Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/30

24 Mr., of Preston, said: Sir, I address you as the President of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors, in application with the associations of Scotland. We are aware that this is both a difficult and delicate matter for any Minister of State to deal with, and we are also well aware that the rights of a citizen are to be considered and respected, but at the same time we think, that where it can be proved that a number of people living in small rooms are engaged in this work, under conditions physically and morally of a deplorable nature, some steps should be taken by which either sanitary inspectors, or inspectors under the Factory and Workshop Act, should be able to inquire into and remedy this state of things. We are well aware that this is now becoming an important question, and we trust that when the facts and figures are laid before you they will convince you that it is a question which requires the serious consideration of those friends who are so anxious for the sanitary and social condition of this country.

Mr., of Glasgow, said: I beg, sir, to endorse all that has been said as to the extent of this evil. In Scotland, for a great number of years past, we have carefully considered this question, and at every meeting of our association it has been brought under discussion. Nor have we lost any opportunity of calling the attention of the public to this matter, for it is the general body of the community who should complain of a system by which everything of a contagious character existing in the rooms of the sweaters is conveyed to the homes of the customers. I might state a great number of cases from my own personal experience, in which I have actually seen the garments in the course of making up covering the beds in which fever patients lay. These are facts which have come under my own observation; and though we have informed the sanitary inspectors of the evil, with a view of its remedy, we have failed to obtain their interference. Therefore, our opinion is, that if an employer should please to give his workmen the work to take home, he should be bound to make provision by which that home should be registered; and we have simply to ask if you can see your way to introduce some clause in the bill you contemplate bringing forward by which it may be compulsory upon an employer to register any house or shop in which his work is done. We do not think it is right to interfere in the way in which the work is done, but that it is only for the Government to see that their inspectors have power to prevent the spread of contagion. At all events, the fact of a contagious disease being in the house of a workman might be made known, and then the public could defend themselves. I may mention one or two other cases. I visited a house in Glasgow where, in a room some 6 feet by 8 feet, a man and his wife and boy lived and worked. Just before I came the mother and child had been removed to a fever hospital, and there had been nothing to cover the boy but the clothes on which the father was engaged. Then, in another house I visited, I went into the attic, which was divided in two by a screen. In one division there was no furniture; this was a sort of workshop and kitchen, the other was the sleeping apartment, and here a man and his wife and two sons lived. Now, we