Tradesmen We see the tradesmen of England, as they grow wealthy, seek pedigrees coming every day to the herald's office to search for the coats of arms of their ancestors, in order to paint them upon their coaches and engrave them upon their plate, embroider them upon their furniture, or carve them upon the pediments of their new houses; and how often do we see them trace the registers of their families up to the prime nobility or the most ancient gentry of the kingdom! In this search we find them often qualified to raise new families, if they do not descend from old; as was said of a certain tradesman of London, that if he could not find the ancient race of gentlemen from which he came, he would begin a new race, who should be as good gentlemen as any that went before him. . . Trade makes These things prove abundantly that the greatness of the England great British nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominions by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power; but it is all owing to trade, to the increase of our commerce at home and the extending it abroad. It is owing to trade that new discoveries have been made in lands unknown, and new settlements and plantations made, new colonies planted, and new governments formed, in the uninhabited islands and the uncultivated continent of America; and those plantings and settlements have again enlarged and increased the trade, and thereby the wealth and power of the nation by whom they were discovered and planted. We have not increased our power, or the number of our subjects, by subduing the nations which possess those countries, and incorporating them into our own, but have entirely planted our colonies and peopled the countries with our own subjects, natives of this island; and, excepting the negroes, which we transport from Africa to America as slaves to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations, all our colonies, as well in the islands as on the continent of America, are entirely peopled from Great Britain and Ireland, and chiefly the former; the natives having either removed further up into the country, or, by their own folly and treachery in raising war against us, been destroyed and cut off. An immediate result of the Industrial Revolution was an enormous increase in the amount of goods manufactured and exported. This remarkable increase in production is described in the following extract. modern To show the expansion of trade following the new inven- 211. Effitions it is necessary to give a few statistics. When machinery ciency of was introduced into the textile industries the output of manu- industrial factured goods increased by leaps and bounds. In 1764 the methods (from C. A. cotton imported into England amounted to about 4,000,000 Beard's pounds; in 1841 it had increased to nearly 500,000,000 The Induspounds. In 1792 the amount of cotton imported into Lan- trial Revol cashire alone from the United States was 138,000 pounds; tion) in 1800 it was 18,000,000 pounds. The wool imported into England in 1766 was only about 2,000,000 pounds; in 1830 the amount had risen to more than 32,000,000 pounds. In 1788 the iron output was 61,000 tons; in 1839 it was over 1,250,000 tons. One hundred years after Crompton invented his spinning mule there were in Lancashire 2655 cotton mills running a total of nearly 38,000,000 spindles and 463,000 power looms; in the twenty-two years from 1793 to 1815 English exports, according to official valuation, rose from £17,000,000 annually to £58,000,000, in spite of the depression caused by the Napoleonic wars. These figures give an inkling of the industrial transformation which followed the great inventions. Now let us turn to the real increase in the productive capacity of the individual. In other words, let us see whether productive capacity has grown more rapidly than the population. Unfortunately careful statistics are only of recent date, but we know that Hargreaves's jenny worked, originally, only eight spindles. The number was gradually increased to one hundred and twenty, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century to two hundred. The jenny now has more than a thousand spindles, each revolving at the rate of ten thousand revolutions per minute. A man and two boys can tend two thousand spindles. The hand-loom weaver used to make from sixty to eighty throws of the shuttle per minute. Fifty years ago the best power loom made only one hundred throws; to-day the highest-grade loom runs at the rate of about four hundred per minute, and along with the increase of the productive capacity of the machine there is a decrease in the amount of human labor required in the operations. Formerly one weaver tended but one loom; now one worker tends from two to ten looms, according to the grade of goods. So great has been the increase in the efficiency of textile machinery that a single operative can supply two hundred and fifty persons with the necessary cotton garments, or three hundred persons with woolen clothing. In every branch of industry attention has been devoted to increasing productive power, until almost marvelous results have been attained. In the continuation of the construction of the Cologne