See the Blue books “Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom,” Nos. 8 and 13. Lond., 1861 and 1866. In Lancashire the number of mills increased only 4 per cent. between 1839 and 1850; 19 per cent. between 1850 and 1856; and 33 per cent. between 1856 and 1862; while the persons employed in them during each of the above periods of 11 years increased absolutely, but diminished relatively. (See “Rep. of Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1862,” p. 63.) The cotton trade preponderates in Lancashire. We may form an idea of the stupendous nature of the cotton trade in that district when we consider that, of the gross number of textile factories in the United Kingdom, it absorbs 45.2 per cent., of the spindles 83.3 per cent., of the power-looms 81.4 per cent., of the mechanical horse-power 72.6 per cent., and of the total number of persons employed 58.2 per cent. (l.c., pp. 62-63.)

97 Ure, l.c., p. 18.

98 Ure, l.c., P. 3 1. See Karl Marx, l.c., pp. 140-141.

99 It looks very like intentional misleading by statistics (which misleading it would be possible to prove in detail in other cases too), when the English factory legislation excludes from its operation the class of labourers last mentioned in the text, while the parliamentary returns expressly include in the category of factory operatives, not only engineers, mechanics, &c., but also managers, salesmen, messengers, warehousemen, packers, &c., in short everybody, except the owner of the factory himself.

100 Ure grants this. He says, “in case of need,” the workmen can be moved at the will of the manager from one machine to another, and he triumphantly exclaims: “Such a change is in flat contradiction with the old routine, that divides the labour, and to one workman assigns the task of fashioning the head of a needle, to another the sharpening of the point.” He had much better have asked himself, why this “old routine” is departed from in the automatic factory, only “in case of need. “

101 When distress is very great, as, for instance, during the American Civil War, the factory operative is now and then set by the Bourgeois to do the roughest of work, such as road-making, &c.. The English “ateliers nationaux” [national workshops] of 1862 and the following years, established for the benefit of the destitute cotton operatives, differ from the French of 1848 in this, that in the latter the workmen had to do unproductive work at the expense of the state, in the former they had to do productive municipal work to the advantage of the bourgeois, and that, too, cheaper than the regular workmen, with whom they were thus thrown into competition. “The physical appearance of the cotton operatives is unquestionably improved. This I attribute ... as to the men, to outdoor labour on public works.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1863,” p. 59.) The writer here alludes to the Preston factory operatives, who were employed on Preston Moor.

102 An example: The various mechanical apparatus introduced since the Act of 1844 into woollen mills, for replacing the labour of children. So soon as it shall happen that the children of the manufacturers themselves have to go through a course of schooling as helpers in the mill, this almost unexplored territory of mechanics will soon make remarkable progress. “Of machinery, perhaps self-acting mules are as dangerous as any other kind. Most of the accidents from them happen to little children, from their creeping under the mules to sweep the floor whilst the mules are in motion. Several ‘minders’ have been fined for this offence, but without much general benefit. If machine makers would only invent a self-sweeper, by whose use the necessity for these little children to creep under the machinery might be prevented, it would be a happy addition to our protective measures.” (“Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st. Oct., 1866,” p. 63.)

103 So much then for Proudhon’s wonderful idea: he “construes” machinery not as a synthesis of instruments of labour, but as a synthesis of detail operations for the benefit of the labourer himself.

104 F. Engels, l.c., p. 217. Even an ordinary and optimist Free-trader, like Mr. Molinari, goes so far as to say, “Un homme s’use plus vite en surveillant, quinze heures par jour, l’évolution uniforme d’un mécanisme, qu’en exercant, dans le même espace de temps, sa force physique. Ce travail de surveillance qui servirait peut-être d’utile gymnastique à l’intelligence, s’il n’était pas trop prolongé, détruit à la longue, par son excès, et l’intelligence, et le corps même.” [A man becomes exhausted more quickly when he watches over the uniform motion of mechanism for fifteen hours a day, than when he applies his physical strength over the same period of time. This labour of surveillance, which might perhaps serve as a useful exercise for the mind, if it did not go on too long, destroys both the mind and the body in the long run, through excessive application] (G. de Molinari: “Études Économiques.” Paris, 1846.)

105 F. Engels, l.c., p. 216.

106 “The Master Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Defence Fund. Report of the Committee.” Manchester, 1854, p. 17. We shall see hereafter, that the “master” can sing quite another song, when he is threatened with the loss of his “living” automaton.

107 Ure, l.c., p. 15. Whoever knows the life history of Arkwright, will never dub this barber-genius “noble.” Of all the great inventors of the 18th century, he was incontestably the greatest thiever of other people’s inventions and the meanest fellow.

108 “The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an end both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half past five. If he come a few minutes late, he is punished; if he come 10 minutes late, he is not allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day’s wage. He must eat, drink and sleep at word of command.... The despotic bell calls him from his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in the mill? There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations he pleases; he alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure; and if he insert the veriest nonsense, the courts say to the workman: Since you have entered into this contract voluntarily, you must now carry it out .... These workmen are condemned to live, from their ninth year till their death, under this mental and bodily torture.” (F. Engels, l.c., p. 217, sq.) What, “the courts say,” I will illustrate by two examples. One occurs at Sheffield at the end of 1866. In that town a workman had engaged himself for 2 years in a steelworks. In consequence of a quarrel with his employer he left the works, and declared that under no circumstances would he work for that master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract, and condemned to two months’ imprisonment. (If the master break the contract, he can be proceeded against only in a civil action, and risks nothing but money damages.) After the workman has served his two months, the master invites him to return to the works, pursuant to the contract. Workman says: No, he has already been punished for the breach. The master prosecutes again, the court condemns again, although one of the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity, by which a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again for the same offence or crime. This judgment was given not by the “Great Unpaid,” the provincial Dogberries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in London. — [Added in the 4th German edition. — This has now been done away with. With few exceptions, e.g., when public gas-works are involved, the worker in England is now put on an equal footing with the employer in case of breach of contract and can be sued only civilly. — F. E.] The second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November 1863. About 30 power-loom weavers, in the employment of one Harrup, a cloth manufacturer at Leower’s Mill, Westbury Leigh, struck work because master Harrup indulged in the agreeable habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morning; 6d. for 2 minutes; 1s. for 3 minutes, and 1s. 6d. for ten minutes. This is at the rate of 9s. per hour, and £4 10s. 0d. per diem; while the wages of the weavers on the average of a year, never exceeded 10s. to 12s. weekly. Harrup also appointed a boy to announce the starting time by a whistle, which he often did before six o’clock in the morning: and if the hands were not all there at the moment the whistle ceased, the doors were closed, and those hands who were outside were fined: and as there was no clock on the premises, the unfortunate hands were at the mercy of the young Harrup-inspired time-keeper. The hands on strike, mothers of families as well as girls, offered to resume work if the timekeeper were replaced by a clock, and a more reasonable scale of fines were introduced. Harrup summoned I9 women and girls before the magistrates for breach of contract. To the utter indignation of all present, they were each mulcted in a fine of 6d. and 2s. 6d. for costs. Harrup was followed from the court by a crowd of people who hissed him. A favourite operation with manufacturers is to punish the workpeople by deductions made from their wages on account of faults in the material worked on. This method gave rise in 1866 to a general strike in the English pottery districts. The reports of the Ch. Empl. Com. (1863-1866), give cases where the worker not only receives no wages, but becomes, by means of his labour, and of the penal regulations, the debtor to boot, of his worthy master. The late cotton crisis also furnished edifying examples of the sagacity shown by the factory autocrats in making deductions from wages. Mr. R. Baker, the Inspector of Factories, says, “I have myself had lately to direct prosecutions against one cotton mill occupier for having in these pinching and painful times deducted 10d. a piece from some of the young workers employed by him, for the surgeon’s certificate (for which he himself had only paid 6d.), when only allowed by the law to deduct 3d., and by custom nothing at all .... And I have been informed of another, who, in order to keep without the law, but to attain the same object, charges the poor children who work for him a shilling each, as a fee for learning them the art and mystery of cotton spinning, so soon as they are declared by the surgeon fit and proper persons for that occupation. There may therefore be undercurrent causes for such extraordinary exhibitions as strikes, not only wherever they arise, but particularly at such times as the present, which without explanation, render them inexplicable to the public understanding.” He alludes here to a strike of power-loom weavers at Darwen, June, 1863. (“Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 30 April, 1863,” pp. 50-51.) The reports always go beyond their official dates.

