Dock laborer

“ But it is outside that one must search for the misery which those who know them best acknowledge to be the commonest lot of the Dock-labourer.
Inside, when the men are at work, the beer barrel on a stand with wheels is trundled merrily along at certain hours, and there is a contractor who supplies the men with food. It is outside that the beer barrel and the food contractor find their occupation gone. ”

“ These men have waited, many of them, through the dead of night to be nearest to the great gates when they open, and the foremen come to choose the hands that are needed for the unloading of the ships.
And there among the crowd waiting, some of them in the last despair for a day's work, you may find many a mystery. All the men who wait in dumb patience through the long hours for the dock gates to open are not of the labouring class. The wreckage drifts to the dock gates for a job, because it is the great market for unskilled labour. ”

“ The average number of vessels lying at one time in the East and West India Docks is 215, all ships of large tonnage. The Dock Company keeps 2,500 persons in regular employment for the loading and unloading of ships, and employs as casual labourers nearly 3,000 men besides.
The London dock labourer, to whom of late much public sympathy has been extended, is of two classes. The regular labourer, since the great strike, has been fairly well paid for an unskilled artisan, and is assured of constant employment. ”

“ A very real determination exists among all the enlightened and thoughtful shipowners to put an end to the conditions of labour which produce the hooligan and the wastrel. As at other ports the dock labour is casual. A scheme is in preparation by which regular men shall be increased as far as possible, and the fringe of casuals which remains shall have their work dovetailed, in so far as conditions allow. ”

“ The spectacle of the life of the London Dock labourers is one of the most terrible examples of the logical outcome of the present social system. In the six great metropolitan docks over 100,000 men are employed, the great bulk of whom are married and have families. ”

“ And wisely directed effort might, too, aim at abolishing the system of casual labour at the docks—a system which keeps thousands of half-fed men hanging each morning about the dock gates because on one day in ten all may be wanted—a system which degrades men by forcing them to scramble for their work and almost enjoy the chance on which homes and existence depend. ”

“ Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping up into the ship—and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun. ”

“ But the labour of thousands is influenced also by the wind; an easterly wind prevailing for a few days will throw out of employment 20,000 dock labourers and others who are dependent on the shipping for their employment; such as lumpers, corn-porters, timber-porters, ship-builders, sail-makers, lightermen, watermen, and, indeed, almost all those who are known as ’long-shoremen. ”

“ Especially when then don't happen to be any ships in for a few days, which means, of course, nothing to unload. That's the time; there's plenty of men almost starving then. They have no trade to go to, or can get no work at it, and they swoop down to the docks for work, when they had much better stay away."
But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work. Here is the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels.
C. is a fine built man, standing nearly six feet. ”

“ The knots of labourers trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to eat their food in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air of picnicking by the side of a lonely mountain pool. They were restful (and I should say very unprofitable) , those basins, where the chief officer of one of the ships involved in the harassing, strenuous, noisy activity of the New South Dock only a few yards away could escape in the dinner-hour to stroll, unhampered by men and affairs, meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of all things human. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I work at the dock I have 1l. 1s. a-week, and when I am rafting short-hour ships (i.e. ships from which we work only from eight till four) I get 4s. per day. When I am working long-hour ships (i.e. ships at which the working lasts from six till six) I get 5s. a-day; the other rafters employed by the company are paid the same. Our wages have remained the same ever since I have been in the business; all the other men have been lowered, such as carpenters, labourers, watchmen, deal-porters and the like; but we are not constant men, or else I dare say ours would have been reduced too. ”

“ Her decks, encumbered with harbour gear and tackle, are given over to the rude hands of the longshoreman; a lumber yard for harbour refuse, a dumping ground for the ashes of the bustling dock tugs. On the hatch covers of her empty holds planks and stages are thrown aside, left as when the last of the cargo was dragged from her; hoist ropes, frayed and chafed to feather edges, swing from the yardarms; broken cargo slings lie rotting in a mess of grain refuse. The work is done. There is not a labourer's pay in her; the stevedores are gone ashore. ”

“ But as the ship passed slowly up the river, and, finally, was taken charge of by the grimy tugs which nosed her with much labor into place at a great dock, the officers began to hustle all the steerage passengers into more compact masses on the deck and her attention once more centered on the matters of the moment. The building on the dock shut off the free salt breeze and quickly the unclean breath of the crowd distressed her lungs. The worried immigrants trod on one another's heels, fell across their huddled trunks and bundles, chattered, gayly or in fright, close in each other's ears. ”

