On these an employee on the North Staffordshire line comments: --Everyone knows the
consequences
that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on
?
?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
in Factories Regulation Acts.
Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th August, 1859, pp.
4, 5.
17 Reports of the Inspector of Factories for the half year. October, 1856, p. 35. 18 Reports, &c. , 30th April, 1858, p. 9.
19 Reports, &c. , l. c. , p. 10.
20 Reports &c. , l. c. , p. 25.
21 Reports &c. , for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. See Appendix No. 2; Reports, &c. , 31st October, 1862, pp. 7, 52, 53. The violations of the Acts became more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf Reports, &c. , ending 31st October, 1863, p. 7.
22 Reports, &c. , October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against every interruption in factory
? ? 195 Chapter 10
labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury (Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept at work 5 boys between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a. m. on Friday to 4 p. m. on the following Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one hour for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of 30 hours in the --shoddyhole,? as the hole is called, in which the woollen rags are pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c. , forces even the adult workman to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protection of his lungs! The accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath -- as quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath -- that they had, in their great compassion for the unhappy children, allowed them four hours for sleep, but the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen were mulcted in ? 20. Dryden anticipated these gentry:
Fox full fraught in seeming sanctity,
That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie, That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer, And durst not sin! before he said his prayer! ?
23 Rep. , 31st Oct. , 1856, p. 34. 24 l. c. , p. 35.
25 l. c. , p. 48.
26 l. c. , p. 48.
27 l. c. , p. 48.
28 l. c. , p. 48.
29 Report of the Insp. &c. , 30th April 1860, p. 56.
30 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports.
31 --The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards on the conquest of America in the pursuit of gold. ? John Wade, --History of the Middle and Working Classes,? 3rd Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book of Political Economy, is, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts, e. g. , on commercial crises. The historical part is, to a great extent, a shameless plagiarism of Sir F. M. Eden's --The State of the Poor,? London, 1797.
32 Daily Telegraph, 17th January, 1860.
33 Cf. F. Engels --Lage, etc. ? pp. 249-51.
34 Children's Employment Commission. First report. , etc. , 1863. Evidence. pp. 16, 19, 18. 35 Public Health, 3rd report, etc. , pp. 102, 104, 105.
36 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Report, p. 24.
37 Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi.
38 l. c. , p. xlviii.
39 l. c. , p. liv.
40 This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus labour time. These gentlemen consider 101/2 hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes of course the normal surplus labour. After this begins --overtime? which is paid a little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick in order to extort more surplus labour, which it would still be, even if the labour-power expended during the normal working day were properly paid.
? ? 196 Chapter 10
41 l. c. , Evidence, pp. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 54.
42 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bearing the significant name of --bakers' stuff. ?
43 Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the buyer, 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or adulterated soot in the legal sense. The --amis du commerce? [friends of commerce] decided it to be genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition to pay the costs of the suit.
44 The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the --sophistications? of commodities, enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know all the methods and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc. Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Rouard de Card, --On the Falsifications of the materials of the Sacrament. ? (--De la falsification des substances sacramentelles,? Paris, 1856. )
45 --Report, &c. , relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers, &c. , London, 1862,? and --Second Report, &c. , London, 1863. ?
46 l. c. , First Report, &c. , p. vi.
47 l. c. , p. Ixxi.
48 George Read, --The History of Baking,? London, 1848, p. 16.
49 Report (First) &c. Evidence of the --full-priced? baker Cheeseman, p. 108.
50 George Read, l. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still denounced as --public nuisances. ? Thus the Grand Jury at the quarter session of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the Lower House which, among other things, states, --that these factors of Blackwell Hall are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put down as a Nuisance. ? --The Case of our English Wool. , &c. ,? London, 1685, pp. 6, 7.
51 First Report, &c.
52 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861. 53 l. c.
54 Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January 5th, 1866. (See Workman's Advocate, January 13th, 1866. ) The formation since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first in Scotland is a historic event. In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings. (It will be seen from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat, entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1830, and especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws, begins again in the sixties, until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume, as well as to the Blue books that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the English land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ea. )
55 Reynolds' Newspaper, January, 1866. -- Every week this same paper has, under the sensational headings, --Fearful and fatal accidents,? --Appalling tragedies,? &c. , a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes.
