Suppose absolute surplus-value is increased — surplus labour, and so the working day, is lengthened — while the variable capital stays the same: same number of workers, same nominal wage. It makes no difference here whether the overtime gets paid or not. This lowers the value of the constant capital relative to the whole capital and to the variable capital, and that by itself raises the rate of profit — even setting aside the growth in the amount of surplus-value and any possible rise in the rate of surplus-value.

The fixed part of the constant capital — the factory buildings, the machinery — stays the same size whether you work it 16 hours or 12. Lengthening the day needs no new outlay in this, the most expensive part of the constant capital. On top of that, the money sunk in the buildings and machinery comes back in the price of the goods over fewer turnover periods, so it has to stay tied up for less time before it earns a given profit. That is why lengthening the working day raises profit even when the overtime is paid, and — up to a point — even when it is paid at a higher rate than the normal hours.

This is why the constant need to add more fixed capital, built into the modern industrial system, has been one of the chief goads driving profit-hungry capitalists to lengthen the working day.

It doesn't work the same way when the working day stays the same. Then it becomes necessary either to increase the number of workers — and with them, in some proportion, the mass of fixed capital, the buildings, the machinery — in order to exploit a larger mass of labour (setting aside, here, any deductions from wages or any pushing of wages below their normal level).

Or, where the intensity of labour is stepped up, or the productive power of labour is raised, in order to produce more relative surplus-value overall, the mass of the circulating part of the constant capital grows, in branches of industry that use raw material, because more raw material and the like gets processed in the same span of time; and second, the machinery set in motion by the same number of workers grows too, and so does this part of the constant capital as well.

The growth of surplus-value is therefore accompanied by a growth of constant capital; the growing exploitation of labour, by a rise in the cost of the conditions of production through which that labour is exploited — that is, by a larger outlay of capital. The rate of profit is therefore reduced on the one side by this, even as it is raised on the other.

A whole series of running costs stays almost or entirely the same whether the working day is longer or shorter. Supervision costs are lower for 500 workers working 18 hours than for 750 workers working 12 hours.

As one Factory Report put it: 'The expense of working a factory 10 hours almost equals that of working it 12.'

Another Factory Report notes the same thing: government and local taxes, fire insurance, the wages of various permanent staff, the depreciation of machinery, and various other running costs of a factory carry on unchanged whether the working time is long or short; and as output falls, they rise relative to profit.

How long it takes for the value of machinery and other pieces of fixed capital to be reproduced is fixed, in practice, not by how long the machinery can physically last, but by the total length of the labour process during which it is used and worn down. If the workers have to grind away 18 hours instead of 12, that adds three days to the week — a week becomes a week and a half, two years become three.

If the overtime isn't paid, then beyond the normal surplus labour-time, the workers are giving up, out of every two weeks, a third week for nothing; out of every two years, a third year for nothing. And that is how the machinery's value comes back 50 per cent faster - reproduced in two-thirds of the time it would otherwise need.

Throughout this investigation - as in the one on swings in raw-material prices (Chapter 6) - we start from an assumption: how much surplus-value is squeezed out of the workers, and the rate at which it is squeezed, are both taken as fixed. That is a simplification, adopted to keep needless complications out.

As already stressed in the account of cooperation, the division of labour, and machinery, the economizing in the conditions of production that marks large-scale production comes essentially from this: these conditions serve labour that has been socially combined: one motor, one building, one set of tools worked by all the workers at once, instead of a separate set for each. That combination is what makes them social conditions of labour.

They get consumed together, in the production process, by the collective worker, instead of being used in scattered fashion by a mass of disconnected workers, or workers cooperating directly only on a small scale. In a large factory with one or two central motors, the cost of these motors does not rise in step with their horsepower - that is, with how much machinery they can drive; the cost of the transmission machinery doesn't grow in the same proportion as the mass of working machines it passes motion on to; the frame of the working machine itself doesn't get more expensive in proportion to the growing number of tools it operates as its organs, and so on.

The concentration of the means of production, further, saves on buildings of every kind — not only for the workshops themselves but also for storage space and the like. The same holds for spending on fuel, lighting, and so on. Other conditions of production stay the same whether they're used by a few or by many.

This whole economizing, which comes from concentrating the means of production and using them on a mass scale, is possible only where the workers have been massed together in one place and work together — in other words, only through the social combination of labour. It arises, then, just as much from the social character of labour as surplus-value arises from the surplus labour of each individual worker taken in isolation.

Even the constant improvements that are possible and necessary here spring solely from the social experience and observation that production by the collective worker, combined on a large scale, provides and allows.

The second great branch of economizing in the conditions of production works the same way. We mean the turning-back of the excretions of production — its so-called waste — into new elements of production, whether of the same branch of industry or of another; the processes by which this so-called waste gets thrown back into the circuit of production, and so of consumption, productive or individual.

This branch of savings too, which we'll look at more closely later, is the result of social labour on a large scale. It's the sheer mass of this waste, the scale that matches large-scale labour, that turns it back into an object of trade and so into a new element of production. Only as the waste of jointly-carried-on production, and so of production on a large scale, does it gain this importance for the production process, does it remain a bearer of exchange-value.

This waste — apart from the service it performs as a new element of production — cheapens, as it becomes saleable again, the cost of the raw material, into which its normal wastage is always reckoned: that is, the quantity that on average must be lost in working it up. Cutting the cost of this part of the constant capital raises the rate of profit by exactly that much, given the size of the variable capital and the rate of surplus-value.

If the surplus-value is given, the rate of profit can only be increased by lowering the value of the constant capital that commodity production requires.

As it enters into the production of commodities, it isn't the constant capital's exchange-value that matters at all, but its use-value alone. How much labour the flax can absorb in a spinning mill doesn't depend on its value, but on its quantity, once the degree of the productive power of labour — that is, the level of technical development — is given. In the same way, the help a machine gives to, say, three workers doesn't depend on its value, but on its use-value as a machine. At one stage of technical development, a bad machine can be costly; at another, a good machine can be cheap.

