London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3

by Henry Mayhew

Hence the next point in the inquiry is as to the means by which the productiveness of operatives is capable of being extended. There are many modes of effecting this. Some of these have been long known to students of political economy, while others have been made public for the first time in these letters. Under the former class are included the division and co-operation of labour, as well as the “large system of production;” and to the latter belongs “the strapping system,” by which men are made to get through four times as much work as usual, and which I have before described. But the most effectual means of increasing the productiveness of labourers is found to consist, not in any system of supervision, however cogent, nor in any limitation of the operations performed by the work-people to the smallest possible number, nor in the apportionment of the different parts of the work to the different capabilities of the operatives, but in connecting the workman’s interest directly with his labour; that is to say, by making the amount of his earnings depend upon the quantity of work done by him. This is ordinarily effected in manufacture by means of what is called piece-work. Almost all who work by the day, or for a fixed salary—that is to say, those who labour for the gain of others, not for their own—have, it has been well remarked, “no interest in doing more than the smallest quantity of work that will pass as a fulfilment of the mere terms of their engagement.” Owing to the insufficient interest which day-labourers have in the result of their labour, there is a natural tendency in such labour to be extremely inefficient—a tendency only to be overcome by vigilant superintendance (such as is carried on under the strapping system among the joiners) on the part of the persons who are interested in the result. The master’s eye is notoriously the only security to be relied on. But superintend them as you will, day labourers are so much inferior to those who work by the piece, that, as we before said, the latter system is practised in all industrial occupations where the work admits of being put out in definite portions, without involving the necessity of too troublesome a surveillance to guard against inferiority (or scamping) in the execution. But if the labourer at piece-work is made to produce a greater quantity than at day-work, and this solely by connecting his own interest with that of his employer, how much more largely must the productiveness of workmen be increased when labouring wholly on their own account! Accordingly, it has been invariably found, that whenever the operative unites in himself the double function of capitalist and labourer, making up his own materials or working on his own property, his productiveness single-handed is considerably greater than can be attained under the large system of production, where all the arts and appliances of which extensive capital can avail itself are brought into operation.

Of the industry of working masters or trading operatives in manufactures there are as yet no authentic accounts. We have, however, ample records concerning the indefatigability of their agricultural counterparts—the peasant-proprietors of Tuscany, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries where the labourers are the owners of the soil they cultivate. “In walking anywhere in the neighbourhood of Zürich,” says Inglis, in his work on Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, “one is struck with the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants. When I used to open my casement, between four and five o’clock in the morning, to look out upon the lake and the distant Alps, I saw the labourer in the fields; and when I returned from an evening walk, long after sunset, as late perhaps as half-past eight, there was the labourer mowing his grass or tying up his vines.” The same state of thing exists among the French peasantry under the same circumstances. “The industry of the small proprietor,” says Arthur Young, in his “Travels in France,” “were so conspicuous and so meritorious, that no commendation would be too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour.” If, then, this principle of working for one’s self has been found to increase the industry, and consequently the productiveness of labourers, to such an extent in agriculture, it is but natural that it should be attended with the same results in manufactures, and that we should find the small masters and the peasant-proprietors toiling longer and working quicker than labourers serving others rather than themselves. But there is an important distinction to be drawn between the produce of the peasant-proprietor and that of the small master. Toil as diligently as the little farmer may, since he cultivates the soil not for profit, but as a means of subsistence, and his produce contributes directly to his support, it follows that his comforts must be increased by his extra-production; or, in other words, that the more he labours, the more food he obtains. The small master, however, producing what he cannot eat, must carry his goods to market and exchange them for articles of consumption. Hence, by over-toil he lowers the market against himself; that is to say, the more he labours the less food he ultimately obtains.

But 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. This brings us to another important distinction which it is necessary to make between the peasant-proprietor and the small master. The little farmer cannot increase his produce by devoting a less amount of labour to each of the articles; that is to say, he cannot scamp his work without diminishing his future stock. A given quantity of labour must be used to obtain a given amount of produce. None of the details can be omitted without a diminution of the result: scamp the ploughing and there will be a smaller crop. In manufactures, however, the result is very different. There one of the principal means of increasing the productions of a particular trade, and of the cabinet trade especially, is by decreasing the amount of work in each article. Hence, in such cases, all kinds of schemes and impositions are resorted to to make the unskilled labour equal to the skilled, and thus the market is glutted with slop productions till the honourable part of the trade, both workmen and employers, are ultimately obliged to resort to the same tricks as the rest.

