The nominal wages rose in consequence partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a rise in the price of the primary means of subsistence
independent
of this depreciation.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
?
- (Standard, 5th April, 1867.
)
As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote Belgium as the Paradise of the labourer because --freedom of labour,? or what is the same thing, --freedom of capital,? is there limited
? 461 Chapter 25
neither by the despotism of Trades' Unions, nor by Factory Acts, a word or two on the --happiness' of the Belgian labourer. Assuredly no one was more thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of this happiness than the late M. Ducpe? tiaux, inspector-general of Belgian prisons and charitable institutions, and member of the central commission of Belgian statistics. Let us take his work: --Budgets e? conomiques des classes ouvrie`res de la Belgique,? Bruxelles, 1855. Here we find among other matters, a normal Belgian labourer's family, whose yearly income and expenditure he calculates on very exact data, and whose conditions of nourishment are then compared with those of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner. The family --consists of father, mother, and four children. ? Of these 6 persons --four may be usefully employed the whole year through. ? It is assumed that --there is no sick person nor one incapable of work, among them,? nor are there --expenses for religious, moral, and intellectual purposes, except a very small sum for church sittings,? nor --contributions to savings banks or benefit societies,? nor --expenses due to luxury or the result of improvidence. ? The father and eldest son, however, allow themselves --the use of tobacco,? and on Sundays --go to the cabaret,? for which a whole 86 centimes a week are reckoned.
--From a general compilation of wages allowed to the labourers in different trades, it follows that the highest average of daily wage is 1 franc 56c. , for men, 89 centimes for women, 56 centimes for boys, and 55 centimes for girls. Calculated at this rate, the resources of the family would amount, at the maximum, to 1,068 francs a-year. . . . In the family . . . taken as typical we have calculated all possible resources. But in ascribing wages to the mother of the family we raise the question of the direction of the household. How will its internal economy be cared for? Who will look after the young children? Who will get ready the meals, do the washing and mending? This is the dilemma incessantly presented to the labourers. ?
According to this the budget of the family is:
The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit upon the hypothesis that the labourer has the food of:
--We see that few labouring families can reach, we will not say the average of the sailor or soldier, but even that of the prisoner. ? The general average (of the cost of each prisoner in the different prisons during the period 1847-1849), has been 63 centimes for all prisons. This figure, compared with that of the daily maintenance of the labourer, shows a difference of 13 centimes. It must be remarked further, that if in the prisons it is necessary to set down in the account the expenses of
? ? ? The father
? ? 300 working days at fr. 1. 56
? ? ? ? fr. 468
? ? ? ? ? mother
300 working days at fr. 0. 89
? ? ? ? fr. 267
? ? ? boy
? 300 working days at fr. 0. 56
? ? ? fr. 168
? ? ? girl
? ? 300 working days at fr. 0. 55
? ? ? ? fr. 165
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Total fr. 1,068
? ? ? ? The man-of-war's man
? ? ? ? ? ? fr. 1,828
? ? ? Deficit fr. 760
? ? ? The soldier
? ? ? ? fr. 1,473
? ? Deficit fr. 405
? ? The prisoner
? ? ? ? ? fr. 1,112
? ? ? Deficit fr. 44
? 462
Chapter 25
administration and surveillance, on the other hand, the prisoners have not to pay for their lodging; that the purchases they make at the canteens are not included in the expenses of maintenance, and that these expenses are greatly lowered in consequence of the large number of persons that make up the establishments, and of contracting for or buying wholesale, the food and other things that enter into their consumption. . . . How comes it, however, that a great number, we might say, a great majority, of labourers, live in a more economical way? It is . . . by adopting expedients, the secret of which only the labourer knows;, by reducing his daily rations; by substituting rye-bread for wheat; by eating less meat, or even none at all, and the same with butter and condiments; by contenting themselves with one or two rooms where the family is crammed together, where boys and girls sleep side by side, often on the same pallet; by economy of clothing, washing, decency: by giving up the Sunday diversions; by, in short, resigning themselves to the most painful privations. Once arrived at this extreme limit, the least rise in the price of food, stoppage of work, illness, increases the labourer's distress and determines his complete ruin; debts accumulate, credit fails, the most necessary clothes and furniture are pawned, and finally, the family asks to be enrolled on the list of paupers. ? (Ducpe? tiaux, l. c. , pp. 151, 154, 155. )
In fact, in this --Paradise of capitalists? there follows, on the smallest change in the price of the most essential means of subsistence, a change in the number of deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij: --De Vlamingen Vooruit! ? Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16. ) In all Belgium are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the official statistics, 90,000 are wealthy and on the list of voters = 450,000 persons; 390,000 families of the lower middle-class in towns and villages, the greater part of them constantly sinking into the proletariat, = 1,950,000 persons, Finally, 450,000 working class families = 2,250,000 persons, of whom the model ones enjoy the happiness depicted by Ducpe? tiaux. Of the 450,000 working class families, over 200,000 are on the pauper list.
