This report deals
especially
with the agricultural labourers.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
--Christ was a wicked man.
?
--This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen.
?
(--Ch.
Employment Comm.
V.
Report, 1866?
p.
55, n.
278.
) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited.
In the paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for all processes, except rag-sorting.
In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight of the following Saturday.
Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and I of 6 hours in each week.
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In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, --seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays. ? Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often work overtime, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 36 hours of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12 who work the whole month 14 hours a day, --without any regular relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half an hour each for meals. ? In some mills, where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terrible extent, --and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most monotonous of the various processes. ? (--Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV. , 1865,? p. xxxviii, and xxxix. )
67 Fourth Report, &c. . 1865, 79, p. xvi. 68 l. c. , 80. p. xvi.
69 l. c. , 82. p. xvii.
70 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the world that has been done wrong has been done wrong for the very best of reasons. (Hegel, l. c. , p. 249 )
71 l. c. , 85, p. xvii. To similar tender scruples of the glass manufacturers that regular meal-times for the children are impossible because as a consequence a certain quantity of heat, radiated by the furnaces, would be --a pure loss? or --wasted,? Commissioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that of Ure, Senior, &c. , and their puny German plagiarists a` la Roscher who are touched by the --abstinence,? --self-denial,? --saving,? of the capitalists in the expenditure of their gold, and by their Timur- Tamerlanish prodigality of human life! --A certain amount of heat beyond what is usual at present might also be going to waste, if meal-times were secured in these cases, but it seems likely not equal in money-value to the waste of animal power now going on in glass-houses throughout the kingdom from growing boys not having enough quiet time to eat their meals at ease, with a little rest afterwards for digestion. ? (l. c. , p. xiv. ) And this in the year of progress 1865! Without considering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the performance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15 hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system of 6 hours' relays is in force. --During the working part of the week six hours is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out of this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing, dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for fresh air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially at such hot and fatiguing work. . . . Even the short sleep is obviously liable to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if it is day. ? Mr. White gives cases where a boy worked 36 consecutive hours; others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morning, and then slept in the works till 5 a. m. (3 hours! ) only to resume their work. --The amount of work,? say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, --done by boys, youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is certainly extraordinary. ? (l. c. , xliii. and xliv. ) Meanwhile, late by night, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reels out of his club homeward droning out idiotically. --Britons never, never shall be slaves! ?
72 In England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is condemned to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of
? ? 200 Chapter 10
contract if he remains away from his metal, paper, or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of expanding capital. A memorial (August 1863), in which the London day-labourers in fish and poultry shops asked for the abolition of Sunday labour, states that their work lasts for the first 6 days of the week on an average 15 hours a-day, and on Sunday 8-10 hours. From this same memorial we learn also that the delicate gourmands among the aristocratic hypocrite of Exeter Hall, especially encourage this --Sunday labour. ? These --holy ones,? so zealous in cute curanda [in attending to their bodily pleasures], show their Christianity by the humility with which they bear the overwork, the privations, and the hunger of others. Obsequium ventris istis (the labourers) perniciosius est [Gluttony is more ruinous to their stomachs - paraphrase of Horace].
73 --We have given in our previous reports the statements of several experienced manufacturers to the effect that over-hours . . . certainly tend prematurely to exhaust the working power of the men. ? (l. c. , 64. p. xiii. )
74 Cairnes, --The Slave Power,? pp. 110. 111.
75 John Ward: --The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent,? London, 1843, p. 42. 76 Ferrand's Speech in the House of Commons, 27th April, 1863.
