SOCIAL TENDENCIES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



BY GRAHAM TAYLOR 



[Graham Taylor, Professor of Sociology, Chicago Theological Seminary, Pro- 

 fessorial Lecturer, University of Chicago, Warden of Chicago Commons, 

 b. Schenectady, New York, 1851. A.B. Rutgers College, 1870; M.A., D.D. 

 ibid. ; LL.D. Illinois College. Professor in Hartford Theological Seminary, 

 1SS8-92. Member of American Economic Association; National Conference 

 of Charities and Corrections. Editor of Charities and ilie Commons.] 



THE industrial revolution, during the initial stage of which the 

 nineteenth century dawned, dates and characterizes our contempo- 

 rary conditions and order of life. The political revolutions of the 

 eighteenth century were the expiring struggles of the dissolving 

 feudal solidarity rather than the travail attending the birth of the 

 present age. 



The individualism which intervened between the medievalism 

 ending with the French Revolution and the modern industrial era 

 inaugurated by the introduction of machinery and the factory 

 system is proving to be more transitional than persistent. Its 

 phenomenal achievements and forceful individuals are exceptional 

 enough to claim an age of their own. But they were destined to 

 fulfill the higher function of preparing a way for, and making possible 

 the still farther-reaching development which is only now evolving 

 its form and order. The social disintegration intervening between 

 these most distinct eras allowed, if it did not compel, the evolution 

 of the individual as the new unit of society. No sooner had the 

 type of this individualized unit been fairly and firmly set than the 

 process of reintegration set in. The forces resident in or centred 

 about machine production and the subdivision of labor began to 

 assert their superiority to the domination of the individual who 

 created and, until recently, controlled them. This reintegration of 

 social units, more independent than had ever existed before or can 

 ever exist on the same scale again while present tendencies last, 

 is the phenomenon that distinguishes the close of the nineteenth 

 and the opening of the twentieth century. 



The tendency of these times in all spheres of life has been from 

 individual independence to the interdependence of man upon man, 

 craft upon craft, class upon class, nation upon nation; from unre- 

 stricted competition to a combination of capital and labor as in- 

 evitable and involuntary as the pull of the force of gravity; from 

 the personal maintenance of the freedom of contract to the only 

 possible exercise of that right among increasing multitudes by col- 

 lective bargaining; from local autonomy and state rights to national 

 consolidations; from racial populations to a cosmopolitan, composite 



