slavery, starvation, waste of life, year-long imprisonment in dungeons
narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition, which goes on among
thousands of free English clothes-makers at this day?

"The man is mad," says Mammon, smiling supercilious pity. Yes, Mammon; mad
as Paul before Festus; and for much the same reason, too. Much learning has
made us mad. From two articles in the "Morning Chronicle" of Friday, Dec.
14th, and Tuesday, Dec. 18th, on the Condition of the Working Tailors,
we learnt too much to leave us altogether masters of ourselves. But there
is method in our madness; we can give reasons for it--satisfactory to
ourselves, perhaps also to Him who made us, and you, and all tailors
likewise. Will you, freshly bedizened, you and your footmen, from
Nebuchadnezzar and Co.'s "Emporium of Fashion," hear a little about how
your finery is made? You are always calling out for facts, and have a firm
belief in salvation by statistics. Listen to a few.

The Metropolitan Commissioner of the "Morning Chronicle" called two
meetings of the Working Tailors, one in Shad well, and the other at the
Hanover Square Rooms, in order to ascertain their condition from their
own lips. Both meetings were crowded. At the Hanover Square Rooms there
were more than one thousand men; they were altogether unanimous in their
descriptions of the misery and slavery which they endured. It appears
that there are two distinct tailor trades--the "honourable" trade, now
almost confined to the West End, and rapidly dying out there, and the
"dishonourable" trade of the show-shops and slop-shops--the plate-glass
palaces, where gents--and, alas! those who would be indignant at that
name--buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors'
own slang; slang is true and expressive enough, though, now and then. The
honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four
hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all