“I was brought up as a type-founder; my father, who was one, learnt me
his trade; but he died when I was quite a young man, or I might have
been better perfected in it. I was comfortably off enough then, and got
married. Very soon after that I was taken ill with an abscess in my
neck, you can see the mark of it still.” [He showed me the mark.] “For
six months I wasn’t able to do a thing, and I was a part of the time,
I don’t recollect how long, in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. I was weak
and ill when I came out, and hardly fit for work; I couldn’t hear of
any work I could get, for there was a great bother in the trade between
master and men. Before I went into the hospital, there was money to pay
to doctors; and when I came out I could earn nothing, so everything
went, yes, sir, everything. My wife made a little matter with charing
for families she’d lived in, but things are in a bad way if a poor
woman has to keep her husband. She was taken ill at last, and then
there was nothing but the parish for us. I suffered a great deal before
it come to that. It was awful. No one can know what it is but them that
suffers it. But I didn’t know what in the world to do. We lived then in
St. Luke’s, and were passed to our own parish, and were three months
in the workhouse. The living was good enough, better then than it is
now, I’ve heard, but I was miserable.” [“And I was _very_ miserable,”
interposed the wife, “for I had been brought up comfortable; my father
was a respectable tradesman in St. George’s-in-the-East, and I had been
in good situations.”] “We made ourselves,” said the husband, “as useful
as we could, but we were parted of course. At the three months’ end,
I had 10_s._ given to me to come out with, and was told I might start
costermongering on it. But to a man not up to the trade, 10_s._ won’t
go very far to keep up costering. I didn’t feel master enough of my
own trade by this time to try for work at it, and work wasn’t at all
regular. There were good hands earning only 12_s._ a week. The 10_s._
soon went, and I had again to apply for relief, and got an order for
the stone-yard to go and break stones. Ten bushels was to be broken for
15_d._ It was dreadful hard work at first. My hands got all blistered
and bloody, and I’ve gone home and cried with pain and wretchedness.
At first it was on to three days before I could break the ten bushels.
I felt shivered to bits all over my arms and shoulders, and my head
was splitting. I then got to do it in two days, and then in one, and
it grew easier. But all this time I had only what was reckoned three
days’ work in a week. That is, you see, sir, I had only three times
ten bushels of stones given to break in the week, and earned only
3_s._ 9_d._ Yes, I lived on it, and paid 1_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, for
the neighbours took care of a few sticks for us, and the parish or
a broker wouldn’t have found them worth carriage. My wife was then
in the country with a sister. I lived upon bread and dripping, went
without fire or candle (or had one only very seldom) though it wasn’t
warm weather. I can safely say that for eight weeks I never tasted one
bite of meat, and hardly a bite of butter. When I couldn’t sleep of
a night, but that wasn’t often, it was terrible, very. I washed what
bits of things I had then myself, and had sometimes to get a ha’porth
of soap as a favour, as the chandler said she ‘didn’t make less than a
penn’orth.’ If I eat too much dripping, it made me feel sick. I hardly
know how much bread and dripping I eat in a week. I spent what money I
had in it and bread, and sometimes went without. I was very weak, you
may be sure, sir; and if I’d had the influenza or anything that way, I
should have gone off like a shot, for I seemed to have no constitution
left. But my wife came back again and got work at charing, and made
about 4_s._ a week at it; but we were still very badly off. Then I got
to work on the roads every day, and had 1_s._ and a quartern loaf a
day, which was a rise. I had only one child then, but men with larger
families got two quartern loaves a day. Single men got 9_d._ a day.
It was far easier work than stone-breaking too. The hours were from
eight to five in winter, and from seven to six in summer. But there’s
always changes going on, and we were put on 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day and
a quartern loaf, and only three days a week. All the same as to time
of course. The bread wasn’t good; it was only cheap. I suppose there
was 20 of us working most of the times as I was. The gangsman, as you
call him, but that’s more for the regular hands, was a servant of the
parish, and a great tyrant. Yes, indeed, when we had a talk among
ourselves, there was nothing but grumbling heard of. Some of the tales
I’ve heard were shocking; worse than what I’ve gone through. Everybody
was grumbling, except perhaps two men that had been 20 years in the
streets, and were like born paupers. They didn’t feel it, for there’s
a great difference in men. They knew no better. But anybody might
have been frightened to hear some of the men talk and curse. We’ve
stopped work to abuse the parish officers as might be passing. We’ve
mobbed the overseers, and a number of us, I was one, were taken before
the magistrate for it; but we told him how badly we were off, and he
discharged us, and gave us orders into the workhouse, and told ’em to
see if nothing could be done for us. We were there till next morning,
and then sent away without anything being said.
“It’s a sad life, sir, is a parish worker’s. I wish to God I could
get out of it. But when a man has children he can’t stop and say ‘I
can’t do this,’ and ‘I won’t do that.’ Last week, now, in costering, I
lost 6_s._” [he meant that his expenses, of every kind, exceeded his
receipts by 6_s._], “and though I can distil nectar, or anything that
way” [this was said somewhat laughingly], “it’s only when the weather’s
hot and fine that any good at all can be done with it. I think, too,
that there’s not the money among working men that there once was.
Anything regular in the way of pay must always be looked at by a man
with a family.
“Of course the streets must be properly swept, and if I can sweep
them as well as Mr. Dodd’s men, for I know one of them very well, why
should I have only 3_s._ 4-1/2_d._ a week and three loaves, and he have
16_s._, I think it is? I don’t drink, my wife knows I don’t” [the wife
assented], “and it seems as if in a parish a man must be kept down when
he is down, and then blamed for it. I may not understand all about it,
but it looks queer.”
From an _unmarried_ man, looking like a mere boy in the face, although
he assured me he was nearly 24, as far as he knew, I heard an account
of his labour and its fruits as a parish scavager; also of his former
career, which partakes greatly in its characteristics of the narratives
I gave, toward the close of the first volume, of deserted, neglected,
and runaway children.
He lived from his earliest recollection with an old woman whom he first
called “grandmother,” and was then bid to call “aunt,” and she, some of
the neighbours told him, had “kept him out of his rights,” for she had
4_s._ a week with him, so that there ought to have been money coming to
him when he grew up. I have sometimes heard similar statements from the
ignorant poor, for it is agreeable enough to them to fancy that they
have been wronged out of fortunes to which they were justly entitled,
and deprived of the position and consequence in life which they ought
to have possessed “by rights.” In the course of my inquiries among the
poor women who supply the slop milliners’ shops with widows’ caps,
cap fronts, women’s collars, &c., &c., I was told by one middle-aged
cap-maker, a very silly person, that she would be worth 100,000_l._,
“if she had her rights.” What those “rights” were she could not
explain, only that there was and had been a great deal of money in the
family, and of course she had a right to her share, only she was kept
out of it.
The youth in question never heard of a father, and had been informed
that his mother had died when he was a baby. From what he told me, I
think it most probable that he was an illegitimate child, for whose
maintenance his father possibly paid the 4_s._ a week, perhaps to
some near relative of the deceased mother. The old woman, as well as
I could make the matter out from his narrative, died suddenly, and,
as little was known about her, she was buried by the parish, and the
lad, on the evening of the funeral, was to have been taken by the
landlord of the house where they lodged into the workhouse; but the
boy ran away before this could be accomplished; the parish of course
not objecting to be relieved of an incumbrance. He thought he was then
about twelve or thirteen years of age, and he had before run away from
two schools, one a Ragged-school, to which he had been sent, “_for
it was so confining_,” he said, “and one master, not he as had the
raggeds, leathered him,” to use his own words, “tightly.” He knew his
letters now, he thought, but that was all, “and very few,” he said,
gravely, “would have put up with it so long as I did.” He subsisted as
well as he could by selling matches, penny memorandum books, onions,
&c., after he had run away, sleeping under hedges in the country, or in
lodging-houses in town, and living on a few pence a day, or “starving
on nothink.” He was taken ill, and believed it was of a fever, at or
somewhere about Portsmouth, and when he was sufficiently recovered,
and had given the best account he could of himself, was passed to his
parish in London. The relieving officer, he said, would have given him
a pair of shoes and half-a-crown, and let him “take his chance, but
the doctor wouldn’t sartify any ways.” He meant, I think, that the
medical officer found him too ill to be at large on his own account.
