 Chapter 15 Section 4 of Capital Volume 1. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Ingalls. Part 4. Production of Relative Surplus Value. Chapter 15. Machinery and Modern Industry. Section 4. The Factory. At the commencement of this chapter we considered that which we may call the body of a factory, i.e., machinery organized into a system. We there saw how machinery, by annexing the labor of women and children, augments the number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic exploitation. How it confiscates the whole of the workman's disposable time by immoderate extension of the hours of labor, and how finally its progress, which allows of enormous increase of production in shorter and shorter periods, serves as a means of systematically getting more work done in a shorter time, or of exploiting labor power more intensely. We now turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect form. Dr. Ure, the pindar of the automatic factory, describes it on the one hand as, combined cooperation of many orders of work people, adult and young, intending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines, continuously impelled by a central power, the prime mover, on the other hand, as a vast automaton composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object, all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving force. These two descriptions are far from being identical. In one, the collective laborer, or social body of labor, appears as the dominant subject, and the mechanical automaton as the object. In the other, the automaton itself is the subject, and the workmen are merely conscious organs, co-ordinate with the unconscious organs of the automaton, and together with them subordinated to the central moving power. The first description is applicable to every possible employment of machinery on a large scale. The second is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the modern factory system. Ure prefers, therefore, to describe the central machine, from which the motion comes, not only as an automaton, but as an autocrat. In these spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials. Ure, first C, page 18. Along with the tool, the skill of the workmen in handling it passes over to the machine. The capabilities of the tool are emancipated from the restraints that are inseparable from human labor power, thereby the technical foundation on which is based the division of labor in manufacture is swept away. Hence in the place of the hierarchy of specialized workmen that characterizes manufacturer, there steps in the automatic factory a tendency to equalize and reduce to one in the same level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines. In the place of the artificially produced differentiations of the detailed workmen, step the natural differences of age and sex. Footnote. Ure, first C, page 31. See Karl Marx, first C, pages 140 through 141. So far as division of labor reappears in the factory, it is primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialized machines, and of masses of workmen, not however organized into groups among the various departments of the factory, in each of which they work at a number of similar machines placed together. Their cooperation, therefore, is only simple. The organized group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by the connection between the head workmen and his few assistants. The essential division is into workmen who are actually employed on the machines, among whom are included a few who look after the engine, and into mere attendants, almost exclusively children of these workmen. Among the attendants are reckoned more or less all feeders who supply the machines with the material to be worked. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant class of persons whose occupation it is to look after the whole of the machinery and repair it from time to time, such as engineers, mechanics, joiners, etc. This is a superior class of workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade. It is distinct from the factory operative class, and merely aggregated to it. This division of labor is purely technical. It looks very like intentional misleading by statistics, which misleading it would be possible to prove in detail in other cases too, when the English factory legislation excludes from its operation the class of laborers last mentioned in the text, while the parliamentary returns expressly included in the category of factory operatives, not only engineers and mechanics, etc., but also managers, salesmen, messengers, warehouse men, packers, etc. In short, everybody except the owner of the factory himself. To work at a machine, the workmen should be taught from childhood in order that he may learn to adapt his own movements to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton. When the machinery as a whole forms a system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-operation based upon it requires the distribution of various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallizing this distribution after the manner of manufacturer by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Footnote. Ure grants this. He says, In case of need, the workmen can be moved at the will of the manager from one machine to another, and he triumphantly exclaims, Such a change is in flat contradiction with the old routine that divides the labor and to one workman assigns the task of fashioning the head of a needle to another the sharpening of the point. He had much better have asked himself why this old routine is departed from in the automated factory, only in case of need. Endnote. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work. The most striking proof of this is afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manufacturers doing their revolt from 1848 to 1850. Lastly, the quickness with which machine work is learned by young people does away with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive employment by machinery a special class of operatives. Footnote. When distress is very great, as, for instance, during the American Civil War, the factory operative is now and then set by the bourgeois to do the roughest of work, such as road-making, etc. The English Atelier's National, National Workshops of 1862 and the following years, established for the benefit of destitute cotton operatives, differ from the French of 1848 in this, but in the latter the workmen had to do the unproductive work at the expense of the state. In the former they had to do productive municipal work to the advantage of the bourgeois, and that, too, cheaper than the regular workmen, with whom they were thus thrown into competition. The physical appearance of the cotton operatives is unquestionably improved. This I attribute, as to the men, to outdoor labor on public works. Direct of Inspect of Fact, 31st October, 1863, page 59. The writer here alludes to the Preston factory operatives who were employed on Preston more. End note. With regard to the work of the mere attendance, it can, to some extent, be replaced in the mill by machines, and owing to its extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals burdened with this drudgery. Footnote. An example. The various mechanical apparatus introduced since the act of 1844 into woolen mills for replacing the labor of children. So soon as it shall happen that the children of the manufacturers themselves have to go through a course of schooling as helpers in the mill, this almost unexplored territory of mechanics will soon make remarkable progress. Of machinery, perhaps self-acting mules are as dangerous as any other kind. Most of the accidents from them happen to little children, from their creeping under the mules to sweep the floor whilst the mules are in motion. Several minders have been fined for this offense, but without much general benefit. If machine makers would only invent a self-sweeper, by whose use the necessity for these little children to creep under the machinery might be prevented, it would be a happy addition to our protective measures. Reports of inspectors of factories for the 31st of October, 1866, page 63. End note. Although then technically speaking the old system of division of labor is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory as a traditional habit handed down from manufacture and is afterwards systematically remolded and established in a more hideous form by capital as a means of exploiting labor power. The lifelong specialty of handling one in the same tool now becomes the lifelong specialty of serving one in the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use with the object of transforming the workman from his very childhood into a part of a detail machine. Note. So much then for Prudone's wonderful idea. He construes machinery not as a synthesis of instruments of labor, but as a synthesis of detail operations for the benefit of the laborer himself. End note. In this way not only are the expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole and therefore upon the capitalist is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture the workman makes use of a tool. In the factory the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labor proceed from him. Here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workman are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman who becomes its mere living appendage. The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again