Section 7.- The Struggle for the Normal Working Day. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
ital discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act of 1860, drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the "protection of labour", in equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calenderers and finishers. English juris-prudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctioned in the Court of Common Pleas [25]° this piece of pettifogging. "The operatives have been greatly disappointed ... they have complained of overwork, and it is greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a faulty definition" (I.e., p. 18). ' The "open-air bleachers" had evaded the law of 1860, by means of the lie that no women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Factory Inspectors, and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions from the operatives, bereft of its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open air was reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying rooms were used at temperatures of from 90° to 100° Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the most part by girls. "Cooling" is the technical expression for their occasional escape from the drying rooms into the fresh air. "Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80° to 90° for linens, and 100° and upwards for cambrics. Twelve girls ironing and doing-up in a small room about 10 feet square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The girls stand round the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics rapidly for the ironers. The hours of work for these hands are unlimited. If busy, they work till 9 or 12 at night for successive nights" (Reports, &c, for 31st October, 1862, p. 56). A medical man states: "No special hours are allowed for cooling, but if the temperature gets too high, or the workers' hands get soiled from perspiration, they are allowed to go out for a few minutes.... My experience, which is considerable, in treating the diseases of stove workers, compels me to express the opinion that their sanitary condition is by no means so high as that of the operatives in a spinning factory" (and Capital, in its memorials to Parliament, had painted them as floridly healthy, after the manner of Rubens). "The diseases most ob-servable amongst them are phthisis, bronchitis, irregularity of uterine functions, hyste-ria in its most aggravated forms, and rheumatism. All of these, I believe, are either directly or indirectly induced by the impure, overheated air of the apartments in which the hands are employed and the want of sufficient comfortable clothing to protect them from the cold, damp atmosphere, in winter, when going to their homes" (I.e., pp. 56-57). The Factory Inspectors remarked on the supplementary law of 1863, torn from these open-air bleachers: "The Act has not only failed to afford that protection to the workers which it appears to offer, but contains a clause ... apparently so worded that, unless persons are detected working after 8 o'clock at night they appear to come under no protective provisions at all, and if they do so work, the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely follow" (I.e., p. 52). "To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compel-ling, women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the case Acts,[251] by which, in the former, the labour of young persons and women during the night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18, between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden. We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission, which threatened to deprive of their "freedom" all the important branches of English Industry, with the exception of agriculture, mines, and the means of transport.[1]
Section 7.- The Struggle for the Normal Working Day. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus value, or the extraction of surplus labour, is the specific end and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from any changes in the mode of production, which may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far as we have at present gone, only the independent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our historical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry; on the other, the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play important parts, the former was to us only a special department, and the latter only a specially striking example of labour exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent development of our inquiry, from the mere connection of the historic facts before us, it follows:
First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the corresponding changes in the social relations of the producers2)
may be, and perhaps for longer hours than these, without limit as to age, without reference to sex, and without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situated" (Reports, &c, for 30th April, 1863, p. 40).
[1] Note to the 2nd Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction has again set in.
[2] "The conduct of each of these classes" (capitalists and workmen) "has been the gave rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the working day and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the first half of the nine-teenth century simply as exceptional legislation.[1]' As soon as this primitive dominion of the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that, in the meantime, not only had many other branches of production been made to adopt the same factory system, but that manufactures with more or less obsolete methods, such as potteries, glass-making, &c, that old-fashioned handicrafts, like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic industries, such as nail-making,[2]' had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Legislation was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its exceptional character, or where, as in England, it proceeds after the manner of the Roman Casuists, to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory.[3]'
Second. The history of the regulation of the working day in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as "free" vendor of his labour power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working class. As the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry, it first breaks out in the home ofthat industry — England.[4]' The English factory workers were the
result of the relative situation in which they have been placed" (Reports, &c, for 31st October, 1848, p. 113).
[1] "The employments, placed under restriction, were connected with the manufacture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water power. There were two conditions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz., the use of steam or water power, and the manufacture of certain specified fibres" (Reports, &c, for 31st October, 1864, p. 8).
->: On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission.[252]
[3] "The Acts of last Session" (1864) "... embrace a diversity of occupations, the cus-toms in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary, as formerly, to constitute, in legal phrase, a 'Factory'" (Reports, &c, for 31st October, 1864, p. 8).
[4] Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this movement. Even in the coal and metal mines, labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are con-champions, not only of the English, but of the modern working class generally, as their theorists were the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital." Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace to the English working class that they inscribed "the slavery of the Factory Acts" on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving for "perfect freedom of labour".[2]»
France limps slowly behind England. The February revolution [255]
was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours' law,3) which is much more deficient than its English original. For all that, the French revolutionary method has its special advantages. It once for all commands the same limit to the working day in all shops and factories without distinction, whilst English legislation reluctantly yields to the pressure of circumstances, now on this point, now on that, and is getting lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory
sumed, in perfect "freedom", at any period, and through any length of time. Of every 1,000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 83 women, 135 boys, and 49 girls under 16; in the blast-furnaces, &c, of every 1,000, 668 are men, 149 women, 98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploitation of mature and immature labour power. The average daily pay for a man is 2s. 8d., for a woman, Is. 8d., for a boy, Is. 2-pd. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports of coal, iron, &c.[253]
" Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours' day into his factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his "Combination of children's education with productive labour" and the Co-operative Societies of working men,[254] first called into being by him. To-day the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.
'•" Ure (French translation), Philosophie des Manufactures, Paris, 1836, Vol. II, pp. 39, 40, 67, 77, &c.
