Excerpt from How Contagion and Infection Are Spread, Through the Sweating System in the Tailoring Trade: Being a Report of a Conference of Trades Unionists of South Lancashire, Held in the Cotton Waste Dealers' Exchange, Manchester, on February 24th, 1877

I have no doubt many people at the present time wonder what is the meaning of the term sweating, as applied to the tailoring trade; and I do not presume to lay down the following as the only reason why such a term is applied to the system on which certain branches of trade conduct their business. About the close of the last century and beginning of the present, it was found that people placed gold coins in a bag, and by turning them backwards and forwards for a considerable time, a gold dust remained behind, as the result of friction produced by the coins rubbing against each other. This was sold at a profit by those practising the system, which was termed sweating it was afterwards made illegal. The persons found guilty of this practice chiefly belonged to the Hebrew race.

About the same period, a transition was taking place in the payment of wages of the journeyman tailor, from weekly wages to piecework and being a trade which did not require much inconvenience in carrying the work from one place to another, and which work could be done almost wherever the workman could find sitting and elbow room, and also being one in which wife and family could assist, it led to a class of men (who neglected work at the beginning of the week) taking work home with them to do din'ing the night and morning intervening between the workshop being closed and opened next day. These men worked principally for the lowest class trades, and for employers who entered into the business for the purpose of making money, at any cost; they (the employers), finding that they had this class of men continually in their power, by advancing such sums of money as met their convenience, they suggested that it would be more to the men's advantage to take work home altogether, and both themselves and families could make the work; but they would not pay the same price for such work as to those working in the shop. The men themselves, in many instances, being in debt to the employer, and not being able to appear in decent dress amongst other workmen in the shop, greedily accepted the position, not thinking that it would lead to their own degradation and also that of their families.

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