V. I.

Lenin

To the Working Men and Women of the Thornton Factory [1]

Workingmen and women of the Thornton Factory!

November6th and 7th should be memorable days for all of us.... The
weavers, by their solid resistance to the employer’s pressure have
proved that at a difficult moment there are still people in our midst who
can uphold our common interests as workers, that our worthy employers have
not yet succeeded in turning us for all time into the miserable slaves of
their bottomless purses. Let us, then, comrades, stand firm and steadfast
and carry on to the very end, let us remember that we can improve our
conditions only by our common and concerted efforts. Above all, comrades,
don’t fall into the trap so cunningly prepared for you by
Messrs. Thornton. They reason as follows: “There is a hitch now in
disposing of our goods, so that if we keep to our previous working
conditions we shall not get the profits we got previously.... And we are
not ready to take anything less.... So then, we’ll have to tighten
up on the workers, let them shoulder the cost of the bad prices on the
market.... But the job has to be done cleverly and not in any old way, so
that the worker, in the simplicity of his mind, will not understand what

Sort

of a titbit we are preparing for him.... If we tackle all of them at
once, they will all rise up at once, and we shan’t be able to handle
them, so we shall first dupe those miserable weavers, and then the others
won’t get away.... We are not accustomed to restrain ourselves in
dealing with these creatures, and what for, anyhow? New brooms sweep
cleaner here So then, the employers, who are so full of concern for the worker’s well-being, want, to quietly and steadily impose on
the workers of all departments what they have already imposed on the
weavers.... That is why, if we all remain indifferent to the fate of the
weaving sheds, we shall dig with our own hands a pit into which we, too,
shall soon be thrown. Latterly the weavers have been earning, in round
figures, 3 rubles 50 kopeks a fortnight, and during the same period
families of seven have contrived somehow to live on 5 rubles, and families
consisting of husband, wife and child on 2 rubles in all. They have sold
the last of their clothes and used up the last. coppers they earned by
their hellish labour at a time when their benefactors, the Thorntons, were
adding millions to the millions they already had. To crown it all ever-new
victims of the employers’ avarice have been thrown out on the
streets before their eyes, and the pressure has been regularly increased
with the most heartless cruelty.... Without any explanation, they have
started mixing noils [2] and clippings with the wool, which slows the job
down terribly; delays in getting the warp have increased as though
inadvertently; finally, they have begun without ado to introduce short
time, and now the pieces have to be five instead of nine schmitz [3] long, so that the
weaver has to fuss around longer and oftener in obtaining and fixing the
warps, for which, as is known, not a kopek is paid. They want to wear our
weavers down, and the earnings of I ruble 62 kopeks per fortnight, which
have already begun to appear in the pay-books of some of the weavers, may,
in the near future, become general in the weaving sheds.... Comrades, do
you, too, want to see the day when you get this sort of kindness from the
employers? If not, if, finally, your hearts have not entirely turned to
stone in face of the suffering of poor folks like yourselves, rally
solidly round our weavers, let us put forward our common demands, and on
every suitable occasion let us wrest better conditions from our
oppressors. Workers of the spinning sheds, don’t delude yourselves
about the stability and slight increase in your earnings.... After all,
almost two-thirds of your number have already been dismissed, and your
better earnings have been purchased at the cost of the starvation of your
own spinners who have been thrown out of work. This again is a cunning
trick of the employers and is not difficult to understand if you only count how much was earned by the entire
mule-spinning department previously, and how much now. Workers of the new
dyeing department! Twelve rubles a month, all told, is what you now earn,
at the cost of 14 1/4 hours’ daily work, saturated from head to foot
with the murderous fumes of dyes! Pay attention to our demands: we also
want to end the illegal deductions made from you due to your
foreman’s inefficiency. Labourers, and all nix-skilled workers
generally! Do you really expect to retain your 60-SO kopeks a day, when
the skilled weaver has to content himself with 20 kopeks a day? Comrades,
don’t be blind, don’t swallow the employers’ bait, stand
up for one another more firmly, otherwise it will go badly for all of us
this winter. We must all keep a most watchful eye on the employers’
manoeuvres aimed at reducing rates, and with all our strength resist every
tendency in this direction for it spells ruin for us.... Turn a deaf ear
to all their pleadings about business being bad: for them it only means
less profit on their capital, for us it means starvation and suffering for
our families who are deprived of their last crust of stale bread. Can
there be any comparison between the two things? They are now putting
pressure on the weavers first of all, and we must secure:

1)an increase in weavers’ rates to their spring level, i.e., by
about 6 kopeks per schmitz; 2)that the weavers, too, be brought under the law which says that the
worker must be told how much he can earn on a job before he begins it. Let
the rates list, bearing the factory inspector’s signature, exist not
only on paper, but in reality, as required by law. For weaving, for
example, the existing rates should be accompanied by information about the
quality of the wool, the quantity of noils and clippings in it, and there
should be an estimate of the time required for preparatory work; 3)that the working time be so distributed that we do not stand idle
through no fault of our own; now, for example, things are so arranged that
on each piece the weaver loses a day waiting for warp, and since the piece
is becoming almost half its former size, the weaver ’will suffer .a
double loss, regardless of the rates list. If the boss wants to rifle our
earnings this way, let him do so outright, in such a manner that we definitely know what he wants to squeeze out of us; 4)that the factory inspector sees to it that there is no trickery about
the rates, that there are no double rates.

That means, for example, that the rates list should not contain
two different rates for one and the same kind of article. only
with different names. For example, we got 4 rubles 32 kopeks a
piece for weaving Bieber, and only 4 rubles 14 kopeks for

Ural, [4] —yet as far as work goes isn’t it one and the same thing? A still more impudent
piece of trickery is the double price given for goods of one
denomination. That way Messrs. Thornton dodged the fines laws,
which state that a fine may only be imposed for such damage as
results from the worker’s carelessness and that the deduction has to be recorded in his pay-book under the heading
“fines” not later than three days after it is imposed. A strict record has to be kept of all the fines, the
total sum of which is not to go into the employer’s pocket, but must be used to cover the needs of the workers of
the factory concerned. With us, however—we have but to look at our books—there are empty spaces, there are no
fines, and one might think our employers are the most kind-hearted of all. Actually, however, due to our lack of
knowledge, they dodge the law and easily fix things to suit
themselves.... We are not fined, you see, yet deductions are
made from us, the smaller rate being paid and as long as two
rates have existed, a smaller and a bigger one, there has been
nothing at all to cavil at, they have kept on deducting the
money and putting it into their own pockets; 5)that in addition to introducing a single rate, let each deduction be
registered in the fines column, with an indication of why it is made.

Thenwrong fining will be obvious, less of our work will be done for
nothing, and there will be a drop in the number of disgraceful things
being done now, as, for example, in the dyeing department, where the
workers’ earnings are lower on account of the foreman’s
inefficiency, which cannot, according to law, be a reason for non-payment
of labour, since there can be no question here of the worker’s
carelessness. And haven’t all of us had deductions for which we are
not in the least to blame?

6)we demand that the payment we make for lodgings be on the pre-1891
level, that is to say, one ruble per person per month, because our
earnings being what they are we positively have nothing to pay the two
rubles with, and in any case, what for?... For the filthy, smelly, crowded
kennel always in danger of fire? Don’t forget, comrades, that all
over St. Petersburg it is considered enough to pay a ruble a month, and
that only our considerate bosses are not satisfied with that—so we
must force them here, too, to cut down their greed. In defending these
demands, comrades, we are not rebelling at all; we are merely demanding
that we be given what all the workers of other factories now enjoy by law,
the return of what has been taken from us by those who placed all their
hopes on our inability to uphold our own rights. Let us, then, show on
this occasion that our “benefactors” are mistaken.