Part 84
Formerly throughout the kingdom--and it is a custom _still_ prevalent in some parts, more especially in the north--single men and women seeking engagements as farm-servants, congregated at what were called the “Hirings,” held usually on the three successive market days, which were nearest to May-day and Martinmas-day. The hiring was thus at two periods of the year, but the engagement was usually for the twelvemonth. By the concurrent consent, however, of master and servant, when the hiring took place, either side might terminate it at the expiration of the six months, by giving due notice; or a further hiring for a second twelvemonth could be legally effected without the necessity of again going to the hirings. The servants, even before their term of service had expired, could attend a hiring (generally held under the authority of the town’s charter) as a matter of right; the master and mistress having no authority to prevent them. The Market Cross was the central point for the holding of the hirings, and the men and women, the latter usually the most numerous, stood in rows around the cross. The terms being settled, the master or mistress gave the servant “a piece of money,” known as a “god’s penny” (the “handsel penny”), the offer and acceptance of this god’s penny being a legal ratification of the agreement, without any other step. In the old times such engagements had almost always (as shown in the term “God’s penny”) a character of religious obligation. At the earliest period, the hirings were held in the church-yards; afterwards by the Market Cross.
I have spoken of this matter more in the past than the present tense, for the system is greatly changed as regards the male farm-servant, though little as regards the female. Now the male farm-labourers, instead of being hired for a specific term, are more generally hired by week, by job, or by day; indeed, even “half-a-day’s” work is known. At one period it was merely the married country labourers, residing in their own cottages, who were temporarily engaged, but it is now the general body, married and unmarried, old and young, with a few exceptions. Formerly the farmer was bound to find work for six or twelve months (for both terms existed) for his hired labourers. If the land did not supply it, still the man must be maintained, and be paid his full wages when due. By such a provision, the labour and wage of the hired husbandman were regular and rarely _casual_; but this arrangement is now seldom entered into, and the hired husbandman’s labour is consequently generally casual and rarely regular. This principle of hiring labourers only for so long as they are wanted, as contradistinguished from the “_principle of natural equity_,” spoken of by Blackstone, which requires that “the servant shall serve and the master maintain him _throughout all the revolutions of the respective seasons, as well when there is work to be done as when there is not_,” has been the cause, perhaps, of more casual labour and more pauperism and crime, in this country, than, perhaps, any other of the antecedents before mentioned. The harvest is now collected solely by casual labourers, by a horde of squalid immigrants, or the tribe of natural and forced vagabonds who are continually begging or stealing their way throughout the country; our hops are picked, our fruit and vegetables gathered by the same precarious bands--wretches who, perhaps, obtain some three months’ harvest labour in the course of the year. The ships at our several ports are discharged by the same “_casual hands_,” who may be seen at our docks scrambling like hounds for the occasional bit of bread that is vouchsafed to them; there numbers loiter throughout the day, even on the chance of _an hour’s employment_; for the term of hiring has been cut down to the finest possible limits, so that the labourer may not be paid for even a second longer than he is wanted. And since he gets only bare subsistence money when employed, “What,” we should ask ourselves, “_must_ be his lot when unemployed?”
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I now come to consider the circumstances causing an undue increase of the labourers in a country. Thus far we have proceeded on the assumption that both the quantity of work to be done and the number of hands to do it remained stationary, and we have seen that by the mere alteration of the time, rate, and mode of working, a vast amount of surplus, and, consequently, casual labour may be induced in a community. We have now to ascertain how, still assuming the quantity of work to remain unaltered, the same effect may be brought about by an undue _increase of the number of labourers_.
There are many means by which the number of labourers may be increased besides that of a positive increase of the people. These are--
1. By the undue increase of apprentices.
2. By drafting into the ranks of labour those who should be otherwise engaged, as women and children.
3. By the importation of labourers from abroad.
4. By the migration of country labourers to towns, and so overcrowding the market in the cities.
5. By the depression of other trades.
6. By the undue increase of the people themselves.
Each and every of the first-mentioned causes are as effective a circumstance for the promotion of surplus labour, as even the positive extension of the population of the country.
Let me begin with the undue increase of a trade by means of _apprentices_.
This is, perhaps, one of the chief aids to the cheap system. For it is principally by apprentice labour that the better masters, as well as workmen, are undersold, and the skilled labourer consequently depressed to the level of the unskilled. But the great evil is, that the cheapening of goods by this means causes an undue increase in the trade. The apprentices grow up and become labourers, and so the trade is glutted with workmen, and casual labour is the consequence.
