Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight
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are the certain results, and among the many benefits which arise from their joint co-operation may be ranked most prominently the value which they teach men to place upon intelligent contrivance; the readiness with which they cause new improvements to be received; and the impulse which they thus unavoidably give to that inventive spirit which is gradually emancipating man from the rude forms of labour, and making what were regarded as the luxuries of one age to be looked upon in the next as the ordinary and necessary conditions of human existence."[2]
The present volume is founded upon two little works which the author wrote more than twenty years ago, and which were widely circulated. One of these books, 'The Results of Machinery,' was published, in connexion with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, at a period of great national alarm, when a blind rage against a power supposed to interfere with the claims of labour was generally prevalent, and led, in the southern agricultural districts especially, to many acts of daring violence. Happily that spirit is passed away. The spirit of knowledge has arisen; and we are told now, by an unquestionable authority, that labourers themselves begin to regard the tedious work of the flail as too irksome[3]—the same class that in 1830 broke the thrashing machines. In remodelling that portion of the present volume it is unnecessary to deprecate the evils of hostility to machinery; but rather to look forward to its more complete union with skilled labour as the triumph of the productive forces of modern society. In the other little book upon which this volume is founded, 'Capital and Labour,' the general subject of the Production of wealth was popularly treated, and the argument is here carried forward. But in the present work it will be the further endeavour of the writer not to overlook the general relations of Capital and Labour in the Distribution of wealth. As the mistakes about Production have yielded, in a great degree, to improved education, so may those which belong to Distribution also yield to the progress of Knowledge. These are not mistakes which are confined to one class, and that the most numerous. The freedom of Industry has as much claim to be regarded as the security of Capital. We have distinct evidence that in another country these principles are better understood.
"The results which have been obtained in the United States, by the application of machinery wherever it has been practicable to manufactures, are rendered still more remarkable by the fact that combinations to resist its introduction there are unheard of. The workmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements, the importance and value of which, as releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate. With the comparatively superabundant supply of hands in this country, and therefore a proportionate difficulty in obtaining remunerative employment, the working classes have less sympathy with the progress of invention. Their condition is a less favourable one than that of their American brethren for forming a just and unprejudiced estimate of the influence which the introduction of machinery is calculated to exercise on their state and prospects. I cannot resist the conclusion, however, that the different views taken by our operatives and those of the United States upon this subject are determined by other and powerful causes, besides those dependent on the supply of labour in the two countries. The principles which ought to regulate the relations between the employer and the employed seem to be thoroughly understood and appreciated in the United States; and while the law of limited liability affords the most ample facilities for the investment of capital in business, the intelligent and educated artisan is left equally free to earn all that he can, by making the best use of his hands, without let or hindrance by his fellows."[4]
Without attempting to give this volume the formal shape of a treatise on Political Economy, it is the wish of the author to convey the broad parts of his subject in a somewhat desultory manner, but one which is not altogether devoid of logical arrangement. He desires especially to be understood by the young; for upon their right appreciation of the principles which govern society will depend much of the security and happiness of our own and the coming time. The danger of our present period of transition is, that theory should expect too much, and that practice should do too little, in the amelioration of the condition of the people.
A great number of woodcuts have been for the first time introduced into this volume, which illustrate mechanical inventions. But the author begs distinctly to be understood that his object here is not to describe processes. His notices of them, more or less extended, are simply to illustrate the course of his argument; and in that way to make the book more useful, because more attractive, for purposes of education.
[1] J. J. Rousseau.
[2] Special Report of Mr. Joseph Whitworth on the New York Industrial Exhibition.
[3] Mr. Pusey's Report on Agricultural Implements.
[4] Mr. Whitworth's Special Report.
CHAPTER I.
Feeble resources of civilized man in a desert—Ross Cox, Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron—A Moskito Indian on Juan Fernandez—Conditions necessary for the production of utility.
Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land—without food, without clothes, without fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the knowledge he had acquired would be worse than useless; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new position. Let the land upon which he is thrown produce spontaneous fruits—let it be free from ferocious animals—let the climate be most genial—still the man would be exceedingly powerless and wretched. The first condition of his lot, to enable him to maintain existence at all, would be that he should labour. He must labour to gather the berries from the trees—he must labour to obtain water from the rivulets—he must labour to form a garment of leaves, or of some equally accessible material, to shield his body from the sun—he must labour to render some cave or hollow tree a secure place of shelter from the dews of night. There would be no intermission of the labour necessary to provide a supply of food from hand to mouth, even in the season when wild fruits were abundant. If this labour, in the most favourable season, were interrupted for a single day, or at most for two or three days, by sickness, he would in all probability perish. But, when the autumn was past, and the wild fruits were gone, he must prolong existence as some savage tribes are reported to do—by raw fish and undressed roots. The labour of procuring these would be infinitely greater than that of climbing trees for fruit. To catch fish without nets, and scratch up roots with naked hands, is indeed painful toil. The helplessness of this man's condition would principally be the effect of one circumstance;—he would possess no accumulation of former labour by which his present labour might be profitably directed. The power of labour would in his case be in its least productive state. He would partly justify the assertion that man has the feeblest natural means of any animal;—because he would be utterly unpossessed of those means which the reason of man has accumulated around every individual in the social state.
We asked the reader to suppose a civilized man in the very lowest state in which the power of labour may be exercised, because there is no record of any civilized man being for any length of time in such a state.
Ross Cox, a Hudson's Bay trader, whose adventures were given to the world some twenty years ago, was in this state for a fortnight; and his sufferings may furnish some idea of the greater miseries of a continuance in such a powerless condition. Having fallen asleep in the woods of the north-west of America, which he had been traversing with a large party, he missed the traces of his companions. The weather being very hot, he had left nearly all his clothes with his horse when he rambled from his friends. He had nothing to