it should be one of the objects of inquiry to ascertain whether there
exists any one such definite form, it will be better at the outset to
confine ourselves to the question, "What is Sweating?"

As an industrial term the word seems to have been first used among
journeymen tailors. The tailoring houses which once executed all orders
on their own premises, by degrees came to recognize the convenience of
giving out work to tailors who would work at their own homes. The long
hours which the home workers were induced to work in order to increase
their pay, caused the term "Sweater" to be applied to them by the men
who worked for fixed hours on the tailors' premises, and who found their
work passing more and more into the hands of the home workers. Thus we
learn that originally it was long hours and not low wages which
constituted "sweating." School-boy slang still uses the word in this
same sense. Moreover, the first sweater was one who "sweated" himself,
not others. But soon when more and more tailoring work was "put out,"
the home worker, finding he could undertake more than he could execute,
employed his family and also outsiders to help him. This makes the
second stage in the evolution of the term; the sweater now "sweated"
others as well as himself, and he figured as a "middleman" between the
tailoring firm which employed him, and the assistants whom he employed
for fixed wages. Other clothing trades have passed through the same
process of development, and have produced a sub-contracting middleman.
The term "sweater" has thus by the outside world, and sometimes by the
workers themselves, come to be generally applied to sub-contractors in
small City trades. But the fact of the special application has not
prevented the growth of a wider signification of "sweating" and
"sweater." As the long hours worked in the tailors' garrets were
attended with other evils--a low rate of wages, unsanitary conditions,
irregularity of employment, and occasional tyranny in all the forms