109 The protection afforded by the Factory Acts against dangerous machinery has had a beneficial effect. “But ... there are other sources of accident which did not exist twenty years since; one especially, viz., the increased speed of the machinery. Wheels, rollers, spindles and shuttles are now propelled at increased and increasing rates; fingers must be quicker and defter in their movements to take up the broken thread, for, if placed with hesitation or carelessness, they are sacrificed.... A large number of accidents are caused by the eagerness of the workpeople to get through their work expeditiously. It must be remembered that it is of the highest importance to manufacturers that their machinery should be in motion, i.e., producing yarns and goods. Every minute’s stoppage is not only a loss of power, but of production, and the workpeople are urged by the overlookers, who are interested in the quantity of work turned off, to keep the machinery in motion, and it is no less important to those of the operatives who are paid by the weight or piece, that the machines should be kept in motion. Consequently, although it is strictly forbidden in many, nay in most factories, that machinery should be cleaned while in motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most, if not in all, that the workpeople do, unreproved, pick out waste, wipe rollers and wheels, &c., while their frames are in motion. Thus from this cause only, 906 accidents have occurred during the six months.... Although a great deal of cleaning is constantly going on day by day, yet Saturday is generally the day set apart for the thorough cleaning of the machinery, and a great deal of this is done while the machinery is in motion.” Since cleaning is not paid for, the workpeople seek to get done with it as speedily as possible. Hence “the number of accidents which occur on Fridays, and especially on Saturdays, is much larger than on any other day. On the former day the excess is nearly 12 per cent. over the average number of the four first days of the week, and on the latter day the excess is 25 per cent. over the average of the preceding five days; or, if the number of working-hours on Saturday being taken into account — 7½ hours on Saturday as compared with 10½ on other days — there is an excess of 65 per cent. on Saturdays over the average of the other five days.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1866,” pp. 9, 15, 16, 17.)

110 In Part I. of Book III. I shall give an account of a recent campaign by the English manufacturers against the Clauses in the Factory Acts that protect the “hands” against dangerous machinery. For the present, let this one quotation from the official report of Leonard Horner suffice: “I have heard some mill-owners speak with inexcusable levity of some of the accidents; such, for instance, as the loss of a finger being a trifling matter. A working-man’s living and prospects depend so much upon his fingers, that any loss of them is a very serious matter to him. When I have heard such inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this question: Suppose you were in want of an additional workman, and two were to apply, both equally well qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or a forefinger, which would you engage? There never was a hesitation as to the answer....” The manufacturers have “mistaken prejudices against what they have heard represented as a pseudo-philanthropic legislation.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1855.") These manufacturers are clever folk, and not without reason were they enthusiastic for the slave-holders’ rebellion.

111 In those factories that have been longest subject to the Factory Acts, with their compulsory limitation of the hours of labour, and other regulations, many of the older abuses have vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a certain extent “improved construction of the buildings,” and this is an advantage to the workpeople. (See “Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1863,” p. 109.)

112 See amongst others, John Houghton: “Husbandry and Trade Improved.” London, 1727. “The Advantages of the East India Trade, 1720.” John Bellers, l.c. “The masters and their workmen are, unhappily, in a perpetual war with each other. The invariable object of the former is to get their work done as cheaply as possible; and they do not fail to employ every artifice to this purpose, whilst the latter are equally attentive to every occasion of distressing their masters into a compliance with higher demands.” (“An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions,” pp. 61-62. Author, the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, quite on the side of the workmen.)

113 In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery, even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character, as in the case of the Sheffield file cutters in 1865.

114 Sir James Steuart also understands machinery quite in this sense. “Je considère donc les machines comme des moyens d’augmenter (virtuellement) le nombre des gens industrieux qu’on n’est pas obligé de nourrir.... En quoi l’effet d’une machine diffère-t-il de celui de nouveaux habitants?” (French trans. t. I., l. I., ch. XIX.) More naïve is Petty, who says, it replaces “Polygamy.” The above point of view is, at the most, admissible only for some parts of the United States. On the other hand, “machinery can seldom be used with success to abridge the labour of an individual; more time would be lost in its construction than could be saved by its application. It is only really useful when it acts on great masses, when a single machine can assist the work of thousands. It is accordingly in the most populous countries, where there are most idle men, that it is most abundant.... It is not called into use by a scarcity of men, but by the facility with which they can be brought to work in masses.” (Piercy Ravenstone: “Thoughts on the Funding System and its Effects.” London, 1824, p. 45.)

115 [Note in the 4th German edition. — This applies to Germany too. Where in our country agriculture on a large scale exists, hence particularly in the East, it has become possible only in consequence of the clearing of the estates (“Bauernlegen”), a practice which became widerspread in the 16th century and was particularly so since 1648. — F. E.]

116 “Machinery and labour are in constant competition.” Ricardo, l.c., p. 479.

117 The competition between hand-weaving and power-weaving in England, before the passing of the Poor Law of 1833, was prolonged by supplementing the wages, which had fallen considerably below the minimum, with parish relief. “The Rev. Mr. Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wilmslow in Cheshire, a manufacturing district. The questions of the Committee of Emigration, and Mr. Turner’s answers, show how the competition of human labour is maintained against machinery. ‘Question: Has not the use of the power-loom superseded the use of the hand-loom? Answer: Undoubtedly; it would have superseded them much more than it has done, if the hand-loom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages.’ ‘Question: But in submitting he has accepted wages which are insufficient to support him, and looks to parochial contribution as the remainder of his support? Answer: Yes, and in fact the competition between the hand-loom and the power-loom is maintained out of the poor-rates.’ Thus degrading pauperism or expatriation, is the benefit which the industrious receive from the introduction of machinery, to be reduced from the respectable and in some degree independent mechanic, to the cringing wretch who lives on the debasing bread of charity. This they call a temporary inconvenience.” (“A Prize Essay on the Comparative Merits of Competition and Co-operation.” Lond., 1834, p. 29.)

118 “The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country” (i.e., as Ricardo explains in the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists, whose wealth, from the economic point of view, forms the Wealth of the Nation), “may at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condition of the labourer.” (Ricardo, l.c., p. 469.) “The constant aim and the tendency of every improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labour of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and children for that of grown-up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen.” (Ure, l.c., t. I., p. 35.)

119 “Rep. Insp. Fact. for 31st October, 1858,” p. 43.

120 “Rep. lnsp. Fact. for 31st October, 1856,” p. 15.

121 Ure, l.c., p. 19. “The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick-making consists in this, that the employer is made entirely independent of skilled labourers.” (“Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Report,” Lond., 1866, p. 130, n. 46.) Mr. A. Sturrock, superintendent of the machine department of the Great Northern Railway, says, with regard to the building of locomotives, &c.: “Expensive English workmen are being less used every day. The production of the workshops of England is being increased by the use of improved tools and these tools are again served by a low class of labour.... Formerly their skilled labour necessarily produced all the parts of engines. Now the parts of engines are produced by labour with less skill, but with good tools. By tools, I mean engineer’s machinery, lathes, planing machines, drills, and so on.” (“Royal Com. on Railways,” Lond., 1867, Minutes of Evidence, n. 17, 862 and 17, 863.)

122 Ure, l.c., p. 20.

123 Ure, l.c., p. 321.

124 Ure, l.c., p. 23.

125 “Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1863,” pp. 108,109.

126 l.c., p. 109. The rapid improvement of machinery, during the crisis, allowed the English manufacturers, immediately after the termination of the American Civil War, and almost in no time, to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth, during the last six months of 1866, was almost unsaleable. Thereupon began the consignment of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty, viz., reducing wages 5 per cent. The workpeople resisted, and said that the only remedy was to work short time, 4 days a-week; and their theory was the correct one. After holding out for some time, the self-elected captains of industry had to make up their minds to short time, with reduced wages in some places, and in others without.

127 “The relation of master and man in the blown-flint bottle trades amounts to a chronic strike.” Hence the impetus given to the manufacture of pressed glass, in which the chief operations are done by machinery. One firm in Newcastle, who formerly produced 350,000 lbs. of blown-flint glass, now produces in its place 3,000,500 lbs. of pressed glass. (“Ch. Empl. Comm., Fourth Rep.,” 1865, pp. 262-263.)

128 Gaskell. “The Manufacturing Population of England,” London, 1833, pp. 3, 4.

129 W. Fairbairn discovered several very important applications of machinery to the construction of machines, in consequence of strikes in his own workshops.

