BOOK II. PRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. FORMS OF PRODUCTION. ALL values are created by modifications of existing matter. Man cannot create one particle; but he can modify what he finds, or change its condition, in three ways; viz.: By TRANSMUTATION, by TRANSFORMATION, by TRANSPORTATION. First, by transmutation. This is eminently the work of the agriculturist, who, availing himself of the chemical agencies of the earth and air, transmutes seeds into vegetables, fruits, and grains; and these again, by the aid of animal organizations, into butter, beef, hides, &c. This is the most extensive branch of industry, and employs probably four-fifths of the human race from generation to generation. It is the base of the great pyramid of production. It furnishes the material and the support of all other forms of labor; and not this only, but it renews and restores their waste with an unceasing supply of fresh bodily and mental power. The air of trade and of the mill heats and rises, and cold currents rush in from the prairie and the mountain. The foot of the rustic is ever turned to the marts of commerce, and the busy gatherings of men. He comes with clumsy tread and homespun dress; but he takes the first place in the market and the synagogue. Basil enters Constantinople as night is falling, stares about on the magnificence of the city, and [24] falls asleep on the steps of the Church of St. Diomede. He is tired of Macedon. He has business on the throne of the world. He who restored the laws of the Eastern empire, and reclaimed the lands deluged by the barbarian floods, is the exemplar of the countryman, in all times, gazing rudely around on the luxury his homely virtues are to appropriate. The millionnaire dashes by in his splendid turnout a raw, tall lad, with a bundle on a stick, looks on with wonder, the employer of that man's children. Just as agriculture sends to the markets and the mills of the world their materials, so it sends them their workmen. Strength and even life go fast in the eager competitions of manufactures and trade. Cool air, fresh blood, flows in from the country, to supply the waste. The bare, bleak hills, where Nature grudges every morsel of food, and stabs cruelly through every chink in the wall, every rent in the clothes, feed the busy cities with men. The streams of vigorous life run off from them to refresh the plains below. Agriculture has no need to receive back, in any form, her contributions to the other occupations. The power to give without exhaustion lies in the liberal, healthful reproduction of man, when living in intimate relations with Nature. Here, after all its hurts, humanity comes for healing. War and pestilence, the fierce contest of the mart, the stifling atmosphere of the mill, may waste our kind in quick or lingering deaths; but still, by the side of the brooks, men will be born to hold up the frame of industry and social order when their supporters faint and fail. Yet agriculture does get back a certain share of what it gives. Because it is not a labor of ambition, because honors are not to be gathered in the fields it cultivates, because the excitements of machinery and association are not to be found in its work or play, because quick wealth is not to be realized in its slow increase, the rustic turns himself to the city; and because it is not a labor of ambition, and for each of the other reasons given, the citizen, weary with all, goes back to the open fields and fresh air of the country. The cabbages of Diocletian, the eggs of John Ducas Vataces, the apples of Sir William Temple, are the return made to agriculture for Basils, Astors, and Lawrences. But the department of agriculture is not confined to the popular view of it. When grain is produced, the seed must be planted in prepared ground, the long interval of growth to maturity must be filled with care and labor; and, at last,. the work of harvesting completes the round of duties that go to the production of the grain. But there are great industries in the department of agriculture, where harvesting alone is performed by man. Nature has done all the rest. Man's part is to find and to take of her bounty. Such an industry is mining, whether of iron or coal, whether of diamonds underground in Golconda, or sponge under water in the Archipelago. Such an industry is the fisheries,whether of whales off Greenland, of cod off Newfoundland, or of pearl-oyster off Ceylon. So great, indeed, is the scientific extension of the department of agriculture, that even the smelting of the ore, and the transportation from the fishing-grounds to the port from which the venture began, are included in it, because these first put the products in the possession of the capitalist in an available form. Any further change, whether to make the metal up into forms for use, or carry the fish or oil or pearls to market, would come under the other forms of production, to which we now proceed. Man modifies matter and exchanges its condition,- This is the business of the manufacturer and the mechanic. These create values by changing the forms of matter, as cotton and wool into cloth, iron into tools and implements. This is the second great department of human industry. Its ramifications extend throughout the world, yet not everywhere of the same vigor and extent. Since manufactures, as a whole, do not meet wants so primitive and absolute as does agriculture, they are, by a law evident in all industry, found not to be so equally diffused. Those needs which are peremptory and instant will, from that reason, tend to obtain their supply from the immediate. neighborhood in which they arise. The nearer objects of desire approach to being luxuries, the more cosmopolitan they become. Other reasons, which will appear in our progress, will further account for the unequal growth of manufactures, which have yet more uniformity than is exhibited in statistical tables, or in general estimation, since the staple articles of manufacture attract more attention than those multiform smaller products which far outweigh them in value. The distribution of manufactures is governed by a variety of conditions, among which may be briefly stated the following: 1. The industrial genius of a people. Without plunging into the deep questions of ethnical differences, or compensations in the whole of character, it is yet evident beyond discussion, that the active powers of every people have something of their own which they do not fully share with others. Were all the nations of the earth possessed of mental, moral, and physical qualities which could be positively estimated to be, in the sum of them, equal, it is quite certain that they would be far from similar: their energies would develop in different lines towards different objects. Patience and a kind of business faith distinguish some peoples, mark their features, and are impressed distinctly in the results of industry. Activity and daring speculation no less characterize others. To a class of minds thoroughly representative of more than one nation, mechanical contrivance gives the same glow of pleasure that rewards the painter for his years of toil. A distrustful, reserved, secretive disposition may be observed through the entire industry of another country, tending to individualize efforts and discourage combination. The catalogue of traits has been extended sufficiently to account for much of the inequality which exists in the distribution of manufactures among the nations of the civilized world. 2. The territorial advantages of a people, which are both positive and negative in their nature,-positive, as a people is endowed with water-power, and with the collocation of necessary materials, as of ore, coal, and lime for making iron; negative, as a people is not attracted to other branches of production by superior facilities. It is esti mated that Holland has not agricultural capacities to supply a third of its population. With some peoples, this niggardliness of soil would have been a reason for emigration or starvation; but there, uniting with the peculiar genius of the inhabitants, this necessity has produced a wealthy and flourishing state. It has ever been held by moral writers, that such unkindness of Nature develops the industrial energies of a people, where it is not so extreme as to destroy even the conditions of production. But the inquiry is too abstruse for our purpose. 3. Great accidents, belonging neither to the essential genius of the people, or its territorial endowments. Such are the transcendent discoveries in the sciences and the arts. Such are wars which exhaust nations, leaving them weak for generations. Such are persecutions, like that which scattered over the continent six hundred thousand Huguenots, the cunning artisans of France; like that which wrought devastation still greater in the "reconciled" provinces of Spain.* Such was the windfall of the Indies in the lap of Europe. The desirableness of such a distribution of manufactures will be discussed elsewhere. Our purpose here is only to show by what means it comes about so unequally. Passing now from this question, and looking only to the aggregate of such industries, we find it to be small, if we "Our manufactures were the growth of the persecutions in the Low Countries."- EDMUND BURKE, in his speech to the electors of Bristol. |