This apprentice system is the great bane of the printer’s trade. Country printers take an undue number of boys to help them cheap; these lads grow up, and then, finding wages in the provinces depressed through this system of apprentice labour, they flock to the towns, and so tend to glut the labour market, and consequently to increase the number of casual hands.
One cause of the increased surplus and casual labour in such trades as dressing-case, work-box, writing-desk-making and other things in the fancy cabinet trade (among the worst trades even in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green), shoemaking, and especially of women and children’s shoes, is the taking of many apprentices by small masters (supplying the great warehouses). As journey-work is all but unknown in the slop fancy cabinet trade, an apprentice, when he has “served his time,” must start on his own account in the same wretched way of business, or become a casual labourer in some unskilled avocation, and this is one way in which the hands surely, although gradually, increase beyond the demand. It is the same with the general slop cabinet-maker’s trade in the same parts. The small masters supply the “slaughterhouses,” the linen-drapers, &c., who sell cheap furniture; they work in the quickest and most scamping manner, and do more work (which is nearly all done on the chance of sale), as they must confine themselves to one branch. The slop chair-makers cannot make tables, nor the slop table-makers, chairs; nor the cheffonier and drawer-makers, bedsteads; for they have not been taught. Even if they knew the method, and _could_ accomplish other work, the want of practice would compel them to do it slowly, and the slop mechanic can never afford to work slowly. Such classes of little masters, then, to meet the demand for low-priced furniture, rear their sons to the business, and frequently take apprentices, to whom they pay small amounts. The hands so trained (as in the former instances) are not skilled enough to work for the honourable trade, so that they can only adopt the course pursued by their parents, or masters, before them. Hence a rapid, although again gradual, increase of surplus hands; or hence a resort to some unskilled labour, to be wrought casually. This happens too, but in a smaller degree, in trades which are not slop, from the same cause. Concerning the _apprentice system_ in the boot and shoe trade, when making my inquiries into the condition of the London workmen, I received the following statements:--
“My employer had seven apprentices when I was with him; of these, two were parish apprentices (I was one), and the other five from the Refuge for the Destitute, at Hoxton. With each Refuge boy he got 5_l._ and three suits of clothes, and a kit (tools). With the parish boys of Covent-garden and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, he got 5_l._ and two suits of clothes, reckoning what the boy wore as one. My employer was a journeyman, and by having all us boys he was able to get up work very cheap, though he received good wages for it. We boys had no allowance in money, only board, lodging, and clothing. The board was middling, the lodging was too, and there was nothing to complain about in the clothing. He was severe in the way of flogging. I ran away six times myself, but was forced to go back again, as I had no money and no friend in the world. When I first ran away I complained to Mr. ---- the magistrate, and he was going to give me six weeks. He said it would do me good; but Mr. ---- interfered, and I was let go. I don’t know what he was going to give me six weeks for, unless it was for having a black eye that my master had given me with the stirrup. Of the seven only one served his time out. He let me off two years before my time was up, as we couldn’t agree. The mischief of taking so many apprentices is this:--The master gets money with them from the parish, and can feed them much as he likes as to quality and quantity; and if they run away soon, the master’s none the worse, for he’s got the money; and so boys are sent out to turn vagrants when they run away, as such boys have no friends. Of us seven boys (at the wages our employer got) one could earn 19_s._, another 15_s._, another 12_s._, another 10_s._, and the rest not less than 8_s._ each, for all worked sixteen hours a day--that’s 4_l._ 8_s._ a week for the seven, or 225_l._ 10_s._ a year. You must recollect I reckon this on nearly the best wages in the women’s trade. My employer you may call a sweater, and he made money fast, though he drank a good deal. We seldom saw him when he was drunk; but he _did_ pitch into us when he was getting sober. Look how easily such a man with apprentices can undersell others when he wants to work as cheap as possible for the great slop warehouses. They serve haberdashers so cheap that oft enough it’s starvation wages for the same shops.”
Akin to the system of using a large number of apprentices is that of _employing boys and girls_ to displace the work of men, at the less laborious parts of the trade.
