Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/27

21 A committee has made inquiries into the work of the sweating system in this town, and the report shows the deplorable state of the persons and homes of the workers. It is saddening to reflect that the wholesale houses in Liverpool, Manchester, London, and all towns where this class of trade is made up, export contagion, disease, and death in the bales of goods packed for shipment to be sold in other lands. God only knows where the limit of this "upas" deleterious influence is felt, unknown to the wearers of the clothing, which brings to them secretions in its folds most poisonous to life, and in its most loathsome forms. We have traced the subject, as affecting humanity, from the peer to the peasant. The investigations in Liverpool fully prove the extent of the system, and bring to one's mind the illness of the Prince of Wales some few years since, said to have been caused by defective drainage in Scarborough; but the inquiries into the working of the system here would lead us to think that the complaint had been carried from the home of the out-worker in the clothes of acquaintances or attendants with whom he came in contact. The system, with all its attendant evils, has been fully shown in these inquiries.

The report from this place begins by stating that the journeymen tailors have waited and hoped many years for some amelioration in their condition, and are now encouraged in their hope when they hear of the question of the evils of the sweating system receiving public consideration. The duty of exposing it is a difficult one, not only from the listless apathy of the operatives engaged in it, but from the opposition of those interested. The harbour is the largest mail packet station in the world; the population is about 60,000, and work is made for gentlemen travelling to all parts of the globe; yet there are not thirty men employed in workshops provided by the masters. Hundreds work at home under the same conditions as depicted in other places; the middleman, or master sweater, employing men at his home at from 17s. to £1 per week, women and girls from 1s. per day and upwards; these work together in some cases with the man's family, in bedrooms and other rooms of the house. The manner in which work is sent entails night and day work, and often Sunday labour, on all. Proper rest, health, and strength are sacrificed to the god Mammon and to the moral degradation of those engaged. The committee know of many cases of neglect of sanitary rules, and disease has been engendered, and whole families have suffered from scarlet fever and other infectious diseases; yet work was pursued in the house during the whole of the time persons were afflicted, and garments were made for customers of the most respectable houses in the trade. The committee further state the system of both sexes working together in such places, and that the conduct and conversation of men, women, and girls is such as to raise a blush on the cheek of the most callous persons; the small wages paid to females and the levity of conduct lead many further into vice, to eke out a living and provide dress to appear in the streets.

We class these together because army and navy clothing is made there. The two extracts given from the report of Dr. Thorne, and the knowledge that at the present moment there is a very serious outbreak of fever and disease in the borough of Portsmouth, which has been going on for some time, led a member of Parliament to put the following question to the President of the Local Government Board:—"Whether, considering the representations that have already been made to the Government in respect to cases of this kind, it will order an inquiry to be made into the danger that exists for the spread of contagious diseases by allowing tailors to manufacture clothing in their private dwellings?" The answer was most unsatisfactory, merely stating that hospital accommodation was being provided for the isolation of these cases. Medical gentlemen from the other towns waited on