Chapter II: Part 2

Poland perceives her destiny to be industrial: she has already a large surplus of manufactured goods to sell. Likewise Czechoslovakia. These are instances of new countries. Spain and Greece are importing machinery, and Spain is so anxious to develop industry that she considers paying a bounty out of the public treasury on exports of textiles. India, whose historic economic function had been to send raw cotton to Great Britain and buy cotton cloth from Manchester, now consumes half her own raw cotton in her native mills; she not only satisfies three-quarters of her own want for cotton cloth but is beginning actually to export that commodity, even to the United States. This will seem very wasteful, indeed, when you pause to set it against the historical background of the United States. For a long time we exported raw cotton and imported cotton cloth. That was to have been the pattern of our economic life as a British colony; we were to produce only raw materials, ship them to Great Britain and buy from her the surplus of her machines. We were forbidden, in fact, to weave cloth for sale or to have iron mills. Now we are an industrial nation; we consume more and more of our own raw cotton and export enormous quantities of cotton cloth. Ultimately we shall have no raw cotton at all to sell; our mills will require the whole of our annual crop; we shall have nothing but cotton cloth to sell. To whom shall we sell it? Not to the Indians; they wish to make their own. Probably not to the Egyptians. The Japanese manufacturers of cotton goods have recently invaded the Egyptian market that was formerly Great Britain’s own, and are underselling the British there. You would think China would be Japan’s natural outlet for cotton goods. So it is. The difficulty is that Japan must be looking further because China is beginning to supply herself.

The Chinese instance is poignant. A few years ago—until the War, in fact—China exported food and raw materials and imported manufactured goods—nothing else to speak of either way. This was as the Western industrial nations wished it to be. So anxious were they to have it so that they bound China by treaty not to put tariff barriers against the goods they wished to sell in the Chinese markets, except by mutual consent—that is to say, with their consent.

The War suspended this thraldom. The Chinese imported machines and began to make their own things, especially cloth. Power-looms appeared as by magic. And after the War, they continued to appear. During three years after the War the number trebled, and in 1922, the table of Chinese imports and exports presented a strange face. Among her imports were machines and machine-parts; also semimanufactured goods to be finished in Chinese factories. And one-fifth of her total exports consisted of manufactured goods. China an exporter of machine products!

And so up and down the earth. In Brazil, where there was hardly any visible production of artificial things before 1914, the whole outlook has changed. That country is now able from her own machines to meet the whole of her want for matches, textiles, footgear, wallpaper, phonograph-discs, hardware, hats, and playing cards, and will soon be self-supplied with practically everything she needs.

The Colonial System that was to have answered forever Great Britain’s need for raw materials and food in exchange for machine-products will not hold in that character. In India the revolt is political; elsewhere it is peaceably economic. Canada is already powerfully machined; she is exporting motor-cars. Australia, going in the same direction, is beginning to export shoes. The Union of South Africa takes steps to subsidize local industry. Ireland no sooner gains control of her economic life than she puts a tariff-wall around herself to limit the sale of foreign goods, meaning British goods as well, thinking thereby to foster infant industries.

Well, everyone now is doing that. The old industrial countries, too, are protecting themselves against one another’s goods, the last to come to it being Great Britain herself. For more than half-a-century she was the protagonist of free trade, abhoring tariffs, because she was paramount in machine-craft and could beat her rivals both in their own markets and in her own. That advantage having departed from her, she is driven to tariff-protection: she puts up barriers against other people’s goods if they are too cheap, because they are too cheap, and calls it Safeguarding Home Industries.

V

THE PARADOX OF SURPLUS

What does it mean? Can there be too many desirable and useful things? Can things be too cheap? You would say No. Surely, so long as any human want remains unsatisfied, things cannot be either too plentiful or too cheap? But there is another dimension.

Everything that is not still or dead must exist in a state of rhythmic tension. It is true of the plant, it is true of the animal, it is true of each race of plants and each race of animals, it is true of the kingdom of plants against the kingdom of animals. It is true of people, as individuals, as races, as a species. And it is true, also, of the machine.

In the living organism growth of tissue at a normal rate consonant with the rhythm is vital. A wild growth of that same tissue will be fatal. In the aggregate of life there is equilibrium among millions of different forms, each form striving but never succeeding and is possessing every other form and taking the world. The oyster, if unhindered, would displace every other living thing on the earth in maybe ten generations, and then, of course, perish for want of space in which to contain itself. What hinders the oyster and at the same time preserves it is that principle of tension in nature, without which it would be impossible for innumerable forms and varieties of life, the relations of which to one another are reciprocal, neutral, hostile, anonymous, to exist together all in one great taut pattern.

Now regard the third kingdom, artificial, implanted with mechanical beasts, that contains civilization. Life in this environment is economic. Its characteristic behaviour is a progressive differentiation of labour. Tasks are divided and subdivided until, at length, there are countless separate groups of people, each one performing a singular function to which it is trained and tending to become unable to perform any other. The subdivisions are beyond enumeration. They multiply so fast that the book of the census cannot keep up with them.

The shoe-industry, for example, does not consist in shoemakers. You might search it in vain for a shoemaker—that is, one who should know how to raise a pair of shoes from flat leather. In the shoe factory the material passes through a train of machines. Each machine is minded by an operative who performs one little specialized part of the work in endless repetition. The product is shoes by thousands of gross.

