No More Learning

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.
J. Leach deposes:
--Last winter six out of nineteen girls were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have to bawl at them to keep them awake. ? W. Duffy: --I have seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes open for the work; indeed, none of us could. ? J. Lightbourne: --Am 13 We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night last winter. ? G. Apsden: --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 his --hands? who work for --us? ) work on with no stoppage for meals, so that day's work of 101/2 hours is finished by 4. 30 p. m. , and all after that is over-time. ? 40 (Does this Mr. Smith take no meals himself during 101/2 hours? ) --We (this same Smith) seldom leave off working before 6 p. m. (he means leave off the consumption of --our? labour-power machines), so that we (iterum Crispinus) are really working over-time the whole year round. 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 78 1/2 hours a week. For the six weeks ending May 2nd this year (1862), the average was higher - 8 days or 84 hours a week. ?
Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely devoted to the pluralis majestatis [the Royal --we,? i. e. , speaking on behalf of his subjects], 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
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whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against the proposal --to stop the machines at least during meal-times. ?
--A clause,? says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in the Borough, --which allowed work between, say 6 a. m. and 9 p. m. in would suit us (! ) very well, but the factory hours, 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. , are not suitable. Our machine is always stopped for dinner. (What generosity! ) There is no waste of paper and colour to speak of. But,? he adds sympathetically, --I can understand the loss of time not being liked. ?
The report of the Commission opines with nai? vete? that the fear of some --leading firms? of losing time, i. e. , the time for appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel - as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production itself. 41
No branch of industry in England (we do not take into account the making of bread by machinery recently introduced) has preserved up to the present day a method of production so archaic, so - as we see from the poets of the Roman Empire - pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the labour-process; it begins by taking it just as it finds it.
The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London, was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee --on the adulteration of articles of food? (1855-56), and Dr. Hassall's work, --Adulterations detected. ? 42 The consequence of these revelations was the Act of August 6th, 1860, --for preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink,? an inoperative law, as it naturally shows the tenderest consideration for every Free-trader who determines by the buying or selling of adulterated commodities --to turn an honest penny. ? 43The Committee itself formulated more or less nai? vely its conviction that Free-trade meant essentially trade with adulterated, or as the English ingeniously put it, --sophisticated? goods. In fact this kind of sophistry knows better than Protagoras how to make white black, and black white, and better than the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos [before your own eyes] that everything is only appearance. 44
At all events the Committee had directed the attention of the public to its --daily bread,? and therefore to the baking trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers against their over-work, &c. The cry was so urgent that Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863 several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Inquiry. His report. 45 together with the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abscesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Free-trade, the free baking- trade was therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of 1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of business.
--The work of a London journeyman baker begins, as a rule, at about eleven at night. At that hour he ? makes the dough,' - a laborious process, which lasts from
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half an hour to three quarters of an hour, according to the size of the batch or the labour bestowed upon it. He then lies down upon the kneading-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which the dough is ? made'; and with a sack under him, and another rolled up as a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours. He is then engaged in a rapid and continuous labour for about five hours - throwing out the dough, ? scaling it off,' moulding it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up into the shop, &c. , &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller bakehouses approximates usually to the higher rather than to the lower degree of heat. When the business of making the bread, rolls, &c. , is over, that of its distribution begins, and a considerable proportion of the journeymen in the trade, after working hard in the manner described during the night, are upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying baskets, or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bakehouse, leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 p. m. according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature of their master's business; while others are again engaged in the bakehouse in ? bringing out' more batches until late in the afternoon. 46. . . During what is called ? the London season,' the operatives belonging to the ? full-priced' bakers at the West End of the town, generally begin work at 11 p. m. , and are engaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning. They are then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in the afternoon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit-baking. They may have, after they have done their work, sometimes five or six, sometimes only four or five hours' sleep before they begin again. On Fridays they always begin sooner, some about ten o'clock, and continue in some cases, at work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p. m. on Saturday night, but more generally up to 4 or 5 o'clock, Sunday morning. On Sundays the men must attend twice or three times during the day for an hour or two to make preparations for the next day's bread. . . . The men employed by the underselling masters (who sell their bread under the ? full price,' and who, as already pointed out, comprise three-fourths of the London bakers) have not only to work on the average longer hours, but their work is almost entirely confined to the bakehouse. The underselling masters generally sell their bread. . . in the shop. If they send it out, which is not common, except as supplying chandlers' shops, they usually employ other hands for that purpose. It is not their practice to deliver bread from house to house. Towards the end of the week . . . the men begin on Thursday night at 10 o'clock, and continue on with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evening. ? 47
Even the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the --underselling? masters. --The unpaid labour of the men was made the source whereby the competition was carried on. ? 48 And the --full-priced? baker denounces his underselling competitors to the Commission of Inquiry as thieves of foreign labour and adulterators.
