ntinent was a vast storehouse of riches--potential riches. Before they
could be made of actual use, however, the hand of man must transform
them and transport them.

These necessary industrial processes were impossible under the "every
man for himself" formula. Here was a vast continent, with boundless
opportunities for supplying the necessaries and comforts of
life--provided men were willing to come together; divide up the work;
specialize; and exchange products.

Cooperation--alone--could conquer nature. The basis of this cooperation
proved to be the machine. Its means was the system of production and
transportation built upon the use of steam, electricity, gas, and labor
saving appliances.

When the United States was discovered, the shuttle was thrown by hand;
the hammer was wielded by human arm; the mill-stones were turned by wind
and water; the boxes and bales were carried by pack-animals or in
sailing vessels,--these processes of production and transportation were
conducted in practically the same way as in the time of Pharaoh or of
Alexander the Great. A series of discoveries and inventions, made in
England between 1735 and 1784, substituted the machine for the tool; the
power of steam for the power of wind, water or human muscle; and set up
the factory to produce, and the railroad and the steamboat to transport
the factory product.

American industry, up to 1812, was still conducted on the old,
individualistic lines. Factories were little known. Men worked singly,
or by twos and threes in sheds or workrooms adjoining their homes. The
people lived in small villages or on scattered farms. Within the century
American industry was transformed. Production shifted to the factory;
about the factory grew up the industrial city in which lived the tens or
hundreds of thousands of factory workers and their families.

The machine made a new society. The artisan could not compete with the
products of the machine. The home workshop disappeared, and in its place
rose the factory, with its tens, its hundreds and its thousands of
operatives.

Under the modern system of machine production, each person has his
particular duty to perform. Each depends, for the success of his
service, upon that performed by thousands of others.

All modern industry is organized on the principle of cooperation,
division of labor, and specialization. Each has his task, and unless
each task is performed the entire system breaks down.

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