The public, generally, are deplorably misinformed as to the character and purpose of trade societies. The common impression is that they are combinations of working-men, instituted and maintained solely with the view of exacting an exorbitant rate of wages from their employers, and that they are necessarily connected with strikes, and with sundry other savage and silly means of attaining this object. It is my duty, however, to make known that the rate of wages which such societies are instituted to uphold has, with but few exceptions, been agreed upon at a conference of both masters and men, and that in almost every case I find the members as strongly opposed to strikes, as a means of upholding them, as the public themselves. But at all events the maintenance of the standard rate of wages is not the sole object of such societies—the majority of them being organised as much for the support of the sick and aged as for the regulation of the price of labour; and even in those societies whose efforts are confined to the latter purpose alone, a considerable sum is devoted annually for the subsistence of their members when out of work. The general cabinet-makers, I have already shown, have contributed towards this object as much as 1000l. per annum for many years past. It is not generally known how largely the community is indebted to the trade and friendly societies of the working classes dispersed throughout the kingdom, or how much expense the public is saved by such means in the matter of poor-rates alone.

According to the last Government returns there are at present in England, Scotland, and Ireland, upwards of 33,000 such societies, 14,000 of which are enrolled and 8000 unenrolled—the remaining 11,000 being secret societies, such as the Odd Fellows, Foresters, Druids, Old Friends, and Rechabites. The number of members belonging to these 33,000 societies is more than three millions. The gross annual income of the entire associations is 4,980,000l. and their accumulated capital 11,360,000l. The working people of this country, and I believe of this country alone, contribute therefore to the support of their own poor nearly five millions of money every year, which is some thousands of pounds more than was dispensed in parochial relief throughout England and Wales in 1848. Hence it may be truly said, that the benefits conferred by the trade and friendly societies of the working classes are not limited to the individuals receiving them, but are participated in by every ratepayer in the kingdom, for were there no such institutions the poor-rates must necessarily be doubled.

I have been thus explicit on the subject of trade societies in general, because I know there exists in the public mind a strong prejudice against such institutions, and because it is the fact of belonging to some such society which invariably distinguishes the better class of workmen from the worse. The competitive men, or cheap workers, seldom or never are members of any association, either enrolled or unenrolled. The consequence is, that when out of work, or disabled from sickness or old age, they are left to the parish to support. It is the slop-workers of the different trades—the cheap men or non-society hands—who constitute the great mass of paupers in this country. And here lies the main social distinction between the workmen who belong to societies and those who do not—the one maintain their own poor, the others are left to the mercy of the parish. The wages of the competitive men are cut down to a bare subsistence, so that, being unable to save anything from their earnings, a few days’ incapacity from labour drives them to the workhouse for relief. In the matter of machinery, not only is the cost of working the engine, but the wear and tear of the machine, considered as a necessary part of the expense of production. With the human machine, however, it is different, slop-wages being sufficient to defray only the cost of keeping it at work, but not to compensate for the wear and tear of it. Under the allowance system of the old poor-law, wages, it is well known, were reduced far below subsistence-point, and the workmen were left to seek parish relief for the remainder; and so in the slop part of every trade, the underpaid workmen when sick or aged are handed over to the state to support.

As an instance of the truth of the above remarks I subjoin the following statement, which has been furnished to me by the Chairmakers’ Society concerning their outgoings:—

“The objects which the London Chairmakers have in view by associating in a trade society,” says the written statement from which the above account is extracted, “is to insure, as near as possible, one uniform price for the work they execute, so that the employer shall have a guarantee in making his calculations that he will not be charged more or less than his neighbours, who employ the same class of men: to assist their members in obtaining employment, and a just remuneration for the work they perform: to insure their tools against fire: to provide for their funerals in the event of death: and to relieve their members when unemployed or in sickness—the latter being effected by paying persons to collect voluntary subscriptions for invalid members, such subscriptions producing on an average 5l. in each case. The members have, moreover, other modes of assisting each other when in difficulties.”

I may as well here subjoin the statement I have received from this society concerning the circumstances affecting their business.

