Fabian TraCt No. 130. 


HOME WORK and SWEATING 


. 

The Causes and the Remedies. 


By Miss B. L. HUTCHINS. 

PuBLISHED AND SoLD BY 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 

PRICE ONE PENNY. 

LONDON: 
THR FABIAN SociETY, 3 CLF.MENT's INr-:, STRAND, W C. 
jANUARY 1907. 



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 Datly 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 1s meant by the Sweating System. 
The phrase, the Sweating Sy stem 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 bysaying that it is not with one but many sweating systems we have to 
deal : Mr. Schloss says that no sweating S)•stem 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 :I.-
Unduly low rates of wages. 
2.-Excessive hours of labor. 
3.-Insanitary state of the workplaces. 


4 

Mr. Schloss has added the important point, taxing of working-power 
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 employerthinks 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. Longbefore machinery was introduced we find the scattered weavers suffer· 
ing from their lack of organization, subject to continual oppressionby the factors who disposed of the stuff. Elizabeth's ministers were 
so impressed wjth 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 £ncrease thez"r wages." (S. P. Dam. Eliz. Vol. 
244.) In more recent times the handloom weavers vainly petitionedParliament to revive the assessment of wages in their trade. In 181 5 
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 grievouslyunderpaid, 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 widelyspread. It is not only the competition of hand work with machinerythat cuts down the rates of pay. The chain making at CradleyHeath 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, 

• The Tariff Problem, 1903, p. 110. 

5 


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 onlyemploy women, children and young persons, for a certain period and 
within certain hours ; the sweater's hands may work all night if theyand 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, knowingnothing 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 competitionbetween 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 higherstandard of requirements in regard to "suitable and sufficient" sanitary 
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 legalregulation of home work must be amended and extended in order to 


6 

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 Da£/y News 
Exhibition Handbook. 

A. 
Trouser maker, widow with 4 children, works ro or 12 hours 
a day, her best earnings (exceptional) are ros. 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 ss. a week. Highest earnings 8s. 2rl. for a full week including 
Sunday.
C. 
Button carder. Two old people work together, earn 3s. 6d. perweek. 
Such instances could be multiplied ad 11auseam. The CradleyHeath chain makers, after deducting cost of fuel, earn only ss. to 6s. 
weekly for hard work, of a kind really skilled in its way, and not yetreplaceable 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 .:otton. 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 quickworker ; what would have been the earnings of an average or slow 
worker? In match-box making and similar wretched trades, about 
rd. 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 IOtd. 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 theywork 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.t The explanationis 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 Handbool<, p. 39· 
· t See G. H. Wood, F.S.S., in theJour11al ofthe Stalislical Society, June, 1902. 


7 


for these improvements, and employment is given to "cheap and 
docile labor" only. In so far as these women consent to take lower 
and lower rates, they can get work. 

Sweating is not "cheap" to the community. 

The sweater, as we have seen, may squeeze a profit out of such 
" cheap and docile labor," in so far as he can shift the cost of subsistence 
on to other people, or compel his employees to do with wagesinsufficient to keep them in health. How far is such labor really 
"cheap " ? The cost to the community in physical deterioration 
and poor relief is impossible to estimate in £ s. d., but obviously it 
must be considerable. In many cases the children are pressed into 
the service, and set to sew buttons or hooks on cards as soon as they 
come in from school. A home worker will tell you she can make 
so-and-so per week "with the children helping." Ifthe children are 
too young to work, the result of the mother's home work is that theyare neglected. A young married woman, perhaps with a recent babyand two or three little ones beside, tries to supplement her husband's 
irregular or scanty earnings by taking some work ; finishing babies' 
boots, for instance. The boots thus made are usually hard, stiff, 
wretched little things, of a kind no baby should ever wear ; meantime 
the worker, tired, dejected, underpaid and underfed, uses all her 
small strength to make a few pence over this wretched employment,
and has little energy left to clean her room or care for her own children, 
who stray about unwashed, half-clothed, and neglected. It is 
impossible to imagine a more deplorable misdirection of energy. Let 
illness come, and the possible results are such as no one can contemplate 
without a shudder. A "notifiable" infectious disease mayperhaps be discovered in good time, if the inspector is watchful, and 
stops the work before it is too late ; but we are coming more and 

more to realize that most diseases are infectious, and that tuberculous 
disease is especially so. The germs of disease or vermin may and 
doubtless often are, carried from one poor little child to another in 
the shoes, clothing or toys made under these conditions. The deterioration 
of physique that must result in children brought up in these 
miserable surroundings and on insufficient food is so evident that it 
needs no emphasis. 

