Factory owners’ campaign money had long blocked sweatshop reform legislation

Evidence

Reformers had been haranguing against unsafe conditions in the sweatshops for years, but their harangues had thudded without effect against political stockades buttressed with campaign contributions of factory owners. Now they descended on Albany, led by men like Henry Moskowitz, a bunch of near-hysterical women, and one very quiet one, Henry Moskowitz’s wife. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 540