the
employers to whom my investigators have addressed themselves.

For the enforcement of this Act, and for the prevention of evasion and
collusion, I rely upon the factory inspectors, who will report
anything that has come to their notice on their rounds and who will
make themselves a channel for complaints. I rely still more upon the
special peripatetic inspectors and investigators who will be appointed
under the Act by the Board of Trade, who will have to conduct
prosecutions under the Act, and who will devote all their time to the
purposes of the Act. These officers will incidentally clothe the Trade
Boards with real authority, once the rate has been enforced, in that
they will be responsible to the Trade Board, and not to some powerful
Department of Government external to the Trade Board itself. I rely
further upon the support of the members of the Trade Boards
themselves, who will act as watch-dogs and propagandists. I rely upon
the driving power of publicity and of public opinion. But most of all
I put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of
employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or
self-interest, or from a combination of the two--they are not
necessarily incompatible ideas--will form a vigilant and instructed
police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labour
constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal
competition of unscrupulous rivals.

An investigator in the East End of London writes:

"The people who can check evasion are the large firms. Their
travellers form a magnificent body of inspectors, who ought to see
that the Act is enforced. The checking of evasion will have to be
carried out, not so much by visiting workshops and home-workers as by
hearing where cheap, low-class goods are coming into the market, and
tracing the goods back to the contractors who made them."

There are solid reasons on which we on this side of the House who are
Free Traders rely with confidence, when we associate ourselves with
this class of legislation. First of all, we must not imagine that this
is the only European country which has taken steps to deal with
sweating. The first exhibition of sweated products was held in Berlin,
and it was from that exhibition that the idea was obtained of holding
that most valuable series of exhibitions throughout this country
which created the driving power which renders this Bill possible. I am
advised that G