Knowledge is Power Part 1

Knowledge is Power.

by Charles Knight.

INTRODUCTION.

It has been wisely said by a French writer who has scattered abroad sound and foolish opinions with a pretty equal hand, that "it requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what is seen every day."[1] To no branch of human knowledge can this remark be more fitly applied than to that which relates to the commonest things of the world,--namely, the Wants of Man and the Means of satisfying them.

Man, it has been maintained, has greater natural wants and fewer natural means than any other animal. That his wants are greater, even in the rudest state of the species, than the wants of any quadruped--to say nothing of animals lower in the scale of being--there can be no doubt.

But that his natural means are feebler and fewer we cannot believe; for the exercise of his understanding, in a variety of ways which no brute intelligence can reach, is the greatest of his natural means,--and that power enables him to subdue all things to his use.

It is the almost unlimited extent of the wants of man in the social state, and the consequent multiplicity and complexity of his means--both his wants and means proceeding from the range of his mental faculties--which have rendered it so difficult to observe and explain the laws which govern the production, distribution, and consumption of those articles of utility, essential to the subsistence and comfort of the human race, which we call Wealth. It is not more than a century ago that even those who had "a great deal of philosophy" first began to apply themselves to observe "what is seen every day" exercising, in the course of human industry, the greatest influence on the condition and character of individuals and nations. The properties of light were ascertained by Sir Isaac Newton long before men were agreed upon the circ.u.mstances which determined the production of a loaf of bread; and the return of a comet after an interval of seventy-six years was pretty accurately foretold by Dr. Halley, when legislators were in almost complete ignorance of the principle which regularly brought as many cabbages to Covent Garden as there were purchasers to demand them.

Since those days immense efforts have been made to determine the great circ.u.mstances of our social condition, which have such unbounded influence on the welfare of mankind. But, unhappily for themselves and for others, many of every nation still remain in comparative darkness, with regard even to the elementary truths which the labours of some of the most acute and benevolent inquirers that the world has produced have succeeded in establishing. Something of this defect may be attributed to the fact that subjects of this nature are considered difficult of comprehension. Even the best educated sometimes shrink from the examination of questions of political economy when presented in their scientific form. Charles Fox said that he could not understand Adam Smith. And yet Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' is essentially an amusing book in many parts. Matters affecting the interests of every human being, and involving a variety of facts having relation to the condition of mankind in every age and country, are not necessarily, as has been supposed, dry and difficult to understand, and consequently only to be approached by systematic students. In this belief it is proposed in this volume to exhibit the natural operation of the principles by which Industry, as well as every other exchangeable property, must be governed. The writer has to apply all the universal laws which regulate the exchanges of mankind to the direction of that exchange which the great bulk of the people are most interested in carrying forward rapidly, certainly, and uninterruptedly--the exchange of Labour for Capital. But he has also to regard those laws with especial reference to that mighty Power which has become so absorbing and controlling in our own day--the Power of Science applied to the Arts, or, in other words, Knowledge. It is not too much to a.s.sert that, henceforth, Labour must take its absolute direction from that Power. It is now the great instrument of Capital. In time it will be understood universally to be the best partner of Labour. "Wherever education and an unrestricted press are allowed full scope to exercise their united influence, progress and improvement 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 emanc.i.p.ating 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 c.o.x, 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 princ.i.p.ally be the effect of one circ.u.mstance;--he would possess no acc.u.mulation 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 a.s.sertion 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 acc.u.mulated 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 c.o.x, 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 defend himself against the wolves and serpents but a stick; he had nothing of which to make his bed but long gra.s.s and rushes; he had nothing to eat but hips and wild cherries. The man would doubtless have perished, unless he had met with some Indians, who knew better how to avail themselves of the spontaneous productions around them. But this is not an instance of the continuance of Labour in the lowest state of its power.

The few individuals, also, who have been found exposed in forests, such as Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron,--who were discovered, the one about a century ago, in Germany, the other about forty years since, in France,--differed from the civilized man cast naked upon a desert sh.o.r.e in this particular--their _wants_ were of the lowest nature. They were not raised above the desires of the most brutish animals. They supplied those desires after the fashion of brutes. Peter was enticed from the woods by the sight of two apples, which the man who found him displayed. He did not like bread, but he eagerly peeled green sticks, and chewed the rind. He had, doubtless, subsisted in this way in the woods. He would not, at first, wear shoes, and delighted to throw the hat which was given him into the river. He was brought to England, and lived many years with a farmer in Hertfordshire. During the Scotch Rebellion, in 1745, he wandered into Norfolk; and having been apprehended as a suspicious character, was sent to prison. The gaol was on fire; and Peter was found in a corner, enjoying the warmth of the flames without any fear. The Savage of Aveyron, in the same manner, had the lowest desires and the feeblest powers. He could use his hands, for instance, for no other purpose than to seize upon an object; and his sense of touch was so defective, that he could not distinguish a raised surface, such as a carving, from a painting. This circ.u.mstance of the low physical and intellectual powers of these unfortunate persons prevents us exhibiting them as examples of the state which we asked the reader to suppose.

