This statement shows, out of 11s. 1½d. earnings, a receipt of less than 5s. a-week.

According to the returns of the Trinity House, there were 615,619 tons of ballast put on board 11,234 ships in the year 1848. The ballast-heavers are paid at the rate of 6d. per ton for shovelling the ballast out of the Trinity Company’s lighters into the holds of vessels. Hence, the total earnings of the ballast-heavers in that year were 15,390l. 9s. 6d. And calculating two-thirds (the men say they always get rid of a half, and often three-fourths, of their earnings in drink) of this sum to have been spent in liquor, it follows that as much as 10,260l. 6s. 4d. went to the publican, and only 5,130l. 3s. 2d. to the labouring men. According to this estimate of their gross earnings, if we calculate the body of the ballast-heavers as numbering 350 men, the average wages of the class are about 16s. 6d. per week each man; or if we reckon the class at 400, then the average wages of each person would be about 14s. 6d. per week. From all I can learn this appears to be about the truth—the earnings of the men being about 15s. a-week, and their real income about 5s.

The men shall now speak for themselves.

The first that I saw were two of the better class of foremen, who volunteered to give me an account of the system.

“I am a foreman or ganger of the ballast-heavers,” said one. “I work under a man who is a publican and butcher; and I also work under another who is only a butcher. I, moreover, work under a grocer. I engage the different gangs of men for the parties under whom I work. I also pay the men. The publican, butcher, or grocer, as the case may be, agrees to give me 9s. a score tons. The foremen often give the men the same money as they themselves receive, barring a pot of beer or a quartern of gin that they may have out of the job. Some foremen take much more.”

Another foreman, who was present while I was taking the statement of this man, here observed, that “Many foremen claim tow-tow, or a ‘fifth-handed’ proportion—that is, they will have 10s. when the working men have only 5s. There is a great deal of imposition on the working-classes here, I can assure you; the general thing, when we go to a job out of a public-house is, that the publican expects the men to drink to the amount of 4s. out of every 1l., and 6s. out of every 30s. that’s coming to them—that is, one-fifth part of the men’s money must be spent in liquor. The drink is certainly not the best; indeed, if there is any inferior stuff they have it: it’s an obligation on them that they drink. If they refuse to drink, they won’t get employed, and that’s the plain truth of it. Oh, it’s long wanted looking to; and I’m glad at last to find some one inquiring into it. If they went to get the regular beer from the fair public-houses they would have to pay 3d. a pot for it; and at the contracting publicans’ they must give 4d. a pot, and have short measure, and the worst of stuff too. Every six pots of beer they give to the men is only five pots fair measure; and the rum they charge them 2d. half-a-pint more than the regular public-houses would, and far worse rum into the bargain. Besides the profit on their drink, some publicans charge 6d. per score tons as well. Out of the money coming to the men after the publican has been paid his score, many foremen claim one-fifth part over and above their regular share; or, in other words, the foremen takes two shares, and the men only one each. When the men have been paid, the publican paying them expects them to spend a further sum in drink, looking black at the man who goes away without calling for his pint or his pot, and not caring if they drink away the whole of their earnings. There’s a good many would be glad if the men sat in their houses and spent their last farthing, and then had to go home penniless to their wives and families.”

“I am a ‘ganger’ to a butcher as well as a publican,” said one of the foremen. “His practice is just the same as the publican’s. He receives 10s. per score tons, and pays me for the men 9s. The men and myself are all expected to spend about one-half of our earnings with the butcher in meat. He charges 6½d. per lb.; and at other houses, with ready money, I and the men might get it for 4d. as good. His meat is at least one-third dearer than other butchers’. I am also ganger to a grocer, and he gets about the same profit out of the men he employs—that is to say, the articles he supplies the men with are at least one-third dearer than at other shops. If anything, he makes more out of the men than the butcher; for if any man goes a score (which he always encourages) he stops the whole out the man’s earnings, and often leaves him without a penny after the job is done. When the publican, grocer, butcher, or lodging-house keeper has a contract for ballast, he directs the foreman working under him to get together the gang that regularly work from his house. This gang are men who always deal at the shop, and the contractor would dismiss me if I was to engage any other men than those who were his regular customers. Many a time a publican has told me that some man was a good, hard drinker, and directed me to engage him whenever I could. If a man sticks up a score, he also tells me to put him on first of all: the grocer and the butcher do the same. This system is the cause, I know, of much distress and misery among the men; the publicans make the men drunkards by forcing them to drink. I know many wives and children who starve half their time through it. They haven’t a bit of shoe or clothing, and all through the publican compelling the men to spend their earnings in drink. After the gang is paid, at least three out of the four get drunk; and, often, the whole four. Many a time I have seen the whole of the men reeling home without a penny to bless themselves, and the wife and children have to suffer for all this; they are ill-treated and half-starved: this I can safely say from my own knowledge.”