130 Ure, l.c., pp. 368-370

131 Ure, l.c., pp. 368, 7, 370, 280, 281, 321, 370, 475.

132 Ricardo originally was also of this opinion, but afterwards expressly disclaimed it with the scientific impartiality and love of truth characteristic of him. See l.c., ch. xxxi. “On Machinery.”

133 Nota bene. My illustration is entirely on the lines of those given by the above named economists.

134 A disciple of Ricardo, in answer to the insipidities of J. B. Say, remarks on this point: “Where division of labour is well developed, the skill of the labourer is available only in that particular branch in which it has been acquired; he himself is a sort of machine. It does not therefore help matters one jot, to repeat in parrot fashion, that things have a tendency to find their level. On looking around us we cannot but see, that they are unable to find their level for a long time; and that when they do find it, the level is always lower than at the commencement of the process.” (“An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand,” &c., Lond. 1821, p. 72.)

135 MacCulloch, amongst others, is a past master in this pretentious cretinism. “If,” he says, with the affected naïveté of a child of 8 years, “if it be advantageous, to develop the skill of the workman more and more, so that he is capable of producing, with the same or with a less quantity of labour, a constantly increasing quantity of commodities, it must also be advantageous, that he should avail himself of the help of such machinery as will assist him most effectively in the attainment of this result.” (MacCulloch: “Princ. of Pol. Econ.,” Lond. 1830, p. 166.)

136 “The inventor of the spinning machine has ruined India, a fact, however, that touches us but little.” A. Thiers: De la propriété. — M. Thiers here confounds the spinning machine with the power-loom, “a fact, however, that touches us but little.”

137 According to the census of 1861 (Vol. II., Lond., 1863), the number of people employed in coal mines in England and Wales, amounted to 246,613 of which 73,545 were under, and 173,067 were over 20 years. Of those under 20, 835 were between 5 and 10 years, 30,701 between 10 and 15 years, 42,010 between 15 and 19 years. The number employed in iron, copper, lead, tin, and other mines of every description, was 319, 222.

138 In England and Wales, in 1861, there were employed in making machinery, 60,807 persons, including the masters and their clerks, &c., also all agents and business people connected with this industry, but excluding the makers of small machines, such as sewing-machines, &c., as also the makers of the operative parts of machines, such as spindles. The total number of civil engineers amounted to 3,329.

139 Since iron is one of the most important raw materials; let me here state that, in 1861, there were in England and Wales 125,771 operative iron founders, of whom 123,430 were males, 2,341 females. Of the former 30,810 were under, and 92,620 over 20 years.

140 “A family of four grown-up persons, with two children as winders, earned at the end of the last, and the beginning of the present century, by ten hours’ daily labour, £4 a week. If the work was very pressing, they could earn more.... Before that, they had always suffered from a deficient supply of yarn.” (Gaskell, l.c., pp. 25-27.)

141 F. Engels, in “Lage, &c.,” points out the miserable condition of a large number of those who work on these very articles of luxury. See also numerous instances in the “Reports of the Children’s Employment Commission.”

142 In 1861, in England and Wales, there were 94,665 sailors in the merchant service.

143 Of these only 177,596 are males above 13 years of age.

144 Of these, 30,501 are females.

145 Of these, 137,447 males. None are included in the 1,208,648 who do not serve in private houses. Between 1861 and 1870 the number of male servants nearly doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847 there were 2,694 gamekeepers (for the landlords’ preserves), in 1869 there were 4,921. The young servant girls in the houses of the London lower middle class are in common parlance called “slaveys.”

146 Ganilh, on the contrary, considers the final result of the factory system to be an absolutely less number of operatives, at whose expense an increased number of “gens honnêtes” live and develop their well-known “perfectibilité perfectible.” Little as he understands the movement of production, at least he feels, that machinery must needs be a very fatal institution, if its introduction converts busy workmen into paupers, and its development calls more slaves of labour into existence than it has suppressed. It is not possible to bring out the cretinism of his standpoint, except by his own words: “Les classes condamnées à produire et à consommer diminuent, et les classes qui dirigent le travail, qui soulagent, consolent, et éclairent toute la population, se multiplient ... et s’approprient tous les bienfaits qui résultent de la diminution des frais du travail, de l’abondance des productions, et du bon marché des consommations. Dans cette direction, l’espéce humaine s’élève aux plus hautes conceptions du génie, pénètre dans les profoundeurs mystérieuses de la religion, établit les principes salutaires de la morale (which consists in ‘s’approprier tous les beinfaits,’ &c.), les lois tutélaires de la liberté (liberty of ‘les classes condamnées à produire?’) et du pouvoir, de l’obéissance et de la justice, du devoir et de la l’humanité.” [The classes condemned to produce and to consume diminish, and the classes which direct labour, which relieve, console and enlighten the whole population, multiply ... and appropriate all the benefits which result from the diminution of the costs of labour, from the abundance of products and the cheapness of consumer goods. In this way, the human species rises to the highest creations of genius, penetrates the mysterious depths of religion, and establishes the salutory principles of morality, the laws for the protection of liberty, and power, of obedience and justice, of obligation and humanity] For this twaddle, see “Des Systèmes d’Economie Politique, &c., Par M. Ch. Ganilh,” 2ème ed., Paris, 1821, t. I, p. 224, and see p. 212.

147 “Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1865,” p. 58, sq. At the same time, however, means of employment for an increased number of hands was ready in 110 new mills with 11,625 looms, 628,576 spindles and 2,695 total horse-power of steam and water (l.c.).

148 “Reports, &c., for 31 Oct., 1862,” p. 79. At the end of 1871, Mr. A. Redgrave, the factory inspector, in a lecture given at Bradford, in the New Mechanics’ Institution, said: “What has struck me for some time past is the altered appearance of the woollen factories. Formerly they were filled with women and children, now machinery seems to do all the work. At my asking for an explanation of this from a manufacturer, he gave me the following: ‘Under the old system I employed 63 persons; after the introduction of improved machinery I reduced my hands to 33, and lately, in consequence of new and extensive alterations, I have been in a position to reduce those 33 to 13’.”

149 See “Reports, &c., 31 Oct., 1856,” p. 16.

150 “The sufferings of the hand-loom weavers were the subject of an inquiry by a Royal Commission, but although their distress was acknowledged and lamented, the amelioration of their condition was left, and probably necessarily so, to the chances and changes of time, which it may now be hoped” [20 years later!] “have nearly obliterated those miseries, and not improbably by the present great extention of the power-loom.” (“Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1856,” p. 15.)

151 Other ways in which machinery affects the production of raw material will be mentioned in the third book.

152

153

154 The economic development of the United States is itself a product of European, more especially of English modern industry. In their present form (1866) the States must still be considered a European colony. [Added in the 4th German edition. — “Since then they have developed into country whose industry holds second place in the world, without on that account entirely losing their colonial character.” — F. E.]

155 In an appeal made in July, 1866, to the Trade Societies of England, by the shoemakers of Leicester, who had been thrown on the streets by a lock-out, it is stated: “Twenty years ago the Leicester shoe trade was revolutionised by the introduction of riveting in the place of stitching. At that time good wages could be earned. Great competition was shown between the different firms as to which could turn out the neatest article. Shortly afterwards, however a worse kind of competition sprang up, namely, that of underselling one another in the market. The injurious consequences soon manifested themselves in reductions of wages, and so sweepingly quick was the fall in the price of labour, that many firms now pay only one half of the original wages. And yet, though wages sink lower and lower, profits appear, with each alteration in the scale of wages, to increase.” Even bad times are utilised by the manufacturers, for making exceptional profits by excessive lowering of wages, i.e., by a direct robbery of the labourer’s means of subsistence. One example (it has reference to the crisis in the Coventry silk weaving): “From information I have received from manufacturers as well as workmen, there seems to be no doubt that wages have been reduced to a greater extent than either the competition of the foreign producers, or other circumstances have rendered necessary ... the majority of weavers are working at a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent. in their wages. A piece of ribbon for making which the weaver got 6s. or 7s. five years back, now only brings them 3s. 3d. or 3s. 6d.; other work is now priced at 2s. and 2s. 3d. which was formerly priced at 4s. and 4s. 3d. The reduction in wage seems to have been carried to a greater extent than is necessary for increasing demand. Indeed, the reduction in the cost of weaving, in the case of many descriptions of ribbons, has not been accompanied by any corresponding reduction in the selling price of the manufactured article.” (Mr. F. D. Longe’s Report. “Ch. Emp. Com., V. Rep., 1866,” p. 114, 1.)

156 Conf “Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1862,” p. 30.

157 l.c., p. 19.

158 “Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1863,” pp. 41-45.

