It does not pay either the employing firm or
the sub-contractor to consider the health or even the life of the
workers, provided that the state of the labour market is such that they
can easily replace spent lives.
4. The inability to combine for their mutual protection and advantage of
scattered employes working in small bodies, living apart, and
unacquainted even with the existence of one another, is another
"cheapness" of the workshop system.
5. The fact that so large a proportion of master-sweaters are Jews has a
special significance. It seems to imply that the poorer class of
immigrant Jews possess a natural aptitude for the position, and that
their presence in our large cities furnishes the corner-stone of the
vicious system. Independence and mastery are conditions which have a
market value for all men, but especially for the timid and often down-
trodden Jew. Most men will contentedly receive less as master than as
servant, but especially the Jew. We saw that the immigrant Jew, by his
capacities and inclinations, was induced to make special efforts to
substitute work of management for manual labour, and to become a profit-
maker instead of a wage-earner. The Jew craves the position of a
sweating-master, because that is the lowest step in a ladder which may
lead to a life of magnificence, supported out of usury. The Jewish Board
of Guardians in London, though its philanthropic action is on the whole
more enlightened than that of most wealthy public bodies, has been
responsible in no small measure for this artificial multiplication of
small masters.
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