There were, about twenty years ago, a numerous body of tradesmen, who were employers, though not workmen to the general public, known as “trade-working masters.” These men, of whom there are still a few, confined their business solely to supplying the trade. They supplied the greater establishments where there were showrooms with a cheaper article than the proprietors of those greater establishments might be able to have had manufactured on their own premises. They worked not on speculation, but to order, and were themselves employers. Some employed, at a busy time, from twenty to forty hands, all working on their premises, which were merely adapted for making, and not for selling or showing furniture. There are still such trade-working masters, the extent of their business not being a quarter what it was; neither do they now generally adhere to the practice of having men to work on their premises, but they give out the material, which their journeymen make up at their own abodes.

“About twenty years ago,” said an experienced man to me, “I dare say the small masters formed about a quarter of the trade. The slacker trade becomes, the more the small masters increase; that’s because they can’t get other work to do; and so, rather than starve, they begin to get a little stuff of their own, and make up things for themselves, and sell them as best they can. The great increase of the small masters was when trade became so dead. When was it that we used to have to go about so with our things? About five years since, wasn’t it?” said he, appealing to one of his sons, who was at work in the same room with him. “Yes, father,” replied the lad, “just after the railway bubble; nobody wanted anything at all then.” The old man continued to say,—“The greater part of the men that couldn’t get employed at the regular shops then turned to making up things on their account; and now, I should say, there’s at least one half working for themselves. About twelve years ago masters wanted to cut the men down, and many of the hands, rather than put up with it, took to making up for themselves. Whenever there’s a decrease of wages there’s always an increase of small masters; for it’s not until men can’t live comfortably by their labour that they take to making things on their own account.”

I now come to the amount of capital required for an operative cabinet-maker to begin business on his own account.

To show the readiness with which any youth out of his time, as it is called, can start in trade as a garret cabinet master, I have learned the following particulars:—This lad, when not living with his friends, usually occupies a garret, and in this he constructs a rude bench out of old materials, which may cost him 2s. If he be penniless when he ceases to be an apprentice, and can get no work as a journeyman, which is nearly always the case, for reasons I have before stated, he assists another garret-master to make a bedstead, perhaps; and the established garret-master carries two bedsteads instead of one to the slaughter-house. The lad’s share of the proceeds may be about 5s.; and out of that, if his needs will permit him, he buys the article, and so proceeds by degrees. Many men, to start themselves, as it is called, have endured, I am informed, something like starvation most patiently. The tools are generally collected by degrees, and often in the last year of apprenticeship, out of the boy’s earnings. They are seldom bought first-hand, but at the marine-store shops, or at the second-hand furniture brokers’ in the New Cut. The purchaser grinds and sharpens them up at any friendly workman’s where he can meet with the loan of a grindstone, and puts new handles to them himself out of pieces of waste wood. 10s. or even 5s. thus invested has started a man with tools, while 20s. has accomplished it in what might be considered good style. In some cases the friends of the boy, if they are not poverty-stricken, advance him from 40s. to 50s. to begin with, and he must then shift for himself.

When a bench and tools have been obtained, the young master buys such material as his means afford, and sets himself to work. If he has a few shillings to spare he makes himself a sort of bedstead, and buys a rug or a sheet and a little bedding. If he has not the means to do so he sleeps on shavings stuffed into an old sack. In some few cases he hires a bench alongside some other garret-master, but the arrangement of two or three men occupying one room for their labour is more frequent when the garrets where the men sleep are required for their wives’ labour in any distinct business, or when the articles the men make are too cumbrous, like wardrobes, to be carried easily down the narrow stairs.

A timber merchant, part of whose business consists in selling material to little masters, gave me two instances, within his own knowledge, of journeymen beginning to manufacture on their own account.

A fancy cabinet-maker had 3s. 6d. at his command. With this he purchased material for a desk as follows:—