The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892Engels, Friedrich
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The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892
Engels, Friedrich
Great Britain -- Economic conditions; Working class -- Great Britain
The state of the case is this: If children cannot take care, the
employment of children must be forbidden. If adults are reckless, they
must be mere over-grown children on a plane of intelligence which does
not enable them to appreciate the danger in its full scope; and who is to
blame for this but the bourgeoisie which keeps them in a condition in
which their intelligence cannot develop? Or the machinery is
ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fencing, to supply which falls
to the share of the bourgeoisie. Or the operative is under inducements
which outweigh the threatened danger; he must work rapidly to earn his
wages, has no time to take care, and for this, too, the bourgeoisie is to
blame. Many accidents happen, for instance, while the operatives are
cleaning machinery in motion. Why? Because the bourgeois would
otherwise oblige the worker to clean the machinery during the free hours
while it is not going, and the worker naturally is not disposed to
sacrifice any part of his free time. Every free hour is so precious to
the worker that he often risks his life twice a week rather than
sacrifice one of them to the bourgeois. Let the employer take from
working-hours the time required for cleaning the machinery, and it will
never again occur to an operative to clean machinery in motion. In
short, from whatever point of view, the blame falls ultimately on the
manufacturer, and of him should be required, at the very least, life-long
support of the incapacitated operative, and support of the victim's
family in case death follows the accident. In the earliest period of
manufacture, the accidents were much more numerous in proportion than
now, for the machinery was inferior, smaller, more crowded, and almost
never fenced. But the number is still large enough, as the foregoing
cases prove, to arouse grave question as to a state of things which
permits so many deformities and mutilations for the benefit of a single
class, and plunges so many industrious working-people into want and
starvation by reason of injuries undergone in the service and through the
fault of the bourgeoisie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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