Chapter VI
How to Do Away with the Sweating System¹

Beatrice Webb

Before we can hope to solve the problem which forms the subject matter of this paper, we must answer two preliminary questions. First, we must decide what we mean by sweating and the sweating system; and secondly, we must determine what are the causes of these evils. For it is obvious that without an exact conception of the nature of the suffering which we desire to remedy, without some idea of the sources of the evils which we are determined to cure, we shall fail to grapple with the practical question of ' How to do away with the Sweating System.'

Fortunately for us the first question has already been adequately answered by an august authority. Almost the only result of the elaborate inquiry into the sweating system,² conducted by a Committee of the House of Lords in 1888-90, was an accurate definition of sweating at once comprehensive and concise. Lord Derby and his colleagues finally decided that sweating was no particular method of remuneration, no peculiar form of industrial organisation, but certain conditions of employment — viz. unusually low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, and insanitary work places. When we get any one of these conditions in an extreme and exaggerated form — for instance, when we find a woman sewing neckties in her own home, straining every nerve to earn only a halfpenny an hour — still more, when we see all these conditions combined, as in the cellar dwellings in which the Jewish boot-finishers work sixteen or seventeen hours a day for a wage of 12s. per week — then we say that the labour is sweated, and that the unfortunates are working under the sweating system.

Let us, therefore, pass on to the second point. What are the causes that produce these evils? Some persons maintain that sweating is restricted to industries in which sub-contract -prevails; that, in fact, it is the middleman who is the sweater; that this man grinds the face of the poor, and takes from them the fruits of their labour. You will remember a cartoon that appeared in Punch about the time of the House of Lords' inquiry, in which the middleman was represented as a bloated man-spider sucking the life-blood out of men and women who were working around him. Now, before I studied the facts of East London industries for myself I really believed that this horrible creature existed. But I soon found out that either he was purely a myth, or that the times had been too hard for him, and that he had been squeezed out of existence by some bigger monster. For I discovered that in the coat trade, and in the low-class boot trade — which are exclusively in the hands of the Jews — where the work is still taken out by small contractors, these middlemen, far from being bloated idlers, work as hard, if not harder, than their sweated hands, and frequently earn less than the machinist or presser to whom they pay wages. On the other hand, in those trades in which English women are employed — such as the manufacture of shirts, ties, umbrellas, juvenile suits, etc. — the middleman is fast disappearing. It is true that formerly the much -abused sub -contract system prevailed in these trades — that is to say, some man or woman would contract with the wholesale manufacturer to make and deliver so many dozen garments for a certain sum. He would then distribute these garments one by one in the homes of the women, or perhaps he would engage women to make them in his own house. He might receive a shilling for the making of each garment, but he would give only tenpence to the actual workers, pocketing twopence in return for his trouble and risk. But of late years the more enterprising wholesale manufacturers have thought it most unjust that the middleman should pocket the twopence. To remedy this injustice they have opened shops all over the East End of London, where they give out work just as the middleman used to do, first to be machined and then to be finished. But, strangely enough, they still pay tenpence to their workers, the only difference being that instead of the middle-man getting the balance they pocket the twopence themselves. Nor do they trouble themselves in the very least where these garments are made. The women who support themselves and perhaps their families by this class of work live in cellars or in garrets, sometimes two or three families in one room. This does not concern the wholesale manufacturer. No doubt he would tell you that the middleman was the sweater and that he had destroyed him. But, unfortunately, he did not destroy, or even diminish, what the practical observer means by sweating. The actual worker gains absolutely nothing by the disappearance of the subcontractor, middleman, or so-called sweater. In East London the change has been, so far as the workers are concerned, from out of the frying-pan into the fire.

And if we leave the clothing trade, and pass to the lower grades of the furniture trades, in which all the evils of sweating exist, we may watch the poverty-stricken maker of tables and chairs hawking his wares along the Curtain Road, selling direct to the export merchant, or to the retail trades-man — or perchance, to the private customer. In the manufacture of cheap boots in London, of common cutlery at Sheffield, of indifferent nails at Halesowen, we meet with this same sorrowful figure — the small master or out-worker buying his material on credit, and selling his product to meet the necessities of the hour; in all instances underselling his competitors, great and small. Respectable employers, interested in a high standard of production, trade unionists, keen for a high standard of wage, agree in attributing to this pitiful personage the worst evils of the sweating system. Here, not only do we fail to discover the existence of sub-contract, but even the element of contract itself disappears, and the elaborate organisation of modern industry is replaced by a near approach to that primitive higgling of the market between the actual producer of an article and the actual consumer — to that primaeval struggle and trial of endurance in which the weakest and most necessitous invariably suffers.

I do not wish you to imagine that I deny the existence of the sweater in the sweated industries. But I deny that the sweater is necessarily or even usually the sub-contractor or employing middleman. The sweater is, in fact, the whole nation. The mass of struggling men and women whose sufferings have lately been laid bare are oppressed and defrauded in every relation of life: by the man who sells or gives out the material on which they labour; by the shopkeeper who sells them provisions on credit, or forces them under the truck system; by the landlord who exacts, in return for the four walls of a bedroom, or for the unpaved and undrained back-yard, the double rent of workshop and dwelling; and, lastly, by every man, woman, and child who consumes the product of their labour. In the front rank of this, the most numerous class of sweaters, we find the oppressed workers themselves. The middleman where he exists is not the oppressor, but merely one of the instruments of oppression. And we cannot agree with Punch's representation of him as a spider devouring healthy flies. If we must describe him as a noxious insect we should picture him much more truly as the maggot that appears in meat after decay has set in. He is not the cause, but one of the occasional results of the evil. He takes advantage of the disorganised state of the substance which surrounds him, and lives on it; if he does not do so, some other creature will devour both him and his food. What we have to discover, therefore, is the origin of the disorganisation itself.³

Now, in all the manufacturing industries in which ' sweating ' extensively prevails we discover one common feature. The great mass of the production is carried on, not in large factories, but either by small masters in hidden workshops, or by workers in their own dwellings. And, as a natural consequence of this significant fact, the employer — whether he be the profit-making middleman, wholesale trader, or even the consumer himself — is relieved from all responsibility for the conditions under which the work is done. The workers, on the other hand, incapacitated for combination by the isolation of their lives, excluded by special clauses for the protection of the Factory Acts, are delivered over body and soul to the spirit of unrestrained competition, arising from the ever-increasing demand for cheap articles in the great markets of the world. If we compare this state of things with the industries in which sweating does not exist, we see at once that in the case of the engineer, the cotton-spinner, or the miner, the men work together in large establishments, and the employer becomes responsible for the conditions of their employment. The mill-owner, coal-owner, or large iron-master, is forced to assume, to some slight extent, the guardianship of his workers. He is compelled by the State to provide healthy accommodation, to regulate the hours of labour of women and young persons, to see to the education of children, to guard against and insure all workers against accident. Trade unions, arising from the massing of men under the factory system, insist on a recognised rate of wages. Public opinion, whether social or political, observes the actions of a responsible employer in the open light of day. Willingly or unwillingly, he must interpose his brains and his capital between groups of workers on the one hand, and the great mass of conscienceless consumers on the other. These are the services exacted from him by the community in return for the profits he makes. He is, in fact, the first link between the private individual intent on his own gain, and the ideal official of the Socialistic State administering the instruments of production in trust for the people. It is the absence of this typical figure of nineteenth-century industry which is the distinguishing feature of the sweating system.

On the other hand, we have seen, in the sweated industries, how, by the system of home-work, the virtual employer altogether escapes the responsibilities of his position. He gives out his work from an office to a miscellaneous and scattered set of work-people, whose places of abode he scarcely even knows; his work is done in un-inspected domestic workshops, it may be under the most insanitary conditions; his employees must, as he knows, often toil far into the night to comply with his demands, but he incurs no penalty. Alike from the obligations and the expenses of the factory owner, the sweater is free. Meanwhile, the slum landlord is receiving, for his cellars and attics, the double rent of workshop and dwelling without incurring the expensive sanitary obligations of the mill-owner. In short, it is home work which creates all the difficulties of our problem. For it is home work which, with its isolation, renders trade combination⁴ impracticable; which enables the manufacturer to use as a potent instrument-, for the degradation of all, the necessity of the widow or the creed of the Jew. And more important still, it is home work which, by withdrawing the workers from the beneficent protection of the Factory Acts, destroys all legal responsibility on the part of the employer and the landlord for the conditions of employment.

