Section 3.- Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working day, the were-wolf s hunger for surplus labour in a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins,[4]' caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday.
Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, "that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilised world.... Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.... We are not surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, should stand forward and protest against discussion.... The system, as the
" 1. c, p. 48. " Report of the Insp. &c, 30th April, 1860, p. 56. [31] This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports [see Reports, &c, 31st October, 1858, pp. 48-53], Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spiritually.... What can be thought of a town which holds a public meeting to petition that the period of labour for men shall be diminished to eighteen hours a day? .... We declaim against the Virginian and Carolinian cotton-planters. Is their black-market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh more detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes place in order that veils and collars may be fabri-cated for the benefit of capitalists?" '
The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years, been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result is embodied in Mr. Scriven's Report of 1841 to the "Children's Employment Commissioners", in the report of Dr. Greenhow of 1860 published by order of the medical officer of the Privy Council [183] (Public Health, 3rd Report, 102-113), lastly, in the report of Mr. Longe of 1863 in the "First Report of the Children's Employment Commission, of the 15th June, 1863". For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860 and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children themselves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of industry by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agreeable and healthful occupation.[2]»
William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He "ran moulds" (carried ready-moulded articles into the drying-room, afterwards bringing back the empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every day in the week at 6 a. m., and left off about 9 p.m. "I work till 9 o'clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight weeks."
Fifteen hours of labour for a child 7 years old! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says: "I turn jigger, and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o'clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two nights last week."
Fernyhough, a boy of ten:
"I have not always an hour (for dinner). I have only half an hour sometimes; on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday." [3] Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the pottery districts of Stoke-on-Trent and Wolstanton is extraordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke, only 36.6% and in Wolstanton only 30.4% of the adult male population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among the men of that age in the first district more than half, in the second, nearly -\ of the whole deaths are the result of pul-monary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical practi-tioner at Hanley, says:
"Each successive generation of potters is more dwarfed and less robust than the preceding one."
In like manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean:
"Since he began to practise among the potters 25 years ago, he had observed a marked degeneration especially shown in diminution of stature and breadth."
These statements are taken from the report of Dr. Greenhow in 1860."
From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the following: Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staffordshire Infirmary, says:
"The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a degenerated population, both physically and morally. They are, as a rule, stunted in growth, ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the chest; they become prematurely old, and are certainly short-lived; they are phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit their debility of constitution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and disorders of the liver and kidneys, and by rheuma-tism. But of all diseases they are especially prone to chest-disease, to pneumonia, phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear peculiar to them, and is known as potter's asthma, or potter's consumption. Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or other parts of the body, is a disease of two-thirds or more of the potters.... That the 'dégénérescence' of the population of this district is not even greater than it is, is due to the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and [to] intermarriages with more healthy races."[2]'
Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institution, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things:
"I can only speak from personal observation and not from statistical data, but I do not hesitate to assert that my indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the avarice of either parents or employers."
He enumerates the causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the phrase, "long hours". The report of the Commission trusts that
"a manufacture which has assumed so prominent a place in the whole world, will not long be subject to the remark that its great success is accompanied with the physical deterioration, widespread bodily suffering, and early death of the workpeople ... by whose labour and skill such great results have been achieved.""
And all that holds of the potteries in England is true of those in Scotland.[2]
The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly developed in England, and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow. With it has spread the form of lock-jaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children to it, "the ragged, half-starved, untaught children".[31]
Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (1863), 270 were under 18, 40 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range of the working day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night labour, irregular meal times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufacture.
In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or further into the night.
J. Leach deposes:
the children could none of them keep their eyes open for the work; indeed, none of us could." J. Lightbourne: "Am 13 ... We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night last winter." G. Aspden: "That boy of mine ... when he was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day.... I have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop." Smith, the man-aging partner of a Manchester factory: "We" (he means his "hands" who work for "us") "work on, with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 10 -[2] hours is finished by 4.30 p. m., and all after that is over-time." " (Does this Mr. Smith take no meals himself during 10-hours?) "We" (this same Smith) "seldom leave off working before 6 p.m." (he means leave off the consumption of "our" labour-power machines), "so that we" (iterum Crispinus) ' [8 4] "are really working over-time the whole year round.... For all these, children and adults alike" (152 children and young persons and 140 adults), "the average work for the last 18 months has been at the very least 7 days, 5 hours, or 78 7 hours a week. For the six weeks ending May 2nd this year" (1863), "the average was higher — 8 days or 84 hours a week."
Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely devoted to the plu-ralis majestatis, adds with a smile, "Machine-work is not great." So the employers in the block-printing say: "Hand labour is more healthy than machine-work." On the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against the proposal "to stop the machines at least during meal-times".
"A clause", says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in the Borough, "which allowed work between, say 6 a. m. and 9 p. m. ... would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6 a. m. to 6 p. m., are not suitable. Our machine is always stopped for dinner." (What generosity!) "There is no waste of paper and colour to speak of. But," he adds sympathetically, "I can understand the loss of time not being liked."
The report of the Commission opines with naïveté that the fear of some "leading firms" of losing time, i.e., the time for appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel — as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production itself.[2]'
" This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus-labour time. These gentlemen consider 1 Cry hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes of course the normal surplus labour. After this begins "overtime" which is paid a little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick in order to extort more surplus labour, which it would still be, even if the labour power expended during the normal working day were properly paid.
No branch of industry in England (we do not take into account the making of bread by machinery recently introduced) has preserved up to the present day a method of production so archaic, so — as we see from the poets of the Roman Empire — pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the labour process; it begins by taking it just as it finds it.
The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London, was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee "on the adulteration of articles of food" (1855-56), and Dr. Hassall's work, Adulterations detected.[1]' The consequence of these revelations was the Act of August 6th, 1860, "for preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink", an inoperative law, as it naturally shows the tenderest consideration for every Free-trader who determines by the buying or selling of adulterated commodities "to turn an honest penny".[2]' The Committee itself formulated more or less naively its conviction that Free-trade meant essentially trade with adulterated, or as the English ingeniously put it, "sophisticated" goods. In fact this kind of sophist-ry knows better than Protagoras how to make white black, and black white, and better than the Eleatics ' [8 5] how to demonstrate ad oculosb
that everything is only appearance.[3]'
At all events the Committee had directed the attention of the public to its "daily bread", and therefore to the baking trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers against their over-work, &c. The cry
[1] Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bearing the significant name of "baker's stuff".
!) Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the buyer, 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or adulterated soot in the legal sense. The "amis du commerce" a decided it to be genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition to pay the costs of the suit.
[3] The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the "sophistications" of commodities, ' a [6] enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know all the methods, and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc. Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Rouard de Card, "On the Falsifications of the Materials of the Sacrament"
("De la falsification des substances sacramentelles", Paris, 1856 [pp. 89-92]).
was so urgent that Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863 [187] several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Inquiry. His report,'[1] together with the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow,[188] but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abscesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Free-trade, the free baking trade was therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of 1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the overwork in this old-fashioned, homely line of business.
