Nellie Mason Auten

“ The other person to be held responsible for the conditions of manufacture is the consumer. It has taken many hard lessons to teach the consumer this ; some of these came in the form of the loss of little children through the wearing of infected clothes ; others came through the contraction of disease by older people ; and the lessons have been learned by some through a mere acquaintance with the facts. For these, simply to see and know the conditions of the workers was enough, with- out any selfish interest or fear. And many there are who have not yet learned the lesson at all. ”

“ A tailor makes an entire garment himself; but in the ordinary contractor's shop one person does the basting, one of the operators sews the first straight seams, another takes the more difficult part, while the rest of the work is divided among several handworkers, the button-sewers, and the home finishers. Most parts of the work one can learn easily in a day, or in a week or two at the outside. It is not difficult, then, to find workers, people who have no trade and no pride of trade or skill ”

“ The union label stands usually for an eight- hour day and the union scale of wages ; but, as the league advocates point out, takes little account of sanitary conditions. Some of the union men have felt, too, that the members of the league were largely the wives of heads of department stores, factory owners, merchant tailors, etc., who would not concern themselves about any sweat-shop goods in which their husbands might be interested. They have felt that the league, then, could have only selfish interests in view that in considering the public health they were really caring only for their own. ”

“ It must require a vast labor force—many more than the 128,255 people reported as at work in clothing shops in 1898 in Chicago, and in the city and state of New York—to make the garments for our seventy-six million people. Considering that only twelve or fifteen of the states in the union have any labor laws or factory legislation whatever, and that only five of these attempt to regulate the sweating system, it may be imagined how widespread the system may be, and how great is the chance for abuses. ”

“ It is probable that the sweating system exists to some extent and in a more or less extreme form in almost every large city and in many of the smaller ones in the United States. The clothing industry is not, like the pork-packing industry, for example, one that is by its character confined to a large city. As was noted in the country trade, not quite all the garments came from Chicago; and one merchant knew of clothing shops in a town of two thousand inhabitants in Illinois. ”

“ He may be the head of a department store or the owner of a large clothing establishment or a merchant tailor. Whoever he is, if he is not able to erect or to provide suitable factories instead of shifting the responsibility of workrooms upon his petty contractors, he would better delegate the manufacture of his goods to someone who is. There is no more necessity for any of these men except, perchance, the merchant tailor to make his own garments in little shops and in tenements than for him to make his own muslins and challies and lawns, his silks and linens and broadcloths. ”

“ Yes, I must keep on working, even though my back is breaking and my eyes will scarcely stay open, for wife and little ones must have bread, and I must work now if it kills me, for soon there will be no work to do. ”

“ A small room, a few sewing machines, and people are all that a contractor needs to set up shop. Fifty or one hundred dollars will do very well for a start, and his workers are in his opinion worthy of little more consideration than his foot-power machines. To open a factory, however, he must have a steam engine with its connection to the improved machines. When he has gone to the expense of putting in power, he cannot afford to let any machines stand idle, and his employes have steady work. ”

“ The immediate change to be desired for the tailors is the introduction of the back-shop. There are two or three reasons for such a change. In the first place, the owner of a factory does not require or expect his workers to pay rent for the room in which they work nor to own the machines they use. The factory system is supposed to have displaced domestic industry in this age in America. ”

“ Yet it is to be hoped that, if such a change is to be wrought, it may be in the nature of an evolution rather than of a revolution, in order that the suffering and wretchedness and hatred that attended the introduction of the factory system through the inventions of Kay, Crompton, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Cartwright, and others, may be avoided. ”

“ It would seem, however, that there might be unions in the different branches of the industry for each nationality. It is hopeless to think of organizing women working in their homes ; but, if the factory system is brought in, there will be no necessity for such organization. Some would think it hopeless, too, to attempt to organize the Italians, but only twenty-eight of the Italians work- ing in the garment trades were men. So small a number of workers, even if unorganized, could not affect the conditions of trade very much. ”

“ The construction of large factories would do much, too, toward overcoming the seasonal difficulty, since the fixed plant of the factory would make for comparative regularity and steadiness of employment. Moreover, home work would be done away, and this would help to destroy the parasitic character of the industry.
Another thing to be desired is a higher standard of life among the workers themselves. Many of them have no idea of cleanliness, and no desire for it. ”

“ His staff consists of operators or machine sewers, hand-workers, and pressers. His hand-workers sometimes do all the finishing, but more often he employs home finishers, women who come from the neighboring tenements to take the work into their homes for the last touches. These finishers make bids for the work just as the contractors do, and are pitted one against another in the same way. The only difference is that they are poorer, more ignorant, and more helpless, and so are more at the contractors' mercy than the contractors are at the mercy of the manufacturers. ”

“ Added to this is their poverty, which makes it necessary for them to accept whatever work with whatever wages they can get. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty," according to the old proverb. ”

“ Something is wrong if these conditions can exist; and, whether or not the solution lies in the inauguration of the socialistic state, SOME PHASES OF SWEATING SYSTEM IN CHICAGO 641
it is a serious question whether, if it is true that each person has a " right to be himself such as he is," he has not also the right to have undiminished that which he produces.
Although legislation and organization cannot be expected to do everything, yet a violent subversion of existing society seems hardly necessary if certain people, parts of the social process, can be made to feel their responsibility. ”

“ In such a factory the wages may not be much higher than in some of those that were visited. Indeed, it is often true, unless the labor is organized as among the Swedes, that the wages are a little lower in the steam shops than in the better class of con- tractors' shops near by ; but the hours are shorter, never more than ten, and there is not the strain of piece work. The mere abolition of piece work would go far toward destroying the sweating system. Work would be paid for by the week, and could be done at a reasonable rate of speed. ”

