The Trade Union Woman Part 7

But by a not altogether inexplicable coincidence, it had been among the employes of this very firm that the smoldering flames of human discontent broke out, that were to grow into the "Strike of the Forty Thousand," a strike that proved to be but the first of a long series of revolts among the foreign garment-workers of the largest cities in the East and the Middle West.

It is true that in such an extensive trade as that of making ready-made clothes, with its low wages and its speeding-up, its sweating and its uncertainty of employment, there is always a strike on somewhere. At that very time, there were in progress two strikes of quite respectable size: one in Boston, under the Ladies' Tailors'

and Dressmakers' Union, and the other in St. Louis, where the long-drawn-out Marx and Haas strike involving the makers of men's ready-made clothing, was in its first stage.

But outside of labor circles, these strikes were attracting no particular attention. The public were not even aware of what was happening, and would have been entirely indifferent if they had known.

The turning out of ladies' ready-made waists is an immense business in New York. The trade, like other branches of garment-making, is largely in the hands of Jewish employers. The workers are princ.i.p.ally recently arrived foreigners, Russian and other Slavic Jews, Italians and other immigrants from eastern Europe. They are in an overwhelming majority women, or, to be more accurate, girls.

During all the earlier part of the year 1909 the Ladies' Waist Makers'

Union No. 25 had been showing quite undue activity and unwelcome persistence in preaching unionism and its advantages among all and sundry of these foreign girls, and with quite unusual success. The managers of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company awoke one morning to a sense of what was happening. To quote from a writer in _The Outlook_:

One of the firm appeared before the girls and told them in kind phrases that the company was friendly to the union, and that they desired to encourage it, and that they might better give a.s.sistance, they would like to know what girls belonged to it. The girls, taken in by this speech, acknowledged their membership; only, instead of a few that the company had thought to discover and weed out, it developed that one hundred and fifty girls were members. That evening they were told, in the same kind way, that, because of a lull in the trade, due to an uncertainty as to fashions in sleeves, there was for the time being no more work.

The girls took their discharge without suspicion; but the next morning they saw in the newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts of the company asking for shirt-waist operators at once. Their eyes opened by this, the girls picketed the shop, and told the girls who answered the advertis.e.m.e.nt that the shop was on strike. The company retaliated by hiring thugs to intimidate the girls, and for several weeks the picketing girls were being constantly attacked and beaten. These melees were followed by wholesale arrests of strikers, from a dozen to twenty girls being arrested daily.

Out of ninety-eight arrested all but nineteen were fined in sums of from one to ten dollars.

With the aid of the police and a complaisant bench the Triangle Company had been successful in its attempt to empty the young union's treasury, and had likewise intimidated the workers till their courage and spirit were failing them. The manufacturers had accomplished their object.

At this stage the New York Women's Trade Union League took up the battle of the girls. Every morning they stationed allies in front of the factory, to act as witnesses against illegal arrest, and to prevent interference with lawful picketing. The wrath of the police was then turned upon the League. First one and then another ally was arrested, this performance culminating in the unlawful arrest of Mary Dreier, president of the League. The police were sadly fooled upon this occasion, and their position was not in any degree strengthened, when they angrily, and just as unreasonably freed their prisoner, as soon as they discovered her ident.i.ty. "Why didn't you tell me you was a rich lady? I'd never have arrested you in the world."

This was good copy for the newspapers, and the whole story of wrongful discharge, unlawful arrest and insulting treatment of the strikers by the police began to filter into the public mind through the columns of the daily press. It was shown that what had happened in the case of the Triangle employes had been repeated, with variations, in the case of many other shops. Respectable and conservative citizens began to wonder if there might not be two sides to the story. They learned, for instance, of the unjust "bundle" system, under which the employer gives out a bundle of work to a girl, and when she returns the completed work, gives her a ticket which she can convert into cash on pay day. If the ticket, a tiny sc.r.a.p of paper, should be lost, the girl had no claim on the firm for the work she had actually done.

Again, some employers had insisted that they paid good wages, showing books revealing the astonishing fact that girls were receiving thirty dollars, thirty-five dollars, and even forty dollars per week. Small reason to strike here, said the credulous reader, as he or she perused the morning paper. But the protest of the libelled manufacturer lost much of its force, when it was explained that these large sums were not the wage of one individual girl, but were group earnings, paid to one girl, and receipted for by her, but having to be shared with two, three or four others, who had worked with and under the girl whose name appeared on the payroll.

