Casual laborer

“ If labor is so good and great a thing let all be thankful, for all can have as much of it as may be desired. The eight-hour law is not mandatory to the laborer, nor does possession of leisure entail idleness. It is permitted to the clerk, the shopman, the street peddler—to all who live by the light employment of keeping the wolf from the door without eating him—to abandon their ignoble callings, seize the shovel, the axe and the sledge-hammer and lay about them right sturdily, to the ample gratification of their desire. ”

“ The yearly return of so many seasonal hands for 166 the wool and grain season, year after year, who look for casual work elsewhere in the meantime in shearing sheds—on the wharfs—in other industries and even in the Government temporary service—and prefer casual work is not an encouraging sign. The higher rates paid for casual work do, and will, encourage many men to rely on that class of labor. ”

“ In the organization of the Knights of Labor the common or the unskilled laborer finds a home, a retreat where he can do that for himself which the skilled laborer does for himself in his organization. If the labor organization confers benefits, and none doubt the fact who know anything of their operations, why should not the common laborer, the unskilled workingman, participate in such blessings? Why should not the home of the common laborer be made bright and beautiful? Why should not the wife and children of the common laborer be surrounded with the comforts of life? ”

“ 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 ”

“ When I call in my laborers, on a Saturday night, to pay them, it often brings to my mind the great and general day of account, when I, and you, and all of us, shall be called to our grand and awful reckoning, when we shall go to receive our wages, master and servants, farmer and laborer. When I see that one of my men has failed of the wages he should have received, because he has been idling at a fair; another has lost a day by a drinking-bout, a third confesses that, though he had task-work, and might have earned still more, yet he has been careless, and has not his full pay to receive ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ STANDPOINTS. A POOR man who supported his family by daily labor used to deal with the two storekeepers of his native village. Of one he bought flour and meat; of the other, materials for his own and his children’s clothing. Being a good workman and honest as well as industrious, he was accustomed to settle his accounts at both stores every Saturday night.
All went on well and to the satisfaction of both buyer and seller as long as health lasted. But at length sickness came, and Saturday brought the laborer no wages. ”

“ The day-laborer, when his work is done, receives the wages of his labor, and goes to his home content and with a cheerful spirit, whistling on his way, his mind free from all perplexing plans and cares, and enjoys his evening in pleasant intercourse with his family and neighbors, and, when he retires to rest, has the blessing of sound sleep, the reward of his healthful toil: while his wealthy employer, whose lot he may perhaps be unwisely inclined to envy, has, perchance, his mind agitated and his rest disturbed by busy schemes and worrying doubts and anxieties. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ There are hundreds of thousands of small masters who are obliged on Saturday to run about for hours in order to borrow the week's pay for their workers and who are happy if their profit is equal to the wages of a factory laborer. ”

“ But whatever Fate may have in store for my dear little Georgie and her chosen co-worker, of one thing I am sure,—that, fare as they may with worldly fortune, they will never be content, having tasted of the salt of work, to feed again on the honey-bread of idleness, or become drones in the working-hive, but will persevere to the end in the principles and practices of what in the best sense of the word may be called their Labor Union. ”

“ In time he is rewarded. He may come to be a checker, a clerk, or an inspector; while the sterling fellow, the hard worker, the “sticker,” as he is called, may stop and work himself to death like a slave. Thus, deserving men, because they have proved themselves adepts at the work, have been kept on the ash-barrows for ten or twelve years, sweating their lives away for the sum of eighteen shillings a week. Several, however, disgusted with the business, have left the shed and gone back to work on the farms, in the pure surroundings of the fields and villages. ”

“ Piece-work also shows that in the wage-earning world there is a group of men somewhat analogous to the retail shopkeepers, possessing the confidence of the employer, and not belonging to the proletariat class. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ The dress factory job was like another world compared with candy, brass, and the laundry. In each of those places I had worked on one floor of a big plant, doing one subdivided piece of labor among equally low-paid workers busy at the same sort of job as myself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ JOB HUNTING AMONG THE CASUAL WORKERS
In seasonal and casual work, as in all types of industry, a process of selection takes place. Great numbers of men are attracted into seasonal occupations because of the good wages offered. But only those remain who are content to migrate from one locality to another in response to the demands for labor. The average man soon realizes that in the course of a year seasonal work does not pay even if fabulous wages are received for short-lived jobs. ”

“ I at once replied that my master had sent me to town to hire myself out for a few weeks, and that I was ready to go with him immediately. The joy I felt at finding employment so overcame me, that all thought of my wages was forgotten. Bidding farewell to the man who had given me my breakfast, and thanking him in my heart for his kindness, I followed my new employer, who informed me that he had engaged to remove a thousand bales of cotton from a large warehouse, to the end of a wharf at which a ship lay, that was taking in the cotton as a load. ”

“ On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. ”

“ For the better class of workmen, employed in the factory, the machinery helpers, etc., we have bath-houses. These men have rooms, and as a rule they are unmarried. Most of the labouring men, if they have families, when they are paid off, go away for a day, or a day and a half, and take their money to their families, and then come back to work. Those who are not married, keep on working or stay off a few days. It is quite uncommon to find a labouring man who can read and write. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It cannot but be realized, by all the women to whom I speak, how very casual is the communication between the laboring class in this community and [252] their employers. Suppose a housekeeper wants additional service, how can she secure it? If she is not wealthy enough to hire regularly, her "chance" is a very poor one ”

“ It's a sickening, tiresome, disheartening business, Bill, to be out of a job and go from one place to another asking if you can sell your labor power and have people look suspiciously at your, shabby clothes and tired face, and tell you there's nothing doing. Into shop and store and hotel and factory you go, and the answer is always. ”

“ The wages of those who are regularly employed being scant, what must be the condition of those whose employment is but casual and precarious? Mayhew says—
"The hours of labour in mechanical callings are usually twelve, two of them devoted to meals, or seventy-two hours (less by the permitted intervals) in a week. In the course of my inquiries for the Chronicle, I met with slop cabinet-makers, tailors, and milliners, who worked sixteen hours and more daily, their toil being only interrupted by the necessity of going out, if small masters, to purchase materials, and offer the goods for sale ”

“ If we look at the class of the casual labourers of this country, calculated at somewhat under two millions in number, these often fail to get a full week's work, and their average earnings for the year are so low that, even with careful management, they are frequently unable to procure for themselves and their families the necessaries of healthy life. ”

“ The larder is stocked with good food, good books are on the shelves, each day starts and ends with a joyous feeling about the heart.
And I, this sunburnt, carefree person, pretend to have been as a worker among workers. Again some one says, “The artificiality of it!”
Back in that hot New York the girls I labored among are still packing chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing “family,” beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming sheets and ticketing pillow cases. ”

“ The amount of pay earned varies according to the capacity and industry of the workers, and the majority appear to be both busy and skilful. Some there are that look dull and sleepy; others, as we enter, are asleep with their heads pillowed on their arms, that are crossed on the table, but they are wakened by a nudge or a whisper; and even the most absorbed labourer finds time to give us a glance as we pass. ”

“ He shook hands with the barmaid, swept the room with a curious glance and settled down with his drink at the elbow of the lanky labourer. He spoke so loudly, and with such an accent of gentility that his voice could be heard above the rumour of the bar. He slapped his neighbour on the back.
‘Out of work?’ he said. ‘There’s no need for any one to be out of work in these days. I know the kind of work you chaps get, and damn me if I can see how you put up with it. Now, what have you been earning on the farm? Fifteen shilling a week? I guessed as much. And ten hours’ work a day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What will the American workman do to express his American temperament through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." ”