Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853--Lock-out vs. Turn-out

Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: by Marx;
First Published: in the New York Daily Tribune, November 1 1853;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

While the first cannon bullets have been exchanged in the war of the Russians against Europe, the first blood has been spilt in the war now raging in the manufacturing districts, of capital against labor. On Friday night a riot took place at Wigan, arising out of the contest between the colliers and the coal kings; on Saturday the town was stated to be perfectly quiet, but today we are informed by electric telegraph that at the colliery of Lord Crawford or of the Earl Balcarres, an attack was made by the colliers; that the armed force was called out; that the soldiers fired, and that one of the workmen was killed. As I am to receive private information from the spot, I adjourn my report on this event. ...

Thus, one by one, step by step, the industrial bourgeoisie have removed, with their own hands, all the carefully propagated delusions that could be conjured up at the hour of danger, in order to deturn the indignation of the working classes from their real antagonist, and to direct it against the antagonists of the millocracy, against the landed aristocracy. in 1853, there have waned away the false pretenses on the part of the masters and the silly illusions on the part of the men. The war between those two classes has become unmitigated, undisguised, openly avowed and plainly understood. “The question,” exclaim the masters themselves in one of their recent manifestoes — “is no longer one of wages but one of mastership.” The Manchester liberals, then, have at last thrown off the lion’s skin. What they pretend at — is mastership for capital and slavery for labor.

Lock-out vs. Turn-out, is the great lawsuit now pending in the industrial districts, and bayonets are likely to give judgement in the case. A whole industrial army, more than 70,000 working-men are disbanded and cast upon the streets. To the mills closed at Preston and Wigan there have been added those of the district of Bacup, which includes the townships of Bacup, Newchurch, Rawtenstall, Sharnford, and Stanford. At Burnley the mills stopped last Friday; at Padiham on Saturday. at Accrington the masters are contemplating a lock-out; at Bury, where about 1,000 men are already out of work, the masters have given notice to their hands of a lock-out unless they discontinued their contributions to those out of work in their own town and at Preston. and at Kindley, three large mills were closed on Saturday afternoon, and more than a thousand additional persons thrown out of employment.

While the hypocritical, phrase-mongering, squint-eyed set of Manchester humbugs spoke peace to the Czar at Edinburgh, they acted war with their own countrymen at Manchester. While they preached arbitration between Russia and Europe, they were rejecting scornfully all appeals to arbitration from their own fellow-citizens. The workmen of Preston had carried in an open air meeting the resolution that the delegates of the factory operatives recommend the Mayor to call a public meeting of the manufacturers and the operatives to agree to an amicable settlement of the dispute now pending.

But the masters do not want arbitration. What they pretend at is dictation. While, at the very moment of a European struggle, those Russian propagandists cry for reduction of the army, they are at the same time augmenting the army of civil war, the police force, in Lancashire and Yorkshire. To the workmen we can only say with The People’s Paper.

If they close all the mills of Lancashire do you send delegates to Yorkshire and enlist the support of the gallant men of the West Riding. If the mills of the West Riding are closed, appeal to Nottingham and Derby, to Birmingham and Leicester, to Bristol and Norwich, to Glasgow and Kidderminster, to Edinburgh and Ipswich. Further and further, wider and wider, extend your appeals and rally your class through every town and trade. If the employers choose to array all their order against you, do you array your entire class against them. If they will have the vast class struggle, let them have it, and we will abide the issue of that tremendous trial.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853--On Strikes and the Value of Labor

Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: by Marx;
First Published: in the New York Daily Tribune, September 27 1853;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

While thus the bright sunshine of commercial and industrial prosperity is hidden by gloomy prospects, strikes are still forming, and will for some time yet form, an important feature of our industrial condition, only they are beginning to change their character contemporary with the change that is now going on in the general condition of the country.

At Bury a new advance of 2d. per 1,000 hanks has been asked on the part of the spinners. Masters refusing, they left work, and the weavers will do so as soon as they have worked up the yarn on hand. At Preston, while the weavers still demand an advance of 10 per cent, being supported by the operatives of the surrounding districts, six masters have already locked up their mills and the others are likely to follow them. Two thousand operatives have thus been thrown out of work. At Blackburn the mechanics of Mr. Dickinson, iron-founder, still remain out. At Wigan the capreelers of one mill have struck for an advance of Id. per score, and the throstle-spinners of another mill refused to commence work until their wages were advanced. The mills were closed. At the same place the coalminers’ strike, embracing about 5,000 hands, is going on. The Earl of Crawford, and other extensive [coal-mine owners] in the neighborhood, dismissed their hands on Wednesday evening. A numerous meeting of the colliers was then held in Scales’ Orchard. At Manchester 5,000 looms stand still, besides the minor strikes going forward, such as that of the fustian-dyers, the skein-dyers, felt-hat makers, etc.

At Bolton, meetings of the operative cotton-spinners are being held for an advance of wages. There are shoemakers’ strikes at Trenton, Bridgewater, etc.; cab-drivers’ strikes at Glasgow; masons’ strikes at Kilmarnock, threatened turn-outs of the police at Oldham, etc. At Birmingham, nailers demand an advance of 10 per cent, at Wolverhampton, the carpenters one of 6d. per day; the London carpenters ditto, and so on. While through the principal manufacturing towns of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, etc., the operatives are holding public meetings, to decide upon measures for the support of their suffering brethren, the masters on the other hand are resolved to close their establishments for an indefinite period, with the design of starving their hands into submission.

“We find,” says the Sunday Times, “that generally speaking, the demand for an advance of wages has not exceeded 6d. a day; and, looking at the present price of provisions, [...] it can hardly be said [...] that the demand is an unreasonable one. We know it has been said that one aim of the present strikers is to obtain a sort of communistic share of the real or supposed profits of the manufacturer; but the comparison between the increased demand for wages and the enhanced value of the prime necessaries of life, furnishes an ample refutation of the charge.”

When the working people ask for more than “the prime necessaries of life,” when they pretend “to share” in the profits resulting from their own industry, then they are accused of communistic tendencies. What has the price of provisions to do with the “eternal and supreme law of supply and demand"? In 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842, while there was a continued rise in the price of provisions, wages were sinking until they reached the starvation point. “Wages,” said then the same manufacturers, “don’t depend upon the price of provisions, but upon the eternal law of supply and demand.”

“The demands of the working people,” says the Sunday Times, “may be submitted to when urged in a respectful manner.”

What has respect to do with the “eternal law of supply and demand"? Has any one ever heard of the price of coffee rising at Mincing-lane when “urged in a respectful manner"? The trade in human flesh and blood being carried on in the same manner as that of any other commodity, give it at least the chances of any other.

The wages-movement has been going on now for a period of six months. Let us judge it by the test acknowledged on the part of the masters themselves, by the “eternal laws of supply and demand,” or are we, perhaps, to understand, that the eternal laws of political economy must be interpreted in the same manner as the eternal peace treaties Russia has concluded with Turkey?

Six months ago the work-people, had they even found their position not strengthened by the great demand for their labor, by constant and enormous emigration to the gold fields and to America, must have inferred the enhancement of industrial profits from the general prosperity-cry uttered by the middle-class press exulting at the blessings of Free Trade. The workmen, of course, demanded their share of that so loudly proclaimed prosperity, but the masters fought hard against them. Then, the workmen combine, threaten to strike, enforce their demands in a more or less amicable manner. Wherever a strike occurs, the whole of the masters and their organs in pulpit, platform and press, break out into immoderate vituperation of the “impudence and stupidity” “of such attempts at dictation.”