Monday, November 22, was a memorable day. A ma.s.s meeting had been called in Cooper Union to consider the situation. Mr. Gompers was one of the speakers. At the far end of the hall rose a little Jewish girl, and asked to be heard. Once on the platform, she began speaking in Yiddish, fast and earnestly. She concluded by saying she was tired of talking, and so would put the motion for a general strike of the whole trade. One who was present, describing the tense dramatic moment that followed, writes: "The audience unanimously endorsed it. 'Do you mean faith?' said the chairman. 'Will you take the old Jewish oath,' And up came 2,000 Jewish hands with the prayer, 'If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither and drop off at the wrist from this arm I now raise.'" The girl was Clara Lemlich, from the Leiserson factory. She did not complain for herself, for she was a fairly well-paid worker, making up to fifteen dollars in the rush season, but for her much poorer sisters.

The response within that hall typified the response next day outside.

I quote the words of an onlooker:

From every waist-making factory in New York and Brooklyn, the girls poured forth, filling the narrow streets of the East Side, crowding the headquarters at Clinton Hall, and overflowing into twenty-four smaller halls in the vicinity. It was like a mighty army, rising in the night, and demanding to be heard. But it was an undisciplined army. Without previous knowledge of organization, without means of expression, these young workers, mostly under twenty, poured into the Union. For the first two weeks from 1,000 to 1,500 joined each day. The clerical work alone, involved in, registering and placing recruits was almost overwhelming. Then halls had to be rented and managed, and speakers to be procured.

And not for one nationality alone. Each hall, and there were twenty-four, had to have speakers in Yiddish, Italian and English.

Every member of the League was pressed into service. Still small halls were not enough. Lipzin's Theatre was offered to the strikers, and ma.s.s meetings were held there five afternoons a week.

Meanwhile committees were appointed from each shop to settle upon a price list. As the quality of work differed in different shops, a uniform wage was impossible and had to be settled by each shop individually. When the hundreds of price lists were at last complete, meetings were arranged for each shop committee and their employers. Again the price list was discussed, and a compromise usually effected. In almost every shop, however, an increase of from 15 to 20 per cent. was granted.

Apart from wages, the contract insured significant improvements.

Besides calling for recognition of the union it demanded full pay for legal holidays, limited night work during the rush season to eight P.M., abolished all Sunday work, did away with the inside contracting system, under which one girl took out work for several, and provided for a fair allotment of work in slack seasons.

After one hundred and ninety firms had signed up, and the majority of the strikers had returned to their shops, an attempt was made to settle with the still obdurate employers through arbitration, at the suggestion of the National Civic Federation.

Meanwhile picketing was going on; the pickets were being punished, not only with heavy fines, thus depleting the union's treasury, but with terms in the workhouse. Some of these criminals for principle were little girls in short skirts, and no attempt was made to separate them when in confinement from disorderly characters. But what was the result? The leaders saw to it that a photograph was taken of such a group, with "Workhouse Prisoners" pinned across the breast of each, and worn as a badge of honor, a diploma of achievement, and the newspapers were but too glad to print the picture. When that spirit of irrepressible energy and revolt once possesses men or women, punishment is converted into reward, disgrace trans.m.u.ted into honor.

This it was, more even than the story of the wrongs endured, which had its effect on the public. In the rebound of feeling the illegality of the police behavior was admitted. The difficulties put in the way of the courageous little pickets led to the forming of parades, and the holding of meetings even in a cla.s.s of society where no one had counted on receiving sympathy. The ladies of the rich and exclusive Colony Club learned from the girls themselves of the many disadvantages connected with waist-making. For instance that in the off season there was little regular work at all; and that all the time there were the fines and breakages. One girl told how she had been docked for a tucking foot, which, as she said, just wore out on her, "It wasn't really my fault," she concluded, "and I think the boss should look out for his own foots."

Said another: "When a girl comes five minutes late at my shop, she is compelled to go home. She may live outside of the city, it does not matter, she must go home and lose a day.

"We work eight days in the week. This may seem strange to you who know that there are only seven days in the week. But we work from seven in the morning till very late at night, when there's a rush, and sometimes we work a week and a half in one week."

The socialist women did yeoman service, protecting the pickets, attending the trials, speaking at meetings and taking a full share of the hard work. The organized suffragists and clubwomen were drawn into the thick of the fight. They spread the girls' story far and wide, raised money, helped to find bonds, and were rewarded by increased inspiration for their own propaganda.

The enormous extent of the strike, being, as it was, by far the largest uprising of women that has ever taken place upon this continent, while adding proportionately to the difficulties of conducting it to a successful issue, yet in the end deepened and intensified the lesson it conveyed.

In the end about three hundred shops signed up, but of these at least a hundred were lost during the first year. This was due, the workers say, partly to the terrible dullness in the trade following the strike, and partly to the fact that they were not entirely closed shops.

