The new unionism in the clothing industry

Front matter

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IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY

BY

Contents

PAGE

Development of Socialism Among Jews in the U. S. . . 59

Italian Immigration . 63

Chapter I

The rapid rise of the unions in the clothing industry is dramatic in itself. The workers who compose them, largely of foreign birth, were for many years notoriously exploited. Their sufferings from over¬ crowding in the tenements, from occupational dis¬ eases, from underpayment, overwork, and seasonal unemployment, formed a favorite theme for the in¬ vestigator, the proponent of welfare legislation, the social worker. Charity and the law were invoked again and again, without noticeable effect. The periodic revolts of the toilers themselves, spontan¬ eous and well-nigh unorganized, arose with the re¬ turning seasons, and spent themselves without per¬ manent gain like furious waves which fall and withdraw again into the sea. For these unfortunate city children there seemed to be no hope. Then came a sudden and unexpected victory. The unions began to flourish. Almost within ten years the clothing workers have come out of the sweatshops and ad¬ vanced to a leading position in American organized labor.

It is not for their material victories, however, that these unions are worthy of extended study. Other unions also have won good wages and reasonable hours. The needle-trades organizations are typical, not so much of the general labor movement in the United States at the moment, as of aspirations and tendencies which are rapidly gaining ground. It is their philosophy, their methods, their aims beyond wages and hours, their remarkable educatipnal pro¬ gram, which give them a somewhat p eculia r_ sigiiifU ba'nce._ They embody what seems to be a new sort of unionism.

As Sidney and Beatrice Webb have pointed out in their “History of Trade Unionism”1 there have been many revivals in the labor movement to which the term “new unionism” has been applied. As long ago as 1830 the London Times was much agitated by a project to form “one big union” of all crafts throughout the nation, and held up the Trades Union as a bogy with which to frighten its readers. At that time the innovators favored associations using purely economic action on an ever- widening scale, as opposed to the old-fashioned friendly and benefit societies. In 1842, after chartism had spent its force and the unions had been weakened by frequent in¬ dustrial depressions, a new unionism arose whose aim was to build cautiously and moderately an en¬ during structure, with a sounder financial stability. The classic example of new unionism in England, however, was the movement resulting from the dock strike of 1889. For many years organization had been almost the exclusive prerogative of the skilled craftsmen, the “aristocracy of labor.” Now came a great and successful strike of the unskilled. Socialist influence showed strongly in the agitation. It was class-conscious, and vaguely revolutionary in aim. The unions were characterized by the absence of benefit funds or any of the vested interests which tend to make labor conservative. They were not exclusive, and were thought of chiefly as instruments of economic warfare. At the same time they wel¬ comed state interference in the form of laws regulat¬ ing everything except the hours of labor, and looked forward to the time when the workers, as voters, should be the predominant power in the state. Since 1889 the new unionism has been a term in constant use in England; although its precise meaning has varied with almost every change in the aspiration of the more aggressive and radical wing of the labor movement.

The new unionism was revivified in 1911, when another great strike broke out in the port of London. It began with the National Union of Sailors and Firemen, and soon spread to the dockers, the steve¬ dores, the gasworkers, the carmen, the coal porters, the tug enginemen, the grain porters and others. It is estimated that over 100,000 men took part in a parade which aroused the whole city. In spite of the port authorities, this strike was in large measure successful; but the chief of its results was the for¬ mation of the National Transport Workers’ Federa¬ tion, an organization of the numerous unions con¬ cerned, for the purpose of future industrial action. It is this powerful and radical union which has since joined with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Miners’ Federation in the celebrated “Triple Alliance,” an inter- industrial body which is probably at once the strongest and most intelligently aggres¬ sive organization of labor in the world. With one hand it supports the far-reaching program of the British Labor Party, while with the other it threatens direct economic action for the consummation of national ownership and democratic management of the mines and railways. In maturity, therefore, British new unionism has assumed a well defined philosophy and method. It believes in the fullest kind of industrial and inter-industrial organization for economic pressure. It believes in independent political organization for the use of the franchise. Its goal is a socialized society, operating very much in the manner advocated by G. D. H. Cole and the other proponents of national guilds, if we can judge by the programs of the miners.