E. The British Agricultural Proletariat
Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic product and accumulation assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer. Before I turn to his present situation, a rapid retrospect. Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the 18th century, although the revolution in landed property, from which the changed mode of production starts as a basis, has a much earlier date.
If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful observer, though a superficial thinker, as to the agricultural labourer of 1771, the latter plays a very pitiable part compared with his predecessor of the end of the 14th century,
--when the labourer . . . could live in plenty, and accumulate wealth,? 75
not to speak of the 15th century, --the golden age of the English labourer in town and country. ? We need not, however, go back so far. In a very instructive work of the year 1777 we read:
--The great farmer is nearly mounted to a level with him [the gentleman]; while the poor labourer is depressed almost to the earth. His unfortunate situation will fully appear, by taking a comparative view of it, only forty years ago, and at present. . . . Landlord and tenant . . . have both gone hand in hand in keeping the labourer down. ? 76
? 463 Chapter 25
It is then proved in detail that the real agricultural wages between 1737 and 1777 fell nearly 1/4 or 25 per cent.
--Modern policy,? says Dr. Richard Price also, --is, indeed, more favourable to the higher classes of people; and the consequences may in time prove that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and beggars, or of grandees and slaves. ? 77
Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural labourer from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as well as to his self-respect, amusements, &c. , is an ideal never attained again since that time. His average wage expressed in pints of wheat was from 1770 to 1771, 90 pints, in Eden's time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60. 78
The state of the agricultural labourer at the end of the Anti-Jacobin War, during which landed proprietors, farmers, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, stockbrokers, army-contractors, &c. , enriched themselves so extraordinarily, has been already indicated above.
The nominal wages rose in consequence partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a rise in the price of the primary means of subsistence independent of this depreciation. But the actual wage-variation can be evidenced in a very simple way, without entering into details that are here unnecessary. The Poor Law and its administration were in 1795 and 1814 the same. It will be remembered how this law was carried out in the country districts: in the form of alms the parish made up the nominal wage to the nominal sum required for the simple vegetation of the labourer. The ratio between the wages paid by the farmer, and the wage-deficit made good by the parish, shows us two things. First, the falling of wages below their minimum; second, the degree in which the agricultural labourer was a compound of wage labourer and pauper, or the degree in which he had been turned into a serf of his parish. Let us take one county that represents the average condition of things in all counties. In Northamptonshire, in 1795, the average weekly wage was 7s. 6d. ; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 6 persons, ? 36 12s. 5d. ; their total income, ? 29 18s. ; deficit made good by the parish, ? 6 14s. 5d. In 1814, in the same county, the weekly wage was 12s. 2d. ; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 5 persons, ? 54 18s. 4d. ; their total income, ? 36, 2s. ; deficit made good by the parish, ? 18 6s. 4d. 79 In 1795 the deficit was less than 1/4 the wage, in 1814, more than half. It is self-evident that, under these circumstances, the meagre comforts that Eden still found in the cottage of the agricultural labourer, had vanished by 1814. 80 Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocals, was, thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.