“Our trade,” say they, in a written communication to me, “has suffered very materially from a change which took place about 30 years ago in the system of work. We were at that time chiefly employed by what we term ‘trade-working masters,’ who supplied the upholsterers with the frames of chairs and sofas; but since then we have obtained our work directly from the sellers. At first the change was rather beneficial than otherwise. The employer and his salesman, however, have now, in the greater number of instances, no knowledge of the manufacturing part of the business, and this is very detrimental to our interest, owing to their being unacquainted with the value of the labour part of the articles we make. Moreover, the salesman sends all the orders he can out of doors to be made by the middlemen, though the customer is led to believe that the work is executed on the premises, whereas only a portion of it is made at home, and that chiefly the odd and out-of-the-way work, because the sending of such work out of doors would not answer the end of cheapness. The middleman, who executes the work away from the premises, subdivides the labour to such an extent that he is enabled to get the articles made much cheaper, as well as to employ both unskilful workmen and apprentices.

“Placed in the position where the employer gets the credit of paying us the legitimate price for our labour, it would appear that we have no cause of complaint; but, owing to the system of things before stated, as well as to the number of linendrapers, carpet-makers, and others, who have recently entered the trade without having any practical knowledge of the business, together with the casualty of our employment, our social position has become scarcely any better, or so good, as that of the unskilful or the dissipated workman, while, from the many demands of our fellow-operatives upon us, in the shape of pecuniary assistance, we have a severe struggle to maintain anything like a respectable footing in the community. The principal source of regret with us is, that the public have no knowledge of the quality of the articles they buy. The sellers, too, from their want of practical acquaintance with the manufacturing part of the business, have likewise an injurious effect upon our interests, instead of seconding our efforts to keep up a creditable position in society.

“The subjoined is the amount of the capital of our society at the present time:—

Such, then, is the state of the society men belonging to the cabinet-makers’ trade. These, as I before said, constitute that portion of the workmen whose wages are regulated by custom, and it now only remains for me to set forth the state of those whose earnings are determined by competition. Here we shall find that the wages a few years since were from three to four hundred per cent better than they are at present, 20s. having formerly been the price paid for making that for which the operatives now receive only 5s., and this notwithstanding that the number of hands in the London trade from 1831 to 1841 declined 33 per cent relatively to the rest of the population. Nor can it be said that this extraordinary depreciation in the value of the cabinet-makers’ labour has arisen from any proportionate decrease in the quantity of work to be done. The number of houses built in the metropolis has of late been considerably on the increase. Since 1839 there have been 200 miles of new streets formed in London, no less than 6405 new dwellings having been erected annually since that time: and as it is but fair to assume that the majority of these new houses must have required new furniture, it is clear that it is impossible to account for the decline in the wages of the trade in question upon the assumption of an equal decline in the quantity of work. How, then, are we to explain the fact that, while the hands have decreased 33 per cent, and work increased at a considerable rate, wages a few years ago were 300 per cent better than they are at present? The solution of the problem will be found in the extraordinary increase that has taken place within the last 20 years of what are called “garret-masters” in the cabinet trade. These garret-masters are a class of small “trade-working masters,” supplying both capital and labour. They are in manufacture what the peasant-proprietors are in agriculture, their own employers and their own workmen. There is, however, this one marked distinction between the two classes,—the garret-master cannot, like the peasant-proprietor, eat what he produces: the consequence is, that he is obliged to convert each article into food immediately he manufactures it, no matter what the state of the market may be. The capital of the garret-master being generally sufficient to find him in the materials for the manufacture of only one article at a time, and his savings being barely enough for his subsistence while he is engaged in putting those materials together, he is compelled the moment the work is completed to part with it for whatever he can get. He cannot afford to keep it even a day, for to do so is generally to remain a day unfed. Hence, if the market be at all slack, he has to force a sale by offering his goods at the lowest possible price. What wonder, then, that the necessities of such a class of individuals should have created a special race of employers, known by the significant name of “slaughter-house men?”—or that these, being aware of the inability of the garret-masters to hold out against any offer, no matter how slight a remuneration it affords for their labour, should continually lower and lower their prices until the entire body of the competitive portion of the cabinet trade is sunk in utter destitution and misery? Moreover, it is well known how strong is the stimulus among peasant-proprietors, or indeed any class working for themselves, to extra production. So it is, indeed, with the garret-masters; their industry is indeed almost incessant, and hence a greater quantity of work is turned out by them, and continually forced into the market, than there would otherwise be. What though there be a brisk and a slack season in the cabinet-makers’ trade, as in the majority of others? Slack or brisk, the garret-master must produce the same excessive quantity of goods. In the hope of extricating himself from his overwhelming poverty, he toils on, producing more and more; and yet the more he produces the more hopeless does his position become, for the greater the stock that he thrusts into the market the lower does the price of his labour fall, until at last he and his own family work for less than he himself could earn, a few years back, by his own unaided labour.

