London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (44 page)

3rd.
The loaders of the carts
for shipment are the same persons as those who collect the dust, but thus employed for the time being. The pay for this work is by the ‘piece’ also, 2
d
. per chaldron between four persons being the usual rate, or ½
d
. per man. The men so engaged have no perquisites. The barges into which they shoot the soil or ‘brieze’, as the case may be, hold from 50 to 70 chaldrons, and they consider the loading of one of these barges a good day’s work. The average cargo is about 60 chaldrons, which gives them 2
s
. 6
d
. per day, or somewhat more than their average earnings when collecting.

4th.
The carriers of cinders
to the cinder heap. I have mentioned that, ranged round the sifters in the dust-yard, are a number of baskets, into which are put the various things found among the dust, some of these being the property of the master, and others the perquisites of the hill man or woman, as the case may be. The cinders and old bricks are the property of the master, and to remove them to their proper heaps boys are employed by him at 1
s
. per day. These boys are almost universally the children of dustmen and sifters at work in the yard, and thus not only help to increase the earnings of the family, but qualify themselves to become the dustmen of a future day.

5th.
The hill-man or hill-woman
. The hill-man enters into an agreement with the contractor to sift
all
the dust in the yard throughout the year at so much per load and perquisites. The usual sum per load is 6
d
., nor have I been able to ascertain that any of these people undertake to do it at a less price. Such is the amount paid by the contractor for Whitechapel. The perquisites of the hill-man or hill-woman, are rags, bones, pieces of old metal, old tin or iron vessels, old boots and shoes, and one-half of the money, jewellery, or other valuables that may be found by the sifters.

The hill-man or hill-woman employs the following persons, and pays them at the following rates:

1st.
The sifters
are paid 1
s
. per day when employed, but the employment is not constant. The work cannot be pursued in wet weather, and the services of the sifters are required only when a large heap has accumulated, as they can sift much faster than the dust can be collected. The employment is therefore precarious; the payment has not, for the last 30 years at least, been more than 1
s
. per day, but the perquisites were greater. They formerly were allowed one-half of whatever was found; of late years, however, the hill-man has gradually reduced the perquisites ‘first one thing and then another’, until the only one they have now remaining is half of whatever money or other valuable article may be
found in the process of sifting. These valuables the sifters often pocket, if able to do so unperceived, but if discovered in the attempt, they are immediately discharged.

2nd.
The fillers-in
, or shovellers of dust into the sieves of sifters, are in general any poor fellows who may be straggling about in search of employment. They are sometimes, however, the grown-up boys of dustmen, not yet permanently engaged by the contractor. These are paid 2
s
. per day for their labour, but they are considered more as casualty men, though it often happens, if ‘hands’ are wanted, that they are regularly engaged by the contractors, and become regular dustmen for the remainder of their lives.

3rd. The little fellows, the children of the dustmen, who follow their mothers to the yard, and help them to pick rags, bones, &c., out of the sieve and put them into the baskets, as soon as they are able to carry a basket between two of them to the separate heaps, are paid 3
d
. or 4
d
. per day for this work by the hill-man.

The wages of the dustmen have been increased within the last seven years from 6
d
. per load to 8
d
. among the large contractors – the ‘small masters’, however, still continue to pay 6
d
. per load. This increase in the rate of remuneration was owing to the men complaining to the commissioners that they were not able to live upon what they earned at 6
d
.; an enquiry was made into the truth of the men’s assertion, and the result was that the commissioners decided upon letting the contracts to such parties only as would undertake to pay a fair price to their workmen. The contractors, accordingly, increased the remuneration of the labourers; since then the principal masters have paid 8
d
. per load to the collectors. It is right I should add, that I could not hear – though I made special enquiries on the subject – that the wages had been in any one instance reduced since Free-trade has come into operation.

The usual hours of labour vary according to the mode of payment. The ‘collectors’, or men out with the cart, being paid by the load, work as long as the light lasts; the ‘fillers-in’ and sifters, on the other hand, being paid by the day, work the ordinary hours, viz., from six to six, with the regular intervals for meals.

The summer is the worst time for all hands, for then the dust decreases in quantity; the collectors, however, make up for the ‘slackness’ at this period by nightwork, and, being paid by the ‘piece’ of load at the dust business, are not discharged when their employment is less brisk.