But who determines what kinds of shoe and how many shoes shall be made? What becomes of them when they are made? Who knows they can be sold? What if they are not saleable?

If you address these questions to one of the operatives minding a machine you will find him dumb. He knows only his own function.

It is very complicated. There are two industries here. One is the shoe-industry; the other is the shoe-machine industry. One could not exist without the other, yet they are separate and very unlike. The shoe-industry itself, that has dispensed with shoemakers, will have a finance department, an economic department, a buying department, a department of production science, a style and designing department, a chemical department, a department of distribution, a sales department, an advertizing department, and others we do not think of. It is all about shoes. These are all shoe people. They agglomerate in shoe towns. They think shoes. The world is a foot. The more it can be shod the better. They live by shoes.

But to do this they must be able to exchange shoes for the things they want. Shoes, therefore, must have a relation of value to every other thing in the economic world. It follows that, in order to have this exchange-value, shoes must have also a relation of quantity to all other things. If for any reason the production of shoes becomes suddenly abnormal that exchange-value is lost. It is like one kind of tissue growing wild in the organism. Shoes are necessary; but an excessive quantity cannot be absorbed by the economic body. There will be in that case a morbid pathology in the shoe-industry, unemployment in the shoe town, despair among the shoe people, many of whom have never learned to do anything else. Left to themselves, without shoes to make, they might even starve.

It may be in the same way a soap town, a textile town, a garment town, an iron town, a motor town like Detroit, a rubber-tire town like Akron, a furniture town like Grand Rapids. It may be all of these—that is to say, industry as a whole, increasing its output at an abnormal rate. As you project the thought you begin to see, first, the vital importance of rhythm, equilibrium, tension, in the realm of industry, and then the inverse meaning of a sudden competitive increase in the machine-power of the world.

Ask the Italians what it means. They are an old people coming to it with a fresh mind. The conversation that follows took place in February, 1925. Talking are, on one side, the Italian Minister of Finance, and on the other, a visiting journalist:

“The industrial idea is new in Italy. It is since the War. You had a clean slate. You could have done anything you had the imagination to do. First you might have made a scientific survey of Italy’s latent genius and resources, and then you might have thought of producing goods that should be uniquely Italian and therefore non-competitive. But what have you done? You have gone in for the great staples of world commerce, such as cotton and woollen textiles, artificial silk, and motor-cars. Don’t you see that in doing this you take on the competition of Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, the United States?”

“Yes, we see that.”

“Those countries have the field and the experience and better access than Italy to sources of raw material.”

“That we know, also.”

“Then how can you hope successfully to compete with them? What have you that they have not? What advantage against theirs?”

“One you haven’t thought of.”

“What is it?”

“A man can live on less in Italy than anywhere else. We don’t know why that is. It may be the way the sun shines on him. But it is a fact. That is our advantage. With that we shall succeed.”

“Do you realize what that means? You are saying that Italy proposes to found an industrial career on the lowest terms of human existence. Your people will not accept it.”

“But they will.”

“How do you know they will?”

“Because they will do anything sooner than starve.”

What a finish for the morning hope of the machine-age!—if it were. Monotonous tending of the machine on the lowest standard of living; alternative, starvation.

Suppose it were true. Suppose the Italian people did accept the terms and acquired the knack and skill. Then Italian manufactures, being cheaper than any other, would sweep the markets of the world. The older industrial nations—Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, _et al._—could protect their domestic markets by tariff-barriers, but they would find themselves losing their foreign markets to the Italians. For such industrial countries as are obliged to exchange a machine-surplus abroad for food the loss of foreign markets would be fatal. They would have to meet the Italian competition. They would have to say, as the Italians now are saying: “It is that or starve.” They would have to let down the standard of living to meet Italy’s wage-cost. This would oblige Italy to make her standard lower still, and thus, in a cycle, until all of them were sunk in misery.

And this is by no means an impossible progression of events. It has once taken place on a lesser scale. Beginning about 1870, there was a sudden and uncontrollable increase in the output of industry from two principal causes. One was the rapid rise of competitive industry in Germany and the United States; the other—much more potent—was the discovery of a new and cheaper way of making steel. This one discovery transformed the aspect of industry by increasing its potential power as much, perhaps, as one-hundred fold. Until then people spoke of the iron age; after that it was the steel age. For a quarter of a century prices fell continuously, while solemn economic bodies sat pondering the phenomenon. In that time all the capital employed in industry was lost at least once, probably twice or three times. The producer’s only hope was to improve his machines and increase production, for as he did that his cost per unit fell and for a little while he could undersell his competitor. In methods of production and in the efficiency of machines there was necessarily amazing progress; nevertheless, when all other means of reducing costs had failed, it had to be taken out of labour. In the United States it was not so bad because here the domestic demand for manufactures was unlimited, and a tariff-wall protected industry from foreign competition. In Germany it was very bad.

Germany then was where Italy now is. Her advantage was that the German people would work harder and longer for less money than the British. The competition was between these two. The British Government, disturbed by her new rival’s success in foreign trade, made a study of labour conditions in Germany. It found Sunday labour very prevalent in the factories. “Only the hours of divine service are excluded”, said a report from Saxony.

Commenting, _The_ (London) _Economist_ said: “The question of Sunday labour is one of considerable interest for England, for it is unquestionable that among the causes of Germany’s ability to compete with England as a mercantile and industrial country the fact that here more hours are worked for less money is not the least important. The prohibition of Sunday labour would, of course, mean increased cost of production, and every increase in the cost of production will render it more difficult for Germany to outrival older manufacturing countries in the markets of the world.”

