Part 60
I do not think that I can better approximate the number of casuals than by quoting the opinion of a contracting scavager familiar with his workmen and their ways. He considered that there were always nearly as many hands on the look-out for a job in the streets, as there were regularly employed at the business by the large contractors; this I have shown to be 262, let us estimate therefore the number of casuals at 200.
According to the table I have given at pp. 213, 214, the number of men regularly or constantly employed at the metropolitan trade is as follows:--
Scavagers employed by large contractors 262 Ditto small contractors 13 Ditto machines 25 Ditto parishes 218 Ditto street-orderlies 60 --- Total working scavagers in London 578
But the prior table given at pp. 186, 187, shows the number of scavagers employed throughout the metropolis in wet and dry weather (_exclusive of the street-orderlies_) to be as follows:--
Scavagers employed in wet weather 531 Ditto in dry weather 358 --- Difference 173
Hence it would appear that about one-third less hands are required in the dry than in the wet season of the year. The 170 hands, then, discharged in the dry season are the casually employed men, but the whole of these 170 are not turned adrift immediately they are no longer wanted, some being kept on “odd jobs” in the yard, &c.; nor can that number be said to represent the entire amount of the surplus labour in the trade; but only that portion of it which _does_ obtain even casual employment. After much trouble, and taking the average of various statements, it would appear that the number of casualty or quantity of occasional surplus labour in the scavaging trade may be represented at between 200 and 250 hands.
The scavaging trade, however, is not, I am informed, so overstocked with labourers now as it was formerly. Seven years ago, and from that to ten, there were usually between 200 and 300 hands out of work; this was owing to there being a less extent of paved streets, and comparatively few contractors; the scavaging work, moreover, was “scamped,” the men, to use their own phrase, “licking the work over any how,” so that fewer hands were required. Now, however, the inhabitants are more particular, I am told, “about the crooks and corners,” and require the streets to be swept oftener. Formerly a gang of operative scavagers would only collect six loads of dirt a day, but now a gang will collect nine loads daily. The causes to which the surplus of labourers at present may be attributed are, I find, as follows:--Each operative has to do nearly double the work to what he formerly did, the extra cleansing of the streets having tended not only to employ more hands, but to make each of those employed do more work. The result has, however been followed by an increase in the wages of the operatives; seven years ago the labourers received but 2_s._ a day, and the ganger 2_s._ 6_d._, but now the labourers receive 2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and the ganger 3_s._
In the city the men have to work very long hours, sometimes as many as 18 hours a day without any extra pay. This practice of overworking is, I find, carried on to a great extent, even with those master scavagers who pay the regular wages. One man told me that when he worked for a certain large master, whom he named, he has many times been out at work 28 hours in the wet (saturated to the skin) without having any rest. This plan of overworking, again, is generally adopted by the small masters, whose men, after they have done a regular day’s labour, are set to work in the yard, sometimes toiling 18 hours a day, and usually not less than 16 hours daily. Often so tired and weary are the men, that when they rise in the morning to pursue their daily labour, they feel as fatigued as when they went to bed. “Frequently,” said one of my informants, “have I gone to bed so worn out, that I haven’t been able to sleep. However” (he added), “there is the work to be done, and we must do it or be off.”
This system of overwork, especially in those trades where the quantity of work to be done is in a measure fixed, I find to be a far more influential cause of surplus labour than “over population.” The mere number of labourers in a trade is, _per se_, no criterion as to the quantity of labour employed in it; to arrive at this three things are required:--
(1) The number of hands; (2) The hours of labour; (3) The rate of labouring;
for it is a mere point of arithmetic, that if the hands in the scavaging trade work 18 hours a day, there must be one-third less men employed than there otherwise would, or in other words one-third of the men who are in work must be thus deprived of it. This is one of the crying evils of the day, and which the economists, filled as they are with their over-population theories, have entirely overlooked.
There are 262 men employed in the Metropolitan Scavaging Trade; one-half of these at the least may be said to work 16 hours per diem instead of 12, or one-third longer than they should; so that if the hours of labour in this trade were restricted to the usual day’s work, there would be employment for one-sixth more hands, or nearly 50 individuals extra.
The other causes of the present amount of surplus labour are--
The many hands thrown out of employment by the discontinuance of railway works.
