FREDERICK ENGELS
THE ENGLISH TEN HOURS BILL
The English workers  have
suffered a major defeat, which came from a most  unexpected
quarter. A  few weeks ago the Court  of Exchequer, one of
England’s four High  Courts,  reached a decision, as a result
of which the main stipulations of the Ten Hours  Bill, passed
in the year 1847, have been for all intents and purposes
revoked.
The history of the Ten Hours  Bill provides a striking
example of the path of development peculiar to the class
contradictions in England and therefore deserves closer
perusal.
It is common  knowledge how  the rise of large-scale industry brought  in its wake a completely new,  utterly shameless form of exploitation of the working  class by  the factory
owners. The new  machines made the labour of adult men
superfluous, since their supervision  only  required the labour
of women  and children, which was far better suited to this
task and at the same time more  cheaply obtainable than that
of men. Thus, industrial exploitation at once engulfed the
whole family, imprisoning  it in the factory; women  and
children were obliged to work  without  ceasing day and night,
until they fell victim to complete exhaustion. As  a result of
the growing  demand for child labour, workhouse  children
became nothing  more  nor  less than commodities; from the
age of four or even three they were auctioned off by  the

dozen, bound  as apprentices to the highest bidder among  the
factory owners. The memory  of the shameless and brutal
treatment of women  and children at that time, which was
quite relentless while there was still a single muscle, sinew
or drop of blood to be exploited, is still very much  alive
among  the older generation of workers  in England. Some  of
these workers  still carry this memory  with them in the form
of a crooked back or crippled limb, and all are haunted by
it on  account of their irrevocably damaged health. The lot of
the slaves on  the worst  of the American plantations was pure
bliss in comparison with that of the English workers  of that
period.
From  an early stage the state was obliged to introduce
measures to check the factory owners ’ utterly ruthless exploitation, which defied all postulates of a civilised society.
However,  these original legal restrictions proved highly inadequate and were soon  obviated. It was not  until fifty years
after the introduction of large-scale industry, when  industrial
development had already taken firm root, not  until 1833, that
it was possible to enact an effective law, which at least put
a stop  to the most  glaring excesses.
As  early as the beginning  of this century a group  was
formed under the leadership of a number  of philanthropists,
which campaigned for the legal restriction of the working
day in the factories to ten hours. This group,  which, under
Sadler’s leadership in the twenties and, after his death, that
of Lord Ashley and Richard Oastler, continued agitating
until the Ten Hours  Bill was finally passed, gradually rallied
to its banner, apart from the workers  themselves, the
aristocracy and all those sections of the bourgeoisie that were
hostile to the factory owners. This association between work ers and the most  heterogeneous and reactionary elements of
English society meant that the campaign for the Ten Hours
Bill had to be conducted quite separately from the revolutionary campaign of the workers. The Chartists, of course,
supported the Ten Hours  Bill to a man; they were the most
numerous  and active participants at the meetings in support
of the Ten Hours  Bill and they put  their press at the disposal
of the Short-Time Committee. Yet not  a single Chartist
campaigned officially alongside the aristocratic and bourgeois