--They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages. ? 49
The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the beginning of the 18th century, from the time when the corporate character of
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the trade was lost, and the capitalist in the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises behind the nominal master baker. 50 Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic production in this trade, of the unlimited extension of the working day and of night-labour, although the latter only since 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London. 51
After what has just been said, it will be understood that the Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among the short-lived labourers, who, having by good luck escaped the normal decimation of the children of the working-class, rarely reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking trade is always overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply of these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agricultural districts of England, and Germany.
In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland organised at their own expense great meetings to agitate against night and Sunday work. The public - e. g. , at the Dublin meeting in May, 1860 - took their part with Irish warmth. As a result of this movement, day-labour alone was successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Waterford, &c.
--In Limerick, where the grievances of the journeymen are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller bakers being the greatest opponents. The example of Limerick led to a retrogression in Ennis and Tipperary. In Cork, where the strongest possible demonstration of feeling took place, the masters, by exercising their power of turning the men out of employment, have defeated the movement. In Dublin, the master bakers have offered the most determined opposition to the movement, and by discountenancing as much as possible the journeymen promoting it, have succeeded in leading the men into acquiescence in Sunday work and night-work, contrary to the convictions of the men. ? 52
The Committee of the English Government, which Government, in Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones with the implacable master bakers of Dublin, Limerick, Cork, &c. :
--The Committee believe that the hours of labour are limited by natural laws, which cannot be violated with impunity. That for master bakers to induce their workmen, by the fear of losing employment, to violate their religious convictions and their better feelings, to disobey the laws of the land, and to disregard public opinion (this all refers to Sunday labour), is calculated to provoke ill-feeling between workmen and masters, . . . and affords an example dangerous to religion, morality, and social order. . . . The Committee believe that any constant work beyond 12 hours a-day encroaches on the domestic and private life of the working-man, and so leads to disastrous moral results, interfering with each man's home, and the discharge of his family duties as a son, a brother, a husband, a father. That work beyond 12 hours has a tendency to undermine the health of the workingman, and so leads to premature old age and death, to the great injury of families of working-men, thus deprived of the care and support of the head of the family when most required. ? 53
So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the ploughman, protests against his 13-14 hours' work in the most inclement climate, with 4 hours' additional work on Sunday (in this land of Sabbatarians! ), 54 whilst, at the same time, three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury - a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employee is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one
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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, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power, and more --abstemious,? more --self-denying,? more --thrifty,? in the draining of paid labour-power. 55
From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages, sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain on Ulysses, on whom - without referring to the Blue books under their arms - we see at a glance the mark of over-work, let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves that before capital all men are alike - a milliner and a blacksmith.
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-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story, 56 was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 161/2 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-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 261/2 hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded 1/3 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. 57 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 work- room, 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 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. ?