I next saw two men, who stated that they were oppressed by the publican, and the foreman also. The first said, “I work under a publican, and have to pay the foreman one-fifth of my earnings; I only have fourpence out of every shilling I earn, and I must be a sober man indeed to get that. Both the publican and the foreman get eightpence out of a shilling, and make their money out of my sweat. Nine years ago I was left, to my sorrow, with nine motherless children, and I am the slave of the publican. He is my destruction, and such are my sufferings, that I don’t care what I do if I can destroy the system; I shall die happy if I can see an end to it. I would go to bed supperless to-night, and so should my children, if I could stop it. After I have had a job of work, many’s the time I have not had a penny to take home to my children, it has all gone betwixt the foreman and the publican; and what is more, if I had brought anything home I should have stood a worse chance of work the next day. If I had gone away with sixpence in my pocket, the work that should have come to me would have gone to those who had spent all in the house. I can solemnly say that the men are made regular drunkards by the publicans. I am nine-and-twenty years dealing with this oppression, and I wish from my heart I could see an end to it, for the sake of my children and my fellow-creatures’ children as well. But I suffer quite as much from the foreman as I do from the publican. I am obliged to treat him before I can get a job of work. The man who gives him the most drink he will employ the first. Besides this, the foreman has two-fifth parts of the money paid for the job; he has twice as much as the men if he does any of the work; and if he does none of the work he takes one-fifth of the whole money: besides this, the men do three times the foreman’s labour. If I could get the full value of my sweat, I could lay by to-morrow, and keep my family respectably. In the room of that, now, my family want bread often—worse luck, for it hurts my feelings. I have been idle all to-day; for hearing of this, I came to make my statement, for it was the pride of my heart to do all that I could to put an end to the oppression. The publicans have had the best of me, and when the system is done away with I shan’t be much the better for it. I have been nine-and-twenty years at it, and it has ruined me both body and soul; but I say what I do for the benefit of others, and those who come after me.”

