Dora B. Montefiore 1912
Source: British Socialist, Vol. I No. 12 December, 1912, pp. 539-542, Vol. II No. 1 January, 1913, pp. 16-20, Vol. II, No. 2 February, 1913, pp. 65-69, Vol. II No. 3 March, 1913, pp. 116-120;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.
When speaking to friends and comrades in England I find that but little is known of the actual conditions under which gold is obtained in South Africa, or of how labour is recruited, treated and rewarded by the close confederation of mine magnates, who extract such enormous profits from the exploitation, disease and death of millions of their fellow-men.
It may be, therefore, of interest to English Socialists to set down some of the facts of gold mining in South Africa, drawing constantly, in support of my assertions, from the actual reports of the exploiters.
It will be within the memory of my readers that Chinese coolies were at first used by the mineowners to do the unskilled work of drilling and shifting the gold-bearing rock. It will also be remembered how the lies of Liberal hypocrites replaced these Chinese coolies (who were represented as working in chains) by native Kaffirs and Zulus, who are at the present day cunningly enslaved and chained to their jobs by the fetters of economic compulsion. The native of South Africa, being able to extract from the soil, and from his flocks and herds, sufficient for his simple demands on life – food, clothing and shelter in abundance – has the good sense not to love work for work’s sake; but enjoys basking in the sun, and taking life easily, when once his personal and communal needs have been satisfied. The problem, therefore, for the exploiting white race was, “How to make the nigger work?” and a temporary solution was found in the hut tax, under which tax every native had to pay a certain sum annually to the Government for the privilege of being allowed to live in his own hut. This tax has to be paid in gold, therefore the native cannot offer oxen or mealies in barter, but has to leave his kraal for some months and work in the service of the white man to earn the yellow gold which the Union Government demands. But even then, so loth is the physically healthy and splendidly developed native to exchange his agricultural life for the charms of our so-called civilisation, that there is much difficulty in recruiting the 200,000 native boys necessary for carrying on the work of the Rand mines alone, not to mention the many thousands more required for diamond mining, unskilled labour in connection with other industries, and house-boys, farm-boys, ricksha boys, & c. The following quotation from the chairman’s speech at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Mines in 1911 will show how the exploiters intend to set about the work of divorcing the able-bodied natives from the soil and forcing them into wage-slavery; and will interpret the psychology of the mine magnates and their shareholder friends much more picturesquely and vividly than any words of mine could hope to do: –
“Some say it is no part of a Government’s duty to find labour. Quite so; but they can at least view with disquietude their country suffering from grave financial loss through industry being stifled in consequence of the absence of a complete and firm native policy. What is wanted is surely a policy that would establish once for all that, outside special reserves, the ownership of land must be in the hands of white races, and that the surplus of young men, instead of squatting on the land in idleness, and spreading out over unlimited areas, must earn their living by working for a wage, as every white man who is not a landowner has to do.”
Does it not read almost like the record of that period in English history when, men being needed for the ever-increasing demands of industrialism, they and their families were steadily (but legally, of course) pushed and driven and squeezed off the land, so that they might be compelled to “earn their living by working for a wage,” or, in other words, should possess nothing to barter but their labour-power? How successfully the English Government was appealed to to help in the casting of this iniquitous drag-net, our depopulated rural areas of to-day plainly show; while the silly bleat of “Back to the land” is about as effectual at the present time as was Canute’s order in the past to the incoming tide. An agricultural population is evolved, it is not made in a generation; and as the native population of South Africa is essentially agricultural, it is a crime for a capitalist Government to assist in driving it into the degrading wage-slavery of either gold or diamond mining. There are at the present time over 200,000 natives employed on the Rand in gold mining, and 51 per cent. of these natives come from Portuguese territory, the rest from various parts of the Union and British South Africa. The Native Labour Regulation Act permits the “farming” of native labour by contractors – that is, the recruiting of them at a certain wage, and subsequently letting them out at a higher rate to the mineowners, the contractor retaining the difference in amount. The hut tax ensures the enforced labour in mines of natives from British territory; and a later Act, the Squatters Act, was passed with a similar intention. But I gathered that the latter Act, though it forced many natives to work for a wage instead of living on the produce of their small holdings, only resulted in a better supply of labour to the farmers and orchardists; for the native, unless compelled by deliberately-imposed economic pressure, still goes unwillingly to underground work.
