In that orphan heart's sad ear;
But all of us all ignoring,
What lies at our door so near!"
There is nothing wholesome in the question whether it is better to
pauperize people a little in the attic, or to pauperize them altogether
in the almshouse. We ought not to pauperize them at all. A noble
Christian woman, who has a young men's Bible class in the North End,
and who by her womanly tact and Christian sympathy has gained the
confidence of some of the most hopeless cases in that section, told me
that one of these boys said to her, "When the Back Bay folks know that
we are made of flesh and blood, they won't pauperize us any longer."
[Illustration: CLARK'S MISSION.]
The eighth question returns in some of its aspects to the first: "The
use of the term 'slave' implies a slave-owner and a slave-driver. In
this series of the manufacturer, the sweater or middleman, and the
working-woman with her children, which is the slave-owner, and which is
the slave-driver? Under what authority does the slave-master force this
woman to render her labor for all that it is worth?" Answering the last
part of the question first, I have already shown that the woman does
not get all that her work is worth. The manufacturer, who makes from
seventy-eight to a hundred and fifty per cent profit, gets a far larger
proportion of the profits than rightly belongs to him.
Under the sweating system, the sweater is, most emphatically, both the
slave-master and slave-driver; and no Georgia overseer was ever more
cruel than some of these sweater taskmasters in Boston to-day.
Even at the wretched wages they pay, they will not give any of their
workers all the work they can do; they dole out the work to them,
trying to make them think it is very scarce. If they ask for higher
pay, they are met at once with a threat of discharge. Do you ask why
they do not hunt for something better? What can a poor,
half-broken-down mother, with three little babies, do hunting work? Who
will pay the rent, furnish them food, and care for the children while
she makes her search? There are thousands of laboring people, both men
and women, in all our great cities, who are in the same condition that
a majority of the Israelites were when Moses came to them, and told the
marvellous story of his talk with Jehovah, and painted before their dim
eyes the picture of the Canaan, and recounted to their dull ears the
promise of their deliverance from bondage. Pathetic, indeed, is the
record, "They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for
cruel bondage." It is idle to talk, as so many newspapers as well as
private individuals do, as though domestic service were the cure-all
for these half-starving, under-paid women. A great majority of the
women who are slaves to these sweaters, have families of little
children depending on them, that are as dear to their hearts as are the
children of more fortunate mothers to them. Dr. Barnardo, of London,
who has had a most extensive experience among the poor, tells of a poor
woman, with a husband lying disabled in the hospital, earning her
living by charing and odd jobs, while she herself was receiving
out-door hospital relief for physical debility. Driven at last to
accept assistance from the relieving officer, she hastened home, placed
the bread and meat on a table, and fell dead of exhaustion. Dr.
Barnardo was sent for, and beside the dead body of the mother he was
surprised, as well he might be, to find five well-fed, chubby children.
The poor, slum mother had literally starved herself to death that her
children might live! Truly, as Coleridge says, "A mother is the holiest
thing alive;" and God never intended that the almshouse or the orphan
asylum should be the only refuge held open for a mother who is able and
willing to work to support her children.
In the ninth question our critic says: "If her work is worth more than
she gets, can she not get it? A little inquiry into the condition of
the clothing trade and some examination of the facts might disclose to
you that the poor sewing-woman is poor because she sews poorly, and
that there is always a scarcity of skilful and intelligent
sewing-women, at full wages." The more thorough my examination into the
facts of the case, the more I am convinced that the sweating system is
demoralizing the entire clothing trade, as it will every trade it
touches. Whether the woman sews poorly or not, she does not, in any
class she may be placed, receive the wages to which she is entitled.
[Illustration: NORTH END JUNK SHOP.]
The conclusion of my critic's letter is, I think, as remarkable as
anything in it. He says: "My final question is, how do you propose to
help those who are incapable of helping themselves, without pauperizing
them yet more than they are pauperized under their present conditions?
What will you do when you have destroyed the house and done away with
the sweater?" To this part of the concluding question I simply say, I
will be a Christian, and pay honest wages for honest work. But the
critic continues: "Are you justified, as a Christian minister, in
creating prejudice and arousing malignant passion by the use of the
term 'slave?' Can you defend or justify this term under the conditions
as they are stated in the printed report of your sermon? I venture to
put these questions to you because I think that the dangerous class in
this community is to be found among persons who, without intelligence,
create animosity and, by their method of preaching, tend to retard
rather than to promote the progress of the poor and ignorant in this
country." My answer to all that is, that, as a Christian minister, I am
a follower of Him, who, standing in the midst of the self-satisfied and
wealthy oppressors of His times, exclaimed, "Woe unto you, Pharisees!
for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over
judgment and the love of God." And who, standing in the audience of all
the people, said unto His disciples, "Beware of the Scribes which
devour widows' houses, and for a show make long prayers: the same shall
receive greater damnation;" who, standing in the presence of the
lawyers, cried aloud, "Woe unto you, also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men
with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the
burdens with one of your fingers." I am a follower of Him who came "not
to send peace on the earth, but a sword." All an infernal system of
oppression, like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To
uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow
in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that
nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds
them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under
cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the
tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his
friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright and shame. Neither am
I alarmed that this critic, as a type of conservatism, regards me as a
member of the most dangerous class in the community. It was ever thus.
