Labor, Liberals, and Sweatshops

Sweatshops have been with us a long time. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, the term came into existence in the late nineteenth century and remains with us today because it still resonates. Sweatshops are usually defined by conditions of labor. ¹ By the late twentieth century, the term had transcended garment shops and entered into new usage, describing unsavory employment of any kind. ² Yet the sweatshop remain intricately linked to the garment industry in the public’s mind, because it remains a fundamental problem for the industry. This essay looks at the efforts garment unions made to combat sweatshops in the twentieth century. Starting with the strikes of the Progressive Era, the garment union leaders saw worker-organization as an effective means to eradicating sweatshops from the industry. Unions organized the industry, not merely its workers, from the bottom up. By the Great Depression, however, the unions placed increasing faith in the power of federal legislation and regulation. Having placed such trust in the government, they tied themselves closely to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Once they latched onto legislation and government action, something they saw as an effective strategy, the garment unions started enlarging the definition of the sweatshop to include runaway shops and, finally, foreign shops.