THE
INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM
BEING THE WILLIAM LEVI BULL
LECTURES FOR THE YEAR 1905
BY
LYMAN ABBOTT
Author of" Christianity and Social Problems"
"Evolution of Christianity " etc.
LONDON
ALEXANDER MORING LTD
THE DE LA MORE PRESS
32 GEORGE STREET HANOVER SQUARE W
The Letter Establishing the Lectureship
Bishop Whitaker presented the Letter of Endowment of the
Lectureship on Christian Sociology from Rev. William L.
Bull as follows :
For many years it has been my earnest desire to found a
Lectureship on Christian Sociology, meaning thereby the
application of Christian principles to the Social, Industrial,
and Economic problems of the time, in my Alma Mater, the
Philadelphia Divinity School. My object in founding this
Lectureship is to secure the free, frank, and full consideration
of these subjects, with special reference to the Christian
aspects of the question involved, which have heretofore, in
my opinion, been too much neglected in such discussion.
It would seem that the time is now ripe and the moment an
auspicious one for the establishment of this Lectureship, at
least tentatively.
After a trial of three years, I again make the offer, as in
my letter of January I, 1901,10 continue these Lectures
for a period of three years, with the hope that they may
excite such an interest, particularly among the undergraduates
of the Divinity School, that I shall be justified, with the ap-
proval of the authorities of the Divinity School, in placing
the Lectureship on a more permanent foundation.
I herewith pledge myself to contribute the sum of six
hundred dollars annually, for a period of three years, to the
payment of a lecturer on Christian Sociology, whose duty it
shall be to deliver a course of not less than four lectures to
the students of the Divinity School, either at the school or
21 6035
elsewhere, as may be deemed most advisable, on the
cation of Christian principles to the Social, Industrial, and
Economic problems and needs of the times ; the said lecturer
to be appointed annually by a committee of five members :
the Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania ; the Dean of the
Divinity School ; a member of the Board of Overseers, who
shall at the same time be an Alumnus ; and two others, one
of whom shall be myself and the other chosen by the pre-
ceding four members of the committee.
Furthermore, if it shall be deemed desirable that the Lec-
tures shall be published, I pledge myself to the additional
payment of from one to two hundred dollars for such purpose.
To secure a full, frank, and free consideration of the ques-
tions involved, it is my desire that the opportunity shall be
given from time to time to the representatives of each school
of economic thought to express their views in these Lectures.
The only restriction I wish placed on the lecturer is that
he shall be a believer in the moral teachings and principles
of the Christian Religion as the true solvent of our Social,
Industrial, and Economic problems. Of course, it is my
intention that a new lecturer shall be appointed by the com-
mittee each year, who shall deliver the course of Lectures for
the ensuing year.
WILLIAM LEVI BULL.
PREFACE
FROM 1870, when I took up my residence
in Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, to 1887, when I
assumed the pastorate of Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, I was engaged in two courses of
study : one in the New Testament in prepa-
ration for a Commentary on that Book ; the
other on our industrial and sociological prob-
lems, impelled thereto by the journalistic
duty of reporting and interpreting the inci-
dents in our current American history. The
result of that study was an early conviction
that the principles of the Manchester School
of Political Economy, which had dominated
academic instruction in my college days, as
they were commonly understood and prac-
tically applied, could not be reconciled with
either the principles or the spirit inculcated
by Jesus Christ. To apply those principles
to the solution of our industrial problems
became my endeavor, which has now been
6 Preface
pursued as a life purpose for upwards of a
quarter of a century. In an appendix to
this volume is given a list of some of the
principal books which have entered into
this course of study ; but more important
has been the study of that problem at first
hand, in the investigation of specific inci-
dents and events in our industrial develop-
ment, in visits to mines, factories, and other
organized industries, and in conferences
with both labor ]eaders and captains of in-
dustry. When in 1904 I was invited to
give this course of Lectures on the condi-
tions expressed in the letter establishing
this Lectureship, the invitation was gladly
accepted because it furnished an opportu-
nity to put into a compact form some of the
conclusions which had been reached as a
result of my faith " in the moral teachings
and principles of the Christian religion as
the true solvent of our Social, Industrial
and Economic problems." The American
community is slowly coming to the conclu-
sion that universal suffrage is no solvent of
Preface 7
our political problems unless it is accom-
panied by a universal education which
must be moral as well as intellectual. It is
also slowly coming to the conclusion that
industrial liberty is no solvent of our eco-
nomic problems unless it is accompanied by
a recognition of economic duties and obli-
gations. This too tardy rediscovery of the
essential teaching of Jesus Christ makes
this beginning of the twentieth century far
more full of hope for industrial peace and
prosperity than was the beginning of the
nineteenth, with its calm assurance that
educated self-interest would prove a panacea
for all industrial evils.