The number of white miners employed is about 11,000. They come principally from Wales, Cornwall and Australia, and their graves lie thick along the Rand, or deep in the ocean along the track of the passenger steamers on which, as a last hope, they ship when the dreaded miners’ phthisis has them in death grip.
In the Chamber of Mines Report for July, 1911, the gold output for the month is stated to be £3,012,738 and in June, 1912, Mr. Raymond Schumacher, as chairman of the Rand Mines, Limited, when presenting his annual report and statement of accounts to the general meeting of shareholders, stated that “the net profit for the year ending December 31, 1911, was £1,117,408, and that two dividends at the former rate of 110 per cent., and representing roughly £1,169,000, had been paid to shareholders during the year.” One would think that dividends such as these would satisfy the most greedy of shareholders; yet we read further in the chairman’s report for July, 1911, before the Chamber of Mines: “I fear, however, that this spring there will not be the great eagerness to seek work that we had expected from the Transkei natives, owing to the fact that in addition to their mealie crops the natives were clever enough to take advantage of this abnormally moist winter by sowing quantities of wheat. No one would really believe that in this twentieth century this great industry, which is the pulse, one may say, of South Africa, and could by severe fluctuations play havoc with the systems of monetary exchanges of the world, should depend for its adequate labour supply on whether negroes are in the mood to seek work at remuneration higher than that paid in some European mining centres, or whether they prefer to enjoy idleness and the excess of foodstuffs produced on their estates. But so it is; and no remedy seems forthcoming.” Here speaks the spirit of the old slave-owner. If a negro is not in the humour to go down a mine and court death by accident or disease, then he must be forced by hunger to do so; and Government must be evoked to force by “legal” methods hunger on the negro. It is monstrous, thinks the wage-slave driver, that in this twentieth century, when economic pressure acts so unerringly and satisfactorily, in all “civilised” countries where capitalism prevails, in forcing into the labour market white men, women and children, that the primitive races of South Africa can escape the same fate merely through the fact of their possessing the land and implements of production!
The next step, therefore, in the scheme of capitalist development was to force upon the South African Union Government (which is the obedient instrument for putting into legal form the exploiting cravings of the mine magnates) the necessity of annexing the lands of “negroes who are not in the mood to seek works” And in this campaign the Press had to be used on the side of the mining interests. The natives must be described as brutal and degraded, as stupid and filthy in their habits; they must be made to feel in every way that they are an inferior race, incapable of rising or of improving their condition. The expression constantly used is that “the native must be kept in his place.” Yet, when he shows a marked desire to keep to himself and live on the produce of his own land, he is yanked out of his home and family circle by cunningly-devised laws, and is thrown into the ranks of ferocious competition and of wage-slavery. His primitive methods of agriculture are always spoken and written of scornfully; yet, when he shows himself smart enough to take advantage of a good season, and obtain an unusually heavy crop of corn, the mine magnate weeps salt tears over the “excess of foodstuffs” grown by the native “boys,” who are thus enabled, for a season at least, to live as men should live, instead of toiling and sweating as do beasts.
As regards the cleanliness and decency of the natives when left to themselves in their own kraals, I take the following extracts from one of the Government Blue Books on Native Affairs: –
“Fricksburg, Orange Free State. – On the whole, native huts and enclosures (scherms) are kept very clean.”
“Fourisburg natives keep their huts very clean.”
These reports and others are in each case signed by the President or Police Magistrate of the district.
On the other hand, when a native comes in contact with our so-called civilisation he is not only cut off from his accustomed communal life, but if working in a mine he has to live in a compound, and if employed as a house-boy he has a hut somewhere on the back premises; but in either case he is separated from his women kind and forced to live an unnatural sex life. Though it is a punishable offence to sell alcohol to a native, there are always plenty of degraded whites engaged in an illicit drink traffic, because the profits to be obtained are so large; and any crimes committed by natives whilst living among the whites are always attributable to the vile cheap alcohol sold to them by white men. Work in the mines is vitally exhausting, and causes a craving for some form of stimulant both among black and white miners, and the statistics regarding the amount of alcohol consumed per head among the white mining population give one pause when reflecting on the example set to these “backward races” by those who initiate them into the civilisation of capitalism. As regards other “benefits” conferred on the native races by their contact with economically-enforced wage-slavery, I take the following figures from the “Mining Journal,” of September, 1911: “During that month 65 natives died from accidents, and 400 from disease.” Again: “During the 12 months ending September, 1911, 882 natives died from accidents, and 5,602 from disease.” It must be remembered that these figures only represent the actual number of natives who die in the compounds of the Rand; but many thousands more are returned to their villages to die, or wander away, when in the early stages of disease, and eventually die.