The old antislavery agitators were considered the most dangerous men in
the republic, and I remember that a very distinguished minister once
bitterly regretted the agitation on the evils of slavery, because he
feared it would destroy the prospect for a revival of religion in the
city where he lived.
[Illustration: HOME OF THE MATHERS.]
If to be a Christian minister is to stand as a policeman to hold back
the righteous indignation of the robbed and degraded laborer, or preach
patience and contentment to empty stomachs,--empty that the sweater may
grow rich and fat on the toil of orphans and widows,--then I spurn the
title as beneath the dignity of my manhood; but if, as I take it, to be
a Christian minister is to be like my Master, the brother of all men,
rich or poor, standing forever as the unflinching enemy of oppression
and injustice wherever found, as the friend and advocate of the
defenceless and the weak, then I am proud of the title, and thank God
for its unspeakable privilege.
IV.
THE PLAGUE OF THE SWEAT-SHOP.
"Can the heart be deformed, and contract incurable ugliness and
infirmity under the pressure of disproportionate misfortune, like the
spine beneath too low a vault?"
--VICTOR HUGO: _Les Miserables_.
The Klamath Lake Indians in Oregon have a strange and weird fashion of
mourning their dead. They dig a hole in the ground, and roof it over
with willows, which they cover with dirt, forming a sort of underground
cabin. In case of death in the family, the relatives go into this
dug-out, which is called a "sweat-lodge," and heated rocks are brought
in and heaped in the centre of the lodge, and water sprinkled over
them, so as to fill the room with steam. In the midst of this
steam-heated, poisonous air the family hover around their heap of
rocks, and sweat for days at a time, in memory of their departed
friends.
When the mourning days are over, they heap up into a cairn beside the
sweat-lodge the stones that have been used, as a monument to their
dead.
But that, after all, is only a brief torture which is soon over, and is
constantly lightened by the hope of relief. The sweat-lodge of our
modern civilization is a much more serious matter. The tortured victims
who are suffering there, are not mourning for their dead friends, but
for the living, and in the dark night of their sorrow there is no
promise of a brighter dawn.
The word "sweater" derives its origin from the Anglo-Saxon word _swat_,
and means the separation or extraction of labor or toil from others,
for one's own benefit. Any person who employs others to extract from
them surplus labor without compensation, is a sweater. A
middleman-sweater is a person who acts as a contractor of such labor
for another man. The position becomes aggravated when the
middleman-sweater, as is usually the case in the modern sweat-shop,
employs the labor himself, at his own house, for the purpose of
extracting a double quantity of labor, either by lowering wages or
working longer hours.
An English writer gives this definition of the sweating system: "One
whereby the middleman tries to get the largest profit, with the least
labor and outlay, out of the maximum labor of his workers." Another
gives three definitions: "First, one who grinds the face of the poor;
second, a man who contributes neither capital, skill, nor speculation,
and yet gets a profit; third, a middleman." Still another describes it
as a systematized payment of unfair wages. Away back in the days of
Queen Anne the term "sweater" was given to a certain class of street
ruffian. The sweaters went about in small bands, and, forming a circle
around an inoffensive wayfarer, pricked him with their swords, and
compelled him to dance till he perspired from the exertion. The sweater
is still a ruffian, though the street is no longer the scene of action,
but, in some attic or tenement-house bedroom, he gathers his victims
from the poorest and most helpless of our population.
It is my purpose, first of all this morning, to show you something of
the growth and development of the sweat-shop in England. It is
reasonable for us to suppose that, if left to itself, it will produce
the same general results in this country that it has there. Fortunately
we have an abundance of data upon which to form our conclusions.
There are in the Boston Public Library five ponderous volumes
containing the evidence taken before a commission, appointed by the
English House of Lords, to examine into the sweating system of Great
Britain.
I think it is well for American laboring-men to know that this evidence
puts beyond question the fact that the sweating business, while it may
begin with the clothing trade, by no means ends there. "The plague of
the sweatshop" is not something of interest to the tailors and
sewing-women only, but is of equal importance to workers of every
class. Take the matchbox trade; before the sweating days, the people
who worked at it received two and three-fourths pence a gross. Now the
large contractors let and sub-let until it is only one and a half pence
a gross, and a woman and a family of children have to work all the week
to make four or five shillings.
