137 The Act of 1844
certainly
--robbed?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
exploitation of labour-power.
It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on for over two years with a cynical recklessness, a terrorist energy all the cheaper because the rebel capitalist risked nothing except the skin of his --hands.
?
To understand that which follows we must remember that the Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847 were all three in force so far as the one did not amend the other: that not one of these limited the working day of the male worker over 18, and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5. 30 a. m. to 8. 30 p. m. had remained the legal --day,? within the limits of which at first the 12, and later the 10 hours' labour of young persons and women had to be performed under the prescribed conditions.
The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a part of, in many cases half of the young persons and women employed by them, and then, for the adult males, restoring the almost obsolete night-work. The Ten Hours' Act, they cried, leaves no other alternative. 113
Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals. Let us hear the Factory Inspectors.
--Since the restriction of the hours of work to ten, the factory occupiers maintain, although they have not yet practically gone the whole length, that supposing the hours of work to be from 9 a. m. to 7 p. m. they fulfil the provisions of the statutes by allowing an hour before 9 a. m. and half an hour after 7 p. m. [for meals]. In some cases they now allow an hour, or half an hour for dinner, insisting at the same time, that they are not bound to allow any part of the hour and a half in the course of the factory working day. ? 114 The manufacturers maintained therefore that the scrupulously strict provisions of the Act of 1844 with regard to meal- times only gave the operatives permission to eat and drink before coming into, and after leaving the factory - i. e. , at home. And why should not the workpeople eat their dinner before 9 in the morning? The crown lawyers, however, decided that the prescribed meal-times
--must be in the interval during the working-hours, and that it will not be lawful to work for 10 hours continuously, from 9 a. m. to 7 p. m. , without any interval. ? 115
After these pleasant demonstrations, Capital preluded its revolt by a step which agreed with the letter of the law of 1844, and was therefore legal.
The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after 1 p. m. of such children, from 8 to 13, as had been employed before noon. But it did not regulate in any way the 61/2 hours' work of the children whose work-time began at 12 midday or later. Children of 8 might, if they began work at noon, be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour; from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, 2 hours; from 5 to 8. 30 in the evening, 31/2 hours; in all, the legal 61/2 hours. Or better still. In order to make their work coincide with that of the adult male labourers up to 8. 30 p. m. , the manufacturers only had to give them no work till 2 in the afternoon, they could then keep them in the factory without intermission till 8. 30 in the evening.
--And it is now expressly admitted that the practice exists in England from the desire of mill-owners to have their machinery at work for more than 10 hours a-
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day, to keep the children at work with male adults after all the young persons and women have left, and until 8. 30 p. m. if the factory-owners choose. ? 116
Workmen and factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds, but Capital answered:
--My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, The penalty and forfeit of my bond. ?
In fact, according to statistics laid before the House of Commons on July 26th, 1850, in spite of all protests, on July 15th, 1850, 3,742 children were subjected to this --practice? in 257 factories. 117 Still, this was not enough. The Lynx eye of Capital discovered that the Act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours' work before mid-day without a pause of at least 30 minutes for refreshment, but prescribed nothing of the kind for work after mid-day. Therefore, it claimed and obtained the enjoyment not only of making children of 8 drudge without intermission from 2 to 8. 30 p. m. , but also of making them hunger during that time.
--Ay, his breast. So says the bond. ?
This Shylock-clinging118 to the letter of the law of 1844, so far as it regulated children's labour, was but to lead up to an open revolt against the same law, so far as it regulated the labour of --young persons and women. ? It will be remembered that the abolition of the --false relay system? was the chief aim and object of that law. The masters began their revolt with the simple declaration that the sections of the Act of 1844 which prohibited the ad libitum use of young persons and women in such short fractions of the day of 15 hours as the employer chose, were --comparatively harmless? so long as the work-time was fixed at 12 hours. But under the Ten Hours' Act they were a --grievous hardship. ? 119 They informed the inspectors in the coolest manner that they should place themselves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old system on their own account. 120 They were acting in the interests of the ill-advised operatives themselves, --in order to be able to pay them higher wages. ?
