1 3 1 9 LIBR 1 4 ARY 6 — — -r* 6 CILITY 111 3 1M Thompson I =fl UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES y SOCIAL SCIENCE NATIONAL ECONOMY. ROBT. ELLIS THOMPSON, M. A., PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL SClE>CE 'l}T t6e' UNIVERSITY OF" PENNSYLVANIA. I I " The true greatness of kingdoms and estates, and the means thereof, is an argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand ; to the end that neither by overmeasuring their forces, they lose themselves in vain enterprises, nor on the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful and pusillanimous counsels."— Lord Bacon. PHILADELPHIA: PORTER and COATES. 1875. .:,,,, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by PORTER ?c COATES, in the Office cf tho L'l/i-anan of Congress, at "Washington. MEARS * DUSENBERY, Electrotypera and Stereotypers. SHERMAN * CO. Printers. * « t ■ • » *■ t * 1 G / PREFACE. The author of this book has had a twofold purpose in its preparation, — -first, to furnish a readable discussion of the subject for the use of those who wish to get some knowledge of it, but have neither the time nor the inclination to study elaborate or voluminous works ; secondly, and more especially, to provide a text-book for those teachers — in colleges and else- where — who approve of our national policy as in the main the right one, and who wish to teach the principles on which it rests and the facts by which it is justified. Of course the book is not exactly what it would have been had either of these purposes been kept singly in view. Some explanations are given, which are here only because this is meant to be a text- book ; there are discussions of a political kind, for instance, in the second chapter, whose presence is necessitated by the fact that no specific instruction in political philosophy is ordinarily given in our college courses, and the teacher of National Economy cannot always assume that his classes are already familiar with the conception of the state in its full significance. On the other hand, in the closing chapters, what the theological controversialists used to call "the present truth " has been stated and defended with a fulness which would ordinarily be needless in a text-book, and it is sug- 4 130-135: The Rate of Wages and the "Wage-Fund" Theory; \\ 136-141: The History of Labor; g 142: Labor gains more and faster than Capital; gg 143-148: Some Obstacles to its Welfare; gg 149-151 : Trades' Unions and Strikes: g 152: Arbitration; g 153: Cooperation : g 154 : Industrial Partnerships; g 155 : Labor Banks; g 150: Woman's Work and Wages. CONTEXTS. IX CHAPTER VIII. (§§157-185.) The Science and Economy of Money 156 % 157, 158: The Function of Money; gg 158-160: The "Precious Metals" and their History; gg 161-104: The Theory of the Passivity of Money ; gg 105-107: Paper-money; gg 108-171: Money of Ac- count, Banking and Panics ; gg 172-176 : Banking in England : g 177: Scotland: g 178: France; g 179: Land Banks; gg 180-185: Banking in the United States. CHAPTER IX. (§§ 186—204.) National Economy of Finance and Taxation . . 191 gg 186, 187 : The need of a Revenue ; § 1SS : Old Methods of getting it; g 1S9 : The Sorts of Taxation : gg 190, 191 : Indirect Taxes : gg 192- 195: Direct Tnxation; g 196: Economy of Taxation; gg 197-200: War Debts; gg 201-204: Our Treasury Notes. CHAPTER X. (§§ 205—225.) The Science and Economy of Commerce .... 209 gg 205, 206 : The Function of the Trader: gg 207-210 : His Profits and his Power; gg 211-213 : The Reform of Commercial Methods ; gg2l4- 218: The English Theory of International Exchanges; gg 219-223: Refutation of its Current Form; gg 224, 225: True and False Com- merce. CHAPTER XI. (§§ 226—268.) The Science and Economy of Manufactures. — The Theory 231 gg 226-228: The Natural Growth of a Varied Industry; gg 229-231 : The Interferences with this Growth: gg 232-230: Political Theorists object to State Resistance to these Interferences ; gg 237-239 : Tariffs, their Methods and the Incidence of their Duties; \\ 240-243: Protection benefits the Laborer; gg 244-251 : Protection benefits the Farmer; X CONTENTS. §§ 252-254: Protection makes Commerce equitable; §§ 255-261: Pro- tection fosters Manufactures and reduces the Prices of their Products, §§ 262-26S : Objections to Protection answered. CHAPTER XII. (§§ 269—329.) The Science and Economy of Manufactures. — The Practice 279 § 269 : The Relation of Theory to Practice; § 270 : Protection in Anri- quity; §271: Mediajval and Spanish; g^ 272-274 : France; §§275- 288: England; §287: Canada; §§ 288-290: Australia; §§291-297: Ireland; §§298,299: India; §300: Belgium; §§301-304: Germany; §305: Russia: §306: Sweden and Denmark; §307: Spain; §308: Portugal; § 309: Turkey; §§ 310-329: The United States (§' 310: Colonial Times; § 311 : The Revolution and the Constitution ; § 312: Federalist Times; §§ 313, 314: AVar of 1812: §§ 315-317: Three Democratic Tariffs ; § 318 : Hays, the Whig and Dallas Tariffs ; § 318 : The Morril Tariff and the Rebellion ; §§ 319-329 : The Results of Pro- tection). CHAPTER XIII. (§§ 330-346.) The Science and Economy of Intelligence and Education 383 §§ 330, 331 : The Need and Nature of a National Education; §§ 332- 335 : History of National Education ; § 336 : Our Public Schools ; '0 337 : National Education has three Aspects ; §338: For the Culture State; §§ 339, 340 : For the Jural State; §§ 341-346 : For the Indus- trial State (§ 341 : Agricultural Education; §§ 342-6: Technical Tra ; n;ng for Workmen engaged in Manufactures). SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. ' CHAPTER 'FIRST; Definition and History of the Science. § 1. Social Science (in the sense in which we shall use that term) is that branch of the science of man which treats of man as existing in society, and in relation to his material wants and welfare. The related art by which this science is carried into practice is the art of national or political economy. For sake of definiteness, we prefer the former name. § 2. It has been objected by some that there can be no such thing as a science of man. " Science," they say, " deals only with things whose actions and reactions can be foretold, after we have mastered the general laws by which they are governed. The test of science, as Comte says, is the power of prediction. There is a science of Chemistry, because there is a possibility of foretelling what compound will be produced by the union of any two elements or known compounds. But man is not governed by laws of that sort ; he is a being possessed of affec- tions and a will, which often act in the most arbitrary way, — in a way that no one can foresee or predict." This objection expresses a truth which can never be left out of sight. If we ignore it we shall miss the conditions under which man's material welfare is to be achieved. Men can never be put to a good use of any sort, while they are regarded or (xi) 12 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. treated as things. To do so will be to keep them poor, as well as to degrade them morally; for the best work and the wisest economy can be got out of them, only by bringing their free will into play in the desirable direction. But the possibility of constructing a science of man does not rest upon the power to foresee the line of action that each indi- vidual man will pursue. Man lives in a world which his will did not create, and whose " constitution and course of nature " he cannot change. If he act in violation of its laws, he must take the penalty.; Thus if. he Jildftlge'in habits that contravene the constitution of his moral nature* then moral degradation, unhappiness and re.taor^e: w.ili;be tfie.'keces'sary results. Because there is such a moral '" constitution and course of nature," there is a science of ethics, which enables us to predict, not the conduct of each individual man, but the consequences of such conduct, whatever it may be. And there exists equally for society an economic "constitution and course of nature ;" the nation that complies with its laws attains to material well-being or wealth, and the nation that disobeys them inflicts poverty upon itself as a whole, or upon the mass of its people. To learn what those laws are, is the business-of the student of social science ; to govern a nation according to them is the business of the statesman, and is the art of national economy. While men are beings possessed of a will, they ordinarily act from motives. This is especially true of their conduct in re- gard to their material welfare; in this connection the same motives act with great uniformity upon almost all men. The same wants exist for all ; the same welfare is desired by all ; so that in this department of the science of man there is so little caprice, that there is nearly as much power to foresee and foretell what men will do, as in some of the sciences to fore- see the actions of things. Nearly, but not quite so much ; for while men are agreed as to the end here, there is room for dif- ference of opinion as to the means, and consequently for variety of action — for wise and unwise ways of procedure. § 3. What Social Science lacks in certainty, as compared with SOCIETY A PRIMARY FACT. 13 the sciences of nature, it more than makes up in the higher interest that it excites. Whatever science deals with our own species and its fortunes, comes very close to each one of us. Whatever it can tell us of the probable future of our nation, or our race, concerns us more than predicted eclipses or chemical discoveries. The most brilliant chemical or astronomical cer- tainty could not move an Englishman so deeply as that bare conjecture of Macaulay, that the time may come " when some traveller from New Zealand shall take his seat on a broken arch of Westminster bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." The other sciences have an independent value ; but they interest us most when we see that they have a bearing upon this, when they open still larger utilities of nature to human possession, and add to the welfare of mankiud. We ask the chemist: " Will the time ever come when we will be no longer dependent upon our coal deposits for light and warmth, but will be able to produce both from the decomposition of water V We ask the physicist: "Will we soon be able to use this subtle, omnipresent electric force as a motive power ? Will we ever be able to move through the air in manageable balloons, with speed and safety ?" These are not the greatest problems that science has to solve, hut they have an interest for us all that more abstract questions can never possess. §4. Our Science considers man as existing in society; we find him, indeed, nowhere else. The old lawyers and political philosophers talked of a state of nature, a condition of savage isolation, out of which men emerged by the social contract, through which society was first constituted. But no one else has any news from that country; everywhere men exist in more or less perfectly organized society ; — they are born into the society of the family without any choice of their own ; and they grow up as members of tribes or nations, that grew out of families. All their material welfare rests upon this fact, and must be considered in connection with it. The cooperation by which they emerge from the most utter poverty to wealth, is possible only within society and under its protection. Upon 14 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the wise management of its general policy, and the efficiency of its government, the welfare and the security of the indi- vidual depend. The natural right to property, by which that welfare is perpetuated from day to day, is realized only in society. The transmission of the things that contribute to ma- terial welfare from one generation to another — of real and per- sonal property, of knowledge, skill and methods of industry — would be impossible but for the existence of bodies that outlive the single life, and aim at their own perpetuation. Vita brevis, ars long a, or else each new generation would have to begin at the foundation. Hence it is that this science begins with the conception of social state ; not with the study of wealth in the abstract, nor of the individual man and his desires. At the fall of the civilized societies that made up the ancient world, the useful arts and sciences would have perished in Western Europe with the polities under which they were developed, had not the great Benedictine order gathered both into their monasteries. These were at once schools of learning and industrial establishments, and the only places safe from the barbarous intrusions of half-Christianized bar- barians. § 5. Social science reduced to practice is the art of national economy. The term ecouomy, or house-thrift, does not mean here wise saving, any more than it means wise spending. It is borrowed from the management of the first and simplest of all human societies, the unit out of which all other societies have grown — the family. The adjective national prefixed indicates the transfer of the conception of thrift to the society which exists that justice may be done and natural rights be realized, and which for that purpose is put in trust with the lives and the material possessions of the whole people. § 6. National economy is much older than social science. The former came into existence with the first nation, the latter began to be studied about the time of the discovery of America, and first gained a place as a recognised science a century ago. There is nothing utmsual in this, for nearly every science lags for a time behind its related art. Themistocles knew " how to make a small city great" lung before Plato and Aristotle ART BEFORE SCIENCE. 15 founded the science of politics. Dyeing, cooking, and a thousand other applications of chemistry were in use from the earliest historic periods; but the first centennial of Dr. Priestley's dis- covery of oxygen, that laid the foundation of that science, has been celebrated in our own time. Sometimes the two — the science and the art — exist together, with little or no influence upon each other, for a long period. Thus there was for centu- ries a science of music, taught and studied by men who were not practical musicians ; while those that were, pursued their art without giving the slightest heed to the science. All human experience shows that science can be of the greatest service to its related art. As chemistry has improved and simplified the industrial methods that existed before Priest- ley and Lavoisier, so the discovery of the economic laws that govern the advance of society in wealth, has greatly changed for the better the economic methods of the nations. Some of the older empirical rules it has vindicated as right ; others it has condemned and set aside as wrong ; it has suggested new and extended the applications of others that were old. It runs the risk, indeed, of rejecting some methods that were clearly right ; and it must guard against this, by making the most careful and thorough survey of all the facts of the case. In the first stages of a science, which we may call the mechan- ical, empirical rules predominate among the doctrines ; but gradually the simpler and far less numerous scientific principles that underlie these rules are perceived. When these are once grasped, the process of submitting rules to the test of principles is an easy and safe one. The science has then passed into its dynamical stage. The ancients knew no science of political or national economy. Commonplace remarks and moralizing reflections on the subject are found scattered here and there through their literatures. Single facts that could hardly escape their notice, such as the advantage of the division of labor, and of the transition from barter to the use of money, and the difference between value and utility, were remarked upon, especially by Aristotle. In 16 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. these hints lay the possible germs of social science, but they were not followed up, nor the underlying laws investigated. § 1. The rivalry excited in other parts of Europe, by the prosperity of Venice and Genoa, first led men to study the sub- ject, and we find it occupying a place in the literatures of Italy and Spain, France and England, from the sixteenth century. The circumstances of the times gave shape to these studies. This was the nationalist period of history. Europe had revolted against all the schemes of a universal monarchy ; and independ- ent sovereign kingdoms, with national languages and literatures, and even churches, divided its area among them. That a thing was Spanish or was English, was praise enough in the ears of Spaniard or Englishman. How to aggrandize to the utmost their own country, at whatever expense to others, was the great problem of statesmanship, especially after the religious heats, that had divided Europe into two hostile camps, cooled off" somewhat. And of all means to that end, the possession of an abundance of money seemed the best and readiest. After a money-famine that had begun with the Christian era, and had grown in intensity for fifteen centuries, the discovery of America and the East Indies had brought in a vast and sudden supply, which had given Spain for a time an undue preponderance in European politics, and had everywhere bettered the condition of the people. How to acquire it by a foreign trade that would give a balance in favor of our own country, — how to keep it here at home for general circulation and national uses in case of need, was the question. The Mercantile school of writers, as they are now called, set themselves to find methods. As a rule their books were corrective of common errors ; they showed that the best way was the indirect way, — to stimulate home industry and have plenty of commodities to sell, not to put a premium on foreign coins and prohibit the export of gold. Theirs was a real science, but in the mechanical stage. Among the notable writers of this school are Antonio Serra (1613, a Neapolitan) ; Thomas Munn ( England's Treasure by Foreign Trade, 1664) ; Andrew Yarranton {England's Improvement by Land and Sea, 1677-81); John Locke (jOn the Interest and Value of Money, 1691 and 1698); Sir THE MERCANTILE SCHOOL. 17 Wm. Petty (Essays in Political Arithmetic 1691). The systematic writers are the Abbe Genovesi (Lezzioni di Commercio e di Economico Civile, 1765) and Sir James Steuart (Principles of Political Economy, 1767). Contemporary opponents are Sir Josiah Child (Brief Observations con- cerning Trade, 1608); le Sieur de Boisguillebert (Factum de France, 1712, re rare ; agricultural methods are rapidly improving; the country is tilled like a garden, yielding several heavy crops every year, and presenting the most beautiful and civilized appearance of any in the world. § 90. In Prussia the mediaeval system held its ground down to the beginning of the present century. The government " saw with terror, in 1803, how insecure was a state which had so great a claim on the bodies, and none at all on the hearts of its people" (Grustav Freytag). Some opposed change. The bauer was stupid, lazy and thriftless, it was said ; nothing could be made of him. A government commission met at 3Iemel in 1807 to draft a land-law that should effect the transition from the mediaeval to the modern agriculture. They found them- selves divided into two parties : on the one side the great states- man Stein, the great historian Niebuhr and his friend Stage- mann ; on the other a group of now-forgotten doctrinaires, who bad studied English political economy under Kraus at Koenigs- berg. The latter wished for a policy that would secure the maximum of production from the soil, independently of the welfare of the producers. " They held it indifferent whether the present feebler proprietors remained or not, if their place was supplied by wealthier ones, and thus the greatest possible amount of profit secured." They preferred, indeed, that the change should take that shape, following the English commer- cial maxim : " most produce by least labor." " Why," they asked, " waste the productive force of four proprietors and six- teen horses to do that which one proprietor and six horses can do better?" The other party " considered the promotion of the welfare of the actually-existing occupants of the soil as the true problem of the statesman;" else they "saw the likelihood of obtaining a class of proprietors who would have no moral interest in the welfare of the country, and they felt the importance of a numerous class of small landholders." Happily their counsels prevailed; the transition was effected by impartial legislation, and not on English principles nor hy English methods. The 86 ■ SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. peasant secured the complete control of his own labor, and rose from a state of villeinage to the freedom of a landowner; in re- turn he ceded to his former master a portion of the land he had held, retaining the rest in fee simple. All restrictions on the sale of laud were removed, and provision was made for cutting oif entails. This measure was enlarged and extended to all parts of the kingdom in 1811. It aimed at the highest end of national economy, the welfare of the people ; it secured the lower also — the maximum of production from the soil. Since its adoption, the yeoman class has grown in numbers, wealth aud independence. In Westphalia especially, land con- stantly passes into their hands by purchase. Its price has risen rapidly; it rose seventy-five per cent, between 1829 and 1843. The bulk of it is now in the hands of the actual tillers of the soil; the agricultural methods are very greatly improved, and the hauer is now proverbial for thrift and industry. § 91. Switzerland takes rank next to Belgium in the per- fection of its intensive culture, and the density of its popula- tion. Every foothold of ground is occupied ; if the clefts of the rocks contain no soil, it is carried thither. Norway with its rocky surface, and Denmark with its alterna- tions of peat and gravel, would be — like Flemish Belgium — in- accessible to any sort of agriculture that did not bring into play the entire devotion and earnestness of their people. In both the greatest difficulties have been overcome and the largest out- lays of labor rewarded. Russia, in the emancipation of her serfs (1861), had to solve the problem that was before Prussia half a ceutury earlier. The large proprietors and the students of English political and rural economy wished to see the land vested in the nobility, and the bulk of the peasantry reduced to the level of day-laborers. But the aristocratic party had lost its prestige through its failure to carry the Crimean war to a successful issue. The government secured to the serfs the right to purchase at a moderate rate enough arable and pasture land for the needs of each village, and undertook to collect the payment in small annual instal- THE EQUILIBRIUM OF THE INDUSTRIES. 87 merits and pay it over to the landowners. That the economic Tesults of the measure are as yet anything but satisfactory must be admitted. This is due (1) to the virus of slavery still poison- ing the minds of the people and leading them to regard work as a curse and a disgrace; (2) to the system of taxation, by which the public burdens are thrown chiefly upon the peasantry; and (3) to the fact that the system of communistic land tenure is still kept up in Russia, and in such a way as to deprive the peasant of many of the most powerful impulses to industry, im- provement and thrift. In Italy, the plains of the north are under petty culture, and the excellence of the agriculture is proverbial. In Tuscany the lands are farmed in larger portions on the metayer system, the landlord and tenant dividing the crop equally. To pass from Lombardy to Tuscany, is to go from better to worse ; but to cross the Tiber to what was the Papal States and Naples, is to come into a country of large farms, in which beggary and bad tillage deface the earth. The yield is much smaller, and the rural methods are those of the days of Hildebrand, if not of Cato the Censor. § 92. Another chief point in the economy of land is to secure and preserve an equilibrium of the three great elements of the industrial state — the agricultural, the commercial and the manu- facturing. To cherish and foster agriculture alone is not to cherish it at all. The farmer's work, unless misdirected and wasteful, produces more than furnishes food for himself and his household. Were it otherwise the whole population would have to be employed in agriculture, as was the case in the earliest, period of the art. The existence of such a surplus sets free a part of the population to engage in work of producing other things that society counts among the necessities and comforts of life. When this class, and the number of persons needed for the exchange of the products of both classes, are large enough to consume the ordinary surplus product of the farming class, the three classes stand in equilibrium ; the farmer is assured of a market for his crop, and of a fair exchange of other objects 88 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. of desire for what he can spare. But if these two classes are not large enough to consume his surplus, the equilibrium does not exist-, and the farmer must suffer accordingly. His labor goes for nought; his crop rots in the fields, or if gathered and taken to market, brings a trifling price because farmers are underbidding each other for the small sales that are possible. In our Mississippi valley, for instance, the equilibrium of the two classes has not yet been attained. " The burning of corn for fuel in the West, of which we hear dismal stories once in seven years, is an indication that too many people there are en- gaged in farming and too few in manufacturing " (The Nation, New York, 1869). In the absence of a sufficient home market, the foreign demand for breadstuffs and other farm produce is the only dependence of the farmer. For reasons hereafter given, the exchange of raw produce for manufactured goods between distant points can never be a remunerative one for the producer of the former. Were the rural economy of every nation wisely managed, no such exchange could take place ; save in years of extraordinary scarcity the transportation of large quantities of breadstuffs and the like across the seas would not be thought of. The foreign market can therefore last no longer than the bad management of a few densely peopled countries lasts ; with every advance in agricul- tural methods and rural economy it must threaten to disappear. And even while it lasts it is the most uncertain of all markets. The farmer who depends on it takes the risk of two harvests in- stead of one. If the foreign country have a bad harvest, and so need much grain, while his own country's harvest is not too good, he may get as fair a profit as the nature of the case per- mits ) in any other combination of circumstances he will not. Still more complicated are his chances when other nations nearer the foreign market are competitors to supply its needs. In that case his success depends upon their comparative failure also. Worse still, the price he can get for what he sells at home is fixed and regulated by that of what he sends abroad ; if a large surplus, raised for the foreign market, be left on his hands, FARMING FOR A DISTANT MARKET. 89 prices will rule low in the home market also, because he and his fellow- farmers will be underselling each other in competing to supply its demand. § 93. The farmer who depends upon a distant market can never carry on his farming by the best methods. He cannot raise that variety of crops by which the pressure of tillage upon tin; resources of the soil is lightened ; for such crops cannot be transported to a distance. He must grow the great staples that meet the foreign demand, year after year, to the exhaustion of the most important elements of his land. He cannot make such returns to the soil as will keep up its fertility ; the refuse of the factory and the town are not to be had. The highly nitro- geuized forms of animal manure he can procure in trifling quantities only, as his own cattle and those of his brother farmers are the only beasts of the sort in his neighborhood, and are far fewer in number thau if he had a town close at hand making large demands for meat and dairy produce. He can only farm thriftlessly and wastefully ; in our Eastern sense of the word his place is not a farm, but a wheat factory or a corn factory. The farmer who lives near his market is continually improving an instrument of great power and value; he who lives at a distance from his market is continually injuring it and breaking it. The one is adding every year to the wealth of the soil beneath his feet; the other is exporting that wealth to a distance, without the opportunity of making any return to the soil he is robbing of its fertility. The census of 1870 exhibits the undue preponderance of agriculture in the states we have referred to. In six Western States fifty-four percent, of those who report any occupation were engaged in farming, while of the whole population of the United States so reported only forty-seven per cent, are farmers. In nine Southern Stat s, from North Carolina to Texas, the proportion is as high as seventy-five per cent. The six Western States have nineteen per cent, of the national popu- lation: but they raise forty per cent, of the whole corn crop, and forty- two per cent, of the wheat crop, while of all other crops they raise less than their share. Their industry lacks variety, being chiefly agriculture ; their agriculture lacks variety, being chiefly the growth of cereals. In 1872, when the English demand for American breadstuff's was much above 90 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the average, Illinois produced enough to feed all her own population, and to supply the whole English demand, at that rate, for ten years. See a very able article on " The Farmers' Difficulty," by Edward Stanwood, in Old and New for September 1872. § 94. The theories of the national economy of land which pass current with the English economists seem to be suggested by their practice. Like the theory of population discussed in the last chapter, they seem designed to excuse the anomalies and miseries of English society, by throwing the blame on the natural laws which govern and condition the growth of society. Indeed, the chief of the English theories about land grew directly out of the Malthusian theory of population. In the last statement of that theory that Mr. Malthus made (1826) he concedes to his numerous opponents that so long as good land was to be had, " the rate at which food could be made to in- crease would far exceed what was necessary to keep pace with the most rapid increase of the population " possible. This shows that the whole question turns upon the relation of man to the soil. The " theory of population" is therefore the parent of the " theory of rent" announced by David Ricardo in 1815, and designed to explain the way in which the growth of society makes the few rich aud the many poor, by inuring chiefly to the benefit of a class of monopolists called landlords. In his view, rent arises from the insufficiency of good land to supply the entire people. The first settlers of a country take possession of the best lands; the second set of cultivators are obliged to take those that are worse, or pay nearly if not quite the differ- ence in rent. When the second grade of land has been settled up, the next set must take up a third grade, or pay nearly if not quite the difference in yearly value for a share of the first or second. Thus as the growth of numbers requires the tillage of an ever larger area of the soil, each higher grade of land pays an increasing rent. With every advance in population men are driven to poorer and more wretched soils, and the monopolists of the higher grade of lands are able to live in idleness aud RICARDO'S " LAW OF RENT." 91 plenty upon their continually increasing share of the growths of the soil. The only limit to the process will be reached when the only laud that is unoccupied is too poor to repay cultivation. The rent that can be secured for any given piece of ground will be nearly if not quite the difference between its annual yield and that of the poorest lands under cultivation. § 95. To show what Mr. Ricardo asserts to be the tendency at work as a country grows in density of population, let us sup- pose the case of an island divided into a number of areas equal in extent but of various degrees of fertility, and each large enough to employ a hundred laborers. The best land in the series can produce (let us say) 900 bushels of wheat, giving nine bushels to each laborer if there be an equal division. The next best will produce (let us say) one-tenth less or 810 bushels, giving 1710 (or 900 plus 810) bushels to be divided between two hundred workmen ; and so on. If the population double every twenty-five years, as Mr. Matthus says it may, the following table shows what the growth of population and of sustenanee will be in two centuries : — Years. Persons. Bushels. Share. 900 9. 1,710 8.151 3,150 7.875 5,670 7.0875 9,990 6.243 17,190 5.37 31,710 4.92 48,990 3.8 72,030 2.8 But on the theory of unequal division propounded by Mr. Ricardo, the owners of the lauds last occupied would not get 2.8 but only 1.8 bushels each, and the amount which falls to them is just or almost the share that falls to the tenants of any of higher grade. The difference between that share and the actual annual yield is absorbed in rent. If the entire seven grades of superior land is leased to tenants, its owners absorb nearly if -not quite 25,950 bushels as their royalty on the use of 1 100 26 200 51 400 76 800 101 1,600 126 3,200 151 6,400 176 12,800 201 25,600 92 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the land, leaving 46,080 bushels to the actual workmen. The denser the population, therefore, the greater the misery of the people, and every growth in their numbers increases their own poverty and adds to the wealth of these monopolists. § 96. This doctrine found even more acceptance with the English school, and elicited far less criticism and opposition, than that of Mr. Malthus on population. It was a more direct and explicit apology for the anomalous state of things in Eng- land; it explained how a nation might grow in wealth while a very large share of its people sank ever deeper in poverty aud misery. It was a still more explicit and satisfactory verdict of " Nobody to blame," — a still clearer excuse for the absence of effort to amend things. Mr. J. S. Mill goes so far as to pro- nounce this law of rent and of the increasing sterility of the land brought under cultivation, to be the very corner-stone of the science. " After a certain not very advanced stage in the progress of agriculture ... in any given state of agricultural skill and knowledge . . . every increase of produce is obtained by more than a proportional increase in the application of labor to the land. This general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in Political Economy. Were the law different, nearly all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." An American writer of the same school says : " It is natural — and if natural, proper — though we may not see the reason — that poverty and want, and disease and misery, should be the next- door neighbors of wealth and unbounded prosperity." § 97. On Mr. llicardo's theory that land derives its value from the natural properties of the soil, and not from the labor expended on it, and that landlords are a class of monopolists who have possessed themselves of it, and thus managed to make the growth of society inure chiefly to their own benefit, the right of ownership in land is one that rests on no sufficient foundation, and one that many of the interests of society call upon the state to set aside and destroy. Mr. Ricardo himself was no friend of these " monopolists," and his school are as little RICARDO'S " LAW " TESTED BY FACTS. 93 so. Especially in late years they have been given to using phrases that strongly resemble the utterances of those com- munists, who would have the right to landed property, if not to all property, repudiated by society. ' They have held up the land-tenure of their country as the source of nearly all its social evils ; they have insisted that the nature of landed property is such that it is both the right and the duty of the state to inter- fere with it in ways that would be public robbery if applied to other sorts of property ; they have declared that the ownership of land — in contrast to the ownership of other things — is a public trust, a stewardship of which the nation may exact an account. The offspring of these teachings is the Irish Land Law of 1870, by which the landowner is forbidden to rent his land for the price that it will bring in the open market. All contracts are to be on terms that an Irish judge shall- decide to be reasonable, and when the lease expires the tenant cannot be ejected unless paid for his good-will and improvements. § 98. Do the facts of history bear out this theory ? If they do we shall find (1) that in any given area the amount of the produce of the land obtained iu earlier times is greater in pro- portion to the number of laborers ; (2) that of two countries, or two districts in the same country, if other things be equal, the one that is poorest in people is the one in which the average degree of personal wealth and comfort is the highest; (3) that the share that falls to the landlord increases, and that which falls to the laborer diminishes, as more land is brought under cul- tivation. Not one of these results is sustained by observation. The facts alleged in the previous chapter in regard to the con- dition of savage nations, and of civilized peoples in the earlier stase, show us that the thinly-settled countries are those in which continual poverty prevails, and frequent famines occur. In the first and the second points, therefore, the theory diverges widelv from the facts. On the third point — the increasing share of the landlord, as distinguished from an increasing amount — the theory is equally 94 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. at fault. With the growth of society in numbers, in intelligence, in the efficiency of its workers, the landlord obtains a continually increasing amount, but a continually decreasing share. His third falls to a fourth of the produce, but the fourth is more than the third was; the fourth becomes a fifth, but the actual amount is still increased. Adam Smith pointed this out as the difference between the times when feudal bondage existed in Europe and the whole crop fell to the landlord, and his own day when the landlord took a third or a fourth part of the pro- duce, but got three or four times as much as the whole had once amounted to. Mr. Malthus showed from official returns that in England the landlord iu his day took but a fifth of the crop in rent, and yet got a larger quantity than in previous ages when his share had been one-fourth, one-third, or even two-fifths. We have it on equally high authority that between 1790 and 1833 the amount got by the landlord had doubled, while the improved condition of the laborer showed that the increase had not been at his ex- pense. Mr. Senior says that the improvements in England between 1776 and 1836 had " more than doubled the wages of labor and nearly trebled the value of land." These results are not open to question ; they have been reached by competent statists, all of thein of the school of Ricardo. The official figures in regard to France show that of the gross produce of the culture of the soil, 35, 37, 43, 60 and 60 per cent., had been paid as the cost of cultivation at the dates 1700, 1760, 1788, 1813 and 1840, and that the yearly sum that fell to each family engaged in agriculture at each date was 135, 126, 161, 400 and 500 francs respectively. Comparing these figures with the price of bread at each date, we find that the people of France had not much over half enough to eat under Louis XIV. ; about two-thirds of enough under Louis XV. ; three-fourths under Louis XVI., and more than enough under the Empire. The minister D'Argenson in 1753, a year of no special scarcity, says: "Men die around us like flies and are reduced to eat grass." The Duke of Orleans brought a loaf of fern bread to RICARDO S ANACHRONISM. 95 the Royal Council, and placing it before the King, his brother, said : " Sire, see what your subjects live upon!" The returns to labor in France are by no means what they ought to be even now. France is more fertile than England, yet two-thirds of the French people are engaged in producing food for the nation, against one-third of the English ; and with all, the latter are better fed and more prosperous generally. Furthermore, one- sixth of the soil of France is covered with forests ; one-twenty- fourth of England. If Mr. Ricardo be right, this should mean that the pressure of population has not yet brought the French nation to the cultivation of the poorer soils, and that the acre- age under tillage yields a larger average of bushels than in England. But notoriously the reverse of this is true. And if we compare department with department, it is found that the most populous parts of France are also those in which the yield per acre and the consumption of food per head are both greater, and the quality of the food better, than in the others. § 99. The study of the early history of land-tenures, begun since 31r. E-icardo's time, it is now admitted by English scholars, discredits his assumption that all the facts known to us can be traced back to the competition for the use of the soil. Such competition is quite modern in its origin. In former times land was not held by individuals, but by associated groups, bound together by kinship and by immemorial custom. The whole group held the soil in common as an inalienable possession, and assigned parts of it to single families for their use. While cus- tom defined the rights of these families and prevented all intru- sion upon them, custom also debarred the family from disposing of those rights. Where some chief or lord of the manor pos- sessed a claim upon the services of the rest of its tenants, the kind and amount of this also were fixed by custom ; and where a violent change of lordship overthrew existing customs, others of equal rigidity quickly grew up in their stead, and were quietly assumed to have held from time immemorial. No market for land, and consequently no competition for its pos- session existed among the actual cultivators. Only the ex- 96 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. tinction of these tenures in common, and the enclosure of the lands, created individual ownership in the modern sense, and with it competitive rents. Down to quite recent times the rent of land even in England was fixed by custom, not by competi- tion, and much of it is still so held. But English economists, following Adam Smith and Ricardo, have always assumed that competitive are the only true rents, just as English lawyers have assumed that all customary rights are usurpations on the rights of the lord of the manor. Both opinions had their excuse in the almost if not quite universal ignorance of the historical fact; both have doue great mischief to the common people, by fostering the notion that the traditional customary rights of the people to the land could be set aside without injustice. " These tenures afford confirmation of the doubts suggested in Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities respecting the historical truth of the economic theory of the origin of rent. Early land-rents were not com- petitive rents; they were not at all in conformity with Mr. Ricardo's doctrine ; they bore, for the most part, no relation to the fertility of the soil, or its vicinity to market, if there was any market at all. . . . Each manor was, as it were, a separate territory, inhabited by a distinct com- munity. There was no competition for the tenure of farms from without; and within the manor the sole regulators of rent were the arbitrary will of the lord, and custom. The rent of the villein was at first, in theory at least, an arbitrary rent; in its next stage it was a customary rent, in labor or produce ; in a third stage it became commuted into a money- rent, based on a valuation of the customary service or payments in kind. In the book before us [Blount's Tenures of Land] we have many exam- ples of the customary rent in labor and in kind, and of the commuted money-rent ; but there is not a single example of a competitive rent. Competitive rents only began with enclosures and the disruption of the old manorial community ; and customary rents survive to this day in many a manor, in defiance of economic theory" ( The Athenecum, 1874). The only early instance of a rent not fixed by custom is that provided for in one of the old Irish laws, in which a member of one group, be- coming an outcast, becomes the tenant of another. Of such a tenant as large a rent as could be exacted, might be justly demanded; but of a member of the sept itself only a fair (i. e., a customary) rent could be exacted. § 100. Mr. Ricardo is wrong in his very first premise. " The THE AVORST LAND FIRST. 97 elements of value to" the first settlers of a new country " are not the resources that are capable of development through in- dustry and enterprise, but those which offer the readiest supply of the necessaries of life" (J. H. Burton). They do not begin with the best soil, and afterwards proceed to that which is worse, however natural and reasonable it may seem to assume that they do so. The best soil is usually not known to them as such ; even if it were, it is nearly always inaccessible to them. Through its very wealth, it is not unusually covered with timber, whose clearance is impossible to them. More commonly it is marshy, and requires what would be to them a vast expenditure of labor to drain it. It lies in the lower parts of the country, to which the aqueous circulation has been for ages carrying down the richest elements of the soil. It is infested with malarias, bred of vegetable decay. It is utterly devoid of those natural facili- ties for defence, which in most situations are imperiously neces- sary to the settler. The progress of civilization in all ages, therefore, has been from the thin and poor soils high up the rivers to the richer soils that lie nearer their mouths. The retrogression of civiliza- tion has been the abandonment of the richer soils and the re- treat up the hillsides to those that are lighter and less fertile. The next chapter gives the historical proofs of these facts, and of the true law of settlement. The great means that has enabled men to pass from the poorer soils to the richer is the power of cooperation that increases with the growth of numbers, unless some artificial obstacle has been interposed to prevent it. The sudden decline of numbers, or the diminution of the power of association, has had the effect of driving men back from the land that richly repays the labor expended upon it, to the soil that furnishes natural drainage, that can be ploughed with a crooked sapling and harrowed with a thorny bush. The labor expended upon such soil is slightly repaid; the crop reaped is therefore dear; but necessity has no choice. 