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 296 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

individual examples of the lack of power of the single purchaser already adduced, the answer is manifold. One of the most important considerations is the fact that legislation is by no means uniform throughout the states ; and the righteous man in Massachusetts, living under the best labor code in this country, enforced by the most vigilant and experienced inspectors of factories, is in as great danger of buying garments made in infectious shops under the sweating system, which is in full blast, and is daily increasing in extent and in intensity in New York city, as was the Montana purchaser from the shops of Chicago. For under the constitution of the United States no one state can forbid the importation of goods made in another state, however far the standard of conditions of manufacture in that state may fall below its own. For the promotion of uniform legislation for the protection of the consumer, if for no other purpose, there seems to be room for the work of the National Consumers' League.

Nor is this all. While the manufacturers are spending mil- lions for the purpose of enticing and persuading buyers, the nation, the states, and the cities are spending their hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purpose of affording to the public information concerning industrial conditions, food adulterations, and various other interests of the buyer. The Department of Labor at Washington, the state bureaus of labor statistics, the state inspectors of factories, the municipal boards of health all publish, annually or biennially (some of them quarterly, monthly, and weekly), information designed for the enlighten- ment and instruction of the public. But very little of this information has, hitherto, served the purposes of the individual purchaser. If I have read the reports of all these ofificers, I am not only in as great danger as before of buying glucose for sugar, acetic acid for vinegar, and paper in the soles of my shoes ; I am in as great danger as ever of buying smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, infectious sore eyes, and a dozen forms of disease of the skin in my new garments. For not one of these ofificials publishes the list of the kitchen tailors to whom the merchant tailor gives his goods to be made up; just as not one of them