The casual labour of so large a body of men as the rubbish-carters is a
question of high importance, for it affects the whole unskilled labour
market. And this is one of the circumstances distinguishing unskilled
from skilled labour. Unemployed cabinet-makers, for instance, do not
apply for work to a tailor; so that, with skilled labourers, only one
trade is affected in the slack season by the scarcity of employment
among its operatives. With unskilled labourers it is otherwise. If in
the course of next week 100 rubbish-carters were from any cause to be
thrown out of employment, and found an impossibility to obtain work at
rubbish-carting, there would be 100 fresh applicants for employment
among the bricklayer’s-labourers, scavagers, nightmen, sewermen,
dock-workers, lumpers, &c. Many of the 100 thus unemployed would, of
course, be willing to work at reduced wages merely that they might
subsist; and thus the hands employed by the regular and “honourable”
part of those trades are exposed to the risk of being underworked,
as regards wages, from the surplusage of labour in other unskilled
occupations.
The employment of the rubbish-carters depends, in the first
instance, upon the _season_. The services of the men are called into
requisition when houses are being built or removed. In the one case,
the rubbish-carters cart away the refuse earth; in the other they
remove the old materials. The _brisk season_ for the builders, and
consequently for the rubbish-carters, is, as I heard several of them
express it, “when days are long.” From about the middle of April to the
middle of October is the _brisk_ season of the rubbish-carters, for
during those six months more buildings are erected than in the winter
half of the year. There is an advantage in fine weather in the masonry
becoming _set_; and efforts are generally made to complete at least the
carcase of a house before the end of October, at the latest.
I am informed that the difference in the employment of labourers
about buildings is 30 per cent.--one builder estimated it at 50 per
cent.--less in winter than in summer, from the circumstance of fewer
buildings being then in the course of erection. It may be thought
that, as rubbish-carters are employed frequently on the foundation of
buildings, their business would not be greatly affected by the season
or the weather. But the work is often more difficult in wet weather,
the ground being heavier, so that a smaller extent of work only can
be accomplished, compared to what can be done in fine weather; and an
employer may decline to pay six days’ wages for work in winter, which
he might get done in five days in summer. If the men work by the piece
or the load the result is the same; the rubbish-carter’s employer has a
smaller return, for there is less work to be charged to the customer,
while the cost in keeping the horses is the same.
Thus it appears that under the most favourable circumstances about
_one-fourth_ of the rubbish-carters, even in the honourable trade, may
be exposed to the evils of non-employment merely from the state of the
weather influencing, more or less, the custom of the trade, and this
even during _the_ six months’ employment out of the year; after which
the men must find some other means of earning a livelihood.
There are, in round numbers, 850 operative rubbish-carters employed
in the brisk season throughout the metropolis; hence 212 men, at this
calculation, would be regularly deprived of work every year for six
months out of the twelve. It will be seen, however, on reference to
the table here given, that the average number of weeks each of the
rubbish-carters is employed throughout the twelve months is far below
26; indeed many have but three and four weeks work out of the 52.
By an analysis of the returns I have collected on this subject I find
the following to have been the actual term of employment for the
several rubbish-carters in the course of last year:--
Employment in the
Men. Year.
9 had 39 weeks, or 9 months.
214 „ 26 „ 6 „
4 „ 20 „ 5 „
10 „ 18 „
28 „ 16 „ 4 „
8 „ 14 „
353 „ 13 „ 3 „
4 „ 12 „
34 „ 10 „
29 „ 9 „
38 „ 8 „ 2 „
38 „ 6 „
27 „ 5 „
45 „ 4 „ 1 „
15 „ 3 „
---
856
Hence about one-fourth of the trade appear to have been employed for
six months, while upwards of one-half had work for only three months
or less throughout the year--many being at work only three days in the
week during that time.
The rubbish-carter is exposed to another casualty over which he can no
more exercise control than he can over the weather; I mean to what is
generally called _speculation_, or a rage for building. This is evoked
by the state of the money market, and other causes upon which I need
not dilate; but the effect of it upon the labourers I am describing is
this: capitalists may in one year embark sufficient means in building
speculations to erect, say 500 new houses, in any particular district.
In the following year they may not erect more than 200 (if any), and
thus, as there is the same extent of unskilled labour in the market,
the number of hands required is, if the trade be generally less
speculative, less in one year than in its predecessor by the number of
rubbish-carters required to work at the foundations of 300 houses. Such
a cause may be exceptional; but during the last ten years the inhabited
houses in the five districts of the Registrar-General have increased
to the extent of 45,000, or from 262,737 in 1841, to 307,722 in 1851.
It appears, then, that the annual increase of our metropolitan houses,
concluding that they increase in a regular yearly ratio, is 4500. Last
year, however, as I am informed by an experienced builder, there were
rather fewer buildings erected (he spoke only from his own observations
and personal knowledge of the business) than the yearly average of the
decennial term.
The casual and constant wages of the rubbish-carters may be thus
detailed. The whole system of the labour, I may again state, must be
regarded as _casual_, or--as the word imports in its derivation from
the Latin _casus_, a chance--the labour of men who are occasionally
employed. Some of the most respectable and industrious rubbish-carters
with whom I met, told me they generally might make up their minds,
though they might have excellent masters, to be six months of the year
unemployed at rubbish-carting; this, too, is less than the average of
this chance employment.
Calculating, then, the rubbish-carter’s receipt of _nominal wages_ at
18_s._, and his _actual wages_ at 20_s._ in the honourable trade, I
find the following amount to be paid.
By nominal wages, I have before explained, I mean what a man is _said_
to receive, or has been _promised_ that he shall be paid weekly. Actual
wages, on the other hand, are what a man positively _receives_, there
being sometimes additions in the form of perquisites or allowances;
sometimes deductions in the way of fines and stoppages; the additions
in the rubbish-carting trade appear to average about 2_s._ a week.
But these _actual wages_ are received only so long as the men are
employed, that is to say, they are the _casual_ rather than the
_constant_ earnings of the men working at a trade, which is essentially
of an occasional or temporary character; the average employment at
rubbish-carting being only three months in the year.
Let us see, therefore, what would be the constant earnings or income of
the men working at the better-paid portion of the trade.
£ _s._ _d._
The gross actual wages of ten
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 39 weeks, at 20_s._ per week,
amount to 390 0 0
The gross actual wages of 250
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 26 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 6500 0 0
The gross actual wages of 360
rubbish-carters, casually employed
for 13 weeks, at 20_s._ per week 4600 0 0
------------
Total gross actual wages of 620
of the better-paid rubbish-carters 11,490 0 0
But this, as I said before, represents only the _casual_ wages of the
better-paid operatives--that is to say, it shows the amount of money
or money’s worth that is positively received by the men while they are
in employment. To understand what are the _constant_ wages of these
men, we must divide their gross casual earnings by 52, the number of
weeks in the year: thus we find that the constant wages of the ten
men who were employed for 39 weeks, were 15_s._ instead of 20_s._ per
week--that is to say, their wages, equally divided throughout the year,
would have yielded that constant weekly income. By the same reasoning,
the 20_s._ per week casual wages of the 250 men employed for 26 weeks
out of the 52, were equal to only 10_s._ constant weekly wages; and so
the 360 men, who had 20_s._ per week casually for only three months
in the year, had but 5_s._ a week _constantly_ throughout the whole
year. Hence we see the enormous difference there may be between a man’s
casual and his constant earnings at a given trade.
The next question that forces itself on the mind is, how do the
rubbish-carters live when no longer employed at this kind of work?
When the slack season among rubbish-carters commences, nearly one-fifth
of the operatives are discharged. These take to scavaging or dustman’s
work, as well as that of navigators, or, indeed, any form of unskilled
labour, some obtaining full employ, but the greater part being able
to “get a job only now and then.” Those masters who keep their men
on throughout the year are some of them large dust contractors, some
carmen, some dairymen, and (in one or two instances in the suburbs, as
at Hackney) small farmers. The dust-contractors and carmen, who are by
far the more numerous, find employment for the men employed by them
as rubbish-carters in the season, either at the dust-yard or carrying
sand, or, indeed, carting any materials they may have to move--the
wages to the men remaining the same; indeed such is the transient
character of the rubbish-carting trade, that there are no masters or
operatives who devote themselves solely to the business.