Another cause of the necessity of the garret-master to part with his goods as soon as made is the large size of the articles he manufactures, and the consequent cost of conveying them from slaughter-house to slaughter-house till a purchaser be found. For this purpose a van is frequently hired; and the consequence is, that he cannot hold out against the slaughterer’s offer, even for an hour, without increasing the expense of carriage, and so virtually decreasing his gains. This is so well known at the slaughter-houses, that if a man, after seeking in vain for a fair remuneration for his work, is goaded by his necessities to call at a shop a second time to accept a price which he had previously refused, he seldom obtains what was first offered him. Sometimes when he has been ground down to the lowest possible sum, he is paid late on a Saturday night with a cheque, and forced to give the firm a liberal discount for cashing it.

For a more detailed account, however, of the iniquities practised upon this class of operatives, I refer the reader to the statements given below. It will be there seen that all the modes by which work can be produced cheap are in full operation. The labour of apprentices and children is the prevailing means of production. I heard of one small trade-working master who had as many as eleven apprentices at work for him; and wherever the operative is blessed with a family they all work, even from 6 years old. The employment of any undue number of apprentices also tends to increase the very excess of hands from which the trade is suffering; and thus it is, that the lower wages become, the lower still they are reduced. There are very few—some told me there were none, but there are a few who work as journeymen for little masters; but these men become little masters in their turn, or they must starve in idleness, for their employment is precarious. These men have no time for social intercommunication: the struggle to live absorbs all their energies, and confines all their aspirations to that one endeavour. Their labour is devoted, with the rarest exceptions, to the “slaughter-houses, linendrapers, ’polsterers, or warehouses.” By all these names I heard the shopkeepers who deal in furniture of all kinds, as well as drapery goods, designated.

These men work in their own rooms, in Spitalfields and Bethnal-green; and sometimes two or three men in different branches occupy one apartment, and work together there. They are a sober class of men, but seem so perfectly subdued by circumstances, that they cannot or do not struggle against the system which several of them told me they knew was undoing them.

The subdivisions of this trade I need not give, they are as numerous as the articles of the cabinet-maker’s calling.

I have mentioned that the black houses, or linendrapers at the west end of London, were principally supplied from the east end. In the neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road and Oxford-street, for instance, most of my readers will have had their attention attracted by the dust-coloured appearance of some poor worker in wood carrying along his skeleton of an easy chair, or a sofa, or a couch, to dispose of in some shop. Often, too, a carter has to be employed for the same purpose, at the rate of 1s. 6d. an hour; and thus two hours will exhaust the very fullest value of a long day’s labour. From a furniture-carter of this description I received some most shocking details of having to “busk” it, as this taking about goods for sale is called by those in the trade.

