Fifth Avenue in New York is one of the world’s great thoroughfares. Years ago it was devoted exclusively to residential purposes. The wealthy people built their homes along the lower end of the street. As the city grew, these people followed the avenue north until at the present time the finest homes in the city are located in the neighborhood of Central Park in the upper reaches of the street. Between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square there are now a number of business houses, two fine old churches, and a portion of the city that still retains the residential quality of dignity and worth. From Fourteenth Street to Fiftieth Street the avenue is given over almost exclusively to business. From Thirtieth Street to Fifty-seventh Street are found the finest shops and stores in New York City. Below Thirtieth Street this stately avenue, and the numbered cross streets for many blocks running east and west have been invaded by great skyscrapers known as loft buildings in which is being carried on the greatest garment-making industry in the world.

The workers in the garment trade in New York are nearly all Jews and Italians. At any time of the summer and winter thousands of these workers will be Found spending their leisure on the street between twelve and one o’clock. When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street. This solid mass of men and women, all speaking a tongue that is unintelligible to American ears, pass round and round, back and forth, up and down, a resistless tide typifying the steady resistless rise of labor to a position in society where it must be considered.

These big loft buildings occupied by the garment-making industry have been constructed in recent years, and so rapidly have they been erected that the storekeepers and business men of upper Fifth Avenue have formed an organization and are exerting every effort “to save the avenue from this advancing tide of foreign workers.”

Many shops and department stores have been forced to give way before the onward sweep of this enterprise. The area in New York occupied most exclusively by the garment workers is about a mile long and about one-half mile wide; in this district there are thousands of workers employed exclusively in making garments of one kind and another. The Garment Makers’ Union has a membership of 60,000. How much do we know about these workers? When the Triangle Shirt Waist Company’s loft caught fire and scores of girls were burned to death or killed by jumping from the building, the country was shocked, but up to that time we had not known that thousands of girls work every day behind closed and locked doors. We have almost forgotten the incident. Where was the factory? What was done about it? The girls were, however, our servants working at the task of furnishing us with clothes! Fashion and Clothes. In the last chapter we considered the workers who produce the material from which clothes are made. The question that is still of vital significance to most of us is, how shall we make our clothes? “I have not a thing to wear,” is a very common statement, yet it does not mean what it says, for the people that use this complaint most frequently are the ones who have literally trunks full of clothes. What they mean is that they have nothing in the latest fashion. Fashion is a hard taskmaster. Some one has said that the length of the stay of a society woman at any hotel can be determined by the number of gowns she brings with her to the hotel. “She would no more think of wearing the same gown twice to the same place than she would think of insulting her best friends,” was a woman’s description of her companion to prove that she was a “real lady.” The frequent changes in style bring rich returns to the manufacturers of clothing and call for a ceaseless outgo by people who feel that they are obliged to follow the dictates of fashion. “I hate rich people,” said a little shop-girl. “For every time I see a woman wearing a fine dress I cannot help thinking how hard I work and how useless the dress is for any practical purpose.”

Dressmaking in the Home. Dressmaking was at one time carried on entirely within the family. It was a domestic employment. The only garments that were made outside of the home were men’s clothes, and the journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic. He made the entire garment himself; but even in this industry very often the work was carried on in his home and all the members of the family assisted more or less. The Sweat-Shop. The sweat-shop, in most cases, is a home that has been turned into a factory. The father or mother goes to the manufacturer of clothing and agrees to furnish so many pairs of pants or waists or shirts for so much money. The worker carries these garments to the home and all the family go to work upon the job. Many of these homes are one-room affairs, so that in many instances the work is carried on in the room where the cooking is done; where the meals are eaten and where the family sleeps. Legislation has done much to eliminate the sweat-shops, and sweating as a system is under the ban. Every church and every individual in the church ought to know all about the work of the National Consumers’ League. This organization inspects factories and workshops and issues a stamp or label that is attached to all garments made under clean, humane, healthful, and fair conditions. Information can be secured by writing to Mrs. Florence Kelly, 289 Fourth Avenue, New York. Look for this label when you buy any garment.

Low wages make possible the continuation of the sweat-shop system. In a family where the wage-earner receives less than enough for its subsistence, or for some reason or other the earnings are decreased to a rate at which the family cannot live, it becomes necessary to supplement the family income. Wife and children go to work, boarders and lodgers are taken into the home, and the standardization of living is so lowered that normal conditions of home life are impossible. In a study made of the garment trades it was found that in the homes where work is being done for a profit only about 11 per cent. of the husbands in these families earned $500 or more a year, while more than one half of them earned $300 or less a year.