98 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. CHAPTER SIXTH. The National Economy of Land (continued): How the Earth was Occupied. § 101. The historical refutation of Mr. Ricardo's theory, which is presented by the history of the settlement of the various countries of the earth, was first given to the world by Mr. H. C. Carey in his book The Past, the Present and the Future (1848). It is worthy of study, not only as a refutation of a dismal theory of the destiny of mankind, but for the light it casts upon the economic side of the world's history, and indirectly upon other sides also. It might be easily and fairly elaborated into an economical history of the earth, for that history is nothing but the story of man's conquest of nature's resistance and the pro- gressive mastery of her manifold utilities. Finding that the whole ease as regards Europe and Asia could be re- stated from later authorities, chiefly English, we have taken compara- tively few of the details from Mr. Carey. In regard to America, we have followed his lead more fully. The question being one of the tenure of land and its effects upon the well-being of the people, we will confine ourselves to those people who live or lived under such a tenure. This ex- cludes barbarous and nomadic tribes generally and restricts the inquiry to the Shemitic and Indo-Germanic races, and to their precursors in civilization, the people of China and the Hamitic nations of Egypt and the Euphrates valley. § 102. China comes first, as it presents the least-developed and therefore the most ancient type of civilization. . That its language has no grammatical cohesion and its polity no organic unity are related facts. In the earliest ages its people were con- fined to the mountainous provinces of the interior, where the soil is generally thin and invariably light and porous, aud easily cultivated. Here was the ancient capital Hien-Vang, once an illustrious and splendid city, that emperors expended their wealth SETTLEMENT OF CHINA. — OF EGYPT. 99 in adorning; now an insignificant village. Here was the home of the ancient sages Fo-hi and Con-fu-tze, who gave to Chinese civilization its hard and formal tone. Not till about the becin- niug of the third century B. c. were the middle provinces be- tween the mountains and the plain — now the seat of the tea- culture — annexed to the kingdom. Then as numbers grew, the people spread down into the plains along the seashore, occupy- ing rather than conquering them. Their superiority to the mountain provinces in agricultural wealth is unquestioned; but the great rivers that have long enriched them with the spoils of the mountains are a source of great danger. Had they been occupied by numbers insufficient to resist the inundations, the colonies would have been swept away. In this lowland the great cities of modern China have grown up in comparatively recent times, entirely eclipsing the ancient cities of the interior. See Pauthier's Chine, on Description Historique . . . d'aprla des Documents Chinois, Paris, 1S39 (Pages 6, 7, 215, 221). § 103. Egypt is one of the few very fertile regions of the earth that at a very early date was settled and became the theatre of a vigorous civilization. But it is no exception to the rule. The oldest traces of civilization — as native traditions would lead us to expect — are to be found in Upper Egypt, where the country borders on Nubia. At a later date, popula- tion poured down into the rich plain of the Delta, as possibly they had previously poured out of barren, rocky Nubia into the region about Thebes. The two regions are carefully dis- tinguished by the Egyptians themselves; in the title of the sovereigns down to the Ptolemies, Upper Egypt is put first ; in the double crown they wore, the white crown of the former rises above the red one of the latter. The valley of the Nile in Upper Egypt is devoid of rain; it is rich, but narrow and in- capable of extension or improvement by art ; in the Delta rain falls frequently, the valley is broad and rich, and the construc- tion of canals added greatly to its wealth. It is a purely allu- vial formation ; the waves of the Mediterranean once washed the rocks on which the pyramids stand. In the earliest ages 100 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the soil of the Delta was no doubt much less accessible than at present, and we hear of great works of drainage being under- taken by the early kings. " It is to the junction of the two arms of the Nile, by a nest of canals, that Egypt is indebted for its fertility" (Bunsen). " They say that in the time of Menes, all Egypt, except the Thebaid, was a morass, and that no part of the land now existing below Lake Myris was then above water. To this place from the sea is seven days' journey by the river" (Herodotus). "The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are a colony led out from among them by Osiris; and that Egypt was formerly no part of the continent, but a sea at the beginning of the world ; but that afterwards it was made land by the river Nile" (Diodorus Siculus). The date of the rise of towns in Lower Egypt was known to the Hebrews. The country was the granary of the nations from the earliest times known to us, feeding its vast and dense population most abun- dantly and dispensing its grain to the needy and thinly-settled regions in its vicinity. All this wealth it brings from the interior of the continent, the primitive seats of the race. " All Egypt," says Herodotus, " is the gift of the Nile." Since the decline of the population and of the power of association under Moham- medan despotism, the desert has encroached upon the valley, and the fertility of the country has been greatly diminished through the decay of the canals and other works of irrigation. § 104. The original seat of the Shemitic race, and indeed of the human race after the flood, was in the mountainous high- lands of Armenia. When at last their growing numbers poured into Mesopotamia and the plains of Shinar, their first instinct was to secure their safety by the erection of an artificial moun- tain, "whose top should reach unto heaven." When we find the Shemites in possession of this region some ages later, it is the kingdom of Elam, perched on the highlands on the eastern side of the valley of the great rivers, that is dominant. As numbers grew there arose the great empire of Nineveh. Nine- veh, whose site was a high plain at the foot of the mountain rauges, raised considerably above the river's bank and exposed HOMES OF THE SHEMI'lTi?. ; 101 to the action of the drought, but free from floods ^and> .evidently ■ preferred to richer lands because of this singo advantage!- Not until after centuries of empire and its conquest by the Medes, did it give place to Babylon, situated far down the valley in fertile lands that the growth of population had made accessible to cultivation. Empire of Nineveh b. c. 1440-625. An Akkadian empire, with its capital situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, and whose people proba- bly came over from Arabia, seems to have preceded Nineveh. In other places occupied by the Shemitic races similar sites are chosen as preferable. Moab, " the desired land," is a cluster of limestone hills east of the Dead Sea. Amnion chooses the high plateaus farther up the Jordan. Ishmael spreads over the rocky and stony peninsula of Arabia. The children of Esau take the border land of the desert, and find the Horites or mountaineers already in possession. The Israelites get as their long-expected inheritance the rocky strip on both sides the Jordan, — with the caution that it is a hill-country, not an Egypt where they might water the soil with their foot. Among the people they must drive out before them, the Amorites or Highlanders are the strongest, and are led by the King of Bashan, whose long-deserted upland country still abounds in strange monuments of its early greatness. We have frequent notice in later Jewish history of the extension of culture to un- occupied districts in the plains, by enterprising rulers, — and the consequent rise of new cities like Samaria and Jezreel in the most fertile parts of the country. Only the Philistines and Phenicians on the west were able to do what the Babylonians did in the east. Their high civilization and gift of social - organization enabled them to settle in the lowlands by the sea and extend their commerce upon its waters. § 105. The great Aryan or In do-Germanic race, that com- prises nearly all the civilized peoples of modern history, has been traced to its primitive home among the mountain ranges that form the western limit of the Chinese empire, and the dry, elevated tabledands that lie west of them. In this part 1Q2 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. of -the world.. cur common, grains and our domestic animals are native. . ■ ... . • . • The Sanscrit and the Zend branches of the race were for a time united. After their separation, the former branch, on its way to occupy the valley of the Ganges, remained for a long period in the Holy Land and the Land of the Sacred Singers, two elevated and comparatively barren districts at the foot of the Himalayehs. Here the Vedas were composed. When the pressure of popula- tion upon subsistence forced them to seek a larger and more fertile home, they conquered or expelled the aboriginal peoples of the Punjaub and the Northwest Provinces, establishing in the latter in course of time that fully developed caste system, which we erroneously ascribed to all India. The far more fertile plains of Bengal were left to the aborigines, whom they drove out of the higher plateau on which Delhi and all the ancient cities of the Sanscrit race have their sites. Brahmans who we,nt down to Bengal at the suit of native princes, were regarded as degraded, and lost the right of intermarriage. Not until well on in the Christian Middle Ages was the Hindoo element in Bengal strong enough to set up its own social and religious system even in a very modified form, and when the Mohammedans conquered Bengal they found a great work still to be done in bringing the soil under culture by drainage and embankments. The connection between the density of uumbers and man's power over nature in Bengal is seen in the fact that after the famine of 1770 had all but decimated the people, whole districts relapsed into jungle, and the villages had a hard fioht to hold their own agaiust the forest and its wild beasts. A British regiment marched 120 miles in 1780 through a dense forest, where once every acre had been under cultivation, and the post route in 1789 took a circuit of 50 miles to connect two towns a few miles from each other. Even in our own times the Santals of the hill country continue to settle in Bengal in great numbers, finding abundauce of good land there, and paying much less rent for it than in their own over-populated mountain districts. When the English began to build railroads in India no Bengali workmen were to be had, because after thousands of THE SANTALS. — THE PERSIANS. 103 years of continuous occupation every native that chose could have a farm of his own, and therefore did not choose to work for wages; but in the still earlier settled districts of the Santals and other hill-tribes, where the soil is thin and sandy, the con- tractors found it easy to hire laborers. The Santals seem to have been the race that the Aryans drove out of the North-west Provinces. Their traditions describe them as first " clothed by the Great Mountain," and as coming down into India from the higher valleys of the Bramapootra in the eastern Himalayas (as the Sanskrit race from the Western) when their primitive home became too strait for them. They have begun to people Bengal itself, leaving in the west meagre land that requires to be manured and irrigated, and yields only one crop a year — yet rents at nine shillings an acre — to settle on " excellent lands in the eastern districts, yielding two crops a year for the trouble of turning up the soil," and renting for seven or eight shillings. Of the adjacent island of Ceylon Gov. Ward writes : "There must once have been a large population on the west side of the island in the neigh- borhood of Manaar and Aripo; the causes which prompted the selection of this barren coast probably determined the choice of Anuradhapura as the seat of government; other causes equally obscure drove back this teeming population (leaving everywhere traces of its industry and skill) to the neighborhood of Pollinarna, where its second capital was founded; that like the first is now a wilderness; and nothing remains to bespeak its ancient magnificence save the long line of tanks that unite it with Tamblegam Bay and Trincomalee." § 106. The Persian race were associated with the Sanskrit until religious dissensions rent them asunder. They then re- traced their steps northward and occupied the sites of the ancient kingdoms of Bactria, Persia and Media. Persia is divided between a dry salty plain devoid of water, and an exten- sive mountainous region interrupted by patches of comparative fertility. But " the whole appearance of the country was dry, stony and sterile " (Rawlinson). " The livery of the land is constantly brown or gray; water is scanty; plains and mountains are equally destitute of wood " (Frazer's Khorasan). Herodotus describes it as " a scanty and rugged land." The most ancient cities indicate by their sites the course of settlement The ancient capital Pasargadae was built in an open space far in among these mountains; Persepolis, its successor, in a similar 10-4 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. space nearer the plain. Such was the territory selected by this brave and powerful people and made the subject of continual struggles with foreigners. The related tribe of the Medes were also highlanders, occupy- ing the plateau that skirts the valley of the Tigris on the east. Their country was divided between two districts, the one made up of lofty mountain ridges, the other an elevated plain mostly a flat sandy desert, incapable of sustaining more than a scanty and sparse population. The best region lies between the desert and the mountains, and cannot be called fertile, though it is fairly productive and would support a large settled population. § 107. North-west of Iran runs the range of the Caucasus, the gate of passage from Asia to Europe, the boundary between the sacred laud of Iran and the outland of Turan. Every people in passing seems to have left a fragment as a colony in this mountain range or the adjacent hill-spurs. Its valleys seem to have been coveted prizes. Chinese met Egyptian here ; a hundred varieties of Tartars were mingled ; the Iron or Ossetian people represented the Aryan race. In the market-place of Colchis a hundred and thirty languages were spoken and inter- preted. The part played by this mountain region in the history of commerce has been but imperfectly appreciated ; it was the market of exchange between East and West, the channel of the silk trade with China. It has an historical significance that the Argonauts seek in Colchis the golden fleece. As late as the six- teenth century the place had not lost its importance, and Queen Elizabeth sent an envoy thither to arrange a commercial treaty. Nor was the region without importance agriculturally ; many of its people, especially the Chinese settlement from Assam, were devoted purely to tillage and carried on extensive irrigations. Haxthausen's Tribes of the Caucasus. § 108. The Aryans who passed iuto Europe, divide naturally into two great currents, each consisting of several successive waves. The first current plays the chief part in ancient history; the second in modern. Of the southern or classic current, the first, and therefore the most western wave, is the Latin race that found a home in Italy. THE SETTLEMENT OF ITALY. 105 This term does not include " the flat country in the north between the Alps and the Apennines," "which does not belong geogra- phically, nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land of mountain and hill, the Italy of [ancient] his- tory. . . This mountain system nowhere rises abruptly into a precipitous chain, but spreading broadly over the land and enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes, presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of man." When we begin to hear of Italy we find its people perched among the Apennine mountains and their spurs — the Latin, the Umbrian, the Samnite and the Euganean hills, and "the highlands of Etruria." The most ancient, the Iapy- gian stock, is found in the far south where " the sea all but washes the bases of the mountains." "The southward advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central mountain ridges, can still be clearly traced ; indeed its last phases belong to purely historic times Less is known regarding the route which the Latin migration followed." We find them settled below the Tiber, first on " the narrow plateau between Alban lake and the Alban mount," the site of Alba Longa, " the primitive seat of the Latin stock and the mother-city of Rome, as well as of all the other Old Latin communities; here, too, on the slopes lay (he very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium, Alicia and Tus- culum. Here are found some of those primitive works of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization." This site, in " the isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium," was chosen because it " offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the freshest springs and the most secure posi- tion." Below them lay a volcanic soil of exceptional richness, which afterwards sustained an immense population in a territory no larger than Zurich ; yet it was worth their while to cut a tunnel through 6000 feet of lava rock to partially drain the lake, and thus secure additional soil on the mountain itself. It marks a more advanced stage in man's power over nature when a few of these tribes occupy the cluster of hills by the Tiber's bank, a site occupied by bushmen (Ramnes, Roma), on the 106 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. borders of Etruria and within sight of the Sabine hills. Yet if the surrounding region itself was fertile, the immediate site was by no means so. It was exposed to freshets, and the water was neither plenty nor good. " In antiquity itself an opinion was expressed that the first body of immigrant cultivators could scarce have spontaneously resorted in search of a suitable settle- ment to that unhealthy and unfruitful spot in a region other- wise so highly favored." But the other hills of Latium were already covered with towns, and the exceptional position of Rome as a stronghold on the banks of the Tiber and near the con- fluence of three nations, led to its rapid growth as a commercial city. Across the Tiber, and stretching northward to the Apen- nines, lies Etruria, the country of that mysterious kinless people the Rasenna, who in prehistoric times spread their wares over all Northern Europe. They came from the north, clinging to the spurs and slopes of the Apennines, fighting with the moun- tain tribes for every upland valley, and driving the Umbrians far- ther down the central chain. " The oldest and most important Etruscan towns lay far inland ; in fact we find not a single Etrus- can town immediately on the coast except Populonia, which we know for certain was not one of the old twelve cities." The ad- vance of population from the valleys and spurs of the Apennines to the plains and the seacoast, and the rise of such towns as Pisa, belong to a later period. The primitive seat of this stock is to be found in the Rhetian Alps, among the mountains of the Tyrol and the Grisons. The complete occupation of the rich 'plains drained by the Po and of Venetia belongs to a period well on in the Christian era, when the weight of influence and popu- lation was transferred across the Po to the cities of Lombardy. In the earliest period we find the Gauls gathered on the slopes below the Alps, and the Ligurians among the mountains that connect the Alps with the Apennines. So much for the part played by the mountains of Italy in her earliest history. As for the lowlands, the Greeks found the rich plains of Campania comparatively unoccupied. They had no difficulty in absorbing and Hellenizing its scanty Ausonian population and making the country a new Greece. THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. — GREECE. 107 The quotations and most of the facts are taken from Mommsen's History of Rome. These statements have all the more force because of Mommsen's being utterly at fault as to the rationale of the facts. He says : " The stream only overflows the heights when the lower grounds are already occupied; and only through the supposition that there were Latin stocks already settled on the coast are we able to explain why the Sabellians should have contented themselves with the rough mountain districts, from which they afterwards issued and intruded wherever it was possible, between the Latin tribes." It is uoteworthy that we know of no such " Latin stocks settled on the coast ;" their existence is an hypothesis. The islands about Italy have the same history in this respect. In Corsica and Sardinia the population is still scattered in mountain villages, although the lands that lie below them are capable of all the richest growths of the tropics. Sicily is still notable — as when the Greeks settled it — for " the extraordinary fertility of the soil, especially near the sea — its capacity for corn, wine, oil . . . its abundant fisheries near the coast." Yet the Sikuls and Sikaris who had occupied it for ages "seem to have been of rude pastoral habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in caverns hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the Balearic Islands and Sardinia " (Grote). § 109. European history begins in Greece, which " is among the most mountainous territories in Europe." Besides the leading ranges that form the skeleton of the land " there are so many ramifications and dispersed peaks — so vast a number of hills and crags of different magnitude and elevation, — that a comparatively small proportion of the surface is left for level ground. Not only few continuous plains, but even few con- tinuous valleys exist throughout all Greece. The largest spaces of level ground are seen in Thessaly, in yEtolia, in the western portions of the Peloponnesus, and in Boeotia ; but irregular mountains, valleys and frequent but isolated land-locked basins and declivities, which often occur but seldom last long, form the character of the country " (Grote). The strong northward currents of the Mediterranean have scooped away and washed out the valleys that lay between the mountain ranges, and made them arms of the sea, giving Greece a poor soil, but making it 108 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. on almost every side open to commerce. With a territory no larger than Portugal, it has a coast line as long as that of Spain and Portugal. As might be expected, Hellas furnishes no great wealth of sustenance. " The barley cake seems to have been more commonly eaten than the wheaten loaf, but one or the other, together with vegetables and fish (sometimes fresh, but more frequently salt), was the common food. ... By the Greeks generally flesh-meat seems to have been but little eaten, except at festivals and sacrifices. The Athenians, though their light, dry and comparatively poor soil produced excellent barley, nevertheless did not grow enough corn for their own consump- tion " (G-rote). But even within Greece the true law of settlement, the pass- age from poor to richer soils, is illustrated. When her history begins we find the principal branches of the Hellenic stock still a cluster of mountain tribes gathered around Thermopylae in the cluster of mountain ranges that branch out from (Eta. Here is formed the Amphictyonic League, in which the Dorians and the Ionians have but two votes out of twelve. Here was Delphi, the most ancient holy place within Hellas proper. Here the capital of the Minyi, the mountain fastness of Orchomenos, takes rank as the oldest royal city of the Hellenes. Only this branch of the race is strong and numerous enough to undertake the artificial drainage necessary to fit a part of Bceotia for occu- pation — -the Copaic plain, which is now again a malarious marsh. The other extremity of the plain was occupied by the Cadmean city of Thebes; the rich middle district lay idle until a band of Thessalian Greeks settled it and brought its wet, marshy soil under tillage. Larissa, the fortress of the Achaeans in Phthiotis, hung like a bird's nest to the rocks that overlooked the rich lowlands of the Spercheus. The Ionians of the rocky triangle of Attica prided themselves on being autochthones — on ranking all the others in priority of settlement. The Dorians — whom the Iliad never names — were crowded into the petty mountain district of Doris, until (passing by the rich valleys of Boeotia) they set out to conquer and occupy " the cluster of GREECE AND ITS ISLANDS. — GAUL. 109 mountains," " the mountain bulwark of Greece," called Pelopon- nesus. They found it occupied by Arcadians — most probably aboriginal Pelasgians — in the central mountain ranges, and by the Achaians ou the comparatively barren northern coast, where the mountains of Arcadia slope rapidly down to the sea. The steep, rocky promontory of the north-west was the site of the ancient kingdoms of Argos and Mycenae, the latter of which under Agamemnon enjoyed the leadership of all Greece in the traditions of the Trojan war. The sites of the first cities of the district are still marked by the vast Cyclopean remains upon the short, steep eastern slope, the halls of Tiryns and the royal palace of Agamemnon, whose huge stones keep their place by their own sheer weight. The older towns were first eclipsed and then destroyed by Argos, which changed its site from the hill fortress or " Larissa " chosen by the Pelasgians to one near the head of the Argolic gulf, on ground too marshy to be accessible at the earlier date. The Dorian conquerors spread around the border of the olive leaf, leaving the Arcadians in the centre un- harmed, and yielding the upland plain of Elis to their allies the jEtolians. Such a country could not contain such a people. Greek colonies were carried to every neighboring shore. The rocky islands of the iEgean, where the natural drainage is perfect, were first occupied, and played in early Greek history a part out of all proportion to their value and importance. The Greeks passed to the opposite shores of Asia, the rich countries whose beauties Herodotus so fondly vaunts, where the arable lands that lie around its four great rivers are nearly as accessible by sea as Greece itself. § 110. Of the northern wave of Aryans that came into Europe, the first was the Celtic, which under pressure of other comers, finally formed a habitat in the west. In Gaul Caesar found the most powerful tribes settled on the spurs of the Alpine rauges, where the great centres of popula- tion — Bibracte, Vienne and Novioduuum, — lay iu a regiou that is now far more sparsely occupied. Ou the border he eucouu- 110 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. tered a dangerous enemy in the Helvetians, who poured down from the mountains of Switzerland with a vast army. Farther north lay numerous tribes and cities along the rocky promon- tories of Brittany. Hardly a place that he names can be located in the richer portions of France. The antiquarian still finds his spoil in the high and poor lands, and there only. Brit- tany is especially full of the remains of prehistoric antiquity, such as the massive stone erections at Carnac. The places named in the early history of the Christian king- dom of France, under the Capetian kings, are to be found chiefly towards the heads of the streams or on some other upland site, where the soil furnished natural drainage and was there- fore accessible to the very imperfect agriculture of that period. Auvergue, Dijon and Limousin were places of note in Feudal France, and the exceptional prominence of Troyes as a commer- cial city is perpetuated in the standard called " troy weight." Both in France and Germany the monks of the Benedictine and other early orders received a free gift of many of the best sites in those kingdoms — places worthless in the opinion of the donors but (as the result showed) capable, under an efficient and combined effort to master nature, of being made very gardens in fertility. These were often heavily-wooded lands, malarious valleys, morasses and the like. § 111. In Spain the northern and north-western districts, a vast cluster of mountain ranges, play a part of especial promi- nence in early history. Here are the Basques or Escaldunais, the descendants of the Celtiberian aborigines. In Spain's best days the southern and fertile provinces were carefully cultivated. Under misrule they were the first to suffer, and great cities have gradually sunk to the level of villages and provincial towns, while the area of culture has greatly diminished. As it is. the northern or mountain provinces are actually the best tilled in the peninsula, and " the almost inaccessible mountains of the As- turias, Galicia and Catalonia," and the arid ravines of Guipus- coa, Biscay and Navarre, are well peopled, while every corner of Andalusia suffers for lack of workmen. Hence the growth of THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND. Ill the former io political importance and their persistent attempts to again control the policy of the whole nation. § 112. The theory that we are discussing was devised to ex- plain the coudition of Great Britain,. but no English antiqua- rian would have given such an account of the settlement of the country. When the Romans invaded England, it was at most about half as populous as at the date of the Norman conquest. " The woods must have been larger, the fens had not been par- tially reclaimed and made accessible by causeways ; some of the tribes were unacquainted with tillage ; the beech tree, which doubled our food for swine, had not been introduced ; half the roots, vegetables and fruits, which now supplement our corn- crops, had not passed the Channel, and the great roads were not yet made on which the plenty of a fortunate district could be transported to parts where the crops had failed. The stunted British cattle, whose remains we constantly disinter, are proof that even if tillage was known, a large portion of the population lived upon milk. The best peopled parts of England were pro- bably those which were most open and easy to cultivate ; the home counties, Norfolk and Suffolk, and the south-western coun- ties." A " mighty sum of toil has transformed the country throughout England. The fens and forests are a mere memory and a name; foreign trees grow in our hedge-rows; it is difficult to find a point within half a mile of which a road does not run ; the climate has been modified as woods have been felled and marshes drained ; our rivers are smaller than in the old days. Thanks to these labors, and to those marvellous changes in agri- cultural science, which may bear comparison with any triumphs of mechanics, England, left to her own resources, can now support four times the population that the country contained under Edward TIL, eight times our number at the period of the Norman conquest, and perhaps sixteen men for one whom Csesar found in the island." In this ami the following paragraphs quotations not otherwise credited, and much besides, are from Mr. C. H. Pearson's Historical Maps of England, with Explanatory Essays (2d edition, London, 1870). Mr. 112 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. Pearson tries to account for many of the facts by military and political reasons, having no knowledge of the true law of the occupation of the land. § 113. The Celtic tribes whom the Romans found in the island do not seem to have been either numerous or powerful, as the invading army that added the island to the Roman Empire numbered but 30,000 men. The home of the several tribes is in every case but one uncertain, but they seem to have been con- fined to the hills of the north and to the hill system of the south and west coasts, which opposes its cliffs to the currents from the Atlantic, and is divided from the rest of the island by the old Roman military road from London through Chester, that the Saxons called Watling Street. The monumental remains of the ante-Roman epoch indicate this. " The earliest grave mounds are mostly found in the mountainous districts of the land, — among the hills and fast- nesses ; the later [Roman and Saxon] overspreading hill, valley and plain alike. Thus in Cornwall, in Yorkshire, in Derbyshire and in Dorsetshire, in Wiltshire and many other districts, the earliest interments are or have been abundant; while the later ones, besides being mixed up with them in the districts named, are spread over every other county. In the counties just named Celtic remains more abound than those of any other period. In Dorsetshire, for instance, ' that county,' as the venerable Stukeley declares, 'for sight of barrows not to be equalled in the whole world,' the early mounds abound on the downs and the lofty Ridgeway, an immense range of hills of some forty miles in extent. — while those of a later period lie in other parts of the county. In Yorkshire again they abound chiefly in the wolds ; and in Cornwall on the highlands. The same again of Derbyshire, where they lie for the most part scattered over the wild mountainous region of the Peak, — a district occupying nearly one-half of the county, and containing within its limits many towns, villages and other places of extreme interest. In this it resembles Dorsetshire, for in the district occupied by the Ridgeway and the downs are very many CELTIC OCCUPATION OF ENQLAND. 113 highly interesting aud important places. It is true that here and there in Derbyshire, as in other counties, an early grave mound exists in the southern or lowland portion of the county. . . . There are districts where there is scarcely a hill even in that land [of hills] where a barrow does not exist or is not known to have existed." See Grave Mounds and their Contents, by Llellwyn Jewett. London, 1870. § 114. West of Watling Street lay (1) the ancient kingdom of Cornwall, which must have been densely peopled, "as we learn from the Roman lists of towns, the traces of ancient agriculture and the abundance of ancient remains. Here is the seat of the events now clothed in poetry in the Arthur-Sagas. The land is now mostly abandoned by the farmer to the fisherman and the miner. (2) Wales, whose mountains were fought for as a prize by the two great branches of the Celtic race. (3) The Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, which includes the Galwegian district of Scotlaud and the lake district of England. When the Roman occupation ceased, we find the Celts confined to this dis- trict and the south coast. Their literature "shows no acquaint- ance with the country east — let us say — of the second degree of longitude, beyond what a half-educated yeoman now might have of America. . . . Except perhaps in one case there is no authentic tradition of war with the Saxons or Angles in that region, or of British sovereignty there. The single exception is that of Kent." And yet the race is remarkably tenacious of traditions. It carried the Cornish Arthur-Sagas into Brittany ; the Irish Fintral-Sasras into Scotlaud. It knew little or nothing of the east, of the rich lands containing nearly all the wheat- fields of England, while the west is devoted to grazing. What tribes were fouud in it by the Romans were few and scattered. It was therefore open to Roman colonization, and a mixed multi- tude of Roman citizens aud continental peoples was transplanted thither. Seventy thousand Roman citizens are said to have been killed in the massacres by which Boadicea began her revolt. This was the region that fell so easily into the hands of the 8 114 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. German tribes, and after a few struggles became the site of Saxon kingdoms. As the Saxons pressed westward they en- countered a fiercer resistance, and repaid it by enslaving the conquered people. At Domesday the percentage of slaves in the north and east was but 3£ per ceut. ; in the five south- western counties 16 to 17 per cent. ; and the intermediate degrees of serfage hold the same proportion. The west was the land desired by Saxon as well as Celt ; its ranges of hills, that rise to mountains as they approach the sea, were the subject of protracted conflict, and it was the kingdom of Wessex that rose to such eminence that its king became Bretwalda or sovereign of England. " All the energy and enterprise of the Saxon name flowed naturally towards the west, and from the district of the West Saxons, at first only embracing Hampshire and a part of Wiltshire, went out all the conquering expeditions that wrested not only the south-west and the* valley of the Severn, but the more southern of the Midland counties from the Britons." § 115. The early isolation of the Saxon kingdoms as of the Celtic tribes was largely due to the great lines of forest that ran across the country, and to the fens that covered much of its surface. To the former (as greatly increasing the annual rain- fall) the existence of the latter was largely due. " The clouds which at present pass over our heads and break in another country or over the sea, were arrested by the simplest natural agencies ; and the water that now flows down in a thousand drains to the river, was preserved in marshes and lakes, which in turn sent back what they had received in dank exhalations." The deflections of the Roman roads show that these were among their chief difficulties of engineering, while they show readiness to run over a hill instead of round it. In Saxon times these obstacles isolated closely related tribes, and forced them to advance from east to west, and to occupy the poorer soils on the high moorlands and the mountain-sides, where traces of the most ancient occupants are visible. We find the Saxon Saint Cuthbert praised because in his missionary tours "he was wont THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND. 115 chiefly to go through those places and to preach iu those ham- lets which were high up on rugged mountains, frightful to others to visit, and whose people hy their poverty and ignorance hin- dered the approach of teachers. He went out from the monas- tery often a whole week, sometimes two or three, and often also for a whole month would not return home, but abode in the wild places" and gave them lessons in husbandry and in finding and saving water (Hughes's Alfred the Great, pp. 28-9). § 116. Throughout early English history the lands beyond the Humber are slightly or not at all connected with the southern shires. Of the midland shires, now the most fertile grain-lands iu the island, we hear next to nothing. " The map of Saxon-Eng- land is singularly bare for that midland district, and the few names that mark it are mostly of towns which Edward the Elder founded as a military frontier. Few, indeed, are the charters that record gifts of land in its rich pastures; scanty and late the names of monastic foundations that sprang up in it." " A great district popularly called the desert stretched from Durham through the West Riding [of Yorkshire] to the Peak [in Derbyshire ;] and to a period as late as the twelfth century, contained no town of importance. . . The site of Durham was occupied by a thick wood in the twelfth century. Down to a much later time, a lamp used to be hung from the old steeple of All Saints, York, to guide travellers across the forest of Galtres. The Domesday Survey tells us that in Derbyshire five ' hundreds ' out of six were heavily wooded ; and that in Lancashire a quar- ter of a million of acres was covered with a network of dense woods." With the Normans begins a new era for these mid- land shires. " Generally the north of England, Kent and Glou- cestershire, were the parts most thickly peopled under the Romans, while under the Saxons Wessex and the eastern coun- ties were on the whole the best governed and developed. . . From Derby, with its one borough, to Wiltshire, with at least eight and perhaps sixteen, or Suffolk with six, is a great ascent. But it points to different conditions of country." " With the Norman dynasty came new conditions of national life. Wiltshire 11G SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. and Somersetshire declined in relative importance. . . Under King John Lincolnshire alone contributed a fourth of the exports between Newcastle and the Land's End. The mid- land districts of England were now neither desolate nor mar- tial." Yet we still find districts now fertile named in mediaeval history as morasses that threatened the destruction of armies; and the rich grain-fields of South Lancashire were in the reign of Elizabeth a quagmire that daunted the antiquary Camden. Oliver Cromwell was one of a '.' company of adventurers " that undertook to drain the fen of Huntingdon and Cambridge shires by diking the channel of the Ouse. Northumberland during the Roman period was densely set- tled; Roman remains are numerous; Roman cities were fre- quent and of great size on its '' naturally sterile " soil. It afterwards sank into comparative unimportance. The eastern lowlands of Scotland were at first an outlying part of this king- dom ; the castle of Edinburgh is built on the site of a North- umbrian fortress designed to defend the northern frontier. § 117. The earliest history of the kingdom of Scotland goes back to the occupation of the Western Highlands by Scotch tribes from the north of Ireland and their subjugation of the Picts. But the prehistoric remains, such as the subterranean dwellings and villages on the upper reaches of the river Don in the slopes of the Highlands, go still farther back. " The coun- try is crowded with hill-forts, small and great; they may be counted by hundreds. They cousist of mounds of earth or stones, or both, running round the crests of hills." Every spur of the Cheviots is crowned with remnants of old fastnesses whose builders are unknown to us. As to the Irish occupation of the Highlands it has well been gaid that l£ one acquainted with the agricultural resources of the north of Ireland at the present day, might question the induce- ment of a people to leave that region for the sake of settling in Western Scotland. But it is observable of the Celts as of other indolent races, that the elements of value to them arc not the resources capable of development through industry and enter- SCOTLAND AND ITS ISLANDS. 117 prise, but those which offer the readiest supply of some of the necessaries of life. . . The geological character of the country would supply them with a limited quantity of alluvial soil for immediate cultivation. It was found on the deltas of the moun- tain streams, on the narrow straths around their margin, and occasionally in hollows containing alluvial deposits, which might have been the beds of ancient lakes. These patches of fruitful ground the first immigrants would find ready for use. Modern agriculture has indeed been able to add very little to their area, and has wisely determined that sheep-farming is the proper use of those tracts of mountains among which the alluvial patches are thinly scattered. It is a curious coincidence worth remem- bering, that those very lands in Northern Ireland which the an- cestors of the Scots Highlanders abandoned, were in later times sought and occupied by Scots Lowlanders as a promising field of industrial enterprise." See Burton's History of Scotland, Chapter V. (Edinburgh, 1873). As in English history, we find a Celtic kingdom (Strathclyde) occupying the western hills and Cumberland, while the more fertile Lothians lie open to the invader and yield to the Teutons with hardly a struggle. But even in the Lothians the richer soils — as along the Tweed — are of more recent occupation and were forests and swamps two centuries ago. § 118. The comparatively bare and now insignificant islands that lie around the coast were once prizes. The Romans seized the Orkneys and perhaps established a garrison there, and the remains of cyclopean works attest a still earlier occupation of the Islands. In the Ossianic traditions they formed a powerful kingdom. In the middle ages they were pledged to the King of Norway as security for a sum of money that would now more than purchase their fee simple. To the west lie the far more barren Hebrides, which, with the Isle of Man, Dublin and the south east of Ireland, once formed a powerful Danish king- dom. These islands, once " rich and powerful," we find after- wards " sinking into poverty," while the others have merely 118 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. "preserved a respected position in the British Empire, as main- taining a valuable and industrious population." The Duke of Argyle, President of the Cobden Club, in his book about Iona tells us the story of the settlement of that island and the adjacent highlands. " At a time," he says, "when artificial drainage was unknown, and in a rainy climate, the flats aud hollows, which are now generally the most valuable portions of the land, were occupied by swamps and moss. On the steep slopes alone, which offered natural drainage, was it possible to raise cereal crops. And this is one source of the error which strangers so often make in writing on the High- lands. They see the marks of the plough high up upon the mountains, where the land is now very wisely abandoned to the pasturage of sheep or cattle; and seeing this, they conclude that tillage has decreased, and they wail over the diminished industry of man. But when those high banks and braes were cultivated, the richer levels below were the haunts of the otter and the fishing-places of the heron. Those ancient plough- marks are the sure indications of a rude and ignorant hus- bandry. " In the eastern slopes of Iona, Columba and his companions found one tract of land which was as admirably fitted for the growth of corn, as the remainder of it was suited to the support of flocks and herds. On the north-eastern side of the island, between the rocky pasturage and the shore, there is a long natural declivity of arable soil, steep enough to be naturally dry, and protected by the hill from the western blast. " And so here Columba's tent was pitched and his Bible opened, and his banner raised for the conversion of the heathen." § 119. Ireland (as that best of judges Arthur Young says), taken acre for acre, is more fertile than England. Yet in her earlier history, when the whole population consisted of a few hundred thousands gathered into clans, its " pressure upon land and food " caused frequent famines, and led to large emigrations into what we regard as the poorest parts of the sister island. IRELAND AND BELGIUM. 