Wichita eagle., 1888-07-15

parliamentary committee On the so called
Sweating system" would do it. Ii free
traders did not too often belong to that
incorrigible ciass-n1e1 who adopt q phras-
ingly plausible theory and adhere to in
spite of overwhelming evidence OF its folly
the evidence now offered from every
part of England would snake even their
Anglomaniac convictions. il London work
ingInan. asked by the parliamentary com
nittee what he considered the greatest
evils now threatening him, promptly
replied, sweating and swarmery," by
which he meant that worknen driven
out of their own trades by German. Bel
gian and other competition had ''swarmed -
into the cities and were employed ON the
Sweating" system.
And what is the Sweating" system?
Well, as the regular workshops are badly
overcrowded, and the desperate workmen
in them combine to exclude new men, q
multitude of small employers has sprung
up; they put the needy laborers in small
rooms, thus escaping the inspection or
dered by the factories acts, and pay them
half or less than half the current rates,
thus undertaking the legitimate en-
ployers and pocketing the enormous
profits. The evidence before the commit
tee reads as If II were wrung out OF racked
bodies and written in blood.
One woman. for instance, employed in
putting the bristles into hair brushes,
earned just FIVE farthings about Two and
half cents per hour, working in her
own room, and had to deliver the brushes
every night, as the middle man would not
trust the poor starving wretch with more
than one days materials. In another
room man made twelve pairs of shoes
for four and half shillings NEARLY 81. 10),
and delivered them. He was sort Of
aristocrat among the ''sweated," as he
could be trusted with stock enough for
such big job. The stories told by match
box makers, chair makers, bird cage max
ers and hair sieve weaEers were simply
heartrending. One man furnished his
own wood and wire, worked in his own
room and made small innet cages for
nine pence q doZenl
And these were not .ese worst cases; for
it was found that scores of small, unven-
t1Gted rooms were taken by the middle
men as workshops; that in them the vic
tins were crowded as thick as they could
work, and in more than one instance, as
it was proved, the air was so loaded with
disease that the clothing made there was
infected with it, and diseases of nature
SO peculiar that physicians could not dag
nose them were thus introduced into the
houses Of comparatively well to do people.
In other instances the trusted women who
were allowed to take the clothing to their
own rooms were found 'in unwomanly
rags" toiling till faintness overcame
them, barely sustaining life on the poorest
food and signing the weary refrain:
O God that bread should be so dear
And flesh and blood SO cheapi
Perhaps the saddest feature of the case
is that many of those sufferers were from
the country, where they had once been
rosy and stalwart farm tenants or labor
ers; but the agricultural interest has de-
clined so rapidly under free trade that the
exiled ruraists are now crowding the
cities. The agricultural reports continue
the dreary detail that from 10000 to
200, 600 moro acres every year are changed
from grain to grass lands, and the cult