St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-06-10
A SWEATERS PARADISE

subordinate positions than before ana that
the unskilled generally must work for wages
the result of sharp competition. This sharp
competition again is intensified by the con-
slant invention Of new machines and methods
for cheapening production and distribution,
and by an enormous immigration. Produc-
ton is cheapened and many advantages are
obtained, but all this is at the expense of low
ering the conditions Of life to large numbers
Of people, and Of producing for others many
dangers which, though lightly regarded, are
none the less real and serious.
The sweating system in the United States
is one of the most unsavory products of these
conditions. Women and children workers
in many occupations have been forced by the
sharp competition Of necessity to work for
wages less than sufficient for bare living.
and as they succunbed to slow starvation
and other unsanitary conditions combined,
their places have been flied by others, forced
down from higher level by inexorable cir
cunstances, or growing up in the slums, or
assisted TO this country from abroad. These
undergrad occupations of women and
children have been constantly encroaching on
the comparatively well paid trades of men,
the clothing trade being affected most of all.
New York is the great centre of the ready
made clothing trade. In the manufacturing
part of this business there are about 10000
workers, while within radius of twenty-five
miles from the City Hall there are probably
$4,000 more. OF these about sixty-f1ve per
cent. are American and foreign Jews, twenty
five per cent. Italians and the balance of
American, English and other nationalities.
The great preponderance of Jews results from
special European conditions, which we can
not here discuss, and in substantial measure
from the terrible prosecution Of the Jews in
Russia.
The sweating system of manufacture is one
of contracting out. A B does manufactur-
ing trade that would employ for reasonable
hours thousand men and proportionate
number of women and children. To build
factories of this capacity and fit them up
properly, giving adequate breathing space
and proper sanitary conditions for all en-
ployees would require a large capital en-
ployed under circumstances OF law and of
public opinion tending in a substantial degree
to limit the profit that could be made from
each toiler. For the time being at least A
can do better for himself. He puts out his
work by contract to D, E and others at
prices far below the cost at which he could
make the goods in properly appointed
factory. These contractors often sub-con-
tract till there are three or four removes and
as many profits between A B and those who
actually perform his work in filthy tenements,
unsanitary at the best, and made trebly SO by
an oyercrowding which the officers of the law
would certainly interfere with in large,
clearly and otherwise well appointed factory,
and by hours of labor beyond the safe endur-
ance of rugged men, and which must neces-
sarily interfere with the physical develop
ment of children. Think of living such life,
thankful that the work holds out and that you
do not die Of absolute starvation on wages
less than fourth of what it costs to keep
convicts in the penitentiary!
This is not oil Or even the worst of it. The
very existence of such a little Gehenna as
sweat shop poisons the atmosphere. The
thousands of these dens in the East side of
New York send forth through the regions
about them, and even far away to the palaces
of the rich, invisible clouds of disease-breed-
ing germs that infect the air and produce
many death. Such places are the favorite
haunts of typhus, measles, smallpox, scarlet
fever and diphtheria. And there is one dis
ease we have more reason to dread than any
other. Always present and never epidemic,
consumption is responsible for one seventh
of all the deaths in the United States. Con-
sumption breeds in these places and the
deadly baccilli are waited on the winds to
every nook, increasing the amount of general
contagicn, and the probabilities of this
dreaded death for every dweller for many
miles around. Let the man or woman that
does not believe this visit dozen sweat shops,
count the faces that seem marked by con-
sumption and note the proportion to the
seemingly healthy, and then say whether he
or she would feel as safe from consumption
in such neighborhood rs among more
healthy people. And then, noting that the
germs of this disease float in the air, noting
also the number of deaths in the city by con-
sumption, let such a one judge whether the
contagion is not intensified by these thou
SAINTS OF vile dens, and the danger to life
somewhat increased iiNeyery TART OF the city.
AtS2 Orchard stree, New York, are the
hcaCF Quarters o. tho Operators aid C!ol.1-
makers Cn.on Ne. /. OF Etes YORK. THIS
organization IS ;iShii.,l. sweat s;aDs and SIR.
ID. H.. H..