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This development, in the case of England , has to be followedup most minutely. Up to our century the standard of livingfor the worker stood authoritatively defined—the degree oflabour as well as of remuneration. If he earned sufficient with threedays’ work to live sis days in the ordinary manner, he did not workthe other three. Therefore the merchants of Manchester toldA. Young that they preferred high to low food prices; for nothinghut the first compelled the worker to labour.
This customary foundation of existence fell with the appear-ance of the modern trade system. Broken-down farmers andcottage workers, workhouse children, discharged soldiers—inshort, the poorest of the poor—were placed at the newly-inventedmachines. It is known that the workers applied themselves tofactory labour only through the uttermost necessity. The irondiscipline and regularity of this labour itself appeared worse thanthe untrammelled misery of cottage workers. Only by thelowest wages were those elements to be forced to regular work.This deterioration occurred so much the more without oppositionbecause those first workers of Centralised Industry wore thusfirst drawn from customary conditions, whereas, on the other hand,their employers had already completely realised the modem man.Certainly the power of that first generation of English large em-ployers consisted entirely in carrying out the principle ofeconomy, regardless of anything. The proposition: Satisfy thywants with the smallest possible expense, produce at the lowestcost, was of so much value to them that the choir of nationaleconomists accompanying the drama declared it to be the ever-lasting law of human life.
The “white slaves” which the modern factory system liasproduced have been spoken of. This is more than a saying.Because, in spite of outward differences, the position of thosefactory proletarians certainly resembles inwardly that of slaves,in that they seem in a hopeless manner to be forced to the mini-mum standard of living, and that every interest of the w r orker inhis work is lacking. Contemporary observers have therefromderived the immobile wage-law. They had, as we see to-day,only that stage of trade before their eyes which belongs to thechange from scattered to centralised industry, and has only ex-tended itself where that change was retarded. On the otherhand, Centralised Industry, which is no longer a monopolv com-pared with a declining industry, requires, as we shall see more
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