Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/253

Rh in the proverb of Solomon, "They that hate instruction love death." In sociology, as in biology, there are three states. The first of balance, when things grow neither better nor worse; the second that of elaboration or evolution, as we see it when animals adapt themselves to their environments; and third, that of degeneration, when they rapidly lose the ground they have made. For a nation, a state of balance is only impossible in the early stage of its existence, but it is impossible when its environments are constantly changing.

The possession of the raw materials of industry and the existence of a surplus population are important factors for the growth of manufactures in the early history of a nation, but afterward they are bound up with another factor—the application of intellect to their development, England could not be called a manufacturing nation till the Elizabethan age. No doubt coal, iron, and wood were in abundance, though, in the reign of the Plantagenets, they produced little prosperity. Wool was sent to Flanders to be manufactured, for England then stood to Holland as Australia now does to Yorkshire. The political crimes of Spain, from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to that of Philip III, destroyed it as a great manufacturing nation, and indirectly led to England taking its position. Spain, through the activity and science of the Arabian intellect, had acquired many important industries. The Moors and the Moriscoes, who had been in Spain for a period as long as from the Norman conquest of this country to the present date, were banished, and with them departed the intellect of Spain. Then the invasion of the Low Countries by Philip II drove the Flemish manufacturers to England, while the French persecution of the Huguenots added new manufacturing experience, and with them came the industries of cotton, wool, and silk. Cotton mixed with linen and wool became freely used, but it was only from 1738 to the end of the century that the inventions of Wyatt, Arkwright, Hargreaves, Compton, and Cartwright started the wonderful modern development. The raw cotton was imported from India or America, but that fact as regards cost was a small factor in comparison with the intellect required to convert it into a utility. Science has in the last hundred years altered altogether the old conditions of industrial competition. She has taught the rigid metals to convey and record our thoughts even to the most distant lands, and, within less limits, to reproduce our speech. This marvelous application of electricity has diminished the cares and responsibilities of governments, while it has at the same time altered the whole practice of commerce. To England steam and electricity have been of incalculable advantage. The ocean, which once made the country insular and isolated, is now the very life-blood of England and of the greater England beyond the seas. As in the human body the blood bathes all its parts, and through its traveling corpuscles carries force to all its members, so in the body politic of England and its pelasgic extensions