SECTION 6
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY.
COMPULSORY LIMITATION BY LAW OF THE
WORKING-TIME.
THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS, 1833 TO 1864
After capital had taken centuries in extending the working-day to its normal maximum limit, and then
beyond this to the limit of the natural day of 12 hours,98 there followed on the birth of machinism and
modern industry in the last third of the 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an avalanche
in its intensity and extent. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken
down. Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicity in the old statutes, became so confused that
an English judge, as late as 1860, needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain "judicially" what was day
and what was night.99 Capital celebrated its orgies.
As soon as the working-class, stunned at first by the noise and turmoil of the new system of production,
recovered, in some measure, its senses, its resistance began, and first in the native land of machinism,
in England. For 30 years, however, the concessions conquered by the workpeople were purely nominal.
Parliament passed 5 labour Laws between 1802 and 1833, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny
for their carrying out, for the requisite officials, &c.100
They remained a dead letter. "The fact is, that prior to the Act of 1833, young persons and children
were worked all night, all day, or both ad libitum."101
A normal working-day for modern industry only dates from the Factory Act of 1833, which included cotton,
wool, flax, and silk factories. Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of capital than the history of the
English Factory Acts from 1833 to 1864.
The Act of 1833 declares the ordinary factory working-day to be from half-past five in the morning to
half-past eight in the evening and within these limits, a period of 15 hours, it is lawful to employ young
persons (i.e., persons between 13 and 18 years of age), at any time of the day, provided no one individual
young person should work more than 12 hours in any one day, except in certain cases especially provided
for. The 6th section of the Act provided. "That there shall be allowed in the course of every day not
less than one and a half hours for meals to every such person restricted as hereinbefore provided." The
employment of children under 9, with exceptions mentioned later was forbidden; the work of children
between 9 and 13 was limited to 8 hours a day, night-work, i.e., according to this Act, work between
8:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m., was forbidden for all persons between 9 and 18.
The law-makers were so far from wishing to trench on the freedom of capital to exploit adult labour-
power, or, as they called it, "the freedom of labour," that they created a special system in order to prevent
the Factory Acts from having a consequence so outrageous.
"The great evil of the factory system as at present conducted," says the first report of the Central Board
of the Commission of June 28th 1833, "has appeared to us to be that it entails the necessity of continuing
the labour of children to the utmost length of that of the adults. The only remedy for this evil, short of
the limitation of the labour of adults which would, in our opinion, create an evil greater than that which
is sought to be remedied, appears to be the plan of working double sets of children." ... Under the name
of System of Relays, this "plan" was therefore carried out, so that, e.g., from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 in the
afternoon, one set of children between 9 and 13, and from 1.30 p.m. to 8.30 in the evening another set
were "put to," &c.
In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in the most barefaced way, ignored all the Acts as to
children's labour passed during the last twenty-two years, the pill was yet further gilded for them. Parliament
decreed that after March 1st, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1st 1835, no child under 12, and
after March 1st, 1836, no child under 13 was to work more than eight hours in a factory. This "liberalism,"
so full of consideration for "capital," was the more noteworthy as. Dr. Farre, Sir A. Carlisle, Sir
B. Brodie, Sir C. Bell, Mr. Guthrie, &c., in a word, the most distinguished physicians and surgeons in