Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/226

 APPENDIX 219

tarians. Finally, the more productive capital grows, the more it is compelled to produce for a market whose requirements it does not know,—the more supply tries to force demand, and consequently crises increase in frequency and in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens the concentration of capital, adds to the prole- tariat. Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among the.workers grows too, and grows in a far greater proportion. The reward of labor is less for all, and the burden of labor is increased for at least some of them.

In 1829 there were, in Manchester, 1,088 cotton spinners employed in 36 factories. In 1841 there were but 448, and they tended 55,353 more spindles than the 1,088 spinners did in 1829. If manual labor had in- creased in the same proportion as productive force, the number of spinners ought to have risen to 1,848; im- proved machinery had, therefore, deprived 1,100 workers of employment.

We know beforehand the reply of the economists— the people thus thrown out of work will find other kinds of employment. Dr. Bowring did not fail to reproduce this argument at the Congress of Economists. But neither did he fail to refute himself. In 1833, Dr. Bowring made a speech in the House of Commons upon the 50,000 hand-loom weavers of London who have been starving without being able to find that new kind of employment which the Free Traders hold out to them in the distance. I will give the most striking portion of this speech of Mr. Bowring.

“The misery of the hand-loom weavers,” he says, tic the inevitable fate of all kinds of labor which are easily acquired, and which may, at any moment, be replaced by less costly means, As in these cases competition