The extra profit a capitalist gets because, say, cotton and spinning machinery have become cheaper, is the result of a rise in the productive power of labour — not in the spinning itself, but in machine-building and cotton-growing. To turn a given quantity of labour into a product, that is, to appropriate a given quantity of surplus labour, less outlay is needed in the conditions of labour. The costs required to appropriate this particular quantity of surplus labour fall.

We've already talked about the saving that comes from the collective worker — the socially combined worker — using the means of production jointly in the production process. Further savings in the outlay on constant capital, arising from shortening the time of circulation (where the development of the means of communication is an essential material factor), will be looked at further on.

But here we should also note straightaway the economizing that comes from the constant improvement of machinery, namely: first, improvement in its material — iron instead of wood, for instance; second, machinery getting cheaper through improvements in machine-building generally, so that although the value of the fixed part of the constant capital keeps growing as labour develops on a large scale, it grows nowhere near as fast; third, specific improvements that let already-existing machinery work more cheaply and more effectively — improvements to steam boilers, for instance, which we'll look at in more detail later; and fourth, the reduction of waste through better machinery.

Anything that reduces the wear on machinery, and on fixed capital generally, over a given production period doesn't just cheapen the individual commodity — since every commodity reproduces, in its price, the share of wear that falls on it — it also reduces the proportional capital outlay for that period. Repair work and the like, as it becomes needed, gets counted, in the reckoning, as part of the original cost of the machinery. Reducing that repair cost, because the machinery lasts longer, reduces the price of the machinery by just that much.

For most economizing of this kind, it holds again that it's only possible for the combined worker, and often can only be realized by working on a still larger scale — so it requires, in turn, an even larger combination of workers directly in the production process itself.

On the other hand, though, the development of the productive power of labour in one branch of production — say, in the production of iron, coal, machines, in building, and so on, which may in turn be tied up with advances in intellectual production, especially natural science and its application — appears here as the condition for lowering the value, and so the cost, of the means of production in other branches of industry, say textiles or agriculture.

This follows automatically, since the commodity that comes out as the product of one branch of industry goes back in as a means of production in another. How cheap or dear it is depends on the productive power of labour in the branch it comes out of as a product, and this is, at the same time, the condition not only for cheapening the commodities into whose production it enters as a means of production, but also for lowering the value of the constant capital of which it now becomes an element — and so for raising the rate of profit.

What's characteristic of this kind of economizing on constant capital, arising from the ongoing development of industry, is that here the rise in the rate of profit in one branch of industry is owed to the development of the productive power of labour in another. What benefits the capitalist here is, again, a gain that is the product of social labour — even though not the product of the workers he himself directly exploits.

That development of the productive power of labour always traces back, in the last instance, to the social character of the labour that has been set in motion; to the division of labour within society; to the development of intellectual labour, especially of natural science. What the capitalist makes use of here are the advantages of the whole system of the social division of labour. It is the development of the productive power of labour in its external department — the department that supplies him with means of production — through which the value of the constant capital this capitalist applies is here lowered - the same means of production now cost him less - and so the rate of profit is raised.

There is a second way the rate of profit can rise. The first came from economizing on the labour that makes the constant capital; this one comes from economizing on how the constant capital is used. When workers are concentrated together and cooperate on a large scale, constant capital is saved: the same buildings, heating and lighting cost proportionally less for large-scale production than for small. The same holds for power machinery and working machinery — its value keeps rising in absolute terms, but falls relatively, against the growing scale of production and the growing size of variable capital, that is, the mass of labour-power set in motion.

The economy a capital achieves within its own branch of production is, first and directly, economy of labour — cutting down the paid labour of its own workers. The economy just described is a different thing: it is bringing about the largest possible appropriation of other people's unpaid labour in the most economical way — that is, at the given scale of production, at the lowest possible cost.

Where this economy does not rest on the exploitation, already covered, of the productive power of the social labour that goes into producing constant capital, but on economy in applying constant capital itself, it comes either directly from the cooperation and social form of labour within this particular branch, or from producing machinery and the like on a scale where its value does not grow to the same degree as its use-value does.

Two points need to be kept in view here. First: if the value of c were 0, then p' would equal s', and the rate of profit would stand at its maximum. Second: what matters for the direct exploitation of labour itself is not at all the value of the means of exploitation used, whether fixed capital or raw and ancillary materials. Insofar as they serve as absorbers of labour — as the media in or through which labour, and so also surplus labour, becomes objectified — the exchange-value of the machinery, the buildings, the raw materials and so on makes no difference whatever. Only two things matter. First, how much of them the process technically needs to put alongside a given amount of living labour. Second, how fit they are for the job — not only good machinery, but also good raw and ancillary materials.

The rate of profit does depend in part on the quality of the raw material. Good material yields less waste, so a smaller mass of raw material is needed to absorb the same quantity of labour; and the working machine also meets less resistance. In part, this even affects surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value: with bad raw material, the worker needs more time to process the same quantity, and with wages staying the same this means a deduction from surplus labour. It further has a very significant effect on the reproduction and accumulation of capital, which, as Volume 1 shows, depends even more on the productive power of labour than on the mass of labour applied.

This makes the capitalist's fanaticism for economizing on means of production understandable. That nothing gets wasted or squandered, that means of production are used only in the way production itself requires, depends partly on the training of the workers, and partly on the discipline the capitalist exercises over the combined workers — a discipline that becomes superfluous in a state of society where workers work for their own account, just as it is already almost entirely superfluous under piece-wages.

This same fanaticism also shows itself the other way round, in the adulteration of the elements of production — a chief means of lowering the value of constant capital relative to variable, and so of raising the rate of profit; and to this is added selling these elements of production above their value, insofar as that value reappears in the product, as a significant piece of swindling. This factor plays a decisive role especially in German industry, whose principle is: it can surely only please people if we first send them good samples and afterwards bad goods. These, however, are phenomena belonging to competition, and do not concern us here.

It should be noted that this rise in the rate of profit, produced by reducing the value — that is, the costliness — of constant capital, is entirely independent of whether the branch of industry in which it happens produces luxury goods, or means of subsistence that go into workers' consumption, or means of production generally. That distinction would only matter for the rate of surplus-value, which depends essentially on the value of labour-power, that is, on the value of the worker's customary means of subsistence. Here, by contrast, surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value are assumed as given. How surplus-value relates to the total capital — and this is what determines the rate of profit — depends, under these conditions, exclusively on the value of the constant capital, and not at all on the use-value of the elements it is made of.

