"I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in the
surrounding districts, during a period of several months, entering the
spinning-rooms unexpectedly, and often alone, at different times of
the day, and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement
inflicted on a child; nor, indeed, did I ever see children in
ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert; taking
pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility
natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad
emotions, in my mind, was always exhilerating. It was delightful to
observe the nimbleness with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule
carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them
at leisure, after a few seconds' exercise of their tiny fingers, to
amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and
winding on were once more completed. The work of these lively elves
seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing
dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it
off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day's work, they evinced
no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they
immediately began to skip about any neighbouring playground, and to
commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys issuing
from a school."
Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were not an
urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure
should have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not
subsided after a couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this
whole performance only in the afternoon after five or six hours' work,
but not in the evening! As to the health of the operatives, the
bourgeois has the boundless impudence to cite the report of 1833 just
quoted in a thousand places, as testimony for the excellent health of
these people; to try to prove by detached and garbled quotations that no
trace of scrofula can be found among them, and, what is quite true, that
the factory system frees them from all acute diseases, (that they have
every variety of chronic affection instead he naturally conceals). To
explain the impudence with which our friend Ure palms off the grossest
falsehoods upon the English public, it must be known that the report
consists of three large folio volumes, which it never occurs to a well-
fed English bourgeois to study through. Let us hear further how he
expresses himself as to the Factory Act of 1834, passed by the Liberal
bourgeoisie, and imposing only the most meagre limitations upon the
manufacturers, as we shall see. This law, especially its compulsory
education clause, he calls an absurd and despotic measure directed
against the manufacturers, through which all children under twelve years
of age have been thrown out of employment; and with what results? The
children thus discharged from their light and useful occupation receive
no education whatsoever; cast out from the warm spinning-room into a cold
world, they subsist only by begging and stealing, a life in sad contrast
with their steadily improving condition in the factory and in Sunday
school. Under the mask of philanthropy, this law intensifies the
sufferings of the poor, and will greatly restrict the conscientious
manufacturer in his useful work, if, indeed, it does not wholly stop him.
{169}
The ruinous influence of the factory system began at an early day to
attract general attention. We have already alluded to the Apprentices'
Act of 1802. Later, towards 1817, Robert Owen, then a manufacturer in
New Lanark, in Scotland, afterwards founder of English Socialism, began
to call the attention of the Government, by memorials and petitions, to
the necessity of legislative guarantees for the health of the operatives,
and especially of children. The late Sir Robert Peel and other
philanthropists united with him, and gradually secured the Factory Acts
of 1818, 1825, and 1831, of which the first two were never enforced, and
the last only here and there. This law of 1831, based upon the motion of
Sir J. C. Hobhouse, provided that in cotton mills no one under twenty-one
should be employed between half-past seven at night and half-past five in
the morning; and that in all factories young persons under eighteen
should work no longer than twelve hours daily, and nine hours on
Saturday. But since operatives could not testify against their masters
without being discharged, this law helped matters very little. In the
great cities, where the operatives were more restive, the larger
manufacturers came to an agreement among themselves to obey the law; but
even there, there were many who, like the employers in the country, did
not trouble themselves about it. Meanwhile, the demand for a ten hours'
law had become lively among the operatives; that is, for a law which
should forbid all operatives under eighteen years of age to work longer
than ten hours daily; the Trades Unions, by their agitation, made this
demand general throughout the manufacturing population; the philanthropic
section of the Tory party, then led by Michael Sadler, seized upon the
plan, and brought it before Parliament. Sadler obtained a parliamentary
committee for the investigation of the factory system, and this committee
reported in 1832. Its report was emphatically partisan, composed by
strong enemies of the factory system, for party ends. Sadler permitted
himself to be betrayed by his noble enthusiasm into the most distorted
and erroneous statements, drew from his witnesses by the very form of his
questions, answers which contained the truth, but truth in a perverted
form. The manufacturers themselves, incensed at a report which
represented them as monsters, now demanded an official investigation;
they knew that an exact report must, in this case, be advantageous to
them; they knew that Whigs, genuine bourgeois, were at the helm, with
whom they were upon good terms, whose principles were opposed to any
restriction upon manufacture. They obtained a commission, in due order,
composed of Liberal bourgeois, whose report I have so often cited. This
comes somewhat nearer the truth than Sadler's, but its deviations
therefrom are in the opposite direction. On every page it betrays
sympathy with the manufacturers, distrust of the Sadler report,
repugnance to the working-men agitating independently and the supporters
of the Ten Hours' Bill. It nowhere recognises the right of the working-
man to a life worthy of a human being, to independent activity, and
opinions of his own. It reproaches the operatives that in sustaining the
Ten Hours' Bill they thought, not of the children only, but of themselves
as well; it calls the working-men engaged in the agitation demagogues,
ill-intentioned, malicious, etc., is written, in short, on the side of
the bourgeoisie; and still it cannot whitewash the manufacturers, and
still it leaves such a mass of infamies upon the shoulders of the
employers, that even after this report, the agitation for the Ten Hours'
Bill, the hatred against the manufacturers, and the committee's severest
epithets applied to them are all fully justified. But there was the one
difference, that whereas the Sadler report accuses the manufacturers of
open, undisguised brutality, it now became evident that this brutality
was chiefly carried on under the mask of civilisation and humanity. Yet
Dr. Hawkins, the medical commissioner for Lancashire, expresses himself
decidedly in favour of the Ten Hours' Bill in the opening lines of his
report, and Commissioner Mackintosh explains that his own report does not
contain the whole truth, because it is very difficult to induce the
operatives to testify against their employers, and because the
manufacturers, besides being forced into greater concessions towards
their operatives by the excitement among the latter, are often prepared
for the inspection of the factories, have them swept, the speed of the
machinery reduced, etc. In Lancashire especially they resorted to the
device of bringing the overlookers of workrooms before the commissioners,
and letting them testify as working-men to the humanity of the employers,
the wholesome effects of the work, and the indifference, if not the
hostility of the operatives, towards the Ten Hours' Bill. But these are
not genuine working-men; they are deserters from their class, who have
entered the service of the bourgeoisie for better pay, and fight in the
interests of the capitalists against the workers. Their interest is that
of the capitalists, and they are, therefore, almost more hated by the
workers than the manufacturers themselves.
And yet this report suffices wholly to exhibit the most shameful
recklessness of the manufacturing bourgeoisie towards its employees, the
whole infamy of the industrial exploiting system in its full inhumanity.
Nothing is more revolting than to compare the long register of diseases
and deformities engendered by overwork, in this report, with the cold,
calculating political economy of the manufacturers, by which they try to
prove that they, and with them all England, must go to ruin, if they
should be forbidden to cripple so and so many children every year. The
language of Dr. Ure alone, which I have quoted, would be yet more
revolting if it were not so preposterous.
The result of this report was the Factory Act of 1834, which forbade the
employment of children under nine years of age (except in silk mills),
limited the working-hours of children between 9-13 years to 48 per week,
or 9 hours in any one day at the utmost; that of young persons from 14-18
years of age to 69 per week, or 12 on any one day as the maximum,
provided for an hour and a half as the minimum interval for meals, and
repeated the total prohibition of night-work for persons under eighteen
years of age. Compulsory school attendance two hours daily was
prescribed for all children under fourteen years, and the manufacturer
declared punishable in case of employing children without a certificate
of age from the factory surgeon, and a certificate of school attendance
from the teacher. As recompense, the employer was permitted to withdraw
one penny from the child's weekly earnings to pay the teacher. Further,
surgeons and inspectors were appointed to visit the factories at all
times, take testimony of operatives on oath, and enforce the law by
prosecution before a Justice of the Peace. This is the law against which
Dr. Ure inveighs in such unmeasured terms!