“ One prosecution of him- self or of a neighboring contractor is usually sufficient to teach the lesson that the law must be obeyed. An employer now generally goes for his affidavits the moment the inspector enters the room. The provision has done something, too, toward making children more stable in their industrial life. It was at one time customary for children to go in flocks from one contractor to another ; but now, when the affidavit has been properly filed, an employer is loth to let his workers go. ”

“ He must, then, to finish the work, employ one more man and two more women, or else lengthen the working day. After a week or two the amount of work falls off and he receives but 500 vests. He may keep the sixteen workers with- out keeping them busy the usual number of hours, but he is more likely to dismiss one of the men and three or four of the girls. In a factory supplied with power there cannot be these sudden and frequent changes in the labor force without too great a loss to the employer. ”

“ But even among the Swedes conditions are not all up to this standard. Next door to the factory is a cooperative tailor shop, 2 a room rented by several tailors, each working independently of the other and for a different merchant tailor. Each one pays $3 a month rent and about $i a week for silk, car-fare, and other incidentals. Their season is the same as that of the vest-makers, but there is very little work in the slack season. In the busy months each man makes two coats a week by working from twelve to sixteen hours a day, and earns from $8 to $13 a week. ”

“ It is the old story of Cain unwilling to acknowledge himself his brother's keeper, an illustration of the proverb that what is everybody's business or rather, perhaps, nobody's business will never be done ”

“ Unless they happen to have neighbors who work for the same employer, they cannot tell what other people who are doing the same work for the same man are earning. Their situation in small shops works in the same direction, although to a less degree. Although the people in a shop are likely to earn the same wages for the same amount of work, yet a shop making the same grade of garments in the same block, or even next door, may be paying higher or lower wages.
Another set of causes has its rise in the character of the industry. The garment trades are seasonal industries ”

“ A large clothing firm or department store estimates that it will need a certain number of ready-made garments for its spring or fall trade. It may have them made in inside or in outside shops. An inside shop is a room in a part of the store belonging to the firm, or is a separate building elsewhere in the city under the direct management of a superintendent appointed by the firm. ”

“ The Swedes are scattered more or less throughout the city, but those in the garment trades are to be found on the north side. Where the best pants and coats are made, girls earn as much as $10 or $12 a week. This is partly due to the fact that many girls go into domestic service and leave so small a supply that the contractors are organized for the purpose of securing and keeping workers. The workers, too, are organized, even the women, and so keep up their wages. One of these organizations is the Custom Vest Trimmers', Operators', and Pressers' Union. ”

“ The conclusion to be drawn from this study of charity records seems to be that sweat-shop workers very seldom ask any aid, and when they do, it is often work which they desire. One is compelled to feel a great deal of respect for them. ”

“ A merchant tailor has in the same shop with himself one or more "bushelmen," who repair garments, and one cutter who cuts all the garments. Besides these, there are usually several "journeymen" tailors in his employ, who come to the shops for garments and make them up in their own homes, unless a "back- shop" is provided a room near by where the tailors work together, although on separate garments. ”

“ If all garments made in tenements or dwelling-houses were so labeled, few people of any intelligence would wish to buy them. Furthermore, if the inspectors had power to grant or refuse a license to any individual wishing to employ persons outside of his own family, judging from a personal inspection of the size and cleanliness and sanitary condition of the room or rooms to be used, the number of tenement shops could be greatly reduced, and the standard of their condition raised. ”

“ The young women never go into domestic service, and not many in proportion to the number of men are found in the sweat-shops. They prefer to work down town in the department stores, and are remarkably free from any immo- bility which might keep them nearer home.
In the ten shops visited there were fifty-six males and sixty females almost as many males as females while among the Bohemians there were more than three times as many females. In some shops more men than women were employed, and in these and in cloak and suit shops the wages were higher than among the Bohemians. ”

“ In New York, too, 14.8 per cent, of all the workers whose shops are inspected by the factory inspectors are in the clothing trades, while in Illinois only 7.3 percent, are so engaged.
One of the most interesting conflicts between capital and labor in current history was the strike of the journeymen tailors and the lockout on February 15, 1900. There were 700 men in the union, and thirty-five or forty merchant tailors for whom they worked. ”

“ To a large degree the clothing trade is a belated industry, through the non-application of improved machinery and through the failure to adopt factory methods.
Home work is another cause of much trouble. ”

“ One of the inspectors said one day, when leaving a shop where a girl of fifteen was running a machine at a terrific rate of speed : " If I had my way about it, no woman should ever work like that." Even if none of these more serious troubles come, the con- stant nervous strain gradually takes the life and spirit out of one. The danger to physical health is the chief reason why the employment of women and children becomes a serious problem. ”

“ Even the small steam or gas factory has some disad- vantages. It is very likely to occupy one or more floors of some old tenement or other building never intended for a factory, and consequently badly lighted, poorly ventilated, and in an unsani- tary condition. The gas engine, too, often poisons the air. Moreover, with small factories, the workers in any one branch of the trade are likely to be widely scattered throughout the city, and organization is still difficult. ”

“ If those men whose hearts are not of stone would find out before the rush season begins what kinds of suits they wish, and would leave their orders early, some of the hurry of the height of the season might be avoided. ”

“ The means of effecting a change in so com- plex a situation as the sweating system has been seen to be cannot be perfectly simple. One of the first means that suggest themselves, however, is legislation. Much has been accomplished toward doing away with the evils of the system in New York and in Boston through the enactment of laws; and the manufacture of clothing in Chicago has been regulated to a large extent. ”