“It is probable,” said a working shoemaker to me, “that, independent of apprentices, 200 additional hands are added to our already over-burdened trade yearly. Sewing boys soon learn the use of the knife. Plenty of poor men will offer to finish them for a pound and a month’s work; and men, for a few shillings and a few weeks’ work, will teach other boys to sew. There are many of the wives of chamber-masters teach girls entirely to make children’s work for a pound and a few months’ work, and there are many in Bethnal-green who have learnt the business in this way. These teach some other members of their families, and then actually set up in business in opposition to those who taught them, and in cutting offer their work for sale at a much lower rate of profit; and shopkeepers in town and country, having circulars sent to solicit custom, will have their goods from a warehouse that will serve them cheapest; then the warehouseman will have them cheap from the manufacturer; and he in his turn cuts down the wages of the workpeople, who fear to refuse offers at the warehouse price, knowing the low rate at which chamber-masters will serve the warehouse.”
As in all trades where lowness of wages is the rule, the boy system of labour prevails among the cheap cabinet-workers. It prevails, however, among the garret-masters, by very many of them having one, two, three or four youths to help them, and so the number of boys thus employed through the whole trade is considerable. This refers principally to the general cabinet trade. In the fancy trade the number is greater, as the boys’ labour is more readily available; but in this trade the greatest number of apprentices is employed by such warehousemen as are manufacturers, as some at the East end are, or rather by the men that they constantly keep at work. Of these men, one has now eight and another fourteen boys in his service, some apprenticed, some merely “engaged” and dischargeable at pleasure. A sharp boy, in six or eight months, becomes “handy;” but four out of five of the workmen thus brought up can do nothing well but their own particular branch, and that only well as far as celerity in production is considered.
It is these boys who are put to make, or as a master of the better class distinguished to me, not to _make_ but to put together, ladies’ work-boxes at 5_d._ a piece, the boy receiving 2-1/2_d._ a box. ‘Such boxes,’ said another workman, ‘are nailed together; there’s no dove-tailing, nothing of what I call _work_, or workmanship, as you say, about them, but the deal’s nailed together, and the veneer’s dabbed on, and if the deal’s covered, why the thing passes. The worst of it is, that people don’t understand either good work or good wood. Polish them up and they look well. Besides--and that’s another bad thing, for it encourages bad work--there’s no stress on a lady’s work-box, as on a chair or a sofa, and so bad work lasts far too long, though not half so long as good; in solids especially, if not in veneers.’
To such a pitch is this demand for children’s labour carried, that there is a market in Bethnal-green, where boys and girls stand twice a week to be hired as binders and sewers. Hence it will be easily understood that it is impossible for the skilled and grown artizan to compete with the labour of mere children, who are thus literally brought into the market to undersell him!
Concerning this market for boys and girls, in Bethnal-green, I received, during my inquiries into the boot and shoe trade, the following statements from shopkeepers on the spot:--
“Mr. H---- has lived there sixteen years. The market-days are Monday and Tuesday mornings, from seven to nine. The ages of persons who assemble there vary from ten to twenty, and they are often of the worst character, and a decided nuisance to the inhabitants. A great many of both sexes congregate together, and most market days there are three females to one male. They consist of sewing boys, shoe-binders, winders for weavers, and girls for all kinds of slop needlework, girls for domestic work, nursing children, &c. No one can testify, for a fact, that they (the females) are prostitutes; but, by their general conduct, they are fit for anything. The market, some years since, was held at the top of Abbey-street; but, on account of the nuisance, it was removed to the other end of Abbey-street. When the schools were built, the nuisance became so intolerable that it was removed to a railway arch in White-street, Bethnal-green. There are two policemen on market mornings to keep order, but my informant says they require four to maintain anything like subjection.”
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But _family work, or the conjoint labour of a workman’s wife and children_, is an equally extensive cause of surplus and casual labour.
A small master, working, perhaps, upon goods to be supplied at the lowest rates to wholesale warehousemen, will often contribute to this result by the way in which he brings up his children. It is less expensive to him to teach them his own business, and he may even reap a profit from their labour, than to have them brought up to some other calling. I met with an instance of this in an inquiry among the toy-makers. A maker of common toys brought up five children to his own trade, for boys and girls can be made useful in such labour at an early age. His business fell off rapidly, which he attributed to the great and numerous packages of cheap toys imported from Germany, Holland, and France, after the lowering of the duty by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff. The chief profit to the toy-maker was derived from the labour, as the material was of trifling cost. He found, on the change in his trade, that he could not employ all his family. His fellow tradesmen, he said, were in the same predicament; and thus surplus hands were created, so leading to casualty in labour.
