What these figures mean is that almost the whole of the natural increase in country population is being gradually sucked into city life. Not London alone, of course, but all the large cities have been engaged in this work of absorption. Everywhere the centripetal forces are at work. The larger the town the stronger the power of suction, and the wider the area over which the attraction extends. There are three chief considerations which affect the force with which the attraction of a large city acts upon rural districts. The first is distance. By far the largest quantity of new-comers into London are natives of Middlesex, Kent, Bucks, and what are known as "the home counties." As we pass further North and West, the per-centage gradually though not quite regularly declines. The numbers from Durham and Northumberland on the one hand, and from Devon and Somerset on the other are much larger than those from certain nearer counties, such as Stafford, Yorkshire, and Lancaster. The chief determinate of the force of attraction, distance from the centre, is in these cases qualified by two other considerations. In the case of Durham and Northumberland a large navigable seaboard affords greater facility and cheapness of transport, an important factor in the mobility of labour. In the case of Devon and Somerset the absence of the counter-attraction of large provincial cities drives almost the whole of its migratory folk to London, whereas in Yorkshire and Lancashire and the chief Midland manufacturing counties the attraction of their own industrial centres acts more powerfully in their immediate neighbourhood than the magic of London itself. Thus, if we were to take the map of England and mark it so as to represent the gravitation towards cities, we should find that every remotest village was subject to a number of weaker or stronger, nearer or more distant, forces, which were helping to draw off its rising population into the eddy of city life. If we examined in detail a typical agricultural county, we should probably find that while its one or two considerable towns of 40,000 or 50,000 inhabitants were growing at something above the average rate for the whole country, the smaller towns of 5000 to 10,000 were only just managing to hold their own, the smallest towns and large villages were steadily declining, while the scattered agricultural population remained almost stationary. For it is the small towns and the villages that suffer most, for reasons which will shortly appear.

Sec. 3. Effects of Agricultural Depression.—We have next to ask what is the nature of this attractive force which drains the country to feed the city population? What has hitherto been spoken of as a single force will be seen to be a complex of several forces, different in kind, acting conjointly to produce the same result.

The first readily suggests itself couched under the familiar phrase, Agricultural Depression. It is needless here to enlarge on this big and melancholy theme. It is evident that what is called the law of Diminishing Return to Labour in Agriculture, the fact that every additional labourer, upon a given surface, beyond a certain sufficient number, will be less and less profitably employed, while the indefinite expansion of manufacture will permit every additional hand to be utilized so as to increase the average product of each worker, would of itself suffice to explain why in a fairly thickly populated country like England, young labourers would find it to their interest to leave the land and seek manufacturing work in the cities. This would of itself explain why the country population might stand still while the city grew. When to this natural tendency we add the influence of the vast tracts of virgin, or cheaply cultivated soil, brought into active competition with English agriculture by the railways and steamships which link us with distant lands in America, Australia, and Asia, we have a fully adequate explanation of the main force of the tide in the movement of population. After a country has reached a certain stage in the development of its resources, the commercial population must grow more quickly than the agricultural, and the larger the outside area open to supply agricultural imports the faster the change thus brought about in the relation of city and rural population.

Sec. 4. Nature of the Decline of Rural Population.—It has been shown that the absolute reduction in the number of those living in rural districts is very small. If, however, we take the statistics of farmers and farm- labourers in these same districts we often find a very considerable decline. The real extent of the decline of agriculture is somewhat concealed by the habit of including in the agricultural population a good many people not engaged in work of agriculture. The number of retail shopkeepers, railway men and others concerned with the transport of goods, domestic servants, teachers, and others not directly occupied in the production of material wealth, has considerably increased of late years. So too, not every form of agriculture has declined. While farmers and labourers show a decrease, market-gardeners show a large increase, and there seem to be many more persons living in towns who cultivate a bit of land in the country as a subsidiary employment.

Taken as a whole the absolute fall off in the number of those working upon the soil is not large. The decline of small country industries is much more considerable. Here another law of industrial motion comes in, the rapid tendency of manufacture towards centralization in the towns, which we have discussed in the last chapter. Here we are concerned only with its effect in stamping out small rural industries. The growth of the railway has been the chief agent in the work. Wherever the railroad has penetrated a country it has withered the ancient cottage industries of our land. It is true that even before the time of railways the development of machinery had in large measure destroyed the spinning and weaving trades, which in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and elsewhere had given employment to large numbers of country families. The railway, and the constant application of new machinery have completed this work of destruction, and have likewise abolished a number of small handicrafts, such as hand-stitched boots, and lace, which flourished in western and midland districts, Nor is this all. The same potent forces have transferred to towns many branches of work connected indirectly with agricultural pursuits; country smiths, brickmakers, sawyers, turners, coopers, wheelwrights, are rapidly vanishing from the face of the country.

Sec. 5. Attractions of the Town, Economic and Social. The concrete form in which the industrial forces, which we have described, appeal to the dull-headed rustic is the attraction of higher wages. An elaborate comparison of towns and country wages is not required. It is enough to say that labourer's wages in London and other large cities are some 50 per cent, higher than the wages of agricultural labourers in most parts of England, and the wages of skilled labour show a similar relation. Besides the actual difficulty of getting agricultural employment in many parts, improved means of knowledge, and of cheap transport, constantly flaunt this offer of higher wages before the eyes of the more discontented among agricultural workers. It is true that if wages are higher in London, the cost of living is also higher, and the conditions of life and work are generally more detrimental to health and happiness; but these drawbacks are more often realized after the fatal step has been taken than before.

Along with the concrete motive of higher wages there come other inherent attractions of town life.

"The contagion of numbers, the sense of something going on, the theatres and music-halls, the brilliantly-lighted streets and busy crowds"[18] have a very powerful effect on the dawning intelligence of the rustic. The growing accessibility of towns brings these temptations within the reach of all. These social attractions probably contain more evil than good, and act with growing force on the restless and reckless among our country population. The tramp and the beggar find more comfort and more gain in the towns. The action of indiscriminate and spasmodic charity, which still prevails in London and other large centres of riches, is responsible in no small measure for the poverty and degradation of city slums.

"The far-reaching advertisement of irresponsible charity acts as a powerful magnet. Whole sections of the population are demoralized, men and women throwing down their work right and left in order to qualify for relief; while the conclusion of the whole matter is intensified congestion of the labour market—angry bitter feeling for the insufficiency of the pittance, or rejection of the claim." So writes Miss Potter of the famous Mansion House Relief Funds.

It is easy to see how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively small fraction of the whole. Our city criminal, our city loafer, is generally home-grown, and is not supplied directly from the country. If it were true that only the worthless portion of our country population passed into our cities to perish in the struggle for existence, which is so fatal in city life, we should on the whole have reason to congratulate ourselves. But this is not so. The main body of those who pass into city life are in fact the cream of the native population of the country, drawn by advantages chiefly economic. They consist of large numbers of vigorous young men, mostly between the age of twenty and twenty-five, who leave agriculture for manufacture, or move into towns owing to displacement of handicrafts by wholesale manufacture.

Sec. 6. Effect of the Change on National Health.—This decay of country life, however much we may regret it, seems under present industrial conditions inevitable. Nor is it altogether to be regretted or condemned. The movement indisputably represents a certain equalization of advantages economic, educational, and social. The steady workman who moves into the town generally betters himself from the point of view of immediate material advantages.

But in regarding the movement as a whole a much more serious question confronts us. What is the net result upon the physical well-being of the nation of this drafting of the abler and better country folk into the towns? Let the death-rate first testify. In 1902 the death-rate for the whole rural population was 13.7 per 1000, that of the whole urban population 17.8. Now it is not the case that town life is necessarily more unhealthy than country life to any considerable extent. There are well-to-do districts of London, whole boroughs, such as Hampstead, where the death-rate is considerably lower than the ordinary rural rate. The weight of city mortality falls upon the poor.

Careful statistics justify the conclusion that the death-rate of an average poor district in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow, is quite double that of the average country district which is being drained to feed the city. We now see what the growth of town population, and the decay of the country really means. It means in the first place that each year brings a larger proportion of the nation within reach of the higher rate of mortality, by taking them from more healthy and placing them under less healthy conditions. In the case of the lower classes of workers who gravitate to London, it means putting them in a place where the chance of death in a given year is doubled for them. And remember, this higher death-rate is applied not indiscriminately, but to selected subjects. It is the young, healthy, vigorous blood of the country which is exposed to these unhealthy conditions. A pure Londoner of the third generation, that is, one whose grandparents as well as his parents were born in London, is very seldom found. It is certain that nearly all the most effective vital energy given out in London work, physical and intellectual alike, belongs to men whose fathers were country bred, if they were not country born themselves. In kinds of work where pure physical vigour play an important part, this is most strikingly apparent. The following statistics bearing on the London police force were obtained by Mr. Llewellyn Smith in 1888—

London born. Country born. Total.

