Brentano vs. Marx

 Notabene: In his second reply (

Documents, No. 6

) Marx only had to defend the Inaugural Address, since up to then Mr.

Brentano had not got the passage in Capital into his nagging range. And in his following rejoinder (

Documents, No.7

) Mr.

Brentano's attack is still directed against the Inaugural Address and Marx's defence of this.

 It is only after Marx's death that a new turn comes, and this not through Mr. Brentano but through his Cambridge

shield-bearer. Only now is it discovered that in Capital Marx suppressed the resonant declarations made by Mr. Gladstone

about the unexampled improvement in the condition of the British worker, and that this converted Mr. Gladstone's meaning

into the contrary.

 And here we have to say that Marx missed the opportunity for a brilliant burst of rhetoric. The whole section in the

introduction to which this speech by Gladstone is quoted has the purpose of furnishing evidence that the condition of the

great majority of the British working class was straitened and unworthy, just at the time of this intoxicating augmentation

of wealth. What a magnificent contrast Gladstone's selfsame pompous words about the happy condition of the British

working class, ~a condition] unexampled in the history of any country and any age, would have provided to this evidence

of mass poverty, drawn from the official publications of Parliament itself!

 But if Marx wished to refrain from such a rhetorical effect, he had no reason to quote these words of Gladstone's. Firstly,

they are nothing hut the standard phrases which every British Chancellor of the Exchequer believes it to be his moral duty

to repeat in good or even in tolerable business periods; they are thus meaningless. And secondly, Gladstone himself

retracted them within a year; in his next budget speech of April 7, 1864, at a time of even greater industrial prosperity, he

spoke of masses "on the border of pauperism", and of branches of business in which wages have not increased", and

proclaimed -- according to Hansard:

 

"Again, and yet more at large, what is human life, but, in the great majority of cases, a struggle for existence?" *

 

* And here some more from this speech, according to Hansard: the number of paupers had fallen to 840,000. "That

amount, however, does not include persons who are dependent upon charitable establishments; or who are relieved by

private almsgiving.... But, besides all those whom it comprises, think of those who arc on the borders of that region, think

how many of the labouring classes are struggling manfully but with difficulty to maintain themselves in a position above

the place of paupers." In the congregation of a clergyman in the East End of London, 12,000 out of 13,000 souls were

always on the verge of actual want; a well-known philanthropist had declared that there were whole districts in the East

End of London in which you cannot find an omnibus or a cab, in which there ii no street music, nor even a street beggar...

The means to wage the struggle for existence were, however, somewhat better than previously (!) ... In many places wages

had increased, but in many others they had not, etc. And this jeremiad came just one year after the pompous announcement

of the "unexampled" improvement!

 But Marx quotes this other budget speech of Gladstone's immediately after that of 1863, and if Mr. Gladstone himself, on

April 7, 1864, declared that the unexampled blessings were non-existent, those blessings for the existence of which he had

possessed "varied and indubitable evidence", then for Marx there was no longer the slightest shadow of a reason to quote

these vivacious protestations, which were unfortunately ephemeral, even for Mr. Gladstone. He could content himself with

the speaker's admissions that while the incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over had augmented intoxicatingly, the poor

had in any case become less poor, and that the interval between extreme wealth and extreme poverty had scarcely been

reduced.

 We shall not comment on the fact that it is the habit of the official German economists to quote Marx in sentences torn

from context. If he had created a hullabaloo in every such case, as Mr. Brentano has done here, he would never have been

finished.

 But now let us examine more closely the unexampled augmentation of the means of subsistence enjoyed at that time by

the British labourer, peasant or miner, artisan or operative.

 The peasant is in England and the greater part of Scotland only an agricultural day labourer. In 1861 there were a total of

1,098,261 such peasants, of whom 204,962 lived as farmhands on tenant farms. * From 1849 to 1859 his money wage had

increased by 1 shilling, in a few cases by 2 shillings a week, but in the final analysis this was mostly only a nominal

increase. His position in 1863, the really abject housing conditions under which he lived, are described by Dr. Hunter

(Public Health, VII Report, 1864):

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"The costs occasioned by the agricultural labourer are fixed at the lowest figure at which he can live."