From a pale, feeble-looking man whom I met on a Saturday evening at the west end, carrying a mahogany chiffonier, I had the following statement:—

“I have dragged this chiffonier with me,” he said, “from Spitalfields, and have been told to call again in two hours (it was then half-past 7). I am too tired to drag it to another linendraper’s, and indeed I shouldn’t have so good a chance there; for if we go late, the manager considers we’ve been at other places, and he’ll say, ‘You needn’t bring me what others have refused.’ I was brought up as a general hand at ——, but was never in society, which is a great disadvantage. I feel that now. I used to make my 25s. or 28s. a-week six or seven years back; but then I fell out of employ, and worked at chair-making for a slaughter-house, and so got into the system, and now I can’t get out of it. I have no time to look about me, as, if I’m idle, I can’t get bread for my family. I have a wife and two children. They’re too young to do anything; but I can’t afford to send them to school, except every now and then 1d. or 2d. a-week, and so they may learn to read, perhaps. The anxiety I suffer is not to be told. I’ve nothing left to pawn now; and if I don’t sell this chiffonier I must take it back, and must go back to a house bare of everything, except, perhaps, 3s. or 2s. 6d. my wife may have earned by ruining her health for a tailor’s sweater; and 1s. 6d. of that must go for rent. I ought to have 2l. for this chiffonier, for it’s superior mahogany to the run of such things; but I ask only 35s., and perhaps may be bid 28s., and get 30s.; and it may be sold, perhaps, by the linendraper for 3l. 3s. or 3l. 10s. Of course we’re obliged to work in the slightest manner possible; but, good or bad, there’s the same fault found with the article. I have already lost 3½ hours; and there’s my wife anxiously looking for my return to buy bread and a bit of beast’s head for to-morrow. It’s hard to go without a bit o’ meat on Sundays; and, indeed, I must sell at whatever price—it don’t matter, and that the linendraper depends upon.”

I now subjoin a statement of a garret-master—a maker of loo tables—who was endeavouring to make a living by a number of apprentices:—

“I’m now 41,” he said, “and for the last ten or twelve years have been working for a linendraper who keeps a slaughter-house. Before that I was in a good shop, Mr. D——’s, and was a general hand, as we were in the fair trade. I have often made my 50s. a-week on good work of any kind: now, with three apprentices to help me, I make only 25s. Work grew slack; and rather than be doing nothing, as I’d saved a little money, I made loo tables, and sold them to a linendraper, a dozen years back or so, and so somehow I got into the trade. For tables that, eighteen years ago, I had in a good shop 30s. for making, now 5s. is paid; but that’s only in a slaughterer’s own factory, when he has one. I’ve been told often enough by a linendraper, ‘Make an inferior article, so as it’s cheap: if it comes to pieces in a month, what’s that to you or me?’ Now, a 4-foot loo is an average; and if for profit and labour—and it’s near two days’ work—I put on 7s., I’m bid 5s. less. I’ve been bid less than the stuff, and have on occasions been forced to take it. That was four years ago; and I then found I couldn’t possibly live by my own work, and I had a wife and four children to keep; so I got some apprentices. I have now three, and two of them are stiff fellows of 18, and can do a deal of work. For a 4-foot loo table I have only 1l., though the materials cost from 11s. to 13s., and it’s about two days’ work. There’s not a doubt of it that the linendrapers have brought bad work into the market, and have swamped the good. For work that, ten or twelve years ago, I had 3l. 5s. to 3l. 10s. from them, I have now 30s. Of course, it’s inferior in quality in proportion, but it doesn’t pay me half as well. I know that men like me are cutting one another’s throats by competition. Fourteen years ago we ought to have made a stand against this system; but, then, we must live.”

A pale young man, working in a room with two others, but in different branches, gave me the following account:—

“I have been two years making looking-glass frames. Before that I was in the general cabinet line, but took to this when I was out of work. I make frames only; the slaughter-houses put in the glasses themselves. If I had other work I couldn’t afford to lose time going from one to another that I wasn’t so quick at. I make all sizes of frames, from nine-sevens to twenty-four-eighteens (nine inches by seven, and twenty-four inches by eighteen). Nine-sevens are most in demand; and the slaughter-houses give 10s. 6d. a-dozen for them. Two years back they gave 15s. All sizes has fallen 3s. to 4s. a-dozen. I find all the material. It’s mahogany veneered over deal. There’s only five or six slaughter-houses in my way; but I serve the Italians or Jews, and they serve the slaughter-houses. There’s no foreigners employed as I’m employed. It’s not foreign competition as harms us—it’s home. I almost ask more than I mean to take, for I’m always bid less than a fair price, and so we haggle on to a bargain. The best weeks I have had I cleared 25s.; but in slack times, when I can hardly sell at all, only 12s. Carrying the goods for sale is such a loss of time. Things are very bad now; but I must go on making, and get a customer when trade is brisker if I can. Glass has rose 1s. a-foot, and that’s made a slack in the trade, for my trade depends greatly on the glass trade. I know of no women employed in my trade, and no apprentices. We are all little masters.”