The same state of things went on quietly until
--the Swing riots, in 1830, revealed to us (i. e. , the ruling classes) by the light of blazing corn-stacks, that misery and black mutinous discontent smouldered quite as fiercely under the surface of agricultural as of manufacturing England. ? 81
At this time, Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the agricultural labourers --white slaves,? and a Bishop echoed the epithet in the Upper House. The most notable political economist of that period - E. G. Wakefield - says:
--The peasant of the South of England . . . is not a freeman, nor is he a slave; he is a pauper. ? 82
The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new light on the condition of the agricultural labourers. On the one hand; it was to the interest of the middle-class agitators to prove how little the Corn Laws protected the actual producers of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their --diplomatic zeal? for factory legislation.
? 464 Chapter 25
It is an old English proverb that --when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own,? and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of the two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on each hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, philanthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a favourite subject in the revelations of the Morning Chronicle on the condition of the agricultural labourers. This journal, then the most important Liberal organ, sent special commissioners into the agricultural districts, who did not content themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but published the names both of the labouring families examined and of their landlords. The following list gives the wages paid in three villages in the neighbourhood of Blanford, Wimbourne, and Poole. The villages are the property of Mr. G. Bankes and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It will be noted that, just like Bankes, this --low church pope,? this head of English pietists, pockets a great part of the miserable wages of the labourers under the pretext of house-rent: -
? ? ? FIRST VILLAGE
? ? (a) Children.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? (b) Number of Members in Family.
? ? ? ? 4
5
? ? ? ? 4
? ? 4
? ? 8
? ? 5
? ? (c) Weekly Wage of the Men.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? 7s. 0d.
? ? ? ? 7s. 0d.
? ? ? (d) Weekly Wage of the Children.
? ? ? ? -
-
? ? ? ? -
? ? -
? ? 1/-, 1/6
? ? 1/-, 2/-
? ? (e) Weekly Income of the whole Family.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? 8s. 0d.
?
As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote Belgium as the Paradise of the labourer because --freedom of labour,? or what is the same thing, --freedom of capital,? is there limited
? 461 Chapter 25
neither by the despotism of Trades' Unions, nor by Factory Acts, a word or two on the --happiness' of the Belgian labourer. Assuredly no one was more thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of this happiness than the late M. Ducpe? tiaux, inspector-general of Belgian prisons and charitable institutions, and member of the central commission of Belgian statistics. Let us take his work: --Budgets e? conomiques des classes ouvrie`res de la Belgique,? Bruxelles, 1855. Here we find among other matters, a normal Belgian labourer's family, whose yearly income and expenditure he calculates on very exact data, and whose conditions of nourishment are then compared with those of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner. The family --consists of father, mother, and four children. ? Of these 6 persons --four may be usefully employed the whole year through. ? It is assumed that --there is no sick person nor one incapable of work, among them,? nor are there --expenses for religious, moral, and intellectual purposes, except a very small sum for church sittings,? nor --contributions to savings banks or benefit societies,? nor --expenses due to luxury or the result of improvidence. ? The father and eldest son, however, allow themselves --the use of tobacco,? and on Sundays --go to the cabaret,? for which a whole 86 centimes a week are reckoned.
--From a general compilation of wages allowed to the labourers in different trades, it follows that the highest average of daily wage is 1 franc 56c. , for men, 89 centimes for women, 56 centimes for boys, and 55 centimes for girls. Calculated at this rate, the resources of the family would amount, at the maximum, to 1,068 francs a-year. . . . In the family . . . taken as typical we have calculated all possible resources. But in ascribing wages to the mother of the family we raise the question of the direction of the household. How will its internal economy be cared for? Who will look after the young children? Who will get ready the meals, do the washing and mending? This is the dilemma incessantly presented to the labourers. ?