Now, what did the strikes prove, if not that the workmen preferred applying a mode of their own of testing the proportion of the supply to the demand rather than to trust to the interested assurances of their employers? Under certain circumstances, there is for the workman no other means of ascertaining whether he is or not paid the actual market value of his labor, but to strike or to threaten to do so. In 1852, on an average, the margin between the cost of the raw material and the price of the finished goods — for instance, the margin between the cost of raw cotton and that of yarn, between the price of yarn and that of cotton goods, was greater, consequently the profit of the spinner and the manufacturer was undoubtedly larger than it has been in 1853. Neither yarn not goods have, until very lately, risen in the same proportion as cotton. Why, then, did the manufacturers not advance wages at once in 1852? There was no cause, they say, in the relative position of supply and demand justifying such a rise of wages in 1852. Indeed? Hands were not quite as short a year ago as they are now, but the difference is out of proportion to the sudden and repeated rise of wages forced out of the manufacturers since then, by virtue of the law of supply and demand, as expounded by turnouts. There are, certainly, more factories at work than last year, and more able-bodied workmen have emigrated since then, but at the same time never has there been such a supply of factory labor poured into our “hives of industry” from agricultural and other pursuits, as during the last twelve months.

The fact is that the “hands,” as usual, perceived only too late, that the value of their labor had risen 30 per cent many a month ago, and then in the summer of this year — only then — they began to strike, first for 10 per cent, then for another 10 per cent, and so on, for as much, of course, as they could get. The constant success of these strikes, while it generalized them all over the country, was the best proof of their legitimacy, and their rapid succession in the same branch of trade, by the same “hands” claiming fresh advances, fully proved that according to supply and demand the work-people had long been entitled to a rise of wages, which was merely kept from them on account of their being ignorant of the state of the labor market. When they at last became acquainted with it, the manufacturers, who had all the while preached “the eternal law of supply and demand,” fell back on the doctrine of “enlightened despotism,” claiming the right to do as they liked with their own, and propounding as their angry ultimatum that the work-people don’t know what is good for them.

The change in the general commercial prospects must change the relative position of the work-people and their employers. Sudden as it came on, it found many strikes begun, still more in preparation. No doubt, there will be more, in spite of the depression, and, also, for a rise of wages, for as to the argument of the manufacturer, that he cannot afford to advance, the workmen will reply, that provisions are dearer, both arguments being equally powerful. However, should, as I suppose, the depression prove lasting, the work-people will soon get the worst of it, and have to struggle — very unsuccessfully — against reduction. But then their activity will soon be carried over to the political field, and the new organization of trades, gained in the strikes, will be of immense value to them.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune, 1853--The War Question— Financial Matters— Strikes

First published: in the New York Daily Tribune, No. 3904, October 21, 1853 and reprinted in the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune, No. 878, October 25 and in abridged form in German in Die Reform, Nos. 64 and 65, October 24 and 25, 1853;
Transcribed: November 16 1996 (director@marx.org);

London, Friday, Oct. 7, 1853
[ The War Question ]
On Friday last, The Morning Chronicle, in its fourth edition, communicated a telegraphic despatch, according to which the Sultan [Abdul Mejid] had declared war against Russia. The Paris Patrie of yesterday evening announces, in a semi-official note, that the intelligence received from the East, does not confirm the statement of The Morning Chronicle. According to another Ministerial paper, the Constitutionnel, it was on the reiterated representations of Mr. de Bruck, the Austrian Internuncio, that the Divan assembled on the 25th, with the view to deliberate on the Vienna note, when it declared it would abide by the last note of Reshid Pasha. [1] A Grand Council was convoked on the following day. This Council consisting of 120 of the principal Ministers, Councillors, Pashas and religious dignitaries, resolved that

"it would be contrary to the dignity, and subversive of the sovereign authority of the Sultan to sign the Vienna note without the modifications suggested by the Divan, and that, inasmuch as the Czar [Nicholas I] had declared those modifications to be totally inadmissible, and refused to abandon his demand for an engagement destructive of the independence of the Ottoman Empire, it only remained for the Council to advise the Sultan to proceed at once to adopt the measures necessary for the preservation of his Empire, and to free his dominions from the presence of the invader." [Quoted according to the article published in The Morning Post, October 5, 1853 and reprinted in Le Constitutionnel, No. 279, October 6, 1853. -- Ed]

As to the formal declaration of war, it has not yet been confirmed by any authentic dispatch. This time, at least, the Porte has caught the Western diplomats. The English and French Governments, not daring to call their fleets home, unable to hold any longer their ridiculous position at Besika Bay, unwilling to pass the straits in open defiance to the Czar, wanted the Porte to send for ships from Besika Bay on the pretext that danger to the Christians at Constantinople was to be apprehended during the fêtes of the Bairam. The Porte refused, observing that there was no danger; that if there was, it would protect the Christians without foreign aid, and that it did not wish to summon the ships until after the fêtes. But the vanguard of the united fleets had hardly crossed the straits, when the Porte, having now put its vacillating and treacherous allies into a fix, declared for war. As to the war itself, it commenced three months ago, when the Russian forces crossed the Pruth. The first campaign was even brought to a close when the Russian legions reached the banks of the Danube. The only change that can now take place will be that the war will cease to be a one-sided one.

Not only the Bey of Tunis [Ahmed], but the Shah of Persia [Nasr-ed-Din], notwithstanding the intrigues of Russia, has placed at the disposal of the Sultan a corps of 60,000 of his best troops. The Turkish army, then, may truly be said to be a mustering of all the available forces of Mohammedanism in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. The hosts of the two religions which have long struggled for supremacy in the East, the Russo-Greek and the Mohammedan are now fronting each other, the one summoned by the arbitrary will of a single man -- the other by the fatal force of circumstances, according to their mutual creeds, as the Russo-Greek Church rejects the dogma of predestination, while Mohammedanism centers upon fatalism.

To-day two meetings are to be held, the one in Downing-st. -- the other at the London Tavern; the one by the Ministers -- the other against them; the one in favor of the Czar -- the other in favor of the Sultan.

From the leaders of The Times and Morning Chronicle, we might infer, if there could exist any doubt about the intention of the Coalition, that it will try to the utmost to prevent war, to resume negotiations, to kill time, to paralyze the Sultan's army, and to support the Czar in the Principalities.

"The Czar has declared for peace," The Times is happy to state [here and below Marx quotes from the leaders in The Times No. 21552, October 6, 1853. -- Ed.], upon undoubted authority. The Czar has expressed "pacific sentiments at Olmütz [2] by his own lips." He will not accept the modifications the Porte has proposed; he will abide by the original Vienna note, but he will allow the Vienna conference to interpret the note in a preternatural sense, contradictory to his own Nesselrode's interpretation. He will allow them to occupy themselves with conferences, provided they allow him, meanwhile, to occupy the Principalities.

The Times, in its peace paroxysm, compares the two Emperors of Russia and Austria to a couple of savage chiefs in the interior of Africa, in order to arrive at the conclusion:

"After all, what does the world care for the Emperor of Russia, that it should go to war out of deference to his political mistakes?"

[ Financial Matters ]
The banks of Turin, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw have raised their rate of discount. In the bank returns of last week, the bullion reserve of the Bank of England was stated to have again decreased by £181,615, its total amount now being only £15,680,783. The active circulation of notes has decreased to the extent of nearly £500,000, while the discount of bills has increased by £400,000 [based on an account of September 24, 1853 in The Economist, No. 527 October 1, 1853. -- Ed.] a coincidence which confirms the statement I made in my letter on the Peel Act, that the amount of bank notes in circulation does not rise and fall in proportion to the amount of banking business which is done.

