Part 68

“The council considers it a duty to the poor to touch upon the niggardly manner in which parish scavengers are generally paid, and the deplorable and emaciated condition which they usually present, with regard to their clothing and personal appearance. One contractor pays 16_s._ 6_d._ per week; 2 pay 16_s._; 12 (including a Highway Board) pay 15_s._ each; 1 pays 14_s._ 6_d._; 2 pay 14_s._; and 1 pays so low as 12_s._ On the other hand, five parish boards of ‘guardians of the poor,’ pay only 9_s._ each, to their miserable mud-larks; one pays 8_s._; another 7_s._ 5_d._; a third 7_s._; a fourth compensates its labourers--in the British metropolis, where rent and living are necessarily higher than elsewhere--with 5_s._ 8_d._ per week! whilst a fifth pays 3 men 15_s._ each, 12 men 10_s._ each, and 6 men 7_s._ 6_d._ each, for exactly the same kind of work!!! But what renders this mean torture of men (because they happen to be poor) absurd as well as cruel, are the anomalous facts, that whilst the guardians of one parish pay 5 men 7_s._ each, the contractor for another part of the same parish, pays his 4 men 14_s._ each;--and whilst the guardians of a second parish pay only 5_s._ 8_d._, the Highway Board pays 15_s._ to each of its labourers, for performing exactly the same work in the same district!--Mr. Darke, scavenging contractor of Paddington, lately stated that he never had, and never would, employ any man at less than 16_s._ or 18_s._ per week;--and Mr. Sinnott, of Belvidere-road, Lambeth, about three months since, offered to certain West-End guardians, to take 40 paupers out of their own workhouse to cleanse their own parish, on the street-orderly system;--and to pay them 15_s._ per week each man[25]; but the economical guardians preferred filth and a full workhouse, to cleanliness, Christian charity, and common sense;--and so the proposal of this considerate contractor was rejected! It is certainly far from being creditable to boards of gentlemen and wealthy tradesmen who manage parish affairs, to pay little more than one-half the wages that an individual does, to poor labourers who cannot choose their employment or their masters....

“The broken-down tradesman, the journeyman deprived of his usual work by panic or by poverty of the times, the ingenious mechanic, or the unsuccessful artist, applies at the parish labour-market for leave to live by other labour than that which hitherto maintained him in comfort.... The usual language of such persons, even when applying for private alms or parochial relief, is, not that they want money, but ‘that they have long been out of work;’ ‘that their particular trade has been overstocked with apprentices, or superseded by machinery;’ or, ‘that their late employer has become bankrupt, or has discharged the majority of his hands from the badness of the times.’ To a man of this class, the guardian of the poor replies, ‘We will test your willingness to labour, by employing you in the stone-yard, or to sweep the streets; but the parish being heavily burthened with rates, we cannot afford more than 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week.’ The poor creature, conscious of his own helplessness, accepts the miserable pittance, in order to preserve himself and family from immediate starvation....

“The council has taken much pains to ascertain the wages, and mode of expenditure of them, by this uncared-for, and almost pariah, class of labourers throughout the metropolitan parishes; and it possesses undeniable proofs, that few possess any further garment than the rags upon their backs; some being even without a change of linen; that they never enter a place of worship, on account of their want of decent clothing; that their wives and children are starved and in rags, and the latter without the least education; that they never by any chance taste fresh animal food; that one-third of their hard earnings is paid for rent; and that their only sustenance (unless their wives happen to go out washing or charing), consists of bread, potatoes, coarse tea without milk or sugar, a salt herring two or three times a week, and a slice of rusty bacon on Sunday morning! The meal called dinner they never know; their only refection being breakfast and ‘tea:’ beer they do not taste from year’s end to year’s end; and any other luxury, or even necessary, is out of the question.

“Of the 21 scavengers employed by St. James’s parish in 1850, no less than 16,” says Mr. Cochrane’s report, “were married, with from one to four children each. How the poor creatures who receive but 7_s._ 6_d._ a week support their families, is best known to themselves.”

Let me now, in conclusion, endeavour to arrive at a rough estimate as to the sum of which the pauper labours annually are mulct by the before-mentioned rates of remuneration, estimating their labour at the market value or amount paid by the honourable contractors, viz. 16_s._ a week; for if private individuals can afford to pay that wage, and yet reap a profit out of the transaction, the guardians of the poor surely could and should pay the same prices, and not avail themselves of starving men’s necessities to reduce the wages of a trade to the very quick of subsistence. If it be a sound principle that the condition of the pauper should be rendered _less_ desirable than that of the labourer, assuredly the principle is equally sound that the condition of the labourer should be made _more_ desirable than that of the pauper; for if to pamper the pauper be to make indolence more agreeable than industry, certainly to grind down the wages of the labourer is to render industry as unprofitable as indolence. In either case the same premium is proffered to pauperism. As yet the Poor-Law Commissioners have seen but one way of reducing the poor-rates, viz., by rendering the state of the pauper as _unenviable_ as possible, and they have wholly lost sight of the other mode of attaining the same end, viz., by making the state of the labourer as _desirable_ as possible. To institute a terrible poor law without maintaining an attractive form of industry, is to hold out a boon to crime. If the wages of the working man are to be reduced to bare subsistence, and the condition of the pauper is to be rendered worse than that of the working man, what atrocities will not be committed upon the poor. Elevate the condition of the labourer, and there will be no necessity to depress the pauper. Make work more attractive by increasing the reward for it, and laziness will necessarily become more repulsive. As it is, however, the pauper is not only kept at the very lowest point of subsistence, but his half-starved labour is brought into competition with that of men living in a comparative state of comfort; and the result, of course, is, that instead of decreasing the number of paupers or poor-rates, we make paupers of our labourers, and fill our workhouses by such means. If a scavager’s labour be worth from 12_s._ to 15_s._ per week in the market, what moral right have the _guardians of the poor_ to pay 5_s._ 8_d._ for the same commodity? If the paupers are set to do work which is fairly worth 15_s._, then to pay them little more than one-third of the regular value is not only to make unwilling workers of the paupers, but to drag down all the better workmen to the level of the worst.

It may be estimated that the outlay on pauper labour, as a whole, after deducting the sum paid to superintendents and gangers, does not exceed 10_s._ weekly per individual; consequently the lowering of the price of labour is in this ratio: There are now, in round numbers, 450 pauper scavagers in the metropolis, and the account stands thus:--

Yearly. 450 scavagers, at the regular weekly wages of 16_s._ each £18,710 450 pauper labourers, 10_s._ each weekly 11,700 ------- Lower price of pauper work £7,020

Hence we see, that the great scurf employers of the scavagers, after all, are the guardians of the poor, compared with whom the most grasping contractor is a model of liberality.

That the minimum of remuneration paid by the parishes has tended, and is tending more and more, to the general depreciation of wages in the scavaging trade, there is no doubt. It has done so directly and indirectly. One man, who had been a last-maker, told me that he left his employment as a London scavager, for he had “come down to the parish,” and set off at the close of the summer into Kent for the harvest and hopping, for, when in the country, he had been more used to agricultural labour than to last, clog, or patten making. He considered that he had not been successful; still he returned to London a richer man by 26_s._ 6_d._ Nearly 20_s._ of this soon went for shoes and necessary clothing, and to pay some arrears of rent, and a chandler’s bill he owed, after which he could be trusted again where he was known. He applied to the foreman of a contractor, whom he knew, for work. “What wage?” said the foreman. “Fifteen shillings a week,” was the reply. “Why, what did you get from the parish for sweeping?” “Nine shillings.” “Well,” said the foreman, “I know you’re a decent man, and you were recommended before, and so I _can_ give you four or five days a week at 2_s._ 4_d._ a day, and no nonsense about hours; _for you know yourself I can get 50 men as have been parish workers at 1s. 9d. a day, and jump at it, and so you mustn’t be cheeky_.” The man closed with the offer, knowing that the foreman spoke the truth.

A contractor told me that he could obtain “plenty of hands,” used to parish scavaging work, at 10_s._ 6_d._ to 12_s._ a week, whereas he paid 16_s._

It is evident, then, that the system of pauper work in scavaging has created an increasing market for cheap and deteriorated labour, a market including hundreds of the unemployed at other unskilled labours; and it is hardly to be doubted that the many who have faith in the doctrine that it is the best policy to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, will avail themselves of the low-priced labour of this pauper-constituted mart.

It is but right to add, that those parishes which pay 15_s._ a week are as worthy of commendation as those which pay 9_s._, 7_s._ 6_d._ and 7_s._ per week, and 1_s._ 4_d._ and 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day are reprehensible; and, unfortunately, the latter have a tendency to regulate all the others.

OF THE STREET-ORDERLIES.

This constitutes the last of the four varieties of labour employed in the cleansing of the public thoroughfares of London. I have already treated of the self-supporting manual labour, the self-supporting machine labour, and the pauper labour, and now proceed to the consideration of the philanthropic labour of the streets.

In the first place, let us understand clearly what is meant by philanthropic labour, and how it is distinguished from pauper labour on the one hand, and self-supporting labour on the other. Self-supporting labour I take to be that form of work which returns not less, and generally something more, than is expended upon it. Pauper labour, on the other hand, is work to which the applicants for parish relief are “set,” not with a view to the profit to be derived from it, but

## partly as a test of their willingness to work, and partly as a means

of employing the unemployed; while philanthropic labour is employment provided for the unemployed with the same disregard of profit as distinguishes pauper labour, but with a greater regard for the poor, and as a means of affording them relief in a less degrading manner than is done under the present Poor Law. Pauper and philanthropic labour, then, differ essentially from self-supporting labour in being _non-profitable_ modes of employment; that is to say, they yield so bare an equivalent for the sum expended upon the labourers, that none, in the ordinary way of trade, can be found to provide the means necessary for putting them into operation: while pauper labour differs from philanthropic labour, in the fact that the funds requisite for “setting the poor on work” are provided by law as a matter of social policy, whereas, in the case of philanthropic labour, the funds, or a part of them, are supplied by voluntary contributions, out of a desire to improve the labourers’ condition. There are, then, two distinguishing features in all philanthropic labour--the one is, that it yields no profit (if it did it would become a matter of trade), and the other, that it is instituted and maintained from a wish to benefit the labourer.

[Illustration: STREET ORDERLIES.]

The Street-Orderly system forms part of the operations on behalf of the poor adopted by a society, of which Mr. Charles Cochrane is the president, entitled the “National Philanthropic Association,” which is said to have for its object “the promotion of social and salutiferous improvements, street cleanliness, and the employment of the poor, so that able-bodied men may be prevented from burthening the parish-rate, and preserved independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation.” Here a twofold object is expressed: the Philanthropic Association seeks not only to benefit the poor by giving them employment, and “preserving them independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation,” but to benefit the public likewise, by “promoting social and salutiferous improvements and street cleanliness.” I shall deal with each of these objects separately; but first let me declare, so as to remove all suspicion of private feelings tending in any way to bias my judgment in this most important matter, that I am an utter stranger to the President and Council of the Philanthropic Association; and that, whatever I may have to say on the subject of the street-orderlies, I do simply in conformity with my duty to the public--to state truthfully all that concerns the labourers and the poor of the metropolis.

_Viewed economically, philanthropic and pauper work may be said to be the regulators of the minimum rate of wages_--establishing the lowest point to which competition can possibly drive down the remuneration for labour; for it is evident, that if the self-supporting labourer cannot obtain greater comforts by the independent exercise of his industry than the parish rates or private charity will afford him, he will at once give over working for the trading employer, and declare on the funds raised by assessment or voluntary subscription for his support. Hence, those who wish well to the labourer, and who believe that cheapness of commodities is desirable “only,” as Mr. Stewart Mill says (p. 502, vol. ii.), “when the cause of it is, that their production costs little labour, and not when occasioned by that labour’s being ill-remunerated;” and who believe, moreover, that the labourer is to be benefited solely by the cultivation of a high standard of comfort among the people--to such, I say, it is evident, that a poor law which reduces the relief to able-bodied labourers to the smallest modicum of food consistent with the continuation of life must be about the greatest curse that can possibly come upon an over-populated country, admitting, as it does, of the reduction of wages to so low a point of mere brutal existence as to induce that recklessness and improvidence among the poor which is known to give so strong an impetus to the increase of the people. A minimized rate of parish relief is necessarily a minimized rate of wages, and admits of the labourers’ pay being reduced, by pauper competition, to little short of starvation; and such, doubtlessly, would have been the case long ago in the scavaging trade by the employment of parish labour, had not the Philanthropic Association instituted the system of street-orderlies, and by the payment of a higher rate of wages than the more grinding parishes afforded--by giving the men 12_s._ instead of 9_s._ or even 7_s._ a week--prevented the remuneration of the regular hands being dragged down to an approximation to the parish level. Hence, rightly viewed, philanthropic labour--and, indeed, pauper labour too--comes under the head of a remedy for low wages, as preventing, if properly regulated, the undue depreciation of industry from excessive competition, and it is in this light that I shall now proceed to consider it.

The several plans that have been propounded from time to time, as remedies for an insufficient rate of remuneration for work, are as multifarious as the circumstances influencing the three requisites for production--labour, capital, and land. I will here run over as briefly as possible--abstaining from the expression of all opinion on the subject--the various schemes which have been proposed with this object, so that the reader may come as prepared as possible to the consideration of the matter.

The remedies for low wages may be arranged into two distinct groups, viz., those which seek to increase the labourer’s rate of pay _directly_, and those which seek to do so _indirectly_.

The _direct_ remedies for low wages that have been propounded are:--

A. _The establishment of a standard rate of remuneration for labour._ This has been proposed to be brought about by three different means, viz.:--

1. By law or government authority; either (_a_) fixing the minimum rate of wages, and leaving the variations above that point to be adjusted by competition (this, as we have seen, is the effect of the poor-law); or, (_b_) settling the rate of wages generally by means of local boards of trade for _conseils de prud’hommes_, consisting of delegates from the workmen and employers, to determine, by the principles of natural equity, a _reasonable_ scale of remuneration in the several trades, their decision being binding in law on both the employers and the employed.

