Each and every of the first-mentioned causes are as effective a
circumstance for the promotion of surplus labour, as even the positive
extension of the population of the country.
Let me begin with the undue increase of a trade by means of
_apprentices_.
This is, perhaps, one of the chief aids to the cheap system. For it
is principally by apprentice labour that the better masters, as well
as workmen, are undersold, and the skilled labourer consequently
depressed to the level of the unskilled. But the great evil is, that
the cheapening of goods by this means causes an undue increase in the
trade. The apprentices grow up and become labourers, and so the trade
is glutted with workmen, and casual labour is the consequence.
This apprentice system is the great bane of the printer’s trade.
Country printers take an undue number of boys to help them cheap;
these lads grow up, and then, finding wages in the provinces depressed
through this system of apprentice labour, they flock to the towns, and
so tend to glut the labour market, and consequently to increase the
number of casual hands.
One cause of the increased surplus and casual labour in such trades
as dressing-case, work-box, writing-desk-making and other things in
the fancy cabinet trade (among the worst trades even in Spitalfields
and Bethnal Green), shoemaking, and especially of women and children’s
shoes, is the taking of many apprentices by small masters (supplying
the great warehouses). As journey-work is all but unknown in the slop
fancy cabinet trade, an apprentice, when he has “served his time,”
must start on his own account in the same wretched way of business, or
become a casual labourer in some unskilled avocation, and this is one
way in which the hands surely, although gradually, increase beyond the
demand. It is the same with the general slop cabinet-maker’s trade in
the same parts. The small masters supply the “slaughterhouses,” the
linen-drapers, &c., who sell cheap furniture; they work in the quickest
and most scamping manner, and do more work (which is nearly all done
on the chance of sale), as they must confine themselves to one branch.
The slop chair-makers cannot make tables, nor the slop table-makers,
chairs; nor the cheffonier and drawer-makers, bedsteads; for they have
not been taught. Even if they knew the method, and _could_ accomplish
other work, the want of practice would compel them to do it slowly,
and the slop mechanic can never afford to work slowly. Such classes
of little masters, then, to meet the demand for low-priced furniture,
rear their sons to the business, and frequently take apprentices, to
whom they pay small amounts. The hands so trained (as in the former
instances) are not skilled enough to work for the honourable trade,
so that they can only adopt the course pursued by their parents, or
masters, before them. Hence a rapid, although again gradual, increase
of surplus hands; or hence a resort to some unskilled labour, to be
wrought casually. This happens too, but in a smaller degree, in trades
which are not slop, from the same cause. Concerning the _apprentice
system_ in the boot and shoe trade, when making my inquiries into the
condition of the London workmen, I received the following statements:--
“My employer had seven apprentices when I was with him; of these, two
were parish apprentices (I was one), and the other five from the Refuge
for the Destitute, at Hoxton. With each Refuge boy he got 5_l._ and
three suits of clothes, and a kit (tools). With the parish boys of
Covent-garden and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, he got 5_l._ and two suits
of clothes, reckoning what the boy wore as one. My employer was a
journeyman, and by having all us boys he was able to get up work very
cheap, though he received good wages for it. We boys had no allowance
in money, only board, lodging, and clothing. The board was middling,
the lodging was too, and there was nothing to complain about in the
clothing. He was severe in the way of flogging. I ran away six times
myself, but was forced to go back again, as I had no money and no
friend in the world. When I first ran away I complained to Mr. ---- the
magistrate, and he was going to give me six weeks. He said it would do
me good; but Mr. ---- interfered, and I was let go. I don’t know what
he was going to give me six weeks for, unless it was for having a black
eye that my master had given me with the stirrup. Of the seven only
one served his time out. He let me off two years before my time was
up, as we couldn’t agree. The mischief of taking so many apprentices
is this:--The master gets money with them from the parish, and can
feed them much as he likes as to quality and quantity; and if they run
away soon, the master’s none the worse, for he’s got the money; and so
boys are sent out to turn vagrants when they run away, as such boys
have no friends. Of us seven boys (at the wages our employer got) one
could earn 19_s._, another 15_s._, another 12_s._, another 10_s._,
and the rest not less than 8_s._ each, for all worked sixteen hours
a day--that’s 4_l._ 8_s._ a week for the seven, or 225_l._ 10_s._ a
year. You must recollect I reckon this on nearly the best wages in
the women’s trade. My employer you may call a sweater, and he made
money fast, though he drank a good deal. We seldom saw him when he was
drunk; but he _did_ pitch into us when he was getting sober. Look how
easily such a man with apprentices can undersell others when he wants
to work as cheap as possible for the great slop warehouses. They serve
haberdashers so cheap that oft enough it’s starvation wages for the
same shops.”
