The Botto
House, 1913.
THE
SILK STRIKE OF
1913
Excerpts
from The
Fragile Bridge:
Paterson Silk
Strike 1913 by
Steve Golin
The
silk strike that
began in February
1913 was one in a
series of
industrial
conflicts that
erupted in the
eastern United
States in the
period from 1909
to 1913. New
immigrants from
southern and
eastern Europe
took the lead in
these industrial
conflicts. When
they struck, these
new immigrants
tended to form
all-inclusive,
industry-wide
unions that cut
across traditional
lines of craft and
sex.
In
the ribbon trade,
and to a lesser
extent in broad
silk, the male
striker was direct
heir to a long
tradition of
artisan
independence. The
delicate nature of
the silk thread
demanded great
skill on the part
of the weaver. The
first ribbon and
broadsilk weavers
in Paterson owned
their own looms
and supplied the
power with their
hands and feet.
They owned their
homes in Paterson
and expected to be
treated with the
respect due
artisans. As an
industrial town,
Paterson at the
beginning of the
twentieth century
was something of
an anomaly. It was
unusual not
because it
depended on
immigrant labor
– that was
hardly exceptional
– but because it
depended on
skilled immigrant
labor. And it was
unusual because it
had undergone the
process of
industrialization
so recently and,
indeed,
incompletely. The
industrial
revolution started
later and
proceeded more
slowly in the
weaving of silk
than in the
production of
other textiles,
and the efforts of
Paterson silk
weavers to protect
themselves against
its effects were
more successful.
The
power loom came to
silk only in the
1870s. Equipped
with an automatic
device that
stopped the loom
when the thread
broke, the new
loom could be
attended by women
and girls, a less
expensive and
initially more
manageable source
of labor. In broad
silk the male
weavers fought a
delaying battle
against the power
loom, which
nevertheless
gradually replaced
the handloom
during the 1880s.
In ribbon weaving,
however, power
lagged behind.
Ribbon weavers
made the narrow
and often fine
silk used for
ties, labels, and
hatbands. For the
very reason that
power came to silk
so much later than
to cotton and
other textiles –
because, that is,
of the delicacy of
the thread and of
the work – power
came to ribbon
weaving last. Not
until 1889, when a
high-speed
automatic ribbon
loom was
introduced, could
embroidered
designs on ribbon
goods be produced
efficiently by
power looms.
Throughout
the 1890s some
handloom ribbon
weavers still
worked the old
way, but by 1900,
or 1905 at the
latest, the
handloom had
disappeared in
Paterson. By using
the latest
technology,
Paterson's
manufacturers
captured markets
from the less
mechanized
European silk
industry and also
attracted capital
away from Paterson's
older industries;
by 1900 they had
succeeded in
making Paterson
into "Silk
City," the
"Lyons of
America". But
the new technology
did not equally
transform their
work force; the
habits and
attitudes of the
handloom weaver
outlived the
handloom. Long
after the English
and French
migration had
stopped and the
power loom had
completely
replaced the
hand-loom, weavers
were needed. And
they were still
troublesome,
because only by
causing trouble
could they
maintain the value
of their skills.
The
refusal of skilled
weavers to be
stepped on by the
manufacturers made
Paterson notorious
as a center of
labor militance
and radicalism
during the last
decades of the
nineteenth century
and the first
decade of the
twentieth.
Throughout these
years they
struggled as well
against their
internal divisions
by nationality,
craft, and gender.
Finally, in 1913,
as a direct result
of what they had
learned from
previous setbacks,
they went on
strike together:
male and female
weavers,
English-speaking
and Italian and
Jewish weavers,
skilled weavers
and unskilled
dyers' helpers.
Skilled
workmen, proud of
their craft and
aggressive in the
pursuit of justice
as they conceived
it, were central
to the rise in
Paterson – and
to its fall. Their
old independent
habits, their
constant strikes,
and especially
their many
victories were
costly to the silk
manufacturers. By
resisting with all
their strength and
wisdom the
tendency of
capitalism to turn
improvements in
machinery against
them by lowering
the value of their
labor, the skilled
male weavers
inadvertently
helped launch the
flight of capital
from Paterson.
