COMPOUND FREE LABOUR. 521 



gle employers, working on their materials and with their 

 implements; and what was then exceptional has since be 

 come general. 



Of course compound free labour under this form has more 

 and more replaced scattered free labour because of the 

 economy achieved. Machines furnished by a capitalist 

 employer are likely to be better, and more rapidly improved, 

 than those owned by poor men living apart. The regularity 

 and the method sure to be insisted on by a master, must 

 both be conducive to efficiency of production. And further, 

 the supplies of raw material can be obtained on lower terms 

 by a relatively rich man who purchases wholesale, than by 

 single workers who buy in small quantities. Hence the 

 employer of aggregated free workmen is able to undersell 

 the free workmen not aggregated. 



It should, however, be remarked that the degree of this 

 substitution in part depends on the extent to which the older 

 forms of society have been replaced by newer forms, and in 

 part on the natures of the industries, as furthered little or 

 much by division of labour. In Germany, where sundry 

 feudal relations survived down to the early part of the pre 

 sent century, where the gild-system of regulating industry 

 continued here and there in force, and where separation be 

 tween the rural and urban populations is even now in some 

 places so incomplete that men work in the fields in summer 

 and at their looms in winter, cottage-industry holds its own 

 to a considerable extent against factory-industry. 



What we are chiefly interested in noting, however, is the 

 transformation of industrial relations entailed by this con 

 centration. A triple differentiation may be observed. The 

 man who was partly artisan partly agriculturist ceases en 

 tirely to be agriculturist. Simultaneously the increasing 

 urban populations become marked off from the rural popu 

 lations: town-life and country-life acquire sharp distinc 

 tions. Lastly the manufacturing class, throughout which 

 in early days masters were themselves workers, domestically 