What might have happened does not detain us. What did happen was very fortunate.

First, the food-supply from free virgin land in North and South America increased at the same time in a prodigious manner, so that, notwithstanding the wild energy of the machine, the equilibrium between agriculture and industry was fairly well maintained.

Second, there was still room in the world for colonial development on a vast scale. This occurred, and the outlets thereby created for the surplus product of machines were most timely.

Third—and this is very important—finance, to save itself from deluge, got control of industry. It was unable to buy industry out. All the banks in the world had not money enough to do that. This apparently insuperable difficulty it solved in a simple manner. It formed industry by groups into great joint-stock corporations and sold the stock to the public. And, although generally finance did not keep control in a literal sense, it did so centre it as to make the management responsive thereafter to financial counsel. The classic instance in the United States was the formation of the Steel Trust, which was in very earnest a measure of desperation. The steel-making machine had become a demon whose pastime was panic. By this feat of finance, which occurred in all industrial countries, a new rhythm was established. It was most imperfect: absolute control of production was impossible. But panics from overproduction were thereafter episodic, not continuous, and this was a great improvement.

And now a second time the machine has got away. But how much more powerful it is and widely planted than before. The industrial capacity of the United States alone is greater than that of all Europe twenty-five years ago. There are no more such virgin continents as North and South America to be exploited for food; and, besides, countries that were then content to play an agricultural part, exchanging meat and grain and raw materials for machine-made wares, now are resolved to have industries of their own—nay! more, to have an industrial surplus for sale abroad, engaging in that game themselves. Colonies are no longer docile. And as to finance, there is little probability that it will be able again to lay its hand upon the throttle. There are several reasons why.

The significance of industry has changed. Formerly it was a private affair in which the State was but dimly concerned, and so concerned only in a social sense, whereas now the idea of industry is basically political. It associates with thoughts of security independence in all circumstances, national welfare, power, and grandeur. A factory is like a ship to be privately enjoyed in time of peace, subject to mobilization for war. The War did that. Great Britain now subsidizes so-called key-industries as before she subsidized ships under the eye of the Admiralty if they were so built as to be easily converted into cruisers. All this is beyond the control of finance.

For another reason, there are signs that industry in the future is more likely to command finance than finance is to dominate industry.

By finance it shall be understood that we mean organized influence—in short, banking. Its occult authority has been seriously impaired. The high day of its priestcraft is gone.

Formerly it was consulted in war. You could not manage a war without a gold-chest: it was the banker who said whether that could be filled or not. Now one of the first steps you take in case of war is to suspend the bank, declare a moratorium, and print paper money to pass from hand to hand.

When the World-War started it was the opinion of finance that it could not last above ninety days: it could not be financed beyond that limit. It lasted four years and did not stop then for want of money.

After the War international finance was morally powerless to prevent the colossal mark swindle, Germany printing and selling all over the earth billions of paper marks that were to be flatly repudiated. Nor was it able to visit the slightest penalty upon the authors of this financial enormity, for immediately afterwards it was obliged, on political grounds, to float a large gold loan for Germany and thereby restore her to solvency and credit. In Germany finance was unable to prevent the industrial dynasts from appropriating to themselves all the middle-class wealth that was invested in bonds, mortgages, annuities, and savings banks: they simply borrowed it and then paid it back in worthless paper money.

It is very significant this humiliation of finance. In situations where the political will is dominant and in those where economic forces act alone the omens are the same. Henry Ford is the extraordinary instance of an industrialist who proceeds without benefit of finance. He creates his capital as he goes along; what he does not create he commands. He does not borrow.

VI

IN PERIL OF TRADE

So now what will happen? From the excessive power already existing to produce industrial commodities, from the continued increase of that power nevertheless for political and national reasons, from the raising of trade-barriers by one nation against another because every one fears the effect upon its own industries of receiving cheap goods from another, from this running of people out of the fields to tend more machines, from the amazing growth of urban tissue in the economic body—from all of this what follows?

The Italians suggest a bitter competition in terms of living, those to survive who will accept most patiently and at the lowest wage the drudgery of minding machines. That might go rather far; ultimately it comes to absurdity. To whom at last should they sell their goods? Not to the impoverished workers of other industrial countries, defeated in the struggle. To whom else? To the agricultural countries? But these, for the reasons we have seen, are tending as such to disappear. They are buying machines. Italy brings nothing to the solution. She is merely coming tardily to do what others have done to excess.

A brilliant Belgian economist suggests that only the most efficient equipment will survive, and only enough of that to satisfy the natural demand for goods. All the rest must be abandoned because there will be no profit in working it. Well, it remains to be seen if people will abandon their machines without a struggle, purely for rational reasons. Much more is it likely that the higher cost of working the less efficient equipment will be compensated by a lower wage-rate, unemployment being the workers’ alternative. Moreover, if all the inefficient and unnecessary machines were scrapped that would mean only postponement of the sequel. The competition would begin all over again.

There are those who suggest that we are facing toward the mercantile system of the Middle Ages, when it was the custom for each nation jealously to protect its home-market from the competitive handicrafts of other nations, and to prohibit or punitively tax the exportation of raw material to rival countries. So we are. To say it is merely to indicate the rock upon which, if nothing happens, the ship of trade is bound to wreck herself.

