The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution
Chapter 9: The Personal Stage of Socialization II. The Town Type
Ernest W. Burgess
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The town type of personal relations.—The growth of towns and the rise of a middle class of merchants and artisans coincident with the differentiation of the group of yeomen in the country was a process of socialization characterized by the formation of appropriate mental attitudes and habits which were to play a dynamic rôle in English life. The mercantile system in politics, the Reformation in England, and the Puritan movement were but the projected expression of the everyday thinking, sentiment, habits, and activities of men engaged in trade, in craftwork, and in small manufacture. This new type of socialization finds objective expression in the industrial organization of the town and the occupational experiences of its inhabitants.
Though the towns originated at the time of the Danish invasions,[1] though they were stimulated by the consequences of the Norman Conquest, they but gradually increased in population, wealth, and influence. For example, at the time of the Domesday survey there were only ten towns with over 5,000 inhabitants. London, with but 40,000 inhabitants, was the only city ; York and Bristol were mere towns of 12,000.[2] England was predominantly rural and continued so. Two hundred years later the proportion of town to country population is estimated[3] at one to fourteen. Even in the first third of the sixteenth century London is not credited with more than 60,000 inhabitants.[4] While the number of towns summoned to send representatives to Parliament in the reign of Edward I was 166,[5] these must be thought of as small settlements, the majority of which had not over 1,000 inhabitants.
The village community and the manor contained in embryo those tendencies which were to develop into the economic system of the
( 110) town. The function of the pedlar, with his itinerant circuit to the markets and fairs, devolved later upon local dealers. The division of trades, which exempt in whole or in part certain persons from agricultural labor, furnished the germ of the guild crafts. The development of human nature in the personal, social, and economic relations of the town furnished the new type of mental attitude found in the merchant and the artisan.
The organization of the merchant guild, like that of the village and the manor, is built upon personal and local relations. But here the resemblance ceases. The guild is an association of men engaged in buying and selling for the common promotion of their common ends. The object of the organization is both exclusive and inclusive. The guild secured a monopoly of the local market[6] by the exclusion of non-members from the trade. The welfare of its members was secured both by mutual aid and by the limitations upon competition within the guild. For "the members of the guild had a right to claim to have a part with another member in a successful bargain. If he fell into poverty he might count on their aid, and if he was imprisoned, or even unjustly accused, they would assist him."[7] Thus the organizing principle of the merchant guild was the mutual advantage of its members with reciprocal aid against the outside world.
Partly within and partly without the guild organization, there developed during the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries associations known as craft guilds.[8] Each of these guilds was an organization of the artisans of a single trade. But the mastercraftsman differed from the merchant in manufacturing the goods which he sold to the public or to a complementary craft. With the rapid expansion of industry and the consequent growth of subdivision and specialization[9] of trades in the reign of Edward III, the crafts multi-plied so that in London, for example, there were forty "mysteries."[10] The natural result was that the merchant guilds gradually disintegrated into an aggregate of distinct crafts.[11] With this break-up
( 111) of the old unity of the trades came an increase in the municipal regulation of industry. Although in a few places the crafts became integral parts of the common council and in most places subordinate organs for the regulation of industry, still the community as a whole in its corporate capacity controlled the crafts in the public interest and acted as arbiter in all trade disputes. "The mediaeval world was fully convinced that since all trade and manufacture was carried on for the benefit of the public, all trade and manufacture should be subject to public control; and no one then questioned that it was the duty and the right of the State or the municipality to fix hours of labor, rates of wages, prices of goods, times and places of sale, the quality of the wares to be sold, and so on."[12] So, then, we may look upon the guild crafts of a town as (a) an aggregate of separate associations, each organized to secure a monopoly in its particular trade and complete control over it ;[13] and (b) as a system of industrial organization utilized by the civic government for the regulation of industry in the interests of the whole community.[14]
This sketch of the external organization of the guild cannot but indicate the revolution in industrial habits and mental attitudes involved in the transition from agriculture to trade. The resulting mental type is determined by the play of occupational activities within the circumference of human relations. The mental makeup of the merchant and the artisan was a particular organization of human nature and mind, functionally related to the economic situation of the time.
The relation of the merchant to his customers embodies in inchoate form the Mercantilistic theory. The trader desires a fair profit; the community demands public welfare. The impulse for gain is not instinctive, but is developed in the exchange situation. The merchant's answer in the book of Saxon dialogues indicates that traders were early conscious of a fundamental principle of economics : " `Will you sell your things here as you bought them there ?" I will not, because what would my labor profit me? I will sell them here, dearer than I bought them there, that I may get some
( 112) profit to feed me, my wife, and children.' "[15] Then, too, the community life of the mediaeval town tended to maintain a standard of commercial morality. "So long as economic dealings were based on a system of personal relationships they all had an implied moral character. To supply a bad article was morally wrong, to demand excessive payment for goods or for labor was extortion, and the right or wrong of every transaction was easily understood."[16] In the personal relations of the merchant to his customers there developed two traits of character, a keen desire for profit, and an endeavor to offer good service.
