As defined by sweatshopwatch.org, a sweatshop is a “workplace where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or benefits, poor working conditions, and arbitrary discipline.” The difficulty in defining sweatshop is the word extreme. What some labor activists call extreme, some employers consider necessary but dirty jobs that need to be done. LAISSEZ-FAIRE advocates suggest sweatshops are a voluntary choice. Workers accept the working conditions and pay because they have no better alternative. When they have better options, they will move on. The term sweatshop originated in the 19th century. Middlemen would contract to provide PRODUCTs to companies and then hire workers on a piecemeal rate to produce the products. The difference between the price paid to the middleman and the price paid to workers was the middleman’s PROFIT, “sweated” from the labor of workers. Most Americans’ images of sweatshops are associated with 19th-century industrialization and abuse of child labor. The Triangle Factory fire in 1911 was a galvanizing force in the U.S. history of sweatshops. More than 500 women were working on the ninth floor of a building in downtown New York when the fire broke out. Since doors were locked to keep workers from leaving early, many women jumped to their death. Throughout the early 1900s, what most people would agree are sweatshop conditions existed in both the textile and agricultural industries. Textile workers were often immigrants, thankful to not be in the country they had fled and willing to take any job opportunity. Huge numbers of immigrants arrived annually in most U.S. port cities, creating a steady stream of workers. The number of sweatshops diminished—or diminished from public view—after labor legislation in the 1930s increased the rights of workers to unionize and created a MINIMUM WAGE. With increasing prosperity in the United States after World War II, many textile jobs moved overseas. In the 1990s college students, aware of extreme working conditions in overseas factories where workers produced logo products for their college bookstores, began organizing efforts to address international sweatshops. In one of the worst cases, young women from the Philippines were brought to Saipan, a Pacific island, and kept in slave-like conditions. Most governments in EMERGING MARKETS overlook sweatshops, accepting them as the price of creating jobs. When major U.S. apparel makers like Nike, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Liz Claiborne were associated with international sweatshops, pressure from U.S. consumers forced change. Today sweatshops still exist in the United States, most often in the garment industry. In 2002, 19 workers at a Los Angeles sewing factory began to protest against their employer, complaining that they were not paid for overtime nor were they paid minimum wage for their work. The workers organized a BOYCOTT of one of the retail stores selling the factory’s clothing; the retailer countered with a defamation lawsuit. Agricultural workers continue to organize against poor working conditions and underpayment of wages. In both the garment and agricultural industries, often workers are illegal aliens in the United States and therefore are not willing to pressure for change.