I also questioned another of the men, who had been a prime mover in obtaining the Act. He assured me, that before the “emancipation” of the men the universal belief of the coalwhippers, encouraged by the publicans, was, that it was impossible for them to work without liquor. In order to do away with that delusion, the three principal agents in procuring the Act became teetotalers of their own accord, and remained so, one for sixteen months and another for nine years, in order to prove to their fellow workmen that drinking over their labour could be dispensed with, and that they might have “cool brains to fight through the work they had undertaken.”
Another of the more intelligent men who had been a teetotaler:—“I performed the hardest labour I ever did, before or after, with more ease and satisfaction than ever I did under the drinking system. It is quite a delusion to believe that with proper nutriment the health declines under principles of total abstinence.”
After this I was anxious to continue my investigations among the coalporters, and see whether the more intelligent among them were as firmly convinced as the better class of coalwhippers were, that intoxicating drinks were not necessary for the performance of hard labour. I endeavoured to find one of each class, pursuing the same plan as I had adopted with the coalwhippers: viz. I sought first, one who was so firmly convinced of the necessity of drinking fermented liquors during his work, that he had never been induced to abandon them; secondly, I endeavoured to obtain the evidence of one who had tried the principle of total abstinence and found it fail; and thirdly, I strove to procure the opinion of those who had been teetotalers for several years, and who could conscientiously state that no stimulant was necessary for the performance of their labour. Subjoined is the result of my investigations.
Concerning the motives and reasons for the great consumption of beer by the coalporters, I obtained the following statement from one of them:—“I’ve been all my life at coalportering, off and on, and am now thirty-nine. For the last two years or so I’ve worked regularly as a filler to Mr. ——’s waggons. I couldn’t do my work without a good allowance of beer. I can’t afford so much now, as my family costs me more; but my regular allowance one time was three pots a-day. I have drank four pots, and always a glass of gin in the morning to keep out the cold air from the water. If I got off then for 7s. a-week for drink I reckoned it a cheap week. I can’t do my work without my beer, and no coalporter can, properly. It’s all nonsense talking about ginger-beer, or tea, or milk, or that sort of thing; what body is there in any of it? Many a time I might have been choked with coal-dust, if I hadn’t had my beer to clear my throat with. I can’t say that I’m particularly thirsty like next morning, after drinking three or four pots of beer to my own work, but I don’t get drunk.” He frequently, and with some emphasis, repeated the words, “But I don’t get drunk.” “You see, when you’re at such hard work as ours, one’s tired soon, and a drop of good beer puts new sap into a man. It oils his joints like. He can lift better and stir about brisker. I don’t care much for beer when I’m quiet at home on a Sunday; it sets me to sleep then. I once tried to go without to please a master, and did work one day with only one half-pint. I went home as tired as a dog. I should have been soon good for nothing if I’d gone on that way—half-pinting in a day. Lord love you! we know a drop of good beer. The coalporters is admitted to be as good judges of beer as any men in London—maybe, the best judges; better than publicans. No salt and water will go down with us. It’s no use a publican trying to gammon us with any of his cag-mag stuff. Salt and water for us! Sartainly, a drop of short (neat spirit) does one good in a cold morning like this; it’s uncommon raw by the waterside, you see. Coalporters doesn’t often catch cold—beer and gin keeps it out. Perhaps my beer and gin now cost me 5s. a-week, and that’s a deal out of what I can earn. I dare say I earn 18s. a-week. Sometimes I may spend 6s. That’s a third of my earnings, you say, and so it is; and as it’s necessary for my work, isn’t it a shame a poor man’s pot of beer, and drop of gin, and pipe of tobacco, should be so dear? Taxes makes them dear. I can read, sir, and I understand these things. Beer—four pots a-day of it doesn’t make me step unsteady. Hard work carries it off, and so one doesn’t feel it that way. Beer’s made of corn as well as bread, and so it stands to reason it’s nourishing. Nothing’ll persuade me it isn’t. Let a teetotal gentleman try his hand at coal-work, and then he’ll see if beer has no support in it. Too much is bad, I know, but a man can always tell how much he wants to help him on with his work. If beer didn’t agree with me, of course I wouldn’t drink it: but it does. Sartainly we drops into a beer-shop of a night, and does tipple a little when work’s done; and the old women (our wives) comes for us, and they get a sup to soften them, and so they may get to like it overmuch, as you say, and one’s bit of a house may go to rack and manger. I’ve a good wife myself, though. I know well enough all them things is bad—drunkenness is bad! All I ask for is a proper allowance at work; the rest is no good. I can’t tell whether too much or no beer at coal-work would be best; perhaps none at all: leastways it would be safer. I shouldn’t like to try either. Perhaps coalporters does get old sooner than other trades, and mayn’t live so long; but that’s their hard work, and it would be worse still without beer. But I don’t get drunk.”