On these an employee on the North Staffordshire line comments: --Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on
? ? 197 Chapter 10
the look-out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: -- One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty. . . . The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: -- Wednesday. 15 hours: Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 141/2 hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88 hours 30 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6 1/4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time-keeper,. . . and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours for a goods man (i. e. , 78 hours). . . . He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last told they would give him another quarter, i. e. , 10d. ,? l. c. , 4th February. 1866.
56 Cf F. Engels, l. c. , pp. 253, 254.
57 Dr. Letheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: --The minimum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling room 500 cubic feet. ? Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London Hospitals: --With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary seamstresses, there are three miseries -- over-work, deficient air, and either deficient food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, . . . is infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade, in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists, who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to force economy out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dressmaker can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable, and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds. ? Dr. Richardson: --Work and Over-work,? in --Social Science Review,? 18th July, 1863.
58 Morning Star, 23rd June, 1863. -- The Times made use of the circumstance to defend the American slave-owners against Bright, &c. --Very many of us think,? says a leader of July 2nd, 1863, --that, while we work our own young women to death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter against families who were born slave-owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves well, and work them lightly. ? In the same manner, the Standard, a Tory organ, fell foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: --He excommunicated the slave-owners, but prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and conductors of London, &c. , work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog. ? Finally, spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, --Zum Teufel ist der Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben. ? [--In the cult of genius . . . The cult remains,? paraphrasing Schiller] In a short parable, he reduces the one great event of contemporary history, the American Civil War, to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South with all his might, because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of the South hires his by the life. (Macmillan's Magazine. Ilias Americana in nuce. August, 1863. ) Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers -- by no means for the rural -- has burst at last. The sum of all is -- slavery!
59 Dr. Richardson, l. c.
? ? 198 Chapter 10
60 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. London, 1864, pp. iv. , v. , vi.
61 --Both in Staffordshire and in South Wales young girls and women are employed on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only by day but also by night. This practice has been often noticed in Reports presented to Parliament, as being attended with great and notorious evils. These females employed with the men, hardly distinguished from them in their dress, and begrimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of self-respect, which can hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation. ? (l. c. , 194, p. xxvi. Cf. Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii. ) It is the same in glass-works.
62 A steel manufacturer who employs children in night-labour remarked: --It seems but natural that boys who work at night cannot sleep and get proper rest by day, but will be running about. ? (l. c. , Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii. ) On the importance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of the body, a physician writes: --Light also acts upon the tissues of the body directly in hardening them and supporting their elasticity. The muscles of animals, when they are deprived of a proper amount of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses its tone from defective stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to be perverted. . . . In the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during the day, and to the direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to health. Light assists in the elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the fibre after it has been laid down. It also acts as a stimulus upon the organs of sight, and by this means brings about more activity in the various cerebral functions. ? Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician of the Worcester General Hospital, from whose work on --Health? (1864) this passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr. White, one of the commissioners: --I have had opportunities formerly, when in Lancashire, of observing the effects of nightwork upon children, and I have no hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers were fond of asserting, those children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their health. ? (l. c. , 284. , p. 55. ) That such a question should furnish the material of serious controversy, shows plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-functions of capitalists and their retainers.
63 l. c. , 57, p. xii.
64 l. c. . Fourth Report (1865). 58. p. xii. 65 l. c.
66 l. c. , p. xiii. The degree of culture of these --labour-powers? must naturally be such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jeremiah Haynes, age 12 -- --Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16. A king is him that has all the money and gold. We have a king (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess Alexandra. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's son is the Princess Alexandra. A Princess is a man. ? William Turner, age 12 -- --Don't live in England. Think it is a country, but didn't know before. ? John Morris, age 14 -- --Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people was drownded but one, heard say that one was a little bird. ? William Smith age 15 -- --God made man, man made woman. ? Edward Taylor, age 15 -- --Do not know of London. ? Henry Matthewman, age 17 -- --Had been to chapel, but missed a good many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot say any others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but died like other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways, because he was religious in some ways and others isn't. ? (l. c. , p. xv. ) --The devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives. ? --Christ was a wicked man. ? --This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen. ? (--Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866? p. 55, n. 278. ) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and I of 6 hours in each week.
