Part 81
The above-mentioned classes may be taken, according to the Occupation Abstract of the last Census, at between 500,000 and 600,000; and, assuming the same ratio as to the difference of employment between the brisk and the slack seasons of the trades, or, in other words, that 25 per cent. less hands are required at the slack than at the brisk time of these trades, we have another 150,000 people, who, with their families, may be estimated altogether at say 500,000, who are thrown out of work at a certain season, and have to starve on as best they can for at least three months in the year.
The last-mentioned of the causes inducing briskness or slackness of employment are--
D. Commerce and Accidents.
_Commerce_ has its periodical fits and starts. The publishers, for instance, have their season, generally from October to March, as people read more in winter than in summer; and this arrangement immediately effects the printers and bookbinders; there is no change, however, as regards the newspapers and periodicals. Again, the early importation to this country of the new foreign fruits gives activity to the dock and wharf labourers and porters and carmen. Thus the arrival here, generally in autumn, of the nut, chestnut, and grape (raisin) produce of Spain; of the almond crops in Portugal, Spain, and Barbary; the date harvest in Morocco, and different parts of Africa; the orange gathering in Madeira, and in St. Michael’s, Terceira, and other islands of the Azores; the fig harvest from the Levant; the plum harvest of the south of France; the currant picking of Zante, Ithaca, and other Ionian Islands;--all these events give an activity, as new fruit is always most saleable, to the traders in these southern productions; and more shopmen, shop-porters, wharf labourers, and assistant lightermen are required--casually required--for the time.
I was told by a grocer, with a country connection, and in a large way of business, that for three weeks or a month before Christmas he required the aid of four fresh hands, a shopman, an errand-boy, and two porters (one skilled in packing), for whom he had nothing to do after Christmas. If in the wide sweep of London trade there be 1000 persons, including the market salesmen, the retail butchers, the carriers, &c., so circumstanced, then 4000 men are _casually_ employed, and for a very brief time.
The brief increase of the carrying business generally about Christmas, by road, water, or railway, is sufficiently indicated by the foregoing account.
The employment, again, in the cotton and woollen manufacturing districts may be said to depend for its briskness on commerce rather than on the seasons.
_Accidents_, or extraordinary social events, promote casual labour and then depress it. Often they depress without having promoted it.
During the display of the Great Exhibition, there were some thousands employed in the different capacities of police, packing, cleaning, porterage, watching, interpreting, door-keeping and money-taking, cab-regulating, &c.; and after the close of the Exhibition how many were retained? Thus the Great Exhibition fostered casual, or uncertain labour. Foreign revolutions, moreover, affect the trade of England: speculators become timid and will not embark in trade or in any proposed undertaking; the foreign import and export trades are paralysed; and fewer clerks and fewer labourers are employed. Home political agitations, also, have the same effect; as was seen in London during the corn-law riots, about 35 years ago (when only eight members of the House of Commons supported a change in those laws); the Spafields riots in 1817; the affair in St. Peter’s-field, Manchester, in 1819; the disturbances and excitement during the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1820-1, and the loss of life on the occasion of her funeral in 1821; the agitation previously to the passing of the Reform Bill had a like effect; the meeting on Kennington Common on the 10th of April;--in all these periods, indeed, employment decreased. Labour is affected also by the death of a member of the royal family, and the hurried demand for general mourning, but in a very small degree to what was once the case. A West-End tailor employing a great number of hands did not receive a single order for mourning on the death of Queen Adelaide; while on the demise of the Princess Charlotte (in 1817) thousands of operative tailors, throughout the three kingdoms, worked day and night, and for double wages, on the general mourning. Gluts in the markets, an increase of heavy bankruptcies and “panics,” such as were experienced in the money market in 1825-6, and again in 1846, with the failure of banks and merchants, likewise have the effect of augmenting the mass of casual labour; for capitalists and employers, under such circumstances, expend as little as possible in wages or employment until the storm blows over. Bad harvests have a similar depressing effect.
