of labour and manufacture, machinery and large-scale industry in 
their historical and economic connections and effects; at any rate, 
they could here learn much that is new. And what in particular 
will they say of the fact which runs counter to all traditional — 
theories of free competition and which is -here nevertheless 
substantiated from official material, namely that in England, the 
fatherland of free competition, there is almost no industry left in 
-which the daily working hours are not strictly prescribed by. 
government. intervention and which. is not supervised by. factory 
inspectors?, And that nevertheless, not only ‘do the individual 
industries prosper, in line with the reduction in working hours, 
but the individual worker also produces more in the shorter hours 
than he did previously in the longer hours? | 

Alas, we cannot deny that the particularly bitter tone which the 
author uses against the official German economists is not without : 
justification. They more ‘or less all belong to the “vulgar 
economists”; they have prostituted their science for the sake of 
momentary popularity and denied its great classical exponents. 
They speak of “harmonies” and wallow in the most banal 
contradictions. May the severe lesson given them in this book serve 
to awaken them from their lethargy, to recall to them that 
political economy is not merely a milchcow providing us with butter 
but a science demanding serious and zealous application.