159 l.c., pp. 41-42

160 l.c., p. 57.

161 l.c., pp. 50-51.

162 l.c., pp. 62-63.

163 “Rep. &c., 30th April, 1864,” p. 27.

164 From a letter of Mr. Harris, Chief Constable of Bolton, in “Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865,” pp. 61-62.

165 In an appeal, dated 1863, of the factory operatives of Lancashire, &c., for the purpose of forming a society for organised emigration, we find the following: “That a large emigration of factory workers is now absolutely essential to raise them from their present prostrate condition, few will deny; but to show that a continuous stream of emigration is at all times demanded, and, without which it is impossible for than to maintain their position in ordinary times, we beg to call attention to the subjoined facts: — In 1814 the official value of cotton goods exported was £17,665,378, whilst the real marketable value was £20,070,824. In 1858 the official value of cotton goods exported, was £182,221,681; but the real or marketable value was only £43,001,322, being a ten-fold quantity sold for little more than double the former price. To produce results so disadvantageous to the country generally, and to the factory workers in particular, several causes have co-operated, which, had circumstances permitted, we should have brought more prominently under your notice; suffice it for the present to say that the most obvious one is the constant redundancy of labour, without which a trade so ruinous in its effects never could have been carried on, and which requires a constantly extending market to save it from annihilation. Our cotton mills may be brought to a stand by the periodical stagnations of trade, which, under present arrangements, are as inevitable as death itself; but the human mind is constantly at work, and although we believe we are under the mark in stating that six millions of persons have left these shores during the last 25 years, yet, from the natural increase of population, and the displacement of labour to cheapen production, a large percentage of the male adults in the most prosperous times find it impossible to obtain work in factories on any conditions whatever.” (“Reports of Insp. of Fact., 30th April 1863,” pp. 51-52.) We shall, in a later chapter, see how our friends, the manufacturers, endeavoured, during the catastrophe in the cotton trade, to prevent by every means, including State interference, the emigration of the operatives.

166 “Ch. Empt. Comm. III. Report, 1864,” p. 108, n. 447.

167 In the United States the restoration, in this way, of handicrafts based on machinery is frequent; and therefore, when the inevitable transition to the factory system shall take place, the ensuing concentration will, compared with Europe and even with England, stride on in seven-league boots.

168 See “Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” p. 64.

169 Mr. Gillott erected in Birmingham the first steel-pen factory on a large scale. It produced, so early as 1851, over 180,000,000 of pens yearly, and consumed 120 tons of steel. Birmingham has the monopoly of this industry in the United Kingdom, and at present produces thousands of millions of steel-pens. According to the Census of 1861, the number of persons employed was 1,428, of whom 1,268 females from 5 years of age upwards.

170 “Ch. Empl. Comm. II. Rep. 1864,” p. LXVIII., n. 415.

171 And now forsooth children are employed at file-cutting in Sheffield.

172 “Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep. 1866,” p. 3, n. 24; p. 6, n. 55, 56; p. 7, n. 59, 60.

173 l.c., pp. 114, 115, n. 6, 7. The commissioner justly remarks that though as a rule machines take the place of men, here literally young persons replace machines.

174 See the Report on the rag trade, and numerous details in “Public Health, VIII. Rep.” Lond. 1866, app., pp. 196, 208.

175 “Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep., 1866,” pp. xvi-xviii, n. 86-97, and pp. 130-133, n. 39-71. See also III. Rep., 1864, pp. 48, 56.

176 “Public Health. Sixth Rep.,” Lond. 1864, pp. 29, 31.

177 l.c., p. 30. Dr. Simon remarks that the mortality among the London tailors and printers between the ages of 25 and 35 is in fact much greater, because the employers in London obtain from the country a great number of young people up to 30 years of age, as “apprentices” and “improvers,” who come for the purpose of being perfected in their trade. These figure in the census as Londoners, they swell out the number of heads on which the London death-rate is calculated, without adding proportionally to the number of deaths in that place. The greater part of them in fact return to the country, and especially in cases of severe illness. (l.c.)

178 I allude here to hammered nails, as distinguished from nails cut out and made by machinery. See “Child. Empl. Comm., Third Rep.,” pp. xi., xix., n. 125-130, p. 52, n. 11, p. 114, n. 487, p. 137, n. 674.

179 “Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep.,” p. xxii, n. 166.

180 “Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864,” pp. xix., xx., xxi.

181 l.c., pp. xxi.. xxii.

182 l.c., pp. xxix., xxx.

183 l.c., pp. xi., xii.

184 “Child. Empl. Comm., I. Rep. 1863,” p. 185.

185 In England millinery and dressmaking are for the most part carried on, on the premises of the employer, partly by workwomen who live there, partly by women who live off the premises.

186 Mr. White, a commissioner, visited a military clothing manufactory that employed 1,000 to 1,200 persons, almost all females, and a shoe manufactory with 1,300 persons; of these nearly one half were children and young persons.

187 An instance. The weekly report of deaths by the Registrar-General dated 26th Feb., 1864, contains 5 cases of death from starvation. On the same day The Times reports another case. Six victims of starvation in one week!

188 “Child. Empl. Comm., Second Rep., 1864,” p. lxvii., n. 406-9, p. 84, n. 124, p. lxxiii, n. 441, p. 68, n. 6, p. 84, n. 126, p. 78, n. 85, p. 76, n. 69, p. lxxii, n. 483.

189 “The rental of premises required for workrooms seems the element which ultimately determines the point; and consequently it is in the metropolis, that the old system of giving work out to small employers and families has been longest retained, and earliest returned to.” (l.c., p. 83, n. 123.) The concluding statement in this quotation refers exclusively to shoemaking.

190 In glove-making and other industries where the condition of the work-people is hardly distinguishable from that of paupers, this does not occur.

191 l.c., p. 83, n. 122.

192 In the wholesale boot and shoe trade of Leicester alone, there were in 1864, 800 sewing-machines already in use.

193 l.c., p. 84, n. 124.

194 Instances: The Army Clothing Depot at Pimlico, London, the Shirt factory of Tillie and Henderson at Londonderry, and the clothes factory of Messrs. Tait at Limerick which employs about 1,200 hands.

195 “Tendency to Factory System” (l.c., p. lxvii). “The whole employment is at this time in a state of transition, and is undergoing the same Change as that effected in the lace trade, weaving, &c.” (l.c., n. 405.) “A complete revolution” (l.c., p. xlvi., n. 318). At the date of the Child. Empl. Comm. of 1840 stocking making was still done by manual labour. Since 1846 various sorts of machines have been introduced, which are now driven by steam. The total number of persons of both sexes and of all ages from 3 years upwards, employed in stocking making in England, was in 1862 about 129,000. Of these only 4,063 were, according to the Parliamentary Return of the 11th February, 1862, working under the Factory Acts.

196 Thus, e.g., in the earthenware trade, Messrs. Cochrane, of the Britain Pottery, Glasgow, report: “To keep up our quantity we have gone extensively into machines wrought by unskilled labour, and every day convinces us that we can produce a greater quantity than by the old method.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” p. 13.) “The effect of the Fact. Acts is to force on the further introduction of machinery” (l.c., pp. 13-14).

197 Thus, after the extension of the Factory Act to the potteries, great increase of powerjiggers in place of hand-moved jiggers.

198 “Report of lnsp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” pp. 96 and 127.

199 The introduction of this and other machinery into match-making caused in one department alone 230 young persons to be replaced by 32 boys and girls of 14 to 17 years of age. This saving in labour was carried still further in 1865, by the employment of steam power.

200 “Ch. Empl. Comm., 11. Rep., 1864,” p. ix., n. 50.

201 “Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” p..22.

202 “But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully in some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital beyond the means of many of the present occupiers.” “I cannot but rejoice,” writes Sub-Insp. May, “that notwithstanding the temporary disorganisation which inevitably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension Act), and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended to remedy, &c.” (Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865.)

203 With blast furnaces, for instance, “work towards the end of the week being generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also.” (“Child. Empl. Comm., III. Rep.,” p. vi.) “The little masters generally have very irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it up.... They always employ their own children, if they have any.” (l.c., p. vii.) “The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and practice of making up for this by working longer hours.” (l.c., p. xviii.) “In Birmingham ... an enormous amount of time is lost ... idling part of the time, slaving the rest.” (l.c., p. xi.)

204 “Child. Empl. Comm., IV., Rep.,” p. xxxii., “The extension of the railway system is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and the consequent hurry, neglect of meal-times, and late hours of the workpeople.” (l.c., p. xxxi.)

