it. Yet, in defence of his rights,
there is in all the world no such fighter as he. Literally, he will die
fighting, by inches, too, from starvation. Witness his strikes. I
believe that, should the time come when the country needs fighting men,
the son of the despised immigrant Jew will resurrect on American soil,
the first that bade him welcome, the old Maccabee type, and set an
example for all the rest of us to follow.

This long while he has been in the public eye as the vehicle and
promoter of sweating, and much severe condemnation has been visited upon
him with good cause. He had to do something, and he took to the
clothes-maker's trade as that which was most quickly learned. The
increasing crowds, the tenement, and his grinding poverty made the soil
wherein the evil grew rank. But the real sweater does not live in Ludlow
Street; he keeps the stylish shop on Broadway, and he does not always
trouble himself to find out how his workers fare, much as that may have
to do with the comfort and security of his customers.

"We do not have to have a license," said the tenants in one wretched
flat where a consumptive was sewing on coats almost with his last gasp;
"we work for a first-class place on Broadway."

And so they did. Sweating is simply a question of profit to the
manufacturer. By letting out his work on contract, he can save the
expense of running his factory and delay longer making his choice of
styles. If the contractor, in turn, can get along with less shop room by
having as much of the work as can profitably be so farmed out done in
the tenements by cheap home labor, he is so much better off. And
tenement labor is always cheap because of the crowds that clamor for it
and must have bread. The poor Jew is the victim of the mischief quite
as much as he has helped it on. Back of the manufacturer and the
contractor there is still another sweater,--the public. Only by its
sufferance of the bargain counter and of sweat-shop-made goods has the
nuisance existed as long as it has. I am glad I have lived to see the
day of its passing, for, unless I greatly mistake, it is at hand now
that the old silent partner is going out of the firm.

I mean the public. We tried it in the old days, but the courts said the
bill to stop tenement cigar-making was unconstitutional. Labor was
property, and property is inviolable--rightly so until it itself becomes
a threat to the commonwealth. Child labor is such a threat. It has been
st