Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
https://archive.org/details/ourbenevolentfeu00ghenrich
Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
An additional Transcriber’s note is at the end.
OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM
by
W. J. GHENT
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1902
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1902,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
The germ of this book was contained in an article published in the
_Independent_, April 3, 1902. The wide interest which that article
awakened prompted the elaboration and arrangement of its briefly
considered and somewhat disjointed parts into the present form.
The chapters on “Our Makers of Law” and “Our Interpreters of Law” have
been carefully read by a member of the New York Bar who has made a
special study of the matters treated therein. Some of the decisions
cited in the latter chapter are admitted to be those of subordinate
courts in comparatively unimportant States. The intention, however, was
to give a general view of judicial interpretation; and for that reason
it became necessary to cite decisions of inferior as well as superior
courts, and those from semi-industrial as well as industrial States.
As the book goes to press, the news is published that the anthracite
magnates have yielded and made concessions to public sentiment. It is
an act in harmony with the wiser forethought of most of the magnates
of to-day, and it strengthens the general seigniorial position
immeasurably.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER
I. UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS 1
II. COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE 11
III. OUR MAGNATES 27
IV. OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS 47
V. OUR MAKERS OF LAW 83
VI. OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW 102
VII. OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION 122
VIII. GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES 154
IX. TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT 180
INDEX 199
CHAPTER I UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” But what the new order
shall be is a matter of some diversity of opinion. Whoever, blessed
with hope, speculates upon the future of society, tends to imagine it
in the form of his social ideals. It matters little what the current
probabilities may be--the strong influence of the ideal warps the
judgment. To Thomas More, though most tendencies of his time made for
absolutism, the future was republican and communistic; and to Francis
Bacon the present held the promise of a new Atlantis, despite the
growing arrogance of the Crown and the submissiveness of the people.
The great diversity of social ideals produces a like diversity of
social forecasts. All the soothsayers give different readings of the
signs. Even those of the same school, who build the future in the
light of the same dogmas, differ in regard to particulars of form
and structure. How many forecasts of one sort or another have been
given us, it is impossible to say. Mr. H. G. Wells, in a footnote to
his “Anticipations,” complains of their scarcity. “Of quite serious
forecasts and inductions of things to come,” he says, “the number is
very small indeed; a suggestion or so of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s, Mr.
Kidd’s ‘Social Evolution,’ some hints from Mr. Archdall Reid, some
political forecasts, German for the most part (Hartmann’s ‘Earth in the
Twentieth Century,’ _e.g._), some incidental forecasts by Professor
Langley (_Century Magazine_, December, 1884, _e.g._), and such isolated
computations as Professor Crookes’s wheat warning and the various
estimates of our coal supply, make almost a complete bibliography.” But
surely the Utopians, from Plato to Edward Bellamy, have given us “quite
serious forecasts”; there is something of serious prophecy in both Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, much more in Tolstoi and Peter Kropotkin;
and the “Fabian Essays” are charged with it. Mr. Henry D. Lloyd’s
“Wealth against Commonwealth” closes with a brilliant and eloquent
picture of a regenerated society, and Mr. Edmond Kelly’s “Individualism
and Collectivism” is in large part prophetic. All the social reformers
who write books or articles give us engaging pictures of things as
they are to be; and though the Philosophical Anarchists deal rather
more largely with polemics than with prophecy, the Socialists are
conspicuously definite and serious in their forecasts. Even the popular
scientists--the astronomers, biologists, and anthropologists--often run
into prediction; and in the pages of Richard A. Proctor, E. D. Cope,
and Grant Allen, and of such living men as M. Camille Flammarion, Mr.
Alfred Russell Wallace, and Professor W. J. McGee, we have frequent
depictions of certain phases of the future.
Doubtless, any reader can add to this list. Of a surety, we have had
no lack of forecasts of one sort or another; and now we have some
new contributions,--Mr. Wells’s “Anticipations,” Mr. Benjamin Kidd’s
“Principles of Western Civilization,” two brief but sententious papers
by Professor John B. Clark, on “The Society of the Future” and “A
Modified Individualism” (published in the _Independent_), a definite
Socialist prediction by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, and a semi-Socialist one by
Mr. Sidney Webb.
