ing the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities of exceeding the limits of the normal working day, e.g., in the branches of industry already mentioned, which are of an exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working day means for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the over- work beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the words of the English official report, " tiuly fearful."^ '' It is impossible," the report continues, " for any mind to realise the amount of work described in the following passages as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years of age...without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such abuses of the power of parents and of employers can no longer be allowed to exist."^ "The practice of boys working at all by day and night turns either in the usual course of things, or at pressing times, seems inevitably to open the door to their not unfrequently working unduly long hours. These hours are, indeed, in some cases, not only cruelly but even incredibly long for children. Amongst a number of boys it will, of course, not unfrequently happen that one or moi-e are from some cause absent. When this happens, their place is made up by one or more boys, who work in the other turn. That this is a well understood system is plain...from the answer of the manager of some large rolling-mills, who, when I asked him how the place of the boys absent from their turn was made up, 'I daresay, sir, you know that as well as I do,' and admitted the fact."^ "At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6 a.m. to h\ p.m., a boy worked about four nights every week till 8| p.m. at least...and this for six months. Another, at 9 years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and, when 10, has made two days and two nights running." A third, "now 10...worked from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. three nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights." "Another, now 13,...worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next day, for a week together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from Monday morning till Tuesday night." " Another, now 12, has 244 Capitalist Prodztction.
worked in an iron foundry at Stavely from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. for a fortnight on end; could not do it any more." " George Allinsworth, age 9, came here as cellar-boy last Friday; next morning we had to begin at 3, so I stopped here all night. Live five miles off. Slept on the floor of the furnace, over head, with an apron under me, and a bit of a jacket over me. The two other days I have been here at 6 a.m. Aye! it is hot in here. Before I came here I was nearly a year at the same work at some works in the country. Began there, too, at 3 on Saturday morning — always did, but was very gain [near] home, and could sleep at home. Other days I began at 6 in the morn- ing, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening," &;c.^ 1 1. c, p. xiii. The degree of culture of these " labour-powers " must naturally be such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jeremiah Haynes, age 12 — "Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16, A king is him that has all the money and gold. We have a King (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess A.lexandra. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's son is the Princess Alexandra. A Princess is a man." William Turner, age 12 — "Don't live in Eng- land. Think it is a country, but didn't know before." John Morris, age 14 — "Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people was drownded but one; heard say that one was a little bird." William Smith, age 15—" God made man, man made woman." Edward Taylor, age 15 — "Do not know of Lon- don." Henry Matthewman, age 17 — "Had been to chapel, but missed a good many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot say any others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but died like other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways, because he was religious in some ways, and others isn't." (1. c. p. xv.) " The devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives." " Christ was a wicked man." " This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen." (" Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 18G3," p. 55, n. 278.) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night- work is the rule for all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night- work, by relays, is carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and 1 of 6 hours in each week. In other cases each set works 24 hours consecu- tively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, *' seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays." Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that oiight to relieve them, to work a doiable turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often work over-time, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 3G hours of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12 who work the whole month 14 hours a day, " without any regular The Working Day, 245 Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours* system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the " cruel and incredible " extension of the working day are natur- ally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system in its " normal " form, Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent, are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in night sets, thus express themselves: *'The boys do not suffer from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86° to 90"*...At the forges and in the rolling-mills the hands work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the work are day work, i.^., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge tlie hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work in the night, without any alternation of day and night work...We do not find any difference in the health of those who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and probably people can sleep better if they have the same period of rest than if it is changed About 20 of the boys under the age of 18 work in the night sets We could not well do without lads under 18 working by night. The objection would be the increase in the cost of production...Skilled hands and the heads in every department are difficult to get, but of lads we could get any number...But from the small proportion of boys that we employ, the subject (?.«., of restrictions on night work) Ls of little im- portance or interest to us."^ Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messi-s, John Brown &; Co., steel and iron works, employing about SOOO men and boys, part of whose operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes on night and day by relays, states " that in the heavier steel work one or two boys are employed to a score or two men." Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under 18, of whom about i or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half-an-hour each for meals." In some mills, where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terrible extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most monotonous of the various processes." (" Ch. Employment Comm. Eeport IV 1865," p. xxxviii and xxxix.) i Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 70, p. xvL 246 Capitalist Production, proposed alteration of the law, Mr Ellis says: " I do not think it would be very objectionable to require that no person under the age of 18 should work more than 12 hours in the 24. But we do not think that any line could be drawn over the age of 12, at which boys could be dispensed with for night work. But we would sooner be prevented from employing boys under the age of 13, or even so high as 14, at all, than not be allowed to employ boys that we do have at night. Those boys who work in the day sets must take their turn in the night sets also, because the men could not work in tlie night sets only; it would ruin their health We think, however, that night work in alternate weeks is no harm. (Messrs. Nay lor & Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of their business, considered that periodically changed night-labour might possibly do more harm than continual night-labour.) We find the men who do it, as well as the others who do other work only by day Our objections to not allowing boys under 18 to work at night, would be on account of the increase of expense, but this is the only reason. (What cynical naivete!) We think that the increase would be more than the trade, with due regard to its being successfully carried out, could fairly bear. (What mealy-mouthed phraseology I) Labour is scarce heie, and might fall short if there were such a regulation." {i.e., Ellis Brown & Co. might fall into the fatal j)erplexity of being obliged to pay labour-power its full value.)i The " Cyclops Steel and Iron Works," of Messrs. Cammell & Co., are conducted on the same large scale as those of the above mentioned John Brown & Co. The managing director had handed in his evidence to the Government Commissioner, Mr. White, in writing. Later he found it convenient to suppress the MS. when it had been returned to him for revision. Mr. White, however, has a good memory. He remembered quite clearly that for the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the night- labour of children and young persons " would be impossible, it would be tantamount to stopping their works," and yet their business employs little more than 6 % ^^ ^^7^ under 18, and less than 1 % under 13.2 The Working Day. 247 On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of Sanderson, Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, AtterclifFe, says: " Great difficulty would be caused by preventing boys under 18 from workinor at niorht. The chief would be the in- crease of cost from employing men instead of boys. I cannot say what this would be, but probably it would not be enough to enable the manufacturers to raise the price of steel, and con- sequently it would fall on them, as of course the men (what queer-headed folk! ) would refuse to pay it." Mr. San- derson does not know how much he pays the children, but " perhaps the younger boys get from 4s. to 5s. a week...The boys' work is of a kind for which the strength of the boys is generally (' generally,' of course not always) quite sufficient, and consequently there would be no gain in the greater strength of the men to counterbalance the loss, or it would be only in the few cases in which the metal is heavy. The men would not like so well not to have boys under them, as men would be less obedient. Besides, boys must begin young to learn the trade. Leaving day work alone open to boys would not answer this purpose." And why not? Why could not boys learn their handicraft in the day-time? Your reason? " Owing to the men working days and nights in alternate weeks, the men would be separated half the time from their boys, and would lose half the profit which they make from them. The training which they give to an apprentice is considered as part of the return for the boys' labour, and thus enables the men to get it at a cheaper rate. Each man would want half of this profit." In other words, Messrs. Sanderson would have to pay part of the wages of the adult men out of their own pockets instead of by the night work of the boys. Messrs. Sanderson's profit would thus fall to some extent, and this is the good Sandersonian reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft in the day.^ In addition to this, it would throw night labour on those who worked instead of the boys, which they would not be able to 1 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the world that has been done wrong has been done wrong for the very best of reasons.
248 Capitalist Production.
stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they would very likely lead to the giving up of night work altogether, and " as far as the work itself is concerned," says E. F. Sander- son, " this would suit as well, but — " But Messrs. Sanderson have something else to make besides steel. Steel-making is simply a pretext for surplus-value making. Tlie smelting furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery, iron, coal, &;c., have something more to do than transform themselves into steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and naturally absorb more in 24 hours than in 12. In fact they give, by grace of God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the working time of a certain number of hands for all the 24 hours of the day, and they lose their character as capital, are therefore a pure loss for the Sandersons, as soon as their function of absorbing labour is interrupted. " But then there would be the loss from so much expensive machinery, lying idle half the time, and to get through the amount of work which we are able to do on the present system, we should have to double our premises and plant, w^hich would double the outlay." But why should these Sandersons pretend to a privilege not enjoyed by the other capitalists who only work during the day, and whose buildings, machinery, raw material, therefore lie " idle " during the night? E. F. Sanderson answers in the name of all the Sandersons: " It is true that there is this loss from machinery lying idle in those manufactories in which work only goes on by day. But the use of furnaces would involve a further loss in our case. If they were kept up there would be a waste of fuel (instead of, as now, a waste of the living substance of the w^orkers), and if they were not, there would be loss of time in laying the fires and getting the heat up (whilst the loss of sleeping time, even to children of 8 is a gain of working time for the Sanderson tribe), and the furnaces themselves would suffer from the changes of temperature." (Whilst those same furnaces suffer nothing from the day and night change of labour.)^ 1 1. c. 85, p. xvii. To similar tender scruples of the glass manufacturers that regular meal times for the children are impossible because as a consequence a certain quantity of heat, radiated by the furnaces, would be **a pure loss" or "wasted," Com- missioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that of Ure, Senior, &c., and The Working Day. 249 SECTION 5.— THE STRUGGLE FOR A NORMAL WORKING DAY. COMPULSORY LAWS FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE WORKING DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14th TO THE END OF THE 17tH CENTURY.
