Section 3.- Senior's " Last Hour"
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the bel-ésprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economic "science", and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place, the political economy that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed Factory Act,[168] but against the still more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual practical acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor "wanted a good deal of finishing;" it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: "Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture." London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage:
"Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are employed, ... can be worked more than 1 ly hours a day, that is, 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.
"Now the following analysis (!) will show that in a mill so worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer to invest £100,000: — £80,000 in his mill and machinery, and £20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return ofthat mill, supposing the capital to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent., ought to be goods worth £115,000.... Of this £115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work produces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (constituting the whole £115,000) twenty, that is to say £100,000 out of the £115,000, simply replace the capital; — one twenty-third (or £5,000 out of the £115,000) makes up for the deterioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining 2-
23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half-hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, therefore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about £2,600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed — if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit would be destroyed." '
And the Professor calls this an "analysis"! If, giving credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production, i. e., the reproduction or replacement of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c, then his analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been: — Gentlemen! if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 1 fy, then, other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c, will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your workpeople will in future spend one hour and a half less time in reproducing or replacing the capital that has been advanced.— If, on the other hand, he did not believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned exclusively
1; Senior, 1. c , pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in "A Letter to Mr. Senior", & c , London, 1837 [Senior, 1. c , pp. 30-42], that they are worth no more than the so-called "Analysis". Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undying service to the English working class. He carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours worked by the "hands" in the mills.
Apart from errors in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 11-^ hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be conceived to consist of 11-^ hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of £115,000; one half-hour yields ^ x £115,000; 20 half-hours yield ^ X £115,000 = £100,000, i.e., they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain 3 half-hours, which yield ^ x £115,000 = £15,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields^ x £115,000 = £5,000; i.e., it makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i. e., the last hour, yield^ x £115,000 = £10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the last ^ of the product into portions of the working day itself.
with the relations of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw material, &c, on one side of the account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance with the calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced his wages in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis thus:
According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the amount of his labour is measured by his labour time. This you say, amounts to 1 \\ hours a day. He employs one portion of these 11^ hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and the remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he does alsolutely nothing. But since, on your assumption, his wages, and the surplus value he yields, are of equal value, it is clear that he produces his wages in 5f hours, and your net profit in the other 5-J hours. Again, since the value of the yarn produced in 2 hours, in equal to the sum of the values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 11^ working hours, of which 5f hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour but one, and 5~f, the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The last working hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary working hour, neither more nor less. How then can the spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that embodies 5 -f- hours' labour? The truth is that he performs no such miracle. The use value produced by him in one hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is measured by 5^ working hours, of which 4~f were, without any assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the remaining one hour alone is added by him. Therefore since his wages are produced in 5f hours, and the yarn produced in one hour also contains 5f hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the result, that the value created by his 5^ hours' spinning, is equal to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are altogether on the wrong track, if you think that he loses a single moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the contrary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour; bur that is only because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman produces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working hours, whether they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in that yarn, there are incorporated 1 hjf working hours, or just a whole day's work, i.e., two hours of his own work and 9^ hours of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5-f- hours, he produces his wages, an in the last 5-J hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment of labour power, I only talk your own slang. Now, gentlemen, if you compare the working time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day; this gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt, that if you make your "hands" toil for 13 hours, instead of 1 l-f, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus labour, then the latter will be increased from fjf hours' labour to ?f hours' labour, and the rate of surplus value from 100% to 126^ %. So that you are altogether too sanguine, in expecting that by such an addition of 1^ hours to the working day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words that it will be "more than doubled". On the other hand — man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse — you take too pessimist a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 11^ to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus labour will fall from 5-J hours to 4-f hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus value, namely