Though the merchant-trader formed the wealthy and influential class in town, the artisan is a better representative of urban industry. With commercial and ethical ideas similar to those of the merchant, the master of a small shop lived his life in the circle of intimate personal relations. He worked side by side with his workmen, who in general lodged at his house and ate at his table. His helpers were of two sorts. The journeymen were young, unmarried men who had served their apprenticeship and who expected in time to start shops of their own. The apprentices were boys, sons of neighbors or of peasants, who had been indentured to the master for seven years to learn the trade. These three groups of workers, apprentice, journeyman, and small employer, represent the three stages in the life of the mastercraftsman. A study of the mental attitudes necessary for success in the trade will give the clue for the interpretation of the rôle of the middle classes in the social, political, and religious movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Specialization of skill was the natural outcome of division of trades. The limitation of the activity of an individual to a single group of allied processes secured not only economy of time and effort, but an increase of efficiency and skill. The concentration of the attention upon the task, the nice co-ordination of hand and eye involved, required a superior type of mental organization and a high refinement of muscular adjustment. The fact that the entire process of production was in the hands of the person introduced the element of control, stimulated initiative, and often resulted in invention. In the majority of trades the variety of the processes in manufacture excluded monotony and sustained interest. The instinct of workmanship was called into play by the rivalry within the group
( 113) of workmen and by the standard of excellence set by the requirements of the examinations of apprentice and of master.
The effects of occupation are not confined to manual efficiency; they determine attitudes to life and shape habits of thought. The activities of the shop, the buying of the raw material, the planning and making of the article, the selling of the finished product, developed a higher type of mental organization than that required for the sowing and the plowing of the peasants. To measure, to calculate, to figure, not only for today, but for a month and a year ahead, made for increased control over mental imagery, the discipline of the imagination, and the discriminating use of past experience. Success in life also required a nicer adjustment to the circle of personal relations around the artisan. The status of the villein, though servile, was secure; on the other hand, the standing of the artisan among his fellows was subject to every shift of circumstance. Little wonder that the mastercraftsman endeavored to secure his position by advantageous relations, not only to his guild, but also within his shop and with the community. This complexity of personal relations tended toward greater self-control. In the guild, the artisan was on terms of equality and brotherhood with his fellows ; in the shop, a master who must get the most labor out of his co-workers ; in trade, deferent, but not servile to my lord and lady. Business life developed its valuable psychic and moral characteristics: steadiness of hand and eye, foresight and calculation, thrift and frugality, neighborliness and self-control. The life of the shop and town contributed its influences. The running talk of the shop, the meetings of the masters of the craft, with the discussion of trade differences, stimulated independence of thinking and made for clearer consciousness of individual and group interest. Town life brought wider contact. Many merchants had business in London or had represented the town in Parliament ; one or two of them had been across the English Channel. In the Middle Ages the country gentry went to town[17] for the winter as now to London. The town clerk had perhaps come from Oxford or Cambridge. The demand for education in reading, writing, and arithmetic for business purposes resulted in the addition of the schoolmaster to the community. Groups of foreign artisans settled from time to time in many of the towns, bringing with them not only improved industrial arts, but
( 114) "outlandish" ways of living. From the country a constant stream of peasant boys and girls sought work and wages. Disciples of Wycliffe were active in spreading their thought-provoking doctrines among the discontented element. All these influences contributed to make the town the center of the new forces making for progress. The foment and ferment of these class and racial contacts could have no other effect than that of widening the mental outlook and of stimulating the thinking of the townsman. It is in these times of unrest and of industrial change that the old "mores"lose their force and new attitudes and habits suited to new circumstances arise.
Town life and occupational activity make not only for an awakened intellectual interest but also for a change in moral attitude. Puritanism has been alike condemned and commended for its part in the destruction of "Merrie England." This popular explanation is superficial. The Puritan movement was simply the projection of the lower middle-class attitude and imposed the middle-class "mores,"accentuated by years of ridicule and persecution, upon the other classes in England. Mrs. Green shows that in town life at the end of the fifteenth century the reaction had set in toward the disapproval of merrymaking. "On the whole, it is evident that long before the Reformation, and even when as yet no Puritan principles had been imported into the matter, the gaiety of the towns was already sobered by the pressure of business and the increase of the class of depressed workers."[18] Daily experience in trade and in craft brought home to individuals the lesson that success in business required habits of industry and economy; that pleasure-seeking, extravagance, and dissipation led to failure. After two or three generations this attitude of mind expressed itself in proverbs and rhymes ; the middle class as a group now sanctioned, as right, con-duct that led to success in business, and condemned, as wrong, conduct that made for failure. It is possible to trace these two steps in the process.
It was but natural for the mastercraftsman to attempt to train his apprentices in habits of application and thrift and to desire steady workers for journeymen. We have no reason to believe that the lower-class English youth of this period was superior to the "roughs and toughs"of American towns and cities. For example, shops were closed on Sunday because "journeymen and apprentices had wasted
( 115) and purloined the property of their masters while they have been attending at their parish churches." [19] The indentures which have been preserved indicate not only the interest of the master in the morals of his apprentice, but also the shortcomings of the latter. "He is not to frequent taverns, commit fornication or adultery with the housemaids or in town, nor betroth himself without his master's permission. He is not to wear certain garments, play at dice, chequers, or any other unlawful game, but is to conduct himself soberly and piously as a good and faithful servant, or in default to serve double time." [20] It is impossible to state what compromise with this ideal resulted in actual life because of the tendency to indulge in the condemned practices, but the attitude of the master may be readily inferred. He had himself been apprentice and journeyman and had observed the worthless after-life of many a good-natured journeyman bent on having a "good time." The example of a "good-for-nothing" old toper of the town must often, in that day as in this, have served as a text for mothers and masters in the training of the boy.
