Mr. Freak, Secretary of the Shoemakers' Society, stated before the Immigration Committee, that over 10,000 foreigners were engaged in the boot-making trade in the East End of London. He said:--"Until within ten or fifteen years ago, the Jew foreigners did not affect our trade much; but by degrees they have taken the work that men generally learned their trade on, such as the commoner class of work. They simply have taken it to themselves entirely, and the effect has been that hundreds of our men have to walk about, particularly in winter-time, who used to be employed on that class of work. These Jew foreigners work in our trade at this common work sixteen or eighteen hours a day, and the consequence is, they make a lot of cheap nasty stuff that destroys the market, and injures us. And if we have a strike on, or any little dispute occurs in our trade, when we might otherwise get a little better terms for ourselves, they go and take the work at any price, and so defeat our ends in getting or attempting to get our proper wages." Mr. Freak reckons that about 25 per cent. of the persons engaged in the _whole_ of the boot and shoe trade in the city of London are foreigners; but that the commoner kind of work is monopolized by foreigners entirely. He further said that the introduction of this pauper labour has seriously affected the rate of wages received by the English operatives, not of course so much in the best shops, but very greatly in the commoner class of work. It had also the effect of reducing the employment of a large number of Englishmen, and of driving hundreds out of work altogether. He went on to say:--"I know that at the time when I first came to London, any one could get work at the middle or common class of goods; and now they are sent out to the homes or given to the sweaters, who take them on the system that they are working themselves in the way I have mentioned; and the price is reduced so low that to work single-handed a man could not get his living. He has to sweat his children or his wife; and if a man and his wife and children do not want anything more than just bread and cheese and sleep, then they might get a living out of it; because some of these Jews who come over will not come out of the house for a whole week. They will sleep in the same place where they work day after day. They simply get food and the barest raiment to cover them, and that is all they can get for their work. I do not think that these foreign Jews have created any new industry; but they have made the industry in common work more beastly, and I do think that they are doing an injury in our foreign markets by the stuff that they make, because a great quantity of it is made of cardboard and composition. The leather that is put into the sole is simply a bit of veneer. It is simply a thin sole covered over a composition--clump as we call it. It is composed of shreds of leather, ground up, and stuck together."