The fact is so
astonishing
as to be almost incredible .
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
?
?
?
?
?
5.
21%
? ? ? Gasworks
? ? 126. 02%
? ? ? ? 11. 45%
? ? Railways
? ? 83. 29%
? ? ? ? ? 7. 57%
? If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of four consecutive years each, the rate of augmentation of the income increases constantly. 32 It is, e. g. , for that arising from profits between 1853 to 1857, 1. 73% yearly; 1857-1861, 2. 74%, and for 1861-64, 9. 30% yearly. The sum of the incomes of the United Kingdom that come under the income tax was in 1856, ? 307,068,898; in 1859, ? 328,127,416; in 1862. ? 351,745,241; in 1863, ? 359,142,897; in 1864, ? 362,462,279; in 1865, ? 385,530,020. 33
The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by its concentration and centralisation. Although no official statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland), they were voluntarily given in 10 counties. These statistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the number of farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so that 5,016 had been thrown together into larger farms. 34 From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than ? 1,000,000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did; and 4 from 1856 to June, 1859, i. e. , in 41/2 years. 35 The centralisation will, however, be best seen from a short analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits, exclusive of farms, &c. ), in the years 1864 and 1865. I note beforehand that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything over ? 60. These incomes liable to taxation in England, Wales and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to ? 95,844,222. in 1865 to ? 105,435,579. 36 The number of persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416, out of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003. The following table shows the distribution of these incomes in the two years:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Year ending April 5th, 1864.
? ? ? Year ending April 5th, 1865.
? ? ? Income from Profits
? ? ? ? ? Income from People
? ? ? ? Income from Profits
? ? ? Income from People
? ? Total Income
? ? ? ? 95,844,222
? ? ? ? 308,416
? ? ? 105,435,738
? ? ? 332,431
? ? of these
? ? ? ? 57,028,289
? ? ? ? ? 23,334
? ? ? ? 64,554,297
? ? ? ? 24,265
? ? ? of these
? ? 36,415,225
? ? ? ? 3,619
? ? 42,535,576
? ? 4,021
? ? of these
? ? ? ? 22,809,781
? ? ? ? ? 832
? ? ? ? 27,555,313
? ? ? ? 973
? ? ? of these
? ? 8,744,762
? ? ? ? ? 91
? ? 11,077,238
? ? ? 107
? In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,453,079 tons of coal, of value ? 16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons, of value ? 23,197,968; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons of pig-iron, of value ? 8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value ? 11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in the United Kingdom was 8,054 miles, with a paid-up capital of ? 286,068,794; in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, with capital paid up of ? 425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum
? 449 Chapter 25
of the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was ? 268,210,145; in 1865, ? 489,923,285. The following table shows the movement of the exports:
1846 ? 58,842,377 1849 63,596,052 1856 115,826,948 1860 135,842,817 1865 165,862,402 186637 188,917,563
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the Registrar-General of the British people:
--Rapidly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with the progress of industry and wealth. ? 38
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this wealth, to the working class.
--It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country,? says Gladstone, --that while there was a decrease in the consuming powers of the people, and while there was an increase in the privations and distress of the labouring class and operatives, there was at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of capital. ? 39
Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget:
--From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent. . . . In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20 per cent. !
The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible . . . this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power . . . entirely confined to classes of property . . . must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities of general consumption. While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say. ? 40
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained --poor,? only --less poor? in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class --an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,? then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, e. g. , the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter, milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means of subsistence. 41 Gladstone's next Budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus value- making and the happiness of the people --tempered by poverty. ? He speaks of masses --on the border? of pauperism, of branches of trade in which --wages have not increased,? and finally sums up the happiness of the working class in the words:
--human life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence. ? 42
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations, declares roundly:
? 450
Chapter 25
--I do not, of course, deny that money wages have been augmented by this increase of capital (in the last ten years), but this apparent advantage is to a great extent lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming dearer? (he believes because of the fall in value of the precious metals). . . "the rich grow rapidly richer, whilst there is no perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the industrial classes. . . . They (the labourers) become almost the slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe money. ? 43
In the chapters on the --working day? and --machinery,? the reader has seen under what circumstances the British working class created an --intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power? for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly concerned with the social functioning of the labourer. But for a full elucidation of the law of accumulation, his condition outside the workshop must also be looked at, his condition as to food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to concern ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the industrial proletariat, and with the agricultural labourers, who together form the majority of the working class.