" What is a working day? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value it buys? How far may the working day be ex- tended beyond the working time necessary for the reproduction of labour-power itself? " It has been seen that to these questions capital replies: the working day contains the full 24 hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which labour-power absolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a their puny German plagiarists ^ la Eoscher who are touched by the "abstinence,'' " self-denial," "saving," of the capitalists in the expenditure of their gold, and by their Timur-Tamerlanish prodigality of human life! "A certain amount of heat beyond what is usual at present might also be going to waste, if meal times were secured in these cases, but it seems likely not equal in money-value to the waste of animal power now going on in glass-houses throughout the kingdom from growing boys not having enough quiet time to eat their meals at ease, with a little rest afterwards for digestion." (1. c, p. xlv.) And this in the year of progress 1865! Without con- sidering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the performance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15 hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system of 6 hours' relays is in force. " During the working part of the week six hours is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out of this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing, dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for fresh air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially at such hot and fatiguing work...Even the short sleep is obviously liable to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if it is day." Mr White gives cases where a boy worked 36 consecutive hours; others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morn- ing, and then slept in the works till 5 a.m. (3 hours!) only to resume their work. "The amount of work," say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, "done by boys, youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is certainly extraordinary." (1. c, xliii. and xliv.) Meanwhile, late by night perhaps, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reels out of his club homeward droning out idiotically, " Britons never, never shall be slaves T 250 Capitalist Production, country of Sabbatarians!)^ — moonshine! But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal -time, incorpor- ating it where possible with the process of production itself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of pro- duction, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the- machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the resto- ration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers* period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased pro- duce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.
The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the pro- duction of surplus- value, the absorption of surplus-labour), produces thus, with the extension of the working day, not only the deterioration of human labour-power by robbing it of its 1 In England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is condemned to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of contract if he remains away from his metal, paper, or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of ex- panding capital. A memorial (August 1863), in which the London day-labourers in fish and poultry shops asked for the abolition of Sunday labour, states that their work lasts for the first 6 days of the week on an average 15 hours a-day, and on Sunday 8-10 hours. From this same memorial we learn also that the delicate gourmands among the aristocratic hypocrites of Exeter Hall, especially encourage this "Sunday labour." These " holy ones," so zealous in cute curanda, show their Christianity by the humility with which they bear the overwork, the privations, and the hunger of others. Ohsequium ventris istis {the labourers) pemiciosius est.
The Working Day, 251 normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and death of this labour-power itself.^ It extends the labourer's time of production during a given period by shortening his actual life- time.
But the value of the labour-power includes the value of the commodities necessary for the reproduction of the worker, or for the keeping up of the working class. If then the unnatural extension of the working day, that capital necessarily strives after in its unmeasured passion for self-expansion, shortens the length of life of the individual labourer, and therefore the duration of his labour-power, the forces used up have to be re- placed at a more rapid rate and the sum of the expenses for the reproduction of labour-power will be greater; just as in a machine the part of its value to be reproduced every day is greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It would seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in the direction of a normal working day.
The slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If he loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be restored by new outlay in the slave-mart. But " the rice-grounds of Georgia, or the swamps of the Mississippi may be fatally in- jurious to the human constitution; but the waste of human life which the cultivation of these districts necessitates, is not so great that it cannot be repaired from the teeming preserves of Virginia and Kentucky. Considerations of economy, more- over, which, under a natural system, afford some security for humane treatment by identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once trading in slaves is practised, become reasons for racking to the uttermost the toil of the slave; for, when his place can at once be supplied from foreign preserves, the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than its productiveness while it lasts. It is accord- ingly a maxim of slave management, in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is that which takes 1 " We have given in our previous reports the statements of several experienced manufacturers to the effect that over-hours...certainly tend prematurely to ex haust the working power of the men." (1. c. 61, p. xiii.)
252 Capitalist Proditction.
out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth. It is in tropical culture, where annual profits often equal the whole capital of plantations, that negro life is most recklessly sacrificed. It is the agriculture of the West Indies, which has been for centuries prolific of fabulous wealth, that has engulfed millions of the African race. It is in Cuba, at this day, whose revenues are reckoned by millions, and whose planters are princes, that we see in the servile class, the coarsest fare, the most exhausting and unremitting toil, and even the absolute destruction of a portion of its numbers every year."^