--Do you think the mines in your neighbourhood are sufficiently inspected to insure a compliance with the
provisions
of the Act?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
) --Would you prohibit the employment of women in factories also?
?
--No, I would not.
?
(n.
1734.
) --Why not?
?
--I think it a more honourable occupation for them in the mills.
?
(n.
1735.
) --Still it is injurious to their morality, you think?
?
--Not so much as working on the pit bank; but it is more on the social position I take it; I do not take it on its moral ground alone.
The
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degradation, in its social bearing on the girls, is deplorable in the extreme. When these 400 or 500 girls become colliers' wives, the men suffer greatly from this degradation, and it causes them to leave their homes and drink. ? (n. 1736. ) --You would be obliged to stop the employment of women in the ironworks as well, would you not, if you stopped it in the collieries? ? --I cannot speak for any other trade. ? (n. 1737. ) --Can you see any difference in the circumstances of women employed in ironworks, and the circumstances of women employed above ground in collieries? ? --I have not ascertained anything as to that. ? (n. 1740. ) --Can you see anything that makes a distinction between one class and the other? ? --I have not ascertained that, but I know from house to house visitation, that it is a deplorable state of things in our district. . . . ? (n. 1741. ) --Would you interfere in every case with the employment of women where that employment was degrading? ? --It would become injurious, I think, in this way: the best feelings of Englishmen have been gained from the instruction of a mother. . . . (n. 1750. ) --That equally applies to agricultural employments, does it not? ? --Yes, but that is only for two seasons, and we have work all the four seasons. ? (n. 1751. ) --They often work day and night, wet through to the skin, their constitution undermined and their health ruined. ? --You have not inquired into that subject perhaps? ? --I have certainly taken note of it as I have gone along, and certainly I have seen nothing parallel to the effects of the employment of women on the pit bank. . . . It is the work of a man. . . a strong man. ? (ns. 1753, 1793, 1794. ) --Your feeling upon the whole subject is that the better class of colliers who desire to raise themselves and humanise themselves, instead of deriving help from the women, are pulled down by them? ? --Yes. ? (n. 1808. ) After some further crooked questions from these bourgeois, the secret of their --sympathy? for widows, poor families, &c. , comes out at last. --The coal proprietor appoints certain gentlemen to take the oversight of the workings, and it is their policy, in order to receive approbation, to place things on the most economical basis they can, and these girls are employed at from 1s. up to 1s. 6d. a day, where a man at the rate of 2s. 6d. a day would have to be employed. ? (n. 1816. )
IV. Coroner's inquests. -
--With regard to coroner's inquests in your district, have the workmen confidence in the proceedings at those inquests when accidents occur? ? --No; they have not. ? (n. 360. ) --Why not? ? --Chiefly because the men who are generally chosen, are men who know nothing about mines and such like. ? --Are not workmen summoned at all upon the juries? ? --Never but as witnesses to my knowledge. ? --Who are the people who are generally summoned upon these juries? ? --Generally tradesmen in the neighbourhood . . . from their circumstances they are sometimes liable to be influenced by their employers . . . the owners of the works. They are generally men who have no knowledge, and can scarcely understand the witnesses who are called before them, and the terms which are used and such like. ? --Would you have the jury composed of persons who had been employed in mining? ? --Yes, partly. . . they (the workmen) think that the verdict is not in accordance with the evidence given generally. ? (ns. 361, 364, 366, 368, 371, 375. ) --One great object in summoning a jury is to have an impartial one, is it not? ? --Yes, I should think so. ? --Do you think that the juries would be impartial if they were composed to a considerable extent of workmen? ? --I cannot see any motive which the
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workmen would have to act partially . . . they necessarily have a better knowledge of the operations in connexion with the mine. ? --You do not think there would be a tendency on the part of the workmen to return unfairly severe verdicts? ? --No, I think not. ? (ns. 378, 379, 380. )
V. False weights and measures. - The workmen demand to be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight instead of by cubical contents of the tubs; they also demand protection against the use of false weights, &c. (n. 1071. )
--If the tubs were fraudulently increased, a man. could discontinue working by giving 14 days' notice? ? --But if he goes to another place, there is the same thing going on there. ? (n. 1071. ) --But he can leave that place where the wrong has been committed? ? --It is general; wherever he goes, he has to submit to it. ? (n. 1072. ) --Could a man leave by giving 14 days' notice? ? --Yes. ? (n. 1073. ) And yet they are not satisfied!
