to turn aside the regular stream of business. The remedy is of another kind. Machinery, and methods by which bread is made more rapidly, will put an end to overwork as destructive as the toil on a Louisiana sugar-plantation, where the overseer tells you it answers better to “use up” so many “hands” per season than to reduce the production.
These are the two main evils which too often subsist where all the rest have been got rid of. Not always; for there are master-bakers who have managed to reduce the hours of work without losing their custom. It is for the trade at large to consider whether they can do this, or whether they will retire from the contest with machinery. The most unlikely thing of all is that they can go on in their present way of conducting their business.
So much for the masters. Now, what can the men do?
It is for them to say whether they do the best they can for their health. When their turn comes for an hour or two’s sleep, do they go at once to their proper bed, and get into it undressed and washed? or do they fling themselves down on the nearest place that will hold them, among the fumes of yeast, and the heat or the draughts which are common in bakehouses? Do they give themselves the best chance for an appetite by taking nothing between meals, according to the practice of educated and well-mannered people; or do they drink between meals, to support their strength, as they say?
When work is over, do they go straight home, to a wholesome tea and bed? or do they turn into the public-house, and game and quarrel, and drink till the night hour comes round? If their order has not the best character for sobriety, and frugality, and good-temper, there is great excuse for them, from the irritated condition of brain which their mode of life establishes: but no degree of allowance can lessen the misfortune. There are such people as elderly bakers, and even healthy bakers; and this shows that the men, to a certain extent, hold their lot in their own hands. The masters are perfectly justified in pointing out a man, here and there, who has sense and prudence in the management of himself, and a good wife to make his home the pleasantest and most restful place he can go to, and in bidding us observe that the baker’s lot need not be a bad one; while, again, the men are perfectly justified in pointing to the bad health and the moral infirmities of their order, as an evidence that there must be something essentially wrong in the conditions of their occupation.
We shall all come round to machinery, I doubt not. Surely the journeymen bakers, who have appealed to parliament and the public for protection, will not quarrel with redress because it is brought by machinery. By doing so, they would forfeit the sympathy which has caused already much improvement in their lot. They will not, indeed, have any choice in the matter, now that the fact has become known that the “steam bakeries” in the American cities afford prime bread at 6d. which is here 7d. or 7½d., though, supposing flour to be at the same price, every other requisite is cheaper in London than at New York. Dear as labour is there, and all tools and materials, the cheapness of machinery and steam, in comparison with the long labour of the human arm and the oven-fires, enables the American bakers to sell cheaper bread.
It appears that the tax paid by London alone in the form of the needless penny on the sixpence, is above five millions of not dollars, but pounds, sterling per annum. Why should London go on paying this,—not to do anybody any good, but to send hundreds of poor men to the grave every year? We must remember that, including the men’s families, 25,000 persons have their lot bound up with that of the journeymen bakers of London.
There would be a very small reduction of numbers in the trade, and little or no reduction of wages. The machinery is of a kind which does not supersede human attendance, while doing the most laborious part of the work. The most important circumstance is the saving of time. If the most laborious processes are got through in one-fifth of the time at present required, there is an end of the long hours. If the baking is still done in the night, the men are not toiling all the day too.
It is a mistake to suppose that bread made by machinery must be of a kind that the public does not like. Because the bread made at the Dockhead mills has no yeast in it, it does not follow that American and Birmingham bread cannot be fermented. The Birmingham people like what Londoners call bitter bread, and consider London bread insipid: yet both kinds are made in “steam bakeries,” as the Americans call the mills. Neither is it true that such machinery must be on a large scale, so as to drive all but wealthy capitalists out of the trade. The bread-making on board the Great Eastern may be considered to be on a large scale: and so may that in such institutions as Greenwich Hospital, Aldershot Camp, and our prisons and workhouses and hospitals: but in much smaller establishments than these the mixing and kneading is done by mechanical means; and, as the newspapers have lately told us, there are small bakehouses in London where it answers as well in proportion to make a dozen loaves in this way as a thousand. Putting all these things together, can there be a doubt that the journeyman baker’s grievances are coming to an end, by a better means than an Act of Parliament, which would be turned into ridicule by events as soon as it was passed? There will not be a speedy end—if an end at all—to home-made bread; but the kneading will not long be done by the cook’s stout arm. There will not probably be a speedy end to fermented bread; but men will not be wanted to work twenty or forty hours at a stretch to produce it. There will not be a speedy end to private bakehouses, unless the masters show themselves to be less sensible than they are supposed to be. If they were to attempt to go on causing their men to die at forty-two, they must be pushed aside by companies or individuals more fit to be employers of labour: but there is no reason for supposing them to be, as a class, either so foolish or so heartless. As soon as they see how, they will be doing what is