Metropolitan Police 2,716 10,908 13,624 City " 194 698 892

Railway men, carriers, omnibus-drivers, corn and timber porters, and those in whose work physique tells most, are all largely drawn from the country. Nor is the physical deterioration of city life to be merely measured by death-rates. Many town influences, which do not appreciably affect mortality, distinctly lower the vitality, which must be taken as the physical measure of the value of life. The denizens of city slums not only die twice as fast as their country cousins, but their health and vigour is less during the time they live.

A fair consideration of these facts discloses something much more important than a mere change in social and industrial conditions. Linked with this change we see a deterioration of the physique of the race as a distinct factor in the problem of city poverty. This is no vague speculation, but a strongly-supported hypothesis, which deserves most serious attention. Dr. Ogle, who has done much work in elucidation of this point, sums up in the following striking language—

"The combined effect of this constantly higher mortality in the towns, and of the constant immigration into it of the pick of the rural population, must clearly be a gradual deterioration of the whole, inasmuch as the more energetic and vigorous members of the community are consumed more rapidly than the rest of the population. The system is one which leads to the survival of the unfittest."

Thus the city figures as a mighty vampire, continually sucking the strongest blood of the country to keep up the abnormal supply of energy it has to give out in the excitement of a too fast and unwholesome life. Whether the science of the future may not supply some decentralizing agency, which shall reverse the centralizing force of modern industry, is not a wholly frivolous speculation to suggest. Some sanguine imaginations already foresee the time when those great natural forces, the economical use of which has compelled men and women to crowd into factories in great cities, may be distributable with such ease and cheapness over the whole surface of the land as no longer to require that close local relation which means overcrowding in work and in home life. If science could do this it would confer upon humanity an advantage far less equivocal than that which belongs to the present reign of iron and steam.

Sec. 7. The Extent of Foreign Immigration.—So much for the inflow from the country districts. But there is another inflow which is drawing close attention, the inflow of cheap foreign labour into our towns. Here again we have first to guard against some exaggeration. It is not true that German, Polish, and Russian Jews are coming over in large battalions to steal all the employment of the English working-man, by under-selling him in the labour-market. In the first place, it should be noted that the foreigners of England, as a whole, bear a smaller proportion to the total population than in any other first-class European state. In 1901 the foreigners were 76 in 10,000 of the population; that is a good deal less than one per cent. Our numbers as a nation are not increased by immigration. On the contrary, between 1871 and 1901 we lost considerably by emigration.[19] Even London, the centre of attraction to foreigners, does not contain nearly so large a per-centage of foreigners as any other great capital. The census gave 3 per cent. as the proportion of foreigners, excluding those born in England of foreign parents. Though this figure is perhaps too low, the true proportion cannot be very large. It is not the number, but the distribution and occupation of the foreign immigrants, that make them an object of so much solicitude. The borough of Stepney contains no less than 40 per cent. of the foreign- born population of London, the foreigners increasing from 15,998 in 1881 to 54,310 in 1901. At present 182 out of every 1000 in this district are foreigners. The proportion is also very high in Holborn, Westminster, Marylebone, Bethnal Green, and St Pancras. The Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, 1902, states "that the greatest evils produced by the Alien Immigrants here are the overcrowding caused by them in certain districts of London, and the consequent displacement of the native population." The concentration of the immigrant question is attested by the fact that in 1901 no less than 48 per cent. of the total foreign population were resident in six metropolitan boroughs, and in the three cities of Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds. While a considerable number of them are Germans, French, and Italians, attracted here by better industrial conditions in trades for which they have some special aptitude, a greatly increasing proportion are Russian and Polish Jews, driven to immigrate partly by political and religious persecution, partly for industrial ends, and feeding the unskilled labour-market in certain manufactures of our great cities.

Sec. 8. The Jew as an Industrial Competitor.—Looking at these foreigners as individuals, there is much to be said in their favour. They do not introduce a lower morality into the quarters where they settle, as the Chinese are said to do; nor are they quarrelsome and law-breaking, like the low-class Italians who swarm into America. Their habits, so far as cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady, industrious, quiet, sober, thrifty, quick to learn, and tolerably honest. From the point of view of the old Political Economy, they are the very people to be encouraged, for they turn out the largest quantity of wealth at the lowest cost of production. If it is the chief end for a nation to accumulate the largest possible stock of material wealth, it is evident that these are the very people we require to enable us to achieve our object.

But if we consider it is sound national policy to pay regard to the welfare of all classes engaged in producing this wealth, we may regard this foreign immigration in quite another light. The very virtues just enumerated are the chief faults we have to find with the foreign Jew. Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay, willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living, because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an orderly citizen, he is almost void of social morality. No compunction or consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law; the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness, folly, and vice of the society in which he lives.

Sec. 9. Effect of Foreign Competition.—One other quality he has in common with the mass of poor foreigners who compete in the London labour market—he can live on less than the Englishman. What Mrs Webb says of the Polish Jew, is in large measure true of all cheap foreign labour—"As industrial competitor, the Polish Jew is fettered by no definite standard of life; it rises and falls with his opportunities; he is not depressed by penury, and he is not demoralized by gain." The fatal significance of this is evident. We have seen that notwithstanding a general rise in the standard of comfort of the mass of labourers, there still remains in all our cities a body of labouring men and women engaged in doing ill-paid and irregular work for wages which keep them always on the verge of starvation. Now consider what it means for these people to have brought into their midst a number of competitors who can live even more cheaply than they can live, and who will consent to toil from morning to night for whatever they can get. These new-comers are obviously able, in their eagerness for work, to drive down the rate of wages even below what represents starvation-point for the native worker. The insistence of the poorer working-classes, under the stimulus of new- felt wants, the growing enlightenment of public opinion, have slowly and gradually won, even for the poorer workers in English cities, some small advance in material comfort, some slight expansion in the meaning of the term "necessaries of life." Turn a few shiploads of Polish Jews upon any of these districts, and they will and must in the struggle for life destroy the whole of this. Remember it is not merely the struggle of too many workers competing on equal terms for an insufficient quantity of work. That is terrible enough. But when the struggle is between those accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed to a lower, standard of life, the latter can obviously oust the former, and take their work. Just as a base currency drives out of circulation a pure currency, so does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher one. This is the vital question regarding foreign immigration which has to be faced.

Nor is it merely a question of the number of these foreigners. The inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. Where work is slack and difficult to get, a very small addition of low-living foreigners will cause a perceptible fall in the entire wages of the neighbourhood in the employments which their competition affects. It is true that the Jew does not remain a low- skilled labourer for starvation wages. Beginning at the bottom of the ladder, he rises by his industry and skill, until he gets into the rank of skilled workers, or more frequently becomes a sub-contractor, or a small shopkeeper. It might appear that as he thus rose, the effect of his competition in the low skilled labour market would disappear. And this would be so were it not for the persistent arrival of new-comers to take the place of those who rise. It is the continuity in the flow of foreign emigration which constitutes the real danger.

Economic considerations do not justify us in expecting any speedy check upon this flow. The growing means of communication among nations, the cheapening of transport, the breaking down of international prejudices, must, if they are left free to operate, induce the labourer to seek the best market for his labour, and thus tend to equalize the condition of labour in the various communities, raising the level of the lower paid and lower lived at the expense of the higher paid and higher lived.

Sec. 10. The Water-tight Compartment Theory.—One point remains to be mentioned. It is sometimes urged that the foreign Jews who come to our shores do not injure our low skilled workers to any considerable extent, because they do not often enter native trades, but introduce new trades which would not have existed at all were it not for their presence. They work, it is said, in water-tight compartments, competing among themselves, but not directly competing with English workers. Now if it were the case that these foreigners really introduced new branches of production designed to stimulate and supply new wants this contention would have much weight. The Flemings who in Edward III.'s reign introduced the finer kinds of weaving into England, and the Huguenot refugees who established new branches of the silk, glass, and paper manufactures, conferred a direct service upon English commerce, and their presence in the labour market was probably an indirect service to the English workers. But this is not the case with the modern Jew immigrants. They have not stimulated or supplied new wants. It is not even correct to say that most of them do not directly compete with native labour. It is true that certain branches of the cheap clothing trade have been their creation. The cheap coat trade, which they almost monopolize, seems due to their presence. But even here they have established no new kind of trade. To their cheap labour perhaps is due in some cases the large export trade in cheap clothing, but even then it is doubtful whether the work would not otherwise have been done by machinery under healthier conditions, and have furnished work and wages for English workers. During the last decade they have been entering more and more into direct competition with British labour in the cabinet- making, shoemaking, baking, hair-dressing, and domestic service occupations. Lastly, they enter into direct competition of the worst form with English female labour, which is driven in these very clothing trades to accept work and wages which are even too low to tempt the Jews of Whitechapel. The constant infiltration of cheap immigrant labour is in large measure responsible for the existence of the "sweating workshops," and the survival of low forms of industrial development which form a factor in the problem of poverty.



