White Slaves | Page 6

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.
[Illustration: POSTAL UNIFORMS.]
There has been quite a controversy recently as to where the new United
States postal uniforms for the Boston carriers were made. I settled this
question to my own satisfaction during the past week, when, in

company with Dr. Luther T. Townsend, of Boston University, and two
other gentlemen, one of them being an Italian interpreter, I climbed the
rickety stairs of an old North End tenement house, and found the pants
for these same uniforms being made by Italian women at nine and a
half cents a pair! They received them from a Jewish sweater. One of
these women says that, by beginning at four o'clock in the morning and
frequently working until twelve o'clock at night, she can make six pairs
of these pants in a day. She has five children; the rent is two dollars per
week. The husband has been out of work for eight months; the only one
of the children who is able to earn anything is a boy who is a bootblack,
and can earn, in fine weather, three dollars a week. Another woman at
work on these postal uniforms, who was not able to labor quite such
long hours, could only make four pairs a day. She also had five
children, the only one able to earn anything being a daughter, fourteen
years of age, who works in a sweater's shop for two dollars a week.
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 have my note-books full of many other cases, including Portuguese,
Italian, English, Polish, and a few Irish and American women, of the
same general character as those already related; but a similar wicked
scale of prices runs through the making of other clothing. I called on a
woman in South Boston last week who was making overalls for a city
firm at sixty cents a dozen pairs. They are the large variety of overalls,
such as expressmen and such workers use, with straps going over the
shoulders. I took a tape-line and carefully measured the sewing on one
pair of these overalls. When they come to the seamstress, there has not
been a stitch taken in them--they are simply cut out. There are thirty
separate and distinct seams to be sewed, making in the aggregate
thirty-two and a half feet of sewing, for which she receives the gross
amount of five cents, out of which she has to pay the carrying to and
fro. If she goes after them herself, she can bring only two dozen at a
time, which will cost her ten cents car-fare, going and coming. When
sent by express in a package of five or six dozen--the number she is
able to make in a week--she is charged fifteen cents expressage each
way, so that the expressage eats up the making of six pairs. In addition
to this, the stiff cloth is very hard on machine needles, and she will

break about ten cents worth per week. This woman's story is a sad one.
Her husband, who was a strong, hard-working man, fell ill through an
over-strain, and died after fifteen months' sickness, two months ago.
She has three little children, the oldest four years and the youngest a
little over a year. Work as hard as she can, driving her machine until
late into the night, she is able to make only five dozen pairs of overalls
a week, which, when expressage and breakage of needles are taken out,
leaves her two dollars and sixty-five cents. The rent is a dollar and a
half, which leaves one dollar and fifteen cents for the food and clothing
of a mother and three children. Of course she cannot live on that, and
would starve to death if she were not assisted by charity. And yet there
is a firm doing business in South Boston mean enough to take
advantage of the fact that people living in this part of the city are
compelled to pay car-fare or expressage on work secured in the city
proper, and so has reduced the price for work given out in South
Boston to fifty cents a dozen pairs.
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