1913 Paterson silk strike
1913 CE
The 1913 Paterson silk strike is a work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey.
The strike involves demands for establishment of an eight-hour day and improved working conditions.
The strike begins in February 1913, and ends five months later, on July 28.
During the course of the strike, approximately eighteen hundred and fifty strikers are arrested, including Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
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Paterson's silk strike of 1913 is part of a series of industrial strikes in the garment and textile industries of the American East from 1909 to 1913.
The participants of these strikes are largely immigrant factory workers from southern and eastern Europe.
Class division, race, gender, and manufacturing expertise all cause internal dissension among the striking parties and this leads many reformist intellectuals in the Northeast to question their effectiveness.
A major turning point for these labor movements had occurred in 1912 during the Lawrence Textile Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where laborers were able to successfully pressure mill owners to raise wages, later galvanizing support from left-leaning intellectual groups.
The successful strike had helped attract interest from intellectual circles in Paterson’s labor movements, and has given union organizers confidence in also achieving improved working conditions and wages for Paterson’s silk weavers.
The IWW manages to help the hungry strikers children into foster homes to ease their way of life and provide food and aid while their parents and workers are striking.
Although they had shut down Paterson and beaten off an attempt by the AFL (American Federation of Labor) to undercut the strike, they were unable to extend the strike to the annexes of the Paterson mills in Pennsylvania.
Paterson manufacturers, victorious but frightened, will hold back for another decade.
Strike supporters were torn apart as a result of the defeat, and the IWW will never fully recover in Eastern America.
The participants of these strikes are largely immigrant factory workers from southern and eastern Europe.
Class division, race, gender, and manufacturing expertise all cause internal dissension among the striking parties and this leads many reformist intellectuals in the Northeast to question their effectiveness.
A major turning point for these labor movements had occurred in 1912 during the Lawrence Textile Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where laborers were able to successfully pressure mill owners to raise wages, later galvanizing support from left-leaning intellectual groups.
The successful strike had helped attract interest from intellectual circles in Paterson’s labor movements, and has given union organizers confidence in also achieving improved working conditions and wages for Paterson’s silk weavers.
The IWW manages to help the hungry strikers children into foster homes to ease their way of life and provide food and aid while their parents and workers are striking.
Although they had shut down Paterson and beaten off an attempt by the AFL (American Federation of Labor) to undercut the strike, they were unable to extend the strike to the annexes of the Paterson mills in Pennsylvania.
Paterson manufacturers, victorious but frightened, will hold back for another decade.
Strike supporters were torn apart as a result of the defeat, and the IWW will never fully recover in Eastern America.