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But let us pass over the physical feeling and look at my sur- roundings. As was stated before, we were in a rear tenement, which was reached through an alley paved with tin cans and broken bottles, and the outside stairway leading to the house was rickety beyond belief. Each step groaned and trembled as I crept carefully up to the door, where I had to stoop a little to enter a small room lighted by one window. In this room were six people and five machines, the sixth man being a presser. Opening off the first room was a second, smaller and darker, where the head of the establishment and two others worked. The whole place was filthy, and was rendered even more unpleas- ant by unsavory odors from the living-rooms adjoining, where the enterprising wife boarded the workers. The presser was an unsightly object, clad in one brace and a pair of trousers, and he literally boiled over his work. The perspiration dropped con- tinually from his short brown beard to the steaming clothes he was ironing. The irons were heated on an ill-smelling oil stove, and all of this made the room horribly unpleasant. But these things made no difference to the men and women, whose whole beings were absorbed in the various processes of making knee pants, for each was paid according to the number of pieces he turned off. 1
The sweaters are not unionized, and so there is no minimum wage. The state factory law theoretically regulates the number of hours in a working day. I say theoretically, because in actual practice the sweater and his family work as many hours as they see fit. I found in New York women, and even children under the legal age, working till nearly midnight in the busy season. Very young children can be utilized advantageously, pulling out basting threads. Their small fingers do the work well enough, and much time is saved to the adult members of the family. This is appalling to those of us whose childhood's memories carry only long days of delightful play out of doors with a twilight-hour bedtime. And this is what belongs to every child in the state; and cursed, I say, be the industrial system that defrauds the children of this God-given right !
1 An exception was extra help hired and paid by the day.
