no result) in connection with the “Dwellings of the Poor,” the “Unemployed,” and the “Sweating System,” has fully disclosed that characteristic feature of the economic life of England and Scotland; and the painstaking researches made by Mr. Charles Booth have shown that one-quarter of the population of London — that is, 1,000,000 out of the 3,800,000 who entered within the scope of his inquest — would be happy if the heads of their families could have regular earnings of something like 91 a week all the year round. Half of them would be satisfied with even less than that. The same state of things was found by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree at York.137 Cheap labour is offered in such quantities in the suburbs of all the great cities of Great Britain, that the petty and domestic trades, which are scattered on the Continent in the villages, gather in this country in the cities.
Exact figures as to the small industries are wanting, but a simple walk through the suburbs of London — would do much to realise the variety of petty trades which swarm in the metropolis, and, in fact, in all chief urban agglomerations. The evidence given before the “Sweating System Committee” has shown how far the furniture and ready-made clothing palaces and the “Bonheur des Dames” bazaars of London are mere exhibitions of samples, or markets for the sale of the produce of the small industries. Thousands of sweaters, some of them having their own workshops, and others merely distributing work to sub-sweaters who distribute it again amidst the destitute, supply those palaces and bazaars with goods made in the slums or in very small workshops. The commerce is centralised in those bazaars — not the industry. The furniture palaces and bazaars are thus merely playing the part which the feudal castle formerly played in agriculture: they centralise the profits — not the production.
In reality, the extension of the petty trades, side by side with the great factories, is nothing to be wondered at. It is an economic necessity.
The absorption of the small workshops by