Paterson,
New Jersey, was known as the Silk City of America. More than one-third
of its 73,000 workers held jobs in the silk industry. High-speed automatic
looms were introduced into the factories at the beginning of the 20th
century. In 1911 silk manufacturers in Paterson decided that workers,
who had previously ran two looms, were now required to operate four
simultaneously. Workers complained that this would cause unemployment
and consequently, would bring down wages.
On 27th January, 1913, 800 employees of the Doherty Silk Mill went
on strike when four members of the workers' committee were fired for
trying to organize a meeting with the company's management to discuss
the four-loom system. Within a week, all silk workers were on strike
and the 300 mills in the town were forced to close.
Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
of the Industrial Workers of the World arrived
in Paterson and took over the running of the strike. During the dispute
over 3,000 pickets were arrested, most of them received a 10 day sentence
in local jails. Two workers were killed by private detectives hired
by the mill workers. These men were arrested but were never brought
to trial.
John Reed, the well-known socialist journalist, arrived in the
town to report the strike. He was soon arrested and imprisoned in
Paterson County Jail. Other left-wing journalists such as Walter
Lippman and Mabel Dodge arrived to
show solidarity with Reed and to support the demand that reporters
should be free to report industrial disputes.
John Reed, Mabel Dodge
and John Sloan organised a Paterson Strike
Pageant in Madison Square Garden in an attempt to raise funds for
the strikers. However, the strike fund was unable to raise enough
money and in July, 1913, the workers were starved into submission.
Art Young, Solidarity
(7th June, 1913)
(1)
Leonora Barry published a report for the Knights
of Labor in 1887.
March 14 was sent to Paterson
to look into the condition of the women and children employed in the
Linen-thread Works of that city. There are some fourteen or fifteen
hundred persons employed in this industry, who were at that time out
of employment for this reason: Children who work at what is called
doffing were receiving $2.70 per week, and asked for an increase of
5 cents per day. They were refused, and they struck, whereupon all
the other employees were locked out. This was what some of the toadying
press called "Paterson's peculiar strike," or "unexplainable
phenomena." The abuse, injustice and suffering which the women
of this industry endure from the tyranny, cruelty and slave-driving
propensities of the employers is something terrible to be allowed
existence in free America. In one branch of this industry women are
compelled to stand on a stone floor in water the year round, most
of the time barefoot,
with a spray of water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly
against the breast; and the coldest night in winter as well as the
warmest in summer those poor creatures must go to their homes with
water dripping from their underclothing
along their path, because there could not be space or a few moments
allowed them wherein to change their clothing. A constant supply of
recruits is always on hand to take the places of any who dare rebel
against the ironclad authority of those in charge.
(2)
John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906)
The textile industries rank first in the enslavement of children.
One
evening, not long ago, I stood outside of a large flax mill in Paterson,
New Jersey, while it disgorged its crowd of men, women, and children
employees. All the afternoon, as I lingered in the tenement district
near the mills, the comparative silence of the streets oppressed me.
There were many babies and very small children, but the older children,
whose boisterous play one expects in such streets, were wanting.
At six o'clock the whistles
shrieked, and the streets were suddenly filled with people, many of
them mere children. Of all the crowd of tired, pallid, and languid-looking
children I could only get speech with one, a little girl who claimed
thirteen years, though she was smaller than many a child of ten. Indeed,
as I think of her now, I doubt whether she would have come up to the
standard of normal physical development either in weight or stature
for a child of ten. One learns, however, not to judge the ages of
working children by their physical appearance, for they are usually
behind other children in height, weight, and girth of chest, - often
as much two or three years. If my little Paterson friend was thirteen,
perhaps the nature of her employment will explain her puny, stunted
body. She works in the "steaming room" of the flax mill.
All day long, in a room filled
with clouds of steam, she has to stand barefooted in pools of water
twisting coils of wet hemp. When I saw her she was dripping wet though
she said that she had worn a rubber apron all day. In the coldest
evenings of winter little Marie, and hundreds of other little girls,
must go out from the superheated steaming rooms into the bitter cold
in just that condition. No wonder that such children are stunted and
underdeveloped.
(3)
William Hayward, International Socialist
Review (May, 1913)
When the broad silk weavers in Henry Doherty's mill in Paterson, New
Jersey, left their machines last February they inaugurated what has
proved to be the closest approach to a general strike that has yet
taken place in an American industry. At present no less than 50,000
silk workers are on strike in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and
Connecticut.
(4) In her book, Movers and Shakers,
Mabel Dodge described the Paterson Strike
Pageant at Madison Square Garden (1936)
For a few electric moments there was a terrible unity between all
of these people. They were one: the workers who had come to show their
comrades what was happening across the river and the workers who had
come to see it. I have never felt such a pulsing vibration in any
gathering before or since.
(5) Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, speech about the Paterson Strike at the New York Civic
Club Forum (31st January, 1914)
What is a labour victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers
must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary
spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain
a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work
with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve
a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. For workers to go back
with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and determined attitude
toward society means that even if they have made no economic gain
they have the possibility of gaining in the future.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addressing
strikers in Paterson (1913)
Last updated: 28th May,
2002
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
