefore, with amazing rapidity when the leaders of the movement had disappeared--Tchernishevski and others by exile, and Dobrolubof and Pissaref by death--and when among the less prominent representatives of the younger generation many succumbed to the sobering influences of time and experience or drifted into lucrative professions. Besides this, the reactionary currents were making themselves felt, especially since the attempt on the life of the Emperor. So long as these had been confined to the official world they had not much affected the literature, except externally through the Press-censure, but when they permeated the reading public their influence was much stronger. Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that, in the last years of the sixties, there was a subsidence of excitement and enthusiasm and the peculiar intellectual phenomenon which had been nicknamed Nihilism was supposed to be a thing of the past. In reality the movement of which Nihilism was a prominent manifestation had merely lost something of its academic character and was entering on a new stage of development. CHAPTER XXXV SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA, REVOLUTIONARY AGITATION, AND TERRORISM Closer Relations with Western Socialism--Attempts to Influence the Masses--Bakunin and Lavroff--"Going in among the People"--The Missionaries of Revolutionary Socialism--Distinction between Propaganda and Agitation--Revolutionary Pamphlets for the Common People--Aims and Motives of the Propagandists--Failure of Propaganda--Energetic Repression--Fruitless Attempts at Agitation--Proposal to Combine with Liberals--Genesis of Terrorism--My Personal Relations with the Revolutionists--Shadowers and Shadowed--A Series of Terrorist Crimes--A Revolutionist Congress--Unsuccessful Attempts to Assassinate the Tsar--Ineffectual Attempt at Conciliation by Loris Melikof--Assassination of Alexander II.--The Executive Committee Shows Itself Unpractical--Widespread Indignation and Severe Repression--Temporary Collapse of the Revolutionary Movement--A New Revolutionary Movement in Sight. Count Tolstoy's educational reform had one effect which was not anticipated: it brought the revolutionists into closer contact with Western Socialism. Many students, finding their position in Russia uncomfortable, determined to go abroad and continue their studies in foreign universities, where they would be free from the inconveniences of police supervision and Press-censure. Those of the female sex had an additional motive to emigrate, because they could not complete their studies in Russia, but they had more difficulty in carrying out their intention, because parents naturally disliked the idea of their daughters going abroad to lead a Bohemian life, and they very often obstinately refused to give their consent. In such cases the persistent daughter found herself in a dilemma. Though she might run away from her family and possibly earn her own living, she could not cross the frontier without a passport, and without the parental sanction a passport could not be obtained. Of course she might marry and get the consent of her husband, but most of the young ladies objected to the trammels of matrimony. Occasionally the problem was solved by means of a fictitious marriage, and when a young man could not be found to co-operate voluntarily in the arrangement, the Terrorist methods, which the revolutionists adopted a few years later for other purposes, might be employed. I have heard of at least one case in which an ardent female devotee of medical science threatened to shoot a student who was going abroad if he did not submit to the matrimonial ceremony and allow her to accompany him to the frontier as his official wife! Strange as this story may seem, it contains nothing inherently improbable. At that time the energetic young ladies of the Nihilist school were not to be diverted from their purpose by trifling obstacles. We shall meet some of them hereafter, displaying great courage and tenacity in revolutionary activity. One of them, for example, attempted to murder the Prefect of St. Petersburg; and another, a young person of considerable refinement and great personal charm, gave the signal for the assassination of Alexander II. and expiated her crime on the scaffold without the least sign of repentance. Most of the studious emigres of both sexes went to Zurich, where female students were admitted to the medical classes. Here they made the acquaintance of noted Socialists from various countries who had settled in Switzerland, and being in search of panaceas for social regeneration, they naturally fell under their influence, at the same time they read with avidity the works of Proudhon, Lassalle, Buchner, Marx, Flerovski, Pfeiffer, and other writers of "advanced opinions." Among the apostles of socialism living at that time in Switzerland they found a sympathetic fellow-countryman in the famous Anarchist, Bakunin, who had succeeded in escaping from Siberia. His ideal was the immediate overthrow of all existing Governments, the destruction of all administrative organisation, the abolition of all bourgeois institutions, and the establishment of an entirely new order of things on the basis of a free federation of productive Communes, in which all the land should be distributed among those capable of tilling it and the instruments of production confided to co-operative associations. Efforts to obtain mere political reforms, even of the most radical type, were regarded by him with contempt as miserable palliatives, which could be of no real, permanent benefit to the masses, and might be positively injurious by prolonging the present era of bourgeois domination. For the dissemination of these principles a special organ called The Cause of the People (Narodnoye Dyelo) was founded in Geneva in 1868 and was smuggled across the Russian frontier in considerable quantities. It aimed at drawing away the young generation from Academic Nihilism to more practical revolutionary activity, but it evidently remained to some extent under the old influences, for it indulged occasionally in very abstract philosophical disquisitions. In its first number, for example, it published a programme in which the editors thought it necessary to declare that they were materialists and atheists, because the belief in God and a future life, as well as every other kind of idealism, demoralises the people, inspiring it with mutually contradictory aspirations, and thereby depriving it of the energy necessary for the conquest of its natural rights in this world, and the complete organisation of a free and happy life. At the end of two years this organ for moralising the people collapsed from want of funds, but other periodicals and pamphlets were printed, and the clandestine relations between the exiles in Switzerland and their friends in St. Petersburg were maintained without difficulty, notwithstanding the efforts of the police to cut the connection. In this way Young Russia became more and more saturated with the extreme Socialist theories current in Western Europe. Thanks partly to this foreign influence and partly to their own practical experience, the would-be reformers who remained at home came to understand that academic talking and discussing could bring about no serious results. Students alone, however numerous and however devoted to the cause, could not hope to overthrow or coerce the Government. It was childish to suppose that the walls of the autocratic Jericho would fall by the blasts of academic trumpets. Attempts at revolution could not be successful without the active support of the people, and consequently the revolutionary agitation must be extended to the masses. So far there was complete agreement among the revolutionists, but with regard to the modus operandi emphatic differences of opinion appeared. Those who were carried away by the stirring accents of Bakunin imagined that if the masses could only be made to feel themselves the victims of administrative and economic oppression, they would rise and free themselves by a united effort. According to this view all that was required was that popular discontent should be excited and that precautions should be taken to ensure that the explosions of discontent should take place simultaneously all over the country. The rest might safely be left, it was thought, to the operation of natural forces and the inspiration of the moment. Against this dangerous illusion warning voices were raised. Lavroff, for example, while agreeing with Bakunin that mere political reforms were of little or no value, and that any genuine improvement in the condition of the working classes could proceed only from economic and social reorganisation, maintained stoutly that the revolution, to be permanent and beneficial, must be accomplished, not by demagogues directing the ignorant masses, but by the people as a whole, after it had been enlightened and instructed as to its true interests. The preparatory work would necessarily require a whole generation of educated propagandists, living among the labouring population rural and urban. For some time there was a conflict between these two currents of opinion, but the views of Lavroff, which were simply a practical development of academic Nihilism, gained far more adherents than the violent anarchical proposals of Bakunin, and finally the grandiose scheme of realising gradually the Socialist ideal by indoctrinating the masses was adopted with enthusiasm. In St. Petersburg, Moscow and other large towns the student association for mutual instruction, to which I have referred in the foregoing chapter, became centres of popular propaganda, and the academic Nihilists were transformed into active missionaries. Scores of male and female students, impatient to convert the masses to the gospel of freedom and terrestrial felicity, sought to get into touch with the common people by settling in the villages as school-teachers, medical practitioners, midwives, etc., or by working as common factory hands in the industrial centres. In order to obtain employment in the factories and conceal their real purpose, they procured false passports, in which they were described as belonging to the lower classes; and even those who settled in the villages lived generally under assumed names. Thus was formed a class of professional revolutionists, sometimes called the Illegals, who were liable to be arrested at any moment by the police. As compensation for the privations and hardships which they had to endure, they had the consolation of believing that they were advancing the good cause. The means they usually employed were formal conversations and pamphlets expressly written for the purpose. The more enthusiastic and persevering of these missionaries would continue their efforts for months and years, remaining in communication with the headquarters in the capital or some provincial town in order to report progress, obtain a fresh supply of pamphlets, and get their forged passports renewed. This extraordinary movement was called "going in among the people," and it spread among the young generation like an epidemic. In 1873 it was suddenly reinforced by a detachment of fresh recruits. Over a hundred Russian students were recalled by the Government from Switzerland, in order to save them from the baneful influence of Bakunin, Lavroff, and other noted Socialists, and a large proportion of them joined the ranks of the propagandists.* * Instances of going in among the people had happened as early as 1864, but they did not become frequent till after 1870. With regard to the aims and methods of the propagandists, a good deal of information was obtained in the course of a judicial inquiry instituted in 1875. A peasant, who was at the same time a factory worker, informed the police that certain persons were distributing revolutionary pamphlets among the factory-hands, and as a proof of what he said he produced some pamphlets which he had himself received. This led to an investigation, which showed that a number of young men and women, evidently belonging to the educated classes, were disseminating revolutionary ideas by means of pamphlets and conversation. Arrests followed, and it was soon discovered that these agitators belonged to a large secret association, which had its centre in Moscow and local branches in Ivanovo, Tula, and Kief. In Ivanovo, for instance--a manufacturing town about a hundred miles to the northeast of Moscow--the police found a small apartment inhabited by three young men and four young women, all of whom, though belonging by birth to the educated classes, had the appearance of ordinary factory workers, prepared their own food, did with their own hands all the domestic work, and sought to avoid everything which could distinguish them from the labouring population. In the apartment were found 240 copies of revolutionary pamphlets, a considerable sum of money, a large amount of correspondence in cypher, and several forged passports. How many persons the society contained, it is impossible to say, because a large portion of them eluded the vigilance of the police; but many were arrested, and ultimately forty-seven were condemned. Of these, eleven were noble, seven were sons of parish priests, and the remainder belong to the lower classes--that is to say, the small officials, burghers, and peasants. The average age of the prisoners was twenty-four, the oldest being thirty-six and the youngest under seventeen! Only five or six were over twenty-five, and none of these were ringleaders. The female element was represented by no less than fifteen young persons, whose ages were on an average under twenty-two. Two of these, to judge by their photographs, were of refined, prepossessing appearance, and seemingly little fitted for taking part in wholesale massacres such as the society talked of organising. The character and aims of the society were clearly depicted in the documentary and oral evidence produced at the trial. According to the fundamental principles, there should exist among the members absolute equality, complete mutual responsibility and full frankness and confidence with regard to the affairs of the association. Among the conditions of admission we find that the candidate should devote himself entirely to revolutionary activity; that he should be ready to sever all ties, whether of friendship or of love, for the good cause; that he should possess great powers of self-sacrifice and the capacity for keeping secrets; and that he should consent to become, when necessary, a common labourer in a factory. The desire to maintain absolute equality is well illustrated by the article of the statutes regarding the administration: the office-bearers are not to be chosen by election, but all members are to be office-bearers in turn, and the term of office must not exceed one month! The avowed aim of the society was to destroy the existing social order, and to replace it by one in which there should be no private property and no distinctions of class or wealth; or, as it is expressed in one document, "to found on the ruins of the present social organisation the Empire of the working classes." The means to be employed were indicated in a general way, but each member was to adapt himself to circumstances and was to devote all his energy to forwarding the cause of the revolution. For the guidance of the inexperienced, the following means were recommended: simple conversations, dissemination of pamphlets, the exciting of discontent, the formation of organised groups, the creation of funds and libraries. These, taken together, constitute, in the terminology of revolutionary science, "propaganda," and in addition to it there should be "agitation." The technical distinction between these two processes is that propaganda has a purely preparatory character, and aims merely at enlightening the masses regarding the true nature of the revolutionary cause, whereas agitation aims at exciting an individual or a group to acts which are considered, in the existing regime, as illegal. In time of peace "pure agitation" was to be carried on by means of organised bands which should frighten the Government and the privileged classes, draw away the attention of the authorities from less overt kinds of revolutionary action, raise the spirit of the people and thereby render it more accessible to revolutionary ideas, obtain pecuniary means for further activity, and liberate political prisoners. In time of insurrection the members should give to all movements every assistance in their power, and impress on them a Socialistic character. The central administration and the local branches should establish relations with publishers, and take steps to secure a regular supply of prohibited books from abroad. Such are a few characteristic extracts from a document which might fairly be called a treatise on revolutionology. As a specimen of the revolutionary pamphlets circulated by the propagandists and agitators I may give here a brief account of one which is well known to the political police. It is entitled Khitraya Mekhanika (Cunning Machinery), and gives a graphic picture of the ideas and methods employed. The mise en scene is extremely simple. Two peasants, Stepan and Andrei, are represented as meeting in a gin-shop and drinking together. Stepan is described as good and kindly when he has to do with men of his own class, but very sharp-tongued when speaking with a foreman or manager. Always ready with an answer, he can on occasions silence even an official! He has travelled all over the Empire, has associated with all sorts and conditions of men, sees everything most clearly, and is, in short, a very remarkable man. One of his excellent qualities is that, being "enlightened" himself, he is always ready to enlighten others, and he now finds an opportunity of displaying his powers. When Andrei, who is still unenlightened, proposes that they should drink another glass of vodka, he replies that the Tsar, together with the nobles and traders, bars the way to the throat. As his companion does not understand this metaphorical language, he explains that if there were no Tsars, nobles, or traders, he could get five glasses of vodka for the sum that he now pays for one glass. This naturally suggests wider topics, and Stepan gives something like a lecture. The common people, he explains, pay by far the greater part of the taxation, and at the same time do all the work; they plough the fields, build the houses and churches, work in the mills and factories, and in return they are systematically robbed and beaten. And what is done with all the money that is taken from them? First of all, the Tsar gets nine millions of roubles--enough to feed half a province--and with that sum he amuses himself, has hunting-parties, and feasts, eats, drinks, makes merry, and lives in stone houses. He gave liberty, it is true, to the peasants; but we know what the Emancipation really was. The best land was taken away and the taxes were increased, lest the muzhik should get fat and lazy. The Tsar is himself the richest landed proprietor and manufacturer in the country. He not only robs us as much as he pleases, but he has sold into slavery (by forming a national debt) our children and grandchildren. He takes our sons as soldiers, shuts them up in barracks so that they should not see their brother-peasants, and hardens their hearts so that they become wild beasts, ready to rend their parents. The nobles and traders likewise rob the poor peasants. In short, all the upper classes have invented a bit of cunning machinery by which the muzhik is made to pay for their pleasures and luxuries. The people will one day rise and break this machinery to pieces. When that day comes they must break every part of it, for if one bit escapes destruction all the other parts of it will immediately grow up again. All the force is on the side of the peasants, if they only knew how to use it. Knowledge will come in time. They will then destroy this machine, and perceive that the only real remedy for all social evils is brotherhood. People should live like brothers, having no mine and thine, but all things in common. When we have created brotherhood, there will be no riches and no thieves, but right and righteousness without end. In conclusion, Stepan addresses a word to "the torturers": "When the people rise, the Tsar will send troops against us, and the nobles and capitalists will stake their last rouble on the result. If they do not succeed, they must not expect any quarter from us. They may conquer us once or twice, but we shall at last get our own, for there is no power that can withstand the whole people. Then we shall cleanse the country of our persecutors, and establish a brotherhood in which there will be no mine and thine, but all will work for the common weal. We shall construct no cunning machinery, but shall pluck up evil by the roots, and establish eternal justice!" The above-mentioned distinction between Propaganda and Agitation, which plays a considerable part in revolutionary literature, had at that time more theoretical than practical importance. The great majority of those who took an active part in the movement confined their efforts to indoctrinating the masses with Socialistic and subversive ideas, and sometimes their methods were rather childish. As an illustration I may cite an amusing incident related by one of the boldest and most tenacious of the revolutionists, who subsequently acquired a certain sense of humour. He and a friend were walking one day on a country road, when they were overtaken by a peasant in his cart. Ever anxious to sow the good seed, they at once entered into conversation with the rustic, telling him that he ought not to pay his taxes, because the tchinovniks robbed the people, and trying to convince him by quotations from Scripture that he ought to resist the authorities. The prudent muzhik whipped up his horse and tried to get out of hearing, but the two zealots ran after him and continued the sermon till they were completely out of breath. Other propagandists were more practical, and preached a species of agrarian socialism which the rural population could understand. At the time of the Emancipation the peasants were convinced as I have mentioned in a previous chapter, that the Tsar meant to give them all the land, and to compensate the landed proprietors by salaries. Even when the law was read and explained to them, they clung obstinately to their old convictions, and confidently expected that the REAL Emancipation would be proclaimed shortly. Taking advantage of this state of things, the propagandists to whom I refer confirmed the peasants in their error, and sought in this way to sow discontent against the proprietors and the Government. Their watchword was "Land and Liberty," and they formed for a good many years a distinct group, under that title (Zemlya i Volya, or more briefly Zemlevoltsi). In the St. Petersburg group, which aspired to direct and control this movement, there were one or two men who held different views as to the real object of propaganda and agitation. One of these, Prince Krapotkin, has told the world what his object was at that time. He hoped that the Government would be frightened and that the Autocratic Power, as in France on the eve of the Revolution, would seek support in the landed proprietors, and call together a National Assembly. Thus a constitution would be granted, and though the first Assembly might be conservative in spirit, autocracy would be compelled in the long run to yield to parliamentary pressure. No such elaborate projects were entertained, I believe, by the majority of the propagandists. Their reasoning was much simpler: "The Government, having become reactionary, tries to prevent us from enlightening the people; we will do it in spite of the Government!" The dangers to which they exposed themselves only confirmed them in their resolution. Though they honestly believed themselves to be Realists and Materialists, they were at heart romantic Idealists, panting to do something heroic. They had been taught by the apostles whom they venerated, from Belinski downwards, that the man who simply talks about the good of the people, and does nothing to promote it, is among the most contemptible of human beings. No such reproach must be addressed to them. If the Government opposed and threatened, that was no excuse for inactivity. They must be up and doing. "Forward! forward! Let us plunge into the people, identify ourselves with them, and work for their benefit! Suffering is in store for us, but we must endure it with fortitude!" The type which Tchernishevski had depicted in his famous novel, under the name of Rakhmetof--the youth who led an ascetic life and subjected himself to privation and suffering as a preparation for future revolutionary activity--now appeared in the flesh. If we may credit Bakunin, these Rakhmetofs had not even the consolation of believing in the possibility of a revolution, but as they could not and would not remain passive spectators of the misfortunes of the people, they resolved to go in among the masses in order to share with them fraternally their sufferings, and at the same time to teach and prepare, not theoretically, but practically by their living example.* This is, I believe, an exaggeration. The propagandists were, for the most part of incredibly sanguine temperament. * Bakunin: "Gosudarstvennost' i Anarkhiya" ("State Organisation and Anarchy"), Zurich, 1873. The success of the propaganda and agitation was not at all in proportion to the numbers and enthusiasm of those who took part in it. Most of these displayed more zeal than mother-wit and discretion. Their Socialism was too abstract and scientific to be understood by rustics, and when they succeeded in making themselves intelligible they awakened in their hearers more suspicion than sympathy. The muzhik is a very matter-of-fact practical person, totally incapable of understanding what Americans call "hifalutin" tendencies in speech and conduct, and as he listened to the preaching of the new Gospel doubts and questionings spontaneously rose in his mind: "What do those young people, who betray their gentlefolk origin by their delicate white hands, their foreign phrases, their ignorance of the common things of everyday peasant life, really want? Why are they bearing hardships and taking so much trouble? They tell us it is for our good, but we are not such fools and simpletons as they take us for. They are not doing it all for nothing. What do they expect from us in return? Whatever it is, they are evidently evil-doers, and perhaps moshenniki (swindlers). Devil take them!" and thereupon the cautious muzhik turns his back upon his disinterested self-sacrificing teachers, or goes quietly and denounces them to the police! It is not only in Spain that we encounter Don Quixotes and Sancho Panzas! Occasionally a worse fate befell the missionaries. If they allowed themselves, as they sometimes did, to "blaspheme" against religion or the Tsar, they ran the risk of being maltreated on the spot. I have heard of one case in which the punishment for blasphemy was applied by sturdy peasant matrons. Even when they escaped such mishaps they had not much reason to congratulate themselves on their success. After three years of arduous labour the hundreds of apostles could not boast of more than a score or two of converts among the genuine working classes, and even these few did not all remain faithful unto death. Some of them, however, it must be admitted, laboured and suffered to the end with the courage and endurance of true martyrs. It was not merely the indifference or hostility of the masses that the propagandists had to complain of. The police soon got on their track, and did not confine themselves to persuasion and logical arguments. Towards the end of 1873 they arrested some members of the central directory group in St. Petersburg, and in the following May they discovered in the province of Saratof an affiliated organisation with which nearly 800 persons were connected, about one-fifth of them belonging to the female sex. A few came of well-to-do families--sons and daughters of minor officials or small landed proprietors--but the great majority were poor students of humbler origin, a large contingent being supplied by the sons of the poor parish clergy. In other provinces the authorities made similar discoveries. Before the end of the year a large proportion of the propagandists were in prison, and the centralised organisation, so far as such a thing existed, was destroyed. Gradually it dawned on the minds even of the Don Quixotes that pacific propaganda was no longer possible, and that attempts to continue it could lead only to useless sacrifices. For a time there was universal discouragement in the revolutionary ranks; and among those who had escaped arrest there were mutual recriminations and endless discussions about the causes of failure and the changes to be made in modes of action. The practical results of these recriminations and discussions was that the partisans of a slow, pacific propaganda retired to the background, and the more impatient revolutionary agitators took possession of the movement. These maintained stoutly that as pacific propaganda had become impossible, stronger methods must be adopted. The masses must be organised so as to offer successful resistance to the Government. Conspiracies must therefore be formed, local disorders provoked, and blood made to flow. The part of the country which seemed best adapted for experiments of this kind was the southern and southeastern region, inhabited by the descendants of the turbulent Cossack population which had raised formidable insurrections under Stenka Razin and Pugatcheff in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, then, the more impatient agitators began their work. A Kief group called the Buntari (rioters), composed of about twenty-five individuals, settled in various localities as small shopkeepers or horse dealers, or went about as workmen or peddlers. One member of the group has given us in his reminiscences an amusing account of the experiment. Everywhere the agitators found the peasants suspicious and inhospitable, and consequently they had to suffer a great deal of discomfort. Some of them at once gave up the task as hopeless. The others settled in a village and began operations. Having made a topographic survey of the locality, they worked out an ingenious plan of campaign; but they had no recruits for the future army of insurrection, and if they had been able to get recruits, they had no arms for them, and no money wherewith to purchase arms or anything else. In these circumstances they gravely appointed a committee to collect funds, knowing very well that no money would be forthcoming. It was as if a shipwrecked crew in an open boat, having reached the brink of starvation, appointed a committee to obtain a supply of fresh water and provisions! In the hope of obtaining assistance from headquarters, a delegate was sent to St. Petersburg and Moscow to explain that for the arming of the population about a quarter of a million of roubles was required. The delegate brought back thirty second-hand revolvers! The revolutionist who confesses all this* recognises that the whole scheme was childishly unpractical: "We chose the path of popular insurrection because we had faith in the revolutionary spirit of the masses, in its power and its invincibility. That was the weak side of our position; and the most curious part of it was that we drew proofs in support of our theory from history--from the abortive insurrections of Pazin and Pugatcheff, which took place in an age when the Government had only a small regular army and no railways or telegraphs! We did not even think of attempting a propaganda among the military!" In the district of Tchigirin the agitators had a little momentary success, but the result was the same. There a student called Stefanovitch pretended that the Tsar was struggling with the officials to benefit the peasantry, and he showed the simple rustics a forged imperial manifesto in which they were ordered to form a society for the purpose of raising an insurrection against the officials, the nobles, and the priests. At one moment (April, 1877), the society had about 600 members, but a few months later it was discovered by the police, and the leaders and peasants were arrested. * Debogorio-Mokrievitch. "Vospominaniya" ("Reminiscences"). Paris, 1894-99. When it had thus become evident that propaganda and agitation were alike useless, and when numerous arrests were being made daily, it became necessary for the revolutionists to reconsider their position, and some of the more moderate proposed to rally to the Liberals, as a temporary measure. Hitherto there had been very little sympathy and a good deal of openly avowed hostility between Liberals and revolutionists. The latter, convinced that they could overthrow the Autocratic Power by their own unaided efforts, had looked askance at Liberalism because they believed that parliamentary discussions and party struggles would impede rather than facilitate the advent of the Socialist Millennium, and strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie without really improving the condition of the masses. Now, however, when the need of allies was felt, it seemed that constitutional government might be used as a stepping-stone for reaching the Socialist ideal, because it must grant a certain liberty of the Press and of association, and it would necessarily abolish the existing autocratic system of arresting, imprisoning and exiling, on mere suspicion, without any regular form of legal procedure. As usual, an appeal was made to history, and arguments were easily found in favour of this course of action. The past of other nations had shown that in the march of progress there are no sudden leaps and bounds, and it was therefore absurd to imagine, as the revolutionists had hitherto done, that Russian Autocracy could be swallowed by Socialism at a gulp. There must always be periods of transition, and it seemed that such a transition period might now be initiated. Liberalism might be allowed to destroy, or at least weaken, Autocracy, and then it might be destroyed in its turn by Socialism of the most advanced type. Having adopted this theory of gradual historic development, some of the more practical revolutionists approached the more advanced Liberals and urged them to more energetic action; but before anything could be arranged the more impatient revolutionists--notably the group called the Narodovoltsi (National-will-ists)--intervened, denounced what they considered an unholy alliance, and proposed a policy of terrorism by which the Government would be frightened into a more conciliatory attitude. Their idea was that the officials who displayed most zeal against the revolutionary movement should be assassinated, and that every act of severity on the part of the Administration should be answered by an act of "revolutionary justice." As it was evident that the choice between these two courses of action must determine in great measure the future character and ultimate fate of the movement, there was much discussion between the two groups; but the question did not long remain in suspense. Soon the extreme party gained the upper hand, and the Terrorist policy was adopted. I shall let the revolutionists themselves explain this momentous decision. In a long proclamation published some years later it is explained thus: "The revolutionary movement in Russia began with the so-called 'going in among the people.' The first Russian revolutionists thought