Beginning at the bottom of the ladder, he rises by his industry and skill, until he gets into the rank of skilled workers, or more frequently becomes a sub-contractor, or a small shopkeeper.

The term "sweater" has thus by the outside world, and sometimes by the workers themselves, come to be generally applied to sub-contractors in small City trades.

For though it has been, and still is, true, that where the method of sub- contract is used the workers are frequently "sweated," and though to the popular mind the sub-contractor still figures as the typical sweater, it is not right to regard "sub-contract" as the real cause of sweating.

The terms "sweating" and "sweating System," then, after originating in a narrow application to the practice of over-work under sub-contractors in the lower branches of the tailoring trade, has expanded into a large generic term, to express the condition of all overworked, ill-paid, badly-housed workers in our cities.

As we saw, many of the cases of sweating were found where there was a sub-contractor.

In cases where the well-to-do, comfortable sub-contractor is found, he generally pays fair wages, and does not grossly abuse his power.

Lastly, there may be the "sub-contractor" proper, who undertakes to do a portion of a work already contracted for, and either finds materials and tools, and pays workers to work for him, or sublets parts of his contract to workers who provide their own materials and tools.

The payment of rent is thus avoided by the business firm which is the real employer, and thrown upon the sub-contractor or the workers themselves, to be by them in their turn generally evaded by using the dwelling-room for a workshop.

It does not pay either the employing firm or the sub-contractor to consider the health or even the life of the workers, provided that the state of the labour market is such that they can easily replace spent lives.

In those trades where it is possible to give out an indefinite amount of the work to sub-contractors, or to workers to do at home, it seems impossible that any great results can be thus attained.

He took a contract for building one section of a canal, which was to pass through part of his land; sub-contractors cheated him, and he, in his honesty, almost ruined himself to right their wrong.

He had amassed a modest competence as sub-contractor in the Commissariat during the second Afghan War, and retired to enjoy it in his ancestral village.

Campbell & Co. settled the accounts of sub-contractors monthly, so that Amarendra would not have to wait long for his money.

"Hawk has been chasing around getting affidavits; for what purpose I don't know, though Lesher tells me that one of them was sworn by Houligan, the sub-contractor who tried to fight the engineer's estimates on the Jump Creek work.

There was a man, a neighbour of ours, came home from Central America, maybe five years ago, and he told us he'd seen our James out there, and that he was working as a sub-contractor, or something of that sort, on that Panama Canal there was so much talk about in them days.

He's set down in this attestation clause as Michael Carstairs, engineer, American Quarter, Colon; and John Phillips is described as sub-contractor, of the same address.

Orders from master-tailors were undertaken by sub-contractors, who themselves farmed the work out to needy workers, who made the articles in their own crowded and foetid homes, receiving "starvation wages."

Two more enactments deal with the earnings of the workmen of contractors and sub-contractors, make them a first charge on all contract money, give workers employed on works of construction a lien thereon, and compel a contractor's employer to hold back at least one-fourth of the contract money for a month after the completion of a contract, unless he shall be satisfied that all workmen concerned have been paid in full.