by the
working-men. The bourgeoisie insists that although the price of piece-
work has been reduced, yet the total of wages for the week's work has
rather risen than fallen, and the condition of the operatives rather
improved than deteriorated. It is hard to get to the bottom of the
matter, for the operatives usually dwell upon the price of piece-work.
But it is certain that the weekly wage, also, has, in many branches of
work, been reduced by the improvement of machinery. The so-called fine
spinners (who spin fine mule yarn), for instance, do receive high wages,
thirty to forty shillings a week, because they have a powerful
association for keeping wages up, and their craft requires long training;
but the coarse spinners who have to compete against self-actors (which
are not as yet adapted for fine spinning), and whose association was
broken down by the introduction of these machines, receive very low
wages. A mule spinner told me that he does not earn more than fourteen
shillings a week, and his statement agrees with that of Leach, that in
various factories the coarse spinners earn less than sixteen shillings
and sixpence a week, and that a spinner, who years ago earned thirty
shillings, can now hardly scrape up twelve and a half, and had not earned
more on an average in the past year. The wages of women and children may
perhaps have fallen less, but only because they were not high from the
beginning. I know several women, widows with children, who have trouble
enough to earn eight to nine shillings a week; and that they and their
families cannot live decently upon that sum, every one must admit who
knows the price of the barest necessaries of life in England. That wages
in general have been reduced by the improvement of machinery is the
unanimous testimony of the operatives. The bourgeois assertion that the
condition of the working-class has been improved by machinery is most
vigorously proclaimed a falsehood in every meeting of working-men in the
factory districts. And even if it were true that the relative wage, the
price of piece-work only, has fallen, while the absolute wage, the sum to
be earned in the week, remained unchanged, what would follow? That the
operatives have had quietly to look on while the manufacturers filled
their purses from every improvement without giving the hands the smallest
share in the gain. The bourgeois forgets, in fighting the working-man,
the most ordinary principles of his ow