We see, then, that large bodies of British workpeople are, in these early years of the twentieth century, extremely overworked and underpaid. These evils are not, as is so often declared, a result of cheap selling. One of the worst examples of underpayment in the Sweated Industries Exhibition was a lady’s combination garment, of nainsook, the selling price of which was 22s.; and much of the work produced by the underpaid is sold at a good price to the well-to-do. On the other hand, under a well organised factory system, goods that are sold at a very low price are sometimes produced by workers receiving comparatively high wages. Nor is it true that any large proportion of these ill paid workers are either drunken or idle, or yet incompetent. Incompetent, indeed, they eventually become, if they are starved, physically and mentally, for a long enough period; but many of them remain competent for a surprising number of years. Very many of them are pathetically industrious, and by no means all are unskilled. Neither my reader nor I, for instance, could cover a racquet ball so that it would pass muster when inspected by the paymaster; it is improbable that either of us could cover an umbrella, and pretty certain that neither could make a passable artificial rose of even the poorest description. The driver of a motor omnibus is—in theory at least, and often in practice—a highly skilled mechanic; but his skill does not enable him (his trade union being still comparatively young and weak) to retain his freedom of action nor to resist the most exhausting and harassing conditions of labour. The evil is thus not confined to women, nor to home workers, nor to any class or trade. Nor is it confined to any one country. Nearly every instance quoted could be matched from Germany and from America. “Sweating,” in short, invariably tends to appear wherever and whenever industry is not either highly organised or else stringently regulated by law. CHAPTER VII HOW UNDERPAYMENT COMES A shirtmaker’s story—The “higgling of the market” as seen at the factory gate—Mr Booth’s percentage of poverty—Mr Rowntree’s—The living wage in America—How wages are determined—By relative needs—Not by efficiency—Mr Bosanquet’s fundamental fallacy—Ambiguity of word “earn”—Effect upon the poor of the pressure of the poorer—Efficiency only of pecuniary value while rare—Not inefficiency but poverty the real disease.