The first Cap Trade Union in New York was founded in 1874. By then there were already Jews in that industry from Germany and Poland, and they started the union in New York. The cap trade really took off during the Gold Rush, when masses of people flocked to California, where gold had been discovered in 1849. Since the railroads weren’t yet fully developed, those adventurers who left home equipped themselves with warm clothing, especially fur or cloth hats. Then during the Civil War that erupted ten or twelve years later between North and South, there was a great demand for military caps.
The trade in New York started out as a home work industry, meaning that working women, Americans and Irish, took home the work from the warehouses of the manufacturers, who employed only cutters in their factories. The women would sew the caps in their homes. Until 1851, when the first real sewing machine was on the market, the women sewed the caps by hand. By the time of the Civil War, the cap industry had shifted to being a factory business. The workers had relatively good conditions, and good workers were able to make a decent living. By then most of them were immigrants from Germany, England, and Ireland. In the 1870s a good worker could earn up to twenty dollars a week. That was considered big money, since other industries paid their workers eight to nine dollars a week. But women who made cheaper hats could only earn a lot less.
In the book from which I draw my information, The History of the Cap and Millinery Workers’ Union,132 there is a reproduction of an 1865 petition from women cap workers to President Lincoln, asking him to give his orders for military caps directly to them instead of to the contractors. I have already mentioned the great crisis of 1873. It was the worst crisis known until then, and every trade was hit with massive unemployment.
Almost all the workers in the land — and their families — suffered privation. The crisis lasted years, and when workers were again being hired it was for starvation wages. Workers lost all the gains that they had made with their unions since 1828. The cap makers still had some work
132 Weinstein is referring to Jacob M. Budish, Geshikhte fun di kloth hat, kep un milineri arbeter [The History of the Cloth Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers] (New York: Op-tu-deyt Printing Co., 1925).
producing military caps for the government, but the manufacturers reduced their salaries to the level of starvation wages.
Things got so bad that the workers finally lost patience, and a strike erupted in New York in 1874, the first in the industry. A few strikes in individual sweatshops had already broken out earlier.
Around 1,500 workers, men and women, went out on strike. Most of the men were German Jewish immigrants. We called them “Daytshe Yehudim”.133 Among the women there were many Irish and Germans as well as American-born workers. Most of the cap manufacturers were German — Christians and Jews — but there were some Irish and Americans. The finishers, German Jews who sewed the caps by hand, led that strike, although there were by then some operators, a very few, who worked on machines making the cheaper kinds of caps. The blockers also went on strike, but the cutters, although they already had a union in the 1870s, stayed on the job. The strikers, who were paid by the piece, were asking for an increase of twenty to forty percent.
The strikers organized a union called the Central Union of Cap Makers, with V. Ober as President and M. Wiener as Secretary. The big manufacturers held a meeting at which they resolved not to accede to the demand of the workers. The strikers then sent an appeal to their brother cap makers in other cities — like Boston and Philadelphia — asking for their support, and they received a warm, comradely response. They promised them financial help, as did organized workers in other trades that were very sympathetic.
Most significantly, the Cutters’ Union decided to join the strike. They resolved not to work in any factory that had not settled with the Central Union of Cap Makers. The manufacturers could do nothing without their cutters, and they began to meet with the union representatives until the strike was settled. The workers won a fifteen percent increase.
But about half a year later the finishers, who were essential to the trade, concluded that they didn’t need a union any more, since they had won the strike. So the Central Union eventually fell apart, but the Cutters’
Union held on. They valued it highly, though it was really no more than a self-help association for its members in time of need.
133 “Daytsh” is the Yiddish word for “German”. “Yehudim” is the Hebrew word for
“Jews”. “Daytshe yehudim”, shortened to “Yehudim”, was used to distinguish German Jews from other Jews, who were normally called “Yidn”.
Unemployment was still high in the country because of the crisis, and the cap trade was still very slack. At the same time, making caps became simpler and the quality of the caps was lower. The manufacturers again started to lower the wages, and the finishers were struggling to make a living. Girls were hired as “assistants”, and were paid three to four dollars a week, while the finishers were earning five to seven dollars.
The cap makers went out on strike again in May 1878. There happened to be a lot of business at the time, and the strike lasted until July, with the workers winning a wage increase. But the following year the owners repealed the increase. There was no union, so the workers founded one, the Cap Finishers’ Union, on August 15, 1879. That union’s constitution featured these important points:
1. No cap maker may have more than two “assistants” and may not work more than sixty hours per week.
2. Workers who had been working at home before the founding of the union can continue to work at home, but they may not take home more work from the factory than workers do in the factory itself.
3. Workers may not take work home from more than one factory.
This was all in the context of the sweating (sweatshop) system that had grown up in the 1870s in New York. There was also a point in the constitution that German would be the official language at union meetings, although you could also speak English. The Cap Finishers’
Union called strikes in 1880 and 1881 that were so successful that afterwards a finisher could earn eight or nine dollars a week.