advocates of the Bill or sat on  the Short-Time Committee  in
Manchester. This committee consisted exclusively of workers
and factory foremen. The workers  concerned, however,  were
completely broken  individuals, worn  out  by  work,  meek, God fearing, respectable men,  who  were filled with pious  horror  at
the very thought  of Chartism and socialism, showed  deep
respect for Crown  and Church  and were too  downtrodden to
hate the industrial bourgeoisie; all they were still capable of
was humble  reverence for the aristocracy, who  at least
deigned to take an interest in their wretched plight. The
working-class Toryism  of these supporters  of the Ten Hours
Bill was the echo of the workers ’ original opposition  to industrial progress, which was aimed at re-establishing the
former patriarchal conditions, while its most  active manifestations had gone  no  further than the smashing of machines. The
bourgeois  and aristocratic leaders of this group  were just as
reactionary as these workers. They were all without  exception
sentimental Tories, for the most  part utopian visionaries,
wallowing in reminiscences of the extinct patriarchal cottageindustry exploitation and its concomitant piety, homeliness,
hidebound worthiness  and its set patterns handed down  from
generation to generation. Their thick skulls reeled at the mere
glimpse of industrial revolutionary ferment. Their petty-
bourgeois  minds were gripped with fear at the prospect of the
new  forces of production developing at miraculous speed,
which in a matter of a few years had swept  away what had
been the most  venerable, sacrosanct and important classes in
society, substituting in their place new,  formerly unknown
classes, whose  interests, sympathies, attitudes and way of life
were quite incompatible with the institutions of the old
English society. These soft-hearted visionaries lost no  op portunity  to protest on  moral, humanitarian and compassionate grounds  against the unrelenting cruelty and ruthlessness that accompanied this upheaval contrasting it with the
stability, quiet cosiness and modest respectability of the
vanishing patriarchal system  which they held up  as the ideal
society.
Whenever  the question of the ten-hour working  day
became a focus of public interest, all sections of society whose
interests had suffered as a result of the industrial revolution

and whose  livelihood was threatened by  it gave their support
to these elements. At  such times the bankers, stockjobbers,
shipowners  and merchants, the landed aristocracy, the big
landowners from the West  Indies and the petty bourgeoisie
rallied in ever larger numbers  to the support  of the Ten
Hours  Bill campaign.
The Ten Hours  Bill provided an excellent meeting ground
for these reactionary classes and factions to join forces with
the proletariat against the industrial bourgeoisie. While the
Bill served to hold down  the rapid growth  of the wealth and
influence, social and political power  of the factory owners,
it brought  the workers  a purely material, even strictly
physical benefit. It saved their health from too  rapid deterioration. It did not, however,  give them anything which
might  have made of them a threat to their reactionary fellowcampaigners: it neither brought  them political power  nor
altered their social position as wage-workers. On  the
contrary, this campaigning for a ten-hour working  day kept
the workers  permanently under the influence and to some
extent under the actual leadership of these property-owning
allies, a leadership from which they had been making increasing efforts to dissociate themselves ever since the
Reform  Bill and the rise of the Chartist movement. It was
quite natural, particularly at the beginning  of the industrial
revolution, that the workers,  engaged as they were in direct
struggle against only  the industrial bourgeoisie, should ally
themselves to the aristocracy and other sections of the bour geoisie, who  did not  exploit them directly and who  were also
opposing  the industrial bourgeoisie. But  this alliance contaminated the working-class movement  with a considerable
influx of reactionary elements, which is taking a long  time
to disappear; it gave rise to a significant increase in the
influence of reactionary elements in the working-class move ment, namely, those workers,  whose  branch of production was
still at the manufactory stage and therefore threatened by
industrial progress, as, for example, the hand-loom weavers.
It was therefore most  fortunate for the workers  that the
Ten Hours  Bill was finally put  through  in 1847, at a time
of general turmoil, when  all the old parliamentary parties
were disintegrating and the new  ones had not  yet taken
7«