is like the labor of Sisyphus. The burden of labor, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn out laborer. Note. Friedrich Engels, 1st C, page 217. Even an ordinary and optimist free trader, like Mr. Molinari, goes so far as to say. A man moves faster a surveillance, one hour per day, the evolution uniform of a mechanism that is exercising in the same space of time, its physical force, this work of surveillance that could be of the use of gymnastics to intelligence if it was not too long de tourer up la langue par son excess et l'intelligence et l'acro-même. A man becomes exhausted more quickly when he watches over the uniform motion of a mechanism for fifteen hours a day than when he applies his physical strength over the same period of time. This labor of surveillance, which might perhaps serve as a useful exercise for the mind if it did not go on too long, destroys both the mind and the body in the long run through excessive application. G. de Molinari etude économique Paris, 1846. End note. At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. End note. Friedrich Engels, 1st C, page 216. End note. The lightning of the labor, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the laborer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far it is not only a labor process, but also a process of creating surplus value, has this in common. That it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labor, but the instruments of labor that employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system that this inversion, for the first time, acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labor confronts the laborer during the labor process, in the shape of capital, of dead labor that dominates and pumps dry living labor power. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labor, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labor, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual in significant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labor that are embodied in the factory mechanism, and together with that mechanism constitute the power of the master. This master, therefore, in whose brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united, whenever he falls out with his hands, contemptuously tells them, the factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labor, and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which by a short training of the least expert can be it more quickly, as well as abundantly acquired. The master's machinery really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labor and the skill of the operative, which sixth month's education can teach, and a common laborer can learn. Footnote The master spinners and manufacturer's defense fund report of the committee, Manchester, 1854, page 17. We shall see hereafter that the master can sing quite another song when he is threatened with the loss of his living automaton. End note The technical subordination of the workmen to the uniform motion of the instruments of labor, and the peculiar composition of the body of work people, consisting, as it does, of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barric discipline which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully develops the before mentioned labor of overlooking, thereby dividing the work people into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army. The main difficulty in the automatic factory lay above all in training human beings to renounce their dulcetory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton. To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculane Enterprise, the noble achievement of Aukwright. Even at the present day, when the system is perfectly organized and its labor lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty into useful hands. Footnote Ure, 1st C, page 15. Whoever knows the life history of Aukwright will never dub this barber-genius noble. Of all the great inventors of the eighteenth century, he was uncontestably the greatest thiever of other people's inventions and the meanest fellow. End note. The factory code in which capital formulates, like a private legislator, and at his own good will, his aristocracy over his work people, unaccompanied by that division of responsibility in other matters so much approved of by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more approved representative system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of that social regulation of the labor process, which becomes requisite in cooperation on a great scale and in the employment in common of instruments of labor and especially of machinery. The place of the slave-driver slash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties. All punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory like courgeous so arranges matters that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to him than the keeping of them. Footnote. The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat comes nowhere more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an end, both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half-past five. If he come a few minutes late he is punished. If he come ten minutes late he is not allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day's wage. He must eat, drink, and sleep at a word of command. The despotic bell calls him from his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in the mill? There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations he pleases. He alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure. And if he insert the various nonsense the courts say to the workmen, since you have entered into this contract voluntarily you must now carry it out. These workmen are condemned to live from their ninth year till their death under this mental and bodily torture. Friedrich Engels, First See, page two hundred and seventeen. The courts say, I will illustrate by two examples. One occurs at Sheffield at the end of eighteen sixty-six. In that town a workman had engaged himself for two years in a steel works. In consequence of a quarrel with his employer he left the works and declared that under no circumstances would he work for that master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract and condemned to two months' imprisonment. If the master breaks the contract he can be preceded against only in a civil action and risks nothing but money damages. After the workman has served his two months the master invites him to return to the works, pursuant to the contract. Workman says, No, he has already been punished for the breach. The master prosecutes again. The court condemns again, although one of the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity, by which a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again for the same offense or crime. This judgment was given not by the great unpaid, the provincial dog-berries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in London. Added in the fourth German edition, this has now been done away with, with few exceptions, e.g., when public gas works are involved, the worker in England is now put on an equal footing with the employer in case of breach of contract, and can be sued only civilly. Friedrich Engels The second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November, 1863. About thirty powerloom weavers in the employment of one Harrop, a cloth manufacturer at Lowers Mill, Westbury-Lee, struck work because master Harrop indulged in the agreeable habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morning, six pints for two minutes, one shilling for three minutes, and one shilling six pints for ten minutes. This is at the rate of nine shillings per hour, and four pounds ten shillings per diem, while the wages of the weavers on the average of a year never exceeded ten shillings to twelve shillings weekly. Harrop also appointed a boy to announce the starting time by a whistle, which he often did before six o'clock in the morning, and if the hands were not all there at the moment the whistle ceased, the doors were closed, and those hands who were outside were fined, and as there was no clock on the premises the unfortunate hands were at the mercy of the young Harrop-inspired timekeeper. The hands on strike, the mothers of families as well as girls, offered to resume work if the timekeeper were replaced by a clock, and a more reasonable scale of fines were introduced. Harrop summoned nineteen women and girls before the magistrates for breach of contract. To the utter indignation of all present they were each molested in a fine of six pence and two shilling six pence for cost. Harrop was followed from the court by a crowd of people who hissed him. A favorite operation with manufacturers is to punish the work people by deductions made from their wages on account of faults in the material worked on. This method gave rise in eighteen sixty-six to a general strike in the English pottery districts. The reports of the Ch-Empth corn, eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-six, give cases where the worker not only receives no wages, but becomes, by means of his labor and of the penal regulations, the debtor to boot of his worthy master. The late cotton crisis also furnished edifying examples of the sagacity shown by the factory autocrats in making deductions from wages. Mr. R. Baker, the inspector of factories, says, I have myself had lately to direct prosecutions against one cotton mill