tender-hearted but loose-thinking philanthropists, short-visioned
working-class orators, assisted by the satire of the comic journal, has
firmly planted in the imagination of the public an ideal of an East
London sweater; an idle, bloated middleman, whose expansive waistcoat is
decorated with resplendent seals and watch-chains, who drinks his
Champagne, and smokes his perfumed cigar, as he watches complacently the
sunken faces and cowering forms of the wretched creatures whose
happiness, health, and very life are sacrificed to his heartless greed.

Now a fair study of facts show this creature to be little else than a
myth. The miseries of the sweating den are no exaggeration, they are
attested by a thousand reliable witnesses; but this monster human spider
is not found there. Though opinions differ considerably as to the
precise status of the sweating middleman, it is evident that in the
worst "sweating" trades he is not idle, and he is not rich. In cases
where the well-to-do, comfortable sub-contractor is found, he generally
pays fair wages, and does not grossly abuse his power. When the worst
features of sweating are present, the master sweater is nearly always
poor, his profits driven down by competition, so that he barely makes a
living. It is, indeed, evident that in many of the worst Whitechapel
sweating-dens the master does not on the average make a larger income
than the more highly paid of his machinists. So, too, most of these
"sweaters" work along with their hands, and work just as hard. Some,
indeed, have represented this sweating middleman as one who thrusts
himself between the proper employer and the working man in order to make
a gain for himself without performing any service. But the bulk of
evidence goes to show that the sweater, even when he does not occupy
himself in detailed manual labour, performs a useful work of
superintendence and management. "The sweater in the vast majority of
cases is the one man in the workshop who can, and does, perform each and