The
ribbon weavers
refused to believe
that the tendency
of modern
machinery to
render their labor
cheaper was
irreversible; to
them, the
relationship
between improved
technology and
falling wages
seemed neither
natural nor
inevitable.
It
was the broad-silk
weavers who
triggered the
strike of 1913 and
succeeded in
transforming it
into a general
strike. The unity
between different
nationalities,
first achieved by
the broad-silk
weavers, was one
essential
ingredient of the
1913 general
strike. The other
essential
ingredient was the
achievement of
unity between the
different crafts.
The basis for
solidarity between
dyers' helpers
and broad-silk
weavers was
developed by
militant silk
workers in the
months preceding
the strike and
centered on the
movement for an
eight-hour day.
Resistance to four
looms directly
involved only
broad-silk
weavers, but the
demand for the
eight-hour day
expressed in
radical fashion
the hopes of all
silk workers for
steadier work,
more bargaining
power, and better
conditions and
wages.
In
1913, in Paterson,
New Jersey, three
vital groups of
people came
together: striking
silk workers,
organizers from
the Industrial
Workers of the
World (IWW), and
Greenwich Village
intellectuals.
Solidarity in
Paterson, growing
out of the history
of the silk
workers, was
reinforced by the
influence of the
IWW. The Paterson
strikers invited
organizers from
the national IWW
to help them in
1913 because of
its highly
publicized success
in organizing the
new immigrants in
Lawrence,
Massachusetts, in
1912. The IWW
organizers brought
democratic and
nonviolent
techniques of
organization,
innovative ways of
actively involving
women and
immigrants, and a
vision of America
as the place where
the working class
of the world could
come together. The
Lawrence strike
ended in victory
in March 1912, and
during the
following year
real relationships
began to develop
between the
organizers and
Village
intellectuals.
Writers and
artists were able
to observe the
Paterson strike,
to mix in it, to
find their own way
of contributing.
Hence, the IWW was
able to serve, for
a moment, as a
fragile bridge
between the
Village
intellectuals and
the Paterson
working class.
The
sense of
convergence -
between art and
socialism, the
women's movement
and the industrial
union movement,
the personal and
the political -
defined the moment
of 1913. As a
young theorist,
Walter Lippmann
cited both the
feminist movement
and the industrial
union movement as
the "big
revolts" that
were transforming
America in 1913;
IWW strikes and
the battle for
women's suffrage
were "at once
the symptoms and
the instruments of
progress."
"We
are living at a
most interesting
moment in the art
development of
America,"
wrote Hutchins
Hapgood in the New
York Globe on the
eve of the Armory
Show. "It is
no mere accident
that we are also
living at a most
interesting moment
in the political,
industrial, and
social development
of America. What
we call our 'unrest'
is the condition
of vital growth,
and this
beneficent
agitation is as
noticeable in art
and in the woman's
movement as it is
in politics and
industry."
In
the spring of
1913, visitors
from Greenwich
Village came to
Paterson, drawn by
their desire to
see the strike.
What drew them, as
much as anything,
was the nature of
the strike. Like
the Lawrence
strike, the
Paterson strike
bubbled over with
the songs and
humor of many
nationalities and
was propelled by
the courage of
both sexes. More
clearly than in
Lawrence, where
the strike began
as a defensive
reaction against
cuts in wages, the
Paterson strike
aimed from the
beginning at
creating a human
way of life. Flynn
asserted again and
again that
Paterson was
"more
significant"
than Lawrence,
where "the
strikers were
forced to quit
their work because
they were down to
starving
conditions";
in Paterson, the
weavers were
beginning at a
higher material
and educational
level and aiming
at a better way of
life. The silk
workers' demand
for an eight-hour
day was especially
attractive to
Village writers
and artists. In
1913 one of the
slogans which the
silk workers
carried on banners
in Paterson and
shouted on the
streets of New
York was
"Eight Hours
Work, Eight Hours
Rest, and Eight
Hours
Pleasure."
