 Section 58 of London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Julian Henry. Of casual labour in general, and that of the rubbish carters in particular. The subject of casual labour is one of such vast importance in connection with the welfare of a nation and its people, and one of which the causes as well as consequences seem to be so utterly ignored by economical writers and unheeded by the public, that I propose here saying a few words upon the matter in general, with the view of enabling the reader the better to understand the difficulties that almost all unskilled and many skilled labourers have to contend with in this country. By casual labour I mean such labour as can obtain only occasional, as contradistinguished from constant employment. In this definition I include all classes of workers, literate and illiterate, skilled and unskilled, whose professions, trades or callings expose them to be employed temporarily rather than continuously, and whose incomes are in a consequent degree fluctuating casual and uncertain. In no country in the world is there such an extent and at the same time such a diversity of casual labour as in Great Britain. This is attributable to many causes, commercial and agricultural, natural and artificial, controllable and uncontrollable. I will first show what are the causes of casual labour and then point out its effects. The causes of casual labour may be grouped under two heads. One, the brisk and slack seasons and fit times or periodical increase and decrease of work in certain occupations. Two, the surplus hands, appertaining to the different trades. First as to the briskness or slackness of employment in different occupations. This depends in different trades on different causes, among which may be enumerated a. the weather, b. the seasons of the year, c. the fashion of the day, d. commerce and accidents. I shall deal with each of these causes seriatim. A. the labour of thousands is influenced by the weather. It is suspended or prevented in many instances by stormy or rainy weather, and in some few instances it is promoted by such a state of things. Among those whose labour cannot be executed on wet days or executed but imperfectly and who are consequently deprived of their ordinary means of living on such days are paviers, pipe-layers, brick-layers, painters of the exteriors of houses, slaters, fishermen, watermen, playing with their boats for hire. The crews of the river steamers, a large body of agricultural labourers such as hedgers, ditchers, moors, reapers, ploughmen, latchers and gardeners, costermongers and all classes of street sellers to a great degree, street performers and showmen. With regard to the degree in which agricultural or indeed in this instance woodland labour may be influenced by the weather, I may state that a few years back there had been a fall of oaks on an estate belonging to Colonel Craddock near Greta Bridge and the poor people, old men and women, in the neighbourhood were selected to strip off the bark for the tanners under the direction of a person appointed by the proprietor. For this work they were paid by the basket load. The trees lay in an open and exposed situation and the rain was so incessant that the barkers could scarcely do any work for the whole of the first week but kept waiting under the nearest shelter in the hopes that it would clear up. In the first week of this employment nearly one-third of the poor persons who had commenced their work with eagerness had to apply for some temporary parochial relief. A rather curious instance this of a parish suffering from the casualty of a very humble labour and actually from the attempt of the poor to earn money and do work prepared for them. On the other hand some few classes may be said to be benefitted by the rain which is impoverishing others. These are cab men who are the busiest on sherry days, scavengers, umbrella makers, clog and pattern makers. I was told by the omnibus people that their vehicles filled better in hot than in wet weather but the labour of thousands is influenced also by the wind. An easterly wind prevailing for a few days will throw out of employment 20,000 dock labourers and others who are dependent on the shipping for their employment such as lumpers, corn porters, timber porters, shipbuilders, sailmakers, lighter men, watermen and indeed almost all those who are known as longshoremen. The same state of things prevails at hull, Bristol, Liverpool and all our large ports. Frost again is equally inimicable to some labourers interests. The frozen out market gardeners are familiar to almost everyone and indeed all those who are engaged upon the land may be said to be deprived of work by severely cold weather. In the weather alone then we find a means of starving thousands of our people. Rain, wind and frost are many a labourer's natural enemies and to those who are fully aware of the influence of the elements upon the living and comforts of hundreds of their fellow creatures the changes of weather are frequently watched with a terrible interest. I am convinced that altogether a wet day deprives not less than 100,000 and probably nearer 200,000 people including builders, bricklayers and agricultural labourers of their ordinary means of subsistence and drives the same number to the public houses and beer shops on this part of the subject I have collected some curious facts. Thus not only decreasing their income but positively increasing their expenditure and that perhaps in the worst of ways. Nor can there be fewer dependent on the winds for their bread. If we think of the vast number employed either directly or indirectly at the various ports of this country and then remember that at each of these places the prevalence of a particular wind must prevent the ordinary arrival of shipping and so require the employment of fewer hands. We shall have some idea of the enormous multitude of men in this country who can be starved by a nipping and an eager air. If in London alone there are 20,000 people deprived of food by the prevalence of an easterly wind and I had the calculation from one of the principal officers of the St Catherine Dock Company. Surely it will not be too much to say that throughout the country there are not less than 50,000 people whose living is thus precariously dependent. Altogether I am inclined to believe that we shall not be over the truth if we assert there are between 100,000 and 200,000 individuals and their families or half a million of people dependent on the elements for their support in this country. But this calculation refers to those classes only who are deprived of a certain number of days work by an alteration of the weather a cause that is essentially ephemeral in its character. The other series of natural events influencing the demand for labour in this country are of a more continuous nature, the stimulus and the depression enduring for weeks rather than days. I allude to the second of the four circumstances above mentioned as inducing riskness or slackness of employment in different occupations, namely B. the seasons. These are the seasons of the year and not the arbitrary seasons of fashion of which I shall speak next. The following classes are among those exposed to the uncertainty of employment and consequently of income from the above cause. Since it is only in particular seasons that particular works such as buildings will be undertaken or that open-air pleasure excursions will be attempted. Carpenters, builders, brickmakers, painters, plasterers, paper hangers, rubbish carters, sweeps and driggers and lumpers. The latter depending mainly on the arrival of the timber ships to the Thames and this owing to the ice in the Baltic Sea and in the river St. Lawrence and so on takes place only at certain seasons of the year. Coal whippers and coal porters. The coal trade being much brisker in winter. Market porters and those employed in summer in steamboat, railway, van and barge excursions. Then there are the casualties attending agricultural labour for although the operations of nature are regular even as the seed time follows the harvest. There is almost invariably a smaller employment of labour after the completion of the haymaking, the sheep shearing and the grain reaping labourers. For the hay and corn harvests it is well known that there is a periodical immigration of Irishmen and women who clamour for the casual employment. Others again leave the towns for the same purpose. The same result takes place also in the fruit and pea picking season for the London green markets while in the winter such people return some to their own country and some to form a large proportion of the casual class in the metropolis. A tall Irishman of about 34 or 35 whom I had to see when treating of the religion of the street Irish is a customed crossing sweeping at all or most of the seasons I have mentioned and returns to it for the winter at the end of October while his wife and children are then so many units to add to the casualties of the street sale of apples, nuts and onions by overstocking the open air markets. The autumnal season of hop picking is the grand rendezvous for the vagrancy of England and Ireland the stream of London vagrancy flowing frequently into Kent at that period and afterwards flowing back with increased volume. Men, women and children are attracted to the hop harvest. The season is over in less than a month and then the casual labourers engaged in it and they are nearly all casual labourers must divert their industry or their endeavours for a living into other channels swelling the amount of casualty in unskilled work or street trade. Numerically to estimate the influence of the seasons on the labour market of this country is almost an overwhelming task. Let us try however. There are in round numbers one million agricultural labourers in this country