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.
[Illustration: THE PEANUTTER.]
The cabinet and upholstery trade is not exempt. Sub-contracting here,
as in clothing, is the first step in sweating. The evidence shows that
sweating began in this business as early as 1855, but has rapidly
increased under pauper immigration from Italy and Russia since 1880.
Much of the work is crowded into garrets and cellars, where there are
no sanitary arrangements. So universally is this so, that the sweater
in this business is called a "garret master." Wages have been brought
down, from forty to fifty shillings a week, to from eighteen to twenty
shillings.
The boot and shoe trade has had the same history. Large numbers of
foreigners are employed in this work. The workers are kept in ignorance
of the language and under surveillance, so as to be taken advantage of.
They are not instructed in the more skilled work, and, to use the words
of one of the witnesses, "are too crushed to resist." They are
compelled to work from eighteen to twenty hours a day. Wages in these
sweat-shops are from ten to fifteen shillings a week.
In Sheffield, the great cutlery manufacturing city, the same system is
prevailing, and a woman whose business was awl-blade grinding, a strong
woman of forty-five years of age, testified that she could only make
six and a half shillings per week.
Military harness and accoutrements are also made by the sweaters. Many
workmen earn only three pence an hour, and complain that they cannot
live on it. The nail trade is in the same condition. A man and wife
working together make thirteen shillings a week. Women's earnings
average from three shillings and a half to six shillings per week.
Large numbers of women are only able to earn three shillings a week at
this business. Boys and girls are paid, in a sweater's chain-shop,
one-half penny per hour.
A witness from Glasgow testified in regard to the clothing shops of
that city: "It is a rule among the sweaters to give the men some money,
a shilling, every night, to keep them alive till the next day. Some of
the men at the end of the week are actually in debt instead of having
anything coming to them. When in debt, they do not, as a rule, come
back, but go to another sweater. The men never actually get any wages,
but are in debt from one year's end till another. All independence is
taken out of the men; they are always in the sweater's power."
A witness from Leeds says: "Wages are driven to a starvation level, and
workmen at piece-work compelled to excessive hours. If the employers
find a good workman, who is earning good wages by piece-work, they try
to reduce prices. Time work is healthier, but no one would believe how
the men are driven in shops where time-work exists."
Another gentleman, testifying about his investigations in Glasgow,
tells of a place he visited, where a sweater had between forty and
fifty women employed in an old boiler shed, a disused part of an
engineer's shop; the women had to get to it by three wooden ladders,
and had to go through a joiner's shop in order to enter the workroom.
There was no sanitary accommodation for these women anywhere. It is a
common practice for sweaters to take on learners, that is to say, to
employ young girls for a certain time to learn the machine part of the
work; but they get no wages for say five or six weeks or so, or two
months, and after that time, if competent, they receive two or three
shillings per week. But the sweater's trick, as soon as the busy season
is over, is to discharge all these girls and take on a new batch.
The practical slavery to which the laboring-people, by the sweating
system, have been degraded, is illustrated on almost every page of the
evidence. One witness testifies: "They do almost as they like with
their victims. The people are afraid to give evidence against them. The
sweater is a law unto himself. One woman I came across says she has not
been paid for her work done some three years ago, on some trivial
pretext which the sweater made. Another deducted a whole week's work
from a woman's wages because she was ten minutes late, and so
aggravated the people in the neighborhood that they smashed his
windows, showing the state of things between the sweater and his
people."
As one would naturally expect, moral degradation keeps pace with the
outrage upon the rights of the laborer. It is claimed that the
Jewesses, who have always had the most unblemished character of any
women in the world, are being ruined in the sweat-shops of London,
where they are herded together with all classes of men in a way which
renders morality and decency next to impossible. One witness bears this
terrible testimony: "The sweating system, in which you have young girls
working with men of all nationalities, and of all degrees of
intelligence, conduces to their being later on, and they are mostly, to
my certain knowledge, prostitutes. Most of the young English girls whom
we can see in the Strand and Oxford Street are, or have been,
tailoresses, and the conditions conduce to that effect."
So great and wide-spread is this question of the increase of immorality
in England, under the reign of the sweat-shop, that a barrister-at-law,
Mr. Wm. Thompson, has written a novel entitled, "The Sweater's Victim,"
which has for its burden the ruin of girls through the "plague of the
sweat-shop."
It is easy to say, "Oh, well, these horrible things you are telling us
about belong to the Old World!" I would to God they did belong to the
Old World alone, but the horrible truth is, that this vicious system is
like a banyan-tree that has run its roots under the sea, and is coming
up, and blossoming, and flourishing in all our great American cities.