A less demand for unskilled labour in agricultural districts, or a smaller remuneration for it.
A less demand for some branches of labour (as ostlers, &c.), by the introduction of machinery (applied to roads), or through the caprices of fashion.
It should, however, be remembered, that men often found their opinions of such causes on prejudices, or express them according to their class interests, and it is only a few employers of unskilled labourers who care to inquire into the antecedent circumstances of men who ask for work.
As regards the population part of the question, it cannot be said that the surplus labour of the scavaging trade is referable to any inordinate increase in the families of the men. Those who are married appear to have, on the average, four children, and about one-half of the men have no family at all. Early marriages are by no means usual. Of the casual hands, however, full three-fourths are married, and one-half have families.
There are not more than ten or a dozen Irish labourers who have taken to the scavaging, though several have “tried it on;” the regular hands say that the Irish are too lazy to continue at the trade; but surely the labour of the hodman, in which the Irish seem to delight, is sufficient to disprove this assertion, be the cause what it may. About one-fourth of the scavagers entering the scavaging trade as casual hands have been agricultural labourers, and have come up to London from the several agricultural districts in quest of work; about the same proportion appear to have been connected with horses, such as ostlers, carmen, &c.
The _brisk and slack seasons_ in the scavaging trade depend upon the state of the weather. In the depth of winter, owing to the shortness of the days, more hands are usually required for street cleansing; but a “clear frost” renders the scavager’s labour in little demand. In the winter, too, his work is generally the hardest, and the hardest of all when there is snow, which soon becomes mud in London streets; and though a continued frost is a sort of lull to the scavagers’ labour, after “a great thaw” his strength is taxed to the uttermost; and then, indeed, new hands have had to be put on. At the West End, in the height of the summer, which is usually the height of the fashionable season, there is again a more than usual requirement of scavaging industry in wet weather; but perhaps the greatest exercise of such industry is after a series of the fogs peculiar to the London atmosphere, when the men cannot _see_ to sweep. The table I have given shows the influence of the weather, as on wet days 531 men are employed, and on dry days only 358; this, however, does not influence the Street-Orderly system, as under it the men are employed every day, unless the weather make it an actual impossibility.
According to the rain table given at p. 202, there would appear to be, on an average of 23 years, 178 wet days in London out of the 365, that is to say, about 100 in every 205 days are “rainy ones.” The months having the greatest and least number of wet days are as follows:--
No. of days in the month in which rain falls. December 17 July, August, October 16 February, May, November 15 January, April 14 March, September 12 June 11
Hence it would appear that June is the least and December the most showery month in the course of the year; the greatest _quantity_ of rain falling in any month is, however, in October, and the least quantity in March. The number of wet days, and the quantity of rain falling in each half of the year, may be expressed as follows:--
Total Total in depth No. of of rain wet falling days. in inches. The first six months in the year ending June there are 84 10 The second six months in the year ending December there are 93 14
Hence we perceive that the quantity of work for the scavagers would fluctuate in the first and last half of the year in the proportion of 10 to 14, which is very nearly in the ratio of 358 to 531, which are the numbers of hands given in table pp. 186, 187, as those employed in wet and dry weather throughout the metropolis.
If, then, the labour in the scavaging trade varies in the proportion of 5 to 7, that is to say, that 5 hands are required at one period and 7 at another to execute the work, the question consequently becomes, how do the 2 casuals who are discharged out of every 7 obtain their living when the wet season is over?
When a scavager is out of employ, he seldom or never applies to the parish; this he does, I am informed, only when he is fairly “beaten out” through sickness or old age, for the men “hate the thought of going to the big house” (the union workhouse). An unemployed operative scavager will go from yard to yard and offer his services to do anything in the dust trade or any other kind of employment in connection with dust or scavaging.
Generally speaking, an operative scavager who is casually employed obtains work at that trade for six or eight months during the year, and the remaining portion of his time is occupied either at rubbish-carting or brick-carting, or else he gets a job for a month or two in a dust-yard.
