rapid increase in iron and steel tonnage is certain to come. Largely
through the influence of the reconstruction of our navy, numerous large
plants for the construction of steel ships have been established at
Bath, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Newport News, San Francisco,
and other seaports. Cities on the Mississippi River, and especially
those on the Great Lakes, are engaged in building ships of iron and
steel. There are several steel plants in the Lake ports, and in them we
have built the larger part of our steel tonnage. Our iron ships have
been built chiefly in the seaboard yards. During the present year,
1899, the American yards are busy constructing vessels both for the
navy and for our merchant fleet, and new yards are being established.
Having begun selling crude and structural iron and steel and various
classes of machinery in Europe, even in Great Britain, we shall ere
long be selling iron and steel ships. The excellence of our navy has
brought us orders for war ships, and the skill and invention of our
shipbuilders will bring us foreign orders for merchantmen.
VIII. CAUSES ACCOUNTING FOR THE CENTURY’S COMMERCIAL PROGRESS.
The commercial progress of the nineteenth century, the salient phases
of which have been depicted in the foregoing pages, has been the result
of three sets of causes, economic, political, and social.
The economic causes of most importance are the improvements in
transportation, the reorganization of industry on a large scale, the
accumulation of capital, together with the growth of corporations and
credit institutions whereby the utility of capital has been enhanced,
and the discovery of large stores of gold.
[Illustration: CRAMP’S SHIPYARD ON THE DELAWARE.]
Transportation is the handmaid of trade. Whatever enables this handmaid
to do her work cheaper and quicker enlarges the scope and volume of the
world’s commerce. When one considers that it cost nearly four times as
much in 1875 to ship wheat from New York to Liverpool as it did twenty
years later, and fully three times as much from Chicago to Liverpool,
one can readily understand how transportation has removed hindrances to
commerce.
Cheap and rapid transportation has made an extensive commerce possible,
but it has been the organization of industry on a large scale that has
created the chief demand for commerce. Industry at the present time is,
to a large extent, so organized as best to promote the territorial and
international division of labor; and each large producer regards the
whole world as his market. The amount of commerce required increases
with the concentration and specialization of industry, and with every
widening of the producer’s market.
It has been the accumulation of capital and its increased availability
for purposes of production that have made possible the organization
of industry on its present basis, and enabled men to construct the
highly developed transportation system by means of which commerce
is accomplished. The material progress of the past century is
unprecedented. Industry has created wealth as with the touch of a magic
wand; and this rapidly growing wealth has been made available capital
through the instrumentality of the corporation which, by means of
stocks and bonds, has gathered into giant organizations the property of
hundreds and even thousands of individuals. The industrial corporations
have been greatly assisted in their work of concentrating and applying
capital, by the banks and other institutions that have enlarged
credit and made a given amount of property capable of performing a
much larger work. The expansion of industrial credits, furthermore,
has been greatly facilitated by the issue of government bonds in
large amounts during the century. These state obligations constitute
excellent business securities, of which banks, other corporations,
and individuals make extensive use. Such are some of the factors that
have promoted the accumulation of capital and increased the volume of
commerce.
Money is not capital, but an adequate supply of a sound and stable
medium of exchange is essential to industrial and commercial progress.
Twice in the history of the world the discovery of large supplies of
the precious metals has given a great impetus to industry and trade:
once, in the sixteenth century, when the Spanish galleys brought to
Europe rich treasure from the silver mines of America; and again, in
the middle of the nineteenth century, when the rich finds of gold
were made in Australia and California. The very rapid increase in the
commerce of the United States and of the world at large, which began
about 1850, was in no small degree the result of the rising prices
which followed the discoveries of gold. The closing decade of the
century is witnessing a similar occurrence. For many years prices
declined rapidly; the demands made upon the world’s gold supply were
rapidly increased at a time when the annual output was declining. From
1850 to 1870 the annual output of gold averaged over $130,000,000;
it then declined so rapidly that it amounted to only a little over
$100,000,000 a year, in 1885 and 1886. It was only $118,848,700 in
1890; but the present annual production is nearly $300,000,000, and
the fall in prices has been cheeked for a while at least. The very
rapid enlargement in commerce during the past two years must have been
facilitated by the recent increase in the annual production of gold.