saying that in the summer four labourers are employed for every three in the winter there would be 250,000 people and their families or say one million of individuals deprived of their ordinary subsistence in the wintertime. This of course does not include those who come from Ireland to assist at the harvest getting. How many these maybe I have no means of ascertaining. Added to these there are the natural vagabonds whom I have before estimated at another 100,000, see page 408 volume 1 and who generally help at the harvest work or the fruit or hop picking. Then there are the carpenters who are 163,000 in number. The builders 9,200. The brick makers 18,000. The painters 48,200. The coal whippers 9,200. The coal miners 110,000. Making altogether 350,000 people and estimating that for every four hands employed in the brisk season there are only three required in the slack. We have 80,000 more families or 300,000 people deprived of their living by the casualty of labour. So that if we assert that there are at the least including agricultural labourers 1,250,000 people thus deprived of their usual means of living we shall not be very wide of the truth. The next cause of the briskness or slackness of different employments is sea fashion. The London fashionable season is also the parliamentary season and is the briskest from about the end of February to the middle of July. The workmen most affected by the aristocratic popular or general fashions are tailors, ladies' habit makers, boot and shoemakers, hatters, glovers, milliners, dress makers, manchow makers, drawn and straw bonnet makers, artificial flower makers, plume-a-sur, staymakers, silk and velvet weavers, saddlers, harness makers, coach builders, cabmen, job coachmen, farriers, livery stablekeepers, polterers, pastry cooks, confectioners and so on and so on. The above mentioned classes may be taken according to the occupation abstract of the last census at between 500,000 and 600,000 and assuming the same ratio as to the difference of employment between the brisk and the slack seasons of the trades or in other words that 25% less hands are required at the slack than at the brisk time of these trades. We have another 150,000 people who with their families may be estimated altogether at, say, 500,000 who are thrown out of work at a certain season and have to starve on as best they can for at least three months in the year. The last mentioned of the causes inducing briskness or slackness of employment are D., commerce and accidents. Commerce has its periodical fits and starts. The publishers, for instance, have their season generally from October to March as people read more in winter than in summer and this arrangement immediately affects the printers and bookbinders. There is no change, however, as regards the newspapers and periodicals. Again, the early importation to this country of the new foreign fruits gives activity to the dock and wharf labourers and porters and carmen. Thus the arrival here generally in autumn of the nut, chestnut and grape raisin, produce of Spain, of the almond crops in Portugal, Spain and Barbary, the date harvest in Morocco and different parts of Africa, the orange gathering in Madeira and in St. Michael's, Tersera and other islands of the Azores, the fig harvest from the Levant, the plum harvest of the south of France, the current picking of Zante, Ithaca and other Ionian islands. All these events give an activity as new fruit is always most saleable to the traders in these southern productions and more shopmen, shop porters, wharf labourers and assistant-litermen are required, casually required, for the time. I was told by a grocer with a country connection and in a large way of business that for three weeks or a month before Christmas he required the aid of four fresh hands, a shopman, an earned boy and two porters, one skilled in packing, for whom he had nothing to do after Christmas. If in the wide sweep of London trade there be 1,000 persons, including the market salesman, the retail butchers, the carriers and so on, so circumstanced, then 4,000 men are casually employed and for a very brief time. The brief increase of the carrying business generally about Christmas by road, water or railway is sufficiently indicated by the foregoing account. The employment again in the cotton and woolen manufacturing districts may be said to depend for its briskness on commerce rather than on the seasons. Accidents or extraordinary social events promote casual labour and then depress it. Often they depress without having promoted it. During the display of the Great Exhibition there were some thousands employed in the different capacities of police, packing, cleaning, porterage, watching, interpreting, doorkeeping and money taking, cab regulating and so on. And after the close of the exhibition how many were retained. Thus the Great Exhibition fostered casual or uncertain labour. Foreign revolutions moreover affect the trade of England. Speculators become timid and will not embark in trade or in any proposed undertaking. The foreign import and export trades are paralysed and fewer clerks and fewer labourers are employed. Home political agitations also have the same effect as was seen in London during the Corn Law riots about 35 years ago when only 8 members of the House of Commons supported a change in those laws. The Spa Fields riots in 1817 the Affair in St Peter's Field Manchester in 1819 the disturbances and excitement during the trial of Queen Caroline in 1820 to 1821 and the loss of life on the occasion of her funeral in 1821. The agitation previously to the passing of the reform bill had a like effect. The meeting on Kennington Common on the 10th of April in all these periods indeed employment decreased. Labour is affected also by the death of a member of the royal family and the hurried demand for general mourning but in a very small degree to what was once the case. A West End tailor employing a great number of hands did not receive a single order for mourning on the death of Queen Adelaide. While on the demise of the Princess Charlotte in 1817 thousands of operative tailors throughout the three kingdoms worked day and night and for double wages on the general mourning. Gluts in the markets, an increase of heavy bankruptcies and panics such as were experienced in the money market in 1825 to 1826 and again in 1846 with the failure of banks and merchants likewise have the effect of augmenting the mass of casual labour. For capitalists and employers under such circumstances expend as little as possible in wages or employment until the storm blows over. Bad harvests have a similar depressing effect. There are also the consequences of changes of taste the abandonment of the fashions of gentlemen's wearing swords as well as embroidered garments, flowing periwigs, large shoe buckles all reduced able artisans to poverty by depriving them of work. So it was when to carry on the war with France Mr. Pitt introduced a tax on hair powder. Hundreds of hairdressers were thrown out of employment many persons abandoning the fashion of wearing powder rather than pay the tax. There are now city gentlemen who can remember that when clerks they had sometimes to wait two or three hours for their turn at a barber's shop on a Sunday morning for they could not go abroad until their hair was dressed and powdered and their queues trimmed to the due standard of fashion. So it has been moreover in modern times in the substitution of silk for metal buttons, silk hats for stuff and in the supersedence of one material of dress by another. These several causes then which could only exist in a community of great wealth and great poverty have rendered and are continually rendering the labour market uncertain and overstocked to what extent they do and have done this it is of course almost impossible to say precisely but even with the strongest disposition to avoid exaggeration we may assert that there are in this country no less than 125,000 families or 500,000 people who depend on the weather for their food 300,000 families or 1,250,000 people who can obtain employment only at particular seasons 150,000 more families or 500,000 people whose trade depends upon the fashionable rather than the natural seasons are thrown out of work at the cessation of the brisk time of their business and perhaps another 150,000 of families or 500,000 people dependent on the periodical increase and decrease of commerce and certain social and political accidents which tend to cause a greater or less demand for labour altogether we may assert with safety that there are at the least 725,000 families or 3 millions of men women and children whose means of living far from being certain and constant are of a precarious kind depending either upon the rain, the wind, the sunshine the caprice of fashion or the ebbing and flowings of commerce but there is a still more potent cause at work to increase the amount of casual labour in this country thus far we have proceeded on the assumption that at the brisk season of each trade there is full employment for all but this is far from being the case in the great majority if not the whole of the instances above sighted in almost all occupations there is in this country a superfluity of labourers and this alone would tend to render the employment of a vast number of the hands of a casual rather than a regular character in the generality of trades the calculation is that one third of the hands are fully employed one third partially and one third unemployed throughout the year this of course would be the case if there were twice too many work people for suppose the number of work people in a given trade to be 6,000 and the work sufficient to employ fully only half the quantity then of course 2,000 might be occupied their whole time 2,000 more might have work sufficient to occupy them half their time and the remaining 2,000 have no work at all or the whole 4,000 might on the average obtain 3 months employment out of the 12 and this is frequently the case hence we see that a surplus edge of hands in a trade tends to change the employment of the great majority from a state of constancy and regularity into one of casuality and precariousness consequently it becomes of the highest importance that we should endeavour to ascertain what are the circumstances inducing a surplus edge of hands in the several trades of the present day a surplus edge of hands in a trade may proceed from three different causes namely one the increase of the hours, rate or mode of working or else the term of hiring two the increase of the hands themselves three the decrease of the work each of these causes is essentially distinct in the first case there is neither an increase in the number of hands nor a decrease in the quantity of work and yet a surplus edge of labourers is the consequence for it is self evident that if there be work enough given trade to occupy 6,000 men all the year round labouring 12 hours per day for 6 days in the week the same quantity of work will afford occupation to only 4,000 men or one third less labouring between 15 and 16 hours per day for 7 days in the week the same result would of course take place if the workmen were made to labour one third more quickly and so to get through one third more work in the same time either by increasing their interest in the work by the invention of a new tool by extra supervision or by the subdivision of labour and so on and so on the same result would of course ensue as if they laboured one third longer hours namely one third of the hands must be thrown out of employment so again by altering the mode or form of work as by producing on a large scale instead of the small a smaller number of labourers are required to execute the same amount of work and thus if the market for such work be necessarily limited a surplus of labourers is the result hence we see that the alteration of the hours, rate or mode of working may tend as positively to overstock a country with labourers as if the labourers themselves had unduly increased but this of course is on the assumption that both the quantity of work and the number of hands remain the same the next of the three causes above mentioned as inducing a surplus of hands is that which arises from a positive increase in the number of labourers while the quantity of work remains the same or increases at a less rate than the labourers and the third cause is where the surplus of labourers arises not from any alteration in the number of hands but a decrease in the quantity of work there are distinctions necessary to be born clearly in mind for the proper understanding of this branch of the subject in the first case both the number of hands and the quantity of work remain the same but the term rate or mode of working is changed in the second hours rate or mode of working remain the same as well as the quantity of work but the number of hands is increased in the third case neither the number of hands nor the hours rate or mode of working is supposed to have been altered but the work only to have decreased the surplus of hands will of course be the same in each of these cases I will begin with the first namely that which induces a surplus of labourers in a trade by enabling fewer hands to get through the ordinary amount of work this is what is called the economy of labour there are of course only three modes of economising labour or causing the same quantity of work to be done by a smaller number of hands first by causing the men to work longer second by causing the men to work quicker and so get through more work in the same time third by altering the mode of work or hiring as in the large system of production where fewer hands are required or the custom of temporary hirings where the men are retained only so long as their services are needed and discharged immediately afterwards first of that mode of economising labour which depends on an increase of either the ordinary hours or days for work this is what is usually termed overwork and Sunday work both of which are largely creative of surplus hands the hours of labour in mechanical callings are usually 12 to 12 hours or 72 hours less by the permitted intervals in a week in the course of my enquiries for the chronicle I met with slop cabinet makers tailors and millners who worked 16 hours and more daily their toil being only interrupted by the necessity of going out if small masters to purchase materials and offer the goods for sale or if journeymen in the slop trade to obtain more work and carry what was completed to the masters shop they worked on Sundays also one tailor told me that the coat he worked at on the previous Sunday was for the reverend Mr. Blank who little thought it and these slop workers rarely give above a few minutes to a meal thus they toil 40 hours beyond the hours usual in an honourable trade 112 hours instead of 72 in the course of a week or between 3 and 4 days of the regular hours of work of the 6 working days in other words 2 such men will in less than a week accomplish work which should occupy 3 men a full week or 1000 men will execute labour fairly calculated to employ 1500 at the least opacity of employment is thus caused among the general body by this system of over labour increasing the share of work accruing to the several operatives and so adding to surplus hands of overwork as regards excessive labour both in the general and fancy cabinet trade I heard the following accounts which different operatives concurred in giving while some represented the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour and some by 2 hours a day than I have stated the labour of the men who depend entirely on the slaughterhouses for the purchase of their articles is usually 7 days a week the year through that is 7 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 6 days of the week each of 10 hours or 60 hours in all 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 7 days in the week or 105 hours in all concerning the hours of labour in this trade I had the following minute particulars from a garret master who was a chair maker I work from 6 every morning to 9 at night some work till 10 breakfast at 8 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 3 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 and a half 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 5 or 6 in summer when it's dusk I take a walk I'm not well dressed enough for a Sunday walk when it's light and I can't wear my apron on that day very well to hide patches but there's 8 hours that I reckon I take up every week one with another 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 8 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 the East End turners generally I was informed when inquiring to the state of that trade labour at the lathe from 6 o'clock in the morning till 11 and 12 at night being 18 hours work per day or 108 hours per week they allow themselves 2 hours for their meals it takes them upon an average 2 hours more every day fetching and carrying their work home some of the East End men work on Sundays and not a few either said my informant sometimes I have worked hard said one man from 6 one morning till 4 the next and scarcely had any time to take my meals in the bargain I've been almost suffocated with the dust flying down my throat after working so many hours upon such heavy work too and sweating so much it makes a man drink where he would not this system of overwork exists in the slop part of almost every business indeed it is the principal means by which the cheap trade is maintained let me cite from my letters in the chronicle some more of my experience on this subject as regards the London Mantua makers I said quote the work women for good shops that give fair or tolerably fair wages and expect good work can make 6 average sized mantles in a week working from 10 to 12 hours a day the slop workers by toiling from 13 to 16 hours a day will make 9 such sized mantles in a week in a season of 12 weeks 1000 workers for the slop houses and warehouses would at this rate make 100 and 8000 mantles or 36000 more than workers for the fair trade or to put it in another light these slop women by being compelled in order to live to work such over hours as inflict lasting injury on the health supplant by their overwork and over hours the labour of 500 hands working the regular hours end quote the following are the words of a chamber master working for the cheap shoe trade from people being obliged to work twice the hours they once did work or that in reason they ought to work a glut of hands is the consequence and the masters are led to make reductions in the wages they take advantage of our poverty and lower the wages so as to undersell each other and command business my daughters have to work 15 hours a day that we may make a bear living they seem to have no spirit and no animation in them in fact such very hard work takes the youth out of them they have no time to enjoy their youth and with all their work they present the respectable appearance they ought I interposed my informant's wife often feel a faintness and oppression from my hard work as if my blood did not circulate the better class of artisans denounce the system of Sunday working as the most iniquitous of all the impositions they object to it not only on moral and religious grounds but economically also every 600 men employed on the Sabbath say they deprive 100 individuals of a week's work every 6 men who labour 7 days in the week must necessarily throw one other man out of employ for a whole week the 7th man is thus deprived of his fair share of work by the overtoiling of the other 6 this Sunday working is a necessary consequence of the cheap slot trade the workmen cannot keep their families by their 6 days labour and therefore they not only under that system get less wages and do more work but by their extra labour throw so many more hands out of employment here then in the overwork of many of the trade we find a vast cause of surplus hands and consequently of casual labour and that the work in these trades has not proportionately increased is proven by the fact of the existence of a superfluity of workmen let us now turn our attention to the second of the causes above sighted namely the causing of men to work quicker and so to accomplish more in the same time there are several means of attaining this end it may be brought about either a by making the workmen's gains depend directly on the quantity of work executed by him as by the substitution of peace work for day work B by the omission of certain details or parts necessary for the perfection of the work C by decreasing the workmen's pay and so increasing the necessity for him to execute a greater quantity of work in order to obtain the same income D increasing the supervision and encouraging a spirit of emulation among the work people E by dividing the labour into a number of simple and minute processes and so increasing the expertness of the labourers F by the invention of some new tool or machine for expediting the operations of the workmen I shall give a brief illustration of each of these causes seriatim showing how they tend to produce a surplusage of hands in the trades to which they are severally applied and first as to making the workmen's gains depend directly on the quantity of work executed by him Of course there are but two direct modes of paying for labour either by the day or by the peace Overwork by day work is effected by means of what is called the strapping system as described in the morning chronicle in my letter upon the carpenters and joiners where a whole shop are set to race over their work in silence one with another through the rest from the knowledge that anything short of extraordinary exertion will be sure to be punished with dismissal Overwork by peace work on the other hand is almost a necessary consequence of that mode of payment for where men are paid by the quantity they do Of course it becomes the interest of a workman to do more than he otherwise would Quote Almost all who work by the day or for a fixed salary for those who labour for the gain of others not for their own have, it has been well remarked no interest in doing more than the smallest quantity of work that will pass as a fulfilment of the mere terms of their engagement Owing to the insufficient interest which day labourers have in the result of their labour there is a natural tendency in such labour to be extremely inefficient a tendency only to be overcome by vigilant superintendents the persons who are interested in the result The master's eye is notoriously the only security to be relied on but superintend them as you will day labourers are so much inferior to those who work by the peace that as was before said the latter system is practised in all industrial occupations where the work admits of being put out in definite portions without involving the necessity of too troublesome a surveillance to guard against inferiority or scamping in the execution but if the labourer at peace work is made to produce a greater quantity than at day work and this solely by connecting his own interest with that of his employer how much more largely must the productiveness of workmen be increased when labouring wholly on their own account accordingly it has been invariably found that whenever the operative unites in himself the double function of capitalist and labourer as the garret master in the cabinet trade and the chamber master in the shoe trade making up his own materials or working on his own property his productiveness single handed is considerably greater than can be attained even under the large system of production where all the arts and appliances of which extensive capital can avail itself are brought into operation as regards the increased production by omitting certain details necessary for the due perfection of the work it may be said that scamping adds at least two hundred percent to the productions of the cabinet makers trade I ascertained in the course of my previous inquiries several cases of this over work from scamping and a juice too a very quick hand a little master working as he called it at a slaughtering pace for a warehouse made sixty plain writing desks in a week of ninety hours while a first rate workman also a quick hand made eighteen in a week of seventy hours the scamping hand said he must work at the rate he did to make fourteen shillings a week from a slaughterhouse and so used to such style of work had he become that though a few years back he did west end work with the best style he could not now make eighteen 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 would endanger the veneer or if it have 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 ready 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 warehouse man does not detect the flaw in the general as contradistinguished from the fancy cabinet trade I found the same ratio of scamping a good workman in the better paid trade made a four foot mahogany chest of drawers in five days working the regular hours and receiving at piece work price 35 shillings 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 though of course in a very inferior manner they would hold together for a time I was assured and that was all but the slaughterer cared only to have them viewly and cheap these two cases exceed the average and I have cited them to show what can be done under the scamping system we now come to the increased rate of working induced by a reduction of the ordinary rate of remuneration of the workman not only is it true that overwork makes underpay but the converse of the proposition is equally true that underpay makes overwork that is to say it is true of those trades where the system of piecework or small mastership admits of the operative doing the utmost that he is able to accomplish for the workman in such cases seldom or never thinks of reducing his expenditure to his income but rather of increasing his labour so as still to bring his income by extra production up to his expenditure hence we find that as the wages of a trade descend so do the labourers extend their hours of work to the utmost possible limits they not only toil earlier than before but the Sunday becomes a work day like the rest amongst the sweaters of the tailoring trade Sunday labour as I have shown is almost universal and when the hours of work are carried to the extreme of human industry then more is sought to be done in a given space of time either by the employment of the members of their own family or apprentices upon the inferior portion of the work by scamping it my employer I was told by a journeyman tailor working for the missers nickel reduces my wages one third and the consequence is I put in two stitches where I used to give three I must work from six to eight and later said a Pembroke table maker to me to get 18 shillings now for my labour where I used to get 54 shillings a week that's just a third I used to give my children good schooling and good meals now children have to be put to work very young I have four sons working for me at present not only therefore does any stimulus to extra production make overwork and overwork make underpay but underpay by becoming an additional provocative to increased industry again gives rise in its turn to overwork in law overwork makes underpay and underpay makes overwork but the above means of increasing the rate of working refers solely to those cases where the extra labour is induced by making it the interest of the workman so to do the other means of extra production is by strict supervision of journeymen or those paid by the day the shops where this system is enforced are termed strapping shops as indicative of establishments where an undue quantity of work is expected from a journeyman in the course of the day such shops though not directly making use of cheap labour for the wages paid in them are generally of the higher rate still by exacting more work may of course be said in strictness to encourage the system now becoming general of less pay and inferior skill these strapping establishments sometimes go by the name of scamping shops on account of the time allowed for the manufacture of the different articles not being sufficient to admit of good workmanship concerning this strapping system I received the following extraordinary account from a man after his heavy days labour never in all my experience had I seen so sad an instance of overwork the poor fellow was so fatigued that he could hardly rest in his seat as he spoke he sighed deeply and heavily and appeared almost spirit broken with excessive labour I work at what is called a strapping shop he said and have worked at nothing else for these many years past in London I call strapping doing as much work as a human being or a horse possibly can in a day and that without any hanging upon the collar but with the foreman's eyes constantly fixed upon you six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night the shop in which I work is for all the world like a prism the silent system is as strictly carried out there as in a model jail if a man was to ask any common question of his neighbour except it was connected with his trade he would be discharged there and then if a journeyman makes the least mistake he is packed off just the same a man working at such places is almost always in fear for the most trifling things he's thrown out of work in an instant and then the quantity of work that one is forced to get through is positively awful if he can't do a plenty of it he doesn't stop long where I am no one would think it was possible to get so much out of blood and bones no slaves work like we do at some of the strapping shops the foreman keeps continually walking about with his eyes on all the men at once at others the foreman is perched high up so that he can have the whole of the men under his eye together I suppose since I knew the trade that a man does four times the work that he did formerly I know a man that's done four pairs of sashes in a day and one is considered to be a good day's labour what's worse than all the men are everyone striving one against the other each is trying to get through the work quicker than his neighbours four or five men are set the same job so that they may all be treated against one another and then away they go everyone striving as hardest for fear that the others should get finished first they are all tearing along from the first thing in the morning to the last at night as hard as they can go and when the time comes to knock off they are ready to drop I was hours after I got home last night before I could get a wink of sleep the soles of my feet were on fire and my arms ached to that degree that I could hardly lift my hand to my head often too when we get up of a morning we are more tired than when we went to bed for we can't sleep many a night but we mustn't let our employers know it or else they'd be certain we couldn't do enough for them and we get the sack so tired as we may be we are obliged to look lively somehow or other at the shop of a morning if we're not beside our bench the very moment the bell's done ringing our times docked a little minute out of the hour if I was working for a fair master I should do nearly one third and sometimes a half less work than I am now forced to get through and even to manage that much I shouldn't be idle a second of my time it's quite a mystery to me how they do contrive to get so much work out of the men but they're very clever people they know how to have the most out of a man better than anyone in the world they're all picked men in the shop regular strappers and no mistake the most of them are 5 foot 10 and fine broad-shouldered strong-backed fellows too if they weren't they wouldn't have them bless you, they make no words with the men they sack them if they're not strong enough to do all they want and they can pretty soon tell the very first shaving a man strikes in the shop what a chap is made of some men are done up at such work quite old men in grey with spectacles on by the time they are 40 I have seen fine strong men of 36 come in there and be bent double in 2 or 3 years they are most all countrymen at the strapping shops if they see a great strapping fellow who they think has got some stuff about him that will come out they will give him a job directly we are used for all the world like cab or omnibus horses directly they've had all the work out of us we are turned off and I am sure after my day's work is over my feelings must be very much the same as one of the London cab horses as for Sunday it is literally a day of rest with us for the greater part of us lay a bed all day and even that will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and muscles when I'm done and flung by of course I must starve End of Section 58 Section 59 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of casual labour in general and that of the rubbish carters in particular Part 2 the next means of inducing a quicker rate of working and so economising the number of labourers is by the division and subdivision of labour in perhaps all the skilled work of London of the better sort or less the case it is the case in a much smaller degree in the country the nice subdivision makes the operatives perfect adepts in their respective branches working at them with a greater and a more assured facility than if their care had to be given to the whole work and in this manner the work is completed in less time and consequently by fewer hands in illustration of the extraordinary increased productiveness induced by the division I need only cite the well known cases it is found says Mr Mill that the productive powers of labour is increased by carrying the separation further and further by breaking down more and more every process of industry into parts so that each labourer shall confine himself to an even smaller number of simple operations and thus in time arise those remarkable cases of what is called the division of labour with which all readers on subjects of this nature are familiar Adam Smith's illustration from pin making though so well known is so much to the point that I will venture once more to transcribe it quote the business of making a pin is divided into 18 distinct operations one man draws out the wire another straightens it, a third cuts it a fourth points it and a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head which requires two or three distinct operations to put it on is a peculiar business to whiten the pins is another it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper I have seen a small manufactory where ten men only were employed and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations but though they were very poor and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery they could when they exerted themselves make among them about 12 pounds of pins in a day there are in a pound upwards of 4,000 pins of a middling size those ten persons therefore could make among them upwards of 48,000 pins in a day each person therefore making a tenth part of 48,000 pins might be considered as making 4,800 pins in a day but if they had all wrought separately and independently without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business they certainly could not each of them have made 20 perhaps not one pin in a day end quote Monsieur Say furnishes a still stronger example of the effects of division of labour from a not very important branch of industry certainly the manufacture of playing cards quote it is said by those engaged in the business that each card that is a piece of board of the size of the hand before being ready for sale does not undergo fewer than 70 operations every one of which might be the occupation of a distinct class of workmen and if there are not 70 classes of work people in each card manufactory it is because the division of labour is not carried so far as it might be because the same workmen is charged with 2, 3 or 4 distinct operations the influence of this distribution of employment is immense I have seen a card manufactory where 30 workmen produced daily 15,500 cards being above 500 cards for each labourer and it may be presumed that if each of these workmen were obliged to perform all the operations himself even supposing him a practised hand he would not perhaps complete 2 cards in a day and the 30 workmen instead of 15,500 cards would make only 60 end quote one great promoter of the decrease of manual labour is to be found in the economy of labour from a very different cause to any I have pointed out as tending to the increase of surplus hands and casual labour namely to the use of machinery in this country the use of machinery has economised the labour both of man and horse to a greater extent than is known in any other land and that is near the all departments of commerce or traffic the total estimated machine power in the kingdom is 600 million of human beings and this has been all produced within the last century in agriculture for example the threshing of the corn was the peasants work of the later autumn and of a great part of the winter until towards the latter part of the last century the harvest was hardly considered complete until the corn was threshed the peasants on the first introduction of the threshing machines they were demolished in many places by the country labourers whose rage was excited to find that their winter's work instead of being regular had become casual but the use of these machines is now almost universal it would of course be the height of absurdity to say that threshing machines could possibly increase the number of threshers even as the reaping machines cannot possibly increase the number of reapers their effect is rather to displace the greater number of labourers so engaged and hence indeed the economy of them it is not known what number of men were at any time employed in threshing corn their displacement was gradual and in some of the more remote parts of the provinces the flails of the threshers may be heard still but if a threshing machine for their off different power takes labourers the economisation or displacement of manual labour is at once shown to be the economisation and displacement of the whole labour for a season of a countryside thus increasing surplus hands in other matters in the unloading vessels by cranes in all branches of manufacturers and even in such minor matters as the grinding of coffee berries and the cutting and splitting of wood an immense amount of manual labour has been minimised, economised or displaced by steam machinery on my enquiry into the condition of the London sawers I found that the labour of 2000 men had been displaced by the steam sawmills of the metropolis alone at one of the largest builders I saw machines for making mortises and tenons for sticking mouldings and indeed performing all the operations of the carpenter machine doing the work perhaps of 100 men I asked the probable influence that such an instrument was likely to have on the men ruin them all was the laconic reply of the superintendent of the business within the last year casks have been made by machinery a feat that the coopers declared impossible wheels also have been lately produced by steam I need however as I have so recently touched upon the subject do no more than call attention to the information I have given page 240 volume 2 concerning the use of machinery in lieu of human labour it is there shown that if the public street sweeping were affected throughout the metropolis by the machines nearly 196 of the 275 manual labourers now scavenging for the parish contractors would be thrown out of work and deprived of 7,438 pounds out of their joint earnings in the year it is the fashion of political economists to insist on the general proposition that machinery increases the demand for labour rather than decreases it when they write unguardedly however they invariably betray a consciousness that the benefits of machinery to manual labourers are not quite so invariable which otherwise may count here for instance is a confession from the pamphlet on the employer and employed published by the Messers chambers gentlemen who surely cannot be accused of being a verse to economical doctrines it is true the pamphlet is intended to show the evils of strikes to working men but it likewise points out the evils of mechanical power to the same class when applied to certain operations strikes also lead to the superseding of hand labour by machines says this little work in 1831 on the occasion of a strike at Manchester several of the capitalists afraid of their business being driven to other countries had recourse to the celebrated machinists Messers Sharp and Cole of Manchester requesting them to direct the inventive talents of their partner Mr Roberts to the construction of a self-acting mule in order to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and impending ruin under assurances of the most liberal encouragement in the adoption of his invention Mr Roberts suspended his professional pursuits as an engineer and set his fertile genius to construct a spinning automaton in the course of a few months he produced a machine called the self-acting mule which in 1834 was in operation in upwards of 60 factories doing the work of the head spinners so much better than they could do it themselves as to leave them no chance against it in his work on the philosophy of manufacturers Dr Eurer observes on the same subject quote the elegant art of calico printing which embodies in its operations the most elegant problems of chemistry as well as mechanics had been for a long period the sport of foolish journeymen who turned the liberal means of comfort it furnished them into weapons of warfare against their employers and the trade itself they were in fact by their delirious combinations plotting to kill the goose which laid the golden eggs of their industry or to force it to fly off to a foreign land where it might live without molestation in the spirit of Egyptian taskmasters the operative printers dictated to the manufacturers the quality of the apprentices to be admitted into the trade the hours of their own labour and the wages to be paid them at length capitalists sought deliverance from this intolerable bondage in the resources of science and were speedily reinstated in their legitimate dominion of the head over the inferior members the four colour and five colour machines which now render calico printing an unerring and expeditious process are mounted in all great establishments it was under the high pressure of the same despotic confederacies that self-acting apparatus for executing the dying and rinsing operations has been devised end quote the croppers of the west riding of Yorkshire and the hecklers or flak stressors can unfold a tale of woe on this subject their earnings exceeded those of most mechanics but the frequency of strikes among them and the irregularities in their hours and times of working compelled masters to substitute machinery for their manual labour their trades in consequence have been in a great measure superseded it must then be admitted that machinery in some cases at least does displace manual labour and so tend to produce a surplus of labourers even as overwork Sunday work, scamping work strapping work, peace work minutely divided work and so on have the same effect so long as the quantity of work to be done remains unaltered the extensibility of the market is the one circumstance which determines whether the economy of labour produced by these means is a blessing or a curse to the nation to apply mechanical power the division of labour the large system of production or indeed any other means of enabling the most number of labourers to do the same amount of work when the quantity of work to be done is limited in its nature as for instance the threshing of corn the sawing of wood and so on is necessarily to make either poppers or criminals of those who were previously honest independent men living by the exercise of their industry in that particular direction economise your labour one half in connection with a particular article or you must sell twice the quantity of that article or displace a certain number of the labourers that is to say suppose it requires 400 men to produce 4,000 commodities in a given time then if you enable 200 men to produce the same quantity in the same time you must get rid of 8,000 commodities or deprive a certain number of labourers of their ordinary means of living indeed the proposition is almost self-evident though generally ignored by social philosophers economise your labour at a greater rate than you expand your markets and you must necessarily increase your poppers and criminals in precisely the same ratio the division of labour says Mr. Mill, following Adam Smith is limited by the extent of the market if by the separation of pin making into 10 distinct employments 48,000 pins can be made in a day this separation will only be advisable if the number of accessible consumers is such as to require everyday something like 48,000 pins if there is a demand for only 25,000 the division of labour can be advantageously carried but to the extent which will everyday produce that smaller number again as regards the large system of production the same authority says the possibility of substituting the large system of production for the small depends of course on the extent of the market the large system can only be advantageous when a large amount of business is to be done it implies therefore either a populace and flourishing community or a great opening for exportation but these are mere glimmerings of the broad incontrovertible principle that the economisation of labour at a greater rate than the expansion of the markets is necessarily the cause of surplus labour in a community the effect of machinery in depriving the families of agricultural labourers of their ordinary sources of income is well established those countries, writes Mr Thornton in which the class of agricultural labourers is most depressed have all one thing in common each of them was formerly the seat of a flourishing manufacture carried on by the cottagers at their own homes for a decade or been withdrawn to other situations thus in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire the wives and children of labouring men had formerly very profitable occupation in making lace during the last war a tolerable lace maker working 8 hours a day could easily earn 10 shillings or 12 shillings a week the profits of this employment have been since so much reduced by the use of machinery now work 12 hours daily to earn 2 shilling 6 pence a week the last of the conditions above sighted as causing the same or a greater amount of work to be executed with a less quantity of labour is the large system of production Mr Babbage and Mr Mill have so well and fully pointed out the economy of labour effected in this manner that I cannot do better than quote from them even when no additional subdivision of the work says Mr Mill would follow an enlargement of the operation there will be good economy in enlarging them to the point at which every person to whom it is convenient to assign a special occupation will have full employment in that occupation this point is well illustrated by Mr Babbage if machines be kept working through the 24 hours note which is evidently the only economical mode of employing them it is necessary that some person shall attend to admit the workman at the time they relieve each other and whether the porter or other servant so employed admit one person or 20 his rest will be equally disturbed it will also be necessary occasionally to adjust or repair the machine and this can be done much better the workman accustomed to machine making than by the person who uses it now since the good performance and the duration of machines depend to a very great extent upon correcting every shake or imperfection in their parts as soon as they appear the prompt attention of a workman resident on the spot will considerably reduce the expenditure arising from the wear and tear of the machinery but in the case of a single lace frame or a single loom this would be too expensive a plan here then arises another circumstance which tends to enlarge the extent of the factory it ought to consist of such a number of machines as shall occupy the whole time of one workman in keeping them in order if extended beyond that number the same principle of economy would point out the necessity of doubling or tripling the number of machines in order to employ the whole time of two or three skillful workmen where one portion of the workman's labour consists in the exertion of mere physical force as in weaving and in many similar arts it will soon occur to the manufacturer that if that part were executed by a steam engine the same man might in the case of weaving attend to two or more looms at once and since we already suppose that one or more operative engineers have been employed the number of looms may be so arranged that their time shall be fully occupied in keeping the steam engine and the looms in order pursuing the same principles the manufactory becomes gradually so enlarged that the expense of lighting during the night amounts to a considerable sum and as there are already attached to the establishment persons who are up all night and can therefore constantly attend to it and it is the most important engineer to make and keep in repair any machinery the addition of an apparatus for making gas to light the factory leads to a new extension at the same time that it contributes by diminishing the expense of lighting and the risk of accidents from fire to reduce the cost of manufacturing long before a factory has reached this extent it will have been found necessary to establish an accountant's department of workmen and to see that they arrive at their stated times and this department must be in communication with the agents who purchase the raw produce and with those who sell the manufactured article it will cost these clerks and accountants little more time and trouble to pay a large number of workmen than a small number to check the accounts of large transactions than of small if the business doubled itself it would probably be necessary to increase but certainly not to double the number either of accountants or of buying and selling agents every increase of business would enable the whole to be carried on with a proportionally smaller amount of labour as a general rule the expenses of a business do not increase by any means proportionally to the quantity of business let us take as an example a set of operations which we are accustomed to see carried on by one great establishment that of the post office suppose that the business let us say only of the London letter post instead of being centralised in a single concern were divided among 5 or 6 competing companies each of these would be obliged to maintain almost as large an establishment as is now sufficient for the whole since each must arrange for receiving and delivering letters in all parts of the town to send letter carriers into every street and almost every alley and this too as many times in the day as is now done by the post office if the service is to be as well performed each must have an office for receiving letters in every neighbourhood with all subsidiary arrangements for collecting the letters from the different offices and redistributing them I say nothing of the much greater number of superior officers to check and control the subordinates implying not only a greater cost in salaries for such responsible officers but the necessity perhaps of being satisfied in many instances with an inferior standard of qualification and so failing in the object but this refers solely to the large system of business as applied to purposes of manufacture and distribution in connection with agriculture and the same saving of labour affected the large farmer says Mr Mill has some advantage in the article of buildings it does not cost so much to house a great number of cattle in one building as to lodge them equally well in several buildings there is also some advantage in implements a small farmer is not so likely to possess expensive instruments but the principal agricultural implements even when of the best construction are not expensive it may not answer to a small farmer to own a threshing machine for the small quantity of corn he has to thresh but there is no reason why such a machine should not in every neighbourhood be owned in common or provided by some person to whom the others pay a consideration for its use the large farmer can make some saving in cost of carriage there is nearly as much trouble in bringing a small portion of produce to market as a much greater produce in bringing home a small as a much larger quantity of manure and articles of daily consumption there is also the greater cheapness of buying things in large quantities a short time ago I went into Buckinghamshire to look into the allotment system and in one parish of 1,800 acres I found that some years ago there were 17 farmers who occupied upon the average 100 acres each and who, previous to the immigration of the Irish harvest men constantly employed 6 men a piece or in the aggregate upwards of 100 hands now however the farmers in the same parish occupy to the extent of 300 acres each and respectively employ only 6 men and a few extra hands at harvest time thus the number of hands employed by this system has been decreased one half I learned moreover from a clergyman there who had resided in Wiltshire that the same thing was going on in that county also that small farms were giving way to large farms and that at least half the labourers had been displaced the agricultural labourers at the time of taking the last census were 1,500,000 in number so that if this system be generally carried out there must be 750,000 labourers and their families or 3 million people deprived of their living by it Sir James Graham in his evidence before the committee on criminal commitments has given us some curious particulars as to the decrease of the number of hands required for agricultural purposes where the large system of production is pursued in place of the small he has told us how many hands he was enabled to get rid of by these means the proportion of labour displaced it will be seen amounted to about 10% of the labouring population in answer to a question relative to the increase of population in his district he replied I have myself taken very strong means to prevent it for it so happens that my whole estate came out of lease in the year 1822 after the currency of a lease of 14 years and by consolidation of farms and the destruction of cottages I have diminished upon my own property the population to the extent of from 300 to 400 souls on how many acres on about 30,000 acres note this is at the rate of 1 in every 100 acres and note what was the whole extent of population it was under 4,000 before I reduced it what became of those 300 or 400 the greater part of them being small tenants were enabled to find farms on the states of other proprietors who pursued the opposite course of subdividing their estates for the purpose of obtaining higher nominal rents others have become day labourers and as day labourers I have reason to know they are more thriving than they were farmers subject to a high rent which their want of capital seldom enabled them to pay two or three of these families went to America have you any out of work none entirely out of work some only partially employed but since the dispersion of this large mass of population the supply of labour has not much exceeded the demand for whenever I removed a family I pulled down the house the jealousy respecting settlements is an ample check on the influx of strangers similar to the influence of the large system of production in its displacement of labourers as enabling a large quantity of work to be executed by one establishment with a smaller number of hands than would be required where the amount of work to be divided into a number of smaller establishments similar to this mode of labour is that mode of work which by altering the produce rather than the mode of production and by substituting an article that requires less labour for one that required more gets rid of a large quantity of labour and consequently adds to the surplusage of labourers an instance of this is in the substitution of pastureage for tillage plough less and graze more the great economist of labour simply because fewer people will be required to attend to the land but this plan of grazing instead of ploughing was adopted in this country some centuries back and with what effect to the labourers and the people at large the following extract from the work of Mr Thornton on overpopulation will show the extension of the woollen manufacturer was raising the price of wool and the little attendance which sheep require was an additional motive for causing sheep farming to be preferred to tillage arable land therefore began to be converted into pasture and the seemingly interminable cornfields which like those of Germany at this day probably extended for miles without having their even surface broken by fences or any other visible boundaries disappeared after being sown with grass they were surrounded and divided by enclosures to prevent the sheep from straying and to do away with the necessity of having shepherds always on the watch by these changes the quantity of work to be done upon a farm was exceedingly diminished and most of the servants whom it had been usual to board and lodge in the manor and farmhouses were dismissed this was not all the married farm servants were ousted from their cottages were pulled down and their gardens and fields were annexed to the adjoining meadows the small farmers were treated in the same way as their leases fell in and were sent to join the daily increasing crowd of competitors for work that was daily increasing in quantity even freeholders were in some instances ejected from their lands this social revolution had probably commenced even before the prosperity of the peasantry had reached its climax but in 1487 it attracted the notice of parliament and an act was passed to restrain its progress for already it was observed that enclosures were becoming more frequent whereby arable land which could not be manured without people and families was turned into pasture which was easily rid by a few herdsmen and that tenancies for years lives and at will whereupon most of the yeomanry lived were turned into domains note Lord Bacon's history of King Henry VII works volume 5 page 61 end note in 1533 note 25th Henry the 8th cap 13 end note an act was passed strongly condemning the practice of accumulating farms which it was declared had reduced the capitalist multitude of the people to poverty and misery and left them no alternative but to steal or to die pitifully of cold and hunger in this act it was stated that single farms might be found with flocks of from 10,000 to 20,000 sheep