shape. The passing of this Bill was but  one of a whole  series
of extremely confused parliamentary divisions, the results
of which appeared to be determined by  nothing  other than
chance and during which, apart from the convinced freetraders among  the factory owners,  on  the one hand, and
the fanatically protectionist landowners, on  the other, no
party voted in a consistent united fashion. This Bill was seen
as a cunning  blow,  which the aristocracy, some  of the Peelites
and some  of the Whigs  had dealt at the factory owhers,  so
as to take their revenge for the major victory the latter had
won  by  repealing the Corn  Laws.
The Ten Hours  Bill not  only  satisfied an absolutely
essential need of the workers  by  protecting their health to
some  extent from the frenzied exploitation of the factory
owners,  but  also freed the workers  from the association with
sentimental dreamers, from the partnership with England’s
reactionary classes in general. Patriarchal rantings of the
Oastlers and moving  professions of sympathy  from the Lord
Ashleys fell on  deaf ears, once the Ten Hours  Bill ceased
to be the point  of their tirades. It was only  then that the
working-class movement  started to concentrate its entire attention on  the conquest of political power  by  the proletariat,
as the primary means of revolutionising the whole of the
existing society. Whereupon  the aristocracy and reactionary
sections of the bourgeoisie, but  a short while ago allies of the
workers,  now  started both  violently opposing  the working class movement  and allying themselves with the bourgeoisie
with a similar fervour.
As  a result of the industrial revolution, industry, by  means
of which England had been able to secure complete domination of the world market, had become England’s all-important
branch of production. England stood to rise or fall in time
with her industry, soar or  sink with industry’s fluctuations. As
industry came to exert this decisive influence, so  the industrial
bourgeoisie, the factory owners,  came to constitute the all-
important class in English society; the political domination
of industrialists and the removal of all social and political
institutions which obstructed the development of large-scale
industry became a necessity. The industrial bourgeoisie set
about this task and English history from 1830 to the present

day is a history of the victories which it gained one  after the
other over its united reactionary opponents.
Whereas the July  Revolution  in France brought  the
financial aristocracy to power,  the Reform  Bill in England,
which was passed soon  afterwards, in 1832, led to the fall
of the financial aristocracy. The bank, the national creditors
and the stock-exchange speculators, in a word,  those dealing
in money,  to whom  the aristocracy was deeply in debt, had
hitherto held almost unchallenged sway in England, behind
the checkered mask of their electoral monopoly.  The more
large-scale industry and world trade developed, the more
intolerable, despite various concessions, this domination
became. It was overthrown  by  the alliance of all the other
sections of the bourgeoisie with the English proletariat and
the Irish peasants. In face of the threat of popular revolution
the bourgeoisie returned its notes by  the pile to the bank,
bringing  it to the verge of bankruptcy. The financial
aristocracy stepped down  at the right moment  and through
its flexibility spared England a February Revolution.
The Reform  Bill gave all propertied classes in the country,
down  to the last shopkeeper, a share in political power. All
sections of the bourgeoisie were thus granted a domain where
they could legitimately assert their interests and claims to
power. Rivalries between various sections of the bourgeoisie,
similar to those which have been going  on  in France under
the Republic ever since the June  victory of 1848 have in
England since the Reform  Bill proceeded in Parliament. It
goes without  saying that the results these rivalries have led
to in the two  countries, where widely differing conditions
prevail, also show  little similarity.
The industrial bourgeoisie, having once gained access to the
field of parliamentary struggle after the Reform  Bill, could
not  fail to win  victory after victory. As  a result of the restrictions on  sinecures the financiers’ aristocratic hangers-on were
sacrificed to the industrial bourgeoisie,38 as were the paupers
as a result of the Poor  Law of 183339 and the financiers and
landowners through  the reduction of tariffs and the introduction of income tax, which did away with their tax privileges.
Fhese victories swelled the numbers  of the industrialists’
minions. Wholesale and retail trade became their tributaries