Clearly we must first see to it that our own house is in order. I am glad to think that co-operators as employers already recognise their duty as regards the payment of fair wages, the exaction of reasonable hours of labour, and the provision of sanitary workplaces for all their employees. This special responsibility of co-operators as employers has often been dwelt upon. The shirt-making shops of the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society at Shieldhall offer a brilliant example of what may be done by co-operative enterprise in an industry usually abandoned to the sweater.⁵

But it is useless to shut our eyes to the fact that co-operators can never hope to become the employers of the great mass of the workers who suffer under the sweating system. Taken as a whole the sweated industries may be said to work mainly for export. The low-class clothing made in East London is largely worn, not by our own people, but by the inhabitants of Australia and the Cape. The common boots and shoes turned out wholesale by the Jewish families of Whitechapel, or the Leicestershire villagers, equally supply the Colonial market. The sweated knives of Sheffield disgrace her name and injure her commercial prestige throughout the whole world. Even the most patient Conservative would not ask us patiently to watch the degradation of large sections of our countrymen whilst the Co-operative Wholesale Society is enroling, as members, the dusky Indian or the almond-eyed Mongolian, who are to so large an extent the virtual employers of the sweated workers. And even in those cases where the cheap and nasty products of the sweating system are used at home, they supply the needs neither of co-operators nor of those among whom co-operation is ever likely to flourish. The evil influence of the export sweating trade extends to that which supplies a nearer market. It is the woman earning a half-penny an hour at clothes for the Cape who buys the cheap furniture hawked about the Curtain Road. It is the Jewish boot-finisher working for abroad who, in his turn, buys the slop clothing displayed in the sweater's front shop. We are thus in a vicious circle, where sweating itself creates the conditions for the sweating system.⁶ For can we expect the nail-maker, toiling sixteen or seventeen hours a day for bare subsistence, or the children brought up in the one-roomed homes of East or South London, to develop that high level of moral and intellectual character which experience has proved to be absolutely essential to any considerable growth of co-operative association? As a matter of fact, the officials of the co-operative movement have met with as great obstacles to the .spread of co-operation among the victims of the sweating system as an ardent co-operator would experience if he insisted on going as a co-operative missionary to the South Sea Islanders.

And if it be impracticable to transform the sweater's victim into a co-operative consumer, still more impossible will it be to change him into a co-operative producer. We may differ as to the desirability of Associations of Producers in other departments of industry. But it will be needless to remind the experienced co-operator that the idea of the East End female necktie-makers, the Staffordshire nail-makers, or the Jewish boot-finishers ever being able to set up in business for themselves as associations of producers is simply chimerical. Whether or not the self-governing workshop be the goal of industrial organisation, it is certainly not the starting-point. Indeed, those who believe most firmly in associations of producers insist most keenly that it requires for its success an exceptional amount of character and intelligence on the part of the workers. Moreover, the self-governing workshop, pledged to a high standard of wage, would be subject, in the sweated industries, to the competition of the home-work system, with its degraded labour and cheap products. Should we desire, therefore, the rapid spread of co-operative production, carried on by associations of producers, our first step must be to root up and destroy the evils of sweating.

