ABSTRACT
The repeal of the Corn Laws was the sign, as List might have pointed out, of the capitalist coming-of-age; and among the gifts made to Capitalism on that auspicious occasion was the surrendered sword of the working-class movement. Radicals like John Bright and Cobden, who successfully led a mixed movement of the working and middle classes to the conquest of Free Trade, remained blind to the need for factory reform, and hostile industrially to the Trade Unions whose political backing they were eager to secure. For those earlier movements were complete in themselves, and represented complete and independent stages in the development of working-class policy and opinion. From the time when they begun to build, the British working-class movement has a steady and continuous history. The "Working-class Limiteds" grew up as joint stock companies owned chiefly by manual workers; while the expanding Co-operative movement provided a non-profit-making investment for a growing mass of working-class savings.