The
silk strikers and
IWW needed new
allies to help
break the deadlock
in Paterson; the
Village
intellectuals
needed to test
their ideas and
abilities in a
practical
situation, to
prove themselves
that the world was
changing and that
they were indeed
part of the
change. Haledon ,
New Jersey became
a crucial link in
the bridge from
New York to
Paterson. Haledon
functioned as a
halfway house, an
almost neutral
territory where
the middle-class
intellectuals
could mingle with
the strikers and
feel the
excitement of the
strike without
making themselves
overly vulnerable.
The
first meeting
there was held on
the first Sunday
of the strike to
protest the police
activity of the
previous week:
arrests,
clubbings, refusal
to grant permits
for parades,
confiscation of
literature,
threats to close
the halls. This
meeting could not
have been held in
Paterson. In
Paterson, Sunday
belonged to the
clergy; city law
banned all other
public business.
One
month after the
first Haledon
meeting, the IWW
leaders took
possession of the
house of Pietro
Botto, at 83
Norwood Street,
where they were
able to address
the great throng
of strikers. An
upper porch
furnished an
excellent platform
from which the
speakers could
make their
addresses and
still be heard by
the crowds. The
Paterson strike
came into its own
at the Botto
house. The size of
the crowd kept
increasing every
Sunday. An
admittedly
"conservative
estimate" by
the New York Call
put 20,000 people
at the May 25
meeting; the
hostile New York Times
said 25, 000.
The Botto House
today.
The
strike spread also
to silk mills even
farther from
Paterson. Writing
in early April,
when the defeats
in Pennsylvania
were not yet
evident, Haywood
asserted that
50,000 silk
workers in New
Jersey,
Pennsylvania, New
York, and
Connecticut had
joined the strike
that the Doherty
broad-silk weavers
had begun, making
it "the
closest approach
to a general
strike that has
yet taken place in
American
industry."
Had the Paterson
strikes and the
IWW really closed
down or hopelessly
crippled the silk
industry in
Pennsylvania,
there would have
been no need for
sympathy strikes
in May; the
Paterson strike
would have been
won, and the
victorious
strikers would
have been back at
work.
By
the end of May,
after three months
on strike, most
families of silk
workers were
having real
difficulty feeding
themselves, let
alone paying the
rent. Actively
renewing their
faith each Sunday
in Haledon, men
and women
transformed their
daily struggles
into a living
testimony to
resilience,
courage, and hope.
That is why
Haledon had such
an impact on
visitors. There,
New York
intellectuals saw
the working class
at its most
hopeful and most
united. Back in
New York, the
intellectuals
spread the word
about Paterson,
both publicly and
privately, and
joined in the
serious task of
fund raising. The
round of
fund-raising
meetings begun in
April continued in
May, with their
typical
combination of
Wobbly (IWW) and
Socialist
speakers. But the
Village connection
was already adding
a new dimension to
the drive to
develop strike
support in New
York. By the third
week in May, many
New York writers
and artists were
hard at work on
the Paterson
Pageant.
By
showing the
audience the
active role that
workers were
playing in
Paterson, the
originators of the
Pageant hoped to
reach out to the
hearts and
pocketbooks of
workers in New
York. They even
hoped to force the
New York
newspapers to tell
the real story of
the strike.
Haywood in an
essay about the
strike, which he
had written
earlier in April,
pointed to the
need for
publicity.
"Through
their control of
outside
newspapers, the
Paterson silk
manufacturers were
able to bring
about a general
conspiracy of
silence. The New
York papers, for
example, after the
first few days in
which they gave
prominence to the
strike, were
warned through
subtle sources
that unless there
was less publicity
they would be made
to suffer through
loss of support
and
advertising."
The Pageant began,
then, as a way of
breaking the
conspiracy of
silence in New
York.
On
June 7 and
overflow crowd of
almost 15,000
people watched the
silk workers enact
the major events
of their strike.
When the doors
were finally
closed at nine o'clock
by order of the
police, every seat
in the Garden was
taken, 1,000
people were
standing inside,
and many thousands
more were left
outside in lines
stretching for
blocks. By that
time almost 15,000
had crowded
inside. Only about
12,000 of these
had paid, however.
The rest were silk
strikers who had
been admitted
free, including
800 who had walked
the twenty-three
miles from
Paterson to the
Garden and a
larger contingent
from Hudson
County, New
Jersey. The
audience as a
whole was
overwhelmingly
working class.