Are co-operators, then, powerless to do away with the sweating system? We must, I fear, admit that neither as employers nor as associated workers can they deal directly with the evil outside their ranks. Yet co-operators, of both schools, are most vitally interested in maintaining throughout the whole community a high standard of industrial morality. For not only does the sweating system practically exclude from their membership whole sections of their fellow-workers, but even in their own market they are unfortunately only too liable to be attacked by unscrupulous private competitors. The failures of promising experiments in co-operative production have too often been attributed to the difficulty of obtaining a market for well-made goods. Nearly every quarterly meeting bears unconscious witness to the insidious influence of the low-priced manufacturer of low-class goods, in the complaint that the Co-operative Wholesale Society or the retail store is charging, for some articles, more than the private trader. And in all the labour troubles which perplex the co-operative committee-man, it is the ever present fear of the competing sweater which at times prevents our ready acquiescence in that generous treatment of co-operative employees advocated by our most enlightened administrators.

Now, to find an effective remedy for the evils which we have been describing, we need only observe the teachings of history. When unscrupulous tradesmen ran the stores hard by subtle adulterations, co-operators became eager advocates of an Adulteration Act. When sharp competitors were passing off as English-made, low-class foreign wares, the Merchandise Marks Act was passed for the protection of more honest British traders. And if we leave for the moment the narrower aspect of the sweating system as hostile to co-operation, and consider it as involving the degradation of millions of our fellow-workers, we may again learn from history the most practical way of rendering the worst forms of sweating impossible. Seventy years ago the Rochdale weaver was, in his own way, suffering from all the evils which we now call sweating. Hours of labour stretched to the very limit of human endurance, dangerous and unventilated work -places, wages diminished by fines and fraud and truck on every side, were the hideous characteristics of Lancashire's white slavery at the beginning of this century. It is no mere coincidence that the stable growth of the co-operative movement itself was delayed until excessive toil and insanitary conditions of labour had by the Factory Acts been effectively penalised in the textile industries. Legislation, and legislation alone, was competent to cope with these gigantic evils. Similar evils elsewhere now demand similar remedies. The only radical cure of the sweating system is the application of legislative regulation to the special circumstances of the sweated industries. Now I venture to maintain that it is perfectly feasible to insist on the responsibility of landlord and employer in the sweated industries, and thus to bring the workers under the protection of the Factory Acts. The problem confronting us is the substitution of the factory system, with its regulated hours and enforced sanitation, for manufacturing carried on in dwellings and unregistered workshops. We cannot at one blow prohibit home work, but we must at any rate remove the exceptional legal privileges which at present offer a direct encouragement to the wholesale trader, who gives work out, to the detriment of the responsible manufacturer.⁷ Our task, in short, is to build up in these disorganised industries, the legal responsibility of the employer and landlord.

Without entering into the technical details of legislation which I have elsewhere proposed,⁸ it may broadly be said to provide for a double registration by landlord and employer of all places in which manufacturing work is carried on. The landlord, should he permit the use of his premises for manufacturing purposes, will under this proposed legislation be compelled to provide all accommodation necessary for the health of the workers. And the duty of preventing overcrowding, or any other improper use of his premises, will be as rigidly enforced on the owner of the nail-maker's hovel or the boot -finisher's cellar, as it already is on the mill -owner and the colliery proprietor. On the other hand, the employer who, to escape the Factory Acts, gives work out to be done at home, will be made equally responsible with the mill-owner for the age, health, education, and the hours of labour of those members of the protected classes whom he employs.⁹ This double responsibility of the landlord and the employer would be, I believe, a direct and fatal blow to the sweating system. Tenement landlords would hesitate to permit the use of their single rooms for manufacturing purposes if they became liable to heavy penalties for overcrowding and bad sanitation. Wholesale traders would find it more economical to erect factories than to institute an army of private inspectors to protect themselves from breaches of the Factory Act in thousands of unknown homes. Once deprive the giver-out of work of his exceptional legal privileges and there will be a steady tendency to replace the sweaters' dens by the large and healthy factories, easily controlled both by law and by public opinion, in which the great industries of the nation are already carried on. In this way, and in this way alone, can be transformed the unfortunate victims of the sweating system into such prosperous and independent operatives as now swarm the streets of Rochdale.

