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The evils of the system have been allowed to grow far too long to be rooted out in a moment. The voice of reason and humanity has been overwhelmed by the inordinate ravings of capital in its anxiety to secure more than its fair share.
The following is from the Echo:—
"HARD FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF LABOUR.
"If one-half of the world doesn't know how the other half lives, it is not because they are not told. Last week the tailors were laying their grievances before the Home Secretary, and informed the world generally how terribly they are dominated by that potent ruler of the world yclept 'Backsheesh.' The tailors have doubtless a just cause of complaint, and unlike many others connected with the organisation of labour, it probably more closely concerns wearers of clothes than the makers of them. We, of course, refer to the 'sweating system.' The kernel of the abuse can go into a very small nutshell. Messrs. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 'General Outfitters,' find it necessary, in order to get large profits and yet supply cheap coats, to make the public pay on one hand and their workmen on the other. 'Devil's dust' and 'shoddy' allow a considerable margin for gain to the seller, but to keep a well-ventilated workshop which will pass muster with the Inspector of Factories is not by any means so pleasing a duty. Accordingly, they settle the matter by not keeping a workroom at all. They resort to this 'sweating system.' They give their clothes out to be made at the lowest contract prices by the journeymen tailors at their own houses. The masters neither inquire nor care, nor do their customers know though they do care, while the workmen are not likely to tell, whether contagious disease was raging in the workman's house at the time the clothes were being sewn by the tailor and his family. As a matter of fact, frequently the coat which the dandy is to wear has been made in a miserable den up a court where half the children sleeping in the room which is at once workshop, bedroom, kitchen, and dining-room, are ill with smallpox or fever. In this manner there cannot be doubt, as shown by a case which we mentioned on Saturday, but that epidemics are spread in spite of the vigilance of the Health Officers and the authorities generally. It admits of a very simple but radical cure—which is all the better, in so far that it is one suggested by the workmen themselves—viz., that every house in which work of this kind is carried out be licensed as a factory, and subjected to inspection. This would soon bring the masters to their senses. It would compel them to have workshops where, in their own interests, the other workmen would see that no one would be admitted who, either by reason of disease in himself or in his family, was capable of spreading contagion. It is scandalous that, simply to make greater profits for wealthy tailors, the public should be subjected to the risk of disease over the spread of which they have no control; while, on the other hand, the miserable prices which the masters are thus enabled to pay the workmen throw the latter, on the slightest trade