On
Sunday, June 8,
hundreds of
thousands of New
Yorkers read about
the key events of
the strike in
detail in their
newspapers. On
Monday, William D.
Haywood announced
that the
newspapers had
been saying that
the Paterson
strike was broken,
but now the
Pageant had shown
the people of New
York the truth.
And later in the
month, sure
enough, outside
contributions to
the strikers'
relief fund in
Paterson began to
grow. In terms of
its original
purpose of
publicizing the
strike, the
Pageant was an
overwhelming
success.
Realizing
that hunger was
becoming the key
problem and that
publicity had to
be the means of
solving it, they
fell back on
another tactic
that proved
decisive in
Lawrence. They
decided to send
the children out
of the city.
Financially,
sending away the
children did help
the strikers. All
together, as many
as 600 children
were cared for by
families in New
York (including
many in Brooklyn)
and more than 100
others by families
in Elizabeth, New
Jersey. Fewer
mouths to feed in
Paterson provided
the strikers some
short-term relief.
Margaret
Sanger helped
Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn organize the
exodus of the
children. She had
played this role
before, in
Lawrence. But in
Paterson, for the
first time, she
worked with Flynn
at strike meetings
in the brand-new
effort to
publicize the
notion of family
limitation. Sanger
and Flynn believed
that sending the
children away was
only a stopgap
solution; having
fewer children
would in the long
run enable
working-class men
and especially
working-class
women to take
control of their
own fate and
become more
powerful. (Sanger
was already
something of an
expert in this
area; her popular
and provocative
series of articles
for women on sex
education,
including birth
control, had been
published by the Call
in 1912. Although
the national
campaign for birth
control had barely
begun, and the
role of Sanger and
Flynn in the
campaign would not
be clearly defined
until the winter
of 1914-15, Sanger
helped build the
women's bridge
in 1913).
In
May, Sanger also
threw herself into
the preparations
for the Pageant.
On the day of the
Pageant, in
recognition of her
leading role, she
and Patrick
Quinlan led the
Hudson County and
New York silk
strikers in the
great parade.
The
Pageant had been
made possible by
the bridge that
Haywood and the
IWW had built from
Paterson to New
York, and it
confirmed the
value of that
bridge. It
confirmed, too,
what the
intellectuals had
previously only
hoped – that art
could become an
integral part of
the revolution.
For many in their
generation the
Pageant would
remain, as it did
for Hapgood, the
highest point
"of
self-expression in
industry and
art." Hapgood
was the first to
recognize the
importance of the
Paterson Strike
Pageant as both
revolutionary art
and revolutionary
politics.
After
the Paterson
Strike Pageant the
manufacturers were
still united;
their annexes in
Pennsylvania
continued to
operate, and their
allies in Paterson
continued to
increase the
pressure on the
strikers. Great as
it was, the
Pageant could not
win the strike.
Though more money
came into the
relief fund from
New York, more and
more strikers
needed relief.
Finally, more than
seven weeks after
the Pageant, the
silk workers
returned to the
mills.
The
problem was that
no matter how much
money came in,
more was needed
every week. All
the resources of
the strikers –
their savings,
their credit with
store owners, and
the help they
received from
local supporters
– were
exhausted. The
cost of feeding
the strike soared
in June as the
number of strikers
needing relief of
all kinds
continued to grow.
On the average,
during the four
months of its
existence, the
Relief Committee
raised almost $500
a day, but by late
June it needed
almost $1000 a day
just to meet
immediate needs.
In addition, the
collapse of
Paterson's
economy as a
result of the long
strike undermined
all local sources
of support and
created a
multiplying
effect.
What
finally won the
strike for the
manufacturers was
their ability to
outlast the
strikers.
