therefore, we should consider "materials" rather than particular species
of plants--utility or adaptation rather than acclimatization. We should
study the entire range of textile manufacture, and before giving
attention to questions of cultivation we should first ascertain how far
the plants which we already know can be produced within our own borders
may be depended upon to supply the "material" adapted to present demands
in manufacture. If the larger part of our better fabrics--cordage and
fine twines, bagging, and similar rough goods--can be made from cotton,
flax, common hemp, and Sisal hemp, which we ought to be able to produce
in quantity at home, there is no further need of costly experiments with
other fibers. Unfortunately, however, it is possible for manufacturers
to "discriminate" against a particular fiber when the use of another
fiber better subserves their private interests. As an example, common
hemp was discriminated against in a certain form of small cordage, in
extensive use, because by employing other, imported fibers, it has been
possible in the past to control the supply, and in this day of trusts
such control is an important factor in regulating the profits. With
common hemp grown on a thousand American farms in 1890, the price of
Sisal and Manila hemp binding twine, of which fifty thousand tons were
used, would never have been forced up to sixteen and twenty cents a
pound, when common hemp, which is just as good for the purpose, could
have been produced in unlimited quantity for three and a half cents.
The bagging with which the cotton crop is baled is made of imported
jute, but common hemp or even low-grade flax would make better bagging.
A change from jute to hemp or flax in the manufacture of bagging (it
would only be a return to these fibers), could it be brought about,
would mean an advantage of at least three million dollars to our
farmers. Yet in considering such a desirable change we are confronted
with two questions: Is it possible to compete with foreign jute? and
can prejudice be overcome? For it is true that there are, even among
farmers, those who would hesitate to buy hemp bagging at the same price
as jute bagging because it was not the thing they were familiar with.
But some of them will buy inferior jute twine, colored to resemble hemp,
at the price of hemp, and never question the fraud.
[Illustration: CABBAGE PALMETTO IN FLORIDA.]
Our farmers waste the fibrous straw produced on the million acres of
flax grown for seed. It has little value, it is true, for the production
of good spinning flax, yet by modifying present methods of culture,
salable fiber can be produced and the seed saved as well, giving two
paying crops from the same harvest where now the flaxseed grower secures
but one.
In summarizing the situation in this country, therefore, it will be seen
that, out of the hundreds of fibrous plants known to the botanist and to
the fiber expert, the textile economist need only consider four or five
species and their varieties, all of them supplying well-known commercial
products that are regularly quoted in the world's market price current,
the cultivation and preparation of which are known quantities. Were the
future of new fiber industries in this country to rest upon this simple
statement, there would be little need of further effort. The problem,
however, is one of economical adaptation to conditions not widely
understood in the first place, and not altogether within control in the
second.
Twenty flax farmers in a community decide to grow flax for fiber, and
two of these farmers are perhaps acquainted with the culture. They go
to work each in his own way; ten make a positive failure in cultivation
for lack of proper direction, five of the remaining ten fail in retting
the straw, and five succeed in turning out as many different grades
of flax line, only one grade of which may come up to the standard
required by the spinners. And all of them will have lost money. If the
failure is investigated it will be discovered that the proper seed was
not used; in some instances the soil was not adapted to the culture,
and old-fashioned ideas prevailed in the practice followed. The straw
was not pulled at the proper time, and it was improperly retted. The
breaking and scutching were accomplished in a primitive way, because the
farmers could not afford to purchase the necessary machinery, and of
course they all lost money, and decided in future to let flax alone.
But the next year the president of the local bank, the secretary
of the town board of trade, and three or four prosperous merchants
formed a little company and built a flax mill. A competent
superintendent--perhaps an old country flax-man--was employed, a
quantity of good seed was imported, and the company contracted with
these twenty farmers to grow five, ten, or fifteen acres of flax straw
each, under the direction of the old Scotch superintendent. The seed
was sold to them to be paid for in product; they were advised regarding
proper soil and the best practice to follow; they grew good straw, and
when it was ready to harvest the company took it off their hands at a
stipulated price per ton. The superintendent of the mill assumed all
further responsibility, attended to the retting, and worked up the
product. Result: several carloads of salable flax fiber shipped to the
Eastern market in the winter, the twenty farmers had "money to burn"
instead of flax straw, and the company was able to declare a dividend.
This is not altogether a supposititious case, and it illustrates the
point that in this day of specialties the fiber industry can only be
established by co-operation.