"The work of a London journeyman baker begins, as a rule, at about eleven at night. At that hour he 'makes the dough',— a laborious process, which lasts from half an hour to three quarters of an hour, according to the size of the batch or the labour bestowed upon it. He then lies down upon the kneading-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which the dough is 'made'; and with a sack under him, and another rolled up as a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours. He is then engaged in a rapid and continuous labour for about five hours — throwing out the dough, "scaling it off, moulding it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up into the shop, &c, &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller bake-houses approximates usually to the higher rather than to the lower degree of heat. When the business of making the bread, rolls, &c, is over, that of its distribution begins, and a considerable proportion of the journeymen in the trade, after working hard in the manner described during the night, are upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying baskets, or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bakehouse, leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 p. m. according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature of their master's business; while others are again engaged in the bakehouse in 'bringing out' more batches until late in the afternoon.[21]... During what is called 'the London season', the operatives belonging to the 'full-priced' bakers at the West End of the town, generally begin work at 11 p. m., and are engaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning. They are then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in the afternoon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit-baking. They may have, after they have done their work, sometimes five or six, sometimes only four or five hours' sleep before they begin again. On Fridays they always begin sooner, some about ten o'clock, and continue in some cases, at work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p. m. on Saturday night, but more generally up to 4 or 5 o'clock, Sunday morning. On Sundays the men must attend twice or three times during the day for an hour or two to make preparations for the next day's bread. ... The men employed by the underselling masters (who sell their bread under the 'full price', and who, as already pointed out, comprise three-fourths of the London bakers) have not only to work on the average longer hours, but their work is almost entirely confined to the bakehouse. The underselling masters generally sell their bread ... in the shop. If they send it out, which is not common, except as supplying chandlers' shops, they usually employ other hands for that purpose. It is not their practice to deliver bread from house to house. Towards the end of the week ...the men begin on Thursday night at 10 o'clock, and continue on with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evening."'[1]
Even the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the "underselling" masters."The unpaid labour of the men was made the source whereby the competition was carried on."2) And the "full-priced" baker denounces his underselling competitors to the Commission of Inquiry as thieves of foreign labour and adulterators.
"They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages."[31]
The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the beginning of the 18th century, from the time when the corporate character of the trade was lost, and the capitalist in the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises behind the nominal master baker.[4]' Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic production in this trade, of the unlimited extension of the working day and of night labour, although the latter only since 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London.[51]
After what has just been said, it will be understood that the Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among the short-lived
[1] 1. c, p. lxxi. - George Read, The History of Baking, London, 1848, p 16. , a 9
[1] Report (First) &c. Evidence of the "full-priced" baker Cheeseman, p. 108. [4] George Read, 1. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still denounced as "public nuisances". Thus the Grand Jury ' [9 0] at the quarter session of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the Lower House which, among other things, states, "that these factors of Blackwell Hall are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put down as a Nuisance". [G. Clarke,] The Case of our English Wool, &c, London, 1685, p. 7.
labourers, who, having by good luck escaped the normal decimation of the children of the working class, rarely reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking trade is always overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply of these labour powers to London are Scotland, the western agricultural districts of England, and Germany.
In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland organised at their own expense great meetings to agitate against night and Sunday work. The public — e. g., at the Dublin meeting in May, 1860 — took their part with Irish warmth. As a result of this movement, day labour alone was successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Waterford, &c.
"In Limerick, where the grievances of the journeymen are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller bakers being the greatest opponents. The example of Limerick led to a retrogression in Ennis and Tipperary. In Cork, where the strongest possible demonstration of feeling took place, the masters, by exercising their power of turning the men out of employment, have defeated the movement. In Dublin, the master bakers have offered the most determined opposition to the movement, and by discountenancing as much as possible the journeymen promoting it, have succeeded in leading the men into ac-quiescence in Sunday work and night work, contrary to the convictions of the men." "
The Committee of the English Government, which Government, in Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones with the implacable master bakers of Dublin, Limerick, Cork, &c:
"The Committee believe that the hours of labour are limited by natural laws, which cannot be violated with impunity. That for master bakers to induce their workmen, by the fear of losing employment, to violate their religious convictions and their better feelings, to disobey the laws of the land, and to disregard public opinion" (this all refers to Sunday labour), "is calculated to provoke ill-feeling between workmen and masters, ... and affords an example dangerous to religion, morality, and social order. ... The Committee believe that any constant work beyond 12 hours a-day encroaches on the domestic and private life of the working-man, and so leads to disastrous moral results, interfering with each man's home, and the discharge of his family duties as a son, a brother, a husband, a father. That work beyond 12 hours has a tendency to under-mine the health of the working-man, and so leads to premature old age and death, to the great injury of families of working-men, thus deprived of the care and support of the head of the family when most required."[2]'
So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the ploughman, protests against his 13-14 hours' work in the most inclement climate, with 4 hours' additional work on Sunday (in this land of Sabbata-rians! [1 9 2]) ;" whilst, at the same time, three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury [1 9 0] — a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employés is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours a-day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure of holiday makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly "respectable" British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle "rider" to their verdict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour power, and more "abstemious", more "self-denying", more "thrifty", in the draining of paid labour power.2;
[1] Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January 5th, 1866. (See Workman's Advocate, January 13th, 1866.) The formation since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first in Scotland is a historic event. In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings.(It will be seen from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat, entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1830, and especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws,[193] begins again in the sixties, until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume, as well as to the Blue Books [9]
that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the English land labourers. ' [9 4] Adden-dum to the 3rd ed.)