119 Such was the exodus of Scots that established the Celtic king- dom of Dalaradia, and laid the foundation of Scottish nation- ality. Such also was the invasion and occupation of North Wales by the Gadhelic or Irish kingdom of Gwyuned, just about the time of the Saxon incursions on the east. The Scotch and English colonies in the north had a long struggle with the natural obstacles to settlement, among which want of drainage and consequently malaria and agues were the chief. Within the memory of people now living, large districts have been brought under culture, and the yield of the land im- mensely increased wherever the density of population was such as to make it both possible and worth while. The malarious type of disease — includiugthat offspring of the union of hunger and malaria, typhus fever — have comparatively disappeared. § 120. We pass to the habitat of the Teutonic race. Bel- gium is naturally divided into the Flemish and the Walloon provinces. In the former Flemish is spoken ; in the latter French, but both are of the Teutonic stock. The territory of the former, with the exception of a strip of alluvial soil along the seashore, is one of the most sterile that has ever been sub- jected to human agriculture, and yet one of the most productive, if not absolutely the most productive in the world. It owes this to the vast condensation of population on its surface, to the division of its soil into petty farms, to the vast outlay of capital on their cultivation, and to the high state of intelligence and consequently of agricultural skill. It is here that the vast population of Belgium is chiefly condensed ; here were situated the great medieval cities that once gave Belgium her industrial predominance. The eastern part of the region, the sterile Kempen, where even modern skill and science has repeatedly failed in extorting a remunerative crop from the soil, was in the Middle Ages covered with rich abbeys. It abounds in ruins that belong to a still earlier period, many of them uow covered by the growth of the peat soil. At the beginning of our era this great district seems to have been pretty fully settled, and the oldest traces of Belgian cities and castles are found here. 120 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. Both the alluvial lands reclaimed by dykes along the sea- coast, and the Walloon provinces on the south, are by nature in- comparably richer than Flanders. But both are of later occu- pation, are inferior in agriculture, and support a much scantier population. The rich Hesbayenne region, the finest in the coun- try, was mostly covered with forests down to the present century. The farms are large, the capital expended on an acre is far less, the yield of produce much smaller. The appearance of the country is much inferior to that of the northern provinces, which have the look of a carefully-cultivated garden. At the extreme south, we come upon the Ardennes region, which extends into France, — a series of mountains and valleys, now looked upon as comparatively worthless, but much sought after in earlier times because it possessed a limited quantity of alluvial soil in the hollows and along the streams. Here the Franks long paused before advancing to the low lands of France. Here in all probability the Niebelungenlied was composed by a Frankish minstrel. See La Economie Rurale de la Belgique par Emile de Laveleye (2d Edition, 1863). § 121. In Holland we have a living monument of the growth of man's power over nature with the growth of numbers. In Roman times the population was so poor that the empire ex- empted them from taxation ; the chief food was fish. The narrow and barren Hauptland was the chief province — a line of dry peat bogs between the Zuyder Zee and the ocean. The vast dykes which defend the land from the encroachments of the sea, as yet were not, and about the beginning of the ninth century, the whole province of North Friesland, stretching from the Zuyder Zee (then an inland lake) past Heligoland to the coast of Schleswick, was swallowed up by the ocean, leaving only a few sandy islands to mark its outline. As numbers grew the sea-liue was fixed and steadily maintained, the marshes were drained, woods cleared away, and even inland lakes emptied into the ocean. The area between the peat-bogs and sandy beaches of the Frisians and the dry upland wolds of the Saxons was THE SETTLEMENT OF GERMANY. 121 occupied, and Holland became one of the richest countries in Europe and still remains such. See Niebuhr'a Naehgelasaene Schriften, Hamburg, 1S12. § 121. Germany consists of three very different regions ; the first and more southern lies in the Alpine mountain system; the second extends down to the less elevated Hercynian mountain system ; the third consists of extensive plains between the moun- tains and the sea, part sand cast up by the ocean, part alluvium deposited by the rivers. The earliest history of Germany is the history of the states that occupy the upland region ; and the most marked transition is the transfer of population, political importance and even literary pre-eminence from the older states in the south to the younger states of the north — a change con- summated in the establishment of Berlin as the capital of the new German Empire. In the earliest times the Germans seem to have been settled exclusively in the mountains and the intermediate valleys. That these mountains contain no lateral valleys was a great obstacle to the advance of the Komans, who were also deterred by the vast forests that covered a large part of the country. On the slopes of the Hartz Mountains Hermann aud the Cherusker de- feated the army of Varus. In these times, when the upland populations were far less dense than at present, we find the Ger- mans forced by want and famine to seek an abode in other coun- tries. The passage of Batavian and Saxon tribes to the coast of the North Sea took place in historic times and seems to have been along the dry, sandy wolds that intersect the morasses of lower Westphalia — morasses that Niebuhr still found unre- claimed. Bremen was founded by Karl the Great, — a castle among the forests on the Elbe. The Frisians indeed spread along the coast and, with an expenditure of labor that was won- derful for that time they, by diking and draining, reclaimed many marshy and fertile districts. Such was the country of the Stedingers on the Weser below Bremen, where the staunch free- men were brought under feudal rule (a. d. 1235) only after a prolonged struggle with the pretended sovereigns of the country. 122 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. The plains that lie south of the Baltic were slightly if at all occupied by the Germans in the earlier ages. A country of lakes and woods, of marshy jungles, sandy wildernesses inhabit- ed by " numerous wild beasts and perhaps some shaggy Ger- mans of the Suevic type " as Pytheas of Marseilles saw it B. c. 327. So few were they that after the migration of nations that broke up the Roman Empire " those northern Baltic countries were left comparatively vacant, so that new immigrating popula- tions from the east, all of Sclavic origin, easily obtained foot- ing and supremacy there." They " were of the kind called Vandals or Wends ; they spread themselves as far west as Ham- burg and the ocean, — south also far over the Elbe in some quar- ters," finding no hindrance for the most part, nor likely to find any till they approached the slopes of the Hartz. A. D. 928 the German emperor Henry the Fowler began their conquest and established four great margravates to overlook their country, and after two centuries and a half of hard fighting the Germans were the masters. Without driving out the Wends — who in- deed clung mostly to the islands and the reaches of dry sandy beach — they found room for a vast body of Teutonic colonists, who began diking rivers, draining marshes, turning quagmire and moss into pasture and comland, and bringing the richest lands of the empire under cultivation. Hence the rise of Mecklenburg, Pommerania, Posen, Prussia and Brandenburg. § 123. The two Scandinavian peninsulas were comparatively populous countries at a very early period, so that the pressure of population upon land and food was considerable. Yet the people were but a fraction of their present numbers at a time when their poverty necessitated a law that all the sons except the eldest should seek a home and a living by piracy on the sea or by invading some other country. " The notion of Scandinavia as a cradle and workshop of nations (officina gentium) recurs perpetually for centuries onward in history. . . . Nothing authorizes us to conclude that the northern countries have ever been more populous than they are now; rather the contrary might safely be laid down. But it is not the less certain that Scandinavia contained, if not a great, yet a re- SWEDEN AND NEW ENGLAND. 123 dundant population, larger than the land was able to support " (Greijer). Hence the vast bodies — Goths, Normans, Lombards, Angles, Jutes, — that poured down upon other parts of Europe, founding new kingdoms or plundering all the coasts as far as Constantinople. In the early history of Sweden, the more northern and barren provinces exercised a decided preponder- ance, imposing their name and their language upon the whole peuinsula, just as the dialect first of Swabia and then of Thu- ringia became the literary dialect of German. Equally marked is the early preponderance of the narrow sandy peninsula of Jut- laud. " For 150 years Sweden was consigned to anarchy and wretchedness, degraded into an appendage to Denmark, a coun- try less extensive and [now] less powerful than itself. The clear- ing of the forest, the settlement of the land, the progress of the useful arts were effectually obstructed." § 124. In America, the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritan colonists fixed their homes on the barren shores of Massachu- setts Bay ; and even when they penetrated the county to found new commonwealths, they chose high and dry spots like New- port and New Haven. The richest soils under cultivation in New England were reclaimed within fifty years. Other lands, quite as rich, if not richer, lie unfilled, while old mountain settlements in Berkshire county and other districts are being emptied of their inhabitants and ancient farmhouses left untenanted. But much of the long-occupied lands have grown in fertility, as agri- cultural methods and appliances have been improved. " Our soil," says Emerson, " is capable of as great and increased pro- ductiveness as that which England has attained. Concord is now one of the oldest towns in the country, — far on now [1858] in its third century. The selectmen have once in five years per- ambulated its bounds, and yet in this year a very large quantity of land has been discovered and added to the agricultural land, and without a murmur of complaint from any neighbor. By drainage we have gone to the subsoil, and we have a Concord under Concord, a Middlesex under Middlesex, and a basement- story of Massachusetts more valuable than the superstructure. 124 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. Tiles are political economists. They are so many young Ameri- cans announcing a better era and a clay of fat things." Mr. Emerson sees the bearing of all this, for he adds: "There has been a nightmare brought up in England, under the indigestion of the late suppers of overgrown landlords and loomlords, that men bred too fast for the powers of the soil, — that men multiplied in a geometrical ratio, whilst corn only in an arithmetical. The theory is that the best land is taken up first. This is not so, as Henry Carey of Philadelphia has shown, for the poorest land is the first cultivated, and the last lands are the best lands. It needs science to cultivate the best lands in the best manner. Every day a new plant, a new food is found. Thus political economy is not mean, but liberal, and on the pattern of the sun and sky ; it is coin- cident with love and hope. It is true that population increases in the ratio of morality, and the crops will increase in like ratio." § 125. In New York the first lines of settlement ran along the dry and sandy hills from Manhattan Island and the High- lauds to the Mohawk valley. The settlements on the edge of that beautiful and fertile region are much older than those within it. Rich and fertile districts like Geneva have not a history of more than seventy years, while the more remote and less fertile lands along the Pennsylvania line were settled very early, their elevation and their consequent exemption from malaria being an especial recommendation. The New York farmer of our days finds that " knocking the bottom out of a swamp " is one of the most profitable things he can put his hand to, and his less-know- ing neighbors stare at the crops that follow. New Jersey was preferred by the first Quaker settlers to the ■west bank of the Delaware, because of the abundance of her ]i»ht, sandy soils, which were the more easily got at. Hundreds of their clearings, which have long been abandoned, may be found in these districts. The Swedes across the river followed suit. They built Christiana, Lewistown, and other towns of Delaware that have become decayed and insignificant places. § 126. Penn had the same preference for high land. His first choice for the site of Philadelphia was twelve miles farther north. The early maps of the province show us miles of small farms running from the city along the tops of the ridges, while the richer and lower lands on each side are marked as uncleared MIDDLE AND WESTERN STATES. 125 and uncultivated. Hence the origin of the Ridge Road. A large part of the banks of our rivers above the city, are still unsafe as building-sites, while below us lie undrained swamps that will yet be the farm-gardens of our city. Much of the best land in the interior of the state is still unoccupied, especially in the valley of the Susquehanna, while comparatively barren places on the slopes of the Alleghenies and its related ranges were settled at a very early date. The old roads of the state go twisting about as if in search of hills to clamber along — even in the limestone valleys, where there is no malaria — while the new ones run along the streams and through the valleys. The vast immigration, from the north of Ireland that went on during last century found homes in the Alleghenies and its spurs, which they entered through Pennsylvania and North Caro- lina, and then spread over the whole Apalachian system from what are now the Oil Regions to Huntsville in Northern Ala- bama. Their choice was not prompted by want of better lands, — for such lay unreclaimed on both sides of the mountains; — nor by indolence (as Mr. Burton charges upon the Irish settlers of the Scotch Highlands), for no race is more industrious ; — nor by any special safety of their position, as they had to bear for half a century the brunt of our Indian wars. They took the lands that lay most open to them, as did their brethren, who passed by Maine to settle the Granite state. § 127. The same course of settlement may be traced in every Western state. Everywhere the rich valley-lands are avoided as the seat of malaria. In Wisconsin the first settlement was made in the patch of highlands called the Blue Mound, and the lines of settlement ran out along the sandy hills as in the east. The richest and the most fertile spots on the prairies were in earlier times the sloughs or " wet prairies " — the terror of travel- lers, but now under combined and patient exertion " fair as the garden of the Lord." One such in Southern Illinois, occupied by Paisley weavers turned American farmers, recalls the most carefully tilled bits of the British Islands. This whole district, commonly known as Egypt, and spreading from the Mississippi 126 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. far east of the Wabash, is perhaps the richest in the whole North. Yet the Southern planters on their way to occupy Mis- souri, passed it by in disdain, and left it to " poor whites " of the South, who occupy such dry and sandy ridges as they find accessible, where the rudest agriculture suffices to supply their very primitive wants. The rich creek bottoms are inaccessible to its rude and scanty population, who have hardly any notion of their value and no capital sufficient to master them. A mau, whose lands if rightly tilled would feed a New England town, will live in a log-hut of two rooms, with a loom and spinning- wheel on the " stoop," and ride to a Hard Shell church, with a saddle of raw hide and stirrups of straw. Every family has its package of quinine, and ''the Egyptian shakes" are a proverb. If we ascend the various branches of the Mississippi, we find tillage approaching the river if the population is dense, receding from the river to the barer lands that furnish natural drainage if it be sparse. Descending the river we reach the vast levees that protect the richest plantations of the continent and testify to the growth of man's power to command the services of nature with the in- crease of numbers. East of this southern valley lie the South Atlantic States. In North Carolina the richest lands are still undrained, while labor is expended upon others that yield from three to five bushels of wheat to the acre. The Cotton States contain millious of acres still inaccessible to agriculture through lack of population, because a large outlay of intelligently di- rected labor would be required to occupy them. In Texas the first Spanish colony at Bexar and the first American colony at Austin, high up on the Colorado, were both settled by men, who passed by millions of acres of better land as inaccessible, to reach an exceptional elevation. § 123. Mexico mostly exemplifies the first stage of the pro- gress of settlement. In the rich lands along the Rio Grande, we find only the recent city of Matamoras; in the higher dis- trict, drained by its tributary the San Juan, Monterey is the centre of quite a populous district. Passing westward, we cross MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA. 127 the densely-settled Saltillo and Potosi, the former a series of sandy plains, — the latter a land without rivers, where the failure of the periodical rains occasions severe famines. In this high and dry central plateau the population' is chiefly concentrated, while the richer lands between that and the coast, where vege- tation is luxuriant and rivers abundant, lie still uncleared. The valley of Mexico was once an exception, but under Spanish mis- rule and exaction its forty cities disappeared and tillage has re- treated to the higher lands, which now supply its single city with food. So rich Honduras contrasts with barren but populous Yuca- tan, where water is a luxury; and the comparison might be ex- tended to the whole region of Central and South America. The rich valley of the Amazon, where vegetation grows with a luxu- riance that recalls the geological ages of the past, is still in- accessible to human agriculture through that very wealth, and is left to the monkeys and a few degraded tribes of Indians. Humboldt being struck with the beauty of a little vine that he found there — a pretty graceful bit of green a few inches in length, — marked its site by "blazing" a neighboring tree, as he intended to take it with him on his way back a few months later. When he returned, it had grown sixty feet into that tree; he left it there. § 129. Looking at the entire area of the earth's surface, we find (1) that no nation occupies a territory incapable of support- ing its actual or even its probable population. Norway conies nearest to forming an exception, but the Scandinavian peninsula is manifestly designed for the home of one nationality. Sweden raises more cereals than her people eat, and a very considerable area of her arable lands are still covered with dense forests. England is clearly no exception ; she is capable of producing on her soil four times as much food as her people use; but her agriculture lags far behind the general average of her skill in the invention of better methods and in the application of scien- tific principles. (2) The pressure of population upon subsistence and upon 128 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the land exists in sparsely-settled regions, and there only. It is a providential agency to stir men to greater exertions and wiser methods, and these exertions are always abundantly rewarded. (3) The richest areas of the earth's surface lie still unoccu- pied, and in many cases the richest districts, within national boundaries whose population is dense enough to take possession of them, are untilled and uudrained. (4) The area of culture may be indefinitely extended in both directions. It is now — we may say — the belt of land that lies between districts that are too poor and districts that are too rich to repay culture. The former as well as the latter may be mas- tered, as the sciences advauce in their mastery of the secrets of nature ; chalk downs and sandy deserts may be transformed into fair garden fields and orchards at the touch of man, as great natural forces and resources are brought into his service. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. (5) The value of the land of a country is chiefly — or in truth entirely — due to the labor that has been wisely expended upon it, and is proportional to that. The price of a Belgian farm, for instance, is twelve times as great as that of the same amount of waste land in the same country, and the latter brings even that nominal price only because (1) it furnishes a field for labor to produce utilities possible but as yet non-existent; (2) because the labor already expended on other adjacent pieces of land, and the growth of numbers and of the power of association, have made it possible to bring this one under tillage. Were the same piece of land to be transferred to the Andes, its market value would be nil. In fine, if in any case a people, with the strength of numbers and the strength of skill, should come to such a state that great wealth should be found side by side with deep poverty and its accompaniments, misery and sordid vice, the cause of such a state of things, is not to be sought in " the pressure of popula- tion upon land and food," but in bad national thrift. Somebody is to blame I THE NATIONAL ECONOMY OF LABOR. 129 CHAPTER SEVENTH. The National Economy op Labor. § 130. The industrial age, in which national economy has become a science, is also the democratic age, in which the govern- ing class are no longer regarded as composing the state or possess- ing an exclusive right to direct its policy to the promotion of their own interests. It is no longer possible, therefore, to call a nation wealthy and prosperous because large masses of capital are in the hands of a few men, if the great body of the people are ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed, or struggling on the brink of pauperism. The prosperity of "the most numerous class, that is, the poorest," is coming ever more to the front as the great problem of modern statesmanship. In an industrial age this problem resolves itself into the question of the rewards of labor. Modern governments can no longer undertake to support great numbers of people in idleness on the produce of the industry of other classes, as was done in the Greek republics and the Roman Empire. Those others, with the advance of political equality, claim equal rights and care. The aim of national economy is therefore to secure " a fair day's wages for a fair day's work," to all who are willing and able to work. In modern industry, the operations are so complex in method and so extensive in scale that unassisted labor would be unable to undertake them. Those who by their savings, or by the inheritance of other men's savings, have come into the pos- session of a large amount of the results of past labor, natur- ally and necessarily take the work of organizing industry and directing its forces. These men are capitalists, and their ac- cumulations are called capital. § 131. Of the net product of the joint application of labor and capital, what proportion should fall to labor and what to 9 130 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. capital ? Is there a natural and necessary rate of distribution, or does it vary arbitrarily according to the contract made ? The English economists generally accept the former alterna- tive ; they believe that there is a natural and necessary rate of wages ; that no efforts of the workman can permanently raise wages above that rate, and no efforts of the capitalist can per- manently depress them below it. For, say they, if wages be raised above the natural rate, the rate of increase in the population will be accelerated, and after a time the number of workmen will be so great that they will underbid each other for work, and the rate will be depressed again. If it be depressed below the natural rate by this or any other cause, then the rate of increase of the population will be diminished, and the labor market will be scantily supplied, so that wages must rise. Between the two extremes of this oscillation, there is a middle point of stability, — the natural rate of wages, that which will neither accelerate the growth of population till it surpasses the growth of capital, nor the reverse. This natural rate is the amount necessary to sup- ply to the unmarried workman the real necessaries of life, and whatever other things his class regard as such. The theory is commonly stated in another form, which also accepts a natural rate of wages, and one which is reached far more swiftly. All the money in a country that is available for the payment of labor is taken in the mass and called the wage fund. This fund is divided pretty equally among all the laborers in the country. The apparent inequalities in the dis- tribution are not real ; higher wages can always be traced to payment for undergoing danger or doing work that is disagree- able or discreditable, or work that involves special capacity or preparation. The amount of the fund to be divided depends upon the amount of capital in circulation. The rate of division depends upon the number of claimants. The workinguien have no power to increase the amount of the fund, but they can limit the number of those among whom it is divided, and on their doing so depeuds their welfare as a class. This theory in both its shapes grows out of the supposed THE HADES OF LABOR. 131 11 law of population," and must stand or fall with that. Like that, its motive is to show that the misery of the working classes is not to be attributed to any mismanagement on the part of the ruling class, but to the operation of natural and unavoidable laws. Its verdict is, " Nobody to blame," when the growth of a nation in wealth and numbers, and the distribution of wealth among those numbers, do not go on together. The first form of the theory is fully refuted by the ascer- tained fact that the poorest classes are the most thriftless, and the least likely to take thought for the future. The second, by the proofs that workingmen actually have, by combination, raised the rate of wages, without any such increase of circula- ting capital, or the resulting " wage fund," as is here demanded as a preliminary to that increase. The facts arc abundantly given by Mr. W. T. Thornton (On Labor, 1870), and by Mr. Cliffe Leslie (Systems of Land Tenure, 1S68). § 132. If the English theory as to the relations of labor and capital is true, then there is no hope for the essential improve- ment of the workingman's condition so long as the existing order of society holds its ground. What labor gains on one side it for ever loses on the other, and as often as it rolls the Sisyphean rock — the rate of wages — up the hill, it rolls down again to crush and destroy the workman. All the old pictures of foiled effort, with which the Greeks peopled their Hades, become but pictures of the efforts of the working classes to raise their con- dition above the wretched standard called " natural wages." Those who are striving to rouse the working classes to over- throw the frame-work of modern society and its economic basis, the right of property, are not slow to discern this. Thus the leader of the German socialists, Lasalle, based his fierce denun- ciations of modern civilization and its proprietary rights upon the recognised doctrines of the English school, claiming to be "equipped with all the knowledge of the age" on this subject. His chief opponent, his successful rival in the love and allegiance of the working classes of Germany, is Schulze-Delitzsch, who has devoted his life to showing the working classes that they 132 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. can improve their condition simply by removing unnatural obstacles to improvement, by availing themselves of the great drift of society towards an equality of condition, and without for an instant lifting their hands against the accumulations and the vested rights of the rich. In doing so, he ranged himself on the side of the German- American school of economists founded by List and represented by H. C. Carey, telling Herr Lasallc that if he had taken the pains to go over the whole field he would have found better teachers and better principles than those of Malthus and Ricardo. " If any one object," he says, "that the economical principles of the writer are devoid of authority, it will suffice to answer that these princi- ples have been established by the work of one of the most philosophic minds of our epoch, the celebrated American economist, Carey. That work is entitled Principles of Social Science. It was finished in ISfiO ; some years later gave us a German translation of it (Miinehen, 1863-4, published by E. A. Fleischmann). We commend it to the public as one of the most eminent publications that have appeared in this branch of human knowledge. " All that is false and damnable in the economic theories of the modern English school, especially those of Ricardo and Malthus, — theories which furnish the starting-point for the thesis defended by Lasalle, — there meets with a triumphant refutation ; and it is truly astonishing that our opponent, ' armed with all the knowledge of the age,' had not even known of the aforementioned labors of the eminent man, who, during the last twenty years, has discovered a great number of truths that are now ac- cepted as axioms in political economy." John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, shows us that the gloomy out- look for the future of the majority of mankind, presented to his mind when he studied the world through the spectacles made for his eyes by Malthus and Ricardo, led him to at least approximate to the theory of the St. Simonian socialists. They proposed to abolish all rights of in- heritance ; to reconstruct the government out of the ablest men in each of the professions ; to make the state everybody's heir, and to redis- tribute all property as fast as its present possessors died. In Mr. Mill's Principles fii, xiii, $ 2) he speaks of "the industrial system pre- vailing in this country and regarded by many writers as the ne plus ultra of civilization," as "irrevocably condemned," unless it prove itself com- petent to solve the population question by bringing sufficient motives to self restraint to bear upon the classes " dependent on the wages of hired labor." § 133. The English theory that the power of competition THE LAW OF PARSIMONY. 133 fixed all the status of industries, and that all things found their level, led to the inference — adduced above — that the wages of labor are essentially the same in all departments, and that any difference in payment could be traced to an implied payment for facing some danger, or something disagreeable or disgraceful in the work. Closer investigation shows us that custom is as large an element as competition in determining the rate of wages, although the latter is gaining upon the former steadily in modern society. The great change going on all around us is from cus- tomary status, that fixes the rate and price of all things by tradition, to one in which they are fixed by free contract. But the change is anything but complete in any department of life, and as to wages it is simply impossible to say why some classes of work are paid so high and others so low. To give a reason for the difference would be to trace to reason what had not its origin in reason ; or if it ever had, it was in a past so distant that we cannot reconstruct it. § 134. Capitalists are, of course, more ready than working- men to listen to the English arguments in favor of the necessity and naturalness of a low rate of wages. But the effort to keep the workingman down to such a rate ignores the very nature of the instrument that is to be used. It is to adopt as a maxim of economy the fundamental falsehood of slavery, — that a man may be treated as a thing. The law of parsimony is a wise one in dealing with the material, but not with the workman. Every needless pound of iron on the locomotive, every needless pound of coal in the fire-place, is so much waste of the moving force. Every unnecessary ton of iron on the girders of the bridge merely adds to the weight to be sustained, without proportionally increasing the strength that sustains it. So in regard to cost of material ; what is needless is waste. But when we come to apply the law of parsimony to the com- plex being called man, we discover by experience that there are very decided limits to its application. Here at least " there is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty." The lowest 134 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. wages that you can get a man to live on, will not get the best work out of him. Put a whole people on such wages, and keep them there — if you can — for two or three generations, and you will have crushed the energy, the spirit, the heart out of that people, and made them a very inferior and unprofitable class of workmen. You will have taken away from the great mass of them the means of advancing in intelligence ; their physical character will have deteriorated greatly ; their social morality — their good-will, and public spirit, and ready helpfulness, and brotherly feeling — will have been pretty thoroughly eliminated. Factories will be full of the inflammable human stuff, to which demagogues furnish the spark. The stability of the social edifice, aud consequently the security of property, will be endangered. Instead of cheerful, pains-taking, thrifty work, eye-service alone will be rendered, and profits will suffer from waste more than they would from high wages. On the other hand, wages that put heart and hope into a man, that make him feel that his personal efforts and his best work are needed to keep them at present rates, that offer him the prospect of becoming his own master by frugality, that enable him to educate his children to fill a place like his own intelli- gently, or perhaps to rise to a higher place, — such wages are in the long ruu the best of investments. It cannot be said that cap- italists any more than workmen, have always been alive to this substantial harmony of their interests. When the higher rate of wages has been adopted, it has too commonly been after a conflict between the two classes, through which much of its good effect upon the workmen has been destroyed. § 135. Men are morally responsible for the terms on which they purchase labor. When the workman makes his contract singly, the capitalist has a power to dictate its terms, which does not exist in ordinary transactions. In case of disagreement as to terms, it remains to be seen which of the two can hold out longest. Labor cannot: the laborer would starve. Capital can live on its accumulations. If I refuse to buy the baker's loaf, because I think it too dear, he loses but little in waiting THE WASTE OF SLAVERY. 135 till noon for another customer. I have therefore no means of dictating to him. But " labor is the most perishable of com- modities." He who cannot sell his morning's labor before noon, can never sell it; it is gone. The producer of other commo- dities can at least stop producing, and lose only the interest, on his capital, when the prices are unsatisfactory. But he who has labor to sell cannot stop producing, cannot cease to offer his single commodity for such price as he can get. § 136. The history of labor shows the wisdom of generous dealing with the laborer. In the earliest ages, he was generally a slave; but it was found that slave labor was dear at any price. Homer says : — " The day That makes a man a slave, takes half his worth away." Pliny tells us Coli rura ah ergastulis pessi'nmm est, et quicquid agitur a desperantibus (It is the worst possible tillage that is carried ou by slaves, nor are they more fit for any other sort of work, because they are devoid of hope). A southern slave- holder told Frederick Law Olmstead : " In working niggers we must always calculate that they will not labor at all except to avoid punishment, and they will never do more than just enough to save themselves from being punished, and no amount of pun- ishment will prevent their working carelessly and indifferently." Why should it ? " Fear," says Bentham, " leads the laborer to hide his powers, rather than to show them ; to remain below, rather than to surpass himself. ... By displaying superior ca- pacity, the slave would only raise the measure of his ordinary duties ; by a work of supererogation he would only prepare punishment for himself. His ambition is the reverse of that of the freeman ; he seeks to descend in the scale of industry, rather than to ascend." And just the same must be the effects of a system in which the workman's wages are fixed by his necessities and not by his work. See Prof. Cairnes's The Slave Poicer (1862) ; Chapter II. " The Eco- nomic Basis of Slavery." 136 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. § 137. The history of European serfdom in the middle ages tells the same story. The great mass of the population of Europe was in a state of villeinage, which varied in its forms, but was commonly little short of slavery. They were worth so little as workmen that it took all but a small percentage of the population to raise food for the whole, and vast numbers were employed in herding swine and cattle. In the worst cases, which were very numerous, the villein had no right to the produce of his labor ; the landlord took the whole, and gave the serf what he pleased, — generally the refuse. Hence, as Gurth the swine- herd (in Ivanhoe) says, the cattle bore Saxon names (ox, pig, calf, sheep), while they lived and needed care, but Norman names (beef, pork, veal, mutton), when killed and turned to food. Afterwards these villeins began in great numbers to buy their time, and then their freedom, — a fact which shows at once the greater worth of free labor. Those feudal masters were too poor to give anything for nothing; they sold their slaves to the slaves themselves, because the latter could afford to pay more than any other purchasers ; and because the purchase-money earned in half freedom was the full price of the slave's work. What we see in our own century in Prussia went on in England : the emancipated serfs bought land of their lords, creating a new market for it. The Prussian masters complained of the Stein legislation (§ 90) as an invasion of vested rights, but that great statesman told them that a generous policy would benefit all parties. They now admit the fact; what their serfs gained they did not lose. Between 1829 and 1843 land rose 75 per cent, in Westphalia, while there has been an incalculable improvement in the condition of the peasantry — some of whom still remember the time when they were called sclaven. § 138. We begin to hear of free laborers in England in the fourteenth century, and from this time laws are passed on the one hand to protect them and increase their number, on the other to keep their wages down to a minimum rate. These laws tell us themselves that such short-sighted policy could not THE HISTORY OF LABOR. 137 reach its end. " The price of labor continually rose ; the price of food constantly fell " (Thorold Rogers). This must have been the consequence of a great increase in productive power of labor acting in harmony with capital. The logic of facts drove wages up, and every successive change was to the advantage of all classes. The workman rose in freedom, self-respect and effi- ciency. Between the Restoration and the Revolution the week's wages of a farm hand was four shillings. In 1680 an M. P. com- plained that the English mechanic was demanding a shilling a day, though he would still work for less. In the century end- ing 1830, the wages of a carpenter at Greenwich Hospital rose from 2s. 6d. to 5s. 8c?. a day. Bread, indeed, had risen equally, but all other necessaries had fallen. The wages of an English farm hand for various periods, if translated into wheat values at current rates, gives this result: 1680-1700, 54 pints; 1701- 1726, 64 pints ; 1727-51, 78 pints; 1752-64, 80 pints; 1770, 79 pints ; 1780, 82 pints ; 1824, 89 pints ; 1832, 90 pints. § 139. In France this matter has been very carefully investi- gated, and it appears that the rural population of France had half as much food as they needed in the time of Louis XIV. ; two-thirds uuder Louis XV. ; three-fourths under Louis XVI. ; while from the time of the Empire the laborer's budget begins to show a surplus instead of a deficit. D'Argenson writes in 1739 : " At the moment when I write, in the month of Febru- ary, in the midst of peace, — with appearances promising a harvest, if not abundant, at least passable, — men die around us like flies and are reduced by poverty to eat grass." A fern loaf was brought to the council table by the King's brother that his majesty might " see what his subjects lived upon." With the increase of wages, labor has risen to such efficiency that one fourth of the soil formerly devoted to grain is now set free for " industrial crops," and the food of a much larger population is raised upon the other three-fourths. At the same time a much larger proportion of the people is set free to engage in manu- factures of all kinds. 138 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. § 140. In the colony of New York in 1773, when cheap and fertile lands were plenty, and every mechanic could turn farmer if he pleased, day laborers were paid 45 cents a day ; ship carpenters, three times as much; house carpenters, $1.10; journeymen tailors, 56 cents. Adam Smith, who gives us these data, says that the London rate was lower than this, but that of the other colonies was not. Has the rate diminished since the country became more densely settled ? In 1850 our factories employed 731,137 men and 225,922 women, whose daily wages was respectively $.88 6-10 and $.49 2-10, for each person. In 1860 they employed 1,040,349 men and 270,900 women, at wages of $102 and $.59 respectively. In 1870 the number was 1,615,598 men and 323,770 women, and 114,628 young persons, a total of 2,053,996 workers, at an average of $1.18 per diem; a gain of 37 per cent, in ten years. § 141. What is true of different periods in the same country is equally true of different countries at the same date : — Badly paid labor is dearer as a rule than well paid. Two Englishmen will mow as much hay as six Russians, and although their wages are much higher, the hay costs the farmer only half as much. Arthur Young saw that the Essex laborer was cheaper at half a crown a day than the Tipperary laborer at 5 pence. This is still true of Irish labor outside Ulster and the Dublin Pale ; capi- talists pay less for it and yet find it at least no cheaper. The Edin- burgh Review denies that labor is cheaper on the Continent than in England in spite of the difference in wages, and Mr. J. S. Mill says " the cost of labor is frequently at its highest when wages are lowest." He says that labor is probably no dearer in the United States than in England. When the Revolution of 1848 banished the English navvies who were working on the French railroads, it was found that twice as many Frenchmen could not do the work. But when these had been put for a while on the beef diet of the English navvies, they came up to the English standard, and two could do almost as much as five had done. § 142. It is not only through the growth of the laborer in thrift and skill that his condition is bettered. All the accumula- THE LAW OF DISTRIBUTION. 