In undeveloped stages of capitalist production, enter- prises requiring a long working period, and hence a large investment of capital for a long time, such as the building of streets, canals, etc., especially when they can be carried out only on a large scale, are either not managed on a capi- talist basis at all, but rather at the expense of the munici- pality or state (in older times generally by means of forced 266 Capital.
266 Capital.
labor, so far as labor-power was concerned); or, such prod- ucts as require a long working period are manufactured only for the smaller part by the help of the private re- sources of the capitalist himself. For instance, in the build- ing of a house, the private person for whose account the house is built advances money in instalments to the con- tractor. The owner thus pays for his house in instalments to the extent that his productive process proceeds. But in the developed capitalist era, when on the one hand masses of capital are concentrated in the hands of single individ- uals, while on the other hand associations of capitalists (stock companies) appear by the side of individual capital- ists and the credit system is simultaneously developed, a capitalist contractor builds only in exceptional cases for the order of private individuals. He makes it his business to build rows of houses and sections of cities for the market, just as individual capitalists make it their business to build railroads as contractors.
To what extent capitalist production has revolutionized the building of houses in London, is shown by the testi- mony of a contractor before the banking committee of 1857. When he was young, he said, houses were generally built to order and the payments made in instalments to the contractor when certain stages of the building were com- pleted. Very little was built on speculation. Contractors used to consent to this mainly to give their hands regular employment and thus keep them together. In the last forty years, all this has changed. Very little is now built for order. If a man wants a house, he selects one from among those built on speculation or still in process of building. The contractor no longer works for his customers, but for the market. Like every other industrial capitalist, he is compelled to have finished articles on the market. While fomerly a contractor had perhaps three or four houses at a time building for speculation, he must now buy a large piece of real estate (which, in continental language means rent it for ninety-nine years, as a rule), build from 100 to 200 houses on it, and thus engage in an enterprise which exceeds from twenty to fifty times his resources. The funds are secured by taking up mortgages, and money is placed The Working Period. 267 at the disposal of the contractor to the extent that the build- ing of the individual houses is progressing. Then, if a crisis comes along and interrupts the payment of the ad- vance instalments, the entire enterprise generally collapses. In the best case, the houses remain unfinished until the coming of better times, in the worst case they are sold at auction at half-price. Without building on speculation, and that on a large scale, no contractor can get along now- adays. The profit from building itself is extremely small. The main profit of the contractor comes from raising the ground rent, by a careful selection and utilization of the building lots. By this method of speculation anticipating the demand for houses nearly the whole of Belgravia and Tyburnia, and the countless thousands of villas in the vi- cinity of London have been built. (Abbreviated from the Report of the Select Committee on Bank Acts. Part I, 1857, Evidence, Questions 5413-18; 5535-36.)
The execution of enterprises with considerably long work- ing periods and on a large scale does not fall fully within the province of capitalist production, until the concentration of capitals is very pronounced, and the development of the credit system offers, on the other hand, the comfortable ex- pedient of advancing another's money instead of one's own capital and thus risking its loss. It goes without saying that the fact whether or not the capital advanced in production belongs to the one who uses it or to some one else has no in- fluence on the velocity and time of turn-over.
The circumstances which augment the product of the individual working day, such as co-operation, division of la- bor, employment of machinery, shorten at the same time the working period of connected acts of production. Thus machinery shortens the building time of houses, bridges, etc.; a mowing and threshing machine, etc., shorten the working period required to transform the ripe grain into a finished product. Improved shipbuilding reduces by in- creased speed the time of turn-over of capital invested in navigation. Such improvements as shorten the working period and thereby the time for which circulating capital must be advanced are, however, generally accompanied by an increased outlay for fixed capital. On the other hand, 268 Capital.
the working period in certain branches of production may be shortened by the mere extension of co-operation. The completion of a railroad is hastened by the employment of huge armies of laborers and the carrying on of the work in many places at once. The time of turn-over is in that case hastened by an increase of the advanced capital. More means of production and more labor-power must be com- bined under the command of the capitalist.
