Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/27

 general knowledge sapped superstition, and the musket swept away the last relics of warrior chivalry.

As the markets expanded also, the results of these great changes in every direction became more and more apparent. The miserable state of the internal communications forced Englishmen more and more into foreign commerce, which was rendered exceptionally profitable, not only by the discovery of new markets that gave great returns to the trader, but also by the useful adjuncts of piracy and slavery. To keep pace with this growth of commerce wider organisation of labour was needed, and, therefore, as already stated, the group of workmen toiling under the superintendence of the master, with a more and more regulated division of labour, supplanted the old handicraft. Workshops grew larger and larger, small factories were formed in certain trades. The workmen ceased to own any portion of their own product: that, as a whole, went into the hand of the employer who paid for a part of its value in wages; in the same way the agricultural labourer ceased to have any interest in the crops which he raised: they, too belonged to the farmer, subject to a deduction for rent to the landlord; and the labourer also received a part of the value of his labour in wages. Production had become or was rapidly becoming social: appropriation and exchange remained under the control of the individual.

During the whole of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century this process went on. Organised handicraft, factory industry, and house industry, were still to be seen together. A good many yeomen remained in some districts, but they were