occupier. For having, in these pinching and painful times, deducted ten pence a piece from some of the young workers employed by him for the surgeon's certificate, for which he himself had only paid six pence, when allowed by the law to deduct three pence, and by custom nothing at all. And I have been informed of another, who, in order to keep without the law, but to obtain the same object, charges the poor children who work for him a shilling each, as a fee for learning them the art and mystery of cotton-spinning, so soon as they are declared by the surgeon fit and proper persons for that occupation. There may therefore be undercurrent causes for such extraordinary exhibitions as strikes, not only wherever they arise, but particularly at such times as the present, which without explanation render them inexplicable to the public understanding. He alludes here to a strike of power loom weavers at Darwin, June 1863. Reports of inspectors of factories for 30 April, 1863, pages 50-51. The reports always go beyond their official dates. End note. We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under which factory labor is carried on. Every organ of sense is injured in an equal degree by artificial elevation of the temperature, by the dust laden atmosphere, by the deafening noise, not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly crowded machinery, which, with the regularity of the seasons, issues its list of the killed and wounded in the industrial battle. Footnote. The protection afforded by the factory acts against dangerous machinery has had a beneficial effect. But there are other sources of accident which did not exist twenty years since—one, especially, Viz, the increased speed of the machinery. Wheels, rollers, spindles, and shuttles are now propelled at increased and increasing rates. Fingers must be quicker and defter in their movements to take up the broken thread, for if placed with hesitation or carelessness they are sacrificed. A large number of accidents are caused by the eagerness of the work people to get through their work expeditiously. It must be remembered that it is of the highest importance to manufacturers that their machinery should be in motion, i.e. producing yams and goods. Every minute's stoppage is not only a loss of power but of production, and the work people are urged by the overlookers who are interested in the quantity of work turned off to keep the machinery in motion, and it is no less important to those of the operatives who are paid by the weight or piece that the machine should be kept in motion. Consequently, although it is strictly forbidden in many, nay, in most factories, that machinery should be cleaned while in motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most, if not in all, that the work people do unprovoked, pick out waste, wipe rollers and wheels, etc., while their frames are in motion. Thus, from this cause only, 906 accidents have occurred during the six months. Although a great deal of cleaning is constantly going on by day, yet Saturday is generally the day set apart for the thorough cleaning of the machinery, and a great deal of this is done while the machinery is in motion. Since cleaning is not paid for, the work people seek to get done with it as speedily as possible. Hence, the number of accidents which occur on Fridays and especially on Saturdays is much larger than on any other day. On the former day the excess is nearly twelve percent over the average number of the first four days of the week, and on the latter day the excess is twenty-five percent over the average of the preceding five days, or if the number of working hours on Saturday being taken into account, seven-and-a-half hours on Saturday as compared with ten-and-a-half on other days, there is an excess of sixty-five percent on Saturdays over the average of the other five days. Part of the Inspector of Factories, 31st October, 1866, Pages Nine, Fifteen, Sixteen, and Seventeen. End Note. Economy of the social means of production, matured and forced as in a hot-house by the factory system, is turned, in the hands of capital, into systematic robbery of what is necessary for the life of the workmen while he is at work. Robbery of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the comfort of the workmen. Is Fourier wrong when he calls factories tempered bag-nose? Footnote. In Part One of Book Three I shall give an account of a recent campaign by the English manufacturers against the clauses in the Factory Acts that protect the hands against dangerous machinery. For the present let this one quotation from the official report of Leonard Horner Suffice. I have heard some mill-owners speak with inexcusable levity of some of the accidents, such, for instance, as the loss of a finger being a trifling matter. A working man's living and prospects depend so much upon his fingers that any loss of them is a very serious matter to him. When I have heard such inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this question. Suppose you were in want of an additional workmen, and two were to apply, both equally well-qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or a forefinger, which would you engage? There never was a hesitation as to the answer. The manufacturers have mistaken prejudices against what they have heard represented as pseudo philanthropic legislation. Report of the Inspector of Factories, 31st October, 1855. These manufacturers are clever folk, and not without reason where they enthusiastic for the slave-holders' rebellion. End note. In these factories that have been longest subject to the Factory Acts, with their compulsatory limitations of the hours of labor and other regulations, many of the older abuses have vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a certain extent improved construction of the buildings, and this is an advantage to the work-people. See the report of the Inspector of Factories for the 31st October, 1863, page 109. End note. End of Part 4, Chapter 15, Section 5 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 Capital, a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1, by Karl Marx. Translated from the 3rd German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Friedrich Engels. Part 4. Production of Relative Surplus Value, Chapter 15, Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 5, The Strife Between Workmen and Machine. The contest between the Capitalist and the Waged Laborer dates back to the very origin of Capital. It raged on throughout the whole manufacturing period. Note. See amongst others John Houghton, Husbandry and Trade Improved, London, 1727. The advantages of the East India Trade, 1720, John Beller's. The masters and their workmen are, unhappily, in a perpetual war with each other. The invariable object of the former is to get their work done as cheaply as possible, and they do not fail to employ every artifice to this purpose, whilst the latter are equally attentive to every occasion of distressing their masters into a compliance with higher demands. An inquiry into the causes of the present high price of provisions, Pages 61 through 62, author, the Reverend Nathaniel Forster, quite on the side of the workmen. End note. But only since the introduction of machinery has the workmen fought against the instrument of labor itself, the material embodiment of capital. He revolts against this particular form of the means of production, as being the material basis of the Capitalist mode of production. In the seventeenth century, nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the work people against the ribbon loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings, called in Germany Bandmühle, Schernowmühle, and Mühlenstuhle. These machines were invented in Germany, Abbe Lenzelade, in a work that appeared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says as follows. Anthony Müller of Dunzig saw about fifty years ago in that town a very ingenious machine, which weaves four to six pieces at once. But the mayor, being apprehensive that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned. In Leiden this machine was not used till 1629. There the riots of the ribbon-rievers at length compelled the town council to prohibit it. In Hack Erbe, says Boxhorn, inst Paul 1663, referring to the introduction of this machine into Leiden, antehose vigente serseter annus instrumentum quedum invinerant textorium, quos solos pluspani e facilius confesere potrat, quon pluris e quali tempore, hink terbe orte e quere le textorum, tandem qusis hugis instrumenti a magistruti prohibitist est. In this town, about twenty years ago, certain people invented an instrument for weaving, with which a single person could weave more cloth and more easily than many others in the same length of time. As a result there arose disturbances and complaints from the weavers, until the town council finally prohibited the use of this instrument. After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, etc., the state's general of Holland at length permitted it to be used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th December 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction into England was causing disturbances among the work people. By an imperial edict of 19 February 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany. In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The emperor, Charles VI, on 9 February 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not until 1665 was its use