CHAPTER X.

The Influence of Industrial Progress on the Working Classes.
(Hxtracted from vol. II, ch. 15, sections 3—7.)
(A) Labour of Women and Children.
In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers, by enrolling under the direct sway of capital every member of the workman's family, without distinction of age or sex. Com- pulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family.1
The value of labour power was determined, not only by the labour time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to the labour market, depreciates the labour power of the^ man. To purchase the labour power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour power of the head of the family, but, in return,
1 Dr. Edward Smith, during the ;n>Tican
Civil War, was sent by the English Government to 1 ancasi and other pla. i on the sanitary condition of the cotton op
He reported, that from a hygienic point banishment of the "in the fai-'
ii now had stiff ii
ihe breast, instead of poisoning thorn with
They had tin; Unfortunately the acquisition of '
1 at a time when they had nothing to cook. But from thi;- how capital, for tin i, has usurped the labour
necessary in the home of the family. This crisis u ilised to
•wing to the daughters of the workmen in sewing schools. An i and a universal crisis, in order that the working girls who spin for the whole world might learn to sew!
THE INFLUENCE OI INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 77
four days' labour takes the place of one. In order that [ the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus labour for the capitalist.
«The numerical increase of labourers has been great, through the growing substitution of female for male, and above all, of child for adult labour. Three girls of 13, at wages of from 6 shillings to 8 shillings a week, have replaced the one man of mature age, of wages varying from 18 shillings to 45 shillings.» (Th. de Quincey: «the Logic" of Political Econ., London 1845.») Since certain family functions, such as nursing and suckling children, cannot be entirely suppressed, the mothers confiscated by capital must hire substitutes of some sort. Domestic work, such as sewing and mending, must be replaced by the purchase of ready- made articles. Hence, the diminished expenditure of labour in the house is accompanied by an increased expenditure of money. The cost of keeping the family increases and balances the greater income. In addition to this, economy and judgment in the consumption and preparation of the means of subsistence becomes impossible.1
Machinery also revolutionises the contract between labourer and capitalist, since capital buys children and young persons under age. Previously, the workman sold his own labour power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave dealer. The demand for children's labour often resembles in form the inquiries for negro slaves, such as were formerly to be read among the advertisements in American journals. In the reports of the Children's Employment Commission (1864 — 66) we find truly revolting details regarding the conduct of the operative parents in relation to the traffic in children — conduct which entirely resembles slave-dealing.
One consequence of the ensuing dissolution of family life is the enormous mortality, during the first few years of their life, of the children of the operatives. In sixteen of the registration districts into which England is divided, there are, for every 100000 children alive under the age of one year, only 9000 deaths in a year on an average (in one
1 Abundant material relating to these facts, which are concealed by official political economy, is to be found in the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, of the Children's Employment Commission, and more especially in the Reports on Public Health,
78 CIIM'ltR V.
district only TOCO); in 24 districts the deaths are 10 000, but under 11000; in 30 districts, over I, but under 12000; in 48 districts over 12000, but under 13000; in 22 districts over 20000; in 25 districts over 21000; in 17 over 22000; in 11 over 23000; in Hoo, Wolverhampton, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Preston, over 24000; in Nottingham, Stockport and Bradford, over 250CO; in Wisbeach 26000; and in Manchester 26 125.1 As was shown by an official medical inquiry in the 1861, the high death-rates are, apart from local causes, prin- cipally due to the employment of the mothers away from their homes, and the neglect and maltreatment consequent on her absence, such as, amongst others, insufficient nourishment, unsuitable food, and dosing with opiates; besides this, there arises an unnatural estrangement between mother and child, and as a consequence intentional starving and poisoning of the children. In those agricultural districts, «where a minimum in the employment of women exists, the death-rate is on the other hand very In
The moral degradation caused by the capitalistic exploita- tion of women and children has been so exhaustively depicted by F. Engels in his «Lage der arbeitenden Klassen iands», and other writers, that I need only mention the subject in this place. But the, intellectual desolation, artificially produced by converting immature human beings into men; machines for the fabrication of surplus-value, a state of mind clearly distinguishable from that natural ignorance which keeps the mind fallow without destroying its capacity for development, its natural fertility, this desolation finally compelled even the English Parliament to make elementary education a compulsory condition to the «productive» employment of children under 14 years, in every industry subject to the Factory Acts. The spirit of capitalist produc- tion stands out clearly in the ludicrous wording of the so- called education clauses in the Factory Acts, in the absence of an administrative machinery, in the opposition of the manufacturers even to these education clauses, and in the dodges they put in practice for evading them. The legislature ^provides nothing more than that the children shall on certain days of the week, and for a certain number
n Public
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 79
of hours (three) in each day, be inclosed within the four walls of a place called a school, and that the employer of the child shall receive weekly a certificate to that effect signed by a person designated by the subscriber as a schoolmaster or schoolmistress*.1 Previous to the passing of the amended Factory Act, 1844, it happened, not unfrequently, that the certificates of attendance at school were signed by the school- master or schoolmistress with a cross, as they themselves were unable to write. «But it is not only in the miserable places above referred to that the children obtain certificates of school attendance without having received instruction of any value, for in many schools where there is a competent teacher, his efforts are of little avail from the distracting crowd of children of all ages, fromjnfants of 3 years old and upwards; his livelihood, miserable aT^Ffie bebi, depending*- oir-fhe pence received from the greatest number of children whom it is possible to cram into the space. To this is to be added scanty school furniture, deficiency of books and other materials for teaching, and the depressing effect upon the poor children themselves of a close, noisome atmosphere. I have been in many such schools, where I have seen rows of children doing absolutely nothing; and this is certified as school attendance, and, in statistical returns, such children are set down as being educated.»2 As an example of the perfidious manner in which the capitalists seek to thwart the law, we may quote the following: By the Act relating to print works and similar industries, «every child, before being employed in a print work, must have attended school for at least 30 days, and not less than 150 hours, during the six months immediately preceding such first day of employment, and during the continuance of its employment in the print works, it must attend for a like period of 30 days, and 150 hours, during every successive period of six months .... The attendance at school must be between 8 a. m.'and 6 p. m. No attendance of less than iy2 hours, nor more than 5 hours on any one day, shall be reckoned as part of the 150 hours.» How did capital carry out these legal obligations? «Under ordinary circumstances the children attend school morning and afternoon for 30 days, for at least 5 hours each day.
i Leonard Horner in .Reports of Insp. of Fact, for 30th June,
'2> L Horner in ^Reports &c., for 31st Oct.. 1856» pp. 17. 18. Sir J. Kincaid in ^Reports, &c., 31st Oct. 185o . pp. 06.
