The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and
children
into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
3
? ? 2
? ? Children.
? ? ? ? 5
? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? 4
? ? ? ? ? ? 4
? ? ? ? 2
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? 0
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? ? 4
? ? ? Number of Persons.
? ? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? ? 7
? ? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? 9
? ? ? ? ? 4
? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? ? 5
? ? ? ? 2
? ? . 5
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? (9. ) Kent
Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches:
(10. ) Northamptonshire
Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the winter 2030 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half- starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar dialect, --the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at them. ?
At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet fever, &c. ; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of 8 and 9 adults respectively.
(11. ) Wiltshire
Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom. Pentill, in the same parish: a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the roof of worn-out thatch.
(12. ) Worcestershire
House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851 to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4. 2 to 4. 6.
Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers declare that the cots are --a great nuisance here, because they bring the poor. ? On the statement of one gentleman:
--The poor are none the better for them; if you build 500 they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the more they want?
(according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on --the means of housing? ). Dr. Hunter remarks:
? ? ? Kitchen:
? ? ? 9 ft. 5 by 8 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6
? ? ? Scullery:
? ? ? ? 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft. 6 by 6 ft. 6
? ? ? ? ? Bedroom:
? ? ? 8 ft. 5 by 5 ft. 10 by 6 ft. 3
? ? ? ? Bedroom:
? ? 8 ft. 3 by 8 ft. 4 by 6 ft. 3
? ? 474 Chapter 25
--Now these poor must come from somewhere, and as there is no particular attraction, such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from some other unfit place, which will send them here. If each could find an allotment near his work, he would not prefer Badsey, where he pays for his scrap of ground twice as much as the farmer pays for his. ?
The continual emigration to the towns, the continual formation of surplus population in the country through the concentration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, machinery, &c. , and the continual eviction of the agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its --relative surplus population,? the greater is their pressure on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute excess of the agricultural population over the means for housing it, the greater, therefore, in the villages is the local surplus population and the most pestilential packing together of human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scattered little villages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible draining of men from the surface of the land. The continuous superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite of their diminishing number and the increasing mass of their products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miserable housing which breaks down their last power of resistance. and makes them more slaves of the landed proprietors and the farmers. 107 Thus the minimum of wages becomes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its constant --relative surplus population,? is at the same time underpopulated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c. , is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. 108 --Hence we find in the official documents contradictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and excess of labour simultaneously.
The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new means of making a surplus population of the male agricultural labourer and of keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this vicious circle - the so-called gang-system, to which I must briefly return here. 109
The gang system obtains almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve us as an example. A large part of this county is new land, marsh formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has worked wonders in the way of drainage. What were once fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by human endeavour, as in the island of Axholme and other parishes on the banks of the Trent. In proportion as the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound along the sides of the hills. There alone had the population formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter-time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400- 1,000 acres (they are called --confined labourers? ) are solely employed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and carried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an average, scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e. g. , gave evidence before the Commission of Inquiry:
? 475
Chapter 25
--I farm 320 acres, all arable land. I have not one cottage on my farm. I have only one labourer on my farm now. I have four horsemen lodging about. We get light work done by gangs. ? 110
The soil requires much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain processes of manuring, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs, or organised bands that dwell in the open villages.
The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and children of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the gang master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, generally what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but with a dash of enterprise and savoir-faire. He is the recruiting-sergeant for the gang, which works under him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with the latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average is not very much above that of an ordinary agricultural labourer, 111depends almost entirely upon the dexterity with which he manages to extract within the shortest time the greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The farmers have discovered that women work steadily only under the direction of men, but that women and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force - as Fourier knew - while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to economise his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm to another, and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is, therefore, much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring families, than employment by the individual farmer, who only employs children occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets his influence in the open villages that children are generally only to be hired through his instrumentality. The lending out of these individually, independently of the gang, is his second trade.
The --drawbacks? of the system are the overwork of the children and young persons, the enormous marches that they make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the gang-master, who, in some districts is called --the driver,? is armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic emperor, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must therefore be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to himself by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey what Fourier calls --phanerogamie,? is the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Gomorrahs,112 and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang.
The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the payment and treatment of the children is worse.
The gang system, which during the last years has steadily increased,113 clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang-master. it exists for the enrichment of the large farmers, 114and indirectly of the landlords. 115 For the farmer there is no more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well
? 476 Chapter 25
below the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible amount of money 116 and of making adult male labour --redundant. ? From the exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the gang system is at the same time declared --necessary? on account of the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns. 117 The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of capitalistic production. 118
F. Ireland
In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First, the main facts of the case.
The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664; in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309; in 1866, to 51/2 millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 5/16 ths of its people. 119 Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell, from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres - i. e. , to their centralisation.
? ? ? ? ? Table A
? ? ? ? ? LIVE-STOCK
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Year
? ? ? ? ? ? ? Horses
? Cattle
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Sheep
? ? ? Pigs
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1860
? ? ? ? ? ? 619,811
? ? ? ? ? ? -
? 3,606,374
? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? 2
? ? Children.
