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Capitalist Production.

all, whilst the mildly liberal Forster, M.P., sheds tears over the blessings of free-trade, and the profits of the eminent men of Bradford who deal in worsted. In the Report of September, 1865, Dr. Bell, one of the poor law doctors of Bradford, ascribes the frightful mortality of fever-patients in his district to the nature of their dwellings. "In one small cellar measuring 1500 cubic feet . . . there are ten persons. . . . Vincent Street, Green Aire Place, and the Leys include 223 houses having 1450 inhabitants, 435 beds, and 36 privies. . . . The beds—and in that term I include any roll of dirty old rags, or an armful of shavings—have an average of 3.3 person to each, many have 5 and 6 persons to each, and some people, I am told, are absolutely without beds; they sleep in their ordinary clothes, on the bare boards—young men and women, married and unmarried, all together. I need scarcely add that many of these dwellings are dark, damp, dirty, stinking holes, utterly unfit for human habitations; they are the centres from which disease and death are distributed amongst those in better circumstances, who have allowed them to fester in our midst."[1]

Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of its dwellings. "Bristol, where the blankest poverty and domestic misery abound in the wealthiest town of Europe."[2]

c. The Nomad Population.

We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural, but whose occupation is in great part industrial. They are the light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its needs, now to this point, now to that. When they are not on the march, they "camp." Nomad labour is used for various

    Cellars.
    Regent Square 1 cellar 8 persons
    Acre Street 1 cellar 7 persons
    33 Roberts Court 1 cellar 7 persons
    Back Pratt Street, used as a brazier's shop. 1 cellar 7 persons
    27 Ebenezer Street 1 cellar 6 persons

    l. c., p. iii.

  1. l. c., p. 114.
  2. l. c., p. 50.