BLOUSEMAKERS' STRIKE

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 25

BLOUSEMAKERS' STRIKE

NEW YORK, January Miss Anne Morgan, a daughter of Mr I’ierpont Morgan, has raised £250.00C capital, and proposes opening a factory that will employ 10,000 trade unionist blousemakei's. Chiefly in consequence of the' wards of exhortation addressed to them by Mr Gompors, the Labour leader,.. 20,000 girls between the ages of 17 and 20 are enjoying- a great holiday in the streets of tho East Side of New York. They are on strike for -shorter hours and larger wages, and while they are promenading in their bast clothes 150 blouse factories and shop,* are forced to suspend operations. One-half of the 40,000 New York blousemakers who had voted in favour of a. strike left their work before noon on 23rd November. The question of what to do with the great army of blouse girls that poured into Clinton Hall made the leaders desperate. The understanding had been that the workers would report at the factories at the usual hour and leave work at 10 a.m. at a signal from a representative of the union. Then they were to -bo assigned to the 20 halls which had been engaged as strike headquarters. When the signal wrs given, however, the employees rushed pell-mell to Clinton Hall. The committee appointed to manage the strike had their hands full. The men begged the women to go away and return later. Then the employers began to arrive to settle, and hundreds of nonunion girls who thad joined the strikers appeared to ask how they could be enrolled in tho union. Miss Mary E. Dreier, president of the Women’s Trade Union League, which is taking a hand in the strike, managed to get into the corridor, and with her assistance in the way of pleading a passage-way, was cleared. In- tho meantime headquarters for strikers had been established in tho various halls, where shop meetings were also held. Tho strike leaders reported that 11 employers had signed agreements. Each factory had its own scale of prices, but there are general, demands which apply to all. These are a 52-hour working week, payment for legal holidays, against more than two hours a day overtime, and that the piece-workers get 20 per cent, and week-workers 15 per cent, advance in wages.