Capital Volume 1
by Karl Marx


Chapter 28

Bloody Legislation against the expropriated, from the end of the
fifteenth century. Forcing down of wages by Acts of Parliament


    The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of
feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people
from the soil, this "free" proletariat could not possibly be
absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown
upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged
from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt
themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were
turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from
inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at
the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century,
throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against
vagabondage. The fathers of the present working-class were
chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and
paupers. Legislation treated them as "voluntary" criminals, and
assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working
under the old conditions that no longer existed.
    In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
    Henry VIII 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a
beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment
for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and
whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear
an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have
lived the last three years and to "put themselves to labour."
What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII the former statute is repeated,
but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for
vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear
sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be
executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
    Edward VI: A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547,
ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as
a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The
master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and
such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him
to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains.
If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery
for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter
S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The
master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a
slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the
slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be
executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the
rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about
for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with
a redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work,
in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the
vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave
for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation,
and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take
away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as
apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until
the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the
slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them,
etc., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the
neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily
and to be more certain of him.(1*) The last part of this statute
provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or
by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to
find them work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England
until far into the 19th century under the name of "roundsmen."
    Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are
to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some
one will take them into service for two years; in case of a
repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be
executed, unless some one will take them into service for two
years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without
mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and
another of 1597.(2*)
    James I: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a
rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are
authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first
offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2
years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as
often as the justices of the peace think fit... Incorrigible and
dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder
and set to bard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to
be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until
the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne,
c. 23.
    Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th
century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in
Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI's reign (Ordinance of
July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of
age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade,
is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute
of Charles V for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict
of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the
"Plakaat" of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), etc.
    Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly
expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into
vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws
grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage
system.
    It is not enough that the conditions of labour are
concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole
of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who
have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough
that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of
capitalist production develops a working-class, which by
education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that
mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The
organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully
developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of
a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand
of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds
with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic
relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the
capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of
course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of
things, the labourer can be left to the "natural laws of
production," i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence
springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions
of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic
genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise,
wants and uses the power of the state to "regulate" wages, i.e.,
to force them within the limits suitable for surplus value
making, to lengthen the working-day and to keep the labourer
himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential
element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
    The class of wage-labourers, which arose in the latter half
of the 14th century formed then and in the following century only
a very small part of the population, well protected in its
position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country
and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town
master and workmen stood close together socially. The
subordination of labour to capital was only formal -- i.e., the
mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over constant.
The demand for wage-labour grew, therefore, rapidly with every
accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage-labour
followed but slowly. A large part of the national product,
changed later into a fund of capitalist accumulation, then still
entered into the consumption fund of the labourer.
    Legislation on wage-labour (from the first, aimed at the
exploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always equally
hostile to him),(3*) is started in England by the Statute of
Labourers, of Edward III, 1349. The ordinance of 1350 in France,
issued in the name of King John, corresponds with it. English and