"This was the only possible plan by which to maintain, under the Ten Hours' Act, the industrial supremacy of Great Britain. ? --Perhaps it may be a little difficult to detect irregularities under the relay system; but what of that? Is the great manufacturing interest of this country to be treated as a secondary matter in order to save some little trouble to Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Factories? ? 121
All these shifts naturally were of no avail. The Factory Inspectors appealed to the Law Courts. But soon such a cloud of dust in the way of petitions from the masters overwhelmed the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that in a circular of August 5th, 1848, he recommends the inspectors not
--to lay informations against mill-owners for a breach of the letter of the Act, or for employment of young persons by relays in cases in which there is no reason to believe that such young persons have been actually employed for a longer period than that sanctioned by law. ? Hereupon, Factory Inspector J. Stuart allowed the so-called relay system during the 15 hours of the factory day throughout Scotland, where it soon flourished again as of old. The English Factory Inspectors, on the other hand, declared that the Home Secretary had no power dictatorially to suspend the law, and continued their legal proceedings against the pro-slavery rebellion.
But what was the good of summoning the capitalists when the Courts in this case the country magistrates - Cobbett's --Great Unpaid? - acquitted them? In these tribunals, the masters sat in judgment on themselves An example. One Eskrigge, cotton-spinner, of the firm of Kershaw,
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Leese, & Co. , had laid before the Factory Inspector of his district the scheme of a relay system intended for his mill. Receiving a refusal, he at first kept quiet. A few months later, an individual named Robinson, also a cotton-spinner, and if not his Man Friday, at all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before the borough magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introducing the identical plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four Justices sat, among them three cottonspinners, at their head this same inevitable Eskrigge. Eskrigge acquitted Robinson, and now was of opinion that what was right for Robinson was fair for Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision, he introduced the system at once into his own factory. 122 Of course, the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the law. 123
These judicial farces, exclaims Inspector Howell, --urgently call for a remedy - either that the law should be so altered as to be made to conform to these decisions, or that it should be administered by a less fallible tribunal, whose decisions would conform to the law . . . when these cases are brought forward. I long for a stipendiary magistrate. ? 124
The crown lawyers declared the masters' interpretation of the Act of 1848 absurd. But the Saviours of Society would not allow themselves to be turned from their purpose. Leonard Horner reports,
--Having endeavoured to enforce the Act . . . by ten prosecutions in seven magisterial divisions, and having been supported by the magistrates in one case only . . . I considered it useless to prosecute more for this evasion of the law. That part of the Act of 1848 which was framed for securing uniformity in the hours of work, . . . is thus no longer in force in my district (Lancashire). Neither have the sub-inspectors or myself any means of satisfying ourselves, when we inspect a mill working by shifts, that the young persons and women are not working more than 10 hours a-day. . . . In a return of the 30th April, . . . of millowners working by shifts, the number amounts to 114, and has been for some time rapidly increasing. In general, the time of working the mill is extended to 131/2 hours' from 6 a. m. to 71/2 p. m. , . . . . in some instances it amounts to 15 hours, from 51/2 a. m. to 81/2 p. m. ? 125
Already, in December, 1848, Leonard Horner had a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unanimously declared that no system of supervision could, under this relay system, prevent enormous over-work. 126 Now, the same children and young persons were shifted from the spinning-room to the weaving-room, now, during 15 hours, from one factory to another. 127 How was it possible to control a system which,
--under the guise of relays, is some one of the many plans for shuffling ? the hands' about in endless variety, and shifting the hours of work and of rest for different individuals throughout the day, so that you may never have one complete set of hands working together in the same room at the same time. ? 128
But altogether independently of actual over-work, this so-called relay system was an offspring of capitalistic fantasy, such as Fourier, in his humorous sketches of --Courses Seances,? has never surpassed, except that the --attraction of labour? was changed into the attraction of capital. Look, for example, at those schemes of the masters which the --respectable? press praised as models of --what a reasonable degree of care and method can accomplish. ? The personnel of the workpeople was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories, which themselves constantly changed and recharged their constituent parts. During the 15 hours of the factory day, capital dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes, now for an hour, and then pushed him out again, to drag him into the factory and to thrust him out afresh, hounding him hither and thither, in scattered shreds of
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time, without ever losing hold of him until the full 10 hours' work was done. As on the stage, the same persons had to appear in turns in the different scenes of the different acts. But as an actor during the whole course of the play belongs to the stage, so the operatives, during 15 hours, belonged to the factory, without reckoning the time for going and coming. Thus the hours of rest were turned into hours of enforced idleness, which drove the youths to the pot-house, and the girls to the brothel. At every new trick that the capitalist, from day to day, hit upon for keeping his machinery going 12 or 15 hours without increasing the number of his hands, the worker had to swallow his meals now in this fragment of time, now in that. At the time of the 10 hours' agitation, the masters cried out that the working mob petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours' wages for 10 hours' work. Now they reversed the medal. They paid 10 hours' wages for 12 or 15 hours' lordship over labour-power. 129 This was the gist of the matter, this the masters' interpretation of the 10 hours' law! These were the same unctuous Free-traders, perspiring with the love of humanity, who for full 10 years, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, had preached to the operatives, by a reckoning of pounds, shillings, and pence, that with free importation of corn, and with the means possessed by English industry, 10 hours' labour would be quite enough to enrich the capitalists. 130 This revolt of capital, after two years was at last crowned with victory by a decision of one of the four highest Courts of Justice in England, the Court of Exchequer, which in a case brought before it on February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that this Act itself contained certain words that rendered it meaningless. --By this decision, the Ten Hours' Act was abolished. ? 131 A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid of using the relay system for young persons and women, now took it up heart and soul. 132
But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings. The pretended Ten Hours' Act was thus simple humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension. Some of the masters themselves murmured:
--On account of the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of things altogether abnormal and anarchical obtains. One law holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire, one law in one parish of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighbourhood. The manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, the manufacturer in country districts could not find the people necessary for the relay system, still less for the shifting of hands from one factory to another,? &c.
