The reason for this increased consumption is obvious; when the weather prevents workmen from prosecuting their respective callings in the open air, they have recourse to drinking, to pass away the idle time. Any one who has made himself familiar with the habits of the working classes has often found them crowding a public-house during a hard rain, especially in the neighbourhood of new buildings, or any public open-air work. The street-sellers, themselves prevented from plying their trades outside, are busy in such times in the “publics,” offering for sale braces, belts, hose, tobacco-boxes, nuts of different kinds, apples, &c. A bargain may then be struck for so much and a half-pint of beer, and so the consumption is augmented by the trade in other matters.
Now, taking 750 barrels as the average of the extra sale of beer in consequence of wet weather, we have a consumption beyond the demands of the ordinary trade in malt liquor of 27,000 gallons, or 216,000 pints. This, at 2d. a pint, is 3000l. for a day’s needless, and often prejudicial, outlay caused by the casualty of the weather and the consequent casualty of labour. A censor of morals might say that these men should go home under such circumstances; but their homes may be at a distance, and may present no great attractions; the single men among them may have no homes, merely sleeping-places; and even the more prudent may think it advisable to wait awhile under shelter in hopes of the weather improving, so that they could resume their labour, and only an hour or so be deducted from their wages. Besides, there is the attraction to the labourer of the warmth, discussion, freedom, and excitement of the public-house.
That the great bulk of the consumers of this additional beer are of the classes I have mentioned is, I think, plain enough, from the increase being experienced only in that beverage, the consumption of gin being little affected by the same means. Indeed, the statistics showing the ratio of beer and gin-drinking are curious enough (were this the place to enter into them), the most gin, as a general rule, being consumed in the most depressed years.
“It is a fact worth notice,” said a statistical journal, entitled “Facts and Figures,” published in 1841, “as illustrative of the tendency of the times of pressure to increase spirit drinking, that whilst under the privations of last year (1840) the poorer classes paid 2,628,286l. tax for spirits; in 1836, a year of the greatest prosperity, the tax on British spirits amounted only to 2,390,188l. So true is it that to impoverish is to demoralise.”
The numbers who imbibe, in the course of a wet day, these 750 barrels, cannot, of course, be ascertained, but the following calculations may be presented. The class of men I have described rarely have spare money, but if known to a landlord, they probably may obtain credit until the Saturday night. Now, putting their extra beer-drinking on wet days—for on fine days there is generally a pint or more consumed daily per working man—putting, I say, the extra potations at a pot (quart) each man, we find one hundred and eight thousand consumers (out of 2,000,000 people, or, discarding the women and children, not 1,000,000)! A number doubling, and trebling, and quadrupling the male adult population of many a splendid continental city.
Of the data I have given, I may repeat, no doubt can be entertained; nor, as it seems to me, can any doubt be entertained that the increased consumption is directly attributable to the casualty of labour[55].
Of the Scurf Trade among the Rubbish-Carters.
Before proceeding to treat of the cheap or “scurf” labourers among the rubbish-carters, I shall do as I have done in connection with the casual labourers of the same trade, say a few words on that kind of labour in general, both as to the means by which it is usually obtained and as to the distinctive qualities of the scurf or low-priced labourers; for experience teaches me that the mode by which labour is cheapened is more or less similar in all trades, and it will therefore save much time and space if I here—as with the casual labourers—give the general facts in connection with this part of my subject.
In the first place, then, there are but two direct modes of cheapening labour, viz.:—
1. By making the workmen do more work for the same pay.