Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

234
V. I. LENIN
themselves without employment and are unable to earn
anything; i.e., there is created what in the language of
economic science is called a reserve army of labour—artificial
surplus-population” (61). The drop in the prices of labour
caused by this reserve army is sometimes so great that
“many farmers possessing machines preferred” (in 1895)
“to harvest with hand labour rather than with machines”
(ibid., 66, from Sbornik Khersonskogo Zemstva [Kherson
Zemstvo Symposium], August 1895)! More strikingly and
convincingly than any argument this fact reveals how profound
are the contradictions inherent in the capitalist
employment of machinery!
Another consequence of the use of machinery is the growing
employment of female and child labour. The existing
system of capitalist agriculture has, generally speaking,
given rise to a certain hierarchy of workers, very much reminiscent
of the hierarchy among factory workers. For example,
on the estates in South Russia there are the following
categories: a) full workers, adult males capable of doing all
jobs b) semi-workers, women and males up to the age of 20;
semi-workers are divided again into two categories: aa) 12,
13 to 15, 16 years of age—these are semi-workers in the stricter
sense of the term—and bb) semi-workers of great strength;
“in the language used on the estates, ‘three-quarter’ workers,”*
from 16 to 20 years of age, capable of doing all the
jobs done by the full worker, except mowing. Lastly, c)
semi-workers rendering little help, children not under 8 and
not over 14 years of age; these act as swine-herds, calf-herds,
weeders and plough-boys. Often they work merely for their
food and clothing. The introduction of agricultural implements
“lowers the price of the full worker’s labour” and renders
possible its replacement by the cheaper labour of women and
juveniles. Statistics on migrant labour confirm the fact of
the displacement of male by female labour: in 1890, of
the total number of workers registered in the township of
Kakhovka and in the city of Kherson, 12.7% were women;
in 1894, for the whole gubernia women constituted 18.2%
(10,239 out of 56,464); in 1895, 25.6% (13,474 out of 48,753).
Children in 1893 constituted 0.7% (from 10 to 14 years of
* Tezyakov, loc. cit., 72.