Esther’s world A primary source document
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n the Lower East Side of New York City, crowded tenement rooms doubled as places to both live and work. Mothers enlisted young children to assist in stitching garments and finery that was manufactured elsewhere and sold uptown to the rich.
Daniel's speech emphasizes some common concerns of reformers in the Progressive Era (1900-1920): child welfare, poverty, and public health. Excerpted from a 1905 speech: "… Every garment worn by a woman is found being manufactured in tenement rooms. The coarsest homewrappers to the daintiest lace gown for a fine evening function are manufactured in these rooms. Corsets and shoes are the most uncommon. The adornments of woman's dress, the flowers and feathers for her hats, the hats themselves — these I have seen being made in the presence of small-pox, on the lounge with the patient. In this case the hats belonged to a Broadway firm. All clothing worn by infants and young children — dainty little dresses — I have seen on the same bed with children sick of contagious diseases and into these little garments is sewed some of the contagion. Every garment worn by men is found being manufactured in rooms whose legitimate use is for living purposes. Men's hats are less frequently found, but one wonders if there are men enough in the world to wear all the trousers that are finished in tenement rooms. All clothing when not being sewed upon is thrown on the bed or under it, on the floor or more often used as a couch for a child.
… The workers, poor, helpless, ignorant foreigners, work on in dirt, often in filth unspeakable, in the presence of all contagious and other diseases, and in apartments in which the sun enters only at noon or never at all… … The sick as long as they can hold their heads up, must work to pay for the cost of their living. As soon as they are convalescent they must begin again. The other day a girl of 8 years was dismissed from the diphtheria hospital after a severe attack of the disease. Almost immediately she was working at women's collars, although scarcely able to walk across the room alone… … Is there any other remedy? I believe that a law absolutely forbidding any manufacturer to have any part of his work done in a tenement-house could be enforced. If women must add to the income of the family they should do it in buildings built for this purpose; children at least under eight years of age would not be employed; men and women in the last stages of tuberculosis could not work because of inability to go to a factory. The children, the future Americans, would stand a better chance of becoming useful citizens; and the consumer possessed of much wealth or little, could know that his garments were not stained with the blood of helpless women and little children." — tenant.net/Community/LES/wreck7.html
In addition to wearing apparel, boxes, cigars, pocketbooks, jewelry, clocks, watches, wigs, fur garments, paper bags — anything the manufacturing, altering, repairing or finishing of which requires hand labor or simple machinery, is found in these rooms. Often one finds the women manufacturing, the man sorting fruit to
Syracuse Stage 43
2004-2005 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html
Intimate Apparel
In 1905, Annie S. Daniel of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children spoke to the National Consumer's League, addressing the dreadful and disease-ridden conditions endured by tenement dwellers.
be sold on the street…