As regards the increased production by omitting certain details necessary for the due perfection of the work, it may be said that “scamping” adds at least 200 per cent. to the productions of the cabinet-maker’s trade. I ascertained, in the course of my previous inquiries, several cases of this over-work from scamping, and adduce two. A very quick hand, a little master, working, as he called it, “at a slaughtering pace,” for a warehouse, made 60 plain writing-desks in a week of 90 hours; while a first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made 18 in a week of 70 hours. The scamping hand said he must work at the rate he did to make 14s. a week from a slaughter-house; and so used to such style of work had he become, that, though a few years back he did West-end work in the best style, he could not now make eighteen desks in a week, if compelled to finish them in the style of excellence displayed in the work of the journeyman employed for the honourable trade. Perhaps, he added, he couldn’t make them in that style at all. The frequent use of rosewood veneers in the fancy cabinet, and their occasional use in the general cabinet trade gives, I was told, great facilities for scamping. If in his haste the scamping hand injure the veneer, or if it have been originally faulty, he takes a mixture of gum shellac and “colour” (colour being a composition of Venetian red and lamp black), which he has ready by him, rubs it over the damaged part, smooths it with a slightly-heated iron, and so blends it with the colour of the rosewood that the warehouseman does not detect the flaw. In the general, as contradistinguished from the fancy, cabinet trade I found the same ratio of “scamping.” A good workman in the better-paid trade made a four-foot mahogany chest of drawers in five days, working the regular hours, and receiving, at piece-work price, 35s. A scamping hand made five of the same size in a week, and had time to carry them for sale to the warehouses, wait for their purchase or refusal, and buy material. But for the necessity of doing this the scamping hand could have made seven in the 91 hours of his week, though of course in a very inferior manner. “They would hold together for a time,” I was assured, “and that was all; but the slaughterer cared only to have them viewly and cheap.” These two cases exceed the average, and I have cited them to show what can be done under the scamping system.
We now come to the increased rate of working induced by a reduction of the ordinary rate of remuneration of the workman. Not only is it true that over-work makes under-pay, but the converse of the proposition is equally true, that under-pay makes over-work—that is to say, it is true of those trades where the system of piece-work or small mastership admits of the operative doing the utmost amount of work that he is able to accomplish; for the workman in such cases seldom or never thinks of reducing his expenditure to his income, but rather of increasing his labour, so as still to bring his income, by extra production, up to his expenditure. Hence we find that, as the wages of a trade descend, so do the labourers extend their hours of work to the utmost possible limits—they not only toil earlier and later than before, but the Sunday becomes a work-day like the rest (amongst the “sweaters” of the tailoring trade Sunday labour, as I have shown, is almost universal); and when the hours of work are carried to the extreme of human industry, then more is sought to be done in a given space of time, either by the employment of the members of their own family, or apprentices, upon the inferior portion of the work, or else by “scamping it.” “My employer,” I was told by a journeyman tailor working for the Messrs. Nicoll, “reduces my wages one-third, and the consequence is, I put in two stitches where I used to give three.” “I must work from six to eight, and later,” said a pembroke-table-maker to me, “to get 18s. now for my labour, where I used to get 54s. a week—that’s just a third. I could in the old times give my children good schooling and good meals. Now children have to be put to work very young. I have four sons working for me at present.” Not only, therefore, does any stimulus to extra production make over-work, and over-work make under-pay; but under-pay, by becoming an additional provocative to increased industry, again gives rise in its turn to over-work. Hence we arrive at a plain unerring law—over-work makes under-pay and under-pay makes over-work.
But the above means of increasing the rate of working refer solely to those cases where the extra labour is induced by making it the interest of the workman so to do. The other means of extra production is by stricter supervision of journeymen, or those paid by the day. The shops where this system is enforced are termed “strapping-shops,” as indicative of establishments where an undue quantity of work is expected from a journeyman in the course of the day. Such shops, though not directly making use of cheap labour (for the wages paid in them are generally of the higher rate), still, by exacting more work, may of course be said, in strictness, to encourage the system now becoming general, of less pay and inferior skill. These strapping establishments sometimes go by the name of “scamping shops,” on account of the time allowed for the manufacture of the different articles not being sufficient to admit of good workmanship.
Concerning this “strapping” system I received the following extraordinary account from a man after his heavy day’s labour. Never in all my experience had I seen so sad an instance of overwork. The poor fellow was so fatigued that he could hardly rest in his seat. As he spoke he sighed deeply and heavily, and appeared almost spirit-broken with excessive labour:—
“I work at what is called a strapping shop,” he said, “and have worked at nothing else for these many years past in London. I call ‘strapping’ doing as much work as a human being or a horse possibly can in a day, and that without any hanging upon the collar, but with the foreman’s eyes constantly fixed upon you, from six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock at night. The shop in which I work is for all the world like a prison; the silent system is as strictly carried out there as in a model gaol. If a man was to ask any common question of his neighbour, except it was connected with his trade, he would be discharged there and then. If a journeyman makes the least mistake, he is packed off just the same. A man working at such places is almost always in fear; for the most trifling things he’s thrown out of work in an instant. And then the quantity of work that one is forced to get through is positively awful; if he can’t do a plenty of it, he don’t stop long where I am. No one would think it was possible to get so much out of blood and bones. No slaves work like we do. At some of the strapping shops the foreman keeps continually walking about with his eyes on all the men at once. At others the foreman is perched high up, so that he can have the whole of the men under his eye together. I suppose since I knew the trade that a man does four times the work that he did formerly. I know a man that’s done four pairs of sashes in a day, and one is considered to be a good day’s labour. What’s worse than all, the men are every one striving one against the other. Each is trying to get through the work quicker than his neighbours. Four or five men are set the same job, so that they may be all pitted against one another, and then away they go every one striving his hardest for fear that the others should get finished first. They are all bearing along from the first thing in the morning to the last at night, as hard as they can go, and when the time comes to knock off they are ready to drop. I was hours after I got home last night before I could get a wink of sleep; the soles of my feet were on fire, and my arms ached to that degree that I could hardly lift my hand to my head. Often, too, when we get up of a morning, we are more tired than when we went to bed, for we can’t sleep many a night; but we mustn’t let our employers know it, or else they’d be certain we couldn’t do enough for them, and we’d get the sack. So, tired as we may be, we are obliged to look lively, somehow or other, at the shop of a morning. If we’re not beside our bench the very moment the bell’s done ringing, our time’s docked—they wont give us a single minute out of the hour. If I was working for a fair master, I should do nearly one-third, and sometimes a half, less work than I am now forced to get through, and, even to manage that much, I shouldn’t be idle a second of my time. It’s quite a mystery to me how they do contrive to get so much work out of the men. But they are very clever people. They know how to have the most out of a man, better than any one in the world. They are all picked men in the shop—regular ‘strappers,’ and no mistake. The most of them are five foot ten, and fine broad-shouldered, strong-backed fellows too—if they weren’t they wouldn’t have them. Bless you, they make no words with the men, they sack them if they’re not strong enough to do all they want; and they can pretty soon tell, the very first shaving a man strikes in the shop, what a chap is made of. Some men are done up at such work—quite old men and gray with spectacles on, by the time they are forty. I have seen fine strong men, of 36, come in there and be bent double in two or three years. They are most all countrymen at the strapping shops. If they see a great strapping fellow, who they think has got some stuff about him that will come out, they will give him a job directly. We are used for all the world like cab or omnibus horses. Directly they’ve had all the work out of us, we are turned off, and I am sure, after my day’s work is over, my feelings must be very much the same as one of the London cab horses. As for Sunday, it is literally a day of rest with us, for the greater part of us lay a-bed all day, and even that will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and muscles. When I’m done and flung by, of course I must starve.”
The next means of inducing a quicker rate of working, and so economizing the number of labourers, is by the division and subdivision of labour. In perhaps all the skilled work of London, of the better sort, this is more or less the case; it is the case in a much smaller degree in the country.
The nice subdivision makes the operatives perfect adepts in their respective branches, working at them with a greater and a more assured facility than if their care had to be given to the whole work, and in this manner the work is completed in less time, and consequently by fewer hands.
In illustration of the extraordinary increased productiveness induced by the division of labour, I need only cite the well-known cases:—
“It is found,” says Mr. Mill, “that the productive power of labour is increased by carrying the separation further and further; by breaking down more and more every process of industry into parts, so that each labourer shall confine himself to an even smaller number of simple operations. And thus, in time, arise those remarkable cases of what is called the division of labour, with which all readers on subjects of this nature are familiar. Adam Smith’s illustration from pin-making, though so well-known, is so much to the point, that I will venture once more to transcribe it. ‘The business of making a pin is divided into eighteen distinct operations. One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, and a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper. I have seen a small manufactory where ten men only were employed, and where some of them, consequently, performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of 4000 pins of a middling size.
“‘Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of 48,000 pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of 48,000 pins, might be considered as making 4800 pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made 20, perhaps not one pin in a day.’”