SWEATING IN THE IRON TRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2629, 18 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

SWEATING IN THE IRON TRADE.

The fmmy reader will no doubt try to make tbe old puu out of sweating in tbe iron trade. But the evidence brought before the Royal Commission, now sitting oil the question, is too serious to make puns upon. Tbe ease of sweating among the chain makers of East Worcestershire and South Staffordshire is a disgrace to any civilised country. Few people, except those who have lived among the chainmakers, have any idea of the degrading work imposed upon females and colonists will wonder why on earth womc will labour for such small wages. Mr R. Juggins, a trade secretary of Birmingham, in his evidence said lie had known chains sold by saddlers in London for 7s each which were made in Staffordshire for lid each. Mr Thomas Homer, President of the Chainmakers' Society, said that he knew one piaster chainmaker near Cradley who was paying the boys and girls in his shop id per hour. One witness, a married woman, stated that her husband was a coal miner, earning oa (i I per day. She worked 12 hours a day chainmaking, and in six days she could make lewt of common chain, for which she was paid (is Gd, just a fraction over Id per hour for most laborious work. Another married woman said she worked five days per week from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., for which she earned 4s Od. Samuel Priest, a maker of hooks aud swivels for traces as well as backhands and other small chains, said by working hard for a full week he could earn 14s or 15s. The secret, of these low prices is the trade of the middleman, or, as he is termed, tbe " fogger." This man supplies the working people with the iron, aud in most cases, as he keeps a store, he supplies their food. They are compelled to sell their chains to him, and lie makes a large profit, uot only oil the chain, but on the iron he sells them, and then a third heavy profit on the food he supplies them with. The Rev Harold RyleU, of Dudley, said the only remedy he could suggest for the present hardships of the chainmakers was a freer access to the land and a generous system of co-operation by which iron could be bought and sold to the operatives at fixed prices and then repurchased from the people when worked up into chains, anj profit derived in the working of the scheme to be divide 1 between those who provided the capital and the workers.—[London correspondent ]