80' CHAF1ER V
and upon the expiration of the 30 days, the statutory total of 150 hours having been attained, having, in their language, made up their book, they return Jo the print work, where they continue until the six months have expired, when another instalment of school attendance becomes due, and they again seek the school until the book is again made up .... Many boys having attended school for the required number of hours, when they return to school after the expiration of their six months' work in the print work, are in the same condition as when they first attended school as print-work boys. They have lost all they gained by their previous school atten- dance .... In other print works the children's attendance at school is made to depend altogether upon the exigencies of the work in the establishment. The requisite number of hours is made up each six months, by instalments consisting of from 3 to 5 hours at a time, spreading over, perhaps, the whole six months .... For instance, the attendance on one day might be from 8 to 11 a. m., on another day from 1 p. m. to 6 p. ITL, and the child might not appear at school again for several days, when it would attend from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.; then it might attend for 3 or 4 days consecutively, or for a week, then it would not appear in school for 3 weeks or a month, after that upon some odd days at some odd hours when the operative who employed it chose to spare it; and thus the child was, as it were, buffeted from school to work, from work to school, until the tale of 150 hours was told.»J
By the excessive addition of women and children to the ranks of the workers, machinery at last breaks down the resistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing •period continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.
(B) Prolongation of the working-day.
If machinery be the most powerful means for incre the productiveness of labour /. e., for shortening the working time required in the production of a comnuxl becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means for lengthening the working-day beyond all bounds set by
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c.
human nature. It creates, on the one hand, new conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope to this its constant tendency, and on the other hand, new motives with which to whet capital's appetite for the labour of others.
In the form of machinery, the implements of labour become automatic, things moving and working independently of the workmen. They are henceforth an industrial perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing for ever, did it not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies and the strong wills of its human attendants. Capital is therefore animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered. This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness of machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character of the women and children employed on it.
The longer the machine works, the greater is the mass of the products over which the value transmitted ,by the machine is spread, and the less is the portion of that value added to each single commodity. This is a sufficient reason for the capitalist to prolong the daily activity of the machine as much as possible.
The wear and tear of a machine is not exactly pro- portional to its working time. And even if it were so, a machine working 16 hours daily for ll/2 years, covers as long a working period as, and transmits to the total product no more value than, the same machine would if it worked only 8 hours daily for 15 years. But in the first case the value of the machine would be reproduced twice as quickly as in the latter, and the capitalist would, by this use of the machine, absorb in ll/? years as. much surplus-value as in the second case he would in 15.
The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds. The one arises from use, the other from non-use, as a sword rusts when left in its scabbard. The latter kind is due to the elements, and this wear and tear is, to a certain extent, inversely proportional to the use of the machine. The longer it stands still, the more it is used-up by the elements.
But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also undergoes what we may call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value, either by machines of the same sort being produced cheaper thaii it, or by better machines entering into competition with it. In both cases, be the machine ever so young and full of life, its value is
82 CHM'llR X.
no longer determined by the labour actually materialised in it, but by the labour-time requisite to reproduce either it or the better machine. It has, therefore, lost value more or less. The shorter the period taken to reproduce its total value, the less is the danger of moral depreciation; and the longer the working day, the shorter is that period. When machinery is first introduced into an industry, new methods of repro- ducing it more cheaply follow blow upon blow, and so do improvements, that not only affect individual parts and details of the machine, but its entire build. It is, therefore, in the early days of the life of machinery that this special incentive to the prolongation of the working day makes itself felt most acutely.1
Given the length of the working day. all other circum- stances remaining the same, the exploitation of double the number of workmen demands, not only a doubling of that part of constant capital which is invested in machinery and buildings, but also of that part which is laid out in raw material and auxiliary substances. The lengthening of the working day, on the other hand, allows of production on an extended scale without any alteration in the amount of capital laid out on machinery and buildings. It is true that this takes place, more or less, with every lengthening of the working day; but in the case under consideration, the change is more marked, because the capital converted into the in- struments of labour preponderates to a greater degree. «When a labourer*, said Mr. Ashworth, a cotton magnate, to Profesor Nassau W. Senior, in 1837, «lays down his spade, he renders useless, for that period, a capital worth eighteen- pence. When one of our people (i.e. the factory workman) leaves the mill, he renders useless a capital that has cost £ 100000.»2 Only fancy! making «useless» for a single moment, a capital that has cost £ 100 COO! It is, in truth, monstrous, that a single one of our people should ever leave the factory! The increased use of machinery, as Senior after the instruction he received from Ashworth clearly perceives,
tie improvements which t
patent lift was so jjreat 1na 1' 1'jni
each other so rapidly, that machines which had abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new impi superseded their nt.
ahead times, therefore, the tulle maimfaclu; day, by means of double sets of hands, from tin
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. g3
makes a constantly increasing lengthening of the working day «desirable».
When machines are first introduced in an isolated fashion in a given branch of industry, the social value of the product of the machine is superior to its individual value, I. e. the product of the machine requires less labour than the product of competitors working without machinery. The value, however, is determined by the «socially necessary» labour, in this case the greater amount of labour requisite when no machine is available. The machine-made product can con- sequently be sold at a much higher price than its own value represents. During this transition period, when the use of machinery is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore exceptional, and the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly «lhe sunny time of this his first love», by prolonging the working day as much as possible. The magnitude of the profit whets his appetite for more profit.
As the use of machinery becomes more general in a particular industry, the social value of the product sinks down to its individual value, and the law that surplus-value does not arise from the labour power that has been replaced by the machinery, but from the labour power actually employed in working with the machinery, asserts itself. Sur- plus-value arises from variable capital alone, i. e. from living labour; it must therefore be greater in the measure in which living labour is employed by capital, and less in the measure in which the amount of such labour is reduced. But the ob- ject of the machine is to eliminate living labour and to act as a substitute for the latter. Machinery increases the power of production, and cheapens the product, seeing that it manu- factures this product with less expenditure of labour. It thereby reduces the cost of living, and consequently the value of labour power. It obtains all these results, however, only by reducing the number of labourers employed by a given capitalist, or in other words by 'transferring a part of the formerly variable capital employed in paying wages to the purchase and upkeep of machines, I. e. by transforming variable capital into constant capital which produces no sur- plus-value. Let us illustrate this by a concrete example. Before the introduction of machinery a capital of £ 5000 had to be applied to the extent of 40 per cent to the purchase of labour implements and raw material, the other 60 per cent serving for the remuneration of human labour. When
84 CHAI'lliR X
machinery is introduced, the productiveness of the under- taking is tripled. Henceforth only 20 per cent of the capital is applied for the remuneration of labour, and two-thirds of the labourers hitherto employed are discharged. That share of the capital which formerly served to remunerate them serves in future for the purchase of machines and of the raw material to be worked-up by the latter.
It is impossible, however, to squeeze as much surplus- value out of 2 as out of 24 labourers. If each of these 24 men gives only one hour of surplus-labour in 12, the 24 men give together 24 hours of surplus-labour, while 24 hours is the total labour of the two men. Hence, the application of machinery to the production of surplus-value implies a con- tradiction which is immanent in it, since the rate of surplus- value cannot be increased, except by diminishing the number of workmen. It is this contradiction, that in its turn drives the capitalist, without his being conscious of the fact, to excessive lengthening of the working day, in order (hat he may com- pensate the decrease in the number of labourers exploited, by an increase of the absolute surplus- value of each individual labourer.