77 Those were the very words used by the cotton manufacturers. ? l. c.
78 l. c. Mr. Villiers, despite the best of intentions on his part, was --legally? obliged to refuse the requests of the manufacturers. These gentlemen, however, attained their end through the obliging nature of the local poor law boards. Mr. A. Redgrave, Inspector of Factories, asserts that this time the system under which orphans and pauper children were treated --legally? as apprentices --was not accompanied with the old abuses? (on these --abuses? see Engels, l. c. ), although in one case there certainly was --abuse of this system in respect to a number of girls and young women brought from the agricultural districts of Scotland into Lancashire and Cheshire. ? Under this system the manufacturer entered into a contract with the workhouse authorities for a certain period. He fed, clothed and lodged the children, and gave them a small allowance of money. A remark of Mr. Redgrave to be quoted directly seems strange, especially if we consider that even among the years of prosperity of the English cotton trade, the year 1860 stands unparalleled, and that, besides, wages were exceptionally high. For this extraordinary demand for work had to contend with the depopulation of Ireland, with unexampled emigration from the English and Scotch agricultural districts to Australia and America, with an actual diminution of the population in some of the English agricultural districts, in consequence partly of an actual breakdown of the vital force of the labourers, partly of the already effected dispersion of the disposable population through the dealers in human flesh. Despite all this Mr. Redgrave says: --This kind of labour, however, would only be sought after when none other could be procured, for it is a high-priced labour. The ordinary wages of a boy of 13 would be about 4s. per week, but to lodge, to clothe, to feed, and to provide medical attendance and proper superintendence for 50 or 100 of these boys, and to set aside some remuneration for them, could not be accomplished for 4s. a-head per week. ? (Report of the Inspector of Factories for 30th April, 1860, p. 27. ) Mr. Redgrave forgets to tell us how the labourer himself can do all this for his children out of their 4s. a- week wages, when the manufacturer cannot do it for the 50 or 100 children lodged, boarded, superintended all together. To guard against false conclusions from the text, I ought here to remark that the English cotton industry, since it was placed under the Factory Act of 1850 with its regulations of labour-time, &c. , must be regarded as the model industry of England. The English cotton operative is in every respect better off than his Continental companion in misery. --The Prussian factory operative labours at least ten hours per week more than his English competitor, and if employed at his own loom in his own house, his labour is not restricted to even those additional hours. (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1855, p. 103. ) Redgrave, the Factory Inspector mentioned above, after the
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Industrial Exhibition in 1851, travelled on the Continent, especially in France and Germany, for the purpose of inquiring into the conditions of the factories. Of the Prussian operative he says: --He receives a remuneration sufficient to procure the simple fare, and to supply the slender comforts to which he has been accustomed . . . he lives upon his coarse fare, and works hard, wherein his position is subordinate to that of the English operative. ? (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ? 31st Oct. , 1855, p. 85. )
79 The over-worked --die off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who perish are instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons makes no alteration in the scene. ? (--England and America. ? London, 1833, vol. I, p. 55. By E. G. Wakefield. )
80 See --Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1863. ? Published in London 1864.
This report deals especially with the agricultural labourers. --Sutherland . . . is commonly represented as a highly improved county . . . but . . . recent inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hill sides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London alley. ? (W. Th. Thornton. --Overpopulation and its Remedy. ? l. c. , pp. 74, 75. ) They resemble in fact the 30,000 --gallant Highlanders? whom Glasgow pigs together in its wynds and closes, with prostitutes and thieves.
81 --But though the health of a population is so important a fact of the national capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not been the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. . . . The consideration of the health of the operatives was forced upon the mill-owners. ? (Times, November 5th, 1861. ) --The men of the West Riding became the clothiers of mankind . . . the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a few generations must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftesbury's Bill limited the hours of children's labour,? &c. (--Report of the Registrar-General,? for October 1861. )
82 We, therefore, find, e. g. , that in the beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning extensive potteries in Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah Wedgwood, & Sons, petition in a memorial for --some legislative enactment. ? Competition with other capitalists permits them no voluntary limitation of working-time for children, &c. --Much as we deplore the evils before mentioned, it would not be possible to prevent them by any scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. . . . Taking all these points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some legislative enactment is wanted. ? (--Children's Employment Comm. ? Rep. I, 1863, p. 322. ) Most recently a much more striking example offers. The rise in the price of cotton during a period of feverish activity, had induced the manufacturers in Blackburn to shorten, by mutual consent, the working-time in their mills during a certain fixed period. This period terminated about the end of November, 1871. Meanwhile, the wealthier manufacturers, who combined spinning with weaving, used the diminution of production resulting from this agreement, to extend their own business and thus to make great profits at the expense of the small employers. The latter thereupon turned in their extremity to the operatives, urged them earnestly to agitate for the 9 hours' system, and promised contributions in money to this end.