139 tions of capital in other men's hands cooperate to make his work more efficient and to secure him a larger share of its re- wards. All the work that has been done already adds to the value of the work that he is now doing. Hence, in the course of natural development, the power of labor over the accumula- tions of the results of past labor, grows with the growth of those accumulations. Past work never brings market price, because its very existence makes present work more effective than it was. "The share assigned to the laborer almost always bears a much larger proportion to his labor than his employer's share bears to the labor which his capital represents" (W. T. Thorn- ton). The price of a thing being fixed by the cost of its repro- duction, every improvement in the methods of production lowers the price of what has been already produced. Suppose that any European kingdom or American state were brought into the market as a whole, it would bring the sum needed to bring it up to its present state of improvement in the present condition of labor. Such a sum would represent a mere fraction of the labor that actually was required in its past history to do the same work. Thus the worth of the fee simple of the real estate of England (including roads and mines) is reckoned — or was a few years ago — at £2,000,000,000. This represents much less than the labor of five million men for ten years at present English rates ; yet it would purchase the results of the labor of millions spread over the thousand years through which the English nation has lasted (§ 112), because it would now achieve as much as those millions did. Value is not determined, therefore, by the cost of production, but by the cost of reproduction, and with every improvement in method, and even with every ac- cumulation of results, the latter falls below the former. With the growth in the productive power of labor, an in- creased proportion of the increased product falls to the laborer. The improved instruments with which he works are themselves the products of more efficient labor; their value has fallen while his has risen. The capitalist cannot demand as much for the 140 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. use of them as before ; the workman's ability to become himself a capitalist has increased, and that ability is one of the points to be considered in their contract. The capitalist's share in- creases greatly in quantity, but is a less proportion of the whole amount. For with the diminution of nature's resistance, the whole dead stock employed in production declines in value while man's value rises, as he is by all these changes the master of larger utilities. The power of his labor to command the service of capital rises ; that of capital to command his labor declines ; the inequality of laborer and capitalist tends to disappear. The Italian economist Ferrara in the introduction to the twelfth volume of the Bibliote.ca dell' Economisti (Turin, 1852), says of this definition: "Carey [in 1837], and after him Eastiat [in 1850], have introduced a formula a posteriori, that I believe destined to be universally adopted; and it is greatly to be regretted that the latter should have limited him- self to occasional indications of it, instead of giving to it the import- ance so justly given by the former. In estimating the equilibrium between cost to one's self and the utility to others, a thousand circumstances may intervene ; and it is desirable to know if there be not among men a law, a principle of universal application. Supply and demand, rarity and abundance, etc., are all insufficient and liable to perpetual exceptions. Carey has remarked, and with great sagacity, that this law is the labor saved, the cost of reproduction — an idea that is, as I think, most felicitous. It appears to me that there cannot arise a case in which a man shall determine to make an exchange, in which this law will not be found to apply. I will not give a quantity of labor or pains, unless offered in ex- change for a utility equivalent, and I will not regard it as an equivalent, unless I see that it will come to me at less cost than would be necessary for its reproduction. I regard this formula as most felicitous, because, while on the one hand, it retains the idea of cost, which is constantly referred to by the mind, on the other it avoids the absurdity to which we are led by the theory, which pretends to see everywhere a value equivalent to the cost of production ; and finally it shows more perfectly the essential justice that governs all our exchanges." § 143. In regard to the quality and the rewards of labor, therefore, the same law of progress holds as in regard to food and land. As society advances in numbers and wealth, there is, unless bad economy prevent, a constant progress from worse to better. With the growth of wealth and of numbers, the power of combination increases, with great increase in the productive- ness of labor and the power of accumulation. GREAT AND PETTY INDUSTRY. 141 What are the chief forms of bad economy that prevent the laborer from profiting fully by the growth of society ? (1) When the steps in the progress of improvement are very sudden and great, a considerable amount of suffering is often inflicted ; but this is temporary and, to much greater extent than is commonly supposed, can be avoided. The introduction of labor-saviug machinery is an instance of what we mean ; a much more striking one was the transition during the last quarter of the eighteenth century from hand to steam power, and from the workshop to the factory system. The old school-books used to tell us that " it takes ten men to make a pin." But since that day an inventive mechanic has put together a machine that only needs to be fed with wire, well oiled and supplied with steam-power, to turn out complete pins, sort them, and even thrust them into the papers in the right numbers and in straight rows. What is to become of the ten pin-makers ? In any community in which industrial progress is constaut, there will be openings for their work. Even Mr. Mill, who believes that such inventions have not "lightened the toil of any human being," admits that "they have enabled a greater number to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment." Why is this the result? Because pins made by the new process are so much cheaper than before, that the demand for them is greatly enhanced, and when this demand has reached its natural height the whole number of persons employed in the manu- facture (including miners, machine-makers, engineers, &c.) is greater than it was before. As the money then needed to buy pins for a family is much less than it was, there is something left to buy other things, and to pay the men who produce them. Furthermore, machinery supersedes muscle but not brains, force but not intelligence. It drives men from low-priced, mechanical work, to employments that demand a higher capacity and command higher pay. Increasing the productiveness of labor, it increases also the workman's share of its results. And this share is not to be conceived as lying idle in the hands of those that earn it. It is again expended in employing other workmen by purchasing necessaries and comforts. 142 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. The change in methods of work (by its demand for adaptive- ness), and the quality of the new kind of work, both demand a large measure of intelligence in the workman. The amount of suffering and privation involved in such a change, is exactly proportional to the ignorance and general backwardness of the working classes. For this society is directly responsible. § 144. The transition from industry organized on a small scale to the larger industry of the factory system was begun in Lan- cashire in 1790 by Richard Arkwright, and has been one of the greatest of industrial revolutions. It grew naturally out of the invention of the steam-engine, aud the application of a power that moves a hundred looms or spinning jennies as easily as a score. It has introduced the precision and effectiveness of military dis- cipline into industry, divided labor more thoroughly, assigned to every workman his position, and reduced the loss of time and of material to a minimum. It thus rendered the labor of the workman far more productive than when he wrought in isolation, flinging the shuttle and tramping down the treadles by the force of his own muscles. It consequently increased the wages of his industry, while it diminished the value of all manufactured goods. The transition to the industry of the factory did not begin in the United States till the second decade of the present century, but since that date the wages of workmen have been doubled, and that of workwomen trebled, while the purchasing power of both has advanced at a still swifter rate. It may be questioned, however, whether the change was not more sweeping than it need have been if the working classes had been fully alive to their own interests, — and therefore more injurious, temporarily, to their interests. Large intelligence and large capital went together in effecting the change. It was assumed on all hands that the steam-engine can only be employed with economy as the motive power of a large estab- lishment, which experience shows to be untrue. Small em- ployers shared in the prejudice of their workmen and the uneducated generally against the new invention. Instead of accommodating themselves to the logic of facts, they resisted VARIED INDUSTRY RAISES WAGES. 143 the change, and were swept into the large factories by the force of circumstances, before they knew. The restoration of petty industry in a new form, with all the advantages of discipline, intelligence and machinery, is one of the most desirable of changes in the future. §145. (2) A French workman has well said that "when two workmen run after one master, wages fall ; they rise when two masters run after one workman." Had he said " two sorts of masters," it would have been even truer. " There is rarely competition for labor ivithin a trade in a particular place, unless there be competition for it from without" (Leslie). The more openings there are for the laborer to invest his capital (which ia his labor), and for the capitalist to invest his (which is the accu- mulation of past labor), the better each will be remunerated. Hence the connection between varied industry and fair wages, as well as fair profits. In any country (or even district) in which that is wanting, labor will be but poorly paid, and especially so, if agriculture is the only pursuit open to the great body of the people. Furthermore, that form of industry, as a rule, furnishes employments that are suited only to able-bodied men, and con- sequently, if there be not a fair admixture of manufactures, those who are not equal to hard, out-door work, are left dependent upon those who are. With the rise of a varied in- dustry, the number of workers rises to a maximum, that of idlers sinks to a minimum. A field sown with various sorts of grass seed yields a larger crop than if one kind only be used, because each finds special nourishment in some single element of the soil; and so is it with the employment of all the elements of in- dustrial power. In later English history, the manufactures have become con- centrated in London and in the midland and northern shires. Between 1770 and 1850, wages rose 66 per cent, in the twelve northern shires and 100 per cent, in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire : in eighteen southern agricultural shires, only 14 per cent., although food and cottage-hire were far dearer, [n the former two sorts of masters run after one work- 144 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. man ; in the latter the growth of population has no outlet save in farming ; local capital, of which labor is the most perishable form, has no other investment, and two workmen run after one master. In Ireland the principle is seen still more clearly. The south is now not over populated, but under populated ; whole districts are desolate and idle ; yet nowhere are wages above eight shillings a week, though food is nearly as dear as in England, to which everything is now carried. In the north, the eastern three counties have a very different rate of wages. " In that vast system of manufactures, which now stretches over several counties, it is around towns in which population has doubled in half a generation, that agricultural wages are high- est" (Leslie). The north, from the first days of the Ulster plantation, has had two sorts of employers running after every workman. § 146. (3) Laws made in the interest of the upper classes very greatly interfere with the well-being of the working classes, especially the farm-hands. Till very recently the right of the workingmen peaceably to combine to secure higher wages was denied and its exercise punished on both sides of the Atlantic, although no law forbade the employers to combine in depressing washes. Till very recently the treasurer of a Trade's Union in England might rob it with impunity; the law would not punish him. The Unions were outlawed, though their members since 1824 were not. Laws not made for any such purpose have often been perverted in their application to the great injury of the working classes. Thus under the old English poor law, the farmers in many dis- tricts by combined action beat down their workmen's wages to such a point, that the latter were forced to " come upon the parish," by asking relief as out-door paupers. The guardians were required by the law to find them work, which they did by supplementing their wages up to the point required for their subsistence. Thus able-bodied men, who fairly earned a living, were degraded to the rank of paupers in order that the whole community might be forced to contribute to the farmer's profits. LAWS AGAINST LABOR. 145 " He was virtually able to put his hand into the pockets of the neighboring rate-payers to make up the deficiency to those whom he employed" (Fawcett). The consequences were most disas- trous • the spirit of the people was broken, and pauperism increased so vastly that it absorbed in some parishes more than half the rent of the land. In some cases the land was actually offered to the paupers to till for themselves and refused ; they preferred to live on alms. Could there be a worse economy of the wealth-producing forces of a nation than the destruction of the thrift, the self-respect and the hopefulness of the common people ? § 147. The new poor law (1834) contained an especial provi- sion to put an end to the supplementing of wages out of the rates, which, with some other good regulations, at once reduced the number of paupers. But the injury inflicted on the rural work- man and the poorer classes in the greater cities, in the lowering of the tone of social morality and the spirit of independence, cannot be healed in a day. Vast numbers avail themselves of every pretence to ask this public alms. The tax that pauperism imposes upon the whole population of England is six shillings a head, and falls with especial severity upon the poorer districts, as every district must provide for its own. Those who are man- fully struggling to support themselves, are continually dragged down by the poor-rates into the number of those for whose benefit it is assessed. The army of paupers numbers 1871) one in twenty of the English people, one in twenty-three of the Scotch, only one in seventy-four of that Irish people, whose recklessness and thriftlessness always furnish excuses for the failures and blunders of a bad national economy. § 148. (4) The disproportionate outlay of the workingman's savings upon objects of luxury, instead of a wise saving, is justly alleged as a cause of misery to the class. Thus the ex- penditure upon spirituous liquors is a heavier tax upon the earnings of the laborer than all others put together. But the remedy and therefore the responsibility of this state of things is partly with society at large. It is in the improvement of the 10 146 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. homes of the poor, and in furnishing them with mental resources and proper places of resort. So long as the gin-shop and the bar- room are to the modern workman what the church was to the peasant of the Middle Ages, viz. : the only clean, warm and well-lighted room that he is welcome to visit in his hours of leisure, — so long will he go to them. "The main exciting cause of drunkenness is, I believe, bad air and bad lodging" (Chas. Kingsley). Alcohol is sought as the only accessible relief from the physical prostration and mental depression that bad habits of living produce. Drunkenness was once universal in the highest classes of society; "drunk as a lord" was an English proverb. It has decreased, no doubt with the growth of habits of personal cleanliness, and with a larger intelligence as to the conditions on which good health may be enjoyed. In some parts of Sweden they have effected a thorough reform of the tavern, without attempting to abolish it. The right to sell liquor in a district is put up at auction by the government, and bought in by an association of the friends of temperance. They open the number of houses that the law prescribes and at the legal hours only. They sell other drinks and food as well as pure liquors, and allow of no solicita- tion to purchase the latter. No person who has had "enough" can get any more. The association furnish pleasant rooms to which the work- ingman can invite his family, and provide books and periodicals. The proceeds, after paying all expenses, go to local charities. The diffusion of education will both directly and indirectly work to the same end. When this has multiplied the number and elevated the character of his enjoyments, the workman will no longer seek happiness in sordid physical gratifications. Per- haps he will then come to learn — as no class has yet learned — the vast importance of the way in which a people dis- poses of the small surplus left it, after the necessaries of life have been provided. Everything that impoverishes mind and purse tends to increase the outlay upon articles of false luxury which are rather hurtful than helpful. § 149. (5) Grave injuries have been inflicted on the laboring classes by the conflict between labor and capital. In the absence of any knowledge of the essential harmony of their iuterests, trades' unions and their strikes. 147 or at best from the notion that the interests of the workmen were consulted by keeping down wages to the natural level, English employers, with the approval and support of English economists, have striven to get their work done at a minimum rate of wages. The workmen, finding individual resistance use- less, organized for combined effort, and fixed rates of wages for their respective trades. Their right to associate and to refuse to work for less than this seems plain enough, but the governing classes denied the right, and treated these Unions as unlawful conspiracies. Being thus put out of the pale of the law, the Unions unhappily, but not unnaturally, fell into lawless methods of securing their ends. They had the right to use all persuasive methods to induce those who did not belong to the Union and comply with its rules, to become members, and failing in that to refuse to work in the same shop with them. But they went beyond all lawful limits to force outsiders into membership, and to force them from work during " strikes," as they called the temporary suspension of work intended to force masters to raise wages. "Ratteners," as these outsiders were called, had their tools destroyed, their persons assaulted, their houses attacked, sometimes by explosive substances ; and in a number of cases their lives were taken. It is a question whether the Trades' Unions have accomplished the ends of their organization. The figures presented by Mr. Thornton in his work on Labor seem to show conclusively that they have ; that the hours of labor have been reduced, and that rates of wages that would never have been attained without com- bined action, have been thus secured, and that the end of the process is not reached. This indeed is contrary to the teachings of English economists that* there is a limited wage fund subject to the demands of labor, and that the average share of each workman can only be increased by reducing the number of claimants or increasing the fund. " Workmen are solemnly ad- jured, in the name of political economy, not to try to get their wages raised, because success in the attempt must be followed by a fall of profits, and bring wages down again. They are en- 148 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. treated not to better themselves, because any temporary better- ing must be followed by a reaction that will leave them as ill off as before." " To go on reasserting that unionism does not raise wages, and that to all appearances permanently, would now-a- days be running too completely counter to every-day experience. To assert that it cannot raise them, is the utmost extent to which any but the hardiest theorists still venture to go" (Thornton). True it is that strikes have frequently, perhaps in a majority of cases, ended with a victory for the masters; but the very rise in rate thus successfully refused has been almost always conceded afterwards to prevent a renewal of the strike ; and the gain thus made, when the aggregate of increase is com- puted, has been such as to cast into the shade all the sacrifices and losses incurred during the strike. § 150. Trades' Unions' strikes need not succeed if the masters would unite as closely and cooperate as heartily as the men. As a rule tbe employers are taken in detail. The strike for an advance is made in a few establishments, and those that it throws out of work are supported by the members of the Union at work elsewhere. Succeeding in these establishments, they then make the same demands in other quarters, and with the same result. Strikes have utterly failed in a few cases, where the masters throughout a whole trade have at once discharged all members of the Union, thus retaliating by what is called a " lock-out." But as a rule the employers of labor have not the means of effecting close association, that their workmen possess. Busi- ness makes them rivals ; they are often blindly exulting in the embarrassment of a brother capitalist, when they might well read in it a prophecy of what is coming on themselves. Nor have they any of the vigorous class feeling and opinion, which enables the workingmen to compel unwilling associates to fall into line. § 151. These Unions, originating in England about half a century ago (at first merely as Benefit Societies, which most of them still are), have spread into France and Germany, and the United States. They were brought across the ocean by English THE KESTOKATION OF HARMONY. 149 and Welsh operatives, attracted to our shores by the superior advantages possessed by our working classes. They are still an exotic on our soil ; their strikes are generally in the hands of persons of foreign birth ; they have never attained the complete- ness of organization and the effective management that character- ize those of England. This is due to the fact that there is really no such need of them in a country where every man can leave the workshop and become a farmer if he will; where the supply of skilled workmen generally falls far below the demand; where the utmost freedom of association co-exists with the habit of spontaneous action ; where wages are steadily and materially advancing; where public sentiment gives no support to the doc- trine that low wages are best; and where social and political prestige is rather on the side of numbers, than on that of wealth and the capitalists. They have unquestionably checked the growth of some of our industries by limiting too much the number of persons who may be admitted as apprentices, a rule that does far more mischief in a rapidly expanding country than in one that is nearer the limit of its industrial capacities. But after all, it must be borne in mind that united action is in many cases the best and most effective means for labor to secure fair terms in dealing with capital; and that there is in the Trades Union itself, apart from the outrages sometimes perpetrated in its name, nothing to call for reprobation. § 152. Labor and capital in conflict are in an unnatural state ; harmony is their true relation. For reasons already given, capital finds its account in the cheerful service of labor, not in its discontent. To labor, capital is a benefactor in the highest sense ; were the whole class of capitalists with all their accu- mulations to be annihilated, labor would be reduced to indigence and a struggle for existence more severe than can easily be con- ceived. The capitalist is the captain of industry, who takes the unorganized mob of men, drills it into a disciplined army, supplies them with weapons, ammunition and a commissariat, and leads them to industrial conquests. He is able to do so be- cause he has accumulated instead of merely consuming; his 150 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. right to his million rests on exactly the same ground as the workman's right to his week's earnings. By what method to restore a lasting harmony between the two, is a great question of the day. The first and simplest method is by arbitration. Where it is possible to obtain referees, in whose impartiality and intelligence both parties have confi- dence, and where both are ready to submit their case, disputes are easily settled and harmony restored. The ordinary courts of justice are not available for the purpose, because they cannot adjudicate the terms of contracts not yet made., and because the judges have no special acquaintance with the matters at issue. The establishment of tribunals of arbitration chosen from both masters and men, with the sanction of government, has been successfully tried in England, and these have put an end to several recent strikes and lock-outs. Something like these, though more official in their character, were the Conseils de Prudhommes of mediaeval France, which were revived by Na- poleon I. in 1806 ; but the latter are rather government courts of selected experts to decide legal issues. § 153. A second solution is offered by the system of coopera- tion, whose advocates would abolish the conflict between capitalist and laborer, by uniting the two functions in the same persons. They would have workingmen unite their savings to establish a workshop of their own, to be managed by foremen of their own selection under rules adopted by the whole body. Instances of this industrial method are to be found very early in our own country. The Greek merchant marine is based on the same principle, and it has secured, through the zeal and energy of its sailors, nearly the monopoly of the carrying trade in the Mediterranean. But the first proclamation of the method as a means to revolutionize industry and commerce was made by the socialist Robert Owen. His design was to set up coopera- tive stores rather than workshops ; to abolish the profits of middlemen rather than to get rid of the wages system. About 182-1-30 many societies were formed on this basis to make " every man his own shopkeeper." The most successful was the CO-OPERATION. — INDUSTRY. 151 " Rochdale Equitable Pioneers," organized in 1844. The politi- cal troubles of 1348-50 called attention to this method and to successful applications of it to industry in France. The Christian socialist party (F. D. Maurice, Chas. Kingsley, Thos. Hughes, J. M. Ludlow, &c.) urged its general adoption as a remedy for the deadly competition of the wages system. Every man was to be his own employer as well as his own shopkeeper. In spite of many failures, cooperation has an honorable record of suc- cesses to show in France, England, Germany, Spain and the United States. If considered as intended to supersede the wages system en- tirely, cooperation is open to serious theoretical and practical objections. In the light of the true law of social progress (§ 30), it will be seen to be a decline in industrial organization, when duties and functions that have been distributed among several persons are united in the same person. It would be a loss on all sides, were the captain of industry to cease to exist, and were his functions to be vested in the whole body of work- men. The singleness of purpose, the clearness of outlook, and the energy that large industrial operations demand, could never be brought into play by an association of workmen, or by dele- gates chosen from their ranks and subject to their control. As a rule, the possession of capital is itself the gauge of business capacity, and of the power to organize and administer an estab- lishment. To exclude those who possess these from their present position, would be to deprive industry of its natural and trusted leaders. Now if cooperation were to become uni- versal they would become mere money-lenders, or else their capital would be entirely withdrawn from the sphere of produc- tion, — a loss of the results of past labor that would be eminently deporable. In practice it has been found difficult to secure the right sort of men to take the place at the head of cooperative establishments. Men of the necessary cpualifications are generally able to com- mand their own price elsewhere, and are too well satisfied with their positions to give them up to begin a mere experiment here. 152 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. And if they did, the estimate put upon their services by their new associates is commonly much below their deserts, so that they would soon be glad to go back to their old places. In the absence of first-class men, it is commonly not the second class that are chosen, but rather men of an inferior grade but more showy qualities. § 154. Less open to objection as a solution of the question is the plan of industrial partnerships. In this, the proprietor of an establishment agrees to pay his workmen the current rate of wages, and also to distribute among them at the end of the year all or part of the net profit above a certain percentage, say 15 or 20 per cent. This method identifies the interests of labor and capital without confounding their functions. The men are stimulated to do their utmost, — to avoid all waste as tending to diminish profits, and all careless work as injuring their market, — and to keep each other up to the mark by the force of public opinion. This plan also is no novelty in our own country. Thus in Albert Gallatin's Glass Factory (established in 1794 at New Geneva, Pa., being the first west of the Alleghenies), every workman had a direct interest in the profits, besides regular wages. The whale fishery and the China trade were managed on the same principle. It was first urged upon the attention of Europe by Charles Babbage in his Economy of Manufactures (1829). A Parisian house-painter, after making trial of the wages system in 1842, took his workmen into this limited sort of partnership, with moral and financial results that attracted very great attention, and led to its imitation by a considerable-number of establishments in France and not a few in England. It has been found that the plan restores thorough good feeling between masters and men, where the worst irritation has existed for years ; that it makes the workmen eager to adopt improved methods, that they would previously have resisted to the utmost; that it diminishes the amount of drunkenness and thriftlessness, and reduces to a minimum the number of holidays spent in dissipation ; that it creates a vigorous public opinion against eye- INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIPS. — CREDIT BANKS. 153 service and waste, and leads men to pride themselve upon giving good work for their wages. In some cases the amount of profits reserved to themselves by the firm, was fixed at a higher percen- tage than they had ever earned ; and yet at the end of the year they had a surplus to divide with their workmen. The plan has been adopted in a good number of American establishments, but it may fairly be hoped that it will be ex- tended to many more, as it seems to be the least objectionable and the most effective of all the new solutions of the labor ques- tion. Of course circumstances will demand manifold modifica- tions of the principle. The number of laborers employed in proportion to the capital invested, must determine what is the proportion of the surplus that will fall to capital and labor respectively. In case the business has suffered losses, it might perhaps be both wise and just to recoup those losses out of the profits of following years. All these details are open to equitable adjustment at the start, or to arbitration as cases of disagreement arise ; "but the great thing is to get the workman to feel that he is working for himself and has something to hope for as the result of his skill and diligence. § 155. Another modification of the principle of cooperation is that introduced in Germany by Schulze-Delitzch. In that country industry is not so generally organized on the grand scale as is common in England, France and America; a great part of their workshops are very small establishments, often managed by a single family. If these were to have their materials at the lowest price they must buy them at wholesale to save commissions ; to this end there were organized raw material associations, that they might combine their capital for such pur- chases. Then came the establishment of public bazaars by these or similar associations, for the sale of their wares. But it was fouud that these workmen had but little capital and no credit; they could offer no sufficient security to induce the banks to lend them even the small sums that they needed ; for a working- man's capital is his health and strength, and his death or serious illness destroys it. But if the single workingman has no credit, 154 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. a large body of them organized on the principle of mutual security would have credit enough ; if one or a few died or were ill the rest would be the bank's security. Associations were therefore formed to establish loan banks or people's banks, as they are variously called ; and these banks make advances to their shareholders on such terms as put them on an equality with the rich. The movement began in 1850. In 1S72, after twenty-two years of slow and steady growth, there were 442 associations for purchase of raw materials and sale of wares; 2220 banks to make advances to workmen. Of these banks, 807 reported 372,742 members; loans, 359,519,200 thalers; capital, 21,373,529 thalers; deposits and borrowed capital, 77,188,731 thalers. (A thaler is seventy-two and a half cents.) This group of banks is connected with a central bank, which negotiates loans for them in the money market. § 156. The question of the rate at which woman's labor should be paid, and of tbe employments that should be open to her, is one of the living issues of our time, and must not be passed over. The rate at which she is paid is often alleged as an instance of the power of custom, and unjust custom at that. For doing exactly the same sort of work, it is said, and doing it quite as well, she receives far less pay than a man does. Custom, no doubt, has its influence here ; the more rapid advance of woman's rate of pay seems to indicate as much. But there is reason as well as custom for the difference. (1) Men are more steady workmen than women are. The latter, rightly or wrongly, all but a small minority, look forward to marriage and the care of a household as their true career. For this reason they do not concentrate their attention upon their calling with the same singleness of eye as men show. Nor have they, as a rule, the same power of continuous applica- tion, although they have far more natural quickness. The superintendent of the Elgin Watch Factory told me that the women employed there learnt far more during their first fort- night than men did; but there they stopped, while the men went on learning all their lives. woman's work and wages. 155 (2) Through the limitation of the number of employments open to women, they are driven to underbid each other for work. By " employments open to women " are meant those that their prejudices will allow them to enter, not merely those that are fit for their sex to undertake. The position of household ser- vant, for instance, is one that very few American-born white women will now accept. Nor is it of any use to argue the ques- tion, or to hold up the example of a few ladies of high culture and slender purse; the position of direct control by an indi- vidual will, that is bound by no rules save such as it extemporizes from time to time, is become intolerable to them. They fly from it to the store, the factory, the school-room, and finding all these insufficient, they will sew for slop-shops and die of slow starva- tion rather than go to the kitchen. German and Irish women, and Chinese men are the only material to be had to fill these vacancies, to the varied discomfort of the mistresses of the households. The plan of cooperative housekeeping in cities and towns offers a solution of the difficulty. By this, cooking would be conducted in a large central establishment, under the manage- ment of superior chefs, and the purchases made by experienced caterers under the direction of a committee of housekeepers. This change would be in the same line as that which removed the work of spinning and weaving from the list of household duties ; it would cheapen living to both rich and poor, by enabling wholesale purchases ; it would give an opportunity for the application of scientific principles to the art of cooking; and it would furnish congenial and well-paid work to a large per- centage of the women now out of employment. Nor would it be impossible to apply the same cooperative principle to other parts of household work, and relieve the mistress of the family from the necessity of depending on the services of a class, who — with some exceptions — are certainly not improved and human- ized by their position. 156 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. CHAPTER EIGHTH. The Science and Economy op Money. § 157. The progress of society from slavery and poverty and isolation to freedom, wealth and association, involves not only a progressive differentiation of its members and of their functions, but also a constantly increasing interchange of services between these. The more developed the society, the greater the inter- dependence of its members, and the more numerous and rapid these exchanges. With the solitary backwoodsman they have no existence, and he must overcome nature's resistance and master her utilities unaided. But when the country begins to be settled, these exchanges begin ; if a town spring up, they become more numerous andrapid; if the town grow into a city, the system of mutual service becomes complete. These exchanges are at first effected by barter, or the direct exchange of commodity for commodity. But a little experience shows this process to be both awkward and wasteful. The artisan might waste more time than he spent to produce his commodity, in searching for a customer whose wants and pos- sessions were the exact complement of his own. "Where a single article that varied in the value of its parts, such as the carcass of a cow, had to be divided among a great number of customers, the adjustment of values was nearly impossible. This led to the setting apart some one commodity which should be the representative of all estimable values, and should be the instru- ment of these exchanges and therefore of human association for mutual help. Cattle (pecus), being the first form of personal property {peculium or chattels), was first used as money (peciinia). Afterwards silver, and probably somewhat later gold came into use. The scarcity of these precious metals, and their eminent fitness for making ornaments, had, doubtless, brought them into general demand and caused them to be held at a very high price. The transition to their use as money was gradual and natural. It COINED AND UNCOINED MONEY. 157 is impossible to trace the early history of their adoption. The oldest historical records tells us that they were already in use, though not yet coined, in the patriarchal age, — that is, at a time when the family was still the largest social unit among peoples that afterwards played a part in ancient history. The first coins were in the form of animals, as indicating that they were substitutes for cattle. Afterwards they were coined in small, flat masses of equal weight and a recognised degree of purity, with an image and superscription, which now give these pieces a great historical interest. People who believe that the world ought to confine itself to this primi- tive sort of money sometimes strive to see something especially divine in gold and silver. They have called them " the money of God and of De- mocracy," " the natural medium of exchange," and have alleged that they have "a universal attraction for man, superior to that felt for any other kind of merchandise." A step farther would bring us to the rhap- sodies of the alchemists. The right to coin money is now regarded as an appanage of sovereign power ; though at the period of the incursion of the Germanic tribes into the Roman empire, it was imposed as a duty on the conquered cities. Governments have at various times inflicted great injury by debasing the current coin, with- out any ultimate gain to their treasury. The presence of an inferior coinage drives the superior out of circulation, for as soon as the value of the latter as bullion exceeds its legal value as coin, it is withdrawn from circulation and hoarded. Similar are the effects of trying to fix the comparative value of gold and silver at other than the market rates. Thus the law of 1817, that made the guinea worth twenty-one shillings in silver, drove the latter out of England ; and a similar law drove gold out of France. The scale and weights came into use again through the governments contiuually tampering with the weight of the coinage and through the rogueries of sweaters and clippers. When we hear that one king of France, John the Good, changed the weight of the lime seventy-one times in nine years, we know why the mediajval merchant carried a pair of scales at his girdle. In the sixteenth century the merchants of Ham- burg fixed a standard of weight and purity for an ideal coinage, called 158 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. "money of account," into which they translated all the coin deposited in their city bank, according to its weight and purity. § 158. The adoption of any form of money as the instrument of association and exchange was a clear advance upon barter. In barter every commodity discharges two functions at the same time ; it is both goods and money. In the new method of ex- change the two functions are separated ; money and goods become separate things. Nor is a vast amount of material thereby withdrawn from other uses : a very small amount of money suffices to effect a very large number of exchanges, and no country needs anything like as much money as it has pro- perty ; it might as well have wagons and railroad carriages enough to convey all its movables at once. Very much of its property never changes hands, except by inheritance; a still larger amount not once in a long series of years. At most a very small amount changes hands in the course of a single day, and there is no use for as much money as will represent this amount. The same sum (be it coin, or notes, or credit represented by a check) may be used repeatedly in the same day, and thus dis- charge many times its own amount of indebtedness. The most perfect money is that which changes hands with greatest rapidity ; the more rapid its circulation the greater its useful- ness. " The proportion borne by money to commerce decreases in advancing societies" (Carey), and by consequence its rate of interest, or the price paid for the use of money, fulls with every advance in its usefulness. Brutus got fifty per cent, a year; Rothschild will lend at four. The precious metals have many qualities that fit them for use as coined money. They are not liable to rust; they are easily alloyed with baser metals and as easily separated ; they receive a stamped impression easily and retain it firmly; they are not easily worn or abraded ; they are readily distinguished from other metals. Their defects are their weight, their intrinsic value as commodities, and hence the real loss of value by such abra- sions as they suffer. So long as we use as money what possesses a very considerable value for other purposes, and is liable to be VALUE OF THE PRECIOUS METALS. 159 diverted to other uses, we cannot be said to have attained the complete separation of the function of money from that of com- modities. That these metals should be used at all as money is a matter of convention or general agreement merely. But that conven- tion once established, their value in circulation, like all other values, is not conventional, but is determined by the cost of reproduction. If, however, the general agreement to use them as money were to cease, and they were to be demonetized, the excessive supply for other uses would cause their purchasing power to decline very greatly. Their intrinsic utility would, in- deed, be more generally made use of, since they would be far more generally employed in the arts than at present, and in this respect there would be a net gain to mankind in the change. Their use — especially that of gold — as ornaments would cease on this decline in price, and this would make them still cheaper. However well fitted their color and brilliancy to attract the eye and please the fancy of childish savages, the refined taste of civilized man would cast them aside as barbarous. They still hold their place in the toilet because they are " condensed wealth, the trophies of industrial warfare," analogous to the savage's string of scalps. Very few of the articles made of them have any artistic merit. § 159. They are difficult of reproduction, and therefore valu- able, because they are scanty in supply and hard of access in their natural deposits. Gold especially is found in very small quantities, and to dig for it is — considering the number of per- sons employed in it — the most unprofitable of human employ- ments. It has the fascination of a lottery, in which a few suc- ceed, but thousands fail. The Mexicans have a saying that he who mines for copper will grow rich ; he who digs for silver may or may not; he who seeks gold never will. Were it otherwise, success would defeat itself, through the decline in the value of its products. These metals are, therefore, a very expensive instrument for effecting exchanges. They require a vast outlay of capital, labor 160 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. and intelligence, that might otherwise be expended in producing what would directly meet and satisfy the primal needs of hu- manity. " It is a heavy price, and each ounce of gold repre sents so much labor withdrawn from agriculture aud other indus- trial pursuits, which minister directly to the comforts and necessities of mankind. " See R. H. Patterson's Economy of Capital (1864). These two metals do not circulate equally in all parts of the world, nor is their purchasing power the same everywhere. Since 1771 gold alone is "legal tender" for large payments in England; i. e., is such an offer of payment as the creditor must accept or forfeit his claim to interest. The United States fol- lowed the example of England, but on the Continent of Europe both are legal tender. In the East gold has never been a circu- lating medium ; China will not accept it in payment for her teas and silks; in India gold mohurs are coined, but have never been legal tender. During the panic of 1866, merchants of Calcutta offered 20,000?. in gold at the banks, but could not obtain even bank notes in exchange. Cowries, a species of shell, are used in the native kingdoms of Central Africa and some parts of India. Part of the land revenue of Orissa is paid in them, at the rate of 6000 or 7000 to the rupee. Similar were the wampum belts of our Indians. Carthage had a coinage of metal enclosed in stamped leather; Sparta had an intentionally cumbrous one of iron. Russia during the present century tried to get coins of plati- num into circulation, but they were bought up and withdrawn because of the too great variation in the commercial value of platinum. Copper and bronze have been commonly used for coins of small value, but lat- terly an alloy of nickel and copper has been adopted by several of the most enlightened nations as the best material for small coins. § 160. The " precious metals" are often spoken of as " the standard of value," which is true only in a restricted sense. A standard must remain the same, however other things change ; and this is certainly not true of gold and silver. Their pur- chasing power has been continually varying, generally declining, as the natural deposits of their ores have been laid bare, and the resistance of nature to those who searched for them has THE VALUE OF GOLD VARIABLE. 