Sweatshop

“ To-day again, as at the rise of the nineteenth century, women are binding shoes, but not like "poor, lone Hannah, sitting at the window stitching in a mournful muse." The women who to-day constitute 33 per cent, of all persons engaged in the manufacture of shoes in the United States are, all of them, factory workers. Unlike the sewing trades, the manufacture of shoes has escaped the sweatshop system. Here, as in the textile trades, we behold an industry in which the transition of women from home to factory is final and complete. ”

“ The public sympathy with the starving needlewomen of 1831 mainly sprang from an awakening recognition of the dangers of sweatshop manufacture, for already it had been shown that garments produced under foul and filthy conditions, in quarters not fit for human habitation, were likely to carry disease and death into the homes of the well-to-do. ”

“ Sewing machines being simple to operate and comparatively cheap, soon were bought by the workers themselves, and so the sewing trades have to a great extent remained a domestic industry, the old home system gradually merging into the modern sweatshop system, one of the greatest industrial evils of our day. ”

“ To all appearances an independent manufacturer on a small scale, the sweater is generally nothing more than the agent of some big establishment, which finds it more economical to let the work be done in sweatshops than in its own factories. ”

“ Stone is making boys’ waists for thirty-five cents a dozen, and there are more than 20,000 sweatshops in Chicago where similar prices prevail, and Chicago is but one of a score of cities in this country where sweating is in vogue. ”

“ This is seldom for more than 6d., for the sweater will not give them victuals if he has no work for them to do. Many who live and work at the sweater's are married men, and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings by themselves. Some send them to the workhouse, others to their friends in the country. Besides the profit of the board and lodging, the sweater takes 6d. out of the price paid for every garment under 10s.; some take 1s., and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s. This man works for a large show-shop at the West End. ”

“ The co-operative store, which we thought would be found all right, has lately adopted the 'sweating' system in their tailoring business, thus coming down to the level of all the others of this class, who employ 'sweaters' only. We are strongly of opinion that public attention has only to be drawn to so great an evil to obtain a remedy, and we think the best remedy is to put under the Workshops Act the whole of the places where any sort of manufacturing industry is carried on. ”

“ The sweater is simply the middleman, the sub-contractor, a workman like his fellows, perhaps with the single distinction from the rest that he knows a little English; perhaps not even that, but with the accidental possession of two or three sewing-machines, or of credit enough to hire them, as his capital, who drums up work among the clothing-houses. Of workmen he can always get enough. Every ship-load from German ports brings them to his door in droves, clamoring for work. ”

“ Indeed, the men working under sweaters at such prices generally consider themselves well off if they have a shilling or two in their pockets for Sunday. The profits of the sweater, however, would be from £4 to £5 out of twelve men, working on his premises. The usual number of men working under each sweater is about six individuals; and the average rate of profit, about £2, 10s., without the sweater doing any work himself. It is very often the case that a man working under a sweater is obliged to pawn his own coat to get any pocket-money that he may require. ”

“ If the money be not lent, still let us stint and strain ourselves to the very bone, if it were only to raise one sweater's security-money, which one of us should pay into the slopseller's hands, in his own name, but on behalf of all: that will at least save one sweater's profit out of our labour, and bestow it upon ourselves; and we will not spend that profit, but hoard it, till we have squeezed out all the sweaters one by one. Then we will open our common shop, and sell at as low a price as the cheapest of the show shops. ”

“ According to the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, "in practice sweating consists of the farming out by competing manufacturers to [Pg 210] competing contractors of the material for garments, which in turn is distributed among competing men and women to be made up." This system is opposed to the factory system, where the manufacturer employs his own workmen, sees the goods made, and knows the conditions. The sweating system is one of the iniquities of commercial greed, and the helpless foreigner of certain classes is its victim. ”

“ Since the sweating in women's industries is so important a subject as to demand a separate treatment, the facts stated here will chiefly apply to male industries.
Tailoring.--In the tailoring trade the best kind of clothes are still made by highly-skilled and well-paid workmen, but the bulk of the cheap clothing is in the hands of "sweaters," who are sometimes skilled tailors, sometimes not, and who superintend the work of cheap unskilled hands. In London the coat trade should be distinguished from the vest and trousers trade. ”

“ Some, indeed, have represented this sweating middleman as one who thrusts himself between the proper employer and the working man in order to make a gain for himself without performing any service. But the bulk of evidence goes to show that the sweater, even when he does not occupy himself in detailed manual labour, performs a useful work of superintendence and management. "The sweater in the vast majority of cases is the one man in the workshop who can, and does, perform each and any branch of the trade." ”

“ That competition leads every employer to pay the highest wages that can be recovered from the sale of the pants, also allowing the sweater's charge. If the cost of making is advanced on this class of pants, they cannot be sold at all; then there would be no sweater, and the woman would get no work. Is no work better than some work?
4. The sweater deals as a middleman with the manufacturer and the worker. If he did not deal with this kind of work, it would cost the manufacturer more to reach the worker than it does now; no sweater would be employed if he did not earn what he makes ”

“ One good shirt is enough. When you wash it, substitute the sweater until it dries. In fact, by keeping the sweater always in your waterproof bag, you possess a dry garment to change into. Two handkerchiefs are enough. One should be of silk, for neck, head, or--in case of cramps or intense cold--the stomach; the other of coloured cotton for the pocket. Both can be quickly washed, and dried en route. Three pairs of heavy wool socks will be enough--one for wear, one for night, and one for extra. A second pair of drawers supplements the sweater when a temporary day change is desirable. ”

