I am valley paley. I am the director of the center for Womens History, and i am so delighted to welcome you to the New York historical society and to the center this evening. If you do not know about us, its time you did. We are the first such center within the walls of a major museum in the United States. And its about time. Im not going to take too much time too much time away from the panel, but i do want to do a special shout out to our moderator, nick, who is the andrew w. Mellon foundation postdoctoral fellow in Womens History and public history here at New York historical. Nick is a fantastic scholar and human being and colleague, and i am so absolutely thrilled that he is in with us at a very important moment in the development of the center. I also want to do a special shout out to the Mellon Foundation itself which about four years ago gave us a giant vote of confidence and a very lovely grant to get the center up and running. So because of the Mellon Foundation, were here, and were here to stay. And really, really happy about that. In any case, nick went to columbia university. Got his ph. D. There just a couple of years ago, as did i, more than a couple of years ago. But starting in september of 2019, hell be an assistant professor of labor and public history at the university of massachusetts in boston. But we will be desolate when he leaves, but he is they are very fortunate in boston to have him. Kudos to you. Incomes first book the work of education educationbased in skoolss, the Labor Movement. Its the Exhibition Right outside this room which inspired this conversation this evening. So without further adieu, nick. Thanks, valerie. Good evening. Thank you so much for being with us here on this final friday of Womens History month. Its really been a remarkable month here at the center for Womens History. I wanted to say a bit about what we do and thank the folks who made it possible. Just this month alone, we have held our fourth annual Diane And Adam Conference Conference on Womens History and a dozen other programs across our Museum And Weve brought in well over a thousand people which makes me very excited. Before i go any further, i want to acknowledge the two people who made this all happen. Our special assistant, allie who has worked tirelessly. Weve worn her ragged. Shes made all the details of these events happen. We also want to thank our fearless leader Valerie Paley who has built this center from the ground up and those of white House Work there work here, a chance to realize our visions for this work, for this history and exhibitions and programs like these. So please give valerie [ applause ] and i should say while some of us are looking forward to taking it a little slower in april, every month is Womens History month here at the New York historical society. First such center within the walls of a major museum. Our exmibitionsor the fourth floor and galleries in the corridor here. We also work closely with the education division. Just this month launched women and the american story which is an online Womens History Curriculum Guide for middle and high school classes. And building that Curriculum Weve relied on work for another project, the first ever massive open online course in Womens History titled women have always worked which we produced with Alice And Columbia university. Thats online. So please do take a brochure. Sign up for our email list. You can get more involved with the center by joining our Womens History council. Youll be the first to hear about events like these among other perks. Check out that literature. Some important thanks. Were grateful for the support of the members of our Womens History council, the support of Womens History corporate council. We also like to acknowledge joyce cowan, diane adam max, our trustee Gina Reed and the andrew w. Mellon foundation for funding our programs. Its because of their generous involvement and that of many in the room that were able to do all that we do. I should add the exhibition well be discussing tonight was inspired by the Generosity And Memory of Jean Appleton whose commitment to Womens Labor History helped launch the center and sustain it. And this brings me to tonights program. So this is in a way our Opening Event for this E Hibition which is Ladies Garmented, womens work, womens activist. You saw it coming in. Hopefully youll spend some time on the way out. This show tells the stories of women workers, organizers, and the international Ladies Garment workers association. It explores how their work shaped the Labor Movement and the Womens Movement across these years. These are very big topics which is precisely why we need this panel. Weve got the first of a few events on the topic. Were joined by three scholars who will help us examine and understand this history and all its complexity. Ill introduce them properly. Alice Kessler Harris is the chair of the scholarly advisory board of the center for Womens History here at New York historical society. Shes Professor Emerita in the institute for research on women and gender. And sexuality. Her book in pursuit of quite was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 2002 and she republished her work of Womens History, women have always worked with the university of illinois. And for the purposes of Tonights Conversation she has a copy, her very first published articles in the journals feminine studies and Labor History analyzing the women workers. Janet gayle is an archival document. Thrilled to have it out of the case. Jeannette gayle is assistant professor of history. Her work lies in intersection of africanamerican womens and Labor History. Her scholarship illuminates the interconnected histories of the black struggle for Freedom And Struggle for womens rights, focused specifically on the role black female migrant dressmakers played as they transitioned from homebased production to the Garment Industry in the early to mid20s century in new York City. Her forthcoming Book Fashion in Freedom Clack dressmakers in early 20th century new York Charts migration of black dressmakers from the american south and the british West Indis to new York City and it examines their role in really important developments. The fashioning of identity, the integration of a black working industrial Working Class of organized labor. Strange Page Break there. My fault. In the struggle for civil rights. And Margaret Chen Associate professor of sociology. Born and raised in new York City and herself a child of chinese immigrant parents. She earned her ph. D. From columbia is and the author of sewing women based on extensive Field Work in the industry. Shes finishing up a Book Manu Script examining how asianamericans do in moving up past midmanagement in the professional workplace. Asianamericans make up 20 to 25 of college students and do less well in the working world. Shes also working on a project on the pure effect examining graduates of in high school. Shes a Faculty Associate of the Roosevelt House of public Policy Institute and member of the Kuni Math and the kuni asian research institute. Please join me in welcoming our speakers. Just a couple of logistics. You may have noticed the cameras in back. Cspan is filming this. For those in the audience it will be over your head so no need for a waiver, but wanted to let you know. And our conversation lasts about an hour. Well not have a formal q a but do join us for refreshments afterwards. Also please take this time to silence your cell phones. So ive been talking enough already. Im going to say a few things about the show but really try to work my comments about the show into our conversation now. I did want to say, of course, this was inspired by Jean Appleton who was herself very involved and her father was a longtime its also champagne. This is a very in some ways, current show, at least to my mind. First of all, here in New York, just on monday, we honored the 108th anniversary of the factory fire. This was a disaster known to many of you. Changed the course of the ilg, the protective Labor Legislation. Particularly occupational Health And Safety requirements in the United States. And those who were down there, a ceremony is always a very big event. After years of bad news and declining Union Density and Labor Movement, 2018 witnessed the largest these were workers walking out who were women, often led by women. Teachers, nurses, flight attendants. Weve seen some of those workers as well in the Hotel Industry Embrace these larger emerging Womens Movements speaking out about me too and others. So the questions were trying to ask in this show, how women workers organize, connect, the broader struggles and social movements and shape womens activism more broadly. We can shed some light on that tonight hopefully. Now the last thing ill say with an introduction like this you might expect a massive show in our gallery. You know the history of the ilg you might expect the same. There are about 1500 words of text in that show and 2500 linear feet of ilg records at Cornell Center alone. For a small show we have a big topic. And thats why we have this panel tonight. So i wanted to start asking our speakers to sort of give us a sense from their own work, first, really sort of who these women workers and organizers were in the periods they studied. How their own ethnic and racial backgrounds, the world they came from, migrated from, shaped their work and organizing, sometimes constrained it but also how it shaped the inequalities they faced in the union on the job and beyond. And given that were historians and go chronologically, lets start with alice. So first, thank you. Thank you, nick, for that nice introduction, and thank you, valerie, as always, for the wonderful program that you and ally do. Let me start by telling you a story. Heres the story. Its 1968, and, yes, i am that hold. Just completed my doctoral dissertation at Rutgers University on the jewish Labor Movement in New York in the 1890s. And i put down my pen and i have got my first job lined up. And suddenly i realize theres a womans movement out there just beginning. And i dont have a single woman in my dissertation. How could that be . Well, its the 1890s, of course. Labor in the 1890s, labor in the 1950s and 60s, that didnt have anything to do with women. It had to do with men and male workers. At least in my consciousness at that point. But when the Womens Movement exploded and i became immediately active in it, i realized that there was no way i could publish a dissertation on the Labor Movement, especially not the jewish Labor Movement without looking for the women. So i went back to work. And i started to look for the labor organizers in the union. I learned very quickly now, my big excuse, of course, is that i was working on the 1890s and women joined the ilg and agitated to join the ilg in large numbers not until the early 1900s. So i escaped my own blame game. But as i started looking for them, i realized that here was an industry, the Garment Industry in New York, which already, in the early days, it was probably about 70 the workers in the industry, about 70 jewish, about 30 italian and the sprinkling of other people. But the industry was dominated by immigrants and something like 85 of the workers in the industry, the operators, the Sewing Machine operators, were female. So how could it be that i had missed all the women and could it have been that the women were unimportant in the formation of the union . The ilg was founded the international Ladies Garment Workers Union was founded in 1901 formally and joined the american federation. Then the american federation of labor shortly thereafter. Its early founders were skilled male operators. They were the cutters in the industry. The fur workers in the industry. Those who were said to have brought to the industry the skills to design and cut and make the garments which they had been given. But the labor in the industry almost all of it was done by females, sometimes at home in workshops but much of the time in what were called small contractors shops and then in early burgeoning factories which began in the early 