 Chapter 10, Section 6 of Capital Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anna Simon. Capital, a critical analysis of capitalist production, Volume 1, by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and edited by Frederick Engels. Part 3, The Production of Absolute Surplus Value. Chapter 10, The Working Day. Section 6. The struggle for the normal working day. Compulsory limitation by law of the working time. The English Factory Acts, 1833-1864. After Capital had taken centuries in extending the working day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the limit of the natural day of twelve hours, there followed on the birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of the 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an avalanche in its intensity and extent. Footnote, quote, It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil twelve hours a day, which, including the time for their meals and forgoing to and returning from their work, amounts in fact to fourteen of the twenty-four hours. Without entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working classes without intermission from the early age of thirteen, and in trades not subject to restriction much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is at evil greatly to be deplored. For the sake, therefore, of public morals, of bringing up an orderly population and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day should be reserved for rest and leisure. End of quote. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken down. Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicity and the old statutes, became so confused that an English judge as late as 1860 needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain, judicially, what was day and what was night. Footnote. See, judgment of Mr. J. H. Otway, Belfast, Hillary Sessions, County, Antrim, 1860, and the footnote. Capital celebrated its orgies. As soon as the working class, stunned at first by the noise and turmoil of the new system of production, recovers their pride. For thirty years, however, the concessions conquered by the work-people were purely nominal. Parliament passed five labour laws between 1802 and 1833, but were shrewd and outlawed by the new system of production. The new system of production, the new system of production, recovered in some measure its senses, its resistance began, and first in a native land of machinism, in England. For thirty years, however, the concessions conquered by the work-people were purely nominal. It is very characteristic of the regime of Louis-Philippe, the bourgeois king, that the one factory act passed during his reign, that of March 22nd, 1841, was never put in force, and this law only dealt with child labour. It fixed eight hours a day for children between eight and twelve, twelve hours for children between twelve and sixteen, etc., with many exceptions which allow night-work in the new system of production. The supervision and enforcement of this law are, in a country where every mouse is under police administration, left to the goodwill of the Amis du Commerce. Only since 1853, in one single department, the département du Noeur, has a paid government inspector been appointed, not only in the new system of production, but in the new system of production. Only since 1853, in one single department, the département du Noeur, has a paid government inspector been appointed, not less characteristic of the development of French society generally, is the fact that Louis-Philippe's law stood solitary among the all-embracing mass of French laws till the Revolution of 1848, and a footnote. They remained a dead-letter, quote, the fact is that prior to the act of 1833, young persons and children were worked all night, all day, or both at Libertum, end of quote, footnote, report of inspectors of factories, 30th of April, 1860, page 50, end of footnote. A normal working day from modern industry only dates from the factory act of 1833, which included cotton, wool, flax and silk factories. Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of capital than the history of the English factory acts from 1833 to 1864. The act of 1833 declares the ordinary factory working day to be from half past five in the morning to half past eight in the evening, and within these limits, a period of 15 hours, it is lawful to employ young persons, i.e. persons between 13 and 18 years of age, at any time of the day, provided no one individual young person should work more than 12 hours in any one day, except in certain cases especially provided for. The sixth section of the act provided, quote, that there shall be allowed in the course of every day not less than one and a half hours from meals to every such person restricted as herein before provided, end of quote. The employment of children under nine, with exceptions mentioned later, was forbidden. The work of children between nine and 13 was limited to eight hours a day. Night work, i.e. according to this act, work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m., was forbidden for all persons between nine and 18. The lawmakers were so far from wishing to trench on the freedom of capital to exploit adult labour power, or as they called it, quote, the freedom of labour, end of quote, that they created a special system in order to prevent the factory acts from having a consequence so outrageous. The great evil of the factory system as at present conducted, says the first report of the Central Board of the Commission of June 28, 1833, has appeared to us to be that it entails the necessity of continuing the labour of children to the utmost length of that of the adults. The only remedy for this evil, short of the limitation of the labour of adults, which would, in our opinion, create an evil greater than that which is sought to be remedied, appears to be the plan of working double sets of children, end of quote. Under the name of system of relays, this plan was therefore carried out so that, e.g. from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 in the afternoon, one set of children between 9 and 13, and from 1.30 p.m. to 8.30 in the evening, another set were put on, etc. In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in the most bare-faced way, ignored all the acts as to children's labour passed during the last 22 years, the pill was yet further gilded for them. Parliament decreed that after March 1, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1, 1835, no child under 12, and after March 1, 1836, no child under 13 was to work more than 8 hours in a factory. This liberalism, so full of consideration for capital, was the more noteworthy as Dr. Farr, Sir A. Carlyle, Sir B. Brody, Sir C. Bell, Mr. Guthrie, etc., in a word the most distinguished physicians and surgeons in London had declared in their evidence before the House of Commons that there was danger in delay. Dr. Farr expressed himself still more coarsely. Legislation is necessary for the prevention of death in any form in which it can be prematurely inflicted, and certainly this, i.e. the factory method, must be viewed as a most cruel mode of inflicting it. That same reformed parliament which in its delicate consideration for the manufacturers condemned children under 13 for years to come to 72 hours of work per week in the factory hell, on the other hand in the Emancipation Act which also administered freedom drop by drop, forbade the planters from the outside to work any Negro slave more than 45 hours a week. But in no wise conciliated, capital now began a noisy agitation that went on for several years. It turned chiefly on the age of those who, under the name of children, were limited to eight-hours work and were subjected to a certain amount of compulsory education. According to capitalistic anthropology, the age of childhood ended at ten, or at the outside, at eleven. The more nearly the time approached for the coming into full force of the Factory Act in the fatal year 1836, the more wildly raged the mob of manufacturers. They managed in fact to intimidate the government to such an extent that in 1835 it proposed to lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13 to 12. In the meantime, the pressure from without grew more threatening. Courage filled the House of Commons. It refused to throw children of 13 under a joggernaut car of capital for more than eight hours a day, and the act of 1833 came into full operation. It remained unaltered until June 1844. In the ten years during which it regulated factory work, first in part and then entirely, the official reports of the factory inspectors team with complaints as to the impossibility of putting the act into force. As a law of 1833 left it optional with the laws of capital during the 15 hours from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. to make every young person and every child begin, break off, resume or end is 12 or 8 hours at any moment they liked. It also permitted them to assign to different persons different times for meals. These gentlemen soon discovered a new system of relays by which the labour horses were not changed fixed stations, but were constantly re-harnessed at changing stations. We do not pause longer on the beauty of this system as we shall have to return to it later. But this much is clear at the first glance, that this system annulled the whole factory act, not only in the spirit, but in the letter. How could factory inspectors, with this complex bookkeeping in respect to each individual child or young person, enforce the legally determined work time and the granting of the legal meal times? In a great many of the factories, the old brutalities soon blossomed out again unpunished. In an interview with the Home Secretary, 1844, the factory inspectors demonstrated the impossibility of any control under the newly invented relay system. Footnote, report of the inspectors of factories, 31st October, 1849, page 6 and the footnote. In the meantime however, circumstances had greatly changed. The factory hands, especially since 1838, had made the ten hours bill their economic as they had made the charter their political election cry. Some of the manufacturers, even, who had managed their factories in conformity with the Act of 1833, overwhelmed Parliament with memorials on the immoral competition of their false brethren, whom greater impudence or more fortunate local circumstances enabled to break the law. Moreover, however much the individual manufacturer might give the reign to his old lust for gain, the spokesmen and political leaders of the manufacturing class ordered a change of front and