Chapter IV.

"The Sweating System."



Sec. 1. Origin of the Term "Sweating."—Having gained insight into some of the leading industrial forces of the age, we can approach more hopefully the study of that aspect of City poverty, commonly known as the "Sweating System."

The first thing is to get a definite meaning to the term. Since the examination of experts before the recent "Lords' Committee" elicited more than twenty widely divergent definitions of this "Sweating System," some care is required at the outset of our inquiry. The common use of the term "Sweating System" is itself responsible for much ambiguity, for the term "system" presupposes a more or less distinct form of organization of industry identified with the evils of sweating. Now as it should be one of the objects of inquiry to ascertain whether there exists any one such definite form, it will be better at the outset to confine ourselves to the question, "What is Sweating?"

As an industrial term the word seems to have been first used among journeymen tailors. The tailoring houses which once executed all orders on their own premises, by degrees came to recognize the convenience of giving out work to tailors who would work at their own homes. The long hours which the home workers were induced to work in order to increase their pay, caused the term "Sweater" to be applied to them by the men who worked for fixed hours on the tailors' premises, and who found their work passing more and more into the hands of the home workers. Thus we learn that originally it was long hours and not low wages which constituted "sweating." School-boy slang still uses the word in this same sense. Moreover, the first sweater was one who "sweated" himself, not others. But soon when more and more tailoring work was "put out," the home worker, finding he could undertake more than he could execute, employed his family and also outsiders to help him. This makes the second stage in the evolution of the term; the sweater now "sweated" others as well as himself, and he figured as a "middleman" between the tailoring firm which employed him, and the assistants whom he employed for fixed wages. Other clothing trades have passed through the same process of development, and have produced a sub-contracting middleman. The term "sweater" has thus by the outside world, and sometimes by the workers themselves, come to be generally applied to sub-contractors in small City trades. But the fact of the special application has not prevented the growth of a wider signification of "sweating" and "sweater." As the long hours worked in the tailors' garrets were attended with other evils—a low rate of wages, unsanitary conditions, irregularity of employment, and occasional tyranny in all the forms which attend industrial authority—all these evils became attached to the notion of sweating. The word has thus grown into a generic term to express this disease of City poverty from its purely industrial side. Though "long hours" was the gist of the original complaint, low wages have come to be recognized as equally belonging to the essence of "sweating." In some cases, indeed, low wages have become the leading idea, so that employers are classed as sweaters who pay low wages, without consideration of hours or other conditions of employment. Trade Unions, for example, use the term "sweating" specifically to express the conduct of employers who pay less than the "standard" rate of wages. The abominable sanitary condition of many of the small workshops, or private dwellings of workers, is to many reformers the most essential element in sweating.

Sec. 2. Present Applications of the Name.—When the connotation of the term "sweating" had become extended so as to include along with excessive hours of labour, low wages, unsanitary conditions of work, and other evils, which commonly belong to the method of sub-contract employment, it was only natural that the same word should come to be applied to the same evils when they were found outside the sub-contract system. For though it has been, and still is, true, that where the method of sub- contract is used the workers are frequently "sweated," and though to the popular mind the sub-contractor still figures as the typical sweater, it is not right to regard "sub-contract" as the real cause of sweating. For it is found—

Firstly, that in some trades sub-contract is used without the evils of sweating being present. Mr. Burnett, labour correspondent to the Board of Trade, in his evidence before the Lords' Committee, maintains that where Trade Unions are strong, as in the engineering trade, sub-contract is sometimes employed under conditions which are entirely "unobjectionable." So too in the building trades, sub-contract is not always attended by "sweating."

Secondly, much of the worst "sweating" is found where the element of sub-contract is entirely wanting, and where there is no trace of a ravenous middleman. This will be found especially in women's employments. Miss Potter, after a close investigation of this point, arrives at the conclusion that "undoubtedly the worst paid work is made under the direction of East End retail slop-shops, or for tally-men—a business from which contact, even in the equivocal form of wholesale trading, has been eliminated."[20] The term "sweating" must be deemed as applicable to the case of the women employed in the large steam- laundries, who on Friday and Saturday work for fifteen or sixteen hours a day, to the overworked and under-paid waitresses in restaurants and shops, to the men who, as Mr. Burleigh testified, "are employed in some of the wealthiest houses of business, and received for an average working week of ninety-five hours, board, lodging, and L15 a year," as it is to the tailoress who works fourteen hours a day for Whitechapel sub-contractors.

The terms "sweating" and "sweating System," then, after originating in a narrow application to the practice of over-work under sub-contractors in the lower branches of the tailoring trade, has expanded into a large generic term, to express the condition of all overworked, ill-paid, badly-housed workers in our cities. It sums up the industrial or economic aspects of the problem of city poverty. Scarcely any trade in its lowest grades is free from it; in nearly all we find the wretched "fag end" where the workers are miserably oppressed. This is true not only of the poorest manual labour, that of the sandwich-man, with his wage of 1s. 2d. per diem, and of the lowest class of each manufacturing trade in East and Central London. It is true of the relatively unskilled labour in every form of employment; the miserable writing-clerk, who on 25s. a week or less has to support a wife and children and an appearance of respectability; the usher, who grinds out low-class instruction through the whole tedious day for less than the wage of a plain cook; the condition of these and many other kinds of low-class brain-workers is only a shade less pitiable than the "sweating" of manual labourers, and the causes, as we shall see, are much the same. If our investigation of "sweating" is chiefly confined to the condition of the manual labourer, it is only because the malady there touches more directly and obviously the prime conditions of physical life, not because the nature of the industrial disease is different.

Sec. 3. Leading "Sweating" Trades.—It is next desirable to have some clear knowledge of the particular trades in which the worst forms of "sweating" are found, and the extent to which it prevails in each. The following brief summary is in a large measure drawn from evidence furnished to the recent Lords' Committee on the Sweating System. Since the sweating in women's industries is so important a subject as to demand a separate treatment, the facts stated here will chiefly apply to male industries.

Tailoring.—In the tailoring trade the best kind of clothes are still made by highly-skilled and well-paid workmen, but the bulk of the cheap clothing is in the hands of "sweaters," who are sometimes skilled tailors, sometimes not, and who superintend the work of cheap unskilled hands. In London the coat trade should be distinguished from the vest and trousers trade. The coat-making trade in East London is a closely- defined district, with an area of one square mile, including the whole of Whitechapel and parts of two adjoining parishes. The trade is almost entirely in the hands of Jews, who number from thirty to forty thousand persons. Recent investigations disclosed 906 workshops, which, in the quality and conditions of the work done in them, may be graded according to the number of hands employed. The larger workshops, employing from ten to twenty-five hands or more, generally pay fair wages, and are free from symptoms of sweating. But in the small workshops, which form about 80 per cent of the whole number, the common evils of the sweating system assert themselves—overcrowding, bad sanitation, and excessive hours of labour. Thirteen and fourteen hours are the nominal day's work for men; and those workshops which do not escape the Factory Inspector assign a nominal factory day for women; but "among the imperfectly taught workers in the slop and stock trade, and more especially in the domestic workshops, under-pressers, plain machinists, and fellers are in many instances expected to 'convenience' their masters, i.e. to work for twelve or fifteen hours in return for ten or thirteen hours' wage."[21] The better class workers, who require some skill, get comparatively high wages even in the smaller workshops, though the work is irregular; but the general hands engaged in making 1s. coats, generally women, get a maximum of 1s. 6d., and a minimum which is indefinitely below 1s. for a twelve hours' day. This low-class work is also hopeless. The raw hand, or "greener" as he is called, will often work through his apprenticeship for nominal wages; but he has the prospect of becoming a machinist, and earning from 6s. to 10s. a day, or of becoming in his turn a sweater. The general hand has no such hope. The lowest kind of coat-making, however, is refused by the Jew contractor, and falls to Gentile women. These women also undertake most of the low-class vest and trousers making, generally take their work direct from a wholesale house, and execute it at home, or in small workshops. The price for this work is miserably low, partly by reason of the competition of provincial factories, partly for reasons to be discussed in a later chapter. Women will work for twelve or fifteen hours a day throughout the week as "trousers finishers," for a net-earning of as little as 4s. or 5s. Such is the condition of inferior unskilled labour in the tailoring trade. It should however be understood that in "tailoring," as in other "sweating" trades, the lowest figures quoted must be received with caution. The wages of a "greener," a beginner or apprentice, should not be taken as evidence of a low wage in the trade, for though it is a lamentable thing that the learner should have to live upon the value of his prentice work, it is evident that under no commercial condition could he support himself in comfort during this period. It is the normal starvation wage of the low-class experienced hand which is the true measure of "sweating" in these trades. Two facts serve to give prominence to the growth of "sweating" in the tailoring trades. During the last few years there has been a fall of some 30 per cent, in the prices paid for the same class of work. During the same period the irregularity of work has increased. Even in fairly large shops the work for ordinary labour only averages some three days in the week, while we must reckon two and a half days for unskilled workers in smaller workshops, or working at home.