I shall now proceed to the other branch of the trade. The remarks I have made concerning the wretched social condition and earnings of fancy cabinet-makers who are in society, apply even more strongly to the non-society men. The society men are to be found chiefly in Clerkenwell; the non-society men in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. With these unfortunate workmen there is yet a lower deep. The underpaid men of Clerkenwell work generally to order, if the payment be never so inadequate. But the still more underpaid men of Spitalfields work almost universally on speculation. The Spitalfields cabinet-maker finds his own material, which he usually purchases of the great cabinet-makers or the pianoforte-makers, being the veneers which are the refuse of their work. The supply of the east-end warehousemen is derived from little masters—men who work at their own abodes, and have the assistance of their wives and children. It is very rarely that they, or their equally underpaid fellows in the general cabinet trade, employ an active journeyman. Almost every man in the trade works on his own account, finds his own material, and goes “on the busk to the slaughter-houses” for the chance of a customer.

I found the fancy cabinet-makers certainly an uninformed class, but patient, temperate, and resigned. Some few could neither read nor write, and their families were growing up as uninformed as the parents. The hawking from door to door of workboxes made by some of the men themselves, their wives assisting them with hawking, was far commoner than it is now; but it is still practised to a small extent.

I called on an old couple to whom I was referred, as to one of the few parties employed in working for the men who supplied the warehouses. The man’s appearance was gaunt and wretched. He had been long unshorn; and his light blue eyes had that dull, half-glazed look, which is common to the old when spirit-broken and half-fed. His room, a small garret in Spitalfields, for which he paid 1s. 3d. a-week, was bare of furniture, except his work-bench and two chairs, which were occupied by his wife, who was at work lining the boxes her husband was making. A blanket rolled up was the poor couple’s bed. The wife was ten years younger than her husband. She was very poorly clad in an old rusty black gown, tattered here and there; but she did not look very feeble.

“I am 63,” the man said, and he looked 80, “and was apprenticed in my youth to the fancy cabinet trade. I could make 4l. 4s. a-week at it by working long hours when I was out of my time, forty-two years back. I have worked chiefly on workboxes. I didn’t save money—I was foolish; but it was a hard-living and a hard-drinking time. I’m sorry for it now. Thirty years ago things weren’t quite so good, but still very good; and so they were twenty years back. But since the slaughter-houses came in, men like me has been starving. Why here, sir, for a rosewood workbox like this, which I shall get 6d. for making, I used to give a brother of mine 6s. 6d. for making twenty years ago. I’ve been paid 22s. 6d. years ago for what I now get 2s. 6d. for. The man who employs me now works for a slaughter-house; and he must grind me down, or he couldn’t serve a slaughter-house cheap enough. He finds materials, and I find tools and glue; and I have 6s. a-dozen for making these boxes, and I can only make a dozen a-week, and the glue and other odds and ends for them costs me 6d. a-dozen. That, with 9d. or 10d. a-week, or 1s., that my wife may make, as she helps me in lining, is all we have to live on. We live entirely on tea and bread and butter, when we can get butter; never any change—tea, and nothing else all day; never a bit of meat on a Sunday. As for beer, I haven’t spent 4s. on it these last four years. When I’m not at work for a little master, I get stuff of one, and make a few boxes on my own account, and carry them out to sell. I have often to go three or four miles with them; for there’s a house near Tottenham-court-road that will take a few from me, generally out of charity. When I’m past work, or can’t meet with any, there’s nothing but the workhouse for me.”

