But before that time must intervene a period which bids one pause for breath.A new romance, like unto none in all the past, the economic romance, will be born.For the dazzling prize of world-empire will the nations of the earth go up in harness.Powers will rise and fall, and mighty coalitions shape and dissolve in the swift whirl of events.Vassal nations and subject territories will be bandied back and forth like so many articles of trade.And with the inevitable displacement of economic centres, it is fair to presume that populations will shift to and fro, as they once did from the South to the North of England on the rise of the factory towns, or from the Old World to the New.Colossal enterprises will be projected and carried through, and combinations of capital and federations of labor be effected on a cyclopean scale.
Concentration and organization will be perfected in ways hitherto undreamed.The nation which would keep its head above the tide must accurately adjust supply to demand, and eliminate waste to the last least particle.Standards of living will most likely descend for millions of people.With the increase of capital, the competition for safe investments, and the consequent fall of the interest rate, the principal which today earns a comfortable income would not then support a bare existence.Saving toward old age would cease among the working classes.And as the merchant cities of Italy crashed when trade slipped from their hands on the discovery of the new route to the Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope, so will there come times of trembling for such nations as have failed to grasp the prize of world-empire.In that given direction they will have attained their maximum development, before the whole world, in the same direction, has attained its.There will no longer be room for them.But if they can survive the shock of being flung out of the world's industrial orbit, a change in direction may then be easily effected.That the decadent and barbarous peoples will be crushed is a fair presumption; likewise that the stronger breeds will survive, entering upon the transition stage to which all the world must ultimately come.
This change of direction must be either toward industrial oligarchies or socialism.Either the functions of private corporations will increase till they absorb the central government, or the functions of government will increase till it absorbs the corporations.Much may be said on the chance of the oligarchy.
Should an old manufacturing nation lose its foreign trade, it is safe to predict that a strong effort would be made to build a socialistic government, but it does not follow that this effort would be successful.With the moneyed class controlling the State and its revenues and all the means of subsistence, and guarding its own interests with jealous care, it is not at all impossible that a strong curb could be put upon the masses till the crisis were past.
It has been done before.There is no reason why it should not be done again.At the close of the last century, such a movement was crushed by its own folly and immaturity.In 1871 the soldiers of the economic rulers stamped out, root and branch, a whole generation of militant socialists.