I was near losing my life there--the foul air of so many people working
all day in the place, and sleeping there at night, was quite suffocating.
Almost all the men were consumptive, and I myself attended the dispensary
for disease of the lungs. The room in which we all slept was not more than
six feet square. We were all sick and weak, and both to work._ Each of the
six of us paid 2s. 6d. a week for our lodging, or 15s. altogether, and I
am sure such a room as we slept and worked in might be had for 1s. a week;
you can get a room with a fire-place for 1s. 6d. a week. The usual sum that
the men working for sweaters pay for their tea, breakfasts, and lodging
is 6s. 6d. to 7s. a week, and they seldom earn more money in the week.
Occasionally at the week's end they are in debt to the sweater. This is
seldom for more than 6d., for the sweater will not give them victuals if
he has no work for them to do. Many who live and work at the sweater's are
married men, and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings
by themselves. Some send them to the workhouse, others to their friends
in the country. Besides the profit of the board and lodging, the sweater
takes 6d. out of the price paid for every garment under 10s.; some take
1s., and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s. This man works for a
large show-shop at the West End. The usual profit of the sweater, over and
above the board and lodging, is 2s. out of every pound. Those who work
for sweaters soon lose their clothes, and are unable to seek for other
work, because they have not a coat to their back to go and seek it in.
_Last week, I worked with another man at a coat for one of her Majesty's
ministers, and my partner never broke his fast while he was making his half
of it._ The minister dealt at a cheap West End show-shop. All the workman
had the whole day-and-a-half he was making the coat was a little tea. But
sweaters' work is not so bad as government work after all. At that, we
cannot make more than 4s. or 5s. a week altogether--that is, counting the
time we are running after it, of course. _Government contract work is the
worst of all, and the starved-out and sweated-out tailor's last resource._