which does not provide those engaged in it with sufficient to keep them in health is essentially unsound.  Used-up capital must be replaced, and of all forms of capital the most fundamental and indispensable is the human energy necessarily consumed in the work of production.  A sweated industry does not provide for the replacing of that kind of capital.  It squanders its human material.  It consumes more energy in the work it exacts than the remuneration it gives is capable of replacing.  The workers in sweated industries are not able to live on their wages.  As it is, they live miserably, grow old too soon, and bring up sickly children.  But they would not live at all, were it not for the fact that their inadequate wages are supplemented, directly, in many cases, by out-relief, and indirectly by numerous forms of charity.  In one way or another the community has to make good the inefficiency that sweating produces.  In one way or another the community ultimately pays, and it is my firm belief that it pays far more in the long run under the present system than if all workers were self-supporting.  If a true account could be kept, it would be found that anything which the community gains by the cheapness of articles produced under the sweating system is more than outweighed by the indirect loss involved in the inevitable subsidising of a sweated industry.  That would be found to be the result, even if no account were taken of the greatest loss of all, the loss arising from the inefficiency of the sweated workers and of their children, for sweating is calculated to perpetuate inefficiency and degeneration.

The question is:  Can anything be done?  Of the three related evils—­unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, and insanitary condition of work-places—­it is evident that the first applies equally to sweated workers in factories and at home, but the two others are to some extent guarded against, in factories, by existing legislation.  This is the reason why some people would like to see all work done for wages transferred to factories.  Broadly speaking, I sympathise with that view.  But if it were universally carried out at the present moment, it would inflict an enormous amount of suffering and injustice on those who add to their incomes by home work.  Hence the problem is twofold.  First, can we extend to workers in their own homes that degree or protection in respect of hours and sanitary conditions which the law already gives to workers in factories?  And secondly, can we do anything to obtain for sweated workers, whether in homes or factories, rates of remuneration less palpably inadequate?  Now it certainly seems impossible to limit the hours of workers, especially adult workers, in their own homes.  More can be done to ensure sanitary conditions of work.  Much has been done already, so far as the structural condition of dwellings is concerned.  But I am afraid that the measures necessary to introduce what may be called the factory