Part 85
“Why, I stood at this bench,” said the wife, “with my child, only ten years of age, from four o’clock on Friday morning till ten minutes past seven in the evening, without a bit to eat or drink. I never sat down a minute from the time I began till I finished my work, and then I went out to sell what I had done. I walked all the way from here [Shoreditch] down to the Lowther Arcade, to get rid of the articles.” _Here she burst out in a violent flood of tears, saying, “Oh, sir, it is hard to be obliged to labour from morning till night as we do, all of us, little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by it either.”_
“And you see the worst of it is, this here children’s labour is of such value now in our trade, that there’s more brought into the business every year, so that it’s really for all the world _like breeding slaves_. Without my children I don’t know how we should be able to get along.” “There’s that little thing,” said the man, pointing to the girl ten years of age before alluded to, as she sat at the edge of the bed, “why she works regularly every day from six in the morning till ten at night. She never goes to school. We can’t spare her. There’s schools enough about here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep her without working. If I’d ten more children I should be obliged to employ them all the same way, and there’s hundreds and thousands of children now slaving at this business. There’s the M----’s; they have a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of all works at the bench; and the oldest ain’t fourteen. I’m sure, of the 2500 small masters in the cabinet line, you may safely say that 2000 of them, at the very least, has from five to six in family, _and that’s upwards of_ 12,000 _children that’s been put to the trade since prices has come down_. Twenty years ago I don’t think there was a child at work in our business; and I am sure there is not a small master now whose whole family doesn’t assist him. But what I want to know is, what’s to become of the 12,000 children when they’re growed up, and come regular into the trade? Here are all my young ones growing up without being taught anything but a business that I know they must starve at.”
In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case of sickness, “Oh, bless you,” he said, “there’s nothing but the parish for us. I _did_ belong to a Benefit Society about four years ago, but I couldn’t keep up my payments any longer. I was in the society above five-and-twenty year, and then was obliged to leave it after all. I don’t know of one as belongs to any Friendly Society, and I don’t think there is a man as can afford it in our trade now. They must all go to the workhouse when they’re sick or old.”
The following is from a journeyman tailor, concerning the employment of women in his trade:--
“When I first began working at this branch, there were but very few females employed in it: a few white waistcoats were given out to them, under the idea that women would make them cleaner than men--and so indeed they can. But since the last five years the sweaters have employed females upon cloth, silk, and satin waistcoats as well, and before that time the idea of a woman making a cloth waistcoat would have been scouted. But since the increase of the puffing and the sweating system, masters and sweaters have sought everywhere for such hands as would do the work below the regular ones. Hence the wife has been made to compete with the husband, and the daughter with the wife: they all learn the waistcoat business, and must all get a living. If the man will not reduce the price of his labour to that of the female, why he must remain unemployed; and if the full-grown woman will not take the work at the same price as the young girl, why she must remain without any. The female hands, I can confidently state, have been sought out and introduced to the business by the sweaters, from a desire on their part continually to ferret out hands who will do the work cheaper than others. The effect that this continual reduction has had upon me is this: Before the year 1844 I could live comfortably, and keep my wife and children (I had five in family) by my own labour. My wife then attended to her domestic and family duties; but since that time, owing to the reduction in prices, she has been compelled to resort to her needle, as well as myself, for her living.” [On the table was a bundle of crape and bombazine ready to be made up into a dress.] “I cannot afford now to let her remain idle--that is, if I wish to live, and keep my children out of the streets, and pay my way. My wife’s earnings are, upon an average, 8_s._ per week. She makes dresses. I never would teach her to make waistcoats, because I knew the introduction of female hands had been the ruin of my trade. With the labour of myself and wife now I can only earn 32_s._ a week, and six years ago I could make my 36_s._ If I had a daughter I should be obliged to make her work as well, and then probably, with the labour of the three of us, we could make up at the week’s end as much money, as, up to 1844, I could get by my own single hands. My wife, since she took to dressmaking, has become sickly from over-exertion. Her work, and her domestic and family duties altogether, are too much for her. Last night I was up all night with her, and was compelled to call in a female to attend her as well. The over-exertion now necessary for us to maintain a decent appearance, has so ruined her constitution that she is not the same woman as she was. In fact, ill as she is, she has been compelled to rise from her bed to finish a mourning-dress against time, and I myself have been obliged to give her a helping-hand, and turn to at women’s work in the same manner as the women are turning to at men’s work.”