Mr. Dornbush concludes his monthly commercial circular as follows:

"Political events during the last week have greatly added to the agitation in the Corn trade, caused by the increasing reports of a deficient wheat crop, the spreading of the potato disease and the scarcity of ship-room. Town flour has advanced to 70 shillings per 280 pounds, new wheat to 80 shillings, with a rising discount approaching 5 per ct. A great excitement now pervades the corn trade -- the probability of a war in the East, the prohibition of exporting grain from Egypt, the confirmed deficiency in the wheat crop in England, the spreading of the potato disease, the falling off in the foreign arrivals (especially from the South of Europe), the continued demand for France, Belgium and Holland -- these were the principal exciting causes that again drove up prices of wheat variously from one shilling to six shillings per quarter in the leading provincial markets held last week.... Generally, immediately after harvest, the tendency of prices is and remains downward till Christmas. This year the movement has been the reverse.... Prices have been rising for some months past. At this moment there is no actual want of corn in any part of this quarter of the globe; many granaries, barns and rick-yards are full to repletion, and in some sea ports store-room is wanting. The late rise in price, therefore, has not been caused by a present, but by a prospective scarcity of corn, founded on the presumption of a deficiency in the crops, the effects of which are expected to be felt as the season advances. The coming winter is likely to prove one of great hardship and privation.... The prevailing opinion is still in favor of a further advance in prices; and while the bulk of speculators continue 'buying and storing,' the tendency is likely to remain upward, probably till next spring.... The presumable high range of prices during the next winter is likely to become, in the following spring, a great attraction to the importation of corn from distant regions, which, in ordinary seasons, cannot be reached on account of the distance and high cost of carriage; next spring an accumulation of arrivals from all accessible parts of the world is not improbable; and the very cause which now contributes to raise the price by the withdrawal of stocks from sale, will, with the setting in of the downward tide of prices, tend to depress the value of corn with a force commensurate to the then eagerness of holders to dispose of their stocks. Now the rule is to buy; then the watchword will be to sell. Next year may prove as dangerous and disastrous as 1847."

The general depression in the Manchester market continues. In proportion as the news from Australia and China, as well as that regarding the Eastern complication, are taking a more gloomy character, the minds of cotton-spinners manufacturers and merchants, become more unsettled. The fall in prices may now be considered in ordinary qualities and Nos. of yarn to be from 7/8 to 1d. per lb., from the highest point two months ago, which is very near twice as much as the fall in the corresponding quality of cotton, amounting to no more than 1/2 to 5/8 d. And even at the extreme reduction of 1d., people find it difficult to sell, and stocks, the bugbears of our sympathetic school of political economists, go on accumulating. Of course it must not be expected that this accumulation of stocks will increase very rapidly; at the present moment both merchants and manufacturers, on finding several markets overstocked, have yet the outlet of sending their goods, on consignment, to other markets, and this faculty they very largely use just now. But to throw the entire exportable produce of British industry, large enough to swamp, at regular intervals, the whole world, upon a few more or less confined markets, will necessarily excite the same state of plethora, and the revulsions consequent upon it, in those very markets which are as yet stated to be healthy. Thus it is that the slightly improved news from India, according to which there still is no chance of profitable exportation to that country, but merely a chance of diminishing loss upon fresh exports, has induced a rather considerable business to that country, partly on account of the regular India houses, partly on account of the Manchester spinners and manufacturers themselves, who, rather than submit to the loss incumbent upon sales in a declining market, prefer taking whatever slight chance of a better sale there may result from a speculative export to India. And here I may add, that it has been ever since 1847 a regular practice with the Manchester spinners and manufacturers to send out for their own account large shipments to India, etc., and to have the returns in Colonial produce, sold equally for their own account either in British North America or Continental harbors. These speculations do not, certainly, belong to the legitimate trading sphere of the manufacturer, who is necessarily not half as well informed of the state of the markets as the sea-port merchant, but they please the British cotton-spinner who, while directing such distant operations, believes that favorite illusion realized, in which he imagines himself the supreme director, the ruling mind, as it were, of the world's trade and commercial destinies. And if it were not for these speculations which hold fast for a year or eighteen months a considerable portion of the industrial surplus capital, there is no doubt that the extension of manufactures in England would for the last five years have gone on at a still more rapid rate.

In the dry goods market, domestics are the articles suffering under the greatest depression; stocks continue to accumulate although a great number of looms have been stopped. Yet it cannot be said that there is anything doing in other sorts of goods.

A similar stagnation prevails at Leeds and Bradford, at Leicester and Nottingham. At the latter place the hours of work have been reduced to ten and even eight in the lace trade; hosiery has been depressed ever since June last, when the production was at once reduced in Nottingham by one-third of its amount. The only trade that appears to go on in uninterrupted prosperity for the present, is the hardware trade of Birmingham and its vicinity.

At London, bankruptcy begins to spread among the small shop-keepers.

[ Strikes ]
In my letter of August 12, I stated that the master spinners and manufacturers were getting up "An Association for the purpose of aiding the trade in regulating the excitement among the operatives in the Manchester District," that that Association was to consist of local Associations, with a Central Committee, and that it intended "resisting all demands made by associated bodies of mill-hands, fortifying the monopoly of capital by the monopoly of combination, and dictating terms as an Associated body."

Now, is it not a very curious fact, that this scheme, of which informed you about two months ago, has, to this very moment, never been alluded to by the London papers, although silently carried out in the meantime, and already doing its work at Preston, Bolton and Manchester? The London press, it appears, was anxious to withhold the fact from the eyes of the world, that the Factory Lords were systematically arraying their class against the class of Labor, and that the successive steps taken by them, instead of being the spontaneous result of circumstances, are the premeditated effects of a deep-laid conspiracy of an organized Anti-Labor League! This English Capitalist League of the nineteenth century is yet to find its historian, as the French Catholic League did in the authors of the Satyre Menippée, at the end of the sixteenth century. [3]

The work-people, in order to succeed in their demands, must naturally try to keep the one party in till the strike of the others has proved victorious. Where this plan is acted upon, the mill-owners combine to close all their mills, and, thus, to drive their hands to extremities. The Preston manufacturers [4], as you know, were to begin the game. Thirteen mills are already closed, and, at the expiration of another week, every mill is to be shut up, throwing out of work more than 24,000 men. The weavers have addressed a memorial to the masters, soliciting an interview, or offering to refer the matters in dispute to arbitration, but their request was rejected. As the Preston weavers are assisted by penny collections from the operatives of the surrounding districts, from Stalybridge, Oldham, Stockport, Bury, Withnell, Blackburn, Church-Parish, Acton, Irwell-Vale, Enfield, Burnley, Colne, Bacup, &c.; the men having discovered that the only means of resisting the undue influence of capital, was by union among themselves; the Preston factory-lords, on their part, have sent out secret emissaries to undermine the means of succor for the men on strike, and to induce the mill-owners of Burnley, Colne, Bacup, &c., to close their establishments, and to cause a general cessation of labor. In certain places, as at Enfield, the overlookers have been induced to inform their masters, who had taken a part in forwarding the movement, and accordingly a number of penny collectors have been discharged. While the Preston men are exhorted by the work-people of the surrounding districts to remain firm and united, the Preston masters meet with an immense applause from the other manufacturers, being extolled as the true heroes of the age.