161 diminished. Vast quantities of them were furnished to Europe by Spanish America from the conquest of Mexico and Peru, till the revolt of those colonies in 1810. During the thirt3 years that followed, the supply was largely interrupted, and the supply of money in other forms was hindered by restrictive legis- lation. It was a time of great popular distress, and of em- barrassment to the money markets of the world. Commerce and manufactures were growing, but the instrument of ex- change was nearly a fixed quantity. In 1840 Russia began to work the Ural mines: the gold discoveries in California (1848) and in Australia (1854) came next. Since then the annual increase of coined money has been nearly quadrupled, and a vast extension of commerce and manufactures has followed through- out the world. While both the periods of increase have seen a decline in the purchasing power of gold and silver, in neither of them has it fallen in anything like the ratio of increase. Humboldt esti- mates that in the eighteenth century there were thirty times as much coin in circulation as in the fifteenth ; yet money had, on the very highest estimate, only twelve times as much purchasing power at the era of the Reformation as at present. When the new flow of gold into Europe began, economists of the English school (Chevalier, Cobden, etc.), predicted a rapid fall in its value ; others of the same school (Caird, Jevens, etc.), claim that this has been the case to some extent, say ten or fifteen per cent. But even this much is not universally admitted. " We have seen," says R. II. Patterson, " three hundred million pounds added to the general currency within fifteen years, with so little effect that it is still doubted by many authorities whether there has been any depreciation at all." A small depreciation seems, however, to have taken place. § 161. On the principles generally accepted by the English school, and first enunciated by David Hume in 1752, the rate of decrease in value should have been exactly proportional to the increase in amount. He says that " the only influence which a greater abundance of coin has in the kingdom" is " by 11 162 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. heightening the price of commodities and obliging every one to pay a greater number of these little yellow or white pieces for everything he purchases." He admits indeed a temporary effect of quite another kind : " In every kingdom into which money begins to flow in greater abundance than formerly, everything takes a new pace; labor and industry gain life; the merchant becomes more enterprising, the manufacturer more diligent and skilful, and even the farmer follows his plough with greater alacrity and attention." Mr. J. S. Mill applies the well-worn formula of demand and supply to the subject in this way : " The demand for money consists of all the goods offered for sale. . . . The money and the goods are seeking each other for the purpose of being exchanged. . . . Hence if the whole money in circulation was doubled, prices would be doubled ; if it was only increased one-fourth, prices would rise one-fourth." Mr. Mill does not appear to be aware of the fact that all but a small percentage uf purchases are paid for by offset (checks, bills of exchange, etc.), without the use of coin. § 162. The element of truth in this mechanical theory is separated from the falsehood in Mr. Patterson's statement: " An addition to the currency of a country is not necessarily a benefit. ... If the currency be doubled, while the productions of that country and the demand for money remain as they were, the double amount will do no more than the lesser one, — only all prices, wages, rents, etc., will be doubled in amount. The prices which a fanner or manufacturer gets for his goods will be increased; but so also in similar proportion will be the amount of his outlay in rent and taxes. It is like adding to both sides of an equation. It would be a sheer waste of money. ... A case like this, however, never occurs in the actual world." And why ? Because in the actual world money is always drifting to the nations whose industry and enterprise give it the highest utility, — to the nations whose increased productiveness and in- creased demand for money furnish a sphere of usefulness to the increase, — to the nations whose worth, honor and intelligence MORE MONEY, MORE PRODUCTION. 1G3 make them the safest depositaries of the world's loose cash, and thus the centres of credit. England has raised her coin circulation to 150,000.000/., but her annual savings are between a hundred and a hundred and thirty millions. The vast quan- tities of the precious metals that flowed into Europe after the discovery of America, may well, in the absence of new enter- prises and industries to employ it, have had a different effect, and produced " a dearness of all things without a dearth of anything." Europe — especially Spaiu — was industrially inert, incapable of safely absorbing so large a quantity of the precious metals, incapable of receiving the industrial impulse they would most naturally have imparted. The lack of stimulating in- fluence on a stagnant and stationary society is seen in India and China, which absorb every year $50,000,000 in silver, only to hoard it away. § 163 The influx of money into a progressive country is one of the most powerful promoters aud increasers of production. To money (as to labor) " time is money ;" whoever possesses it must seek an investment for it, or lose the profits ; when it is plenty, all sorts of productive work are stimulated ; labor is the master of capital, and industrial enterprise gains a more than proportionally larger return for its outlay, with every increase of the outlay. Labor becomes more productive as the instru- ment of association is more universally accessible. Its price rises while that of commodities falls. The drain of money away from a country does not make it — as some have said — " a good place to buy in but a bad place to sell in," — just the reverse. It makes it a bad place in which to buy anything but special products of its soil or climate, because although labor is cheap, the commodities produced by labor are dear through its inefficiency. It makes it, therefore, a good place for the sale of the merchandise of countries more happily situated. " To him that hath shall be given." Money tends to where money is ; start a shilling in circulation in Thibet or Central Africa, and the chances are that it will turn up in London. It will do so, because the presence of great accumu- 164 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. lations of capital in England, have made English labor produc- tive to a degree that outweighs all other considerations. § 164. For the same reason, the money market in poor countries always tends towards stringency. However great may have been the recent supply, it is speedily drawn off into a thousand side channels, and the main stream is diminished. The effect of this is far more than proportional to the amount involved, for this market is extremely sensitive. On the first intimation of a scarcity, the rate rises, and they who must have money to pav the current expenses of large establishments, or to meet their out- standing obligations, are at the mercy of the lender. The cap- tains of industry, and, through them, their laborei's, are no longer the masters but the servants of capital. § 165. A second form of money, and one that is in many re- pects superior to coin, is paper-money. It is open to none of the objections that we have presented to the use of gold and silver. It wears out sooner, indeed, but can be replaced at a trifling cost ; its production withdraws no large portion of the race from productive industry; its use abstracts from the arts no substance of intrinsic value ; it circulates more rapidly than gold because it represents great values by a smaller bulk, and is easier of transfer. And when, as can be accomplished by wise legislation, the public have security that the note is really issued by the firm that it professes to come from, and that that firm is able to meet all just demands upon it, the last objection to its use is removed. If barter may be compared to the rude mode of transportation on human backs, and coin to transportation in carriages drawn by horses, paper-money is the steam-carriage, whose use calls for larger precautions against danger, but whose superior utility far outweighs that consideration. The earliest form of paper-money was the bill of exchange. From a letter of Cicero to his brother Atticus, directing him to obtain a sum of money at Athens, we learn that this or some- thing equivalent to it existed in antiquity. It was reinvented in the Middle Ages, not by the Jews, but by the Caursins, a class of money-changers employed by the Papal See in the col- THE BILL OF EXCHANGE. 165 lection and transmission of its revenue from all parts of Europe to Rome or Avignon. The Hanse towns adopted it, and it passed into currency as one of the ordinary methods of com- merce between distant traders. By this plan a debtor in Hamburg, who wishes to pay his London creditor, goes "on 'change" and buys of a discouut house a draft on London for the amount. This draft has pre- viously been drawn by some Hamburg merchant upon his London debtor, and sold by him to the discount house for a trifle less than the market rate of exchange. This exchange is " in favor of Hamburg " when drafts on London are plenty and sell for a small percentage less than the " face value." It is " against Hamburg " when the reverse is the case ; and unless the course of exchange changes, some specie will in that case have to be exported from Hamburg to London to restore the balance. The amount of the discount or the premium on bills of exchange can never be greater than the cost of transmitting specie, in- cluding interest and insurance. By this method, it will be seen, the debts of London merchants to Hamburg merchants are paid by set-off against the debts of Hamburg merchants to London merchants, and the amount of money exchanged between the two cities is reduced to a minimum. § 166. The advantages of this plan are so great that the advantage of something like it for the transaction of business within each city was readily seen, and banks of deposit and issue were established as early as the fifteenth century. The first Italian banks, however, were mere associations of the public creditors in each city for the joint care of their interests, and when they became banks in the modern sense, they did not begin the issue of paper-money, but dealt ouly in money of account, which is yet to be described. The same is true of the banks of Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Stockholm. By 1673 we find the Bank of Genoa issuing bills of pretty large amount, which passed into circulation for wholesale transactions. About the same time the English goldsmiths began the practice of issuing bills which circulated in the same way, and when in 1694 the 166 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. Bank of England, and in 1605 the Bank of Scotland, were established, the issue of these bank-notes to those who bor- rowed money was a feature of each institution. These were at first "time-notes" bearing a low rate of interest, and conse- quently certain to be presented for redemption. Growing a little bolder, the Bank of England issued demand notes that bore no interest, and these passed rapidly into circulation, imparting a vigorous impulse to all sorts of business. As the country really needed these, it was almost impossible that any large quantity of them could be presented for redemption at once, except in cases of extraordinary panic. Of course the bank was enabled to extend its discounts far beyond the amount of coin at its command. For the bank did not — no bank could — keep on hand specie enough to redeem its entire circulation. It was sufficient if it kept as much as experience showed would meet the largest ordinary demand for it. Such was the genesis of the modern banknote, which has been one of the most powerful agents to promote and fertilize industry. To establish a bank of issue in a community where none has existed before, is to coin the mutual credit and confi- dence of the people into available money. It is to bring men into closer and more helpful association, by furnishing a new supply of the instrument of association and of the exchange of ser- vices. It is to put the means of industrial activity into the hands of those captains of industry who will open avenues of useful employment to the idle and the dependent. It is to recall from distant banks, and to draw out of old stockings and cash-boxes, the accumulated savings of the commuuity, and make them doubly efficient in the promotion of local interests. By adding to the rapidity of societary circulation it adds new profits to every bargain, and gives a new efficiency to every blow on the anvil, a new value to the crops in every field. Sir Walter Scott says of the Scotch system of banks of issue : "The facilities which it has afforded to the industrious and enterprising agriculturist or manufacturer, as well as to the trustees of the public in executing national works, have con- HOW TO MAKE BANK-NOTES SAFE. 167 verted Scotland from a poor, miserable and barren country into one where, if nature has done less, art and industry have done more than in perhaps any country in Europe, England not excepted. Through the means of credit which this system afforded, roads have been made, bridges built, and canals dug, opening up to reciprocal communication the most sequestered districts of the country; manufactures have been established, unequalled in extent or success, — wastes have been converted into productive farms, — the productions of the earth for human use have been multiplied twenty fold, while the wealth of the rich and the comforts of the poor have been extended in the same proportion. And all this in a country where the rigor of the climate and the sterility of the soil seemed united to set improvement at defiance. Let those who remember Scotland forty years since bear witness if I speak truth or false- hood." See "Malachi Malagrowthcr's" Letters on the Proposed Change in the Currency (Edinburgh, 1826). § 16'7. The community, in using the notes of the bank as money, pass a vote of confidence in the general solvency. They are authorizing the directors to monetize a small portion of the capital of the neighborhood, that the utility of the rest and the facility of its transfer may be increased. They are passing, at the same time, a vote of confidence in the honesty and prudence of those directors. <; What security have we that the confidence thus extended will not be abused ?" Two: (1) government inspection should be continually exercised over every such institution, and should extend to all the details of its management. Of course this implies no publication of the bank's affairs, save when the re- sults are such as to justify its dissolution. (2) Under restrictions imposed by general laws, any number of citizens should be as much at liberty to establish a bank as to open a store to sell dry-goods. The profits of legitimate bank- ing are always large enough to attract thither capital sufficient to supply safely all the demand for paper-money and discounts It 168 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. is only when the business is made a monopoly, and confined to a small number of firms, that their limited capital is unequal to the demand for money made upon them by the community. The best guarantee for safety is freedom. The supposed danger that over-issues are practicable, and that they may not only bring the holder of bank-notes into a position of risk, but also derange the whole market for money, and with it all other markets, is in the main a mere bugbear. Banks do not break down because their note circulation is too large, but because the other departments of their business are so badly managed that their notes, be tbey few or many, have no guarantee behind them. A bank can ordinarily put into circulation no more notes than the community needs. The avenues of return are always more open to the public than those of issue to the directors. But one class of English economists have said " over-issue " so often that they are ready to stake their reputation as financiers upon this theory, which is sustained by no facts, and is disputed by the ablest men (Tooke, Ash- burton, Fullarton, etc.) of their own school. " It was a pair of spectacles which the Bullion Committee [of 1811] left as a legacy to the subsequent generation, and which became the medium through which all our monetary difficulties were viewed. The increase of the bank's issues to the extent of a million or two above the ordinary amount, was held capable of producing the most momentous consequences. It ' depressed the currency,' and was the parent of our recurrent monetary crises. The up- holders of this theory, it is true, never demonstrated by a refer- ence to prices that the currency was depressed. They took that for granted, and a good deal more besides " (R. H. Patter- son). § 168. The third and the most perfect form of money is money of account. It possesses in a still higher degree all the advantages that make paper-money better than coin. It passes in circulation most rapidly ; it performs the vastest amount of service in proportion to its amount ; its use involves no loss by wear ; its production is so nearly costless that its cost hardly THE BANKS OF VENICE AND GENOA. 169 enters into men's thoughts. As much as paper-money is less material than coin, by so much is money of account less material than paper-money. As we have compared coined money in its efficiency and utility to a carriage drawn by horses, and paper- money to the car moved by steam-power, so might we conceive of money of account as a vehicle of transportation through the air, moving with electric swiftness, and impelled by some of those subtler physical forces whose mastery is yet to be achieved. It is the money of civilization ; its use involves a degree of intelligent insight into the true nature of wealth and of ex- changes, and a strong confidence in the general honesty and trustworthiness of mankind, that are impossible to the savage or the half-civilized man. Money of account originated in the commercial cities of Italy, and its use was thence transferred to the great emporiums of Northern Europe — Amsterdam, Hamburg and Stockholm. The republics of A^enice and of Genoa authorized their creditors to establish banks on the basis of the certificates of the city's debt. The Bank of Venice dates from 1171, when a forced loan was raised to fit out a fleet ; that the burden might be felt as little as possible, the persons assessed were formed into a company for protection of their common concern and the receipt of interest j at the same time the debt was made easily transferable by order on the company, and thus its use for the discharge of obligations grew up naturally. At first it was a forced loan under special guarantees ; then a desirable investment ; then a means of pay- ment. The first character of the deposits so entirely disappeared that government ceased to pay interest on the capital. Then to secure a uniform currency, it decreed that all wholesale transac- tions should be paid in the form of a transfer of bank stock, unless otherwise stipulated; so that whoever had a box full of coins, gathered from the four quarters of the earth through the manifold channels of Venetian trade, took them to the bank to get credit upon its books according to their weight and fineness. The standard by which their value was estimated was called " money of account," to distinguish it from the various moneys 170 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. that were translated into it. The government treated these masses of coin as payment for the privilege of a credit on the bank's book, and all idea of their repayment was lost sight of. Yet for four hundred years, or until the conquest of the city by Napoleon I., this money of account circulated freely, and was at a premium (or agio) in coin ; trade proceeded with a rapidity previously unknown ; no Venetian ever raised his voice in com- plaint of an institution which was the pride of the city and the envy of Europe. When the French destroyed it, they found no funds to reward them. The Bank of Genoa originated in the same way, but differed in some details of management, such as the issue of bank-notes. The Bank of Stockholm owed its origin to the fact that copper was the only coin in circulation in Sweden, and it was therefore necessary to translate this into a more convenient form of money. Hamburg and Amsterdam, the Genoa and Venice of the North in the sixteenth century, were equally embarrassed by the various weights and standards of the coin that flowed into their cities, and established banks of deposit and transfer to translate these into " money of account;" here also wholesale transactions were required to be settled in the shape of transfer of bank credits. As neither were based on government debts, and neither loaned money, the expenses were defrayed by a slight charge to the customers of the bank. Both cities reaped immense advantages from the system, in the rapidity and ease with which money of account passed from one person to another in effecting ex- changes. The Bank of Amsterdam failed in 1790, as it was found that the funds on which its credit rested had been in part abstracted by the Dutch government. That of Hamburg still exists. § 169. A bank in the modern sense is more than any of these institutions was. It is a discount house, a firm for the issue of paper-money, a place for deposit of money, a clearing- house, and a branch of a larger clearing-house. It is the union of all the earlier features of such institutions, with the addition of others that grew out of the peculiar methods of modern business. FOUR FUNCTIONS OF A BANK. 171 First, its discount business. A bank is an institution that deals in credits by buying up debts, — that may be said to turn debts into credits for a consideration called discount. Except in the retail trade, the larger part of modern business is transacted by means of " mercantile paper." The buyer does not transfer the amount due to the seller in coin or bank-notes. He gives him a bill for the amount payable in (say) sixty or ninety days. The seller cannot afford to do without the money for so long a time. He wants to " turn over his capital " as fast as possible; he would rather give up a percentage of his profits and get the money at once. He takes it to bank to be discounted, after making himself responsible for its payment by endorsing it. If the directors are satisfied with the name of the endorser or of the drawer,, or of both, they let him have the money, minus the interest for the time specified. When the time is up the drawer of the bill must pay it, or if he fail its endorser must. Second, its issue business. A whole or a part of the money advanced to the bank's customer may be needed in such shape as will circulate among all classes. If he be a contractor or a manufacturer he is dealing with people who keep no bank ac- count. He must, therefore, have money that they can use, and this the bank gives him, either in its own notes, or in those of some other bank. In this way the banks put into circulation a much larger sum in notes than their whole paid-up capital would suffice to redeem, and this with perfect safety to themselves and great benefit to the community. Third, its business as a clearing-house, which is the most important of its functions. In most cases a customer of the bank who has had a note discounted would find it very incon- venient to be paid in any form of money; he prefers a credit to that amount on the books of the bank. That is, the bank advances him a sum of money, and he at once "deposits" it with the bank, and uses the credit thus obtained to pay his debts by check, i. e., by the transfer of a portion of this credit to the account of his creditors. A small percentage of checks are drawn in money by their holders, but in most cases they 172 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. are paid simply by a transfer of credits. In this case the " deposits " on the bank's books become virtually part of the currency, and constitute a vast fund of "money of account" for the discharge of indebtedness. These deposits far exceed in amount all otber forms of money in circulation, and move with greater rapidity and exhibit vaster utility in effecting exchanges. The deposit fund continually tends, indeed, to diminish in volume through the discounted notes maturing and being paid, as well as through the payment of depositors' checks ; and it is only kept up through fresh deposits of cash or fresh discounts. When the demand for these discounts is not great, or the directors are hopeful and confident, the rate of discount falls. When the con- trary is the case, it rises and the best security is required. This is particularly noticeable in countries where there is no legal limit to the rate of interest, such as England. In the United States a bank usually charges uniformly the rate fixed by law. Fourth, to make the system more efficient and to give this money of account yet wider currency, each bank in our great cities is a branch of a larger clearing-house. When all the business of a city was done at a single bank, the transfer of its credits sufficed for all wholesale transactions. When several took the place of one, very large sums of money passed between them, as a check would not transfer credit unless both parties kept accounts at the same bank. But now each bank makes its statement in the clearing-house, of its claims against every other, and on balancing the account of each, the net indebtedness to (or from) it is ascertained, and paid from (or to) the clearing- house. These balances are the merest fraction of the gross amounts, and the system brings every bank, to a certain extent, under the supervision of the rest. This method of settlement was adopted by the dealers in the old French fairs, and enabled the merchants to transact a great deal of business with the exchange of very little money. The Scotch banks first adopted it for the mutual supervision and con- trol of their circulation. They met once a fortnight in Edinburgh to ex- change notes, and paid the net balances in coin. CAUSE AND CHARACTER OF PANICS. 173 § 170. Note here that we must distinguish betweeu the true character of money of account and the way in which it is mostly created in modern times. The method of buying and selling " on time " with which it is now associated is open to many ob- jections; but if that method were utterly abolished, if the dis- count system were to cease, and all purchases were to be paid in cash, such a currency as this would be as necessary as ever for the transaction of business. The credit-fund would then have to be created entirely, as it now is in part, by the actual deposit of money in some institution like the Bank of Hamburg. Its volume would then be no longer liable to contraction or ex- pansion with the hopefulness or distrust of bank directors. Were a money of account based not on deposits of cash, but on deposits of securities to a fixed amount, as in Venice, it would retain its power of circulation, with no reduction of its volume, in the worst seasons of panic, and would be continually available for the transaction of legitimate business. The possession of such a "money of account" was the secret of the mercantile stability of Venice and Genoa, Hamburg and Amsterdam ; as the complication of our " money of account" with the discount system is a chief cause of our commercial fluctuations. § 1*71. No market is so sensitive as the money market. A very slight reduction in the supply raises the price out of all proportion, and leads to a rigid scrutiny of all securities offered as the ground of a loan. The banks at such a period are sensi- tive to the approaching stringency ; they refuse discounts that they would else have granted ; they refuse new paper, and put an artificial dam across the great stream of credit-payments, to the ruin of those who must go on and who must have money. In the fright that follows, as in all frights, men lose their wits ; the business community is demoralized. Credit, faith in any- body, in anything but visible and tangible money, disappears. There is a general falling back upon the more primitive and material methods of payment. The great credit-fund of money of account loses its currency, or hold upon public confidence, because created by discounts and bound up with the uncertain 174 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. fortunes of the discounting banks. Then begins a " run upon the deposits." Those deposits were in great part created by credits granted, and were never intended to be paid in money of any sort. The banks should have the option of paying them in legal tender, or in certificates of deposit, good at the clearing-house; but they have none. They are demanded in visible and current money. In spite of the reduction of dis- counts, their amount is still too great to be thus disposed of, and a suspension of the banks necessarily follows, upon which the panic reaches its height. All exchange of services, except the most necessary, ceases at once ; the community relapses into the barbarism of mutual distrust. The history of banking, since the establishment of the discount system, shows us the necessity of such a reform as will sunder that system from bank- ing proper, and secure the permanent currency and the free crea- tion (under proper safeguards) of money of account. No bank existed in England till 1694. During Common- wealth times the London goldsmiths, whose fire-proof and thief- proof vaults rendered them the natural custodians of large sums of money, began to exercise some of the functions of modern banking. They granted loans at high rates of interest, and is- sued these in demand-notes. A little experience showed them how much specie they must keep on hand to meet the possible demand for it on any one day. They paid depositors six per cent, interest for it. This continued till after the Revolution. § 172. It occurred to William Paterson, member of the Scotch Parliament from Dumfries, that government could raise money fur the war against France without paying the high rate of in- terest exacted by the goldsmiths. He saw that a far larger sum than they could command would be obtained, if the government could give confidence to the multitudes who were hoarding sniall sums, and make it worth their while to lend them. He pro- posed a Bank of England, after the model of those of Italy and Holland, — i. e., for the issue of circulating paper-money, secured by the deposit of what we call government securities. After much opposition, the plan was adopted with some modifications, THE BANK OF ENGLAND. 175 and the Bank of England began its career January 1st 1694 by lending its whole paid-up capital of £1,200,000 to the gov- ernment at 8 per cent, interest. At first its notes were gladly taken in exchange for the light and defective silver currency of that day ; but when the new coinage that was carried through under Sir Isaac Newton came upon the market, the notes de- clined in favor, although they bore interest and were much needed for the business of the country. Iu 1096 their redemp- tion in specie was suspended. The Tory party, mostly country gentlemen, attempted to establish a land-bank as a rival. It also was to loan money to the government and to discount bills only on the credit of real estate. The plan failed utterly and caused great loss to the nation. ■ The Bank of England grew slowly into favor, and lost its bit- terest enemies as the old race of usurers died out and none filled their places. It gradually perfected its methods; it established the system of book credits, with payments by check. It substitu- ted demand-notes bearing no interest for time-notes that bore interest; these new notes passed quickly into the circulation, and were rarely returned for redemption. It issued smaller and therefore more useful notes, the first being never less than £20. It secured in 1706 a virtual monopoly, not more than six per- sons being allowed to unite their capital to establish any other bank in England. (This lasted 120 years, and was then confined to London and towns within 65 miles of it.) On the other hand it upheld the public credit, and greatly simplified ques- tions of finance, by furnishing a channel through which the people could easily come to the support of the government in time of need, and could always obtain either a profitable invest- ment for capital or a loan of money on easy terms. The rate of discount doivn to 18-14 varied between 4 and 5 per cent., save a rise to 5* and 6 in the last half of 1839. Other bank- ing houses grew up in London and throughout the country, but all subordinate to the great national concern in London. § 173. As a state bank it shared in the vicissitudes of the government. It had to stand a run on its specie in 1745, when 176 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the Pretender was on his way to London, but the city merchants stopped this by publicly pledging themselves to stand by tbe bank. In 1772 and 1783 panics were caused by " over-trad- ing" in foreign goods; in the latter the ^bank for the first time adopted the policy of cutting down its discounts, till the drain of specie from the country should cease, — an effectual but rather " heroic" remedy, as every reduction of the circulation intensi- fies the panic. In 1793 and 1797 panics recurred ; that of 1793 caused partly by over-trading, partly by the political disturbances of the time; that of 1797 entirely by the latter. In both cases the bank made bad worse, by refusing discounts and thus allowing wealthy and solvent firms to go down unaided. Happily tbe government re- stored confidence by an issue of exchequer notes. In 1810 the revolt of the Spanish-American colonies led to immense over- trading and a consequent panic. Cargoes of skates had been sent to cities where ice and snow were never seen, and others had received Epsom salts enough to physic their entire popula- tion once a week for fifty years. The bank having suspended specie payments since 1797, came to the aid of solvent firms with large amounts of notes, and the government ordered an issue of £6,000.000 besides. § 174. In 1815 the bank began to get ready for a resumption of specie payments by cutting down discounts and reducing cir- culation. It thus reduced the currency by £12,000,000, a mere trifle as compared with the money value of the nation's pro- perty ; but the whole circulation for a time stopped and an arti- ficial panic was produced. In 1819 it resumed specie payments, after a suspension of twenty-five years, thus altering at once and greatly the terms of all contracts made in the interval and not yet executed. All who had land, labor or produce to sell, or contracts to fill, were placed at great disadvantage. Creditors — i. e., the wealthy, capital-holding class — gained greatly, except where their debtors were absolutely ruined. Mills stopped, land fell in price, labor was thrown idle, and in peace men suffered more than the calamities of war. peel's bank bill. 177 In 1S25, 1S37 and 1839 panics similar to that of 1793 occurred — i. e., they were caused by over-trading and intensified by the selfish policy of the bank. In 1810 a parliamentary commission began to investigate the reasons of these crises, and in 1814 Sir Robert Peel's famous " Bank Act " was passed, with a view to prevent their recurrence. Rejecting the opinion of Adam Smith — that if bank-notes he issued only on the discount of merchantable bills of undoubted character, and founded on a real transaction, they cannot be excessive, — English financiers had adopted the theory of over-issues as explaining the whole matter. That theory grew very naturally out of their mechanical theory of the effect of an increased supply of money (§ 161). § 175. The Act of 1811 was directed to the regulation of the English currency through the Bank of England, to prevent a fancied " depreciation." It severed the banking department proper from the department of issues, and transferred to the latter £11,000,000 in government obligations as security for bank- notes of that amount. It required that, if the note circulation exceeded that sum, the bank should have gold in its vaults equal to the excess. At the same time it provided that the bank-note circulation of the country banks should be limited and diminished, never increased. In other words, it made the amount of paper- money in circulation in England dependent upon the amount of bullion in the vaults of the banks. The measure betrayed a total want of apprehension of the true nature of the discount and deposit system. It did not put the vast currency created by the bank's advances and those of its rivals, under any specific limitations. It allowed the bankers to create currency ad libitum on the pages of their ledgers, pro- vided they did not print it on bits of silk paper that passed from hand to hand. In ordinary business times it could therefore put no restraint upon the real circulation of the country. Rather it set before the bank the strongest inducement to multiply that currency and stimulate speculation when money was easy, that it might " make hay while the sun shone " and get its super- fluous issues into circulation. Heretofore the rate of discount 12 178 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. had ranged between 4 and 5 ; from this date the extremes are 2 and 10. The office of a regulator is to moderate extremes ; but the bank has really intensified and exaggerated them. And when we speak of the Bank of England, it must be re- membered that it controls all the lesser banks. By its im- mense size, its vast prestige, its special privileges, it is able to fix the rate to be paid for money throughout the kingdom. But in other than ordinary times, when this great credit-fund loses its currency, when the business community is demoralized by panic, and the demand for other and more tangible forms of money recurs, the act becomes at once powerful for mischief. In such a case the actual supply of notes and specie is manifestly unequal to the vast demand made upon it by the business of a great nation ; and not only the Bank of England, but all the banks of the country are hand-tied so far as regards any help they can give. Their notes may be as good as gold. Since 1823 they have always been so. But they can issue none until the government step in and put an end to the panic by sus- pending the act that was meant to prevent panics. All these objections were very ably presented before the act was passed, by Lord Ashburton (head of the house of Baring Bros.), T. Tooko, (author of the History of Prices), John Fullarton {On the Regtdation of the Currency), Charles Scott (a Montreal banker), and others ; but to no purpose. The " sound views on currency " represented by Peel, Lord Overstone (Mr. Jones Lloyd), Torrens, McCulloch, enrich himself without impoverishing the soil. It does so by bringing the farmer and the artisan into neighborhood, and giv- ing the former facilities for making returns to the soil that he would not otherwise possess. It does so by creating a demand fur less exhaustive crops than the great staples that are needed in the foreign market. It does so by promoting the cattle- farming that has turned large areas of Belgian peat and sand into the richest firms in the world. It docs so by making it worth while to farm more carefully, through the certainty of a permanent local market, rather than to get out of the soil as fast as possible all the easily accessible elements, and then move on westward to take up new land. What has been the history 256 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. of American agriculture thus far ? It has mostly been the rob- bing the soil of its most valuable qualities to export its wealth across the ocean. " In my opinion it would be improper to estimate the total aunual waste of the country at less than equal to the mineral constituents of fifteen hundred million bushels of corn. To suppose this can continue is simply ridiculous. As yet we have much virgin soil, and it will be long ere we reap the full fruits of our improvidence ; but it is merely a question of time. With our earth-butchery and prodigality we are each year losing the intrinsic essence of our vitality" (Geo. E. Waring). In some parts of the country it is no longer a question of time. Districts like the region around Albany will now yield but a third the amount of wheat that the first settlers got from them. The New Englanders have been the most wasteful of our farmers. Wherever they have settled, as in western New York, the soil has been blighted under their feet. On the other hand, the grain farmers of eastern Pennsylvania, by their steady care to keep up the fertility of the soil, have made their lands more valuable with every year. Not that their methods are first-ra-tc; any one who has seen a European farm knows how much they have to learn, especially on the utilization of manures. But by sowing clover, a plant whose roots thrust themselves down to the subsoil and take mineral sustenance from that, and by ploughing down the clover with lime, the land has been kept up to a fair degree of fertility. The possession of a home market, however, and the command of the refuse of our towns and factories, and the opportunity to keep large numbers of cattle and to alternate other crops with grain, have been the chief cause of their pros- perity. The farmer who has his market at hand, unless he be unusually thriftless and wasteful, can go on year after year im- proving the instrument by which he makes his living ; he who depends on a distant market has no choice, as he must go on, year after year, destroying it. § 251. Protection diminishes the risk of farming by giving variety to its products. The farmer who depends upon exporta- tion puts all his eggs into one basket. Excessive rains or ex- PROTECTION AND COMMERCE. 257 ccssive droughts, insects and blights, wage war upon the few staple articles that he can find a market for. If he had the consumers at hand, he could sell them a great variety of crops; if one failed, the others would ordinarily — not always — escape. Green crops flourish under the rainfall that ruins wheat ; the blight that spreads ruin among the grain is powerless over the hay. The soil that yields a poor and a risky return for one article is just the thing for another. § 252. Thirdly, the people of a nation reap a benefit from the restrictive policy, in that it applies the law of parsimony to the number of the commercial class, and to their profits. A country is wealthy in proportion to the amount of its labor for which it can find productive employment, in directing either the organic or the formal changes of matter that fit it for man's use. But the trader and those whom he directly employs produce nothing; he only contributes to the productiveness of labor by saving the time that the producer might otherwise waste in seeking a purchaser. The more the service of the trader is needed, the less is the net benefit derived from him, because the greater in that case is the amount of the tax he imposes upon the article on its way from the producer to the consumer. This tax is ordinarily greatest when the distance between the pro- ducer and the consumer is greatest, and, as we have seen, is in that case not limited to the cost of transportation and a fair ] in iiit fir his services. By practices and methods, of which arti- ficial scarcities are but extreme instances, the price of the goods thai he transmits is lowered or raised at pleasure, either to destiny competition in the market where he sells, or to reap the large profits that far nmre than repay him for that and other sacrifices. That these profits are ordinarily excessive in the absence of home competition is evident from the fact that he can afford to pay a considerable share of the protective duties designed to create home competition. The restrictive policy brings the producer and the consumer into neighborhood, and thus diminishes their need of the trader. and weakens his power over them. The heavy tax of trans- 17 258 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. portation is saved ; men are set free from that most laborious and unproductive of occupations to engage in others which are productive, and which this very policy has called into existence. The buyers of an article are no longer dependent upon the trader as to the price they will pay ; if it be exorbitant, they can go direct to the producer. The market can no longer be forestalled, because the great and necessary commodities are no longer concentrated in a few hands, but pass in much smaller parcels, and through much fewer hands, from those who produce them to those who need them. § 253. Not that this policy destroys international commerce; it only transforms it and makes it more equitable. From an exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods, it raises it to an exchange of manufactured goods on each side. Even if the value of international exchanges is not reduced — and pro- tection often increases them — their bulk and the cost of their transportation are reduced, and that very decidedly. Men have, thereby, more power to command the use of ships, and less need to use them. It gives men at once more power over ships, and ships less power over men — which is the law of progress in regard to the instruments of wealth. It restores the equili- brium of foreign exchange, and puts an end to the export of specie from the poorer to the wealthier countries, retaining it where it is most needed by increasing its utility and purchasing power. A country that continually develops native wealth and in- dustry by a consistent Nationalist policy grows in power to pur- chase those articles that its own manufactures do not yet supply, or that can only be produced in another climate than its own. The country that has the most diversified industry is best able to patronize the finer industries of other countries. The servant girls of the Northern States before the war bought more English silks than did the slaveholding aristocracy of the South. Every country that carries on an unrestricted trade with another much richer than itself, purchases a less and less valuable class and amount of goods with every generation, till at last its demand COMPLAINTS OF THE TRADING CLASS. 