In this ever-increasing economic struggle everything is in the favour of the East. The depreciation in value of silver in the West has made competition still more difficult for us. Silver, the only currency in the East, has there retained its full value, while in Europe its value has decreased by almost a half. When a Hindoo, Japanese, or Chinese merchant sends to Europe £100 worth of wheat, cotton, or any other merchandise, he receives £100 in gold, which he can exchange for nearly £200 worth of silver, which he then has only to turn into silver money, with which he pays his workmen. These 200 in silver have in his country the same value that they had twenty-five years ago, for the depreciation of silver in Europe has had no parallel in the East, where, moreover, the cost of labour has everywhere remained the same. As the cost of manufacture is no higher than it formerly was, the Oriental manufacturer, merely by selling an article in Europe, disposes of it at double its cost price. Of course he also has to pay double for anything he may buy of us, since he must pay £200 of silver for £100 of gold, so that he has every incentive to sell us more and more and to buy from us less and less. The present rate of exchange accordingly offers the East an immense premium on exportation. No protective tariff short of one absolutely prohibitive can contend with such differences in the cost of production. Accordingly, European commerce would appear fatally destined to being reduced, in the near future, to the exchange of merchandise costing twenty times as much as it costs in the East, and paid for in gold, against products costing one-twentieth as much and paid for in silver. As no exchange can continue for long under such conditions, and is lingering on awhile merely because the East has not yet completed the organisation of its industrial machinery, it is plainly evident that Europe is fated shortly to lose Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 172
her clientèle in the Far East as she has already lost it in America. Not only will she lose it, but she will very soon be condemned — being unable to produce enough to nourish her inhabitant — to buy of her old clients without being able to sell them anything. The Japanese have no illusions as to this state of things.
One of their ministers of foreign affairs, Mr. Okuna, speaking of Europe in a recently published speech, expressed himself in these words: “She exhibits symptoms of decrepitude. The coming century will see her constitutions in fragments and her empires in ruins.”
I believe Japan will be ruined long before Europe, for the simple reason that she has superimposed, on her own civilisation, and without being able to fuse the two, another civilisation which has nothing in common with her past, and which will presently lead her into the completest anarchy. But China, by far the superior of Japan in many respects, and notably in the matter of commercial honesty, is destined to have a powerful future. These small-skulled Asiatics, who can effect nothing but servile copies of our inventions, are doubtless barbarians, but history shows that the mightiest empires have always been brought low by barbarians.
Many causes will arise to complicate, for the greater number of the European nations, the, difficulties of the commercial struggle with the East. When the Trans-Siberian railway is finished all the commerce between the East and the West will tend to concentrate itself in the hands of Russia. As we know, this railway will cross part of China and unite Russia with Japan. The 130 millions of Russia will then be in contact with the 400 millions of China, and Russia will become the first commercial power of the world, since the transit between the East and the West will necessarily be in her hands. From London to Hong-Kong is about thirty-six days by sea. By the Trans-Siberian railway it will be about eighteen. The sea-route will doubtless then be as completely abandoned as the Cape route is to-day, and what then will be the use of England’s commercial fleets? France will lose what little trade remains to her.
In that day she will perhaps regret the £400,000,000 lent to Russia, a large portion of which will have gone to the making of this disastrous competition.
In 1887 we had £80,000,000 in Russian securities: ten years later the amount reached £400,000,000. It is not unreasonable to ask whether we should not have gained much more by devoting this enormous sum to the development of our own industries and our commerce.2
Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 173
The struggle between the East and West whose development I have just denoted is only at its commencement, and we can but suspect the issue. The dreamers of perpetual peace, of universal disarmament, imagine wars to be the most disastrous of struggles. They certainly do destroy a large number of individuals, but it appears highly probable that the industrial and commercial struggles which are approaching will be far more murderous and will accumulate more ruin and disaster than ever did the bloodiest wars. Such struggles, so peaceful in appearance, are in reality implacable. Pity is unknown to them; to conquer or to disappear are the only alternatives.
Socialism scarcely glances at such problems. Its conceptions are too narrow, its horizon too limited. Those nations in which it has most firmly taken root will be those for which the commercial struggle with the East will be hardest, and the defeat of the vanquished most rapid. Only those nations which possess a sufficient degree of initiative in industrial matters, sufficient intelligence to perfect their machinery, and to adapt it to new necessities, will be able to defend themselves. It is not Collectivism, with its ideal of slavish equality in work and wages, that will be able to furnish our workers with the means to struggle against the invasion of Eastern produce. Where will it find the money to pay its workers when their wares find no more purchasers, when all the factories have one by one been closed, and when all the capitalists have departed for countries in which they meet with hearty welcome and easily earned dividends, in the place of incessant persecutions?
