It must be remembered also that the political conflict between the landed 167 gentry and the manufacturers forced on this reform.
Meanwhile, in spite of all the suffering caused by the Industrial Revolution, it was impossible for the capitalists to engross the whole of the profits gained by it, or at least to go on piling them up in an ever-increasing ratio. The class struggle took another form, besides that of mere hunger riots and forcible repression, the Trades Unions to wit. Although the primary intention of these was the foundation of benefit societies, which had been one of the practical uses to which the guilds of the early Middle Ages had been put, like them also they had at last to take in hand matters dealing with the regulation of labour.
The first struggles of the trades unions with capital took place while they were still illegal; but the repeal of the law against the combination of workmen in 1824 set them partially free in that respect, and they soon began to be a power in the country. Aided by the rising tide of commercial prosperity, which made the capitalists more willing to yield up some part of their enormous profits rather than 168 carry on the struggle à l'outrance, they prevailed in many trade contests, and succeeding in raising the standard of livelihood for skilled workmen, though of course in ridiculous disproportion to the huge increase in the sum of the national income. Further than this it was and is impossible for them to go, so long as they recognise the capitalists as a necessary part of the organisation of labour. It was not at first understood by the capitalist class that they did so recognise them, and consequently in the period of their early successes the trades unions were considered rather as dangerous revolutionists than as a part of the capitalist system, which was their real position, and were treated to that kind of virulent and cowardly abuse and insult which the shopkeeper in terror for his shop always has at his tongue’s end.