Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

The workers in the garment trade in New York are nearly all Jews and Italians. At any time of the summer and winter thousands of these workers will be Found spending their leisure on the street between twelve and one o’clock. When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street. This solid mass of men and women, all speaking a tongue that is unintelligible to American ears, pass round and round, back and forth, up and down, a resistless tide typifying the steady resistless rise of labor to a position in society where it must be considered.

These big loft buildings occupied by the garment-making industry have been constructed in recent years, and so rapidly have they been erected that the storekeepers and business men of upper Fifth Avenue have formed an organization and are exerting every effort “to save the avenue from this advancing tide of foreign workers.”

Press Illustrating Service.

When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street.

Many shops and department stores have been forced to give way before the onward sweep of this enterprise. The area in New York occupied most exclusively by the garment workers is about a mile long and about one-half mile wide; in this district there are thousands of workers employed exclusively in making garments of one kind and another. The Garment Makers’ Union has a membership of 60,000. How much do we know about these workers? When the Triangle Shirt Waist Company’s loft caught fire and scores of girls were burned to death or killed by jumping from the building, the country was shocked, but up to that time we had not known that thousands of girls work every day behind closed and locked doors. We have almost forgotten the incident. Where was the factory? What was done about it? The girls were, however, our servants working at the task of furnishing us with clothes!

Fashion and Clothes. In the last chapter we considered the workers who produce the material from which clothes are made. The question that is still of vital significance to most of us is, how shall we make our clothes? “I have not a thing to wear,” is a very common statement, yet it does not mean what it says, for the people that use this complaint most frequently are the ones who have literally trunks full of clothes. What they mean is that they have nothing in the latest fashion. Fashion is a hard taskmaster. Some one has said that the length of the stay of a society woman at any hotel can be determined by the number of gowns she brings with her to the hotel. “She would no more think of wearing the same gown twice to the same place than she would think of insulting her best friends,” was a woman’s description of her companion to prove that she was a “real lady.” The frequent changes in style bring rich returns to the manufacturers of clothing and call for a ceaseless outgo by people who feel that they are obliged to follow the dictates of fashion. “I hate rich people,” said a little shop-girl. “For every time I see a woman wearing a fine dress I cannot help thinking how hard I work and how useless the dress is for any practical purpose.”

Dressmaking in the Home. Dressmaking was at one time carried on entirely within the family. It was a domestic employment. The only garments that were made outside of the home were men’s clothes, and the journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic. He made the entire garment himself; but even in this industry very often the work was carried on in his home and all the members of the family assisted more or less.

The Sweat-Shop. The sweat-shop, in most cases, is a home that has been turned into a factory. The father or mother goes to the manufacturer of clothing and agrees to furnish so many pairs of pants or waists or shirts for so much money. The worker carries these garments to the home and all the family go to work upon the job. Many of these homes are one-room affairs, so that in many instances the work is carried on in the room where the cooking is done; where the meals are eaten and where the family sleeps. Legislation has done much to eliminate the sweat-shops, and sweating as a system is under the ban. Every church and every individual in the church ought to know all about the work of the National Consumers’ League. This organization inspects factories and workshops and issues a stamp or label that is attached to all garments made under clean, humane, healthful, and fair conditions. Information can be secured by writing to Mrs. Florence Kelly, 289 Fourth Avenue, New York. Look for this label when you buy any garment.

Low wages make possible the continuation of the sweat-shop system. In a family where the wage-earner receives less than enough for its subsistence, or for some reason or other the earnings are decreased to a rate at which the family cannot live, it becomes necessary to supplement the family income. Wife and children go to work, boarders and lodgers are taken into the home, and the standardization of living is so lowered that normal conditions of home life are impossible. In a study made of the garment trades it was found that in the homes where work is being done for a profit only about 11 per cent. of the husbands in these families earned $500 or more a year, while more than one half of them earned $300 or less a year.