“ Of these, it appears there are 1030 men casually employed at all the timber docks, of whom only 132 obtain work all the year round. How the 900 casual deal-porters and rafters live during the six months of the year that the slack season usually lasts in the timber trade, I cannot conceive. As not a sixpence of their earnings is saved in the brisk season, their fate in the winter is to suffer privations and afflictions which they only know.
I shall begin with the state of the dock-labourers employed at the foreign and hard-wood trade. ”

“ A carpenter or bricklayer, on the contrary, is sometimes thrown out of work, and becomes anxious as to the means of keeping his family. Masons and bricklayers, who cannot work during frosty weather, ought of course to have higher wages during the rest of the year, so as to make up a good average. Dock-labourers, who are simply strong men without any particular skill, earn large wages when trade is brisk and many ships come into the docks; at other times, when trade is slack, or when contrary winds keep ships out of port, they often fall into destitution through want of employment. ”

“ The labourer is paid by his foreman in tickets instead of cash, and invariably finds himself at the end of the week victimised, or, to use a more expressive, though not so genteel a term, diddled, to a heart-rending extent. Dock-labourers who are in regular gangs and regularly employed, are the greatest sufferers by this unjust mode of payment. ”

“ The Court of Appeals properly concluded that the work was part of the loading process and that therefore the longshoreman was in the service of the ship. That gives pragmatic, realistic meaning to the concept of loading and avoids the narrow, grudging, hypertechnical definition.
Loading activity that involves work on the ship and on the dock. Longshoremen are both shipside workers and shoreside workers and move back and forth from deck to dock. At times an individual worker may be using the ship's appliances and a moment later the stevedore's appliances. ”

“ These men are waiting in hopes of a job, which they rarely obtain until all the known hands have been set to work before them. The casual labourers confine themselves to no particular dock, but resort to the one which they account the most likely to want hands; and some even of the more regularly employed deal-porters change their docks occasionally for the same reason. These changes of locality puzzle the regular deal-porters in the estimation of the number of hands in their calling at the respective docks. ”

“ London dockers, to the number of some 25,000, are agitating for a rise in wages; between 5,000 and 6,000 of them have struck work at the Victoria and Albert Dock on the question, forsooth, whether they shall be engaged inside the docks, or outside. In other words, the expeditious handling of London's sorely needed food is being jeopardised by a ridiculous squabble which one would think half a dozen capable business men could settle in five minutes. But here, as usual, the poorest are the victims of their own class. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That industrious and peaceable [140] body of men, the coalwhippers, groaned for a long period under the iniquities of the truck system; they are now protected by a special Act of Parliament, renewed from time to time; but the dock-labourers yet eat their bread leavened by a sense of injustice. There are none to help them; for they have no organisation, and very few friends. It is perfectly true that the dock-companies have nothing whatsoever to do with the social servitude under which their labourers groan; and that it is private speculators who work the system for their own aggrandisement ”

“ 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. ”

“ How to overcome these grave difficulties which stand in the way of effective combination among unskilled workers is a consideration of the first importance. The rapid and momentarily successful action of organized dock labourers must not be taken as conclusive evidence that combination in all other branches of low-class labour can proceed at the same pace. The public and localized character of the competition for casual dock labour rendered effective combination here possible, in spite of the low intellectual and moral calibre of the average labourer. ”

“ I should think the rafters upon an average make 5s. a-week. Some of them has boats, and some gets a job at timber-towing; but some (and that’s the greatest number) has nothing at all to turn their hands to excepting the casual dock labour; that is, anything they can chance to get hold of. I don’t think those who depend upon the casual labour of the docks after the fall season is over (the fall ships are the last that come) make 5s. a-week, take one man with another. I should say, more likely, their weekly earnings is about 4s. ”

“ The wages of the casual dock-labourers have been reduced a great deal more than those of the constant men; three months ago they all had 18s. a-week, and now the highest wages paid to the casual labourers is 15s. The reason why the wages of the rafters have not been lowered is, I take it, because we are freemen, and there are not so many to be had who could supply our places. Not one of a hundred lightermen and watermen are able to raft. We are only employed at certain times of the year. ”

“ Firmly we believe in the good luck that lies in the hand of an old friend. "'Bye, John!"
In groups, as their work is finished, the dockers go on shore, and leave to the crew the nowise easy task of clearing up the raffle, lashing down, and getting the lumbered decks in something approaching sea-trim. Fortunately, there is time for preparation. Usually, we are dragged to the dock gates with the hatches uncovered, the derricks aloft, and the stowers still busy blocking off the last slings of the cargo. ”