Senior at the seventh annual congress of --The National Association for the
Promotion
of Social Science,?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
p.
ix.
, n.
50.
201 --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. . 22.
202 --But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully in some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital beyond the means of many of the present occupiers. ? --I cannot but rejoice,? writes Sub-Insp. May, --that notwithstanding the temporary disorganisation which inevitably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension Act), and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended to remedy, &c. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865. )
203 With blast furnaces, for instance, --work towards the end of the week being generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also. ? (--Child. Empl. Comm. , III. Rep. ,? p. vi. ) --The little masters generally have very irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it up. . . . They always employ their own children, if they have any. ? (l. c. , p. vii. ) --The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and practice of making up for this by working longer hours. ? (l. c. , p. xviii. ) --In Birmingham . . . an enormous amount of time is lost . . . idling part of the time, slaving the rest. ? (l. c. , p. xi. )
204 --Child. Empl. Comm. , IV. , Rep. ,? p. xxxii. , --The extension of the railway system is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and the consequent hurry, neglect of meal- times, and late hours of the workpeople. ? (l. c. , p. xxxi. )
205 --Ch. Empl. Comm, IV. Rep. ,? pp. xxxv. , n. 235, 237.
206 --Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. ,? p. 127, n. 56.
207 With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time, I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1833. Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had then, before steam had halved all distances and established new regulations for transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will certainly fail should it have to be tried. ? (--Reports of Insp. of Fact. , 31 Oct. , 1862,? pp. 54, 55. )
208 --Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. ,? p. xviii, n. 118.
209 John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: --The uncertainty of fashions does increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen are miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master-weavers not daring to lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring comes, and they know what the fashion will then be; 2ndly, In the spring the journeymen are not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that they may supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the plough of hands, drains the
? ? 349 Chapter 15
country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city with beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg. ? (--Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, &c. ,? p. 9. )
210 --Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 171, n. 34.
211 The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: --Under these circumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a. m. to 7 or 7. 30 p. m. , in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra outlay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an extra machine costs only ? 16 or ? 18; much of such over-time as does occur is to be referred to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space. ? --Ch. Empl, Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 171, n. 35, 36, 38.
212 l. c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for the workpeople against the manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade, states: --The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e. g. , to send the goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season, and at the same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing vessel and a steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be in the foreign market before their competitors. ?
213 --This could be obviated,? says a manufacturer, --at the expense of an enlargement of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament. ? l. c. , p. x. , n. 38.
214 l. c. , p. xv. , n. 72. sqq.
215 --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 127.
216 It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average intensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are consumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of Nature. According to the experiments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that a healthy man gives off about 1,300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would give about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. ? Every man should have at least 800 cubic feet. ? (Huxley. )
217 According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under 14 years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same time they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is responsible for compliance with the Act. --Factory education is compulsory, and it is a condition of labour. ? (--Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. 111. )
218 On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars, see the speech of N. W.
Senior at the seventh annual congress of --The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science,? in --Report of Proceedings, &c. ,? Lond. 1863, pp. 63, 64, also the --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? pp. 118, 119, 120, 126, sqq.
219 --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. 118. A silk manufacturer naively states to the Children's Employment Commissioners: --I am quite sure that the true secret of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour from a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor irksome, or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish my own children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their schooling. ? (--Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 82, n. 36. )
220 Senior, l. c. , p. 66. How modern industry, when it has attained to a certain pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the social conditions of production, of also revolutionising people's minds, is strikingly shown by a comparison of Senior's speech in 1863, with
? ? 350 Chapter 15
his philippic against the Factory Act of 1833; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are forbidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, e. g. , Mr. Snell reports it to be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor person claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr. Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied to certain families --because they were sending their children to school! ?
221 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently the tension and the amount of tambour-power expended become monstrous, and especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus Mr. Longe; one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood boys of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon-looms, not to mention younger children who had to drive smaller machines. --It is extraordinarily fatiguing work. The boy is a mere substitute for steam power. ? (--Ch. Empl. Comm. V, Rep. 1866;? p. 114, n. 6. ) As to the fatal consequences of --this system of slavery,? as the official report styles it, see l. c. , p. 114 sqq.
222 l. c. , p. 3, n. 24.
223 l. c. , P. 7, n. 60.
224 --In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant, according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned by himself. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at Church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they were shorn from the sheep and sown in the flaxfield. In the preparation of these. it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle, thimble, and a very few parts of the iron-work employed in the weaving. The dyes, toci, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs and herbs. ? (Dugald Stewart's --Works,? Hamilton's Ed. , Vol. viii. , pp. 327- 328. )
225 In the celebrated --Livre des me? tiers? of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear --to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recommend his own-wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others. ?
226 --The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. ? (F. Engels und Karl Marx: --Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. ? Lond. 1848, p. 5. )
227 --You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. ? Shakespeare.
228 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: --I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this
? ? 351 Chapter 15
world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man. ? (A. Corbon, --De l'enseignement professionnel,? 2e`me ed. , p. 50. )
229 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: --An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness. . . . Bodily labour, it's a primitive institution of God. . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease. . . . Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it. . . . A childish silly employ? (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) --leaves the children's minds silly,? (--Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry. ? Lond. , 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18. )
230 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the lacemaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.
231 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. xxv. , n. 162, and II. Rep. , p. xxxviii. , n, 285, 289, p. xxv. , xxvi. , n. 191.
232 --Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so' -- (--Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 129. )
233 --Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? pp. 27-32.
234 Numerous instances will be found in --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ?
235 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. x. , n. 35.
236 Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p.
201 --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. . 22.
202 --But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully in some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital beyond the means of many of the present occupiers. ? --I cannot but rejoice,? writes Sub-Insp. May, --that notwithstanding the temporary disorganisation which inevitably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension Act), and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended to remedy, &c. ? (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865. )
203 With blast furnaces, for instance, --work towards the end of the week being generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also. ? (--Child. Empl. Comm. , III. Rep. ,? p. vi. ) --The little masters generally have very irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it up. . . . They always employ their own children, if they have any. ? (l. c. , p. vii. ) --The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and practice of making up for this by working longer hours. ? (l. c. , p. xviii. ) --In Birmingham . . . an enormous amount of time is lost . . . idling part of the time, slaving the rest. ? (l. c. , p. xi. )
204 --Child. Empl. Comm. , IV. , Rep. ,? p. xxxii. , --The extension of the railway system is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and the consequent hurry, neglect of meal- times, and late hours of the workpeople. ? (l. c. , p. xxxi. )
205 --Ch. Empl. Comm, IV. Rep. ,? pp. xxxv. , n. 235, 237.
206 --Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. ,? p. 127, n. 56.
207 With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time, I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1833. Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had then, before steam had halved all distances and established new regulations for transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will certainly fail should it have to be tried. ? (--Reports of Insp. of Fact. , 31 Oct. , 1862,? pp. 54, 55. )
208 --Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. ,? p. xviii, n. 118.
209 John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: --The uncertainty of fashions does increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen are miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master-weavers not daring to lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring comes, and they know what the fashion will then be; 2ndly, In the spring the journeymen are not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that they may supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the plough of hands, drains the
? ? 349 Chapter 15
country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city with beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg. ? (--Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, &c. ,? p. 9. )
210 --Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 171, n. 34.
211 The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: --Under these circumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a. m. to 7 or 7. 30 p. m. , in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra outlay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an extra machine costs only ? 16 or ? 18; much of such over-time as does occur is to be referred to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space. ? --Ch. Empl, Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 171, n. 35, 36, 38.
212 l. c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for the workpeople against the manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade, states: --The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e. g. , to send the goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season, and at the same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing vessel and a steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be in the foreign market before their competitors. ?
213 --This could be obviated,? says a manufacturer, --at the expense of an enlargement of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament. ? l. c. , p. x. , n. 38.
214 l. c. , p. xv. , n. 72. sqq.
215 --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 127.
216 It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average intensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are consumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of Nature. According to the experiments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that a healthy man gives off about 1,300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would give about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. ? Every man should have at least 800 cubic feet. ? (Huxley. )
217 According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under 14 years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same time they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is responsible for compliance with the Act. --Factory education is compulsory, and it is a condition of labour. ? (--Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. 111. )
218 On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars, see the speech of N. W.
Senior at the seventh annual congress of --The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science,? in --Report of Proceedings, &c. ,? Lond. 1863, pp. 63, 64, also the --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? pp. 118, 119, 120, 126, sqq.
219 --Rep. Insp. Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1865,? p. 118. A silk manufacturer naively states to the Children's Employment Commissioners: --I am quite sure that the true secret of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour from a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor irksome, or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish my own children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their schooling. ? (--Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. ,? p. 82, n. 36. )
220 Senior, l. c. , p. 66. How modern industry, when it has attained to a certain pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the social conditions of production, of also revolutionising people's minds, is strikingly shown by a comparison of Senior's speech in 1863, with
? ? 350 Chapter 15
his philippic against the Factory Act of 1833; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are forbidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, e. g. , Mr. Snell reports it to be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor person claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr. Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied to certain families --because they were sending their children to school! ?
221 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently the tension and the amount of tambour-power expended become monstrous, and especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus Mr. Longe; one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood boys of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon-looms, not to mention younger children who had to drive smaller machines. --It is extraordinarily fatiguing work. The boy is a mere substitute for steam power. ? (--Ch. Empl. Comm. V, Rep. 1866;? p. 114, n. 6. ) As to the fatal consequences of --this system of slavery,? as the official report styles it, see l. c. , p. 114 sqq.
222 l. c. , p. 3, n. 24.
223 l. c. , P. 7, n. 60.
224 --In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant, according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned by himself. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at Church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they were shorn from the sheep and sown in the flaxfield. In the preparation of these. it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle, thimble, and a very few parts of the iron-work employed in the weaving. The dyes, toci, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs and herbs. ? (Dugald Stewart's --Works,? Hamilton's Ed. , Vol. viii. , pp. 327- 328. )
225 In the celebrated --Livre des me? tiers? of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear --to love his brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recommend his own-wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles made by others. ?
226 --The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. ? (F. Engels und Karl Marx: --Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. ? Lond. 1848, p. 5. )
227 --You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. ? Shakespeare.
228 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: --I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this
? ? 351 Chapter 15
world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man. ? (A. Corbon, --De l'enseignement professionnel,? 2e`me ed. , p. 50. )
229 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: --An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness. . . . Bodily labour, it's a primitive institution of God. . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease. . . . Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it. . . . A childish silly employ? (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) --leaves the children's minds silly,? (--Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry. ? Lond. , 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18. )
230 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the lacemaking and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.
231 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. xxv. , n. 162, and II. Rep. , p. xxxviii. , n, 285, 289, p. xxv. , xxvi. , n. 191.
232 --Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps more so' -- (--Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? p. 129. )
233 --Rep. Insp. of Fact. , 31st October, 1865,? pp. 27-32.
234 Numerous instances will be found in --Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ?
235 --Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p. x. , n. 35.
236 Ch. Empl. Comm. , V. Rep. ,? p.
