With a nod to Dr. Jonathan Swift and his Modest Proposal from Preventing the Children of the Poor to be a Burthen to Their Parents published in 1729, and after a few hours spent with a young man intent on seeking answers to  current vexing questions on the topics of immigration, starvation,  drownings at sea and other such annoyances, a few excerpts from Charles Kingsley’s Cheap Clothes and Nasty, published in 1850 (but a quick tap on any search engine will allow you to read the whole thing):

« Sweet competition! Heavenly maid! – Now a days hymned alike by penny-a-liners and philosophers as the ground of all society the only real preserver of the earth! Why not of Heaven, too? Perhaps there is competition among the angels, and Gabriel and Raphael have won their rank by doing the maximum of worship on the minimum of grace? We shall know some day. In the meanwhile, ‘these are thy works, thou Parent of all good!’ Man eating man, eaten by man, in every variety of degree and method! Why does not some enthusiastic political economist write an epic on ‘The Consecration of Cannibalism?’ »

…

« The reason why there are so many Irishmen working for the sweaters is, because they are seduced over to this country by the prospect of high wages and plenty of work. They are brought over by the Cork boats at 10s. a head, and when they once get here, the prices they receive are so small, that they are unable to go back. In less than a week after they get here, their clothes are all pledged, and they are obliged to continue working under the sweaters. »

…

« In Arthurian legend, Ryence, a king of Wales and Ireland, wore a coat made of the beards of knights he had overcome. During the French Revolution, skins of the victims of the guillotine were tanned at Meudon. »

Charles Kingsley – Cheap Clothes and Nasty (1850)

source  for the entire text: http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/economic/sweat.htm