harbour, 60 acres of docks, a castle, old grammar-school, &c.;
is the chief seat of the copper-smelting and of the tin-plate manufacture
of England, and exports the products of these works, as well as coal,
zinc, and other minerals, in large quantities.

SWATOW (30), a seaport of China, at the mouth of the Han, 225 m. E.
of Canton; has large sugar-refineries, factories for bean-cake and
grass-cloth; since the policy of "the open door" was adopted in 1867 has
had a growing export trade.

SWAZILAND (64), a small South African native State to the E. of the
Transvaal, of which in 1893 it became a dependency, retaining, however,
its own laws and native chief; is mountainous, fertile, and rich in
minerals; the Swazis are of Zulu stock, jealous of the Boers, and
friendly to Britain.

SWEATING SICKNESS, an epidemic of extraordinary malignity which
swept over Europe, and especially England, in the 15th and 16th
centuries, attacking with equal virulence all classes and all ages, and
carrying off enormous numbers of people; was characterised by a sharp
sudden seizure, high fever, followed by a foetid perspiration; first
appeared in England in 1485, and for the last time in 1551.

SWEATING SYSTEM, a term which began to be used about 1848 to
describe an iniquitous system of sub-contracting in the tailoring trade.
Orders from master-tailors were undertaken by sub-contractors, who
themselves farmed the work out to needy workers, who made the articles in
their own crowded and foetid homes, receiving "starvation wages." The
term is now used in reference to all trades in cases where the conditions
imposed by masters tend to grind the rate of payment down to a bare
living wage and to subject the workers to insanitary surroundings by
overcrowding, &c., and to unduly long hours. Kingsley's pamphlet, "Cheap
Clothes and Nasty," and novel, "Alton Locke," did much to draw public
attention to the evil. In 1890 an elaborate report by a committee of the
House of Lords was published, and led in the following year to the
passing of the Factory and Workshops Act and the Public Health Act, which
have greatly mitigated the evil.

SWEDEN (4,785), a kingdom of Northern Europe, occupying the eastern
portion of the great Scandinavian Peninsula, bounded W. by Norway, E. by
Russian Finland, Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic, and on the N. stretches
across the Arctic circle between Norway (NW.) and Russia (NE.), while its
southern serrated shores