Some witnesses have traced it in a great measure, if not principally, to
the action of factors; some to excessive competition among small masters
as well as men; others have accused the Trades Unions of a course of
action which has defeated the end they have in view, namely, effectual
combination, by driving work, owing to their arbitrary conduct, out of
the factory into the house of the worker, and of handicapping England in
the race with foreign countries, by setting their faces against the use
of the best machinery."[24]
Shirt-making.--Perhaps no other branch of the clothing trade shows so
large an area of utter misery as shirt-making, which is carried on,
chiefly by women, in East London. The complete absence of adequate
organization, arising from the fact that the work is entirely out-work,
done not even by clusters of women in workshops, but almost altogether
by scattered workers in their own homes, makes this perhaps the
completest example of the evils of sweating. The commoner shirts are
sold wholesale at 10s. 6d. per dozen. Of this sum, it appears that the
worker gets 2s. 11/2d., and the sweater sometimes as much as 4s. The
competition of married women enters here, for shirt-making requires
little skill and no capital; hence it can be undertaken, and often is,
by married women, anxious to increase the little and irregular earnings
of their husbands, and willing to work all day for whatever they can
get.
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