Part 87
On a careful revision of the whole of the circumstances before detailed, I am led to believe that there is considerable truth in the statement lately put forward by the working classes, that only one-third of the operatives of this country are fully employed, while another third are partially employed, and the remaining third wholly unemployed; that is to say, estimating the working classes as being between four and five millions in number, I think we may safely assert--considering how many depend for their employment on particular times, seasons, fashions, and accidents, and the vast quantity of over-work and scamp-work in nearly all the cheap trades of the present day, the number of women and children who are being continually drafted into the different handicrafts with the view of reducing the earnings of the men, the displacement of human labour in some cases by machinery, and the tendency to increase the division of labour, and to extend the large system of production beyond the requirements of the markets, as well as the temporary mode of hiring--all these things being considered, I say I believe we may safely conclude that, out of the four million five hundred thousand people who have to depend on their industry for the livelihood of themselves and families, there is (owing to the extraordinary means of economizing labour which have been developed of late years, and the discovery as to how to do the work of the nation with fewer people) barely sufficient work for the _regular_ employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed, obtaining a day’s work _occasionally_ by the displacement of some of the others.
Adopt what explanation we will of this appalling deficiency of employment, one thing at least is certain: we cannot _consistently with the facts of the country_, ascribe it to an increase of the population beyond the means of labour; for we have seen that, while the people have increased during the last fifty years at the rate of ·9 per cent. per annum, the wealth and productions of the kingdom have far exceeded that amount.
OF THE CASUAL LABOURERS AMONG THE RUBBISH-CARTERS.
The casual labour of so large a body of men as the rubbish-carters is a question of high importance, for it affects the whole unskilled labour market. And this is one of the circumstances distinguishing unskilled from skilled labour. Unemployed cabinet-makers, for instance, do not apply for work to a tailor; so that, with skilled labourers, only one trade is affected in the slack season by the scarcity of employment among its operatives. With unskilled labourers it is otherwise. If in the course of next week 100 rubbish-carters were from any cause to be thrown out of employment, and found an impossibility to obtain work at rubbish-carting, there would be 100 fresh applicants for employment among the bricklayer’s-labourers, scavagers, nightmen, sewermen, dock-workers, lumpers, &c. Many of the 100 thus unemployed would, of course, be willing to work at reduced wages merely that they might subsist; and thus the hands employed by the regular and “honourable” part of those trades are exposed to the risk of being underworked, as regards wages, from the surplusage of labour in other unskilled occupations.
The employment of the rubbish-carters depends, in the first instance, upon the _season_. The services of the men are called into requisition when houses are being built or removed. In the one case, the rubbish-carters cart away the refuse earth; in the other they remove the old materials. The _brisk season_ for the builders, and consequently for the rubbish-carters, is, as I heard several of them express it, “when days are long.” From about the middle of April to the middle of October is the _brisk_ season of the rubbish-carters, for during those six months more buildings are erected than in the winter half of the year. There is an advantage in fine weather in the masonry becoming _set_; and efforts are generally made to complete at least the carcase of a house before the end of October, at the latest.
I am informed that the difference in the employment of labourers about buildings is 30 per cent.--one builder estimated it at 50 per cent.--less in winter than in summer, from the circumstance of fewer buildings being then in the course of erection. It may be thought that, as rubbish-carters are employed frequently on the foundation of buildings, their business would not be greatly affected by the season or the weather. But the work is often more difficult in wet weather, the ground being heavier, so that a smaller extent of work only can be accomplished, compared to what can be done in fine weather; and an employer may decline to pay six days’ wages for work in winter, which he might get done in five days in summer. If the men work by the piece or the load the result is the same; the rubbish-carter’s employer has a smaller return, for there is less work to be charged to the customer, while the cost in keeping the horses is the same.
Thus it appears that under the most favourable circumstances about _one-fourth_ of the rubbish-carters, even in the honourable trade, may be exposed to the evils of non-employment merely from the state of the weather influencing, more or less, the custom of the trade, and this even during _the_ six months’ employment out of the year; after which the men must find some other means of earning a livelihood.
There are, in round numbers, 850 operative rubbish-carters employed in the brisk season throughout the metropolis; hence 212 men, at this calculation, would be regularly deprived of work every year for six months out of the twelve. It will be seen, however, on reference to the table here given, that the average number of weeks each of the rubbish-carters is employed throughout the twelve months is far below 26; indeed many have but three and four weeks work out of the 52.
By an analysis of the returns I have collected on this subject I find the following to have been the actual term of employment for the several rubbish-carters in the course of last year:--
Employment in the Men. Year.
