I have, myself, visited a number of these shops during the past few weeks. I will describe a few of them very briefly. Here is one in two rooms. There is no light except from the end of the room, which contains twenty-three people, men, women, and little girls. I am satisfied that some of the girls could not have been more than twelve or thirteen. One of the women had a little baby which, though almost entirely naked, was crying from the heat and poisonous air. The place did not look as if it had been swept for weeks. The clothing, both finished and unfinished, was piled up in every direction, and workers walked over it with their sweaty feet, for they wore only such clothing as was absolutely indispensable. The stench of the place was sickening in the extreme.
I went into another place, where there were eighteen men and twelve girls. As near as I could judge, the ages of the girls were from ten to fifteen. The men were nearly all smoking, and that, together with the heat from the fire necessary for the pressing, made an atmosphere that was almost intolerable, even for a few moments. I was not astonished that the girls looked pallid and sickly. There was only one filthy water-closet for men and women.
[Illustration: REAR OF NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE.]
I was in a little tenement-house Jew shop where a man and four boys were making knee pants in a bedroom. The clothing was piled upon the bed, which was one of the filthiest assortments of tenement-house bedding that I have ever seen—and that is saying a great deal. The largest shop I visited was one in which there were seventy-nine people employed. They occupied four rooms. The rooms were quite large, but were filthy almost beyond description. The coal was piled up in huge heaps on the floor; ashes, both in barrels and heaps, were scattered about; clothing was flung over the floors everywhere; dirt and scraps of cloth literally made a carpet for these rooms. These seventy-nine people were about evenly divided between the sexes, and yet for all this herd of humanity there was only one water-closet, the door of which stood open, on the landing, and the poisonous stench filled all the rooms; the floor about it was damp and filthy. How any woman or girl could work in this shop, and retain her self-respect, I do not understand. I estimated that at least twenty boys and girls of this company were under fifteen; one little boy sitting on the floor hard at work was almost crying with a headache. The men were smoking cigarettes here, as in other places, and this added to the poisonous condition of the air. The majority of these people could not speak English. Taken altogether, they were a hopeless-looking lot. Many of them had a brutal, hunted look in their faces.
Remember, this is not Glasgow, or London, or New York, but in the heart of Boston, in the month of June, 1891. It is easy to say that these people are foreigners, and that they had poor wages where they came from; that they are probably as well off here as they were at home, and that they are too ignorant and brutal to suffer, as more refined and cultivated people would. Putting all other questions aside for a moment, let us remember that these people are setting up a standard of living in our midst, which, if permitted to become established, will dictate its cruel laws to all the laboring people in the community.
[Illustration: COMMONWEALTH AVENUE.]
If this system is allowed to go on, there are people living in luxury, who are indifferently pooh-poohing this whole question, whose grandchildren will be starved to death in a sweat-shop.
No investment exacts such cruel usury as indifference to injustice. A wrong, uncared for in a North End tenement house will avenge itself, sooner or later, on Beacon Hill or Commonwealth Avenue.
I thank God for every indication of discontent, on the part of laboring men and women, at conditions which cramp or fetter the free utterance of their manhood or womanly glory. In that divine discontent is the hope of the race. Our own Lowell sings:—
"The hope of truth grows stronger day by day.
I hear the soul of man around me waking,
Like a great sea its frozen fetters breaking,
And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray,
Tossing huge continents in scornful play,
And crushing them with din of grinding thunder
That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder.
The memory of a glory passed away
Lingers in every heart, as in the shell
Resounds the by-gone freedom of the sea.
And every hour new signs of promise tell
That the great soul shall once again be free;
For high and yet more high the murmurs swell
Of inward strife for truth and liberty."