of the world's struggle. It is, of course, the primary undertaking of civilization, and once achieved, our thought and our effort must go forward in aims that are more far reaching. Our goal must be the destruction of the economic root of war-in other words, to establish an economic, as well as a political, internationalism, a community of interest, even if qualified and incomplete, among great nations. The American policy of the open door in colonial administration must find acceptance in the world if mankind is to emerge from the perennial menace of war.”

SUGGESTED READINGS

Dominion, Leon, The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe.
Krehbiel, Edward Benjamin, Nationalism, War and Society.

Rose, J. Holland, Nationality in Modern History.

Toynbee, Arnold J., Nationality and the War.
Zimmern, Alfred E., Nationality and Government.

International Conciliation Bulletin No. 112, March 1917.

"What is Nationality?" by Theodore Ruyssen.

The Individ-
ualism of
the French
Revolution.

PART V

CHAPTER I

THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION

THE French Revolution in one of its aspects stands for individualism as against the community life or manor life of the feudal era. It was a revolt against the idea that men must be chained together in all activities of life; that because one's father was a baker the son must be a baker, and because he is a baker he must follow the methods of bread baking fixed by long established custom.

In no relations were class chains so galling as in economic life. Nowhere was the revolt against nobles and clergy so persistent and so determined as in the economic relations of the classes. To the lower classes light came slowly, both as to cause and effect. The slow evolution of industry through the eighteenth century had brought forth a great industrial class, whose development had given rise to discontent with its position, and its discontent was transmitted to the agricultural peasantry.

This creation of a new human force in society was the first definite product of the evolution of industry. Once created, it made the old order impossible. Individualism took the place of the feudal manor with its great lord surrounded by his group of dependent serfs, and a new world was made possible by the social, economic, and political changes in the new situation.

England was the birthplace of the new economic life. Unlike conditions in France, in England the old feudal order quietly and persistently changed until it had largely broken down. The manor England the system had disappeared, the guilds had largely lost their Birth place control. Individualism had already taken hold of ecoof New Economic Life. nomic life and England had emerged into the dawn of a new era. Moreover, the security of an insular position had tended to develop capital and encourage commerce. Her religious liberalism had invited to her shores the most enlightened groups of the Flemish industrial classes. These had, in turn, given an impetus to manufacturing that placed her at the forefront of the industrial and commercial world. England was also blessed with a climate favorable to the production of cloth, for its dampness made for the better handling of the cotton threads. She had, too, in her swift streams an abundance of water power as well as the coal and iron under her soil.

But better than anything else was the enterprise and alertness which had come as the result of the national consciousness which already held England in its embrace. This idea of unity, acting in concert with the social changes which had brought individual initiative, made England the birthplace of our modern economic life. The Napoleonic era fortunately found this new England well established, an England which the continental system of the Great Conqueror failed to destroy. It was an England whose manufactures were to save the state and whose increase of output was made possible by growth of invention and discovery in the period immediately preceding the French Revolution.

In a brief chapter it is impossible to do more than note the fields in which the changes took place, and perhaps suggest something of their importance. As an historian of the last century has expressed it, "Here in England, unheeded by preoccupied diplomats and ministries, a grand alliance of coal, iron, steam, and a whole group of textile industries was being developed, which were to modify Europe more profoundly than the concert of powers, or the settlements which were being made at the Congress of Vienna."

The Alliance in Economic Life.

This alliance produced, first of all, great changes in machinery and made possible the exchange of human power for that of machine power in the manufacture of all classes of products. Under the old system of domestic manufacture, the drawing of the thread was poorly done by hand after the laborious preparation of the cotton, the wool and the flax. This thread was then used in hand weaving. All the members of the household were used but the process was infinitely slow and laborious. With the coming of machinery not only was the product better when completed but it was done many times more rapidly.

Inventions

and Their

It will be enough, perhaps, to enumerate some of the inventions which produced this great revolution in clothmaking and in manufacturing of all kinds. The first important discovery was Kay's "flying shuttle", 1733, by which the shuttle was Influence. thrown back and forth by means of a handle, thus accelerating the process of weaving. This was followed in 1765 by Hargreaves' "spinning jenny" which made possible the drawing of eight threads at once. This enabled thread making to keep pace with weaving, and the process was soon developed very much farther and was continued until the spinning machine was able to make a thousand threads at a time infinitely more rapidly than the first jenny made its eight threads. With a start both in thread production and weaving inventions continued. In 1769, Richard Arkwright invented

his "water frame," which consisted of "a series of revolving rollers, rotating at various speeds, which spun cotton thread so firmly that an all cotton cloth could now be made" instead of mixing with the cotton linen, or wool as had formerly been necessary. The water frame as its name suggests was operated by a water wheel instead of by hand. A little later, 1779, the spinning jenny was further developed by Crompton's "mule" which enabled the jenny to make a finer and stronger thread and it was operated by water power which enabled the thread to be made more rapidly. Ten years later this increase in thread making was taken advantage of by the further perfecting of the weaving process through which Cartwright was able to make his machine do the work of four men under the old process.

The work of cloth making and the use of cotton was given its final impetus by Eli Whitney's "cotton gin", 1792, which enabled theseed to be separated from the cotton by machinery so that this new product at once began to supply the bulk of the material for the manufacture of cloth.

In the meantime water power had proved unsatisfactory, for its location was practically fixed and mills had to go to it for the power necessary for manufacturing. This condition was eventually overcome by a series of inventions which finally produced Watt's "steam engine" in 1769. After 1769 it was soon possible to apply the principle of the steam engine to the running of machinery and thus mills and factories could be more advantageously located. With the coming of the steam engine and the machinery of the mills came also a demand for more durable material with which to construct them. In place of the old charcoal furnace with its hand bellows, which can be seen still in many blacksmith shops, there was substituted coal which greatly helped the process. It was not until 1856, however, that the making of steel was standardized by the discovery of the "Bessemer process" of hardening the iron and thus making it durable for use in machinery. With the discoveries of the use of coal and iron two of our most important industries were developed, industries upon which depend the greater part of all our industrial life.

The changes produced by the discovery of the use of steam soon found application in transportation. The steamboat and the locomotive both practically developed before 1850, made possible world trade to replace the narrow trade interests of the earlier period. The revolution in transportation was followed by one in the means of communication, the telegraph, the telephone, the ocean cables by which the world has been brought nearer together than were the people of England in the Middle Ages. The telegraph was perfected by 1850, the Atlantic cable laid in 1866 and the principle of the telephone discovered in 1860.