The many hands thrown out of employment by the discontinuance of
railway works.
A less demand for unskilled labour in agricultural districts, or a
smaller remuneration for it.
A less demand for some branches of labour (as ostlers, &c.), by the
introduction of machinery (applied to roads), or through the caprices
of fashion.
It should, however, be remembered, that men often found their opinions
of such causes on prejudices, or express them according to their class
interests, and it is only a few employers of unskilled labourers who
care to inquire into the antecedent circumstances of men who ask for
work.
As regards the population part of the question, it cannot be said
that the surplus labour of the scavaging trade is referable to any
inordinate increase in the families of the men. Those who are married
appear to have, on the average, four children, and about one-half of
the men have no family at all. Early marriages are by no means usual.
Of the casual hands, however, full three-fourths are married, and
one-half have families.
There are not more than ten or a dozen Irish labourers who have taken
to the scavaging, though several have “tried it on;” the regular hands
say that the Irish are too lazy to continue at the trade; but surely
the labour of the hodman, in which the Irish seem to delight, is
sufficient to disprove this assertion, be the cause what it may. About
one-fourth of the scavagers entering the scavaging trade as casual
hands have been agricultural labourers, and have come up to London from
the several agricultural districts in quest of work; about the same
proportion appear to have been connected with horses, such as ostlers,
carmen, &c.
The _brisk and slack seasons_ in the scavaging trade depend upon the
state of the weather. In the depth of winter, owing to the shortness
of the days, more hands are usually required for street cleansing; but
a “clear frost” renders the scavager’s labour in little demand. In the
winter, too, his work is generally the hardest, and the hardest of
all when there is snow, which soon becomes mud in London streets; and
though a continued frost is a sort of lull to the scavagers’ labour,
after “a great thaw” his strength is taxed to the uttermost; and then,
indeed, new hands have had to be put on. At the West End, in the height
of the summer, which is usually the height of the fashionable season,
there is again a more than usual requirement of scavaging industry in
wet weather; but perhaps the greatest exercise of such industry is
after a series of the fogs peculiar to the London atmosphere, when the
men cannot _see_ to sweep. The table I have given shows the influence
of the weather, as on wet days 531 men are employed, and on dry days
only 358; this, however, does not influence the Street-Orderly system,
as under it the men are employed every day, unless the weather make it
an actual impossibility.
According to the rain table given at p. 202, there would appear to be,
on an average of 23 years, 178 wet days in London out of the 365, that
is to say, about 100 in every 205 days are “rainy ones.” The months
having the greatest and least number of wet days are as follows:--
No. of days in
the month in
which rain
falls.
December 17
July, August, October 16
February, May, November 15
January, April 14
March, September 12
June 11
Hence it would appear that June is the least and December the most
showery month in the course of the year; the greatest _quantity_ of
rain falling in any month is, however, in October, and the least
quantity in March. The number of wet days, and the quantity of rain
falling in each half of the year, may be expressed as follows:--
Total
Total in depth
No. of of rain
wet falling
days. in inches.
The first six months in the year
ending June there are 84 10
The second six months in the
year ending December there are 93 14
Hence we perceive that the quantity of work for the scavagers would
fluctuate in the first and last half of the year in the proportion of
10 to 14, which is very nearly in the ratio of 358 to 531, which are
the numbers of hands given in table pp. 186, 187, as those employed in
wet and dry weather throughout the metropolis.
If, then, the labour in the scavaging trade varies in the proportion of
5 to 7, that is to say, that 5 hands are required at one period and 7
at another to execute the work, the question consequently becomes, how
do the 2 casuals who are discharged out of every 7 obtain their living
when the wet season is over?
When a scavager is out of employ, he seldom or never applies to the
parish; this he does, I am informed, only when he is fairly “beaten
out” through sickness or old age, for the men “hate the thought
of going to the big house” (the union workhouse). An unemployed
operative scavager will go from yard to yard and offer his services
to do anything in the dust trade or any other kind of employment in
connection with dust or scavaging.
Generally speaking, an operative scavager who is casually employed
obtains work at that trade for six or eight months during the
year, and the remaining portion of his time is occupied either at
rubbish-carting or brick-carting, or else he gets a job for a month or
two in a dust-yard.
Many of these men seem to form a body of street-jobbers or operative
labourers, ready to work at the docks, to be navvies (when strong
enough), bricklayers’ labourers, street-sweepers, carriers of trunks
or parcels, window-cleaners, errand-goers, porters, and (occasionally)
nightmen. Few of the class seem to apply themselves to trading, as in
the costermonger line. They are the loungers about the boundaries of
trading, but seldom take any onward steps. The street-sweeper of this
week, a “casual” hand, may be a rubbish-carter or a labourer about
buildings the next, or he may be a starving man for days together, and
the more he is starving with the less energy will he exert himself to
obtain work: “it’s not in” a starving or ill-fed man to exert himself
otherwise than what may be called _passively_; this is well known to
all who have paid attention to the subject. The want of energy and
carelessness begotten by want of food was well described by the tinman,
at p. 355 in vol. i.