This brief statement sufficiently explains
the genesis of this volume, the object of
which is to indicate certain lessons which
the industrial evolution of the last half
century has to teach us in the light of the
precepts and principles inculcated by Jesus
Christ.
LYMAN ABBOTT.
Cornwall-on-the- Hudson, N. Y.,
May, 1905.
CONTENTS
I. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM ... 11
II. THE POLITICAL SOLUTION EEGU-
LATION 57
III. THE ECONOMIC SOLUTION KEOR-
GANIZATION 113
IY. THE ETHICAL SOLUTION KEGEN-
ERATION 159
I
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM
You are to be congratulated, young gen-
tlemen, on the fact that you are entering
upon your ministry at a time when theo-
logical seminaries recognize two principles :
first, that there is no Christianity which is
not applied Christianity ; and secondly,
that Christianity is social as well as indi-
vidual, that is, it aims at the reconstruc-
tion of society as well as the regeneration
of the individual.
Christ began His ministry by preaching
the Kingdom of God, and a kingdom is an
organization. The Apostle, in his Apoca-
lyptic vision, saw the time when the king-
doms of this world should become the king-
doms of our Lord and of His Christ. To ac-
complish such a transformation is the pur-
pose of the Christian ministry. The indus-
14 The Industrial Problem
trial problem, viewed from the Christian
point of view, is simply this : How shall
our industries be put upon a Christian basis,
organized according to the principles which
Jesus Christ inculcated, and permeated by
His spirit? We are not, in these hours,
turning aside from your strictly professional
course to something of secondary impor-
tance ; it is not in this spirit that we are to
approach this theme. It is essential, cen-
tral, vital, to your ministry. The question
which we are to consider is not primarily
industrial or economic ; it is human, Chris-
tian, profoundly religious.
You will not expect me to offer to you a
solution of the industrial problem ; cer-
tainly that is not my purpose, nor even my
desire. I wish in these four lectures to de-
fine that problem, to apply to it in certain
of its aspects the principles and precepts in-
culcated by Jesus Christ, and so to indicate
the direction in which you are in your min-
istry to look and labor for its ultimate solu-
tion. In the first lecture I shall endeavor
The Industrial Problem 15
to put the problem before you and to indi-
cate one direction in which society is looking
for a solution, and will look in vain. In
the other three lectures I shall endeavor to
indicate the direction in which we are to
look for the solution of this problem
through, respectively, political administra-
tion, industrial reorganization, and religious
inspiration.
In 1894 Herbert Spencer wrote to Mr.
James A. Skilton, of Brooklyn, a letter on
the industrial situation, which was pub-
lished in the Brooklyn Eagle in the same
year. The letter is as follows :
Fairfield, Pewsey, Wilt., May 28, 1894.
DEAR MR. SKILTON :
I believe I wished you good-speed in
your enterprise, but I believe your enter-
prise is futile. In the United States, as here
and elsewhere, the movement toward disso-
lution of existing social forms and reorgan-
ization on a socialistic basis I believe to be
irresistible. We have bad times before us
and you have still more dreadful times be-
16 The Industrial Problem
fore you civil war, immense bloodshed,
and eventually military despotism of the
severest type.
Truly yours,
HERBERT SPENCER.
