"Sweating"

As the banking moratorium closed in on the financial heart of the nation last week it found New York State going to work on another evil consequence of the Depression--the "sweating" of women and children. In a strong special message to the Legislature striking at labor conditions that smacked of 30 years ago, Governor Lehman had called for a Minimum Wage law. Declared he:

''The evidence is overwhelming that the Depression has been exploited by short-sighted and selfish employers who pay wages unreasonably low and not at all commensurate with the service rendered. Instances have come to my attention of the payment to women of wages as low as $4 for a full work week. . . . Such trade practices are a source of unfair competition to firms who seek to maintain decent standards."

Hearings at Albany were started on legislation to carry out the Governor's recommendation. Fifty organizations ranging from the State Federation of Labor to the New York Principals' Association went on record for a Minimum Wage law. Manufacturers' lobbyists who had staved off such a measure for 20 years admitted that they were now beaten, that the bill would pass this spring.

New York City was the worst "sweat" spot in the State and its dressmaking industry, employing 50.000 women, was the most "sweated" trade. Unscrupulous employers, with a labor surplus at hand, had battered wages down to the Chinese coolie level. In many a sweatshop the "U. S. standard of living," which the textile tariff is supposed to protect, had declined to a point where workers could subsist only with the help of charity. Girls were sleeping in subways because they could not earn the price of a bed. Hospitals were filling with women who had worked themselves into a state of collapse for a pittance.

Some case histories turned up for the crusading New York World-Telegram by welfare workers:

A piece worker gets 12 -c- per gross, makes $4 per week. Her daily expenses: carfare, 20-c-; lunch, 25-c-; nursery care for her children, 20-c---total, 65-c-. Her profits for a full week's work: 10-c-.

A hat maker crochets them for 40-c- per doz. In a week she makes two dozen.

An apron girl is paid 2 1/2-c- per apron. Her daily output nets her 20-c-.

A slipper liner gets 21-c- to line 72 pairs. If she lines one slipper every 45 sec., she makes $1.05 in a nine-hour day.

Home workers, two sisters and their mother, are paid 80-c- a gross to make "frogs" for men's pajamas. Their combined weekly income: $4.

Girl cleaners in a Brooklyn pants factory are paid 1/2-c- for each garment they thread and sponge--a 5-min. operation. Their income: 6-c- per hour, $2.78 per week.

Packing girls, aged 13, in a food factory receive 1-c- for filling a dozen jars, putting them in-wooden boxes, lugging the boxes to the next department. Maximum daily wage: 50-c-.

Once there were 17 States with minimum wage laws for women & children. Today there are but six--California, North Dakota. Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Massachusetts. In the first five the law is mandatory. In Massachusetts where it is advisory a commission fixes minimum wages, turns public opinion loose upon the employer who refuses to abide by them.

Any minimum wage law that New York enacts must thread its way through the 14th Amendment to get by the U. S. Supreme Court. In 1917 the court upheld (4-to-4) the Oregon law and in 1925 overturned a similar statute from Arizona. In 1923 it voided (5-to-3) a District of Columbia wage law for women on the ground that women should not "be subject to restrictions upon their liberty of contract which could not lawfully be imposed in the case of men under similar circumstances." Another objection in the court's eyes was that the minimum wage was based on "living standards" which had no "causal connection" with the employer or the job he offered.

Hopefully declared Governor Lehman: "I am advised by competent constitutional authorities that present day conditions are so changed that a mandatory minimum wage law based not on living standards but on the minimum value of the services rendered might well be upheld by the Supreme Court."

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