SWEATED INDUSTRY
AND THE
MINIMUM WAGE
“The whole spectacle of poverty indeed is incredible. As soon as you
cease to have it before your eyes—even when you have it before your
eyes—you can hardly believe it, and that is perhaps why so many people
deny that it exists, or is much more than a superstition of the
sentimentalist.”
W. D. HOWELLS.
“The system which produces the happiest moral effects will be found
most beneficial to the interest of the individual and the common weal;
upon this basis the science of political economy will rest at last,
when the ponderous volumes with which it has been overlaid shall have
sunk by their own weight into the dead sea of oblivion.”
R. SOUTHEY.
SWEATED INDUSTRY
AND THE
MINIMUM WAGE
BY
CLEMENTINA BLACK
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
A. G. GARDINER
CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SWEATING LEAGUE
[Illustration: [Logo]]
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1907
_All rights reserved._
So many persons have kindly helped me with material for this volume that
it is impossible to name all of them; but I cannot forbear to express my
thanks to Mr W. Pember Reeves, to Mr Tom Garnett of Clitheroe, to my old
friends Mrs Bogue Luffmann and Mr H. H. Champion, who have collected
information for me in Australia, and last, but not least, to Mr Gardiner
for his valuable introduction.
C. B.
_March 1907_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
PART I
SWEATED INDUSTRY
CHAPTER I
THE POOREST OF ALL 1