Let us advance another step in our view of the power of Labour. Let us take a man in one respect in the same condition that we supposed--left upon a desert land, without any direct social aid; but with some help to his labour by a small Acc.u.mulation of former industry. We have instances on record of this next state.

In the year 1681 a Moskito Indian was left by accident on the island of Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific Ocean; the English ship in which he was a sailor having been chased off the coast by some hostile Spanish vessels.

Captain Dampier describes this man's condition in the following words:--

"This Indian lived here alone above three years; and although he was several times sought after by the Spaniards, who knew he was left on the island, yet they could never find him. He was in the woods hunting for goats, when Captain Watlin drew off his men, and the ship was under sail before he came back to sh.o.r.e. He had with him his gun, and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot; which being spent, he contrived a way, by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife; heating the pieces first in the fire, which he struck with his gun-flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun, which he hardened, having learnt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife, or grind them to an edge by long labour, and harden them to a good temper as there was occasion.[5] With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provisions as the island afforded, either goats or fish. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house, or hut, half a mile from the sea, which was lined with goat's skin; his couch, or barbecu of sticks, lying along about two feet distance from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding.

He had no clothes left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English; and therefore killed three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and dressed them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ash.o.r.e."

Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an uninhabited island. He had a regular supply of goats and fish; he had the means of cooking this food; he had a house lined with goats' skins, and bedding of the same; his body was clothed with skins; he had provisions in abundance to offer, properly cooked, when his old companions came to him after three years' absence. What gave him this power to labour profitably?--to maintain existence in tolerable comfort?

Simply, the gun, the knife, and the flint, which he accidentally had with him when the ship sailed away. The flint and the bit of steel which he hardened out of the gun-barrel gave him the means of procuring fire; the gun became the material for making harpoons, lances, and hooks, with which he could obtain fish and flesh. Till he had these tools, he was compelled to eat seal's flesh. The instant he possessed the tools, he could make a selection of what was most agreeable to his taste. It is almost impossible to imagine a human being with less acc.u.mulation about him. His small stock of powder and shot was soon spent, and he had only an iron gun-barrel and a knife left, with the means of changing the form of the gun-barrel by fire. Yet this single acc.u.mulation enabled him to direct his labour, as all labour is directed even in its highest employment, to the change of form and change of place of the natural supplies by which he was surrounded. He created nothing; he only gave his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured, the things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned; when he did obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley--he changed its place; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a lining for his bed--he changed its form. Change of form and change of place are the beginning and end of all human labour; and the Moskito Indian only employed the same principle for the supply of his wants which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the channels of manufactures or commerce.

But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the condition of the man without any acc.u.mulation of former labour--that is, of the man without any capital about him--was only _in the second stage in which the power of labour can be exercised_, and in which it is comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured--he laboured with acc.u.mulation--but he laboured without that other power which gives the last and highest direction to profitable labour.

Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human life:--

1. _That there shall be Labour._

The man thrown upon a desert island without acc.u.mulation,--the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind,--were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded command of the spontaneous productions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as compared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end.

[Ill.u.s.tration: African Hut.]

The second condition in the production of utility is,--

2. _That there shall be acc.u.mulation of former labour, or Capital._

Without acc.u.mulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the lowest in the scale of animal existence. The reason is obvious. Man requires some acc.u.mulation to aid his natural powers of labouring; for he is not provided with instruments of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadrupeds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Providence which presides over such manifold contrivances. He must, therefore, to work profitably, acc.u.mulate instruments of work. But he must do more, even in the unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty to direct his industry as he pleases, uncontrolled by the rights of other men. He must acc.u.mulate stores of covering and of shelter. He must have a hut and a bed of skins, which are all acc.u.mulations, or capital. He must, further, have a stock of food, which stock, being the most essential for human wants, is called _provisions_, or things provided. He would require this provision against the accidents which may occur to his own health, and the obstacles of weather, which may prevent him from fishing or hunting. The lowest savages have some stores. Many of the inferior animals display an equal care to provide for the exigencies of the future. But still, all such labour is extremely limited. When a man is occupied only in providing immediately for his own wants--doing everything for himself, consuming nothing but what he produces himself,--his labour must have a very narrow range. The supply of the lowest necessities of our nature can only be attended to, and these must be very ill supplied. The Moskito Indian had fish, and goats' flesh, and a rude hut, and a girdle of skins; and his power of obtaining this wealth was insured to him by the absence of other individuals who would have been his compet.i.tors for what the island spontaneously produced. Had other Indians landed in numbers on the island, and had each set about procuring everything for himself, as the active Moskito did, they would have soon approached the point of starvation; and then each would have begun to plunder from the other, unless they had found out the principle that would have given them all plenty. There wanted, then, another power to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction, besides that of acc.u.mulation. It is a power which can only exist where man is social, as it is his nature to be;--and where the principles of civilization are in a certain degree developed. It is, indeed, the beginning and the end of all civilization.