But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of the working class which has forfeited its condition of existence (the sale of labour power), and vegetates upon public alms. The official list of paupers numbered in England44 851,369 persons; in 1856, 877,767; in 1865, 971,433. In consequence of the cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to 1,079,382 and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most heavily on London, created in this centre of the world market, more populous than the kingdom of Scotland, an increase of pauperism for the year 1866 of 19. 5% compared with 1865, and of 24. 4% compared with 1864, and a still greater increase for the first months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From the analysis of the statistics of pauperism, two points are to be taken. On the one hand, the fluctuation up and down of the number of paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. On the other, the official statistics become more and more misleading as to the actual extent of pauperism in proportion as, with the accumulation of capital, the class-struggle, and, therefore, the class consciousness of the working men, develop. E. g. , the barbarity in the treatment of the paupers, at which the English Press (The Times, Pall Mall Gazette, etc. ) have cried out so loudly during the last two years, is of ancient date. F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the same horrors, exactly the same transient canting outcries of --sensational literature. ? But frightful increase of --deaths by starvation? in London during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the growing horror in which the working-people hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place of punishment for misery. 45
B. The Badly Paid Strata of the British Industrial Class
During the cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged by the Privy Council with an inquiry into the conditions of nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years had led him to the conclusion that --to avert starvation diseases,? the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least 3,900 grains of carbon with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with 200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same quantity of nutritive elements as are contained in 2 lbs. of good wheaten bread, for men 1/9 more; for the weekly average of adult men and women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen. His calculation was practically confirmed in a surprising manner by its agreement with the miserable quantity of nourishment to which want had forced down the consumption of the cotton operatives. This was, in December, 1862, 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly.
In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into the state of distress of the worst- nourished part of the English working class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council,
? 451 Chapter 25
chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers, on the other, over silk-weavers, needlewomen, kid-glovers, stocking- weavers, glove-weavers, and shoemakers. The latter categories are, with the exception of the stocking-weavers, exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry to select in each category the most healthy families, and those comparatively in the best circumstances.
As a general result it was found that
--in only one of the examined classes of in-door operatives did the average nitrogen supply just exceed, while in another it nearly reached, the estimated standard of bare sufficiency [i. e. , sufficient to avert starvation diseases], and that in two classes there was defect - in one, a very large defect - of both nitrogen and carbon. Moreover, as regards the examined families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more than one-third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the average local diet. ? 46
Among the agricultural labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom, were the worst fed. 47 The insufficiency of food among the agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the women and children, for --the man must eat to do his work. ? Still greater penury ravaged the town-workers examined.
--They are so ill fed that assuredly among them there must be many cases of severe and injurious privation. ? 48
(--Privation? of the capitalist all this! i. e. , --abstinence? from paying for the means of subsistence absolutely necessary for the mere vegetation of his --hands. ? ) 49
The following table shows the conditions of nourishment of the above-named categories of purely town-dwelling work-people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith, and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives during the time of their greatest distress:
? ? Both Sexes
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Average weekly carbon
? ? ? ? Average weekly nitrogen
? ? ? Five in-door occupations
? ? ? ? 28,876 grains
? ? 1,192 grains
? ? Unemployed Lancashire Operatives
? ? ? ? ? 28,211 grains
? ? ? ? 1,295 grains
? ? ? Minimum quantity to be allowed to the Lancashire Operatives, equal number of males and females
? ? ? ? 28,600 grains
? ? 1,330 grains
? One half, or 60/125, of the industrial labour categories investigated, had absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly average of the liquid means of nourishment in the families varied from seven ounces in the needle-women to 243/4 ounces in the stocking-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain milk were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-stuffs consumed weekly varied from 73/4 lbs. for the needle-women to 111/2 lbs. for the shoemakers, and gave a total average of 9. 9 lbs. per adult weekly. Sugar (treacle, etc. ) varied from 4 ounces weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces for the stocking-makers; and the total average per week for all categories was 8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of butter (fat, etc. ) 5 ounces per
? 452 Chapter 25
adult. The weekly average of meat (bacon, etc. ) varied from 71/4 ounces for the silk-weavers, to 181/4 ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the different categories 13. 6 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult, gave the following average figures; silk-weavers 2s. 21/2d. , needle-women 2s. 7d. , kid-glovers 2s. 91/2d. , shoemakers 2s 73/4d. , stocking-weavers 2s. 61/4d. For the silk- weavers of Macclesfield the average was only 1s. 81/2d. The worst categories were the needle- women, silk-weavers and kid-glovers. 50 Of these facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health Report says:
--That cases are innumerable in which defective diet is the cause or the aggravator of disease, can be affirmed by any one who is conversant with poor law medical practice, or with the wards and out-patient rooms of hospitals. . . . Yet in this point of view, there is, in my opinion, a very important sanitary context to be added. It must be remembered that privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that as a rule great poorness of diet will only come when other privations have preceded it. Long before insufficiency of diet is a matter of hygienic concern, long before the physiologist would think of counting the grains of nitrogen and carbon which intervene between life and starvation, the household will have been utterly destitute of material comfort; clothing and fuel will have been even scantier than food - against inclemencies of weather there will have been no adequate protection - dwelling space will have been stinted to the degree in which overcrowding produces or increases disease; of household utensils and furniture there will have been scarcely any-even cleanliness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. The home, too, will be where shelter can be cheapest bought; in quarters where commonly there is least fruit of sanitary supervision, least drainage, least scavenging, least suppression of public nuisances, least or worst water supply, and, if in town, least light and air. Such are the sanitary dangers to which poverty is almost certainly exposed, when it is poverty enough to imply scantiness of food. And while the sum of them is of terrible magnitude against life, the mere scantiness of food is in itself of very serious moment. . . . These are painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of idleness. In all cases it is the poverty of working populations. Indeed, as regards the in-door operatives, the work which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is for the most part excessively prolonged. Yet evidently it is only in a qualified sense that the work can be deemed self-supporting. . . . And on a very large scale the nominal self- support can be only a circuit, longer or shorter, to pauperism. ? 51
The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the --housing of the poor. ? Every unprejudiced observer sees that the greater the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is the corresponding heaping together of the labourers, within a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the dwellings of the working-people. --Improvements? of towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, &c.
? ? ? Gasworks
? ? 126. 02%
? ? ? ? 11. 45%
? ? Railways
? ? 83. 29%
? ? ? ? ? 7. 57%
? If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of four consecutive years each, the rate of augmentation of the income increases constantly. 32 It is, e. g. , for that arising from profits between 1853 to 1857, 1. 73% yearly; 1857-1861, 2. 74%, and for 1861-64, 9. 30% yearly. The sum of the incomes of the United Kingdom that come under the income tax was in 1856, ? 307,068,898; in 1859, ? 328,127,416; in 1862. ? 351,745,241; in 1863, ? 359,142,897; in 1864, ? 362,462,279; in 1865, ? 385,530,020. 33
The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by its concentration and centralisation. Although no official statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland), they were voluntarily given in 10 counties. These statistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the number of farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so that 5,016 had been thrown together into larger farms. 34 From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than ? 1,000,000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did; and 4 from 1856 to June, 1859, i. e. , in 41/2 years. 35 The centralisation will, however, be best seen from a short analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits, exclusive of farms, &c. ), in the years 1864 and 1865. I note beforehand that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything over ? 60. These incomes liable to taxation in England, Wales and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to ? 95,844,222. in 1865 to ? 105,435,579. 36 The number of persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416, out of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003. The following table shows the distribution of these incomes in the two years:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Year ending April 5th, 1864.
? ? ? Year ending April 5th, 1865.