In America, too, we have heard the term before. Not many years ago it was applied to the Industrial Workers of the World. The characteristics of this organization have been obscured in the public mind by the propaganda of its enemies, who have succeeded in identifying it with bloody revolt and wanton destruction of property. It arose, how¬ ever, in much the same spirit as the new unions in England. It was a revolt against the narrow and conservative craft spirit of many of the older unions, it appealed mainly to the unskilled and hitherto unorganized, and it called for a reconstructed society in which the workers, organized by industries, would control production.

The I. W. W. developed along a different line, how¬ ever, from that taken by the British movement stimulated by Tom Mann and other syndicalists. In Britain, the syndicalists soon gave up the plan of trying to form new industrial unions to compete with the organizations of labor already existing, but rather carried on an agitation for the federation and amalgamation of the old craft and trade bodies. In America the attempt to set up a separate labor move¬ ment continued. In England pure syndicalism was abandoned for the use of political action, and for the working out of an adaptation to collectivist theory which is now represented by the guild movement. In America, no compromise with the socialists was attempted by the I. W. W., except in the smaller and less influential Detroit wing. In England, the con¬ scious development of ca’ canny, or slacking on the job, did not long continue. In America, the I. W. W. tried to perfect the weapon of the short strike and the strike on the job or the “ conscientious with¬ drawal of efficiency.” With the exception of the Detroit group, the American I. W. W. stood for decentralization, and preferred spontaneous guer¬ rilla warfare to the building of a strong organization which, because it had something to lose, might be¬ come conservative. Perhaps on account of these policies, the I. W. W. has never secured the adherence of many workers for long, save the casual agricul¬ tural and forest labor of the West. Its power has always been overestimated by those who have been afraid of it, and it does not now, if it ever did, offer any such promise as the new unionism in Eng¬ land.

Robert F. Hoxie, in his “Trade Unionism in the United States,” contends that unions are not of one or two kinds simply, but assume many forms, ac¬ cording to the function for which they exist. Among these forms he has identified four basic types, to which in some degree all unions in the United States have approximated. Business unionism, in this classification, is the kind formed to serve the material interests of its members within the existing indus¬ trial structure; its main object is to practice collec¬ tive bargaining. Uplift unionism is characterized by broad humanitarian purposes ; its main methods are friendly benefits and mutual insurance; it was prominent during the early stages of union history and was roughly typified during the latter half of the nineteenth century by the Knights of Labor. Revolutionary unionism aims to prepare for a new social and industrial order; it is divided into two subsidiary types — socialistic, which lays more em¬ phasis on political action, and quasi-anarchistic, which eschews political action and looks forward to abolishing entirely the state as we know it. The I. W. W. may be taken as an example of the latter. Predatory unionism has no large aspirations, but preys on the employer through secret and illegal methods such as blackmail and bribery, sometimes for the benefit of the members, sometimes for the benefit of the dishonest union official. This type flourished twenty years ago in the United States, but has now almost disappeared.

To the present writers it seems that this classifica¬ tion is not wholly illuminating, because it is not based on a sufficiently dynamic conception of the labor movement. The types are not, after all, quite co¬ ordinate. In the light of the intensification of the industrial conflict which takes place with the growth of the capitalist order, neither uplift unionism nor predatory unionism seem fundamental enough types to set beside business unionism and revolutionary unionism. At bottom the labor movement is one, because it represents a protest, unconscious or con¬ scious, against the status of the wage-worker. What¬ ever the avowed purpose and policies of the union under consideration, its activities are bound to affect the structure of society to a greater or less degree. Its particular creed and method are dependent on a variety of circumstances. Unions holding to creeds and methods which become unsuited to the advance¬ ment of labor tend to disappear as the environment alters. As we have seen, the most revolutionary unions employ collective bargaining; the character¬ istics of uplift unionism are displayed sometimes by business unions and sometimes by socialist unions; predatory unionism is practiced, if at all, by business unions corrupted by boss politics, or by little cliques in revolutionary unions driven underground through suppression.

