Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/111

 TRUE CONSEEVATISM. 103

early American type just as the shoe factory has driven out the journeyman shoemaker. And this is going on to-day.

There is nothing unnatural in this. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree natural. Tclocial development is in accordance with certain immutable* laws. And the law of development, whether it be the development of a solar system, of the tiniest organism, or of a human society, is the law of integration. It is in obedience to this law a law evidently as all-compelling as the law of gravitation that these new agencies, which so powerfully stimulate social growth, tend to the specialization and interdepen- dence of industry. It is in obedience to this law that the factory is superseding the independent mechanic, the large farm is swallowing up the little one, the big store shutting up the small one, that corporations are arising that dwarf the State, and that population tends more and more to concentrate in cities. Men must work together in larger and in more closely related groups!\ Production must be on a greater scale. The only question is, whether the relation in which men are thus drawn together and compelled to act together shall be the natural relation of interdependence in equality, or the unnatural relation of dependence upon a mastdfl If the one, then may civilization advance in whafis evidently the natural order, each step leading to a higher step. If the other, then what Nature has intended as a blessing becomes a curse, and a condition of inequality is produced which will inevitably destroy civilization. Every new invention but hastens the catastrophe.

Now, all this we may deduce from natural laws as fixed and certain as the law of gravitation. And all this we may see going on to-day. This is the reason why modern progress, great as it has been, fails to relieve poverty; this is the secret of the increasing discontent which per-

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