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Outlines of Industrial History…

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Outlines of Industrial History I 10.-THE CREATION OF THE PROLETARIAT I The reader will recall that in Outline 9 it was ,shown how the merchants gathered together that accumulation which is the starting <:> point of capital; and how they, owing to their methods of accumulation, were under the illusion that value was created in exchange. If he lias carefully read the chapters men- tioned at the Outline's end—and he should have done so—he will have gained some knowledge of the horrors which accompanied this primitive ac- cumulation. He will have found that the Congo atrocities are not without precedents in this terrible story of meanness, of treachery, of bri- bery, of massacre, of the artificial creation of famines, and of wars for slaves and plunder. It is indeed a tale which harrows up the soul." He will have an insight into things which no or- thodox history-book will supply. He will know* how the much admired Elizabethan mariners were busy trading captured slaves for rum and how Hawkins in particular, as a mark of royal recognition of his gallant exploits in this trade, received from good Queen Bess a ship called Jesus" to encourage him in his Christian en- terprises., The Knights of the road never sur- passed the Knights of commerce at this romantic process of loot and murder." Yet in spite of this it is often maintained that the capitalist class owns its capital because of its practice of thrift and abstinence. THE NECESSITY OF A PROLETARIAT. Why does capitalism need a class which has no other way of living than by the sale of its labour-po\Ver ? To answer this question we must clearly understand what capital is. Capital is that part of wealth used to create more wealth, ,and, as we have tried to show, only emerges upon the stage when certain historical developments have occurred. Preceding forms of capital—merchants' and usurers' —did not create more value. (The word "value" is a more definite economic term than "wealth," because the latter may include na- tural wealth in the making of which no human labour was expended, though the given defini- tion of capital still holds good, as no person can use the wealth, for example, of a beautiful sun- set to make more sunsets or wealth.) The mer- chant and userer only transferred values from their different owners if no commodities or ex- change-values were produced then they (the trader and the money-lender) would be idle. That the merchant, by at first dealing in the surplus products of the community, initiated, increased and encouraged commodity-production is not de- nied. But we witnessed in the last lesson that the cheating and looting of the merchants and the extortion of the usurers, in former Empires, through causin~ internal divisions and corrup- tien and external pressure, became outplayed and created their own nemesis in the disappear- ance of their tree-men customers and in foreign invasions. This impossibility of making more value with- out the expenditure of labour confirms the La- bour Theory of Value. Labour," declared Petty, is the father and active principle of Wealth. lands are the mother." The accumula- tion of values was only potential capital until the serf and gild relations had been destroyed, and a class ef people, free from, all the old regula- tions and owning only one particular commodity, Was forced to sell this commodity—thus supply- ing the labour-power without which capital can- Rot function. We will now turn from the theoretical to the practical aspect and attempt to notice the facts in English history which helped to produce this necessary proletariat and follow how the Fif- teenth Century Golden Age of the labourer was swept away. Remembering the relativity of all beginnings, no attempt will be made at chrono- logical exactness; and it should be clearly urJr derstood that the factors hereafter noted did not operate separately but were in constant inter- play aiding each other. THE BREAK-UP OF THE FEUDAL BANDS. As this point has already been dealt with in "The Fall of Feudalism," we need not stop to describe how the policy of would-be absolute Anarchs, the effects of war and new methods of war, and the growth of luxtit-y and towns com- bined to make the barons disband their retainers. Hitherto the number of his retainers was a cri- terion of the baron's wealth, but this standard Was displaced in later years by another—the size of his rent-roll. The fighting retainers became hee-booters or sturdy beggars or flocked to the towns to find work. THE CONFISCATION OF THE MONAS- TERIES. With the decline of feuctallsm the Church, the chief upholder of it traditions, was attacked as a stiner of inquiry. The curious, enterprising, daring spirit of the age flouted the Church with its blind reverence for the pa.st and its obstinate retention of beliefs concerning the world which voyagQs nd thinkers had proved untrue. Our fiext Outline uiil contain further particulars of how lier prestige was destroyed, new methods of adopted, and of how the coming of Printing and education broke down her monopoly ,of learning which was the source of her power in a dark, superstitious age. Her insolence and -%?cl at- k l Steed for revenue, her clamming up of wealth '\tttich otherwise might have financed new under- takings, her crowds of idle monks, and her many sacred holidays and indiscriminate charity which Prevented the poor from acquiring industrious habits—these were the causes of the Reforma- lon. In 1534 England separate dfrom Rome and 1l 1536 and 1539 the hugh rental and lands of one thousand religious-houses were confiscated. The nlOnk, the Church's dependents, and the workers dpoll the Church's lands followed the way of the 13banded feudal retainers. This confiscation of religious property was also Used to weaken the Guilds by taking from them that part of their funds left and used for reli- gions purposes. HIGH PRICES. J-'hese, too, played a, part in reducing the la- bourer from his former comparatively indepen- dent state. The discovery of new supplies, and the resulting cheapening of the precious metals, in obedience to the law of value, caused prices to I-ife '?llid ? the Sixteenth Century prices rose a.n 16? Per cent., while wages rose only 30 per  Another factor which raised prices and helped to worsen the workers' conditions, from those of the Golden Age, was the depreciation of the coinage both in size and quality, indulged in y the early Tudor monarchs. Wages, then, as Qaw, only slowly following the rising prices, for It IS always easier to get the workers to act upon he defensive than upon the offensive, the la- t 'Hirer lost in