VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 2
Sixteen Hours a Day, the Five Year Old at the Bottom of the Mine
The last section, that door opened, and the person walked in. This section walks in after him. The numbers in there are hard to read. But these are not the book swinging its brush. These are the nineteenth century country’s own parliamentary inquiries, set down on the record one line at a time. Not seen clear, and you cannot see how bare that position is.
First, the hours
The standard workday of the early factory was twelve to sixteen hours, six days a week, fifty two weeks a year.
This was not the occasional overtime. This was the everyday.
That country’s Factory Act of 1833, for the first time, set a limit on the hours. Children of nine to thirteen, not more than nine hours a day. Youths of thirteen to eighteen, not more than twelve hours a day.
See those two words clear, a limit. Before the limit, there was no ceiling.
And this law reached only the factories of the textile trade, other trades not yet within its charge.
Set this twelve to sixteen hours a day against the labor rent of the serf in the last chapter.
The eastern European serf’s labor rent was three days a week of unpaid work on the landlord’s land, and the days that remained were his own.
The worker of the early factory was in labor for his employer the whole week through, not one hour of it his own.
Read this line slow. The intensity of the factory’s hours went past any form of serfdom in history.
Why children
The early factory used child labor in great quantity. The reason is simple, it is an account.
The child’s wage is low, often only a third to a quarter of the grown man’s.
The child is small of body, can crawl under the machine to clean the cotton fluff, can crawl into the narrow galleries of the mine.
The child is easy to manage, will not think of changing places.
And the poorhouses had children to spare, and the factory could contract for them in batches from the poorhouse.
Set these four side by side. Every one of them is closely reckoned. Not one of them is hatred.
This is the thing this volume is out to see clear from end to end. That position needs no bad man. It needs only an account reckoned very clear.
1842, that mining report
In 1842, that country’s commission of inquiry into the mines put out a report. In it is set down a thing.
In the coal mines there was a kind of work, the trapper. Commonly a child of five to ten.
He is under the ground twelve hours a day, sitting alone by a pitch-dark ventilation door. Hearing the coal cart come, he pulls the door open to let it through. The cart past, he shuts the door again.
Then goes on sitting.
In the report is a piece of testimony from a five year old trapper. He says he is very afraid of the dark. But he must work, or he is beaten.
Read this passage slow.
The nineteenth century, that island nation of the modern West, the standard-bearer of industrialization, one of what was then called the birthplaces of modern civilization.
A child of five, in a place pitch dark underground, working alone twelve hours.
Walk in close, look into that door
Walk in a little closer.
There is no light there. He has no lamp in his hand, a lamp costs money, and is dangerous besides.
He sits there, stone all around. He can hear water dripping far off. He has sat two hours, and there are ten hours more.
He is five. Three years ago he was still at the breast.
He is afraid of the dark. He said this line to the inquiry man, and that inquiry man wrote it down, and so today it is still known that on that day, that child was afraid of the dark.
He does not cry. Crying is of no use, and no one would hear.
Mark this. This is not the book swinging its brush. This is the writing on that report.
And this thing was no isolated case. The 1842 inquiry showed that in that country’s coal mines, child labor under ten was about five in a hundred, and under fourteen about thirty in a hundred.
The whole mining system was propped on the labor of children.
The textile mills were the same. The 1816 parliamentary inquiry showed that of the workers in that country’s textile mills, child labor was more than half.
Is this enslavement
Take it and measure it with the volume’s rod.
In law, no. These child laborers were not bought and sold. It was their parents who, of their own will, sent them into the factory.
Look once more at those two words, of their own will.
Why did the parents will it. Because to not send them in was for the whole family to starve.
Then in substance. Go back to the volume’s standard of judgment. One side hands its resources, its time, its strength, without cease, to another side. Did this mechanism happen.
It happened. Twelve hours a day. Six days a week. Fifty two weeks a year.
From the age of five.
Think back to the rod of the tenth chapter of this semester. Formal freedom and substantive freedom are two different things.
Here it serves again.
How the account was made to balance
Now the deepest of this layer.
In the mid nineteenth century, a textile mill in some industrial town of that country had these typical figures. A grown male worker made about fifteen shillings a week. A grown woman worker about seven a week. The same work, the woman took half. A child worker about two to four a week.
In the same period, for a family of four to hold to the barest survival in that industrial town, food, lodging, clothing, took about twenty to twenty five shillings a week.
Set these two numbers against each other.
One grown man’s wage cannot keep a family alive.
And so the whole family must turn out. The wife into the mill, the children into the mill. All their wages together, and only then is there barely enough to live.
This is why that five year old child was at the bottom of the mine.
It is not that his parents were hard of heart. It is that this account, only so, could be made to balance.
Look once more at that number. Fifteen and seven and three is twenty five. Just enough.
Not one over.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section spoke no great reasoning. This section only spread the 1842 report out before the eye.
It set up three things.
The first. Twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week, not one hour of the whole week his own. The intensity of the factory’s hours went past any form of serfdom in history.
The second. Children were used not out of hatred, but because they were cheap, small of body, easy to manage. That position needs no bad man, it needs only an account reckoned very clear.
The third. That account balanced only with the whole family in the mill. The parents were of their own will. But the other end of that will was the whole family starving.
Then, in law he is free. Is this false. It is not false. He truly can quit at any time. He truly can sign a contract with anyone. This is real freedom, a thing there was not for thousands of years.
But he has no ground in his hand, no money, and a family at home waiting for the pot to be filled. Quit, and tomorrow there is no rice.
A person having the right to say no, and a person having the means to say no, are two different things.
The next section, formal freedom, and substantive freedom.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.