The other man said that he worked under a publican, and a grocer as well, and lodged with a foreman. “I pay 2s. a week for my lodgings,” he said; “there are two beds in the room, and two men in each. The room where we all sleep is not more than seven feet long by five feet wide, and barely seven feet high. There is no chimney in it. It is a garret, with nothing in it but the two beds. There hadn’t need be much more, for it wouldn’t hold even a chair besides. There’s hardly room, in fact, for the door to open. I find it very close sleeping there at night-time, with no ventilation, but I can’t help myself. I stay there for the job of work. I must stay; I shouldn’t get a day’s work if I didn’t. The lodgings are so bad, I’d leave them to-morrow if I could. I know I pay twice as much as I could get them for elsewhere. That’s one way in which I, for one, am robbed. Besides this, I am obliged to treat the foreman; I am obliged to give him two glasses of rum, as well as lodging at his house, in order to get employment. I have also to drink at the public-house; one-fifth of my money is kept, first and foremost, by the publican. That goes for the compulsory drink—for the swash which he sends us on board, and that we think the Thames-water is sweet and wholesome to it. It is expressly adulterated for our drink. If we speak a word against it we should be left to walk the streets, for a week and more forward. Even if we were known to meet a friend, and have a pint or a pot in another public-house, we should be called to an account for it by the publican we worked under, and he would tell us to go and get work where we spent our money; and, God knows, very little money we would have coming out of his house after our hard sweat. After the compulsory drink, and the publican has settled with us, and his fifth part of our hard-earned money for the swash—it’s nothing else—that he has given us to drink, then I should be thought no man at all if I didn’t have two pots of beer, or half-a-pint of gin, so that I would count myself very lucky indeed if I had a couple of shillings to take home, and out of that I should have to spend two-thirds of it to get another job. I am a married man, and my wife and three children are in Ireland. I can’t have them over, for it is as much as I can do to support myself. I came over here thinking to get work, and to send them money to bring them over after me, but since I have been here I have been working at the ballast-work, and I have not been able to keep myself. I don’t complain of what is paid for the work; the price is fair enough; but we don’t get a quarter of what we earn, and the Irish ballast-heavers suffer more here than in their own country. When I came over here I had a good suit of clothes to my back, and now I’m all in rags and tatters, and yet I have been working harder, and earning more money, that I did in all my life. We are robbed of all we get by the foremen and publicans. I was eight years a teetotaler before I went to ballast-work, and now I am forced to be a drunkard, to my sorrow, to get a job of work. My wife and children have a bit of land in Ireland to keep them, and they’re badly off enough, God knows. I can neither help them, nor send money to bring them over to me; nor can I get over to them myself. The grocers whom we work under rob us in the same manner. I have worked under one. He supplied bread, butter, tea, sugar, coffee, candles, tobacco, cheese, &c. It is a larger kind of chandlers’ shop. He charges us 5½d. for the same bread as I can buy for 4½d. at other shops. The tea, sugar, and other articles he supplies us with are at the same rate; they are either worse or dearer than at other shops. They generally manage to get a fifth part of our earnings wherever we go; but the grocers are best of all, for they don’t ruin our health, as what they give us don’t make us sick. I work for these two houses because the foreman that I lodge with has work out of both houses, and we are obliged to deal at the houses that he works under; if we didn’t we shouldn’t get the job, so that if we are not robbed by the publican we are by the grocer. They will have it out of the poor hard-working man, and the foreman must have the gain out of it as well. I only wish to God it was done away with, for it is downright oppression to us all, and if I never have another stroke of work I will strive all I can to have it done away with for the sake of my fellow-men.”

After these two cases came one who said,—“I have been three years a ballast-heaver. Just before that I came to this country. When I came I got to be a lodger with a foreman to a publican. I paid him 2s. 6d. a-week. My family, a wife and two children, came over when I had got work as a ballast-heaver. I couldn’t take them to the lodgings I then had; they were all for single men: so I had to take another place, and there I went to live with my family; but to keep my work I had to pay the foreman of the publican—him that lets these lodgings to the ballast-heaver—2s. 6d. a-week all the same as if I had been living there. That I had, and I had to do it for two years. Yes, indeed. I didn’t earn enough to pay for two lodgings, so two or three months back I refused to pay the 2s. 6d. a-week for a place I hadn’t set my foot in for two years, and so I lost my work under that foreman and his publican. If me and my children was starving for want of a bite of bread, neither of them would give me a farthing. There’s plenty as bad as them, too, and plenty used like me, and it’s a murdering shame to tax poor men’s labour for nothing.”

This man reiterated the constant story of being compelled to drink against his will, hating the stuff supplied to him, being kept for hours waiting before he was paid, and being forced to get drunk, whether he would or no. The man also informed me that he now works under a butcher, who pays 8s. a score to the hands he employs, he (the butcher) receiving from the captain 10s.

“Suppose,” he said, “I have a 60-ton job, I’d be entitled to 7s. 6d. without beer, or such-like; but under this butcher I get only 5s. 3d., and out of that 5s. 3d.—that’s all I get in hard money—I’m expected to spend 4s. or thereabouts in meat, such as he chooses to give. I have no choice; he gives what he likes, and charges me 6½d. a-pound for what I could buy at 4d. in a regular way. Very inferior stuff he keeps. Working under a butcher, we must all live on this poor meat. We can’t afford bread or vegetables to it.”