openly allowed in the electorate of Saxony. This machine, which shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and the power loom, and of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. It enabled a totally inexperienced boy to set the whole loom with all its shuttles in motion by simply moving a ride backwards and forwards, and in its improved form produced from forty to fifty pieces at once. Around 1630 a wind sawmill erected near London by a Dutchman succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginnings of the eighteenth century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everett in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water power than it was set on fire by one hundred thousand people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand work people, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned parliament against awkward scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first fifteen years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jackabin governments of a pinnmouth, a castle-ray, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the work people learned to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used. Note, in old-fashioned manufacturers the revolts of the work people against machinery, even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character, as in the case of the Sheffield file-cutters in 1865. End note. The contests about wages in manufacture presuppose manufacture and are in no sense directed against its existence. The opposition against the establishment of new manufacturers precedes from the guilds and privileged towns, not from the work people. Hence the writers of the manufacturing period treat the division of labor chiefly as a means of virtually supplying a deficiency of laborers, and not as a means of actually displacing those in work. This distinction is self-evident. If it be said that one hundred millions of people would be required in England to spin with the old spinning-wheel, the cotton that is now spun with mules by five hundred thousand people, this does not mean that the mules took the place of those millions who never existed. It means only this, that many millions of work people would be required to replace the spinning machinery. If on the other hand we say that in England the power loom through eight hundred thousand weavers on the streets, we do not refer to existing machinery that would have to be replaced by a definite number of work people, but to a number of weavers in existence who were actually replaced or displaced by the looms. During the manufacturing period, handicraft labor, altered though it was by a division of labor, was yet the basis. The demands of the new colonial markets could not be satisfied owing to the relatively small number of town operatives handed down from the Middle Ages, and the manufacturers proper opened out new fields of production to the rural population, driven from the land by the dissolution of the feudal system. At that time, therefore, division of labor and cooperation in the workshops were viewed more from the positive aspect that they made the work people more productive. Footnote, Sir James Stewart also understands machinery quite in this sense. Je considère donc les machines comme des moyens d'augmenter virtuellement le nombre des gens industriaux qu'on n'est pas obligé de nourrir, et quoi l'effort d'un machine des fertiles de celui de nouveau habitant. FRENCH TRANSLATION CHAPTER XIX More naive is petty, who says it replaces polygamy. The above point of view is, at the most, admissible only for some parts of the United States. On the other hand, machinery can seldom be used with success to abridge the labor of an individual. More time would be lost in its construction than could be saved by its application. It is only really useful when it acts on great masses, when a single machine can assist the work of thousands. It is accordingly in the most populous countries, where there are most idle men, that it is most abundant. It is not called into use by a scarcity of men, but by the facility with which they can be brought to work in masses. Percy Ravenstone, Thoughts on the Funding System and Its London, 1824, page 45. End note. Long before the period of modern industry, cooperation and the concentration of the instruments of labor in the hands of a few gave rise in numerous countries where these methods were applied in agriculture to great, sudden, and forcible revolutions in the modes of production, and consequently in the conditions of existence and the means of employment of the rural populations. But this contest, at first, takes place more between the large and the small landed proprietors than between capital and wage labor. On the other hand, when the laborers are displaced by the instruments of labor, by sheep, horses, et cetera, in this case, force is directly resorted to in the first instance as the prelude to the Industrial Revolution. The laborers are first driven from the land, and then come the sheep. Land grabbing on a great scale, such as was perpetrated in England, is the first step in creating a field for the establishment of agriculture on a great scale. Footnote. Note in the fourth German edition. This applies to Germany, too, where in our country, agriculture on a large scale exists, hence particularly in the East, it has become possible only in consequence of the clearing of the estates. Bernlegen, a practice which became widespread in the 16th century and was particularly so since 1648. Friedrich Engels. Endnote. Hence this subversion of agriculture puts on, at first, more the appearance of a political revolution. The instrument of labor, when it takes the form of a machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workmen himself. Note. Machinery and labor are in constant competition. Ricardo, page 479. Endnote. The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery is dense forward directly proportional to the number of work people whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by that machinery. The whole system of capitalist production is based on the fact that the workman sells his labor power as a commodity. Division of Labor specializes this labor power by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool. So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine, then with the use value, exchange value, too, of the workman's labor power vanishes. The workman becomes unsalable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enactment. That portion of the working class, thus by machinery, rendered superfluous, i.e. no longer immediately necessary for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufacturers with industry, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry, swamps the labor market, and sinks the price of labor power below its value. It is impressed upon the work people as a great consolation, first that their sufferings are only temporary, a temporary inconvenience, secondly that machinery acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field of production, only by degrees, so that the extent and intensity of its destructive effect is diminished. The first consolation neutralizes the second. When machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great masses. History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English handloom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several decades and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation, many with families vegetated for a long time, on two-and-a-half shillings a day. Footnote The competition between hand-weaving and power-weaving in England before the passing of the poor law of 1833 was prolonged by supplementing the wages which had fallen considerably below the minimum with parish relief. The reverend Mr. Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wimslow and Cheshire, a manufacturing district. The questions of the Committee of Immigration and Mr. Turner's answers show how the competition of human labor is maintained against machinery. Has not the use of the power-loom superseded the use of the handloom? Answer. Undoubtedly. It would have superseded them much more than it has done if the handloom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages. Question. But in submitting he has accepted wages which are insufficient to support him, and looks to parochial contribution as the remainder of his support? Answer. Yes, and in fact the competition between the handloom and the power-loom is maintained out of the poor rates. Thus degrading pauperism or expatriation is the benefit which the industrious receive from the introduction of machinery to be reduced from the respectable and in some degree independent mechanic to the cringing wretch who lives on the debasing bread of charity. This they call a temporary inconvenience. A prize essay on the comparative merits of competition and cooperation, London, 1834, page 29. On the other hand the English cotton machinery produced an acute effect in India. The Governor General reported 1834 to 1835, the misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the planes of India. No doubt in turning them out of this temporal world the machinery caused them no more than a temporary inconvenience. For the rest, since machinery is continually seizing upon new fields of production, its temporary effect is really permanent. Hence the character of independence and estrangement which the capitalist mode of production as a whole