THE NEW INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT.

 By HENRICUS.

No. II.

It seems to me that a great mistake has been made by those persons who have so confidently declared that there is no antagonism between labour and capital as matters now stand in the world, and who persist in asserting that the one is but the handmaid of the other. We have had so much said upon this subject, and it has been said so dogmatically, that the workmen have come to distrust political economy as a cunning device of the rich to keep down the poor, or as a science, if it be really a science and not the beginning only of one, which does not touch their wants, wishes, feelings, or aspirations. The truth requires to be spoken of this point, and, as usual, the truth will be found, I think, between the two extremes. The Internationalists who proposed in the United States, even as they have proposed in Germany and elsewhere, to convert the state into a gigantic employer of labour and distribute of wealth, represent, so to speak, the red end of the labour spectrum, having great heat; whilst the extreme political economists may be said to represent the violet end, where there is great chemical force without any warmth at all. Obviously these two ends taken separately will not see the useful purposes of humanity, but combine them, and we have light, heat, and the pure white colour which serves so many useful ends. Now, I hold that society, in its industrial sense, must be a mingling of all the waves or kinds of light, and that any one who attempts to separate the rays and set them apart, gets only one kind of force—a force useful merely for a special purpose and not for the general purposes of society. The contest between the let-alones and the coddlers is an example of what I mean. They represent the two ends of the social spectrum. The Communists are the red end, seeking to make silk purses out of sows' ears by legislation or force of arms, and fully confident that they can gather figs from thistles. They have failed, and must fail, because they seek to get what is not there to be got, and cannot be created or made to grow by any means at their command. Yet they have — and will have —numerous followers, and I for one should not be surprised to hear of other risings, even as we hear already from California that a new war between labour and capital is threatened. Discontent has spread far and wide. The working classes want something which they cannot well explain, but they have a notion that they have not got their rights, and that they are being oppressed. This is the real danger, alike to their own progress and to unity, and it is, I think, of the utmost importance that they should be made to see that they cannot get what they desire —so far as they know what they do desire —by the method which many of them are ready to adopt. On the other hand, the blue end of the spectrum offers only a cold prospect, even to those who are most ready to believe in its absolute perfection. Mazzini, who was not, I think, much of political economist, once said that socialism meant seeking the fruit on the roots which should be found on the branches, but I do not profess to understand what he meant. Socialism in all its forms proposes to do by machinery the work that must be done by the people themselves, and has failed, and always will fail, except in isolated cases, such as we find in America, where religion or conviction of some peculiar kind is the bond of union, and then seldom for longer than a generation. A work-a-day system must be of a different character, and this is precisely what is now beginning to be seen, in Great Britain at all events, if not on the Continent of Europe also. On the red side of the spectrum, Louis Blanc urged some very strange things, such as special merit is a gift and, therefore, ought to be paid for, and he described political economy as laissez faire, laissez-mourir, laissez perir. This last struck home. The poor, the struggling, even the well to do workman, responded to this cry, which meant —save us, save our friends, save the bulk of the people whom your wise political economists, your Malthuses, your Mills, and your Adam Smith's would let perish under the deadening pressure of uncontrollable circumstances. The sentiment was no doubt right, but the inference drawn from it was wrong.

