Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/28

22 the member of Parliament in person, and others wrote letters, entreating of him not to let the subject rest, for, from their knowledge, diseases were disseminated both in the army and navy by this abominable system.

Tunbridge Wells, Derby, Hull, Oxford, Cambridge, and towns both in North and South Wales; Dublin, Belfast, Londonderry, and other towns in Ireland; Edinburgh and Glasgow, in Scotland, all bear testimony to the evils of this system, which can be remedied as follows:—"That it should be a duty upon all manufacturers to find workshop accommodation for those they employ, whether the number be many or few." "That any part or parts of a dwelling-house so occupied should be considered a factory, and should be so registered for the purposes of any Act of Parliament made to apply to their supervision, and that all Rules and Acts made for the inspection and regulation of factories and workshops should be applied equally in all cases."

The arguments against these propositions cannot outweigh the cause of humanity, but it is the duty of the public themselves, in their own interest, to see that they give their orders only to those who provide workshops. The work is one in which all should share and take an interest. The minister may preach, the philanthropist may plead, the philosopher may point out the path to higher and nobler aims in life, but so long as the home of the artisan is turned into a workshop for the manufacturer—so long as "man's inhumanity to man" requires the life of his fellow-creatures to be sweated out by excessive hours of toil in a poisoned atmosphere—so long will the comfort and pleasure that should adorn the poor man's home be banished hence, and our youth and manhood will seek elsewhere—in the song-room or the pot-house, or still lower regions—a substitute that may sink them still deeper into the gulf of misery which others have assisted to prepare for them.