While the shortening of the working period is thus mostly accompanied by an increase of the capital advanced for this shortened time, so that the amount of capital advanced increases to the extent that the time for which the advance is made decreases, it must be noted that the essential point, apart from the existing amount of social capital, is the de- gree in which the means of production or subsistence, or their control, is scattered or concentrated in the hands of individual capitalists, in other words, the degree of con- centration of capitals. Inasmuch as credit promotes the concentration of capital in one hand, it hastens and inten- sifies by its contribution the shortening of the working pe- riod and thereby of the time of turn-over.
In branches of production in which the working period is continually, or occasionally, determined by definite natural conditions, no shortening of the working period can take place by the above mentioned means. Says Walter Good, in his "Political, Agricultural, and Commercial Fallacies," (London, 1866, page 325): "The expression, 'more rapid turn-over5 cannot be applied to grain crops, as only one turn-over per year is possible. As for cattle, we will sim- ply ask: How is the turn-over of bi- or tri-ennial sheep, and of quardrennial and quinquennial oxen to be hastened?"
The necessity of securing ready money (for instance, for the payment of fixed tithes, such as taxes, groundrent, etc.) solves this question by selling or killing cattle before they have reached the normal economic age, to the great detri- ment of agriculture. This also causes finally a rise in the price of meat. We read on pages 12 and 13 of the above named work that the people who formerly were mainly engaged in the raising of cattle for the purpose of supplying the pastures of the midland counties in summer, and the stables of the The Working Period. 269 eastern counties in winter, have been so reduced by the fluc- tuations and sinking of the corn prices that they are glad to avail themselves of the high prices of butter and cheese; they carry the former every week to the market, in order to cover their running expenses, while they take advance payments on the cheese from some middleman who calls for it as soon as it can be transported and who, of course, makes his own prices. As a result of this, agriculture being ruled by the laws of political economy, the calves, which were formerly taken south from the dairy districts to be raised, are now sacrificed in masses, frequently when they are only eight or ten days old, in the stock yards of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and other neighboring cities. But if the malt were untaxed, the farmers would not only have made more profits and been able to keep their young cattle until they would have been older and heavier, but the malt would also have served instead of milk for the raising of calves by those who keep no cows: and the present appalling want of young cattle would have been avoided to a large extent. If the raising of calves is now recommended to those small farmers, they reply: "We know very well that it would pay to raise them on milk, but in the first place we should have to lay out money, and we cannot do that, and in the second place we should have to wait long for the return of our money, while in dairying we get returns immediately."
If the prolongation of the turn-over has such conse- quences for the smaller English farmers, it is easy to see what disadvantages it must produce for the small farmers of the continent.
To the extent that the working period lasts, and thus the period required for the completion of the commodity ready for circulation, the value successively yielded by the fixed capital accumulates and the reproduction of this value is retarded. But this retardation does not cause a renewed out- lay of fixed capital. The machine continues its function in the process of production, no matter whether the reproduc- tion of its wear and tear in the form of money takes place slowly or rapidly. It is different with the circulating capi- tal. Not only must capital be tied up for a longer time in proportion as the working period extends, but new capital 270 Capital.
270 Capital.
must also be continually advanced in the form of wages, raw and auxiliary materials. A retardation of the reproduc- tion has therefore a different effect on either capital. No matter whether reproduction proceeds rapidly or slowly, the fixed capital continues its functions. But the circulating capital becomes unable to perform its functions, if the re- production is retarded, if it is tied up in the form of unsold, or unfinished and as yet unsalable, products, and if no ad- ditional capital is at hand for its reproduction in natural form.
