menial service, securing
the right of property in handiwork and regulating public taxes;
distributing land ownership and freeing trade and barter.

While they were doing this against stubborn resistance, a whole new
organization of work suddenly appeared. The suddenness of this
"Industrial Revolution" of the 19th century was partly fortuitous--in
the case of Watt's teakettle--partly a natural development, as in the
matter of spinning, but largely the determination of powerful and
intelligent individuals to secure the benefits of privileged persons, as
in the case of foreign slave trade.

The result was on the one hand a vast and unexampled development of
industry. Life and civilization in the late 19th and early 20th century
were Industry in its whole conception, language, and accomplishment: the
object of life was to make goods. Now before this giant aspect of
things, the new democracy stood aghast and impotent. It could not rule
because it did not understand: an invincible kingdom of trade, business,
and commerce ruled the world, and before its threshold stood the Freedom
of 18th century philosophy warding the way. Some of the very ones who
were freed from the tyranny of the Middle Age became the tyrants of the
industrial age.

There came a reaction. Men sneered at "democracy" and politics, and
brought forth Fate and Philanthropy to rule the world--Fate which gave
divine right to rule to the Captains of Industry and their created
Millionaires; Philanthropy which organized vast schemes of relief to
stop at least the flow of blood in the vaster wounds which industry was
making.

It was at this time that the lowest laborers, who worked hardest, got
least and suffered most, began to mutter and rebel, and among these were
the American Negroes. Lions have no historians, and therefore lion hunts
are thrilling and satisfactory human reading. Negroes had no bards, and
therefore it has been widely told how American philanthropy freed the
slave. In truth the Negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal
to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada,
by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the
abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many
civilian helpers in the Civil War. This war was not a war for Negro
freedom, but a duel between two industrial systems, one of which was
bound to fail because it was an anachronism, and the other bound to
succeed bec