l labour, performs a useful work of
superintendence and management. "The sweater in the vast majority of
cases is the one man in the workshop who can, and does, perform each and
any branch of the trade."

For the old adage, which made a tailor the ninth part of a man, has been
completely reversed by the subdivision of work in modern industry. It
now takes more than nine men to make a tailor. We have foremen or
cutters, basters, machinists, fellers, button-holers, pressers, general
workers, &c. No fewer than twenty-five such subdivisions have been
marked in the trade. Since the so-called tailor is no tailor at all, but
a "button-holer" or "baster," it is obvious that the working of such a
system requires some one capable of general direction.

This opinion is not, however, inconsistent with the belief that such
work of "direction" or "organization" may be paid on a scale wholly out
of proportion to the real worth of the services performed. Extremely
strong evidence has been tendered to show that in many large towns,
especially in Leeds and Liverpool, the "sweating" tailor has frequently
"no practical knowledge of his trade." The ignorance and incompetence of
the working tailors enables a Jew with a business mind, by bribing
managers, to obtain a contract for work which he makes no pretence to
execute himself. His ability consists simply in the fact that he can get
more work at a cheaper rate out of the poorer workmen than the manager
of a large firm. In his capacity of middleman he is a "convenience," and
for his work, which is nominally that of master tailor, really that of
sweating manager, he gets his pay.

Part of the "service" thus rendered by the sweater is doubtless that he
acts as a screen to the employing firm. Public opinion, and "the
reputation of the firm," would not permit a well-known business to
employ the workers _directly_ under their own roof upon the terms which
the secrecy of the sweater's den enables them to pay. But in spite of
this, whether the "Jew sweater" is really a competent tailor or is a
mere "organizer" of poor labour, it should be distinctly understood that
he is paid for the performance of real work, which under the present
industrial system has a use.

Sec. 6. Different Species of Middlemen.--It may be well here to say
something on the general position of the "middleman" in commerce. The
popular notion that the "middleman" is a useless being, and that if he
could be abolished all wou