"While the farmer is starving, his cattle thrive. There had been considerable rain and the grass pasture was luxuriant. The Indian farmer will starve alongside of a fat ox. The precepts of superstition seem cruel for the individual, but they are preserving society; the preservation of the cattle secures the continuation of agriculture and thereby the sources of future subsistence and wealth. It may sound hard and sad, but it is so: In India a man is easier replaced than an ox." (Return, East Indian. Madras and Orissa Famine. No. 4, page 4.) Compare with the preceding the statement of Manara-Dharma-Sestra, chapter X, page 862; "The sacrifice of life without any reward, for the purpose of preserving a priest or a cow...can secure the salvation of these low-born tribes."
Of course, it is impossible to deliver a quinquennial ani- mal before the lapse of five years. But a thing that is pos- sible is the gettiug ready of the animals for their destina- tion by changed modes of treatment. This was accomplished particularly by Bakewell. Formerly, English sheep, like the French as late as 1855, were not ready for slaughter- ing until after four or five years. By the Bakewell system, even a one year old sheep may be fattened, and in every case it is completely grown before the end of the second year. By means of careful sexual selection, Bakewell, a farmer of Dishley Grange, reduced the skeleton of sheep to the mini- mum required foi their existence. His sheep are called the New Leicesters. "The breeder can now supply three sheep for the market in the same time that he formerly required for one, and at that with a broader, rounder, and larger development of the parts giving the most meat. Nearly their The Working Period. 271 entire weight is pure meat." (Lavergne, The Rural Econo- my of England, etc., 1855, page 22.)
The methods which shorten the working periods are ap- plicable to different branches of industry only to a very different degree and do not compensate for the differences in the length of time of the various working periods. To stick to our illustration, the working period required for the building of a locomotive may be absolutely shortened by the employment of new implement machines. But if at the same time the finished product turned out daily or weekly by a cotton spinnery is still more rapidly increased, then the length of the working period in machine build- ing, compared with that in spinning, has nevertheless been relatively lengthened.
272 Capital.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TIME OP PRODUCTION.
The working time is always the time of production, that is to say, the time during which capital is held in the sphere of production. But vice versa, not all time during which capital is engaged in the process of production is neces- sarily a working time.
It is not in this case a question of interruptions of the labor-process conditioned on natural limitations of labor- power itself, although we have seen to what extent the mere circumstance that fixed capital, factory buildings, machin- ery, etc., are unemployed during pauses of the labor-proc- ess, became one of the motives for an unnatural prolonga- tion of the labor-process and for day and night work. It is rather a question of an interruption independent of the length of the labor-process and conditioned on the nature and the production of the goods themselves, during which the object of labor is for a longer or shorter time subjected to lasting natural processes, causing physical, chemical, or physiological changes and suspending the labor-process en- tirely or partially.
For instance, grape juice, after being pressed, must fer- ment for a while and then rest for some time, in order to reach a certain degree of perfection. In many branches of industry the product must pass through a drying process, for instance in pottery, or be exposed to certain conditions which change its chemical nature, for instance in bleaching. "Winter grain needs about nine months to mature. Between the time of sowing and harvesting the labor-process is al- most entirely suspended. In timber raising, after the sow- ing and the incidental preliminary work are completed, the seed may require 100 years in order to be transformed into a finished product, and during all this time it requires very insignificant contributions of labor.
In all these cases, additional labor is contributed only occasionally during a large portion of the time of produc- The Time of Production. 273 tion. The condition described in the previous chapter, where additional capital and labor must be contributed to the capi- tal already tied up in the process of production, is found here only in longer or shorter intervals.
In all these cases, therefore, the time of production of the advanced capital consists of two periods: One period, during which the capital is engaged in the labor-process; a second period, during which its form of existence — being that of an unfinished product — is surrendered to the influ- ence of natural processes, without being in the labor-proc- cess. It does not alter the case, that these two periods of time may cross and pervade one another here and there. The working period and the period of production do not coin- cide. The time of production is greater than the working period. But the product is not finished until the time of production is completed, only then it is mature and can be transformed from a productive into a commodity-capital. According to the length of the period of production not consisting of working time, the period of turn-over is like- wise prolonged. In so far as the time of production in excess of the working time is not once and for all deter- mined by definite natural laws, such as regulate the matur- ing of grain, the growth of an oak, etc., the period of turn- over may be more or less shortened by an artificial reduc- tion of the time of production. Such instances are the intro- duction of chemical bleaching instead of lawn bleaching, the improvement of drying apparatus in drying processes. Or, in tanning, where the penetration of the tannic acid into the skins, by the old method, required from six to eighteen months, while the new method, by means of the air-pump, does it in one and a half to two months. (J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil, Traite theorique et pratique des Entre- prises industrielles, etc., Paris, 1857, second edition.) The most magnificent illustration of an artificial abbreviation of the time of production which is taken up with natural proc- esses is furnished by the history of the production of iron, more especially the conversion of raw iron into steel dur* ing the last 100 years, from the puddling process discovered about 1780 to the modern Bessemer process and the latest 274 Capital.
methods introduced since then. The time of production has been enormously abbreviated, but the investment of fixed capital has increased accordingly.
A peculiar illustration of the divergence of the time of production from the working time is furnished by the American manufacture of shoe-lasts. In this case, a con- siderable part of the expense is due to the fact that the wood must be stored for drying for as much as 18 months, in order that the finished last may not change its form by warping. During this time, the wood does not pass through any other labor-process. The period of turn-over of the in- vested capital is, therefore, not determined solely by the time required for the manufacture of the lasts, but also by the time during which the wood lies unproductive in the drying process. It is for 18 months in the process of pro- duction before it can enter into the labor-process proper. This illustration shows at the same time, how it is that the periods of turn-over of different parts of the total circulating capital may differ in consequence of conditions, which do not owe their existence to the sphere of circulation, but to that of production.
The difference between the time of production and the working time becomes especially apparent in agriculture. In our moderate climates, the land bears grain once a year. The abbreviation or prolongation of the period of produc- tion (for winter grain an average of nine months) is itself dependent on the change of good or bad seasons, and for this reason it cannot be as accurately determined before- hand and controlled as in industry properly so called. Only such by-products as milk, cheese, etc., are successively pro- ducible and saleable in short periods. On the other hand, the working time meets with the following conditions: "The number of working days in the various regions of Germany, with regard to the climatic and other determining condi- tions, will permit the assumption of the three following main working periods: For the spring period, from the middle of March or beginning of April to the middle of May, about 50 to 60 working days; for the summer period, from the beginning of June to the end of August, 65 to The Time of Production. 275 80; and for the fall period, from the beginning of September to the end of October, or the middle or end of November, 55 to 75 working days. For the winter, only the chores customary for that time, such as the hauling of manure, wood, market goods, and building materials, are to be noted." (F. Kirchhoff, Handbuch der landwirthschaftlichen Be- triebslehre. Dresden, 1852, page 160.)
To the extent that the climate is unfavorable, the work- ing period of agriculture, and thus the outlay for capital and labor, is crammed into a short space of time. Take, for instance, Russia. In some of the northern regions of that country agricultural labor is possible only during 130 to 150 days per year. It may be imagined what would be the losses of Russia, if 50 out of its 65 million of European in- habitants would remain unemployed during six or eight months of the winter, when all field work must stop. Apart from the 200,000 farmers, who work in the 10,500 factories of Russia, local house industries have everywhere developed in the villages. There are some villages in which all farmers have been for generations weavers, tanners, shoemakers, locksmiths, knifemakers, etc. This is particularly the case in the provinces of Moscow, Vladimir, Kaluga, Kostroma, and Petersburg. By the way, this house-industry is being more and more pressed into the service of capitalist produc- tion. The weavers, for instance, are supplied with woof and web directly by merchants or middlemen. (Abbreviated from the Reports by H. M. Secretaries of Embassy and Legation, on the Manufactures, Commerce, etc., No. 8, 1865, pages 86 and 87.) We see here that the divergence of the period of production from the working period, the latter being but a part of the former, forms the natural basis for the com- bination of agriculture with an agricultural side-industry, and that this side-industry, on the other hand, offers points of vantage to the capitalist, who intrudes first in the per- son of the merchant. When capitalist production later ac- complishes the separation of manufacture and agriculture, the rural laborer becomes ever more dependent on accidental side-employment and his condition is correspondingly low- ered. For the capital, all the differences are compensated in the turn-over. Not so for the laborer.
276 Capital.
While in most branches of industry proper, of mining, transportation, etc., the work proceeds uniformly, the work- ing time being the same from year to year, and the out- lay for the capital passing daily into circulation being uni- formly distributed, making exception of such abnormal in- terruptions as fluctuations of prices, business depressions, etc.; while furthermore also the recovery of the circulating capi- tal, or its reproduction, is uniformly distributed through- out the year, provided the conditions of the market remain the same — there is, on the other hand, the greatest inequality in the outlay of circulating capital in such investments of capital, in which the working time constitutes only a part of the time of production, while the recovery of the capital takes place in bulk at a time determined by natural condi- tions. If such a business is managed on the same scale as one with a continuous working period, that is to say, if the amount of the circulating capital to be advanced is the same, it must be advanced in larger doses at a time and for longer periods. The durability of the fixed capital differs here considerably from the time in which it actually performs a productive function. Together with the difference between working time and time of production, the time of invest- ment of the employed fixed capital is, of course, likewise continually interrupted for a longer or shorter time, for instance, in agriculture in the case of laboring cattle, im- plements and machines. In so far as this fixed capital con- sists of laboring cattle, it requires continually the same, or nearly the same, amount of expenditure for feed, etc., as it does during its working time. In the case of inanimate instruments of labor, disuse also implies a certain amount of depreciation. Hence there is an appreciation of the prod- uct in general, seeing that the transfer of value is not cal- culated by the time in which the fixed capital performs its function, but by the time in which it depreciates in value. In such branches of production as these, the disuse of the fixed capital, whether combined with current expenses or not, forms as much a condition of its normal employment as, for instance, the waste of a certain quantity of cotton in spinning; and in the same way the labor-power unproduc- The Time of Production. 277 tively consumed in any labor-process under normal condi- tions, and inevitably so, counts as much as its productive consumption. Every improvement which reduces the un- productive expenditure of instruments of labor, raw mate- rial, and labor-power, also reduces the value of the product.
In agriculture, both the longer duration of the working period and the great difference between working period and productive period are combined. Hodgskin truly says with regard to this circumstance that the difference in the time (although he does not here distinguish between working time and productive time) required to get the products of agriculture ready and that required for the products of other branches of production is the main cause for the great de- pendence of farmers. They cannot market their goods in less time than one year. During this entire period they must borrow from the shoemaker, the tailor, the smith, the wagonmaker, and various other producers, whose articles they need, and which articles are finished in a few days or weeks. In consequence of this natural circumstance, and as a result of the more rapid increase of wealth in other branches of production, the real estate owners who have mo- nopolized the land of the entire country, although they have also appropriated the monopoly of legislation, are neverthe- less unable to save themselves and their servants, the ten- ants, from the fate of becoming the most dependent people in the land. (Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy, London, 1827, page 147, note.)
All methods by which partly the expenditures for wages and instruments of labor in agriculture are distributed more equally over the entire year, partly the turn-over is shortened by the raising of various products making different harvests possible during the course of the year, require an increase of the circulating capital invested in wages, fertilizers, seeds, etc., and advanced for purposes of production. This is the case, for instance, in the transition from the three plat sys- tem with fallow land to the system of crop rotation without fallow. It applies furthermore to the cultures derobees of Flanders. "The root crops are planted in culture derobee; the same field yields in succession first grain, flax, rape, for 278 Capital.