At all events, the owners of these show-shops
realize a far higher profit than need be, while the buildings required for
a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd
plate-glass fronts, and brass scroll-work chandeliers, and puffs, and paid
poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the
upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the
tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the
ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration
office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this
succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only
true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association
involves a saving both of labour and of capital. Why should it not succeed,
when every one connected with the establishment, landlords and workmen,
will have an interest in increasing its prosperity, and none whatever in
lowering the wages of any party employed?
But above all, so soon as these men are found working together for common
profit, in the spirit of mutual self-sacrifice, let every gentleman and
every Christian, who has ever dealt with, or could ever have dealt with,
Nebuchadnezzar and Co.
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