similar situation was presented with the decision to raise a fund for the relief of the victims of the Russian famine. In Chicago this contact with the membership is made through shop meetings conducted throughout the city. Shop chairmen are called into a general meeting, where they have an opportunity to discuss the proposals. The office of the Joint Board prepares a schedule of shop meetings. Convenient halls are rented. Organizers of different nationality, chosen for their relations with the groups whom they are to address, are called in from the field and are assigned to their shop meetings. Then the machinery is put into operation and the shop meetings are held. At these meetings every possible type of subject is considered, from the history of the Amalgamated to the specific proposal then under discussion. An idea of the extent of these meetings can be got from the fact that in the year from February, 1921, to January 14, 1922, 2,104 such meetings were held throughout the city—886 in the down-town and outlying districts, 814 in the northwest side, and 404 in the southwest. An activity of the union, which has in the past two years assumed great importance, grows directly out of the terms of the agreements between the union, Hart, Schaffner and Marx and the other clothing manufacturers of Chicago. Under these terms the manufacturers are given the right to employ non-union workers, provided that no qualified union workers are then available for the work. The manufacturers, therefore, apply to the union for workers before they attempt to engage any in the open market and the union has come to conduct a registration office of its unemployed members. To this office unemployed come and register; give what particulars about their occupations are necessary; and await a call to the next job. In the years of depression like 1921 and 1922, the ante-room in the union headquarters is almost daily filled with such applicants seeking employment. From October 5, 1920, to the end of 1921, 44,384 “ O. K.'s" were issued to unemployed members at the three employment offices now conducted by the union. Not all of the energies of the union, however, are ex pended in purely industrial and political affairs. Union business is necessarily absorbing; the problems of the industry must be attended; but at the same time attention should not be diverted from the possibilities for cultural development that inhere in a group continuously engaged in a common enterprise. These 40,000 to 50,000 members of the union, of some twenty different nationalities; varied in outlook and training; some in the country a few months, others born here; some members of trade unions for 20 years, others inducted within the last month or week; to this motley group must be given cohesion and unity, outside of the shop and industry as well as within. It is in general to accomplish this end that the union pursues its educational activities. Education becomes more than mere instruction; it is the great social activity of the union. The school room of the educational department of the Chicago Joint Board is not a small hall where a few ardent students of Marx straggle in and out a night or two a week. It is a great, bright entertainment on Friday night; a meeting of more than 5,000 persons at Carmen's Hall, where men bring their families, stand in line from late afternoon and stay until near midnight to hear members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, famous singers, pianists, and violinists, and to listen to talks by such men as Lincoln Steffens, Raymond Robins, Frank P. Walsh, Hillman and others. These gigantic meetings, started for the first time in 1919, have now become an institution in the lives of the Chicago clothing workers. They could no more be abolished than could the union itself. Each year a larger number of these types of meetings are held. In 1920 the appropriation for them was $5,400 and in 1921 this sum was raised to $12,000. While these large meetings constitute the center of the educational activities of the union, classes for the instruction of small groups have also on occasion been provided. It is the purpose of the Joint Board to facilitate reading and study by the building of a library which has already been established in the central offices of the Board on Halsted Street. But the educational foundations of the union are Executive Offices, Chicago Joint Board-Samuel Levin, Manager; A. D. Marimpietri, in Charge, Price Fixing; Frank Rosenblum, Directing Organization Work still the daily contact in the shops, local unions, and at the Joint Board between the workers, the union and the industry, and the Friday night meetings. Up to the present the members of the Chicago Joint Board have learned most by active participation in the business of running their union and of conducting their affairs in shop and factory. The Chicago Joint Board of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers has not played its part in the clothing industry of Chicago alone. From the time when, in 1910, it first rejected the leaders of the United Garment Workers, through the fight at Nashville in 1914, until the present, it has been a powerful force in more ways than one in building a strong national organization of clothing workers. When the break came at Nashville, the Chicago delegates, the memory of 1910 still vivid in their minds, joined with the delegates from New York and elsewhere in the fight to discredit and reject Rickert and his associates. Later when the Amalgamated Clothing Workers was organized, Chicago men and women became leaders of the new organization. Probably never before in the history of a labor organization were so many leaders drawn from so narrow a circle. Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, was an apprentice cutter in Hart, Schaffner and Marx and a striker in the strike of 1910. Potofsky, now assistant general secretary-treasurer of the national union, Levin, Marimpietri, Rosenblum, Skala, Rissman, members of the General Executive Board of the national union, are all from Chicago and helped in the rise of both the Chicago Joint Board and of the national organization. This contribution of leadership did not end the service of the Chicago union. From the first the spirit of Chicago has been of incalculable service when the fight was on in other centers and the outlook seemed dark. They, themselves, worn by long struggles with the clothing manufacturers, yet never forgot the importance of an active national organization. When the time came, and the national union was being attacked, Chicago went a long way toward sup |