According to this the budget of the family is:
The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit upon the hypothesis that the labourer has the food of:
--We see that few labouring families can reach, we will not say the average of the sailor or soldier, but even that of the prisoner. ? The general average (of the cost of each prisoner in the different prisons during the period 1847-1849), has been 63 centimes for all prisons. This figure, compared with that of the daily maintenance of the labourer, shows a difference of 13 centimes. It must be remarked further, that if in the prisons it is necessary to set down in the account the expenses of
? ? ? The father
? ? 300 working days at fr. 1. 56
? ? ? ? fr. 468
? ? ? ? ? mother
300 working days at fr. 0. 89
? ? ? ? fr. 267
? ? ? boy
? 300 working days at fr. 0. 56
? ? ? fr. 168
? ? ? girl
? ? 300 working days at fr. 0. 55
? ? ? ? fr. 165
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Total fr. 1,068
? ? ? ? The man-of-war's man
? ? ? ? ? ? fr. 1,828
? ? ? Deficit fr. 760
? ? ? The soldier
? ? ? ? fr. 1,473
? ? Deficit fr. 405
? ? The prisoner
? ? ? ? ? fr. 1,112
? ? ? Deficit fr. 44
? 462
Chapter 25
administration and surveillance, on the other hand, the prisoners have not to pay for their lodging; that the purchases they make at the canteens are not included in the expenses of maintenance, and that these expenses are greatly lowered in consequence of the large number of persons that make up the establishments, and of contracting for or buying wholesale, the food and other things that enter into their consumption. . . . How comes it, however, that a great number, we might say, a great majority, of labourers, live in a more economical way? It is . . . by adopting expedients, the secret of which only the labourer knows;, by reducing his daily rations; by substituting rye-bread for wheat; by eating less meat, or even none at all, and the same with butter and condiments; by contenting themselves with one or two rooms where the family is crammed together, where boys and girls sleep side by side, often on the same pallet; by economy of clothing, washing, decency: by giving up the Sunday diversions; by, in short, resigning themselves to the most painful privations. Once arrived at this extreme limit, the least rise in the price of food, stoppage of work, illness, increases the labourer's distress and determines his complete ruin; debts accumulate, credit fails, the most necessary clothes and furniture are pawned, and finally, the family asks to be enrolled on the list of paupers. ? (Ducpe? tiaux, l. c. , pp. 151, 154, 155. )
In fact, in this --Paradise of capitalists? there follows, on the smallest change in the price of the most essential means of subsistence, a change in the number of deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij: --De Vlamingen Vooruit! ? Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16. ) In all Belgium are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the official statistics, 90,000 are wealthy and on the list of voters = 450,000 persons; 390,000 families of the lower middle-class in towns and villages, the greater part of them constantly sinking into the proletariat, = 1,950,000 persons, Finally, 450,000 working class families = 2,250,000 persons, of whom the model ones enjoy the happiness depicted by Ducpe? tiaux. Of the 450,000 working class families, over 200,000 are on the pauper list.
E. The British Agricultural Proletariat
Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic product and accumulation assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer. Before I turn to his present situation, a rapid retrospect. Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the 18th century, although the revolution in landed property, from which the changed mode of production starts as a basis, has a much earlier date.
If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful observer, though a superficial thinker, as to the agricultural labourer of 1771, the latter plays a very pitiable part compared with his predecessor of the end of the 14th century,
--when the labourer . . . could live in plenty, and accumulate wealth,? 75
not to speak of the 15th century, --the golden age of the English labourer in town and country. ? We need not, however, go back so far. In a very instructive work of the year 1777 we read:
--The great farmer is nearly mounted to a level with him [the gentleman]; while the poor labourer is depressed almost to the earth. His unfortunate situation will fully appear, by taking a comparative view of it, only forty years ago, and at present. . . . Landlord and tenant . . . have both gone hand in hand in keeping the labourer down. ? 76
? 463 Chapter 25
It is then proved in detail that the real agricultural wages between 1737 and 1777 fell nearly 1/4 or 25 per cent.
