Thomas Carlyle “from Past and Present: Midas”

I found the comparison of Midas to England at the beginning of the industrial age to be most appropriate. As with the greed that comes with the age of industrialization there is internal turmoil. Carlyle points out that “England is full of wealth… supply of human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition” (477). Midas is appropriate as the story goes a king wished that everything he touched would be turned to gold but quickly realized that this also meant that he could not eat or even hold is love ones as everything he touched would turn into gold. With England and the limitless potential that the industrial age brought there was the thought that the average laborer could not fully experience the benefit that new material wealth brought. This idea of inequality was looked at quite often during this time period and would continue leading up to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that truly showed the horrid conditions of factory life. Here though Carlyle is focusing on the poor houses of England at the time. Carlyle open wonders why with this sudden explosion of funds that the average person has to live in such low conditions. This speculation is well warranted as the average person at the time was leaving the country side to move to the city to work in a factory setting. In this setting the factory would provide everything that was needed, such as pay and food, but at the cost that if you get the slightest bit sick or injured you would be fired. The major theme that Carlyle is trying to get at is England’s pursuit of wealth will be its undoing. This is dangerous for the average person as they are caught up by what the leaders of the country feel are best. Yet these leaders are in plush conditions and were never even close to experiencing what the average factory worker had to deal with. It is this environment that lead to Karl Marx and Fredrick Ingles to preach about communism as a way to stop this stratification of society and to hopefully stop any form of poverty. But like Midas, England will not realize its own mistake and undoing till it is too late and England gets what it wants and like Midas ended up cursed.