Tuesday 26 November 2013

Quote From: An Essay on Trade and Commerce (1770)

I came across this wonderful passage from an anonymous work entitled An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Containing Observations of Taxes etc. published in London in 1770. The central argument the writer is engaging in is how (and if) workers should be made to work longer hours. It's a wonderful piece, not because of how much has changed, but just how strikingly similar it is to the speeches and policies made by our current Tory led coalition:

“If the making of every seventh day an holiday is supposed to be of divine institution, as it implies the appropriating the other six days to labour surely it will not be thought cruel to enforce it .... That mankind in general, are naturally inclined to ease and indolence, we fatally experience to be true, from the conduct of our manufacturing populace, who do not labour, upon an average, above four days in a week, unless provisions happen to be very dear.... Put all the necessaries of the poor under one denomination; for instance, call them all wheat, or suppose that ... the bushel of wheat shall cost five shillings and that he (a manufacturer) earns a shilling by his labour, he then would be obliged to work five days only in a week. If the bushel of wheat should cost but four shillings, he would be obliged to work but four days; but as wages in this kingdom are much higher in proportion to the price of necessaries ... the manufacturer, who labours four days, has a surplus of money to live idle with the rest of the week . ... I hope I have said enough to make it appear that the moderate labour of six days in a week is no slavery. Our labouring people do this, and to all appearance are the happiest of all our labouring poor... but the Dutch do this in manufactures, and appear to be a very happy people. The French do so, when holidays do not intervene. But our populace have adopted a notion, that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being more free and independent than in any country in Europe. Now this idea, as far as it may affect the bravery of our troops, may be of some use; but the less the manufacturing poor have of it, certainly the better for themselves and for the State. The labouring people should never) think themselves independent of their superiors.... It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where, perhaps, seven parts out of eight of the whole, are people with little or no property. The cure will not be perfect, till our manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the same sum which they now earn in four days.”

To this end, and for “extirpating idleness debauchery and excess,” promoting a spirit of industry, “lowering the price of labour in our manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of poor’s rates,” our “faithful Eckart” of capital proposes this approved device: to shut up such labourers as become dependent on public support, in a word, paupers, in “an ideal workhouse.” Such ideal workhouse must be made a “House of Terror,” and not an asylum for the poor, “where they are to be plentifully fed, warmly and decently clothed, and where they do but little work.”
Quoted in Marx's Capital Vol 1, pages 387-8

Thursday 14 November 2013

Dirty Hands (Lyrics) by Harry Bird

 
i've always kept myself well out of trouble
i've always kept my tongue inside my head
i've always kept a clean cut reputation
and the good book somewhere close beside my bed
 
but there's only one thing i want
when my time on this earth ends
a pair of dirty hands, oh lord
and a clean conscience
 
well everywhere i've been i've seen oppression
and everywhere i've been i've seen abuse
and everywhere i've been i've put a blind eye on the table
cos it never costs you anything to lose
 
but there's only one thing i want
when my time on this earth ends
a pair of dirty hands, oh lord
and a clean conscience
 
lay lay lay…
 
they said jesus shouldn't heal a man on sunday
he shouldn't eat with sinners and he shouldn't have fun
well some rules are just waiting to be broken I guess
so i think it's time i started breaking some
 
but there's only one thing i want
when my time on this earth ends
a pair of dirty hands, oh lord
and a clean conscience
 
Click here to listen to Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies play Dirty Hands