I shall now pass to the labourers at the docks. This transition I am induced to make, not because there is any affinity between the kinds of work performed at the two places; but because the docks constitute, as it were, a sort of home colony to Spitalfields, to which The dock-labourers are a striking instance of mere brute force with brute appetites. This class of labour is as unskilled as the power of a hurricane. Mere muscle is all that is needed; hence every human locomotive is capable of working there. All that is wanted is the power of moving heavy bodies from one place to another. Mr. Stuart Mill tells us that labour in the physical world is always and solely employed in putting objects in motion; and assuredly, if this be the principle of physical labour, the docks exhibit the perfection of human action. Dock-work is precisely the office that every kind of man is fitted to perform, and there we find every kind of man performing it. Those who are unable to live by the occupation to which they have been educated, can obtain a living there without any previous training. Hence we find men of every calling labouring at the docks. There are decayed and bankrupt master-butchers, master-bakers, publicans, grocers, old soldiers, old sailors, Polish refugees, broken-down gentlemen, discharged lawyers’ clerks, suspended government clerks, almsmen, pensioners, servants, thieves—indeed, every one who wants a loaf, and is willing to work for it. The London Dock is one of the few places in the metropolis where men can get employment without either character or recommendation, so that the labourers employed there are naturally a most incongruous assembly. Each of the docks employs several hundred hands to ship and discharge the cargoes of the numerous vessels that enter; and as there are some six or seven of such docks attached to the metropolis, it may be imagined how large a number of individuals are dependent on them for their subsistence. At a rough calculation, there must be at least 20,000 souls getting their living by such means. The London Dock.Before proceeding to give an account of the London Dock itself, let me thus publicly tender my thanks to Mr. Powles, the intelligent and obliging secretary, for the ready manner in which he placed the statistics of the company at my service. Had I experienced from the deputy-superintendent the same courtesy and consideration, the present exposition of the state of the labourers employed in the London Dock would, doubtless, have been more full and complete. But the one gentleman seemed as anxious to withhold information as the other was to impart it. Indeed, I found in I shall now give a brief statement of the character, condition, and capacity of the London Dock. After which, the description of the kind of labour performed there; and then the class of labourers performing it will follow in due order. The London Dock occupies an area of ninety acres, and is situated in the three parishes of St. George, Shadwell, and Wapping. The population of those three parishes in 1841 was 55,500, and the number of inhabited houses 8000, which covered a space equal to 338 acres. This is in the proportion of twenty-three inhabited houses to an acre and seven individuals to each house. The number of persons to each inhabited house is, despite of the crowded lodging-houses with which it abounds, not beyond the average for all London. I have already shown that Bethnal-green, which is said to possess the greatest number of low-rented houses, had only, upon an average, seventeen inhabited houses to each acre, while the average through London was but 5·5 houses per acre. So that it appears that in the three parishes of St. George’s-in-the-East, Shadwell, and Wapping, the houses are more than four times more crowded than in the other parts of London, and more numerous by half as many again than those even in the low-rented district of Bethnal-green. This affords us a good criterion as to the character of the neighbourhood, and, consequently, of the people living in the vicinity of the London Dock. The courts and alleys round about the dock swarm with low lodging-houses; and are inhabited either by the dock-labourers, sack-makers, watermen, or that peculiar class of the London poor who pick up a living by the water-side. The open streets themselves have all more or less a maritime character. Every other shop is either stocked with gear for the ship or for the sailor. The windows of one house are filled with quadrants and bright brass sextants, chronometers, and huge mariners’ compasses, with their cards trembling with the motion of the cabs and waggons passing in the street. Then comes the sailors’ cheap shoe-mart, rejoicing in the attractive sign of “Jack and his Mother.” Every public-house is a “Jolly Tar,” or something equally taking. Then come sailmakers, their windows stowed with ropes and lines smelling of tar. All the grocers are provision-agents, and exhibit in their windows the cases of meat and biscuits; and every article is warranted to keep in any climate. The corners of the streets, too, are mostly monopolised by slopsellers; their windows parti-coloured with bright red-and-blue flannel shirts; the doors nearly blocked up with hammocks and “well-oiled nor’-westers;” and the front of the house itself nearly covered with canvas trousers, rough pilot-coats, and shiny black dreadnoughts. The passengers alone would tell you that you were in the maritime districts of London. Now you meet a satin-waistcoated mate, or a black sailor with his large fur cap, or else a Custom-house officer in his brass-buttoned jacket. The London Dock can accommodate 500 ships, and the warehouses will contain 232,000 tons of goods. The entire structure cost 4,000,000l. in money: the tobacco warehouses alone cover five acres of ground. The wall surrounding the dock cost 65,000l. One of the wine-vaults has an area of seven acres, and in the whole of them there is room for stowing 60,000 pipes of wine. The warehouses round the wharfs are exposing from their extent, but are much less lofty than those at St. Katherine’s; and being situated at some distance from the dock, goods cannot be craned out of the ship’s hold and stowed away at one operation. According to the last half-yearly report, the number of ships which entered the dock during the six months ending the 31st of May last was 704, measuring upwards of 195,000 tons. The amount of earnings during that period was 230,000l. and odd, and the amount of expenditure nearly 121,000l. The stock of goods in the warehouses last May was upwards of 170,000 tons. As you enter the dock the sight of