From: Karl Marx’s Capital Volume One, Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value, CHAPTER TEN: THE WORKING-DAY

[66] l. c., p. xiii. The degree of culture of these “labour-powers”

must naturally be such as appears in the following dialogues with one

of the commissioners: Jeremiah Haynes, age 12 — “Four times four is 8;

4 fours are 16. A king is him that has all the money and gold. We have

a king (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess Alexandra.

Told that she married the Queen’s son. The Queen’s son is the Princess

Alexandra. A Princess is a man.” William Turner, age 12 — “Don’t live

in England. Think it is a country, but didn’t know before.” John

Morris, age 14 — “Have heard say that God made the world, and that all

the people was drownded but one, heard say that one was a little

bird.” William Smith age 15 — “God made man, man made woman.” Edward

Taylor, age 15 — “Do not know of London.” Henry Matthewman, age 17 —

“Had been to chapel, but missed a good many times lately. One name

that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot say any

others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but

died like other people. He was not the same as other people in some

ways, because he was religious in some ways and others isn’t.” (l. c.,

1. xv.) “The devil is a good person. I don’t know where he lives.”

“Christ was a wicked man.” “This girl spelt God as dog, and did not

know the name of the queen.” (“Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866 “

278. 55, n. 278.) The same system obtains in the glass and paper works

as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the paper factories, where

the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for all

processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is

carried on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday

night until midnight of the following Saturday. Those who are on

day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1 day of 18 hours; those on night-work

5 nights of 12, and I of 6 hours in each week. In other cases each set

works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one set working 6

hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In other

cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the

paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This

system, says Commissioner Lord, “seems to combine all the evils of

both the 12 hours’ and the 24 hours’ relays.” Children under 13, young

persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes

under the 12 hours’ system they are obliged, on account of the

non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double

turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often

work overtime, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 36 hours

of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of

glazing are found girls of 12 who work the whole month 14 hours a day,

“without any regular relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3

breaks of half an hour each for meals.” In some mills, where regular

night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terrible

extent, “and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in

the most monotonous of the various processes.” (“Ch. Employment Comm.

Report IV., 1865,” p. xxxviii, and xxxix.)