Let your students role play at negotiating a settlement to the Paterson, New Jersey, silk manufacturing strike of 1913. Leading representatives of management and workers meet to attempt to reach a compromise and end the conflict. Students assume roles of actual individuals involved in the strike. Historically, the mediation effort was unsuccessful, but students, by using the conference as a starting point, can create their own scenario of the outcome and obtain an understanding of:
- the working conditions for silk workers and the problems of mill owners in Paterson
- the reasons the workers were striking and how they unified to try and achieve their goals
- ideological conflicts within the national labor movement at the turn of the twentieth century
Several historical topics are touched upon:
- the rights of workers to protest
- the role of women in the work force
- the changing demographics of immigration
- the evolution of technology in the workplace
Specific objectives are:
- to describe the concerns of workers and the position of management in a historical context
- to understand mediation as a means of reaching compromise
Teacher's Instructions
1. Begin by reading "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike: A Share of Life" by John Dean in the Fall 1994 issue of Labor's Heritage and "Collision Course: Historical Background of the Paterson Strike" below. These two essays place the Paterson silk strike in historical perspective.
2. Photocopy "Collision Course: Historical Background of the Paterson Strike" and give each student a copy. Photocopy "Profiles," which provides information about the following eight individuals: Moses Strauss, Henry Doherty, Samuel McCollom, John Golden, Edward Zuersher, Adolph Lessig, Carrie Golzio, and Scully Bell.
3. Discuss the historical information with your class, making sure that students understand the events and terminology.
4. State the purpose of mediation: to arrive at a compromise.
5. Assign or call for volunteers to assume the eight roles. Alternatively, the class could be divided into eight groups.
6. Allow students sufficient time to read the profiles and organize into teams of owners and workers.
7. As the discussion between management and labor progresses, write the points made by each group on the chalkboard under headings "Management" and "Labor."
8. After approximately twenty to thirty minutes, call a halt to the mediation.
9. Open up the issues to general class discussion, moving into how students might cope with a strike situation in which, as workers, they had not received wages for a long time. Compare the overall strike situation in 1913 with contemporary work stoppages. How are they the same? How are they different?
Time allotment: One to two class periods.
Student involvement: Activity can be used with high school students. [TOP]
Bibliography
Boris, Eileen and Nelson Lichtenstein, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Workers. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1991.
Cumbler, John. Working-Class Community in Industrial America: Work, Leisure and Struggle in Two Industrial Cities. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979.
Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1969.
Golin, Steve. The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike, 1913. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988.
Herbst, John A. and Catherine Keene. Life and Times in Silk City. Haledon, NJ: American Labor Museum, 1984.
Kornbluh, Joyce, ed. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology. Chicago, IL: Kerr Publishing Co., 1988.
Meltzer, Milton. Bread and Roses: Struggle of American Labor, 1865-1915. New York, NY: Mentor Books, 1967.
Roediger, David R. and Philip S. Foner. Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day. London: Verson, 1989.
Scranton, Philip B., ed. Silk City. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Historical Society, 1985.
Smith, Page. The Rise of Industrial America. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1984. [TOP]
Collision Course: Historical Background of the Paterson Strike
Paterson, New Jersey, was a city that offered fertile ground for the American labor movement. As early as 1828, one of the nation's first strikes occurred in the city when women and children demanded a twelve-hour workday. After the Civil War, Paterson shifted out of the production of cotton textiles and established a virtual monopoly in the production of silk. By 1900, it was the nation's fifteenth largest city and known internationally as the "Silk City of the New World." Paterson was aided in its industrial growth by its proximity to New York City for the distribution and sale of its goods and by ease of access to immigrants to fill its workforce. As mechanical improvements in the manufacture of silk made working conditions more demanding and complex, conflict between owners and workers increased. By 1913 there was an industry-wide strike in the city.
In addition to the conflict between owners and workers, by 1913 there was a struggle between two union organizations for worker loyalty. Throughout the early months of the strike, the United Textile Workers Union -- an organization affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) -- confronted the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW, or "Wobblies," was founded in 1905 for the purpose of uniting all workers regardless of their particular craft or job. The IWW believed workers could achieve goals more effectively if they acted collectively across an entire industry rather than each craft trying to bargain separately with employers. The IWW practiced inclusiveness, seeking membership from skilled and unskilled workers, citizens and immigrants, men and women. Its motto was "Abolition of the wage system." The IWW believed that once the working class was fully organized and won over to a revolutionary perspective, wage earners could take over the means of production through a massive general strike.
The older and better established AFL was a federation of craft unions that for the most part had organized white males with specific work skills who either were native-born or from Northern European immigrant groups. Its motto could be expressed as "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work." Unions affiliated with the AFL regarded IWW leaders as firebrands who were too disruptive and insufficiently accommodating to management. The spirit of confrontation was prevalent in the IWW. The AFL preferred compromise.
