3rd. The carman (one-horse or two-horse, as the case may be), who attends to the horse and cart, brushes the dirt into the ganger’s shovel, and assists the ganger in wet sloppy weather in carting the dirt, and then takes the mud to the place where it is deposited.
There is only one mode of payment for the above labours pursued among the master scavagers, and that is by the week.
1st. The ganger receives a weekly salary of 18s. when working for an “honourable” master; with a “scurf,” however, the ganger’s pay is but 16s. a week.
2nd. The gang receive in a large establishment each 16s. per week, but in a small one they usually get from 14s. to 15s. a week. When working for a small master they have often, by working over hours, to “make eight days to the week instead of six.”
3rd. The one-horse carman receives 16s. a week in a large, and 15s. in a small establishment.
4th. The two-horse carman receives 18s. weekly, but is employed only by the larger masters.
On the [opposite page] I give a table on this point.
Some of these men are paid by the day, some by the week, and some on Wednesdays and Saturdays, perhaps in about equal proportions, the “casuals” being mostly paid by the day, and the regular hands (with some exceptions among the scurfs) once or twice a week. The chance hands are sometimes engaged for a half day, and, as I was told, “jump at a bob and a joey (1s. 4d.), or at a bob.” I heard of one contractor who not unfrequently said to any foreman or gangsman who mentioned to him the applications for work, “O, give the poor devils a turn, if it’s only for a day now and then.”
Piece-work, or, as the scavagers call it, “by the load,” did at one time prevail, but not to any great extent. The prices varied, according to the nature and the state of the road, from 2s. to 2s. 6d. the load. The system of piece-work was never liked by the men; it seems to have been resorted to less as a system, or mode of labour, than to insure assiduity on the part of the working scavagers, when a rapid street-cleansing was desirable. It was rather in the favour of the working man’s individual emoluments than otherwise, as may be shown in the following way. In Battle-bridge, four men collect five loads in dry, and six men seven loads in wet weather. If the average piece hire be 2s. 3d. a load, it is 2s. 9¾d. for each of the five men’s day’s work; if 2s. 2d. a load, it is 2s. 8½d. (the regular wage, and an extra halfpenny); if 2s., it is 2s. 6d.; and if less (which has been paid), the day’s wage is not lower than 2s. At the lowest rates, however, the men, I was informed, could not be induced to take the necessary pains, as they would struggle to “make up half-a-crown;” while, if the streets were scavaged in a slovenly manner, the contractor was sure to hear from his friends of the parish that he was not acting up to his contract. I could not hear of any men now set to piece-work within the precincts of the places specified in the table. This extra work and scamping work are the two great evils of the piece system.
In their payments to their men the contractors show a superiority to the practices of some traders, and even of some dock-companies—the men are never paid at public-houses; the payment, moreover, is always in money. One contractor told me that he would like all his men to be teetotallers, if he could get them, though he was not one himself.