Industrialized nation

“ Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense. ”

“ In the third place, the destruction of our manufactures leaves the foreigner without competition in our market, and he consequently raises the price of the article sent here for sale, as is now seen in the increased cost of iron imported from England. The prosperity and wealth of every nation must depend upon its productive industry. ”

“ Since the onset of the great revolution the goods and services have come increasingly from a factory-office centered occupational apparatus. When we consider the integration of the world economy, it is this industrialized, modern economy that we have chiefly in mind. ”

“ France had made only the barest beginnings in the modern industries depending on coal and iron, and on the application of machinery, at the time of the Revolution, and though industries developed when commerce was interrupted by war, they were weak in organization and technique, and loudly demanded protection when peace returned, and opportunities for commerce developed. ”

“ Industrialization
First, we must now industrialize further in order to end our poverty and in order to protect our national integrity.
We enter this difficult world with one important advantage: our break­through in agricultural production. Freed from the problem of feeding our people, we can concentrate more of our resources on industrializing our economy and on making our boundaries secure. ”

“ The nineteenth century was the age of Power Discovered; mechanical inventions, the concentration of industry, the extension of the factory system, new means of transportation destroyed the last vestige of the feudal world and left the democratic ideal triumphant but unfulfilled: a new century dawns,—the age of Power Humanized. The industrial world in which we live, with all its peculiar characteristics, has been built upon the ruins of the feudal order, and in due time will give place to a newer and better civilization. ”

“ Colonisation, imperialism, the opening up of new agricultural countries, is therefore the other side of industrialism.
The present revolution in the world to-day is thus in a real sense a sequel to the industrial revolution, which gave birth to our modern industry. That imposing industry depends upon non-industrial populations, who produce food, cotton, wood and copper, and exchange them for manufactured goods. Since the people who fashion and transport products must be fed by those who raise them, agricultural production must be stimulated at home and abroad. ”

“ In the early history of this nation, the people of this country, represented by their popular government, were appealed to by the men engaged in manufacturing after this fashion: "We cannot make the things you need as cheaply as the manufacturers in foreign countries. They are wealthy and we are poor. They have their mills already in operation, we have ours to build. The capital we borrow bears a rate [97] of interest double that which the foreign mill-owner has to pay. The labor we must employ is not yet trained as is theirs, and it must receive far higher wages. ”

“ The Industrial Revolution accomplished for England what the political revolution did for France, but by more peaceful means. Yet not alone in France was the event achieved in blood—for the Factory as well as the Terror had its victims. The history of the factory is no dry summary of patent rights and inventions, inventories of cotton and cotton goods, abstracts of ledgers, journals, cash-books, and pay-rolls,—it is a human story,—laissez-faire, over-production, enlightened selfishness, were no abstract terms, but vital human problems. ”

“ When the factory system, with its concomitant woman and child wage labor, and with all the crying evils of its early history, was already fully established in England, industry was still carried on under the old domestic system in the American colonies. This was due to the fact that England—eager to become mistress of the world in industry, as she was mistress of the world in discovery and conquest—jealously guarded her inventions, her machinery and her skilled artisans. ”

“ As industry develops and ownership becomes concentrated more and more into fewer hands; as the control of the economic forces of society become more and more the sole property of imperialistic finance, it becomes apparent that the workers, in order to sell their labor power with any degree of success, must extend their forms of organization in accordance with changing industrial methods. ”

“ Here are the beginnings of a modern industrial system: iron and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw materials. ”

“ It has been increasingly put to use to purchase the machinery and the tools of our industrialization without which no satis­factory solution to the problems of poverty and unemploy­ment would ever be possible. In addition to the increased requirements of our growing industries, we dipped into our reserve for the expanding needs of our growing population for imported essential consumer goods. ”

“ These projects are expected to intensify the technological com­ponent of the industrial structure and the develop­ment of an efficient domestic intermediate goods industry.
The success of industrialization, however, will rely a great deal on our capacity to export our products. ”

“ Our modernized machinery and factories can produce full fifty per cent, more goods than are turned out, with very few, if any, more hands. Now, the rapid utilization of our colonial lands on the system traced, means an equally rapid creation of fresh customers. ”

“ He seems to me to argue the question as if all domestic industry were confined to the production of manufactured articles; as if the employment of our own capital and our own labor, in the occupations of commerce and navigation, were not as emphatically domestic industry as any other occupation. Some other gentlemen, in the course of the debate, have spoken of the price paid for every foreign manufactured article as so much given for the encouragement of foreign labor, to the prejudice of our own. ”

“ The talent, the energy, the ambition that formerly sought expression in the management of great estates and the control of hosts of slaves, now seek a field of action in trade, in manufacturing enterprises, or in the general enterprises of development. This was for the ruling class of the South the natural outcome of the great economic revolution that followed the war."
As in all other parts of the world, the mechanical revolution was attended by the growth of a population of industrial workers dependent not upon the soil but upon wages for their livelihood. ”

