Great Britain -- Emigration and immigration; Noncitizens -- Great Britain
Such monsters do exist. Of that there can be no doubt. They are by no
means exclusively Hebrews, neither are they confined to the tailoring
trade alone; nor is it necessary to go as far as Whitechapel in
search of them. But a dispassionate study of the facts will show that
the great bulk of the "sweaters" are very poor; and that with their
profits driven down by competition, they can hardly make a living. In
fact, both employers and employed are alike the victims of this fierce
competitive struggle, and of the craze for cheapness at any cost. The
result is that the market is flooded with a quantity of cheap and
inferior articles which injure the trade, and destroy the demand for
good English work.
At present, the two trades most affected are the cheap tailoring and
boot-making. In the former, as a direct consequence, all the horrors
of "sweating" reign supreme. In the latter, the cheaper kind of work
is now taken by foreigners entirely; hundreds of Englishmen who were
formerly employed in it at a fair wage are driven out of employment,
and now seek in vain for work. "Oh," but I hear some say, "they can
turn their hands to something else." But it is not so easy for a man
who has been apprenticed and brought up to a certain trade, to turn
his hand to "something else." His craft is his bread, his trade is
his capital; it is dear to him, for upon it he has lavished all his
skill, all his energies. It is hard that he should be robbed of it by
the foreigner. These two trades are not the only ones affected. In the
cabinet-making, chair-turning, cigar-making, cheap fur trade, and other
industries, the same evil is beginning to work, and always with similar
baleful results. Labour is displaced; Englishmen are robbed of their
work; and if they do not become paupers or something worse, they are
driven from their homes to seek their fortunes anew in some distant
land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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