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Capitalist Production.

more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well below the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible amount of money,[1] and of making adult male labour "redundant." From the exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the gang-system is at the same time declared "necessary" on account of the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns.[2] The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of capitalistic production.[3]

    due to the name of the system. If instead of "gang" it were called "the Agricultural Juvenile Industrial Self-supporting Association," everything would be all right.

  1. "Gang work is cheaper than other work; that is why they are employed," says a former gangmaster (l. c., p. 17, § 14). "The gang-system is decidedly the cheapest for the farmer, and decidedly the worst for the children," says a farmer. (l. c., p. 16, § 3.)
  2. "Undoubtedly much of the work now done by children in gangs used to be done by men and women. More men are out of work now where children and women are employed than formerly." (l. c., p. 48, n. 202.) On the other hand, "the labour question in some agricultural districts, particularly the arable, is becoming so serious in consequence of emigration, and the facility afforded by railways for getting to large towns that I (the "I" is the steward of a great lord) think the services of children are most indispensable." (l. c., p. 80, n. 180.) For the "labour question" in English agricultural districts, differently from the rest of the civilised world, means the landlords' and farmers' question, viz., how it is possible, despite an always increasing exodus of the agricultural folk, to keep up a sufficient relative surplus-population in the country, and by means of it keep the wages of the agricultural labourer at a minimum?
  3. The "Public Health Report," where in dealing with the subject of children's mortality, the gang-system is treated in passing, remains unknown to the press, and, therefore, to the English public. On the other hand, the last report of the "Child. Empl. Comm." afforded the presa sensational copy always welcome. Whilst the Liberal press asked how the fine gentlemen and ladies, and the well-paid clergy of the State Church, with whom Lincolnshire awarms, could allow such a system to arise on their estates, under their very eyes, they who send out expressly missions to the Antipodes, "for the improvement of the morals of South Sea Islanders"—the more refined press confined itself to reflections on the coarse degradation of the agricultural population who are capable of selling their children into snch slavery! Under the accursed conditions to which these "delicate" people condemn the agricultural labourer, it wonld not be surprising if he ate his own children. What is really wonderful is the healthy integrity of character, he has, in great part, retained. The official reports prove that the parents, even in the gang districts, loathe the gang-system. "There is much in the evidence that show that the parents of the children would, in many instances, be glad to he aided by the requirements of a legal obligation, to resist the pressure and the temptations to which they are often subject. They are liable to be urged at times by the parish officers, at times by em-