The rising position of women and the beginnings of home life assisted the reaction from merrymaking and dissipation. The relation of home and shop was close. Even the house of the rich merchant, often a three-storied mansion, had the shop on the ground floor. Wife and daughters worked as auxiliary aid in the craft. The widow of the merchant or artisan carried on the trade until remarried[21] Married women were permitted to become traders with the privileges of property-holding and legal protection.[22] These facts indicate how far the influence of the wife and the home might make for the simpler pleasures of the family and away from the distraction of the town festivals and fairs. The artisan can hardly have whole-heartedly approved of the circuses, the pageants, the holidays, and the carnivals inherited from village life. Though these amusements had become communal institutions and made an evident appeal to apprentice and journeyman, the crafts by the end
( 116) of the fifteenth century began to complain[23] against the burden of their support. However the mastercraftsman might at first en-courage and later tolerate them as aids to business, in the end he was bound to recognize that the dissipation and licentiousness connected with them distracted from shop discipline. Besides, their influence was bad on the home life which was now taking the place of the old community activities. Patten, in his book, The Development of English Thought, a searching psychological study of English classes,[24] puts this point well : "Both economically and socially the home and the communal life stand opposed to each other. Economically, because the income spent at the fair and the festival is demanded by the home ; socially, because the pleasures of these places lower men's standards and taint the purer atmosphere of the home. Its more intimate relations demanded a total abstinence from the coarser pleasures in which communal life abounded. As soon, therefore, as economic conditions made English homes possible, the seeds of Puritanism were sown."[25]
The rules of success for individual conduct soon passed into group maxims with the development of personal types approved by the "mores." In the rude proverbs of daily speech, "jingling rhymes of wise council," we may enter into the mental makeup of the crafts-man's life. "They picture a life anxious and difficult, whose recognized condition is one of toil that knows no relaxation and no end, of hardship borne with unquestioned endurance—a life amid whose humble prosperity family affection and the family welfare are best assured by having one roof, one entrance door, one fire, and one dining table, and a `back door' is looked on as an extravagance which would bring any household to ruin. . . . The standard of conduct is one framed for a laborious middle class, with its plain-spoken seriousness, its sturdy morality, its activity and rectitude and independence, its dullness and vigilance and thrift. It is the duty of good men to set their people well to work, to keep house carefully, to get through any heavy job steadily and swiftly, to pay wages regularly, to give true weight, to remember ever that `borrowed thing must needs go home.' "[26]
( 117)
The distinctive characteristics of the middle class are, then : a growing consciousness of class interests, an intellectual awakening, the development of appropriate standards of conduct. This mental organization of interests, attitudes and character of the members of the middle classes had a dynamic effect upon the whole of English life. The Mercantilistic policy, the Reformation, Puritanism, are the three chief expressions of the middle class movement.
A. The class-conscious assertion of national privileges by the commercial and middle classes was a gradual growth. The perception that the national power could be controlled, as the municipal authority had been controlled, for the promotion of commerce and industry, did not at once break upon the perception of the middle class. In a sense the nation stumbled upon the mercantile policy and unconsciously followed its principles long before a conscious attempt was made to utilize it in order to promote national wealth. So great was the hold of the landed aristocracy over the imagination of the middle classes that the latter did not at once appreciate the shift of power in their favor.
The victory of the paid armies of English yeomen over the French feudal array at Crécy and Poitiers had great significance for the future.[27] The new personnel of the English force was a virtual admission that the feudal aristocracy had relinquished its former function of national defense. The employment of an army of paid soldiers instead of the feudal forces indicated that the highest military efficiency in future struggles would depend, primarily, upon a well-filled treasury. These two facts taken together demonstrated that the strength of the nation now lay in its middle class, in its solid gentry and stout yeomen, in its shrewd merchants and thrifty artisans. The consequence of the increasing importance of trade shows itself in the tendency toward the commercialization of the country gentry, in the growing political power of the middle classes, both in Parliament and in the royal favor, and in the development of a national commercial policy. The interests and aims of a commercial class allied with the landed gentry became outspoken in Parliament and began to influence national action.
From early time the influence of the towns was in advance of their direct political control. The advantage, in a crisis, of concentration of population and the towns' general independence of the
( 118) great barons made their adherence of advantage to the king. In a real sense London, with its large population, with its wealthy merchants, and with its prestige among the towns, came to represent the mercantile interest and feeling. As early as the Norman kings, the support of London gained Stephen his throne;[28] the unsuccessful De Montfort relied on the support of the towns ;[29] Henry IV and Henry V allied themselves with the mercantile element,[30] while the unfailing support of London enabled Edward IV to rule more absolutely than his predecessors.[31] The immediate influence of the towns lay in their relation to the pecuniary wants of the king. The periodic financial needs of royalty, particularly acute before a military campaign, indirectly promoted the power of the towns. The large contributions of London citizens and the large loans of the other towns quite generally demanded quid pro quo [32] In addition, the support of the representatives of the boroughs was of increasing importance in the securing of grants of supplies.
For from the initial representation of the towns in De Montfort's Parliament, the participation of the members of the boroughs in Commons[33] gradually widened in scope. In the fifteenth century, although the town representatives outnumbered the knights of the shire four to one in the Commons, questions of finance naturally fell to the former and matters of state were discussed by the latter. But the sixteenth century marks the equality of citizens with the knights[34] in the Commons, as well as the growing importance of the lower house. The seventeenth century opens with the struggle between the king and Parliament ; the lower middle classes are the support of Cromwell during the Commonwealth ;[35] the course of events after the Revolution in 1688 brings definitely into opposition the Tories representing the landholding class and the Whigs depending for
( 119) support upon the middle and commercial classes.[36] Beneath this gradual shifting of power from the landed to the trade interest had proceeded a commercialization of the landowners and the rise of a mercantile national policy.
