By the excessive addition of women and children to the ranks of the workers, machinery at last breaks down the resistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing period continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.[1]
b. Prolongation of the working-day.
If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the productiveness of labour—i.e., for shortening the working time required in the production of a commodity, it becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means, in those industries first invaded by it, for lengthening the working day beyond all bounds set by human nature. It creates, on the one hand, new conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope to this its constant tendency, and on the other hand, new motives with which to whet capital’s appetite for the labour of others.
In the first place, in form of machinery, the implements of labour become automatic, things moving and working independent of the workman. They are thenceforth an industrial perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing forever, did it not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies and the strong wills of its human attendants. The automaton, as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the person of the capitalist, with intelligence and will; it is therefore animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered by that repellant yet elastic natural barrier, man.[2] This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness of machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character of the women and children employed on it.[3]
- ↑ “Mr. E., a manufacturer … informed me that he employed females exclusively at his power-looms … gives a decided preference to married females, especially those who have families at home dependent on them for support; they are attentive, docile, more so than unmarried females, and are compelled to use their utmost exertions to procure the necessaries of life. Thus are the virtues, the peculiar virtues of the female character to he perverted to her injury—thus all that is most dutiful and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and suffering.” (Ten Hours’ Factory Bill, The Speech of Lord Ashley, March 15th, Lond., 1844, p. 20.)
- ↑ “Since the general introduction of machinery, human nature has been forced far beyond its average strength.” (Rob. Owen: “Observations on the effects of the manufacturing system, 2nd Ed. Lond., 1817.”)
- ↑ The English, who have a tendency to look upon the earliest form of appearance
