Section 4.- Surplus Produce
" If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of the English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets of the world, depend on "the last working hour", on the other hand, Dr. Andrew Ure showed,[170] that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of being kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory, are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world, they will be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Since 1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this "last', this "fatal hour". Thus Mr. Howell in his report of the 31st May, 1855: "Had the following ingenious calculation" (he quotes Senior) "been correct, every cotton factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year 1850" (Reports of the Insp. of Fact, for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855, p. 19). In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hours' bill," ' the masters of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoulders of a few of their workpeople. One of the clauses of this petition is as follows: "Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice." On this the factory report of 31st Oct., 1848, says: "The atmosphere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exceptionally un-pleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are unable to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term 'idling' to their own children, who, after allowing for meal times, are fettered for 10 whole hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere... These children work longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages... Such cruel talk about 'idleness and vice' ought to be branded as the pur-est cant, and the most shameless hypocrisy... That portion of the public, who, about 12 years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore, the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit, that portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds, that the original discovery of the virtues of'the last hour' has since been so far improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of the labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal hour." (See Reports [of the] Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1848, p. 101). The same report then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the ca-joling, the threats, and the falsifications, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them Senior invented the battle cry of the "last hour" in 1836." In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill.
Section 4.- Surplus Produce
The portion of the product that represents the surplus value, (one-tenth of the 20 lbs, or 2 lbs of yarn, in example given in Sec. 2) we call "surplus produce". Just as the rate of surplus value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus produce is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus value is the chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus produce.[21]
upon Parliament as the petitions of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the present status of so-called economic science, that neither Senior himself, who, at a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legislation, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false conclusions of the "original discovery". They appeal to actual experience, but the why and wherefore remains a mystery.
[11] Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from his journey to Manchester. In the "Letters on the Factory Act", he makes the whole net gains including "profit" and "interest", and even "something more", depend upon a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer [pp. 12-13]. One year previously, in his Outline of [the Science of] Political Economy, written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated Philistines, he had also "discovered", in opposition to Ricardo's determination of value by labour,[3] that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest from his asceticism, in other words, from his "abstinence" [p. 153]. The dodge was an old one, but the word "abstinence" was new. Herr Röscher translates it rightly by "Enthaltung". Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons,"(1) of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by "Entsagung"
(renunciation).
[21] "To an individual with a capital of £20,000, whose profits were £2,000 per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a 100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for £10,000 or £20,000, provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below £2,000. Is not the real interest of the The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus labour, i. e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value of his labour power, and produces the surplus value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i. e., the working day.
Endnotes
[170] A. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufacturers: or, An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain. London, 1835, p. 406.— 237
[11] 1 ' The plan outlined here was not realised by Marx. The work referred to here as Book II, was published by Engels as Volume II of Capital (1885) after Marx's death, and Book III as Volume III of Capital (1894). Book IV was not published in Marx's or Engels' lifetime. See also Note 2.— 11, 565
[3] A reference to Lassalle's work Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch der ökonomische Julian, oder: Capital und Arbeit, Berlin, 1864, Drittes Kapitel: "III. Tausch, Werth und freie Concurrenz", especially p. 149.— 8
[21] The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright. Defending the interests of manufacturers, the League secured the repeal of the Corn Laws which provided for the limitation and prohibition of grain imports, which served the interests of the landed aristocracy. The Corn Law adopted in 1815 prohibited the import of corn while the price of bread in England itself remained less than 80 sh. per quarter. In 1822 this law was slightly altered, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, according to which there was a rise in import duties on corn when its price fell on the home market and vice versa. Trying to achieve the repeal of corn laws and to establish trade in corn, the League aimed at reducing domestic prices for corn and thus at reducing wages for wage-workers.The slogan of free trade was widely used by the League in its advocacy of the unity of interests of workers and manufacturers. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.'— 15, 296, 458, 462, 667, 703