Having now pointed out the causes of casual labour, I proceed to set
forth its effects.
All casual labour, as I have said, is necessarily _uncertain_
labour; and wherever uncertainty exists, there can be no foresight
or pro-vidence. Had the succession of events in nature been
irregular,--had it been ordained by the Creator that similar causes
under similar circumstances should _not_ be attended with similar
effects,--it would have been impossible for us to have had any
knowledge of the future, or to have made any preparations concerning
it. Had the seasons followed each other fitfully,--had the sequences
in the external world been variable instead of invariable, and what
are now termed “constants” from the regularity of their succession
been changed into inconstants,--what provision could even the most
prudent of us have made? Where all was dark and unstable, we could
only have guessed instead of reasoned as to what was to come; and who
would have deprived himself of present enjoyments to avoid future
privations, which could appear neither probable nor even possible
to him? Pro-vidence, therefore, is simply the result of certainty,
and whatever tends to increase our faith in the uniform sequences
of outward events, as well as our reliance on the means we have of
avoiding the evils connected with them, necessarily tends to make us
more prudent. Where the means of sustenance and comfort are fixed, the
human being becomes conscious of what he has to depend upon; and if he
feel _assured_ that such means may fail him in old age or in sickness,
and be fully impressed with the _certainty_ of suffering from either,
he will immediately proceed to make some provision against the time of
adversity or infirmity. If, however, his means be _uncertain_--abundant
at one time, and deficient at another--a spirit of speculation or
gambling with the future will be induced, and the individual get to
believe in “luck” and “fate” as the arbiters of his happiness rather
than to look upon himself as “the architect of his fortunes”--trusting
to “chance” rather than his own powers and foresight to relieve him
at the hour of necessity. The same result will necessarily ensue if,
from defective reasoning powers, the ordinary course of nature be not
sufficiently apparent to him, or if, being in good health, he grow too
confident upon its continuance, and, either from this or other causes,
is led to believe that death will overtake him before his powers of
self-support decay.
The ordinary effects of uncertain labour, then, are to drive the
labourers to improvidence, recklessness, and pauperism.
Even in the classes which we do not rank among labourers, as, for
instance, authors, artists, musicians, actors, uncertainty or
irregularity of employment and remuneration produces a spirit of
wastefulness and carelessness. The steady and daily accruing gains of
trade and of some of the professions form a certain and staple income;
while in other professions, where a large sum may be realized at one
time, and then no money be earned until after an interval, incomings
are rapidly spent, and the interval is one of suffering. This is part
of the very nature, the very essence, of the casualty of employment
and the delay of remuneration. The past privation gives a zest to
the present enjoyment; while the present enjoyment renders the past
privation faint as a remembrance and unimpressive as a warning. “Want
of providence,” writes Mr. Porter, “on the part of those who live by
the labour of their hands, and whose employments so often depend upon
circumstances beyond their control, is a theme which is constantly
brought forward by many whose lot in life has been cast beyond the
reach of want. It is, indeed, greatly to be wished, for their own
sakes, that the habit were general among the labouring classes of
saving some part of their wages when fully employed, against less
prosperous times; but it is difficult for those who are placed in
circumstances of ease to _estimate the amount of virtue that is implied
in this self-denial_. It must be a hard trial for one who has recently,
perhaps, seen his family enduring want, to deny them the small amount
of indulgences, which are, at the best of times, placed within their
reach.”
It is easy enough for men in smooth circumstances to say, “the
privation is a man’s own fault, since, to avoid it, he has but to
apportion the sum he may receive in a lump over the interval of
non-recompense which he knows will follow.” Such a course as this,
experience and human nature have shown not to be easy--perhaps, with
a few exceptions, not to be possible. It is the starving and not the
well-fed man that is in danger of surfeiting himself. When pestilence
or revolution are rendering life and property _casualties_ in a
country, the same spirit of improvident recklessness breaks forth. In
London, on the last visitation of the plague, in the reign of Charles
II., a sort of Plague Club indulged in the wildest excesses in the
very heart of the pestilence. To these orgies no one was admitted who
had not been bereft of some relative by the pest. In Paris, during the
reign of terror in the first revolution, the famous Guillotine Club
was composed of none but those who had lost some near relative by the
guillotine. When they met for their half-frantic revels every one wore
some symbol of death: breast pins in the form of guillotines, rings
with death’s-heads, and such like. The duration of their own lives
these Guillotine Clubbists knew to be uncertain, not merely in the
ordinary uncertainty of nature, but from the character of the times;
and this feeling of the jeopardy of existence, from the practice of
violence and bloodshed, wrought the effects I have described. Life
was more than naturally casual. When the famine was at the worst in
Ireland, it was remarked in the _Cork Examiner_, that in that city
there never had been seen more street “larking” or street gambling
among the poor lads and young men who were really starving. This was a
natural result of the casualty of labour and the consequent casualty of
food. Persons, it should be remembered, do not insure houses or shops
that are “doubly or trebly hazardous;” they gamble on the uncertainty.
Mr. Porter, in his “Progress of the Nation,” cites a fact bearing
immediately upon the present subject.
“The formation of a canal, which has been in progress during the last
five years, in the north of Ireland (this was written in 1847), has
afforded steady employment to a portion of the peasantry, who before
that time were suffering all the evils, so common in that country,
which result from the precariousness of employment. Such work as they
could previously get came at uncertain intervals, and was sought
by so many competitors, that the remuneration was of the scantiest
amount. In this condition of things the men were improvident, to
recklessness; their wages, insufficient for the comfortable sustenance
of their families, were wasted in procuring for themselves a temporary
forgetfulness of their misery at the whiskey-shop, and the men
appeared to be sunk into a state of hopeless degradation. From the
moment, however, that work was offered to them which was _constant in
its nature and certain in its duration_, and on which their weekly
earnings would be sufficient to provide for their comfortable support,
_men who had been idle and dissolute were converted into sober
hard-working labourers, and proved themselves kind and careful husbands
and fathers_; and it is stated as a fact, that, notwithstanding the
distribution of several hundred pounds weekly in wages, the whole of
which must be considered as so much additional money placed in their
hands, the consumption of whiskey was absolutely and _permanently_
diminished in the district. During the comparatively short period in
which the construction of this canal was in progress, some of the most
careful labourers--men who most probably before then never knew what it
was to possess five shillings at any one time--saved sufficient money
to enable them to emigrate to Canada.”
There can hardly be a stronger illustration of the blessing of constant
and the curse of casual labour. We have competence and frugality as the
results of one system; poverty and extravagance as the results of the
other; and among the very same individuals.
In the evidence given by Mr. Galloway, the engineer, before a
parliamentary committee, he remarks, that “when employers are competent
to show their men that their business is _steady and certain_, and when
men find that they are likely to have _permanent_ employment, they have
always _better habits and more settled notions_, which will make them
_better men_ and _better workmen_, and will produce great benefits to
all who are interested in their employment.”
Moreover, even if payment be assured to a working man regularly, _but
deferred for long intervals_, so as to make the returns lose all
appearance of regularity, he will rarely be found able to resist the
temptation of a tavern, and, perhaps, a long-continued carouse, or of
some other extravagance to his taste, when he receives a month’s dues
at once. I give an instance of this in the following statement:--
For some years after the peace of 1815 the staffs of the militias were
kept up, but not in any active service. During the war the militias
performed what are now the functions of the regular troops in the three
kingdoms, their stations being changed more frequently than those of
any of the regular regiments at the present day. Indeed, they only
differed from the “regulars” in name. There was the same military
discipline, and the sole difference was, that the militia-men--who
were balloted for periodically--could not, by the laws regulating
their embodiment, be sent out of the United Kingdom for purposes of
warfare. The militias were embodied for twenty-eight days’ training,
once in four years (seldom less) after the peace, and the staff acted
as the drill sergeants. They were usually steady, orderly men, working
at their respective crafts when not on duty after the militia’s
disembodiment, and some who had not been brought up to any handicraft
turned out--perhaps from their military habits of early rising and
orderliness--very good gardeners, both on their own account and as
assistants in gentlemen’s grounds. No few of them saved money. Yet
these men, with very few exceptions, when they received a month’s pay,
fooled away a part of it in tippling and idleness, to which they were
not at all addicted when attending regularly to their work with its
regular returns. If they got into any trouble in consequence of their
carousing, it was looked upon as a sort of legitimate excuse, “Why you
see, sir, it was the 24th” (the 24th of each month being the pension
day).
The thoughtless extravagance of sailors when, on their return to port,
they receive in one sum the wages they have earned by severe toil
amidst storms and dangers during a long voyage, I need not speak of; it
is a thing well known.
These soldiers and seamen cannot be said to have been _casually_
employed, but the results were the same as if they had been so
employed; the money came to them in a lump at so long an interval as to
appear uncertain, and was consequently squandered.
I may cite the following example as to the effects of uncertain
earnings upon the household outlay of labourers who suffer from the
casualties of employment induced by the season of the year. “In the
long fine days of summer, the little daughter of a working brickmaker,”
I was told, “used to order chops and other choice dainties of a
butcher, saying, ‘Please, sir, father don’t care for the price just
a-now; but he must have his chops good; line-chops, sir, and tender,
please--’cause he’s a brickmaker.’ In the winter, it was, ‘O please,
sir, here’s a fourpenny bit, and you must send father something cheap.
He don’t care what it is, so long as it’s cheap. It’s winter, and he
hasn’t no work, sir--’cause he’s a brickmaker.’”
I have spoken of the tendency of casual labour to induce intemperate
habits. In confirmation of this I am enabled to give the following
account as to the increase of the sale of malt liquor in the metropolis
_consequent upon wet weather_. The account is derived from the personal
observations of a gentleman long familiar with the brewing trade, in
connection with one of the largest houses. In short, I may state that
the account is given on the very best authority.
There are _nine_ large brewers in London; of these the two firms
transacting the greatest extent of business supply, daily, 1000 barrels
each firm to their customers; the seven others, among them, dispose,
altogether, of 3000 barrels daily. All these 5000 barrels a day are
solely for town consumption; and this may be said to be the _average_
supply the year through, but the public-house sale is far from regular.
After a wet day the sale of malt liquor, principally beer (porter), to
the metropolitan retailers is from 500 to 1000 barrels more than when
a wet day has not occurred; that is to say, the supply increases from
5000 barrels to 5500 and 6000. Such of the publicans as keep small
stocks go the next day to their brewers to order a further supply;
those who have better-furnished cellars may not go for two or three
days after, but the result is the same.
The reason for this increased consumption is obvious; when the weather
prevents workmen from prosecuting their respective callings in the
open air, they have recourse to drinking, to pass away the idle time.
Any one who has made himself familiar with the habits of the working
classes has often found them crowding a public-house during a hard
rain, especially in the neighbourhood of new buildings, or any public
open-air work. The street-sellers, themselves prevented from plying
their trades outside, are busy in such times in the “publics,” offering
for sale braces, belts, hose, tobacco-boxes, nuts of different kinds,
apples, &c. A bargain may then be struck for so much and a half-pint of
beer, and so the consumption is augmented by the trade in other matters.
Now, taking 750 barrels as the average of the extra sale of beer in
consequence of wet weather, we have a consumption beyond the demands
of the ordinary trade in malt liquor of 27,000 gallons, or 216,000
pints. This, at 2_d._ a pint, is 3000_l._ for a day’s needless, and
often prejudicial, outlay caused by the casualty of the weather and
the consequent casualty of labour. A censor of morals might say that
these men should go home under such circumstances; but their homes may
be at a distance, and may present no great attractions; the single men
among them may have no homes, merely sleeping-places; and even the more
prudent may think it advisable to wait awhile under shelter in hopes
of the weather improving, so that they could resume their labour, and
only an hour or so be deducted from their wages. Besides, there is the
attraction to the labourer of the warmth, discussion, freedom, and
excitement of the public-house.
That the great bulk of the consumers of this _additional_ beer are
of the classes I have mentioned is, I think, plain enough, from the
increase being experienced only in that beverage, the consumption of
gin being little affected by the same means. Indeed, the statistics
showing the ratio of beer and gin-drinking are curious enough (were
this the place to enter into them), the most gin, as a general rule,
being consumed in the most depressed years.
“It is a fact worth notice,” said a statistical journal, entitled
“Facts and Figures,” published in 1841, “as illustrative of the
_tendency of the times of pressure to increase spirit drinking_, that
whilst under the privations of last year (1840) the poorer classes
paid 2,628,286_l._ tax for spirits; in 1836, a year of the greatest
prosperity, the tax on British spirits amounted only to 2,390,188_l._
_So true is it that to impoverish is to demoralise._”
The numbers who imbibe, in the course of a wet day, these 750 barrels,
cannot, of course, be ascertained, but the following calculations may
be presented. The class of men I have described rarely have spare
money, but if known to a landlord, they probably may obtain credit
until the Saturday night. Now, putting their _extra_ beer-drinking on
wet days--for on fine days there is generally a pint or more consumed
daily per working man--putting, I say, the _extra_ potations at a pot
(quart) each man, we find _one hundred and eight thousand_ consumers
(out of 2,000,000 people, or, discarding the women and children, not
1,000,000)! A number doubling, and trebling, and quadrupling the male
adult population of many a splendid continental city.
Of the data I have given, I may repeat, no doubt can be entertained;
nor, as it seems to me, can any doubt be entertained that the increased
consumption is directly attributable to the casualty of labour[55].