Many of these men seem to form a body of street-jobbers or operative labourers, ready to work at the docks, to be navvies (when strong enough), bricklayers’ labourers, street-sweepers, carriers of trunks or parcels, window-cleaners, errand-goers, porters, and (occasionally) nightmen. Few of the class seem to apply themselves to trading, as in the costermonger line. They are the loungers about the boundaries of trading, but seldom take any onward steps. The street-sweeper of this week, a “casual” hand, may be a rubbish-carter or a labourer about buildings the next, or he may be a starving man for days together, and the more he is starving with the less energy will he exert himself to obtain work: “it’s not in” a starving or ill-fed man to exert himself otherwise than what may be called _passively_; this is well known to all who have paid attention to the subject. The want of energy and carelessness begotten by want of food was well described by the tinman, at p. 355 in vol. i.
One casual hand told me that last year he was out of work altogether three months, and the year before not more than six weeks, and during the six weeks he got a day’s work sometimes at rubbish carting and sometimes at loading bricks. Their wives are often employed in the yards as sifters, and their boys, when big enough, work also at the heap, either in carrying off, or else as fillers-in; if there are any girls, one is generally left at home to look after the rest and get the meals ready for the other members of the family. If any of the children go to school, they are usually sent to a ragged school in the neighbourhood, though they seldom attend the school more than two or three times during the week.
The additional hands employed in wet weather are either men who at other times work in the yards, or such as have their “turns” in street-sweeping, if not regularly employed. There appears, however, to be little of system in the arrangement. If more hands are wanted, the gangsman, who receives his orders from the contractor or the contractor’s managing man, is told to put on so many new hands, and over-night he has but to tell any of the men at work that Jack, and Bob, and Bill will be wanted in the morning, and they, if not employed in other work, appear accordingly.
There is nothing, however, which can be designated a _labour market_ appertaining to the trade. No “house of call,” no trade society. If men seek such employment, they must apply at the contractor’s premises, and I am assured that poor men not unfrequently ask the scavagers whom they see at work in the streets where to apply “for a job,” and sometimes receive gruff or abusive replies. But though there is nothing like a labour market in the scavager’s trade, the employers have not to “look out” for men, for I was told by one of their foremen, that he would undertake, if necessary, which it never was, by a mere “round of the docks,” to select 200 new hale men, of all classes, and strong ones, too, if properly fed, who in a few days would be tolerable street-sweepers. It is a calling to which agricultural labourers are glad to resort, and a calling to which _any_ labourer or any mechanic may resort, more especially as regards sweeping or scraping, apart from shovelling, which is regarded as something like the high art of the business.
We now come to estimate the earnings of the casual hands, whose yearly incomes must, of course, be very different from those of the regulars. The _constant_ weekly wages of any workman are of course the average of his casual--and hence we shall find the wages of those who are _regularly_ employed far exceed those of the _occasionally_ employed men:--
£ _s._ _d._ Nominal yearly wages at scavaging for 25 weeks in the year, at 16_s._ per week 20 16 0 Perquisites for 26 weeks, at 2_s._ 2 12 0 ------------------ Actual yearly wages at scavaging 23 8 0 Nominal and actual weekly wages at rubbish carting for 20 weeks in the year, at 12_s._ 12 0 0 Unemployed six weeks in the year 0 0 0 ----------------- Gross yearly earnings 35 8 0 ----------------- Average casual or constant weekly wages throughout the year 15 4-1/2
Hence the difference between the earnings of the casual and the regular hand would appear to be one-sixth. But the great evil of all casual labour is the uncertainty of the income--for where there is the greatest chance connected with an employment, there is not only the greatest necessity for providence, but unfortunately the greatest tendency to improvidence. It is only when a man’s income becomes regular and fixed that he grows thrifty, and lays by for the future; but where all is chance-work there is but little ground for reasoning, and the accident which assisted the man out of his difficulties at one period is continually expected to do the same good turn for him at another. Hence the casual hand, who passes the half of the year on 18_s._, and twenty weeks on 12_s._, and _six weeks on nothing_, lives a life of excess both ways--of excess of “guzzling” when in work, and excess of privation when out of it--oscillating, as it were, between surfeit and starvation.