that the freedom of the people could be obtained only by the people itself, and they imagined that the only thing necessary was that the people should absorb Socialistic ideas. To this it was supposed that the peasantry were naturally inclined, because they already possess, in the rural Commune, institutions which contain the seeds of Socialism, and which might serve as a basis for the reconstruction of society according to Socialist principles. The propagandists hoped, therefore, that in the teachings of West European Socialism the people would recognise its own instinctive creations in riper and more clearly defined forms and that it would joyfully accept the new teaching. "But the people did not understand its friends, and showed itself hostile to them. It turned out that institutions born in slavery could not serve as a foundation for the new construction, and that the man who was yesterday a serf, though capable of taking part in disturbances, is not fitted for conscious revolutionary work. With pain in their heart the revolutionists had to confess that they were deceived in their hopes of the people. Around them were no social revolutionary forces on which they could lean for support, and yet they could not reconcile themselves with the existing state of violence and slavery. Thereupon awakened a last hope--the hope of a drowning man who clutches at a straw: a little group of heroic and self-sacrificing individuals might accomplish with their own strength the difficult task of freeing Russia from the yoke of autocracy. They had to do it themselves, because there was no other means. But would they be able to accomplish it? For them that question did not exist. The struggle of that little group against autocracy was like the heroic means on which a doctor decides when there is no longer any hope of the patient's recovery. Terrorism was the only means that remained, and it had the advantage of giving a natural vent to pent-up feelings, and of seeming a reaction against the cruel persecutions of the Government. The party called the Narodnaya Volya (National Will) was accordingly formed, and during several years the world witnessed a spectacle that had never been seen before in history. The Narodnaya Volya, insignificant in numbers but strong in spirit, engaged in single combat with the powerful Russian Government. Neither executions, nor imprisonment with hard labour, nor ordinary imprisonment and exile, destroyed the energy of the revolutionists. Under their shots fell, one after the other, the most zealous and typical representatives of arbitrary action and violence. . . ." It was at this time, in 1877, when propaganda and agitation among the masses were being abandoned for the system of terrorism, but before any assassinations had taken place, that I accidentally came into personal relations with some prominent adherents of the revolutionary movement. One day a young man of sympathetic appearance, whom I did not know and who brought no credentials, called on me in St. Petersburg and suggested to me that I might make public through the English Press what he described as a revolting act of tyranny and cruelty committed by General Trepof, the Prefect of the city. That official, he said, in visiting recently one of the prisons, had noticed that a young political prisoner called Bogolubof did not salute him as he passed, and he had ordered him to be flogged in consequence. To this I replied that I had no reason to disbelieve the story, but that I had equally no reason to accept it as accurate, as it rested solely on the evidence of a person with whom I was totally unacquainted. My informant took the objection in good part, and offered me the names and addresses of a number of persons who could supply me with any proofs that I might desire. At his next visit I told him I had seen several of the persons he had named, and that I could not help perceiving that they were closely connected with the revolutionary movement. I then went on to suggest that as the sympathisers with that movement constantly complained that they were systematically misrepresented, calumniated and caricatured, the leaders ought to give the world an accurate account of their real doctrines, and in this respect I should be glad to assist them. Already I knew something of the subject, because I had many friends and acquaintances among the sympathisers, and had often had with them interminable discussions. With their ideas, so far as I knew them, I felt bound to confess that I had no manner of sympathy, but I flattered myself, and he himself had admitted, that I was capable of describing accurately and criticising impartially doctrines with which I did not agree. My new acquaintance, whom I may call Dimitry Ivan'itch, was pleased with the proposal, and after he had consulted with some of his friends, we came to an agreement by which I should receive all the materials necessary for writing an accurate account of the doctrinal side of the movement. With regard to any conspiracies that might be in progress, I warned him that he must be strictly reticent, because if I came accidentally to know of any terrorist designs, I should consider it my duty to warn the authorities. For this reason I declined to attend any secret conclaves, and it was agreed that I should be instructed without being initiated. The first step in my instruction was not very satisfactory or encouraging. One day Dimitri Ivan'itch brought me a large manuscript, which contained, he said, the real doctrines of the revolutionists and the explanation of their methods. I was surprised to find that it was written in English, and I perceived at a glance that it was not at all what I wanted. As soon as I had read the first sentence I turned to my friend and said: "I am very sorry to find, Dimitri Ivan'itch, that you have not kept your part of the bargain. We agreed, you may remember, that we were to act towards each other in absolutely good faith, and here I find a flagrant bit of bad faith in the very first sentence of the manuscript which you have brought me. The document opens with the statement that a large number of students have been arrested and imprisoned for distributing books among the people. That statement may be true according to the letter, but it is evidently intended to mislead. These youths have been arrested, as you must know, not for distributing ordinary books, as the memorandum suggests, but for distributing books of a certain kind. I have read some of them, and I cannot feel at all surprised that the Government should object to their being put into the hands of the ignorant masses. Take, for example, the one entitled Khitraya Mekhanika, and others of the same type. The practical teaching they contain is that the peasants should be ready to rise and cut the throats of the landed proprietors and officials. Now, a wholesale massacre of the kind may or may not be desirable in the interests of Society, and justifiable according to some new code of higher morality. That is a question into which I do not enter. All I maintain is that the writer of this memorandum, in speaking of 'books,' meant to mislead me." Dimitri Ivan'itch looked puzzled and ashamed. "Forgive me," he said; "I am to blame--not for having attempted to deceive you, but for not having taken precautions. I have not read the manuscript, and I could not if I wished, for it is written in English, and I know no language but my mother tongue. My friends ought not to have done this. Give me back the paper, and I shall take care that nothing of the sort occurs in future." This promise was faithfully kept, and I had no further reason to complain. Dimitri Ivan'itch gave me a considerable amount of information, and lent me a valuable collection of revolutionary pamphlets. Unfortunately the course of tuition was suddenly interrupted by unforeseen circumstances, which I may mention as characteristic of life in St. Petersburg at the time. My servant, an excellent young Russian, more honest than intelligent, came to me one morning with a mysterious air, and warned me to be on my guard, because there were "bad people" going about. On being pressed a little, he explained to me what he meant. Two strangers had come to him and, after offering him a few roubles, had asked him a number of questions about my habits--at what hour I went out and came home, what persons called on me, and much more of the same sort. "They even tried, sir, to get into your sitting-room; but of course I did not allow them. I believe they want to rob you!" It was not difficult to guess who these "bad people" were who took such a keen interest in my doings, and who wanted to examine my apartment in my absence. Any doubts I had on the subject were soon removed. On the morrow and following days I noticed that whenever I went out, and wherever I might walk or drive, I was closely followed by two unsympathetic-looking individuals--so closely that when I turned round sharp they ran into me. The first and second times this little accident occurred they received a strong volley of unceremonious vernacular; but when we became better acquainted we simply smiled at each other knowingly, as the old Roman Augurs are supposed to have done when they met in public unobserved. There was no longer any attempt at concealment or mystification. I knew I was being shadowed, and the shadowers could not help perceiving that I knew it. Yet, strange to say, they were never changed! The reader probably assumes that the secret police had somehow got wind of my relations with the revolutionists. Such an assumption presupposes on the part of the police an amount of intelligence and perspicacity which they do not usually possess. On this occasion they were on an entirely wrong scent, and the very day when I first noticed my shadowers, a high official, who seemed to regard the whole thing as a good joke, told me confidentially what the wrong scent was. At the instigation of an ex-ambassador, from whom I had the misfortune to differ in matters of foreign policy, the Moscow Gazette had denounced me publicly by name as a person who was in the habit of visiting daily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs--doubtless with the nefarious purpose of obtaining by illegal means secret political information--and the police had concluded that I was a fit and proper person to be closely watched. In reality, my relations with the Russian Foreign Office, though inconvenient to the ex-ambassador, were perfectly regular and above-board--sanctioned, in fact, by Prince Gortchakoff--but the indelicate attentions of the secret police were none the less extremely unwelcome, because some intelligent police-agent might get onto the real scent, and cause me serious inconvenience. I determined, therefore, to break off all relations with Dimitri Ivan'itch and his friends, and postpone my studies to a more convenient season; but that decision did not entirely extricate me from my difficulties. The collection of revolutionary pamphlets was still in my possession, and I had promised to return it. For some little time I did not see how I could keep my promise without compromising myself or others, but at last--after having had my shadowers carefully shadowed in order to learn accurately their habits, and having taken certain elaborate precautions, with which I need not trouble the reader, as he is not likely ever to require them--I paid a visit secretly to Dimitri Ivan'itch in his small room, almost destitute of furniture, handed him the big parcel of pamphlets, warned him not to visit me again, and bade him farewell. Thereupon we went our separate ways and I saw him no more. Whether he subsequently played a leading part in the movement I never could ascertain, because I did not know his real name; but if the conception which I formed of his character was at all accurate, he probably ended his career in Siberia, for he was not a man to look back after having put his hand to the plough. That is a peculiar trait of the Russian revolutionists of the period in question. Their passion for realising an impossible ideal was incurable. Many of them were again and again arrested; and as soon as they escaped or were liberated they almost invariably went back to their revolutionary activity and worked energetically until they again fell into the clutches of the police. From this digression into the sphere of personal reminiscences I return now and take up again the thread of the narrative. We have seen how the propaganda and the agitation had failed, partly because the masses showed themselves indifferent or hostile, and partly because the Government adopted vigorous repressive measures. We have seen, too, how the leaders found themselves in face of a formidable dilemma; either they must abandon their schemes or they must attack their persecutors. The more energetic among them, as I have already stated, chose the latter alternative, and they proceeded at once to carry out their policy. In the course of a single year (February, 1878, to February, 1879) a whole series of terrorist crimes was committed; in Kief an attempt was made on the life of the Public Prosecutor, and an officer of gendarmerie was stabbed; in St. Petersburg the Chief of the Political Police of the Empire (General Mezentsef) was assassinated in broad daylight in one of the central streets, and a similar attempt was made on his successor (General Drenteln); at Kharkof the Governor (Prince Krapotkin) was shot dead when entering his residence. During the same period two members of the revolutionary organisation, accused of treachery, were "executed" by order of local Committees. In most cases the perpetrators of the crimes contrived to escape. One of them became well known in Western Europe as an author under the pseudonym of Stepniak. Terrorism had not the desired effect. On the contrary, it stimulated the zeal and activity of the authorities, and in the course of the winter of 1878-79 hundreds of arrests--some say as many as 2,000--were made in St. Petersburg alone. Driven to desperation, the revolutionists still at large decided that it was useless to assassinate mere officials; the fons et origo mali must be reached; a blow must be struck at the Tsar himself! The first attempt was made by a young man called Solovyoff, who fired several shots at Alexander II. as he was walking near the Winter Palace, but none of them took effect. This policy of aggressive terrorism did not meet with universal approval among the revolutionists, and it was determined to discuss the matter at a Congress of delegates from various local circles. The meetings were held in June, 1879, two months after Solovyoff's unsuccessful attempt, at two provincial towns, Lipetsk and Voronezh. It was there agreed in principle to confirm the decision of the Terrorist Narodovoltsi. As the Liberals were not in a position to create liberal institutions or to give guarantees for political rights, which are the essential conditions of any Socialist agitation, there remained for the revolutionary party no other course than to destroy the despotic autocracy. Thereupon a programme of action was prepared, and an Executive Committee elected. From that moment, though there were still many who preferred milder methods, the Terrorists had the upper hand, and they at once proceeded to centralise the organisation and to introduce stricter discipline, with greater precautions to ensure secrecy. The Executive Committee imagined that by assassinating the Tsar autocracy might be destroyed, and several carefully planned attempts were made. The first plan was to wreck the train when the Imperial family were returning to St. Petersburg from the Crimea. Mines were accordingly laid at three separate points, but they all failed. At the last of the three points (near Moscow) a train was blown up, but it was not the one in which the Imperial family was travelling. Not at all discouraged by this failure, nor by the discovery of its secret printing-press by the police, the Executive Committee next tried to attain its object by an explosion of dynamite in the Winter Palace when the Imperial family were assembled at dinner. The execution was entrusted to a certain Halturin, one of the few revolutionists of peasant origin. As an exceptionally clever carpenter and polisher, he easily found regular employment in the palace, and he contrived to make a rough plan of the building. This plan, on which the dining-hall was marked with an ominous red cross, fell into the hands of the police, and they made what they considered a careful investigation; but they failed to unravel the plot and did not discover the dynamite concealed in the carpenters' sleeping quarters. Halturin showed wonderful coolness while the search was going on, and continued to sleep every night on the explosive, though it caused him excruciating headaches. When he was assured by the chemist of the Executive Committee that the quantity collected was sufficient, he exploded the mine at the usual dinner hour, and contrived to escape uninjured.* In the guardroom immediately above the spot where the dynamite was exploded ten soldiers were killed and 53 wounded, and in the dining-hall the floor was wrecked, but the Imperial family escaped in consequence of not sitting down to dinner at the usual hour. * After living some time in Roumania he returned to Russia under the name of Stepanof, and in 1882 he was tried and executed for complicity in the assassination of General Strebnekof. For this barbarous act the Executive Committee publicly accepted full responsibility. In a proclamation placarded in the streets of St. Petersburg it declared that, while regretting the death of the soldiers, it was resolved to carry on the struggle with the Autocratic Power until the social reforms should be entrusted to a Constituent Assembly, composed of members freely elected and furnished with instructions from their constituents. Finding police-repression so ineffectual, Alexander II. determined to try the effect of conciliation, and for this purpose he placed Loris Melikof at the head of the Government, with semi-dictatorial powers (February, 1880). The experiment did not succeed. By the Terrorists it was regarded as "a hypocritical Liberalism outwardly and a veiled brutality within," while in the official world it was condemned as an act of culpable weakness on the part of the autocracy. One consequence of it was that the Executive Committee was encouraged to continue its efforts, and, as the police became much less active, it was enabled to improve the revolutionary organisation. In a circular sent to the affiliated provincial associations it explained that the only source of legislation must be the national will,* and as the Government would never accept such a principle, its hand must be forced by a great popular insurrection, for which all available forces should be organised. The peasantry, as experience had shown, could not yet be relied on, but efforts should be made to enrol the workmen of the towns. Great importance was attached to propaganda in the army; but as few conversions had been made among the rank and file, attention was to be directed chiefly to the officers, who would be able to carry their subordinates with them at the critical moment. * Hence the designation Narodovoltsi (which, as we have seen, means literally National-will-ists) adopted by this section. While thus recommending the scheme of destroying autocracy by means of a popular insurrection in the distant future, the Committee had not abandoned more expeditious methods, and it was at that moment hatching a plot for the assassination of the Tsar. During the winter months his Majesty was in the habit of holding on Sundays a small parade in the riding-school near the Michael Square in St. Petersburg. On Sunday, March 3d, 1881, the streets by which he usually returned to the Palace had been undermined at two places, and on an alternative route several conspirators were posted with hand-grenades concealed under their great coats. The Emperor chose the alternative route. Here, at a signal given by Sophia Perovski, the first grenade was thrown by a student called Ryssakoff, but it merely wounded some members of the escort. The Emperor stopped and got out of his sledge, and as he was making inquiries about the wounded soldiers a second grenade was thrown by a youth called Grinevitski, with fatal effect. Alexander II. was conveyed hurriedly to the Winter Palace, and died almost immediately. By this act the members of the Executive Committee proved their energy and their talent as conspirators, but they at the same time showed their shortsightedness and their political incapacity; for they had made no preparations for immediately seizing the power which they so ardently coveted--with the intention of using it, of course, entirely for the public good. If the facts were not so well authenticated, we might dismiss the whole story as incredible. A group of young people, certainly not more than thirty or forty in number, without any organised material force behind them, without any influential accomplices in the army or the official world, without any prospect of support from the masses, and with no plan for immediate action after the assassination, deliberately provoked the crisis for which they were so hopelessly unprepared. It has been suggested that they expected the Liberals to seize the Supreme Power, but this explanation is evidently an afterthought, because they knew that the Liberals were as unprepared as themselves and they regarded them at that time as dangerous rivals. Besides this, the explanation is quite irreconcilable with the proclamation issued by the Executive Committee immediately afterwards. The most charitable way of explaining the conduct of the conspirators is to suppose that they were actuated more by blind hatred of the autocracy and its agents than by political calculations of a practical kind--that they acted simply like a wounded bull in the arena, which shuts its eyes and recklessly charges its tormentors. The murder of the Emperor had not at all the effect which the Narodovoltsi anticipated. On the contrary, it destroyed their hopes of success. Many people of liberal convictions who sympathised vaguely with the revolutionary movement without taking part in it, and who did not condemn very severely the attacks on police officials, were horrified when they found that the would-be reformers did not spare even the sacred person of the Tsar. At the same time, the police officials, who had become lax and inefficient under the conciliatory regime of Loris Melikof, recovered their old zeal, and displayed such inordinate activity that the revolutionary organisation was paralysed and in great measure destroyed. Six of the regicides were condemned to death, and five of them publicly executed, amongst the latter Sophia Perovski, one of the most active and personally sympathetic personages among the revolutionists. Scores of those who had taken an active part in the movement were in prison or in exile. For a short time the propaganda was continued among military and naval officers, and various attempts at reorganisation, especially in the southern provinces, were made, but they all failed. A certain Degaief, who had taken part in the formation of military circles, turned informer, and aided the police. By his treachery not only a considerable number of officers, but also Vera Filipof, a young lady of remarkable ability and courage, who was the leading spirit in the attempts at reorganisation, were arrested. There were still a number of leaders living abroad, and from time to time they sent emissaries to revive the propaganda, but these efforts were all fruitless. One of the active members of the revolutionary party, Leo Deutsch, who has since published his Memoirs, relates how the tide of revolution ebbed rapidly at this time. "Both in Russia and abroad," he says, "I had seen how the earlier enthusiasm had given way to scepticism; men had lost faith, though many of them would not allow that it was so. It was clear to me that a reaction had set in for many years." Of the attempts to resuscitate the movement he says: "The untried and unskilfully managed societies were run to death before they could undertake anything definite, and the unity and interdependence which characterised the original band of members had disappeared." With regard to the want of unity, another prominent revolutionist (Maslof) wrote to a friend (Dragomanof) at Geneva in 1882 in terms of bitter complaint. He accused the Executive Committee of trying to play the part of chief of the whole revolutionary party, and declared that its centralising tendencies were more despotic than those of the Government. Distributing orders among its adherents without initiating them into its plans, it insisted on unquestioning obedience. The Socialist youth, ardent adherents of Federalism, were indignant at this treatment, and began to understand that the Committee used them simply as chair a canon. The writer described in vivid colours the mutual hostility which reigned among various fractions of the party, and which manifested itself in accusations and even in denunciations; and he predicted that the Narodnaya Volya, which had organised the various acts of terrorism culminating in the assassination of the Emperor, would never develop into a powerful revolutionary party. It had sunk into the slough of untruth, and it could only continue to deceive the Government and the public. In the mutual recriminations several interesting admissions were made. It was recognised that neither the educated classes nor the common people were capable of bringing about a revolution: the former were not numerous enough, and the latter were devoted to the Tsar and did not sympathise with the revolutionary movement, though they might perhaps be induced to rise at a moment of crisis. It was considered doubtful whether such a rising was desirable, because the masses, being insufficiently prepared, might turn against the educated minority. In no case could a popular insurrection attain the object which the Socialists had in view, because the power would either remain in the hands of the Tsar--thanks to the devotion of the common people--or it would fall into the hands of the Liberals, who would oppress the masses worse than the autocratic Government had done. Further, it was recognised that acts of terrorism were worse than useless, because they were misunderstood by the ignorant, and tended to inflame the masses against the leaders. It seemed necessary, therefore, to return to a pacific propaganda. Tikhomirof, who was nominally directing the movement from abroad, became utterly discouraged, and wrote in 1884 to one of his emissaries in Russia (Lopatin): "You now see Russia, and can convince yourself that it does not possess the material for a vast work of reorganisation. . . . I advise you seriously not to make superhuman efforts and not to make a scandal in attempting the impossible. . . . If you do not want to satisfy yourself with trifles, come away and await better times." In examining the material relating to this period one sees clearly that the revolutionary movement had got into a vicious circle. As pacific propaganda had become impossible, in consequence of the opposition of the authorities and the vigilance of the police, the Government could be overturned only by a general insurrection; but the general insurrection could not be prepared without pacific propaganda. As for terrorism, it had become discredited. Tikhomirof himself came to the conclusion that the terrorist idea was altogether a mistake, not only morally, but also from the point of view of political expediency. A party, he explained, has either the force to overthrow the Government, or it has not; in the former case it has no need of political assassination, and in the latter the assassinations have no effect, because Governments are not so stupid as to let themselves be frightened by those who cannot overthrow them. Plainly there was nothing to be done but to wait for better times, as he had suggested, and the better times did not seem to be within measurable distance. He himself, after publishing a brochure entitled "Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionist," made his peace with the Government, and others followed his example.* In one prison nine made formal recantations, among them Emilianof, who held a reserve bomb ready when Alexander II. was assassinated. Occasional acts of terrorism showed that there was still fire under the smouldering embers, but they were few and far between. The last serious incident of the kind during this period was the regicide conspiracy of Sheviryoff in March, 1887. The conspirators, carrying the bombs, were arrested in the principal street of St. Petersburg, and five of them were hanged. The railway accident of Borki, which happened in the following year, and in which the Imperial family had a very narrow escape, ought perhaps to be added to the list, because there is reason to believe that it was the work of revolutionists. * Tikhomirof subsequently worked against the Social Democrats in Moscow in the interests of the Government. By this time all the cooler heads among the revolutionists, especially those who were living abroad in personal safety, had come to understand that the Socialist ideal could not be attained by popular insurrection, terrorism, or conspiracies, and consequently that further activity on the old lines was absurd. Those of them who did not abandon the enterprise in despair reverted to the idea that Autocratic Power, impregnable against frontal attacks, might be destroyed by prolonged siege operations. This change of tactics is reflected in the revolutionary literature. In 1889, for example, the editor of the Svobodnaya Rossia declared that the aim of the movement now was political freedom--not only as a stepping-stone to social reorganisation, but as a good in itself. This is, he explains, the only possible revolution at present in Russia. "For the moment there can be no other immediate practical aim. Ulterior aims are not abandoned, but they are not at present within reach. . . The revolutionists of the seventies and the eighties did not succeed in creating among the peasantry or the town workmen anything which had even the appearance of a force capable of struggling with the Government; and the revolutionists of the future will have no greater success until they have obtained such political rights as personal inviolability. Our immediate aim, therefore, is a National Assembly controlled by local self-government, and this can be brought about only by a union of all the revolutionary forces." There were still indications, it is true, that the old spirit of terrorism was not yet quite extinct: Captain Zolotykhin, for example, an officer of the Moscow secret police, was assassinated by a female revolutionist in 1890. But such incidents were merely the last fitful sputterings of a lamp that was going out for want of oil. In 1892 Stepniak declared it evident to all that the professional revolutionists could not alone overthrow autocracy, however great their energy and heroism; and he arrived at the same conclusion as the writer just quoted. Of course, immediate success was not to be expected. "It is only from the evolutionist's point of view that the struggle with autocracy has a meaning. From any other standpoint it must seem a sanguinary farce--a mere exercise in the art of self-sacrifice!" Such are the conclusions arrived at in 1892 by a man who had been in 1878 one of the leading terrorists, and who had with his own hand assassinated General Mezentsef, Chief of the Political Police. Thus the revolutionary movement, after passing through four stages, which I may call the academic, the propagandist, the insurrectionary, and the terrorist, had failed to accomplish its object. One of those who had taken an active part in it, and who, after spending two years in Siberia as a political exile, escaped and settled in Western Europe, could write thus: "Our revolutionary movement is dead, and we who are still alive stand by the grave of our beautiful departed and discuss what is wanting to her. One of us thinks that her nose should be improved; another suggests a change in her chin or her hair. We do not notice the essential that what our beautiful departed wants is life; that it is not a matter of hair or eyebrows, but of a living soul, which formerly concealed all defects, and made her beautiful, and which now has flown away. However we may invent changes and improvements, all these things are utterly insignificant in comparison with what is really wanting, and what we cannot give; for who can breathe a living soul into a corpse?" In truth, the movement which I have endeavoured to describe was at an end; but another movement, having the same ultimate object, was coming into existence, and it constitutes one of the essential factors of the present situation. Some of the exiles in Switzerland and Paris had become acquainted with the social-democratic and labour movements in Western Europe, and they believed that the strategy and tactics employed in these movements might be adopted in Russia. How far they have succeeded in carrying out this policy I shall relate presently; but before entering on this subject, I must explain how the application of such a policy had been rendered possible by changes in the economic conditions. Russia had begun to create rapidly a great manufacturing industry and an industrial proletariat. This will form the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER XXXVI INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS AND THE PROLETARIAT Russia till Lately a Peasant Empire--Early Efforts to Introduce Arts and Crafts--Peter the Great and His Successors--Manufacturing Industry Long Remains an Exotic--The Cotton Industry--The Reforms of Alexander II.