A Workers' Inquiry

What is your trade?

Does the shop in which you work belong to a capitalist or to a limited company/ State the names of the capitalist owners or directors of the company.

State the number of rooms in which the various branches of production are carried on. Describe the specialty in which you are engaged. Describe not only the technical side, but the muscular and nervous strain required, and its general effect on the health of the workers.

Describe the hygienic conditions in the workshops; the size of the rooms, space allotted to every worker, ventilation, temperature, plastering, lavatories, general cleanliness, noise of machinery, metallic dust, dampness, etc.

Is there any municipal or government supervision of hygienic conditions in the workshops?

Are there in your industry particular effluvia which are harmful for the health and produce specific diseases among the workers?

Is first-aid organized in your workshop?

How much time do you lose in coming to the workshop and returning home?

Are wages paid entirely in money, or in some other form?

If you rent a lodging from your employer, on what conditions ? Does he not deduct the rent from your wages?

Have you ever known any rank and file workers who could retire from employment at the age of 50 and live on the money earned by them as wage workers.

Do any resistance associations exist in your trade and how are they led? Send us their rules and regulations.

Do you know of cases when the government made unfair use of the armed forces, to place them at the disposal of the employers against their wage workers?

Are you aware of any cases when the government intervened to protect the workers from the extortions of the employers and their illegal associations?

Does the government strive to secure the observance of the existing factory laws against the interests of the employers? Do its inspectors do their duty?

Are there in your workshop or trade any friendly societies to provide for accidents, sickness, death, temporary incapacity, old age, etc.? Send us their rules and regulations.

Are there cooperative guilds in your trade? How are they controlled? Do they hire workers for wages in the same ways as the capitalists? Send us their rules and regulations.

Are there any workshops in your trade in which payment is made to the workers partly in the form of wages and partly in the form of so-called profit sharing? Compare the sums received by these workers and the sums received by other workers who don't take place in so-called profit sharing. State the obligations of the workers living under this system. may they go on strike, etc. or are they only permitted to be devoted servants of their employers?

What are the general physical, intellectual and moral conditions of life of the working men and women employed in your trade?

Karl Marx

La Revue Socialiste | 1880