' Whence it would appear that this
petitioner
felt himself ?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
10.
88 --A Discourse on the necessity of encouraging Mechanick Industry,? London, 1690, p. 13. Macaulay, who has falsified English history in the interests of the Whigs and the bourgeoisie, declares as follows: --The practice of setting children prematurely to work . . . prevailed in the 17th century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact that in that single city, boys and girls of very tender age create wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a year. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. . . . That which is new is the intelligence and the humanity which remedies them. ? (--History of England,? vol. 1. , p. 417. ) Macaulay might have reported further that --extremely well-disposed? amis du commerce in the 17th century, narrate with --exultation? how in a poorhouse in Holland a child of four was employed, and that this example of --vertu mise en pratique? [applied virtue] passes muster in all the humanitarian works, a` la Macaulay, to the time of Adam Smith. It is true that with the substitution of manufacture for handicrafts, traces of the exploitation of children begin to appear. This exploitation existed always to a certain extent among peasants, and was the more developed, the heavier the yoke pressing on the husbandman. The tendency of capital is there unmistakably; but the facts themselves are still as isolated as the phenomena of two-headed children. Hence they were noted --with exultation? as especially worthy of remark and as wonders by the far-seeing --amis du commerce,? and recommended as models for their own time and for posterity. This same Scotch sycophant and fine talker, Macaulay, says: --We hear to-day only of retrogression and see only progress. ? What eyes, and especially what ears!
89 Among the accusers of the workpeople, the most angry is the anonymous author quoted in the text of --An Essay on Trade and Commerce, containing Observations on Taxes, &c. ,? London, 1770. He had already dealt with this subject in his earlier work: --Considerations on Taxes. ? London, 1765. And the same side follows Polonius Arthur Young, the unutterable statistical prattler. Among the defenders of the working-classes the foremost are: Jacob Vanderlint, in: --Money Answers all Things. ? London, 1734, the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, D. D. , in --An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of
? ? 203 Chapter 10
Provisions,? London, 1767; Dr. Price, and especially Postlethwayt, as well in the supplement to his --Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,? as in his --Great Britain's Commercial Interest explained and improved. ? 2nd Edition, 1755. The facts themselves are confirmed by many other writers of the time, among others by Josiah Tucker.
90 Postlethwayt, l. c. , --First Preliminary Discourse,? p. 14.
91 --An Essay,? &c. He himself relates on p. 96 wherein the --happiness? of the English agricultural labourer already in 1770 consisted. --Their powers are always upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder. ?
92 Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays, plays an important part in the genesis of capital.
93 --An Essay,? 4c. , pp. 15, 41, 96, 97, 55, 57, 69. -- Jacob Vanderlint, as early as 1734, declared that the secret of the out-cry of the capitalists as to the laziness of the working people was simply that they claimed for the same wages 6 days' labour instead of 4.
94 l. c. , p. 242.
95 l. c. --The French,? he says, --laugh at our enthusiastic ideas of liberty. ? l. c. , p. 78.
96 --They especially objected to work beyond the 12 hours per day, because the law which fixed those hours, is the only good which remains to them of the legislation of the Republic. ? (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ? , 31 st October, 1856, p. 80. ) The French Twelve Hours' Bill of September 5th, 1850, a bourgeois edition of the decree of the Provisional Government of March 2nd, 1848, holds in all workshops without exceptions. Before this law the working day in France was without definite limit. It lasted in the factories 14, 15, or more hours. See --Des classes ouvrie`res en France, pendant l'anne? e 1848. Par M. Blanqui. ? M. Blanqui the economist, not the Revolutionist, had been entrusted by the Government with an inquiry into the condition of the working-class.
