025-Chapter-9-The-Rate-of-Surplus-Value-Section-3-Senior_s-Last-Hour

Section 3: Senior’s “Last Hour”

第3节：西尼尔(Senior)的“最后一小时”

【这一节是论战，暂时不译。现有翻译版本已经很好了。】

One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the
bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economic “science,”
and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in
the latter place, the Political Economy that he taught in the former. The
manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed
Factory Act, but against the still more menacing Ten-hours’ agitation. With
their usual practical acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor
“wanted a good deal of finishing;” it was this discovery that caused them to
write for him. On his side the Professor has embodied the lecture he received
from the Manchester manufacturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: “Letters on the
Factory Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture.” London, 1837. Here we find,
amongst others, the following edifying passage:

“Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are
employed, ... can be worked more than 11½ hours a day, that is, 12 hours for
5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.

“Now the following analysis (!) will show that in a mill so worked, the
whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a
manufacturer to invest £100,000: – £80,000 in his mill and machinery, and
£20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing
the capital to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent.,
ought to be goods worth £115,000.... Of this £115,000, each of the
twenty-three half-hours of work produces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of
these 23-23rds (constituting the whole £115,000) twenty, that is to say
£100,000 out of the £115,000, simply replace the capital; – one twenty-third
(or £5,000 out of the £115,000) makes up for the deterioration of the mill
and machinery. The remaining 2-23rds, that is, the last two of the
twenty-three half-hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent.
If, therefore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work
thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about
£2,600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than
doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour
per day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed –
if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit would
be destroyed.”^[1]10

And the Professor calls this an “analysis!” If, giving credence to the out-cries
of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the
day in the production, i.e., the reproduction or replacement of the value of the
buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c., then his analysis was superfluous. His
answer would simply have been: – Gentlemen! if you work your mills for 10 hours
instead of 11½, then, other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton,
machinery, &c., will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose.
Your work-people will in future spend one hour and a half less time in
reproducing or replacing the capital that has been advanced. – If, on the other
hand, he did not believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert
in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that
is concerned exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the
working day, before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful
not to lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be
good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw
material, &c., on one side of the account, and the capital advanced in wages on
the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance with the
calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced his wages
in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis thus:

According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one produces his
wages, and in the last hour your surplus-value or net profit. Now, since in
equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the last hour but one,
must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only while he
labours that he produces any value at all, and the amount of his labour is
measured by his labour-time. This you say, amounts to 11½ hours a day. He
employs one portion of these 11½ hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and
the remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he does
absolutely nothing. But since, on your assumption, his wages, and the
surplus-value he yields, are of equal value, it is clear that he produces his
wages in 5¾ hours, and your net profit in the other 5¾ hours. Again, since the
value of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the values of his
wages and of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 11½
working-hours, of which 5¾ hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the
last hour but one, and 5¾, the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We
now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The last working-hour but
one is, like the first, an ordinary working-hour, neither more nor less. How
then can the spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that
embodies 5¾ hours’ labour? The truth is that he performs no such miracle. The
use-value produced by him in one hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value
of this yarn is measured by 5¾ working-hours, of which 4¾ were, without any
assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the
cotton, the machinery, and so on; the remaining one hour alone is added by him.
Therefore since his wages are produced in 5¾ hours, and the yarn produced in one
hour also contains 5¾ hours’ work, there is no witchcraft in the result, that
the value created by his 5¾ hours’ spinning, is equal to the value of the
product spun in one hour. You are altogether on the wrong track, if you think
that he loses a single moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing
the values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the contrary, it is
because his labour converts the cotton and spindles into yarn, because he spins,
that the values of the cotton and spindles go over to the yarn of their own
accord. This result is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity.
It is true, he will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of
cotton, than he will in half an hour; but that is only because in one hour he
spins up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that
the workman produces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in
the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, 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 11½
working-hours, or just a whole day’s work, i.e., two hours of his own work and
9½ hours of other people’s. And my assertion that, in the first 5¾ hours, he
produces his wages, and in the last 5¾ 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 11½, 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 5¾ hours’ labour to 7¼ 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 1½ 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 pessimist a view, when you fear, that with a
reduction of the hours of labour from 11½ 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 5¾ hours to 4¾ hours, a period that still gives a
very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82 14/23%. 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.”^[2]11 Whenever your “last hour” strikes in earnest, think of the Oxford
Professor. And now, gentlemen, “farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better
world, but not before.”

