CHAPTER XIII

The abolition of the corn-laws in 1846 and the consequent cheapening of necessary food for the workers, the discovery of gold in California and Australia, the prodigious increase in the luxury and expenditure of the upper and muddle classes, all the action and reaction of the 169 commercial impulse created by the great machine industries, gave an appearance of general prosperity to the country, in which, as we have said, the skilled workmen did partake to a certain extent; and the views of middle-class optimists as to the continuance of bourgeois progress, and the gradual absorption of all the “thrifty and industrious” part of the working classes into its ranks seemed confirmed until within the last few years; all the more as the practical triumph of the Liberal party had ceased to make “politics” a burning question. Nevertheless, as a sign that the underground lava had not ceased flowing, it was noticed that ever since the ripening of the great industries, in periods of about ten years came recurring depressions of trade. These were accounted for in various ingenious ways, but otherwise did not trouble the capitalist mind, which got to consider this also, because of its regular recurrence, to be a sign of the stability of the present system, merely looking upon it as something to be taken into the general average and insured against in the usual manner. But within the last few 170 years this latest eternal bourgeois providence has failed us. In spite of the last partial revival of trade, depression dogs us with closer persistence. The nations whom we assumed would never do anything but provide us with raw materials, have become our rivals in manufacture, and our competitors in the world-market; while owing to the fact that America has enormous stretches of easily tilled virgin soil, which does not need manure, and that the climate of India makes it easy to support life there, those two countries supply us with such large amounts of grain, and at so cheap a rate, that raising it in England has become unprofitable; hence the farmers are poor, and the landlords cannot get the same rents for