the forest of masts in the distance, and the tall chimneys vomiting clouds of black smoke, and the many coloured flags flying in the air, has a most peculiar effect; while the sheds with the monster wheels arching through the roofs look like the paddle-boxes of huge steamers. Along the quay you see, now men with their faces blue with indigo, and now gaugers, with their long brass-tipped rule dripping with spirit from the cask they have been probing. Then will come a group of flaxen-haired sailors chattering German; and next a black sailor, with a cotton handkerchief twisted turban-like round his head. Presently a blue-smocked butcher, with fresh meat and a bunch of cabbages in the tray on his shoulder; and shortly afterwards a mate, with green paroquets in a wooden cage. Here you will see sitting on a bench a sorrowful-looking woman, with new bright cooking tins at her feet, telling you she is an emigrant preparing for her voyage. As you pass along this quay the air is pungent with tobacco; on that it overpowers you with the fumes of rum; then you are nearly sickened with the stench of hides, and huge bins of horns; and shortly afterwards the atmosphere is fragrant with coffee and spice. Nearly everywhere you meet stacks of cork, or else yellow bins of sulphur, or lead-coloured copper-ore. As you enter this warehouse, the This immense establishment is worked by from one to three thousand hands, according as the business is either brisk or slack. Out of this number there are always 400 to 500 permanent labourers, receiving on an average 16s. 6d. per week, with the exception of coopers, carpenters, smiths, and other mechanics, who are paid the usual wages of those crafts. Besides these are many hundred—from 1000 to 2500—casual labourers, who are engaged at the rate of 2s. 6d. per day in the summer and 2s. 4d. in the winter months. Frequently, in case of many arrivals, extra hands are hired in the course of the day, at the rate of 4d. per hour. For the permanent labourers a recommendation is required; but for the casual labourers no character is demanded. The number of the casual hands engaged by the day depends, of course, upon the amount of work to be done; and I find that the total number of labourers in the dock varies from 500 to 3000 and odd. On the 4th May, 1849, the number of hands engaged, both permanent and casual, was 2794; on the 26th of the same month it was 3012; and on the 30th it was 1189. These appear to be the extreme of the variation for that year: the fluctuation is due to a greater or less number of ships entering the dock. The lowest number of ships entering the dock in any one week last year was 29, while the highest number was 141. This rise and fall is owing to the prevalence of easterly winds, which serve to keep the ships back, and so make the business slack. Now, deducting the lowest number of hands employed from the highest number, we have no less than 1823 individuals who obtain so precarious a subsistence by their labour at the docks, that by the mere shifting of the wind they may be all deprived of their daily bread. Calculating the wages at 2s. 6d. per day for each, the company would have paid 376l. 10s. to the 3012 hands employed on the 26th of May 1849; while only 148l. 12s. 6d. would have been paid to the 1189 hands engaged on the 30th of the same month. Hence, not only would 1823 hands have been thrown out of employ by the chopping of the wind, but the labouring men dependent upon the business of the docks for their subsistence would in one day have been deprived of 227l. 17s. 6d. This will afford the reader some faint idea of the precarious character of the subsistence obtained by the labourers employed in this neighbourhood, and, consequently, as it has been well proved, that all men who obtain their livelihood by irregular employment are the most intemperate and improvident of all. It will be easy to judge what may be the condition and morals of a class who to-day, as a body, may earn near upon 400l., and to-morrow only 150l. I had hoped to have been able to have shown the fluctuations in the total amount of wages paid to the dock-labourers for each week throughout the whole year; and so, by contrasting the comparative affluence and comfort of one week with the distress and misery of the other, to have afforded the reader some more vivid idea of the body of men who are performing, perhaps, the heaviest labour, and getting the most fickle provision of all. But still I will endeavour to impress him with some faint idea of the struggle there is to gain the uncertain daily bread. Until I saw with my own eyes this scene of greedy despair, I could not have believed that there was so mad an eagerness to work, and so biting a want of it, among so vast a body of men. A day or two before I had sat at midnight in the room of the starving weaver; and as I heard him tell his bitter story, there was a patience in his misery that gave it more an air of heroism than desperation. But in the scenes I have lately witnessed the want has been positively tragic, and the struggle for life partaking of the sublime. The reader must first remember what kind of men the casual labourers generally are. They are men, it should be borne in mind, who are shut out from the usual means of life by the want of character. Hence, you are not astonished to hear from those who are best acquainted with the men, that there are hundreds among the body who are known thieves, and who go to the docks to seek a living; so that, if taken for any past offence, their late industry may plead for some little lenity in their punishment. He who wishes to behold one of the most extraordinary and least-known scenes of this metropolis, should wend his way to the London Dock gates at half-past seven in the morning. There he will see congregated within the principal entrance masses of men of all grades, looks, and kinds. Some in half-fashioned surtouts burst at the elbows, with the dirty shirts Presently you know, by the stream pouring through the gates and the rush towards particular spots, that the “calling foremen” have made their appearance. Then begins the scuffling and scrambling forth of countless hands high in the air, to catch the eye of him whose voice may give them work. As the foreman calls from a book the names, some men jump up on the backs of the others, so as to lift themselves high above the rest, and attract the notice of him who hires them. All are shouting. Some cry aloud his surname, some his christian name, others call out their own names, to remind him that they are there. Now the appeal is made in Irish blarney—now in broken English. Indeed, it is a sight to sadden the most callous, to see thousands of men struggling for only one day’s hire; the scuffle being made the fiercer by the knowledge that hundreds out of the number there assembled must be left to idle the day out in want. To look in the faces of that hungry crowd is to see a sight that must be ever remembered. Some are smiling to the foreman to coax him into remembrance of them; others, with their protruding eyes, eager to snatch at the hoped-for pass. For weeks many have gone there, and gone through the same struggle—the same cries; and have gone away, after all, without the work they had screamed for. From this it might be imagined that the work was of a peculiarly light and pleasant kind, and so, when I first saw the scene, I could not help imagining myself. But, in reality, the labour is of that heavy and continuous character that you would fancy only the best fed could stand it. The work may be divided into three classes. 