An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 72

[Sidenote: Advance in medical science.]

This has produced the most extraordinary advance in medicine and biology. It has made it possible to determine the difference between healthy and diseased tissue; and not many years ago the microscope revealed the fact that the bodies of animals and men are the home of excessively small organisms called bacteria, some of which, through the poisonous substances they give out, cause disease. The modern treatment of many maladies, such as consumption, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and typhoid, is based upon this momentous discovery. The success of surgical operations has also been rendered far more secure than formerly by the so-called antiseptic measures which are now taken to prevent the development of bacteria.[464]

[Sidenote: Scientific discovery and invention did not affect daily life before the end of the eighteenth century.]

277. The discoveries of the scientist and of the mathematician did not begin to be applied to the affairs of daily life until about a hundred and fifty years ago. No new ways had previously been discovered for traveling from place to place. Spinning and weaving were still carried on as they had been before the barbarians overran the Roman Empire.

Iron, of which we now make our machines, could only be prepared for use expensively and in small quant.i.ties by means of charcoal and bellows.

[Sidenote: The 'domestic system' of manufacture.]

Manufacture still meant, as it did in the original Latin (_manu facere_), to make by hand. Artisans carried on their trade with their own tools in their own homes, or in small shops, like the cobbler of to-day. Instead of working with hundreds of others in a great factory and being entirely dependent upon his wages, the artisan, in England at least, was often able to give some attention to a small garden plot from which he derived a part of his support. This "domestic system" was displaced by factories, as the result of a series of mechanical inventions made in England during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Through them machinery was subst.i.tuted for hand and foot power and for the simple implements which had served the world for centuries.

[Sidenote: Cheap iron and adequate power essential to the development of machinery.]

[Sidenote: Watt invents the steam engine.]

In order that machinery should develop and become widely useful, two things were necessary. In the first place, there must be some strong material available of which to make the machines; for that purpose iron and steel have, with few exceptions, proved to be the best. In the second place, some adequate power must be found to propel the machinery, which is ordinarily too heavy to be run by hand or foot power. This necessary motive power was discovered in steam. The steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much r.e.t.a.r.ded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate cylinder of sufficient size, but in the year 1777 the new machine was successfully used for pumping. A few years later (1785) he arranged his engine so that it would turn a wheel. In this way, for the first time, steam could be used to run machinery--the spindles, for example, in a cotton mill.

[Sidenote: Steam used for spinning and weaving.]

A few years before Watt completed his improved steam engine, the old spinning wheel had been supplanted by the modern system, in which the thread is drawn out by means of spindles revolving at different rates of speed. The spindles, which had at first been run by water power, could now be propelled by steam. The old loom had also been improved, and weaving by steam began to become general after the year 1800.

[Sidenote: Use of steam cheapens iron.]

[Sidenote: New method of producing steel.]

Machinery, however, could not become common so long as iron and steel were expensive. The first use, therefore, to which the crude steam engines were put was to furnish a blast which enabled the iron smelter to employ coal instead of charcoal to fuse the iron ore (1777).

Moreover, the steam pumps made it possible for the miners to pump out the water which impeded their work in the mines, and in this way cheapened both the iron and the coal. Soon the so-called "puddling furnace" was invented, by means of which steel was produced much more economically than it could be earlier. Rolling mills run by steam then took the place of the hammers with which the steel had formerly been beaten into shape. These discoveries of the use of steam and coal and iron revolutionized the life of the people at large in western Europe more quickly than any of the events which have been previously recorded in this volume. It is the aim of the remainder of this chapter to indicate very briefly the variety and importance of the effects produced by modern inventions.[465]

[Sidenote: Domestic industry supplanted by the factory system.]

278. Machinery although very efficient was expensive, and had necessarily to be near the boilers which produced the steam.

Consequently machines for particular purposes were grouped in factories, and the workmen left their homes and gathered in large establishments.

The hand worker with his old tools was more and more at a disadvantage compared with the workman who produced commodities by machinery. The result was inevitable, namely, that domestic industry was supplanted by the factory.

[Sidenote: Advantages of machinery.]

[Sidenote: Division of labor.]

One of the princ.i.p.al advantages of the factory system is that it makes possible a minute division of labor. Instead of giving his time and thought to the whole process, each worker concentrates his attention upon one single step of the process, and by repeating a simple set of motions over and over again acquires wonderful dexterity. At the same time the period of necessary apprentices.h.i.+p is shortened under the factory system, because each separate task is comparatively simple.