“The cause of the serious decrease in our trade,” said another tailor to me, “is the employment given to workmen at their own homes; or, in other words, to the ‘sweaters.’ The sweater is the greatest evil to us; as the sweating system increases the number of hands to an almost incredible extent--wives, sons, daughters, and extra women, all working ‘long days’--that is, labouring from sixteen to eighteen hours per day, and Sundays as well. I date the decrease in the wages of the workman from the introduction of piece-work and giving out garments to be made off the premises of the master; for the effect of this was, that the workman making the garment, knowing that the master could not tell whom he got to do his work for him, employed women and children to help him, and paid them little or nothing for their labour. This was the beginning of the sweating system. The workmen gradually became transformed from journeymen into ‘middlemen,’ living by the labour of others. Employers soon began to find that they could get garments made at a less sum than the regular price, and those tradesmen who were anxious to force their trade, by underselling their more honourable neighbours, readily availed themselves of this means of obtaining cheap labour. The consequence was, that the sweater sought out where he could get the work done the cheapest, and so introduced a fresh stock of hands into the trade. Female labour, of course, could be had cheaper than male, and the sweater readily availed himself of the services of women on that account. Hence the males who had formerly been employed upon the garments were thrown out of work by the females, and obliged to remain unemployed, unless they would reduce the price of their work to that of the women. It cannot, therefore, be said that the reduction of prices originally arose from there having been more workmen than there was work for them to do. There was no superabundance of hands until female labour was generally introduced--and even if the workmen had increased 25 per cent. more than what they were twenty years back, still that extra number of hands would be required now to make the same number of garments, owing to the work put into each article being at least one-fourth more than formerly. So far from the trade being over-stocked with male hands, if the work were confined to the men or the masters’ premises, there would not be sufficient hands to do the whole.”
According to the last Census (1841, G.B.), out of a population of 18,720,000 the proportions of the people occupied and unoccupied were as follows:--
Occupied 7,800,000 Unoccupied (including women and children) 10,920,000
Of those who were occupied the following were the proportions:--
Engaged in productive employments[42] 5,350,000 Engaged in non-productive employments 2,450,000
Of those who were engaged in productive employments, the proportion (in round numbers) ran as follows:--
Men 3,785,000 Women 660,000 Boys and girls 905,000
Here, then, we find nearly one-fifth, or 20 per cent., of our producers to be boys and girls, and upwards of 10 per cent. to be women. Such was the state of things in 1841. In order to judge of the possible and probable condition of the labour market of the country, if this introduction of women and children into the ranks of the labourers be persisted in, let us see what were the proportions of the 10,920,000 men, women, and children who ten years ago still remained unoccupied among us. The ratio was as follows:--
Men 275,000 Women 3,570,000 Boys and girls 7,075,000
Here the unoccupied men are about 5 per cent. of the whole, the children nearly two-thirds, and the wives about one-third. Now it appears that out of say 19,000,000 people, 8,000,000 were, in 1841, occupied, and by far the greater number, 11,000,000, unoccupied.
Who were the remaining eleven millions, and what were they doing? They, of course, consisted principally of the unemployed wives and children of the eight millions of people before specified, three millions and a half of the number being females of twenty years of age and upwards, and seven millions being children of both sexes under twenty. Of these children, four millions, according to the “age abstract,” were under ten years, so that we may fairly assume that, at the time of taking the last census, _there were very nearly seven millions of wives and children of a workable age still unoccupied_. Let us suppose, then, that these seven millions of people are brought in competition with the five million producers. What is to be the consequence? If the labour market be overstocked at present with only five millions of people working for the support of nineteen millions (I speak according to the Census of 1841), what would it be if another seven millions were to be dragged into it? And if wages are low now, and employment is precarious on account of this, what will not both work and pay sink to when the number is again increased, and the people clamouring for employment are at least treble what they are at present? When the wife has been taught to compete for work with the husband, and son and daughter to undersell their own father, what will be the state of our labour market then?
