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 would go well, arises from a confusion of thought which deserves notice.  This confusion springs from a failure to understand that the “middleman” is a part of a commercial System.  He is not a mere intruder, a parasitic party, who forces his way between employer and worker, or between producer and consumer, and without conferring any service, extracts for himself a profit which involves a loss to the worker or the consumer, or to both.  If we examine this notion, either by reference to facts, or from a priori consideration, we shall find it based on a superstition.  “Middleman” is a broad generic term used to describe a man through whose hands goods pass on their way to the consuming public, but who does not appear to add any value to the goods he handles.  At any stage in the production of these goods, previous to their final distribution, the middleman may come in and take his profit for no visible work done.  He may be a speculator, buying up grain or timber, and holding or manipulating it in the large markets; or he may be a wholesale merchant, who, buying directly from the fisherman, and selling to the retail fishmonger, is supposed to be responsible for the high price of fish; he may be the retailer who in East London is supposed to cause the high price of vegetables.