A second general cause accounting for the world’s progress in commerce
is political—the commercial policy followed by the leading nations
of the world. Up to the nineteenth century, practically every country
strove to promote its trade, navigation interests, and its power as
a nation by means of the mercantile system,—a system of strict and
detailed regulation of foreign trade by means of tariffs and navigation
laws. Each country strove to determine the nature of its international
trade, and endeavored to carry on its commerce in its own ships. In
the case of one country, at least, the mercantile system was eminently
successful. Great Britain entered the great Napoleonic wars with a
powerful naval and merchant marine, and emerged from that struggle the
unquestioned mistress of the ocean. Her industries also, as well as
her ships, were stronger than those of other countries; and she soon
concluded that both her foreign trade and her shipping would profit by
doing away with the restrictions of the mercantile system, and adopting
the policy of entire commercial freedom. She made no mistake, for her
industries and commerce have wonderfully prospered.
The success of free trade and freedom of commerce in the United Kingdom
had much influence upon other countries, and, during the third quarter
of the nineteenth century, several countries began to move cautiously
in the direction that the United Kingdom had taken. They soon found,
however, that for them free trade and shipping meant British trade
and shipping, because of their inability to compete successfully with
their powerful rival; and, during the last quarter of the century,
the dominant commercial and maritime policy outside of the British
Isles has been one providing for the regulation of trade by tariffs,
and for the promotion of the mercantile marine by postal payments and
bounties. At the present time, the two most powerful commercial rivals
of the United Kingdom are the United States and Germany; and their
trade policy is one of regulation instead of freedom. It would seem,
therefore, judging by results, that both the United Kingdom and her
competitors have acted wisely, and that in both cases the means adopted
were such as conditions demanded.
The third cause of the world’s commercial progress during the past
century has been colonial expansion. Germany, France, and other
countries, influenced by the great success of the United Kingdom,
have established colonies in different parts of the world, and
assumed control over uncivilized peoples, until there are now 125
colonies, protectorates, and dependencies. These 125 regions comprise
two fifths of the land surface of the globe, and contain one third
of its population. These colonies and protectorates import annually
over $1,500,000,000 worth of commodities, and of this large sum more
than forty per cent is bought from mother countries. The last nation
to adopt the policy of colonial expansion is the United States, her
principal colony, the Philippine Islands, having been made a part of
her possessions because of our desire to secure a larger share of the
trade of the Orient.
IX. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY PROSPECT.
The world is entering upon the twentieth century with the nations of
the earth bound to each other by much closer relations than existed a
hundred years ago, and chief among the forces that draw the countries
of the world together is commerce. It is commerce, more than anything
else, that has brought about the existing organization of industry in
which each nation is dependent upon every other.
The nations of the world are mutually dependent, but their interests
are not identical. In the future, as they have done in the past,
nations will compete with each other, each striving to secure
for itself a maximum of economic advantage; and this competition
will continue to take the form of commercial rivalry. The great
international struggles of the present day are being carried on to
secure trade advantages; and at no time in the past have those contests
been more earnest than they now are. The conflicts of the twentieth
century will be commercial struggles, and they will be intense.
In the centuries when Phœnicia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, and Venice were
successively powerful, the Mediterranean was the theatre of commercial
activity and international rivalry. The navigators and explorers, whose
exploits closed the mediæval period and inaugurated the modern era,
carried the world’s commerce from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and
transferred the centres of national greatness from the southern to the
western and northern nations of Europe. The great industrial countries
of the present are those of Europe and America adjacent to the North
Atlantic. These countries originate the larger part of the world’s
commerce; and the main streams of international trade are those which
connect these countries with each other and with those regions of the
earth less highly developed industrially.
The Isthmus of Suez, just north of the Tropic of Cancer, and the
Isthmus of Panama, a short distance south of that line, were the only
barriers which nature placed across an otherwise continuous water route
around the earth in the northern hemisphere. These barriers diverted
the lines which the world’s largest volume of traffic tends to follow
far to the south around Africa and South America, or did so until
1869, when Europe overcame the barrier of most consequence to her by
the construction of the Suez Canal. Since the opening of that waterway
Europe has enjoyed advantages for international trade superior to those
enjoyed by our country. Our regions most highly developed industrially
are tributary to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. To the east of us
lies Europe, a region of great industrial advancement, demanding
little more than our surplus food products and raw materials; to the
south are the countries of the South Atlantic lying along the line of
the world’s secondary commercial routes; countries, moreover, whose
trade we can secure only in direct competition with Europe, which has
already forestalled us at many points. In pushing their trade westward
the industrial States of the United States—and they are found in
the eastern half of our country—find that the possibilities of a
traffic by land are restricted within narrow bounds by the heavy costs
of a long haul over the elevated Cordilleran Mountain ranges, while
shipments by water have to take the circuitous and expensive route
around South America. Until an isthmian canal is constructed the
United States will be handicapped in its competition with Europe for
the trade of all countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.