259 counts for nothing in the markets of the other. In so far as a richer country persuades the poorer ones to follow this policy, she herself becomes less of a workshop and more of a mart; their raw products pass through her ports and factories with ever less of elaboration and an ever greater diminution in their amount. From carrying on commerce with the world she sinks to the position of a nation of shopkeepers and traders which carries on commerce for the world. The relations of Ireland, Portugal and Turkey to England illustrate what we mean. See next chapter. England's very best customers are the Protectionist nations. § 254. The numbers and the prosperity of our own trading class that are engaged in foreign commerce show that the pro- tective policy has not extinguished that occupation. They show likewise that the profits of manufacture under protection are not so great as to cause an excessive diversion of capital in that direction. If we were to listen, indeed, to the complaints of some of this class, we would infer in them either a great want of common sense, or a sublime disregard of their own interests. They complain, without courting any comparison of their ledgers, that the profits of the manufacturing class are inordinately great, — that two or three hundred per cent, per annum are reached in this or that line of production. Then, why not leave importing and go to manufacturing? Oh, they are too moral! "Those who believe that a legal monopoly is a system of robbery protest against it on principle, and do not want to share its ill-got gains " Evening Post). Or if this be incredible there is another reason. " The profits are so precarious that before the year is up we may lose everything by a reduction of the tariff" ( Ibidem). There would be very little danger of a reduction were it not for the zealous warfare that these gentlemen wage upon the tariff. If our manufactures arc an unsafe investment, it is they who make them so. Tn doing so they not only keep those profits up. if they are high, by checking die flow of capital in that direction, but make those (supposed) high profits right and reasonable, as 2G0 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. covering not only a fair return for the invested capital but a fair insurance for the risk thus created. § 255. Fourthly, and especially, the restrictive policy fosters and encourages the growth of manufactures, and is often the only way to create a varied industry in a new or a poor country that does not possess it. In imposing a protective duty upon the products of foreign manufacture, the aim is not dearness or scarcity, but the reverse. Prohibitory duties or the legal monopoly of a manufacture by a few persons might produce a scarcity; but protective duties operate in exactly the contrary direction. If dearness — and we measure that by the labor-cost always — were to be the result, and even the permanent result of such a policy, it might yet be vindicated as a wise measure, for all the reasons we have already specified. — reasons that relate to the economy of labor, of agriculture, and of commerce. But a rise in price can be but a temporary result of the pro- tective duty, while only prohibitory duties can create s-carcity. And even if we leave out of view those compensatory advantages that accrue to the community from the first, the temporary sacri- fice involved in the temporary increase of price is a measure of wise policy quite in the line of the best statesmanship in other fields of national life. The establishment of a post office, which in a country like the United States will not pay for itself for centuries to come, is a measure whose wisdom none disputes. It binds the people in one, promotes intelligence, helps the popular education, renders services that far outweigh its cost. Yet a consistent free trader must oppose the measure, as taxing the mass of the people for the benefit of the classes who use the post office; if he defended it, it would be on grounds of indirect benefit that would justify a like sacrifice in the protection of home industry. Our public school and college system is another instance of this. Consistent free traders, like Herbert Spencer and Gerritt Smith, must oppose the measure. It is taxing all classes for the benefit of one class of "producers," the fathers and mothers; WISE NATIONAL SACRIFICES. 261 it is the expenditure of public money for other ends than those of police at home and defence abroad. It can only be justified on the ground that it pays in the long run, and indirectly to all classes, as protection does. And protection itself, as Mr. Mill very forcibly puts it, is a method by which producers are " edu- cated up to the level of those with whom the processes have become habitual." Not only the education, but the rearing of children, which the Christian state imposes upon the parents by its laws to give perpetuity to the relationship of marriage, and to punish in- fanticide, is a business involving large sacrifices for an ultimate benefit. Were not the natural affections too strong for logic, we might have zealous advocates of free trade urging men to give up this wasteful business, and import full-grown men and women from Europe, where they are to be had so cheaply. In short, wherever we turn we find the farsightedness that makes the sacrifice, and the nearsightedness that refuses to make it, set over against one another, and the one approved as wisdom by the consent of mankind, which rejects the other as folly. § 256. Protection, adopted for these ends, has the sanction of nearly all the great free trade authorities. Adam Smith con- ceded that, "by means of such regulations, indeed, a manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been other- wise, and after a certain time may be made as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country." His chief French disciples are Say, Blanqui, Rossi, and Chevalier. Say taught that " pro- tection granted with a view to promote the profitable ap- plication of labor and capital might be productive of universal benefit. New modes of employment, though destined to result in great advantage when the workmen have been trained and the preliminary obstacles surmounted, were liable, without the aid of government, to cause heavy loss to the undertaker — a result carefully to be avoided." Blanqui writes that " experience has already taught us that a people ought never to deliver over to the chances of foreign trade the fate of its manufactures." Rossi declared that " in the conduct of a nation," as in that of 262 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. a family, sacrifices needed to be made in the hope of thereby opening " new roads to affluence." Chevalier declares that '' every nation owes to itself to seek the establishment of diversi- fication in the pursuits of its people, as Germany and England have already done in regard to cottons and woollens, and as France herself has done in reference to so many and so widely different departments of industry;" that this " is not an abuse of power on the part of the government ; on the contrary, it is the accomplishment of a positive duty which required it so to act at each epoch in the progress of a nation as to favor the taking possession of all the branches of industry whose acquisi- tion is authorized by the nature of things. Governments are, in effect, the personification of nations, and it is required that they should exercise their influence in the direction indicated by the general interest, properly studied and fully appreciated." And in his opinion, " combination of varied effort is not only promotive of general prosperity, but is the one and only condi- tion of national progress." All these gentlemen belong to the free trade school, especially Chevalier. So does John Stuart Mill, who is of the opinion that " the superiority of one country over another in a branch of industry often arises only from it having begun it sooner. A country which has this skill and experience to acquire may iu other respects be better adapted to the production than those earlier in the field ; and, besides, it is a just remark that no- thing has a greater tendency to produce improvement in any branch of production than its trial under a new set of conditions. But it cannot be expected that individuals should at their own risk, or rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture and bear the burthen of carrying it on until the producers have been educated up to the level of those with whom the processes have become traditional. A protecting duty continued for a reasonable time will sometimes be the least inconvenient mode in which a country can tax itself for the support of such an experiment." Mr. Geo. W. Smalley (of The N. Y. Tribune) asked Mr. Mill during his later years, " whether he still adhered to this statement ?" " Cer- MB. J. S. MILL ON PROTECTION. 2G3 tainly," was his answer; "I have never affirmed anything to the con- trary. I do not, presume to say that the United State? may not find protection expedient in their present state of development. I do not even say that if I were an American I should not be a protectionist." If there be any doubt as to the practical bearing of these concessions, especially the last, it is dispelled by Prof. Thorold Rogers : " Few statements made by any writer have, I am per- suaded, been more extensively, though unintentionally, mis- chievous than this admission of Mr. Mill. The passage has been quoted over and over again in the United States, and in the British colonies, as a justification of the financial system which these communities have adopted. The circumstances in which they are situated exactly square with the hypothesis of Mr. Mill. The countries are young and rising, — industries, as yet nascent, are thoroughly suited to the natural capacity of the region and of the people ; the latter being of the same stock with the mother country whose manufactures they prohibit and discourage. There is no reason, apparently, except that of priority in the market, why the industry of the old country should not be transplanted to the new. Hence, I repeat, Mr. Mill's concession is perpetually quoted, and is perpetually mis- chievous." We protectionists may now cease quoting Mr. Mill, and begin to quote Prof Thorold Rogers. § 257. The object and the effect of protective duties, then, is to enable the home producer to furnish the manufactured goods more plentifully and cheaper than before the duty was imposed. " Though it were true," says Alexander Hamilton, " that the immediate and certain effect of regulations controlling the com- petition of foreign with domestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true that the contrary is the ultimate effect of every successful manufacture. When a domestic manu- facture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prose- cution of it a competent number of persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. Being free from the heavy charges which attend the importation of foreign commodities, it can be afforded cheaper, and accordingly seldom or never fails to be afforded cheaper in process of time than was the foreign article for which 264 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. it is the substitute. The internal competition which takes place soon does away everything like monopoly, and by degrees re- duces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed." So well ascertained and so necessary is this result as regards the profits of manufacture that Prof. Thorold Rogers alleges it as a reason against protection : " Unless the state were to go so far as to grant a monopoly of production to one or a few indi- viduals whom it protects, it could not prevent the operation of that economic law which reduces profits, other things being equal, to an equality. Manufacturers crowd into the protected occupation, and the benefit intended to be secured by the policy of the government is distributed and annihilated by competi- tion." Mr. Rogers does not seem to be aware that this is the very " benefit intended to be secured." But we have his word as to how that policy does and must work, — above all that it involves no monopoly. " Competition being always free," says McCulloch, " among home producers, the exclusion of any particular species of foreign manufactured goods cannot elevate the profits of those who pro- duce similar articles at home above the common level, and merely attracts as much additional capital to that particular business as may be required to furnish an adequate supply of goods." Neither of these two authors, it will be perceived, concedes that prices are brought down by protection to the foreign rate ; but they both show that the foolish clamor as to the excessive profits of the protected manu- facturer has nothing to go upon. Mr. D. A. Wells flatly contradicts his English teachers when he says : " It not unfreqaently happens that the imposition of a tax in the form of a tariff on an imported article is made the occasion for very greatly and unnecessarily advancing the prioe of a corresponding domestic product." § 258. What are the reasons for this final reduction in price ? It is because the obstacles to cheap production have been over- come, and the home producers are competing for the home market. These obstacles are manifold. (1) The lack of se- curity deters the manufacturer from putting his capital into a large undertaking. He has to make great outlays, great sacri- PROTECTION EDUCATES. 2G5 fices even, but he has no security that he will ever reap the fruits, unless the home market is secured to him. He fears the foreign competition more than that of his competitors at home, because the latter stand on an equality of power and capacity with him, while the former are able and ready to make large sacrifices simply to drive him out of the market and secure it to themselves. It is not a matter as to which we are left in any doubt that artificial fluctuations are produced for this purpose. "It has already been shown," says Coleridge in 1834, "in evi- dence which is before all the world, that some of our manu- facturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately injuring foreign manufacturers, if they can." " Experience," says Blauqui, one of the free trade economists of France, " has already taught us that a people ought never to deliver over to the chances of foreign trade the fate of its manufactures." A report presented to the British Parliament in 1S64 by a commission appointed to investigate the state of industry in the mining districts says :— " The laboring classes generally in the manufacturing districts of this country, and especially- in the iron and coal districts, are very little aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for being employed at all to the immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times in order to destroy foreign competition, and to gain and keep possession of foreign markets. Authentic instances are well known of employers having, in such times, carried on their works at a loss amount- ing in the aggregate to £300,000 or £400,000 in the course of three or four years. " If the efforts of those who encourage the combinations to restrict the amount of labor and to produce strikes were to be successful for any length of time, the great accumulations of capital could no longer bo made which enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition in times of great depression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step in when prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign capital can again accumulate to such an ex- tent as to be able to establish a competition in prices with any chance of success. '• The great capitals of this country are the great instruments of war- fare against the competing capital of foreign countries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining by which our manufacturing su- premacy can be maintained ; the other element.— cheap labor, abundance of raw materials, means of communication, and skilled labor — being rapidly in process of being equalized." 266 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. So much for Tennyson's "... fair, white-winged peace-maker." A greater poet had some excuse for making his Eaust say : — " Krieg, Handel nnd Piraterie Dreieiuig sind sic, nicht zu trennen." § 259. (2) The inexperience of the laboring class is not to be overcome in a day. Their lack of skill involves difficulties and losses ; their industrial education, like all education, is an invest- ment that pays only in the long run. The unprotected manu- facturer is a captain of industry who must drill his men under fire, must expect to fight with them from the first day that he enlisted them. Foreign operatives, indeed, can be secured in some branches and for positions that require special skill. The non-commissioned officers of the industrial army may therefore be men of some experience, but the rank and file employed in a new industry are raw recruits. But when once the army has learnt its drill, work becomes as effective as anywhere else, and the labor-cost, and with it the labor-price of production, is as low as elsewhere, and lower at home, as the cost of transportation and the profits of a long string of middlemen are no longer added to the price while the article is on its way from the pro- ducer to the consumer. And the captains of industry themselves need drill and ex- perience as well as their workmen. The processes of a great manufacture are not to be learnt in a day, even if no changes in method are contemplated. But among the great advantages Gained in the acclimatization of new industries, not the least is the gain in improved methods when an old industry is tried under a new set of conditions. Many of the most notable labor- saving inventions, beginning with Whitney's cotton-gin, owe their existence to the efforts of those who were engaged in prosecuting new and protected industries. Such has been the history of the sugar manufacture in Europe, which now actually pays duties that discriminate in favor of cane sugar from the West Indies, and yet partly supplies even the English demand. The great advances made in the application of chemistry to A DIFFICULT CASE. 267 manufactures, date from the efforts of Napoleon to make the Con- tinent independent of England. Thirty years ago Dr. Wayland entered his protest against the duties that discriminated in favor of home-made cutlery, since " not a thousandth part of the cutlery used is made here." Since then, by the invention of new machines, England is actually surpassed in the production of all but the finest varieties. An English Trade Circular of 1871 says: "Every Canadian season affords unmistakable evidence that some additional article in English hardware is being supplanted by the produce of the Northern States, and it is notorious how largely American wares are rivalling those of the mother country in other of our colonial possessions, as well as upon the Continent. The ascendancy of the Protectionist party in the States con- tinues to operate most favorably for the manufacturing interest there, and it is no wonder that, under such benignant auspices, the enterprise in this direction is swelling to colossal proportions." The Spectator (London) declares that the new manufactures in Bengal will in a few years be strong enough to hold their own against English competition, but that if at present, or so long as " coal is dear, and the habit of manufacture upon the large scale not yet formed" the removal of high duties would cause them first to languish and then to die out, as the native manufactures of India did half a century ago, § 260. (3) The complete organization of industry, and the accumulation of the capital that make it possible, are not effected in a day. It is a commonplace of the economists that the pro- ducts of industry are cheapened by extending the scale of pro- duction. Very often a manufacture already existing in the face i'f unrestricted foreign competition is carried on in a small, feeble and costly way for lack of assurance as to a large demand for it. But as soon as protection gives it that assurance the production is doubled, trebled, (|uadrupled, — and the price is pulled down to less than the previous selling rates instead of rising to the height of the duty imposed. Thus the selling price of American cottons fell after the tariff of 1842 imposed a heavy duty on English cottons, instead of rising. Something of the same sort in the hardware trade was evidenced by an 268 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. English circular of that year offering hardware at rates that. after paying the new duties would still be a little lower than they had been before. The same was the case with the price of starch, and doubtless with many other articles, which at once began to be made in large quantities instead of small. Mr. Greeley illustrates this by the case of a newspaper; double its circulation, and the publisher can afford a better paper at a less price. § 261. Much is often made by the opponents of protection of a case in which the adjustment of duties is exceedingly difficult. It may be desirable to protect both the production of the raw material and of the finished product of an industry. This occurs more frequently elsewhere than in our own country, but the case of the woollen and iron industries brings this within the number of our tariff problems. Our present tariff on wools and woollens was adjusted on a basis agreed to by a joint convention of wool- growers and wool-manufacturers, but it is complained, by a small minority of the latter, that it forces them to pay an exorbitant price for certain grades of foreign wool which they must have to mix with native wool for the production of some classes of goods ; and that the protection accorded them by duties on the goods is nullified by the duties on wool. The same complaint is made by some manufacturers who need a large supply of steel and iron, and who say that the steel that they can buy in the Ameri- can market is inferior, or the iron too dear. These complaints may or may not have foundation in fact, but the true remedy seems to be the higher protection of the manufactured goods, rather than the proposed " removal of duties from articles re- productively consumed." The difficulty will disappear as the production of these raw materials of the manufacture-is brought nearer perfection ; and no one that believes in protection could consistently seek its solution in the removal of duties. In conclusion, a formal answer to a feiv of the more common object ions may not be out of place. § 262. (1) "Protection discriminates against the consumer, in favor of the producer." AVho this consumer is, that is neither WHAT IS HIS INTEREST ? 269 a producer as well, nor directly dependent upon the prosperity of other people who are producers, is hard to say. His name and the mysteriousness of his character would seem to indicate that he is the Devil. But most likely he is an innocent ens logician, manufactured by the same process of abstraction by which the economists devised their economical man — " a covetous machine, inspired to action only by avarice and the desire of pro- gress." That is, they cut away or stole away (abstracted) the better half of the real being, and persisted in treating the remainiug human fragment (if we can call it human) as a living reality. "The consumer" always buys and never sells — has no soul and no patriotism — has no interest but the cheapness of commodities — belongs to none of the classes that make up the industrial state. His sole function in life is to devour the result of other men's labors, but he adds nothing himself to the sum of the utilities that make wealth. There may be a few excep- tional persons In the nation that deserve to be called mere con- sumers — fruges consumere nati — but that the national policy is to be for ever directed in accordance with the interests of an insig- nificant and useless class, is a large assumption. And that their interest lies in the direction of dependence upon the farther producer, instead of the nearer, we have seen reason enough to doubt. " The consumer" must be as short-sighted as he is hard to find, if he thinks it does. We have shown, by a review of all the classes of producers in a nation, that each is benefited by protection, and that the harmony of their interests is thus achieved. Is anything gained by regarding these people as not being what they are, in order to base upon a false assumption a false antithesis between the two aspects that every industrial unit in the nation presents, as each is at once producer and consumer ? The Apostle set aside this false antithesis when he conditioned eating upon working consumption upon production. § 263. (2) " But it is every one's interest — his money inte- rest, at least — to buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest he has access to." Suppose that his buying in the 270 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. cheapest market makes the difference of his having no dearest market to sell in, but only a cheapest market for that purpose also. Then manifestly his interest is found, if he have anything to sell, be it sweat of brow or of brain, be it wares or provisions, in the comparative rates of the two markets. Free trade simply forces him — forces all the producers in the country — to buy in the markets that now exist, be they good or bad, without giving them either right or power to create a new and a better market than auy that exists. The sole interest of a man is not in the spending the money he has now in his pocket, be it great or small. A larger interest for him is the getting more to replace it. And then the interest of those who have empty pockets, of the unemployed laborers of a country, runs still more strongly in the same direction. Terence could buy " as much for a shilling in Ireland as he can here for a dollar." Why then didn't he stay there ? Because he " couldn't get the shilling," and he can compass the dollar. It is not, then, anybody's interest to buy in the cheapest and sell in the clearest of existing markets, if by that operation he leaves himself, in the long run, without much or anything to buy with. Least of all is it the interest of a nation, which has the power to create for itself markets in which the relative cheapness and dearness is really in favor of all classes of buyers and sellers. § 264. (3) " Every country has its own natural advantages, from which Providence meant the rest to derive benefit. Each country should do the things that are easiest. Free trade proposes that they shall do so — Protection that they shall not. It is, therefore, a setting aside the course of nature; it is intro- ducing an unnatural system of exclusion." Every country has its own natural advantages, from which Providence evidently meant its own people to derive benefit. To that end Providence itself gives a certain measure of natu- ral protection in the cost of transportation, &c. "Were all the international relations of the people in a natural state, that natu- ral protection would possibly be quite sufficient. But the purely NATURAL ADVANTAGES. 271 artificial status of those relations, produced by an unnatural national economy of some of them, deprives others, the newer and weaker countries, of the opportunities of natural growth and development. It is the aim of protection merely to remove the obstacles to natural growth. This natural growth is achieved in the equilibrium of the industries. If one wealthy nation has destroyed that at home, has impoverished her agriculture by driving out of that channel the mass of the population, and is thereby forced to find work for them in manufacturing goods for foreign countries, and food for them in the unequal exchange of those goods for wheat and corn, all her finaucial power is at once exerted in the direction of destroying or hindering the growth of the equilibrium of the industries elsewhere. That she may manufacture for the rest of the world, the rest of the world must confine itself to raising food and raw materials for her. Is it " natural " that any nation should keep its farms on one continent and its workshops on another ? Is it " natural" that cotton, on its way from the grower to the wearer, should go half-way round the globe and back again ? Is it " natural " that a large part of the race should be employed in carrying bulky articles — raw materials and coarse goods — from some countries to others in the same climate and of the same general capacity'' Is it "natural" that a country with millions of tons of iron on the surface of her soil, and square miles of good coal not far below it, and most of her labor running to waste for lack of employment, should send for rail- road iron thousands upon thousands of miles ? (See § 297.) Is it not a most unnatural and artificial system? Or is there no test of what is " natural " in this connection, except present cheapness in money price? Protection is natural resistance to an unnatural state of things. If to the superficial eye it wear the appearance of artificiality, it shares in the reproach of many a just war, which, although defensive in reality, wore the appearance of being offensive. 272 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. § 265. (4) " Protection can change the direction of capital, but does not add to its amount or efficiency. It can only divert it from more to less remunerative channels, without in the least adding to its power to employ and fertilize labor, or increase the national wealth." This argument has been partly refuted in the exhibition of the effects of a varied industry upon labor. Its chief author, Adam Smith, gives us its refutation in another direction, when he calls attention to the greater rapidity of movement of a capi- tal employed in a home manufacture than a foreign trade, a con- sideration that has great weight when a country of limited capi- tal is under discussion. We have also seen that the capital that is wastefully and feebly employed in a native manufacture under free trade, becomes far more efficient when a protective duty gives it a larger market. Far less than double capital will do quadruple the work, when the demand is quadrupled. But the chief answer is that capital grows steadily under a nationalist policy, and declines as steadily in its absence. For capital grows as the power of association is increased, and the social circulation is accelerated ; declines with the decline of either. Men can save only when they have plenty of work, and that work is remunerative. A nation that leaves its labor largely unemployed is unable to make those accumulations of the results of past labor that we call capital. A nation that secures its peo- ple as much and as varied industry of a productive and re- munerative kind as the case permits, is on the road to wealth. In the latter case the results of labor are more evenly distributed than in the former; they are represented by the houses owned by well-paid workmen ; the accounts kept at the saving's banks; the possession of better furniture; the better education of the children. In the former the gains effected gather into the possession of a few men of great fortune ; they make a greater display, but the mass of the population are in penury. Even if this objection were true in the sense in which it is meant, the advantage of protection would be great. To direct a part of the capital out of the channels in which alone it would " PROTECTION DOES NOT PROTECT." 273 earn a return under free trade, — the channels of money-lend- ing land speculation, transportation and agriculture — would prove a great gain to all classes, by increasing the rapidity of commerce at home, by diversifying industry, and adding to the mutual helpfulness and interdependence of the people. For a new country, in the present state of the world's industry, the question is not between this manufacture and that; not between " manufactures suited to the character of the country, and there- fore remunerative," and others that " must be carried on at a loss." It is substantially between agriculture associated only with a few of the rudest industries that supply its direct wants, and the equilibrium of the industries, in which manufactures hold their due place. Under all these smooth sayings lies this harsh alternative, which is carefully hid away from the popular Bight by round words. §266. (5) "Protection does not protect." This epigram bears two senses : 1. " Production does not increase prices, and, therefore, does not stimulate home production. Look," we are told, ; ' at its effect on copper. A heavy duty was imposed, and the effect was that the article reached figures so low that several mines had to stop, and its price at home is more governed by the prices that it brings in the foreign market than ever before." This is quite true, and yet the aim of the protective duty was accomplished. The American producer was secured control of the home market; if he went into over-production he made ;i mistake from which no national policy or legislation could Bave him. That he began to export pig copper, and thus to make himself dependent upon the foreign market, is not the fault of the tariff. He merely repeated what has been pointed out as the great mistake made by the farming interest. Mean- time, what becomes of the theory that protective duties add ju7 the growth of wheat rose from 5.4 to 6.8 bushels per head of the people, so that she feeds all her people, and has food to spare, though her population is nearly three times as dense as that of Pennsylvania. Between ISoO and 1856 the value of her exports increased 131 per cent., though the population had not increased five per cent. The increase in the value of British exports for the same period was 120 per cent.; and the amount of theton, 1873. § 291. Two of England's dependencies — Ireland and India — ■ have had no discretion as to the direction of their economic policy, — no power to set up barriers against the beneficencies of free trade. Both of them have been, throughout the period of their relation to her, relatively inferior in capital and skill, and both have illustrated the result of free competition between nations so situated. Ireland possesses many natural advantages, but labors under the absence of others. Acre for acre her soil is better than that of England, but her immense rainfall — in some places in the west it rains two hundred days in the year — renders grain-farm- ing gambling. Since the failure of the potato crop, she has been 310 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. chiefly dependent upon green crops and dairy farming, and she is unsurpassed in both. She has mines of gold, silver, and iron, but very few of coal ; a great geological convulsion seems to have stripped her of her coal measures, paring the top from the island and leaving bare the vast limestone plain, intersected with peat bogs, which forms its centre. But English coal can be put down on her seaboard as cheaply as in the south of Eng- land ; more cheaply than in France. Her vast area of fine pas- ture land and her peculiar climate, render the wool of her sheep exceptionally fine, and therefore for centuries back in great de- mand to mix with the coarse wools on the Continent. But her wool is not woven and spun at home ; she exports it together with large quantities of food. Her Celtic people are of the same blood with the French across the Channel, and possess the same capa- city for the development of fine taste, and the artistic feeling for form and color; but these lie undeveloped while they remain at home. The Irishman only flourishes after being transplanted from his native soil, although he feels for that soil the most pas- sionate attachment. His qualities as a workman, which have been so abundantly useful in our country, lie dormant at home. § 292. The spirit in which the English government and people used to deal with Irish industry finds its most striking illustration in the suppression of the woollen manufacture at the close of the seventeenth century. The manufacture of woollens and linens began very early; under Henry VIII. the importa- tion of Irish woollen thread was prohibited. Under Charles I. Went worth used all his tyrannical energies to suppress the woollen manufacture, and promote that of linen. The over- throw of the King and his party left the Irish free to spin and weave what they would, and not till after the Revolution of 1688 did the complaints of the English manufacturers induce the government to restrict them from producing woollens for the supply of the home market. The English House of Lords (1698) took the initiative, and begged the King to take measures to confine the Irish to the linen trade, as the rapid growth of their woollen trade was drawing English spinners and weavers IRISH WOOLLEN INDUSTRY STRANGLED. 311 to Ireland. The House of Commons followed, and the King promised to do what was desired. The Irish Parliament was in no sense a body that represented the nation ; they imposed a prohibitory duty on the export of Irish woollens, while the English Parliament prohibited their export save from six Irish to six English ports. Irish industry received a shock from which it never recovered, and even English industry felt the recoil. The wool-workers flocked over into England, and overstocked the labor market, or by competing for the trade, cut down the profits. Others took their skill and industry to the Continent, and contributed to the improvement of the foreign factories. A great part of the people were thrown out of employment, or thrown back upon farming, and the era of rack-rents began. " Upon the determination of all leases made before 1690," says Dean Swift, " a gentleman thinks he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has only doubled his rent roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent — leases granted but for a term of years — tenants tied down to hard conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the land they occupy to the best advantage by the certainty they have of the rent being raised, on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the. improvements they shall make." The value of Ireland as a customer for English goods was very greatly diminished ; where once they had bought large quantities of the better wares, they now took only the coarser, and in small amounts. Well might Swift, with savage wit, refuse to respond to the toast, " Ireland's Prosperity." on the ground that he " never drunk to memories." " Ireland," he wrote in 1727, " is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of, either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of exporting their native commodities and manufactures wherever they pleased, except to countries at war with their own prince or state ; yet this privilege, by the superiority of mere power, is denied us in the must momentous parts of com- merce." With every generation her trade declined, except that in linen, conducted chiefly by the Scotch and English colonists in the three north-eastern counties, where the streams are so 312 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. richly charged with natural chlorides that they will bleach without the addition of chemicals. Even this was envied ; in 17S5 Manchester sent up a petition with 117,000 signatures, asking the prohibition of Irish linens. The implied pledge made to foster the Irish linen trade was never kept; bounties were given to English and Scotch producers only. But the Irish maker held his own, and the annual value of Irish linen is now half that of the rental of the kingdom. § 293. This act was but the worst of many conceived in the same spirit. The export of cattle to England in 1663 was pro- hibited in order to protect the English breeder. The manufac- ture of glass was put down in the same way as that of woollens. " The easiness of the Irish labor market and the cheapness of provisions still giving us the advantage, even though we had to import our materials, we next made a dash at the silk business, but the silk manufacturer proved as pitiless as the woolstapler. The cotton manufacturer, the sugar refiner, the soap and caudle maker (who especially dreaded the abundance of our kelp), and any other trade or interest that thought it worth its while to pe- tition was received by Parliament with the same cordiality, until the most searching scrutiuy failed to detect a single vent for the hated industry of Ireland to respire" (Lord Dufferiu). The country was •forbidden to trade with the East, with the Mediter- ranean, with the Colonies. Not till the rising of the Irish Volunteers in 1778, and the consecpuent concession of the independence of the Irish Parlia- ment in 1783, was the weaker island treated as possessed of any industrial rights that the stronger was bound to respect. From that period till the Union of 1801, Ireland had control of her own industrial policy, and one of the first uses that she made of it was to impose a duty upon the importation of certain English goods which it was felt could be made as well at home. Those eighteen years were a time of rapid industrial growth; Irish manufactures began to show themselves. " There is not a nation on the habitable globe," wrote Lord Clare in 1798, " which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agricul- THE INFAMOUS UNION. 313 ture and manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period." But one of the provisions of the infamous compact which terminated the country's legislative independence, was the gradual removal of these duties. Those on cotton goods were to be removed between 1808 and 1821 ; those on woollens by the latter date; that on cotton yarn in 1810. As the pro- cess went on, the Irish factories closed with the same beautiful regularity. The protected silk, flannel, stocking, blanket and calico manufactures of Ireland are now extinct. By 1840 the woollen manufacturers of Dublin had fallen off from ninety-one to twelve ; their workmen from nearly 5000 to about GOO ; wool- combing and carpet-weaving was almost gone. Six thousand weavers and combers in Cork were reduced to 478 by 1834. Once again the people were thrown back upon the land ; the merciless competition of British capital was as effective as the merciless legislation of the English Parliament; English Free Trade undersold Irish manufactures out of existence, and reduced the Irish people to the uniformity of a single employ- ment. The only field of enterprise left was competition for the possession of a few acres, as the last refuge from starvation. " Some well-meant but vain attempts have been made from time to time to promote manufactures in the country, in the form of what is called an Irish manufacture movement, that is, an agita- tion tn induce a general undertaking or resolution to use articles of Irish manufacture rather than English, without reference to their relative quality or cheapness" (J. N. Murphy). But in vain ; because the people had no power to "give effect to their judgment respecting their own interests," all attempts at such cert being ineffectual, "unless it receives the sanction and validity of a law" (Mill). "It is well known that almost all the manufactured articles used in Ireland, save linen, are British or foreign products. There are British and French millinery and silks; British, French, Danish and Hungarian gloves; English soap, candles, ironmongery, hardware and glass; in fact, almost everything in use by rich and poor — all imported and paid for by Irish raw agricultural product" 314 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. (Murphy). England has 740 occupations relating to trade, com- merce and manufacture; little Scotland 501; Ireland only 261. § 294. " Some human agency must be accountable," says Lord Dufferin, " for the perennial desolation of a lovely and fertile island, watered by the fairest streams, caressed by a clem- ent atmosphere, held in the embraces of a sea whose affluence fills the noblest harbors of the world, and inhabited by a race — valiant, generous, tender — gifted beyond measure with the power of physical endurance, and graced with the liveliest intel- ligence." Many are the solutions ! 1. "The Irish are an idle, thriftless race," says prejudice. Their record in the colonies and in America, as in England itself, disproves the slander. " We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness," says Swift, " because we seldom find them employed ; but then we don't consider that they have nothing to do." "They are priest-ridden, ig- norant Catholics," says bigotry. They bring their religion with them to new fields of labor, but it does not prevent their pros- pering. They are of the same creed as the industrious and prosperous Belgians; of the same race and creed as the French. " They are turbulent; the country is so disturbed by popular out- rages, that capital shrinks from Ireland as a field of investment," say the lovers of peace and quiet. It is admitted that Ireland is disturbed because of the poverty and misery of the people. It is a miserable circle, if the effects of their misery are such as to prevent the application of the remedy. Is not the effect put for the cause here ? 