And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all capitalists.
Under these circumstances a compromise between masters and men was effected that received the seal of Parliament in the additional Factory Act of August 5th, 1850. The working day for --young persons and women,? was raised from 10 to 101/2 hours for the first five days of the week, and shortened to 71/2 on the Saturday. The work was to go on between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. 133, with pauses of not less than 11/2 hours for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the same time for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844. By this an end was put to the relay system once for all. 134 For children's labour, the Act of 1844 remained in force.
One set of masters, this time as before, secured to itself special seigneurial rights over the children of the proletariat. These were the silk manufacturers. In 1833 they had howled out in threatening fashion, --if the liberty of working children of any age for 10 hours a day were taken away, it would stop their works. ? 135 It would be impossible for them to buy a sufficient number of children over 13. They extorted the privilege they desired. The pretext was shown on subsequent
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investigation to be a deliberate lie. 136 It did not, however, prevent them, during 10 years, from spinning silk 10 hours a day out of the blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools for the performance of their work.
137 The Act of 1844 certainly --robbed? them of the --liberty? of employing children under 11 longer than 61/2 hours a day. But it secured to them, on the other hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and 13, 10 hours a day, and of annulling in their case the education made compulsory for all other factory children. This time the pretext was
--the delicate texture of the fabric in which they were employed, requiring a lightness of touch, only to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories. ? 138
The children were slaughtered out-and-out for the sake of their delicate fingers, as in Southern Russia the horned cattle for the sake of their hide and tallow. At length, in 1850, the privilege granted in 1844, was limited to the departments of silk-twisting and silk-winding. But here, to make amends to capital bereft of its --freedom,? the work-lime for children from 11 to 13 was raised from 10 to 101/2 hours. Pretext: --Labour in silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics, and less likely in other respects also to be prejudicial to health. ? 139 Official medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the contrary,
--the average death-rate is exceedingly high in the silk districts and amongst the female part of the population is higher even than it is in the cotton districts of Lancashire. ? 140
Despite the protests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every 6 months, the mischief continues to this hour. 141
The Act of 1850 changed the 15 hours' time from 6 a. m. to 8. 30 p. m. , into the 12 hours from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. for --young persons and women? only. It did not, therefore, affect children who could always be employed for half an hour before and 21/2 hours after this period, provided the whole of their labour did not exceed 61/2 hours. Whilst the bill was under discussion, the Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament statistics of the infamous abuses due to this anomaly. To no purpose. In the background lurked the intention of screwing up, during prosperous years, the working day of adult males to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the three following years showed that such an attempt must come to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives. The Act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by forbidding the --employment of children in the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women. ? Henceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850 regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of industry that come under it. 142 Since the passing of the first Factory Act half a century had elapsed. 143
Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original sphere in the --Printworks' Act of 1845. ? The displeasure with which capital received this new --extravagance? speaks through every line of the Act. It limits the working day for children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between 6 a. m. and 10 p. m. , without any legal pause for meal-times. It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night. 144 It is a Parliamentary abortion. 145
However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in those great branches of industry which form the most characteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers, struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the legal limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a civil war of half a century, themselves referred ostentatiously to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still --free. ? 146 The Pharisees of --Political Economy? now proclaimed the discernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working
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day as a characteristic new discovery of their --science. ? 147 It will be easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable, the power of resistance of capital gradually weakened, whilst at the same time the power of attack of the working-class grew with the number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately interested in the question. Hence the comparatively rapid advance since 1860.
The dye-works and bleach-works all came under the Factory Act of 1850 in 1860;148 lace and stocking manufactures in 1861.
