Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 — Chapter 6. Single Branches of Industry. Factory Hands, part 3

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}