“ The sweater takes large contracts and divides it out among the very poor, reducing the price to starvation limits, and reserving the profits for himself.
Some of the women whose story I shall tell do not work for sweaters, but are treated almost as badly by the powerful and wealthy firms who employ them. In these cases the firm itself has learned the sweater's secret, and through an agent of its own is sweating the life-blood out of these half-starved victims. ”

“ Let us see now what the profit of the average sweater is likely to be, and then that of the workwoman, skilled and unskilled, taking our figures in every case from the Blue Book containing Mr. Burnett's report and confirmed by many workers. A small sweater in Brunswick Street employed a presser and a machinist, with two women for button-holes and felling, his business being the production of tunics for postmen. For each of these he received two shillings, or half a dollar a coat, which he considered a very good price. He paid his presser 4s. 6d. ($1.12) per day; his machinist 5s. ”

“ However, the branch of Mr Sweater’s business to which it is desired to especially direct the reader’s attention was the Homeworkers Department. He employed a large number of women making ladies’ blouses, fancy aprons and children’s pinafores. Most of these articles were disposed of wholesale in London and elsewhere, but some were retailed at “Sweaters” Emporium” in Mugsborough and at the firm’s other retail establishments throughout the county. Many of the women workers were widows with children, who were glad to obtain any employment that did not take them away from their homes and families. ”

“ Her experience was to the effect that it is only by the sweated farthing that in these days of cut-throat competition shops which sell things made by hand or by the sewing-machine can pay their expenses, that the sweater is himself sweated, and that the workwoman, starving under the sweating system, mistrusts any other and is an element of danger in the very workroom which is founded for her emancipation. ”

“ The sweater is either the small master or the middleman; the employer practically resigns the responsibility of his workmen and makes a contract with a middleman, who 33relieves him of trouble and makes his profit out of the workmen’s pay. Or the employer finds a middleman who distributes the work and collects it, does part of it himself, and sweats others, being himself sweated. Or sometimes it is a “chamber master” who employs “greeners”—new hands—for long hours on wages which admit of bare subsistence—sweating, in fact, is the outcome in all its shapes of remorseless competition. ”

“ The fur trade in Europe has been largely driven into Whitechapel sweaters' shops. They call the sweater in this business a "chamber master," and in these foul chambers, in the midst of "bad smells, great heat, no ventilation, and fetid refuse," men and women swelter and die, the men getting ten shillings, and the women about five shillings a week. ”

“ A sweater, this, in a small way. Five men and a woman, two young girls, not fifteen, and a boy who says unasked that he is fifteen, and lies in saying it, are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, “knee-pants” in the Ludlow Street dialect. The floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. In the alcove, on a couch of many dozens of “pants” ready for the finisher, a bare-legged baby with pinched face is asleep. A fence of piled-up clothing keeps him from rolling off on the floor. ”

“ She is working on fine cloth pants; she gets thirteen cents a pair; by working till very late in the evening, she can complete four pairs a day, and thinks it would be almost a paradise if she could make her fifty-two cents every day; but it is one of the characteristics of a sweater to systematically keep all his people hungry for work, and she seldom is able to get more than twelve pairs a week. She lives alone in a little sweat-box under the roof, for which she pays a dollar and a quarter per week. ”

“ When the garment makers, spurred to production by the presence of an army of laborers in mills and mines, began to increase and cheapen their output, they gave the jeans and railroad jumpers to Irish and German women who would make them at home. The sweating system, as old and older than the ready-made trade, has adapted itself to the city, and has taken a form scarcely recognizable to one familiar with the contract shops on New York's East Side. ”

“ The manufacturer knows it, and is not slow to take advantage of his knowledge. He makes him hungry for work by keeping it from him as long as possible; then drives the closest bargain he can with the sweater. ”

“ The sweater, it may be as well to state, is the man who contracts with the large houses to supply them with shirts, or clothes, or any other kind of slop work; the more his victims sweat, the more are his gains. The sweater is often a Jew, never a Christian.
Let the reader walk with us to a fashionable clothing establishment—a mart, we believe, as it is called. ”

“ They do not need our building material, and as for clothing, one American is worth more as a customer than a hundred of these natives. While a few wear rich robes, the mass content themselves with a very scanty costume of very cheap cotton—a costume which someone has described as "a handkerchief around the loins and a table cloth around the head." No shoe manufacturer need send a salesman to these parts, for even the coachman and footmen in livery are barefooted. ”

“ Hundreds work at home under the same conditions as depicted in other places; the middleman, or master sweater, employing men at his home at from 17s. to £1 per week, women and girls from 1s. per day and upwards ”

“ The words carried a little smile, and he recognized her meaning with a start.
He gave a quick glance from the knitting to her face—and then to the group near the table. A little low whistle broke from his lips—so low that it might have been only fancy that the lips shaped it—before they returned to the whimsical smile. . . . Alan Sargent was himself the proud possessor of a sweater—made of heavy wool, dark gray in color, and man's size. It had been presented to him on the day of its completion—the day he made his first visit to Milly's office—nearly a year ago. ”

“ Guess, with our sweaters and coats we c’n be warm enough as we sit here and talk.”
“But all of us ain’t got sweaters,” exclaimed Buster, shiveringly, “’less somebody happens to have my blue moon one stickin’ at the bottom of his bag. Now, don’t everybody get mad at what I’m sayin’, and turn on me savagely. Course I mean that it might a-got in there just [77] by accident like. And I’d be ever so much obliged if you’d look and see. A sweater is a mighty fine thing to have sometime, which right now is one of ’em; and when you don’t find it, you feel as blue as that moon mine had on the breast.” ”