The continual emigration to the towns, the continual formation of surplus
 population in the country through the concentration of farms, conversion of
 arable land into pasture, machinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the
 agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand.
 The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its “relative
 surplus population,” the greater is their pressure on
 the means of employment, the greater is the absolute excess of the agricultural
 population over the means for housing it, the greater, therefore, in the
 villages is the local surplus population and the most pestilential packing
 together of human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scattered
 little villages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible draining of
 men from the surface of the land. The continuous superseding of the
 agricultural labourers, in spite of their diminishing number and the increasing
 mass of their products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is
 ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miserable
 housing which breaks down their last power of resistance, and makes them more
 slaves of the landed 648proprietors and the farmers. [107] Thus the minimum of wages becomes
 a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in
 spite of its constant “relative surplus population,” is at the same
 time underpopulated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the
 efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c., is most marked. It is
 to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at
 those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and
 intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers
 for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of
 the cultivation of the soil. [108]
 Hence we find in the official documents contradictory
 complaints from the same places of deficiency and excess of labour
 simultaneously. The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in
 wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and
 exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the
 women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new
 means of making a surplus population of the male agricultural labourer and of
 keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this
 vicious649 circle — the so-called gang-system, to which I must
 briefly return here. [109]