He discharged himself, however, in a few weeks from this parish
workhouse, as he was convalescent. “The grub there, you see, sir,” he
said, “was stunning good when I first went, but it fell off.” As the
probability is that there was no change in the diet, it may not be
unfair to conclude that the regular meals of the establishment were
very relishable at first, and that afterwards their very regularity and
their little variation made the recipient critical.
“When I left, sir,” he stated, “they guv me 2_s._ 6_d._, and a tidy
shirt, and a pair of blucherers, and mended up my togs for me decent.
I tried all sorts of goes then. I went to Chalk-farm and some other
fairs with sticks for throwing, and used to jump among them as throwing
was going on, and to sing out, ‘break my legs and miss my pegs.’ I got
many a knock, and when I did, oh! there _was_ such larfing at the fun
on it. I sold garden sticks too, and garden ropes, and posts sometimes;
but it was all wery poor pay. Sometimes I made 10_d._, but not never
I think but twice 1_s._ a day at it, and oftener 6_d._, and in bad
weather there was nothink to be done. If I made 6_d._ clear, it was
1_d._ for cawfee--for I often went out fasting in a morning--and 1_d._
for bread and butter, and 1_d._ for pudden for dinner, and another
1_d._ perhaps for beer--half-pint and a farden out at the public
bar--and 2_d._ for a night’s lodging. I’ve had sometimes to leave half
my stock in flue with a deputy for a night’s rest. O, I didn’t much
mind the bugs, so I could rest; and next day had to take my things out
if I could, and pay a hexter ha’penny or penny, for hintrest, like.
Yes, I’ve made 18_d._ a hevening at a fair; but there’s so many a
going it there that one ruins another, and wet weather ruins the whole
biling, the pawillion, theaytres and all. I never was a hactor, never;
but I’ve thought sometimes I’d like to try my hand at it. I may some
day, ’cause I’m tall. I was forced to go to the parish again, for I
got ill and dreadful weak, and then they guv me work on the roads. I
can’t just say how long it’s since, two or three year perhaps, but I
had 9_d._ a day at first, and reglar work, and then three days and
three loaves a week, and then three days and no loaves. I haven’t been
at it werry lately. I’ve rayther taken the summer out of myself, but
I must go back soon, for cold weather’s a coming. Vy, I lived a good
deal on carrying trunks from the busses to Euston Railway; a good
many busses stops in the New-road, in the middle of the square. Some
was foreigners, and they was werry scaly. No, I never said nothink
but once, ven I got two French ha’pennies for carrying a heavy old
leather thing, like a coach box, as seemed to belong to a family; and
then the railway bobbies made me hold my tongue. I jobbed about in
other places too, but the time’s gone by now. O, I had a deal to put
up with last winter. What is 9_d._ a day for three days? and if poor
men had their rights, times ’ud be different. I’d like to know where
all the money goes. I never counted how many parish sweepers there
was; too many by arf. I’ve a rights to work, and it’s as little as a
parish can do to find it. I pay 1_s._ a week for half a bed, and not
half enough bed-clothes; but me and Jack Smith sometimes sleeps in our
clothes, and sometimes spreads ’em o’ top. No, poor Jack, he hasn’t no
hold on a parish; he’s a mud-lark and a gatherer [bone-grubber]. Do
I like the overseers and the parish officers? In course not, nobody
does. Why don’t they? Well, how can they? that’s just where it is. Ven
I haven’t been at sweeping, I’ve staid in bed as long as I was let;
but Mother B.--I don’t know no other name she has--wouldn’t stand it
after ten. O no, it wern’t a common lodging-house, a sort of private
lodging-house perhaps, where you took by the week. If I made nothink
but my ninepences, I lived on bread and cawfee, or bread and coker,
and sometimes a red herring, and I’ve bought ’em in the Brill at five
and six a penny. Mother B. charged 1/2_d._ for leave to toast ’em on
her gridiron. She _is_ a scaly old ----. _I’ve oft spent all my money
in a tripe supper at night, and fasted all next day._ I used to walk
about and look in at the cook-shop windows, and try for a job next
day. _I’d have gone five miles for anybody for a penn’orth of pudden._
No, I never thought of making away with myself; never. Nor I never
thought of going for a soldier; _it wouldn’t suit me to be tied so_.
What I want is this here--regular work and no jaw. O, I’m sometimes as
miserable as hunger’ll make a parson, if ever he felt it. Yes, I go to
church sometimes when I’m at work for the parish, if I’m at all togged.
No doubt I shall die in the workus. You see there’s nobody in the world
cares for me. I can’t tell just how I spend my money; just as it comes
into my head. No, I don’t care about drinking; it don’t agree with me;
but there’s some can live on it. I don’t think as I shall ever marry,
though who knows?”
The third and last system of parish work is where the labourer is
employed regularly, and paid a fixed wage, out of the parochial fund
certainly, but not in the same manner as the paupers are paid, nor with
any payment in kind (as in loaves), but all in money. The payment in
this wise is usually 1_s._ 6_d._ a day, and, but for such employment,
the poor so employed, would, in most instances, apply for relief.
In one parish, where the poor are regularly employed in street
sweeping, and paid a regular wage in money, the whole scavaging work is
done by the paupers, as they are usually termed, though they are not
“on the rate.” By them the streets are swept and the houses dusted,
the granite broken for macadamization, and the streets and roads
repaved or repaired. This is done by about 50 men, the labour in the
different departments I have specified being about equally apportioned
as to the number employed in each. The work is executed without any
direct intervention of the parish officers employed in administering
_relief_ to the poor, but through the agency of a board. All the men,
however, are the poor of the parish, and but for this employment would
or might claim relief, or demand admittance with their families into
the workhouse. The system, therefore, is one of indirect pauper labour.
Nearly all the men have been unskilled labourers, the exception being
now and then a few operatives in such handicrafts as were suffering
from the dearth of employment. Some of the artizans, I was informed,
would be earning their 9_s._ in the stone-yard one week, and the next
getting 30_s._ at their business. The men thus labouring for the parish
are about three-fifths Irishmen, a fifth Welchmen, or rather more than
a fifth, and the remainder Englishmen. There is not a single Scotchman
among them.
There is no difference, in the parish I allude to, between the wages
of married and single men, but men with families are usually preferred
among the applicants for such work. They all reside in their own rooms,
or sometimes in lodging-houses, but this rests with themselves.
I had the following account from a heavy and healthy-looking
middle-aged man, dressed in a jacket and trousers of coarse corduroy.
There is so little distinctive about it, however, that I will not
consume space in presenting it in the narrative form in which I noted
it down. It may suffice that the man seemed to have little recollection
as to the past, and less care as to the future. His life, from all
I could learn from him, had been spent in what may be called menial
labour, as the servant, not of an individual, but of a parish; but
there was nothing, he knew of, that he had to thank anybody for--parish
or any one. They wanted _him_ and he wanted _them_. On my asking him if
he had never tried to “better himself,” he said that he _had_ once as a
navvy, but a blow on the head and eye, from a portion of rock shivered
by his pick-axe, disabled him for awhile, and he left railway work.
He went to church, as was expected of him, and he and his wife liked
it. He had forgotten how to read, but never was “a dab at it,” and
so “didn’t know nothing about the litany or the psalms.” He couldn’t
say as he knew any difference between the Church of England and the
Roman Catholic church-goers, “cause the one was a English and the t’
other a Irish religion,” and he “wasn’t to be expected to understand
Irish religion.” He saw no necessity to put by money (this he said
hesitatingly), supposing he could; what was his parish for? and he
would take care he didn’t lose his settlement. If he’d ever had such a
chance as some had he might have saved money, but he never had. He had
no family, and his wife earned about 4_s._ a week, but not every week,
in a wool warehouse, and they did middling.
The above, then, are the modes in which paupers, or imminent paupers,
so to speak, are employed, and in one way or other are _paid_ for their
labour, or what is called paid, and who, although parish menials, still
reside in their own abodes, with the opportunity, such as it is, of
“looking out” for better employment.
As to the _moral qualities of the street-sweeping paupers_ I do not
know that they differ from those of paupers generally. All men who feel
themselves sunk into compulsory labour and a degraded condition are
dissatisfied, and eager to throw the blame of their degradation from
their own shoulders. But it is evident that these men are unwilling
workers, because their work is deprived of its just reward; and
although I did not hear of any difficulty being experienced in getting
them to work, I was assured by many who knew them well, that they do
not go about it with any alertness. Did any one ever hear a pauper
whistle or sing at his street-work? I believe that every experienced
vestryman will agree to the truth of the statement that it is very
rarely a confirmed pauper rises from his degradation. His thoughts
and aspirations seem bounded by the workhouse and the parish. The
reason appears to be because the workhouse authorities seek rather to
degrade than to elevate the man, resorting to every means of shaming
the pauper, until at last he becomes so utterly callous to the disgrace
of pauperism that he does not care to alter his position. The system,
too, adopted by the parish authorities of not paying for work, or
paying less than the ordinary prices of the trade, causes the pauper
labourers to be unwilling workers; and finding that industry brings
no reward, or less than its fair reward, to them, they get to hate
all work, and to grow up habitual burdens on the State. Crabbe, the
poet, who in all questions of borough and parish life is an authority,
makes his workhouse boy, Dick Monday, who when a boy got more kicks
than halfpence, die Sir Richard Monday, of Monday-place; but this is a
flight on the wings of poetical licence; certainly not impossible, and
that is all which can be said for its likelihood.
The following remarks on the payment of the parish street-sweepers are
from one of Mr. Cochrane’s publications:--
“The council considers it a duty to the poor to touch upon the
niggardly manner in which parish scavengers are generally paid, and
the deplorable and emaciated condition which they usually present,
with regard to their clothing and personal appearance. One contractor
pays 16_s._ 6_d._ per week; 2 pay 16_s._; 12 (including a Highway
Board) pay 15_s._ each; 1 pays 14_s._ 6_d._; 2 pay 14_s._; and 1 pays
so low as 12_s._ On the other hand, five parish boards of ‘guardians
of the poor,’ pay only 9_s._ each, to their miserable mud-larks; one
pays 8_s._; another 7_s._ 5_d._; a third 7_s._; a fourth compensates
its labourers--in the British metropolis, where rent and living are
necessarily higher than elsewhere--with 5_s._ 8_d._ per week! whilst
a fifth pays 3 men 15_s._ each, 12 men 10_s._ each, and 6 men 7_s._
6_d._ each, for exactly the same kind of work!!! But what renders this
mean torture of men (because they happen to be poor) absurd as well
as cruel, are the anomalous facts, that whilst the guardians of one
parish pay 5 men 7_s._ each, the contractor for another part of the
same parish, pays his 4 men 14_s._ each;--and whilst the guardians of
a second parish pay only 5_s._ 8_d._, the Highway Board pays 15_s._
to each of its labourers, for performing exactly the same work in the
same district!--Mr. Darke, scavenging contractor of Paddington, lately
stated that he never had, and never would, employ any man at less
than 16_s._ or 18_s._ per week;--and Mr. Sinnott, of Belvidere-road,
Lambeth, about three months since, offered to certain West-End
guardians, to take 40 paupers out of their own workhouse to cleanse
their own parish, on the street-orderly system;--and to pay them
15_s._ per week each man[25]; but the economical guardians preferred
filth and a full workhouse, to cleanliness, Christian charity, and
common sense;--and so the proposal of this considerate contractor
was rejected! It is certainly far from being creditable to boards of
gentlemen and wealthy tradesmen who manage parish affairs, to pay
little more than one-half the wages that an individual does, to poor
labourers who cannot choose their employment or their masters....
“The broken-down tradesman, the journeyman deprived of his usual work
by panic or by poverty of the times, the ingenious mechanic, or the
unsuccessful artist, applies at the parish labour-market for leave
to live by other labour than that which hitherto maintained him in
comfort.... The usual language of such persons, even when applying for
private alms or parochial relief, is, not that they want money, but
‘that they have long been out of work;’ ‘that their particular trade
has been overstocked with apprentices, or superseded by machinery;’ or,
‘that their late employer has become bankrupt, or has discharged the
majority of his hands from the badness of the times.’ To a man of this
class, the guardian of the poor replies, ‘We will test your willingness
to labour, by employing you in the stone-yard, or to sweep the streets;
but the parish being heavily burthened with rates, we cannot afford
more than 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week.’ The poor creature, conscious of his
own helplessness, accepts the miserable pittance, in order to preserve
himself and family from immediate starvation....
“The council has taken much pains to ascertain the wages, and mode of
expenditure of them, by this uncared-for, and almost pariah, class
of labourers throughout the metropolitan parishes; and it possesses
undeniable proofs, that few possess any further garment than the rags
upon their backs; some being even without a change of linen; that they
never enter a place of worship, on account of their want of decent
clothing; that their wives and children are starved and in rags, and
the latter without the least education; that they never by any chance
taste fresh animal food; that one-third of their hard earnings is paid
for rent; and that their only sustenance (unless their wives happen to
go out washing or charing), consists of bread, potatoes, coarse tea
without milk or sugar, a salt herring two or three times a week, and
a slice of rusty bacon on Sunday morning! The meal called dinner they
never know; their only refection being breakfast and ‘tea:’ beer they
do not taste from year’s end to year’s end; and any other luxury, or
even necessary, is out of the question.
“Of the 21 scavengers employed by St. James’s parish in 1850, no less
than 16,” says Mr. Cochrane’s report, “were married, with from one to
four children each. How the poor creatures who receive but 7_s._ 6_d._
a week support their families, is best known to themselves.”
Let me now, in conclusion, endeavour to arrive at a rough estimate
as to the sum of which the pauper labours annually are mulct by the
before-mentioned rates of remuneration, estimating their labour at the
market value or amount paid by the honourable contractors, viz. 16_s._
a week; for if private individuals can afford to pay that wage, and yet
reap a profit out of the transaction, the guardians of the poor surely
could and should pay the same prices, and not avail themselves of
starving men’s necessities to reduce the wages of a trade to the very
quick of subsistence. If it be a sound principle that the condition
of the pauper should be rendered _less_ desirable than that of the
labourer, assuredly the principle is equally sound that the condition
of the labourer should be made _more_ desirable than that of the
pauper; for if to pamper the pauper be to make indolence more agreeable
than industry, certainly to grind down the wages of the labourer is to
render industry as unprofitable as indolence. In either case the same
premium is proffered to pauperism. As yet the Poor-Law Commissioners
have seen but one way of reducing the poor-rates, viz., by rendering
the state of the pauper as _unenviable_ as possible, and they have
wholly lost sight of the other mode of attaining the same end, viz.,
by making the state of the labourer as _desirable_ as possible. To
institute a terrible poor law without maintaining an attractive form of
industry, is to hold out a boon to crime. If the wages of the working
man are to be reduced to bare subsistence, and the condition of the
pauper is to be rendered worse than that of the working man, what
atrocities will not be committed upon the poor. Elevate the condition
of the labourer, and there will be no necessity to depress the pauper.
