For though it has been, and still is, true, that where the method of sub- contract is used the workers are frequently "sweated," and though to the popular mind the sub-contractor still figures as the typical sweater, it is not right to regard "sub-contract" as the real cause of sweating.

For it is found-- Firstly, that in some trades sub-contract is used without the evils of sweating being present.

Mr.Burnett, labour correspondent to the Board of Trade, in his evidence before the Lords' Committee, maintains that where Trade Unions are strong, as in the engineering trade, sub-contract is sometimes employed under conditions which are entirely "unobjectionable." So too in the building trades, sub-contract is not always attended by "sweating." Secondly, much of the worst "sweating" is found where the element of sub-contract is entirely wanting, and where there is no trace of a ravenous middleman.

This will be found especially in women's employments.

Miss Potter, after a close investigation of this point, arrives at the conclusion that "undoubtedly the worst paid work is made under the direction of East End retail slop-shops, or for tally-men--a business from which contact, even in the equivocal form of wholesale trading, has been eliminated."[20] The term "sweating" must be deemed as applicable to the case of the women employed in the large steam- laundries, who on Friday and Saturday work for fifteen or sixteen hours a day, to the overworked and under-paid waitresses in restaurants and shops, to the men who, as Mr.Burleigh testified, "are employed in some of the wealthiest houses of business, and received for an average working week of ninety-five hours, board, lodging, and L15 a year," as it is to the tailoress who works fourteen hours a day for Whitechapel sub-contractors.
The terms "sweating" and "sweating System," then, after originating in a narrow application to the practice of over-work under sub-contractors in the lower branches of the tailoring trade, has expanded into a large generic term, to express the condition of all overworked, ill-paid, badly-housed workers in our cities.