If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the one hand, supplies new and powerful motives to ai lengthening of the working day, and radically changes methods of labour, in such a manner as to break down all opposition to this tendency, on the other hand it produces, partly by employing women and children, partly by setting free the labourers it supplants, a surplus working population, which is compelled to submit to the dictation of capital. Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry, that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restriction on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the economical paradox, that the most powerful instru- ment for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer's time a;id that of his family, at Hie disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.'
There followed on the birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of the 18th century, an im extension of the working-day like an avalanche in its intensity and extent. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex,
from here
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 85
day and night, became so confused that an English judge, as late as 1860, needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain «judicially» what was 'day and what was night. Capital celebrated its orgies. «The fact is, that prior to the Act of 1833, young persons and children were worked all night, all day, or both ad libitum.*1
' Now let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters to this day (1863—1865) or was so yesterday.2
Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Notting- ham, on the 14th January, 1860, «that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the popu- lation connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the civilised world. . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stonelike torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate. . . . What can be thought of a town which holds a /public meeting to petition that the period of labour for /lien shall be diminished to eighteen hours a day?»3 . . .
The potteries o^ Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years, (before I860); been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. For my /purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860 an6 1863, some depositions of the exploited children themselvei. From the children we may form an opinion as to the Adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch , spinning appears , an agreeable and healthy occupation.
William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He «ran moulds» (carried ready- moulded articles Into the drying room, afterwards bringing back the empty mould). He came to work every day in the week at 6. a. m. and left off about 9 p. m. «I work till 9 o'clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight weeks.» Fifteen hours of labour for a child 9 years old! J Murray, 12 years of age, says: «I turn jigger, and
1 « Report of Insp. of Fact.>, 30th April, 1860, p. 50.
2 Form here on vol. I ch. 10, section 3.
3 «Daily Telegrapi>, 15. 1. 1860.
86 CIIM'IHR \
run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o'clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. ^ There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this morning. 1 get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two last week.»
Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the pottery districts of Stoke-on-Trent and Wolstanton is extraordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke only 30.0 % and in Wolstanton only 30.4 % of the adult male population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among the men of that age in the first district more than half, in the second nearly two-fifths of all the deaths are the result of pulmonary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical practitioner at Hanley, says: successive generation of potters is more dwarfed and less robust than the preceding one». In like manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean: «Since he began to practise among the potters 25 years ago, he had observed a marked degeneration, especially shown in diminution of stature and breadth». These statements are taken from the report of Dr. Greenhow in I860.1
From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the following: Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staffordshire Infirmary, says: «The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a degenerated population, both physically and morally. They are, as a rule, stunted in growth, ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the they become prematurely old, and are certainly shorl-livod; they are phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit their debility of constitution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and disorders of the liver and kidneys, and by chest disease, pneumonia, phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear peculiar to them and is known as potter's asthma, or potter's nplion. Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or other parts of the body, is a disease of two-thirds or more of the potters .... That the «degenerescence» of the population - of this district is not even greater than it is, is due to the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and intermarriages with more healthy racv
Public Health, 3rd report, etc., p. 102, 104, 105.
THE I Nil I. \DUSTRIAL I'ROURESS
Mr. Charles Pearson, late house surgeon of the same institution, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things: «I can only speak from personal observation and not from statistical data, but I do not hesitate to assert that my indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the avarice of either parents or employers.» He enumerates the causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the phrase, «long hours». And all that holds of the potteries in England is true of those in Scotland.
The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly developed in England, and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, New- castle and Glasgow. With it has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and un- pleasantness in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children to it, «the ragged, half-starved, un- taught children*. Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range of the working day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night labour, irregular meal times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufacture.
In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a. m. to 10 p. m. or further into the night.
G. Apsden deposes (1862): «That boy of mine . . when he was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day . . . I have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop.» Smith, the managing partner of a Manchester factory: «We (he means
88 ClIAI'TtR A.
his «hands» who work for «us») work on, with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of I0y2 hours is finished by 4.30. p. in , and all after that is overtime.* (Does this Mr. Smith take no meals himself during Wy2 hours?) «We (this same Smith) seldom leave off working before 6 p. in. . . . For all these, children and adults alike (152 children and young persons and 140 adults),, the average work for the last 18 months has been at the very least 7 days, 5 hours, or !&/, hours a week. For the six weeks ending May 2nd this year (1863), the average was higher — 8 days or 84 hours a week.» Still this same Mr. Smith adds with a smile, «Machine work is not great.» So the employers in the block-printing say: «Hand labour is more healthy than* machine-work.» On the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against the proposal «to stop the machines at least during meal times».
In January 1866, three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury --a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundred^ of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employes is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours a day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure of holiday- makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly «respectable» British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle «rider» to their verdict, ex- pressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the pur- chase of a sufficient quantity of labour power, and more «abstemious», more «self-denying», more «thrifty», in the draining of paid labour power.1
i paper has, under sensational headings, a whole li-
» )n these an employe1 on the North Staffordshire line ci
(4. 2. 18o6): ^Everyone knows the occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look- out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The
THE INFLUENCE ()l INDUSTRIAL !>R
From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves that before capital all men are alike — a milliner and a black- smith.
In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the «sensational» heading, «Death from simple over-work». It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly-respected dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often- told story, was once more recounted.1 This girl worked, on an average, W/2 hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honour of the newly im- ported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26!/2 hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded one-third of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board. And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that «Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over- crowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom.» In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict
following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning at a very early hour. \Vhen he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty .... He worked a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without inter- mission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: — Wednesday, 15 hours; Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 141/2 hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week .of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours (or 78 hours per week). But what about the payment for the extra 10 hours and 40 minutes? After long bargaining he received 10 d.
1 Cf F. Engels. Lage der arheitenden Klassen in England pp. 253, 254.
90
that «the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by over- work in an over-crowded workroom, &c.»
Dr. Richardson, Senior Phjsician to one of the London Hospitals: «With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary sempstresses, there are three miseries — over-work, deficient air, and either deficient food or . deh'cient digestion. . . • But the mischiefs of the trade, in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists. . . . This power tells throughout the whole class of female workers. If a dress- maker can get a little circle of customers, such is the com- petition that, in her home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try independently, she must join an establishment, "where her labour is not less, but where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with the variations of society- Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable, and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds.» (Dr. Richardson: «Work and Overwor! «Social Science Review», 18th July, 1863).