The expansion of commerce and industry in England resulted in a horizontal instead of a perpendicular stratification of classes. The line of demarkation between land and trade became intercepted by many connecting links. In the first place, a growing appreciation of wealth led to the fusion of the landed gentry with the trade aristocracy. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the intermarriage of the families of the country gentry and successful town merchants,[37] in the eighteenth century the many matrimonial alliances between commercial magnates and noble houses,[38] tended to consolidate the interests of the two classes. Then, too, the wealthy merchant, craving the aristocratic distinction which land gave, became a large landowner.[39] It was from the country gentry and commercial classes that Henry VII created his new nobility[40] after the destruction of the old feudal houses. Not only sentiment and family ties, but also economic interest tended to unite the two classes. The foreign and home demand for English wool helped to overturn the manorial system and the feudal conception of landholding. To the lord of the manor the possession of land had been valued because it would sup-port men, peasants to till the soil, and a military retinue to fight for him in battle.[41] The squire, sometimes himself a wealthy merchant, now perceived in his land, pasture for sheep; and in wool, a commodity, the sale of which would bring him in a profit. The objective manifestation of this new mental attitude is seen in the extensive inclosures for pastures during the sixteenth century.[42] The eviction of the smaller tenants, the raising of the rent for yeomen and farmers, the unscrupulous inclosing of the commons, caused such general suffering that More in his Utopia is moved to complain that
( 120) "sheep may be said now to devour men, and to unpeople not only villages but towns." [43]
At the same time a similar fusion was tending to unite the interests and points of view of the lower classes. The common attitude of the small artisan and yeoman need not have been due to intimate relations, for the economic situation of the two classes was similar. The necessity of ingraining habits of industry, the emphasis upon thrift and economy, the value of foresight, the development of a protective philosophy against the practices of the wealthier classes, were common to both groups. This union of the poorer classes of the town and the village was due not only to the fellow-feeling of common oppression, but also to ties of relationship. Many of the apprentices and journeymen had parents in the country.[44] This interconnection was local and passive, and not until Cromwell's time was any attempt made to organize it.
The development of the commercial attitude in the landed aristocracy, together with its control over the minds of the merchants and manufacturers, soon began to influence national policy. The feudal baron had been content with plenty, food and drink enough for his household and for his armed retainers. The merchant, however, in selling his wares, wanted a profit over the purchase price ; the landlord was now looking for high rents from his land and high prices for his wool; the manufacturer, no longer content with community standing, desired a gain on the increased investment of capital in his business; while the king wanted a huge accumulation of treasure, ready at hand for the emergency of war and as an insurance against the necessity of too frequent parliaments.[45] The guilds in the town had been strong enough to manipulate the municipal power to their own advantage: the control of the national power meant a much wider field of activity. In a sense, Mercantilism is a generalization to national affairs of the guild system of control of the towns [46] The strong local power of the municipality became subordinate to the growing national patriotism; the welfare of the trade and landed aristocracy became more and more dependent upon
( 121) securing and maintaining a national regulation of commerce and industry. The first definite adherence to the new policy comes in the reign of Richard III." Pushed on, as we may believe, with the approval of London merchants,"[47] three trade measures highly to the interest of the commercial classes became laws: the prohibition of retail trade by foreign merchants in England, the encouragement of the native shipping, and the prohibition of the export of money and bullion except under royal license.[48] These statutes exhibit the purpose of Mercantilism and the means sought to secure the end. The goal is national power; the means employed are the accumulation of treasure, increase of shipping, regulation of commerce and industry,[49] ostensibly and to a limited extent in regard to the interests of the whole people, but predominantly in the interests of the powerful merchants and the large landholders.[50] So it came about in England that, while in theory Mercantilism was a system which aimed to promote national efficiency in the struggle for political and commercial existence, in practice it was a manipulation of this principle in favor of the merchants, manufacturers, and landlords. While in foreign affairs commerce and industry long remained sub-ordinate to or at most contributory to national policy, in domestic regulation of industry the economic interests of the wealthy classes were promoted at the expense of the interests of the bulk of the population.
Mercantilism was not satisfied with securing a home market and the regulation of domestic industry, but extended its activity to inter-national relations. The foreign policy of the nation was the outcome of the patriotic desires of the English sovereign and the national prejudice of the people, influenced more and more by the commercial interests of the classes in control of Parliament and public opinion. The change was from wars of military conquest and of religion to wars for a sole market. The Hundred Years' War, the foreign policy of Henry VIII, the rôle of England as the champion of Protestantism, were predominantly contests for military glory or religious defense, although economic motives were involved. But from "the middle of the seventeenth century . . . European wars have been waged on behalf of the balance of [commercial] power. . . . The English, the French and the Dutch were the
( 122) competitors in the wars for a sole market. But Holland was practically ruined at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and France was stripped . . . of her colonies at the peace of Paris, and England became not only the principal maritime, but the principal manufacturing and mercantile country in the world. . . . The most important sole market which Great Britain had acquired by her wars was the seaboard of North America. To support the finances of the chartered company, the British Parliament determined on taxing the inhabitants of her sole market, and the result . . . was the war of American Independence." [51]
Not only the securing of the world-market for English goods, but the regulation of industry was a characteristic piece of Mercantilistic policy. Ostensibly for the good of the public and of the laborer, the statutes for the reorganization of industry contain unmistakable evidences of class legislation. Thus the famous Statute of Labourers of Elizabeth's reign,[52] providing for the assessment of wages, states in the preamble that "the wages and allowances rated and limited in many of the said statutes [i.e., the old Statutes of Labourers] are in divers places too small and not answerable to this time," and hypocritically places the machinery of enforcement of the act in the hands of the local justices of the peace, men closely allied to the employer and too often identical with him.[53] One main object of the Law of Apprenticeship was to prevent the movement of population from the country to the towns.[54] The levy of the compulsory poor rate prescribed in the celebrated Poor Law of Elizabeth[55] fell heavily upon the small occupier who did not employ laborers, and worked to the advantage of the employer of workmen.[56] The prohibition of the export of wool benefited the manufacturers, while the Corn Laws worked to the advantage of the landowners. The protest of Parliament against monopolies is an instance in which the interests of the commercially and politically dominant classes coincided with the welfare of the unrepresented classes. But the fact that "all through the seventeenth century a rise of rents is treated, not as a special boon to the landlord class, but as a gain to the country at large,"[57] is due not so much to the public spirit of the landlords,
( 123) as to their utter lack of appreciation of the existence of the interests of the other classes.[58] The Navigation Acts[59] were recognized at the time as favoring the merchants and the shipping interest,[60] but were defended on the ground of the necessity of maintaining a large sea-force.