The consequence of this law, and especially of the appointment of
inspectors, was the reduction of working-hours to an average of twelve to
thirteen, and the superseding of children as far as possible. Hereupon
some of the most crying evils disappeared almost wholly. Deformities
arose now only in cases of weak constitution, and the effects of overwork
became much less conspicuous. Nevertheless, enough testimony remains to
be found in the Factory Report, that the lesser evils, swelling of the
ankles, weakness and pain in the legs, hips, and back, varicose veins,
ulcers on the lower extremities, general weakness, especially of the
pelvic region, nausea, want of appetite alternating with unnatural
hunger, indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the chest in consequence
of the dust and foul atmosphere of the factories, etc. etc., all occur
among employees subject to the provisions of Sir J. C. Hobhouse's law (of
1831), which prescribes twelve to thirteen hours as the maximum. The
reports from Glasgow and Manchester are especially worthy of attention in
this respect. These evils remained too, after the law of 1834, and
continue to undermine the health of the working-class to this day. Care
has been taken to give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a
hypocritical, civilised form, to restrain the manufacturers through the
arm of the law from too conspicuous villainies, and thus to give them a
pretext for self-complacently parading their sham philanthropy. That is
all. If a new commission were appointed to-day, it would find things
pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory attendance at
school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government failed to
provide good schools. The manufacturers employed as teachers worn-out
operatives, to whom they sent the children two hours daily, thus
complying with the letter of the law; but the children learned nothing.
And even the reports of the factory inspectors, which are limited to the
scope of the inspector's duties, _i.e_., the enforcement of the Factory
Act, give data enough to justify the conclusion that the old evils
inevitably remain. Inspectors Horner and Saunders, in their reports for
October and December, 1844, state that, in a number of branches in which
the employment of children can be dispensed with or superseded by that of
adults, the working-day is still fourteen to sixteen hours, or even
longer. Among the operatives in these branches they found numbers of
young people who had just outgrown the provisions of the law. Many
employers disregard the law, shorten the meal times, work children longer
than is permitted, and risk prosecution, knowing that the possible fines
are trifling in comparison with the certain profits derivable from the
offence. Just at present especially, while business is exceptionally
brisk, they are under great temptation in this respect.
Meanwhile the agitation for the Ten Hours' Bill by no means died out
among the operatives; in 1839 it was under full headway once more, and
Sadler's place, he having died, was filled in the House of Commons by
Lord Ashley {174} and Richard Oastler, both Tories. Oastler especially,
who carried on a constant agitation in the factory districts, and had
been active in the same way during Sadler's life, was the particular
favourite of the working-men. They called him their "good old king,"
"the king of the factory children," and there is not a child in the
factory districts that does not know and revere him, that does not join
the procession which moves to welcome him when he enters a town. Oastler
vigorously opposed the New Poor Law also, and was therefore imprisoned
for debt by a Mr. Thornley, on whose estate he was employed as agent, and
to whom he owed money. The Whigs offered repeatedly to pay his debt and
confer other favours upon him if he would only give up his agitation
against the Poor Law. But in vain; he remained in prison, whence he
published his Fleet Papers against the factory system and the Poor Law.
The Tory Government of 1841 turned its attention once more to the Factory
Acts. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, proposed, in 1843, a bill
restricting the working-hours of children to six and one-half, and making
the enactments for compulsory school attendance more effective; the
principal point in this connection being a provision for better schools.
This bill was, however, wrecked by the jealousy of the dissenters; for,
although compulsory religious instruction was not extended to the
children of dissenters, the schools provided for were to be placed under
the general supervision of the Established Church, and the Bible made the
general reading-book; religion being thus made the foundation of all
instruction, whence the dissenters felt themselves threatened. The
manufacturers and the Liberals generally united with them, the working-
men were divided by the Church question, and therefore inactive. The
opponents of the bill, though outweighed in the great manufacturing
towns, such as Salford and Stockport, and able in others, such as
Manchester, to attack certain of its points only, for fear of the working-
men, collected nevertheless nearly two million signatures for a petition
against it, and Graham allowed himself to be so far intimidated as to
withdraw the whole bill. The next year he omitted the school clauses,
and proposed that, instead of the previous provisions, children between
eight and thirteen years should be restricted to six and one-half hours,
and so employed as to have either the whole morning or the whole
afternoon free; that young people between thirteen and eighteen years,
and all females, should be limited to twelve hours; and that the hitherto
frequent evasions of the law should be prevented. Hardly had he proposed
this bill, when the ten hours' agitation was begun again more vigorously
than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of his
friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he
threw himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the
Ten Hours' Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the
masses of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides brought
them allies, and on March 19th, 1844, Lord Ashley carried, with a
majority of 179 to 170, a resolution that the word "Night" in the Factory
Act should express the time from six at night to six in the morning,
whereby the prohibition of night-work came to mean the limitation of
working-hours to twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual
work a day. But the ministry did not agree to this. Sir James Graham
began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and at the next vote on
the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten and twelve
hours! Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a new
bill, and that if this failed to pass they should resign. The new bill
was exactly the old Twelve Hours' Bill with some changes of form, and the
same House of Commons which had rejected the principal points of this
bill in March, now swallowed it whole. The reason of this was that most
of the supporters of the Ten Hours' Bill were Tories who let fall the
bill rather than the ministry; but be the motives what they may, the
House of Commons by its votes upon this subject, each vote reversing the
last, has brought itself into the greatest contempt among all the
workers, and proved most brilliantly the Chartists' assertion of the
necessity of its reform. Three members, who had formerly voted against
the ministry, afterwards voted for it and rescued it. In all the
divisions, the bulk of the opposition voted _for_ and the bulk of its own
party _against_ the ministry. {176} The foregoing propositions of Graham
touching the employment of children six and one-half and of all other
operatives twelve hours are now legislative provisions, and by them and
by the limitation of overwork for making up time lost through breakdown
of machinery or insufficient water-power by reason of frost or drought, a
working-day of more than twelve hours has been made well-nigh impossible.