" In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1855 [, p. 332], it is stated: "The French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and workshops to 12 hours, does not confine this work to definite fixed hours. For children's labour only the work time is prescribed as between 5 a. m. and 9 p. m. Therefore, some of the masters use the right which this fatal silence gives them to keep their works going, without intermission, day in, day out, possibly with the exception of Sunday. For this purpose they use two different sets of workers, of whom neither is in the workshop more than 12 hours at a time, but the work of the establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity? Besides "the destructive influence of night labour on the human organism", stress is also laid upon "the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the same badly-lighted workshops" [Reports, &c, for 31st October, 1855, p. 59].
enactments.1J On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a principle that which in England was only won in the name of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently for the first time claimed as a general right.[2]'
In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War [7] was the eight hours' agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of Labour at Baltimore (August 1866) [256] declared:
"The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained."[3]
At the same time, the Congress of the International Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the proposition of the London General Council, resolved that "the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at im-
[11] "For instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same cur-tilage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory Act" (Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, &c, for October 31st, 1861, p. 20). After enumerating the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications arising from them, Mr. Baker says: "It will hence appear that it must be very difficult to secure the execution of these three Acts of Parliament where the occupier chooses to evade the law." But what is assured to the lawyers by this is law-suits [I.e., p. 21].
[2] Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: "These objections" (of capital to the legal limitation of the working day) "must succumb before the broad principle of the rights of labour.... There is a time when the master's right in his workman's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no exhaustion in the question" (Reports, &c, for 31st Oct., 1862, p. 54).
[3] "We, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than slavery. That is why we decide that 8 hours are enough for a working day, and ought to be legally recognised as enough; why we call to our help that powerful lever, the press; ... and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer" (Resolution of the Working Men of Dunkirk, New York State, 1866).[25]' provement and emancipation must prove abortive ... the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day". [2 5 8]
Thus the movement of the working class on both sides of the Atlantic, that had grown instinctively out of the conditions of production themselves, endorsed the words of the English Factory Inspector, R.J. Saunders:
"Further steps towards a reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the prescribed limit strictly enforced." '•
It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity "labour power" face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no "free agent", that the time for which he is free to sell his labour power is the time for which he is forced to sell it,2)
that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him "so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited".3) For "protection" against "the serpent of their agonies",[259] the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death.[41] In place of the pompous catalogue of the
[1] Reports, &c, for [31st] Oct., 1848, p. 112. T: "The proceedings" (the manoeuvres of capital, e. g., from 1848-50) "have afforded, moreover, incontrovertible proof of the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced, that operatives need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the disposal of the only property which they possess — the labour of their hands and the sweat of their brows" (Reports, &c, for April 30th, 1850, p. 45)."Free labour (if so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law to protect it" (Reports, &c, for October 31st, 1864, p. 34). "To permit, which is tantamount to compel-ling ... to work 14 hours a day with or without meals," &c. (Repts. &c, for April 30th, 1863, p. 40).
î; Friedrich Engels, I.e. ["The English Ten Hours' Bill"], p. 5 [present edition, Vol. 10, p. 288],
": The 10 Hours' Act has, in the branches of industry that come under it, "put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers" (Reports, &c, for 31st Oct., 1859, p. 47). "Capital" (in factories) "can never be employed in keeping the machinery in motion beyond a limited time, without certain injury to the health and morals of the labourers employed; and they are not in a position to protect themselves" (I.e., p. 8).
Endnotes
[251] 2 5 ' The reference is to An Act to Prevent the Employment of Women and Children during the Night in Certain Operations Connected with Bleaching by the Open-Air Process [11th April 1862], which took effect on January 1, 1863, and An Act for the Regulation of Bake-houses [13th July, 1863] {The Bakehouse Regulation Act, 1863).—302
[252] See Children's Employment Commission. Third report..., London, 1864, and also this volume, pp. 469 and 548.—303
[255] A reference to the February 1848 Revolution in France.— 304
[253] See H. H. Creed, W. Williams, "Foreign Competition with British Manufactures. To the Editor of The Times". In: The Times, No. 25682, December 15, 1866.—304
[254] In 1844, workers in the town of Rochdale (Manchester industrial region) who had been influenced by Owen's ideas took the initiative in organising a consumers' co-operative, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Society, which became the prototype for workers' cooperatives in England and other countries.— 304, 336, 505
[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
[256] The General Congress of Labour in Baltimore was held from 20 to 25 August 1866. It was attended by 60 delegates representing 60,000 American workers organised in trade unions. The Congress discussed such matters as the legal introduction of an eight-hour working day, political activities, cooperative societies, the unification of all workers in trade unions, strikes, and housing conditions. It was decided at the Congress to form the National Labour Union. For the quotation that follows see "National Labor Congress. Grand Industrial Demonstration in Baltimore". In: The International Journal, Vol. 1, No. 6, September 1866, p. 183.—305
[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
[258] Quoted from the resolution of the Geneva Congress of the International Working Men's Association (September 1866), which was drawn up on the basis of Marx's "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional Central Council. The Different Questions". Here the resolution reproduces the text of the "Instructions" word for word (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 187).— 306
[259] "The serpent of their agonies" — paraphrased words from H. Heine's poem "Heinrich" from the cycle "Zeitgedicht".— 306
[41] Engels wrote his work In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx specially for the purpose of defending Marx against repeated accusations of deliberately falsifying a quotation from Gladstone's speech of 16 April 1863 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 95-176).—38
[25] "German Literature". In: The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, No. 638, January 18, 1868, p. 97.—16
[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
[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
[4] Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (It is of you that the story is told) — Horace, Satires, Bk. I, Satire 1.— 8, 272