still rarer, it is held by some that in a study where so much depends upon accurate statements of quantity little advance is at present possible.

And it is, of course, true that until the advance of organised curiosity has provided us with a complete measurement of industrial phenomena over a wide area of commerce and over a considerable period of time, the inductive science of Economics cannot approach exactitude.

But a study which cannot claim this exactness may yet be a science, and may have its value. A hypothesis which best explains the generally apparent relation between certain known phenomena is not the less science because it is liable to be succeeded by other hypotheses which with equal relative accuracy explain a wider range of similar phenomena. It is true that in studies where we know that there exists a number of unascertained factors we shall expect a more fundamental displacement of earlier and more speculative hypotheses than in studies where we know, or think we know, that most of the phenomena with which we are concerned are equally within our ken: but the earlier scientific treatment, so far as it goes, is equally necessary and equally scientific.

In modern industrial changes many different factors, material and moral, are discernibly related to one another in many complex ways. According as one or other of the leading factors is taken for a scientific objective the study assumes a widely different character.

For example, since the end of Industry is wealth for consumption it would be possible to group the industrial phenomena accordingly as they served more fully and directly to satisfy human wants, or as they affected quantitatively or qualitatively the standard of consumption, and to consider the reflex actions of changed consumption upon modes of industrial activity. Or again, considering Industry to consist essentially of organised productive human effort, those factors most closely related to changes in nature, conditions, and intensity of work might form the centre of scientific interest; and we might group our facts and forces according to their bearing upon this. These points of view would give us different objective scientific studies.

Or, once more, taking a purely subjective standpoint, we might search out the intellectual expression of these industrial changes in the changing thought and feeling of the age, tracing the educative influences of industrial development upon (1) the deliberate judgments of the business world and of economic thinkers as reflected in economic writings; (2) politics, literature, and art through the changes of social environment, and the direct stimulation of new ideas and sentiments. The deeper and more important human bearings of the changes in industrial environment might thus be brought into prominence as well as the reaction by which, through the various social avenues of law, public opinion, and private organised activity, these intellectual forces have operated in their turn upon the industrial structure.

The crowning difficulty of an adequate scientific treatment consists in the fact that each and all of these scientific objects ought to be pursued simultaneously; that is to say, the whole of the phenomena—industrial, intellectual, political, moral, æsthetic—should be presented in their just but ever-changing proportions.

This larger philosophic treatment is only named in order that it may be realised how narrow and incomplete would be even the amplest fulfilment of the purpose indicated in the title of this book.

§ 2. Industrial science has not yet sufficiently advanced to enable a full treatment of the objective phenomena to be attempted.

The method here adopted is to take for our intellectual objective one important factor in modern industrial movements, to study the laws of its development and activity, and by observing the relations which subsist between it and other leading factors or forces in industry to obtain some clearer appreciation and understanding of the structure of industry as a whole and its relation to the evolution of human society. This central factor is indicated by the descriptive title peculiarly applied to modern industry, Capitalism. A clear view of the phenomena grouped together under the head of the Industrial Revolution cannot fail to give prominence to the changes that have taken place in the structure and functional character of Capital. Whatever transformations have taken place in the character of land, the raw material of industrial wealth, and of labour, or those abilities and faculties of man which operate upon the raw material, have occurred chiefly and directly through the agency of the enlarged and more complex use of those forms of material wealth which, while embodying some element of human effort, are not directly serviceable in satisfying human want.

Writers upon Political Economy have brought much metaphysical acumen to bear upon definitions of Capital, and have reached very widely divergent conclusions as to what the term ought to mean, ignoring the clear and fairly consistent meaning the term actually possesses in the business world around them. The business world has indeed two views of Capital, but they are consistent with one another. Abstractly, money or the control of money, sometimes called credit, is Capital. Concretely, capital consists of all forms of marketable matter which embody labour. Land or nature is excluded except for improvements: human powers are excluded as not being matter; commodities in the hands of consumers are excluded because they are no longer marketable. Thus the actual concrete forms of capital are the raw materials of production, including the finished stage of shop goods; and the plant and implements used in the several processes of industry, including the monetary implements of exchange. Concrete business capital is composed of these and of nothing but these.[1] In taking modern industrial phenomena as the subject of scientific inquiry it is better to accept such terminology as is generally and consistently received by business men, than either to invent new terms or to give a private significance to some accepted term which shall be different from that given by other scientific students, and, if we may judge from past experience, probably inferior in logical exactitude to the current meaning in the business world.

§ 3. The chief material factor in the evolution of Capitalism is machinery. The growing quantity and complexity of machinery applied to purposes of manufacture and conveyance, and to the extractive industries, is the great special fact in the narrative of the expansion of modern industry.

It is therefore to the development and influence of machinery upon industry that we shall chiefly direct our attention, adopting the following method of study. It is first essential to obtain a clear understanding of the structure of industry or "the industrial organism" as a whole, and of its constituent parts, before the new industrial forces had begun to operate. We must then seek to ascertain the laws of the development and application of the new forces to the different departments of industry and the different parts of the industrial world, examining in certain typical machine industries the order and pace of the application of the new machinery and motor to the several processes. Turning our attention again to the industrial organism, we shall strive to ascertain the chief changes that have been brought about in the size and structural character of industry, in the relations of the several parts of the industrial world, of the several trades which constitute industry, of the processes within these