But altogether independently of actual over-work, this so-called
 relay system was an offspring of capitalistic fantasy, such as Fourier,
 in his humorous sketches of “Courtes Seances,” has never surpassed, except
 that the “attraction of labour” was changed into the attraction of capital.
 Look, for example, at those schemes of the masters which the “respectable” 
 press praised as models of “what a reasonable degree of care and method
 can accomplish.” The personnel of the workpeople was sometimes divided
 into from 12 to 14 categories, which themselves constantly changed and
 recharged their constituent parts. During the 15 hours of the factory day,
 capital dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes, now for an hour, and
 then pushed him out again, to drag him into the factory and to thrust him
 out afresh, hounding him hither and thither, in scattered shreds of time,
 without ever losing hold of him until the full 10 hours’ work was done.
 As on the stage, the same persons had to appear in turns in the different
 scenes of the different acts. But as an actor during the whole course of
 the play belongs to the stage, so the operatives, during 15 hours, belonged
 to the factory, without reckoning the time for going and coming. Thus the
 hours of rest were turned into hours of enforced idleness, which drove
 the youths to the pot-house, and the girls to the brothel. At every new
 trick that the capitalist, from day to day, hit upon for keeping his machinery
 going 12 or 15 hours without increasing the number of his hands, the worker
 had to swallow his meals now in this fragment of time, now in that. At
 the time of the 10 hours’ agitation, the masters cried out that the working
 mob petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours’ wages for 10 hours’ work.
 Now they reversed the medal. They paid 10 hours’ p276wages for 12 or 15 hours’ lordship over labour-power. [129] This
 was the gist of the matter, this the masters’ interpretation of the 10
 hours’ law! These were the same unctuous Free-traders, perspiring with
 the love of humanity, who for full 10 years, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation,
 had preached to the operatives, by a reckoning of pounds, shillings, and
 pence, that with free importation of corn, and with the means possessed
 by English industry, 10 hours’ labour would be quite enough to enrich the
 capitalists. [130] This revolt of capital, after two
 years was at last crowned with victory by a decision of one of the four
 highest Courts of Justice in England, the Court of Exchequer, which in
 a case brought before it on February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers
 were certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that this
 Act itself contained certain words that rendered it meaningless. “By this
 decision, the Ten Hours’ Act was abolished.” [131]
 A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid of using the relay system
 for young persons and women, now took it up heart and soul. [132]