IV. JOHN WADE? 


1. “If the object sought be to render an operative a machine, whereby the greatest 
quantity of work in a given occupation may be extracted from him, no way so effective 
as division of labour” [p. 125}. 


2. A reduction of wages drives the workers either to reduce their 
spending or to increase their productivity, in factories operated by 
machines, for instance (and in general), by working longer hours; or, 
with handicraftsmen, hand-loom weavers, etc., by working harder in 
the same hour. But since their wages have been reduced precisely 
because the demand has slackened, they thereby increase the supply 
at the unfavourable moment. The consequence is that their wages 
drop still lower, and then the bourgeois come along and say “If the 
people would only work”. 

3. Altogether, the general law is that there cannot be two market 
prices, and that the lower market price prevails (given equal quality). 

Take 1,000 workers of equal skill; 50 are without work; the price is 
then determined not by the 950 who are employed but by the 50 who 
are unemployed. | 

But this law of the market price weighs more heavily on the 
commodity labour than on other commodities, because the worker 
cannot lay up his commodity in store but must sell his life activity or, 
deprived of the means of subsistence, must die. 

The saleable commodity labour differs from other commodities in 
particular by its evanescent nature, by the impossibility of accumulating 
it, and by the fact that the supply cannot be increased or reduced with 
the same facility as with other products. 

4. The humanity of the capitalists consists in buying as much 
labour as possible at the cheapest price. Agricultural labourers earn 
more in summer than in winter, although in winter they need more 
food, fuel and warmer clothing. 

5. The abolition of Sunday, for example, would be a sheer loss to 
the workers. The masters seek to reduce wages by leaving them 
nominally the same but making the workers work a quarter of an 
hour more, for example, shortening meal times, etc. 

6. Wages affected by fashions, the changing seasons, and commer- 
cial fluctuations.224 

7. If the worker, supplanted by the machine, goes into another 
industry, that is as a rule a worse one. He never gets back into his 
former position. 


4 J. Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes.— Ed. 


15— 1826 


420 Karl Marx 


The machine and the division of labour replace dear by cheap 
labour. 

One has suggested to the workers: 

1) savings banks; 

2) to learn all possible trades (so that when there is a surplus of 
workers in one industry the same occurs at once in all industries). 

8. In times of stagnation: 

a) cessation of work; 

b) reduction of wages; 

c) the same wage, but employment for fewer days in the week.”” 

9. Concerning the combinations of trade,’ it is to be remarked: 

1. The expenses of the workers (the costs). Invention of machines 
in consequence of the combinations. Other division of labour. 
Depression of wages. Deplacement> of factories to other localities. 

2. If they were all to succeed in keeping wages so high that profits 
were significantly reduced below the average profits of other 
countries, or so that capital would grow more slowly, the industry of 
a country would be ruined, and the workers together with the 
masters even more so. 


Although a reduction in taxes does not benefit the workers, a rise 
in taxation, on the other hand, harms them. The good thing in the 
rise in taxation in countries with a developed bourgeoisie is that the 
estate of small farmers and proprietors (craftsmen, etc.) is thereby 
ruined and thrown into the working class. 


Influence of the Irish in England, the Germans in Alsace, on 
wages.