DARK SATANIC MILLS 63

a "reserve" of labour was indispensable. In exceptionally good
times the whole "reserve" could be quickly absorbed by produc-
tive industry: in normal or bad ones, it must remain unemployed
and subsist on poor relief or beggary.1 Engels writing in 1844,
reckoned the surplus in England and Wales at a million' and
a half or about a tenth of the entire population.

The economic justification of all this was that the factories
were giving to the country a wealth she had never before possessed
and bringing within the purchasing power of the poor articles
which had hitherto been available only to princes. The evils
that were inseparable from that system were merely transitional;
the nation had only to be patient, to refrain from palliative and
wasteful measures and observe the laws of supply and demand,
and .all would be well. The general body of the middle class
accepted this comforting proposition. To any one with capital
the mechanical multiplication of productive processes offered
unprecedented opportunities: never had there been such a chance
for the far-seeing investor. The same processes by cheapening
the price and multiplying the quantity of goods must surely
benefit labour too. Thev march of progress was irresistible.
"Our fields," declared Macaulay, voicing the buoyant sentiment
of his class, "are cultivated with a skill unknown elsewhere,
with a skill which has extracted rich harvests from moors and
morasses. Our houses are filled with conveniences which the
kings of former times might have envied. Our bridges, our
canals, our roads, our modes of communication fill every stranger
with wonder. Nowhere are manufactures carried to such per-
fection. Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over
matter."

The spirit of the age—that is, of the readers and writers of
books, newspapers and journals—was preoccupied with the
getting of material wealth and a purely mechanical organisation
of society." It preferred a quantitative to a qualitative ideal of
production. It was opposed to that older and more catholic con-

lat At the gates of all the London docks,' says the Rev. W. Champney, preacher of
the East End, * hundreds of the poor appear every morning in -winter before daybreak, in
the hope of getting a day's work. They await the opening of the gates; and, when the
youngest and strongest and best known have been engaged, hundreds, cast down by
disappointed hope, go back to their wretched homes.* When these people find no work
and will not rebel against society, what remains for them but to beg? And surely no
one can wonder at the great army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with
whom the police carries on perpetual war" F. JEngels, The Condition of the Working
Class in England iv, 1844^ #6-7.