A Fair Day's Wage for a Fair Day's Work?: Sweated Labour and the Origins of Minimum Wage Legislation in Britain

The nature of sweating and the origins of low pay legislation are of fundamental social, economic and moral importance. Although difficult to define, sweating, according to a select committee established to investigate the issue, was characterised by long hours, poor working conditions and above all by low pay. By the beginning of the twentieth century the government estimated that up to a third of the British workforce could be classed as sweated labour, and for the first time in a century...