* * * * *
But the labour of wives, and children, and apprentices, is not the only means of glutting a particular trade with hands. There is another system becoming every day more popular with our enterprising tradesmen, and this is the _importation of foreign labourers_. In the cheap tailoring this is made a regular practice. Cheap labour is regularly imported, not only from Ireland (the wives of sweaters making visits to the Emerald Isle for the express purpose), but small armies of working tailors, ready to receive the lowest pittance, are continually being shipped into this country. That this is no exaggeration let the following statement prove:--
“I am a native of Pesth, having left Hungary about eight years ago. By the custom of the country I was compelled to travel three years in foreign parts, before I could settle in my native place. I went to Paris, after travelling about in the different countries of Germany. I stayed in Paris about two years. My father’s wish was that I should visit England, and I came to London in June, 1847. I first worked for a West end show shop--not _directly_ for them--but through the person who is their middleman getting work done at what rates he could for the firm, and obtaining the prices they allowed for making the garments. I once worked four days and a half for him, finding my own trimmings, &c., for 9_s._ For this my employer would receive 12_s._ 6_d._ He then employed 190 hands; he _has_ employed 300. Many of those so employed set their wives, children, and others to work, some employing as many as five hands this way. The middleman keeps his carriage, and will give fifty guineas for a horse. I became unable to work from a pain in my back, from long sitting at my occupation. The doctor told me not to sit much, and so, as a countryman of mine was doing the same, I employed hands, making the best I could of their labour. I have now four young women (all Irish girls) so employed. Last week one of them received 4_s._, another 4_s._ 2_d._, the other two 5_s._ each. They find their board and lodging, but I find them a place to work in, a small room, the rent of which I share with another tailor, who works on his own account. There are not so many Jews come over from Hungary or Germany as from Poland. The law of travelling three years brings over many, but not more than it did. The revolutions have brought numbers this year and last. They are Jew tailors flying from Russian and Prussian Poland to avoid the conscription. I never knew any of these Jews go back again. _There is a constant communication among the Jews, and when their friends in Poland, and other places, learn they are safe in England, and in work and out of trouble, they come over too. I worked as a journeyman in Pesth, and got_ 2_s._ 6_d. a week, my board and washing, and lodging, for my labour._ We lived well, everything being so cheap. The Jews come in the greatest number about Easter. They try to work their way here, most of them. Some save money here, but they never go back; if they leave England it is to go to America.”
* * * * *
The labour market of a particular place, however, comes to be overstocked with hands, not only from the introduction of an inordinate number of apprentices and women and children into the trade, as well as the importation of workmen from abroad, but the same effect is produced by _the migration of country labourers to towns_. This, as I have before said, is specially the case in the printer’s and carpenter’s trades, where the cheap provincial work is executed chiefly by apprentices, who, when their time is up, flock to the principal towns, in the hopes of getting better wages than can be obtained in the country, owing to the prevalence of the apprentice system of work in those parts. The London carpenters suffer greatly from what are called “improvers,” who come up to town to get perfected in their art, and work for little or no wages. The work of some of the large houses is executed mainly in this way; that of Mr. Myers was, for instance, against whom the men lately struck.
But the unskilled labour of towns suffers far more than the skilled from the above cause.
The employment of unskilled labourers in towns is being constantly rendered more casual by the migrations from the country parts. The peasants, owing to the insufficiency of their wages, and the wretchedness of their dwellings and diet, in Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, and elsewhere, leave their native places without regret, and swell the sum of unskilled labour in towns. This is shown by the increase of population far beyond the excess of births over deaths in those counties where there are large manufacturing or commercial towns; whilst in purely agricultural counties the increase of population does not keep pace with the excess of births. “Thus in Lancashire,” writes Mr. Thornton, in his work on Over-Population, “the increase of the population in the ten years ending in 1841, was 330,210, and in Cheshire, 60,919; whilst the excess of births was only 150,150 in the former, and 28,000 in the latter. In particular towns the contrast is still more striking. In Liverpool and Bristol the annual deaths actually exceed the births, so that these towns are only saved from depopulation by their rural recruits, yet the first increased the number of its inhabitants in ten years by more than one-third, and the other by more than one-sixth. In Manchester, the annual excess of births could only have added 19,390 to the population between 1831 and 1841; the actual increase was 68,375. The number of emigrants (immigrants) into Birmingham, during the same period, may, in the same way, be estimated at 40,000; into Leeds, at 8000; into the metropolis, at 130,000. On the other hand, in Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, the actual addition to the population, in the same decennial period, was only 15,491, 31,802, and 39,253 respectively; although the excess of births over deaths in the same counties was about 20,000, 38,600, and 48,700.”
The unskilled labour market suffers, again, from the depression of almost any branch of skilled labour; for whatever branch of labour be depressed, and men so be deprived of a sufficiency of employment, one especial result ensues--the unskilled labour market is glutted. The skilled labourer, a tailor, for instance, may be driven to work for the wretched pittance of an East end slop-tailor, but he cannot “turn his hand” to any other description of skilled labour. He cannot say, “I will make billiard-tables, or book-cases, or boots, or razors;” so that there is no resource for him but in unskilled labour. The Spitalfields weavers have often sought dock labour; the turners of the same locality, whose bobbins were once in great demand by the silk-winders, and for the fringes of upholsterers, have done the same; and in this way the increase of casual labour increases the poverty of the poor, and so tends directly to the increase of pauperism.
* * * * *
We have now seen what a vast number of surplus labourers may be produced by an extension of time, rate, or mode of working, as well as by the increase of the hands, by other means than by _the increase of the people themselves_. If, however, we are increasing our workers at a greater rate than we are increasing the means of work, the excess of workmen must, of course, remain unemployed. But are we doing this?