1900s with the expansion of the shirt waste industry, and we can talk about what shirt wastes are later. You can see one of you can see one. See a very elegant one in the cases. But the women who worked and were the majority of employees in the industry were not members of the international Ladies Garment workers early on. By 1903, 1904, 1905, they were agitating to become union members because as union members, they understood that they would be protected from arbitrary rules of employers. And those arbitrary rules were, you can imagine them, if you like. They were charged fines for coming in late. They were docked if the garment they were sewing on was badly sewn. They were sometimes charged for the needles they used of the for the Sewing Machine needles they used and for the thread that they used at the beginning, they had to supply their own machines and they had to go out and rent the machines and bring them to the workplace and on and on and on. And, of course, the days were endless. Not just six days a week but 6 1 2 days a week usually and endless hours. So these women really wanted to organize. And the men in the industry resisted it. They didnt want women because women were said to be unskilled. Well, you and i would ask questions about what did they mean by skill and, of course, they define skill in terms of the work that men did. And if it was work that women did, it was by definition unskilled, even though it could take weeks and sometimes months to train a good Sewing Machine operator in a particular task. The women never the less pushed, and a special moment thats gone down in history as the uprising of the 30,000 some people say 20,000, but ill stick with the 30,000 number. In 1909, the women became particularly agitated by wage cuts in the industry. They were all doing Piece Work and there were cuts to the pieces. And angry, angry, angry that they were being asked to work endless hours, unseasonal work and then suddenly the work was done and theyd have six weeks of no work at all. And sometimes starvation in those six weeks. Generally, they lived with families. Generally, they were single women, daughters of immigrant families. And immigrant women themselves. And when they lost their jobs, even if it was only six weeks, the whole family suffered. So the women in 1909 went on strike. They did it over the objection of the man. There are famous stories about how clara stands up at a famous meeting that the women had called and said, i have had enough of your conversation to the men who were trying to resist striking. I say we should go out on strike. And then the famous oath. If i betray the oath i now make, let this hand i raise shrivel. From the arm i now raise. Well, im paraphrasing. You can get the picture. And thousands of women went out on strike. The strike lasted several months. It was not entirely a success. In fact, perhaps a third of the industry decided to accept unionization, and those shops became union shops and the people who worked in those shops became union members. But twothirds did not. And yet it was that strike that convinced men that women were organizable. That they could organize. And it was that strike that raised to the forefront the names of the women who we now recognize as the female strike organizers. So paulie newman, rose schneiderman, cohn. Not yet rose. She didnt emigrate to the United States until a few years later. But those names and those women have gone down in history as continuously confronting, first the men who didnt want them to strike, and then working with the men to create what was one of the most enduring Unions Trade unions. Two minutes, and then ill to say, why was this important . Why did it matter that these women joined the union . Well, first of all, the international Ladies Garment union, without women in it, would have, you know, maybe 10 of the membership that it had with women in it. With the huge, large membership, the whole union had clout, and the Union Movement in general became something that not only the employers in the particular Garment Industry had to respect but that employers everywhere had to notice that far from being unorganizable, women were organizable and could create good, strong unions. That was the first importance. So the ilg inspired unionization among female textile workers, among female shoe workers, among the Garment Workers in male clothing, in chicago, for example, followed shortly thereafter and so on. But there was a second issue that makes it important. The men have organized the union to get better working conditions and better wages. Women wanted that, too, but in a very famous phrase that rose schneiderman is apock riffally said to have uttered. We want bread, but we want roses, too. We want not only that we have better wages and shorter hours and so on, but we want you to provide us with the goodies that come from being part of a community. And those goodies included night classes, English Classes for immigrant women. Sports teams. Vacation places that working women could go and have a vacation. Dances. Musical performances and so on. This idea that the union was a social institution, we sometimes call it social unionism, was a concept that women brought into the Union Movement and that then spread throughout the Union Movement. And youll hear more about it in the 1930s, but it begins right in those early years of the strike. And theres a third and final thing which we need to remember, and that is that the trade Union Movement which was led by men, even after this strike was over. Most of the leadership still remained a male leadership. Nevertheless, needed to acknowledge that women were workers. And that as workers, they were as economically responsible as the men were for family support. Not for the support of wives and children necessarily, but for the support of parents, siblings, their own children, if they were single parents and so on. And that recognition was never lost after the ilg voted in to being. So im going to stop there and let you continue and you tell such wonderful stories. Now you understand why im captivated by this whole thing. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Thank you all so much for coming and for organizing it. So i tell the story of black women in the union. And since you started with a story, im going to tell you a little bit of a story, too. They say that, well, that history is biographical. In my case, it is. I am an immigrant. And so and i sort of went to university and started doing history and very much interested in immigration and, you know, what were women doing . And the story is that is that, you know, you have these women coming from the south, from the great migration and also from the british West Indis, and that they worked as domestic servants. Thats what they did. And then i came across a book, and there was one line in it, and said that, well, they were also Garment Workers. And i was just fascinated because this was a new narrative. And so i decided that i was going to trace this. And lo and behold, i, you know, i discovered that certainly in the beginning years of the Garment Industry, there were a sprinkling of black women. I think that in 1910, there might have been about 200 at max, really, a drop in the bucket. World war ii made the difference as it did to most gave black folks and an opportunity to break into industry because of the vacancies created because you got men going to war but certainly in the case of the Garment Industry in New York, the cessation of transatlantic Shipment Shipping that you didnt have the sort of supply for the traditional supply of kworks are from eastern and southern europe, which was sort of the traditionally the supply for the Garment Industry. Well, there were all of these black women. And this was their opportunity. And so in sort of the closing years of World War i is when you get black women going into the Industry Sort of en masse so that by 1920 you have like 2,500 black women in the industry. And so it took me from, okay, so now i know that these women are not just working as domestic servants. Theyre working in the Garment Industry. Theyre skilled workers. Many of them from the west from the british west indies in particular because im able to trace them because of records, brought sewing skills with them. This is skills they learned at school. And also from the south, what im able to do to tie in sort of give specific numbers from the south, sort of less clearly because of the lack of documentation because its an internal migration. But nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence to indicate that many of these women also brought dressmaking skills with them to new York City. So theyd go into the union into the Garment Industry. A few of them, and this is one of the things about the ilgw, which is very different to other Afl Affiliated Unions is that the ilgw from its inception was open to organizing black folks. Almost all of the other unions were not. And so there are there are a few black women who joined the union, you know, by 1920s. By 1920. 1920s is a period where the ilgw goes through a lot of internal disarray. There is a struggle for control between the socialists and the communists. And although they sort of start to really make an effort to organize black women by 1920 because theyre significant number. 2,500. They start these campaigns but theyre interrupted by this internal dissent. This disarray, i want to call it, in the union. And then they come out of that. The union comes out of that in 1928, 29 the union starts to reach out. They actually employ the first black Woman Organizer who has a really interesting history. She comes out of the brooklyn ywca, the segregated she is sent to Brookwood Labor Institute to on a scholarship which is funded in part by the naacp who, by now, these people realize that, you know, they really it is important for black folks to become part of the industrial workforce and to join interracial unions. The campaign starts in september 1929. One month after, you are going youre into the depression era. Its very interesting, and alice and i have interesting take on that. Definitely the depression matters in that i think that i think that conditions caused by the depression, those conditions itself, i dont think that that is what gets them to join the union. But the nra, and its not that its not the national Recovery Act that does it either. But i think a response by the unions to the nira that says, look, we have to organize. This sort of protective Labor Legislation is not all that it is made out to be. And it energizes the union. And by then, black women are ready. The foundations, i think, were laid in the early 1930s. The big moment, the watershed moment is august 16th, 1933 when the dressmakers called a strike overnight. The black membership in the union goes from 400 to over 4,000. Thats the moment. Thats the moment. And they become very, very active in the union from the beginning from the moment they go in. And i think this is also part of this is they go and most of them are in the local 22 which is run by zimmerman. And he has a particular take. Hes really committed to this idea of social unionism. He is a sort of protege, i think, of and he takes it seriously. And black women sort of really embraced this. They are on the Executive Board of local 22. They are really just active in all aspects of the union. And my Work Sort of traces them from the union into the civil Rights Movement. This is a sort of pathway. The skills that they develop, you know, in management, in sort of the, what i call the democratic life of the union, really prepares them to play to be part of the vanguard of the black civil Rights Movement in the 1940s. So they are sort of at the forefront of the struggle for the fair employment practice commission. Theres a massive rally at madison square gardens that these women organize in 1946. Its we never get a permanent fepc, but its an important step that takes us into 1964. And so all of these steps, you know, ranking this history and you go, well, okay, so that didnt work. But i think that so i dont write triumphant