AND ON THE CONTINENT.

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tralised industrial development. But more and more does theinterweaving of isolated industries seize upon the circles which upto now kept aloof. The countryman also produces more to sellthan to use.

English centralised industry, still in the “ thirties ” dependingupon an under-nourished factory proletariat, stands to-day uponthe wide basis of an operative population with high capacity forconsumption. Still in the “ thirties ” were the wages in Lanca-shire not sufficient to cover even the needs of ordinary food;products of industry were not bought. To-day the raising of theweekly earnings and the cheapening of foodstuffs grants a con-siderable surplus above living necessities. This is the reason forthat astonishing use of industrial productions, especially theresults of the textile industry, as the operatives’ budgets to followwill show. But it is to be mentioned that the class of industrialworkers capable of consumption is by no means limited to Lanca-shire. It extends as far as the English centralised industries reach.Machine workers, shipbuilders, miners, and partly, also, workersat iron furnaces, enjoy a somewhat still higher standard of livingthan cotton operatives.

Also the farmer and agricultural labourer are to-day completelydrawn into the market; the Scotch “ Jack of all trades,” of Eden,has also disappeared from isolated districts. Far remote, only toexchange the surplus of his farm, the countryman produces to-day,solely for the wants of society, productions which he perhaps doesnot need for himself. This so much the more because since therepeal of the Corn Laws he threw himself upon specialties; forinstance, meat of good quality, pedigree-horses, garden products,etc., for which the industrial development, on the other hand,pushed forward customers capable of paying. The more legisla-tion, as it has already done in Ireland, favours small landed pro-prietors, the more does a new home market for English centralisedindustry extend (27).

27. Compare, concerning the influence of exchange between centralisedindustry and spade culture, what Atkinson (“ Distribution of Products,” p. 77)relates about the farmers once producing wheat in the State of New York . Bygoing over to spadework, for which the industrial centres were close customers,they removed themselves successfully from the competition of the large central-ised corn producers of the West. Wheat, unlike rye, requires the addition ofvegetable food. Wheat contains not only more nourishment, but is easier toassimilate ; therefore vegetables are necessary in order to bring the digestiveorgans into play.

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