The most significant distinction, in our opinion, is that between unions which are unconscious that their efforts tend toward a new social order and go adapt their strategy solely to the immediate situation and unions which are conscious oftheir d'esirlffor a new order, and so base their strategy on more funda¬ mental considerations. Thesetwo types in turn have many variants, but the nature of every variation bears the impress of the primary type. It is the former type, roughly corresponding with Professor Hosie’s “business unionism” which we have chosen to call the “old unionism,” and the latter which we have called “the new unionism.” G. D. H. Cole has given this distinction a phrasing which brings out its meaning in an objective way. In “The World of Labor” he writes, “Regarded merely as instruments of collective wage-bargaining, the unions are the most powerful weapon in the hands of labor; if they are in addition the germs of the future organization of industry as a whole, their importance becomes at once immeasurably greater.”

In spite of the decline of the I. W. W., the new unionism in other forms is by no means waning in the United States. Various kinds of old unions in the course of their natural development are being forced to approach it by one route or another. The conservative Railway Brotherhoods have little by little been obliged to cooperate with unions of the unskilled; the railway “system federation” is a unit through which craft action has been superseded by industrial action ; and the enunciation of the Plumb plan is a long step towards the acknowledgment of the need for a new economic order which can be at¬ tained not through collective bargaining but only through combined political and economic action. The United Mine Workers have long been a union indus¬ trial in form and practicing industrial rather than craft strikes; socialist influence has been strong with¬ in the union, though not dominant in its government. The time is rapidly approaching, as even its con¬ servative officials admit, when no further gains of importance can be made for the members without pressing actively for the nationalization of the mines, a measure already endorsed several times by the convention. Similar tendencies can be observed everywhere in the conservative American Federation of Labor. Thus does the old unionism merge into the new, by force of sheer economic and social pressure.

No strong and important group of unions in the United States, however, has whole-heartedly ac¬ cepted the new unionism and consciously modeled structure and strategy accordingly, except the unions in the clothing industry. For this reason they may be considered the nearest approach to the pure type now existing in America. They sprang into power about the time of the port strike of 1911 in London, and the course of their development has been much closer to that of the new unions in England than to that of the I. W. W. They arose from mass move¬ ments of the unskilled and semi-skilled, carrying the skilled along with them. They have built up a strong and highly centralized industrial structure, but one sensitive at the same time to the will of the rank and file. They skilfully use collective bargaining, not primarily as a means of gaining material concessions, but as a means of solidifying the workers and re¬ taining victories that will make possible further progress along the main highway. While prepared for the most extended economic action, they at the same time take an active part in independent political action. They do not preach sabotage or ca’ canny, but on the contrary assist in every sound project that may improve the industrial machine and increase productivity. Upon the cultural aspects of the labor movement — the press, education, and art — they lay great stress. In short, their whole tendency is in the direction of training the workers for assuming control of production, and _of_ accepting the social and economic responsibility which such control involves. _

However different in theory and method, all forms of “new unionism” have had one trait in common. They have always come into being during a period in which the labor movement as a whole seemed to have exhausted its resources and was felt to be in danger of decline if not of destruction. They have all represented a divergence from the established practice, and, more significant than that, all have brought to the movement a new breadth of sympathy and vision, a new ideal, and a new hope. An exposi¬ tion of the new unionism as exemplified by the clothing workers of America may give further light to those who have been stirred by the expressed aspirations of British labor and by the present flux and unrest in the American labor movement, and in particular to those who have seen great promise in the ideal of national guilds.