In 1882, when the mass immigration of Jews began from southern Russia, Poland, and Lithuania, a great change occurred in the cap industry because of the improvements in the sewing machines. A cheaper line of caps was produced, but the finishers no longer worked on them by hand. Gradually the machine operators replaced the finishers, who had always done the work manually. By 1884 only about 175 were left of the 800 who had been working in the trade ten years earlier. New styles of caps were made, all on machines. The first labor associations of the cap machine operators formed in the early 1880s under the influence of the finishers, who well understood the importance of unions. As the finishers dwindled, the cutters began to get involved in other aspects of
the trade so as to maintain their working conditions. They remained the aristocrats of the trade for a while, but the general strikes in the industry brought their conditions closer to those of the other workers.
In 1886 there was a big impetus in New York for the eight-hour work day. The cap cutters, who belonged to the Knights of Labor and the Central Labor Union, pushed for a Joint Executive for all the branches of the cap industry, including the machine operators. But that joint federation did not last long, and the eight-hour day did not succeed.
Among the masses of immigrants there were hat makers from the old country, and other Jewish immigrants learned to operate the machines.
This new wave from Russia, Poland, and Lithuania, were very different from the first German hat makers. Many of them had already been influenced by Russian-Jewish radicals in the early 1880s.
In 1887 the cap operators formed their own Cloth Hat Operators’
Union Number 1, which was independent of any labor federation. Its founders were still the original German Jews, not the newcomers. I can remember that, as Secretary of the United Hebrew Trades, at the end of 1888 I wondered how to bring the new union into the UHT. But the leaders of the new union had no interest whatsoever, and when a committee from the UHT tried to attend one of their meetings, they did not let them in.
We decided to wait until their determination to stay apart had lessened, but we didn’t have to wait long. In 1889 a strike broke out in the cap trade, which lasted a few weeks and which they lost. The union was reeling. The only Socialist among the cap makers, named Goldreich, attended a meeting of Branch 8 of the Socialist Labor Party, of which he was a member, and asked us to try again. He assured us that this time the union would join the UHT and would be stronger for it. So we appointed another committee, including Joseph Barondess, M.
Schach from the Knee-pants Union, S. D. Cooper, and me.
That time they let us right into the meeting of about thirty people who were discussing the state of their union. A suggestion was made to donate to a hospital the few dollars that were left in their account. Our committee explained what we could do to strengthen their union. The cap makers were quite depressed, and they had little hope of rebuilding their union. Their leader was a German Jewish operator, A. Menke, who was very conservative. He was the president of a lodge and a good speaker. He really wanted to revive the union, and this is what he said:
My dear brothers! You all know that the young Spanish king is very sick.
[He was a young boy who was dying, and all the American newspapers were writing about it.] He is the only heir to the Spanish throne. Now imagine that a great doctor comes and offers to save his life. Wouldn’t his parents just be delighted? Now, brothers, these gentlemen have come from a labor association to offer us a brotherly hand when our union is on the verge of dying. They wish to help us — the remnants of our last struggle, the last strike — become a strong union again. Brothers, let us accept it with thanks and with joy.
His speech worked, and the cap makers decided to join the UHT and try to re-establish their union. They started with a banquet celebration for all the cap makers. A number of delegates went from the UHT, for whom it was an odd surprise, because many of us thought it was a betrayal of our Socialist ideals to enjoy a fine meal at a time when workers were going hungry and rarely had a decent meal. The UHT sent some of its best speakers: Cahan, Zametkin, Hillquit, our German comrade Huber, and many others. Cahan and Zametkin made a great impression, and Zametkin was especially appreciated. His father had been a prominent hat maker in Odessa, and he felt quite at home with the cap makers.
I met a number of very elderly men at that banquet, and I knew right away that they were neither Lithuanian Jews nor Polish Jews.
They were German Jews, the “finishers” from the old days who had recently become machine operators. The speeches lifted the morale of the cap makers, and the UHT arranged for mass meetings to be held on Saturday night every eight weeks. At that time the cap workers were better off than the shirt makers, the knee-pants workers, and the tailors, because they were “inside workers”, meaning they didn’t work for contractors. Although they worked long hours and were paid by the piece, they earned more than most other Jewish workers. But they had to work very fast. In addition, they were required to take work home, which was called “carrying the black sack”. Therefore all the workers had to have their own machine, needles, and cotton at home.
By 1890 they had rebuilt a strong union with the help of the UHT.
During that year’s season they could make fifty to sixty dollars a week, some even seventy dollars, which was considered a lot of money then. It happened by accident, because a hat fashion called the “Nellie Bly” was all the rage. Everyone knew about the American woman reporter of that name who had traveled the world in seventy-two days, and American
women all wore that hat. The workers had a strong union, and they could use the situation to their advantage and earn some good money.
