The trade is almost entirely in the hands of Jews, who number from thirty to forty thousand persons.

Recent investigations disclosed 906 workshops, which, in the quality and conditions of the work done in them, may be graded according to the number of hands employed.

The larger workshops, employing from ten to twenty-five hands or more, generally pay fair wages, and are free from symptoms of sweating.

But in the small workshops, which form about 80 per cent of the whole number, the common evils of the sweating system assert themselves--overcrowding, bad sanitation, and excessive hours of labour.

Thirteen and fourteen hours are the nominal day's work for men; and those workshops which do not escape the Factory Inspector assign a nominal factory day for women; but "among the imperfectly taught workers in the slop and stock trade, and more especially in the domestic workshops, under-pressers, plain machinists, and fellers are in many instances expected to 'convenience' their masters, i.e.to work for twelve or fifteen hours in return for ten or thirteen hours' wage."[21] The better class workers, who require some skill, get comparatively high wages even in the smaller workshops, though the work is irregular; but the general hands engaged in making 1s.