Such a letter from such a student of life
must be taken seriously. His apprehen-
sions may not be well-founded, but they are
not to be carelessly disregarded. I believe
he is right in saying that there is going on
in our time a movement toward the disso-
lution of existing forms and a reorganiza-
tion on what may perhaps be not unfitly
termed a socialistic basis, and that this
movement is irresistible. I do not believe
that this movement threatens civil war, im-
mense bloodshed, and eventually military
despotism. I believe, on the contrary, that
it has in it the promise of an industrial
prosperity and an intellectual, social, and
spiritual development far transcending any
that past history has afforded. It is a
movement accompanied with serious evils,
but is essentially beneficent and in accord-
The Industrial Problem 17
ance with that law of evolution which, per-
haps, no one has better defined than Mr.
Spencer, a movement from a simpler to a
more complex, and from a lower to a higher,
state of society.
Historically, the family is the unit out of
which society is composed, the cell from
which by constant reduplication the social
organism is created ; it is the earliest or-
ganization, and the progenitor of all other
organizations. In primitive society, as
seen, for instance, in the portraiture of the
patriarchal age given to us in the Book of
Genesis, the family is the state and the
father is its head. He is absolute monarch
legislator, governor, judge ; he enacts the
laws, interprets the laws, enforces the laws.
The family is the army ; in case of war the
father acts as commander-in-chief, and leads
forth to battle his sons and his servants.
The family is the church ; the father is the
priest and sets up the altar and conducts the
worship. The family is the industrial
organism ; the father directs the industries,
i8 The Industrial Problem
takes the proceeds, and distributes them as
he judges best among the members of his
little community.
Gradually both differentiation and en-
largement of the organization take place.
Two or three families, or more, unite for the
purpose of offensive or defensive warfare
and the tribe is formed. Because of his
age, his experience, or his character, the
father of one of the families becomes the
chief of the tribe, its ruler in peace, its
commander-in-chief in battle. The fami-
lies unite in a common worship, and a priest
or priests are appointed to conduct this tribal
worship, and, that they may the better con-
duct their sacred duties, they are excused
from military service. Industry is or-
ganized ; certain phases of manual labor
are assigned to the women, certain others to
the men. Henceforth the complicated proc-
ess of growth is traceable in separated
departments, military, political, religious,
and industrial.
The families have been merged into a
The Industrial Problem 19
tribe, and eventually the tribes are merged
into a nation, first for military purposes, to
defend the community from attack or to
give it greater power in wars of conquest.
The organization is primarily military ; it is
therefore necessarily despotic, for war can be
carried on only by a despotic authority.
There is an appearance, but no reality, of
unity ; the unity is formal, not vital ; there
are not a hundred thousand wills united
in a common purpose, but a hundred thou-
sand persons executing the will of one per-
son ; not a hundred thousand minds, seeing,
thinking, planning harmoniously, but a
hundred thousand persons not thinking at
all, but doing without thought what one
person has planned.
With the development of the individual
man it becomes increasingly difficult to
maintain this subordination of the all to the
one, or of the many to the one. The indi-
vidual begins to think, the individual will
to assert itself. Out of this grow meetings
for public discussion, with resultant assent
20 The Industrial Problem
or dissent ; and eventually some form of
legislative body comes into existence to
express the thoughts and the resolves of the
many. This process is taking place under
our eyes at the present time in Russia.
For forty years the Russians, in their
zemstvos, or provincial assemblies, have been
unconsciously training themselves to think
their own thoughts and form their own
plans respecting the common welfare ; and
after forty years of this training they are
beginning to demand, with increasing
urgency, the right to have some share in
thinking national thoughts, and forming
the national purpose. Gradually, as the
natural result of such development of the
individual life and such demand for par-
ticipation in national actions, the govern-
ment is differentiated into three depart-
ments : the legislative, the judicial, and the
executive. The people begin to think
harmoniously, hence the legislative ; their
sense of justice begins to develop and they
begin to agree in their conscience, hence
The Industrial Problem 21
the judicial ; they begin truly to act to-
gether, to carry out what they have
planned, to realize in national acts the
decision of the national conscience, hence
the executive. Thus the nation is organ-
ized ; cooperation and combination take the
place of unquestioning subjection to one
supreme, all-powerful will.
