Material progress

“ That there is a common cause, and that it is either what we call material progress or something closely connected with material progress, becomes more than an inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class together and speak of as industrial depression are but intensifications of phenomena which always accompany material progress, and which show themselves more clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are most fully realized—that is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed—we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness. ”

“ Since the satisfaction of his physical needs and the desire of comfortable living require some mastery of physical resources, his progress can naturally be measured by the degree of success he makes in providing for satisfactions of this kind. Such progress is material progress, and its standards are economy and efficiency, or the attainment of the maximum result with the minimum of effort. This kind of progress is very diversified, embracing all the economic concerns of life, and much of society and the arts. ”

“ That this growth in wealth will go on during the twentieth century cannot be doubted, but that the proportionate rate of increase will equal that of the century now at its end may well be questioned, the inventive activity and application of nature’s forces within this century having reached a development which seems to preclude as great a future rate of progress. The nineteenth may, therefore, perhaps remain the banner century in material progress. ”

“ The progress of industries, the growth of material and mechanical civilisation, are interesting, but they are not the most interesting. They have their reward in the increase of material comforts; but, unless we are mistaken about our nature, they do not highly concern us after all. ”

“ But mind remained, and mind infused by every invasion with new ideas. The raw material of progress continued undestroyed. Material production is only inorganic substance poured into the mold of an idea. ”

“ It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. [1] I do not mean that the9 condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. ”

“ Taking a broader view—for we might go on with the material details of progress all about us ad infinitum, did patience and strength hold out—we look abroad over the land, and note the great elements of a progress peculiarly American, in the growth and distribution of population, in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce. Each and all have been incalculably aided by perpetual invention. ”

“ The effect of inventions and improvements The effect of inventions and improvements in the productive arts is to save labour-that is, to enable the same result to be secured with less labour, or a greater result with the same labour. ”

“ I do not intend by these remarks to imply that any new trades or improvements in manufactures have been or can be effected without the labours of inventors and practical men, but that there should be a more judicious division of labour: one man to discover new truths, another to put them into the form of practical inventions, and the business man to work them ”

“ The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes it comprehends little more than simple growth—as of a nation in the number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads. Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products—as when the advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the individual or people exhibiting it ”

“ Thus (to take the most obvious case first) , the impelling force to most of the improvements effected in the arts of life, is the desire of increased material comfort; but as we can only act upon external objects in proportion to our knowledge of them, the state of knowledge at any time is the limit of the industrial improvements possible at that time; and the progress of industry must follow, and depend on, the progress of knowledge. ”

“ As long as arts and manufactures are left to be directed and improved by simple experience, their progress is extremely slow, but directly scientific knowledge is successfully applied to them, they bound forward with astonishing speed. ”

“ By means of our enterprise and capital also, the first railways, telegraphs, gas works, cotton mills, modern water works, suspension bridges, water wheels, harbours, lighthouses, &c., &c., in nearly all parts of the world were constructed; and foreign nations have been inducted into the practical methods of working our great manufacturing and technical applications of science. ”

“ For the purposes of this discussion, it is not necessary to go beyond the acceptance of the fact of demand, nor to argue the question as to whether the material demands of civilization should be curbed and progress restricted to matters of mind and human happiness. ”

“ And had it not been for these and other adaptations of scientific knowledge, we should have competed in vain with the cheaper labour and longer days of toil of continental nations. Other great causes, such as our insular position, suitable climate, freedom, geographical position, etc., etc. have, however, also contributed to the result. Commerce also in its turn has done vast things for mankind. ”

“ It is this uncontrollable desire to work on and fashion the rough materials that lie under our hands that gives the first impulse to civilization, and impels us onward in the progress of improvement. And wherever we discern the faintest indication that such a principle is at work, there we may securely hope that development will ultimately take place. ”

“ Who have helped the world onward so much as the workers; men who have had to work for necessity or from choice? All that we call progress—civilization, well-being, and prosperity—depends upon industry, diligently applied,—from the culture of a barley-stalk, to the construction of a steamship,—from the stitching of a collar, to the sculpturing of "the statue that enchants the world." ”

“ Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists. ”

“ This great consummation, devoutly to be wished, may form the story of the next fifty years of our progress along these specific lines, so that some one in the distant future, looking down the rugged pathway of the years, may see this race of ours coming up, step by step, into the fullest possession of our industrial, economic and intellectual emancipation. ”