of speech towards the work people. They had entered upon the contest for the repeal of the corn laws and needed the workers to help them to victory. They promised, therefore, not only a double-sized loaf of bread, but the enactment of the ten hours bill and the free trade millennium. Footnote, report of the inspectors of factories, 31st October, 1848, page 98 and the footnote. Thus they still less dared to oppose a measure intended only to make the law of 1833 a reality, threatened in their holiest interest the rent of land that Tories thundered with philanthropic indignation against the nefarious practices of their foes. Footnote, Leonard Horner uses the expression nefarious practices in his official reports, report of inspectors of factories 31st October, 1859, page 7 and the footnote. This was the origin of the Additional Factory Act of June 7th, 1844. It came into effect on September 10th, 1844. It places under production a new category of workers, vis the women over 18. They were placed in every respect on the same footing as the young persons, their work time limited to 12 hours, their night labor forbidden, etc. For the first time legislation saw itself compelled to control directly and officially the labor of adults. In the factory report of 1844 to 1845 it is said with irony, quote, no instances have come to my knowledge of adult women having expressed any regret at their rights being thus far interfered with, end of quote, footnote, report, etc., 30th September, 1844, page 15, end of footnote. The working time of children under 13 was reduced to 61 and in certain circumstances to 7 hours a day. Footnote, the act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day after day, but only on alternate days. In the main this clause remained inoperative, end of footnote. To get rid of the abuses of the spurious relay system, the law established besides others the following important regulations, quote, that the hours of work of children and young persons shall be reckoned from the time when any child or young person shall begin to work in the morning, end of quote, so that if A e.g. begins work at 8 in the morning and B yet 10, B's work day must nevertheless end at the same hour as A's, quote, the time shall be regulated by a public clock, end of quote, for example the nearest railway clock by which the factory clock is to be set. The occupier is to hang up a legible printed notice stating the hours for the beginning and ending of work and the times allowed for the several meals. Children beginning work before 12 noon may not be again employed after 1 p.m. The afternoon shift must therefore consist of other children than those employed in the morning. Of the hour and a half for mealtimes, quote, one hour thereof at least shall be given before three o'clock in the afternoon and at the same period of the day. No child or young person shall be employed more than five hours before 1 p.m. without an interval for mealtime of at least 30 minutes. No child or young person, or female, shall be employed or allowed to remain in any room in which any manufacturing process is then, i.e. at mealtimes, carried on, end of quote, etc. It has been seen that these maniche which with military uniformity regulate by stroke of the clock the times, limits, pauses of the work were not at all the products of parliamentary fancy. They developed gradually out of circumstances as natural laws of the modern mode of production. Their formulation, official recognition, and proclamation by the state were the result of a long struggle of classes. One of the first consequences was that in practice the working day of the adult males in factories became subject to the same limitations, since in most processes of production the cooperation of the children, young persons, and women is indispensable. On the whole therefore during the period from 1844 to 1847 the 12 hours working day became general and uniform in all branches of industry under the Factory Act. The manufacturers however did not allow this progress without a compensating retrogression. At their instigation the House of Commons reduced the minimum age for exploitable children from 9 to 8 in order to assure that additional supply of factory children which is due to capitalists according to divine and human law. Quote, as a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number of children to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8 to 90 years of age would meet the increased demand, end of quote. Logosateto page 13 and the footnote. The years 1846 to 1847 are epoch making in the economic history of England. The repeal of the Corn Laws and of the duties on cotton and other raw material, free trade proclaimed as the guiding star of legislation in a word the arrival of the millennium. On the other hand in the same years the Chartist movement and the 10 hours agitation reached their highest point. They found allies in the Tories panting for revenge. Despite the fanatical opposition of the army of perjured free traders with right and captain at their head, the 10 hours bill struggled for so long went through Parliament. The new Factory Act of June 8th 1847 enacted that on July 1st 1847 there should be a preliminary shortening of the working day for young persons from 13 to 18 and all females to 11 hours, but that on May 1st 1848 there should be a definite limitation of the working day to 10 hours. In other respects the Act only amended and completed the Acts of 1833 and 1844. Capital now entered upon a preliminary campaign in order to hinder the act from coming into full force on May 1st 1848 and the workers themselves under the presence that they had been taught by experience were to help in the destruction of their own work. The moment was cleverly chosen. It must be remembered too that there has been more than two years of great suffering in consequence of the terrible crisis of 1846 to 1847 among the factory operatives, from many mills having worked short time and many being altogether closed. A considerable number of the operatives must therefore be in very narrow circumstances, many it is to be feared in death, so that it might fairly have been presumed that at the present time they would prefer working the longer time in order to make up for past losses, perhaps to pay off debts or get their furniture out of pawn or replace debt sold or to get a new supply of clothes for themselves and their families. End of quote. Footnote. Report of the inspectors of factories, 31st October 1848, page 16, end of footnote. The manufacturers tried to aggravate the natural effect of the circumstances by a general reduction of wages by 10%. This was done, so to say, to celebrate the inauguration of the new free trade era. Then followed a further reduction of 8, 1, 3% as soon as the working day was shortened to 11 and a reduction of double that amount as soon as it was finally shortened to 10 hours. Wherever, therefore, circumstances allowed it, a reduction of wages of at least 25% took place. Footnote. Quote. I found that men who'd been getting 10 shillings a week had had one shilling taken off for a reduction in the rate of 10% and one shilling sixpence of the remaining nine shillings for the reduction in time. Together two shilling sixpence and notwithstanding this, many of them said they would rather work 10 hours, end of quote, loco citato, and a footnote. Under such favorably prepared conditions, the agitation among the factory workers for the repeal of the Act of 1847 was begun. Neither lies, bribery, nor threats were spared in this attempt, but all was in vain. Concerning the half-dozen petitions in which work people were made to complain of their oppression by the Act, the petitioners themselves declared under oral examination that their signatures had been extorted from them. Quote. They felt themselves oppressed but not exactly by the factory Act, end of quote. Footnote. Quote. Though I signed it, the petition, I said at the time I was putting my hand to a wrong thing. Then why did you put your hand to it? Because I should have been turned off if I had refused. Once it would appear that this petitioner felt himself oppressed but not exactly by the factory Act, end of quote, loco citato, page 102, and a footnote. But if the manufacturers did not succeed in making the work people speak as they wished, they themselves shrieked all the louder in press and parliament in the name of the work people. They denounced the factory inspectors as a kind of revolutionary commissioners like those of the French National Convention ruthlessly sacrificing the unhappy factory workers to their humanitarian crotchet. This manoeuvre also failed. Factory Inspector Leonard Horner conducted in his own person and through his sub-inspectors many examinations of witnesses in the factories of Lancashire. About 70% of the work people examined declared in favour of ten hours, a much smaller percentage in favour of eleven, and an altogether insignificant minority for the old twelve hours. Footnote, page 17, loco citato. In Mr. Horner's district, 10,270 adult male labourers were thus examined in 181 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix of the factory reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish valuable material in other connections also. And a footnote. Another friendly dodge was to make the adult males work twelve to fifteen hours and then to blaze and abroad this fact is the best proof of what the proletariat desired in its heart of heart. But the ruthless Factory Inspector Leonard Horner was again to the fore. The majority of the overtimes declared, quote, they would much prefer working ten hours for less wages but that they had no choice, that so many were out of employment, so many spinners getting very low wages by having to work as pieces being unable to do better, that if they refused to work the longer time others would immediately get their places so that it was a question with them of agreeing to work the longer time or of being thrown out of employment altogether, end of quote. Footnote. See the evidence collected by Leonard Horner himself, numbers 69, 70, 71, 72, 92, 93, and that collected by Sub-Inspector A, numbers 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 70 of the appendix. One manufacturer or two tells the plain truth. See number 14 and number 265, logo citato, end of footnote. The preliminary campaign of capital thus came to grief and the Ten Hours Act came into force May 1st, 1848. But meanwhile the fiasco of the Chartist Party whose leaders were imprisoned and whose organisation was dismembered had shaken the confidence of the English