Excerpt from Werner Sombart's Modern Capitalism Vol. II (currently editing)

[k_a_nitz]

 From Chapter 53: The Unemployed:

The labour problem during the epoch of early capitalism is only to be understood if you bring to mind the strange contradiction which actually constituted the peculiar form of the labour market during the entire period — the contradiction that at the same time a surplus of labour power reigned and in many places a lack of labour power made itself noticeable. When I say a surplus of labour power reigned, it is to be understood by it that there was in all states from the 15th to the 18th century a great mass of propertyless, poor, fit for work people who did not find their sustenance through gainful employment or not in sufficient measure, and they as a consequence either begged or starved and in the end died of hunger. The fact of mass misery during all the centuries of early capitalism and in all the European lands is seen to be vouched for by a sufficient quantity of evidence.