French legislation run parallel and are identical in purport. So
far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory extension of the
working-day, I do not return to them, as this point was treated
earlier (Chap. X, Section 5).
    The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance of
the House of Commons. A Tory says naively: "Formerly the poor
demanded such high wages as to threaten industry and wealth.
Next, their wages are so low as to threaten industry and wealth
equally and perhaps more, but in another way."(4*) A tariff of
wages was fixed by law for town and country, for piece-work and
daywork. The agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out
by the year, the town ones "in open market." It was forbidden,
under pain of imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those fixed
by the statute, but the taking of higher wages was more severely
punished than the giving them. [So also in Sections 18 and 19 of
the Statute of Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days' imprisonment
is decreed for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one
days for him that receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the
penalties and authorised the masters to extort labour at the
legal rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations,
contracts, oaths, etc., by which masons and carpenters
reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void.
Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the
14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the laws against
Trades' Unions. The spirit of the Statute of Labourers of 1349
and of its offshoots, comes out clearly in the fact, that indeed
a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, but on no account a
minimum.
    In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as
we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not in
proportion to the depreciation of money and the corresponding
rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore, in reality
fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down remained in
force, together with the ear-clipping and branding of those "whom
no one was willing to take into service." By the Statute of
Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the peace were
empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them according to
the time of the year and the price of commodities. James I
extended these regulations of labour also to weavers, spinners,
and all possible categories of workers.(5*) George II extended
the laws against coalitions of labourers to manufactures. In the
manufacturing period par excellence, the capitalist mode of
production had become sufficiently strong to render legal
regulation of wages as impracticable as it was unnecessary; but
the ruling classes were unwilling in case of necessity to be
without the weapons of the old arsenal. Still, 8 George II
forbade a higher day's wage than 2s 7 1/2d for journeymen tailors
in and around London, except in cases of general mourning; still,
13 George III, c. 68, gave the regulation of the wages of
silk-weavers to the justices of the peace; still, in 1706, it
required two judgments of the higher courts to decide, whether
the mandates of justices of the peace as to wages held good also
for non-agricultural labourers; still, in 1799, an act of
Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners should
continue to be regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and two Scotch
acts of 1661 and 1671. How completely in the meantime
circumstances bad changed, is proved by an occurrence unheard-of
before in the English Lower House. In that place, where for more
than 400 years laws had been made for the maximum, beyond which
wages absolutely must not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a
legal minimum wage for agricultural labourers. Pitt opposed this,
but confessed that the "condition of the poor was cruel."
Finally, in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were
repealed. They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist
regulated his factory by his private legislation, and could by
the poor rates make up the wage of the agricultural labourer to
the indispensable minimum. The provisions of the labour statutes
as to contracts between master and workman, as to giving notice
and the like, which only allow of a civil action against the
contract-breaking master, but on the contrary permit a criminal
action against the contract-breaking workman, are to this hour
(1873) in full force. The barbarous laws against Trades' Unions
fell in 1825 before the threatening hearing of the proletariat.
Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful fragments
of the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally, the act of
Parliament of June 29, 1871, made a pretence of removing the last
traces of this class of legislation by legal recognition of
Trades' Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same date (an act
to amend the criminal law relating to violence, threats, and
molestation), re-established, in point of fact, the former state
of things in a new shape. By this Parliamentary escamotage the
means which the labourers could use in a strike or lock-out were
withdrawn from the laws common to all citizens, and placed under
exceptional penal legislation, the interpretation of which fell
to the masters themselves in their capacity as justices of the
peace. Two years earlier, the same House of Commons and the same
Mr Gladstone in the well-known straightforward fashion brought in
a bill for the abolition of all exceptional penal legislation
against the working-class. But this was never allowed to go
beyond the second reading, and the matter was thus protracted
until at last the "great Liberal party," by an alliance with the
Tories, found courage to turn against the very proletariat that
had carried it into power. Not content with this treachery, the
"great Liberal party" allowed the English judges, ever
complaisant in the service of the ruling classes, to dig up again
the earlier laws against "conspiracy," and to apply them to
coalitions of labourers. We see that only against its will and
under the pressure of the masses did the English Parliament give
up the laws against Strikes and Trades' Unions, after it had
itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the position
of a permanent Trades' Union of the capitalists against the
labourers.
    During the very first storms of the revolution, the French
bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of
association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791, they
declared all coalition of the workers as "an attempt against
liberty and the declaration of the rights of man," punishable by
a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of
an active citizen for one year.(6*) This law which, by means of
State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and
labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived
revolutions and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror
left it untouched. It was but quite recently struck out of the
Penal Code. Nothing is more characteristic than the pretext for
this bourgeois coup d'etat. "Granting," says Chapelier, the
reporter of the Select Committee on this law, "that wages ought
to be a little higher than they are,... that they ought to be
high enough for him that receives them, to be free from that
state of absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries
of life, and which is almost that of slavery," yet the workers
must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their own
interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their
"absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery" because,
forsooth, in doing this they injure "the freedom of their
cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs," and because a
coalition against the despotism of the quondam masters of the
corporations is -- guess what! -- is a restoration of the
corporations abolished by the French constitution.(7*)

NOTES:

1. The author of the "Essay on Trade, etc.," 1770, says, "In the
reign of Edward VI indeed the English seem to have set, in good
earnest, about encouraging manufactures and employing the poor.
This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus: 'That
all vagrants shall be branded, etc.'" l.c., p. 5.

