Calculated
at this rate, the resources of the family would amount, at the maximum, to 1,068 francs a-year.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
70 Here I merely cast a hurried glance over the conditions of their dwellings.
As a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or his tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands.
They receive cottages and coal for firing --for nothing?
- i.
e.
, these form part of their wages, paid in kind.
Those who are not lodged in this way receive in compensation ?
4 per annum.
The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shopkeepers, &c.
, that group themselves around them.
The ground-rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense.
The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their families.
If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the pressure increases.
In the construction of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the --abstinence?
of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not absolutely unavoidable.
--The lodging which is obtained by the pitman and other labourers connected with the collieries of Northumberland and Durham,? says Dr. Julian Hunter, --is perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any large specimens can be found in England, the similar parishes of Monmouthshire excepted. . . . The extreme badness is in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallness of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are thrust, the want of water, the absence of privies, and the frequent placing of one house on the top of another, or distribution into flats, . . . the lessee acts as if the whole colony were encamped, not resident. ? 71
--In pursuance of my instructions,? says Dr. Stevens, --I visited most of the large colliery villages in the Durham Union. . . . With very few exceptions, the general statement that no means are taken to secure the health of the inhabitants would be true of all of them. . . . All colliers are bound ['bound,' an expression which, like bondage, dates from the age of serfdom] to the colliery lessee or owner for twelve months. . . . If the colliers express discontent, or in any way annoy the ? viewer,' a mark of memorandum is made against their names, and, at the annual ? binding,'
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such men are turned off. . . It appears to me that no part of the ? truck system' could be worse than what obtains in these densely-populated districts. The collier is bound to take as part of his hiring a house surrounded with pestiferous influences; he cannot help himself, and it appears doubtful whether anyone else can help him except his proprietor (he is, to all intents and purposes, a serf), and his proprietor first consults his balance-sheet, and the result is tolerably certain. The collier is also often supplied with water by the proprietor, which, whether it be good or bad, he has to pay for, or rather he suffers a deduction for from his wages. ? 72
In conflict with --public opinion,? or even with the Officers of Health, capital makes no difficulty about --justifying? the conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines the working and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground that they are necessary for profit. It is the same thing when capital --abstains? from protective measures against dangerous machinery in the factory, from appliances for ventilation and for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with the housing of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, in his official Report says:
--In apology for the wretched household accommodation . . . it is alleged that miners are commonly worked on lease; that the duration of the lessee's interest (which in collieries is commonly for 21 years), is not so long that he should deem it worth his while to create good accommodation for his labourers, and for the tradespeople and others whom the work attracts; that even if he were disposed to act liberally in the matter, this disposition would commonly be defeated by his landlord's tendency to fix on him, as ground-rent, an exorbitant additional charge for the privilege of having on the surface of the ground the decent and comfortable village which the labourers of the subterranean property ought to inhabit, and that prohibitory price (if not actual prohibition) equally excludes others who might desire to build. It would be foreign to the purpose of this report to enter upon any discussion of the merits of the above apology. Nor here is it even needful to consider where it would be that, if decent accommodation were provided, the cost . . . would eventually fall - whether on landlord, or lessee, or labourer, or public. But in presence of such shameful facts as are vouched for in the annexed reports [those of Dr. Hunter, Dr. Stevens, &c. ] a remedy may well be claimed. . . . Claims of landlordship are being so used as to do great public wrong. The landlord in his capacity of mine-owner invites an industrial colony to labour on his estate, and then in his capacity of surface-owner makes it impossible that the labourers whom he collects, should find proper lodging where they must live. The lessee [the capitalist exploiter] meanwhile has no pecuniary motive for resisting that division of the bargain; well knowing that if its latter conditions be exorbitant, the consequences fall, not on him, that his labourers on whom they fall have not education enough to know the value of their sanitary rights, that neither obscenest lodging nor foulest drinking water will be appreciable inducements towards a ? strike. '? 73
D. Effect of Crises on the Best Paid Part of the working class
Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be allowed to show, by one example, how industrial revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the
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working class. It will be remembered that the year 1857 brought one of the great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically ends. The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already discounted in the regular factory districts by the cotton famine, which threw much capital from its wonted sphere into the great centres of the money- market, the crisis assumed, at this time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866 was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, immediately followed by the collapse of countless swindling companies. One of the great London branches of industry involved in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The magnates of this trade had not only over-produced beyond all measure during the overtrading time, but they had, besides, engaged in enormous contracts on the speculation that credit would be forthcoming to an equivalent extent. Now, a terrible reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of March, 1867) continues in this and other London industries. 74 To show the condition of the labourers, I quote the following from the circumstantial report of a correspondent of the Morning Star, who, at the end of 1866, and beginning of 1867, visited the chief centres of distress:
--In the East End districts of Poplar, Millwall, Greenwich, Deptford, Limehouse and Canning Town, at least 15,000 workmen and their families were in a state of utter destitution, and 3,000 skilled mechanics were breaking stones in the workhouse yard (after distress of over half a year's duration). . . . I had great difficulty in reaching the workhouse door, for a hungry crowd besieged it. . . . They were waiting for their tickets, but the time had not yet arrived for the distribution. The yard was a great square place with an open shed running all round it, and several large heaps of snow covered the paving-stones in the middle. In the middle, also, were little wicker-fenced spaces, like sheep pens, where in finer weather the men worked; but on the day of my visit the pens were so snowed up that nobody could sit in them. Men were busy, however, in the open shed breaking paving-stones into macadam. Each man had a big paving-stone for a seat, and he chipped away at the rime-covered granite with a big hammer until he had broken up, and think! five bushels of it, and then he had done his day's work, and got his day's pay - threepence and an allowance of food. In another part of the yard was a rickety little wooden house, and when we opened the door of it, we found it filled with men who were huddled together shoulder to shoulder for the warmth of one another's bodies and breath. They were picking oakum and disputing the while as to which could work the longest on a given quantity of food - for endurance was the point of honour. Seven thousand . . . in this one workhouse . . . were recipients of relief . . . many hundreds of them . . . it appeared, were, six or eight months ago, earning the highest wages paid to artisans. . . . Their number would be more than doubled by the count of those who, having exhausted all their savings, still refuse to apply to the parish, because they have a little left to pawn. Leaving the workhouse, I took a walk through the streets, mostly of little one-storey houses, that abound in the neighbourhood of Poplar. My guide was a member of the Committee of the Unemployed. . . . My first call was on an ironworker who had been seven and twenty weeks out of employment. I found the man with his family sitting in a little back room. The room was not bare of furniture, and there was a fire in it. This was necessary to keep the naked feet of the young children from
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getting frost bitten, for it was a bitterly cold day. On a tray in front of the fire lay a quantity of oakum, which the wife and children were picking in return for their allowance from the parish. The man worked in the stone yard of the workhouse for a certain ration of food, and threepence per day. He had now come home to dinner quite hungry, as he told us with a melancholy smile, and his dinner consisted of a couple of slices of bread and dripping, and a cup of milkless tea. . . . The next door at which we knocked was opened by a middle-aged woman, who, without saying a word, led us into a little back parlour, in which sat all her family, silent and fixedly staring at a rapidly dying fire. Such desolation, such hopelessness was about these people and their little room, as I should not care to witness again. ? Nothing have they done, sir,' said the woman, pointing to her boys, ? for six and twenty weeks; and all our money gone - all the twenty pounds that me and father saved when times were better, thinking it would yield a little to keep us when we got past work. Look at it,' she said, almost fiercely, bringing out a bank-book with all its well kept entries of money paid in, and money taken out, so that we could see how the little fortune had begun with the first five shilling deposit, and had grown by little and little to be twenty pounds, and how it had melted down again till the sum in hand got from pounds to shillings, and the last entry made the book as worthless as a blank sheet. This family received relief from the workhouse, and it furnished them with just one scanty meal per day. . . . Our next visit was to an iron labourer's wife, whose husband had worked in the yards. We found her ill from want of food, lying on a mattress in her clothes, and just covered with a strip of carpet, for all the bedding had been pawned. Two wretched children were tending her, themselves looking as much in need of nursing as their mother. Nineteen weeks of enforced idleness had brought them to this pass, and while the mother told the history of that bitter past, she moaned as if all her faith in a future that should atone for it were dead. . . . On getting outside a young fellow came running after us, and asked us to step inside his house and see if anything could be done for him. A young wife, two pretty children, a cluster of pawn-tickets, and a bare room were all he had to show. ?
On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract from a Tory newspaper. It must not be forgotten that the East-end of London, which is here dealt with, is not only the seat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but also of a so-called --home-industry? always underpaid.
--A frightful spectacle was to be seen yesterday in one part of the metropolis. Although the unemployed thousands of the East-end did not parade with their black flags en masse, the human torrent was imposing enough. Let us remember what these people suffer. They are dying of hunger. That is the simple and terrible fact. There are 40,000 of them. . . . In our presence, in one quarter of this wonderful metropolis, are packed - next door to the most enormous accumulation of wealth the world ever saw - cheek by jowl with this are 40,000 helpless, starving people. These thousands are now breaking in upon the other quarters; always half- starving, they cry their misery in our ears, they cry to Heaven, they tell us from their miserable dwellings, that it is impossible for them to find work, and useless for them to beg. The local ratepayers themselves are driven by the parochial charges to the verge of pauperism. ? - (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
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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
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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.