What Has Been Done. 
Successive enquiries and reports have brought these conditions 
before the public. The Commission on Children's Employment,
1863-7, advised the extension of the Factory Act to homes in which 
certain industries were carried on. But no government has had the 
courage to take such a step, each in turn having been daunted, partly 
no doubt by a vague dread of infringing "the sanctity of the home," 
but still more, probably, by the practical difficulties of administering 
such an Act. The law in regard to home work consists of a few 
very mild provisions. Lists of out-workers' names and addresses 
must be kept by employers or contractors in certain specified trades, 
and must be forwarded to the district or town council (in London 


8 

the Metropolitan Borough Council) and the names and addresses of 
out-workers residing outside the borough or district must be forwarded 
on by the authority to the authority of the district or boroughin which the out-worker resides. Giving out work to be done in 
unwholesome premises, or to a house in which any person is suffering 
from an infectious disease, is punishable by fine, unless the contractor 
can plead ignorance, which of course in many cases he can. These 
regulations are not strong enough to fix the responsibility for the 
conditions under which the work is done on the shoulders of the 
employer, and there is good reason to suppo$e that even as theystand, the regulations are not well observed.* C"<lrOI' 

In domestic workshops, viz., those workshops in which only the 
members of a family are employed, the hours of work are unregulatedas regards women, and are regulated for children and young persons 
on an elastic system, by which the number of hours the child or 
young person may work is restricted, but the period of employmentand meal-times need not be stated, save only that work must cease 
at night, viz., between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Now all experience tends to 
show that a regulation of hours which does not include a statement 
of the period of employment is very nearly illusory. In these cases 
the inspector cannot do much more than check the employment of 
children and young persons at night. No regulation as to hours applies 
to out-workers, unless the out-worker is himself an employer of 
a child, young person, or woman, as sometimes happens, in which 
case the work place is a "workshop" and as such is under the FactoryAct. But the solitary home-worker, and the worker whose employment 
is " irregular and does not furnish the whole or principal means 
of living of the family," IT'ay work any hours that seem to them 
good.

The hours of work of out-workers are, however, closely bound upwith the question of wages. The employer does not directly compel 
them to work long hours, but he exercises compulsion indirectly 
through the miserable rates of pay. Out-workers would not work 
so many hours if they could get a decent remuneration without so 
doing. It is often urged by religious and benevolent persons who 
are shocked when these facts come to light, that the purchasersof wares so unjustly made are guilty, and ought to satisfy themselves 
that goods are not made by sweated labor. Can pressure be brought 
to bear by customers to ensure better wages ? 

Consumers' Leagues and Trade Union Labels. 

Private consumers cannot exercise much influence. It is doubtful 
whether consumers' leagues, by issuing "white lists," can do 
much to favor the good employer, for the reason that trade is so 
complicated that it is practically impossible to trace the production 

• The statistics contained in the Return presented to Parliament, No. 2II of 
1906, shew that in a considerable number of districts little use has been made by the 
local authorities of their powers under the home work provisions of the Factory Act. 
In Ocrober, 1906, the Home Office issued a Memorandum to the Clerks of Town and 
Borough Councils urging the importance of thorough administration. 

9 

of a.ny article through its stages. We may please ourselves with the 
notion that Messrs. Barkley or Whiterod, or whoever it is we prefer, 
is "all right," and provides seats or afternoon tea for his youngpeople, which no doubt is all to the good as far as it goes. But who 
can trace the clothing, the jam, or the toys sold by Barkley and 
Whiterod, back to the dealer, and thence to the actual makers of the 
goods, who may be scattered all over England, or, indeed, the world? 
Consumers' leagues might however exercise a very good educational 
influence by agitati!)n, by disseminating instruction among their 
members and the public, and even by raising the standard of public 
opinion on the two points of (a) paying bills regularly, (b) treatingtradespeople with more consideration in the matter of giving orders 
for clothing, etc., with a reasonable time allowed for carrying them 
out. In both these ways the well-to-do classes, sometimes from hard 
callousness, but much more often from sheer ignorant thoughtlessness,
help to tighten the pressure of competition on the tradesman, and 
through him on the workers, and here there is a real field for the 
educating influence of the consumers' league. Again, the committees 
of philanthropic societies and religious bodies should before all others 
see that their own hands are clean. It is not a pleasant thoughtthat bibles are frequently stitched and folded at starvation rates of 
pay; and illegal overtime on church embroidery before festivals has 

