Thus the two curses which the wholesalers inflict upon the garment trades through the sweating system-instability of work and a remuneration insufficient for the maintenance of wholesome 'shops-have taken deeper hold than ever upon garment manufacture in Chicago, notwithstanding the regular inspections, the frequent prosecutions, the rigid enforcement of every provision of the Illinois law for the protection of the public.

The effort to enforce the child-labor sections of the law is more arduous and less fruitful in the sweatshops than elsewhere. Thus, while the number of children engaged in manufacture in Illinois has decreased by 1,284 since December, 1895, in the sweatshops the decrease has amounted to but 121 children. There are still 1,060 girls and 128 boys in the sweatshops-one in six of all the children employed in manufacture in the State. In 1895 this ratio was one in seven; in 1894 it was but one in eleven. In 1896 it has risen to one in six, in spite of the successful prosecution between Dec. 15, 1895, and Sept. 1, 1896, of 140 sweaters on 205 charges of violation of the child-labor provisions, as follows: Children employed under 14 years of age, 17; children under 16 years of age without affidavits, 120; children employed without keeping register, 46; without posting wall lists, 22.

There is no prospect of any considerable reduction in the number of children employed in these shops under the present provisions of the law. It is the settled policy of sweaters to hire children and take the risks; and they are not likely to abandon this policy, because they are compelled to employ the cheapest labor. Nothing less than the total abolition of tenement-house manufacture will, in the opinion of the inspectors, materially diminish the employment of children under the sweating system.

The eight-hour section of the law, if it could have been enforced, might have gone far toward abolishing the sweating system, because small groups of employes using foot-power can yield a profit to the sweater only by working inhumanly long hours. The Illinois Manufacturers' Association, however, not only promptly carried cases under this section to the Supreme Court, but instructed the contractors that, while the cases were pending, the law need not be obeyed. Many of the-Justices taking the same view, it was found impossible to enforce the eighthours section in these shops at any time. The short working day has therefore never had any real trial as a means of restricting or abolishing tenement-house manufacture.

The very explicit regulations laid down in Sections 1. 2 and 7 are plainly intended to clothe the inspectors with extraordinary powers for the purpose of enabling them to keep tenement-house shops under constant supervision, and to protect the public from the danger of infection which lurks in that form of manufacture.

In Section I manufacture of cigars and specified articles of clothing in rooms used for eating and sleeping purposes in tenement houses is prohibited; but the scope of this prohibition is disastrously limited by the exception made that "members of the family living therein may carry on this manufacture in eating and sleeping rooms. This section also requires that every such workshop shall be

kept clean, free from vermin, infectious and contagious matter, and that the person in control of the shop shall register it with the Board of Health.

In Section 2 provision is made for condemnation and destruction of goods in process of manufacture whenever found in infectious condition.

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Section 7 defines any house, room or place," where any part of the manufacture of the articles of clothing enumerated in Section 1 is carried on, to be a workshop, and subject to inspection. It further requires every person, firm or corporation having such workshops in his, their or its employ, to keep a complete list of them, and to produce it on demand of an inspector.

The method of enforcement pursued by the department has been as follows: Manufacturers of cloaks and clothing (custom and ready-made) have been called upon from time to time for the lists which Section 7 requires them to keep and produce on the demand of an inspector. In 1896 lists were obtained from thirteen cloak houses, fifty manufacturers of ready-made clothing, 210 custom tailors. In only one instance has it been necessary to enforce the demand for a list by prosecuting the manufacturer for refusing to give it.

The manufacturers' lists are filed in the office of this department. The addresses furnished by them are the basis for the street lists with which the office is always provided of outside (or contractor's) shops. To keep these lists in order, corrected from day to day, requires the constant and careful work of one experienced person. Without such lists there could be nothing approaching regular supervision of the tenement-house shops of Chicago. The difficulty of keeping street lists accurately is increased by the fact that the name of the same contractor may be given on the lists of a dozen manufacturers, with as many variations in his name and address. The recurrent cause for corrections in the street lists is the shifting about of the irresponsible contractors. The records of a year show the same contractor in many locations, sometimes with a new name at each change; while against the street number which was his at the beginning of the year may be set down one name after another, as one contractor uses the shop, vacates it and is succeeded by another.

In 1896 there have been visited 2,378 of these contractors' shops, in which 14,752 people were found at work, of whom 1,188 were children under 16 years of age and 7,181 females above that age.

Not all of these shops are upon tenement-house premises; but the typical contractor's shop, commonly known as the sweatshop, is upon tenement-house premises, and as the schedules filed in the office show-these form a large majority. Such shops are marked by the department as requiring constant surveillance and efficient inspectors are detailed to the work. The frequency of the inspections is only limited by the extent of the territory to be covered.

Special inspections on account of notice of contagious diseases are made in addition to the regular inspections. By the kindly co-operation of the Chicago Board of Health this department is daily supplied with a list of cases of contagious disease, as compiled for the Board from reports of the previous day. This daily list is compared with the street lists, and where our records show a shop so near a case of contagious disease as to make it possible that clothing in process of manufacture in the shop may be infected, a special inspection is made

at once. In the present year this department has received notice of 2,461 cases of diphtheria, and of these 1,021 were in proximity to sweatshops.

When the inspector believes there is evidence o. infection the sweater is warned not to take the goods from the shop until permission is given, the manufacturer is notified not to receive the goods, and the Board of Health is requested to send a physician to decide whether the goods are in an infectious condition When smallpox was epidemic among the sweatshops in one part of Chicago in 1894 three inspectors were constantly in the infected district, a considerable amount of clothing was burned, under authority vested in the inspector by Section 2 of the law, and a very large amount was sterilized. During the present year the spread of infection has undoubtedly been checked to some degree by prompt action on information from the Board of Health and holding goods upon infected premises until sterilized.