1. Wheel-work, or that which is moved by the muscles of the legs and weight of the body; 2. jigger, or winch-work, or that which is moved by the muscles of the arm. In each of these the labourer is stationary; but in the truck work, which forms the third class, the labourer has to travel over a space of ground greater or less in proportion to the distance which the goods have to be removed. The wheel-work is performed somewhat on the system of the treadwheel, with the exception that the force is applied inside instead of outside the wheel. From six to eight men enter a wooden cylinder or drum, upon which are nailed battens, and the men laying hold of ropes commence treading the wheel round, occasionally singing the while, and stamping time in a manner that is pleasant, from its novelty. The wheel is generally about sixteen feet in diameter and eight to nine feet broad; and the six or eight men treading within it, will lift from sixteen to eighteen hundred weight, and often a ton, forty times in an hour, an average of twenty-seven feet high. Other men will get out a cargo of from 800 to 900 casks of wine, each cask averaging about five hundred weight, and being lifted about eighteen feet, in a day and a half. At trucking each man is said to go on an average thirty miles a-day, and two-thirds of that time he is moving 1½ cwt. at six miles and a-half per hour. This labour, though requiring to be seen to be properly understood, must still appear so arduous that one would imagine it was not of that tempting nature, that 3000 men could be found every day in London desperate enough to fight and battle for the privilege of getting 2s. 6d. by it; and even if they fail in “getting taken on” at the commencement of the day, that they should then retire to the appointed yard, there to remain hour after hour in the hope that the wind might blow them some stray ship, so that other gangs might be wanted, and the calling foreman seek them there. It is a curious sight to see the men waiting in these yards to be hired at 4d. per hour, for such are the terms given in the after part of the day. There, seated on long benches ranged against the wall, they remain, some telling their miseries and some their crimes to one another, whilst others doze away their time. Rain or sunshine, there can always be found plenty ready to catch the stray 1s. or 8d. worth of work. By the size of the shed you can tell how many men sometimes remain there in the pouring rain, rather than run the chance of losing the stray hours’ work. Some loiter on the bridges close by, and presently, as their practised eye or ear tells them that the calling foreman is in want of another gang, they rush forward in a stream towards the gate, though only six or eight at most can be hired out of the hundred or more that are waiting there. Again the same mad fight takes place as in the morning. There is the same jumping on benches, the same raising of hands, the same entreaties, and the same failure as before. It is strange to mark the change that takes place in the manner of the men when the foreman has left. Those that have been engaged go smiling to their labour. Indeed, I myself met on the quay just such a chuckling gang passing to their work. Those who are left behind give vent to their disappointment in abuse of him whom they had been supplicating and smiling at a few minutes before. Upon talking with some of the unsuccessful ones, they assured me that the men who had supplanted them had only gained their ends by bribing the foreman who had engaged them. This I made a point of inquiring into, and the deputy-warehousekeeper, of whom I At four o’clock the eight hours’ labour ceases, and then comes the paying. The names of the men are called out of the muster-book, and each man, as he answers to the cry, has half-a-crown given to him. So rapidly is this done that, in a quarter of an hour, the whole of the men have had their wages paid them. They then pour towards the gate. Here two constables stand, and as each man passes through the wicket, he takes his hat off, and is felt from head to foot by the dock-officers and attendant: and yet, with all the want, misery, and temptation, the millions of pounds of property amid which they work, and the thousands of pipes and hogsheads of wines and spirits about the docks, I am informed, upon the best authority, that there are on an average but thirty charges of drunkenness in the course of the year, and only eight of dishonesty every month. This may, perhaps, arise from the vigilance of the superintendents; but to see the distressed condition of the men who seek and gain employment in the London Dock, it appears almost incredible, that out of so vast a body of men, without means and without character, there should be so little vice or crime. There still remains one curious circumstance to be added in connexion with the destitution of the dock-labourers. Close to the gate by which they are obliged to leave, sits on a coping-stone the refreshment man, with his two large canvas pockets tied in front of him, and filled with silver and copper, ready to give change to those whom he has trusted with their dinner that day until they were paid. As the men passed slowly on in a double file towards the gate, I sat beside the victualler, and asked him what constituted the general dinner of the labourers. He told me that he supplied them with pea-soup, bread and cheese, saveloys, and beer. “Some,” he said, “had twice as much as others. Some had a pennyworth, some had eatables and a pint of beer; others, two pints, and others four, and some spend their whole half-crown in eating and drinking.” This gave me a more clear insight into the destitution of the men who stood there each morning. Many of them, it was clear, came to the gate without the means of a day’s meal, and, being hired, were obliged to go on credit for the very food they worked upon. What wonder, then, that the calling foreman should be often carried many yards away by the struggle and rush of the men around him seeking employment at his hands! One gentleman assured me that he had been taken off his feet and hurried a distance of a quarter of a mile by the eagerness of the impatient crowd around him. Having made myself acquainted with the character and amount of the labour performed, I next proceeded to make inquiries into the condition of the labourers themselves, and thus to learn the average amount of their wages from so precarious an occupation. For this purpose, hearing that there were several cheap lodging-houses in the neighbourhood, I thought I should be better enabled to arrive at an average result by conversing with the inmates of them, and thus endeavouring to elicit from them some such statements of their earnings at one time and at another, as would enable me to judge what was their average amount throughout the year. I had heard the most pathetic accounts from men in the waiting-yard; how they had been six weeks without a day’s hire. I had been told of others who had been known to come there day after day in the hope of getting sixpence, and who lived upon the stray pieces of bread given to them in charity by their fellow-labourers. Of one person I was informed by a gentleman who had sought out his history in pure sympathy, from the wretchedness of the man’s appearance. The man had once been possessed of 500l. a-year, and had squandered it all away; and through some act or acts that I do not feel myself at liberty to state, had lost caste, character, friends, and everything that could make life easy to him. From that time he had sunk and sunk in the world, until, at last, he had found him, with a lodging-house for his dwelling-place, the associate of thieves and pickpockets. His only means of living at this time was bones and rag-grubbing; and for this purpose the man would wander through the streets at three every morning, to see what little bits of old iron, or rag, or refuse bone he could find in the roads. His principal source of income I am informed, from such a source as precludes the possibility of doubt, was by picking up the refuse ends of cigars, drying them, and selling them at one-halfpenny per ounce, as tobacco, to the thieves with whom he lodged. However, to arrive at a fair estimate as to the character and the earnings of labourers generally, I directed my guide, after the closing of the docks, to take me to one of the largest lodging-houses in the neighbourhood. The young man who was with me happened to know one of the labourers who was lodging there, and having called him out, I told him the object of my visit, and requested to be allowed to obtain information from the labourers assembled within. The man assented, and directing me to follow him, he led me through a narrow passage into a small room on the ground floor, in which sat, I should think, at least twenty or thirty of the most wretched objects I ever beheld. Some were shoeless—some coatless—others shirtless; and from all these came so rank and foul a stench, that I was sickened with a moment’s inhalation of the fetid atmosphere. It was now so late that I felt it would be imprudent to venture into another such house that night; so, having heard of the case of a dock-labourer who had formerly been a clerk in a Government office, I made the best of my way to the place where he resided. He lived in a top back-room in a small house, in another dismal court. I was told by the woman who answered the door to mount the steep stairs, as she shrieked out to the man’s wife to show me a light. I found the man seated on the edge of a bed, with six young children grouped round him. They were all shoeless, and playing on the bed was an infant with only a shirt to cover it. The room was about 7 feet square, and, with the man and his wife, there were eight human creatures living in it. In the middle of the apartment, upon a chair, stood a washing-tub foaming with fresh suds, and from the white crinkled hands of the wife it was plain that I had interrupted her in her washing. On one chair, close by, was a heap of dirty linen, and on another was flung the newly-washed. There was a saucepan on the handful of fire, and the only ornaments on the mantelpiece were two flat-irons and a broken shaving-glass. On the table at which I took my notes there was the bottom of a broken ginger-beer bottle filled with soda. The man was without a coat, and wore an old tattered and greasy black satin waistcoat. Across the ceiling ran strings to hang clothes upon. On my observing to the woman that I supposed she dried the clothes in that room, she told me that they were obliged to do so, and it gave them all colds and bad eyes. On the floor was a little bit of matting, and on the shelves in the corner one or two plates. In answer to my questionings the man told me he had been a dock-labourer for five or six years. He was in Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. When there he had 150l. a-year. Left through accepting a bill of exchange for 871l. He was suspended eight years ago, and had petitioned the Lords of the Treasury, but never could get any answer. After that he was out for two or three years, going about doing what he could get, such as writing letters. “Then,” said the wife, “you went into Mr. What’s-his-name’s shop.” “Oh, yes,” answered the man, “I had six months’ employment at Camberwell. I had 12s. a-week and my board there.” Before this they had lived upon their things. He had a good stock of furniture and clothing at that time. The wife used to go out for a day’s work when she could get it. She used to go out shelling peas in the pea season—washing or charing—anything she could get to do. His father was a farmer, well to do. He should say the old man was worth a good bit of money, and he would have some property at his death. “Oh, sir,” said the woman, “we have been really very bad off indeed; sometimes without even food or firing in the depth of winter. It is not until recently that we have been to say very badly off, because within the last four years has been our worst trouble. We had a very good house—a seven-roomed house in Walworth—and well furnished and very comfortable. We were in business for ourselves before we went there. We were grocers, near Oxford-street. We lived there at the time when Aldis the