Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/33

 cities with a proletariat under the control of the capitalist class in a worse condition (this all official reports show) than any slave class of ancient times had ever lived in. For ere long the capitalist class, now almost at the height of its economical power, had swept away entirely the restrictions imposed by the middle-age polity. Freedom of contract between the pauper and the plutocrat, unrestrained competition between men and women in order that they might be able to get enough out of the product of their labour merely to keep body and soul together, wholesale slaughter of children by overwork and insufficient nourishment in unhealthy, overheated factories and ill-ventilated mines—the whole system was based upon never-ending oppression of the most horrible kind. Wages fell in proportion to the cost of living at the very time when enormous fortunes were being accumulated in the cotton, wool, silk, iron, and other industries. Women and children were brought in to reduce the wages of their own fathers and brothers by competing for under-pay.

The legislature, under the direct control of the classes interested in maintaining this atrocious slavery under the guise of freedom, refused at first even to bring in laws to prevent babes from three to nine years of age from being worked fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours a day. Capital had full swing in every direction and ground down the body of the people into a hopeless degradation from which they have never yet emerged. Risings there were from time to time in the earlier part of this century against this fearful oppression brought about by sheer greed for gain. But they were all unsuccessful, and not until the half of the century had passed