In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the employment of children (1863) the same fate was shared by the manufacturers of all earthenwares (not merely pottery), Lucifer- matches, percussion caps, cartridges, carpets, fustian-cutting, and many processes included under the name of --finishing. ? In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air149 and baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the former, the labour of young persons and women during the night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18, between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden. We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission, which threatened to deprive of their --freedom? all the important branches of English Industry, with the exception of agriculture, mines, and the means of transport. 150
Section 7: The Struggle for a Normal Working Day. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus value, or the extraction of surplus labour, is the specific end and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from any changes in the mode of production, which may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far as we have at present gone only the independent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our historical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry, on the other, the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play important parts, the former was to us only a special department, and the latter only a specially striking example of labour exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of the historic facts before us it follows:
First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the corresponding changes in the social relations of the producers151 gave rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the working day and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the first half of the nineteenth century simply as exceptional legislation. 152 As soon as this primitive dominion of the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that, in the meantime, not only had many other branches of production been made to adopt the same factory system, but that manufactures with more or less obsolete methods, such as potteries, glass-making, &c. , that old- fashioned handicrafts, like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic industries, such as nail-making,153 had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Legislation was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its exceptional character, or where, as in England, it proceeds after the manner of the Roman Casuists, to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory. 154
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Second. The history of the regulation of the working day in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as --free? vendor of his labour-power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working-class. As the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry, it first breaks out in the home of that industry - England. 155 The English factory workers were the champions, not only of the English, but of the modern working-class generally, as their theorists were the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital. 156 Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace to the English working-class that they inscribed --the slavery of the Factory Acts? on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving for --perfect freedom of labour. ? 157
France limps slowly behind England. The February revolution was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours' law,158 which is much more deficient than its English original. For all that, the French revolutionary method has its special advantages. It once for all commands the same limit to the working day in all shops and factories without distinction, whilst English legislation reluctantly yields to the pressure of circumstances, now on this point, now on that, and is getting lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments. 159 On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a principle that which in England was only won in the name of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently for the first time claimed as a general right. 160
In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours' agitation, that ran with the seven- leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared:
--The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained. ? 161
At the same time, the Congress of the International Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the proposition of the London General Council, resolved that --the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive. . . the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day. ?
Thus the movement of the working-class on both sides of the Atlantic, that had grown instinctively out of the conditions of production themselves, endorsed the words of the English Factory Inspector, R. J. Saunders
--Further steps towards a reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the prescribed limit strictly enforced. ? 162
It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity --labour-power? face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no --free agent,? that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it,163 that in fact the
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vampire will not lose its hold on him --so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited. ? 164 For --protection? against --the serpent of their agonies,? the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling. by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death. 165 In place of the pompous catalogue of the --inalienable rights of man? comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working day, which shall make clear --when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins. ? Quantum mutatus ab illo! [What a great change from that time! - Virgil]166
1 --A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short. ? (--An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Containing Observations on Taxes, &c. ? London. 1770, p. 73. )
2 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound? A question that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the nature of money as the --little shilling men? of Birmingham.
3 --It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest possible quantity of labour (d'obtenir du capital de? pense la plus forte somme de travail possible). ? J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil. --Traite? the? orique et pratique des entreprises industrielles. ? 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 63.
4 --An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State. . . . There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of this kingdom: particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions. ? --An Essay on Trade and Commerce, &c. ,? p. 47, and 15
5 --Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, l'e? conomie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquie? tude, pre? tend qu'il la vole. ? [If the free labourer allows himself an instant of rest, the base and petty management, which follows him with wary eyes, claims he is stealing from it. ] N. Linguet, --The? orie des Lois Civiles. &c. ? London, 1767, t. II. , p. 466.
6 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of the working day to 9 hours, their Committee published a manifesto that contained, to some extent, the plea of our worker. The manifesto alludes, not without irony, to the fact, that the greatest profit-monger amongst the building masters, a certain Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity (This same Peto, after 1867, came to an end a la Strousberg. )
7 --Those who labour . . . in reality feed both the pensioners . . . [called the rich] and themselves. ? (Edmund Burke, l. c. , p. 2. )
8 Niebuhr in his --Roman History? says very naively: --It is evident that works like the Etruscan, which in their ruins astound us, pre-suppose in little (! ) states lords and vassals. ? Sismondi says far more to the purpose that --Brussels lace? pre-supposes wage-lords and wage-slaves.
9 --One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothed, without pitying their miserable lot. There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the sick, the feeble, the aged, for woman's weakness. All must, forced by blows, work on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress. ? (--Diod. Sic. Bibl. Hist. ,? lib. 2, c. 13.
