Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 37-38 of the 1978 Arlington House edition of David Friedman’s 1973 book, The Machinery of Freedom; (the second edition of this indispensable book is available on-line for free):

While the Industrial Revolution was actually occurring, much of the opposition to it came from the conservative landed gentry, who objected that luxuries and independence were corrupting the working classes. It is a curious irony that time has made those gentlemen the intellectual allies – often the directly quoted authorities – of modern liberals and socialists who assail nineteenth-century capitalism for rather different reasons. The modern liberal will claim that it was state legislation, limiting hours, preventing child labor, imposing safety regulations, and otherwise violating the principle of laissez faire, that brought progress. But the evidence indicates that the legislation consistently followed progress rather than preceding it. It was only when most workers were already down to a ten-hour day that it became politically possible to legislate one.