AND ON THE CONTINENT.
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in its own country (29). Germany stands also in tliis respect on the step of the economical development which England had attained in the “ thirties.” The replacement of labour by machinery is still comparatively slight, and therewith Germany also still lacks that operative, just as capable for labour as for consumption, which forms to-day the strength of England . In consequence of this the farmer has also not yet the market for the products of his garden and spade which make him himself a good customer, capable of paying for the productions of centralised industry.
IV.—Comparison of the Costs of Production in England and.
The rising markets of the world have evolved the modem method of production on a large scale, and in the first instance in the cotton industry. But other trades have rapidly followed in this latter’s footsteps, especially the iron industry, machine making, and shipbuilding, so that at the present time English national economy bears a centralised industrial character. Tliis progress was a consequence of certain historical conditions arising from certain natural advantages of England . But the latter as permanent elements must give way to the continuous cheapening of the costs of production. The industrial strength of England depends no longer in the first instance on those natural advantages, but rather on the fact that English national economy has farthest advanced the technical, commercial, and social results of modern centralised industry; and that therewith, both by employers and employed, that psychological change has been most developed— that psychological change which, we noted above, occurred with the departure from the customary foundations of the old methods of trade. The onward-driving wheel of the advancement was the pressure or demands of the world’s market. Seen from this point of view, the fact will be easily understood that at the present moment the costs of building and running mills, and of raw materials and finished articles in the greatest staple industry, are the cheapest in England .