A growing light on the actions of trade as it is organized by the industrial powers now impels nations hitherto agricultural to found industries of their own. As producers of foodstuffs and raw materials to be exchanged for machine-products they came to have a sense of being exploited. In academic theory this was an exchange by which the industrial nation satisfied its food wants and the agricultural nation its industrial wants, to mutual advantage. But how came the industrial nation also to acquire wealth by the transaction? Performing the preferred industrial task, it got not only its food but a profit over. What else could it mean but that after a series of years the industrial nation should come to have large interest-bearing investments in the agricultural country, owning its railroads, tramways, water works, and banks? What else could it mean but that the richest country in foreign investments was the one that had been for the longest time engaged in exchanging the surplus product of its machines for the food and raw materials of other countries? How was it that those other countries, after having served her for many years with food and raw materials, invariably owed her a great deal of money? Or, if you approach it from the other point of view, you find in the economic literature of industrial nations a certain finished doctrine, which is that the exchange of manufactured goods for food and raw materials is a business that pays. It is not primarily a vital transaction. It becomes vital by extension—that is to say, when in the course of time the industrial population has increased beyond the native food supply. But in the beginning the motive is gain. Nakedly, it is an exchange of skilled labour for unskilled labour, to the enrichment of the former; it is a division of labour among nations on a kind of caste plan.

There is much to be said for it. In no other way could civilization have been spread so fast; by no other method could the world have become so rich in a few years. There was much to be said, also, for piracy. It diffused, manners, customs, and wealth; it made peoples acquainted with one another; it made a flat world round and laid the foundations of modern commerce. In the modern case all difficulty begins when the peoples to whom the less profitable tasks have been allotted become intelligently dissatisfied and resolve to change their status, as the American colonists did, as the Japanese did, as now all lusty nations are doing, last of all the Chinese.

Modern trade evolved from piracy. There was a time when all transfer of goods between nations was by joyous might. It is pleasant to believe that the cause of the decline of piracy was a rise in the moral sense of mankind. It is more likely to have been the other way—that as piracy declined for rational reasons rules to govern commercial conduct became necessary. To enforce the rules became everyone’s duty. To break them was punishable. From this would germinate a moral sense. Piracy was bound to fail. On a large scale, continuous and competitive, it simply was not feasible. Competition ruined it.

There was a marginal time in which one was either pirate or trader, agreeably to circumstance. The early Greek in his dangerous ship never knew which he was; nor did anyone else. He took when the taking was good; when it was not, he bartered. The Romans finally abolished piracy in the Mediterranean, but on the high seas it was the great romantic enterprize down to a very recent time. Some of its heroes are venerated as daring navigators, pathbreakers of empire. It takes some effort to remember that trees are still standing that were already old when the world was a place where finding was keeping. If what you found was in the possession of savages or heathens, you exchanged for it the hope of civilization, maybe a few glass beads. Toward the end, this wonderful business began to be hedged about with restrictions. You had to be careful not to take anything forcibly from people who had treaties of amity with your own country, for if you did they made trouble for you at home, diplomatically, and you might even be hanged at the end of an otherwise glorious voyage.

But if you swindled them in trade, that was all right. Naturally, the first theory of trade was to give the least and get the most. There was else no point to it.

The significance of trade has fundamentally changed in our time. What was a private adventure has become a national necessity, vital to the existing form of the principal industrial states of the world. And yet that first rude theory of it, representing the step from piracy to commerce, universally survives. This, at last, is the crucial fact.

It has been impossible to part with the notion that there must be gain in trade—a profit on one side beyond the mutual satisfaction of unlike wants with unlike goods. Hence the term, balance of trade, meaning the balance in your favour, or against you, from the transactions of commerce. The rule is that the industrial nations come out each year with a balance in their favour. The countries with whom they have been exchanging machine-made goods for food and raw materials owe them money. This simply means that the industrial nations charge more for what they sell than they pay for what they buy. Hence the gain. That is how they get rich. It is more than a rule: it is the very principle of trade; and if you say there is any other principle the commercial mind becomes instantly stark. What would activate trade if not the hope of gain?

Nevertheless, trade on that principle is bound to fail, as piracy failed, and for the same practical reason. On a vast scale, with unlimited participation, it is not continuously feasible. Every nation cannot have a favourable trade-balance. So long as three or four nations had a monopoly of machines and machine-craft, it could be managed; it could even assume such colossal proportions as to create the illusion of being permanent as the way of the world. That monopoly is broken. The machine is increasingly a common possession. Its power is dispersed, and there is much new and unbidden ecstasy in the exercise of it. And whereas it was that a few nations exploited many, what now opens to view is the prospect of all nations simultaneously engaged in the effort to exploit one another. Every frontier a trade wall. Each nation forbidding others to do unto it that which it is bent upon doing to them. So we return to the middle of the sixteenth century, no wiser than the British were when the Parliament voted _An Act Avoiding Divers Foreign Wares Made by Handicraftsmen Beyond the Seas_ (_5 Eliz. c. 7, Statutes of the Realm, Vol. IV, Part I, pp. 428-429), 1562_. It reads:

Whereas heretofore the artificers of this realm of England (as well within the city of London as within other cities, towns, and boroughs of the same real) that is to wit, girdlers, cutlers, saddlers, glovers, point-makers, and such like handicraftsmen, have been in the said faculties greatly wrought, and greatly set on work, as well for the sustentation of themselves, their wives, and families, as for a good education of a great part of the youth of this realm in good art and laudible exercise:

Yet notwithstanding so now it is, that by reason of the abundance of foreign wares brought into this realm from the parts of beyond the seas, the said artificers are not only less occupied, and thereby utterly impoverished, the youth not trained in the said sciences and exercises, and thereby the said faculties and the exquisite knowledges thereof like in short time within this realm to decay; but also divers cities and towns within this realm of England much thereby impaired, the whole realm greatly endamaged and other countries greatly enriched.