The Task System. A study of conditions in the dressmaking industry was made by the United States government. The results of this study showed that we never can get back to the old state of affairs. We have entered into a new period of production and this must continue. The task system prevails in a large number of the garment-making shops. By the task system is meant that the work on a garment is done by a team of three persons consisting of a machine-operator, a baster, and a finisher. Every three teams have two pressers and several girls to sew on the pockets and buttons that are necessary for the completion of the garment. There is essentially a fine adjustment within the team, so that each one completes his work in time to pass it on to the next one as soon as the latter is ready to receive it. A certain amount of work is called a task, and this amount is supposed to be done within a day. Forced competition has gradually increased the amount of the task, until frequently even with the most strenuous activity the task cannot be completed without working twelve and fourteen hours a day. The wages paid are based upon the utmost that the best individual in the team can do in a day.

This system came in with the influx of the Jews into New York in the early eighties. These workers, with their intense desire to accumulate money, get on in the world, and then be emancipated from hard work, are peculiarly adapted to the system. Just as soon as a few of the workers save enough money they become proprietors of small factories. Another thing that enters into the situation is the characteristics of the people themselves. Jews are a restless race and resent the rigid routine and supervision of the factory, but the comparative freedom in a small shop under the task system appeals to their desires to get on in the world and gives them a degree of freedom which they cannot have under the factory system. The task system lends full opportunity for the cupidity of worker and owner to exploit other workers, and in the end every man in the shop comes to be looked upon as an opportunity for more profits.

The Modern Factory. Another stage in the evolution of the clothing industry is found in the factory itself. Just as the task system was an improvement over the sweat-shop in the home, so the factory is a big advance over the task system. The factory has grown very rapidly owing to the demand for tailor-made clothes, to the continual change in the styles, and to the large supply of cheap labor always at hand. In recent years the demand for men’s and women’s ready-made clothes has so increased that now large department stores which formerly sold only cheap grades of ready-made clothes are stocking up with expensive garments in order to cater to the class of customers who used to order their clothes directly from the custom tailor.

This movement toward standardizing the clothing industry aids the factory in overcoming the competition of the smaller shops. There is going on a sure but slow movement toward the elimination of the bad conditions in the garment trades, and the factories are increasing because people of even moderate means are demanding higher-priced and better-grade garments. “I got such a wonderful bargain to-day, you just ought to see the shirt-waists that are being sold for one dollar and seventy-five cents. Why, you couldn’t even buy the material for that price, to say nothing of the work and trouble of making it.” This is an accurate report of a conversation overheard on a street-car one evening. It sounds familiar to you, now, doesn’t it? When you got your bargain, did you ever consider the girls who work to make you that waist? The manufacturer is not alone responsible for bad conditions. It is impossible for him to pay good wages and continue in business unless he can sell his goods at a decent profit. If you force him to compete with the sweat-shop, you drive him out of business and subsidize the sweat-shop at the same time.

Our selfishness in desiring to get the best possible bargains makes us thoughtless partners of the exploiters of the men and women who are working to make our clothes. Progress costs money, time, and thought. We are all bound together and go forward or backward with the group. Next time you buy a dress or a suit, try to picture the girls and men who worked on it. Consider the hours of labor which they spent and the responsibilities that rest upon them; then figure against the price which you are paying a fair proportion of the cost for wages to these workers, and ask yourself would you be willing to make the garment for that price? If you would not, providing, of course, that you had the skill, you are not playing fair with your sister and brother who live somewhere and are being cheated out of a decent wage.

Groups by Races. The workers in the garment industries in New York live in groups made up not by industrial conditions or interests so much as by racial interests. The Jews tend to live in certain quarters of the city confined to themselves, and the Italians have their quarters also. As a family accumulates a little money, plans are made to move out of these sections in lower New York and to settle in different surroundings in the upper part of the city, on Lexington Avenue or in the Bronx.

Seasonal Work in the Garment Trade. In spite of the tremendous advance made in late years in these industries in matters relating to conditions of work, such as the eliminating of excessive overtime, shortening of the regular hours of labor, and raising rates or earnings, the matter of unemployment is still a serious problem. The garment trades are affected by seasonal demands. Everybody wants a new suit at just about the same time. “If I cannot have my spring suit by Easter, I would just as soon not have it at all,” was the complaint of a young girl whose family was trying to make retrenchments during war time. The improvement in conditions has been marked; but in no way has it been found practicable to lengthen the work season. And since payment by the piece is widely prevalent in the clothing industries, in the case of home workers a record of the time and the payment is not strictly kept, and statistics are not available.

