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The ILGWU
Social Unionism in Action
The Union Meets the Met: Victory of Light over Darkness
Magazine of Art, October 1946.
“Victory of Light over Darkness,” a mural by Ernest Fiene.
The mural, 17 feet by 65 feet, was in the auditorium of the Central Needle Trades High School, in New York. A pamphlet about the mural put out by the sponsors of the mural, the ILGWU, reads in part:
Below on the far right are shown the sweat shop, home work and child labor conditions of early manufacturing in New York, over which hovers a huge green figure symbolizing greed, who with his right hand clutches the cut cloth which typifies what in needle trades industry was known as the “struggle for the bundle.” The central group illustrates men, women and children carrying all these bundles for home work… below the figure of Enlightenment is a group of prominent persons in labor, manufacturing, and civic life largely responsible for the reform of conditions…
