Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/317

 THE SWEAT-SHOP IN SUMMER 303

Another employer of mine was a red-bearded Jew who made shirt waists. He had three women and one young boy working for him, and agreed to take me at sixty cents a day. I went to work immediately finishing cuffs. The waists I worked on came from an ultra-fashionable shirtmaker a woman who charges eight dollars for the mere making of a garment. I learned her identity from the boy who carried the parcels back and forth. A few days later I called on that woman and inquired her prices. She quoted them as I have stated. I then asked her if the waists were made in her own shop. With a bewitching little smile she answered : " Oh yes, we make everything right in the back rooms. That is why I charge good prices and take only a limited amount of work from select people!" I told her I thought I would not leave an order then, and passed out, not caring to belong to the " select." She added the insult of a lie to the injury of sweated waists. Her waists were carefully cut and fitted, but were just as poorly made as much cheaper ready- to-wear ones.

A sojourn among the garment workers certainly reveals some strange facts about the making of fashionable clothing. Now I never see certain more or less fashionable establishments with- out thinking at the same time of certain tenement attics bound to them by an invisible tie. My lady who scatters smiles through slumdom little dreams that the stylish clothes she wears may have been partly made beyond the ill-smelling alley she will not enter. It may be her first visit there but her clothes should feel at home !

Work in the shop of the red-bearded Jew was hard for me, because the days were insufferably warm, and the light was poor, as the workroom was on a court. I got along rather slowly, and I had a feeling that possibly I was not worth more than sixty cents a day. But my pride suffered a frightful shock when my employer told me that I was not worth anything, and he did not propose to pay me at all. This decision was precipi- tated upon me at the end of the second day, when I asked for my wages, as I did not intend to return.

I learned but little from my companions there. The women