The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-17
CHAPTER VII.


| Employers and Einploy
Massive Industry Combinations
of Capital.
We have glanced over nearly the en-
tire economic history of mankind to the
Beginning OF the nineteenth century. The
reader must remember that in SO rapid
a review the picture that we have been
able to present of any given era has nes,-
| essarily been most indefinite. We could
only draw outlines: We could simply
touch and pass on. Especially neager
Is our account of the later stretches in
this economic march. Do not think that
agriculture was ever the same thing in
all nations or that commercial nation
here must have proceeded precisely like
a commercial nation there. Do, not fancy
that peoples have ever leaped from one
fashion of industrial life TO another n
an instant or with anything like clear
consciousness of the change. Remember
that a century might elapse in the his
tory of a land wherein it would puzzle
the wisest to determine whether its pri-
mary industry was this or that. Con-
tiguous districts have fourished upon
different lines of endeavor in the same
epoch. Today nails of a certain kind are
machine made in England, hand made
in Germany. In parts of Slavic Europe
you may visit the Old communistic viii
lage community STILL Also in Sierra
Leone and upon the gold coast you might
at this moment see whole villages work.
ing the fields in common and dividing
the harvest among the families accord
ing to their numbers. In all these things
rightly to utilize the account that has
been given we must bear in mind it's nee
essarily sketchy and hasty character.
The necessity of making allowance for
the conlplexity of conditions as we ap-
proach modern life is particularly in place
when We speak of manufacture and COM
merce as eharacterizing an industrial
period. They continue to exist in our
own day, though no longer the dominant
marks of our industry. When they were
the salient forms of the peoples wealth.
making activity they were not the exclu-
sive FORMS To see, however, the pro-
priety Of seizing upon manufactures and
commerce as making In certain nations
a considerably definite period of indus
trial evolution we need only consider
England, France and Germany during
the eighteenth century. Each of these
nations had then passed the era when
agrio ulture was its main business, yet
knew little as yet of credit and nothing
of masses, capital or the centralized
control of capital and labor as these
facts stand before us now. 1t is the
west European nations in the eighteenth
century and the ancient peoples when
at a correspondent level of industry that
we have in mind when speaking of man.
ufactures and commerce as denoting an
industrial era or type.
The finer and more careful organization
of business sketched in the preceding
study brings with it the employer and
those working for him on the wages
basis, e Employers and employed
now for the first time stand forth as reg
ular phenomena of industry, as definite
and separate classes in the social world
The functions by them represented
were present before, but the classes not,
till now Now, too, the time empnati-
cally turns against slavery, because in
dustry of the new order demands in every
worker sense of personal interest and
responsibility. TO be sure many peoples
at the stage now under discussion have
retained slavery The ancient nations
all did so. OF Athens, in her greatest
days. three-fourths of the population
We're slaves. But in modern times not
only are slave-holding nations the most
backward, but even among them the in
stitution is an unstable equilibrium and
at length fails utterly.
At this grade of advance where COM
merce and manufacturing are the Gig
nificant features of mems industry, cap
1ta1 becomes more important than even
before. 1t Is instructive to notice how
ever, that thes chief demand for capital
then is the commerce and trade, not yet
in manufacturing For manufacturing,
though in many forms singularly perfect,
as We have seen, has not yet come to be
carried in the large way SO familiar
TO II div hui tcyf rfoI
in little groups, in households or by indi-
viduals, with simple tools and cheap ap-
planes of all kinds. It's products are
products of labor rather than products Of
capital Even in the agriculture, which
is. of course, carried on along with man
ufaeturing and In commerce, capital is
less important than it becomes In the
period of massive industry. The agri-
culture which continues Is still extensive
rather than intensive; transportation is
mostly by caravans, wind and water;
land roads are few and mainly very
poor.
With the growth of manufactures and
commerce must obviously come great
changes In economic legislation and in
the whole posture of the public admins
tration toward industrial affairs An
entire new code in rights in rem makes
its advent. Laws touching wages, touch
ing obligations, touching taxation, have
to be modified, freshly interrupted and
applied. Private international law takes
ON the character of a system. The state
aside from its own very important
special industries, which 1t administers
like any great corporation, becomes more
than ever power In the industrial world
showing its face and applying its hand at
every turn. partly for good, partly for
evil.