Paterson Silk Strike

PATERSON SILK STRIKE

PATERSON SILK STRIKE began on 23 January 1913, when 800 workers walked off their jobs in the "Silk City" of Paterson in northern New Jersey. They were joined within two weeks by nearly 24,000 additional workers at more than one hundred of Paterson's mills. Manufacturers instigated the six-month strike when new machinery enabled them to double the number of looms per worker, from two to four. Factory operatives averaged twelve-hour days, and feared the machines would increase their workloads and create pay cuts and unemployment. Workers set aside differences in language, religion, ethnicity, and skill levels to unite behind the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Victorious at a similar strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, the IWW sent William Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn to coordinate the Paterson strike. Unfortunately for the workers, the new machinery allowed mill owners to increase operations elsewhere and maintain profits. Manufacturers initiated numerous acts of violence, and their influence with local politicians and police led to the arrest of more than 2,000 largely peaceful strikers. At least one worker was killed by the mill owners' private guards, who were never brought to trial. In a last-ditch attempt to win financial and public support, New York radicals Walter Lippman, Max Eastman, Mabel Dodge, and John Reed staged the "Paterson Strike Pageant" at Madison Square Garden. The strike's theatrical dramatization earned rave reviews, but little money. Skilled ribbon weavers were the first to break ranks and accept the mill owners' terms, returning to work on 18 July, and most of the remaining strikers returned to work, defeated, on 28 July, with a few holding out until 25 August.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Golin, Steve. The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike, 1913. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Tripp, Anne Huber. The I.W.W. and the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

John Cashman

See also Strikes .