6) THE
STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY.
THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS, 1833 TO 1864
COMPULSORY LIMITATION BY LAW OF THE WORKING-TIME.
Capital took centuries
to be able to extend the working day to its natural limit. But, with
the onset of machine production at the end of the 18th
Century, and the creation of a mass working class, as the peasants
were driven from the land, by the Enclosure Acts, capital pushed the
working day way beyond its normal limit.
Enlightened sections of
the bourgeoisie recognised the limitations for themselves, not to
mention the immorality of that.
“It is certainly much to be regretted that
any class of persons should toil 12 hours a day, which, including the
time for their meals and for going to and returning from their work,
amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 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 13, and in trades not subject to restriction, much younger, must
be extremely prejudicial, and is an 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.” (Leonard Horner in “Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st
Dec., 1841.”)” (Note 1, p 264)
The workers fought back
against it. But, the availability of such a huge, latent reserve
army of labour, created the conditions both for capital to use it up
wastefully, and for competition between them to force them to do so.
At the same time, those conditions placed workers in the least
favourable condition to be able to fight back.
Although laws were
passed restricting hours and establishing regulations, in the whole
period up to 1833, Parliament provided no resources for their
implementation. Worst affected were children, who, at this stage,
fulfilled an important role for capital, precisely because they were
even cheaper labour than that of adults. Moreover, because children
were a source of household income for parents, it was often the case
that parents acted as an immediate recruiter and discipline over
child labour.
The 1833 Factory Act
established a 15 hour working day from 5.30 in the morning to 8.30 at
night. It allowed workers aged between 13 to 18 to be employed at
any time of day up to a limit of 12 hours. It mostly outlawed
employing children under 9, and limited employment of 9-13 year olds
to 8 hours a day. Night work for under 18's was outlawed.
Marx notes that,
even under these limits, children under 13 could be worked 72 hours a
week, whilst the “Emancipation Act, which also
administered freedom drop by drop, forbade the planters, from the
outset, to work any Negro slave more than 45 hours a week.” (p 266)
In fact, the 1833 Act
did not come into force until 1836, and in the meantime, capital
agitated vigorously to reduce the age limit from 13 to 10. It
continued until 1844. In the intervening period, the Factory
Inspectors' Reports demonstrate that it was impossible to enforce.
The employers introduced various “Relay Systems” whereby young
workers were employed at varying times during the day, allocated to
various jobs, and with varying meal times, so that it was impossible
to audit what hours had been worked.
But, times were
changing. Workers were organising more effectively in Trades Unions,
and after 1838 had raised the demand for the Ten Hours Act.
Increasing demand for labour-power was meeting the “using up” of
available supplies of labour.
 |
| Cobden & Bright |
“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 rein 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 workpeople. 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 in the Free-trade millennium.” (p 267)
On this basis, the 1844
Act was introduced, which placed women over 18 under the same
protections as young workers. Hours were limited to 12, and night
work was banned. Hours for children under 13 were reduced to 6 1/2.
The Act also effectively banned the Relay System by calculating the
time worked from the time work began in a morning.
 |
| Disraeli |
“The years 1846-47 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
Bright and Cobden at their head, the Ten 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.” (p 268-9)
The employers took
advantage of a weakening of the workers' position arising from the
serious economic downturn of the 1840's, and particularly the crises
of 1846-7, to try to frustrate the Act. They cut wages by 25%, in an
attempt to get workers to agitate for a repeal of the Act. Leonard
Horner reports,
““I found that men who had been getting
10s. a week, had had 1s. taken off for a reduction in the rate of 10
per cent, and 1s. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the reduction in
time, together 2s. 6d.. and notwithstanding this, many of them said
they would rather work 10 hours.” l.c.” (Note 2, p 269)
“Another “friendly” dodge was to make the
adult males work 12 to 15 hours, and then to blazon abroad this fact
as the best proof of what the proletariat desired in its heart of
hearts. But the “ruthless” Factory Inspector Leonard Horner was
again to the fore. The majority of the “over-times” declared:
“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 piecers, 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.”” (p 270)
The Act came in on 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 shop-keepers, Protectionists and
Freetraders, government and opposition, priests and freethinkers,
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 capitalist
risked nothing except the skin of his “hands.”” (p 270-1)
The employers began by
sacking a large part of the children and women who were covered by
the Act. Then they argued that the hour and a half provided for meal
breaks were to be taken before and after the actual 10 hour work day.
The Factory Inspectors challenged that, largely succesfully, in the
Courts.
The employers then
turned their attention again to children, breaking up the times they
worked in the afternoon, so that they could be kept at work until
8.30 at night. The employers then essentially declared they would
reintroduce the Relay System for children. To back it up, they
overwhelmed the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, with petitions,
opposing legal action against them. Grey conceded, but the Factory
Inspectors refused his instructions and continued taking employers to
court for breaches of the Act.
Not that that did much
good. The magistrates, invariably acquitted them. Indeed, often
they were the same people! That in itself was illegal.
Leonard Horner
reported,
“Having endeavoured to enforce the Act ... by
ten 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 (Lancashire).
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” (p 274)
Eventually, appearance
and reality had to be aligned.
“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. “By this decision, the Ten Hours’ Act was
abolished.” A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid of
using the relay system for young persons and women, now took it up
heart and soul.” (p 276)
But, now the contradictions of capital reasserted
themselves and its need for a State to mediate its interests
re-emerged. One the one hand,
“The workpeople had hitherto offered a
passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They now
protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings.” (p
276)
On the other,
“Some of the masters themselves murmured:
“On account of the contradictory decisions of
the magistrates, a condition of things altogether abnormal and
anarchical obtains. One law holds in Yorkshire, another in
Lancashire, one law in one parish of Lancashire, 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,” &c.
So, a compromise was reached in the 1850 Factory
Act, which raised the working day for women and young people from 10
to 10 1/2, but abolished the relay System for good.
“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. Since the passing of the first
Factory Act half a century had elapsed...
However, the principle had triumphed with its
victory in those great branches of industry which form 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 purblind. The masters from whom the legal limitation and
regulation had been wrung step by step after a civil war of half a
century, themselves referred ostentatiously to the contrast with the
branches of exploitation still “free.” The Pharisees of
“Political Economy” now proclaimed the discernment of the
necessity of a legally fixed working-day as a characteristic new
discovery of their “science.”” (p 279-80)
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