arising class of
weavers who lived wholly upon wages, had no property whatever, not even
the pretended property of a holding, and so became working-men,
proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between spinner and weaver was
destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, yarn had been
spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as the loom
required a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived by
spinning, while others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel
aside; and, if they had not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to
live upon the wages of the father alone. Thus began with spinning and
weaving that division of labour which has since been so infinitely
perfected.

While the industrial proletariat was thus developing with the first still
very imperfect machine, the same machine gave rise to the agricultural
proletariat. There had, hitherto, been a vast number of small
landowners, yeomen, who had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as
their neighbours, the farming weavers. They cultivated their scraps of
land quite after the ancient and inefficient fashion of their ancestors,
and opposed every change with the obstinacy peculiar to such creatures of
habit, after remaining stationary from generation to generation. Among
them were many small holders also, not tenants in the present sense of
the word, but people who had their land handed down from their fathers,
either by hereditary lease, or by force of ancient custom, and had
hitherto held it as securely as if it had actually been their own
property. When the industrial workers withdrew from agriculture, a great
number of small holdings fell idle, and upon these the new class of large
tenants established themselves, tenants-at-will, holding fifty, one
hundred, two hundred or more acres, liable to be turned out at the end of
the year, but able by improved tillage and larger farming to increase the
yield of the land. They could sell their produce more cheaply than the
yeomen, for whom nothing remained when his farm no longer supported him
but to sell it, procure a jenny or a loom, or take service as an
agricultural labourer in the employ of a large farmer. His inherited
slowness and the inefficient methods of cultivation bequeathed by his
ancestors, and above which he could not rise, left him no alternative
when forced to compete with men who managed their holdings on sounder
principles and with all the advant