Under the leadership of Joseph Barondess, the union held a number of strikes in 1891, including those against the big firms of Benjamin and Caspari, Blumenthal Brothers, and Popkin and Marks. Some of the strikes were for higher wages, and others were against the firing of union members. The manufacturers weren’t used to unions. Until then they would raise the wages a little when the workers struck and lower them again when the season was over. But now, with a strong union, the cloak makers could hold on to their gains and keep asking for more.
Strikes erupted in all the big factories that used to let out the work to the contractors. When the union sent pickets to the shops, the contractors did what the manufacturers did: they pulled out and ran to smaller towns near New York.
The union’s picket committee sent some men to a contractor in Jamaica, Long Island, to demand that he stop using scab labor. A fight broke out between the scabs and the committee men. Exactly what happened is still not clear, but the pickets were accused of having badly beaten the contractor, pouring vitriol all around, and turning over a lit oven. One of the contractor’s children was burned. The pickets returned to New York, but one cloak maker, L. Rhinegold, was caught as he was trying to get on a tramway back to New York. All the capitalist English-language newspapers — even those that had been sympathetic when the Cloak Makers’ Union was founded — immediately published
scathing articles condemning “the aliens”, the immigrants of the union and of all the Jewish trade unions, for using violent methods. Passions were inflamed. The Executive Board, Joseph Barondess and the other activists, were aghast. Barondess, whose anarchist sympathies had kept him distant from the UHT and the SLP, came running seeking help in the building of the Arbeter tsaytung, where all the Social-Democratic organizations as well as the UHT had their offices.
That very evening the Executive Board held a meeting at 385 Bowery.
A large squad of police detectives appeared with the Jamaica contractor, and they arrested every person that he indicated. They took between twelve and fifteen cloak makers, union officials, and Barondess last, to the Jamaica jail. This caused an uproar, and not just in the Jewish neighborhood. The capitalist English papers screamed their headlines,
“Barondess and Crew Arrested”. They were in jail for three days. Since we only had a weekly newspaper, we printed one page every day to report what was happening. An inquest was held in Jamaica Court on the fourth day, and they were all released because there was no evidence against them. They only kept Rhinegold, who had been arrested on the tram.
And then there was another sensation! As soon as the cloak makers were freed, just as they were leaving the court, two detectives from New York showed Barondess a document and told him, “You are our prisoner”, and they took him to the Tombs.155 This was the story:
Barondess had reached a settlement with the firm of Popkin and Marks on Canal Street. He received a check from them for $100 for back pay, or for the time that the workers had been on strike. Then the bosses filed a criminal complaint against him on the grounds that he had extorted the money from them. The case hinged on an error on the check. This caused an even greater uproar in our little labor world. Barondess was bailed out only a week later, because the bail had been set at $20,000, which was a huge sum for the workers in those days.
At Rhinegold’s trial for the Jamaica incident, the jury sentenced him to five years in Sing-Sing, and he was sent away. The Cloak Makers’
Union supported his family the entire time and tried very hard to get the Governor to pardon him. Governor David B. Hill did finally pardon him after six or seven months. The case of Barondess dragged on for
155 The New York City Prison.
more than year. The union was weaker after some difficult strikes, and Barondess could do nothing while he was waiting to be sentenced.
He grew weary of doing nothing and decided to leave for England, suddenly making for Montreal without saying a word.
One evening Mr Friedman, the owner of the Golden Rule Hall (125 Rivington Street) — who had paid the bail for Barondess — came to the United Hebrew Trades office at 8½ Ludlow Street and told us that he had heard that Barondess was in Montreal on the way to England. We went to Philip Krantz, the editor of the Arbeter tsaytung. Krantz turned red, because he had received a letter telling him that Barondess was in Montreal and going to Europe. It was decided that Krantz and Friedman would take the next train to Montreal.
But Barondess was gone by the time they arrived. They learned that, the night before, he had signed on as a sailor on a small freighter going to Quebec City and from there to England the next day. The two left for Quebec City, and when they got there in the morning they found the ship and Barondess about to cross the ocean. Krantz convinced him within a few minutes to return to New York. But as soon as he arrived his bail was rescinded, and he was again imprisoned in the “Tombs”
until the trial. The union called a meeting at 125 Rivington Street to show solidarity with their leader.
The trial was held, and Barondess was sentenced to twenty-one months. Through its leader, Jimmy Archibald, a Tammany Hall man, the Central Labor Union arranged with Richard Crocker, the Tammany boss, to have Barondess pardoned. Masses of petitions were presented to Governor Flower until he pardoned Barondess in 1892. The Socialists were very opposed to accepting the pardon, and on June 10 Louis Miller published a sharp rebuke in the Arbeter tsaytung.
