The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quered India. This brings us to the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Europe began to be supplied with cheap food, this time from the west; and where it was admitted free, as in England, it greatly depressed the landed interest, permitting the upgrowth of democracy. But now come in some differ- ences. The drain to the East was met by various expedients, principally by the introduction of credit money. And, great- est difference of all, at the end of the eighteenth century the English, with the aid of money obtained from the East, de- veloped manufacturing by machinery and steam power, on a large scale, with the capitalist system, and have entered the in- dustrial stage, though some of the European states are not yet out of the stage of militarism. This industrialism has sup- plied England with a substitute for agriculture, and, extending to some other portions of Europe and to North America, has retarded the drain to the East, by putting western productivity ahead of the eastern, so that actually manufactures may be ex- ported thither. Here we are at present. But now the East is adopting west- ern methods, and in time the same eastern superiority may perhaps tell, due to its people’s ability and willingness to live on less. Then the drain may set in again. We have, more- over, recently been favoured by new supplies of gold, notably from the far south and the extreme north. But these will not last many years longer, and may be compared with the gold which Cesar brought from Gaul. When appreciation again sets in (perhaps forty or fifty years from now, or even sooner ) and becomes intolerable, it may be met by resort to paper money. ‘That is a possibility, but not a probability, since the financiers will for their own selfish purposes resist. There will likewise be failure of the sources of real wealth, as we have seen. In addition, we have to face the moral evils ever grow- ing in a high civilisation,