Normally,
manufacturers
shipped goods to
commission agents
who, as middlemen,
warehoused them
for sale and
allowed the
manufacturers to
draw cash on
account at
interest against
the future sale of
these goods –
frequently 60
percent of the
expected market
price. Having
accumulated large
surpluses as a
result of
competition in the
industry, the
commission houses
were able to
unload them during
the strike, to
their profit and
that of the silk
manufacturers. The
strike, in that
sense, prove a
"blessing in
disguise for the
producer" by
cleaning out
inventories and
transforming the
market "from
a buyer's to a
seller's
market." Even
though their mills
were closed,
Paterson
manufacturers
could still make
some money when
their middlemen
sold, at high
prices, goods that
were otherwise
going to waste.
The
other silk center
that mattered was
eastern
Pennsylvania.
Rivaling Paterson
in the quantity of
silk weavers and
dye workers, if
not in the quality
of the product,
this region had
been expanded by
the Paterson mill
owners precisely
to counter the
militance of
Paterson's silk
workers. In
Pennsylvania as a
whole, the silk
workers were not
as militant as the
Paterson workers
had been for
decades. They had
not created the
same traditions of
struggle or
developed the same
unity.
In
a war of
attrition,
Pennsylvania gave
the manufacturers
the advantage. The
greatest resource
of the Paterson
mill owners –
greater even than
their control of
the police, the
courts, the local
media, and most
respectable
opinion – was
their ability to
shift orders to
their plants
across the state
line. "With
plenty of cheap
labor in
Pennsylvania and
extra looms the
Paterson owners
found a way to
retain their
regular
clients,"
explained an
industry insider,
late in May. As
orders from
regular customers
were received,
"they were
promptly
transferred to
mills in
Pennsylvania."
In the busy season
of a good year,
nevertheless, the
strike was hurting
them greatly.
"This is the
turning point in
the Paterson
strike," said
the New York Call
after the
halls were closed.
"No matter
how much the
workers have
suffered, the
manufacturers can
sum up their
suffering in great
financial losses.
But this is the
time when every
weapon in the
possession of the
manufacturers is
turned against the
worker."
Pennsylvania
and hunger gave
the manufacturers
the victory.
"The dyers
were the first to
break under the
pressure…..
followed by the
broad-silk
weavers,"
observed Quinlan.
"The ribbon
weavers held out
for a week or so
longer."
Alone among the
major groups on
strike, the dye
workers went back
in total disarray,
without receiving
concessions. The
backbone of the
strike had been
broken.
The
Paterson ribbon
weavers voted to
abandon both the
general strike and
the demand for the
eighth-hour day
and to seek
instead a
nine-hour
settlement on a
shop-by shop
basis. The
broad-silk weavers
were already
returning to work,
with vague
promises from the
manufacturers to
discuss grievances
and a more solid
pledge to abolish
the three- and
four-loom system.
Counting shop by
shop, the
delegates were
able to conclude
that a total of
twenty-one firms
had conceded a
reduction in hours
from ten to nine.
In
1916 and again in
1919 the
manufacturers as a
group made
significant
concessions to the
silk workers on
the length of the
workday rather
than risk a
general strike.
The manufacturers
showed new
flexibility
regarding the
touchy issues of
work hours and
union organization
because they were
convinced that
they could not
withstand another
victory like that
of 1913. On the
four-loom issue,
which had proved
the most explosive
of all, they
proceeded with
uncharacteristic
restraint,
increasing the
loom assignments
where they could
but pulling back
as soon as there
was trouble. In
1919, two-loom
assignments were
still standard in
Paterson – and
only in Paterson.
Everywhere else,
broad-silk weavers
worked four looms.
In
addition to the
strategy of
avoiding
confrontation, the
manufacturers
developed two
strategies aimed
at transforming
the structure of
the silk industry
in Paterson and
making a
recurrence of 1913
impossible. One of
these was to get
out Paterson.
Unable to control
labor in Paterson,
the large
manufacturers ran
away from the
city, making it
the haven of the
small shop. Before
1913, the Paterson
silk industry had
been characterized
by medium-sized
shops. Within a
decade after 1913,
Paterson – and
only Paterson,
among the silk
centers – became
dominated by the
small shop.
For
the next three
years, through
1919, the Paterson
silk industry
continued to
thrive, and the
silk workers
remained on the
offensive until
finally, in 1919
– after a wave
of shop strikes
– the Paterson
broad-silk and
ribbon weavers won
the eight hour
day.
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