A man who had worked in an iron-foundry, but who had “lost his work” (I believe through some misconduct) and was glad to get employment as a street-sweeper, as he had a good recommendation to a contractor, told me that “the misery of the thing” was the want of regular work. “I’ve worked,” he said, “for a good master for four months an end at 2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and they were prime times. Then I hadn’t a stroke of work for a fortnight, and very little for two months, and if my wife hadn’t had middling work with a laundress we might have starved, or I might have made a hole in the Thames, for it’s no good living to be miserable and feel you can’t help yourself any how. We was sometimes half-starved, as it was. I’d rather at this minute have regular work at 10_s._ a week all the year round, than have chance-work that I could earn 20_s._ a week at. I once had 15_s._ in relief from the parish, and a doctor to attend us, when my wife and I was both laid up sick. O, there’s no difference in the way of doing the work, whatever wages you’re on for; the streets must be swept clean, of course. The plan’s the same, and there’s the same sort of management, any how.”
STATEMENT OF A “REGULAR SCAVAGER.”
The following statement of his business, his sentiments, and, indeed, of the subjects which concerned him, or about which he was questioned, was given to me by a street-sweeper, so he called himself, for I have found some of these men not to relish the appellation of “scavager.” He was a short, sturdy, somewhat red-faced man, without anything
## particular in his appearance to distinguish him from the mass of
mere labourers, but with the sodden and sometimes dogged look of a man contented in his ignorance, and--for it is not a very uncommon case--rather proud of it.
“I don’t know how old I am,” he said--I have observed, by the by, that there is not any excessive vulgarity in these men’s tones or accent so much as grossness in some of their expressions--“and I can’t see what that consarns any one, as I’s old enough to have a jolly rough beard, and so can take care of myself. I should think so. My father was a sweeper, and I wanted to be a waterman, but father--he hasn’t been dead long--didn’t like the thoughts on it, as he said they was all drownded one time or ’nother; so I ran away and tried my hand as a Jack-in-the-water, but I was starved back in a week, and got a h---- of a clouting. After that I sifted a bit in a dust-yard, and helped in any way; and I was sent to help at and larn honey-pot and other pot making, at Deptford; but honey-pots was a great thing in the business. Master’s foreman married a relation of mine, some way or other. I never tasted honey, but I’ve heered it’s like sugar and butter mixed. The pots was often wanted to look like foreign pots; I don’t know nothing what was meant by it; some b---- dodge or other. No, the trade didn’t suit me at all, master, so I left. I don’t know why it didn’t suit me; cause it didn’t. Just then, father had hurt his hand and arm, in a jam again’ a cart, and so, as I was a big lad, I got to take his place, and gave every satisfaction to Mr. ----. Yes, he was a contractor and a great man. I can’t say as I knows how contracting’s done; but it’s a bargain atween man and man. So I got on. I’m now looked on as a stunning good workman, I can tell you.
“Well, I can’t say as I thinks sweeping the streets is hard work. I’d rather sweep two hours than shovel one. It tires one’s arms and back so, to go on shovelling. You can’t change, you see, sir, and the same parts keeps getting gripped more and more. Then you must mind your eye, if you’re shovelling slop into a cart, perticler so; or some feller may run off with a complaint that he’s been splashed o’ purpose. _Is_ a man ever splashed o’ purpose? No, sir, not as I knows on, in coorse not. [Laughing.] Why should he?
“The streets _must_ be done as they’re done now. It always was so, and will always be so. Did I ever hear what London streets were like a thousand years ago? It’s nothing to me, but they must have been like what they is now. Yes, there was always streets, or how was people that has tin to get their coals taken to them, and how was the public-houses to get their beer? It’s talking nonsense, talking that way, a-asking sich questions.” [As the scavager seemed likely to lose his temper, I changed the subject of conversation.]
“Yes,” he continued, “I have good health. I never had a doctor but twice; once was for a hurt, and the t’other I won’t tell on. Well, I think nightwork’s healthful enough, but I’ll not say so much for it as you may hear some on ’em say. I don’t like it, but I do it when I’s obligated under a necessity. It pays one as overwork; and werry like more one’s in it, more one may be suited. I reckon no men works harder nor sich as me. O, as to poor journeymen tailors and sich like, I knows they’re stunning badly off, and many of their masters is the hardest of beggars. I have a nephew as works for a Jew slop, but I don’t reckon that _work_; anybody might do it. You think not, sir? Werry well, it’s all the same. No, I won’t say as I could make a veskit, but I’ve sowed my own buttons on to one afore now.