The inquiries I have set on foot in the various trades scheduled have brought to me most satisfactory assurances from nearly all the employers to whom my investigations have addressed themselves....

But most of all I have put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two--they are not necessarily incompatible ideas--will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labor constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal competition of unscrupulous rivals." Mr.Churchill claims that employers who are trying to pursue such trades with modern machinery and modern methods are more seriously hampered by the competition of the "sweaters" than they are by that of foreign employers.

"I cannot believe," he concludes, "that the process of raising the degenerate and parasitical portion of these trades up to the level of the most efficient branches of the trade, if it is conducted by those conversant with the conditions of the trade and interested in it, will necessarily result in an increase in the price of the ultimate product.

It may even sensibly diminish it through better methods."[62] Mr.Churchill is able to point out, as with most of the other reforms, that in one country or another they are already being put into effect, the legislation against "sweating" being already in force in Bavaria and Baden, as well as in Australia, under a somewhat different form.
But the most striking of the British labor reforms has yet to be mentioned.

Not only were the present old age pensions established by the common consent of all the political parties, but a law has now been enacted--also with the approval of all parties (and only twenty-one negative votes in Parliament)--to apply the same methods of state insurance of workingmen to sickness, accidents, and even to unemployment.