Casual labor

“ One job done—done now and forever. A definite piece of work put behind you—and no one coming along in six months with documents or discoveries or new theories or practices to upset all your labors. I say it is blessed to pack chocolates when one has been studying labor problems for some years. Every professor ought to have a fling at packing chocolates.
Folks wonder why a girl slaves in a factory when she could be earning good money and a home thrown in doing housework. I think of that as I watch Annie. ”

“ Sir, I am the son of a 'hireling manual laborer' who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, 'lives by daily labor.' I, too, have 'lived by daily labor.' I, too, have been a 'hireling manual laborer.' Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood, and want was there sometimes—an unbidden guest. ”

“ I feel that I could never resume the habit of labor, and renounce this mode of life, sometimes rich, as to day, sometimes precarious,—but at least free and full of leisure, joyous and without care, and at worst a thousand times preferable to living upon four francs a week. ”

“ The casual hand, I propose to define as an employee who is not employed for a fortnight continuously and who is not entitled to a week's notice before his employment is determined. A new light was thrown by the evidence in this case on the growing tendency of some men to depend on the high rates for casual work only, to enable them to work when they thought fit, and idle when they felt inclined.... ”

“ With so many other laborers in the field, and considering their task, we scarcely dare think of the miserably small pay they must receive for their labor. We wonder how they can live. And yet they have a certain wholesome, thrifty appearance—their clothes, although coarse, are not ragged; they look well and strong, and they work with an energy which would imply a certain satisfaction in their task well done. ”

“ Labor does not engender dirt. Never say of a laborer coming from his work, “He is filthy.” You should say, “He has on his garments the signs, the traces, of his toil.” Remember this. And you must love the little mason, first, because he is your comrade; and next, because he is the son of a workingman.
Thy Father.
[60] ”

“ The occupation itself is so engaging, that one commences readily, and the interest increases so naturally, that no great share of perseverance is needed to continue the employment, and thus labor becomes a pleasure, and the dangerous habit of idleness is checked. ”

“ When men expressed themselves in their particular handicraft they found much of their joy in life in their work. One of the by-products of large-scale industry and the accompanying subdivision of labor has been the worker's inevitable lack of interest in the monotonous job. Since too long hours spent at mechanical, repetitious labor result in a lowered standard of efficiency, and rebellion on the part of the worker, there has followed a continual tendency toward a reduction in the length of the working day. ”

“ Only working-people were in the streets: [Pg 383] men going to their day's labor, blanchisseuses with their clothes in bundles on their heads, cooks and maids of all work with their baskets on their arms going to the market for the day's supply of food for the family. ”

“ The laborer whom he saw in the early morning swinging his dinner pail while with light steps he marched to the daily task in mill and factory, and whom he watched in the evening's dusk after the factory sirens had blown the working man's curfew, hurrying home anxious to reach his humble fireside, and for whom heretofore he had only known feelings of deepest contempt, suddenly had become a man who benefitted preciously far more of his life than any yegg he could recall. ”

“ The time necessary for this will accustom him to habits of steady industry, and in order that he may not be revolted by work, the hours of labor should not be overlong, and recreation and healthy amusement should be placed within his reach. ”

“ The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child, again: this result was foreseen from the phase of the division of labor, during which we saw the quality of the workman degenerate in the ratio in which industry was perfected. ”

“ By casual labour I mean such labour as can obtain only occasional as contradistinguished from constant employment. In this definition I include all classes of workers, literate and illiterate, skilled and unskilled, whose professions, trades, or callings expose them to be employed temporarily rather than continuously, and whose incomes are in a consequent degree fluctuating, casual, and uncertain.
In no country in the world is there such an extent, and at the same time such a diversity, of casual labour as in Great Britain. ”

“ So he never was able to "take his ease, eat, drink, and be merry." And if he had spent as much labor in useful work (say building, or ploughing, or sandal-making) , what a good workman he might have become! ”

“ We cannot hope that a highly efficient, intelligent young girl will perform menial labor some sixteen hours a day for a few dollars a week and board, with the privilege of eating off the tubs and sleeping in a five-by-seven closet off the kitchen, when she can obtain a clerkship in one of the department stores where she has light, clean employment, [Pg 190] shorter hours, and sees something of the passing show ”

“ Housekeeping comprises at least three trades, that of cook, laundress and seamstress, to which might be added that of house cleaning; and yet it is expected of woman that she will single-handed [Pg 274] successfully carry on these various trades, and at the same time bear and rear children and teach them to become great and good. How long would men undergo a like amount of labor without devising some means of lightening and separating its burdens? ”

“ This is the significance that physical labor possesses for man in every community; but in our community, where the avoidance of this law of labor has occasioned the unhappiness of a whole class of people, employment in physical labor acquires still another significance,--the significance of a sermon, and of an occupation which removes a terrible misfortune that is threatening mankind. ”

