SOME PHASES OF SWEATING SYSTEM IN CHICAGO 607
177; Russia, 251; other foreign countries, 32. Total foreign, 859; total, 1,022. In this report the Jews seem to have been counted under the countries from which they came. Of the nationalities now prominent in the garment making of Chicago, this paper discusses the Italians, Scandinavians, Bohemians, Jews, and Poles, stating in regard to each something of their home and industrial conditions, together with the results of some personal investigations in the case of the last four.
The Italians congregate about North Franklin street, South Clark street, and on the west side between Polk and Taylor and Jefferson and Halsted streets. They have the lowest standard of living, and are more squalid and filthy and more crowded than any of the other nationalities. From the Ninth Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor, on The Italians in Chicago, published in 1897, were culled these figures: 1,348 families, including 6,773 persons, were visited, forming a large proportion of the Italians in the city and representing typical cases. Out of the whole number, 182, or 2.68 per cent., worked at the gar- ment trades during a part or the whole of the year ; 28 were males and 154 females; 22 were heads of families and 99 were housewives; 124 were married, 50 single, and 8 widowed.
Only 9 of the whole number were born in the United States, and, in every case but one, the parents were born in Italy. Only 94 of the whole number were able to speak English, and less than 30 could read and write it. Seventy-one were entirely illiterate, and all but 4 of these were women, while 18 were entirely literate, and of this number only 5 were men. Among the women, then, seem to be the extremes of both literacy and illiteracy, while nearly all the men seem to have some education or at least to be able to speak English.
Fifty had been in the United States less than five years, 72 more than five but less than ten years, and 50 more than ten years. Of the males eligible to naturalization more than 63 per cent, had been naturalized, but this was just one-fourth the whole number of males at work in these trades. The husbands or fathers of two-thirds of the females were naturalized. About 30 of the workers came from homes in which there had been at