For reformation whereof, be it enacted by our sovereign lady the Queen’s Highness, and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of this present parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, that no person or persons whatsoever, from or after the feast of the Nativity of St John Baptist now next ensuing, shall bring or cause to be brought into this realm of England from the parts of beyond the seas, any girdles, harness for girdles, rapiers, daggers, knives, hilts, pummels, lockets, chapes, dagger-blades, handles, scabbards, and sheaths for knives, saddles, horseharness, stirrups, bits, gloves, points, leather laces, or pins, being ready made or wrought in any parts of beyond the seas, to be sold, bartered, or exchanged within this realm of England or Wales; upon pain to forfeit all such wares so to be brought contrary to the true meaning of this act, in whose hands soever they or any of them shall be found, on the very value thereof.

Shall it be either this again, or from a universal war of machine-competition the survival of one titanic industrial nation with a monopoly of foreign trade and the might to force its surplus goods on other people’s markets? That nation would fall in time and not altogether from its own weight. It would, of course, abuse its power; but, moreover, it would be unable to collect its favourable trade-balances from all the rest of the world.

Logical extremes are fictions of thought. It is always another thing that happens. The one impossibility is for trade to wear in its present character. It has come to the end of its theory, witness the dread with which European statesmen, economists, and industrialists regard the payment of German reparations. How shall Germany pay? In goods. There is no other way. She cannot pay in gold. There is not that much gold in the whole world. The Allied creditors actually lend her a little gold in order that she may recover from her amazing act of bankruptcy and get back to the way of producing exportable wealth. But to whom shall she deliver her goods, or sell them? Great Britain does not want them. Her anxiety is how to keep her own factories going. They make the same goods. France does not wish them, nor Belgium, nor Italy, nor the United States, and all for the same reason. They have a potential surplus of industrial commodities from their own machines. Then shall Germany sell her goods in other markets and turn the money proceeds over to Great Britain, France, _et al_? But they themselves need those other markets on which to sell their own industrial products. German competition is not wanted there. Thus an _impasse_.

If, in desperation, the Allied creditors forgave Germany her reparation debt, or so much of it as she should be obliged to pay in competitive goods, that would be still worse. For Germany would then compete in those other markets on her own initiative and keep the profit. And all the time those other markets, in Asia, Africa, South America, tend to become less and less exploitable because they belong to people who have begun to found industries of their own and are in the way to be natively supplied with manufactures.

VII

DIM VISTAS NEW

It must occur to you that what the world requires to find is a new conception of commerce among nations—one that shall be free of the predatory impulse, above the exploiting motive, competitive in some nobler sense. It need not be magnanimous or unselfish—not yet; but only enlightened enough to comprehend the latter meaning of events.

For a superseding principle the perfect pattern is represented in nature, where you see dissimilar organisms existing together in a state of symbiosis, one sustaining the other, vitally interdependent, yet neither exploiting the other.

There is no accrual of advantage to one side, no gain, no favourable balance of trade. One gives exactly as much as it receives and two wants are equally satisfied, with nothing to boot either way.

This is very different from parasitism, which is one-sided, for gain only. And there is a very curious suggestion that organisms now existing together in a state of permanent symbiotic union were once parasitic and learned better.

It cannot be supposed that nations will ever deliberately substitute a principle of mutualism for the principle of gain in trade. They could not if they would. Those that have the advantage must fight for it to the end. Commerce itself, if you look to it, is a complex structure of growth for which there is nowhere any original accountability. It cannot change its philosophy, any more than a tree, for it has none. It has instead a vital instinct for opportunity and a flexible way with necessity and circumstance. There is no hope of its being reformed ideally by mass intelligence. The conglomerate mind is irresponsibly, impersonally selfish; it cannot act without experience. There is no experience of peoples sustaining one another on a sympathetic plan, each willing to give as much as it takes, with no balance favourable or unfavourable to be settled in gold or debt. This has never happened. It is an idea only.

But if now we move our point of view from the centre to the circumference, we shall see already taking place, with the force of natural events, momentous alterations in the scheme of economic life—one of decay and one of revaluation.

We witness almost unawares the ruin of that classic enterprise of empire which is founded upon the theory of a balance of trade and a division of labour whereby the colonies, the dominions, the subject and mandated peoples are hewers, drawers, and food-bringers, serving those who live in cities, practise machine-craft, and think themselves wholly benevolent.

The machine has betrayed it. Nothing more unexpected has occurred since the discovery of a simple chemical reaction that was to destroy the privileged warrior-caste among mankind. When a splendid knight in armour was powerless against the peasant with a musket and a knight with a musket no better than a peasant, the romantic profession of arms was doomed. Gunpowder ended the age of chivalry. Ultimate military power passed to the people.

