The Garment Workers' Cross-Country Crusade
Two strikers from St. Louis arrive in Everett to rally local labor against the unfair practices of the Marx & Haas firm.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
When something over a year ago the great firm of Marx Haas in St. Louis locked out a thousand garment workers and declared for the non-union shop, it little guessed that two of its girl employees were to be largely instrumental in compelling it to deal fairly and squarely with its people or close the doors of its two great factories. Last Monday evening in the Labor Temple, under the auspices of the local Ladies' Label League, a crowd that filled every foot of room in the hall and overflowed into the entrance hall, listened for over an hour to the earnest, eloquent appeal of these women to the manhood and womanhood of Everett to help their people in their struggle for union conditions. Miss Fannie Sellens and Miss Katharine Hurley told the story of their own lives and the every-day history of their comrades. For years the garment workers in the factories of Marx and Haas in St. Louis have been organized. Sixteen months ago nine hundred people in the employ of Marx Haas were locked out. Of this number six hundred were females, mostly young girls. Miss Sellens and Miss Hurley volunteered to travel city after city, asking merchants not to handle the goods of Marx Haas and pleading for financial support for those locked out. They report that the firm of Marx Haas is today employing but two hundred people and turning out only about one-fourth of their capacity. The spirit of the working class movement remains: an injury to one is the concern of all.
“The working class must work out its own salvation on both the industrial and political field. No part can stand alone; it must be a helping part of a composite whole.”
This article highlights a turn-of-the-century strategy of 'union label' boycotts that anticipated modern consumer activism. The struggle of garment workers to organize against multi-state corporations mirrors the ongoing labor battles in the textile and retail sectors.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.