It has been shown that the dustmen who perambulate the streets
usually collect five loads in a day; this, at 8
d
. per load, leaves them about 1
s
. 8
d
. each, and so makes their weekly earnings amount to about 10
s
. per week. Moreover, there are the ‘perquisites’ from the houses whence they remove the dust; and further, the dust-collectors are frequently employed at the night-work, which is always a distinct matter from the dust-collecting, &c., and paid for independent of their regular weekly wages, so that, from all I can gather, the average wages of the men appear to be rather more than 15
s
. Some admitted to me, that in busy times they often earned 25
s
. a week.

Then, again, dustwork, as with the weaving of silk, is a kind of family work. The husband, wife, and children (unfortunately) all work at it. The consequence is, that the earnings of the whole have to be added together in order to arrive at a notion of the aggregate gains.

The following may therefore be taken as a fair average of the earnings of a dustman and his family
when in full employment
. The elder boys when able to earn 1
s
. a day set up for themselves, and do not allow their wages to go into the common purse.

These are the earnings, it should be borne in mind, of a family in full employment. Perhaps it may be fairly said that the earnings of the single men are, on an average, 15
s
. a week, and 1
l
. for the family men all the year round.

Now, when we remember that the wages of many agricultural labourers are but 8
s
. a week, and the earnings of many needlewomen not
6
d
. a day, it must be confessed that the remuneration of the dustmen, and even of the dust women, is
comparatively
high. This certainly is not due to what Adam Smith, in his chapter on the Difference of Wages, terms the ‘disagreeableness of the employment’. ‘The wages of labour,’ he says, ‘vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness, of the employment.’ It will be seen – when we come to treat of the nightmen – that the most offensive, and perhaps the least honourable, of all trades, is far from ranking among the best paid, as it should, if the above principle held good. That the disagreeableness of the occupation may in a measure tend to decrease the competition among the labourers, there cannot be the least doubt, but that it will consequently induce, as political economy would have us believe, a larger amount of wages to accrue to each of the labourers, is certainly another of the many assertions of that science which must be pronounced ‘not proven’. For the dustmen are paid, if anything, less, and certainly not more, than the usual rate of payment to the London labourers; and if the earnings rank high, as times go, it is because all the members of the family, from the very earliest age, are able to work at the business, and so add to the general gains.

The dustmen are, generally speaking, an hereditary race; when children they are reared in the dust-yard, and are habituated to the work gradually as they grow up, after which, almost as a natural consequence, they follow the business for the remainder of their lives. These may be said to be born-and-bred dustmen. The numbers of the regular men are, however, from time to time recruited from the ranks of the many ill-paid labourers with which London abounds. When hands are wanted for any special occasion an employer has only to go to any of the dock-gates, to find at all times hundreds of starving wretches anxiously watching for the chance of getting something to do, even at the rate of 4
d
. per hour. As the operation of emptying a dust-bin requires only the ability to handle a shovel, which every labouring man can manage, all work-men, however unskilled, can at once engage in the occupation; and it often happens that the men thus casually employed remain at the calling for the remainder of their lives. There are no houses of call whence the men are taken on when wanting work. There are certainly public-houses, which are denominated houses of call, in the neighbourhood of every dust-yard, but these are merely the drinking shops of the men, whither they resort of an evening after the labour of the day is accomplished, and whence they are furnished in the course of the afternoon with beer; but such houses cannot be said to constitute the dustman’s ‘labour-market’, as in the tailoring and other
trades, they being never resorted to as hiring-places, but rather used by the men only when hired. If a master have not enough ‘hands’ he usually inquires among his men, who mostly know some who – owing, perhaps, to the failure of their previous master in getting his usual contract – are only casually employed at other places. Such men are immediately engaged in preference to others; but if these cannot be found, the contractors at once have recourse to the system already stated.

The manner in which the dust is collected is very simple. The ‘filler’ and the ‘carrier’ perambulate the streets with a heavily-built high box cart, which is mostly coated with a thick crust of filth, and drawn by a clumsy-looking horse. These men used, before the passing of the late Street Act, to ring a dull-sounding bell so as to give notice to housekeepers of their approach, but now they merely cry, in a hoarse unmusical voice, ‘Dust oy-eh!’ Two men accompany the cart, which is furnished with a short ladder and two shovels and baskets. These baskets one of the men fills from the dust-bin, and then helps them alternately, as fast as they are filled, upon the shoulder of the other man, who carries them one by one to the cart, which is placed immediately alongside the pavement in front of the house where they are at work. The carrier mounts up the side of the cart by means of the ladder, discharges into it the contents of the basket on his shoulder, and then returns below for the other basket which his mate has filled for him in the interim. This process is pursued till all is cleared away, and repeated at different houses till the cart is fully loaded; then the men make the best of their way to the dust-yard, where they shoot the contents of the cart on to the heap, and again proceed on their regular rounds.