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 process of production itself, so that food is given to the laborer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers, to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labor-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labor-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the laborers' period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labor-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labor-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the laborer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.

The Organization of Labor

(Early French Utopian Socialist, 1811-1882)

What is competition, from the point of view of the workman? It is work put up to auction. A contractor wants a workman; three present themselves.

"How much for your work?"

"Half a crown; I have a wife and children."

"Well; and how much for yours?"

"Two shillings; I have no children, but I have a wife."