PART III. IMMIGRANTS IN THE LEADING INDUSTRIES [The Immigration Commission has devoted several volumes of its report to a description of labor conditions in special industries which are generally believed to typify the evils of recent immigration. Of these, five will be considered in this part.] CHAPTER XVII THE GARMENT WORKERS 'HE manufacture of clothing in the United States is an immigrant industry. Immigrants have furnished the labor and in most instances the capital. The labor conditions in this industry have attracted wide public attention by frequent strikes, ever since the Russian Jews have become the predominant element among the operatives. The clothing industry has become associated in the public mind with the sweating system, and since the employees are, with few exceptions, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the conclusion is readily reached that the root of 'the sweating system is in the character of the new immigration. This view draws support from the attitude of the United Garment Workers of America, an organization of Jewish garment workers, which, at its annual convention in 1905, adopted a resolution demanding restriction of further immigration for the protection of the foreign-born workers already here. And yet a dispassionate study of 1 Reports of the Immigration Committee, vol. 11, p. 417. 2 John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 115. the clothing industry shows that labor conditions have very substantially improved with the coming of the "new immigration." The sweating system did not originate with the Jewish clothing workers: it preceded them by more than half a century. In the Report of Woman and Child WageEarners in the United States, recently published by the United States Bureau of Labor, we find a vast amount of information on the employment of women in the clothing industry in the first third of the nineteenth century, at the time when the wage-earners were nearly all American-born. The history of this period, like that of the better-known period of the machine, is a tale of long hours, low wages, and exploitation. The "sweating system," indeed, in the broad sense of that term, was established in this country at the very beginning of the ready-made garment business and has developed simultaneously with that business. The contract system established stages and degrees of sweating, but a study of the sweating system would have to extend back at least as far as the beginning, in 1828, of Matthew Carey's agitation in the interests of... the working women, of whom he estimated that there were in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Baltimore between 18,000 and 20,000. . . . The disclosures made by Matthew Carey during the course of his investigation and agitation in behalf of the sewing women seem, though quaintly worded, very modern in their substance. It was set forth, for example, in the resolutions passed at a meeting in Philadelphia on February 21, 1829, that “it requires great expertness, unceasing industry from sunrise till 10 or 11 o'clock at night, constant employment (which very few of them have) without any interruption whatever from sickness, or attention to their families, to earn a dollar and a half a week, and, in many cases, a half or a third of their time is expended in attending their children, and no small portion in traveling eight, ten or fourteen squares for work, and as many to take it back when finished." . . . The committee appointed at this meeting reported: "That . . . the wages paid to seamstresses who work in their own apartments-to spoolers, to spinners, to folders of printed books— and in many cases to those who take in washing, are utterly inadequate to their support, even if fully employed . . . whereas the work is so precarious that they are often unemployed-sometimes for a whole week together, and very frequently one or two days in each week." ... Helen L. Sumner: "History of Women in Industries of the United In Boston (in 1830) the average weekly wages of a woman garment worker, when fully employed, were given by a contemporary writer as but a dollar or a dollar and a quarter, while the common rent of a room was a dollar a week.1 In other words, the weekly wages of a Boston working woman were barely sufficient to provide for rent. While fully employed, she was not self-supporting, but had to depend upon her family for the necessities of life. In Baltimore, too, in 1833, the wages of sewing women were declared not sufficient for the genteel support of the single individual who performs the work, although she may use every effort of industry which her constitution is capable of sustaining." It Instances of the sweating system are again recorded in 1844, still before the first inrush of Irish immigration. was reported that a man and two women working together from twelve to sixteen hours a day earned a dollar amongst them, and that the women, if they did not belong to the family, received each about $1.25 a week for their work, the man paying out of the remaining $3.50 about $1.00 a week for rent of his garret.3 From 1850, the Irish workers became predominant in the clothing industry. At that period the clothing industry in New York City was in its infancy. There were no factories, and the workers occupied small rooms or sweatshops.4 In 1853 the investigation of the clothing trade made by the New York Tribune disclosed the existence of a "middle system.' For example, near one of the streets running from the Bowery to the East River an old Irish woman was found who had four girls at work for her, their compensation consisting solely of food for six days of the week. In another case a woman had hired four "learners," two of whom received only board and lodging, and the other two $1.00 a week each without food. S States." Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, vol. ix., pp. 123-124. 1 Ibid., p. 125. 2 Ibid., p. 126. 3 Ibid., p. 141. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. II, p. 369. $ Sumner, loc. cit., pp. 141-142. According to the Immigration Commission, the "displacement of the old races by the new, or recent, immigrants" has been "one resulting through the willingness of the 'raw' immigrants to accept lower wages than those who have been in this country for a longer period of time."' Yet when the earnings of the "raw" immigrant women of the present day are compared with those of the "old races, it is found that the native American and the Irish working women of past generations were "willing" to work only for board and lodging, or even for board alone, depending upon their families for other necessities, whereas the Jewish factory girls are at least self-supporting. The question is not whether wages to-day are all that could be desired, but whether they have been reduced by recent immigration, and Dr. Sumner's historical research proves the contrary. " One of the chief factors which kept down the wages of working women in the early history of the clothing industry was country competition. "We know instances," said the New York Morning News, in 1845, "where shirtwaist makers put their work out in the country in the winter at II cents each. The work is done by those who do not make it a means of living, but use it merely as an auxiliary to dress." The Voice of Industry too, stated in 1845 that “a gentleman told us, the other day, that he saw the daughter of a respectable farmer making shirts at II cents apiece, for one of the dealers. He asked her whether she thought it a sufficient price. 'No,' said she, 'if I were obliged to support myself, I could not do it by this work; but I merely employ my time which otherwise I should not use. In the same year the chairwoman of a meeting of working women in New York said that she knew several employers who paid only from 10 to 18 cents per day, and that one employer, who offered girls 20 cents per day, told them that if they did not take it "he would obtain girls from Connecticut who would work for less even than what he offered." By 1850, the cheap labor of the farmhouse is said to have been employed "in the getting up of clothing, skirts, stocks, hosiery, suspenders, carriage trappings, buttons, and a hundred other light things." I 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. II., p. 369. • Sumner, loc. cit., pp. 140–141. These conditions have changed as the direct result of immigration. The rapid growth of the wage-working population created a market for ready-made clothing. These new branches of work, whereby a product, which when formerly made by the custom tailor, the dressmaker, or the housewife cost higher prices than most of the people could afford, is now made in the latest styles, enable all classes of people to be better dressed and to spend much more money every year for clothing. Herein the immigrant has created his own employment.' The expansion of the clothing industry was made possible by the introduction of the factory system with its greater efficiency than home work. The operation of a factory requires a regular force of employees whose livelihood must be provided for by their wages. This is the reason why the immigrant girl from Southern or Eastern Europe cannot accept the low wages which the daughters of native American farmers regarded as satisfactory. A development peculiar to the factory method of clothing manufacturing was the substitution of male for female labor, with a consequent increase of the rate of wages. The view that the new immigrants tend to lower the wages of the older immigrants apparently finds support in the statistics of the Immigration Commission, which show for each race at present employed in the clothing industry "a general increase in weekly earnings with the increased period of residence." In other words, the earnings of the recent immigrants are lower than those of the older immigrants, because, it is explained, "the immigrants of long residence have acquired a higher standard of living and consequently demand a higher wage."3 Quite naturally then, "the older employees are unable to meet the competition of the recent immigrants, whose demands are not great."4 The reasoning sounds plausible, still it will not stand close 1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxvii. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 380. 3 Ibid., p. 370. 4 Ibid. |