Part 69
2. Alteration of the mode of work; as the substitution of day-work for piece-work, as a means of decreasing the stimulus to overwork.
3. Extension of the term of hiring; by the substitution of annual engagements for daily or weekly hirings, with a view to the prevention of “casual labour.”
4. Limitation of the number of hands employed by one capitalist; so as to prevent the undue extension of “the large system of production.”
5. Taxation of machinery; with the object, not only of making it contribute its quota to the revenue of the country, but of impeding its undue increase.
6. The discountenance of every form of work that tends to the making up of a greater quantity of materials with a less quantity of labour; and consequently to the expenditure of a greater proportion of the capital of the country on machinery or materials, and a correspondingly less proportion on the labourers.
E. _“Protective imposts,” or high import duties on such foreign commodities as can be produced in this country_; with the view of preventing the labour of the comparatively untaxed and uncivilized foreigner being brought into competition with that of the taxed and civilized producer at home.
F. _“Financial reform,” or reduction of the taxation of the country_; as enabling the home labourer the better to compete with the foreigner.
The two latter proposals, and that of the extension of the markets, may be said to seek to remedy low wages by expanding or circumscribing the foreign trade of the country.
G. _A different division of the proceeds of labour._ For this object several schemes have been propounded:--
1. The “tribute system” of wages; or payment of labour according to the additional value which it confers on the materials on which it operates.
2. The abolition of the middleman; whether “sweater,” “piece-master,” “lumper,” or what not, coming between the employer and employed.
3. Co-operation; or joint-stock associations of labourers, with the view of abolishing the profit of the capitalist employer.
H. _A different mode of distributing the products of labour_; with the view of abolishing the profit of the dealer, between the producer and consumer--as co-operative stores, where the consumers club together for the purchase of their goods directly of the producers.
I. _A more general and equal division of the wealth of the country_: for attaining this end there are but two known means:--
1. Communism; or the abolition of all rights to individual property.
2. Agapism; or the voluntary sharing of individual possessions with the less fortunate or successful members of the community.
These remedies may, with a few exceptions (such as the tribute system of wages, and the abolition of middlemen), be said to constitute the socialist and communist schemes for the prevention of distress.
J. _Creating additional employment for the poor_; and so removing the surplus labour from the market. Two modes of effecting this have been proposed:--
1. Home colonization, or the cultivation of waste lands by the poor.
2. Orderlyism, or the employment of the poor in the promotion of public cleanliness, and the increased sanitary condition of the country.
K. _The prevention of the enclosure of commons_; as the means of enabling the poor to obtain gratuitous pasturage for their cattle.
L. _The abolition of primogeniture_; with the view of dividing the land among a greater number of individuals.
M. _The holding of the land by the State_, and equal apportionment of it among the poor.
N. _Extension of the suffrage among the people_; and so allowing the workman, as well as the capitalist and the landlord, to take part in the formation of the laws of the country. For this purpose there are two plans:--
1. “The freehold-land movement,” which seeks to enable the people to become proprietors of as much land as will, under the present law, give them “a voice” in the country.
2. Chartism, or that which seeks to alter the law concerning the election of members of Parliament, and to confer the right of voting on every male of mature age, sound mind, and non-criminal character.
O. _Cultivation of a higher moral and Christian character among the people._ This form of remedy, which is advocated by many, is based on the argument, that, without some mitigation of the “selfishness of the times,” all other schemes for improving the condition of the people will be either evaded by the cunning of the rich, or defeated by the servility of the poor.
The above I believe to be a full and fair statement of the several plans that have been proposed, from time to time, for alleviating the distress of the people. This enumeration is as comprehensive as my knowledge will enable me to make it; and I have abstained from all comment on the several schemes, so that the reader may have an opportunity of impartially weighing the merits of each, and adopting that, which in his own mind, seems best calculated to effect what, after all, we every one desire--whether protectionist, economist, free-trader, philanthropist, socialist, communist, or chartist--the good of the country in which we live, and the people by whom we are surrounded.
* * * * *
Now we have to deal here with that particular remedy for low wages or distress which consists in creating additional employment for the poor, and of which the street-orderly system is an example.
The increase of employment for the poor was the main object of the 43 Eliz., for which purpose, as we have seen, the overseers of the several parishes were empowered to raise a fund by assessments upon the property of the rich, for providing “a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work.” But though economists, to this day, tell us that “while, on the one hand, industry is limited by capital, so, on the other, every increase of capital gives, or is capable of giving, additional employment to industry, and this without assignable limit,”[26] nevertheless the great difficulty of carrying out the provisions of the original poor-law has consisted in finding a market for the products of pauper labour, for the frequent gluts in our manufactures are sufficient to teach us that it is one thing to produce and another to dispose of the products; so that to create additional employment for the poor something besides capital is requisite: it is necessary either that they shall be engaged in producing that which they themselves immediately consume, or that for which the market admits of being extended.
The two plans proposed for the employment of the poor, it will be seen, consist (1) in the cultivation of waste lands; (2) in promoting public cleanliness, and so increasing the sanitary condition of the country. The first, it is evident, removes the objection of a market being needed for the products of the labour of the poor, since it proposes that their energies should be devoted to the production of the food which they themselves consume; while the second seeks to create additional employment in effecting that increased cleanliness which more enlightened physiological views have not only made more desirable, but taught us to be absolutely necessary to the health and enjoyment of the community.
The great impediment, however, to the profitable employment of the poor, has generally been the unproductive or unavailing character of pauper labour. This has been mainly owing to the fact that the able-bodied who are deprived of employment are necessarily the lowest grade of operatives; for, in the displacement of workmen, those are the first discarded whose labour is found to be the least efficient, either from a deficiency of skill, industry, or sobriety, so that pauper labour is necessarily of the least productive character.
Another great difficulty with the employment of the poor is, that the idle, or those to whom work is more than usually irksome, require a stronger inducement than ordinary to make them labour, and the remuneration for parish work being necessarily less than for any other, those who are pauperized through idleness (the most benevolent among us must allow there are such) are naturally less than ever disposed to labour when they become paupers. All pauper work, therefore, is generally unproductive or unavailing, because it is either inexpert or unwilling work. The labour of the in-door paupers, who receive only their food for their pains, is necessarily of the same compulsory character as slavery; while that of the out-door paupers, with the remuneration often cut down to the lowest subsisting point, is scarcely of a more willing or more availing kind.
Owing to this general unproductiveness, (as well as the difficulty of finding a field for the profitable employment of the unemployed poor,) the labour of paupers has been for a long time past directed mainly to the cleansing of the public thoroughfares. Still, from the degrading nature of the occupation, and the small remuneration for the toil, pauper labourers have been found to be such unwilling workers that many parishes have long since given over employing their poor even in this capacity, preferring to entrust the work to a contractor, with his paid self-supporting operatives, instead.
The founder of the Philanthropic Association appears to have been fully aware of the two great difficulties besetting the profitable employment of the poor, viz., (1) finding a field for the exercise of their labours where they might be “set on work” with benefit to the community, and without injury to the independent operatives already engaged in the same occupation; and (2) overcoming the unwillingness, and consequently the unavailingness, of pauper labour.
The first difficulty Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to obviate by taking advantage of that growing desire for greater public cleanliness which has arisen from the increased knowledge of the principles governing the health of towns; and the second, by giving the men 12_s._ instead of 9_s._ or 7_s._ a week, or worse than all, 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ and a quartern loaf a day for three days in the week, and so not only augmenting the stimulus to work (for it should be remembered that wages are to the human machine what the fire is to the steam-engine), but preventing the undue depreciation of the labour of the independent workman. He who discovers the means of increasing the rewards of labour, is as great a friend to his race as he who strives to depreciate them is the public enemy; and I do not hesitate to confess, that I look upon Mr. Charles Cochrane as one of the illustrious few who, in these days of unremunerated toil, and their necessary concomitants--beggars and thieves, has come forward to help the labourers of this country from their daily-increasing degradation. His benevolence is of that enlightened order which seeks to extend rather than destroy the self-trust of the poor, not only by creating additional employment for them, but by rendering that employment less repulsive.
The means by which Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to gain these ends constitutes the system called Street-Orderlyism, which therefore admits of being viewed in two distinct aspects--first, as a new mode of improving “the health of towns,” and, secondly, as an improved method of employing the poor.
Concerning the first, I must confess that the system of scavaging or cleansing the public thoroughfares pursued by the street-orderlies assumes, when contemplated in a sanitary point of view, all the importance and simplicity of a great discovery. It has been before pointed out that this system consists not only in cleansing the streets, but in _keeping_ them clean. By the street-orderly method of scavaging, the thoroughfares are continually being cleansed, and so never allowed to become dirty; whereas, by the ordinary method, they are not cleansed _until_ they are dirty. Hence the two modes of scavaging are diametrically opposed; under the one the streets are cleansed as fast as dirtied, while under the other they are dirtied as fast as cleansed; so that by the new system of scavaging the public thoroughfares are maintained in a perpetual state of cleanliness, whereas by the old they may be said to be kept in a continual state of dirt.
The street-orderly system of scavaging, however, is not only worthy of high commendation as a more efficient means of gaining a particular end--a simplification of a certain process--but it calls for our highest praise as well for the end gained as for the means of gaining it. If it be really a sound physiological principle, that the Creator has made dirt offensive to every rightly-constituted mind, because it is injurious to us, and so established in us an instinct, before we could discover a reason, for removing all refuse from our presence, it becomes, now that we have detected the cause of the feeling in us, at once disgusting and irrational to allow the filth to accumulate in our streets in front of our houses. If typhus, cholera, and other pestilences are but divine punishments inflicted on us for the infraction of that most kindly law by which the health of a people has been made to depend on that which is naturally agreeable--cleanliness, then our instinct for self-preservation should force us, even if our sense of enjoyment would not lead us, to remove as fast as it is formed what is at once as dangerous as it should be repulsive to our natures. Sanitarily regarded, the cleansing of a town is one of the most important objects that can engage the attention of its governors; the removal of its refuse being quite as necessary for the continuance of the existence of a people as the supply of their food. In the economy of Nature there is no loss: this the great doctrine of waste and supply has taught us; the detritus of one rock is the conglomerate of another; the evaporation of the ocean is the source of the river; the poisonous exhalations of animals the vital air of plants; and the refuse of man and beasts the food of their food. The dust and cinders from our fires, the “slops” from the washing of our houses, the excretions of our bodies, the detritus and “surface-water” of our streets, have all their offices to perform in the great scheme of creation; and if left to rot and fust about us not only injure our health, but diminish the supplies of our food. The filth of the thoroughfares of the metropolis forms, it would appear, the staple manure of the market-gardens in the suburbs; out of the London mud come the London cabbages: so that an improvement in the scavaging of the metropolis tends not only to give the people improved health, but improved vegetables; for that which is nothing but a pestiferous muck-heap in the town becomes a vivifying garden translated to the country.
Dirt, however, is not only as prejudicial to our health and offensive to our senses, when allowed to accumulate in our streets, as it is beneficial to us when removed to our gardens,--but it is a most expensive commodity to keep in front of our houses. It has been shown, that the cost to the people of London, in the matter of extra washing induced by defective scavaging, is at the least 1,000,000_l._ sterling per annum (the Board of Health estimate it at 2,500,000_l._); and the loss from extra wear and tear of clothes from brushing and scrubbing, arising from the like cause, is about the same prodigious sum; while the injury done to the furniture of private houses, and the goods exposed for sale in shops, though impossible to be estimated--appears to be something enormous: so that the loss from the defective scavaging of the metropolis seems, at the lowest calculation, to amount to several millions per annum; and hence it becomes of the highest possible importance, economically as well as physiologically, that the streets should be cleansed in the most effective manner.
Now, that the street-orderly system is the only rational and efficacious mode of street cleansing both theory and practice assure us. To allow the filth to accumulate in the streets before any steps are taken to remove it, is the same as if we were never to wash our bodies until they were dirty--it is to be perpetually striving to cure the disease, when with scarcely any more trouble we might prevent it entirely. There is, indeed, the same difference between the new and the old system of scavaging, as there is between a bad and a good housewife: the one never cleaning her house until it is dirty, and the other continually cleaning it, so as to prevent it being ever dirty.
Hence it would appear, that the street-orderly system of scavaging would be a great public benefit, even were there no other object connected with it than the increased cleanliness of our streets; but in a country like Great Britain, afflicted as it is with a surplus population (no matter from what cause), that each day finds the difficulty of obtaining work growing greater, the opening up of new fields of employment for the poor is perhaps the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon the nation. Without the discovery of such new fields, “the setting the poor on work” is merely, as I have said, to throw out of employment those who are already employed; it is not to decrease, but really to increase, the evil of the times--to add to, rather than diminish, the number of our paupers or our thieves. The increase of employment in a nation, however, requires, not only a corresponding increase of capital, but a like increase in the demand or desire, as well as in the pecuniary means, of the people to avail themselves of the work on which the poor are set (that is to say, in the extension of the home market); it requires, also, some mode of stimulating the energies of the workers, so as to make them labour more willingly, and consequently more availingly, than usual. These conditions appear to have been fulfilled by Mr. Cochrane, in the establishment of the street-orderlies. He has introduced, in connection with this body, a system of scavaging which, while it employs a greater number of hands, produces such additional benefits as cannot but be considered an equivalent for the increased expenditure; though it is even doubtful whether, by the collection of the street manure unmixed with the mud, the extra value of that article alone will not go far to compensate for the additional expense; if, however, there be added to this the saving to the metropolitan parishes in the cost of watering the streets--for under the street-orderly system this is not required, the dust never being allowed to accumulate, and consequently never requiring to be “laid”--as well as the greater saving of converting the paupers into self-supporting labourers; together with the diminished expense of washing and doctors’ bills, consequent on the increased cleanliness of the streets--there cannot be the least doubt that the employment of the poor as street-orderlies is no longer a matter of philanthropy, but of mere commercial prudence.
Such appear to me to be the principal objects of Mr. Cochrane’s street-orderly system of scavaging; and it is a subject upon which I have spoken the more freely, because, being unacquainted with that gentleman, none can suspect me of being prejudiced in his favour, and because I have felt that the good which he has done and is likely to do to the poor, has been comparatively unacknowledged by the public, and that society and the people owe him a heavy debt of gratitude[27].
I shall now proceed to set forth the character of the labour, and the condition and remuneration of the labourers in connection with the street-orderly system of scavaging the metropolitan thoroughfares.
The first appearance of the street-orderlies in the metropolis was in 1843. Mr. Charles Cochrane, who had previously formed the National Philanthropic Association, with its eleemosynary soup-kitchens, &c., then introduced the system of street-orderlies, as one enabling many destitute men to support themselves by their labour; as well as, in his estimation, a better, and eventually a more economical, mode of street-cleansing, and partaking also somewhat of the character of a street police.
The first “demonstration,” or display of the street-orderly system, took place in Regent-street, between the Quadrant and the Regent-circus, and in Oxford-street, between Vere-street and Charles-street. The streets were thoroughly swept in the morning, and then each man or boy, provided with a hand-broom and dust-pan, removed any dirt as soon as it was deposited. The demonstration was pronounced highly successful and the system effective, in the opinion of eighteen influential inhabitants of the locality who acted as a committee, and who publicly, and with the authority of their names, testified their conviction that “the most efficient means of keeping streets clean, and more especially great thoroughfares, was to prevent the accumulation of dirt, by removing the manure within a few minutes after it has been deposited by the passing cattle; the same having, hitherto, remained during several days.”
The cost of this demonstration amounted to about 400_l._, of which, the Report states, “200_l._ still remains due from the shop-keepers to the Association; which,” it is delicately added, “from late commercial difficulties they have not yet repaid” (in 1850).
Whilst the street-orderlies were engaged in cleansing Regent-street, &c., the City Commissioners of the sewers of London were invited to depute some person to observe and report to them concerning the method pursued; but with that instinctive sort of repugnance which seems to animate the great bulk of city officials against improvement of any kind, the reply was, that they “did not consider the same worthy their attention.” The matter, however, was not allowed to drop, and by the persevering efforts of Mr. Cochrane, the president, and of the body of gentlemen who form the Council of the Association, Cheapside, Cornhill, and the most important parts of the very heart of the city were at length cleansed according to the new method. The ratepayers then showed that _they_, at least, _did_ consider “the same worthy of attention,” for 8000 out of 12,000 within a few days signed memorials recommending the adoption of what they pronounced an improvement, and a public meeting was held in Guildhall (May 4, 1846), at which resolutions in favour of the street-orderly method were passed. The authorities did not adopt these recommendations, but they ventured so far to depart from their venerable routine as to order the streets to be “swept every day!” This employed upwards of 300 men, whereas at the period when the sages of the city sewers did not consider any proposed improvement in scavagery worthy their attention, the number of men employed by them in cleansing the streets did not exceed 30.
The street-orderly system was afterwards tried in the parishes of St. Paul, Covent-garden, St. James (Westminster), St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. Anne, Soho, and others--sometimes calling forth opposition, of course from the authorities connected with the established modes of paving, scavaging, &c.
It is not my intention to write a complete history of the street-orderlies, but merely to sketch their progress, as well as describe their peculiar characteristics.
Within these few months public meetings have been held in almost every one of the 26 wards of the City, at which approving resolutions were either passed unanimously or carried by large majorities; and the street-orderly system is now about to be introduced into St. Martin’s parish instead of the street-sweeping machine.
As far as the street-orderly system has been tried, and judging only by the testimony of public examination and public record of opinion, the trial has certainly been a success. A memorial to the Court of Sewers, from the ward of Broad-street, supported by the leading merchants of that locality, in recommendation of the employment of street-orderlies, seems to bear more closely on the subject than any I have yet seen.