pawnbroker’s was burnt down. We might have done well if we had not given so much credit.” “I’ve got,” said the husband, “about 90l. owing me down there now. It’s quite out of character to think of getting it. At Clerkenwell I got a job at a grocer’s shop. The “We buy most bread,” said the wife, “and a bit of firing, and I do manage on a Saturday night to get them a bit of meat for Sunday if I possibly can; but what with the soap, and one thing and another, that’s the only day they do get a bit of meat, unless I’ve a bit given me. As for clothing, I’m sure I can’t get them any unless I have that given me, poor little things.” “Yes, but we have managed to get a little bread lately,” said the man. “When bread was 11d. a loaf, that was the time when we was worse off. Of course we had the seven children alive then. We buried one only three months ago. She was an afflicted little creature for 16 or 17 months: it was one person’s work to attend to her, and was very badly off for a few months then. We’ve known what it was sometimes to go without bread and coals in the depth of winter. Last Christmas two years we did so for the whole day, until the wife came home in the evening and brought it might be 6d. or 9d. according how long she worked. I was looking after them. I was at home ill. I have known us to sit several days and not have more than 6d. to feed and warm the whole of us for the whole of the day. We’ll buy half-a-quartern loaf, that’ll be 4½d. or sometimes 5d., and then we have a penny for coals, that would be pretty nigh all that we could have for our money. Sometimes we get a little oatmeal and make gruel. We had hard work to keep the children warm at all. What with their clothes and what we had, we did as well as we could. My children is very contented; give ’em bread, and they’re as happy as all the world. That’s one comfort. For instance, to-day we’ve had half-a-quartern loaf, and we had a piece left of last night’s after I had come home. I had been earning some money yesterday. We had 2 oz. of butter, and I had this afternoon a quarter of an oz. of tea and a pennyworth of sugar. When I was ill I’ve had two or three of the children round me at a time, fretting for want of food. That was at the time I was ill. A friend gave me half a sovereign to bury my child. The parish provided me with a coffin, and it cost me about 3s. besides. We didn’t have her taken away from here, not as a parish funeral exactly. I agreed that if he would fetch it, and let it stand in an open space that he had got there, near his shop, until the Saturday, which was the time, I would give the undertaker 3s. to let a man come with a pall to throw over the coffin, so that it should not be seen exactly it was a parish funeral. Even the people in the house don’t know, not one of them, that it was buried in that way. I had to give 1s. 6d. for a pair of shoes before I could follow my child to the grave, and we paid 1s. 9d. for rent, all out of the half sovereign. I think there’s some people at the docks a great deal worse off than us. I should say there’s men go down there and stand at that gate from 7 to 12, and then they may get called in and earn 1s., and that only for two or three days in the week, after spending the whole of their time there.” The scenes witnessed at the London Dock were of so painful a description, the struggle for one day’s work—the scramble for twenty-four hours’ extra-subsistence and extra-life were of so tragic a character, that I was anxious to ascertain if possible the exact number of individuals in and around the metropolis who live by dock labour. I have said that at one of the docks alone I found that 1823 stomachs would be deprived of food by the mere chopping of the breeze. “It’s an ill wind,” says the proverb, “that blows nobody good;” and until I came to investigate the condition of the dock-labourer I could not have believed it possible that near upon 2000 souls in one place alone The docks of London are to a superficial observer the very focus of metropolitan wealth. The cranes creak with the mass of riches. In the warehouses are stored goods that are as it were ingots of untold gold. Above and below ground you see piles upon piles of treasure that the eye cannot compass. The wealth appears as boundless as the very sea it has traversed. The brain aches in an attempt to comprehend the amount of riches before, above, and beneath it. There are acres upon acres of treasure, more than enough, one would fancy, to stay the cravings of the whole world, and yet you have but to visit the hovels grouped round about all this amazing excess of riches to witness the same amazing excess of poverty. If the incomprehensibility of the wealth rises to sublimity, assuredly the want that co-exists with it is equally incomprehensible and equally sublime. Pass from the quay and warehouses to the courts and alleys that surround them, and the mind is as bewildered with the destitution of the one place as it is with the superabundance of the other. Many come to see the riches, but few the poverty, abounding in absolute masses round the far-famed port of London. According to the official returns, there belonged to this port on the 31st of December, 1842, very nearly 3000 ships, of the aggregate burden of 600,000 tons. Besides that there were 239 steamers, of 50,000 tons burden; and the crews of the entire number of ships and steamers amounted to 35,000 men and boys. The number of British and foreign ships that entered the port of London during the same year was 6400 and odd, whose capacity was upwards of a million and a quarter of tons, and the gross amount of customs duly collected upon their cargoes was very nearly 12,000l. of money. So vast an amount of shipping and commerce, it has been truly said, was never concentrated in any other single port. Now, against this we must set the amount of misery that co-exists with it. We have shown that the mass of men dependent for their bread upon the business of only one of the docks are, by the shifting of the breeze, occasionally deprived in one day of no less than 220l., the labourers at the London Dock earning as a body near upon 400l. to-day, and to-morrow scarcely 150l. These docks, however, are but one of six similar establishments—three being on the north and three on the south side of the Thames—and all employing a greater or less number of hands, equally dependent upon the winds for their subsistence. Deducting, then, the highest from the lowest number of labourers engaged at the London Dock—the extremes according to the books are under 500 and over 3000—we have as many as 2500 individuals deprived of a