There remains, however, no doubt that, in a very short time, the Ten
Hours' Bill will really be adopted. The manufacturers are naturally all
against it, there are perhaps not ten who are for it; they have used
every honourable and dishonourable means against this dreaded measure,
but with no other result than that of drawing down upon them the ever
deepening hatred of the working-men. The bill will pass. What the
working-men will do they can do, and that they will have this bill they
proved last spring. The economic arguments of the manufacturers that a
Ten Hours' Bill would increase the cost of production and incapacitate
the English producers for competition in foreign markets, and that wages
must fall, are all _half_ true; but they prove nothing except this, that
the industrial greatness of England can be maintained only through the
barbarous treatment of the operatives, the destruction of their health,
the social, physical, and mental decay of whole generations. Naturally,
if the Ten Hours' Bill were a final measure, it must ruin England; but
since it must inevitably bring with it other measures which must draw
England into a path wholly different from that hitherto followed, it can
only prove an advance.
Let us turn to another side of the factory system which cannot be
remedied by legislative provisions so easily as the diseases now
engendered by it. We have already alluded in a general way to the nature
of the employment, and enough in detail to be able to draw certain
inferences from the facts given. The supervision of machinery, the
joining of broken threads, is no activity which claims the operative's
thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which prevents him from occupying
his mind with other things. We have seen, too, that this work affords
the muscles no opportunity for physical activity. Thus it is, properly
speaking, not work, but tedium, the most deadening, wearing process
conceivable. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental
powers decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every
day and all day long from his eighth year. Moreover, he must not take a
moment's rest; the engine moves unceasingly; the wheels, the straps, the
spindles hum and rattle in his ears without a pause, and if he tries to
snatch one instant, there is the overlooker at his back with the book of
fines. This condemnation to be buried alive in the mill, to give
constant attention to the tireless machine is felt as the keenest torture
by the operatives, and its action upon mind and body is in the long run
stunting in the highest degree. There is no better means of inducing
stupefaction than a period of factory work, and if the operatives have,
nevertheless, not only rescued their intelligence, but cultivated and
sharpened it more than other working-men, they have found this possible
only in rebellion against their fate and against the bourgeoisie, the
sole subject on which under all circumstances they can think and feel
while at work. Or, if this indignation against the bourgeoisie does not
become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence
is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The
physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the
factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute
this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental
lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned
which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt
here too! There is no cause for surprise, therefore, that in the
manufacturing towns especially, drunkenness and sexual excesses have
reached the pitch which I have already described. {178}
Further, the slavery in which the bourgeoisie holds the proletariat
chained, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system. Here
ends all freedom in law and in fact. The operative must be in the mill
at half-past five in the morning; if he comes a couple of minutes too
late, he is fined; if he comes ten minutes too late, he is not let in
until breakfast is over, and a quarter of the day's wages is withheld,
though he loses only two and one-half hours' work out of twelve. He must
eat, drink, and sleep at command. For satisfying the most imperative
needs, he is vouchsafed the least possible time absolutely required by
them. Whether his dwelling is a half-hour or a whole one removed from
the factory does not concern his employer. The despotic bell calls him
from his bed, his breakfast, his dinner.
