of signing the agreement. On May 1, 1917, 10 per cent. increases were granted by decision of the Board and this time applied horizontally. The following year, on April 22, 1918, the firm granted "voluntary " increases, the result of negotiations between the union and the firm, effective as of May 2, 1918, and amounting to 10 per cent and 15 per cent. Like other gains of the Hart, Schaffner and Marx workers, these increases were of great help in stimulating the campaign to organize the rest of the Chicago market, which still remained non-union. On January 2, 1919, after seven years of distinguished and invaluable service, Mr. J. E. Williams, Chairman of the Board of Arbitration, died. James H. Tufts, Professor of Philosophy in the University, of Chicago, was appointed to succeed him. CHAPTER IV THE BREAK FROM THE UNITED GARMENT WORKERS IN 1914 THE Conduct and termination of the 1910 strike resulted in resentment and suspicious hostility of the clothing workers toward their leaders in the United Garment Workers of America. In order to realize the intensity of their feeling, and the accumulated sense of injustice that culminated in the fall of 1914, it is necessary to go further back and examine briefly the history, the methods, and the various activities of the clothing workers' organizations prior to the break in the ranks of the United Garment Workers in 1914. It is from the first a history of exploitation and of chaos. It is clear from the nature of the industry itself and the course of its development, that organization of the clothing workers presented a highly complicated problem. The very conditions that made organization a pressing necessity tended also to retard its progress as we have seen in the sweatshop years before the 1910 strike. The immigrant workers; the highly seasonal nature of the industry; the | prevalence of home work, with all the special problems of organization involved in that system; the constant division and sub-division of operations, setting the skilled workers at a comparative disadvantage; all these helped to make the clothing industry one of the most difficult of American industries to organize. From the beginning many sporadic and ineffective attempts to organize the clothing workers were made by such unions as the Journeymen Tailors, originally formed as a benevolent organization only. For the most part these attempts were either too feeble to be effective, or disrupted by jealousies and dissensions, or undermined by corruption from within. Of these early organizations the Journeymen Tailors were the most powerful, especially in New York City, where they were supported by the Central Labor Union in the first general strike in 1833. The first national organization of tailors, however, did not come until after the foundation of the Knights of Labor in 1866. It began, as most unions of that period did, in rebellion against an older union no longer effective. In 1873 the various locals under the Knights of Labor joined to form a national organization. One of the worst difficulties under which they labored was the necessity for secrecy, due to the blacklisting and lockouts in the reaction that followed the Civil War. Partly for this reason and partly through inherent weaknesses in the organization, the Knights of Labor were never very successful in organizing the clothing workers. The decade of 1880-1890 was filled with uprisings, new organizations, counter-movements and revolts. Finally in 1891 the United Garment Workers was organized, supported at the beginning, by the United Hebrew Trades. The union was organized under the leadership of dissatisfied officers of the Knights of Labor and took immediate steps to entrench and safeguard itself by obtaining a charter from the American Federation of Labor. This step was strongly opposed by the United Hebrew Trades, which just a little while before had urged the organization of the United Garment Workers, and it passed a resolution in 1892 criticising their action in affiliating with the American Federation of Labor. In 1893 the new union engineered a strike that developed into a fight with the Knights of Labor, from which the United Garment Workers emerged victorious. This strike was followed by a period of severe depression and unemployment, lasting until the beginning of the new era of inside shops. It was largely in these years, from 1883 to 1894, that the sweat-shop came to be the characteristic feature of the clothing industry, and became closely associated in the minds of the workers with the contract system that prevailed during that period. Beginning with 1894, however, the great inside factories began to spring up. Their effect was greatly to facilitate the work of organization, partly because of the greater accessibility of workers through the grouping by sections, and partly because of the relative decrease in the number of home workers. The United Garment Workers reaped the benefits of these great changes, and soon found itself the most powerful of the then existing clothing workers' organizations. The union comprised three main branches of the garment industry -overalls, shirts, and "men's and boys' clothing." Early in their history the United Garment Workers were fairly successful in organizing the pants-makers, children's jacket makers, and especially the overall makers. With the Brotherhood of Tailors of New York, however, which had affiliated with the United Garment Workers, but had to a certain degree retained its independence, the new organization got on badly from the beginning. This hostility continued and grew throughout the history of the United Garment Workers. Viewed in the light of all the events up to 1914, and according to their own subsequent statements, the hostility and distrust of the tailors were founded principally on the following grievances: (1) The failure of the United Garment Workers to organize the tailors, or to support them in their attempts to organize or increase their membership; (2) refusal to take notice of the growing demand on the part of the clothing workers for industrial unionism rather than craft unionism; (3) autocratic and unrepresentative administration of the union's business, both constitutionally and unconstitutionally; (4) corrupt practices existing among the officers of the United Garment Workers, and the misuse of union funds, particularly in connection with the abuse of the union label. How far these complaints were justified, the events themselves show best. Serious dissatisfaction with the union's policy in regard to the organization of the tailors was manifested in 1904 at the close of an unsuccessful strike in New York City. It was only one of many cases in which the clothing workers were to find themselves not only unsupported at a crucial moment by their own leaders, but forced to accept unsatisfactory terms of settlement. In the meantime there were many proofs of neglect in regular “peace-time peace-time" organization work as well, in the distress signals sent out by various locals seeking support for their failing membership. At the convention of 1906, for example, a Chicago tailors' local reported that its membership had fallen from 450 to 30, and they asked the national office to help them regain their membership. Another local reported "a state of loss of confidence, and in some cases discouraged to a great extent." Another Chicago local reported a drop in membership from 500 to 32, and said that the only way to organize was "to show outsiders the direct benefit, moral and financial, it is for them to be organized -we have nothing to offer." A St. Louis local appealed for help, reporting that they were "almost out of existence." Various other locals described similar conditions, but almost without exception their requests were ignored. The distrust that had been awakened in the minds of the workers was further stimulated by the action of the leaders in the Tailors' first general strike of 1907 in New York. After the New York Tailors had struck for the right to organize and for the 53-hour week, there was a split within the ranks and the United Garment Workers' officials charged those who persisted in opposing them with insurgency, and expelled them from membership, although fifty thousand members had voted in favor of the so-called "insurgents." The split was apparently healed, but the strike was lost. But perhaps the most important single event that proved to the workers, not only that the national office was not primarily interested in organizing the clothing workers, but that it was actually in many cases opposed, was the Chicago strike of 1910, and its settlement. President Rickert in his report on the 1910 strike to the next convention shows clearly that the officers were opposed to the purposes of the strikers. In discussing the rejection of the first agreement which he had drawn up, and which provided that no question of union or open shop or shop |