20. Chapter XX: That Aristocracy May Be Engendered By
Manufactures
I have shown that democracy is favorable to the growth of
manufactures, and that it increases without limit the numbers of
the manufacturing classes: we shall now see by what side road
manufacturers may possibly in their turn bring men back to
aristocracy. It is acknowledged that when a workman is engaged
every day upon the same detail, the whole commodity is produced
with greater ease, promptitude, and economy. It is likewise
acknowledged that the cost of the production of manufactured
goods is diminished by the extent of the establishment in which
they are made, and by the amount of capital employed or of
credit. These truths had long been imperfectly discerned, but in
our time they have been demonstrated. They have been already
applied to many very important kinds of manufactures, and the
humblest will gradually be governed by them. I know of nothing
in politics which deserves to fix the attention of the legislator
more closely than these two new axioms of the science of
manufactures.
When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the
fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with
singular dexterity; but at the same time he loses the general
faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. He
every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it
may be said of him, that in proportion as the workman improves
the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who has spent
twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? and to what
can that mighty human intelligence, which has so often stirred
the world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the
best method of making pins' heads? When a workman has spent a
considerable portion of his existence in this manner, his
thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily toil; his
body has contracted certain fixed habits, which it can never
shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the
calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws and manners
have been at the pains to level all barriers round such a man,
and to open to him on every side a thousand different paths to
fortune; a theory of manufactures more powerful than manners and
laws binds him to a craft, and frequently to a spot, which he
cannot leave: it assigns to him a certain place in society,
beyond which he cannot go: in the midst of universal movement it
has rendered him stationary.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is
more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the artisan
recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount of
capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated men come
forward to embark in manufactures which were heretofore abandoned
to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The magnitude of the efforts
required, and the importance of the results to be obtained,
attract them. Thus at the very time at which the science of
manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of
masters.
Whereas the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys a more
extensive whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in
proportion as that of the former is narrowed. In a short time
the one will require nothing but physical strength without
intelligence; the other stands in need of science, and almost of
genius, to insure success. This man resembles more and more the
administrator of a vast empire -that man, a brute. The master
and the workman have then here no similarity, and their
differences increase every day. They are only connected as the
two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and out of which he does not
get: the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent
upon the other, and seems as much born to obey as that other is
to command. What is this but aristocracy?
As the conditions of men constituting the nation become more
and more equal, the demand for manufactured commodities becomes
more general and more extensive; and the cheapness which places
these objects within the reach of slender fortunes becomes a
great element of success. Hence there are every day more men of
great opulence and education who devote their wealth and
knowledge to manufactures; and who seek, by opening large
establishments, and by a strict division of labor, to meet the
fresh demands which are made on all sides. Thus, in proportion
as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, that particular
class which is engaged in manufactures becomes more aristocratic.
Men grow more alike in the one -more different in the other; and
inequality increases in the less numerous class in the same ratio
in which it decreases in the community. Hence it would appear,
on searching to the bottom, that aristocracy should naturally
spring out of the bosom of democracy.
But this kind of aristocracy by no means resembles those
kinds which preceded it. It will be observed at once, that as it
applies exclusively to manufactures and to some manufacturing
callings, it is a monstrous exception in the general aspect of
society. The small aristocratic societies which are formed by
some manufacturers in the midst of the immense democracy of our
age, contain, like the great aristocratic societies of former
ages, some men who are very opulent, and a multitude who are
wretchedly poor. The poor have few means of escaping from their
condition and becoming rich; but the rich are constantly becoming
poor, or they give up business when they have realized a fortune.
Thus the elements of which the class of the poor is composed are
fixed; but the elements of which the class of the rich is
composed are not so. To say the truth, though there are rich men,
the class of rich men does not exist; for these rich individuals
have no feelings or purposes in common, no mutual traditions or
mutual hopes; there are therefore members, but no body.
Not only are the rich not compactly united amongst
themselves, but there is no real bond between them and the poor.
Their relative position is not a permanent one; they are
constantly drawn together or separated by their interests. The
workman is generally dependent on the master, but not on any
particular master; these two men meet in the factory, but know
not each other elsewhere; and whilst they come into contact on
one point, they stand very wide apart on all others. The
manufacturer asks nothing of the workman but his labor; the
workman expects nothing from him but his wages. The one
contracts no obligation to protect, nor the other to defend; and
they are not permanently connected either by habit or by duty.
The aristocracy created by business rarely settles in the midst
of the manufacturing population which it directs; the object is
not to govern that population, but to use it. An aristocracy
thus constituted can have no great hold upon those whom it
employs; and even if it succeed in retaining them at one moment,
they escape the next; it knows not how to will, and it cannot
act. The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound
by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief
of its serving-men, and to succor their distresses. But the
manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and
debases the men who serve it, and then abandons them to be
supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural
consequence of what has been said before. Between the workmen
and the master there are frequent relations, but no real
partnership.
I am of opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing
aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the
harshest which ever existed in the world; but at the same time it
is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless
the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed
in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of
conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may
be predicted that this is the channel by which they will enter.