--Protectionists and Free Trade--Progress under High Tariffs--M. Witte's Policy--How Capital Was Obtained--Increase of Exports--Foreign Firms Cross the Customs Frontier--Rapid Development of Iron Industry--A Commercial Crisis--M. Witte's Position Undermined by Agrarians and Doctrinaires--M. Plehve a Formidable Opponent--His Apprehensions of Revolution--Fall of M. Witte--The Industrial Proletariat. Fifty years ago Russia was still essentially a peasant empire, living by agriculture of a primitive type, and supplying her other wants chiefly by home industries, as was the custom in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. For many generations her rulers had been trying to transplant into their wide dominions the art and crafts of the West, but they had formidable difficulties to contend with, and their success was not nearly as great as they desired. We know that as far back as the fourteenth century there were cloth-workers in Moscow, for we read in the chronicles that the workshops of these artisans were sacked when the town was stormed by the Tartars. Workers in metal had also appeared in some of the larger towns by that time, but they do not seem to have risen much above the level of ordinary blacksmiths. They were destined, however, to make more rapid progress than other classes of artisans, because the old Tsars of Muscovy, like other semi-barbarous potentates, admired and envied the industries of more civilised countries mainly from the military point of view. What they wanted most was a plentiful supply of good arms wherewith to defend themselves and attack their neighbours, and it was to this object that their most strenuous efforts were directed. As early as 1475 Ivan III., the grandfather of Ivan the Terrible, sent a delegate to Venice to seek out for him an architect who, in addition to his own craft, knew how to make guns; and in due course appeared in the Kremlin a certain Muroli, called Aristotle by his contemporaries on account of his profound learning. He undertook "to build churches and palaces, to cast big bells and cannons, to fire off the said cannons, and to make every sort of castings very cunningly"; and for the exercise of these various arts it was solemnly stipulated in a formal document that he should receive the modest salary of ten roubles monthly. With regard to the military products, at least, the Venetian faithfully fulfilled his contract, and in a short time the Tsar had the satisfaction of possessing a "cannon-house," subsequently dignified with the name of "arsenal." Some of the natives learned the foreign art, and exactly a century later (1856) a Russian, or at least a Slav, called Tchekhof, produced a famous "Tsar-cannon," weighing as much as 96,000 lbs. The connection thus established with the mechanical arts of the West was always afterwards maintained, and we find frequent notices of the fact in contemporary writers. In the reign of the grandfather of Peter the Great, for example, two paper-works were established by an Italian; and velvet for the Tsar and his Boyars, gold brocades for ecclesiastical vestments, and rude kinds of glass for ordinary purposes were manufactured under the august patronage of the enlightened ruler. His son Alexis went a good many steps further, and scandalised his God-fearing orthodox subjects by his love of foreign heretical inventions. It was in his German suburb of Moscow that young Peter, who was to be crowned "the Great," made his first acquaintance with the useful arts of the West. When the great reformer came to the throne he found in his Tsardom, besides many workshops, some ten foundries, all of which were under orders "to cast cannons, bombs, and bullets, and to make arms for the service of the State." This seemed to him only a beginning, especially for the mining and iron industry, in which he was particularly interested. By importing foreign artificers and placing at their disposal big estates, with numerous serfs, in the districts where minerals were plentiful, and by carefully stipulating that these foreigners should teach his subjects well, and conceal from them none of the secrets of the craft, he created in the Ural a great iron industry, which still exists at the present day. Finding by experience that State mines and State ironworks were a heavy drain on his insufficiently replenished treasury, he transferred some of them to private persons, and this policy was followed occasionally by his successors. Hence the gigantic fortunes of the Demidofs and other families. The Shuvalovs, for example, in 1760 possessed, for the purpose of working their mines and ironworks, no less than 33,000 serfs and a corresponding amount of land. Unfortunately the concessions were generally given not to enterprising business-men, but to influential court-dignitaries, who confined their attention to squandering the revenues, and not a few of the mines and works reverted to the Government. The army required not only arms and ammunition, but also uniforms and blankets. Great attention, therefore, was paid to the woollen industry from the reign of Peter downwards. In the time of Catherine there were already 120 cloth factories, but they were on a very small scale, according to modern conceptions. Ten factories in Moscow, for example, had amongst them only 104 looms, 130 workers, and a yearly output for 200,000 roubles. While thus largely influenced in its economic policy by military considerations, the Government did not entirely neglect other branches of manufacturing industry. Ever since Russia had pretensions to being a civilised power its rulers have always been inclined to pay more attention to the ornamental than the useful--to the varnish rather than the framework of civilisation--and we need not therefore be surprised to find that long before the native industry could supply the materials required for the ordinary wants of humble life, attempts were made to produce such things as Gobelin tapestries. I mention this merely as an illustration of a characteristic trait of the national character, the influence of which may be found in many other spheres of official activity. If Russia did not attain the industrial level of Western Europe, it was not from want of ambition and effort on the part of the rulers. They worked hard, if not always wisely, for this end. Manufacturers were exempted from rates and taxes, and even from military service, and some of them, as I have said, received large estates from the Crown on the understanding that the serfs should be employed as workmen. At the same time they were protected from foreign competition by prohibitive tariffs. In a word, the manufacturing industry was nursed and fostered in a way to satisfy the most thorough-going protectionist, especially those branches which worked up native raw material such as ores, flax, hemp, wool, and tallow. Occasionally the official interference and anxiety to protect public interests went further than the manufacturers desired. On more than one occasion the authorities fixed the price of certain kinds of manufactured goods, and in 1754 the Senate, being anxious to protect the population from fires, ordered all glass and iron works within a radius of 200 versts around Moscow to be destroyed! In spite of such obstacles, the manufacturing industry as a whole made considerable progress. Between 1729 and 1762 the number of establishments officially recognised as factories rose from 26 to 335. These results did not satisfy Catherine II., who ascended the throne in 1762. Under the influence of her friends, the French Encyclopedistes, she imagined for a time that the official control might be relaxed, and that the system of employing serfs in the factories and foundries might be replaced by free labour, as in Western Europe; monopolies might be abolished, and all liege subjects, including the peasants, might be allowed to embark in industrial undertakings as they pleased, "for the benefit of the State and the nation." All this looked very well on paper, but Catherine never allowed her sentimental liberalism to injure seriously the interests of her Empire, and she accordingly refrained from putting the laissez-faire principle largely into practice. Though a good deal has been written about her economic policy, it is hardly distinguishable from that of her predecessors. Like them, she maintained high tariffs, accorded large subsidies, and even prevented the export of raw material, in the hope that it might be worked up at home; and when the prices in the woollen market rose very high, she compelled the manufacturers to supply the army with cloth at a price fixed by the authorities. In short, the old system remained practically unimpaired, and notwithstanding the steady progress made during the reign of Nicholas I. (1825-55), when the number of factory hands rose from 210,000 to 380,000, the manufacturing industry as a whole continued to be, until the serfs were emancipated in 1861, a hothouse plant which could flourish only in an officially heated atmosphere. There was one branch of it, however, to which this remark does not apply. The art of cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving struck deep root in Russian soil. After remaining for generations in the condition of a cottage industry--the yarn being distributed among the peasants and worked up by them in their own homes--it began, about 1825, to be modernised. Though it still required to be protected against foreign competition, it rapidly outgrew the necessity for direct official support. Big factories driven by steam-power were constructed, the number of hands employed rose to 110,000, and the foundations of great fortunes were laid. Strange to say, many of the future millionaires were uneducated serfs. Sava Morozof, for example, who was to become one of the industrial magnates of Moscow, was a serf belonging to a proprietor called Ryumin; most of the others were serfs of Count Sheremetyef--the owner of a large estate on which the industrial town of Ivanovo had sprung up--who was proud of having millionaires among his serfs, and who never abused his authority over them. The great movement, however, was not effected without the assistance of foreigners. Foreign foremen were largely employed, and in the work of organisation a leading part was played by a German called Ludwig Knoop. Beginning life as a commercial traveller for an English firm, he soon became a large cotton importer, and when in 1840 a feverish activity was produced in the Russian manufacturing world by the Government's permission to import English machines, his firm supplied these machines to the factories on condition of obtaining a share in the business. It has been calculated that it obtained in this way a share in no less than 122 factories, and hence arose among the peasantry a popular saying: "Where there is a church, there you find a pope, And where there is a factory, there you find a Knoop."* The biggest creation of the firm was a factory built at Narva in 1856, with nearly half a million spindles driven by water-power. * Gdye tserkov--tam pop; A gdye fabrika--tam Knop. In the second half of last century a revolution was brought about in the manufacturing industry generally by the emancipation of the serfs, the rapid extension of railways, the facilities for creating limited liability companies, and by certain innovations in the financial policy of the Government. The emancipation put on the market an unlimited supply of cheap labour; the construction of railways in all directions increased a hundredfold the means of communication; and the new banks and other credit institutions, aided by an overwhelming influx of foreign capital, encouraged the foundation and extension of industrial and commercial enterprise of every description. For a time there was great excitement. It was commonly supposed that in all matters relating to trade and industry Russia had suddenly jumped up to the level of Western Europe, and many people in St. Petersburg, carried away by the prevailing enthusiasm for liberalism in general and the doctrines of Free Trade in particular, were in favour of abolishing protectionism as an antiquated restriction on liberty and an obstacle to economic progress. At one moment the Government was disposed to yield to the current, but it was restrained by an influential group of conservative Political Economists, who appealed to patriotic sentiment, and by the Moscow manufacturers, who declared that Free Trade would ruin the country. After a little hesitation it proceeded to raise, instead of lowering, the protectionist tariff. In 1869-76 the ad valorem duties were, on an average, under thirteen per cent., but from that time onwards they rose steadily, until the last five years of the century, when they averaged thirty-three per cent., and were for some articles very much higher. In this way the Moscow industrial magnates were protected against the influx of cheap foreign goods, but they were not saved from foreign competition, for many foreign manufacturers, in order to enjoy the benefit of the high duties, founded factories in Russia. Even the firmly established cotton industry suffered from these intruders. Industrial suburbs containing not a few cotton factories sprang up around St. Petersburg; and a small Polish village called Lodz, near the German frontier, grew rapidly into a prosperous town of 300,000 inhabitants, and became a serious rival to the ancient Muscovite capital. So severely was the competition of this young upstart felt, that the Moscow merchants petitioned the Emperor to protect them by drawing a customs frontier round the Polish provinces, but their petition was not granted. Under the shelter of the high tariffs the manufacturing industry as a whole has made rapid progress, and the cotton trade has kept well to the front. In that branch, between 1861 and 1897, the number of hands employed rose from 120,000 to 325,000, and the estimated value of the products from 72 to 478 millions of roubles. In 1899 the number of spindles was considerably over six millions, and the number of automatic weaving machines 145,000. The iron industry has likewise progressed rapidly, though it has not yet outgrown the necessity for Government support, and it is not yet able to provide for all home wants. About forty years ago it received a powerful impulse from the discovery that in the provinces to the north of the Crimea and the Sea of Azof there were enormous quantities of iron ore and beds of good coal in close proximity to each other. Thanks to this discovery and to other facts of which I shall have occasion to speak presently, this district, which had previously been agricultural and pastoral, has outstripped the famous Ural region, and has become the Black Country of Russia. The vast lonely steppe, where formerly one saw merely the peasant-farmer, the shepherd, and the Tchumak,* driving along somnolently with his big, long-horned, white bullocks, is now dotted over with busy industrial settlements of mushroom growth, and great ironworks--some of them unfinished; while at night the landscape is lit up with the lurid flames of gigantic blast-furnaces. In this wonderful transformation, as in the history of Russian industrial progress generally, a great part was played by foreigners. The pioneer who did most in this district was an Englishman, John Hughes, who began life as the son and pupil of a Welsh blacksmith, and whose sons are now directors of the biggest of the South Russian ironworks. * The Tchumak, a familiar figure in the songs and legends of Little Russia, was the carrier who before the construction of railways transported the grain to the great markets, and brought back merchandise to the interior. He is gradually disappearing. Much as the South has progressed industrially in recent years, it still remains far behind those industrial portions of the country which were thickly settled at an earlier date. From this point of view the most important region is the group of provinces clustering round Moscow; next comes the St. Petersburg region, including Livonia; and thirdly Poland. As for the various kinds of industry, the most important category is that of textile fabrics, the second that of articles of nutrition, and the third that of ores and metals. The total production, if we may believe certain statistical authorities, places Russia now among the industrial nations of the world in the fifth place, immediately after the United States, England, Germany, and France, and a little before Austria. The man who has in recent times carried out most energetically the policy of protecting and fostering native industries is M. Witte, a name now familiar to Western Europe. An avowed disciple of the great German economist, Friedrich List, about whose works he published a brochure in 1888, he held firmly, from his youth upwards, the doctrine that "each nation should above all things develop harmoniously its natural resources to the highest possible degree of independence, protecting its own industries and preferring the national aim to the pecuniary advantage of individuals." As a corollary to this principle he declared that purely agricultural countries are economically backward and intellectually stagnant, being condemned to pay tribute to the nations who have learned to work up their raw products into more valuable commodities. The good old English doctrine that certain countries were intended by Providence to be eternally agricultural, and that their function in the economy of the universe is to supply raw material for the industrial nations, was always in his eyes an abomination--an ingenious, nefarious invention of the Manchester school, astutely invented for the purpose of keeping the younger nations permanently in a state of economic bondage for the benefit of English manufacturers. To emancipate Russia from this thraldom by enabling her to create a great native industry, sufficient to supply all her own wants, was the aim of his policy and the constant object of his untiring efforts. Those who have had the good fortune to know him personally must have often heard him discourse eloquently on this theme, supporting his views by quotations from the economists of his own school, and by illustrations drawn from the history of his own and other countries. A necessary condition of realising this aim was that there should be high tariffs. These already existed, and they might be raised still higher, but in themselves they were not enough. For the rapid development of the native industry an enormous capital was required, and the first problem to be solved was how this capital could be obtained. At one moment the energetic minister conceived the project of creating a fictitious capital by inflating the paper currency; but this idea proved unpopular. When broached in the Council of State it encountered determined opposition. Some of the members of that body, especially M. Bunge, who had been himself Minister of Finance, and who remembered the evil effects of the inordinate inflation of the currency on foreign exchanges during the Turkish War, advocated strongly the directly opposite course--a return to gold monometallism, for which M. Vishnegradski, M. Witte's immediate predecessor, had made considerable preparations. Being a practical man without inveterate prejudices, M. Witte gave up the scheme which he could not carry through, and adopted the views of his opponents. He would introduce the gold currency as recommended; but how was the requisite capital to be obtained? It must be procured from abroad, somehow, and the simplest way seemed to be to stimulate the export of native products. For this purpose the railways were extended,* the traffic rates manipulated, and the means of transport improved generally. * In 1892, when M. Witte undertook the financial administration, there were 30,620 versts of railway, and at the end of 1900 there were 51,288 versts. A certain influx of gold was thus secured, but not nearly enough for the object in view.* Some more potent means, therefore, had to be employed, and the inventive minister evolved a new scheme. If he could only induce foreign capitalists to undertake manufacturing industries in Russia, they would, at one and the same time, bring into the country the capital required, and they would cooperate powerfully in that development of the national industry which he so ardently wished. No sooner had he roughly sketched out his plan--for he was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet--than he set himself to put it into execution by letting it be known in the financial world that the Government was ready to open a great field for lucrative investments, in the form of profitable enterprises under the control of those who subscribed the capital. * In 1891 the total value of the exports was roughly 70,000,000 pounds. It then fell, in consequence of bad harvests, to 45 millions, and did not recover the previous maximum until 1897, when it stood at 73 millions. Thereafter there was a steady rise till 1901, when the total was estimated at 76 millions. Foreign capitalists responded warmly to the call. Crowds of concession-hunters, projectors, company promoters, et hoc genus omne, collected in St. Petersburg, offering their services on the most tempting terms; and all of them who could make out a plausible case were well received at the Ministry of Finance. It was there explained to them that in many branches of industry, such as the manufacture of textile fabrics, there was little or no room for newcomers, but that in others the prospects were most brilliant. Take, for example, the iron industries of Southern Russia. The boundless mineral wealth of that region was still almost intact, and the few works which had been there established were paying very large dividends. The works founded by John Hughes, for example, had repeatedly divided considerably over twenty per cent., and there was little fear for the future, because the Government had embarked on a great scheme of railway extension, requiring an unlimited amount of rails and rolling-stock. What better opening could be desired? Certainly the opening seemed most attractive, and into it rushed the crowd of company promoters, followed by stock-jobbers and brokers, playing lively pieces of what the Germans call Zukunftsmusik. An unwary and confiding public, especially in Belgium and France, listened to the enchanting strains of the financial syrens, and invested largely. Quickly the number of completed ironworks in that region rose from nine to seventeen, and in the short space of three years the output of pig-iron was nearly doubled. In 1900 there were 44 blast furnaces in working order, and ten more were in course of construction. And all this time the Imperial revenue increased by leaps and bounds, so that the introduction of the gold currency was effected without difficulty. M. Witte was declared to be the greatest minister of his time--a Russian Colbert or Turgot, or perhaps the two rolled into one. Then came a change. Competition and over-production led naturally to a fall in prices, and at the same time the demand decreased, because the railway-building activity of the Government slackened. Alarmed at this state of things, the banks which had helped to start and foster the huge and costly enterprises contracted their credits. By the end of 1899 the disenchantment was general and widespread. Some of the companies were so weighted by the preliminary financial obligations, and had conducted their affairs in such careless, reckless fashion, that they had soon to shut down their mines and close their works. Even solid undertakings suffered. The shares of the Briansk works, for example, which had given dividends as high as 30 per cent., fell from 500 to 230. The Mamontof companies--supposed to be one of the strongest financial groups in the country--had to suspend payment, and numerous other failures occurred. Nearly all the commercial banks, having directly participated in the industrial concerns, were rudely shaken. M. Witte, who had been for a time the idol of a certain section of the financial world, became very unpopular, and was accused of misleading the investing public. Among the accusations brought against him some at least could easily be refuted. He may have made mistakes in his policy, and may have been himself over-sanguine, but surely, as he subsequently replied to his accusers, it was no part of his duty to warn company promoters and directors that they should refrain from over-production, and that their enterprises might not be as remunerative as they expected. As to whether there is any truth in the assertion that he held out prospects of larger Government orders than he actually gave, I cannot say. That he cut down prices, and showed himself a hard man to deal with, there seems no doubt. The reader may naturally be inclined to jump to the conclusion that the commercial crisis just referred to was the cause of M. Witte's fall. Such a conclusion would be entirely erroneous. The crisis happened in the winter of 1899-1900, and M. Witte remained Finance Minister until the autumn of 1903. His fall was the result of causes of a totally different kind, and these I propose now to explain, because the explanation will throw light on certain very curious and characteristic conceptions at present current in the Russian educated classes. Of course there were certain causes of a purely personal kind, but I shall dismiss them in a very few words. I remember once asking a well-informed friend of M. Witte's what he thought of him as an administrator and a statesman. The friend replied: "Imagine a negro of the Gold Coast let loose in modern European civilisation!" This reply, like most epigrammatic remarks, is a piece of gross exaggeration, but it has a modicum of truth in it. In the eyes of well-trained Russian officials M. Witte was a titanic, reckless character, capable at any moment of playing the part of the bull in the china-shop. As a masterful person, brusque in manner and incapable of brooking contradiction, he had made for himself many enemies; and his restless, irrepressible energy had led him to encroach on the provinces of all his colleagues. Possessing as he did the control of the purse, his interference could not easily be resisted. The Ministers of Interior, War, Agriculture, Public Works, Public Instruction, and Foreign Affairs had all occasion to complain of his incursions into their departments. In contrast to his colleagues, he was not only extremely energetic, but he was ever ready to assume an astounding amount of responsibility; and as he was something of an opportunist, he was perhaps not always quixotically scrupulous in the choice of expedients for attaining his ends. Altogether M. Witte was an inconvenient personage in an administration in which strong personality is regarded as entirely out of place, and in which personal initiative is supposed to reside exclusively in the Tsar. In addition to all this he was a man who felt keenly, and when he was irritated he did not always keep the unruly member under strict control. If I am correctly informed, it was some imprudent and not very respectful remarks, repeated by a subordinate and transmitted by a Grand Duke to the Tsar, which were the immediate cause of his transfer from the influential post of Minister of Finance to the ornamental position of President of the Council of Ministers; but that was merely the proverbial last straw that broke the camel's back. His position was already undermined, and it is the undermining process which I wish to describe. The first to work for his overthrow were the Agrarian Conservatives. They could not deny that, from the purely fiscal point of view, his administration was a marvellous success; for he was rapidly doubling the revenue, and he had succeeded in replacing the fluctuating depreciated paper currency by a gold coinage; but they maintained that he was killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Evidently the tax-paying power of the rural classes was being overstrained, for they were falling more and more into arrears in the payment of their taxes, and their impoverishment was yearly increasing. All their reserves had been exhausted, as was shown by the famines of 1891-92, when the Government had to spend hundreds of millions to feed them. Whilst the land was losing its fertility, those who had to live by it were increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. Already in some districts one-fifth of the peasant households had no longer any land of their own, and of those who still possessed land a large proportion had no longer the cattle and horses necessary to till and manure their allotments. No doubt M. Witte was beginning to perceive his mistake, and had done something to palliate the evils by improving the system of collecting the taxes and abolishing the duty on passports, but such merely palliative remedies could have little effect. While a few capitalists were amassing gigantic fortunes, the masses were slowly and surely advancing to the brink of starvation. The welfare of the agriculturists, who constitute nine-tenths of the whole population, was being ruthlessly sacrificed, and for what? For the creation of a manufacturing industry which rested on an artificial, precarious basis, and which had already begun to decline. So far the Agrarians, who champion the interests of the agricultural classes. Their views were confirmed and their arguments strengthened by an influential group of men whom I may call, for want of a better name, the philosophers or doctrinaire interpreters of history, who have, strange to say, more influence in Russia than in any other country. The Russian educated classes desire that the nation should be wealthy and self-supporting, and they recognise that for this purpose a large manufacturing industry is required; but they are reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary to attain the object in view, and they imagine that, somehow or other, these sacrifices may be avoided. Sympathising with this frame of mind, the doctrinaires explain that the rich and prosperous countries of Europe and America obtained their wealth and prosperity by so-called "Capitalism"--that is to say, by a peculiar social organisation in which the two main factors are a small body of rich capitalists and manufacturers and an enormous pauper proletariat living from hand to mouth, at the mercy of the heartless employers of labour. Russia has lately followed in the footsteps of those wealthy countries, and if she continues to do so she will inevitably be saddled with the same disastrous results--plutocracy, pauperism, unrestrained competition in all spheres of activity, and a greatly intensified struggle for life, in which the weaker will necessarily go to the wall.* * Free competition in all spheres of activity, leading to social inequality, plutocracy, and pauperism, is the favourite bugbear of Russian theorists; and who is not a theorist in Russia? The fact indicates the prevalence of Socialist ideas in the educated classes. Happily there is, according to these theorists, a more excellent way, and Russia can adopt it if she only remains true to certain mysterious principles of her past historic development. Without attempting to expound those mysterious principles, to which I have repeatedly referred in previous chapters, I may mention briefly that the traditional patriarchal institutions on which the theorists found their hopes of a happy social future for their country are the rural Commune, the native home-industries, and the peculiar co-operative institutions called Artels. How these remnants of a semi-patriarchal state of society are to be practically developed in such a way as to withstand the competition of manufacturing industry organised on modern "capitalist" lines, no one has hitherto been able to explain satisfactorily, but many people indulge in ingenious speculations on the subject, like children planning the means of diverting with their little toy spades a formidable inundation. In my humble opinion, the whole theory is a delusion; but it is held firmly--I might almost say fanatically--by those who, in opposition to the indiscriminate admirers of West-European and American civilisation, consider themselves genuine Russians and exceptionally good patriots. M. Witte has never belonged to that class. He believes that there is only one road to national prosperity--the road by which Western Europe has travelled--and along this road he tried to drive his country as rapidly as possible. He threw himself, therefore, heart and soul into what his opponents call "Capitalism," by raising State loans, organising banks and other credit institutions, encouraging the creation and extension of big factories, which must inevitably destroy the home industry, and even--horribile dictu!--undermining the rural Commune, and thereby adding to the ranks of the landless proletariat, in order to increase the amount of cheap labour for the benefit of the capitalists. With the arguments thus supplied by Agrarians and doctrinaires, quite honest and well-meaning, according to their lights, it was easy to sap M. Witte's position. Among his opponents, the most formidable was the late M. Plehve, Minister of Interior--a man of a totally different stamp. A few months before his tragic end I had a long and interesting conversation with him, and I came away deeply impressed. Having repeatedly had conversations of a similar kind with M. Witte, I could compare, or rather contrast, the two men. Both of them evidently possessed an exceptional amount of mental power and energy, but in the one it was volcanic, and in the other it was concentrated and thoroughly under control. In discussion, the one reminded me of the self-taught, slashing swordsman; the other of the dexterous fencer, carefully trained in the use of the foils, who never launches out beyond the point at which he can quickly recover himself. As to whether M. Plehve was anything more than a bold, energetic, clever official there may be differences of opinion, but he certainly could assume the airs of a profound and polished statesman, capable of looking at things from a much higher point of view than the ordinary tchinovnik, and he had the talent of tacitly suggesting that a great deal of genuine, enlightened statesmanship lay hidden under the smooth surface of his cautious reserve. Once or twice I could perceive that when criticising the present state of things he had his volcanic colleague in his mind's eye; but the covert allusions were so vague and so carefully worded that the said colleague, if he had been present, would hardly have been justified in entering a personal protest. A statesman of the higher type, I was made to feel, should deal not with personalities, but with things, and it would be altogether unbecoming to complain of a colleague in presence of an outsider. Thus his attitude towards his opponent was most correct, but it was not difficult to infer that he had little sympathy with the policy of the Ministry of Finance. From other sources I learned the cause of this want of sympathy. Being Minister of Interior, and having served long in the Police Department, M. Plehve considered that his first duty was the maintenance of public order and the protection of the person and autocracy of his august master. He was therefore the determined enemy of revolutionary tendencies, in whatever garb or disguise they might appear; and as a statesman he had to direct his attention to everything likely to increase those tendencies in the future. Now it seemed that in the financial policy which had been followed for some years there were germs of future revolutionary fermentation. The peasantry were becoming impoverished, and were therefore more likely to listen to the insidious suggestions of Socialist agitators; and already agrarian disturbances had occurred in the provinces of Kharkof and Poltava. The industrial proletariat which was being rapidly created was being secretly organised by the revolutionary Social Democrats, and already there had been serious labour troubles in some of the large towns. For any future revolutionary movement the proletariat would naturally supply recruits. Then, at the other end of the social scale, a class of rich capitalists was being created, and everybody who has read a little history knows that a rich and powerful tiers etat cannot be permanently conciliated with autocracy. Though himself neither an agrarian nor a Slavophil doctrinaire, M. Plehve could not but have a certain sympathy with those who were forging thunderbolts for the official annihilation of M. Witte. He was too practical a man to imagine that the hands on the dial of economic progress could be set back and a return made to moribund patriarchal institutions; but he thought that at least the pace might be moderated. The Minister of Finance need not be in such a desperate, reckless hurry, and it was desirable to create conservative forces which might counteract the revolutionary forces which his impulsive colleague was inadvertently calling into existence. Some of the forgers of thunderbolts went a great deal further, and asserted or insinuated that M. Witte was himself consciously a revolutionist, with secret, malevolent intentions. In support of their insinuations they cited certain cases in which well-known Socialists had been appointed professors in academies under the control of the Ministry of Finance, and they pointed to the Peasant Bank, which enjoyed M. Witte's special protection. At first it had been supposed that the bank would have an anti-revolutionary influence by preventing the formation of a landless proletariat and increasing the number of small land-owners, who are always and everywhere conservative so far as the rights of private property are concerned. Unfortunately its success roused the fears of the more conservative section of the landed proprietors. These gentlemen, as I have already mentioned, pointed out that the estates of the nobles were rapidly passing into the hands of the peasantry, and that if this process were allowed to continue the hereditary Noblesse, which had always been the civilising element in the rural population, and the surest support of the throne, would drift into the towns and there sink into poverty or amalgamate with the commercial plutocracy, and help to form a tiers etat which would be hostile to the Autocratic Power. In these circumstances it was evident that the headstrong Minister of Finance could maintain his position only so long as he enjoyed the energetic support of the Emperor, and this support, for reasons which I have indicated above, failed him at the critical moment. When his work was still unfinished he was suddenly compelled, by the Emperor's command, to relinquish his post and accept a position in which, it was supposed, he would cease to have any influence in the administration. Thus fell the Russian Colbert-Turgot, or whatever else he may be called. Whether financial difficulties in the future will lead to his reinstatement as Minister of Finance remains to be seen; but in any case his work cannot be undone. He has increased manufacturing industry to an unprecedented extent, and, as M. Plehve perceived, the industrial proletariat which manufacturing industry on capitalist lines always creates has provided a new field of activity for the revolutionists. I return, therefore, to the evolution of the revolutionary movement in order to describe its present phase, the first-fruits of which have been revealed in the labour disturbances in St. Petersburg and other industrial centres. CHAPTER XXXVII THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN ITS LATEST PHASE Influence of Capitalism and Proletariat on the Revolutionary Movement--What is to be Done?