Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/725

Rh the immediate cause for the improvement in quantity and quality of productions is competition."

Mr. Spencer regards the development of a sound and convenient medium of exchange as a condition essential to that integration of industries which has everywhere accompanied the differentiation of industrial functions. The idea that each local community must be autonomous and self-supporting, peculiar to early societies and in harmony with their prevailing militancy, must give way as production increases and the means of distribution are developed. These advances are dependent on an acceptable medium of exchange. "With a good monetary system the resistance to exchange disappears; relative values of things can be measured; current prices can be recognized; and thus arises competition, with all the cheapenings, stimulations, and improvements resulting from it." A debased currency tends to limit exchanges to the community which employs it; witness the innumerable disastrous experiments with irredeemable paper money. "A developed and differentiated currency furthers production and raises the rate of distribution," thus aiding in the integration of society. Mr. Spencer's conclusions confirm the teachings of political economists, and will commend themselves to all who believe in sound and progressive financial methods.

All these processes of industrial evolution tend to raise man out of the static independence of the savage state into that higher realm of interdependence and mutual service which is his noble prerogative as a social being. By them labor is organized and regulated. Its early regulation implies either actual or potential coercion, at first effected by combined religious, governmental, and industrial control. These functions are gradually differentiated as social evolution proceeds. Emancipation from coercion is conditioned upon the higher development of character in the worker. Patriarchal regulation, communal regulation, and slavery were necessary steps in industrial progress, leading to the modern system of free labor under contract.

The place of the craft-guilds in industrial evolution is treated most suggestively. Their universal prevalence, their normal development in a militant society as substitutes for the original family groups, their important bearing on the evolution of the political franchise, are admirably expounded. It is shown, however, that the "free man" of the industrial guild was free only in a qualified sense. He was subject to many restrictions imposed both by the guild and by the government of the country. The modern trade union, while not a lineal descendant of the craft-guild, is the product of similar social conditions, and is akin to it in nature; militant in its structure and often tyrannical in its oppression of the individual worker. The fruitlessness of the attempt to benefit the worker by artificial efforts to raise the rate of wages is clearly shown. Natural law is stronger than artificial regulations. "Protected industries do not prosper." Yet Mr. Spencer recognizes the fact that trade organizations are natural to the passing stage of social evolution, and may have beneficial functions under existing conditions. Employers are more ready to raise wages when trade is flourishing than they would be without the menace of combined labor. They treat the laborer with more respect. They are led to study the convenience of the men, and look after their health and comfort. The discipline of the organization also helps to prepare the men for the higher social and industrial conditions which will probably arise.