Of the scavagers proper there are, as in all classes of unskilled
labour, that is to say, of labour which requires no previous
apprenticeship, and to which any one can “turn his hand” on an
emergency, two distinct orders of workmen, “the _regulars_ and
_casuals_” to adopt the trade terms; that is to say, the labourers
consist of those who have been many years at the trade, constantly
employed at it, and those who have but recently taken to it as a means
of obtaining a subsistence after their ordinary resources have failed.
This mixture of _constant_ and _casual_ hands is, moreover, a necessary
consequence of all trades which depend upon the seasons, and in which
an additional number of labourers are required at different periods.
Such is necessarily the case with dock labour, where an easterly wind
prevailing for several days deprives _thousands of work_, and where the
change from a foul to a fair wind causes an equally inordinate demand
for workmen. The same temporary increase of employment takes place
in the agricultural districts at harvesting time, and the same among
the hop growers in the picking season; and it will be hereafter seen
that there are the same labour fluctuations in the scavaging trade, a
greater or lesser number of hands being required, of course, according
as the season is wet or dry.
This occasional increase of employment, though a benefit in some few
cases (as enabling a man suddenly deprived of his ordinary means of
living to obtain “a job of work” until he can “turn himself round”), is
generally a most alarming evil in a State. What are the casual hands
to do when the extra employment ceases? Those who have paid attention
to the subject of dock labour and the subject of casual labour in
general, may form some notion of the vast mass of misery that must
be generally existing in London. The subject of hop-picking again
belongs to the same question. Here are thousands of the very poorest
employed only for a few days in the year. What, the mind naturally
asks, do they after their short term of honest independence has ceased?
With dock labour the poor man’s bread depends upon the very winds;
in scavaging and in street life generally it depends upon the rain;
and in market-gardening, harvesting, hop-picking, and the like, it
depends upon the sunshine. How many thousands in this huge metropolis
have to look immediately to the very elements for their bread, it
is overwhelming to contemplate; and yet, with all this fitfulness
of employment we wonder that an extended knowledge of reading and
writing does not produce a decrease of crime! We should, however,
ask ourselves whether men can stay their hunger with alphabets or
grow fat on spelling books; and wanting employment, and consequently
food, and objecting to the _incarceration_ of the workhouse, can we
be astonished--indeed is it not a natural law--that they should help
themselves to the property of others?
* * * * *
Concerning the “regular hands” of the contracting scavagers, it may,
perhaps, be reasonable to compute that little short of one-half of them
have been “to the manner born.” The others are, as I have said, what
these regular hands call “casuals,” or “casualties.” As an instance of
the peculiar mixture of the regular and casual hands in the scavaging
trade, I may state that one of my informants told me he had, at one
period, under his immediate direction, fourteen men, of whom the former
occupations had been as follows:--
7 Always Scavagers (or dustmen, and six
of them nightmen when required).
1 Pot-boy at a public-house (but only as a boy).
1 Stable-man (also nightman).
1 Formerly a pugilist, then a showman’s assistant.
1 Navvy.
1 Ploughman (nightman occasionally).
2 Unknown, one of them saying, but gaining
no belief, that he had once been a gentleman.
--
14
In my account of the street orderlies will be given an interesting and
elaborate statement of the former avocations, the habits, expenditure,
&c., of a body of street-sweepers, 67 in number. This table will be
found very curious, as showing what classes of men have been _driven_
to street-sweeping, but it will not furnish a criterion of the
character of the “regular hands” employed by the contractors.
The “casuals” or the “casualties” (always called among the men
“cazzelties”), may be more properly described as men whose employment
is accidental, chanceful, or uncertain. The regular hands of the
scavagers are apt to designate any new comer, even for a permanence,
any sweeper not reared to or versed in the business, a casual
(“cazzel”). I shall, however, here deal with the “casual hands,” not
only as hands newly introduced into the trade, but as men of chanceful
and irregular employment.
These persons are now, I understand, numerous in all branches of
unskilled labour, willing to undertake or attempt any kind of work,
but perhaps there is a greater tendency on the part of the surplus
unskilled to turn to scavaging, from the fact that any broken-down man
seems to account himself competent to sweep the streets.
To ascertain the number of these casual or outside labourers in the
scavaging trade is difficult, for, as I have said, they are willing
in their need to attempt any kind of work, and so may be “casuals” in
divers departments of unskilled labour.