83 The labour Statutes, the like of which were enacted at the same time in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, were first formally repealed in England in 1813, long after the changes in methods of production had rendered them obsolete.
84 --No child under 12 years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 10 hours in one day. ? General Statutes of Massachusetts, 63, ch. 12. (The various Statutes were passed between 1836 and 1858. ) --Labour performed during a period of 10 hours on any day in all cotton, woollen, silk, paper, glass, and flax factories, or in manufactories of iron and brass, shall be considered a legal day's labour. And be it enacted, that hereafter no minor engaged in any factory shall be holden or required to work more than 10 hours in any day,or 60 hours in any week; and that hereafter no minor shall be admitted as a worker under the age of 10 years in any factory within this
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State. ? State of New Jersey. An Act to limit the hours of labour, &c. , ? 1 and 2. (Law of 18th March, 1851. ) --No minor who has attained the age of 12 years, and is under the age of 15 years, shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 11 hours in any one day, nor before 5 o'clock in the morning, nor after 7. 30 in the evening. ? (--Revised Statutes of the State of Rhode Island,? &c. , ch. 139, ? 23, 1st July, 1857. )
85 --Sophisms of Free Trade. ? 7th Ed. London, 1850, p. 205, 9th Ed. , p. 253. This same Tory, moreover, admits that --Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but against the labourer and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of 464 years. Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, unnecessary and burdensome. ? (l. c. , p. 206. )
86 In reference to this statute, J. Wade with truth remarks: --From the statement above (i. e. , with regard to the statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was considered equivalent to one-third of the income of an artificer and one-half the income of a labourer, which indicates a greater degree of independence among the working-classes than prevails at present; for the board, both of labourers and artificers, would now be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages. ? (J. Wade, --History of the Middle and Working Classes,? pp. 24, 25, and 577. ) The opinion that this difference is due to the difference in the price-relations between food and clothing then and now is refuted by the most cursory glance at --Chronicon Preciosum, &c. ? By Bishop Fleetwood. 1st Ed. , London, 1707; 2nd Ed. , London, 1745.
87 W. Petty. --Political Anatomy of Ireland, Verbum Sapienti,? 1672, Ed. 1691, p. 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
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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.
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In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, --seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays. ? Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often work overtime, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 36 hours of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12 who work the whole month 14 hours a day, --without any regular relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half an hour each for meals. ? In some mills, where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terrible extent, --and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most monotonous of the various processes. ? (--Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV. , 1865,? p. xxxviii, and xxxix. )
67 Fourth Report, &c. . 1865, 79, p. xvi. 68 l. c. , 80. p. xvi.
69 l. c. , 82. p. xvii.
70 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the world that has been done wrong has been done wrong for the very best of reasons. (Hegel, l. c. , p. 249 )
71 l. c. , 85, p. xvii. To similar tender scruples of the glass manufacturers that regular meal-times for the children are impossible because as a consequence a certain quantity of heat, radiated by the furnaces, would be --a pure loss? or --wasted,? Commissioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that of Ure, Senior, &c. , and their puny German plagiarists a` la Roscher who are touched by the --abstinence,? --self-denial,? --saving,? of the capitalists in the expenditure of their gold, and by their Timur- Tamerlanish prodigality of human life! --A certain amount of heat beyond what is usual at present might also be going to waste, if meal-times were secured in these cases, but it seems likely not equal in money-value to the waste of animal power now going on in glass-houses throughout the kingdom from growing boys not having enough quiet time to eat their meals at ease, with a little rest afterwards for digestion. ? (l. c. , p. xiv. ) And this in the year of progress 1865! Without considering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the performance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15 hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system of 6 hours' relays is in force. --During the working part of the week six hours is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out of this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing, dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for fresh air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially at such hot and fatiguing work. . . . Even the short sleep is obviously liable to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if it is day. ? Mr. White gives cases where a boy worked 36 consecutive hours; others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morning, and then slept in the works till 5 a. m. (3 hours! ) only to resume their work. --The amount of work,? say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, --done by boys, youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is certainly extraordinary. ? (l. c. , xliii. and xliv. ) Meanwhile, late by night, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reels out of his club homeward droning out idiotically. --Britons never, never shall be slaves! ?
