POWER OF STEAM AND CONTEMPT OF ARTISANS.
A few Million People now wield twice as much Industrial Power as all
the People on the Globe exerted a Hundred Years ago. -- A Revolution
wrought, not by the Schools and Colleges, but by the Mechanic. -- The
Union between Science and Art prevented by the Speculative Philosophy
of the Middle Ages. -- Statesmen, Lawyers, Littérateurs, Poets, and
Artists more highly esteemed than Civil Engineers, Mechanics, and
Artisans. -- The Refugee Artisan a Power in England, the Refugee
Politician worthless. -- Prejudice against the Artisan Class shown by
Mr. Galton in his Work on “Hereditary Genius.” -- The Influence of
Slavery: it has lasted Thousands of Years, and still Survives.
What the civil engineers and mechanics of England have done for that
country the same classes here have done for America. It is by these
classes that all civilized countries have been made prosperous and
great. And the agent through which the power of man has been augmented a
thousand-fold is steam. “In the manufactures of Great Britain alone, the
power which steam exerts is estimated to be equal to the manual labor of
four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males
supposed to inhabit the globe.”[39] This is the most significant fact of
all time, namely, that a few millions of people in a small island now
wield twice as much industrial power as all the people on the globe
exerted one hundred years ago. And it is a fact of the utmost
significance that the public educational institutions of England
contributed scarcely anything to this industrial revolution, whose
influence now comprehends all civilized countries. The men by whom it
was wrought came not from the classic shades of the universities, but
from the foundery, the forge, and the machine-shop. There has been very
little change in educational methods since the time when Bacon said,
“They learn nothing at the universities but to believe.” He proposed
that a college be established and devoted to the discovery of new truth.
No such college has, however, been established, but many new truths have
been discovered. Suppose all the universities of England, of the United
States, and of all other highly civilized countries had, from the time
of Bacon, been conformed to his ideas, and devoted to the discovery of
new truths? Such a course would have united science and art, and insured
vastly greater progress, no doubt, than that which has actually taken
place. The union of science with art has thus far been rendered
impossible by reason of the wide prevalence of purely speculative views.
The speculative philosophy of the Middle Ages still projects its baleful
influence over our institutions of learning. Abstract ideas are still
regarded as of more vital importance than things. Statesmen, lawyers,
littérateurs, poets, and artists are more highly esteemed than civil
engineers, machinists, and artisans. Mr. Smiles, in his excellent work
on the Huguenots, has shown that England owes to the French and the
Flemish immigrants “almost all her industrial arts and very much of the
most valuable life-blood of her modern race.”[40] Commenting upon this
fact in his work on “Hereditary Genius,” Mr. Francis Galton says,
“There has been another emigration from France of not unequal magnitude,
but followed by very different results, namely, that of the revolution
of 1789. It is most instructive to contrast the effects of the two. The
Protestant emigrants were able men, and have profoundly influenced for
good both our breed and our history; on the other hand, the political
refugees had but poor average stamina, and have left scarcely any traces
behind them.”[41]
[39] “Brief Biographies: James Watt,” p. 1. By Samuel Smiles. Chicago:
Belford, Clark & Co., 1883.
[40] “In short, wherever the refugees settled they acted as so many
missionaries of skilled work, exhibiting the best practical examples
of diligence, industry, and thrift, and teaching the English people in
the most effective manner the beginnings of those various industrial
arts in which they have since acquired so much distinction and
wealth.”--“The Huguenots,” p. 107. By Samuel Smiles. New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1867.
[41] “Hereditary Genius,” p. 360. By Francis Galton, F.R.S., etc. New
York: D. Appleton & Co., 1880.
This is the testimony of a distinguished student of biology; and it is
to the effect that the refugee artisan is of immense value to the
country where he finds an asylum, while the refugee politician is of no
value at all. We should naturally say, our author having made this
important discovery will enlarge upon it. First of all, he will deduce
the conclusion that if the refugee politician is of no value to the
country where he finds an asylum, the home politician is an equally
unimportant factor in the social problem. Then he will make an
exhaustive study of the industrial class as the chief basis of his
propositions and speculations on the subject of the science of life. Not
at all. Mr. Galton, in his work on “Hereditary Genius,” offers another
striking illustration of the repressive force of habit and the influence
of popular prejudice. In his classifications of men according to their
professions, with a view to the inquiry whether “genius, talent, or
whatever we term great mental capacity, follows the law of organic
transmission--runs in families, and is an affair of blood and breed”--in
such classifications Mr. Galton forgets for the time being that there is
an industrial class. He runs through the entire social scale, from “the
judges of England between 1660 and 1865,” not omitting Lord Jeffreys,
down through statesmen, commanders, literary men, poets, musicians, men
of science, painters, divines, the boys in Cambridge, oarsmen, and
wrestlers of the North Country, but has no word to say of the civil
engineers, or of the inventors--those immortal men whose monuments in
stone and iron exist in every corner of England.
