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CHAPTER IV.
The Influence or Centralised Industrial Development on theDivision of the Nation’ s Income.
I. — Generally.
In what degree are single classes of society sharers in the fruitsof that enormous increase of production which centralised in-dustrial methods influence?
A view here looms before us which, at least in Germany, iswidely spread, one of the few contemplations in which the opera-tives and the wealthy classes are to-day opposed-—Centralisedindustry makes proletarians of society, and disperses the middleclasses. The poor become poorer, and the rich richer. Thetension on both sides is always increasing; a violent contact of theopposite poles will be at last unavoidable.
The bourgeoisie, for this reason, look upon economical progress,therefore, in many cases with an anxious eye. Anxiety about thesocial consequences sets them even themselves against their owninterests. The attainment of an economically great position forGermany— and without this to-day its great political and militarypower is certainly not permanently tenable—appears to- themdoubtful on social grounds, because it demands centralised industryand further movement towards machinery. Indeed, the tallchimney appears to such anxious souls as a warning finger—a“ Mene Tekel ” of the coming day of revolution.
The operatives, on the other hand, greet the economical pro- «
gross, because it brings them nearer to- the moment when theexpropriators, ever less in number, will be at length themselvesexpropriated. Every factory chimney is to them a true sign of thefuture day of reckoning.
To us it is neither of the two. To us it is a sign, not only ofeconomical but also of social progress, with which the latest