adual
transfer of manufacture from London to the provinces. A large number of
workers in London factories have found themselves out of work. The
break-up of the London factories has furnished "sweating trades" with a
large quantity of unemployed and starving people from whom to draw.

Regarded from the widest economic point of view, the existence of an
excessive supply of labour seeking employments open to free competition
must be regarded as the most important aspect of the "sweating system."
The recent condition of the competition for casual dock-labour brought
dramatically to the foreground this factor in the labour question. The
struggle for livelihood was there reduced to its lowest and most brutal
terms. "There is a place at the London Docks called the cage, a sort of
pen fenced off by iron railings. I have seen three hundred half-starved
dockers crowded round this cage, when perhaps a ganger would appear
wanting three hands, and the awful struggle of these three hundred
famished wretches fighting for that opportunity to get two or three
hours' work has left an impression upon me that can never be effaced.
Why, I have actually seen them clambering over each other's backs to
reach the coveted ticket. I have frequently seen men emerge bleeding and
breathless, with their clothes pretty well torn off their backs." The
competition described in this picture only differs from other
competitions for low-skilled town labour in as much as the conditions of
tender gave a tragical concentration to the display of industrial
forces. This picture, exaggerated as it will appear to those who have
not seen it, brings home to us the essential character of free
competition for low-skilled labour where the normal supply is in excess
of the demand. If other forms of low-skilled labour were put up to be
scrambled for in the same public manner, the scene would be repeated _ad
nauseam_. But because the competition of seamstresses, tailors, shirt-
finishers, fur-sewers, &c., is conducted more quietly and privately, it
is not less intense, not less miserable, and not less degrading. This
struggle for life in the shape of work for bare subsistence wages, is
the true logical and necessary outcome of free competition among an over
supply of low-skilled labourers.

Sec. 3. The Multiplication of "Small Masters."--Having made so much
progress in our analysis, we shall approach more intelligently another
important aspect of the "sweating system."