There has been quite a controversy recently as to where the new United
States postal uniforms for the Boston carriers were made. I settled
this question to my own satisfaction during the past week, when, in
company with Dr. Luther T. Townsend, of Boston University, and two
other gentlemen, one of them being an Italian interpreter, I climbed
the rickety stairs of an old North End tenement house, and found the
pants for these same uniforms being made by Italian women at _nine and
a half cents a pair_! They received them from a Jewish sweater. One of
these women says that, by beginning at four o'clock in the morning and
frequently working until twelve o'clock at night, she can make six
pairs of these pants in a day. She has five children; the rent is two
dollars per week. The husband has been out of work for eight months;
the only one of the children who is able to earn anything is a boy who
is a bootblack, and can earn, in fine weather, three dollars a week.
Another woman at work on these postal uniforms, who was not able to
labor quite such long hours, could only make four pairs a day. She also
had five children, the only one able to earn anything being a daughter,
fourteen years of age, who works in a sweater's shop for two dollars a
week.

On the walls of the rooms in this building where the postal uniforms
were being made, the cockroaches were crawling, and in some places were
swarming as thick as ants about an anthill.

I have my note-books full of many other cases, including Portuguese,
Italian, English, Polish, and a few Irish and American women, of the
same general character as those already related; but a similar wicked
scale of prices runs through the making of other clothing. I called on
a woman in South Boston last week who was making overalls for a city