? ? ? Income from Profits
? ? ? ? ? Income from People
? ? ? ? Income from Profits
? ? ? Income from People
? ? Total Income
? ? ? ? 95,844,222
? ? ? ? 308,416
? ? ? 105,435,738
? ? ? 332,431
? ? of these
? ? ? ? 57,028,289
? ? ? ? ? 23,334
? ? ? ? 64,554,297
? ? ? ? 24,265
? ? ? of these
? ? 36,415,225
? ? ? ? 3,619
? ? 42,535,576
? ? 4,021
? ? of these
? ? ? ? 22,809,781
? ? ? ? ? 832
? ? ? ? 27,555,313
? ? ? ? 973
? ? ? of these
? ? 8,744,762
? ? ? ? ? 91
? ? 11,077,238
? ? ? 107
? In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,453,079 tons of coal, of value ? 16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons, of value ? 23,197,968; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons of pig-iron, of value ? 8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value ? 11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in the United Kingdom was 8,054 miles, with a paid-up capital of ? 286,068,794; in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, with capital paid up of ? 425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum
? 449 Chapter 25
of the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was ? 268,210,145; in 1865, ? 489,923,285. The following table shows the movement of the exports:
1846 ? 58,842,377 1849 63,596,052 1856 115,826,948 1860 135,842,817 1865 165,862,402 186637 188,917,563
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the Registrar-General of the British people:
--Rapidly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with the progress of industry and wealth. ? 38
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this wealth, to the working class.
--It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country,? says Gladstone, --that while there was a decrease in the consuming powers of the people, and while there was an increase in the privations and distress of the labouring class and operatives, there was at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of capital. ? 39
Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget:
--From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent. . . . In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20 per cent. !
The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible . . . this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power . . . entirely confined to classes of property . . . must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities of general consumption. While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say. ? 40
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained --poor,? only --less poor? in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class --an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,? then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, e. g. , the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter, milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means of subsistence. 41 Gladstone's next Budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus value- making and the happiness of the people --tempered by poverty. ? He speaks of masses --on the border? of pauperism, of branches of trade in which --wages have not increased,? and finally sums up the happiness of the working class in the words:
--human life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence. ? 42
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations, declares roundly:
? 450
Chapter 25
--I do not, of course, deny that money wages have been augmented by this increase of capital (in the last ten years), but this apparent advantage is to a great extent lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming dearer? (he believes because of the fall in value of the precious metals). . . "the rich grow rapidly richer, whilst there is no perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the industrial classes. . . . They (the labourers) become almost the slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe money. ? 43
In the chapters on the --working day? and --machinery,? the reader has seen under what circumstances the British working class created an --intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power? for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly concerned with the social functioning of the labourer. But for a full elucidation of the law of accumulation, his condition outside the workshop must also be looked at, his condition as to food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to concern ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the industrial proletariat, and with the agricultural labourers, who together form the majority of the working class.
But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of the working class which has forfeited its condition of existence (the sale of labour power), and vegetates upon public alms. The official list of paupers numbered in England44 851,369 persons; in 1856, 877,767; in 1865, 971,433. In consequence of the cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to 1,079,382 and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most heavily on London, created in this centre of the world market, more populous than the kingdom of Scotland, an increase of pauperism for the year 1866 of 19. 5% compared with 1865, and of 24. 4% compared with 1864, and a still greater increase for the first months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From the analysis of the statistics of pauperism, two points are to be taken. On the one hand, the fluctuation up and down of the number of paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. On the other, the official statistics become more and more misleading as to the actual extent of pauperism in proportion as, with the accumulation of capital, the class-struggle, and, therefore, the class consciousness of the working men, develop. E. g. , the barbarity in the treatment of the paupers, at which the English Press (The Times, Pall Mall Gazette, etc. ) have cried out so loudly during the last two years, is of ancient date. F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the same horrors, exactly the same transient canting outcries of --sensational literature. ? But frightful increase of --deaths by starvation? in London during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the growing horror in which the working-people hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place of punishment for misery. 45
B. The Badly Paid Strata of the British Industrial Class
During the cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged by the Privy Council with an inquiry into the conditions of nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years had led him to the conclusion that --to avert starvation diseases,? the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least 3,900 grains of carbon with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with 200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same quantity of nutritive elements as are contained in 2 lbs. of good wheaten bread, for men 1/9 more; for the weekly average of adult men and women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen. His calculation was practically confirmed in a surprising manner by its agreement with the miserable quantity of nourishment to which want had forced down the consumption of the cotton operatives. This was, in December, 1862, 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly.
In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into the state of distress of the worst- nourished part of the English working class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council,
? 451 Chapter 25
chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers, on the other, over silk-weavers, needlewomen, kid-glovers, stocking- weavers, glove-weavers, and shoemakers. The latter categories are, with the exception of the stocking-weavers, exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry to select in each category the most healthy families, and those comparatively in the best circumstances.