Another phase of our beneficent contact with the native population is shown in the following extracts from Blue Book 1910, Department of Native Affairs: –
“Elliotsdale (Transkei). – Syphilis is reported as introduced from the great labour centres.”
“Vryburg (British Bechuanaland). – The natives are fairly healthy, but a large percentage are suffering from syphilis in an aggravated form .... The time has arrived for the Government to give this disease its most serious consideration, for unless something is done very soon to cope with its spread in a more satisfactory manner than the present system the whole native population will become affected.”
“Gordonia. – Syphilis is rife; in the municipality there has been an average of 30 cases per month.”
“Namaqualand. – Syphilis excessively general at the mission stations.”
“Mount Ayliff. – Syphilis exists. It is frequently introduced by natives returning from work in large centres, and by females working in the villages of the Territories.”
It is further admitted in the Blue Book Reports that the imposition of the hut tax causes overcrowding. At Inanda (Natal) the District Magistrate writes: “The crowding of large numbers of both sexes into one hut is noticeable everywhere. This is an expedient for tax-saving; and economy is sought at the expense of morality and health. The ‘idokodo’ (children’s hut) of old is fast disappearing for the above reason.” As regards the amount of the hut tax, the Magistrate of Berkeley West states: “I estimate that natives contribute indirectly to the revenue at the rate of about 12s. to 14s. per head per annum” (“head” being a hut tax payer). From Transkei comes the report: Every adult man with a wife pays a hut tax of 10s., with an extra 10s. for every additional wife. They also pay tank dues and dog taxes.”
Pneumonia, miners’ phthisis and syphilis – these are the three plagues which are decimating the native population of South Africa, for whom we white races have made ourselves the responsible guardians, inasmuch as we have taken away much of their land, have forced them to pay us taxes (though we give them no representation), and compel them, through economic pressure, to work for us. As regards the way we meet our responsibilities, I cull the following from the Twenty-second Annual Report of the Chamber of Mines (1911): “The question of mortality of natives is having the closest attention of your Executive; and it has been pointed out to you before that if we are not to be credited with humanitarian impulses, we are at least actuated by business motives in preserving our native labour force in an efficient and healthy condition.” Socialists, at least, can read between the lines of this cynical utterance, and they realise that, whether it is a question of “our native labour force,” or “our white labour force,” any ameliorative industrial legislation brought in under capitalism is only (like the Lloyd George Insurance Bill) introduced in order to preserve that “labour force in an efficient and healthy condition” in order that it may be more profitable for exploitation.
In pursuit of this policy actuated by “business motives” the Chamber of Mines reports that the death-rate from pneumonia among natives has been reduced from 44 per 1,000 per annum to 27 per 1,000 per annum; and that since the recent professional visit to the Rand of Sir Almroth Wright, when he prepared a vaccine and inoculated the natives for pneumonia on a large scale, pneumonia has been less rife among the “boys.” But when one sees the magnificent physique and muscular strength of both men and women natives in their kraals, and when one studies the bases of their traditional morality and hygiene, one asks oneself if it is not one of the great crimes against human life which is being committed at the present day in South Africa, where beautiful bodies, once instinct with health, are being, for the vile purposes of capitalist exploitation, first infected with loathsome diseases, and then inoculated with still more loathsome viruses. Surely in our mad lust for gold we are getting further and further away from John Ruskin’s dictum that “the only wealth is life"!