2. " The misery of Ireland arises from the excess of her population," say the old-fashioned economists. Between the Union and the Famine (§ 66) the rate of increase of popula- tion in Ireland was less than in England ; since that date there has been a decrease of one-third through emigration, without any corresponding improvement in the condition of the people. Although England consumes over fifty million bushels of grain in the manufacture of liquor, she manages to feed, in ordinary years, two thirds of her population or fourteen and a half mil- WHY IS IRELAND POOR? 815 lion people — taking the census of 1868 — on the produce of twenty-five and a half million acres of arable land. Belgium on six and a half million acres feeds nearly five million people. Ireland with fifteen and a half million acres of better land than cither England or Belgium can show, is overpopulated with a people that number something over five and a half million souls! " But since the famine and emigration brought down the numbers, things are much better in Ireland. Mr. Disraeli, you know, says that the ; famine did more for Ireland than a long succession of statesmen had been able to do.' ' The fam- ine and emigration did reduce the population from something like eight millions to the present figures, a decline of 32 per cent. But the best judges pronounce that this reduction has effected no material improvement in the condition of the peo- ple, which is improving only where the farmerand the artisan are in neighborhood, and where the farmer sells his crop to his neighbors, i. c, in the three or four north-eastern counties. Every- where else, the Irishman at home is " selling the hide for six- pence and buying back the tail for a shilling." " The dispropor- tion of the opportunities of employment to population," as Lord Pufferin expresses it. is the real state of the case; not the dis- proportion of natural resources and land to the population. But this explanation confesses judgment against those who have control of the industries of Ireland. For the rapid and enor- mous multiplication of any people, if it outrun the development of their industrial resources, is a proof and a consequence of the wretchedness and poverty that first made them reckless and hopeless. It is the well-to-do workman, the one who has a social standing and prospects, that considers his ways. See \ 68, note. The only evidence we can find for the assertion of a rapid increase in the population is the fact that the Registrar-General reported nn enormous birth-rate in Ireland. Rut the official figures of the Irish -us show that this must have been balanced by a still more enormous death-rate, as indeed is highly probable ($ 71). Yet Mr. Mill gives from Quetelet a table of annual increase which puts the Irish rate far higher than that of England, and indeed the highest in Europe. 316 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. § 295. 3. " The misery of Ireland arises out of the wretched system of land tenure," say the new-fashioned economists, Mr. Thornton and his disciples; "her people are reduced to tenants at will, they are rack-rented ; they have no inducement to improve their land, because the better they make it, the higher the rents will go. They hide their savings from the landlords, and get two per cent, interest on them, instead of putting them into the land. They need security of tenure and compensation for unexhausted improvement. Till they get them, as Mr. Caird says, ' what the ground will yield from year to year, at the least cost of time, labor and money, is taken from it.' ' The inference is that the Irish landlords, and the middlemen to whom they let their properties, and who again sublet it to the farmers, have been the vampires who have destroyed Irish prosperity, and driven her people beyond the seas. But where the same land tenure has coexisted with manufactures the people have prospered ; and where the two have not been asso- ciated, the landlord has often been broken in fortune as well as the tenant. The commissioners sent out to relieve the sufferers by the famine, found in the Connaught poor-houses men of estate and family, who had served as the High Sheriffs of their counties. Oue-third the landlords of Ireland were swept away in the common ruin. A very large portion of the land of Ireland has changed hands in late years ; £25,000,000 worth in the ten years (1849-1859), during which the Encum- bered Estates' Court sat in Dublin. Of the estates thus sold, the ownership was often only nominal ; the landlord an unpaid pensioner on his own laud. And it is a mistake to suppose that rack-rents are necessarily high, except in relation to the means of the tenant. "The rents of Ireland are comparatively low. This, I believe, is generally admitted, though there are flagrant exceptions ; even a rent that is absolutely low, may be beyond the means of an indigent or unskilful tenant" (Lord Dufferiu.) They are in fact much lower than farmers with the command of a home market easily pay in other countries; much higher than the Irish farmer can often afford. THE IRISH LAND-MARKET. 817 After all, what is the charge brought against the Irish land- lords and their middlemen ? That they acted on the princi- ples of English Political Economy, and sold their commodity in the dearest market they could find. " The moral respon- sibility of accepting a competition rent is pretty much the same as that of profiting by the market rate of wages. If the first is frequently exorbitant, the latter is as often inadequate, and inadequate wages are as fatal to efficiency as a rack-rent is to production ; though each be the result of voluntary adjustment, it is the same abject misery and absence of an alternative which rule the rate of both. . . . The disproportion of the op- portunities of employment to population has resulted in univer- sal pressure and universal competition — competition in the labor market; .... competition in the land market only to be relieved by the application to more profitable occupations of so much of the productive energies of the nation as may be in excess of the requirements of a perfect agriculture How powerfully the development of manufactures in the North of Irelaird has contributed to the relief of the agricultural classes of Ulster, by giving the tenant farmer an opportunity of apprenticing some of his sons to business, .... and by enabling the cottier tenant to supplement his agricultural earn- ings with hand-loom weaving, and by a general alleviation of the pressure upon the land, I need not describe. Had Ireland only been allowed to develop the other innumera- ble resources at her command, as she has developed the single industry in which she was permitted to embark, the equilibrium between the land and the population dependent upon the land would never have been disturbed, nor would the relations between landlord and tenant have become a subject of anxiety" (Lord Dufferin). lint the new Irish Land Bill of Messrs. Gladstone and Fortescue seeks to put a limit to the competition for land by legal restriction, rather than to put an end to it by removing its cause — by creating and cherishing a varied industry. They did so with eyes fully open to the source of this unhappy com- petition. In the debate on the Bill in the House of Commons 318 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the line of argument adopted by the Government, according to The Spectator, was this : " Free contract implies free contract- ors ; however, partly from historical circumstances but chiefly from the absence of alternative employments, the poorer tenants of Ireland are not free ; at least half the adult population are compelled by the coerciSn of hunger to agree to any terms which will secure them the use of the soil. It is because they are not free that a penalty is affixed to capricious eviction, — that a court is to settle the terms on which leases must be granted, that even on the expiring of the lease, good-will is to revive like a plant out of the ground." On reading this, we are obliged to ask : Are there no resources at the command of statesmanship, by which these " alternative employments " could be called into existence, and the Irish problem solved without tampering with vested rights, and re- calling into existence that " system of limited, imperfect and half-developed rights, natural only to a low civilization," which all Europe has taken such trouble to be rid of. There is a re- source which has always been found fully equal to the occasion, but unfortunately it is called Protection. And from the most trusted leaders that the people of Catholic Ireland ever had, a demand for its establishment has been distinctly made. " What sort of legislation would follow the establishment of a separate Irish Parliament, if any legislation at all, might easily be anticipated, if it were not distinctly foreshadowed iu a tentative declaration of some Catholic clcrgymeu, drawn with great ability for its purpose, and assur- edly not put forward without the private sanction of higher authority than it claims. It is enough to say it is declared that Political Economy will not do for Ireland, that the Irish manufacturer cannot compete with the English, and that the natural energies of the Irish people must be developed — that is to say, properly speaking, repressed — by Protection and prohibition" — (Clifl'e Leslie (Land Syxtenm of Ireland, England and the Continent, pp. 35-6.) Mr. Leslie recognises the fact that the absenoe of manufactures is a chief source of Irish poverty and retrogression. However, he believes that Ireland is not a manufacturing country, be- cause her land tenure laws are so bad that the capitalist cannot secure Bites for factories, and he seeks to substantiate this reasoning by adducing some half dozen cases of hardship. The land tenure is the same in England as in Ireland; the same in Ulster as in Connaught. It was Ireland's "lack of capital." 319 the same in 1783—1801 as it is now, when no such difficulty as to the sites of factories was experienced. Did not the Gladstone ministry and their majority in Parliament " declare that Political Economy would not do for Ireland," when they resolved to set aside freedom of contract between landlord and tenant ? '• If Eng- lish landlords, millionaires and economists have an economical convic- tion, it is in favor of freedom of contract. Yet a house led by the greatest of living economists has abandoned it. . . . The liill does inter- fere directly with their claim to do as they like with their own Mr. Lowe, when taunted with his old economical arguments, acknow- ledged that the Bill was not intended to increase wealth, which is the ob- ject of Political Economy, but to save society'" (Spectator). § 296. (4) " Ireland is miserable, wretched, unprogressive •for lack of capital to undertake the industries that would give her people sufficient employment," says the practical man. Solomon anticipated him when he wrote, "The destruction of the poor is his poverty j" but of what use is it to tell the Irish people that the reason why they are so ill off is because they were not in the past able to lay by for the present, and therefore will not now be able to do so for the future ? " We frequently hear Irish aspirations after English capital ; and loud are the popular rejoicings when an Englishman settles in Ireland, with a few thousand pounds, to establish some branch of industry ; and these rejoicings are not so much for the example he sets, as for the capital he brings with him. We find, too, the English press occasionally warning the people of Ireland not to frighten away by their turbulence English capital, which, if not so deterred, would be devoted to the development of Ireland, instead of be- ing sent for employment to the antipodes. — a warning which im- plies that Ireland must look outside herself for the capital neces- sary to develop her resources. . . . Capital may be defined as past labor laid by to aid future. . . . The capital of Great Bri- tain and other civilized nations has grown from weak and scanty beginnings. . . . The capital, or saved labor of any country, must in the aggregate come from the labor of that country. It cannot come from any other source. Another country will not supply it. Capital is not parted with unless in exchange for an equivalent. The more the labor of a country is productively 320 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. employed, the larger will be the amount of its saved labor. The greater the activity of industry, the energy of production, the process of perpetual consumption and reproduction, the greater will be the capital created within the country" (J. N. Murphy). But even savings are not capital unless they are reproductively employed in the country itself; and the productive classes of Ireland save large sums of money, for whose investment there is absolutely no opening in Ireland. An average of £1(3,000,000 is deposited with the Irish banks at 1J per cent, interest, and is invested in the London money market by the bankers. And the amount of these savings would be very much greater, were it not for the vast number of the unemployed and unproductive class who live off the national income. These are the two ex- tremes of Irish society, — the landlords who draw incomes from Irish estates and spend them in Paris or Naples, instead of de- voting themselves, as captains of industry, to the development and improvement of their estates ; the great host of beggars, paupers and dependent persons, who find nothing to do, and live in idleness off the the earnings of others, some of them in- side, but most of them outside the workhouse. Even Lord Dufferin joins in this talk about Ireland's need of capital: — " Let capital overflow her soil, and though her superficial area remain the same, the stimulus to her powers of production would be equivalent to an accession of territory sufficient to support thousands in affluence, where at present hundreds find a difficulty in extracting a bare subsistence." Ireland has, and under any free trade regime would have, to compete with the industrial skill and the division of labor which has been the slow acquisition of centuries of English history. Irish labor is dear, as all unskilled labor is. As her people say, " their fingers are all thumbs" at manufacturing, and Lord Dufferin himself tells us that "even the tra- ditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude." The nascent industries of Ireland would be " strangled in their cradle," unless the new capitalists had — as the Australian expressed it — "a pretty strong back" to bear up against the sort of competition that Manchester and Bradford, Sheffield and Birmingham would bring to bear upon them. § 297. What will England do for Ireland ? Almost anything except protect her industry or repeal the Union and concede the " Home Rule" that would enable her to protect herself. Every- thing, that is, but the one thing that will be of permanent use. JUDGE BYLES ON RESTITUTION. 321 She will eveu interfere with the rights of property, and put the competition of the land market under restraint. But she will suffer no restraints upon the market for cottons, woollens, hard- ware, soap, candles and glass; its competitions are something unspeakably sacred, on which none may lay irreverent hands. And then, is not British prosperity bound up with the doctrine that men have the right to buy in the cheapest aud sell in the dearest market, and do what they will with their own, — provided it is not land in Ireland ? Only one English voice is raised in protest : " The destruction of Irish industry by the ancient English policy is not only a case for repentance, but for restitu- tion, or at least compensation. Like other sinners, we are very willing to confess that we have done wrong; ready even to promise that we will do so no more. But a proposal that we should give any Irish industry, or even any English industry on Irish ground, a partial and temporary advantage, so as to place Ireland, as nearly as we can, in the same state as if she had al- ways been fairly treated, as an integral part of the empire — a proposal to make up for past delinquencies and really restore in- dustry to its natural channels — I say such a proposal, just and natural as it is, would at present be received in England with derision." ... If this were done " England's gain in the re- sult cannot be calculated. But she will be no loser even in the process. The wealth that native manufactures will at once pour into Ireland's lap will not be abstracted from the United King- dom, but created in Ireland" (Judge Byles). See Sophisms nf Free Trade ; Chap. XVI. : " Free Trade for Ireland." Also Lord Dufferin's Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ireland; and Mr. J. N. Murphy's Ireland — Industrial, Political and Social. § 298. India was a manufacturing country when English merchants first began to establish their factories or trading sta- tions along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Down to quite a recent period a great trade in the fine cotton goods of India — "so fine that you can hardly feel them with your hand" — was carried on. " On the coast of Coromandel and in the Province of Bengal, when at some distance from a high-road or principal 21 322 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman and child is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At pres- ent much the greater part of whole provinces are employed in this single manufacture," whose process " includes no less than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants of Indostan " (Col. Orme, 1805). The manufacture was very ancient : "the weaver of Dacca on his clumsy loom produced in the days of the Roman empire that ' woven wind,' the transparent Indian muslin, — the human gossamer, of which a whole dress will pass through a finger ring. Any other nation than our own, I sup- pose, would have cherished the manufacture of a fabric, the most perfect probably in the whole world, and certainly the most ancient that can be specifically identified : had it fallen naturally into disuse, would have held a little state money well spent to preserve it. Not so we English. We have well-nigh annihilated the cottou manufacture of India. Dacca is in great measure desolate; the population, from 300.000 has fallen to 60 or 70,000; its most delicate muslins are almost things of the past. We imposed prohibitory duties on the import of Indian manufactures into this country. We imported our own at. nomi- nal duties into India. The slave-grown cotton of America, steam-woven into Manchester cheap-and-nasties, displaced on their native soil the far more durable but more costly products of the Indian loom. ..." See J. M. Ludlow's British India, its Races and its History. Two vols. Cambridge, 1858. Also, his Thoughts on the Policy of the Crown toward India. London, 1859; and Chapman's Cotton and Commerce of India. England brought India juster and cheaper government, an era of peace, lighter taxes and improved methods of manage- ment. But under the Christian rule of Britain the industry of the country has been blighted, and ' ; the manufactures of India were, it may be said completely ruined by a general lowering of import duties [in 1813] on articles the produce or manu- facture of Great Britain, without any reciprocal advantages beim; given to Indian produce or manufactures when brought home. Next, inasmuch as the sale of opium, — a government THE IDLENESS OF INDIA. 323 monopoly in Bengal and Behar — was greatly impeded by the competition of tree-grown opium from the native states of Malwa, prohibitory duties were imposed at all the Presiden- cies on" the latter, " and the native princes of Malwa were ac- tually induced to prohibit the cultivation of the poppy for British behoof, — being suitably bribed for thus ruining their own sub- jects " (Ludlow). By 1833 not a single piece of cloth was ex- ported from India, and for the ruin inflicted on its artisans Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, could find " no paral- lel in the annals of commerce." English writers tell of ; ' the enormous and undeniable falling off in the commercial activity of India; the decay of those flourishing marts with which the whole coast was once studded; . . . the contraction, and in great measure the ruin of trade; the neglect of public works ; the depreciation of agricultural produce ;" which last " is ob- served to be a marked feature of our rule. . . . The numerous local markets created by the existence of the native princes," and by the wide existence of a class that had other means of subsistence than farming, (' ocean transport, Hv United States and the British American Colonies had great advantages in their construction, and largely monopolized the business. S'-nce 185.5 American ship-building has declined on both aides <>f the bor- der, because steamships built of iron have taken their place, and for the construction of these the Clyde, the Mersey and Belfasl have exceptional advantages. We have had for years complete free trado in all the materi- 372 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. als, but the business does not resume its old proportions, though it might do so if we protected our commerce by heavy discriminating duties in favor of goods imported in American ships. As it is, our shipbuilding Las began to revive, and a line of ocean steamers, built of American iron in Ameri- can dockyards, is competing for the ocean carrying-trade. (3) On the decline in export trade, and the increase of importations, showing that we are more than ever dependent on the foreign producer. If, as Mr Wells admits, we produce vastly more and export less, it must be because our power to consume is vastly increased. And this, surely, is the final test of a nation's wealth, of its power over nature. Not that we are less able to export than we were, but that we are under less necessity to export, through the greater development of the home market. In fact we are competing with England for the markets of the world and even those of her colonies and dependencies, as never before. Another American Free Trader has come nearer the truth on this subject; Mr. Opdyke says that when a country has attained a certain density of population, it ceases to import manufactured goods, and to export raw materials, and begins to import raw materials and to export manufac- tured goods; and that "during the period of transition, the foreign commerce of a nation must gradually diminish." (±) That the increase per cent, in production is not as great as in former decades. Even if this were so, it is to be remembered (as The (London) Times well objects here), there was a larger amount to increase from, so that even an accel- erated rate of production might well appear less when thus estimated, and a steady rate of increase always must. When a child passes from its fifth to its tenth year, those five years are an increase of a hundred per cent; the next five are but fifty per cent. ; the next thirty-three, and so on. But when the growth of the national wealth during the period in question is taken in gross, and compared with that of the previous decades, it exhibits an accelerated rate of growth as compared with pre- vious decades. § 319. The census taken in 1870 gives us the means to form an approximate estimate of the .growth of the country during the previous decade under a Protectionist policy. In considering its statistics, we must remember (1) that they are confessedly very imperfect, and fall short of the actual facts, through the impcr- fectness of the census law, and most especially through the in- efficiency of many of the government's agents for the collection of facts. (2) That they refer to a period which witnessed a vast destruction of national wealth by civil war, and a vast diversion of popular energies from industrial to martial pursuits; Superintendent Walker sums up the natioual wealth, the true THE GROWTH OF A DECADE. 373 value of personal and real estate, at §30,068,518,507 in 1^70, while in 1SG0 it was 610,159,616,068 (including §3,000,000,000 of slave property), and in 1850, 87,135,780,218. That is to say (leaving out the slaves), to the something over thirteen bil- lions, which represented the entire accumulations of the nation in a quarter of a millennium, there were added nearly seventeen billions by the accumulations of one decade, while the accumu- lations of the previous decade were about nine billions. Mr. Walker thinks the increase is not so great as this, because (1) of the careless way in which the census of 18G0 was taken : and (2) the " in- flation of prices" in 1S70 through depreciation of the currency. The last reason for a deduction we utterly reject as unfounded, for reasons already given. The former (for which he deducts twenty or thirty per cen t applies still more forcibly to the census of 1850 as compared with 1860. As Mr.. Wells says, the increase in that decade was at most eighty, or per- haps only sixty-five per cent. The aggregate value of the farm lands (and of the implements and machinery used to till them) advanced from $6,891,163,238 to 89, 599, 682,290, while their area increased from 163 to 188 mil- lion acres. This, be it noted, includes those districts of the country where the value of real estate has deteriorated through the transition from slavery to freedom, and the imperfect adjust- ment of society to the new condition. Were other parts of the country to be taken by themselves, the results would be far more striking, and it would be seen in a multitude of cases that the in- crease in the value of the lands has far outrun the increase of area under cultivation, mainly through the development of a va- ried industry in the farmer's vicinity. The difference between different districts of the country in their greater or less approximation to that equilibrium ot the industries, through which alone the farmer obtains a fair price for his crops, makes it hard to fix the aggregate value of the crops. The Superintendent speaks of " such notorious facts as corn selling in New England at ninety cents a bushel, and burn- ing for fuel in Iowa; wheat selling at 81. 35 in New York, and for forty-five cents in Minnesota; beef bringing 87 a hundred on the hoof in the East, while cattle are slaughtered for their 374 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. hides in Texas." He estimates the annual value of farm pro- ducts at §2,447.538,658, and of the orchards and market gar- dens at one-fourth as much. Has the farmer suffered from the policy that has sought to bring him and the artisan into neighborhood, and to give him a steady market, a home market for his crop? Mr. WellS, sum- ming up the results reached in 1869, found that the value of our farm products in that year was nearly as great as that of all our products in 1860. The increase in their bulk had been ' great; that of their value still greater. The farm produce car- ried by our railroads had increased two hundred and twenty-five per cent, in bulk and three hundred and fifty per ceut. in market price. The unwisely rapid extension of Western settlement, and the immense growth of the farming class under the impulse given by the homestead and similar laws, aud by railroad grants, has indeed postponed the attainment of the equilibrium of our na- tional industries. But more than ever before for that very rea- son the Western farmer needs the Eastern market for his grain — a market that would be greatly diminished by the reduction of the class engaged in manufactures. Were our people driven to farming by the closing of our factories, the price of pork and grain in the Mississippi valley would be a problem for the calculus of infinitesimals. The East, indeed, especially New England, has gone too far in the transfer of industry from farming at home to the West, if not to the factory. Vermont raises wheat enough to feed her people thirty-seven days of the year; Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut, ten or eleven days; Massachusetts, to give them a breakfast, a dinner, and a sparing supper ; Rhode Island raises 782 bushels, and buys 3,000,000. This will be corrected as the West puts more money into manufacturing, and consumes the bulk of her crop at home; and agriculture will again assume its old proportions in the East, where plenty of good land lies idle, and is passed by in the eagerness for a home on the prairies. Reducing the census of 1870 aud that of 1860 to the same THE PROGRESS OF MANUFACTUBES. 375 basis of calculation, as to the admission or the omission of certain industries, the Superintendent finds the total reported production of our manufactures in I860 was $1,880, 801,670 ; in 1870, 3,924,958,000,— a gross gain of 108.12 per cent. Both statements, he believes, fall very far short of the actual facts, and his belief is fully confirmed by a comparison of the returns of Philadelphian manufactures in the census, with the facts reached by a more careful inquiry. The Superintendent again disputes the amount of increase by asserting a rise in prices of manufactured goods, such as would bring down the increase to fifty-two per cent. The materials consumed by our manufacturers, and of course purchased in large part from our other producing classes, were worth $555,123,822 in 1850; 81,031,005,092 in 1860; and $2,488,427,242 in 1870. The returns of the amount paid in wages by manufacturers are defective, because in the minor industries the masters are also workmen, and their earnings in the latter capacity are not reported. In 1850 the amount paid in wages was 8236,755,404 to 957,059 persons; in 1800,8378,878,966 to 1,311,240 persons; in 1870, 8775,584,343 to 2,053,966 persons. The gain of the nation has been the gain of the many, not of the few only. The deposits in the savings' banks of Massachusetts for instance were more than the aggregate dividends of her manufacturers, and investment is found for these savinsrs through the manufac- turers borrowing. Yet the best-paid workingmen made little or no use of these institutions. In Connecticut labor absorbs thirty-seven and seven-eighths millions of the gross profits of manufacture, leaving thirty-five and three-fourths millions to the capitalists of that state, to pay interest on capital, cover all risks and insurance, replace the wear of machinery, and pay all . incidental expenses And the farmer's gain of a home market has been the laborer's gain of more than the opportunity to turn farmer; for in a country where every one can get land, the manufacturer has to compete, not with the farmer's offer of wag.es, but with the attractions and advantages of the fanner's positiou. 376 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. § 320. We will now look at the progress of a few of the great staples of industry. Our make of iron fell from seven to five hundred thousand tons under the tariff of 1847. It rallied again under the stimu- lus of California gold, and up to the outbreak of the war vibrated between seven and nine hundred thousand tons. We passed the million in 186-4, fell back again nest year, and then passed it again and for ever, and reached nearly two millions in 1869. During the latter part of the decade, the world, as Mr. Greeley said, was "iron-hungry." The demand for it throughout the world was so great, especially through the extension of railways, that it surpassed the possible supply, and the price rose every- where. England had to import foreign ores to fill her contracts, as her own mines did not supply enough. Alarm was taken at the high profits of American iron men, and the duty was lowered in 1870, and again in 1872. The price did not fall, however, and the only effect of the reduction was to put some $15,000,000 into the pockets of English iron-men, which would otherwise have gone into the United States treasury. America was putting $350,000,000 a year into building new railroads and re-building old ones, which was too large an outlay of capital in that direction, and much of it was spent on roads which ought not to be built for many years to couie, and which could only help to still more increase and disperse our merely agricultural population, and put off the equilibrium of our in- dustries. x\t last the limit of that business was reached in the fall of 1873 and its panic. The iron-hunger was satiated for a while, and the tariff, even as mutilated in the' previous years, began to be of use again. The home production of iron had reached a point that made it amply sufficient to meet the re- duced demand. English producers were forced to relieve their home market of its glut in any possible direction, and but for the tariff, and the specific character of its duties, we might have had the glut of 1847 over again. When the census of 1870 was taken, the total annual value of American iron and manufactures of iron was $3:22,128,698; OUR IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRIES. 377 that of the materials employed $193,208,218. There were em- ployed in the manufacture 137,545 workmen, who received $73,027,976 in wages. The industry was distributed between 3726 establishments, which had in operation 3086 steam-en- gines and 80S water-wheels. The amount of ore mined that year was 3,395,718 tons; its value $13,204,138; the miners numbered 15,022 persons, and received $0.82S.022 in wages. That American methods of iron production have been greatly improved to the cheapening of the article, is admitted even by the English trade. Their Colliery Guardian says that " there can be no doubt that the development of native metallurgical industry has had the effect of edging English iron to some ex- tent out of markets in which it formerly had a controlling influ- ence So far from the American demand showing a ten- dency to revive since the panic, " it seems to be falling off even more and more." The record made by furnaces in Western Pennsylvania shows that in securing a maximum of production at a minimum of cost in this, as in nearly all departments of iron manufacture, the American producer is far ahead. § 321. The invention of processes of making steel cheaply and in large quantities, especially of the Bessemer process, has in our own days given that variety of iron a great importance. In 1864, the agents of some of our great railways went to Eng- land to see at what rate they could procure rails of Bessemer steel, and were told that they could not be furnished at less than 8150 in gold, delivered in England, or $390 in currency, put down in Philadelphia and duties paid. By a combination nf railroad men, an establishment for their production was built (the Liberty Works at Harrisburg), and at once English agents were canvassing the market, offering them at $130 (gold) a ton. Tlie manufacture maybe said to have fairly started by l v ii7 when the price was $160 a ton in currency, and by the time of the pnnic were one-fourth cheaper, and had sold as low as $102 50 in 1871. The manufacture showed with every year a steady increase in the control of the home market. The census of 1870 reports the value of our annual product 378 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. of steel at $9,609,986 (against $1,879,840 in 1860), the materi- als used as worth $5,166,003 ; the wages paid $1,651,132. The application of the Bessemer process in America has been very decidedly improved even during the few years of its adop- tion. After hearing the reading and discussion of a paper de- scribing the American methods, the President of the British Iron and Steel Institute declared that " America is going ahead I" It was then shown that Americans get very much more work out of the Bessemer apparatus than has been found possi- ble in England. In 1869 the best " cupola" that could be had would melt fourteen tons a day, but by American improvements made in three years, the meltiug of one hundred and five tons per half day was reached in 1872. Instead of the European average of twelve " blows" a day, Johnstown has reached a huudred and eighty blows a week. Such has been the history of an industry, which has owed its very existence to protection. Yet it is said that " in the most highly protected industries American talent has done least." An effort is making to reduce the duties on foreign steel used in making cutlery and edge tools, on the ground that American steel is not good enough. Some urge that in the absence of Swedish ores to mix with native, it is impossible to produce steel of sufficiently good quality in America. If that plea were true, then such steel ought not to be subjected to any duty, it being an article that cannot be produced at home. But in fact, as good steel is made in America as anywhere, and if the quality produced in any locality is not good enough, it is the fault of its producers. The Ironmonger (London) says, " We are running a great risk in Eugland of being beaten by America in the manufacture of axes, shovels, hoes and other implements of the kind. The Pittsburgh steel, both cast and rolled, is fully up to the mark of the best English : in fact to such a degree that it is not only supplanting our products, but in every shape of tool it is largely exported to the European continent. American bolts and hinges excel ours, and their medium cutlery of all kinds is cheaper and better than any manufactured here." At home American steel has been sup- planting the foreign in one branch of manufacture after another, and im- porters have found increasing difficulties in getting orders. Our axes and saws, the best in the world, were once made of foreign steel, because only the best would do. They are now made of the native steel, which has also been subjected to the severest comparative tests in drilling rocks at the Bergen Tunnel, the Hell (!ate excavations and elsewhere with thu same results in its favor. OUR STEEL AND COPPER INDUSTRIES. 370 § 322. Tn manufactures from steel — cutlery, locks, bolts, hinges, saws, axes, spades, shovels, agricultural machinery and the like — Americans have, by the application of labor-saving machinery, outstripped competition. In the finest varieties of cutlery, which as yet can only be annealed by hand, America cannot compete with P]ngland as yet, anymore than Sheffield can rival the sword- blades of Damascus, or Manchester can equal the hue muslins of Decca. Labor is too dear. But in lower grades of cutlery, and in saws and axes, Sheffield itself has had to go to school to its western rivals. American patterns are imported and imitated, and American machinery is introduced so far as the preju- dices of the English workmen will permit. A report to Parlia- ment, made in 1868, gives a confessedly imperfect list of Bir- mingham wares in which other countries were competing and largely replacing English goods in the marked of the world. In regard to twenty-seven classes the United States are named as competitors, — in many of these as the only competitors, and in not a few instances as having secured a monopoly of production. American makers are supplying Canada and other British colonies with hardware, Germany with reapers and farming in- struments, and even England itself with a large number of articles, especially with machine-shop tools. A dealer in these, visiting an English store in 18G9, and asking to see their latest novelties, was shown article after article of American manu- facture. He said he had seen all those. " Where do you keep shop ?" " In New York." " Then we have nothing new to show you." Our manufactures from steel in 1870 were worth in the aggre- gate $183,959,596. The materials used were worth §77,576,974. The wages paid to 112.280 workmen were $62,299,746. This includes some articles that are partly composed of iron or of brass, such as machinery, safes, scales and professional instruments. § 323. There is but a limited demand for cupper and copper- wares throughout the world. We have large mines of this mineral, but till 1869 we were large importers of it. Then •• the House of Representatives, by a vote of 110 to 55. passi-d the 380 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. bill to make copper dear, and prevent its introduction from abroad. . . They thought only of the handful of persons who own the mines ; they paid no regard to the interests of millions of consumers" (JV. Y. Evening Post). Protection did at once what it always does in the long run at least; the price of copper fell from 22 to 20& cents per pound, and its production rose to 25,000,000 pounds. Indeed, the copper producers repeated the mistake of our farmers. They had to export their surplus yield of copper, and became dependent upon the foreign market. The annual value of the copper, the copper-wares, and the coppersmithing in 1870 was $22,720,229 (against $13,093,612 in 1860) ; the materials, $1-4, 676,437 ; wages, paid to 7238 per- sons, $4,192,376. The effect of the legislation of 1869 has been gravely alleged, both in Congress and elsewhere, as a reason against protective legislation, because " it is impossible to foresee its effects." § 324. Our manufactures of textile goods have experienced the' same effects of the protective policy, — the improvement of methods, the improvement of quality, the development of native skill, and the reduction of prices. In a report upon this branch of manufacture made in 1873 to Her Majesty's government by one of the secretaries of the British Legation, it is said : " In every important branch of industry the American manufacturers seem to be ever gaining on their competitors of the Old World, by availing themselves to the utmost of every advantage of im- proved process of labor-saving machinery which American or other invention may offer. There can be little doubt that the celerity with which all such advantages are thought out and then introduced into general use is owing to the constant pressure of high rates of wages and the comparatively certain protection of capital invested in inventions. The great industries of America would probably compare favorably with the best organ- ized of the competing industries of Europe. The past history and present development of the textile industries is an earnest of a prolific future. Whether or not a reduced cost of living shall ever be attained, one cannot doubt that under sound conditions OUR COTTON AND WOOLLEN INDUSTRIES. 381 of production, American industry will not only supply its home market, but will also become a formidable competitor in foreign markets in many articles." The annual value of our textile manufactures — cottons, wool- lens, linens, carpets and worsted goods — was $o80,913,815 (against $199,228,256 in 1860) j the materials were worth $238,393,905. The wages of 243,731 persons, the majority women, were $75,628,743. The decade that closed in 1870 was a time of trial and de- pression for the cotton trade throughout the world. Our war cut off the chief source of supply of raw cotton for several years, and permanently raised the price. Linen goods were thus brought into competition with cotton in every market. The development of the manufacture and the investment of new capital were largely checked. Before the opening of the war the American cotton manufacture had already attained a large development, aud had made good its footing against foreign competition. The gain of 1842-7 had never been lost, because of the development of skill and capital invested in the manufacture in New England, and the natural protection furnished by vicinity to the cotton -fields. Our annual manufacture of cotton goods (including twists, yarns, &c.) was worth $177,503,687 in 1870 (against $117,872,- 441 in I860). The materials cost $111,976,726 (instead of $57,969,231 in 1860). In wages there were paid $39,003,383 to 135,703 workmen. For the reasons given, especially through the transfer of the slave to his rightful owner, himself to wit, and the consequent rise in price of the product of his labor, and because of the already great development of this industry, it has not grown as fast as some others. But the advance in the quality of manufactures, the improvement of methods, aud the increase in the production of higher grades have been very marked. And it is noteworthy that no country in the world consumes so large an amount of cotton goods in proportion to its population, our amount being nearly half the whole quantity woven by ling- land for herself and the rest of the world. § 325. Our woollen manufactures, and the production of native 382 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. wools, did not receive proper protection till well on in the decade, just as the wool-tariff of 1828 was enacted years after the adequate protection of our other great staples. The tariff of 1867 was designed to promote both the home production of wool and its improvement in quality, and also the manufacture of woollen goods. Under its operation the growth of wool has vastly in- creased and the farmer's market for its sale greatly improved. The number of our woollen manufactories and of the persons em- ployed in them were doubled during the decade ; the wages paid increased from 89,610,25-1 to 826.877,575 ; the wool consumed from 83,608,468 pounds to 172,078,919 pounds (of which only 17, oil, 824 was imported); the value of their products from 861,894,986 to $155,405,358. "All this," it may be said, " is at the expense of the con- sumer. He pays more for every article of wear, because the country is ambitious to manufacture more." " Woollens," says the A r . Y. Evening Post, "are now [1869] cheaper in gold than they were in 1860. There has been an average decline in prices of about thirteen per cent." It bases this conclusion upon a com- parative list of prices furnished by the two largest New York houses to Mr. D. A. Wells. Another free trade organ in Xew York, The Economist, says : " Such continued improvements in the manufacturing of woollen goods will soon place us beyond the reach of rivals, and cause our products to be imitated the world over, as our best and most saleable patterns are the result of American ingenuity both in coloring and style." A peculiarly excellent feature of the great growth of this in- dustry is its wide diffusion throughout all parts of the country. There are nearly five hundred woollen factories south of Mason and Dixon's line; over a thousand west of the Alleghenies, and twenty beyond the Rocky mountains. Minneapolis makes blan- kets for New York houses at seventy-five dollars a pair, and Cali- fornia boasts that she produces the finest in the world. § 326. The silk manufacture was one of the first attempted in America. The coronation robe of Charles II. was 'furnished from the colonies, and Queen Charlotte, in 1770, received and OUR SILK AND EARTHENWARE INDUSTRIES. 883 wore an American silk dress. Great hopes were inspired by the ononis multicaulis in 1828-37, but the panic, with which the period of these experiments closed, put an end to that at- tempt to produce native silk in large quantities. Under the protective duties imposed during the last decade, the manufac- ture has been doubled in value, and bids fair to become a lead- ing industry. The annual product for 1873 was worth $16,157.