 Section 48 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gillian Henry. Of the cleansing of the streets by Popper Labour. Continued. The mode of working as regards the use of the implements and the manual labour is generally the same among the Popper Scavengers as I have described in connection with the scavengers generally. The consideration of what is the rate of parish pay to the poor who are employed as scavengers is complicated by the different modes in which the employment is carried out. For as we see there is, first, the scavenging labour by workhouse inmates without any payment beyond the cost of maintenance and clothing. Second, the short or three days a week labour with or without relief in the bestowal of bread. And third, the six days work weekly with a money wage and no bread nor anything in the form of payment in kind or off relief. Let me begin with the first system of labour above mentioned. Namely, the employment of the indoor Poppers without wages of any kind their food, lodging and clothing being considered as equivalents for their work. The principle evil in connection with this form of parish work is its compulsory character. The men regarding it not as so much work given in exchange for such and such comforts but as something exacted from them. And to tell the truth it is precisely the counterpart of slavery being equally deficient in all inducement to toil and consequently requiring almost the same system of compulsion and supervision in order to keep the men at their labour. All interest in the work is destroyed, there being no reward connected with it and consequently the same organised system of setting to work is required as with cattle. There are but two inducements to voluntary action pain to be avoided or pleasure to be derived or in other words the attractiveness and repulsiveness of objects. Take away the pecuniary attraction of labour and men become mere beasts of burden capable of being set to work only by the dread of some punishment hence the system of parish labour which has no reward directly connected with it must necessarily be tyrannical and so tend to induce idleness and a hatred of work altogether. Of the different forms of Popper work street sweeping is I am inclined to believe the most unpopular of all among the poor. The scavenging is generally done in the workhouse dress and that to all except the hardened Poppers and sometimes even to them is highly distasteful. Neither have such labourers as I have said the incentive of that hope of the reward which however diminutive still tends to sweeten the most repulsive labour. I am informed by an experienced gangsman under a contractor that it is notorious that the workhouse hands are the least industrious scavengers in the streets. They don't sweep as well, he said, and don't go about it like regular men they take it quite easy. It is often asserted that this labour of the workhouse men is applied as a test but this opinion seems rather to bear on the past than the present. One man thus employed gave me the following account. He was garrulous but not communicative as is frequently the case with men who love to hear themselves talk and are not very often able to command listeners. He was healthy looking enough but he told me he was or had been delicate. He queriously objected to be questioned about his youth or the reason of his being a Popper but seemed to be abounding in workhouse stories and workhouse grievances. Street sweeping, he said, degrades a man and if a man's poor he hasn't no call to be degraded. Why can't they set the thieves and pickpockets to sweep? They could be watched easy enough. There's always idle fellers as reckons themselves real gents as can be got for watching and such easy jobs for they get as much for them as three men's paid for hard work in a week. I never was in a prison but I've heard that people there is better fed and better cared for than in workhouses. What's the meaning of that, sir? I'd like for to know. You can't tell me but I can tell you the workhouses made as ugly as it can be that poor people maybe got to leave it and chance dying in the street rather. Here the man indulged in a gavel detail of a series of Popper grievances which I had a difficulty in diverting or interrupting or my asking if the other Poppers had the same opinion as to street sweeping as he had. He replied, To be sure they has. All them that has sense to have opinion at all has. There's not two sides to it anyhow. No I don't want to be kept and do nothing. I want proper work and by the rights of it I might as well be kept with nothing to do as blank or blank. Note parish officials and note Have they nothing to do? I asked. Nothing but to make mischief and get what ought to go to the poor. It's salaries and such like as swallows the rates and that's what every poor family knows as knows anything. Did I ever like my work better? Certainly not. Do I take any pains with it? Well, where would be the good? I can sweep well enough when I please but if I could do more than the best man has ever Mr Dark paid a pound a week to it wouldn't be a bit better for me. Not a bit sir I assure you. We all takes it easy whenever we can but the work must be done. The only good about it is that you get outside the house. It's a change that way certainly. But we work like horses and is treated like asses. Note on my reminding him that he had just told me that they all took it easy when they could and that rather often. He replied, Well don't horses? But it ain't much use talking sir. It's only them as has been in work as is and in parish work as can understand all the ins and outs of it. In giving the above and the following statements I have endeavoured to elicit the feelings of the several poppers whom I conversed with. Poor ignorant or prejudiced men may easily be mistaken in their opinions or in what they may consider their facts but if a clear exposition of their sentiments be obtained it is a guide to the truth. I have therefore given the statement of the indoor poppers' opinions querulously as they were delivered as I believe them to be the sentiments of those of his class who as he said had any opinion at all. It seems indeed from all I could learn on the subject that Popper's street work even at the best is unwilling and slovenly work. Popper workmen being the worst of all workmen. If the streets be swept clean it is because a dozen poppers are put to the labour of eight, nine or ten regular scavengers who are independent labourers and who may have some pride of art or some desire to show their employers that they are to be depended upon. This feeling does not actuate the Popper workmen who thinks or knows that if he did evince a desire and a perseverance to please it would avail him little beyond the sneers and ill will of his mates so that even with a disposition to acquire the good opinion of the authorities there is this obstacle in his way and to most men who move in a circumscribed sphere it is a serious obstacle. Of the second mode of Popper scavenging namely that performed by outdoor poppers and paid for partly in money and partly in kind I heard from officials connected with Popper management very strong condemnations as being full of mischievous and degrading tendencies The payment to the outdoor Popper scavenger averages, as I have stated nine pence a day to a single man with perhaps a quarter loaf and this in some cases is for only three days in the week while to a married man with a family it varies between one shilling and a penny hipney to one shilling tuppence a day with a quarter and sometimes two quarter loafs and this likewise is occasionally from three to six days in the week on this the single or family men must subsist if they have no other means of earning an addition the men thus employed are certainly not independent labourers nor are they in the full sense of the word as popularly understood Poppers for their means of subsistence are partly the fruits of their toil and although they are wretchedly dependent they seem to feel that they have a sort of right to be set to work as the law ordains such modicum of relief in or out of the workhouse as will only ward off death through hunger this three days a week work is by the poor or Popper labourers looked upon as being after the indoor Popper work the worst sort of employment from a married man employed by the parish under this mode I had the following account he was an intelligent looking man of about 35 but with nothing very particular in his appearance unless it were ahead of very curly hair he gave me the statement in his own room which was larger than I have usually found such abodes and would have been very bare but that it was somewhat littered with the vessels of his trade as a street seller of nectar Persian sherbet, raspberry aid and other decoctions of coloured ginger beer with high sounding names and indifferent flavour in the summer he said he could live better thereby with little costaring than by street sweeping but being often a sickly man he could not do so during the uncertainties of a winter street trade his wife, a decent looking woman was present occasionally suckling one child about two years old for the poor often protract the weaning of their children as the mother's nutriment is the cheapest of all food for the infant and as the means of postponing the further increase of their family whilst another of five or six years of age sat on a bench by her side there was nothing on the walls in the way of an ornament as I have seen in some of the rooms of the poor for the couple had once been in the workhouse and might be driven there again and with such apprehensions did not care perhaps to make a home otherwise than they found it even if the consumption of only a little spare time were involved the husband said as a type founder my father who was one learned me his trade but he died when I was quite a young man or I might have been better perfected in it I was comfortably off enough then and got married very soon after that I was taken ill with an abscess in my neck you can see the mark of it still note he showed me the mark, end note for six months I wasn't able to do a thing and I was a part of the time I don't recollect how long I was weak and ill when I came out and hardly fit for work I couldn't hear of any work I could get for there was a great bother in the trade between master and men before I went into the hospital there was money to pay for doctors and when I came out I could earn nothing so everything went, yes sir, everything my wife made a little matter with charing for families she'd lived in but things are in a bad way if a poor woman has to keep her husband she was taken ill at last and then there was nothing but the parish for us I suffered a great deal before it come to that it was awful no one can know what it is but them that suffers it but I didn't know what in the world to do we lived then in St. Luke's and were passed to our own parish and were three months in the workhouse the living was good enough better then than it is now I've heard but I was miserable I was very miserable interposed the wife for I had been brought up comfortable my father was a respectable tradesman in St. George's in the east and I had been in good situations we made ourselves, said the husband as useful as we could but we were partied of course at the three months end I had ten shillings given to me to come out with and was told I might start costumungering on it but to a man not up to the trade I was very far to keep up costumungering I didn't feel mastery enough of my own trade by this time to try for work at it and work wasn't at all regular there were good hands earning only 12 shillings a week the ten shillings soon went and I had again to apply for relief and got an order for the stoneyard to go and break stones ten bushels was to be broken for 15 pence it was dreadful hard work at first my hands got all blistered and bloody and I've gone home and cried with pain and wretchedness at first it was on to three days before I could break the ten bushels I felt shivered to bits all over my arms and shoulders and my head was splitting I then got to do it in two days and then in one and it grew easier but all this time I had only what was reckoned three days work in a week that is you see sir I had only three times ten bushels given to break in the week and earned only three shillings nine pence yes I lived on it and paid one shilling six pence a week rent for the neighbours took care of a few sticks for us and the parish or a broker wouldn't have found them worth carriage my wife was then in the country with a sister I lived upon bread and dripping went without fire or candle or had one only very seldom though it wasn't warm weather I can safely say that for eight weeks I never tasted one bite of meat and hardly a bite of butter when I couldn't sleep of a night but that wasn't often it was terrible very I washed what bits of things I had then myself and had sometimes to get a heap worth of soap as a favour as the chandler said she didn't make less than a pen earth if I eat too much stripping it made me feel sick I hardly know how much bread and dripping I eat in a week I spent what money I had in it and bread and sometimes went without I was very weak you may be sure sir and if I'd had the influenza or anything that way I should have gone off like a shot for I seemed to have no constitution left but my wife came back again and got work at charring and made about four shillings a week at it but we were still very badly off then I got to work on the roads every day and had a shilling and a quarter loaf a day which was a rise I had only one child then but men with larger families got two quarter loaves a day single men got nine pence a day it was far easier work than stone breaking too the aroush were from eight to five in winter and from seven to six in summer but there's always changes going on and we were put on one shilling penny hipney a day and a quarter loaf and only three days a week the bread wasn't good it was only cheap I suppose there was twenty of us working most of the time as I was the gangsman as you call him but that's more for the regular hands was a servant of the parish and a great tyrant yes indeed while we had a talk among ourselves there was nothing but grumbling heard of some of the tales I've heard were shocking worse than what I've gone through everybody was grumbling except perhaps two men that had been in the streets and were like born poppers they didn't feel it for there's a great difference in men they knew no better but anybody might have been frightened to hear some of the men talk and curse we've stopped work to abuse the parish officers as might be passing we've mobbed the overseers and a number of us, I was one were taken before the magistrate for it but we told him how badly we were off and he discharged us and gave us orders into the workhouse and told him to see if nothing could be done for us we were there till next morning and then sent away without anything being said it's a sad life sir as the parish workers I wish to God I could get out of it but when a man has children he can't stop and say I can't do this and I won't do that last week now in Costring I lost six shillings note he meant that his expenses of every kind exceeded his receipts by six shillings and note and though I can distill nectar or anything that way note this was said somewhat laughingly and note it's only when the weather's hot and fine that any good at all can be done with it I think too that there's not the money among the working men that there once was anything regular in the way of pay must always be looked at by a man with a family of course the streets must be properly swept and sweep them as well as Mr. Dodd's men for I know one of them very well why should I have only three shillings four pins hipney a week and three loaves and he have sixteen shillings I think it is I don't drink my wife knows I don't note the wife assented and note and it seems as if in a parish a man must be kept down when he is down and then blamed for it I may not understand all about it but it looks queer an unmarried man looking like a mere boy in the face although he assured me he was nearly 24 as far as he knew I heard an account of his labour and its fruits as a parish scavenger also of his former career which partakes greatly in its characteristics of the narratives I gave towards the close of the first volume of deserted neglected and runaway children he lived from his earliest recollection with an old woman whom he first called his grandmother and was then bid to call aunt and she some of the neighbours told him had kept him out of his rights for she had four shillings a week with him so that there ought to have been money coming to him when he grew up I have sometimes heard similar statements from the ignorant poor for it is agreeable enough for them to fancy that they have been wronged out of fortunes to which they were justly entitled and deprived of position and consequence in life which they ought to have possessed by rights in the course of my inquiries among the poor women who supply the slop millner's shops with widows caps cap fronts, women's collars and so on and so on I was told by one middle aged cap maker a very silly person that she would be worth 100,000 pounds if she had her rights what those rights were she could not explain only that there was and had been a great deal of money in the family and of course she had her right to her share only she was kept out of it the youth in question never heard of a father and had been informed that his mother had died when he was a baby from what he told me I think it most probable that he was an illegitimate child for whose maintenance his father possibly paid the four shillings a week perhaps to some near relative of the deceased mother the old women as well as I could make the matter out from his narrative died suddenly and as little was known about her she was buried by the parish and the lad on the evening of the funeral was to have been taken by the landlord of the house where they launched into the workhouse but the boy ran away before this could be accomplished the parish of course not objecting to be relieved of an encumbrance he thought he was then about 12 or 13 years of age and he had before run away from two schools one a ragged school to which he had been sent for it was so confining he said and one master not he has had the ragged leathered him to use his own words tightly he knew his letters now he thought but that was all and very few he said gravely would have put up with it so long as I did he subsisted as well as he could by selling matches penny memorandum books onions and so on after he had run away sleeping under hedges in the country or in lodging houses in town and living on a few pens a day or starving on nothing he was taken ill and believed it was of a fever at or somewhere about Portsmouth and when he was sufficiently recovered and had given the best account he could of himself was passed to his parish in London the relieving officer he said would have given him a pair of shoes a crown and let him take his chance but the doctor wouldn't certify any ways he meant I think that the medical officer found him too ill to be at large on his own account he discharged himself however in a few weeks from the parish workhouse as he was convalescent the grub there you see sir he said was stunning good when I first went but it fell off as the probability is that there was no change in the diet it may not be unfair to conclude that the regular meals of the establishment were very relishable at first and that afterwards their very regularity and their little variation made the recipient critical when I left sir he stated they gave me two shilling sixpence and a tidy shirt and a pair of butchers and mended up my togs for me decent I tried all sorts of goes then I went to Chuck Farm and some other fairs with sticks for throwing and used to jump among them as throwing was going on and to sing out break my legs and miss my pegs I got many a knock and when I did oh there was such laughing at the fun on it I sold garden sticks too and garden ropes and posts sometimes but it was all very poor pay sometimes I made tenpence but not never I think but twice one shilling a day at it an oftener sixpence and in bad weather there was nothing to be done if I made sixpence clear it was a penny for coffee for it often went out fasting in a morning and a penny for bread and butter and a penny for pudding for dinner and another penny perhaps for beer half pint and a fart in out at the public bar and tuppence for a night's lodging I've had sometimes to leave half my stalk and flu with the deputy for a night's rest oh I didn't much mind the bugs so I could rest and next day had to take my things out if I could and pay a hexter hapny or penny for interest like yes I've made 18pence a heavening at a fair but there's so many a going it there but one ruins another and wet weather ruins the whole biling the pavilion, theatres and all I never was a hector, never but I've thought sometimes I'd like to try my hand at it I may someday cause I'm tall I was forced to go to the parish again I got ill and dreadful weak and then they gave me work on the roads I can't just say how long it's since, two or three year perhaps but I had nine pence a day at first and regular work and then three days and three loaves a week and then three days and no loaves I haven't been at it wary lately I'd rather take the summer out at myself but I must go back soon for cold weather's a coming by I lived a good deal on carrying trunks from the buses to Euston railway I got many buses stops on the new road in the middle of the square some was foreigners and they was wary scaly no I never said nothing but once when I got two French hipneys for carrying a heavy old leather thing like a coach box I seemed to belong to a family and then the railway bobbies made me hold my tongue I jobbed about in other places too but the time's gone by now oh I had a deal to put up with last winter what is nine pence a day for three days and if poor men had their rights times would be different I'd like to know where all the money goes I never counted how many parish sweepers there was too many by ARF I have a right to work and it's as little as a parish can do to find it I pay a shilling a week for half a bed and not half enough bed clothes but me and Jack Smith sometimes sleeps in our clothes and sometimes spreads them on top no poor Jack he hasn't no hold on a parish he's a mudlark and a gatherer note bone grubber and note do I like the overseers and the parish officers? of course not nobody does why don't they well how can they that's just where it is then I haven't been at sweeping I've stayed in bed as long as I was let but mother B I don't know no other name she has wouldn't stand it after ten oh no it is a common lodging house a sort of private lodging house perhaps where you took by the week if I made nothing but my nine pins I lived on bread and coffee or bread and cocker and sometimes a red herring and I've bought them in the braille at five and six a penny mother B charged a hipney for leave to toast them on her gridiron she is a scaly old blank I've off spent all my money in a tripe supper at night and fasted all next day I used to walk about and look in at the cook shop windows and try for a job next day I'd have gone five miles for anybody for a pen earth of pudding no I never thought of making away with myself never nor I never thought of going for a soldier it wouldn't suit me to be tied so what I want is this here regular work and no jaw oh I'm sometimes as miserable as hunger will make a person if ever he felt it yes I go to church sometimes when I'm at work for the parish if I'm at all talked no doubt I shall die in the workers you see there's nobody in the world cares for me I can't tell just how I spend my money just as it comes into my head no I don't care about drinking it don't agree with me but there's some can live on it I don't think as I shall ever marry though who knows the third and last system of parish work is where the labour is employed regularly and paid a fixed wage out of the parochial fund certainly but not in the same manner as the poppers are paid nor with any payment in kind as in loaves but all in money the payment in this wise is usually one shilling sixpence a day and but for such employment the poor so employed would in most instances apply for relief in one parish where the poor are regularly employed in street sweeping and paid a regular wage and money the whole scavenging work is done by the poppers as they are usually termed though they are not on the rate by them the streets are swept and the house is dusted the granite broken for macadamization and the streets and roads repaved or repaired this is done by about 50 men the labour in the different departments I have specified being about equally apportioned as to the number employed in each the work is executed without any direct intervention of the parish officers employed in administering relief to the poor but through the agency of a board all the men however are the poor of the parish and but for this employment would or might claim relief or demand admittance with their families into the work house the system therefore is one of indirect proper labour nearly all the men have been unskilled labourers the exception being now and then a few operatives in such handicrafts as were suffering from the death of employment some of the artisans I was informed would be earning their nine shillings in the stoneyard one week and the next getting 30 shillings at their business the men thus labouring for the parish are about three fifths Irishman a fifth Welshman or rather more than a fifth and the remainder Englishman there is not a single Scotchman among them there is no difference in the parish I allowed to between the wages of married and single men but men with families are usually preferred among the applicants for such work they all reside in their own rooms or sometimes in lodging houses but this rests with themselves I had the following account from a heavy and healthy looking middle-aged man dressed in a jacket and trousers of course corduroy there is so little distinctive about it however that I will not consume space in the narrative form in which I noted it down it may suffice that the man seemed to have little recollection as to the past and less care as to the future his life from all I could learn from him had been spent in what may be called menial labour as the servant not of an individual but of a parish but there was nothing he knew of that he had to thank anybody for parish or anyone they wanted him and he wanted them on my asking him if he had never tried to better himself he said that he had once as an abbey but a blow in the head and eye from a portion of rock shivered by his pickaxe disabled him for a while and he left real wee work he went to church as was expected of him and he and his wife liked it he had forgotten how to read but never was a dab at it and so didn't know nothing about the litany or the sams he couldn't say as he knew any difference between the church of England and the Roman Catholic churchgoers because the one was at English and the other at Irish religion and he wasn't to be expected to understand Irish religion he saw no necessity to put by money this he said hesitatingly supposing he could what was his parish for and he would take care he didn't lose his settlement if he'd ever had such a chance as some had he might have saved money but he never had he had no family and his wife earned about four shillings a week but not every week in a wool warehouse and they did middling the above then are the modes in which poppers or imminent poppers so to speak are employed and in one way or other are paid for their labour or what is called paid and who although parish menials still reside in their own abodes with the opportunity such as it is of looking out for better employment as to the moral qualities of the streetsweeping poppers I do not know that they differ from those of poppers generally all men who feel themselves sunk into compulsory labour and a degraded condition are dissatisfied and eager to throw the blame of their degradation from their own shoulders but it is evident that these men are unwilling workers because their work is deprived of its just reward and although I did not hear of any difficulty being experienced in getting them to work I was assured by many who knew them well that they do not go about it with any alertness did anyone ever hear a popper whistle or sing at his street work I believe that every experienced vestry man will agree to the truth of the statement that it is very rarely a confirmed popper rises from his degradation his thoughts and aspirations seem bounded by the workhouse and the parish the reason appears to be because the workhouse authorities seek rather to degrade than to elevate the man resorting to every means of shaming the popper until at last he becomes so utterly callous to the disgrace of popperism that he does not care to alter his position the system too adopted by the parish authorities of not paying for work or paying less than the ordinary prices of the trade causes the popper labourers to be unwilling workers and finding that industry brings no reward or less than its fair reward to them they get to hate all work and to grow up habitual burdens on the state crab the poet who in all questions of borough and parish life is an authority makes his workhouse boy Dick Monday who when a boy got more kicks than half pence die Sir Richard Monday of Monday Place but this is a flight on the wings of political license certainly not impossible and that is all which can be said for its likelihood the following remarks on the payment of the parish streetsweepers are from one of Mr Cochran's publications quote the council considers it a duty to the poor to touch upon the niggardly manner in which parish generally paid and the deplorable and emaciated condition which they usually present with regard to their clothing and personal appearance one contractor pays 16 shillings six pence per week two pay 16 shillings 12 including a highway board pay 15 shillings each one pays 14 shillings six pence two pay 14 shillings and one pays so low as 12 shillings on the other hand five parish boards of guardians of the poor pay only 9 shillings each to their miserable mudlarks one pays 8 shillings another 7 shillings 5 pence a third 7 shillings a fourth compensates its labourers in the British metropolis where rent and living are necessarily higher than elsewhere with 5 shillings 8 pence per week whilst a fifth pays 3 men 15 shillings each 12 men 10 shillings each and 6 men 7 shillings 6 pence each for exactly the same kind of work but what renders this mean torture of men because they happen to be poor absurd as well as cruel are the anomalous facts that while the guardians of one parish pay 5 men 7 shillings each the contractor for another part of the same parish pays his 4 men 14 shillings each and whilst the guardians of a second parish pay only 5 shillings 8 pence the highway board pays 15 shillings to each of its labourers for performing exactly the same work in the same district Mr. Dark scavenging contractor of Paddington lately stated that he never had and never would employ any man at less than 16 shillings or 18 shillings per week and Mr. Sinut of Belvedere Road Lambeth about 3 months since in West End Guardians to take 40 poppers out of their own workhouse to cleanse their own parish on the street orderly system and to pay them 15 shillings per week each man note to the honourable conduct of the above named contractors to their men I am glad to be able to bear witness all the men speak in the highest terms of them end note but the economical guardians preferred filth and a full workhouse Christian charity and common sense and so the proposal of this considerate contractor was rejected it is certainly far from being creditable to boards of gentlemen and wealthy tradesmen who manage parish affairs to pay a little more than one half the wages that an individual does to poor labourers who cannot choose their employment or their masters the broken down tradesmen the journeyman deprived of his usual work the mechanic or by poverty of the times the ingenious mechanic or the unsuccessful artist applies at the parish labour market for leave to live by other labour than that which hitherto maintained him in comfort the usual language of such persons even when applying for private alms or parochial relief is not that they want money but that they have long been out of work that their particular trade has been over stocked with apprentices or superseded by machinery or that their late employer has become bankrupt or has discharged the majority of his hands from the badness of the times to a man of this class the guardian of the poor replies we will test your willingness to labour by employing you in the stone yard or to sweep the streets but the parish being heavily burdened with rates we cannot afford more than seven shillings or eight shillings a week the poor creature conscious of his own helplessness accepts the miserable pittance in order to preserve himself and family from immediate starvation the council has taken much pains to ascertain the wages and mode of expenditure of them by this uncared for and almost pariah class of labourers throughout the metropolitan parishes and it possesses undeniable proofs that few possess any further garment than the rags upon their backs some being even without a change of linen that they never enter a place of worship on account of their want of decent clothing that their wives and children are starved and in rags and a latter without the least education that they never by any chance taste fresh animal food that one third of their hard earnings is paid for rent and that their only sustenance unless their wives happen to go out washing or charring consists of bread, potatoes coarse tea without milk or sugar assault herring two or three times a week and a slice of rusty bacon on Sunday morning the meal called dinner they never know their only reflection being breakfast and tea beer they do not taste from years end to years end and any other luxury or even necessary is out of the question of the 21 scavengers employed by St James's parish in 1850 no less than 16 says Mr Cochran's report were married with from one to four children each how the poor creatures who receive but seven shilling sixpence a week support their families is best known to themselves end quote let me now in conclusion endeavour to arrive at a rough estimate as to the sum of which the pauper labourers annually are mocked by the before mentioned rates of remuneration estimating their labour value or amount paid by the honourable contractors namely 16 shillings a week for if private individuals can afford to pay that wage and yet reap a profit out of the transaction the guardians of the poor surely could and should pay the same prices and not avail themselves of starving men's necessities to reduce the wages of a trade to the very quick of subsistence if it be a sound principle the condition of the pauper should be rendered less desirable than that of the labourer assuredly the principle is equally sound that the condition of the labourer should be made more desirable than that of the pauper for if to pamper the pauper be to make indolence more agreeable than industry certainly to grind down the wages of the labourer is to render industry as unprofitable as indolence in either case the same premium as yet the poor law commissioners have seen but one way of reducing the poor rates namely by rendering the state of the pauper as unenviable as possible and they have wholly lost sight of the other mode of attaining the same end namely by making the state of the labourer as desirable as possible to institute a terrible poor law without maintaining an attractive form of industry is to hold out a boon to crime if the wages of the working man are to be reduced to bear subsistence and the condition of the pauper is to be rendered worse than that of the working man what atrocities will not be committed upon the poor elevate the condition of the labourer and there will be no necessity to depress the pauper make work more attractive by increasing the reward for it and laziness will necessarily become more repulsive as it is however the pauper is not only kept at the very lowest point of subsistence but his half starved labour is brought into competition with that of men living in a comparative state of comfort and the result of course is that instead of decreasing the number of pauper or poor rates we make pauper's off our labourers and fill our work houses by such means if a scavenger's labour be worth from 12 shillings 15 shillings per week in the market what moral right have the guardians of the poor to pay 5 shillings 8 pins for the same commodity if the pauper's are set to do work which is fairly worth 15 shillings then to pay them little more than one third of the regular value is not only to make unwilling workers of the pauper's but to drag down all the better workmen to the level of the worst may be estimated that the outlay on pauper's labour as a whole after deducting the sum paid to superintendents and gangers does not exceed 10 shillings weekly per individual consequently the lowering of the price of labour is in this ratio there are now in round numbers 450 pauper's scavengers in the metropolis and the account stands thus 450 scavengers at the regular weekly wages 16 shillings each 18,720 pounds yearly 450 pauper labourers 10 shillings each weekly 11,700 pounds yearly lower price of pauper's work 7,020 pounds hence we see that the great scurf employers of the scavengers after all are the guardians of the poor compared with whom the most grasping contractor is a model of liberality that the minimum of remuneration paid by the parishes has tended and is tending more and more to the general depreciation of wages in the scavenging trade there is no doubt it has done so directly and indirectly one man who had been a last maker told me that he left his employment as a London scavenger for he had come down to the parish and set off at the close of the summer into Kent for the harvest and hopping for when in the country he had been more used to agricultural labour than to last clog or pattern making he considered that he had not been successful still he returned to London a richer man by 26 shillings and sixpence nearly 20 shillings of this soon went for shoes and necessary clothing and to pay some rears of rent and a Chandler's bill healed after which he could be trusted again where he was known he applied to the foreman of a contractor whom he knew for work what wage? said the foreman 15 shillings a week was the reply why? what did you get from the parish for sweeping? nine shillings well said the foreman I know you're a decent man and you were recommended before and so I can give you four or five days a week at two shillings fourpence a day and no nonsense about ours for you know yourself I can get 50 men as have been parish workers at one shilling ninepence a day and jump at it and so you mustn't be cheeky the man closed with the offer knowing that the foreman spoke the truth a contractor told me that he could obtain plenty of hands used to parish scavenging work at 10 shillings sixpence to 12 shillings a week whereas he paid 16 shillings it is evident then that the system of popper work in scavenging has created an increasing market for cheap and deteriorated labour a market including hundreds of the unemployed at other unskilled labourers and it is hardly to be doubted that the many who have faith in the doctrine that it is the best policy to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market will avail themselves of the low priced labour of this popper constituted mark it is but right to add that those parishes which pay 15 shillings a week are as worthy of commendation as those which pay nine shillings seven shillings sixpence and seven shillings per week and one shilling fourpence and one shilling a penny a day are reprehensible and unfortunately the latter have a tendency to regulate all the others End of section 48 section 49 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 the street orderlies this constitutes the last of the four varieties of labour employed in the cleansing of the public thoroughfares of London I have already treated of the self supporting manual labour the self supporting machine labour and the popper labour and now proceed to the consideration of the philanthropic labour of the streets in the first place let us understand clearly what is meant by philanthropic labour and how it is distinguished from popper labour on the one hand and self supporting labour on the other self supporting labour I take to be that form of work which returns not less and generally something more than is expended upon it popper labour on the other hand which the applicants for parish relief are set not with a view to the profit to be derived from it but partly as a test of their willingness to work and partly as a means of employing the unemployed while philanthropic labour is employment provided for the unemployed with the same disregard of profit as distinguishes popper labour but with a greater regard for the poor and as a means of affording them relief in a more grading manner than is done under the present poor law popper and philanthropic labour then differ essentially from self supporting labour in being non profitable modes of employment that is to say they yield so bare and equivalent for the sum expended upon the labourers that none in the ordinary way of trade can be found to provide the means necessary for putting them into operation while popper labour differs from philanthropic labour in the fact that the funds requisite for setting the poor on work are provided by law as a matter of social policy whereas in the case of philanthropic labour the funds or a part of them are supplied by voluntary contributions out of a desire to improve the labourers condition there are then two distinguishing features in all philanthropic labour the one is that it yields no profit if it did it would become a matter of trade and the other that it is instituted and maintained from a wish to benefit the labourer the street orderly system forms part of the operations on behalf of the poor adopted by a society of which Mr Charles Cochran is the president entitled the National Philanthropic Association which is said to have for its object quote social and salutiferous improvements street cleanliness and the employment of the poor so that able-bodied men may be prevented from burdening the parish rate and preserved independent of Workhouse, Ames and degradation end quote here a two fold object is expressed the philanthropic association seeks not only to benefit the poor by giving them employment and preserving them independent Ames and degradation but to benefit the public likewise by promoting social and salutiferous improvements and street cleanliness I shall deal with each of these objects separately but first let me declare so as to remove all suspicion of private feelings tending in any way to bias my judgment in this most important matter that I am an utter stranger to the president and council of the philanthropic association and that whatever I may have to say on the subject of the street orderlies I do simply in conformity with my duty to the public to state truthfully all that concerns the labourers and the poor of the metropolis viewed economically, philanthropic and popper work may be said to be the regulators of the minimum rate of wages establishing the lowest point to which competition can possibly drive down the remuneration for labour for it is evident that if the self supporting labourer cannot obtain greater comforts by the independent exercise of his industry than the parish rates or private charity will afford him he will at once give overworking for the trading employer and declare on the funds raised by assessment or voluntary subscription for his support hence those who wish well to the labourer and who believe that cheapness of commodities is desirable only as Mr Stuart Mill says page 502 of volume 2 when the cause of it is that their production costs little labour and not when occasioned by that labourers being ill remunerated and who believe moreover that the labourer is to be benefitted solely by the cultivation of a high standard of comfort among the people to such I say it is evident that a poor law which reduces the relief to able-bodied labourers to the smallest modicum of food consistent with the continuation of life must be about the greatest curse that can possibly come upon an overpopulated country admitting as it does of the reduction of wages to so low a point of mere brutal existence as to induce that recklessness and improvidence among the poor which is known to give so strong an impetus to the increase of the people the rate of parish relief is necessarily a minimised rate of wages and admits of the labourers pay being reduced by proper competition to little short of starvation and such doubtlessly would have been the case long ago in the scavenging trade by the employment of parish labour had not the philanthropic association instituted the system of street orderlies and by the payment of a higher rate of wages than the more grinding afforded by giving the men 12 shillings instead of 9 shillings or even 7 shillings a week prevented the remuneration of the regular hands being dragged down to an approximation to the parish level hence rightly viewed philanthropic labour and indeed popper labour too comes under the head of a remedy for low wages as preventing if properly regulated the undue depreciation of industry from excessive competition and it is in this light that I shall now proceed to consider it the several plans that have been propounded from time to time as remedies for an insufficient rate of remuneration for work are as multifarious as the circumstances influencing the three requisites for production labour capital and land I will here run over as briefly as possible abstaining from the expression of all opinion on the subject the various schemes which have been proposed with this object so that the reader may come as prepared as possible to the consideration of the matter the remedies for low wages may be arranged into two distinct groups namely those which seek to increase the labourers rate of pay directly and those which seek to do so indirectly the direct remedies for low wages that have been propounded are A. the establishment of a standard rate of remuneration for labour this has been proposed to be brought about by three different means namely one by law or government authority either A. fixing the minimum rate of wages and leaving the variations above that point to be adjusted by competition this as we have seen is the effect of the poor law or B. settling the rate of wages generally by means of local boards of trade for concede prudence consisting of delegates from the workmen and employers to determine by the principles of natural equity a reasonable scale of remuneration in the several trades their decision being binding in law on both the employers and the employed two by public opinion this has been generally proposed by those who are what Mr Mill terms shy of admitting the interference of the authority in contracts for labour fearing that if the law intervened it would do so rashly and ignorantly and desiring to compass by moral sanction what they consider useless or dangerous to attempt to bring about by legal means every employer says Mr Mill they think ought to give sufficient wages and if he does not give such wages willingly he should be compelled to do so by public opinion three by trade societies or combination among the workmen that is to say by the payment of a small sum per week out of the wages of the workmen towards the formation of a fund for the support of such of their fellow operatives as maybe out of employment or refused to work for those employers who seek to give less than the standard rate of wages established by the trade B. the prohibition of stoppages or deductions of all kinds from the nominal wages of workmen this is principally the object of the anti-truck society which seeks to obtain an act of parliament in joining the payment in full of all wages the stoppages or extortions from workmen's wages generally consist of one finds for real or pretended misconduct two rents for tools frames gas and sometimes lodgings three sale of trade appliances as trimmings, thread and so on at undue prices four sale of food drink and so on at an exorbitant rate of profit five payment in public houses as the means of inducing the men to spend a portion of their earnings in drink six deposit of money as security before taking out work so that the capital of the employer is increased without payment of interest to the work people C. the institution of certain aides or additions to wages as one, perquisites or gratuities obtained from the public as with waiters, boxkeepers coachmen, dustmen, vergers and others two, beer money and other allowances to workmen three, family work or the cooperation of the wife means of increasing the workman's income four, allotments of land to be cultivated after the regular day's labour five, the parish allowance system or relief in aid of wages as practised under the old poor law D. the increase of the money value of wages by one, cheap food two, cheap lodgings through building improved dwellings for the poor and doing away with the profit of subletting three, cooperative stores or the club system of obtaining provisions at wholesale prices four, the abolition of the payment of wages on Sunday morning or at so late an hour on the Saturday night as to prevent the labourer availing himself of the Saturday's market five, tea totalism as causing the men to spend nothing in fermented drinks and so leaving them more than on food such are the direct modes of remedying low wages namely either by preventing the price of labour itself falling below a certain standard prohibiting all stoppages from the pay of the labourer instituting certain aids or additions to such pay or increasing the money value of the ordinary wages by reducing the price of provisions the indirect modes of remedying low wages are of a far more complex character they consist of first the remedies propounded by political economists which are A. the decrease of the number of labourers for gaining this end several plans have been proposed as one checks against the increase of the population for which the following are the chief Malthusian proposals A. preventative checks for the hindrance of impregnation B. prohibition of early marriages among the poor C. increase of the standard of comfort or requirements among the people as a means of inducing prudence and restraint of the passions D. infanticide as among the Chinese 2. emigration as a means of draining off the surplus labourers 3. limitation of apprentices in skilled trades as a means of preventing the increase of particular occupations this however is advocated not by economists but generally by operatives 4. prevention of family work or the discouragement of the labour of the wives and children of operatives this again cannot be said to be an economist remedy B. increase of the circulating capital or some set aside for the payment of the labourers 1. by government imposts governments, says Mr Mill can create additional industry by creating capital they may lay on taxes and employ the amount productively this was the object of the original poor law 43 Elizabeth which empowered the overseers of the poor to quote, raise weekly or otherwise by taxation of every inhabitant and so on such sums of money as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool and other wear or stuff to set the poor on work end quote 2. by the issue of paper money the proposition of Mr Jonathan Duncan is that the government should issue notes equivalent to the taxation of the country with the view of affording increased employment to the poor the people being set to work as it were upon credit in the same manner as the labourers tried to build the market house at Guernsey 3. the extension of the markets of the country by the abolition of all restrictions on commerce and the encouragement of the free interchange of commodities so that by increasing the demand for our products we may be able to afford employment to an extra number of producers they above constitute what with a few exceptions may be termed more particularly in the context of the the regulation of the quantity of work done by each workman or the prevention of the undue economising of labour for this end several means have been put forward 1. the shortening the hours of labour and abolition of Sunday work 2. alteration of the mode of work as the substitution of day work for peace work as a means of decreasing the stimulus 3. extension of the term of hiring by the substitution of annual engagements for daily or weekly hireings with a view to the prevention of casual labour 4. limitation of the number of hands employed by one capitalist so as to prevent the undue extension of the large system of production 5. taxation of machinery with the object not only of making it contribute its quota to the revenue of the country but of impeding its undue increase 6. the discountenance of every form of work that tends to the making up of a greater quantity of materials with a less quantity of labour and consequently to the expenditure of a greater proportion of the capital of the country on machinery or materials and a correspondingly less proportion on the labourers e. protective impulses on such foreign commodities as can be produced in this country with the view of preventing the labour of the comparatively untaxed and uncivilised foreigner being brought into competition with that of the taxed and civilised producer at home e. financial reform or reduction of the taxation of the country as enabling the home labourer the better to compete with the foreigner the two latter proposals and that of the extension of the markets may be said to seek to remedy low wages by expanding or circumscribing the foreign trade of the country g. a different division of the proceeds of labour for this object several schemes have been propounded 1. the tribute system of wages or payment of labour according to the additional value which it confers on the materials on which it operates 2. the abolition of the middleman whether sweater peacemaster, lumper or what not coming between the employer and employed 3. cooperation or joint stock associations of labourers with the view of abolishing the profit of the capitalist employer H. a different mode of distributing the products of labour with the view of abolishing the profit of the dealer between the producer and consumer 4. cooperative stores where the consumers club together for the purchase of their goods directly of the producers 5. a more general and equal division of the wealth of the country for attaining this end there are but two known means 1. communism or the abolition of all rights to individual property 2. agapism or the voluntary sharing of individual possessions with the less fortunate successful members of the community these remedies may with a few exceptions such as the tribute system of wages and the abolition of middlemen be said to constitute the socialist and communist schemes for the prevention of distress J. creating additional employment for the poor and so removing the surplus labour from the market 2. modes of effecting this have been proposed 1. home colonisation or the cultivation of wastelands by the poor 2. orderlyism or the employment of the poor in the promotion of public cleanliness and the increased sanitary condition of the country K. the prevention of the enclosure of commons as the means of enabling the poor to obtain gratuitous pasturage for their cattle L. the abolition of primogenitor with the view of dividing the land among a greater number of individuals M. the holding of the land by the state and equal apportionment of it among the poor N. the extension of the suffrage among the people and so allowing the workmen as well as the capitalist and the landlord to take part in the formation of the laws of the country for this purpose there are two plans 1. the freehold land movement which seeks to enable the people to become proprietors of as much land as will under the present law give them a voice in the country 2. charterism or that which seeks to alter the law concerning the election of members of parliament and to confer the right of voting on every male of mature age sound mind and non-criminal character oh cultivation of a higher moral and Christian character among the people this form of remedy which is advocated by many is based on the argument that without some mitigation of the selfishness of the times all other schemes for improving the condition of the people will be either evaded by the cunning of the rich or defeated by the servility of the poor the above I believe to be a full and fair statement of the several plans that have been proposed from time to time for alleviating the distress of the people this enumeration is as comprehensive as my knowledge will enable me to make it and I have abstained from all comment on the several schemes so that the reader may have an opportunity of impartially weighing the merits of each and adopting that which in his own mind seems best calculated to affect what after all we every one desire whether protectionist, economist free trader, philanthropist socialist, communist or chartist the good of the country in which we live and the people by whom we are surrounded now we have here to deal with that particular remedy for low wages or distress which consists in creating additional employment for the poor and of which the street orderly system is an example the increase of employment for the poor was the main object of the 43 Elizabeth for which purpose as we have seen the overseers of several parishes were empowered to raise a fund by assessments upon the property of the rich for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool and other wear or stuff to set the poor on work but though economists to this day tell us that while on the one hand industry is limited by capital so on the other every increase of capital gives or is capable of giving additional employment to industry and this without a signable limit end quote note this is Mr. Mills second fundamental proposition respecting capital see principles of political economy page 82 volume 1 what I intend to assert is, says that gentleman that the portion of capital which is destined to the maintenance of the labourers may, supposing no increase in anything else be indefinitely increased without creating an impossibility of finding them employment in other words if there are human beings capable of work and food to feed them they may always be employed in producing something end note nevertheless the great difficulty of carrying out the provisions of the original poor law has consisted in finding a market for the products of proper labour and frequent gluts in our manufacturers are sufficient to teach us that it is one thing to produce and another to dispose of the products so that to create additional employment for the poor something besides capital is requisite it is necessary either that they shall be engaged in producing that which they themselves immediately consume or that for which the market admits of being extended the two plans proposed for the employment of the poor it will be seen consist one in the cultivation of wastelands two in promoting public cleanliness and so increasing the sanitary condition of the country the first it is evident remove the objection of a market being needed for the products of the labour of the poor since it proposes that their energies should be devoted to the production of the food which they themselves consume while the second seeks to create additional employment affecting that increased cleanliness which more enlightened physiological views have not only made more desirable but taught us to be absolutely necessary to the health and enjoyment of the community the great impediment however to the profitable employment of the poor has generally been the unproductive or an availing character of proper labour this has been mainly owing to the fact that the able-bodied who are deprived of employment are necessarily the lowest grade of operatives for in the displacement of workmen those are the first discarded whose labour is found to be the least efficient either from a deficiency of skill, industry or sobriety so that proper labour is necessarily of the least productive character another great difficulty with the employment of the poor is that the idle or those to whom work is more than usually irksome require a stronger inducement than ordinary to make them labour and the remuneration for parish work being necessarily less than for any other those who are properised through idleness the most benevolent among us must allow there are such are naturally less than ever disposed to labour when they become poppers all popper work therefore is generally unproductive or unavailing because it is either inexpert or unwilling work the labour of the indoor poppers who receive only their food for their pains is necessarily of the same compulsory character as slavery while that of the outdoor poppers with the remuneration often cut down to the lowest subsisting point is scarcely of a more willing or more availing kind owing to this general unproductiveness as well as the difficulty of finding a field for the profitable employment of the unemployed poor the labour of poppers has been for a long time passed directed mainly to the cleansing of the public thoroughfares still from the degrading nature of the occupation and the small remuneration for the toil popper labourers have been found to be such unwilling workers that many parishes have long since given over employing their poor even in this capacity preferring to entrust the work to a contractor with paid self supporting operatives instead the founder of the philanthropic association appears to have been fully aware of the two great difficulties besetting the profitable employment of the poor namely one finding a field for the exercise of their labourers where they might be set on work with benefit to the community and without injury to the independent operatives already engaged in the same occupation and two overcoming the unwillingness and consequently the unavailingness of popper labour the first difficulty Mr Cochran has endeavoured to obviate by taking advantage of that growing desire for greater public cleanliness which has arisen from the increased knowledge of the principles governing the health of towns and the second by giving the men 12 shillings instead of 9 shillings or 7 shillings a week or worse of all one shilling a penny hipney and a quarter loaf a day for three days in the week and so not only augmenting the stimulus to work for it should be remembered that wages are to the human machine what the fire is to the steam engine but preventing the undue depreciation of the labour of the independent workmen he who discovers the means of increasing the rewards of labour is as great a friend to his race and I appreciate them is the public enemy and I do not hesitate to confess that I look upon Mr Charles Cochran as one of the illustrious few who in these days of unremunerated toil and their necessary concomitance beggars and thieves has come forward to help the labourers of this country from their daily increasing degradation his benevolence is of that enlightened order which seeks to extend rather than destroy the rest of the poor not only by creating additional employment for them but by rendering that employment less repulsive the means by which Mr Cochran has endeavoured to gain these ends constitutes the system called street orderlyism which therefore admits of being viewed in two distinct aspects first as a new mode of improving the health of towns and secondly as an improved method of employing the poor in the first I must confess that the system of scavenging or cleansing the public thoroughfares pursued by the street orderlies assumes when contemplated in a sanitary point of view all the importance and simplicity of a great discovery it has been before pointed out that this system consists not only in cleansing the streets but in keeping them clean by the street orderly method of scavenging the thoroughfares are continually being cleansed and so never allowed to become dirty whereas by the ordinary method they are not cleansed until they are dirty hence the two modes of scavenging are diametrically opposed under the one the streets are cleansed as fast as dirtied while under the other they are dirtied as fast as cleansed so that by the new system of scavenging the public thoroughfares are maintained in a perpetual state of cleanliness whereas by the old they may be said to be kept in a continual state of dirt the street orderly system of scavenging however is not only worthy of high commendation as a more efficient means of gaining a particular end a simplification of a certain process but it calls for our highest praise as well for the end gained as for the means of gaining it if it be really a sound physiological principle that the creator has made dirt offensive to every rightly constituted mind because it is injurious to us and so established in us an instinct before we could discover a reason for removing all refuse from our presence it becomes now that we have detected the cause of the feeling in us at once disgusting and irrational to allow the filth to accumulate in our streets in front of our houses if typhus, cholera and other pestilences are but divine punishments for the infraction of that most kindly law by which the health of a people has been made to depend on that which is naturally agreeable cleanliness there are instinct for self preservation should force us, even if our sense of enjoyment would not lead us to remove as fast as it is formed what is at once as dangerous as it should be repulsive to our natures sanitarily regarded the cleansing of a town is one of the most important objects that can engage the attention of its governors the removal of its refuse being quite as necessary for the continuance of the existence of a people as the supply of their food in the economy of nature there is no loss this, the great doctrine of waste and supply has taught us the detritus of one rock is the conglomerate of another the evaporation of the ocean is the source of the river the poisonous exhalations of animals the vital air of plants and the refuse of man and beasts the food of their food the dust and cinders from our fires the slopes from the washing of our houses the excretions of our bodies the detritus and surface water of our streets have all their offices to perform in the great scheme of creation and if left to rot and fuss about us not only injure our health but diminish the supplies of our food the filth of the thoroughfares of the metropolis forms it would appear the staple manure of the market gardens in the suburbs out of the London mud come the London cabbages so that an improvement in the scavenging of the metropolis tends not only to give the people improved health but improved vegetables for that which is nothing but a pistiferous muck heap in the town becomes a vivifying garden dirt however is not only as prejudicial to our health and offensive to our senses when allowed to accumulate in our streets as it is beneficial to us when removed to our gardens but it is a most expensive commodity to keep in front of our houses it has been shown that the cost to the people of London in the matter of extra washing induced by defective scavenging is at the least one million pounds sterling per annum the Board of Health estimated at 2,500,000 pounds and the loss from extra wear and tear of clothes from brushing and scrubbing arising from the like cause is about the same prodigious sum while the injury done to the furniture of private houses and the goods exposed for sale in shops though impossible to be estimated appears to be something enormous so that the loss from the defective scavenging of the metropolis seems at the lowest calculation to amount to several millions per annum and hence it becomes of the highest possible importance economically as well as physiologically that the streets should be cleansed in the most effective manner now that the street orderly system is the only rational and efficacious mode of street cleansing both theory and practice assure us to allow the filth to accumulate in the streets the three steps are taken to remove it is the same as if we were never to wash our bodies until they were dirty it is to be perpetually striving to cure the disease when with scarcely any more trouble we might prevent it entirely there is indeed the same difference between the new and the old system of scavenging as there is between a bad and a good housewife the one never cleaning her house until it is dirty we are continually cleaning it so as to prevent it being ever dirty hence it would appear that the street orderly system of scavenging would be a great public benefit even where there are no other object connected with it than the increased cleanliness of our streets but in a country like Great Britain afflicted as it is with a surplus population no matter from what cause that each day finds the difficulty of obtaining work growing greater the opening up of new fields of employment for the poor is perhaps the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon the nation without the discovery of such new fields the setting the poor on work is merely as I have said to throw out of employment those who are already employed it is not to decrease but really to increase the evil of the times to add to rather than diminish the number of our poppers or our thieves the increase of employment in a nation however requires not only a corresponding increase of capital but a like increase in the demand or desire as well as in the pecuniary means of the people to avail themselves of the work on which the poor are set that is to say in the extension of the home market it requires also some mode of stimulating the energies of the workers so as to make them labour more willingly and consequently more availingly than usual these conditions appear to have been fulfilled by Mr Cochran