Senior invented the battle cry of the “last hour” in 1836.^[3]12 In the London
Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was again raised by James
Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this time in opposition to the 10
hours’ bill.

---

1. 10 Senior, l.c., pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are
   of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that
   manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount
   required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to
   replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the
   accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in “A Letter to Mr.
   Senior,” &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than so-called
   “Analysis.” Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in
   1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered
   undying service to the English working-class. He carried on a life-long
   contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the
   Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower
   House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours
   worked by the “hands” in the mills.

   Apart from efforts in principle, Senior’s statement is confused. What he
   really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman
   for 11½ hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too,
   the working year, may be conceived to consist of 11½ hours or 23
   half-hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the
   year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of
   £115,000; one half-hour yields 1/23 × £115,000; 20 half-hours yield
   20/23 × £115,000 = £100,000, i.e., they replace no more than the capital
   advanced. There remain 3 half-hours, which yield 1/23 × £115,000 =
   £5,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23 ×
   £115,000 = £5,000; i.e., it makes up for the wear and tear of the
   machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.e., the last hour, yield 2/23 ×
   £115,000 = £10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the
   last 2/23 of the product into portions of the working day itself.

   ↩︎

2. 10 Senior, l.c., pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are
   of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that
   manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount
   required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to
   replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the
   accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in “A Letter to Mr.
   Senior,” &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than so-called
   “Analysis.” Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in
   1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered
   undying service to the English working-class. He carried on a life-long
   contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the
   Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower
   House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours
   worked by the “hands” in the mills.

   Apart from efforts in principle, Senior’s statement is confused. What he
   really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for
   11½ hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the
   working year, may be conceived to consist of 11½ hours or 23 half-hours, but
   each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this
   supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of £115,000; one
   half-hour yields 1/23 × £115,000; 20 half-hours yield 20/23 × £115,000 =
   £100,000, i.e., they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain
   3 half-hours, which yield 1/23 × £115,000 = £5,000 or the gross profit. Of
   these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23 × £115,000 = £5,000; i.e., it makes up
   for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.e.,
   the last hour, yield 2/23 × £115,000 = £10,000 or the net profit. In the
   text Senior converts the last 2/23 of the product into portions of the
   working day itself. ↩︎

3. 10 Senior, l.c., pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are
   of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that
   manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount
   required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to
   replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the
   accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in “A Letter to Mr.
   Senior,” &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than so-called
   “Analysis.” Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in
   1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered
   undying service to the English working-class. He carried on a life-long
   contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the
   Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower
   House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours
   worked by the “hands” in the mills.

   Apart from efforts in principle, Senior’s statement is confused. What he
   really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for
   11½ hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the
   working year, may be conceived to consist of 11½ hours or 23 half-hours, but
   each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this
   supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of £115,000; one
   half-hour yields 1/23 × £115,000; 20 half-hours yield 20/23 × £115,000 =
   £100,000, i.024-Chapter-9-The-Rate-of-Surplus-Value-Section-3-Senior_s-Last-Houre., they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain
   3 half-hours, which yield 1/23 × £115,000 = £5,000 or the gross profit. Of
   these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23 × £115,000 = £5,000; i.e., it makes up
   for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.e.,
   the last hour, yield 2/23 × £115,000 = £10,000 or the net profit. In the
   text Senior converts the last 2/23 of the product into portions of the
   working day itself. ↩︎