CHAPTER n

People sometimes think of trade-union problems as if unions sprang from economic theories and flour¬ ished in the pure air of a revolutionary or labor movement. Should there be industrial or craft unions? Should they accept collective agreements? Should their strategy be determined by business policy or by faithfulness to the class struggle? These are fundamental questions, but they are not settled, for any particular union, by a mere appeal to meta¬ physics. Neither is the best answer to them, and to others of similar nature, dependent mainly on the traditions, character, and education of the workers involved. The character of labor organization takes its form from the nature of industry itself. In the case of any group of unions with a special tendency or philosophy it is safe to assume that their char¬ acteristics have developed largely from the special industrial environment in which they have arisen. Is it, for instance, pure accident that in both England and America the coal miners, utterly different as they are in races and culture, have industrial unions and demand nationalization of the mines, while in both countries metal-trade or engineering unions have been built on craft lines, and are now engaged in a difficult struggle for amalgamation? There seems to be at work among the unions a principle of adaptation which in a real sense determines the nature of the survivors. It would be fruitless to attempt an analysis of the labor movement in the needle trades without first studying in some detail the industries in which it lives. It is necessary to understand the problems the unions have to solve to see how they have, not by inspiration or perversity, but by a process of trial and error, hit upon effective methods of solution.

Judged by any standard except capital employed, the group of industries under consideration — that producing clothing — is among the largest in the country. In 1917, according to government estimates made for the military draft, 754,062 persons were engaged in the manufacture of clothing, a larger number than in any other single industry except textiles, and more than in any other general occupa¬ tion except agriculture, transportation, and the building trades. According to the latest available census figures 1 there were in round numbers 518,000 wage-earners in the ready-made clothing group (including furs), a number surpassed among in¬ dustrial workers only by those in iron and steel and their products, lumber and its remanufacturers, and textiles. Clothing ranked 7th in wages paid ($256,400,000), 8th in amount paid for materials

i Abstract of the Census of Manufactures, 1914.

($696,000,000) and 8th in value of the finished product ($1,340,000,000). The capital invested was approximately $600,000,000. The number of estab¬ lishments was about 16,000. If clothing were com¬ bined with textiles, the two together would outrank in most respects any other large group of in¬ dustries.

For our purposes the clothing trades must be divided into two main groups : one, of which we shall speak in this chapter, is that in which the unions originated and developed their strength; the other, of different industrial and social structure, is that into which they are now rapidly making their way. The first group includes 2 men’s and boys’ clothing (175,000 workers), women’s and children’s clothing (169,000 workers), cloth hats and caps (7,000 workers), and fur goods (10,000 workers). The second embraces men’s shirts (52,000 workers), col¬ lars and cuffs (10,000 workers), men’s furnishings including neckwear (22,000 workers), corsets (20,000 workers), suspenders and garters (10,000 workers), and millinery. The main distinction is that most of the second group are not so favorable to sub-con¬ tracting and small establishments, require a larger proportion of capital and have more highly devel¬ oped machine processes. Overalls are included under men’s clothing, but they form a special case which must be discussed separately.

Ready-made clothing was almost unknown before

2 The figures in this paragraph are from the Abstract of the Census of Manufactures, 1914. These figures are inaccurate now, but they serve to show the relative importance.

1825. The first factory of which there is any record was that of George Opdyke in Hudson Street, New York City, established in 1831. Neither this nor its successors before the Civil War were, however, fac¬ tories as we understand the term. The manufac¬ turers merely sold, designed, and cut the garments, and they were sewed in the home, the cheaper grades by farmers’ wives, the better ones by skilled city tailors. In no case did the product compete with custom-tailored suits. Its manufacture arose to fill the demand of second-hand clothing dealers for odd sizes to round out their stock, and it was sold prin¬ cipally to sailors who had neither the time nor the money to employ a tailor, and to southern negroes and poor whites. The sewing machine, placed on the market in 1850, gave the industry some stimulus. By 1859 it was estimated that there were 4,000 estab¬ lishments giving employment to 114,800 workers. The centers were chiefly Boston, New Bedford, and New York, because of their proximity to the mills and to the most numerous supply of cheap casual labor.

Most of the first manufacturers were custom tailors. The busy seasons for the custom tailor lasted but 20 or 25 weeks in the year, and the making of ready-made clothes filled the gap. As the ready¬ made clothing business grew, some of the larger firms found it profitable enough so that they gave up the custom trade entirely. Before the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in a St. Louis paper an¬ nouncing sales of ready-made clothing at wholesale and retail, and stating that the goods were made in a New York factory permanently employing 2,000 hands.