And now for hundreds of millions of people hitherto inferior in status the machine is a symbol of liberation, freedom, independence, recognition, racial power. Japan is the thrilling example in Asia. Did it not deliver her from a thraldom imposed by the Western Powers in the interest of their own trade? Did it not make her in one generation their equal, a nation to be feared? Certainly for these reasons use and possession of the machine will increase in the world beyond any natural economic ratio, and both the power and profit of empire will cease.

The other alteration, already beginning to be visible though not yet adequately understood, is a change in the value of food. Three causes henceforth will be operating together to make food dear. First, as cities continue to grow and the industrial population of the earth continues to augment faster than the agricultural population, the need to import food will be always greater; second, the exportable surplus of food will be always less because as the agricultural and low-craft nations progress toward their ideal of industrial independence they will consume more and more of their own food products; and third, the supply of those industrial commodities that are exchanged for food will enormously increase.

In the language of the economist, the agricultural index will rise and the industrial index will fall. It will require a greater quantity of manufactures to buy a bushel of wheat; fewer bushels of wheat to buy a manufactured article. This will not be for one year or two. It will be lasting. It will affect the status of great groups and classes of people. In the cities and industrial centres the cost of living will move in a vertical manner.

The difficulties of food-importing countries may, almost certainly will, become desperate. The people of Great Britain, for example, will pay dearly for the wealth they have amassed by industry in the last seventy-five years. If the value of food, priced in British machine-wares, should double, then for the same quantity of food as before they would have to give twice the quantity of manufactured goods, which would mean twice as much labour and no more to eat. The same difficulties will beset all countries not self-contained in food. They will exhort their people to return to the fields, which the people will be loth to do, having tasted cities. They will expect their governments to make food cheaper by edict, or to buy it out of taxation and distribute it gratis. Moreover, in some countries, taking again the case of Great Britain as notable, there may not be enough land. The people perhaps could not feed themselves no matter how intensively they worked their fields, industry having multiplied the population beyond the utmost potentiality of a native food supply. Obviously indicated is a movement of dispersal together with a limitation upon the increase of industrial population. More power will pass to countries, like the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Australia, that have the advantage of enormous food-reserves. Their problems will be internal.

None of this can happen without much blind and violent resistance. But, of course, it will not happen all at once, not all in one place, nor in every case with a clear meaning. And it is not certain that any amount of experience, however painful, will bring nations to adopt what we have called a symbiotic principle of commerce with one another. There is at first the danger that agriculture in its turn will exploit industry as industry has exploited peasantry and that those who possess or control resources of food and raw materials will hold them too dear, thereby taking the industrial nations into their debt or provoking them to insane measures.

Thus the opportunity to go forward might be lost in passion. The fate of retrogression is possible. This has happened many times. It is much less probable than ever before, however, for many reasons that seem permanent. When knowledge was a precious torch borne aloft by a few hands through storm and stress, it was easily quenched. Then darkness. You can hardly imagine destruction of the existing body of science, technology, and fact-knowledge. The mass of it is too great to be lost.

That, of course, has nothing to do with wisdom. By knowledge alone man might extinguish himself utterly. But to suppose that he will not find a new way to go on with, that he will either move the old struggle to new ground or return to medievalism, is to believe there is no law of human progress.

The probability is that he will find the way unknowingly, by groping, and will be well upon it before he has had time to formulate any clear idea or theory of what he is doing. He will have found little by little that it pays, better than any other way, not as he once understood profit, but in terms of enduring satisfactions, which may include peace. Critical understanding of it will come later with reflection, and as it comes he will rid his mind of the phantasy in pursuit of which he has made the world so much richer in things than in happiness.

Seeing now only how relentlessly the curse pursued him still and how the affliction of monotonous toil if it be lifted in one place is made heavier in another, he is torn with a sense of frustration. But the view is wrong—false to his first nature. He forgets the truth of his own myth. Somewhere down the ages it got turned upside down. Once he dwelt in the Garden of Eden, or supposed he did, and cared not for it. He was bored there and beguiled to his fall. The figure at the gate forbidding his return is a symbol of self-knowledge; it was set there by his own forethought, lest he should be tempted to go back.

If the machine with which he has believed himself to be storming a childish wish ever brought him to a state of effortless ease on earth, that would be his last.

It may be a power he is yet morally unprepared to exercise. How strange at least that with an incentive so trivial and naïve in itself he should have been able to perform an absolute feat of creation!

The machine was not. He reached his mind into emptiness and seized it. Even yet he cannot realize what he has done. Out of the free elemental stuff of the universe, visible and invisible, some of it imponderable, such as lightning, he has invented a class of typhonic, mindless organisms, exempt from the will of nature.

We have no understanding of creation, its process or meaning. The machine is the externalized image of man’s thoughts. It is furthermore an extension of his life, for we perceive as an economic fact that human existence in its present phase, on its present scale, could not continue in its absence. And what are we ourselves, life to begin with, if not an image of thought? Perhaps it is true as a principle of creation that the image and its creator must co-exist, inseparably.

In any light, man’s further task is Jovian. That is to learn how best to live with these powerful creatures of his mind, how to give their fecundity a law and their functions a rhythm, how not to employ them in error against himself—since he cannot live without them.

_Each, pott 8vo, 2/6 net_ _Occasionally illustrated_

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

This series of books, by some of the most distinguished English thinkers, scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics, and artists, was at once recognized as a noteworthy event. Written from various points of view, one book frequently opposing the argument of another, they provide the reader with a stimulating survey of the most modern thought in many departments of life. Several volumes are devoted to the future trend of Civilization, conceived as a whole; while others deal with particular provinces, and cover the future of Woman, War, Population, Clothes, Wireless, Morals, Drama, Poetry, Art, Sex, Law, etc.

