Part 19: The Industrial Revolution
19.3
Sadler Report: Child Labor
By the early nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had spread from England and was beginning
to transform Europe from a rural to an urban society. In England, this transformation often depressed the
living standards of workers beneath even those of the cottage manufacturing system of an earlier era.
In doing so, however, it paved the way for its own reform, for it bared to the public eye in an aggravated
form conditions that had long existed but had passed relatively unnoticed. Poverty and misery could be
overlooked as long as the workers remained scattered about the countryside, but once they were congregated in the hideous slums of the Midlands industrial centers, their plight became too obvious to
remain unheeded. Consequently, social reform became the order of the day.
Among the most prominent of the English reformers was the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885),
who concentrated on working conditions in the factories. At Shaftesbury’s instigation, another reformer,
Michael Sadler, introduced a bill in Parliament in 1831 designed to regulate the working conditions of
children in textile mills. The bill was referred to a committee, with Sadler as chairman. The selection that
follows is an excerpt from the evidence presented before that committee. The committee’s recommendations resulted in the Factory Act of 1833, which limited the working hours of children and set up a
system of inspection to insure that its regulations would be carried out.
The Sadler Report requires no comment; it speaks for itself. The selection included here was picked
almost at random from a bulky volume of testimony provided by hundreds of witnesses. Although these
witnesses were presumably selected with some care, their accounts provide a generally accurate picture
of the conditions of many factory workers, children in particular, in early-nineteenth-century England.
Source: The Sadler Rep ort: Report from the Committee on the Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children in
the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom (London: House of Commons, 1832).
THE SADLER REPORT
VENERIS, 18° DIE MAII, 1832
Michael Thomas Sadler, Esquire, in the Chair
MR. MATTHEW CRABTREE, called in; and Examined.
What age are you? —Twenty—two.
What is your occupation? —A blanket manufacturer.
Have you ever been employed in a factory?-Yes.
At what age did you first go to work in one?-Eight.
How long did you continue in that occupation?-Four years.
Will you state the hours of labour at the period when you first went to the factory, in ordinary times? —From 6
in the morning to 8 at night.
Fourteen hours? — Yes.
With what intervals for refreshment and rest? — An hour at noon.
Then you had no resting time allowed in which to take your breakfast, or what is in Yorkshire called your “drinking”? — No.
When trade was brisk what were your hours? —From 5 in the morning to 9 in the evening.
Sixteen hours? —Yes.
With what intervals at dinner?-An hour.
How far did you live from the mill?-About two miles.
Was there any time allowed for you to get your breakfast in the mill?-No.
Did you take it before you left your home?-Generally.
During those long hours of labour could you be punctual; how did you awake? — I seldom did awake spontaneously; I was most generally awoke or lifted out of bed, sometimes asleep, by my parents.
Were you always in time?-No.
What was the consequence if you had been too late?-I was most commonly beaten.
Severely?-Very severely, I thought.
In whose factory was this?-Messrs. Hague & Cook’s, of Dewsbury.
Will you state the effect that those long hours had upon the state of your health and feelings?-I was, when working those long hours, commonly very much fatigued at night, when I left my work; so much so that I sometimes should
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have slept as I walked if I had not stumbled and started awake again; and so sick often that I could not eat, and what I did
eat I vomited.
Did this labour destroy your appetite?-It did.
In what situation were you in that mill?-I was a piecener.
Will you state to this Committee whether piecening is a very laborious employment for children, or not?-It is a
very laborious employment. Pieceners are continually running to and fro, and on their feet the whole day.
The duty of the piecener is to take the cardings from one part of the machinery, and to place them on another?Yes.
So that the labour is not only continual, but it is unabated to the last?-It is unabated to the last.
Do you not think, from your own experience, that the speed of the machinery is so calculated as to demand the
utmost exertions of a child supposing the hours were moderate?-It is as much as they could do at the best; they are always
upon the stretch, and it is commonly very difficult to keep up with their work.
State the condition of the children toward the latter part of the day, who have thus to keep up with the machinery.-It is as much as they do when they are not very much fatigued to keep up with their work, and toward the close of the
day, when they come to be more fatigued, they cannot keep up with it very well, and the consequence is that they are beaten
to spur them on.
Were you beaten under those circumstances? — Yes.
Frequently?-Very frequently.
And principally at the latter end of the day?-Yes.
And is it your belief that if you had not been so beaten, you should not have got through the work?-I should not
if I had not been kept up to it by some means.
Does beating then principally occur at the latter end of the day, when the children are exceedingly fatigued?-It does
at the latter end of the day, and in the morning sometimes, when they are very drowsy, and have not got rid of the fatigue
of the day before.
What were you beaten with principally?-A strap.
Anything else?-Yes, a stick sometimes; and there is a kind of roller which runs on the top of the machine called
a billy, perhaps two or three yards in length, and perhaps an inch and a half or more in diameter; the circumference would
be four or five inches; I cannot speak exactly.
Were you beaten with that instrument?-Yes.
Have you yourself been beaten, and have you seen other children struck severely with that roller?-I have been
struck very severely with it myself, so much so as to knock me down, and I have seen other children have their heads
broken with it.
You think that it is a general practice to beat the children with the roller?-It is.
You do not think then that you were worse treated than other children in the mill?-No, I was not, perhaps not so
bad as some were.
In those mills is chastisement towards the latter part of the day going on perpetually?-Perpetually.
So that you can hardly be in a mill without hearing constant crying?-Never an hour, I believe.
Do you think that if the over—looker were naturally a humane person it would be still found necessary for him
to beat the children, in order to keep up their attention and vigilance at the termination of those extraordinary days of
labour?-Yes, the machine turns off a regular quantity of cardings, and of course they must keep as regularly to their work
the whole of the day; they must keep with the machine, and therefore however humane the slubber may be, as he must keep
up with the machine or be found fault with, he spurs the children to keep up also by various means but that which he commonly resorts to is to strap them when they become drowsy.
At the time when you were beaten for not keeping up with your work, were you anxious to have done it if you
possibly could?-Yes; the dread of being beaten if we could not keep up with our work was a sufficient impulse to keep us
to it if we could.
When you got home at night after this labour, did you feel much fatigued?-Very much so.
Had you any time to be with your parents, and to receive instruction from them?-No.
What did you do?-All that we did when we got home was to get the little bit of supper that was provided for us
and go to bed immediately. If the supper had not been ready directly, we should have gone to sleep while it was preparing.
Did you not, as a child, feel it a very grievous hardship to be roused so soon in the morning?-I did.
Were the rest of the children similarly circumstanced? —Yes, all of them; but they were not all of them so far from
their work as I was.
And if you had been too late you were under the apprehension of being cruelly beaten?-I generally was beaten
when I happened to be too late; and when I got up in the morning the apprehension of that was so great, that I used to run,
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and cry all the way as I went to the mill.
That was the way by which your punctual attendance was secured?-Yes.
And you do not think it could have been secured by any other means?-No.
Then it is your impression from what you have seen, and from your own experience, that those long hours of
labour have the effect of rendering young persons who are subject to them exceedingly unhappy?-Yes.
You have already said it had a considerable effect upon your health?-Yes.
Do you conceive that it diminished your growth?-I did not pay much attention to that; but I have been examined
by some persons who said they thought I was rather stunted, and that I should have been taller if I had not worked at the
mill.
What were your wages at that time?-Three shillings [per week—Ed].
And how much a day had you for over—work when you were worked so exceedingly long?-A half—penny a day.
Did you frequently forfeit that if you were not always there to a moment?-Yes; I most frequently forfeited what
was allowed for those long hours.
You took your food to the mill; was it in your mill, as is the case in cotton mills, much spoiled by being laid
aside?-It was very frequently covered by flues from the wool; and in that case they had to be blown off with the mouth,
and picked off with the fingers before it could be eaten.