The decline which has taken place within the last twenty years in the wages of the operative cabinet-makers of London is so enormous, and, moreover, it seems so opposed to the principles of political economy, that it becomes of the highest importance in an inquiry like the present to trace out the circumstances to which this special depreciation is to be attributed. It has been before shown that the number of hands belonging to the London cabinet trade decreased between 1831 and 1841 33 per cent in comparison with the rest of the metropolitan population; and that, notwithstanding this falling off, the workman’s wages in 1831 were at least 400 per cent better than they are at present; 20s. having formerly been paid for the making of articles for which now only 5s. are given. To impress this fact, however, more strongly upon the reader’s mind, I will cite here a few of many instances of depreciation that have come to my knowledge. “Twenty years ago,” said a workman in the fancy cabinet line, “I had 6d. an inch for the making of 20-inch desks of solid mahogany; that’s 10s. for the entire article: now I get 2s. 3d. for the same thing. Smaller desks used to average us 6s. each for wages: now they don’t bring us more than 1s. Ladies’ 12-inch workboxes twenty years ago were 3s. 6d. and 4s. a-piece making; now they are 5d. for the commoner sort and 7d. for those with better work.” “I don’t understand per cents,” said another workman, “but this I do know, the prices that I get have within this twenty years fallen from 4s. to 5d., and in some cases to 4½d.”

Here, then, we find that wages in the competitive portion of the cabinet trade—that is among the non-society hands—(the wages of the society men I have before explained are regulated, or rather fixed by custom)—were twenty years ago 400 per cent better in some cases, and in others no less than 900 per cent higher than they are at present, and this while the number of workmen has decreased as much as one-third relatively to the rest of the population. How, then, is this extraordinary diminution in the price of labour to be accounted for? Certainly not on the natural assumption that the quantity of work has declined in a still greater proportion than the number of hands to do it, for it has also been proved that the number of new houses built annually in the metropolis, and therefore the quantity of new furniture required, has of late years increased very considerably.

In the cabinet trade, then, we find a collection of circumstances at variance with that law of supply and demand by which many suppose that the rate of wages is invariably determined. Wages, it is said, depend upon the demand and supply of labour; and it is commonly assumed that they cannot be affected by anything else. That they are, however, subject to other influences, the history of the cabinet trade for the last twenty years is a most convincing proof, for there we find, that while the quantity of work, or in other words, the demand for labour, has increased, and the supply decreased, wages, instead of rising, have suffered a heavy decline. By what means, then, is this reduction in the price of labour to be explained? What other circumstance is there affecting the remuneration for work, of which economists have usually omitted to take cognizance? The answer is, that wages depend as much on the distribution of labour as on the demand and supply of it. Assuming a certain quantity of work to be done, the amount of remuneration coming to each of the workmen engaged must, of course, be regulated, not only by the number of hands, but by the proportion of labour done by them respectively; that is to say, if there be work enough to employ the whole of the operatives for sixty hours a-week, and if two-thirds of the hands are supplied with sufficient to occupy them ninety hours in the same space of time, then one-third of the trade must be thrown fully out of employment: thus proving that there may be surplus labour without any increase of the population. It may, therefore, be safely asserted, that any system of labour which tends to make the members of a craft produce a greater quantity of work than usual, tends at the same time to over-populate the trade as certainly as an increase of workmen. This law may be summed up briefly in the expression that over-work makes under-pay.

