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Therefore expansion and imperialism are consequently a policy dictated by the class interests of the capitalists.
Before the present industrial system had developed, agriculture was the chief occupation of the people. This was necessary owing to the very low rate of production. Primitive methods and tools required much labor and gave small returns. The people were therefore almost entirely dependent upon agricultural pursuits for their existence.
Now, the lord or a number of lords who formed a land aristocracy were in position ta dictate terms to the propertyless workers who, in order to live, had to have access to the soil. Therefore the vast majority could only work and live by the grace of the land-owning minority. The land owners were the masters, and the landless lived for and by the grace of the masters.
During this epoch manufacturing was conducted under the old domestic system. The workers lived more or less in the rural districts; work was carried on by the artisan in his little house. He had also, in nearly all cases, his plot of land near the house. Work, too, was more regular than is is at present, for there were fewer commercial fluctuations.
The relations between employers and employed were far closer than now.
There were no gigantic blast furnaces rising amid blackened heaps of cinders; no infernal coke regions, where the corroding gases are so deadly that for miles around fruit will not ripen, flowers will not bloom, trees die, and grass will not grow; no tall chimneys belching forth clouds of evil smoke; no disease breeding spinning mills, housing and working under a single roof thousands of women and children; the factory and furnace were almost unknown. These were yet to come.
The change from the domestic system of industry to the modern system of production by machinery and steam power was sudden and violent. Great discoveries and inventions soon worked deep changes. The previously slow growth of industry developed quickly into a feverish burst of manufacturing production that completely revolutionized the industrial world.
The old primitive hand tools had to give way to the new machine—hand craft could not compete with the more modern machine. The tools used in the homes were mostly owned by the users, they being simple, crude and cheap. The most humble toilers could in time