upon them and it was ordained that no man should keep more than 2,000 sheep except upon his own land or rent more than two farms two years later it was enacted that the King should have a moiety of the prophets of land converted subsequently to a date specified from tillage to pastures until a suitable house was erected and the land was restored to tillage in 1552 a law was made note 5 and 6 Edward VI cap 5 end note which required that on all estates as large a quantity of land as had been kept in tillage for four years together at any time since the accession of Henry VIII should be so continued in tillage but these and many subsequent enactments of the same kind had not the smallest effect in checking the consolidation of farms we find Roger Asham in Queen Elizabeth's reign lamenting the dispersion of families the ruin of houses the breaking up and destruction of the noble yeomanry the honour and strength of England Harrison also speaks of towns pulled down for sheep walks and of the tenements that had fallen either down or into the Lord's hands or had been brought and united together by other men so that in some one manner 17, 18 or 20 houses were shrunk note Eden's history of the poor volume 1 page 118 end note where have been a great many householders and inhabitants says Bishop Latimer there is now but a shepherd and his dog note Latimer's sermons page 100 end note and in a curious tract published in 1581 by one William Stafford a husband man is made to exclaim Mary these enclosures do and undo as all paid dearer for our land that we occupy and causeth that we can have no land to put to tillage all is taken up for pastor either for sheep or for grazing of cattle in so much that I have known of late a dozen plows within less compass than six miles about me laid down within this seven years and where three score persons or upwards had their livings now one man with his cattle hath all is the cause of all our mischief for they have driven husbandry out of the country by which was increased before all kinds of vitals and now altogether sheep sheep sheep note pictorial history of England volume 2 page 900 end note while numbers of persons were thus continually driven from their homes and deprived of their means of livelihood we need not be at a loss to account for the increase of vagrancy without ascribing it to the increase of population end quote as an instance within our time of the same mode of causing a surplusage of labourers and so adding to the quantity of casual labour in the kingdom namely by the extension of pastureage and consequent diminution of tillage we may cite the clearances as they were called which took place some few years back in the highlands of Scotland it is only within the last few years says the author above quoted that the straths and glens of Sutherland have been cleared of their inhabitants and that the whole country has been converted into one immense sheep walk over which the traveller may proceed for 40 miles together without seeing a tree or a stone wall or anything but a heath dotted with sheep and lambs note reports of the commissioner in the Times newspaper in June 1845 end note the example of Sutherland is imitated in the neighbouring counties during the last four years some hundreds of families have been weeded out of Rosture and nearly 400 more have received notice to quit next year similar notice has been given to 34 families in Cromarty and only the other day 18 families who were living in peace and comfort in England Calvi in Rosture were expelled from the farms occupied for ages by themselves and their forefathers to make room for sheep end quote and still we are told to plow less and graze more we now come to the last mentioned of the circumstances inducing a surplus edge of labourers and consequently augmenting the amount of casual labour throughout the kingdom including the mode of hiring the labourers at page 236 of the present volume I have said in connection with this part of the subject quote formerly the mode of hiring labourers was by the year so that the employer was bound to maintain them when unemployed but now journey work or hiring by the day prevails and the labourers being paid and that mere subsistence money and wanted are necessitated to become either poppers or thieves when their services are no longer required it is moreover this change from yearly to daily hirings and the consequent discarding of men when no longer required that has partly caused the immense mass of surplus labourers who are continually vagabondising through the country begging or stealing as they go men for whom there is but some two or three weeks work and they are still engaging hot picking and the like throughout the year end quote Blackstone in treating of the laws relating to master and servant the greater part of the farm labourers or farm servants as they were then called being included under the latter head tells us at page 425 of his first volume quote the first sort of servants acknowledged by the laws of England are menial servants called from being interminia or domestic the contract between them and their masters arises upon the hiring if the hiring be generally without any particular time limited the law construes it to be a hiring for a year common law 42 upon a principle of natural equity that the servant shall serve and the master maintain him throughout all the revolutions respective seasons as well when there is work to be done as when there is not end quote Mr Thornton says until recently it had been common for farm servants even when married and living in their own cottages to take their meals with their master and what was of more consequence in every farmhouse many unmarried servants of both sexes were lodged as well as boarded the latter therefore even if ill paid might be tolerably housed and fed and many of them fared no doubt much better than they could have done if they had been left to provide for themselves with treble their actual wages formerly throughout the kingdom and it is accustomed still prevalent in some parts more especially in the north single men and women seeking engagements as farm servants congregated at what were called the hireings held usually on the three consecutive market days which were nearest to Mayday and Merton this day the hiring was thus at two periods of the year but the engagement was usually for the 12 months by the concurrent consent however of master and servant when the hiring took place either side might terminate it at the expiration of the six months by giving due notice or a further hiring for a second 12 month could be legally effected without the necessity of again going to the hireings the servants even before their term of service had expired could attend a hiring generally held under the authority of the town's charter as a matter of right the master and mistress having no authority to prevent them the market cross was the central point for the holding of the hireings and the men and women were usually the most numerous stood in rows round the cross the terms being settled the master or mistress gave the servant a piece of money known as a God's penny the Hansel penny the offer and acceptance of this God's penny being a legal ratification of the agreement without any other step in the old times such engagements had almost always as shown in the term God's penny a character of religious obligation at the earliest period the hireings were held in the church yards afterwards by the market cross I have spoken of this matter more in the past than the present tense for the system is greatly changed as regards the male farm servant though little as regards the female now the male farm labourers instead of being hired for a specific term are more generally hired by week by job or by day even half a day's work is known at one period it was merely the married country labourers residing in their own cottages who were temporarily engaged but it is now the general body married and unmarried old and young with a few exceptions formerly the farmer was bound to find work for six or 12 months for both terms existed for his hired labourers if the land did not supply it still the man must be maintained and be paid his full wages when due by such a provision the labour and wage of the hired husband men were regular and rarely casual but this arrangement is now seldom entered into and the hired husband men's labour is consequently generally casual and rarely regular this principle of hiring labourers only for so long as they are wanted as contradistinguished from the principle of natural equity spoken of by Blackstone which requires that the servant shall serve and the master maintain him throughout all the revolutions of the respective seasons as well when there is work to be done as when there is not has been the cause perhaps of more casual labour and more and crime in this country than perhaps any other of the antecedents before mentioned the harvest is now collected solely by casual labourers by a horde of squalid immigrants or the tribe of natural and forced vagabonds who are continually begging or stealing their way throughout the country our hops are picked our fruit and vegetables gathered by the same precarious bands riches who perhaps obtain some three months of the harvest labour in the course of the year the ships at our several ports are discharged by the same casual hands who may be seen at our docks scrambling like hounds for the occasional bit of bread that is vouched safe to them their numbers loiter throughout the day even on the chance of an hour's employment for the term of hiring has been cut down to the finest possible limits so that the labourer may not be paid for even a second longer than he has wanted and since he gets only bare subsistence money when employed what we should ask ourselves must be his lot when unemployed End of section 59