Introduction
In 1922, Robert W. Bruère gave thanks for the enormous social and economic benefits brought by the Coal Age. Yet the benefits could have been far greater. Despite so much plenty, mankind went on living as if life were still a desperate scramble for survival in which might is right and the weakest go to the wall. When we finally realise our dream of solar energy, will we be any better prepared?
LESS than two centuries ago the steam engine harnessed coal to the looms of England. With coal came iron and steel, and with steel and steam came the industrial revolution, its factories massed in cities, its railroads weaving manufacturing centres together, its steel ships and cables and telegraph wires unfolding and integrating the economic life of the world. In western Europe especially it converted an age-long economic deficit into an economic surplus. For the first time in human history it brought the possibility of the good life to every man’s door.
But it found men spiritually unprepared. As in the tribal days men warred upon one another for food, so now they warred upon one another for coal and the incredible spawn of coal.* Instead of establishing civilisation on foundations of mutual aid, service, and brotherhood, men turned their cities into shambles of childhood,* poverty was embittered, civil strife in mine, mill, and factory became endemic, wars on an unprecedented scale engaged nations and groups of nations. The World War* and the famine and widespread desolation that followed gave tragic evidence of our spiritual unpreparedness.
* Bruère echoed Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) in complaining about economists and politicians who assume that there is never enough to go round, and that prosperity in one nation must mean poverty in another: see The Jealousy of Trade.
* Shambles (plural also shambles) is used nowadays to means chaos or wreckage. However, Bruère appears to be using it in the archaic sense of meat-markets or slaughterhouses. He cited a Parliamentary Committee on the Employment of Children and Young Persons (1842), which recorded the conditions and experiences of children down the pit. Many were boys, but girls often handled traps (part of the ventilation system) and pushed corves (a corf is a large coal waggon or basket). “Chained, belted, harnessed like dogs in a go-cart,” said the Report “black, saturated with wet, and more than half naked—crawling upon their hands and feet, and dragging their heavy loads behind them they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural.”
* This passage was written in 1922, four years after the end of the Great or First World War of 1914-1918.
Précis
Writing in 1922, American campaigner Robert Bruère counted the blessings of coal and the industrial revolution, but reminded us that amidst the prosperity and social progress they brought, and despite there being enough for everyone, there was also widespread squalor, selfishness and war. It was, he said, a testimony to mankind’s spiritual unreadiness for the gift we had been given. (60 / 60 words)
Writing in 1922, American campaigner Robert Bruère counted the blessings of coal and the industrial revolution, but reminded us that amidst the prosperity and social progress they brought, and despite there being enough for everyone, there was also widespread squalor, selfishness and war. It was, he said, a testimony to mankind’s spiritual unreadiness for the gift we had been given.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, besides, just, not, otherwise, since, unless, whereas.
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