205 “Ch. Empl. Comm, IV. Rep.,” pp. xxxv., n. 235, 237.

206 “Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep.,” p. 127, n. 56.

207 “With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time, I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1833. Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had then, before steam had halved all distances and established new regulations for transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will certainly fail should it have to be tried.” (“Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1862,” pp. 54, 55.)

208 “Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep.,” p. xviii, n. 118.

209 John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: “The uncertainty of fashions does increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen are miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master-weavers not daring to lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring comes, and they know what the fashion will then be; 2ndly, In the spring the journeymen are not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that they may supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the plough of hands, drains the country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city with beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg.” (“Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, &c.,” p. 9.)

210 “Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep.,” p. 171, n. 34.

211 The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: “Under these circumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a.m. to 7 or 7.30 p.m., in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra outlay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an extra machine costs only £16 or £18; much of such over-time as does occur is to be referred to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space.” “Ch. Empl, Comm. V. Rep.,” p. 171, n. 35, 36, 38.

212 l.c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for the workpeople against the manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade, states: “The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e.g., to send the goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season, and at the same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing vessel and a steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be in the foreign market before their competitors.”

213 “This could be obviated,” says a manufacturer, “at the expense of an enlargement of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament.” l.c., p. x., n. 38.

214 l.c., p. xv., n. 72. sqq.

215 “Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1865,” p. 127.

216 It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average intensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are consumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of Nature. According to the experiments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that a healthy man gives off about 1,300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would give about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. “Every man should have at least 800 cubic feet.” (Huxley.)

217 According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under 14 years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same time they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is responsible for compliance with the Act. “Factory education is compulsory, and it is a condition of labour.” (“Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” p. 111.)

218 On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars, see the speech of N. W. Senior at the seventh annual congress of “The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science,” in “Report of Proceedings, &c.,” Lond. 1863, pp. 63, 64, also the “Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” pp. 118, 119, 120, 126, sqq.

219 “Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,” p. 118. A silk manufacturer naively states to the Children’s Employment Commissioners: “I am quite sure that the true secret of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour from a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor irksome, or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish my own children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their schooling.” (“Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep.,” p. 82, n. 36.)

220 Senior, l.c., p. 66. How modern industry, when it has attained to a certain pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the social conditions of production, of also revolutionising people’s minds, is strikingly shown by a comparison of Senior’s speech in 1863, with his philippic against the Factory Act of 1833; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are forbidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, e.g., Mr. Snell reports it to be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor person claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr. Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied to certain families “because they were sending their children to school!”

221 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently the tension and the amount of tambour-power expended become monstrous, and especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus Mr. Longe; one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood boys of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon-looms, not to mention younger children who had to drive smaller machines. “It is extraordinarily fatiguing work. The boy is a mere substitute for steam power.” (“Ch. Empl. Comm. V, Rep. 1866;” p. 114, n. 6.) As to the fatal consequences of “this system of slavery,” as the official report styles it, see l.c., p. 114 sqq.

222 l.c., p. 3, n. 24.

223 l.c., P. 7, n. 60.

224 “In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant, according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned by himself. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at Church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they were shorn from the sheep and sown in the flaxfield. In the preparation of these. it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle, thimble, and a very few parts of the iron-work employed in the weaving. The dyes, toci, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs and herbs.” (Dugald Stewart’s “Works,” Hamilton’s Ed., Vol. viii., pp. 327-328.)

225 In the celebrated “Livre des métiers” of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear “to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recommend his own wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others.”

226 “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” (F. Engels und Karl Marx: “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.” Lond. 1848, p. 5.)

227 “You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.”
Shakespeare.

228 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: “I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing.... Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.” (A. Corbon, “De l’enseignement professionnel,” 2ème ed., p. 50.)

229 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: “An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness.... Bodily labour, it’s a primitive institution of God.... Labour being as proper for the bodies’ health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease.... Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it.... A childish silly employ” (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) “leaves the children’s minds silly,” (“Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry.” Lond., 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18.)

230 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the lacemaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.

231 “Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep.,” p. xxv., n. 162, and II. Rep., p. xxxviii., n, 285, 289, p. xxv., xxvi., n. 191.

232 “Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so.” (“Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865,” p. 129.)

233 “Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865,” pp. 27-32.

234 Numerous instances will be found in “Rep. of Insp. of Fact.”

235 “Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep.,” p. x., n. 35.

236 “Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep.,” p. ix., n. 28.

237 l.c., p. xxv., n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with small scale, industries, see “Ch. Empl. Comm., III. Rep.,” p. 13, n. 144, p. 25, n. 121, p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c.

238 The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace-making, stocking-weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with its numerous sub-divisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove-making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c., paper-mills, glassworks, tobacco factories, India-rubber works, braid-making (for weaving), hand-carpetmaking, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of spindles and spools, letterpress printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery (including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c.), rope-making, manufacture of jet ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works, tallow chandlers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries connected with timber, and other mixed trades.

239 l.c., p. xxv., n. 169.

240 Here (from “The Tory Cabinet...... to “Nassau W. Senior") the English text has been altered in conformity with the 4th German edition. — Ed.

241 The Factory Acts Extension Act was passed on August 12, 1867. It regulates all foundries, smithies, and metal manufactories, including machine shops; furthermore glass-works, paper mills, gutta-percha and India-rubber works, tobacco manufactories, letter-press printing and book-binding works, and, lastly, all workshops in which more than 50 persons are employed. The Hours of Labour Regulation Act, passed on August 17, 1867, regulates the smaller workshops and the so-called domestic industries. I shall revert to these Acts and to the new Mining Act of 1872 in Volume II.

242 Senior, “Social Science Congress,” pp. 55-58.

243 The “personnel” of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 2 assistant inspectors and 41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted for the year 1871-72 to no more than £25,347, inclusive of the law expenses incurred by prosecutions of offending masters.

244 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bearing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the factory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system to be theoretically the starting-point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion of this when, in his “Handboek van Practische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62,” which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handicrafts against the factory system.

[Added in the 4th German edition — The “hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments” (S. 314) (present volume, p. 284) which English legislation called into life by means of the mutually conflicting Factory Acts, the Factory Acts Extension Act and the Workshops’ Act, finally became intolerable, and thus all legislative enactments on this subject were codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. Of course no detailed critique of this English industrial code now in effect can be presented here. The following remarks will have to suffice. The Act comprises:

1) Textile Mills. Here everything remains about as it was: children more than 10 years of age may work 5½ hours a day; or 6 hours and Saturday off; young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and at most 6½ on Saturday.

2) Non-Textile Factories. Here the regulations are brought closer than before to those of No. 1, but there are still several exceptions which favour the capitalists and which in certain cases may be expanded by special permission of the Home Secretary.

3) Workshops, defined approximately as in the former Act; as for the children, young workers and women employed there, the workshops are about on a par with the non-textile factories, but again conditions are easier in details.

4) Workshops in which no children or young workers are employed, but only persons of both sexes above the age of 18; this category enjoy still easier conditions.

5) Domestic Workshops, where only members of the family are employed, in the family dwelling: still more elastic regulations and simultaneously the restriction that the inspector may, without special permission of the ministry or a court, enter only rooms not used also for dwelling purposes; and lastly unrestricted freedom for straw-plaiting and lace and glove-making by members of the family. With all its defects this Act, together with the Swiss Federal Factory Law of March 23, 1877, is still by far the best piece of legislation in this field. A comparison of it with the said Swiss federal law is of particular interest because it clearly demonstrates the merits and demerits of the two legislative methods — the English, “historical” method, which intervenes when occasion requires, and the continental method, which is built up on the traditions of the French Revolution and generalises more. Unfortunately, due to insufficient inspection personnel, the English code is still largely a dead letter with regard to its application to workshops. — F. E.]

245 “You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emasculated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilised, not only in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division.” (David Urquhart, l.c., p. 119.) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.

246 See Liebig: “Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie,” 7. Auflage, 1862, and especially the “Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,” in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig’s immortal merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ventures on such haphazard assertions as the following: “By greater pulverising and more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided, and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed; but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This law,” adds Liebig, “was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his ‘Principles of Pol. Econ.,’ Vol. 1, p. 17, as follows: ‘That the produce of land increases, caeteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed’ (Mill here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo’s school, for since the ‘decrease of the labourers employed,’ kept even pace in England with the advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no application to that country, at all events), ‘is the universal law of agricultural industry.’ This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this law.” (Liebig, l.c., Bd. I., p. 143 and Note.) Apart from Liebig’s wrong interpretation of the word “labour,” by which word he understands something quite different from what Political Economy does, it is, in any case, “very remarkable” that he should make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by James Anderson in A. Smith’s days, and was repeated in various works down to the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism (the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to himself in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of, Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo’s theory, and in 1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite commonplace, and known to every schoolboy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, “remarkable” authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos.