2. Thomas More says in his "Utopia". "Therfore that on covetous
and unsatiable cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey
maye compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of grounde
together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust owte
of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude, or by violent
oppression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei
be so weried that they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes,
therfore, or by other, either by hooke or crooke they muste
needes departe awaye, poore, selye, wretched soules, men, women,
husbands. wiues, father,esse children, widowes, wofull mothers
with their yonge babes, and their whole household smal in
substance, and muche in numbre, as husbandrye requireth many
handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their knowen accustomed
houses. fyndynge no place to reste in. All their housholde
stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well abide
the sale: yet beeynge sodainely thruste owte, they be constrayned
to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they haue wandered
abrode tyll that be spent, what cant they then els doe but
steale, and then iustly pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng.
And yet then also they be caste in prison as vagaboundes, because
they go aboute and worke not: whom no man wyl set a worke though
thei neuer so wiliyngly profre themselues therto." Of these poor
fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced to
thieve, "7,200 great and petty thieves were put to death." in the
reign of Henry VIII. (Holinshed, "Description of England," Vol 1.
p 186) In Elizabeth's time, "rogues were trussed up apace, and
that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four
hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes."
(Strype's Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of
Religion, and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England
during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign." Seconded, 1725, Vol. 2)
According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40
persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped,
and 183 discharged as "incorrigible vagabonds." Nevertheless, he
is of opinion that this large number of prisoners does not
comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the
negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the
people; and the other counties of England were not better off in
this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse.

3. "Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences
between masters and their workmen. its counsellors are always the
masters," says A. Smith. "L'esprit des lois, c'est la propriete,"
says Linguet.

4. "Sophisms of Free Trade." By a Barrister. London, 1850, p.
206. He adds maliciously: "We were ready enough to interfere for
the employer, can nothing now be done for the employed?"

5. From a clause of Statute 2 James I, c. 6, we see that certain
cloth makers took upon themseives to dictate. in their capacity
of justices of the peace, the official tariff of wages in their
own shops. In Germany, especially after the Thirty Years War,
statutes for keeping down wages were general. "The want of
servants and labourers was very troublesome to the landed
proprietors in the depopulated districts. All villagers were
forbidden to let rooms to single men and women; all the latter
were to be reported to the authorities and cast into prison if
they were unwilling to become servants, even if they were
employed at any other work, such as sowing seeds for the peasants
at a daily wage, or even buying and selling corn. (Imperial
privileges and sanctions for Silesia, I, 25) For a whole century
in the decrees of the small German potentates a bitter cry goes
up again and again about the wicked and impertinent rabble that
will not reconcile itself to its hard lot, will not be content
with the legal wage; the individual landed proprietors are
forbidden to pay more than the State had fixed by a tariff. And
yet the conditions of service were at times better after the war
than 100 years later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652,
meat twice a week, whilst even in our century, districts are
known where they have it only three times a year. Further, wages
after the war were higher than in the following century." (G.
Freytag)

6. Article I of this law runs: "L'aneantissement de toute espece
de corporations du meme etat et profession etant l'une des bases
fondamentales de la constitution francaise, il est defendu de les
retablir de fait sous quelque pretexte et sous quelque forme que
ce soit." Article IV declares, that if "des citoyens attaches aux
memes professions, arts et metiers prenaient des deliberations,
faisaient entre eux des conventions tendantes a refuser de
concert ou a n'accorder qu'a un prix determine le secours de leur
industrie ou de leurs travaux, les dites deliberations et
conventions... seront declarees inconstitutionnelies,
attentatoires a la liberte et a la declaration des droits de
l'homme, etc.": felony, therefore, as in the old labour statutes.
("Revolutions de Paris," Paris, 1791, t. III, p. 523)

7. Buchez et Roux: "Histoire Parlementaire," t. x., p. 195.