Union Square

Most of the 20,000 garment workers who walked a picket line for fourteen weeks in the cold winter of 1909-1910 were young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. The strike started in November when a twenty-three-year-old Jewish immigrant garment worker from Russia named Clara Lemlich sat in the Great Hall at Cooper Union. She listened with hundreds of fellow shirtwaist workers as Samuel Gompers and others debated whether their union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, should call a general strike. Suddenly she raced to the platform and, speaking in Yiddish, she said:

“I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared–now!”

The crowd went wild. When the chairman finally restored order, he asked for someone to second the motion. The entire assemblage shouted its response. The young strikers walked the picket line all winter, beat off employer thugs, and shocked onlookers with their determination. They won a settlement that improved working conditions, though the union was only recognized in some shops. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was one shop that did not improve conditions.

 

Four Women

This extraordinary photograph captures the emotional power of women marching in solidarity with unusual clarity. It has been used in many history books, identified in some as being from the beginning of the “Uprising of 20,000,” in November 1909. Other books have identified it as a march in the spring after the strike that included victorious strikers joining suffragists to demand better working conditions, an end to child labor, and the right to vote. Another source identifies the image as a clothing workers’ strike in Chicago in 1910.

 

STRIKE Marcher

This extraordinary photograph captures the emotional power of women marching in solidarity with unusual clarity. It has been used in many history books, identified in some as being from the beginning of the “Uprising of 20,000,” in November 1909. Other books have identified it as a march in the spring after the strike that included victorious strikers joining suffragists to demand better working conditions, an end to child labor, and the right to vote. Another source identifies the image as a clothing workers’ strike in Chicago in 1910.

ILGWU Anniversary Poster

Commissioned by the ILGWU from the artist Letizia Pitigliani (1935-2012). Note the children sewing in the tenement, the women carrying heavy piles of piece work from the tenement to the shop, and the strikers being arrested.

Private collection, photograph of poster by Teddy Fung.