working class in its own strength. Soon after this the June insurrection in Paris and its bloody suppression united in England as on the continent all fractions of the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists, stock exchange wolves and shopkeepers, protectionists and free traders, government in opposition, priests and free thinkers, young whores and old nuns under the common cry for the salvation of property, religion, the family and society. The working class was everywhere proclaimed, placed under a ban under a virtual law of suspects. The manufacturers had no need any longer to restrain themselves. They broke out in open revolt not only against the Ten Hours Act but against the whole of the legislation that since 1833 had aimed at restricting in some measure the free exploitation of labour power. It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature carried on for over two years with a cynical recklessness, a terrorist energy, all the cheaper because the rebel capitalists risked nothing except the skin of his hands. To understand that which follows we must remember that the factory acts of 1833, 1844 and 1847 were all three in force so far as the one did not amend the other. That not one of these limited the working day of the male worker over 18 and that since 1833 the fifteen hours from 5.30 am to 8.30 pm had remained the legal day within the limits of which at first the twelve and later the ten hours labour of young persons and women had to be performed under the prescribed conditions. The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a part of in many cases half of the young persons and women employed by them and then for the adult males restoring the almost obsolete night work. The Ten Hours Act they cried leaves no other alternative. Footnote. Reports etc. for 31st October 1848 pages 133 and 134 end of footnote. Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals. Let us hear the factory inspectors quote Since the restriction of the hours of work to ten the factory occupiers maintain although they have not yet practically gone the whole length that supposing the hours of work to be from 9 am to 7 pm they fulfill the provisions of the statutes by allowing an hour before 9 am and half an hour after 7 pm for meals. In some cases they now allow an hour or half an hour for dinner insisting at the same time that they are not bound to allow any part of the hour and a half in the course of the factory working day end of quote. Footnote. Reports etc. for 30th April 1848 page 47 end of footnote. The manufacturers maintained therefore that the scrupulously strict provisions of the Act of 1844 with regard to meal times the operatives permission to eat and drink before coming into and after leaving the factory i.e. at home and why should not the work people eat their dinner before 9 in the morning the crown lawyers however decided that the prescribed meal times quote must be in the interval during the working hours and that it will not be lawful to work for ten hours continuously from 9 am to 7 pm without any interval end of quote. Footnote. Reports etc. for 31st October 1848 page 130 end of footnote. After these pleasant demonstrations capital polluted its revolt by a step which agreed with the letter of the law of 1844 and was therefore legal. The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after 1 pm of such children from 8 to 13 as had been employed before noon but it did not regulate in any way the six and a half hours of the children whose work time began at 12 midday or later. The children of 8 might if they began work at noon be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour, from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, 2 hours from 5 to 8.30 in the evening, 3 and a half hours in all the legal 6 and a half hours or better still. In order to make their work coincide with that of the adult meal laborers up to 8.30 pm the manufacturers only had to give them no work till 2 in the afternoon they could then keep them in the factory without intermission till 8.30 in the evening. And it is now expressly admitted that the practice exists in England from the desire of male owners to have their machinery at work for more than 10 hours a day to keep the children at work with male adults after all the young persons and women have left and until 8.30 pm if the factory owners choose end of quote. Footnote, reports etc. Workmen and factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds but capital answered quote In fact according to statistics laid before the House of Commons on July 26th 1850 in spite of all protests on July 15th 1850 3742 children were subjected to this practice in 257 factories Footnote, reports etc. for 31st October 1850 pages 5 and 6 and the footnote Still this was not enough the link's eye of capital discovered that the act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours work before midday without a pause of at least 30 minutes for a refreshment but prescribed nothing of the kind for work after midday therefore it claimed and obtained the enjoyment of not only of making children of 8 drudge without an intermission from 2 to 8.30 pm but also of making them hunger during their time quote I his heart so says the bond end of quote This shy lock clinging to the letter of the law of 1844 so far as it regulated children's labour was but to lead up to an open revolt against the same law so far as it regulated the labour of young persons and women Footnote The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form in the coat with the influence of the slave owners shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War imposed on the territory of New Mexico it is said that the labourer in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour power is his, the capitalist's, money the same view was current among the Roman patricians the money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor this flesh and blood were therefore their money hence the shy lock law of the ten tables lingwards hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared beyond the tiber banquets of debtor's flesh may remain as undecided as that of dharmur on the Christian Eucharist and the footnote it will be remembered that the abolition of the false relay system was a chief aim and object of that law the masses began their revolt the symbol declaration that the sections of the act of 1844 which prohibited the at-libertum use of young persons and women in such short fractions of the day of 15 hours as the employer chose were comparatively harmless so long as the work time was fixed at 12 hours but under the ten hours act they were a grievous hardship footnote reports etc. for 30th April 1848 page 28 and the footnote they informed the inspectors in the coolest manner that they should place themselves above the letter of the law and reintroduce the old system on their own account footnote thus among others philanthropist ashworth to lennard horner in a disgusting quaker letter reports etc. April 1849 page 4 and the footnote they were acting in the interests of the ill-advised operatives themselves quote in order to be able to pay them higher wages end of quote quote this was the only possible plan by which to maintain under the ten hours act the industrial supremacy of great Britain end of quote quote perhaps it may be a little difficult to detect irregularities and that a relay system but what of that is the great manufacturing interest of this country to be treated as a secondary matter in order to save some little trouble to inspectors and sub-inspectors of factories end of quote footnote page 140 and the footnote all these shifts naturally were of no avail the factory inspectors appealed to the law courts but soon such a cloud of dust in the way of petitions from the masters overwhelmed the home secretary sir george gray that in a circular of august 5th 1848 he recommends the inspectors not quote to lay informations against mill owners for a breach of the letter of the act or for employment of young persons by relays in cases in which there is no reason to believe that such young persons have been actually employed for a longer period than that sanctioned by law end of quote hereupon factory inspector jay steward allowed the so-called relay system during the 15 hours of the factory day throughout scotland where it soon flourished again as of old the english factory inspectors on the other hand declared that the home secretary had no power dictatorially to suspend the law and continued their legal proceedings against the pro-slavery rebellion but what was the good of summoning the capitalists when the quotes in this case the country magistrates cupboards great unpaid acquitted them in these tribunals the masters said in judgment on themselves an example one escrick cotton spinner of firm of kershow lees and co had laid before the factory inspector of his district the scheme of a relay system intended for his mill receiving a refusal he had first kept quiet a few months later an individual named robinson also a cotton spinner and if not his man friday at all events related to escrick appeared before the borough magistrate of stockport on a charge of introducing the identical plan of relays invented by escrick four justices said among them three cotton spinners at their head the same inevitable escrick escrick acquitted robinson and now was of opinion that what was right for robinson was fair for escrick supported by his own legal decision he introduced the system at once into his own factory footnote reports etc for 30th april 1849 page 21 22 conform like examples ebid pages 4 and 5 and a footnote of course the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the law footnote by roman 1 and 2 will roman 4 chapter 24 section 10 known as sir john wobhouse's factory act it was forbidden to any owner of a cotton spinning or weaving mill or the father son or brother of such owner to act as justice of the peace in any inquiries that concerned the factory act and the footnote these judicial forces exclaims inspector howell quote urgently call for a remedy either that the law should be so altered as to be made to conform to these decisions or that it should be administered by a less fallible tribunal whose decisions would conform to the law when these cases are brought forward I long for a stipendary magistrate and the quote footnote loco citato and the footnote the crown lawyers declared the master's interpretation of the act of 1848 absurd where the saviors of society would not allow themselves to be turned from their purpose lennard horner