I
Mr. Wells, in his lecture before the Royal Institution last January,
put forth the thesis that, just as we can picture the general aspects
of the earth in mesozoic times by a study of geology and paleontology,
so by a study of the present sociological drift can we picture the
society of a hundred years hence. He thereupon gives us “Anticipations”
as a result of the more or less rigorous working out of this method.
There is much to be said for the method, and its right employment might
probably give us something of great value. Unfortunately, Mr. Wells
forgets his thesis, and plunges into pure vaticination. He writes
with a spirited aggressiveness, and his pictures are often vivid and
impressive. But the greater part of his revelation is of a state of
things which seems far removed from what would be produced by any
current tendencies, actual or latent.
Mr. Kidd’s predictions lack somewhat in definiteness of outline, and
need not here concern us. Tolstoi, on the other hand, is specific.
He dreams of a return to a more primitive manner of production, and a
social change toward a status of Anarchist-Communism. He scoffs at the
enormous diversity of wants made necessary by the growing intelligence
and refinement of the race, and urges mankind to live more simply. “The
town must be abandoned, the people must be sent away from the factories
and into the country to work with their hands; the aim of every man
should be to satisfy all his wants himself.” But the counsel falls
upon heedless ears. Urged to live more simply, the race, impelled by
natural and irresistible laws, yearly increases the sum of its wants.
Science, art, and industry constantly pile up new commodities. Mankind
finds that through them it secures longer and healthier, if not happier
lives. It recognizes that by this increase of wants more human beings
are employed, and that by a slight diminution thereof tens of thousands
are thrown into idleness. And finally it recognizes that by a division
of labor, in which natural aptitude in particular directions is sought
to be secured, the greatest and most economical production follows.
Under Anarchist-Communism and the performance of labor in the direction
of each individual attempting to create the things needful for himself,
there would be entailed upon us a productive waste vastly greater than
that heretofore compelled by capitalism, diffusing a degree of want
and consequent wretchedness at present unknown. There is no present
indication that mankind will take this step.
Something better is to be said for Peter Kropotkin’s ideal of a
communistic union of shop industry and agriculture. In remote places,
outside the current of factory industrialism, there are still survivals
of this union, though the communistic feature is generally wanting.
Doubtless, under any form of society, even a well-regulated State
Socialism, this union would to some extent persist. But if there are
any present tendencies toward its growth, they are but feeble and
isolated. Kropotkin’s recent book, “Fields, Factories and Workshops,”
which was intended to sound the glad timbrel of rejoicing over the
expansion of this movement, turns out to be a rather pitiful threnody
on the decline and death of petty industries throughout Europe.
Moreover, it is one thing to argue the persistence of this manner of
production in scattered places, and quite another to argue it the
dominant manner of production in a transformed society of the future.
Of the coming of such a society the evidences are painfully scant.
We have also the Single-Taxers, the followers of the late Henry George,
who are quite as fertile in prophecy as in polemics. They dream of a
millennium through the imposition of a tax on the economic value of
land, and the abolition of all other taxes and duties of whatsoever
kind. Free competition is their shibboleth; and it is no less the
shibboleth of the Neo-Jeffersonians, the followers of Mr. Bryan.
Except for the fact that these two schools are somewhat Jacobinical,
their general notions of the coming society do not differ greatly
from the notions of the orthodox economists. All of these desire,
or think they desire, free competition. Arising out of an era of
competition, Professor Clark sees a coming order wherein the rich “will
continually grow richer, and the multi-millionnaires will approach
the billion-dollar standard; but the poor will be far from growing
poorer.... It may be that the wages of a day will take him [the worker]
to the mountains, and those of a hundred days will carry him through a
European tour.”
The dreadful spectre of monopoly, however, arises to threaten these
visions. Most of the orthodox economists acknowledge a possible danger
from it, but the Single-Taxers and Jeffersonians are sure it is a real
and growing menace. Says Professor Clark, “Between us and the régime
of monopoly there ranges itself a whole series of possible measures
stopping short of Socialism, and yet efficient enough to preserve our
free economic system.” It is a “free economic system” which all these
are bent on having,--the economists determined on preserving it, the
others on establishing it; for the Single-Taxers, with their _bête
noir_ of private ownership of land, and the Jeffersonians, with their
_bêtes noirs_ of railroads and trusts, deny that our economic system
is at present “free.” Doubtless they are both right; but if there be
one fact in the realm of political economy fairly established, it is
that the era of competition, whether free or unfree, is dead, and the
means of its resurrection are unknown to political science. With old
men the dream of its revival is warrantable, for it springs from that
retrospective mood of age which gilds past times, and that attendant
mood which recreates and projects them into some imagined future; but
with the younger generation visions of free competition are but as
children’s dreams of wild forests and shaggy animals--the atavistic
reminders of experiences unknown to the individual, though knit into
the fibre of the race. The subject is one far better suited to the
domain of a psychologist like Dr. Stanley Hall than to the scope of
this book.