To understand that which follows we must remember that the Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847 were all three in force so far as the one did not amend the other: that not one of these limited the working day of the male worker over 18, and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5. 30 a. m. to 8. 30 p. m. had remained the legal --day,? within the limits of which at first the 12, and later the 10 hours' labour of young persons and women had to be performed under the prescribed conditions.
The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a part of, in many cases half of the young persons and women employed by them, and then, for the adult males, restoring the almost obsolete night-work. The Ten Hours' Act, they cried, leaves no other alternative. 113
Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals. Let us hear the Factory Inspectors.
--Since the restriction of the hours of work to ten, the factory occupiers maintain, although they have not yet practically gone the whole length, that supposing the hours of work to be from 9 a. m. to 7 p. m. they fulfil the provisions of the statutes by allowing an hour before 9 a. m. and half an hour after 7 p. m. [for meals]. In some cases they now allow an hour, or half an hour for dinner, insisting at the same time, that they are not bound to allow any part of the hour and a half in the course of the factory working day. ? 114 The manufacturers maintained therefore that the scrupulously strict provisions of the Act of 1844 with regard to meal- times only gave the operatives permission to eat and drink before coming into, and after leaving the factory - i. e. , at home. And why should not the workpeople eat their dinner before 9 in the morning? The crown lawyers, however, decided that the prescribed meal-times
--must be in the interval during the working-hours, and that it will not be lawful to work for 10 hours continuously, from 9 a. m. to 7 p. m. , without any interval. ? 115
After these pleasant demonstrations, Capital preluded its revolt by a step which agreed with the letter of the law of 1844, and was therefore legal.
The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after 1 p. m. of such children, from 8 to 13, as had been employed before noon. But it did not regulate in any way the 61/2 hours' work of the children whose work-time began at 12 midday or later. Children of 8 might, if they began work at noon, be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour; from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, 2 hours; from 5 to 8. 30 in the evening, 31/2 hours; in all, the legal 61/2 hours. Or better still. In order to make their work coincide with that of the adult male labourers up to 8. 30 p. m. , the manufacturers only had to give them no work till 2 in the afternoon, they could then keep them in the factory without intermission till 8. 30 in the evening.
--And it is now expressly admitted that the practice exists in England from the desire of mill-owners to have their machinery at work for more than 10 hours a-
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day, to keep the children at work with male adults after all the young persons and women have left, and until 8. 30 p. m. if the factory-owners choose. ? 116
Workmen and factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds, but Capital answered:
--My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, The penalty and forfeit of my bond. ?
In fact, according to statistics laid before the House of Commons on July 26th, 1850, in spite of all protests, on July 15th, 1850, 3,742 children were subjected to this --practice? in 257 factories. 117 Still, this was not enough. The Lynx eye of Capital discovered that the Act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours' work before mid-day without a pause of at least 30 minutes for refreshment, but prescribed nothing of the kind for work after mid-day. Therefore, it claimed and obtained the enjoyment not only of making children of 8 drudge without intermission from 2 to 8. 30 p. m. , but also of making them hunger during that time.
--Ay, his breast. So says the bond. ?
This Shylock-clinging118 to the letter of the law of 1844, so far as it regulated children's labour, was but to lead up to an open revolt against the same law, so far as it regulated the labour of --young persons and women. ? It will be remembered that the abolition of the --false relay system? was the chief aim and object of that law. The masters began their revolt with the simple declaration that the sections of the Act of 1844 which prohibited the ad libitum use of young persons and women in such short fractions of the day of 15 hours as the employer chose, were --comparatively harmless? so long as the work-time was fixed at 12 hours. But under the Ten Hours' Act they were a --grievous hardship. ? 119 They informed the inspectors in the coolest manner that they should place themselves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old system on their own account. 120 They were acting in the interests of the ill-advised operatives themselves, --in order to be able to pay them higher wages. ?
"This was the only possible plan by which to maintain, under the Ten Hours' Act, the industrial supremacy of Great Britain. ? --Perhaps it may be a little difficult to detect irregularities under the relay system; but what of that? Is the great manufacturing interest of this country to be treated as a secondary matter in order to save some little trouble to Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Factories? ? 121
All these shifts naturally were of no avail. The Factory Inspectors appealed to the Law Courts. But soon such a cloud of dust in the way of petitions from the masters overwhelmed the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that in a circular of August 5th, 1848, he recommends the inspectors not
--to lay informations against mill-owners for a breach of the letter of the Act, or for employment of young persons by relays in cases in which there is no reason to believe that such young persons have been actually employed for a longer period than that sanctioned by law. ? Hereupon, Factory Inspector J. Stuart allowed the so-called relay system during the 15 hours of the factory day throughout Scotland, where it soon flourished again as of old. The English Factory Inspectors, on the other hand, declared that the Home Secretary had no power dictatorially to suspend the law, and continued their legal proceedings against the pro-slavery rebellion.
