Mr. Goodman, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the Liverpool Tailors' Society, stated in his evidence before the House of Lords' Committee, that fifteen years ago the Sweating system only existed to a very limited extent in Liverpool; but that now it was carried on in a most extensive manner. He said that he accounted for its existence to a very large extent by the influx of foreigners, principally Jews. "At the present moment, fully two-thirds of the sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners; the majority of whom, as I have already stated, are not tailors at all, and have never served one hour in the tailor trade properly as an apprentice. I was told by a Jew some time ago, and he made a serious complaint to me on that head, that he was already finding the competition of his own people so severe, that being a practical man, he should have to do as they had done in many cases, lower his prices, or else he could not make a living. The competition, even amongst the Jews, is getting so severe that the prices are constantly tending to decrease; and I believe that to-day they are very much lower than they were a few years ago in Liverpool, through this competition of foreigners amongst themselves, together with their competition with the natives." Mr. Allen, Secretary of the Master Tailors' Association in Liverpool, stated that, "As an Association, we have discussed the matter, and we are opposed to it in the main (_i.e._ foreign immigration), and we passed a resolution that the importation of pauper aliens be prohibited with this condition, the prohibition not to extend to skilled workmen imported under contract." Mr. Keir, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors, thus moderately and dispassionately stated the case:--"I hardly know that it would be wise to stop immigration altogether. That would be an unnatural and hardly fair way of doing the thing; but I think it ought to be regulated in some way, and that the poorest, and most miserable, and the unskilled, perhaps, of foreign labour ought not to be thrown upon the markets of England to oppose and to act detrimentally to the interests of the English people. I do not think it would be wise, and I don't know that we could advocate, and I am sure any intelligent man would not advocate altogether, the complete prohibition of foreign labour; but at the same time I think there must be, or ought to be, some means devised whereby skilled labour should contend against skilled labour in a fair and straight market. It is not skilled labour against skilled labour; it is poverty thrown in our midst, and it is poverty competing with itself, as it were; and struggling in that way, and the manner in which they live, the food they eat, and the circumstances under which they exist, deprive them altogether of the comforts of home, you may almost say, as far as Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Welshmen are concerned."