So that not giving you a little leisure for eating your food, but obliging you to take it at the mill, spoiled your food
when you did get it?-Yes, very commonly.
And that at the same time that this over—labour injured your appetite?-Yes.
Could you eat when you got home?-Not always.
What is the effect of this piecening upon the hands? —It makes them bleed; the skin is completely rubbed off, and
in that case they bleed in perhaps a dozen parts.
The prominent parts of the hand?-Yes, all the prominent parts of the hand are rubbed down till they bleed; every
day they are rubbed in that way.
All the time you continue at work? —All the time we are working. The hands never can be hardened in that
work, for the grease keeps them soft in the first instance, and long and continual rubbing is always wearing them down,
so that if they were hard they would be sure to bleed.
Is it attended with much pain? —Very much.
Do they allow you to make use of the back of the hand? —No; the work cannot be so well done with the back
of the hand, or I should have made use of that.
Is the work done as well when you are so many hours engaged in it, as it would be if you were at it a less time?
—I believe it is not done so well in those long hours; toward the latter end of the day the children become completely
bewildered, and know not what they are doing, so that they spoil their work without knowing.
Then you do not think that the masters gain much by the continuance of the work to so great a length of time? —
I believe not.
Were there girls as well as boys employed in this manner? —Yes.
Were they more tenderly treated by the overlookers, or were they worked and beaten in the same manner? —There
was no difference in their treatment.
Were they beaten by the overlookers, or by the slubber? —By the slubber.
But the overlooker must have been perfectly aware of the treatment that the children endured at the mill? —Yes;
and sometimes the overlooker beat them himself; but the man that they wrought under had generally the management of
them.
Did he pay them their wages? —No; their wages were paid by the master.
But the overlooker of the mill was perfectly well aware that they could not have performed the duty exacted
from them in the mill without being thus beaten? — I believe he was.
You seem to say that this beating is absolutely necessary, in order to keep the children up to their work; is it universal throughout all factories? —I have been in several other factories, and I have witnessed the same cruelty in them all.
Did you say that you were beaten for being too late? —Yes.
Is it not the custom in many of the factories to impose fines upon children for being too late, instead of beating
them?-It was not in that factory.
What then were the fines by which you lost the money you gained by your long hours? — The spinner could not
get on so fast with his work when we happened to be too late; he could not begin his work so soon, and therefore it was
taken by him.
Did the slubber pay you your wages? —No, the master paid our wages.
And the slubber took your fines from you? —Yes.
Then you were fined as well as beaten? —There was nothing deducted from the ordinary scale of wages, but only
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from that received for over—hours, and I had only that taken when I was too late, so that the fine was not regular.
When you were not working over—hours, were you so often late as when you were working over—hours? —Yes.
You were not very often late whilst you were not working over—hours? —Yes, I was often late when I was not
working over—hours; I had to go at six o’clock in the morning, and consequently had to get up at five to eat my breakfast and go to the mill, and if I failed to get up by five I was too late; and it was nine o’clock before we could get home,
and then we went to bed; in the best times I could not be much above eight hours at home, reckoning dressing and eating
my meals, and everything.
Was it a blanket—mill in which you worked? —Yes.
Did you ever know that the beatings to which you allude inflicted a serious injury upon the children? —I do not
recollect any very serious injury, more than that they had their heads broken, if that may be called a serious injury; that has
often happened; I, myself, had no more serious injury than that.
You say that the girls as well as the boys were employed as you have described, and you observed no difference
in their treatment? —No difference.
The girls were beat in this unmerciful manner? —They were.
They were subject, of course, to the same bad effects from this over working? —Yes.
Could you attend an evening—school during the time you were employed in the mill? —No, that was completely
impossible.
Did you attend the Sunday—school? —Not very frequently when I work at the mill.
How then were you engaged during the Sunday?- I very often slept till it was too late for school time or for
divine worship, and the rest of the day I spent in walking out and taking a little fresh air.
Did your parents think that it was necessary for you to enjoy a little fresh air? —I believe they did; they never said
anything against it; before I went to the mill I used to go to the Sunday—school.
Did you frequently sleep nearly the whole of the day on Sunday? —Very often.
At what age did you leave that employment? — I was about 12 years old.
Why did you leave that place? — I went very late one morning, about seven o’clock, and I got severely beaten
by the spinner, and he turned me out of the mill, and I went home, and never went any more.
Was your attendance as good as the other children? —Being at rather a greater distance than some of them, I was
generally one of the latest.
Where was your next work? —I worked as bobbin—winder in another part of the works of the same firm.
How long were you a bobbin—winder? —About two years, I believe.
What did you become after that? —A weaver.
How long were you a weaver? —I was a weaver till March in last year.
A weaver of what? —A blanket—weaver.
With the same firm? —With the same firm.
Did you leave them? — No; I was dismissed from my work for a reason which I am willing and anxious to
explain.
Have you had opportunities of observing the way in which the children are treated in factories up to a late period?
—Yes.
You conceive that their treatment still remains as you first found it, and that the system is in great want of regulation? —It does.
Children you still observe to be very much fatigued and injured by the hours of labour? —Yes.
From your own experience, what is your opinion as to the utmost labour that a child in piecening could safely
undergo? —If I were appealed to from my own feelings to fix a limit, I should fix it at ten hours, or less.
And you attribute to longer hours all the cruelties that you describe? —A good deal of them.
Are the children sleepy in mills? —Very.
Are they more liable to accidents in the latter part of the day than in the other part? —I believe they are; I believe
a greater number of accidents happen in the latter part of the day than in any other. I have known them so sleepy that in
the short interval while the others have been going out, some of them have fallen asleep, and have been left there.
Is it an uncommon case for children to fall asleep in the mill, and remain there all night? —Not to remain there
all night; but I have known a case the other day, of a child whom the overlooker found when he went to lock the door, that
had been left there.
So that you think there has been no change for the better in the treatment of those children; is it your opinion that
there will be none, except Parliament interfere in their behalf? —It is my decided conviction.
Have you recently seen any cruelties in mills? — Yes; not long since I was in a mill and I saw a girl severely
beaten; at a mill called Hicklane Mill, in Batley; I happened to be in at the other end of the room, talking; and I heard the
blows, and I looked that way, and saw the spinner beating one of the girls severely with a large stick. Hearing the sound,
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led me to look round, and to ask what was the matter, and they said it was “Nothing but paying [beating—Ed.] ‘his
ligger—on.’ “
What age was the girl? — About 12 years.
Was she very violently beaten? —She was.
Was this when she was over—fatigued? —It was in the afternoon.
Can you speak as to the effect of this labour in the mills and factories on the morals of the children, as far as you
have observed? — As far as I have observed with regard to morals in the mills, there is everything about them that is disgusting to every one conscious of correct morality.
Do you find that the children, the females especially, are very early demoralized in them? —They are.
Is their language indecent? —Very indecent; and both sexes take great familiarities with each other in the mills,
without at all being ashamed of their conduct.
Do you connect their immorality of language and conduct with their excessive labour? —It may be somewhat connected with it, for it is to be observed that most of that goes on toward night, when they begin to be drowsy; it is a kind
of stimulus which they use to keep them awake; they say some pert thing or other to keep themselves from drowsiness, and
it generally happens to be some obscene language.
Have not a considerable number of the females employed in mills illegitimate children very early in life? —I
believe there are; I have known some of them have illegitimate children when they were between 16 and 17 years of age.
How many grown—up females had you in the mill? — I cannot speak to the exact number that were grown up;
perhaps there might be thirty—four or so that worked in the mill at that time.
How many of those had illegitimate children? A great many of them; eighteen or nineteen of them, I think.
Did they generally marry the men by whom they had the children? —No; it sometimes happens that young
women have children by married men, and I have known an instance, a few weeks since, where one of the young women
had a child by a married man.