? ? 199 Chapter 10
In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, --seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays. ? Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours.
17 Reports of the Inspector of Factories for the half year. October, 1856, p. 35. 18 Reports, &c. , 30th April, 1858, p. 9.
19 Reports, &c. , l. c. , p. 10.
20 Reports &c. , l. c. , p. 25.
21 Reports &c. , for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. See Appendix No. 2; Reports, &c. , 31st October, 1862, pp. 7, 52, 53. The violations of the Acts became more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf Reports, &c. , ending 31st October, 1863, p. 7.
22 Reports, &c. , October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against every interruption in factory
? ? 195 Chapter 10
labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury (Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept at work 5 boys between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a. m. on Friday to 4 p. m. on the following Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one hour for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of 30 hours in the --shoddyhole,? as the hole is called, in which the woollen rags are pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c. , forces even the adult workman to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protection of his lungs! The accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath -- as quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath -- that they had, in their great compassion for the unhappy children, allowed them four hours for sleep, but the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen were mulcted in ? 20. Dryden anticipated these gentry:
Fox full fraught in seeming sanctity,
That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie, That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer, And durst not sin! before he said his prayer! ?
23 Rep. , 31st Oct. , 1856, p. 34. 24 l. c. , p. 35.
25 l. c. , p. 48.
26 l. c. , p. 48.
27 l. c. , p. 48.
28 l. c. , p. 48.
29 Report of the Insp. &c. , 30th April 1860, p. 56.
30 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports.
31 --The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards on the conquest of America in the pursuit of gold. ? John Wade, --History of the Middle and Working Classes,? 3rd Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book of Political Economy, is, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts, e. g. , on commercial crises. The historical part is, to a great extent, a shameless plagiarism of Sir F. M. Eden's --The State of the Poor,? London, 1797.
32 Daily Telegraph, 17th January, 1860.
33 Cf. F. Engels --Lage, etc. ? pp. 249-51.
34 Children's Employment Commission. First report. , etc. , 1863. Evidence. pp. 16, 19, 18. 35 Public Health, 3rd report, etc. , pp. 102, 104, 105.
36 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Report, p. 24.
37 Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi.
38 l. c. , p. xlviii.
39 l. c. , p. liv.
40 This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus labour time. These gentlemen consider 101/2 hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes of course the normal surplus labour. After this begins --overtime? which is paid a little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick in order to extort more surplus labour, which it would still be, even if the labour-power expended during the normal working day were properly paid.
? ? 196 Chapter 10
41 l. c. , Evidence, pp. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 54.
42 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bearing the significant name of --bakers' stuff. ?
43 Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the buyer, 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or adulterated soot in the legal sense. The --amis du commerce? [friends of commerce] decided it to be genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition to pay the costs of the suit.
44 The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the --sophistications? of commodities, enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know all the methods and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc. Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Rouard de Card, --On the Falsifications of the materials of the Sacrament. ? (--De la falsification des substances sacramentelles,? Paris, 1856. )
45 --Report, &c. , relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers, &c. , London, 1862,? and --Second Report, &c. , London, 1863. ?
46 l. c. , First Report, &c. , p. vi.
47 l. c. , p. Ixxi.
48 George Read, --The History of Baking,? London, 1848, p. 16.
49 Report (First) &c. Evidence of the --full-priced? baker Cheeseman, p. 108.
50 George Read, l. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still denounced as --public nuisances. ? Thus the Grand Jury at the quarter session of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the Lower House which, among other things, states, --that these factors of Blackwell Hall are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put down as a Nuisance. ? --The Case of our English Wool. , &c. ,? London, 1685, pp. 6, 7.
51 First Report, &c.
52 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861. 53 l. c.
54 Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January 5th, 1866. (See Workman's Advocate, January 13th, 1866. ) The formation since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first in Scotland is a historic event. In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings. (It will be seen from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat, entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1830, and especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws, begins again in the sixties, until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume, as well as to the Blue books that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the English land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ea. )
55 Reynolds' Newspaper, January, 1866. -- Every week this same paper has, under the sensational headings, --Fearful and fatal accidents,? --Appalling tragedies,? &c. , a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes.