--Our white slaves,? cried the Morning Star, the organ of the Free-traders, Cobden and Bright, --our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die. ? 58
--It is not in 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. Working in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of human 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-rate of his country. In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per thousand per
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annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults of the country in its entirety. The occupation, 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. He can strike so many 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. ? 59
Section 4: Day and Night Work. The Relay System
Constant capital, the means of production, considered from the standpoint of the creation of surplus value, only exist to absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional quantity of surplus labour. While they fail to do this, their mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of capital. And this loss becomes positive and absolute as soon as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional outlay at the recommencement of work. The prolongation of the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, therefore, the inherent tendency of capitalist production. But as it is physically impossible to exploit the same individual labour-power constantly during the night as well as the day, to overcome this physical hindrance, an alternation becomes necessary between the workpeople whose powers are exhausted by day, and those who are used up by night. This alternation may be effected in various ways; e. g. , it may be so arranged that part of the workers are one week employed on day-work, the next week on night-work. It is well known that this relay system, this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway in the full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture, and that at the present time it still flourishes, among others, in the cotton spinning of the Moscow district. This 24 hours' process of production exists to-day as a system in many of the branches of industry of Great Britain that are still --free,? in the blast- furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metallurgical establishments in England, Wales, and Scotland. The working-time here includes, besides the 24 hours of the 6 working days, a great part also of the 24 hours of Sunday. The workers consist of men and women, adults and children of both sexes. The ages of the children and young persons run through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases from 6) to 18. 60
In some branches of industry, the girls and women work through the night together with the males. 61
Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of night-labour,62 the duration of the process of production, unbroken during the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities of exceeding the limits of the normal working day, e. g. , in the branches of industry already mentioned, which are of an exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working day means for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the over-work beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the words of the English official report, --truly fearful. ? 63
--It is impossible,? the report continues, --for any mind to realise the amount of work described in the following passages as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years of age . . . without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such abuses of the power of parents and of employers can no longer be allowed to exist. ? 64
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"The practice of boys working at all by day and night turns either in the usual course of things, or at pressing times, seems inevitably to open the door to their not unfrequently working unduly long hours. These hours are, indeed, in some cases, not only cruelly but even incredibly long for children. Amongst a number of boys it will, of course, not unfrequently happen that one or more are from some cause absent. When this happens, their place is made up by one or more boys, who work in the other turn. That this is a well understood system is plain . . . from the answer of the manager of some large rolling-mills, who, when I asked him how the place of the boys absent from their turn was made up, ? I daresay, sir, you know that as well as I do,' and admitted the fact. ? 65
--At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6 a. m. to 51/2 p. m. , a boy worked about four nights every week till 81/2 p. m. at least . . . and this for six months. Another, at 9 years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and, when 10, has made two days and two nights running. ? A third, --now 10 . . . worked from 6 a. m. till 12 p. m. three nights, and till 9 p. m. the other nights. ? --Another, now 13, . . . worked from 6 p. m. till 12 noon next day, for a week together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e. g. , from Monday morning till Tuesday night. ? --Another, now 12, has worked in an iron foundry at Stavely from 6 a. m. till 12 p. m. for a fortnight on end; could not do it any more. ? --George Allinsworth, age 9, came here as cellar-boy last Friday; next morning we had to begin at 3, so I stopped here all night. Live five miles off. Slept on the floor of the furnace, over head, with an apron under me, and a bit of a jacket over me. The two other days I have been here at 6 a. m. Aye! it is hot in here. Before I came here I was nearly a year at the same work at some works in the country. Began there, too, at 3 on Saturday morning - always did, but was very gain [near] home, and could sleep at home. Other days I began at 6 in the morning, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening,? &c. 66
Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours' system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the --cruel and incredible? extension of the working day are naturally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system in its --normal? form.
Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in night sets, thus express themselves:
--The boys do not suffer from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86? to 90? . . . . At the forges and in the rolling mills the hands work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the work are day-work, i. e. , from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. In the forge the hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work in the night, without any alternation of day and night work. . . . We do not find any difference in the health of those who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and probably people can sleep better if they have the same period of rest than if it is changed. . . . About 20 of the boys under the age of 18 work in the night sets. . . . We could not well do without lads under 18 working by night. The objection would be the increase in the cost of production. . . . Skilled hands and the heads in every department are difficult to get, but of lads we could get any number. . . . But from the small proportion of boys that we employ, the subject (i. e. , of restrictions on night-work) is of little importance or interest to us. ? 67
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Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co. , steel and iron works, employing about 3,000 men and boys, part of whose operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes on night and day by relays, states --that in the heavier steel work one or two boys are employed to a score or two men. ? Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under 18, of whom about 1/3 or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the proposed alteration of the law, Mr. Ellis says:
--I do not think it would be very objectionable to require that no person under the age of 18 should work more than 12 hours in the 24. But we do not think that any line could be drawn over the age of 12, at which boys could be dispensed with for night-work. But we would sooner be prevented from employing boys under the age of 13, or even so high as 14, at all, than not be allowed to employ boys that we do have at night. Those boys who work in the day sets must take their turn in the night sets also. because the men could not work in the night sets only; it would ruin their health. . . . We think, however, that night-work in alternate weeks is no harm. ?
(Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of their business, considered that periodically changed night-labour might possibly do more harm than continual night-labour. )
--We find the men who do it, as well as the others who do other work only by day. . . . Our objections to not allowing boys under 18 to work at night, would be on account of the increase of expense, but this is the only reason. ?
(What cynical nai? vete? ! ) --We think that the increase would be more than the trade, with due regard to its being successfully carried out, could fairly bear. (What mealy-mouthed phraseology!