Another coalporter, who has been a teetotaler ten years on the 25th of last August, told me, that before he took the pledge he used to drink a great deal after he had done his work, but while he was at work he could not stand it. “I don’t think I used to drink above three pints and a half and a pennyworth of gin in the daytime,” said this man. “Of an evening I used to stop at the public-house, generally till I was drunk and unfit to work in the morning. I will vouch for it I used to take about three pots a-day after I had done work. My reckoning used to come to about 1s. 8d. a-day, or, including Sundays, about 10s. 6d. per week. At that time I could average all the year round about 30s. a-week, and I used to drink away 10s. of it regularly. I did, indeed, sir, more to my shame.”
The other coalporter told me his earnings averaged about the same, but he drank more.
“I should say I got rid of nearly one-half of my money. I did like the beer then: I thought I could not live without it. It’s between twelve and thirteen years since the first coalporter signed the pledge. His name was John Sturge, and he was looked upon as a madman. I looked upon him myself in that light. The next was Thomas Bailey, and he was my teetotal father. When I first heard of a coalporter doing without beer, I thought it a thing impossible. I made sure they wouldn’t live long; it was part of my education to believe they couldn’t. My grandfather brewed home-brewed beer, and he used to say to me, ‘Drink, my lad, it’ll make thee strong.’ The coalporters say now, if we could get the genuine home-brewed, that would be the stuff to do us good; the publican’s wash is no good. I drank for strength; the stimulation caused by the alcohol I mistook for my own power.”
“Richard Hooper! He’s been a teetotaler now about twelve years. He was the fourth of the coaleys as signed the pledge, and he first instilled teetotalism on my mind,” said the other man. “Where he works now there’s nine out of fifteen men is teetotalers. Seeing that he could do his work much better than when he drinked beer, induced me to become one. He was more regular in his work after he had given it up than whenever I knowed him before.”
“The way in which Thomas Bailey put it into my head was this here,” continued the other. “He invited me to a meeting: I told him I would come, but he’d never make a teetotaler of me, I knowed. I went with the intention to listen to what they could have to say. I was a little bit curious to know how they could make out that beer was no good for a body. The first man that addressed the meeting was a tailor. I thought it might do very well for him; but then, says I, if you had the weight of 238lbs. of coals on your back, my lad, you couldn’t do it without ale or beer. I thought this here, because I was taught to believe I couldn’t do without it. I cared not what any man said about beer, I believed it was life itself. After the tailor a coalporter got up to speak. Then I began to listen more attentively. The man said he once had a happy home and a happy wife, everything the heart could wish for, but through the intoxicating drinks he had been robbed of everything. The man pictured the drunkard’s home so faithfully, that the arrows of conviction stuck fast in my heart, and my conscience said, Thou art a drunkard, too! The coalporter said his home had been made happy through the principle of total abstinence. I was determined to try it from that hour. My home was as miserable as it possibly could be, and I knowed intoxicating drink was the cause on it. I signed the pledge that night after the coalporter was done speaking, but was many months before I was thoroughly convinced I was doing right in abstaining altogether. I kept thinking on it after going home of a night, tired and fatigued with my hard work, some times scarcely able to get up-stairs through being so overwrought; and not being quite satisfied about it, I took every opportunity to hear lectures upon the subject. I heard one on the properties of intoxicating drinks, which quite convinced me that I had been labouring under a delusion. The gentleman analysed the beer in my presence, and I saw that in a pint of it there was 14 ozs. of water that I had been paying 2d. for, 1 oz. of alcohol, and 1 oz. of what they call nutritious matter, but which is the filthiest stuff man ever set eyes upon. It looked more like cobblers’ wax than anything else. It was what the lecturer called the—residyum, I think was the name he gave it. The alcohol is what stimulates a man, and makes him feel as if he could carry two sacks of coal while it lasts, but afterwards comes the depression; that’s what the coalporters call the ‘blues.’ And then he feels that he can do no work at all, and he either goes home and puts another man on in his place, or else he goes and works it off with more drink. You see, where we coalporters have been mistaken is believing alcohol was nutriment, and in fancying that a stimulant was strength. Alcohol is nothing strengthening to the body—indeed, it hardens the food in the stomach, and so hinders digestion. You can see as much any day if you go into the hospitals, and look at the different parts of animals preserved in spirits. The strength that alcohol gives is unnatural and false. It’s food only that can give real strength to the frame. I have done more work since I’ve been a teetotaler in my eight years than I did in my ten or twelve years before. I have felt stronger. I don’t say that I do my work better, but this I will say, without any fear of contradiction, that I do my work with more ease to myself, and with more satisfaction to my employer, since I have given over intoxicating drinks. I scarcely know what thirst is. Before I took the pledge I was always dry, and the mere shadow of the potboy was quite sufficient to convince me that I wanted something. I certainly haven’t felt weaker since I left off malt liquor. I have eaten more and drank less. I live as well now as any of the publicans do, and who has a better right to do so than the man who works? I have backed as many as sixty tons in a day since I took the pledge, and have done it without any intoxicating drink, with perfect ease to myself, and