Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/652

638 cannot be perfectly simple. One of the first means that suggest themselves, however, is legislation. Much has been accomplished toward doing away with the evils of the system in New York and in Boston through the enactment of laws; and the manufacture of clothing in Chicago has been regulated to a large extent. But better regulation is needed. Many urge legislation on the part of the federal government because of the distribution throughout the whole country of the garments made in shops in these cities. Such action could be defended on the ground of the preservation of the public health. It could provide that all goods should be made under sanitary conditions; but, unless the enforcement of this law were left to the state inspectors, a large corps of government inspectors would be necessary.

There might, however, be this further justification of federal legislation. It is probable that the sweating system exists to some extent and in a more or less extreme form in almost every large city and in many of the smaller ones in the United States. The clothing industry is not, like the pork-packing industry, for example, one that is by its character confined to a large city. As was noted in the country trade, not quite all the garments came from Chicago; and one merchant knew of clothing shops in a town of two thousand inhabitants in Illinois. It must require a vast labor force—many more than the 128,255 people reported as at work in clothing shops in 1898 in Chicago, and in the city and state of New York—to make the garments for our seventy-six million people. Considering that only twelve or fifteen of the states in the union have any labor laws or factory legislation whatever, and that only five of these attempt to regulate the sweating system, it may be imagined how widespread the system may be, and how great is the chance for abuses. Until the separate states come to a realizing sense of their responsibility for the conditions of their workers, the federal government is the only power to protest against any evils which may exist.

Another reason often given for the federal legislation is the phenomenon of the states in competition with one another. An instance in point was the case of the Boston cutters, who found their work being sent to New York because of the cheapness of