There are also the consequences of changes of taste. The abandonment of the fashions of gentlemen’s wearing swords, as well as embroidered garments, flowing periwigs, large shoe-buckles, all reduced able artizans to poverty by depriving them of work. So it was, when, to carry on the war with France, Mr. Pitt introduced a tax on hair powder. Hundreds of hair-dressers were thrown out of employment, many persons abandoning the fashion of wearing powder rather than pay the tax. There are now city gentlemen, who can remember that when clerks, they had sometimes to wait two or three hours for “their turn” at a barber’s shop on a Sunday morning; for they could not go abroad until their hair was dressed and powdered, and their queues trimmed to the due standard of fashion. So it has been, moreover, in modern times in the substitution of silk for metal buttons, silk hats for stuff, and in the supersedence of one material of dress by another.
These several causes, then, which could only exist in a community of great wealth and great poverty have rendered, and are continually rendering, the labour market uncertain and over-stocked; to what extent they do and have done this, it is, of course, almost impossible to say _precisely_; but, even with the strongest disposition to avoid exaggeration, we may assert that there are in this country no less than 125,000 families, or 500,000 people, who depend on the weather for their food; 300,000 families, or 1,250,000 people, who can obtain employment only at particular seasons; 150,000 more families, or 500,000 people, whose trade depends upon the fashionable rather than the natural seasons, are thrown out of work at the cessation of the brisk time of their business; and, perhaps, another 150,000 of families, or 500,000 people, dependent on the periodical increase and decrease of commerce, and certain social and political accidents which tend to cause a greater or less demand for labour. Altogether we may assert, with safety, that there are at the least 725,000 families, or three millions of men, women, and children, whose means of living, far from being certain and constant, are of a precarious kind, depending either upon the rain, the wind, the sunshine, the caprice of fashion, or the ebbings and flowings of commerce.
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But there is a still more potent cause at work to increase the amount of _casual_ labour in this country. Thus far we have proceeded on the assumption that at the brisk season of each trade there is full employment for all; but this is far from being the case in the great majority, if not the whole, of the instances above cited. In almost all occupations there is in this country a _superfluity of labourers_, and this alone would tend to render the employment of a vast number of the hands of a casual rather than a regular character. In the generality of trades the calculation is that one-third of the hands are fully employed, one-third partially, and one-third unemployed throughout the year. This, of course, would be the case if there were twice too many work-people; for suppose the number of work-people in a given trade to be 6000, and the work sufficient to employ (fully) only half the quantity, then, of course, 2000 might be occupied their whole time, 2000 more might have work sufficient to occupy them half their time, and the remaining 2000 have no work at all; or the whole 4000 might, on the average, obtain three months’ employment out of the twelve; and this is frequently the case. Hence we see that a surplusage of hands in a trade tends to change the employment of the great majority from a state of constancy and regularity into one of casualty and precariousness.
Consequently it becomes of the highest importance that we should endeavour to ascertain what are the circumstances inducing a surplusage of hands in the several trades of the present day. A _surplusage of hands_ in a trade may proceed from three different causes, viz.:--
1. The alteration of the hours, rate, or mode of working, or else the term of hiring.
2. The increase of the hands themselves.
3. The decrease of the work.
Each of these causes is essentially distinct; in the first case there is neither an increase in the number of hands nor a decrease in the quantity of work, and yet a surplusage of labourers is the consequence, for it is self-evident that if there be work enough in a given trade to occupy 6000 men all the year round, labouring twelve hours per day for six days in the week, the same quantity of work will afford occupation to only 4000 men, or one-third less, labouring between fifteen and sixteen hours per diem for seven days in the week. The same result would, of course, take place, if the workman were made to labour one-third more _quickly_, and so to get through one-third more work in the same time (either by increasing their interest in their work, by the invention of a new tool, by extra supervision, or by the subdivision of labour, &c., &c.), the same result would, of course, ensue as if they laboured one-third longer hours, viz., one-third of the hands must be thrown out of employment. So, again, by altering the _mode or form of work_, as by producing on the large scale, instead of the small, a smaller number of labourers are required to execute the same amount of work; and thus (if the market for such work be necessarily limited) a surplusage of labourers is the result. Hence we see that the alteration of the hours, rate, or mode of working may tend as positively to overstock a country with labourers as if the labourers themselves had unduly increased.
But this, of course, is on the assumption that both the quantity of work and the number of hands remain the same. The next of the three causes, above mentioned as inducing a surplusage of hands, is that which arises from a positive _increase in the number of labourers_, while the quantity of work remains the same or increases at a less rate than the labourers; and the third cause is, where the surplusage of labourers arises not from any alteration in the number of hands, but from a positive _decrease in the quantity of work_.
