PART VI THE STATE AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM PROFESSOR Ellwood defines the social problem as follows: "The Social Problem is now, what it has been in all ages, namely, the problem of the relations of men to one another. It is the problem of human living together and cannot be confined to any statement in economic, eugenic,1 or other one-sided terms. The social problem is neither the labor problem, nor the problem of the distribution of wealth, nor the problem of the relation of population to natural resources, nor the control of hereditary qualities, nor the harmonious adjustment of the relation of the sexes, but it is all these and more. If the social problem is the problem of human living together, then it is as broad as humanity and human nature, then no mere statement, of it in terms of one set of factors will suffice." 2 3 The social problem as a modern phenomenon may be said to have arisen with the industrial revolution, the change which took place in industry in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. It is true, of course, that there has always been a social problem but this great transformation of industry in all its relations is the source of the social problem as the western world knows it to-day. Prior to the industrial revolution there was in England what is known as the domestic system. Under the domestic system, industry had been carried on in the household or in small local shops where workmen, usually belonging to an organization called the guild, worked together. They usually owned their own tools and carried on the business of selling the product of their own labor. The workman many times during the summer months worked on a farm and in the winter months carried on the labor in his home with the entire family. Under these conditions the workman received nearly the entire product of his labor. The only restrictions were the laws of his country and the rules of the guild. Daniel Defoe, the author of 1'Eugenic' has reference to the idea that heredity is the chief source of differences in people. 2 Ellwood, The Social Problem, 13-14.. For description of the industrial revolution in its economic aspects, especially in regard to the great inventions, see Chapter I, Part V, The Economic Revolution. Robinson Crusoe, has described this system very vividly. He says: "The land was divided into small enclosures of from two acres to six or seven acres each, seldom more, every three or four pieces having a house belonging to them; hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another. We could see at every house a tenter and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth, or kersie, or shalloon. At every considerable house there was a manufactory. Every clothier keeps one horse at least, to carry his manufactures to market, and every one generally keeps a cow or two, or more, for his family. By this means the small pieces of enclosed land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn (i.e., grain) enough to feed their poultry. The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at their dye vat, some at their looms, others dressing the cloth; the women and children carding or spinning, all being employed from the youngest to the eldest. 994 It has Social and Economic Changes of Industrial The Industrial Revolution brought about many social and economic changes. The great growth of wealth which resulted from the industrial revolution has had its good as well as its bad results. resulted in a wider distribution of wealth of the people as a whole; it has enabled an increasing population to live. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the population of Europe doubled. As an illustration of the expansion of industry, the British cotton manufacture increased from $1,000,000 in 1760 to $600,000,000 in 1910. The commerce of the Unites States and Europe increased eight hundred per cent. in fifty years (1830-1880). Revolution. Since the changes made by the industrial revolution in the production, preservation and distribution of goods, an ordinary workingman to-day has a more varied, a more interesting, and a more comfortable life than the noble living in his castle during the Middle Ages. The common man of today has the streets of his city lighted with gas or electricity;5 he can live in a warmly-heated house; he can have a varied diet. The food of the entire world,-nuts and coffee from South America; dates from Arabia and the far East; fruits from Central and South America are brought to his very doors by the fast methods of modern distribution. The medieval knight had to have * Quoted in Robinson and Beard, Development of Modern Europe, II, 44-45. This was a description of Defoe's journey through Yorkshire in 1724-1726. Compare the picture of Paris in the eighteenth century as described by Arthur Young in his Travels:-"The great city (Paris) appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen The streets are very narrow, and many of them crowded, nine tenths dirty, and all without foot pavements." Robinson and Beard's Readings II, 141-2. spices in order to make his food palatable. Our modern ways of preserving food make this entirely unnecessary. The ordinary medieval noble had a most uninteresting life. The monotony of his life was only relieved by occasional wars. His food was poor and unvaried. He had no newspapers or pictures and few books. In short, it was an uncommon thing for even a noble to be able to read. The wandering minstrel brought him what little news he got from the outside. Not for him the great daily newspaper with the news of the whole world. The cheapened processes of printing have created a greater revolution than the transformation of the country worker into the citydweller; a greater revolution than the American Revolution or of the French Revolution. The ordinary man to-day is thus enabled to read what was only permitted to a few. Then think of the motion picture! It has enabled the poorest individual to enjoy the wonders of his age. and to witness with his own eyes what is happening the world over. This is one side of the picture. The results have not been wholly good. The greatly increased production of wealth ought to have meant that every-able-bodied man, woman or child should have enough of this world's goods to live in comfort all his or her life. Poverty had to be expected under the old system of production and distribution when not enough goods could be produced or saved to carry over from one generation to another. With the tremendous increase in the world's wealth this is no longer true. A great deal of capital is saved. No longer should the Biblical injunction be true that the poor we always have with us. Investigations made by Charles Booth in London in the latter part of the nineteenth century show that, roughly speaking, thirty per cent. of the population of that city were continually in poverty. A similar investigation in York, England, showed that over twenty-seven per cent. of the population of that city lived below the poverty line and that some forty-three per cent. of the laboring classes were found in such a condition. Other investigations confirm these statements. Another result which has come with the increase in industry has been the appearance of panics and crises. As a result of these, unemployment has become common. The removal of the evils of poverty Capital does not mean money but goods saved from one period to another. 