public end. And there is this about the aims of Unionism, that they
are best calculated to teach the value of such co-operation; to bring
home to men of all classes their essential inter-dependence on one
another, as well as to bring home to each individual the pettiness and
meanness of personal vanity and ambition in the presence of anything
so great, so stately, as the common heritage and traditions of the
British race.




SWEATED INDUSTRIES

Oxford, December 5, 1907


This exhibition is one of a series which are being held in different
parts of the country with the object of directing attention, or rather
of keeping it directed, to the conditions under which a number of
articles, many of them articles of primary necessity, are at present
being produced, and with the object also of improving the lot of the
people engaged in the production of those articles. Now this matter is
one of great national importance, because the sweated workers are
numbered by hundreds of thousands, and because their poverty and the
resulting evils affect many beside themselves, and exercise a
depressing influence on large classes of the community. What do we
mean by sweating? I will give you a definition laid down by a
Parliamentary Committee, which made a most exhaustive inquiry into
the subject: "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of work, and
insanitary condition of the workplaces." You may say that this is a