This same butcher, I was afterwards informed, had been twice fined for using false weights to customers, such as the man whose statement I have given; he even used wooden weights made to look like lead.

The following is an instance of the injustice done to the men by those who contract to whip rather than to heave the ballast on board.

“I now work,” said the man, whom I was referred to as an exponent of the wrong, “for Mr. ——, a publican who contracts to supply ships with ballast by the lump. He’ll contract to supply a ship with all the ballast she’ll want by the lump—that is, so much money for all she wants, instead of so much by the ton; or he may contract with a ship at 2s. 6d. a-ton. We—that is a gang of eight men—may put two loads or 120 tons on board in the course of a day. For those 120 tons he will receive 120 half-crowns, that’s 15l. For putting in those 120 tons we—that is, the eight ballast-heavers employed—receive 2s. 6d. a-day of 12 or 14 hours; that is 8 half-crowns or 20 shillings, with 3s. 6d. a-day for a basket-man, in addition to the eight, so leaving the publican a profit of 13l. 16s. 6d.” I could hardly believe in the existence of such a system—yielding a mere pittance to the labourer, and such an enormous profit to the contractor, and I inquired further into the matter. I found the statement fully corroborated by many persons present; but that was not all I learned. When the men, by incessant exertion, get in 120 tons in a day, as they often do, nothing is charged them for the beer they have had, four or five pints a-day each; but if only 60 tons be got in, as sometimes happens, through the weather and other circumstances, then the men employed on the half-a-crown a-day must pay for their own beer and pay their private scores for treating a friend, or the like. “There’s no chance of a job,” said my informant; “not a bit of it.” He continued: “Very bad drink it is—the worst—it makes me as sick as a dog. There’s two brothers there what they call blood-hounds; they’re called so because they hunt up the poor men to get them to work, and to see that they spend their money at their employer’s public-house when work’s done. If you don’t spend something, no bread to cut the next morning—not a bit of it—and no chance of another job there. He employs us ballast-heavers, when we are not at the ballast, in backing coals into the steamers.”

I have given the statement of a ballast-heaver as to the system pursued by those whom he called basket-men. The employer here alluded to is one of that class, the difference being, that the ballast-heavers shovel the ballast out of the lighter on to the stage, and from the stage through a port-hole into the hold. Four men are thus employed, two on the lighter, and two on the stage. With a large ship five men are employed, and two stages. When the basket-man or the man contracting by the lump is employed, this process is observed:—There are two men in the lighter alongside the vessel to be ballasted, whose business it is to fill five baskets. There are five men at the winch aboard ship employed heaving up these baskets, and a basket-man to turn them over and empty out their contents.

