Produced by Jeannie Howse, Peter Vachuska, David Edwards and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Bolded text has been bracketted with ='s, =like so=. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * _THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._ EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM A STUDY OF MACHINE PRODUCTION. BY JOHN A. HOBSON, M.A., AUTHOR OF "PROBLEMS OF POVERTY." THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 1902. PREFACE. In seeking to express and illustrate some of the laws of the structural changes in modern industry, I have chosen a focus of study between the wider philosophic survey of treatises on Social Evolution and the special studies of modern machine-industry contained in such works as Babbage's _Economy of Manufactures_ and Ure's _Philosophy of Manufactures_, or more recently in Professor Schulze-Gaevernitz's careful study of the cotton industry. By using the term "evolution" I have designed to mark the study as one of a subject-matter in process of organic change, and I have sought to trace in it some of those large movements which are characteristic of all natural growth. The sub-title, _A Study of Machine-Production_, indicates a further narrowing of the investigation. Selecting the operation of modern machinery and motors for special attention, I have sought to enforce a clearer recognition of organic unity, by dwelling upon the more material aspects of industrial change which mark off the last century and a half from all former industrial epochs. The position of central importance thus assigned to machinery as a factor in industrial evolution may be--to some extent must be--deceptive, but in bringing scientific analysis to bear upon phenomena so complex and so imperfectly explored, it is essential to select some single clearly appreciable standpoint, even at the risk of failing to present the full complexity of forces in their just but bewildering interaction.