AIMS OF THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE 301
AIMS OF THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE 3° I
The Consumers' League of New York city, dealing exclusively with the stores on Manhattan Island, made its appeal exclusively to the conscience of the purchasers. Asking them to give the preference to the stores in the White List, it stated its purpose of encouraging humane employers to continue in their course, and of inducing others to imitate them. The success attending that appeal has encouraged the league to enter upon its more extended field of action; and, incidentally, to broaden the scope of its appeal. The National Consumers' League asks that purchasers, by insisting upon buying goods bearing its label, will discriminate in favor of those manufacturers who treat their employes humanely, so far as that is possible under the conditions of the competitive system; and that they will do so both for the sake of the employes and also for the sake of promoting that form of manufacture which is most wholesome for the whole community, in preference to conditions in which danger of spreading infection is constant and considerable. The appeal is still, as before, on behalf of the employe; but it is, also, on behalf of a far larger constituency — the whole purchasing public.
For, clearly, it is also a social duty to promote that form of manufacture which tends toward wholesome products, made under right conditions, rather than the sweatshop with its dangers to the family in which the work is done, and to the purchaser who may buy all the diseases to which reference has been made, despite the glib assurance of the salesman: "All our goods are produced in our own factory."
The present appeal of the National Consumers' League promises to be of increasing value to those employers who care to meet their employes as self-respecting people employed under reasonable conditions, and paid wages in proportion to the value of their work. Many such employers have greeted the league with cordial welcome. One proprietor of a factory, known for forty years as having most carefully selected employes, unusually intelligent, and in surroundings rarely desirable, on being visited by a representative of the National Consumers' League, stated that these were aspects of his factory in which the public had