Is it your opinion that those who have the charge of mills very often avail themselves of the opportunity they have
to debauch the young women? —No, not generally; most of the improper conduct takes place among the younger part of
those that work in the mill.
Do you find that the children and young persons in those mills are moral in other respects, or does their want of
education tend to encourage them in a breach of the law? —I believe it does, for there are very few of them that can
know anything about it; few of them can either read or write.
Are criminal offences then very frequent? —Yes, theft is very common; it is practised a great deal in the mills,
stealing their bits of dinner, or something of that sort. Some of them have not so much to eat as they ought to have, and
if they can fall in with the dinner of some of their partners they steal it. The first day my brother and I went to the mill we
had our dinner stolen, because we were not up to the tricks; we were more careful in future, but still we did not always
escape.
Was there any correction going on at the mills for indecent language or improper conduct? —No, I never knew
of any.
From what you have seen and known of those mills, would you prefer that the hours of labour should be so long
with larger wages, or that they should be shortened with a diminution of wages? — If I were working at the mill now, I
would rather have less labour and receive a trifle less, than so much labour and receive a trifle more.
Is that the general impression of individuals engaged in mills with whom you are acquainted? —I believe it is.
What is the impression in the country from which you come with respect to the effect of this Bill upon wages?
—They do not anticipate that it will affect wages at all.
They think it will not lower wages? —They do.
Do you mean that it will not lower wages by the hour, or that you will receive the same wages per day? —They
anticipate that it may perhaps lower their wages at a certain time of the year when they are working hard, but not at other
times, so that they will have their wages more regular.
Does not their wish for this Bill mainly rest upon their anxiety to protect their children from the consequences of
this excessive labour, and to have some opportunity of affording them a decent education? —Yes; such are the wishes of
every humane father that I have heard speak about the thing.
Have they not some feeling of having the labour equalized? — That is the feeling of some that I have heard
speak of it.
Did your parents work in the same factories? —No.
Were any of the slubbers’ children working there? —Yes.
Under what slubber did you work in that mill? —Under a person of the name of Thomas Bennett, in the first
place; and I was changed from him to another of the name of James Webster.
Did the treatment depend very much upon the slubber under whom you were? —No, it did not depend directly
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upon him, for he was obliged to do a certain quantity of work, and therefore to make us keep up with that.
Were the children of the slubbers strapped in the same way? —Yes, except that it is very natural for a father to
spare his own child.
Did it depend upon the feelings of a slubber toward his children? —Very little.
Did the slubbers fine their own spinners? — I believe not.
You said that the piecening was very hard labour; what labour is there besides moving about; have you anything
heavy to carry or to lift? —We have nothing heavy to carry, but we are kept upon our feet in brisk times from 5 o’clock
in the morning to 9 at night.
How soon does the hand get sore in piecening? —How soon mine became sore I cannot speak to exactly; but they
get a little hard on the Sunday, when we are not working, and they will get sore again very soon on the Monday.
Is it always the case in piecening that the hand bleeds, whether you work short or long hours? —They bleed
more when we work more.
Do they always bleed when you are working? —Yes.
Do you think that the children would not be more competent to this task, and their hands far less hurt, if the
hours were fewer every day, especially when their hands had become seasoned to the labour? —I believe it would have an
effect for the longer they are worked the more their hands are worn, and the longer it takes to heal them, and they do not
get hard enough after a day’s rest to be long without bleeding again; if they were not so much worn down, they might heal
sooner, and not bleed so often or so soon.
After a short day’s work, have you found your hands hard the next morning? — They do not bleed much after we
have ceased work; they then get hard; they will bleed soon in the morning when in regular work.
Do you think if the work of the children were confined to about ten hours a day, that they would not be able to
perform this piecening without making their hands bleed? —I believe they would.
So that it is your opinion, from your experience, that if the hours were mitigated, their hands would not be so
much worn, and would not bleed by the business of piecening? —Yes.
Do you mean to say that their hands would not bleed at all? — I cannot say exactly, for I always wrought long
hours, and therefore my hands always did bleed.
Have you any experience of mills where they only work ten hours? —I have never wrought at such mills, and in
most of the mills I have seen their hands bleed.
At a slack time, when you were working only a few hours, did your hands bleed? —No, they did not for three or
four days, after we had been standing still for a week; the mill stood still sometimes for a week together, but when we did
work we worked the common number of hours.
Were all the mills in the neighbourhood working the same number of hours in brisk times? —Yes.
So that if any parent found it necessary to send his children to the mill for the sake of being able to maintain them,
and wished to take them from any mill where they were excessively worked, he could not have found any other place
where they would have been less worked? —No, he could not; for myself, I had no desire to change, because I thought I
was as well off as I could be at any other mill.
And if the parent, to save his child, had taken him from the mill, and had applied to the parish for relief, would
the parish, knowing that he had withdrawn his child from its work, have relieved him?-No.
So that the long labour which you have described, or actual starvation, was, practically, the only alternative that
was presented to the parent under such circumstances? — It was; they must either work at the mill they were at or some
other, and there was no choice in the mills in that respect.
What, in your opinion, would be the effect of limiting the hours of labour upon the happiness, and the health, and
the intelligence of the rising generation? —If the hours are shortened, the children may, perhaps, have a chance of attending some evening—school, and learning to read and write; and those that I know who have been to school and learned to
read and write; have much more comfort than those who have not. For myself, I went to a school when I was six years old,
and I learned to read and write a little then.
At a free—school? —Yes, at a free—school in Dewsbury; but I left school when I was six years old. The fact is,
that my father was a small manufacturer, and in comfortable circumstances, and he got into debt with Mr. Cook for a
wool bill, and as he had no other means of paying him, he came and agreed with my father, that my brother and I should
go to work at his mill till that debt was paid; so that the whole of the time that we wrought at the mill we had no wages.
THOMAS BENNETT, called in; and Examined.
Where do you reside? — At Dewsbury.
What is your business? — A slubber.
What age are you? —About 48.
Have you had much experience regarding the working of children in factories? —Yes, about twenty—seven years.
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Have you a family? —Yes, eight children.
Have any of them gone to factories? —All.
At what age? —The first went at six years of age.
To whose mill? —To Mr. Halliley’s, to piece for myself.
What hours did you work at that mill? —We have wrought from 4 to 9, from 4 to 10, and from 5 to 9,
and from 5 to 10.
What sort of a mill was it? —It was a blanket—mill; we sometimes altered the time, according as the days
increased and decreased.
What were your regular hours? —Our regular hours when we were not so throng, was from 6 to 7. And when you
were the throngest, what were your hours then? —From 5 to 9, and from 5 to 10, and from 4 to 9.
Seventeen hours? —Yes.
What intervals for meals had the children at that period? —Two hours; an hour for breakfast, and an hour for
dinner.
Did they always allow two hours for meals at Mr. Halliley’s? —Yes, it was allowed, but the children did not get
it, for they had business to do at that time, such as fettling and cleaning the machinery.
But they did not stop in at that time, did they? —They all had their share of the cleaning and other work to do.
That is, they were cleaning the machinery? —Cleaning the machinery at the time of dinner.
How long a time together have you known those excessive hours to continue? —I have wrought so myself very
nearly two years together.
Were your children working under you then? —Yes, two of them.
State the effect upon your children. —Of a morning when they have been so fast asleep that I have had to go up
stairs and lift them out of bed, and have heard them crying with the feelings of a parent; I have been much affected by it.
Were not they much fatigued at the termination of such a day’s labour as that? —Yes; many a time I have seen
their hands moving while they have been nodding, almost asleep; they have been doing their business almost mechanically.
While they have been almost asleep, they have attempted to work? —Yes; and they have missed the carding and
spoiled the thread, when we have had to beat them for it.
Could they have done their work towards the termination of such a long day’s labour, if they had not been chastised to it? —No.
