INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 247 



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 clothes, 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 clothes they sew, 

 or each part of it. Immense factories of this 

 kind exist in England, and it appeared from 

 testimony given before the " Sweating Com- 

 mittee " that women are fearfully " sweated " 

 in such workshops the full price of each slightly 

 spoiled piece of clothing 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. In 

 the textile trades, weaving is often done either 

 by the family or by a master who employs one 



