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hours to reproduce his wages, an improved machine enables him to do it in, say, three hours, and to present the capitalist with nine hours unpaid toil. That is why, with every advance in the mode of industry, the rate of exploitation increases and the class antagonism between the workers and capitalists becomes sharper. A similar result, that is, an increase in the rate of exploitation, is obtained by increasing the working day (this being limited however, to the point when it might impair the efficiency of the worker). Being a more open, direct effort at exploitation, it leads to resistance; hence the fights on the working day between the capitalist and working classes.
Again, the same result is achieved by lowering the standard of living of the workers 01 by reducing the cost of living; hence, on the one hand, the employment of women and children whose standard of living is generally lower than that of men (and who, so far, have also been more docile, helpless tools than men), and, on the other hand, the introduction of Free Trade (when England had as yet nothing to fear from the competition of other countries), thus reducing the cost of food to the workers. It is no mere accident that the same industrial capitalists who were so largely instrumental in bringing about Free Trade for the main purpose, as they themselves made clear, of lowering the cost of food, these same philanthropists bitterly opposed every attempt to shorten the working day, or to limit the employment of women and children under even the most inhuman conditions.
And it is from this surplus labour of men, women and children, producing surplus value, and for which the capitalist has paid nothing, that the wealth of the capitalist has been, and is being, built up. At one time, the owner of slaves or serfs simply appropriated the products of his chattels, and saw to their feeding, clothing, etc., as he would to that of his cattle. Now, however, men are outwardly free, and mystery surrounds the wealth of the non-producing class. This mystery is simply the appropriation by the capitalist of the surplus labour or the surplus value produced by the worker. This is the peculiar form of expropriation of one class by the other taken under capitalism, and upon this, the necessary relation between
