White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor

by Louis Albert Banks

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.