_Commerce_ has its periodical fits and starts. The publishers, for
instance, have their season, generally from October to March, as people
read more in winter than in summer; and this arrangement immediately
effects the printers and bookbinders; there is no change, however, as
regards the newspapers and periodicals. Again, the early importation
to this country of the new foreign fruits gives activity to the dock
and wharf labourers and porters and carmen. Thus the arrival here,
generally in autumn, of the nut, chestnut, and grape (raisin) produce
of Spain; of the almond crops in Portugal, Spain, and Barbary; the date
harvest in Morocco, and different parts of Africa; the orange gathering
in Madeira, and in St. Michael’s, Terceira, and other islands of the
Azores; the fig harvest from the Levant; the plum harvest of the south
of France; the currant picking of Zante, Ithaca, and other Ionian
Islands;--all these events give an activity, as new fruit is always
most saleable, to the traders in these southern productions; and more
shopmen, shop-porters, wharf labourers, and assistant lightermen are
required--casually required--for the time.
I was told by a grocer, with a country connection, and in a large
way of business, that for three weeks or a month before Christmas he
required the aid of four fresh hands, a shopman, an errand-boy, and two
porters (one skilled in packing), for whom he had nothing to do after
Christmas. If in the wide sweep of London trade there be 1000 persons,
including the market salesmen, the retail butchers, the carriers, &c.,
so circumstanced, then 4000 men are _casually_ employed, and for a very
brief time.
The brief increase of the carrying business generally about Christmas,
by road, water, or railway, is sufficiently indicated by the foregoing
account.
The employment, again, in the cotton and woollen manufacturing
districts may be said to depend for its briskness on commerce rather
than on the seasons.
_Accidents_, or extraordinary social events, promote casual labour and
then depress it. Often they depress without having promoted it.
During the display of the Great Exhibition, there were some thousands
employed in the different capacities of police, packing, cleaning,
porterage, watching, interpreting, door-keeping and money-taking,
cab-regulating, &c.; and after the close of the Exhibition how
many were retained? Thus the Great Exhibition fostered casual, or
uncertain labour. Foreign revolutions, moreover, affect the trade of
England: speculators become timid and will not embark in trade or in
any proposed undertaking; the foreign import and export trades are
paralysed; and fewer clerks and fewer labourers are employed. Home
political agitations, also, have the same effect; as was seen in
London during the corn-law riots, about 35 years ago (when only eight
members of the House of Commons supported a change in those laws); the
Spafields riots in 1817; the affair in St. Peter’s-field, Manchester,
in 1819; the disturbances and excitement during the trial of Queen
Caroline, in 1820-1, and the loss of life on the occasion of her
funeral in 1821; the agitation previously to the passing of the Reform
Bill had a like effect; the meeting on Kennington Common on the 10th
of April;--in all these periods, indeed, employment decreased. Labour
is affected also by the death of a member of the royal family, and
the hurried demand for general mourning, but in a very small degree
to what was once the case. A West-End tailor employing a great number
of hands did not receive a single order for mourning on the death of
Queen Adelaide; while on the demise of the Princess Charlotte (in 1817)
thousands of operative tailors, throughout the three kingdoms, worked
day and night, and for double wages, on the general mourning. Gluts
in the markets, an increase of heavy bankruptcies and “panics,” such
as were experienced in the money market in 1825-6, and again in 1846,
with the failure of banks and merchants, likewise have the effect of
augmenting the mass of casual labour; for capitalists and employers,
under such circumstances, expend as little as possible in wages or
employment until the storm blows over. Bad harvests have a similar
depressing effect.
There are also the consequences of changes of taste. The abandonment
of the fashions of gentlemen’s wearing swords, as well as embroidered
garments, flowing periwigs, large shoe-buckles, all reduced able
artizans to poverty by depriving them of work. So it was, when, to
carry on the war with France, Mr. Pitt introduced a tax on hair powder.
Hundreds of hair-dressers were thrown out of employment, many persons
abandoning the fashion of wearing powder rather than pay the tax. There
are now city gentlemen, who can remember that when clerks, they had
sometimes to wait two or three hours for “their turn” at a barber’s
shop on a Sunday morning; for they could not go abroad until their
hair was dressed and powdered, and their queues trimmed to the due
standard of fashion. So it has been, moreover, in modern times in the
substitution of silk for metal buttons, silk hats for stuff, and in the
supersedence of one material of dress by another.
These several causes, then, which could only exist in a community of
great wealth and great poverty have rendered, and are continually
rendering, the labour market uncertain and over-stocked; to what extent
they do and have done this, it is, of course, almost impossible to
say _precisely_; but, even with the strongest disposition to avoid
exaggeration, we may assert that there are in this country no less
than 125,000 families, or 500,000 people, who depend on the weather
for their food; 300,000 families, or 1,250,000 people, who can
obtain employment only at particular seasons; 150,000 more families,
or 500,000 people, whose trade depends upon the fashionable rather
than the natural seasons, are thrown out of work at the cessation of
the brisk time of their business; and, perhaps, another 150,000 of
families, or 500,000 people, dependent on the periodical increase and
decrease of commerce, and certain social and political accidents which
tend to cause a greater or less demand for labour. Altogether we may
assert, with safety, that there are at the least 725,000 families, or
three millions of men, women, and children, whose means of living, far
from being certain and constant, are of a precarious kind, depending
either upon the rain, the wind, the sunshine, the caprice of fashion,
or the ebbings and flowings of commerce.
* * * * *
But there is a still more potent cause at work to increase the amount
of _casual_ labour in this country. Thus far we have proceeded on
the assumption that at the brisk season of each trade there is full
employment for all; but this is far from being the case in the great
majority, if not the whole, of the instances above cited. In almost all
occupations there is in this country a _superfluity of labourers_, and
this alone would tend to render the employment of a vast number of the
hands of a casual rather than a regular character. In the generality
of trades the calculation is that one-third of the hands are fully
employed, one-third partially, and one-third unemployed throughout the
year. This, of course, would be the case if there were twice too many
work-people; for suppose the number of work-people in a given trade
to be 6000, and the work sufficient to employ (fully) only half the
quantity, then, of course, 2000 might be occupied their whole time,
2000 more might have work sufficient to occupy them half their time,
and the remaining 2000 have no work at all; or the whole 4000 might,
on the average, obtain three months’ employment out of the twelve;
and this is frequently the case. Hence we see that a surplusage of
hands in a trade tends to change the employment of the great majority
from a state of constancy and regularity into one of casualty and
precariousness.
Consequently it becomes of the highest importance that we should
endeavour to ascertain what are the circumstances inducing a surplusage
of hands in the several trades of the present day. A _surplusage of
hands_ in a trade may proceed from three different causes, viz.:--
1. The alteration of the hours, rate, or mode of working, or else the
term of hiring.