- 500 (against 86,607,771 in 1860), and gave employment to 10,- 651 persons (7208 of them women and girls), who received 83.722,988 in wages. The industry is chiefly located around New York city, and in the two adjacent states, and the raw ma- terial is all of it imported. But good silks and threads are made from the refuse of the Chinese manufactories, after it has been passed through a Yankee machine that disentangles and straight- ens it. The manufacture of broad silks began under the protection of the new tariff, — as there was but one establishment so employed in 1860, — and as their production requires skill and experience, the first that were made were of inferior quality, because of their defective finish. American silks seemed likely to become a by- word ; they were too gummy, and therefore cut into strips even while they hung unworn ; dust gathered on them aud stuck to them. But in the last few years the improvement in these fabrics has been so great, that should it continue, they will soon rival those of Lyons in quality, while their cheapness will briug them within the reach of all classes, and make silks as demo- cratic as cottons. In one case silks made in Philadelphia were seized in New York by custom-house experts as being certainly smuggled. § 321. The manufacture of stone and earthenware has been nearly tripled since 1860. The annual value of its products was 86,045,536 in 1870 (against less than two and a half million in 1860 ; in wages 82.247,173 were divided among 6116 workmen. Here also labor-saving machinery has been substituted in Ameri- can manufactories for the traditional methods depicted on the palaces of the Pharaohs and still universally employed in Eu- 884 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. rope; and we have had visitors from England "taking notes" as to the methods of applying steam-power to this manufacture. § 328. We have given but specimens of the progress of our manufactures under protection. We might say ten times as much of the same sort, out of the third volume of the Ninth Census. " Sooner or later," says our free trade friend, The Spectator, " we have no doubt at all that America, with her vast natural resources, both in fuel and land, will far outrun us in the race of commercial and manufacturing enterprise. That is a mere question of time, though there is apparently no such reason for apprehending any very formidable rivalry in Europe." § 329. We are soon to provoke a comparison of these results with the industries of the Old World, and a very eminent British statesman, recently a visitor among us, proposes that it shall be made the occasion of such a display of qualities and prices as shall convince " the American consumer " of the su- perior advantages of free trade. The poor success of England in previous international displays of this sort was supposed to have made her somewhat chary of courting such comparisons (§343), but it seems that the present case is so circumstanced as to furnish sufficient motives for another attempt. Of course the comparison will be. between the products of each country and those of the rest of the world, and — for reasons given in the next chapter — we fear that neither England nor America will stand as high as they ought. But had this exhibition of results come before instead of since the war, we should have had com- paratively very little to offer in comparison. But if it is re- membered under what difficulties our producers have labored, and within how short a period many of our industries have at- tained a respectable magnitude, no American will have need to blush for his country, in view of the evidence given of her in- dustrial vitality and vastnes's of resource. THE ECONOMY OF INTELLIGENCE AND EDUCATION. 385 CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. The Science and Economy of Intelligence and Education. § 330. In presenting what have been found to be wise methods of national economy, and in attempting the solution of economic problems, it has agaiu and again been pointed out in the fore- going chapters, that the education and the consequent high in- telligence of the people is essential to the prosperity of a nation. We have seen that an agriculture that is not directed by scien- tific knowledge is wasteful in itself, and will at last be unable to meet — much less to outrun — the ever-increasing demand of tbe people upon its productiveness. Experience also shows that, so long as farming is conducted in an unintelligent way, it will never be anything but a distasteful drudgery, which will drive the best young men of the agricultural class into the cities, and to occupations that employ mind as well as muscle. "We have seen that the notion that labor will always leave an ill- rewarded employment for one that is better paid, is disproved by facts. The uneducated farm-hand of Dorsetshire, with his mental horizon no larger than the visible one, shrinks from pushing out into an unknown and untried world to seek his for- tune, and puts up with ten shillings a week, when a few shires farther north he might earn a competence. The Flemish bocr works for a half or a third what he might get a dozen miles to the south, because he has never had the chance to pick up the small amount of French that would fit him to labor in Brabant or Brussels. We have also seen that improvements in methods and in machinery, by discontinuing the employment of some class of workmen, inflicts great injury upon that class if its average of intelligence be low, aud its power of adapting itself to a new set of conditions be slight. And wc have also seen that all these 25 386 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. improvements make a larger demand upon the workman's intel- lectual gifts, and can only be carried out to the best advantage where these receive a fair measure of cultivation. It has also been seen that the condition of the working classes is capable of very great improvement, through the adoption of certain methods of economy — labor-banks, cooperative societies, building societies, and the like — which demand the diffusion of a considerable measure of knowledge if they are to be well sup- ported and wisely managed. We have seen that the sanatory condition of a community is capable of very great improvement only when the conditions of life and health are understood by the people. And upon this, as has been said, depends in large measure the industrial capa- city and efficiency of the people. English statists estimate that every death represents one hundred and sixty-six days' illness, during which the sufferer, if a working man, is thrown upon the charity of his friends or of society for his support. The conse- quent total to be subtracted from the productive and accumula- lative powers of the people is immense. We have seen that the protective policy is vindicated by its friends and conceded by its enemies to be a measure of national education, whereby special advantages are given to the home producer until he has learnt the habit of manufacture and acquired skill in its methods. A natural accompaniment of such a policy is an active national effort for the technical training of those who are competent to receive it. § 331. These and other considerations like them lead us to see the importance of education as a part of a wise national economy. The small outlay of the national resources that is necessary to train every citizen to the highest rank in industrial efficiency that is possible to him, is well expended in the purchase of a larger gain to all classes. It is one of those wise sacrifices of present for future advantage, which distinguish progressive societies from those that are stagnant. But a national education can never be a merely industrial education, — can never be even first and chiefly industrial. The NATIONAL EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY. 387 industrial state is but one aspect of the national life, and an edu- cation that could contemplate only its ends would come l'ar short of the training required to fit the citizen for his place in the body politic. It would also defeat its own ends by leaving the man undisciplined in many duties and in right methods of thought, that very greatly influence his industrial worth. On the other hand, there is especial need to call attention to this part of national education, since the conception of the nation as an indus- trial state is quite a modern one. Napoleon among the men of practice and Fichte among the thinkers — closely followed by Saint Simon — were the first to recognise its truth. And as in earlier theories of national life, so in earlier methods of educa- tion, other things were regarded and this neglected. § 332. A National Education, limited in its range indeed, but broad enough to embrace the whole scope of the nation's voca- tion, was enjoined upon the Jews by the Mosaic legislation. Especially of the moral law it is said : These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart [i. e., thine un- derstanding, thy thoughts;] and thou shalt press them upon thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou best down, and when thou risest up." The later Jews, at a time when the industrial life of their nation had attained a larger development, required that every father, however wealthy, should teach his son a trade, so as to provide against all contingencies of fortune and enable him to avoid becoming either a pauper or a thief. In Greece we have two great methods of national education standing in very sharp contrast. The Spartan was a system of military discipline, of stern and unnatural restraint. It was the drill of an armed garrison who gave up their individual tastes, ideas and impulses, and submitted to an all-constraining lav.-. The death of the three hundred at Thermopylae, " in obedience to the laws," was the crown and the flower of the life of the city, which produced no great men of letters, and indeed few great men of any sort. The Athenian method was a full and free development of human nature, especially on its intellectual 388 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. and aesthetic sides. In Athens, more than in any other land or time, we have the results of the extension of the finest culture of mind to the whole free population of a state. Of formal teaching and learning there was comparatively little, except the memorizing of Homer and other poets in the schools ; the new science of mathematics seems to have taken its name from the fact that it was the first hranch of knowledge that was not picked up — like reading, writing, grammar, politics, the arts — from one's fellow-citizens, from being at the theatre, or from the daily con- templation of great works of art, the sight of inscriptions, &c. ; but needed to be learned by direct and formal application. Yet their intellectual education was perfect ; no accumulations of knowledge or improvement of methods have enabled any people or class to attain a higher or more balanced cultivation of the mind. But they lacked moral balance and self-restraint, and so became the victims of their own cleverness, as Socrates sav/ and told them. If the New Testament teaching be true, both these opposite methods were right and capable of being united, because there is in man a higher or spiritual nature which education is to awaken into life and call forth into activity and vigor ; while there is also in man a lower or animal nature, by which he must not be governed, and which must be brought under restraint and discipline. § 333. The Roman inherited the Greek method of education, but never gave such prominence to it. The Greek governments were systems of education ; Roman education was a branch of the civil service. The great university of Alexandria, the Muitseion, was not only cherished by the new rulers, but repro- duced in other chief cities, especially by the Athenaeum at Rome. In lesser places, what we might call colleges, professional chairs and schools were founded, and considerable zeal displayed for the education of the higher class of citizens. But the learn- ing chiefly cultivated had no relation to the practical life of the times. Much time, fur instance, was given to rhetoric and oratory, although all real use of these had disappeared with the cessation of free popular assemblies. MEDIEVAL EDUCATION. 389 In the Byzantine Empire this Imperial system was perpetuated down to the capture of Constantinople without the slightest change even in the text-hooks. Except during the brief period when Julian forbade the Christians to use the old classics, no Christian literature of any sort was admitted to the schools of the Eastern Empire, and the use of the Scriptures in such a place would have been deemed sacrilege. In the west, Karl the Great sought to trace out and revive the old imperial foundations throughout his empire, and the monastic schools at Fulda, Aachen, St. Gall, and other places, were prob- ably the perpetuation of his efforts. More important still was the schola- pahtina, or court school, which he made an adjunct of his household, and which became a tradition of the royal court of France. It was afterwards transplanted to the new capital, Paris, and it enjoyed the service of many able men. such as John Scotus Erigena, who came over from Ireland, then the land of Christian schools and Christian learning. Karl adopted as the basis of instruction in the higher schools the system or classifica- tion of Boethius, in which all learning was divided into the seven liberal arts, of which three (the trieium) were taught in the higher classes, and four (the quadrioium) in the lower. Hence the phrase "Master of Arts." In the lower schools reading, writing, arithmetic and singing were taught. This classification lasted till the revival of classical learning. Out of the court school, or the ecclesiastical school which succeeded it, grew the University of Paris, the mother and mistress of all European universities, except Bologna and Oxford, whose possession made France in the earlier Middle Ages the Kingdom of the University, as Italy was the Kingdom of the Holy See, and Germany that of the Holy Roman Empire. The rise of the University was so very gradual that the steps can hardly be traced, but at the time when Abadard was drawing tens of thousands of pupils to Paris to hear him expound the scholastic philosophy, and partly perhaps through his grea( suc- cess, the University had taken a distinct shape, which was chiefly changed by the division of the professors into separate 390 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. " faculties," and the students into "nations," and this formed the model after which others were erected in Bohemia, Germany, Spain and Scotland. These institutions were hardly instruments of popular education. They attracted, indeed, an immense body of students to a few great centres of culture ; we read of forty thousand at the University of Oxford. But their object was to form a learned class, not to reach the whole people. He who received it betook himself to a new sort of life ; he did not go to the schools to learn what would fit him to fill his place in the class in which he was born, but to leave that class and enter another. It was a training for grown men, not for children. Only monastic schools were open to the latter in the earlier Middle Ages ; and when others were established they were chiefly preparatory to the universities, and imparted a highly abstract and artificial training in a very tiresome and inadequate way. They were generally trivial schools in which were taught the arts of grammar, music and arithmetic, i. e., the Latin grammar of Donatus, the psalms and hymns of the Missal and their ordinary tuues, and the elements of computation. The only Latin literature read was the distichs of Cato and a Latin version of iEsop's Fables; but in course of time, the Catechism (i. e., the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Decalogue) were added. Even with the revival of the study of classic learning, no change was made in these schools. Luther went to school under one of the new Humanists, but read nothing of the new literature until he went to the University. § 334. To the Reformation, and especially to Luther, popular education owes a very great impulse. In some sense we may say that it began at that date. The claim put forth that the Bible should become the people's book, and the efforts to circulate the new translations of it, as well as other edifying books, involved, as a correlative, a general effort to make the new literature ac- cessible to the common people by a general diffusion of know- ledge. But Luther aimed at diffusiug a national education that should be truly such. In his appeals to the German cities, urg- ing them to set up good schools — " not such as have been hereto- THE REFORMATION AND EDUCATION. 391 fore, where a lad learned at his Donatus and his Alexander for twenty or may be thirty years, but never learned them " — he especially pleads for the general study of letters — " good poets and histories," — and for the formation of city libraries of all sorts of good books as the complement of the school system. He would have the chronicles of their own country hold a promi- nent place in these collections. He would thus provide not only a competent body of educated men for the service of church and state, but also " a plenty of fine, learned, rational, honorable, well-brought-up citizens," as " the best and costliest possession of a city:" The Calvinistic Reformers laid still greater stress upon know- ledge and intelligence, as needful for every true Christian. It was their ideal to see the Bible in the hands of a community competent to understand it. In Switzerland, Germany, Holland and France, they carried out this principle with great thorough- ness, but nowhere more completely than in Scotland. Knox aud his associates and successors worked for the establishment and endowment of English and Latin schools, and the improve- ment of the universities, as zealously as for the establishment of the Reformed doctrines. In spite of some temporary defeats, they carried their point, and the Scotch became a far better educated and more intelligent people than their richer neighbors at the other end of the island. In England the Reformation was a measure carried through by the government and the aris- tocracy ; it was not so democratic in its character, and it af- fected but slightly the economic condition of the people. The agitation for a plan of popular education, to reach and provide for the most numerous class — as the higher and middle classes have been provided for by old foundations and private schools — has hardly been mooted there till within the present century. The first appropriation of money for the purpose was the vote of £100,000 in 1847, and only in our own times has there been adopted a plan of national education large enough to reach the whole people. It has, of course, been opposed, (1) by some few consistent free traders, like Herbert Spencer; (2) by those 392 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. religionists who regard education as a spiritual function and deny the power of the state to exercise such functions ; and (3) by those who object to the existing law, because it takes under gov- ernment patronage the various Church schools that are already established. Ireland has had au excellent national school system for a good many years past, whose eifects in the dissemination of intelli- gence forbid us to ascribe the poverty of her people to igno- rance. They take rank above the English in this respect. Our chief authorities for the history of education in the old world are Prof. Franz Hoffmann's Idea of a University (translated and published in the Perm Monthly for October, 1872); Prof. F. D. Maurice's Lectures on National Education (London, 1839), and his Learning and Working (London, 1855); and Karl Jiirgeu's Luther's Leben (Leipsic, 1846). § 335. American education was begun by the churches, and the higher institutions of learning nearly all originated with the ecclesiastical bodies, as most of them are still under their control. The University of Pennsylvania was, through the influence of Franklin, perhaps the first to arise without formal connection with the churches. The colleges and academies of the New England States, and of districts settled from New England, were chiefly modelled after Harvard and Yale, and drew their teachers from those mother institutions and their daughters. Those of the Middle and many of the Western States may commonly be traced to the educational efforts of the Presbyterian clergy from the north of Ireland and from Scotland. The Puritan and Presbyterian elements have been the chief agencies in our higher educational system, and in both cases the interest and the motive was ecclesiastical. Religion, it would appear, was the only force at work in American society at large that was strong enough to overcome the American passion for money-making, to insist on the excellence of a liberal education, and thus to cherish the love of learning and of science till it grew strong enough to stand alone. Only in our own days have institutions of the same character been endowed in a few places by the state govern- ments. § 336. Schools for popular education were very early estab- OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 393 lished in nearly all of the colonies. Especially in Pennsylvania the Society of Friends was most zealous in establishing elementary schools, and in imparting to all within their reach the elements of a good English education. At their schools in this city many who were not of their body received "their training, and it is very largely to the influence of the Quaker element thus exerted that the Commonwealth owes the solid sense and practical sagacity of its best and most influential elements. But the system of state education originated in New England, and has only been ex- tended to other parts of the country within the memory of per- sons now living, and to the South only since the recent war. The progress of the system has been very rapid, and it is now recognised as a universally established principle that the state is responsible for the existeuce of illiteracy and of the crimes and violences that flow from ignorance. The system is opposed (1) by a very few consistent free traders, like the late Gerritt Smith ; and (2) by some religious bodies, which regard educa- tion as a spiritual function inhering in the church. Less can be said for the quality than the quantity of the edu- cation given by our public schools. Indeed we cannot too heartily recognise the fact that education is yet in an experi- mental stage among us, and that beyond the clear duty of teach- ing a few of the first and plainest elements of learning, every- thing else is open to question. We have too often forgotten that education is a means merely, a very flexible means to any end that we have in view, and that we must first fix the end by care- ful reflection and then with equal care adjust the means to the end. Education has been talked of as if there were something magical in the contact of a young mind with a series of school books and of teachers. But the magical results have not been forthcoming. Especially the notion that education — the imparting of know- ledge and the discipline of the intellect — was of itself sufficient to abolish all crime, has received a decided refutation. There is indeed a limited amount of truth in this notion. Crimes of violence, for instance, as Henry Holbeach says, very commouly 394 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. grow out of the imperfect communication of ideas and feelings between uneducated people. Their heartburnings " are born of imperfect intelligence of each other in dilemmas of conscience or affection, upon which such poor means of utterance as they have are thrown away." Hence we speak of quarrelling persons, if they be reconciled, as coming to an understanding. There is also in the discipline of the school-room, its required order, cleauliuess and self-restraint, a powerful moral training for the young, if the teacher be equal to the task. And even the mere power to read, in the great preponderance of good literature over bad, and the great prominence of the best of books in modern society, is pretty sure to do far more good than evil to its possessors, taken as a whole. Yet our excellent fellow-citizen, Mr. Joseph R. Chandler, gives it as the result of his fourteen years' devotion to the cause of prison-discipline, "that learning has little or nothing to do with preventing or promoting crime, however it may influ- ence the character of the act. . . . While in the lowest order of crime I may have found more unlettered than lettered crimi- nals, I have found the former more amenable to gentle moral dealing than the latter were." But this generalization is not based upon a comparison of two societies of different degrees of intelligence, or two stages of intelligence of the same society, and is, therefore, hardly justified. Indeed, the fact last alleged in its support, and which Mr. Chandler's authority puts beyond question, points to exactly the opposite conclusion. The edu- cated criminal is more hardened, because his fall has been greater: he "sinned against light," and that light of his intelli- gence was one of the deterrent forces that might have held him back. The more and the stronger those forces, the greater the fall, and the more hardening its effect upon the character. Con- science, however, uutil enlightened by intelligence, is a mere and not a true guide in life. It has been, when un- ur. sp enlightened, the source of a great multitude of crimes against humanity. There are, indeed, cases in which education has been so abstractly intellectual, so devoid of all moral drift and tone, THE MEANING OF NATIONAL EDUCATION. 395 that the conscience has been almost suppressed. But education may easily be made, or rather can hardly help being made, veiy different from that, — can never be truly national, truly in ac- cordance with the very first notion of the state, without being very different. § 337. Without discussing in detail the merits and defects of our present systems, we shall seek to discover what idea is rightly conveyed by the term national education. This term carries us back to the idea of the state as the institution of rights, and as distinguishable into three departments of national activity, — the jural estate, the culture state and the industrial state. Manifestly the second of these now engrosses attention, whereas we hitherto have been chiefly considering the third. A national education, then, is (1) one that develops in the man the intellectual powers and capacities that fit him to understand the ideas and the truths that are the common possession of his fel- low-citizens, and that fits him to act with at least that degree of mental freedom that his nation has attained. (2) It is one that impresses upon him the characteristics of an upright and good citizen, a man of public spirit, and a devoted patriot, and that fits him to exercise such political powers as are intrusted to him by the constitution of his country. (3) It is one that gives him such general instruction, and offers him the opportunity to ac- quire such special training, as will fit him for his special profes- sion, calling or industry, and will enable him to pursue it in the most effective manner. § 338. Firstly, education to fit a man for his position in the culture state will have reference to the rank in knowledge, in- sight and mental power possessed by his own nation. The pub- lic schools of China or Japan should not give lessons in German philosophy, or in the English language, or any language but their own. Even the intellectual growth of a nation is chiefly from within, and the attempt to import a foreign culture by wholesale, can only result in crushing out that which is of native growth, and in retarding the normal progress of the people. It will merely root out the native plants, and substitute a hortus 396 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. siccus of dry and dead specimens, without sap or root. For every country possesses a certain average of intelligence, and has at- tained a certain stage in the great historical march of the human spirit from childish subjection to manly freedom. And as the nature of that march is governed by the historical constitution and course of nature, each country must take the next step for- ward before it can take any subsequent step, — must start from the position that it now occupies, and build upon the foundation that it has already laid. Mr. Palgrave, the English art critic, for instance, expressed his fears that Japanese art will be stopped in its natural course of development, through the imitation of foreign models. The language and literature of each country are at once the perfect expression of the degree and quality of its culture, and the means of education in conformity with that. The sure foundation of all national education, on its national side, is the study of the native speech, through books that record it in its highest and purest forms. But text-books that give only the result of such studies, and teach nothing of their method, such as spelling books, school dictionaries, grammars, manuals of etymology, and the like, are not educational instruments in any true sense. They impart information, without impartingdiscipline; they give no impulse, save in a very few cases, to the further pur- suit of the same studies, but rather weary and disgust the student. They do not render the service that all rightly directed study of a lano-uasre through its literature will render, in training the judgment to decide between greater and lesser probabilities, by the problems it presents as to the meaning and connection of words. They give rather a phantasm of knowledge about words, a mass of definitions and statements, than an actual acquaintance with words in their living uses. They are more likely to hide from the student than to declare to him the wonder and beauty of the language, as a work of art at once human and divine, as the result of a great process of education, by which men were led on from the sense perception of things material, to the appre- hension of the more real and less tangible verities of life. THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION. 397 The study of another than the native language, especially of a language of the same family but of earlier date, gives a great ad- vantage, in enabling the student to compare and contrast the two, and suggests to him open secrets that would otherwise have es- caped him. Hence the great use made of Greek and Latin in the higher education, one of which gives the most perfect illustration of the living force of words, the other of the laws of their govern- ment, and both correspond to earlier stages in the world's intellec- tual development. Both have been subjected to an analysis by great scholars that has extended over centuries, and are therefore provided with an apparatus of study the most complete possible. But these studies cannot be introduced into our public schools generally, chiefly because their curriculum of study is not pro- tracted to years in which these could be effectively pursued. The best substitute attainable in those schools, is that of our own language in its earlier stages, as presented, let us say, by the great English classics from Chaucer to Milton. That literature is as much the heritage of the American as of the English people ; while un-American elements may be traced in all the great writers of the following centuries, those earlier masters are free from them. And they furnish a long series of noble books, which embalm the wisdom and the excellency of lives not less noble. With wise guidance, and not too elaborate an apparatus for their study, the scholar might learn from them at once the method of studying words and their history, and the personal friendship for great authors, that constitutes a large part of the truest culture. But mere volumes of extracts, however excellent for some pur- poses, will not answer here ; they prevent the study of literary works as artistic wholes ; they do not ordinarily give a full ex- hibit of the state of the language at any one era ; and they cul- tivate the habit of dipping into books rather than continuous reading. There is another language, not national but universal, address ing itself not to the understanding but the heart of man — touch- ing fibres of his human nature too fine to vibrate to ordinary language, — fibres that lie closer to his very self and deeper than 398 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. his ordinary self. Music should, in the opinion of Plato and Milton, form a part of human education ; and the general sense of mankind has assigned it a very large place in the great up- lifting process which we call civilization. The hold which it has taken upon the working classes in our own days, especially in England, its power to elevate and refine, to harmonize and humanize, to remind men of the ideal to which all worthy life is ever striving, to cheer them with far-off glimpses of it amid the sordiduess of the actual, all confirm this high estimate of the human use and worth of music as an educating force. What- ever danger there may be in an excessive devotion to it, it should be made a subject of universal training, and its introduc- tion into our public schools, though something late, is a most excellent revival of what was once a study practised in every school. Mathematical science, in contrast to language, represents the most general form of intellectual culture; it calls forth and disci- plines the reason, the universal intellectual power, which belongs toman as man, and apprehends not probabilities but certain and unquestionable truth. Arithmetic, geometry, algebra, have in modern times held a high place in education. In our schools arithmetic is not taught thoroughly, because after a slight amount of instruction in the pure science, the student's attention is diverted to its application to commercial computations. A more thorough discipline in the analysis of number would be of far more use even in practical life than these rules and methods, which are mostly obsolete in our counting-houses. Geometry, for the same reason that too much heed is given to what is thought practical, is either entirely omitted, or is postponed till after the student has mastered the more difficult subject of algebra. The physical sciences are a means of education only when pur- sued in such a way as to teach their methods as well as their results. The latter may be imparted as information in very large quantities without the student's having attained any real acquaintance with the facts; he may have got no more than a mass of memorized definitions and statements, and, in spite of EARTH-LORE AND NEIGHUORHOOD-LORE. 399 Bacon and all who have followed him, may mistake these for the facts. He may have learnt not a whit of the patience, self- distrust, humility, and loyalty to fact, that characterize the true man of science, the original investigator. His powers of attention, observation and accuracy may have been left dormant under it all. These objections hold with great force against the branch of physical science most taught in our schools, and the method by which it is taught. From the lowest to the highest schools, and by a series of graded text-books, the attention of the pupil is concentrated upon geography , with no result save the overloading the memory with a mass of statements which constitute no real knowledge of the earth's surface. They are true in detail, but the whole is false as professing to be an adequate account of our planet. They are a hindrance, therefore, to real knowledge, as they render the student content with what is a mere phantasm knowledge. He mostly learns them by heart without any reali- zing sense of their meaning, and a question out of the usual run of questions often displays the vacuity of his mind on the subject. For this earth-lore it would be well to substitute neighborhood- lore — or the study of those facts that actually fall under the scholar's observation, and their scientific explanation. The student might learn the geology of his native district; its rela- tion to all the large geographical facts, such as the isothermal lines, the continental formations, the sea and the tides ; its meteorology especially, its weather-lore; its natural history in all its branches, with incitement to collect specimens for the school museums; its social history and progress from the days of the red man's wigwam to the present time. Such a training would be in the line of the providential purpose that ordinarily connects each single life with a single spot of earth; it would give t lie mind the sense of a hold upon the world, a definite place and starting-point. It would be more likely, by connecting life with knowledge, to be the first stage in a life devoted to knowledge, than if its youth had been spent in loading the memory with 400 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. notions that, however real in the knowledge of the scientist, possess no reality for the scholar. And to come still more close to the student, he should be taught the elements of practical hygiene in connection with the broader physiological laws that govern health and disease. There are few of us but would live longer and more healthfully for such self-knowledge ; it would save men from grave mistakes such as often embitter a lifetime by disease, and would thereby add greatly to the industrial power of the nation. § 339. Secondly, to fit a man for his place in the jural state, education will implant in his mind the convictions of righteous- ness, of justice, that underlie the national order and the laws by which it is prescribed and enforced. The. state is the organiza- tion of the whole people for the purpose of securing justice; this is the common vocation of all states, and except as they recognise it and act on it, they are unworthy of the name and forfeit the rights of nations. The elevation of the individual citizen into the true national consciousness is therefore an edu- cation in righteousness, in uprightness, — and the means of re- straint upon unrighteousness, prohibitions and punishments, are but secondary political agencies. The state must seek first of all to plant the right seed, and secondarily to root out the tares. This is, thus far, only incidentally attempted in our modern system, through the influence of school discipline, the enforce- ment of order, and the operation upon the mind of studies that aim at other ends, but do effect something towards this end, by familiarizing the mind with the conception of law as the under- lying principle in every sphere of life and observation. And indeed it is by indirect teaching, rather than by the imparting of moral information, that most can be effected. The study of the lives of gi-eat and good men may do much ; such as those biographies in which Plutarch has preserved for us the life and spirit of the great heroes of the Greek and Roman world. And out of biographies already at hand, a corresponding book might be compiled for the modern period and written with the same " universal sympathy with genius " (Emerson), in the same spirit THE OLD TESTAMENT IN EDUCATION. 401 of genuine enthusiasm and admiration, and convey the same in- spiration of enthusiasm to its students. Both in its selection and its method, it should contemplate men in the relation of their lives to the life of the state, showing how their virtues contributed to its strength and its freedom, and even how their vices, faults and weaknesses tended to weaken and enslave it. It should he, like Plutarch's, a book " crammed with life," with "genial facility" of style, the embalming of noble lives. It should stand higher than his. as modern society stands above ancient, in the clearer knowledge that "righteousness is of the essence of the state " (Plato), aud in the firmer purpose to edu- cate students into that devotion to it which is the truest and highest form of the national consciousness. The best text-books for this training are wisely written histo- ries, and of these the finest is the Old Testament history of the Jewish nation, which is especially fitted to exemplify the great principle that is to be here inculcated, — that the divine call laid upon every nation is a call to righteousness. The national literature of that people tells how a family became a tribe, a cluster of tribes, a nation ; that the law of righteous- ness was disclosed to them as the foundation of their national life; that their experiences, both light and dark, disclosed to them the truth that they were a strong, united and living people when they lived by it, but weak, divided and dying when they lost sight of it. Espc^ally the prophets of the nation stand out prominently as the interpreters of the meaning of their nation's history, — as pointing out the moral order, the moral " constitu- tion and course of nature," upon which the nation's life, free- dom and prosperity depended. Their function was not specially " the prediction of future events;" some of their books contain no predictions whatever, and those that occur in others for the most part flow naturally from that perception of " the laws that circle under the outer shell and skin of daily life," — laws at once ethical and social — which they were trained to observe in " the schools of the prophets." Their power of prediction was but 26 402 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. the test of the reality of their science of the moral order of society, as of all other science (§ 2). The Old Testament has been so overlaid with allegorizing, "edifying,"' and other unhistorical sorts of commentaries, that its political significance has been obscured. One of the best expositions of its political side is given in Prof. E. D. Maurice's Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, (Am. Ed., Boston, 1854). In the same spirit Sir Edward Straehey has treated the prophecies of Isaiah in his Hebrew Politics in the Times of Sargon and Sennacherib, (2d Ed., London, 1S74), and Matthew Arnold has published the last twenty-six chapters of that book as a text-book for schools ( The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration). The most instructive history of any modern nation will be the one that most closely approaches to that Hebrew method of his- toriography, — not by any affectation of style or the lifeless repeti- tion of Bible phrases, but by the application of the same princi- ples in the selection of the representative facts, and in its severe and faithful, though friendly, judgmeuts of all national trans- actions. It will start from essentially the same conception of the nature and the calling of the nation, and will trace the same divine hand "shaping" men's " ends" for purposes that they had not foreseen. It will give a lasting importance, an inex- haustible significance to the transactions of temporal affairs, by connecting them with the eternal principles of right. It will make the student feel that his calling, as a member of a nation, is a lofty and solemn thing, and will awake him not only to the consciousness, but also to the conscience of freedom. It will show him that the privileges and franchises of citizenship are a divine trust, a stewardship, and his abuse of them a crime of a very high nature. It will not be claimed that our present school histories are written on any such plan as this. They have been, for the most part, modelled more after the Fourth of July oration than the Hebrew prophets. They teach too often the silly vanity of national boastfulness, instead of any mere ethical lesson. As the sense of humor has been developed among us, such teaching and such speech-making have turned our brief but honorable history into a theme of jest and popular merriment, which no CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 403 longer excites the imagination or rouses patriotic enthusiasm. Our educated classes now seek in other lauds the scenes of historic association which they no longer find at home. § 340. The mere instruction in righteousness is not in itself sufficient for the formation of a human character according to the standard of our own country. The legal maxim, Swmmum jus, summa injuria, has its truth in this connection ; the merely righteous man, the just man whose justice is a hard insisting on all his rights, an exacting of his own, comes short of perfect rightness or righteousness, and is often guilty of acts which the popular conscience pronounces to be simply wrong, though not technically so. This is so because we are, however imperfectly, a Christian nation, — because the national standard of character is derived from the Sermon on the Mount as well as from the Ten Commandments. That Sermon does not set aside the old code ; it only complements it by enjoining upon the individual heart and conscience a spirit of meekness, of self-sacrifice, and of forgiveness, that counteracts the spirit of self-assertion and hard legalism, which would bring the law itself into contempt by making it the instrument of men's selfishness and rapacity. The old basis of national order, the stern righteousness that demands M an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," it leaves un- touched ; but it guards that order against a peril involved in its own nature as applied to the affairs of imperfect men. And it announces these injunctions, not as applicable to some special class of saintly characters, but as laws of the kingdom of God — of God's government of men. The New Testament, therefore, either in or out of the public schools, should form an essential part of the education of the young for their places as members of a Christian nation. Its exclusion from those schools, even if it be taught sufficiently elsewhere, may have the effect of sundering its lessons from his practical life, and lead him to suppose that the book is a mere "religious" or churchly text-book, whose precepts of Christian courtesy, forbearance and self-sacrifice, concern but slightly his relations to society at large. The chief objections to its in- 404 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND NATIONAL ECONOMY. troduction are, we believe, based on misconceptions of its real character, many of which are due to those who have come to be regarded as its especial custodians and interpreters. Even as a literary work, the English Bible holds such a place as a master-piece that no course of education can be complete if it exclude it. Its phrases have become the proverbs and household words of the people ; ignorance of the broad outlines of its history and teachings, even of the letter of some especial parts, consigns a man to social contempt. And it has become entwined with all the other classical literature of the language. Not only Milton, Bunyan and Cowper, but even Shakespeare, Scott and Byron would be in places unintelligible to those who have acquaintance with it. For this reason, among others, the Hindoos prefer to study English in the missionary schools where it is read, rather than in the government schools from which it is excluded. They also resent its exclusion from the latter as a piece of jealousy similar to that with which they once kept the Vcdas from the knowledge of Europeans. A Roman Catholic writer, the late Father F. W. Faber, says of the Eng- lish Bible : " Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country ? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, the anchor of the national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads arailingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent but intelligible voice of his guardian angel ; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Protestant Bible" (Preface to Life