and London  and Liverpool began paying homage at the altar
of free trade, the industrialists’ Messiah. But  with these
victories their requirements and aspirations also grew.
Modern  large-scale industry can only  hold its own  pro vided that it is constantly expanding and constantly conquering new  markets. The infinite facility of mass production, the
incessant development and improvement  of machinery, which
lead to the constant ousting  of capital and workers,  oblige it
to follow this course. Any  lull marks the onset of ruin. The
expansion of industry, however,  depends on  the expansion of
the market. Yet, since industry at its present level of development  is expanding its productive forces incomparably faster
than it can expand its markets, those periodic crises occur,
when,  owing  to a surplus  of means of production and output,
commercial circulation suddenly comes to a standstill and
industry and trade can do nothing  but  mark time, until the
surplus  output  finds an outlet through  new  channels. England
is the focal point  of these crises, the crippling effect of which
cannot fail to make itself felt in the most  distant and remote
corners of the world market and bring  about the ruin of a
considerable section of the industrial and commercial bour geoisie everywhere. In such crises, which incidentally make
all sections of English society still more  clearly aware of their
dependence on  the factory owners,  there is only  one way to
save the situation: to expand markets, either through  win ning  new  ones or exploiting more  thoroughly  those in
existence. Apart from a few exceptions when,  as for instance
in China in 1842, a previously tightly closed market was
prised open  by  force of arms, there is only  one industrial
means of opening  up  new  markets and exploiting existing
ones  more  thoroughly,  namely, introducing lower prices, i.e.,
reducing production costs. Production costs can be reduced by
the adoption of new,  improved production methods and by
means of cuts in profits or wages. The introduction of improved production methods, however,  cannot avert crises,
since this in its turn  leads to increased production, which
again makes new  markets necessary. Profit cuts are out  of the
question  at times of crisis, when  everyone is only  too  glad to
sell even at a loss. The same applies to wages, which more over, like profit are subject to laws that are independent of

the wishes and intentions of the factory owners. Nevertheless,
it is wages that constitute the bulk of production costs and
repeated cuts are the only  means of expanding markets and
surmounting  such crises. Yet wages will fall only  if the
necessities of life can be provided for the worker  more
cheaply. However,  the necessities of life in England were
made more  expensive for the worker  by  protective tariffs on
corn, on  produce imported from the English colonies, etc.,
and also by  indirect taxes.
This is what lay at the root  of the industrialists’ unremitting, energetic and nation-wide agitation for free trade and,
in particular, for the abolition of the corn tariffs. Hence the
significant fact that from 1842 onwards each trade and industrial crisis brought  them yet another victory. The interests
of the landowners in England were sacrificed to those of the
interests of the landowners in the colonies likewise through
the lifting of differential tariffs on  sugar and other produce,
and those of the shipowners  through  the repeal of the Navigation Laws.40 At  the present juncture the industrialists are
campaigning for restrictions on  state spending and on  taxation
and for the enfranchisement of that section of the working
class on  whom  they can best rely. They are eager to bring
new  allies into Parliament in order to win  direct political
power  for themselves all the faster: this alone will enable
them to put  an end to the now  absurd but  very costly traditional appendages of the English state machine, namely, the
aristocracy, the church, the rotten boroughs  and the semi-
feudal legal system. There is no  doubt  that the now  immi nent new  trade crisis, which seems bound  to coincide with
new  major collisions on  the Continent,  will at least bring
about this advance in England’s development.
Yet amidst this series of uninterrupted victories of the
industrial bourgeoisie reactionary groups  succeeded in
hampering its advance with the fetters of the Ten Hours
Bill. The Ten Hours  Bill was passed at a time marked neither
by  prosperity nor  crisis, during one  of those transition periods
when  industry is sufficiently embarrassed by  the consequences of over-production as to be able to put  in motion  only
a part of its resources and when  the factory owners  themselves do not  allow their factories to work  full time. At  a,

