Workmen's advocate., 1888-06-02
LAW OF PROGR E>> ECONOMIC PRESSURE AND
 HUMANlTY'S DESTINY.
Adaptation 10 Environment The Trend of Modern Production Toward Cooperation The
 Crisis Near at Hand.
 The Inevitable.

It Is no uncommon thing for the speakers in the cause of Socialism to be met with the almost dcspairing enquiry, Do you think you will ever convert majority, or at any rate a sufficient number, of the peo- pie to your view to establish Social lsm?' And then we are reminded of the terrible amount of apathy, ignorance and indifference that exists amongst the workers.
 Our friends who speak in this way forget that almost all great fundu- mental changes in the social organ ism have been brought about quite irrespective of the wishes, and some times even without the knowledge, of those who were the principal lnstru- mcnts in bringing them about.
 No man, nor any body of men, ever made a social revolution. The most we can hope for is to guide and direct 1t. Revolutions arc the out come of economic growth and de- velopment; In spite, then, of the vaporings of the individualists, we can safely say that nations and peo- pies have never, of their own inlta- tive, made any fundamental changes in their social surroundings, but these have always been brought about by economic pressure. Adapt atlon to the environment IS the law of progress, and, in fact, of life, and as economic conditions have changed, the people have had to adapt them selves to the changed conditions or perish; and so We find that to-day, as always, man ls simply the result of the conditions in which he is born, that while to the individual there is given within limits d certain amount of freewIl, the moulding of the destiny of the human race goes on, guided by forces over which man, as an individual, has very little control indeed.
 When man was stage lower in the animal scale, and lived III the forest, we know the family of the forest lived at peace within itself, according to the golden rule. Why? So that it might not die. Any in- ternal strife, any cessation of watch fulness meant that the family would be destroyed by it's yigllant enemies, the wild beasts, or the surrounding families or tribes. Then, as now, man was what his surroundings made him; he had to adapt himself to them or perish Take the ease of the early Egyptians. A migra- tory people suddenly find themselves in the valley of the Nile; finding they could raise their crops by the expenditure of very ltde labor by casting their seed into the overflow Ing waters of the Nile, they settled there. They would have continued to live by this very simple process of throwing their seed into the Nile had not economic pressure been ap- piled through the increase of popu- lation-man not having that great power over over nature which we possess to-day. Their position WAS a peculiar one; surrounded on one side by the sea, on the other by q dense forest inhabited by wild beasts. When, therefore, population had greatly increased, and the Nile over flowed its banks more than usual, as Walter Bagehot tells us, thousands were swept away by the flood; and when then the Nile did not overflow it's banks to the usual extent, and sufficient crops could not be raised, thousands dIed of starvation. Urged on by this pressure the more thought ful began to observe, and eventually discovered the law of hydraulics, or the storing up of waters, and in- stead of beng the slave of the Nile became it's master. As in this in- stance, 30 in others; all advance has been the result of economic pressure, and where there has been no epo-