walked five miles to a temperance meeting afterwards. But before I became a teetotaler, after the same amount of work, I should scarcely have been able to crawl home; I should have been certain to have lost the next day’s work at least: but now I can back that quantity of coals week after week without losing a day. I’ve got a family of six children under twelve years of age. My wife’s a teetotaler, and has suckled four children upon the principle of total abstinence. Teetotalism has made my home quite happy, and what I get goes twice as far. Where I work now, four out of five of us are teetotalers. I am quite satisfied that the heaviest work that a man can possibly do may be done without a drop of fermented liquor. I say so from my own experience. All kind of intoxicating drinks is quite a delusion. They are the cause of the working man’s wages being lowered. Masters can get the men who drink at their own price. If it wasn’t for the money spent in liquor we should have funds to fall back upon, and then we could stand out against any reduction that the masters might want to put upon us, and could command a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work: but as it is, the men are all beggars, and must take what the master offers them. The backing of coals out of the holds of ships is man-killing work. It’s scandalous that men should be allowed to force their fellow-men to do such labour. The calves of a man’s leg is as hard as a bit of board after that there straining work; they hardly know how to turn out of bed of a morning after they have been at that for a day. I never worked below bridge, thank God! and I hope I never shall. I’ve not wanted for a day’s work since I’ve been a teetotaler. Men can back out of a ship’s hold better without liquor than with it. We teetotalers can do the work better—that is, with more ease to ourselves—than the drinking men. Many teetotalers have backed coals out of the hold, and I have heard them say over and over again that they did their work with more comfort and ease than they did when they drank intoxicating drink. Coalbacking from the ship’s hold is the hardest work that it is possible for a man to do. Going up a ladder 16 feet high with 238 lbs. weight on a man’s back is sufficient to kill any one; indeed, it does kill the men in a few years, they’re soon old men at that work: and I do say that the masters below bridge should be stopped going on as they’re doing now. And what for? Why, to put the money they save by it into their own pockets, for the public ain’t no better off, the coals is just as dear. Then the whippers and lightermen are all thrown out of work by it; and what’s more, the lives of the backers are shortened many years—we reckon at least ten years.”
“I wish to say this much,” said the other teetotaler: “it’s a practice with some of the coal-merchants to pay their men in public-houses, and this is the chief cause of a great portion of the wages being spent in drink. I once worked for a master upon Bankside as paid his men at a public-house, and I worked a week there, which yearned me 28s. and some odd halfpence. When I went on Saturday night the publican asked me what I was come for. In reply, I said ‘I’m come to settle.’ He said, ‘You’re already settled with,’ meaning I had nothing to take. I had drinked all my lot away, he said, with the exception of 5s. I had borrowed during the week. Then I told him to look back, and he’d find I’d something due to me. He did so, and said there was a halfpenny. I had nothing to take home to my wife and two children. I asked the publican to lend me a few shillings, saying my young un’s had nothing to eat. His reply was, ‘That’s nothing to me, that’s your business.’ After that I made it my business. While I stood at the bar in came the three teetotalers, and picked up the 28s. each that was coming to them, and I thought how much better they was off than me. The publican stopped all my money for drink that I knowed I’d not had, and yet I couldn’t help myself, ’cause he had the paying on me. Then something came over me as I stood there, and I said, ‘From this night, with the help of God, I’ll never taste of another drop of intoxicating liquors.’ That’s ten years ago the 25th of last August, and I’ve kept my pledge ever since, thank God! That publican has been the making of me. The master what discharged me before for getting drunk, when he heard that I was sober sent for me back again. But before that, the three teetotalers who was a working along with me was discharged by their master, to oblige the publican who stopped my money. The publican, you see, had his coals from the wharf. He was a ‘brass-plate coal-merchant’ as well as a publican, and had private customers of his own. He threatened to take his work away from the wharf if the three teetotalers wasn’t discharged; and sure enough the master did discharge them, sooner than lose so good a customer. Many of the masters now are growing favourable to teetotalism. I can say that I’ve done more on the principle of total abstinence than ever I done before. I’m better in health, I’ve no trembling when I goes to my work of a morning; but, on the contrary, I’m ready to meet it. I’m happier at home. We never has no angry words now,” said the man, with a shake of the head, and a strong emphasis on the now. “My children never runs away from me as they used to before; they come and embrace me more. My money now goes for eatables and clothes, what I and my children once was deprived on through my intemperate habits. And I bless God and the publican that made me a teetotaler—that I do sincerely—every night as I go to bed. And as for men to hold out that they can’t do their work without it, I’m prepared to prove that we have done more work without it than ever we have done or could do with it.”
I have been requested by the coalwhippers to publish the following expression of gratitude on their part towards the Government for the establishment of the Coalwhippers’ Office:—
“The change that the Legislature has produced in us, by putting an end to the thraldom of the publican by the institution of this office, we wish it to be generally known that we and our wives and children are very thankful for.”