the sore spot of England bare before the eyes of the world; will not
confess, even to itself, that the workers are in distress, because it,
the property-holding, manufacturing class, must bear the moral
responsibility for this distress. Hence the scornful smile which
intelligent Englishmen (and they, the middle-class, alone are known on
the Continent) assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of
the working-class; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole
middle-class of everything which concerns the workers; hence the
ridiculous blunders which men of this class, in and out of Parliament,
make when the position of the proletariat comes under discussion; hence
the absurd freedom from anxiety, with which the middle-class dwells upon
a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day collapse, the speedy collapse
of which is as certain as a mathematical or mechanical demonstration;
hence the miracle that the English have as yet no single book upon the
condition of their workers, although they have been examining and mending
the old state of things no one knows how many years. Hence also the deep
wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London, against the
rich, by whom they are systematically plundered and mercilessly left to
their fate, a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost
within the power of man to predict, must break out into a Revolution in
comparison with which the French Revolution, and the year 1794, will
prove to have been child's play.




THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT.


The order of our investigation of the different sections of the