Despite all over-work,
continued
day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
--Cyclopedia of Agriculture?
of J.
C.
Morton, Art.
, the article --Labourer,?
where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one.
9 --All those who are paid by piece-work . . . profit by the transgression of the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work over-time is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers. ? (--Rept. of Insp. of Fact. , 30th April, 1858,? p. 9. ) --This system? (piece-work), --so advantageous to the employer . . . tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to over-work himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages. . . . This is . . . another great cause to which the bad constitutions of the potters are to be attributed. ? (--Child. Empl. Comm. 1. Rept. ,? p. xiii. )
10 --Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job . . . wages may very materially differ in amount. . . . But in work by the day there is generally an uniform rate . . . recognized by both employer and employed as the standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade. ? (Dunning, l. c. , p. 17. )
11 --The work of the journeyman-artisans will be ruled by the day or by the piece. These master- artisans know about how much work a journeyman-artisan can do per day in each craft, and often pay them in proportion to the work which they do; the journey men, therefore, work as much as they can, in their own interest, without any further inspection. ? (Cantillon, --Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en ge? ne? ral,? Amst. Ed. , 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755. ) Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn, already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the English, but the English edition: --The Analysis of Trade, Commerce, &c. ,? by Philip Cantillon, late of the city of London, Merchant, is not only of later date (1759), but proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition: e. g. , in the French edition, Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion trade, &c. , that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of the English edition, according to which the work is --taken chiefly from the manuscript of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, &c. ,? seem, therefore, a pure fiction, very customary at that time.
? ? 389 Chapter 21
12 --How often have we seen, in some workshops, many more workers recruited than the work actually called for? On many occasions, workers are recruited in anticipation of future work, which may never materialize. Because they are paid by piece wages, it is said that no risk is incurred, since any loss of time will be charged against the unemployed. ? (H. Gregoir: --Les Typographes devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles,? Brusseles, 1865, p. 9. )
13 --Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain,? London, 1815.
14 --A Defense of the Landowners and Farmers of Great Britain,? 1814, pp. 4, 5
15 Malthus, --Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,? Lond. , 1815.
16 --Those who are paid by piece-work . . . constitute probably four-fifths of the workers in the factories. ? --Report of Insp. of Fact. ,? 30th April, 1858.
17 --The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its productive power. ? (Ure, l. c. , p. 317. ) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases. Further: --By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earnings for any given number of hours' work,? but --the foregoing statement requires a certain modification. . . . The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults? (l. c. , p. 321), which has in no way a tendency to raise wages.
18 H. Fawcett: --The Economic Position of the British labourer. ? Cambridge and London, 1865, p. 178.
19 In the --London Standard? of October 26, 1861, there is a report of proceedings of the firm of John Bright & Co. , before the Rochdale magistrates --to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades' Union. Bright's partners had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and with the labour (! ) previously required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employer's capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from 11/2d. per yard to 1d. , leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning beforehand. ?
20 --Trades' Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavor to share in the benefits of improved machinery. ? (Quelle horreur! ) --. . . the demanding higher wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavor to establish a duty on mechanical improvements. ? (--On Combination of Trades,? new ed. , London, 1834, p. 42. )
? ? Chapter 22: National Differences of Wages
In the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude of the value of labour-power - this magnitude being considered either absolutely or relatively, i. e. , as compared with surplus value; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of subsistence in which the price of labour is realized might again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from, the changes of this price. 1 As has been already said, the simple translation of the value, or respectively of the price, of labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages. In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must therefore take into account all the factors that determine changes in the amount of the value of labour-power; the price and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and historically developed, the cost of training the labourers, the part played by the labour of women and children, the productiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude. Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different countries, to a uniform working day. After this reduction to the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both of the productivity and the intensity of labour.
In every country there is a certain average intensity of labour below which the labour for the production of a commodity requires more than the socially necessary time, and therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a given country, the measure of value by the mere duration of the working-time. This is not the case on the universal market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The average intensity of labour changes from country to country; here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time more value, which expresses itself in more money.
But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by the fact that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value.
