The pauper scavengers employed by the metropolitan parishes are divided into three classes: 1. The in-door paupers, who receive no wages whatever, their lodging, food, and clothing being considered to be sufficient remuneration for their labour; 2. The out-door paupers, who are paid partly in money and partly in kind, and employed in some cases three days, and in others six days in the week; 3. The unemployed labourers of the district, who are set to scavenging work by the parish and paid a regular money-wage—the employment being constant, and the rate of remuneration varying from 1_s._ 3_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ a day for each of the six days, or from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 15_s._ a week. The first class of pauper-scavengers, or those who receive nothing for their labour beyond their lodging, food, and clothing, are treated as slaves. The labour is compulsory, without inducements for exertion, and conducted upon the same system which the authorities of the parish would use for working cattle. One of these scavengers gave the following account of this degrading labour to Mr. Mayhew:— "'Street-sweeping,' he said, 'degrades a man, and if a man's poor he hasn't no call to be degraded. Why can't they set the thieves and pickpockets to sweep? they could be watched easy enough; there's always idle fellers as reckons theirselves real gents, as can be got for watching and sitch easy jobs, for they gets as much for them as three men's paid for hard work in a week. I never was in a prison, but I've heerd that people there is better fed and better cared for than in workusses. What's the meaning of that, sir, I'd like to know. You can't tell me, but I can tell you. The workus is made as ugly as it can be, that poor people may be got to leave it, and chance dying in the street rather.' [Here the man indulged in a gabbled detail of a series of pauper grievances which I had a difficulty in diverting or interrupting. On my asking if the other paupers had the same opinion as to the street-sweeping as he had, he replied:—] 'To be sure they has; all them that has sense to have a 'pinion at all has; there's not two sides to it anyhow. No, I don't want to be kept and do nothink. I want _proper_ work. And by the rights of it I might as well be kept with nothink to do as — or —' [parish officials]. 'Have they nothing to do?' I asked. 'Nothink, but to make mischief and get what ought to go to the poor. It's salaries and such like as swallers the rates, and that's what every poor family knows as knows any think. Did I ever like my work better? Certainly not. Do I take any pains with it? Well, where would be the good? I can sweep well enough, when I please, but if I could do more than the best man as ever Mr. Drake paid a pound a week to, it wouldn't be a bit better for me—not a bit, sir, I assure you.