A /MS OF THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE 2gi
and more accessible supplies by which they are surrounded. The pitiful result is that the importer buys the least quantity of the real Italian product requisite for the purpose of admixture with American adulterants. The most flagrant example of this is, perhaps, the use of Italian olive oil, of which virtually none, really pure, is placed upon the market, for sale at retail. What the Italian immigrants really get is the familiar Italian label, the well-known package with contents tasting more or less as they used to taste at home in Italy. What the actual ingredients may be they know as little as we know when we place our so-called maple syrup, or our so-called butter, or honey, on our hot cakes at a hotel in the city. The demand of the Italians in America for Italian products, although large, persistent, and maintained at a heavy sacrifice on the part of the purchasers, is not an effective demand, because the immigrants have neither the knowledge nor the organization wherewith to enforce it.
That knowledge alone, without organization, is not sufficient to create an effective demand is well illustrated by the experience of a conscientious shopper of my acquaintance in Chicago. Deeply stirred by an eloquent appeal in behalf of the sweaters' victims and their sufferings, she determined to free her own con- science by buying only goods made in factories. She began her search for such goods in the great leading department store in which she had always fitted out her boys for school. The sales- man assured her that "All our goods are made in our own factory; we handle no sweatshop goods." She, being a canny person and well instructed, asked for the written assurance of that fact, signed by a member of the firm, to be sent home with the goods. They were never sent, though this was an excellent customer whom the firm was in the habit of obliging if possible. This process she repeated in several stores and outfitting estab- lishments, until it became clear to her mind that she could not free her conscience alone and unaided. Her plight well illus- trates the case of the individual consumer, enlightened but unor- ganized and, therefore, ineffectual.
The purchaser who is able and willing to pay for the best that the market affords is apt to think that, whatever the sorrows
