THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF SALTWORKERS
by Anon
Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District (1866)
The social condition of the salt workers has for centuries been, and in most cases continues to be a reproach to English civilisation. The heat of the stoves and pan-houses in which they work, and which frequently better deserve the name of their homes than the miserable hovels in which they huddle out of working hours, renders more than a minimum of clothing unnecessary if not burdensome, and even this minimum is not unfrequently dispensed with by both sexes. The work is necessarily continuous day and night and from Monday morning to Saturday evening it often happens that the labourer never quits the precincts of the works, snatching his intervals of rest beside the pans. Men and women, boys and girls, are thus exposed to more than all the debasing and demoralising influences which haunt the worst dwellings of our agricultural labourers, without a single antagonistic agency to prevent their lapse into the lowest depths of brutish immorality. The social condition of the saltworkers has constantly been, and probably still is, more abjectly degraded than that of any other class equally numerous, although their poverty is by no means so depressing. With scarcely an exception, wherever salt manufactures on a large scale have existed, the population employed in them has been the disgrace and pollution of the neighbourhood, a community almost unapproachable by philanthropy and irreclaimable by religion. Happily we are able to record the dawn of better days in the district nearest to Birmingham.
It is now eight years since the employment of women at the Stoke Works was entirely discontinued by the proprietor, John Corbett, Esq., and although the full result of the measure will not be felt until a new generation has arisen, it has already acted on the habits and condition of the workpeople in such a manner as to produce a social revolution in the neighbourhood. Marriage, an institution previously almost ignored, has in a great measure superseded the indiscriminate concubinage resulting from the former conditions of labour; the dwellings of the workpeople, now continuously occupied, have very perceptibly improved, and if the condition of the saltworker from a social and moral point of view is still greatly lower than that of the average artisan, it is far higher than it ever has been, or indeed, could be, under the old system. The reformation thus effected has also been materially aided by an alteration in the arrangement of the work introduced about five years ago. Formerly, one man only was usually appointed to take charge of each pan both by day and night, and was paid at the rate of 1s. 10¼d., per ton of salt manufactured. In place of this system, what is termed "shift work" is now universally adopted at the Stoke Works. Two men, one for the day and one for the night, are appointed to each pan, and receive 2s. per ton proportionally divided between them, the higher rate of payment being compensated by the additional amount manufactured under the new system. Three assistants are required to each pan, who are paid by the men in charge of it out of their receipts for the salt manufactured. Much of the work can be done by boys and girls, and a father, by taking his children as his assistants, could make a considerable addition to his wages. A strong inducement is thus held out to parents to employ their children in such a manner, as wholly to preclude their chance of obtaining any education, although at Stoke the inducement no longer exists in the case of girls. All the work is paid by the piece, and even in processes apparently so simple, an amount of judgement, experience, tact, and dexterity is required which makes a wide difference between the wages of a good and bad workman. A fair workman on an average, at 2s. per ton, can it is calculated make about 28s. per week. Each head of a pan is paid 22s. weekly on account, and the balance is settled monthly, the work being appraised by the foreman of the salt works, who rejects or reduces the allowance for work in any way faulty or imperfect. About 500 hands are employed at Stoke Works, and the average amount of salt of all kinds manufactured is about 3,000 tons per week, with a consumption of from 1,500 to 2,000 tons of fuel.