A few Million People now wield twice as much Industrial Power as all the People on the Globe exerted a Hundred Years ago. — A Revolution wrought, not by the Schools and Colleges, but by the Mechanic. — The Union between Science and Art prevented by the Speculative Philosophy of the Middle Ages. — Statesmen, Lawyers, Littérateurs, Poets, and Artists more highly esteemed than Civil Engineers, Mechanics, and Artisans. — The Refugee Artisan a Power in England, the Refugee Politician worthless. — Prejudice against the Artisan Class shown by Mr. Galton in his Work on “Hereditary Genius.” — The Influence of Slavery: it has lasted Thousands of Years, and still Survives.

What the civil engineers and mechanics of England have done for that country the same classes here have done for America. It is by these classes that all civilized countries have been made prosperous and great. And the agent through which the power of man has been augmented a thousand-fold is steam. “In the manufactures of Great Britain alone, the power which steam exerts is estimated to be equal to the manual labor of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit the globe.”[39] This is the most significant fact of all time, namely, that a few millions of people in a small island now wield twice as much industrial power as all the people on the globe exerted one hundred years ago. And it is a fact of the utmost significance that the public educational institutions of England contributed scarcely anything to this industrial revolution, whose influence now comprehends all civilized countries. The men by whom it was wrought came not from the classic shades of the universities, but from the foundery, the forge, and the machine-shop. There has been very little change in educational methods since the time when Bacon said, “They learn nothing at the universities but to believe.” He proposed that a college be established and devoted to the discovery of new truth. No such college has, however, been established, but many new truths have been discovered. Suppose all the universities of England, of the United States, and of all other highly civilized countries had, from the time of Bacon, been conformed to his ideas, and devoted to the discovery of new truths? Such a course would have united science and art, and insured vastly greater progress, no doubt, than that which has actually taken place. The union of science with art has thus far been rendered impossible by reason of the wide prevalence of purely speculative views. The speculative philosophy of the Middle Ages still projects its baleful influence over our institutions of learning. Abstract ideas are still regarded as of more vital importance than things. Statesmen, lawyers, littérateurs, poets, and artists are more highly esteemed than civil engineers, machinists, and artisans. Mr. Smiles, in his excellent work on the Huguenots, has shown that England owes to the French and the Flemish immigrants “almost all her industrial arts and very much of the most valuable life-blood of her modern race.”[40] Commenting upon this fact in his work on “Hereditary Genius,” Mr. Francis Galton says,

“There has been another emigration from France of not unequal magnitude, but followed by very different results, namely, that of the revolution of 1789. It is most instructive to contrast the effects of the two. The Protestant emigrants were able men, and have profoundly influenced for good both our breed and our history; on the other hand, the political refugees had but poor average stamina, and have left scarcely any traces behind them.”[41]

This is the testimony of a distinguished student of biology; and it is to the effect that the refugee artisan is of immense value to the country where he finds an asylum, while the refugee politician is of no value at all. We should naturally say, our author having made this important discovery will enlarge upon it. First of all, he will deduce the conclusion that if the refugee politician is of no value to the country where he finds an asylum, the home politician is an equally unimportant factor in the social problem. Then he will make an exhaustive study of the industrial class as the chief basis of his propositions and speculations on the subject of the science of life. Not at all. Mr. Galton, in his work on “Hereditary Genius,” offers another striking illustration of the repressive force of habit and the influence of popular prejudice. In his classifications of men according to their professions, with a view to the inquiry whether “genius, talent, or whatever we term great mental capacity, follows the law of organic transmission—runs in families, and is an affair of blood and breed”—in such classifications Mr. Galton forgets for the time being that there is an industrial class. He runs through the entire social scale, from “the judges of England between 1660 and 1865,” not omitting Lord Jeffreys, down through statesmen, commanders, literary men, poets, musicians, men of science, painters, divines, the boys in Cambridge, oarsmen, and wrestlers of the North Country, but has no word to say of the civil engineers, or of the inventors—those immortal men whose monuments in stone and iron exist in every corner of England.

