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.

Sec. 4. Economic Advantages of "Small Workshops."--The question we have to
answer is this--Why has the small workshop survived and grown up in
London and other large cities, in direct antagonism to the prevalent
industrial movement of the age? It is evident that the small workshop
system must possess some industrial advantages which enable it to hold
its own. The following considerations throw light upon this subject.

1. A larger proportion of the work in sweating trades is work for which
there is a very irregular demand. Irregularity of employment, or, more
accurately speaking, insufficiency of employment--for the "irregularity"
is itself regular--forms one of the most terrible phases of the sweating
system. The lower you descend in the ranks of labour the worse it is. A
large number of the trades, especially where women are employed, are
trades where the elements of "season" and fashion enter in. But even
those which, like tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, furniture and
upholstery, would seem less subject to periodic or purely capricious
changes, are liable in fact to grave and frequent fluctuations of the
market. The average employment in sweating trades is roughly estimated
at three or four days in the week. There are two busy seasons lasting
some six weeks each, when these miserable creatures are habitually
overworked. "The remaining nine months," says Mr. Burnett, "do not
average more than half time, especially among the lower grade workers."