Engaged in productive employments[42] 5,350,000
Engaged in non-productive employments 2,450,000
Of those who were engaged in productive employments, the proportion (in
round numbers) ran as follows:--
Men 3,785,000
Women 660,000
Boys and girls 905,000
Here, then, we find nearly one-fifth, or 20 per cent., of our producers
to be boys and girls, and upwards of 10 per cent. to be women. Such
was the state of things in 1841. In order to judge of the possible
and probable condition of the labour market of the country, if this
introduction of women and children into the ranks of the labourers be
persisted in, let us see what were the proportions of the 10,920,000
men, women, and children who ten years ago still remained unoccupied
among us. The ratio was as follows:--
Men 275,000
Women 3,570,000
Boys and girls 7,075,000
Here the unoccupied men are about 5 per cent. of the whole, the
children nearly two-thirds, and the wives about one-third. Now it
appears that out of say 19,000,000 people, 8,000,000 were, in 1841,
occupied, and by far the greater number, 11,000,000, unoccupied.
Who were the remaining eleven millions, and what were they doing? They,
of course, consisted principally of the unemployed wives and children
of the eight millions of people before specified, three millions and a
half of the number being females of twenty years of age and upwards,
and seven millions being children of both sexes under twenty. Of these
children, four millions, according to the “age abstract,” were under
ten years, so that we may fairly assume that, at the time of taking
the last census, _there were very nearly seven millions of wives and
children of a workable age still unoccupied_. Let us suppose, then,
that these seven millions of people are brought in competition with the
five million producers. What is to be the consequence? If the labour
market be overstocked at present with only five millions of people
working for the support of nineteen millions (I speak according to the
Census of 1841), what would it be if another seven millions were to be
dragged into it? And if wages are low now, and employment is precarious
on account of this, what will not both work and pay sink to when the
number is again increased, and the people clamouring for employment are
at least treble what they are at present? When the wife has been taught
to compete for work with the husband, and son and daughter to undersell
their own father, what will be the state of our labour market then?
* * * * *
But the labour of wives, and children, and apprentices, is not the
only means of glutting a particular trade with hands. There is another
system becoming every day more popular with our enterprising tradesmen,
and this is the _importation of foreign labourers_. In the cheap
tailoring this is made a regular practice. Cheap labour is regularly
imported, not only from Ireland (the wives of sweaters making visits
to the Emerald Isle for the express purpose), but small armies of
working tailors, ready to receive the lowest pittance, are continually
being shipped into this country. That this is no exaggeration let the
following statement prove:--
“I am a native of Pesth, having left Hungary about eight years ago.
By the custom of the country I was compelled to travel three years in
foreign parts, before I could settle in my native place. I went to
Paris, after travelling about in the different countries of Germany.
I stayed in Paris about two years. My father’s wish was that I should
visit England, and I came to London in June, 1847. I first worked for
a West end show shop--not _directly_ for them--but through the person
who is their middleman getting work done at what rates he could for the
firm, and obtaining the prices they allowed for making the garments.
I once worked four days and a half for him, finding my own trimmings,
&c., for 9_s._ For this my employer would receive 12_s._ 6_d._ He then
employed 190 hands; he _has_ employed 300. Many of those so employed
set their wives, children, and others to work, some employing as many
as five hands this way. The middleman keeps his carriage, and will give
fifty guineas for a horse. I became unable to work from a pain in my
back, from long sitting at my occupation. The doctor told me not to sit
much, and so, as a countryman of mine was doing the same, I employed
hands, making the best I could of their labour. I have now four young
women (all Irish girls) so employed. Last week one of them received
4_s._, another 4_s._ 2_d._, the other two 5_s._ each. They find their
board and lodging, but I find them a place to work in, a small room,
the rent of which I share with another tailor, who works on his own
account. There are not so many Jews come over from Hungary or Germany
as from Poland. The law of travelling three years brings over many,
but not more than it did. The revolutions have brought numbers this
year and last. They are Jew tailors flying from Russian and Prussian
Poland to avoid the conscription. I never knew any of these Jews go
back again. _There is a constant communication among the Jews, and
when their friends in Poland, and other places, learn they are safe in
England, and in work and out of trouble, they come over too. I worked
as a journeyman in Pesth, and got_ 2_s._ 6_d. a week, my board and
washing, and lodging, for my labour._ We lived well, everything being
so cheap. The Jews come in the greatest number about Easter. They try
to work their way here, most of them. Some save money here, but they
never go back; if they leave England it is to go to America.”
* * * * *
The labour market of a particular place, however, comes to be
overstocked with hands, not only from the introduction of an inordinate
number of apprentices and women and children into the trade, as well
as the importation of workmen from abroad, but the same effect is
produced by _the migration of country labourers to towns_. This,
as I have before said, is specially the case in the printer’s and
carpenter’s trades, where the cheap provincial work is executed chiefly
by apprentices, who, when their time is up, flock to the principal
towns, in the hopes of getting better wages than can be obtained in
the country, owing to the prevalence of the apprentice system of work
in those parts. The London carpenters suffer greatly from what are
called “improvers,” who come up to town to get perfected in their art,
and work for little or no wages. The work of some of the large houses
is executed mainly in this way; that of Mr. Myers was, for instance,
against whom the men lately struck.
But the unskilled labour of towns suffers far more than the skilled
from the above cause.
The employment of unskilled labourers in towns is being constantly
rendered more casual by the migrations from the country parts.
The peasants, owing to the insufficiency of their wages, and the
wretchedness of their dwellings and diet, in Wilts, Somerset, Dorset,
and elsewhere, leave their native places without regret, and swell
the sum of unskilled labour in towns. This is shown by the increase
of population far beyond the excess of births over deaths in those
counties where there are large manufacturing or commercial towns;
whilst in purely agricultural counties the increase of population
does not keep pace with the excess of births. “Thus in Lancashire,”
writes Mr. Thornton, in his work on Over-Population, “the increase of
the population in the ten years ending in 1841, was 330,210, and in
Cheshire, 60,919; whilst the excess of births was only 150,150 in the
former, and 28,000 in the latter. In particular towns the contrast
is still more striking. In Liverpool and Bristol the annual deaths
actually exceed the births, so that these towns are only saved from
depopulation by their rural recruits, yet the first increased the
number of its inhabitants in ten years by more than one-third, and
the other by more than one-sixth. In Manchester, the annual excess of
births could only have added 19,390 to the population between 1831
and 1841; the actual increase was 68,375. The number of emigrants
(immigrants) into Birmingham, during the same period, may, in the same
way, be estimated at 40,000; into Leeds, at 8000; into the metropolis,
at 130,000. On the other hand, in Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, the
actual addition to the population, in the same decennial period, was
only 15,491, 31,802, and 39,253 respectively; although the excess of
births over deaths in the same counties was about 20,000, 38,600, and
48,700.”
The unskilled labour market suffers, again, from the depression of
almost any branch of skilled labour; for whatever branch of labour be
depressed, and men so be deprived of a sufficiency of employment, one
especial result ensues--the unskilled labour market is glutted. The
skilled labourer, a tailor, for instance, may be driven to work for the
wretched pittance of an East end slop-tailor, but he cannot “turn his
hand” to any other description of skilled labour. He cannot say, “I
will make billiard-tables, or book-cases, or boots, or razors;” so that
there is no resource for him but in unskilled labour. The Spitalfields
weavers have often sought dock labour; the turners of the same
locality, whose bobbins were once in great demand by the silk-winders,
and for the fringes of upholsterers, have done the same; and in this
way the increase of casual labour increases the poverty of the poor,
and so tends directly to the increase of pauperism.
* * * * *
We have now seen what a vast number of surplus labourers may be
produced by an extension of time, rate, or mode of working, as well as
by the increase of the hands, by other means than by _the increase of
the people themselves_. If, however, we are increasing our workers at
a greater rate than we are increasing the means of work, the excess of
workmen must, of course, remain unemployed. But are we doing this?
Let us test the matter on the surest data. In the first instance let us
estimate the increase of population, both according to the calculations
of the late Mr. Rickman and the returns of the several censuses. The
first census, I may observe, was taken in 1801, and has been regularly
continued at intervals of ten years. The table first given refers to
the population of England and Wales:--