elopment the
world can sustain? How far can it be exploited? How much capital is
necessary? Can sufficient capital be accumulated? A brief resume of the
industrial history of the last one hundred years or so will be relevant
at this stage of the discussion. Capitalistic production, in its modern
significance, was born of the industrial revolution in England in the
latter half of the eighteenth century. The great inventions of that
period were both its father and its mother, while, as Mr. Brooks Adams
has shown, the looted treasure of India was the potent midwife. Had
there not been an unwonted increase of capital, the impetus would not
have been given to invention, while even steam might have languished for
generations instead of at once becoming, as it did, the most prominent
factor in the new method of production. The improved application of
these inventions in the first decades of the nineteenth century mark the
transition from the domestic to the factory system of manufacture and
inaugurated the era of capitalism. The magnitude of this revolution is
manifested by the fact that England alone had invented the means and
equipped herself with the machinery whereby she could overstock the
world's markets. The home market could not consume a tithe of the home
product. To manufacture this home product she had sacrificed her
agriculture. She must buy her food from abroad, and to do so she must
sell her goods abroad.

But the struggle for commercial supremacy had not yet really begun.
England was without a rival. Her navies controlled the sea. Her armies
and her insular position gave her peace at home. The world was hers to
exploit. For nearly fifty years she dominated the European, American,
and Indian trade, while the great wars then convulsing society were
destroying possible competitive capital and straining consumption to its
utmost. The pioneer of the industrial nations, she thus received such a
start in the new race for wealth that it is only today the other nations
have succeeded in overtaking her. In 1820 the volume of her trade
(imports and exports) was 68,000,000 pounds. In 1899 it had increased to
815,000,000 pounds,--an increase of 1200 per cent in the volume of trade.

For nearly one hundred years England has been producing surplus value.
She has been producing far more than she consumes, and this excess has
swelled the volume of her capital. This capital has been invested in her
enterprise