Page:Das Kapital (Moore, 1906).pdf/273

Rh specially for cleaning, &c., either before 6 a.m. [sic!] or before 2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons."

"The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs, which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain.… In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors making out a case."

These "small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as "petty pilfering of minutes," "snatching a few minutes," or, as the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling at meal times."

It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus-value by surplus-labour, is not secret. "If you allow me," said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten minutes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket." "Moments are the elements of profit."