Since then, however, the organization has grown in strength. It was one of these coming under the protocol, covering the Ladies' Garment Workers, in so many branches, which was agreed to after the strikes in the needle trades of the winter of 1913. The name was changed from Ladies' Waist Makers, to Ladies' Waist and Dress Makers.

But the waist-makers' strike was not confined to New York. With the opening of their busy season, the New York manufacturers found themselves hard pressed to fill their orders, and they were making efforts to have the work done in other cities, not strike-bound. One of the cities in which they placed their orders was Philadelphia.

It was with small success, however, for the spirit of unrest was spreading, and before many weeks were over, most of the Philadelphia waist-makers had followed the example of their New York sisters.

The girls were in many respects worse off in Philadelphia than in New York itself. Unions in the sewing trades were largely down and out there, and public opinion was opposed to organized labor.

When the disturbance did come, it was not so much the result of any clever policy deliberately thought out, as it was the sudden uprising and revolt of exasperated girls against a system of persistent cutting down extending over about four years. A cent would be taken off here, and a half-cent there, or two operations would be run into one, and the combined piece of work under one, and that a new, name would bring a lower rate of pay. The practice of paying for oil needles, cotton and silk had been introduced, a practice most irritating with its paltry deduction from a girl's weekly wage. Next there was a system of fines for what was called "mussing" work. Every one of these so-called improvements in discipline was deftly utilized as an excuse for taking so much off the girls' pay.

Patience became exhausted and the girls just walked out. Two-thirds of the waist-makers in the city walked out. Of these about eighty-five per cent., it is believed, were Jewish girls, the rest made up of Italians with a few Poles. The girls who did not go out were mostly Americans. One observer estimated at the time that about forty per cent. of those in the trade were under twenty years of age, running down to children of twelve.

When the workers, with no sort of warning or explanation, or making any regular preliminary demands, just quit, it upset matters considerably. A little girl waist-maker may appear to be a very insignificant member of the community, but if you multiply her by four thousand, her absence makes an appreciable gap in the industrial machine, and its cogs fail to catch as accurately as heretofore. So that even the decent manufacturers felt pretty badly, not so much about the strike itself, as its, to them, inexplicable suddenness.

Such men were suffering, of course, largely for the deeds of their more unscrupulous fellow-employers.

One manufacturer, for instance, had gained quite a reputation for his donations to certain orphanages. These were to him a profitable investment, seeing that the inst.i.tutions served to provide him with a supply of cheap labor. He had in his shop many orphans, who for two reasons could hardly leave his employ. They had no friends to whom to go, and they were also supposed to be under obligations of grat.i.tude to their benefactor-employer. One of his girl employes, to whom he paid seven dollars a week, turned out for that wage twelve dollars'

worth of work. This fact the employer admitted, justifying himself by saying that he was supporting her brother in an orphanage.

It was a hard winter, and the first week of the strike wore away without a sign of hope. Public opinion was slow to rouse, and the newspapers were definitely adverse. The general view seemed to be that such a strike was an intolerable nuisance, if not something worse. At length the conservative _Ledger_ came out with a two-column editorial, outlining the situation, and from then on news of the various happenings, as they occurred, could be found in all the papers. But the girls were unorganized. There was no money, and they faced the first days of the new year in a mood of utter discouragement.

Organizers from the International of the Ladies' Garment Workers had, however, come on from New York to take charge. The strikers were supported by the Central Labor Union of Philadelphia, under the leadership of the capable John J. Murphy, and representatives of the National Women's Trade Union League, in the persons of Mrs. Raymond Robins and Miss Agnes Nestor, were already on the scene.

In the struggle itself, the New York experiences were repeated. The fight went on slowly and stubbornly. Arrests occurred daily and still more arrests. Money was the pressing need, not only for food and rent, but to pay fines and to arrange for the constantly needed bonds to bail out arrested pickets. At length a group of prominent Philadelphia women headed by Mrs. George Biddle, enlisted the help of some leading lawyers, and an advisory council was formed for the protection of legal rights, and even for directing a backfire on lawbreaking employers by filing suits for damages. With such interest and such help money, too, was obtained. The residents of the College Settlement, especially Miss Anna Davies, the head resident, and Miss Anne Young, the members of the Consumers' League, the suffragists and the clubwomen all gave their help.

These women were moved to action by stories such as those of the little girl, whom her late employer had been begging to return to his deserted factory. "The boss, he say to me, 'You can't live if you not work.' And I say to the boss, 'I live not much on forty-nine cents a day.'"

