* "It can be argued that those occupation which demand specific abilities or longer training have on the whole become more lucrative; while the commensurate wage for mechanically uniform activity, in which everyone can be quickly and easily trained, has fallen, and inevitably so, as a result of growing competition. And it is precisely this kind of labor which, under the present system of labor organization, is by far the most common.
"So, if a worker in the first category now earns seven times as much as he did 50 years ago, while another in the second category continues to earn the same as he did then, then on average they earn four times as much.
"But if in a given country there are only a thousand workers in the first category and a million in the second, then 999,000 are no better off than 50 years ago, and they are worse off if the prices of staple goods have risen.
"And yet people are trying to deceive themselves about the most numerous class of the population with superficial average calculations of this sort.
"Moreover, the size of wages is only one factor in evaluating a worker's income: it is also essential to take into account the length of time for which such wages are guaranteed, and there is no question of guarantees in the anarchy of so-called free competition with its continual fluctuations and stagnation. Finally, we must bear in mind the hours of work which were usual earlier and those which are usual now. And for the English cotton workers, the working day has been increased, as a result of the employers' greed, from 12 to 16 hours during the past 25 years or so -- i.e., since labor-saving machines were introduced. This increase in one country and in one branch of industry inevitably carried over to a greater or lesser degree into other areas, for the rights of the wealthy to subject the poor to boundless exploitation are still universally acknowledged."
[ Wilhelm Schulz, Die Bewegung der Produktion, eine geschichtlichstatistiscke Abhandlung . Zurich and Winterthur, 1843, p. 65 ]
"But even even this were as true as it is false, that the average income of all classes of society has grown, the differences and relative intervals between incomes can still have grown bigger, so that the contrast between wealth and poverty becomes sharper. For it is precisely because total production rises that needs, desires, and claims also increase, and they increase in the same measure as production rises; relative poverty can therefore grow while absolute poverty diminishes. The Samoyed is not poor with his blubber and rancid fish, for in his self-contained society, everyone has the same needs. But, in a state which is ****** rapid headway, which, in the course of a decade, increases its total production in relation to the population by a third, the worker who earns the same at the end of the 10 years as he did at the beginning has not maintained his standard of living, he has grown poorer by a third."
[ Wilhelm Schulz, pp. 65-6 ] But political economy knows the worker only as a beast of burden, as an animal reduced to the minimum bodily needs.
"If a people is to increase its spiritual *******, it can no longer remain in thrall to its bodily needs, it can no longer be the servant of the flesh. Above all, it needs time for intellectual exercise and recreation. This time is won through new developments in the organization of labor.
"Nowadays, a single worker in the cotton mills, as a result of new ways of producing power and new machinery, can often do work that previously needed 100 or even 250-300 workers. All branches of industry have witnessed similar consequences, since external natural forces are increasingly being brought to bear on human labor. If the amount of time and human energy needed earlier to satisfy a given quantity of material needs was later reduced by half, then, without any forfeiture of material comfort, the margin for intellectual creation and recreation will have increased by half.
"But, even the sharing of the spoils which we win from old Chronos on his very own territory still depends on blind and unjust chance.
"In France, it has been estimated that, at the present stage of production, an average working day of five hours from each person capable of work would be sufficient to satisfy all society's material needs.... In spite of the time saved through improvements in machinery, the time spent in slave labor in the factories has increased for many people."
[ Wilhelm Schulz, pp. 67-8 ]
"The transition from complicated handicrafts presupposes a breaking down of such work into the ****** operations of which it consists.
To begin with, however, only a part of the uniformly recurring operations falls to the machines, while another part falls to men.
Permanently uniform activity of this kind is by its very nature harmful to both soul and body -- a fact which is also confirmed by experience; and so, when machinery is combined in this way, with the mere division of labor among a larger number of men, all the shortcomings of the latter inevitably make their appearance. These shortcomings include the greater mortality of factory workers....
"No attention has been paid to the essential distinction between how far men work through machines and how far they work as machines."
[ Wilhelm Schulz, pp. 69 ]
"In the future life of the nations, however, the mindless forces of nature operating in machines will be our slaves and servants."
[ Wilhelm Schulz, pp. 74 ]
"In the English spinning mills, only 158,818 men are employed, compared with 196,818 women. For every 100 men workers in the Lancashire cotton mills, there are 103 women workers' in Scotland, the figure is as high as 209. In the English flax mills in Leeds, there are 147 women for every 100 men workers; in Dundee, and on the east coast of Scotland, this figure is as high as 280. In the English silk-factories, there are many women workers; in the wool factories, where greater strength is needed, there are more men.
