"Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt;
But 'tain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out."

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: _Biglow Papers_.

A wise man of the old time, after a tour of observation, came home to
say, "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done
under the sun: and behold the tears of such, as were oppressed, and
they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was
power; but they had no comforter." If this report had been written by
one who had been climbing with me through the tenement houses of not
less than a score of Boston streets, conversing with the sewing-women,
looking on their poverty-lined faces and their ragged children,
breathing the poisonous air of the quarters where they work, and
listening to their heart-rending stories of cruelty and oppression, it
would be an appropriate summary of our observation. It is my purpose,
at this time, to take you with me on a tour of observation. As
well-lighted streets are better than policemen to insure safety and
good order, so I believe that the best possible service I can render
the public is to turn on the light, and tell, as plainly and simply as
I can, the story of what I have seen and heard and smelled in the white
slave-quarters, which are a disgrace to our fair city. I shall confine
myself at this time entirely to the work of women and children in their
own homes. Most of this work is parcelled out to them by middlemen who
are known as "sweaters." That word sweater is not in the old
dictionaries. It is a foul word, born of the greed and infernal lust
for gold which pervade the most reckless and wicked financial circles
of our time. The sweater takes large contracts and divides it out among
the very poor, reducing the price to starvation limits, and reserving
the profits for himself.