The more
helpless and dependent they were, the more sure of getting work from
him. In speaking about his plans he said: 'It will take these girls
years to learn English and to learn how to go about and find work. In
that way I will be able to get their labor very cheap.' His theory
turned out to be practical. He has since built several tenement-houses."
[Sidenote: A Foreign Importation]
The cheap tailor business is divided among the Italians, Russians,
Poles, and Swedes, Germans and Bohemians. The women and children are
made to work, and hours are not carefully counted. Long work, poor food,
poor light, foul air, bad sanitation--all make this kind of life far
worse than any life which the immigrants knew in Europe. Better physical
starvation there than the mental and spiritual blight of these modern
conditions here. That so much of hopeful humanity is found in these
unwholesome and congested wards proves the quality worth saving and
elevating.
[Sidenote: Story of a Sweat-shop Girl]
Here is an illustration of the resolute spirit which conditions cannot
crush. A young Polish girl was brought by her widowed mother to America,
in hope of bettering their condition.
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