Where endeavours have been made to organize East End shirt-makers, milliners, and others who work at home, very little has been achieved.

In those trades where it is possible to give out an indefinite amount of the work to sub-contractors, or to workers to do at home, it seems impossible that any great results can be thus attained.

Even in trades where part of the work is done in factories, the existence of reckless competition among unorganized out-workers can be utilized by unprincipled employers to destroy attempts at effective combination among their factory hands.
The force of public opinion which may support an organization of factory workers by preventing outsiders from underselling, can have no effect upon the competition of home-workers, who bid in ignorance of their competitors, and bid often for the means of keeping life in themselves and their children.

The very poverty of the mass of women-workers, the low industrial conditions, which Unionism seeks to relieve, form cruel barriers to the success of their attempts.

The low physical condition, the chronic exhaustion produced by the long hours and fetid atmosphere in which the poorer workers live, crush out the human energy required for effective protest and combination.