The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844

Friedrich Engels · 1844 (as a report/study of conditions; published in Germany 1845) primary

passage 213 of 219 · Act, the Masters' and Servants' Act; and Thomas Duncombe, the representative of the working-men in the House of Commons, was the great man of the session; while the Liberal middle-class with its motion for repealing the Corn Laws, and the Radical middle-class with its resolution for refusing the taxes, played pitiable roles. Even the debates about > Act should express the time from six at night to six in the morning, whereby the prohibition of night-work came to mean the limitation of working-hours to twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual work a day. But the ministry did not agree to this. Sir James Graham began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and at the next vote on the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten and twelve hours! Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a new bill, and that if this failed to pass they should resign. The new bill was exactly the old Twelve Hours' Bill with some changes of form, and the same House of Commons which had rejected the principal points of this bill in March, now swallowed it whole. The reason of this was that most of the supporters of the Ten Hours' Bill were Tories who let fall the bill rather than the ministry; but be the motives what they may, the (83/89)

in brief

Engels recounts a parliamentary session over the Masters' and Servants' legislation and factory working hours, arguing that debates on night-work were treated as merely a twelve-hour limit and then reversed by the ministry.

Philanthropy, 27, 28, 88, 173, 212, 278.

Police, 132, 221, 225, 226, 281, 282.

Reform Bill, ix., 17, 214, 229, 285.

Reserve Army, 85, 90.

Schools--Day, 110, et seq. 173, 200, 207, 250. Night, 110, 250. Sunday, 111, 202, 250.

Socialism, vi., vii., xii., 122, 236, et seq. 275, 297.

Starvation, 25, 29, 73, 76, 88, 117, 167, 189, 285.

Strikes, ix., xiv., xv., 168, 215, 218, 223, 224, 231, 254, 256, 257.

Suicide, 115, 116.

Surplus Population, 81, et seq. 139, 263, 266, 280, 287.

Ten Hours' Bill, vii., 142, 172, 174, et seq. 230, 235, 284.

Truck System, vii., viii., 182-3, 185, 252, 253.

Ventilation of Dwellings, 36. Mines, 249. Towns, 27, 28, 36, 53, et seq. 63, 64, 96, et seq. Workrooms, 155, 156, 158.

Workhouses, 287, et seq.

Footnotes.

{7} According to Porter's Progress of the Nation, London, 1836, vol. i., 1838, vol. ii., 1843, vol. iii. (official data), and other sources chiefly official.

{20} Compare on this point my "Outlines for a Critique of Political Economy" in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher.

{23} This applies to the time of sailing vessels. The Thames now is a dreary collection of ugly steamers.--F. E.

{32} Times, Oct. 12th, 1843.

{33} Quoted by Dr. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E, Fellow and late President of the Royal College of Physicians, etc. etc. "Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland and its Effects on the Health of Great Towns." Edinburgh, 1840. The author is a religious Tory, brother of the historian, Archibald Alison.

{35a} "Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes in Great Britain with Appendix." Presented to both Houses of Parliament in July 1842, 3 vols. Folio.

{35b} The Artisan, October, 1842.

{38} "Arts and Artisan at Home and Abroad," by J. C. Symonds, Edinburgh, 1839. The author, as it seems, himself a Scotchman, is a Liberal, and consequently fanatically opposed to every independent movement of working- men. The passages here cited are to be found p. 116 et seq.

{40a} It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere storing- rooms for rubbish, but dwellings of human beings.

{40b} Compare Report of the Town Council in the Statistical Journal, vol. 2, p. 404.

{49} "The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working-Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester." By James Ph. Kay, M.D. 2nd Ed. 1832.

Dr. Kay confuses the working-class in general with the factory workers, otherwise an excellent pamphlet.

{55} And yet an English Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the Report of the Children's Employment Commission, that these courts are the masterpiece of municipal architecture, because, like a multitude of little parks, they improve ventilation, the circulation of air! Certainly, if each court had two or four broad open entrances facing each other, through which the air could pour; but they never have two, rarely one, and usually only a narrow covered passage.

{63} Nassau W. Senior. "Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the President of the Board of Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thompson, Esq.), London, 1837, p. 24.

{64} Kay, loc. cit., p. 32.

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topics: forms of government · justice as a virtue · labor, wages, and the division of work

The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 · Friedrich Engels · 1844