proletariat follows naturally from the foregoing history of its rise. The
first proletarians were connected with manufacture, were engendered by
it, and accordingly, those employed in manufacture, in the working up of
raw materials, will first claim our attention. The production of raw
materials and of fuel for manufacture attained importance only in
consequence of the industrial change, and engendered a new proletariat,
the coal and metal miners. Then, in the third place, manufacture
influenced agriculture, and in the fourth, the condition of Ireland; and
the fractions of the proletariat belonging to each, will find their place
accordingly. We shall find, too, that with the possible exception of the
Irish, the degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct
proportion to their relation to manufacture; and that the factory hands
are most enlightened as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less
so, the agricultural labourers scarcely at all. We shall find the same
order again among the industrial workers, and shall see how the factory
hands, eldest children of the industrial revolution, have from the
beginning to the present day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement,
and how the others have joined this movement just in proportion as their
handicraft has been invaded by the progress of machinery. We shall thus
learn from the example which England offers, from the equal pace which
the Labour Movement has kept with the movement of industrial development,
the historical significance of manufacture.

Since, however, at the present moment, pretty much the whole industrial
proletariat is involved in the movement, and the condition of the
separate sections has much in common, because they all are industrial, we
shall have first to examine the condition of the industrial proletariat
as a whole, in order later to notice more particularly each separate
division with its own peculiarities.