The relative cheapening of the means of production naturally does not rule out their absolute sum of value growing; the absolute scale on which they are applied increases enormously as the productive power of labour develops, together with the growing scale of production that goes with it.

This economy in the application of constant capital, however you look at it, results, in part, from nothing more than the fact that the means of production function and are used as the common means of production of the combined worker, so that the economy itself appears as a product of the social character of directly productive labour. But it is also partly the result of the development of the productivity of labour in the branches that supply capital with its means of production — so that, if you consider total labour against total capital, rather than just the workers employed by capitalist X against that capitalist X, this economy again presents itself as a product of the development of the productive forces of social labour, the only difference being that capitalist X draws advantage not only from the productivity of labour in his own workshop but also from that of other people's workshops.

And yet the economy of constant capital appears to the capitalist as a condition entirely foreign to the worker, none of his business, something the worker has nothing to do with — while it stays perfectly clear to the capitalist that the worker certainly has something to do with whether the capitalist buys a lot of labour or a little for the same money (for that is how the transaction between capitalist and worker appears in his mind). To a much higher degree than with the other powers inherent in labour, this economy in the use of the means of production — this method of reaching a given result at the lowest outlay — appears as a power inherent in capital itself, and as a method peculiar to, and characteristic of, the capitalist mode of production.

This way of seeing things is all the less strange since the appearance of the facts matches it, and since the capital-relation in fact conceals the inner connection by putting the worker into complete indifference, externality and alienation towards the conditions in which his own labour is realized.

First: the means of production making up constant capital represent only the capitalist's money — much as, in Linguet's image, the body of a Roman debtor represented his creditor's money — and they stand in relation only to him, while the worker, insofar as he comes into contact with them in the actual process of production, deals with them only as use-values for production, as means of labour and material to work on. Whether their value rises or falls is therefore a matter that touches his relation to the capitalist no more than whether he works in copper or in iron. The capitalist, admittedly, likes to see the matter differently, as will be indicated later, as soon as an increase in the value of the means of production, and the resulting fall in the rate of profit, occurs.

Second: insofar as these means of production are, in the capitalist process of production, at the same time means for exploiting labour, whether these means of exploitation are relatively cheap or costly concerns the worker as little as it concerns a horse whether it is driven with an expensive bit and bridle or a cheap one.

Finally, as we saw earlier, in Volume 1, the worker in fact relates to the social character of his labour — to its combination with the labour of others for a common purpose — as to a power foreign to him; the conditions for realizing this combination are property foreign to him, and their being squandered would be a matter of complete indifference to him, were he not compelled to economize on it. It is quite different in factories that belong to the workers themselves, for example at Rochdale.

It hardly needs mentioning, then, that insofar as the productive power of labour in one branch of production shows up, in another, as a cheapening and improvement of the means of production, and so serves to raise the rate of profit, this general connection running through social labour appears to the workers as something entirely foreign to them — something that in fact concerns only the capitalist, since he alone buys and appropriates these means of production. That he buys the product of workers in a different branch of production with the product of the workers in his own branch, and so disposes of the product of other people's labour only to the extent that he has appropriated the labour of his own workers for nothing, is a connection that the process of circulation and so on conveniently conceals.

It should be added that, just as large-scale production first develops in the capitalist form, so the hunger for profit on one side, and on the other competition, which forces the cheapest possible production of commodities, together make this economy in the use of constant capital appear as something peculiar to the capitalist mode of production, and therefore as a function of the capitalist.

Just as the capitalist mode of production drives, on one side, the development of the productive forces of social labour, so on the other it drives economy in the use of constant capital.

But the capitalist mode of production does not stop at this alienation and indifference between the worker, the bearer of living labour on one side, and the economical — that is, rational and thrifty — use of his conditions of labour on the other. Given its contradictory, antagonistic nature, the capitalist mode of production goes on to count the squandering of the worker's life and health, the degrading of his very conditions of existence, as itself economy in the use of constant capital, and so as a means of raising the rate of profit.

Since the worker spends the greatest part of his life in the production process, the conditions of the production process are, for the most part, the conditions of his active life-process, his conditions of life — and economy in these conditions of life is a method of raising the rate of profit, entirely as we already saw earlier, in Volume 1, that overwork, the turning of the worker into a mere beast of burden, is a method of speeding up the self-valorization of capital, the production of surplus-value.

This economy stretches to overcrowding cramped, unhealthy spaces with workers — which in capitalist terms is called saving on buildings; to crowding dangerous machinery into the same spaces and neglecting safety devices against the danger; to leaving out precautions in production processes that are by their nature harmful to health, or, as in mines, bound up with danger, and so on. Not to mention the complete absence of any arrangements to make the production process more humane for the worker, to make it pleasant, or even just bearable. From the capitalist standpoint that would be a wholly pointless and senseless waste. Capitalist production, for all its stinginess, is on the whole thoroughly wasteful with human material — just as, on the other hand, thanks to the way it distributes its products through trade and the manner of its competition, it is very wasteful with material means too, and loses on one side, for society, what it gains on the other, for the individual capitalist.

Capital pushes in two directions at once. In its direct use of living labour it cuts that labour down to what is necessary, constantly shortening the labour a product takes by exploiting the social productive powers of labour — economizing, that is, as far as it can on the living labour it uses directly. Then it applies that reduced labour under the most economical conditions it can, driving the value of the constant capital it uses down to its lowest possible minimum. If the value of commodities is determined by the necessary labour-time contained in them, and not by the labour-time contained in them overall, then it is capital that first makes that rule bite in practice, while at the same time constantly shortening the labour-time socially necessary to produce a commodity. The price of the commodity is thereby reduced to its minimum, since every part of the labour required to produce it is reduced to its minimum.