Having shown from the actual reports of the exploiters themselves what are the conditions under which their cheap native labour is recruited and treated, I will now give an account of the work in the gold mines themselves, and in my concluding article will give facts and figures concerning the dread miners’ phthisis, which attacks and kills both white and native workers. Night and day the shifts of coughing white and native wage-slaves, urged by the whip of economic compulsion, slide down the gaping holes that lead to the underground workings. Night and day, and even on Sundays, pound away the mighty stamps which crush to powder the rock that the electric drills and dynamite have shifted underground. The skips that bring up the rock take down the miners and the hammerboys – 600, 1,000, 2,000 feet, according to the levels at which they are working. Once down below the scene suggests Dante’s Inferno, and the words “All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” leap to the lips. As I recall my visit to the various levels of a Rand gold mine, I see again the passages and tunnels, where, with a small lamp in hand, I groped and stumbled. From time to time a tiny gleam of light showed in the distance, and the distant rattle along the rails of a Kaffir-propelled truck could be heard. A shout, a slowing down of the truck, while my guide and I scrambled behind an abutting rock, and soon the truck, its load, and the Kaffir were once more lost in the gloom. A sudden bend to the right in the tunnel and we splashed through a pool of water made from the steady drip, drip of the rough hewn roof, while slight-looking wattle trunks bent and split under the weight of scooped-out rock. As we groped our way along we could hear a faint, muffled tap, tap, tap, coming, it seemed, through the rock on the left. It was the hammering of a gang of native “boys” working in a neighbouring stope; they were hammering out the holes in the rock destined to receive the charges of dynamite. By and by, through a three-foot-high opening in the side of the tunnel, a staggering whiff of “native” greeted our nostrils. That hole led down to a stope, and, guided by the sound of the hammering, which gradually grew into a clanging din, we reached, by crawling on hands and knees, one of the side chapels of this temple of the great gold god. Wearing fragmentary loin and leg coverings, and moving like the spirits of the damned in the half-revealing gloom, more than a hundred Kaffirs were swinging their hammers, were sweating and shouting on the floor of a stope a few feet high, and as steep as the roof of a church. One white man (once a Northumberland coal miner), sitting apart, guided and controlled their fantastic clamour.
For more than five minutes I sat spell-bound, thinking out the perversity of the situation which forced men to leave the light of day, and to sweat, and toil, and curse in this man-conceived hell, in order that other men and women, whom they had never seen, might have more wealth and luxuries than they could possibly enjoy. I thought of the many shareholders in Rand gold mines, most of whom had never even seen the outside of a mine, and many of whom would never be induced to go down one and learn at first hand something about this human-life-destroying industry. Then my thoughts turned to the exquisite houses of the mine magnates in Parktown, the wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, and the picture of one of these millionaire houses rose up before me as I saw it but a few days before, with its white walls and its red tiled roof, its terraces and its pergolas, all an exact copy of an old Italian monastery; and I recalled the treasures of art which it contained, and the marvellous Persian rugs and carpets, which alone were insured for £20,000. And I realised that the walls of the house were cemented with human blood, and that human agony, and suffering, and sweat were on its hearthstone, and were crying aloud amidst all the beauty of its art! Twenty-seven shillings worth of gold is the average value extracted from every ton of rock; and this weird scene at which I was assisting was the first process of blasting or “shifting” the rock. Once brought to the surface, it would be crushed and stamped into finest powder; this powder would then be treated by the many and complicated washing processes, then by the scientific cyanide processes, until the last grain of gold would be extracted, and the residuum of white dust be added to the huge “duos,” which rise daily higher and higher along the whole ridge of the Rand. After the final melting and refining of the metal by fire, there emerge the pale yellow bars of gold for which men fight, and cheat, and sell their souls, and destroy their bodies, and forget the purposes and the joy of life!
But my thoughts were broken in on by the suggestion that we should grope our way across the stope and see the padlocked locker containing the stored dynamite, and watch the Northumberland miner make and prepare the fuses. Each miner works his shift with so many Kaffir boys under him, and he is paid according to results in the amount of rock he shifts and gets to the surface. At a lower level the electric drills, with their dreaded death-dealing dust, were at work. Here the jarring, boring, piercing noises racked the nerves, and added one more terror to this devitalising toil. Streams of water played on the spots where the electric drills were being used, and these are supposed to mitigate the danger of the dust; but in many overhead drills it is impossible to use the water without half-drowning the “boy” who is working the drill, and the safeguard of water has, of necessity, to be dispensed with. The official reports continue, however, to record “the persistent carelessness of the miners,” ignoring the fact that the very nature of the work is a gamble with human life, and could not, under the best of conditions, be made either a safe or a healthy occupation.
