How many days did the Textile Strike last?
87 Days
What were the names of the 2 Unions that represented the interest of the workers?
International Workers of the Word (IWW) & American Federation of Labor (AFL)
Who were the majority of the striking workers?
Female Immigrants
What were the 2 arcs or fragments of the path in American History that led up to be the catalyst for the Textile Strike?
Industrial Revolution & The American Labor Movement
What is the name of the Bill that NY State Legislation passed to reduce the factory workers work week from 60 hours to 54 hours, that lowered their weekly pay that sparked the Textile Strike?
The Jackson Bill
What were the names of the two knitting mills involved in the Textile Strike?
The Phoenix Knitting Mill & The Gilbert Knitting Mill
Who was the nurse’s that was sent from the wealthy industrialists women’s club , the Fortnightly Club, to study and help treat tuberculosis, that was brought on by the workers squalid living conditions, among the workers?
Helen Schloss
Why did the workers reject the Settlement arranged by the AFL?
Wanted greater concessions
On Jan 3, 1913 a Settlement was reached and called for 3 things to be met. What were those three things?
There was a great deal of labor unrest and many labor strikes in America in the pre-World War 1 period. Much of this unrest was the result of unsafe factory working conditions and low wages paid to workers in American factories.
“An injury to one is an injury to all”
The 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike began on October 9, 1912 and was not settled until January 3, 1913. During the eighty-seven day strike two national labor unions, the International Workers of the World (IWW) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), competed to represent the interests of the striking workers.
The local and national newspaper media of the day covered the strike-related events in great detail, particularly several confrontations between law enforcement and strikers.
Most of the striking workers were recent immigrants from southern and Eastern European countries who lived on the south side of Little Falls in densely crowded tenement apartment houses. The strike divided the Little Falls community along socioeconomic and ethnic lines.
The pictures on display are photographic images of Little Falls around the time of the strike. The posters include both pictures and quotations of important individuals connected to the strike and other time period appropriate labor movement images.
1912 LITTLE FALLS TEXTILE STRIKE
Clashes between police and striking workers, suppression of Constitutional rights, outside political agitation and national media coverage, the 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike had it all when it came to industrial age human drama. This is the 100th anniversary of the strike and what follows is part of that story.
To best understand this important local historic event, we must go back half a century to the Civil War and trace forward two arcs of American history, the rapid industrialization of the late-19th century and the advance of the American labor movement.
LATE-1800’s - AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MIGHT
The Civil War fast-tracked America’s industrial development. Both the Union and the Confederacy needed to upgrade their industrial output to supply their armies with munitions and materials. Railroads had to be built and improved to better move supplies and soldiers. The industrialized nation that emerged from the Civil War was quite different from the more agricultural nation that entered it.
Gilded Age America (1870’s -90’s) was dominated by an unregulated capitalist economic system sometimes referred to as robber baron economics after the industrial tycoons who engineered its growth; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were idolized by the general public.
Presidents and Congress bent to the whims of industry; the press and law enforcement followed suit. Industry held sway as America spread its wings across the continent and its navy across the oceans in search of territory, resources and markets.
Labor was seen as a resource to be exploited in the reach for profit. Workers had few rights and low-skilled factory laborers were easily replaced by ever-arriving immigrants. Such was the case in turn-of-the-century Little Falls.
Labor unions were fledgling lightweights compared to the industrial might wielded by robber barons. By the late 1880’s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had replaced the Knights of Labor as the nation’s largest labor union representing factory workers. Federal and state lawmakers routinely favored the interests of capital over labor. In the early 1900’s organized labor began to flex a little more muscle.
In 1905 the International Workers of the World (IWW or Wooblies) emerged as the most radical edge of the organized labor movement. Socialist by nature, the IWW was committed to direct action and the philosophy of “one big union” of both skilled and unskilled workers.
In pre-World War I America the struggle was on between owners and workers to divide the profits of industry and between moderate and radical labor unions to represent the interests of factory workers. These same forces moved front and center during the 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike.