gives to the instruments of labor and to the product, as against the workmen is developed by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism. Note. The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country, i.e. as Ricardo explains on the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists whose wealth from the economic point of view forms the wealth of the nation, may at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condition of the laborer. Ricardo, page 469. The constant aim and the tendency of every improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labor of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labor of women and children for that of grown-up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen. You're a first C, page 35. End note. Therefore it is with the advent of machinery that the workmen for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments of labor. The instrument of labor strikes down the laborer. This direct antagonism between the two comes out most strongly, whenever newly introduced machinery competes with handicrafts or manufacturers, handed down from former times. But even in modern industry the continual improvement in machinery and the development of the automatic system has an analogous effect. The object of improved machinery is to diminish manual labor, to provide for the performance of a process or the completion of a link in a manufacturer by the aid of an iron instead of the human apparatus. Footnote. Court of the Inspector of Factory for the 31st October, 1858, page 43. End note. The adaptation of power to machinery here to fore moved by hand is almost of daily occurrence. The minor improvements in machinery having for their object economy of power, the production of better work, the turning off of more work in the same time, or in supplying the place of a child, a female or a man, are constant. And although sometimes apparently of no great moment, they have somewhat important results. Note. Report of the Inspector of Factories for 31st October, 1856, page 15. End note. Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness of hand it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism so self-regulating that a child can superintendent. Note. Ure, 1st C, page 19. The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick-making consists in this, that the employer is made entirely independent of skilled laborers. Employment Committee Report, London, 1856, page 130. Note 46. Mr. A. Sturrock, Superintendent of the Machine Department of the Great Northern Railway, says, with regard to the building of locomotives, etc., expensive English workmen are being less used every day. The production of the workshops of England is being increased by the use of improved tools, and these tools are again served by a low class of labor. Formerly, their skilled labor necessarily produced all the parts of engines. Now, the parts of engines are produced by labor with less skill, but with good tools. By tools I mean engineers' machinery, lathes, planing machines, drills, and so on. Royal Committee on Railways, London, 1867. Notice of Evidence, Note 17, 862, and 17, 863. End Note. On the automatic plan, skilled labor gets progressively superseded. Note. Ure. Page 20. End Note. The effect of improvements in machinery, not merely in superseding the necessity for the employment of the same quantity of adult labor as before, in order to produce a given result, but in substituting one description of human labor for another, the less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for adult, female for male, causes a fresh disturbance in the weight of wages. Note. Ure. First C. Page 321. End Note. The effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule is to discharge the greater part of the men's spinners and to retain adolescents and children. Note. Ure. First C. Page 23. End Note. Every power of expansion of the factory system owing to accumulated practical experience to the mechanical means at hand and to constant technical progress was proved to us by the giant strides of that system under the pressure of a shortened working day. But who in 1860, the zenith here of the English cotton industry, would have dreamt of the galloping improvements in machinery and the corresponding displacement of working people called into being during the following three years under the stimulus of the American Civil War. A couple of examples from the reports of the inspectors of factories will suffice in this point. A Manchester manufacturer states, We formerly had 75 carting engines. Now we have 12 doing the same quantity of work. We are doing with fewer hands by 14 at a savings in wages of 10 pounds a week. Our estimated saving in waste is about 10% in the quantity of cotton consumed. In another fine spinning mill in Manchester I was informed that through increased speed and the adoption of some self-acting processes a reduction had been made in number of a fourth in one department and of above half in another and that the introduction of the combing machine in place of the second carting had considerably reduced the number of hands formerly employed in the carting room. Another spinning mill is estimated to affect a saving of labor of 10%. The Messers Gilmore spinners at Manchester state, In our blowing room department we consider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third less in wages and hands. In the jack frame and drawing frame room about one-third less in expense and likewise one-third less in hands. In the spinning room about one-third less in expenses. But this is not all. When our yarn goes into the manufacturers it is so much better by the application of our new machinery that they will produce a greater quantity of cloth. And cheaper than from the yarn produced by old machinery. Note, reports of the inspectors of factories, 31st October, 1863, page 108, 109. End note. Mr. Redgrave further remarks in the same report, the reduction of hands against increased production is, in fact, constantly taking place. In woolen mills the reduction commenced some time since and is continuing. A few days since the master of a school in the neighborhood of Rochdale said to me that the great falling off in the girl's school is not only caused by the distress but by the changes of machinery in the woolen mills, in consequence of which a reduction of seventy short timers had taken place. Note. First to see page 109. The rapid improvement of machinery during the crisis allowed the English manufacturers immediately after the termination of the American Civil War and almost in no time to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth during the last six months of 1866 was almost unsaylable. Thereupon began the consignment of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty, vis reducing wages five percent. The work people resisted and said that the only remedy was to work short time four days a week and their theory was the correct one. After holding out for some time the self-elected captains of industry had to make up their minds to short time, with reduced wages in some places and in others without. And note. The following table shows the total result of the mechanical improvements in the English cotton industry due to the American Civil War. From 1857 to 1868 the number of factories in the United Kingdom increased by three hundred and fifty. The number of power looms increased by almost eighty thousand and the number of spindles increased by about four million. The number of persons employed also increased by about twenty one thousand persons. Hence between 1861 and 1868, three hundred thirty-eight cotton factories disappeared. In other words, more productive machinery on a larger scale was concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of capitalists. The number of power looms decreased by twenty thousand six hundred sixty-three but since their product increased in the same period an improved loom must have yielded more than an old one. Lastly the number of spindles increased by one million six hundred twelve thousand five hundred forty one while the number of operatives decreased by fifty thousand five hundred and five. The temporary misery inflicted on the work people by the cotton crisis was heightened and from being temporary made permanent by the rapid and persistent progress of machinery. But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better of the workmen and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him and as such capital proclaims it from the rooftops and as such makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital. Footnote. The relation of master and man in the blown flint bottle trades amounts to a chronic strike. Hence the impetus given to the manufacture of pressed glass in which the chief operations are done by machinery. One firm in Newcastle who formerly produced three hundred and fifty thousand pounds of blown flint glass now produces in its place three million five hundred pounds of pressed glass. Employment commission, fourth reprint, 1865, pages 262 to 263. End note. According to Gaskell, the steam engine was from the very first an antagonist of human power, an antagonist that enabled the capitalists to tread underfoot the growing claims of the workmen who threatened the newly born factory system with a crisis. Footnote. Gaskell, the manufacturing population of England, London, 1833, pages 3, 4. End note. It would be possible to write a