--Reply of Plekhanof--A New Departure--Karl Marx's Theories Applied to Russia--Beginnings of a Social Democratic Movement--The Labour Troubles of 1894-96 in St. Petersburg--The Social Democrats' Plan of Campaign--Schism in the Party--Trade-unionism and Political Agitation--The Labour Troubles of 1902--How the Revolutionary Groups are Differentiated from Each Other--Social Democracy and Constitutionalism--Terrorism--The Socialist Revolutionaries--The Militant Organisation--Attitude of the Government--Factory Legislation--Government's Scheme for Undermining Social Democracy--Father Gapon and His Labour Association--The Great Strike in St. Petersburg--Father Gapon goes over to the Revolutionaries. The development of manufacturing industry on capitalist lines, and the consequent formation of a large industrial proletariat, produced great disappointment in all the theorising sections of the educated classes. The thousands of men and women who had, since the accession of the Tsar-Emancipator in 1855, taken a keen, enthusiastic interest in the progress of their native country, all had believed firmly that in some way or other Russia would escape "the festering sores of Western civilisation." Now experience had proved that the belief was an illusion, and those who had tried to check the natural course of industrial progress were constrained to confess that their efforts had been futile. Big factories were increasing in size and numbers, while cottage industries were disappearing or falling under the power of middlemen, and the Artels had not advanced a step in their expected development. The factory workers, though all of peasant origin, were losing their connection with their native villages and abandoning their allotments of the Communal land. They were becoming, in short, a hereditary caste in the town population, and the pleasant Slavophil dream of every factory worker having a house in the country was being rudely dispelled. Nor was there any prospect of a change for the better in the future. With the increase of competition among the manufacturers, the uprooting of the muzhik from the soil must go on more and more rapidly, because employers must insist more and more on having thoroughly trained operatives ready to work steadily all the year round. This state of things had a curious effect on the course of the revolutionary movement. Let me recall very briefly the successive stages through which the movement had already passed. It had been inaugurated, as we have seen, by the Nihilists, the ardent young representatives of a "storm-and-stress" period, in which the venerable traditions and respected principles of the past were rejected and ridiculed, and the newest ideas of Western Europe were eagerly adopted and distorted. Like the majority of their educated countrymen, they believed that in the race of progress Russia was about to overtake and surpass the nations of the West, and that this desirable result was to be attained by making a tabula rasa of existing institutions, and reconstructing society according to the plans of Proudhon, Fourier, and the other writers of the early Socialist school. When the Nihilists had expended their energies and exhausted the patience of the public in theorising, talking, and writing, a party of action came upon the scene. Like the Nihilists, they desired political, social, and economic reforms of the most thorough-going kind, but they believed that such things could not be effected by the educated classes alone, and they determined to call in the co-operation of the people. For this purpose they tried to convert the masses to the gospel of Socialism. Hundreds of them became missionaries and "went in among the people." But the gospel of Socialism proved unintelligible to the uneducated, and the more ardent, incautious missionaries fell into the hands of the police. Those of them who escaped, perceiving the error of their ways, but still clinging to the hope of bringing about a political, social, and economic revolution, determined to change their tactics. The emancipated serf had shown himself incapable of "prolonged revolutionary activity," but there was reason to believe that he was, like his forefathers in the time of Stenka Razin and Pugatcheff, capable of rising and murdering his oppressors. He must be used, therefore, for the destruction of the Autocratic Power and the bureaucracy, and then it would be easy to reorganise society on a basis of universal equality, and to take permanent precautions against capitalism and the creation of a proletariat. The hopes of the agitators proved as delusive as those of the propagandists. The muzhik turned a deaf ear to their instigations, and the police soon prevented their further activity. Thus the would-be root-and-branch reforms found themselves in a dilemma. Either they must abandon their schemes for the moment or they must strike immediately at their persecutors. They chose, as we have seen, the latter alternative, and after vain attempts to frighten the Government by acts of terrorism against zealous officials, they assassinated the Tsar himself; but before they had time to think of the constructive part of their task, their organisation was destroyed by the Autocratic Power and the bureaucracy, and those of them who escaped arrest had to seek safety in emigration to Switzerland and Paris. Then arose, all along the line of the defeated, decimated revolutionists, the cry, "What is to be done?" Some replied that the shattered organisation should be reconstructed, and a number of secret agents were sent successively from Switzerland for this purpose. But their efforts, as they themselves confessed, were fruitless, and despondency seemed to be settling down permanently on all, except a few fanatics, when a voice was heard calling on the fugitives to rally round a new banner and carry on the struggle by entirely new methods. The voice came from a revolutionologist (if I may use such a term) of remarkable talent, called M. Plekhanof, who had settled in Geneva with a little circle of friends, calling themselves the "Labour Emancipation Group." His views were expounded in a series of interesting publications, the first of which was a brochure entitled "Socialism and the Political Struggle," published in 1883. According to M. Plekhanof and his group the revolutionary movement had been conducted up to that moment on altogether wrong lines. All previous revolutionary groups had acted on the assumption that the political revolution and the economic reorganisation of society must be effected simultaneously, and consequently they had rejected contemptuously all proposals for reforms, however radical, of a merely political kind. These had been considered, as I have mentioned in a previous chapter, not only as worthless, but as positively prejudicial to the interests of the working classes, because so-called political liberties and parliamentary government would be sure to consolidate the domination of the bourgeoisie. That such has generally been the immediate effect of parliamentary institutions is undeniable, but it did not follow that the creation of such institutions should be opposed. On the contrary, they ought to be welcomed, not merely because, as some revolutionists had already pointed out, propaganda and agitation could be more easily carried on under a constitutional regime, but because constitutionalism is certainly the most convenient, and perhaps the only, road by which the socialistic ideal can ultimately be attained. This is a dark saying, but it will become clearer when I have explained, according to the new apostles, a second error into which their predecessors had fallen. That second error was the assumption that all true friends of the people, whether Conservatives, Liberals, or revolutionaries, ought to oppose to the utmost the development of capitalism. In the light of Karl Marx's discoveries in economic science every one must recognise this to be an egregious mistake. That great authority, it was said, had proved that the development of capitalism was irresistible, and his conclusions had been confirmed by the recent history of Russia, for all the economic progress made during the last half century had been on capitalist lines. Even if it were possible to arrest the capitalist movement, it is not desirable from the revolutionary point of view. In support of this thesis Karl Marx is again cited. He has shown that capitalism, though an evil in itself, is a necessary stage of economic and social progress. At first it is prejudicial to the interests of the working classes, but in the long run it benefits them, because the ever-growing proletariat must, whether it desires it or not, become a political party, and as a political party it must one day break the domination of the bourgeoisie. As soon as it has obtained the predominant political power, it will confiscate, for the public good, the instruments of production--factories, foundries, machines, etc.--by expropriating the capitalist. In this way all the profits which accrue from production on a large scale, and which at present go into the pockets of the capitalists, will be distributed equally among the workmen. Thus began a new phase of the revolutionary movement, and, like all previous phases, it remained for some years in the academic stage, during which there were endless discussions on theoretical and practical questions. Lavroff, the prophet of the old propaganda, treated the new ideas "with grandfatherly severity," and Tikhomirof, the leading representative of the moribund Narodnaya Volya, which had prepared the acts of terrorism, maintained stoutly that the West European methods recommended by Plekhanof were inapplicable to Russia. The Plekhanof group replied in a long series of publications, partly original and partly translations from Marx and Engels, explaining the doctrines and aims of the Social Democrats. Seven years were spent in this academic literary activity--a period of comparative repose for the Russian secret police--and about 1890 the propagandists of the new school began to work cautiously in St. Petersburg. At first they confined themselves to forming little secret circles for making converts, and they found that the ground had been to some extent prepared for the seed which they had to sow. The workmen were discontented, and some of the more intelligent amongst them who had formerly been in touch with the propagandists of the older generation had learned that there was an ingenious and effective means of getting their grievances redressed. How was that possible? By combination and strikes. For the uneducated workers this was an important discovery, and they soon began to put the suggested remedy to a practical test. In the autumn of 1894 labour troubles broke out in the Nevski engineering works and the arsenal, and in the following year in the Thornton factory and the cigarette works. In all these strikes the Social Democratic agents took part behind the scenes. Avoiding the main errors of the old propagandists, who had offered the workmen merely abstract Socialist theories which no uneducated person could reasonably be expected to understand, they adopted a more rational method. Though impervious to abstract theories, the Russian workman is not at all insensible to the prospect of bettering his material condition and getting his everyday grievances redressed. Of these grievances the ones he felt most keenly were the long hours, the low wages, the fines arbitrarily imposed by the managers, and the brutal severity of the foreman. By helping him to have these grievances removed the Social Democratic agents might gain his confidence, and when they had come to be regarded by him as his real friends they might widen his sympathies and teach him to feel that his personal interests were identical with the interests of the working classes as a whole. In this way it would be possible to awaken in the industrial proletariat generally a sort of esprit de corps, which is the first condition of political organisation. On these lines the agents set to work. Having formed themselves into a secret association called the "Union for the Emancipation of the Working Classes," they gradually abandoned the narrow limits of coterie-propaganda, and prepared the way for agitation on a larger scale. Among the discontented workmen they distributed a large number of carefully written tracts, in which the material grievances were formulated, and the whole political system, with its police, gendarmes, Cossacks, and tax-gathers, was criticised in no friendly spirit, but without violent language. In introducing into the programme this political element, great caution had to be exercised, because the workmen did not yet perceive clearly any close connection between their grievances and the existing political institutions, and those of them who belonged to the older generation regarded the Tsar as the incarnation of disinterested benevolence. Bearing this in mind, the Union circulated a pamphlet for the enlightenment of the labouring population, in which the writer refrained from all reference to the Autocratic Power, and described simply the condition of the labouring classes, the heavy burdens they had to bear, the abuses of which they were the victims, and the inconsiderate way in which they were treated by their employers. This pamphlet was eagerly read, and from that moment whenever labour troubles arose the men applied to the Social Democratic agents to assist them in formulating their grievances. Of course, the assistance had to be given secretly, because there were always police spies in the factories, and all persons suspected of aiding the labour movement were liable to be arrested and exiled. In spite of this danger the work was carried on with great energy, and in the summer of 1896 the field of operations was extended. During the coronation ceremonies of that year the factories and workshops in St. Petersburg were closed, and the men considered that for these days they ought to receive wages as usual. When their demand was refused, 40,000 of them went out on strike. The Social Democratic Union seized the opportunity and distributed tracts in large quantities. For the first time such tracts were read aloud at workmen's meetings and applauded by the audience. The Union encouraged the workmen in their resistance, but advised them to refrain from violence, so as not to provoke the intervention of the police and the military, as they had imprudently done on some previous occasions. When the police did intervene and expelled some of the strike-leaders from St. Petersburg, the agitators had an excellent opportunity of explaining that the authorities were the protectors of the employers and the enemies of the working classes. These explanations counteracted the effect of an official proclamation to the workmen, in which M. Witte tried to convince them that the Tsar was constantly striving to improve their condition. The struggle was decided, not by arguments and exhortations, but by a more potent force; having no funds for continuing the strike, the men were compelled by starvation to resume work. This is the point at which the labour movement began to be conducted on a large scale and by more systematic methods. In the earlier labour troubles the strikers had not understood that the best means of bringing pressure on employers was simply to refuse to work, and they had often proceeded to show their dissatisfaction by ruthlessly destroying their employers' property. This had brought the police, and sometimes the military, on the scene, and numerous arrests had followed. Another mistake made by the inexperienced strikers was that they had neglected to create a reserve fund from which they could draw the means of subsistence when they no longer received wages and could no longer obtain credit at the factory provision store. Efforts were now made to correct these two mistakes, and with regard to the former they were fairly successful, for wanton destruction of property ceased to be a prominent feature of labour troubles; but strong reserve funds have not yet been created, so that the strikes have never been of long duration. Though the strikes had led, so far, to no great practical, tangible results, the new ideas and aspirations were spreading rapidly in the factories and workshops, and they had already struck such deep root that some of the genuine workmen wished to have a voice in the managing committee of the Union, which was composed exclusively of educated men. When a request to that effect was rejected by the committee a lengthy discussion took place, and it soon became evident that underneath the question of organisation lay a most important question of principle. The workmen wished to concentrate their efforts on the improvement of their material condition, and to proceed on what we should call trade-unionist lines, whereas the committee wished them to aim also at the acquisition of political rights. Great determination was shown on both sides. An attempt of the workmen to maintain a secret organ of their own with the view of emancipating themselves from the "Politicals" ended in failure; but they received sympathy and support from some of the educated members of the party, and in this way a schism took place in the Social Democrat camp. After repeated ineffectual attempts to find a satisfactory compromise, the question was submitted to a Congress which was held in Switzerland in 1900; but the discussions merely accentuated the differences of opinion, and the two parties constituted themselves into separate independent groups. The one under the leadership of Plekhanof, and calling itself the Revolutionary Social Democrats, held to the Marx doctrines in all their extent and purity, and maintained the necessity of constant agitation in the political sense. The other, calling itself the Union of Foreign Social Democrats, inclined to the trade-unionism programme, and proclaimed the necessity of being guided by political expediency rather than inflexible dogmas. Between the two a wordy warfare was carried on for some time in pedantic, technical language; but though habitually brandishing their weapons and denouncing their antagonists in true Homeric style, they were really allies, struggling towards a common end--two sections of the Social Democratic party differing from each other on questions of tactics. The two divergent tendencies have often reappeared in the subsequent history of the movement. During ordinary peaceful times the economic or trade-unionist tendency can generally hold its own, but as soon as disturbances occur and the authorities have to intervene, the political current quickly gains the upper hand. This was exemplified in the labour troubles which took place at Rostoff-on-the-Don in 1902. During the first two days of the strike the economic demands alone were put forward, and in the speeches which were delivered at the meetings of workmen no reference was made to political grievances. On the third day one orator ventured to speak disrespectfully of the Autocratic Power, but he thereby provoked signs of dissatisfaction in the audiences. On the fifth and following days, however, several political speeches were made, ending with the cry of "Down with Tsarism!" and a crowd of 30,000 workmen agreed with the speakers. Thereafter occurred similar strikes in Odessa, the Caucasus, Kief, and Central Russia, and they had all a political rather than a purely economic character. I must now endeavour to explain clearly the point of view and plan of campaign of this new movement, which I may call the revolutionary Renaissance. The ultimate aim of the new reformers was the same as that of all their predecessors--the thorough reorganisation of Society on Socialistic principles. According to their doctrines, Society as at present constituted consists of two great classes, called variously the exploiters and the exploited, the shearers and the shorn, the capitalists and the workers, the employers and the employed, the tyrants and the oppressed; and this unsatisfactory state of things must go on so long as the so-called bourgeois or capitalist regime continues to exist. In the new heaven and the new earth of which the Socialist dreams this unjust distinction is to disappear; all human beings are to be equally free and independent, all are to cooperate spontaneously with brains and hands to the common good, and all are to enjoy in equal shares the natural and artificial good things of this life. So far there has never been any difference of opinion among the various groups of Russian thorough-going revolutionists. All of them, from the antiquated Nihilist down to the Social Democrat of the latest type, have held these views. What has differentiated them from each other is the greater or less degree of impatience to realise the ideal. The most impatient were the Anarchists, who grouped themselves around Bakunin. They wished to overthrow immediately by a frontal attack all existing forms of government and social organisation, in the hope that chance, or evolution, or natural instinct, or sudden inspiration or some other mysterious force, would create something better. They themselves declined to aid this mysterious force even by suggestions, on the ground that, as one of them has said, "to construct is not the business of the generation whose duty is to destroy." Notwithstanding the strong impulsive element in the national character, the reckless, ultra-impatient doctrinaires never became numerous, and never succeeded in forming an organised group, probably because the young generation in Russia were too much occupied with the actual and future condition of their own country to embark on schemes of cosmopolitan anarchism such as Bakunin recommended. Next in the scale of impatience came the group of believers in Socialist agitation among the masses, with a view to overturning the existing Government and putting themselves in its place as soon as the masses were sufficiently organised to play the part destined for them. Between them and the Anarchists the essential points of difference were that they admitted the necessity of some years of preparation, and they intended, when the Government was overturned, not to preserve indefinitely the state of anarchy, but to put in the place of autocracy, limited monarchy, or the republic, a strong, despotic Government thoroughly imbued with Socialistic principles. As soon as it had laid firmly the foundations of the new order of things it was to call a National Assembly, from which it was to receive, I presume, a bill of indemnity for the benevolent tyranny which it had temporarily exercised. Impatience a few degrees less intense produced the next group, the partisans of pacific Socialist propaganda. They maintained that there was no necessity for overthrowing the old order of things till the masses had been intellectually prepared for the new, and they objected to the foundation of the new regime being laid by despots, however well-intentioned in the Socialist sense. The people must be made happy and preserved in a state of happiness by the people themselves. In the last place came the least impatient of all, the Social Democrats, who differ widely from all the preceding categories. All previous revolutionary groups had systematically rejected the idea of a gradual transition from the bourgeois to the Socialist regime. They would not listen to any suggestion about a constitutional monarchy or a democratic republic even as a mere intermediate stage of social development. All such things, as part and parcel of the bourgeois system, were anathematised. There must be no half-way houses between present misery and future happiness; for many weary travellers might be tempted to settle there in the desert, and fail to reach the promised land. "Ever onward" should be the watchword, and no time should be wasted on the foolish struggles of political parties and the empty vanities of political life. Not thus thought the Social Democrat. He was much wiser in his generation. Having seen how the attempts of the impatient groups had ended in disaster, and knowing that, if they had succeeded, the old effete despotism would probably have been replaced by a young, vigorous one more objectionable than its predecessor, he determined to try a more circuitous but surer road to the goal which the impatient people had in view. In his opinion the distance from the present Russian regime protected by autocracy to the future Socialist paradise was far too great to be traversed in a single stage, and he knew of one or two comfortable rest-houses on the way. First there was the rest-house of Constitutionalism, with parliamentary institutions. For some years the bourgeoisie would doubtless have a parliamentary majority, but gradually, by persistent effort, the Fourth Estate would gain the upper hand, and then the Socialist millennium might be proclaimed. Meanwhile, what had to be done was to gain the confidence of the masses, especially of the factory workers, who were more intelligent and less conservative than the peasantry, and to create powerful labour organisations as material for a future political party. This programme implied, of course, a certain unity of action with the constitutionalists, from whom, as I have said, the revolutionists of the old school had stood sternly aloof. There was now no question of a formal union, and certainly no idea of a "union of hearts," because the Socialists knew that their ultimate aim would be strenuously opposed by the Liberals, and the Liberals knew that an attempt was being made to use them as a cat's-paw; but there seemed to be no reason why they of the two groups should not observe towards each other a benevolent neutrality, and march side by side as far as the half-way house, where they could consider the conditions of the further advance. When I first became acquainted with the Russian Social Democrats I imagined that their plan of campaign was of a purely pacific character; and that they were, unlike their predecessors, an evolutionary, as distinguished from a revolutionary, party. Subsequently I discovered that this conception was not quite accurate. In ordinary quiet times they use merely pacific methods, and they feel that the Proletariat is not yet sufficiently prepared, intellectually and politically, to assume the great responsibilities which are reserved for it in the future. Moreover, when the moment comes for getting rid of the Autocratic Power, they would prefer a gradual process of liquidation to a sudden cataclysm. So far they may be said to be evolutionaries rather than revolutionaries, but their plan of campaign does not entirely exclude violence. They would not consider it their duty to oppose the use of violence on the part of the more impatient sections of the revolutionists, and they would have no scruples about utilising disturbances for the attainment of their own end. Public agitation, which is always likely in Russia to provoke violent repression by the authorities, they regard as necessary for keeping alive and strengthening the spirit of opposition; and when force is used by the police they approve of the agitators using force in return. To acts of terrorism, however, they are opposed on principle. Who, then, are the Terrorists, who have assassinated so many great personages, including the Grand Duke Serge? In reply to this question I must introduce the reader to another group of the revolutionists who have usually been in hostile, rather than friendly, relations with the Social Democrats, and who call themselves the Socialist-Revolutionaries (Sotsialisty-Revolutsionery). It will be remembered that the terrorist group, commonly called Narodnaya Volya, or Narodovoltsi, which succeeded in assassinating Alexander II., were very soon broken up by the police and most of the leading members were arrested. A few escaped, of whom some remained in the country and others emigrated to Switzerland or Paris, and efforts at reorganisation were made, especially in the southern and western provinces, but they proved ineffectual. At last, sobered by experience and despairing of further success, some of the prisoners and a few of the exiles--notably Tikhomirof, who was regarded as the leader--made their peace with the Government, and for some years terrorism seemed to be a thing of the past. Passing through Russia on my way home from India and Central Asia at that time, I came to the conclusion that the young generation had recovered from its prolonged attack of brain-fever, and had entered on a more normal, tranquil, and healthy period of existence. My expectations proved too optimistic. About 1894 the Narodnaya Volya came to life again, with all its terrorist traditions intact; and shortly afterwards appeared the new group which I have just mentioned, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, with somewhat similar principles and a better organisation. For some seven or eight years the two groups existed side by side, and then the Narodnaya Volya disappeared, absorbed probably by its more powerful rival. During the first years of their existence neither group was strong enough to cause the Government serious inconvenience, and it was not till 1897-98 that they found means of issuing manifestos and programmes. In these the Narodovoltsi declared that their immediate aims were the annihilation of Autocracy, the convocation of a National Assembly and the reorganisation of the Empire on the principles of federation and local self-government, and that for the attainment of these objects the means to be employed should include popular insurrections, military conspiracies, bombs and dynamite. Very similar, though ostensibly a little more eclectic, was the programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Their ultimate aim was declared to be the transfer of political authority from the Autocratic Power to the people, the abolition of private property in the means of production, and in general the reorganisation of national life on Socialist principles. On certain points they were at one with the Social Democrats. They recognised, for example, that the social reorganisation must be preceded by a political revolution, that much preparatory work was necessary, and that attention should be directed first to the industrial proletariat as the most intelligent section of the masses. On the other hand they maintained that it was a mistake to confine the revolutionary activity to the working classes of the towns, who were not strong enough to overturn the Autocratic Power. The agitation ought, therefore, to be extended to the peasantry, who were quite "developed" enough to understand at least the idea of land-nationalisation; and for the carrying out of this part of the programme a special organisation was created. With so many opinions in common, it seemed at one moment as if the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries might unite their forces for a combined attack on the Government; but apart from the mutual jealousy and hatred which so often characterise revolutionary as well as religious sects, they were prevented from coalescing, or even cordially co-operating, by profound differences both in doctrine and in method. The Social Democrats are essentially doctrinaires. Thorough-going disciples of Karl Marx, they believed in what they consider the immutable laws of social progress, according to which the Socialistic ideal can be reached only through capitalism; and the intermediate political revolution, which is to substitute the will of the people for the Autocratic Power, must be effected by the conversion and organisation of the industrial proletariat. With the spiritual pride of men who feel themselves to be the incarnations or avatars of immutable law, they are inclined to look down with something very like contempt on mere empirics who are ignorant of scientific principles and are guided by considerations of practical expediency. The Social-Revolutionaries seem to them to be empirics of this kind because they reject the tenets, or at least deny the infallibility, of the Marx school, cling to the idea of partially resisting the overwhelming influence of capitalism in Russia, hope that the peasantry will play at least a secondary part in bringing about the political revolution, and are profoundly convinced that the advent of political liberty may be greatly accelerated by the use of terrorism. On this last point they stated their views very frankly in a pamphlet which they published in 1902 under the title of "Our Task" (Nasha Zadatcha). It is there said: "One of the powerful means of struggle, dictated by our revolutionary past and present, is political terrorism, consisting of the annihilation of the most injurious and influential personages of Russian autocracy in given conditions. Systematic terrorism, in conjunction with other forms of open mass-struggle (industrial riots and agrarian risings, demonstrations, etc.), which receive from terrorism an enormous, decisive significance, will lead to the disorganisation of the enemy. Terrorist activity will cease only with the victory over autocracy and the complete attainment of political liberty. Besides its chief significance as a means of disorganising, terrorist activity will serve at the same time as a means of propaganda and agitation, a form of open struggle taking place before the eyes of the whole people, undermining the prestige of Government authority, and calling into life new revolutionary forces, while the oral and literary propaganda is being continued without interruption. Lastly, the terrorist activity serves for the whole secret revolutionary party as a means of self-defence and of protecting the organisation against the injurious elements of spies and treachery." In accordance with this theory a "militant organisation" (Boevaga Organisatsia) was formed and soon set to work with revolvers and bombs. First an attempt was made on the life of Pobedonostsef; then the Minister of the Interior, Sipiagin, was assassinated; next attempts were made on the lives of the Governors of Vilna and Kharkof, and the Kharkof chief of police; and since that time the Governor of Ufa, the Vice-Governor of Elizabetpol, the Minister of the Interior, M. Plehve, and the Grand Duke Serge have fallen victims to the terrorist policy.