Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/325

Rh has raised in the minds of many a vague fear akin to that which children feel when they read of giants and genii, and politicians have conjured with their names as nurses frighten infants with tales of great monsters that are coming to eat them, and this notwithstanding that the greatest effect in all fields of human effort has been gained through organizations, characterized by combination and recombination, that, working under centralized control, have enlisted great numbers of men in the attainment of far-reaching ends. The advantages of combined action in bodily attack and defense led step by step through the grouping of tribes and clans to the formation of great armies. Upholders of like ecclesiastical doctrines have associated themselves in organizations that have sought to extend their sway by united effort. Similar needs of similarly conditioned masses of men have caused the growth of political governments that have combined and recombined. With advancing civilization the soldier's calling becomes of less and less importance; with the growth of the intellect ecclesiasticism loses its dominance; and with the loosening of the shackles of paternalism the sphere of political government recedes. Advancing humanity now demands, more than ever before, the service of him who contributes most to that wholesome care of the physical being which is essential to the highest development of the mental and moral life. The artisan and the tradesman, who were the butt of ridicule, the object of contumely, when my lords the warriors and my lords the bishops ruled the world, find that their vocations, increased and extended by the aid of science, are of inestimable value to the human race. The forces tending toward the highest civilization, that through physical conflict have evolved the great nations which abide side by side under a fuller promise of peace—that throughout the strife between mind and mind as to the Unknown Cause have evolved the great religious organizations that seem more and more content to abandon useless dogmas, to join in the promulgation of moral precepts that are common to them all and in the ever more discreet ministration of charity—are now swirling with greatest intensity in the field of industry, evolving the great industrial organizations, that through the mutual reaction of one upon the other will bring that clearer knowledge by means of which they will be made the peaceful and harmonious agents of the higher life. And therefore, inseparable from consideration of the causes that have led to industrial combination and the effect of industrial organizations in the present, is speculation as to the direction the tendency toward such combination will take in the future, the extent to which it will involve industrial functions, and the effect the organizations will have upon the individual life of the members of a community.