“The system which has, I believe, the worst effect on the women’s trade in the boot and shoe business throughout England is,” I said in the _Morning Chronicle_, “chamber-mastering. There are between 300 and 400 chamber-masters. Commonly the man has a wife, and three or four children, ten years old or upwards. The wife cuts out the work for the binders, the husband does the knife-work, the children sew with uncommon rapidity. The husband, when the work is finished at night, goes out with it, though wet and cold, and perhaps hungry--his wife and children waiting his return. He returns sometimes, having sold his work at cost price, or not cleared 1_s._ 6_d._ for the day’s labour of himself and family. In the winter, by this means, the shopkeepers and warehouses can take the advantage of the chamber-master, buying the work at their own price. By this means haberdashers’ shops are supplied with boots, shoes, and slippers; they can sell women’s boots at 1_s._ 9_d._ per pair; shoes, 1_s._ 3_d._ per pair; children’s, 6_d._, 8_d._, and 9_d._ per pair, getting a good profit, having bought them of the poor chamber-master for almost nothing, and he glad to sell them at any price, late at night, his children wanting bread, and he having walked about for hours, in vain trying to get a fair price for them; thus, women and children labour as well as husbands and fathers, and, with their combined labours, they only obtain a miserable living.”
The labour of the wife, and indeed the whole family--family work, as it is called--is attended with the same evil to a trade, introducing a large supply of fresh hands to the labour market, and so tending to glut with workpeople each trade into which they are introduced, and thus to increase the casual labour, and decrease the earnings of the whole.
“The only means of escape from the inevitable poverty,” I said in the same letters, “which sooner or later overwhelms those in connection with the cheap shoe trade, seems to the workmen to be by the employment of his whole family as soon as his children are able to be put to the trade--and yet this only increases the very depression that he seeks to avoid. I give the statement of such a man residing in the suburbs of London, and working with three girls to help him:--
“‘I have known the business,’ he said, ‘many years, but was not brought up to it. I took it up because my wife’s father was in the trade, and taught me. I was a weaver originally, but it is a bad business, and I have been in this trade seventeen years. Then I had only my wife and myself able to work. At that time my wife and I, by hard work, could earn 1_l._ a week; on the same work we could not now earn 12_s._ a week. As soon as the children grew old enough the falling off in the wages compelled us to put them to work one by one--as soon as a child could make threads. One began to do that between eight and nine. I have had a large family, and with very hard work too. We have had to lie on straw oft enough. Now, three daughters, my wife, and myself work together, in chamber-mastering; the whole of us may earn, one week with another, 28_s._ a week, and out of that I have eight to support. Out of that 28_s._ I have to pay for grindery and candles, which cost me 1_s._ a week the year through. I now make children’s shoes for the wholesale houses and anybody. About two years ago I travelled from Thomas-street, Bethnal-green, to Oxford-street, “on the hawk.” I then positively had nothing in my inside, and in Holborn I had to lean against a house, through weakness from hunger. I was compelled, as I could sell nothing at that end of the town, to walk down to Whitechapel at ten at night. I went into a shop near Mile-end turnpike, and the same articles (children’s patent leather shoes) that I received 8_s._ a dozen for from the wholesale houses, I was compelled to sell to the shopkeeper for 6_s._ 6_d._ This is a very frequent case--very frequent--with persons circumstanced as I am, and so trade is injured and only some hard man gains by it.’”
Here is the statement of a worker at “fancy cabinet” work on the same subject:--
“The most on us has got large families. We put the children to work as soon as we can. My little girl began about six, but about eight or nine is the usual age.” _“Oh, poor little things,” said the wife, “they are obliged to begin the very minute they can use their fingers at all.”_ “The most of the cabinet-makers of the East end have from five to six in family, and they are generally all at work for them. The small masters mostly marry when they are turned of 20. You see our trade’s coming to such a pass, that unless a man has children to help him he can’t live at all. _I’ve worked more than a month together, and the longest night’s rest I’ve had has been an hour and a quarter; aye, and I’ve been up three nights a week besides._ I’ve had my children lying ill, and been obliged to wait on them into the bargain. You see, we couldn’t live if it wasn’t for the labour of our children, though it makes ’em--poor little things!--old people long afore they are growed up.”