Set of four turned feet, beech-stained 1 6
--------
19 7
For the article when completed he received 25_s._, toiling at it for
27 or 28 hours. The tradesman from whom I derived this information,
and who was familiar with every branch of the trade, calculated that
three-fifths of the working cabinet-makers of London make for the
warehouses--in other words, that there are 3000 small masters in the
trade. The most moderate computation was that the number so employed
exceed one half of the entire body of the 5000 metropolitan journeymen.
The next point in this inquiry is concerning the industry and
productiveness of this class of workmen. Of over-work, as regards
excessive labour, and of over-production from scamped workmanship,
I heard the following accounts which different operatives, both in
the fancy and general cabinet trade concurred in giving, while some
represented the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour, and
some by two hours a day, than I have stated.
The labour of the men who depend entirely on the slaughter-houses for
the purchase of their articles, with all the disadvantages that I
described in a former letter, is usually seven days a week the year
through. That is seven days--for Sunday-work is all but universal--each
of 13 hours, or 91 hours in all, while the established hours of labour
in the honourable trade are six days of the week, each of 10 hours,
or 60 hours in all. Thus 50 per cent is added to the extent of the
production of low-priced cabinet work merely from over-hours, but in
some cases I heard of 15 hours for seven days in the week, or 105
hours in all. The exceptions to this continuous toil are from one to
three hours once or twice in the week, when the workman is engaged
in purchasing his material of a timber merchant, who sells it in
small quantities, and from six to eight hours when he is employed in
conveying his goods to a warehouse, or from warehouse to warehouse
for sale. Concerning the hours of labour I had the following minute
particulars from a garret-master who was a chairmaker.
“I work from 6 every morning to 9 at night--some work till 10--I
breakfast at 8, which stops me for 10 minutes. I can breakfast in
less time, but it’s a rest; my dinner takes me say 20 minutes at the
outside, and my tea 8 minutes. All the rest of the time I’m slaving
at my bench. How many minutes’ rest is that, sir? 38. Well, say
three-quarters of an hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when
I rest; but I can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and
eat in, or I should lose more time. Altogether I labour 14-1/4 hours
every day, and I must work on Sundays at least 40 Sundays in the year.
One may as well work as sit fretting. But on Sundays I only work till
it’s dusk, or till five or six in summer. When it’s dusk I take a walk;
I’m not well-dressed enough for a Sunday walk when its light, and I
can’t wear my apron very well on that day to hide patches. But there’s
eight hours that I reckon I take up every week in dancing about to the
slaughterers’. I’m satisfied that I work very nearly 100 hours a-week
the year through, deducting the time taken up by the slaughterers and
buying stuff--say eight hours a-week, it gives more than 90 hours
a-week for my work, and there’s hundreds labour as hard as I do just
for a crust.”
This excessive toil, however, is but one element of over-production.
Scamping adds at least 200 per cent to the productions of the
cabinet-maker’s trade. I have ascertained several cases of this
over-work from scamping, and adduce two. A very quick hand, a little
master, working as he called it “at a slaughtering pace” for a
warehouse, made 60 plain writing desks in a week of 90 hours, whilst a
first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made 18 in a week of 70 hours.
The scamping hand said he must work at the rate he did to make 14_s._
a-week from a slaughter-house, and so used to such style of work had
he become, that though a few years back he did west-end work in the
best style, he could not now make 18 desks in a week, if compelled to
finish them in the style of excellence displayed in the work of the
journeyman employed for the honourable trade. Perhaps, he added, he
couldn’t make them in that style at all. The frequent use of rosewood
veneers in the fancy cabinet, and their occasional use in the general
cabinet trade, gives, I was told, great facilities for scamping. If,
in his haste, the scamping hand injure the veneer, or if it has been
originally faulty, he takes a mixture of gum shellac and “colour,”
(colour being a composition of Venetian red and lamp black) which he
has already by him, rubs it over the damaged part, smooths it with a
slightly heated iron, and so blends it with the colour of the rosewood
that the warehouseman does not detect the flaw. Indeed, I was told that
very few warehousemen are judges of the furniture they bought, and they
only require it to look well enough for sale to the public, who know
even less than themselves. In the general cabinet trade I found the
same ratio of scamping, compared with the products of skilled labour
in the honourable trade. A good workman made a 4-foot mahogany chest
of drawers in five days, working the regular hours, and receiving at
piece-work price 35_s._ A scamping hand made five of the same size in a
week, and had time to carry them for sale to the warehouses, wait for
their purchase or refusal, and buy material. But for the necessity of
doing this the scamping hand could have made seven in the 91 hours of
his week, of course in a very inferior manner. They would hold together
for a time, I was assured, and that was all; but the slaughterers cared
only to have them viewy and cheap. These two cases exceed the average,
and I have cited them to show what can be done under the scamping
system.
I now come to show how this scamp work is executed, that is to say, by
what helps or assistants when such are employed. As in all trades where
lowness of wages is the rule, the apprentice system prevails among the
cheap cabinet-workers. It prevails, however, among the garret-masters,
by very many of them having one, two, three, or four apprentices,
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 8, and another 14 boys in his service, some
apprenticed, some merely engaged and discharged at pleasure. A sharp
boy, thus apprenticed, 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.
I have before alluded to the utter destitution of the cheap workers
belonging to the cabinet trade, and I now subjoin the statement of a
man whom I found last winter in the Asylum for the Houseless Poor.
“I have been out of work a twelvemonth, as near as I can reckon. When
I was in work I was sometimes at piece-work and sometimes at day-work.
When I first joined the trade (I never served my time, my brother
learnt me) there was plenty of work to do. For this last twelvemonth I
have not been able to get anything to do, not at my own trade. I have
made up one dozen of mahogany chairs on my own account. The wood and
labour of them cost me 1_l._ 5_s._, I had to pay for a man to do the
carving and sweeping of them, and I had to give 1_l._ for the wood. I
could get it much cheaper now, but then I didn’t know anything about
the old broken ship-wood that is now used for furniture. The chairs
I made I had to sell at a sacrifice. I was a week making them, and
got only 2_l._ for the dozen when they were done. By right I should
have had at least 50_s._ for them, and that would have left 25_s._
for my week’s work, but as it was I had only 15_s._ clear money, and
I have worked at them much harder than is usual in the trade. There
are two large houses in London that are making large fortunes in this
manner. About a fortnight after I found out that I couldn’t possibly
get a living at this work, and as I didn’t feel inclined to make the
fortunes of the large houses by starving myself, I gave up working at
chair-making on my own account. I then made a few clothes-horses. I
kept at that for about six months. I hawked them in the streets, but I
was half-starved by it. Some days I sold them, and some I was without
taking a penny. I never in one day got rid of more than half-a-dozen,
and they brought 3_s._, out of which there was the wood and the other
materials to pay for, and they would be 1_s._ 6_d._ at least. If I
could get rid of two or three in a day I thought I did pretty well,
and my profit on these was about 9_d._, not more. At last I became so
reduced by the work that I was not able to buy any more wood, and the
week after that I was forced to quit my lodging. I owed three weeks’
rent, at 1_s._ 6_d._ a week, and was turned out in consequence. I had
no things for them to seize, they had all gone long before. Then I was
thrown upon the streets. I had no friends (my brothers are both out
of the country) and no home. I was sleeping about anywhere I could.
I used to go and sit at the coffee-houses where I knew my mates were
in the habit of going, and they would give me a bit of something to
eat, and make a collection to pay for a bed for me. At last this even
began to fail me, my mates could do no more for me. Then I applied to
some of the unions, but they refused to admit me into the casual ward
on account of my not being a traveller. I was a whole week walking in
the streets without ever lying to rest. I used to go to Billingsgate
to get a nap for a few minutes, and then I used to have a doze now
and then on a door-step and under the railway arches. At this time I
had scarcely any food at all, not even bread. At last I was fairly
worn out, and being in the neighbourhood, I applied at St. Luke’s, and
told them I was starving. They said they could do nothing for me, and
advised me to apply at the Houseless Poor Asylum. I did so, and was
admitted directly. I have been four nights in the Asylum already, and
I don’t know what I shall do when I leave. My tools are all gone; they
are sold, and I have no money to buy new ones. There are hundreds in
the trade like me, walking about the streets with nothing to do and no
place to put their heads in.”
I shall now conclude with the following statement as to the effects
produced by the slop cabinet business upon the honourable part
of the trade. I derived my information from Mr. ----, one of the
principal masters at the west-end, and who has the highest character
for consideration for his men. “Since the establishment of slaughter
houses, and aptly indeed,” said my informant, “from my knowledge of
their effects upon the workmen, have they been named--the demand for
articles of the best cabinet-work, in the manufacture of which the
costliest woods and the most skilled labour London can supply are
required, has diminished upwards of 25 per cent. The demand, moreover,
continues still to diminish gradually. The result is obvious. Only
three men are now employed in this trade in lieu of four as formerly,
and the men displaced may swell the lists of the underpaid, and even of
the slop-workers. The expense incurred by some of the leading masters
in the honourable trade is considerable, and for objects the designs of
which inferior masters pirate from us. The designs for new styles of
furniture add from 5 to 10 per cent to the cost of the most elaborate
articles that we manufacture. The first time any of these novel designs
comes to the hammer by the sale of a gentleman’s effects they are
certain of piracy, and so the pattern descends to the slaughter-houses.
These great houses are frequently offered prices, and by very wealthy
persons, that are an insult to a tradesman wishing to pay a fair price
to his workmen. For instance, for an 8-foot mahogany bookcase, after a
new design, and made to the very best style of art, the material being
the choicest, and everything about in admirable keeping, the price is
50 guineas. ‘O dear!’ some rich customer will say, ‘50 guineas! I’ll
give you 20, or, indeed, I’ll give you 25.’” (I afterwards heard from
a journeyman that this would be the cost of the labour alone.) The
gentleman I saw spoke highly of the intelligence and good conduct of
the men employed, only society men being at work on his premises. He
feared that the slop-trade, if not checked, would more and more swamp
the honourable trade.