reports quote having endeavoured to enforce the act by 10 prosecutions in seven magisterial divisions and having been supported by the magistrates in one case only I considered it useless to prosecute more for this evasion of the law that part of the act of 1848 which was framed for securing uniformity in the hours of work is thus no longer in force in my district, langeshire neither have the sub-inspectors or myself any means of satisfying ourselves when we inspect a mill working by shifts that the young persons and women are not working more than 10 hours a day in a return of the 30th April of mill owners working by shifts the number amounts to 114 and has been for some time rapidly increasing in general the time of working the mill is extended to 13.5 hours from 6 a.m. to 7.30 p.m in some instances it amounts to 15 hours from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. end of quote footnote reports etc. for 30th April 1849 page 5 and the footnote already in December 1848 Leonard Horner had a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unanimously declared that no system of supervision could under this relay system prevent enormous overwork footnote reports etc. for 31st October 1849 page 6 and the footnote now the same children and young persons were shifted from the spinning room to the weaving room now during 15 hours from one factory to another footnote reports etc. for 30th April 1849 page 21 and the footnote how was it possible to control a system which quote under the guise of relays is some one of the many plans for shuffling the hands about an endless variety and shifting the hours of work and of rest for different individuals throughout the day so that you may never have one complete set of hands working together in the same room at the same time end of quote footnote reports etc. for 31st October 1848 page 95 and the footnote but altogether independently of actual overwork this so called relay system was an offspring of capitalistic fancy such as Fourier in his humorous sketches of Corus Seance has never surpassed except that the extraction of labour was changed into the extraction of capital look for example at those schemes of the masters which the respectable press praised as models of what a reasonable degree of care and method can accomplish the personnel of the work people was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories which themselves constantly changed and recharged their constituent parts during the 15 hours of the factory day dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes now for an hour and then pushed him out again to drag him into the factory and to thrust him out of fresh hounding him hither and thither in scattered threads of time without ever losing hold of him until the full 10 hours work was done as on the stage the same persons had to appear in turns at the different scenes of the different acts but as an actor during the whole course of the play belongs to the stage so the operatives for 15 hours belong to the factory without reckoning the time for going and coming thus the hours of rest were turned into hours of enforced idleness which drove the youth to the pot house and the girls to the brothel at every new trick the capitalist from day to day hit upon for keeping his machinery going 12 or 15 hours without increasing the number of his hands the worker had to swallow his meals now in this fragment of time now in that at the time of the 10 hours agitation the masters cried out that the working mob petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours wages for 10 hours work now they reversed the medal they paid 10 hours wages for 12 or 15 hours lordship over labour power footnote see reports etc for 30th April 1849 page 6 and the detailed explanation of the shifting system by factory inspectors Howell and Saunders in reports etc for 31st October 1848 see also the petition to the queen from the clergy of Ashton and Facinity in the spring of 1849 against the shift system and the footnote this was the gist of the matter this the masters interpretation of the 10 hours law these were the same unctuous free traders perspiring with a love of humanity who for full 10 years during the anti-corner law agitation had preached to the operatives by reckoning of pounds, shillings and pens that with free importation of corn and with the means possessed by English industry 10 hours labour would be quite enough to enrich the capitalists footnote conform for example the factory question in the 10 hours bill by R. H. Gregg 1837 and the footnote this revolt of capital after two years was at last crowned with victory by a decision of one of the four highest courts of justice in England the court of exchequer which in a case brought before it on February 8th 1850 decided that the manufacturers were certainly acting against the sense of the act of 1844 but that this act itself contained certain words that rendered it meaningless quote by this decision the 10 hours act was abolished end of quote footnote the 10 hours bill in the Neue Reinische Zeitung Politische Ökonomische Revue edited by K. Marx April number 1850 page 13 the same high court of justice discovered during the American Civil War a verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming of pirate ships and a footnote a crowd of masters who until then had been afraid of using them for young persons and women now took it up hardened soul footnote reports etc for 30th April 1850 and a footnote but on this apparently decisive victory of capital followed at once a revulsion the work people had hitherto offered a passive although in flexible and unremitting persistence they now protested in Lenkeshire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings the pretended 10 hours act was thus simple humbug parliamentary cheating had never existed the factory inspectors urgently warned the government that the antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension some of the masters themselves murmured quote on account of the contrary decisions of the magistrates a condition of things altogether abnormal and anarchical obtains one law holds in Yorkshire another in Lenkeshire one law and one parish of Lenkeshire another in its immediate neighbourhood the manufacturer in large towns could evade the law the manufacturer in country districts could not find the people necessary for the relay system still less for the shifting of hands from one factory to another end of quote etc and the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour power by all capitalists under these circumstances a compromise between masters and men was affected that received the seal of parliament and the additional factory act of August 5th 1850 the working day for young persons and women was raised from 10 to 10 and a half hours for the first five days of the week and shortened to 7 and a half on the Saturday the work was to go on between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. footnote in winter from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. may be substituted and the footnote with pauses of not less than one and a half hours for meal times these meal times to be allowed at one and the same time for all and conformably to the conditions of 1844 by this an end was put to the relay system once for all footnote quote end of quote for children's labour the act of 1844 remained in force one set of masters this time as before it was considered to itself special seniorial rights of the children of the proletariat these were the silk manufacturers in 1833 they had howled out in threatening fashion quote if the liberty of working children of any age for ten hours a day were taken away it would stop their works end of quote footnote reports etc for September 1844 page 13 end of footnote it would be impossible for them to have a sufficient number of children over 13 they extorted the privilege they desired the pretext was shown on subsequent investigation to be a deliberate lie footnote logo citato end of footnote it did not however prevent them during ten years from spinning silk ten hours a day out of the blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools for the performance of their work footnote, logo citato and the footnote the act of 1844 certainly robbed them of the liberty of employing children under 11 longer than six and a half hours a day but it secured to them on the other hand the privilege of working children between 11 and 13 ten hours a day and of a nulling in their case the education made compulsory for all other factory children this time the pretext was quote the delicate texture of the fabric in which they were employed requiring a lightness of touch only to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories end of quote footnote reports etc for 31st October 1846 page 20 end of footnote the children were slaughtered out and out for the sake of their delicate fingers as in southern russia the horned cattle for the sake of their hide and tello at length in 1850 the privilege granted in 1844 was limited to the departments of silk twisting and silk winding but here to make amends to capital bereft of its freedom the work time for children from 11 to 13 was raised from 10 to 10 and a half hours pretext quote labor in silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics and less likely in other respects also to be prejudicial to health end of quote footnote reports etc for 31st October 1861 page 26 end of footnote official medical inquiries proved afterwards that on the contrary quote the average death rate is exceedingly high in the silk districts and amongst the female part of the population is higher even than it is in the katten districts of langeshire end of quote footnote logo cittato page 27 on the whole the working population subject to the factory act was greatly improved physically all medical testimony agrees on this point and personal observation at different times has convinced me of it nevertheless an exclusive of the terrible death rate of the children in the first years of their life the official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavorable health condition of the manufacturing districts as compared with agricultural districts of normal health as evidence take the following table from his 1861 report summary of table this table shows death rates from pulmonary affections in males and females in eight different manufacturing districts compared to eight healthy agricultural districts the eight manufacturing districts are Wigan and Blackburn for cotton, Halifax and Bradford for worsted Michaelsfield and Leek for silk and