CAUSES OF THE 1912 TEXTILE STRIKE
Beginning on October 9, 1912 and continuing for three months, these two arcs of American history collided on the streets of Little Falls. The interests of capital and labor brought to the surface by strike events divided the community along socio-economic and ethnic lines.
Occurring between more highly publicized industrial strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts and Paterson, New Jersey, the 1912 Textile Strike began as a local event but soon became one of the largest strikes in state history. Many residents favored the capitalist interests of the mill owners. Others felt sympathy for the downtrodden workers. City officials and local law enforcement attempted to keep the factories open and laid the groundwork for the introduction of outside political forces.
By 1900 Little Falls was an industrial hub in the central Mohawk Valley with a fast-growing population and over 60 manufacturing interests. The primary industries were textile concerns, with the Gilbert and Phoenix knitting mills being the largest companies with the most employees.
Most of these textile factory workers were immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, principally Italians, Poles, Slovenians, Slovaks and Czechs. The majority of these workers lived in squalor on Little Falls’ south side where most were crammed into crowded tenement dwellings. State inspectors found living conditions for Little Falls factory workers to be as bad as anywhere in the state. As was true in much of early 20th century America, these “new” immigrants were often resented and marginalized by earlier immigrant groups.
By 1912 Little Falls was a microcosm of national industrial age forces with the interests of labor and capital in opposition and a mixed bag of often quarrelsome ethnic groups. The spark that ignited the 1912 Textile Strike came from Albany.
In 1912 the NYS Legislature enacted legislation reducing from 60 to 54 the number of weekly hours that women and children could work in factories. In part, the Jackson Bill had been a response to the horrific 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in NYC that had claimed the lives of 145 mostly female workers. The law’s impact was immediate in Little Falls.
OCTOBER 1912 - THE TROUBLE BEGINS
The owners of the Phoenix and Gilbert knitting mills cut the pay of their workers in response to the reduced workweek and the response of their employees was immediate: Short pay envelopes were the impetus on October 9, 1912 for 80 mostly female employees of the Phoenix Knitting Mill and, a week later, 76 workers at the Gilbert Knitting Mill to walk off the job and into history. Desperate people had been driven to desperate action.
Key figures in the Textile Strike included public health nurse turned labor sympathizer Helen Schloss, labor organizer Matilda Rabinowitz, Little Falls Police Chief James “Dusty” Long, Schenectady socialist Mayor George Lunn, and IWW co-founder William “Big Bill” Haywood, but the real heroes were the strikers themselves.
What followed was a bitter and at times violent labor strike against both the Phoenix and Gilbert knitting mills involving over 600 workers and putting Little Falls in the middle of national labor movement events.
The initial response by Little Falls city officials and law enforcement was to side with the mill owners. Chief Long said: “We have a strike on our hands and a foreign element to deal with. We have in the past kept them in subjugation and we mean to keep them where they belong.”
This type of response by city officials drew ever-widening attention and publicity, even from the national media. The refusal of public speaking permits and the breaking up of peaceful labor gatherings in Clinton Park in the early days of the strike inadvertently put out the welcome mat to political activists far and wide. The strikers and their sympathizers had been turned into media martyrs. The IWW and socialists of all stripes came to Little Falls to side with the strikers. Among them were Mayor Lunn and IWW heavyweights Rabinowitz and Haywood. These individuals saw Little Falls as an opportunity to advance national organized labor causes.
The Journal and Courier October 18 headline read: “Arrest Mayor Lunn – Schenectady Socialist in Little Falls Lock-up.” Arrested in Clinton Park for inciting to riot, Lunn had been doing little more than trying to address an assembly of striking workers. The right of assembly and free speech had seemingly been revoked on the streets of Little Falls.
On October 24, 1912 striking workers held a mass meeting and voted to join the IWW; the radical union had become the organizing force behind the Little Falls strike. A strike committee was formed and Little Falls authorities were accused of deliberately inciting riots and then making arrests. One strike committee strategy was to goad police into making mass arrests so that city jails would be swelled to beyond capacity.
