Florence Kelley report

“Report of Inspection by Committee,” Report of the Committee on Manufactures on the Sweating System (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893), p. xi.

BOSTON, MASS., April 12, 1892
On the suggestion of Inspector Griffin, who stated that the Italians were about the only ones worth looking into in this regard, we visited a number of places, mainly those of Italians.

At the first place we found a man and his wife and eight children living in two rooms, each 12 by 12, where they ate, slept, cooked, and worked at making children’s pants, the new materials cut and sorted for which were found piled up on the bed in the inside room. The two rooms, while they showed every sign of poverty and crowding, were not particularly unclean, the inspector noting that they were better than a few days since, when he had warned them. There were no conveniences for [water] closets, etc., except those in common with others on the same alley, filthy and nauseating beyond description and showing no regard to decency, let alone comfort or cleanliness.

Right across the alley there was visited the second place which the inspector now discovered for the first time. In two rooms about the same width, but each a little longer than those just visited, was found a man and his wife and four children with several boarders or guests, the latter lying about in a way to indicate that they were decidedly at home. Here clothing was being manufactured, and upon the three beds were piled the goods, cut ready to be made up. The stench and filth of these rooms were such as to make it impossible for members of the committee to remain in them, while the closet arrangements outside were simply a mass of filth.

On the next visit there were found on the second floor a husband, wife, and two children and a boarder, living in two rooms, one about 10 by 18 and another about 10 by 7; and here, also, clothing was being made up and stacked upon the beds. This place was decidedly filthy, but not so repulsive as the one just left.

The next visit was to a place where a man and his wife, three children, a girl cousin, and two employés lived, ate, and slept in a place 18 by 20 feet, divided into three irregular rooms. Here cooking, eating, sleeping, and working were being carried on in the same room, and the materials and finished goods were piled upon the beds and the tables where the food lay. Here filth was such as to be nauseating, and the committee could hardly complete its inspection.

The next visit was to a little apartment of two rooms, which the inspector informed us had been cleaned up by their occupants by his order, and where they were, however, still permitted to continue the making up of clothing in their eating and sleeping rooms. Upon going to the tenement on one of the upper floors of which this apartment was situated, we found it posted with a red scarlet-fever bill and were informed that the fever patients were sick in the room on the same floor, immediately opposite the apartments where clothing was being made, and which we came to investigate. On inquiry we were told that the inspector had no powers in such a case so long as the fever patient was not actually in the identical apartment with the clothing.

We next visited two rooms on a third floor, where we found two little girls, say 5 and 8 years old, left alone in a dirty and disordered apartment of two rooms, while their mother and sister were at work in a local concern making up pants. The machine in the room and the general situation of the furniture, etc., showed that the business had been carried on there and upon the same tables where the family ate. Upon inquiry the elder of the little girls said that her mamma and sister each brought home pantaloons to work upon at night. The premises here were very dirty, and the beds and cooking arrangements repulsively so; but yet a most agreeable contrast in order and cleanliness to the worst of those before visited.