* * In this list I have not mentioned the assassination of M. Bogolyepof, Minister of Public Instruction, in 1901, because I do not know whether it should be attributed to the Socialist-Revolutionaries or to the Narodovoltsi, who had not yet amalgamated with them. Though the Social Democrats have no sentimental squeamishness about bloodshed, they objected to this policy on the ground that acts of terrorism were unnecessary and were apt to prove injurious rather than beneficial to the revolutionist cause. One of the main objects of every intelligent revolutionary party should be to awaken all classes from their habitual apathy and induce them to take an active part in the political movement; but terrorism must have a contrary effect by suggesting that political freedom is to be attained, not by the steady pressure and persevering cooperation of the people, but by startling, sensational acts of individual heroism. The efforts of these two revolutionary parties, as well as of minor groups, to get hold of the industrial proletariat did not escape the notice of the authorities; and during the labour troubles of 1896, on the suggestion of M. Witte, the Government had considered the question as to what should be done to counteract the influence of the agitators. On that question it had no difficulty in coming to a decision; the condition of the working classes must be improved. An expert official was accordingly instructed to write a report on what had already been done in that direction. In his report it was shown that the Government had long been thinking about the subject. Not to speak of a still-born law about a ten-hour day for artisans, dating from the time of Catherine II., an Imperial commission had been appointed as early as 1859, but nothing practical came of its deliberations until 1882, when legislative measures were taken for the protection of women and children in factories. A little later (1886) other grievances were dealt with and partly removed by regulating contracts of hire, providing that the money derived from deductions and fines should not be appropriated by the employers, and creating a staff of factory inspectors who should take care that the benevolent intentions of the Government were duly carried out. Having reviewed all these official efforts in 1896, the Government passed in the following year a law prohibiting night work and limiting the working day to eleven and a half hours. This did not satisfy the workmen. Their wages were still low, and it was difficult to get them increased because strikes and all forms of association were still, as they had always been, criminal offences. On this point the Government remained firm so far as the law was concerned, but it gradually made practical concessions by allowing the workmen to combine for certain purposes. In 1898, for example, in Kharkof, the Engineers' Mutual Aid Society was sanctioned, and gradually it became customary to allow the workmen to elect delegates for the discussion of their grievances with the employers and inspectors. Finding that these concessions did not check the growing influence of the Social Democratic agitators among the operatives, the Government resolved to go a step further; it would organise the workers on purely trade-unionist lines, and would thereby combat the Social Democrats, who always advised the strikers to mix up political demands with their material grievances. The project seemed to have a good prospect of success, because there were many workmen, especially of the older generation, who did not at all like the mixing up of politics, which so often led to arrest, imprisonment and exile, with the practical concerns of every day life. The first attempt of the kind was made in Moscow under the direction of a certain Zubatof, chief of the secret police, who had been himself a revolutionary in his youth, and afterwards an agent provocateur. Aided by Tikhomirof, the repentant terrorist whom I have already mentioned, Zubatof organised a large workmen's association, with reading-rooms, lectures, discussions and other attractions, and sought to convince the members that they should turn a deaf ear to the Social Democratic agents, and look only to the Government for the improvement of their condition. In order to gain their sympathy and confidence, he instructed his subordinates to take the side of the workmen in all labour disputes, while he himself brought official pressure to bear on the employers. By this means he made a considerable number of converts, and for a time the association seemed to prosper, but he did not possess the extraordinary ability and tact required to play the complicated game successfully, and he committed the fatal mistake of using the office-bearers of the association as detectives for the discovery of the "evil-intentioned." This tactical error had its natural consequences. As soon as the workmen perceived that their professed benefactors were police spies, who did not obtain for them any real improvement of their condition, the popularity of the association rapidly declined. At the same time, the factory owners complained to the Minister of Finance that the police, who ought to be guardians of public order, and who had accused the factory inspectors of stirring up discontent in the labouring population, were themselves creating troubles by inciting the workmen to make inordinate demands. The Minister of Finance at the moment was M. Witte, and the Minister of Interior, responsible for the acts of the police, was M. Plehve, and between these two official dignitaries, who were already in very strained relations, Zubatof's activity formed a new base of contention. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the very risky experiment came to an untimely end. In St. Petersburg a similar experiment was made, and it ended much more tragically. There the chief rôle was played by a mysterious personage called Father Gapon, who acquired great momentary notoriety. Though a genuine priest, he did not belong by birth, as most Russian priests do, to the ecclesiastical caste. The son of a peasant in Little Russia, where the ranks of the clergy are not hermetically sealed against the other social classes, he aspired to take orders, and after being rusticated from a seminary for supposed sympathy with revolutionary ideas, he contrived to finish his studies and obtain ordination. During a residence in Moscow he took part in the Zubatof experiment, and when that badly conducted scheme collapsed he was transferred to St. Petersburg and appointed chaplain to a large convict prison. His new professional duties did not prevent him from continuing to take a keen interest in the welfare of the working classes, and in the summer of 1904 he became, with the approval of the police authorities, president of a large labour union called the Society of Russian Workmen, which had eleven sections in the various industrial suburbs of the capital. Under his guidance the experiment proceeded for some months very successfully. He gained the sympathy and confidence of the workmen, and so long as no serious questions arose he kept his hold on them; but a storm was brewing and he proved unequal to the occasion. In the first days of 1905, when the economic consequences of the war had come to be keenly felt, a spirit of discontent appeared among the labouring population of St. Petersburg, and on Sunday, January 15th--exactly a week before the famous Sunday when the troops were called into play--a strike began in the Putilof ironworks and spread like wildfire to the other big works in the neighbourhood. The immediate cause of the disturbance was the dismissal of some workmen and a demand on the part of the labour union that they should be reinstated. A deputation, composed partly of genuine workmen and partly of Social Democratic agitators, and led by Gapon, negotiated with the managers of the Putilof works, and failed to effect an arrangement. At this moment Gapon tried hard to confine the negotiations to the points in dispute, whereas the agitators put forward demands of a wider kind, such as the eight-hour working day, and they gradually obtained his concurrence on condition that no political demands should be introduced into the programme. In defending this condition he was supported by the workmen, so that when agitators tried to make political speeches at the meetings they were unceremoniously expelled. A similar struggle between the "Economists" and the "Politicals" was going on in the other industrial suburbs, notably in the Nevski quarter, where 45,000 operatives had struck work, and the Social Democrats were particularly active. In this section of the Labour Union the most influential member was a young workman called Petroff, who was a staunch Gaponist in the sense that he wished the workers to confine themselves to their own grievances and to resist the introduction of political demands. At first he succeeded in preventing the agitators from speaking at the meetings, but they soon proved too much for him. At one of the meetings on Tuesday, when he happened to be absent, a Social Democrat contrived to get himself elected chairman, and from that moment the political agitators had a free hand. They had a regular organisation composed of an organiser, three "oratorical agitators," and several assistant-organisers who attended the small meetings in the operatives' sleeping-quarters. Besides these there were a certain number of workmen already converted to Social Democratic principles who had learned the art of making political speeches. The reports of the agitators to the central organisation, written hurriedly during this eventful week, are extremely graphic and interesting. They declared that there is a frightful amount of work to be done and very few to do it. Their stock of Social Democratic pamphlets is exhausted and they are hoarse from speech-making. In spite of their superhuman efforts the masses remain frightfully "undeveloped." The men willingly collect to hear the orators, listen to them attentively, express approval or dissent, and even put questions; but with all this they remain obstinately on the ground of their own immediate wants, such as the increase of wages and protection against brutal foremen, and they only hint vaguely at more serious demands. The agitators, however, are equally obstinate, and they make a few converts. To illustrate how conversions are made, the following incident is related. At one meeting the cry of "Stop the war!" is raised by an orator without sufficient preparation, and at once a voice is heard in the audience saying. "No, no! The little Japs (Yaposhki) must be beaten!" Thereupon a more experienced orator comes forward and a characteristic conversation takes place: "Have we much land of our own, my friends?" asks the orator. "Much!" replies the crowd. "Do we require Manchuria?" "No!" "Who pays for the war?" "We do!" "Are our brothers dying, and do your wives and children remain without a bit of bread?" "So it is!" say many, with a significant shake of the head. Having succeeded so far, the orator tries to turn the popular indignation against the Tsar by explaining that he is to blame for all this misery and suffering, but Petroff suddenly appears on the scene and maintains that for the misery and suffering the Tsar is not at all to blame, for he knows nothing about it. It is all the fault of his servants, the tchinovniks. By this device Petroff suppresses the seditious cry of "Down with autocracy!" which the Social Democrats were anxious to make the watchword of the movement, but he has thereby been drawn from his strong position of "No politics," and he is standing, as we shall see presently, on a slippery incline. On Thursday and Friday the activity of the leaders and the excitement of the masses increase. While the Gaponists speak merely of local grievances and material wants, the Social Democrats incite their hearers to a political struggle, advising them to demand a Constituent Assembly, and explaining the necessity for all workmen to draw together and form a powerful political party. The haranguing goes on from morning to night, and agitators drive about from one factory to another to keep the excitement at fever-heat. The police, usually so active on such occasions, do not put in an appearance. Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, the honest, well-intentioned, liberal Minister of the Interior, cannot make up his mind to act with energy, and lets things drift. The agitators themselves are astonished at this extraordinary inactivity. One of them, writing a few days afterwards, says: "The police was paralysed. It would have been easy to arrest Gapon, and discover the orators. On Friday the clubs might have been surrounded and the orators arrested. . . . In a word, decided measures might have been taken, but they were not." It is not only Petroff that has abandoned his strong position of "No politics"; Gapon is doing likewise. The movement has spread far beyond what he expected, and he is being carried away by the prevailing excitement. With all his benevolent intentions, he is of a nervous, excitable nature, and his besetting sin is vanity. He perceives that by resisting the Social Democrats he is losing his hold on the masses. Early in the week, as we have seen, he began to widen his programme in the Social Democratic sense, and every day he makes new concessions. Before the week is finished a Social Democratic orator can write triumphantly: "In three days we have transformed the Gaponist assemblies into political meetings!" Like Petroff, Gapon seeks to defend the Tsar, and he falls into Petroff's strategical mistake of pretending that the Tsar knows nothing of the sufferings of his people. From that admission to the resolution that the Tsar must somehow be informed personally and directly, by some means outside of the regular official channel, there is but one step, and that step is quickly taken. On Friday morning Gapon has determined to present with his own hands a petition to his Majesty, and the petition is already drafted, containing demands which go far beyond workmen's grievances. After resisting the Social Democratic agitators so stoutly, he is now going over, bag and baggage, to the Social Democratic camp. This wonderful change was consummated on Friday evening at a conference which he held with some delegates of the Social Democrats. From an account written by one of these delegates immediately after the meeting we get an insight into the worthy priest's character and motives. In the morning he had written to them: "I have 100,000 workmen, and I am going with them to the Palace to present a petition. If it is not granted, we shall make a revolution. Do you agree?" They did not like the idea, because the Social Democratic policy is to extort concessions, not to ask favours, and to refrain from anything that might increase the prestige of the Autocratic Power. In their reply, therefore, they consented simply to discuss the matter. I proceed now to quote from the delegate's account of what took place at the conference: "The company consisted of Gapon, with two adherents, and five Social Democrats. All sat round a table, and the conversation began. Gapon is a good-looking man, with dark complexion and thoughtful, sympathetic face. He is evidently very tired, and, like the other orators, he is hoarse. To the questions addressed to him, he replies: 'The masses are at present so electrified that you may lead them wherever you like. We shall go on Sunday to the Palace, and present a petition. If we are allowed to pass without hindrance, we shall march to the Palace Square, and summon the Tsar from Tsarskoe Selo. We shall wait for him till the evening. When he arrives, I shall go to him with a deputation, and in presenting to him the petition, I shall say: 'Your Majesty! Things cannot go on like this; it is time to give the people liberty.' (Tak nelzya! Para dat' narodu svobodu.) If he consents, we shall insist that he take an oath before the people. Only then we shall come away, and when we begin to work, it will only be for eight hours a day. If, on the other hand, we are prevented from entering the city, we shall request and beg, and if they do not let us pass, we shall force our way. In the Palace Square we shall find troops, and we shall entreat them to come over to our side. If they beat us, we shall strike back. There will be sacrifices, but part of the troops will come over to us, and then, being ourselves strong in numbers, we shall make a revolution. We shall construct barricades, pillage the armourers' shops, break open the prisons, and seize the telephones and telegraphs. The Socialist-Revolutionaries have promised us bombs, and the Democrats money: and we shall be victorious!* * This confirms the information which comes to me from other quarters that Gapon was already in friendly relations with other revolutionary groups. "Such, in a few words, were the ideas which Gapon expounded. The impression he made on us was that he did not clearly realise where he was going. Acting with sincerity, he was ready to die, but he was convinced that the troops would not fire, and that the deputation would be received by the Emperor. He did not distinguish between different methods. Though not at all a partisan of violent means, he had become infuriated against autocracy and the Tsar, as was shown by his language when he said: 'If that blockhead of a Tsar comes out' (Yesli etot durak Tsar vuidet) . . . Burning with the desire to attain his object, he looked on revolution like a child, as if it could be accomplished in a day with empty hands!" Knowing that no previous preparations had been made for a revolution such as Gapon talked of, the Social Democratic agents tried to dissuade him from carrying out his idea on Sunday, but he stood firm. He had already committed himself publicly to the project. At a workmen's meeting in another quarter (Vassiliostrof) earlier in the day he had explained the petition, and said: "Let us go to the Winter Palace and summon the Emperor, and let us tell him our wants; if he does not listen to us we do not require him any longer." To a Social Democrat who shook him warmly by the hand and expressed his astonishment that there should be such a man among the clergy, he replied: "I am no longer a priest; I am a fighter for liberty! They want to exile me, and for some nights I have not slept at home." When offered assistance to escape arrest, he answered laconically: "Thanks; I have already a place of refuge." After his departure from the meeting one of his friends, to whom he had confided a copy of the petition, rose and said: "Now has arrived the great historical moment! Now we can and must demand rights and liberty!" After hearing the petition read the meeting decided that if the Tsar did not come out at the demand of the people strong measures should be taken, and one orator indicated pretty plainly what they should be: "We don't require a Tsar who is deaf to the woes of the people; we shall perish ourselves, but we shall kill him. Swear that you will all come to the Palace on Sunday at twelve o'clock!" The audience raised their hands in token of assent. Finding it impossible to dissuade Gapon from his purpose, the Social Democrats told him that they would take advantage of the circumstances independently, and that if he was allowed to enter the city with his deputation they would organise monster meetings in the Palace Square. The imperious tone used by Gapon at the public meetings and private consultations was adopted by him also in his letters to the Minister of the Interior and to the Emperor. To the former he wrote: "The workmen and inhabitants of St. Petersburg of various classes desire to see the Tsar at two o'clock on Sunday in the Winter Palace Square, in order to lay before him personally their needs and those of the whole Russian people. . . . Tell the Tsar that I and the workmen, many thousands in number, have peacefully, with confidence in him, but irrevocably, resolved to proceed to the Winter Palace. Let him show his confidence by deeds, and not by manifestos." To the Tsar himself his language was not more respectful: "Sovereign,--I fear the Ministers have not told you the truth about the situation. The whole people, trusting in you, has resolved to appear at the Winter Palace at two o'clock in the afternoon, in order to inform you of its needs. If you hesitate, and do not appear before the people, then you tear the moral bonds between you and them. Trust in you will disappear, because innocent blood will flow. Appear to-morrow before your people and receive our address of devotion in a courageous spirit! I and the labour representatives, my brave comrades, guarantee the inviolability of your person." Gapon was no longer merely the president of the Workmen's Union: inebriated with the excitement he had done so much to create, he now imagined himself the representative of the oppressed Russian people, and the heroic leader of a great political revolution. In the petition which he had prepared he said little about the grievances of the St. Petersburg workmen whose interests he had a right to advocate, and preferred to soar into much higher regions: "The bureaucracy has brought the country to the verge of ruin, and, by a shameful war, is bringing it to its downfall. We have no voice in the heavy burdens imposed on us; we do not even know for whom or why this money is wrung from the impoverished people, and we do not know how it is expended. This state of things is contrary to the Divine laws, and renders life unbearable. Assembled before your palace, we plead for our salvation. Refuse not your aid; raise your people from the tomb, and give them the means of working out their own destiny. Rescue them from the intolerable yoke of officialdom; throw down the wall that separates you from them, in order that they may rule with you the country that was created for their happiness--a happiness which is being wrenched from us, leaving nothing but sorrow and humiliation." With an innate sentiment of autocratic dignity the Emperor declined to obey the imperious summons, and he thereby avoided an unseemly altercation with the excited priest, as well as the boisterous public meetings which the Social Democrats were preparing to hold in the Palace Square. Orders were given to the police and the troops to prevent the crowds of workmen from penetrating into the centre of the city from the industrial suburbs. The rest need not be described in detail. On Sunday the crowds tried to force their way, the troops fired, and many of the demonstrators were killed or wounded. How many it is impossible to say; between the various estimates there is an enormous discrepancy. At one of the first volleys Father Gapon fell, but he turned out to be quite unhurt, and was spirited away to his place of refuge, whence he escaped across the frontier. As soon as he had an opportunity of giving public expression to his feelings, he indulged in very strong language. In his letters and proclamations the Tsar is called a miscreant and an assassin, and is described as traitorous, bloodthirsty, and bestial. To the ministers he is equally uncomplimentary. They appear to him an accursed band of brigands, Mamelukes, jackals, monsters. Against the Tsar, "with his reptilian brood," and the ministers alike, he vows vengeance--"death to them all!" As for the means for realising his sacred mission, he recommends bombs, dynamite, individual and wholesale terrorism, popular insurrection, and paralysing the life of the cities by destroying the water-mains, the gas-pipes, the telegraph and telephone wires, the railways and tram-ways, the Government buildings and the prisons. At some moments he seems to imagine himself invested with papal powers, for he anathematises the soldiers who did their duty on the eventful day, whilst he blesses and absolves from their oath of allegiance those who help the nation to win liberty. So far I have spoken merely of the main currents in the revolutionary movement. Of the minor currents--particularly those in the outlying provinces, where the Socialist tendencies were mingled with nationalist feeling--I shall have occasion to speak when I come to deal with the present political situation as a whole. Meanwhile, I wish to sketch in outline the foreign policy which has powerfully contributed to bring about the present crisis. CHAPTER XXXVIII TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND FOREIGN POLICY Rapid Growth of Russia--Expansive Tendency of Agricultural Peoples--The Russo-Slavonians--The Northern Forest and the Steppe--Colonisation--The Part of the Government in the Process of Expansion--Expansion towards the West--Growth of the Empire Represented in a Tabular Form--Commercial Motive for Expansion--The Expansive Force in the Future--Possibilities of Expansion in Europe--Persia, Afghanistan, and India--Trans-Siberian Railway and Weltpolitik--A Grandiose Scheme--Determined Opposition of Japan--Negotiations and War--Russia's Imprudence Explained--Conclusion. The rapid growth of Russia is one of the most remarkable facts of modern history. An insignificant tribe, or collection of tribes, which, a thousand years ago, occupied a small district near the sources of the Dnieper and Western Dvina, has grown into a great nation with a territory stretching from the Baltic to the Northern Pacific, and from the Polar Ocean to the frontiers of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and China. We have here a fact well deserving of investigation, and as the process is still going on and is commonly supposed to threaten our national interests, the investigation ought to have for us more than a mere scientific interest. What is the secret of this expansive power? Is it a mere barbarous lust of territorial aggrandisement, or is it some more reasonable motive? And what is the nature of the process? Is annexation followed by assimilation, or do the new acquisitions retain their old character? Is the Empire in its present extent a homogeneous whole, or merely a conglomeration of heterogenous units held together by the outward bond of centralised administration? If we could find satisfactory answers to these questions, we might determine how far Russia is strengthened or weakened by her annexations of territory, and might form some plausible conjectures as to how, when, and where the process of expansion is to stop. By glancing at her history from the economic point of view we may easily detect one prominent cause of expansion. An agricultural people, employing merely the primitive methods of agriculture, has always a strong tendency to widen its borders. The natural increase of population demands a constantly increasing production of grain, whilst the primitive methods of cultivation exhaust the soil and steadily diminish its productivity. With regard to this stage of economic development, the modest assertion of Malthus, that the supply of food does not increase so rapidly as the population, often falls far short of the truth. As the population increases, the supply of food may decrease not only relatively, but absolutely. When a people finds itself in this critical position, it must adopt one of two alternatives: either it must prevent the increase of population, or it must increase the production of food. In the former case it may legalise the custom of "exposing" infants, as was done in ancient Greece; or it may regularly sell a large portion of the young women and children, as was done until recently in Circassia; or the surplus population may emigrate to foreign lands, as the Scandinavians did in the ninth century, and as we ourselves are doing in a more peaceable fashion at the present day. The other alternative may be effected either by extending the area of cultivation or by improving the system of agriculture. The Russo-Slavonians, being an agricultural people, experienced this difficulty, but for them it was not serious. A convenient way of escape was plainly indicated by their peculiar geographical position. They were not hemmed in by lofty mountains or stormy seas. To the south and east--at their very doors, as it were--lay a boundless expanse of thinly populated virgin soil, awaiting the labour of the husbandman, and ready to repay it most liberally. The peasantry therefore, instead of exposing their infants, selling their daughters, or sweeping the seas as Vikings, simply spread out towards the east and south. This was at once the most natural and the wisest course, for of all the expedients for preserving the equilibrium between population and food-production, increasing the area of cultivation is, under the circumstances just described, the easiest and most effective. Theoretically the same result might have been obtained by improving the method of agriculture, but practically this was impossible. Intensive culture is not likely to be adopted so long as expansion is easy. High farming is a thing to be proud of when there is a scarcity of land, but it would be absurd to attempt it where there is abundance of virgin soil in the vicinity. The process of expansion, thus produced by purely economic causes, was accelerated by influences of another kind, especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The increase in the number of officials, the augmentation of the taxes, the merciless exactions of the Voyevods and their subordinates, the transformation of the peasants and "free wandering people" into serfs, the ecclesiastical reforms and consequent persecution of the schismatics, the frequent conscriptions and violent reforms of Peter the Great--these and other kinds of oppression made thousands flee from their homes and seek a refuge in the free territory, where there were no officials, no tax-gatherers, and no proprietors. But the State, with its army of tax-gatherers and officials, followed close on the heels of the fugitives, and those who wished to preserve their liberty had to advance still further. Notwithstanding the efforts of the authorities to retain the population in the localities actually occupied, the wave of colonisation moved steadily onwards. The vast territory which lay open to the colonists consisted of two contiguous regions, separated from each other by no mountains or rivers, but widely differing from each other in many respects. The one, comprising all the northern part of Eastern Europe and of Asia, even unto Kamchatka, may be roughly described as a land of forests, intersected by many rivers, and containing numerous lakes and marshes; the other, stretching southwards to the Black Sea, and eastwards far away into Central Asia, is for the most part what Russians call "the Steppe," and Americans would call the prairies. Each of these two regions presented peculiar inducements and peculiar obstacles to colonisation. So far as the facility of raising grain was concerned, the southern region was decidedly preferable. In the north the soil had little natural fertility, and was covered with dense forests, so that much time and labour had to be expended in making a clearing before the seed could be sown.