Page:Das Kapital (Moore, 1906).pdf/753

 to ascertain whether a dietary might not be hit upon for prisoners employed on public works nearly approaching to the dietary of free labourers? … “He [the agricultural labourer] might say: ‘I work hard, and have not enough to eat, and when in prison I did not work harder where I had plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for me to be in prison again than here.’” From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative summary.

The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863, on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourer’s families is below the minimum necessary “to arrest starvation diseases.” This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts of Cormwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts. “The nourishment obtained by the labourer himself,” says Dr. E. Smith, “is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he eats a larger share … necessary to enable him to