576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is shown us in the uses made of gunpowder. At first a destructive 

 agent, it lias become an agent of immense service in quarrying, mining, 

 railway-making, etc. 



A no less important benefit, bequeathed by war, has been the for- 

 mation of large societies. By force alone were small nomadic hordes 

 welded into large tribes ; by force alone were large tribes welded into 

 small nations; by force alone have small nations been welded into 

 large nations. While the fighting of societies usually maintains sepa- 

 rateness, or by conquest produces only temporary unions, it produces, 

 from time to time, permanent unions ; and as fast as there are formed 

 permanent unions of small into large, and then of large into still larger, 

 industrial progress is furthered in three ways. Hostilities, instead of 

 being perpetual, are broken by intervals of peace. When they occur, 

 hostilities do not so profoundly derange the industrial activities. And 

 there arises the possibility of carrying out the division of labor much 

 more effectually. War, in short, in the slow course of things, brings 

 about a social aggregation which furthers that industrial state at va- 

 riance with war ; and yet nothing but war could bring about this so- 

 cial aggregation. These two ti'uths, that without war large aggre- 

 gates of men cannot be formed, and that without large aggregates of 

 men there cannot be a developed industrial state, are illustrated in all 

 places and times. Among existing uncivilized and semi-civilized races, 

 we everywhere find that union of small societies by a conquering so- 

 ciety is a step in civilization. The records of peoples now extinct 

 show us this with equal clearness. On looking back into our own his- 

 tory, and into the histories of neighboring nations, we similarly see 

 that only by coercion were the smaller feudal governments so subor- 

 dinated as to secure internal peace. And, even lately, the long-desired 

 consolidation of Germany, if not directly effected by "blood and iron," 

 as Bismarck said it must be, has been indirectly effected by them. 

 The furtherance of industrial development by aggregation is no less 

 manifest. If we compare a small society with a large one, we get clear 

 proof that those processes of cooperation by which social life is made 

 possible assume high forms only when the numbers of the cooperating 

 citizens are great. Ask of what use a cloth-factory, supposing they 

 could have one, would be to the members of a small tribe, and it be- 

 comes manifest that, producing as it would in a single day a yeai-'s 

 supply of cloth, the vast cost of making it and keeping it in order 

 could never be compensated by the advantage gained. Ask what 

 would happen were a shop like Stewart's, in New York, supplying all 

 textile products, set up in a village, and you see that the absence of 

 a sufficiently-extensive distributing function would negative its con- 

 tinuance. Ask what sphere a bank would have had in the Old-English 

 period, when nearly all people grew their own food and wove their 

 own wool, and it becomes obvious that the various appliances for fa- 

 cilitating exchange can grow up only when a community becomes so 