In all these industries, whether the fiber cultivated is flax, ramie,
or jute, the machine question enters so largely into the problem of
their successful establishment that the business must be conducted on a
large scale. Even in the growth of Sisal hemp in Florida, should it be
attempted, the enterprise will only pay when the necessary mill plant
for extracting the fiber is able to draw upon a cultivated area of five
hundred acres. In other words, the small farmer can never become a
fiber producer independently, but must represent a single wheel in the
combination.
[Illustration: THE LUFFA, OR SPONGE CUCUMBER.]
The subject is a vast one, and, while I have been able to set forth the
importance of these industries as new sources of national prosperity,
only an outline has been given of the difficulties which are factors in
the industrial problem. Summing up the points of vantage, the market is
already assured; through years of study and experiment we are beginning
to better understand the particular conditions that influence success
or failure in this country; we have the best agricultural implements in
the world, and American inventive genius will be able, doubtless, in
time, to perfect the new mechanical devices which are so essential to
economical production; our farmers are intelligent and industrious, and
need only the promise of a fair return for their labor to enter heart
and soul into this work.
WHAT IS SOCIAL EVOLUTION?
BY HERBERT SPENCER.
Though to Mr. Mallock the matter will doubtless seem otherwise, to most
it will seem that he is not prudent in returning to the question he has
raised; since the result must be to show again how unwarranted is the
interpretation he has given of my views. Let me dispose of the personal
question before passing to the impersonal one.
He says that I, declining to take any notice of those other passages
which he has quoted from me, treat his criticism as though it were
"founded exclusively on the particular passage which" I deal with, "or
at all events to rest on that passage as its principal foundation and
justification."[4] It would be a sufficient reply that in a letter to a
newspaper numerous extracts are inadmissible; but there is the further
reply that I had his own warrant for regarding the passage in question
as conclusively showing the truth of his representations. He writes:--
Should any doubt as to the matter still remain in the reader's
mind, it will be dispelled by the quotation of one further passage.
"_A true social aggregate_," he says ["_as distinct from a mere
large family_], _is a union of like individuals, independent of one
another in parentage, and approximately equal in capacities_."[5]
I do not see how, having small liberty of quotation, I could do better
than take, as summarizing his meaning, this sentence which he gives as
dissipating "any doubt." But now let me repeat the paragraph in which I
have pointed out how distorted is Mr. Mallock's interpretation of this
sentence.
Every reader will assume that this extract is from some
passage treating of human societies. He will be wrong, however. It
forms part of a section describing Super-Organic Evolution at large
("Principles of Sociology," sec. 3), and treating, more especially,
of the social insects; the purpose of the section being to exclude
these from consideration. It is implied that the inquiry about to
be entered upon concerns societies formed of like units, and not
societies formed of units extremely unlike. It is pointed out that
among the _Termites_ there are six unlike forms, and among the
Sauba ants, besides the two sexually-developed forms, there are
three classes of workers--one indoor and two outdoor. The members
of such communities--queens, males, soldiers, workers--differ
widely in their structures, instincts, and powers. These
communities formed of units extremely unequal in their capacities
are contrasted with communities formed of units approximately equal
in their capacities--the human communities about to be dealt with.
When I thus distinguished between groups of individuals having
widely different sets of faculties, and groups of individuals
having similar sets of faculties (constituting their common human
nature), I never imagined that by speaking of these last as having
approximately equal capacities, in contrast with the first as
having extremely unequal ones, I might be supposed to deny that any
considerable differences existed among these last. Mr. Mallock,
however, detaching this passage from its context, represents it as
a deliberate characterization to be thereafter taken for granted;
and, on the strength of it, ascribes to me the absurd belief that
there are no marked superiorities and inferiorities among men! or,
that if there are, no social results flow from them![6]
Though I thought it well thus to repudiate the absurd belief ascribed to
me, I did not think it well to enter upon a discussion of Mr. Mallock's
allegations at large. He says I ought to have given to the matter "more
than the partial and inconclusive attention he has [I have] bestowed
upon it." Apparently he forgets that if a writer on many subjects deals
in full with all who challenge his conclusions, he will have time for
nothing else; and he forgets that one who, at the close of life, has
but a small remnant of energy left, while some things of moment remain
to be done, must as a rule leave assailants unanswered or fail in his
more important aims. Now, however, that Mr. Mallock has widely diffused
his misinterpretations, I feel obliged, much to my regret, to deal
with them. He will find that my reply does not consist merely of a
repudiation of the absurdity he ascribes to me.
* * * * *
The title of his book is a misnomer. I do not refer to the fact that
the word "Aristocracy," though used in a legitimate sense, is used in a
sense so unlike that now current as to be misleading: that is patent.