The same Dr. Richardson continues: dressmakers' rooms that working to death is the order of the day, but in a thousand other places; in every place I had almost said, where «a thriving business» has to be done .... We will take the blacksmith as a type. If the poets were true, there is no man so hearty, so merry, as the blacksmith; he rises early and strikes his sparks before the sun; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man. Work- ing in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of hu- man positions, physically speaking- But we follow him into the city or town, and we see the stress of work on that strong man, and what then is his position in the death-rait- of his country? In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults of the country in its entirety. The occiij instinctive almost as a portion of human art, unobjectionable as a branch of human industry, is made by mere excess of work the destroyer of the man. lie can strike so many
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 91
blows per day, walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to strike so many more blows, to walk so many more steps, to breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase altogether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort; the result is, that producing for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies at 37 for 50.»
(C) Intensification of Labour.1
The immoderate lengthening of the working day, pro- duced by machinery in the hands of capital, leads to a reac- tion on the part of society, the very sources of whose life are menaced; and, thence, to a normal working day whose length is fixed by law. On the basis of such a normal day, the intensity of labour was greatly increased.
It is self-evident, that in proportion as the use of machi- nery spreads, and the experience of a special class of work- men habituated to machinery accumulates, the rapidity and intensity of labour increase as a natural consequence. Thus in England, during half a century, lengthening of the work- ing day went hand in hand with increasing intensity of fac- tory labour. Nevertheless the reader will clearly see, that where we have labour, not carried on by fits and starts, but repeated day after day with unvarying uniformity, a point must inevitably be reached, where extension of the working day and intensity of the labour mutually exclude one an- other, in such a way that lengthening of the working day becomes compatible only with a lower degree of intensity, and a higher degree of intensity only with a shortening of the working day. So soon as the gradually surging re- volt of the working class compelled Parliament to shorten compulsorily the hours of labour, and to begin by imposing a normal working day on factories proper, so soon con- sequently as an increased production of surplus - value by the prolongation of the working day was once for all put a stop to, from that moment capital threw itself with all its might into the production of such surplus-value, by haste- ning on the further improvement tff machinery.
i From here on once more vol. II, ch. 15, section 3 sq.
Henceforth surplus-value is increased not only by cheap- ening the product and thereby reducing the value of labour power, but at the same time by intensitying the labour, /. e. by increasing the tension of labour power, so thai ir%a shor- ter time it must perform as much or even more labour than formerly in a longer time. The more intensive 10 hours day contains henceforth as much labour (or expended labour power) as the porous working-day of 12 hours. The product therefore of one of the former hours has as much or more value than has the product of l1/^ of the latter hours. Apart from the increased yield of relative surplus-value through the heightened productiveness of labour, the same mass 01 value is now produced for the capitalist say by T ',: hours of surplus labour, and 62/> hours of necessary labour, as was previously produced by four hours of surplus labour and eight hours of necessary labour.
We now come to the question: How is the labour inten- sified?
The first effect of shortening the working-day results from the self-evident law, that the efficiency of labour power is in an inverse ratio to the duration of its expenditure. The shorter a labourer works, the more intensively can he work. Hence, within certain limits, what is 1" : teniiio- the
duration is gained by the increasing tension of labour power. That the workman moreover really does expend more labour power/ is ensured by the mode in which the capitalist pays him.1 In those industries, such as potteries, where nndii- nery plays little or no part, the introduction of the Factory Acts has strikingly shown that the mere shortening of the working-day increases to a wonderful degree the regulari- ty, uniformity, order, continuity, and energy of the labour.-' It seemed, however, doubtful whether this effect was produced in the factory proper, where the dependence of the workman on the continuous and uniform motion of the machinery had already created the strictest discipline. Hence, when in 1844 the reduction of the working-day to less than twelve hours was being debated, the masters almost unanimously declared «that their overlookers in the different rooms took good cafe that the hands lost no time->, that «the extent of vigilance and attention on the part of the workmen
THE INFLUENCE Ol INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 93
hardly capable of being increased*, and therefore, that the speed of the machinery and other conditions remaining unaltered, «to expect in a well managed factory any im- portant result from increased attention of the workmen was an absurdity*.1 This assertion was contradicted by experiments. Mr. Robert Gardner reduced the hours of labour in his two large factories at Preston, on and after the 20th April, 1844, from twelve to eleven hours a day. The result of about a year's working was that «the same amount of product for the same cost was received, and the workpeople as a whole earned in eleven hours as much wages as they did before in twelve».2 In the weaving department, where, moreover, many sorts of h'gured fancy articles were woven, there was not the slightest alteration in the conditions of the work. The result was: «From 6th January to 20th April, 1844, with a twelve hours day, average weekly wages of each hand 10s. V/2 d.; from 20th April to 29th June, 1844, with a day of eleven hours, average weekly wages 10s. 3 y2d.» Here we have more produced in eleven hours than previously in twelve, and entirely in consequence of more steady application and economy of time by the workpeople. While they got the same wages and gained one hour of spare time, the capitalist got the same amount produced and saved the cost of coal, gas, and other such items, for one hour. Similar experiments, and with the like success, were carried out in the mills of Messrs. Horrocks and Jackson. (Report for 1844, p. 21.)
The moral element played an important part in the above experiments. The workpeople told the factory inspector: «We work with more spirit, we have the reward ever before us of getting away sooner at night, and one active and cheerful spirit pervades the whole mill, from the youngest piecer to the oldest hand, and we can greatly help each other.»
So soon as that shortening becomes compulsory, machinery becomes in the hands of capital the objective means, systematically employed for squeezing out more labour in a given time. This is effected in two, ways: by increasing the speed of the machinery, and by giving the workman more machinery to tend.
1 Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 1844 and the quarter ending 30th April 1845. pp. 20—21."
! 1. c. p. 19. Since the wages for piece-work were unaltered, the weekly wages depended on the quantity produced.
94 CHAPTER X.
The improvements in the steam-engine have increased the piston speed, and at the same time have made it possible, by means of a greater economy of power, to drive with the same or even a smaller consumption of coal more machinery with the same engine. The improvements in the transmitting mechanism have lessened friction and, what so strikingly distinguishes modern from the older machinery, have reduced the diameter and weight of the shafting to a constantly decreasing minimum. Finally, the improvements in the operative machines have, while reducing their size, increased their speed and efficiency, as in the modern power- loom; or, while increasing the size of their frame-work, have also increased the extent and number of their working parts, as in spinning mules, or have added to the speed of these working parts by imperceptible alterations of detail, such as those which ten years ago increased the speed of the spindles in self-acting mules by one-fifth (I. e. about 1855).