“ Was all that labor more wearing to health and strength than the cruel bondage in which we live, while laboring to secure, from servants, the care and efficient work absolutely necessary to the present style of living? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it must also be recognised that the unskilled casual labourer has little chance of realising the good life, so long as he remains a casual. But, in general, it is his own fault if he remains a casual. ”

“ They melted down some of the church ornaments, and in a few months baskets full of the envious shining trinkets were in all the Plaza shops. Help yourself.... Labor is plentiful. Everybody wants to work at least a few hours a day—they insist upon it. ”

“ Under such ideal conditions it is obvious that all labor would be pleasurable, and that the only ground for distinguishing different kinds of labor or different hours of labor would be that some would afford more pleasure to the laborer than others. Men would be paid in such a society, not because they did disagreeable things, but because they produced want-satisfying goods, and to do so refrained from other lines of activity or relaxation that promised even more pleasure than the work in hand. ”

“ I am speaking, of course, of that class of people of our race who depend mainly upon a day's work—working by the day, as we call it—for their living. These men with whom I talked gave several illustrations of this tendency. In the first place, I think they mentioned, without exception, this fact—that if the coloured people are employed in a factory, they work well and steadily for a few days, say until Saturday night comes, and they are paid their week's wages. ”

“ The unemployed artisan, the casual labourer, and the casual labourer's wife and children, the sweated worker, the infirm worker, the worker's widow, the under-fed child, the untrained, undisciplined, and exploited boy labourer—it is upon these subjects that our minds should dwell in the early days of 1909. ”

“ The hard-working day labourer, the small shopkeeper, the functionary who has laboured all his life ten or twelve hours out of every twenty-four, and has never had but one desire in his life—that of taking his fill of rest—imagines that his son will naturally be much happier than himself if he does not have to work so much. ”

“ Try this mode of working resolutely for a few months, and labor or oversight of labor will become so nearly a second nature that you will arrange, or perform almost instinctively, even with pleasure, that which now seems a heavy burden, grievous to be borne. To show just what may be done, let us take a glance at the arrangements for washing and ironing days.
Every housekeeper has her own way of apportioning the work of her servants. ”

“ The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. ”

“ Workmen's compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold, consolations, if there be no employment. ”

“ When one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal holidays as the sole respite—to find at the month's end that the only possible economics are pleasures—one is at least better fitted to comprehend the standpoint of the worker ”

“ It often takes months of gentle persistence before the girls, be they human-hair-workers or cracker-packers, or domestic workers or stenographers, see how greatly it is to their own interest to join or to form a labor organization. Many locals formed with so much thought and after so much pains, drop to pieces after a few months or a year or two. That is a universal experience in the labor movement everywhere. ”

“ So they rested, and then they went to the public dining-room and dined, and then he started on his search for employment. But they soon realised that in the matter of one convenience the world was just as badly off as it had ever been, and that was a nice, secure, honourable, remunerative employment, leaving ample leisure for the private life, and demanding no special ability, no violent exertion nor risk, and no sacrifice of any sort for its attainment. ”

“ The need for her physical labor having gone, and mental industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank left by the lack of productive activity. ”

“ To the brain-working captain of industry, maintaining himself and his family on thousands a year, the manual-working wage-earner seems to belong to another species, having mental faculties and bodily needs altogether different from his own. ”

“ While one does not lose caste by doing manual labor, temporarily or as a makeshift, he suffers socially, in certain circles, who chooses deliberately a vocation which requires him to wear soiled clothing, to carry a plebeian dinner-pail, and to work hard with his hands. Because of this, many bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, plasterers, plumbers, and other workers, ambitious socially for their sons, instead of teaching them trades in which they might excel and in which there might be an unrestricted future for them, train them for clerical and office work. ”

“ Somebody is going to get the life crowded out of him at every turn, and it isn't always the work hand in the factory. The money kings eat each other for breakfast every day. As for work, we always thought we worked. You should take a peep into the shops and factories I've seen this week. Work? Why, we don't know what work is, and we waste enough food every day to keep a workman's family, and we're dressed liked queens, in comparison with them right now. ”

“ Others, again, after partaking of a few mouthfuls of food, go on making up their fires, not only to keep themselves awake, but also to help the work forward and earn their money for the shift. I have many times worked all night — through both meal-hours — in the attempt to earn my wages, and then have been deficient. ”

“ Now it is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity. ”

“ But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in practice he can’t; for one who gets into a gentleman’s family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty know that they’ve no chance before them, but day-laborer born, day-laborer live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching to get not meat and beer even, but bread and potatoes ”

“ In our society, which are the classes that love work for work's sake? The peasant proprietors, the little shop-keepers; the former bent double over their fields, the latter crouched in their shops, burrow like the mole in his subterranean passage and never stand up to look at nature leisurely. ”

“ As the boy in school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain hours and taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory he earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. ”