been so frequent as to be specially mentioned by the Chief LadyInspector. The committees also of working·men's clubs, co-operative 
societies, friendly societies and trade unions might scrupulously 
pass the "rat-shop" printer by, however cheaply he may offer to do 
the work. Some good, perhaps, might be done by the requirementof a label on goods for sale, stating that the goods were tenement 
made, in unhealthy conditions, or the reverse. This plan has been 
tried in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, it is said, with some success 
; but th-= extreme ease with which a label can be forged or destroyed 
makes the provision of doubtful value. It is better to face 
the fact that the customer is for the most part powerless to ascertain 
where or how his purchases have been produced ; and though the 
"education of demand" may do a little to check sweating, much 
cannot be hoped from it. Much sweating, moreover, is carried on 
not for the supply of public authorities or even for the English customer, 
but for export. It becomes· evident, then, that only the 
collective authority of the community acting through its organized 
representatives can take effective action. 

Protection of Home Industries. 
Protection of home industries is sometimes urged as a possible 
remedy for sweating. The evidence collected for the Berlin exhibition 
of sweated industries shewed however that sweating is quite as 
rampant in protected Germany as in free-trade England; and there 
are colonies of home-workers in Chicago and New York where even 
the very high tariff maintained in America does not make wages or 
conditions any better than in the worst parts of London. Regulationof sweating would do far more for trade than any import duty on 


10 

manufactured goods, as it would deprive the sweater of the unfair 
advantage he now gets by employing "cheap and docile labor" in 
unregulated workrooms, and more custom and a larger share of the 
export trade would then go to the traders who are carrying on business 
honestly under fair conditions. 

Alien Immigration. 
Restraint of immigration is often urged as a remedy for sweating, 
but the Aliens Act of 1905 achieved little or nothing, and it is 
unlikely that even a much more drastic Act would really check the 
evil. It must be remembered that the alien population is comparatively 
small, though, no doubt, in one or two districts it forms 
a high percentage. Sweating is quite equally rampant where the 
alien is a negligible quantity. There are practically no foreigners 
in the cutlery or nail and chain-making industries, yet there the 
sweater flourishes. Even in the tailoring trades, the competition 
of destitute foreigners is as nothing compared with the great 
mass of unskilled and unorganized female labor which crowds the 
market. The removal of all Jews from the sweated trades would 
be but a partial and temporary relief. The evil effect of the Jew's 
competition lies in the characteristics which render him a fit subjectfor the pestilential conditions of home work: he overcrowds whole 
districts ; his standard of comfort is low ; and his ingenuity has 
created or organized new industries to suit the circumstances. In 
the factory, English skilled labor has the preference : abolish the 
conditions that now specially favor the demoralizing competition of 
the Jew, and the difficulty will be got over without an impracticable 
policy of exclusion. The latest factory inspector's report from New 
Zealand (June, 1906) says that though there has been a considerable 
influx of labor into the colony of late years, no displacement or unemployment 
of their own people has ensued. Why? Because the 
system ofemploymwt £11 the colony perm£ts no undercutt£ng tit wages,

and "thus gives to those possessing knowledge of local conditions 
and requirements advantage over the visitor, unless the latter shows 
decidedly superior attainments." 

How Wages have been Raised. 

If we want to decide how to raise the wages of sweated workers 
we are fortunately not compelled to rely on theory alone, for in the 
colonies of Australasia two distinct methods of regulating wages have 
been in operation for ten or eleven years, and the results can be 
studied on the spot, or in reports issued on the subject. The two 
methods were initiated respectively by New Zealand in I 894 and byVictoria, Australia, in 1896. In New Zealand the machinery designedfor the prevention and settlement of labor disputes is made use of 
to abolish sweating. "The colony was divided into districts, in 
each of which a local board of conciliation might, if petitioned for, 
be set up, composed of equal numbers of masters and men, with an 
impartial chairman. At the request of any party to an industrial 
dispute, the district board was to call the other parties before it, and 


II 

hear, examine and award. As soon as a dispute stood referred to a 

board, anything in the nature of striking or locking-out was for


bidden. A board's award, however, was not to be enforce


able by law, but was only to be a friendly recommendation to the 

disputants. In case these, or any of them, refused to accept it, any 

party might appeal to the court of arbitration, or the conciliators 

themselves, if hopeless of effecting a settlement, might themselves 

send a case thither."* The court is presided over by a Judge of the 

Supreme Court, and it rests with the court to say whether the award 

is to have the force of law or to be merely in the nature of good

advice. If it is to have legal force, it must be filed in the Supreme

Court and then it has the weight of an ordinary submission to an 

award, and any party to it can, by leave of the judge, get an order 

exacting a penalty for breach of it. Decisions of the court are 

binding not only on the parties to the dispute, but on all employers 

and trade unions registered in the trade, and since 1900 decisions are 

equally binding on anyone entering the industry regulated by them. 