the rising market which these Actors created. THE ENCLOSURES. ? ?hltie dilemma of the landlord, caused by the Portage of labour following the Black Death, ??d a. solution in the increase of wool-growing. A't'flrst the trouble was that no labour could be ?t; howen-or as wool-growing developed, the tak bourers and their holdings were in the way and ?r labour was no longer required. I In the years 1540-1600, owing to the high prices obtainable for wool the tendency to evict men for sheep was especially hastened. Begin- ning in a small way in the Thirteenth Century the enclosure of land, in what had been prac- tically an hedgeless country, was widely and ra- pidly adopted. The following figures will convey some idea of its extent and rate of increase in the 18th and the first half of the 19th Centuries: In the years 11101 to 1760, 334,974 acres enclosed. In the years 1760 to 1843, 7,000,000 acres en- closed. The process was something like this: The lord would first of all introduce sheep upon his demesne in order to escape paying high wages. Then he would enclose the waste and restrict the tenants' arable. Next the com- mon lands with all their privileges would be enclosed, and the labourer would find his very existence threatened with the disappearance of his common rights and the demand for his la- bour, as few men were required to tend the sheep. The lord would no longer occmpy the manor house; the peasants were evicted from their holdings, and as they tilled their land in co-operation, when two or three of them were shifted it often meant the breaking up of the whole village. Thus the demolition of the feudal manor was accomplished. Preventive legislation, in 1489, 1514, and 1534, seeking to prevent the turning of arable into pasture land, and to stop this wholesale de- struction of villages, was ineffective because the magistrates' intehrests—themselves being land- lords—were contrary to the laws they were sup- posed to administer. Kett's Norfolk Revolt in 1549 was an uprising of the peasants against the system of enclosures. The prosperity of the large landowners was the poverty of the peasants. The Golden Age be- came a memory. VAGRANCY AND PAUPERISM. These were two of the immediate results iol- lowing upon the factors above enumerated Dis- banded from the little feudal armies, robbed of the shelter, charity, and protection of the mon- asteries, evicted from their holdings, and de- prived of the use of the common lands, these vagrants and robbers became a danger to society through their homelessness and desperation. This danger was at first-met by making appeals through the parish clergymen to private charity, but in 1601 it was found necessary to make the first Poor Law. Pauperism became a recognised institution in society. This Poor Law, however, was the outcome of fear rather than of sympathy with the expropriated, for one of the Elizabethan statutes lays it down that "Lusty and valiant beggars" were to bd "grievously whipped .and burned through the gristle of the right ear with an iron of the compass of an inch about as a i Be f ore Elizabeth, lasting sign of punishment. Before Elizabeth, in Henry VII. 's reign, we read that 72,000 great and petty thieves were hanged. In the time of the Stuarts the Law of Parochial Settlement was necessary because no person likely to be- come chargeable upon the poor rate was allowed to settle in any parish but the one of his birth. The flocking to the towns of the dispossessed villagers helped to break down the guild exclu- siveness. The passing of the Statute of Appren- tices reveals that trade was unregulated, and that apprenticeship was sometimes being evaded. Under this Act wages were often fixed so low by the magistrates that they had to be supple- mented by grants under the Poor Law pro- visions. So with the coming of this free" class, free" from all its former security of subsist- ence, comes the problem of poverty and the freedom to starve. The sad and bitter story of 'the creation of his own class merits the atten- tion of every thoughtful worker. THE RISE OF THE MANUFACTORY. The divorce frcsn the means of production is now complete. Like the two very necessary polies of a magnet, accumulated values now face labour-power. The guilds and their regulations are undermined, and the vagrants are ready to be disciplined in the army of production by the rise of the manufactory, which first took place in the woollen industry. Long before the In- dustrial Revolution, while many industries were still in the guild and domestic stages of produc- tion, in the textile industry men were assembled under the single roof of the factory, where, un- der careful supervision, the division of laoour inside the workshop was introduced. From this came a simplifying and a division of operations paving the way for an applIcation, of machinery and increasing the productiveness of labour. In dosing this Outline, which has endeavoured to show the harsh circumstances which accom- panied the birth of our class, we would make it clear that it has been written with no desire to provoke useless regrets or crocodile tears. To sentimentally rhapsodise over the sufferings of the early members of our class, to wish things had been otherwise or to imagine what might have been otherwise, or to imagine what might have been, is a waste of thought. The moving finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a. word of it." The enclosures improved agriculture by elim- inating waste, they also broke down the narrow outlook of the peasant proprietor and so made for progress. Again though capitalism found it necesgary to divorce the labourer from the means of pro- duction by ways more vigorous than kind before it could emerge and play its part upon the stage of history, we shall see in future lessons how in its progress it developed immense natural re- sources solved the problem of production; brought the whole world into kinship; tended, and is still tending, to break down all barriers of craft, sex, colour and nationality between the workers; and it is gradually drilling and edu- cating us up to the point of control of industry. By strenuous agitation, education in the social' sciences in order to solve the problem of distri- bution, and by efficient organisation, that time can be hastened when the separation traced above will be annulled, and the labourer will be again the ovpier and costroiler of the now highly im- proved means of production. READING.—Capital, Vol. I., chaps. 27 and 28. These contaisa description of the expropria- tion of the peasants and the succeeding legislation. Gibbins Period 3, chap. 1; Period 4, chaps. 1—4.. Warner Chaps. 8 and 10. MARK STARR. I

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