Moreover, many of the products of the London sweating trades are competing on almost equal terms with the products of provincial factories, where machines are used instead of hand-labour.
Sec.4.Economic Advantages of "Small Workshops."-- The question we have to answer is this--Why has the small workshop survived and grown up in London and other large cities, in direct antagonism to the prevalent industrial movement of the age?
It is evident that the small workshop system must possess some industrial advantages which enable it to hold its own.

The following considerations throw light upon this subject.
1.

A larger proportion of the work in sweating trades is work for which there is a very irregular demand.

Irregularity of employment, or, more accurately speaking, insufficiency of employment--for the "irregularity" is itself regular--forms one of the most terrible phases of the sweating system.

The lower you descend in the ranks of labour the worse it is.