Such were the objects and ends of a trade policy consistent with the patriotism and prejudice, the aims and interests of country gentlemen and thrifty merchants. Despite the fact that the wealthy classes were too prone to identify class interest with public policy, and too ready to impose galling restrictions and regulations upon the working class, the mercantile policy demonstrated that the state was not simply an instrument for national military defense and for police protection, but also an agency for promoting the material interests of the people. Never was the apparent success of the system more striking than before its collapse : a world-market had been won for English trade; the Napoleonic contests had been sustained by adherence to Mercantilistic principles. Beneath the forms and limitations of the old system, a new industrial relationship was coming into existence. With the nationalization of Mercantilism, that is, with the substitution of parliamentary regulation of industry for local control, the beginnings of a new relation of persons evolved. The personal relations of the shop and the manor were breaking up, the impersonal relations of the factory with its large employer and hundreds of employees, and the estate with landlord-farmer and laborers were taking their place. But before we consider the development of our present industrial system let us consider the two other chief manifestations of the middle-class movement, the Reformation and Puritanism.
B. The Reformation was an expression and a development of the intellectual independence and the economic discontent of the time. Its theological doctrines are to be found in the thinking of the
( 124) intellectual leaders of the period, but its actual movement was deter-mined by the attitude and interests of the mercantile and middle classes.
The Reformation, on its theoretical side, found its inception in an academic environment. Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther were college men. In England Oxford[61] has always been the starting-point of all the great religious movements. In the third decade of the sixteenth century Cambridge was the center of a group of men,[62] including Coverdale, Tyndale, and Latimer, who met for purposes of religious discussion. The singular freedom and special privileges enjoyed by universities promoted independence of thinking. As Rogers says of Oxford, "It was certainly self-governed, and its authority over its own students was declared to be independent of bishop and pope. Many, too, believed that the course of its studies, under which the most sacred questions were customarily attacked and defended, lent no little aid to the skeptical tone which characterized the writings and conversation of its members."[63] The leadership in religious reform now passed from the monastery to the university. Practically all great future movements in religion, whether the Wesleyan revival or the Oxford movement, were to find their inception in the minds of men kindled by the fullest knowledge of the day.
But the Reformation must have perished still-born, had not circumstances favored its living and growth. The decisive influence which furnished a social body for the new faith seems to have been the mental attitude of the middle class. The economic independence and the urban surroundings of the artisan and merchant made possible and stimulated intellectual independence; the utility of reading and writing for business accounts and transactions gave an incentive to education. The growth of a lay reading class accelerated the invention of printing and its perfection,[64] while the consequent multiplication of books increased the group of readers. The psycho-logical effect of the sixteenth century overvaluation of the printed page, when practically the only book in general circulation was the Bible, cannot be ignored. At any rate, the functional connection
( 125) between the interests and habits of thought of the middle class and the Reformation is obvious. As Rogers points out, "In European history, discontent with existing religious institutions, and the acceptance of heresy on speculative topics, have always been characteristic of manufacturing regions. It was the case in Toulouse in Southern France, in Flanders, in Eastern England. The French Huguenots were the manufacturers and merchants of that country in the seventeenth century, and when they were expelled, carried with them their skill and their capital. Only Italy is an exception, and Italy profited so greatly by the Papacy that it was not disposed to quarrel with the institution." [65]
The hostility of the mercantile manufacturing and trading class to the Catholic church in England was a complex development from many sources. Although the will of the wealthy merchant would probably provide for candles and prayers "for his soul's welfare," and while the magnificence of the local church called forth strong local pride,[66] the payment of immense sums of money to the Roman see not only was the subject of uneasy speculation concerning its relation to the balance of trade,[67] but also was a sore trial to the national self-consciousness.[68] "Nothing," says Stubbs, "had helped so much to maintain the national feeling against the Papacy as the payment of Peter's pence, the penny from every hearth due for the Romescot." [69] Gifts and legacies to monasteries also decreased in the latter part of the fifteenth century,[70] and stories reflecting upon the character of monks began to circulate widely.[71] The question of usury also caused irritation against the church; the merchants, curiously enough, contended that the ecclesiastical courts were too lenient with offenders against the canon.[72] Of all the struggles for liberty waged by towns against their feudal lords, that waged by
( 126) towns on church lands against their ecclesiastical lords was the most bitter.[73] Then, too, the relative freedom from taxation of church and monastic property could not but be noted by the other classes[74] upon whom the heavy burden of military expenditure fell. Quarrels within the church and the growing secularity of the priests inevitably resulted in winning popular contempt and in the independent development of spiritual religion.
