Editing Sweatshop (section)

===19th and early 20th centuries===

Many workplaces through history have been crowded, low-paying, and without job security; but the concept of a sweatshop originated between 1830 and 1850 as a specific type of workshop in which a certain type of middleman, the sweater, directed others in garment making (the process of producing clothing) under arduous conditions. The terms ''sweater'' for the middleman and ''sweat system'' for the process of subcontracting [[piecework]] were used in early critiques like [[Charles Kingsley]]'s ''Cheap Clothes and Nasty'', written in 1850, which described conditions in London, England. The workplaces created for the '''sweating system''' (a system of subcontracting in the [[tailor]]ing trade) were called ''sweatshops'' and might contain only a few workers or as many as 300 or more. All those workers were illegally underpaid in terms of regular time and even overtime. 

Between 1832 and 1850, sweatshops attracted individuals with lower incomes to growing cities, and attracted immigrants to locations such as London and New York City's [[Garment District, Manhattan|garment district]], located near the [[tenement]]s of New York's [[Lower East Side]]. These sweatshops incurred criticism: labor leaders cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rodent infestations: in many cases, there were many workers crowded into small tenement rooms.

In the 1890s, the [[National Anti-Sweating League]] was formed in [[Melbourne]] and campaigned successfully for a [[minimum wage]] via trade boards.<ref>{{Cite book|orig-year=Online: 2006 |year=1983 |url=http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418|title=Australian Dictionary of Biography |volume=9 |chapter=Goldstein, Vida Jane (1869–1949)|last=Brownfoot|first=Janice N. |publisher=Melbourne University Press |via=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University}}</ref> A group with the same name campaigned from 1906 in the UK, resulting in the [[Trade Boards Act 1909]].<ref name=Blackburn/>

In 1910, the [[International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union]] was founded in attempt to improve the condition of these workers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://womenshistory.about.com/od/worklaborunions/a/ilgwu.htm |title=ILGWU |website=About.com Education|access-date=May 17, 2016}}</ref>

Criticism of garment sweatshops became a major force behind workplace safety regulations and [[Labour law|labor laws]]. As some journalists strove to change working conditions, the term ''sweatshop'' came to refer to a broader set of workplaces whose conditions were considered inferior. In the United States, [[investigative journalism|investigative journalists]], known as [[muckraker]]s, wrote exposés of business practices, and [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] politicians campaigned for new laws. Notable exposés of sweatshop conditions include [[Jacob Riis]]' [[photo journalism|photo documentary]] ''[[How the Other Half Lives]]'' and [[Upton Sinclair]]'s book, ''[[The Jungle]]'', a fictionalized account of the [[meat packing industry]].

[[File:Millville, New Jersey - Dresses. Second view of the Western Dress Factory. Emphasis on general conditions in the... - NARA - 518630.jpg|thumb|[[Lewis Hine]] noted poor working conditions when he photographed workers at the Western Dress Factory in [[Millville, New Jersey]], for the [[Works Progress Administration|WPA]]'s National Research Project (1937)]]

In 1911, the [[Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire]] galvanized negative public perceptions of sweatshops in New York City. The pivotal role of this event is chronicled at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, part of the [[Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site]]. While trade unions, [[minimum wage]] laws, [[fire safety]] codes, and labour laws have made sweatshops (in the original sense) rarer in the [[developed world]], they did not eliminate them, and the term is increasingly associated with factories in the [[developing world]].