What a time he has of it, too, inside the factory! Here the employer is
absolute law-giver; he makes regulations at will, changes and adds to his
codex at pleasure, and even, if he inserts the craziest stuff, the courts
say to the working-man: "You were your own master, no one forced you to
agree to such a contract if you did not wish to; but now, when you have
freely entered into it, you must be bound by it." And so the working-man
only gets into the bargain the mockery of the Justice of the Peace who is
a bourgeois himself, and of the law which is made by the bourgeoisie.
Such decisions have been given often enough. In October, 1844, the
operatives of Kennedy's mill, in Manchester struck. Kennedy prosecuted
them on the strength of a regulation placarded in the mill, that at no
time more than two operatives in one room may quit work at once. And the
court decided in his favour, giving the working-men the explanation cited
above. {179a} And such rules as these usually are! For instance: 1. The
doors are closed ten minutes after work begins, and thereafter no one is
admitted until the breakfast hour; whoever is absent during this time
forfeits 3d. per loom. 2. Every power-loom weaver detected absenting
himself at another time, while the machinery is in motion, forfeits for
each hour and each loom, 3d. Every person who leaves the room during
working-hours, without obtaining permission from the overlooker, forfeits
3d. 3. Weavers who fail to supply themselves with scissors forfeit, per
day, 1d. 4. All broken shuttles, brushes, oil-cans, wheels, window
panes, etc., must be paid for by the weaver. 5. No weaver to stop work
without giving a week's notice. The manufacturer may dismiss any
employee without notice for bad work or improper behaviour. 6. Every
operative detected speaking to another, singing or whistling, will be
fined 6d.; for leaving his place during working-hours, 6d. {179b} Another
copy of factory regulations lies before me, according to which every
operative who comes three minutes too late, forfeits the wages for a
quarter of an hour, and every one who comes twenty minutes too late, for
a quarter of a day. Every one who remains absent until breakfast
forfeits a shilling on Monday, and sixpence every other day of the week,
etc, etc. This last is the regulation of the Phoenix Works in Jersey
Street, Manchester. It may be said that such rules are necessary in a
great, complicated factory, in order to insure the harmonious working of
the different parts; it may be asserted that such a severe discipline is
as necessary here as in an army. This may be so, but what sort of a
social order is it which cannot be maintained without such shameful
tyranny? Either the end sanctifies the means, or the inference of the
badness of the end from the badness of the means is justified. Every one
who has served as a soldier knows what it is to be subjected even for a
short time to military discipline. But these operatives are condemned
from their ninth year to their death to live under the sword, physically
and mentally. They are worse slaves than the negroes in America, for
they are more sharply watched, and yet it is demanded of them that they
shall live like human beings, shall think and feel like men! Verily,
this they can do only under glowing hatred towards their oppressors, and
towards that order of things which place them in such a position, which
degrades them to machines. But it is far more shameful yet, that
according to the universal testimony of the operatives, numbers of
manufacturers collect the fines imposed upon the operatives with the most
heartless severity, and for the purpose of piling up extra profits out of
the farthings thus extorted from the impoverished proletarians. Leach
asserts, too, that the operatives often find the factory clock moved
forward a quarter of an hour and the doors shut, while the clerk moves
about with the fines-book inside, noting the many names of the absentees.
Leach claims to have counted ninety-five operatives thus shut out,
standing before a factory, whose clock was a quarter of an hour slower
than the town clocks at night, and a quarter of an hour faster in the
morning. The Factory Report relates similar facts. In one factory the
clock was set back during working-hours, so that the operatives worked
overtime without extra pay; in another, a whole quarter of an hour
overtime was worked; in a third, there were two clocks, an ordinary one
and a machine clock, which registered the revolutions of the main shaft;
if the machinery went slowly, working-hours were measured by the machine
clock until the number of revolutions due in twelve hours was reached; if
work went well, so that the number was reached before the usual working-
hours were ended, the operatives were forced to toil on to the end of the
twelfth hour. The witness adds that he had known girls who had good
work, and who had worked overtime, who, nevertheless, betook themselves
to a life of prostitution rather than submit to this tyranny. {181a} To
return to the fines, Leach relates having repeatedly seen women in the
last period of pregnancy fined 6d. for the offence of sitting down a
moment to rest. Fines for bad work are wholly arbitrary; the goods are
examined in the wareroom, and the supervisor charges the fines upon a
list without even summoning the operative, who only learns that he has
been fined when the overlooker pays his wages, and the goods have perhaps
been sold, or certainly been placed beyond his reach. Leach has in his
possession such a fines list, ten feet long, and amounting to 35 pounds
17s. 10d. He relates that in the factory where this list was made, a new
supervisor was dismissed for fining too little, and so bringing in five
pounds too little weekly. {181b} And I repeat that I know Leach to be a
thoroughly trustworthy man incapable of a falsehood.