The life and teachings of Wycliffe not only prepared the way for the Reformation, but articulated the attitude of a large part of the people to the church. His two central ideas were evangelical poverty and dominion founded on grace. This latter doctrine was in reality a spiritualization of the feudal theory of lordship based on reciprocity of service.[75] Thus, in a sense, the Oxford reformer is reactionary ; at the same time, when the personal ties of feudalism are snapping asunder, he would substitute relations of real service for the extortion and exploitation of the past. His disciples, however, perceived the full social significance of his teachings and entered on a political campaign to accomplish them. The spread of Lollardism was not confined to the peasantry, among whom Wycliffe's poor priests were not much more than agents for unifying the discontent of the period, but made its way far more intelligibly among the artisans and workmen of the towns. In the fifteenth century these doctrines spread to the eastern counties, which were then the centers of industrial life.[76] "For a long time a `weaver,' " says Rogers, "was the familiar synonym for a heretic." [77] Lollardism gave a religious sanction to the thrifty habits of the artisan, and a part of his saving was the money which his more superstitious neighbor spent on priest or monk.[78] The economic character of the Lollard movement is evinced in the Lollard petition to Parliament in1394, which not only disapproves of many of the doctrines and ceremonies of the church, but also condemns "war and capital punishment and trade in luxuries." [79] All evidence goes to show that Lol-
( 127) -lardism was not only a natural expression of the middle-class movement in England, but also revealed the fundamental factors under-lying the break with Rome in England. The Reformation in England was diverted from its natural course of development by the emergence of other factors, which, while accelerating the movement in some directions, impeded it in others. So in analyzing the elements which entered into the situation in England, it will be necessary to take into account other factors than the intellectual awakening and the habits of mind of the middle class.
A statement of the significance of the Reformation in England is difficult, because of the complexity both of the factors entering into it and of the effects produced. The Reformation seems to be a product of the interwoven forces rising out of the economic, intellectual, and national situations. The rising prosperity of the mercantile, artisan, and yeoman classes was achieved by the realization of an economic interest, which grudged the payment of the ecclesiastical exactions and resented the immunity from taxation enjoyed by church lands. This material development made possible and required the growth of the intellectual interest. The thinker and doubter found an aspiring social group with leisure and inclination to hear criticisms of the existing order. The strength of the economic motive in providing a social body for the new movement is shown by the decisive influence[80] which the distribution of monastic lands played in securing the adherence of the aristocracy. Then, too, the perpetual possibility of a clash between the Papacy and the king furnished the situation in which the whole force of the royal power might definitely be brought to aid the new movement. Had a sufficient cause for conflict arisen between pope and Lancastrian king when Lollardism was strong in England, the religious separation might have come a century earlier. Had no such contention arisen, the birth of the Church of England might have been delayed a century. But the addition of the national factor, decisive for the moment, operated in the long run to confine the natural development of the Reformation. So far as Henry VIII and Elizabeth were concerned, Protestantism meant royal, rather than papal, control of the church. So the reaction from Catholicism was carried out, in the completest sense, in the Puritan and sectarian movements.
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The results of the Reformation may be briefly catalogued. First of all there was the serious diminution in the temporal power of the organized church. Stripped of its large material possessions, isolated from the church universal, the Anglican church definitely accepted its subordination to the secular power. Then there was at the same time a trend toward larger freedom in religious opinion, an emancipation of the individual from the control of the organization, toward a larger participation of the individual in the religious life of the time. This tendency expressed itself at first only in the leaders of the religious movement; it was later that the new sense of individual religious freedom became a part of the life of groups in the population. Politically, the Reformation tended to stimulate national sentiment and patriotism by emphasizing the difference between England and South European countries and by placing the English nation in the rôle of the defender of Protestantism. The change to Protestantism was of far-reaching intellectual importance. While the movement did not at once fully emancipate the human mind, it permitted to men of learning a sure, if somewhat restricted, field of intellectual activity. So we perceive that in England organized religion did not as in France repress or expel the free, intellectual energy generated by the middle classes, but accommodated its machinery to a restrained utilization of this new force.
C. The Reformation has been interpreted as essentially a part of the middle-class movement, but largely influenced and controlled in England by the king and the aristocracy. The attempt will now be made to indicate that Puritanism was a lower middle-class development, largely independent of king and aristocracy, which at-tempted to force the tendencies of the Reformation to their logical conclusion. The steps in the proof are as follows : (1) The lower middle class constituted the bulk of the Puritan movement. (2) The practical aims of Puritanism were those of a group struggling with the problems of the middle-class situation. (3) Puritanism, in its further historical development, has been associated both within and without the Established Church with the middle classes of the population.
1. The Puritan movement found its fertile soil in the middle classes. Economic conditions in England in the Tudor period favored the development of a substantial class between the aristocracy, on the one hand, and the tenants and wage-earners on the
( 129) other. "The classes immediately above that of the wage-earners, which included small farmers, shop-keepers, and small employers, naturally profited greatly by the rise in prices. . . . We are not surprised to find that the middle classes grew greatly both in numbers and wealth during the reign of Elizabeth. It was these classes who were most attracted towards Puritanism, which thus became, before the close of Elizabeth's reign, an important factor in the national life, though it was still only slightly represented in the House of Commons, and still more slightly in the House of Lords."[81] The membership of the early separatist churches appears to be drawn from the lower middle class. For example,[82] out of the forty-eight names given of members of Johnson's London congregation in 1592, 27 are artisans, 7 ministers, teachers, and clerks, 4 servants, 6 other employments, 4 occupation not given. "The bulk [of the Pilgrim Fathers]," says Green, "were God-fearing farmers from Lincolnshire and the Eastern counties." [83]
The division of classes as revealed in the Civil War indicates that Parliament and the Commonwealth depended for support on the middle classes. "The core, so to speak, [of the Royalist party] consisted of the country squires, with their deep-rooted traditions of loyalty, their habits of local leadership, their contempt for the interference of yeomen and artisans in politics";[84] consequently, "royalism failed just where Puritanism succeeded, in getting hold of the middle class." [85] That Puritanism was not a lower-class movement is also clear. "Till after Marston Moor the peasantry in most of the counties leaned decidedly to the Royalist side." [86]
2. Not only was Puritanism a lower middle-class movement, but its practical program is genetically related to the problems of the middle-class situation. Puritanism in England was an attempt to realize the economic, moral, and intellectual interests of the lower middle class and to make its standards universal for English society.
