We have seen in the introduction how competition created the proletariat
at the very beginning of the industrial movement, by increasing the wages
of weavers in consequence of the increased demand for woven goods, so
inducing the weaving peasants to abandon their farms and earn more money
by devoting themselves to their looms. We have seen how it crowded out
the small farmers by means of the large farm system, reduced them to the
rank of proletarians, and attracted them in part into the towns; how it
further ruined the small bourgeoisie in great measure and reduced its
members also to the ranks of the proletariat; how it centralised capital
in the hands of the few, and population in the great towns. Such are the
various ways and means by which competition, as it reached its full
manifestation and free development in modern industry, created and
extended the proletariat. We shall now have to observe its influence on
the working-class already created. And here we must begin by tracing the
results of competition of single workers with one another.
Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all
which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for
existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is
fought not between the different classes of society only, but also
between the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of
the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put
himself in their place. The workers are in constant competition among
themselves as the members of the bourgeoisie among themselves. The power-
loom weaver is in competition with the hand-loom weaver, the unemployed
or ill-paid hand-loom weaver with him who has work or is better paid,
each trying to supplant the other. But this competition of the workers
among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its
effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in
the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hence the effort of the workers to nullify
this competition by associations, hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie
towards these associations, and its triumph in every defeat which befalls
them.
The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single
day. The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in
the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can
obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by
the power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in
fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.
It offers him the means of living, but only for an "equivalent" for his
work. It even lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice,
of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible
agent who has attained his majority.
Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of
either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of
starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the
forests! A fine "equivalent" valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie! And
if one proletarian is such a fool as to starve rather than agree to the
equitable propositions of the bourgeoisie, his "natural superiors,"
another is easily found in his place; there are proletarians enough in
the world, and not all so insane as to prefer dying to living.
Here we have the competition of the workers among themselves. If _all_
the proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work
for the bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender its monopoly. But
this is not the case--is, indeed, a rather impossible case--so that the
bourgeoisie still thrives. To this competition of the worker there is
but one limit; no worker will work for less than he needs to subsist. If
he must starve, he will prefer to starve in idleness rather than in toil.
True, this limit is relative; one needs more than another, one is
accustomed to more comfort than another; the Englishman who is still
somewhat civilised, needs more than the Irishman who goes in rags, eats
potatoes, and sleeps in a pig-sty. But that does not hinder the
Irishman's competing with the Englishman, and gradually forcing the rate
of wages, and with it the Englishman's level of civilisation, down to the
Irishman's level. Certain kinds of work require a certain grade of
civilisation, and to these belong almost all forms of industrial
occupation; hence the interest of the bourgeoisie requires in this case
that wages should be high enough to enable the workman to keep himself
upon the required plane.
The newly immigrated Irishman, encamped in the first stable that offers,
or turned out in the street after a week because he spends everything
upon drink and cannot pay rent, would be a poor mill-hand. The mill-hand
must, therefore, have wages enough to enable him to bring up his children
to regular work; but no more, lest he should be able to get on without
the wages of his children, and so make something else of them than mere
working-men. Here, too, the limit, the minimum wage, is relative. When
every member of the family works, the individual worker can get on with
proportionately less, and the bourgeoisie has made the most of the
opportunity of employing and making profitable the labour of women and
children afforded by machine-work. Of course it is not in every family
that every member can be set to work, and those in which the case is
otherwise would be in a bad way if obliged to exist upon the minimum wage
possible to a wholly employed family. Hence the usual wages form an
average according to which a fully employed family gets on pretty well,
and one which embraces few members able to work, pretty badly. But in
the worst case, every working-man prefers surrendering the trifling
luxury to which he was accustomed to not living at all; prefers a pig-pen
to no roof, wears rags in preference to going naked, confines himself to
a potato diet in preference to starvation. He contents himself with half-
pay and the hope of better times rather than be driven into the street to
perish before the eyes of the world, as so many have done who had no work
whatever. This trifle, therefore, this something more than nothing, is
the minimum of wages. And if there are more workers at hand than the
bourgeoisie thinks well to employ--if at the end of the battle of
competition there yet remain workers who find nothing to do, they must
simply starve; for the bourgeois will hardly give them work if he cannot
sell the produce of their labour at a profit.
