Page:Das Kapital (Moore, 1906).pdf/258

252 that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working hours, whether they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in that yarn, there are incorporated 11$1⁄2$ working hours, or just a whole day's work, i. e., two hours of his own work and 9$1⁄2$ hours of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5$3⁄4$ hours, he produces his wages, and in the last 5$3⁄4$ hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment of labour-power, I only talk your own slang. Now gentlemen, if you compare the working time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day; this gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt, that if you make your "hands" toil for 13 hours instead of 11$1⁄2$, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus-labour, then the latter will be increased from 5$3⁄4$ hours' labour to 7$1⁄4$ hours' labour, and the rate of surplus-value from 100%, to 126$2⁄23$%. So that you are altogether too sanguine in expecting that by such an addition of 1$1⁄2$ hours to the working day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words that it will be "more than doubled." On the other hand—man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse—you take too pessimistic a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 11$1⁄2$ to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus-labour will fall from 5$3⁄4$ hours to 4$3⁄4$ hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82$14⁄32$%. But this dreadful "last hour," about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about the day of judgment, is "all bosh." If it goes, it will cost neither you, your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their "purity of mind." Whenever your "last hour" strikes in