You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday September 28, 1915
Chicago, Illinois - Amalgamated Clothing Workers Calls Out Garment Workers
Readers of
Hellraisers will remember that last week garment workers were meeting in the city of Chicago under the slogan:
"Living Wage or War!" Well, war it is, for there are now at least 5,000 garment workers on strike in Chicago with more sure to follow. The number is expected to reach 30,000 or more.
On Saturday, the Chicago Day Book reported that the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America had given the bosses their 48-hour notice, and yesterday's Day Book reported that 5,000 garment workers had been called out. The strikers are fully prepared to face the hundreds of "coppers" whom Chief of Police Healey has readied for action at the request of the employers.
From The Day Book of September 25, 1915:
CLOTHING WORKERS KILL IDEA
THEY'RE NOT ORGANIZED
Sidney Hillman
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Hodcarriers' hall at green and Harrison was crowded to the doors with an overflow on the street organizing mass meetings on the corners. Wicker Park hall on the Northwest Side was also crowded.
Applause that lasted 10 minutes greeted the declaration of Sidney Hillman that the strike order may come within 48 hours if the employers do not accede to the terms submitted to them.
[Hillman said:]
This is not merely an agitation...If we are compelled to call a strike it will be a fight to the finish. The organization is prepared to carry on the fight until the bosses give in. The strike of 1910 was disastrous to the bosses. They have not yet fully recovered from it, but if it has not taught them wisdom we will show them this time that the workers are not to be kept down to intolerable condition, starvation wages, a blacklisting system that makes a man take what is given him or walk the streets without a job!
Another burst of applause greeted Jacob Panken, general counsel of the Amalgamated. He declared that the New York clothing workers had pledged themselves to tie up every mail order house in New York city that would attempt to aid the houses affected in Chicago if a strike was called.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Day Book of September 27, 1915:
5,000 WORKERS OUT-
30,000 TO FOLLOW
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Whole Clothing Industry Threatened With Tie-up-
Healey Answers Bosses Plea-Has Hundreds of
Coppers Ready for Action.
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Five thousand clothing workers have been called out by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to show the bosses that the workers mean business and the general strike order tying up the clothing business will be issued at any moment.
The houses affected by the partial strike order are the Royal Tailors, Charles Kaufman, Alfred Decker & Cohn, Lamm & Co. and Fred Kaufman.
The answer of the clothing manufacturers to the demands of the workers for better wages, shorter hours and the abolition of the bosses' blacklist system was given this morning. The answer was an appeal to Chief of Police Healy for special policemen to help them break the strike by police intimidation of the strikers.
Healy has responded to the cry for help of big business. One hundred mounted men and a similar number of patrolmen have already been detailed for strike duty and were held in reserve hours before it was positively known that the strike would be called.
The House of Kuppenheimer added to their answer by firing 150 clothing workers this morning and the Majestic Tailoring Co., 509 S. Franklin st., threw out of work 300 of their employes.
That this will be a bitter fight is the forecast of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the organization to which the clothing workers belong. Since the strike of 1910 there has been a continual reduction of wages until the people are receiving so little in this, their busy season, that they figure they won't be much worse off out than they are in.
The cutters, one of the hardest branches of the trade to organize, are organized 100 per cent in a fight for their existence against the blacklisting system that was at one time under senatorial investigation because of its absolute control of the workers. If a cutter doesn't submit to anything the boss orders he is put on the blacklist of the bosses' organization in Medinah Temple and forced to walk the streets or get out of the trade, unless he is willing to knuckle under to the bosses.
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[Photograph added.]
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SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Sept 25, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Sept 27, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, emblem
https://books.google.com/...
Sidney Hillman
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/...
We Shall Fight Until We Win,
ISR, Nov 1915, Chicago ACW Strike
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
The Clothing Workers of Chicago
1910-1922
-The Chicago Joint Board
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Chicago, 1922
https://books.google.com/...
Chapter V: The Strike of 1915
https://books.google.com/...
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There is Power in a Union - Billy Bragg
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a union
The union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters, together we will stand
There is power in a union
-Billy Bragg
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