And so we continued to grope on through galleries and workings one above the other, honeycombing the ground for miles round, past stopes, and pumps and sidings, and dodging incessantly the little Kaffir-propelled trucks with their blinking lights rumbling through the gloom towards the pit head. As one set of sweat-drenched toilers scramble into the skips to leave work another shift is deposited below ground, and the hammering and the blasting recommence. The mineowners have learnt now that, just as a horse which has done an exhausting day’s work will last much longer if he gets a rub down, a warm drink and a decent stable, so also a Kaffir, who is in their eyes a working animal of some economic value, will last better if he is forced after working a shift in the mines to change his clothes, take a warm bath, and take a drink of hot coffee. So instead of letting the “boys” die by thousands of pneumonia (from sudden contact with the cold air above ground), as used to be the case, they are not permitted to return to the compound till they have gone through the ceremonies of the change of clothes and the warm drink, and now they only die of pneumonia by hundreds. The compound is a collection of huts where the natives sleep, feed and live what life they have above ground. The huts stand in an enclosure, and a European official has charge of the compound. The amount of the food values served out to the “boys,” and which is known as their “skoff,” is fixed by Government. As much as possible the natives of the different races herd together in these compounds, and those who come from tropical parts have huts specially contrived to keep out the cold of a Johannesburg winter’s night, for the mortality among these tropical natives is specially high. We looked in at one of these huts, where Nyassa boys were crouching together in their blankets, seeking warmth from each other’s bodies, and death was already written on the yellow, shrunken faces of many of the poor victims of the Rand shareholders’ thirst for dividends. There are no statistics collected of the deaths of natives from miners’ phthisis, but since it is acknowledged now, in the Report of the Commission instructed to inquire into the subject, as an “occupational disease” which attacks white miners working with drilling machines at the rate of 11/2 per cent. after six months’ work, we may infer that native labour, with its lesser power of resistance, would provide an even heavier sickness and death-roll from this dreaded disease of fibroid phthisis.
I have already alluded in this series of articles to the dangerous nature of Rand gold-mining from falls of rock and earth, dynamite explosions, and the disease known as miners’ phthisis; but few English people know how terribly prevalent among miners exposed to the inhalation of silicious rock dust is this scourge of fibroid phthisis. It would appear that the fine silicious dust, when inhaled, gradually cuts away the delicate hairs and membranes in the nostrils which serve to protect the lungs from the inroads of minute foreign matters, and that once this natural protection is removed the deadly dust has free access to the lung cavity, where it collects, and changes the spongy matter of the lung tissue into a solid mass as hard as white cement. At first the voice of the sufferer is affected; then he coughs constantly and is short of breath; then, as the disease gains ground, he has to admit he is ill, and frequently unfit for work; finally, he takes to his bed, and dies a horrible, tortured death, gasping for every breath, and, at times, tied down in his bed to prevent him flinging himself on the floor in his efforts to reach an open door or window. Such a scourge has the disease become among white miners, as well as among natives, that a Medical Commission has at last been appointed by the Union Government of South Africa to carry out investigations in connection with the disease; and a short time before I left the country their report was completed, and was presented to the Government. The findings of that report were of an even more startling nature than was expected; and I want the English public to realise that all the facts and figures I am about to give refer to white miners only. It is for white miners only that a sanatorium is provided by shareholders who are pocketing their cent. per cent. out of the sufferings and death of their fellow creatures. And this sanatorium does not deal with a tithe of the cases that every week require treatment and nursing.
The Commission, during its investigations, medically examined over 3,000 men who had been engaged in mining in the Transvaal. Of these, rather more than 1,000, or over 30 per cent., were found to be suffering from fibroid or miners’ phthisis. The facts collected went to show that even after six months’ work with drilling machines the disease could be detected in 11/2 per cent. of the men; after 30 months, more than one-fourth showed symptoms; and after four years’ work with electric drills over 40 per cent. were affected. Four and a-half years lifted the statistics to nearly 55 per cent.; and five and a-half to nearly 64 per cent. Six and a-half years raised the percentage to 70, and for each additional year of service it rose, until at ten and a-half years it exceeded 80 per cent., and at fifteen and a-half years it attained 100 per cent. Of the men examined by the Commissioners, 1,100 were South Africans, and over 300 of them, or 27 per cent., were affected by the disease. England contributed 1,300, of whom about one-third were affected. The remainder included miners from Australia and various other parts of the world. There are, of course, underground, besides the machine rock-drillers and hammermen, many skilled mechanics, engine-drivers and engineers, and these men also at times contract the disease. For hand miners the figures are not so bad; nevertheless, this section of the men examined showed over 20 per cent. affected after 30 months’ work. At five and a-half years the percentage exceeded 30 per cent.; at nine and a-half it passed 40 per cent.; while at the tenth year of work 60 per cent. was reached.