But the operative is his employer's slave in still other respects. If
his wife or daughter finds favour in the eyes of the master, a command, a
hint suffices, and she must place herself at his disposal. When the
employer wishes to supply with signatures a petition in favour of
bourgeois interests, he need only send it to his mill. If he wishes to
decide a Parliamentary election, he sends his enfranchised operatives in
rank and file to the polls, and they vote for the bourgeois candidate
whether they will or no. If he desires a majority in a public meeting,
he dismisses them half-an-hour earlier than usual, and secures them
places close to the platform, where he can watch them to his
satisfaction.
Two further arrangements contribute especially to force the operative
under the dominion of the manufacturer; the Truck system and the Cottage
system. The truck system, the payment of the operatives in goods, was
formerly universal in England. The manufacturer opens a shop, "for the
convenience of the operatives, and to protect them from the high prices
of the petty dealers." Here goods of all sorts are sold to them on
credit; and to keep the operatives from going to the shops where they
could get their goods more cheaply--the "Tommy shops" usually charging
twenty-five to thirty per cent. more than others--wages are paid in
requisitions on the shop instead of money. The general indignation
against this infamous system led to the passage of the Truck Act in 1831,
by which, for most employees, payment in truck orders was declared void
and illegal, and was made punishable by fine; but, like most other
English laws, this has been enforced only here and there. In the towns
it is carried out comparatively efficiently; but in the country, the
truck system, disguised or undisguised, flourishes. In the town of
Leicester, too, it is very common. There lie before me nearly a dozen
convictions for this offence, dating from the period between November,
1843, and June, 1844, and reported, in part, in the _Manchester Guardian_
and, in part, in the _Northern Star_. The system is, of course, less
openly carried on at present; wages are usually paid in cash, but the
employer still has means enough at command to force him to purchase his
wares in the truck shop and nowhere else. Hence it is difficult to
combat the truck system, because it can now be carried on under cover of
the law, provided only that the operative receives his wages in money.
The _Northern Star_ of April 27th, 1843, publishes a letter from an
operative of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, which refers to
a manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as follows (retranslated from the
German):
"It is very strange to think that the accursed truck system should
exist to such an extent as it does in Holmfirth, and nobody be found
who has the pluck to make the manufacturer stop it. There are here a
great many honest hand-weavers suffering through this damned system;
here is one sample from a good many out of the noble-hearted Free
Trade Clique. There is a manufacturer who has upon himself the curses
of the whole district on account of his infamous conduct towards his
poor weavers; if they have got a piece ready which comes to 34 or 36
shillings, he gives them 20s. in money and the rest in cloth or goods,
and 40 to 50 per cent. dearer than at the other shops, and often
enough the goods are rotten into the bargain. But, what says the
_Free Trade Mercury_, the _Leeds Mercury_? They are not bound to take
them; they can please themselves. Oh, yes, but they must take them or
else starve. If they ask for another 20s. in money, they must wait
eight or fourteen days for a warp; but if they take the 20s. and the
goods, then there is always a warp ready for them. And that is Free
Trade. Lord Brougham said we ought to put by something in our young
days, so that we need not go to the parish when we are old. Well, are
we to put by the rotten goods? If this did not come from a lord, one
would say his brains were as rotten as the goods that our work is paid
in. When the unstamped papers came out "illegally," there was a lot
of them to report it to the police in Holmfirth, the Blythes, the
Edwards, etc.; but where are they now? But this is different. Our
truck manufacturer belongs to the pious Free Trade lot; he goes to
church twice every Sunday, and repeats devotedly after the parson: 'We
have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done
the things we ought not to have done, and there is no good in us; but,
good Lord, deliver us.' Yes, deliver us till to-morrow, and we will
pay our weavers again in rotten goods."
