The new devices were hailed as "labour-saving" but they vastly increased
labour both in hours of work and in hands employed. Bulk production
through the factory system was inevitable, the result being an enormous
surplus over the normal and local demand. To organize and conduct these
processes of bulk-production required money greater in amount than
individuals could furnish; so grew up capitalism, the joint-stock
company, credit and cosmopolitan finance. To produce profits and
dividends markets must be found for the huge surplus product. This was
accomplished by stimulating the covetousness of people for things they
had not thought of, under normal conditions would not, in many cases,
need, and very likely would be happier without, and in "dumping" on
supposedly barbarous peoples in remote parts of the world, articles
alien to their traditions and their mode of life and generally
pestiferous in their influence and results. So came advertising in all
its branches, direct and indirect, from the newspaper and the bill-board
to the drummer, the diplomatic representative and the commercial
missionary.
Every year saw some new invention that increased the product per man,
the development of some new advertising device, the conquest of some new
territory or the delimitation of some new "sphere of influence," and the
revelation of some new possibility in the covetousness of man. Profits
rose to new heights and accumulating dividends clamoured for new
opportunities for investment. Competition tended to cut down returns,
therefore labour was more and more sustained through diminished wages
and laws that savagely prevented any concerted effort towards
self-defense. Improvements in agricultural processes and the application
of machinery and steam power, together with bulk-production and
scientific localization of crops, threw great quantities of
farm-labourers out of work and drove them into the industrial towns,
while advances in medical science and in sanitation raised the
proportion of births to deaths and soon provided a surplus of potential
labour so that the operation of the "law of supply and demand," extolled
by a new philosophy and enforced by the new "representative" or
democratic and parliamentary government, resulted in an unfailing supply
of cheap labour paid wages just beyond the limit of starvation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account