To ascertain that there was no provident fund—no provision whatever for sickness—I investigated the case of a man who, in consequence of illness occasioned by his trade, was afflicted with a pulmonary complaint. This man was formerly one of the wine-cellarmen in the London Dock; he was then made a permanent man at the St. Katherine’s Dock, and was dismissed for having taken a lighted pipe in while at his work; and for the last fourteen years and upwards he has been a ballast-heaver. I now give his wife’s statement:—“My husband has been ill for three months, and he has been six weeks in Guy’s Hospital, and I am afraid he’ll never get out again, for he kept up as long as he could for the sake of the children. We have five at home; one of them (twelve years old) I hope to get to sea, having two older sons at sea, and being the mother of twelve children altogether. I will tell you what led to my poor husband’s illness; he was a kind husband to me. I consider it was his hard work that made him ill, and his not getting his rights—not his money when entitled to it. After doing a heavy day’s work he had to go and sit in a cold tap-room, drinking bad beer; but it wasn’t beer—muck, I call it—and he had to wait to be paid, ay, and might have had to wait till the day after, and then come home cold and have to go to bed without a bit of victuals. His illness is owing to that; no horse could stand it long. Ballast-men are worse than slaves in the West Indies. When at work he earned what the others did. He only drank what he couldn’t help—the worst of stuff. No drink, no work. Six weeks ago he went to the hospital, I conveying him. When I returned home I found three strange men had turned my four children into the street, doing it in a brutal way. I rushed into the house, and one said, ‘Who are you?’ I seized the fellow who said this by the handkerchief, and put him out. One of them said, ‘Be off, you old Irish hag, you have no business here; we have possession.’ When I saw the children in the street, passion made me strong, and so I put him out. The collector of the rent, who employed the broker, is a publican, for whom my husband worked as a ballast-heaver until he was unable to work from illness. I was given into custody for an assault, and taken before Mr. Yardley. He considered the assault proved, and as an honest woman I couldn’t deny it, and so I had fourteen days with bread and water. The children were placed in the workhouse, where they were well treated. I was very glad they were so taken care of. As soon as I got out I went to see about my children; that was the first thing I did. I couldn’t rest till I did that. I brought them home with me, though it was only to bread and water, but I was with them. I only owed about 15s. rent, and had been four years in the house at the time the publican put the broker in. We paid 6s. 6d. a-week; it was no use asking such a man as that any mercy. He was in the habit of employing ballast-heavers for many years; and if that doesn’t harden a man’s heart, nothing will. In general these ballast publicans are cruel and greedy. At present I go out washing or charing, or doing anything I can to maintain my children, but work’s very slack. I’ve had a day and a-half this fortnight, earning 2s. 6d., that’s all for a fortnight; the parish allows me four loaves of bread a-week. The children, all boys, just get what keeps a little life in them. They have no bed at night, and are starved almost to death, poor things. I blame the system under which my husband had to work—his money going in drink—for leaving me destitute in the world. On Christmas-day we lived on a bit of workhouse bread—nothing else, and had no fire to eat it by. But for the money gone in drink we might have had a decent home, and wouldn’t so soon have come to this killing poverty. I have been tenderly reared, and never thought I should have come to this. May God grant the system may be done away with, for poor people’s sake.”

I now give the statement of two women, the wives of ballast-heavers, that I may further show how the wives and families of these men are affected by the present system.

“I have been 11 years married,” said one, “and have had five children, four being now living.”

The other woman had been married 23 years, but has no children living.

“We are very badly off,” said the woman with a family, “my husband drinking hard. When I first knew him—when we were sweethearts in a country part of Ireland—he was a farm-labourer and I was a collier’s daughter, he was a sober and well-behaved man. Two years after we were married, and he was a sober man those two years still. We came to London to better ourselves, worse luck. The first work he got was ballast-heaving. Then he was obligated to drink or he couldn’t get work; and so, poor man, he got fond of it. This winter oft enough he brings me and the children home 2s. or 1s. 6d. after a job; and on that we may live for two or three days,—we’re half starved, in course. The children have nothing to eat. It’s enough to tear any poor woman’s heart to pieces. What’s gone into the publican’s till would get the children bread, and bedding, and bits of clothes. Nothing but his being employed at ballast-heaving made him a drunkard, for he is a drunkard now. He often comes home and ill-uses me, but he doesn’t ill-use the children. He beats me with his fists; he strikes me in the face; he has kicked me. When he was a sober man he was a kind, good husband; and when he’s sober now, poor man, he’s a kind, good husband still. If he was a sober man again with his work, I’d be happy and comfortable to what I am now. Almost all his money goes in drink.”

“We can’t get shoes to our feet,” said the second woman.

“When my husband is sober and begins to think,” (continued the first,) “he wishes he could get rid of such a system of drinking,—he really does wish it, for he loves his family, but when he goes out to work he forgets all that. It’s just the drink that does it. I would like him to have a fair allowance at his work, he requires it; and beyond that it’s all waste and sin: but he’s forced to waste it, and to run into sin, and so we all have to suffer. We are often without fire. Much in the pawn-shop do you say, sir? Indeed I haven’t much out.”

“We,” interposed the elder woman, “haven’t a stitch but what’s in pawn except what wouldn’t be taken. We have 50s. worth in pawn altogether—all for meat and fire.”

“I can’t, I daren’t,” the younger woman said, “expect anything better while the present system of work continues. My husband’s a slave, and we suffer for it.”

