Merchants of the greatest executive ability and highest efficiency are able to secure the maximum of cheap production through the legitimate factory system. Men of less business ability, in order to compete successfully, avoid the factory system of production and make use of the sweat-shops instead. The sweat-shop is, therefore, in a single word, an evasion, under the stress of competition, of the factory system of production. [Illustration: AN EVASION OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION.] There are few industries which could profit any longer by this system as opposed to that of the factory, but the manufacture of ready-made clothing is an exception; and, in it, the less fit to survive are sure to take advantage of the sweat-shops, until they have been driven out of the business altogether by those whose superior abilities enable them to undersell the product of the shops with the product of legitimate factories. The manufacturer who makes use of the factory system at once subjects himself to certain regulations. His work-rooms must show a certain cubic area to every operative employed; certain sanitary provisions must be regarded; children under a certain age must not be set to work, and a prescribed number of hours must be accepted as the limit of the working day. But the manufacture of ready-made clothing lends itself to an easy escape from all this. Instead of having his work done in a factory, subject to wholesome but costly restrictions, a merchant may give it out to the lowest bidders among the sweaters. These men take it to their homes, and secure there the services of their wives and children, and employ the families of their neighbors. Thousands of rooms are thus closely packed with workers who have underbid one another in the struggle for existence, until, in the cheapest quarters available, without regard to light and air, and decent sanitation, the work is hurried forward at feverish haste by human wretches whose utmost toil through excessive hours can often earn them little more than the means of bare subsistence. The Unionist was leading me in a brisk walk through a labyrinth of city squalor. Over unswept wooden pavements we passed, along uncleaned, wooden streets, in whose broken surfaces lay heaps of decaying garbage. Wooden houses for the most part flanked the way, hideous, blackened shanties which leaned grotesquely on insecure foundations, with rickety flights of broken steps clinging to the buildings’ sides, where, on warmer days, the teeming population can be seen overflowing from work-rooms and sewing ceaselessly, even in their search for fresh air.