It is a curious fact, not generally noticed by political economists, that no Utopia was ever yet proposed in which the people were to be let alone, to do as they pleased so long as they obeyed certain broad criminal and sanitary laws. From Plato's Republic down to the Coming Race, with its vril force of Lord Lytton, the assumption has always been that it is possible to put men right, and to save them from the consequences of their own rash acts, their follies, and their vices. No writer, as far as I have yet seen, has proposed to get, first of all, a number of cultivated people, fitted for the nice duties of a Utopia, and willing to act according to the beautiful laws devised to secure their well-being. Robert Owen, indeed, saw this condition of the problem, and he said that as man is a creature of circumstances, it was necessary to make good circumstances in order to have good men. But, he was met with the difficulty that man made the circumstances, and circumstances made the man, each being the necessary precedent of the other, and thus got into a sort of deadlock, from which there was no escape. Harmony hall was not harmonious. The Home Colonisation Society— a bitterly satirical name— did not colonise the country, but got into difficulties and, as such societies have usually, had a great deal to pay for printing, which expense fell, of course, upon the nine enthusiastic members who did not run away when the crash came. There can be no Utopia without Utopians. But here, again, the two things are interdependent, and it is like the old difficulty of the egg and the bird— we cannot tell what is to come next. If we could get an industrial army, officered, drilled, duly trained to suffer hardships and obey orders, there is not the slightest doubt that we would also get a very splendid community, which would create wealth so great as now to appear fabulous, and in which there would be little or no crime, no stinks and no diseases that science can combat successfully. We cannot get such an army for obvious reasons, that will occur to anyone who has thought over the question. In the first place, there are no women in a fighting army, or, at all events, women are not taken into account. Social relationship does not exist, and the influence of the beau sexe goes practically for nothing. Moreover, military duty is but part of a man's life at most, whereas the soldier of industry must spend all his life in the performance of his duties, whether he be at home or in the fields pursuing agricultural studies, after the fashion proposed by Horace Greeley, to the strains of military bands. This analogy, though so often used, does not hold good when fairly examined, for the production of wealth, the making of homes, the pursuit of happiness, and the many things which make up life are not war, or even preparation for war, but something different, though not altogether dissimilar. We must, however, note this fact, that men like to be trained. A soldier is proud of his discipline, and has converted obedience into a sacred duty, no matter when he may be called on to obey. Beranger's soldier cries Marchez au pas as he goes out to be shot for striking a young officer who had insulted him, and sees that it is quite necessary that he should suffer. Here is, surely, a wonderful result of training for a doubtful purpose, which might be utilised in some way in order to make the world better than it is, if only we could get the training done in a way adapted to the end in view. For, be it remarked, there is really no question as to the possibility of the production of wealth, or as to its distribution so as to make all comfortable ; at all events, if only we could get the means of doing the work, and so contrive as to make men content to continue the work of their own accord. Clearly, the impulse must come from within. We cannot take men, as Sir Thomas More did, and shut them up in a city of our own invention, or even subject them to the wondrous machinery devised by Bacon, to say nothing of other schemes to make people happy. At this stage the Communists of to-day and the learned men of other times were close together, for they both start with the assumption that things must be done for, not by, the people, and yet the fact remains that there are only the people to do the things after all. There is no tertium quid in the case. The benefactor and the benefited are the same, that where we speak of an order of society, not of the establishment of a Saltire, or lodging-houses for the working classes. General reform must come from the general community, general wealth from general industry and frugality, general happiness from general morality. We have to move the world without a fulcrum for our lever. The thing looks impossible, yet since Jacquard tied a knot in a tight thread, there may be a way to get round if not over the difficulty.

In his English in Ireland, Froude lays down the following proposition :—" There neither is nor can be an inherent privilege in any person or set of persons to live unworthily at their own words, when they can be led or driven into more honourable courses; and the rights of man—if such rights there be— are not to liberty, but to wise direction and control." This is, of course, but another form of the socialistic or communistic idea, and involves the old difficulty of supposing that there is some person or body of persons who can determine what wise direction and control are. Carlyle writes much in the same strain, and a thousand apparently divergent lines will be found to converge in some kind of Utopia, in which some one person or some body of persons is to tell the rest what they ought to do, and what they will be made to do. Within certain limits, of course, persons must be restrained and society pre served, and this is a point upon which all are agreed, but apart from the repression of crime, and some few broad duties, there does not appear to be any function in the way of interference which a Government can effectively fulfil. Who is to determine whether a person is living worthily or unworthily ? Of course, overt acts detrimental to the common weal must be suppressed, as well as such insanitary arrangements as may be injurious to the general health. Indeed, it is difficult to say where the precise limit to government action can be found, for it will advance or recede according to circumstances, but we may safely say that no Government can give "wise direction and control' to individual conduct. This is altogether beyond not only its functions but its power. A Government might as well attempt to regulate the weather as to control private conduct, and every attempt that has been made has ended in utter failure, often in disaster and ruin. Here I must part company with Froude and even Carlyle, not, however, without some lingering sentiment of liking for what they propose to do or get done, for everybody likes to hear of rapid reform and thorough remedies, and a short shrift with idleness and folly. But I am trying to deal with facts, not with wishes, with things as they are not as we should all like them to be.