VI. Inspection of mines. - Casualties from explosions are not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq. )
--Our men complained very much of the bad ventilation of the collieries . . . the ventilation is so bad in general that the men can scarcely breathe; they are quite unfit for employment of any kind after they have been for a length of time in connexion with their work; indeed, just at the part of the mine where I am working, men have been obliged to leave their employment and come home in consequence of that . . . some of them have been out of work for weeks just in consequence of the bad state of the ventilation where there is not explosive gas . . . there is plenty of air generally in the main courses, yet pains are not taken to get air into the workings where men are working. ? --Why do you not apply to the inspector? ? --To tell the truth there are many men who are timid on that point; there have been cases of men being sacrificed and losing their employment in consequence of applying to the inspector. ? --Why is he a marked man for having complained? ? --Yes. . . . . . And he finds it difficult to get employment in another mine? ? --Yes. ?
--Do you think the mines in your neighbourhood are sufficiently inspected to insure a compliance with the provisions of the Act? ? --No; they are not inspected at all . . . the inspector has been down just once in the pit, and it has been going seven years. . . . In the district to which I belong there are not a sufficient number of inspectors. We have one old man more than 70 years of age to inspect more than 130 collieries. ? --You wish to have a class of sub- inspectors? ? --Yes. ? (ns. 234, 241, 251, 254, 274, 275, 554, 276, 293. ) --But do you think it would be possible for Government to maintain such an army of inspectors as would be necessary to do all that you want them to do, without information from the men? ? --No, I should think it would be next to impossible. . . . ? --It would be desirable the inspectors should come oftener? ? --Yes, and without being sent for. ? (n. 280, 277. ) --Do you not think that the effect of having these inspectors examining the collieries so frequently would be to shift the responsibility (! ) of supplying proper ventilation from the owners of the collieries to the Government officials? ? --No, I do not think that, I think that they should make it their business to enforce the Acts which are already in existence. ? (n. 285. ) --When you speak of sub-inspectors, do you mean men at a less salary, and of an inferior stamp to the present inspectors? ? --I would not have them inferior, if you could get them otherwise. ? (n. 294. ) --Do you merely want more inspectors, or do you want a
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lower class of men as an inspector? ? --A man who would knock about, and see that things are kept right; a man who would not be afraid of himself. ? (n. 295. ) --If you obtained your wish in getting an inferior class of inspectors appointed, do you think that there would be no danger from want of skill, &c? ? --I think not, I think that the Government would see after that, and have proper men in that position. ? (n. 297. )
This kind of examination becomes at last too much even for the chairman of the committee, and he interrupts with the observation:
--You want a class of men who would look into all the details of the mine, and would go into all the holes and corners, and go into the real facts . . . they would report to the chief inspector, who would then bring his scientific knowledge to bear on the facts they have stated? ? (ns. 298, 299. ) --Would it not entail very great expense if all these old workings were kept ventilated? ? --Yes, expense might be incurred, but life would be at the same time protected. ? (n. 531. )
A working miner objects to the 17th section of the Act of 1860; he says,
--At the present time, if the inspector of mines finds a part of the mine unfit to work in, he has to report it to the mine-owner and the Home Secretary. After doing that, there is given to the owner 20 days to look over the matter; at the end of 20 days he has the power to refuse making any alteration in the mine; but, when he refuses, the mine-owner writes to the Home Secretary, at the same time nominating five engineers, and from those five engineers named by the mine- owner himself, the Home Secretary appoints one, I think, as arbitrator, or appoints arbitrators from them; now we think in that case the mine-owner virtually appoints his own arbitrator. ? (n. 581. )
Bourgeois examiner, himself a mine-owner:
--But . . . is this a merely speculative objection? ? (n. 586. ) --Then you have a very poor opinion of the integrity of mining engineers? ? --It is most certainly unjust and inequitable. ? (n. 588. ) --Do not mining engineers possess a sort of public character, and do not you think that they are above making such a partial decision as you apprehend? ? --I do not wish to answer such a question as that with respect to the personal character of those men. I believe that in many cases they would act very partially indeed, and that it ought not to be in their hands to do so, where men's lives are at stake. ? (n. 589. )
This same bourgeois is not ashamed to put this question: --Do you not think that the mine-owner also suffers loss from an explosion? ? Finally, --Are not you workmen in Lancashire able to take care of your own interests without calling in the Government to help you? ? --No. ? (n. 1042. )
In the year 1865 there were 3,217 coal mines in Great Britain, and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine-owner himself calculates (Times, 26th January, 1867), that putting on one side their office work, which absorbs all their time, each mine can be visited but once in ten years by an inspector. No wonder that explosions have increased progressively, both in number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men), during the last ten years. These are the beauties of --free? capitalist production! [This sentence has been added to the English text in conformity with the 4th German edition. - Ed. ]
The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in mines, and makes exploiters and owners, to a certain extent, responsible for so-called accidents.