The elder woman made a similar statement. After his score is paid, she said, her husband has brought her 4s., 3s., 2s., 1s., and often nothing, coming home drunk with nothing at all. Both women stated that the drink made their husbands sick and ill, and for sickness there was no provision whatever. They could have taken me to numbers of women situated and used as they were. The rooms are four bare walls, with a few pieces of furniture and bedding such as no one would give a penny for. The young woman was perfectly modest in manner, speech, and look, and spoke of what her husband was and still might be with much feeling. She came to me with a half-clad and half-famished child in her arms.

I then took, for the sake of avoiding repetition, the statements of two ballast-heavers together—constant men—working under different publicans. The account they gave me of the way in which the publicans contracted to ballast a ship was the same as I have given elsewhere.

“I have been twenty years a ballast-heaver,” said one, “and all that time I have worked for a publican, and haven’t a coat to my back. Twenty years ago the publicans had the same number of hands, but had more work for them, and I might then earn 20s. a-week; but I couldn’t fetch that home from the publican. He expected me to spend one-half of my earnings with him; and when I left his house drunk, I might spend the other half. I’ve drunk gallons of drink against my will. I’ve drunk stuff that was poison to me. I turned teetotaler about six months ago, and the publican, my employer, sacked me when he found it out, saying, ‘He’d be d——d if he’d have such men as me—he didn’t make his living by teetotalers.’”

“Yes,” added the other man, “and so my publican told me; for I turned teetotaler myself somewhere about seven years ago, and took the pledge from Father Mathew in the Commercial-road. The publican told me, that if Father Mathew chose to interfere with me, why Father Mathew might get employment for me, for he—that’s the publican—wouldn’t. So I was forced to break my pledge to live—me and my youngsters—I had six then, and I’ve buried two since.”

“Work,” resumed the man who first gave me the statement, “keeps getting worse. Last week I carried only 8s. home, and if I’d got paid by the captain of the ship for the amount of work I did, and on the same terms as the publican, I should have taken home at the very least 16s. The publican that employs us gives us only 8s. a-score, and receives 10s. from the captain. All the publicans don’t do this; some give what they get from the captain, but some publicans takes two-thirds, and that’s the truth. (The second man assented.) One week with another I’ve taken home, this winter, from 12s. to 13s., and but for this shameful starvation system, having to work for a publican’s profit, and to drink his drink, I’d take home my 20s. every week. It makes a man feel like a slave; indeed, I’m not much better. We should be in heaven if we got away from the publican or butcher either; it’s compulsion one’s life through. Some of the publicans have as many as sixty single men lodging in their houses, paying half-a crown a-week; ay, and men that don’t lodge with them, when the house is full, must pay half-a-crown all the same, to get a job of work, as well as paying for the places where they do lodge.”

The first man continued:—

“The gin and rum is the worst that can be supplied; but we must drink it or waste it. We often spill it on the ballast, it’s that bad”—[“Often, often,” was the response of the other man.] “And that’s not the worst. When we get a job of putting sixty tons of ballast on board, we are forced to take six pots of beer with us to our work; but only four pots are supplied, and we must pay for six. We are robbed on every side. I cannot describe how bad it is; a man would hardly believe it; but all will tell you the same—all the men like us.” [So, indeed, the poor fellows did afterwards.] “When we call to be paid, we are kept for hours in a cold tap-room, forced to drink cold stuff without being let have a strike of fire to take the chill off it.”

The other man then made a further statement.

“I’ve been forced to put my sticks in pawn—what I had left—for I was better off once, though I was always a ballast-heaver and have worked for the same publican fourteen years. I have 3l. in pawn now, I blame this present system for being so badly off—sorrow a thing else! Now just look at this: A single man, a lodger, will go into a publican’s and call for 1s. worth of rum, and the publican will call me a scaly fellow, if I don’t do the same; that will be when I’d rather be without his rum, if I got it for nothing.” One publican (the men gave me this account concurrently, and it was fully confirmed by a host of others,) married the niece of a waterman employed to pull the harbour-master about the river. He kept a public-house, and carried on the system of lodgers for ballast-heaving, making a great deal of money out of them; by this means he got so much work at his command, that the rest of the publicans complained to the harbour-master, and the man was forced to give up his public-house. When he had to give it up he made it over to his niece’s husband, and that man allowed him 1s. for every ship he brought him to ballast. “I’ve known him—that’s the publican that succeeded the man I’ve been telling you of—have 40 ships in a day: one week with another he has had 100 ships; that’s 5l., and he has them still. It’s the same now. We’ve both worked for him. His wife’s uncle (the harbour-master’s waterman) says to the captains, and he goes on board to see them after the harbour-master’s visit to them,—‘Go to ——; get your ballast of him, and I’ll give you the best berth in the river.’”