It is interesting to see in these neat little volumes, issued at a low price, the revival of a form of literature, the Pamphlet, which has been in disuse for 200 years.

_Published by_
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
Broadway House: 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

_VOLUMES READY_

=Daedalus=, or Science and the Future. By J. B. S. HALDANE, Reader in Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. _Sixth impression._

“A fascinating and daring little book.”—_Westminster Gazette._ “The essay is brilliant, sparkling with wit and bristling with challenges.”—_British Medical Journal._

“Predicts the most startling changes.”—_Morning Post._

=Callinicus=, a Defence of Chemical Warfare. By J. B. S. HALDANE. _Second impression._

“Mr. Haldane’s brilliant study.”—_Times Leading Article._ “A book to be read by every intelligent adult.”—_Spectator._ “This brilliant little monograph.”—_Daily News._

=Icarus=, or the Future of Science. By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. _Fourth impression._

“Utter pessimism.”—_Observer._ “Mr. Russell refuses to believe that the progress of Science must be a boon to mankind.”—_Morning Post._ “A stimulating book, that leaves one not at all discouraged.”—_Daily Herald._

=What I Believe.= By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. _Second impression._

“One of the most brilliant and thought-stimulating little books I have read—a better book even than _Icarus_.”—_Nation._ “Simply and brilliantly written.”—_Nature._ “In stabbing sentences he punctures the bubble of cruelty, envy, narrowness, and ill-will which those in authority call their morals.”—_New Leader._

=Tantalus=, or the Future of Man. By F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc., Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. _Second impression._

“They are all (_Daedalus_, _Icarus_, and _Tantalus_) brilliantly clever, and they supplement or correct one another.”—_Dean Inge_, in _Morning Post_. “Immensely valuable and infinitely readable.”—_Daily News._ “The book of the week.”—_Spectator._

=Cassandra=, or the Future of the British Empire. By F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc.

“We commend it to the complacent of all parties.”—_Saturday Review._ “The book is small, but very, very weighty; brilliantly written, it ought to be read by all shades of politicians and students of politics.”—_Yorkshire Post._ “Yet another addition to that bright constellation of pamphlets.”—_Spectator._

=Quo Vadimus?= Glimpses of the Future. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE, D.Sc., author of “Selenium, the Moon Element,” etc.

“A wonderful vision of the future. A book that will be talked about.”—_Daily Graphic._ “A remarkable contribution to a remarkable series.”—_Manchester Dispatch._ “Interesting and singularly plausible.”—_Daily Telegraph._

=Hephaestus=, the Soul of the Machine. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE, D.Sc.

“A worthy contribution to this interesting series. A delightful and thought-provoking essay.”—_Birmingham Post._ “There is a special pleasure in meeting with a book like _Hephaestus_. The author has the merit of really understanding what he is talking about.”—_Engineering._

=Lysistrata=, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI, author of “A Defence of Aristocracy”, etc.

“A stimulating book. Volumes would be needed to deal, in the fullness his work provokes, with all the problems raised.”—_Sunday Times._ “Pro-feminine, but anti-feministic.”— _Scotsman._ “Full of brilliant common-sense.”—_Observer._

=Hypatia=, or Woman and Knowledge. By MRS BERTRAND RUSSELL. With a frontispiece. _Second impression._

An answer to _Lysistrata_. “A passionate vindication of the rights of women.”—_Manchester Guardian._ “Says a number of things that sensible women have been wanting publicly said for a long time.”—_Daily Herald._ “Everyone who cares at all about these things should read it.”—_Weekly Westminster._

=Thrasymachus=, the Future of Morals. By C. E. M. JOAD, author of “Common-Sense Ethics,” etc.

“His provocative book.”—_Graphic._ “Written in a style of deliberate brilliance.”—_Times Literary Supplement._ “As outspoken and unequivocal a contribution as could well be imagined. Even those readers who dissent will be forced to recognize the admirable clarity with which he states his case. A book that will startle.”—_Daily Chronicle._

=The Passing of the Phantoms=: a Study of Evolutionary Psychology and Morals. By C. J. PATTEN, Professor of Anatomy, Sheffield University. With 4 Plates.

“Readers of _Daedalus_, _Icarus_ and _Tantalus_, will be grateful for an excellent presentation of yet another point of view.”—_Yorkshire Post._ “This bright and bracing little book.”— _Literary Guide._ “Interesting and original.”—_Medical Times._

=The Mongol in our Midst=: a Study of Man and his Three Faces. By F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 28 Plates. _Second Edition, revised._

“A brilliant piece of speculative induction.”—_Saturday Review._ “An extremely interesting and suggestive book, which will reward careful reading.”—_Sunday Times._ “The pictures carry fearful conviction.”—_Daily Herald._

=The Conquest of Cancer.= By H. W. S. WRIGHT, M.S., F.R.C.S. Introduction by F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D.

“Eminently suitable for general reading. The problem is fairly and lucidly presented. One merit of Mr. Wright’s plan is that he tells people what, in his judgment, they can best do, _here and now_.”—From the _Introduction_.

=Pygmalion=, or the Doctor of the Future. By R. MCNAIR WILSON, M.D.

