by men in the labor movement, women are at a disadvantage through the
comparative youth and inexperience of many female workers, through
their want of trade training, through the assumption, almost universal
among young girls, that they will one day marry and leave the trade,
and through their unconscious response to the public opinion which
disapproves of women joining trade unions.
It is then the lack of permanence, of continuity in spirit and in
concerted action, produced by all these causes, working together, and
the difficulties in the way of remedying this lack of permanence,
which this young organization, the National Women's Trade Union League
of America, has fully and fairly recognized, and which, with a courage
matched to its high purpose, it is facing and trying to conquer.
The Women's Trade Union League, while essentially a part of the labor
movement, has yet its own definite rôle to play, and at this point it
is well to note the response made by organized labor in supporting the
League's efforts. It works under the endorsement of both the American
Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, and
has received in its undertakings the practical support, besides,
of many of the most influential of the international unions, in
occupations as different as those of the shoe-workers, the carpenters
and the miners. The rank and file of the local organizations, in city
after city, have given the same hearty and unqualified approval to the
League's pioneering work, in bringing the unorganized women and girls
into the unions, and in carrying on a constant educative work among
those already organized. As an instance of this openly expressed
approval, take the cordial coöperation which the Chicago League has
ever received from the Chicago Federation of Labor and its allied
locals. But, owing to the complexity of women's lives, the varied
and inconsistent demands that are made upon their energies, the
organization of the League has to be somewhat different from that of
any body which labor men would have formed for themselves.
Locally the relationship varies. In St. Louis the League has never
been represented in the central body by its own delegates, but by
members representing primarily their own organizations, such as
Bindery Women and Boot and Shoe Workers. In Boston, New York and
Chicago each League is represented by its own delegates. In Kansas
City, Missouri, again, not only are the delegates of the League seated
in the central body, but every union of men in it pays a per capita
tax into the funds of the Kansas City Women's Trade Union League.
The National League receives a certain amount of financial support
from the American Federation of Labor, and from a number of the
international unions, several of the latter being affiliated with the
League. State federations, city central bodies, and local unions in
different parts of the country give similar coöperation and money
support.
As the labor movement is organized, it collects into suitable groups
the different classes of wage-earners. But the average housekeeping,
married woman, although both worker and producer, is not a
wage-earner, although more and more, as the home industries become
specialized is she becoming a wage-earner for at least part of her
time. But, as our lives are arranged at present the largest proportion
of married women and a considerable number of single women are
ineligible for admission as members of any trade union. Are
they therefore to be shut out from the labor movement, and from
participation in its activities, no matter how closely their own
interests are bound up with it, no matter how intensely they are in
sympathy with its aims, no matter though as single girls they may have
been members of a union?
We have noted already how much stronger the labor movement would be
if the women and girls engaged in the trades were brought in through
organization. Still further would organized men be advantaged if their
movement were reinforced by this great body of home-keeping women,
vast in numbers, and with their untouched reserves of energy and
experience.
Again, it is only by making room for such women within the labor
movement that women can be represented in sufficient numbers in the
councils of labor. As long as there was no recognized way of admitting
the home woman to even a tiny corner of the labor field, as long as
entry was restricted solely to the wage-earning woman, there seemed
no chance of women being ever in anything but a hopeless minority in
either local or international union, and that minority, too, composed
so largely of young and inexperienced girls. Is it any wonder, then,
that the interests of the working-girls have suffered, and that, as a
ready consequence, workingmen's interests have suffered, too.
The Women's Trade Union League is also bringing into touch with the
labor movement other women's organizations, and especially winning
their increased coöperation in the campaigns for legislation. It is
largely through the ally[A] membership that the Women's Trade Union
League has been able to reach the public ear as well as to attract
assistance and coöperation, especially from the suffragists and the
women's clubs. The suffragists have always been more or less in
sympathy with labor organizations, while outside labor circles, the
largest body to second the efforts of organized labor in the direction
of humanity has been the women's clubs, whether expressing themselves
through the General Federation, or through local activity in their
home towns. An immense group of women thus early became committed
to an active opposition to the employment of children either in
factories, or under the even more dangerous and demoralizing
conditions which await mere babies in the street or in tenement homes.