With economy in the use of constant capital, a distinction has to be drawn. If the mass, and with it the sum of value, of the capital applied grows, this is at first only concentration of more capital in one hand. But it is precisely this larger mass, applied by one hand — which usually corresponds also to an absolutely larger but relatively smaller quantity of labour applied — that permits the economy of constant capital. Looked at for the individual capitalist, the scale of the necessary capital outlay grows, especially with fixed capital; but measured against the mass of material worked up and the labour exploited, its value falls.

The economy just described can now be worked out briefly through a few illustrations. We begin with the last of these economies: economy in the conditions of production, in so far as these are at the same time the worker's conditions of existence and life.

Coal mining. Neglect of the most necessary outlays.

A report on child labour in mines put it this way: given the competition that reigns among colliery owners, they spend only what is strictly needed to get past the most obvious physical difficulties. And given the competition that reigns among the miners themselves — usually more of them than there is work to go round — they will happily expose themselves to serious dangers and the most harmful conditions, for wages only a little higher than a neighbouring farm labourer's, especially since mine work also lets them put their children to profitable use.

This double competition is quite enough on its own to cause a large part of the mines to be run with the most incomplete drainage and ventilation — often with badly built shafts, poor equipment, incompetent engineers, and badly laid-out, badly maintained tunnels and roadways. And this is what causes a destruction of life, limb and health whose statistics, if drawn up, would make a horrifying picture.

Around 1860, English coal mines killed about fifteen men a week on average. According to the report on Coal Mines Accidents (6 February 1862), 8,466 were killed altogether in the ten years 1852 to 1861. But this figure is far too low, as the report itself says — because in the early years, when inspectors had only just been appointed and their districts were far too large, a great many accidents and deaths were never even reported.

The very fact that the number of accidents has fallen sharply since inspection began — despite the still enormous slaughter, and despite inspectors who are too few and too weak — shows which way capitalist exploitation runs of itself, where nothing checks it. These human sacrifices are owed mostly to the filthy avarice of the mine owners, who, for instance, often had only a single shaft dug, so that once that one shaft was blocked, there was not only no effective ventilation but no way out at all.

Looked at narrowly, on its own — leaving aside the process of circulation and the excesses of competition — capitalist production is extremely economical with labour once that labour has been realized and turned into objects, into commodities. And yet it is, far more than any other mode of production, a squanderer of human beings, of living labour — a squanderer not just of flesh and blood but of nerves and brain too.

In fact, it is only through the most tremendous waste of individual development that the development of humanity as a whole gets secured and carried through at all, in this historical epoch that comes immediately before the conscious reconstruction of human society - the point at which people set about remaking society deliberately. And since the whole economizing we are talking about here springs from the social character of labour, it is exactly this directly social character of labour that produces this waste of the workers' life and health.

Something that already shows this is the question the factory inspector R. Baker raised:

Baker put it like this: the whole question deserves serious thought — in what way can this sacrifice of infant life, caused by labour done in crowded groups, best be prevented?

Factories.

This belongs here too: the suppression of every precaution for the workers' safety, comfort and health, even inside the factories themselves. A large part of the casualty lists cataloguing the wounded and the dead of the industrial army — the ones you find in the annual factory reports — comes from exactly this. So does the lack of space, ventilation, and so on.

As late as October 1855, Leonard Horner was still complaining about the resistance of a great many manufacturers to the legal requirement for guards on the horizontal drive shafts — even though the danger kept proving itself through constant, often fatal, accidents, and even though the guard was neither expensive nor any kind of hindrance to the work. In resisting this and other legal requirements, the manufacturers were loyally backed by the unpaid Justices of the Peace who had to decide such cases — men who were mostly manufacturers themselves, or their friends. What kind of rulings these gentlemen handed down is shown by what Lord Campbell, the Lord Chief Justice, said about one such verdict when it came before him on appeal: "It is not an interpretation of the Act of Parliament, it is a repeal of the Act of Parliament."

In the same report Horner tells how, in many factories, the machinery is set in motion without any warning to the workers beforehand. Since there is always something to be done even on machinery that has stopped, hands and fingers are constantly at work inside it, and accidents keep happening again and again from this one simple failure to give a signal.

By this time the manufacturers had formed a trade union to resist factory legislation, the so-called National Association for the Amendment of the Factory Laws in Manchester, which in March 1855 raised more than £50,000 through contributions of two shillings per horsepower — to cover the legal costs of members sued by the factory inspectors, and to fight the cases as an association. The aim was to prove that killing is no murder, so long as it is done for the sake of profit. The factory inspector for Scotland, Sir John Kincaid, tells of a firm in Glasgow that fitted guards on the whole of its machinery using scrap iron already lying around, at a cost of £9 1s. Had it joined that association instead, its 110 horsepower would have cost it £11 in dues — more than the entire guarding had cost. Yet the National Association had been founded in 1854 for the express purpose of defying the law that required such guards; throughout the whole period from 1844 to 1854 the manufacturers had paid it not the slightest attention. Only when the factory inspectors, acting on Palmerston's instructions, warned the manufacturers that the law would now be enforced in earnest did the manufacturers immediately found their association — among whose leading members were many who were themselves Justices of the Peace, and so had to apply that very law in that capacity. When, in April 1855, the new Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, offered a compromise under which the government would settle for guards that were almost purely nominal, the Association indignantly rejected even that. In various lawsuits the famous engineer William Fairbairn lent himself as an expert witness on behalf of economy and capital's violated freedom, staking his own reputation on it. The head of the factory inspectorate, Leonard Horner, was hounded and slandered by the manufacturers in every way.

The manufacturers, however, did not rest until they had obtained a ruling from the Court of Queen's Bench interpreting the 1844 Act as requiring no guards at all on horizontal drive shafts mounted more than seven feet above the ground. And at last, in 1856, they succeeded — through the hypocrite Wilson-Patten, one of those pious men whose showy religion is always ready to do dirty work for the knights of the moneybag — in pushing through an Act of Parliament they could be content with, given the circumstances. The Act effectively stripped the workers of all special protection, and sent them, for damages from accidents with machinery, to the ordinary courts — sheer mockery, given English legal costs — while a very finely worked-out provision about the expert evidence required made it almost impossible for manufacturers to lose such a case. The result was a rapid rise in accidents.

In the half-year from May to October 1858, Inspector Baker recorded a 21 per cent increase in accidents over the previous half-year alone; in his view, 36.7 per cent of all accidents could have been avoided. And yet, by 1858 and 1859, the number of accidents had fallen considerably compared with 1845 and 1846 — by 29 per cent — even though the number of workers in the industries subject to inspection had grown by 20 per cent. Where did this come from? As far as the question has been settled so far — by 1865 — it has been settled mainly through the introduction of new machinery that already comes with the guards built in from the start, guards the manufacturer puts up with because they cost him nothing extra. Some workers had also succeeded in winning heavy court damages for their lost arms, with the judgments upheld all the way up to the highest court.

So much, then, for economizing on the means of protecting the life and limb of the workers, many of them children, against the dangers that come directly from putting them to work with machinery.

Work in enclosed spaces, in general. Everyone knows how far saving on space — and therefore on buildings — pushes workers into cramped rooms. On top of that comes saving on ventilation. Together with the longer working day, both of these produce a large increase in diseases of the breathing organs, and so more deaths.

The examples that follow come from the reports on 'Public Health, 6th Report, 1863'; the report was compiled by Dr John Simon, already well known to us from Volume 1.

Just as it is the combining of workers and their cooperation that makes possible machinery on a large scale, the concentration of the means of production, and economizing in how they are used — so the same is true of this mass working-together in enclosed spaces, under conditions where what decides things is not the workers' health but how easily the product can be made. This same massed concentration in one workshop is, on one hand, a source of growing profit for the capitalist; but on the other hand — unless it is offset by shorter working hours and by special precautions — it is at the same time a cause of the waste of the workers' life and health.

Dr Simon sets out a rule, which he proves with a mass of statistics:

'In proportion as a district's population is thrown onto shared work in enclosed spaces, in that same proportion — other things being equal — the death rate of that district from lung disease rises,' Simon writes.

Bad ventilation is the cause.

'And there is probably not a single exception, in the whole of England, to the rule that in every district with a substantial industry carried on in enclosed spaces, the increased mortality of these workers is enough to tint the whole district's mortality statistics with a decided excess of lung disease,' he adds.

Look at the mortality statistics for industries carried on in enclosed spaces that the Board of Health investigated in 1860 and 1861. Take the same number of men aged between 15 and 55: in England's farming districts, 100 of them die of consumption and other lung diseases. For a population of men the same size, the count is higher elsewhere: in Coventry, 163 such deaths; in Blackburn and Skipton, 167; in Congleton and Bradford, 168; in Leicester, 171; in Leek, 182; in Macclesfield, 184; in Bolton, 190; in Nottingham, 192; in Rochdale, 193; in Derby, 198; in Salford and Ashton-under-Lyne, 203; in Leeds, 218; in Preston, 220; and in Manchester, 263.

The table that follows gives an even more striking example. It shows deaths from lung disease, separately for each sex, for the age group 15 to 25, calculated per 100,000. The districts chosen are ones where only the women work in the industry carried on in enclosed spaces, while the men work in all sorts of trades.

In the silk districts, where more men also work in the factories, their mortality is high as well. The death rate from consumption and similar diseases, for both sexes, reveals — in the report's own words — 'the atrocious sanitary conditions under which a large part of our silk industry is carried on.'

And this is the very same silk industry whose manufacturers, pointing to the exceptionally healthy conditions of their trade, demanded exceptionally long working hours for children under thirteen — and were partly granted them (Volume 1, Chapter 10).

'None of the trades investigated so far has probably given a worse picture than the one Dr Smith gives of tailoring,' the report says. 'The workshops,' he says, 'vary greatly in their sanitary condition; but almost all are overcrowded, badly ventilated, and highly unfavourable to health... Such rooms are hot enough as it is; but once the gas is lit — as it is by day in foggy weather and in the evening in winter — the heat rises to 80 and even 90 degrees' (Fahrenheit, 27-33°C), 'causing dripping sweat and condensation of vapour on the window panes, so that water keeps trickling down or dripping from the skylight, and the workers are forced to keep some windows open, even though this unavoidably gives them chills.'

Of conditions in sixteen of the largest workshops in London's West End, he gives this description: the largest amount of cubic space per worker in these badly ventilated rooms is 270 cubic feet; the smallest, 105 feet; the average for all of them, only 156 feet per man. In one workshop with a gallery running all the way round and lit only from above, between 92 and over 100 people are employed, with a great many gas jets burning; the urinals are right next to the workroom, and the space does not exceed 150 cubic feet per man. In another workshop — described as no more than a dog kennel in a yard lit from above, ventilated only by a small skylight — five or six people work in a space of 112 cubic feet per man. And 'in these atrocious workshops that Dr Smith describes, the tailors usually work twelve to thirteen hours a day, and at certain times the work goes on for fifteen to sixteen hours.'

It should be noted — and John Simon, the head of the medical department behind the report, does note it — that for the age group 25 to 35, the death rates given for tailors, compositors, and printers in London are too low. In both trades, London employers take on a large number of young people from the countryside, probably up to age 30, as apprentices and 'improvers,' meaning people receiving further training. These young workers swell the numbers counted as employed, which is what the London industrial death rates are calculated against; but they do not contribute in the same proportion to the number of deaths recorded in London, because their stay there is only temporary — if they fall ill during this time, they go home to the country, and it is there, if they die, that the death gets registered. This distorts the younger age groups even more, and makes the London death rates for those groups completely worthless as a measure of how unhealthy the industry is.

Typesetters are in a similar position to tailors, except that on top of the lack of ventilation and the foul air, night work is added. Their usual working day lasts twelve to thirteen hours, sometimes fifteen to sixteen.

The report describes it this way: 'Great heat and foul air as soon as the gas is lit... It is not uncommon for fumes from a foundry, or the stench of machinery or cesspools, to rise from the floor below and make the troubles of the upper room worse. The heated air of the lower rooms already warms the upper ones by heating the floor, and where the rooms are low-ceilinged with heavy gas use, this is a serious problem. It is worse still where the steam boilers stand in the lower room and fill the whole house with unwanted heat... In general it can be said that ventilation is uniformly poor and completely inadequate to remove the heat and the products of burning gas after sunset, and that in many workshops — especially ones that used to be dwelling houses — conditions are highly deplorable.' 'In some workshops, especially those producing weekly newspapers, where boys of twelve to sixteen are also employed, work goes on almost without a break for two days and a night; while in other printing offices that specialize in handling 'urgent' work, not even Sunday gives the worker any rest, and his working week comes to seven days instead of six.'

Milliners and dressmakers already came up in Volume 1, Chapter 10, in connection with overwork. Their workrooms are described in our report by Dr Ord. Even when they are better during the day, they become overheated, foul, and unhealthy during the hours when gas is burning. In thirty-four of the better sort of workshops, Dr Ord found that the average number of cubic feet of space per worker was:

'In four cases, more than 500; in four others, 400 to 500; in five others, 300 to 400; in five others, 250 to 300; in seven others, 200 to 250; in four, 150 to 200; and finally in nine, only 100 to 150. Even the most favourable of these cases is barely enough for continuous work unless the room is perfectly ventilated... Even with good ventilation, the workshops become very hot and stuffy after dark because of the many gas jets needed,' Dr Ord reports.

And here is Dr Ord's remark about a workshop of the lower sort that he visited, one run on behalf of a middleman:

'A room holding 1,280 cubic feet; fourteen people present; space per person, 91.5 cubic feet. The women workers here looked worn out and run down. Their earnings were given as 7 to 15 shillings a week, with tea provided on top... Working hours from 8 to 8. The small room in which these fourteen people were crowded together was badly ventilated. There were two movable windows and a fireplace, but it was blocked up; there was no special ventilation of any kind,' Dr Ord notes.

The same report remarks, on the subject of the milliners' overwork:

'The overworking of young women in fashionable millinery shops reaches its monstrous degree for only about four months of the year — the degree that has, on many occasions, briefly stirred the public's surprise and indignation; but during those months, the rule in the workshop is a full fourteen hours' work a day, and when urgent orders pile up, whole days of seventeen to eighteen hours. In other seasons, work in the workshop probably runs ten to fourteen hours; those who work at home are regularly at it twelve or thirteen hours.

In the making of ladies' coats, collars, shirts, and so on, including machine sewing, the hours spent in the shared workshop are fewer, usually not more than ten to twelve; but, says Dr Ord, in certain houses the regular working hours are at certain times considerably stretched by extra hours paid specially for them, and in other houses work is taken home to be finished after the regular working time. We may add that both kinds of overwork are often compulsory.'

John Simon remarks in a note to this page:

'Mr Radcliffe, secretary of the Epidemiological Society, who has had particular occasion to examine the health of milliners at the leading establishments, found that out of every twenty girls who described themselves as "quite well," only one actually was; the rest showed various degrees of physical exhaustion, nervous strain, and the many disorders that come from these. He gives as the causes: first, the length of the working hours, which he puts at a minimum of twelve a day even in the quiet season; and second, overcrowding and bad ventilation of the workshops, air fouled by gas jets, inadequate or poor food, and a lack of attention to comfort at home.'

The head of the English health department concludes that in practice the workers cannot insist on what is, in theory, their first sanitary right. The right is this: whatever work an employer brings them together to do, he should, so far as it lies with him and at his own cost, strip of every needless danger to health. And since the workers cannot force this sanitary justice for themselves, they can expect no effective help either - whatever the legislator was presumed to intend - from the officials charged with carrying out the Nuisances Removal Act.

'No doubt it will cause some small technical difficulties to fix the exact line beyond which employers should be made subject to regulation. But... in principle the claim to protection of health is universal. And in the interest of the myriad working men and women whose lives are now needlessly stunted and shortened by the endless physical suffering that their mere employment produces, I venture to express the hope that the sanitary conditions of labour will likewise be placed universally under suitable legal protection — at least to the extent that effective ventilation of all enclosed workrooms is secured, and that in every trade unhealthy by its nature, the particular danger to health is restricted as far as possible.'

In his report for October 1852, Leonard Horner quotes a letter from the well-known engineer James Nasmyth of Patricroft, the inventor of the steam hammer, which says, among other things:

The public knows very little about the huge increase in driving power that changes and improvements like the ones I'm speaking of (to steam engines) have brought about. The engine-power of our district (Lancashire) lay under the weight of a timid, prejudiced tradition for almost 40 years, but now we're happily free of it. Over the last 15 years, and especially over the last 4 (that is, since 1848), some very important changes have taken place in the way condensing steam engines are run ... The result was that the same engines did far more work, and did it with a big cut in coal use besides ...

For many years after steam power was first brought into the factories of these districts, the speed people believed condensing steam engines could safely be run at was about 220 feet of piston travel a minute; that is, an engine with a 5-foot stroke was kept by the rules to 22 turns of the crankshaft. It wasn't thought proper to drive the engine any faster, and since the whole gearing was built for that 220-feet-a-minute speed, this slow and needlessly limited speed governed the whole works for years. Eventually, though — whether through some engineer's lucky ignorance of the rule, or some bold innovator's better reasons — a higher speed was tried, it worked very well, and others followed the example. People let the engine, as they put it, off the leash, and changed the main wheels of the transmission gearing so the steam engine could do 300 feet a minute or more, while the machinery itself was kept at its old speed ...

This speeding-up of the steam engine is now almost universal, because it turned out that the same engine not only yielded more usable power, but also ran more evenly, thanks to the greater momentum of the flywheel. With the steam pressure and the vacuum in the condenser held the same, more power was obtained simply by speeding up the piston stroke. Say we take a steam engine that gives 40 horsepower at 200 feet a minute: if we alter it suitably so that, at the same pressure and vacuum, it runs at 400 feet a minute, we get exactly double the power. And because the pressure and vacuum are the same in both cases, the strain on the individual parts of the engine — and so the risk of 'accidents' — is not much increased by the higher speed. The whole difference is that we use more steam roughly in proportion to the faster piston movement, and that the bearings and other moving parts wear a little faster, though hardly worth mentioning ...

