be a guarantee of decent wages.  In so far as the purchaser lacks ability to accurately gauge quality, he has little security that by paying a higher price he is securing better wages for the workers.  The so-called respectability of a well-known house is a poor guarantee that its employes are getting decent wages, and no guarantee at all that the workers in the various factories with which the firm deals are well paid.  It is impossible for a private customer to know that by dealing with a given shop he is not directly or indirectly encouraging “sweating.”  It might, however, be feasible for the consuming public to appoint committees, whose special work it should be to ascertain that goods offered in shops were produced by firms who paid decent wages.  If a “white list” of firms who paid good wages, and dealt only with manufacturers who paid good wages, were formed, purchasers who desired to discourage sweating would be able to feel a certain security, so far, at any rate, as the later stages of production are concerned, which ordinary knowledge of the world and business will not at present enable them to obtain.  The force of an organized public opinion, even that of a respectable minority, brought to bear upon notorious “sweating” firms, would doubtless be of great avail, if carefully applied.

At the same time, it must not for a moment be imagined that the problem of poverty would be solved if we could insure, by the payment of higher prices for better qualities of goods, the extermination of the sweating trades.  This low, degraded and degrading work enables large numbers of poor inefficient workers to eke out a bare subsistence.  If it were taken away, the direct result would be an accession of poverty and misery.  The demand for skilled labour would be greater, but the unskilled labourer cannot pass the barrier and compete for this; the overflow of helpless, hopeless, feeble, unskilled labour would be greater than ever.  Whatever the ultimate effects of decreasing the demand for unskilled labour might be, the misery of the immediate effects could not be lightly set aside.  This contradiction of the present certain effect and the probable future effects confronts the philanthropist at every turn.  The condition of the London match-girls may serve as an illustration of this.  Their miserable life has rightly roused the indignation of all kind-hearted people.  The wretched earnings they take have provoked people to suggest that we should put an end to the trade by refusing to buy from them.  But since the earnings of these girls depend entirely on the amount they sell, this direct result of your action, prompted by humane sentiment, will be to reduce still further these miserable earnings; that is to say, you increase the suffering of the very persons whose lot you desire to alleviate.  You may say that you buy your matches all the same, but you buy them at a shop where you may or may not have reason to believe that the attendants are well paid.