For a nation which was foremost in abolishing the slave-trade, to tamely tolerate in its midst an inhuman traffic like this, is something worse than an anachronism--it is a disgrace, and a reproach upon our vaunted civilization. CHAPTER V. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS. The economic aspect of this many-sided question is undoubtedly one of the gravest and most worthy of consideration. The unlimited influx of cheap, destitute, foreign labour, cannot but exercise a prejudicial effect upon the wages of the native working-classes. It forces the decent British workman to compete on unequal terms with those who are willing to work for any wage--however meagre--for any number of hours, and amid surroundings filthy and disgusting in the extreme. I do not of course say that it has this effect upon wages in all industries, but only in those trades which the evil has yet reached. These are not great trades, perhaps, in the sense of the textile or metal industries, but they are considerable industries all the same, and they give employment to hundreds of thousands of men and women. In the trades and districts chiefly affected, this is the agency which reduces the price of labour to a level below that upon which Englishmen and Englishwomen can with decency and self-respect exist, and which renders effectual combination impossible. Every one with any practical knowledge of business, will admit that it is the lowest price which rules the market. If then we have a body of men combining together for the purpose of getting what they consider to be a fair wage, how can they maintain that combination, if, when a strike occurs, or any little dispute arises between employer and employed, by which the employed hope to get a little better terms for themselves, the destitute foreigner steps in ready to undersell them, and to work for little or next to nothing at all? Nor, as things stand, can the employers be greatly blamed either. In these trades few of them are great capitalists, the battle of life is pretty hard on them too, and in struggling to better themselves, they naturally seize every legal means that offers. One of the worst features of this system is the "multiplication of small masters." The subject is a tempting one, but space forbids me to dwell on it. I would only say that the competition among these small employers is almost as fierce as the competition among the employed. Much indignation has been directed against the "sweater," the bloated human spider, who, according to _Alton Locke_, sucks the life-blood of his victims, or who more recently has been presented to us in the pages of _Punch_ as a gorgeously-apparelled, champagne-drinking, cigar-smoking Hebrew, who, as he rakes in his gold, laughs and grows fat upon the sufferings of the wretched creatures sacrificed to his greed.