“Dr Wilson has added a brilliant essay to this series.”—_Times Literary Supplement._ “This is a very little book, but there is much wisdom in it.”—_Evening Standard._ “No doctor worth his salt would venture to say that Dr Wilson was wrong.”—_Daily Herald._

=Prometheus=, or Biology and the Advancement of Man. By H. S. JENNINGS, Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins University.

“This volume is one of the most remarkable that has yet appeared in this series. Certainly the information it contains will be due to most educated laymen. It is essentially a discussion of ... heredity and environment, and it clearly establishes the fact that the current use of these terms has no scientific justification.”—_Times Literary Supplement._ “An exceedingly brilliant book.”—_New Leader._

=Narcissus=: an Anatomy of Clothes. By GERALD HEARD. With 19 illustrations.

“A most suggestive book.”—_Nation._ “Irresistible. Reading it is like a switchback journey. Starting from prehistoric times we rocket down the ages.”—_Daily News._ “Interesting, provocative, and entertaining.”—_Queen._

=Thamyris=, or Is There a Future for Poetry? By R. C. TREVELYAN.

“Learned, sensible, and very well-written.”—_Affable Hawk_, in _New Statesman_. “Very suggestive.”—_J. C. Squire_, in _Observer_. “A very charming piece of work. I agree with all, or at any rate, almost all its conclusions.”—_J. St. Loe Strachey_, in _Spectator_.

=Proteus=, or the Future of Intelligence. By VERNON LEE, author of “Satan the Waster,” etc.

“We should like to follow the author’s suggestions as to the effect of intelligence on the future of Ethics, Aesthetics, and Manners. Her book is profoundly stimulating and should be read by everyone.”—_Outlook._ “A concise, suggestive piece of work.”—_Saturday Review._

=Timotheus=, the Future of the Theatre. By BONAMY DOBRÉE, author of “Restoration Drama,” etc.

“A witty, mischievous little book, to be read with delight.”—_Times Literary Supplement._ “This is a delightfully witty book.”—_Scotsman._ “In a subtly satirical vein he visualizes various kinds of theatres in 200 years time. His gay little book makes delightful reading.”—_Nation._

=Paris=, or the Future of War. By Captain B. H. LIDDELL HART.

A companion volume to _Callinicus_. “A gem of close thinking and deduction.”—_Observer._ “A noteworthy contribution to a problem of concern to every citizen in this country.”—_Daily Chronicle._ “There is some lively thinking about the future of war in _Paris_, just added to this set of live-wire pamphlets on big subjects.”—_Manchester Guardian._

=Wireless Possibilities.= By Professor A. M. LOW. With 4 diagrams.

“As might be expected from an inventor who is always so fresh, he has many interesting things to say.”—_Evening Standard._ “The mantle of Blake has fallen upon the physicists. To them we look for visions, and we find them in this book.”—_New Statesman._

=Perseus=: of Dragons. By H. F. SCOTT STOKES. With 2 illustrations.

“A diverting little book, chock-full of ideas. Mr. Stokes’ dragon-lore is both quaint and various.”—_Morning Post._ “Very amusingly written, and a mine of curious knowledge for which the discerning reader will find many uses.”—_Glasgow Herald._

=Lycurgus=, or the Future of Law. By E. S. P. HAYNES, author of “Concerning Solicitors,” etc.

“An interesting and concisely written book.”—_Yorkshire Post._ “He roundly declares that English criminal law is a blend of barbaric violence, medieval prejudices, and modern fallacies.... A humane and conscientious investigation.”—_T.P.’s Weekly._ “A thoughtful book—deserves careful reading.”—_Law Times._

=Euterpe=, or the Future of Art. By LIONEL R. MCCOLVIN, author of “The Theory of Book-Selection.”

“Discusses briefly, but very suggestively, the problem of the future of art in relation to the public.”—_Saturday Review._ “Another indictment of machinery as a soul-destroyer ... a gloomy prospect, but Mr. Colvin has the courage to suggest solutions.”—_Westminster Gazette._ “This is altogether a much-needed book.”—_New Leader._

=Birth Control and the State=: a Plea and a Forecast. By C. P. BLACKER, _M.C._, M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

Just published. A discussion of the arguments for and against Birth Control, considered from the personal, social, and international aspects, and in its bearings upon the future. Summing up in its favour, the author contends that the only adequate solution rests in the hands of the medical profession throughout the world.

=Atlantis=, or America and the Future. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER.

“Many hard things have been said about America, but few quite so bitter and caustic as these.”—_Daily Sketch._ “The whole of America as his subject. He can conjure up possibilities of a new Atlantis, controlled by the gods; but he requires a few centuries for the communication.”—_Clarion._

=Midas=, or the United States and the Future. By C. H. BRETHERTON, author of “The Real Ireland,” etc.

A companion volume to _Atlantis_. “Full of astute observations and acute reflections ... this wise and witty pamphlet, a provocation to the thought that is creative.”—_Morning Post._ “Packs a punch in every paragraph. One could hardly ask for more ‘meat’.”—_Spectator._

=Nuntius=, or the Future of Advertising. By GILBERT RUSSELL.

“Another booklet which looks wisely on the world of to-morrow. The future of advertising is very sanely considered here. We are heartily in agreement with the main thesis.”—_Spectator._ “A thoughtful little book.”—_Daily Sketch._

=Pegasus=, or Problems of Transport. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER, author of “The Reformation of War,” etc. With 8 Plates.