For present purposes we are concerned with this New Zealand 
measure, not as a means of settling disputes, but for the regulation of 
sweating. The basis of the institution is trade unionism, and it mighttherefore seem as if it could effect little for unorganized workers, 
especially women. But in practice it has done much. If sweated 
workers want to have a revision of the conditions of their work, theyhave but to file a statement of claim in the office of the nearest conciliation 
board, and they are at once in the position of a union. 
Working women have invoked the aid of the law to good purpose. 
For instance, in Auckland, as lately as 1892, it had been found impossible 
to establish a tailoresses' union or a fair factory log, but 
under the Arbitration Act they gained an increase of wages estimated 
at firteen per cent. The latest factory inspector's reports from New 
Zealand state that the Arbitration Act is working most satisfactorily. 
The wages of workers have been increased, and employment has 
become more regular.

Inspectors of awards have been recently appointed, and these 
inspectors are often able to settle disputes without having recourse 
to the courts at all, and in cases where employees have been sweated 
or unfairly paid, the payment of arrears can be claimed. The reportfor 1904-5 says that 295 informations of breach of contract were laid, 
of which 232 were won by the workpeople. Three hundred and 
twelve cases were settled without having recourse to the courts, and 
£1,463 of back wages secured for the workers, besides what was 
obtained at arbitration. In 1905-6, £788 of arrears were obtained 
for the workers by the inspector, plus £1,153 obtained under award 
of the court. 

It will be seen that a great deal is done by agreement and adjustment. 
A noteworthy feature of the arbitration law is a provision for 
filing in the Supreme Courts contracts embodying working conditions 
agreed upon by employers and unions. These documents, called 
industrial agreements, are, when filed, binding for the period men


• Reeves, State Expen"mtnls ;, A ustralia a11d New Zealand, Vol. ii., p. 102. 

tioned in them, which must not exceed three years. Numbers of 
these agreements are voluntarily entered into, and the arbitration 
court sometimes orders the parties to a dispute to execute an industrial.
agreement.

In Victoria wages have been regulated by the plan of havingspecial boards for each trade, consisting of equal numbers of members 
elected as representatives of employers and employed, with a chairman 
elected by the board. A board may be appointed to fix wagesand piece rates for persons employed either inside or outside factories. 
It must also fix the hours for which the rate of wage is fixed, and the 
rate of pay for overtime ; and in fixing wages must take into 
consideration the nature, kind and class of work, the age and sex of 
the workers, and any matter which may be prescribed by regulation.

This Act was passed in 1896 in order to stamp out the sweatingwhich had been shewn to exist in Melbourne and elsewhere in 
Victoria. It has met on the whole with great success, and the 
inspector's reports state that sweating has been practically stamped 
out. South Australia followed Victoria, and passed a Wages Board 
Act in 1900. The main difference between the two methods is that 
in the case of New Zealand, the unit of administration is the district; 
in the case of Victoria it is the trade. In the former case the 
authority isjud£c£al; in the second it is elective. 

Suggestions. 

I.-SANITARY REGULATION. 

Short of regulating wages, we do not believe that any real or 
adequate control of the sweater can be maintained. But undoubtedlyefficient sanitary inspection of homes used as workrooms may do 
some good indirectly, in that it protects the consumer from the veryreal danger of dirt and infection, and also in that it checks the 
giving out of work in some degree, and is likely to ensure more work 
being done in factories and workshops, "to which the employer has 
the right of a;;cess and control." Two competing suggestions are 
now before the public; these are known respectively as the Tennant 
Bill and the Women's Industrial Council's Bill, the latter usuallyintroduced jointly by some friends or members of the Women's 
Industrial Council and of the Scottish Council for Women's Trades. 
Mr. Tennant's Bill aims at placing the responsibility for the conditions 
under which work is done in home workrooms on the giver-
out of work ; and would place the administration in the hands of 
the local sanitary authority, who already receives the out-workers' 
lists. The Women's Industrial Council Bill involves more of an innovation 
; it would place inspection of out-workers under the factoryinspectors, and all out-workers would have to produce a certificate 
shewing that their workrooms had been inspected and found suitable 
for the work to be carried on, having regard to the health of the 
persons to be employed therein. This measure would involve a 
considerable increase in the inspecting staff, but as that is for other 
reasons highly necessary and desirable, it does not in itself constitute 


an objection. In New Zealand and some other colonies any workroom 
where two or more persons are employed, the employer counting 
as one, constitutes a factory within the meaning of the Act. The 
employment of children by their parents does not constitute an exception. 
Those who have studied the history of factory legislation 
can see that this is by far the best method, and the only one that can 
check sweating in home work and prevent unfair competition with 
well-conducted industry. It would however be very difficult to passsuch a measure all at once, in an old country like ours. The 
Women's Industrial Council's Bill or Mr. Tennant's Bill would form 
an intermediate stage, and help the transition to the more logicaland comprehensive measure adopted in New Zealand. 

