The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice | Page 3

as too short and simple for its pages, the short and simple
annals of the poor. And the record is right enough. Of the poor what is
there to say? They were born; they lived; they died. They followed their
leaders, and their names are forgotten.
But written thus our history has obscured the greatest fact that ever
came into it--the colossal change that separates our little era of a
century and a half from all the preceding history of mankind--separates
it so completely that a great gulf lies between, across which comparison
can scarcely pass, and on the other side of which a new world begins.
It has been the custom of our history to use the phrase the "new world"
to mark the discoveries of Columbus and the treasure-hunt of a Cortes
or a Pizarro. But what of that? The America that they annexed to
Europe was merely a new domain added to a world already old. The
"new world" was really found in the wonder-years of the eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries. Mankind really entered upon it when the
sudden progress of liberated science bound the fierce energy of
expanding stream and drew the eager lightning from the cloud.
Here began indeed, in the drab surroundings of the workshop, in the
silent mystery of the laboratory, the magic of the new age.
But we do not commonly realize the vastness of the change. Much of
our life and much of our thought still belongs to the old world. Our
education is still largely framed on the old pattern. And our views of
poverty and social betterment, or what is possible and what is not, are
still largely conditioned by it.
In the old world, poverty seemed, and poverty was, the natural and
inevitable lot of the greater portion of mankind. It was difficult, with
the mean appliances of the time, to wring subsistence from the reluctant
earth. For the simplest necessaries and comforts of life all, or nearly all,
must work hard. Many must perish for want of them. Poverty was
inevitable and perpetual. The poor must look to the brightness of a
future world for the consolation that they were denied in this. Seen thus
poverty became rather a blessing than a curse, or at least a dispensation
prescribing the proper lot of man. Life itself was but a preparation and
a trial--a threshing floor where, under the "tribulation" of want, the
wheat was beaten from the straw. Of this older view much still survives,
and much that is ennobling. Nor is there any need to say goodby to it.
Even if poverty were gone, the flail could still beat hard enough upon
the grain and chaff of humanity.
But turn to consider the magnitude of the change that has come about
with the era of machinery and the indescribable increase which it has
brought to man's power over his environment. There is no need to
recite here in detail the marvelous record of mechanical progress that
constituted the "industrial revolution" of the eighteenth century. The
utilization of coal for the smelting of iron ore; the invention of
machinery that could spin and weave; the application of the undreamed
energy of steam as a motive force, the building of canals and the
making of stone roads--these proved but the beginnings. Each stage of
invention called for a further advance. The quickening of one part of

the process necessitated the "speeding up" of all the others. It placed a
premium--a reward already in sight--upon the next advance.
Mechanical spinning called forth the power loom. The increase in
production called for new means of transport. The improvement of
transport still further swelled the volume of production. The steamboat
of 1809 and the steam locomotive of 1830 were the direct result of
what had gone before. Most important of all, the movement had
become a conscious one. Invention was no longer the fortuitous result
of a happy chance. Mechanical progress, the continual increase of
power and the continual surplus of product became an essential part of
the environment, and an unconscious element in the thought and
outlook of the civilized world.
No wonder that the first aspect of the age of machinery was one of
triumph. Man had vanquished nature. The elemental forces of wind and
fire, of rushing water and driving storm before which the savage had
cowered low for shelter, these had become his servants. The forest that
had blocked his path became his field. The desert blossomed as his
garden.
The aspect of industrial life altered. The domestic industry of the
cottage and the individual labor of the artisan gave place to the factory
with its regiment of workers and its steam-driven machinery. The
economic isolation of the single worker, of the village, even of the
district and