* In the south, on the contrary, the squatter had no trees to fell, and no clearing to make. Nature had cleared the land for him, and supplied him with a rich black soil of marvellous fertility, which has not yet been exhausted by centuries of cultivation. Why, then, did the peasant often prefer the northern forests to the fertile Steppe where the land was already prepared for him? * The modus operandi has been already described; vide supra, pp. 104 et seq. For this apparent inconsistency there was a good and valid reason. The muzhik had not, even in those good old times, any passionate love of labour for its own sake, nor was he by any means insensible to the facilities for agriculture afforded by the Steppe. But he could not regard the subject exclusively from the agricultural point of view. He had to take into consideration the fauna as well as the flora of the two regions. At the head of the fauna in the northern forests stood the peace-loving, laborious Finnish tribes, little disposed to molest settlers who did not make themselves obnoxiously aggressive; on the Steppe lived the predatory, nomadic hordes, ever ready to attack, plunder, and carry off as slaves the peaceful agricultural population. These facts, as well as the agricultural conditions, were known to intending colonists, and influenced them in their choice of a new home. Though generally fearless and fatalistic in a higher degree, they could not entirely overlook the dangers of the Steppe, and many of them preferred to encounter the hard work of the forest region. These differences in the character and population of the two regions determined the character of the colonisation. Though the colonisation of the northern regions was not effected entirely without bloodshed, it was, on the whole, of a peaceful kind, and consequently received little attention from the contemporary chroniclers. The colonisation of the Steppe, on the contrary, required the help of the Cossacks, and forms, as I have already shown, one of the bloodiest pages of European history. Thus, we see, the process of expansion towards the north, east, and south may be described as a spontaneous movement of the agricultural population. It must, however, be admitted that this is an imperfect and one-sided representation of the phenomenon. Though the initiative unquestionably came from the people, the Government played an important part in the movement. In early times when Russia was merely a conglomeration of independent principalities, the Princes were under the moral and political obligation of protecting their subjects, and this obligation coincided admirably with their natural desire to extend their dominions. When the Grand Princes of Muscovy, in the fifteenth century, united the numerous principalities and proclaimed themselves Tsars, they accepted this obligation for the whole country, and conceived much grander schemes of territorial aggrandisement. Towards the north and northeast no strenuous efforts were required. The Republic of Novgorod easily gained possession of Northern Russia as far as the Ural Mountains, and Siberia was conquered by a small band of Cossacks without the authorisation of Muscovy, so that the Tsars had merely to annex the already conquered territory. In the southern region the part played by the Government was very different. The agricultural population had to be constantly protected along a frontier of enormous length, lying open at all points to the incursions of nomadic tribes. To prevent raids it was necessary to keep up a military cordon, and this means did not always ensure protection to those living near the frontier. The nomads often came in formidable hordes, which could be successfully resisted only by large armies, and sometimes the armies were not large enough to cope with them. Again and again during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Tartar hordes swept over the country--burning the villages and towns, and spreading devastation wherever they appeared--and during more than two centuries Russia had to pay a heavy tribute to the Khans. Gradually the Tsars threw off this galling yoke. Ivan the Terrible annexed the three Khanates of the Lower Volga--Kazan, Kipttchak, and Astrakhan--and in that way removed the danger of a foreign domination. But permanent protection was not thereby secured to the outlying provinces. The nomadic tribes living near the frontier continued their raids, and in the slave markets of the Crimea the living merchandise was supplied by Russia and Poland. To protect an open frontier against the incursions of nomadic tribes three methods are possible: the construction of a great wall, the establishment of a strong military cordon, and the permanent subjugation of the marauders. The first of these expedients, adopted by the Romans in Britain and by the Chinese on their northwestern frontier, is enormously expensive, and was utterly impossible in a country like Southern Russia, where there is no stone for building purposes; the second was constantly tried, and constantly found wanting; the third alone proved practicable and efficient. Though the Government has long since recognised that the acquisition of barren, thinly populated steppes is a burden rather than an advantage, it has been induced to go on making annexations for the purpose of self-defence, as well as for other reasons. In consequence of this active part which the Government took in the extension of the territory, the process of political expansion sometimes got greatly ahead of the colonisation. After the Turkish wars and consequent annexations in the time of Catherine II., for example, a great part of Southern Russia was almost uninhabited, and the deficiency had to be corrected, as we have seen, by organised emigration. At the present day, in the Asiatic provinces, there are still immense tracts of unoccupied land, some of which are being gradually colonised. If we turn now from the East to the West we shall find that the expansion in this direction was of an entirely different kind. The country lying to the westward of the early Russo-Slavonian settlements had a poor soil and a comparatively dense population, and consequently held out little inducement to emigration. Besides this, it was inhabited by warlike agricultural races, who were not only capable of defending their own territory, but even strongly disposed to make encroachments on their eastern neighbours. Russian expansion to the westward was, therefore, not a spontaneous movement of the agricultural population, but the work of the Government, acting slowly and laboriously by means of diplomacy and military force; it had, however, a certain historical justification. No sooner had Russia freed herself, in the fifteenth century, from the Tartar domination, than her political independence, and even her national existence, were threatened from the West. Her western neighbours, were like herself, animated with that tendency to national expansion which I have above described; and for a time it seemed doubtful who should ultimately possess the vast plains of Eastern Europe. The chief competitors were the Tsars of Moscow and the Kings of Poland, and the latter appeared to have the better chance. In close connection with Western Europe, they had been able to adopt many of the improvements which had recently been made in the art of war, and they already possessed the rich valley of the Dnieper. Once, with the help of the free Cossacks, they succeeded in overrunning the whole of Muscovy, and a son of the Polish king was elected Tsar in Moscow. By attempting to accomplish their purpose in a too hasty and reckless fashion, they raised a storm of religious and patriotic fanaticism, which very soon drove them out of their newly acquired possessions. The country remained, however, in a very precarious position, and its more intelligent rulers perceived plainly that, in order to carry on the struggle successfully, they must import something of that Western civilisation which gave such an advantage to their opponents. Some steps had already been taken in that direction. In the year 1553 an English navigator, whilst seeking for a short route to China and India, had accidentally discovered the port of Archangel on the White Sea, and since that time the Tsars had kept up an intermittent diplomatic and commercial intercourse with England. But this route was at all times tedious and dangerous, and during a great part of the year it was closed by the ice. In view of these difficulties the Tsars tried to import "cunning foreign artificers," by way of the Baltic; but their efforts were hampered by the Livonian Order, who at that time held the east coast, and who considered, like the Europeans on the coast of Africa at the present day, that the barbarous natives of the interior should not be supplied with arms and ammunition. All the other routes to the West traversed likewise the territory of rivals, who might at any time become avowed enemies. Under these circumstances the Tsars naturally desired to break through the barrier which hemmed them in, and the acquisition of the eastern coast of the Baltic became one of the chief objects of Russia's foreign policy. After Poland, Russia's most formidable rival was Sweden. That power early acquired a large amount of territory to the east of the Baltic--including the mouths of the Neva, where St. Petersburg now stands--and long harboured ambitious schemes of further conquest. In the troublous times when the Poles overran the Tsardom of Muscovy, she took advantage of the occasion to annex a considerable amount of territory, and her expansion in this direction went on in intermittent fashion until it was finally stopped by Peter the Great. In comparison with these two rivals Russia was weak in all that regarded the art of war; but she had two immense advantages: she had a very large population, and a strong, stable Government that could concentrate the national forces for any definite purpose. All that she required for success in the competition was an army on the European model. Peter the Great created such an army, and won the prize. After this the political disintegration of Poland proceeded rapidly, and when that unhappy country fell to pieces Russia naturally took for herself the lion's share of the spoil. Sweden, too, sank to political insignificance, and gradually lost all her trans-Baltic possessions. The last of them--the Grand Duchy of Finland, which stretches from the Gulf of Finland to the Polar Ocean--was ceded to Russia by the peace of Friederichshamm in 1809. The territorial extent of all these acquisitions will be best shown in a tabular form. The following table represents the process of expansion from the time when Ivan III. united the independent principalities and threw off the Tartar yoke, down to the accession of Peter the Great in 1682: English Sq. Miles. In 1505 the Tsardom of Muscovy contained about 784,000 " 1583 " " " " 996,000 " 1584 " " " " 2,650,000 " 1598 " " " " 3,328,000 " 1676 " " " " 5,448,000 " 1682 " " " " 5,618,000 Of these 5,618,000 English square miles about 1,696,000 were in Europe and about 3,922,000 in Asia. Peter the Great, though famous as a conqueror, did not annex nearly so much territory as many of his predecessors and successors. At his death, in 1752, the Empire contained, in round numbers, 1,738,000 square miles in Europe and 4,092,000 in Asia. The following table shows the subsequent expansion: In Europe and the Caucasus In Asia. Eng. sq. m Eng. sq. m. In 1725 the Russian Empire contained about 1,738,000 4,092,000 " 1770 " " " " 1,780,000 4,452,000 " 1800 " " " " 2,014,000 4,452,000 " 1825 " " " " 2,226,000 4,452,000 " 1855 " " " " 2,261,250 5,194,000 " 1867 " " " " 2,267,360 5,267,560 " 1897 " " " " 2,267,360 6,382,321 In this table is not included the territory in the North-west of America--containing about 513,250 English square miles--which was annexed to Russia in 1799 and ceded to the United States in 1867. When once Russia has annexed she does not readily relax her grasp. She has, however, since the death of Peter the Great, on four occasions ceded territory which had come into her possession. To Persia she ceded, in 1729, Mazanderan and Astrabad, and in 1735 a large portion of the Caucasus; in 1856, by the Treaty of Paris, she gave up the mouths of the Danube and part of Bessarabia; in 1867 she sold to the United States her American possessions; in 1881 she retroceded to China the greater part of Kuldja, which she had occupied for ten years; and now she is releasing her hold on Manchuria under the pressure of Japan. The increase in the population--due in part to territorial acquisitions--since 1722, when the first census was taken, has been as follows:-- In 1722 the Empire contained about 14 million inhabitants. " 1742 " " " 16 " " 1762 " " " 19 " " 1782 " " " 28 " " 1796 " " " 36 " " 1812 " " " 41 " " 1815 " " " 45 " " 1835 " " " 60 " " 1851 " " " 68 " " 1858 " " " 44 " " 1897 " " " 129 " So much for the past. To sum up, we may say that, if we have read Russian history aright, the chief motives of expansion have been spontaneous colonisation, self-defence against nomadic tribes, and high political aims, such as the desire to reach the sea-coast; and that the process has been greatly facilitated by peculiar geographical conditions and the autocratic form of government. Before passing to the future, I must mention another cause of expansion which has recently come into play, and which has already acquired very great importance. Russia is rapidly becoming, as I have explained in a previous chapter, a great industrial and commercial nation, and is anxious to acquire new markets for her manufactured goods. Though her industries cannot yet supply her own wants, she likes to peg out claims for the future, so as not to be forestalled by more advanced nations. I am not sure that she ever makes a conquest exclusively for this purpose, but whenever it happens that she has other reasons for widening her borders, the idea of acquiring commercial advantages acts as a subsidiary incentive, and as soon as the territory is annexed she raises round it a line of commercial fortifications in the shape of custom-houses, through which foreign goods have great difficulty in forcing their way. This policy is quite intelligible from the patriotic point of view, but Russians like to justify it, and condemn English competition, on higher ground. England, they say, is like a successful manufacturer who has oustripped his rivals and who seeks to prevent any new competitors from coming into the field. By her mercantile policy she has become the great blood-sucker of other nations. Having no cause to fear competition, she advocates the insidious principles of Free Trade, and deluges foreign countries with her manufactures to such an extent that unprotected native industries are inevitably ruined. Thus all nations have long paid tribute to England, but the era of emancipation had dawned. The fallacies of Free Trade have been detected and exposed, and Russia, like other nations, has found in the beneficent power of protective tariffs a means of escape from British economic thraldom. Henceforth, not only the muzhiks of European Russia, but also the populations of Central Asia, will be saved from the heartless exploitation of Manchester and Birmingham--and be handed over, I presume, to the tender mercies of the manufacturers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who sell their goods much dearer than their English rivals. Having thus analysed the expansive tendency, let us endeavour to determine how the various factors of which it is composed are acting in the present and are likely to act in the future. In this investigation it will be well to begin with the simpler, and proceed gradually to the more complex parts of the problem. Towards the north and the west the history of Russian expansion may almost be regarded as closed. Northwards there is nothing to be annexed but the Arctic Ocean and the Polar regions; and, westwards, annexations at the expense of Germany are not to be thought of. There remain, therefore, only Sweden and Norway. They may possibly, at some future time, come within the range of Russia's territorial appetite, but at present the only part of the Scandinavian Peninsula on which she is supposed to cast longing eyes is a barren district in the extreme north, which is said to contain an excellent warm-water port. Towards the south-west there are possibilities of future expansion, and already some people talk of Austrian Galicia being geographically and ethnographically a part of Russia; but so long as the Austro-Hungarian Empire holds together such possibilities do not come within the sphere of practical politics. Farther east, towards the Balkan Peninsula, the expansive tendency is much more complicated and of very ancient date. The Russo-Slavs who held the valley of the Dnieper from the ninth to the thirteenth century belonged to those numerous frontier tribes which the tottering Byzantine Empires attempted to ward off by diplomacy and rich gifts, and by giving to the troublesome chiefs, on condition of their accepting Christianity, princesses of the Imperial family as brides. Vladimir, Prince of Kief, now recognised as a Saint by the Russian Church, accepted Christianity in this way (A. D. 988), and his subjects followed his example. Russia thus became ecclesiastically a part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the people learned to regard Tsargrad--that is, the City of the Tsar, as the Byzantine Emperor was then called--with peculiar veneration. All through the long Tartar domination, when the nomadic hordes held the valley of the Dnieper and formed a barrier between Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, the capital of the Greek Orthodox world was remembered and venerated by the Russian people, and in the fifteenth century it acquired in their eyes a new significance. At that time the relative positions of Constantinople and Moscow were changed. Constantinople fell under the power of the Mahometan Turks, whilst Moscow threw off the yoke of the Mahometan Tartars, the northern representatives of the Turkish race. The Grand Prince of Moscow thereby became the Protector of the Faith, and in some sort the successor of the Byzantine Tsars. To strengthen this claim, Ivan III. married a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, and his successors went further in the same direction by assuming the title of Tsar, and inventing a fable about their ancestor Rurik having been a descendant of Caesar Augustus. All this would seem to a lawyer, or even to a diplomatist, a very shadowy title, and none of the Russian monarchs--except perhaps Catherine II., who conceived the project of resuscitating the Byzantine Empire, and caused one of her grandsons to learn modern Greek, in view of possible contingencies--ever thought seriously of claiming the imaginary heritage; but the idea that the Tsars ought to reign in Tsargrad, and that St. Sophia, polluted by Moslem abominations, should be restored to the Orthodox Christians, struck deep root in the minds of the Russian people, and is still by no means extinct. As soon as serious disturbances break out in the East the peasantry begin to think that perhaps the time has come for undertaking a crusade for the recovery of the Holy City on the Bosphorus, and for the liberation of their brethren in the faith who groan under Turkish bondage. Essentially different from this religious sentiment, but often blended with it, is a vague feeling of racial affinity, which has long existed among the various Slav nationalities, and which was greatly developed during last century by writers of the Panslavist school. When Germans and Italians were striving after political independence and unity, it naturally occurred to the Slavs that they might do likewise. The idea became popular among the subject Slav nationalities of Austria and Turkey, and it awoke a certain amount of enthusiasm in Moscow, where it was hoped that "all the Slav streams would unite in the great Russian Sea." It required no great political perspicacity to foresee that in any confederation of Slav nationalities the hegemony must necessarily devolve on Russia, the only Slav State which has succeeded in becoming a Great Power. Those two currents of national feeling ran parallel to, and intermingled with, the policy of the Government. Desirous of becoming a great naval Power, Russia has always striven to reach the sea-coast and obtain good harbours. In the north and north-west she succeeded in a certain degree, but neither the White Sea nor the Baltic satisfied her requirements, and she naturally turned her eyes to the Mediterranean. With difficulty she gained possession of the northern shores of the Black Sea, but her designs were thereby only half realised, because the Turks held the only outlet to the Mediterranean, and could effectually blockade, so far as the open sea is concerned, all her Black Sea ports, without employing a single ship of war. Thus the possession of the Straits, involving necessarily the possession of Constantinople, became a cardinal point of Russia's foreign policy. Any description of the various methods adopted by her at different times for the attainment of this end does not enter into my present programme, but I may say briefly that the action of the three factors above mentioned--the religious feeling, the Panslavist sentiment, and the political aims--has never been better exemplified than in the last struggle with Turkey, culminating in the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin. For all classes in Russia the result of that struggle was a feeling of profound disappointment. The peasantry bewailed the fact that the Crescent on St. Sophia had not been replaced by the Cross; the Slavophil patriots were indignant that the "little brothers" had shown themselves unworthy of the generous efforts and sacrifices made on their behalf, and that a portion of the future Slav confederation had passed under the domination of Austria; and the Government recognised that the acquisition of the Straits must be indefinitely postponed. Then history repeated itself. After the Crimean War, in accordance with Prince Gortchakoff's famous epigram, La Russie ne boude pas elle se recueille, the Government had for some years abandoned an active policy in Europe, and devoted itself to the work of internal reorganisation; whilst the military party had turned their attention to making new acquisitions of territory and influence in Asia. In like manner, after the Turkish campaign of 1877-78, Alexander III., turning his back on the Slav brethren, inaugurated an era of peace in Europe and of territorial expansion in the east. In this direction the expansive force was not affected by religious feeling, or Panslavist sentiment, and was controlled and guided by purely political considerations. It is consequently much easier to determine in this field of action what the political aims really are. In Asia, as in Europe, the dominant factor in the policy of the Government has been the desire to reach the sea-coast; and in both continents the ports first acquired were in northern latitudes where the coasts are free from ice during only a part of the year. In this respect, Nikolaefsk and Vladivostok in the Far East correspond to Archangel and St. Petersburg in Europe. Such ports could not fulfil all the requirements, and consequently the expansive tendency turned southwards--in Europe towards the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and in Asia towards the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Pechili. In Persia the Russian Government pursues the policy of pacific infiltration, and already the northern half of the Shah's dominions is pretty well permeated with Russian influence, commercial and political. In the southern half the infiltration is to some extent checked by physical obstacles and British influence, but it is steadily advancing, and the idea of obtaining a port on the Persian Gulf is coming within the range of practical politics. In Afghanistan also the pressure is felt, and here too the expansive tendency meets with opposition from England. More than once the two great Powers have come dangerously near to war--notably in 1885, at the moment of the Penjdeh incident, when the British Parliament voted 11,000,000 pounds for military preparations. Fortunately on that occasion the problem was solved by diplomacy. The northern frontier of Afghanistan was demarcated by a joint commission, and an agreement was come to by which this line should form the boundary of the British and Russian spheres of influence. For some years Russia scrupulously respected this agreement, but during our South African difficulties she showed symptoms of departing from it, and at one moment orders were issued from St. Petersburg for a military demonstration on the Afghan frontier. Strange to say, the military authorities, who are usually very bellicose, deprecated such a movement, on the ground that a military demonstration in a country like Afghanistan might easily develop into a serious campaign, and that a serious campaign ought not to be undertaken in that region until after the completion of the strategical railways from Orenburg to Tashkent. As this important line has now been completed, and other strategic lines are in contemplation, the question arises whether Russia meditates an attack on India. It is a question which is not easily answered. No doubt there are many Russians who think it would be a grand thing to annex our Indian Empire, with its teeming millions and its imaginary fabulous treasures, and not a few young officers imagine that it would be an easy task. Further, it is certain that the problem of an invasion has been studied by the Headquarters Staff in St. Petersburg, just as the problem of an invasion of England has been studied by the Headquarters Staff in Berlin. It may be pretty safely asserted, however, that the idea of a conquest of India has never been seriously entertained in the Russian official world. What has been seriously entertained, not only in the official world, but by the Government itself, is the idea--strongly recommended by the late General Skobelef--that Russia should, as quickly as possible, get within striking distance of our Indian possessions, so that she may always be able to bring strong diplomatic pressure on the British Government, and in the event of a conflict immobilise a large part of the British army. The expansive tendency in the direction of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean was considerably weakened by the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the rapid development of an aggressive policy in the Far east. Never, perhaps, has the construction of a single line produced such deep and lasting changes in the sphere of Weltpolitik. As soon as the Trans-Siberian was being rapidly constructed a magnificent prospect opened up to the gaze of imaginative politicians in St. Petersburg. The foreground was Manchuria a region of 364,000 square miles, endowed by nature with enormous mineral resources, and presenting a splendid field for agricultural colonisation and commercial enterprise. Beyond was seen Korea, geographically an appendix of Manchuria, possessing splendid harbours, and occupied by an effete, unwarlike population, wholly incapable of resisting a European Power. That was quite enough to inflame the imagination of patriotic Russians; but there was something more, dimly perceived in the background. Once in possession of Manchuria, supplied with a network of railways, Russia would dominate Peking and the whole of Northern China, and she would thus be able to play a decisive part in the approaching struggle of the European Powers for the Far-Eastern Sick Man's inheritance. Of course there were obstacles in the way of realising this grandiose scheme, and there were some cool heads in St. Petersburg who were not slow to point them out. In the first place the undertaking must be extremely costly, and the economic condition of Russia proper was not such as to justify the expenditure of an enormous capital which must be for many years unproductive. Any superfluous capital which the country might possess was much more urgently required for purposes of internal development, and the impoverished agricultural population ought not to be drained of their last meagre reserves for the sake of gigantic political schemes which did not directly contribute to their material welfare. To this the enthusiastic advocates of the forward policy replied that the national finances had never been in such a prosperous condition, that the revenue was increasing by leaps and bounds, that the money invested in the proposed enterprise would soon be repaid with interest; and that if Russia did not at once seize the opportunity she would find herself forestalled by energetic rivals. There was still, however, one formidable objection. Such an enormous increase of Russia's power in the Far East would inevitably arouse the jealousy and opposition of other Powers, especially of Japan, for whom the future of Korea and Manchuria was a question of life and death. Here again these advocates of the forward policy had their answer ready. They declared that the danger was more apparent than real. In Far-Eastern diplomacy the European Powers could not compete with Russia, and they might easily be bought off by giving them a very modest share of the spoil; as for Japan, she was not formidable, for she was just emerging from Oriental barbarism, and all her boasted progress was nothing more than a thin veneer of European civilisation. As the Moscow patriots on the eve of the Crimean War said contemptuously of the Allies, "We have only to throw our hats at them," so now the believers in Russia's historic mission in the Far East spoke of their future opponents as "monkeys" and "parrots." The war between China and Japan in 1894-5, terminating in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded to Japan the Liaotung Peninsula, showed Russia that if she was not to be forestalled she must be up and doing. She accordingly formed a coalition with France and Germany, and compelled Japan to withdraw from the mainland, on the pretext that the integrity of China must be maintained. In this way China recovered, for a moment, a bit of lost territory, and further benefits were conferred on her by a guarantee for a foreign loan, and by the creation of the Russo-Chinese Bank, which would assist her in her financial affairs. For these and other favours she was expected to be grateful, and it was suggested to her that her gratitude might take the form of facilitating the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. If constructed wholly on Russian territory the line would have to make an enormous bend to the northward, whereas if it went straight from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok it would be very much shorter, and would confer a very great benefit on the north-eastern provinces of the Celestial Empire. This benefit, moreover, might be greatly increased by making a branch line to Talienwan and Port Arthur, which would some day be united with Peking. Gradually Li-Hung-Chang and other influential Chinese officials were induced to sympathise with the scheme, and a concession was granted for the direct line to Vladivostok through Chinese territory. The retrocession of the Liaotung Peninsula had not been effected by Russia alone. Germany and France had co-operated, and they also expected from China a mark of gratitude in some tangible form. On this point the statesmen of Berlin held very strong views, and they thought it advisable to obtain a material guarantee for the fulfilment of their expectations by seizing Kiaochau, on the ground that German missionaries had been murdered by Chinese fanatics. For Russia this was a most unwelcome incident. She had earmarked Kiaochau for her own purposes, and had already made an agreement with the authorities in Peking that the harbour might be used freely by her fleet. And this was not the worst. The incident might inaugurate an era of partition for which she was not yet prepared, and another port which she had earmarked for her own use might be seized by a rival. Already English ships of war were reported to be prowling about in the vicinity of the Liaotung Peninsula. She hastened to demand, therefore, as a set-off for the loss of Kiaochau, a lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan, and a railway concession to unite these ports with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Chinese Government was too weak to think of refusing the demands, and the process of gradually absorbing Manchuria began, in accordance with a plan already roughly sketched out in St. Petersburg. In the light of a few authentic documents and many subsequent events, the outline of this plan can be traced with tolerable accuracy. In the region through which the projected railways were to run there was a large marauding population, and consequently the labourers and the works would have to be protected; and as Chinese troops can never be thoroughly relied on, the protecting force must be Russian. Under this rather transparent disguise a small army of occupation could be gradually introduced, and in establishing a modus vivendi between it and the Chinese civil and military authorities a predominant influence in the local administration could be established. At the same time, by energetic diplomatic action at Peking, which would be brought within striking-distance by the railways, all rival foreign influences might be excluded from the occupied provinces, and the rest might be left to the action of "spontaneous infiltration." Thus, while professing to uphold the principle of the territorial integrity of the Celestial Empire, the Cabinet of St. Petersburg might practically annex the whole of Manchuria and transform Port Arthur into a great naval port and arsenal, a far more effectual "Dominator of the East" than Vladivostok, which was intended, as its name implies, to fulfil that function. From Manchuria the political influence and the spontaneous infiltration would naturally extend to Korea, and on the deeply indented coast of the Hermit Kingdom new ports and arsenals, far more spacious and strategically more important than Port Arthur, might be constructed. The grandiose scheme was carefully laid, and for a time it was favoured by circumstances. In 1900 the Boxer troubles justified Russia in sending a large force into Manchuria, and enabled her subsequently to play the part of China's protector against the inordinate demands of the Western Powers for compensation and guarantees. For a moment it seemed as if the slow process of gradual infiltration might be replaced by a more expeditious mode of annexation. As the dexterous diplomacy of Ignatief in 1858 had induced the Son of Heaven to cede to Russia the rich Primorsk provinces between the Amur and the sea, as compensation for Russian protection against the English and French, who had burnt his Summer Palace, so his successor might now perhaps be induced to cede Manchuria to the Tsar for similar reasons. No such cession actually took place, but the Russian diplomatists in Peking could use the gratitude argument in support of their demands for an extension of the rights and privileges of the "temporary" occupation; and when China sought to resist the pressure by leaning on the rival Powers she found them to be little better than broken reeds. France could not openly oppose her ally, and Germany had reasons of her own for conciliating the Tsar, whilst England and the United States, though avowedly opposing the scheme as dangerous to their commercial interests, were not prepared to go to war in defence of their policy. It seemed, therefore, that by patience, tenacity and diplomatic dexterity Russia might ultimately attain her ends; but a surprise was in store for her. There was one Power which recognised that her own vital interests were at stake, and which was ready to undertake a life-and-death struggle in defence of them. Though still smarting under the humiliation of her expulsion from the Liaotung Peninsula in 1895, and watching with the keenest interest every move in the political game, Japan had remained for some time in the background, and had confined her efforts to resisting Russian influence in Korea and supporting diplomatically the Powers who were upholding the policy of the open door. Now, when it had become evident that the Western Powers would not prevent the realisation of the Russian scheme, she determined to intervene energetically, and to stake her national existence on the result. Ever since 1895 she had been making military and naval preparations for the day of the revanche, and now that day was at hand. Against the danger of a coalition such as had checkmated her on the previous occasion she was protected by the alliance which she had concluded with England in 1902, and she felt confident that with Russia alone she was quite capable of dealing single-handed. Her position is briefly and graphically described in a despatch, telegraphed at that time (28th July, 1903) by the Japanese Government to its representative at St. Petersburg, instructing him to open negotiations: "The recent conduct of Russia in making new demands at Peking and tightening her hold upon Manchuria has led the Imperial Government to believe that she must have abandoned her intention of retiring from that province. At the same time, her increased activity upon the Korean frontier is such as to raise doubts as to the limits of her ambition. The unconditional and permanent occupation of Manchuria by Russia would create a state of things prejudicial to the security and interests of Japan. The principle of equal opportunity (the open door) would thereby be annulled, and the territorial integrity of China impaired. There is, however, a still more serious consideration for the Japanese Government. If Russia were established on the flank of Korea she would constantly menace the separate existence of that Empire, or at least exercise in it a predominant influence; and as Japan considers Korea an important outpost in her line of defence, she regards its independence as absolutely essential to her own repose and safety. Moreover, the political as well as commercial and industrial interests and influence which Japan possesses in Korea are paramount over those of other Powers; she cannot, having regard to her own security, consent to surrender them to, or share them with, another Power." In accordance with this view of the situation the Japanese Government informed Count Lamsdorff that, as it desired to remove from the relations of the two Empires every cause of future misunderstanding, it would be glad to enter with the Imperial Russian Government upon an examination of the condition of affairs in the Far East, with a view to defining the respective special interests of the two countries in those regions. Though Count Lamsdorff accepted the proposal with apparent cordiality and professed to regard it as a means of preventing any outsider from sowing the seeds of discord between the two countries, the idea of a general discussion was not at all welcome. Careful