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THE WHITE SLAVES OF THE BOSTON "SWEATERS".

"Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 'tain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out."

A wise man of the old time, after a tour of observation, came home to say, "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such, as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter." If this report had been written by one who had been climbing with me through the tenement houses of not less than a score of Boston streets, conversing with the sewing-women, looking on their poverty-lined faces and their ragged children, breathing the poisonous air of the quarters where they work, and listening to their heart-rending stories of cruelty and oppression, it would be an appropriate summary of our observation. It is my purpose, at this time, to take you with me on a tour of observation. As well-lighted streets are better than policemen to insure safety and good order, so I believe that the best possible service I can render the public is to turn on the light, and tell, as plainly and simply as I can, the story of what I have seen and heard and smelled in the white slave-quarters, which are a disgrace to our fair city. I shall confine myself at this time entirely to the work of women and children in their own homes. Most of this work is parcelled out to them by middlemen who are known as "sweaters." That word sweater is not in the old dictionaries. It is a foul word, born of the greed and infernal lust for gold which pervade the most reckless and wicked financial circles of our time. The sweater takes large contracts and divides it out among the very poor, reducing the price to starvation limits, and reserving the profits for himself.

Some of the women whose story I shall tell do not work for sweaters, but are treated almost as badly by the powerful and wealthy firms who employ them. In these cases the firm itself has learned the sweater's secret, and through an agent of its own is sweating the life-blood out of these half-starved victims.

Perhaps you are tired now, and want to rest, but I am insatiable, and will go on. Let me give you the record of six families found in the same tenement.

Family No. 1. They are Italians. The wife and mother is finishing cheap overcoats at four cents apiece. She can finish from eight to ten in a day. She has two finer coats, lined with handsome satin; of these she can complete only five a day, and receives eight cents apiece. There are three in the family, and they pay a dollar and a half per week for their one room. I asked about the husband, and a neighbor woman from the next room remarked contemptuously, "He is no good."

No. 2. These are Poles. The woman makes knee pants of grammar-schoolboy size; she receives sixteen cents a dozen pairs. Two dozen are as many as she ever gets done in a day.

No. 3. They are Italians here, and are at work on knee pants. This woman receives sixteen cents a dozen pairs for most of them, but for some extra nice ones she gets eighteen cents a dozen. She has two dozen brought to her from the sweater's shop every day about two o'clock. She works from two in the afternoon until ten at night, and from six in the morning until noon the next day, to complete her allowance, for which she receives from thirty-two to thirty-six cents. The rent is a dollar and seventy-five cents per week; she has two children.

No. 4. This woman makes men's pants at twelve cents a pair. Formerly, when she was stronger, she could drive herself through six pairs a day; but now, with a little babe to look after, she can get only four pairs done. The room is intolerably dirty; but how can you have the heart to blame her?

No. 5. Polish Jews. The woman makes knee pants, working from seven in the morning till ten o'clock at night, and nets from twenty-seven to forty-four cents a day.

No. 6. Italians. This woman is an expert seamstress. She is finishing men's coats at six cents apiece; and with nothing to bother her, working sixteen hours a day, she makes fifty-four cents. The rent for the narrow little back room is one dollar and thirty-five cents per week.

If you want variety, we will climb four flights of stairs, with half the plastering knocked off the walls, and talk with an English woman. She is working on fine cloth pants; she gets thirteen cents a pair; by working till very late in the evening, she can complete four pairs a day, and thinks it would be almost a paradise if she could make her fifty-two cents every day; but it is one of the characteristics of a sweater to systematically keep all his people hungry for work, and she seldom is able to get more than twelve pairs a week. She lives alone in a little sweat-box under the roof, for which she pays a dollar and a quarter per week.