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The Royal Commission appointed in 1867 to inquire into the employment in agriculture of children, young persons, and women, has published some very important reports. Several attempts to apply the principles of the Factory Acts, but in a modified form, to agriculture have been made, but have so far resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw attention to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards the general application of those principles.
If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades for the purpose of protecting the working-class both in mind and body has become inevitable, on the other hand, as we have already pointed out, that extension hastens on the general conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a few combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the exclusive predominance of the factory system. It destroys both the ancient and the transitional forms, behind which the dominion of capital is still in part concealed, and replaces them by the direct and open sway of capital; but thereby it also generalises the direct opposition to this sway. While in each individual workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order, and economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limitation and regulation of the working day give to technical improvement, the anarchy and the catastrophes of capitalist production as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the competition of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of petty and domestic industries it destroys the last resort of the --redundant population,? and with it the sole remaining safety-valve of the whole social mechanism. By maturing the material conditions, and the combination on a social scale of the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one. 244
Section 10: Modern Industry and Agriculture
The revolution called forth by modern industry in agriculture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will be investigated later on. In this place, we shall merely indicate a few results by way of anticipation. If the use of machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from the injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative, its action in superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In the counties of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to 1868), while in the same period the rural population has diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely. In the United States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines replace labourers; in other words, they allow of the cultivation by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually expel the labourers employed. In 1861 the number of persons occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of agricultural machines was 1,034, whilst the number of agricultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural machines and steam-engines did not exceed 1,205.
In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage-labourer. Thus the desire for social changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old-fashioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones. Capitalist production completely tears asunder the old bond of union which held together agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz. , the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary separation. Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical
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motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i. e. , prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. 245 But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form appropriate to the full development of the human race. In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organisation of labour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and independence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. 246Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer.
1 Mill should have said, --of any human being not fed by other people's labour,? for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
2 See, for instance, Hutton: --Course of Mathematics. ?
3 --From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c. , combinations of levers and of screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the motive power, . . . all this falls under the idea of a tool; but the plough, which is drawn by animal power, and wind-mills, &c. , must be classed among machines. ? (Wilhelm Schulz: --Die Bewegung der Produktion. ? Zu? rich, 1843, p. 38. ) In many respects a book to be recommended.
4 Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i. e. , in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the
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abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.
5 Especially in the original form of the power-loom, we recognise, at the first glance, the ancient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone essential alterations.
6 It is only during the last 15 years (i. e. , since about 1850), that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-making engine, the cardsetting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for forging mule and throstle spindles.
7 Moses says: --Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn. ? The Christian philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands.
8 It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their battles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The wind-mill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests, and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind --belonged. ? The air makes bondage, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making Holland free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but the land for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6,000 horse-power were still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted into morasses.
9 It was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting engine; but, in this form, it continued to be a mere machine for raising water, and the liquor from salt mines.