Moreover, the invention of new machinery is increased, because the very subdivision of the process into simple steps often suggests some way of subst.i.tuting mechanical motion for the motion of the human hand.

[Sidenote: Examples of the increased production of goods by machinery.]

An example of the greatly increased output rendered possible by the use of machinery and division of labor is given by the distinguished Scotch economist, Adam Smith, whose great work, _The Wealth of Nations_, appeared in 1776. Speaking of the manufacture of a pin in his own time, Adam Smith says: "To make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pin is another. It is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper, and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations." By this division, he adds, ten persons can make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. A recent writer reports that now an English machine makes one hundred and eighty pins a minute, cutting the wire, flattening the heads, sharpening the points, and dropping the pin into its proper place. In a single factory which he visited seven million pins were made in a day, and three men were all that were required to manage the mechanism.

Another example of modern mechanical work is found in printing. For several centuries after the development of that art the type was set up by hand, inked by hand, each sheet of paper was laid by hand upon the type and then printed by means of a press operated by a lever. Nowadays our newspapers are, in the great cities at least, printed almost altogether by machinery, from the setting up of the type until they are dropped complete and counted out by hundreds at the bottom of a rotary press. The paper is fed into the press from a great roll and is printed on both sides and folded at the rate of two hundred or more newspapers a minute.

[Sidenote: New means of communication.]

[Sidenote: Steamboats.]

279. The factory system would never have developed upon a vast scale had the manufacturers been able to sell their goods only in the neighborhood. The discovery that steam could be used to carry the goods cheaply and speedily to all parts of the world made it possible for a manufacturer to widen his market indefinitely. Fulton, an American inventor, devised the first steamboat that was really successful, in 1807, yet over half a century elapsed before steams.h.i.+ps began to supplant the old and uncertain sailing s.h.i.+p. It is now possible to make the journey from New York to Southampton, three thousand miles, in less than six days, and with almost the regularity of an express train. j.a.pan may be reached from Vancouver in thirteen days, and from San Francisco via Honolulu, a distance of five thousand five hundred miles, in eighteen days. A commercial map of the world shows that the globe is now crossed in every direction by definite routes, which are followed by innumerable freight and pa.s.senger steamers pa.s.sing regularly from one port to another. These are able to carry goods for incredibly small sums. For example, wheat has frequently been s.h.i.+pped from New York to Liverpool for two cents a bushel.

[Sidenote: Development of the railroad.]

Just as the gigantic modern steams.h.i.+p has taken the place of the schooner and clipper, so, on land, the merchandise which used to be slowly dragged in carts by means of horses and oxen is now transported in long trains of capacious cars, each of which holds as much as many ordinary carts. A ton of freight can now be carried for less than a cent a mile. In 1825 Stephenson's locomotive was put into operation in England. Other countries soon began to follow England's lead in building railroads. France opened its first railroad in 1828, Germany in 1835. By 1840 Europe had over eighteen hundred miles of railroad; fifty years later this had increased to one hundred and forty thousand.

[Sidenote: Startling improvements in the means of communication.]

Besides the marvelous cheapening of transportation, other new means of communication have resulted from modern inventions. The telegraph, the submarine cable, and the telephone, all have served to render communication prompt and certain. Steams.h.i.+ps and railroads carry letters half round the globe for a price too trivial to be paid for delivering a message round the corner. The old, awkward methods of making payments have given way to a tolerably uniform system of coinage. Instead of each petty princ.i.p.ality and each town having its own coins, as was common, especially in Germany and Italy, before the nineteenth century, all coins are now issued by the national central governments. Yet the most convenient coins are difficult to transfer in large quant.i.ties, and nowadays all considerable sums are paid by means of checks and drafts.

The banks settle their accounts by means of a clearing house, and in this way almost no large amount of money need pa.s.s from hand to hand.

England took the lead in utilizing all these remarkable new inventions, and with their aid became, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the manufacturing center of the world. Gradually the new machinery was introduced on the continent, and since 1850 countries having the necessary coal, such as Germany and Belgium, have developed manufacturing industries which now rival those of Great Britain.

[Sidenote: Some results of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.]

[Sidenote: Rapid growth of the towns.]

280. The _industrial revolution_, as the changes above referred to are usually called, could not but have a profound influence upon the life and government of Europe. For example, the population of Europe appears to have nearly doubled during the nineteenth century. One of the most startling tendencies of recent times has been the growth of the towns.

