sible returns are to be obtained by indifferent work or by work which has absolutely no social value. The ordinary mercenary purpose always compels a man to stop at a certain point, and consider something else than the excellence of his achievement. It does not make the individual independent, except in so far as independence is a matter of cash in the bank; and for every individual on whom it bestows excessive pecuniary independence, there are very many more who are by that very circumstance denied any sort of liberation. Even pecuniary independence is usually purchased at the price of moral and intellectual bondage. Such genuine individuality as can be detected in the existing social system is achieved not because of the prevailing money-making motive, but in spite thereof "1

1 Croly, Progressive Democracy, p. 412.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Books: BONAR, JAMES: Philosophy and Political Economy, Ch. IX; CALHOUN, A. W.: A Social History of the American Family, Vol. II, Chs. 2-10; CROLY, H. C.: Progressive Democracy, Chs. 2-5, 9; TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE: Democracy in America, Part I, Chs. 14, 15, Part II, Bk. 2, Chs. 1-4; Dicey, A. V.: Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century, Lecture VI; JEFFERSON, THOMAS: Writings, ed. P. L. Ford, 10 vols., 1892-99; LOCKE, JOHN: Treatises on Government, 1689; MCMASTER, J. B.: A History of the People of the United States, Chs. 17, 22, 24, 33, 44, 46, 50, 56, 75, 87, 105; PAINE, THOMAS: The Rights of Man, ed. M. D. Conway, 1894; RITCHIE, D. G.: Natural Rights, 1895; STEIN METZ, C. P.: America and the New Epoch, 1916, Chs. 3-7; TURNER, F. J.: The Rise of the New West, 1906; WEYL, W. E.: The New Democracy, Chs. 1-5.

2. Articles: TURNER, F. J.: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." The Fifth Year-Book of the National Herbart Society, 1899, pp. 7-41.

CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT SOCIETY

THE period of individualism, that has left such a deep impression upon American life, came to an end about the time of the disappearance of the western frontier. "Up to and including 1880" remarks the Superintendent of the Census of 1890, "the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it cannot, therefore, have a place in the census reports". This is a simple statement of a fact of the profoundest significance for the understanding of the evolution of American ideals. It meant the end of that constant expansion westward that had moulded American institutions, kept the nation's life fluid with all the adventurousness of the pioneer, and conditioned the fundamental conceptions of democracy. It meant that the individualism of the frontiersman, as an ever present and concrete reality, had begun to disappear. The influence that had dominated the nation's life and thought for three-quarters of a century, namely, the necessity of adjustment to the constantly receding frontier, had ceased to be felt. From now on other forces were to take the lead in the shaping of ideals and the creation of problems. The nation had passed from the period of triumphant individualism to that of the machine process. America was to take her place as a member of what Mr. Graham Wallas has called, not without a certain euphemistic magniloquence, "the Great Society ".

It is possible to distinguish three stages in the westward movement that ended about 1880. First came the pioneer who depended for the most part upon the products of nature, such as the chase or the natural vegetation, for his support until

he could erect his cabin, clear and till his few acres wrested from the wilderness. Cut off as he was from communication with home and exposed to the hardships of a new country, the lot of the early pioneer was hard and full of adventure. Along his trail, now transformed into a passable road, aided often by canals and later by the railroad, came another generation of emigrants who added field to field, built permanent houses, erected schoolhouses, mills, and churches. The last stage was reached with the advent of capital and business enterprise. The early settler often took advantage of the rise in prices and sold out to the capitalist. Towns were laid out with spacious streets. Factories were built. The natural resources of the country were developed in scientific fashion. The frontier dropped farther beyond the western horizon. The individualism of the old pioneer type was no more. A new era of reorganization and centralization, the age of "big business," had come. The moving spirit in this new age was the financier or the trust promoter. He sought first to bring order out of the chaos and wastefulness of the earlier pioneer who reaped where he had not sown. The immediate instrument of the man of "big business" was the machine which he proceeded to apply to the extractive industries, production, transportation, and the like; his object was profits, his slogan was combination, and with him came a trained band of chemists, statisticians, employment managers, foresters, and expert agriculturalists. The age of individualism had given place to the beginnings of "the Great Society".

1. THE EFFECT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION UPON

ENGLISH SOCIETY

It is possible to understand "the Great Society" only in the light of the historical perspective. For it is, in reality, the outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the machine process. The Industrial Revolution began about 1760 and ended in 1830, though we are still feeling its far-reaching effects. England illustrates in most striking fashion the effects of the rise of the machine process that made possible the

Industrial Revolution. For the changes in English society were sharply contrasted with an old and well-developed economic life. Defoe thus describes the simple domestic system in the textile industry in Yorkshire about 1725: “The land was divided into small enclosures 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 everyone 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 enough to feed their poultry. The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at their dye-vats, some at their looms, others dressing the cloths; the women or children carding or spinning; all being employed from the youngest to the oldest ". This household industry underwent some modification by the middle of the eighteenth century. The workman who at first owned his own tools, bought his own raw material and sold the finished product, now found it more convenient to turn these phases of his work over to the "factor or middle man, who thus mediated between the worker and his market. We have thus the rise of the entrepreneur or the capitalist employer so familiar in modern business, and at the same time we have the beginnings of the modern capitalist régime.

This domestic economy of the middle of the eighteenth century was essentially mediaeval in character and was based upon definiteness of function and a more or less fixed social status. It was broken up by a series of striking inventions during the latter part of the century. Kay's fly shuttle enabled one weaver to do the work of two. This placed the pressure upon the spinners to supply the needed yarn, causing the invention of the "spinning jenny" of Hargreaves and Arkwright (1767, 1768). This invention transferred the pres

sure back upon the weaver, resulting in the invention of Cartwright's power loom in 1785. The problem then was to get raw material enough for the improved methods of manufacture and this demand was met in the case of cotton by the invention of Whitney's cotton gin in 1793. These inventions completely transformed the old domestic system. The invention of Watts' steam engine in 1786 and its application to cotton manufacture in 1795 and to the iron industry solved the problem of energy and made coal and iron the basis of modern industry. It is possible to distinguish in general three stages in the industrial evolution of the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. The close of the eighteenth century saw the effective exploitation of the earlier inventions through the application of steam power. During the first part of the nineteenth century the possibilities of these and other inventions were indefinitely expanded by the application of steam to locomotion. The last stage, beginning about the middle of the nineteenth century, saw the construction of machinery by machinery. This enabled the expansion of the machine process to take place much more rapidly for it made it possible to extend the machine process by machine methods.

These inventions and the industrial changes they made possible completely transformed English society within fifty years. They gave rise to capitalism or "the gradual concentration in the hands of individuals or corporations of money, plants, implements, raw and finished materials necessary to the production of commodities". Industry was transferred from the village and the quiet country side to the noisy and unsanitary towns that now sprang up like mushrooms. The population of England in 1760 was half rural. By 1860 the rural population had dropped to 37.7 per cent and by 1890 to 28.3 per cent. Great stimulus was given not only to the production of wealth but to the growth of population. The increase in the population of England and Wales from 1800 to 1830 is estimated at more than 56 per cent. Most fundamental was the change wrought in the life of the worker.