Let us test the matter on the surest data. In the first instance let us estimate the increase of population, both according to the calculations of the late Mr. Rickman and the returns of the several censuses. The first census, I may observe, was taken in 1801, and has been regularly continued at intervals of ten years. The table first given refers to the population of England and Wales:--
INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.
-------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+-------------------------- |Population,| |Increase| Annual | Years. |England and|Numerical| per |Increase | | Wales. |Increase.| Cent. |per cent.| -------+---------------------+--------+---------+ [43]1570| 4,038,879 | | | | 1600| 4,811,718 | 772,839| 19 | 0·6 | 1630| 5,601,517 | 789,799| 16 | 0·5 | 1670| 5,773,646 | 172,129| 3 | 0·08 |Increase per Cent. 1700| 6,045,008 | 271,362| 5 | 0·2 | in 50 Years, 1750| 6,517,035 | 472,027| 8 | 0·2 | from 1801 to 1851 = 101. [44]1801| 8,892,536 |2,375,501| 37 | 0·7 | 1811|10,164,068 |1,271,532| 14 | 1·4 |Annual average increase 1821|11,999,322 |1,835,250| 18 | 1·8 | per Cent., 1·41. 1831|13,896,797 |1,897,475| 16 | 1·6 | 1841|15,914,148 |1,982,489| 14 | 1·4 | 1851|17,922,768 |1,968,341| 13 | 1·3 | -------+-----------+---------+------------------+--------------------------
INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF SCOTLAND.
-------+-----------+---------+---------+--------+----------------------- | | |Increase| Annual | Years.|Population,|Numerical| per |Increase | | Scotland. |Increase.| Cent. |per Cent.| -------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+ [45]1755| 1,265,380 | | | |Increase per Cent. [46]1801| 1,608,420 | 343,040 | 27 | 0·6 | in 50 years, from 1811| 1,805,864 | 197,444 | 12 | 1·3 | 1801 to 1851 = 78. 1821| 2,091,512 | 285,657 | 16 | 1·6 | 1831| 2,364,386 | 272,865 | 13 | 1·3 |Annual rate of Increase 1841| 2,620,184 | 255,798 | 11 | 1·1 | per Cent., 1·16. 1851| 2,870,784 | 245,237 | 10 | 1·0 | -------+-----------+---------+--------+---------+-----------------------
INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF IRELAND.
--------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+------------------- | | Numerical |Increase |Annual rate | | | Increase | and |of Increase | | | and |Decrease |and Decrease| Years. |Population,| Decrease. |per Cent.| per Cent. | | Ireland. +------------+---------+------------+ | | † denotes Increase. | | | * „ Decrease. | --------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+ 1731[47]| 2,010,221 | | | | 1754[48]| 2,372,634 | †362,413 | †19 | |Total Decrease 1767 | 2,544,276 | †171,642 | †7 | | in 30 Years, from 1777 | 2,690,556 | †146,280 | †6 | | 1821 to 1851 = 1785 | 2,845,932 | †155,376 | †6 | | 4 per Cent. 1788 | 4,040,000 |†1,194,068 | †42 | | 1805[49]| 5,395,456 |†1,355,456 | †34 | |Annual rate of 1813[50]| 5,937,858 | †542,402 | †10 | | Decrease for 1821[51]| 6,801,827 | †863,969 | †15 | †1·4 | 30 Years, from 1831 | 7,767,401 | †965,574 | †14 | †1·3 | 1821 to 1851, 1841 | 8,175,124 | †407,723 | †5 | †·5 | ·1 per Cent. 1851 | 6,515,794 |*1,659,330 | *20 | *1·8 | --------+-----------+------------+---------+------------+-------------------
INCREASE IN THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.
------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+------------------ | | |Decennial| Annual |Increase in 30 | |Numerical|Increase |Increase | years, from 1821 Years.|Population.|Increase.|per Cent.|per Cent.| to 1851 = 31 ------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+ per Cent. 1821 |20,892,670 | | | | 1831 |24,028,584 |3,135,914| 15 | 1·4 |Annual Rate of 1841 |26,709,456 |2,680,872| 11 | 1·1 | Increase ·9 1851 |27,309,346 | 599,890| 2 | 0·2 | per Cent. ------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+------------------
Discarding, then, all conjectural results, and adhering solely to the returns of the censuses, we find that, according to the official numberings of the people _throughout the kingdom_, the increased rate of population is, in round numbers, 10 per cent. every ten years; that is to say, where 100 persons were living in the United Kingdom in 1821, there are 130 living in the present year of 1851. The average increase in England and Wales for the last 50 years may, however, be said to be 1·5 per cent. per annum, the population having doubled itself during that period.
How, then, does this rate of increase among the people, and consequently the labourers and artizans of the country, correspond with the rate of increase in the production of commodities, or, in plain English, the means of employment? _This_ is the main inquiry.