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THE COTTON TRADE IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER IV.

The Influence or Centralised Industrial Development on the Division of the Nation’ s Income.

I. — Generally.

In what degree are single classes of society sharers in the fruits of that enormous increase of production which centralised in­dustrial methods influence?

A view here looms before us which, at least in Germany, is widely spread, one of the few contemplations in which the opera­tives and the wealthy classes are to-day opposed-—Centralised industry makes proletarians of society, and disperses the middle classes. The poor become poorer, and the rich richer. The tension on both sides is always increasing; a violent contact of the opposite 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 the social consequences sets them even themselves against their own interests. The attainment of an economically great position for Germany— and without this to-day its great political and military power is certainly not permanently tenable—appears to- them doubtful on social grounds, because it demands centralised industry and further movement towards machinery. Indeed, the tall chimney 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 the expropriators, ever less in number, will be at length themselves expropriated. Every factory chimney is to them a true sign of the future day of reckoning.

To us it is neither of the two. To us it is a sign, not only of economical but also of social progress, with which the latest