The following picture
drawn a few years ago by Mr. Frederick Harrison shows how far we yet
fall short of such a realization--"To me at least, it would be enough to
condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if
the permanent condition of industry were to be that which we now behold;
that 90 per cent, of the actual producers of wealth have no home that
they can call their own beyond the end of a week; have no bit of soil,
or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any
kind except as much as will go in a cart; have the precarious chance of
weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for
the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are
separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a month of bad
trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger
and pauperism."[12]
Chapter II.
The Effects of Machinery on the Condition of the Working-Classes.
Sec. 1. Centralizing-Influence of Machinery.--In seeking to understand the
nature and causes of the poverty of the lower working-classes, it is
impossible to avoid some discussion of the influence of machinery. For
the rapid and continuous growth of machinery is at once the outward
visible sign and the material agent of the great revolution which has
changed the whole face of the industrial world during the last century.
With the detailed history of this vast change we are not concerned, but
only with its effects on the industrial condition of the poor in the
present day.
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