And while the conditions of the worker would be enormously improved, there is no reason to suppose that the cost of commodities would be increased. Already the superior quality of factory labour, with its use of machinery, renders it more than doubtful whether there is any real economy even to the employer in home work. Home work is resorted to (according to the evidence of the employer) on account of the excessive competition between traders for quick delivery of contracts. Through giving his work out to homes the employer is free, every now and then, to insist that his unfortunate slaves shall toil through the night to complete his task. Should this privilege be withdrawn from all manufacturers alike the demand of the export trader or the order of the private customer would speedily adapt itself to a more regulated supply. On the other hand, if we regard the quality as well as the price of the article, there is an almost unanimous testimony that systematic home work tends to fraudulent production. In short, it is difficult to determine whether it is the worker or the customer who is really most injured by the sweating system. The task, therefore, which I propose for co-operators, if they really wish to do away with the sweating system, is to follow the precedents of their own action with regard to the Adulteration Acts, and the Merchandise Marks Acts, and to insist upon Parliament passing such a new Factory Act as I have been describing. They have, as we have seen, a direct interest as co-operators, both in the prohibition of demoralising forms of competition, and in the elevation of the lapsed masses now virtually excluded from their ranks. It is their chosen mission to raise the moral standard of industrial life, not only among themselves, but throughout the whole community. They possess, on such questions, an almost unlimited power, would they but choose to exercise it. The first step to reform lies through the House of Commons. We want an extension of the Factory Acts to the sweated industries. But this is a matter in which neither Liberals nor Conservatives are really interested. The miserable workers under the sweating system have no organisation through which they can compel the attention of politicians. But now that their sufferings have been made known to us, it is our duty as citizens to insist, in season and out of season, that those who ask for our votes shall have them only on condition that they will carry out our wishes in this respect. If the million co-operators had been really in earnest during 1891 about doing away with the sweating system, the Government would not have ventured basely to give way to the capitalist and the sweater, and to refuse all amendments of the law which would have put down the present evils.¹⁰ If the Lancashire cotton operatives had been as eager to put down sweating as they were to make their own desires with regard to improvement of the conditions of labour in cotton factories into law, both front benches would have done their bidding in the one matter as they did in the other.

Next year the question will come up again, perhaps under a new government. What action will co-operators take? It rests with you to decide whether your parliamentary committee shall take it up in earnest, whether you will press it upon every candidate whom you can influence, whether from store meeting and district conference this autumn, up and down the land, there shall descend upon M.P.'s, Liberal and Conservative alike, such a flood of resolutions demanding legislation against sweating as shall convince them that the time has gone by for any more shuffling, and that the whole co-operative movement has made up its mind that this dire iniquity shall cease out of the land. These are the practical steps by which, as it seems to me, co-operators can ' best do away with the sweating system.'

Appendix

The following clauses are reprinted from Mr. Sydney Buxton's bill (No. 61 of 1 891), as the best -proposals on the subject yet put into parliamentary form. They represent, however, the minimum of responsibility that should be enforced. The responsibility of the giver-out of work for the hours of labour of the protected classes should also be insisted on in future legislation.

Landlord's Responsibility for Sanitation

The person responsible as owner, under the Acts relating to the public health, for the sanitary condition of any premises used as a factory or workshop, shall be also responsible, concurrently with the occupier, for compliance with such of the requirements of the Factory and Workshops Acts as relate to the sanitary condition of the said premises; and it shall be within the discretion of the factory inspector to proceed against either owner or occupier for the purpose of enforcing the said requirements.

When it shall appear to a Secretary of State, upon the report of any factory inspector, that any factory, workshop, or domestic workshop, is in such a condition as seriously to impair the health of the persons employed therein, and that the owner or occupier thereof, within the space of one month after notice thereof has been given to him, has failed to remedy the defects, the Secretary of State shall have power, by order issued in the manner prescribed by section 65 of the principal Act, and also served upon the said owner or occupier, to require the premises to be forthwith closed, and to remain closed until they have been brought into conformity with the principal Act and the Acts amending the same.

Any person letting for hire premises for the purpose of being used as a domestic workshop, or having reasonable grounds for believing that they are so used or intended to be so used, shall serve notice in writing upon an inspector, specifying the name, if any, and exact address of such premises, the name and address of the occupier thereof, and the name and address of the person responsible as owner of the said premises in accordance with the Public Health Acts, and the inspector shall, on receipt of such notice, forthwith inspect the said premises, and register the same free of charge.

In the event of contravention of this section, the person aforesaid shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds.

The provisions of this section shall only apply to such districts as may be from time to time specified by a Secretary of State by order issued in pursuance of section 65 of the principal Act.

The person responsible as owner under the Public Health Acts shall be required to ensure that any premises let for hire by him for the purpose of being used as a factory, workshop, or domestic workshop, or which he might reasonably suppose to be hired for the purpose of being so used, are in a proper sanitary condition for the purpose; and he shall be deemed, any agreement to the contrary notwithstanding, to warrant the premises as so fit.

In the event of a contravention of this section, the owner of the said premises shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds.

Responsibility of the Employer

It shall be the duty of the occupier of any premises (whether a factory, workshop, domestic workshop, or otherwise) who, in connection therewith, or for the purposes of the occupation carried on there, gives out any material or other article to be manufactured or worked upon by manual labour as defined by section 93 of the principal Act, at any other place than in the said premises in his occupation, to keep a register of the name and address of each person to whom such material or other article is given out, and the date of such delivery, and such register shall be open to inspection by any such person, or the secretary of any trade society, and any inspector and by any officer of the sanitary authority who shall have power to copy any part thereof.

In the event of a contravention of this section in regard to the registering, the occupier of the premises from which such work is given out shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds.

In the event of work being given out to any person who is not on the register, the occupier of the premises from which the said work is given out shall be liable to a fine of not less than ten shillings or more than three pounds.

The occupier of any premises who habitually gives out material or other articles to be manufactured or worked upon by manual labour, as defined by section 93 of the principal Act, at any other place than the said premises, shall be held responsible for the observance of the sanitary provisions of the principal Act, and of any Acts amending the same, with regard to the domestic or other workshops in which such labour is performed, and shall, concurrently with the occupier thereof, be liable to any penalties incurred for any failure to keep the said domestic or other workshops in conformity with the Act.

In construing this section any person to whom the material or other article belongs, which is found upon any premises not kept in conformity with the Act, shall, concurrently with the occupier thereof, be deemed to be liable in the same manner as if he were the occupier thereof.

If an inspector finds any premises in which any manual work, within the meaning of this Act, is being done, to be in an insanitary condition, he shall, if he deems it necessary, thereupon give notice thereof to all persons whose materials or other articles he finds on the said premises, and to any other person known to be in the habit of giving out such materials or other articles to the occupier of the said premises, and if, after a period of three weeks, the premises have not been put into proper sanitary condition, no such person shall continue to give out work to the said occupier under penalty of a fine not exceeding five pounds.

If an inspector discovers on any premises, or portion of the premises, in which any manual work, within the meaning of this Act, is being done, any person residing therein to be suffering from a contagious disease, he shall, if he deems it necessary, give notice thereof to all persons whose materials or other articles he finds on the said premises, or to any other person known to be in the habit of giving out such materials or other articles to the occupier of the said premises, that no such person shall give out any further materials or other articles afore said to the occupier of the said premises until the persons residing therein are free from contagion.

Any person giving out materials or other articles as aforesaid to the occupier of a domestic or other workshop, in contravention of this section, shall be liable to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds.

