entirely from the difference between the labour price which the capitalist pays, and the part of that price which they actually allow to reach the labourer.[1] In England this system is characteristically called the "Sweating system." On the other hand piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for so much per piece with the head labourer—in manufactures with the chief of some group, in mines with the extractor of the coal, in the factory with the actual machine-worker—at a price for which the head labourer himself undertakes the enlisting and payment of his assistant workpeople. The exploitation of the labourer by capital is here effected through the exploitation of the labourer by the labourer.[2]
Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible; this enables the capitalist to raise more easily the normal degree of intensity of labour.[3] It is moreover now the personal interest of the labourer to lengthen the working day, since with it his daily or weekly wages rise.[4] This gradually brings
- ↑ "It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the work-woman is miserably disproportioned." (Child Emp. Com, II. Report, p. lxx, n. 424.)
- ↑ Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: "It would be a great improvement to the system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the contract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over-working his fellows for his own benefit." (l. c. p. 53.) On the vileness of this system, cf. Child. Emp. Com. Rep. III. p. 66, n. 22 p. 11, n. 124, p. xi, n 13, 63, 59, etc.
- ↑ This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e.g., in the Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is "the selecting of a man who possesses superior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him.… Without any comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, aad working-power, made by the employers against the men" (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, l. c. pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trade's Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the "highly respectable" Cyclopædia of Agriculture of J. Ch. Morton, Art. "Labourer," where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one.
- ↑ "All those who are paid by piece-work … profit by the transgression of the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work overtime is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers." (Rept. of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1858, p. 9). "This system (piece-work), so advantageous to the employer … tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to overwork himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages.… This is … another great cause
