AND ON THE CONTINENT.

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of a church, the prominent features of which are apparent far outof labour by capital. But from this follows the refutation of anobjection which has perhaps been met with above by many readers.For instance, readers perhaps ask, Uo not some of the operativeshave their means of livelihood withdrawn by the continuous re-placement of labour by capital? If one operative attends to asmany machines as formerly three operatives, the one may wellreceive a higher wage, but what becomes of the other two? Wesaw, opposed to this, how that development was just onlypossible on the ground of economical elevation of the industryconcerned. The English silk industry cannot, in consequence, goover to the power-loom, because its market is not stable; theelevation of the cotton industry, on the other hand, in spite of alltechnical progress, allowed an increase in the number of opera-tives. There were in 1835, 220,134 operatives, against 504,069in 1885, engaged in it.

I should like to avoid a further misunderstanding—that is,that I neglect, concerning the economical development, the im-portance of social moments. When I pictured those social move-ments by means of which the English operative has attained hispresent height, especially the change of public opinion accompany-ing this development, I found already the necessity of proving theeconomical correctness of this development. If one up to thencould not object that the high standard of living of the English operative was built upon certain foundations; that it would be-come untenable with the rise of competing industries in countriesof so-called cheaper labour ; that it must become forced back bythe pressure of the world’s market, I tried, on the contrary, inwhat has gone before to prove, on the field of the oldest centralisedindustry of the world, how it was just the pressure of the world’smarket to which centralised industry and machine-making wereindebted for their origin, and how the continual development ofboth necessitated an elevation of the classes serving them. If theeconomical correctness of social progress is maintained, this is notto be understood as if the social progress is always or only fre-quently caused from a known understanding of its economicaladvantages. In this respect those earlier social movements had,alongside, at least a strong influence.

Allow me to make use of a scene to throw some light on thisrelation. The height which certain classes of skilled Englishindustrial workers have reached is similar to the towering steeple