COMPOUND FREE LABOUR. 525 



artizan lie has replaced, who, a century ago, having a varied 

 muscular action in working his loom, with breaks caused by 

 the incidents of the work, was able to alternate his indoor 

 activities with outdoor activities in garden or field, we can 

 not but admit that this industrial development has proved 

 extremely detrimental to the operative. 



In their social relations, too, there has been an entailed 

 retrogression rather than a progression. The wage-earning 

 factory-hand does, indeed, exemplify entirely free labour, 

 in so far that, making contracts at will and able to break 

 them after short notice, he is free to engage with whomso 

 ever he pleases and where he pleases. But this liberty 

 amounts in practice to little more than the ability to ex 

 change one slavery for another; since, fit only for his par 

 ticular occupation, he has rarely an opportunity of doing 

 anything more than decide in what mill he will pass the 

 greater part of his dreary days. The coercion of circum 

 stances often bears more hardly on him than the coercion 

 of a master does on one in bondage. 



It seems that in the course of social progress, parts, more 

 or less large, of each society, are sacrificed for the benefit of 

 the society as a whole. In the earlier stages the sacrifice 

 takes the form of mortality in the wars perpetually carried 

 on during the struggle for existence between tribes and 

 nations; and in later stages the sacrifice takes the form of 

 mortality entailed by the commercial struggle, and the keen 

 competition entailed by it. In either case men are used up 

 for the benefit of posterity ; and so long as they go on mul 

 tiplying in excess of the means of subsistence, there appears 

 no remedy. 