In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and productivity of labour there rise above the international level. 2 The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, produced in different countries in the same working- time, have, therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in different prices, i. e. , in sums of money varying according to international values. The relative value of money will, therefore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist mode of production than in the nation with less developed. It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of labour- power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation than in the second; which does not at all prove that this holds also for the real wages, i. e. , for the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer.
But even apart from these relative differences of the value of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently, that the daily or weekly, &tc. , wage in the first nation is higher than in the
? 391 Chapter 22
second, whilst the relative price of labour, i. e. , the price of labour as compared both with surplus value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first. 3
J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to the conclusion that
--in England wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the Continent of Europe. ? 4
The English Factory Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his report of Oct. 31st, 1866, proves by comparative statistics with continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time, continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg declares that the working time there lasted from 5:30 a. m. to 8 p. m. , Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5:3.
Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently employed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business.
Despite all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition.
I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr. Redgrave's, on the average number of spindles per factory and per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He himself remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago, and that since that time the size of the factories and the number of spindles per labourer in England has increased. He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given would still have their value for purposes of comparison.
? ? ? ? ? AVERAGE NUMBER OF SPINDLES PER FACTORY
? ? England, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? ? 12,600
? ? ? ? France, average of spindles per factory
? ? 1,500
? ? Prussia, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 1,500
? ? Belgium, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 4,000
? ? Saxony, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 4,500
? ? Austria, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? ? 7,000
? ? ? ? Switzerland, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? 8,000
? ? ? ? ? AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED TO SPINDLES
? ? France
? ? ? ? ? one person to 14 spindles
? ? Russia
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 28 spindles
? ? ? ? Prussia
? ? one person to 37 spindles
? ? Bavaria
? ? ? ? ? one person to 46 spindles
? ? Austria
? ? ? ? ? one person to 49 spindles
? ? Belgium
? ? ? ? ? one person to 50 spindles
? ? Saxony
? ? ? ? ? one person to 50 spindles
? ? 392 Chapter 22
--This comparison,? says Mr. Redgrave, --is yet more unfavorable to Great Britain, inasmuch as there is so large a number of factories in which weaving by power is carried on in conjunction with spinning? (whilst in the table the weavers are not deducted), --and the factories abroad are chiefly spinning factories; if it were possible to compare like with like, strictly, I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district in which mules containing 2,200 spindles are minded by one man (the minder) and two assistants only, turning off daily 220 lbs. of yarn, measuring 400 miles in length. ? 5
It is well known that in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, English companies have undertaken the construction of railways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with the native labourers, a certain number of English working-men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to take into account the national difference in the intensity of labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of labour varies generally in the inverse direction.
In an --Essay on the Rate of Wages,? 6 one of his first economic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the different nations are directly proportional to the degree of productiveness of the national working days, in order to draw from this international relation the conclusion that wages everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of surplus value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if Carey himself had proved his premises instead of, after his usual uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a confused mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that he does not assert that things actually are as they ought to be according to his theory. For State intervention has falsified the natural economic relations. The different national wages must be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to the State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself. Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those --State expenses? are not the --natural? fruits of capitalistic development? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order afterwards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on the world market (an influence which, it appears, does not spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessitates State intervention, i. e. , the protection of those laws of nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection. He discovered further that the theorems of Ricardo and others, in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions are formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result of the theories of Ricardo and others! Finally he discovered that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production. A step further and he will, perhaps, discover that the one evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist heresy, to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a Bastiat, and of all the other Free-trade optimists of today.
? ? Switzerland
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 55 spindles
? ? Smaller States of Germany
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 55 spindles
? ? ? ? Great Britain
? ? ? one person to 74 spindles
? ? ? ? 393 Chapter 22
1 --It is not accurate to say that wages? (he deals here with their money expression) --are increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article. ? (David Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith's --Wealth of Nations,? 1814, Vol. 1, p. 417, note. )
2 We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstances in relation to productivity may modify this law for individual branches of industry.
3 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith: --It deserves, likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of Labour is usually lower in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain quantity of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light, labour is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer, although the price of grain and other provisions is usually much lower in the last than in the first. . . . Labour estimated by the day is much lower in Scotland than in England. . . . Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England. ? (James Anderson, ? Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry,? &tc. , Edin. 1777, pp. 350, 351. ) On the contrary, lowness of wages produces, in its turn, dearness of labour. --Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in England . . . because the wages are so much lower.