I next obtained an interview with a young man who was the victim of a double extortion. He made the following statement:—

“I work under a publican, and lodge in his house. I have done so for five years. I pay 2s. 6d. a-week, there being ten of us in two rooms. We’re all single men. These two rooms contain four beds, three in the larger room and one in the other. We sleep two in a bed, and should have to sleep three in some; only two of the men don’t occupy the lodgings they pay for. The bigger room may be 16 feet by 10; the smaller about a quarter that size. You cannot turn in it—the bed cannot be brought out of the room without being taken to pieces. We must cook in the tap-room, which is a room for the purpose; it contains forms and an old table, with a large grate. We are found fryingpans and gridirons, and pans, and fire, and candle; but we must find our own knives and forks. The room is shamefully dirty—I mean the tap (cooking) room. It looks as if it hadn’t been washed for years. It’s never been washed to my knowledge. The bed-rooms are very little better. The bedding is very bad—a flock bed, with a pair of blankets and quilt, and a sort of sheet clean once a-fortnight. There’s very bad ventilation and very unpleasant smells. It’s a horrid den altogether. None of us would stop there if we could help it—but we can’t help it, for if we leave we get no work. We are forced to find locks for our rooms, to keep our bits of things from being stolen. One man was robbed; my clothes was in the box with his; the box was broken open, but the clothes was left, and a few halfpence put away in the box was taken. There’s lots of bugs; we can only sleep after hard work, and we must drink when we’re at work. I’ve poured my beer into the river many a time, it was so bad—it tasted poisonous. We’ve drank Thames water rather than the bad beer we’re all forced to drink. To show how we’re treated I’ll tell you this: I owe so much, and so much a week’s stopped to pay it; but it never gets less, I am always charged the same. There it is, the same figures are on the slate, keep paying, paying off as you will. They won’t rub it off, or if they do rub it off it’s there again the next time. Only last week a man was discharged for grumbling, because he objected to paying twice over. He hasn’t had a day’s work since.”

Then came one who was the employé of a publican and grocer. He said:

“I work under a publican and grocer. I’m any man’s man. I stand with my fingers in my mouth at Ratcliff-cross watching, and have done it these last nine years. Half of us is afraid to come and speak to you. When I volunteered, the big-whiskered and fat-faced men (foremen) were looking at me and threatening me for coming to you. No matter, I care for nobody. Worse nor I am I can’t be. No more I can’t. I go to one publican’s to work 60 tons, and for that I get 4s., but 6s. is my rights. The remainder 2s. is left—I’m forced to leave it—for me to drink out on Sunday night. If I was in a fair house the publican would pay me 7s. 6d.; as it is I get 4s. and 2s. must be drunk,—it’s the rule at that house—he’s in opposition and works low. If I was at liberty it wasn’t to his house I’d go for a drink. The hardest-drinking man gets work first, and when a man’s drunk he doesn’t care what stuff he puts into his belly. Before we go to a job the four of us are expected to drink half-a-pint of rum or gin; the publicans expect it. If I was a teetotaler I must pay my whack and the other men may drink it, for the score against the ship is divided among the men equal.

“Suppose two foremen were to meet and have a drop of rum or brandy together, and a little talk about a ship’s ballast, that’s charged to us poor fellows—it’s stuck up to us—but we mustn’t say nothing, though we know we never had a sup of it; but if we say a word it’s all up—no more work.