From this it is evident what the minimum of wages is. The maximum is
determined by the competition of the bourgeoisie among themselves; for we
have seen how they, too, must compete with each other. The bourgeois can
increase his capital only in commerce and manufacture, and in both cases
he needs workers. Even if he invests his capital at interest, he needs
them indirectly; for without commerce and manufacture, no one would pay
him interest upon his capital, no one could use it. So the bourgeois
certainly needs workers, not indeed for his immediate living, for at need
he could consume his capital, but as we need an article of trade or a
beast of burden,--as a means of profit. The proletarian produces the
goods which the bourgeois sells with advantage. When, therefore, the
demand for these goods increases so that all the competing working-men
are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful, the competition
among the workers falls away, and the bourgeoisie begin to compete among
themselves. The capitalist in search of workmen knows very well that his
profits increase as prices rise in consequence of the increased demand
for his goods, and pays a trifle higher wages rather than let the whole
profit escape him. He sends the butter to fetch the cheese, and getting
the latter, leaves the butter ungrudgingly to the workers. So one
capitalist after another goes in chase of workers, and wages rise; but
only as high as the increasing demand permits. If the capitalist, who
willingly sacrificed a part of his extraordinary profit, runs into danger
of sacrificing any part of his ordinary average profit, he takes very
good care not to pay more than average wages.
From this we can determine the average rate of wages. Under average
circumstances, when neither workers nor capitalists have reason to
compete, especially among themselves, when there are just as many workers
at hand as can be employed in producing precisely the goods that are
demanded, wages stand a little above the minimum. How far they rise
above the minimum will depend upon the average needs and the grade of
civilisation of the workers. If the workers are accustomed to eat meat
several times in the week, the capitalists must reconcile themselves to
paying wages enough to make this food attainable, not less, because the
workers are not competing among themselves and have no occasion to
content themselves with less; not more, because the capitalists, in the
absence of competition among themselves, have no occasion to attract
working-men by extraordinary favours. This standard of the average needs
and the average civilisation of the workers has become very complicated
by reason of the complications of English industry, and is different for
different sorts of workers, as has been pointed out. Most industrial
occupations demand a certain skill and regularity, and for these
qualities which involve a certain grade of civilisation, the rate of
wages must be such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill and
subject himself to such regularity. Hence it is that the average wages
of industrial workers are higher than those of mere porters, day
labourers, etc., higher especially than those of agricultural labourers,
a fact to which the additional cost of the necessities of life in cities
contributes somewhat. In other words, the worker is, in law and in fact,
the slave of the property-holding class, so effectually a slave that he
is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity.
If the demand for workers increases, the price of workers rises; if it
falls, their price falls. If it falls so greatly that a number of them
become unsaleable, if they are left in stock, they are simply left idle;
and as they cannot live upon that, they die of starvation. For, to speak
in the words of the economists, the expense incurred in maintaining them
would not be reproduced, would be money thrown away, and to this end no
man advances capital; and, so far, Malthus was perfectly right in his
theory of population. The only difference as compared with the old,
outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of to-day seems to be free
because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week,
the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced
to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular
person, but of the whole property-holding class. For him the matter is
unchanged at bottom, and if this semblance of liberty necessarily gives
him some real freedom on the one hand, it entails on the other the
disadvantage that no one guarantees him a subsistence, he is in danger of
being repudiated at any moment by his master, the bourgeoisie, and left
to die of starvation, if the bourgeoisie ceases to have an interest in
his employment, his existence. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is
far better off under the present arrangement than under the old slave
system; it can dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing
invested capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is
possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out. {80}
Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the
assertion: "That the demand for men, like that for any other commodity,
necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on
too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast." _Just as in the
case of any other commodity_! If there are too few labourers at hand,
prices, _i.e_. wages, rise, the workers are more prosperous, marriages
multiply, more children are born and more live to grow up, until a
sufficient number of labourers has been secured. If there are too many
on hand, prices fall, want of work, poverty, and starvation, and
consequent diseases arise, and the "surplus population" is put out of the
way. And Malthus, who carried the foregoing proposition of Smith
farther, was also right, in his way, in asserting that there are always
more people on hand than can be maintained from the available means of
subsistence. Surplus population is engendered rather by the competition
of the workers among themselves, which forces each separate worker to
labour as much each day as his strength can possibly admit. If a
manufacturer can employ ten hands nine hours daily, he can employ nine if
each works ten hours, and the tenth goes hungry. And if a manufacturer
can force the nine hands to work an extra hour daily for the same wages
by threatening to discharge them at a time when the demand for hands is
not very great, he discharges the tenth and saves so much wages. This is
the process on a small scale, which goes on in a nation on a large one.