I do not think that I can better approximate the number of casuals than
by quoting the opinion of a contracting scavager familiar with his
workmen and their ways. He considered that there were always nearly
as many hands on the look-out for a job in the streets, as there were
regularly employed at the business by the large contractors; this I
have shown to be 262, let us estimate therefore the number of casuals
at 200.
According to the table I have given at pp. 213, 214, the number of
men regularly or constantly employed at the metropolitan trade is as
follows:--
Scavagers employed by large contractors 262
Ditto small contractors 13
Ditto machines 25
Ditto parishes 218
Ditto street-orderlies 60
---
Total working scavagers in London 578
But the prior table given at pp. 186, 187, shows the number of
scavagers employed throughout the metropolis in wet and dry weather
(_exclusive of the street-orderlies_) to be as follows:--
Scavagers employed in wet weather 531
Ditto in dry weather 358
---
Difference 173
Hence it would appear that about one-third less hands are required
in the dry than in the wet season of the year. The 170 hands, then,
discharged in the dry season are the casually employed men, but the
whole of these 170 are not turned adrift immediately they are no longer
wanted, some being kept on “odd jobs” in the yard, &c.; nor can that
number be said to represent the entire amount of the surplus labour in
the trade; but only that portion of it which _does_ obtain even casual
employment. After much trouble, and taking the average of various
statements, it would appear that the number of casualty or quantity of
occasional surplus labour in the scavaging trade may be represented at
between 200 and 250 hands.
The scavaging trade, however, is not, I am informed, so overstocked
with labourers now as it was formerly. Seven years ago, and from
that to ten, there were usually between 200 and 300 hands out of
work; this was owing to there being a less extent of paved streets,
and comparatively few contractors; the scavaging work, moreover, was
“scamped,” the men, to use their own phrase, “licking the work over any
how,” so that fewer hands were required. Now, however, the inhabitants
are more particular, I am told, “about the crooks and corners,” and
require the streets to be swept oftener. Formerly a gang of operative
scavagers would only collect six loads of dirt a day, but now a gang
will collect nine loads daily. The causes to which the surplus of
labourers at present may be attributed are, I find, as follows:--Each
operative has to do nearly double the work to what he formerly did, the
extra cleansing of the streets having tended not only to employ more
hands, but to make each of those employed do more work. The result has,
however been followed by an increase in the wages of the operatives;
seven years ago the labourers received but 2_s._ a day, and the ganger
2_s._ 6_d._, but now the labourers receive 2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and the
ganger 3_s._
In the city the men have to work very long hours, sometimes as many as
18 hours a day without any extra pay. This practice of overworking is,
I find, carried on to a great extent, even with those master scavagers
who pay the regular wages. One man told me that when he worked for a
certain large master, whom he named, he has many times been out at work
28 hours in the wet (saturated to the skin) without having any rest.
This plan of overworking, again, is generally adopted by the small
masters, whose men, after they have done a regular day’s labour, are
set to work in the yard, sometimes toiling 18 hours a day, and usually
not less than 16 hours daily. Often so tired and weary are the men,
that when they rise in the morning to pursue their daily labour, they
feel as fatigued as when they went to bed. “Frequently,” said one of my
informants, “have I gone to bed so worn out, that I haven’t been able
to sleep. However” (he added), “there is the work to be done, and we
must do it or be off.”
This system of overwork, especially in those trades where the quantity
of work to be done is in a measure fixed, I find to be a far more
influential cause of surplus labour than “over population.” The mere
number of labourers in a trade is, _per se_, no criterion as to the
quantity of labour employed in it; to arrive at this three things are
required:--
(1) The number of hands;
(2) The hours of labour;
(3) The rate of labouring;
for it is a mere point of arithmetic, that if the hands in the
scavaging trade work 18 hours a day, there must be one-third less men
employed than there otherwise would, or in other words one-third of the
men who are in work must be thus deprived of it. This is one of the
crying evils of the day, and which the economists, filled as they are
with their over-population theories, have entirely overlooked.
There are 262 men employed in the Metropolitan Scavaging Trade;
one-half of these at the least may be said to work 16 hours per diem
instead of 12, or one-third longer than they should; so that if the
hours of labour in this trade were restricted to the usual day’s work,
there would be employment for one-sixth more hands, or nearly 50
individuals extra.