day’s work and a living by the prevalence of an easterly wind; and calculating that the same effect takes place at the other docks—the East and West India for instance, St. Katherine’s, Commercial, Grand Surrey, and East Country, to a greater or less extent, and that the hands employed to load and unload the vessels entering and quitting all these places are only four times more than those required at the London Dock, we have as many as 12,000 individuals or families whose daily bread is as fickle as the wind itself; whose wages, in fact, are one day collectively as much as 1500l. and the next as low as 500l., so that 8000 men are frequently thrown out of employ, while the earnings of the class to day amount to 1000l. less than they did yesterday. It would be curious to take an average number of days that easterly winds prevail in London throughout the year, and so arrive at an estimate of the exact time that the above 8000 men are unemployed in the course of twelve months. This would give us some idea of the amount of their average weekly earnings. By the labourers themselves I am assured that, taking one week with another, they do not gain 5s. weekly throughout the year. I have made a point of visiting and interrogating a large number of them, in order to obtain some definite information respecting the extent of their income, and have found in only one instance an account kept of the individual earnings. In that case the wages averaged within a fraction of 13s. per week, the total sum gained since the beginning of the year being 25l. odd. I should state, however, that the man earning thus much was pointed out to me as one of the most provident of the casual labourers, and one, moreover, who is generally employed. “If it is possible to get work, he’ll have it,” was said of him; “there’s not a lazy bone in his skin.” Besides this he had done a considerable quantity of piece-work, so that altogether the man’s earnings might be taken as the very extreme made by the best kind of “extra hands.” The man himself gives the following explanation as to the state of the labour-market at the London Dock. “He has had a good turn of work,” he says, since he has been there. “Some don’t get half what he does. He’s not always employed, excepting when the business is in anyway brisk, but when a kind of a slack comes the recommended men get the prefer
If, then, 13s. be the average amount of weekly earnings by the most provident, industrious, and fortunate of the casual labourers at the docks—and that at the best season—it may be safely asserted that the lowest grade of workmen there do not gain more than 5s. per week throughout the year. It should be remembered that the man himself says “some don’t get half what he does,” and from a multiplicity of inquiries that I have made upon the subject this appears to be about the truth. Moreover, we should bear in mind that the average weekly wages of the dock-labourer, miserable as they are, are rendered even more wretched by the uncertain character of the work on which they depend. Were the income of the casual labourer at the docks 5s. per week from one year’s end to another the workman would know exactly how much he had to subsist upon, and might therefore be expected to display some little providence and temperance in the expenditure of his wages. But where the means of subsistence occasionally rise to 15s. a-week, and occasionally sink to nothing, it is absurd to look for prudence, economy, or moderation. Regularity of habits are incompatible with irregularity of income; indeed, the very conditions necessary for the formation of any habit whatsoever are, that the act or thing to which we are to become habituated should be repeated at frequent and regular intervals. It is a moral impossibility that the class of labourers who are only occasionally employed should be either generally industrious or temperate—both industry and temperance being habits produced by constancy of employment and uniformity of income. Hence, where the greatest fluctuation occurs in the labour, there, of course, will be the greatest idleness and improvidence; where the greatest want generally is, there we shall find the greatest occasional excess; where from the uncertainty of the occupation prudence is most needed, there, strange to say, we shall meet with the highest imprudence of all. “Previous to the formation of a canal in the north of Ireland,” says Mr. Porter, in “The Progress of the Nation,” “the men were improvident even to recklessness. Such work as they got before came at uncertain intervals, the wages insufficient for the comfortable sustenance of their families were wasted at the whiskey-shop, and the men appeared to be sunk in a state of hopeless degradation. From the moment, however, that work was offered to them which was constant in its nature and certain in its duration, men who before had been idle and dissolute were converted into sober, hard-working labourers, and proved themselves kind and careful husbands and fathers; and it is said that, notwithstanding the distribution of several hundred pounds weekly in wages, the whole of which must be considered as so much additional money placed in their hands, the consumption of whisky was absolutely and permanently diminished in the district.” Indeed it is a fact worthy of notice, as illustrative of the tendency of the times of pressure, and consequently of deficient and uncertain employment, to increase spirit-drinking, that whilst in the year 1836—a year of the greatest prosperity—the tax on British spirits amounted only to 2,390,000l.; yet, under the privations of 1841, the English poorer classes paid no less than 2,600,000l. in taxes upon the liquor they consumed—thus spending upwards of 200,000l. more in drink at a time when they were less able to afford it, and so proving that a fluctuation in the income of the working-classes is almost invariably attended with an excess of improvidence in the expenditure. Moreover, with reference to the dock-labourers, we have been informed, upon unquestionable authority, that some years back there were near upon 220 ships waiting to be discharged in one dock alone; and such was the pressure of business then, that it became necessary to obtain leave of Her Majesty’s Customs to increase the usual time of daily labour from eight to twelve hours. The men employed, therefore, earned 50 per cent more than they were in the habit of doing at the briskest times; but so far from the extra amount of wages being devoted to increase the comforts of their homes, it was principally spent in public-houses. The riot and confusion thus created in the