weavers were needed, and weavers' wages rose. Now that the weaver could
earn more at his loom, he gradually abandoned his farming, and gave his
whole time to weaving. At that time a family of four grown persons and
two children (who were set to spooling) could earn, with eight hours'
daily work, four pounds sterling in a week, and often more if trade was
good and work pressed. It happened often enough that a single weaver
earned two pounds a week at his loom. By degrees the class of farming
weavers wholly disappeared, and was merged in the newly arising class of
weavers who lived wholly upon wages, had no property whatever, not even
the pretended property of a holding, and so became working-men,
proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between spinner and weaver was
destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, yarn had been
spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as the loom
required a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived by
spinning, while others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel
aside; and, if they had not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to
live upon the wages of the father alone. Thus began with spinning and
weaving that division of labour which has since been so infinitely
perfected.

While the industrial proletariat was thus developing with the first still
very imperfect machine, the same machine gave rise to the agricultural
proletariat. There had, hitherto, been a vast number of small
landowners, yeomen, who had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as
their neighbours, the farming weavers. They cultivated their scraps of
land quite after the ancient and inefficient fashion of their ancestors,
and opposed every change with the obstinacy peculiar to such creatures of
habit, after remaining stationary from generation to generation. Among
them were many small holders also, not tenants in the present sense of
the word, but people who had their land handed down from their fathers,