14 --A Defense of the
Landowners
and Farmers of Great Britain,?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
19 He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all.
20
1 --The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working-man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day-labourer depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co- operative artisan, who in the not distant future promises to combine the artisan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters, even whilst working upon the capital of the employer. ? (John Watts: --Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies. ? Manchester, 1865, pp. 52, 53. ) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: --Facts and Fictions of Political Economists,? in which among other things he declares that --property is robbery. ? That was long ago.
2 T. J. Dunning: --Trades' Unions and Strikes,? Lond. , 1860, p. 22.
3 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage favors the masters' cheating: --A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their over-time. . . . The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person's work for 50 hours, or 5/6's of one person's labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer. ? (--Reports of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1860,? p. 9. ) --Over-working to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have in many former reports shown . . . the injury to workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages. ? (Leonard Horner in --Reports of Insp. of Fact. ,? 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9. )
4 --Wages can be measured in two ways: either by the duration of the labour, or by its product. ? (--Abre? ge? e? 1e? mentaire des principes de l'e? conomie politique. ? Paris, 1796, p. 32. ) The author of this anonymous work: G. Garnier.
5 --So much weight of cotton is delivered to him? (the spinner), --and he has to return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per
? ? 388 Chapter 21
pound for all that he so returns. If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operative procured. ? (Ure, l. c. , p. 317. )
6 --It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the workwoman is miserably disproportioned. ? (--Child. Emp. Comm. II Report,? p. 1xx. , n. 424. )
7 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: --It would be a great improvement to the system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the contract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over-working his fellows for his own benefit. ? (l. c. , p. 53. ) On the vileness of this system, cf. --Child. Emp. Comm. , Rep. III. ,? p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi, n. 13, 53, 59, &c.
8 This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e. g. , in the Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is --the selecting of a man who possesses superior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him . . . without any comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and working-power, made by the employers against the men? (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, l. c. , pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trades' Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the --highly respectable? --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
? ? ?
1 --The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working-man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day-labourer depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co- operative artisan, who in the not distant future promises to combine the artisan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters, even whilst working upon the capital of the employer. ? (John Watts: --Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies. ? Manchester, 1865, pp. 52, 53. ) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: --Facts and Fictions of Political Economists,? in which among other things he declares that --property is robbery. ? That was long ago.
2 T. J. Dunning: --Trades' Unions and Strikes,? Lond. , 1860, p. 22.
3 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage favors the masters' cheating: --A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their over-time. . . . The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person's work for 50 hours, or 5/6's of one person's labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer. ? (--Reports of Insp. of Fact. , 31st Oct. , 1860,? p. 9. ) --Over-working to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have in many former reports shown . . . the injury to workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages. ? (Leonard Horner in --Reports of Insp. of Fact. ,? 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9. )
4 --Wages can be measured in two ways: either by the duration of the labour, or by its product. ? (--Abre? ge? e? 1e? mentaire des principes de l'e? conomie politique. ? Paris, 1796, p. 32. ) The author of this anonymous work: G. Garnier.
5 --So much weight of cotton is delivered to him? (the spinner), --and he has to return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per
? ? 388 Chapter 21
pound for all that he so returns. If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operative procured. ? (Ure, l. c. , p. 317. )
6 --It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the workwoman is miserably disproportioned. ? (--Child. Emp. Comm. II Report,? p. 1xx. , n. 424. )
7 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: --It would be a great improvement to the system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the contract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over-working his fellows for his own benefit. ? (l. c. , p. 53. ) On the vileness of this system, cf. --Child. Emp. Comm. , Rep. III. ,? p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi, n. 13, 53, 59, &c.
8 This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e. g. , in the Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is --the selecting of a man who possesses superior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him . . . without any comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and working-power, made by the employers against the men? (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, l. c. , pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trades' Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the --highly respectable? --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
? ? ?
