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 items against the past and credit items in favour of the present, and when the net balance is struck the result is very different. And so it is with this question of town life and town labour; a distorted and one-sided account has been put forward in order to make out a case. . ..

"Mills employing a number of workmen are mentioned at the beginning of the fourteenth century; journeymen formed a standing class and used to go on strike. But the scale of employment inaugurated in the eighteenth century amounted to a difference in kind, and the development of mechanical power made a still greater innovation.

"Both changes were attended by great evils, due to three main causes: (1) the rapidity of the development; (2) general ignorance and failure to understand the conditions; (3) the abuse of power by employers. The rapid development of industry on a large scale caused a corresponding hurried accumulation of persons in particular places in a haphazard way. . . . A slower pace would have resulted in a more organic growth, but the prevailing ignorance and indifference would have produced similar conditions in the end or rather worse ones.