sweating system

American  

noun

1. the practice of employing workers in sweatshops.

---

Etymology

Origin of sweating system

First recorded in 1850–55

Example Sentences

Take the sweating system of the East End of London, in which, bad conditions of labour always going together, we find starvation wages combined with long hours and unwholesome work-rooms.

From Contemporary Socialism by Rae, John

Irregularity of employment, or, more accurately speaking, insufficiency of employment--for the "irregularity" is itself regular--forms one of the most terrible phases of the sweating system.

From Problems of Poverty by Hobson, J. A. (John Atkinson)

As the design of the sweating system is the elimination of rent from the manufacture of clothing, the "outside work" is begun after the clothing leaves the cutter.

From Twenty Years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes by Addams, Jane

There are in the Boston Public Library five ponderous volumes containing the evidence taken before a commission, appointed by the English House of Lords, to examine into the sweating system of Great Britain.

From White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor by Banks, Louis Albert

A margin of unemployed labour means a bare subsistence wage for low-skilled labour, and it means this wage earned under industrial conditions, such as we find under the "sweating system."

From Problems of Poverty by Hobson, J. A. (John Atkinson)