But what was the good of summoning the capitalists when the Courts in this case the country magistrates - Cobbett's --Great Unpaid? - acquitted them? In these tribunals, the masters sat in judgment on themselves An example. One Eskrigge, cotton-spinner, of the firm of Kershaw,
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Leese, & Co. , had laid before the Factory Inspector of his district the scheme of a relay system intended for his mill. Receiving a refusal, he at first kept quiet. A few months later, an individual named Robinson, also a cotton-spinner, and if not his Man Friday, at all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before the borough magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introducing the identical plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four Justices sat, among them three cottonspinners, at their head this same inevitable Eskrigge. Eskrigge acquitted Robinson, and now was of opinion that what was right for Robinson was fair for Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision, he introduced the system at once into his own factory. 122 Of course, the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the law. 123
These judicial farces, exclaims Inspector Howell, --urgently call for a remedy - either that the law should be so altered as to be made to conform to these decisions, or that it should be administered by a less fallible tribunal, whose decisions would conform to the law . . . when these cases are brought forward. I long for a stipendiary magistrate. ? 124
The crown lawyers declared the masters' interpretation of the Act of 1848 absurd. But the Saviours of Society would not allow themselves to be turned from their purpose. Leonard Horner reports,
--Having endeavoured to enforce the Act . . . by ten prosecutions in seven magisterial divisions, and having been supported by the magistrates in one case only . . . I considered it useless to prosecute more for this evasion of the law. That part of the Act of 1848 which was framed for securing uniformity in the hours of work, . . . is thus no longer in force in my district (Lancashire). Neither have the sub-inspectors or myself any means of satisfying ourselves, when we inspect a mill working by shifts, that the young persons and women are not working more than 10 hours a-day. . . . In a return of the 30th April, . . . of millowners working by shifts, the number amounts to 114, and has been for some time rapidly increasing. In general, the time of working the mill is extended to 131/2 hours' from 6 a. m. to 71/2 p. m. , . . . . in some instances it amounts to 15 hours, from 51/2 a. m. to 81/2 p. m. ? 125
Already, in December, 1848, Leonard Horner had a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unanimously declared that no system of supervision could, under this relay system, prevent enormous over-work. 126 Now, the same children and young persons were shifted from the spinning-room to the weaving-room, now, during 15 hours, from one factory to another. 127 How was it possible to control a system which,
--under the guise of relays, is some one of the many plans for shuffling ? the hands' about in endless variety, and shifting the hours of work and of rest for different individuals throughout the day, so that you may never have one complete set of hands working together in the same room at the same time. ? 128
But altogether independently of actual over-work, this so-called relay system was an offspring of capitalistic fantasy, such as Fourier, in his humorous sketches of --Courses Seances,? has never surpassed, except that the --attraction of labour? was changed into the attraction of capital. Look, for example, at those schemes of the masters which the --respectable? press praised as models of --what a reasonable degree of care and method can accomplish. ? The personnel of the workpeople was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories, which themselves constantly changed and recharged their constituent parts. During the 15 hours of the factory day, capital dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes, now for an hour, and then pushed him out again, to drag him into the factory and to thrust him out afresh, hounding him hither and thither, in scattered shreds of
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time, without ever losing hold of him until the full 10 hours' work was done. As on the stage, the same persons had to appear in turns in the different scenes of the different acts. But as an actor during the whole course of the play belongs to the stage, so the operatives, during 15 hours, belonged to the factory, without reckoning the time for going and coming. Thus the hours of rest were turned into hours of enforced idleness, which drove the youths to the pot-house, and the girls to the brothel. At every new trick that the capitalist, from day to day, hit upon for keeping his machinery going 12 or 15 hours without increasing the number of his hands, the worker had to swallow his meals now in this fragment of time, now in that. At the time of the 10 hours' agitation, the masters cried out that the working mob petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours' wages for 10 hours' work. Now they reversed the medal. They paid 10 hours' wages for 12 or 15 hours' lordship over labour-power. 129 This was the gist of the matter, this the masters' interpretation of the 10 hours' law! These were the same unctuous Free-traders, perspiring with the love of humanity, who for full 10 years, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, had preached to the operatives, by a reckoning of pounds, shillings, and pence, that with free importation of corn, and with the means possessed by English industry, 10 hours' labour would be quite enough to enrich the capitalists. 130 This revolt of capital, after two years was at last crowned with victory by a decision of one of the four highest Courts of Justice in England, the Court of Exchequer, which in a case brought before it on February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that this Act itself contained certain words that rendered it meaningless. --By this decision, the Ten Hours' Act was abolished. ? 131 A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid of using the relay system for young persons and women, now took it up heart and soul. 132
But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings. The pretended Ten Hours' Act was thus simple humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension. Some of the masters themselves murmured:
--On account of the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of things altogether abnormal and anarchical obtains. One law holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire, one law in one parish of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighbourhood. The manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, the manufacturer in country districts could not find the people necessary for the relay system, still less for the shifting of hands from one factory to another,? &c.