Since the spirit of craftsmanship persisted in the tailor, however, and few mechanical processes had been introduced to split the process and make easier the use of unskilled labor, the factory system did not progress here as in other industries. Goods were given out by the warehouse man or manufacturer to the competent but dependent tailors to be done in the home. With the invention of the sewing machine, the participation of the family became easy. The tailor himself did the more difficult sewing and pressing, while his wife and daughters attended to the easier work. This was the beginning of the family system.

At the same time the factories, extending their business, and requiring large quantities of cheap clothing, had to draw into the process semi-skilled workers who could not do good work without super¬ vision. The factory, known as a “warehouse,” was already employing a number of skilled tailors as foremen to give out jobs to the home workers, to examine the product and pay for it. The tailors with whom they were dealing were responsible and known artisans, who could be trusted with the goods. There appeared, however, large numbers of persons applying for employment whom the foremen did not know, or did not believe sufficiently skilled or trust¬ worthy. In order to utilize the labor of these persons the contractor was brought into being. The warehouses gave out the goods to the contractor on his own responsibility, and the latter employed the poorer laborers, finding some kind of shop for them. Thus the sweating system developed.

The Civil War laid the basis for large-scale pro¬ duction in the industry. While it cut off the southern market, it substituted government orders for uni¬ forms in enormous quantities, one manufacturer, for instance, receiving a single order amounting to $1,250,000. The natural results were larger estab¬ lishments, factory buildings erected for the trade, a standardization of sizes, styles, and processes, a greater subdivision of labor making possible the employment of less skilled operators, and more efficient methods of production. The uniform trade furnished the manufacturers with knowledge of the sizes required in quantities and so prepared them to manufacture in advance of demand. When, after the war, soldiers returning to civil life began looking for cheap ready-made clothing, the manufacturers could supply it. Still, however, the making up and finishing of the garment was done in the home or by con¬ tractors. Wages were paid usually not to the in¬ dividual, but to a man and wife. They had risen, on account of the great demand, and without pressure from the workers, a little more than had the cost of living. Whereas before the war a man and wife were paid from eight to ten dollars a week, they now re¬ ceived from twenty to twenty-five. Out of this they had to buy thread, irons, and sundries. Hours, of course, were unlimited, and rapidly growing congestion in the cities was worsening the sanitation and other conditions of work.

By 1869 the men’s clothing industry — the women’s was of later development — had increased to 7858 establishments. It spent nearly twice as much for material as in 1859, and the value of the product was $148,660,000 as against $80,830,000 a decade before. The number of workers had diminished to 108,128, probably on account of large-scale production, but they were paid almost twice as much in the aggregate.

The decade from 1870-1880 was a flourishing one for the industry. It was a great pioneer period, and immigration both increased the demand and fur¬ nished labor. The sale was still for cheap and medium grades, in staple sizes and styles. The fashion factor was unimportant. Jobbers dis¬ tributed the product to small shops. Long credit was customary. Large capital was therefore neces¬ sary and large cutting and merchandizing establish¬ ments the rule. Profits were ample. New machinery was invented, notably for cutting. While the number of firms decreased to 6166 in 1879, the average num¬ ber of workers increased to 160,813, and the product was valued at $209,548,000. Wages, however, re¬ mained stationary, the aggregate advancing only in proportion to the number employed. The home and contracting systems of work were almost uni¬ versal.

By 1889, probably owing to further improvements in process, the number of workers decreased again to

144,926, and the continued tendency to large-scale production reduced the number of establishments to 4867. The value of the product, however, showed the usual increase, mounting to $251,019,000. Improve¬ ments in the manufacture of textiles, with other causes, decreased the amount paid for materials by about two and a half million dollars. Wages were advanced slightly. The conditions of work remained as before, but the heightened competition among the contractors and among the workers under them in¬ tensified every evil of the sweatshop. Meanwhile, the industry had shown a large development in Chicago and other mid-western centers.