As a general result it was found that
--in only one of the examined classes of in-door operatives did the average nitrogen supply just exceed, while in another it nearly reached, the estimated standard of bare sufficiency [i. e. , sufficient to avert starvation diseases], and that in two classes there was defect - in one, a very large defect - of both nitrogen and carbon. Moreover, as regards the examined families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more than one-third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the average local diet. ? 46
Among the agricultural labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom, were the worst fed. 47 The insufficiency of food among the agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the women and children, for --the man must eat to do his work. ? Still greater penury ravaged the town-workers examined.
--They are so ill fed that assuredly among them there must be many cases of severe and injurious privation. ? 48
(--Privation? of the capitalist all this! i. e. , --abstinence? from paying for the means of subsistence absolutely necessary for the mere vegetation of his --hands. ? ) 49
The following table shows the conditions of nourishment of the above-named categories of purely town-dwelling work-people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith, and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives during the time of their greatest distress:
? ? Both Sexes
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Average weekly carbon
? ? ? ? Average weekly nitrogen
? ? ? Five in-door occupations
? ? ? ? 28,876 grains
? ? 1,192 grains
? ? Unemployed Lancashire Operatives
? ? ? ? ? 28,211 grains
? ? ? ? 1,295 grains
? ? ? Minimum quantity to be allowed to the Lancashire Operatives, equal number of males and females
? ? ? ? 28,600 grains
? ? 1,330 grains
? One half, or 60/125, of the industrial labour categories investigated, had absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly average of the liquid means of nourishment in the families varied from seven ounces in the needle-women to 243/4 ounces in the stocking-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain milk were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-stuffs consumed weekly varied from 73/4 lbs. for the needle-women to 111/2 lbs. for the shoemakers, and gave a total average of 9. 9 lbs. per adult weekly. Sugar (treacle, etc. ) varied from 4 ounces weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces for the stocking-makers; and the total average per week for all categories was 8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of butter (fat, etc. ) 5 ounces per
? 452 Chapter 25
adult. The weekly average of meat (bacon, etc. ) varied from 71/4 ounces for the silk-weavers, to 181/4 ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the different categories 13. 6 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult, gave the following average figures; silk-weavers 2s. 21/2d. , needle-women 2s. 7d. , kid-glovers 2s. 91/2d. , shoemakers 2s 73/4d. , stocking-weavers 2s. 61/4d. For the silk- weavers of Macclesfield the average was only 1s. 81/2d. The worst categories were the needle- women, silk-weavers and kid-glovers. 50 Of these facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health Report says:
--That cases are innumerable in which defective diet is the cause or the aggravator of disease, can be affirmed by any one who is conversant with poor law medical practice, or with the wards and out-patient rooms of hospitals. . . . Yet in this point of view, there is, in my opinion, a very important sanitary context to be added. It must be remembered that privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that as a rule great poorness of diet will only come when other privations have preceded it. Long before insufficiency of diet is a matter of hygienic concern, long before the physiologist would think of counting the grains of nitrogen and carbon which intervene between life and starvation, the household will have been utterly destitute of material comfort; clothing and fuel will have been even scantier than food - against inclemencies of weather there will have been no adequate protection - dwelling space will have been stinted to the degree in which overcrowding produces or increases disease; of household utensils and furniture there will have been scarcely any-even cleanliness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. The home, too, will be where shelter can be cheapest bought; in quarters where commonly there is least fruit of sanitary supervision, least drainage, least scavenging, least suppression of public nuisances, least or worst water supply, and, if in town, least light and air. Such are the sanitary dangers to which poverty is almost certainly exposed, when it is poverty enough to imply scantiness of food. And while the sum of them is of terrible magnitude against life, the mere scantiness of food is in itself of very serious moment. . . . These are painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of idleness. In all cases it is the poverty of working populations. Indeed, as regards the in-door operatives, the work which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is for the most part excessively prolonged. Yet evidently it is only in a qualified sense that the work can be deemed self-supporting. . . . And on a very large scale the nominal self- support can be only a circuit, longer or shorter, to pauperism. ? 51
The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the --housing of the poor. ? Every unprejudiced observer sees that the greater the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is the corresponding heaping together of the labourers, within a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the dwellings of the working-people. --Improvements? of towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, &c.