The productiveness of each hand raised to the highest pitch by the
competition of the workers among themselves, the division of labour, the
introduction of machinery, the subjugation of the forces of nature,
deprive a multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then
removed from the market, they can buy nothing, and the quantity of
articles of consumption previously required by them is no longer in
demand, need no longer be produced; the workers previously employed in
producing them are therefore driven out of work, and are also removed
from the market, and so it goes on, always the same old round, or rather,
so it would go if other circumstances did not intervene. The
introduction of the industrial forces already referred to for increasing
production leads, in the course of time, to a reduction of prices of the
articles produced and to consequent increased consumption, so that a
large part of the displaced workers finally, after long suffering, find
work again. If, in addition to this, the conquest of foreign markets
constantly and rapidly increases the demand for manufactured goods, as
has been the case in England during the past sixty years, the demand for
hands increases, and, in proportion to it, the population. Thus, instead
of diminishing, the population of the British Empire has increased with
extraordinary rapidity, and is still increasing. Yet, in spite of the
extension of industry, in spite of the demand for working-men which, in
general, has increased, there is, according to the confession of all the
official political parties (Tory, Whig, and Radical), permanent surplus,
superfluous population; the competition among the workers is constantly
greater than the competition to secure workers.
Whence comes this incongruity? It lies in the nature of industrial
competition and the commercial crises which arise from them. In the
present unregulated production and distribution of the means of
subsistence, which is carried on not directly for the sake of supplying
needs, but for profit, in the system under which every one works for
himself to enrich himself, disturbances inevitably arise at every moment.
For example, England supplies a number of countries with most diverse
goods. Now, although the manufacturer may know how much of each article
is consumed in each country annually, he cannot know how much is on hand
at every given moment, much less can he know how much his competitors
export thither. He can only draw most uncertain inferences from the
perpetual fluctuations in prices, as to the quantities on hand and the
needs of the moment. He must trust to luck in exporting his goods.
Everything is done blindly, as guess-work, more or less at the mercy of
accident. Upon the slightest favourable report, each one exports what he
can, and before long such a market is glutted, sales stop, capital
remains inactive, prices fall, and English manufacture has no further
employment for its hands. In the beginning of the development of
manufacture, these checks were limited to single branches and single
markets; but the centralising tendency of competition which drives the
hands thrown out of one branch into such other branches as are most
easily accessible, and transfers the goods which cannot be disposed of in
one market to other markets, has gradually brought the single minor
crises nearer together and united them into one periodically recurring
crisis. Such a crisis usually recurs once in five years after a brief
period of activity and general prosperity; the home market, like all
foreign ones, is glutted with English goods, which it can only slowly
absorb, the industrial movement comes to a standstill in almost every
branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who cannot survive a
prolonged inactivity of their invested capital fail, the larger ones
suspend business during the worst season, close their mills or work short
time, perhaps half the day; wages fall by reason of the competition of
the unemployed, the diminution of working-time and the lack of profitable
sales; want becomes universal among the workers, the small savings, which
individuals may have made, are rapidly consumed, the philanthropic
institutions are overburdened, the poor-rates are doubled, trebled, and
still insufficient, the number of the starving increases, and the whole
multitude of "surplus" population presses in terrific numbers into the
foreground. This continues for a time; the "surplus" exist as best they
may, or perish; philanthropy and the Poor Law help many of them to a
painful prolongation of their existence. Others find scant means of
subsistence here and there in such kinds of work as have been least open
to competition, are most remote from manufacture. And with how little
can a human being keep body and soul together for a time! Gradually the
state of things improve; the accumulations of goods are consumed, the
general depression among the men of commerce and manufacture prevents a
too hasty replenishing of the markets, and at last rising prices and
favourable reports from all directions restore activity. Most of the
markets are distant ones; demand increases and prices rise constantly
while the first exports are arriving; people struggle for the first
goods, the first sales enliven trade still more, the prospective ones
promise still higher prices; expecting a further rise, merchants begin to
buy upon speculation, and so to withdraw from consumption the articles
intended for it, just when they are most needed. Speculation forces
prices still higher, by inspiring others to purchase, and appropriating
new importations at once. All this is reported to England, manufacturers
begin to produce with a will, new mills are built, every means is
employed to make the most of the favourable moment. Speculation arises
here, too, exerting the same influence as upon foreign markets, raising
prices, withdrawing goods from consumption, spurring manufacture in both
ways to the highest pitch of effort. Then come the daring speculators
working with fictitious capital, living upon credit, ruined if they