You do not think that they could have kept awake or up to their work till the seventeenth hour, without being chastised? —No.
Will you state what effect it had upon your children at the end of their day’s work? —At the end of their day’s
work, when they have come home, instead of taking their victuals, they have dropped asleep with the victuals in their
hands; and sometimes when we have sent them to bed with a little bread or something to eat in their hand, I have found
it in their bed the next morning.
Had it affected their health? —I cannot say much of that; they were very hearty children.
Do you live at a distance from the mill? —Half a mile.
Did your children feel a difficulty in getting home? —Yes, I have had to carry the lesser child on my back, and
it has been asleep when I got home.
Did these hours of labour fatigue you? —Yes, they fatigued me to that excess, that in divine worship I have not
been able to stand according to order; I have sat to worship.
So that even during the Sunday you have felt fatigue from your labour in the week? —Yes, we felt it, and always
took as much rest as we could.
Were you compelled to beat your own children, in order to make them keep up with the machine? —Yes, that was
forced upon us, or we could not have done the work; I have struck them often, though I felt as a parent.
If the children had not been your own, you would have chastised them still more severely? —Yes.
What did you beat them with? — A strap sometimes; and when I have seen my work spoiled, with the roller.
Was the work always worse done at the end of the day? —That was the greatest danger.
Do you conceive it possible that the children could do their work well at the end of such a day’s labour as that?
—No.
Matthew Crabtree, the last Witness examined by this Committee, I think mentioned you as one of the slubbers
under whom he worked? —Yes.
He states that he was chastised and beaten at the mill? —Yes, I have had to chastise him.
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You can confirm then what he has stated as to the length of time he had to work as a child, and the cruel treatment that he received? Yes, I have had to chastise him in the evening, and often in the morning for being too late; when I
had one out of the three wanting I could not keep up with the machine, and I was getting behindhand compared with
what another man was doing; and therefore I should have been called to account on Saturday night if the work was not
done.
Was he worse than others? — No.
Was it the constant practice to chastise the children? —Yes.
It was necessary in order to keep up your work? —Yes.
And you would have lost your place if you had not done so? —Yes; when I was working at Mr. Wood’s mill, at
Dewsbury, which at present is burnt down, but where I slubbed for him until it was, while we were taking our meals he
used to come up and put the machine agoing; and I used to say, ‘You do not give us time to eat”; he used to reply, “Chew
it at your work”; and I often replied to him, “I have not yet become debased like a brute, I do not chew my cud.” Often
has that man done that, and then gone below to see if a strap were off, which would have shown if the machinery was not
working, and then he would come up again.
Was this at the drinking time? —Yes, at breakfast and at drinking.
Was this where the children were working? —Yes, my own children and others.
Were your own children obliged to employ most of their time at breakfast and at the drinking in cleansing the
machine, and in fettling the spindles? I have seen at that mill, and I have experienced and mentioned it with grief, that the
English children were enslaved worse than the Africans. Once when Mr. Wood was saying to the carrier who brought his
work in and out, “How long has that horse of mine been at work?” and the carrier told him the time, and he said “Loose
him directly, he has been in too long,” I made this reply to him, ‘You have more mercy and pity for your horse than you
have for your men.”
Did not this beating go on principally at the latter part of the day? —Yes.
Was it not also dangerous for the children to move about those mills when they became so drowsy and fatigued?
—Yes, especially by lamplight.
Do the accidents principally occur at the latter end of those long days of labour? — Yes, I believe mostly so.
Do you know of any that have happened? I know of one; it was at Mr. Wood’s mill; part of the machinery caught
a lass who had been drowsy and asleep, and the strap which ran close by her catched her at about her middle, and bore her
to the ceiling, and down she came, and her neck appeared to be broken, and the slubber ran up to her and pulled her neck,
and I carried her to the doctor myself.
Did she get well? —Yes, she came about again.
What time was that? — In the evening.
You say that you have eight children who have gone to the factories? —Yes.
There has been no opportunity for you to send them to a day—school? —No; one boy had about twelve months’
schooling.
Have they gone to Sunday—schools? —Yes.
Can any of them write? —Not one.
They do not teach writing at Sunday—schools? —No; it is objected to, I believe.
So that none of your children can write? —No.
What would be the effect of a proper limitation of the hours of labour upon the conduct of the rising generation?
—I believe it would have a very happy effect in regard to correcting their morals; for I believe there is a deal of evil that
takes place in one or other in consequence of those long hours.
Is it your opinion that they would then have an opportunity of attending night—schools? —Yes; I have often
regretted, while working those long hours, that I could not get my children there.
Is it your belief that if they were better instructed, they would be happier and better members of society? —Yes,
I believe so.
Questions:
1. Summarize conditions in the factories.
2. What effect did factory work have on other aspects of the worker’s lives?
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19.4
A Defense of the Factory System (1835): Andrew Ure
The factory system was not without its advocates. One of the most influential was Andrew Ure, a professor of applied science at the University of Glasgow. He was supportive of the efficiency and productive capabilities of mechanized manufacturing. Note how the major criticisms of the reformers (child
labor, degrading and unhealthy work conditions, etc.) are methodically countered. Ure argued that the
owners of the mills and mines were not devils, but were actually abused themselves by the demands of
the workers.
Source: “A Defense of the Factory System” is from Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures
(London: Charles Knight, 1835), pp. 282–284, 290, 300–301, 309–311, 398–399.
Proud of the power of malefaction, many of the cotton-spinners, though better paid, as we have shown, than any similar
set of artisans in the world, organized the machinery of strikes through all the gradations of their people, terrifying or cajoling the timid or the passive among them to join their vindictive union. They boasted of possessing a dark tribunal, by the
mandates of which they could paralyze every mill whose master did not comply with their wishes, and so bring ruin on the
man who had given them profitable employment for many a year. By flattery or intimidation, they levied contributions from
their associates in the privileged mills, which they suffered to proceed, in order to furnish spare funds for the maintenance
of the idle during the decreed suspension of labour. In this extraordinary state of things, when the inventive head and the
sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower members, a destructive spirit began to display itself
among some partisans of the union. Acts of singular atrocity were committed, sometimes with weapons fit only for demons
to wield, such as the corrosive oil of vitriol, dashed in the faces of most meritorious individuals, with the effect of disfiguring their persons, and burning their eyes out of the sockets with dreadful agony.
The true spirit of turn-outs [strikes] among the spinners is well described in the following statement made on oath
to the Factory Commission, by Mr. George Royle Chappel, a manufacturer of Manchester, who employs 274 hands, and
two steam-engines of sixty-four horse power.
“I have had several turn-outs, and have heard of many more, but never heard of a turn-out for short time. I will
relate the circumstances of the last turn-out, which took place on the 16th October, 1830, and continued till the 17th January, 1831. The whole of our spinners, whose average (weekly) wages were 2£. 13s. 5d., turned out at the instigation, as
they told us at the time, of the delegates of the union. They said they had no fault to find with their wages, their work, or
their masters, but the union obliged them to turn out. The same week three delegates from the spinners’ union waited
upon us at our mill, and dictated certain advances in wages, and other regulations, to which, if we would not adhere, they
said neither our own spinners nor any other should work for us again! Of course we declined, believing our wages to be
ample, and our regulations such as were necessary for the proper conducting of the establishment. The consequences were,
they set watches on every avenue to the mill, night and day, to prevent any fresh hands coming into the mill, an object
which they effectually attained, by intimidating some, and promising support to others (whom I got into the mill in a caravan), if they would leave their work. Under these circumstances, I could not work the mill, and advertised it for sale, without any applications, and I also tried in vain to let it. At the end of twenty-three weeks the hands requested to be taken to
the mill again on the terms that they had left it, declaring, as they had done at first, that the union alone had forced them
to turn out. . . .”