Why should garments ever be manufactured under conditions which call for sterilization? Can assurance ever be given that the tenement-made garments in the market ought not to have been sterilized?

There is no more stringent regulation in any State where the attempt has been made to grapple with the growing evil of tenement-house manufacture than is attempted in the Illinois factory act. The failure of the attempt is inherent in the system, and does not depend upon any provision or any method of enforcement. It is, from the outset, a vain attempt to keep tenement-house manufacture and avoid its evil results. Indeed, half-way measures of protection are not only insufficient, but may prove injurious by lulling the public into a false sense of security.

Tenement-house manufacture involves the irresponsible middleman as employer, the small and scattered groups of workers, the necessity for concealing infection (the interests of the landlord and his tenants, of the sweater and his victims, coinciding in this respect, and often obtaining the connivance of a physician of the same race and religion), the impossibility of wholesome surroundings for the employes, and finally the home finisher, the most dangerous and wretched link in the chain.

Assuming the most thorough co-operation between the physicians, the Board of Health and the factory inspectors, the physicians cannot report what they do not know; and among the poorest of the poor-the home workers in the garment trades a physician is usually called only when death is imminent (for the purpose of avoiding a coroner's inquest), and when infection may have been daily sent out from the home for a fortnight or even longer.

No staff of inspectors, however large and well equipped, can grapple successfully with the essential evils of tenement-house manufacture in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, and it is in these great centers that garment manufacture tends increasingly to concentrate.

The present basis of legislation upon tenement-house manufacture is a false one, bulwarked by two delusions. One of these delusions is constantly formulated in the time-worn phrase, “Every man's house is his castle," interpreted to give to the dweller in a tenement-house cellar the right to turn his dwelling into

a shop, to the serious injury of his employes and the jeopardy of the public health. The other delusion is the belief that the widowed mother can support her orphan brood by finishing garments in her home. As a matter of fact, no widow can do this. She who attempts it must not only work in this way, to the ruin of her home life, but also receive charity from public or private sources. There is no decent living to be made at the foot-power sewing-machine, much less at hand sewing, in these days of steam and electricity.

It is incredible what power these two delusions have for prolonging the life of the sweating system. They have always to be met before a reasonable hearing can be obtained for the assurance that the only way to deal effectively with tenement-house manufacture is to abolish it outright. Yet this assurance is the only possible logical conclusion from the experience and observation of this department. Only when the bakeries and laundries are gone from the cellars, when the cigar and garment shops are banished from living rooms, garrets, sheds, stables and basements, will there be any guarantee for the public that the features of the sweating system which now threaten the public health are really under control. In Chicago, with the boundless prairie inviting the population to disperse, and the trolleys and elevated roads facilitating the process of dispersion, there is even less excuse than in New York for deferring a sweeping statutory prohibition of tenement-house manufacture.

When this prohibition is in force there will still be need for Federal legislation in order to protect Illinois purchasers from infection liable to be conveyed to them in garments made in other States.

On the completion of Mrs. Kelley's paper Miss O'Reilly moved that the convention now decide upon the next place of meeting. Motion carried.

Chief Wade of Massachusetts renewed the invitation to the city of Boston.

Mr. Russell of Michigan, Mr. Knaub of Ohio, Mr. Milligan of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Stevens of Illinois spoke in favor of convening in Detroit.

Mr. Wade, with the consent of Mr. White, withdrew the name of Boston from the contest.

Mr. Emsley of Pennsylvania moved and Mrs. Kelley of Illinois seconded the motion that the convention meet in Detroit in 1897. Carried by unanimous vote.

The hour of noon having arrived President Morse declared the convention adjourned.

MORNING SESSION, Thursday, Sept. 3. President Morse called the convention to order at 9:15. Rollcall showed the same representation as at the previous day's ses

sion, except from New Jersey. For that State Mr. John E. Dunn answered roll-call in place of Mr. Weinthal, who had been called away.

On motion reading of minutes of Wednesday's session was dispensed with.

Mr. O'Leary of New York, chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, was called upon and offered the following:

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS.

Mr. President and Members of the Convention: The Committee on Resolutions respectfully reports as follows:

I. That we non-concur in the recommendation of the President in his address, advising the creation of an executive committee to act for the Association in the interim between conventions, for the reason that we believe all necessary business can be transacted by the regular officers of the Association.

2. Your committee recommends that Section 5 of the Constitution governing the duties of the Secretary-Treasurer be amended, as follows: After the word "organization," line three, add: "and he shall keep an itemized account of all moneys received and disbursed by him during the year, and shall present his report in writing to the convention."

3. Your committee recommend the addition of a section to the Constitution, following Section 9, to read: “The President shall, on the opening of the first session of the convention each year, appoint two committees, as follows: An Auditing Committee of three members, and a Committee on Resolutions, of not less than three members. The Auditing Committee shall examine the books, papers, vouchers, receipts, etc., of the Secretary-Treasurer, and shall report thereon in writing to the convention."

5. Your committee indorses the commendable features of the Massachusetts law and of the Statute of the Province of Quebec governing boiler inspection, and recommends that steps be taken to secure similar legislation in all States and Provinces.

6. Your committee recommends the enactment of laws in all States providing for the inspection of bakeshops, and that such inspection be placed under supervision of the Factory Inspection Department.

7. Your committee recommends the re-adoption of the recommendations of former conventions concerning compulsory education, limitation of hours of labor, suppression of sweatshops, employment of minors, and all other provisions for securing the safety and bettering the condition of the wage-earners.

Respectfully submitted,

DANIEL O'LEARY, Chairman.
J. W. KNAUB,
ALZINA P. STEVENS, Secretary.

The report of the committee was read, discussed and adopted

by sections.