As in New York, the police here overreached themselves in their zeal, and arrested a well-known society girl, whom they caught walking arm-in-arm with a striking waist-maker. Result, the utter discomfiture of the Director of Public Safety, and triumph for the fortunate reporters who got the good story.

An investigation into the price of food, made just then by one of the evening newspapers came in quite opportunely, forcing the public to wonder whether, after all, the girls were asking for any really higher wage, or whether they were not merely struggling to hold on to such a wage as would keep pace with the increasing prices of all sorts of food, fuel, lighting, the commonest clothing and the humblest shelter.

The strike had gone on for some weeks, when an effort was made to obtain an injunction forbidding the picketing of the Haber factory.

This was finally to crush the strike and down the strikers. But in pressing for an injunction the manufacturers came up against a difficulty of their own making. The plea that had all along been urged upon the union had been the futility of trying to continue a strike that was not injuring the employers. "For," they had many times said, "we have plenty of workers, our factories are going full blast."

Whereas the Haber witnesses in the injunction suit were bringing proof of how seriously the business was being injured through the success of the girl pickets in maintaining the strike, and, the money loss, they a.s.sured the court was to be reckoned up in thousands of dollars. This inconsistency impressed the judge, and the strikers had the chance of telling their story in open court. "Strikers' Day" was a public hearing of the whole story of the strike.

That night both sides got together, and began to discuss a working agreement. After twenty-five hours of conference between representatives of the Shirt Waist Makers' Union and of the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation, an agreement was arrived at, giving the workers substantial gains; employment of all union workers in the shops without discrimination; a fifty-two-and-a-half-hour week and no work on Sat.u.r.day afternoon; no charges for water, oil, needles or ordinary wear and tear on machinery; wages to be decided with the union for each particular shop, and all future grievances to be settled by a permanent Board of Arbitration; the agreement to run till May 1, 1911.

The workers' success was, unfortunately, not lasting. Owing to the want of efficient local leadership, the organization soon dropped to pieces. That gone, there was nothing left to stand between the toilers and the old relentless pressure of the compet.i.tive struggle, ever driving the employers to ask more, and ever compelling the wage-earners to yield more. The Philadelphia shirt-waist strike of 1910 furnishes a sad and convincing proof of how little is gained by the mere winning of a strike, however bravely fought, unless the strikers are able to keep a live organization together, the members cooperating patiently and steadily, so as to handle the fresh shop difficulties which every week brings, in the spirit of mutual help as well as self-help.

These first Eastern strikes in the garment trades, although local in their incidence, were national in their effects. There had been so much that was dramatic and unusual in the rebellion of the workers, and it had been so effectively played up in the press of the entire country that by the time spring arrived and the strikes were really ended, and ended in both cities with very tangible benefits for the workers, there was hardly anyone who had not heard something about the great strikes, and who had not had their most deeply rooted opinions modified. It was an educational lesson on the grand scale. But the effects did not stop here. The impression upon the workers themselves everywhere was wholly unexpected. They had been encouraged and heartened to combine and thus help one another to obtain some measure of control over workshop and wages.

The echoes of the shirt-waist strikes had hardly died away, when there arose from another group of dissatisfied workers, the self-same cry for industrial justice.

There is no doubt that the Chicago strike which began among the makers of ready-made men's clothing in September, 1910, was the direct outcome of the strikes in New York and Philadelphia. While the Western uprising had many features in common with these, yet it presented difficulties all its own, and in its outcome won a unique success.

Not only was the number of workers taking part greater than in the previous struggles, but, owing to the fact of a large number of the strikers being men, and a big proportion of these heads of families, the poverty and intense suffering resulting from months of unemployment extended over a far larger area. Also the variety of nationalities among the strikers added to the difficulties of conducting negotiations. Every bit of literature put out had to be printed in nine languages. And lastly, the want of harmony between certain of the national leaders of the union involved, and the deep distrust felt by some of the local workers and the strikers for a section of them provided a situation which for complexity it would be hard to match. That the long-continued struggle ended with so large a measure of success for the workers was in part owing to the extraordinary skill and unwearied patience displayed in its handling, and in part to the close and intimate cooperation between the local strike leaders, both men and women, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Chicago Women's Trade Union League. Much also had been learned from recent experience in the strikes immediately preceding.

The immediate cause of the first striker going out was a cut in the price of making pockets, of a quarter of a cent. That was on September 22 in Shop 21, in the Hart, Schaffner and Marx factories. Three weeks later the strike had a.s.sumed such proportions that the officers of the United Garment Workers' District Council No. 6 were asking the Women's Trade Union League for speakers. The League organized its own Strike Committee to collect money, a.s.sist the pickets and secure publicity.

At the instance of the League also an independent Citizens' Committee was formed.