however claimed that they could not grow their cotton

without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate



raged in both the Congress and the Senate.

The North remained obdurate and the South would not give



in. When it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the

southern states threatened to leave the Union. It was a most



dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many things

``might'' have happened. That they did not happen was the



work of a very great and very good man.

On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln,



an Illinois lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual

fortune, had been elected president by the Republicans



who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He

knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd



common-sense told him that there was no room on the northern

continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern



states seceded and formed the ``Confederate States of America,''

Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states



were called upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of

young men responded with eager enthusiasm and there followed



four years of bitter civil war. The South, better prepared

and following the brilliantleadership of Lee and Jackson,



repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the

economic strength of New England and the West began to



tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from obscurity

and became the Charles Martel of the great slave war.



Without interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the

crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863,



President Lincoln issued his ``Emancipation Proclamation''

which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee



surrendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few

days later, President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But



his work was done. With the exception of Cuba which was

still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in



every part of the civilised world.

But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount



of liberty, the ``free'' workmen of Europe did not fare quite so

well. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to many contemporary



writers and observers that the masses of workmen (the so-

called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They



lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums.

They ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to



fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their

families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery



interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legislature,)

encouraged them to forget their woes by offering them



unlimited quantities of whisky and gin at very cheap rates.

The enormousimprovement which has taken place since the



thirties and the forties of the last century is not due to the efforts

of a single man. The best brains of two generations devoted



themselves to the task of saving the world from the disastrous

results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery.



They did not try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would

have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of other



people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit

to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true



equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns

the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk



of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever job

is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of



starvation for himself, his wife and his children.

They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which regulated



the relations between the factory owners and the factory

workers. In this, the reformers have been increasingly



successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the labourers

are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the



excellent average of eight, and their children are sent to the

schools instead of to the mine pit and to the carding-room of



the cotton mills.

But there were other men who also contemplated the sight



of all the belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the

railroad trains, who saw the store-houses filled with a surplus



of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what ultimate

goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come.



They remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds

of thousands of years without commercial and industrial competition.



Could they change the existing order of things and

do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed human



happiness to profits?

This idea--this vague hope for a better day--was not restricted



to a single country. In England, Robert Owen, the

owner of many cotton mills, established a so-called ``socialistic" target="_blank" title="a.社会主义(者)的">socialistic



community'' which was a success. But when he died, the prosperity

of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis



Blanc, a French journalist, to establish ``social workshops''

all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing number



of socialistic" target="_blank" title="a.社会主义(者)的">socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual

communities which remained outside of the regular industrial



life, would never be able to accomplish anything at all. It

was necessary to study the fundamental principles underlying



the whole industrial and capitalistic society before useful remedies

could be suggested.



The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis

Blanc and Francois Fournier were succeeded by theoretical



students of socialism like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of

these two, Marx is the best known. He was a very brilliant



Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He

had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he began



to interest himself in questions of labour and wages and

unemployment. But his liberal views made him very unpopular



with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to

flee to Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and



shabby life as the correspondent of the New York Tribune.

No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on



economic subjects. But in the year 1864 he organised the first

international association of working men and three years later



in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-known trea-

tise called ``Capital.'' Marx believed that all history was a



long struggle between those who ``have'' and those who ``don't

have.'' The introduction and general use of machinery had



created a new class in society, that of the capitalists who used

their surpluswealth to buy the tools which were then used by



the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used

to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Meanwhile,



according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie)

was growing richer and richer and the fourth estate (the proletariat)



was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted that

in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world



while the others would be his employees and dependent upon

his good will.



To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working

men of all countries to unite and to fight for a number of political



and economic measures which he had enumerated in a Manifesto

in the year 1848, the year of the last great European



revolution.

These views of course were very unpopular with the governments



of Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed

severe laws against the Socialists and policemen were ordered



to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the speakers.

But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs



are the best possible advertisements for an unpopular cause.

In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased and it



was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent

revolution but were using their increasing power in the different



Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring

classes. Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet



Ministers, and they co-operated with progressive Catholics and

Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused by the



Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of

the many benefits which had followed the introduction of machinery



and the increased production of wealth.

THE AGE OF SCIENCE



BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER

CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER



IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL

OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS.



AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION

AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD



AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION

AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN

THE UNIVERSE



THE Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks

and the Romans, had all contributed something to the first



vague notions of science and scientificinvestigation. But the

great migrations of the fourth century had destroyed the classical



world of the Mediterranean, and the Christian Church, which

was more interested in the life of the soul than in the life of the



body, had regarded science as a manifestation of that human arrogance

which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged



to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore was closely

related to the seven deadly sins.



The Renaissance to a certain but limitedextent had broken

through this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation,



however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th

century, had been hostile to the ideals of the ``new civilisation,''



and once more the men of science were threatened with severe

punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits



of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ.

Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop