TIMBER-DOCK LABOURERS.

Having already given an account of the supply and consumption of timber throughout the country generally, I shall now speak of the importations into London, and more especially of the condition of the labourers connected with the foreign and colonial timber trade.

The quantity of colonial and foreign timber that has been brought into the port of London since the year 1843 has been as follows:—

1844.1845.1846.1847.1848.1849.
Colonial deals and battens (in pieces)2,025,0002,349,0002,355,0003,339,0002,740,0002,722,000
Foreign ditto (in ditto)2,130,0002,290,0001,242,0001,996,0002,044,0001,903,000
Total pieces4,155,0004,639,0003,597,0005,335,0004,784,0004,625,000
Colonial timber (in loads)57,20055,80053,60049,60038,30038,600
Foreign ditto (in do.)58,20068,10086,00079,10069,00061,400
Total loads115,400123,900139,600128,700107,300100,000

The consumption of the metropolis has been little less than the quantity imported. In the six years above enumerated the total importation of foreign and colonial deals and battens was 27,135,000 pieces, of which 26,695,573 were consumed in London; and the total importation of foreign and colonial timber was 714,900 loads, of which 644,224 were consumed. This gives an average annual importation of 4,522,500 deals and battens, of which only 73,238 have been sent out of the country every year. Of timber, the average annual importation is 119,150 loads, and the average annual exportation only 11,779 loads.

The number of wood-laden ships that have entered the port of London since 1840, together with the countries whence they came, is given below. By this we shall perceive that our trade with Norway in this respect has sunk to exactly one-half of what it was ten years back, while that with Sweden and Finland has been very nearly doubled in the same time. The timber-ships from the Prussian ports have increased little less than one-third, while those from Russia have decreased in the same proportion. The trade with Quebec and Montreal also appears to be much greater than it was in 1840, though compared with 1841 there has been a considerable falling off; that of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia remains very nearly the same as it was at the beginning of the decennial period. Altogether the great change appears to have been the decline of the Norwegian and Russian timber-trade, and the increase of that with Sweden and Prussia. It is also worthy of notice, that notwithstanding the increase of population, the number of wood-laden ships entering the port of London every year has not materially increased within the last ten years.

THE NUMBER OF CARGOES OF TIMBER, DEALS, AND BATTENS, IMPORTED INTO LONDON IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS.

1840.1841.1842.1843.1844.1845.1846.1847.1848.1849.
Christiana and Christiansund49504727362722323923
Other ports of Norway52433836493917282527
Gothenburg61644959596630675541
Swedish ports and Finland85848510290149103101138154
Russian ports18110813011916311514691113134
Prussian ports707052104143124109167108100
Quebec and Montreal168224188230206206166216179195
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia104976213490102127145108105
Sierra Leone, Maulmein, &c.1620293151020211320
786760681842841838740868778799

The next step in our inquiry is, What becomes of the 800 wood-laden ships that annually enter the port of London? Whither do they go to be unladen? to what docks, or places of “special security,” are they consigned to be discharged and to have their cargoes delivered or bonded?

For this purpose there are five docks, three of which lie on the Surrey side of the river. These three are the Commercial Docks, the Grand Surrey Canal Dock, and the East Country Dock, and they are almost contiguous to each other, the Surrey Canal Dock lying immediately alongside the Commercial, and the East Country at the upper end of it. They are situated in, and indeed occupy, nearly the whole of that small cape of land which is formed by the bending of the river between the Pool and Limehouse Reach. The docks on the Middlesex side of the river, which are used for the reception and unlading of timber-ships, are the West India and the Regent’s Dock, or the entrance to the Regent’s Canal.

The number of wood-laden ships that have entered the three principal docks for the last ten years is given below. I am informed by Mr. Jones of the Commercial Docks, that for every ship above 100 tons six men are required to sort and pile away. Rafting from ships of the above burden requires one or two men daily, according to circumstances.

THE NUMBER OF WOOD-LADEN SHIPS WHICH ENTERED THE DIFFERENT DOCKS UNDERMENTIONED IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS.

Year.West India Docks.Commercial Docks.Grand Surrey Docks.
Vessels.Tons.Vessels.Tons.Vessels.Tons.
184015562,02421165,80913540,447
184120182,19626570,43811434,594
184213654,93125087,12410029,596
184316971,211368121,84610831,299
184412153,581480142,22317348,896
184514970,514424137,04715543,211
184618288,308351111,18919550,908
1847228124,114423143,96622662,433
184813876,650412132,40619553,423
184913867,860410136,32921258,780
Total1,617751,3893,5441,148,3771,613453,587
Average Number of Ships per Year,
and their Average Tonnage		1614464354324161281

The foreign and colonial timber trade is, then, confined to five of the seven docks belonging to the port of London. Of these five, three—the Commercial, the Grand Surrey Canal, and the East Country—are situate on the Surrey side of the river, occupying altogether an area of 172½ acres, of which 100½ are water and 72 land, and offering accommodation and protection for no less than 678 vessels. Here the principal part of the timber and deal trade is carried on, the Commercial receiving the greatest number of wood-laden vessels, perhaps greater than any other dock in the world. These, together with that portion of the West India Dock which is devoted to the same purpose, make the entire extent of the timber docks attached to the port of London about 250 acres, of which upwards of 140 are water—a space sufficient to give berths to no less than 940 ships.

I now come to speak of the condition and earnings of the labourers connected with the timber and hard-wood trade. Of these, it appears there are 1030 men casually employed at all the timber docks, of whom only 132 obtain work all the year round. How the 900 casual deal-porters and rafters live during the six months of the year that the slack season usually lasts in the timber trade, I cannot conceive. As not a sixpence of their earnings is saved in the brisk season, their fate in the winter is to suffer privations and afflictions which they only know.

I shall begin with the state of the dock-labourers employed at the foreign and hard-wood trade. This trade is confined mainly, if not solely, to the West India Dock.

Concerning this branch of the wood trade, I give below the statement of a man who has worked at it for many years, and in doing so, I wish to draw attention to the latter part of the narrative, as a proof of what I have repeatedly asserted respecting the regard exhibited by the authorities of the West India Dock, and in particular by Mr. Knight, the superintendent, for the welfare of all the men, whether directly or even indirectly employed by them.

This indirect employment of workmen, however, is the great bane of the industrious classes. Whether the middleman goes by the name of sweater, chamber-master, lumper, or contractor, it is this trading operative who is the great means of reducing the wages of his fellow working-men. To make a profit out of the employment of his brother-operatives he must obtain a lower-class labour. He cares nothing about the quality of the work, so long as the workmen can get through it somehow, and will labour at a cheaper rate. Hence it becomes a business with him to hunt out the lowest grades of working men—the drunken, the dishonest, the idle, the vagabond, and the unskilful men—because these, being unable to obtain employment at the regular wages of the sober, honest, industrious, and skilful portion of the trade, he can obtain their labour at a lower rate than what is usually paid. “Boy-labour or thief-labour,” said a middleman on a large scale, “what do I care, so long as I can get my work done cheap.” I have already shown that the wives of the sweaters not only parade the streets of London on the look-out for youths raw from the country, but that they make periodical trips to the poorest provinces of Ireland, in order to obtain workmen at the lowest possible rate. I have shown, moreover, that foreigners are annually imported from the Continent for the same purpose, and that among the chamber-masters in the shoe trade, the child-market at Bethnal-green, as well as the workhouses, are continually ransacked for the means of obtaining a cheaper kind of labour. All my investigations go to prove that it is chiefly by means of the middleman-system that the wages of the working men are reduced. This contractor—this trading operative—uses the most degraded of the class as a means of underselling the worthy and skilful labourers, and of ultimately dragging the better down to the abasement of the worst. If men cannot subsist on lower prices, then he takes apprentices or hires children; or if workmen of character and worth refuse to work at less than the ordinary rate, then he seeks out the moral refuse of the trade, those whom none else will employ; or else he flies to the workhouse and the gaol to find labour meet for his purpose. Backed by this cheap and refuse labour, he offers his work at lower prices, and so keeps on reducing and reducing the wages of his brethren until all sink in poverty, wretchedness, and vice. I am therefore the more anxious to impress upon the minds of those gentlemen who are actuated by a sincere regard for the interests and comforts of the men in their employ, the evils of such a system; for, however great may be the saving of trouble effected by it, yet, unless it be strictly watched (as I must confess it is at the West India and Commercial Docks) it can only be maintained by the employment of a cheaper and worse class labourer, and therefore must result in the degradation of the workmen. I have said thus much, because I find this contract system the general practice at all the wood-docks, and because I am convinced that the gentlemen to whom the management of those docks is entrusted, Mr. Knight, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Cannan, have the welfare of the men in their employ sincerely at heart.

Of the evils of lumping, or discharging wood-ships by contract, I have already treated at considerable length. Under that system, it will be remembered, I showed that the contractor, who is commonly a publican, makes his profit, not by cheapening the labourer, but by intoxicating him. Like the contractor for ballast, he gets his money out of the drunkenness of the workmen, and by this means is enabled to undersell the dock proprietors; or, in other words, to discharge the wood-laden ships at a less rate than they could possibly afford to do it for by the fair and honourable employment of their men. Of the effects of this system—the drunkenness of the men, the starvation of the wives, the squalor and ignorance of the children, the wretchedness and desolation of the homes, I have already treated at some length: and it will be seen hereafter that in those docks where the supervision that is maintained at the West India and Commercial is not kept up, the labourers are reduced to almost the same state of poverty and destitution.

But to return. A man living in a small room in a poor neighbourhood, but in a tidy apartment, and with a well kept little garden at the back, gave me the following account of his earnings and labour in the mahogany department of the West India Docks:—

“I have worked in the West India Docks for eleven years, and for the last half of that time in the mahogany part of the wood-yard. Before that, I was eleven years in the merchant service as able seaman; but I got married, and thought I could do better in the docks; for, after all, what is 18l. a-year, supposing I had the luck to be at sea nine months every year at 2l. a-month—what is 18l. a-year, sir, to keep a wife and family on, as well as a man himself when he’s ashore? At the West India Docks, we unload the mahogany, or logwood, or fancy wood from the ships, and pile them wherever they’re ordered. We work in gangs of six or seven, with a master at the head of the gang; the logs are got out of the hold with a purchase and a jigger, and heaved ashore by a crane on to a truck, and we drag the truck to the place to stow the timber. In the wood-yards a machine lifts the timber up, by us men turning handles to work the machine, and puts it into its place in the warehouse. We are paid 2s. 6d. a-day, working from eight to four. If only employed for four hours—and we’re not set to work for less than four hours—we have 1s. 4d. If I could get 2s. 6d. a-day all the year through, I’d be a happy man; but I can’t. Me, and such as me, earns 10s., 11s., or as far as 15s. a-week when we are wanted. But take the year through, I make between 9s. and 10s. a-week; out of that I have to keep a wife and four children. I’ve lost one child, and my wife can get little or nothing most times to do with her needle; and if she does get work, what can she make at five farthings or three-halfpence a shirt for the slop-shops? My eldest child, however, does make 1s. or 1s. 6d. a-week. I live on bread and butter, with a drop of beer now and then, six days out of the seven. On Sundays we mostly have a shilling’s worth of meat—bullock’s head generally. Sometimes our work is very hard, with heavy lifting. A weakly man’s no use, and I’ve wondered how I have the strength I have on bread and butter. We are all paid in the dock, and there’s nobody allowed to get the men to drink, or to traffic with them anyhow, but in a fair, regular way. There’s plenty hang about every day who would work a day’s work for 2s.: there’s a good many Irish. I don’t know that there’s any foreigners, without it be on the sugar side. Sometimes a hundred men are employed in our part of the business; to-day there was from forty to fifty at work, and a hundred more was to be had if they’d been wanted. Jobs often come in in a lump—all at once, or none at all; very often with the wind. We run backwards and forwards to the sugar-side or the Surrey Dock, as we expect to be wanted. We don’t know what the foremen of the gangs get, but the company won’t allow them to underpay us; and I have nothing to complain about, either of them or the company, though we’re bad off. The foreman can pick his men. Many of us has to go to the parish. Once I earned only 3s. in three weeks. Our best time is from June or July, continuing on for two, three, four, or five months, as happens. We live half the year and starve the t’other. There’s very few teetotalers among us—men want beer if they live upon bread and butter; there’s many I know lives on a meal a-day, and that’s bread and butter. There’s no drunkards among our men. We’re mostly married men with families; most poor men is married, I think. Poor as I am, a wife and family’s something to cling to like.”