Principles of western civilisation

470 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

effective condition in which the future can ever be emancipated in the present in human society. No mind in our civilisation has, in all probability, as yet imagined the full possibilities of the collective organisation—under the direction of a highly centralised and informed intelligence, acting under the sense of responsibility here described—of all the activities of industry and production, moving steadily towards the goal of the endowment of all human capacities in a free conflict of forces. It is only necessary for the observer, who has once grasped the meaning of the development described in the preceding chapters, to stand at almost any point in the life of the English-speaking world of the present day to realise how far society has, in reality, moved beyond that conception of its joint effort which prevailed in the early period of the competitive era '—

1 Many striking features of the current industrial outlook in England are closely associated with this pressing and increasing need for the centralisation and organisation of knowledge through the agency of the State. In the opening year of the twentieth century an observer would find the journals of Great Britain filled with discussions as to the vast and sudden increase in the output of manufactured iron in the United States, accompanied by regrets for the falling place occupied by England in comparison. Yet he might search through nearly all these discussions without finding any reference to the fact of an opportunity unintelligently missed by the latter country to which this result was, for the time being, closely related. Within the last decade of the nineteenth century the conditions of building in cities became entirely revolutionised. By constructing the framework of steel, and merely facing with stone, it became possible to erect with perfect safety, secure and convenient buildings three and four times the average height of the highest business premises at present existing in London. The immense resulting transformation, which is in full progress in the principal cities throughout the United States, has not even yet begun in London, where the height of buildings is still unintelligently regulated by laws and arrangements which were the product of conditions that have been superseded. But the development is creating a revolution in the United States the effects of which will be felt all over the world, and which will last far into the future. It is giving rise to new industries of which America will continue to hold the control fora long time tocome. The effects on the steel industry have been enormous, and will be lasting. It is transforming the methods of business. It is creating new styles of architecture. Even