Not far away, up two flights, we find a Portuguese widow, with four little girls, the eldest fifteen, the next thirteen, and the younger ones three and six, respectively; they are all dwarfed by hardship and insufficient food, so that the one who is fifteen is not larger than an average girl of twelve. The mother is sick, and the girls are trying to keep the wolf from the door by carrying on the sewing. They are all hard at work; they carry the pants back and forth themselves, and so for the most of their work receive twelve cents, though for some they get only ten cents a pair. They have only two little rooms with the most meagre furniture; the rent is one dollar and a half per week, and the sick mother and four girls huddle together in the one bed at night. They are pretty, bright-faced, intelligent girls, and with a fair chance would grow into strong, noble women; but one shudders when he takes into consideration the fearful odds against which they will have to struggle in this poverty-stricken, crime-cursed alley.

Here is another case of a similar description only a few blocks away. We go up three narrow flights, steep and dark, for space is as important in a low-class Boston tenement house as in a sardine box. The stairway is slippery from filth on the last flight, for on a small bench at the top, in a dry-goods box, a little boy is raising squabs for the market, and the pigeon business, however much it may help to pay the rent, is not conducive to cleanliness. We find here a suite of three little rooms, the largest of which is not more than 10x10; the others are much smaller. In these three little pigeon boxes eight people live, at least sleep--five men and boys, and a mother and two girls. The men are off most of the day, and work at such jobs as they find; the mother and little girls make pants for another leading Boston clothing house. The two little girls, the younger only three years, are both overcasting seams. The three make on an average sixteen pairs of pants a week, for which they get thirteen cents a pair; the young pigeon fancier, already spoken of, carrying the goods to and fro. The rent of these crowded quarters is two dollars and a quarter per week. In the same building, down-stairs, we went into a room which could not have been more than 10x12, where an American woman, with seven young women helping her, was at work dressmaking. We could not discover whether they were working for the stores or not, but the air was poisonous, and the workers had that deadly pallor which comes from habitually breathing bad air and from lack of sufficient food.

Sickness, to be dreaded anywhere, is especially pitiful among these sweaters' slaves in the city. In the country the fresh air, fragrant with the breath of new-mown hay, or sweetened from ten thousand clover blossoms, is free to the poorest, but to be sick in a tenement house is something terrible. Yet crowded quarters, poisonous air, and filthy clothing make sickness a common guest in such places. I climbed one day up two flights into a dirty little room, the smell of which was sickening to me in three minutes, and yet there I found a man on a little cot who has been lying there for more than three years. For two years and more he had not even a cot, but lay on the floor in his dirt and pain. There are two children, too young to be of much assistance; the wife and mother sews, finishing pants for a rich Washington Street firm. She gets twelve, and sometimes, on fine, custom-made pants, thirteen cents a pair. She has worked so hard and continuously on poor food and with insufficient clothing, that rheumatism has settled in the joints of her fingers and stiffened them, till she is only able to turn off nine or ten pairs a week. Last week she could only make a dollar and fifteen cents; the rent was a dollar and a quarter. They have absolutely none of the ordinary comforts of life; the sick man has no sheets for his cot, and the rheumatic mother sleeps with her children on the floor.

Down-stairs, we look in on a mother and two grown daughters who are finishing pants for another fashionable firm, one which does a large business with clergymen. They are paid thirteen cents a pair, ordinarily, and for the very finest custom-made pants they receive as high as twenty cents, but complain, as it takes so much longer with the fine pants, that from two to three pairs is as much as one woman can complete in a day. There is a helpless air about this mother and her daughters that is very depressing.

On the walls of the rooms in this building where the postal uniforms were being made, the cockroaches were crawling, and in some places were swarming as thick as ants about an anthill.

I talked with another young woman, who has made overalls for both these firms, and has been compelled to give it up through sickness brought on from the confinement and strained position of sitting so many hours a day over a sewing-machine. This poor girl told me that both of these firms were now giving a great part of this class of work to the public authorities in charge of the House of Correction, to be done by the prisoners, and that a daily stint for a woman in prison is only eight pairs. This sick, discouraged girl, in a most heart-breaking way, said she thought she would better commit some crime in order to procure a place in the House of Correction, for there she would have much better quarters, a great deal nicer food, and would only have to make eight pairs a day, while at home she must force herself to make at least a dozen pairs a day, or starve.