72 In England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is condemned to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of
? ? 200 Chapter 10
contract if he remains away from his metal, paper, or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of expanding capital. A memorial (August 1863), in which the London day-labourers in fish and poultry shops asked for the abolition of Sunday labour, states that their work lasts for the first 6 days of the week on an average 15 hours a-day, and on Sunday 8-10 hours. From this same memorial we learn also that the delicate gourmands among the aristocratic hypocrite of Exeter Hall, especially encourage this --Sunday labour. ? These --holy ones,? so zealous in cute curanda [in attending to their bodily pleasures], show their Christianity by the humility with which they bear the overwork, the privations, and the hunger of others. Obsequium ventris istis (the labourers) perniciosius est [Gluttony is more ruinous to their stomachs - paraphrase of Horace].
73 --We have given in our previous reports the statements of several experienced manufacturers to the effect that over-hours . . . certainly tend prematurely to exhaust the working power of the men. ? (l. c. , 64. p. xiii. )
74 Cairnes, --The Slave Power,? pp. 110. 111.
75 John Ward: --The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent,? London, 1843, p. 42. 76 Ferrand's Speech in the House of Commons, 27th April, 1863.
77 Those were the very words used by the cotton manufacturers. ? l. c.
78 l. c. Mr. Villiers, despite the best of intentions on his part, was --legally? obliged to refuse the requests of the manufacturers. These gentlemen, however, attained their end through the obliging nature of the local poor law boards. Mr. A. Redgrave, Inspector of Factories, asserts that this time the system under which orphans and pauper children were treated --legally? as apprentices --was not accompanied with the old abuses? (on these --abuses? see Engels, l. c. ), although in one case there certainly was --abuse of this system in respect to a number of girls and young women brought from the agricultural districts of Scotland into Lancashire and Cheshire. ? Under this system the manufacturer entered into a contract with the workhouse authorities for a certain period. He fed, clothed and lodged the children, and gave them a small allowance of money. A remark of Mr. Redgrave to be quoted directly seems strange, especially if we consider that even among the years of prosperity of the English cotton trade, the year 1860 stands unparalleled, and that, besides, wages were exceptionally high. For this extraordinary demand for work had to contend with the depopulation of Ireland, with unexampled emigration from the English and Scotch agricultural districts to Australia and America, with an actual diminution of the population in some of the English agricultural districts, in consequence partly of an actual breakdown of the vital force of the labourers, partly of the already effected dispersion of the disposable population through the dealers in human flesh. Despite all this Mr. Redgrave says: --This kind of labour, however, would only be sought after when none other could be procured, for it is a high-priced labour. The ordinary wages of a boy of 13 would be about 4s. per week, but to lodge, to clothe, to feed, and to provide medical attendance and proper superintendence for 50 or 100 of these boys, and to set aside some remuneration for them, could not be accomplished for 4s. a-head per week. ? (Report of the Inspector of Factories for 30th April, 1860, p. 27. ) Mr. Redgrave forgets to tell us how the labourer himself can do all this for his children out of their 4s. a- week wages, when the manufacturer cannot do it for the 50 or 100 children lodged, boarded, superintended all together. To guard against false conclusions from the text, I ought here to remark that the English cotton industry, since it was placed under the Factory Act of 1850 with its regulations of labour-time, &c. , must be regarded as the model industry of England. The English cotton operative is in every respect better off than his Continental companion in misery. --The Prussian factory operative labours at least ten hours per week more than his English competitor, and if employed at his own loom in his own house, his labour is not restricted to even those additional hours. (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ,? 31st October, 1855, p. 103. ) Redgrave, the Factory Inspector mentioned above, after the
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Industrial Exhibition in 1851, travelled on the Continent, especially in France and Germany, for the purpose of inquiring into the conditions of the factories. Of the Prussian operative he says: --He receives a remuneration sufficient to procure the simple fare, and to supply the slender comforts to which he has been accustomed . . . he lives upon his coarse fare, and works hard, wherein his position is subordinate to that of the English operative. ? (--Rep. of Insp. of Fact. ? 31st Oct. , 1855, p. 85. )
79 The over-worked --die off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who perish are instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons makes no alteration in the scene. ? (--England and America. ? London, 1833, vol. I, p. 55. By E. G. Wakefield. )
80 See --Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1863. ? Published in London 1864.
This report deals especially with the agricultural labourers. --Sutherland . . . is commonly represented as a highly improved county . . . but . . . recent inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hill sides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London alley. ? (W. Th. Thornton. --Overpopulation and its Remedy. ? l. c. , pp. 74, 75. ) They resemble in fact the 30,000 --gallant Highlanders? whom Glasgow pigs together in its wynds and closes, with prostitutes and thieves.