2. The Remedies.
I have just shown how the economic competition between East and West arose and has developed. The facts I have cited show in what manner the economic necessities of the present time are contrary to the aspirations of the Socialists, and how ill the latter have chosen the time for presenting their claims. Now, in examining the possible remedies for the economic competition which eve see growing before our eyes, we shall once again discover how incompatible is victory in the struggle with the Socialist ideal.
I must observe, first of all, that it is easy to attack in theory the pessimistic conclusions I have drawn from this state of things. The economists will tell you, with reason, that hitherto there has never been such a thing as actual over-production of any article; that the slightest excess of production is Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 174
perforce accompanied by a fall in price; and that if as a consequence of competition the European workman is obliged to content himself with a salary of a few pence a day, the smallness of his wages will be without inconvenience when for these pence he is able to obtain all the articles for which he had formerly to pay several shillings. The argument is perfectly just, but it is hardly applicable to any but a remote period, a period, therefore, that does not interest us to-day. Before this phase of the universal abatement of the value of thins there will elapse a long transitional period of disorder. This purled will he all the more difficult to live through in that the conflict between East and West is not merely a struggle between men earning different wages, but also, and above all, a struggle between men whose needs are different. This is the factor which made competition with the Chinese impossible to the Americans, who were obliged to expel them. The equality of chances could be established only by the Chinese establishing themselves in America and acquiring the tastes and rates of expenditure of the Americans. But they were subject to influences too deeply ancestral to change themselves to that extent. With no further needs beyond a cup of tea and a handful of rice, they were able to content themselves with salaries far inferior to those demanded by American workers.
Whatever the future may be, it is the present that concerns us, and the solutions we have to seek are present solutions; so that the remedy that the economists await -the remedy of the spontaneous evolution of things-is for the time being worthless. As for the system of protection, it constitutes a provisional solution, and one of easy application, and accordingly we see the nations of Europe and America adopting it one by one. A small and sparsely populated country may, theoretically, surround itself with a high wall, and refrain from troubling itself about what is passing elsewhere; but where are such countries to be found in the West? According to all statistics, there is hardly a country in all Europe, on account of the excessive increase of population, which could produce enough to feed its inhabitants for more than six months. Supposing that a country did surround itself with the wall of which I have spoken, at the end of six months it would be obliged, under pain of perishing of hunger, to break through the wall and go forth to buy food; but with what would it pay for the corn and other produce it required? Hitherto Europe has acquired the products of the East by means of merchandise; but very soon the East will have no more need of our merchandise. For commerce Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 175
is based on exchange, of which money is only the conventional symbol.
Apart, then, from scientific discoveries, which are certainly possible, the future of Europe, and especially of those countries which live principally by their commerce, would appear to be sufficiently gloomy.
In the coming struggle two categories of nations alone would seem to be fitted to resist. First, those nations whose agriculture is so well developed, and whose populations are so small, that they are able to suffice for themselves and almost completely to abandon outside commerce. Secondly, those nations whose initiative, power of Will, and industrial capacities are highly superior to those of the Orientals. Few European nations to-clay find themselves in the former category; of those few France, happily for herself, is one of the foremost. She produces almost enough to support her populace, and it is by a very sure instinct that she takes care not to increase her population, and disdains the lamentations of the statisticians on that point. She would only have to increase her agricultural returns or reduce her population a little in order to produce enough for her subsistence. Far from concerning ourselves with industry, in which we are bad, or with commerce, in which we are incapable, it is towards agriculture that we should direct all our efforts.3
The English and the Americans belong to the second of the categories I have indicated. But only by means of extreme activity and constant improvement of machinery will they be able to maintain their superiority. It will be a conflict of superior capacity against mediocre and inferior capacity. It is thus that the Americans have been able, by immense efforts, gradually to decrease the prices of production by means of machinery, despite the high prices of labour.
We find in the United States blast-furnaces of which a single one can run 1,000 tons French of metal per day, while ours can found at most 100 or 200
tons; steel works which roll 1,500 tons per day, while ours turn out 150 in the same time; machines which can load 1,000 tons per hour on rail; others which lade a vessel of 4,000 tons in a few hours, and so forth.
To keep on this looting qualities of initiative and capacities are requisite that few nations to-day possess, and which are the most precious of all inheritances, although so antipathetic to the Socialists. With such qualities no difficulties are too great to be surmounted.