Through the latter years of the last century the value of the product in the men’s clothing industry showed the same steady increase, accompanied, ac¬ cording to the census, by fluctuations in number of establishments and number of workers. These fluc¬ tuations are partly due to interaction of the grow¬ ing demand for ready-made clothing with the im¬ provement of process and the advantage of large-scale production. In part, however, they are ficti¬ tious, since different censuses employed different methods of enumeration. The Tenement House Act of 1892 in New York, prohibiting contractors from carrying on manufacture in the home, while it could not be enforced rigidly, was another factor in the establishment of larger shops. It was not until 1895, however, that the first large “ inside shop” wTas es¬ tablished — that is, a shop in which practically all the operations were carried on. The centering of the operations in one building made possible improve¬ ments in sanitation, power, and other working con¬ ditions, but it did not abolish the contractor. Most of the inside shops continued the sub-contracting system within their walls, dealing only with the sub¬ contractor and paying him for the finished article or piece. He in turn acted as the employer of the relatives and hangers-on who worked under his direction.

During the first decade of the new century the in¬ dustry began to undergo changes which further com¬ plicated the existence of the workers. It reached out for the trade formerly taken by custom tailors, and to do so it had to diversify styles and materials. Public taste in turn was affected, and many of the staple demands began to cease altogether. It had been the custom, for instance, for men to wear ready¬ made striped trousers, with a coat of different ma¬ terial. Now the separate trousers business waned rapidly ; advertising was not influencing the men who had had their suits tailored as wholes, but was chang¬ ing the taste of those who had not. With the tendency toward diversification of styles, and the intensified competition in merchandizing, went the gradual elim¬ ination of the large jobber and long credit. Goods could not be held over from season to season by re¬ tailer, jobber, or manufacturer. They had to be ordered as late as possible, so that the shelves should not be piled with unpopular styles. Tailor-to-the trade houses arose, which made a point, not of carry¬ ing stock lines, but of making up suits as ordered through the retailer. All this emphasized the sea¬ sonal tendency of the industry and made it still more difficult to avoid seasonal unemployment. It reduced the amount of capital necessary to engage in manu¬ facturing, and robbed the large and medium-sized houses of much of their advantage. The system of small contractors, with all their irresponsibility, was encouraged. And the business became more de¬ pendent on general conditions. The panic of 1907 gravely injured the clothing industry, although pre¬ vious depressions had helped it. Perhaps this in¬ dicated that recent panics have affected more people in moderate circumstances, but it is certain that the ready-made clothing industry was now serving more people in better circumstances. While the total of its business had been enlarging as usual, the problems of its workers, and of many of its employers as well, had been much aggravated. It was in this period that the unrest of the workers became acute, and the present labor movement in the industry sprang to power.

In 1909 the men’s clothing industry produced nearly one-half the value of the total product of the clothing trades. Its principal center was New York, which turned out 40 per cent of the goods, and con¬ tained a still larger proportion of the establishments. Chicago accounted for 17 per cent. Other important centers were Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Balti¬ more, Milwaukee, Eochester, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, San Francisco, and Syracuse.

The following table summarizes its growth :

No. Av. No.

of Estab- of Wage- Cost of Value of

Year lishments Earners Wages Materials Product s

In Thousands of Dollars

The women’s clothing industry was naturally of later development than the men’s. The women whose husbands bought their suits from second-hand or ready-made establishments sewed their own dresses, and the women who could afford custom dressmakers were, on account of the stronger hold of fashions, more conservative in abandoning them. Cloaks were, however, manufactured in quantities before the Civil War. Even in 1860 cloak manufacturers were ad¬ vertising in New York papers for French women operators. The total product of the New York ready¬ made cloak business was at that time estimated at about $3,000,000. From the very beginning, the ma¬ jority of employees were women, especially young girls who did not own sewing machines and worked better in the factory than at home. Home work was therefore not so prevalent as in the men’s industry, and ‘‘inside shops” were the rule up to the ’eighties.