Nothing shows in a clearer point of view the credulity of mankind in general, and of the people of these islands
in particular, than the ready faith which was given to the tales of cruelty exercised by proprietors of cotton-mills towards
young children. The systems of calumny somewhat resembles that brought by the Pagans against the primitive Christians,
of enticing children into their meetings in order to murder and devour them. . . .
No master would wish to have any wayward children to work within the walls of his factory, who do not mind
their business without beating, and he therefore usually fines or turns away any spinners who are known to maltreat their
assistants. Hence, ill-usage of any kind is a very rare occurrence. I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in
the surrounding districts, during a period of several months, entering the spinning rooms, unexpectedly, and often alone,
at different times of the day, and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement inflicted on a child, nor indeed did
I ever see children in ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert, taking pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad emotions in my mind, was
always exhilarating. It was delightful to observe the nimbleness with which they pieced the broken ends, as the mule-carriage began to recede from the fixed roller-beam, and to see them at leisure, after a few seconds’ exercise of their tiny fingers, to amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and winding-on were once more completed. The work
of these lively elves seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing dexterity. Conscious of their skill,
they were delighted to show it off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day’s work, they evinced no trace of it on emerg-
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ing from the mill in the evening; for they immediately began to skip about any neighbouring playground, and to commence
their little amusements with the same alacrity as boys issuing from a school. It is moreover my firm conviction, that if children are not ill-used by bad parents or guardians, but receive in food and raiment the full benefit of what they earn, they
would thrive better when employed in our modern factories, than if left at home in apartments too often ill-aired, damp,
and cold. . . .
Of all the common prejudices that exist with regard to factory labour, there is none more unfounded than that
which ascribes to it excessive tedium and irksomeness above other occupations, owing to its being carried on in conjunction with the “unceasing motion of the steam- engine.” In an establishment for spinning or weaving cotton, all the hard
work is performed by the steam-engine, which leaves for the attendant no hard labour at all, and literally nothing to do in
general; but at intervals to perform some delicate operation, such as joining the threads that break, taking the cops off the
spindle, &c. And it is so far from being true that the work in a factory is incessant, because the motion of the steam-engine
is incessant, that the fact is, that the labour is not incessant on that very count, because it is performed in conjunction with
the steam-engine. Of all manufacturing employments, those are by far the most irksome and incessant in which
steam-engines are not employed, as in lace-running and stocking-weaving; and the way to prevent an employment from
being incessant, is to introduce a steam-engine into it. These remarks certainly apply more especially to the labour of children in factories. Three-fourths of the children so employed are engaged in piecing at the mules. “When the carriages of
these have receded a foot and a half or two feet from the rollers,” says Mr. Tufnell, “nothing is to be done, not even
attention is required from either spinner or piecer.” Both of them stand idle for a time, and in fine spinning particularly, for
three-quarters of a minute, or more. Consequently, if a child remains at this business twelve hours daily, he has nine hours
of inaction. And though he attends two mules, he has still six hours of non-exertion. Spinners sometimes dedicate these
intervals to the perusal of books. The scavengers, who, in Mr. Sadler’s report, have been described as being “constantly in
a state of grief, always in terror, and every moment they have to spare stretched all their length upon the floor in a state
of perspiration,” may be observed in cotton factories idle for four minutes at a time, or moving about in a sportive mood,
utterly unconscious of the tragical scenes in which they were dramatized. . . .
Mr. Hutton, who has been in practice as a surgeon at Stayley Bridge upwards of thirty-one years, and, of course,
remembers the commencement, and has had occasion to trace the progress and effect, of the factory system, says that the
health of the population has much improved since its introduction, and that they are much superior in point of comfort to
what they were formerly. He also says that fever has become less common since the erection of factories, and that the persons employed in them were less attacked by the influenza in 1833, than other classes of work-people. Mr. Bott, a surgeon,
who is employed by the operatives in Messrs. Lichfield’s mills to attend them in all cases of sickness or accident, at the
rate of one halfpenny a week (a sum which indicates pretty distinctly their small chances of ailment), says that the factory
workmen are not so liable to epidemics as other persons; and that though he has had many cases of typhus fever in the surrounding district, nearly all the mill-hands have escaped, and not one was attacked by the cholera during its prevalence in
the neighbourhood.
Question:
1. How does Andrew Ure defend the factory system? What specific points does he address? Are his
arguments persuasive? Why or why not?
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19.5
The Chartist Demands (1838)
Although the Factory Act of 1833 resulted in an improvement in factory working conditions and in restrictions on child labor, many critics favored more radical reform. The Chartist movement in Great Britain,
which was popular in the 1840s, sought political participation and especially universal manhood suffrage
as means of improving the living conditions of the working poor. The following is an excerpt from the
People’s Petition of 1838, which articulated Chartist demands to the British House of Commons.
Source: “The Chartist Demands” is from The Life and Struggles of William Lovett (New York: Knopf,
1920), pp. 478–481.
We, your petitioners, dwell in a land whose merchants are noted for enterprise, whose manufacturers are very skillful, and
whose workmen are proverbial for their industry.
The land itself is goodly, the soil rich, and the temperature wholesome; it is abundantly furnished with the materials of commerce and trade; it has numerous and convenient harbours; in facility of internal communication it exceeds all
others. For three-and-twenty years we have enjoyed a profound peace.
Yet, with all these elements of national prosperity, and with every disposition and capacity to take advantage of
them, we find ourselves overwhelmed with public and private suffering.
We are bowed down under a load of taxes; which, notwithstanding, fall greatly short of the wants of our rulers;
our traders are trembling on the verge of bankruptcy; our workmen are starving; capital brings no profit, and labour no
remuneration; the home of the artificer is desolate, and the warehouse of the pawnbroker is full; the workhouse is crowded,
and the manufactory is deserted. . . .
It was the found expectation of the people that a remedy for the greater part, if not for the whole, of their grievances, would be found in the Reform Act of 1832.
They were taught to regard that Act as a wise means to a worthy end; as the machinery of an improved legislation, when the will of the masses would be at length potential.
They have been bitterly and basely deceived.
The fruit which looked so fair to the eye has turned to dust and ashes when gathered.
The Reform Act has effected a transfer of power from one domineering faction to another, and left the people as
helpless as before. . . .
Required as we are, universally, to support and obey the laws, nature and reason entitle us to demand, that in the
making of the laws, the universal voice shall be implicitly listened to.
We perform the duties of freemen; we must have the privileges of freemen.
WE DEMAND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE
The suffrage to be exempt from the corruption of the wealthy, and the violence of the powerful, must be
secret. . . .
WE DEMAND THE BALLOT
The connection between the representatives and the people, to be beneficial must be intimate. . . . To public
safety as well as public confidence, frequent elections are essential.
WE DEMAND ANNUAL PARLIAMENTS
With power to choose, and freedom in choosing, the range of our choice must be unrestricted.
We are compelled, by the existing laws, to take for our representatives, men who are incapable of appreciating our
difficulties, or who have little sympathy with them; merchants who have retired from trade, and no longer feel its harassings; proprietors of land who are alike ignorant of its evils and their cure; lawyers, by whom the honours of the senate are
sought after only as means of obtaining notice in the courts. . . .
We demand that in the future election of members of your Honourable House, the approbation of the constituency
shall be the sole qualification; and that to every representative so chosen shall be assigned, out of the public taxes, a fair
and adequate remuneration for the time which he is called upon to devote to the public service.
Finally, we would most earnestly impress on your Honourable House, that this petition has not been dictated by
an idle love of change; that it springs out of no inconsiderate attachment to fanciful theories; but that it is the result of much
and long deliberation, and of convictions, which the events of each succeeding year tend more and more to strengthen.
Question:
1. Who were the Chartists and what were their demands for reform? Was this a political or social
reform program?