The United States looks forward to the coming century, confident of
sharing largely in the world’s commerce. With an enormous and rapidly
growing foreign trade, and with her industries sending their wares into
all quarters of the globe, the future of her trade is certain. Shall we
also become a great maritime nation? Shall we be as successful in the
age of steel steamships as we were in the days when our clipper-ships,
“those strong-winged gulls in timber, put swift girdles around the
earth?” Unquestionably, yes! The commercial advantages which our rivals
have possessed for half a century have nearly all disappeared. Our
maritime instincts are not dead; and when we again turn our attention
in earnest to the work of international navigation, we shall “win anew
the wide-reaching seas our sires loved and occupied so well.”
EDUCATION DURING THE CENTURY
BY FRANKLIN S. EDMONDS, A.M.,
_Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Central High School, Philadelphia_.
The nineteenth century has been characterized by a deep and abiding
interest in popular education. One hundred years ago there were many
close observers who strongly opposed all attempts to provide schools
for the masses, lest they should be educated above their station in
life. This feeling was particularly strong in conservative countries
like England. It led the Duke of Wellington to remark to one who was
explaining to him the work of Joseph Lancaster, “Take care what you are
about; for unless you base all this on religion, you are only making
so many clever devils.” So careful a critic as Alexis de Tocqueville,
after his visit to the United States in 1831, wrote to Jared Sparks:
“Are the effects of education uniformly good? Does not a man who
obtains an education above his social condition become an unquiet
citizen?” The first triumph of the nineteenth century was the conquest
of this fear; and there is to-day a general belief that it is the duty
of each community to provide a well-developed school system, that each
child may have an opportunity for making the best and highest use of
his powers and capabilities.
Perhaps no single element has contributed more to this change in the
popular attitude towards schools than the writings of the great group
of thinkers who, with lofty ideals and keen acumen, have devoted
themselves to the study and discussion of educational questions.
Germany has been foremost in its contributions to educational
literature. Foremost in time as in influence is John Henry Pestalozzi
(1746–1827). Although endowed with an “unrivaled incapacity for
government,” Pestalozzi has yet become an inspiration to modern
pedagogy, because of his love for teaching and the tender sympathy of
his nature. After various educational experiments, he opened, in 1805,
a school at Yverdun, on the Lake of Neufchatel, which soon won for him
a European reputation, and became a centre of interest to educators
from all Europe. The Emperor of Russia gave him a personal proof of his
favor, and Fichte, the great German philosopher, declared that he saw
in Pestalozzi and his labors the dawning of a new era for humanity. In
his writings and in his teaching Pestalozzi emphasized the importance
of the home in education; he asserted the truth that all instruction is
based on observation: “Neither books nor any product of human skill,
but life itself, yields the basis for all education;” and in a general
way he aimed to develop the child through his own personal activity,
rather than to furnish him with useful facts.
The most eminent of Pestalozzi’s disciples was Friedrich Froebel
(1782–1852), the founder of the kindergarten. After a varied career as
a forester, student at Jena, etc., Froebel went to Yverdun in 1808,
and for two years was a co-laborer with Pestalozzi. The impulse which
he here received never lost its force. It brought him to consider
the problems of elementary education, and finally led, in 1837,
to his establishment of the first kindergarten at Blankenburg in
Thuringia. His idea may be well expressed in his own words,—“I can
convert children’s activities, energies, amusements, occupations,
all that goes by the name of play, into instruments for my purpose,
and therefore transform play into work. This work will be education
in the true sense of the term.” His great theory was idealistic—he
believed in the unity of the universe, in the essential harmony of
the world. It was the duty of the teacher to fit the child for his
place in human society. This could be best done if the child was taken
at a very early age and prepared for life in an ordinary school. The
kindergarten, or child-garden, is thus a school where a child learns
social life, where his play is systematized and his activities are
directed. The average course of study takes hold of the child when
he is six years of age; the kindergarten usually fills in the two
preceding years. As an educational institution, the kindergarten has
met with little public support in Europe, although in Paris there are
a number of “maternal schools,” which correspond closely to Froebel’s
plan. In the United States, Miss Elizabeth Peabody became the first
apostle of the movement. The idea of caring for the children below the
regular school-age won instant favor, and in a number of large cities
kindergartens were opened under private auspices. As their success
became clearer and more positive, they were taken under the control of
the public. In 1896–97, the report of the United States Commissioner
of Education shows that there were 1077 kindergartens in the United
States connected with the public-school systems of cities having
more than 4000 population, with an enrollment of 81,916 pupils. The
International Kindergarten Union, formed for the purpose of “gathering
and disseminating knowledge of the kindergarten movement throughout the
world,” has aided greatly in stimulating an intelligent interest in
Froebel’s ideals in America.
