ABSTRACT
The twelve weeks' strike of the Chicago garment workers which is just breaking up may be looked upon as the most recent chapter in the long struggle of the workers to raise their standard of living in what has been historically the worst paid, or, in the words of the sociologist, the most thoroughly "parasitic" trade that modern industry has developed. What the Christian Socialists of an earlier generation called "the dishonorable trade of the slop-shops" still counts its victims by the thousand score, and the victims still belong chiefly to what is known as the weaker sex. As long ago as the Christmas season of 1843, Thomas Hood immortalized the misery of the sweated needle-trades when he published the " Song of the Shirt" in the holiday number of an English comic weekly. Kingsley was the next prophet in this field who undertook to preach the gospel of the poor, and under the signature of Parson Lot he wrote the famous indictment called "Cheap clothes and Nasty," in which he charged that "slavery, starvation, and waste of life" were the cost of the ready-made garments that men so thoughtlessly put on their backs. "Cheap clothes and nasty " they remain to this day, and anyone who reviews the long history of overwork and underpay in this industry may be tempted to question whether all the ready-made garments in the world are worth the misery that has been sewed into them.
