White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy PoorBanks, Louis Albert
History
White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor
Banks, Louis Albert
Poor -- Massachusetts -- Boston; Sweatshops; Working class -- Massachusetts -- Boston
As to the tenement-house sweat-shop, I am convinced that a very simple
law, which ought to be passed by the next legislature, requiring every
manufacturer, of any kind, to file with the inspector of factories a
list of the names and addresses of the people who work for him, would
work wonders. It may be that there are some firms as low down as the
one whose superintendent remarked the other day, when asked what the
effect would be in their business if it were known that their goods
were manufactured in filthy tenement houses: "It would make no
difference at all; our customers would buy of us just the same, no
matter where our garments were made." This firm, I am sure, would find
itself mistaken, and, with a great many others, would break off its
connection with the sweating-business if the law forced it to make that
relation public.
Yet I am sure that nothing promises so much for reform as a revival of
conscientious landlordism. The landlord is now, too often, as one well
says, "an enormous wealthy estate, with heirs scattered here and there,
who hire an agent, as their Southern brothers hired an overseer,
irresponsible, unsympathetic, caring only to please his patrons, by
showing a large balance of profit. And the poorer the tenement, the
larger the balance. No repairs, no janitor, no supervision to pay for;
accommodations so wretched that only the very wretched, who will expect
to be crowded and miserable, will apply for it. O landlord! or
'estate!' too busy to collect your own rents, be not too indolent to
require of your agent a strict account when he brings you twenty per
cent instead of six! You would quickly bring him to book if he were
suddenly to hand you six instead of twenty, but the time to question
him is when it is twenty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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