If all these efforts do not avail the Anglo-Saxons they will find other remedies; and they have already sought them. Several manufacturers have Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 176
succeeded in competing with the Orientals on their own ground, by founding factories in the East and employing native workmen. English manufacturers who could only carry on business at a loss in England have settled in India and entered into competition with English manufactures. But this emigration of capital and capacities, if it were to become general, would leave the English workman inevitably without work, and could scarcely have any other result than to point out to the capitalists the road that tine claims of the Socialists may one day force them to take. We may well ask ourselves what would become of a State thus deprived of all its capital and all its best brains, and composed entirely of mediocrities in talent and fortune. Then would Socialism be able to develop itself freely, and to impose its iron slavery.
But the English statesmen are seeking other means to avoid the dangers they see approaching. Knowing that the East must soon be closed to their shipping, they are now turning to Africa, and we have seen how England and Germany have in a few years taken possession of the whole continent, leaving the Latin nations only a few strips of worthless territory. The empire which the English have made for themselves, which reaches from Alexandria to the Cape, comprising nearly half of Africa, will very soon be covered with railways and telegraphs, and in a few years will undoubtedly form one of the wealthiest regions of the world.
The hereditary aptitudes of the Latin peoples, their social organisation, and their system of education, forbid them all such ambitious designs. Their aptitudes are in the directions of agriculture and the arts. They succeed very indifferently in industry, in foreign trade, and above all in colonisation, even when their colonies are at their very doors, as Algeria. It is a fact to be regretted, certainly, but not to be denied, and the knowledge of it is at least useful so far as it helps to make us understand in what direction our efforts should or should not be directed.
For the rest, the Latin nations need not, perhaps, too greatly regret that they will not be able to play a very active part in the industrial and economic struggle which appears destined, in the near future, to displace the poles of civilisation. This struggle, painful enough for energetic natures, will be absolutely impossible for others. The work of simple labourers is always hard and ill-paid. Contrary to the dreams of the Socialists, the future will show it still harder and still worse paid. It seems as though our civilisations can Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 177
prolong themselves only by means of harder and harder servitude on the part of the mass of workers. Industry and machinery must grow more and more oppressive. Only at the cost of labour every day more painful, at the cost of a terrible over-pressure that will necessitate veritable hecatombs of human lives, will the industrial and commercial nations of Europe be able without too great hazard of failure to encounter the peoples of the East on economic grounds. In every case there will be a war far more atrocious, murderous, and desperate than the military slaughters of old, for no illusion, no hope, will hover over it.
The beacon-lights of the old consoling faiths are flickering, and will soon be extinct for ever. Man, who fought of old for his hearth, his country, or his gods, seems condemned to have no ideal in the struggle of the near future but that of eating his fill, or at least not to die of hunger.
Notes.
1. The factory of Kanegafuchi in Japan employs nearly 6,000 hands working night and day in twelve-hour shifts. The wages are about fivepence a day, and are paid in silver, the market price of which is, as we know, half that of gold.
The following figures are taken from the statistical report on the Japanese Empire, published in 1897 at Tokio by Mr. Hanabusa, chief of the Statistical Department; they are the average wages of different classes of workmen: —
Agricultural labourers, is. 7d. per week; printers, 7s. per week; carpenters, 8s.
9d.
2. When the Trans-Siberian railway, whose importance none of our statesmen seem to understand, is terminated, Russia will be the mistress of China and her 400,000,000 inhabitants; and as she maintains a system of absolute protectionism, against both her allies and other nations, the East will be closed to Europe. India, and even Siam, for alliances count for nothing in the face of political interests, will infallibly be absorbed into this gigantic empire, which will then be the greatest power in the world. The ports and concessions recently obtained in Manchuria, which contains 120 millions of inhabitants, render Russia the sovereign mistress of this province, from which she will be able to recruit innumerable armies. The Chinese Imperial Court is to-day reduced to seeking another capital, in order to preserve some remnants of independence.
A circumstance which no one could have foreseen the conquest of the Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 178
Philippines by the United States, is the only thing that may retard or prevent the absorption of the East by Russia, an absorption which would be ruinous to the West, and which would mark the end of the progress of liberal ideas in Europe. The conquest of the Philippines, so near as they are to China, brings the United States into the midst of the Chinese question, which Spain was too insignificant to affect. The influence of the United States and England will perhaps re-establish the equilibrium of affairs, which has been tending more and more in one direction. We are certainly on the eve of a gigantic struggle, the struggle for the partition of the East, which will undoubtedly fill the coming century. The disarmament which is proposed to us, I imagine not without irony, does not appear to be a thing of the immediate future. Those nations that accepted it would, no doubt, make a few economies, but at the cost of losing their lives, and that very quickly.
