, 1891-07-29
IN'THE SWEATING DENS.
WHERE 10000 OF COMPETITION
HELPLESS VICTIMS ARE FOUND

Stained Toll in New York's ems
Little Girls Who Work Their Eyes Out
Stitching Eighteen Hours a Day.
Notwithstanding all that has been said
and written on the subject, but few peo-
pie outside of labor organizations have
any idea of the extent and horrors of the
Sweating system" as carried on in this
city-a system of industrial slavery
whose cruelties and expressions cause
those of chattel slavery to seem merci-
full in comparison, and which furnishes
an instance of the workings of the
competitive system of industry before
which its stanchest advocates may well
stand appalled,.
Some outbreak, like the revolt of the
cloakmakers last year against the sweat
ing system, draws public attention for a
time to its sickening details, and then
the tide of affairs I've on and the pub
lie conscience is again at rest. In fact,
many people are under the impression
that the long strike of the cloakmakers
put an end to sweating" in this trade
at least. But although it greatly miti-
gated its worst features and placed it, to
a certain extent, under the control of the
union, a large proportion of the trade is
still carried on under the sweating sys-
tenn. In these sweating" shops the
hours of labor are still from z a. IN. to 7
p. m, which means that in winter sea-
son the operatives never see daylight
outside of the wretched lens where they
work. The sanitary conditions of these
workshops also remain unchanged.
AN ARMY Of FORTY THOUSAND.
In the kindred trades, viz, coat, vest,
pants, ladies' and children's clothing and
underwear, the sweating system thrives
unchecked; for, although following the
example set by the cloakmakers, unions
have been formed in most of these trades,
they are still too new and numerically
weak to accomplish much in reforming
these monstrous evils. In these trades
fully 10000 men, women and children
are employed, a large number being
young girls and children.
The long hours prevailing in the sweat
ing establishments is one of their most
horrible and d~emoralizing features.
When one person thus does the work
that should be performed by three or
four, can we wonder at the number of
unemployed who form a constant menace
to the wages of the employed? Fancy
young girls, many of them mere children,
going to work three or fou hours before
the ordinary well to do citizen has break
fasted-to work from sixteen to eighteen
hours in workrooms that are not fit for
dog kennels.
Another feature of tenement house
manufacture that has as yet received
but little attention are the evils arising
from using as factories buildings de-
signed for other purposes. There are
laws for the prevention of disease among
cattle, but in these tenement house work
shops human beings are compelled to
work in rooms absolutely without pro-
visions for ventilation and with utterly
inadequate lightning, thus to contract
chronic diseases of the eyes which they
transmit to future generations.
BLINDED b TOLL
A few weeks ago | visited a sweating
den in Hester streer, accompanied by a
physician; we there found a young girl
finishing pants, whose eyes were in a
most advanced state of disease caused
by the half light in which she had been
working for the last year and a half.
The physician examined her eyes and
declared that it was only a matter of a
month or two when she would become
entirely blind. Both the girl and her
employer received this information with
a careless shrug of the shoulders-the
stoicism of utter misery and the heart
l~essness engendered by an industrial
system which has made human beings
cheaper than beasts of burden. | have
seen three machines and six girls at
work in a small hall bedroom of a tene-
ment house with only one window open
ing within a few feet of a high brick wall.
Another point to which l wish to call
attention is the dangerous illiteracy fos-
tered by this system of working. There
is a provision in the factory law which
states that no one under the age of six
teen years shall be employed in any fac
tory who cannot read and write Eng
lish. This is utterly disregarded in the
sweating establishments. Thousands of
children are growing up in these dis
tricts who not only cannot read and
write English, but who are unable to
read or write in any language. And
these children, physically deteriorated
by long hours of work and deadly sani-
tary conditions, degraded and embruted
by ignorance, will be the American citi-
zens of the future.
1t is not n few isolated workers, but
thousands, who are working under these
conditions. This will be obvious wheI
we consider that the making of clothing
is n of the largest and most necessary
industries. These are conditions that no
mere charity nor philanthropy car amel-
iorate, and which call out, as nothing
else can, for a change in our method of
production. These are some of the con-
ditions of work and wages that furnish
the socialist with his strongest iudict-
ment against the existing social system.
And who shall say that it is not the duty
of the state to step between these help
less people and their employers? Is not
an industrial system whose workings in
evitably engender widespread misery,
degradation aud ignorance, which dwarfs
and stunts humanity physically, mental
ly and morally, vulnerable to the crit
icisms of social reformersr These facts
should arouse the people, the true law.
makers, to a sense of their responsibility
and accountability in this materials
NJ. Van Etten in New York Journal.
The twenty-third congress of the CO.
operative societies of Great Britain has
just been held at Lincoln. In twenty
five years the annual business of the 20
operative retail stores has increased from
GA, 00O, 900 to e2S, 900, 900, and of the
wholesale sCciaties from nothinp IN P1O :