THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 149
There have been other circumstances which have operated simultaneously with the development of the manufacturing industry—the increase of the commodities put in circulation when commerce penetrated to the East Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope, the colonial régime, and the development of maritime commerce.
Another point which has not yet been sufficiently ap- preciated in the history of manufacturing industry was the disbanding of the numerous retainers of the feudal lords, the subaltern members of which became vagabonds before entering the factory. The creation of the factory was preceded by an almost universal vagabondage in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The factory found another powerful support in the numerous peasants, who, continually driven from the country districts by the trans- formation of the fields into pasturage, and through the progress of agriculture rendering a smaller number of hands necessary for cultivation, steadily flocked into the towns during whole centuries.
The growth of the market, the accumulation of capitals, the modification in the social position of classes, a crowd of people who found themselves deprived of their sources of income, these were the various historical conditions for the formation of the manufacturing industry. It was not, as M. Proudhon says, certain amiable stipulations between equals which brought men together in the factory. It was not even in the bosom of the ancient corporations that manufacture had its birth. It was the merchant who became the chief of the modern factory, and not the ancient master of corporations. Almost every- where there was a furious struggle between the manu- facturing industry and the handicrafts.
The accumulation and concentration of instruments of production and of workpeople preceded the development