The reduction of the working day to 12 hours dates in England from 1832. In 1836 a manufacturer stated: «The labour now undergone in the factories is much greater than it used to be ... — compared with thirty or forty years ago . . . owing to the greater attention and activity required by the greatly increased speed which is given to the machinery.» In 1844 Lord Ashley made in the House of Commons the following statements, supported by documentary evidence:
«The labour performed by those engaged in the processes of manufacture, is three times as great as in the beginning of such operations. Machinery has executed, no doubt, the work that would demand the sinews of millions of men; but it has also prodigiously multiplied the labour of those who are governed by its fearful movements ... In 1825, the labour of following a pair of mules spinning cotton yarn of No. 40 — reckoning 12 hours to the working-day — involved a necessity of walking 8 miles. In 1832, the distance travelled in following a pair of mules, spinning cotton yarn of the same number, was 20 miles, and frequently more. In 1825, the spinner put up daily, on each of these mules, 820 stretches, making a total of 1640 stretches in the course of the day. In 1832,' the spinner put up on each mule 2200 sti\ making a total of 4400. In 1844, 2400 stretches, making a total of 4800; and in some cases the amount of labour required is even still greater .... 1 have another document
THL INFLUENCE Of-' INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 95
sent to me in 1842, stating that the labour is progressively increasing — increasing not only because the distance to be travelled is greater, but because the quantity of goods pro- duced is multiplied, while the hands are fewer in proportion than before; and, moreover, because an inferior species of cotton is now often spun, which it is more difficult to work ... In the carding-room there has also been a great increase of labour. One person there does the work formerly divided between two ... In the weaving-room, where a vast number of persons are employed, and principally females-. . . the labour has increased within the last ten years fully 10 per cent, owing to the increased speed of the machinery. In 1838, the number of hanks spun per week was 18000, in 1843 it amounted to 21 000. In 18)9 the number of picks in power-loom-weaving per minute was 60 - - in 1842 it was 140, showing a vast increase of labour.»
In the face of this remarkable intensity of labour which had already been reached in 1844 under the Twelve Hours'Act, there appeared to be a justification for the assertion made at that time by the English manufacturers, that any further progress in that direction was impossible, and therefore that every further reduction of the hours meant a lessened production. But let us come to the period that follows the introduction of the Ten Hours' Act in 1847 into the English cotton, woollen, silk, and flax mills.
«The speed of the spindles has increased upon throst- les 500, and upon mules 1000 revolutions a minute, /. e., the speed of the throstle spindle, which in 1839 was 4500 times a minute, is now (1862) 5000; and of the mule spindle, that was 5000, is now 6000 times a minute.1 James Nasmyth, the eminent civil engineer of Patricroft, near Manchester, explained in a letter to Leonard Horner, written in 1852, the nature of the improvements in the steam-engine that had been made between the years 1848 and 1852. He goes on to" say: «I am confident that from the same weight of steam-engine machinery, we are now obtaining at least 50 per cent, more duty or work per- formed on the average, and that in many cases the identical steam-engines which in the days of the restricted speed of
«Rep. of Fact, for 31st October, 1862:;, p. 62.
96 CIIM'IiR X.
220 feet per minute, yielded 50 horse-power, are now yield- ing upwards of 100.» . . . «The modern steam-engine of 100 horse-power is capable of being driven at a much greater force than formerly, arising from improvements in its construction, the capacity and construction of the boilers, &c.» . . . «Although the same number of hands are employe-.! in proportion to the horse-power as at former periods, there are fewer hands employed in proportion to the machinery. »1 «The facts brought out by the return (of 1856) appear to be that the factory system is increasing rapidly; that although the same number of hands are employed in pro- portion to the horse-power as at former periods, there are fewer hands employed in proportion to the machinery; that the steam-engine is enabled to drive an increased weight of machinery by economy of force and other methods, and that an increased quantity of work can be turned oft by improvements in machinery, and in methods of manufac- ture, by increase of speed of the machinery, and by a variety of other cause-
«The great improvements made in machines of e kind have raised their productive power very much. Without any doubt, the shortening of the hours of labour . . . gave the impulse to these improvements. The latter, combined with the more intense strain on the workman, have ha-.l the effect, that at least as much is produced in the short- ened (by two hours or one-sixth) working-day as was pre- viously produced during the longer one.
But however great the progress of English indnrlry had been during the 8 years from 1848 to 1856 under the influence of a working-day of 10 hours, it was far surpassed during the next period of 6 years from 1850 lo 1862.
In silk fat-lories there were, for instance
Spindles
Looms
Operatives
1856 1862
1 093 799 1 388 544
9260 10709
56131 52428
lilt: INFLUENCE Of-' INDUSTRIAL 1JROOR£SS &c. 97
These figures show
an increase in the spindles of 26,9% an increase in the looms of 15,6% a decrease in the operatives of 1%.
In worsted mills were employed 1850 875830 spindles 1856 1324549 „ (increase 51,2%) 1862 1289172 „ (decrease 2,7%)- But if we deduct the doubling spindles that figure in the numbers for 1856, but not in those for 1862, it will be found that after 1856 the number of spindles remained nearly stationary. On the other hand, after 1850, the speed of the spindles and looms was in many cases doubled. In worsted mills were employed:
Power-looms
Operatives
including Children under 14
1850 1856 1862
32617 38956 43048
79737 87794 86063
9956 11228' 13178
In spite, therefore, of the greatly increased number of looms in 1862, compared with 1856, the total number of the workpeople employed decreased, and that of the children exploited increased.1
On the 27th April, 1863, Mr. Ferrand said in the House of Commons: «I have been informed by delegates from, 16 districts of Lancashire and Cheshire, in whose behalf I speak, that the work in the factories is, in consequence of the improvements in machinery, copstantly on the increase. Instead of as formerly one person with two helps tending two looms, one person now tends three looms without helps, and it is no uncommon thing for one person to , tend four. Twelve hours' work, as is evident from the facts adduced, is now compressed into less than 10 hours. It is therefore self-evident, to what an enormous extent the toil of the factory operative has increased during the last 10 years.»
On 2 modern power-looms a weaver now (1867), makes in a week of 60 hours 26 pieces of certain quality, length,
Report of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct., 18o2:;, pp. 100 and
98 CHAT
and breadth; while on the old power-looms he could make no more than 4 such pieces. The cost of weaving a piece of such cloth had already soon after 1850 fallen from 2s. 9d. to 51/2 d.
«Thirty years ago (1841) one spinner with three piecers was not required to attend to more than one pair of mules with 300—324 spindles. At the present time (1871) he has to mind with the help of 5 piecers 2200 spindles, and produces not less than seven times as much yarn as in 1841. » (Alex. Redgrave, Factory Inspector, in the Jour- nal of Arts, 5th January, 1872.)
Although, therefore, the Factory Inspectors unceasingly and with justice commend the results of the Acts of 1844 and 1850, yet they admit that the shortening of the hours of labour has already called forth such an intensification of the labour as is injurious to the health of the workman and to his capacity for work. «In most of the cotton, worsted, and silk mills, an exhausting state of excitement necessary to enable the workers satisfactorily to mind the machinery, the motion of which has been greatly accelerat- ed within the last few years, seems to me not unlikely to be one of the causes of that excess of mortality from lung disease, which Dr. Greenhow has pointed out in his recent report on this subject.*1 There cannot be the slight- est doubt that the tendency that urges capital so so a prolongation of the hours of labour is once for all forbidden, to compensate itself by a systematic heightening of the intensity of labour, and to convert every improvement in machinery into a more perfect means of exhausting the workman, must soon lead to a state of things in which a reduction of the hours of labour will again be inevitable.
