If the consciousness of kind had spread evenly like a rising tide drawn by the swelling surplus of the age of coal, a world civilization might have quickly come. But it worked unevenly and erratically. Sometimes it spread thinly over whole nations in the form of political beliefs and produced theoretical democracies functioning through the franchise. Sometimes it left the forms of government severely monarchical and produced a spotty economic growth in the form of cooperative societies that functioned in response to the everyday bread and butter needs. Sometimes it brought those having similar occupations together in guilds and trade unions, that tended to ignore mere political boundaries and make men internationally conscious of each other through the way they got their living. But everywhere the rising consciousness of kind came upon obstructions and divisions. Waves hurrying up innocent-looking estuaries would come upon other streams from the same great source, and meet in spluttering, frothing conflict: a long even swell of brotherly feeling would break over some rock of ancestral race prejudice in disaster and bloodshed; mutual aid rose in a murky troubled sea, wave against wave, one current trying to beat another current back. People united into a political nation opposed themselves violently to those united into some economic class within it. Men were driven apart when the interests of their group conflicted with the interests of other groups almost as strongly as they were drawn together by common interest within their own organization. And always the rise of any new group within a fairly comfortable community met opposition from some already established group whose privileges, powers, and possessions the new group tended to infringe. They inevitably appeared like an invading tribe bent on pillage, and the community gathered shoulder to shoulder to resist them, every thought and muscle set to repel what they saw as an attack on the common surplus and in defence of those whose guardianship of the common hoard had afforded them a new measure of comfort. This has been particularly true of all organizations, due to the spread of consciousness of kind among the workers and their efforts to get for themselves a larger share of the benefits of the common surplus. Very rarely has the community been able to see that what was distributed in the form of advanced wages and better conditions was not necessarily taken away from the community as a whole.