Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/305

 THE SWEAT-SHOP IN SUMMER 291

ingly purchase goods made under unsanitary, not to say demora- lizing, conditions. The average person, it must be admitted, knows little or nothing of the conditions and processes of garment-making. He knows equally little of the manufacture of the butter and the production of the milk he buys; but his ignor- ance does not save him from inoculation with fever germs, neither does it excuse him when he communicates disease to others by lack of precaution. City authorities hold him respon- sible in the observance of quarantine regulations ; and so in this case ignorance of the conditions should be no excuse.

It may appear to some that the summer is not an auspicious season for sweat-shop study. It is true that it is a slack time; yet work is being done, and under more trying conditions, in many respects, than in the cold-weather period. First of all, the slackness of the work renders life more precarious, and thus the sweater is tempted to use the services of all members of his family. Children are home from school, and they must justify their existence some way; or, as one man said to me: "What are our children for, if not to help support us?" I must confess that this was to me a rather new view of family obligation. The duty, I should think, is on the side of the parents, who alone are responsible for the existence of their offspring. One feels this keenly when he sees slum streets swarming with small bits of humanity, festering in the summer sultriness. It is all very well to talk of man's duty to the state in reproducing himself. The chief trouble with the poor in the great cities is that they repro- duce themselves too many times. Seven or eight little children in a home where there is only enough bread for two is a mon- strous outrage against the innocent victims, and it should be condemned by enlightened sentiment everywhere.

But it is not my intention to offer a panacea for such a lamentable social condition, but only to call attention to an existing horror which fosters the survival of an industrial anachronism the tenement-house workshop. To the ignorant, harassed parent sewing at home the temptation to utilize childish activity is great. I have no quarrel with those who decry the modern tendency to "race-suicide;" they are sincere, and their