however weak and desultory, has its value.  Union is always strength.  An employer who can easily resist any number of individual claims for higher wages by his power to replace each worker by an outsider, can less easily resist the united pressure of a large body of his workmen, because the inconvenience of replacing them all at once by a body of outsiders, is far greater than the added difficulty of replacing each of them at separate intervals of time.  This is the basis of the power of concerted action among workers.  But the measure of this power depends in the main upon two considerations.

First comes the degree of effectiveness in combination.  The prime requisites for effective combination are a spirit of comradeship and mutual trust, knowledge and self-restraint in the disposition of united force.  Education and free and frequent intercourse can alone establish these elements of effective combination.  And here the first difficulty for workers in “sweating” trades appears.  Low-skilled work implies a low degree of intelligence and education.  The sweating industries, as we have seen, are as a rule those which escape the centralizing influence of the factory System, and where the employes work, either singly or in small groups, unknown to one another, and with few opportunities of forming a close mutual understanding.  In some employments this local severance belongs to the essence of the work, as, for example, in the case of cab-drivers, omnibus-drivers, and generally in shop-work, where, in spite of the growth of large stores, small masters still predominate; in other employments the disunion of workers forms a distinct commercial advantage which enables such low-class industries to survive, as in the small workshop and the home-labour, which form the central crux of our sweating problem.  The very lack of leisure, and the incessant strain upon the physique which belong to “sweating,” contribute to retard education, and to render mutual acquaintanceship and the formation of a distinct trade interest extremely difficult.  How to overcome these grave difficulties which stand in the way of effective combination among unskilled workers is a consideration of the first importance.  The rapid and momentarily successful action of organized dock labourers must not be taken as conclusive evidence that combination in all other branches of low-class labour can proceed at the same pace.  The public and localized character of the competition for casual dock labour rendered effective combination here possible, in spite of the low intellectual and moral calibre of the average labourer.  It is the absence of such public and localized competition which is the kernel of the difficulty in most “sweating” trades.  It may be safely said that the measure of progress in organization of low class labour will be the comparative size and localization of the industrial unit.  Where “sweating” exists in large factories or large shops, effective combination