Buckles’s caustic remark, “the most valuable additions made to legislation have been enactments destructive of preceding legislation, and the best laws which have been passed have been those in which some former laws have been repealed,” does not apply to the works of the civil engineers, inventors, and mechanics of England or of any other country. Their works live after them and never fail to reflect honor upon them. The “acts” of the inventor may be amended but they are never repealed. Each inventive step, however short and apparently unimportant, constitutes a substantial link in the chain of progress; and it is a substantial link, because it invariably contains a hint of the next sequential step.

Mr. Galton is an original thinker of great power, and an untiring investigator. In contrasting the politician with the artisan he discriminates admirably. He finds that the politician is of no value, practically, to the community, while the artisan is of almost inestimable value; and this conclusion he states curtly, without appearing to care a rush for the public sentiment which reverences politics and so-called statesmanship. But when he “makes up his jewels,” so to speak, on the subject of “hereditary genius,” Mr. Galton, as already remarked, forgets that it is worth while to consider the class of men who in the last hundred years have literally almost created a new world. Why is this? The late Mr. Horace Mann answered the question long ago, and he answered it so well that his answer is here reproduced in extenso: “Mankind had made great advances in astronomy, in geometry, and other mathematical sciences, in the writing of history, in oratory and in poetry, in painting and in sculpture, and in those kinds of architecture which may be called regal or religious, centuries before the great mechanical discoveries and inventions which now bless the world were brought to light; and the question has often forced itself upon reflecting minds why there was this preposterousness, this inversion of what would appear to be the natural order of progress? Why was it, for instance, that men should have learned the courses of the stars and the revolution of the planets before they found out how to make a good wagon-wheel? Why was it that they built the Parthenon and the Coliseum before they knew how to construct a comfortable, healthful dwelling-house? Why did they build the Roman aqueducts before they framed a saw-mill? Or why did they achieve the noblest models in eloquence, in poetry, and in the drama before they invented movable types? I think we have arrived at a point where we can unriddle this enigma. The labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men, by classes doomed to ignorance from sire to son; by the bondmen and the bondwomen of the Jews, by the helots of Sparta, by the captives who passed under the Roman yoke, and by the villeins and serfs and slaves of more modern times.”

When the great educational reformer of Massachusetts thus graphically pointed out slavery as the cause of the contempt in which the useful arts had been held from the dawn of history, four millions of men were kept in bondage, and compelled to toil under the lash by one of the most enlightened nations of the earth. Later thirteen millions of people pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the perpetuation of slavery, and half a million soldiers marched repeatedly to battle to do or die in behalf of the right (?) of one man to buy and sell the bodies of his fellow-men.

There is, then, a logical reason for Mr. Galton’s neglect of the artisan class. Slavery in its most odious form not only existed in the heart of a so-called “free” nation twenty-five years ago, but dared Liberty to a deadly contest. Nor were the upholders of slavery without moral support among the governments and peoples of the world. The government of England, of which Mr. Galton is a subject, under cover of a pretended neutrality aided the American slaveholders’ Confederacy in sweeping Freedom’s ships from the sea; and the great families of England, the families cited by Mr. Galton in support of his proposition that genius “is an affair of blood and breed”—those great families were well pleased when Freedom’s ships went down and Freedom’s armies retreated before the assaults of the slave confederacy.

This somewhat extended reference to Mr. Galton is not intended to impugn his good faith as an author. Its design is simply to show that the influence of slavery is not yet extinct; that it still moulds ideas, controls habits of thought, inspires literary men, and permeates literature. In a word, the cause of the contempt in which the useful arts were held in Babylon in the time of Herodotus was in full force in this country down to the date of the issuance of Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation; and it is scarcely necessary to observe that the British Constitution grew out of the feudal system, which was only another name for slavery. It is a proverb in England to this day that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare; and the sentiment of the proverb is a complete justification of human bondage, since it implies that property rights are more sacred than the rights of man. Thus slavery has kept its brand of shame upon the useful arts for thousands of years, and the mind of man has been so deeply impressed thereby that it does not react now that slavery is extinct. Like the slave released from bondage, who still feels the chain, still winces and shrinks from the imaginary scourge, the mind of man continues to revolve automatically in the old channels.[E10]