CHAPTER II THE STRIKE OF 1910 THE Chicago Garment Strike of 1910 was the first great landmark in the long struggle of the clothing workers for emancipation. Because it was felt to be the beginning of a great movement, and because of the importance of the issues and the proportions that the strike reached, there has collected about the story of this fight a mass of memories and traditions, and about the figures of those who were in the thick of it and who devoted themselves heart and soul to the cause of the workers, an almost historical glamor. It was a struggle to excite the keenest interest not only of the world of labor, but of all public-minded citizens. No one could be non-partisan in such a fight, and no one was. The feature of the strike was the entirely unorganized condition of the strikers and the spontaneity and determination of their protest in spite of that fact. It has been described by Mr. Dvorak, the author of the famous strike articles in the Chicago Daily Socialist, as a "simultaneous upheaval of over forty-one thousand garment workers, brought on by sixteen girls, against petty persecution, low wages, abuse and long hours; an upheaval unorganized at the start, which later took on the form of a fight for recognition of the union." The strike did not grow out of a premediated attempt to organize the workers-it rose directly from the industrial conditions of the workers in Chicago. "There really were no definite demands; the demands were that conditions must be changed; nobody knew exactly what they wanted; they wanted something better, of course, or different." These conditions were the inevitable result of the nature and organization of the industry itself, coupled with the un * organized and defenceless position of the workers. A glance at the history of the competitive struggle between the Chicago Wholesale Clothiers' Association (an organization of big concerns formed in defence against the new small tailor shops) and the one big firm that refused to enter the Association-Hart, Schaffner and Marx-is enough to show how the independent tailors, and later the contractors, were all caught in the same system. Gradually, under the competition of more powerful firms the smaller inside shops were driven out of independent business. Many of them turned their inside shops into contract shops and began to work for these big firms on a contract basis. The contractors thus found themselves caught between the upper and nether millstones of the association firms and their rival, Hart, Schaffner and Marx. They became mere pawns in the fight for supremacy. The first important move in this struggle came in response to a tactical increase in contractors' prices granted by the association houses, when Hart, Schaffner and Marx suddenly withdrew all work from their contract shops and opened in their place inside shops employing over eight thousand tailors. This step was the signal for a drive on the part of both competitors to reduce their labor costs. The contract system lent itself easily to reductions in rates, for the contractors would pass the price reductions demanded by the manufacturers on to the workers by lowering their rates. At the same time Hart, Schaffner and Marx would try to preserve its competitive position by cutting the wages of its workers. This whole process was, also, made easy by the prevalence of piece work in an unorganized market. Without protection of their piece rates, the workers would be speeded up and then, when their earnings increased, would have their piece rates cut. A seasonal industry, unorganized workers, contractors, produced their natural and inevitable consequences-low earnings, excessive hours, and a helplessness, which could be relieved only by a powerful and continuous organization of those who worked in the industry. The helplessness of the workers not only made it impossible for them to resist these conditions but was itself aggra vated and intensified by them, so that the workers were caught in a vicious circle. In the first place, the garment workers were almost without exception recently arrived immigrants, unable to speak English, and ignorant of customs and conditions of other American industries. The racial and linguistic differences among the workers themselves made common understanding and action extremely difficult. An article describing the beginning of the strike in the official organ of the Women's Trade Union League, says that the rebellious groups were not even known to each other. They poured out of the shops, threw down their needles, and in nine different languages demanded a better condition of affairs in the industry of garment making in Chicago." That the ignorance of language and customs and the " greenness" of the immigrant workers were taken advantage of, is proved again and again by stories that were told in the course of the investigation of the strike. The following story was told by a young Italian girl: “There were about ten greenhorns who could not talk English at all. I can't speak English very good, but I speak more than what they could. So in the evening I went to the boss and I said: 'Do you like my work?' He said, 'Yes, I like your work very well.' I said: 'How much are you going to pay me?' He said 'What can you do?' 'Well,' I said, 'I told you, basting, finisher, buttons, all kinds of work.' So he said, 'Well I would like to have you be the forelady to teach these greenhorns how to work because these are greenhorns and they can't work very well. You just be forelady and tell them to work more and make me good work.' So I said 'Well, all right, but don't you like the work they do?' He said, 'No, they can't work for me now but you must try and learn them.' So I said to him 'If you think they can't do the work I have some good, experienced girls that could do the work right, and I will bring them over in the morning.' So he laughed-he stopped and laughed. He said, 'Experienced girls? Not in my shop!' 'Why not?' He said, 'I want no experienced girls. They know the pay to get. I got to pay them good wages and they make me less work, but these greenhorns, Italian people, Jewish people, all nationalities, they cannot speak English and they don't know where to go and they just come from the old country, and I let them work hard, like the devil, and those I get for less wages." |