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19.6
Luddism: An Assault on Technology
Anti-technologists of the late-twentieth century were foreshadowed over 150 years earlier by the Luddites: traditional English framework knitters who felt threatened by labor-saving machines and the trend
towards the domination of the factory, mass-producing economy. Some framework knitters and sympathizers resorted to surreptitiously sabotaging machines and factories. Many Luddites were never
apprehended; even the origin of the term is uncertain, though theories, such as the one advanced in this
pamphlet, have been presented. The most frequent instances of Luddite activity occurred between
1810–1840; thereafter they petered out.
Source: Kenneth Carpenter, ed, The Luddites: 3 pamphlets, 1812–1839, (N.Y.: Arno Press, 1972),
pp. 98–112.
LUDDISM
IT will no doubt, be gratifying to some Readers, to be made acquainted with the origin of Luddism. From the enquiries I
made in Nottinghamshire, where Luddism originated, I learnt the following particulars, namely, that a good many years ago,
there lived a poor man at Loughborough, in Leicestershire, about fifteen miles from Nottingham, vhose name was Edward
Ludd: This man was not one of the brightest cast; in regard to his intellects; and, as is commonly the case with such characters, was of an irritable temper. This Edward Ludd, called by his neighbours Ned Ludd, was by trade a Frame Work Knitter: or in plainer language, and which is all the same, a Stocking Weaver. This man, being irritated, either by his Employer,
or his work, or both took the desperate resolution of avenging himself, by breaking his Stocking Frame. As the value of a
common Stocking Frame is considerable, being not much less than Forty Pounds, Ned’s exploit was much more admired
for its temerity than its utility.
However, the consequence of this affair was, a Bon Mot: for, whenever any Stocking Weaver was out of patience
with his Employer or his Employment, he would say, speaking of his Frame, I have good mind to Ned Ludd it:” meaning,
I have a good mind to break it, &c.
About the latter end of the year 1811, the Stocking and Lace Weavers of Nottingham, having been for a long time
harrassed by abridged wages, and want of employment, in whole or in part, and consequently with want of bread, entered
into a combination, (as report says, upon oath) to break certain proscribed Frames. But it should here be observed, that the
interdicted Frames were not all of a new-invented kind, there being many destined to destruction for the sake of their
owner; the owner having rendered himself notorious by abridging the workmen’s wages, and underselling other manufacturers: therefore many Frames of an ordinary construction were broken.
These Frame-Breakers assumed the name of their proto-type Ned Ludd. Hence when they entered a house in
order to break Frames, they would say Ned Ludd or General Ludd, commands us to break these Frames, &c. These men,
collectively, were therefore called Luddites, and their system was, and is, called Luddism.
This system has been communicated to thousands; and as rumour says, to hundreds of thousands, and is still in
existence. But it does not always exist where report places it; for every thief and highwayman now takes the name of Ned
Ludd in his mouth when he is about to commit his depredations; and News Printers seem very willing to have it so; most
of them caring very little about the difference betwixt truth and falsehood; their drift too commonly is, to enhance the value
of their Papers, by saying something that will surprise and astonish their readers. The old and stale names of thief, highwayman, and robber, will not now adorn the great news columns of those Papers which are ever seeking to treat their Readers with a mess of Wonderment! Therefore Ned Ludd being a new character, is made to bear the heat and burden of the
day; for whatever enormities are committed in the counties where Ned lives, they are, for the most part, very carefully
ascribed to him.
Of the fourteen unfortunate men who were executed at York, on the 15th Jan. 1813, not one-half of them, as I am informed,
were in reality Luddites. Either five or six of them were Luddites, who were convicted of entering houses and demanding
fire-arms, or breaking, or attempting to break machinery; part of them upon one charge, and part of them upon the other.
As to the rest of the fourteen, they were, as I am informed, utter strangers to the system of Luddism: but knowing something of Luddism by popular rumour, they had designated themselves Luddites. Wherefore on entering a house they would
preface their demand of money, by telling the people General Ludd was come: or that Ned Ludd had sent them to make
such and such demand. Information of the transaction soon reached the ears of a News Printer: who, glad enough of something fresh to tell his Readers, soon laid it before the public: his fellow News-men would copy his statement, and thus this
wonderful news which was half true and half false, ran, in the compass of a week, all over the three kingdoms.
With regard to the conduct of the Luddites in breaking machinery, I wholly disapprove of it: it is altogether condemnable: for in my opinion, Machinery Ought to be encouraged to any extent whatever. It is also my opinion, that every
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man that invents any thing that will lessen human labour, is a benefactor to mankind, and ought to be rewarded, not by a
patent, as is commonly the case, but out of the national purse, in order that he and others may be encouraged to new exertions, and the public benefitted by the free use of such inventions!
I pity the poor, and should hardly think myself innocent if any man felt more for them than I do; but the remedy
for their grievances, lies not in the destruction of Machinery. They are oppressed exceedingly, but not by Machinery. Those
who accuse Machinery of causing any part of the distresses of the poor, have very contracted views and narrow minds, and
see but a little way. They do not seem to consider that almost every thing was new Machinery once. There was a time when
corn was ground by the hand; and when Cora Mills and Wind Mills were first invented they were New Machinery; and
therefore why not break and burn these as soon as any other kind of Machinery; for if they were all stopped, and corn again
ground by the Hand, there would be plenty of employment; for many hands! Much the same observations might be made
respecting every other kind of Machinery, and I have asked this question in order to shew the silliness of the practice.
The grievous distresses of the poor are occasioned by the Monopolization of Landed Property Rack Rents—
Large Farms—War, and its Concomitants, Bad Trade and Excessive Taxation. The remedy for all which is, PEACE and
REFORM; without these, bad will become worse and worse will be utter ruin!
Nor can l forego the present opportunity of noticing the practice that has long obtained among Journeymen of various callings, respecting Apprentices. Ever since I can remember, feuds and quarrels have subsisted betwixt the Employers and the Employed respecting workmen called illegal men; and also an allowed number of Apprentices: and the proper,
or lawful time of servitude in Apprenticeships, &c. &c. To me these altercations have always appeared highly reprehensible because at the best they originate in ignorance, and not unfrequently in something less excuseable. But be their origin
what it may, they commonly generate litigations and enmity; and sometimes they separate chief friends, and greatly exasperate and injure individuals.
Now, is it not folly, or something worse for one man to, vex and harrass another, either respecting his servants as
a Master, or his servitude as an Apprentice? What right, either in law or reason has one man to teaze and distress another
on these considerations? There is nothing, there can be nothing but what is both unjust and unreasonable in such conduct.
With regard to Apprentices, there ought in reason to be no constraints or restrictions laid upon them or their Masters,
respecting the length or shortness of their servitude: let the parties concerned arbitrate the conditions according to their own
discretion.
And is it not notorious also, that there are some branches of trade, some arts and callings, that are not half so mysterious and difficult of attainment as others? and some young men there are who by dint of superior gifts and mental
endowments from nature will learn a trade in three, or even two years, as perfectly as others will learn the same trade in
seven years. Is it not unjust these, is it not highly unreasonable that the narrow minded policy of selfish ignorance, should
institute schemes of restriction to superscede the bounties of nature. Would it be equitable to compel a man of two yards
high, to take as many strides in walking a mile, as a man of five feet? And is it any more equitable to compel young men
of all geniuses and capacities, to run over the same precise round of seven years in the acquisition of a trade. It is in vain
to declaim against aristocracies and priviledged orders, until this selfish and vexatious conduct be abandoned: for what are
all these petty monopolies and sinister exclusious, but the exhibitions of aristocracy in low life!…
Questions:
1. What does the author postulate as having been the origins of Luddism?
2. What is the author’s position, and what arguments does he bring out, pro-and-con, concerning the
Luddites?
