Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Liberty and Property 19attention to statistics they would easily havediscovered the fallaciousness of their opinion.Infant mortality dropped, the averagelength of life was prolonged, the populationmultiplied, and the average common manenjoyed amenities of which even the well-todoof earlier ages did not dream.However this unprecedented enrichmentof the masses were merely a by-product ofthe Industrial Revolution. Its main achievementwas the transfer of economic supremacyfrom the owners of land to the totality of thepopulation. The common man was no longera drudge who had to be satisfied with thecrumbs that fell from the tables of the rich.The three pariah castes which were characteristicof the pre-capitalistic ages—the slaves,the serfs, and those people whom patristic andscholastic authors as well as British legislationfrom the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuriesreferred to as the poor—disappeared. Theirscions became, in this new setting of business,not only free workers, but also customers.This radical change was reflected in the