This progress toward political organi-
zation is also progress toward individual
liberty and individual development. The
notion of Rousseau that man in a state of
nature was in a state of liberty, and that he
voluntarily sacrificed some of his liberty to
obtain the benefits of civilization, is con-
tradicted by history. Liberty and organ-
ization have gone on together. The most
primitive of modern governments is that of
Russia ; it retains in its autocracy the form
of the family ; the Czar is the father of his
people and nominally enacts their laws, in-
terprets and applies them, and executes them
as interpreted ; and Russia is the country
in which there is the least independent
22 The Industrial Problem
thinking and the least individual liberty.
America, on the other hand, is, of all
modern countries, the one most highly
organized. Its individuals are organized
in towns and counties, its towns and
counties in states, its states in a great
nationality ; and America is, of all modern
countries, the one in which the individual
has the largest liberty, the greatest power
of initiative, and the fullest development.
Nowhere is the merging of the individual
opinion into a public opinion, nowhere the
cooperation of the individual will in the
public will, carried to such an extent as in
America, and nowhere is the individual
mind so developed, and the individual will
so free. In the political sphere, organ-
ization and individual will are not an-
tagonistic. They are concurrent, they
promote each other : the freer the indi-
vidual the better is the organization ; the
more perfect the organization, the freer is
the individual.
We may trace a similar concurrent de-
The Industrial Problem 23
velopment of organization and liberty in
the sphere of religion. First, there are
separate gods for each tribe and for each
family in the tribe. Sometimes these
separate religions live side by side without
intermingling ; more often the men of the
one religion prohibit and attempt to destroy
the other religion by fire and sword. The
result is uniformity but not unity. Uni-
formity is imposed from without ; unity is
developed from within. They are not only
not the same, they are antagonistic ; they
cannot even coexist in the same com-
munity. Under religious uniformity, as
under political uniformity, the people do
not think, they do not will. They accept
the thoughts which their priests impose
upon them and render the services which
their priests require of them. As they
begin to think and to will in the sphere
of religion, they think different religious
thoughts, and demand, for the expression
of their life, different religious rituals.
Sectarianism is the result ; but as the peo-
24 The Industrial Problem
pie think more profoundly they discover a
unity of faith beneath the various forms of
expression, and as their religious purposes
become more unselfish and more spiritual,
they find themselves animated by a com-
mon will, and working toward a common
end. Uniformity has disappeared ; unity
is taking its place. There is more uni-
formity in Romanism than in Protestant-
ism ; there is more unity in Protestantism
than in Romanism.
The same process of differentiation and
organization, of social order concurrent
with individual development, which can
thus be traced in the political and religious
history of mankind, can equally be traced
in its industrial history,
In the primitive state each individual
himself conducts all forms of industry
necessary for his comfort. He kills the
game, skins it, makes of the skins moc-
casins for his feet and a cloak for his body,
digs out the log to serve for a canoe, erects
his wigwam, cultivates his little patch of
The Industrial Problem 25
corn, makes and strings his own bow and
fashions his own arrows ; is, in short,
butcher, tanner, shoemaker, tailor, boat-
builder, house carpenter, farmer, armorer,
all in one. This is individualism, pure and
simple.