Akin to the system of using a large number of apprentices is that of
_employing boys and girls_ to displace the work of men, at the less
laborious parts of the trade.
“It is probable,” said a working shoemaker to me, “that, independent
of apprentices, 200 additional hands are added to our already
over-burdened trade yearly. Sewing boys soon learn the use of the
knife. Plenty of poor men will offer to finish them for a pound and a
month’s work; and men, for a few shillings and a few weeks’ work, will
teach other boys to sew. There are many of the wives of chamber-masters
teach girls entirely to make children’s work for a pound and a few
months’ work, and there are many in Bethnal-green who have learnt the
business in this way. These teach some other members of their families,
and then actually set up in business in opposition to those who taught
them, and in cutting offer their work for sale at a much lower rate of
profit; and shopkeepers in town and country, having circulars sent to
solicit custom, will have their goods from a warehouse that will serve
them cheapest; then the warehouseman will have them cheap from the
manufacturer; and he in his turn cuts down the wages of the workpeople,
who fear to refuse offers at the warehouse price, knowing the low rate
at which chamber-masters will serve the warehouse.”
As in all trades where lowness of wages is the rule, the boy system of
labour prevails among the cheap cabinet-workers. It prevails, however,
among the garret-masters, by very many of them having one, two, three
or four youths to help them, and so the number of boys thus employed
through the whole trade is considerable. This refers principally to
the general cabinet trade. In the fancy trade the number is greater,
as the boys’ labour is more readily available; but in this trade the
greatest number of apprentices is employed by such warehousemen as
are manufacturers, as some at the East end are, or rather by the men
that they constantly keep at work. Of these men, one has now eight and
another fourteen boys in his service, some apprenticed, some merely
“engaged” and dischargeable at pleasure. A sharp boy, in six or eight
months, becomes “handy;” but four out of five of the workmen thus
brought up can do nothing well but their own particular branch, and
that only well as far as celerity in production is considered.
It is these boys who are put to make, or as a master of the better
class distinguished to me, not to _make_ but to put together, ladies’
work-boxes at 5_d._ a piece, the boy receiving 2-1/2_d._ a box.
‘Such boxes,’ said another workman, ‘are nailed together; there’s no
dove-tailing, nothing of what I call _work_, or workmanship, as you
say, about them, but the deal’s nailed together, and the veneer’s
dabbed on, and if the deal’s covered, why the thing passes. The worst
of it is, that people don’t understand either good work or good wood.
Polish them up and they look well. Besides--and that’s another bad
thing, for it encourages bad work--there’s no stress on a lady’s
work-box, as on a chair or a sofa, and so bad work lasts far too long,
though not half so long as good; in solids especially, if not in
veneers.’
To such a pitch is this demand for children’s labour carried, that
there is a market in Bethnal-green, where boys and girls stand twice
a week to be hired as binders and sewers. Hence it will be easily
understood that it is impossible for the skilled and grown artizan
to compete with the labour of mere children, who are thus literally
brought into the market to undersell him!
Concerning this market for boys and girls, in Bethnal-green, I
received, during my inquiries into the boot and shoe trade, the
following statements from shopkeepers on the spot:--
“Mr. H---- has lived there sixteen years. The market-days are Monday
and Tuesday mornings, from seven to nine. The ages of persons who
assemble there vary from ten to twenty, and they are often of the worst
character, and a decided nuisance to the inhabitants. A great many of
both sexes congregate together, and most market days there are three
females to one male. They consist of sewing boys, shoe-binders, winders
for weavers, and girls for all kinds of slop needlework, girls for
domestic work, nursing children, &c. No one can testify, for a fact,
that they (the females) are prostitutes; but, by their general conduct,
they are fit for anything. The market, some years since, was held
at the top of Abbey-street; but, on account of the nuisance, it was
removed to the other end of Abbey-street. When the schools were built,
the nuisance became so intolerable that it was removed to a railway
arch in White-street, Bethnal-green. There are two policemen on market
mornings to keep order, but my informant says they require four to
maintain anything like subjection.”
* * * * *
But _family work, or the conjoint labour of a workman’s wife and
children_, is an equally extensive cause of surplus and casual labour.
A small master, working, perhaps, upon goods to be supplied at the
lowest rates to wholesale warehousemen, will often contribute to this
result by the way in which he brings up his children. It is less
expensive to him to teach them his own business, and he may even reap
a profit from their labour, than to have them brought up to some
other calling. I met with an instance of this in an inquiry among the
toy-makers. A maker of common toys brought up five children to his own
trade, for boys and girls can be made useful in such labour at an early
age. His business fell off rapidly, which he attributed to the great
and numerous packages of cheap toys imported from Germany, Holland, and
France, after the lowering of the duty by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff.
The chief profit to the toy-maker was derived from the labour, as the
material was of trifling cost. He found, on the change in his trade,
that he could not employ all his family. His fellow tradesmen, he said,
were in the same predicament; and thus surplus hands were created, so
leading to casualty in labour.
“The system which has, I believe, the worst effect on the women’s trade
in the boot and shoe business throughout England is,” I said in the
_Morning Chronicle_, “chamber-mastering. There are between 300 and
400 chamber-masters. Commonly the man has a wife, and three or four
children, ten years old or upwards. The wife cuts out the work for
the binders, the husband does the knife-work, the children sew with
uncommon rapidity. The husband, when the work is finished at night,
goes out with it, though wet and cold, and perhaps hungry--his wife
and children waiting his return. He returns sometimes, having sold his
work at cost price, or not cleared 1_s._ 6_d._ for the day’s labour of
himself and family. In the winter, by this means, the shopkeepers and
warehouses can take the advantage of the chamber-master, buying the
work at their own price. By this means haberdashers’ shops are supplied
with boots, shoes, and slippers; they can sell women’s boots at 1_s._
9_d._ per pair; shoes, 1_s._ 3_d._ per pair; children’s, 6_d._, 8_d._,
and 9_d._ per pair, getting a good profit, having bought them of the
poor chamber-master for almost nothing, and he glad to sell them at any
price, late at night, his children wanting bread, and he having walked
about for hours, in vain trying to get a fair price for them; thus,
women and children labour as well as husbands and fathers, and, with
their combined labours, they only obtain a miserable living.”
The labour of the wife, and indeed the whole family--family work, as
it is called--is attended with the same evil to a trade, introducing
a large supply of fresh hands to the labour market, and so tending to
glut with workpeople each trade into which they are introduced, and
thus to increase the casual labour, and decrease the earnings of the
whole.
“The only means of escape from the inevitable poverty,” I said in the
same letters, “which sooner or later overwhelms those in connection
with the cheap shoe trade, seems to the workmen to be by the employment
of his whole family as soon as his children are able to be put to the
trade--and yet this only increases the very depression that he seeks to
avoid. I give the statement of such a man residing in the suburbs of
London, and working with three girls to help him:--
“‘I have known the business,’ he said, ‘many years, but was not brought
up to it. I took it up because my wife’s father was in the trade, and
taught me. I was a weaver originally, but it is a bad business, and I
have been in this trade seventeen years. Then I had only my wife and
myself able to work. At that time my wife and I, by hard work, could
earn 1_l._ a week; on the same work we could not now earn 12_s._ a
week. As soon as the children grew old enough the falling off in the
wages compelled us to put them to work one by one--as soon as a child
could make threads. One began to do that between eight and nine. I have
had a large family, and with very hard work too. We have had to lie
on straw oft enough. Now, three daughters, my wife, and myself work
together, in chamber-mastering; the whole of us may earn, one week with
another, 28_s._ a week, and out of that I have eight to support. Out of
that 28_s._ I have to pay for grindery and candles, which cost me 1_s._
a week the year through. I now make children’s shoes for the wholesale
houses and anybody. About two years ago I travelled from Thomas-street,
Bethnal-green, to Oxford-street, “on the hawk.” I then positively had
nothing in my inside, and in Holborn I had to lean against a house,
through weakness from hunger. I was compelled, as I could sell nothing
at that end of the town, to walk down to Whitechapel at ten at night.
I went into a shop near Mile-end turnpike, and the same articles
(children’s patent leather shoes) that I received 8_s._ a dozen for
from the wholesale houses, I was compelled to sell to the shopkeeper
for 6_s._ 6_d._ This is a very frequent case--very frequent--with
persons circumstanced as I am, and so trade is injured and only some
hard man gains by it.’”
Here is the statement of a worker at “fancy cabinet” work on the same
subject:--
“The most on us has got large families. We put the children to work as
soon as we can. My little girl began about six, but about eight or nine
is the usual age.” _“Oh, poor little things,” said the wife, “they are
obliged to begin the very minute they can use their fingers at all.”_
“The most of the cabinet-makers of the East end have from five to six
in family, and they are generally all at work for them. The small
masters mostly marry when they are turned of 20. You see our trade’s
coming to such a pass, that unless a man has children to help him he
can’t live at all. _I’ve worked more than a month together, and the
longest night’s rest I’ve had has been an hour and a quarter; aye, and
I’ve been up three nights a week besides._ I’ve had my children lying
ill, and been obliged to wait on them into the bargain. You see, we
couldn’t live if it wasn’t for the labour of our children, though it
makes ’em--poor little things!--old people long afore they are growed
up.”
“Why, I stood at this bench,” said the wife, “with my child, only ten
years of age, from four o’clock on Friday morning till ten minutes
past seven in the evening, without a bit to eat or drink. I never sat
down a minute from the time I began till I finished my work, and then
I went out to sell what I had done. I walked all the way from here
[Shoreditch] down to the Lowther Arcade, to get rid of the articles.”
_Here she burst out in a violent flood of tears, saying, “Oh, sir, it
is hard to be obliged to labour from morning till night as we do, all
of us, little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by it either.”_
“And you see the worst of it is, this here children’s labour is of such
value now in our trade, that there’s more brought into the business
every year, so that it’s really for all the world _like breeding
slaves_. Without my children I don’t know how we should be able to get
along.” “There’s that little thing,” said the man, pointing to the girl
ten years of age before alluded to, as she sat at the edge of the bed,
“why she works regularly every day from six in the morning till ten at
night. She never goes to school. We can’t spare her. There’s schools
enough about here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep
her without working. If I’d ten more children I should be obliged to
employ them all the same way, and there’s hundreds and thousands of
children now slaving at this business. There’s the M----’s; they have
a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of all works at the
bench; and the oldest ain’t fourteen. I’m sure, of the 2500 small
masters in the cabinet line, you may safely say that 2000 of them, at
the very least, has from five to six in family, _and that’s upwards of_
12,000 _children that’s been put to the trade since prices has come
down_. Twenty years ago I don’t think there was a child at work in our
business; and I am sure there is not a small master now whose whole
family doesn’t assist him. But what I want to know is, what’s to become
of the 12,000 children when they’re growed up, and come regular into
the trade? Here are all my young ones growing up without being taught
anything but a business that I know they must starve at.”
In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case of
sickness, “Oh, bless you,” he said, “there’s nothing but the parish
for us. I _did_ belong to a Benefit Society about four years ago, but
I couldn’t keep up my payments any longer. I was in the society above
five-and-twenty year, and then was obliged to leave it after all. I
don’t know of one as belongs to any Friendly Society, and I don’t think
there is a man as can afford it in our trade now. They must all go to
the workhouse when they’re sick or old.”
