"
This special value of the trades-unions first became clear to the
residents of Hull-House in connection with the sweating system.
We early found that the women in the sewing trades were sorely in
need of help. The trade was thoroughly disorganized, Russian and
Polish tailors competing against English-speaking tailors,
unskilled Bohemian and Italian women competing against both.
These women seem to have been best helped through the use of the
label when unions of specialized workers in the trade are strong
enough to insist that the manufacturers shall "give out work"
only to those holding union cards. It was certainly impressive
when the garment makers themselves in this way finally succeeded
in organizing six hundred of the Italian women in our immediate
vicinity, who had finished garments at home for the most wretched
and precarious wages. To be sure, the most ignorant women only
knew that "you couldn't get clothes to sew" from the places where
they paid the best, unless "you had a card," but through the
veins of most of them there pulsed the quickened blood of a new
fellowship, a sense of comfort and aid which had been laid out to
them by their fellow-workers.
During the fourth year of our residence at Hull-House we found
ourselves in a large mass meeting ardently advocating the passage
of a Federal measure called the Sulzer Bill.
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