liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or
smaller, according as the state of the market occasions the employment of
a larger or smaller proportion of its members. And if at the moment of
highest activity of the market the agricultural districts and the
branches least affected by the general prosperity temporarily supply to
manufacture a number of workers, these are a mere minority, and these too
belong to the reserve army, with the single difference that the
prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their connection with it.
When they enter upon the more active branches of work, their former
employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work longer
hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers
discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places
filled and themselves superfluous--at least in the majority of cases.
This reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis
and a large number during the period which may be regarded as the average
between the highest prosperity and the crisis, is the "surplus
population" of England, which keeps body and soul together by begging,
stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing handcarts, driving
donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great
town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what
devices this "surplus population" takes refuge. The London
crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the
principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have
been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law
guardians or the municipal authorities for the purpose. Now, however, a
machine has been invented which rattles through the streets daily, and
has spoiled this source of income for the unemployed. Along the great
highways leading into the cities, on which there is a great deal of
waggon traffic, a large number of people may be seen with small carts,
gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives among the passing
coaches and omnibuses, often paying a couple of shillings a week to the
authorities for the privilege. But this occupation is forbidden in many
places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be
sold as manure. Happy are such of the "surplus" as can obtain a push-
cart and go about with it. Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed
to possess an a