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us but the materials of art, that is the human race with its aspirations and passions and its home, the earth; on which materials we shall have to use these tools, leisure and desire.

Yet, though that may be, it is not likely that we shall quite recognise it; it is probable that it will come so gradually that it will not be obvious to our eyes. Maybe, indeed, art is sick to death even now, and nothing but its already half-dead body is left upon the earth: but also; may we not hope that we shall not have to wait for the new birth of art till we attain the peace of the realised New Order? Is it not at least possible, on the other hand, that what will give the death-blow to the vulgarity of which enwraps us all now will be the great tragedy of Social Revolution, and that the worker will then once more begin to have a share in art, when he begins to see his aim clear before him—his aim of a share of real life for all men—and when his struggle for that aim has begun? It is not the excitement of battling for a great and worthy end which is the foe to art, but the dead weight of sordid, unrelieved anxiety, the anxiety for the daily earning of a wretched pittance by labour degrading at once to body and mind, both by its excess and by its mechanical nature.

In any case, the leisure which Socialism above all things aims at obtaining for the worker is also the very things that breeds desire—desire for beauty, for knowledge, for more abundant life, in short. Once more, that leisure and desire are sure to produce art, and without them nothing but sham art, void of life or reason for existence, can be produced: therefore not only the worker, but the world in general, will have no share in art till our present commercial society gives place to real society—to Socialism. I know this subject is too serious and difficult to treat properly in one short article. I will ask our readers, therefore, to consider this as an introduction to the consideration of the relations of industrial labour to art.

In writing this article on “sweating,” I speak with authority as a bonâ fide working tailor for eleven years, working in the sweater's den in the East-end of London. I have endeavoured to gather facts to lay them before the public. The community at large is ignorant of the cruelty that takes place in those fever dens, and it is the oppressed worker who alone knows his grievances; but unfortunately, for fear of being discharged from employment, he has to remain silent, and thus the evil of sweating is extensively carried on, which is nothing more nor less than slow murder. I know there are men and women ready to assist in advocating the people's cause. It is my duty as a Socialist to lay before the public their grievances and also to say to what they are subjected.

Dealing with the deplorable condition of the working tailoresses in East London, their wretched pay, their miserable meals, their captivity, approaching to slavery, in places the most dangerous and unhealthy, simply reveals but one aspect of the misery existing in parts of East London, the natural out-growth of the sweating system. Without entering at length in the course of the present article into the many details of the sweating system, it will be most sufficient to indicate the growth of one of the most miserable conditions of things in the East-end of London, and some of the mischief to which it has given rise. “Sweaters,” then, it may be well to mention at the outset, has a technical meaning, as applied to those engaged in the tailoring trade, a class of men who, receiving a certain amount of cloth from the large clothing establishments in the metropolis, for which security is given, agree to work that cloth into garments, or parts of garments, for a certain price. This assertion, however, must be qualified to some extent, for sweaters thus receiving the cloth direct from the establishment are far from being in the majority. A certain amount of small influence is necessary to obtain “orders” or contracts, and the knowledge of this fact has given rise to a class of “middlemen,” who obtaining the cloth from the establishment, hand it over in their turn to the sweaters for a consideration. To these “middlemen” may, in reality, be traced the existence of the evil of low prices and wretched workshops. The sweaters, having to do the work at a less price because of putting as much of the money as possible into their own pockets, screw their workpeople down to the lowest wages possible, and work the “concern” as cheaply as they can. It may be mentioned, too, that the capital required to start a sweating shop is insignificant. The sweater, having received his orders, is immediately favoured with the attentions of an agent from a firm of sewing-machine manufacturers, who supply him with as many machines as he may acquire, at weekly payments of from one shilling to half-a-crown each, easily deducted from the profits he may pocket at the end of each week. His next move is to strike off a few bills or to advertise for “hands,” who are usually forthcoming. With these he strikes a bargain for a daily wage, screwed down to the utmost farthing, and allowing the sweaters a tolerably good profit. A few gas-burners are knocked up; the two wretched rooms of which the dilapidated house can boast are furnished with a few deal tables and chairs. Each rooms is filled with eight or ten persons, mostly girls, to whom, indeed, the sweater is rather partial, since they can do with less wages. The work is given out, the sewing-machine strikes up its rattling noise, and another sweating-shop is started somewhere in the streets right and left of Bethnal Green, Hackney Road and Whitechapel, in Princess Street, Church Street and Spitalfields. But wherever the shop may be, the sanitary conditions are invariably bad. Starting with little of or capital, the sweater cannot afford to make the rooms fit for the use to which they have been put. Consequently eight or ten persons are crowded into a room barely fit for three persons. The work being continued till late at night, three or four gas-jets may be seen flaring in one room; a coke fire may be seen simply burning in the wretched fireplace; sinks are untapped, closets are without water, and altogether the sanitary conditions are abominable. In this matter the inspectors under the Factory Acts are powerless, sanitation remaining exclusively under local authority, whose functions are limited. Moreover, the workpeople, being for the most part foreigners—Dutch, Polish, Russian—who migrating into this country fancy they have arrived at the El Dorado of their hopes, uneducated, and ignorant of the simplest of sanitary laws, do much by their own to complete the wreck and ruin of their own constitution, started by the sweaters, with the result that over 50 per cent. suffer in a short time from heart and lung disease.

We have received the following notes from a friend in Ireland. They are interesting as dealing with the past treatment of her country by England. We look forward to having a regular series of notes from the same source on the condition of events in Ireland at the present time. *** English peoples, as a rule, will not read Irish newspapers, if the latter have the least National tendency; and as we Irish wish the English nation to know some of the truths concerning the wrongs we have laboured under for centuries, we shall give a few facts—not theories, but hard facts—which can be proved from both the English Government side and the National side. *** In the last century, Dean Swift was a good friend to the suffering Irish. He always upheld the cause of the oppressed, and on one occasion said that the confiscated lands which were given by William III. of England, to his English followers, were given to highwaymen; inasmuch as he considered the recipients must have been stopped and slain on Hounslow Heath on their way to Ireland, and the highwaymen came in their stead. *** William III., when memorialised by the people of Bristol to stop the importation of Irish manufacturers, replied: “I shall do my best to hinder and obstruct the woollen trade of Ireland, and to promote that of England.” *** Shortly afterwards, Dean Swift at a public dinner was asked to drink the toast “Prosperity to Ireland.” “No,” replied the witty Dean, “I never drink memories.” *** A quotation from a letter written by the Lord-Deputy, about the year 1607, will show the spirit in which the inhabitants of Ireland were regarded by their English rulers:—“I have often said and written, it is famine that must consume the Irish, as our swords and other endeavours worked not that speedy effect which is expected; hunger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ against them than the sword . . . I burned all along the Lough [Neagh] within four miles of Dungannon, and killed 100 people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex soever, besides many burned to death. We killed man, woman and child, horse, beast, and whatsoever we could find.” *** During the rebellion of 1798, the soldiers upon one occasion tied and man and his three sons to trees, and then before their eyes, violated the mother and four young sisters. I can give my authorities for this.

“Unnecessary railways have been thrown into distant lands, while steamships have been too largely constructed in British ports. . . . America has had large crops, is well supplied with most things necessary to its population at a range of prices unusually cheap, and yet it felt the depression of prices because of inability to sell its surplus produce abroad at profitable prices. . . . The railways are cutting each other’s throats, or rather dividends, in their frantic attempts to obtain traffic”—Trade and Finance, Daily News.