history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class. At the head of these an importance stands the self-acting mule because it opened up a new epic in the automatic system. Footnote. W. Fairbaim discovered several very important applications of machinery to the construction of machines in consequence of strikes in his own workshops. End note. Naesmith, the inventor of the steam hammer, gives the following evidence before the trades union commission with regard to the improvements made by him in machinery and introduced in consequence of the widespread and long strikes of the engineers in 1851. The characteristic feature of our modern mechanical improvements is the introduction of self-acting tool machinery. What every mechanical workman now has to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself, but to superintend the beautiful labor of the machine. The whole class of workmen that depended exclusively on their skill is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to every mechanic. Thanks to these new mechanical combinations, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from 1,500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my profits. Ure says of a machine used in calico printing, at length capitalists sought deliverance from this intolerable bondage, namely the, in their eyes, burdensome terms of their contracts with the workmen, in the resources of science, and were speedily reinstated in their legitimate rule, that of the head over the inferior members. Speaking of an invention for dressing warps, then the combined malcontents, who fancied themselves impregnably entrenched behind the old lines of division of labor, found their flanks turned and their defenses rendered useless by the new mechanical tactics, and were obliged to surrender at discretion. With regard to the invention of the self-acting mule, he says, a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes. This invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that when capital enlists science into her service, the refractory hand of labor will always be taught docility. Note, Ure, verse C, pages 368 to 370, end note. Although Ure's work appeared 30 years ago, at a time when the factory system was comparatively but little developed, it still perfectly expresses the spirit of the factory, not only by its undisguised cynicism, but also by the naivete with which it blurts out the stupid contradictions of the capitalist brain. For instance, after propounding the doctrine stated above, that capital, with the aid of science taken into its pay, always reduces the refractory hand of labor to docility, he grows indignant, because it, physical mechanical science, has been accused of lending itself to the rich capitalist as an instrument for harassing the poor. After preaching a long sermon to show how advantageous the rapid development of machinery is to the working classes, he warns them that by their obstinacy and their strikes they hasten that development. Violent revulsions of this nature, he says, display short-sighted man in the contemptible character of a self-tormentor. A few pages before he states the contrary. Had it not been for the violent collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous views among the factory operatives, the factory system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially for all concerned. Then he exclaims again, fortunately for the state of society and the cotton districts of Great Britain, the improvements in machinery are gradual. It, improvement in machinery, is said to lower the rate of earnings of adults by displacing a portion of them, and thus rendering their numbers superabundant as compared with the demand for their labor. It certainly augments the demand for the labor of children and increases the rate of their wages. On the other hand, this same dispenser of consolation defends the lowness of the children's wages on the ground that it prevents parents from sending their children at too early an age into the factory. The whole of his book is a vindication of a working day of unrestricted length, that Parliament should forbid children of 13 years to be exhausted by working 12 hours a day, reminds his liberal soul of the darkest days of the Middle Ages. This does not prevent him from calling upon the factory operatives to thank Providence, who, by means of machinery, has given them the leisure to think of their immortal interests. Chapter 15 Part 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. 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 4 Production of Relative Surplus Value Chapter 15 Machinery and Modern Industry Section 6 The Theory of Compensation as regards the work people displaced by machinery. James Mill, McCulloch, Torrens, Sr., John Stuart Mill, and a whole series besides of bourgeois political economists, insist that all machinery that displaces workmen, simultaneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen. Ricardo originally was also of this opinion, but afterwards expressly disclaimed it with the scientific impartiality and love of truth characteristic of him. C. I. C. CHAPTER XXXI ON MACHINERY End Note Suppose a capitalist to employ one hundred workmen at thirty pounds a year each in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually laid out amounts, therefore, to three thousand pounds. Suppose also that he discharges fifty of his workmen, and employs the remaining fifty with machinery that costs him one thousand five hundred pounds. To simplify matters we take no account of buildings, coal, etc. Further, suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs three thousand pounds, both before and after the change. Note Notabene. My illustration is entirely on the lines of those given by the above-named economists. End Note Is any capital set free by this metamorphosis? Before the change the total sum of six thousand pounds consisted half of constant and half of variable capital. After the change it consists of four thousand five hundred pounds constant, three thousand pounds raw material and one thousand five hundred pounds machinery and one thousand five hundred pounds variable capital. The variable capital, instead of being one half, is only one quarter of the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be exchanged against labor power. Variable has been changed into constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of six thousand pounds, can, in future, employ no more than fifty men. With each improvement in the machinery it will employ fewer. If the newly introduced machinery had cost less than did the labor power and implements displaced by it, if, for instance, instead of costing one thousand five hundred pounds, it cost only one thousand pounds, a variable capital of one thousand pounds would have been converted into constant capital, and locked up, and a capital of five hundred pounds would have been set free. The larger sum, supposing wages unchanged, would form a fund sufficient to employ about sixteen out of the fifty men discharged. May, less than sixteen, for in order to be employed as capital, a part of this five hundred pounds must now become constant capital, thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out in labor power. But suppose, besides that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics. Can that be called compensation to the carpet-makers thrown on the streets? At the best its construction employs fewer men than its employment displaces. The sum of fifteen hundred pounds that formerly represented the wages of the discharged carpet-makers now represents in the shape of machinery, one, the value of the means of production used in the construction of that machinery, two, the wages of the mechanics employed in its construction, and three, the surplus value falling to the share of their master. Further, the machinery need not be renewed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the increased number of mechanics in constant employment, one carpet-manufacturer after another must displace workmen by machines. As a matter of fact, the apologists do not mean this sort of setting free. They have in their minds the means of subsistence of the liberated work-people. It cannot be denied, in the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates fifty men, thus placing them at others' disposal, but at the same time it withdraws from their consumption and sets free means of subsistence to the value of fifteen hundred pounds. The simple fact, by no means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economic parlance, tatum out to this, that machinery liberates means of subsistence for the workmen, or converts those means into capital for his employment. The mode of expression you see is everything. Nominibus Molière Lissetmala This theory implies that the fifteen hundred pounds worth of means of subsistence was capital that was being expanded by the labor of the fifty men discharged. That consequently this capital falls out of employment so soon as they commence their forced holidays, and never rest till it has found a fresh investment, where it can, again, be productively consumed by these same fifty men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the workmen must come together again, and that, then, the compensation is complete. That the sufferings of the workmen displaced by machinery are therefore as transient as are the riches of this world. In relation to the discharged workmen, the fifteen hundred pounds worth of means of subsistence