Having already given an account of the supply and consumption of timber
throughout the country generally, I shall now speak of the importations
into London, and more especially of the condition of the labourers
connected with the foreign and colonial timber trade.
The quantity of colonial and foreign timber that has been brought into
the port of London since the year 1843 has been as follows:--
1844. 1845. 1846.
Colonial deals and battens } 2,025,000 2,349,000 2,355,000
(in pieces) }
Foreign ditto (in ditto) 2,130,000 2,290,000 1,242,000
--------- --------- ---------
Total pieces 4,155,000 4,639,000 3,597,000
Colonial timber (in loads) 57,200 55,800 53,600
Foreign ditto (in do.) 58,200 68,100 86,000
------- ------- -------
Total loads 115,400 123,900 139,600
1847. 1848. 1849.
3,339,000 2,740,000 2,722,000
1,996,000 2,044,000 1,903,000
--------- --------- ---------
5,335,000 4,784,000 4,625,000
49,600 38,300 38,600
79,100 69,000 61,400
------- ------- -------
128,700 107,300 100,000
The consumption of the metropolis has been little less than the
quantity imported. In the six years above enumerated the total
importation of foreign and colonial deals and battens was 27,135,000
pieces, of which 26,695,573 were consumed in London; and the total
importation of foreign and colonial timber was 714,900 loads, of which
644,224 were consumed. This gives an average annual importation of
4,522,500 deals and battens, of which only 73,238 have been sent out of
the country every year. Of timber, the average annual importation is
119,150 loads, and the average annual exportation only 11,779 loads.
The number of wood-laden ships that have entered the port of London
since 1840, together with the countries whence they came, is given
below. By this we shall perceive that our trade with Norway in this
respect has sunk to exactly one-half of what it was ten years back,
while that with Sweden and Finland has been very nearly doubled in the
same time. The timber-ships from the Prussian ports have increased
little less than one-third, while those from Russia have decreased in
the same proportion. The trade with Quebec and Montreal also appears to
be much greater than it was in 1840, though compared with 1841 there
has been a considerable falling off; that of New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia remains very nearly the same as it was at the beginning of the
decennial period. Altogether the great change appears to have been the
decline of the Norwegian and Russian timber-trade, and the increase
of that with Sweden and Prussia. It is also worthy of notice, that
notwithstanding the increase of population, the number of wood-laden
ships entering the port of London every year has not materially
increased within the last ten years.
THE NUMBER OF CARGOES OF TIMBER, DEALS, AND BATTENS, IMPORTED INTO
LONDON IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS.
-------------------------------+------+------+------+------+------+
| 1840.| 1841.| 1842.| 1843.| 1844.|
+------+------+------+------+------+
Christiana and Christiansund | 49 | 50 | 47 | 27 | 36 |
Other ports of Norway | 52 | 43 | 38 | 36 | 49 |
Gothenburg | 61 | 64 | 49 | 59 | 59 |
Swedish ports and Finland | 85 | 84 | 85 | 102 | 90 |
Russian ports | 181 | 108 | 130 | 119 | 163 |
Prussian ports | 70 | 70 | 52 | 104 | 143 |
Quebec and Montreal | 168 | 224 | 188 | 230 | 206 |
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia | 104 | 97 | 62 | 134 | 90 |
Sierra Leone, Maulmein, &c. | 16 | 20 | 29 | 31 | 5 |
+------+------+------+------+------+
| 786 | 760 | 681 | 842 | 841 |
+------+------+------+------+------
| 1845.| 1846.| 1847.| 1848.| 1849.
+------+------+------+------+------
| 27 | 22 | 32 | 39 | 23
| 39 | 17 | 28 | 25 | 27
| 66 | 30 | 67 | 55 | 41
| 149 | 103 | 101 | 138 | 154
| 115 | 146 | 91 | 113 | 134
| 124 | 109 | 167 | 108 | 100
| 206 | 166 | 216 | 179 | 195
| 102 | 127 | 145 | 108 | 105
| 10 | 20 | 21 | 13 | 20
+------+------+------+------+------
| 838 | 740 | 868 | 778 | 799
The next step in our inquiry is, What becomes of the 800 wood-laden
ships that annually enter the port of London? Whither do they go to
be unladen? to what docks, or places of “special security,” are they
consigned to be discharged and to have their cargoes delivered or
bonded?
For this purpose there are five docks, three of which lie on the Surrey
side of the river. These three are the Commercial Docks, the Grand
Surrey Canal Dock, and the East Country Dock, and they are almost
contiguous to each other, the Surrey Canal Dock lying immediately
alongside the Commercial, and the East Country at the upper end of it.
They are situated in, and indeed occupy, nearly the whole of that
small cape of land which is formed by the bending of the river between
the Pool and Limehouse Reach. The docks on the Middlesex side of the
river, which are used for the reception and unlading of timber-ships,
are the West India and the Regent’s Dock, or the entrance to the
Regent’s Canal.
The number of wood-laden ships that have entered the three principal
docks for the last ten years is given below. I am informed by Mr. Jones
of the Commercial Docks, that for every ship above 100 tons six men are
required to sort and pile away. Rafting from ships of the above burden
requires one or two men daily, according to circumstances.
THE NUMBER OF WOOD-LADEN SHIPS WHICH ENTERED THE DIFFERENT DOCKS
UNDERMENTIONED IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS.
--------------+--------------------+-------------------+--------------------
Year. | West India Docks. | Commercial Docks. | Grand Surrey Docks.
--------------|--------------------|-------------------|--------------------
| Vessels. Tons. | Vessels. Tons. | Vessels. Tons.
1840 | 155 62,024 | 211 65,809 | 135 40,447
1841 | 201 82,196 | 265 70,438 | 114 34,594
1842 | 136 54,931 | 250 87,124 | 100 29,596
1843 | 169 71,211 | 368 121,846 | 108 31,299
1844 | 121 53,581 | 480 142,223 | 173 48,896
1845 | 149 70,514 | 424 137,047 | 155 43,211
1846 | 182 88,308 | 351 111,189 | 195 50,908
1847 | 228 124,114 | 423 143,966 | 226 62,433
1848 | 138 76,650 | 412 132,406 | 195 53,423
1849 | 138 67,860 | 410 136,329 | 212 58,780
| ----- ------- | ----- --------- | ----- -------
Total | 1,617 751,389 | 3,544 1,148,377 | 1,613 453,587
| |
Average Number } | |
of Ships per } | |
Year, and their} 161 4464 | 354 324 | 161 281
Average Tonnage} | |
-----------------------------------+-------------------+--------------------
The foreign and colonial timber trade is, then, confined to five of the
seven docks belonging to the port of London. Of these five, three--the
Commercial, the Grand Surrey Canal, and the East Country--are situate
on the Surrey side of the river, occupying altogether an area of
172-1/2 acres, of which 100-1/2 are water and 72 land, and offering
accommodation and protection for no less than 678 vessels. Here
the principal part of the timber and deal trade is carried on, the
Commercial receiving the greatest number of wood-laden vessels, perhaps
greater than any other dock in the world. These, together with that
portion of the West India Dock which is devoted to the same purpose,
make the entire extent of the timber docks attached to the port of
London about 250 acres, of which upwards of 140 are water--a space
sufficient to give berths to no less than 940 ships.
I now come to speak of the condition and earnings of the labourers
connected with the timber and hard-wood trade. Of these, it appears
there are 1030 men casually employed at all the timber docks, of
whom only 132 obtain work all the year round. How the 900 casual
deal-porters and rafters live during the six months of the year that
the slack season usually lasts in the timber trade, I cannot conceive.
As not a sixpence of their earnings is saved in the brisk season, their
fate in the winter is to suffer privations and afflictions which they
only know.
I shall begin with the state of the dock-labourers employed at the
foreign and hard-wood trade. This trade is confined mainly, if not
solely, to the West India Dock.
Concerning this branch of the wood trade, I give below the statement
of a man who has worked at it for many years, and in doing so, I wish
to draw attention to the latter part of the narrative, as a proof of
what I have repeatedly asserted respecting the regard exhibited by the
authorities of the West India Dock, and in particular by Mr. Knight,
the superintendent, for the welfare of all the men, whether directly or
even indirectly employed by them.
This indirect employment of workmen, however, is the great bane of the
industrious classes. Whether the middleman goes by the name of sweater,
chamber-master, lumper, or contractor, it is this trading operative who
is the great means of reducing the wages of his fellow working-men.
To make a profit out of the employment of his brother-operatives he
must obtain a lower-class labour. He cares nothing about the quality
of the work, so long as the workmen can get through it somehow, and
will labour at a cheaper rate. Hence it becomes a business with him to
hunt out the lowest grades of working men--the drunken, the dishonest,
the idle, the vagabond, and the unskilful men--because these, being
unable to obtain employment at the regular wages of the sober, honest,
industrious, and skilful portion of the trade, he can obtain their
labour at a lower rate than what is usually paid. “Boy-labour or
thief-labour,” said a middleman on a large scale, “what do I care, so
long as I can get my work done cheap.” I have already shown that the
wives of the sweaters not only parade the streets of London on the
look-out for youths raw from the country, but that they make periodical
trips to the poorest provinces of Ireland, in order to obtain workmen
at the lowest possible rate. I have shown, moreover, that foreigners
are annually imported from the Continent for the same purpose, and
that among the chamber-masters in the shoe trade, the child-market at
Bethnal-green, as well as the workhouses, are continually ransacked for
the means of obtaining a cheaper kind of labour. All my investigations
go to prove that it is chiefly by means of the middleman-system that
the wages of the working men are reduced. This contractor--this
trading operative--uses the most degraded of the class as a means
of underselling the worthy and skilful labourers, and of ultimately
dragging the better down to the abasement of the worst. If men cannot
subsist on lower prices, then he takes apprentices or hires children;
or if workmen of character and worth refuse to work at less than the
ordinary rate, then he seeks out the moral refuse of the trade, those
whom none else will employ; or else he flies to the workhouse and
the gaol to find labour meet for his purpose. Backed by this cheap
and refuse labour, he offers his work at lower prices, and so keeps
on reducing and reducing the wages of his brethren until all sink in
poverty, wretchedness, and vice. I am therefore the more anxious to
impress upon the minds of those gentlemen who are actuated by a sincere
regard for the interests and comforts of the men in their employ, the
evils of such a system; for, however great may be the saving of trouble
effected by it, yet, unless it be strictly watched (as I must confess
it is at the West India and Commercial Docks) it can only be maintained
by the employment of a cheaper and worse class labourer, and therefore
must result in the degradation of the workmen. I have said thus much,
because I find this contract system the general practice at all the
wood-docks, and because I am convinced that the gentlemen to whom the
management of those docks is entrusted, Mr. Knight, Mr. Jones, and Mr.
Cannan, have the welfare of the men in their employ sincerely at heart.
Of the evils of lumping, or discharging wood-ships by contract, I
have already treated at considerable length. Under that system, it
will be remembered, I showed that the contractor, who is commonly a
publican, makes his profit, not by cheapening the labourer, but by
intoxicating him. Like the contractor for ballast, he gets his money
out of the drunkenness of the workmen, and by this means is enabled
to undersell the dock proprietors; or, in other words, to discharge
the wood-laden ships at a less rate than they could possibly afford to
do it for by the fair and honourable employment of their men. Of the
effects of this system--the drunkenness of the men, the starvation of
the wives, the squalor and ignorance of the children, the wretchedness
and desolation of the homes, I have already treated at some length: and
it will be seen hereafter that in those docks where the supervision
that is maintained at the West India and Commercial is not kept up,
the labourers are reduced to almost the same state of poverty and
destitution.
But to return. A man living in a small room in a poor neighbourhood,
but in a tidy apartment, and with a well kept little garden at the
back, gave me the following account of his earnings and labour in the
mahogany department of the West India Docks:--
“I have worked in the West India Docks for eleven years, and for the
last half of that time in the mahogany part of the wood-yard. Before
that, I was eleven years in the merchant service as able seaman; but
I got married, and thought I could do better in the docks; for, after
all, what is 18_l._ a-year, supposing I had the luck to be at sea nine
months every year at 2_l._ a-month--what is 18_l._ a-year, sir, to
keep a wife and family on, as well as a man himself when he’s ashore?
At the West India Docks, we unload the mahogany, or logwood, or fancy
wood from the ships, and pile them wherever they’re ordered. We work
in gangs of six or seven, with a master at the head of the gang; the
logs are got out of the hold with a purchase and a jigger, and heaved
ashore by a crane on to a truck, and we drag the truck to the place to
stow the timber. In the wood-yards a machine lifts the timber up, by
us men turning handles to work the machine, and puts it into its place
in the warehouse. We are paid 2_s._ 6_d._ a-day, working from eight to
four. If only employed for four hours--and we’re not set to work for
less than four hours--we have 1_s._ 4_d._ If I could get 2_s._ 6_d._
a-day all the year through, I’d be a happy man; but I can’t. Me, and
such as me, earns 10_s._, 11_s._, or as far as 15_s._ a-week when we
are wanted. But take the year through, I make between 9_s._ and 10_s._
a-week; out of that I have to keep a wife and four children. I’ve lost
one child, and my wife can get little or nothing most times to do
with her needle; and if she does get work, what can she make at five
farthings or three-halfpence a shirt for the slop-shops? My eldest
child, however, does make 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week. I live on bread
and butter, with a drop of beer now and then, six days out of the
seven. On Sundays we mostly have a shilling’s worth of meat--bullock’s
head generally. Sometimes our work is very hard, with heavy lifting. A
weakly man’s no use, and I’ve wondered how I have the strength I have
on bread and butter. We are all paid in the dock, and there’s nobody
allowed to get the men to drink, or to traffic with them anyhow, but
in a fair, regular way. There’s plenty hang about every day who would
work a day’s work for 2_s._: there’s a good many Irish. I don’t know
that there’s any foreigners, without it be on the sugar side. Sometimes
a hundred men are employed in our part of the business; to-day there
was from forty to fifty at work, and a hundred more was to be had if
they’d been wanted. Jobs often come in in a lump--all at once, or none
at all; very often with the wind. We run backwards and forwards to the
sugar-side or the Surrey Dock, as we expect to be wanted. We don’t know
what the foremen of the gangs get, but the company won’t allow them to
underpay us; and I have nothing to complain about, either of them or
the company, though we’re bad off. The foreman can pick his men. Many
of us has to go to the parish. Once I earned only 3_s._ in three weeks.
Our best time is from June or July, continuing on for two, three,
four, or five months, as happens. We live half the year and starve the
t’other. There’s very few teetotalers among us--men want beer if they
live upon bread and butter; there’s many I know lives on a meal a-day,
and that’s bread and butter. There’s no drunkards among our men. We’re
mostly married men with families; most poor men is married, I think.
Poor as I am, a wife and family’s something to cling to like.”