Hence the next point in the inquiry is as to the means by which the productiveness of operatives is capable of being extended. There are many modes of effecting this. Some of these have been long known to students of political economy, while others have been made public for the first time in these letters. Under the former class are included the division and co-operation of labour, as well as the “large system of production;” and to the latter belongs “the strapping system,” by which men are made to get through four times as much work as usual, and which I have before described. But the most effectual means of increasing the productiveness of labourers is found to consist, not in any system of supervision, however cogent, nor in any limitation of the operations performed by the work-people to the smallest possible number, nor in the apportionment of the different parts of the work to the different capabilities of the operatives, but in connecting the workman’s interest directly with his labour; that is to say, by making the amount of his earnings depend upon the quantity of work done by him. This is ordinarily effected in manufacture by means of what is called piece-work. Almost all who work by the day, or for a fixed salary—that is to say, those who labour for the gain of others, not for their own—have, it has been well remarked, “no interest in doing more than the smallest quantity of work that will pass as a fulfilment of the mere terms of their engagement.” Owing to the insufficient interest which day-labourers have in the result of their labour, there is a natural tendency in such labour to be extremely inefficient—a tendency only to be overcome by vigilant superintendance (such as is carried on under the strapping system among the joiners) on the part of the persons who are interested in the result. The master’s eye is notoriously the only security to be relied on. But superintend them as you will, day labourers are so much inferior to those who work by the piece, that, as we before said, the latter system is practised in all industrial occupations where the work admits of being put out in definite portions, without involving the necessity of too troublesome a surveillance to guard against inferiority (or scamping) in the execution. But if the labourer at piece-work is made to produce a greater quantity than at day-work, and this solely by connecting his own interest with that of his employer, how much more largely must the productiveness of workmen be increased when labouring wholly on their own account! Accordingly, it has been invariably found, that whenever the operative unites in himself the double function of capitalist and labourer, making up his own materials or working on his own property, his productiveness single-handed is considerably greater than can be attained under the large system of production, where all the arts and appliances of which extensive capital can avail itself are brought into operation.

Of the industry of working masters or trading operatives in manufactures there are as yet no authentic accounts. We have, however, ample records concerning the indefatigability of their agricultural counterparts—the peasant-proprietors of Tuscany, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries where the labourers are the owners of the soil they cultivate. “In walking anywhere in the neighbourhood of Zürich,” says Inglis, in his work on Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, “one is struck with the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants. When I used to open my casement, between four and five o’clock in the morning, to look out upon the lake and the distant Alps, I saw the labourer in the fields; and when I returned from an evening walk, long after sunset, as late perhaps as half-past eight, there was the labourer mowing his grass or tying up his vines.” The same state of thing exists among the French peasantry under the same circumstances. “The industry of the small proprietor,” says Arthur Young, in his “Travels in France,” “were so conspicuous and so meritorious, that no commendation would be too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour.” If, then, this principle of working for one’s self has been found to increase the industry, and consequently the productiveness of labourers, to such an extent in agriculture, it is but natural that it should be attended with the same results in manufactures, and that we should find the small masters and the peasant-proprietors toiling longer and working quicker than labourers serving others rather than themselves. But there is an important distinction to be drawn between the produce of the peasant-proprietor and that of the small master. Toil as diligently as the little farmer may, since he cultivates the soil not for profit, but as a means of subsistence, and his produce contributes directly to his support, it follows that his comforts must be increased by his extra-production; or, in other words, that the more he labours, the more food he obtains. The small master, however, producing what he cannot eat, must carry his goods to market and exchange them for articles of consumption. Hence, by over-toil he lowers the market against himself; that is to say, the more he labours the less food he ultimately obtains.

But not only is it true that over-work makes under-pay, but the converse of the proposition is equally true, that under-pay makes over-work; that is to say, it is true of those trades where the system of piece-work or small mastership admits of the operative doing the utmost amount of work that he is able to accomplish, for the workman in such cases seldom or never thinks of reducing his expenditure to his income, but rather of increasing his labour, so as still to bring his income, by extra production, up to his expenditure. This brings us to another important distinction which it is necessary to make between the peasant-proprietor and the small master. The little farmer cannot increase his produce by devoting a less amount of labour to each of the articles; that is to say, he cannot scamp his work without diminishing his future stock. A given quantity of labour must be used to obtain a given amount of produce. None of the details can be omitted without a diminution of the result: scamp the ploughing and there will be a smaller crop. In manufactures, however, the result is very different. There one of the principal means of increasing the productions of a particular trade, and of the cabinet trade especially, is by decreasing the amount of work in each article. Hence, in such cases, all kinds of schemes and impositions are resorted to to make the unskilled labour equal to the skilled, and thus the market is glutted with slop productions till the honourable part of the trade, both workmen and employers, are ultimately obliged to resort to the same tricks as the rest.