But to get more power out of the same engine by speeding up the piston, more coal has to be burned under the same boiler, or a boiler with a greater capacity to make steam has to be used — in short, more steam has to be generated. That is what happened: boilers with a greater steam-making capacity were fitted to the old 'sped-up' engines, and in many cases this gave 100 per cent more work. Around 1842, the remarkably cheap power generated by the steam engines in the Cornish mines began to attract attention. Competition in cotton-spinning forced manufacturers to look for their main source of profit in 'savings', and the striking difference in coal used per hour and per horsepower shown by the Cornish engines — along with the remarkably economical performance of Woolf's double-cylinder engines — brought fuel-saving to the front in our district too. The Cornish engines and the double-cylinder engines delivered one horsepower for an hour on just 3½ to 4 pounds of coal, while the engines in the cotton districts generally used 8 or 12 pounds of coal per horsepower-hour. Such a big difference drove the manufacturers and engineers of our district to reach, by similar means, the kind of remarkably economical results that were already ordinary in Cornwall and France, where the high price of coal had forced manufacturers to cut this costly part of their business as far as they could.

This led to some very important results. First: many boilers, half of whose surface used to be left exposed to the cold outside air back in the good old days of high profits, were now covered over with thick layers of felt, or with bricks and mortar and other materials, which stopped the heat that had been so expensive to produce from radiating away. Steam pipes were protected the same way, and the cylinder too was wrapped in felt and wood. Second came the use of high pressure. Until then, the safety valve had only been weighted enough to let it open at 4, 6, or 8 pounds of steam pressure to the square inch; now it was found that raising the pressure to 14 or 20 pounds ... brought a very significant saving in coal — in other words, the factory's work was done burning a lot less coal. Those who had the means and the nerve for it carried the system of higher pressure and expansion through to its fullest extent, and used specially built steam boilers delivering steam at a pressure of 30, 40, 60, and 70 pounds to the square inch — a pressure that would have made an old-school engineer keel over in fright. But because the economic result of this higher steam pressure very soon showed itself in the unmistakable form of pounds, shillings, and pence, high-pressure boilers became almost universal on condensing engines.

Those who carried the reform through most thoroughly adopted the Woolf engines — and this is what happened in most of the engines built in recent years: Woolf engines with two cylinders, in one of which the steam from the boiler does work by virtue of its pressure being greater than that of the atmosphere, and then, instead of escaping into the open air after every piston stroke as it used to, passes into a low-pressure cylinder about four times the size, does further expansion work there, and is then led into the condenser. The economic result got from engines like this is one horsepower for one hour on every 3½ to 4 pounds of coal, whereas engines of the old kind needed 12 to 14 pounds for the same. A clever device has made it possible to fit the Woolf system of the double cylinder — the combined high- and low-pressure engine — onto already-existing older engines, raising their output while at the same time cutting their coal use. The same result has been reached over the last 8 to 10 years by coupling a high-pressure engine to a condensing engine, so that the used steam from the first passes into the second and drives it. This system has proved useful in many cases.

Nasmyth goes on: it wouldn't be easy to give an exact figure for the increased work done by these very same steam engines where some or all of these newer improvements have been fitted. But I am sure that, for the same weight of steam machinery, we now get at least 50 per cent more service or work on average, and that in many cases the very same steam engine that gave 50 horsepower back when the limited speed of 220 feet a minute was in force now delivers over 100. The highly economical results of using high-pressure steam with condensing engines, together with the far greater demands made on the old steam engines by the expansion of business, have in the last three years led to the introduction of tubular boilers, and through this the cost of generating steam has again been significantly cut.

The same holds for the rest of a factory's machinery - the shafts and belts that carry the power around, and the machines that actually do the work on the material.

Redgrave says: the swift advances made in improving machinery over the last few years have let manufacturers expand production without needing extra driving power. Using labour more economically has become necessary because the working day has been shortened, and in most well-run factories people are always asking how output can be increased while spending less. I have in front of me a statement of figures, which I owe to the kindness of a very intelligent gentleman in my district, showing the number and ages of the workers employed in his factory, the machinery in use, and the wages paid, covering the period from 1840 to now. In October 1840 his firm employed 600 workers, of whom 200 were under 13; in October 1852, only 350 workers, of whom only 60 were under 13. Practically the same number of machines were running, apart from very few, and the same total was paid out in wages in both years.

The new machinery pays off in full only in a building put up for it: an old mill can house it, but not let it run at its best.

A cotton spinner testified: when it comes to improvements in machinery, I have to point out that above all a great advance has been made in the building of factories suited to holding this new machinery ... On the ground floor I double all my yarn — twist two strands into one — and there alone I run 29,000 doubling spindles. In this room and the adjoining shed alone I make a saving in labour of at least 10 per cent — not so much because of improvements in the doubling process itself as because the machines are now concentrated under a single management; and I can drive the same number of spindles with a single main shaft, which saves me 60 to 80 per cent on shafting — the line of rotating shafts that carries the power through the mill — compared with other firms. This also brings a big saving in oil, grease, and so on ... in short, with a better-laid-out factory and improved machinery, I have saved, at a conservative estimate, 10 per cent on labour, and besides that a great saving on power, coal, oil, tallow, driving shafts, belting, and so on.

Under capitalism, people make growing use of the waste that production and consumption throw off. Waste from production means the leftovers of industry and agriculture: think of the by-products in chemical manufacture that get thrown away when output is small, or the iron filings that fall off during machine-making and go back into iron production as raw material. Waste from consumption is different: it's the natural waste products of the human body, and the worn remains of things people have used up, like clothes turned to rags.

Of the two, waste from consumption matters more for agriculture. Yet capitalist society is enormously wasteful about how it handles this. Take London: with the excrement of four and a half million people, the best the city can do, at colossal expense, is to pour it into the Thames and poison the river.

Rising prices for raw materials are naturally what drives people to start using this waste.

Reusing waste like this generally needs three things: enough of it, which only happens when work is done on a large scale; better machinery, able to turn material that used to be unusable into something fit for making new things; and progress in science, especially chemistry, which uncovers what these waste materials are actually good for.

It's true that small-scale, garden-style farming — in places like Lombardy, southern China, and Japan — also achieves a great deal of this kind of economy. But taken as a whole, that system buys its high output in farming at the cost of wasting a huge amount of human labour-power that other branches of production could have used instead.