“Once on a time I worked for a publican close by here, and when I came to the house I had nothing to drink. My oldest mate whispered to me as we were on our way from the London Dock, and told me to speak my mind, for he knew there was a false score chalked against the ship; and the others was afraid to say a word. Well, I did speak when I got into the house, and the foreman was there, and he asked me what business I had to speak more than another? There was 6s. charged to the score for drink that we never touched or ever saw,—not a sup of it. He—that’s the foreman—told me I shouldn’t go to finish the ship; I said I would, in spite of him. I told the missus I expected she wouldn’t give any more drink but what we had ourselves, or would get when we came home; and she said she wouldn’t; and that’s two years ago; but I haven’t had a job from them parties since.

“Suppose I get to the public-house for my money at six in the evening, I am forced to wait there till eleven, until I am drunk very often—drunk from vexation; stopt when I’m hungry after five or six hours’ work on the river, and not let take the money home to my wife and family, nor let have anything to eat, for I’m waiting for that money to get a bit of grub; but when I’m half drunk the hunger goes off just for a time. I must go and drink in a morning if my children go without breakfast, and starve all day till I come home at night. I can get nothing from my employers but drink. If I ask them for a shilling I can’t get it. I’ve finished my load of ballast without breaking my fast but on the beer we’re forced to take with us.

“I’ve found grocers better to work under than publicans,—there’s a great deal more honesty in them. They charge a middling fair price; but they’ll have tow-row out of it,—that’s dry money—so much a score. They’ll stop 6d. a score only for giving us a job. I can get as good sugar as I get of them at 4d. for 3½d.; but then the difference between the grocer and publican is, that the wife and family can have a bit of something to eat under the grocer, but not under the publican. All goes in drink with the publican; but we cannot carry drink home. When I go home drunk from the publican’s, I tumble on the floor, perhaps, and say, ‘Is there anything to eat for me?’ and my old woman says, ‘Where’s the money? give me that and I’ll give you something to eat.’ Then a man gets mad with vexation, and the wife and children runs away from him; they are glad to get away with their lives, they’re knocked about so. It makes a man mad with vexation to see a child hungry,—it kills me; but what the foreman gives me I must take; I dare never say no. If I get nothing—if all is gone in drink—I must go from him with a blithe face to my starving children, or I need never go back to him for another job.”

I shall now set forth as fully as possible the nature of the system by which the ballast-heaver is either forced by the fear of losing all chance of future employment, or induced by the hope of obtaining the preference of work from the publican, his employer, to spend at least one half of his earnings every week in intoxicating drinks. Let me, however, before proceeding directly to the subject of my present communication, again lay before the reader the conclusions which I lately drew from the Metropolitan Police returns for 1848, concerning the intemperance of the labouring classes of London. It is essential that I should first prove the fact, and show its necessary consequences. This done, the public will be more ready to perceive the cause, and to understand that until this and similar social evils are removed, it is worse than idle to talk of “the elevation of the masses,” and most unjust, to use the mildest term, to condemn the working men for sins into which they are positively forced. To preach about the virtues of teetotalism to the poor, and yet to allow a system to continue that compels them to be drunk before they can get work—not to say bread—is surely a mockery. If we would really have the industrious classes sober and temperate men, we must look first, it seems, to their employers. We have already seen that the intemperance of the coal-labourer is the fault of the employer, rather than the man; but we have only to go among the ballast-labourers to find the demoralization of the working man arising, not from any mere passive indifference, but from something like a positive conspiracy on the part of the master.

According to the criminal returns for the metropolis, there were 9197 males and 7264 females, making altogether a total of 16,461 individuals, charged with drunkenness in the year 1848. This makes one in every 110 individuals in London a drunkard—a proportion which, large as it seems, is still less than one-half what it was some ten or fifteen years back.

For the sake of comparison I subjoin, in the following page, a Table, taken from the Government Report on Drunkenness; being a return of the number of charges of drunkenness which have been entered upon the books of the Metropolitan Police in the years 1831, 1832, and 1833, with the number of officers employed in, and the locality of, each division: also the amount of population in each, according to the Parliamentary returns of 1831.

NUMBER OF CHARGES OF DRUNKENNESS EACH YEAR IN THE YEARS 1831, 1832, 1833.