Health Conditions. The health conditions among the workers in the garment industries show an interesting relationship to the wages paid and the method of payment. The United States Public Health Service, reporting on conditions among the garment-workers in New York City, states that the strain was more prevalent where wages were paid on the piece basis than by the week or other time basis. With the increased use of machinery another series of health hazards appears, according to this report. These are the result of fatigue and overstrain caused by the close application to the same process through long hours. The monotony of the work contributes to the bad industrial conditions. At its best the wage of the garment-worker is pitiably small. Among the girls, especially, there is keen competition. They cut one another down, and they underbid and undersell each other. The average wage paid barely affords a living. One little Italian girl in a recent shirt-waist strike in New York said, “Me no live verra much on forta-nine cent a day.” This wage of forty-nine cents it must be said is not usual, and is largely the result of the ignorance of the girl, but there are others like her who are forced to go to work unprepared and therefore are unable to earn a better wage.

In many communities there still lingers the employment of the women and children in home trades, making garments under sweat-shop conditions. The contractor who formerly depended for his living upon letting out his work to the sweat-shops has largely disappeared; but there are still many homes in which work is done and no serious attempt has been made as yet to reach the evils incident to it. Here the workers are driven by the pressure of poverty to labor under conditions and for wages that destroy life, and to work their children in the same manner. Here disease breeds and is passed on to the consumer.

A recent study of the home conditions shows that the worst abuses of child labor linger in this remnant of family work. No child labor law that has been passed in the United States seems to be adequate to the situation. To control this there must be a special provision made in the factory laws of each state regarding the work done by families in their own homes. Several of the states do provide in their laws that no work for pay shall be done in the homes except by the members of the families themselves. Other states provide that this work shall be done under certain conditions, and standards are required of the factory. Massachusetts issues a license to the family to do work in the home, and like New York, requires a “tenement made” tag attached to the article; also holding the owners of the property responsible for any violation of the law. At the Chicago Industrial Exhibition a picture was shown entitled “Sacred Motherhood.” It was that of a woman nursing her child and driving a sewing-machine at the same time. It was a terrible portrayal of unchecked, unregulated industry, which does not stop to reckon the effect upon the future, but imperils the well-being of both the mother and the child.

Labor Disturbances. The fundamental cause of the troubles in the clothing industry in Boston prior to the spring of 1913, was similar to that in the same industry in New York before their abolition by concerted action of the employers and employees in the spring of the same year. There have been serious disturbances in the garment trade in Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities. The difficulty was right in the trade itself and many of the causes of discord will continue for some time to come.

Among these causes of disturbances are long hours, low wages, poor sanitary conditions, sub-contracting, unequal distribution of the work, work in tenement-houses, failure to state the standard price for piece-work, playing of favorites in the giving out of the work, lack of cooperation between the employers and the employees, prevalence of the piece-work system, and the difficulty of determining what shall be paid or what constitutes a just basis for computing hours and wages.

For instance, three girls work in one factory and are put upon work that is to be a test upon which a new wage is to be based. One of the girls is put to work upon a certain task in shirt-waists. They are made of thin material; the thread used is very fine and the stuff shirrs easily, so that it is almost impossible to make any speed. The second girl is put to work upon a pile of plain waists. The third girl has a still different task. Each girl at the beginning of the day has an equal amount of work to do. They all put in the same number of hours and expend approximately the same amount of energy; but at the end of the day one of the girls has finished her task, the other has probably two hours’ work to do on the day following, while the third girl, the one who was working upon the thin waists, has more than a day’s work ahead of her. It will be readily seen that it is almost impossible to determine what pay would be a fair price for making shirt-waists, or for doing any part of the work connected with the making of these garments unless a different and more equitable basis of reckoning is established.

Cost and Selling Price. Another matter that enters into the situation and complicates it is the fact that there is a different selling price put on each garment. Of course, we must all recognize that wages cannot be made except in proportion to the selling price of the garment. No business can be run unless it is able to make enough on its products to pay a decent wage. The cost of production, including the cost of materials, a fair price for the superintendent, and a proportion of the general overhead cost of the factory must be charged against each garment, together with a proportion of the interest on the investment and the approximate cost of the wear and tear on the machinery. Add to this the cost for advertising and marketing the garment. All of these things have to enter into consideration, and the wages must be determined by the amount of money that will be received for the finished garment. Now, how are we to bring about a just settlement of this vexed question? There is only one way in which it can be done, that is, by bringing the workers themselves into partnership with the firm. Just as long as the destiny of the worker is in the hands of the foreman and there is no chance for these workers to be heard, or to have any voice in the decisions that are made, so long there will be fruitful cause for trouble.