--Modern policy,? says Dr. Richard Price also, --is, indeed, more favourable to the higher classes of people; and the consequences may in time prove that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and beggars, or of grandees and slaves. ? 77
Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural labourer from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as well as to his self-respect, amusements, &c. , is an ideal never attained again since that time. His average wage expressed in pints of wheat was from 1770 to 1771, 90 pints, in Eden's time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60. 78
The state of the agricultural labourer at the end of the Anti-Jacobin War, during which landed proprietors, farmers, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, stockbrokers, army-contractors, &c. , enriched themselves so extraordinarily, has been already indicated above.
The nominal wages rose in consequence partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a rise in the price of the primary means of subsistence independent of this depreciation. But the actual wage-variation can be evidenced in a very simple way, without entering into details that are here unnecessary. The Poor Law and its administration were in 1795 and 1814 the same. It will be remembered how this law was carried out in the country districts: in the form of alms the parish made up the nominal wage to the nominal sum required for the simple vegetation of the labourer. The ratio between the wages paid by the farmer, and the wage-deficit made good by the parish, shows us two things. First, the falling of wages below their minimum; second, the degree in which the agricultural labourer was a compound of wage labourer and pauper, or the degree in which he had been turned into a serf of his parish. Let us take one county that represents the average condition of things in all counties. In Northamptonshire, in 1795, the average weekly wage was 7s. 6d. ; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 6 persons, ? 36 12s. 5d. ; their total income, ? 29 18s. ; deficit made good by the parish, ? 6 14s. 5d. In 1814, in the same county, the weekly wage was 12s. 2d. ; the total yearly expenditure of a family of 5 persons, ? 54 18s. 4d. ; their total income, ? 36, 2s. ; deficit made good by the parish, ? 18 6s. 4d. 79 In 1795 the deficit was less than 1/4 the wage, in 1814, more than half. It is self-evident that, under these circumstances, the meagre comforts that Eden still found in the cottage of the agricultural labourer, had vanished by 1814. 80 Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocals, was, thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.
The same state of things went on quietly until
--the Swing riots, in 1830, revealed to us (i. e. , the ruling classes) by the light of blazing corn-stacks, that misery and black mutinous discontent smouldered quite as fiercely under the surface of agricultural as of manufacturing England. ? 81
At this time, Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the agricultural labourers --white slaves,? and a Bishop echoed the epithet in the Upper House. The most notable political economist of that period - E. G. Wakefield - says:
--The peasant of the South of England . . . is not a freeman, nor is he a slave; he is a pauper. ? 82
The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new light on the condition of the agricultural labourers. On the one hand; it was to the interest of the middle-class agitators to prove how little the Corn Laws protected the actual producers of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their --diplomatic zeal? for factory legislation.
? 464 Chapter 25
It is an old English proverb that --when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own,? and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of the two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on each hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, philanthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a favourite subject in the revelations of the Morning Chronicle on the condition of the agricultural labourers. This journal, then the most important Liberal organ, sent special commissioners into the agricultural districts, who did not content themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but published the names both of the labouring families examined and of their landlords. The following list gives the wages paid in three villages in the neighbourhood of Blanford, Wimbourne, and Poole. The villages are the property of Mr. G. Bankes and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It will be noted that, just like Bankes, this --low church pope,? this head of English pietists, pockets a great part of the miserable wages of the labourers under the pretext of house-rent: -
? ? ? FIRST VILLAGE
? ? (a) Children.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? (b) Number of Members in Family.
? ? ? ? 4
5
? ? ? ? 4
? ? 4
? ? 8
? ? 5
? ? (c) Weekly Wage of the Men.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? 7s. 0d.
? ? ? ? 7s. 0d.
? ? ? (d) Weekly Wage of the Children.
? ? ? ? -
-
? ? ? ? -
? ? -
? ? 1/-, 1/6
? ? 1/-, 2/-
? ? (e) Weekly Income of the whole Family.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? ? ? ? 8s. 0d.
? ? ? 8s. 0d.
?
