The Connecticut labor news., 1924-01-26
HAPPY HOME BRAND OF HOUSE DRESSES
 MADE BY CONNECTS
Chicago Jobbing Concern Has Profit able Contract With Iowa
 State Reformatory.

Nedar Kap1dS, Iowa, Jan. 2O.- Thousands of women throughout the United States are wearing aprons and house dresses manufactured by con victs in the Iowa State Reformatory
 at Anamosa. The output IS controlled
 by the Sterling Co.,, SIP West Monroe
 street, Chicago, under the broad name
 of Happy Home" aprons and dress
 es. From I4o,ooo to POO, ,ooo garments
 are turned out every four weeks, and
 the Sterling Co. pays the state of
 Iowa 5 cents in labor costs for each
 accepted garment.
 For years there has been constant
 agitation against contract labor in i 1owa's state penal institutions, but the state has gone into the prison contract labor business with a vengeance and with financial success. Mems shirts
 are being manufactured by convicts at the Fort Madison penitentiary under conditions similar to those affecting the manufacture of women's aprons and house dresses at Anamosa.
 The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette
 prints story of the industry at Ana mosa reformatory, written by Verne Marshall, which should interest house. wives, and this article is based on his printed report. He says the Sterling Co. pays the state board of control
 from $7,ooo to $Io,ooo month for the
 work performed by APO reformatory
 convicts, who in turn receive $5.5o a
 little extra pay if they turn out more
 garments in each four-week period
 than is required by their tasks"
 However, with extras, the total pay of
 a convict rarely exceeds $5 a month. 1 Private manufacturers, of course, are unable to compete with the Sterl- ing Co.,, which recently increased its capital stock from $5oo,ooo to $75o,ooo, l the quarter million being largely
 taken up as "good will" This com pany also has a similar contract with the state of Tennessee and manufac- lures the same class of goods for the ! Southern trade in the state peniten- tiary at Nashville.
 Isadore Taradash is president and treasurer of the Sterling Co.,, and
 Milton F. Goodman is vice-president ; Goodman also is president of the Re liance Manufacturing Company, mak- CTS fmen's work shirts. The Sterl- , ing Co., maintains eight or ten inspec- , tors in the reformatory factory, who , have authority and jurisdiction over the prisoners.
 : Commenting on their condition, the Gazette writer says:
 "The garments made for this Chica- l go firm are known both as aprons | and house dresses. Their brand is peculiar and significant, considering their origin-in prison factories. They d are known as the Happy Home ;, house dresses or aprons. They are : widely advertised, sold in all parts of e the United States. There is a ready
 1 r1,o+ for T,, he e factories are pile on pile of garments, n wrapped in bundles of a dozen gar ments each, then packed in great ship
 ping cases. On cases standing in the s Anamosa factories today are the ad- ,, dresses of we'll known retailers in | various parts of the country, whose : orders pour into the Sterling Com | pany
 ;. "The dresses may go into happy = homes, but certainly they do not ex-
 iperience manufacture under happy : surroundings. Sinister indeed are r these factories, wherein the workers, y under prison rule, do not speak to one | another, where the sound of machin- e tors voice, predominates. To the ee hundreds of men engaged in making d the Happy Home house dresses the $ name of that garment must be a con n stant and aggravating mockery."
 Prisoners confined in the reforma-
 tory at Anamosa are young men and
 fboys ranging in age from I6 to 30.
 When Warden Baumel was asked if
 he did not think 1t would be better to ~ provide them with outdoor work, he said, "Yes, but they might run away" J Asked if he considered apron and
 dressmaking a vocational training for = young men prisoners, he was not
 positive, but thought "it might help"
 Statements by the prisoners show
 that the work is done against their r will, and many have asked to be as = signed to some other sort of labor. The inspectors for the Sterling Co. : walk up and down the ais1es, ever : alert to see that the garments meet es. They keep the industry hurnming, and a word from one of them to a : prison guard, sitting high on his perch at the side or end of the big room, will spell punishment for the prison CT who makes slip"
 | Contracts for spring delivery 'di-
 rect from factory" are now being
 made by the Sterling Company. Re
 tailers pay So per dozen garments,
 less so cents for advertising in local
 newspapers. | There is no law in Iowa requiring
 these garments to be stamped prison
 made" but the purchasers of the Happy Home" brand of aprons and
 house dresses, sold all over the land,
 may know they come from an Iowa prison contract labor factory.