He would know quite five hundred by name.It was a regular fight to get work,I have known nine hundred to be taken on,but there's always hundreds turned away.You see they get to know when ships come in,and when they're consequently likely to be wanted,and turn up then in greater numbers.I would earn 30s.a week sometimes and then perhaps nothing for a fortnight.That's what makes it so hard.You get nothing to eat for a week scarcely,and then when you get taken on,you are so weak that you can't do it properly.I've stood in the crowd at the gate and had to go away without work,hundreds of times.Still Ishould go at it again if I could.I got tired of the little work and went away into the country to get work on a farm,but couldn't get it,so I'm without the 10s.that it costs to join the Dockers'Union.I'm going to the country again in a day or two to try again.Expect to get 3s.a day perhaps.Shall come back to the docks again.Then is a chance of getting regular dock work,and that is,to lounge about the pubs where the foremen go,and treat them.Then they will very likely take you on next day."R.P.was a non-Unionist.Henry F.is a Unionist.His history is much the same.
"I worked at St.Katherine's Docks five months ago.You have to get to the gates at 6o'clock for the first call.There's generally about 400waiting.They will take on one to two hundred.Then at 7o'clock there's a second call.Another 400will have gathered by then,and another hundred or so will be taken on.Also there will probably be calls at nine and one o'clock.About the same number turn up but there's no work for many hundreds of them.I was a Union man.That means 10s.a week sick pay,or 8s.a week for slight accidents;also some other advantages.The Docks won't take men on now unless they are Unionists.The point is that there's too many men.I would often be out of work a fortnight to three weeks at a time.Once earned #3in a week,working day and night,but then had a fortnight out directly after.Especially when then don't happen to be any ships in for a few days,which means,of course,nothing to unload.That's the time;there's plenty of men almost starving then.They have no trade to go to,or can get no work at it,and they swoop down to the docks for work,when they had much better stay away."But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work.Here is the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels.