130 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



with his family, or with a few " assistants," i.e., wage- 

 workers. Or else the artisan has a separate workshop, 

 supplied with wheel-power, as is the case with the Shef- 

 field cutlers. Or several workers come together in a 

 small factory which they maintain themselves, or hire 

 in association, or where they are allowed to work for a 

 certain weekly rent. And in each of these cases they 

 work either directly for the dealer or for a small master, 

 or for a middleman. A further development of this 

 system is the big factory, especially of ready-made cloth, 

 in which hundreds of women pay so much for the sewing- 

 machine, the gas, the gas-heated irons, and so on, and 

 are paid themselves so much for each piece of the 

 ready-made cloth they sew, or each part of it. Immense 

 factories of this kind exist in England, and it appeared 

 from testimony given before the " Sweating Committee " 

 that women are fearfully " sweated " in such workshops 

 the full price of each slightly spoiled piece of cloth- 

 ing being deducted from their very low piecework wages. 

 And, finally, there is the small workshop (often with 

 hired wheel-power) in which a master employs three 

 to ten workers, who are paid in wages, and sells his 

 produce to a bigger employer or merchant there being 

 all possible gradations between such a workshop and the 

 small factory in which a few time workers (five, ten to 

 twenty) are employed by an independent producer. 

 Moreover, in the textile trades, weaving is often done 

 either by the family or by a master who employs one 

 boy only, or several weavers, and after having received 

 the yarn from a big employer, pays a skilled workman 

 to put the yarn in the loom, invents what is necessary 

 for weaving a given, sometimes very complicated pattern, 

 and after having woven the cloth or the ribbons in his 

 own loom or in a loom which he hires himself, he is paid 

 for the piece of cloth according to a very complicated 

 scale of wages agreed to between masters and workers. 

 This last form, we shall see presently, is widely spread 