These are distinctions necessary to be borne clearly in mind for the proper understanding of this branch of the subject.
In the first case both the number of hands and the quantity of work remain the same, but the term, rate, or mode of working is changed.
In the second, hours, rate, or mode of working remain the same, as well as the quantity of work, but the number of hands is increased.
And in the third case, neither the number of hands nor the hours, rate, or mode of working is supposed to have been altered, but the work only to have decreased.
The surplusage of hands will, of course, be the same in each of these cases.
I will begin with the first, viz., that which induces a surplusage of labourers in a trade by enabling fewer hands to get through the ordinary amount of work. This is what is called the “economy of labour.”
There are, of course, only three modes of economizing labour, or causing the same quantity of work to be done by a smaller number of hands.
1st. By causing the men to work _longer_.
2nd. By causing the men to work _quicker_, and so get through more work in the same time.
3rd. By _altering the mode_ of work, or hiring, as in the “large system of production,” where fewer hands are required; or the custom of temporary hirings, where the men are retained only so long as their services are needed, and discharged immediately afterwards.
First, of that mode of economizing labour which depends on an _increase of either the ordinary hours or days for work_. This is what is usually termed over-work and Sunday-work, both of which are largely creative of surplus hands. The hours of labour in mechanical callings are usually twelve, two of them devoted to meals, or 72 hours (less by the permitted intervals) in a week. In the course of my inquiries for the _Chronicle_, I met with slop cabinet-makers, tailors, and milliners who worked sixteen hours and more daily, their toil being only interrupted by the necessity of going out, if small masters, to purchase materials, and offer the goods for sale; or, if journeymen in the slop trade, to obtain more work and carry what was completed to the master’s shop. They worked on Sundays also; one tailor told me that the coat he worked at on the previous Sunday was for the Rev. Mr. ----, who “little thought it,” and these slop-workers rarely give above a few minutes to a meal. Thus they toil 40 hours beyond the hours usual in an honourable trade (112 hours instead of 72), in the course of a week, or between three and four days of the regular hours of work of the six working days. In other words, two such men will in less than a week accomplish work which should occupy three men a full week; or 1000 men will execute labour fairly calculated to employ 1500 at the least. A paucity of employment is thus caused among the general body, by this system of over-labour decreasing the share of work accruing to the several operatives, and so adding to surplus hands.
Of over-work, as regards excessive labour, both in the general and fancy cabinet trade, I heard the following accounts, which different operatives concurred in giving; while some represented the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour, and some by two hours, a day, than I have stated.
The labour of the men who depend entirely on “the slaughter-houses” for the purchase of their articles is usually seven days a week the year through. That is, seven days--for Sunday work is all but universal--each of 13 hours, or 91 hours in all; while the established hours of labour in the “honourable trade” are six days of the week, each of 10 hours, or 60 hours in all. Thus 50 per cent. is added to the extent of the production of low-priced cabinet-work, merely from “over-hours;” but in some cases I heard of 15 hours for seven days in the week, or 105 hours in all.
Concerning the hours of labour in this trade, I had the following minute particulars from a garret-master who was a chair-maker:--
“I work from six every morning to nine at night; some work till ten. My breakfast at eight stops me for ten minutes. I can breakfast in less time, but it’s a rest; my dinner takes me say twenty minutes at the outside; and my tea, eight minutes. All the rest of the time I’m slaving at my bench. How many minutes’ rest is that, sir? Thirty-eight; well, say three-quarters of an hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when I rest; but I can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and eat in, or I should lose more time. Altogether I labour 14-1/4 hours every day, and I must work on Sundays--at least 40 Sundays in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting. But on Sundays I only work till it’s dusk, or till five or six in summer. When it’s dusk I take a walk. I’m not well-dressed enough for a Sunday walk when it’s light, and I can’t wear my apron on that day very well to hide patches. But there’s eight hours that I reckon I take up every week one with another, in dancing about to the slaughterers. I’m satisfied that I work very nearly 100 hours a week the year through; deducting the time taken up by the slaughterers, and buying stuff--say eight hours a week--it gives more than 90 hours a week for my work, and there’s hundreds labour as hard as I do, just for a crust.”