Gradually he learns that he is more skil-
ful in the chase than his neighbor, and that
his neighbor can make a better bow and
arrow than he. So one stays at home to
construct, the other goes forth to hunt, and
the two exchange their products to mutual
advantage. As this exchange of products
becomes more extensive and complicated, a
medium for the exchange is invented,
and thus money comes into use and bar-
ter becomes trade. It is discovered that
different communities have different ad-
vantages in soil and climate, or in the taste
and temper of the people ; so communities
as well as individuals begin to exchange,
and trade becomes commerce. Steam is
discovered and machinery invented. With
steam and machinery comes a necessity for
26 The Industrial Problem
a larger industrial organization. Combina-
tion of capital is now required. Capital is
what a man makes by his industry more
than he consumes in his support or his
pleasures. When the individual housewife
spins the wool and weaves it in her loom
into a homespun garment, a single man in
a single lifetime can easily accumulate the
capital necessary for such household indus-
try. But when a thousand spindles are re-
volving and a hundred looms are clanking
under a single roof, one man cannot in a
lifetime accumulate the capital for such a
manufacturing industry. Various individ-
uals must combine their savings. Thus
first the partnership, and subsequently the
corporation, is created,
A corporation is at once the creation and
the agent of democracy. It is a combina-
tion by which men and women unite their
savings to accomplish by united action
what it would be impossible to accomplish
by individual action. Each individual
contributes something to a common fund,
The Industrial Problem 27
and this common fund is managed by a
man or a body of men selected by the con-
tributors to act as their servant in the ad-
ministration of the common fund for the
common benefit. It is true that this sen-
tence describes the ideal, and that the
actual does not always conform to it.
'Sometimes the man or body of men elected
by the contributors so manage the property
as to rob the contributors and take the
property themselves. Sometimes they man-
age it so as to give to the contributors the
least possible share of the profits and secure
the largest possible share for themselves.
But, in the vast majority of cases, they
manage it with substantial honesty, and
divide the profits of a common enterprise
with substantial equity among those who
have made that enterprise possible. The
existence of the corporation is itself a wit-
ness to the ethical development of the com-
munity in which the corporation exists, for
it cannot exist until moral character has so
developed that it is relatively safe for thou-
28 The Industrial Problem
sands of men and women to intrust their
earnings to the uncontrolled management
of a few financiers of ability. A corpora-
tion in the modern sense of that term was
an ethical impossibility in pagan Greece or
Rome. There was no basis of common
honesty, and therefore none of common
trust and confidence, on which such an
organization could be founded. The exist-
ence of corporations is a testimony to the
high development of standards of honesty
in the community and of mutuality of trust
and confidence growing out of such moral
developments.
If such corporations did not exist, our
industrial civilization would be impossi-
ble. The bank, the factory, the mine, the
railroad, the steamship, are all products
of combinations of capital, that is, of in-
dividual earnings united for carrying on a
common enterprise. If it were possible to
destroy corporations we should have to in-
vest the accumulations of our industry, as
men did in the time of Christ, in clothing
The Industrial Problem 29
and utensils which moth and rust corrupt,
or bury them in the ground, where thieves
break through and steal. The wheels of
our factories would cease to revolve, the
precious metals would lie unused in the
ground, the ocean would become an im-
passable barrier between the continents, and
we should revert to the horse as our only
means of locomotion. To destroy the com-
binations of capital would be to destroy
our civilization.
Organized labor is equally essential to
modern civilization. When a single house-
wife spins and weaves the wool, no organ-
ized industry is necessary; she spins and
weaves as she likes, and as her other duties
permit. But when five hundred spinners
and weavers work together under one roof,
and for a widely-extended market, the
housewife's liberty of industrial action is
no longer possible. These five hundred
workers must work together; the number
of spinners and the number of weavers
must be correctly proportioned ; the hours
30 The Industrial Problem
of labor for each worker must be adjusted
with reference to the hours of labor for all.
They must work under the same roof,
breathing the same air, submitting to the
same conditions. The organization of labor
is as necessary to the existence of a factory
as is the organization of capital. This
necessity of labor organization is perhaps
even more strikingly illustrated by the rail-
road. The transportation of freight and
passengers from New York to Philadelphia
cannot be managed as the transportation
of vegetables from the market garden to the
Philadelphia market in the farmer's wagon.
He brings in the produce on Monday, sends
it in by his son on Tuesday, and stays at
home on Wednesday. It would not be
possible to carry on a railroad by such a
method, and leave the engineer, conductor,
and brakeman to settle among themselves
what days they would serve, and in what
capacity.
The question is sometimes discussed by
the newspapers, Are labor organizations
The Industrial Problem 31
desirable ? This question has no existence ;
it is not real ; it does not exist outside the
columns of newspapers. Labor organiza-