Not only the master tailors and their underlings, but the retail tradesmen,
too, make their profit out of these abominations. By a method which smacks
at first sight somewhat of benevolence, but proves itself in practice to be
one of those "precious balms which break," not "the head" (for that would
savour of violence, and might possibly give some bodily pain, a thing
intolerable to the nerves of Mammon) but the heart--an organ which, being
spiritual, can of course be recognized by no laws of police or commerce.
The object of the State, we are told, is "the conservation of body and
goods"; there is nothing in that about broken hearts; nothing which should
make it a duty to forbid such a system as a working-tailor here describes--
"Fifteen or twenty years ago, such a thing as a journeyman tailor having
to give security before he could get work was unknown; but now I and such
as myself could not get a stitch to do first handed, if we did not either
procure the security of some householder, or deposit L5 in the hands of the
employer. The reason of this is, the journeymen are so badly paid, that the
employers know they can barely live on what they get, and consequently they
are often driven to pawn the garments given out to them, in order to save
themselves and their families from starving.
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