I conversed with several men on the subject of their beer-drinking, but the foregoing is the only statement I met with where a coalporter could give any reason for his faith in the virtues of beer; and vague as in some points it may be, the other reasons I had to listen to were still vaguer. “Somehow we can’t do without beer; it puts in the strength that the work takes out.” “It’s necessary for support.” Such was the pith of every argument.
In order fully to carry out this inquiry, I obtained the address of a coalbacker from the ships, who worked hard and drank a good deal of beer, and who had the character of being an industrious man. I saw him in his own apartment, his wife being present while he made the following statement:—“I’ve worked at backing since I was twenty-four, and that’s more than twelve years ago. I limit myself now, because times is not so good, to two pots of beer a-day; that is, when I’m all day at work. Some takes more. I reckon, that when times was better I drank fifteen pots a-week, for I was in regular work, and middlin’ well off. That’s 780 pots, or 195 gallons a-year, you say. Like enough it may be. I never calculated, but it does seem a deal. It can’t be done without, and men themselves is the best judges of what suits their work—I mean, of how much to take. I’ll tell you what it is, sir. Our work’s harder than people guess at, and one must rest sometimes. Now, if you sit down to rest without something to refresh you, the rest does you harm instead of good, for your joints seem to stiffen; but a good pull at a pot of beer backs up the rest, and we start lightsomer. Our work’s very hard. I’ve worked till my head’s ached like to split; and when I’ve got to bed, I’ve felt as if I’ve had the weight on my back still, and I’ve started awake when I fell off to sleep, feeling as if something was crushing my back flat to my chest. I can’t say that I ever tried to do without beer altogether. If I was to think of such a thing, my old woman there would think I was out of my head.” The wife assented. “I’ve often done with a little when work’s been slackish. First, you see, we bring the coal up from the ship’s hold. There, sometimes, it’s dreadful hot, not a mouthful of air, and the coal-dust sometimes as thick as a fog. You breathe it into you, and your throat’s like a flue, so that you must have something to drink. I fancy nothing quenches you like beer. We want a drink that tastes. Then there’s the coals on your back to be carried up a nasty ladder, or some such contrivance, perhaps twenty feet, and a sack full of coals weighs 2 cwt. and a stone, at least; the sack itself’s heavy and thick: isn’t that a strain on a man? No horse could stand it long. Then, when you get fairly out of the ship, you go along planks to the waggon, and must look sharp, ’specially in slippery or wet weather, or you’ll topple over, and then there’s the hospital or the workhouse for you. Last week we carried along planks sixty feet, at least. There’s nothing extra allowed for distance, but there ought to be. I’ve sweat to that degree in summer, that I’ve been tempted to jump into the Thames to cool myself. The sweat’s run into my boots, and I’ve felt it running down me for hours as I had to trudge along. It makes men bleed at the nose and mouth, this work does. Sometimes we put a bit of coal in our mouths, to prevent our biting our tongues. I do, sometimes, but it’s almost as bad as if you did bite your tongue, for when the strain comes heavier and heavier on you, you keep scrunching the coal to bits, and swallow some of it, and you’re half choked; and then it’s no use, you must have beer. Some’s tried a bit of tobacco in their mouths, but that doesn’t answer; it makes you spit, and often spit blood. I know I can’t do without beer. I don’t think they ’dulterate it for us; they may for fine people, that just tastes it, and, I’ve heard, has wine and things. But we must have it good, and a publican knows who’s good customers. Perhaps a bit of good grub might be as good as beer to strengthen you at work, but the straining and sweating makes you thirsty, more than hungry; and if poor men must work so hard, and for so little, for rich men, why poor men will take what they feel will satisfy them, and run the risk of its doing them good or harm; and that’s just where it is. I can’t work three days running now without feeling it dreadful. I get a mate that’s fresher to finish my work. I’d rather earn less at a trade that would give a man a chance of some ease, but all trades is overstocked. You see we have a niceish tidy room here, and a few middling sticks, so I can’t be a drunkard.”
