greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return
with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles. No
wonder England's industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and
such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive
and insignificant. And in proportion as this increase took place, in the
same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised.
The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty
thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such
low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the
manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the
competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they
could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours' Bill was
enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced--much against
the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in
favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured
brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of
hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict
between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters,
especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary
squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades' Unions, and
finally even to discover in strikes--at opportune times--a powerful means
to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders
of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach
peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is, that all
these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means
to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for
whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all
importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker
and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends
meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the