One casual hand told me that last year he was out of work altogether
three months, and the year before not more than six weeks, and during
the six weeks he got a day’s work sometimes at rubbish carting and
sometimes at loading bricks. Their wives are often employed in the
yards as sifters, and their boys, when big enough, work also at the
heap, either in carrying off, or else as fillers-in; if there are any
girls, one is generally left at home to look after the rest and get
the meals ready for the other members of the family. If any of the
children go to school, they are usually sent to a ragged school in the
neighbourhood, though they seldom attend the school more than two or
three times during the week.
The additional hands employed in wet weather are either men who at
other times work in the yards, or such as have their “turns” in
street-sweeping, if not regularly employed. There appears, however,
to be little of system in the arrangement. If more hands are wanted,
the gangsman, who receives his orders from the contractor or the
contractor’s managing man, is told to put on so many new hands, and
over-night he has but to tell any of the men at work that Jack, and
Bob, and Bill will be wanted in the morning, and they, if not employed
in other work, appear accordingly.
There is nothing, however, which can be designated a _labour market_
appertaining to the trade. No “house of call,” no trade society. If men
seek such employment, they must apply at the contractor’s premises,
and I am assured that poor men not unfrequently ask the scavagers
whom they see at work in the streets where to apply “for a job,” and
sometimes receive gruff or abusive replies. But though there is nothing
like a labour market in the scavager’s trade, the employers have not
to “look out” for men, for I was told by one of their foremen, that he
would undertake, if necessary, which it never was, by a mere “round
of the docks,” to select 200 new hale men, of all classes, and strong
ones, too, if properly fed, who in a few days would be tolerable
street-sweepers. It is a calling to which agricultural labourers are
glad to resort, and a calling to which _any_ labourer or any mechanic
may resort, more especially as regards sweeping or scraping, apart from
shovelling, which is regarded as something like the high art of the
business.
We now come to estimate the earnings of the casual hands, whose yearly
incomes must, of course, be very different from those of the regulars.
The _constant_ weekly wages of any workman are of course the average
of his casual--and hence we shall find the wages of those who are
_regularly_ employed far exceed those of the _occasionally_ employed
men:--
£ _s._ _d._
Nominal yearly wages at scavaging
for 25 weeks in the year, at 16_s._
per week 20 16 0
Perquisites for 26 weeks, at 2_s._ 2 12 0
------------------
Actual yearly wages at scavaging 23 8 0
Nominal and actual weekly wages
at rubbish carting for 20 weeks in
the year, at 12_s._ 12 0 0
Unemployed six weeks in the year 0 0 0
-----------------
Gross yearly earnings 35 8 0
-----------------
Average casual or constant weekly
wages throughout the year 15 4-1/2
Hence the difference between the earnings of the casual and the
regular hand would appear to be one-sixth. But the great evil of all
casual labour is the uncertainty of the income--for where there is
the greatest chance connected with an employment, there is not only
the greatest necessity for providence, but unfortunately the greatest
tendency to improvidence. It is only when a man’s income becomes
regular and fixed that he grows thrifty, and lays by for the future;
but where all is chance-work there is but little ground for reasoning,
and the accident which assisted the man out of his difficulties at
one period is continually expected to do the same good turn for him
at another. Hence the casual hand, who passes the half of the year on
18_s._, and twenty weeks on 12_s._, and _six weeks on nothing_, lives
a life of excess both ways--of excess of “guzzling” when in work, and
excess of privation when out of it--oscillating, as it were, between
surfeit and starvation.
A man who had worked in an iron-foundry, but who had “lost his work”
(I believe through some misconduct) and was glad to get employment as
a street-sweeper, as he had a good recommendation to a contractor,
told me that “the misery of the thing” was the want of regular work.
“I’ve worked,” he said, “for a good master for four months an end at
2_s._ 8_d._ a day, and they were prime times. Then I hadn’t a stroke of
work for a fortnight, and very little for two months, and if my wife
hadn’t had middling work with a laundress we might have starved, or I
might have made a hole in the Thames, for it’s no good living to be
miserable and feel you can’t help yourself any how. We was sometimes
half-starved, as it was. I’d rather at this minute have regular work at
10_s._ a week all the year round, than have chance-work that I could
earn 20_s._ a week at. I once had 15_s._ in relief from the parish,
and a doctor to attend us, when my wife and I was both laid up sick.
O, there’s no difference in the way of doing the work, whatever wages
you’re on for; the streets must be swept clean, of course. The plan’s
the same, and there’s the same sort of management, any how.”