definition of respective interests was the last thing the Russian Government desired. Its policy was to keep the whole situation in a haze until it had consolidated its position in Manchuria and on the Korean frontier to such an extent that it could dictate its own terms in any future arrangement. It could not, however, consistently with its oft-repeated declarations of disinterestedness and love of peace, decline to discuss the subject. It consented, therefore, to an exchange of views, but in order to ensure that the tightening of its hold on the territories in question should proceed pari passu with the diplomatic action, it made an extraordinary departure from ordinary procedure, entrusting the conduct of the affair, not to Count Lamsdorff and the Foreign Office, but to Admiral Alexeyef, the newly created Viceroy of the Far East, in whom was vested the control of all civil, military, naval, and diplomatic affairs relating to that part of the world. From the commencement of the negotiations, which lasted from August 12th, 1903, to February 6th, 1904, the irreconcilable differences of the two rivals became apparent, and all through the correspondence, in which a few apparent concessions were offered by Japan, neither Power retreated a step from the positions originally taken up. What Japan suggested was, roughly speaking, a mutual engagement to uphold the independence and integrity of the Chinese and Korean empires, and at the same time a bilateral arrangement by which the special interests of the two contracting parties in Manchuria and in Korea should be formally recognised, and the means of protecting them clearly defined. The scheme did not commend itself to the Russians. They systematically ignored the interests of Japan in Manchuria, and maintained that she had no right to interfere in any arrangements they might think fit to make with the Chinese Government with regard to that province. In their opinion, Japan ought to recognise formally that Manchuria lay outside her sphere of interest, and the negotiations should be confined to limiting her freedom of action in Korea. With such a wide divergence in principle the two parties were not likely to agree in matters of detail. Their conflicting aims came out most clearly in the question of the open door. The Japanese insisted on obtaining the privileges of the open door, including the right of settlement in Manchuria, and Russia obstinately refused. Having marked out Manchuria as a close reserve for her own colonisation, trade, and industry, and knowing that she could not compete with the Japanese if they were freely admitted, she could not adopt the principle of "equal opportunity" which her rivals recommended. A fidus achates of Admiral Alexeyef explained to me quite frankly, during the negotiations, why no concessions could be made on that point. In the work of establishing law and order in Manchuria, constructing roads, bridges, railways, and towns, Russia had expended an enormous sum--estimated by Count Cassini at 60,000,000 pounds--and until that capital was recovered, or until a reasonable interest was derived from the investment, Russia could not think of sharing with any one the fruits of the prosperity which she had created. We need not go further into the details of the negotiations. Japan soon convinced herself that the onward march of the Colossus was not to be stopped by paper barricades, and knowing well that her actual military and naval superiority was being rapidly diminished by Russia's warlike preparations,* she suddenly broke off diplomatic relations and commenced hostilities. * According to an estimate made by the Japanese authorities, between April, 1903, and the outbreak of the war, Russia increased her naval and military forces in the Far East by nineteen war vessels, aggregating 82,415 tons, and 40,000 soldiers. In addition to this, one battleship, three cruisers, seven torpedo destroyers, and four torpedo boats, aggregating about 37,040 tons, were on their way to the East, and preparations had been made for increasing the land forces by 200,000 men. For further details, see Asakawa, "The Russo-Japanese Conflict" (London, 1904), pp. 352-54. Russia thus found herself engaged in a war of the first magnitude, of which no one can predict the ultimate consequences, and the question naturally arises as to why, with an Emperor who lately aspired to play in politics the part of a great peacemaker, she provoked a conflict, for which she was very imperfectly prepared--imposing on herself the obligation of defending a naval fortress, hastily constructed on foreign territory, and united with her base by a single line of railway 6,000 miles long. The question is easily answered: she did not believe in the possibility of war. The Emperor was firmly resolved that he would not attack Japan, and no one would admit for a moment that Japan could have the audacity to attack the great Russian Empire. In the late autumn of 1903, it is true, a few well-informed officials in St. Petersburg, influenced by the warnings of Baron Rosen, the Russian Minister in Tokio, began to perceive that perhaps Japan would provoke a conflict, but they were convinced that the military and naval preparations already made were quite sufficient to repel the attack. One of these officials--probably the best informed of all--said to me quite frankly: "If Japan had attacked us in May or June, we should have been in a sorry plight, but now [November, 1903] we are ready." The whole past history of territoral expansion in Asia tended to confirm the prevailing illusions. Russia had advanced steadily from the Ural and the Caspian to the Hindu Kush and the Northern Pacific without once encountering serious resistance. Not once had she been called on to make a great national effort, and the armed resistance of the native races had never inflicted on her anything worse than pin-pricks. From decrepit China, which possessed no army in the European sense of the term, a more energetic resistance was not to be expected. Had not Muravieff Amurski with a few Cossacks quietly occupied her Amur territories without provoking anything more dangerous than a diplomatic protest; and had not Ignatief annexed her rich Primorsk provinces, including the site of Vladivostok, by purely diplomatic means? Why should not Count Cassini, a diplomatist of the same type as Ignatief, imitate his adroit predecessor, and secure for Russia, if not the formal annexation, at least the permanent occupation, of Manchuria? Remembering all this, we can perceive that the great mistake of the Russian Government is not so very difficult to explain. It certainly did not want war--far from it--but it wanted to obtain Manchuria by a gradual, painless process of absorption, and it did not perceive that this could not be attained without a life-and-death struggle with a young, vigorous nationality, which has contrived to combine the passions and virtues of a primitive race with the organising powers and scientific appliances of the most advanced civilisation. Russian territorial expansion has thus been checked, for some years to come, on the Pacific coast; but the expansive tendency will re-appear soon in other regions, and it behooves us to be watchful, because, whatever direction it may take, it is likely to affect our interests directly or indirectly. Will it confine itself for some years to a process of infiltration in Mongolia and Northern Thibet, the line of least resistance? Or will it impinge on our Indian frontier, directed by those who desire to avenge themselves on Japan's ally for the reverses sustained in Manchuria? Or will it once more take the direction of the Bosphorous, where a campaign might be expected to awaken religious and warlike enthusiasm among the masses? To these questions I cannot give any answer, because so much depends on the internal consequences of the present war, and on accidental circumstances which no one can at present foresee. I have always desired, and still desire, that we should cultivate friendly relations with our great rival, and that we should learn to appreciate the many good qualities of her people; but I have at the same time always desired that we should keep a watchful eye on her irrepressible tendency to expand, and that we should take timely precautions against any unprovoked aggression, however justifiable it may seem to her from the point of view of her own national interests. CHAPTER XXXIX THE PRESENT SITUATION Reform or Revolution?--Reigns of Alexander II. and Nicholas II. Compared and Contrasted--The Present Opposition--Various Groups--The Constitutionalists--Zemski Sobors--The Young Tsar Dispels Illusions--Liberal Frondeurs--Plehve's Repressive Policy--Discontent Increased by the War--Relaxation and Wavering under Prince Mirski--Reform Enthusiasm--The Constitutionalists Formulate their Demands--The Social Democrats--Father Gapon's Demonstration--The Socialist-Revolutionaries--The Agrarian Agitators--The Subject-Nationalities--Numerical Strength of the Various Groups--All United on One Point--Their Different Aims--Possible Solutions of the Crisis--Difficulties of Introducing Constitutional Regime--A Strong Man Wanted--Uncertainty of the Future. Is history about to repeat itself, or are we on the eve of a cataclysm? Is the reign of Nicholas II. to be, in its main lines, a repetition of the reign of Alexander II., or is Russia about to enter on an entirely new phase of her political development? To this momentous question I do not profess to give a categorical answer. If it be true, even in ordinary times, that "of all forms of human folly, prediction is the most gratuitous," it is especially true at a moment like the present, when we are constantly reminded of the French proverb that there is nothing certain but the unforeseen. All I can hope to do is to throw a little light on the elements of the problem, and allow the reader to draw his own conclusions. Between the present situation and the early part of Alexander II.'s reign there is undoubtedly a certain analogy. In both cases we find in the educated classes a passionate desire for political liberty, generated by long years of a stern, autocratic regime, and stimulated by military disasters for which autocracy is held responsible; and in both cases we find the throne occupied by a Sovereign of less accentuated political convictions and less energetic character than his immediate predecessor. In the earlier case, the autocrat, showing more perspicacity and energy than were expected of him, guides and controls the popular enthusiasm, and postpones the threatened political crisis by effecting a series of far reaching and beneficent reforms. In the present case . . . the description of the result must be left to future historians. For the moment, all we can say is that between the two situations there are as many points of difference as of analogy. After the Crimean War the enthusiasm was of a vague, eclectic kind, and consequently it could find satisfaction in practical administrative reforms not affecting the essence of the Autocratic Power, the main pivot round which the Empire has revolved for centuries. Now, on the contrary, it is precisely on this pivot that the reform enthusiasm is concentrated. Mere bureaucratic reforms can no longer give satisfaction. All sections of the educated classes, with the exception of a small group of Conservative doctrinaires, insist on obtaining a controlling influence in the government of the country, and demand that the Autocratic Power, if not abolished, shall be limited by parliamentary institutions of a democratic type. Another difference between the present and the past, is that those who now clamour for radical changes are more numerous, more courageous, and better organised than their predecessors, and they are consequently better able to bring pressure to bear on the Government. Formerly the would-be reformers were of two categories; on the one hand, the Constitutionalists, who remained within the bounds of legality, and confined themselves to inserting vague hints in loyal addresses to the Tsar and making mild political demonstrations; and on the other hand, the so-called Nihilists, who talked about organising society on Socialistic principles, and who hoped to attain their object by means of secret associations. With both of these groups, as soon as they became aggressive, the Government had no difficulty in dealing effectually. The leading Constitutionalists were simply reprimanded or ordered to remain for a time in their country houses, while the more active revolutionaries were exiled, imprisoned, or compelled to take refuge abroad. All this gave the police a good deal of trouble, especially when the Nihilists took to Socialist propaganda among the common people, and to acts of terrorism against the officials; but the existence of the Autocratic Power was never seriously endangered. Nowadays the Liberals have no fear of official reprimands, and openly disregard the orders of the authorities about holding meetings and making speeches, while a large section of the Socialists proclaim themselves a Social Democratic party, enrol large numbers of working men, organise formidable strikes, and make monster demonstrations leading to bloodshed. Let us now examine this new Opposition a little more closely. We can perceive at a glance that it is composed of two sections, differing widely from each other in character and aims. On the one hand, there are the Liberals, who desire merely political reforms of a more or less democratic type; on the other, there are the Socialists, who aim at transforming thoroughly the existing economic organisation of Society, and who, if they desire parliamentary institutions at all, desire them simply as a stepping stone to the realisation of the Socialist ideal. Behind the Socialists, and to some extent mingling with them, stand a number of men belonging to the various subject-nationalities, who have placed themselves under the Socialist banner, but who hold, more or less concealed, their little national flags, ready to be unfurled at the proper moment. Of these three sections of the Opposition, the most numerous and the best prepared to undertake the functions and responsibilities of government is that of the Liberals. The movement which they represent began immediately after the Crimean War, when the upper ranks of society, smarting under defeat and looking about for the cause of the military disasters, came to the conclusion that Autocracy had been put to a crucial test, and found wanting. The outburst of patriotic indignation at that time and the eager desire for a more liberal regime have been described in previous chapters. For a moment the more sanguine critics of the Government imagined that the Autocratic Power, persuaded of its own inefficiency, would gladly accept the assistance of the educated classes, and would spontaneously transform itself into a Constitutional Monarchy. In reality Alexander II. had no such intentions. He was resolved to purify the administration and to reform as far as possible all existing abuses, and he seemed ready at first to listen to the advice and accept the co-operation of his faithful subjects; but he had not the slightest intention of limiting his supreme authority, which he regarded as essential to the existence of the Empire. As soon as the landed proprietors began to complain that the great question of serf emancipation was being taken out of their hands by the bureaucracy, he reminded them that "in Russia laws are made by the Autocratic Power," and when the more courageous Marshals of Noblesse ventured to protest against the unceremonious manner in which the nobles were being treated by the tchinovniks, some of them were officially reprimanded and others were deposed. The indignation produced by this procedure, in which the Tsar identified himself with the bureaucracy, was momentarily appeased by the decision of the Government to entrust to the landed proprietors the carrying out of the Emancipation law, and by the confident hope that political rights would be granted them as compensation for the material sacrifices they had made for the good of the State; but when they found that this confident hope was an illusion, the indignation and discontent reappeared. There was still, however, a ray of hope. Though the Autocratic Power was evidently determined not to transform itself at once into a limited Constitutional Monarchy, it might make concessions in the sphere of local self-government. At that moment it was creating the Zemstvo, and the Constitutionalists hoped that these new institutions, though restricted legally to the sphere of purely economic wants, might gradually acquire a considerable political influence. Learned Germans had proved that in England, "the mother of modern Constitutionalism," it was on local self-government that the political liberties were founded, and the Slavophils now suggested that by means of an ancient institution called the Zemski Sobor, the Zemstvo might gradually and naturally acquire a political character in accordance with Russian historic development. As this idea has often been referred to in recent discussions, I may explain briefly what the ancient institution in question was. In the Tsardom of Muscovy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries representative assemblies were occasionally called together to deal with matters of exceptional importance, such as the election of a Tsar when the throne became vacant, a declaration of war, the conclusion of a peace, or the preparation of a new code of laws. Some fifteen assemblies of the kind were convoked in the space of about a century (1550-1653). They were composed largely of officials named by the Government, but they contained also some representatives of the unofficial classes. Their procedure was peculiar. When a speech from the throne had been read by the Tsar or his representative, explaining the question to be decided, the assembly transformed itself into a large number of commissions, and each commission had to give in writing its opinion regarding the questions submitted to it. The opinions thus elicited were codified by the officials and submitted to the Tsar, and he was free to adopt or reject them, as he thought fit. We may say, therefore, that the Zemski Sobor was merely consultative and had no legislative power; but we must add that it was allowed a certain initiative, because it was permitted to submit to the Tsar humble petitions regarding anything which it considered worthy of attention. Alexander II. might have adopted this Slavophil idea and used the Zemski Sobor as a means of transition from pure autocracy to a more modern system of government, but he had no sooner created the Zemstvo than he thought it necessary, as we have seen, to clip its wings, and dispel its political ambition. By this repressive policy the frondeur spirit of the Noblesse was revived, and it has continued to exist down to the present time. On each occasion when I revisited Russia and had an opportunity of feeling the pulse of public opinion, between 1876 and 1903, I noticed that the dissatisfaction with the traditional methods of government, and the desire of the educated classes to obtain a share of the political power, notwithstanding short periods of apparent apathy, were steadily spreading in area and increasing in intensity, and I often heard predictions that a disastrous foreign war like the Crimean campaign would probably bring about the desired changes. Of those who made such predictions not a few showed clearly that, though patriotic enough in a certain sense, they would not regret any military disaster which would have the effect they anticipated. Progress in the direction of political emancipation, accompanied by radical improvements in the administration, was evidently regarded as much more important and desirable than military prestige or extension of territory. During the first part of the Turkish campaign of 1877-78, when the Russian armies were repulsed in Bulgaria and Asia Minor, the hostility to autocracy was very strong, and the famous acquittal of Vera Zasulitch, who had attempted to assassinate General Trepof, caused widespread satisfaction among people who were not themselves revolutionaries and who did not approve of such violent methods of political struggle. Towards the end of the war, when the tide of fortune had turned both in Europe and in Asia, and the Russian army was encamped under the walls of Constantinople, within sight of St. Sophia, the Chauvinist feelings gained the upper hand, and they were greatly intensified by the Congress of Berlin, which deprived Russia of some fruits of her victories. This change in public feeling and the horror excited by the assassination of Alexander II. prepared the way for Alexander III.'s reign (1881-94), which was a period of political stagnation. He was a man of strong character, and a vigorous ruler who believed in Autocracy as he did in the dogmas of his Church; and very soon after his accession he gave it clearly to be understood that he would permit no limitations of the Autocratic Power. The men with Liberal aspirations knew that nothing would make him change his mind on that subject, and that any Liberal demonstrations would merely confirm him in his reactionary tendencies. They accordingly remained quiet and prudently waited for better times. The better times were supposed to have come when Nicholas II. ascended the throne in November, 1894, because it was generally assumed that the young Tsar, who was known to be humane and well-intentioned, would inaugurate a more liberal policy. Before he had been three months on the throne he summarily destroyed these illusions. On 17th (29th) January, 1895, when receiving deputies from the Noblesse, the Zemstvo, and the municipalities, who had come to St. Petersburg to congratulate him on his marriage, he declared his confidence in the sincerity of the loyal feelings which the delegates expressed; and then, to the astonishment of all present, he added: "It is known to me that recently, in some Zemstvo assemblies, were heard the voices of people who had let themselves be carried away by absurd dreams of the Zemstvo representatives taking part in the affairs of internal administration; let them know that I, devoting all my efforts to the prosperity of the nation, will preserve the principles of autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as my late father of imperishable memory." These words, pronounced by the young ruler at the commencement of his reign, produced profound disappointment and dissatisfaction in all sections of the educated classes, and from that moment the frondeur spirit began to show itself more openly than at any previous period. In the case of some people of good social position it took the unusual form of speaking disrespectfully of his Majesty. Others supposed that the Emperor had simply repeated words prepared for him by the Minister of the Interior, and this idea spread rapidly, till hostility to the bureaucracy became universal. This feeling reached its climax when the Ministry of the Interior was confided to M. Plehve. His immediate predecessors, though sincere believers in autocracy and very hostile to Liberalism of all kinds, considered that the Liberal ideas might be rendered harmless by firm passive resistance and mild reactionary measures. He, on the contrary, took a more alarmist view of the situation. His appointment coincided with the revival of terrorism, and he believed that autocracy was in danger. To save it, the only means was, in his opinion, a vigorous, repressive police administration, and as he was a man of strong convictions and exceptional energy, he screwed up his system of police supervision to the sticking-point and applied it to the Liberals as well as to the terrorists. In the year 1903, if we may credit information which comes from an apparently trustworthy source, no less than 1,988 political affairs were initiated by the police, and 4,867 persons were condemned inquisitorially to various punishments without any regular trial. Whilst this unpopular rigorism was in full force the war unexpectedly broke out, and added greatly to the existing discontent. Very few people in Russia had been following closely the recent developments of the Far Eastern Question, and still fewer understood their importance. There seemed to be nothing abnormal in what was taking place. Russia was expanding, and would continue to expand indefinitely, in that direction, without any strenuous effort on her part. Of course the English would try to arrest her progress as usual by diplomatic notes, but their efforts would be as futile as they had been on all previous occasions. They might incite the Japanese to active resistance, but Japan would not commit the insane folly of challenging her giant rival to mortal combat. The whole question could be settled in accordance with Russian interests, as so many similar questions had been settled in the past, by a little skilful diplomacy; and Manchuria could be absorbed, as the contiguous Chinese provinces had been forty years ago, without the necessity of going to war. When these comforting illusions were suddenly destroyed by the rupture of diplomatic relations and the naval attack on Port Arthur, there was an outburst of indignant astonishment. At first the indignation was directed against Japan and England, but it soon turned against the home Government, which had made no adequate preparations for the struggle, and it was intensified by current rumours that the crisis had been wantonly provoked by certain influential personages for purely personal reasons. How far the accounts of the disorders in the military organisation and the rumours about pilfering in high quarters were true, we need not inquire. True or false, they helped greatly to make the war unpopular, and to stimulate the desire for political changes. Under a more liberal and enlightened regime such things were supposed to be impossible, and, as at the time of the Crimean War, public opinion decided that autocracy was being tried, and found wanting. So long as the stern, uncompromising Plehve was at the Ministry of the Interior, enjoying the Emperor's confidence and directing the police administration, public opinion was prudent and reserved in its utterances, but when he was assassinated by a terrorist (July 28th, 1904), and was succeeded by Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, a humane man of Liberal views, the Constitutionalists thought that the time had come for making known their grievances and demands, and for bringing pressure to bear on the Emperor. First came forward the leading members of the Zemstvos. After some preliminary consultation they assembled in St. Petersburg, with the consent of the authorities, in the hope that they would be allowed to discuss publicly the political wants of the country, and prepare the draft of a Constitution. Their wishes were only partially acceded to. They were informed semi-officially that their meetings must be private, but that they might send their resolutions to the Minister of the Interior for transmission to his Majesty. A memorandum was accordingly drawn up and signed on November 21st by 102 out of the 104 representatives present. This hesitating attitude on the part of the Government encouraged other sections of the educated classes to give expression to their long pent-up political aspirations. On the heels of the Zemstvo delegates appeared the barristers, who discussed the existing evils from the juridical point of view, and prescribed what they considered the necessary remedies. Then came municipalities of the large towns, corporations of various kinds, academic leagues, medical faculties, learned societies, and miscellaneous gatherings, all demanding reforms. Great banquets were organised, and very strong speeches, which would have led in Plehve's time to the immediate arrest of the orators, were delivered and published without provoking police intervention. In the memorandum presented to the Minister of the Interior by the Zemstvo Congress, and in the resolutions passed by the other corporate bodies, we see reflected the grievances and aspirations of the great majority of the educated classes. The theory propounded in these documents is that a lawless, arbitrary bureaucracy, which seeks to exclude the people from all participation in the management of public affairs, has come between the nation and the Supreme Power, and that it is necessary to eliminate at once this baneful intermediary and inaugurate the so-called "reign of law." For this purpose the petitioners and orators demanded: (1) Inviolability of person and domicile, so that no one should be troubled by the police without a warrant from an independent magistrate, and no one punished without a regular trial; (2) Freedom of conscience, of speech, and of the Press, together with the right of holding public meetings and forming associations; (3) Greater freedom and increased activity of the local self-government, rural and municipal; (4) An assembly of freely elected representatives, who should participate in the legislative activity and control the administration in all its branches; (5) The immediate convocation of a constituent assembly, which should frame a Constitution on these lines. Of these requirements the last two are considered by far the most important. The truth is that the educated classes have come to be possessed of an ardent desire for genuine parliamentary institutions on a broad, democratic basis, and neither improvements in the bureaucratic organisation, nor even a Zemski Sobor in the sense of a Consultative Assembly, would satisfy them. They imagine that with a full-fledged constitution they would be guaranteed, not only against administrative oppression, but even against military reverses such as they have recently experienced in the Far East--an opinion in which those who know by experience how military unreadiness and inefficiency can be combined with parliamentary institutions will hardly feel inclined to concur. It may surprise English readers to learn that the corruption and venality of the civil and military administration, of which we have recently heard so much, are nowhere mentioned in the complaints and remonstrances; but the fact is easily accounted for. Though corrupt practices undoubtedly exist in some branches of the public service, they are not so universal as is commonly supposed in Western Europe; and the Russian reformers evidently consider that the purifying of the administration is less urgent than the acquisition of political liberties, or that under an enlightened democratic regime the existing abuses would spontaneously disappear. The demands put forward in St. Petersburg did not meet with universal approval in Moscow. There they seemed excessive and un-Russian, and an attempt was made to form a more moderate party. In the ancient Capital of the Tsars even among the Liberals there are not a few who have a sentimental tenderness for the Autocratic Power, and they argue that parliamentary government would be very dangerous in a country which is still far from being homogeneous or compact. To maintain the integrity of the Empire, and to hold the balance equally between the various races and social classes of which the population is composed, it is necessary, they think, to have some permanent authority above the sphere of party spirit and electioneering strife. While admitting that the Government in its present bureaucratic form is unsatisfactory and stands in need of being enlightened by the unofficial classes, they think that a Consultative Assembly on the model of the old Zemski Sobors would be infinitely better suited to Russian wants than a Parliament such as that which sits at Westminster. For a whole month the Government took little notice of the unprecedented excitement and demonstrations. It was not till December 25th that a reply was given to the public demands. On that day the Emperor signed an ukaz in which he enumerated the reforms which he considered most urgent, and instructed the Committee of Ministers to prepare the requisite legislation. The list of reforms coincided to a certain extent with the demands formulated by the Zemstvos, but the document as a whole produced profound disappointment, because it contained no mention of a National Assembly. To those who could read between the lines the attitude of the Emperor seemed perfectly clear. He was evidently desirous of introducing very considerable reforms, but he was resolved that they must be effected by the unimpaired Autocratic Power in the old bureaucratic fashion, without any participation of the unofficial world. To obviate any misconception on this point, the Government published, simultaneously with the ukaz, an official communication in which it condemned the agitation and excitement, and warned the Zemstvos, municipalities, and other corporate bodies that in discussing political questions they were overstepping the limits of their legally-defined functions and exposing themselves to the rigours of the law. As might have been foreseen, the ukaz and the circular had not at all the desired effect of "introducing the necessary tranquillity into public life, which has lately been diverted from its normal course." On the contrary, they increased the excitement, and evoked a new series of public demonstrations. On December 27th, the very day on which the two official documents were published--the Provincial Zemstvo of Moscow, openly disregarding the ministerial warnings, expressed the conviction that the day was near when the bureaucratic regime, which had so long estranged the Supreme Power from the people, would be changed, and when freely-elected representatives of the people would take part in legislation. The same evening, at St. Petersburg, a great Liberal banquet was held, at which a resolution was voted condemning the war, and declaring that Russia could be extricated from her difficulties only by the representatives of the nation, freely elected by secret ballot. As an encouragement to the organs of local administration to persevere in their disregard of ministerial instructions, the St. Petersburg Medical Society, after adopting the programme of the Zemstvo Congress, sent telegrams of congratulation to the Mayor of Moscow and the President of the Tchernigof Zemstvo bureau, both of whom had incurred the displeasure of the Government. A similar telegram was sent by a Congress of 496 engineers to the Moscow Town Council, in which the burning political questions had been freely discussed. In other large towns, when the mayor prevented such discussions, a considerable number of the town councillors resigned. From the Zemstvos and municipalities the spirit of opposition spread to the provincial assemblies of the Noblesse. The nobles of the province of St. Petersburg, for example, voted by a large majority an address to the Tsar recommending the convocation of a freely-elected National Assembly; and in Moscow, usually regarded as the fortress of Conservatism, eighty members of the Assembly entered a formal protest against a patriotic Conservative address which had been voted two days before. Even the fair sex considered it necessary to support the opposition movement. The matrons of Moscow, in a humble petition to the Empress, declared that they could not continue to bring up their children properly in the existing state of unconstitutional lawlessness, and their view was endorsed in several provincial towns by the schoolboys, who marched through the streets in procession, and refused to learn their lessons until popular liberties had been