Stokeup and Trenton Wolstanton for earthenware the percentage of adult males against manufacturers in these district ranges from 14.9 to 42.6 percent while the death rate from pulmonary affections per 100,000 males ranges from 547 to 726 in these eight districts while in the eight healthy agricultural districts the death rate per 100,000 males is 305 for the females the percentage of adult females engaged in manufacturers ranges in these eight districts from 13.9 to 34.9 and the death rate ranges from 564 to 804 per 100,000 females compared to a death rate from pulmonary affections per 100,000 females of 340 in eight healthy agricultural districts and a footnote despite the protests of the factory inspector renewed every six months the mischief continues to this hour footnote it is well known with what reluctance the English free traders gave up the protective duty on the silk manufacturer instead of the protection against French importation the absence of protection to English factory children now serves their turn and a footnote in fact of 1850 changed the 15 hours time from 6 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. into the 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for young persons and women only it did not therefore affect children who could always be employed for half an hour before and two and a half hours after this period provided the whole of their labour did not exceed six and a half hours whilst the bill was under discussion the factory inspectors laid before parliaments that the six of the infamous abusers due to this anomaly to no purpose in the background lurk the intention of screwing up during prosperous years the working day of adult males to 15 hours by the aid of the children the experience of the three following years showed that such an attempt must come to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives the act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by forbidding the quote employment of children in the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women henceforth with a few exceptions the factory act of 1850 regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of industry that come under it footnote during 1859 and 1860 the zenith years of the English cotton industry some manufacturers tried by the decoy bait of higher wages for overtime to reconcile the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day the hand mill spinners and self-actor minces put an end to the experiment by a petition to their employers in which they say plainly speaking our lives are to us a burden and while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a week more than the other operatives of the country we feel like hellets in the land and that we are perpetrating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations this therefore was to give you most respectful notice when we commence work again after the Christmas and New Year's holidays we shall work 60 hours per week and no more or from 6 to 6 with 1 hour and a half out reports etc for 30th April 1860 page 30 and the footnote since the passing of the first factory act half a century had elapsed footnote on the means that the wording of this act afforded for its violation of parliamentary return factories regulation act 6th August 1859 and in it, Leonard Horner's suggestions for amending the factory acts to enable the inspectors to prevent illegal working now becoming very prevalent and a footnote factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original sphere in the print works act of 1845 the displeasure with which capital received this new extravagance speaks through every line of the act it limits the working day for children from 8 to 13 and for women to 16 hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. without any legal pause for meal times it allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night footnote children of the age of 8 years and upwards have indeed been employed from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half year in my district end of quote reports, etc. for 31st October 1857 p. 39 and a footnote it is a parliamentary abortion footnote quote the print works act is admitted to be a failure both with reference to its educational and protective provisions end of quote reports, etc. for 31st October 1862 p. 52 and the footnote however, the principle had triumphed with its victory in those great branches of industry which formed the most characteristic creation of the modern mode of production their wonderful development from 1853 to 1860 hand in hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers struck the most per-blind the masters from whom the legal limitation and regulation have been rung step by step after a civil war of half a century themselves referred ostentatiously to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still quote free end of quote footnote thus e.g. E. Potter in a letter to the Times of March 24th 1863 the Times reminded him of the manufacturer's revolt against the 10 hours bill end of quote the Pharisees of political economy now proclaim the discernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working day as a characteristic new discovery of their so-called science footnote thus among others Mr. W. Newmarch collaborator and editor of TUC's History of Prizes is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to public opinion and a footnote it will be easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable the power of resistance of capital gradually weakened whilst at the same time the power of attack of the working class grew with a number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately interested in the question hence the comparatively rapid advance since 1860 the die works and bleach works all came under the factory act of 1850 in 1860 lace and stocking manufacturers in 1861 footnote the act passed in 1860 determined that in regard to die and bleach works the working day should be fixed on August 1st 1861 provisionally at 12 hours and definitely on August 1st 1862 at 10 hours i.e. at 10 and a half hours for ordinary days and 7 and a half for Saturday now when the fatal year 1862 came the old farce was repeated besides the manufacturer's petitioned parliament to allow the employment of young persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer in the existing condition of the trade the time of the cotton famine it was greatly to the advantage of the operatives to work 12 hours per day and make wages when they could end of quote a bill to this effect had been brought in and it was mainly due to the action of the operative bleachers in Scotland that the bill was abandoned end of quote reports etc for 31st October 1862 pages 14 and 15 was defeated by the very work people in whose name it pretended to speak capital discovered with the help of lawyer's 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 calendars and finishes English jurisprudence ever the faithful servant of capital sanctioned in the court of common pleas this piece of pedophogging quote the operatives have been greatly disappointed they have complained of overwork and it is greatly to be regretted that their clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a faulty definition end of quote logo citato page 18 end of footnote in consequence of the first report of the commission on the employment of children 1863 the same fate was shared by the manufacturers of all earthenwares not merely pottery, lucifer matches cushion caps, cartridges, carpets fastened cutting and many processes including another name of finishing in the year 1863, bleaching in the open air and baking were placed under special acts 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 the open air bleaches 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 polyamint was by petitions from the operatives bereft of its notions as 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 degrees fahrenheit in which the work was done for the most part by girls cooling is a technical expression for their occasional escape from the drying rooms into the fresh air quote 15 girls in stoves heat from 80 to 90 degrees fahrenheit for linens and 100 degrees and upwards for kembricks 12 girls ironing and doing up in a small room about 10 feet square in the centre of which is a closed stove the girls stand round the stove which throws out a terrific heat and dries the kembricks 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 end of quote reports etc for 31st October 1862 page 56 a medical man states quote 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 aside and capital in its memorials to parliament had painted them as floridly healthy after the manner of rubens end of aside the diseases most observable amongst them are theses, bronchitis irregularity of uterine functions hysteria 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 end of quote logocitato pages 56 and 57 the factory inspectors remarked on the supplementary law of 1860 torn from these open air bleaches quote 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 comment there are no protective provisions at all and if they do so work the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely follow end of quote 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 compelling women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals as the case 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 dying are situated end of quote reports etc for 30th April 1863 page 40 end of footnote 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 footnote note to the second edition since 1866 when I wrote the above passages a reaction has again set in end of footnote end of part 3 chapter 10, section 6 chapter 10, section 7 of capital volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon capital a critical analysis of capitalist production volume 1 by Karl Marx translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moran, Edward Averling and edited by Frederick Engels part 3, the production of absolute surplus value chapter 10, the working day 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 industry's 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 producers gave rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds the 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 footnote quote the conduct of each of these classes capitalists and workmen has been the result of the relative situation in which they have been placed end of quote reports etc for 31st October 1848 page 113 end of footnote quote end of quote reports etc were 1864, page 8, and the footnote. 