INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 331 



them during the frequently recurring crises. 

 It is only after they have undergone all sorts 

 of sufferings in their struggles against their 

 employers that some factory workers succeed, 

 more or less, here and there, to wrest from 

 their employers a " living wage " and this 

 again only in certain trades. 



To welcome all these sufferings, seeing in 

 them the action of a " natural law " and a 

 necessary step towards the necessary concen- 

 tration of industry, would be simply absurd. 

 While to maintain that the pauperisation of all 

 workers and the wreckage of all village indus- 

 tries are a necessary step towards a higher form 

 of industrial organisation would be, not only to 

 affirm much more than one is entitled to affirm 

 under the present imperfect state of economical 

 knowledge, but to show an absolute want of 

 comprehension of the sense of both natural and 

 economic laws. Everyone, on the contrary, 

 who has studied the question of the growth of 

 great industries on its own merits, will un- 

 doubtedly agree with Thorold Rogers, who 

 considered the sufferings inflicted upon the 

 labouring classes for that purpose as having 

 been of no necessity whatever, and simply having 

 been inflicted to suit the temporary interests of 

 the few by no means those of the nation.* 



* The Economic Interpretation of History. 



