2. Orderlyism, or the employment of the poor in the promotion of
public cleanliness, and the increased sanitary condition of the
country.
K. _The prevention of the enclosure of commons_; as the means of
enabling the poor to obtain gratuitous pasturage for their cattle.
L. _The abolition of primogeniture_; with the view of dividing the land
among a greater number of individuals.
M. _The holding of the land by the State_, and equal apportionment of
it among the poor.
N. _Extension of the suffrage among the people_; and so allowing the
workman, as well as the capitalist and the landlord, to take part in
the formation of the laws of the country. For this purpose there are
two plans:--
1. “The freehold-land movement,” which seeks to enable the people to
become proprietors of as much land as will, under the present law,
give them “a voice” in the country.
2. Chartism, or that which seeks to alter the law concerning the
election of members of Parliament, and to confer the right of voting
on every male of mature age, sound mind, and non-criminal character.
O. _Cultivation of a higher moral and Christian character among the
people._ This form of remedy, which is advocated by many, is based on
the argument, that, without some mitigation of the “selfishness of the
times,” all other schemes for improving the condition of the people
will be either evaded by the cunning of the rich, or defeated by the
servility of the poor.
The above I believe to be a full and fair statement of the several
plans that have been proposed, from time to time, for alleviating
the distress of the people. This enumeration is as comprehensive as
my knowledge will enable me to make it; and I have abstained from
all comment on the several schemes, so that the reader may have an
opportunity of impartially weighing the merits of each, and adopting
that, which in his own mind, seems best calculated to effect what,
after all, we every one desire--whether protectionist, economist,
free-trader, philanthropist, socialist, communist, or chartist--the
good of the country in which we live, and the people by whom we are
surrounded.
* * * * *
Now we have to deal here with that particular remedy for low wages or
distress which consists in creating additional employment for the poor,
and of which the street-orderly system is an example.
The increase of employment for the poor was the main object of the
43 Eliz., for which purpose, as we have seen, the overseers of the
several parishes were empowered to raise a fund by assessments upon the
property of the rich, for providing “a sufficient stock of flax, hemp,
wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work.” But though
economists, to this day, tell us that “while, on the one hand, industry
is limited by capital, so, on the other, every increase of capital
gives, or is capable of giving, additional employment to industry, and
this without assignable limit,”[26] nevertheless the great difficulty
of carrying out the provisions of the original poor-law has consisted
in finding a market for the products of pauper labour, for the frequent
gluts in our manufactures are sufficient to teach us that it is one
thing to produce and another to dispose of the products; so that to
create additional employment for the poor something besides capital
is requisite: it is necessary either that they shall be engaged in
producing that which they themselves immediately consume, or that for
which the market admits of being extended.
The two plans proposed for the employment of the poor, it will be seen,
consist (1) in the cultivation of waste lands; (2) in promoting public
cleanliness, and so increasing the sanitary condition of the country.
The first, it is evident, removes the objection of a market being
needed for the products of the labour of the poor, since it proposes
that their energies should be devoted to the production of the food
which they themselves consume; while the second seeks to create
additional employment in effecting that increased cleanliness which
more enlightened physiological views have not only made more desirable,
but taught us to be absolutely necessary to the health and enjoyment of
the community.
The great impediment, however, to the profitable employment of the
poor, has generally been the unproductive or unavailing character
of pauper labour. This has been mainly owing to the fact that the
able-bodied who are deprived of employment are necessarily the lowest
grade of operatives; for, in the displacement of workmen, those are the
first discarded whose labour is found to be the least efficient, either
from a deficiency of skill, industry, or sobriety, so that pauper
labour is necessarily of the least productive character.
Another great difficulty with the employment of the poor is, that the
idle, or those to whom work is more than usually irksome, require
a stronger inducement than ordinary to make them labour, and the
remuneration for parish work being necessarily less than for any other,
those who are pauperized through idleness (the most benevolent among
us must allow there are such) are naturally less than ever disposed
to labour when they become paupers. All pauper work, therefore, is
generally unproductive or unavailing, because it is either inexpert or
unwilling work. The labour of the in-door paupers, who receive only
their food for their pains, is necessarily of the same compulsory
character as slavery; while that of the out-door paupers, with the
remuneration often cut down to the lowest subsisting point, is scarcely
of a more willing or more availing kind.
Owing to this general unproductiveness, (as well as the difficulty of
finding a field for the profitable employment of the unemployed poor,)
the labour of paupers has been for a long time past directed mainly to
the cleansing of the public thoroughfares. Still, from the degrading
nature of the occupation, and the small remuneration for the toil,
pauper labourers have been found to be such unwilling workers that many
parishes have long since given over employing their poor even in this
capacity, preferring to entrust the work to a contractor, with his paid
self-supporting operatives, instead.
The founder of the Philanthropic Association appears to have been
fully aware of the two great difficulties besetting the profitable
employment of the poor, viz., (1) finding a field for the exercise of
their labours where they might be “set on work” with benefit to the
community, and without injury to the independent operatives already
engaged in the same occupation; and (2) overcoming the unwillingness,
and consequently the unavailingness, of pauper labour.
The first difficulty Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to obviate by taking
advantage of that growing desire for greater public cleanliness
which has arisen from the increased knowledge of the principles
governing the health of towns; and the second, by giving the men
12_s._ instead of 9_s._ or 7_s._ a week, or worse than all, 1_s._
1-1/2_d._ and a quartern loaf a day for three days in the week,
and so not only augmenting the stimulus to work (for it should be
remembered that wages are to the human machine what the fire is to the
steam-engine), but preventing the undue depreciation of the labour
of the independent workman. He who discovers the means of increasing
the rewards of labour, is as great a friend to his race as he who
strives to depreciate them is the public enemy; and I do not hesitate
to confess, that I look upon Mr. Charles Cochrane as one of the
illustrious few who, in these days of unremunerated toil, and their
necessary concomitants--beggars and thieves, has come forward to help
the labourers of this country from their daily-increasing degradation.
His benevolence is of that enlightened order which seeks to extend
rather than destroy the self-trust of the poor, not only by creating
additional employment for them, but by rendering that employment less
repulsive.
The means by which Mr. Cochrane has endeavoured to gain these ends
constitutes the system called Street-Orderlyism, which therefore admits
of being viewed in two distinct aspects--first, as a new mode of
improving “the health of towns,” and, secondly, as an improved method
of employing the poor.
Concerning the first, I must confess that the system of scavaging or
cleansing the public thoroughfares pursued by the street-orderlies
assumes, when contemplated in a sanitary point of view, all the
importance and simplicity of a great discovery. It has been before
pointed out that this system consists not only in cleansing the
streets, but in _keeping_ them clean. By the street-orderly method
of scavaging, the thoroughfares are continually being cleansed, and
so never allowed to become dirty; whereas, by the ordinary method,
they are not cleansed _until_ they are dirty. Hence the two modes of
scavaging are diametrically opposed; under the one the streets are
cleansed as fast as dirtied, while under the other they are dirtied as
fast as cleansed; so that by the new system of scavaging the public
thoroughfares are maintained in a perpetual state of cleanliness,
whereas by the old they may be said to be kept in a continual state of
dirt.
The street-orderly system of scavaging, however, is not only worthy of
high commendation as a more efficient means of gaining a particular
end--a simplification of a certain process--but it calls for our
highest praise as well for the end gained as for the means of gaining
it. If it be really a sound physiological principle, that the Creator
has made dirt offensive to every rightly-constituted mind, because it
is injurious to us, and so established in us an instinct, before we
could discover a reason, for removing all refuse from our presence,
it becomes, now that we have detected the cause of the feeling in us,
at once disgusting and irrational to allow the filth to accumulate
in our streets in front of our houses. If typhus, cholera, and other
pestilences are but divine punishments inflicted on us for the
infraction of that most kindly law by which the health of a people has
been made to depend on that which is naturally agreeable--cleanliness,
then our instinct for self-preservation should force us, even if our
sense of enjoyment would not lead us, to remove as fast as it is formed
what is at once as dangerous as it should be repulsive to our natures.
Sanitarily regarded, the cleansing of a town is one of the most
important objects that can engage the attention of its governors; the
removal of its refuse being quite as necessary for the continuance of
the existence of a people as the supply of their food. In the economy
of Nature there is no loss: this the great doctrine of waste and supply
has taught us; the detritus of one rock is the conglomerate of another;
the evaporation of the ocean is the source of the river; the poisonous
exhalations of animals the vital air of plants; and the refuse of man
and beasts the food of their food. The dust and cinders from our fires,
the “slops” from the washing of our houses, the excretions of our
bodies, the detritus and “surface-water” of our streets, have all their
offices to perform in the great scheme of creation; and if left to rot
and fust about us not only injure our health, but diminish the supplies
of our food. The filth of the thoroughfares of the metropolis forms, it
would appear, the staple manure of the market-gardens in the suburbs;
out of the London mud come the London cabbages: so that an improvement
in the scavaging of the metropolis tends not only to give the people
improved health, but improved vegetables; for that which is nothing
but a pestiferous muck-heap in the town becomes a vivifying garden
translated to the country.
Dirt, however, is not only as prejudicial to our health and offensive
to our senses, when allowed to accumulate in our streets, as it is
beneficial to us when removed to our gardens,--but it is a most
expensive commodity to keep in front of our houses. It has been shown,
that the cost to the people of London, in the matter of extra washing
induced by defective scavaging, is at the least 1,000,000_l._ sterling
per annum (the Board of Health estimate it at 2,500,000_l._); and the
loss from extra wear and tear of clothes from brushing and scrubbing,
arising from the like cause, is about the same prodigious sum; while
the injury done to the furniture of private houses, and the goods
exposed for sale in shops, though impossible to be estimated--appears
to be something enormous: so that the loss from the defective scavaging
of the metropolis seems, at the lowest calculation, to amount to
several millions per annum; and hence it becomes of the highest
possible importance, economically as well as physiologically, that the
streets should be cleansed in the most effective manner.
Now, that the street-orderly system is the only rational and
efficacious mode of street cleansing both theory and practice assure
us. To allow the filth to accumulate in the streets before any steps
are taken to remove it, is the same as if we were never to wash our
bodies until they were dirty--it is to be perpetually striving to cure
the disease, when with scarcely any more trouble we might prevent
it entirely. There is, indeed, the same difference between the new
and the old system of scavaging, as there is between a bad and a good
housewife: the one never cleaning her house until it is dirty, and the
other continually cleaning it, so as to prevent it being ever dirty.
Hence it would appear, that the street-orderly system of scavaging
would be a great public benefit, even were there no other object
connected with it than the increased cleanliness of our streets; but
in a country like Great Britain, afflicted as it is with a surplus
population (no matter from what cause), that each day finds the
difficulty of obtaining work growing greater, the opening up of new
fields of employment for the poor is perhaps the greatest benefit that
can be conferred upon the nation. Without the discovery of such new
fields, “the setting the poor on work” is merely, as I have said, to
throw out of employment those who are already employed; it is not to
decrease, but really to increase, the evil of the times--to add to,
rather than diminish, the number of our paupers or our thieves. The
increase of employment in a nation, however, requires, not only a
corresponding increase of capital, but a like increase in the demand
or desire, as well as in the pecuniary means, of the people to avail
themselves of the work on which the poor are set (that is to say, in
the extension of the home market); it requires, also, some mode of
stimulating the energies of the workers, so as to make them labour
more willingly, and consequently more availingly, than usual. These
conditions appear to have been fulfilled by Mr. Cochrane, in the
establishment of the street-orderlies. He has introduced, in connection
with this body, a system of scavaging which, while it employs a greater
number of hands, produces such additional benefits as cannot but be
considered an equivalent for the increased expenditure; though it is
even doubtful whether, by the collection of the street manure unmixed
with the mud, the extra value of that article alone will not go far to
compensate for the additional expense; if, however, there be added to
this the saving to the metropolitan parishes in the cost of watering
the streets--for under the street-orderly system this is not required,
the dust never being allowed to accumulate, and consequently never
requiring to be “laid”--as well as the greater saving of converting the
paupers into self-supporting labourers; together with the diminished
expense of washing and doctors’ bills, consequent on the increased
cleanliness of the streets--there cannot be the least doubt that the
employment of the poor as street-orderlies is no longer a matter of
philanthropy, but of mere commercial prudence.
Such appear to me to be the principal objects of Mr. Cochrane’s
street-orderly system of scavaging; and it is a subject upon which I
have spoken the more freely, because, being unacquainted with that
gentleman, none can suspect me of being prejudiced in his favour, and
because I have felt that the good which he has done and is likely to do
to the poor, has been comparatively unacknowledged by the public, and
that society and the people owe him a heavy debt of gratitude[27].
I shall now proceed to set forth the character of the labour, and the
condition and remuneration of the labourers in connection with the
street-orderly system of scavaging the metropolitan thoroughfares.
The first appearance of the street-orderlies in the metropolis was in
1843. Mr. Charles Cochrane, who had previously formed the National
Philanthropic Association, with its eleemosynary soup-kitchens, &c.,
then introduced the system of street-orderlies, as one enabling many
destitute men to support themselves by their labour; as well as, in
his estimation, a better, and eventually a more economical, mode of
street-cleansing, and partaking also somewhat of the character of a
street police.
