“At our dock,” he said, “timber and corn are the principal articles; but they are distinct branches and have distinct labourers. I am in the deal part; when a foreign timber-ship comes to the dock, the timber is heaved out of the porthole by the crew themselves. The deal ships, too, are sometimes unloaded by the foreigners themselves, but not often; three or four out of a dozen may. Ours is very dangerous work: we pile the deals sometimes ninety deals high—higher at the busiest time, and we walk along planks, with no hold, carrying the deals in our hands, and only our firm tread and our eye to depend upon. We work in foggy weather, and never stop for a fog; at least, we haven’t for eight or nine years, to my knowledge. In that sort of weather accidents are frequent. There was last year, I believe, about thirty-five falls, but no deaths. If it’s a bad accident, the deal-porters give 6d. a-piece on Saturday night, to help the man that’s had it. There’s no fund for sickness. We work in gangs of five usually, sometimes more. We are paid for carrying 100 of 12-feet deals, 1s. 9d.; 14 feet, 2s. 2d.; 20 and 21 feet, 3s.; 22 feet, 3s. 8d.; and from 24 to 27 feet, 4s. 3d. That’s at piece-work. We used to have 3d. per 100 more for every sort, but it was reduced three or four months back,—or more, may be. In a general way we are paid nothing extra for having to carry the deals beyond an average distance, except for what we call long runs: that’s as far, or about as far, as the dock extends from the place we start to carry the deals from. One week with another, the year through, we make from 12s. to 15s.; the 15s. by men who have the preference when work is slack. We’re busiest from July to Christmas. I’m the head of a gang or team of five, and I’m only paid as they are; but I have the preference if work is slack, and so have the men in my team. Five men must work at the Commercial, or none at all. We are paid in the dock at the contractor’s office (there are three contractors), at four o’clock every Saturday evening. Drinking is kept down in our dock, and with my contractor drunkards are discharged. The men are all satisfied but for the lowering of their wages. No doubt they can get labour cheaper still, there’s so many idlers about. A dozen years back, or so, they did pay us in a public-house. Our deal-porters are generally sober men. The beer-men only come into the dock twice a-day—ten in the morning, and half-past three in the afternoon—and the men never exceed a pint at a time.”
An older man, in the same employ, said:—
“I’ve known deal-portering for twenty years back, and then, at the Commercial Dock, men was paid in a public-house, and there was a good deal of drunkenness. The men weren’t compelled to drink, but was expected to. In that point it’s far better now. When I was first a deal porter I could make half as much more as I do now. I don’t complain of any body about the dock; it ain’t their fault; but I do complain uncommon about the times, there’s so little work and so many to snap at it.”
From a stave-porter at the same dock I had the following account:—
“We are paid by the piece, and the price varies according to size from 1s. 6d. to 10s. the thousand. Quebec staves, 6 feet long by 2 inches thick and a few inches broad, are 10s. the thousand; and other sizes are paid in the same proportion, down to 1s. 6d. We pack the bigger staves about our shoulders, resting one stave on another, more like a Jack-in-the-green than anything else, as our head comes out in the middle of ’em. Of the biggest, five is a good load, and we pack all sizes alike, folding our arms to hold the smaller staves better. Take it altogether, we make at stave-work what the deal-porters do at their work; and, indeed, we are deal-porters when staves isn’t in. There’s most staves comes to the Surrey Canal Dock.”
A man who had worked at the West India Dock as a deal-porter informed me that the prices paid were the same as were paid by the Commercial and East Country Dock Companies before the reduction; but the supply of labour was uncertain and irregular, chiefly at the spring and fall, and in British-American ships. As many as 100 men, however, my informant stated, had been so employed at this dock, making from 15s. to 25s. a-week, or as much as 30s. on occasions, and without the drawback of any compulsory or “expected drinking.” Such, as far as I could learn, is the condition of the labourers employed at these timber docks, where the drinking system and the payment of men in public-houses are not allowed. Concerning the state of the men employed at the other docks where the public-house system still continues, I had the following details.
A deal-porter at the Surrey Canal Dock stated: “I have worked a good many years in the Surrey Dock. There were four contractors at the Surrey Canal, but now there’s one, and he pays the publican where we gets our beer all that’s owing to us deal-porters, and the publican pays us every Saturday night. I can’t say that we are compelled to take beer, certainly not when at our work in the dock, but we’re expected to take it when we’re waiting. I can’t say either that we are discharged if we don’t drink, but if we don’t we are kept waiting late on a Saturday night, on an excuse of the publican’s having no change, or something like that; and we feel that, somehow or other, if we don’t drink we’ll be left in the back-ground. Why don’t the superintendent see us paid in the dock? He pays the company’s labourers in the dock; they’re corn-turners and rafters, and they are paid early, too. We now have 4s. 4d. a day of from 8 to 4, and 5s. 8d. from 6 to 6. It used to be, till four months back, I think, 4s. 10d. and 6s. 4d. In slack times, say six months in the year, we earns from 10s. to 12s. a-week; in the brisk time 30s., and sometimes more; but 30s. is about the average. We are all paid at the public-house. We gathers from after five or so on the Saturday night. We are kept now and then till 12, and after 12, and it has been Sunday morning before we’ve got paid. There is more money spent, in course, up to 12 than up to 10. To get away at ½ past 9 is very early. I should say that half our earnings, except in our best weeks, goes to the publican for drink—more than half oft enough; if it’s a bad week, all our earnings, or more. When it waxes late the wives, who’ve very likely been without Saturday’s dinner or tea, will go to the publican’s for their husbands, and they’ll get to scold very likely, and then they’ll get beaten very likely. We are chiefly married men with families. Pretty well all the deal-porters at the dock are drunkards; so there is misery enough for their families. The publican gives credit two following weeks, and encourages drinking, in course; but he does it quietly. He’ll advance any man at work 1s. a night in money, besides trusting him for drink. I don’t know how many we are; I should say from 50 to 200. In old age or accident, in course, we comes to the parish.”
Other men whom I saw corroborated this statement, and some of their wives expressed great indignation at the system pursued in paying the labourers. None of them objected to their husbands having four pints of beer when actually at their work in the dock; it was against the publicans’ temptations on Saturday and other nights that they bitterly inveighed.
At the earnest entreaty of a deal-porter’s wife, I called on Saturday evening at the public house where the men were waiting to be paid. I walked into the tap-room as if I had called casually, and I was then unknown to all the deal-porters. The tap-room I found small, dark, dirty, and ill-ventilated. What with the tobacco-smoke and the heat of the weather, the room was most disagreeably close and hot. As well as I could count—for although it was a bright summer’s evening the smoke and gloom rendered it somewhat difficult—there were 24 men in this tap-room, which is fitted up with boxes, and the number completely filled the apartment. In an adjoining room, where was a small bar, there were some six or eight more deal-porters lounging about. These numbers, however, fluctuated, for men kept coming in and going out; but all the time I was present there might have been thirty men in the two hot, dirty little rooms. They were strong-looking men enough, and all sun-burnt; but amongst them were some with pinched features and white lips. There they sat, each man with his beer before him; there was not the slightest hilarity amongst them: there was not the least semblance of a convivial Saturday-night’s gathering. The majority sat in silence. Some dozed; others drank or sipped at their pint measures, as if they must do it to while away the time. These deal-porters were generally dressed in corduroy, fustian, or strong, coarse, blue woollen jackets, with trousers of similar material, open big woollen waistcoats, and with coloured cotton handkerchiefs rolled round some thick substance in the way of a stock, and tied loosely round their necks over a striped cotton or loose linen shirt. All had rough bristly beards, intimating that their shaving was confined to the Sunday mornings. With respect to the system pursued at this dock in the payment of the deal-porters, it is right that I should state that I heard from many deal-porters praises of the superintendent, though certainly not of the contractor or the publican. I am glad to be able to state, however, that it is the determination of the company to attempt—and that, indeed, they are now attempting—the abolition of the system of public-house payment. Mr. M‘Cannan, the superintendent of these docks, to whom I am indebted for many favours and courtesies, informed me that an arrangement was once made for the payment of the deal-porters in “an old box” (a sort of wooden office) within the dock; but the impatience and struggling of the men who had to wait a little while for their week’s earnings almost demolished the frail timbers of the old box, and the attempt was abandoned. Within the dock the supply of beer is now limited to three times a-day, with a “vend” of half-a-pint a man each visit.
A middle-aged man, sunburnt and with much of the look of a seaman, gave me an account of his labour as a deal-porter at the East Country Dock. His room, and he with his wife and children had but one, was very sparely furnished, the principal article being a large clean bed. He complained that his poverty compelled him to live in the neighbourhood of some low lodging-houses, which caused all sorts of bad characters to resort to the locality, while cries of “murder” were not uncommon in the night.