 

* The figures are taken partly from the census of 1861, partly from the report of the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT

COMMISSION. 1863-l867. [Census of England and Wales for the year 1861, London, 1863; Children's Employment

Commission (1862), Report (I- VI) of the Commissioners, London, 1863. -- MECW Ed]

 According to the same report, the food intake of a part of the day labourers' families (particularly in eight named counties)

was below the absolute minimum necessary to avert starvation diseases. And Professor Thorold Rogers, a political

supporter of Gladstone, declared in 1866 (A History of Agriculture and Prices) that the agricultural day labourer had once

again become a serf, and, as he demonstrated at length, a poorly fed and poorly housed serf, much worse off than his

ancestor at the time of Arthur Young (1770 to 1780), and incomparably worse than the day labourer in the 14th and 15th

centuries. So Gladstone had no luck at all with the "peasants".

 But how about the "miner"? On this we have the parliamentary report of 1866.a In 1861, 565,875 miners were working in

the United Kingdom, 246,613 of them in coal mines. In the latter the wages of the men had risen slightly, and they mostly

did an eight-hour shift, while the youngsters had to work 14 to 15 hours. Mine inspection was just a farce: there were 12

inspectors for 3,217 mines! The result was that the lives of the miners were sacrificed wholesale in largely avoidable

explosions; the mine-owners compensated themselves in general for the small wage increases by wage deductions based on

false weights and measures. In the ore mines, according to the report of the ROYAL COMMISSION of 1864, conditions

were still worse.

 But the "artisan"? Let us take the metalworkers, altogether 396,998. Of these, some 70,000 to 80,000 were machine fitters,

and their situation was in fact good, thanks to the toughness of their old, strong and rich trade association. For the other

metalworkers too, provided full physical strength and skill were called for, a certain improvement had taken place, as was

natural with business having again become better since 1859 and 1860. In contrast, the situation of the women and children

also employed (10,000 women and 30,000 under 18 in Birmingham and district alone) was miserable enough, and that of

the nail makers (26,130) and chain makers miserable in the extreme.

 In the textile industry, the 456,646 cotton Spinners and weavers, and with them 12,556 calico printers, are decisive. And

they must have been very surprised to hear of this unexampled happiness-in April 1863, at the height of the cotton famine

and the American Civil War, at the time (October 1862) when 60 per cent of the spindles and 58 per cent of the looms

stood idle, and the remainder were only working 2-3 days a week; when over 50,000 cotton operatives, individually or with

families, were supported by the Poor Law or the relief committee and (in March 1863) 135,625 were employed by the

same committee at starvation wages on public works or in sewing schools! (Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine, 1866,

p.21 1.) The other textile operatives, particularly in the wool and linen branches, were relatively prosperous; the lack of

cotton increased their employment.

 The reports of the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION give us the best information on how things looked in a

number of smaller branches of business: hosiery -- 120,000 workers, of whom only 4,000 were protected by the Factory

Act, amongst the others many quite young children, colossally overworked; lace-making and dressing, mostly cottage

industry -- of 150,000 workers only 10,000 protected by the Factory Act, colossal overworking of children and girls;

straw-plaiting and straw-hat-making -- 40,000, almost all children, disgustingly slave-driven; finally the manufacture of

clothing and shoes, employing 370,218 female workers for outerwear and millinery, 380,716 ditto for underwear and -- in

England and Wales alone -- 573,380 male workers, including 273,223 shoemakers and 146,042 tailors, of whom between

l/5 and 1/4 were under 20. Of these 1 1/4 million, a maximum of 30 per cent of the men were passably off, working for

private customers. The rest were exposed, as in all the branches of business mentioned in this paragraph, to exploitation

through middle men, factors, agents, SWEATERS as they are called in England, and this alone describes their lot: terrible

overwork for a wretched wage.

 Things were no better with the "unexampled" fortune of the workers in paper-making (100,000 workers, half women),

pottery (29,000), hat-making (15,000 in England alone), the glass industry (15,000), book printing (35,000), artificial

flower-making (11,000), etc., etc.

 In short, the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION demanded that no fewer than 1,400,000 women, young

people and children should be placed under the protection of the Factory Act, in order to guard them from mostly ruinous

overwork.

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