Much of the work is extremely laborious, hours are long, twelve
hours forming an ordinary day, and the wage paid is the barest
subsistence wage. Much of the work done by women is quite unfit for
them.
Sec. 5. Who is the Sweater? The Sub-contractor?--These facts relating to a
few of the principal trades in the lower branches of which "sweating"
thrives, must suffice as a general indication of the character of the
disease as it infests the inferior strata of almost all industries.
Having learnt what "sweating" means, our next question naturally takes
the form, Who is the sweater? Who is the person responsible for this
state of things? John Bull is concrete, materialistic in his feeling and
his reasoning. He wants to find an individual, or a class embodiment of
sweating. If he can find the sweater, he is prepared to loathe and
abolish him. Our indignation and humanitarianism requires a scape-goat.
As we saw, many of the cases of sweating were found where there was a
sub-contractor. To our hasty vision, here seems to be the responsible
party. Forty years ago _Alton Locke_ gave us a powerful picture of the
wicked sub-contracting tailor, who, spider-like, lured into his web the
unfortunate victim, and sucked his blood for gain. The indignation of
tender-hearted but loose-thinking philanthropists, short-visioned
working-class orators, assisted by the satire of the comic journal, has
firmly planted in the imagination of the public an ideal of an East
London sweater; an idle, bloated middleman, whose expansive waistcoat is
decorated with resplendent seals and watch-chains, who drinks his
Champagne, and smokes his perfumed cigar, as he watches complacently the
sunken faces and cowering forms of the wretched creatures whose
happiness, health, and very life are sacrificed to his heartless greed.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100