cannot speedily sell; they hurl themselves into this universal,
disorderly race for profits, multiply the disorder and haste by their
unbridled passion, which drives prices and production to madness. It is
a frantic struggle, which carries away even the most experienced and
phlegmatic; goods are spun, woven, hammered, as if all mankind were to be
newly equipped, as though two thousand million new consumers had been
discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who
must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their
need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate,
speculators throw their goods upon the market in terror, the market is
disordered, credit shaken, one house after another stops payments,
bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the discovery is made that three times
more goods are on hand or under way than can be consumed. The news
reaches England, where production has been going on at full speed
meanwhile, panic seizes all hands, failures abroad cause others in
England, the panic crushes a number of firms, all reserves are thrown
upon the market here, too, in the moment of anxiety, and the alarm is
still further exaggerated. This is the beginning of the crisis, which
then takes precisely the same course as its predecessor, and gives place
in turn to a season of prosperity. So it goes on
perpetually,--prosperity, crisis, prosperity, crisis, and this perennial
round in which English industry moves is, as has been before observed,
usually completed once in five or six years.
From this it is clear that English manufacture must have, at all times
save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army
of workers, in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required
by the market in the liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or
smaller, according as the state of the market occasions the employment of
a larger or smaller proportion of its members. And if at the moment of
highest activity of the market the agricultural districts and the
branches least affected by the general prosperity temporarily supply to
manufacture a number of workers, these are a mere minority, and these too
belong to the reserve army, with the single difference that the
prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their connection with it.
When they enter upon the more active branches of work, their former
employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work longer
hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers
discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places
filled and themselves superfluous--at least in the majority of cases.
This reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis
and a large number during the period which may be regarded as the average
between the highest prosperity and the crisis, is the "surplus
population" of England, which keeps body and soul together by begging,
stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing handcarts, driving
donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great
town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what
devices this "surplus population" takes refuge. The London
crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the
principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have
been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law
guardians or the municipal authorities for the purpose. Now, however, a
machine has been invented which rattles through the streets daily, and
has spoiled this source of income for the unemployed. Along the great
highways leading into the cities, on which there is a great deal of
waggon traffic, a large number of people may be seen with small carts,
gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives among the passing
coaches and omnibuses, often paying a couple of shillings a week to the
authorities for the privilege. But this occupation is forbidden in many
places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be
sold as manure. Happy are such of the "surplus" as can obtain a push-
cart and go about with it. Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed
to possess an ass in addition to the cart. The ass must get his own food
or is given a little gathered refuse, and can yet bring in a trifle of
money. Most of the "surplus" betake themselves to huckstering. On
Saturday afternoons, especially, when the whole working population is on
the streets, the crowd who live from huckstering and peddling may be
seen. Shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind
of small articles are offered by men, women, and children; and at other
times also, such peddlers are always to be seen standing at the street
corners, or going about with cakes and ginger-beer or nettle-beer.
Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting
fires are further resources of such venders. Others, so-called jobbers,
go about the streets seeking small jobs. Many of these succeed in
getting a day's work, many are not so fortunate.
"At the gates of all the London docks," says the Rev. W. Champney,
preacher of the East End, "hundreds of the poor appear every morning
in winter before daybreak, in the hope of getting a day's work. They
await the opening of the gates; and, when the youngest and strongest
and best known have been engaged, hundreds cast down by disappointed
hope, go back to their wretched homes."
When these people find no work and will not rebel against society, what
remains for them but to beg? And surely no one can wonder at the great
army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police
carries on perpetual war. But the beggary of these men has a peculiar
character. Such a man usually goes about with his family singing a
pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the
benevolence of the passers-by. And it is a striking fact that these
beggars are seen almost exclusively in the working-people's districts,
that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor from which they live.
Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and without
uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it. In
this case, too, they reckon upon the sympathy of the workers alone, who
know from experience how it feels to be hungry, and are liable to find
themselves in the same situation at any moment; for this dumb, yet most
moving appeal, is met with almost solely in such streets as are
frequented by working-men, and at such hours as working-men pass by; but
especially on summer evenings, when the "secrets" of the working-people's
quarters are generally revealed, and the middle-class withdraws as far as
possible from the district thus polluted. And he among the "surplus" who
has courage and passion enough openly to resist society, to reply with
declared war upon the bourgeoisie to the disguised war which the
bourgeoisie wages upon him, goes forth to rob, plunder, murder, and burn!
Of this surplus population there are, according to the reports of the
Poor Law commissioners, on an average, a million and a half in England
and Wales; in Scotland the number cannot be ascertained for want of Poor
Law regulations, and with Ireland we shall deal separately. Moreover,
this million and a half includes only those who actually apply to the
parish for relief; the great multitude who struggle on without recourse
to this most hated expedient, it does not embrace. On the other hand, a
good part of the number belongs to the agricultural districts, and does
not enter into the present discussion. During a crisis this number
naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its highest pitch. Take,
for instance, the crisis of 1842, which, being the latest, was the most
violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each repetition,
and the next, which may be expected not later than 1847, {87} will
probably be still more violent and lasting. During this crisis the poor-
rates rose in every town to a hitherto unknown height. In Stockport,
among other towns, for every pound paid in house-rent, eight shillings of
poor-rate had to be paid, so that the rate alone formed forty per cent.
of the house-rent. Moreover, whole streets stood vacant, so that there
were at least twenty thousand fewer inhabitants than usual, and on the
doors of the empty houses might be read: "Stockport to let." In Bolton,
where, in ordinary years, the rents from which rates are paid average
86,000 pounds, they sank to 36,000 pounds. The number of the poor to be
supported rose, on the other hand, to 14,000, or more than twenty per
cent. of the whole number of inhabitants. In Leeds, the Poor Law
guardians had a reserve fund of 10,000 pounds. This, with a contribution
of 7,000 pounds, was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its
height. So it was everywhere. A report drawn up in January, 1843, by a
committee of the Anti-Corn Law League, on the condition of the industrial
districts in 1842, which was based upon detailed statements of the
manufacturers, asserts that the poor-rate was, taking the average, twice
as high as in 1839, and that the number of persons requiring relief has
trebled, even quintupled, since that time; that a multitude of applicants
belong to a class which had never before solicited relief; that the
working-class commands more than two-thirds less of the means of
subsistence than from 1834-1836; that the consumption of meat had been
decidedly less, in some places twenty per cent., in others reaching sixty
per cent. less; that even handicraftsmen, smiths, bricklayers, and
others, who usually have full employment in the most depressed periods,
now suffered greatly from want of work and reduction of wages; and that,
even now, in January, 1843, wages are still steadily falling. And these
are the reports of manufacturers! The starving workmen, whose mills were
idle, whose employers could give them no work, stood in the streets in
all directions, begged singly or in crowds, besieged the sidewalks in
armies, and appealed to the passers-by for help; they begged, not
cringing like ordinary beggars, but threatening by their numbers, their
gestures, and their words. Such was the state of things in all the
industrial districts, from Leicester to Leeds, and from Manchester to
Birmingham. Here and there disturbances arose, as in the Staffordshire
potteries, in July. The most frightful excitement prevailed among the
workers until the general insurrection broke out throughout the
manufacturing districts in August. When I came to Manchester in
November, 1842, there were crowds of unemployed working-men at every
street corner, and many mills were still standing idle. In the following
months these unwilling corner loafers gradually vanished, and the
factories came into activity once more.
To what extent want and suffering prevail among these unemployed during
such a crisis, I need not describe. The poor-rates are insufficient,
vastly insufficient; the philanthropy of the rich is a rain-drop in the
ocean, lost in the moment of falling, beggary can support but few among
the crowds. If the small dealers did not sell to the working-people on
credit at such times as long as possible--paying themselves liberally
afterwards, it must be confessed--and if the working-people did not help
each other, every crisis would remove a multitude of the surplus through
death by starvation. Since, however, the most depressed period is brief,
lasting, at worst, but one, two, or two and a half years, most of them
emerge from it with their lives after dire privations. But indirectly by
disease, etc., every crisis finds a multitude of victims, as we shall
see. First, however, let us turn to another cause of abasement to which
the English worker is exposed, a cause permanently active in forcing the
whole class downwards.