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 manufacturers with more or less obsolete methods such as potteries, glass-making, etc., had old-fashioned hand-crafts, like baking, and finally, even that the so-called domestic industries, such as nail-making, had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Footnote. 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. And the footnote. 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 chaserists to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory. Footnote. Quote, The acts of last session, 1864, embrace the diversity of occupations, the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary, as formally, to constitute in a legal phrase a factory. End of quote. Quote, etc., for 31st October, 1864, page 8. End of footnote. 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 so-called free vendor of his labour-pull, 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 protected 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 of that industry. England. Footnote. 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 consumed in perfect so-called freedom at any period and through any length of time. Of every 1,000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women, 135 boys, and 44 girls under 16. In the blast furnaces, etc., of every 1,668 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 two shillings eight-pence, for a woman, one shilling eight-pence, for a boy, one shilling two-and-a-half-pence. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount in the value of its exports of coal, iron, etc., and the Footnote. The English factory workers were the 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. Footnote. Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working-day in theory, but actually introduced a ten-hours day into his factory at New Lenarch. This was laughed at as a communistic utopia. So were his combination of children's education with productive labour, and the cooperative society's working-men first called into being by him. Today 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, and the Footnote. Hence the philosopher of the factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace the English working-class that they inscribed, quote, the slavery of the factory acts, end of quote, on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving for, quote, perfect freedom of labour, end of quote. Footnote. Ure, French translation, philosophie des manufactures, Paris 1836, vol. 2, pages 39, 40, 67, 77, etc., end of footnote. Franz limps slowly behind England. The February Revolution was necessary to bring into the world a twelve-hours law, which is much more deficient than its English original. Footnote. In the Comte-Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris 1855 it is stated, quote, the French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and workshops to twelve 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 twelve hours at a time, but the work of the establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity, end of quote. Besides, quote, the destructive influence of night labour on the human organism, end of quote. Stress is also laid upon, quote, the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the same badly lighted workshops, end of quote, end of footnote. 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 enactments. Footnote, quote, for instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same cartilage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dying Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory Act, end of quote, report of Mr Baker in reports, etc., for October 31st, 1861, page 20. After enumerating the different provisions of these acts, and the complications arising from them, Mr Baker says, quote, 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, end of quote. But what is assured to the lawyers by this is law suits, end of footnote. On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a principle that which in England was only one in the name of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently for the first time claimed as a general right. Footnote, thus the factory inspectors at last ventured to say, quote, these objections of capitals 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 workmen's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no exhaustion in the question, end of quote, report, etc., for 31st October, 1862, page 54, end of footnote. 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 had once arose. The first fruit of the civil war was the eight hours agitation that ran with the seven leaked boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of Labour at Baltimore, August 16th, 1866, declared, quote, 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, end of quote, footnote, quote, 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 decided eight hours are enough for a working day and ought to be legally recognized as enough. Why we call to our help that powerful lever the press and why we shall consider all those that refuses this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer, end of quote, resolution of the working men of Dunkirk, New York State, 1866 and the footnote. 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, quote, the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive. The Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day, end of quote. That's the movement of the working class on both sides of the Atlantic that had grown instinctively out of the conditions of production themselves and doles the words of the English Factory Inspector R. J. Sonders, quote, 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 limits strictly enforced, end of quote, footnote, reports, etc., for October 1848, page 112, and the footnote. 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, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him, quote, so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited, end of quote. Footnote, Friedrich Engels, Locositato, page 5, quote, the proceedings, the maneuvers of capital EG from 1848 to 1850, 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, end of quote, reports etc. for April 30th, 1850, page 45, quote, free labour, if so it may be termed, even in a free country, requires a strong arm of the law to protect it, end of quote, reports etc. for October 31st, 1864, page 34, quote, to permit which is tantamount to compelling, to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, end of quote, etc. reports etc. for April 30th, 1863, page 40, end of footnote. For protection against the serpent of their agonies, 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, footnote. The 10 Hours Act has in the branches of industry that come under it, quote, put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long hour workers, end of quote, reports etc. for 31st, October 1859, page 47, quote, 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, end of quote, logo citato, page 8, end of footnote. In place of the pompous catalogue of the inalienable rights of men, comes the modest magna carta of a legally limited working day, which shall make clear, quote, when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins, end of quote. Quantum mutates up illo. Footnote, quote, a still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker's own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and when his own begins, and by possessing a sure fore knowledge of this, is enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for his own purposes, end of quote, logo citato, page 52, quote, by making the masters of their own time, the factory acts have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power, end of quote, logo citato, page 47. With suppressed irony and in very well weighed words, the factory inspectors hint that the actual law also frees the capitalist from some of the brutality natural to a man who is a mere embodiment of capital, that it has given him time for a little culture, quote, formally the master had no time for anything but money, the servant had no time for anything but labor, end of quote, logo citato, page 48, end of footnote, end of part three, chapter 10, section seven, chapter 11 of capital volume one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Jake Baker, October 2007, Capital, a critical analysis of capitalist production, volume one by Karl Marx, translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and edited by Frederick Engels. Part three, the production of absolute surplus value, chapter 11, rate and mass of surplus value. In this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labor power, and therefore the part of the working day necessary for the reproduction or maintenance of that labor power, are supposed to be given constant magnitudes. This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time given of the surplus value that the individual labor furnishes to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e.g., the necessary labor amounts to six hours daily, expressed in a quantum of gold equal to three shillings, then three shillings is the daily value of one labor power, or the value of the capital advanced in the buying of one labor power. If further, the rate of surplus value be equal to 100%. This variable capital of three shillings produces a massive surplus value of three shillings, or the laborer supplies daily a massive surplus labor equal to six hours. But the variable capital of a capitalist is the expression and money of the total value of all the labor powers that he employs simultaneously. Its value is, therefore, equal to the average value of one labor power, multiplied by the number of labor powers employed. With a given value of labor power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies directly as the number of laborers employed simultaneously. If the daily value of one labor power equals three shillings, then a capital of 300 shillings must be advanced in order to exploit daily 100 labor powers of n times three shillings in order to exploit daily n labor powers. In the same way, if a variable capital of three shillings, being the daily value of one labor power, produce a daily surplus value of three shillings, a variable capital of 300 shillings will produce a daily surplus value of 300 shillings, and one of n times three shillings, a daily surplus value of n times three shillings. The mass of the surplus value produced is, therefore, equal to the surplus value, which the