Marx's magnum opus, ``Capital,'' added bulk and substance to the theses of the Communist Manifesto.It contributed the theory of surplus value, which professed to explain the actual mechanism of capitalist exploitation.This doctrine is very complicated and is scarcely tenable as a contribution to pure theory.It is rather to be viewed as a translation into abstract terms of the hatred with which Marx regarded the system that coins wealth out of human lives, and it is in this spirit, rather than in that of disinterested analysis, that it has been read by its admirers.A critical examination of the theory of surplus value would require much difficult and abstract discussion of pure economic theory without having much bearing upon the practical truth or falsehood of Socialism; it has therefore seemed impossible within the limits of the present volume.To my mind the best parts of the book are those which deal with economic facts, of which Marx's knowledge was encyclopaedic.It was by these facts that he hoped to instil into his disciples that firm and undying hatred that should make them soldiers to the death in the class war.The facts which he accumulates are such as are practically unknown to the vast majority of those who live comfortable lives.They are very terrible facts, and the economic system which generates them must be acknowledged to be a very terrible system.A few examples of his choice of facts will serve to explain the bitterness of many Socialists:--Mr.Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, ``that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world....Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.''[4]
[4] Vol.i, p.227.
Three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury--a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman.A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world.The negligence of the employes is the cause of the misfortune.They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labor only lasted eight hours a day.During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted 40 or 50 hours without a break.They were ordinary men, not Cyclops.At a certain point their labor-power failed.Torpor seized them.Their brain ceased to think, their eyes to see.The thoroughly ``respectable'' British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle``rider'' to their verdict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labor-power, and more ``abstemious,'' more ``self-denying,'' more ``thrifty,'' in the draining of paid labor- power.[5]
[5] Vol.i, pp.237, 238.
In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the ``sensational'' heading, ``Death from simple over- work.'' It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise.The old, often-toldstory was once more recounted.This girl worked, on an average, 16 1/2 hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labor-power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee.It was just now the height of the season.It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honor of the newly- imported Princess of Wales.Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26 1/2 hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded 1/3 of the cubic feet of air required for them.At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board.And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London.Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand.The doctor, Mr.Keys, called too late to the death bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that ``Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over- crowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom.'' In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that ``the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over-crowded workroom, &c.'' ``Our white slaves,'' cried the ``Morning Star,'' the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright, ``our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.''[6]
[6] Vol.i, pp.239, 240.
