[5] The slop trade was flourishing by the 18th century, as slop-sellers realized that they could sell to the general public as well as to the army and navy, and also received a boost from the Napoleonic Wars.
[6][7][8] Slop work became organized into a system of large clothing warehouses subcontracting out to small workshops or individuals.
[9][10] In the 19th century, however, "slop" was to gain a negative connotation, because of an economic conflict with the older bespoke tailoring industry.
[11] In London, cheap ready-made clothing gained a wider market through increased middle-class and working-class incomes in the latter part of the century,[12][13] and a succession of strikes organized by tailors unions (in 1827, 1830, and 1834) largely failed.
[8] The women slop-workers were seen as, and sometimes used as, strike-breakers, particularly in the London Tailors' Union strike of 1834 (which sought better wages, shorter hours, and a prohibition of the piecework and homework that slop-work involved);[14][8] and contemporary commentators (such as Henry Mayhew who interviewed clothes sellers and Charles Kingsley in both his Cheap Clothes and Nasty and Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet) painted the traditional tailoring trade's view of the situation as the "honourable" traditional tradesmen (also known as "Flints") versus the "dishonourable" slop-workers (named "Dungs") who worked in sweat-shops, and the de-skilling of what was once skilled labour.