958 REPORT— 1898. 



are obsolete, and yet persist in being. Surely, then, we might argue, there is there 

 a strong force acting against the overpowering economic causes? Are we to wait 

 till these old-fashioned fortifications fall down to the sound of our trumpets ? Of 

 all reformers the most irritating are those who tell us to do nothing lest we should 

 make a mistake ; but next should come those who tell us that even our mistakes 

 can have no effect whatever. If it should appear that there is more in the way 

 than obsolete laws, and that the laws persist because the manners and customs of 

 the people are set fast in the same groove as the laws, then no inarticulate and 

 spasmodic shouting should content us; we shall need the help of patient and 

 intelligent teaching. Transformation of manners and customs can be accompHshed 

 slowly but surely by means of ideas, by the spoken word and example of life and 

 instruction of manners. Such means have been found needful to give a people its 

 first organisation, and will be needed, even in practical England, to organise them 

 for the final reform, if it be the final. 



We are probably too hasty, even the oldest of us, in talking of final reforms and 

 final stages in development. We know little of development, and nothing of 

 finality. Our experience is that every stage in civilisation, or even in economic 

 theory, is temporary as a superstructure, though permanent as a foundation. Per- 

 haps it is the most certain fact of the future that our best economic writings of to-day 

 will then be dismissed as antiquated, and their diction slighted as careless English 

 of the nineteenth century. It needs no great gift of prophecy to foresee that a 

 hundred years hence our industrial conditions will Jiave been much altered. The 

 resident domestic servant, much talked of in Bristol in 1875, will probably be no 

 longer resident. Production will be more democratic ; it will be almost entu-ely of 

 articles used by the masses, and hardly at all of luxuries for the rich, high wages in 

 this way becoming really high. Working men and employers will meet on more 

 equal terms. Whereas even now we use the term ' master ' with timidity, it will 

 by-and-by be as wrong scientifically as ' the sun's rising,' though both may remain 

 current in the poetry of popular language. Our posterity may be living under a 

 system of low interest, small profits, high wages, and great companies. Possibly the 

 great companies will pass into the co-operative societies of Professor Loria's vision. 

 It is to be feared that the advent of these, to supplant other forms of industry, 

 is not very near. Professor Pantaleoni considers that their present counter- 

 parts have nothing in principle and method to distinguish them from ordinary 

 ways of money-making.' Their triumph, however, would mean a very desirable 

 shifting of the balance of industrial power. So far as can be seen, and we have 

 cases in point very close at hand, a long discipline and much instruction, and many 

 unsuccessful trials, will be needed before working men will follow leaders of their own 

 choosing as obediently on the whole as they no\\- submit to the direction of their 

 employers in their industrial work. But it is an acute remark of De Tocqueville, 

 repeated by M. Tarde,- that, when the ' lower ' classes begin to imitate the ' higher ' 

 the distance between them must have become short, and equality must be coming 

 near. This imitation has actually begun to take place in business as well as else- 

 where. Book-keeping and knowledge of the markets are no longer the secret 

 of the middle classes, as knowledge of the law was once the secret of the upper. 

 Working men have shown already, in some few instances, that they can carry on 

 a manufacture as well as a trade ; and if the tyranny of great companies became 

 intolerable we might expect that an attempt would be made all along the line to 

 replace them by some scheme or schemes of co-operation. If such schemes were 

 established forcibly, which is not probable in this country, we might look for a 

 tyranny of the majority followed by a reaction, for the rule of the best leaders has 

 its abuses like that of the best masters, and human passions seem to be more 

 permanent than any industrial system. If such schemes were established gradually 

 and from beneath, they might last till a better system came into view. The voice 

 of reason and public spirit will not be fainter then than now, and will prevail even 

 against the ruling passions of the ruling class. 



' Gwrnale degli Econoviisti, vol. svi. 1898. 

 = L' Imitation, 2nd ed. 1895, pp. 243, 244. 