97 Belgium is the model bourgeois state in regard to the regulation of the working day. Lord Howard of Welden, English Plenipotentiary at Brussels, reports to the Foreign Office May 12th, 1862: --M. Rogier, the minister, informed me that children's labour is limited neither by a general law nor by any local regulations; that the Government, during the last three years, intended in every session to propose a bill on the subject, but always found an insuperable obstacle in the jealous opposition to any legislation in contradiction with the principle of perfect freedom of labour. ?
98 It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil 12 hours a day, which, including the time for their meals and for going to and returning from their work, amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 hours. . . . Without entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working-classes, without intermission, from the early age of 13, and in trades not subject to restriction, much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be deplored. . . . For the sake, therefore, of public morals. of bringing up an orderly population, and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day should be reserved for rest and leisure. ? (Leonard Horner in --Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Dec. , 1841. ? )
99 See --Judgment of Mr. J. H. Otway, Belfast. Hilary Sessions, County Antrim, 1860. ?
100 It is very characteristic of the regime of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, that the one Factory Act passed during his reign, that of March 22nd, 1841, was never put in force. And this law only dealt with child-labour. It fixed 8 hours a day for children between 8 and 12, 12 hours for children between 12 and 16, &c. , with many exceptions which allow night-work even for children 8 years old. The supervision and enforcement of this law are, in a country where every mouse is under police administration, left to the good-will of the amis du commerce. Only since 1853, in one single department -- the Departement du Nord -- has a paid government inspector been appointed. Not less
? ? 204 Chapter 10
characteristic of the development of French society, generally, is the fact, that Louis Philippe's law stood solitary among the all-embracing mass of French laws, till the Revolution of 1848.
101 Report of Insp. of Fact. ? 30th April, 1860, p. 50.
102 --Rept. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1849, p. 6
103 --Rept. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1848, p. 98.
104 Leonard Horner uses the expression --nefarious practices? in his official reports. (--Report of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1859, p. 7. )
105 --Rept. ,? &c. , 30th Sept. , 1844, p. 15.
106 The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day after day, but only on alternate days. In the main, this clause remained inoperative.
107 --As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of children) to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8 to 9 years of age would meet the increased demand? (l. c. , p. 13 ).
108 Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st Oct. , 1848, p. 16.
109 --I found that men who had been getting 10s. a week, had had 1s. taken off for a reduction in the rate of 10 per cent, and 1s. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the reduction in time, together 2s. 6d. . and notwithstanding this, many of them said they would rather work 10 hours. ? l. c.
110 -- ? Though I signed it [the petition], I said at the time I was putting my hand to a wrong thing. ' ? Then why did you put your hand to it? ' ? Because I should have been turned off if I had refused.
' Whence it would appear that this petitioner felt himself ? oppressed,' but not exactly by the Factory Act. ? l. c. , p. 102.
111 p. 17, l. c. In Mr. Horner's district 10,270 adult male labourers were thus examined in 181 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix to the Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish valuable material in other connexions also.
112 l. c. See the evidence collected by Leonard Horner himself, Nos. 69, 70, 71, 72, 92, 93, and that collected by Sub-lnspector A. , Nos. 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 70, of the Appendix. One manufacturer, too, tells the plain truth. See No. 14, and No. 265, l. c.
113 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, pp. 133, 134. 114 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1848, p. 47.
115 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 130.
116 Reports, &c. , l. c. , p. 142.
117 Reports &c. , for 31st October, 1850, pp. 5, 6.
118 The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form. In the code which the influence of the slave-owners, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, imposed on the territory of New Mexico, it is said that the labourer, in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour-power, --is his (the capitalist's) money. ? The same view was current among the Roman patricians. The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor. This --flesh and blood? were, therefore, --their money. ? Hence, the Shylock-law of the Ten Tables. Linguet's hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared, beyond the Tiber, banquets of debtors' flesh, may remain as undecided as that of Daumer on the Christian Eucharist.
119 Reports, &c. . for 30th April, 1848, p. 28.
120 Thus, among others, Philanthropist Ashworth to Leonard Horner, in a disgusting Quaker letter. (Reports, &c. , April, 1849, p. 4. )
? ? 205 Chapter 10
121 l. c. , p. 140.