[2] Reynolds's Newspaper, January, 1866.— Every week this same paper has, under the sensational headings, "Fearful and fatal accidents", "Appalling tragedies", &c, a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employé on the North Staffordshire line comments: "Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out. How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for duty.... The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages, sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain on Ulysses,[195] on whom — without referring to the Blue Books under their arms — we see at a glance the mark of over-work, let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves that before capital all men are alike — a milliner and a blacksmith.
In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the "sensational" heading, "Death from simple over-work". It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story,[1] was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16 [2] hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. ' [9] [6] It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26 [2] hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded -^ of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board.[2]'
15 minutes without intermission. The rest of the week's work was made up as follows:— Wednesday, 15 hours; Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 14 "[2] hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88 hours 30 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6— days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time-keeper.... and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours for a goods man (i. e., 78 hours).... He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last told they would give him another quarter, i.e., 10 d.," 1. c, 4th February, 1866.
[1] Cf. F. Engels, 1. c, pp. 253, 254 [present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 498-5001-• Dr. Letheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: "The minimum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling room 500 cubic feet." [197] Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London Hospitals: "With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary sempstresses, there are three miseries — overwork, deficient air, and either deficient food or deficient digestion.... Needlework, in the main, .... is infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade, in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists, who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to force economy out of labour. This power And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death-bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that
"Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over-crowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom".
In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that
"the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over-crowded workroom, &c."
"Our white slaves," cried the Morning Star, the organ of the Free-traders, Cobden and Bright, "our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die." ''
tells throughout the whole class. If a dressmaker can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same overwork she must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable, and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds." Dr. Richardson, "Work and Overwork", in Social Science Review, 18th July, 1863 [, p. 477].
[11] Morning Star, 23rd June, 1863.— The Times made use of the circumstance to de-fend the American slave-owners against Bright, &c. "Very many of us think," says a leader of July 2nd, 1863, "that, while we work our own young women to death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter against families who were born slave-owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves well, and work them lightly." In the same manner, the Standard [August 15, 1863], a Tory organ, feel foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: "He excommunicated the slave-owners, but prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and conductors of London, &c, work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog." Finally, spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, "Zum Teufel ist der Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben."[198] In a short parable, he reduces the one great event of contemporary history, the American Civil War,[7] to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South with all his might, because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of the South hires his by the life. (Macmillan's Magazine, Ilias Ame-ricana in nuce. August, 1863 [,p. 301]). Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers — by no means for the rural — has burst at last. The sum of all is — slavery!