Among provincial towns Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds show a rapid growth of sweating in the clothing trade. In each case the evil is imputed to "an influx of foreigners, chiefly Jews." In each town the same conditions appear—irregular work and wages, unsanitary conditions, over-crowding, evasion of inspection. The growth in Leeds is remarkable. "There are now ninety-seven Jewish workshops in the city, whereas five years ago there were scarcely a dozen. The number of Jews engaged in the tailoring trade is about three thousand. The whole Jewish population of Leeds is about five thousand."[22]

Boot-making.—The hand-sewn trade, which constitutes the upper stratum of this industry, is executed for the most part by skilled workers, who get good wages for somewhat irregular employment. There are several strong trade organizations, and though the hours are long, extending occasionally to thirteen or fourteen hours, the worst forms of sweating are not found. So too in the upper branches of machine-sewn boots, the skilled hands get fairly high wages. But the lower grades of machine- made boots, and the "sew-rounds," i.e. fancy shoes and slippers, which form a large part of the industry in London, present some of the worst features of the "sweating system." The "sweating master" plays a large part here. "In a busy week a comparatively competent 'sweater' may earn from 18s. to 25s. less skilful hands may get 15s. or 16s. but boys and newly-arrived foreigners take 10s., 8s., 7s., or less; while the masters, after paying all expenses, would, according to their own estimates, make not less than 30s., and must, in many cases, net much higher sums. Owing, however, to the irregularity of their employment, the average weekly earnings of both masters and men throughout the year fall very greatly below the amount which they can earn when in full work."[23] For the lowest kinds of work an ordinary male hand appears to be able to earn not more than 15s. per week. A slow worker, it is said, would earn an average of some 10s. to 12s. per week. The hours of labour for sweating work appear to be from fifteen to eighteen per diem, and "greeners" not infrequently work eighteen to twenty hours a day. Women, who are largely used in making "felt and carpet uppers," cannot, if they work their hardest, make more than 1s. 3d. a day. In the lowest class of work wages fall even lower. Mr. Schloss gives the wages of five men working in a small workshop, whose average is less than 11s. a week. These wages do not of course represent skilled work at all. Machinery has taken over all the skilled work, and left a dull laborious monotony of operations which a very few weeks' practice enable a completely unskilled worker to undertake. Probably the bulk of the cheapest work is executed by foreigners, although from figures taken in 1887, of four typical London parishes, it appeared that only 16 per cent, of the whole trade were foreigners. In the lower classes of goods a considerable fall of price has occurred during the fast few years, and perhaps the most degraded conditions of male labour are to be found in the boot trade. A large proportion of the work throughout the trade is out-work, and therefore escapes the operation of the Factory Act. The competition among small employers is greatly accentuated by the existence of a form of middleman known as the "factor," who is an agent who gets his profit by playing off one small manufacturer against another, keeping down prices, and consequently wages, to a minimum. A large number of the small producers are extremely poor, and owing to the System which enables them to obtain material from leather-merchants on short credit, are constantly obliged to sell at a disadvantage to meet their bills. The "factor," as a speculator, takes advantage of this to accumulate large stocks at low prices, and throwing them on the market in large quantities when wholesale prices rise, causes much irregularity in the trade.

The following quotation from the Report of the Lords' Committee sums up the chief industrial forces which are at work, and likewise illustrates the confusion of causes with symptoms, and casual concomitants, which marks the "common sense" investigations of intricate social phenomena. "It will be seen from the foregoing epitome of the evidence, that sweating in the boot trade is mainly traced by the witnesses to the introduction of machinery, and a more complete system of subdivision of labour, coupled with immigration from abroad and foreign competition. Some witnesses have traced it in a great measure, if not principally, to the action of factors; some to excessive competition among small masters as well as men; others have accused the Trades Unions of a course of action which has defeated the end they have in view, namely, effectual combination, by driving work, owing to their arbitrary conduct, out of the factory into the house of the worker, and of handicapping England in the race with foreign countries, by setting their faces against the use of the best machinery."[24]

Shirt-making.—Perhaps no other branch of the clothing trade shows so large an area of utter misery as shirt-making, which is carried on, chiefly by women, in East London. The complete absence of adequate organization, arising from the fact that the work is entirely out-work, done not even by clusters of women in workshops, but almost altogether by scattered workers in their own homes, makes this perhaps the completest example of the evils of sweating. The commoner shirts are sold wholesale at 10s. 6d. per dozen. Of this sum, it appears that the worker gets 2s. 11/2d., and the sweater sometimes as much as 4s. The competition of married women enters here, for shirt-making requires little skill and no capital; hence it can be undertaken, and often is, by married women, anxious to increase the little and irregular earnings of their husbands, and willing to work all day for whatever they can get. Some of the worst cases brought before the Lords' Committee showed that a week's work of this kind brings in a net gain of from 3s. to 5s. It appears likely that few unmarried women or widows can undertake this work, because it does not suffice to afford a subsistence wage. But if this is so, it must be remembered that the competition of married women has succeeded in underselling the unmarried women, who might otherwise have been able to obtain this work at a wage which would have supported life. The fact that those who work at shirt-making do not depend entirely on it for a livelihood, is an aggravation rather than an extenuation of the sweating character of this employment.

Sec. 4. Some minor "Sweating" Trades.—Mantle-making is also a woman's industry. The wages are just sufficiently higher than in shirt-making to admit the introduction of the lowest grades of unsupported female workers. From 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. a day can be made at this work.

Furring employs large numbers of foreign males, and some thousands of both native and foreign females. It is almost entirely conducted in small workshops, under the conduct of middlemen, who receive the expensive furs from manufacturers, and hire "hands" to sew and work them up. Wages have fallen during the last few years to the barest subsistence point, and even below. Wages for men are put at 10s. or 12s., and in the case of girls and young women, fall as low as 4s.; a sum which is in itself insufficient to support life, and must therefore be only paid to women and girls who are partly subsisted by the efforts of relatives with whom they live, or by the wages of vice.

In cabinet-making and upholstery, the same disintegrating influences have been at work which we noted in tailoring. Many firms which formerly executed all orders on their own premises, now buy from small factors, and much of the lowest and least skilled work is undertaken by small "garret-masters," or even by single workmen who hawk round their wares for sale on their own account. The higher and skilled branches are protected by trade organizations, and there is no evidence that wages have fallen; but in the less skilled work, owing perhaps in part to the competition of machinery, prices have fallen, and wages are low. There is evidence that the sub-contract system here is sometimes carried through several stages, much to the detriment of the workman who actually executes the orders.

One of the most degraded among the sweating industries in the country is chain and nail-making. The condition of the chain-makers of Cradley Heath has called forth much public attention. The system of employment is a somewhat complicated one. A middleman, called a "fogger," acts as a go-between, receiving the material from the master, distributing it among the workers, and collecting the finished product. Evidence before the Committee shows that an accumulation of intricate forms of abuse of power existed, including in some cases systematic evasion of the Truck Act. Much of the work is extremely laborious, hours are long, twelve hours forming an ordinary day, and the wage paid is the barest subsistence wage. Much of the work done by women is quite unfit for them.

Sec. 5. Who is the Sweater? The Sub-contractor?—These facts relating to a few of the principal trades in the lower branches of which "sweating" thrives, must suffice as a general indication of the character of the disease as it infests the inferior strata of almost all industries.

Having learnt what "sweating" means, our next question naturally takes the form, Who is the sweater? Who is the person responsible for this state of things? John Bull is concrete, materialistic in his feeling and his reasoning. He wants to find an individual, or a class embodiment of sweating. If he can find the sweater, he is prepared to loathe and abolish him. Our indignation and humanitarianism requires a scape-goat. As we saw, many of the cases of sweating were found where there was a sub-contractor. To our hasty vision, here seems to be the responsible party. Forty years ago Alton Locke gave us a powerful picture of the wicked sub-contracting tailor, who, spider-like, lured into his web the unfortunate victim, and sucked his blood for gain. The indignation of tender-hearted but loose-thinking philanthropists, short-visioned working-class orators, assisted by the satire of the comic journal, has firmly planted in the imagination of the public an ideal of an East London sweater; an idle, bloated middleman, whose expansive waistcoat is decorated with resplendent seals and watch-chains, who drinks his Champagne, and smokes his perfumed cigar, as he watches complacently the sunken faces and cowering forms of the wretched creatures whose happiness, health, and very life are sacrificed to his heartless greed.