122 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, pp. 21, 22. Cf like examples ibid. , pp. 4. 5.
123 By I. and II. Will. IV. , ch. 24, s. 10, known as Sir John Wobhouse's Factory Act, it was forbidden to any owner of a cotton-spinning or weaving mill, or the father, son, or brother of such owner, to act as Justice of the Peace in any inquiries that concerned the Factory Act.
124 l. c.
125 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. S.
126 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1849, p. 6. 127 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. 21. 128 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 95.
129 See Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. 6, and the detailed explanation of the --shifting system,? by Factory Inspectors Howell and Saunders, in --Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848. ? See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of Ashton and vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the shift system. ?
130 Cf. for example, --The Factory Question and the Ten Hours' Bill. ? , By R. H. Greg, 1837.
131 F. Engels: ? The English Ten Hours' Bill. ? (In the --Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch- oekonomische Revue. ? Edited by K. Marx. April number, 1850, p. 13. ) The same --high? Court of Justice discovered, during the American Civil War, a verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming of pirate ships.
132 Rep. , &c. , for 30th April, 1850.
133 In winter, from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m. may be substituted.
134 --The present law (of 1850) was a compromise whereby the employed surrendered the benefit of the Ten Hours' Act for the advantage of one uniform period for the commencement and termination of the labour of those whose labour is restricted. ? (Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1852, p. 14. )
135 Respons, &c. , for Sept. , 1844, p. 13.
136 l. c.
137 l. c.
138 --Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1846,? p. 20. 139 Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1861, p. 26.
140 l. c. ,p. 27. On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act, has greatly improved physically. All medical testimony agrees on this point, and personal observation at different times has convinced me of it. Nevertheless, and exclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavourable health condition of the manufacturing districts as compared with --agricultural districts of normal health. ? As evidence, take the following table from his 1861 report: --
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
88 --A Discourse on the necessity of encouraging Mechanick Industry,? London, 1690, p. 13. Macaulay, who has falsified English history in the interests of the Whigs and the bourgeoisie, declares as follows: --The practice of setting children prematurely to work . . . prevailed in the 17th century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact that in that single city, boys and girls of very tender age create wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a year. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. . . . That which is new is the intelligence and the humanity which remedies them. ? (--History of England,? vol. 1. , p. 417. ) Macaulay might have reported further that --extremely well-disposed? amis du commerce in the 17th century, narrate with --exultation? how in a poorhouse in Holland a child of four was employed, and that this example of --vertu mise en pratique? [applied virtue] passes muster in all the humanitarian works, a` la Macaulay, to the time of Adam Smith. It is true that with the substitution of manufacture for handicrafts, traces of the exploitation of children begin to appear. This exploitation existed always to a certain extent among peasants, and was the more developed, the heavier the yoke pressing on the husbandman. The tendency of capital is there unmistakably; but the facts themselves are still as isolated as the phenomena of two-headed children. Hence they were noted --with exultation? as especially worthy of remark and as wonders by the far-seeing --amis du commerce,? and recommended as models for their own time and for posterity. This same Scotch sycophant and fine talker, Macaulay, says: --We hear to-day only of retrogression and see only progress. ? What eyes, and especially what ears!
89 Among the accusers of the workpeople, the most angry is the anonymous author quoted in the text of --An Essay on Trade and Commerce, containing Observations on Taxes, &c. ,? London, 1770. He had already dealt with this subject in his earlier work: --Considerations on Taxes. ? London, 1765. And the same side follows Polonius Arthur Young, the unutterable statistical prattler. Among the defenders of the working-classes the foremost are: Jacob Vanderlint, in: --Money Answers all Things. ? London, 1734, the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, D. D. , in --An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of
? ? 203 Chapter 10
Provisions,? London, 1767; Dr. Price, and especially Postlethwayt, as well in the supplement to his --Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,? as in his --Great Britain's Commercial Interest explained and improved. ? 2nd Edition, 1755. The facts themselves are confirmed by many other writers of the time, among others by Josiah Tucker.
90 Postlethwayt, l. c. , --First Preliminary Discourse,? p. 14.
91 --An Essay,? &c. He himself relates on p. 96 wherein the --happiness? of the English agricultural labourer already in 1770 consisted. --Their powers are always upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder. ?
92 Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays, plays an important part in the genesis of capital.
93 --An Essay,? 4c. , pp. 15, 41, 96, 97, 55, 57, 69. -- Jacob Vanderlint, as early as 1734, declared that the secret of the out-cry of the capitalists as to the laziness of the working people was simply that they claimed for the same wages 6 days' labour instead of 4.
94 l. c. , p. 242.
95 l. c. --The French,? he says, --laugh at our enthusiastic ideas of liberty. ? l. c. , p. 78.
96 --They especially objected to work beyond the 12 hours per day, because the law which fixed those hours, is the only good which remains to them of the legislation of the Republic. ? (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ? , 31 st October, 1856, p. 80. ) The French Twelve Hours' Bill of September 5th, 1850, a bourgeois edition of the decree of the Provisional Government of March 2nd, 1848, holds in all workshops without exceptions. Before this law the working day in France was without definite limit. It lasted in the factories 14, 15, or more hours. See --Des classes ouvrie`res en France, pendant l'anne? e 1848. Par M. Blanqui. ? M. Blanqui the economist, not the Revolutionist, had been entrusted by the Government with an inquiry into the condition of the working-class.
97 Belgium is the model bourgeois state in regard to the regulation of the working day. Lord Howard of Welden, English Plenipotentiary at Brussels, reports to the Foreign Office May 12th, 1862: --M. Rogier, the minister, informed me that children's labour is limited neither by a general law nor by any local regulations; that the Government, during the last three years, intended in every session to propose a bill on the subject, but always found an insuperable obstacle in the jealous opposition to any legislation in contradiction with the principle of perfect freedom of labour. ?
98 It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil 12 hours a day, which, including the time for their meals and for going to and returning from their work, amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 hours. . . . Without entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working-classes, without intermission, from the early age of 13, and in trades not subject to restriction, much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be deplored. . . . For the sake, therefore, of public morals. of bringing up an orderly population, and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day should be reserved for rest and leisure. ? (Leonard Horner in --Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Dec. , 1841. ? )
99 See --Judgment of Mr. J. H. Otway, Belfast. Hilary Sessions, County Antrim, 1860. ?
100 It is very characteristic of the regime of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, that the one Factory Act passed during his reign, that of March 22nd, 1841, was never put in force. And this law only dealt with child-labour. It fixed 8 hours a day for children between 8 and 12, 12 hours for children between 12 and 16, &c. , with many exceptions which allow night-work even for children 8 years old. The supervision and enforcement of this law are, in a country where every mouse is under police administration, left to the good-will of the amis du commerce. Only since 1853, in one single department -- the Departement du Nord -- has a paid government inspector been appointed. Not less
? ? 204 Chapter 10
characteristic of the development of French society, generally, is the fact, that Louis Philippe's law stood solitary among the all-embracing mass of French laws, till the Revolution of 1848.
101 Report of Insp. of Fact. ? 30th April, 1860, p. 50.
102 --Rept. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1849, p. 6
103 --Rept. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1848, p. 98.
104 Leonard Horner uses the expression --nefarious practices? in his official reports. (--Report of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1859, p. 7. )
105 --Rept. ,? &c. , 30th Sept. , 1844, p. 15.
106 The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day after day, but only on alternate days. In the main, this clause remained inoperative.
107 --As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of children) to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8 to 9 years of age would meet the increased demand? (l. c. , p. 13 ).
