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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 3, 1910
Chicago, Illinois – Report on Strike of 41,000 Garment Workers, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:
[Part II.]
Not satisfied with cutting the rates and wages of the tailors, the firm instituted a system whereby the employes were charged from five to fifteen dollars for the least damage done to a garment. Lost spools, bobbins and other implements were charged up to the workers and taken out of their wages.
During the slack months, the piece workers were forced to report for work. They sat around in the shops, work or no work, earning no money, but stifling in the close, dust laden atmosphere of the fabric smelling shops.
When the pre-season months, those that constitute the busy time in the clothing industry, arrived, things changed as if by magic. Every employe was driven at top speed. Girls who had worked late into the night at home, threading needles or doing other work in order to make more money and sidestep the ten-hour law, came down to work next morning almost ill. None, however, were ever allowed to go home when sick.
Girls who asked permission to go home when sick were given some powders—good for every ailment from an earache to a sick stomach. If these powders failed to cure and the girl fainted, as happened several times each day, a doctor was summoned. But never, under any circumstances, was a girl or boy given permission to go home when sick, at least not until more substantial evidence than a sickly appearance or a mere statement was given.