Make work more attractive by increasing the reward for it, and laziness
will necessarily become more repulsive. As it is, however, the pauper
is not only kept at the very lowest point of subsistence, but his
half-starved labour is brought into competition with that of men living
in a comparative state of comfort; and the result, of course, is, that
instead of decreasing the number of paupers or poor-rates, we make
paupers of our labourers, and fill our workhouses by such means. If
a scavager’s labour be worth from 12_s._ to 15_s._ per week in the
market, what moral right have the _guardians of the poor_ to pay 5_s._
8_d._ for the same commodity? If the paupers are set to do work which
is fairly worth 15_s._, then to pay them little more than one-third of
the regular value is not only to make unwilling workers of the paupers,
but to drag down all the better workmen to the level of the worst.
It may be estimated that the outlay on pauper labour, as a whole, after
deducting the sum paid to superintendents and gangers, does not exceed
10_s._ weekly per individual; consequently the lowering of the price of
labour is in this ratio: There are now, in round numbers, 450 pauper
scavagers in the metropolis, and the account stands thus:--
Yearly.
450 scavagers, at the regular
weekly wages of 16_s._ each £18,710
450 pauper labourers, 10_s._ each
weekly 11,700
-------
Lower price of pauper work £7,020
Hence we see, that the great scurf employers of the scavagers, after
all, are the guardians of the poor, compared with whom the most
grasping contractor is a model of liberality.
That the minimum of remuneration paid by the parishes has tended,
and is tending more and more, to the general depreciation of wages
in the scavaging trade, there is no doubt. It has done so directly
and indirectly. One man, who had been a last-maker, told me that he
left his employment as a London scavager, for he had “come down to
the parish,” and set off at the close of the summer into Kent for the
harvest and hopping, for, when in the country, he had been more
used to agricultural labour than to last, clog, or patten making.
He considered that he had not been successful; still he returned to
London a richer man by 26_s._ 6_d._ Nearly 20_s._ of this soon went for
shoes and necessary clothing, and to pay some arrears of rent, and a
chandler’s bill he owed, after which he could be trusted again where he
was known. He applied to the foreman of a contractor, whom he knew, for
work. “What wage?” said the foreman. “Fifteen shillings a week,” was
the reply. “Why, what did you get from the parish for sweeping?” “Nine
shillings.” “Well,” said the foreman, “I know you’re a decent man, and
you were recommended before, and so I _can_ give you four or five days
a week at 2_s._ 4_d._ a day, and no nonsense about hours; _for you know
yourself I can get 50 men as have been parish workers at 1s. 9d. a day,
and jump at it, and so you mustn’t be cheeky_.” The man closed with the
offer, knowing that the foreman spoke the truth.
A contractor told me that he could obtain “plenty of hands,” used to
parish scavaging work, at 10_s._ 6_d._ to 12_s._ a week, whereas he
paid 16_s._
It is evident, then, that the system of pauper work in scavaging has
created an increasing market for cheap and deteriorated labour, a
market including hundreds of the unemployed at other unskilled labours;
and it is hardly to be doubted that the many who have faith in the
doctrine that it is the best policy to buy in the cheapest and sell in
the dearest market, will avail themselves of the low-priced labour of
this pauper-constituted mart.
It is but right to add, that those parishes which pay 15_s._ a week
are as worthy of commendation as those which pay 9_s._, 7_s._ 6_d._
and 7_s._ per week, and 1_s._ 4_d._ and 1_s._ 1-1/2_d._ a day are
reprehensible; and, unfortunately, the latter have a tendency to
regulate all the others.