Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)_The condition of the working class in England in 1844

Friedrich Engels a German author was amazed by the injustice that existed in Manchester when visiting there. Unlike Dickens, He gave a much more detailed and sad expose on the industrialism in Manchester (London). The book that Engels published in 1845 laid the groundwork for Engels’s collaboration with Karl Marx. The author described London as a beautiful city that had its ugliness hidden form the first look. Two and half million more people were concentrated there during working hours; those are the poor who had transformed London into the commercial capital of the world.
“It is only later that the traveler appreciates the human suffering which has made all this possible. He can only realize the price that has been paid for all this magnificence after he has tramped the pavement of the main streets on London for some days….It is only when he has visited the slums of this great city that it dawns upon him that the inhabitants of modern London have had to sacrifice so much that is best in human nature in order to create those wonders of civilization with which their city teems” (P1832) Dickens said that the first days visiting London it was impossible to realized the sacrifice that was made by poor to make this beauty possible. The people who did the greatest jobs were not allowed to live there; they sacrified everything that is best in them to make that happen; for example their health, their fate, their proud of being to make this happen and did not rejoice from it for a second. “The vast majority of Londoners have had to let so many of their faculties lie dormant, stunted and unused in order that a small, closely knit group of their fellow citizens could develop to the full the qualities with which nature has endowed them.” (P1832) Engels revolted the readers by telling them that the poor worked to death to produce those beautiful places but that they government or managers of those facilities left them unused in order to satisfy a small portion of the population (rich) to the full extend. “Are they not all human beings with the same innate characteristics and potentialities? Are they not all equally interested in the pursuit of happiness?” (P1832) Here Engels wondered why this much gap existed between rich, middle class and working class. Wondering how people born the same way with the same mentality, motivated with the same mean can pass each other without seen each other. “We know well enough that this isolation of the individual, this narrow minded egotism, is everywhere the fundamental principle of modern society. But nowhere is this selfish egotism so blatantly evident as in the frantic bustle of the great city.” (P1832) Engels told us that this self-interest is normal in modern city, meaning capitalist cities; but he recognized that it was too selfish and not fair. The middle class people were not better off from the working class; they all lived packed together with filthy and gutter-less houses. “Here live the poorest of the poor. Here the worst paid workers rub shoulders with thieves, rogues and prostitutes. Most of them have come from Ireland or are form Irish extraction.” (P1834)
I could not still help wondering: how could this commercial capital of the world, this richest country hold so many poor and sadness? The worst of all is that the poor were the smartest since, if I am not mistaking Irish are very smart people. What was happening in the world then and is still happening to some extents now days. Is injustice ever ended in the world? I guess not, it is a never-ending fight…