Fellow-citizens, what do you think of this? Is there not something wrong in a system of things that permits the authorities of the State or city to enter into competition with the sewing-women of Boston at such a cruel and heartless rate that no woman can work at it and keep out of prison, unless she is assisted by charity? This same South Boston firm gives out men's shirts to be made at sixty cents a dozen. The material for one of these shirts costs twenty-three cents, the making five cents--a total of twenty-eight cents. They retail these shirts at fifty cents apiece, making a net profit of twenty-two cents on an investment of twenty-eight cents for a few weeks' time.

During the last few weeks, as I have gone about among these women, my ears have been haunted with that old song of Thomas Hood, as appropriate now, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, in the city of Boston, as it ever has been anywhere, at any time, in the history of human greed.

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work--work--work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's, oh! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work!

"Work--work--work Till the brain begins to swim! Work--work--work Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

Stitch--stitch--stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt,-- Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt!

"But why do I talk of death, That phantom of grisly bone? I hardly fear his terrible shape, It seems so like my own-- It seems so like my own Because of the fast I keep: O God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work--work--work! My labor never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread--and rags, That shattered roof--and this naked floor-- A table--a broken chair-- And a wall so blank my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there!

"Work--work--work From weary chime to chime! Work--work--work As prisoners work for crime!"

If Thomas Hood had lived in our day, and could have gone around with me in Boston, he would have had to make it stronger yet, for among us the good, honest sewing-woman must work at least one-third harder than the "prisoners work for crime." And on such wages the prayer with which he continues must be forever unanswered:--

"Oh! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet-- With, the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh! but for one short hour,-- A respite, however brief! No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief! A little weeping would ease my heart; But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,-- Would that its voice could reach the rich!-- She sang this "Song of the Shirt."

LETTER OF CRITICISM.

"Slavery ain't o' nary color, 'Tain't the hide that makes it wus, All it keers fer in a feller 'S jest to make him fill its pus."

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Biglow Papers.

BOSTON, June 29, 1891.

A little inquiry into the condition of the clothing trade, and some examination of the fact, 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.

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?

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.

REPLY TO A CRITICISM ON "THE WHITE SLAVES OF BOSTON SWEATERS".

"Freedom's secret wilt thou know?-- Counsel not with flesh and blood; Loiter not for cloak or food; Eight thou feelest, rush to do."

Among the scores of thankful letters which I have received, commenting on the discourse on "The White Slaves of the Boston Sweaters," there is one of an entirety different character, written by a distinguished writer on social questions, a gentleman for whom I have always entertained the highest respect. I should be very glad to give the name of the author of this letter; but as it is marked "personal," I cannot, in honor, do so.

This letter so clearly and unswervingly outlines and defends the extreme conservative side of this question, that I feel I cannot do a better service to the cause of the "sweater's victim" than to answer it in this public way. My critic begins by assailing the title of the discourse. He says: "In the sermon which you preached yesterday, the title as given in the newspapers is 'The White Slaves of the Boston Sweaters.' Under the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, there can be no such thing as 'slave' in this country. Under the decision of Judge Parsons there has not been a slave in Massachusetts since the adoption of the Constitution." Wonderful Judge Parsons! who is able, by the magic wand of his decision, to unshackle all the slaves who, under the cruel whip of necessity,--more unmerciful than any slave-driver's lash,--have sweated under the burdens imposed by avaricious task-masters in every city of the commonwealth.

Can you make men free by constitution simply? Are there no slaves except those who, like the African thirty years ago, are bought and sold at the auction block? Ay, indeed! for every black man liberated by President Lincoln's proclamation, there is, to-day, a white man robbed and degraded and brutalized by some gigantic trust or other equally soulless, unfeeling, corporate power.