And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all capitalists.
Under these circumstances a compromise between masters and men was effected that received the seal of Parliament in the additional Factory Act of August 5th, 1850. The working day for --young persons and women,? was raised from 10 to 101/2 hours for the first five days of the week, and shortened to 71/2 on the Saturday. The work was to go on between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. 133, with pauses of not less than 11/2 hours for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the same time for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844. By this an end was put to the relay system once for all. 134 For children's labour, the Act of 1844 remained in force.
One set of masters, this time as before, secured to itself special seigneurial rights over the children of the proletariat. These were the silk manufacturers. In 1833 they had howled out in threatening fashion, --if the liberty of working children of any age for 10 hours a day were taken away, it would stop their works. ? 135 It would be impossible for them to buy a sufficient number of children over 13. They extorted the privilege they desired. The pretext was shown on subsequent
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investigation to be a deliberate lie. 136 It did not, however, prevent them, during 10 years, from spinning silk 10 hours a day out of the blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools for the performance of their work.
137 The Act of 1844 certainly --robbed? them of the --liberty? of employing children under 11 longer than 61/2 hours a day. But it secured to them, on the other hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and 13, 10 hours a day, and of annulling in their case the education made compulsory for all other factory children. This time the pretext was
--the delicate texture of the fabric in which they were employed, requiring a lightness of touch, only to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories. ? 138
The children were slaughtered out-and-out for the sake of their delicate fingers, as in Southern Russia the horned cattle for the sake of their hide and tallow. At length, in 1850, the privilege granted in 1844, was limited to the departments of silk-twisting and silk-winding. But here, to make amends to capital bereft of its --freedom,? the work-lime for children from 11 to 13 was raised from 10 to 101/2 hours. Pretext: --Labour in silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics, and less likely in other respects also to be prejudicial to health. ? 139 Official medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the contrary,
--the average death-rate is exceedingly high in the silk districts and amongst the female part of the population is higher even than it is in the cotton districts of Lancashire. ? 140
Despite the protests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every 6 months, the mischief continues to this hour. 141
The Act of 1850 changed the 15 hours' time from 6 a. m. to 8. 30 p. m. , into the 12 hours from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. for --young persons and women? only. It did not, therefore, affect children who could always be employed for half an hour before and 21/2 hours after this period, provided the whole of their labour did not exceed 61/2 hours. Whilst the bill was under discussion, the Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament statistics of the infamous abuses due to this anomaly. To no purpose. In the background lurked the intention of screwing up, during prosperous years, the working day of adult males to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the three following years showed that such an attempt must come to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives. The Act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by forbidding the --employment of children in the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women. ? Henceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850 regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of industry that come under it. 142 Since the passing of the first Factory Act half a century had elapsed. 143
Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original sphere in the --Printworks' Act of 1845. ? The displeasure with which capital received this new --extravagance? speaks through every line of the Act. It limits the working day for children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between 6 a. m. and 10 p. m. , without any legal pause for meal-times. It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night. 144 It is a Parliamentary abortion. 145
However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in those great branches of industry which form the most characteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers, struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the legal limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a civil war of half a century, themselves referred ostentatiously to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still --free. ? 146 The Pharisees of --Political Economy? now proclaimed the discernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working
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day as a characteristic new discovery of their --science. ? 147 It will be easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable, the power of resistance of capital gradually weakened, whilst at the same time the power of attack of the working-class grew with the number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately interested in the question. Hence the comparatively rapid advance since 1860.
The dye-works and bleach-works all came under the Factory Act of 1850 in 1860;148 lace and stocking manufactures in 1861.