10 --The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, constitutes a machine. ? (Babbage, l. c. )
11 In January, 1861, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on --The forces employed in agriculture. ? He there states: --Every improvement that furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applicable to the production of pure mechanical force.
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degradation, in its social bearing on the girls, is deplorable in the extreme. When these 400 or 500 girls become colliers' wives, the men suffer greatly from this degradation, and it causes them to leave their homes and drink. ? (n. 1736. ) --You would be obliged to stop the employment of women in the ironworks as well, would you not, if you stopped it in the collieries? ? --I cannot speak for any other trade. ? (n. 1737. ) --Can you see any difference in the circumstances of women employed in ironworks, and the circumstances of women employed above ground in collieries? ? --I have not ascertained anything as to that. ? (n. 1740. ) --Can you see anything that makes a distinction between one class and the other? ? --I have not ascertained that, but I know from house to house visitation, that it is a deplorable state of things in our district. . . . ? (n. 1741. ) --Would you interfere in every case with the employment of women where that employment was degrading? ? --It would become injurious, I think, in this way: the best feelings of Englishmen have been gained from the instruction of a mother. . . . (n. 1750. ) --That equally applies to agricultural employments, does it not? ? --Yes, but that is only for two seasons, and we have work all the four seasons. ? (n. 1751. ) --They often work day and night, wet through to the skin, their constitution undermined and their health ruined. ? --You have not inquired into that subject perhaps? ? --I have certainly taken note of it as I have gone along, and certainly I have seen nothing parallel to the effects of the employment of women on the pit bank. . . . It is the work of a man. . . a strong man. ? (ns. 1753, 1793, 1794. ) --Your feeling upon the whole subject is that the better class of colliers who desire to raise themselves and humanise themselves, instead of deriving help from the women, are pulled down by them? ? --Yes. ? (n. 1808. ) After some further crooked questions from these bourgeois, the secret of their --sympathy? for widows, poor families, &c. , comes out at last. --The coal proprietor appoints certain gentlemen to take the oversight of the workings, and it is their policy, in order to receive approbation, to place things on the most economical basis they can, and these girls are employed at from 1s. up to 1s. 6d. a day, where a man at the rate of 2s. 6d. a day would have to be employed. ? (n. 1816. )
IV. Coroner's inquests. -
--With regard to coroner's inquests in your district, have the workmen confidence in the proceedings at those inquests when accidents occur? ? --No; they have not. ? (n. 360. ) --Why not? ? --Chiefly because the men who are generally chosen, are men who know nothing about mines and such like. ? --Are not workmen summoned at all upon the juries? ? --Never but as witnesses to my knowledge. ? --Who are the people who are generally summoned upon these juries? ? --Generally tradesmen in the neighbourhood . . . from their circumstances they are sometimes liable to be influenced by their employers . . . the owners of the works. They are generally men who have no knowledge, and can scarcely understand the witnesses who are called before them, and the terms which are used and such like. ? --Would you have the jury composed of persons who had been employed in mining? ? --Yes, partly. . . they (the workmen) think that the verdict is not in accordance with the evidence given generally. ? (ns. 361, 364, 366, 368, 371, 375. ) --One great object in summoning a jury is to have an impartial one, is it not? ? --Yes, I should think so. ? --Do you think that the juries would be impartial if they were composed to a considerable extent of workmen? ? --I cannot see any motive which the
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workmen would have to act partially . . . they necessarily have a better knowledge of the operations in connexion with the mine. ? --You do not think there would be a tendency on the part of the workmen to return unfairly severe verdicts? ? --No, I think not. ? (ns. 378, 379, 380. )
V. False weights and measures. - The workmen demand to be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight instead of by cubical contents of the tubs; they also demand protection against the use of false weights, &c. (n. 1071. )
--If the tubs were fraudulently increased, a man. could discontinue working by giving 14 days' notice? ? --But if he goes to another place, there is the same thing going on there. ? (n. 1071. ) --But he can leave that place where the wrong has been committed? ? --It is general; wherever he goes, he has to submit to it. ? (n. 1072. ) --Could a man leave by giving 14 days' notice? ? --Yes. ? (n. 1073. ) And yet they are not satisfied!
