3) Branches of English Industry Without legal Limits to Exploitation
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| Leonard Horner |
In this section, Marx once again draws heavily
from the Reports of Factory Inspectors, and from Engels' “Condition
Of The Working Class” to describe the atrocious conditions that the
early stage of industrial capitalism imposed, much of which can be
seen once more around the globe, in countries undergoing a similar
process. The depravities it imposed, as Marx says, even aroused
bourgeois commentators to compare it unfavourably to the conditions
imposed by slavery.
Some of the worst suffering was amongst children.
Marx quotes from Reports showing 9 year old children working from 2
or 3 in the morning until 12 at night, in the Nottinghamshire lace
factories.
Marx details extensively the role played by
children as young as 7 in the pottery industry in heavy work for 15
hours a day. But, life expectancy in the Potteries was short for all
workers. Many died from pulmonary diseases caused by the dust. Marx
quotes the findings of Dr. J.T. Arledge of the North Staffs Royal
Infirmary, in the Commissioners Report of 1863.
“The potters as a class, both men and women,
represent a degenerated population, both physically and morally. They
are, as a rule, stunted in growth, ill-shaped, and frequently
ill-formed in the chest; they become prematurely old, and are
certainly short-lived; they are phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit
their debility of constitution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and
disorders of the liver and kidneys, and by rheumatism. But of all
diseases they are especially prone to chest-disease, to pneumonia,
phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear peculiar to
them, and is known as potter’s asthma, or potter’s consumption.
Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or other parts of the body,
is a disease of two-thirds or more of the potters .... That the
‘degenerescence’ of the population of this district is not even
greater than it is, is due to the constant recruiting from the
adjacent country, and intermarriages with more healthy races.” (p
235)
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| Phossy Jaw, caused by Phosphorus |
Marx then details the suffering of workers in the
match trade caused by working with phosphorus. Half these workers in
the major cities, were under thirteen, again they were working up to
fifteen hours a day, including night work. Similar long hours were
worked by children in the wallpaper industry.
It was not that Marx opposed child labour. He had
no time for such a Liberal approach. On the contrary, in the
programme he wrote for the First International, Marx makes clear that
he believes that child labour combined with education, is the most
effective means of new generations of workers rapidly advancing
beyond their middle class equivalents. But, as with his proposals in
relation to education and Factory Reform, the point was to obtain
statutory limits for such child labour, which the workers could then
enforce via their own collective action. So, for example he writes,
“We consider the tendency of modern industry
to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the
great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and
legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an
abomination. In a rational state of society every child
whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a
productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person
ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in
order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with
the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal
with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three
classes, to be treated differently; the first class to
range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third,
to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the
employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally
restricted to two; that of the second, to
four; and that of the third, to six
hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one
hour for meals or relaxation...
In enforcing such laws, the working class do
not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that
power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a
general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated
individual efforts.”
He makes a similar point in the
Critique Of The Gotha Programme
“A general prohibition of child labor is
incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an
empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be
reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time
according to the different age groups and other safety measures for
the protection of children, an early combination of productive labor
with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation
of present-day society.”
Marx had referred in an
earlier chapter to the adulteration of bread. It was only one
foodstuff so cheapened. He quotes Chevallier who detailed six
hundred articles.
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| The Co-operative Consumer Research group played a major role in identifying abuses. |
“The French chemist, Chevallier, in his
treatise on the “sophistications” of commodities, enumerates for
many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in review, 10, 20,
30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know
all the methods and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6
kinds of adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of
salt, 19 of milk, 20 of bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of
chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc. Even God Almighty does not
escape this fate. See Rouard de Card, “On the Falsifications of the
materials of the Sacrament.” (“De la falsification des substances
sacramentelles,” Paris, 1856.)” (note 3, p238)
The adulteration of
bread led to the 1860 Act on adulteration, but, like most similar
acts, it was not effective, because the courts usually favoured the
suppliers in a spirit of defending Free Trade.
“His report (H.S. Tremenheere) together with
the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its
stomach. Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough
that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or
sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow,
but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain
quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abscesses,
cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without
counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients. Without
any regard to his holiness, Free-trade, the free baking-trade was
therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close
of the Parliamentary session of 1863), and by the same Act of
Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning was
forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18. The last clause speaks
volumes as to the over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of
business.” (p 238-9)
The same picture could
be seen on the railways, where the consequences were fatal.
“Reynolds’ Newspaper,
January, 1866. — Every week this same paper has, under the
sensational headings, “Fearful and fatal accidents,” “Appalling
tragedies,” &c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On
these an employee on the North Staffordshire line comments: “Everyone
knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and fireman of a
locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out. How can that
be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours,
exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example
which is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work
on the Monday morning at a very early hour. When he had finished what
is called a day’s work, he had been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes.
Before he had time to get his tea, he was again called on for
duty.... The next time he finished he had been on duty 14 hours 25
minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission.
The rest of the week’s work was made up as follows: — Wednesday.
15 hours: Thursday, 15 hours 35 minutes; Friday, 14½ hours;
Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a total for the week of 88
hours 30 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on being paid 6
1/4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the
time-keeper,... and inquired what they considered a day’s work, and
was told 13 hours for a goods man (i.e., 78
hours).... He then asked for what he had made over and above the 78
hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last told they
would give him another quarter, i.e., 10d.,”
l.c., 4th February. 1866.” (Note 2, p 242-3)
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