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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 214 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 (84/89)

in brief
This passage is mostly a continuation of Engels’s legislative/parliamentary recap, followed by bibliographic and authorial notes about sources such as Nassau W. Senior, P. Gaskell, and Adam Smith.

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

{65} P. Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England: its Moral, Social and Physical Condition, and the Changes which have arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour." "Fiat Justitia," 1833.--Depicting chiefly the state of the working-class in Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not a feature of Liberalism to chant the happiness of the workers. He is therefore unprejudiced, and can afford to have eyes for the evils of the present state of things, and especially for the factory system. On the other hand, he wrote before the Factories Enquiry Commission, and adopts from untrustworthy sources many assertions afterwards refuted by the Report of the Commission. This work, although on the whole a valuable one, can therefore only be used with discretion, especially as the author, like Kay, confuses the whole working-class with the mill hands. The history of the development of the proletariat contained in the introduction to the present work, is chiefly taken from this work of Gaskell's.

{67} Thomas Carlyle. "Chartism," London, 1840, p. 28.

{80} Adam Smith. "Wealth of Nations" I., McCulloch's edition in one volume, sect. 8, p. 36: "The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his master, but that of a free servant is at his own expense. The wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and servants of every kind, must be such as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to require. But though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave. The fund for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master or careless overseer."

{87} And it came in 1847.

{90a} Archibald Alison. "Principles of Population and their Connection with Human Happiness," two vols., 1840. This Alison is the historian of the French Revolution, and, like his brother, Dr. W. P. Alison, a religious Tory.

{90b} "Chartism," pp. 28, 31, etc.

{95} When as here and elsewhere I speak of society as a responsible whole, having rights and duties, I mean, of course, the ruling power of society, the class which at present holds social and political control, and bears, therefore, the responsibility for the condition of those to whom it grants no share in such control. This ruling class in England, as in all other civilised countries, is the bourgeoisie. But that this society, and especially the bourgeoisie, is charged with the duty of protecting every member of society, at least, in his life, to see to it, for example, that no one starves, I need not now prove to my German readers. If I were writing for the English bourgeoisie, the case would be different. (And so it is now in Germany. Our German capitalists are fully up to the English level, in this respect at least, in the year of grace, 1886.)

{100a} Dr. Alison. "Management of the Poor in Scotland."

{100b} Alison. "Principles of Population," vol. ii.

{100c} Dr. Alison in an article read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. October, 1844, in York.

{104} "Manufacturing Population," ch 8.

{105a} Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in Mines and Collieries and in the Trades and Manufactures in which numbers of them work together, not being included under the terms of the Factories' Regulation Act. First and Second Reports, Grainger's Report. Second Report usually cited as "Children's Employment Commission's Report." First Report, 1841; Second Report, 1843.

{105b} Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

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topics: books, libraries, and learning · history and the writing of history · labor, wages, and the division of work

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