Economic history, as a subject of separate study, is now nearly a hundred years old. No other idea which has emerged from it has gained a tithe of the attention that scholars, teachers, and the general public have focused on the “industrial revolution.” Yet there is scarcely a conception in economic history more misleading than one which relates all the important problems of our modern civilization to economic changes that are represented as taking place in England between 1760 and 1832. There is scarcely a conception that rests on less secure foundations than one which finds the key to an understanding of the modern industrialized world in these seventy-two years of English economic history.

In 1848, most wagons were still made in small scattered shops where general blacksmithing and wagonmaking were combined, although a few firms such as Wilson, Childe and Company of Philadelphia had achieved considerable size. In that year, Quincy, located in the middle of the corn belt in the westernmost part of Illinois on the Mississippi River, was a growing center of commerce, shipping, and manufacturing for the surrounding area. There had already been established here at least four wagon manufacturers.

In Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, three great movements have taken their origin. The first is characterized by the names Enfantin and Bazard, the second by those of Comte and Taine, the third by Lesseps and Péreire. Enfantin and Bazard were men of imagination, Comte and Taine men of science, Lesseps and Péreire men of action. No other father has engendered such different children. Enfantin and Bazard made Saint-Simon the bearer of a new gospel of salvation; in his name they founded a church and strove to win for it all nations. Comte and Taine made Saint-Simon the founder of a new philosophy; from his ideas they developed a system of knowledge and gained for it the nineteenth century. Lesseps and Péreire made Saint-Simon the pioneer of a new world; from his inspiration they created waterways and railways, banks and factories.

Industry and commerce developed rapidly in China during the last three centuries before Christ, as they did also in the Mediterranean world. Contemporary Hellenistic and Roman businessmen made extensive use of slave labor, and slavery gradually developed an industrial character. Nothing comparable occurred in China. Private and government slavery had a marked growth under the Han empire, but the use of slaves for industrial purposes—even commercial farming— did not become an important characteristic of the Chinese institution. This fact raises questions concerning the “style” of ancient Chinese slavery, and concerning the economic organization of which it was a part.

Systems resembling modern étatisme can be traced to antiquity. So can other measures: planned economy in various fields, monopolies with their fixed prices and other burdens, forms of state control which benefited the state or particular individuals, but which compromised the best interests of the people. On the other hand, paying salaries to the poor, unemployed citizens to avert the outbreak of social revolutions, “soaking the rich” by excessive and even ruinous taxation were among the economic measures known to the ancient world also. So were other present-day phenomena: the presence of “haves and have-nots,” inflation, strikes, and the low purchasing power of the masses.