William Ghent - Our Benevolent Feudalism

The germ of this book was contained in an article published in the Independent , April 3, 1902. The wide interest which that article awakened prompted the elaboration and arrangement of its briefly considered and somewhat disjointed parts into the present form.

The chapters on “Our Makers of Law” and “Our Interpreters of Law” have been carefully read by a member of the New York Bar who has made a special study of the matters treated therein. Some of the decisions cited in the latter chapter are admitted to be those of subordinate courts in comparatively unimportant States. The intention, however, was to give a general view of judicial interpretation; and for that reason it became necessary to cite decisions of inferior as well as superior courts, and those from semi-industrial as well as industrial States.

As the book goes to press, the news is published that the anthracite magnates have yielded and made concessions to public sentiment. It is an act in harmony with the wiser forethought of most of the magnates of to-day, and it strengthens the general seigniorial position immeasurably.

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” But what the new order shall be is a matter of some diversity of opinion. Whoever, blessed with hope, speculates upon the future of society, tends to imagine it in the form of his social ideals. It matters little what the current probabilities may be – the strong influence of the ideal warps the judgment. To Thomas More, though most tendencies of his time made for absolutism, the future was republican and communistic; and to Francis Bacon the present held the promise of a new Atlantis, despite the growing arrogance of the Crown and the submissiveness of the people.

The great diversity of social ideals produces a like diversity of social forecasts. All the soothsayers give different readings of the signs. Even those of the same school, who build the future in the light of the same dogmas, differ in regard to particulars of form and structure. How many forecasts of one sort or another have been given us, it is impossible to say. Mr. H. G. Wells, in a footnote to his “Anticipations,” complains of their scarcity. “Of quite serious forecasts and inductions of things to come,” he says, “the number is very small indeed; a suggestion or so of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s, Mr. Kidd’s ‘Social Evolution,’ some hints from Mr. Archdall Reid, some political forecasts, German for the most part (Hartmann’s ‘Earth in the Twentieth Century,’ e. g. ), some incidental forecasts by Professor Langley ( Century Magazine , December, 1884, e. g. ), and such isolated computations as Professor Crookes’s wheat warning and the various estimates of our coal supply, make almost a complete bibliography.” But surely the Utopians, from Plato to Edward Bellamy, have given us “quite serious forecasts”; there is something of serious prophecy in both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, much more in Tolstoi and Peter Kropotkin; and the “Fabian Essays” are charged with it. Mr. Henry D. Lloyd’s “Wealth against Commonwealth” closes with a brilliant and eloquent picture of a regenerated society, and Mr. Edmond Kelly’s “Individualism and Collectivism” is in large part prophetic. All the social reformers who write books or articles give us engaging pictures of things as they are to be; and though the Philosophical Anarchists deal rather more largely with polemics than with prophecy, the Socialists are conspicuously definite and serious in their forecasts. Even the popular scientists – the astronomers, biologists, and anthropologists – often run into prediction; and in the pages of Richard A. Proctor, E. D. Cope, and Grant Allen, and of such living men as M. Camille Flammarion, Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, and Professor W. J. McGee, we have frequent depictions of certain phases of the future.

Doubtless, any reader can add to this list. Of a surety, we have had no lack of forecasts of one sort or another; and now we have some new contributions, – Mr. Wells’s “Anticipations,” Mr. Benjamin Kidd’s “Principles of Western Civilization,” two brief but sententious papers by Professor John B. Clark, on “The Society of the Future” and “A Modified Individualism” (published in the Independent ), a definite Socialist prediction by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, and a semi-Socialist one by Mr. Sidney Webb.

Mr. Wells, in his lecture before the Royal Institution last January, put forth the thesis that, just as we can picture the general aspects of the earth in mesozoic times by a study of geology and paleontology, so by a study of the present sociological drift can we picture the society of a hundred years hence. He thereupon gives us “Anticipations” as a result of the more or less rigorous working out of this method. There is much to be said for the method, and its right employment might probably give us something of great value. Unfortunately, Mr. Wells forgets his thesis, and plunges into pure vaticination. He writes with a spirited aggressiveness, and his pictures are often vivid and impressive. But the greater part of his revelation is of a state of things which seems far removed from what would be produced by any current tendencies, actual or latent.

Mr. Kidd’s predictions lack somewhat in definiteness of outline, and need not here concern us. Tolstoi, on the other hand, is specific. He dreams of a return to a more primitive manner of production, and a social change toward a status of Anarchist-Communism. He scoffs at the enormous diversity of wants made necessary by the growing intelligence and refinement of the race, and urges mankind to live more simply. “The town must be abandoned, the people must be sent away from the factories and into the country to work with their hands; the aim of every man should be to satisfy all his wants himself.” But the counsel falls upon heedless ears. Urged to live more simply, the race, impelled by natural and irresistible laws, yearly increases the sum of its wants. Science, art, and industry constantly pile up new commodities. Mankind finds that through them it secures longer and healthier, if not happier lives. It recognizes that by this increase of wants more human beings are employed, and that by a slight diminution thereof tens of thousands are thrown into idleness. And finally it recognizes that by a division of labor, in which natural aptitude in particular directions is sought to be secured, the greatest and most economical production follows. Under Anarchist-Communism and the performance of labor in the direction of each individual attempting to create the things needful for himself, there would be entailed upon us a productive waste vastly greater than that heretofore compelled by capitalism, diffusing a degree of want and consequent wretchedness at present unknown. There is no present indication that mankind will take this step.

Something better is to be said for Peter Kropotkin’s ideal of a communistic union of shop industry and agriculture. In remote places, outside the current of factory industrialism, there are still survivals of this union, though the communistic feature is generally wanting. Doubtless, under any form of society, even a well-regulated State Socialism, this union would to some extent persist. But if there are any present tendencies toward its growth, they are but feeble and isolated. Kropotkin’s recent book, “Fields, Factories and Workshops,” which was intended to sound the glad timbrel of rejoicing over the expansion of this movement, turns out to be a rather pitiful threnody on the decline and death of petty industries throughout Europe. Moreover, it is one thing to argue the persistence of this manner of production in scattered places, and quite another to argue it the dominant manner of production in a transformed society of the future. Of the coming of such a society the evidences are painfully scant.