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England's Supremacy: Its Sources, Economies and Dangers
England's Supremacy Its Sources Economies and Dangers Author:James Stephen Jeans Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 13 CHAPTER II. textit{THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. "The division of labour, the multiplication of the arts of peace—which is nothing but a ... more »large allowance to each man to choose his work according to his faculty, to live by his better hand—fills the state with useful and happy labourers; and they, creating demand by the very temptation of their productions, are rapidly and surely rewarded by good sale ; and what a police and ten commandments their work thus becomes."— Emerson. In a general way, it may safely be predicated that the nation which has the most varied industry is likely, all other things being equal, to be the most prosperous, powerful, and contented. Agriculture, though the first and most essential of all callings, is still far from yielding the best results, from a commercial and industrial point of view. Take a country that is almost exclusively agricultural, such as Russia, and compare it with another that is almost exclusively industrial, like Belgium, and the comparison is invariably against the agricultural community. If, again, a purely agricultural country be compared with one that is half agricultural and half manufacturing-, the latter will be sure to have the best of the comparison. There are several obvious reasons why this is and must be so. Man is a gregarious animal, and he never enjoys, in rural retirement and exclusiveness, that free scope for the development of his highest faculties that is gained in the association with his fellows which urban life affords. Nor does agriculture, under any circumstances, call for the exercise of those faculties in the same way that manufactures do. For in most handicraftsthere is a certain education to be gone through—an education of the eye, of the ear, of the hand, or of the brain— which varie...« less