least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case—­to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages.  And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact, that the cause of the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the Capitalistic System itself.  The wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily sum.  After a few hours’ work he has reproduced the value of that sum; but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which cost the capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket.  That is the basis of the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other.  And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance, but by the system itself—­this fact has been brought out in bold relief by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847.

Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases.  Accordingly, the most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous.  Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst “slums” I had to describe.  “Little Ireland” has disappeared, and the “Seven Dials” are next on the list for sweeping away.  But what of that?  Whole districts which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic, have now, with the growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation, discomfort, and misery.  Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no longer tolerated.  The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art of hiding the distress of the working-class.  But that, in regard to their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place, is amply proved by the Report of the Royal Commission “on the Housing of the Poor,” 1885.  And this is the case, too, in other respects.  Police regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it.