? ? ? ? 5
? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? 4
? ? ? ? ? ? 4
? ? ? ? 2
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? ? 2
? ? ? ? 0
? ? 3
? ? ? ? ? 3
? ? ? ? 4
? ? ? Number of Persons.
? ? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? ? 7
? ? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? 9
? ? ? ? ? 4
? ? 8
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? ? 5
? ? ? ? 2
? ? . 5
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? ? ? ? 6
? ? (9. ) Kent
Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches:
(10. ) Northamptonshire
Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the winter 2030 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half- starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar dialect, --the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at them. ?
At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet fever, &c. ; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of 8 and 9 adults respectively.
(11. ) Wiltshire
Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom. Pentill, in the same parish: a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the roof of worn-out thatch.
(12. ) Worcestershire
House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851 to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4. 2 to 4. 6.
Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers declare that the cots are --a great nuisance here, because they bring the poor. ? On the statement of one gentleman:
--The poor are none the better for them; if you build 500 they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the more they want?
(according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on --the means of housing? ). Dr. Hunter remarks:
? ? ? Kitchen:
? ? ? 9 ft. 5 by 8 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6
? ? ? Scullery:
? ? ? ? 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft. 6 by 6 ft. 6
? ? ? ? ? Bedroom:
? ? ? 8 ft. 5 by 5 ft. 10 by 6 ft. 3
? ? ? ? Bedroom:
? ? 8 ft. 3 by 8 ft. 4 by 6 ft. 3
? ? 474 Chapter 25
--Now these poor must come from somewhere, and as there is no particular attraction, such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from some other unfit place, which will send them here. If each could find an allotment near his work, he would not prefer Badsey, where he pays for his scrap of ground twice as much as the farmer pays for his. ?
The continual emigration to the towns, the continual formation of surplus population in the country through the concentration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, machinery, &c. , and the continual eviction of the agricultural population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its --relative surplus population,? the greater is their pressure on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute excess of the agricultural population over the means for housing it, the greater, therefore, in the villages is the local surplus population and the most pestilential packing together of human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scattered little villages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible draining of men from the surface of the land. The continuous superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite of their diminishing number and the increasing mass of their products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miserable housing which breaks down their last power of resistance. and makes them more slaves of the landed proprietors and the farmers. 107 Thus the minimum of wages becomes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its constant --relative surplus population,? is at the same time underpopulated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c. , is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. 108 --Hence we find in the official documents contradictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and excess of labour simultaneously.
The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new means of making a surplus population of the male agricultural labourer and of keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this vicious circle - the so-called gang-system, to which I must briefly return here. 109
The gang system obtains almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve us as an example. A large part of this county is new land, marsh formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has worked wonders in the way of drainage. What were once fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by human endeavour, as in the island of Axholme and other parishes on the banks of the Trent. In proportion as the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound along the sides of the hills. There alone had the population formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter-time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400- 1,000 acres (they are called --confined labourers? ) are solely employed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and carried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an average, scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e. g. , gave evidence before the Commission of Inquiry:
? 475
Chapter 25
--I farm 320 acres, all arable land. I have not one cottage on my farm. I have only one labourer on my farm now. I have four horsemen lodging about. We get light work done by gangs. ? 110
The soil requires much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain processes of manuring, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs, or organised bands that dwell in the open villages.
The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and children of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the gang master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, generally what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but with a dash of enterprise and savoir-faire. He is the recruiting-sergeant for the gang, which works under him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with the latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average is not very much above that of an ordinary agricultural labourer, 111depends almost entirely upon the dexterity with which he manages to extract within the shortest time the greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The farmers have discovered that women work steadily only under the direction of men, but that women and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force - as Fourier knew - while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to economise his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm to another, and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is, therefore, much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring families, than employment by the individual farmer, who only employs children occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets his influence in the open villages that children are generally only to be hired through his instrumentality. The lending out of these individually, independently of the gang, is his second trade.
The --drawbacks? of the system are the overwork of the children and young persons, the enormous marches that they make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the gang-master, who, in some districts is called --the driver,? is armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic emperor, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must therefore be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to himself by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey what Fourier calls --phanerogamie,? is the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Gomorrahs,112 and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang.
The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the payment and treatment of the children is worse.
The gang system, which during the last years has steadily increased,113 clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang-master. it exists for the enrichment of the large farmers, 114and indirectly of the landlords. 115 For the farmer there is no more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well
? 476 Chapter 25
below the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible amount of money 116 and of making adult male labour --redundant. ? From the exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the gang system is at the same time declared --necessary? on account of the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns. 117 The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of capitalistic production. 118
F. Ireland
In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First, the main facts of the case.
The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664; in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309; in 1866, to 51/2 millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 5/16 ths of its people. 119 Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell, from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres - i. e. , to their centralisation.
? ? ? ? ? Table A
? ? ? ? ? LIVE-STOCK
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Year
? ? ? ? ? ? ? Horses
? Cattle
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Sheep
? ? ? Pigs
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? Total Number
? ? ? ? ? ? Decrease
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Increase
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1860
? ? ? ? ? ? 619,811
? ? ? ? ? ? -
? 3,606,374
? ? ? ? ? ?