never was capital. What really confronted them as capital was the sum of fifteen hundred pounds, and afterwards laid out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the fifty discharged men, which part they received as wages from their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets in the form of money they bought means of subsistence to the value of fifteen hundred pounds. These means, therefore, were to them not capital but commodities, and as regards these commodities were not wage laborers but buyers. The circumstance that they were freed by the machinery from the means of purchase changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence a lessened demand for these commodities, voilatude. If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time and extends, there follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence has become reproduced in another form. While prices fall and capital is being displaced, the laborers employed in the production of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn freed from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore, of proving it, when machinery frees the workmen from his means of subsistence, it simultaneously converts those means into capital for his further employment. Our apologists, with their cut and dried law of supply and demand, prove on the contrary that machinery throws workmen on the streets, not only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced. The real facts which are travestied by the optimism of economists are as follows. The laborers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labor market, and there add to the number of workmen at the disposal of the capitalists. In part seven of this book it will be seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on the contrary a most frightful scourge. For the present I will only say this. The laborers that are thrown out of work in any branch of industry can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment, not at all by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them, and was afterwards converted into machinery. And even should they find employment, what a poor look-out is theirs. Crippled as they are by division of labor, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade that they cannot find admission into any industries except a few of inferior kind that are oversupplied with underpaid workmen. A disciple of Ricardo, an answer to the incipities of J.B. Sey, remarks on this point. Where division of labor is well developed, the skill of the laborer is available only in that particular branch in which it has been acquired. He himself is a sort of machine. It does not therefore help matters one jot, to repeat in parrot fashion that things have a tendency to find their level. On looking around us we cannot but see they are unable to find their level for a long time, and that when they do find it, the level is always lower than at the commencement of the process. An inquiry into those principles respecting the nature of demand, et cetera. London, 1821, page 72. End note. Further, every branch of industry attracts each year a new stream of men, who furnish a contingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a supply for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserved men are also diverted into new channels of employment and become absorbed in other branches, meanwhile the original victims during the period of transition for the most part starve and perish. It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not responsible for setting free the workmen from the means of subsistence. It cheapens and increases production in that branch which it seizes on, and at first makes no change in the mass of the means of subsistence produced in other branches. Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much, if not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the laborers thrown out of work, and that quite apart from the enormous share of the annual produce wasted by the non-workers. And this is the point relied on by our apologists. The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist employment of machinery do not exist, they say, since they do not arise out of machinery as such, but out of its capitalist employment. Since therefore machinery, considered alone, shortens the hours of labor, but when in the surface of capital lengthens them, since in itself it lightens labor, but when employed by capital heightens the intensity of labor, since in itself is a victory of man over the forces of nature, but in the hands of capital makes men the slave of those forces, since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital makes them paupers. For all these reasons, and others besides, says the bourgeois economist without more ado, it is clear as noonday that all these contradictions are a mere semblance of the reality, and that as a matter of fact they have neither an actual nor a theoretical existence. Thus he saves himself from all further puzzling of the brain, and what is more implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid enough to contend against, not the capitalist employment of machinery, but machinery itself. No doubt he is far from denying that temporary inconvenience may result from the capitalist use of machinery. But where is the metal without its reverse? Any employment of machinery, except by capital, is to him an impossibility. Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore with him identical with exploitation of the machine by the workman. Whoever therefore exposes the real state of things in the capitalist employment of machinery is against its employment in any way, and is an enemy of social progress. McCulloch, amongst others, is a past master in this pretentious cretinism. If, he says, with the affected naivete of a child of eight years, if it be advantageous to develop the skill of the workman more and more, so that he is capable of producing, with the same or with a less quantity of labor, a constantly increasing quantity of commodities, it must also be advantageous that he should avail himself of the help of such machinery as will assist him most effectively in the attainment of this result. McCulloch, Principles of Political Economy, London, 1830, page 166, end note. Exactly the reasoning of the celebrated Bill Sykes. Gentlemen of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial traveler has been cut. But that is not my fault, it is the fault of the knife. Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience, abolish the use of the knife? Only consider, where would agriculture and trade be without the knife? Is it not a salutary insurgery, as it is knowing in anatomy? And in addition a willing help at the festive board. If you abolish the knife, you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism. Footnote. The inventor of the spinning machine has ruined India, a fact, however, that touches us but little. A. Theirs de la propriété. Monsieur Theirs here confounds the spinning machine with the power loom, a fact, however, that touches us but little. End note. Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, notwithstanding this, bring about an increase of employment in other industries. This effect, however, has nothing in common with the so-called theory of compensation. Since every article produced by a machine is cheaper than a similar article produced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law. If the total quantity of the article produced by machinery be equal to the total quantity of the article previously produced by a handicraft or by a manufacturer and now made by machinery, then the total labor expended is diminished. The new labor spent on the instruments of labor, on the machinery, on the coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labor displaced by the use of the machinery. Otherwise the product of the machine would be as dear or than the product of the manual labor. But as a matter of fact, the total quantity of the article produced by machinery with a diminished number of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been displaced. Suppose that 400,000 yards of cloth have been produced on power looms by fewer weavers than could weave 100,000 yards by hand. In the quadrupled product there lies four times as much raw material. Hence the production of raw material must be quadrupled. But as regards the instruments of labor, such as buildings, coal, machinery, and so on, it is different. The limit up to which the additional labor required for their production can increase varies with the difference between the quantity of the machine-made article and the quantity of the same article that the same number of workmen could make by hand. Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry, the immediate effect is to increase production in the other industries that furnish the first with means of production. How far employment is thereby found for an increased number of men depends, given the length of the working day and the intensity of labor, on the composition of the capital employed, i.e., on the ratio of its constant to its variable component. This ratio in its turn varies considerably with the extent to which machinery has already seized on, or is then seizing on, those trades. The number of the men condemned to work in coal and metal mines increased enormously owing to the progress of the English factory system. But during the last few decades this increase of number has been less rapid, owing to the use of new machinery and mining. Footnote. According to the census of 1861, volume 2, London, 1863, the number of people employed in coal mines in England and Wales amounted to 246,613, of which 73,545 were under and 173,067 were over 20 years. Of those under 20, 835 were between 5 and 10 years, 30,701 between 10 and 15 years, 42,010 between 15 and 19 years. The number employed in iron, copper, lead, tin, and other mines of every description was 319,222. Endnote. A new type of workman springs into life along with a machine, namely its maker. We have already learned that machinery has possessed itself, even of this branch of production, on a scale that grows greater every day. As to raw material, there is not the least doubt that the rapid strides of cotton spinning not only pushed on with tropical luxuriants the growth of cotton in the United States, and with it the African slave trade, but also made the breeding of slaves the chief business of the border slave states. Footnote. In England and Wales in 1861, there were employed in making machinery 60,807 persons, including the masters and their clerks, et cetera. Also all agents and business people connected with this industry, but excluding the makers of small machines, such as sewing machines, et cetera, as also the makers of the operative parts of machines, such as spindles. The total number of civil engineers amounted to 3,329. Endnote. Note. Since iron is one of the most important raw materials, let me here state that in 1861 there were in England and Wales 125,771 operative iron founders of whom 123,430 were men and 2,341 females. Of the former, 30,810 were under and 92,620 over 20 years. Endnote. When in 1790 the first census of slaves was taken in the United States, their number was 697,000. In 1861 it had reached nearly 4 million. On the other hand it is no less certain that the rise of the English woolen factories, together with the gradual conversion of arable land into sheep pasture, brought about the surperfluity of agricultural laborers that led to their being driven in masses into the towns. Ireland, having during the last 20 years reduced its population by nearly one half, is at this moment undergoing the process of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so as exactly to suit the requirements of its landlords and of the English woolen manufacturers. When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or intermediate stages through which the subject of labor has to pass on its way to completion, there is an increased yield of material in those stages, and simultaneously an increased demand for labor in the handicrafts or manufacturers supplied by the produce of the machines. Spinning by machinery, for example, supplied yarn so cheaply and abundantly that the handloom weavers were at first able to work full time without increased outlay, their earnings accordingly rose. Footnote. A family of four grown-up persons, with two children as winders, earned at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century by ten hours daily work, four pounds a week. If the work was very pressing they could earn more. Before that they had always suffered from a deficient supply of yarn. Gaskel First C. pages 25 through 27. End Note. Hence a flow of people into the cotton-weaving trade till at length the eight hundred thousand weavers, called into existence by the Jenny, the Throssel, and the Mule, were overwhelmed by the power-loom. So also, owing to the abundance of clothing materials produced by the machinery, the number of tailors, seamstresses, and needle-women went on increasing until the appearance of the sewing machine. In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively small number of work-people, increases the mass of raw materials, intermediate products, instruments of labor, etc., the working-up of these raw materials and intermediate products becomes split up into numberless branches, social production increases in diversity. The factory system carries the social division of labor measurably further than does manufacture, for it increases the productiveness of the industries it seizes upon in a far higher degree. The intermediate result of machinery is to augment surplus value and the mass of products in which surplus value is embedded, and as the substances consumed by the capitalists and their dependents become more plentiful, so too do these orders of society. Their growing wealth and the relatively diminished number of workmen required to produce the necessaries of life beget simultaneously with the rise of new and luxurious wands, the means of satisfying those wands. A larger portion of the produce of society is changed into surplus produce, and a larger part of the surplus produce is supplied for consumption in a multiplicity of refined shapes. In other words, the production of luxuries increases. Footnote F. Angles in Lage, et cetera, points out the miserable condition of a large number of those who work on these very articles of luxury. See also numerous instances in the reports of the children's employment commission. Endnote The refined and varied forms of the products are also due to new relations with the markets of the world, relations that are created by modern industry. Not only are greater quantities of foreign articles of luxury exchanged for home products, but a greater mass of raw foreign materials, ingredients, and intermediate products are used as means of production in the home industries. Owing to these relations with the markets of the world, the demand for labor increases in the carrying trades, which split up into numerous varieties. In 1861 in England and Wales there were 94,665 sailors in the merchant service. The increase of the means of production and subsistence, accompanied by a relative diminution in the number of laborers, causes an increased demand for labor in making canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on, works that can only bear fruit in the far future. Entirely new branches of production, creating new fields of labor, are also formed, as the direct result either of machinery or of the general industrial changes brought about by it. But the place occupied by these branches in the general production is, even in the most developed countries, far from important. The number of laborers that find employment in them is directly proportional to the demand created by those industries for the crudest form of manual labor. The chief industries of this kind are, at present, gasworks, telegraphs, photography, steam navigation, and railways. According to the Census of 1861 for England and Wales, we find in the gas industry, gasworks, production of mechanical apparatus, servants of the gas companies, et cetera, 15,211 persons. In telegraphy, 2,399, in photography, 2,366, steam navigation, 3,570, and in railways, 70,599, of whom the unskilled navies, more or less permanently employed and the whole administrative and commercial staff, make up about 28,000. The total number of persons, therefore, employed in these five new industries amounts to 94,145. Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labor power in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working class, and the consequent reproduction on a constantly extending scale of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men's servants, women's servants, lackeys, et cetera. According to the census of 1861, the population of England in Wales was 20,066,244 of these 9,776,259 males and 10,289,965 females. If we deduct from this the population, who are all too old or too young for work, all unproductive women, young persons and children, the ideological classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, et cetera, further, all who have no occupation but to consume the labor of others in the form of rent, interest, et cetera, and lastly, poppers, vagabonds, and criminals, they remain in round numbers eight millions of the two sexes of every age, including in that number every capitalist who is in any way engaged in industry, commerce, or finance. Among these eight millions are 1,098,261 agricultural laborers, including shepherds, farm servants, and maid servants living in the houses of farmers. 642,607 all who are employed in cotton, woolen, worsted, flax, hemp, silk, and jute factories in stocking, making, and lace making by machinery. 565,835 all who are employed in coal mines and metal mines. 396,998 all who are employed in metalworks, blast furnaces, rolling mills, et cetera, and metal manufacturers of every kind. 1,208,648 the servant class. Of those employed in the textile industries, only 177,596 are males above 13 years of age. Of those employed in metalworks, 30,501 are females. Of the servant class, 137,447 are males. None are included in the 1,208,648 who do not serve in private houses. Between 1861 and 1870, the number of male servants nearly doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847, there were 2,694 gamekeepers for the landlord's preserves. In 1869, there were 4,921. The young servant girls in the houses of the London lower middle class are in common parlance called slavies. All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines taken together, number 1,208,442. Those employed in textile factories and metal industries taken together, number 1,039,605. In both cases, less than the number of modern domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist exploitation of machinery. End of Part 4, Chapter 15, Section 7.