The Cottage system looks much more innocent and arose in a much more
harmless way, though it has the same enslaving influence upon the
employee. In the neighbourhood of the mills in the country, there is
often a lack of dwelling accommodation for the operatives. The
manufacturer is frequently obliged to build such dwellings and does so
gladly, as they yield great advantages, besides the interest upon the
capital invested. If any owner of working-men's dwellings averages about
six per cent. on his invested capital, it is safe to calculate that the
manufacturer's cottages yield twice this rate; for so long as his factory
does not stand perfectly idle he is sure of occupants, and of occupants
who pay punctually. He is therefore spared the two chief disadvantages
under which other house-owners labour; his cottages never stand empty,
and he runs no risk. But the rent of the cottages is as high as though
these disadvantages were in full force, and by obtaining the same rent as
the ordinary house-owner, the manufacturer, at cost of the operatives,
makes a brilliant investment at twelve to fourteen per cent. For it is
clearly unjust that he should make twice as much profit as other
competing house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from competing
with him. But it implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed profit
from the pockets of the non-possessing class, which must consider the
expenditure of every penny. He is used to that, however, he whose whole
wealth is gained at the cost of his employees. But this injustice
becomes an infamy when the manufacturer, as often happens, forces his
operatives, who must occupy his houses on pain of dismissal, to pay a
higher rent than the ordinary one, or even to pay rent for houses in
which they do not live! The _Halifax Guardian_, quoted by the Liberal
_Sun_, asserts that hundreds of operatives in Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham,
and Rochdale, etc., are forced by their employers to pay house-rent
whether they occupy the house or not. {184} The cottage system is
universal in the country districts; it has created whole villages, and
the manufacturer usually has little or no competition against his houses,
so that he can fix his price regardless of any market rate, indeed at his
pleasure. And what power does the cottage system give the employer over
his operatives in disagreements between master and men? If the latter
strike, he need only give them notice to quit his premises, and the
notice need only be a week; after that time the operative is not only
without bread but without a shelter, a vagabond at the mercy of the law
which sends him, without fail, to the treadmill.
Such is the factory system sketched as fully as my space permits, and
with as little partisan spirit as the heroic deeds of the bourgeoisie
against the defenceless workers permit--deeds to wards which it is
impossible to remain indifferent, towards which indifference were a
crime. Let us compare the condition of the free Englishman of 1845 with
the Saxon serf under the lash of the Norman barons of 1145. The serf was
_glebae adscriptus_, bound to the soil, so is the free working-man
through the cottage system. The serf owed his master the _jus primae
noctis_, the right of the first night--the free working-man must, on
demand, surrender to his master not only that, but the right of every
night. The serf could acquire no property; everything that he gained,
his master could take from him; the free working-man has no property, can
gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and what even the
Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through the truck
system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the things
which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of
the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs
and by-laws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The
free working-man's relation to his master is regulated by laws which are
_not_ obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the
employer nor with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not
separate the serf from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since
almost all the land was fief and there was no capital, practically could
not sell him at all. The modern bourgeois forces the working-man to sell
himself. The serf was the slave of the piece of land on which he was
born, the working-man is the slave of his own necessaries of life and of
the money with which he has to buy them--both are _slaves of a thing_.
The serf had a guarantee for the means of subsistence in the feudal order
of society in which every member had his own place. The free working-man
has no guarantee whatsoever, because he has a place in society only when
the bourgeoisie can make use of him; in all other cases he is ignored,
treated as non-existent. The serf sacrificed himself for his master in
war, the factory operative in peace. The lord of the serf was a
barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle; the employer of
operatives is civilised and regards his "hand" as a machine. In short,
the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a
disadvantage, it is the free working-man. Slaves they both are, with the
single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open,
honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed
from himself and every one else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the
old. The philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives
the name white slaves. But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognises
the right to freedom, at least in outward form; bows before a freedom-
loving public opinion, and herein lies the historic progress as compared
with the old servitude, that the _principle_ of freedom is affirmed, and
the oppressed will one day see to it that this principle is carried out.
{186}