Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1888 — "SWEATING AND SWARMERY." [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

"SWEATING AND SWARMERY."

j What FrM Trade H»< Drought tho Toot of London To. If any evidence could thorough ' free trader In America toils senses surely .that presented by the report of a recent

parliamentary committee on the so called “sweating system” would do it. If free traders did not too often belong to that incorrigiblo class —men who adopt a phras- < ingly plausible theory and adhere to in >-spite of overwhelving evidenco of its folly —tho evidenco now offered from every part of England would shako even their Anglomaniac convictions. A London workingman, asked by the parliamentary committee what ho considered the greatest evils now threatening him, promptly replied, "sweating and swannery,” by .which ho meant that workmen driven odt of, their own trades by German,, Belgian and other competition had!‘ ‘swarmed’* into, tho eitics and were employed on the “sweating” system. ...... .. And what i 3 the 1 ‘sweating’ ’ system? Well, as tho regular workshops aro badly overcrowded, and the desperate workmen in them cethbino to exclude new men, a multitude of small employers has sprung up; the needy laborers in small rooms, Ilium-escaping tho inspection ordered by the factories acts, and pay them half or less than half tho current rates, thus underbidding the legitimate employers and pocketing tho enormous profits. Tho evidenco before the committee reads as if it were wrung out of racked bodies and written in blood. 0 One woman, for instanco, employed in putting tho bristles into hail' brushes, earned just five farthings (about two and a. half cents) per hour, working in her own room, and had to deliver tho brushes every night, as the middle man would not trust the poor starving wretch with more than one day’s materials. In another room a man mado twelve 'pairs of Shoes for four and a half shillings (nearly $1.10), and delivefed them. I? 6 wai '& sort of aristocrat among the “sweated,” as he could bo trusted with stock enough for such a big job/ Tho stories told by matchbox makers, cliair makers, bird cage makers and lniir sieve weavers were simply heartrending. One man furnished his own wood and wire, worked in his own room and made small linnet cages for nine pence a dozen! And these were not the worst cases; for it was found that scores of small, unventilated rooms were, taken by tlie middlemen as workshops; that in them the victims were crowded as thick as they could work, and in more than ono instanco, as it was proved, the air was so loaded with disease that tho clothing made there was -infected with it. and diseases of a nature so peculiar that physicians could not diagnose them were thus introduced into the houses of comparatively well to do people. In other instances tho trusted women who were allowed to take tho clothing to their own rooms were found “in unwomanly rags,” toiling till faintness overcame them, barely sustaining life on the poorest food and sighing tho weary refrain: O Q/d, that bread should be so dear And llesh and blood so cheap i Perhaps tho saddest feature of the caso is that many of those, sufferers were from the country, where they had once been Tosy and stalwart farm tenants or laborers; but tho agricultural interest has declined so rapidly under free trade that the exiled ruralists aro now crowding tho cities. Tho agricultural reports continue tho dreary detail that from .150,000 to 200,000 more acres every yeas are"changed from grain to grass lands, and the cuiti-

vatorn sit adrift. In sixteen years the area cultivated lias shrunk by 2,000,000 acres. In Wiltshire alone 40,496 acres havo gono out of cultivation, and $303,700 per year in farm wages have been withdrawn. The hop farms in the south of England are going into grass lands also; anil in all Great Britain the shrinkage in farm wages is summed up at $14,780,400. This gives us some idea of the mass forced into tho cities to compete with those already there. American farmers have, on the whole, greatly prospered since I 860; they are now Appealed to to vote against the manufacturers. Do they admire the picture of tha Britkh farmer under free trade? Do they covet a share of his “blessings?” Chancellor Sims, of Syracuse university, is stronjfly in favor of the pro* tection or American industries, He con* riders H.trrimn “oha ffie great men of aw nation."

BRUSH DRAWING.

SHOEMAKING.