under 10 years of age was forbidden in mines, capitalists considered the employment of naked women and girls, often in company with men, so far sanctioned by their moral code, and especially by their ledgers, that it was only after the passing of the Act that they had recourse to machinery. The Yankees have invented a stone-breaking machine. The English do not make use of it, because the “wretch”[1] who does this work gets paid for such a small portion of his labour, that machinery would increase the cost of production to the capitalist.[2] In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats,[3] because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery.
section 3.—-the approximate effects of machinery on the workman.
The starting point of Modern Industry is, as we have shown, the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of machinery in a factory. Before we inquire how human material is incorporated with this objective organism, let us consider some general effects of this revolution on the labourer himself.
- ↑ “Wretch” is the recognized term in English political economy for the agricultural labourer.
- ↑ “Machinery … can frequently not be employed until labour (he means wages) rises.” (Ricardo, l. c., p. 579.)
- ↑ See “Report of the Social Science Congress, at Edinburgh.” Oct., 1863.
now rarely employ children under thirteen years of age, i.e., half-timers. They have introduced improved and new machinery of various kinds, which altogether supersedes the employment of children (i.e., under 13 years); f.i., I will mention one process as an illustration of this diminution in the number of children, wherein by the addition of an apparatus, called a piecing machine, to existing machines, the work of six or four half-times, according to the peculiarity of each machine, can be performed by one young person (over 13 years) … the half-time system ‘stimulated’ the invention of the piecing machine.” (Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1858.)