Now a fair study of facts show this creature to be little else than a myth. The miseries of the sweating den are no exaggeration, they are attested by a thousand reliable witnesses; but this monster human spider is not found there. Though opinions differ considerably as to the precise status of the sweating middleman, it is evident that in the worst "sweating" trades he is not idle, and he is not rich. In cases where the well-to-do, comfortable sub-contractor is found, he generally pays fair wages, and does not grossly abuse his power. When the worst features of sweating are present, the master sweater is nearly always poor, his profits driven down by competition, so that he barely makes a living. It is, indeed, evident that in many of the worst Whitechapel sweating-dens the master does not on the average make a larger income than the more highly paid of his machinists. So, too, most of these "sweaters" work along with their hands, and work just as hard. Some, indeed, have represented this sweating middleman as one who thrusts himself between the proper employer and the working man in order to make a gain for himself without performing any service. But the bulk of evidence goes to show that the sweater, even when he does not occupy himself in detailed manual labour, performs a useful work of superintendence and management. "The sweater in the vast majority of cases is the one man in the workshop who can, and does, perform each and any branch of the trade."

For the old adage, which made a tailor the ninth part of a man, has been completely reversed by the subdivision of work in modern industry. It now takes more than nine men to make a tailor. We have foremen or cutters, basters, machinists, fellers, button-holers, pressers, general workers, &c. No fewer than twenty-five such subdivisions have been marked in the trade. Since the so-called tailor is no tailor at all, but a "button-holer" or "baster," it is obvious that the working of such a system requires some one capable of general direction.

This opinion is not, however, inconsistent with the belief that such work of "direction" or "organization" may be paid on a scale wholly out of proportion to the real worth of the services performed. Extremely strong evidence has been tendered to show that in many large towns, especially in Leeds and Liverpool, the "sweating" tailor has frequently "no practical knowledge of his trade." The ignorance and incompetence of the working tailors enables a Jew with a business mind, by bribing managers, to obtain a contract for work which he makes no pretence to execute himself. His ability consists simply in the fact that he can get more work at a cheaper rate out of the poorer workmen than the manager of a large firm. In his capacity of middleman he is a "convenience," and for his work, which is nominally that of master tailor, really that of sweating manager, he gets his pay.

Part of the "service" thus rendered by the sweater is doubtless that he acts as a screen to the employing firm. Public opinion, and "the reputation of the firm," would not permit a well-known business to employ the workers directly under their own roof upon the terms which the secrecy of the sweater's den enables them to pay. But in spite of this, whether the "Jew sweater" is really a competent tailor or is a mere "organizer" of poor labour, it should be distinctly understood that he is paid for the performance of real work, which under the present industrial system has a use.

Sec. 6. Different Species of Middlemen.—It may be well here to say something on the general position of the "middleman" in commerce. The popular notion that the "middleman" is a useless being, and that if he could be abolished all would go well, arises from a confusion of thought which deserves notice. This confusion springs from a failure to understand that the "middleman" is a part of a commercial System. He is not a mere intruder, a parasitic party, who forces his way between employer and worker, or between producer and consumer, and without conferring any service, extracts for himself a profit which involves a loss to the worker or the consumer, or to both. If we examine this notion, either by reference to facts, or from a priori consideration, we shall find it based on a superstition. "Middleman" is a broad generic term used to describe a man through whose hands goods pass on their way to the consuming public, but who does not appear to add any value to the goods he handles. At any stage in the production of these goods, previous to their final distribution, the middleman may come in and take his profit for no visible work done. He may be a speculator, buying up grain or timber, and holding or manipulating it in the large markets; or he may be a wholesale merchant, who, buying directly from the fisherman, and selling to the retail fishmonger, is supposed to be responsible for the high price of fish; he may be the retailer who in East London is supposed to cause the high price of vegetables.

With these species of middlemen we are not now concerned, except to say that their work, which is that of distribution, i.e. the more convenient disposal of forms of material wealth, may be equally important with the work of the farmer, the fisherman, or the market-gardener, though the latter produce changes in the shape and appearance of the goods, while the former do not. The middleman who stands between the employing firm and the worker is of three forms. He may undertake a piece of work for a wholesale house, and taking the material home, execute it with the aid of his family or outside assistants. This is the chamber-master proper, or "sweater" in the tailoring trade. Or he may act as distributor, receive the material, and undertake to find workers who will execute it at their own homes, he undertaking the responsibility of collection. Where the workers are scattered over a large city area, or over a number of villages, this work of distribution, and its responsibility, may be considerable. Lastly, there may be the "sub-contractor" proper, who undertakes to do a portion of a work already contracted for, and either finds materials and tools, and pays workers to work for him, or sublets parts of his contract to workers who provide their own materials and tools. The mining and building trades contain various examples of such sub-contracts. Now in none of these cases is the middleman a mere parasite. In every case he does work, which, though as a rule it does not alter the material form of the goods with which it deals, adds distinct value to them, and is under present industrial conditions equally necessary, and equally entitled to fair remuneration with the work of the other producers. The old maxim "nihil ex nihilo fit" is as true in commerce as in chemistry. In a competitive society a man can get nothing for nothing. If the middleman is a capitalist he may get something for use of his capital; but that too implies that his capital is put to some useful work.

Sec. 7. Work and Pay of the Middleman.—The complaint that the middleman confers no service, and deserves no pay, is the result of two fallacies. The first, to which allusion has been made already, consists in the failure to recognize the work of distribution done by the middleman. The second and more important is the confusion of mind which leads people to conclude that because under different circumstances a particular class of work might be dispensed with, therefore that work is under present circumstances useless and undeserving of reward. Lawyers might be useless if there were no dishonesty or crime, but we do not therefore feel justified in describing as useless the present work they do. With every progress of new inventions we are constantly rendering useless some class or other of undoubted "workers." So the middleman in his various capacities may be dispensed with, if the organization of industrial society is so changed that he is no longer required; but until such changes are affected he must get, and deserves, his pay. It may indeed be true that certain classes of middlemen are enabled by the position they hold to extract either from their employers or from the public a profit which seems out of proportion to the services they render. But this is by no means generally the case with the middleman in his capacity of "sweater." Even where a middleman does make large profits, we are not justified in describing such gain as excessive or unfair, unless we are prepared to challenge the claim of "free competition" to determine the respective money values of industrial services. The "sweating" middleman does work which is at present necessary; he gets pay; if we think he gets too much, are we prepared with any rule to determine even approximately how much he ought to get?

Sec. 8. The Employer as "Sweater."—Since it appears that the middleman often sweats others of necessity because he is himself "sweated," in the low terms of the contract he makes, and since much of the worst "sweating" takes place where firms of employers deal directly with the "workers," it may seem that the blame is shifted on to the employer, and that the real responsibility rests with him. Now is this so? When we see an important firm representing a large capital and employing many hands, paying a wage barely sufficient for the maintenance of life, we are apt to accuse the employers of meanness and extortion: we say this firm could afford to pay higher wages, but they prefer to take higher profits; the necessity of the poor is their opportunity. Now this accusation ought to be fairly faced. It will then be found to fall with very different force according as it is addressed to one or other of two classes of employers. Firms which are shielded from the full force of the competition of capital by the possession of some patent or trade secret, some special advantage in natural resources, locality, or command of markets, are generally in a position which will enable them to reap a rate of profit, the excess of which beyond the ordinary rate of profit measures the value of the practical monopoly they possess. The owners of a coal-mine, or a gas-works, a special brand of soap or biscuits, or a ring of capitalists who have secured control of a market, are often able to pay wages above the market level without endangering their commercial position. Even in a trade like the Lancashire cotton trade, where there is free competition among the various firms, a rapid change in the produce market may often raise the profits of the trade, so that all or nearly all the employing firms could afford to pay higher wages without running any risk of failure. Now employers who are in a position like this are morally responsible for the hardship and degradation they inflict if they pay wages insufficient for decent maintenance. Their excuse that they are paying the market rate of wages, and that if their men do not choose to work for this rate there are plenty of others who will, is no exoneration of their conduct unless it be distinctly admitted that "moral considerations" have no place in commerce. Employers who in the enjoyment of this superior position pay bare subsistance wages, and defend themselves by the plea that they pay the "market rate," are "sweaters," and the blame of sweating will rightly attach to them.

But this is not to be regarded as the normal position of employers. Among firms unsheltered by a monopoly, and exposed to the full force of capitalist competition, the rate of profit is also at "the minimum of subsistence," that is to say, if higher wages were paid to the employes, the rate of profit would either become a negative quantity, or would be so low that capital could no longer be obtained for investment in such a trade. Generally it may be said that a joint-stock company and a private firm, trading as most firms do chiefly on borrowed capital, could not pay higher wages and stand its ground in the competition with other firms. If a benevolent employer engaged in a manufacture exposed to open competition undertook to raise the wages of his men twenty per cent, in order to lift them to a level of comfort which satisfied his benevolence, he must first sacrifice the whole of his "wage of superintendence," and he will then find that he can only pay the necessary interest on his borrowed capital out of his own pocket: in fact he would find he had essayed to do what in the long run was impossible. The individual employer under normal circumstances is no more to blame for the low wages, long hours, &c., than is the middleman. He could not greatly improve the industrial condition of his employes, however much he might wish.

