The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-10
The Advent of manufactures and
Commerce.
CHATTER vi.

Commerce.
The growth of definite crafts and trades
and of traffic by means of money marks
the passage of a people from agriculture
to the next highest stage, that OF manu-
facture and trade When a people has at
tanned to manufactures and commerce
as head industries it need not, in fact
cannot, lay aside the more primitive
ones. Agriculture and fishing at least
will certainly continue and be staple
forms of production. This transition, like
each of the preceding, consists in a rise
by the social body to new round of the
industrial ladder, while it still rests a
crutch Or cane upon each of those reached
before. We have, however, at this point
in the development the peculiar feature
that commerce and manufacturing can
never become in anywise SO exclusively
a peoples means of subsistence as agri-
culture, shepherds work or hunting can
Commerce and manufacturing may be
the Characteristic means of production,
even the main means, but never the sole
means.
1t is only when the commercial stage of
economic experience has been reached
that people can be called civilized.
This is the turning point between what
may with some propriety, be called the
state of nature and the state of culture.
Why it should be so is manifest. Now,
first originate cities and city life. Cities
are centers of manufactures, also CEN
tiers Of trade. A considerable proportion
of the population throngs into them close
together. The art of close community life
has to be learned. Interchange of thought
as well as Of competition, which also now
becomes marked phenomenon, stimu-
lates intelligence. International inter-
course and the consumption Of diverse
products, foreign with domestic, enlarge
thought. The spirit of peace is fostered
by the still further new fact of mutual
dependence between bodies of men. The
people Of the city cannot alone supply
their wants; those of the country do not
any longer, because they can effect this
so much more cheaply and satisfactorily
by exchange with dcnizens of the city.
This is saying in part what must be
more fully emphasized, that a leading
characteristic of the commerce and man.
ufactures epoch is the division of labor
1t existed before; now it is a dominant
and deterninative force. Genuine organi-
zation pervades the nations economic en-
deavor. Merchants in each of their many
kinds constitute a class. So with sailors,
also with miners, and with handicrafts-
men of every sort, and the ramifications
of craft and industry increase as the
years go on. New wants bring new me-
chan1c arts, new arts, new wants; tech
nique arrives at perfection never dream
ed OF before
Many peoples Of antiquity, as the
Egyptians, Hindoos, Assyrans, Babylo-
mans. Phoenicians, Greeks Romans and
Carthaginians, gained this economic level.
1t was not agriculture that supported the
crowded populations and mighty, contig-
uous, wealthy cities whose remains greet
TODAY fha
and Tigris and throughout India 1t was
commerce, no inconsiderable part of it in
manufactured articles. The Bolan and
khyber passes and the fertile strip of
land south of the Caspian sea have been
the avenues of commerce since far pre-
historic times. The stones "jadite" and
'nephrite' have been traced from their
sole and original sources in Central
Asia into Southern and Central Europe
along caravan and water lines which they
must have trayersed more than LOGO
years B. c. Tyre and Sodon, 1000 years
3. e., made themselves fat upon the ocean
carrying trade There is indeed no end
to the adducible evidence that stupendous
traffic was carried on between East Asia
and West Asia and Europe long before
our era, long even before the dawn of
history.
Some specimens of weaving from
EgyptS mummy tombS are believed to
be unsurpassed by aught of later produc-
ton in their kind. The wares designed by
Demetrius of Ephesus or by the Laerces,
whom Homer mentions, would delight and
surprise the most elegant Chicagoans and
New Workers should those old craftsmen
come to the light again and work for the
trade. AS recent writer has well said:
"AH competent judges are agreed touch
ing our inferiority as goldsmiths when
compared with the ancients. Very few
of our great artists think 1t worth their
while to draw patterns for vases and for
salvers rings, brooches and watch chains
1t was not SO when the shrines of half
the cathedrals in Europe shone with ham
mered, chiseled and FURNISHED gold and
enamels, bright as the sun at monday,
and when pastoral STATS, cha1ices, pyxes
and censers were veritable works of art
wrought under the influence of religious
enthusiasm. The doctrine that the de-
nland will insure the supply does not APP
ply to the finest goldsmithing. Surely
there is a demand for such objects as are
said to have been produced by Celebrates
of Lacedaemon and Myrmecides of Mile
tus, and they would not lack purchasers
in Paris, Vienna or London If forthcom-
ing today. In fact, in our ideas of jew
elry and goldsmith's work we are little
in advance of the Cingalese, whose no.