"Swearing Dens " in Glasgow.

Southland Times, Issue 9162, 10 March 1886, Page 3

"Swearing Dens " in Glasgow.

A correspondent wites to the Daily Mail :— Let me draw attention to the tailors' workshops in Glasgow. I have Bat in workshops in Glasgow while the thermometer registered 190 ! and I have wrought in others where it fell to 40 (?) within freezing point. The latter workshops were old and unhealthy stables and haylofts, and are generally found on the South-side. Now, the question ia this, what can be done for the tailor ? — the man who makes the mso. Nothing, praotioally nothing. He works by the piece, and the more he works the more are bis wages. It is impossible to shorten his hours of labour, as the following clearly shows : — Tailoring is at a standstill from January till the Ist of April, and from that time, save a week or two in August, it is fairly busy till the middle of October. Out of the twelve months there is work during only eight, and in the other four the men ' are forced into the meanest situations to obtain the common necessaries of life. The trade has also another grievance — that of female ability beioc preferred. With _ perhaps one or two exceptions in Londoa and Glasgow, there is not a shop but has its full complement of women and, girls. These get the Hod's share of the* trade in the bu«y season and all in the •lack, for the very un-Ruskin reason that they receive for tbeir work about onefourth the trade statement. The next grievance is the sweating system, which, after all the glaring exposures it underwent in the Mail, has cropped np again, , and, what is more humiliating, the system finds its beßt patrons in our leading citi zene. I have wrought in a room on the top flat of an old Glasgow tenement about 12 feet by 8, in which three machines and girls, with 10 women, Were kept hammer aid tongs at work for 14 hours a day, With only 20 minutes intermission. They ate as they wrought, and all this ucder the veiy eyes of a Glasgow Town Councillor. I have wrought in another room where v sweating " was carried on. This apartment was ia size about ten feet by five. A, full-*ized bed occupied the half of the room, and round it on the floor sat three women and four men for more than 16 hours a day. I have registered 180 degrees Fahr. at the stove in that apartment. I have wrought in a chop in Glasgow where the odour was so abominable and the vermin so repulsive and multitudinous that out of twenty men and and six femaleß four Buffered fioin astbma, one from skin disease, three from bronchitis, biz from flatulence, while the remainder were more or less imbecile, I It was a common practice for the idle tailors to bunt the rats in this shop. With a fellow workman I have counted 120, and have known over 40 to be killed in a few hours by a •-. larky" unip ; and I have had my dinner stolen by these foetid pests, though it J lay no more than half a yard from my band. I enclose you the | name of this horrible den. We have a society that apeaking financially, is equal, if not vastly superior, to any other in existence, yet is powerless to redress the poor tailors' grievances, Why not publish to the oitfecns the shops who prefer " sweaters" and females to do tbeir work to the exclusion of men, and those who keep dunghills and atablea for workrooms? Why not lorbid a Bociety mac working where women are preferred ?