Sec. 9. The Purchaser as "Sweater." A third view, a little longer-sighted than the others, casts the blame upon the purchasing public. Wages must be low, we are told, because the purchaser insists on low prices. It is the rage for "cheapness" which is the real cause, according to this line of thought. Formerly the customer was content to pay a fair price for an article to a tradesman with whom he dealt regularly, and whose interest it was to sell him a fair article. The tradesman could thus afford to pay the manufacturer a price which would enable him to pay decent wages, and in return for this price he insisted upon good work being put into the goods he bought. Thus there was no demand for bad work. Skilled work alone could find a market, and skilled work requires the payment of decent wages. The growth of modern competition has changed all this. Regular custom has given way to touting and advertising, the bond of interest between consumer and shopkeeper is broken, the latter seeks merely to sell the largest quantity of wares to any one who will buy, the former to pay the lowest price to any one who will sell him what he thinks he wants. Hence a deterioration in the quality of many goods. It is no longer the interest of many tradesmen to sell sound wares; the consumer can no longer rely upon the recommendation of the retailer as a skilled judge of the quality of a particular line of goods; he is thrown back upon his own discrimination, and as an amateur he is apt to be worsted in a bargain with a specialist. There is no reason to suppose that customers are meaner than they used to be. They always bought things as cheaply as they knew how to get them. The real point is that they are less able to detect false cheapness than they used to be. Not merely do they no longer rely upon a known and trusted retailer to protect them from the deceits of the manufacturer, but the facilities for deception are continually increasing. The greater complexity of trade, the larger variety of commodities, the increased specialization in production and distribution, the growth of "a science of adulteration" have immensely increased the advantage which the professional salesman possesses over the amateur customer. Hence the growth of goods meant not for use but for sale—jerry-built houses, adulterated food, sham cloth and leather, botched work of every sort, designed merely to pass muster in a hurried act of sale. To such a degree of refinement have the arts of deception been carried that the customer is liable to be tricked and duped at every turn. It is not that he foolishly prefers to buy a bad article at a low price, but that he cannot rely upon his judgment to discriminate good from bad quality; he therefore prefers to pay a low price because he has no guarantee that by paying more he will get a better article. It is this fact, and not a mania for cheapness, which explains the flooding of the market with bad qualities of wares. This effectual demand for bad workmanship on the part of the consuming public is no doubt directly responsible for many of the worst phases of "sweating." Slop clothes and cheap boots are turned out in large quantities by workers who have no claim to be called tailors or shoemakers. A few weeks' practice suffices to furnish the quantum of clumsy skill or deceit required for this work. That is to say, the whole field of unskilled labour is a recruiting-ground for the "sweater" or small employer in these and other clothing trades. If the public insisted on buying good articles, and paid the price requisite for their production, these "sweating" trades would be impossible. But before we saddle the consuming public with the blame, we must bear in mind the following extenuating circumstances.

Sec. 10. What the Purchaser can do.—The payment of a higher price is no guarantee that the workers who produce the goods are not "sweated." If I am competent to discriminate well-made goods from badly-made goods, I shall find it to my interest to abstain from purchasing the latter, and shall be likewise doing what I can to discourage "sweating." But by merely paying a higher price for goods of the same quality as those which I could buy at a lower price, I may be only putting a larger profit in the hands of the employers of this low-skilled labour, and am certainly doing nothing to decrease that demand for badly-made goods which appears to be the root of the evil. The purchaser who wishes to discourage sweating should look first to the quality of the goods he buys, rather than to the price. Skilled labour is seldom sweated to the same degree as unskilled labour, and a high class of workmanship will generally be a guarantee of decent wages. In so far as the purchaser lacks ability to accurately gauge quality, he has little security that by paying a higher price he is securing better wages for the workers. The so-called respectability of a well-known house is a poor guarantee that its employes are getting decent wages, and no guarantee at all that the workers in the various factories with which the firm deals are well paid. It is impossible for a private customer to know that by dealing with a given shop he is not directly or indirectly encouraging "sweating." It might, however, be feasible for the consuming public to appoint committees, whose special work it should be to ascertain that goods offered in shops were produced by firms who paid decent wages. If a "white list" of firms who paid good wages, and dealt only with manufacturers who paid good wages, were formed, purchasers who desired to discourage sweating would be able to feel a certain security, so far, at any rate, as the later stages of production are concerned, which ordinary knowledge of the world and business will not at present enable them to obtain. The force of an organized public opinion, even that of a respectable minority, brought to bear upon notorious "sweating" firms, would doubtless be of great avail, if carefully applied.

At the same time, it must not for a moment be imagined that the problem of poverty would be solved if we could insure, by the payment of higher prices for better qualities of goods, the extermination of the sweating trades. This low, degraded and degrading work enables large numbers of poor inefficient workers to eke out a bare subsistence. If it were taken away, the direct result would be an accession of poverty and misery. The demand for skilled labour would be greater, but the unskilled labourer cannot pass the barrier and compete for this; the overflow of helpless, hopeless, feeble, unskilled labour would be greater than ever. Whatever the ultimate effects of decreasing the demand for unskilled labour might be, the misery of the immediate effects could not be lightly set aside. This contradiction of the present certain effect and the probable future effects confronts the philanthropist at every turn. The condition of the London match-girls may serve as an illustration of this. Their miserable life has rightly roused the indignation of all kind-hearted people. The wretched earnings they take have provoked people to suggest that we should put an end to the trade by refusing to buy from them. But since the earnings of these girls depend entirely on the amount they sell, this direct result of your action, prompted by humane sentiment, will be to reduce still further these miserable earnings; that is to say, you increase the suffering of the very persons whose lot you desire to alleviate. You may say that you buy your matches all the same, but you buy them at a shop where you may or may not have reason to believe that the attendants are well paid. But that will not benefit the girls, whose business you have destroyed; they will not be employed in the shops, for they belong to a different grade of labour. This dilemma meets the social reformer at each step; the complexity of industrial relations appears to turn the chariot of progress into a Juggernaut's car, to crush a number of innocent victims with each advance it makes. One thing is evident, that if the consuming public were to regulate its acts of purchase with every possible regard to the condition of the workers, they could not ensure that every worker should have good regular work for decent wages.

In arriving at this conclusion, we are far from maintaining that the public even in its private capacity as a body of consumers could do nothing. A certain portion of responsibility rests on the public, as we saw it rested on employers and on middlemen. But the malady is rightly traceable in its full force neither to the action of individuals nor of industrial classes, but to the relation which subsists between these individuals and classes; that is, to the nature and character of the industrial system in its present working. This may seem a vague statement, but it is correct; the desire to be prematurely definite has led to a narrow conception of the "sweating" malady, which more than anything else has impeded efforts at reform.



Chapter V.

The Causes of Sweating.



Sec. 1. The excessive Supply of Low-skilled Labour.—Turning to the industrial system for an explanation of the evils of "Sweating," we shall find three chief factors in the problem; three dominant aspects from which the question may be regarded. They are sometimes spoken of as the causes of sweating, but they are better described as conditions, and even as such are not separate, but closely related at various points.

The first condition of "sweating" is an abundant and excessive supply of low-skilled and inefficient labour. It needs no parade of economic reasoning to show that where there are more persons willing to do a particular kind of work than are required, the wages for that work, if free competition is permitted, cannot be more than what is just sufficient to induce the required number to accept the work. In other words, where there exists any quantity of unemployed competitors for low-skilled work, wages, hours of labour, and other conditions of employment are so regulated, as to present an attraction which just outweighs the alternatives open to the unemployed, viz. odd jobs, stealing, starving, and the poor-house. In countries where access to unused land is free, the productiveness of labour applied to such land marks the minimum of wages possible; in countries where no such access is possible, the minimum wages of unskilled labour, whenever the supply exceeds the demand, is determined by the attractiveness of the alternatives named above.

A margin of unemployed labour means a bare subsistence wage for low- skilled labour, and it means this wage earned under industrial conditions, such as we find under the "sweating system." In order to keep the wage of low-skilled labour down to this minimum, which can only rise with an improvement in the alternatives, it is not required that there should at any time exist a large number of unemployed. A very small number, in effective competition with those employed, will be quite as effectual in keeping down the rate of wages. The same applies to all grades of skilled labour, with this important difference, that the minimum wage can never fall below what is required to induce less skilled workers to acquire and apply the extra skill which will enable them to furnish the requisite supply of highly-skilled workers. Trade Unions have instinctively directed all their efforts to preventing the competition of unemployed workers in their respective trades from pulling down to its minimum the rate of wages. The strongest of those have succeeded in establishing a standard wage less than which no one shall accept; unemployed men, who in free competition would accept less than this standard wage, are supported by the funds of the Union, that they may not underbid. Unions of comparatively unskilled workers, who are never free from the competition of unemployed, and who cannot undertake permanently to buy off all competitors ready to underbid, endeavour to limit the numbers of their members, and to prevent outsiders from effectively competing with them in the labour market, in order that by restricting the supply of labour, they may prevent a fall of wages. The importance of these movements for us consists in their firm but tacit recognition of the fact, that an excessive supply of unskilled labour lies at the root of the industrial disease of "sweating."

