Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/620

 6o6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

punishable with prosecution and fine. It should be noted that these laws have no regulations to secure proper ventilation and sanitary accommodations nor to prevent overcrowding and excessive hours.

Soon after these laws were passed it became the duty of the factory inspectors, during the epidemic of smallpox in the sweat-shop districts of Chicago in 1894, to enforce the provisions relating to spread of contagion and manufacture of garments in living-rooms by others than members of the immediate family. The workers were totally indifferent to or in dread of vaccination, had a horror of the pest-house, did not understand quarantine, and had no conception of the danger involved in sending out goods made in rooms where there were smallpox patients. 1

Turning the attention now from the first survey of the rise of the sweating problem and the attempts at regulation, some con- sideration may be given to the conditions among the different nationalities of sweat-shop workers in Chicago. The national differences are perhaps more marked in the garment trades than in trades requiring more skill and demanding higher wages.

According to the Seventh Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor for 1894, on The Slums of Great Cities, in a total slum population of 19,748 in Chicago on April I, 1893, there were 1,045, or about 5 per cent., engaged in the garment trades. This is equal to 15.13 percent, of the 6,823 garment workers reported by the inspectors in 1893, but less than 3 per cent, of the num- ber reported in 1899. Doubtless not all the clothing shops were visited in 1893, while the report on the slums is supposed to be complete or nearly so. It is safe to say, then, that not more than 1 5 per cent, of the garment workers live in the slums, but that 5 per cent, or 10 per cent, may do so.

'Of the 1,045 workers, 541 were males of foreign birth 21 years of age or over. Of these 237, or 44 per cent., were aliens, while 56 per cent, had been naturalized. There were 22 scholars and 201 illiterates 112 males and 89 females. The countries represented in this population were as follows : United States, 163; Austria-Hungary, 274; Germany, 73; Italy, 52; Poland,

'See First Special Report, pp. 25, 33, 34, etc.