The following is from a journeyman tailor, concerning the employment of
women in his trade:--
“When I first began working at this branch, there were but very few
females employed in it: a few white waistcoats were given out to
them, under the idea that women would make them cleaner than men--and
so indeed they can. But since the last five years the sweaters have
employed females upon cloth, silk, and satin waistcoats as well, and
before that time the idea of a woman making a cloth waistcoat would
have been scouted. But since the increase of the puffing and the
sweating system, masters and sweaters have sought everywhere for such
hands as would do the work below the regular ones. Hence the wife has
been made to compete with the husband, and the daughter with the wife:
they all learn the waistcoat business, and must all get a living. If
the man will not reduce the price of his labour to that of the female,
why he must remain unemployed; and if the full-grown woman will not
take the work at the same price as the young girl, why she must remain
without any. The female hands, I can confidently state, have been
sought out and introduced to the business by the sweaters, from a
desire on their part continually to ferret out hands who will do the
work cheaper than others. The effect that this continual reduction has
had upon me is this: Before the year 1844 I could live comfortably,
and keep my wife and children (I had five in family) by my own labour.
My wife then attended to her domestic and family duties; but since
that time, owing to the reduction in prices, she has been compelled
to resort to her needle, as well as myself, for her living.” [On the
table was a bundle of crape and bombazine ready to be made up into
a dress.] “I cannot afford now to let her remain idle--that is, if I
wish to live, and keep my children out of the streets, and pay my way.
My wife’s earnings are, upon an average, 8_s._ per week. She makes
dresses. I never would teach her to make waistcoats, because I knew
the introduction of female hands had been the ruin of my trade. With
the labour of myself and wife now I can only earn 32_s._ a week, and
six years ago I could make my 36_s._ If I had a daughter I should be
obliged to make her work as well, and then probably, with the labour
of the three of us, we could make up at the week’s end as much money,
as, up to 1844, I could get by my own single hands. My wife, since she
took to dressmaking, has become sickly from over-exertion. Her work,
and her domestic and family duties altogether, are too much for her.
Last night I was up all night with her, and was compelled to call in a
female to attend her as well. The over-exertion now necessary for us to
maintain a decent appearance, has so ruined her constitution that she
is not the same woman as she was. In fact, ill as she is, she has been
compelled to rise from her bed to finish a mourning-dress against time,
and I myself have been obliged to give her a helping-hand, and turn to
at women’s work in the same manner as the women are turning to at men’s
work.”
“The cause of the serious decrease in our trade,” said another tailor
to me, “is the employment given to workmen at their own homes; or, in
other words, to the ‘sweaters.’ The sweater is the greatest evil to
us; as the sweating system increases the number of hands to an almost
incredible extent--wives, sons, daughters, and extra women, all working
‘long days’--that is, labouring from sixteen to eighteen hours per day,
and Sundays as well. I date the decrease in the wages of the workman
from the introduction of piece-work and giving out garments to be made
off the premises of the master; for the effect of this was, that the
workman making the garment, knowing that the master could not tell
whom he got to do his work for him, employed women and children to
help him, and paid them little or nothing for their labour. This was
the beginning of the sweating system. The workmen gradually became
transformed from journeymen into ‘middlemen,’ living by the labour of
others. Employers soon began to find that they could get garments made
at a less sum than the regular price, and those tradesmen who were
anxious to force their trade, by underselling their more honourable
neighbours, readily availed themselves of this means of obtaining cheap
labour. The consequence was, that the sweater sought out where he could
get the work done the cheapest, and so introduced a fresh stock of
hands into the trade. Female labour, of course, could be had cheaper
than male, and the sweater readily availed himself of the services of
women on that account. Hence the males who had formerly been employed
upon the garments were thrown out of work by the females, and obliged
to remain unemployed, unless they would reduce the price of their work
to that of the women. It cannot, therefore, be said that the reduction
of prices originally arose from there having been more workmen than
there was work for them to do. There was no superabundance of hands
until female labour was generally introduced--and even if the workmen
had increased 25 per cent. more than what they were twenty years back,
still that extra number of hands would be required now to make the
same number of garments, owing to the work put into each article being
at least one-fourth more than formerly. So far from the trade being
over-stocked with male hands, if the work were confined to the men or
the masters’ premises, there would not be sufficient hands to do the
whole.”
According to the last Census (1841, G.B.), out of a population of
18,720,000 the proportions of the people occupied and unoccupied were
as follows:--
Occupied 7,800,000
Unoccupied (including women and children) 10,920,000