noticeably slender and deeply forked. The nest is built sometimes outside, sometimes inside, a barn or other building, is made of mud-pellets mixed with straw and is lined with hay, feathers and other soft material.
The swallow is a mason,
And underneath the eaves
He builds a nest and plasters it
With mud and hay and leaves.
The four to six eggs are white with markings of brown and purple. The cliff or eaves-swallow is a square-tailed bird smaller than the foregoing, which builds numerous nests in colonies under the eaves of barns, other buildings and cliffs. The bank-swallows are our smallest swallows, being about five inches long. They dig tunnels in sand-banks, two or three feet deep with a nest of grass and feathers at the end. The tree-swallow has the under parts white. It nests in hollow trees or in bird-boxes near dwellings. The rough-winged swallow resembles the bank-swallow. It is common in the west, making nests in sand-banks. The purple martin is the largest of our swallows, being about eight inches in length. Swallows resemble the swifts or chimney-swallows and goatsuckers, but the latter belong to quite a different order. All swallows live in colonies. A pair is said to mate for life, but this may be but one of the numberless tales that make up the mass of tradition about this bird. Superstition has long protected the swallow, it being considered ill-luck to kill one. See Martin, Nesting-Boxes and Swift.
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| SWAN |
Swan, water-birds famous for their long graceful necks, and related to ducks and
geese. They inhabit temperate regions, and feed upon seeds, roots and fish-spawn. They have white plumage,
except the black swan of Australia — a very beautiful bird with a long, neck, having a graceful curve. It is a dull black, with white on the wings, and a carmine bill crossed by a white band. The European swan, partly domesticated in parks is pure white and one of the handsomest of all birds. South America has a competitor for grace and beauty in the black-necked swan, a small swan with white plumage, except the head and neck which are dark seal-brown. The common swan reaches a length of about five feet and a weight of
30 pounds. The swans of North America are the trumpeter and whistler swans, with straighter necks and, therefore, less grace and beauty than other members of the group. They are smaller than the common swan.
Swansea (swŏn′sḗ), a seaport of Wales, on Tawe River, 45 miles northwest of Cardiff, is the most important city of South Wales. Its growth is due to its tin-plate manufacture, two thirds of the British output being manufactured here. It also is the principal seat of copper-smelting in Great Britain, and in its vicinity are extensive coal-mines. It has large docks, covering 60 acres, a good harbor, and is several hours nearer the open sea than any other considerable port on Bristol Channel. The McKinley tariff greatly injured Swansea's tin-plate trade. Its charter dates from the days of King John. A tower is still standing of the castle built here by the Earl of Warwick in 1099. Population 114,673.
Swa′ziland′. See Transvaal.
Sweatshops. The sweating-system is the engagement of men, women and children by a contractor to produce goods for the wholesale dealer, on which the workers are paid by the piece and the price is made as low as possible. It is called sweating because, as Charles Kingsley in 1850 first showed the world, it enables the contractor to keep cutting the price so low that even the ablest can just live by unceasing toil, while the less able, spurred to their utmost efforts, are often forced to go into debt to the contractor and thus to work for him, on his terms, at their utmost capacity until they can work no longer. Kingsley's revelations were followed by investigations. But the system has not been stopped. A congressional investigation in 1892 showed that 30% of all clothing manufactured in this country was made under the sweating system, under the following conditions: The sweating is done either in a “den,” a room hired by the contractor, without any provisions suitable for a crowd of different sexes, and filled to its utmost capacity by people who can not afford to be clean or to stop working if sick; or else at home, where the garments or cigars are often handled by consumptives and filth abounds among the wretched toilers. They in many cases work 15 hours a day, seven days to the week. The chief products of “sweating” are garments, cigars, candy and bread. In recent years many states have taken measures to insure the decent condition of bake-shops and of places where candy is manufactured. New York has a law forbidding the manufacture of garments in bed-rooms or eating-rooms. In Illinois such a law is proposed, with the provision that if broken it is the contractor who engaged work in such a place that must