According to the 1911 Annual Report of the Chamber of Mines, the Executive, on their own confession, do not claim to be “credited with humanitarian impulses,” so we can hardly expect that a movement will come from that quarter for checking this deplorable loss of health and life. But, surely, when the true facts of the mortality caused by the exploitation of the workers in this modern industrial warfare are brought before the workers of the world, some concerted movement will be made to encourage and support the Rand miners in their projected strike.
Not only are these unfortunate workers robbed of health and life, but their wages are being seriously reduced, and an organised attempt is being made by the magnates to train and prepare a body of young Dutch workmen (some of them lads of only 17 or 18) to scab on the skilled miners should a strike break out. The trustified power of these magnates is almost irresistible; mine managers, officials and miners are dismissed and replaced with autocratic despotism. None can feel that his job is safe; none dare stand up against these Czars of finance. To add to the difficulties of the Rand miners, the old craft union ideals pit the interests of one set of workers against those of another, and as the underground engine-drivers refuse to come out the possibilities of a successful strike of the miners are much diminished.
Instead of the so-called “Labour” Party in South Africa educating the workers in real class-consciousness, and pointing out to them that the industrial interests of all workers are identical, we find a “Labour” candidate (who is now a “Labour” Member) appealing in his election speeches and literature to the worst form of racial prejudices among the workers, and promising, if he were returned to Parliament, to prevent “corrupt Dutch politicians from replacing English workers on the railways by Dutch workers.” The objective of any party in South Africa which claims to educate industrially and represent the people should be to organise all the white workers, of both races, and the coloured and native workers in one solid union and party, so as to present a united front to the industrial tyranny of the Randlords. There is no other possible hope for the skilled workers of the Union.
The workers’ standard of living is being steadily undermined in all the States, while in Cape Colony it is a case of absolute competition with the coloured man and woman. The railways are State-owned throughout the Union, and the minimum wage for railway workers is 3s. a day. Such pay as this means that the standard of wages among railwaymen is not a high one, and we find many railwaymen married to coloured women because their weekly wage will not keep a white woman at the standard of living which she demands. The Government employs white women to keep the newspaper and bookstalls on the railway line in Cape Colony. I found that one of these women (a widow) was supporting herself and five children on the 16s. a week which was the wage paid by the Government for this work. Her hours were from 7 in the morning till 6 at night. That woman and her children (who are to be some of the future citizens of Cape Colony) are bound to fall to the level of the standard of living of the coloured people, because, on 16s. a week, the rent they can afford to pay compels them to inhabit coloured quarters, and to mix with the coloured population. In the slums of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, “poor whites,” Chinese, Armenians, Malays and coloured folk swarm and breed among unspeakable surroundings. The irresistible laws of economic compulsion compel them to herd together in corrugated iron hovels, from which slum landlords extract fabulous rents. In a word, there is no country in the world where capitalist development is being so rapidly and so ruthlessly accomplished. On the one hand, monstrous accumulations of wealth, filling the pockets of a few thousand people, many of whom have never even seen South Africa; and on the other hand, the most sordid and helpless poverty, to the level of which even skilled workers are being steadily crushed. And to further bemuse and enslave these skilled workers the three capitalist parties – Unionists, Nationalists, and Political Labourists, who thoroughly understand each other when it comes to exploiting labour, offer their nostrums at election time to the working men voters, and, when once sure of their £400 a year, betray and further enslave them till next election day comes round. South Africa is not only at the present moment helping to raise, through her cheap and rapid output of gold, the cost of living all over the world, but she is serving as an object-lesson to industrial workers of every country as an up-to-date expression of concentrated and intensive capitalist development, which must, in the very nature of things, hasten on there, as elsewhere, the Industrial and Social Revolution.