There are in the scavagers’ trade the same distinct classes of
employers as appertain to all other trades; these consist of:--
1. The large capitalists.
2. The small capitalists.
As a rule (with some few honourable and dishonourable exceptions,
it is true) I find that the large capitalists in the several trades
are generally the employers who pay the higher wages, and the small
men those who pay the lower. The reasons for this conduct are almost
obvious. The power of the capital of the “large master” must be
contended against by the small one; and the usual mode of contention
in all trades is by reducing the wages of the working men. The wealthy
master has, of course, many advantages over the poor one. (1) He can
pay ready money, and obtain discounts for immediate payment. (2) He
can buy in large quantities, and so get his stock cheaper. (3) He can
purchase what he wants in the best markets, and that _directly_ of the
producer, without the intervention and profit of the middleman. (4) He
can buy at the best times and seasons; and “lay in” what he requires
for the purposes of his trade long before it is needed, provided
he can obtain it “a bargain.” (5) He can avail himself of the best
tools and mechanical contrivances for increasing the productiveness
or “economizing the labour” of his workmen. (6) He can build and
arrange his places of work upon the most approved plan and in the best
situations for the manufacture and distribution of the commodities.
(7) He can employ the highest talent for the management or design of
the work on which he is engaged. (8) He can institute a more effective
system for the surveillance and checking of his workmen. (9) He can
employ a large number of hands, and so reduce the secondary expenses
(of firing, lighting, &c.) attendant upon the work, as well as the
number of superintendents and others engaged to “look after” the
operatives. (10) He can resort to extensive means of making his trade
known. (11) He can sell cheaper (even if his cost of production be the
same), from employing a larger capital, and being able to “do with” a
less rate of profit. (12) He can afford to give credit, and so obtain
customers that he might otherwise lose.
The small capitalist, therefore, enters the field of competition by no
means equally matched against his more wealthy rival. What the little
master wants in “substance,” however, he generally endeavours to make
up in cunning. If he cannot buy his materials as cheap as a trader of
larger means, he uses an inferior or cheaper article, and seeks by
some trick or other to palm it off as equal to the superior and dearer
kind. If the tools and appliances of the trade are expensive, he either
transfers the cost of providing them to the workmen, or else he charges
them a rent for their use; and so with the places of work, he mulcts
their wages of a certain sum per week for the gas by which they labour,
or he makes them do their work at home, and thus saves the expense of
a workshop; and, lastly, he pays his men either a less sum than usual
for the same quantity of labour, or exacts a greater quantity from them
for the same sum of money. By one or other of these means does the man
of limited capital seek to counterbalance the advantages which his more
wealthy rival obtains by the possession of extensive “resources.” The
large employer is enabled to work cheaper by the sheer force of his
larger capital. He reduces the cost of production, not by employing a
cheaper labour, but by “economizing the labour” that he does employ.
The small employer, on the other hand, seeks to keep pace with his
larger rival, and strives to work cheap, not by “the economy of labour”
(for this is hardly possible in the small way of production), but by
reducing the wages of his labourers. Hence the _rule_ in almost every
trade is that the smaller capitalists pay a lower rate of wages. To
this, however, there are many honourable exceptions among the small
masters, and many as dishonourable among the larger ones in different
trades. Messrs. Moses, Nicoll, and Hyams, for instance, are men who
certainly cannot plead deficiency of means as an excuse for reducing
the ordinary rate of wages among the tailors.
Those employers who seek to reduce the prices of a trade are known
technologically as “_cutting employers_,” in contradistinction to the
standard employers, or those who pay their workpeople and sell their
goods at the ordinary rates.
Of “cutting employers” there are several kinds, differently designated,
according to the different means by which they gain their ends. These
are:--
1. “_Drivers_,” or those who compel the men in their employ to do
more work for the same wages; of this kind there are two distinct
varieties:--
_a._ _The long-hour masters_, or those who make the men work longer
than the usual hours of labour.
_b._ _The strapping masters_, or those who make the men (by extra
supervision) “strap” to their work, so as to do a greater quantity of
labour in the usual time.
2. _Grinders_, or those who compel the workmen (through their
necessities) to do the same amount of work for less than the ordinary
wages.
The reduction of wages thus brought about may or may not be attended
with a corresponding reduction in the price of the goods to the public;
if the price of the goods be reduced in proportion to the reduction
of wages, the consumer, of course, is benefited at the expense of
the producer. When it is not followed by a like diminution in the
selling price of the article, and the wages of which the men are mulct
go to increase the profits of the capitalist, the employer alone is
benefited, and is then known as a “_grasper_.”
Some cutting tradesmen, however, endeavour to undersell their more
wealthy rivals, by reducing the ordinary rate of profit, and extending
their business on the principle of small profits and quick returns,
the “nimble ninepence” being considered “better than the slow
shilling.” Such traders, of course, cannot be said to reduce wages
directly--indirectly, however, they have the same effect, for in
reducing prices, other traders, ever ready to compete with them, but,
unwilling, or perhaps unable, to accept less than the ordinary rate of
profit, seek to attain the same cheapness by diminishing the cost of
production, and for this end the labourers’ wages are almost invariably
reduced.
Such are the characteristics of the cheap employers in all trades. Let
me now proceed to point out the peculiarities of what are called the
scurf employers in the scavaging trade.
The insidious practices of capitalists in other callings, in reducing
the hire of labour, are not unknown to the scavagers. The evils of
which these workmen have to complain under scurf or slop masters are:--