Buckles’s caustic remark, “the most valuable additions made to
legislation have been enactments destructive of preceding legislation,
and the best laws which have been passed have been those in which some
former laws have been repealed,” does not apply to the works of the
civil engineers, inventors, and mechanics of England or of any other
country. Their works live after them and never fail to reflect honor
upon them. The “acts” of the inventor may be amended but they are never
repealed. Each inventive step, however short and apparently unimportant,
constitutes a substantial link in the chain of progress; and it is a
substantial link, because it invariably contains a hint of the next
sequential step.
Mr. Galton is an original thinker of great power, and an untiring
investigator. In contrasting the politician with the artisan he
discriminates admirably. He finds that the politician is of no value,
practically, to the community, while the artisan is of almost
inestimable value; and this conclusion he states curtly, without
appearing to care a rush for the public sentiment which reverences
politics and so-called statesmanship. But when he “makes up his jewels,”
so to speak, on the subject of “hereditary genius,” Mr. Galton, as
already remarked, forgets that it is worth while to consider the class
of men who in the last hundred years have literally almost created a new
world. Why is this? The late Mr. Horace Mann answered the question long
ago, and he answered it so well that his answer is here reproduced _in
extenso_: “Mankind had made great advances in astronomy, in geometry,
and other mathematical sciences, in the writing of history, in oratory
and in poetry, in painting and in sculpture, and in those kinds of
architecture which may be called regal or religious, centuries before
the great mechanical discoveries and inventions which now bless the
world were brought to light; and the question has often forced itself
upon reflecting minds why there was this _preposterousness_, this
inversion of what would appear to be the natural order of progress? Why
was it, for instance, that men should have learned the courses of the
stars and the revolution of the planets before they found out how to
make a good wagon-wheel? Why was it that they built the Parthenon and
the Coliseum before they knew how to construct a comfortable, healthful
dwelling-house? Why did they build the Roman aqueducts before they
framed a saw-mill? Or why did they achieve the noblest models in
eloquence, in poetry, and in the drama before they invented movable
types? I think we have arrived at a point where we can unriddle this
enigma. The labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men, by
classes doomed to ignorance from sire to son; by the bondmen and the
bondwomen of the Jews, by the helots of Sparta, by the captives who
passed under the Roman yoke, and by the villeins and serfs and slaves of
more modern times.”
When the great educational reformer of Massachusetts thus graphically
pointed out slavery as the cause of the contempt in which the useful
arts had been held from the dawn of history, four millions of men were
kept in bondage, and compelled to toil under the lash by one of the most
enlightened nations of the earth. Later thirteen millions of people
pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the
perpetuation of slavery, and half a million soldiers marched repeatedly
to battle to do or die in behalf of the right (?) of one man to buy and
sell the bodies of his fellow-men.
There is, then, a logical reason for Mr. Galton’s neglect of the artisan
class. Slavery in its most odious form not only existed in the heart of
a so-called “free” nation twenty-five years ago, but dared Liberty to a
deadly contest. Nor were the upholders of slavery without moral support
among the governments and peoples of the world. The government of
England, of which Mr. Galton is a subject, under cover of a pretended
neutrality aided the American slaveholders’ Confederacy in sweeping
Freedom’s ships from the sea; and the great families of England, the
families cited by Mr. Galton in support of his proposition that genius
“is an affair of blood and breed”--those great families were well
pleased when Freedom’s ships went down and Freedom’s armies retreated
before the assaults of the slave confederacy.
This somewhat extended reference to Mr. Galton is not intended to impugn
his good faith as an author. Its design is simply to show that the
influence of slavery is not yet extinct; that it still moulds ideas,
controls habits of thought, inspires literary men, and permeates
literature. In a word, the cause of the contempt in which the useful
arts were held in Babylon in the time of Herodotus was in full force in
this country down to the date of the issuance of Mr. Lincoln’s
proclamation of emancipation; and it is scarcely necessary to observe
that the British Constitution grew out of the feudal system, which was
only another name for slavery. It is a proverb in England to this day
that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare; and the sentiment of the
proverb is a complete justification of human bondage, since it implies
that property rights are more sacred than the rights of man. Thus
slavery has kept its brand of shame upon the useful arts for thousands
of years, and the mind of man has been so deeply impressed thereby that
it does not react now that slavery is extinct. Like the slave released
from bondage, who still feels the chain, still winces and shrinks from
the imaginary scourge, the mind of man continues to revolve
automatically in the old channels.[E10]
[E10] “It is related of the Scythians that they became involved in a
contest with the descendants of certain of their slaves, who
successfully resisted them in several battles, whereupon one of them
said: ‘Men of Scythia, what are we doing? By fighting with our slaves,
both we ourselves by being slain become fewer in number, and by
killing them we shall hereafter have fewer to rule over. Now,
therefore, it seems to me that we should lay aside our spears and
bows, and that everyone, taking a horsewhip, should go directly to
them; for so long as they saw us with arms, they considered themselves
equal to us, and born of equal birth; but when they shall see us with
our whips instead of arms, they will soon learn that they are our
slaves, and being conscious of that will no longer resist.’ The
Scythians, having heard this, adopted the advice; and the slaves,
struck with astonishment at what was done, forgot to fight and
fled.”--Herodotus, “Melpomene,” IV. §§ 3, 4. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1882.