THE DRAMA OF CIVILIZATION
Coal embodies our chance of a world civilization. It is the material
form in which the possibility of peace and ease, beauty and learning,
cooperation and brotherhood, have come to the human race.
Before coal was harnessed to the looms of England, before the stored
energy of the sun replaced hand labor at the wheels and gears of her
newly invented machines, there was no such thing as a world
civilization. There was indeed nothing to base a world civilization
upon, for civilization implies leisure consciously to cooperate with
other people, to make life not merely endurable but beautiful and
pleasant as well, leisure to subordinate the instinct to acquire to the
instinct to enjoy, the acquisitive instinct to the consciousness of
kind--and the race as a whole had its entire attention focussed on the
effort to get enough food and clothing and shelter so that it would live
and not die. For only as the acquisitive instinct was dominant and
successful could men survive either singly or in groups, before the
coming of coal.
The limits of civilization were primarily the mechanical limitations of
man's ability to produce. So long as his only ways to drive machinery
were by wind and water, the strength of domesticated animals, and his
own brawn, it was almost impossible for him to accumulate sufficient
reserves of food and clothing so that instead of thinking what he
should eat and what he should put on, he could think a little of how to
make life good. And whenever by some fortunate chance a group of men did
get together a small hoard, parallel with the growth of each tiny
surplus grew the hatred of the outside groups who wished to possess it,
and the need to defend it by force. So that when here and there through
the centuries pocketed civilizations did arise, they were civilizations
perpetually armed for defence and with the sword in their hands. And
though the spirit of man in such places as India and Egypt, in China,
Persia, Palestine, Greece, Carthage, Rome, and the free Italian cities,
as soon as the pressure was removed ever so little, did flower into
religion and art and science, these favored oases were surrounded by
crowding, hungry multitudes who pressed in and in till at last every one
of these was overwhelmed.
Before the coming of coal man had to satisfy his longing for peace and
knowledge and companionship through his dreams. These have come down to
us in the legends of India and Israel, China, Greece, and our own Nordic
ancestors which perpetually play about the fabulous treasure--the Golden
Fleece, the land of milk and honey, the Volsung's miraculous
hoard--pathetic symbols of plenty, liberation, and the possibility of
brotherhood. But until coal came there was no way to make these dreams
come true. For survival was only to the strong, or to the cunning, or to
those who were willing to grow fat on the leanness of others, and every
respite from the basic business of keeping alive was extravagantly paid
for either by oneself or another--before coal came.
But with the coming of coal there rose the possibility of producing more
than enough to keep everybody alive. A tireless bond servant had been
given to the race whose power grew as it was called on, until now in
the United States where coal is used most indefatigably, each family has
the equivalent of thirty human servants, whose use does not need to
involve the exploitation of man by man. For the first time there is the
possibility of all having enough,--of a world surplus on which to base
civilization.
It was too much to expect that this possibility should be understood by
a race which had never before got further than to see that if their
family, their town, their nation, was to have ease and plenty, it must
be quick to get as much of the world's store of food and goods as it
could,--and to acquire them in spite of the fact that the other groups,
who were hot after them also, might perish if they did not get their
share. They did not see that with the coming of coal the supply was
practically unlimited, and so it was not man's sense of brotherhood but
his acquisitive instinct, checked and balked for ages, that first found
channels of release when coal came.
After the coming of coal this acquisitive instinct expanded with cosmic
force. For the first time in history, men and nations thrilled with the
manifest possibility of their escape from the ancient menace of hunger
into a world of measureless plenty. In their greedy rush for possession,
men within nations trampled one another under foot, and nations girded
themselves for world dominion. And as wealth flowed into the village,
the town, and the nation, all men exulted, those who themselves had
nothing as well as those who grew rich. For famine still hovered beyond
the horizon, and the very presence in the community of an economic
surplus, by whomever owned, gave all men a sense of security as though
at last they had won the miraculous hoard of their dreams, through the
coming of coal.
It was inevitable that in this cumulative drive of the acquisitive
instinct with the long-sought surplus almost in sight, the attitude of
mind established and glorified during the ages when war was the common
alternative to hunger, should carry over into factories and mines. The
methods of war,--the ruthless sacrifice of part of the community for the
benefit of the rest,--were the only methods men understood. The new
possibility had arrived but the old habit of mind remained. With the
coming of coal and the beginning of the industrial revolution, no one
dreamed that the time for the cessation of human sacrifice had arrived.
When the mines were first opened, the slave trade still flourished with
almost universal sanction.
"It is a slight fact," wrote Lecky, "but full of ghastly significance as
illustrating the state of feeling at the time, that the ship in which
Hawkins sailed on his second expedition to open the English slave trade
was called _The Jesus_."
This voyage was made a hundred years before the harnessing of coal, but
in the middle of the eighteenth century and far into the nineteenth much
the same state of feeling widely prevailed. The first miners in Scotland
were serfs; the first miners in northern England were bondsmen who sold
themselves by the year and were forbidden by law to leave the mine to
which they were bound.