VI. Inspection of mines. - Casualties from explosions are not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq. )
--Our men complained very much of the bad ventilation of the collieries . . . the ventilation is so bad in general that the men can scarcely breathe; they are quite unfit for employment of any kind after they have been for a length of time in connexion with their work; indeed, just at the part of the mine where I am working, men have been obliged to leave their employment and come home in consequence of that . . . some of them have been out of work for weeks just in consequence of the bad state of the ventilation where there is not explosive gas . . . there is plenty of air generally in the main courses, yet pains are not taken to get air into the workings where men are working. ? --Why do you not apply to the inspector? ? --To tell the truth there are many men who are timid on that point; there have been cases of men being sacrificed and losing their employment in consequence of applying to the inspector. ? --Why is he a marked man for having complained? ? --Yes. . . . . . And he finds it difficult to get employment in another mine? ? --Yes. ?
--Do you think the mines in your neighbourhood are sufficiently inspected to insure a compliance with the provisions of the Act? ? --No; they are not inspected at all . . . the inspector has been down just once in the pit, and it has been going seven years. . . . In the district to which I belong there are not a sufficient number of inspectors. We have one old man more than 70 years of age to inspect more than 130 collieries. ? --You wish to have a class of sub- inspectors? ? --Yes. ? (ns. 234, 241, 251, 254, 274, 275, 554, 276, 293. ) --But do you think it would be possible for Government to maintain such an army of inspectors as would be necessary to do all that you want them to do, without information from the men? ? --No, I should think it would be next to impossible. . . . ? --It would be desirable the inspectors should come oftener? ? --Yes, and without being sent for. ? (n. 280, 277. ) --Do you not think that the effect of having these inspectors examining the collieries so frequently would be to shift the responsibility (! ) of supplying proper ventilation from the owners of the collieries to the Government officials? ? --No, I do not think that, I think that they should make it their business to enforce the Acts which are already in existence. ? (n. 285. ) --When you speak of sub-inspectors, do you mean men at a less salary, and of an inferior stamp to the present inspectors? ? --I would not have them inferior, if you could get them otherwise. ? (n. 294. ) --Do you merely want more inspectors, or do you want a
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lower class of men as an inspector? ? --A man who would knock about, and see that things are kept right; a man who would not be afraid of himself. ? (n. 295. ) --If you obtained your wish in getting an inferior class of inspectors appointed, do you think that there would be no danger from want of skill, &c? ? --I think not, I think that the Government would see after that, and have proper men in that position. ? (n. 297. )
This kind of examination becomes at last too much even for the chairman of the committee, and he interrupts with the observation:
--You want a class of men who would look into all the details of the mine, and would go into all the holes and corners, and go into the real facts . . . they would report to the chief inspector, who would then bring his scientific knowledge to bear on the facts they have stated? ? (ns. 298, 299. ) --Would it not entail very great expense if all these old workings were kept ventilated? ? --Yes, expense might be incurred, but life would be at the same time protected. ? (n. 531. )
A working miner objects to the 17th section of the Act of 1860; he says,
--At the present time, if the inspector of mines finds a part of the mine unfit to work in, he has to report it to the mine-owner and the Home Secretary. After doing that, there is given to the owner 20 days to look over the matter; at the end of 20 days he has the power to refuse making any alteration in the mine; but, when he refuses, the mine-owner writes to the Home Secretary, at the same time nominating five engineers, and from those five engineers named by the mine- owner himself, the Home Secretary appoints one, I think, as arbitrator, or appoints arbitrators from them; now we think in that case the mine-owner virtually appoints his own arbitrator. ? (n. 581. )
Bourgeois examiner, himself a mine-owner:
--But . . . is this a merely speculative objection? ? (n. 586. ) --Then you have a very poor opinion of the integrity of mining engineers? ? --It is most certainly unjust and inequitable. ? (n. 588. ) --Do not mining engineers possess a sort of public character, and do not you think that they are above making such a partial decision as you apprehend? ? --I do not wish to answer such a question as that with respect to the personal character of those men. I believe that in many cases they would act very partially indeed, and that it ought not to be in their hands to do so, where men's lives are at stake. ? (n. 589. )
This same bourgeois is not ashamed to put this question: --Do you not think that the mine-owner also suffers loss from an explosion? ? Finally, --Are not you workmen in Lancashire able to take care of your own interests without calling in the Government to help you? ? --No. ? (n. 1042. )
In the year 1865 there were 3,217 coal mines in Great Britain, and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine-owner himself calculates (Times, 26th January, 1867), that putting on one side their office work, which absorbs all their time, each mine can be visited but once in ten years by an inspector. No wonder that explosions have increased progressively, both in number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men), during the last ten years. These are the beauties of --free? capitalist production! [This sentence has been added to the English text in conformity with the 4th German edition. - Ed. ]
The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in mines, and makes exploiters and owners, to a certain extent, responsible for so-called accidents.
