The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1906-07-13
THE FEARFUL PRICE
OF "CHEAPNESS."

eously, damnably dear.
! As Hood sang so many years ago:
1T not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures lives"
As revoltingly dear as the cheap
clothes and nasty" so wildly described
by Kingsley, are paper bags, with
which We are already familiar
Crowded into a small room, as we
have seen in the Goldberg case, often
! lighted only by means of an oil-lamp,
foul-smelling and peTilous, as many as
eight or ten workers, young and old,
will sometimes be found making paper
bags at four cents a thousand
In this room, though they be of
both sexes and miscellaneous ages,
they sleep and eat as we'll as work
Bedclothing, dirty, and rarely aired, is
piled upon the bed or in some corner,
where it serves as a seat for one or
more of the workers. Scraps of pa
per litter the floor, sometimes to a
depth of several inches, and paste is
everywhere. When the scientist seeks
a medium for the cultivation of germs
he selects paste, just such paste as
this, as the most favorable soil for
germ-culture and growth. Think,
then, what must be the peril to the
health of the community when the
bags so made are used for the convey
ance of fruit and food from the stores!
A terrible retributive justice surely
follows society's Indifference to such
matters.
Indeed, the peril to society through
the dissemination of disease germs
from tenement sweat shops is not
small nor to be lightly put aside. The
bread that is baked in filthy cellars
and the clothing made in homes where
sickness dwells are a fearful menace
to their users. have seen q woman
in the last stages of consumption
sewing women's dresses, and more
than one consumptive cigar-maker
making cheap cigars, moistening the
ends by putting them in his mouth.
A doctor told me a few weeks ago
of girl of eleven years who, though
she was just getting over scarlet fever,
the skin still peeling off was employed
in her home crocheting over brass
rings for some kind of passementerie
work. The price paid for this work
was ten cents for one hundred and
forty-four rings, and the girl could do
two hundred in twelve hours, when she
was well.
Doctor Daniel tells Of girl Of eight
years Just recovering from diphtheria,
who though she was scarcely able to
walk across the room unaided, was
found working on women's collars. It
is a common thing to find children suf-
fering from measles and other diseases
lying upon bundles of partly finished
garments.
If only for self-protection society
should prohibit al such work in tene-
ments
There is no need to multiply ex-
amples of child slavery in the tene-
ments. The cases cited are sufficient
to stamp indelibly upon the minds of
all earnest, intelligent American citi-
Zens the shameful fact that many
thousands of child slaves are toiling
in the dim recesses of the tenements
of our large cities under conditions
far worse than those in the cotton
mills of the South-conditions which
so appalled, us when we first heard of
them.
One more instance ! must give you,
because 1t illustrates the insidiousness
of the evil.
Not long ago saw two Italian chill
dren, in the basement of a West Side
tenement sorting filthy rags. One
was boy of nine and the other a girl
of seven. / stood on the steps of that
basement and watched them as they
worked, picking out various kinds of
rags and putting them into big sacks.
The stencil WIS something indies
and l could only compare it
to the foul odor which emanates from
the great stockyards of Chicago. The
little girl coughed almost necessarily
"a dry, sharp deadly sounding cough.
These children were violating no law
of the state, l found, for they attend
ed school, both of them being in I'M
graded classes for defective and back
ward children. 1t is not difficult to
why, naturally bright and
clever as they seemed to be, they
should be in these especial clsses.
For three hours before school each
from six to nine, and for
five or six hours every night after
leaving school, and all day during
holidays, they work in that basement,
Two nj 90 h.