2. By public opinion; this has been generally proposed by those who are what Mr. Mill terms “shy of admitting the interference of authority in contracts for labour,” fearing that if the law intervened it would do so rashly and ignorantly, and desiring to compass by _moral_ sanction what they consider useless or dangerous to attempt to bring about by _legal_ means. “Every employer,” says Mr. Mill, “they think, _ought_ to give _sufficient wages_,” and if he does not give such wages willingly, he should be compelled to do so by public opinion.

3. By trade societies or combination among the workmen; that is to say, by the payment of a small sum per week out of the wages of the workmen, towards the formation of a fund for the support of such of their fellow operatives as may be out of employment, or refuse to work for those employers who seek to give less than the standard rate of wages established by the trade.

B. _The prohibition of stoppages or deductions of all kinds from the nominal wages of workmen._ This is principally the object of the Anti-Truck Society, which seeks to obtain an Act of Parliament, enjoining the payment in full of all wages. The stoppages or extortions from workmen’s wages generally consist of:--

1. Fines for real or pretended misconduct.

2. Rents for tools, frames, gas, and sometimes lodgings.

3. Sale of trade appliances (as trimmings, thread, &c.) at undue prices.

4. Sale of food, drink, &c., at an exorbitant rate of profit.

5. Payment in public-houses; as the means of inducing the men to spend a portion of their earnings in drink.

6. Deposit of money as security before taking out work; so that the capital of the employer is increased without payment of interest to the workpeople.

C. _The institution of certain aids or additions to wages_; as--

1. Perquisites or gratuities obtained from the public; as with waiters, boxkeepers, coachmen, dustmen, vergers, and others.

2. Beer money, and other “allowances” to workmen.

3. Family work; or the co-operation of the wife and children as a means of increasing the workman’s income.

4. Allotments of land, to be cultivated after the regular day’s labour.

5. The parish “allowance system,” or relief in aid of wages, as practised under the old Poor Law.

D. _The increase of the money value of wages_; by--

1. Cheap food.

2. Cheap lodgings; through building improved dwellings for the poor, and doing away with the profit of sub-letting.

3. Co-operative stores; or the “club system” of obtaining provisions at wholesale prices.

4. The abolition of the payment of wages on Sunday morning, or at so late an hour on the Saturday night as to prevent the labourer availing himself of the Saturday’s market.

5. Teetotalism; as causing the men to spend nothing in fermented drinks, and so leaving them more to spend on food.

Such are the _direct_ modes of remedying low wages, viz., either by preventing the price of labour itself falling below a certain standard; prohibiting all stoppages from the pay of the labourer; instituting certain aids or additions to such pay; or increasing the money value of the ordinary wages by reducing the price of provisions.

The _indirect_ modes of remedying low wages are of a far more complex character. They consist of, first, the remedies propounded by political economists, which are--

A. _The decrease of the number of labourers_; for gaining this end several plans have been proposed, as--

1. Checks against the increase of the population, for which the following are the chief Malthusian proposals:--

_a._ Preventive checks for the hindrance of impregnation.

_b._ Prohibition of early marriages among the poor.

_c._ Increase of the standard of comfort, or requirements, among the people; as a means of inducing prudence and restraint of the passions.

_d._ Infanticide; as among the Chinese.

2. Emigration; as a means of draining off the surplus labourers.

3. Limitation of apprentices in skilled trades; as a means of preventing the undue increase of particular occupations. This, however, is advocated not by economists, but generally by operatives.

4. Prevention of family work; or the discouragement of the labour of the wives and children of operatives. This, again, cannot be said to be an “economist” remedy.

B. _Increase of the circulating capital, or sum set aside for the payment of the labourers._

1. By government imposts. “Governments,” says Mr. Mill, “can create additional industry by creating capital. They may lay on taxes, and employ the amount productively.” This was the object of the original Poor Law (43 Eliz.), which empowered the overseers of the poor to “raise weekly, or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, &c., such sums of money as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work.”

2. By the issue of paper money. The proposition of Mr. Jonathan Duncan is, that the government should issue notes equivalent to the taxation of the country, with the view of affording increased employment to the poor; the people being set to work as it were upon credit, in the same manner as the labourers were employed to build the market-house at Guernsey.

C. _The extension of the markets of the country_; by the abolition of all restrictions on commerce, and the encouragement of the free interchange of commodities, so that, by increasing the demand for our products, we may be able to afford employment to an extra number of producers.

The above constitute what, with a few exceptions, may be termed, more

## particularly, the “economist” remedies for low wages.

D. _The regulation of the quantity of work done by each workman, or the prevention of the undue economizing of labour._ For this end, several means have been put forward.

1. The shortening the hours of labour, and abolition of Sunday-work.