82
23 %• But this dreadful "last hour", about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about the day of judgment, is "all bosh". ' [6 9] If it goes, it will cost neither you, your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their "purity of mind".[1]' Whenever your "last hour" strikes in earnest, think of the Oxford Professor. And now, gentlemen, "farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but not before".[172]
Endnotes
[168] The reference is to An Act to Regulate the Labour of Children and Young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom [29th August 1833]. See this volume, pp. 284-86.-233, 282, 482
[69] The German original has here: "Herr M. Wirth" (1822-1900), German vulgar economist and publicist. On Sedley Taylor see this volume, pp. 40-42.— 88
[1] Capital—Marx's major work to which he devoted four decades (from the early 1840s till the end of his life). Marx started studying political economy at the end of 1843 in Paris. His aim was to write a treatise containing a critical analysis of political economy. As a result of his research in this field appeared such works as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labour and Capital, Manifesto of the Communist Party and others. After an interval caused by the 1848-49 revolution, Marx continued his economic studies in London, where he lived as a refugee from August 1849. Here he studied the works of different economists, the history of economic development and the economics of his time in various countries, especially in England which was then a classic example of a capitalist country. He investigated theories of money, credit and the causes of economic crises, the history of landownership and the theory of ground rent, the socio-economic condition of the working class and questions of population, the history of technology and other problems. -By 1857 he had completed his enormous preparatory work and then proceeded to the final stage — the systématisation and generalisation of the collected material. From January 1857 to June 1858, Marx wrote a manuscript containing 50 signatures, which was, in fact, the first rough draft of Capital. In the present edition it was published in vols 28 and 29. At first Marx intended to publish his work in separate instalments, and the first instalment, as he wrote, "should form a relative whole" (see present edition, Vol. 40, p. 287), which embraces only the first section of Book I — the section consisting of 3 chapters: 1) The Commodity; 2) Money or Simple Circulation and 3) Capital. However, the final variant of the first instalment — A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy — does not contain the third chapter. Marx wrote the chapter on commodity especially. He wrote the chapter on money for "the first instalment" on the basis of the manuscript of 1857-58. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One was published in 1859 (present edition, Vol. 29). It was to be followed by "the second instalment", i. e. by the chapter on capital. However, soon afterwards, Marx had to postpone this work for a year and a half as he was occupied in writing the pamphlet Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17) and in other urgent matters. Only in August 1861, did he begin work on "the second instalment". By the middle of 1863, he had written a new rough draft which was considerably longer than the manuscript of 1857-58 — 23 notebooks, having a total volume of about 200 signatures. The complete manuscript of 1861-63, which is considered to be the second rough draft of Capital, is reproduced in vols 30-34 of the present edition. Later on Marx decided to divide the theoretical part of the work on capital into 3 parts. The historico-critical section was to be the fourth and concluding part, and was to be based on the part of the 1861-63 manuscript entitled "Theories of Surplus Value". In his letter to Kugelmann dated October 13, 1866, Marx writes, "The whole work is thus divided into the following parts: Book I. The Process of Production of Capital. Book II. The Process of Circulation of Capital. Book III. Structure of the Process as a Whole. Book IV. On the History of the Theory" (see present edition, Vol. 42, p. 328). Marx also gave up his plan to publish the work in separate instalments and decided first to complete the whole work and then to publish it. Marx continued his work, concentrating mainly on those parts that were not sufficiently elaborated in the 1861-63 manuscript. He studied an enormous quantity of economic and technical literature, including books on agriculture, on credit and money and turnover. He also studied statistical material, various parliamentary documents, official reports on child labour in industry, on housing conditions of the British working class, etc. Marx then wrote a new manuscript (from August 1863 to the end of 1865), which constituted a more detailed variant of the three theoretical volumes of Capital. Only after the whole work was completed (January 1866), did Marx begin preparing it for the press, having decided, on Engels' advice, not to prepare the whole work but only Volume I of Capital. The final touches were made by Marx with great thoroughness and, in fact, became yet another recasting of Volume I of Capital as a whole. To ensure the integrity, completeness and clarity of the exposition, Marx thought it necessary to reproduce in a comparatively short form the major problems dealt with in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (published in 1859) at the beginning of Volume I of Capital—they now constitute the whole of the first part "Commodities and Money" (in the first edition which was not yet subdivided into parts the first chapter bore this title). After the publication of Volume I of Capital (September 1867), Marx continued work on it in preparation for publication in German and translation into foreign lan-guages. For the second edition (1872) he made more subdivisions and also a lot of changes in the text (see this volume, pp. 12-13), gave important instructions for the Russian edition, published in Petersburg in 1872 and the first foreign translation of Capital, once more changed the book's structure and thoroughly edited the French edition (1872-75). Marx intended to take into consideration most of the changes made in the French edition when preparing the third German edition of Volume I. At the same time, after the publication of Volume I of Capital Marx continued his work on the subsequent volumes, intending to finish the whole edition as soon as possible. However, he was unable to do so. A lot of time was taken up by his activities in the General Council of the First International, and his work was increasingly hampered by poor health. After Marx's death, Engels finished preparing the third (1883) German edition of Volume I of Capital for press, which was taken as the basis for the translation into English made by Samuel Moore and Eduard Aveling and edited by Engels (1887).— 1,311
[172] 1 ' 2 These are paraphrased lines from Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act I, Scene 2.— 237