1 “The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on the productiveness of industry.” (Ramsay, l.c., p. 206.) “If each man’s labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property.” (Ravenstone, l.c. p. 14, 15.)

2 According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in those parts of the earth which have already been explored.

3 “Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer’s, 99 parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps, the labourer has not 2/3.” (The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c., p. 73.)

4 Diodorus, l.c., l. I., c. 80.

5 “The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy.” (England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182.) “Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering... there may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour.” (An Inquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions. Lond. 1767, p. 10.)

6 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian astronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. “Le solstice est le moment de l’année ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d’attention.... C’était cette année tropique qu’il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs opérations agricoles. Ils durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour.” [The solstice is the moment of the year when the Nile begins to rise, and it is the moment the Egyptians have had to watch for with the greatest attention ... It was the evolution of the tropical year which they had to establish firmly so as to conduct their agricultural operations in accordance with it. They therefore had to search the heavens for a visible sign of the solstice’s return.] (Cuvier: Discours sur les révolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer, Paris, 1863, p. 141.)

7 One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mahometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindus in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.

8 “There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men’s wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter.” (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60.) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massy. Hume took his theory of interest from it.

9 “Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du citoyen [rights and duties of the citizen]) laisser un excédent.” [All labour must leave a surplus] Proudhon.

10 F. Schouw: “Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,” 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148.

11 In earlier editions of Capital the quotation from John Stuart Mill, “I assume throughout...of the labourer,” had been given incorrectly, the words “where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes” having been left out. Marx, in a letter dated November 28, 1878, pointed this out to Danielson, the Russian translator of Capital, adding:

“The next two sentences, viz. ‘Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish’ - should be deleted and the following sentence substituted:

“Mr. Mill is good enough to believe that this state of things is not an absolute necessity, even in that economic system in which ‘labourers and capitalists are separate classes.’”

The substance of this note has been taken from the Volksausgabe. The quotation from Mill is from his Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap XV, 5.

12 J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.

1 Note in the 3rd German edition. — The case considered at pages 321-324 is here of course omitted. — F. E.

2 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition, that a rise in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power, can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus-value that the capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which that surplus-value is divided between himself and third persons. It consequently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus-value and value of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of the rule, a misfortune that as often happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith.

3 “When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the proportion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion represents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains the same.” (“Outlines of Political Economy, &c.,” p. 67.)

4 “All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to counterbalance the difference of the working days, between 60 hours a week here, and 72 or 80 elsewhere.” (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1855, p. 65.) The most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length of the working day in Continental factories.

5 “There are compensating circumstances ... which the working of the Ten Hours' Act has brought to light.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1848,” p. 7.)

6 “The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chemical changes which had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamic force.” (Grove: “On the Correlation of Physical Forces.”)

7 “Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit, beyond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence” (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), “they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food.” (Malthus: “Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,” Lond., 1815, p. 48, note.) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working day the groundwork of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working-class “supernumerary,” particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this “over-population” by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.

8 “A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production.” (Essays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the principal causes of the present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.)

1 Thus, e.g., in “Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo’schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrundung einer neuen Rententheorie.” Berlin, 1851. I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.

NOTE ADDED IN THE 3RD GERMAN EDITION: It may be seen from this how favorably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publications of Robertus’ letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgement by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs:

“Capital must be rescued not only from labor, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economic and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off.... Altogether, Marx’s book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital.”
("Briefe, &c., von Dr. Robertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer,” Berlin, 1881, I, Bd. P.111, 46. Brief von Rodbertus.) To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Robertus in his “social letters” finally dwindle down. — F. E.

2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced is of course left out in this calculation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.

3 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in “De l’Esprit d’Association dans tous les intérêts de la communauté". Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.

4 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet this much was clear to them, viz., that it is “une richesse indépendante et disponible qu’il (the possessor) n’a point achetée et qu’il vend.” [a wealth which is independent and disposable, which he ... has not bought and which he sells] (Turgot: “Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses,” p.11.)

1 “Mr.Ricardo ingeniously enough avoids a difficulty which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine — that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it — which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged.” — “A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, &c., of Value,” pp. 50, 51.

2 “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created.” — “Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes,” &c., pp. 75, 76.

3 “Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would ... exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would ... exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities ... is determined not by equal quantities of labour.” — E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” Vol. I., London, 1836, p. 231, note.

4 “There has to be a new agreement” (a new edition of the social contract!) “that whenever there is an exchange of work done for work to be done, the latter” (the capitalist) “is to receive a higher value than the former” (the worker). — Simonde (de Sismondi), “De la Richesse Commerciale,” Geneva, 1803, Vol I, p. 37.

5 “Labour the exclusive standard of value ... the creator of all wealth, no commodity.” Thomas Hodgskin, “Popul. Polit. Econ.,” p. 186.

6 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon’s phrase; “Labour is called value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labour is a figurative expression,” &c. I have remarked: “In labour, commodity, which is a frightful reality, he (Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labour commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic license, on a figurative expression. Does society desire to eliminate all the inconveniences which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary.” (Karl Marx, “Misère de la Philosophie,” pp. 34, 35.) It is naturally still more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say: “What is value?” Answer: “That which a thing is worth"; and what is “price"? Answer: “The value of a thing expressed in money.” And why has agriculture a value? Answer: “Because one sets a price on it.” Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and the land has its “value,” because its value is “expressed in money.” This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things.

7 Cf. “Zur Kritik &c.,” p. 40, where I state that, in the portion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: “How does production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product?”

8 The “Morning Star,” a London Free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American Civil War, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that the Negro in the “Confederate States” worked absolutely for nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a Negro with that of the free workman in the East-end of London.

9 I give in order that you may give; I give in order that you may produce; I produce so that you may give; I produce so that you may produce.

10 Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working day when he is referring to piece-wages.

1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant.

2 “The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour.” (Sir Edward West, “Price of Corn and Wages of Labour,” London, 1836, p. 67.) West is the author of the anonymous “Essay on the Application of Capital to Land.” by a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815. An epoch-making work in the history of Political Economy.

3 “The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour performed.... An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may continue the same.” (West, op. cit., pp. 67, 68, 112.) The main question: “How is the price of labour determined?” West, however, dismisses with mere banalities.

4 This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of the 18th century, the author of the “Essay on Trade and Commerce” often quoted by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: “It is the quantity of labour and not the price of it” (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) “that is determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion. Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount.” (op. cit., pp. 48, 61.) In his “Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages,” London, 1830, in which N. W. Senior uses West’s work without mentioning it, he says: “The labourer is principally interested in the amount of wages” (p. 14), that is to say, the labourer is principally interested in what he receives, the nominal sum of his wages, not in that which he gives, the amount of labour!

5 The effect of such an abnormal lessening of employment is quite different from that of a general reduction of the working day, enforced by law. The former has nothing to do with the absolute length of the working day, and may occur just as well in a working day of 15, as of 6 hours. The normal price of labour is in the first case calculated on the labourer working 15 hours, in the second case on his working 6 hours a day on the average. The result is therefore the same, if he in the one case is employed only for 7½, in the other only for 3 hours.

6 “The rate of payment for overtime (in lace-making) is so small, from ½ d. and ¾ d. to 2d. per hour, that it stands in painful contrast to the amount of injury produced to the health and stamina of the workpeople.... The small amount thus earned is also often obliged to be spent in extra nourishment.” (“Child.Empl.Com., II. Rep.,” p. xvi., n. 117.)

7 E.g., in paper-staining before the recent introduction into this trade of the Factory Act. “We work on with no stoppage for meals, so that the day’s work of 10½ hours is finished by 4:30 p.m., and all after that is over-time, and we seldom leave off working before 6 p.m., so that we are really working over-time the whole year round.” (Mr. Smith’s “Evidence in Child. Empl. Com., 1. Rep.,” p. 125.)