in the establishment of the street orderlies he has introduced in connection with this body a system of scavenging which while it employs a greater number of hands produces such additional benefits as cannot but be considered an equivalent for the increased expenditure though it is even doubtful whether by the collection of the street manure unmixed with the mud the extra value of that article alone will not go far to compensate for the additional expense if however there be added to this the saving to the metropolitan parishes in the cost of watering the streets for under the street orderly system this is not required the dust never being allowed to accumulate and consequently never requiring to be laid as well as the greater saving of converting the poppers into self-supporting labourers together with the diminished expense of washing and doctors bills consequent on the increased cleanliness of the streets there cannot be the least doubt that the employment of the poor as street orderlies is no longer a matter of philanthropy but of mere commercial prudence such appear to me to be the principal objects of Mr Cochran's street orderly system of scavenging and it is a subject upon which I have spoken the more freely because being unacquainted with that gentleman none can suspect me of being prejudiced in his favour and because I have felt that the good which he has done and is likely to do to the poor has been comparatively unacknowledged by the public and that society and the people owe him a heavy debt of gratitude note Mr Cochran is said in the reports of the National Philanthropic Association no less than six thousand pounds of his fortune in the institution of the street orderly system of scavenging end note I shall now proceed to set forth the character of the labour and the condition and remuneration of the labourers in connection with the street orderly system of scavenging the Metropolitan thoroughfares the first appearance of the street orderlies in the metropolis was in 1843 Mr Charles Cochran who had previously formed the National Philanthropic Association with its ill-emotionary soup kitchens and so on then introduced the system of street orderlies as one enabling many destitute men to support themselves by their labour as well as in his estimation a better and eventually a more economical mode of street cleansing and partaking also somewhat of the character of a street police the first demonstration of the day of the street orderly system took place in Regent Street between the quadrant and the Regent Circus and in Oxford Street between Veer Street and Charles Street the streets were thoroughly swept in the morning and then each man or boy provided with a hand broom and dustpan removed any dirt as soon as it was deposited the demonstration was pronounced highly successful and the system effective in the opinion of 18 influential inhabitants of the locality who acted as a committee and who publicly and with the authority of their names testified their conviction that the most efficient means of keeping streets clean and more especially great thoroughfares was to prevent the accumulation of dirt by removing the manure within a few minutes after it has been deposited by the passing cattle the same having hitherto remained during several days the cost of this demonstration amounted to about £400 of which the report states £200 still remains due from the shopkeepers to the association which it is delicately added from late commercial difficulties they have not yet repaid in 1850 whilst the street orderlies were engaged in cleansing Regent Street and so on the city commissioners of the sewers of London decided to depute some person to observe and report to them concerning the method pursued but with that instinctive sort of repugnance which seems to animate the great bulk of city officials against improvement of any kind the reply was that they did not consider the same worthy their attention the matter however was not allowed to drop and by the persevering efforts of Mr Cochran the president and of the body the gentleman who formed the council of the association Cheapside, Cornhill and the most important parts of the very heart of the city were at length cleansed according to the new method the ratepayers then showed that they at least did consider the same worthy of attention for 8000 out of 12000 within a few days signed memorials recommending the adoption of what they pronounced an improvement and a public meeting was held hall May the 4th 1846 at which resolutions in favour of the street orderly method were passed the authorities did not adopt these recommendations but they ventured so far to depart from their venerable routine as to order the streets to be swept every day this employed upwards of 300 men whereas at the period when the sages of the city sewers did not consider any proposed improvement in scavengery worthy their attention the number of men employed by them in cleansing the streets did not exceed 30 the street orderly system was afterwards tried in the parishes of St Paul, Covent Garden St James Westminster St Martin in the Fields St Anne, Soho and others sometimes calling forth opposition of course from the authorities connected with the established modes of paving, scavenging and so on it is not my intention to write a complete history of the street orderlies but merely to sketch their progress as well as describe their peculiar characteristics within these few months public meetings have been held in almost every one of the 26 wards of the city at which approving resolutions were either passed unanimously or carried by large majorities and the street orderly system is now about to be introduced into St Martin's parish instead of the street sweeping machine as far as the street orderly system has been tried and judging only by the testimony of public examination and public record of opinion the trial has certainly been a success a memorial to the court of Searge from the ward of Broad Street supported by the leading merchants of that locality in recommendation of the employment of street orderlies seems to bear more closely on the subject than any I have yet seen your memorialists they state have observed that those public thoroughfares within the city of London which are now cleansed by street orderlies are so remarkably clean as to be almost free from mud in wet and dust in dry weather that such extreme cleanliness is of great comfort to the public and tends to improve the sanitary condition of the ward but it is not only in the metropolis that the street orderlies seem likely to become the established scavengers the streets of Windsor I am informed are now in the court of being cleansed upon the orderly plan in Amsterdam there are at present 16 orderlies regularly employed upon scavenging a portion of the city and in Paris and Belgium I am assured arrangements are being made for the introduction of the system into both those cities where the street orderly mode of scavenging to become general throughout this country it is estimated that employment would be given to 100,000 labourers so that with the families of these men not less than half a million of people would be supported in a state of independence by it the total number of adult able-bodied poppers relieved indoor and outdoor throughout England and Wales on January the 1st 1850 was 154,525 the following table shows the route of the street orderly operations in the metropolis a further column in the report from which the table has been extracted contained the names of 13 clergymen who have weekly read prayers and delivered discourses to the street orderlies at their respective stations and recorded flattering testimonials of conduct and demeanour the employment of street orderlies readers note the following table gives a list of dates and localities cleansed along with the number of street orderlies the number of wives and children dependent and the money expended end readers note 1843 to 1844 Oxford and Regent streets number of street orderlies 50 wives and children dependent 256 money expended £560 1845 Strand number of street orderlies 8 money expended £38 1845 to 1846 Cheapside, Cornhill and so on City of London number of street orderlies children money expended £1,540 2 shillings 1846 to 1847 St Margaret's and St John's Westminster number of street orderlies 15 wives and children money expended £306 1847 St James's and so on number of street orderlies £132 money expended £115 1848 Strand number of street orderlies £8 money expended £35 1848 St Martin's, Lane and so on number of street orderlies £38 money expended £1848 Piccadilly, St James's and so on number of street orderlies £48 Wives and Children, £108 money expended £341 3 shillings 1848 to 1849 St Paul's Covent Garden number of street orderlies £13 Wives and Children, £38 money expended 1849 Regent Street, White Hall and so on number of street orderlies £18 Wives and Children, £68 money expended £98 1849 St Giles and St George's, Blimsbury number of street orderlies £14 money expended £58 one shilling 1849 number of street orderlies £16 Wives and Children, £46 money expended £177 £6 shillings 1849, St Andrew's and St George's, Hoburn number of street orderlies £23 Wives and Children, £83 money expended £63 four shillings and ninepence 1849 Lambeth Parish number of street orderlies £16 Wives and Children, £41 money expended £84 16 shillings 1851 St Martin's in the Fields number of street orderlies £68 Wives and Children, £179 money expended £119 three shillings and fourpence 1851 City of London Central Districts number of street orderlies £103 Wives and Children, £378 money expended £55 total number of street orderlies £546 total number of Wives and Children dependent £1897 total money expended £3782 £6 shillings and a penny The period of nine years comprised in the above statement 1843 and 1851 being both included gives a yearly average as to the number of the poor employed exceeding 60 with a similar average of 210 Wives and Children and a yearly average outlay of £420 The number of orderlies now employed by the association is from 80 to 90 End of section 49