It is itself civilization, partial or complete. It is the last and the most important condition in the production of useful commodities,--

3. _That there shall be exchanges._

There can be no exchanges without acc.u.mulation--there can be no acc.u.mulation without labour. Exchange is that step beyond the constant labour and the partial acc.u.mulation of the lower animals, which makes man the lord of the world.

[5] It is difficult to understand how the Indian could convert the iron gun-barrel into steel, which it appears from Dampier's account that he did. Steel is produced by a scientific admixture of carbon with iron.

But we a.s.sume that the statement is correct, and that a conversion, partial doubtless, of iron into steel did take place.

CHAPTER II.

Society a system of exchanges--Security of individual property the principle of exchange--Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe--Imperfect appropriation and unprofitable labour.

Society, both in its rudest form and in its most refined and complicated relations, is nothing but a system of Exchanges. An exchange is a transaction in which both the parties who make the exchange are benefited;--and, consequently, society is a state presenting an uninterrupted succession of advantages for all its members. Every time that we make a free exchange we have a greater desire for the thing which we receive than for the thing which we give;--and the person with whom we make the exchange has a greater desire for that which we offer him than for that which he offers us. When one gives his labour for wages, it is because he has a higher estimation of the wages than of the profitless ease and freedom of remaining unemployed;--and, on the contrary, the employer who purchases his labour feels that he shall be more benefited by the results of that labour than by retaining the capital which he exchanges for it. In a simple state of society, when one man exchanges a measure of wheat for the measure of wine which another man possesses, it is evident that the one has got a greater store of wheat than he desires to consume himself, and that the other, in the same way, has got a greater store of wine;--the one exchanges something to eat for something to drink, and the other something to drink for something to eat. In a refined state of society, when money represents the value of the exchanges, the exchange between the abundance beyond the wants of the possessor of one commodity and of another is just as real as the barter of wheat for wine. The only difference is, that the exchange is not so direct, although it is incomparably more rapid. But, however the system of exchange be carried on,--whether the value of the things exchanged be determined by barter or by a price in money,--all the exchangers are benefited, because all obtain what they want, through the store which they possess of what they do not want.

It has been well said that "Man might be defined to be an animal that makes exchanges."[6] There are other animals, indeed, such as bees and ants amongst insects, and beavers amongst quadrupeds, which to a certain extent are social; that is, they concur together in the execution of a common work for a common good: but as to their individual possessions, each labours to obtain what it desires from sources accessible to all, or plunders the stores of others. Not one insect or quadruped, however wonderful may be its approaches to rationality, has the least idea of making a formal exchange with another. The modes by which the inferior animals communicate their thoughts are probably not sufficiently determinate to allow of any such agreement. The very foundation of that agreement is a complicated principle, which man alone can understand. It is the Security of individual Property. Immediately that this principle is established, labour begins to work profitably, for it works with exchange. If the principle of appropriation were not acted upon at all, there could be no exchange, and consequently no production. The scanty bounty of nature might be scrambled for by a few miserable individuals--and the strongest would obtain the best share; but this insecurity would necessarily destroy all acc.u.mulation. Each would of course live from hand to mouth, when the means of living were constantly exposed to the violence of the more powerful. This is the state of the lowest savages, and as it is an extreme state it is a rare one,--no security, no exchange, no capital, no labour, no production. Let us apply the principle to an individual case.

The poet who has attempted to describe the feelings of a man suddenly cut off from human society, in "Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez," represents him as saying, "I am monarch of all I survey."[7]

Alexander Selkirk was left upon the same island as the Moskito Indian; and his adventures there have formed the groundwork of the beautiful romance of "Robinson Crusoe." The meaning of the poet is, that the unsocial man had the same right over all the natural productive powers of the country in which he had taken up his abode, as we each have over light and air. He was alone; and therefore he exercised an absolute although a barren sovereignty, over the wild animals by which he was surrounded--over the land and over the water. He was, in truth, the one proprietor--the one capitalist, and the one labourer--of the whole island. His absolute property in the soil, and his perfect freedom of action, were both dependent upon one condition--that he should remain alone. If the Moskito Indian, for instance, had remained in the island, Selkirk's entire sovereignty must have been instantly at an end. Some more definite principle of appropriation must have been established, which would have given to Selkirk, as well as to the Moskito Indian, the right to appropriate distinct parts of the island each to his particular use. Selkirk, for example, might have agreed to remain on the eastern coast, while the Indian might have established himself on the western; and then the fruits, the goats, and the fish of the eastern part would have been appropriated to Selkirk, as distinctly as the clothes, the musket, the iron pot, the can, the hatchet, the knife, the mathematical instruments, and the Bible which he brought on sh.o.r.e.[8] If the Indian's territory had produced something which Selkirk had not, and if Selkirk's land had also something which the Indian's had not, they might have become exchangers. They would have pa.s.sed into that condition naturally enough;--imperfectly perhaps, but still as easily as any barbarous people who do not cultivate the earth, but exchange her spontaneous products.