But as soon as that style went out of fashion, the manufacturers drove the cap makers to go on a strike, which lasted twenty-two weeks — actually it was a lockout, in which the owners locked out 1,200 workers.
The “Nellie Bly Strike” first erupted at the firm of Lichtenstein & Co.
of New York, which had a huge plant. When the strike had been going on at that factory for six weeks, the union asked the other manufacturers to hire the laid-off workers. But the manufacturers refused, because they were all part of a single association. That’s when the union declared a general strike on March 18, 1891. All the cap makers struck: the cutters, the operators, the blockers, the finishers, and the trimmers. They were very well-organized by the union president, A. Menke, and his comrades. But the strike was lost when the owners contracted the work out to scabs. That caused the union to fall apart, and it was a severe blow to the Jewish labor movement. The bosses refused to hire back any of the union members, and working conditions in the factories deteriorated badly. There was no more hope of earning of sixty to seventy dollars a week, as during the “Nellie Bly” fashion days. Cap makers were now making ten to fifteen dollars a week, and that was only if they worked ten-hour days and brought home more work to be done by themselves and their wives at night.
Two years later, at the start of 1893, the Cloth Hat and Cap Makers’
Union was reborn as Local Number 2. Its leaders were H. Goldreich, A. Kirschner, S. Typograph, M. Zimmerman, and J. Schwarz. Unlike the union of 1874, whose members were mostly German Jews, the union of 1893 was made up mostly of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian Jews, including many radicals. I remember that Goldreich was one of its most able activists. I had known him since 1888, and later we were both in Branch 8 of the Socialist Labor Party. At meetings of Cap Maker’s Local 1, I noticed that most people were very attentive when Goldreich spoke from the platform, and they took his advice. He was very influential in the union. Many of us knew that he had been born in Russian Poland but that in 1871 he had fought on the barricades with the Commune in Paris.
Comrade Goldreich was a wonderful activist and, although he was a common factory worker, he played a very important role as one of
the three founders of the Arbeter ring in 1892. He died in New York in June 1929.
M. Zimmerman was another cap maker, also a common worker, who played an important part. Born in Poland, he had little education, but he had leadership qualities. He was a leader among his union coworkers, not a paid official. His words roused their enthusiasm for struggling toward a better life. He devoted his time and health to the union and worked hard every evening, until he grew sick and died before his time. In 1890 I met a young cap maker from southern Russia named S.
Typograph, who had been a worker back home. He was very active in the union and eventually became its manager. Many in the union loved him, but others opposed him because they thought him somewhat dictatorial. For a long time he was a supporter of DeLeon. Quite a lot of the cap makers were members of the SLP at the time.
The UHT helped reorganize Local 2, and by April 1894 it had about 600 members. They won many strikes and lost others. But the cap makers held fast to their own union, and that year Local 2 of New York launched a campaign to organize the entire trade and to unite all the cap makers in the country into an international union. A convention was held with the aim of attracting all the cap makers’ unions of Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities. The manufacturers were not happy that the union was growing in strength again, so they tried their best to make things difficult. In 1895 they announced a lockout, declaring that they wanted “independent” plants, meaning “open shops” for scabs. About 600 operators went on strike, along with about 200 other workers in the industry. Although the cap makers struggled bravely and fiercely, they lost the strike. Local 2 was badly hit, but the workers held on to their union, not as in 1892 after the Nellie Bly Strike disaster. Because of the blow to Local 2, the effort to form an international union was delayed.
The cap makers’ unions revived in 1897, with a series of strikes.
One of the biggest, against the Simonson Cap Company, was for union recognition. It was only partly successful. That was the year of the schism among Jewish Socialists between the DeLeon “loyalists” and the Forverts faction, which all the Jewish unions were drawn into. Most of the United Hebrew Trades unions sided with the Forverts group despite the fact that they belonged to the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, which was the cause of the schism. Even unions that did not agree completely with the Forverts faction left the UHT.
For a time the leaders of the cap makers, Typograph, Hinder, and Goldreich, stayed with the SLP and its Yiddish newspaper, the Abend-Blat, but there were many in the membership who sided with the Forverts. The leaders of that group were Jarchowsky, Schwarz, Abelson, and Aronson. The strife between the two sides in the union lasted for a long time until a meeting was held at which the union decided to pull out of the UHT and join with the Forverts Association. The SLP leaders of Local 2 withdrew from activities in the union. That internal dissension again weakened the union.
For a time the leaders of the cap makers, Typograph, Hinder, and Goldreich, stayed with the SLP and its Yiddish newspaper, the Abend-Blat, but there were many in the membership who sided with the Forverts. The leaders of that group were Jarchowsky, Schwarz, Abelson, and Aronson. The strife between the two sides in the union lasted for a long time until a meeting was held at which the union decided to pull out of the UHT and join with the Forverts Association. The SLP leaders of Local 2 withdrew from activities in the union. That internal dissension again weakened the union.