CHAPTER III

SOCIALISM AND MACHINERY

ANY change in the structure of society leads, no doubt, to corresponding changes in the outlook of the people upon life generally. A change in the industrial order implies a change in the general attitude towards politics, even to questions not specially industrial. This does not, as some alarmists infer, involve the break up of moral sanctions, which are the result, in the main, of prolonged race experience, and not of contemporary industrial arrangements. Socialism does not imply the destruction of the family, nor does it involve Atheism; it is the enemy, of a system of Capitalism historically much later than either Monogamy or Christianity. Steam, machinery, individualist Liberalism, have together broken up the old order for us; it is the state of things provided by these, not the relics of what preceded them, that Socialism comes to destroy.

Yet, in many ways, the changed outlook will modify life, and that in every direction. In no one book, nor by any one man can the whole of its probable reactions be surveyed; but it is possible perhaps to show how the Socialist spirit may be expected to effect certain specific aspects of life,

leaving the reader free to apply the Socialist conception to as many more as he pleases. The remaining chapters must be read as my idea of the implications of Socialism on the interests of modern life dealt with.

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The Industrial Revolution, coming as it did to a society where the mass of the people had no power in the State and were not democratically organised, gave an opening for the unrestrained exploitation of society by successful private individuals. This, and the evils that resulted from it, are obviously at the bottom of modern organic and political Socialism, the central purpose of which is to make common property of that mechanism which is the creation of the Industrial Revolution.

It would be well, then, to examine the standpoint of individual Capitalism itself towards machinery. Briefly, private Capitalism regards machinery from only one point of view, that of cheapness, obtained by reducing the labour time essential to every process. Wherever and whenever a machine is invented, capable of producing a given quantity of work in sufficiently less time than an older process to save in wages a profit on the capital required to buy the machine, then the capitalist invests in that machine. The individual capitalist may, of course, be influenced by some other consideration, but such influences are variable, not constant, and do not spring from Capitalism itself. Here, as elsewhere, profit is the first and only capitalistic consideration; though the Factory Acts, humanitarian sentiment, or his own prejudice and want of

business ability may influence the individual capitalist.

This arises, in the main, from the fact that machinery has rarely belonged to the people who actually use it. The factory owner, not working in the factory itself, probably not knowing, and possibly not caring much, whether the process of manufacture is pleasant or unpleasant, has only one guide always present in his mind-that of financial economy-when any new invention is brought before him. He has been the almost undisputed director of industry for more than a century, and it is not, therefore, wonderful that this constant factor has been almost the only influence shaping the character of modern industry.

Yet this is by no means the only important consideration. Looked at from a human standpoint, machinery can do many other important services to men than merely enabling them to get through their work in a shorter time, or to do more in the same time. Take the cases of two trades. Various processes, based on photography, have, during the last half century, replaced the old method of engraving pictures on wood or metal, not perhaps altogether to the advantage of blackand-white illustration. Probably the old craft of Bewick was a pleasant one to follow. Men could live, if their wages were adequate, usefully and contentedly enough by it; and, cheapness apart, there could not be said to be any human reason for a change, unless to an artistically more perfect method of reproduction. I am not, for this reason,

protesting against more modern inventions. They too, for aught I know, may be interesting enough in the working; though I doubt whether they are altogether an improvement. My point is that there was no great human objection to the older method. The old craft was excellent training for the intelligence of those who worked at it. In our final judgment of the relative merits of the new and old, we should not only consider the questions of speed and cheapness, or even of art combined with these; we should weigh up also the humanising effect on those employed, and the influence of each method on their health. Of course, the ordinary business side of the question should not be ignored, but it is not the only consideration, nor indeed the most important.

Or, take the work of stone-breaking, such as is still largely done by hand in our workhouses and prisons to-day. Obviously, there is very little intelligence required here, nor is it conceivable that anyone can enjoy spending many years or even days at the work. Probably no one of my readers, if set to break a large quantity of stone by hand, but would be sick of his task before he had worked very long, and would be glad of any machine that would finish the whole for him in an hour. Working the stone-breaker would be, not only faster, but more intelligent and inspiring work than raising a hammer so many hundreds times an hour; and he would probably prefer to break twenty tons of stone by machine rather than one by hand.

In truth, human work may fairly be divided into

two classes-that which is elevating and generally more or less pleasant in the doing, and that which is essentially unintelligent and brutalising. Even apart from purely economic considerations, it is obviously desirable to do as much as possible of the latter by machinery. Thus the wind- or watermill was a vast improvement on the hand-quern, and would have been so, to some extent, even if these once new inventions had been as slow as the older method. Grinding corn by hand is a monotonous and laborious task, fatiguing the body without giving any exercise to the mind; and the miller who "lived on a hill" would probably not have been "jolly" if he had been compelled to grind

"Life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality," says Ruskin. If it be desirable to introduce machinery wherever its presence elevates toil from a lower to a higher plane of intelligence, machinery becomes a very doubtful benefit where it has the reverse effect. The inherent vice of Capitalism is, not that it has introduced too much machinery-on the contrary, it has failed to introduce machinery in numbers of places where a more human method of organising industry would have displaced hand work long ago-but that it has introduced it in obedience to one consideration only, that of profit-making.

It will appear, then, that it is not, from the human point of view, desirable to replace a process taking, say, six hours of pleasant work by one requiring only three of unhealthy or disagreeable