labors were to be assured by the stimulus of poverty. The more numerous were the laborers, and at the same time the poorer,—that is, the more dependent on their daily employments for a subsistence, the richer and more powerful would be the “nation.” 57 To maintain a a "plentiful supply" of poor laborers was therefore the supreme end of “national” policy. This general attitude was reflected curiously in a proposal made by the Rev. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, who was a leading economic thinker of his time as well as a prominent churchman. In order to increase the demand for woollen goods, he suggested the clearing of waste lands and the building of small cottages in which "to raise up such a generation of men, women and children as shall be obliged, by their station in life, to be clad in such garments as are made out of coarse wools, and to use such sort of goods for their bedding and furniture.” 68 But the number of workers in many regions came to be viewed as excessive because of the burdensome poor rates, and in many parishes artificial restraints were imposed on the propagation of the “lower orders,” by direct economic pressure or by the administration of the poor law and the acts of settlement. The poor law, however, generally tended to promote an unrestrained increase in numbers. It became a symbol of economic hopelessness and pauperism, and at the same time the assurance of a subsistence.69

Such were the earlier influences surrounding the workers who were drawn into the new industries, and who, in their new environment, were dominated by forces making continued unrestrained and reckless procreation inevitable. With the rise of the “dismal science" of political economy, their excessive multiplication was attributed to so-called laws of nature, and in particular to what was supposed to be the natural and inevitable tendency of population to outrun the means of subsistence.6 Writers who held these views adhered rigorously to the age-old classification of society into the two groups, the laboring poor on the one hand and the owners of wealth on the other. To them, the former group was on an entirely different plane of existence; its members were naturally primitive in their traits and reactions. “The rich appear to be raised in pride and false dignity far above the rest of human beings: whilst the poor are considered as differing only from brutes in being actuated by those inclinations and propensities which disgrace humanity.” An occasional voice was raised which attributed such views, and such conditions in so far as they existed, to the political system and the “atrocious laws.” But such "dangerous” if not seditious criticism was for the most part anonymously expressed, and had no important place in the thought of the time.61 Laboring under the limitations of the prevailing conception of social classes, and lacking the varied data available to later students of society, it is not surprising that these early writers failed to emphasize the demoralizing influences of a socially created environment and the restraining and refining influences of a rising standard of living and a larger participation by the workers in the gifts of nature and the fruits of industry. Such conceptions were seldom entertained by writers, and were even more rarely adopted by rulers, either political or economic, as the basis of their policies.

Our study of the industrial workers began with the paradoxical contrast between an unparalleled increase of productive power and of the means of securing material well-being on the one hand, and on the other a mass of poverty and attendant social degradation seldom equaled in the records of history. Study of the contemporaneous forces beyond the workers' control has indicated the principal causes of the contrast. The industrial workers came from sources which were polluted, and labored in an environment which was degrading. The thought of the time, and the agencies of social control, were beyond their reach and hostile to the improvement of their economic condition. Government, in so far as it functioned, was controlled by upper-class conceptions and interests, but the new society was largely influenced by blind chance and by the brutalizing and ultimately selfdestructive forces of competition. There is ample explanation of the paradox.

5. Forces favorable to group integration and organization

The historian of the beginnings of modern industrial society must paint a gloomy picture, and yet the somber tones are not entirely unrelieved. The reactions of the workers afford a remarkable instance of the powers of resistance inherent in human nature. The gloom of the picture is still more relieved if viewed in the light of the later history of the industrial workers; for out of their abysmal degradation they emerged in the face of appalling obstacles with an intelligent and comprehensive program for social reorganization. The consequences of class government, of crude individualism, of blind chance, and of brutal competition became more and more apparent, but the traditional agencies of social control demonstrated repeatedly their helplessness or their incapacity. The heirs of power, of wealth, of culture, of social position, their economic welfare being assured by inheritance and maintenance of the status quo, naturally in general opposed any fundamental reorganization. It fell to the lot of the industrial workers to become the principal initiators and organizers of the movement to supplant the admittedly irrational, disorderly, wasteful and inequitable processes of economic life by rational, coordinated and cooperative processes worked out on the basis of a "science of society.” 62 This movement is far removed in time as well as in character from the eighteenthcentury origins of modern industrial society; and yet it was during the period of origins that conditions and forces emerged which made possible the later movement for a rational, cooperative reorganization.

Perhaps the most obvious of these was the incalculable increase of productive power in the supplying of economic goods, making improvement in general well-being possible. By the older, cruder methods of producing and transporting commodities, there was often an unavoidable deficit of goods. Improvements in economic technique, involving potentially a practically unlimited productive power, meant that scarcity from this cause could largely be avoided. The causes of scarcity among any considerable part of the population were to be sought for elsewhere. Men were at first disinclined, to be sure, to give up their old fatalistic explanations of scarcity and

" Perhaps the clearest formulation of the ideals of this movement is to be found in the noted document, Labor and the New Social Order, issued in 1918 by the Labor party—a document which has commanded world-wide interest and respect, even from those who oppose the specific policies proposed for putting the ideals into effect.

poverty, and the "dismal science” even evolved new conceptions of a fatalistic nature for putting the blame on inescapable "laws” of nature. But obvious facts began even before the end of the eighteenth century to force their way into consideration. The vastly accelerated rate of wealth production and the increasing profuseness and ostentatious display of luxury became apparent to the understandings of the workers even dulled as they were by unmitigated and stupefying poverty. The periods of acutest "scarcity” proved to be periods when machinery and men and even natural resources for producing and transporting goods were idle. Fields of rotting grain and warehouses bursting with goods, and at the same time multitudes of workers unemployed and starving—these came to be familiar phenomena. Surely not fate, surely not limitations on man's productive powers, should pri

, marily be blamed, but what? Such questioning led ultimately to the widespread belief that men themselves were to blame, because they had allowed their productive powers and their social relations to be controlled by tradition, by the accidents of inheritance, by various irrational forces. The finding of artificial causes led naturally to the quest for corresponding remedies.

These conceptions were essentially social in character. The older handicraftsmen, even when organized in gilds, had been dominated by the ideal of economic independence by virtue of the ownership of their tools and the control in some degree of the output of their labor. This ideal had been seriously impaired, to be sure, by the relative increase in the number of apprentices and journeymen having merely the status of employees, but even they quite commonly owned their tools, maintained personal relations with their employers, and were intrigued by the hope, however vain, of becoming master craftsmen. The domestic manufacturer, the gildsman, the agricultural worker, had frequently had access to a plot