3. From every point of view our agriculture should be developed. At an agricultural conference held in Lyons a few years ago M. de la Roque pointed out that the mortality in the provinces is under 20 per thousand, and is more than 27 per thousand in the towns, and concluded that by the mere fact of emigration into the towns France had lost 700,000 inhabitants. “if our crops of wheat or wine were to fail, the provinces would lose no less than eight to ten million inhabitants.” This is an interesting example of the far-reaching effects of economic facts.
Chapter 3: The Economic Struggles Between the Western Peoples.
1. The Results of Hereditary Aptitudes in a Nation.
I have just shown how the economic necessities created by new circumstances have given rise to the very formidable competition of the peoples of the East, who from being consumers have become producers.
Gradually expelled from the Eastern markets, the peoples of the West are reduced to quarrelling over the European markets which remain open to them.
What are the qualities which will snake for success in the struggles which every day become more severe? Will Socialism give any advantage? This we now propose to consider.
The aptitudes which have determined the superiority of races have not been the same in all periods of history. It is largely because a nation possesses certain aptitudes, but cannot possess all, that we see, in the course of the Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 179
centuries, so many nations pass through all the stages of greatness and decadence, according as the conditions of the period render their characteristic qualities detrimental or valuable.
For a long time the progress of civilisation demanded certain special qualities: courage, a warlike spirit, a fine language, literary and artistic tastes, which the Latin nations possess in a high degree, and in consequence of which they were long at the head of civilisation. Today these qualities have far less value than of old, and it would even seem that some of them will soon have no more scope. Industrial and commercial aptitudes, which were formerly of secondary importance, are taking the first rank with the present phase of the world’s evolution. It follows that the industrial and commercial nations are coming to the front. The centres of civilisation are about to be changed.
The consequences of these facts are very important. As a nation is incapable of changing its aptitudes, it must strive thoroughly to realise what they are, so as to utilise them in the best possible manner, and not to undertake futile struggles in regions where failure awaits them. A man who might snake an excellent musician, at brilliant artist, will make a sorry man of business, a very incapable manufacturer. For nations, as for individuals, the first condition of success in life is to know clearly of what one is capable, and to undertake no task too great for one’s means.
Now the Latin nations, as the result of the hereditary conceptions of which I have pointed out the origin, possess only in a very small degree the aptitudes for commerce, industry, and colonisation which are to-day so necessary. They are warriors, tillers of the land, artists, inventors; they are not manufacturers, business men, nor, above all, colonists.
Slight though the commercial, industrial, and colonising abilities of the Latin races may be, they were, nevertheless, sufficient at a time when there was little or no competition between the nations. To-day they are not sufficient. People are always speaking of the industrial and commercial decadence of our race.
The assertion is not absolutely exact, since our industry and our commerce are far superior to what they were fifty years ago. One ought to say insufficient progress, not decadence. But the word decadence is perfectly just if we understand by that expression that the Latin nations, progressing far less rapidly than their rivals, will soon infallibly be supplanted by them.
The symptoms of this falling behind are clearly to be seen in all the Latin Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 180
peoples, which proves that we are considering a racial phenomenon. Spain seems to have reached the last limit of this increasing inferiority, and it would seem that Italy must soon keep her company. France is still struggling, but the signs of her failure are becoming clearer every day.
2. The Industrial and Commercial Situation of the Latin Peoples.
In the following investigation we shall concern ourselves only with France; for the other Latin peoples we have only to repeat, with greater emphasis, that which applies to France. She is the least extinct of the Latin nations, but none the less her commercial and industrial situation is very far indeed from brilliant.
The facts which demonstrate our commercial and industrial weakness are to-day too evident to be contested. All the reports of our consuls or deputies who have been charged with the investigation of the question are unanimous, and repeat one another in almost the same words.