8 E.g., in the Scotch bleaching-works. “In some parts of Scotland this trade” (before the introduction of the Factory Act in 1862) “was carried on by a system of over-time, i.e., ten hours a day were the regular hours of work, for which a nominal wage of 1s. 2d. per day was paid to a man, there being every day over-time for three or four hours, paid at the rate of 3d. per hour. The effect of this system ... a man could not earn more than 8s. per week when working the ordinary hours ... without over-time they could not earn a fair day’s wages.” (“Rept. of Insp. of Factories,” April 30th, 1863, p. 10.) “The higher wages, for getting adult males to work longer hours, are a temptation too strong to be resisted.” (“Rept. of Insp. of Fact.,” April 30th, 1848, p. 5.) The book-binding trade in the city of London employs very many young girls from 14 to 15 years old, and that under indentures which prescribe certain definite hours of labour. Nevertheless, they work in the last week of each month until 10, 11, 12, or 1 o’clock at night, along with the older labourers, in a very mixed company. “The masters tempt them by extra pay and supper,” which they eat in neighboring public houses. The great debauchery thus produced among these “young immortals” (“Children’s Employment Comm., V. Rept.,” p. 44, n. 191) is compensated by the fact that among the rest many Bibles and religious books are bound by them.

9 See “Reports of lnsp. of Fact.,” 30th April, 1863, p. 10. With very accurate appreciation of the state of things, the London labourers employed in the building trades declared, during the great strike and lock-out of 1860, that they would only accept wages by the hour under two conditions: (1), that, with the price of the working-hour, a normal working day of 9 and 10 hours respectively should be fixed, and that the price of the hour for the 10 hours’ working day should be higher than that for the hour of the 9 hours working day; (2), that every hour beyond the normal working day should be reckoned as over-time and proportionally more highly paid.

10 “It is a very notable thing, too, that where long hours are the rule, small wages are also so.” (“Report of Insp. of Fact.,” 31st. Oct., 1863, p. 9.) “The work which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is, for the most part, excessively prolonged.” (“Public Health, Sixth Report,” 1864, p. 15.)

11 “Report of Inspectors of Fact.,” 30th April, 1860, pp. 31, 32.

12 The hand nail-makers in England, e.g., have, on account of the low price of labour, to work 15 hours a day in order to hammer out their miserable weekly wage. “It’s a great many hours in a day (6 a.m. to 8 p.m.), and he has to work hard all the time to get 11 d. or 1s., and there is the wear of the tools, the cost of firing, and something for waste iron to go out of this, which takes off altogether 2½d. or 3d.” (“Children’s Employment Com., III. Report,” p. 136, n. 671.) The women earn by the same working-time a week’s wage of only 5 shillings. (l.c., p. 137, n. 674.)

13 If a factory-hand, e.g., refused to work the customary long hours, “he would very shortly be replaced by somebody who would work any length of time, and thus be thrown out of employment.” (“Reports of Inspectors of Factories,” 30th April, 1848. Evidence, p. 39, n. 58.) “If one man performs the work of two... the rate of profits will generally be raised ... in consequence of the additional supply of labour having diminished its price.” (Senior, l.c., p. 15.)

14 “Children’s Employment Com., III Rep.,” Evidence, p. 66, n. 22.

15 “Report, &c., Relative to the Grievances Complained of by the Journeymen Bakers.” London, 1862, p. 411, and ib. Evidence, notes 479, 359, 27. Anyhow the full-priced bakers, as was mentioned above, and as their spokesman, Bennett, himself admits, make their men “generally begin work at 11 p.m. ... up to 8 o’clock the next morning.... They are then engaged all day long ... as late as 7 o’clock in the evening.” (l.c., p. 22.)

1 “The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working-man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day-labourer depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artisan, who in the not distant future promises to combine the artisan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters, even whilst working upon the capital of the employer.” (John Watts: “Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies.” Manchester, 1865, pp. 52, 53.) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: “Facts and Fictions of Political Economists,” in which among other things he declares that “property is robbery.” That was long ago.

2 T. J. Dunning: “Trades’ Unions and Strikes,” Lond., 1860, p. 22.

3 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage favors the masters’ cheating: “A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their over-time.... The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person’s work for 50 hours, or 5/6’s of one person’s labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer.” (“Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1860,” p. 9.) “Over-working to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have in many former reports shown ... the injury to workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages.” (Leonard Horner in “Reports of Insp. of Fact.,” 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.)

4 “Wages can be measured in two ways: either by the duration of the labour, or by its product.” (“Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l’économie politique.” Paris, 1796, p. 32.) The author of this anonymous work: G. Garnier.

5 “So much weight of cotton is delivered to him” (the spinner), “and he has to return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per pound for all that he so returns. If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operative procured.” (Ure, l.c., p. 317.)

6 “It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the workwoman is miserably disproportioned.” (“Child. Emp. Comm. II Report,” p. 1xx., n. 424.)

7 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: “It would be a great improvement to the system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the contract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over-working his fellows for his own benefit.” (l.c., p. 53.) On the vileness of this system, cf. “Child. Emp. Comm., Rep. III.,” p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi, n. 13, 53, 59, &c.

8 This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e.g., in the Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is “the selecting of a man who possesses superior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him ... without any comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and working-power, made by the employers against the men” (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, l.c., pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trades’ Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the “highly respectable” “Cyclopedia of Agriculture” of J. C. Morton, Art., the article “Labourer,” where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one.

9 “All those who are paid by piece-work ... profit by the transgression of the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work over-time is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers.” (“Rept. of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1858,” p. 9.) “This system” (piece-work), “so advantageous to the employer ... tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to over-work himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages.... This is ... another great cause to which the bad constitutions of the potters are to be attributed.” (“Child. Empl. Comm. 1. Rept.,” p. xiii.)

10 “Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job ... wages may very materially differ in amount.... But in work by the day there is generally an uniform rate ... recognized by both employer and employed as the standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade.” (Dunning, l.c., p. 17.)

11 “The work of the journeyman-artisans will be ruled by the day or by the piece. These master-artisans know about how much work a journeyman-artisan can do per day in each craft, and often pay them in proportion to the work which they do; the journey men, therefore, work as much as they can, in their own interest, without any further inspection.” (Cantillon, “Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en général,” Amst. Ed., 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755.) Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn, already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the English, but the English edition: “The Analysis of Trade, Commerce, &c.,” by Philip Cantillon, late of the city of London, Merchant, is not only of later date (1759), but proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition: e.g., in the French edition, Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion trade, &c., that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of the English edition, according to which the work is “taken chiefly from the manuscript of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, &c.,” seem, therefore, a pure fiction, very customary at that time.

12 “How often have we seen, in some workshops, many more workers recruited than the work actually called for? On many occasions, workers are recruited in anticipation of future work, which may never materialize. Because they are paid by piece wages, it is said that no risk is incurred, since any loss of time will be charged against the unemployed.” (H. Gregoir: “Les Typographes devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles,” Brusseles, 1865, p. 9.)

13 “Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain,” London, 1815.

14 “A Defense of the Landowners and Farmers of Great Britain,” 1814, pp. 4, 5

15 Malthus, “Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,” Lond., 1815.

16 “Those who are paid by piece-work ... constitute probably four-fifths of the workers in the factories.” “Report of Insp. of Fact.,” 30th April, 1858.

17 “The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its productive power.” (Ure, l.c., p. 317.) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases. Further: “By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earnings for any given number of hours’ work,” but “the foregoing statement requires a certain modification.... The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults” (l.c., p. 321), which has in no way a tendency to raise wages.

18 H. Fawcett: “The Economic Position of the British labourer.” Cambridge and London, 1865, p. 178.

19 In the “London Standard” of October 26, 1861, there is a report of proceedings of the firm of John Bright & Co., before the Rochdale magistrates “to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades’ Union. Bright’s partners had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and with the labour (!) previously required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employer’s capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from 1½d. per yard to 1d., leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning beforehand.”

20 “Trades’ Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavor to share in the benefits of improved machinery.” (Quelle horreur!) “... the demanding higher wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavor to establish a duty on mechanical improvements.” (“On Combination of Trades,” new ed., London, 1834, p. 42.)

1 “It is not accurate to say that wages” (he deals here with their money expression) “are increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article.” (David Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” 1814, Vol. 1, p. 417, note.)

2 We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstances in relation to productivity may modify this law for individual branches of industry.

3 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith: “It deserves, likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of Labour is usually lower in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain quantity of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light, labour is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer, although the price of grain and other provisions is usually much lower in the last than in the first.... Labour estimated by the day is much lower in Scotland than in England.... Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England.” (James Anderson, “Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry,” &tc., Edin. 1777, pp. 350, 351.) On the contrary, lowness of wages produces, in its turn, dearness of labour. “Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in England ... because the wages are so much lower.” (N. 2079 in “Royal Commission on Railways, Minutes,” 1867.)