The evidence of the industrial progress of the world does seem to me to point all in one direction, and that is, that men must save themselves, and cannot be saved by others. The first thing is to set them free to act. This has only very recently been achieved in Great Britain; indeed there still is much to do to clear the way for industry, especially in the direction of better land laws, and in very few other countries are men free to act as they may desire. Having got rid of the hope of extraneous help and of philanthropic assistance, they will quickly discover that capital is a necessity of their well-being, and is only inimical when it is held as the controller of their means of employment. Capital is accumulated labour, the result of abstinence, and the workman ought to see, now there is so much evidence before him, that it is possible to save out of his earnings, and so gradually make capital, not his master, but his hand-maid. To do this union is necessary, and above all self-restraint and patient industry. He must learn not only to work himself, but to value a different kind of work done by others, and not fancy that the hands are more important than the head. By degrees he will acquire business habits, the power of dealing practically with large questions, of discussing various views, and of making allowance for the inevitable fluctuations in trade and the times of depression. He must learn to discount the present for the future, to work to an end, and to forego to-day in order to enjoy to-morrow. In this case this training arises from circumstances, not from philanthropists, and it is of real value, because it arises out of his daily experience. He learns to act as one of an industrial battalion, and thus discovers the wisdom of the soldier, who obeys because he knows that obedience is essential not only to success, but to ordinary efficiency. Of course these qualities will be gained only by slow degrees, and not, probably, until many years of checkered fortune have passed away; but in proportion as they are gained, so is the workman prepared to rise to a higher industrial level, and make use of the opportunities which present themselves for his betterance. Now, it is a simple fact that this kind of training is going on in Great Britain to an extent quite unsuspected by those who have not studied the question of co-operation, and one result is that complicated united business operations are becoming more possible every day. The working man not only works, but adds business knowledge to the special knowledge of his trade, and is learning so to invest his money as not only to bring him in a good return, but to ensure him a pound for his support when age shall have rendered him unfit for work. This is the outcome of much that was called and really was absurd not 20 years ago, and there cannot be a question that the efforts of the working classes, directed by many well-meaning benevolent men in a middle station, have practically added a new principle to political economy. We have now division of labour plus co-operation and the results of this combination have been such as to amaze some of the very persons who thought that political economy had exhausted all the conditions of the production of wealth. Freedom was to have done this, according to some folks, but freedom alone could not do it, though Shelley wrote—

" For the labourer thou art bread,

And a comely table spread,

 From thy daily labour come,
In thy neat and happy home.

Thou art clothes and fire and food

 For the trampled multitude."

Surely, a very interesting picture, but one which has not been realised without a great many other things besides freedom itself. What is more, freedom and prosperity do not always mean either morality or happy homes, as the old Chartist free-thinker, turned Methodist, Thomes Cooper, is constrained to point out in his autobiography. Something more is required, and that is something not easily defined, but what we call education— training—which includes abstinence, foresight, the capacity to see as well as the capacity to do. The former capacity is certainly the most necessary of all, for the real difficulty is to make men perceive things as they are, which is that very valuable, perhaps the highest, faculty called common sense, with which, contrary to general belief, poets are most richly gifted. "Hidden in the light of thought," they see the end where others only see the beginning, and so startle and amaze, and the world has to think much before being able to see what they have discerned at a glance. In another way, the working classes will, we may hope some day come to see clearly the direction in which their salvation lies, and will cease to ask governments to do for them what no government has yet been able to do, but will resolve to do for themselves what it is now demonstrated can be done. The statistics just issued by the Central Co-operative Board in England afford a truly wonderful mass of information, and give cause for surprise, as well as for regret— surprise that so much has been so quietly done, and regret at the evidence afforded that the working classes are ready on slight grounds to desert from their own industrial army whenever they seem likely to gain an advantage thereby. But the evidence is conclusive as to the value of the principle ; the only questions that remain are how is it to be applied, and what hope may we fairly entertain of mankind being able to apply it? We no longer say laissez-faire, but laissez nous agir, for help cannot come from above or below, but from ourselves. This is the new development.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Tuesday 12 February 1878, page 7