There is, moreover, the cheaper labour of apprentices, the great prop of many a slop-trader; for as such traders disregard all the niceties of work, as they disregard also the solidity and perfect finish of any work (finishing it, as it was once described to me, “just to the eye”), a lad is soon made useful, and his labour remunerative to his master, as far as slop remuneration goes, which, though small in a small business, is wealth in a “monster business.”
There are, again, the “improvers.” These are the most frequent in the dress-making and millinery business, as young women find it impossible to form a good connection among a wealthier class of ladies in any country town, unless the “patronesses” are satisfied that their skill and taste have been perfected in London. In my inquiry (in the course of two letters in the Morning Chronicle) into the condition of the workwomen in this calling, I was told by a retired dressmaker, who had for upwards of twenty years carried on business in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor-square, that she had sometimes met with “improvers” so tasteful and quick, from a good provincial tuition, that they had really little or nothing to learn in London. And yet their services were secured for one, and oftener for two years, merely for board and lodging, while others employed in the same establishment had not only board and lodging, but handsome salaries. The improver’s, then, is generally a cheap labour, and often a very cheap labour too. The same form of cheap labour prevails in the carpenter’s trade.
There is, moreover, the labour of old men. A tailor, for instance, who may have executed the most skilled work of his craft, in his old age, or before the period of old age, finds his eyesight fail him,—finds his tremulous fingers have not a full and rapid mastery of the needle, and he then labours, at greatly reduced rates of payment, on the making of soldiers’ clothing—“sanc-work,”[56] as it is called—or on any ill-paid and therefore ill-wrought labour.
The inferior, as regards the quality of the work, and under-paid class of women, in tailoring, for example, again, cheapen labour. It is cheapened, also, by the employment of Irishmen (in, perhaps, all branches of skilled or unskilled labour), and of foreigners, more especially of Poles, who are inferior workmen to the English, and who will work very cheap, thus supplying a low-price labour to those who seek it.
I may remark further, that if a first-rate workman be driven to slop work, he soon loses his skill; he can only work slop; this has been shown over and over again, and so his labour becomes cheap in the mart.
2. Of Untrustworthy Labour (as a cause of cheap labour) I need not say much. It is obvious that a drunken, idle, or dishonest workman or workwoman, when pressed by want, will and must labour, not for the recompense the labour merits, but for whatever pittance an employer will accord. There is no reliance to be placed in him. Such a man cannot “hold out” for terms, for he is perhaps starving, and it is known that “he cannot be depended upon.” In the sweep’s trade many of those who work at a lower rate than the rest of the trade are men who have lost their regular work by dishonesty.
3. The Inexpensive class of workpeople are very numerous. They consist of three sub-divisions:—
(a.) Those who have been accustomed to a coarser kind of diet, and who, consequently, requiring less, can afford to work for less.