granted! Again, for more than a month the Government remained silent on the fundamental questions which were exercising the public mind. At last, on the morning of March 3d, appeared an Imperial manifesto of a very unexpected kind. In it the Emperor deplored the outbreak of internal disturbances at a moment when the glorious sons of Russia were fighting with self-sacrificing bravery and offering their lives for the Faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland; but he drew consolation and hope from remembering that, with the help of the prayers of the Holy Orthodox Church, under the banner of the Tsar's autocratic might, Russia had frequently passed through great wars and internal troubles, and had always issued from them with fresh strength. He appealed, therefore, to all right-minded subjects, to whatever class they might belong, to join him in the great and sacred task of overcoming the stubborn foreign foe, and eradicating revolt at home. As for the manner in which he hoped this might be accomplished, he gave a pretty clear indication, at the end of the document, by praying to God, not only for the welfare of his subjects, but also for "the consolidation of autocracy." This extraordinary pronouncement, couched in semi-ecclesiastical language, produced in the Liberal world feelings of surprise, disappointment, and dismay. No one was more astonished and dismayed than the Ministers, who had known nothing of the manifesto until they saw it in the official Gazette. In the course of the forenoon they paid their usual weekly visit to Tsarskoe Selo, and respectfully submitted to the Emperor that such a document must have a deplorable effect on public opinion. In consequence of their representations his Majesty consented to supplement the manifesto by a rescript to the Minister of the Interior, in which he explained that in carrying out his intentions for the welfare of his people the Government was to have the co-operation of "the experienced elements of the community." Then followed the memorable words: "I am resolved henceforth, with the help of God, to convene the most worthy men, possessing the confidence of the people and elected by them, in order that they may participate in the preparation and consideration of legislative measures." For the carrying out of this resolution a commission, or "special conference," was to be at once convened, under the presidency of M. Bulyghin, the Minister of the Interior. The rescript softened the impression produced by the manifesto, but it did not give general satisfaction, because it contained significant indications that the Emperor, while promising to create an assembly of some kind, was still determined to maintain the Autocratic Power. So at least the public interpreted a vague phase about the difficulty of introducing reforms "while preserving absolutely the immutability of the fundamental laws of the Empire." And this impression seemed to be confirmed by the fact that the task of preparing the future representative institutions was confided, not to a constituent assembly, but to a small commission composed chiefly or entirely of officials. In these circumstances the Liberals determined to continue the agitation. The Bulyghin Commission was accordingly inundated with petitions and addresses explaining the wants of the nation in general, and of various sections of it in particular; and when the Minister declined to receive deputations and discuss with them the aforesaid wants, the reform question was taken up by a new series of congresses, composed of doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, etc. Even the higher ecclesiastical dignitaries woke up for a moment from their accustomed lethargy, remembered how they had lived for so many years under the rod of M. Pobedonostsef, recognised as uncanonical such subordination to a layman, and petitioned for the resurrection of the Patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter the Great. On May 9th a new Zemstvo Congress was held in Moscow, and it at once showed that since their November session in St. Petersburg the delegates had made a decided movement to the Left. Those of them who had then led the movement were now regarded as too Conservative. The idea of a Zemski Sobor was discarded as insufficient for the necessities of the situation, and strong speeches were made in support of a much more democratic constitution. It was thus becoming clearer every day that between the Liberals and the Government there was an essential difference which could not be removed by ordinary concessions. The Emperor proved that he was in favour of reform by granting a very large measure of religious toleration, by removing some of the disabilities imposed on the Poles, and allowing the Polish language to be used in schools, and by confirming the proposals of the Committee of Ministers to place the Press censure on a legal basis. But these concessions to public opinion did not gain for him the sympathy and support of his Liberal subjects. What they insisted on was a considerable limitation of the Autocratic Power; and on that point the Emperor has hitherto shown himself inexorable. His firmness proceeds not from any wayward desire to be able to do as he pleases, but from a hereditary respect for a principle. From his boyhood he has been taught that Russia owes her greatness and her security to her autocratic form of government, and that it is the sacred duty of the Tsar to hand down intact to his successors the power which he holds in trust for them. While the Liberals were thus striving to attain their object without popular disorders, and without any very serious infraction of the law, Revolutionaries were likewise busy, working on different but parallel lines. In the chapter on the present phase of the revolutionary movement I have sketched briefly the origin and character of the two main Socialist groups, and I have now merely to convey a general idea of their attitude during recent events. And first, of the Social Democrats. At the end of 1894 the Social Democrats were in what may be called their normal condition--that is to say, they were occupied in organising and developing the Labour Movement. The removal of Plehve, who had greatly hampered them by his energetic police administration, enabled them to work more freely, and they looked with a friendly eye on the efforts of the Liberal Zemstvo-ists; but they took no part in the agitation, because the Zemstvo world lay outside their sphere of action. In the labour world, to which they confined their attention, they must have foreseen that a crisis would sooner or later be produced by the war, and that they would then have an excellent opportunity of preaching their doctrine that for all the sufferings of the working classes the Government is responsible. What they did not foresee was that serious labour troubles were so near at hand, and that the conflict with the authorities would be accelerated by Father Gapon. Accustomed to regard him as a persistent opponent, they did not expect him to become suddenly an energetic, self-willed ally. Hence they were taken unawares, and at first the direction of the movement was by no means entirely in their hands. Very soon, however, they grasped the situation, and utilised it for their own ends. It was in great measure due to their secret organisation and activity that the strike in the Putilof Ironworks, which might easily have been terminated amicably, spread rapidly not only to the other works and factories in St. Petersburg, but also to those of Moscow, Riga, Warsaw, Lodz, and other industrial centres. Though they did not approve of Father Gapon's idea of presenting a petition to the Tsar, the loss of life which his demonstration occasioned was very useful to them in their efforts to propagate the belief that the Autocratic Power is the ally of the capitalists and hostile to the claims and aspirations of the working classes. The other great Socialist group contributed much more largely towards bringing about the present state of things. It was their Militant Organisation that assassinated Plehve, and thereby roused the Liberals to action. To them, likewise, is due the subsequent assassination of the Grand Duke Serge, and it is an open secret that they are preparing other acts of terrorism of a similar kind. At the same time they have been very active in creating provincial revolutionary committees, in printing and distributing revolutionary literature, and, above all, in organising agrarian disturbances, which they intend to make a very important factor in the development of events. Indeed, it is chiefly by agrarian disturbances that they hope to overthrow the Autocratic Power and bring about the great economic and social revolution to which the political revolution would be merely the prologue. Therein lies a serious danger. After the failure of the propaganda and the insurrectionary agitation in the seventies, it became customary in revolutionary circles to regard the muzhik as impervious to Socialist ideas and insurrectionary excitement, but the hope of eventually employing him in the cause never quite died out, and in recent times, when his economic condition in many districts has become critical, attempts have occasionally been made to embarrass the Government by agrarian disturbances. The method usually employed is to disseminate among the peasantry by oral propaganda, by printed or hectographed leaflets, and by forged Imperial manifestoes, the belief that the Tsar has ordered the land of the proprietors to be given to the rural Communes, and that his benevolent wishes are being frustrated by the land-owners and the officials. The forged manifesto is sometimes written in letters of gold as a proof of its being genuine, and in one case which I heard of in the province of Poltava, the revolutionary agent, wearing the uniform of an aide-de-camp of the Emperor, induced the village priest to read the document in the parish church. The danger lies in the fact that, quite independent of revolutionary activity, there has always been, since the time of the Emancipation, a widespread belief among the peasantry that they would sooner or later receive the whole of the land. Successive Tsars have tried personally to destroy this illusion, but their efforts have not been successful. Alexander II., when passing through a province where the idea was very prevalent, caused a number of village elders to be brought before him, and told them in a threatening tone that they must remain satisfied with their allotments and pay their taxes regularly; but the wily peasants could not be convinced that the "General" who had talked to them in this sense was really the Tsar. Alexander III. made a similar attempt at the time of his accession. To the Volost elders collected together from all parts of the Empire, he said: "Do not believe the foolish rumours and absurd reports about a redistribution of the land, and addition to your allotments, and such like things. These reports are disseminated by your enemies. Every kind of property, your own included, must be inviolable." Recalling these words, Nicholas II. confirmed them at his accession, and warned the peasants not to be led astray by evil-disposed persons. Notwithstanding these repeated warnings, the peasants still cling to the idea that all the land belongs to them; and the Socialist-Revolutionaries now announce publicly that they intend to use this belief for the purpose of carrying out their revolutionary designs. In a pamphlet entitled "Concerning Liberty and the Means of Obtaining it," they explain their plan of campaign. Under the guidance of the revolutionary agents the peasants of each district all over the Empire are to make it impossible for the proprietors to work their estates, and then, after driving away the local authorities and rural police, they are to take possession of the estates for their own use. The Government, in its vain attempts to dislodge them, will have to employ all the troops at its disposal, and this will give the working classes of the towns, led by the revolutionists, an opportunity of destroying the most essential parts of the administrative mechanism. Thus a great social revolution can be successfully accomplished, and any Zemski Sobor or Parliament which may be convoked will merely have to give a legislative sanction to accomplished facts. These three groups--the Liberals, the Social Democrats, and the Socialist Revolutionaries--constitute what may be called the purely Russian Opposition. They found their claims and justify their action on utilitarian and philosophic grounds, and demand liberty (in various senses) for themselves and others, independently of race and creed. This distinguishes them from the fourth group, who claim to represent the subject-nationalities, and who mingle nationalist feelings and aspirations with enthusiasm for liberty and justice in the abstract. The policy of Russifying these subject-nationalities, which was inaugurated by Alexander III. and maintained by his successor, has failed in its object. It has increased the use of the Russian language in official procedure, modified the system of instruction in the schools and universities, and brought, nominally, a few schismatic and heretical sheep into the Eastern Orthodox fold, but it has entirely failed to inspire the subject-populations with Russian feeling and national patriotism; on the contrary, it has aroused in them a bitter hostility to Russian nationality, and to the Central Government. In such of them as have retained their old aspirations of political independence--notably the Poles--the semi-latent disaffection has been stimulated; and in those of them which, like the Finlanders and the Armenians, desire merely to preserve the limited autonomy they formerly enjoyed, a sentiment of disaffection has been created. All of them know very well that in an armed struggle with the dominant Russian nationality they would speedily be crushed, as the Poles were in 1863. Their disaffection shows itself, therefore, merely in resistance to the obligatory military service, and in an undisguised or thinly veiled attitude of systematic hostility, which causes the Government some anxiety and prevents it from sending to the Far East a large number of troops which would otherwise be available. They hail, however, with delight the Liberal and revolutionary movements in the hope that the Russians themselves may undermine, and possibly overthrow, the tyrannical Autocratic Power. Towards this end they would gladly co-operate, and they are endeavouring, therefore, to get into touch with each other; but they have so little in common, and so many mutually antagonistic interests, that they are not likely to succeed in forming a solid coalition. While sympathising with every form of opposition to the Government, the men of the subject-nationalities reserve their special affection for the Socialists, because these not only proclaim, like the Liberals, the principles of extensive local self-government and universal equality before the law, but they also speak of replacing the existing system of coercive centralisation by a voluntary confederation of heterogeneous units. This explains why so many Poles, Armenians and Georgians are to be found in the ranks of the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Of the recruits from oppressed nationalities the great majority come from the Jews, who, though they have never dreamed of political independence, or even of local autonomy, have most reason to complain of the existing order of things. At all times they have furnished a goodly contingent to the revolutionary movement, and many of them have belied their traditional reputation of timidity and cowardice by taking part in very dangerous terrorist enterprises--in some cases ending their career on the scaffold. In 1897 they created a Social-Democratic organisation of their own, commonly known as the Bund, which joined, in 1898, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, on the understanding that it should retain its independence on all matters affecting exclusively the Jewish population.* It now possesses a very ably-conducted weekly organ, and of all sections of the Social-Democratic group it is unquestionably the best organised. This is not surprising, because the Jews have more business capacity than the Russians, and centuries of oppression have developed in the race a wonderful talent for secret illegal activity, and for eluding the vigilance of the police. * The official title of this Bund is the "Universal Jewish Labour Union in Russia and Poland." Its organ is called Sovremenniya Izvestiya (Contemporary News). It would be very interesting to know the numerical strength of these groups, but we have no materials for forming even an approximate estimate. The Liberals are certainly the most numerous. They include the great majority of the educated classes, but they are less persistently energetic than their rivals, and their methods of action make less impression on the Government. The two Socialist groups, though communicative enough with regard to their doctrines and aims, are very reticent with regard to the number of their adherents, and this naturally awakens a suspicion that an authoritative statement on the subject would tend to diminish rather than enhance their importance in the eyes of the public. If statistics of the Social Democrats could be obtained, it would be necessary to distinguish between the three categories of which the group is composed: (1) The educated active members, who form the directing, controlling element; (2) the fully indoctrinated recruits from the working classes; and (3) workmen who desire merely to better their material condition, but who take part in political demonstrations in the hope of bringing pressure to bear on their employers, and inducing the Government to intervene on their behalf. The two Socialist groups are not only increasing the number of their adherents; they are also extending and improving their organisation, as is proved by the recent strikes, which are the work of the Social Democrats, and by the increasing rural disturbances and acts of terrorism, which are the work of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. With regard to the unorganised Nationalist group, all I can do towards conveying a vague, general idea of its numerical strength is to give the numbers of the populations--men, women, and children--of which the Nationalist agitators are the self-constituted representatives, without attempting to estimate the percentage of the actively disaffected. The populations in question are: Poles 7,900,000 Jews 5,190,000 Finlanders 2,592,000 Armenians 1,200,000 Georgians 408,000 ---------- 16,495,000 If a National Assembly were created, in which all the nationalities were represented according to the numbers of the population, the Poles, roughly speaking, would have 38 members, the Jews 24, the Finlanders 12, the Armenians 6, and the Georgians 2: whereas the Russians would have about 400. The other subject-nationalities in which symptoms of revolutionary fermentation have appeared are too insignificant to require special mention. As the representatives of the various subject-nationalities are endeavouring to combine, so likewise are the Liberals and the two Socialist groups trying to form a coalition, and for this purpose they have already held several conferences. How far they will succeed it is impossible to say. On one point--the necessity of limiting or abolishing the Autocratic Power--they are unanimous, and there seems to be a tacit understanding that for the present they shall work together amicably on parallel lines, each group reserving its freedom of action for the future, and using meanwhile its own customary means of putting pressure on the Government. We may expect, therefore, that for a time the Liberals will go on holding conferences and congresses in defiance of the police authorities, delivering eloquent speeches, discussing thorny political questions, drafting elaborate constitutions, and making gentle efforts to clog the wheels of the Administration,* while the Social Democrats will continue to organise strikes and semi-pacific demonstrations,** and the Socialist-Revolutionaries will seek to accelerate the march of events by agrarian disturbances and acts of terrorism. * As an illustration of this I may cite the fact that several Zemstvos have declared themselves unable, under present conditions, to support the indigent families of soldiers at the front. ** I call them semi-pacific, because on such occasions the demonstrators are instructed to refrain from violence only so long as the police do not attempt to stop the proceedings by force. It is certain, however, that the parting of the ways will be reached sooner or later, and already there are indications that it is not very far off. Liberals and Social Democrats may perhaps work together for a considerable time, because the latter, though publicly committed to socialistic schemes which the Liberals must regard with the strongest antipathy, are willing to accept a Constitutional regime during the period of transition. It is difficult, however, to imagine that the Liberals, of whom a large proportion are landed proprietors, can long go hand in hand with the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who propose to bring about the revolution by inciting the peasants to seize unceremoniously the estates, live stock, and agricultural implements of the landlords. Already the Socialist-Revolutionaries have begun to speak publicly of the inevitable rupture in terms by no means flattering to their temporary allies. In a brochure recently issued by their central committee the following passage occurs: "If we consider the matter seriously and attentively, it becomes evident that all the strength of the bourgeoisie lies in its greater or less capacity for frightening and intimidating the Government by the fear of a popular rising; but as the bourgeoisie itself stands in mortal terror of the thing with which it frightens the Government, its position at the moment of insurrection will be rather ridiculous and pitiable." To understand the significance of this passage, the reader must know that, in the language of the Socialists, bourgeoisie and Liberals are convertible terms. The truth is that the Liberals find themselves in an awkward strategical position. As quiet, respectable members of society they dislike violence of every kind, and occasionally in moments of excitement they believe that they may attain their ends by mere moral pressure, but when they find that academic protests and pacific demonstrations make no perceptible impression on the Government, they become impatient and feel tempted to approve, at least tacitly, of stronger measures. Many of them do not profess to regard with horror and indignation the acts of the terrorists, and some of them, if I am correctly informed, go so far as to subscribe to the funds of the Socialist-Revolutionaries without taking very stringent precautions against the danger of the money being employed for the preparation of dynamite and hand grenades. This extraordinary conduct on the part of moderate Liberals may well surprise Englishmen, but it is easily explained. The Russians have a strong vein of recklessness in their character, and many of them are at present imbued with an unquestioning faith in the miracle-working power of Constitutionalism. These seem to imagine that as soon as the Autocratic Power is limited by parliamentary institutions the discontented will cease from troubling and the country will be at rest. It is hardly necessary to say that such expectations are not likely to be realised. All sections of the educated classes may be agreed in desiring "liberty," but the word has many meanings, and nowhere more than in Russia at the present day. For the Liberals it means simply democratic parliamentary government; for the Social Democrat it means the undisputed predominance of the Proletariat; for the Socialist-Revolutionary it means the opportunity of realising immediately the Socialist ideal; for the representative of a subject-nationality it means the abolition of racial and religious disabilities and the attainment of local autonomy or political independence. There is no doubt, therefore, that in Russia, as in other countries, a parliament would develop political parties bitterly hostile to each other, and its early history might contain some startling surprises for those who had helped to create it. If the Constitution, for example, were made as democratic as the Liberals and Socialists demand, the elections might possibly result in an overwhelming Conservative majority ready to re-establish the Autocratic Power! This is not at all so absurd as it sounds, for the peasants, apart from the land question, are thoroughly Conservative. The ordinary muzhik can hardly conceive that the Emperor's power can be limited by a law or an Assembly, and if the idea were suggested to him, he would certainly not approve. In his opinion the Tsar should be omnipotent. If everything is not satisfactory in Russia, it is because the Tsar does not know of the evil, or is prevented from curing it by the tchinovniks and the landed proprietors. "More power, therefore, to his elbow!" as an Irishman might say. Such is the simple political creed of the "undeveloped" muzhik, and all the efforts of the revolutionary groups to develop him have not yet been attended with much success. How, then, the reader may ask, is an issue to be found out of the present imbroglio? I cannot pretend to speak with authority, but it seems to me that there are only two methods of dealing with the situation: prompt, energetic repression, or timely, judicious concessions to popular feeling. Either of these methods might, perhaps, have been successful, but the Government adopted neither, and has halted between the two. By this policy of drift it has encouraged the hopes of all, has satisfied nobody, and has diminished its own prestige. In defence or extenuation of this attitude it may be said that there is considerable danger in the adoption of either course. Vigorous repression means staking all on a single card, and if it were successful it could not do more than postpone the evil day, because the present antiquated form of government--suitable enough, perhaps, for a simply organised peasant-empire vegetating in an atmosphere of "eternal stillness"--cannot permanently resist the rising tide of modern ideas and aspirations, and is incapable of grappling successfully with the complicated problems of economic and social progress which are already awaiting solution. Sooner or later the bureaucratic machine, driven solely by the Autocratic Power in the teeth of popular apathy or opposition, must inevitably break down, and the longer the collapse is postponed the more violent is it likely to be. On the other hand, it is impossible to foresee the effects of concessions. Mere bureaucratic reforms will satisfy no one; they are indeed not wanted except as a result of more radical changes. What all sections of the Opposition demand is that the people should at least take part in the government of the country by means of freely elected representatives in Parliament assembled. It is useless to argue with them that Constitutionalism will certainly not work the miracles that are expected of it, and that in the struggles of political parties which it is sure to produce the unity and integrity of the Empire may be endangered. Lessons of that kind can only be learned by experience. Other countries, it is said, have existed and thriven under free political institutions, and why not Russia? Why should she be a pariah among the nations? She gave parliamentary institutions to the young nationalities of the Balkan Peninsula as soon as they were liberated from Turkish bondage, and she has not yet been allowed such privileges herself! Let us suppose now that the Autocratic Power has come to feel the impossibility of remaining isolated as it is at present, and that it has decided to seek solid support in some section of the population, what section should it choose? Practically it has no choice. The only way of relieving the pressure is to make concessions to the Constitutionalists. That course would conciliate, not merely the section of the Opposition which calls itself by that name and represents the majority of the educated classes, but also, in a lesser degree, all the other sections. No doubt these latter would accept the concession only as part payment of their demands and a means of attaining ulterior aims. Again and again the Social Democrats have proclaimed publicly that they desire parliamentary government, not as an end in itself, but as a stepping stone towards the realisation of the Socialist ideal. It is evident, however, that they would have to remain on this stepping stone for a long series of years--until the representatives of the Proletariat obtained an overwhelming majority in the Chamber. In like manner the subject-nationalities would regard a parliamentary regime as a mere temporary expedient--a means of attaining greater local and national autonomy--and they would probably show themselves more impatient than the Social Democrats. Any inordinate claims, however, which they might put forward would encounter resistance, as the Poles found in 1863, not merely from the Autocratic Power, but from the great majority of the Russian people, who have no sympathy with any efforts tending to bring about the disruption of the Empire. In short, as soon as the Assembly set to work, the delegates would be sobered by a consciousness of responsibility, differences of opinion and aims would inevitably appear, and the various groups transformed into political parties, instead of all endeavouring as at present to pull down the Autocratic Power, would expend a great part of their energy in pulling against each other. In order to reach this haven of safety it is necessary to pass through a period of transition, in which there are some formidable difficulties. One of these I may mention by way of illustration. In creating parliamentary institutions of any kind the Government could hardly leave intact the present system of allowing the police to arrest without a proper warrant, and send into exile without trial, any one suspected of revolutionary designs. On this point all the Opposition groups are agreed, and all consequently put forward prominently the demand for the inviolability of person and domicile. To grant such a concession seems a very simple and easy matter, but any responsible minister might hesitate to accept such a restriction of his authority. We know, he would argue, that the terrorist section of the Socialist-Revolutionary group, the so-called Militant Organisation, are very busy preparing bombs, and the police, even with the extensive, ill-defined powers which they at present possess, have the greatest difficulty in preventing the use of such objectionable instruments of political warfare. Would not the dynamiters and throwers of hand-grenades utilise a relaxation of police supervision, as they did in the time of Louis Melikof,* for carrying out their nefarious designs? * Vide supra, p. 569. I have no desire to conceal or minimise such dangers, but I believe they are temporary and by no means so great as the dangers of the only other alternatives--energetic repression and listless inactivity. Terrorism and similar objectionable methods of political warfare are symptoms of an abnormal, unhealthy state of society, and would doubtless disappear in Russia, as they have disappeared in other countries, with the conditions which produced them. If the terrorists continued to exist under a more liberal regime, they would be much less formidable, because they would lose the half-concealed sympathy which they at present enjoy. Political assassinations may occasionally take place under the most democratic governments, as the history of the United States proves, but terrorism as a system is to be found only in countries where the political power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals; and it sometimes happens that irresponsible persons are exposed to terrorist attacks. We have an instance of this at present in St. Petersburg. The reluctance of the Emperor to adopt at once a Liberal programme is commonly attributed to the influence of two members of the Imperial family, the Empress Dowager and the Grand Duke Vladimir. This is a mistake. Neither of these personages is so reactionary as is generally supposed, and their political views, whatever they may be, have no appreciable influence on the course of affairs. If the Empress Dowager had possessed the influence so often ascribed to her, M. Plehve would not have remained so long in power. As for the Grand Duke Vladimir, he is not in favour, and for nearly two years he has never been consulted on political matters. The so-called Grand Ducal party of which he is supposed to be the leader, is a recently invented fiction. When in difficulties the Emperor may consult individually some of his near relatives, but there is no coherent group to which the term party could properly be applied. As soon as the Autocratic Power has decided on a definite line of action, it is to be hoped that a strong man will be found to take the direction of affairs. In Russia, as in other autocratically governed countries, strong men in the political sense of the term are extremely rare, and when they do appear as a lusus naturae they generally take their colour from their surroundings, and are of the authoritative, dictatorial type. During recent years only two strong men have come to the front in the Russian official world. The one was M. Plehve, who was nothing if not authoritative and dictatorial, and who is no longer available for experiments in repression or constitutionalism. The other is M. Witte. As an administrator under an autocratic regime he has displayed immense ability and energy, but it does not follow that he is a statesman capable of piloting the ship into calm waters, and he is not likely to have an opportunity of making the attempt, for he does not--to state the case mildly--possess the full confidence of his august master. Even if a strong man, enjoying fully the Imperial confidence, could be found, the problem would not be thereby completely and satisfactorily solved, because an autocrat, who is the Lord's Anointed, cannot delegate his authority to a simple mortal without losing something of the semi-religious halo and the prestige on which his authority rests. While a roi faineant may fulfil effectively all the essential duties of sovereignty, an autocrate faineant is an absurdity. In these circumstances, it is idle to speculate as to the future. All we can do is to await patiently the development of events, and in all probability it is the unexpected that will happen. The reader doubtless feels that I am offering a very lame and impotent conclusion, and I must confess that I am conscious of this feeling myself, but I think I may fairly plead extenuating circumstances. Happily for my peace of mind I am a mere observer who is not called upon to invent a means of extricating Russia from her difficult position. For that arduous task there are already brave volunteers enough in the field. All I have to do is to explain as clearly as I can the complicated problem to be solved. Nor do I feel it any part of my duty to make predictions. I believe I am pretty well acquainted with the situation at the present moment, but what it may be a few weeks hence, when the words I am now writing issue from the press, I do not profess to foresee.