There were, about twenty years ago, a numerous body of tradesmen, who were employers, though not workmen to the general public, known as “trade-working masters.” These men, of whom there are still a few, confined their business solely to supplying the trade. They supplied the greater establishments where there were showrooms with a cheaper article than the proprietors of those greater establishments might be able to have had manufactured on their own premises. They worked not on speculation, but to order, and were themselves employers. Some employed, at a busy time, from twenty to forty hands, all working on their premises, which were merely adapted for making, and not for selling or showing furniture. There are still such trade-working masters, the extent of their business not being a quarter what it was; neither do they now generally adhere to the practice of having men to work on their premises, but they give out the material, which their journeymen make up at their own abodes.

“About twenty years ago,” said an experienced man to me, “I dare say the small masters formed about a quarter of the trade. The slacker trade becomes, the more the small masters increase; that’s because they can’t get other work to do; and so, rather than starve, they begin to get a little stuff of their own, and make up things for themselves, and sell them as best they can. The great increase of the small masters was when trade became so dead. When was it that we used to have to go about so with our things? About five years since, wasn’t it?” said he, appealing to one of his sons, who was at work in the same room with him. “Yes, father,” replied the lad, “just after the railway bubble; nobody wanted anything at all then.” The old man continued to say,—“The greater part of the men that couldn’t get employed at the regular shops then turned to making up things on their account; and now, I should say, there’s at least one half working for themselves. About twelve years ago masters wanted to cut the men down, and many of the hands, rather than put up with it, took to making up for themselves. Whenever there’s a decrease of wages there’s always an increase of small masters; for it’s not until men can’t live comfortably by their labour that they take to making things on their own account.”

I now come to the amount of capital required for an operative cabinet-maker to begin business on his own account.

To show the readiness with which any youth out of his time, as it is called, can start in trade as a garret cabinet master, I have learned the following particulars:—This lad, when not living with his friends, usually occupies a garret, and in this he constructs a rude bench out of old materials, which may cost him 2s. If he be penniless when he ceases to be an apprentice, and can get no work as a journeyman, which is nearly always the case, for reasons I have before stated, he assists another garret-master to make a bedstead, perhaps; and the established garret-master carries two bedsteads instead of one to the slaughter-house. The lad’s share of the proceeds may be about 5s.; and out of that, if his needs will permit him, he buys the article, and so proceeds by degrees. Many men, to start themselves, as it is called, have endured, I am informed, something like starvation most patiently. The tools are generally collected by degrees, and often in the last year of apprenticeship, out of the boy’s earnings. They are seldom bought first-hand, but at the marine-store shops, or at the second-hand furniture brokers’ in the New Cut. The purchaser grinds and sharpens them up at any friendly workman’s where he can meet with the loan of a grindstone, and puts new handles to them himself out of pieces of waste wood. 10s. or even 5s. thus invested has started a man with tools, while 20s. has accomplished it in what might be considered good style. In some cases the friends of the boy, if they are not poverty-stricken, advance him from 40s. to 50s. to begin with, and he must then shift for himself.

When a bench and tools have been obtained, the young master buys such material as his means afford, and sets himself to work. If he has a few shillings to spare he makes himself a sort of bedstead, and buys a rug or a sheet and a little bedding. If he has not the means to do so he sleeps on shavings stuffed into an old sack. In some few cases he hires a bench alongside some other garret-master, but the arrangement of two or three men occupying one room for their labour is more frequent when the garrets where the men sleep are required for their wives’ labour in any distinct business, or when the articles the men make are too cumbrous, like wardrobes, to be carried easily down the narrow stairs.

A timber merchant, part of whose business consists in selling material to little masters, gave me two instances, within his own knowledge, of journeymen beginning to manufacture on their own account.

A fancy cabinet-maker had 3s. 6d. at his command. With this he purchased material for a desk as follows:—