9 had 39 weeks, or 9 months. 214 „ 26 „ 6 „ 4 „ 20 „ 5 „ 10 „ 18 „ 28 „ 16 „ 4 „ 8 „ 14 „ 353 „ 13 „ 3 „ 4 „ 12 „ 34 „ 10 „ 29 „ 9 „ 38 „ 8 „ 2 „ 38 „ 6 „ 27 „ 5 „ 45 „ 4 „ 1 „ 15 „ 3 „ --- 856
Hence about one-fourth of the trade appear to have been employed for six months, while upwards of one-half had work for only three months or less throughout the year--many being at work only three days in the week during that time.
The rubbish-carter is exposed to another casualty over which he can no more exercise control than he can over the weather; I mean to what is generally called _speculation_, or a rage for building. This is evoked by the state of the money market, and other causes upon which I need not dilate; but the effect of it upon the labourers I am describing is this: capitalists may in one year embark sufficient means in building speculations to erect, say 500 new houses, in any particular district. In the following year they may not erect more than 200 (if any), and thus, as there is the same extent of unskilled labour in the market, the number of hands required is, if the trade be generally less speculative, less in one year than in its predecessor by the number of rubbish-carters required to work at the foundations of 300 houses. Such a cause may be exceptional; but during the last ten years the inhabited houses in the five districts of the Registrar-General have increased to the extent of 45,000, or from 262,737 in 1841, to 307,722 in 1851. It appears, then, that the annual increase of our metropolitan houses, concluding that they increase in a regular yearly ratio, is 4500. Last year, however, as I am informed by an experienced builder, there were rather fewer buildings erected (he spoke only from his own observations and personal knowledge of the business) than the yearly average of the decennial term.
The casual and constant wages of the rubbish-carters may be thus detailed. The whole system of the labour, I may again state, must be regarded as _casual_, or--as the word imports in its derivation from the Latin _casus_, a chance--the labour of men who are occasionally employed. Some of the most respectable and industrious rubbish-carters with whom I met, told me they generally might make up their minds, though they might have excellent masters, to be six months of the year unemployed at rubbish-carting; this, too, is less than the average of this chance employment.
Calculating, then, the rubbish-carter’s receipt of _nominal wages_ at 18_s._, and his _actual wages_ at 20_s._ in the honourable trade, I find the following amount to be paid.
By nominal wages, I have before explained, I mean what a man is _said_ to receive, or has been _promised_ that he shall be paid weekly. Actual wages, on the other hand, are what a man positively _receives_, there being sometimes additions in the form of perquisites or allowances; sometimes deductions in the way of fines and stoppages; the additions in the rubbish-carting trade appear to average about 2_s._ a week. But these _actual wages_ are received only so long as the men are employed, that is to say, they are the _casual_ rather than the _constant_ earnings of the men working at a trade, which is essentially of an occasional or temporary character; the average employment at rubbish-carting being only three months in the year.
Let us see, therefore, what would be the constant earnings or income of the men working at the better-paid portion of the trade.
£ _s._ _d._ The gross actual wages of ten rubbish-carters, casually employed for 39 weeks, at 20_s._ per week, amount to 390 0 0
The gross actual wages of 250 rubbish-carters, casually employed for 26 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 6500 0 0
The gross actual wages of 360 rubbish-carters, casually employed for 13 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 4600 0 0 ------------ Total gross actual wages of 620 of the better-paid rubbish-carters 11,490 0 0
But this, as I said before, represents only the _casual_ wages of the better-paid operatives--that is to say, it shows the amount of money or money’s worth that is positively received by the men while they are in employment. To understand what are the _constant_ wages of these men, we must divide their gross casual earnings by 52, the number of weeks in the year: thus we find that the constant wages of the ten men who were employed for 39 weeks, were 15_s._ instead of 20_s._ per week--that is to say, their wages, equally divided throughout the year, would have yielded that constant weekly income. By the same reasoning, the 20_s._ per week casual wages of the 250 men employed for 26 weeks out of the 52, were equal to only 10_s._ constant weekly wages; and so the 360 men, who had 20_s._ per week casually for only three months in the year, had but 5_s._ a week _constantly_ throughout the whole year. Hence we see the enormous difference there may be between a man’s casual and his constant earnings at a given trade.
The next question that forces itself on the mind is, how do the rubbish-carters live when no longer employed at this kind of work?