history. But i think that it is really important that all of these steps that these women are integrally part of, that sort of constant way of working for rights. In my case, particularly, workers rights and civil rights. And they sort of come together. They are very active in the 1950s. In raising funds for the civil Rights Struggle in the south. And they are there front and center in the 1963 march in washington. So thats the story that i tell. Thank you. Well, first, i wanted to say thank you to nick and to ally and valerie for having me. So i will continue actually from World War ii, if you dont mind. So from World War ii is actually when you start beginning to see chinese immigrants go into the Garment Industry. Very early on, so it has to do chinese immigrants are here, and the way they come into the u. S. , which is structured by the immigration laws, will tell you exactly how many people are here. So during World War ii it was still, right before World War ii was still the chinese exclusion. There were very few women here but there were americanborn men. They were in World War ii. When they came back, they had access to the Gi Bill. And the very few who had access to the Gi Bill, they saw that, you know, we cant actually come in and do laundry again because, before they left to go off to war, a lot of chinese were in land laundry. When they came back, washing machines were invented. So they looked to their neighbors in chinatown who were the jewish community who actually had garment shops. And they thought, well, maybe we could do this. And many of them who had access to the Gi Bill actually got money for that and the chinese World War ii vets. They were actually allowed to bring war brides to the u. S. So this was the beginning of women in greater numbers coming to the u. S. And then when they came with their husbands, these exgis, they needed work. And to facilitate their need for working, they opened some of the earliest garment shops. There were just very few. Documents show that there were like about a dozen maybe at that point. And we dont see huge numbers of chineseowned contracting shops in chinatown until after 1965. In 1965 was the next major immigration law that allowed chinese immigrants to come in. They came in, in huge numbers after that. And by the time we get to the late 1970s and 1980s, we begin to see 500 garment shops in chinatown at the height. All those years with immigration, we see women coming in. Women needing work. Women who couldnt speak english. Women who lived in chinatown, and in chinatown, they are i guess their refuge or their work was in these garment shops. And we see a proliferation of them. One of the reason yes they were allowed to open, able to open was the massive exodus of blacks and italians and jewish women from the shops. From the midtown area as well as from the downtown area. So you actually see the chinese actually some of them going into the exact same shops, the locations and taking over the Sewing Machines. But the workers changed. They didnt speak italian anymore. They spoke chinese instead. So when they came in to the area to work, how did they become unionized . So the ilg was very interesting. They did not know how to organize these chinese workers at all. So they actually organized them by organizing the contractors. The contractors. So these women did not know that they were members of the union, although they love the Union Benefits. So when you speak to women, chinese women, and you ask them, well, what was your Union Benefit like or what tell me about that . What were you getting in benefits, they called their Union Membership they actually called it in chinese [ speaking chinese ] which is my blue cross card. So what did you think they valued at the union most . Health insurance. Health insurance. So when they joined the union, well, when they worked in the garment shops, they knew they would become a member of the union and actually get health benefits. Health benefits. So thats how they became accustomed to the union. Not until way later in the 1980s, there was this massive strike of 20,000 chinese workers in 1982 in the summer. Walked out of their shops and demanded to stay and remain in the union because by that time, by mid1980s, the 1990s, there was huge global competition. Global competition, so they were, you know, it was harder to maintain their wages. And a lot of the contractors said we dont really need the union. We dont need to be this middle person. We can keep these women working for us because theyre basically captured here. They dont really know english. They cant find another job. Thats what the contractors thought. But the women did not want to put up with that. They wanted their union. And they wanted the union not only for the Health Insurance but also for the dental insurance. Also for the pension they could get. The sick leave and also for the immigration project that actually taught them english so that they could become u. S. Citizens. They also wanted it for their pay stubs. Now why would they want pay stubbs . Because a lot of them were going to become u. S. Citizens. And then what they would do is use those pay stubs to file income taxes to learn about getting credit to show their income taxes to the immigration authorities so that they could bring their family members over. That changed their power within their households. The women actually had much more power, all of that. They also had access to banking. Knowing the credit system. Knowing how to get a mortgage. So many of these early Garment Workers ended up buying homes outside of chinatown in the boroughs in queens or in brooklyn and other places, and thats the beginning of it. From 1980s on, we actually see, after the strike, we actually begin to see chinese women become hired or become i guess representatives in the union. The union actually hired them. Although i have to say, they didnt move that far up, but at least the Garment Union was beginning to recognize the value of having chinese workers in the union. And from then on, through the 1990s, we see