There are in the scavagers’ trade the same distinct classes of employers as appertain to all other trades; these consist of:—
- 1. The large capitalists.
- 2. The small capitalists.
As a rule (with some few honourable and dishonourable exceptions, it is true) I find that the large capitalists in the several trades are generally the employers who pay the higher wages, and the small men those who pay the lower. The reasons for this conduct are almost obvious. The power of the capital of the “large master” must be contended against by the small one; and the usual mode of contention in all trades is by reducing the wages of the working men. The wealthy master has, of course, many advantages over the poor one. (1) He can pay ready money, and obtain discounts for immediate payment. (2) He can buy in large quantities, and so get his stock cheaper. (3) He can purchase what he wants in the best markets, and that directly of the producer, without the intervention and profit of the middleman. (4) He can buy at the best times and seasons; and “lay in” what he requires for the purposes of his trade long before it is needed, provided he can obtain it “a bargain.” (5) He can avail himself of the best tools and mechanical contrivances for increasing the productiveness or “economizing the labour” of his workmen. (6) He can build and arrange his places of work upon the most approved plan and in the best situations for the manufacture and distribution of the commodities. (7) He can employ the highest talent for the management or design of the work on which he is engaged. (8) He can institute a more effective system for the surveillance and checking of his workmen. (9) He can employ a large number of hands, and so reduce the secondary expenses (of firing, lighting, &c.) attendant upon the work, as well as the number of superintendents and others engaged to “look after” the operatives. (10) He can resort to extensive means of making his trade known. (11) He can sell cheaper (even if his cost of production be the same), from employing a larger capital, and being able to “do with” a less rate of profit. (12) He can afford to give credit, and so obtain customers that he might otherwise lose.
The small capitalist, therefore, enters the field of competition by no means equally matched against his more wealthy rival. What the little master wants in “substance,” however, he generally endeavours to make up in cunning. If he cannot buy his materials as cheap as a trader of larger means, he uses an inferior or cheaper article, and seeks by some trick or other to palm it off as equal to the superior and dearer kind. If the tools and appliances of the trade are expensive, he either transfers the cost of providing them to the workmen, or else he charges them a rent for their use; and so with the places of work, he mulcts their wages of a certain sum per week for the gas by which they labour, or he makes them do their work at home, and thus saves the expense of a workshop; and, lastly, he pays his men either a less sum than usual for the same quantity of labour, or exacts a greater quantity from them for the same sum of money. By one or other of these means does the man of limited capital seek to counterbalance the advantages which his more wealthy rival obtains by the possession of extensive “resources.” The large employer is enabled to work cheaper by the sheer force of his larger capital. He reduces the cost of production, not by employing a cheaper labour, but by “economizing the labour” that he does employ. The small employer, on the other hand, seeks to keep pace with his larger rival, and strives to work cheap, not by “the economy of labour” (for this is hardly possible in the small way of production), but by reducing the wages of his labourers. Hence the rule in almost every trade is that the smaller capitalists pay a lower rate of wages. To this, however, there are many honourable exceptions among the small masters, and many as dishonourable among the larger ones in different trades. Messrs. Moses, Nicoll, and Hyams, for instance, are men who certainly cannot plead deficiency of means as an excuse for reducing the ordinary rate of wages among the tailors.
Those employers who seek to reduce the prices of a trade are known technologically as “cutting employers,” in contradistinction to the standard employers, or those who pay their workpeople and sell their goods at the ordinary rates.
Of “cutting employers” there are several kinds, differently designated, according to the different means by which they gain their ends. These are:—
1. “Drivers,” or those who compel the men in their employ to do more work for the same wages; of this kind there are two distinct varieties:—
a. The long-hour masters, or those who make the men work longer than the usual hours of labour.
b. The strapping masters, or those who make the men (by extra supervision) “strap” to their work, so as to do a greater quantity of labour in the usual time.