"It is not in dressmakers' rooms that working to death is the order of the day, but in a thousand other places; in every place I had almost said, where 'a thriving business' has to be done... We will take the blacksmith as a type. If the poets were true, there is no man so hearty, so merry, as the blacksmith; he rises early and strikes his sparks before the sun; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man. Working in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of human positions, physically speaking. But we follow him into the city or town, and we see the stress of work on that strong man, and what then is his position in the death-rate of his country. In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults of the country in its entirety. The occupation, instinctive almost as a portion of human art, unobjec-tionable as a branch of human industry, is made by mere excess of work, the destroyer of the man. He can strike so many blows per day, walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to strike so many more blows, to walk so many more steps, to breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase altogether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort; the result is, that producing for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies at 37 for 50." '
Endnotes
[183] The Privy Council originated in England in the 13th century as the King's highest consultative body, and initially consisted of members of the feudal nobility and higher clergy. In the 17th century, as Parliament and the Cabinet established their ascendancy, the Privy Council's power declined, although formally it remains the supreme royal government body.— 252, 468, 648, 660
[84] A reference to a satirical poem by the medieval French poet Guillot de Paris, Dit du Lendit, in which the ways of the Market of Landit (or Lendit) (a big fair which took place every year not far from Paris in the 12th-19th centuries) were described.— 95
[85] Levellers—representatives of a radical-democratic trend during the English revolution of the mid-17th century. Here Marx hints at the circumstance that commodities as values are equal and in that sense reflect the ideal of the Levellers, who wanted to remove all social inequalities.— 95
[18 7] The reference is to the Children's Employment Commission. In fact, Tremenheere was a co-author of the First Report of the Commissioners..., London, 1863.— 257
[188] Genesis 3: 19.—257
[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
[51] 5 ' See K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 276 sqq.).—51
[90] The Inca State — a state which existed at the beginning of the 15th-the middle of the 16th centuries on the territories of present-day Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and the northern part of Chile, where the primitive communal order was considerably preserved. The predominant tribe of Incas was subdivided into 100 clan communes {ayllu), which gradually developed into village communes.— 98
[192] The allusion is to the fact that Sunday abstention from labour, ordered by the Puritans, is reminiscent of the Jewish Sabbath.— 260, 270
[190] The Grand Jury (Coroner's Jury)—in England until 1933 a body of from 12 to 23 jurors appointed by the sheriff from among "good and loyal persons" to make a preliminary examination of cases before the accused were brought to trial. — 258, 260
[193] A reference to the 1834 Poor Law ("An Act for the Amendment and Better Administration of the Laws Relating to the Poor in England and Wales") which permitted only one form of aid to needy able-bodied persons — their enrolment in prison-type workhouses (union houses), where they were engaged in monotonous, exhausting and unproductive labour. The people nicknamed them Bastilles for the Poor. The law was designed to compel the poor to accept hard working conditions in industry, thus increasing the supply of cheap labour.— 260, 273, 281, 434, 648, 662, 746
[94] Pandects — compendium in 50 books of Roman civil law compiled by order of Justinian in the 6th century; a complete body of laws that expressed the interests of slave-owners.—101
[195] See Homer, Odyssey, XI, 34-43, 541-42.—261
[197] See "The Workrooms of Madame Elise. To the Editor of the Star". In: The Morning Star, No. 2281, June 29, 1863; "Death in the Work-room. To the Editor of The Daily Telegraph". In: The Daily Telegraph, No. 2501, June 29, 1863. E. Lankester was an author of these notes.— 261
[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
[198] A paraphrased expression from Schiller, Kastraten und Männer, used by K. Marx and F. Engels in [Review.] Latter-Day Pamphlets, edited by Thomas Carlyle (present edition, Vol. 10, p. 302).-—262
[7] The Civil War in America broke out in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. It was a war of the North against the Confederacy of the Southern States. The decisive role in the victory of the North in April 1865 was played by the workers and farmers. The international democratic public and the international working-class movement sympathised with and gave all possible support to the position of the Northern States.—9, 207, 262, 398, 540, 720, 760
[4] Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (It is of you that the story is told) — Horace, Satires, Bk. I, Satire 1.— 8, 272
[31] See K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 3-129).—19
[2] Marx is referring to the sections "Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities" and "Theories of the Medium of Circulation and of Money" in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 292-302, 389-417), which he later abandoned as he intended to prepare a special historico-critical concluding volume of Capital (see Note 1).— 7, 532
[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
[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
[6] The American War of Independence (1775-1783) — a revolutionary war fought by 13 British colonies in North America. As a result of their victory an independent state was formed, the United States of America. This war had a great impact on the development of the European revolutionary-democratic movement, in particular on the French revolution of the end of the 18th century.—9, 748
[9] Blue-Books — periodical collections of documents of the British Parliament and Foreign Office, thus called because of the colour of the paper and the cover. The first were published in the 17th century.—10, 29, 30, 260, 498, 670