Arbitration. The experience of the Massachusetts Board of Arbitration warrants the conclusion that there is a proper and very useful sphere of activity for a permanent State Board of Arbitration. A number of questions arise from time to time in almost all trades which do not require a detailed knowledge of the industry on the part of the arbitrating body. There are, for example, questions of discharge in alleged violation of a clause in an agreement covering discharges. There are certain other controversies which both sides are willing to have decided by the application of standards which are matters of fact ascertainable upon investigation. For instance, in many piece-price controversies, both sides are willing to have the questions decided on the basis of what competing manufacturers pay for the same operations under similar working conditions; but each is unwilling to accept the figures presented by the other side in support of its contention. This has been done by the Massachusetts Board in the boot and shoe industry, and recently in a textile case. The Arbitration Board should be given all the powers in the way of compelling the attendance of witnesses and testimony under oath, and the production of books and papers, which it requires to secure the information necessary to reach a decision.

The Religious and Social Problems. Twenty-five per cent. of all the effort put into the processes of industry and commerce is concerned with the supply of clothing. Most of the clothing is made under conditions which determine the life and welfare of such a large proportion of the people that we find in the garment-making industries themselves a distinct and definite challenge to the religious and social agencies. There are some fundamental considerations which must be borne in mind and which will help us to see the problem as it affects the workers. Most of those in the garment trades are foreigners unused to our way of thinking. At noon on Fifth Avenue and again at night as the workers leave for their homes, the newsboys sell papers printed in Yiddish characters almost exclusively, and only a few English papers are sold for several blocks below Twenty-third Street. In religious matters the garment-workers represent three groups: those who are devoted to the faith of their fathers and who are Jews in the truest sense of the word; those who have drifted away from the old faith in the rush of life in America, and, antagonistic to the domination of the Roman Catholic faith, have not been attracted or won by the Protestant faith; and a third class composed of those who are bitterly hostile to all religions because of the corruption of the church as they view it, because of the social injustice of which they are the subjects, and which is identified in their own minds with the church and religious leaders.

It is an interesting thing to visit a social center in either Boston or New York. Ford Hall or Cooper Union serves as a good illustration. Here the majority of the people are Jews, radical through and through. They are intelligently awake and thoroughly skeptical. The Bible is not an open book to many of these people, and they have not learned to read history or current events with an open mind. Social conditions and economic pressure make it almost impossible for them to render a straight and just judgment. They have monstrous misconceptions of Protestants and the Protestant religion, for they see for the most part only the worst side. America means to them, instead of freedom, hope, and independence, only extortionate profiteering.

The Gospel for the Garment-workers. How can we overcome this prejudice? How can we give these people an adequate and intelligible interpretation of the gospel? We must respect their faith. It will not solve the problem to make proselytes of a large number of our new Jewish citizens. We need to be definite, concrete, and practical, and to leave controversial matters and philosophical discussions out of the situation. We need to cultivate more reverence in our American churches, and a finer regard for the associations and experiences of the past of these people. As these words are being written, I can see from my window the tower of a church surmounted by a cross. It is the Judson Memorial Baptist Church on Washington Square. Sunday after Sunday there are gathered together large groups of people. Most of them live under sordid, cramped conditions, but they find in this church a ministry that appeals to them. The church is more interested in making good Americans out of these people, and in interpreting America to them than in securing their membership in the church. And rightly this church is justified in its attitude. By ministering to the people it is gaining their allegiance to the principles of Christianity as it could in no other way.

To sum up the chapter, the making of garments, like other industries we have considered, is highly specialized. It has been taken out of the hands of the American group. The old-fashioned dressmaking and tailor shops have given way to the huge lofts where many factories are turning out clothing for men, women, boys and girls in large quantities. The workers are all city dwellers. They are all foreigners, most of them Jews, with a large intermingling of Italians. To meet their needs and to interpret the gospel to them the church must first of all come to know the conditions under which they live. It must create a public opinion that will demand an adjustment of the difficulties in the trade itself and then in the homes of the people. In the community in which they live it must show that the members of the Protestant churches are the best of friends and neighbors.