the competition increase. Globalization increase. The decrease of workers. We begin to see the increase of undocumented workers come in by the 1990s, competing with the chinese unionized workers. And so there was this i guess friction. But the union decides, not only are they social, but they decide to also have a Workers Project. Immigrant Workers Project where they would actually organize the undocumented. To teach them that everybody is a worker. That we should actually have a Workers Wage that is responsible and that everybody should support each other. At least we can have that where they wouldnt be cutthroat against the union workers and against the nonunion workers who were undocumented. And then over time, we begin to see a decline. And the major decline in the Garment Industry was in 2001. Especially in chinatown. So what happened was after in 2001 after september 11th, it ended after this, in september 11th, at the World Trade Center was only ten blocks away from chinatown. So ten blocks away from chinatown meant that when the World Trade Center World Trade Center buildings fell, chinatown was impacted tremendously. There were blockades on 14th street down to canal street, which meant that trucks that had fabric could not go in to chinatown to deliver work. Trucks that trucks couldnt go in to take out the garmented that were sewed, and all of that was shut down for close to six months. No telephone service. No work could be done, but by 2000s, there was, you know, incredibly sophisticated Computer Technology where people could just send their designs overseas and a lot of these shops took over. Took over. So as of today, there are very few garment shops left in chinatown. Very few actually left in midtown, and the largest devastation was after 9 11. So but i can talk more later, but well end there. Thank you all so much. Give them a hand, why not . [ applause ] i realize im preaching to a choir since you all came to this event, but this has illustrated for me so very much, we always say here, that Womens History is american history. And this history is essential for understanding, not just womens Garment Work but for immigration, World Wars, the depression, the civil Rights Movement. Immigrant Rights Movement. So much of what we know is shaped by these histories weve heard and learning new things about it from these scholars. So i wanted to open up a few different questions. I thought Id Pose a few of them. You pick what sounds most interesting since we dont have a ton of time. One thing i wanted to ask about is this question about pension and triumph. You want to tell stories quickly about the Labor Movement, of success, solidarity. Certainly some of the cases. But we know there are these tensions. And they happen at many scales. Family tensions. This is womens work. How does that challenge men . How does it change gender dynamics in the home among fathers, daughters, husbands, wives. Also tension in the union. How the union responds to black workers, chinese workers. How organizes and doesnt. And then how the Labor Movement faces increasing sort of challenges in each generation from efforts to move shops overseas from efforts to break the union in a variety of ways. So im sure you can talk about all of these and rapidly bring us over time but i thought Id Pose that question of tension at the multiscale way and allow anyone to pick up on it at any point. So maybe i should begin by saying, even in the early years, there are multiple layers of tension. And maybe if i sort of can outline some of them, you can see how they continue some diminishing, some continue. The first level of tension comes from the way in which the industry is organized. So the industry is and weve talked about contractors and contracting shops. So heres how the industry is organized. Some small, usually male person, decides [ laughter ] sorry about that. Thats correct. This male person decides that he wants to go into business for himself. Hes tired of working for somebody else. Hes generally an immigrant who has been in the United States a fairly short period. A matter of a few years. He goes and he purchases, basically, a bundle of cut garments. So he goes to a Cutting Shop and he purchases a bundle of cut garments and then he brings them to either his home or to a small shop that he has set up and his job is to sew those garments for a particular in a particular amount of time. Now how much he pays for the cut garments determines how much he can pay his workers. And generally in the early years, those workers are kin or people who come from the same general area that he comes from. And its sometimes their family members and he pays them as little as he possibly can or nothing, if they are family members, which enables him to buy more cut garments and to exploit more workers. But the system is a selfdestructive system or its a worker destructive system if you like, because the contractor simply cant afford to pay enough to purchase the garments to pay the workers more because somebody else will beat him to it if he pays more and somebody pays less but produces more garments for by paying his workers less. Hell be out of business pretty soon. So the system, that Contracting System remains in place even when the industry in the early 1900s moves into factories. So those things like the Triangle Shirt Waste shop, although the shop is owned by harris and blank, the two men later charged with being responsible for the fire, the contracting within the shop is done by individuals who have hired their own supplied their own machines and hired their own workers. Its in their interest to pay those workers as little as possible and to work them as hard as possible. And that Contracting System diminishes a little bit, but it remains throughout the history of the Garment Industry, including in the chinese period which is what enables chinese entrepreneurs to create these shops, but which also which jobs, but they can never really be paid enough. Now, the tension then when the union comes in, in those early years, theres a clear conflict. Contractors dont want to deal with the union. Why should they want to deal with the union which will ask them to pay more when the whole system is so structured that they cant make any money if they pay more and indeed theyll they pay more and indeed theyll lose their jobs. So thats one set of tensions. When the union intervenes in those tensions, it intervenes hoping and this is the power of that great strike of the 1909, 1910 period, it hopes to organize enough contractors so they wont be cutting each others throats and therefore the throats of the workers. And its only when they can do that by establishing common, you know, interests among the contractors and the workers, that they are able to make any money. So the Garment Industry uniquely, uniquely among american unions and employers creates what are called the protocols of peace in 1911, 1912, 1913. By 1914 virtually all garment manufacturers in New York are signed onto the protocols of peace and the protocols of peace assign prices, basically, for the Piece Work that the workers do so theyre no longer competing with each other. Now the system breaks down. It doesnt last very long. But it is a wonderful example of how the union and the contractors can actually join with each other to benefit the workers in the system, so thats one kind of tension. Second kind of tension, the men dont want the women to organize. They dont think they can organize. Where do the women get help organizing, from other women, from middle class women, and those women organized in the Womens Trade Union league in large Measure Supply the money and the resources and the organizational know how to help the immigrant Women None of these knowledge bases, to organize. Thats great. But it, of course, produces even greater tension between the women and the union because the women are getting benefits from the middle class women who they dont particularly care about the union, they care about organizing these poor women. But it also produces tensions among the women, some of whom begin to resent and one of the most famous of them, pauline newman, there are interesting stories there. She happens to be gay. She lives a life with another woman. She cant tolerate the middle class women who have this sort of american ideal of Family Structure and so on which is antithetical to everything she wants. She wants to treat the workers as workers and to organize them. So theres a Threelayer Tension there that emerges when the women are outside the union, when theyre inside the union, who they go to for help, and so on. And then theres a third layer of tension and thats ethnic tension. We sort of dismisses that. The ilg is a jewish union. A lot of the meetings are held in yiddish. Which is the language that the workers spoke. But there are lots of italians in the industry and theyre working in their own shops. Slowly as the Fact Si Factory system develops, they move into the factories. But the italian women feel completely excluded from the Union Movement because they dont understand whats going on. And until 1920, the ilg pretty much pays no attention to them and then it begins to publish an italian newspaper and try to involve them. Well, the result is, of course, that italian women become strikebreakers. Why should they supported a strike that they dont know what its about. It doesnt involve them. The organization doesnt happen around them. And that tension is reflected as the industry begins as early as 1912, 13 to move south and move into the Coal Mining Country where glove factories and so on are started. Those women, the anglosaxon women, or english speaking women, are also uncomfortable with this jewish union. You put all of those layers of tension together and you dont have anything that looks like a huge you know, a unified process. What you have is an international Ladies Garment Workers Union which is run, led and largely occupied in the early years by jewish immigrant people. Theres a fourth layer. But its so complicated, i dont want to and thats the socialist background of the members which actually emerges as an even greater tension in the 20s and 30s. But im going to leave that [ laughter ] you know, im not even going to go into that except to say as ive said before, the 20s becomes this period where theres so much internal sort of tension between socialists and the communists in the ilgw, who is going to control this union . But i want to take the Tension And Sort of tell the story that im trying to make into to write an article about. So in one of the women that goes at that, one of the black women that she goes into the union, really 1931. Shes one of the earlier black women who say, yes, were going to join the union. Her name is lillian and shes gung ho from the beginning. You see her in the harlem meetings and shes speaking out and shes a true believer. By 1934 she is chosen by zimmerman and dubinski to organize black workers in chicago. They do not want to organize. Shes lifted. She leaves her she leaves New York. She goes to chicago. She relocates. She spends months doing sort of real underground work to talk to these black women because theyre scared of losing their jobs and shes finally getting somewhere and im not quite sure how many months she spends, but its it seems to me a good six to nine months. And then all of a sudden shes just kind of plucked out of chicago and brought back to New York, and a jewish male is put in her place just as she says, im just about to bring all this thing to some sort of productivity. Now the women are ready and she writes this letter to zimmerman and she says, i feel like i have been used as a cats paw. And its such an amazing phrase. And it really and, you know, what happens to her is that she she takes her name off of the election to run for sort of the exit and this is the woman who was on the executive committee, Executive Board of local 22 and she kind of disappears after that. I cant find her anywhere after that. But you get this idea she also says to zimmerman, be very careful to how you are treating black Garment Workers because you