The East-end turners generally, I was informed, when inquiring into the state of that trade, labour at the lathe from six o’clock in the morning till eleven and twelve at night, being 18 hours’ work per day, or 108 hours per week. They allow themselves two hours for their meals. It takes them, upon an average, two hours more every day fetching and carrying their work home. Some of the East-end men work on Sundays, and not a few either, said my informant. “Sometimes I have worked hard,” said one man, “from six one morning till four the next, and scarcely had any time to take my meals in the bargain. I have been almost suffocated with the dust flying down my throat after working so many hours upon such heavy work too, and sweating so much. It makes a man drink where he would not.”
This system of over-work exists in the “slop” part of almost every business--indeed, it is the principal means by which the cheap trade is maintained. Let me cite from my letters in the _Chronicle_ some more of my experience on this subject. As regards the London mantua-makers, I said:--“The workwomen for good shops that give fair, or tolerably fair wages, and expect good work, can make six average-sized mantles in a week, _working from ten to twelve hours a day_; but the slop-workers, by toiling from thirteen to sixteen hours a day, will make _nine_ such sized mantles in a week. In a season of twelve weeks 1000 workers for the slop-houses and warehouses would at this rate make 108,000 mantles, or 36,000 more than workers for the fair trade. Or, to put it in another light, these slop-women, by being compelled, in order to live, to work such over-hours as inflict lasting injury on the health, supplant, by their over-work and over-hours, the labour of 500 hands, working the regular hours.”
The following are the words of a chamber-master, working for the cheap shoe trade:--
“From people being obliged to work twice the hours they once _did_ work, or that in reason they _ought_ to work, a glut of hands is the consequence, and the masters are led to make reductions in the wages. They take advantage of our poverty and lower the wages, so as to undersell each other, and command business. My daughters have to work fifteen hours a day that we may make a bare living. They seem to have no spirit and no animation in them; in fact, such very hard work takes the youth out of them. They have no time to enjoy their youth, and, with all their work, they can’t present the respectable appearance they ought.” “I” (interposed my informant’s wife) “often feel a faintness and oppression from my hard work, as if my blood did not circulate.”
The better class of artizans denounce the system of Sunday working as the most iniquitous of all the impositions. They object to it, not only on moral and religious grounds, but economically also. “Every 600 men employed on the Sabbath,” say they, “deprive 100 individuals of a week’s work. Every six men who labour seven days in the week must necessarily throw one other man out of employ for a whole week. The seventh man is thus deprived of his fair share of work by the overtoiling of the other six.” This Sunday working is a necessary consequence of the cheap slop-trade. The workmen cannot keep their families by their six days’ labour, and therefore they not only, under that system, get less wages and do more work, but by their extra labour throw so many more hands out of employment.
Here then, in the over-work of many of the trade, we find a vast cause of surplus hands, and, consequently, of casual labour; and that the work in these trades has not proportionately increased is proven by the fact of the existence of a superfluity of workmen.
Let us now turn our attention to the second of the causes above cited, viz., _the causing of men to work quicker_, and so to accomplish more in the same time. There are several means of attaining this end; it may be brought about either (_a_) by making the workman’s gains depend directly on the quantity of work executed by him, as by the substitution of piece-work for day-work; (_b_) by the omission of certain details or parts necessary for the perfection of the work; (_c_) by decreasing the workman’s pay, and so increasing the necessity for him to execute a greater quantity of work in order to obtain the same income; (_d_) increasing the supervision, and encouraging a spirit of emulation among the workpeople; (_e_) by dividing the labour into a number of simple and minute processes, and so increasing the expertness of the labourers; (_f_) by the invention of some new tool or machine for expediting the operations of the workman.
I shall give a brief illustration of each of these causes _seriatim_, showing how they tend to produce a surplusage of hands in the trades to which they are severally applied. And first, as to _making the workman’s gains depend directly on the quantity of work executed by him_.
Of course there are but two direct modes of paying for labour--either by the day or by the piece. Over-work by day-work is effected by means of what is called the “strapping system” (as described in the _Morning Chronicle_ in my letter upon the carpenters and joiners), where a whole shop are set to race over their work in silence one with another, each striving to outdo the rest, from the knowledge that anything short of extraordinary exertion will be sure to be punished with dismissal. Over-work by piece-work, on the other hand, is almost a necessary consequence of that mode of payment--for where men are paid by the quantity they do, of course it becomes the interest of a workman to do more than he otherwise would.