When the slack season among rubbish-carters commences, nearly one-fifth of the operatives are discharged. These take to scavaging or dustman’s work, as well as that of navigators, or, indeed, any form of unskilled labour, some obtaining full employ, but the greater part being able to “get a job only now and then.” Those masters who keep their men on throughout the year are some of them large dust contractors, some carmen, some dairymen, and (in one or two instances in the suburbs, as at Hackney) small farmers. The dust-contractors and carmen, who are by far the more numerous, find employment for the men employed by them as rubbish-carters in the season, either at the dust-yard or carrying sand, or, indeed, carting any materials they may have to move--the wages to the men remaining the same; indeed such is the transient character of the rubbish-carting trade, that there are no masters or operatives who devote themselves solely to the business.
THE EFFECTS OF CASUAL LABOUR IN GENERAL.
Having now pointed out the causes of casual labour, I proceed to set forth its effects.
All casual labour, as I have said, is necessarily _uncertain_ labour; and wherever uncertainty exists, there can be no foresight or pro-vidence. Had the succession of events in nature been irregular,--had it been ordained by the Creator that similar causes under similar circumstances should _not_ be attended with similar effects,--it would have been impossible for us to have had any knowledge of the future, or to have made any preparations concerning it. Had the seasons followed each other fitfully,--had the sequences in the external world been variable instead of invariable, and what are now termed “constants” from the regularity of their succession been changed into inconstants,--what provision could even the most prudent of us have made? Where all was dark and unstable, we could only have guessed instead of reasoned as to what was to come; and who would have deprived himself of present enjoyments to avoid future privations, which could appear neither probable nor even possible to him? Pro-vidence, therefore, is simply the result of certainty, and whatever tends to increase our faith in the uniform sequences of outward events, as well as our reliance on the means we have of avoiding the evils connected with them, necessarily tends to make us more prudent. Where the means of sustenance and comfort are fixed, the human being becomes conscious of what he has to depend upon; and if he feel _assured_ that such means may fail him in old age or in sickness, and be fully impressed with the _certainty_ of suffering from either, he will immediately proceed to make some provision against the time of adversity or infirmity. If, however, his means be _uncertain_--abundant at one time, and deficient at another--a spirit of speculation or gambling with the future will be induced, and the individual get to believe in “luck” and “fate” as the arbiters of his happiness rather than to look upon himself as “the architect of his fortunes”--trusting to “chance” rather than his own powers and foresight to relieve him at the hour of necessity. The same result will necessarily ensue if, from defective reasoning powers, the ordinary course of nature be not sufficiently apparent to him, or if, being in good health, he grow too confident upon its continuance, and, either from this or other causes, is led to believe that death will overtake him before his powers of self-support decay.
The ordinary effects of uncertain labour, then, are to drive the labourers to improvidence, recklessness, and pauperism.
Even in the classes which we do not rank among labourers, as, for instance, authors, artists, musicians, actors, uncertainty or irregularity of employment and remuneration produces a spirit of wastefulness and carelessness. The steady and daily accruing gains of trade and of some of the professions form a certain and staple income; while in other professions, where a large sum may be realized at one time, and then no money be earned until after an interval, incomings are rapidly spent, and the interval is one of suffering. This is part of the very nature, the very essence, of the casualty of employment and the delay of remuneration. The past privation gives a zest to the present enjoyment; while the present enjoyment renders the past privation faint as a remembrance and unimpressive as a warning. “Want of providence,” writes Mr. Porter, “on the part of those who live by the labour of their hands, and whose employments so often depend upon circumstances beyond their control, is a theme which is constantly brought forward by many whose lot in life has been cast beyond the reach of want. It is, indeed, greatly to be wished, for their own sakes, that the habit were general among the labouring classes of saving some part of their wages when fully employed, against less prosperous times; but it is difficult for those who are placed in circumstances of ease to _estimate the amount of virtue that is implied in this self-denial_. It must be a hard trial for one who has recently, perhaps, seen his family enduring want, to deny them the small amount of indulgences, which are, at the best of times, placed within their reach.”