The strike in Paterson highlighted the differences between the AFL and IWW, between skilled and unskilled workers. In the early years of silk production, most workers had come from the silk centers of France, Germany, Switzerland, and, especially, England. They were considered skilled craftsmen who had learned their hand-processing skills through apprenticeship systems that restricted entry into the trade. Even with the advent of power looms, silk textile manufacturers needed skilled workers because of the care necessary to produce a superior product. It took many years to produce an expert broad loom silk weaver and even several years to train a worker to perform semi-skilled jobs like winding, doubling, and twisting the silk in preparation for weaving. This factor made Paterson's industry unique. While most textile manufacturers could routinely hire the unskilled to run a machine, Paterson manufacturers, even with new technological advances, had to have an experienced work force in order to created expensive fine silks. Cutting corners in production standards would mean an inferior product and profit losses.
By 1913 the makeup of the working immigrant population in the United States reflected the growing migration from eastern and southern Europe. Since silk production continued to demand skilled labor, the industry recruited newly-arrived Italians: weavers from the Piedmont region and dyers from the Lombardy area. Also many of the broad silk weavers were Jews from Lodz or Bialystok, Poland. Many of the Italians and Jews arrived with left-wing political traditions that encouraged speaking out and holding mass meetings. Although owners perceived them as troublesome, the newcomers had vital production skills and could not easily be replaced.
Paterson silk manufacturers, however, were not helpless, and they sought advantageous economic and political changes. Owners gained considerable influence in Paterson's local government through a new, non-elected Board of Commissioners appointed by the mayor. By 1913, the supervisors on the Board of Commissioners appointed the city's policemen. In addition, the city's increasingly influential Board of Trade helped silk owners siphon work to other locations. Newer technology allowed manufacturers to transfer some unskilled and semi-skilled work out of New Jersey to nearby Pennsylvania towns that had a less militant work force. Influence in law enforcement and some mobility in the manufacturing process gave owners leverage when dealing with worker demands. In Paterson the scales of power seemed to be tipping toward the manufacturer.
The 1913 strike, which lasted over six months, eventually involved more than 24,000 workers and nearly 300 mills in Paterson. The conflict began when Henry Doherty, a broad silk manufacturer, opened a new mill that was designed to increase production by requiring workers to operate four looms instead of two. Previously, Doherty's workers had struck to protest this system, claiming that larger loom assignments meant overwork for some workers and unemployment for the remainder. But, in 1913, militancy on the part of dyers shaped the strike into a different mold.
The working conditions of dyers were the worst in the entire silk industry. The bulk of their work force consisted of unskilled dyers' helpers. A semiskilled supervisor oversaw teams of seven or eight men who worked in dirty and unhealthy buildings filled with steam and boiling chemicals that the workers poured into large tubs to color silk yarn. Insufficient light, wet floors, and poor pay (about $11.00 for a sixty- to seventy-hour work week) contributed to dyer dissatisfaction. The dyers compared their wretched surroundings with that of the weavers who, due to the delicacy and value of the silk at that stage of production, had proper lighting and a clean working environment.
In 1913, three major divisions of silk workers -- broad silk weavers, ribbon weavers, and dyers -- banded together to create an industry-wide strike in Paterson. Their rallying cry centered on all three divisions' desire for an eight-hour day with increased wages for all silk workers regardless of job category. They demanded that the two-loom system of broad weaving be left in place and that working conditions be improved in all the big dye houses. The most noteworthy element of this strike was the involvement of the entire labor community. Ethnicity or job skill did not divide workers; there was a remarkable degree of solidarity. The manufacturers also exhibited new-found solidarity in opposition to the strike, as they realized that time was on their side if they could maintain the upper hand with a show of patience.
The workers established a central strike committee to present demands to manufacturers, who rejected them, leading Paterson local union 152 of the IWW to appeal to its national organization for support. IWW leaders, fresh from leading a very successful strike the previous year in Lawrence, Massachusetts, saw Paterson as a golden opportunity to gain both wider membership and national acceptance for their organization. The AFL's United Textile Workers Union tried not to be ignored, realizing that its survival in the silk industry would depend on a resolution to the conflict that did not favor the IWW. Labor and management and the IWW and the AFL came to the bargaining table with different agendas to end the Paterson strike. They failed to find a solution. Can your class succeed in solving the conflict among the various groups? [TOP]
NOTE: This guide is to be used in conjunction with John Dean's "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike: A Share of Life," in the Fall 1994, Vol. VI, No. 2 issue of Labor's Heritage. Rita G. Koman, an American history curriculum development specialist, authored this guide in consultation with the editorial staff of Labor's Heritage. If you want a more challenging and comprehensive class exercise on this topic, contact us for an additional guide that recreates the trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, one of the key IWW leaders arrested during the 1913 strike.
