New York Topics

The Jewish Post, July 1929.*


Thirty thousand garments workers, mostly Jews, are on strike since July 3. The Manhattan district from 23rd Street to 40th Street, called the Garment Center, is the scene of daily unrest. Nothing fundamentally dangerous, to be sure. Those who have witnessed revolutionary labor struggles in other world centers, with their direct threat to society as now constituted, will be inclined to view these events as a rather mild occurrence. The fights develop, not between the State and labor as a class, but between organized labor as a social force, constructive and state-building in the fight against this social plague, [the] antisocial forces of the sweatshops on one side and the left-wingers on the other.

The sweatshop was the enemy that stood at the cradle of the Jewish labor movement a generation ago.

The individualism and the innate sense of justice of the Jewish worker waged a fierce battle against it. Due to the energy and intellect invested in the fight against this social plague, it was by and by recognized that the abolition of the sweatshop is not only in the interest of labor but perhaps more to the benefit of the State, of industry as such, and of business in general. Under the influence of these labor struggles, social legislation was placed on the statue books[, an] example of a fair and humanitarian approach toward a solution of the problems under modern conditions.

As a result of the unfortunate 1926 strike under the left-wing leadership, the ladies’ garment workers, who were in the forefront of progress, seem again to be threatened with the sweatshop menace. The war declared against it is significant in more than one direction. It certainly has the sympathy of the enlightened New York public, who think in social rather than in narrow class terms.

The appointment by Gov. Roosevelt of our Lieutenant Governor, Colonel Herbert H. Lehman, who was Chairman of Governor Smith’s board during the 1924 strike, augurs well for a speedy and just settlement. It has a particular meaning from a Jewish point of view when it is remembered that the welfare of almost 30,000 Jewish families directly affected and about as many indirectly interested, is at stake.

A housecleaning in the New York needle industry has even greater importance from a Jewish political point of view. The outstanding feature in the Jewish mass immigration to the United States during the beginning of the twentieth century was the compulsory, rapid transformation of a large number of our people from the “Luft menschen”[1] class into a healthy and productive factor in the economic fabric of American life.

Of late, alarming signs of an increasing exodus of many workers and their children into the ranks of the lower-middle classes were beginning to be noted. This fact not only tended to undo the work of the first generation of pioneers, but also to raise many weighty economic and social questions.

The elimination of the sweatshop evil and the raising of the standard [of living] in the need industry may be a step in a direction perhaps beyond the program of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and the American Federation of Labor which lends to it its support.

* Note: this essay appears to have been edited “for style,” and thus doesn’t resemble the writer’s other essays. It also doesn’t make sense and/or makes odd, unsubstantiated claims in places, which suggests that it was hacked up so that it could fit the space that was available.

[1] Yiddish expression (“air people”) for people who have no apparent means of support.