In 1800 London had a population of less than one million; it now contains over four million five hundred thousand inhabitants. Paris, at the opening of the French Revolution, contained less than seven hundred thousand inhabitants; it now has over two and a half millions. Berlin has grown in a hundred years from one hundred and seventy-two thousand to nearly two millions. In England a quarter of the whole population live in towns having over two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and less than a quarter still remain in the country. Our modern life is dominated by the great cities, which not only are the center of commerce and manufacturing, but are the homes of the artist and man of letters.

[Sidenote: Reasons for the growth of the towns.]

There are two obvious reasons for the growth of the towns since the industrial revolution. In the first place, factories are established in places where there is an abundant supply of coal, or where conditions are otherwise favorable; and this brings a large number of people together. In the second place, there is no limit set to the growth of cities, as was formerly the case, by the difficulty of procuring food from a distance. Paris, in the time of Louis XVI, was not a large city in the modern sense of the word; still the government found it very difficult to secure a regular supply of food in the markets. Now grain and even meat and fruit are easily carried any distance. England imports a large amount of her meat from Australia, on the other side of the globe, and even her b.u.t.ter and eggs she gets largely from the continent.

[Sidenote: Abolition of most of the restrictions on trade and industry.]

281. Before the nineteenth century the European governments had been accustomed to regulate trade, industry, and commerce by a great variety of laws, which were supposed to be necessary for the protection of the public. Of this we find examples in the English Navigation Acts;[466] in the guilds, which under the protection of the government enjoyed a monopoly of their industries in their particular districts; in the regulations issued by Colbert[467] and in the grain laws in both France and England, which limited the free importation and even the exportation of grain.

The French and English economists in the eighteenth century, like Turgot and Adam Smith, advocated the abolition of all restrictions, which they believed did far more harm than good. The expediency of this _laissez faire_,[468] or free-trade policy, has now been recognized by most European powers. England abolished her grain laws (the so-called Corn Laws) in 1846, and since then has adopted the policy of free trade, except so far as she raises a revenue from customs duties imposed upon a very few commodities, like liquor and tobacco. Low import duties are collected by most of the European powers on goods entering their territories, but all export duties have been abolished as well as all customs barriers within the countries.

[Sidenote: Government regulations protecting the laborer.]

A short experience with the factory system showed the need of regulations designed to protect the laborer.[469] There was a temptation for the new factories to force the employees to work an excessive number of hours under unhealthful conditions. Women and children were set to run the machines, and their strength was often cruelly overtaxed. Women and children were also employed in the coal mines, under terribly degrading conditions. One of the great functions of our modern governments has been to pa.s.s laws to protect the working men and women and to improve their condition. Germany has been particularly active in this sort of regulation, and has gone so far as to compel workingmen to insure themselves for the benefit of their families.[470]

[Sidenote: Labor unions.]

Another development of the factory system has been the rise of labor unions. These are voluntary a.s.sociations intended to promote the interests of their members. They have grown as the factory system has been extended, and they now enjoy an influence in certain industries comparable to that exercised by the craft guilds of the Middle Ages. The governments do not undertake, however, to enforce the regulations of the labor unions as they formerly did of the guilds.[471]

[Sidenote: The people admitted to a share in the government.]

[Sidenote: Character of modern const.i.tutions.]

282. The extension of manufacturing industries has had much to do with the gradual admission of the people to a share in the government. The life in towns and cities has quickened the intelligence of the working cla.s.ses, so that they are no longer willing to intrust the affairs of government entirely to a king or to the representatives of the upper cla.s.ses. The result of this was, as we have seen, that const.i.tutions were, during the nineteenth century, introduced into all the western European states. While these differ from one another in detail, they all agree in establis.h.i.+ng a house of representatives, whose members are chosen by the people at large. Gradually the franchise has been extended so that the poorest laborer, so soon as he comes of age, is permitted to have a voice in the selection of the deputies.[472] Without the sanction of the representatives of the people, the king and the upper, more aristocratic house are not allowed to pa.s.s any law or establish any new tax. Each year a carefully prepared list of expenses must be presented to the lower house and receive its ratification before money collected by taxation can be spent.

[Sidenote: Equality before the law.]

The French prefaced their first const.i.tution by the memorable words: "All citizens being equal before the law, are alike eligible to all public offices and positions of honor and trust, according to their capacity, and without any distinction, except that of their character and ability." This principle, so different from that which had hitherto prevailed, has been recognized in most of the modern European const.i.tutions. The privileges and exceptions which everywhere existed before the French Revolution have been abolished. Modern European governments are supposed to treat all alike, regardless of social rank or religious belief.