nmah sweatshop exhibition -- sweatshop workers

Sweatshop Workers

The waves of immigrants who poured into American cities desperately needed work. Like the seamstresses they began to replace, these recent immigrants were often vulnerable to exploitation themselves.

Each garment center had its own character, greatly influenced by the groups that toiled within it. In New York, the Irish dominated from 1850 into the 1880s. After 1865, Swedes and Germans entered the industry, followed in the 1890s by Italians and Russian and Polish Jews. In Chicago, Germans, German Jews, Bohemians, and a few Americans and Poles established that city's garment center. They were joined in the 1890s by Scandinavians, Eastern European Jews, Italians, and Lithuanians.

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