“ During that conflict, the United States, cut off from English manufactures as during the Revolution, built up home industries to meet the unusual call for iron, steel, cloth, and other military and naval supplies as well as the demands from ordinary markets. Iron foundries and textile mills sprang up as in the night; hundreds of business men invested fortunes in industrial enterprises so essential to the military needs of the government; and the people at large fell into the habit of buying American-made goods again. ”

“ The English factory girl who is urged to join her Union, the tired old Scotch gatekeeper with a few pounds to invest, the Galician peasant when the emigration agent calls, the artisan in a French provincial town whose industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that unless they find their way among world-wide facts, which only reach them through misleading words, they will be crushed.” The Industrial Revolution of the past century, steam-power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph, have knit mankind together, and made the world one place. ”

“ The industrial overlord holds control of the job with one hand. With the other he controls the product of industry. From the time the raw material leaves the earth in the form of iron ore, crude petroleum, logs, or coal, through all of the processes of production, it is owned by the industrial master, not by the worker. Workers separate the product from the earth, transport it, refine it, fabricate it. Always, the product, like the machinery, is the possession of the owning class. ”

“ In order to lay the foundation for the industrialization of the country, the central point of industrial work shall be the planned, systematic rehabilitation and development of heavy industry, such as mining, the iron and steel industry, power industry, machine-making industry, electrical industry and the main chemical industries, etc. At the same time, the production of the textile industry and other light industries beneficial to the national welfare and to the people's livelihood shall be restored and increased so as to meet the needs of the people's daily consumption. ”

“ In considering the subject, the first important inquiry that we should make is, whether it be desirable that such a portion of the capital and labor of the country should be employed in the business of manufacturing, as would furnish a supply of our necessary wants? Since the first colonization of America, the principal direction of the labor and capital of the inhabitants, has been to produce raw materials for the consumption or fabrication of foreign nations. ”

“ There is nothing in the art of weaving, or working in metals, or in any other material for common use, that is of such difficulty but that any man, with a common capacity, may do it nearly as well as any other man. The habits and manners of mankind, their disposition to labour, and the nature of the government under which they live, may encourage or discourage manufacturing; but both the strength and capacity of any of the natives of Europe, taking them on an average, are fully sufficient to enable them to excel in any work. ”

“ After that, the whole of big production should be nationalised. Together with the transfer of big industry into the hands of the Workers' Government, the less important industries will also become dependent on the Government, because very many lesser industries depended to a great extent on the greater ones even before any nationalisation took place. ”

“ Much as the collective industry of the earth is likely to be increased in efficiency by the extension of science and of the industrial arts, a still more active source of increased cheapness of production will be found, probably, for some time to come, in the gradually unfolding consequences of Free Trade, and in the increasing scale on which Emigration and Colonization will be carried on. ”

“ It was provincial in thought, speech, and habits. It was given over to agriculture, small trade, and rude home manufacture. Presently came the revolutionary inventions of textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery required workers. The working people were forced to give up their small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres. ”

“ The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by close guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. ”

“ During the quarter of a century which followed the war, we devoted our energies and capital to building our railroads, opening the West, exploiting our mineral and forest resources, and building the mills and factories whose products are now rapidly entering foreign markets in all parts of the world. America’s economic activities were industrial rather than commercial. ”

“ Here in the Near East, then, was a great empire awaiting exploitation by Western capital and Western technical skill. No man could adequately predict its ultimate contributions in raw materials to Western industry, or accurately foretell its ultimate capacity in consumption of the products of Western factories, or confidently prophesy its final rôle in the promotion of Western commerce. ”

“ It is vital, therefore, for the Government to ensure the establishment of those industries in India whose absence exposes us to grave danger in event of war. The report advocates the introduction of modern methods of agriculture and in particular of labor-saving devices. Greater efficiency in cultivation, and in the preparation of produce for the market would follow; labor now wastefully employed would be set free for industries and the establishment of shops for the manufacture and repair [Pg 213] of machinery would lead to the growth of a huge engineering industry. ”

“ Let us rest our industries on that standard, and soon we could compete in the markets of the world in all the articles produced from iron, wood, leather, and cotton, the raw basis of which are our national productions. And it must be remembered that all the countries with which we compete are specie-paying countries.
"A country that does not rest her industry upon specie is necessarily excluded from the great manufacturing industries of modern civilization, and is self-condemned to produce only the raw basis for advanced industry. ”

“ The nationalization of capitalistic undertakings shall be begun immediately. It shall be carried through without delay in the mining industry and production of energy (coal, water, electricity) , iron and steel production as well as other highly developed industries, and in the banking and insurance business. Large estates and forests shall immediately be converted into the property of society, whose task it shall be to raise all economic undertakings to the highest point of productivity by the employment of all technical and economic means, as well as to further comradeship. ”