(D) Blunting of the Labourer's Intelligence. Increase of Accidents.
When considering manufacture carried-on without machinery; we saw* that it is entirely based on fli sonal capacity of the labourer, on the skill with which
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 99
he manipulates his tool, and that consequently a hierarchy arises - - the result of the inequalities prevailing among the labourers. We further saw that the difference between such primitive manufacture and modern industry, lies pre- cisely in the fact that the tool which shapes the raw material is withdrawn from the workman and passes over to the machine; so that the latter, and not the workman, henceforth shapes the raw material, whereas the workman has only to superintend the activity of the machine. The capabilities of the tool are emancipated from the restraints that are inseparable from human labour power. In manu- facture, the tool can only operate as long as the workman who manipulates it, and with intensity, skill, and strength corresponding to those displayed in his labour. In modern ..industry, one workman can easily replace another in the task of superintending the machine; and the latter can con- tinue to operate even when the workman is sleeping or eating. Thereby the technical foundation on which is based the division of labour in manufacture, is swept away. Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised workmen that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the automatic factory, a tendency to equalise and reduce to one and the same level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines; in the place of the artificially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step the natural differences of age and sex.
Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on' in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of exploiting labour power. The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving pne and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a ' detail-machine. In this way, not only are the expenses of his reproduction con- siderably lessened, but at the same time his helpless depen- dence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness
100 !/'//:'/
due to the development of. the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process.
In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movement of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage. «The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer.*1 At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening ot the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each in- dividual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic phy- sical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the «master». This «master», therefore, in whose brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united, whenever he falls <>ui his «hands>, contemptuously tells them: tives should keep in wholesome remembrance Hi? fact that ; in/us 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 train the least expert can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired . . . The master's machinery really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the
I . I n ^i | p. 1 80.
//// /A //.MAC/: 01 IMXS/RIAL I'RoGRl.SS &C. JOJ
labour and the skill of the operative, which six month's edu- cation can teach, and a common labourer can learn. »T
The technical subordination of the workman to the uni- form motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully developes the before mentioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the work- people into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army. «The main difficulty (in the automatic factory) ... lay ... above all in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton. » But the difficulty was over- come, and discipline was established. The place of the slave driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book penal- ties. All punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law-giving talent of thq factory Lycurgus so arranges matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to him than the keeping of them. «The slavery in which fhp Jionrgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere more plainly into daylight than in^the factory ^sysieffT In if "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 the 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 plea- sure; 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
1 «The Master Spinners' and Manufacturers' Defence Fund. Report of the Committee . Manchester, 1854, p. 17. We shall see hereafter, that the the loss of his
102
death, under this mental and bodily torture.» (F. Engels 1. c. p. 217, sq.)
We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under which factory labour is carried on. Every organ of sense is injured in an equal degree by artificial elevation of the temperature, by the dust-laden atmosphere, by the deafening noise, not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly crowded machinery, which, with the regu- larity of the seasons, issues its list of the killed and wounded in the industrial battle. Economy of the social means of production, matured and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is turned, in the hands of capital, into systematic robbery of what is necessary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the comfort of the workman.
The protection afforded by the Factory Acts against dangerous machinery has had a beneficial effect. «Bn 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 careless- ness, 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 uninterruptedly, /. /'., producing yarns and goods. Every minute's stoppage is not only a loss of power, but of production, and the work- people are urged by the overlookers, who are intf in the quantity of work turned off, to keep the machinery in motion; and it is not 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 de cleaned while in motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most if not in all ... Thus from this cause only, ()06 accidents have occurred
THE INFLUENCE Of INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. JQ3
during the last 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, the number of working - hours on Saturday being taken into account — 7l/2 hours on Saturday a£ com- pared with Wl/2 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, p. 9, 15, 16, 17.)
I will further quote the following from the official report of Leonard Horner of October 31st. 1855: «I have heard some millowners speak with inexcusable levity of some of the accidents; such, for instance, as the loss of a finger being a trilling 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 quali- fied 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.» . . .
It mus't nevertheless be observed that 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. 10Q).
104
(E) Starvation of the Wage-Earners.
Hie contest between the capftalist and the wage-labourer dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on throughout the whole manufacturing period. But the writers of the manufacturing period treat the division of labour chiefl) as a means of virtually supplying a deficiency of labourers, and not as a means of actually displacing those in work. If it be said that 100 millions of people would be required in England to spin with the old spinning- wheel the cotton that is now spun with mules by 5; people, this does not mean that the mules took the place of those millions who never existed. ' If, on the other hand, we say that in England the power-loom threw 300 COO weavers in the streets, we refer to a number of weavers, in existence who were actually replaced or displaced by the looms. During the manufacturing period, handicraft labour, altered though it was by division of labour, was yet the basis. The demands of the new colonial markets could not be satisfied owing to the relatively small number of town operatives handed down from the middle ages, and the manufactures proper opened out new fields of pro- duction to the rural population, driven from the land by the dissolution of the feudal system. At that time, there- fore, division of labour and co-operation in the workshops were viewed from the positive aspect, that they made the workpeople more productive. The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself. The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery is thenceforward directly proportional to the number of the workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by that machinery. NJ soon as the handling of the tool becomes the work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of labour power vanishes; the workman becomes unsaleable, .iper-money thrown out of currency. That portion of the working class, thus by machinery rendered superfluous, immediately necessary for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal contest of the olu handicrafts and manufactures with machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of indtisi ips the labour market, and sinks the price
I'lli. INFLUENCE Ol IXDUSIKIA/. I'ROURfiSS &c. JQ5
of labour power below its value. It is impressed upon the work-people, as a great consolation, first, that their suffer- ings are only temporary, secondly, that machinery acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field of production only by degrees, so that the extent and intensity of its destructive effect is diminished. The first consolation neu- tralises the second. When machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, ii produces chronic misery among the opera- tives who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great masses. History dis- closes no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinc- tion of the English handloom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several decades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation, many with families vegetated for a long lime on 21/? d. a day. On the other hand, the English cotton machinery produced an acute effect in India. The Governor General reported 1834—35: «The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of India.»
But even in modern industry the continual improve- meni of machinery has an analogous effect. «The object of improved machinery is to 'diminish manual labour.»1 sThe adaptation of power to machinery heretofore moved by hand, is almost of daily occurrence . . . the minor improvements in machinery having for their object economy of power, the production of better work, the turning off of more work in the same time, or in supplying the place of a child, a female, or a man, are constant, and although sometimes apparently of no great moment, have somewhat important results.»2 liar dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a child can superintend it.- Who, in I860, the Zenith year of the English cotton-industry, would have dreamt of the galloping improvements in machinery, and the corresponding displace- ment of working people, called into being during -the
1 «Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1858>, p. 43. - Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1856?, p. 15.