working day of one laborer supplies, multiplied by the number of laborers employed. But as further, the mass of surplus value, which a single laborer produces, the value of labor power being given is determined by the rate of the surplus value. This law follows. The mass of the surplus value produced is equal to the amount of variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate of surplus value. In other words, it is determined by the compound ratio between the number of labor powers exploited simultaneously by the same capitalist and the degree of exploitation of each individual labor power. Let the mass of the surplus value be capital S. The surplus value supplied by the individual laborer in the average day, lowercase S, the variable capital daily advanced in the purchase of one individual labor power, lowercase V, the sum total of the variable capital, uppercase V, the value of an average labor power, uppercase P, its degree of exploitation, A prime over A, surplus labor over necessary labor, and the number of laborers employed N, we have capital S equals quantity, lowercase S over lowercase V, and quantity times uppercase V. Equivalently, capital P times A prime over A times N, it is always opposed, not only that the value of an average labor power is constant, but that the laborers employed by a capitalist are reduced to average laborers. There are exceptional cases in which the surplus value produced does not increase in proportion to the number of laborers exploited, but then the value of the labor power does not remain constant. In the production of a definite mass of surplus value, therefore the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the increase of the other. If the variable capital diminishes, and at the same time, the rate of surplus value increases in the same ratio, the mass of surplus value produced remains unaltered. If, on our earlier assumption, the capitalist must advance 300 shillings in order to exploit 100 laborers a day, and if the rate of surplus value amounts to 50%, this variable capital of 300 shillings yields a surplus value of 150 shillings, or of 100 times 3 working hours. If the rate of surplus value doubles, or the working day, instead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from 6 to 12 hours, and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half, and reduced to 150 shillings, it yields also a surplus value of 150 shillings, or 50 times 6 working hours. Diminition of the variable capital may therefore be compensated by a proportionate rise in the degree of exploitation of labor power, or the decrease in the number of the laborers employed by a proportionate extension of the working day. Within certain limits, therefore, the supply of labor exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of laborers. Footnote. This elementary law appears to be unknown to the vulgar economists, who, upside down Archimedes, in the determination of the market price of labor by supply and demand, imagine they have found the fulcrum by means of which not to move the world, but to stop its motion. Footnote. On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus value produced if the amount of the variable capital, or the number of the laborers employed, increases in the same proportion. Nevertheless, the compensation of a decrease in the number of laborers employed, or of the amount of variable capital advanced by a rise in the rate of surplus value, or by the lengthening of the working day, has impassable limits. Whatever the value of labor power may be, whether the working time necessary for the maintenance of the laborer is two or 10 hours. The total value that a laborer can produce day in, day out, is always less than the value in which 24 hours of laborer are embodied, less than 12 shillings if 12 shillings is the money expression for 24 hours of realized laborer. In our former assumption, according to which six working hours are daily necessary in order to reproduce the labor power itself or to replace the value of the capital advanced in its purchase, a variable capital of 1,500 shillings that employs 500 laborers at a rate of surplus value of 100% with a 12 hours working day produces daily a surplus value of 1,500 shillings or of 6 times 500 working hours. A capital of 300 shillings that employs 100 laborers a day with a rate of surplus value of 200% or with a working day of 18 hours produces only a massive surplus value of 600 shillings or 12 times 100 working hours. And its total value product, the equivalent of the variable capital advanced plus the surplus value, can day in, day out, never reach the sum of 1,200 shillings or 24 times 100 working hours. The absolute limit of the average working day, this being by nature always less than 24 hours, sets an absolute limit to the compensation of a reduction of variable capital by a higher rate of surplus value or of the decrease of the number of laborers exploited by a higher degree of exploitation of labor power. This palpable law is of importance for the clearing up of many phenomena arising from a tendency to be worked out later on of capital to reduce as much as possible the number of laborers employed by it or its variable constituent transformed into labor power in contradiction to its other tendency to produce the greatest possible mass of surplus value. On the other hand, if the mass of labor power employed or the amount of variable capital increases but not in proportion to the fall in the rate of surplus value, the mass of the surplus value produced falls. A third law results from the determination of the mass of the surplus value produced by two factors, rate of surplus value and amount of variable capital advanced. The rate of surplus value or the degree of exploitation of labor power and the value of labor power or the amount of necessary working time being given, it is self-evident that the greater the variable capital, the greater would be the mass of the value produced and of the surplus value. If the limit of the working day is given and also the limit of its necessary constituent, the mass of value and surplus value that an individual capitalist produces is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass of labor that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditions supposed above, depends on the mass of labor power or the number of laborers whom he exploits, and this number in its turn is determined by the amount of the variable capital advanced. With a given rate of surplus value and a given value of labor power therefore, the masses of surplus value produced vary directly as the amounts of the variable capital advanced. Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production. This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays out in living labor power. This part forms his variable capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production, the division of capital into constant and variable differs in different branches of production, and within the same branch of production too, this relation changes with changes in the technical conditions and in the social combinations of the processes of production. But in whatever proportion a given capital breaks up into a constant and a variable part, whether the latter is to the former as 1 is to 2 or 1 to 10 or 1 to x, the law just laid down is not affected by this. 4. According to our previous analysis, the value of the constant capital reappears in the value of the product, but does not enter into the newly produced value, the newly created value product. To employ 1,000 spinners, more raw materials, spindles, etc. are of course required than to employ 100. The value of these additional means of production however may rise, fall, remain unaltered, be large or small. It has no influence on the process of creation of surplus value by means of the labor powers that put them in motion. The law demonstrated above now therefore takes this form. The masses of value and of surplus value produced by different capitals, the value of labor power being given and its degree of exploitation being equal, vary directly as the amounts of the variable constituents of these capitals, i.e. as their constituents transformed into living labor power. This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a content spinner who reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital employs much constant and little variable capital does not on account of this pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted. As from the standpoint of elementary algebra, many intermediate terms are wanted to understand that 0 over 0 may represent an actual magnitude. Classical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively to it because it is a necessary consequence of the general law of value. It tries to rescue the law from collision with contradictory phenomenon by a violent abstraction. It will be seen later how the School of Ricardo has come to grief over this stumbling block. Footnote Further particulars will be given in book four and footnote. Volgar economy, which indeed, quote, has really learned nothing on quote, here as everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the law, which regulates and explains them in opposition to Spinoza. It believes that, quote, ignorance is a sufficient reason and quote, the labor which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective working day. If, e.g., the number of laborers is a million and the average working day of a laborer is 10 hours, the social working day consists of 10 million hours. With a given length of this working day, whether its limits are fixed physically or socially, the mass of surplus value can only be increased by increasing the number of laborers, i.e., of the laboring population. The growth of population here forms the mathematical limit to the production of surplus value by the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given amount of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening of the working day. Footnote, quote, the labor that is the economic time of society is a given portion, say, 10 hours a day of a million people or 10 million hours. Capital has its boundary of increase. This boundary may, at any given period, be attained in the actual extent of economic time employed. And, quote, an essay on the political economy of nations, London, 1821, pages 47, 49, and footnote. It will, however, be seen in the following chapter that this law holds only for the form of surplus value dealt with up to the present. From the treatment of the production of surplus value, so far it follows that not every