For every mother whose heart was broken by having her children wrenched from her arms in the African slave-market, there is a white mother, whose very soul is crushed at the sight of her hungry, ragged, little ones. For every black babe torn from its mother's breast by the iniquitous system of negro slavery, the slums of our great cities have a white child, whose future is equally dark and hopeless.

My critic's first question is, "How do you justify the term 'white slave' when applied to the persons whose condition you describe?" My answer is very simple. If a widow with little children to care for, who cannot go out to do other kinds of work, and is compelled to work eighteen hours a day for fifty cents, and dares not give this up for fear of starvation to her children, is not a slave, then will somebody tell me what element is lacking to make slavery?

To the first part of this question, relating to the roof of this bad tenement house, I answer frankly: Yes, no roof is better. This poor woman, working at starvation-wages, is furnishing from twelve to twenty per cent interest on the money invested in this miserable old rookery, whose heartless landlord, like the unjust judge of the Gospels, fears not God and regards not man. If we condemn this disease-breeding death-trap, it will not be a question of this woman having "no roof" over her head, but she may have a decent roof, with healthful, sanitary regulations, at a less rent than she now pays, and still pay an honest interest on the investment to the landlord. As to the second part of the question, "Is no work better than some work?" that is not a fair putting of the question. Our modern Christian civilization does not dare to put it that way. It is not a question of no work, or some work. We must furnish this woman some work, at such, just and rightful wages as shall give her and her children bread to eat and raiment to put on, and a decent, though it be humble, roof over their heads.

If my critic will take the trouble to examine the testimony given before the committee appointed by the English House of Lords, which may be found in the Public Library, he will see that it is the universal testimony of hundreds of witnesses that the sweater is an unnecessary factor in the manufacturing trades, and that in every department of the labor world where the sweating system has been introduced, the wages of the laborer have been reduced from forty to seventy per cent.

I have already answered this question in part. It is not correct that it would cost the manufacturer more to reach the worker without the sweater than with him. It is also ridiculous to suppose that if the sweater were abolished there would be no work. The demand for clothing would be just the same without the sweater as with him. Besides that, everything that takes the employer away from the people who do his work, and removes him from contact with them, is a bad thing, and always bodes ill to any harmonious relation between capital and labor. I am satisfied that there are proprietors in Boston firms, who, if they could go around with me, and see, as I have seen, the poverty and suffering of the sweaters' slaves who are making up their goods, would revolt against the whole system. It is only the sweater who comes in contact with these people, and the sweater is, as a rule, greedy and avaricious, and hardened against all humane feeling.

The seventh question continues this same thought with variations: "There is an ample supply of money available for purposes of true charity. Does not true charity consist in refusing to give alms to those who can, or may, support themselves? Is it better to give alms to these people, in their attic, or to give alms to them under the conditions of the almshouse? What course would be most sure to pauperize them utterly?" For once, my critic and myself are in agreement. I believe it is better for one to partly support himself than not to do anything towards it. Nothing is more demoralizing to any one than to become accustomed to receive charity. But, after all, you may pauperize people almost as rapidly in the attic as in the almshouse. It is against the whole system that I make war. I do not admit, for a moment, that it is necessary for the sewing-woman to receive such wages as to compel her starvation, unless alms be given to her in her attic.

In the discourse which is thus criticised. I showed plainly that the aprons for which the seamstress received, net, one cent for making, returned a profit of fifteen cents, on an investment of ten cents by her employer. Now, I do not admit that the rigors of competition are so great that it compels this manufacturer to make one hundred and fifty per cent profit while this woman toils sixteen hours a day to make forty-five cents.

I showed that the women who make shirts made only fifty cents a day, and yet the proprietor made on every shirt twenty-two cents profit on an investment of twenty-eight cents. I do not admit that competition is so stern that it is necessary for this shirt manufacturer to make seventy-eight per cent profit while the woman who works for him must beg assistance of the Provident Association, or see her children cry for bread.

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