rooms. In Baltimore there were found to be 871 shops in front rooms, 887 in back rooms, 87 in middle rooms and 3 in rear rooms. Of these 539 were on the first floor, 611 on the second floor, 436 on the third floor, 64 on the fourth floor, 11 on the fifth floor, 2 on the sixth floor and 75 in the basement. The Wisconsin inspectors found in Milwaukee that, of the 280 buildings occupied, 81 per cent. were dwellings, 12 per cent. regular factories, and 7 per cent. used also for other business purposes. There were 27 shops in basements, 205 on the first floor, 45 on the second floor and 3 on the third floor. The workrooms are usually small, low, unventilated and dark, and are often located at the top of a house under a low, sloping roof. Sometimes they are over stables and even more often are located on alleys and in rear tenements. The habit which prevails among most of these people, especially among the Russian Jews, of keeping all windows and doors tightly closed, makes ventilation practically unknown, and the rooms are greatly overheated in summer by the constant presence of the presser's stove. The shops in middle rooms are universally badly lighted and ventilated, as are, obviously, the basement shops. As regards cleanliness, in Baltimore, of the 1,831 rooms inspected, 1,026 were found to be clean, 260 to be dirty, and 545 to be fair. There is abundant testimony to the frequent filthiness of the rooms used as sweat shops. The 1893 Pennsylvania report speaks of one place "on the third floor of a dwelling house. The family consisted of a man, wife and five children who worked, cooked, ate and slept in two small rooms. The people looked as though they had not washed themselves for a year. The boys' coats that they were making were piled upon a dirty bed. The dirt could absolutely have been shoveled out of the rooms. Potato parings, garbage and filth of all kinds were strewn about the floor, and the odor that prevailed was so foul that one of the agents was made sick."" The bad sanitary condition of the houses, the dirt and filth of every description and the close crowding of the rooms with an over-worked, poverty stricken population fully accounts for the prevalence among these people of consumption and other diseases. As Mr. John Graham Brooks stated before the Industrial Commission: "The testimony of physicians that have examined them is that, given a sweat shop that is uninspected, where the members work in the boom season up to the limits of endurance, using foot power for the machine, that it is rare to find, after four or five years, any healthful person there."'2 Although it is exceedingly difficult to trace disease to clothing manufactured under the sweating system, owing to the number of hands through which each garment passes before it is completed, there have been some cases in which this has been done. Vermin are often discovered in sweat shop goods, and wherever they are carried disease germs may also be carried. "There is no other material that so invites use and deposit during manufacture as to involve to so great an extent as does cloth contact with the 1Twenty-first Annual Report of the (Pennsylvania) Bureau of Indus(Penugul trial Statistics, B, pp. 4-5. Industrial Commission, XIV, p. 130. persons of the unclean and sick of the family, not merely during the day, but even as a rest for exhausted sleepers. There is probably no material which, once having harbored disease germs or filth, is so favorable to their preservation or propagation as is cloth, especially when made of wool; and, lastly, it would be hard to imagine any material, or use to which it could be put, that would be so repulsive to civilized instincts and so dangerous to life and health as clothing, steeped in contagion, to be worn on the person. It is, moreover, an erroneous idea to suppose that sweat shop clothing is necessarily poor in quality. On the contrary, overalls and workingmen's garments are usually manufactured in large factories under good conditions, while some of the worst conditions are found in the custom trade and in the manufacture of beautiful and expensive garments. It was again and again stated before the Industrial Commission that no man in buying a custom made suit of the best and most fashionable tailor could have any assurance that it was not made in a sweat shop. The same thing may be said of all classes of women's ready made clothing. A few instances of the danger to the public from the sweating system may be cited. During the smallpox epidemic in Chicago in 1894 "two hundred and seventythree different tenement houses were reported by the factory inspectors to be infected, and the health officials had only a small number of these on their list." In Baltimore - 1 Committee Report, H. R., 52-2, V. I, No. 2309, p. xxil. one case was discovered in which two children lay ill with diphtheria in a room next to that occupied by workers, who were making up cloaks of costly design and fabric. In Chicago a tailor was found working upon an evening coat of the finest quality, while five feet away from his table his son lay dying of typhoid fever, and another tailor was found working on a good summer overcoat in the same room in which there was a patient dying of smallpox. In the latter case the coat was marked with the name of a custom tailor in Helena, Montana. A journeyman tailor testified before the Industrial Commission that while he was working at home his children had scarlatina, whooping cough and measles, and that during this time he made a garment for the superintendent of the county schools. 6. Conditions of Labor: Even worse than the sanitary evils, if such a thing were possible, are the labor conditions that prevail under the sweating system, the long hours, low wages and irregular work. In Boston the average day is about ten hours, while the investigation in Milwaukee disclosed only 5.72 per cent. of the establishments and 1.65 per cent. of the employees working over ten hours. In New York City, however, the secretary of one of the unions was able to point out, from among one hundred and twenty-five persons, sixteen who were working twelve hours, eight who were working fourteen hours, six who were working eighteen hours and four, men who had come over to this country alone and were anxious to send for their families, who were working twenty hours a day. A journeyman tailor of Chicago testified before the Industrial Commission that he knew many men who worked, during the busy season, six days and three nights in the same week, and that he had repeatedly seen men work thirty-six hours without any interruption or sleep or hardly any time to take their meals. Moreover, these long hours are much more exhausting now than they were twenty years ago owing to the increased speed and exertion. Wages vary enormously, frequently with no apparent reason but the greater or less need of the workers and their greater or less ability as bargainers. In one case five different prices for precisely the same work were found in one tenement. Moreover, wages are about 25 per cent. lower in the home shops than in the contractors' shops. The customary rate of wages for piece work in New York is shown in the following table, which was furnished the Industrial Commission by Mr. Henry White, former secretary of the United Garment Workers: |