"This system of over-work exists in the 'slop' part of almost every business; indeed, it is the principal means by which the cheap trade is maintained. Let me cite from my letters in the _Chronicle_ some more of my experience on this subject. As regards the London mantuamakers, I said:—'The workwomen for good shops that give fair, or tolerably fair wages, and expect good work, can make six average-sized mantles in a week, _working from ten to twelve hours a day_; but the slop-workers by toiling from thirteen to sixteen hours a day, will make _nine_ such sized mantles in a week. In a season of twelve weeks, 1000 workers for the slop-houses and warehouses would at this rate make 108,000 mantles, or 36,000 more than workers for the fair trade. Or, to put it in another light, these slop-women, by being compelled, in order to live, to work such over-hours as inflict lasting injury on the health, supplant, by their over-work and over-hours, the labour of 500 hands, working the regular hours." Mr. Mayhew states it as a plain, unerring law, that "over-work makes under-pay, and under-pay makes over-work." True; but under-pay in the first place gave rise to prolonged hours of toil; and in spite of all laws that may be enacted, as long as a miserable pittance is paid to labourers, and that, too, devoured by taxes, supporting an aristocracy in luxury, so long will the workman be compelled to slave for a subsistence. The "strapping" system, which demands an undue quantity of work from a journeyman in the course of a day, is extensively maintained in London. Mr. Mayhew met with a miserable victim of this system of slavery, who appeared almost exhausted with excessive toil. The poor fellow said—