I have just read in your October issue an article entitled: Les 
maitres et les ouvriers en Angleterre, this article mentions a meeting 
reported by la Presse of so-called delegates of workers employed in 
the Lancashire cotton industry, a meeting which took place on 
August 29 last in Manchester. The resolutions passed at this meeting 
were such as to prove to la Presse that there is perfect harmony 
between capital and labour in England. 

You did quite well, gentlemen, to reserve your judgment on the 
authenticity of a report which a newspaper of the French bourgeoisie 
has published, based on newspapers of the English bourgeoisie. The 
report is accurate, it is true; the resolutions were adopted just as la 
Presse gives them; there is only one small statement lacking in 
accuracy, but it is precisely this small inaccuracy that is the crux of 
the matter: the meeting which la Presse describes was not a meeting of 
workers, but a meeting of foremen. 

Gentlemen, I spent two years in the heart of Lancashire itself, and 
these two years were spent among the workers; I saw them both at 
their public meetings and in their small committees, I knew their 
leaders and their speakers, and IJ think I can assure you that in no 
other country in the world will you find men more sincerely devoted 
to democratic principles or more firmly resolved to cast off the yoke 
of the capitalist exploiters, under which they find themselves 
suffering at present, than these Lancashire cotton factory workers. 
How, gentlemen, could these same workers whom I have seen with 
my own eyes throw several dozen factory owners off a meeting hall 
platform, whom I have seen, their eyes glinting and fists raised, cast 


The Masters and the Workers in England 311 


terror into the ranks of the bourgeois gathered on this platform, 
how, I repeat, could these same workers today pass a vote of thanks 
to their masters because the latter were kind enough to prefer a 
reduction in working hours to a reduction in wages? 

But let us take a slightly closer look at the matter. Does not the 
reduction in work mean precisely the same thing for the worker as a 
reduction in wages? Evidently it does; in both cases the worker’s 
position deteriorates to an equal extent. There was therefore no 
possible reason for the workers to thank their masters for having 
preferred the first method of reducing the worker’s income to the 
second. However, gentlemen, if you study the English newspapers 
for late August, you will see that the cotton manufacturers had good 
reason to prefer a reduction in working hours to one in wages. At 
that time the price of raw cotton was rising; the same issue of the 
London Globe which reports the meeting in question? also says that 
the Liverpool speculators were going to take over the cotton market to 
produce an artificial rise in price. What do the Manchester 
manufacturers do in such cases? They send their foremen to 
meetings and make them pass resolutions like those which la Presse 
communicated to you. This is a tried and tested device which is used 
each time the speculators try to raise the price of cotton. It is a 
warning to the speculators to be careful not to attempt to raise the 
price too high; for in that case the manufacturers would reduce 
consumption and in so doing, inevitably produce a drop in price. So 
the meeting which gives la Presse grounds for so much rejoicing and 
acclamation is nothing but one of those foremen’s assemblies which 
do not fool anyone in England. 

In order to give you further proof of the extent to which this 
meeting was the exclusive work of the capitalists, it should suffice to 
tell you that the only newspaper to which the resolutions were sent, 
the newspaper from which all the other newspapers borrowed them, 
was the Manchester Guardian, the organ of the manufacturers. The 
democratic workers’ paper, The Northern Star, also gives them; but 
adds that it has taken them from this capitalist newspaper, a 
damning observation in the eyes of the workers.> 


Yours, etc.