HOME WORK AND SWEATING.

BETWEEN 1886 and 1889 the public became very much excited over the horrors of the "Sweating System." The revelations of hideous suffering, overwork and want brought home for a brief space to the minds of the middle and upper classes "how the poor live." Gradually the excitement died away: new topics absorbed the interest of the public; and of Sweating and the Sweating System we heard little. In 1906, however, the Daily News, following the example of a philanthropic society at Berlin, arranged an exhibition of sweated industries. Workers were shewn, in a London hall, actually manufacturing match-boxes, blouses, etc., or carding hooks and eyes, and so forth; and though for obvious reasons neither the long hours of work nor the insanitary conditions which too generally characterize similar employments, could be permitted or represented in an exhibition, full explanatory details of rates of pay, cost of materials, etc., were given to visitors, and each day there was a lecture by some person qualified to describe and illustrate not only the seen but the unseen side of sweating. The show attracted a vast deal of attention. Pity and sympathy were freely expressed; but along with the pity was mingled a note of sheer bewilderment, and almost daily, when question-time followed the lecture, came the cry, "What can be done? what can we ourselves do, to stop it?" The present Tract is an attempt, not to revive the useless public excitement, but to set plainly before the workers themselves-and especially before the organized Trade Unionists, who can do most to bring about a reform -the actual facts as to Sweating, and the way in which it can be abolished.

What is meant by the Sweating System.

The phrase, the Sweating System is misleading. All experts agree that there is no one industrial system co-extensive with, or invariably present in, the Sweated Trades. Mr. Booth expresses this by saying that it is not with one but many sweating systems we have to deal: Mr. Schloss says that no sweating system whatever is discoverable; and the House of Lords Committee, whilst reporting that the evils complained of could "scarcely be exaggerated," said that they had been unable to find any precise meaning attached to the phrase. An enquiry into sweating resolves itself, therefore, into an enquiry into the conditions under which the "sweated industries" are worked. Here at least a painful and striking uniformity is met with, and accepting it as a starting point, the Lords Committee defined Sweating_as :

1.-Unduly low rates of wages.
2.-Excessive hours of labor.

3.-Insanitary state of the workplaces.

to an unreasonable extent, or getting sixpenny-worth of work out of fourpenny-worth of pay ("driving "). The broadest definition we can find for the term sweating, is, "grinding the faces of the poor." Professor Ashley* has given us a new and vivid phrase," cheap and docile labor," which helps to explain the special characteristic of sweated industry. Sweated workers are sweated because either by reason of sex, age, infirmity or want of organization and support, they have to let their work go cheap. They are compelled by need to sell their labor to the first purchaser who will take it, and cannot make conditions. They must work at the rates of pay the employer thinks good enough for them, and the smallness of the pay automatically extends the hours of work.

Sweating is no new thing. It occurs usually as a symptom of one of two kinds of industrial change: either as the decay of a handicraft or as an extension or offshoot of the factory system. Handloom weaving is an instance of the former kind that will occur to us at once. Long before machinery was introduced we find the scattered weavers suffering from their lack of organization, subject to continual oppression by the factors who disposed of the stuff. Elizabeth's ministers were so impressed with the gravity of the evil that they drafted a bill to "avoid deceits done by Spinners of Woollen yarn and Weavers of Woollen cloth, and to increase their wages." (S. P. Dom. Eliz. Vol. 244.) In more recent times the handloom weavers vainly petitioned Parliament to revive the assessment of wages in their trade. In 1815 it was argued before Peel's Committee on the Employment of Children in Cotton Mills that it was unjust to limit the hours of children working in the mills while the handloom weavers, being grievously underpaid, often had to keep their children working far into the night to make up a living. In Germany and Austria and elsewhere the decaying handicraft, or Hausindustrie, is well known and widely spread. It is not only the competition of hand work with machinery that cuts down the rates of pay. The chain making at Cradley Heath shews that a handicraft can be grossly underpaid and sweated, although as yet no machine has been invented to do the work. But in England the sweated industry now more often takes the form of an auxiliary to the factory. Tailoring, clothing shirts, blouses, ties, shoes, slippers and various trifles such as toys, crackers, match-boxes, instead of being made in the factory, are given out to be made or partly made in the workers' homes. This at first sight seems mysterious, for the economy and efficiency of factory industry (production on a large scale) has been demonstrated over and over again, in theory and in practice. How is it that blouses or match-boxes continue to be made in homes if they could be better and more cheaply made in a factory?

