And now comes the question--What is to be done with these poor tailors, to
the number of between fifteen and twenty thousand? Their condition, as it
stands, is simply one of ever-increasing darkness and despair. The system
which is ruining them is daily spreading, deepening. While we write, fresh
victims are being driven by penury into the slopworking trade, fresh
depreciations of labour are taking place. Like Ulysses' companions in
the cave of Polyphemus, the only question among them is, to scramble so
far back as to have _a chance of being eaten at last_. Before them is
ever-nearing slavery, disease, and starvation. What can be done?
First--this can be done. That no man who calls himself a Christian--no
man who calls himself a man--shall ever disgrace himself by dealing at
any show-shop or slop-shop. It is easy enough to know them. The ticketed
garments, the impudent puffs; the trumpery decorations, proclaim
them,--every one knows them at first sight, He who pretends not to do so,
is simply either a fool or a liar. Let no man enter them--they are the
temples of Moloch--their thresholds are rank with human blood. God's curse
is on them, and on those who, by supporting them, are partakers of their
sins. Above all, let no clergyman deal at them. Poverty--and many clergymen
are poor--doubly poor, because society often requires them to keep up the
dress of gentlemen on the income of an artizan; because, too, the demands
on their charity are quadruple those of any other class--yet poverty is no
excuse. The thing is damnable--not Christianity only, but common humanity
cries out against it. Woe to those who dare to outrage in private the
principles which they preach in public! God is not mocked; and his curse
will find out the priest at the altar, as well as the nobleman in his
castle.
But it is so hard to deprive the public of the luxury of cheap clothes!
Then let the public look out for some other means of procuring that
priceless blessing. If that, on experiment, be found impossible--if the
comfort of the few be for ever to be bought by the misery of the many--if
civilization is to benefit every one except the producing class--then this
world is truly the devil's world, and the sooner so ill-constructed and
infernal a machine is destroyed by that personage, the better.