AGRARIAN TENDENCIES IN EUROPE 43 



H. G. Wells tells us: "There is a tendency in many 

 histories to confuse together what we have here 

 called the mechanical revolution, which was an en- 

 tirely new thing in human experience arising out 

 of the development of organized science, a new step 

 like the invention of agriculture or the discovery 

 of metals, with something else, quite different in 

 its origins, something for which there was already 

 an historical precedent, the social and financial de- 

 velopment which is called the industrial revolution. 

 The two processes were going on together, they were 

 constantly reacting upon each other, but they were 

 in root and essence different. There would have 

 been an industrial revolution of sorts if there had 

 been no coal, no steam, no machinery; but in that 

 case it would probably have followed far more 

 closely upon the lines of the social and financial 

 developments of the later years of the Roman re- 

 public. It would have repeated the story of dis- 

 possessed free cultivators, gang labour, great estates, 

 great financial fortunes, and a socially destructive 

 financial process. Even the factory method came 

 before power and machinery." * 



These revolutionary influences produced great 

 changes in agricultural enterprise. Agricultural 

 practices became increasingly scientific, and the 

 farm population profited by mechanical invention 

 and the adaptation of machinery to farm uses. But 

 the predominant effects of industrialism were busi- 



1 Outline oj History (1920), Vol. II, Chap. XXXIX, p. 393. 



