s less subject to petty spite and unjust interference on
the part of his employer. In this sense he is more free. But on the
other hand, he has lost that guarantee against utter destitution and
degradation afforded by the humanity of the better class of masters. He
has exchanged a human nexus for a "cash nexus." The nominal freedom of
this cash relationship is in the case of the upper strata of workmen
probably a real freedom; the irresponsibility of their employers has
educated them to more self-reliance, and strengthened a healthy
personality in them. It is the lower class of workers who suffer. More
and more they need the humanity of the responsible employer to protect
them against the rigours of the labour-market. The worst miseries of the
early factory times were due directly to the break-up of the
responsibility of employers. This was slowly recognized by the people of
England, and the series of Factory Acts, Employers' Liability Acts, and
other measures for the protection of labour, must be regarded as a
national attempt to build up a compulsory legal responsibility to be
imposed upon employers in place of a natural responsibility based on
moral feeling. We draft legislation and appoint inspectors to teach
employers their duty towards employes, and to ensure that they do it.
Thus in certain industries we have patched up an artificial mechanism of
responsibility.

Wherever this legal responsibility is not enforced in the case of low-
skilled workers, we have, or are liable to have, "sweating." Glancing
superficially at the small workshop or sweating-den, it might seem that
this being a mere survival of the old system, the legal enforcement of
responsibility would be unnecessary. But it is not a mere survival. In
the small workshop of the old system the master was the real employer.
In the modern "sweating" den he is not the real employer, but a mere
link between the employing firm and the worker. From this point of view
we must assign as the true cause of sweating, the evasion of the legal
responsibility of the Factory Act rendered possible to firms which
employ outside workers either directly or indirectly through the agency
of "sweaters." Although it might be prudent as a means of breaking up
the small workshop to attempt to impose upon the "middleman" the legal
responsibility, genuine reform directed to this aspect of "sweating,"
can only operate by making the real employing firm directly responsible
for the in