“ In the growth of handicrafts, arts, manufactures, and inventions, there has been a series of advances from the time when men first began to cultivate the ground, to reduce the metals, and to bring the forces of nature into service. In the development of human society, therefore, and in the progress of arts and human knowledge, there are certain typical stages whose proper use may help us to solve some of the difficult problems in educating the young. ”

“ A complete study would follow their evolution through eight world-wide subjects: architecture, civil engineering, antiquarian research, the development of trade and commerce from primitive barter, social wayfaring, war and its red tragedies, the longevity of barbaric customs, usages, traditions, and the ups and downs of fortune in the slow fever called progress, whose clinical thermometer has been tribal and national enterprise, and whose gradual effects on the temperature of bodies civil have produced many withering crises fatal to civilizations. ”

“ This gradual advance of civilized societies, this constant growth in knowledge of the objects that exist in nature, this constant increase in the number of tools and useful materials, is termed progress, or the evolution of civilization.
We may now proceed to considering the benefits that humankind derives from discoveries and inventions. ”

“ Thus in the eighth and ninth chapters, the transition from implements of stone to those of metal is demonstrated to have taken place in almost every district of the habitable globe, and a progress from ruder to more perfect modes of making fire and boiling food is traced in many different countries; while in the seventh, evidence is collected on the important problem of the relation which Progress has borne to Decline in art and knowledge in the history of the world. ”

“ Machinery of the most perfect kind was applied to every process, economizing labor, facilitating locomotion and aiding in surmounting those difficulties which had ever impeded the progress of young nations. ”

“ If definition be needed, this may be broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a corresponding quantitative ideal of "progress of wealth and population"—towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance of electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and education, of social polity, etc. ”

“ Acquisition and distribution, labour and communication of the fruits of labour, are the two factors that determine the progress of mankind. Thus the precious metal is mined and brought to the surface by the labourer, whence it speeds through the world ”

“ That the productiveness of the labour of a people is limited by their knowledge of the arts of life, is self-evident; and that any progress in those arts, any improved application of the objects or powers of nature to industrial uses, enables the same quantity and intensity of labour to raise a greater produce. ”

“ All these, likewise, in their numberless combinations, which ages of labour and research can never exhaust, may be destined to furnish, in perpetual succession, new sources of our wealth and of our happiness. Science and knowledge are subject, in their extension and increase, to laws quite opposite to those which regulate the material world. ”

“ This projection of new possibilities leads to search for new means of execution, and progress takes place; while the discovery of objects not already used leads to suggestion of new ends.
That science is the chief means of perfecting control of means of action is witnessed by the great crop of inventions which followed intellectual command of the secrets of nature. The wonderful transformation of production and distribution known as the industrial revolution is the fruit of experimental science. ”

“ It is due to the discovery of steam and electricity, to the introduction of machinery, to inventions, great and small, and to the progress in science and education. But from whatever cause this increase in productivity has come, it is to the greater productivity of each individual that the whole country owes its greater prosperity. ”

“ The worshippers of the present and the admirers of America argue, more or less consciously, from a definition of progress which would identify it with the increase6 of the power and speed of machines, of riches, and of our control over nature, however much that control may involve the frenzied squandering of the resources of the earth, which, while immense, are not inexhaustible. ”

“ As mankind multiply and make progress in arts and civilization, new wants arise, and the ingenuity and industry of man is taxed to discover new sources of wealth, maintenance, and occupation: and we find, under the dispensations of an all-wise Providence, that at suitable seasons resources are unveiled which have been long provided but concealed until the fit occasion presents itself. ”

“ The simple reason is, however, that we who promulgate this judgment of value are ourselves committed to a policy of progress; such progress being definable in technical language as an elaboration of society involving at once an ever fuller differentiation of the component units and an ever closer integration of the group as a whole. ”

“ We might consider the question of the twentieth century progress from other points of view, such as agriculture, architecture, household art, literature, medicine, surgery, social relations, etc., though in doing so we should be considering simply developments of existing conditions. ”

“ In order to estimate the progress that industry will achieve in the sphere of production during the coming time, it must be remembered that, if industry is the action of man upon matter, modern science has only within the last few years begun to account for what matter is. ”

“ The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundations, on which rise legal and political superstructures and which correspond to definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. ”

“ That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs, men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it strength, and promotes its development. ”