Beth Sullivan, age 16, of St. Augustine, Fla., for her question:

WHAT IS A SWEATSHOP?

A sweatshop is a small manufacturing establishment in which employees work long hours under substandard conditions for low wages. Fortunately the sweatshop is part of history and isn't prominent in today's labor market.

Before the 1850s primitive conditions had characterized many of the small shops and residences in which manufacturing was done, particularly in the British clothing industry.

By 1850 more than 200,000 women were employed in factories in the United States making such products as clothing, shoes and cigars. As women and children increasingly entered the labor force, the sweatshop system was expanded. In the 1890s sweatshops formed the mainstay of the garment industry. The system was further promoted by the large influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

By the 1930s sweatshops had been severely restricted in the U.S. through federal and state legislation, especially minimum wage and child labor laws.

Sweatshops were an outgrowth of the contracting system in which an employer or middleman (called a sweater) sought to reduce overhead costs and to increase the volume of production by paying for work piecemeal.