"At that time," write J. L. and Barbara Hammond, basing their account on
the report of the Parliamentary Committee on the Employment of Children
and Young Persons (1842), "boys were employed everywhere, girls in
certain districts, Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding, and South
Wales, besides Scotland. Children were employed as trappers, that is to
open and shut the doors that guided the draught of air through the
mine; as fillers, that is to fill the skips and carriages when the men
have hewn the coal; and as pushers, or hurriers, that is, to push the
trucks along from the workers to the foot of the shaft. But in some
mines these trucks were drawn instead of being pushed. 'A girdle is put
round the naked waist, to which a chain from the carriage is hooked and
passed between the legs, and the boys crawl on their hands and knees,
drawing the carriage after them.' In the early days of the century this
arrangement was very common, and women and girls were so employed. By
1842 it was more usual to have small iron railways, and the carriages
were pushed along them. The trapping was done everywhere by children,
generally from five to eight years of age. A girl of eight years old
described her day: 'I'm a trapper in the Gamber Pit. I have to trap
without a light, and I'm scared. I go at four and sometimes half-past
three in the morning and come out at five and half-past. I never go to
sleep. Sometimes I sing when I've light, but not in the dark; I dare not
sing then....' In the West Riding the work of hurrying or pushing the
corves was often done by girls at the time of the report: 'Chained,
belted, harnessed like dogs in a go-cart, black, saturated with wet, and
more than half naked--crawling upon their hands and feet, and dragging
their heavy loads behind them--they present an appearance indescribably
disgusting and unnatural.' ... The children who suffered most were the
apprentices from the workhouse; 'these lads are made to go where other
men will not let their own children go. If they will not do it, they
take them to the magistrates who commit them to prison.' ... In mines
with thick seams it was usual to make good roads, but in less profitable
mines the roads were just large enough to enable small children to get
the corves along them.... It was reported that there was much more
cruelty in the Halifax pits than in those of Leeds and Braseford. A
sub-commissioner met a boy crying and bleeding from a wound in the
cheek, and his master explained 'that the child is one of the slow ones,
who would only move when he saw blood, and that by throwing a piece of
coal at him for that purpose he had accomplished his object, and that he
often adopted the like means.'"
The entire community sanctioned these practices, not the employers only;
for generations even the miners themselves acquiesced in them. Those who
were sacrificed in the mines and factories were victims of the entire
consuming community's war against hunger; the furious drive of the
acquisitive instinct on the one hand, and also of the passionate longing
of all men to escape from economic bondage into security, plenty,
economic and spiritual freedom. It was war of a disastrous sort but the
world of that day saw no alternative,--could see no alternative from the
experience of the race. Until as individuals, and nations and
associations of nations, we have won a stable economic surplus and the
spiritual maturity to use and distribute that surplus for the benefit of
the whole community, we shall not in our hearts condemn war as immoral,
whether it be a military or an industrial war. Always we shall contrive
to believe that what is necessary for us is necessarily good.
People in general deplored the horrors of mining just as before the
coming of coal they had deplored the horrors of the wars they had waged
in order to survive, but the fact remained that if the golden promise of
the industrial revolution was to be realized they must have coal, and
what other way was there to get it? At least part of the world was
living in comfort and security.
As a matter of fact a fair share of the community attained reasonable
comfort after the coming of coal. The acquisitive instinct succeeded in
piling up a vast permanent capital which was enjoyed by a large
proportion of the human race. It had not come through increased
production alone. Raiding and exploitation, both commercial and
military, had helped mightily, for the old method of feeding yourself
from your neighbor's hoard was tremendously accelerated for those
peoples whose manufactures and transportation were driven by the power
of coal. That the exploited peoples suffered in proportion as the
raiding peoples prospered is, of course, true, but among the dominant
peoples themselves the acquisitive instinct had begotten a mutual
consciousness. Throughout those parts of the world where coal had
induced the industrial revolution, a common civilization had sprung up.
Parallel with the triumphant acquisitive instinct had developed the
spirit of brotherhood and mutual aid which limited and controlled it.
The feeling of fellowship which breeds civilization was practically
coextensive with the augmented surplus produced through the coming of
coal. Coal-driven transportation was good enough so that a famine in one
land could be met by the heavy crops from another place: the fighting of
disease, the utilization of patents, the exchange of ideas, of luxuries,
of scientific knowledge, of passports, of fashions, and of food, became
international throughout a large part of the world. Mankind began to
approach a world civilization because since the coming of coal to kill
or starve was no longer the inevitable choice.
That this alternative has even a chance of operating is due to the play
and interplay of the two great fundamental instincts in the soul of
man--the acquisitive instinct through which he learned to use coal to
pile up the material surplus that made civilization possible; and that
other impulse, an offspring of the acquisitive instinct, which has swung
into opposition to its parent but without whose help that parent could
never have achieved a surplus on a large scale, the instinct of
brotherhood, of mutual aid, of cooperation. For without cooperation
among men there would have been lacking the tremendous advantage of
division of labor and mass production, and no surplus, however large and
secure it might have been, could have resulted in civilization except
through mutual aid. Men learned to work together in order to survive;
they learned to enjoy the results of their labor together in order to
become civilized. These two impulses are woven together in man's history
from the start and it is according as one or the other predominates that
we develop a civilization on the basis of our economic surplus, or
merely continue to exist and fight. This instinct of mutual aid is as
truly a cosmic force as the acquisitive instinct.