neighbourhood were such as had never been known before, and indeed were so general among the workmen, that every respectable person in the immediate vicinity expressed a hope that such a thing as “overtime” would never occur again. It may then be safely asserted, that though the wages of the casual labourer at the docks It is consoling to moralise in our easy chairs, after a good dinner, and to assure ourselves that we should do differently. Self-denial is not very difficult when our stomachs are full and our backs are warm; but let us live a month of hunger and cold, and assuredly we should be as self-indulgent as they. I have devoted some time to the investigation of the state of the casual labourers at the other docks, and shall now proceed to set forth the result of my inquiries. The West India Docks.The West India Docks are about a mile and a-half from the London Docks. The entire ground that they cover is 295 acres, so that they are nearly three times larger than the London Docks, and more than twelve times more extensive than those of St. Katherine’s. Hence they are the most capacious of all the great warehousing establishments in the port of London. The export dock is about 870 yards, or very nearly half-a-mile in length by 135 yards in width; its area, therefore, is about 25 acres. The import dock is the same length as the export dock, and 166 yards wide. The south dock, which is appropriated both to import and export vessels, is 1,183 yards, or upwards of two-thirds of a mile long, with an entrance to the river at each end; both the locks, as well as that into the Blackwall basin, being forty feet wide, and large enough to admit ships of 1,200 tons burden. The warehouses for imported goods are on the four quays of the import dock. They are well contrived and of great extent, being calculated to contain 180,000 tons of merchandise; and there has been at one time on the quays, and in the sheds, vaults, and warehouses, colonial produce worth 20,000,000l. sterling. The East India Docks are likewise the property of the West India Dock Company, having been purchased by them of the East India Company at the time of the opening of the trade to India. The import dock here has an area of 18 acres, and the export dock about 9 acres. The depth of water in these docks is greater, and they can consequently accommodate ships of greater burden than any other establishment on the river. The capital of both establishments, or of the united company, amounts to upwards of 2,000,000 of money. The West India import dock can accommodate 300 ships, and the export dock 200 ships of 300 tons each; and the East India import dock 84 ships, and the export dock 40 ships, of 800 tons each. The number of ships that entered the West India Dock to load and unload last year was 3008, and the number that entered the East India Dock 298. I owe the above information, as well as that which follows, to the kindness of the secretary and superintendent of the docks in question. To the politeness and intelligence of the latter gentleman I am specially indebted. Indeed his readiness to afford me all the assistance that lay in his power, as well as his courtesy and gentlemanly demeanour, formed a marked contrast to that of the deputy-superintendent of the London Docks, the one appearing as anxious for the welfare and comfort of the labouring men as the other seemed indifferent to it. The transition from the London to the West India Docks is of a very peculiar character. The labourers at the latter place seem to be more civilised. The scrambling and scuffling for the day’s hire, which is the striking feature of the one establishment, is scarcely distinguishable at the other. It is true there is the same crowd of labourers in quest of a day’s work, but the struggle to obtain it is neither so fierce nor so disorderly in its character. And yet, here the casual labourers are men from whom no character is demanded as well as there. The amount of wages for the summer months is the same as at the London Docks. Unlike the London Docks, however, no reduction is made at the East and West India Docks during the winter. The labour is as precarious at one establishment as at the other. The greatest number of hands employed for any one day at the East and West India Docks in the course of last year was nearly 4000, and the smallest number about 1300. The lowest number of ships that entered the docks during any one week in the present year was 28, and the highest number 209, being a difference of 181 vessels, of an average burden of 300 tons each. The positive amount of variation, however, which occurred in the labour during the briskest and slackest weeks of last year was a difference of upwards of 2500 in the number of extra workmen employed, and of about 2000l. in the amount of wages paid for the six days’ labour. I have been favoured with a return of the number of vessels that entered the East and West India Docks for each week in the present year, and The St. Katherine’s Dock.Nor are the returns from St. Katherine’s Dock of a more cheerful character. Here it should be observed that no labourer is employed without a previous recommendation; and, indeed, it is curious to notice the difference in the appearance of the men applying for work at this establishment. They not only have a more decent look, but seem to be better behaved than any other dock-labourers I have yet seen. The “ticket” system is here adopted—that is to say, the plan of allowing only such persons to labour within the docks as have been satisfactorily recommended to the company, and furnished with a ticket by them in return—this ticket system, says the statement which has been kindly drawn up expressly for me by the superintendent of the docks, may be worth notice, at a time when such efforts are making to improve the condition of the labourers. It gives an identity and locus standi to the men which casual labourers cannot otherwise possess, it connects them with the various grades of officers under whose eyes they labour, prevents favouritism, and leads to their qualifications being noted and recorded. It also holds before them a reward for activity, intelligence, and good conduct; because the vacancies in the list of preferable labourers, which occur during the year, are invariably filled in the succeeding January by selecting, upon strict inquiry, the best of the extra-ticket labourers, the vacancies among the permanent men being supplied in like manner from the list of preferable labourers, while from the permanent men are appointed the subordinate officers, as markers, samplers, &c. Let us, however, before entering