On these an employee on the North Staffordshire line comments: --Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on
? ? 197 Chapter 10
the look-out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: -- One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty. . . . The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: -- Wednesday. 15 hours: Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 141/2 hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88 hours 30 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6 1/4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time-keeper,. . . and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours for a goods man (i. e. , 78 hours). . . . He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last told they would give him another quarter, i. e. , 10d. ,? l. c. , 4th February. 1866.
56 Cf F. Engels, l. c. , pp. 253, 254.
57 Dr. Letheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: --The minimum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling room 500 cubic feet. ? Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London Hospitals: --With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary seamstresses, there are three miseries -- over-work, deficient air, and either deficient food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, . . . is infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade, in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists, who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to force economy out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dressmaker can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable, and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds. ? Dr. Richardson: --Work and Over-work,? in --Social Science Review,? 18th July, 1863.
58 Morning Star, 23rd June, 1863. -- The Times made use of the circumstance to defend the American slave-owners against Bright, &c. --Very many of us think,? says a leader of July 2nd, 1863, --that, while we work our own young women to death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter against families who were born slave-owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves well, and work them lightly. ? In the same manner, the Standard, a Tory organ, fell foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: --He excommunicated the slave-owners, but prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and conductors of London, &c. , work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog. ? Finally, spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, --Zum Teufel ist der Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben. ? [--In the cult of genius . . . The cult remains,? paraphrasing Schiller] In a short parable, he reduces the one great event of contemporary history, the American Civil War, to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South with all his might, because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of the South hires his by the life. (Macmillan's Magazine. Ilias Americana in nuce. August, 1863. ) Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers -- by no means for the rural -- has burst at last. The sum of all is -- slavery!
59 Dr. Richardson, l. c.
? ? 198 Chapter 10
60 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. London, 1864, pp. iv. , v. , vi.
61 --Both in Staffordshire and in South Wales young girls and women are employed on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only by day but also by night. This practice has been often noticed in Reports presented to Parliament, as being attended with great and notorious evils. These females employed with the men, hardly distinguished from them in their dress, and begrimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of self-respect, which can hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation. ? (l. c. , 194, p. xxvi. Cf. Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii. ) It is the same in glass-works.
62 A steel manufacturer who employs children in night-labour remarked: --It seems but natural that boys who work at night cannot sleep and get proper rest by day, but will be running about. ? (l. c. , Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii. ) On the importance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of the body, a physician writes: --Light also acts upon the tissues of the body directly in hardening them and supporting their elasticity. The muscles of animals, when they are deprived of a proper amount of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses its tone from defective stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to be perverted. . . . In the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during the day, and to the direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to health. Light assists in the elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the fibre after it has been laid down. It also acts as a stimulus upon the organs of sight, and by this means brings about more activity in the various cerebral functions. ? Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician of the Worcester General Hospital, from whose work on --Health? (1864) this passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr. White, one of the commissioners: --I have had opportunities formerly, when in Lancashire, of observing the effects of nightwork upon children, and I have no hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers were fond of asserting, those children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their health. ? (l. c. , 284. , p. 55. ) That such a question should furnish the material of serious controversy, shows plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-functions of capitalists and their retainers.
63 l. c. , 57, p. xii.
64 l. c. . Fourth Report (1865). 58. p. xii. 65 l. c.
66 l. c. , p. xiii. The degree of culture of these --labour-powers? must naturally be such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jeremiah Haynes, age 12 -- --Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16. A king is him that has all the money and gold. We have a king (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess Alexandra. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's son is the Princess Alexandra. A Princess is a man. ? William Turner, age 12 -- --Don't live in England. Think it is a country, but didn't know before. ? John Morris, age 14 -- --Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people was drownded but one, heard say that one was a little bird. ? William Smith age 15 -- --God made man, man made woman. ? Edward Taylor, age 15 -- --Do not know of London. ? Henry Matthewman, age 17 -- --Had been to chapel, but missed a good many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot say any others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but died like other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways, because he was religious in some ways and others isn't. ? (l. c. , p. xv. ) --The devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives. ? --Christ was a wicked man. ? --This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen. ? (--Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866? p. 55, n. 278. ) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and I of 6 hours in each week.
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In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, --seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays. ? Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours.