I now give the statement of a coalporter who had been a teetotaler:—“I have been twenty-two years a coalheaver. When I began that work I earned 50s. a-week as backer and filler. I am now earning, one week with another, say 15s. We have no sick fund among us—no society of any sort—no club—no schools—no nothing. We had a kind of union among us before the great strike, more than fourteen years back, but it was just for the strike. We struck against masters lowering the pay for a ton to 2¼d. from 2½d. The strike only lasted two or three weeks, and the men were forced to give way; they didn’t all give way at once, but came to gradual. One can’t see one’s wife and children without bread. There’s very few teetotalers among us, though there’s not many of us now that can be called drunken—they can’t get it, sir. I was a teetotaler myself for two years, till I couldn’t keep to it any longer. We all break. It’s a few years back, I forget zactly when. At that time teetotalers might drink shrub, but that never did me no good; a good cup of tea freshened me more. I used then to drink ginger-beer, and spruce, and tea, and coffee. I’ve paid as much as 5s. a-week for ginger-beer. When I teetotaled, I always felt thirsty. I used to long for a drink of beer, but somehow managed to get past a public-house, until I could stand it no longer. A clerk of ours broke first, and I followed him. I certainly felt weaker before I went back to my beer; now I drink a pint or two as I find I want it. I can’t do without it, so it’s no use trying. I joined because I felt I was getting racketty, and giving my mind to nothing but drink, instead of looking to my house. There may be a few teetotalers among us, but I think not. I only knew two. We all break—we can’t keep it. One of these broke, and the other kept it, because, if he breaks, his wife’ll break, and they were both regular drunkards. A coalporter’s worn out before what you may call well old. There’s not very old men among us. A man’s done up at fifty, and seldom lives long after, if he has to keep on at coalportering. I wish we had some sick fund, or something of that kind. If I was laid up now, there would be nothing but the parish for me, my wife, and four childer (here the poor man spoke in a broken voice). The masters often discharge old hands when they get feeble, and put on boys. We have no coals allowed for our own firesides. Some masters, if we buys of them, charges us full price, others a little cheaper.”
I saw this man in the evening, after he had left his work, in his own room. It was a large and airy garret. His wife, who did not know previously of my visit, had in her domestic arrangements manifested a desire common to the better disposed of the wives of the labourers, or the poor—that of trying to make her “bit of place” look comfortable. She had to tend a baby four months old; two elder children were ill clad, but clean; the eldest boy, who is fifteen, is in the summer employed on a river steamboat, and is then of great help to his parents. There were two beds in the room, and the bedding was decently arranged so as to form a bundle, while its scantiness or worn condition was thus concealed. The solitary table had a faded green cloth cover, very threadbare, but still a cover. There were a few cheap prints over the mantelshelf, and the best description I can give is, in a phrase not uncommon among the poor, that the whole was an attempt to “appear decent.” The woman spoke well of her husband, who was kind to her, and fond of his home, and never drank on Sundays.
Last of all, I obtained an interview with two coalporters who had been teetotalers for some years:—
“I have been a coalporter ever since I have been able to carry coals,” said one. “I began at sixteen. I have been a backer all the time. I have been a teetotaler eight years on the 10th of next March. My average earnings where I am now is about 35s. per week. At some wharfs work is very bad, and the men don’t average half that. They were paid every night where I worked last, and sometimes I have gone home with 2½d. Take one with the other, I should say the coalporter’s earnings average about 1l. a-week. My present place is about as good a berth as there is along the waterside. There is only one gang of us, and we do as much work as two will do in many wharfs. Before I was a teetotaler, I principally drank ale. I judged that the more I gave for my drink, the better it was. Upon an average, I used to drink from three to four pints of ale per day. I used to drink a good drop of gin, too. The coalporters are very partial to ‘dog’s nose’—that is, half a pint of ale with a pennyworth of gin in it; and when they have got the money, they go up to what they term ‘the lucky shop’ for it. The coalporters take this every morning through the week, when they can afford it. After my work, I used to drink more than when I was at it. I used to sit as long as the house would let me have any. Upon an average, I should say I used to take three or four pints more of an evening; so that, altogether, I think I may fairly say I drank my four pots of ale regularly every day, and about half a pint of dog’s nose. I reckon my drink used to cost me 13s. a-week when I was at work. At times I was a drunken, noisy gentleman then.”