Sec. 2. The Contributing Causes of excessive Supply.—The last two chapters have dealt with the principal large industrial movements which bear on this supply of excessive low-skilled labour; but to make the question clear, it will be well to enumerate the various contributing causes.

[Greek: a]. The influx of rural population into the towns constantly swells the supply of raw unskilled labour. The better quality of this agricultural labour, as we saw, does not continue to form part of this glut, but rises into more skilled and higher paid strata of labour. The worse quality forms a permanent addition to the mass of inefficient labour competing for bare subsistence wages.

[Greek: b]. The steady flow of cheap unskilled foreign labour into our large cities, especially into London, swollen by occasional floods of compulsory exiles, adds an element whose competition as a part of the mass of unskilled labour is injurious out of proportion to its numerical amount.

[Greek: g]. Since this foreign immigration weakens the industrial condition of our low-skilled native labour by increasing the supply, it will be evident that any cause which decreases the demand for such labour will operate in the same way. The free importation from abroad of goods which compete in our markets with the goods which "sweated" labour is applied to make, has the same effect upon the workers in "sweating" trades as the introduction of cheap foreign labour. The one diminishes the demand, the other increases the supply of unskilled or low-skilled labour. The import of quantities of German-made cheap clothing into East London shops, to compete with native manufacture of the same goods, will have precisely the same force in maintaining "sweating," as will the introduction of German workers, who shall make these same clothes in East London itself. In each case, the purchasing public reaps the advantage of cheap labour in low prices, while the workers suffer in low wages. The contention that English goods made at home must be exported to pay for the cheap German goods, furnishes no answer from the point of view of the low-skilled worker, unless these exports embody the kind of labour of which he is capable.

[Greek: d]. The constant introduction of new machinery, as a substitute for skilled hand-labour, by robbing of its value the skill of certain classes of workers, adds these to the supply of low-skilled labour.

[Greek: e]. The growth of machinery and of education, by placing women and young persons more upon an equality with male adult labour, swells the supply of low-skilled labour in certain branches of work. Women and young persons either take the places once occupied by men, or undertake new work (e.g. in post-office or telegraph-office), which would once have been open only to the competition of men. This growth of the direct or indirect competition of women and young persons, must be considered as operating to swell the general supply of unskilled labour.

[Greek: z]. In London another temporary, but important, factor must be noted. The competition of provincial factories has proved too strong for London factories in many industries. Hence of late years a gradual transfer of manufacture from London to the provinces. A large number of workers in London factories have found themselves out of work. The break-up of the London factories has furnished "sweating trades" with a large quantity of unemployed and starving people from whom to draw.

Regarded from the widest economic point of view, the existence of an excessive supply of labour seeking employments open to free competition must be regarded as the most important aspect of the "sweating system." The recent condition of the competition for casual dock-labour brought dramatically to the foreground this factor in the labour question. The struggle for livelihood was there reduced to its lowest and most brutal terms. "There is a place at the London Docks called the cage, a sort of pen fenced off by iron railings. I have seen three hundred half-starved dockers crowded round this cage, when perhaps a ganger would appear wanting three hands, and the awful struggle of these three hundred famished wretches fighting for that opportunity to get two or three hours' work has left an impression upon me that can never be effaced. Why, I have actually seen them clambering over each other's backs to reach the coveted ticket. I have frequently seen men emerge bleeding and breathless, with their clothes pretty well torn off their backs." The competition described in this picture only differs from other competitions for low-skilled town labour in as much as the conditions of tender gave a tragical concentration to the display of industrial forces. This picture, exaggerated as it will appear to those who have not seen it, brings home to us the essential character of free competition for low-skilled labour where the normal supply is in excess of the demand. If other forms of low-skilled labour were put up to be scrambled for in the same public manner, the scene would be repeated ad nauseam. But because the competition of seamstresses, tailors, shirt- finishers, fur-sewers, &c., is conducted more quietly and privately, it is not less intense, not less miserable, and not less degrading. This struggle for life in the shape of work for bare subsistence wages, is the true logical and necessary outcome of free competition among an over supply of low-skilled labourers.

Sec. 3. The Multiplication of "Small Masters."—Having made so much progress in our analysis, we shall approach more intelligently another important aspect of the "sweating system." Mr. Booth and other investigators find the tap-root of the disease to consist in the multiplication of small masters. The leading industrial forces of the age, as we have seen, make for the concentration of labour in larger and larger masses, and its employment in larger and larger factories. Yet in London and in certain other large centres of population, we find certain trades which are still conducted on a small scale in little workshops or private houses, and those trades furnish a very large proportion of the worst examples of "sweating." Here is a case of arrested development in the evolution of industry. It is even worse than that; for some trades which had been subject to the concentrating force of the factory system, have fallen into a sort of back-wash of the industrial current, and broken up again into smaller units. The increased proportion of the clothing industries conducted in private houses and small workshops is the most notorious example. This applies not only to East London, but to Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and other large cities, especially where foreign labour has penetrated. For a large proportion of the sweating workshops, especially in clothing trades, are supported by foreign labour. In Liverpool during the last ten years the substitution of home- workers for workers in tailors' shops has been marked, and in particular does this growth of home-workers apply to women.

A credible witness before the Lords' Committee stated that "at the present moment it would be safe to say that two-thirds of the sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners," coming chiefly from Germany and Russian Poland. In Leeds sixteen years ago there were only twelve Jewish workshops; there are now some hundreds.

Since a very large proportion of the worst sweating occurs in trades where the work is given out, either directly or by the medium of sub- contract, to home-workers, it is natural that stress should be laid upon the small private workshops as the centre of the disease. If the work could only be got away from the home and the small workshop, where inspection is impracticable, and done in the factory or large workshop, where limitations of hours of labour and sanitary conditions could be enforced, where the force of public opinion could secure the payment of decent wages, and where organization among workers would be possible, the worst phases of the malady would disappear. The abolition of the small workshop is the great object of a large number of practical reformers who have studied the sweating system. The following opinion of an expert witness is endorsed by many students of the question—"If the employers were compelled to obtain workshops, and the goods were made under a factory system, we believe that they could be made quite as cheaply under that system, with greater comfort to the workers, in shorter hours; and that the profits would then be distributed among the workers, so that the public would obtain their goods at the same price."[25] It is maintained that the inferior qualities of shoes are produced and sold more cheaply in the United States by a larger use of machinery under the factory system, than in London under a sweating system, though wages are, of course, much higher in America. Moreover, many of the products of the London sweating trades are competing on almost equal terms with the products of provincial factories, where machines are used instead of hand-labour.

Sec. 4. Economic Advantages of "Small Workshops."—The question we have to answer is this—Why has the small workshop survived and grown up in London and other large cities, in direct antagonism to the prevalent industrial movement of the age? It is evident that the small workshop system must possess some industrial advantages which enable it to hold its own. The following considerations throw light upon this subject.

1. A larger proportion of the work in sweating trades is work for which there is a very irregular demand. Irregularity of employment, or, more accurately speaking, insufficiency of employment—for the "irregularity" is itself regular—forms one of the most terrible phases of the sweating system. The lower you descend in the ranks of labour the worse it is. A large number of the trades, especially where women are employed, are trades where the elements of "season" and fashion enter in. But even those which, like tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, furniture and upholstery, would seem less subject to periodic or purely capricious changes, are liable in fact to grave and frequent fluctuations of the market. The average employment in sweating trades is roughly estimated at three or four days in the week. There are two busy seasons lasting some six weeks each, when these miserable creatures are habitually overworked. "The remaining nine months," says Mr. Burnett, "do not average more than half time, especially among the lower grade workers."

This gives us one clue to the ability of the small workshop to survive— its superior flexibility from the point of view of the employer.

"High organization makes for regularity; low organization lends itself to the opposite. A large factory cannot stop at all without serious loss; a full-sized workshop will make great efforts to keep going; but the man who employs only two or three others in his own house can, if work fails, send them all adrift to pick up a living as best they can."[26]

Since a smaller sweating-master can set up business on some L2 capital, and does not expect to make much more profit as employer than as workman, he is able to change from one capacity to the other with great facility.

2. The high rent for large business premises, especially in London, makes for the small workshop or home-work system. The payment of rent is thus avoided by the business firm which is the real employer, and thrown upon the sub-contractor or the workers themselves, to be by them in their turn generally evaded by using the dwelling-room for a workshop. Thus one of the most glaring evils of the sweating system is seen to form a distinct economic advantage in the workshop, as compared with the large factory. The element of rent is practically eliminated as an industrial charge.