At Bury, matters are taking a similar turn as at Preston. At Bolton, the bed-quilt makers having lots cast to decide which of them were to begin striking, the masters of the whole trade at once closed their mills.

Besides the simultaneous closing of mills, other means of combination are resorted to. At Keighley, for instance, the weavers of Mr. Lund struck for an advance of wages, the principal cause of their turn-out being his giving less than was received by the weavers of Mr. Anderton, at Bingley. A deputation of the weavers having asked for an interview with Mr. Lund, and proceeded to his lodgings, they had the door politely shut in their faces. But, a week afterward, Mr. Anderton's work-people were informed by notice that a reduction would be made in the wages of his weavers of 3d. per piece, and of his woolcombers of one farthing per pound, Mr. Lund and Mr. Anderton having, in the meantime, concluded an alliance offensive and defensive, with a view to fight the weavers of the one by pulling down the wages of the other. Thus, it is supposed, Mr. Lund's weavers will be driven to submission or Mr. Anderton's weavers to a turn-out, and the additional weight of another turn-out doing away with all chance of support, both sets will bend to a general reduction.

In other instances the masters try to enlist the shop-keepers against the working men. Thus Mr. Horsfall, the coal king of Derby main pit, when, in consequence of a reduction of wages, his hands struck, went to all the butchers, bakers and provision dealers of the neighborhood the colliers trade with, to prevail on them not to let his men have anything on credit.

In all localities where the Association for "regulating the excitement among the operatives" exists, the associated masters have pledged themselves to heavy fines, in case of any individual member violating the status of their League, or yielding to the demands of the "hands." At Manchester these fines amount to £5,000, at Preston to £3,000, at Bolton to £2,000, etc.

There is one feature which, above all, distinguishes the present conflict from past ones. At former periods -- as in 1832, 1839, 1840, 1842 -- a general holiday, as it was called, viz.: a general and simultaneous stopping of labor throughout the whole kingdom, was a favorite idea with the operatives, and the great object they aimed at. This time, it is capital which threatens a general withdrawal. It is the masters who endeavor to bring about a general closing of mills. Do you not think that, if successful, it may prove a very dangerous experiment? Is it their intention to drive the English people to an insurrection of June [5], in order to break their rising spirit, and to lay them prostrate for a series of years to come?

At all events, we cannot too closely watch the symptoms of the civil war preparing in England, especially as the London press intentionally shuts its eyes to great facts, while it diverts its readers with descriptions of such trifles as the banquet given by Mr. Titus Salt, one of the factory princes of Yorkshire, at the opening of his palace-mill, where not only the local aristocracy were regaled, but his hands, too. "Prosperity, health, and happiness to the working class," was the toast proposed by him, as the public is told by the Metropolitan press, but it is not told, that, some days afterwards, his moreen weavers received notice of another reduction in their wages from 2/3 to 2/1. "If this means either health or prosperity to the moreen weavers," writes one of his victims to The People's Paper, "I, for one, do not want it."

You will perhaps have seen from The Times that a Mrs. MacDonnell, of Knoydart, Glengarry, has, in imitation of the Duchess of Sutherland, undertaken to clear her estates, in order to replace men by sheep. The People's Paper, informed by a correspondent on the spot, gives the following graphic description of this Malthusian operation!

"This lady had a number of cottagers on her domains, many of whom were unable to pay their rents -- some being considerably in arrears, as we are told. She, therefore, ordered them all off, and drove them to take refuge in the woods and caves, where they have since been lurking, or rather dying, while Mrs. MacDonnell's horses have been warmly bedded in secure and comfortable dwellings. She at the same time offered them a free passage to Canada, passage money being cheaper than poor rolls, and permission to sell their little stocks,' they having no stock whatever to sell, except the clothes they stand in, a broken table, or a rheumatic cat. Finally, she forgave them the arrears -- she could not get. This is called 'noble generosity.'"

Such ejections appear to be again the order of the day, throughout the Highlands. Thus, at least, we are informed by Sir Charles Forbes, a Highland laird, writing to The Times,

"that sheep-farms are now becoming so valuable, that it will pay our English sheep-farmers to hire sheep at any time, and to pay for the removal of all who stand in their way."

Signed: Karl Marx

NOTES
BACKGROUND: On November 3 1853, the New-York Daily Tribune (No. 3915) published a comment from Buffalo on this article. It was written in the form of a letter to the editors, entitled "Workmen's Strike in England" and signed "An Old English Factory Clerk." The writer of the letter stressed, in particular, that "every word of 'Karl Marx's' letter of the 7th inst., is true, touching the intentions of bad men, to provoke the operatives to overt acts." In their note, the editors argued the importance of strikes in the struggle for the workers' economic interests, advising the latter to fight for protectionist tariffs, and concluded with "but let every one act as to him shall seem advisable."

The article, entitled "Die Lage England," was published in an abridged form in the New York newspaper Die Reform.

The first section of this article was published under the title "The War Question" in The Eastern Question.

[1] A reference to Reshid Pasha's Note of August 19 1853 to the representatives of Britain, France and Prussia, which stated that the Turkish Government would accept the Vienna Note only if certain amendments and reservations were made in it, and if the Russian troops withdrew from the Danubian Principalities.

[2] In September 1853 a meeting between Nicholas I and the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph took place in Olmütz as a result of which the Austrian Government made an unsuccessful attempt to encourage the Western powers to take a new step toward settling the Russo-Turkish conflict on the basis of unconditional acceptance of the Vienna Note by the Sultan. During the talks, Nicholas I sought to convince Francis Joseph that the operations of Russian troops in the Danubian Principalities would be limited to defence of the left bank of the Danube.

[3] A reference to an anonymous political pamphlet published in France in 1594. It was written by supporters of religious peace closely associated with King Henry IV (Jacques Gillot, Florent Chrestien, P. Le Roy and others). The pamphlet was directed against the Catholic League (which was founded in 1576 during the Huguenot wars and operated with intervals up to 1596), whose aristocratic leaders strove to reduce the power of the monarchy and gain unrestricted privileges for the Catholic feudal nobility. The title of the pamphlet was borrowed from the Roman author Varro (1st century B.C.) who wrote his Menippean Satires in imitation of the Greek philosopher Menippus.

[4] A description follows of the initial stages of the major social clash between workers and employers which is known in the history of the working-class movement as the Preston strike. The weavers and spinners of the textile mills in and around Preston went on strike in August 1853 demanding a ten per cent wage rise; they were supported by workers of other trades. In September of the same year the Manufacturers' Association responded with a lockout. Twenty-five thousand workers out of thirty thousand were without work. The lockout lasted until February 1854, but the strike continued after that date. To break the strike the Manufacturers' Association started bringing workers to Preston from Ireland and English workhouses. In March 1854, the leaders of the strike were arrested, and as funds were low the workers were compelled to return to work. The strike ended in May.

In his reports to the New-York Daily Tribune, Marx wrote about different episodes of the strike; at the end of March 1854, he devoted a whole article to this event, "British Finances. -- The Troubles at Preston."

[5] A reference to the heroic uprising of the Paris workers in June 1848. The uprising was the first great civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in history.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853--On the Labor Contract

Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: by Marx: “Financial Failure of Government.– Cabs.–Ireland.–The Russian Question”;
First Published: in the New York Daily Tribune, July 29, 1853;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

“Strike” is the order of the day. During the present week 5,000 miners have struck in the northern coal district; 400 to 500 journeymen corkcutters in London; about 2,000 laborers employed by the different wharfingers on the Thames; the police force at Hull, similar attempts being made by the City and general Metropolitan Police; and finally the bricklayers employed at St. Stephens, under the very nose of Parliament.

“The world is becoming a very paradise for laborers. Men are becoming valuable,” exclaims The Times, In order to reduce that paradise to terrestrial dimensions, the mill-lords of Lancashire have formed an association, for mutually assisting and supporting each other against the demands of the people. But not content with opposing combination to combination, the bourgeoisie threaten to appeal to the interference of law — of law dictated by themselves. In what manner this is done may be inferred from the following expectorations of The Morning Post, the organ of the liberal and amiable Palmerston.

If there is a piece of wickedness which pre-eminently deserves to be punished with an iron hand, it is the system of strikes.... What is wanted is some stringent and summary mode of punishing the leaders and chief men of these combinations.[...] it would be no interference with the freedom of the labor market to treat these fellows to a flogging.... It is idle to say that this would interfere with the labor market. As long as those who supply the labor market refrain from jeopardizing the interests of the country, they may be left to make their own terms with the employers.

Within a certain conventional limit, the laborers shall be allowed to imagine themselves to be free agents of production, and that their contracts with their masters are settled by mutual convention; but that limit passed, labor is to be openly enforced upon them on conditions prescribed by Parliament, that permanent Combination Committee of the ruling classes against the people.

Source: Marx and Engels on Ireland, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971.

Like the world in general, we are assured that Ireland in particular is becoming a paradise for the labourer, in consequence of famine and exodus. Why then, if wages really are so high in Ireland, is it that Irish labourers are flocking in such masses over to England to settle permanently on this side of the “pond,”[41] while they formerly used to return after every harvest? If the social amelioration of the Irish people is making such progress, how is it that, on the other hand, insanity has made such terrific progress among, them since 1847, and especially since 1851? Look at the following data from “the Sixth Report on the District Criminal and Private Lunatic Asylums in Ireland”:

1851 Sum total of admissions in Lunatic Asylums. 2,584 (1,301 males and 1,283 females.)
1852 2,662 (1,276 males and 1,386 females.)
March, 1853 2,870 (1,447 males and 1,423 females.)
And this is the same country in which the celebrated Swift, the founder of the first Lunatic Asylum in Ireland,[42] doubted whether 90 madmen could be found.

Notes
41. Marx means the Irish Sea.

42. Jonathan Swift bequeathed his entire fortune to the building of a lunatic asylum in Dublin. It was opened in 1757.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune--Russian Policy Against Turkey.— Chartism

Published: in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3819, July 14, 1853. Reprinted in the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune, No. 849, July 15, 1853;
Transcribed by: director@marx.org, November 16 1996;
HTML Mark-up: Andy Blunden;

London, Friday, July 1, 1853

Since the year 1815 the Great Powers of Europe have feared nothing so much as an infraction of the status quo. But any war between any two of those powers implies subversion of that status quo. That is the reason why Russia's encroachments in the East have been tolerated, and why she has never been asked for anything in return but to afford some pretext, however absurd, to the Western powers, for remaining neutral, and for being saved the necessity of interfering with Russian aggressions. Russia has all along been glorified for the forbearance and generosity of her "august master," who has not only condescended to cover the naked and shameful subserviency of Western Cabinets, but has displayed the magnanimity of devouring Turkey piece after piece, instead of swallowing it at a mouthful. Russian diplomacy has thus rested on the timidity of Western statesmen, and her diplomatic art has gradually sunk into so complete a mannerism, that you may trace the history of the present transactions almost literally in the annals of the past.

The hollowness of the new pretexts of Russia is apparent, after the Sultan [Abdul Mejid] has granted, in his new firman to the Patriarch of Constantinople [Germanos] more than the Czar himself had asked for -- so far as religion goes. Now was, perhaps, the "pacification of Greece" [1] a more solid pretext? When M. de Villèle, in order to tranquilize the apprehensions of the Sultan [Mahmud II], and to give a proof of the pure intentions of the Great Powers, proposed "that the allies ought above all things to conclude a Treaty by which the actual status quo of the Ottoman Empire should be guaranteed to it," the Russian Ambassador at Paris [K. O. Pozzo di Borgo] opposed this proposition to the utmost, affirming

"that Russia, in displaying generosity in her relations with the Porte, and in showing inappreciable respect for the wishes of her allies, [...] had been obliged, nevertheless, to reserve exclusively to herself to determine her own differences with the Divan; [...] that a general guarantee of the Ottoman Empire, independently of its being unusual and surprising, would wound the feelings of his master and the rights acquired by Russia, and the principles upon which they were founded."

Russia pretends now to occupy the Danubian principalities, without giving to the Porte the right of considering this step as a casus belli.

Russia pretended, in 1827, "to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia in the name of the three Powers."

While Russia proclaimed the following in her declaration of war of April 26, 1828:

"Her allies would always find her ready to concert her march with them, in execution of the Treaty of London [2], and ever anxious to aid in a work, which her religion and all the sentiments honorable to humanity recommended to her active solicitude, always disposed to profit by her actual position only for the purpose of accelerating the accomplishment of the Treaty of July 6th,"

while Russia announced in her manifesto, A. D. 1st October, 1829:

"Russia has remained constantly a stranger to every desire of conquest -- to every view of aggrandizement."

Her Ambassador at Paris was writing to Count Nesselrode.

"When the Imperial Cabinet examined the question, whether it had become expedient to take up arms against the Porte, [...] there might have existed some doubt about the urgency of this measure in the eyes of those who had not sufficiently reflected upon the effects of the sanguinary reforms, which the Chief of the Ottoman Empire has just executed with such tremendous violence. [...]

"The Emperor has put the Turkish system to the proof, and his Majesty has found it to possess a commencement of physical and moral organization which it hitherto had not. If this Sultan had been enabled to offer us a more determined and regular resistance, while he had scarcely assembled together the elements of his new plan of reform and ameliorations, how formidable should we have found him had he had time to give it more solidity. [...] Things being in this state, we must congratulate ourselves upon having attacked them before they became more dangerous for us, for delay would only have made our relative situation worse, and prepared us greater obstacles than those with which we meet."

Russia proposes now to make an aggressive step and then to talk about it. In 1829 Prince Lieven wrote to Count Nesselrode:

"We shall confine ourselves to generalities, for every circumstantial communication on a subject so delicate would draw down real dangers, and if once we discuss with our allies the articles of treaty with the Porte, we shall only content them when they will imagine that they have imposed upon us irreparable sacrifices. It is in the midst of our camp that peace must be signed and it is when it shall have been concluded that Europe must know its conditions. Remonstrances will then be too late and it will then patiently suffer what it can no longer prevent."

Russia has now for several months been delaying action under one presence or another, in order to maintain a state of things which, being neither war nor peace, is tolerable to herself, but ruinous to the Turks. She acted in precisely the same manner in the period we have alluded to. As Pozzo di Borgo said:

"It is our policy to see that nothing new happens during the next four months and I hope we shall accomplish it, because men in general prefer waiting; but the fifth must be fruitful in events."

The Czar, after having inflicted the greatest indignities on the Turkish Government, and notwithstanding that he now threatens to extort by force the most humiliating concessions, nevertheless raises a great cry about his "friendship for the Sultan Abdul Mejid" and his solicitude "for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire." On the Sultan he throws the "responsibility" of opposing his "just demands," of continuing to "wound his friendship and his feelings," of rejecting his "note," and of declining his "protectorate."

In 1828, when Pozzo di Borgo was interpellated by Charles X about the bad success of the Russian arms in the campaign of that year, he replied, that, not wishing to push the war à outrance without absolute necessity, the Emperor had hoped that the Sultan would have profited by his generosity, which experiment had now failed.

Shortly before commencing her present quarrel with the Porte Russia sought to bring about a general coalition of the Continental Powers against England, on the Refugee question, and having failed in that experiment, she attempted to bring about a coalition with England against France. Similarly, from 1826 to 1828, she intimidated Austria by the "ambitious projects of Prussia," doing simultaneously all that was in her power to swell the power and pretensions of Prussia, in order to enable her to balance Austria. In her present circular note she indicts Bonaparte as the only disturber of peace by his pretensions respecting the Holy Places [3]; but, at that time, in the language of Pozzo di Borgo, she attributed

"all the agitation that pervaded Europe to the agency of Prince Metternich, and tried to make the Duke of Wellington himself perceive that the deference which he would have to the Cabinet of Vienna would be a drawback to his influence with all the others, and to give such a turn to things that it would be no longer Russia that sought to compromise France with Great Britain, but Great Britain who had repudiated France, in order to join the Cabinet of Vienna."

Russia would now submit to a great humiliation if she retreated. That was identically her situation after the first unsuccessful campaign of 1828. What was then her supreme object? We answer in the words of her diplomatist:

"A second campaign is indispensable in order to acquire the superiority requisite for the success of the negotiation. [...] When this negotiation shall take place we must be in a state to dictate the conditions of it in a prompt and rapid manner.... With the power of doing more His Majesty would consent to demand less. [...] To obtain this superiority appears to me what ought to be the aim of all our efforts. This superiority has now become a condition of our political existence, such as we must establish [...] and maintain in the eyes of the world."

But does Russia not fear the common action of England and France? Certainly. In the Secret Memoirs on the Means possessed by Russia for breaking up the alliance between France and England, revealed during the reign of Louis Philippe, we are told:

"In the event of a war, in which England should coalesce with France, Russia indulges in no hope of success. unless that union [...] be broken up; so that at the least England should consent to remain neutral during the continental conflict."

The question is: Does Russia believe in a common action of England and France? We quote again from Pozzo di Borgo's dispatches:

"From the moment that the idea of the ruin of the Turkish Empire ceases to prevail, it is not probable that the British Government would risk a general war for the sake of exempting the Sultan from acceding to such or such condition, above all in the state in which things will be at the commencement of the approaching campaign, when everything will be as yet uncertain and undecided. These considerations would authorize the belief that we have no cause to fear an open rupture on the part of Great Britain; and that she will content herself with counseling the Porte to beg peace, and with lending the aid of the good offices in her power during the negotiation if it takes place, without going further, should the Sultan refuse or we persist."

And as to Nesselrode's opinion of the "good" Aberdeen, the Minister of 1828, and the Minister of 1853, it may be well to quote the following from a dispatch by Prince Lieven:

"Lord Aberdeen reiterated in his interview with me the assurance that at no period it had entered into the intentions of England to seek a quarrel with Russia -- that he feared that the position of the English Ministry was not well understood at St. Petersburg -- that he found himself in a delicate situation. Public opinion was always ready to burst forth against Russia. The British Government could not constantly brave it; and it would be dangerous to excite it on questions [...] that touched so nearly the national prejudices. On the other side we could reckon with entire confidence upon the [...] friendly dispositions of the English Ministry which struggled against them."

The only thing astonishing in the note of M. de Nesselrode, of June 11, is not "The insolent melange of professions refuted by acts, and threats veiled in declaimers," but the reception Russian diplomatical notes meet with for the first time in Europe, calling forth, instead of the habitual awe and admiration, blushes of shame at the past and disdainful laughter from the Western world at this insolent amalgamation of pretensions, finesse and real barbarism. Yet Nesselrode's circular note, and the "ultimatissimum" of June 16, are not a bit worse than the so much admired master-pieces of Pozzo di Borgo and Prince Lieven. Count Nesselrode was at their time, what he is now, the diplomatical head of Russia.

There is a facetious story told of two Persian naturalists who were examining a bear; the one who had never seen such an animal before, inquired whether that animal dropped its cubs alive or laid eggs; to which the other, who was better informed, replied: "That animal is capable of anything." The Russian bear is certainly capable of anything, so long as he knows the other animals he has to deal with to be capable of nothing.

En passant, I may mention the signal victory Russia has just won in Denmark, the Royal message having passed with a majority of 119 against 28, in the following terms:

"In agreement with the 4th paragraph of the Constitution d. d. June 5, 1849, the United Parliament, for its part, gives its consent to the arrangement by His Majesty of the succession to the whole Danish Monarchy in accordance with the Royal message respecting the succession of Oct. 4, 1852, renewed June 13, 1853."

[ Chartism ]
Strikes and combinations of workmen are proceeding rapidly, and to an unprecedented extent. I have now before me reports on the strikes of the factory hands of all descriptions at Stockport, of smiths, spinners, weavers, etc., at Manchester, of carpet-weavers at Kidderminster, of colliers at the Ringwood Collieries, near Bristol, of weavers and roomers at Blackburn, of roomers at Darwen, of the cabinet-makers at Boston, of the bleachers, finishers, dyers and power-loom weavers of Bolton and neighborhood, of the weavers of Barnsley, of the Spitalfields broad-silk weavers, of the lace makers of Nottingham, of all descriptions of workingmen throughout the Birmingham district, and in various other localities. Each mail brings new reports of strikes; the turn-out grows epidemic. Every one of the larger strikes, like those at Stockport, Liverpool, etc., necessarily generates a whole series of minor strikes, through great numbers of people being unable to carry out their resistance to the masters, unless they appeal to the support of their fellow-workmen in the Kingdom, and the latter, in order to assist them, asking in their turn for higher wages. Besides it becomes alike a point of honor and of interest for each locality not to isolate the efforts of their fellow-workmen by submitting to worse terms, and thus strikes in one locality are echoed by strikes in the remotest other localities. In some instances the demands for higher wages are only a settlement of long-standing arrears with the masters. So with the great Stockport strike.

In January, 1848, the mill-owners of the town made a general reduction of 10 per cent. from all descriptions of factory-workers' wages. This reduction was submitted to upon the condition that when trade revived the 10 per cent. was to be restored. Accordingly the work-people memorialized their employers, early in March, 1853, for the promised advance of 10 per cent.; and as they would not come to arrangements with them, upward of 30,000 hands struck. In the majority of instances, the factory-workmen affirmed distinctly their right to share in the prosperity of the country, and especially in the prosperity of their employers.

The distinctive feature of the present strikes is this, that they began in the lower ranks of unskilled labor (not factory labor) actually trained by the direct influence of emigration, according to various strata of artizans, till they reached at last the factory people of the great industrial centers of Great Britain; while at all former periods strikes originated regularly from the heads of the factory-workers, mechanics, spinners, &c., spreading thence to the lower classes of this great industrial hive, and reaching only in the last instance, to the artizans. This phenomenon is to be ascribed solely to emigration.