So-called waste matters a great deal in almost every industry. The Factory Report of October 1863, for instance, gives it as one of the main reasons why tenant farmers, in England and in many parts of Ireland alike, are reluctant to grow flax, and rarely do:

'The great waste ... that happens when flax is prepared in the small, water-powered scutch mills ... The waste with cotton is comparatively small, but with flax it is very large. Good handling during water-retting and good machine scutching could cut this loss down a great deal ... In Ireland, flax is often scutched in a thoroughly disgraceful way, so that 28 to 30 per cent of it is lost' — all of which better machinery could prevent. So much oakum - the loose fibre thrown off in the process - fell that the factory inspector says:

'I have been informed, with regard to some of the scutch mills in Ireland, that the scutchers often take the waste made there home and burn it on their own hearths — and yet it is very valuable.'

Cotton waste will come up again further on, when the price swings of that raw material are discussed.

The woollen industry was more resourceful than flax preparation.

'It used to be common to condemn preparing wool waste and woollen rags for re-use, but that prejudice has entirely died out in the shoddy trade - the business of making new cloth from reclaimed wool -, which has become an important branch of the Yorkshire woollen district, and no doubt the trade in cotton waste will soon take the same place, as a branch of business that meets a recognized need. Thirty years ago, woollen rags — pieces of pure woollen cloth and the like — were worth on average about £4 4s. a ton; in the last few years they have come to be worth £44 a ton. And demand has grown so much that mixed fabrics of wool and cotton are now used too, since a way has been found to destroy the cotton without harming the wool; thousands of workers are now employed making shoddy, and the consumer gets great benefit from it, since he can now buy cloth of good average quality at a very moderate price.'

By the end of 1862, this rejuvenated shoddy wool already made up a third of the whole wool consumption of English industry. The 'great benefit' to 'the consumer' is this: his woollen clothes now take only a third as long to wear out, and a sixth as long to become threadbare.

The English silk industry was heading down the same slope. Between 1839 and 1862, the consumption of real raw silk had fallen somewhat, while the consumption of silk waste had doubled. With improved machinery, it became possible to manufacture, out of this material — practically worthless elsewhere — a silk usable for many purposes.

The most striking example of using waste is the chemical industry. It uses not only its own waste, by finding new uses for it, but also the waste of the most varied other industries — turning, for instance, coal-tar, once almost useless, into aniline dyes, madder dye (alizarin), and more recently into medicines as well.

There are two different savings here, and they have to be kept apart. The first is the saving that comes from re-using the waste production throws off. The second is the saving made in producing waste at all - cutting what production throws off down to a minimum, and using up, right up to the maximum, all the raw and auxiliary materials that go into production.

Saving on waste depends partly on how good the machinery used is. Oil, soap, and the like are saved in proportion to how precisely the machine parts are made and how well they are polished — that concerns the auxiliary materials.

Partly, though, and this matters most, whether a larger or smaller share of the raw material turns into waste during production depends on the quality of the machines and tools used. And finally, it depends on the quality of the raw material itself. That, in turn, is shaped partly by how developed the extractive industry and agriculture that produce it are — the progress of cultivation in the strict, agricultural sense — and partly by how refined the processes are that the raw material goes through before it enters the factory.

Dureau de la Malle writes: 'Parmentier has shown that, since a period not very far back — the time of Louis XIV, say — the art of milling grain has been improved a great deal in France, so that the new mills, compared with the old ones, can get up to fifty per cent more bread out of the same amount of grain. Indeed, for one Paris resident's yearly consumption, people once reckoned 4 setiers of grain, then 3, then finally 2 — whereas nowadays it is only 1⅓ setier, or about 342 pounds a head ... In the Perche, where I lived for a long time, crudely built mills with millstones of granite and trap rock were rebuilt according to the rules of a mechanical art that has advanced so much over the last thirty years. They were fitted with good millstones from La Ferté, the grain was ground twice, the milling sack was made to move in a circle, and the yield of flour for the same amount of grain rose by a sixth. So I can easily explain to myself the huge gap between how much grain the Romans consumed daily and how much we do: the whole reason simply lies in how poor the methods of milling and bread-making were. In the same way I must also explain a curious fact that Pliny mentions ... Flour was sold in Rome, depending on quality, at 40, 48, or 96 asses the modius. These prices, so high compared with the grain prices of the same time, are explained by the mills of that period — still in their infancy, and imperfect — and the considerable cost of milling that resulted.'

These savings in the use of fixed capital are, as already said, the result of labour conditions being applied on a large scale — in short, of their serving as conditions for labour that is directly social - work organized from the start as one joint operation rather than many separate ones - or for direct cooperation within the production process. On the one hand, this is the only condition under which mechanical and chemical inventions can be applied without making the commodity more expensive — and that condition is never optional. On the other hand, it is only at a large scale of production that the economies that come from using up plant and materials in common become possible at all. And finally, it is only the experience of the combined worker - the whole workforce of a plant taken together as one working body - that discovers and reveals where and how to economize, how to carry out discoveries already made in the simplest way, and what practical friction has to be overcome in putting the theory into practice — in applying it to the production process — and so on.

One distinction worth noting in passing: universal labour is not the same as communal labour. Both play their part in the production process, both shade into each other, but the two are also different from one another.

Universal labour is all scientific work, all discovery, all invention. It depends partly on cooperation with people living now, partly on making use of the work of people who came before. Communal labour, by contrast, presupposes individuals cooperating directly with one another.

What has just been said gets fresh confirmation from something often observed:

First, the great difference in cost between building a new machine for the first time and reproducing it afterwards — see Ure and Babbage on this.

Second, how much more it costs to run a business built on brand-new inventions, compared with the later businesses that rise on its ruins, ex suis ossibus — out of its very bones. This goes so far that the first entrepreneurs mostly go bankrupt, and it's only the later ones — who get buildings, machinery, and the rest more cheaply — who flourish. So it is usually the most worthless and shabbiest sort of money-capitalist who draws the greatest profit out of every new development of the universal labour of the human mind, and out of its social use through combined labour.