108 Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st Oct. , 1848, p. 16.
109 --I found that men who had been getting 10s. a week, had had 1s. taken off for a reduction in the rate of 10 per cent, and 1s. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the reduction in time, together 2s. 6d. . and notwithstanding this, many of them said they would rather work 10 hours. ? l. c.
110 -- ? Though I signed it [the petition], I said at the time I was putting my hand to a wrong thing. ' ? Then why did you put your hand to it? ' ? Because I should have been turned off if I had refused.
' Whence it would appear that this petitioner felt himself ? oppressed,' but not exactly by the Factory Act. ? l. c. , p. 102.
111 p. 17, l. c. In Mr. Horner's district 10,270 adult male labourers were thus examined in 181 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix to the Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish valuable material in other connexions also.
112 l. c. See the evidence collected by Leonard Horner himself, Nos. 69, 70, 71, 72, 92, 93, and that collected by Sub-lnspector A. , Nos. 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 70, of the Appendix. One manufacturer, too, tells the plain truth. See No. 14, and No. 265, l. c.
113 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, pp. 133, 134. 114 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1848, p. 47.
115 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 130.
116 Reports, &c. , l. c. , p. 142.
117 Reports &c. , for 31st October, 1850, pp. 5, 6.
118 The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form. In the code which the influence of the slave-owners, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, imposed on the territory of New Mexico, it is said that the labourer, in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour-power, --is his (the capitalist's) money. ? The same view was current among the Roman patricians. The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor. This --flesh and blood? were, therefore, --their money. ? Hence, the Shylock-law of the Ten Tables. Linguet's hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared, beyond the Tiber, banquets of debtors' flesh, may remain as undecided as that of Daumer on the Christian Eucharist.
119 Reports, &c. . for 30th April, 1848, p. 28.
120 Thus, among others, Philanthropist Ashworth to Leonard Horner, in a disgusting Quaker letter. (Reports, &c. , April, 1849, p. 4. )
? ? 205 Chapter 10
121 l. c. , p. 140.
122 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, pp. 21, 22. Cf like examples ibid. , pp. 4. 5.
123 By I. and II. Will. IV. , ch. 24, s. 10, known as Sir John Wobhouse's Factory Act, it was forbidden to any owner of a cotton-spinning or weaving mill, or the father, son, or brother of such owner, to act as Justice of the Peace in any inquiries that concerned the Factory Act.
124 l. c.
125 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. S.
126 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1849, p. 6. 127 Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. 21. 128 Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 95.
129 See Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1849, p. 6, and the detailed explanation of the --shifting system,? by Factory Inspectors Howell and Saunders, in --Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848. ? See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of Ashton and vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the shift system. ?
130 Cf. for example, --The Factory Question and the Ten Hours' Bill. ? , By R. H. Greg, 1837.
131 F. Engels: ? The English Ten Hours' Bill. ? (In the --Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch- oekonomische Revue. ? Edited by K. Marx. April number, 1850, p. 13. ) The same --high? Court of Justice discovered, during the American Civil War, a verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming of pirate ships.
132 Rep. , &c. , for 30th April, 1850.
133 In winter, from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m. may be substituted.
134 --The present law (of 1850) was a compromise whereby the employed surrendered the benefit of the Ten Hours' Act for the advantage of one uniform period for the commencement and termination of the labour of those whose labour is restricted. ? (Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1852, p. 14. )
135 Respons, &c. , for Sept. , 1844, p. 13.
136 l. c.
137 l. c.
138 --Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1846,? p. 20. 139 Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1861, p. 26.
140 l. c. ,p. 27. On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act, has greatly improved physically. All medical testimony agrees on this point, and personal observation at different times has convinced me of it. Nevertheless, and exclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavourable health condition of the manufacturing districts as compared with --agricultural districts of normal health. ? As evidence, take the following table from his 1861 report: --
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
