e capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily
sum. After a few hours' work he has reproduced the value of that sum;
but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series
of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during
these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which cost the
capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket. That is the basis of
the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a
few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of
production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of
wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other.
And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance,
but by the system itself--this fact has been brought out in bold relief
by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847.

Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other
epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of
sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and
family from falling victims to such diseases. Accordingly, the most
crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been
made less conspicuous. Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide
avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst "slums" I had to
describe. "Little Ireland" has disappeared, and the "Seven Dials" are
next on the list for sweeping away. But what of that? Whole districts
which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic, have now, with the
growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation,
discomfort, and misery. Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no
longer tolerated. The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art
of hiding the distress of the working-class. But that, in regard to
their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place, is amply
proved by the Report of the Royal Commission "on the Housing of the
Poor," 1885. And this is the case, too, in other respects. Police
regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge
in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it.

But while England has thus outgrown the juvenile state of capitalist
exploitation described by me, other countries have only just attained it.
France, Germany, and especially America, are the formidable competitors
who, at this moment--as foreseen by