sum of money or of value is at pleasure transformable into capital. To affect this transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities. The minimum of variable capital is the cost price of a single labor power employed the whole year through, day in, day out, for the production of surplus value. If this laborer were in possession of his own means of production and were satisfied to live as a laborer, he need not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of his means of subsistence, say, eight hours a day. He would, besides, only require the means of production sufficient for eight working hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who makes him do besides these eight hours, say, four hours surplus labor, requires an additional sum of money for furnishing the additional means of production. On our supposition, however, he would have to employ two laborers in order to live on the surplus value appropriated daily, as well and no better than a laborer, i.e., to be able to satisfy his necessary wants. In this case, the mere maintenance of life would be the end of his production, not the increase of wealth, but this latter is implied in capitalist production. That he may live only twice as well as an ordinary laborer, and besides turn half of the surplus value produced into capital, he would have to raise, with the number of laborers, the minimum of the capital advanced eight times. Of course, he can, like his laborer, take to work himself, participate directly in the process of production, but he is then only a hybrid between a capitalist and a laborer, a small master. A certain stage of capitalist production necessitates that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the time during which he functions as a capitalist, i.e., as personified capital, to the appropriation and therefore control of the labor of others and to the selling of the products of this laborer. The farmer cannot rely on his own labor, and if he does, I will maintain that he is a loser by it. His employment should be a general attention to the whole. His thresher must be watched, or he will soon lose his wages in court not threshed out. His mowers, reapers, etc., must be looked after. He must constantly go round his fences. He must see there is no neglect, which would be the case if he was confined to any one spot. End quote. An inquiry into the connection between the present price of provisions and the size of farms, etc., by a farmer. London, 1773, page 12. This book is very interesting. In it, the genesis of the capitalist farmer, or merchant farmer, as he is explicitly called, may be studied, and his self-glorification at the expense of the small farmer, who has only to do with bare subsistence, be noted. Quote. The class of capitalists are from the first partially, and they become ultimately completely discharged from the necessity of the manual labor. End quote. Textbook of lectures on the political economy of nations by the Reverend Richard Jones, Hertford, 1852, lecture 3, page 39. End footnote. The guilds of the middle ages, therefore, tried to prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist by limiting the number of laborers that could be employed by one master within a very small maximum. The possessor of money, or commodities, actually turns into a capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel in his logic that merely quantitative differences between a certain point pass into qualitative changes. Footnote. The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law. Addition to third edition. For the explanation of this statement, which is not very clear to nonchemists, we remark that the author speaks here of the homologous series of carbon compounds, first so named by C Gerhardt in 1843, each series of which has its own general algebraic formula. Thus the series of paraffins, CnH2n plus 2, that of the normal alcohols, CnH2n plus 2O, of the normal fatty acids, CnH2nO2, and many others, and the above examples, by the simple quantitative addition of CH2 to the molecular formula, a qualitatively different body is each time formed. On the share, overestimated by Marx, of Laurent and Gerhardt in the determination of this important fact, C Kopp, and Wichlung der Chemie, Munich 1873, pages 709, 716, and Schroekamer, the rise and development of organic chemistry, London, 1879, page 54, signed Frederick Engels, C Letter from Marx to Engels, 22 June 1867. For Hegel's formulation of the idea in the logic, C remark, examples of such nodal lines, the maxim, nature does not make leaps. And footnote, the minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money, or commodities, must command, in order to metamorph himself into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions, certain spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capitalist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the time of Klöber, and as in many German states up to our own epoch, partly to the formation of societies with legal monopolies for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and commerce, the forerunners of our modern joint stock companies. Footnote, Martin Luther calls these kinds of institutions, the company monopolia, and footnote. Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired the command over labor, i.e., over functioning labor power, or the laborer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that the laborer does his work regularly and with the proper degree of intensity. Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper out of surplus labor and exploiter of labor power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of bounds, recklessness, and efficiency all earlier systems of production based on directly compulsory labor. At first, capital subordinates labor on the basis of the technical conditions in which it historically finds it. It does not therefore change immediately the mode of production, the production of surplus value in the form hitherto considered by us by means of simple extension of the working day proved, therefore, to be independent of any change in the mode of production itself. It was not less active in the old-fashioned bakeries than in the modern cotton factories. If we consider the process of production from the point of view of the simple labor process, the laborer stands in relation to the means of production, not in their quality as capital, but as the mere means and material of his own intelligent productive activity. In tanning, e.g., he deals with the skins of his simple object of labor, it is not the capitalist whose skin he tans, but it is different as soon as we deal with a process of production from the point of view of the process of creation of surplus value. The means of production are at once changed into means for the absorption of the labor of others. It is now no longer the laborer that employs the means of production, but the means of production that employ the laborer. Instead of being consumed by him as material elements of his productive activity, they consume him as the ferment necessary to their own life process, and the life process of capital consists only in its movement as value constantly expanding, constantly multiplying itself. Furnaces and workshops that stand idle by night and absorb no living labor are a mere loss to the capitalist. Hence, furnaces and workshops constitute lawful claims upon the night labor of the work people. The simple transformation of money into the material factors of the process of production into means of production transforms the later into a title and a right to labor and surplus labor of others. An example will show in conclusion how this sophistication peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production, this complete inversion of the relation between dead and living labor, between value and the force that creates value, mirrors itself in the consciousness of capitalists. During the revolt of the English factory lords between 1848 and 1850, quote, the head of one of the oldest and most respectable houses in the west of Scotland, Monsieur's Carlisle Sons and Company, of the linen and cotton thread factory at Paisley, a company which has now existed for about a century, which was in operation in 1752 and four generations of the same family have conducted it, this very intelligent gentleman then wrote a letter, footnote, reports of inspection of fact, April 30th, 1849, page 59, and footnote. Then wrote a letter in the Glasgow Daily Mail of April 25th, 1849 with the title, The Relay System, in which among other things the following grotesquely naive passage appears, quote, let us now see what evils will attend the limiting to 10 hours the working of the factory. They amount to the most serious damage to the mill owner's prospects and property. If he, i.e. his hands, worked 12 hours before and is limited to 10, then every 12 machines or spindles in his establishment shrink to 10 and should the works be disposed of, they will be valued only as 10 so that a sixth part would thus be deducted from the value of every factory in the country. Footnote, local citato, page 60, factory inspector Stuart, himself a Scotchman, and in contrast to the English factory inspectors, quite taken captive by the capitalistic method of thinking, remarks expressly on this letter which he incorporates in his report that it is, quote, the most useful of the communications which any of the factory owners working with relays have given to those engaged in the same trade and which is the most calculated to remove the prejudices of such of them as have scruples respecting any change of the arrangement of the hours of work. End, quote, end footnote. To this west of Scotland bourgeois brain, inheriting the accumulated capitalistic qualities of four generations, the value of the means of production, spindles, etc., is so inseparably mixed up with their property as capital to expand their own value and to swallow up daily a definite quantity of the unpaid labor of others that the head of the firm of Carlisle and company actually imagines that if he sells his factory not only will the value of the spindles be paid to him, but in addition their power of annexing surplus value, not only the labor which is embodied in them, and is necessary to the production of spindles of this kind, but also the surplus labor which they help to pump out daily from the brave Scots of Paisley, and for that very reason he thinks that with the shortening of the working day by two hours the selling price of 12 spinning machines dwindles to that of ten. End of chapter 11 of capital, volume 1.