Sweating in London

Evening Star, Issue 7420, 16 January 1888, Page 3

Sweating in London

Mr John Burnett, the labor correspondent of the Beard of Trade, has just issued his report on the sweating system in the East End of London, and a very sad document it is. A more terrible Blavery than that endured by those operated upon by the " sweater " it is impossible to conceive. For instance :—" Case 53 makes children's knickerbockers at a pair, and can earn 5s 6d a week. Case 54 makes children's suits; working ten or eleven hours per day can make 4s 3d per week. Case 54a, a woman of fifty-five and one of twenty-four, who make children's Buits : One week they started at six in the morning, and worked until midnight each day; their total was 8s 6d between the two for the week." Two causes have mainly brought about this terrible state of affairs—namely, the excessive employment of middlemen and the immigration of destitute foreigners. The extent of the readymade clothes trade may be estimated by the fact that the value of the export trade only, exclusive of what is made for this country, amounts to L 3,902,211 annually. The master tailor employs the sweating contractor. The contractor employs another " sweater," and he again employs a number of smaller '• sweaters," and so on, till at the bottom of the tree comes the actual worker, who has, by living on next to nothing and working tor inordinately long hours, to feed

this army of middlemen. Again, the work is now so subdivided that it requires but little skill, and anybody who is oontent to labor on starvation wagps has a ohanco pf employment. '■ There are now cutters, baiters, maohiniata, pressors, fellers, buttonhole workers, and general workers, all brought to bear on tho construction of a oo&t." At a remedy to this state of things, Mr Burnett recommends tho application of the Factories Aot to men as well as to women and ohildren i the restriction, by poll-tax or otherwise, of the immigration of foreigners j that Government shall do Its own work, and that no Government clothing dontraots shall be worked out under the sweating or sub-oontract system ; and that a Commission of Inquiry into the system generally shall be held. He also recommends the introduction of tho cooperative system among the workers, in rrder to do away with the middlemen ; but this recommendation, it need hardly be said, will be utterly futile, for it would be hopeless to expect any combination among such a miscellaneous herd of foreigners as are now crowded together in Whitechapel and its neighborhood. Indeed, the indigenous Englishman is being pushed out of that district, In 1880 there were only one-sixth of the population of Whitechapel foreigners and Jews; the proportion is now onefourth, although there is but little increase in the total of inhabitants. Mr Burnett puts down the number of Jews employed under the sweating system as it prevails in the tailoring trade of East London at from 18,000 to 20.000. This state of affairs appears to indicate that the universal hospitality theory is being pushed a little too far. A line, it would appear, should be drawn somewhere. The. one most advisable would be probably that just above German bands and the utterly destitute foreigner. I