White Slaves | Page 3

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.
Let us begin near at home with a South Boston case, which came to my

notice through the dispensary doctor for the district. It is a widow with
one child--a little boy scarcely three years old. The child is just
recovering from a troublesome sickness, through which the doctor
became acquainted with her. She has been sewing for a good while for
one of the largest and most respectable dry-goods houses on
Washington Street--a firm whose name is a household word throughout
New England. Her sewing has been confined to two lines--cloaks and
aprons. For some time she has been making white aprons--a good long
apron, requiring a yard, perhaps, of material; it is hemmed across the
bottom and on both sides, the band or "apron string" is hemmed on
both sides, and then sewed on to the apron, making six long seams. For
these she is paid fifteen cents a dozen! And besides that, this great, rich
firm, whose members are rolling in wealth and luxury, charges this
poor widow fifteen cents expressage on her package of ten dozen
aprons, so that for making one hundred and twenty aprons, such as I
have described, she receives, net, one hundred and thirty-five cents! If
she works from seven o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at
night, she can make four dozen; but, with the care of her child, she is
unable to average more than three dozen, for which, after the
expressage is taken out, she receives forty cents a day for the support of
herself and child.
Her rent for the one little room is one dollar per week. It is idle to say
that this firm is compelled to do this by competition, for the material
and making of these aprons cost less than ten cents, and the firm retails
them ordinarily at _twenty-five cents apiece_. On cloaks she did better,
receiving from fifty to seventy-five cents apiece, she furnishing her
own sewing-silk and cotton. On these she could make, by working
from seven A.M. till eleven P.M., nearly a dollar a day, but she could
never get more than six cloaks a week, so that the income for the week
was about the same.
[ILLUSTRATION: PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC.]
Now come with me a little farther around the harbor. Let us climb up
three flights, to a little attic suite of two rooms, so low at the side that,
with my length of anatomy, I have to keep well to the middle of the
room in order to stand upright. Here live a Portuguese mother and five
children, the oldest thirteen, the youngest not yet three, a poor,
deformed, little thing that has consumption of the bowels, brought on

by scanty and irregular food. Its tiny legs are scarcely thicker than my
thumb, and you cannot look at its patient, wasted, little face, that looks
old enough to have endured twenty-five years of misery, instead of
three, without the heartache. I ask the mother how she earns her living,
and she points to a package that has just come in. Picking it up, and
untying the strings, I find there six pairs of pants, cut out and basted up,
ready for making. Looking at the card, we are astonished to find that