Uprising of 20,000 (1909) | Jewish Women's Archive (original) (raw)

Designed in the early 1890s, the shirtwaist (or blouse) arrived at a time when production of women’s clothing moved from the household to the factory. By 1909, 600 shops operated in New York City (the center of garment manufacturing in the United States), employing 30,000 workers and producing fifty million dollars in merchandise annually. The relatively newer shirtwaist factories—generally of medium to large size, employing roughly 50 to 300 people during the busy seasons—provided slightly better working conditions and wages than the older suit and cloak shops, which employed mostly Jewish men.

In the shops, the internal subcontracting system trapped about a quarter of the women in unskilled, poorly paid jobs. These “learners,” so-called even after they mastered their tasks, earned three to four dollars per week (during the busy seasons), while semiskilled “operators,” about 50 to 60 percent of the workforce, earned seven to twelve dollars per week. At the top of the hierarchy stood highly skilled sample makers, cutters, and pattern makers who earned fifteen to twenty-three dollars per week and subcontracted work to “learners.” They were almost exclusively male and the most likely segment of the workforce to be unionized before the uprising.

The division of labor along skill and gender lines reinforced biases among conservative trade unionists against organizing women and unskilled laborers. Although the International Ladies Garment Workers Union did not officially discriminate against women, its conservative leadership (replaced by socialists in 1914) dismissed women as an ephemeral part of the workforce, interested primarily in marriage and motherhood—an opinion shared by Samuel Gompers and many of the AFL’s craft unions. Jewish women did quit working after marriage in significantly higher numbers than their Italian coworkers, but this did not prevent militancy in the workplace or in the community. (Conversely, Italian woman proved difficult to organize.) In fact, an emergent tradition of activism among women (punctuated by the 1902 Term used for ritually untainted food according to the laws of Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws).kosher meat boycott, the 1907 rent strike, and sporadic labor struggles) played a key role in sustaining the 1909 uprising.

The movement that culminated in the uprising of the 20,000 began with spontaneous strikes against the Leiserson Company, the Rosen Brothers, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Company—New York’s largest manufacturer of shirtwaists—(See Triangle Shirtwaist Fire) during the summer/fall busy season of 1909. Although prompted by different incidents, workers shared a common set of underlying grievances about wages, hours, workplace safety, and workplace indignities suffered specifically by women (such as unwanted sexual advances, threats, and invasions of privacy). The Rosen Brothers settled with their employees after five weeks, but Leiserson and Triangle remained intransigent.

From the outset, the young strikers faced three-way opposition from the manufacturers, the police, and the courts. Triangle and Leiserson hired thugs and prostitutes to abuse strikers, often with aid from policemen, who then arrested strikers on trumped-up charges of assault. In court, strikers faced hostile magistrates who upbraided the young women (“You are striking against God and nature,” scolded one enraged judge), fined them, and, in some cases, sentenced them to the workhouse.

In an attempt to curb abuses, the fledgling Local 25 of the ILGWU, which represented shirtwaist makers, asked the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) (established by upper-class suffragists in 1904 to promote the welfare of working women) to monitor the picket lines. After police arrested Mary Dreier, head of the WTUL, for allegedly harassing a scab, strikers won the sympathy of a previously indifferent public. The WTUL proved a valuable ally; its members walked the picket lines, raised funds, and pleaded the strikers’ case to the general public. The Forverts, the United Hebrew Trades, the Arbeter-ring (Workmen’s Circle), and the Socialist Party and its weekly The Call also provided important logistical and financial support.

Nonetheless, by early November, Local 25 had almost depleted its strike fund, and many strikers chose to return to work rather than suffer arrest, harassment, and personal injury. Furthermore, Triangle and Leiserson partially circumvented the strike by subcontracting work to smaller shops (though, on at least one occasion, subcontracted workers went on a sympathy strike). Instead of conceding defeat, Local 25’s fifteen-member executive committee (six of whom were women and all socialists) called for a general strike to shut down production entirely in the shirtwaist industry.

On November 22, thousands of young women packed into Cooper Union to discuss Local 25’s recommendations. Samuel Gompers and Mary Dreier spoke, along with a number of luminaries of the Jewish labor movement, including Meyer London, labor lawyer and future Socialist Party congressman; Benjamin Feigenbaum, the meeting’s chair and popular Forverts writer; and Bernard Weinstein, head of the United Hebrew Trades. In speech after speech, speakers offered support, but urged caution.