Nor do I refer to the fact that the word "Evolution," covering, as it
does, all orders of phenomena, is wrongly used when it is applied to
that single group of phenomena constituting Social Evolution. But I
refer to the fact that his book does not concern Social Evolution at
all: it concerns social life, social activity, social prosperity. Its
facts bear somewhat the same relation to the facts of Social Evolution
as an account of a man's nutrition and physical welfare bears to an
account of his bodily structure and functions.
In an essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," published in 1857,
containing an outline of the doctrine which I have since elaborated in
the ten volumes of _Synthetic Philosophy_, I commenced by pointing out
defects in the current conception of progress.
It takes in not so much the reality of Progress as its
accompaniments--not so much the substance as the shadow. That
progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into
the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded
as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws
understood: whereas the actual progress consists in those internal
modifications of which this increased knowledge is the expression.
Social progress is supposed to consist in the produce of a greater
quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying men's
wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in
widening freedom of action: whereas, rightly understood, social
progress consists in those changes of structure in the social
organism which have entailed these consequences. The current
conception is a teleological one. The phenomena are contemplated
solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes are
held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend
to heighten human happiness. And they are thought to constitute
progress simply _because_ they tend to heighten human happiness.
But rightly to understand progress, we must inquire what is the
nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests.[7]
With the view of excluding these anthropocentric interpretations and
also because it served better to cover those inorganic changes which the
word "progress" suggests but vaguely, I employed the word "evolution."
But my hope that, by the use of this word, irrelevant facts and
considerations would be set aside, proves ill-grounded. Mr. Mallock now
includes under it those things which I endeavored to exclude. He is
dominated by the current idea of progress as a process of improvement,
in the human sense; and is thus led to join with those social changes
which constitute advance in social organization, those social changes
which are ancillary to it--not constituting parts of the advance itself,
but yielding fit materials and conditions. It is true that he recognizes
social science as aiming "to deduce our civilization of to-day from
the condition of the primitive savage." It is true that he says social
science "primarily sets itself to explain, not how a given set of
social conditions affects those who live among them, but how social
conditions at one epoch are different from those of another, how each
set of conditions is the resultant of those preceding it."[8] But in
his conception as thus indicated he masses together not the phenomena
of developing social structures and functions only, but all those which
accompany them; as is shown by the complaint he approvingly cites
that the sociological theory set forth by me does not yield manifest
solutions of current social problems:[9] clearly implying the belief
that an account of social evolution containing no lessons which he who
runs may read is erroneous.
While Mr. Mallock's statements and arguments thus recognize Social
Evolution in a general way, and its continuity with evolution of simpler
kinds, they do not recognize that definition of evolution under its
various forms, social included, which it has been all along my purpose
to illustrate in detail. He refers to evolution as exhibited in the
change from a savage to a civilized state; but he does not ask in what
the change essentially consists, and, not asking this, does not see what
alone is to be included in an account of it. Let us contemplate for a
moment the two extremes of the process.
Here is a wandering cluster of men, or rather of families, concerning
which, considered as an aggregate, little more can be said than can be
said of a transitory crowd: the group considered as a whole is to be
described not so much by characters as by the absence of characters. It
is so loose as hardly to constitute an aggregate, and it is practically
structureless. Turn now to a civilized society. No longer a small
wandering group but a vast stationary nation, it presents us with a
multitude of parts which, though separate in various degrees, are tied
together by their mutual dependence. The cluster of families forming
a primitive tribe separates with impunity: now increase of size, now
dissension, now need for finding food, causes it from time to time
to divide; and the resulting smaller clusters carry on what social
life they have just as readily as before. But it is otherwise with a
developed society. Not only by its stationariness is this prevented from
dividing bodily, but its parts, though distinct, have become so closely
connected that they can not live without mutual aid. It is impossible
for the agricultural community to carry on its business if it has not
the clothing which the manufacturing community furnishes. Without fires
neither urban nor rural populations can do their work, any more than can
the multitudinous manufacturers who need engines and furnaces; so that
these are all dependent on coal-miners. The tasks of the mason and the
builder must be left undone unless the quarryman and the carpenter have
been active. Throughout all towns and villages retail traders obtain
from the Manchester district the calicoes they want, from Leeds their
woolens, from Sheffield their cutlery. And so throughout, in general
and in detail. That is to say, the whole nation is made coherent by the
dependence of its parts on one another--a dependence so great that an
extensive strike of coal-miners checks the production of iron, throws
many thousands of ship-builders out of work, adds to the outlay for
coal in all households, and diminishes railway dividends. Here then is
one primary contrast--the primitive tribe is incoherent, the civilized
nation is coherent.