Finally, we have the Socialists, with their prophecy of the early
establishment of a coöperative commonwealth. It is a noble picture,
in its best expression based upon the extreme of faith in the coming
generations of mankind, however its draughtsmen may criticise the
wisdom and justice of the present. There is no doubt that now a
ground-swell of Socialist conviction moves like a tide “of waters
unwithstood”; everywhere one notes its influences. Even so conservative
a scholar as Professor Henry Davies, lecturer on the history of
philosophy in Yale University, can write, “There is no doubt that the
next form of political activity to claim attention is the socialistic,
as it is the most popular and serious of any now before the educated
minds of this country.” Its propaganda is carried on untiringly, and
that its results are feared is evident from the equal aggressiveness
of a counter-propaganda maintained by the ingenious defenders of the
present régime against the whole form and spirit of Socialism. But
though socialist conviction spreads, the substance sought for seems
as far away as ever. It would seem, for the most part, to be but a
lukewarm conviction, much like that for which the Laodiceans were so
widely famed. Present tendencies make for other forms of production,
for a vastly different social régime.
II
The dominant tendencies will be clearly seen only by those who for
the time detach themselves from their social ideals. What, then, in
this republic of the United States, may Socialist, Individualist,
and Conservative alike see, if only they will look with unclouded
vision? In brief, an irresistible movement--now almost at its
culmination--toward great combinations in specific trades; next toward
coalescence of kindred industries, and thus toward the complete
integration of capital. Consequent upon these changes, the group of
captains and lieutenants of industry attains a daily increasing power,
social, industrial, and political, and becomes the ranking order
in a vast series of gradations. The State becomes stronger in its
relation to the propertyless citizen, weaker in its relation to the
man of capital. A growing subordination of classes, and a tremendous
increase in the numbers of the lower orders, follow. Factory industry
increases, and the petty industries, while still supporting a great
number of workers, are in all respects relatively weaker than ever
before; they suffer a progressive limitation of scope and function
and a decrease of revenues. Defenceless labor--the labor of women
and children--increases both absolutely and relatively. Men’s wages
decline or remain stationary, while the value of the product and the
cost of living advance by steady steps. Though land is generally held
in somewhat smaller allotments, tenantry on the small holdings, and
salaried management on the large, gradually replace the old system of
independent farming; and the control of agriculture oscillates between
the combinations that determine the prices of its products and the
railroads that determine the rate for transportation to the markets.
In a word, they who desire to live--whether farmers, workmen,
middlemen, teachers, or ministers--must make their peace with those
who have the disposition of the livings. The result is a renascent
Feudalism, which, though it differs in many forms from that of the
time of Edward I, is yet based upon the same status of lord, agent,
and underling. It is a Feudalism somewhat graced by a sense of ethics
and somewhat restrained by a fear of democracy. The new barons seek
a public sanction through conspicuous giving, and they avoid a too
obvious exercise of their power upon political institutions. Their
beneficence, however, though large, is but rarely prodigal. It
betokens, as in the case of the careful spouse of John Gilpin, a frugal
mind. They demand the full terms nominated in the bond; they exact from
the traffic all it will bear. Out of the tremendous revenues that flow
to them some of them return a part in benefactions to the public; and
these benefactions, whether or not primarily devoted to the easement of
conscience, are always shrewdly disposed with an eye to the allayment
of pain and the quieting of discontent. They are given to hospitals; to
colleges and churches which teach reverence for the existing régime,
and to libraries, wherein the enforced leisure of the unemployed
may be whiled away in relative contentment. They are never given,
even by accident, to any of the movements making for the correction
of what reformers term injustice. But not to look too curiously into
motives, our new Feudalism is at least considerate. It is a paternal, a
Benevolent Feudalism.