Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/657

 SOME PHASES OF SWEATING SYSTEM IN CHICAGO 643

description ; yet its principles and aims may be briefly stated. The organization is only about ten years old, having started in England in 1890, and almost simultaneously in New York. It rests on the principles that those who buy are responsible for the conditions under which they buy and under which their goods are made ; that the demand creates the supply, and the character of the demand creates the character of the supply. The two principal objects held in view have been the attempt to secure "fair" conditions to the employes in department stores and to furnish a guarantee that clothing is not made in sweat- shops. It has been difficult to secure garments made outside of sweat-shops because of the prevalence of the system. The offi- cial label of the National Consumers' League, however, when attached to goods is a guarantee to the purchaser that they were made under clean and healthful conditions.

There has been a little ill-feeling or misunderstanding between the trades unions and the Consumers' League. The unions have felt that the league label came into competition with or interfered with theirs that it stood for a lower stand- ard than theirs. The union label stands usually for an eight- hour day and the union scale of wages ; but, as the league advocates point out, takes little account of sanitary conditions. Some of the union men have felt, too, that the members of the league were largely the wives of heads of department stores, factory owners, merchant tailors, etc., who would not concern themselves about any sweat-shop goods in which their husbands might be interested. They have felt that the league, then, could have only selfish interests in view that in considering the public health they were really caring only for their own. Yet this view seems a little unfair to some of the workers in the league, who are at least trying to see both sides and to bring about a solution of some of these problems. There seems to be need just now for some compromise in the question of labels for the introduction of a label, perhaps, which shall incorporate the advantages of both labels.

Yet even if the league meets with great success among those who pay high prices for their goods, it alone can hardly hope to