SWEATING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10215, 8 December 1893, Page 3

SWEATING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,—The Master Tailors’ Association apparently has a desire to see sweating carried on, with all its attendant evils, as all correspondence from the Tailors’ Union on irregularities of the trade are treated with silent contempt. Boy labour is rampant; one employer has: fourteen apprentices engaged for five, years, who, upon attaining the age of eighteen, are exempt from Factory Act control, so > that extortionate employers work, , the boy twelve to fourteen hours ■ per .day. It is easy to, accumulate wealth when boy sweaters are the producers. In another shop the work is sent out to the sweaters, and their own men have to walk about until an excess of work arrives. In others the wagen are barely an existence. Had the tailors and tailoresses resorted to extreme measures, then the callousness of the Masters’ .Association might have been excusable; but every reasonable effort has been tried and found unavailable. Yet we are told there ia no need of the •Industrial Conciliation and Compulsory Arbitration Act. The workers’ only hope seems, to :,bb . by. the ballot-box and state,legislation^—lam, Ac,, . ASSISTANT SWEATER.