81 --But though the health of a population is so important a fact of the national capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not been the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. . . . The consideration of the health of the operatives was forced upon the mill-owners. ? (Times, November 5th, 1861. ) --The men of the West Riding became the clothiers of mankind . . . the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a few generations must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftesbury's Bill limited the hours of children's labour,? &c. (--Report of the Registrar-General,? for October 1861. )
82 We, therefore, find, e. g. , that in the beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning extensive potteries in Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah Wedgwood, & Sons, petition in a memorial for --some legislative enactment. ? Competition with other capitalists permits them no voluntary limitation of working-time for children, &c. --Much as we deplore the evils before mentioned, it would not be possible to prevent them by any scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. . . . Taking all these points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some legislative enactment is wanted. ? (--Children's Employment Comm. ? Rep. I, 1863, p. 322. ) Most recently a much more striking example offers. The rise in the price of cotton during a period of feverish activity, had induced the manufacturers in Blackburn to shorten, by mutual consent, the working-time in their mills during a certain fixed period. This period terminated about the end of November, 1871. Meanwhile, the wealthier manufacturers, who combined spinning with weaving, used the diminution of production resulting from this agreement, to extend their own business and thus to make great profits at the expense of the small employers. The latter thereupon turned in their extremity to the operatives, urged them earnestly to agitate for the 9 hours' system, and promised contributions in money to this end.
83 The labour Statutes, the like of which were enacted at the same time in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, were first formally repealed in England in 1813, long after the changes in methods of production had rendered them obsolete.
84 --No child under 12 years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 10 hours in one day. ? General Statutes of Massachusetts, 63, ch. 12. (The various Statutes were passed between 1836 and 1858. ) --Labour performed during a period of 10 hours on any day in all cotton, woollen, silk, paper, glass, and flax factories, or in manufactories of iron and brass, shall be considered a legal day's labour. And be it enacted, that hereafter no minor engaged in any factory shall be holden or required to work more than 10 hours in any day,or 60 hours in any week; and that hereafter no minor shall be admitted as a worker under the age of 10 years in any factory within this
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State. ? State of New Jersey. An Act to limit the hours of labour, &c. , ? 1 and 2. (Law of 18th March, 1851. ) --No minor who has attained the age of 12 years, and is under the age of 15 years, shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 11 hours in any one day, nor before 5 o'clock in the morning, nor after 7. 30 in the evening. ? (--Revised Statutes of the State of Rhode Island,? &c. , ch. 139, ? 23, 1st July, 1857. )
85 --Sophisms of Free Trade. ? 7th Ed. London, 1850, p. 205, 9th Ed. , p. 253. This same Tory, moreover, admits that --Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but against the labourer and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of 464 years. Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, unnecessary and burdensome. ? (l. c. , p. 206. )
86 In reference to this statute, J. Wade with truth remarks: --From the statement above (i. e. , with regard to the statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was considered equivalent to one-third of the income of an artificer and one-half the income of a labourer, which indicates a greater degree of independence among the working-classes than prevails at present; for the board, both of labourers and artificers, would now be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages. ? (J. Wade, --History of the Middle and Working Classes,? pp. 24, 25, and 577. ) The opinion that this difference is due to the difference in the price-relations between food and clothing then and now is refuted by the most cursory glance at --Chronicon Preciosum, &c. ? By Bishop Fleetwood. 1st Ed. , London, 1707; 2nd Ed. , London, 1745.
87 W. Petty. --Political Anatomy of Ireland, Verbum Sapienti,? 1672, Ed. 1691, p. 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
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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.
