Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/15

9 fever in the families of working tailors, principally Germans, in the purlieus of Soho, at whose homes the work was carried on as usual. In one case a young man sat on the 'board' making a vest and trousers while in the highly-dangerous period of the disease known as desquamation, or 'peeling.' There were also in the same room two persons with symptoms of the malady. 'This family,' writes our correspondent, 'like many others in the neighbourhood whom I attended, did work for the leading tailors and clothiers in the neighbourhood of Regent Street and the West End.'"

The following is an extract from an article in the publication called Truth on the subject:—

"And surely our readers will admit that five guineas seem a great deal to have to pay for a coat that will kill, and that 40s. are too much for a death-warrant in the shape of a pair of trousers. We invite the public to turn the matter over in their minds. It is well worthy of consideration. Many firms charge fancy prices; is it too much to ask that they should take ordinary care? Is it too much to require that they should provide better workshops, or exercise some supervision over the hands they employ, and the places in which they allow their work to be done? If they refuse to do this; if they are supinely content to cast their cut-out cloth upon the slums of London, and have it returned to them after many days made up into garments reeking with they care not what deadly and loathsome disorder, would it not be wise for us to go elsewhere for our clothes, and order our coats and trousers from those firms which get their work done in the purer air and in their own workshops, where some sort of caution and inspection are practised? Is it not better to see to these things ourselves, than to risk being carried off in the bloom of one's manhood by scarlet fever or smallpox? The present and most nefarious practice of the majority of firms is this. They take your measure, they cut your coat, and then they give it to be made up to any poor wretch who can sew well—and who is honest. "Whence he comes and whither he goes when he leaves the shop, what his circumstances are, among whom and what sort of people he lives, of all this they know nothing and care less. All they do care for is that he shall bring the work back at the proper time, done after a business-like fashion. They, of course, never think of asking him how he is, or how his wife and children are, or whether he and his family inhabit a room which contains another family or two attacked by various kinds of infectious diseases. They take a purely commercial view of the matter, and acting upon the most approved principles of political economy, as they are careful to sell in the very dearest, so they take pains to buy in the very cheapest market they can find. And if the market in which they buy happens to be not merely cheap but nasty, what care they? They make a good profit, and the lives of their workers enter not into their thoughts. They are intent on making money, no matter who suffers."