The first “demonstration,” or display of the street-orderly
system, took place in Regent-street, between the Quadrant and
the Regent-circus, and in Oxford-street, between Vere-street and
Charles-street. The streets were thoroughly swept in the morning, and
then each man or boy, provided with a hand-broom and dust-pan, removed
any dirt as soon as it was deposited. The demonstration was pronounced
highly successful and the system effective, in the opinion of eighteen
influential inhabitants of the locality who acted as a committee, and
who publicly, and with the authority of their names, testified their
conviction that “the most efficient means of keeping streets clean, and
more especially great thoroughfares, was to prevent the accumulation
of dirt, by removing the manure within a few minutes after it has been
deposited by the passing cattle; the same having, hitherto, remained
during several days.”
The cost of this demonstration amounted to about 400_l._, of which,
the Report states, “200_l._ still remains due from the shop-keepers to
the Association; which,” it is delicately added, “from late commercial
difficulties they have not yet repaid” (in 1850).
Whilst the street-orderlies were engaged in cleansing Regent-street,
&c., the City Commissioners of the sewers of London were invited to
depute some person to observe and report to them concerning the method
pursued; but with that instinctive sort of repugnance which seems to
animate the great bulk of city officials against improvement of any
kind, the reply was, that they “did not consider the same worthy their
attention.” The matter, however, was not allowed to drop, and by the
persevering efforts of Mr. Cochrane, the president, and of the body of
gentlemen who form the Council of the Association, Cheapside, Cornhill,
and the most important parts of the very heart of the city were at
length cleansed according to the new method. The ratepayers then showed
that _they_, at least, _did_ consider “the same worthy of attention,”
for 8000 out of 12,000 within a few days signed memorials recommending
the adoption of what they pronounced an improvement, and a public
meeting was held in Guildhall (May 4, 1846), at which resolutions in
favour of the street-orderly method were passed. The authorities did
not adopt these recommendations, but they ventured so far to depart
from their venerable routine as to order the streets to be “swept every
day!” This employed upwards of 300 men, whereas at the period when the
sages of the city sewers did not consider any proposed improvement in
scavagery worthy their attention, the number of men employed by them in
cleansing the streets did not exceed 30.
The street-orderly system was afterwards tried in the parishes of St.
Paul, Covent-garden, St. James (Westminster), St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
St. Anne, Soho, and others--sometimes calling forth opposition, of
course from the authorities connected with the established modes of
paving, scavaging, &c.
It is not my intention to write a complete history of the
street-orderlies, but merely to sketch their progress, as well as
describe their peculiar characteristics.
Within these few months public meetings have been held in almost every
one of the 26 wards of the City, at which approving resolutions were
either passed unanimously or carried by large majorities; and the
street-orderly system is now about to be introduced into St. Martin’s
parish instead of the street-sweeping machine.
As far as the street-orderly system has been tried, and judging only by
the testimony of public examination and public record of opinion, the
trial has certainly been a success. A memorial to the Court of Sewers,
from the ward of Broad-street, supported by the leading merchants of
that locality, in recommendation of the employment of street-orderlies,
seems to bear more closely on the subject than any I have yet seen.
“Your memorialists,” they state, “have observed that those public
thoroughfares within the city of London which are now cleansed by
street-orderlies, _are so remarkably clean_ as to be _almost free from
mud in wet, and dust in dry weather_--that _such extreme cleanliness
is of great comfort to the public_, and tends to improve the sanitary
condition of the ward.”
But it is not only in the metropolis that the street-orderlies seem
likely to become the established scavagers. The streets of Windsor, I
am informed, are now in the course of being cleansed upon the orderly
plan. In Amsterdam, there are at present 16 orderlies regularly
employed upon scavaging a portion of the city, and in Paris and
Belgium, I am assured, arrangements are being made for the introduction
of the system into both those cities. Were the street-orderly mode of
scavaging to become general throughout this country, it is estimated
that employment would be given to 100,000 labourers, so that, with the
families of these men, not less than half a million of people would be
supported in a state of independence by it. The total number of adult
able-bodied paupers relieved--in-door and out-door--throughout England
and Wales, on January 1, 1850, was 154,525.
The following table shows the route of the street-orderly operations in
the metropolis. A further column, in the Report from which the table
has been extracted, contained the names of thirteen clergymen who have
“weekly read prayers and delivered discourses to the street-orderlies
at their respective stations, and recorded flattering testimonials of
their conduct and demeanour.”