3. Does the author view Luddites as criminals or victims? Explain.
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19.7
Utopian Socialism (1816): Robert Owen
One of the great personal success stories of the nineteenth century was Robert Owen. Born the son of
a saddle maker, Owen left school at the age of 9 and went to work in a draper’s shop. At the age of 18,
he borrowed money and set up a small cotton mill in Manchester. Within ten years, he was very wealthy
and was joint owner of the New Lanark mills, the largest textile operation in Scotland. But Robert Owen
was possessed with a desire to improve the lot of humanity. He provided higher wages and better working conditions for his employees and established free schools for their children. The New Lanark mills
also returned a handsome profit. Owen sought government intervention and regulation to change conditions in industry. He could not understand why all factories could not be run on his utopian model. He
is generally accepted in England as the founder of British socialism. The following address was delivered
in 1816 on the opening of an “Institution for the Formation of Character” at New Lanark. Note the
emphasis on morality as an essential ingredient of change.
Source: “Utopian Socialism” is from Robert Owen, Address to the Workers of New Lanark (1816).
Every society which exists at present, as well as every society which history records, has been formed and governed on a
belief in the following notions, assumed as first principles:
First,—That it is in the power of every individual to form his own character.
Hence the various systems called by the name of religion, codes of law, and punishments. Hence also the angry
passions entertained by individuals and nations towards each other.
Second,—That the affections are at the command of the individual. Hence insincerity and degradation of character. Hence the miseries of domestic life, and more than one-half of all the crimes of mankind.
Third,—That it is necessary that a large portion of mankind should exist in ignorance and poverty, in order to
secure to the remaining part such a degree of happiness as they now enjoy.
Hence a system of counteraction in the pursuits of men, a general opposition among individuals to the interests
of each other, and the necessary effects of such a system,—ignorance, poverty, and vice.
Facts prove, however—
First,—That character is universally formed for, and not by, the individual.
Second,—That any habits and sentiments may be given to mankind.
Third,—That the affections are not under the control of the individual.
Fourth,—That every individual may be trained to produce far more than he can consume, while there is a sufficiency of soil left for him to cultivate.
Fifth,—That nature has provided means by which population may be at all times maintained in the proper state
to give the greatest happiness to every individual, without one check of vice or misery.
Sixth,—That any community may be arranged, on a due combination of the foregoing principles, in such a
manner, as not only to withdraw vice, poverty, and, in a great degree, misery, from the world, but also to place every individual under circumstances in which he shall enjoy more permanent happiness than can be given to any individual under
the principles which have hitherto regulated society.
Seventh,—That all the assumed fundamental principles on which society has hitherto been founded are erroneous, and may be demonstrated to be contrary to fact. And—
Eighth,—That the change which would follow the abandonment of those erroneous maxims which bring misery
into the world, and the adoption of principles of truth, unfolding a system which shall remove and for ever exclude that
misery, may be effected without the slightest injury to any human being.
Here is the groundwork,—these are the data, on which society shall ere long be re-arranged; and for this simple
reason, that it will be rendered evident that it will be for the immediate and future interest of every one to lend his most
active assistance gradually to reform society on this basis. I say gradually, for in that word the most important considerations are involved. Any sudden and coercive attempt which may be made to remove even misery from men will prove injurious rather than beneficial. Their minds must be gradually prepared by an essential alteration of the circumstances which
surround them, for any great and important change and amelioration in their condition. They must be first convinced of
their blindness: this cannot be effected, even among the least unreasonable, or those termed the best part of mankind, in
their present state, without creating some degree of irritation. This irritation, must then be tranquillized before another
step ought to be attempted; and a general conviction must be established of the truth of the principles on which the projected change is to be founded. Their introduction into practice will then become easy,—difficulties will vanish as we
approach them,—and, afterwards, the desire to see the whole system carried immediately into effect will exceed the means
of putting it into execution.
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The principles on which this practical system is founded are not new; separately, or partially united, they have
been often recommended by the sages of antiquity, and by modern writers. But it is not known to me that they have ever
been thus combined. Yet it can be demonstrated that it is only by their being all brought into practice together that they are
to be rendered beneficial to mankind; and sure I am that this is the earliest period in the history of man when they could
be successfully introduced into practice.
Questions:
1. How would you define Utopian Socialism? How important is character to success?
2. Why was Robert Owens’s factory at New Lanark successful? Do the most successful capitalists
place an emphasis on people over profit?
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19.8
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
According to Lenin, Marxism was derived from three sources: German philosophy, English political
economy, and French socialism. The German philosophy was the absolute idealism of G. W. F. Hegel,
which Karl Marx had imbibed while a student at the University of Berlin. Central to this philosophy was
the notion of dialectic, the theory that history is a series of struggles between opposing forces, with
each successive struggle occurring on a higher level than the one that preceded it. Hegel viewed the
struggles as taking place between opposing ideas embodied in distinct national cultures. But Marx
shifted the struggles from the ideational plane to the economic or material plane, and transformed the
antagonists from nations to classes. In other words, he replaced Hegel’s dialectical idealism with his
own dialectical materialism; or, as he put it, he turned the dialectic, which Hegel had stood on its head,
back on its feet again.
The English political economy that Lenin referred to consisted of the writings of the classical economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, whose labor theory of value provided Marx with the basic
assumption underlying his greatest work, Capital. But Marx reversed the argument of the classical economists: Where they found in the labor theory of value a defense of capitalism, he found a weapon to
attack it.
Finally, in his reference to French socialism Lenin had in mind the works of a group of writers, including Claude Saint-Simon, François Fourier, Pierre Proudhon, and Louis Blanc, whose views on the elimination of capitalism and the establishment of the ideal society greatly influenced Marx-even though
later he scornfully brushed their theories aside as “utopian” socialism, while claiming that his own were
“scientific.”
Although Lenin and most other orthodox Marxists would undoubtedly deny it, Marxism owes a debt to
a fourth source. This is a moral tradition, stretching back all the way to Socrates and the Old Testament
prophets. Marx, the philosopher, historian, and economist, was above all else a moral reformer. Although
he clothed his critique of capitalism in an elaborate intellectual framework, at heart it was a moral protest
against the human misery and degradation resulting from early-nineteenth-century industrialism. And
though he assiduously repeated that his socialism was scientific, the new era of human happiness that
he envisioned in the classless society following the revolution was an ideal as utopian as that of Plato’s
Republic.
The Communist Manifesto, one of the greatest revolutionary documents in history, was the joint production of Marx (1818-1883) and his lifelong friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Composed in 1848 as a platform for the Communist League, a small organization of radical workmen, it
contains in capsule form most of the major Marxist doctrines. The Manifesto is reproduced here complete except for Part Ill, in which the authors criticize other forms of socialism.
Source: Trans S. Moore
MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
A specter is haunting Europe-the specter of Communism. All the powers of Old Europe have entered into a holy alliance
to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is
the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims,
their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto
to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish, and Danish languages.
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BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS1
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journey-man, in a word, oppressor
and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that
each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes.
In the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various
orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle
Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate
gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society, has not done away with class
antagonisms. It has but established new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class
antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly
facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the
first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The
East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of
exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and
thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no
longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new market. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters
were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern
Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the
modern bourgeois.
Modern Industry has established the world’s market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This
market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has,
in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion, as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended,
in the same proportion, the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed
down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series
of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that
class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval
commune, here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), here taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in
France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a
counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last,
since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world’s market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative
State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of
the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
1
By Bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labor. By proletariat the
class of modern wage-laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live.
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The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It
has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no
other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered
freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom-Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and
political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless; direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe.
It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere
money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what
man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and
Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the
relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in
unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the
bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the
globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world’s market given a cosmopolitan character to production
and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the
national ground on which it stood. All old established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.