cathedral in 1870, two men with a steam crane lifted as much stone in a day as three hundred and sixty men could have done in the same time in the Middle Ages. The old craftsman produced at best a couple of pairs of shoes per day; the modern worker with machinery can turn out five hundred pairs a day. In one year six English workmen can produce enough bread to supply a thousand people for the same length of time. This includes all the labor from the breaking up of the soil to the delivery of the bread to the consumer. The extent to which mechanical power can be substituted for hand labor depends upon the ability of man to contrive machinery. Here is the material key to man's spiritual progress. The plowing of a furrow, the sowing of the seed, the reaping of the grain, its transportation from one market to another, the weaving of a fabric, and the making of a coat, all represent in the final analysis the application of so much power to matter. The past achievements of inventors have shown us that there are no limits to the ways in which the exhaustless forces of nature can be applied to do man's work. If we look back, we see man struggling to maintain life by sheer strength of muscle; but if we look forward along the centuries of the future, we see the struggle for existence taking only a small portion of man's energy, leaving all the remainder of his powers of heart and brain free for the enlargement and enriching of life. CHAPTER XIX THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 IN FRANCE Section 57. Unpopularity of Louis Philippe's Louis Philippe was called to the throne of France by a small minority of political leaders at Paris, and no serious attempt was made to render the Orleans monarchy popular by the extension of the right to vote or by social reforms. Consequently the new government became the object of the severest criticism on the part of many discontented persons of all shades of opinion. The following bitter attack on the monarchy, selected from among innumerable similar diatribes, is not to be taken as a fair description of Louis Philippe's government, but merely as an illustration of how it appeared to a decided opponent who was instrumental in overthrowing it in the Revolution of 1848. tisan criti cism of L Philippe's Until the opening of the year 1847 the monarchical power 212. A pa in France seemed to gain strength steadily, and to the superficial observer appeared to be firmly established. Success had apparently crowned all its efforts. With a single exception, governme (condense the sudden death of the heir to the throne, — fortune had in no way thwarted the projects of the aged monarch, whom his courtiers, anticipating history, ventured to designate by the most glorious titles. Even his own ministers, in the curious letters discovered in February, 1848, place Louis Philippe far above Louis XIV and Napoleon. mily erests Fern Louis lippe's icies ruption gns in hplaces e immoral of the rt Thus the "system," as it was first called, grew apace, and by degrees the mask was withdrawn that concealed its ulterior aims. Audacious impudence took the place of the wily policy of the preceding fifteen years. At home, dynastic interests controlled every transaction, while abroad this selfish conspiracy seconded the schemes of an absolutist diplomacy directed against the real interests of the nation. To compensate for the Spanish marriages, which brought to the House of Orleans an immediate dowry of thirty millions, with a probable crown in reversion, the other European powers were allowed to efface the last vestiges of Poland, and French arms were freely given to the Jesuits of the Sonderbund.1 At the same time the court, the ministers, the inferior functionaries, and the aristocrats devoured the financial resources of the nation. The civil list laid a heavy hand on the public domains, and carved broad acres out of the state forests; the budget was so adjusted as to satisfy the cravings of the minions of the government. The public offices, commissariat, national institutions, were made the objects of shameful corruption; and thus venality, which had its source in the cabinet of the ministers, spread in many streams through all the ministerial branches, and only stayed its course at the extreme verge of this political hierarchy. The most scandalous appointments, the monopoly of public offices by privileged families, and an almost hereditary claim, favored by the government, in the higher elective offices, — everything tended to encourage, at the center of the official world, corruption, sordid passions, and vulgar instincts. The princes had revived the frightful morals of the Regency and of the Directory. Each of them was surrounded by his own petty court of schemers and roués. There were royal hunts and races at Chantilly and Compiègne; days of gallantry and nights spent at the card table. And on the morrow all these sons of sin went to receive the communion at St. Roch, with the devotees of the old régime. Hypocrisy was the bosom friend of Immorality; and never did the juggleries of the old faith stand higher in favor than in these days of dissolution. 1 See The Development of Modern Europe, Vol. II, p. 73, note 2. |