Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/633

 SOME PHASES OF SWEATING SYSTEM IN CHICAGO 619

wage. Another child, however, said her father worked from 6 in the morning until 7 or 8 at night. She did not know what wages he received. Another said her father worked in a down- town shop from 6 to 6, and in the busy season had to begin work at 4 or 5 and work until 8 or 9 o'clock.

A great many of the shops are situated in buildings tene- ments or shops or stables on the back part of the lot. This is bad for two reasons. It deprives the tenement of its yard space and usually makes the shop front on the alley or dirty back street. In one instance on the northwest side there was a court fifteen or twenty feet square surrounded on all sides by buildings four stories high. Heaps of dirty snow lay massed on the ground, too much shut off from the sun to melt and disap- pear. The only entrance to the court was by narrow sidewalks along the front tenement. The narrow spaces between the four buildings only served to make the court more dismal. From below the steps that led to the shop in the rear came, even on the cold winter day, the foul odors of an ill-cared-for closet. One felt almost as if shut up in some dungeon of an earlier age, and breathed a sigh of relief on returning to the freer air and outlook of the street.

There is seldom adequate or proper sanitary accommodation in the shops or on the premises. Often the closets are wholly unfit for use. In one instance the contractor asked the inspector to report the condition to the board of health. He said that he had already asked the landlord to attend to the matter, but he had paid no heed. The Illinois law makes no provision as yet for the regulation of these conditions.

In a time of epidemic of smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., the danger to the public health from the tenement-house manufacture of garments is very great. There are so many shops that it is impossible to inspect them all at any such time to find whether garments are being made where disease exists. Through ignorance or indifference on the part of the workers, clothing permeated with disease germs may be sent out. Except in such a time of special danger, however, it is the workers who deserve our solicitude rather than the wearers.