II.-TRUCK AND PARTICULARS. 

A recent legal decision has held out-workers to be outside the 
operation of the Truck Acts, and thus, Miss Squire says,* placedthousands of workpeople outside the protection they had hitherto 
successfully claimed. This anomaly will it is to be hoped be rightedbefore long by legislation. A provision recommended by the International 
Conference for Labor Regulation, Geneva, 1906, was that 
"particulars" of work and wages (now required under our law to be 
given to the worker) should also be exposed in the employer's payoffice. This might be very useful and perhaps would help towards 
the difficult work of organizing the trades in question. 

III.-wAGE REGULATJON. 

While measures for better inspection of home work and for 
improved sanitary conditions should have all the support that can 
be given them, and the restricted hours of work in domestic workshops 
should be enforced as far as possible, and made binding on 
home workers wherever children are employed, yet these measures 
by themselves will almost certainly prove inadequate. The utmost 
cleanliness and the strictest enforcement of an Eight Hours Day will 
not provide food for the sweated worker's child or make six shillings 
a week into a decent wage for a woman. 

The Wages Boards are supported by the high authority of Sir 
Charles Dilke, who has several times introduced a Bill on the lines of 
the Victorian measure. The advantage of the New Zealand plan 
however is that instead of confiding the regulation of wages to the 
representatives of sectional interests, an impartial and unbiassed authority 
of high legal knowledge and position is set up, who after 
hearing and weighing the evidence of those immediately concerned, 
can fix minimum rates binding on an industry within a given district, 
and the same authority also has power to decide disputes as to hours 
and conc!itions of employment (so far as these are not already regulated 
by the Factories Act), while the wages board is really an ad hoc 
body dealing with wages and nothing else. Without attempting to 
discuss every detail of the machinery that would have to be set in 
motion in England, we suggest that the Conciliation Act, 1896, might 

,,

*Factory Inspector's Report for 1905, p. 323. 


be amended and extended so as to deal with sweated trades.* The 
Board of Trade might be empowered to appoint a commissioner to 
enquire into the conditions of home work in some special district, 
and if much sweating were discovered, the commissioner should form 
a board, consisting of himself and two persons thoroughly conversant 
with the trade, as representatives of employers and employed. Homeworkers 
might then register as unions under the board, every care 
being taken to make the process as simple as possible. The board 
would then proceed to take evidence as to the rates of pay, in order 
to discover what piece rates yield a living wage per hour. Havingdrawn up a scale, which should be published in the district and made 
known as far as possible, every effort should be used to induce the 
employers to adopt the scale voluntarily as a minimum. The factoryinspector might be charged with the duty of discovering how far the 
minimum rate was adopted, and of calling the attention of employers 
to the decision. If difficulties were made, and the standard rate was 
not adopted, recourse should be had to a Court of Arbitration, whose 
decisions should have the force of law, and be bindiug for the trade 
within the district concerned. The experience of New Zealand shews 

that the inspector can do a great deal to bring about amicable arrangements 
and fair agreements as to wages, without recourse to the Court, 
when it is known that he has that measure in reserve. A very difficult 
question would be the decision of the amount of the standard 
minimum wage, for which the assistance and advice of experts would 
have to be called in. It would have to be remembered that manysweated workers are working as supplementary earners only; therefore 
the most effectual method would be, not to require a livingweekly wage, which would certainly be evaded wholesale, but a scale 
of piece rates which would yield a fair remuneration per hour. Supposing 
it was decided that Iss. should be the standard minimum 
weekly wage for women, the piece rates should be calculated so as to 
yield about 3!d. per hour, which would mean a very substantial 
increase to most home workers. Inspectors of awards, as in New 
Zealand, should be appointed to enforce the law. It would probablybe wise not to attempt to fix a really living wage at once, but to tryand effect a moderate rise first, and revise the rates after two or 
three years. If a system of this kind was tried first in one or two 
districts notorious for sweating, it might then gradually be extended 
and develop into a national minimum. 

