Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

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Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
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Ages of Workers in Cotton Mills in Lancaster in
1833
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Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory
Boy (1840)
A little girl about seven years old had a job as
scavengershe was to collect incessantly, from
the factory floor, the flying fragments of cotton
that might impede the work... while the hissing
machinery passed over her, and when this is
skillfully done, and the head, body, and the
outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor,
the steady moving, but threatening mass, may pass
and repass over the dizzy head and trembling body
without touching it. But accidents frequently
occur and many are the flaxen locks, rudely torn
from infant heads, in the process.
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Frances Trollope was attacked for producing a
book that could be purchased in parts and was
therefore available to the working class. One
writer suggested that the book would result in
the "burning of factories" and that the author
deserved to be sent to prison. One critic
suggested that books like this should be left to
male writers as "women are more at home in the
flower garden and by the domestic hearth."
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(No Transcript)
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John Leech, Capital and Labour (Punch Magazine,
May, 1843)
Gustave Dore, London (1872)
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Economic Realities By June 1837, some 50,000
workers in Manchester alone were unemployed or
part time because of the collapse in trade. As
factories increased in numbers, so the spread of
machinery caused distress for hand spinners and
weavers. In 1830, there were 60,000 power looms
and 240,000 hand looms by 1860 power loom
supremacy was almost complete and wages of
handloom weavers had fallen 1815 est. 16s/-
per week

1825 est. 9s/- per week


1830 est. 6s/- per week

By 1841 some 34,000 Irish
people had moved to the Manchester area and
accepted poor pay and conditions because the
worst in England was better than the best in
Ireland. They tended to depress wages and
conditions. Masters believed in laissez-faire
and believed that the poor should educate
themselves, not demand political rights.
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The problems which existed in factories were
highlighted by the Parliamentary Select Committee
of 1833 and the Royal Commission 1. excessive
hours 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and often longer 2.
shortage of mealtimes 40 minutes at noon, and no
opportunity to rest 3. poor conditions
of work dust, filth, unguarded machinery,
heavy lifting 4. dangers to health
constant bending, exhaustion, deformity
5. cruelty of overseers strapping, heavy
penalties for unpunctuality and so on
6. fear was engendered in a 'culture of
violence' 7. complicity of parents in
promoting child labor
How do we know what Marx and Engels observed?
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The proletarian is without property his
relation to his wife and children has no longer
anything in common with 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. 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 produces, above all, are its own
grave-diggers.