Helen Schloss had been brought to Little Falls in May 1912 by the Fortnightly Club to study and help treat tuberculosis outbreaks in the city. By the time of the strike, Schloss had been so taken with the struggles of the working poor that she resigned her post, threw herself into strike activities and became a central figure.
October 30, 1912 was a day of confrontation. The violence ensued when a combination of Little Falls police and special policemen, hired through the Humphrey Detective Agency in Albany, clashed with strikers near the entrance of the Gilbert Knitting Mill. A number of strikers were savagely beaten, one policeman was shot in the leg and another was stabbed.
The strikers then withdrew across the Mohawk River, with many heading to their strike headquarters at Slovak Hall on today‘s Flint Ave. The police followed, destroying some of the building’s contents, roughing up more people and perhaps firing shots into the basement before fanning out across the city to arrest individuals connected with the strike. By day’s end, the entire strike committee, including Schloss and Ben Legere, were in custody. The stakes had been raised and what followed was a two-sided media blitz and more confrontation.
NOVEMBER - ESCALATION AND AFL ATTEMPTS AT SETTLEMENT
On November 7 city officials and north side residents held a counter-demonstration at the Hippodrome Theater and issued a strong sentiment of support for the actions of local law enforcement and city officials. At the same time, the “property rights v. human dignity” theme emerged in the media. Mayor Frank Shall stated that mill workers had been exploited by “outside sources, fakirs, fanatics, and those who profit from industrial disturbances.” It was clear that the strikers had few allies on the more prosperous north side.
In early November, Big Bill Haywood arrived in Little Falls to help direct strike activities. The Little Falls Defense League was formed and socialist speakers fanned out across the northeast to help raise money to replace lost wages.
On November 15 the Little Falls Common Council approved the hiring of 38 additional special police. Some theorize that city officials did not want city policemen to be directly involved in violent exchanges with other city residents.
Later in the month, AFL officials arrived in Little Falls and quickly established the United Textile Workers local # 206 to represent Little Falls mill workers. The IWW and the AFL competed for local membership and tried to best position themselves to reap the benefits of media coverage. On November 29, the AFL announced that they had reached a settlement between mill owners and striking workers that much resembled the actual settlement reached in early January. Striking workers refused the attempted settlement, they had suffered much and wanted greater concessions. December was to bring bitterly cold weather, official NYS intervention and much additional drama to the streets of Little Falls.
DECEMBER - CHILDREN MOVED AND STATE MEDIATION
In early December the pro-mill owners newspaper Journal and Courier confidently proclaimed that “the mills are gaining steadily and there is no longer any doubt who are the masters of the situation.” Overlooked was the fact that hundreds of mill workers were still on strike, marching and picketing daily with IWW red banners. One of the more creative picket signs read “less booze for owners, more bread for workers.”
The IWW urged striking families to accept the earlier offers of Schenectady socialists and send their children there for the holidays. On December 17, eighteen Little Falls children departed from the local railroad station for Schenectady, gaining striking workers great sympathy in the press.
With little hope of a strike settlement, the NYS Department of Labor interceded on December 24 by ordering the Board of Mediation and Arbitration to go to Little Falls and conduct public hearings. December 27, 28 and 30 produced dozens of witnesses at State hearings, yielding conflicting versions of why the strike began and why settlement had not yet been reached. Workers testified that horrible living and working conditions were the main causes and that the pay cut had pushed many families beyond the breaking point. Mill owners maintained that Little Falls factory wages did not result in financial hardship.
Mediation Board members pushed hard for a settlement. Mill owners were arm- twisted into advancing terms of settlement for the three-month long strike. The eventual strike settlement called for three things: First, there was to be no discrimination against those mill workers who had been on strike. Second, the two companies were to reinstate all employees as soon as possible. Third, all men and women were to receive 60 hours of pay for 54 hours of work.