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The Royal Commission appointed in 1867 to inquire into the employment in agriculture of children, young persons, and women, has published some very important reports. Several attempts to apply the principles of the Factory Acts, but in a modified form, to agriculture have been made, but have so far resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw attention to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards the general application of those principles.
If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades for the purpose of protecting the working-class both in mind and body has become inevitable, on the other hand, as we have already pointed out, that extension hastens on the general conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a few combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the exclusive predominance of the factory system. It destroys both the ancient and the transitional forms, behind which the dominion of capital is still in part concealed, and replaces them by the direct and open sway of capital; but thereby it also generalises the direct opposition to this sway. While in each individual workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order, and economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limitation and regulation of the working day give to technical improvement, the anarchy and the catastrophes of capitalist production as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the competition of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of petty and domestic industries it destroys the last resort of the --redundant population,? and with it the sole remaining safety-valve of the whole social mechanism. By maturing the material conditions, and the combination on a social scale of the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one. 244
Section 10: Modern Industry and Agriculture
The revolution called forth by modern industry in agriculture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will be investigated later on. In this place, we shall merely indicate a few results by way of anticipation. If the use of machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from the injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative, its action in superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In the counties of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to 1868), while in the same period the rural population has diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely. In the United States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines replace labourers; in other words, they allow of the cultivation by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually expel the labourers employed. In 1861 the number of persons occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of agricultural machines was 1,034, whilst the number of agricultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural machines and steam-engines did not exceed 1,205.
In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage-labourer. Thus the desire for social changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old-fashioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones. Capitalist production completely tears asunder the old bond of union which held together agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz. , the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary separation. Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical
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motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i. e. , prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. 245 But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form appropriate to the full development of the human race. In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organisation of labour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and independence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. 246Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer.
1 Mill should have said, --of any human being not fed by other people's labour,? for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
2 See, for instance, Hutton: --Course of Mathematics. ?
3 --From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c. , combinations of levers and of screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the motive power, . . . all this falls under the idea of a tool; but the plough, which is drawn by animal power, and wind-mills, &c. , must be classed among machines. ? (Wilhelm Schulz: --Die Bewegung der Produktion. ? Zu? rich, 1843, p. 38. ) In many respects a book to be recommended.
4 Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i. e. , in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the
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abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.
5 Especially in the original form of the power-loom, we recognise, at the first glance, the ancient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone essential alterations.
6 It is only during the last 15 years (i. e. , since about 1850), that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-making engine, the cardsetting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for forging mule and throstle spindles.
7 Moses says: --Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn. ? The Christian philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands.
8 It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their battles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The wind-mill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests, and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind --belonged. ? The air makes bondage, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making Holland free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but the land for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6,000 horse-power were still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted into morasses.
9 It was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting engine; but, in this form, it continued to be a mere machine for raising water, and the liquor from salt mines.
10 --The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, constitutes a machine. ? (Babbage, l. c. )
11 In January, 1861, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on --The forces employed in agriculture. ? He there states: --Every improvement that furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applicable to the production of pure mechanical force.
