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London Sweatshops: A Great Evil of the Clothing Industry in the Late 19th Century
At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, Great Britain reigned supremely dominant, owning the “greatest empire the planet had yet seen.” And London was the capital of this empire, filling the role of the imperial metropolis of the world. London’s production was largely focused on small-scale manufacturing, with breweries and flour mills commonplace. But the single largest industry in London at this time was the clothing industry. This clothing industry, which employed a third of the roughly 800,000 laborers in East End London at this time, would give rise to a great evil that would mar the city's history: sweating.

Conditions
The constantly increasing demand for ready-made clothing was the major factor that led to the prevalence of sweatshops in London. From 1870 to 1890 alone, the percentage of clothing that was ready-made for purchase jumped from 25% to 60% and this dramatic upward trend only increased in the following years.

The so-called “sweating system,” which was not a formal system in itself but rather the excess and abuse of a system, was known to exist in several trades but was chiefly found in the clothing trade. The characteristic evils of “sweating” would include extremely prolonged hours, excessively low wages, irregular employment, and crowded and unsanitary workshops. This system of abusing plentiful labor for low wages in miserable conditions was made possible by a crowded population in a large city, contracted work, and inexpensive machinery - exactly the conditions available in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

These sweatshop factories would draw the laboring poor from London and neighboring cities, often employing orphans and the extremely poor in return for room and board. Common conditions of labor in these sweatshops included sixteen-hour workdays six days a week, for pay that was barely enough for sustenance. Laborers would return home from work exhausted, get a short night's sleep, then be back at work first thing the next morning. There was neither time nor money for leisure and enjoyment. These long hours spent in the sweatshops were unhealthy and dangerous. Dust and byproducts from the textile manufacturing process would be trapped in small rooms with poor ventilation, and workers were always at risk for severe injury from the whirring machinery.

The Sweating System
Subdivision of labor and the contract system with wages were characteristic features of the sweating system. There would be a limited number of skilled workmen who would be employed in the employers’ shops. From there, the production of various parts of suits and other garments would be doled out to individual labor contractors, called “sweaters,” who would be charged with producing a certain quantity of product within a certain timeframe. These contractors would then hire multitudes of unskilled workers and churn out of them excessive hours of hard labor in return for almost no pay at all.

Protest Against the System
As early as 1849, letters and publications record the miserable and unjust conditions that plagued the laboring poor of London. In particular, a letter published in the Morning Chronicle by Henry Mayhew, an English social researcher and reform advocate, sheds light on the plight of the “slop-workers” of London. With shocked disdain, he notes his disbelief “that there were human beings toiling so long and gaining so little, and starving so silently and heroically, round about our very homes.”

Similarly, Charles Kingsley, a priest and university professor in England, came out with the burning publication “Cheap Clothes and Nasty” in 1850. This tract brought forward concerns about the serious menace that the sweatshops imposed to the social and physical health of the East End of London.

Efforts to End the System
In the closing remarks of his publication “Cheap Clothes and Nasty,” after presenting the horrors of the sweating system that plagued London’s laboring class, Charles Kingsley poses the question “what then is to be done with these poor tailors?” With their condition one of “ever-increasing darkness and despair” and the system ruining them “daily spreading, deepening,” Charles Kingsley presents his idea of what the rest of London could do to combat this evil. He proclaims that no man who should call himself a Christian, or a man alone, for that matter, would ever dare to buy from such a “slop shop” as they were called. He cries out for all of London to essentially boycott clothing shops run by such sweaters, proclaiming that “the whole thing is damnable - not Christianity only, but common humanity cries out against it.”

The National Consumers League was founded in 1902, with the purpose of ending sweatshop labor. It made efforts to investigate the working conditions where goods were made, raise the wages of women and children workers, and open the eyes of the public community to the great injustice happening at their back doors.

In the United Kingdom, the Trade Boards Act of 1909 provided for the creation of boards that could set minimum wage criteria that would be legally enforceable.