We believe that the New Zealand Arbitration Court offers greatadvantages in the superior judgment and detachment of mind that 
could be brought to bear by a skilled expert, who would have the 
opportunity of hearing evidence from different trades, as comparedwith the method of leaving the solution to the decision of those 
themselves concerned in any particular industry, and we also believe 

• It may be noticed that the measures for regulating wages here suggested are 
not entirely identical with those advocated in Fabian Tract No. 128. The di.crepancyis one of detail merely. The writer of the present Tract is entirely in sympathy with 
the principles laid down in "The Case fora Legal Minimum Wage," but doubts the 
advisability of employjng the local authorities in the manner there suggested. 

15 


that the encouragement given to women's organizations by making it 
cheap and easy for any little group of workers to register as a union, 
might have most valuable results. Experience shews that efficiency 
in the administration of the Factory Act regulations approaches perfection 
most nearly where the workers are best organized, and themselves 
take an intelligent interest in the measures enacted for their 
good. Women have hitherto proved apathetic and weak-kneed as 
trade unionists, but they are improving year by year. It is noticeable 
that a commission appointed in Victoria to enquire into the 
working of the various labor laws of the Australasian colonies stronglycommended the New Zealand regulations. It reported as follows:"
The New Zealand Conciliation and Arbitration Acts remain to-daythe fairest, most complete, and most useful labor law on the statute 
books of the Australian States protecting on the one hand 
the fair-minded employer from the dishonest competition of the 
sweater, who keeps down cost of production by paying miserablylow wages, and on the other, the toiling thousands to whom a rise 
in wages of a few shillings a week when an industry can fairly bear 
it, often means the difference between griping poverty and comparative 
comfort. Its main provisions have stood the test of time ; and 
while employers and workers alike keenly criticize each other's 
actions in connection with its operations in certain industrial centres, 
in no part of the colony which we visited dtd we hear any generaldes£re expressedfor t"ts repeal."

Special consideration would also·have to be given to those industries 
which are decaying handicrafts rather than auxiliaries to the 
factory. These, as already said, are relatively inconsiderable in 
England, but nevertheless occupy quite a large proportion of the 
population in certain districts. In some Highland villages the poor 
people have two or three sheep of their own, shear the wool, spin it 
into yarn, and knit it into stockings, for which they receive about 
Is. a pair from the dealer. No wage regulation could touch this 
form of sweating, and it is likely enough that in the chain-making,
the specially sweated industry at Cradley, the employers would soon 
be sharp enough to arrange to sell the iron and buy the chain, instead 
of paying wages, so that they would avoid the minimum wagealtogether. In cases like these it would be desirable for the Government 
to take measures to instruct the people as to co-operative 
association for buying their own material, and to organize them for 
self-help and mutual protection, by lending capital, and so forth. 
Measures of this kind have been adopted in Austria for the assistance 
of the ancient crafts and rural industries, with very good effect. 
It would of course be better still to take over the whole industry and 
carry it on in Government shops with fair wages and good conditions. 

IV.-DIRECT EMPLOYMENT. 

To those who follow the argument here supported,~' that sweating, 
though apparently an inexpensive method of production, is ruinous 

* It is developed with much more fulness in Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. 
Webb (Longmans, 1902, I2s.). 

16 

to the community through the physical and moral deterioration 
induced in the sweated and their workers, it will be at once evide::nt 
that the abolition of sweating is an important incidental advantage of 
direct public employment. The establishment of the Army Clothing 
Factory has saved thousands of workers from sweating dens without 
any increase in the cost of production."" The enlargement of that 
factory so as to produce in it not only some but all the clothing 
required for the army, militia and volunteers, would rescue thousands 
more from their present fate. The workshops at Woolwich could be 
expanded so as to render unnecessary that contracting for saddlery 
work, chains and hardware, which now promotes sweating. A navyclothing factory might supersede all sweating of the garments of 
sailors, coastguards, and marines. The Government factories should 
produce also all the uniforms of the customs, police, prisons, post 
office, and other official staffs, as well as all the boots, shoes, saddlery,
and accoutrements required. 

And if local authorities followed suit-if the London County 
Council were given power to set up its own clothing factory, and to 
supply other local governing bodies-if it became the practice to 
manufacture all asylum, hospital, police, and fire brigade uniforms 
required by any Town or County Council or other public body,
either in its own factory or in that of some other public body-if a 
similar course were pursued with regard to boots and shoes, saddlery, 
and general leather work, chains, furniture, and other commonlysweated wares, part, at least, of the evil would disappear. For it 
would be easy to ensure that the factories of the Government or the 
Town Council would be well-built, well-ventilated and well-equipped;
that the hours of work would be regular and short; that the employment 
would be steady, and the wages at any rate as high as those 
paid in the best shops elsewhere. 