"The original and elementary subjective fact in society is the
consciousness of kind," writes Professor Giddings, "... It is the basis
of class distinction, of innumerable forms of alliance, of rules of
intercourse, and of peculiarities of policy.... It is about the
consciousness of kind as a determining principle, that all other motives
organize themselves in the evolution of social choice, social volition,
or social policy."
In any attempt to understand the function of coal in the development of
human society, it is necessary to remember the universal democratic
tendency of men similarly circumstanced, to organize into defensive and
offensive groups. They organize into bar associations, medical
societies, religious denominations, manufacturers' associations, and
trade unions in obedience to a principle as pervasive in the animate as
the force of gravitation is in the material world. While the primary
driving force behind each group as it organizes is the acquisitive
instinct, the natural reaching out for the means of subsistence, for
wages, fees, profits; for food, clothing, shelter, then for more food,
more clothing, better shelter, still the actual attainment of the
surplus makes possible the widening operation of the consciousness of
kind, and turns men's minds toward all those attributes that are
characteristic of the good life in which both the individual personality
and also the spiritual being of the group, the nation, and the race find
fruition. For an economic surplus is merely the condition of the good
life, and the end to which the human spirit forever strives to direct
the use of the surplus, is the good life itself--a worthy civilization.
If the consciousness of kind had spread evenly like a rising tide drawn
by the swelling surplus of the age of coal, a world civilization might
have quickly come. But it worked unevenly and erratically. Sometimes it
spread thinly over whole nations in the form of political beliefs and
produced theoretical democracies functioning through the franchise.
Sometimes it left the forms of government severely monarchical and
produced a spotty economic growth in the form of cooperative societies
that functioned in response to the everyday bread and butter needs.
Sometimes it brought those having similar occupations together in guilds
and trade unions, that tended to ignore mere political boundaries and
make men internationally conscious of each other through the way they
got their living. But everywhere the rising consciousness of kind came
upon obstructions and divisions. Waves hurrying up innocent-looking
estuaries would come upon other streams from the same great source, and
meet in spluttering, frothing conflict: a long even swell of brotherly
feeling would break over some rock of ancestral race prejudice in
disaster and bloodshed; mutual aid rose in a murky troubled sea, wave
against wave, one current trying to beat another current back. People
united into a political nation opposed themselves violently to those
united into some economic class within it. Men were driven apart when
the interests of their group conflicted with the interests of other
groups almost as strongly as they were drawn together by common interest
within their own organization.
And always the rise of any new group within a fairly comfortable
community met opposition from some already established group whose
privileges, powers, and possessions the new group tended to infringe.
They inevitably appeared like an invading tribe bent on pillage, and the
community gathered shoulder to shoulder to resist them, every thought
and muscle set to repel what they saw as an attack on the common surplus
and in defence of those whose guardianship of the common hoard had
afforded them a new measure of comfort.
This has been particularly true of all organizations, due to the spread
of consciousness of kind among the workers and their efforts to get for
themselves a larger share of the benefits of the common surplus. Very
rarely has the community been able to see that what was distributed in
the form of advanced wages and better conditions was not necessarily
taken away from the community as a whole.
When the coal miners, actuated by the consciousness of kind, began to
organize for mutual aid and defence, the community at large as well as
the mine owners condemned them as subversive conspirators, not only
against their lawful masters, but also against the general peace and
well-being of the nation, which was quite obviously flourishing,--piling
up a surplus with national security as a by-product,--by reason of the
thousands of tons of coal which the newly organized group might
conceivably curtail. It was the community as a whole, not the employers
only, that sanctioned the use of the courts and the military against the
miners' union, as they would have countenanced their use against
soldiers who mutinied.
Only slowly is our community, to which the coming of coal has given the
chance to develop a world civilization, beginning to see that neither
the acquisitive instinct through which men pile up a surplus, nor the
consciousness of kind through which they organize to build up a
civilization, is the result of individual perversity or caprice. Unions
and employers' associations arise in obedience to a fundamental law of
human conduct, they are the means by which society wins its way out of
chaos and anarchy into peace and orderly government. Through such group
organizations men develop the understanding of one another and of the
community at large, which is the foundation of brotherhood and civilized
life. It is through them that the community develops standards of
living; it is through them that the ideals of cooperation acquire
reality. It is by the acquisitive instinct that men live; it is by the
consciousness of kind, the instinct of mutual aid and cooperation, that
men are transformed into human beings. The interplay of these forces
makes the history of civilization--of nations and the great basic
industries within the nations. They are the flying shuttles with which
man at Time's loom weaves "the living garment of God."