[Footnote A: An ally is a man or a woman of any class not a worker
in any organized trade who believes in the organization of women and
subscribes to the following League platform.
1. Organization of all workers into trade unions.
2. Equal pay for equal work.
3. Eight-hour day.
4. A living wage.
5. Full citizenship for women.]
There is a similar movement going on within the National Young Women's
Christian Association. The reason for this stand being taken by
women's organizations was characteristic. The impelling force that
urged those women on was something far deeper than mere philanthropy.
It was the acceptance by a whole group of women of the old
responsibilities of motherhood, in the new form that these must take
on if new conditions are to be met. It was as if the motherhood of the
country had said in so many words: "Social conditions are changing,
but we are still the mothers of the new generation. Society is
threatened with this calamity, that they will pass beyond our care
before the needs and claims of childhood have been satisfied. As
individuals we are now powerless. Let us see what coöperation will do
to right conditions that are fast slipping beyond our control."
But how unconscious the vast number of women of this type were, either
of the true nature of the force they were obeying or the point whither
they were tending, was graphically illustrated at the Biennial
Federation of Women's Clubs in St. Paul, in 1906, when a woman
protested from the floor against the appointment of a committee to
deal with industrial conditions. She added that she was all in favor
of the Federation working against child labor, but they had no call to
interfere in industrial questions.
This is an illustration of how the rank and file of the clubwomen
became committed to industrial reform as part of their program, and
incidentally, although there were those among their leaders who well
knew whither the movement was tending. The Women's Trade Union League
represents one of the forces that is leading on the most conservative
among them to stand forth for industrial justice consciously and
deliberately, while the League's special aims are brought the nearer
to accomplishment by the support of this other group of women.
The Women's Trade Union League is, and as long as it fulfills its
present function, will surely remain, a federation of trade unions
with women members, but it finds a niche and provides an honorable and
useful function for the wives of workingmen, for ex-trade-union women,
and for others who endorse trade unionism and gladly give their
support to a constructive work, aiming at strengthening the weakest
wing of labor, the unorganized, down-driven, underpaid working-girls.
If the League is to be an organization open to, and aiming at
including eventually the great majority of working-women, it must be
so flexible as to admit the woman who works in the home without formal
wages, as well as the woman who works for an employer for wages. Both
are in many respects upon the same footing in relation to society.
Both are earners and producers. Both require the help of organization.
Both should be an integral part of the labor movement. Both therefore
may be consistently received as dues-paying members into Women's Trade
Union Leagues, even although we are still too confused and puzzled
to permit of housewives forming their own unions, and therefore such
members have to be received as allies.
In thus leaving open a door, however, through which all working-women
may enter the League, the founders were mindful of the fact, and have
it embodied in the constitution, that the main strength must lie in
the increasing number of wage-earning girls and women who are socially
developed up to the point of being themselves organized into trade
unions. The League has so far grown, and can in the future grow
normally, only so far as it is the highest organized expression of the
ideals, the wishes and the needs of the wage-earning girl.
As for the woman of wealth, I should be the last to question her right
to opportunities for self-development, or to deny her the joy of
assisting her sorely driven sisters to rise out of the industrial
mire, and stand erect in self-reliant independence. But if the League
is to grow until it becomes the universal expression of the woman's
part in organized labor, then the privilege of assisting with
financial help the ordinary activities of the League can be hers only
during the infancy of the body. No organization can draw its nurture
permanently from sources outside of itself, although many a movement
has been nursed through its early stages of uncertainty and struggle
by the aid of the sympathetic and understanding outsider.
V
THE HUGE STRIKES
In September, 1909, the name of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company,
which has since become a word of such ill omen, was known to few
outside the trade. The factory had not then been wrapped in the flames
and smoke of the Asch fire, that was to cut short the lives of one
hundred and forty-three workers, and to blight the existence and mar
the happiness of many more.
But by a not altogether inexplicable coincidence, it had been among
the employés 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 principally 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
assistance, 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 advertisements 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 advertisement 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 mêlées 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 identity. "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 employés 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 scrap 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 mass 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 mass 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 transmuted 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 class 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.