During all those eighteen months of arrests and trials, the union was too weak to defend the interests of the workers in the shops. Wages dropped and thousands of cloak makers left the union because of that.
When things had calmed down, we began to try to strengthen the union again, but we could not draw the masses of workers back in. They were weary of all their struggles. Strife flared up again between the supporters of Barondess and his opponents, who wanted to exclude him from the union. This went on until the spring of 1893, with fistfights both in the shops and in the meeting halls.
Terrible unemployment hit the cloak makers with the Panic of 1893, like the other trades, and it weakened the union even further. The conflict among the cloak makers worsened by the day. The opponents of Barondess began to organize, and the union accused eighteen of them of incitement against him. Instead of answering the charge, they called a meeting at 91 Delancey Street at the Socialist Labor Lyceum, and founded an opposition union, the International Cloak Makers’ Union.
Now it was open war between the two unions. One of the leaders of the International was a Socialist, Nathan Zwirin, a cloak maker. He later became a lawyer and is now an active Zionist. Another leader was Joseph Schlossberg, now Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union.
At the time when the new union was formed, Abraham Rosenberg, a Barondess supporter, became Secretary of the old union and M. Kunz, another cloak maker, became Second Secretary. Their union joined with the Brotherhood of Tailors to become Local No. 64 of the UGWA. They, plus a few other Jewish unions, were in conflict with the United Hebrew Trades. They put out a weekly newspaper, the Yunyon tsaytung.156
The strife between the two unions continued until they reunited in June 1894. The old union agreed to exclude Barondess from any office, even an “honorary” membership in the union. But as soon as that was settled, the cloak makers of Brownsville named him an honorary member. When the Panic of 1893 was over, jobs for cloak makers became plentiful in 1894. The two unions were united, but conditions in the shops were terrible, so the workers began streaming back to the union.
Shop strikes erupted. There was a movement to bring Barondess back as Manager. Committees went to Baltimore, where he was publishing a Yiddish newspaper with Mr Kassowski, Di fraye presse.157 He let them beg him at first, but finally agreed to give up the paper and return to New York.
That year 400 cloak makers struck the firm of Julius Stein, on account of a dispute with thirty-two cutters who did not belong to the Cutters’
Union and with whom Barondess had made peace to strengthen the union. Just at that same time, the Brotherhood of Tailors was on strike to replace the quota system with a weekly wage, and they won. The
156 Yiddish: Union Newspaper.
157 Yiddish: The Free Press.
cloak makers were impatient to go on strike, so they called a mass meeting — which was well-attended — at the New Irving Hall on Broome Street.
It was decided to call a general strike of the thousands of cloak makers the night before Yom Kippur. New union members signed up for fifty cents and worked out their demand for a wage scale, which was sent to the manufacturers. But it took a long time, and picketing began at the shops. Things looked good at first, but the important manufacturers refused to settle. The strike dragged on, and the workers suffered. About 2,000 Italian cloak makers, whose meeting hall was on Prince Street, also took part in the strike, but we didn’t pay much attention to them. Their president, an Italian, used the opportunity to betray them to the bosses at five dollars a head.
There was great sympathy for the strikers among the general public, but there wasn’t enough financial support, and the strike grew weaker by the day. More and more workers returned to work until the strike was lost. Technically the strike was not broken. The tragedy of 1894 ended with Barondess leaving the union, and he had no more official connection to it thereafter. The United Garment Workers, the parent union of the Cloak Makers’ Union, asked to inspect its account books.
Since it didn’t have any books, the UGW expelled the cloak makers, and their union dissolved.
A new union started at the beginning of August in 1896, the United Brotherhood of Cloak Makers No. 1. That union sided with the Forverts supporters when they left the Socialist Labor in 1897. The Brotherhood was very successful until 1899, with several thousand members, and it held several victorious strikes that raised the wages. The union had seven paid walking delegates, and its President was A. Gayer, a Social-Democrat but not a cloak maker by trade.
The Brotherhood lasted until 1899, when the scandal of the “Velvet delegates” occurred. Four of the delegates used to meet every day at a restaurant on Houston Street, where they would discuss union matters rather than at the office. But they spent days and nights playing cards.
They used “Velvet” as a password to call a meeting at the restaurant.
(It was the owner’s name). They refused to obey the orders of the Executive Board, so they were fired, but they were paid their remaining salaries. This incident seriously undermined the union, and they sent for Abraham Bisno, leader of the Chicago cloak makers, to save it.