This is how M. d’Estournelles expresses himself in a recent publication: —
“M. Charles Roux has given us a résumé of all the regrettable things observed in an already long experience, in a report on the decadence of our commerce. He might have written the same things of our navy or of our colonies. France compromises or neglects her resources through apathy, routine, and attachment to rules of thumb, of which a great number date from Colbert or Richelieu. Like all victims of apathy, she is energetic by fits and starts, and becomes heroic; but she also has fits of madness, of sentimental reform, undertaken without forethought, and often worse than the evil they are destined to cure. When, for instance, she ceases to exploit her colonies, it is to assimilate them to the mother country from one day to the next, to make French departments of them, and to ruin them. Or she will suddenly decide, without a shadow of motive, and in spite of the natural and insurmountable difficulties in the way, that all the native Jews of Algeria shall be French electors, and consequently masters of the Arab population, and of our colonists themselves. Or, again, thanks to our ignorance she will ingenuously organise in the colonies a parody, a caricature of universal suffrage; gives the right of voting on our Budget, and on matters of peace and war, to the representatives of natives, Indian or Senegalese, who do not pay our taxes, do not serve in our army, and do not speak our language.”
Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 181
M. Depasse, in a judicious article, gives the causes of this state of things, which are almost identical with those I have already indicated:—
“France was not born a commercial nation; she is an artist, a warrior, a revolutionary. It is her glory that she has an ideal raised far above the practical details of commerce, but as wars and revolutions are less and less in fashion she becomes less and less able to respond to the ideal of modern nations, and art itself is suffering profound modifications, since it has to address itself to mobs, and not only to an élite.
“All that for centuries has made the superiority of France has lost its value; another civilisation is preparing itself, which will, we may be sure, have its own splendours; but France would seem all the less disposed to enter into it with all her heart and all her genius, in that she has shone with a greater splendour and received more advantages and profit in the old civilisation of which she was the mistress. France is far advanced in the matter of political liberties; but politics also have lost their value; she is falling back into the second rank in the estimation of the world and the requirements of the nations.
France is lettered and eloquent; it has been her character for two thousand years. But the eloquence of words is being supplanted by the eloquence of figures. Thus on every hand this phenomenon is presented for our consideration; everything, or almost everything, that for long centuries made the power, originality, grace, and wealth of France, has lost its value in the world, and seems to have been cast out of the current of the order of things which is bearing modern humanity forward. This is perhaps a fact not unworthy of the attention of politicians.”
“The German peril!” writes M. Schwob, “well, that is just true ; but let us say also the British peril, the Australian peril, the American peril, and even the Russian peril and the Chinese peril. On the battlefield of modern industry and commerce there is neither peace nor alliance. Treaties are passed that are called commercial treaties, but these treaties themselves have for their object war without limit, without pity, more implacable than war at the cannon’s mouth, and all the more perilous in that it victimises its millions without noise and without smoke.
“Thus our political alliance with Russia, and our reciprocal and unalterable friendship, do not prohibit commercial conventions which are, for the moment, entirely to the advantage of Germany, and to our hurt. In the regions of Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 182
economics, in the present state of Europe and the world, there is no such thing as friendship. A heartless war is being waged on every side.” Our consuls, who witness abroad the steady and rapid decline of our commerce, make the same complaints, despite the reserve imposed on them by their official position. All give the same warnings, which, however, are quite futile. They reproach our manufacturers and commercial men for their apathy, their carelessness, their lack of initiative, their helplessness in changing old processes for new, and in adapting the formalities of every kind with which they surround the slightest actions to the new requirements of their customers; in a word, they reproach them with their want of commercial intelligence.
Innumerable examples could be given. I will confine myself to the following, since they are highly typical: —
“Our manufacturers, and even the largest of them,” writes the correspondent of the Temps in the Transvaal, “are distrustful busybodies, unwilling to exert themselves, and cheerfully exchanging a lengthy correspondence on matters that their English or German competitors would settle in a few days.
“The English and German engineers have on the spot the current prices, in fullest detail, of every sort of machinery used in the mining industry, and when a tender or an estimate is invited they are able to deliver it within the short limit of five or seven days which is usually allowed. Our French engineers, who have not the same data, thanks to the inertia of their employers, have to abstain from competing, as the six weeks necessary for a messenger to reach and return from France render it impossible.... The English and Germans have complied with the demands which were made of them.” There are many analogous facts.
“A year ago,” we read in the Journal “a merchant of South America wished to export some American lambskins to France and Germany. He was put in communication, for this purpose, thanks to the officious care of our consul and our minister of commerce, with one of our commission agents. The American merchant then despatched a consignment of twenty thousand skins to the French house, and, simultaneously, an equal consignment to a German house in Hamburg, with whom he had an understanding. A year went by; the two houses sent in the accounts of the sales. The French house had experienced so many difficulties in selling the merchandise, and was obliged to consent to Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, 183
such low prices, that the operation resulted in a loss of 10 per cent on the part of the exporter. The German house, more active and more competent, had realised on the same goods a profit of 12 per cent. And the characteristic part of the affair is this: that it was in France precisely that it was able