Notes

1. A paper read at the twenty-fourth annual congress of Co-operative Societies, held at Rochdale, June 1892. ↩
2. The voluminous Report and Evidence of this committee is published as a parliamentary paper, H.L. 62 of 1890. An article by the present writer in the Nineteenth Century for May 1890, entitled 'The Lords and the Sweating System,' gives a critical analysis of the recommendations. A useful summary of the evidence is published by the Women's Liberal Federation, price id. A systematic analysis of the whole problem is concisely given in Fabian Tract, No. 50, Sweating, its Cause and Remedy. ↩
3. The common assumption that sweating arises principally from the struggle for existence among destitute aliens appears to me to be inaccurate. No one would deny that the evils of sweating are aggravated by the presence of workers such as the Jews, with an indefinitely low standard of life and an absence of skill. (See the preceding chapter, 'The Jews of East London.') But all the evils of sweating exist where neither Jews nor foreigners have yet penetrated (as, for instance, in the chain and nail industry); or where their competition is but little felt (as in the low-grade furniture trade). Even in the clothing trades the competition of Jewish immigrants is practically limited to some branches of the tailoring and boot and shoe trades. On the other hand, we are everywhere confronted with a large supply of cheap female labour, far exceeding in numbers even the most exaggerated estimate of alien immigration. The evil effect of Jewish immigrants on the labour market is, indeed, not a question of fact, but a question of proportion. The Jews are counted by their thousands; the women, dragging in their real semi-dependent husbands and a huge force of unprotected children, may be numbered by hundreds of thousands. This aspect of the subject is discussed in various chapters in Mr. Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People; and in Industrial Democracy, part ii. chap. x. sec. 4, 'The Exclusion of Women.' ↩
4. I have not attempted in this paper to deal with home work from the standpoint of trade unionism; but if systematic home work be unfavourable to the growth of co-operation, it is absolutely fatal to the stability, or perhaps even to the existence, of trade combination. Trade unionists are, of all reformers, the most vitally interested in the abolition of workplaces withdrawn from the jurisdiction of law, trade-union regulation, and public opinion. On this point see Industrial Democracy, vol. ii. part ii. chap. xii. ↩
5. The movement against sweating would be assisted if co-operators invariably insisted that no order should be given to any but ' fair ' houses innocent of sweating. Every town council or other public authority should be urged to follow the example of the London County Council, in insisting on the payment by all contractors of the standard rate of wages in each occupation, and in rigidly refusing all tenders from ' unfair ' firms. The cheapness of the sweater (often, by the way, delusive) is the price of blood. ↩
6. The industrial demoralisation of East London is, I believe, caused mainly by the two factors of home work and intermittent dock labour, and even the existence of so large a class of irregularly-employed dock labourers is, to a large extent, rendered possible only by the home work done by their wives. I doubt if co-operation can ever flourish in East London until these continuing sources of degradation are removed. See Industrial Democracy, part iii. chap. iii. sec. 4, ' Parasitic Trades.' ↩
7. At present any proposal to secure better conditions for factory workers is apt to be met by the objection that it will tend to drive the work into the homes, and so perpetuate the sweating system. ↩
8. Many of these proposals were thrown into technical form in Mr. Sydney Buxton's excellent bill for the amendment of the Factory Acts (No. 61 of 189 1). I have reprinted some of the clauses as an appendix to this paper. Unfortunately, hardly any of Mr. Buxton's proposals have been carried into law, and the new Factory Act (54 & 55 Vict. c. 75), whilst conceding all the demands of the well-organised cotton operatives, leaves the condition of the sweated workers, for want of the help of such a widespread organisation as the co-operative movement, even worse than before. Since this was written yet another Factory Act has been passed (58 & 59 Vict. c. 37), which again does nothing effectual to put down sweating. See chap. iii. 'Women and the Factory Acts.' ↩
9. A necessary preliminary to the enforcement of this responsibility would be the compulsory registration, by any employer of home workers, of the names and addresses of all persons to whom he gives out work. The Lords' committee, following the precedent of a Factory Act of Victoria, recommended the enactment of a clause to this effect. This was embodied in the Factory Act of 1891 (sec. 27 of 54 & 55 Vict. c. 75), and it is the only one of the committee's recommendations which has been carried into law. See The Law Relating to Factories and Workshop>s, by May Abraham and Llewellyn Davies (London, 1896.) ↩
10. It is sometimes said that to seek new legislation is beyond the sphere of co-operators. But the great political influence of the co-operative movement is constantly being exerted in order to secure new legislation. Among bills lately promoted or supported by the organised strength of co-operators may be named the Food and Drugs Act, the Leaseholds Enfranchisement Bill, measures relating to property qualification for public office, etc. etc. ↩