9 --All those who are paid by piece-work . . . profit by the transgression of the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work over-time is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers. ? (--Rept. of Insp. of Fact. , 30th April, 1858,? p. 9. ) --This system? (piece-work), --so advantageous to the employer . . . tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to over-work himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages. . . . This is . . . another great cause to which the bad constitutions of the potters are to be attributed. ? (--Child. Empl. Comm. 1. Rept. ,? p. xiii. )
10 --Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job . . . wages may very materially differ in amount. . . . But in work by the day there is generally an uniform rate . . . recognized by both employer and employed as the standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade. ? (Dunning, l. c. , p. 17. )
11 --The work of the journeyman-artisans will be ruled by the day or by the piece. These master- artisans know about how much work a journeyman-artisan can do per day in each craft, and often pay them in proportion to the work which they do; the journey men, therefore, work as much as they can, in their own interest, without any further inspection. ? (Cantillon, --Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en ge? ne? ral,? Amst. Ed. , 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755. ) Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn, already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the English, but the English edition: --The Analysis of Trade, Commerce, &c. ,? by Philip Cantillon, late of the city of London, Merchant, is not only of later date (1759), but proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition: e. g. , in the French edition, Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion trade, &c. , that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of the English edition, according to which the work is --taken chiefly from the manuscript of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, &c. ,? seem, therefore, a pure fiction, very customary at that time.
? ? 389 Chapter 21
12 --How often have we seen, in some workshops, many more workers recruited than the work actually called for? On many occasions, workers are recruited in anticipation of future work, which may never materialize. Because they are paid by piece wages, it is said that no risk is incurred, since any loss of time will be charged against the unemployed. ? (H. Gregoir: --Les Typographes devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles,? Brusseles, 1865, p. 9. )
13 --Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain,? London, 1815.
14 --A Defense of the Landowners and Farmers of Great Britain,? 1814, pp. 4, 5
15 Malthus, --Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,? Lond. , 1815.
16 --Those who are paid by piece-work . . . constitute probably four-fifths of the workers in the factories. ? --Report of Insp. of Fact. ,? 30th April, 1858.
17 --The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its productive power. ? (Ure, l. c. , p. 317. ) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases. Further: --By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earnings for any given number of hours' work,? but --the foregoing statement requires a certain modification. . . . The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults? (l. c. , p. 321), which has in no way a tendency to raise wages.
18 H. Fawcett: --The Economic Position of the British labourer. ? Cambridge and London, 1865, p. 178.
19 In the --London Standard? of October 26, 1861, there is a report of proceedings of the firm of John Bright & Co. , before the Rochdale magistrates --to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades' Union. Bright's partners had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and with the labour (! ) previously required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employer's capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from 11/2d. per yard to 1d. , leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning beforehand. ?
20 --Trades' Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavor to share in the benefits of improved machinery. ? (Quelle horreur! ) --. . . the demanding higher wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavor to establish a duty on mechanical improvements. ? (--On Combination of Trades,? new ed. , London, 1834, p. 42. )
? ? Chapter 22: National Differences of Wages
In the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude of the value of labour-power - this magnitude being considered either absolutely or relatively, i. e. , as compared with surplus value; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of subsistence in which the price of labour is realized might again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from, the changes of this price. 1 As has been already said, the simple translation of the value, or respectively of the price, of labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages. In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must therefore take into account all the factors that determine changes in the amount of the value of labour-power; the price and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and historically developed, the cost of training the labourers, the part played by the labour of women and children, the productiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude. Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different countries, to a uniform working day. After this reduction to the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both of the productivity and the intensity of labour.
In every country there is a certain average intensity of labour below which the labour for the production of a commodity requires more than the socially necessary time, and therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a given country, the measure of value by the mere duration of the working-time. This is not the case on the universal market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The average intensity of labour changes from country to country; here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time more value, which expresses itself in more money.
But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by the fact that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value.
In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and productivity of labour there rise above the international level. 2 The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, produced in different countries in the same working- time, have, therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in different prices, i. e. , in sums of money varying according to international values. The relative value of money will, therefore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist mode of production than in the nation with less developed. It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of labour- power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation than in the second; which does not at all prove that this holds also for the real wages, i. e. , for the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer.
But even apart from these relative differences of the value of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently, that the daily or weekly, &tc. , wage in the first nation is higher than in the
? 391 Chapter 22
second, whilst the relative price of labour, i. e. , the price of labour as compared both with surplus value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first. 3
J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to the conclusion that
--in England wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the Continent of Europe. ? 4
The English Factory Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his report of Oct. 31st, 1866, proves by comparative statistics with continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time, continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg declares that the working time there lasted from 5:30 a. m. to 8 p. m. , Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5:3.
Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently employed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business.
Despite all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition.
I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr. Redgrave's, on the average number of spindles per factory and per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He himself remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago, and that since that time the size of the factories and the number of spindles per labourer in England has increased. He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given would still have their value for purposes of comparison.
? ? ? ? ? AVERAGE NUMBER OF SPINDLES PER FACTORY
? ? England, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? ? 12,600
? ? ? ? France, average of spindles per factory
? ? 1,500
? ? Prussia, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 1,500
? ? Belgium, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 4,000
? ? Saxony, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? 4,500
? ? Austria, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? ? ? ? 7,000
? ? ? ? Switzerland, average of spindles per factory
? ? ? 8,000
? ? ? ? ? AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED TO SPINDLES
? ? France
? ? ? ? ? one person to 14 spindles
? ? Russia
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 28 spindles
? ? ? ? Prussia
? ? one person to 37 spindles
? ? Bavaria
? ? ? ? ? one person to 46 spindles
? ? Austria
? ? ? ? ? one person to 49 spindles
? ? Belgium
? ? ? ? ? one person to 50 spindles
? ? Saxony
? ? ? ? ? one person to 50 spindles
? ? 392 Chapter 22
--This comparison,? says Mr. Redgrave, --is yet more unfavorable to Great Britain, inasmuch as there is so large a number of factories in which weaving by power is carried on in conjunction with spinning? (whilst in the table the weavers are not deducted), --and the factories abroad are chiefly spinning factories; if it were possible to compare like with like, strictly, I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district in which mules containing 2,200 spindles are minded by one man (the minder) and two assistants only, turning off daily 220 lbs. of yarn, measuring 400 miles in length. ? 5
It is well known that in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, English companies have undertaken the construction of railways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with the native labourers, a certain number of English working-men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to take into account the national difference in the intensity of labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of labour varies generally in the inverse direction.
In an --Essay on the Rate of Wages,? 6 one of his first economic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the different nations are directly proportional to the degree of productiveness of the national working days, in order to draw from this international relation the conclusion that wages everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of surplus value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if Carey himself had proved his premises instead of, after his usual uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a confused mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that he does not assert that things actually are as they ought to be according to his theory. For State intervention has falsified the natural economic relations. The different national wages must be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to the State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself. Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those --State expenses? are not the --natural? fruits of capitalistic development? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order afterwards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on the world market (an influence which, it appears, does not spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessitates State intervention, i. e. , the protection of those laws of nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection. He discovered further that the theorems of Ricardo and others, in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions are formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result of the theories of Ricardo and others! Finally he discovered that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production. A step further and he will, perhaps, discover that the one evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist heresy, to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a Bastiat, and of all the other Free-trade optimists of today.
? ? Switzerland
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 55 spindles
? ? Smaller States of Germany
? ? ? ? ? ? one person to 55 spindles
? ? ? ? Great Britain
? ? ? one person to 74 spindles
? ? ? ? 393 Chapter 22
1 --It is not accurate to say that wages? (he deals here with their money expression) --are increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article. ? (David Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith's --Wealth of Nations,? 1814, Vol. 1, p. 417, note. )
2 We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstances in relation to productivity may modify this law for individual branches of industry.
3 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith: --It deserves, likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of Labour is usually lower in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain quantity of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light, labour is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer, although the price of grain and other provisions is usually much lower in the last than in the first. . . . Labour estimated by the day is much lower in Scotland than in England. . . . Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England. ? (James Anderson, ? Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry,? &tc. , Edin. 1777, pp. 350, 351. ) On the contrary, lowness of wages produces, in its turn, dearness of labour. --Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in England . . . because the wages are so much lower.
