The reproduction of the working class carries with it the accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one generation to another.[1] To what extent the capitalist reckons the existence of such a skilled class among the factors of production that belong to him by right, and to what extent he actually regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is seen so soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss In consequence of the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lancashire were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from the working-class itself, and from other ranks of society, there arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary national subscriptions, in order to enable the “superfluous” hands to emigrate to the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, the “Times” published on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This letter was rightly called in the House of Commons, the manufacturers’ manifesto.[2] We cull here a few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted.
“He” (the man out of work) “may be told the supply of cotton-workers is too large … and … must… in fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds.… Public opinion … urges emigration.… The master cannot willingly see his labour supply being removed; he may think, and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound.… But if the public funds are to be devoted to assist emigration, he has a right to be heard, and perhaps to protest.” Mr. Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the “trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from Ireland and from the agricultural districts,” how immense is its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded 513ths of the total
- ↑ “The only thing, of which one can say, that it is stored up and prepared beforehand, is the skill of the lahourer…. The accumulation and storage of skilled labour, that most important operation, is, as regards the great mass of labourers, accomplished without any capital whatever.” (Tho. Hodgskin: Labour Defended, &c., p. 13.)
- ↑ “That letter might be looked upon as the manifesto of the manufacturers.” (Ferrand: Motion on the Cotton Famine, H. v. C., 27th April, 1863.)
