TECHNOLOGY 199

large-scale trade. Where there is little specialization and trade, a two-
class system generally obtains; the group is divided into warriors and
workers (as it was under feudalism), masters and slaves (as it was under
the plantation economy of the Old South), or landlords and peasants (as
it wras in postfeudal European agriculture and at many other times and
places). The three-class system, consisting of warriors (or the political
elite), workers, and merchants, has always been associated with a fairly
high level of the arts and the urbanization and commerce that this high
level of the arts makes possible. The three-class system historically ap-
peared in Sumerian civilization, in the Greek city-states, in Rome, and in
old China. It developed in western Europe out of the feudal two-class
system and as an indirect consequence of the technological changes that
have already been discussed.

Service Functionaries.—When, with the mechanization of craft pro-
cedures the guild system gave way to the factory, craftsmen became more
or less indistinguishable in status from common hired laborers. As trade
and hence tradesmen increased in importance, so did various service
functions and functionaries—men who aid, or are at any event supposed
to aid, in one way or another in the production of goods but do not
actually do productive work. Increased productive efficiency, both in
agriculture and industry, released a considerable proportion of the pop-
ulation for these service functions, even as it made such nonproductive
activities necessary. Thus as the factory unit grew larger, more and more
men were needed to facilitate, direct, and coordinate the labor of the
specialized workers—more engineers, more bookkeepers, more buyers of
raw materials, and more sellers of finished products. As trade became more
intricate and of larger scale, more middlemen, handlers, bookkeepers, and
other functionaries were needed. And as goods became more diversified,
there were more and more opportunities for the small, specialized mer-
chant. England, it was said at the time, was becoming a nation of shop-
keepers.

All these changes in production and trade posed new problems of
political regulation. The functions of law expanded, and that meant an
increase in the importance and number of lawmakers, of bureaucrats to
administer the law, and of lawyers to interpret the law and guide the lay-
man through the expanding legal maze. Moreover, the growth of science
and the application of science to industry, agriculture, and public health
gave rise to a host of new service activities. The technological develop-
ments associated with the industrial revolution have thus not only kept
the productive worker in a position of social inferiority but have given,
ever-increasing status to social functionaries, who have taken over the
class position originally held by the medieval craftsmen.