large towns. The progress was indeed
interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well
as in 1866; but these revulsions were now considered as natural,
inevitable events, which must be fatalistically submitted to, and
which always set themselves right in the end.

"And the condition of the working-class during this period? There was
temporary improvement even for the great mass. But this improvement
always was reduced to the old level by the influx of the great body of
the unemployed reserve, by the constant superseding of bands by new
machinery, by the immigration of the agricultural population, now,
too, more and more superseded by machines.

"A permanent improvement can be recognised for two 'protected'
sections only of the working-class. Firstly, the factory hands. The
fixing by Act of Parliament of their working-day within relatively
rational limits has restored their physical constitution and endowed
them with a moral superiority, enhanced by their local concentration.
They are undoubtedly better off than before 1848. The best proof is
that, out of ten strikes they make, nine are provoked by the
manufacturers in their own interests, as the only means of securing a
reduced production. You can never get the masters to agree to work
'short time,' let manufactured goods be ever so unsaleable; but get
the workpeople to strike, and the masters shut their factories to a
man.

"Secondly, the great Trades' Unions. They are the organisations of
those trades in which the labour of _grown-up men_ predominates, or is
alone applicable. Here the competition neither of women and children
nor of machinery has so far weakened their organised strength. The
engineers, the carpenters, and joiners, the bricklayers, are each of
them a power, to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers
and bricklayers' labourers, they can even successfully resist the
introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably
improved since 1848 there can be no doubt, and the best proof of this
is in the fact, that for more than fifteen years not only have their
employers been with them, but they with their employers, upon
exceedingly good terms. They form an aristocracy among the working-
class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a relatively
comfortable position, and they accept it as f