The Mining Proletariat

But the bourgeoisie will not take warning. The resistance of the miners does but embitter it the more. Instead of appreciating this forward step in the general movement of the workers, the property-holding class saw in it only a source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough to declare themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had hitherto received. It saw in the just demands of the non-possessing workers only impertinent discontent, mad rebellion against “Divine and human order;” and, in the best case, a success (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by “ill-intentioned demagogues who live by agitation and are too lazy to work.” It sought, of course, without success, to represent to the workers that Roberts and the Union’s agents whom the Union very naturally had to pay, were insolent swindlers, who drew the last farthing from the workingmen’s pockets. When such insanity prevails in the property-holding class, when it is so blinded by its momentary profit that it no longer has eyes for the most conspicuous signs of the times, surely all hope of a peaceful solution of the social question for England must be abandoned. The only possible solution is a violent revolution, which cannot fail to take place.