On January 3, 1913 a mass meeting of striking workers was held with Matilda Rabinowitz serving as chairperson. After fiery speechmaking by union officials, the striking workers voted unanimously to accept the settlement offer and agreed to return to work beginning on January 6. The bitter eighty-seven day strike was over. In its aftermath bad faith remained and a city sought to bury the memories.
IMPACT AND AFTERMATH
The 1912 Textile Strike was a major historical event for Little Falls and a small piece of the fabric that was early 20th century American industrial labor relations. Most attempts by city officials to mend the wounds and solve the socio-economic problems laid bare by the three-month strike were cosmetic. Mayor Shall spoke of “sending them to school” as a solution which did little to address the need for better affordable housing for a growing city and better opportunities for the struggling poor and recent immigrant arrivals.
State investigators who visited Little Falls after the strike concluded that the final strike settlement did little to improve the lives of factory workers in the city and that “the one outstanding and unavoidable conclusion of this report is that there is need of a thorough general investigation of wages and cost of living among the textile workers of the Mohawk Valley.”
In the words of one writer, Little Falls remained “a city of close physical proximity but great social distance.” Socio-economic and class divisions remained as strong after the strike as before. Only time and intermarriage would help to bridge these divisions.
The 1912 Textile Strike left few good memories for Little Falls residents. The WWI-induced Red Scare (1917-1921) brought ill-repute onto socialism and few who had marched under IWW banners wanted to be reminded. By 1920 the Phoenix Knitting Mills had left Little Falls, its factory buildings later became Allegro Shoe Company. The Gilbert Knitting Mill operated until the 1960’s. The Canal Place waterfront commercial and arts district now occupies the space where this industrial age human drama played out a century ago.
Following the 1912 Strike, Dusty Long continued on his long and distinguished career as Little Falls police chief. Matilda Rabinowitz and Big Bill Haywood went on to other sites of labor unrest while advancing the interests of the working class. Haywood eventually fled to Russia around 1918. Rabinowitz helped to found the great United Auto Workers Union in Detroit. Helen Schloss later became prominent in the women’s suffrage movement. George Lunn went onto a long political career, including stints in the U.S. Congress and as Lieutenant Governor of NYS. The 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike had been but single chapters in their storied careers.
In the final analysis, the 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike was a short chapter in the much larger text that chronicles America’s early 20th century titanic struggle between owners and workers. Our factory working ancestors paid in blood, broken bones and lost wages the price that helped to advance their own rights and dignity. They also contributed a small part to much larger labor victories under FDR’s 1930’s New Deal.
In 1935 both the National Labor Relations Act giving labor unions the right of collective bargaining and the Fair Labor Standards Act legislating a minimum wage were enacted by a Democratic Congress and President. A livable wage and the right to speak to management with one voice were precisely what those courageous strikers had picketed and held out for in the bitter cold.
One final but all important footnote to the 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike is that it was begun and in a large part carried out by women in an age when men dominated industry and politics. “First wave” feminism would soon yield women’s suffrage through the 1920 19th Amendment. These courageous Little Falls women left their small but indelible mark on American history.
Although our grandparents sought to forget the 1912 Textile Strike, at its 100th anniversary we must remember because the same issues are still alive today. In the age of globalization and the outsourcing of American jobs, the working class is still falling victim to the whims of industry; lawmakers still favor the interests of the haves over those of the have nots
Our ancestors – their 1912 efforts and sacrifices have long been forgotten, but their resurrected images in old Textile Strike-era photographs still haunt us as we seek to tell their stories a hundred years later.
Most important are maps # 3 and #4. Mills prominent in the strike are outlined in yellow and other major industrial firms in red. Here you can see the location of the Phoenix, Mackinnon, and Gilbert mills as well as the location of the nearby train station and Clinton Park.
The Sokol Hall (Slovak Hall) was located a short distance away, across the Mohawk River and Erie Canal (indicated as #5 on the main map) on the South Side where most of the workers, of Italian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Polish descent, lived. The major clash occurred on Wednesday, October 30, 1912 and shortly afterward the police raided the Sokol Hall which they believed to be the strike headquarters.
Little Falls Music Exhibit