7 For discussion why this is unnecessary see: Patten, S. N. The New Basis of Civilization. Notice his discussion of the difference between deficit and surplus economy. 8 One of the chief causes of poverty is unemployment. Compare the chapters Social Legislation in England and Social Legislation in Germany in regard to means of combating this evil. During the war, the United States established the United States Employment Bureau. See chapter Labor and the War, Part VI, Ch. IV. has been undertaken by enlightened thinkers and statesmen in all civilized countries." Means of ameliorating the evil conditions of modern life have been proposed and are being acted upon. Social insurance of various kinds has been enacted with laws.10 Still poverty exists! Modern poverty is harder to endure when the individual knows that under modern methods of production it is unnecessary. Society should care for those whose poverty is due to physical or mental infirmity but the hard-working man or woman in this day in the western world ought not to dread its advent. Modern methods of taxation are being devised to prevent the exploitation of the working class and to bring about a wider dispersal of goods. One of the most important of the changes of the Industrial Revolution was the development of the factory system. This change from the domestic system to the factory system was very gradual, for even to-day there are small shops run by their owners as under the domestic system. Instead of working in his own shop or with his fellows in a small industry, the workman now works in a large factory employing sometimes hundred or thousands of workmen. Thus, with the rise of the factory system there came the development of the capitalist or the employer who furnished the capital to carry on the industry, and the employees or workingmen who simply had their own physical labor to offer. Under the domestic system, the workingman might expect to rise and become himself an employer. Under the new system, this became increasingly difficult because of the necessity of obtaining capital to carry on the business. "The workman in the factory, having nothing more to accomplish than a mere muscular and automatic effort, was descended below the journeyman " of former times; at the same time, the chief of the industry had been lifted infinitely above the master-workman. Whether the factory belongs to him, or whether he is only the director of it, this industrial leader has an immense capital at his disposal, and, like a general, he commands an army of workmen. Through his intelligence, position, and manner of living, he belongs to a different world from Compare the speech of Lloyd George in his defense of the Budget in the House of Commons, April 29, 1909. He declared it was a budget "to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness." He concluded his famous address by stating that he hoped that "before this generation has passed away" that the world will have advanced "towards that good time when poverty and wretchedness and human degradation .. will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests." Hayes, C. J. H. British Social Politics, 380. 10 Compare discussion of Social Legislation in chapters Social Legislation in England and Social Legislation in Germany. 11 Under the Guild system there were three classes of workers:-(1) Masterworkmen (2) Journeymen (3) Apprentices. that occupied by his workmen." 12 The typical unit of production ceased to be a single family or group of persons working together and came to be a compact organization of people working in a vast factory. With the development of the factory also came the infinite division of labor. In the domestic system, the workman might perform the entire operation of some particular industry like the oldfashioned cobbler in shoe-making. But with the development of the factory there came specialization and one workman performed only a very minute part of the entire operation. This resulted in a separation in many cases of a workman from the results of his labor. Under the former system, he saw the product which he produced and under the new system in most cases he never saw the result of his work. This led to monotony and made the work irksome and ceased to bring about "joy in his labor." 13 "The laboring man lost especially his relative freedom and independence. Owning no longer the tools with which he worked and becoming specialized in his labor, he seemed but little more than a cog in the vast industrial machine. Hence the tendency of capitalism has been to dehumanize the conditions under which the laboring man works." 14 The Growth of Cities. With the factory system came the development of the growth of cities. A recent writer says: "The primary cause for the rapid increase of urban population not only in this country but throughout the civilized world has been the development of the factory system which necessitates concentration of populations at the places where manufacturing is being carried on." 15 This resulted in the transfer of the people from the country to the cities and the congestion of these people in the neighborhood of the factory. 16 With the congestion came the growth of the slum with its overcrowded condition and resulting in the congestion in large tenements where often more than two or three people lived in one room. This has resulted in the housing problem and with that problem pov 17 12 Laveleyé, quoted in Seignobos' "Contemporary Civilization." 426. 13 "The mass of the industrial population became wage-earners only, without that interest in their work which the old gild workers who owned the product of their labour had had."-Tickner, Social and Industrial History of England, 539. 14 Ellwood, Social Problem, 80-81. 15 Parmelee, Poverty and Social Progress, 166. 16 Cf. the picture of the factory town in Perris, Industrial History of Modern England, 147 ff. 17 See statement in chapter, Labor and the War, Part VI, Chapter IV, regarding the housing conditions in English and Scottish cities prior to the War. It must be remembered, however, that the growth of cities is very recent and moderr society has not yet learned how to adjust itself perfectly to city life. |