Prescott Library: Triangle Factory Fire, History 7: Union Efforts

Uprising of 20,000 - Strike in 1909 by shirtwaist workers and other famous strikes of the time period

UPRISING OF 20,000 (1909)
On November 23, 1909, more than twenty thousand Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry.
Clara Lemlich sparks "Uprising of the 20,000"
In the months that followed, thousands of garment workers, mainly young Jewish and Italian women, walked picket lines and confronted police brutality.
The Cooper Union Meeting of 1909 From The Call, with Samuel Gompers
The Triangle walkout, sparked by grievances common throughout the shirtwaist industry, exploded into a general strike. First published in The Call, November 23, 1909
Agitation Among the Ladies' Waistmakers Local 25. General Executive Board Sanction Agitation
The victory nearly two years ago of the Ladies' Waistmakers, Local 25, of New York, has, it appears, not been as complete a success as was generally believed at that time; at any rate not a lasting success. One of the main reasons for the disappointment is that the agreements originally signed with the union were of an individual rather than collective character
Among the Poor Girls By Wirt Sikes
Sikes, a popular social reformer in his day, worked with church groups and supported the efforts of the Working Women's Protective Union. First published in Putnam's Magazine, April 1868.
International Ladies Garment Workers Union
The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was founded in 1900. The eleven Jewish men who founded the union represented seven local unions from East Coast cities with heavy Jewish immigrant populations.
Sweatshops and Strikes before 1911

Strike funds Low

People to Profile

Samuel Gompers Granddaddy of the Labor Movement.
In December 1886, Gompers called a meeting of the Federation. At this meeting, the organization was transformed into the American Federation of Labor.
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Samuel Gompers
Gompers emigrated in 1863 from England to New York City, where he took up his father's trade of cigar making and in 1872 became a naturalized citizen. His careful leadership of labour interests earned Gompers a reputation for conservatism.
Pauline Newman
NEWMAN, PAULINE (1890?-1986), labor activist, was born in Kovno, Lithuania, around 1890. After her father's death in 1901, Newman's mother decided to take her three daughters to New York City. At age thirteen, she began working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Letter to Michael and Hugh From Pauline M. Newman
As a young teenager, she became employed at the Triangle Factory. She was no longer employed there by the time of the fire but she wrote the following description of working conditions at this factory and speaks about why workers endured the indignities.
Clara Lemlich
Like so many young immigrant girls, Clara Lemlich found work in a Lower East Side garment shop. Infuriated by working conditions that, she said, reduced human beings to the status of machines, she began organizing women into the fledgling International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) soon after her arrival in New York in 1905.
Life in the Shop By Clara Lemlich
Lemlich, executive board member of Local 25, sparked the 1909 walkout of shirtwaist makers with her call for a strike. This piece was first published in the New York Evening Journal, November 28, 1909.
Rose Schneiderman
From 1904 through the 1950s, the militant trade unionist and women’s rights advocate spoke on street corners, soapboxes, lecture platforms, and over the radio, impressing even those who did not share her political views.
The Women's Trade Union League
National Women's Trade Union League of America