There exists a class of philanthropists, and even of socialists, who consider strikes as very mischievous to the interests of the "workingman himself," and whose great aim consists in finding out a method of securing permanent average wages. Besides, the fact of the industrial cyclus, with its various phases, putting every such average wages out of the question. I am, on the very contrary, convinced that the alternative rise and fall of wages, and the continual conflicts between masters and men resulting therefrom, are, in the present organization of industry, the indispensable means of holding up the spirit of the laboring classes, of combining them into one great association against the encroachments of the ruling class, and of preventing them from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production. In a state of society founded upon the antagonism of classes, if we want to prevent Slavery in fact as well as in name, we must accept war. In order to rightly appreciate the value of strikes and combinations, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the apparent insignificance of their economical results, but hold, above all things, in view their moral and political consequences. Without the great alternative phases of dullness, prosperity, over-excitement, crisis and distress, which modern industry traverses in periodically recurring cycles, with the up and down of wages resulting from them, as with the constant warfare between masters and men closely corresponding with those variations in wages and profits, the working-classes of Great Britain, and of all Europe, would be a heart-broken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass, whose self-emancipation would prove as impossible as that of the slaves of Ancient Greece and Rome. We must not forget that strikes and combinations among the serfs were the hot-beds of the mediaeval communes, and that those communes have been in their turn, the source of life of the now ruling bourgeoisie.

I observed in one of my last letters, of what importance the present labor-crisis must turn out to the Chartist movement in England, which anticipation I now find realized by the results obtained in the first two weeks of the reopened campaign by Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader. The first great open-air meeting was, as you know, to be held on the mountain of Blackstone-Edge. On the 19th ult., the Lancashire and Yorkshire delegates of the respective Chartist localities congregated there, constituting themselves as Delegate-Council Ernest Jones's petition for the Charter was unanimously adopted as that proposed to emanate from the meetings in the two counties, and the presentation of the Lancashire and Yorkshire petitions was voted to be entrusted to Mr. Apsley Pellatt, M. P. for Southwark, who had agreed to undertake the presentation of all Chartist petitions. As to the general meeting, the most sanguine minds did not anticipate its possibility, the weather being terrific, the storm increasing hourly in violence and the rain pouring without intermission. At first there appeared only a few scattered groups climbing up the hill, but soon larger bodies came into sight, and from an eminence that overlooked the surrounding valleys, thin but steady streams of people could be viewed as far as the eye could carry, through the base pelting of the rain, coming upward along the roads and footpaths leading from the surrounding country. By the time at which the meeting was announced to commence, upward of 3,000 people had met on the spot, far removed from any village or habitation, and during the long speeches, the meeting, notwithstanding the most violent deluge of rain, remained steadfast on the ground

Mr. Edward Hooson's resolution: "That the social grievances of the working classes of the country are the result of class-legislation, and that the only remedy for such class-legislation is the adoption of the people's Charter," was supported by Mr. Gammage, of the Chartist Executive, [4] and Mr. Ernest Jones, from whose speeches I give some extracts.

"The resolution which has been moved attributed the people's [...] grievances to class-legislation. He thought that no man who had watched the course of events could disagree with that statement. The House of Commons, so called, had turned a deaf ear to all their complaints, and when the wail of misery had arisen from the people, it had been mocked and derided by the men who assumed to be the representatives of the nation, and if by any singular chance the voice of the people found an echo in that House, it was always drowned in the clamor of the murderous majority of our class-legislators. [Loud applause.] The House of Commons not only refused to do justice to the people, but it even refused to inquire into their social condition. They would all recollect that sometime ago, Mr. Slaney had introduced into the House a motion for the appointment of a standing commission. whose business it should be to inquire into that condition and suggest measures of relief -- but such was the determination of the House to evade the question, that on the introduction of the motion, only twenty-six members were present, and the House was counted out. [Loud cries of shame, shame.] And on the reintroduction of that motion, so far from Mr. Slaney being successful, he (Mr. Gammage) believed that out of 656 honorable men, but 19 were present even to enter on a discussion of the question. [...] When he told them what was the actual condition of the people, he thought they would agree with him, that there existed abundant reasons for inquiry. They were told by political economists that the annual production of this country was £820,000,000. Assuming that there were in the United Kingdom 5,000,000 of working families, and that such families received an average income of fifteen shillings per week, which he believed was a very high average compared with what they actually received [cries of "a great deal too high"], supposing them, however, to average this amount, they received out of their enormous annual production a miserable one hundred and ninety-five millions, -- [cries of shame]. -- and all the rest went into the pockets of idle landlords, usurers and the capitalist class generally.... Did they require a proof that these men were robbers? [...] They were not the worst of thieves who were confined within the walls of our prisons; the greatest and cleverest of thieves were those who robbed by the power of laws made by themselves, and these large robberies were the cause of all the smaller ones that were transacted throughout the country.... Mr. Gammage then entered into an analysis of the House of Commons, proving [...] that from the classes to which the members of that House belonged, and the classes which they represented, it was impossible that there should exist the smallest sympathy between them and the working millions. In conclusion, said the speaker, the people must become acquainted with their Social Rights."

Mr. Ernest Jones said:

"To-day we proclaim that the Charter shall be law. [Loud cheers.] I ask you how to reengage in this great movement, because I know that the time has arrived for so doing, and that the game is in your hand, and because I am anxious that you should not let the opportunity go by. Brisk trade and emigration have given you a momentary power, and upon how you use that power depends your future position. If you use it only for the objects of the present, you will break down when the circumstances of the present cease. But if you use it, not only to strengthen your present position, but to secure your future one, you will triumph over all your enemies. If brisk trade and emigration give you power, that power must cease when brisk trade and emigration cease, and unless you secure yourself in the interval, you will be more slaves than ever. [Hear, hear.] But the very sources that cause your strength now will cause your weakness before long. The emigration that makes your labor scarce, will make soon your employment scarcer.... The commercial reaction will set in, and now I ask you, how are you preparing to meet it? [...] You are engaged in a noble labor movement for short time and high wages, and you are practically carrying it through to some extent, [...] but mark! you are not carrying it through Parliament. Mark! the game of the employer is this -- amuse them with some concessions, but yield to them no law. Don't pass a Wages bill in Parliament, but concede some of its provisions in the factory. [Hear.] The wages slave will then say, "Never mind a political organization for a Ten Hours bill or a Wages measure -- we've got it, ay, ourselves without Parliament." Yes, but can you keep it without Parliament? What gave it you? Brisk trade. What will take it from you? Dull trade. [...] Your employers know this. [...] Therefore, they shorten your hours of work or raise your wages, or remit their stoppages, in hopes that you will forego the political organization for these measures. [Cheers.] They shorten the hours of work, well knowing that soon they will run their mills short time -- they raise your wages, well knowing that soon they will give thousands of you no wages at all. But they tell you also -- the midland manufacturers -- that, even if the laws were passed, this would only force them to seek other means of robbing you -- that was the plain meaning of their words. So that in the first place, you can't get the acts passed, because you have not got a People's Parliament. In the second place, if they were passed, they tell you that they would circumvent them. [Loud cries of "hear."] Now, I ask you, how are you preparing for the future? How are you using the vast strength you momentarily possess? [...] That [...] you will be powerless, unless you prepare now -- you will lose all you may have gained; and we are here to-day to show you how to keep it and get more. [...] Some people fancy a Chartist organization would interfere with the Labor movement. Good Heaven! it is the very thing to make it successful.... The employed cannot do without the employer unless he can employ himself. The employed can never employ himself, unless he can command the means of work -- land, credit and machinery. He can never command these, unless he breaks down the landed, moneyed and mercantile monopolies, and these he cannot subvert except by wielding sovereign power. Why do you seek a Ten Hours bill? If political power is not necessary to secure labor-freedom why go to Parliament at all? Why not do in the factory at once? Why, because you know, you feel, you by that very act admit tacitly, that political power is needed to obtain social emancipation. [Loud cheers.] Then I point you to the foundation of political power -- I point you to the suffrage -- I point you to the Charter. [Enthusiastic applause.] ... It may be said: "Why do we not wait till the crisis comes, and the millions rally of their own accord." Because we want not a movement of excitement and danger, but one of calm reason and moral strength. We will not see you led away by excitement, but guided by judgment -- and therefore we bid you now reorganize -- that you may rule the storm, instead of being tossed by it. Again, continental revolution will accompany commercial reaction -- and we need to raise a strong beacon of Chartism to light us through the chaos of tempest. [...] To-day, then, we reinaugurate our movement, and to obtain its official recognition, we go through the medium of Parliament -- not that we expect them to grant the petition -- but because we use them as the most fitting mouth-piece to announce our resurrection to the world. Yes, the very men that proclaimed our death, shall have the unsought pleasure to proclaim our resurrection, and this petition is merely the baptismal register announcing to the world our second birth." [Loud cheers.]