moment  such as this, when  the Ten Hours  Bill set limits to
the competition between the factory owners  themselves, only
at such a moment,  could it be tolerated. However,  this
moment  was soon  to make way for a new  period of
prosperity. The emptied markets demanded new  supplies;
speculation got  under way once more,  thus doubling demand
and the factory owners  could not  produce enough. Now  the
Ten Hours  Bill became an intolerable shackle for industry,
which more  than ever before required complete independence
and freedom from all restrictions with regard to the disposal
of all its resources. What was to become of the industrialists
during the next crisis if they were not  permitted to exploit to
the full this short period of prosperity?  The Ten Hours  Bill
had to be revoked. Since there was as yet insufficient support
in Parliament to do this, ways would  have to be found to
obviate it.
The Bill set a ten-hour limit for the working  day of young
people under eighteen and all women  workers. Since the
latter and children make up  the majority of factory workers,
this meant that factories in general could work  only  ten hours
a day. The factory owners,  however,  when  the next wave of
prosperity called for an increase in working  hours,  found a
wav out  of the situation. As  before, with regard to children
under fourteen, whose  working  hours  had been made subject
to still stricter limits, so  on  this occasion they proceeded to
engage some  women  and young  people as relief and shift
workers. Thus  they were able to keep their factories running
and adult employees working  for as many as thirteen,
fourteen and fifteen hours  a day without  a single individual,
among  those effected by  the Ten Hours  Bill, working  for
more  than the statutory ten hours  a day. This contravened
the letter of the law to a certain extent, but  the whole spirit
of the law and the intention of its authors far more  so.
The factory inspectors complained while Justices of the
Peace were divided among  themselves and reached varying
verdicts. The higher the wave of prosperity rose, the louder
the industrialists protested against the Ten Hours  Bill and
against the intervention of factory inspectors. Sir George
Grey, the Home  Secretary, instructed the inspectors to close
their eyes to the relay or shift system- Yet a good  number

of them did not  let these instructions harass them, in the
knowledge that they had the law behind them. Finally a much
publicised case was brought  before the Court  of Exchequer
which came out  in favour of the factory owners. This verdict
was tantamount to an abrogation of the Ten Hours  Bill and
the factory owners  are once again unchallenged masters of
their factories; in times of crisis they can keep their factories
running  two,  three or six hours  and during periods of
prosperity thirteen or fifteen hours,  while the factory
inspector is no  longer in a position to interfere.
The Ten Hours  Bill was supported mainly by  reactionaries
and put  through  Parliament by  exclusively reactionary
classes, and it is now  clear from the way in which the Bill
was put  through  that it was indeed a thoroughly  reactionary
measure. The whole of England’s social development is
bound  up  with the development and advance of industry. All
institutions which stand in the way of this advance, which
restrict it or seek to regulate and control it according to
any outside criteria are of necessity reactionary: their position
is precarious and they are bound  to be swept  away by  it. The
revolutionary current which dealt so  easily with the whole
patriarchal society of the England of the Past, the aristocracy
and the finance bourgeoisie, is most  unlikely to allow the
moderate Ten Hours  Bill to stem its passage. All attempts
of Lord Ashley and his associates to reinstate the Bill by
means of an authentic interpretation will be in vain or  at best
achieve ephemeral results.
Nevertheless the Ten Hours  Bill is indispensable for the
workers. For  them it is a physical necessity. Without  this Bill
the whole of the present generation of English workers  is
doomed to physical collapse. Yet there is a tremendous gulf
between the Ten Hours  Bill which the workers  are now
demanding and the Ten Hours  Bill which Sadler, Oastler
and Ashley campaigned for and which was passed by  the
reactionary coalition of 1847. The Bill’s short lifespan, its
simple undoing — a mere court ruling, not  even an act of
Parliament, was required to revoke it— and the subsequent
behaviour of their former reactionary associates have taught
the workers  what an alliance with reaction is worth. It has
taught theni how  little they gain from the enactment of