None of the great German philosophers has been honored with a more
loyal cult than Johann Friedrich Herbart (1775–1841), who directed
general attention to the necessity of studying the principles
of education. In his writings and lectures while professor at
the University of Göttingen, Herbart started an inquiry into the
theoretical basis of instruction. He found the final aim of all
education to centre in the formation of moral character, while the
keystone of instruction is interest. “The final aim of instruction is
morality. But the nearer aim which instruction in particular must see
before itself in order to reach the final one, is many-sidedness of
interest.” Herbart’s influence in arousing and directing thought has
been most felt in Germany, but in America his name has been taken by
one of the most active educational associations, “The National Herbart
Society.”
[Illustration: PESTALOZZI.
(The Perry Pictures. Copyright, 1898, by E. A. Perry, Malden, Mass.)]
Next to Germany in its list of great educational thinkers must
come England. At the beginning of this century there were no
“public schools” in England, in the American sense of the term.
The great preparatory schools,—Eton, Rugby, Harrow, Winchester,
etc.,—although called “public” by the English, were in reality endowed
boarding-schools, where as a rule only the children of the rich could
be found. General education was cared for by the village schools under
the direction of the vicar of the parish, and usually presided over
by elderly dames with varied degrees of attainments. At the end of
the eighteenth century, the work of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster
began to arouse some interest. Working independently, the one in India
and the other in London, both developed the same method of providing
general instruction at a minimum of cost, by using the more advanced
pupils to instruct the beginners. “By the aid of monitors,” said
Lancaster, “one master can teach a thousand boys.” In 1798, Lancaster
opened the first English school of this kind in Southwark, London,
placing this inscription over the door: “All that will may send their
children and have them educated freely, and those that do not wish to
have education for nothing may pay for it, if they please.” In 1808,
the Royal Lancasterian Society was organized, to agitate for more
schools; and although its name was changed, in 1814, to British and
Foreign School Society, its work has continued down to the present
time. In 1818, Lancaster came to America, and was at once placed in
general charge of the public schools of Philadelphia. He was made
principal of a model school for training teachers, which is believed
to have been the first attempt at a normal school in America. After
extensive agitation in New York, in Canada, where in 1829 he received
an appropriation from the legislature to enable him to start his
monitorial schools, and even in South America, Lancaster’s work was
done.
Probably the greatest teacher of the century in England was Thomas
Arnold, whose character will long live in literature through the loving
portraiture of his pupils. While contributing little of importance
to the science of pedagogy, he was yet able to work a revolution in
the general conception of teacher and pupil, and their relations to
each other. He insisted that his teachers must continue their studies
after they had secured positions, and so raised professional ideals.
“The pupil,” said he, “must drink from the running fountain, and not
from the stagnant pool.” His sympathy gave him rare power to mould the
character of boys. He trusted his boys and they became worthy of it.
“It is a shame to tell Arnold a lie! He always believes one,”—was the
common saying. As a consequence, there went out from Rugby School from
1827 to 1842, the years of Arnold’s headmastership, a group of clean,
healthy, whole-souled boys, well fitted to become leaders in English
life.
Many contributions have been made to the literature of pedagogy during
the century, but there is none that has attracted more attention or
stimulated more earnest discussion than Herbert Spencer’s “Education.”
In the first chapter of his book, Spencer asks the question which
aroused the educational world,—“What knowledge is of most worth?” It
at once directed inquiry into the very heart of educational theory. The
course of study, the order in which subjects should be considered, the
time to be given to each,—all these problems were vitally concerned
with the answer to this question. Mr. Spencer’s solution won instant
favor: “How to live,” said he, “that is the essential question for
us.... And this, being the great thing needful for us to learn, is,
by consequence, the great thing which education has to teach. To
prepare us for _complete_ living is the function which education has
to discharge.” This point of view led to the accenting of useful
and practical subjects. The human body should be studied,—this is
necessary to fulfill the first law of nature, self-preservation. The
natural sciences should be an essential part of education: this is
necessary for our acquaintance with the world in which we must live
and work. History and social science should be studied: that each one
may become fully in touch with the society in which he forms a unit.
Naturally, little time would be left for branches that were æsthetic or
cultural, and so Spencer would have the student give but his surplus
time to these. But the important thing was that he should know himself,
his world, and his society, so that he would be fitted to do his work
in the most complete way. His practical influence upon education
is best seen in the great increase of appreciation for the natural
sciences, which has led to the introduction of nature observation and
study, even in the most elementary schools.
[Illustration: FROEBEL, FOUNDER OF KINDERGARTENS.
(The Perry Pictures. Copyright, 1898, by E. A. Perry, Malden, Mass.)]