In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the employment of children (1863) the same fate was shared by the manufacturers of all earthenwares (not merely pottery), Lucifer- matches, percussion caps, cartridges, carpets, fustian-cutting, and many processes included under the name of --finishing. ? In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air149 and baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the former, the labour of young persons and women during the night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18, between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden. We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission, which threatened to deprive of their --freedom? all the important branches of English Industry, with the exception of agriculture, mines, and the means of transport. 150
Section 7: The Struggle for a Normal Working Day. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus value, or the extraction of surplus labour, is the specific end and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from any changes in the mode of production, which may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far as we have at present gone only the independent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our historical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry, on the other, the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play important parts, the former was to us only a special department, and the latter only a specially striking example of labour exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of the historic facts before us it follows:
First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the corresponding changes in the social relations of the producers151 gave rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the working day and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the first half of the nineteenth century simply as exceptional legislation. 152 As soon as this primitive dominion of the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that, in the meantime, not only had many other branches of production been made to adopt the same factory system, but that manufactures with more or less obsolete methods, such as potteries, glass-making, &c. , that old- fashioned handicrafts, like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic industries, such as nail-making,153 had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Legislation was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its exceptional character, or where, as in England, it proceeds after the manner of the Roman Casuists, to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory. 154
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Second. The history of the regulation of the working day in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as --free? vendor of his labour-power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working-class. As the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry, it first breaks out in the home of that industry - England. 155 The English factory workers were the champions, not only of the English, but of the modern working-class generally, as their theorists were the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital. 156 Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace to the English working-class that they inscribed --the slavery of the Factory Acts? on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving for --perfect freedom of labour. ? 157
France limps slowly behind England. The February revolution was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours' law,158 which is much more deficient than its English original. For all that, the French revolutionary method has its special advantages. It once for all commands the same limit to the working day in all shops and factories without distinction, whilst English legislation reluctantly yields to the pressure of circumstances, now on this point, now on that, and is getting lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments. 159 On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a principle that which in England was only won in the name of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently for the first time claimed as a general right. 160
In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours' agitation, that ran with the seven- leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared:
--The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained. ? 161
At the same time, the Congress of the International Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the proposition of the London General Council, resolved that --the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive. . . the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day. ?
Thus the movement of the working-class on both sides of the Atlantic, that had grown instinctively out of the conditions of production themselves, endorsed the words of the English Factory Inspector, R. J. Saunders
--Further steps towards a reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the prescribed limit strictly enforced. ? 162
It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity --labour-power? face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no --free agent,? that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it,163 that in fact the
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vampire will not lose its hold on him --so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited. ? 164 For --protection? against --the serpent of their agonies,? the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling. by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death. 165 In place of the pompous catalogue of the --inalienable rights of man? comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working day, which shall make clear --when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins. ? Quantum mutatus ab illo! [What a great change from that time! - Virgil]166
1 --A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short. ? (--An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Containing Observations on Taxes, &c. ? London. 1770, p. 73. )
2 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound? A question that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the nature of money as the --little shilling men? of Birmingham.
3 --It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest possible quantity of labour (d'obtenir du capital de? pense la plus forte somme de travail possible). ? J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil. --Traite? the? orique et pratique des entreprises industrielles. ? 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 63.
4 --An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State. . . . There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of this kingdom: particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions. ? --An Essay on Trade and Commerce, &c. ,? p. 47, and 15
5 --Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, l'e? conomie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquie? tude, pre? tend qu'il la vole. ? [If the free labourer allows himself an instant of rest, the base and petty management, which follows him with wary eyes, claims he is stealing from it. ] N. Linguet, --The? orie des Lois Civiles. &c. ? London, 1767, t. II. , p. 466.
6 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of the working day to 9 hours, their Committee published a manifesto that contained, to some extent, the plea of our worker. The manifesto alludes, not without irony, to the fact, that the greatest profit-monger amongst the building masters, a certain Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity (This same Peto, after 1867, came to an end a la Strousberg. )
7 --Those who labour . . . in reality feed both the pensioners . . . [called the rich] and themselves. ? (Edmund Burke, l. c. , p. 2. )
8 Niebuhr in his --Roman History? says very naively: --It is evident that works like the Etruscan, which in their ruins astound us, pre-suppose in little (! ) states lords and vassals. ? Sismondi says far more to the purpose that --Brussels lace? pre-supposes wage-lords and wage-slaves.
9 --One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothed, without pitying their miserable lot. There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the sick, the feeble, the aged, for woman's weakness. All must, forced by blows, work on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress. ? (--Diod. Sic. Bibl. Hist. ,? lib. 2, c. 13.
