Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/649

 SOME PHASES OF SWEATING SYSTEM IN CHICAGO 635

dollars, or five dollars a week for seven or eight months in the year! What shall I do the rest of the year? Oh, I must try to save a little, or things worse than death may befall me." This is not too dark a picture for many of the 35,853 workers in the garment trades in Chicago.

Connected with the desire for large profits and low prices is competition, or the "higgling of the market." 1 Because manu- facturers have to compete with one another, they drive as close bargains as possible with their contractors ; and because the con- tractors are in a similar race, they must pay their employes as little as possible and get as much work as possible out of them.

A further cause of the perpetuation of the system is the position of the poor, their poverty, and their necessity to buy cheap goods. The Webbs have said that "sweating itself creates the conditions of sweating." 2 It is most certainly true that those who make sweated goods are among those who buy them. But many farmers and the poor in small towns depend on such goods. It may be that they are engaged in a sweating system of their own, and that they are themselves compelled to work too hard for too little pay.

A mere acquaintance with existing conditions in the gar- ment trades is sufficient to cause one to begin dreaming of Utopias for the sweat-shop workers, but mundane creatures like ourselves are hardly ready for Utopias. Just at present some more immediate and practical ideal is desired.

The first thing to be hoped for is the gradual displacement of the small shop and the system of home work by the factory system. Even the small steam or gas factory has some disad- vantages. It is very likely to occupy one or more floors of some old tenement or other building never intended for a factory, and consequently badly lighted, poorly ventilated, and in an unsani- tary condition. The gas engine, too, often poisons the air. Moreover, with small factories, the workers in any one branch of the trade are likely to be widely scattered throughout the city, and organization is still difficult. A building erected purposely

1 S. AND B. WEBB, Industrial Democracy, Part III, chap. ii.

2 See S. AND B. Webb, Problems of Industry, p. 146.