12 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISThouses for the workers, low wages and long hours, and the spread
of disease and prostitution were disturbing concomitants of ex
pansion in industrial production and transportation. There is
abundant statistical evidence that the economic revolution was on
the march and that the ancient bonds which had held medieval
society together were beginning to break. Moreover, labor was
becoming more highly specialized and therefore more monoto
nous, and skilled workers already were being forced to yield their
highly respected standing in the guilds to become mere cogs of a
factory system. These developments still were in their earliest
stages, and Germany lagged far behind England and France in
this respect; but the march of "big industry" had started, along
the Rhine, in Saxony, and in Silesia, and theories of laissez-faire
economics and modern capitalism were beginning to replace the
medieval concepts which had held the feudal and guild systems
together in the German states.^1
Aachen was the scene of workers' riots against the introduction
of laborsaving machines in the early 1830's. Solingen and Cologne
experienced serious labor troubles. The number of journeymen
increased, but the number of masters remained stationary. Tailors
complained about "ready-made" suits and consequent unemploy
ment; workers in Bonn protested against the use of steam engines;
and labor demonstrations in Breslau indicated the decline of the
crafts and the rise of the class struggle.^2 The year 1844 brought
the tragic insurrection of Silesian weavers. Goaded by the decline
in demand for their products, and by low wages and exploitation
under a "truck system" which forced them to accept inadequate
food in lieu of wages, the starving and desperate workers attacked
the factories and mills of their employers, only to have their dem-
(^1) Erich Kunze, Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur des Vormärz, 1840-50 (Bres
lau, 1938), 10-11.
(^2) Eduard Bernstein, Die Schneiderbewegung in Deutschland, Ihre Organisa
tion und Kämpfe (Berlin, 1913), I, 60-71; Max Quarck, Die erste deutsche Ar¬
beiterbeivegung 1848-1849 (Leipzig, 1924), 2, 10, 21; see also Hugo C. M. Wen-
del, The Evolution of Industrial Freedom in Prussia, 1845-1849 (New York,
1921), passim.