London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

The cheap labour of the rubbish-carters’ trade appears to be a consequence of two distinct antecedents, viz., casual labour and the prevalence of the contract system among builder’s work. The small-master system also appears to have some influence upon it.

First as regards the influence of casual labour in reducing the ordinary rate of wages.

The tables given at p. [290], vol. ii., showing the wages paid to the rubbish-carters, present what appears, and indeed is, a strange discrepancy of payment to the labourers in rubbish-carting. About three-fourths of the rubbish-carters throughout London receive 18s. weekly, when in work; in Hampstead, however, the rate of their wages is (uniformly) 20s. a week; in Lambeth (but less uniformly), it is 19s.; in Wandsworth, 17s.; in Islington, 16s.; and in Greenwich, 14s. and 12s. The character of the work, whether executed for 12s. or 20s. weekly, is the same; why, then, can a rubbish-carter, who works at Hampstead, earn 8s. a week more than one who works at Greenwich? An employer of rubbish-carters, and of similar labourers, on a large scale, a gentleman thoroughly conversant with the subject in all its industrial bearings, accounts for the discrepancy in this manner:—

After the corn and the hop-harvests have terminated, there is always an influx of unskilled labourers into Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich. These are the men who, from the natural bent of their dispositions, or from the necessity of their circumstances, resort to the casual labour afforded by the revolution of the seasons, when to gather the crops before the weather may render the harvest precarious and its produce unsound, is a matter of paramount necessity, and the increase of hands employed during this season is, as a consequence, proportionately great. The chief scene of such labour in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, is in the county of Kent; and on the cessation of this work, of course there is a large amount of labour “turned adrift,” to seek, the next few days, for any casual employment that may “turn up.” In this way, I am assured, a large amount of cheap and unskilled labour is being constantly placed at the command of those masters who, so to speak, occupy the line of march to London, and are, therefore, first applied to for employment by casual labourers; who, when engaged, are employed as inferior, or unskilful, workmen, at an inferior rate of remuneration. Greenwich may be looked upon as the first stage or halt for casual labourers, on their way to London.

My informant assured me, as the result of his own observations, that an English labourer would, as a general rule, execute more work by one-sixth, in a week, than an Irish labourer (a large proportion of the casual hands are Irish); that is, the extent of work which would occupy the Irishman six, would occupy the Englishman but five days, were it so calculated. The Englishman was, however, usually more skilled and persevering, and far more to be depended upon. So different was the amount of work, even in rubbish-carting, between an able and experienced hand and one unused to the toil, or one inadequate from want of alertness or bodily strength, or any other cause, to its full and quick execution, that two “good” men in a week have done as much work as three indifferent hands. Thus two men at 18s. weekly each are as cheap (only employers cannot always see it), when they are thorough masters of their business, as three unready hands at 12s. a week each. The misfortune, however, is, that the 12s. a week men have a tendency to reduce the 16s. to their level.

With regard to the difference between the wages of Hampstead and Greenwich, I am informed that stationary working rubbish-carters are not too numerous in Hampstead, which is considered as rather “out of the way;” and as that metropolitan suburb is surrounded in every direction by pasture-land and wood-land, it is not in the line of resort of the class of men who seek the casual labour in harvesting, &c., of which I have spoken; it is rarely visited by them, and consequently, the regular hands are less interfered with than elsewhere, and wages have not been deteriorated.

The mode of work among the scurf labourers differs somewhat from that of the honourable part of the trade; the work executed by the scurf masters being for the most part on a more limited scale than that of the others. To meet the demands of builders or of employers generally, when “time” is an object, demands the use of relays of men, and of strong horses. This demand the smaller or scurf master cannot always meet. He may find men, but not always horses and carts, and he will often enough undertake work beyond his means and endeavour to aggrandise his profits by screwing his labourers. The hours of scurf-employed labour are nominally the same as the regular trade, but as an Irish carter said, “it’s ralely the hours the masther plases, and they’re often as long as it’s light.” The scurf labourer is often paid by the day, with “a day’s hire, and no notice beyond.” I am informed that scurf labourers generally work an hour a day, without extra remuneration, longer than those in the honourable trade.

The rubbish-carters employed by the scurf masters are not, as a body, I am assured, so badly paid as they were a few years back. It is rarely that labouring men can advance any feasible reason for the changes in their trade.

One of the main causes of the deteriorated wages of the rubbish-carters is the system of contracting and subletting. This, however, is but a branch of the ramified system of subletting in the construction of the “scamped” houses of the speculative builders. The building of such houses is sublet, literally from cellar to chimney. The rubbish-carting may be contracted for at a certain sum. The contractor may sublet it to men who will do it for one-fourth less perhaps, and who may sublet the labour in their turn. For instance, the calculation may be founded on the working men’s receiving 15s. weekly. A contractor, a man possessing a horse, perhaps, and a couple of carts, and hiring another horse, will undertake it on the knowledge of his being able to engage men at 12s. or 13s. weekly, and so obtain a profit; indeed the reduction of price in such cases must all come out of the labour.

This subletting, I say, is but a small part of a gigantic system, and it is an unquestionable cause of the grinding down of the rubbish-carters’ wages, and that by a class who have generally been working men themselves, and risen to be the owners of one or two carts and horses.