resource is the
daily sale of their labor-power. The middle class arrives hereby at a
plight that grows ever graver. One field of industry after another,
where small production still predominated, is seized and occupied to
capitalist ends. The competition of capitalists among themselves compels
them to explore ever newer fields of exploitation. Capital goes about
"like a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour." The smaller and
weaker establishments are destroyed; if their owners fail to save
themselves upon some new field--a feat that becomes ever harder and less
possible--then they sink down into the class of the wage earners, or of
Catilinarians. All efforts to prevent the downfall of handicraft and of
the middle class by means of institutions and laws, borrowed from the
lumber-room of the musty past, prove utterly ineffective. They may
enable one or another to deceive himself on his actual condition; but
soon the illusion vanishes under the heavy weight of facts. The process
of absorption of the small by the large takes its course with all the
power and pitilessness of a law of Nature, and the process is sensible
to the feeling and the sight of all.

In the period between 1875-1882, the number of small industries
decreased in Prussia by 39,655,[164] although the population increased
in this period by about two million heads. The number of workmen
employed in small industries sank, during that time, from 57.6 per
cent., to 54.9 per cent. The industrial statistics for 1895 will furnish
much more drastic figures. The development of large production stands in
close relation to the development of steam machine and steam
horse-power. And what is the picture presented by these? Prussia had:--

1878. 1893.
Stationary steam boilers 32,411 53,024 + 63.6 per cent.
Stationary steam engines 29,895 53,092 + 77.6 per cent.
Movable machines 5,536 15,725 + 184 per cent.

The Kingdom of Saxony had:--

1861. 1891.
Stationary steam engines 1,003 8,075 + 700 per cent.
Horse-power 15,633 160,772 + 922 per cent.

In 1861, a steam engine in Saxony had, on an average, a 15.5
horse-power; in 1891, it had 19. All Germany had in 1878 about three
million horse-power in operation in industry; in 1894, about five
million. Austria had in 1873 in round figures 336,000 horse-power; in
1888, about 2,150,000. Ste