Of the Casual Labourers among the Rubbish-Carters.
The casual labour of so large a body of men as the rubbish-carters is a question of high importance, for it affects the whole unskilled labour market. And this is one of the circumstances distinguishing unskilled from skilled labour. Unemployed cabinet-makers, for instance, do not apply for work to a tailor; so that, with skilled labourers, only one trade is affected in the slack season by the scarcity of employment among its operatives. With unskilled labourers it is otherwise. If in the course of next week 100 rubbish-carters were from any cause to be thrown out of employment, and found an impossibility to obtain work at rubbish-carting, there would be 100 fresh applicants for employment among the bricklayer’s-labourers, scavagers, nightmen, sewermen, dock-workers, lumpers, &c. Many of the 100 thus unemployed would, of course, be willing to work at reduced wages merely that they might subsist; and thus the hands employed by the regular and “honourable” part of those trades are exposed to the risk of being underworked, as regards wages, from the surplusage of labour in other unskilled occupations.
The employment of the rubbish-carters depends, in the first instance, upon the season. The services of the men are called into requisition when houses are being built or removed. In the one case, the rubbish-carters cart away the refuse earth; in the other they remove the old materials. The brisk season for the builders, and consequently for the rubbish-carters, is, as I heard several of them express it, “when days are long.” From about the middle of April to the middle of October is the brisk season of the rubbish-carters, for during those six months more buildings are erected than in the winter half of the year. There is an advantage in fine weather in the masonry becoming set; and efforts are generally made to complete at least the carcase of a house before the end of October, at the latest.
I am informed that the difference in the employment of labourers about buildings is 30 per cent.—one builder estimated it at 50 per cent.—less in winter than in summer, from the circumstance of fewer buildings being then in the course of erection. It may be thought that, as rubbish-carters are employed frequently on the foundation of buildings, their business would not be greatly affected by the season or the weather. But the work is often more difficult in wet weather, the ground being heavier, so that a smaller extent of work only can be accomplished, compared to what can be done in fine weather; and an employer may decline to pay six days’ wages for work in winter, which he might get done in five days in summer. If the men work by the piece or the load the result is the same; the rubbish-carter’s employer has a smaller return, for there is less work to be charged to the customer, while the cost in keeping the horses is the same.
Thus it appears that under the most favourable circumstances about one-fourth of the rubbish-carters, even in the honourable trade, may be exposed to the evils of non-employment merely from the state of the weather influencing, more or less, the custom of the trade, and this even during the six months’ employment out of the year; after which the men must find some other means of earning a livelihood.
There are, in round numbers, 850 operative rubbish-carters employed in the brisk season throughout the metropolis; hence 212 men, at this calculation, would be regularly deprived of work every year for six months out of the twelve. It will be seen, however, on reference to the table here given, that the average number of weeks each of the rubbish-carters is employed throughout the twelve months is far below 26; indeed many have but three and four weeks work out of the 52.
By an analysis of the returns I have collected on this subject I find the following to have been the actual term of employment for the several rubbish-carters in the course of last year:—
| Men. | Employment in the Year. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | had | 39 | weeks, or | 9 | months. |
| 214 | „ | 26 | „ | 6 | „ |
| 4 | „ | 20 | „ | 5 | „ |
| 10 | „ | 18 | „ | ||
| 28 | „ | 16 | „ | 4 | „ |
| 8 | „ | 14 | „ | ||
| 353 | „ | 13 | „ | 3 | „ |
| 4 | „ | 12 | „ | ||
| 34 | „ | 10 | „ | ||
| 29 | „ | 9 | „ | ||
| 38 | „ | 8 | „ | 2 | „ |
| 38 | „ | 6 | „ | ||
| 27 | „ | 5 | „ | ||
| 45 | „ | 4 | „ | 1 | „ |
| 15 | „ | 3 | „ | ||
| 856 | |||||
Hence about one-fourth of the trade appear to have been employed for six months, while upwards of one-half had work for only three months or less throughout the year—many being at work only three days in the week during that time.
The rubbish-carter is exposed to another casualty over which he can no more exercise control than he can over the weather; I mean to what is generally called speculation, or a rage for building. This is evoked by the state of the money market, and other causes upon which I need not dilate; but the effect of it upon the labourers I am describing is this: capitalists may in one year embark sufficient means in building speculations to erect, say 500 new houses, in any particular district. In the following year they may not erect more than 200 (if any), and thus, as there is the same extent of unskilled labour in the market, the number of hands required is, if the trade be generally less speculative, less in one year than in its predecessor by the number of rubbish-carters required to work at the foundations of 300 houses. Such a cause may be exceptional; but during the last ten years the inhabited houses in the five districts of the Registrar-General have increased to the extent of 45,000, or from 262,737 in 1841, to 307,722 in 1851. It appears, then, that the annual increase of our metropolitan houses, concluding that they increase in a regular yearly ratio, is 4500. Last year, however, as I am informed by an experienced builder, there were rather fewer buildings erected (he spoke only from his own observations and personal knowledge of the business) than the yearly average of the decennial term.
The casual and constant wages of the rubbish-carters may be thus detailed. The whole system of the labour, I may again state, must be regarded as casual, or—as the word imports in its derivation from the Latin casus, a chance—the labour of men who are occasionally employed. Some of the most respectable and industrious rubbish-carters with whom I met, told me they generally might make up their minds, though they might have excellent masters, to be six months of the year unemployed at rubbish-carting; this, too, is less than the average of this chance employment.
Calculating, then, the rubbish-carter’s receipt of nominal wages at 18s., and his actual wages at 20s. in the honourable trade, I find the following amount to be paid.
By nominal wages, I have before explained, I mean what a man is said to receive, or has been promised that he shall be paid weekly. Actual wages, on the other hand, are what a man positively receives, there being sometimes additions in the form of perquisites or allowances; sometimes deductions in the way of fines and stoppages; the additions in the rubbish-carting trade appear to average about 2s. a week. But these actual wages are received only so long as the men are employed, that is to say, they are the casual rather than the constant earnings of the men working at a trade, which is essentially of an occasional or temporary character; the average employment at rubbish-carting being only three months in the year.
Let us see, therefore, what would be the constant earnings or income of the men working at the better-paid portion of the trade.
| £ | s. | d. | |
| The gross actual wages of ten rubbish-carters, casually employed for 39 weeks, at 20s. per week, amount to | 390 | 0 | 0 |
| The gross actual wages of 250 rubbish-carters, casually employed for 26 weeks, at 20s. per week | 6500 | 0 | 0 |
| The gross actual wages of 360 rubbish-carters, casually employed for 13 weeks, at 20s. per week | 4600 | 0 | 0 |
| Total gross actual wages of 620 of the better-paid rubbish-carters | 11,490 | 0 | 0 |
But this, as I said before, represents only the casual wages of the better-paid operatives—that is to say, it shows the amount of money or money’s worth that is positively received by the men while they are in employment. To understand what are the constant wages of these men, we must divide their gross casual earnings by 52, the number of weeks in the year: thus we find that the constant wages of the ten men who were employed for 39 weeks, were 15s. instead of 20s. per week—that is to say, their wages, equally divided throughout the year, would have yielded that constant weekly income. By the same reasoning, the 20s. per week casual wages of the 250 men employed for 26 weeks out of the 52, were equal to only 10s. constant weekly wages; and so the 360 men, who had 20s. per week casually for only three months in the year, had but 5s. a week constantly throughout the whole year. Hence we see the enormous difference there may be between a man’s casual and his constant earnings at a given trade.
The next question that forces itself on the mind is, how do the rubbish-carters live when no longer employed at this kind of work?
When the slack season among rubbish-carters commences, nearly one-fifth of the operatives are discharged. These take to scavaging or dustman’s work, as well as that of navigators, or, indeed, any form of unskilled labour, some obtaining full employ, but the greater part being able to “get a job only now and then.” Those masters who keep their men on throughout the year are some of them large dust contractors, some carmen, some dairymen, and (in one or two instances in the suburbs, as at Hackney) small farmers. The dust-contractors and carmen, who are by far the more numerous, find employment for the men employed by them as rubbish-carters in the season, either at the dust-yard or carrying sand, or, indeed, carting any materials they may have to move—the wages to the men remaining the same; indeed such is the transient character of the rubbish-carting trade, that there are no masters or operatives who devote themselves solely to the business.