If the work
could only be got away from the home and the small workshop, where
inspection is impracticable, and done in the factory or large workshop,
where limitations of hours of labour and sanitary conditions could be
enforced, where the force of public opinion could secure the payment of
decent wages, and where organization among workers would be possible,
the worst phases of the malady would disappear. The abolition of the
small workshop is the great object of a large number of practical
reformers who have studied the sweating system. The following opinion of
an expert witness is endorsed by many students of the question--"If the
employers were compelled to obtain workshops, and the goods were made
under a factory system, we believe that they could be made quite as
cheaply under that system, with greater comfort to the workers, in
shorter hours; and that the profits would then be distributed among the
workers, so that the public would obtain their goods at the same
price."[25] It is maintained that the inferior qualities of shoes are
produced and sold more cheaply in the United States by a larger use of
machinery under the factory system, than in London under a sweating
system, though wages are, of course, much higher in America. Moreover,
many of the products of the London sweating trades are competing on
almost equal terms with the products of provincial factories, where
machines are used instead of hand-labour.
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