will soon find you have a Duel Situation on your hands. Shes talking about the communists. Because the communists are constantly really trying to work from within and trying to get, you know, the workers, but particularly uninterested in black workers. She almost threatens zimmerman. Its an interesting little anecdote that when you start pulling back the layers, it shows the layers of race and also gender. Thats a story that i have to contribute to show you sort of whats going on, right . Ill tell you a little bit about the women and the men and also at home, the tensions. And its tied to the union because of how much more the women get. So the men and the women who work in chinatown, the chinese immigrants, so the majority theres two basic industries in chinatown, from the 1960s through the 2000s. So its Restaurant Work and Garment Work. Thats where the majority of the chinese immigrants work. So the Restaurant Work for the men its mostly men in Restaurant Work. Mostly women in garment, are not unionized at all. They get cash payments. So the women the men are mostly just getting enough for wages. They dont get any benefits at all. But what it means is when the women work and get benefits, the women are actually bringing maybe not more in wages home, bringing more in terms of benefits. The men feel this tension. However, the men also appreciate what the women do. What the women do in terms of getting especially Health Care for their kids, its expensive to take your kids to the doctor. Its expensive to do everything. But the women, because theyre able to get all of this from the union, sometimes get push back from the men. There are cases where i spoke to some of the women. They remember early on and in the current times, in the late 1990s, where there would be domestic violence, where they demanded their wages and all of the rest of the stuff is good. But you have to remain in your place. There are cases where the women were able to get much more power in the household because of the union. The men and the women chose in their families which members would be the next to immigrate to the u. S. And once that happens their relatives, even if their the mens relatives, gave a lot of high regard is what the men would say, or the women, to their wives. So the wives were elevated in a certain way that the men werent looked at. So those tensions are there the whole time. Whole time. And its because the union, you know, was able to provide all these extra things for the women. This is just to elaborate on that a little bit. One of the big differences is that your chinese women are mostly married with families. Right. The women who tended its not universally true, but the women who worked in the Garment Industry in the early 1900s are young and unmarried for the most part. And the assumption was that you would quit work when you you would quit working for somebody else. You might continue to work for your spousal partner, but you wouldnt be working outside the home if you could avoid it. Now, there are lots of people who couldnt avoid it, they were widowed or died or so on. But the vast majority were unmarried women and their paychecks went to their mothers or their fathers. In other words, they didnt most of them keep anything, unlike male workers, sons who went out to work. The women turned their pay packets to their families and were sometimes given a little Spending Money or Transportation Money or whatever it was. Thats so far from resentment, the women were they were essential to the running of the household, their income was an important piece of income. My question is the africanamerican women, were they married . Were they i cant remember the exact percentages, but its a mix. Several were married. But the as far as wages is concerned, the wages of black women have always been essential to the Household Economy because black men didnt have either were unemployed, underemployed or worked at such lowpaying jobs that that the wages of women were essential to the household becomes even more essential to the survival of the household during the depression, right . So they one of the things that i argue is that in the early years, female Garment Workers who are still employed in the Garment Industry, theyre afraid to join the june in the early years because they feel that if they join the union, theyre going to lose their jobs and thats the end of the household. I have cases where the woman loses her job, the man is not working because the unemployment among africanamerican men is so high. Its something like 10 or 15 points higher than white male unemployment and this is in manhattan. And families just break up. They just have to they just break up because the womens earnings is whats holding stuff together. So, yeah, its essential. And its a mix. And as far as the single women are concerned, im not sure to the extent in which these young single women are turning over their pay packets. I dont think its to the extent that you had in sort of jewish households or italian households. I think theres a slightly different sort of a dynamic there. But, yeah, the wages are essential of these women who are working in the Garment Industry. I have a dozen more questions. [ laughter ] but were, in fact, out of time. It went quickly. The museum closes at 8 00. I went to give you a chance to see the exhibition. Please join me in thanking our speakers. [ applause ] continue the conversation and enjoy your weekend. American History Tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. Next, on lectures in History Tulane Professor Jana Lipman teaches a class on the rise of organic farming. What i want to do today is i want to give us our third lecture in our unit about labor and american food. We talked about the Beef Industry on monday and looked at the jungle in upton sinclair. Then we looked at the Chicken Industry here in the american south. Today were going to be looking at agricultural labor. As i said, those in the room who are vegetarians are not off the hook. In fact, we have to think about the ways in which agricultural