V.-ANTI-SWEATING CLAUSES IN ALL Pusuc CoNTRACTS. 

But however rapidly we press on the establishment of publicfactories for the supply of public wants, many public bodies will, for 
a long time to come, have to buy goods which are at present usuallythe product of sweating. The Government contracts all contain 
some clause which is intended to secure a fair wage for the workers, 
and to restrain the practice of sub-contracting. For instance, the 
form of tender for clothing to be delivered by the contractor to the 
War Office includes among the required conditions that no portionof the contract be transferred without the written permission of the 
Secretary of State; that all garments shall be cut out and made upin the contractor's own factory, and no work shall be done in the 

*Even if there were some increase in cost of production, it would still be goodpolicy for the country to pay a living wage. The private sweater can send hi' worn-
out workers to the workhouse when he has done with them : the country has to maintain 
its bye-products of pauperism. (See Common Sense o/ Municipal Tt·ading, byBernard Shaw. Constable, 1904, 2s. 6d.) It is a fact less well-known than it should 
be, that municipal contractors have been found giving out workhouse clothing to be 
made up by women who were compelled to ask for out-relief from their own union to 
supplement their wretched earnings. One way or another-the country pays. 


17 


homes of the workpeple ; that the wages paid shall be those current 
in each trade for competent workmen in the district in which the 
work is carried out, and that the wages shall be paid to the workers 
-direct, and not through any foreman or intermediary. So far back 
as 189 I the House of Commons passed a resolution that the Government's 
duty was to make every effort to secure the payment of fair 
or current wages for work done by workmen under Government 
<:ontracts. But these provisions where out-workers are concerned 
are at present often neglected. 

Though sub-letting and home work are expressly prohibited, 
there are hundreds of h >me-workers openly employed in Government 
work, and except in work where the workers are organized in 
trade unions there is no provision for ensuring a standard of wages. 
In 1906, the Minister for War, Mr. Haldane, had his attention drawn 
to the matter by some representatives of the Women's Industrial 
Council, and assured them that he would introduce some system of 
effective inspection. He also kindly assisted the committee of the 
Sweated Home Industries Exhibition by lending materials on which 
to employ the Government workers, who shewed the low prices 
at which they had to work for Government contractors. Municipal 
and other public authorities have the same difficulty, and probably 
will co!ltinue to have it if they employ middlemen: A case has 
been discovered where a contractor gave a worker a JOb to do for a 
municipal contract, and paid her the fair price insisted on by the 
municipality, but on condition that she should do other work for 
him at a rate lower than usual, so that her average wage is not protected 
by the fair wage clause. "The only satisfactory solution to 
prevent such evasions is the extension of direct employment without 
the medium of a private contractor by the Government and other 
public authorities."* The extension of employment under fair conditions 
will bendit the sweated workers not only directly, in so far 
as they themselves obtain employment under those conditions, but 
indirectly, as the payment of fair wages to the men employed would 
lessen the competition for work by married women. Nothing comes 
home more forcibly to the investigator of home work than this fact, 
that many of the women would not take work out at all if their husbands 
could obtain a decent remuneration. A great deal of sweated 
work by women is simply an indirect result of the under-payment or 
irregular employment of men.t 

Conclusion. 

There are those who will say that the measures of reform here 
sketched out wi.l have the effect of throwing out of work those poor 
people who are not worth employing at the wages and under the 

• Interim Report on Home Work, by Mrs. J. R. MacDonald ; Women's Industrial 
Council, 1906; p. 35t 
An ex-out-worker told the present writer she had given up taking work-her 
"old man said it w~sn't wonh it." Many " old men" would say the same if theycould earn their own wages. See on this point Cadbury's Women's ~VorR and Wages, 
which shews that men's wages for the less skilled kinds of work in Birmingham are 
often not more than 17s. or r8s. 


18 

conditions that would be required under an amended Factory Act, 
with a minimum wage and strictly sanitary conditions required for 
out-workers as well as indoor hands. M. Aftalion, in a recent interesting 
study,~' declares that to regulate home work is to destroy it, 
and cites the example of Victoria, where the establishment of a minimum 
wage has driven almost all the work into factories. We believe, 
judging from the analagous case of factory regulation, that the unemployment 
which would result from a well thought out scheme of 
home work regulation would be much less than these critics expect.
Some workers would go to the factory; some, as already pointed out, 
would no longer need to take work out, if the head of the family were 
assured a living wage. Some workers, now underpaid, underfed, 
underwarmed, and badly clothed, would quickly respond to improved 
conditions and pay, and would in a short time become really more 
efficient. Moreover, we must remember that the payment of larger 
wages to a class of workers previously underpaid would in itself be 
a beneficial stimulus to trade, and lead to an increased demand for 
employment in the production of the food and clothing required.
But let us admit that most probably there would be some workers 
unable to earn the minimum wage, and consequently thrown out of 
employment. These, we must remember, would be the workers 
either so unhealthy, so old, or so exhausted with a life of underpaidtoil, that they would not be worth employing under the changed conditions 
and improved standard set. Here, surely, if eYer, is the case 
for liberal poor relief. It would be far cheaper to the community in 
the end to pension off these victims of unregulated competition than 
to allow them to compete iu the labor market, lower the rate of 
wages, and through their cheapness thrust the more capable out of 
work. For it must be remembered we are not here discussing those 
who are " unemployable " because of drink, extravagance or excess. 
The pathetic part of the sweated industries is that it is often the very 
virtues of these people that are their ruin. Miss Clementina Black, in 
her introduction to the cases investigated and tabulated by the W o-
men's Industrial Council,t says "many of them are of the highest 
respectability and maintain a standard of conduct and cleanliness 
quite heroic... . The majority of these 44 women are industrious, 
even painfully industrious; most are thoroughly respectable; scarcely 
one is paid a living wage." They will sit up all night, and work for 
what is given them, and submit. Theirs is indeed "cheap and 
docile labor." They represent an out-of-date tradition and a superseded 
method, and only the wise and careful intervention of the State 
can save them and their children from a slow process of deterioration 
through want. "There is no person in this kingdom-or in any of 
the states that are called civilized-who does not partake of the proceeds 
of underpaid labor ; and the conditions of such labor are not 
growing better ; they are, if anything, growing worse, and underpayment 
is rather spreading than decreasing." t 

* Le Dlveloppement de Ia Fabrique, et le Travail a Domie~le. Paris : Larose ; 1906. 
t Interim Report on Home Industries of Women, p. 44· 
t Ibid, p. 45· 

NoTE.-A few sentences of Fabian Tract No. 30 are incorporated 
above, by permission. 

BOOKS RECOMMENDED. 

Bibliography of "Sweating" and of the Legal Minimum Wage. 1906. National 
Anti-Sweating League, I 33 Salisbury-square, E.C. 3d. 
Report on the Sweating System in the East End of London. BJ: ]OHN BURNETT, 
Labor Correspondent of the Board of Trade. 1887. P. S. Kmg and Son. 
BOOTH, CHARLES.-Life and Labor of the People. Vol. 4, chap. x. 1887. Macmillan. 
7s. 6d. 

Report on the Condition of Nail Makers and Small Chain Makers in South Staffordshire 
and East Worcestershire. By the Labor Correspondent of the Board of 
Trade. 1888. P. S. King and Son. 

Reports of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System. 
With Minutes of Evidence. 1888-1 8go. P. S. King and Son. 
HoBSON, ]. A.-Problems of Poverty. r8gr. Methuen and Co. 2s. 6d. 
SCHLOss, D. F.-Methods of Industrial Remuneration. r8g8. Williams. 7s. 6d. 
WEBB, SIDNEY and BEATRICE.-lndustrial Democracy. Second edition. 1901. 
Longmans. 12s. net. 
WEBB, Mrs. SIDNEY (editor).-Case for the Factory Acts. 1902. Richards. 2s. 6d. 
CADBURY, E., M. C. MATHESON, and G. SHANN.-Women's Work and Wages [inBirmingham]. 1906. Unwin. 6s. 
Women's Industrial Council. Interim Report on Home Industries of Women in London. 
rgo6. 7 John-street, W.C. 6d. 
International Association for Labor Legislation. Report on Home Work by Mrs.-----RAMSAY 
MACDONALD, presented to the Geneva Conference, 1906. 
Home Office. Return as to the Administration by the Local Authorities of the 
Factory and Workshops Act of 1901. rgo6. P. S. King and Son. 
Handbook of Sweated Industries Exhibition. 1906. Daily Ntu-s Office. 6J. 
National Anti-Sweating League. Report of Conference held at the Guildhall, City 
of London, October, 1906. 
BARRAULT, H. E.-La Reglementation du Travail a Domi~ile en Angleterre. rgo6.
Librairie de Ia SociEhe du Recueil, 22 Rue Sufflot, Paris. 


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