3. The evasion of the restrictions of the Factory Act must be regarded as another economic advantage. Excessive hours of labour when convenient, overcrowding in order to avoid rent, absence of proper sanitary conditions, are essential to the cheapest forms of production under present conditions. It does not pay either the employing firm or the sub-contractor to consider the health or even the life of the workers, provided that the state of the labour market is such that they can easily replace spent lives.

4. The inability to combine for their mutual protection and advantage of scattered employes working in small bodies, living apart, and unacquainted even with the existence of one another, is another "cheapness" of the workshop system.

5. The fact that so large a proportion of master-sweaters are Jews has a special significance. It seems to imply that the poorer class of immigrant Jews possess a natural aptitude for the position, and that their presence in our large cities furnishes the corner-stone of the vicious system. Independence and mastery are conditions which have a market value for all men, but especially for the timid and often down- trodden Jew. Most men will contentedly receive less as master than as servant, but especially the Jew. We saw that the immigrant Jew, by his capacities and inclinations, was induced to make special efforts to substitute work of management for manual labour, and to become a profit- maker instead of a wage-earner. The Jew craves the position of a sweating-master, because that is the lowest step in a ladder which may lead to a life of magnificence, supported out of usury. The Jewish Board of Guardians in London, though its philanthropic action is on the whole more enlightened than that of most wealthy public bodies, has been responsible in no small measure for this artificial multiplication of small masters. A very large proportion of the funds which they dispensed was given or lent in small sums in order to enable poor Jews "to set up for themselves." The effect of this was twofold. It first assisted to draw to London numbers of continental Jews, who struggled as "greeners" under sweaters for six months, until they were qualified for assistance from the Jewish Board of Guardians. It then enabled them to set up as small masters, and sweat other "greeners" as they themselves were sweated. It was quite true that the object of such charity was the most useful which any society could undertake; namely, that of assisting the industrially weak to stand on their own legs. But it was unfortunately true that this early stage of independence was built upon the miserable dependence of other workers.

6. But while, as we see, there are many special conditions which, in London especially, favour the small workshop, the most important will be found to consist in the large supply of cheap unskilled labour. This is the real material out of which the small workshop system is built. In dealing with the other conditions, we shall find that they all presuppose this abundant supply of labour. If labour were more scarce, and wages therefore higher, the small workshop would be impossible, for the absolute economy of labour, effected by the factory organization with its larger use of machinery, would far outweigh the number of small economies which, as we have seen, at present in certain trades, favour and make possible the small workshop. Every limitation in the supply of this low-skilled labour, every expansion of the alternatives offered by emigration, access to free land, &c., will be effectual in crushing a number of the sweating workshops, and favouring the large factory at their expense.

Sec. 5. Irresponsibility of Employers.—The third view of the sweating System lays stress upon its moral aspect, and finds its chief cause in the irresponsibility of the employer. Now we have already seen that this severance of the personal relation between employer and employed is a necessary result of the establishment of the large factory as the industrial unit, and of the ever-growing complexity of modern commerce. It is not merely that the widening gap of social position between employer and employed, and the increased number of the latter, make the previous close relation impossible. Quite as important is the fact that the real employer in modern industry is growing more "impersonal." What we mean is this. The nominal employer or manager is not the real employer. The real employer of labour is capital, and it is to the owners of the capital in any business that we must chiefly look for the exercise of such responsibility as rightly subsists between employer and employed. Now, while it is calculated that one-eighth of the business of England is in the hands of joint-stock companies, constituting far more than one-eighth of the large businesses, in the great majority of other cases, where business is conducted on a large scale, the head of the business is to a great extent a mere manager of other people's capital. Thus while the manager's sense of personal responsibility is weakened by the number of "hands" whom he employs, his freedom of action is likewise crippled by his obligation to subserve the interests of a body of capitalists who are in ignorance of the very names and number of the human beings whose destiny they are controlling. The severance of the real "employer" from his "hands" is thus far more complete than would appear from mere attention to the growth in the size of the average business. Now it must not be supposed that this severance of the personal relation between employer and employed is of necessity a loss to the latter. There is no reason to suppose that the close relation subsisting in the old days between the master and his journeymen and apprentices was as a rule idyllically beautiful. No doubt the control of the master was often vexatious and despotic. The tyranny of a heartless employer under the old system was probably much more injurious than the apathy of the most vulgar plutocrat of to-day. The employe under the modern system is less subject to petty spite and unjust interference on the part of his employer. In this sense he is more free. But on the other hand, he has lost that guarantee against utter destitution and degradation afforded by the humanity of the better class of masters. He has exchanged a human nexus for a "cash nexus." The nominal freedom of this cash relationship is in the case of the upper strata of workmen probably a real freedom; the irresponsibility of their employers has educated them to more self-reliance, and strengthened a healthy personality in them. It is the lower class of workers who suffer. More and more they need the humanity of the responsible employer to protect them against the rigours of the labour-market. The worst miseries of the early factory times were due directly to the break-up of the responsibility of employers. This was slowly recognized by the people of England, and the series of Factory Acts, Employers' Liability Acts, and other measures for the protection of labour, must be regarded as a national attempt to build up a compulsory legal responsibility to be imposed upon employers in place of a natural responsibility based on moral feeling. We draft legislation and appoint inspectors to teach employers their duty towards employes, and to ensure that they do it. Thus in certain industries we have patched up an artificial mechanism of responsibility.

Wherever this legal responsibility is not enforced in the case of low- skilled workers, we have, or are liable to have, "sweating." Glancing superficially at the small workshop or sweating-den, it might seem that this being a mere survival of the old system, the legal enforcement of responsibility would be unnecessary. But it is not a mere survival. In the small workshop of the old system the master was the real employer. In the modern "sweating" den he is not the real employer, but a mere link between the employing firm and the worker. From this point of view we must assign as the true cause of sweating, the evasion of the legal responsibility of the Factory Act rendered possible to firms which employ outside workers either directly or indirectly through the agency of "sweaters." Although it might be prudent as a means of breaking up the small workshop to attempt to impose upon the "middleman" the legal responsibility, genuine reform directed to this aspect of "sweating," can only operate by making the real employing firm directly responsible for the industrial condition of its outdoor direct or indirect employes.

This responsibility imposed by law has been strengthened as an effective safeguard of the interests of the workers by combination among the latter. In skilled industries where strong trade organization exists, the practical value of such combination exceeds the value of restrictive legislation.

"In their essence Trade Unions are voluntary associations of workmen, for mutual protection and assistance in securing the most favourable conditions of labour." "This is their primary and fundamental object, and includes all efforts to raise wages or prevent a reduction of wages; to diminish the hours of labour or resist attempts to increase the working hours; and to regulate all matters pertaining to methods of employment or discharge, and modes of working."[27] Engineers, boiler- makers, cotton-spinners, printers, would more readily give up the assistance given them by legislative restriction than the power which they have secured for themselves by combination. It is in proportion as trade combination is weak that the actual protection afforded by Factory and Employers' Liability Acts become important. Just as we saw that sweating trades were those which escaped the legislative eye; so we see that they are also the trades where effective combination does not exist. Where Trade Unions are strong, sweating cannot make any way. The State aid of restrictive legislation, and the self help of private combination are alike wanting to the "sweated" workers.



Chapter VI.

Remedies for Sweating.



Sec. 1. Factory Legislation. What it can do.—Having now set forth the three aspects of the industrial disease of "Sweating"—the excessive supply of unskilled labour, the multiplication of small employers, the irresponsibility of capital—we have next to ask, What is the nature of the proposed remedies? Since any full discussion of the different remedies is here impossible, it must suffice if we briefly indicate the application of the chief proposed remedies to the different aspects of the disease. These remedies will fairly fall into three classes.

The first class aim at attacking by legislative means, the small workshop system, and the evils of long hours and unsanitary conditions from which the "sweated" workers suffer. Briefly, it may be said that they seek to increase and to enforce the legal responsibility of employers, and indirectly to crush the small workshop system by turning upon it the wholesome light of publicity, and imposing certain irksome and expensive conditions which will make its survival in its worst and ugliest shapes impossible. The most practical recommendation of the Report of the Lords' Committee is an extension of the sanitary clauses of the Factory Act, so as to reach all workshops.

We have seen that the unrestricted use of cheap labour is the essence of "sweating." If the wholesome restrictions of our Factory Legislation were in fact extended so as to cover all forms of employment, they would so increase the expenses of the sweating houses, that they would fall before the competition of the large factory system. Karl Marx writing a generation ago saw this most clearly. "But as regards labour in the so- called domestic industries, and the intermediate forms between this and manufacture, so soon as limits are put to the working day and to the employment of children, these industries go to the wall. Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour power is the sole foundation of their power to compete."[28]

The effectiveness of the existing Factory Act, so far as relates to small workshops, is impaired by the following considerations—

1. The difficulty in finding small workshops. There is no effectual registration of workshops, and the number of inspectors is inadequate to the elaborate and tedious method of search imposed by the present system.