4 (Ure, op. cit., p. 314.)

5 (“Reports of Insp. of Fact.,” 31st Oct., 1866, pp. 31-37, passim.)

6 “Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Causes of the Differences in the Condition of the Labouring Population throughout the World,” Philadelphia, 1835.

1 “Mais ces riches, qui consomment les produits du travail des autres, ne peuvent les obtenir que par des échanges [purchases of commodities]. S’ils donnent cependant leur richesse acquise et accumulée en retour contre ces produits nouveaux qui sont l’objet de leur fantaisie, ils semblent exposés à épuiser bientôt leur fonds de réserve; ils ne travaillent point, avons-nous dit, et ils ne peuvent même travailler; on croirait donc que chaque jour doit voir diminuer leurs vieilles richesses, et que lorsqu’il ne leur en restera plus, rien ne sera offert en échange aux ouvriers qui travaillent exclusivement pour eux.... Mais dans l’ordre social, la richesse a acquis la propriété de se reproduire par le travail d’autrui, et sans que son propriétaire y concoure. La richesse, comme le travail, et par le travail, donne un fruit annuel qui peut être détruit chaque année sans que le riche en devienne plus pauvre. Ce fruit est le revenu qui naît du capital.” [The rich, who consume the labour of others, can only obtain them by making exchanges ... By giving away their acquired and accumulated wealth in exchange for the new products which are the object of their capricious wishes, they seem to be exposed to an early exhaustion of their reserve fund; we have already said that they do not work and are unable to work; therefore it could be assumed with full justification that their former wealth would be diminishing with every day and that, finally, a day would come when they would have nothing, and they would have nothing to offer to the workers, who work exclusively for them. ... But, in the social order, wealth has acquired the power of reproducing itself through the labour of others, without the help of its owners. Wealth, like labour, and by means of labour, bears fruit every year, but this fruit can be destroyed every year without making the rich man any poorer thereby. This fruit is the revenue which arises our of capital.] (Sismondi: “Nouv. Princ. d’Econ. Pol.” Paris, 1819, t. I, pp. 81-82.)

2 “Wages as well as profits are to be considered, each of them, as really a portion of the finished product.” (Ramsay, l. c., p. 142.) “The share of the product which comes to the labourer in the form of wages.” (J. Mill, “Eléments, &c.” Translated by Parissot. Paris, 1823, p. 34.)

3 “When capital is employed in advancing to the workman his wages, it adds nothing to the funds for the maintenance of labour.” (Cazenove in note to his edition of Malthus’ “Definitions in Pol. Econ.” London, 1853, p. 22.)

4 “The wages of labour are advanced by capitalists in the case of less than one fourth of the labourers of the earth.” (Rich. Jones: “Textbook of Lectures on the Pol. Econ. of Nations.” Hertford, 1852, p. 36.)

5 “Though the manufacturer” (i.e., the labourer) “has his wages advanced to him by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of these wages being generally reserved, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed.” (A. Smith, l. c., Book II. ch. III, p. 311.)

6 “This is a remarkably peculiar property of productive labour. Whatever is productively consumed is capital and it becomes capital by consumption.” (James Mill, l. c., p. 242.) James Mill, however, never got on the track of this “remarkably peculiar property.”

7 “It is true indeed, that the first introducing a manufacture employs many poor, but they cease not to be so, and the continuance of it makes many.” (“Reasons for a Limited Exportation of Wool.” London, 1677, p. 19.) “The farmer now absurdly asserts, that he keeps the poor. They are indeed kept in misery.” (“Reasons for the Late Increase of the Poor Rates: or a Comparative View of the Prices of Labour and Provisions.” London, 1777, p. 31.)

8 Rossi would not declaim so emphatically against this, had he really penetrated the secret of “productive consumption.”

9 “The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest perhaps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 450 feet, live on bread and beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much richer in bone-earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread.” (Liebig, l. c., vol. 1., p. 194, note.)

10 James Mill, l. c., p. 238

11 “If the price of labour should rise so high that, notwithstanding the increase of capital, no more could be employed, I should say that such increase of capital would be still unproductively consumed.” (Ricardo, l. c., p. 163.)

12 “The only productive consumption, properly so called, is the consumption or destruction of wealth” (he alludes to the means of production) “by capitalists with a view to reproduction.... The workman ... is a productive consumer to the person who employs him, and to the State, but not, strictly speaking, to himself.” (Malthus’ “Definitions, &c.,” p. 30.)

13 “The only thing, of which one can say, that it is stored up and prepared beforehand, is the skill of the labourer.... The accumulation and storage of skilled labour, that most important operation, is, as regards the great mass of labourers, accomplished without any capital whatever.” (Th. Hodgskin: “Labour Defended, &c.,” p. 13.)

14 “That letter might be looked upon as the manifesto of the manufacturers.” (Ferrand: “Motion on the Cotton Famine.” H.o.C., 27th April, 1863.)

15 It will not be forgotten that this same capital sings quite another song, under ordinary circumstances, when there is a question of reducing wages. Then the masters exclaim with one voice: “The factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour, and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which, by a short training of the least expert, can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired ... The master’s machinery” (which we now learn can be replaced with advantage in 12 months,) “really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and skill of the operative” (who cannot now be replaced under 30 years), “which six months’ education can reach, and a common labourer can learn.” (See ante, p. 423.)

16 Parliament did not vote a single farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed some Acts empowering the municipal corporations to keep the operatives in a half-starved state, i.e., to exploit them at less than the normal wages. On the other hand, when 3 years later, the cattle disease broke out, Parliament broke wildly through its usages and voted, straight off, millions for indemnifying the millionaire landlords, whose farmers in any event came off without loss, owing to the rise in the price of meat. The bull-like bellow of the landed proprietors at the opening of Parliament, in 1866, showed that a man can worship the cow Sabala without being a Hindu, and can change himself into an ox without being a Jupiter.

17 “L’ouvrier demandait de la subsistence pour vivre, le chef demandait du travail pour gagner.” [The worker required the means of subsistence to live, the boss required labour to make a profit] (Sismondi, l. c., p. 91.)

18 A boorishly clumsy form of this bondage exists in the county of Durham. This is one of the few counties, in which circumstances do not secure to the farmer undisputed proprietary rights over the agricultural labourer. The mining industry allows the latter some choice. In this county, the farmer, contrary to the custom elsewhere, rents only such farms as have on them labourers’ cottages. The rent of the cottage is a part of the wages. These cottages are known as “hinds’ houses.” They are let to the labourers in consideration of certain feudal services, under a contract called “bondage,” which, amongst other things, binds the labourer, during the time he is employed elsewhere, to leave some one, say his daughter, &c., to supply his place. The labourer himself is called a “bondsman.” The relationship here set up also shows how individual consumption by the labourer becomes consumption on behalf of capital - or productive consumption - from quite a new point of view: “It is curious to observe that the very dung of the hind and bondsman is the perquisite of the calculating lord ... and the lord will allow no privy but his own to exist in the neighbourhood, and will rather give a bit of manure here and there for a garden than bate any part of his seigneurial right.” (“Public Health, Report VII., 1864,” p. 188.)

19 It will not be forgotten, that, with respect to the labour of children, &c., even the formality of a voluntary sale disappears.

20 “Capital pre-supposes wage labour, and wage labour pre-supposes capital. One is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence. Does an operative in a cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton goods? No, he produces capital. He produces values that give fresh command over his labour, and that, by means of such command, create fresh values.” (Karl Marx: “Lohnarbeit und Kapital,” in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: No. 266, 7th April, 1849.) The articles published under the above title in the N. Rh. Z. are parts of some lectures given by me on that subject, in 1847, in the German “Arbeiter-Verein” at Brussels, the publication of which was interrupted by the revolution of February.

1 “Accumulation of capital; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital.” (Malthus: “Definitions, &c.,” ed. Cazenove, p. 11.) “Conversion of revenue into capital,” (Malthus: “Princ. of Pol. Econ “ 2nd Ed., Lond.. 1836, p. 320.)

2 We here take no account of export trade, by means of which a nation can change articles of luxury either into means of production or means of subsistence, and vice versà. In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation, and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industry.

3 Sismondi’s analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he contents himself, to too great an extent, with the phrase “conversion of revenue into capital,” without fathoming the material conditions of this operation.

4 “Le travail primitif auquel son capital a dû sa naissance.” [the original labour, to which his capital owed its origin] Sismondi, l. c., ed. Paris, t. I., p. 109.