To the Striking Miners of the Ruhr Valley

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About 20,000 miners of the Ruhr Valley went on strike on June 18, 1872. They demanded a 25 per cent increase in wages and an eight-hour working day. After five weeks of struggle, the workers were defeated.

The German capitalist press is calling on you to drop your demands for an eight-hour shift and a 25 per cent wage increase, and is saying that you should resume work so that German industry might avoid having to get its coal from England, thus letting German money go abroad instead of using it to pay for German labour.

This is the eternal miserable whine of the bourgeois, heard whenever the workers get up on their own feet and try to make any demands. In England, where they have been telling the same old story for forty years or so now, nobody takes any notice any more. In this particular instance, however, it is worth pointing out that the capitalist press is deliberately trying to mislead you, by telling you that all the mine-owners and manufacturers need to do is just to write to England to get all the coal they want.

In England, coal consumption has increased since 1869 at an unprecedented rate, owing to the general upturn that has occurred in English industry since then, to the increase in the number of factories, the enlarged consumption by the railways, the immense growth of marine steam-ship traffic—but mainly owing to the colossal extension of the iron industry, which, in the last three years, has far outstripped all previous periods of prosperity. The Daily News, a liberal capitalist paper (edition of July 15 of this year) has this to say on the subject:

“One of the principal reasons for the recent advance in the price of coal is undoubtedly the sudden and unexampled improvement in the iron trade. [...] The North of England raises about one-fourth of the total quantity of coal produced in Great Britain. A large portion of this” goes to “London and the South and East of England with fuel. It has also been extensively used for steam-ship purposes; but more recendy the development of the iron trade in Cleveland” (quite close to the mines) “caused a sudden demand for coal for local purposes. The growth of a trade requiring now at the rate of, perhaps, not less than from five to six millions of tons* of coal per annum, naturally gave a great stimulus to the coal trade [...]. In addition to this, however, we have to consider the rapid rise of the west-coast hematite iron district. The blast-furnaces in Cumberland and Lancashire derive their fuel almost exclusively from the Durham coal-field,” and, according to moderate estimates, need “one million and a half tons of coal” annually [...]. “In the North of England alone the new blast-furnaces now in course of erection [...] would require [...] three-quarters of a million tons of coal per annum. Then there are new rolling mills and several blast-furnaces in the west-coast district. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that the fuel question became a subject of vital importance in the whole North of England, and the natural result was that prices speedily went up. In South Staffordshire, Scotland, South Wales, Derbyshire, the West Riding, and other parts of the country, the same causes operated to bring about higher prices of fuel.”

Under these circumstances, the English miners did the same as you: they demanded higher wages and shorter working hours. The English mine-owners, as always superior to their German competitors in insight and worldly wisdom, put up no serious resistance, but rather accepted all the demands. Hear what The Daily News says further on this point:

“Wages were advanced from time to time... The miners also went in for systematic shortening of [...] a day’s work. Altogether it is asserted by practical men that the quantity of coal now raised is not more per man than about 60 per cent of what was produced when trade was dull and wages were [...] much lower than they are now. This difficulty might be met by the employment of more men, but the men are not to be had all at once. It is true they are being drafted in to some extent from the agricultural districts; but pitmen want a good deal of training, so that the amount of relief thus to be obtained will be comparatively small and slow in its operation. At this moment the men have succeeded in some parts of the country in getting a reduction of the hours of labour to eight per day, whilst in all parts advances in wages are succeeding each other so rapidly that there seems no alternative but higher selling prices.”

Then there is another circumstance to be borne in mind. Almost throughout England the topmost coal seams are exhausted and the mines have to be sunk deeper and deeper. Hear, again, the article in The Daily News:

“the best portions of these valuable deposits” in South Staffordshire “have been worked out. In many parts of that once rich mineral tract, the mines are exhausted, and the pit mounds are fast being converted into arable and grazing land, though thousands of acres” (pit mounds) “yet remain an almost desolate

* The English ton is almost the exact equivalent of 2,000 Zollpfunds or 1,000 kilos. waste. The resources of the district are not, however, yet used up. Mines are being sunk to greater depths round the confines of the coal field... But under existing circumstances, even with improved modern appliances for mining purposes, it is increasingly expensive to raise material, besides which it has now to be carried further before it reaches the iron manufacturer... What we have said about South Staffordshire applies also to many other parts of the country. The coal has now to be won from greater depths, and has to be conveyed longer distances to the works where it is principally consumed.”

The consequence is that, as The Daily News points out, coal prices at the pit-head “have doubled”, and that there is now a real shortage of coal, which is claiming the attention of the whole country. Another paper, the English capitalists’ main economic journal The Economist, says in its July 13 edition:

“Since the beginning of the present year coal has been rising rapidly in price, till it is now between 60 and 100 per cent dearer than it was twelve months ago... Before a week or two is over, the whole rise may be a good deal more than 100 per cent, with little sign of any immediate check to the movement. Coal exports in June of this year were 1,108,000 tons, or 4 per cent more than in June last year, but its value was £758,000, or 53 per cent more. This year the value of the coal exports in June was on average 13s 9d” (or 4 thalers l7’/2 groschen) “per ton; last year it was 9s 4d” (or 3 thalers 3 1/2 groschen).

The Spectator, a third capitalist paper (July 20), also reports that, in London, good house coal has increased in price from 23s, or 7 thalers 20 groschen, to 35s, or 11 thalers 20 groschen.

From these facts you can see what to make of the mineowners’ and manufacturers’ threat to get their coal from England. Mr. Alfred Krupp can issue as many ukases as he wishes; he will have to pay dearer for English coal than for Ruhr coal, and it is very questionable too whether he will get it at all.

In my capacity as Secretary for Germany of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association I considered it my duty to bring these facts to your notice.

Karl Marx

London, July 21, 1872