If the journeyman can manage
to scrape together L5, he has to leave it in the hands of his employer all
the time that he is working for the house. I know one person who gives out
the work for a fashionable West End slop-shop that will not take household
security, and requires L5 from each hand. I am informed by one of the
parties who worked for this man that he has as many as 150 hands in
his employ, and that each of these has placed L5 in his hands, so that
altogether the poor people have handed over L750 to increase the capital
upon which he trades, and for which he pays no interest whatsoever."
This recalls a similar case (mentioned by a poor stay-stitcher in another
letter, published in the "Morning Chronicle"), of a large wholesale
staymaker in the City, who had amassed a large fortune by beginning to
trade upon the 5s. which he demanded to be left in his hands by his
workpeople before he gave them employment.
"Two or three years back one of the slopsellers at the East End became
bankrupt, and the poor people lost all the money that had been deposited
as security for work in his hands.
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