isolated, minor  measures against the industrial bourgeoisie.
It has taught them that the industrial bourgeoisie is so  far the
only  class which at the present time is capable of providing
their movement  with leaders and that to obstruct its progres sive mission  would  be fruitless. Despite their open  hostility
towards the industrialists, which has in no  way been cooled,
the workers  are now  much  more  inclined to support  the latter
in their campaign to achieve completely free trade, financial
reform and an extension of the franchise, than to let themselves be rallied once more  to the banners of the united forces
of reaction by  philanthropic mystification. They feel that their
time can only  come after the industrialists’ energy has been
completely spent and are thus responding to the right
instincts in going  out  of their way to accelerate the process
of development which will give the industrialists the power
they seek and lead to their subsequent  downfall. Meanwhile
they do not  forget that in doing so  they are bringing  their
own,  immediate enemies to power,  and that they can only
achieve their own  liberation by  overthrowing  the industrialists and winning  political power  for themselves. The
virtual annulment of the Ten Hours  Bill has proved this to
them once again most  pointedly. The reinstatement of this
Bill is futile without  universal suffrage, and universal suffrage
in England, two-thirds of whose  population consists of industrial proletarians, implies exclusive political power  for
the working  class, together with all those revolutionary
changes in social conditions intrinsic to that power. The Ten
Hours  Bill which the workers  are now  calling for is therefore
quite different from the one which the Court  of Exchequer
has just abrogated. It no  longer represents an isolated
attempt to cripple industrial progress, it is a link in a long
chain of measures aimed at radically changing the whole
of the present structure of society and gradually doing away
with hitherto existing class contradictions. It is no  longer a
reactionary but  a revolutionary measure for which they are
campaigning.
The virtual repeal of the Ten Hours  Bill, first by  the
factory owners  taking the law into their own  hands, and
then by  the Court  of Exchequer, served above all to shorten
the recent period of prosperity and bring  the next crisis

nearer. Meanwhile all that serves to bring  these crises nearer
also serves to accelerate the advance of English society and
the immediate goal of that advance, namely, the overthrow
of the industrial bourgeoisie by  the industrial proletariat. The
means at the disposal of the industrialists for the expansion
of markets and the elimination of crises are few and far between. The reduction of state spending advocated by  Cobden
is either merely a piece of Whig  talk or  it borders on  a revolution, even if it is only  a temporary solution. If this measure
is to be followed through  on  a wide, truly revolutionary
scale— in as far as the English industrialists can be revolutionary— how  is the next crisis to be averted? It is evident
that the English industrialists, whose  means of production
possess  an inestimably greater capacity for expansion than
their commodity  markets, are rapidly approaching the point
when  they will no  longer have any loopholes to turn  to, when
the periods of prosperity, which now  still separate one crisis
from the next, will disappear altogether under the pressure
of the inordinate growth  of productive forces, when  crises
will only  be separated by  short periods of feeble half-hearted
industrial activity and when  industry, trade and the whole  of
modern  society will perish as a result of an excess of energy,
for which it has no  outlet, on  the one  hand, and utter exhaustion on  the other, were it not  for the fact that this abnormal
state of affairs bears its own  remedy within itself and that
industrial development at the same time has engendered the
one class which will be able to take over the direction of
society, namely, the proletariat. The proletarian revolution
is then inevitable and its victory assured.
Such is the logical normal sequence of events that is bound
to stem from the whole complex of social conditions in
present-day England. To  what extent this normal process
can be shortened by  clashes on  the Continent  and revolutionary upheavals in England will soon  emerge.
And  what of the Ten Hours  Bill?
The moment  the confines of the world market become too
narrow  for the full deployment of all modern  industry’s resources, the moment  this industry requires a social revolution
in order that its potential may once more  have free scope for
action, the restriction of working  hours  ceases to be a reac
tionary measure or a brake on  industrial progress. On  the
contrary such restrictions emerge of their own  accord. The
first result of the proletarian revolution in England will be
the centralisation of large-scale industry in the hands of the
state, in other words,  in the hands of the ruling proletariat,
and those rivalries which today lie at the root  of the contradiction between regulation of working  hours  and industrial
progress  will vanish with the centralisation of industry. Thus
the problem  of the ten-hour working  day, like all those which
stem from the contradiction between capital and wagelabour, can be solved by  one thing and one thing only — the
proletarian revolution.
in March 1850
Published in Neue Rheinische Translated from the German
Zeitung. Politisch-dkonomische
Revue No.  4, April 1850