They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by
industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones, industries
whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by
the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency we have had intercourse in every direction, universal
interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual
nations become common property. National onesidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and
from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world-literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means
of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the
heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred
of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly
increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population
from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semibarbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of
production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected
provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation,
with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application
of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for
cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
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We see then: the means of production and of exchange on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were
generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing
industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property, became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their places stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by
the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production,
of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the
sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many
a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against
modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie
and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time
more threateningly, the existence of the bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but
also of the previously created productive forces, is periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that,
in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity-the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put
back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply
of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of
society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have
become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring
disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On
the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by
the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive
crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie
itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the
men who are to wield those weapons-the modern working class-the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern
working class, developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as
their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only
the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production
of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay, more, in proportion as the use of
machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work enacted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into factories, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrialized army they
are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they the slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above
all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim,
the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes
developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to age
and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in
cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, and pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class-the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the
handicraftsmen and peasant-all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suf-
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fice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists,
partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited
from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.
At first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one
trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the
bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that
compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their
mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own
active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set
the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage therefore, the proletarians do
not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the nonindustrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in
greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the
ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and
nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers even more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever
more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and
individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to
form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they
found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate results but in the ever-improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the
workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a
political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required
centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being
upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again; stronger, firmer, mightier. It
compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.
Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of
the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those
portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with
the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these countries it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its
help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated
into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh
elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the
ruling class, in fact, within the whole range of an old society, assumes such a violent glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just
as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie
goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeoisie ideologists, who have raised themselves to the
level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary
class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
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The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the
bourgeoisie to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary,
but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but
their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting class thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,
may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far
more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of the old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family
relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting
society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of
society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of
appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for,
and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian
movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.
The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national
struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil
war, raging within existing society, up to the point where the war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and
oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own
class. He becomes a pauper and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence
upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his
slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers.
The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from
under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie
therefore produces above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
II
PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles
of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class
against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a
whole.
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The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have
over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented,
or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature
of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change, consequent upon the change
in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois
property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and
appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as
the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small
peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property
which exploits wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labor for
fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labor. Let us examine both
sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective
product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members
of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed.
It loses its class character.
Let us now take wage-labor.
The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is
absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer. What, therefore, the wage-laborer appropriates by
means of his labor, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human
life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we want to do away with, is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only
in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In Communist society accumulated
labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the
past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois: abolition of individuality and freedom! And
rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling, and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and
buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed
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to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie
itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property
is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in
the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is, the nonexistence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we
intend.
From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois
property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes!
You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middleclass owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him
of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.
It has been objected, that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will
overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of
its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but
another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labor when there is no longer any capital.
All objections against the communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same
way, been urged against the communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class structure
is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of
your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a
will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social
forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property-historical relations that rise and disappear in
the progress of production-this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see
clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit
in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the
practical absence of the family among the proletarians and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with
the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead
guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by
the intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means of schools, etc? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the
influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child
becomes all the more disgusting, as, by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.
But you Communists would introduce community of women; screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He heard that the instruments of production are
to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will
likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
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For the rest nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women
which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to
speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might
possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women. For the rest it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring
with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must
first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it
is, so far, itself national though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world’s market, to uniformity in the mode of production and
in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized
countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by
another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological
standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social
life?
What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as
material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but express the fact that within the old society the
elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of
the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
competition within the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical,” and juridical ideas have been modified in the
course of historic development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this
change.
“There are besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it
therefore acts as a contradiction to all past historical experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class
antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of
society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it
displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to
increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
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Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property
and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient
and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social
order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will of course be different in different countries.
Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive
monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands,
and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labor Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and
country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political
power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its
contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will,
along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonism, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which
the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
...
IV
POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION
PARTIES
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communist to the existing working class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests
of the working class; but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.
In France the Communists ally themselves with Social-Democrats, against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally handed down from the
great Revolution.
In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic
elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.
In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution, as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the
hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so
many weapons against the bourgeoisie the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce
along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
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The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a much more
developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the
bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter
what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only
by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!
Questions:
1. What do Marx and Engels mean by the terms “bourgeois” and “proletariat”?
2. How do you think a nineteen century factory worker, as described in the last section, would have
responded to the Communist Manifesto? Why?
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PART 20
Nationalism and Imperialism
20.1
Program of the Serb Society of National Defense [Narodna Odbrana]
Certainly one of the most violent national movements throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one that combined both the irredentist and militant strains of nationalism, was Balkan nationalism. “Balkan” is the Turkish word for mountain, and the rugged topography of the Balkan peninsula of
southeastern Europe contributed mightily to the development of Balkan nationalism. Serbia, the largest
of all the Balkan states, long considered itself the natural leader of all Balkan peoples and bitterly
resented the interference of Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey in Balkan affairs. After nearly five centuries of subjugation, Serbia gained its independence from Turkey in 1878 and aggressively sought to
assert its hegemony over the entire Balkan peninsula. Early in the twentieth century, the executive committee of a Serbian patriotic society, the Society of National Defense, published its program for Serbian
nationalism. Unlike many abstract, theoretical statements of nationalism, this document is a practical
step-by-step blueprint for igniting Serbian nationalism to resist continued foreign interference and to prepare for a greater Serbian role in Balkan politics.
Source: Narodna Odbrana lzdanje Stredisnog Odbora Odbrane (Belgrade, 1911), translated into
German and printed in Die Kriegsschuldfrage (Berlin, 1927), V, 192–225 in Europe in the Nineteenth
Century: A Documentary Analysis of Change and Conflict, ed., Eugene N. Anderson. Stanley J. Pinceti,
Jr., and Donald J. Ziegler 2:329–31; 316–22. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper
Saddle River, NJ.
It is quite wrong to think Kossowo1 once existed, is past, and that today it must simply be avenged. Kossowo is still
among us, or, to put it differently, we are today in the middle of Kossowo, and we are not avenging it but fighting on its
battlefield.
The Serbian people are always fighting the battle of Kossowo, only the battlefield changes form. Our present
Kossowo is the darkness and ignorance in which the Serbs live. Barbarism of every kind, unhygienic conditions, lack of
national consciousness, party and other feuds—these are the Turks of today against whom we must set out to a new Kossowo. These internal causes of a new Kossowo are considerable; there are external causes too, however, beyond our boundaries in the north and west—the Germans, the Austrians, and the Swabians with their drive toward our Serb and Slavic
south. Darkness and ignorance among our people within and the German invasion from outside are the new Turks whom
we must meet today on the Serb battlefield of Kossowo and with whom we have to resume the struggle for the Serbian
name and Serbian freedom.
The freedom of a people is just as incomplete when it is in bondage to ignorance as when it is in physical bondage.
Man can be enserfed also to errors, prejudices, ignorance, love of drink, barbarism. War must be waged against all these
evils. Just as we once rebelled against the Turks, we must now rebel against these evil national conditions and fight for freedom from them.
The view that there is war only when the guns thunder and the rifles crack is a false one. Among nations there is
never peace, but always a condition of war; life goes forward under the sign of struggle. Even today in the middle of
peace the Serbs are waging a desperate war. Woe to him who does not know it. This war is our present fight for our soil,
our health, civilization, knowledge, schools, physical culture—as we have described it already in the section “The New
Contemporary Narodna Odbrana.”
1
The Turks crushed the Serbian-Albanian-Croatian army at Kossowo (also spelled as Kosovo or Kossovo) in 1389 and conquered the country, but
Milosch Obilitsch, a Serb hero of the battle, succeeded in penetrating the Turkish line and slaying the Turkish sultan. The anniversary of the battle
and of the assassination has been commemorated on June 28, a Serbian national holiday.
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