men, day after day, for the performance of the most intricately adjusted tasks, in such a way that their efforts shall result in an Atlantic liner! Trade unionism, then, whatever the ability of its leaders, does not represent democratic action in the actual process of economic production at all; and instead of pointing to any development of such action in the future, merely helps to show us that no such development is to be looked for. Such being the case, then, the facts that now {238} claim our attention will, when they are first stated, wear an appearance of paradox; for though the power of democracy, in the advanced processes of production, is smaller than it is in any other kind of social activity, abstract thought and discovery alone excepted, yet it exercises an influence on production none the less, which is as purely democratic in character and as far-reaching in its consequences as that which it has ever exercised over the doctrines of any religion. For what is the object of production? It is the satisfaction of human wants, which begin as needs, and gradually develop into tastes. The multiplication of these needs, together with the satisfaction of them, is what civilisation means; and though material wealth may increase, as it does in many new countries, without any concurrent development of civilisation in its higher forms, civilisation in its higher forms cannot increase, and certainly cannot diffuse itself throughout the community at large, without a development in the means of material production. Books, for example, though they are vehicles of mental culture, are themselves economic commodities, and depend for their accessibility to the public on the same kind of industrial agencies as do cotton, sugar, tobacco, and that comforter of the nations—alcohol. Refinement of taste and feeling, again, is largely diffused by pictures; but the accessibility of any great picture to the vast majority of any nation depends on the industrial processes by which it can be cheaply and faithfully {239} reproduced—processes which have only of late years reached any sort of perfection.