It is easy enough for men in smooth circumstances to say, “the privation is a man’s own fault, since, to avoid it, he has but to apportion the sum he may receive in a lump over the interval of non-recompense which he knows will follow.” Such a course as this, experience and human nature have shown not to be easy--perhaps, with a few exceptions, not to be possible. It is the starving and not the well-fed man that is in danger of surfeiting himself. When pestilence or revolution are rendering life and property _casualties_ in a country, the same spirit of improvident recklessness breaks forth. In London, on the last visitation of the plague, in the reign of Charles II., a sort of Plague Club indulged in the wildest excesses in the very heart of the pestilence. To these orgies no one was admitted who had not been bereft of some relative by the pest. In Paris, during the reign of terror in the first revolution, the famous Guillotine Club was composed of none but those who had lost some near relative by the guillotine. When they met for their half-frantic revels every one wore some symbol of death: breast pins in the form of guillotines, rings with death’s-heads, and such like. The duration of their own lives these Guillotine Clubbists knew to be uncertain, not merely in the ordinary uncertainty of nature, but from the character of the times; and this feeling of the jeopardy of existence, from the practice of violence and bloodshed, wrought the effects I have described. Life was more than naturally casual. When the famine was at the worst in Ireland, it was remarked in the _Cork Examiner_, that in that city there never had been seen more street “larking” or street gambling among the poor lads and young men who were really starving. This was a natural result of the casualty of labour and the consequent casualty of food. Persons, it should be remembered, do not insure houses or shops that are “doubly or trebly hazardous;” they gamble on the uncertainty.
Mr. Porter, in his “Progress of the Nation,” cites a fact bearing immediately upon the present subject.
“The formation of a canal, which has been in progress during the last five years, in the north of Ireland (this was written in 1847), has afforded steady employment to a portion of the peasantry, who before that time were suffering all the evils, so common in that country, which result from the precariousness of employment. Such work as they could previously get came at uncertain intervals, and was sought by so many competitors, that the remuneration was of the scantiest amount. In this condition of things the men were improvident, to recklessness; their wages, insufficient for the comfortable sustenance of their families, were wasted in procuring for themselves a temporary forgetfulness of their misery at the whiskey-shop, and the men appeared to be sunk into a state of hopeless degradation. From the moment, however, that work was offered to them which was _constant in its nature and certain in its duration_, and on which their weekly earnings would be sufficient to provide for their comfortable support, _men who had been idle and dissolute were converted into sober hard-working labourers, and proved themselves kind and careful husbands and fathers_; and it is stated as a fact, that, notwithstanding the distribution of several hundred pounds weekly in wages, the whole of which must be considered as so much additional money placed in their hands, the consumption of whiskey was absolutely and _permanently_ diminished in the district. During the comparatively short period in which the construction of this canal was in progress, some of the most careful labourers--men who most probably before then never knew what it was to possess five shillings at any one time--saved sufficient money to enable them to emigrate to Canada.”
There can hardly be a stronger illustration of the blessing of constant and the curse of casual labour. We have competence and frugality as the results of one system; poverty and extravagance as the results of the other; and among the very same individuals.
In the evidence given by Mr. Galloway, the engineer, before a parliamentary committee, he remarks, that “when employers are competent to show their men that their business is _steady and certain_, and when men find that they are likely to have _permanent_ employment, they have always _better habits and more settled notions_, which will make them _better men_ and _better workmen_, and will produce great benefits to all who are interested in their employment.”
Moreover, even if payment be assured to a working man regularly, _but deferred for long intervals_, so as to make the returns lose all appearance of regularity, he will rarely be found able to resist the temptation of a tavern, and, perhaps, a long-continued carouse, or of some other extravagance to his taste, when he receives a month’s dues at once. I give an instance of this in the following statement:--
For some years after the peace of 1815 the staffs of the militias were kept up, but not in any active service. During the war the militias performed what are now the functions of the regular troops in the three kingdoms, their stations being changed more frequently than those of any of the regular regiments at the present day. Indeed, they only differed from the “regulars” in name. There was the same military discipline, and the sole difference was, that the militia-men--who were balloted for periodically--could not, by the laws regulating their embodiment, be sent out of the United Kingdom for purposes of warfare. The militias were embodied for twenty-eight days’ training, once in four years (seldom less) after the peace, and the staff acted as the drill sergeants. They were usually steady, orderly men, working at their respective crafts when not on duty after the militia’s disembodiment, and some who had not been brought up to any handicraft turned out--perhaps from their military habits of early rising and orderliness--very good gardeners, both on their own account and as assistants in gentlemen’s grounds. No few of them saved money. Yet these men, with very few exceptions, when they received a month’s pay, fooled away a part of it in tippling and idleness, to which they were not at all addicted when attending regularly to their work with its regular returns. If they got into any trouble in consequence of their carousing, it was looked upon as a sort of legitimate excuse, “Why you see, sir, it was the 24th” (the 24th of each month being the pension day).
The thoughtless extravagance of sailors when, on their return to port, they receive in one sum the wages they have earned by severe toil amidst storms and dangers during a long voyage, I need not speak of; it is a thing well known.