October 14, 1998
"BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE"

Sweatshop Experience
By: Jennifer Bahou

A sweatshop is a place where unskilled workers work under extremely dreadful conditions. "The Department of Labor defines a work place as a sweatshop if it violates two or more of the most basic labor laws including child labor, minimum wage, overtime, and fire safety laws." (http://www.feminist.org/other/sweattag.html) Women ranging from 15 to 22 years make up 90% of the workers in sweatshops. In addition to working under forced overtime, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, corporal punishment, no benefits, and little wage, they even bring work home to finish. Many children dropouts are found working under these conditions.

These unfit workplaces have been existing from the 1820 until present. The public took efforts to stop this unstable employment in 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire made public the ongoing violence and regulations in the business world. A fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company that trapped workers inside and killed over 140 young immigrant women employees. From this chaos, a number of investigations, labor strikes, and public demonstrations began. As a result of these activities, the New Deal reforms came about in 1930 which were designed to abolish sweatshops and reinforce unions. After World War II sweatshops began to disappear because of the expanding government regulation of monopolies and the rise of trade unions. Yet, that was not the end of sweatshops. As businesses began to focus on design and brand-name advertising the sweatshops began to reform. (http://www.si.edu/nman/ve/sweatshops/history/indchg.htm) Many businesses need a certain amount of items to be done and could not meet the deadline, which re-established the need for sweatshops. Today, many things are being done to stop sweatshops. President Clinton has created an Apparel Industry Task Force of both labor rights and corporate interests to address the issue of sweatshops (http:www.feminist.org/other/sweattag.html).

History museums display to the public a knowledge of the American past. They provide us with objects to commemorate and preserve American history. Museum exhibits obtain remembrances from the past to educate the public with a better understanding of the past life. The exhibit shown in The National Museum of American History, called "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," best illustrates the heartache and pain in the lives of the workers in these sweatshops. Throughout the exhibit you can feel the sorrow and distress that the employees must of had in their lives.

Visual objects best represent an idea or communicate a concept or theory. The pictures of the actual workplaces, quotes from the those who have experience sweatshop labor, clothes sewn by the workers, and sewing machines are some of the objects used in the exhibit to portray the unfair treatment of the workers.

Through this picture, it is seen that workers were forced to work together under crowded, unhealthy conditions. Men and women worked as teams of sewing-machine operators to complete the exorbant amount of garments needed to be finished each day. As deflation occured through the yeears, the workers were required to complete larger amounts of garments and therefore had to often work into the night hours. Some teams worked 15 to 18 hours a day to meet their deadlines. This is only one of the many pictures which portrays the hideous and unsafe working conditions.

Throughout the exhibit there were short quotes from sweatshop workers who express their feelings about events that occurred during that time.

"This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap, and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 143 of us are burned to death."

Rose Schneiderman, labor organizer, at memorial gathering 1911

Rose Schneiderman represented the Fire of Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Walking through the exhibit was very emotional to many. I saw many elderly people who were familiar with the peak of the sweatshop era. Hopefully, from this exhibit people can learn from the past mistakes and prevent more sweatshops from forming.

The last object seen throughout the exhibit was clothing. The garments ranged in variety from pants, shirt, suits, shoes to sportswear and dresses etc. Knowing the torments the workers went through to produce cloth for the public saddens me about the state of our country just decades ago. The thought that I may be wearing clothing today which has been made by sweatshops workers in the world, even now, horrifies me.

The exhibit mainly shows the torment and sorrow encountered by the sweatshop workers day in and day out. It is important to consider that the exhibit only shows one side of the situation. It does not show the social and economic situations around the country and whether or not these conditions were common in all workplaces nationwide. Lisa Witte, another student who viewed the exhibit, stated in her paper, "Material Culture in Museum: The Smithsonan Sweatshop Exhibit,", that "the exhibit created questions, and forcefully provided many sides to the story that had not been looked at, creating a controversy that so many Americans of today seem to seek in their quest for the right way to remember history." As I leave the exhibit, I realize how horrible employers treat ther workers. I have had many job experiences and am greatful to never have gone through such an experience. People, everywhere, should take time out of their busy schedules to acknowledge the awful treatments sweatshop workers recieve by their employers, by visiting this intense exhibit.

WORK CITED

* Frager, Ruth A. Sweatshop Strife: class, ethnicity, and gender in the Jewish Labour movement of toronto, 1990-1939. University of Toronto Press, c1992.

* NMAN Sweatshop Exhibition

* Frequently Asked Questions About Sweatshops

* Garments

* Lisa Witte- AMST205: Material Culture in Museum: The Smithsonan Sweatshop Exhibit.

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