into a description of the class and number of labourers employed at St. Katherine’s give a brief description of the docks themselves. The lofty walls, which constitute it in the language of the Custom-house a place of special security, enclose an area of 23 acres, of which 11 are water, capable of accommodating 120 ships, besides barges and other craft; cargoes are raised into the warehouses out of the hold of a ship, without the goods being deposited on the quay. The cargoes can be raised out of the ship’s hold into the warehouses of St. Katherine’s in one-fifth of the usual time. Before the existence of docks, a month or six weeks was taken up in discharging the cargo of an East-Indiaman of from 800 to 1200 tons burden, while 8 days were necessary in the summer and 14 in the winter to unload a ship of 350 tons. At St. Katherine’s, however, the average time now occupied in discharging a ship of 250 tons is twelve hours, and one of 500 tons two or three days, the goods being placed at the same time in the warehouse: there have been occasions when even greater despatch has been used, and a cargo of 1100 casks of tallow, averaging from 9 to 10 cwt. each, has been discharged in seven hours. This would have been considered little short of a miracle on the legal quays less than fifty years ago. In 1841, about 1000 vessels and 10,000 lighters were accommodated at St. Katherine’s Dock. The capital expended by the dock company exceeds 2,000,000 of money. The business of this establishment is carried on by 35 officers, 105 clerks and apprentices, 135 markers, samplers, and foremen, 250 permanent labourers, 150 preferable ticket-labourers, proportioned to the amount of work to be done. The average number of labourers employed, permanent, preferable, and extras, is 1096; the highest number employed on any one day last year was 1713, and the lowest number 515, so that the extreme fluctuation in the labour appears to be very nearly 1200 hands. The lowest sum of money that was paid in 1848 for the day’s work of the entire body of labourers employed was 64l. 7s. 6d., and the highest sum 214l. 2s. 6d., being a difference of very nearly 150l. in one day, or 900l. in the course of the week. The average number of ships that enter the dock every week is 17, the highest number that entered in any one week last year was 36, and the lowest 5, being a difference of 31. Assuming these to have been of an average burden of 300 tons, and that every such vessel would require 100 labourers to discharge its cargo in three days, then 1500 extra hands ought to have been engaged to discharge the cargoes of the entire number in a week. This, it will be observed, is very nearly equal to the highest number of the labourers employed by the company in the year 1848. The remaining docks are the Commercial Docks and timber ponds, the Grand Surrey Canal Dock at Rotherhithe, and the East Country Dock. The Commercial Docks occupy an area of about 49 acres, of which four-fifths are water. There is accommodation for 350 ships, and in the warehouses for 50,000 tons of merchandise. They are appropriated to vessels engaged in the European timber and corn In addition to these there is the Regent’s Canal Dock, between Shadwell and Limehouse, and though it is a place for bonding timber and deals only, it nevertheless affords great accommodation to the trade of the port by withdrawing shipping from the river. The number of labourers, casual and permanent, employed at these various establishments is so limited, that, taken altogether, the fluctuations occurring at their briskest and slackest periods may be reckoned as equal to that of St. Katherine’s. Hence the account of the variation in the total number of hands employed, and the sum of money paid as wages to them, by the different dock companies, when the business is brisk or slack, may be stated as follows:— From the above statement then it appears, that by the prevalence of an easterly wind no less than 7000 out of the aggregate number of persons living by dock labour may be deprived of their regular income, and the entire body may have as much as 5250l. a week abstracted from the amount of their collective earnings, at a period of active employment. But the number of individuals who depend upon the quantity of shipping entering the port of London for their daily subsistence is far beyond this amount. Indeed we are assured by a gentleman filling a high situation in St. Katherine’s Dock, and who, from his sympathy with the labouring poor, has evidently given no slight attention to the subject, that taking into consideration the number of wharf-labourers, dock-labourers, lightermen, riggers and lumpers, shipwrights, caulkers, ships’ carpenters, anchor-smiths, corn-porters, fruit and coal-meters, and indeed all the multifarious arts and callings connected with shipping, there are no less than from 25,000 to 30,000 individuals who are thrown wholly out of employ by a long continuance of easterly winds. Estimating then the gains of this large body of individuals at 2s. 6d. per day, or 15s. per week, when fully employed, we shall find that the loss to those who depend upon the London shipping for their subsistence amounts to 20,000l. per week, and, considering that such winds are often known to prevail for a fortnight to three weeks at a time, it follows that the entire loss to this large class will amount to from 40,000l. to 60,000l. within a month,—an amount of privation to the labouring poor which it is positively awful to contemplate. Nor is this the only evil connected with an enduring easterly wind. Directly a change takes place a glut of vessels enters the metropolitan port, and labourers flock from all quarters; indeed they flock from every part where the workmen exist in a greater quantity than the work. From 500 to 800 vessels frequently arrive at one time in London after the duration of a contrary wind, and then such is the demand for workmen, and so great the press of business, owing to the rivalry among merchants, and the desire of each owner to have his cargo the first in the market, that a sufficient number of hands is scarcely to be found. Hundreds of extra labourers, who can find labour nowhere else, are thus led to seek work in the docks. But, to use the words of our informant, two or three weeks are sufficient to break the neck of an ordinary glut, and then the vast amount of extra hands that the excess of business has brought to the neighbourhood are thrown out of employment, and left to increase either the vagabondism of the neighbourhood or to swell the number of paupers and heighten the rates of the adjacent parishes. |