--The lodging which is obtained by the pitman and other labourers connected with the collieries of Northumberland and Durham,? says Dr. Julian Hunter, --is perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any large specimens can be found in England, the similar parishes of Monmouthshire excepted. . . . The extreme badness is in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallness of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are thrust, the want of water, the absence of privies, and the frequent placing of one house on the top of another, or distribution into flats, . . . the lessee acts as if the whole colony were encamped, not resident. ? 71
--In pursuance of my instructions,? says Dr. Stevens, --I visited most of the large colliery villages in the Durham Union. . . . With very few exceptions, the general statement that no means are taken to secure the health of the inhabitants would be true of all of them. . . . All colliers are bound ['bound,' an expression which, like bondage, dates from the age of serfdom] to the colliery lessee or owner for twelve months. . . . If the colliers express discontent, or in any way annoy the ? viewer,' a mark of memorandum is made against their names, and, at the annual ? binding,'
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such men are turned off. . . It appears to me that no part of the ? truck system' could be worse than what obtains in these densely-populated districts. The collier is bound to take as part of his hiring a house surrounded with pestiferous influences; he cannot help himself, and it appears doubtful whether anyone else can help him except his proprietor (he is, to all intents and purposes, a serf), and his proprietor first consults his balance-sheet, and the result is tolerably certain. The collier is also often supplied with water by the proprietor, which, whether it be good or bad, he has to pay for, or rather he suffers a deduction for from his wages. ? 72
In conflict with --public opinion,? or even with the Officers of Health, capital makes no difficulty about --justifying? the conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines the working and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground that they are necessary for profit. It is the same thing when capital --abstains? from protective measures against dangerous machinery in the factory, from appliances for ventilation and for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with the housing of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, in his official Report says:
--In apology for the wretched household accommodation . . . it is alleged that miners are commonly worked on lease; that the duration of the lessee's interest (which in collieries is commonly for 21 years), is not so long that he should deem it worth his while to create good accommodation for his labourers, and for the tradespeople and others whom the work attracts; that even if he were disposed to act liberally in the matter, this disposition would commonly be defeated by his landlord's tendency to fix on him, as ground-rent, an exorbitant additional charge for the privilege of having on the surface of the ground the decent and comfortable village which the labourers of the subterranean property ought to inhabit, and that prohibitory price (if not actual prohibition) equally excludes others who might desire to build. It would be foreign to the purpose of this report to enter upon any discussion of the merits of the above apology. Nor here is it even needful to consider where it would be that, if decent accommodation were provided, the cost . . . would eventually fall - whether on landlord, or lessee, or labourer, or public. But in presence of such shameful facts as are vouched for in the annexed reports [those of Dr. Hunter, Dr. Stevens, &c. ] a remedy may well be claimed. . . . Claims of landlordship are being so used as to do great public wrong. The landlord in his capacity of mine-owner invites an industrial colony to labour on his estate, and then in his capacity of surface-owner makes it impossible that the labourers whom he collects, should find proper lodging where they must live. The lessee [the capitalist exploiter] meanwhile has no pecuniary motive for resisting that division of the bargain; well knowing that if its latter conditions be exorbitant, the consequences fall, not on him, that his labourers on whom they fall have not education enough to know the value of their sanitary rights, that neither obscenest lodging nor foulest drinking water will be appreciable inducements towards a ? strike. '? 73
D. Effect of Crises on the Best Paid Part of the working class
Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be allowed to show, by one example, how industrial revulsions affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the
? 459 Chapter 25
working class. It will be remembered that the year 1857 brought one of the great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically ends. The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already discounted in the regular factory districts by the cotton famine, which threw much capital from its wonted sphere into the great centres of the money- market, the crisis assumed, at this time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866 was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, immediately followed by the collapse of countless swindling companies. One of the great London branches of industry involved in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The magnates of this trade had not only over-produced beyond all measure during the overtrading time, but they had, besides, engaged in enormous contracts on the speculation that credit would be forthcoming to an equivalent extent. Now, a terrible reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of March, 1867) continues in this and other London industries. 74 To show the condition of the labourers, I quote the following from the circumstantial report of a correspondent of the Morning Star, who, at the end of 1866, and beginning of 1867, visited the chief centres of distress:
--In the East End districts of Poplar, Millwall, Greenwich, Deptford, Limehouse and Canning Town, at least 15,000 workmen and their families were in a state of utter destitution, and 3,000 skilled mechanics were breaking stones in the workhouse yard (after distress of over half a year's duration). . . . I had great difficulty in reaching the workhouse door, for a hungry crowd besieged it. . . . They were waiting for their tickets, but the time had not yet arrived for the distribution. The yard was a great square place with an open shed running all round it, and several large heaps of snow covered the paving-stones in the middle. In the middle, also, were little wicker-fenced spaces, like sheep pens, where in finer weather the men worked; but on the day of my visit the pens were so snowed up that nobody could sit in them. Men were busy, however, in the open shed breaking paving-stones into macadam. Each man had a big paving-stone for a seat, and he chipped away at the rime-covered granite with a big hammer until he had broken up, and think! five bushels of it, and then he had done his day's work, and got his day's pay - threepence and an allowance of food. In another part of the yard was a rickety little wooden house, and when we opened the door of it, we found it filled with men who were huddled together shoulder to shoulder for the warmth of one another's bodies and breath. They were picking oakum and disputing the while as to which could work the longest on a given quantity of food - for endurance was the point of honour. Seven thousand . . . in this one workhouse . . . were recipients of relief . . . many hundreds of them . . . it appeared, were, six or eight months ago, earning the highest wages paid to artisans. . . . Their number would be more than doubled by the count of those who, having exhausted all their savings, still refuse to apply to the parish, because they have a little left to pawn. Leaving the workhouse, I took a walk through the streets, mostly of little one-storey houses, that abound in the neighbourhood of Poplar. My guide was a member of the Committee of the Unemployed. . . . My first call was on an ironworker who had been seven and twenty weeks out of employment. I found the man with his family sitting in a little back room. The room was not bare of furniture, and there was a fire in it. This was necessary to keep the naked feet of the young children from
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getting frost bitten, for it was a bitterly cold day. On a tray in front of the fire lay a quantity of oakum, which the wife and children were picking in return for their allowance from the parish. The man worked in the stone yard of the workhouse for a certain ration of food, and threepence per day. He had now come home to dinner quite hungry, as he told us with a melancholy smile, and his dinner consisted of a couple of slices of bread and dripping, and a cup of milkless tea. . . . The next door at which we knocked was opened by a middle-aged woman, who, without saying a word, led us into a little back parlour, in which sat all her family, silent and fixedly staring at a rapidly dying fire. Such desolation, such hopelessness was about these people and their little room, as I should not care to witness again. ? Nothing have they done, sir,' said the woman, pointing to her boys, ? for six and twenty weeks; and all our money gone - all the twenty pounds that me and father saved when times were better, thinking it would yield a little to keep us when we got past work. Look at it,' she said, almost fiercely, bringing out a bank-book with all its well kept entries of money paid in, and money taken out, so that we could see how the little fortune had begun with the first five shilling deposit, and had grown by little and little to be twenty pounds, and how it had melted down again till the sum in hand got from pounds to shillings, and the last entry made the book as worthless as a blank sheet. This family received relief from the workhouse, and it furnished them with just one scanty meal per day. . . . Our next visit was to an iron labourer's wife, whose husband had worked in the yards. We found her ill from want of food, lying on a mattress in her clothes, and just covered with a strip of carpet, for all the bedding had been pawned. Two wretched children were tending her, themselves looking as much in need of nursing as their mother. Nineteen weeks of enforced idleness had brought them to this pass, and while the mother told the history of that bitter past, she moaned as if all her faith in a future that should atone for it were dead. . . . On getting outside a young fellow came running after us, and asked us to step inside his house and see if anything could be done for him. A young wife, two pretty children, a cluster of pawn-tickets, and a bare room were all he had to show. ?
On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract from a Tory newspaper. It must not be forgotten that the East-end of London, which is here dealt with, is not only the seat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but also of a so-called --home-industry? always underpaid.
--A frightful spectacle was to be seen yesterday in one part of the metropolis. Although the unemployed thousands of the East-end did not parade with their black flags en masse, the human torrent was imposing enough. Let us remember what these people suffer. They are dying of hunger. That is the simple and terrible fact. There are 40,000 of them. . . . In our presence, in one quarter of this wonderful metropolis, are packed - next door to the most enormous accumulation of wealth the world ever saw - cheek by jowl with this are 40,000 helpless, starving people. These thousands are now breaking in upon the other quarters; always half- starving, they cry their misery in our ears, they cry to Heaven, they tell us from their miserable dwellings, that it is impossible for them to find work, and useless for them to beg. The local ratepayers themselves are driven by the parochial charges to the verge of pauperism. ? - (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
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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
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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
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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.