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a) The Puritan movement on its economic side was a portion of the great individualistic trend which followed in the wake of the break-up of the feudal industrial order. The Puritan in his economic relations was the prototype of the "economic man," motived by enlightened self-interest. An artisan in the town and a yeoman in the country, he must count the pennies to make both ends meet. Thrifty and self-reliant, with a scorn for the incompetent, he developed, as well, traits of character and habits which have won him the severest condemnation. Cunningham savagely attacks Puritanism for its merciless exploitation of inferior groups and races. "The effects of Puritan teaching in undermining the old teaching about the lawful use of riches has already been discussed. . . . There are three positive evils where its tendency can be most clearly traced: (a) in degrading the condition of the laborer; (b) in reckless treatment of native races ; and (c) the development of the worst forms of slavery." [87] The changes under the Puritan régime in England were for the benefit of the hirer of labor and brought little or no advantage to the wage-working class. "Puritanism, by abolishing holidays and generally discountenancing amusements, tended to make work longer and harder. When we allow for this, and for the small rise in prices, it is questionable whether there was much improvement in real wages, measured by time." [88] The Puritan most certainly used his lease of power to legislate for his own class benefit and not for the advantage of the thriftless, amusement-loving laborer!
b) The moral attitude of the Puritan was a natural outgrowth of the economic problems of the lower middle-class situation. To this economically valuable code of conduct was given the highest religious sanction. No keener nor more incisive psychological analysis of the relation of the religion and the morals of aspiring lower economic groups has been given than that by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations. In the following passage, it is true, the great economist is especially concerned with the sectarian movements of his day, but the principles stated are applicable to the origin and development of practically all the Protestant sects : "In every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or
( 131) systems of morality current at the same time ; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other, the liberal, or if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people : the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion. . . . In the liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, etc., provided that they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week's thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman forever, and to drive him through despair upon committing the most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people, therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to people of their condition. . . .
"Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as their most numerous proselytes. . . . The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend themselves to that order of people to whom they first proposed their plan of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them, perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavored to gain credit by refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigor has frequently recommended them more than anything else to the respect and veneration of the common people."[89]
This analysis by Smith makes plain the three stages in the development of Puritan "mores": first, conduct with an economic value; then, a moral code approved by the group; finally, standards of morality with the highest religious sanction. The political triumph of Puritanism disclosed the extent to which the "mores" of the
( 131) lower class were imposed by legislation upon the people. "At the same time the religious observance of Christmas Day was prohibited, marriages were only lawful if solemnized by a magistrate, and plays, horse-races, and most public amusements were forbidden. It is unquestionable that these restrictions were greatly resented by the poor, while amongst the richer folk the memoirs of the time show how many who had opposed the Laudian movement were even less satisfied with the new religious fashions." [90]
c) The intellectual interest of Puritanism found its chief expression in a theology which reflected and synthesized the life-experience of the man of the lower middle class. Calvinism is the theoretical expression of the new individualistic attitude toward life. The chief points in the Calvinistic doctrine, salvation by grace, total depravity, and election, have a peculiar relation to the everyday life of the middle class. Redemption by grace rather than by works meant in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries salvation by godly living rather than by penance and showy giving. The dogma of total depravity was a generalization from experience. The pleasures of the world had a power over men which could be explained only by positing the innate wickedness of human nature. Thus the Puritan assumed that his children (and the latter often lived up to the assumption)[91] were unregenerate and must be converted from darkness to light. The doctrine of election appeared to reveal the actual plan of human affairs. In economic life the thrifty, godly man succeeded, while his amusement-loving, intemperate neighbor failed. One man seemed chosen of Providence to advance and the other to retrograde. We should not smile at the Puritan explanation of experience. Calvinism is a good statement, in religious phraseology, to be sure, of the theory of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Naturally the social teachings of Jesus made slight appeal to the individualistic, self-reliant, self-made man of the middle class. On the contrary, the Puritan found in the conflict of God's chosen people with the Canaanites a ready interpretation of his struggle with the "lewd nobility and gentry" ;[92] he discovered in the story of the Fall a vivid illustration of the doc-
( 132) -trine of total depravity; he pushed to its logical extremes the Paulinetheology with its doctrine of grace.
3. Puritanism failed politically, but succeeded spiritually. The ideal of Cromwell to place the exercise of military and political power in the hands of godly men could not be reconciled with democratic constitutional development. Though the Ironsides were "formed strictly of `men of religion' " and though "no blasphemy, drinking, disorder, or impiety were suffered in their ranks," [93] control by military force failed to accomplish a change of heart on the part of the nation. The "hundred and fifty-six men . . . selected [for the Constituent Convention of 1653] . . . from lists furnished by the congregational churches" [94] represented only a minority of the nation and abandoned the hopeless attempt to create the constitutional machinery for lower middle-class rule. Political Puritanism was compelled to stake its all on the person of one man; and the Commonwealth collapsed with the death of Cromwell.