While the developing society has thus become integrated, it has passed
from its original uniform state into a multiform state. Among savages
there are no unlikenesses of occupations. Every man is hunter and upon
occasion warrior; every man builds his own hut, makes his own weapons;
every wife digs roots, catches fish, and carries the household goods
when a change of locality is needed: what division of labor exists is
only between the sexes. We all know that it is quite otherwise with a
civilized nation. The changes which have produced the coherence have
done this by producing the division of labor: the two going on _pari
passu_. The great parts and the small parts, and the parts within parts,
into which a modern society is divisible, are clusters of men made
unlike in so far as they discharge the unlike functions required for
maintaining the national life. Rural laborers and farmers, manufacturers
and their workpeople, wholesale merchants and retailers, etc., etc.,
constitute differentiated groups, which make a society as a whole
extremely various in composition. Not only in its industrial divisions
is it various, but also in its governmental divisions, from the
components of the legislature down through the numerous kinds and grades
of officials, down through the many classes of masters and subordinates,
down through the relations of shopkeeper and journeyman, mistress and
maid. That is to say, the change which has been taking place is, under
one aspect, a change from homogeneity of the parts to heterogeneity of
the parts.
A concomitant change has been from a state of vague structure, so far
as there is any, to a state of distinct structure. Even the primary
differentiation in the lowest human groups is confused and unsettled.
The aboriginal chief, merely a superior warrior, is a chief only
while war lasts--loses all distinction and power when war ceases; and
even when he becomes a settled chief, he is still so little marked
off from the rest that he carries on his hut-building, tool-making,
fishing, etc., just as the rest do. In such organization as exists
nothing is distinguished, everything is confused. Quite otherwise is
it in the developed nation. The various occupations, at the same time
that they have become multitudinous, have become clearly specialized
and sharply limited. Read the London Directory, and while shown how
numerous they are, you are shown by the names how distinct they are.
This increasing distinctness has been shown from the early stages
when all freemen were warriors, through the days when retainers now
fought and now tilled their fields, down to the times of standing
armies; or again from the recent days when in each rural household,
besides the bread-winning occupation, there were carried on spinning,
brewing, washing, to the present day when these several supplementary
occupations have been deputed to separate classes exclusively devoted
to them. It has been shown from the ages when guilds quarreled about
the things included in their respective few businesses, down to our
age when the many businesses of artisans are fenced round and disputed
over if transgressed, as lately by boilermakers and fitters; and is
again shown by the ways in which the professions--medical, legal, and
other--form themselves into bodies which shut out from practice, if they
can, all who do not bear their stamp. And throughout the governmental
organization, from its first stage in which the same man played various
parts--legislative, executive, judicial, militant, ecclesiastic--to
late stages when the powers and functions of the multitudinous classes
of officials are clearly prescribed, may be traced this increasing
sharpness of division among the component parts of a society. That is to
say, there has been a change from the indefinite to the definite. While
the social organization has advanced in coherence and heterogeneity, it
has also advanced in definiteness.
If, now, Mr. Mallock will turn to _First Principles_, he will there
see that under its chief aspect Evolution is said to be a change from
a state of indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a state of definite,
coherent heterogeneity. If he reads further on he will find that these
several traits of evolution are successively exemplified throughout
astronomic changes, geologic changes, the changes displayed by each
organism, by the aggregate of all organisms, by the development of the
mental powers, by the genesis of societies, and by the various products
of social life--language, science, art, etc. If he pursues the inquiry
he will see that in the series of treatises (from which astronomy
and geology were for brevity's sake omitted) dealing with biology,
psychology, and sociology, the purpose has been to elaborate the
interpretations sketched out in _First Principles_; and that I have not
been concerned in any of them to do more than delineate those changes of
structure and function which, according to the definition, constitute
Evolution. He will see that in treating of social evolution I have dealt
only with the transformation through which the primitive small social
germ has passed into the vast highly developed nation. And perhaps he
will then see that those which he regards as all-important factors are
but incidentally referred to by me because they are but unimportant
factors in this process of transformation. The agencies which he
emphasizes, and in one sense rightly emphasizes, are not agencies by
which the development of structures and functions has been effected;
they are only agencies by which social life has been facilitated and
exalted, and aids furnished for further social evolution.
* * * * *
Respecting the essential causes of this social transformation, it must
suffice to say that it results from certain general traits in human
beings, joined with the influences of their varying circumstances.