Listen to this description of the slaves of the sweat-shop in New York,
given by the _New York Herald_: "In the lower portion of the great east
side of this city, are hundreds of tall, ill-appearing tenement houses,
in which thousands of half-starved, sunken-eyed men and women are
crowded into small, foul, over-heated rooms, working day and night for
just enough to keep body and soul together. Scattered among the workers
are dirty children, and sometimes cats and dogs. Everything in these
places has to stand aside for work. It is work, work, work, day and
night, year in and year out. In these over-crowded rooms the air is
poisoned with the heat from the stoves, the steam from the cooking, and
the fumes of oil and gas. Very few of the toilers can speak English.
They are the most wretched-looking, miserably-paid class of workers in
America. They are foreigners, and come chiefly from Russia and Poland.
No sunshine enters into their lives. Their existence is one hard, deep,
grinding toil. They have no hope of brighter days to come. As they have
worked for years, so they expect to work in the future. But the sweater
does not care. He has his contracts with the manufacturers. Every day
great bundles of clothing are dumped into these dens, and then the
slaves are driven at full speed to make them up. Competition is keen,
but the sweater makes money."
[Illustration: INSIDE A SWEAT-SHOP.]
The Journeymen Tailors' National Union, in its fifth annual report,
describes in detail one of these New York sweat-shops, similar to those
which the recent commission, appointed by the Governor of
Massachusetts, found to be the manufactories of enormous quantities of
clothing for Boston firms: "On the first floor, which was occupied by
two families, was a contractor, or 'sweater,' who made overcoats. In
the front room, 8x16 ft., eight full-grown men were at work, some on
sewing-machines, a man pressing, and others finishing. They were
hollow-cheeked and cadaverous. Trousers and undershirts were their only
apparel. In the rear room, 9x14, were six other men, almost identical
in appearance with those in the front. All were working as if for dear
life.
"This place was simply indescribable in its filthiness. The only
household furniture discernible (for the contractor and his family
lived in the rooms), were a bedstead and a child's crib in one of the
two dark, so-called bedrooms. Bedding and overcoats were piled up
together. The floors were four inches deep with dirt and cotton
battings and scraps of linings. The ceilings and woodwork looked as
though they had not seen a brush since the house was built years ago.
Water from the floor above had leaked through the ceiling, but it
seemed to make no difference. One stove was used by the pressers and
the cook. It did not appear that there was any regular meal hour. There
was a table littered with dirty dishes, morsels of food, and scraps of
coats. One man was seated, eating out of a dish with his fingers,
without the aid of spoon, knife, or fork. As soon as he had finished,
he merely wiped his hands on some cotton batting, and proceeded with
his work. The poor creatures were haggard and apparently stupid." What
wonder?
Dr. George C. Stiebling, of New York, who accompanied the recent Boston
investigating committee, says, in an affidavit made after a careful
investigation, that the New York sweatshops "in which clothing is
manufactured, and which serve at the same time as dwelling-rooms for
the bosses, their families, and boarders, are overcrowded,
ill-ventilated, over-heated, full of dirt, filth, vermin and stench,
and that, consequently, they are in a most unwholesome,
health-destroying and disease-breeding condition." The doctor, speaking
of one particular case, says: "On the fourth floor I found four very
small rooms, occupied by five sewing-machines, twenty-four working
hands, and the family of the boss consisting of himself, wife, and five
living children. The mother reported to affiant that, within the last
few years, six of her children had died of various diseases here in the
same place." Relying upon these and other facts, which he relates, the
Doctor declares it to be his deliberate conclusion, as a medical man,
that "the dust, filth, and dirt, accumulated in the 'sweating dens' he
has visited and examined, contain the germs of the prevailing
infectious diseases, such as diphtheria, scarlatina, measles,
erysipelas, and smallpox, and that the clothing manufactured in these
shops is impregnated with such germs, and consequently may transmit and
spread the aforesaid diseases to persons who handle and wear it."
These places referred to in this affidavit by Dr. Stiebling, who is a
wealthy and respectable medical practitioner, are places where goods
are made almost exclusively for Boston houses.
Another physician of standing and repute, Dr. Markierez, who made an
investigation of the sweating district, in connection with a commission
from the advisory board of the operative tailors of Boston, in August,
1889, states that the section of New York City in which the
tenement-house system of clothing manufacture is carried on, is filthy
and infested with vermin; and he further affirms that the sanitary
condition of these tenement houses is so low that the death rate is
frightful and almost beyond comprehension.
That the sweating system in New York degrades the men and women
employed in the sweatshops, may be inferred from the fact that men and
women to the number of twelve have been found sleeping together in one
of these workrooms. The tenement-house factories are so crowded that no
such thing as privacy or modesty, on the part of men or women, is
possible; the usual water-closet is a wooden bucket upon every landing,
which fills the air with its vile and death-breeding stench.