Mr. Hooson's resolution and the petition to Parliament were here, as well as at the subsequent meetings during the week, enthusiastically accepted by acclamation.

At the meeting of Blackstone-Edge, Ernest Jones had announced the death of Benjamin Ruston, a workingman who seven years before, had presided at the great Chartist meeting held at the same spot [5]; and he proposed that his funeral should be made a great political demonstration, and be connected with the West Riding meeting for the adoption of the Charter, as the noblest obsequies to be given to that expired veteran. Never before in the annals of British Democracy, has such a demonstration been witnessed, as that which attended the revival of Chartism in the West Riding, and the funeral of Benjamin Ruston, on Sunday last [June 26, 1853], when upward of 200,000 people were assembled at Halifax, a number unprecedented even in the most excited times. To those who know nothing of English society but its dull, apoplectic surface, it should be recommended to assist at these workingmen's meetings and to look into those depths where its destructive elements are at work.

The Coalition has gained the preliminary battle on the Indian question, Lord Stanley's motion for delay of legislation having been rejected by a majority of 182 votes [In the House of Commons on June 30, 1853]. Pressure of matter obliges me to delay my comments upon that division.

Signed: Karl Marx

NOTES
BACKGROUND: The title under which the article appeared in the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune. The New-York Tribune entitled it "Russian Policy Against Turkey", and under this title the first section of the article, bearing on the Russo-Turkish conflict, was published in The Eastern Question.

In his work on this article and other reports dealing with the history of international relations, Marx made use of materials and documents usually translated into English and published in The Portfolio; or a Collection of State Papers. His excerpts from this source are contained in Notebook XXII.

[1] "Pacification of Greece" -- An expression used in the diplomatic documents of the European powers with reference to their intervention of the Turko-Greek conflict caused by the liberation struggle of the Greek people against Turkish rule in the 1820s.

[2] The London conferences of the representatives of Britain, Russia and France were held in 1827-29 and discussed the Greek question. On July 6, 1827, the three powers signed a Convention which confirmed the Protocol on Greek autonomy signed by Britain and Russia in St. Petersburg on April 4 1826. Both the Protocol and the Convention contained clauses on the diplomatic recognition of Greece as an independent state and armed mediation in the Turko-Greek conflict. On the basis of this Convention the allied fleet was sent into Greek waters and took part in the battle of Navarino. A number of other documents concerning Greece were also signed, including a Protocol of March 22 1829, which established the borders of the Greek state and provided for a monarchical form of government in Greece. However, these agreements and the steps taken by Britain and France, who hoped to settle the conflict through diplomacy, without a defeat for Turkey in the Russo-Turkish was, could not make Turkey change her attitude on the Greek question. It was only after the victory of the Russian army under General Diebich in the 1829 campaign that Turkey agreed to make some concessions.

[3] A reference to Nesselrode's Note (a circular letter of June 11 1853) to Russian diplomats abroad. The Note criticized the Porte's actions and gave ground for presenting a new ultimatum to Turkey demanding that the Russian Tsar be recognized as the protector of the Christian subjects of the Sultan and threatening to resort to "decisive measures" if these demands were rejected. This ultimatum, which Marx calls below and "ultimatissimum", was presented to the Porte on June 16 1853.

[4] A reference to the Executive Committee of the National Charter Association founded in July 1840. The Association was the first mass workers' party in the history of the working-class movement and had up to 50,000 members at the height of the Chartist movement. However, a lack of ideological and tactical unity and a certain looseness in its organization affected its activities. After the defeat of the Chartists in 1848 and the ensuing split in their ranks, the Association lost its mass character. Nevertheless, under the leadership of Ernest Jones and other revolutionary Chartists, it fought for the revival of Chartism on a socialist basis, which found its expression in the programme adopted by the Chartist Convention in 1851. The Association ceased its activities in 1858.

[5] A reference to the Blackstone-Edge meeting organized by the Chartists on August 2 1846. The meeting in which Ernest Jones took part was held on June 19 1853.

The International Workingmen's Association, 1866--Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council--The Different Questions

Written: in English by Marx at the end of August 1866;
First published: in Der Vorbote Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866 and The International Courier Nos. 6/7, February 20, and Nos. 8/10, March 13, 1867;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org, April 1996.

Table of Contents
Organisation of the International Association
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
Limitation of the working day
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
Co-operative labour
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
Direct and indirect taxation
International credit
Polish question
Armies
Religious question
1.
Organisation of the International Association
Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.

The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.

The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary. [The French and German texts add: "The Standing Committee, which is in fact an executive of the Central Council, to be chosen by Congress, the function of any of its member to be defined by the Central Council."]

The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carpets) to be charged extra.

While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (etablissement des societes de secours mutuels. Appoi moral et materiel accorde aux orphelins de l'association [foundation of benefit societies; moral and material assistance to the Association's orphans. -- Ed.]) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.

2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.

(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.

(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:

That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.

That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.

That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.

General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
Industry, name of.
Age and sex of the employed.
Number of the employed.
Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
(a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
Meal times and treatment.
Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
Nature of occupation.
Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
Moral condition. Education.
State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.

It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.

We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.

For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.

This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.

4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.

However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.

It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.

If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.

The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.

Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.

By education we understand three things.

Firstly: Mental education.

Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.

Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]

A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.

The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.

It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.

5.
Co-operative labour
It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.

(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.

(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.

(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.

(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.

(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.

6.
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.

Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.

Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.

(b) Their present.

Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield:

"That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community."

(c) Their future.

Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: "incapable of organised resistance"] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: "convince the broad masses of workers"] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.

7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.

(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]

Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment

Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.

8.
International credit
Initiative to be left to the French.

9.
Polish question
[The French subtitle reads: "Necessity of annihilating Russian influence in Europe by implementing the right of nations to self-determination and restoring Poland on a democratic and social basis." German subtitle reads similarly.]

(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendancy; That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.

(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance, with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be interrupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.

(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.

10.
Armies
[French and German subtitle reads: "Standing armies; their relation to production."]

(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point.

(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms.

(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies.

11.
Religious question
[French and German subtitle reads: "Religious ideas; their influence on the social, political and intellectual movement".]

To be left to the initiative of the French.

Notes
a Note from International Publishers: Instead of this sentence the French and German texts have two sentences ending the preceding paragraph and beginning a new one: "However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons belonging to the working class.

"We deem it necessary, basing on physiology, to divide children and young persons of both sexes" and then as in the English text.