The Reason why Sweating Pays the Sweater. Although, broadly speaking, the factory is the more economical method, yet the employment of home-workers offers an advantage, *Th Tariff Pro sm, 1903, p. 110.

in that very little capital is needed for starting or extending a business, and also because the sweating employer or contractor is able to shift some of the cost on to other people's shoulders. The manufacturer has to pay rent and rates for his factory; the sweater leaves the workers to pay rent for themselves. The manufacturer has to observe Factory Act requirements as to the cleaning, ventilation and sanitation of his factory; the sweater does not trouble about the condition of the workrooms to which he gives out work, as long as he gets the work done. The manufacturer may only employ women, children and young persons, for a certain period and within certain hours; the sweater's hands may work all night if they and he see fit. But there is another circumstance which gives the sweater an advantage, or apparent advantage, and that is in the complete lack of organization among these out-workers. It is true, no doubt, that factory women also are generally unorganized, but the mere fact of working and being paid together helps to maintain some sort of a standard, though often low enough. Out-workers are mostly very poor people, scattered about in their little homes, knowing nothing of one another; sometimes very shy and shrinking; they are often women who sorely need a few shillings to supplement the more or less irregular earnings of the head of the house, but are not entirely dependent on their own industry. If they ask for better pay or attempt to protest against a reduction of rates, there is one answer for them; others will be thankful to get the work. Some of these women get a little charity; many have poor relief; some have husbands who earn 16s. or 17s. a week when they are lucky enough to be in work at all. Some depend entirely on their wretched trade, and their case must be little better than prolonged starvation. All of them constitute however a force of "cheap and docile labor" which can be made profitable after a fashion, though it can obviously be applied to some industries only. Work that depends on delicate or costly machinery, or on skilled supervision and organization, is safe from any competition from the home. But the needlework trades and certain small objects that can be made with little skill, boxes, toys, crackers, etc., offer a field to the enterprise of the sweating employer, because the work can so easily be transferred from the factory or shop to the home. And the peculiarly unfortunate feature of this competition between the two industrial modes is that every improvement in the Factory Law or in its administration tends to drive work out of the factory into the home. If a local authority resolves to adopt a higher standard of requirements in regard to "suitable and sufficient tary accommodation, the occupier of a workshop may decide to send away women and give them work to do at home; on the other hand, stricter inspection of out-workers will help to disgust their employer, who will think he would rather take on more indoor hands than be worried over the infectious diseases of people he knows very little about. The exact effect of the law in force in deciding the choice between outdoor and indoor employment is a point on which fuller information is much needed. But one thing is plain; the legal regulation of home work must be amended and extended in order to

do away with the unfair advantage obtained by the employer; otherwise the benefit of the Factory Act to the worker will in certain industries involve the giving more work out to homes.

Wages.

The unfair advantage enjoyed by the sweater is of two kinds: first, the evasion of factory legislation, already mentioned; second, the extreme lowness of the wages paid. Of the low wages so much has been heard lately that it is hardly necessary to labor the point further. We may take a few instances at random from the Daily News Exhibition Handbook.

A. Trouser maker, widow with 4 children, works 10 or 12 hours a day, her best earnings (exceptional) are 10s. 6d. a week; more often 3s. or 4s.; receives parochial relief.

B. Match-box maker, works 12 hours a day, earns on an average less than 5s. a week. Highest earnings 8s. 2d. for a full week including Sunday. C. Button carder. Two old people work together, earn 3s. 6d. per week.

Such instances could be multiplied ad nauseam. The Cradley Heath chain makers, after deducting cost of fuel, earn only 5s. to 6s. weekly for hard work, of a kind really skilled in its way, and not yet replaceable by machinery. The present writer has personally visited home workers in London, Birmingham and Cradley Heath, and has met with one, a skilled waistcoat maker, who was paid a living wage. The next most favourable instance was that of a remarkably quick, capable girl, making girls' frocks, lined throughout and trimmed, at 8d. each, deducting cost of cotton. She said she could make five or even six a day on occasion; but "you have to move yourself to do it"; and one could well believe it. This was an exceptionally quick worker; what would have been the earnings of an average or slow worker? In match-box making and similar wretched trades, about id. per hour seems to be what the piece rates yield. The lowest depths of all perhaps are reached by workers who sew hooks and eyes, buttons, etc., on cards. Carding hooks and eyes I have found paid at 14d. per gross cards in Birmingham. The employer was threatening to reduce the price to 10 d. for there were middlewomen who could farm the work out to " very poor people," and thus cut the recognized price of 14d. per gross. The average earnings of women in this work are only about 3s. 3d. weekly, even when they work long hours.* In all these small home industries the wages appear to tend steadily downwards, although in factory work women's wages have been rising for a considerable period. The explanation is not far to seek; whereas the factory industry, aided not only by machinery which can be seen, but by improvements in organization and supervision which are not seen (or not so easily), becomes more efficient and produces at a less cost, in home work there is no scope

*Daily News Hanabook, p. 39.

† See G. H. Wood, F.S.S., in the Journal of the Statistical Society, June, 1902.