It is certainly not to be done by sweeping condemnation. After all it is of more importance that useful articles should be produced than beautiful ones. Half a loaf is better than no bread, and to suppress, by law whatever appears to the philanthropist to be "sweating," might so reduce profits in certain trades as to throw thousands out of employment and so produce greater misery than it was intended to cure. The complicated nature of our modern industries has rendered the task of fixing the responsibility.not Jess necessary but infinitely more difficult. So many workmen are now employed in the manufacture of even the simplest article that to determine the responsibility for its right production is no easy task. It may not Tost with the workman at all, who only does what he is told, but with the employer; who, in his turn, may plead the nature of the public demand. It is a question, for instance, how far the responsibility for the evils of sweating may not be laid at the door of those who thoughtlessly go where bargains in cheap furniture or clothes are to be found at prices which might at least awaken suspicion as to the manner in which they had been produced. There are employers who would be glad to reduce the working hours of their employes if it could be done without ruin to the industry in which they are engaged, or without weakening by isolated action the demand for an responsibility is and how it comes home to eight hours' day. You see how general the
one of us. Not only are we responsible for the evils that exist; we are bound to do our best to cure them, Ib is not the king who makes the laws. now. It is the pee. Still, it is not much that we can ope to do by law.
LEGAL RESTRICTIONS, You cannot make a man moral by Act of Parliament, but you may by government interference give him at least the chance of becoming moral. You can insist that children shall not be allowed to work until they have first been educated, and that from certain kinds of labour women shall be excluded altogether. You can put a stop to overcrowding in factories and regulate the conditions under which certain dangerous manufactures are carried on. But the posits good, apart from the removal of glaring abuses, which can be accomplished by government: interference is very slight and is generally better left
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.