106
CHAP]
following 3 years, under the stimulus of the American Civil War? A couple of examples from the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories will suffice on this point. A Manchester manufacturer states: «We formerly had 75 card- ing engines, now we have 12, doing the same quantity of work of equal if not better quality . . . We are saving in wages £ 10 a week. Our estimated saving in waste is about 10% in the quantity of cotton consumed.» «In another fine spinning mill in Manchester, I was informed that through increased speed and the adoption of some self- acting processes, a reduction had been made, in the number of workmen, of a fourth in one department, and of above half in another, and that the introduction of the combing machine in place of the second carding, had considerably reduced the number of hands formerly employed in the carding-room.» Another spinning mill is estimated to effect a saving of labour of 10%. The Messrs. Gilmore, spinners at Manchester, state: «In our blowing-room depart- ment we consider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third less in wages and hands ... in two other departments about one-third less in expense, and likewise one-third less in hands; in the spinning-room about one- third less in expenses. But this is not all; when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it is so much better by the application of our new machinery, that they will produce a greater quantity of cloth, and cheaper than from the yarn produced by old machinery^1
The following table shows the total result of the mechanical approvements in the English cotton industry due to the American civil war. Number of
Factories
Power-Looms
Spindles
Persons Emp'oyed
1858 1861 1868
2210 2887 2549
298847 ' 399992 379329
28010217 30 387 494 32000014
379213 451 569 301 064
Hence, between 1861 and 1868, 338 cotton factories disap- peared, in other words more productive machinery on a larger scale was concentrated in the hands of a smaller
Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st. Oct., 1863>, pp. 108, 109.
THE INFLUENCE Of INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. 107
number of capitalists. The number of power-looms decrea- sed by 20663; but since their product increased in the same period, an improved loom must have yielded more than an old one. Lastly the number of spindles increased by 1612541, while • the number of operatives decreased by 50505. The «temporary» misery, inflicted on the work- people by the cotton-crisis, was heightened, and from being temporary made permanent, by the rapid and persistent progress of machinery.
But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous. It is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the work- ing class against the autocracy of capital. According to Gaskell, the steam engine was from the very first an antagonist of human power, an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under foot the growing claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly-born factory system with a crisis.1 It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class.
Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, gives the following evidence before the Trades Union Commission, with regard to the improvements made by him in machinery and introduced in consequence of the wide-spread and long strike of the engineers in 1851: «The characteristic feature of our modern mechanical improvements is the introduction of self-acting tool machinery. What every mechanical work- man has now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine. The whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill, is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to every mechanic. Thanks to these new mechanical combinations, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from 1500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my profits.»
A whole series of bourgeois political economists insist that all machinery that displaces workmen, simultaneously
i Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England. London, 1833, pp. 3, 4.
8*
108
and necessarily sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen.
Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at i a year each, in a carpet factory. The variable c annually laid out (in wages) amounts, therefore, to £ Suppose, also, that he discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him ;(). To simplify matters, we take no account of buil- dings, coal, &c. Further suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs £ 3000, both before and after the change. Is any capital set free by this metamorphosis? Before the change, the total sum of £ 6000 consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After the change it consists of £ 45CO constant (£ 3000 raw material and T 1 r>00 machinery), and £ 1 .">()() variable capital. The variable capital ' (converted into living labour power), instead of being one half, is only one quarter of the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be exchanged against labour power: variable has been changed into constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of £ 6COO can, in future, employ no more than 50 men. With each improvement in the machinery, it will employ fewer.
But suppose the newly introduced machinery had less than did the labour power and implements displaced by it. What happens then? Let us assume that, instead of costing £ 1500, it had cost only £ 1000. Of the i' ;'.()!*(), which were paid originally as wages, £ 1500 serve this purpose further, i lO'.'O arc employed in purchasing machin- ery, and £ 500 are effectively set free. At the best, the latter sum (supposing wages unchanged) would only suffice to employ 10 men instead of 50. In reality, even less than 16, for a part of th if this sum is to be applied
to employing labour, must be laid-out in implements and raw material.
But suppose, besides, that the making .of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpel makers, thrown on the streets? At the best, its construction employs fewer men than its employment displaces. I lie sum of £ 1500 that formerly represented the wages of the
THE
discharged carpet-makers, now represents in the shape of machinery: (1) the value of the means of production used in the construction of that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics employed in its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the share of their «masters». Thus only a part of the £ 1500, is henceforth laid-out in wages. Further, the machinery need not be renewed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the increased number of mechanics in constant employment, one carpet manufacturer after another must displace workmen by machines.
As a matter of fact, the apologists do not mean this sort of setting free of capital. They have in their minds the means of subsistence of the liberated workpeople. It cannot be denied, in the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates 50 men, thus placing them at others' dis- posal, but, at the same time, it withdraws from their con- sumption and sets free means of subsistence to the value of £ 1500. The simple fact, by no means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economical parlance tanta- mount to this, that machinery liberates means of subsistence for the workman, or converts those means into capital for his employment. The mode of expression, you see, is every- thing.
This theory implies that the £ 1500 worth *of means of subsistence was capital that was being expanded by the labour of the 50 men discharged. That, consequently, this capital falls out of employment so soon as they commence their forced holidays, and never rests till it has found a fresh investment, where it can again be productively consumed by these same 50 men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the workmen must come together again, and that, then, the compensation is complete. That the sufferings of the workmen displaced by machinery are therefore as transient as are the riches of this world.
In relation to the discharged workmen, the £ 1500 worth of means of subsistence never was capital. What really confronted them as capital, was the sum of £ 1500, afterwards laid out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the 50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from their employer in money
110 CHAPTER X
instead of in kind. With the carpets in the form of money, they bought means 6f subsistence to the value of £' 1500. These means, therefore, were to them not capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these commodities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circumstance that they were «freed», by the machinery, from the means of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-ruyers. Hence a lessened demand for those commodities. If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time, and extends, there follows a restriction in the production of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced in another form, and thus the labourers employed in the production of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn «freed» from a part of their wages. The result is that machinery throws workmen on the streets, not only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced.
The real facts are as follows: The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen at the disposal of the capitalists. In another chapter of this book it will be seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on the contrary a. most frightful scourge. For the present I will only say this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards converted into machinery. And even should they find employment, what a poor look-out is theirs! Crippled as they are by division of labour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade, that they cannot find admission into any industries, except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with underpaid workmen. Further, every branch of industry attracts each
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c.
year a new stream of men, who furnish a contingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a supply for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve men are also diverted into new channels of employ- ment, and become absorbed in other branches; meanwhile the original victims, during the period of transition, for the most part starve and perish.
It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not responsible for « setting free» the workman from the means of subsistence. It cheapens and increases production in that branch which it seizes on, and at first makes no change in the mass of the means of subsistence produced in other branches, Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much, if not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the labourers thrown out of work; and that quite apart from the enormous share of the annual produce wasted by the non-workers. And this is the point relied on by our apologists! The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist employment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since they do not arise out of ma- chinery, as such, but out of its capitalist employment! Since therefore machinery, considered alone, shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the service of capital, lengthens them; since in itself it lightens labour, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity of labour; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces; since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers - for all these reasons and others besides, says the bour- geois economist without more ado, when we regard machinery itself, it is as clear as noonday that all these contradictions are a mere semblance of the reality, and that, as a matter of fact, they have neither an actual nor a theoretical existence. Thus he saves himself from all further puzzling of the brain, and what is more, implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid enough to contend against, not the capitalistic employment of machinery, but machinery itself.
No doubt he is far from denying that temporary incon- venience may result from the capitalist use of machinery.
112 CHAPTER V.
Bui where is the medal without its reverse! Any employ men i ol machinery, except by capital, is to him an impossibility. Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore, with him, identical with exploitation of the machine by the workman. Whoever, therefore, exposes the real state of things in the capitalistic employment of machinery, is against its employment in any way, and is an enemy of social progress. Exactly the reasoning of the celebrated Bill Sykes: «Gentlemen of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial traveller has been cut. But that is not my fault; it is the fault of the knife. Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience, abolish the use of the knife? Only consider! Where would agriculture and trade be without the knife? Is it not salutary in surgery, as it is knowing in anatomy? And in addition a willing help at the festive board? If you abolish the knife — you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism.»
Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, notwithstanding this, bring about an increase .of employment in other industries. True, if the total quantity of the article produced by machinery be equal to the total quantity of the article previously produced by a handicraft or by manu- facture, and now made by machinery, then the total labour expended is diminished. The new labour spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour displaced by the use of the machinery; otherwise the product of the machine would be as dear, or dearer, than the product of the manual labour. But, as a matter of fact, the total quan- tity of the article produced by machinery by far exceeds the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been displaced. The result must be that, at. first, an increase of employment takes place in other branches of labour. Let us suppose that a given number of workmen has produced by handicraft ICO 000 yards of cloth. Now the machine appears -on the scene, throws a number of workmen out ol employment, but enables the remainder to produce 400000 yards. In Hie quadrupled product there lies four times as much raw material. Ik-ua- tlu- production of raw material must be quadrupled. And also tin- production of buildings,
THE JNl-'/.L'ENCE Ol INDUSTRIAL !>/ ( JRI:SS fcc. H3
coal, machinery, &c., may demand, when 400000 yards are produced, more labour than is saved in the case of 100 000.
Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry, the immediate effect is to increase production in the other industries that furnish the first with means of production. How far employment is thereby found for an increased number of men, depends on the extent to which machinery has already seized on, or is then seizing on, those trades. The number of the men condemned to work in coal and metal mines increased enormously owing to the progress of the English factory system; but during the last few decades this increase of number has been less rapid, owing to the use of new machinery in mining. A new type of workman springs into life along with machine, namely its maker. As to raw material, there is not the least doubt that the rapid strides of cotton spinning not only pushed on with tropical luxuriance the growth of cotton in the United States, and with it the African slave trade, but also made the breeding of slaves the chief business of the border slave-states. When, in 17QO, the first census of slaves was taken in the United States, their number was 697000; in 1861 it had nearly reached four millions. On the other hand, it is no; less certain that the rise of the English woollen factories, together with the gradual conversion of arable land into sheep pasture, brought about the superfluity of agri- cultural labourers that led to their being driven in masses into the towns. Ireland, having during the last twenty years reduced its population by nearly one half, is at this moment (1867) undergoing the process of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so as exactly to suit the require- ments of its landlords and of the English woollen manufac- • turers.
When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or intermediate stages through which the subject of labour has to pass on its way to completion, and when the half-finished or intermediary product is produced in great quantities, whereas the finished product (of which the former is the preparatory stage) is still supplied by handicraft, an in- creased demand for labour arises in consequence of the greater quantity of material available. Spinning by ma- chinery, for example, supplied yarn so cheaply and so abundantly that the hand-loom weavers were, at first, able
CHM'lkR \.
to work full time without increased outlay. Their earnings accordingly rose. Hence a flow of people into the cotton- weaving trade, till at length the SCO COO weavers, called into existence by the Jenny, the throstle and the mule, were overwhelmed by the power-loom. So also, owing to the abun- dance of clothing materials produced by machinery, the number of tailors, seamstresses and needle-women went on increasing until the appearance of the sewing machine.
Machinery causes, at first, a further increase of employ- ment in the industries that produce luxuries. For it augments surplus-value and the mass of products in which surplus-value is embodied. Thus the wealth of the capitalist class increases. And as the number of workmen necessary for the production of the necessaries of life diminishes rela- tively, with the rise of new and luxurious wants arise the means of satisfying those wants. In other words, the pro- duction of luxuries increases. The refined and varied forms of the products are also due to new relations with the markets of the world, relations that are created by modern industry. Not only are greater quantities of foreign articles of luxury exchanged for home products, but a greater mass of foreign raw materials, ingredients, and intermediate pro- ducts, are used as means of production in the home in- dustries. Ov/ing to these relations with the markets of the world, the demand for labour increases in the carrying trades, which split up into numerous varieties.1
The increase of the means of production and subsistence, accompanied by a relative diminution in the number of labourers, causes an increased demand for labour in making canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on, works thai only bear fruit in the far fu
Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour power in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working class, and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scaK the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, Xc.
' In ISbl, in I:nul;iml mil \\.-ik-s. ihcn vvr; in the
merchant service.
THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS &c. H5
According to .the census of 1861, the population of England and Wales included:
Persons:
Agricultural labourers . . . . 1 100 000
All who are employed in textile factories . 643000 All who are employed in coal mines and
metal mines . • . . . . . 565 '000 All who are employed in metal works . (blast-furnaces, rolling mills, &c.), and metal manufactures of every kind . . 400000 The servant class 1210000
None are included in the 1210 COO who do not serve in private houses.
Nevertheless, in spite of the mass of hands actually displaced and virtually replaced by machinery, we can understand how the factory operatives, through the building of more mills and the extension of old ones in a given industry, may become more numerous than the manufacturing workmen and handicraftsmen that have been displaced. Suppose, for example, that iii the old mode of production a capital of £ 500 is employed weekly, £ 200 being laid out in means of production, and £ 300, say £ 1 per man, in labour-power. On the introduction of machinery only £ 100 is now laid out in labour power. Consequently, two-thirds of the workmen are discharged. If now the business extends, and the total capital employed grows to £ 1500 tinder unchanged conditions, the number of operatives employed will increase to 300, just as many as before the introduction of the machinery. If the capital further grows to £ 2000, 400 men will be employed, or one-third more than under the old system. Their numbers have, in point of fact, increased by 100, but relatively, /. e., in proportion to the total capital advanced, they have diminished by SCO, for the £ 2COO capital would, in the old state of things, have employed 1200 instead of 400 men. Hence, a relative decrease in the number of hands is consistent with an actual increase.
( IIM'll R XL