The political suicide of Puritanism and Independency was not followed by the permanent loss of its economic and spiritual influence. In the towns the merchants thrived and made their power felt in the control of national policy. "Independency became the religion of the large towns, especially of London. The sect, of course, was the most hateful to the restored monarchy and the restored Church. Had it been possible, they would have been visited with the utmost severity of the Clarendon persecuting Acts. But these sectaries rapidly grew rich, and out of the trade which flourished exceedingly in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, they became the moneyed interest of London." [95] Nor were the Dissenters completely without political influence. "Walpole's long tenure of power was due to a variety of causes. He was supported by the moneyed classes and by the Dissenters, who were promised the repeal of the Test and the Corporation Acts." [96]
Puritanism, while it did not succeed by statute in forcing its attitude toward life upon the people, accomplished its object by indirection. Puritanism entered the "mores" of the English people. "Puritanism," as Green says, "laid down the sword. It ceased from the long attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence,
( 134) and fell back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of men. It was from the moment of its seeming fall that its real victory began. As soon as the wild orgy of the Restoration was over, men began to see that nothing that was really worthy in the work of Puritanism had been undone. The revels of Whitehall, the skepticism and debauchery of courtiers, the corruption of statesmen, left the mass of Englishmen what Puritanism had made them, serious, earnest, sober in life and conduct, firm in their love of Protestantism and of freedom. In the Revolution of 1688 Puritanism did the work of civil liberty which it had failed to do in that of 1642. It wrought out through Wesley and the revival of the eighteenth century the work of religious re-form which its earlier efforts had only thrown back for a hundred years. Slowly but steadily it introduced its own seriousness and purity into English society, English literature, English politics. The history of English progress since the Restoration, on its moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism."[97]
Puritanism, therefore, like Mercantilism and the Reformation, was a projected expression of one phase of the mental attitude of the middle class. The co-operative mental attitude, arising out of the personal relations and association of the guild masters and em-bodied in their organization, was extended to the nation as the Mercantilistic policy. The intellectual unrest and interest of the middle class not only accelerated the forces that were making for the Reformation, but provided the social body for the acceptance of the theoretical principles of the leaders of the movement. Habits of thrift and a strict code of morals, functionally valuable to the success of the individual of the lower middle class, were developed in the system of personal relations of the shop and the farm, and incorporated into the "mores" of the English people under the form of Puritanism.
But while the mental and ethical attitudes generated by the system of personal relations of the shop and the manor were profoundly affecting English life, the economic basis for these personal relations was being undermined. While the strength of feudalism was broken by the Peasants' Revolt and the declining guilds had "practically been annihilated by the confiscation of their lands under Edward VI's guardian, Somerset,[98] yet personal ties still consti-
( 135) -tuted the effective social cement until their lessening cohesive force was dissipated in the reconstruction of the Industrial Revolution. So between the downfall of Puritanism and the rise of the industrial leaders, English national development exhibits the control of the country gentry and of the commercial interests. A paragraph will be sufficient to indicate the nature of the classes and forces in control in this transition period between the Restoration and the first Re-form Bill.
The Restoration signified the defeat of the lower middle-class attempt to maintain control of the government. The artisans of the town and the freeholders of the county resumed their place of sub-ordination to the great merchants and the landlords. Gneist makes clear that the Restoration did not mean a recognition of the divine right of kings, but the intrenchment of the aristocracy in power and the development of a fanatical and militant class-consciousness.[99] This dominant class is no longer composed exclusively of great houses as in feudal times, but comprises a "hereditary nobility within a much more numerous dominant class," [100] the gentry. By control of the militia, by marked ascendancy in local government, by the system of entails, the gentry sought to lay a solid basis for the security and perpetuity of their position ; by a high income qualification and control of "rotten" boroughs by the great country families, this class succeeded in dominating the House of Commons and, together with its exclusive representation in the House of Lords, in deter-mining the policy of the government.[101] Throughout the eighteenth century the gentry was at all times in control of the government, despite[102] the alternation of power between the two great political parties, the Tory and the Whig. In a theoretical way, this division in politics represented the contrast between the principle of submission to the authority of church and sovereign and the principle of the right of resistance against unconstitutional encroachment, or as Gneist[103] felicitously phrases it : "'Church and Crown' was the watchword of the Tories, `Throne and Altar,' of the Whigs." The line of separation, however, was not merely intellectual or tempera-mental, but was determined also by underlying class interests. While Gneist is undoubtedly right when he asserts[104] that "both
(136) parties are primarily factors of the ruling class, with great noble families at their heads," still the core of Tory strength was in the county squires and the clergy,[105] while the great Whig families relied upon the support of towns. With the close of the century, however, this old order was breaking up.
The new forces which were to control the next hundred years now entered the
national consciousness. The terrorism of the French Revolution exhibited to the
ruling class not only the excesses of a depressed people, but also the capacity
of the bourgeoisie to direct a government. The unnoticed growth of manufacture
in England and the reconstruction of the agrarian system pitilessly destroyed
the last remaining vestiges of the old personal relations between artisan and
workman, between squire and tenant. Gneist recognizes[106]
that the aristocracy used its period of power to its own advantage. He states
that the ruling gentry in state and church suffered the extinction of the
declining free peasantry, framed a system of indirect taxes and protective
duties to the disadvantage of the laboring class, permitted the expensiveness of
justice to exclude the lower classes from its benefits, entirely neglected
popular education, ignored the religious training of the masses, and, in
general, failed to cope with the increasing misery, degradation, and poverty of
the broadest strata of the population. The growth of the factory towns
unrepresented in Parliament was an objective manifestation of the extent of
social change and the social need of reconstructing outgrown social forms. A new
middle class had arisen, radically different from that of the seventeenth
century. The capitalist manufacturer now assumed the central place of power
among the bourgeoisie, and utilized the dissatisfaction of the many to force his
way into the political arena and to shape the policy of the state in harmony
with his class interests. We shall now consider the transition in the social
constitution from personal to impersonal ties, the dominance of capital and of
the machine and of system in industry, the rise of the capitalist, the
aggregation and organization of labor, and the consequent conflict of classes.
