Capital Volume I

Times, Pall Mall Gazette, etc.) have cried out so loudly during the last two years, is of ancient 
date. F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the same horrors, exactly the same transient canting 
outcries of “sensational literature.” But frightful increase of “deaths by starvation” in London 
during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the growing horror in which the working-people 
hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place of punishment for misery.
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B. The Badly Paid Strata of the British Industrial Class 
During the cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged by the Privy Council with an inquiry 
into the conditions of nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and Cheshire. His 
observations during many preceding years had led him to the conclusion that “to avert starvation 
diseases,” the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least 3,900 grains of carbon 
with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with 
200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same quantity of nutritive elements as are contained 
in 2 lbs. of good wheaten bread, for men 1/9 more; for the weekly average of adult men and 
women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen. His calculation was 
practically confirmed in a surprising manner by its agreement with the miserable quantity of 
nourishment to which want had forced down the consumption of the cotton operatives. This was, 
in December, 1862, 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly.
In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into the state of distress of the worst-
nourished part of the English working class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council, 
chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His inquiry ranges on the one hand over the 
agricultural labourers, on the other, over silk-weavers, needlewomen, kid-glovers, stocking-
weavers, glove-weavers, and shoemakers. The latter categories are, with the exception of the 
stocking-weavers, exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry to select in each 
category the most healthy families, and those comparatively in the best circumstances.
As a general result it was found that 
“in only one of the examined classes of in-door operatives did the average 
nitrogen supply just exceed, while in another it nearly reached, the estimated 
standard of bare sufficiency [i.e., sufficient to avert starvation diseases], and that 

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Chapter 25 
in two classes there was defect – in one, a very large defect – of both nitrogen and 
carbon. Moreover, as regards the examined families of the agricultural population, 
it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of 
carbonaceous food, that more than one-third were with less than the estimated 
sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, 
Oxfordshire, and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the 
average local diet.”
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Among the agricultural labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom, 
were the worst fed.
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 The insufficiency of food among the agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, 
chiefly on the women and children, for “the man must eat to do his work.” Still greater penury 
ravaged the town-workers examined. 
“They are so ill fed that assuredly among them there must be many cases of severe 
and injurious privation.”
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(“Privation” of the capitalist all this! i.e., “abstinence” from paying for the means of subsistence 
absolutely necessary for the mere vegetation of his “hands.”) 
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The following table shows the conditions of nourishment of the above-named categories of purely 
town-dwelling work-people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith, and with the 
food-allowance of the cotton operatives during the time of their greatest distress: