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                                    -- Labor Movement History--20th Century (under construction)

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PictureChildren during 'March of the Mill Children' in 1903 led by labor activist Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones which began in Philadelphia, crossed New Jersey and ended in unsuccessful attempt to meet President Theodore Roosevelt at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and seek his support for laws restricting work hours and improving workplace safety. Image: BlueJersey.com
  -- Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children

       On July 7, 1903, labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the March of the Mill Children, starting in Philadelphia and walking more than 100 miles over three weeks to President Teddy Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, with most of their route crossing New Jersey. Jones sought to focus public outrage on the conditions of textile mills, with 46,000 workers then on strike in Philadelphia, and particularly on child labor in mills and factories during a period when more than 15% of children under 16 were working.

       Along their way, the young marchers were fed and given places to sleep by union members and other supporters in Trenton, Princeton, and New Brunswick, and rallies attracting thousands were held in  the factory centers of Elizabeth, Newark, Paterson, Passaic and Jersey City. Following a torchlight parade through Manhattan in which Jones put the children in animal cages to dramatize management treatment of their workers, the sixty remaining marchers reached Roosevelt's home, but were turned away by his staff without seeing the President. Despite the rebuff by Roosevelt, the March did help to build public awareness and support for reform.
*  March of the Mill Children by Gail Friedman, Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
In 1904, the year after the March of the Children, the National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed, with its key backers including former President Grover Cleveland, who had retired to live in Princeton after leaving office in 1897. Perhaps the most effective step by the Committee was retaining photographer Lewis Hine to illustrate child labor conditions throughout the country, with some of his most dramatic photos taken in glass-blowing plants in South Jersey and the streets of Newark. By publishing information on the lives and working conditions of young workers, it helped to mobilize popular support for state-level child labor laws. These laws were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to keep children in school and out of the paid labor market until a specified age (usually 12, 14, or 16 years.)Despite the rebuff from the President, the March did help to build public awareness and support for reform. From the beginning of industrialization in the United States, factory owners often hired young workers. They were working with their parents at textile mills, helping fix machinery at factories and reaching areas too small for an adult to work. For many families child labor was a way to keep hand to mouth.
In 1904, the first organization dedicated to the regulation of a child labor appeared. The National Child Labor Committee published information about working conditions and contributed to state-level laws on child labor which typically set minimum ages for child workers and mandated compulsory education.


As the United States industrialized, factory owners hired young workers for a variety of tasks. Especially in textile mills, one of New Jersey's leading employers, children were often hired together with their siblings and parents. Employers also found that their small size could be utilized to fix machinery in cramped spaces more difficult for grown adults to access. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities.


The National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904, and included among its key backers former President Grover Cleveland, who had retired to a home in Princeton after leaving office in 1897. Perhaps the most effective step by the Committee was retaining photographer Lewis Hine to illustrate child labor conditions throughout the country, with some of his most dramatic photos taken in glass-blowing plants in South Jersey and the streets of Newark. By publishing information on the lives and working conditions of young workers, it helped to mobilize popular support for state-level child labor laws. These laws were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to keep children in school and out of the paid labor market until a specified age (usually 12, 14, or 16 years.)
In 1916, the NCLC and the National Consumers League successfully pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating–Owen Act, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. It was the first federal child labor law. However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), declaring that the law violated the Commerce Clause by regulating intrastate commerce. In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped.
It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children.

Even with new restrictions, New Jersey law was only intermittently enforced, and major exceptions remained. Child labor, for example, was allowed for work at home contracted by factories, and many families put children to work. A report published in 1928 by the federal Children's Bureau, for example, found that in one New Jersey home children as young as three were engaged in work at home for textile mills. Contracts from out-of-state manufacturers also contributed to to the unregulated use of child labor, as the federal report continued: "Manufacturers shipping home work into New Jersey from Pennsylvania and New York, as employers residing outside the state, can seldom if ever be prosecuted under the New Jersey laws regulating industrial home work, and as regards work shipped into New Jersey, they are beyond the jurisdiction of the home-work laws of their own states."
*  Child Labor in New Jersey. Part II. Children Engaged in Industrial Home Work by Mary Skinner US Children's Bureau 1928) Social Service Review 1929, University of Chicago Press.
In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor. However, The 1938 labor law giving protections to working children excludes agriculture. As a result, approximately 500,000 children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the United States.
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Night scene at Wheaton Glass in Millville in 1909. Image: Lewis Hine Collection-Library of Congress
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Newsboys in Newark in 1909. Image: Lewis Hine Collection-Library of Congress
PictureBoys working at night in Arcade Bowling Alley in Trenton in 1909. Image: Lewis Hine Collection-Library of Congress
-- Woodrow Wilson as President

        Early in 1910, Woodrow Wilson resigned as president of Princeton University to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New Jersey, Although Wilson initially was viewed skeptically by labor leaders, he endorsed a progressive program--previously advocated on a national basis by Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan and Robert La Follette--focusing on business regulation and protection of worker rights that gradually won their support, aiding his securiing the nomination and his election.

​       After taking office in January 1911, Wilson focused on four major state reforms—reforming the election laws to reduce the power of political bosses, a corrupt practices act, reforming practices relating to compensating workers fro injuries on the job,  and establishing a commission to regulate utilities. While governor, Wilson oversaw the creation of the very first workers’ compensation system in the country.  Before the implementation of that revolutionary program, employers could use a number of defenses to escape having to pay for injuries and medical costs, such as claiming that negligence of the worker or a co-worker contributed to any extent to the injury or that the injury was a “natural risk” of the job.  Under the law signed by Wilson, these defenses were eliminated and a system of assured employer-financed medical care put in place regardless of fault without the need to resort to the courts in exchange for workers’ relinquishing the right to sue for a higher judgement.

​In addition, he pushed through Congress the Clayton Antitrust Act making certain business practices illegal, such as price discrimination, agreements prohibiting retailers from handling other companies' products, and directorates and agreements to control other companies. The power of this legislation was greater than that of previous anti-trust laws since it dictated accountability of individual corporate officers and clarified guidelines. This law was considered the "Magna Carta" of labor by Samuel Gompers because it specifically exempted unions from being charged, as they had pursuant to the Sherman Anitrust Act of 1890,  for such activities as engaging in organizing drives, strikes, picketing and collective bargaining. The Act expressly declared "that the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce," thus allowing unions to pursue joint actions and practices barred to business entities.  and permit[ting] labor organizations to carry out their legitimate objective". Therefore, boycotts, peaceful strikes, peaceful picketing, and collective bargaining are not regulated by this statute. Injunctions could be used to settle labor disputes only when property damage was threatened.In 1916, under threat of a national railroad strike, Wilson approved legislation that increased wages and cut working hours of railroad employees; there was no strike.[146
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was created by Wilson to strengthen and clarify the earlier Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It prohibited some monopolies from forming and also protected the labor unions and farmers' organizations from being prosecuted for organizing. Since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, courts in the United States had interpreted the law on cartels as applying against trade unions. This had created an impossible situation for workers, who needed to organize so as to rebalance the equal bargaining power against their employers. The Sherman Act had also triggered the largest wave of mergers in US history, as businesses realized that instead of creating a cartel they could simply fuse into a single corporation, and have all the benefits of market power that a cartel could bring.
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 was put into place to prevent companies from employing child labor, which was detrimental to children. The act was ruled unconstitutional, and a concrete child labor amendment was not passed until 1938.
The Adamson Act was passed in response to railroad workers threatening a nationwide strike unless they were given an eight-hour work day, while still being paid for 10 hours. The act stopped the strike at the last minute. Wilson also passed the Workingmen's Compensation Act of 1916, which provided financial assistance to federal employees who were injured and unable to work for a time. This was a precursor to workers compensation for all employees.
In 1940, New Jersey's child labor laws were tightened. The new laws mandated that children remain in school until age 16 and required all under 18 to obtain working papers from school supervisors or teachers, ending the prior practice which allowed  those 14 and over who had completed eighth grade or those 15 and over who had finished sixth grade to work full-time.
PictureImage: VoicesofLabor.com
On Saturday morning of November 26, 1910, six young women burned to death and 19 more died when they leapt from the windows of a blazing factory in Newark. The four-story building, with wooden floors and stairs, housed separate businesses making paper boxes, electrical products and underwear. The building quickly caught fire when a worker at the electrical firm putting a lamp together accidentally sparked a flame, and her boss unsuccessfully tried to put out the fire with sand, delaying calling for help from firemen assigned to a fire-engine across the street and a truck and ladder around the corner. When the firemen finally arrived, they found that their ladder could not be raised above the third floor. Those trapped on the fourth floor found their way down through a narrow passage blocked by a locked door--a common practice at the time to keep workers from taking breaks--with six girls dying from smoke or burns and another nineteen killed as a result of jumping from the fourth-story windows. Of the six dead, three were sisters of the Gottlieb family aged 26, 20 and 18. The fire made national news and more that 100,000 people came the next day to view the site. A coroner’s jury a month later deemed the fire the result of human error: “They died from misadventure and accident.”

​Some four months after the Newark fire, on March 25, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in Manhattan killed 145 workers, with the number of deaths attributed, as in Newark, to inadequate safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the international Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for workers.brought wider attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers.– 1910
​* 1910 Newark Factory Fire by Glenn G. Geisheimer, VirtualNewarkNJ.com
​*  Newark's 1910 High Street Factory Fire by Gordon Bond, GardenStateLegacy.com
*  In Newark, Wresting a Fatal Factory Fire From Oblivion, 2/23/2011, NY Times
-- Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
PictureWorkers listening to leaders speaking on balcony of the Botto House in Haledon, now the American Labor Museum. Image: American Labor Museum

        The most famous strike in New Jersey's history, and one that drew national attention, began on February 25, 1913 and continued for nearly five months, at its peak shutting down over three hundred Paterson silk mills and idling some 25,000 workers.

       
      
       The strike followed another well-known walkout in the year before at textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, organized by the International Workers of the World. The Lowell strike ended after the mill owners garnted substantial raises following outrage at the hours and pay in the mills, along with the living conditions in the company=sponsored housing provided the families of the labor force. During the Lowell strike, its leaders sent hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New Jersey, New York and other states, a move which generated widespread public support.

       The Paterson conflict was sparked when broad-silk weavers protested an increase in loom assignments from two to four. As skilled workers, the broad-silk weavers had fought since the 1880s for control over the rate of production, but mill owners were eager to introduce new machinery to increase productivity and match competitors in other states who were implementing the four-loom system.

​       With new prestige gained from their role in the Lowell strike, the leaders of the International Workers of the World also came to organize the workers, who found other support from the Communist Party. Unlike the older crafts unions, the IWW also pushed for unity among skilled and unskilled workers, as well as encouraging leadership by women both within the workplace and on the picket lines. Under the IWW's leadership, the Paterson workers, skilled and unskilled, united to create a broader list of demands ranging from  preventing the youngest children from being hired, to improving safety to establishing a minimum wage. Other workers at mills throughout the city, including  unskilled helpers, quickly joined the strike, with mass outdoor meetings held by strike leaders to update workers and announce new plans.

       As the strike dragged on into the spring, on June 7 the "Pageant of the Paterson Strike" was performed by over a thousand workers in Madison Square Garden in Manahttan recreating the incidents leading to the walkout, generating broader public interest and generating new financial aid from prominent intellectuals, celebrities, socialists and communists. The strike leaders also reached out for help from the International Workers of the World, the fast-growing labor organization which also had supported the Lowell strike. The demands of the Paterson weavers to control their own work also fit with a primary goal of the IWW to promote democratic management of the workplace and an expanded political role for labor. Broader support for the workers was drwn from intellectuals and celebrities, as well as organization of socialists and communists. Two weeks into the strike, all types of weavers united to create a list of demands directed to mill owners and employers, ranging from minimum age restrictions to protect children to abolishing the multiple-loom systems to ensure the presence of jobs.[11] Manufacturers responded with a seven-part statement regarding the economic unviability of the demands, among other concerns.[14]Ultimately, the strike ended in failure on July 8, 1913. Scholars cite an important reason for this failure as Paterson’s necessary adaptation to the new machinery and new economics of the silk industry. Manufacturers would not acquiesce to the demands of strikers because they simply could not. Without producing goods at competitive prices through new machinery and cheap labor, they would otherwise have been put out of business by firms in Pennsylvania.[
Many of the silk workers had brought militant traditions of struggle with them from European textile centers; in Paterson they had welded their traditions together. The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) organizers whom they invited to help them in 1913 -- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, and Bill Haywood -- added some traditions of their own. Flynn held successful weekly meetings for women only. With I.W.W. encouragement, Italian and Jewish women like Carrie Golzio and Hannah Silverman joined the traditional local leadership of male weavers (Adolf Lessig, Louis Magnet, Evald Koettgen). I.W.W. organizers stressed that the active role played by rank-and-file silk strikers in the management of their strike was training for the democratic management of industry and society.
*  American Labor Museum
*  Paterson Museum

Silent movie produced to build public support for workers during 1926 Passaic Textile Strike

-- 1926 Passaic textile strike

​Paterson's neighbor of Passaic in Passaic County also was the site for the start of one of the longest strikes to that point in the nation's history, which ultimately saw over 15,000 woolen mill workers in Passaic, Paterson, Clifton and Lodi stop work over wage and hour issues in several factories.

​        The strike had been sparked when Botany Worsted Mills, Passaic's largest plant, first reduced work hours and then cut wages by 10%--a move quickly copied by management at the other mills. A state report in 1925 found that the average annual wages of male textile workers ranged from $1,000 to $1,200, while female workers typically earned from $800 to $1,000 during a period when the government concluded that a $1,400 yearly income was necessary to maintain a basic "American standard of living."
  • Sophie Cohen, a Jewish immigrant teenager in Paterson, New Jersey remembered attending IWW picnics, dances, and mass meetings when she was fifteen. She and her teenage friends went on to attempt to organize the mills where they worked:

I wasn’t an official organizer, but when I became a weaver, a girlfriend and I would take jobs in unorganized factories and try to organize them. We would refuse the four looms, saying it was too much for us. Because we were young girls, we were permitted to work only two. After a few weeks, we would hand out leaflets and call for an organizing meeting. We looked so innocent that the managers never thought we were capable of even believing in a union
*  Stewart Bird, Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW (Chicago: Lake View Press, 1985), at p. 67.

-- New Technology and Manufacturing

        In the 1920s, New Jersey's economy also became increasingly influenced by major manufacturing operations using new technology both in products and the means of production. Thomas Edison, who relocated his laboratory from Menlo Park in Middlesex County to West Orange, continued to develop and market his inventions and adaptations in the generation and distribution of electricity and in consumer products such as the light bulb and the phonograph. Henry Ford, who began his career as an employee of one of Edison's companies in the Midwest, established his largest assembly plant in Edgewater. The aircraft companies founded by the Wright brothers and the pilot Glenn Wright would join in 1929 to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which would produce thousands of planes and engines in New Jersey into the 1950s. The Radio Corporation of America

        The walkout began on January 25, 1926, and was organized by  a "United Front Committee" formed by the Trade Union Educational League of the Workers Party, a Communist group. When a stalemate developed with management, the workers voted in August to drop the Communist United Front Committee and have the United Textile Workers of America, an affiliate of the anti-Communist American Federation of Labor, take over the strike. Nonetheless, the strike dragged on into the fall  and continued into the following year, finally ending only on March 1, 1927, when the last mill being picketed signed a contract with the striking workers. The remaining Communist influence in the plants, however, would continue to have an impact after the strike; in 1928, the national leadership of the United Textile Workers expelled the entire Passaic local
Roosevelt strike
Prior to last October, the employees working in this plant (known as the Williams & Clark Co.) received a wage of $2.00 a day, which wage they succeeded in establishing by a strike in 1912. Although it had been agreed that a month's notice was to be given by either party desiring a change, this fertilizer company, on a four days’ notice, reduced the wages of its employes to $1.60 a day. This reduction in wages was made during a dull period in this trade and the employees accepted the reduction without serious protest on the assurance that commencing January 1 of this year the $2.00 a day wage would be restored.Prior to last October, the employes working in this plant (known as the Williams & Clark Co.) received a wage of $2.00 a day, which wage they succeeded in establishing by a strike in 1912. Although it had been agreed that a month's notice was to be given by either party desiring a change, this fertilizer company, on a four days’ notice, reduced the wages of its employes to $1.60 a day. This reduction in wages was made during a dull period in this trade and the employes accepted the reduction without serious protest on the assurance that commencing January 1 of this year the $2.00 a day wage would be restored.
On January 1 the company again failed in the promise to its employes. So on January 3 the employes went out on strike to compel a restoration of their former wage. What followed thereafter is only a repetition of scenes and events which transpired in West Virginia, Calumet, Mich., and Colorado. Instead of an industrial conflict, we find an “industrial war." Nine days after the inauguration of the strike, approximately 200 strikers met a train at the depot, located near the Williams & Clark plant. These strikers anticipated the arrival of strike breakers and they hoped to enlist the sympathetic response of these men in their cause. Upon arrival of the train, a committee of the strikers, with the permission of the train crew, went through the train. As the committee reported that no strikebreakers were on the train, the enthusiastic strikers set up a shout of satisfaction. The message “No scabs have arrived" filled every one of these industrial warriors with joy. To them, this pleasant incident meant new hope, greater encouragement—ultimate success of restoring the $2.00 a day wage. Little did these strikers realize that this enjoyment and pleasure, hope and ambition would soon end in a tragedy—in the loss of life and blood. Without provocation and immediately following their shout of exultation, about thirty deputies (hired gunmen from New York City), under the cloak of official authority, rushed out from the Williams & Clark plant, pounced upon the strikers and deliberately shot right and left to kill and maim these peaceful citizens.
When the one-sided battle was over two strikers were found dead and over twenty-five men injured and maimed. Two indisputable facts have since been clearly established; first, that not one of the deputies was injured to the slightest degree—not even scratched: secondly, that all the wounds inflicted on the strikers were located in their backs and legs. In addition, the chief of police, who immediately after the shooting searched over 150 strikers, declared that not one of the strikers was armed or carried a weapon of any kind.

On January 1 the company again failed in the promise to its employees. So on January 3 the employees went out on strike to compel a restoration of their former wage.19 January 1915 (United States)
Twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey.New Jersey long has played a prominent role in the history of organized labor. The founders of the IWW were looking for a new model of unionism, one that rejected the backwardness of the then-dominant American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Great Depression
 The October 1929 stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression which would continue until World War II. At its depth, the jobless in New Jersey ranged between a quarter to a third of its workforce, with African American unemployed estimated at over half of workers.  New Jersey per capita income fell from $839 in 1929 to $433 in 1933 and some 140 banks closed between 1928 and 1933. New Jersey's state government issued begging licenses to the poor because the New Jersey government funds were being exhausted. Under the Works Progress Administration, part of the Second New Deal by FDR, many new jobs were provided in order to support the poor and unemployed. These projects included the expansion of Fort Dix, Roosevelt Park in Edison, and Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.

The primary New Jersey contact for dispensing New Deal projects and funds was Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague. Although he had supported New York City Mayor Al Smith against Roosevelt for the presidential nomination at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Hague had quckly repaired his relationship with FDR, hosting him in New Jersey at a swing through the state which was capped by a rally in Spring Lake In Jersey City political boss Frank Hague secured the construction the Medical Center, the Armory, and Roosevelt Stadium. Strikes also grew common during the Great Depression; in 1937 a group of gravediggers from New Jersey went on strike.
PictureJohn L. Lewis. Image: voicesoflabor.com
Founding of Congress of Industrial Organizations

United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis. In October 1935, the American Federation of Labor met for its annual convention at the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City. Lewis and others proposed motions in favor of industrial unionism, which were voted down or ruled out of order. When "Big Bill" Hutcheson of the Carpenters Union also challenged a leader allied with Lewis who rose to speak by raising another point of order, Lewis shouted at Hutcheson, with their exchange escalating to the point that Lewis threw a punch which sent Hutcheson sprawling.

A month later, the industrial unionists, led by Lewis, founded the Committee on Industrial Organization as a coalItion within the AFL, but soon established it as an independent federation renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations after the AFL expelled the leading CIO unions. In the 1930s and 1940s, the CIO led successful  drives to organize the auto, steel, rubber, oil, chemical, trucking, and electrical industries. In some labor sector, such as the fast-growing service industries, the tow competed directly against each other; in 1937, for example, the CIO founded the State, County and Municipal Workers of American to oppose the AFL's American Federal State, County, and Municipal Employees. 
​*  Today in Labor History, VoicesofLabor.com

-- World War II
After the United States entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941, New Jersey industries quickly shifted to military production. The state already was a major aircraft producer through the plants of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in Paterson, Woodridge and Caldwell, and during the war it became the largest supplier of engines to the military. The complex in Woodridge on its own had at its peak over 27,000 workers and operated 24 hours a day, with its importance to the war effort demonstrated by its being guarded by anti-aircraft guns and being built with three-foot thick concrete walls. Less than a week after the Pearl Harbor attack, the General Motors plant in Ewing, which had been making car components such as trim moldings and door locks, started its conversion, opening a month later as a joint facility operated by Eastern Aircraft and Gruman Aviation making the new Avenger torpedo bomber to support the upcoming US counter-offensive in the Pacific. By the end of the war in August 1945, some 7,800 Avengers made in Ewing had been produced, including the one flown by future President George H.W. Bush when he was shot down over the Pacific in 1944.
All the city's big plants converted from civilian to military production: John A. Roebling's Sons; Thermoid Rubber; Crescent Wire; Philco; American Steel and Wire, Switlik Parachute. New companies sprang up, too: the naval turbine contractor, Delaval; several extensions of General Electric's Philadelphia plant, and dozens of chemical-makers. Then came Pearl Harbor.
The parachute which George Bush used to bail out of his Avenger also was made in New Jersey, indeed near to the Ewing plane plant at the Switlik Parachute & Equipment Co. in Trenton. Founded in 1920 by Polish immigrant Stanley Switlik, the company had made parachutes for such air pioneers as Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhardt and Richard Byrd and by the beginning of the war was providing some 70% of the parachutes used by the military. Its wartime production ramped up to turn out 2,500 parachutes a week with a workforce of 1,200, almost all of them women seamstresses. The Switlik parachute was believed to have saved the lives of more than 5,000 pilots

*  1925: The chute that saved 5,000 lives by Jon Blackwell, CapitalCentury.com, Trentonian
In the 1930′s, with a new name, Switlik Parachute & Equipment Company became the largest manufacturer of parachutes in the country. was producing 70 percent of the military's parachutes. Switlik also organized the "Caterpillar Club," named after the critters that produce parachute silk, for all fliers who bailed out safely in an emergency.

At its peak, Switlik turned out 2,500 parachutes a week ? now made from, nylon instead of Japanese silk ? and employed 1,200, almost all of them women seamstresses
    Suddenly, Bodine's labor was in demand — and now he was earning, not $12 a week, but $12 a day.

    He was assigned to a "crabbing crew," a group of troubleshooters who re-engineered deficient parts on finished aircraft. In November 1942, he was there as the first Avenger rolled off the assembly line.

   

​Women made up more than half the 8,000-strong work force at Roebling, Trenton's biggest industry. They prepared paperwork, cleaned floors, hauled steel and operated the machines that churned out steel airplane directional wires, assembly rods, radio antennae and anti-sub netting. All the while, they tried to scrounge up enough money to feed a family where the man of the house had left to fight a war.

*  Curtiss-Wright Facility in Woodridge, LostinJersey.com
PictureWorkers with rolls of finished silk in Paterson silk factory in 1914. Image: Library of Congress
New Jersey shipyards were responsible for the construction of many naval ships, including battleships, aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers and destroyers. New Jersey received 9% of all allied war-related contracts throughout the World War II era. During the war, Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth County was opened for naval production, which provided ships with a safe port to take on ammunition. A German U-boat (U-869) was sunk off the coast of New Jersey in 1945.

Camp Kilmer was a staging area near New Brunswick serving the port of New York. Buildings were painted such that they had a camouflage effect. Camp Kilmer helped to serve troops by offering medical care and providing them with supplies. Camp Kilmer became inactive in 1949 but was reactivated for the Korean War. It again became inactive in 1955, but was reactivated for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Fort Dix was opened again for the training of soldiers for the war effort. Nearly 500,000 soldiers enlisted for the war,  leading many women to take jobs in their husbands’ absences.

PictureNotice of mass meeting called by Communist Party and support of National Textile Workers Union in 1932. Image: Library of Congress
19 January 1915 (United States)
Twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey.New Jersey long has played a prominent role in the history of organized labor. The founders of the IWW were looking for a new model of unionism, one that rejected the backwardness of the then-dominant American Federation of Labor (AFL). 3 July 1835 (United States)
1879, the Federation of Trades & Labor Unions of New Jersey was born, a full seven years before Samuel Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In its early years, the Federation was a leader in the early fight for factory safety laws – including one law that mandated fire escapes and adequate ventilation at workplaces, some 30 years before the fatal Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City brought the issue to the nation’s attention.


ust before Independence Day, they began a strike demanding shorter hours. They also demanded an end to the use of fines to enforce discipline in the mills, wage withholding, and the company store system in the town. In support of the strikers, an organization called the Paterson Association for the Protection of the Working Class was established. They also received monetary support from workers in Newark and New York City.[2] lthough the strike was broken, it achieved a significant reduction in work hours. According to historians David Roediger and Philip Foner, "...the strike, which added a dozen hours to each worker's weekly leisure, must have been counted a success by the children initiating it."[2]
Founded in 1886, the AFL surpassed the declining Knights of Labor to become the one large union federation in the US by the twentieth century boasting nearly two million members by 1904, but it was plagued with problems7.towards the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of the wage system. Since its first convention in 1905, the IWW had picked up thousands of new members through new organizing and new affiliations, but by the end of the faction fights in 1908, membership in what was left of the IWW again numbered some five to six thousand.20 And the IWW was still losing plenty of strikes for every victory, as in the large Paterson, New Jersey silk strike which went down to defeat only a year after Lawrence, or the defeat of the rubber workers strike 1886 (United States)
1887 (United States)1919 January 1915 (United States)

In spite of labor successes in organizing New Jersey workers, its ability to sustain higher wages was undercut as large employers sought cheaper labor elsewhere. For example, when the RCA plant in Camden organized, RCA opened a new production center in the non-union town of Bloomington, Indiana. And when the Bloomington plant unionized, RCA opened a new factory in the open-shop town of Memphis, Tennessee. For much of the 20th century, New Jersey labor faced the real or veiled negotiating threat of plants relocating to other states or countries.


Textile workers fought with police in Passaic, New Jersey. A year-long strike ensued.
1926 (United States)
Passaic, New Jersey, Textile Strike occurred.[27]
Twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey.
Port of New York Longshoremen's Strike occurred.[19]
American Federation of Labor founded. Samuel Gompers served as first president.[19]
As industry developed on a massive scale in the US, the AFL continued to organize along craft lines, leading Wobblies to dub it the “American Separation of Labor.” As early as the 1890s, union militants were demanding a fundamental change in the organizing practices and organizational structure of the AFL. As US capitalism continued to develop and concentrate into enormous corporations and monopolies, it only made sense for the labor movement to organize itself accordingly in order to be able to effectively organize the new mass industries. This wa19 January 1915 (United States)
Twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey.s radically different than the mechanism by which craft unions operated; namely, as a job trust, restricted to the better- off layers of the working class who could afford the high initiation fees, and then could expect to be paid high wages based on the union’s control over the supply of skilled labor.nder Governor Woodrow Wilson, the New Jersey State Federation of Labor was able to pass the nation’s first effective workmen’s compensation law. And the Fede                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ration continued winning victories, including legalizing the right to organize and bargain collectively, raising wages and shortening work hours, banning child labor, and increasing workplace health and safety laws.
In 1939, New Jersey’s second labor federation, the Industrial Union Council, was formed. And it was on September 25, 1961 when more than 3,000 union members packed into a Newark armory to watch as the two organizations formally came together to create the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
On July 8, 1905, after eleven full days of stormy debate and urgent discussion, the Industrial Workers of the World was formed. With most of the unions mentioned above affiliating as well as those connected to the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance (ST&LA) and other small local bodies, the membership in the first few months of the IWW totaled around 5,000 members.5 The Western Federation of Miners would affiliate in 1906, bringing another 22,000 members. A small but new union federation had been created, based on the politics of class struggle and the idea that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”6 IndeedIt was a battle that started after John L. Lewis, the fiery United Mine Workers leader, threw a punch that floored William “Big Bill” Hutcheson, of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, during the 55th national AFL convention in the old Atlantic City Convention Center. Lewis then led his miners and textile workers in a walkout — and launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and an era of sit-down strikes and massive organizing drives.

PictureDelegates to 1946 CIO Convention in Atlantic City on boardwalk front of Convention Hall. Image: University of Massachusetts
Post-war labor unrest

After the end of World War II, labor unrest escalated as issues surfaced that were deferred during the conflict for the sake of the war effort. The security of existing jobs also came under threat from cutbacks in military production and competition from returning veterans.

A few months after Japan surrendered, one of the longest strikes in 1946 began on January 14 at the Phelps Dodge copper wire plant in Elizabeth. The strike was called by Local 41 of the Electrical, Radio and Machinist Workers Union over wages and working conditions, and the walkout saw the company bring in strikebreakers by boat from Brooklyn, with violence leading to the fatal shooting of one striker on a picket line, and several others were injured. In a related tragedy, while folksinger Woody Guthrie sang to an Elizabeth rally at the end of the strike, a fire in his Brooklyn apartment killed his four-year-old daughter


On January 14, 1946 Local 41 of the Electrical, Radio and machinist Workers Union (UE) went on strike over wages and working conditions against the Phelps Dodge Co. copper plant in Elizabeth. The strike closed the plant for 270 days, one of the largest work stoppages of the year, larger even than other substantive coal and steel strikes which usually lasted no more than three months.. The length of the strike, as a function of the ethnic solidarity of the work forces in the city’s neighborhood.

Phelps Dodge first purchased its South Front St property in Elizabeth in 1932 and was a major producer of nonferrous (esp copper) metal goods. It soon expanded its holdings to the entire Bayway Terminal, once used for storing cotton from India and China. Plant officers or employees – over a third were Polish, largely skilled or semiskilled - played little role in civic affairs but invested substantively in industrial sport leagues. Phelps Dodge president resisted negotiation and hired armed Brooklynites, which the union accused of being gangsters led by Mafia figure Anthony Anastasia. One violent confrontation resulted in the gunshot death of worker Mario Russo. The eventual settlement favored the labor union.

Cf. Robert Bruno, "The 1946 Union of Electrical, Radio and machinist Workers’ Strike Against Phelps Dodge Copper Company of Elizabeth New Jersey," Labor History

1948-49 Workers’ strike (5 months) of Elizabeth’s Singer plant, one of the most notable strikes in NJ history, receives support of celebrated folklore singer, Woody Guthrie First built in 1873, the plant at its peak was Elizabeth's largest employer with some 10,000 workers, but had begun a long process of relocating operations to lower-cost sites outside New Jersey, a decline which led to final closing of the plant in 1982.

-1950s

James P Mitchell, (1900-1964) An Elizabeth native, become US Secretary of Labor in 1953 and in the Eisenhower Cabinet He began his political career in 1932 as the Union County supervisor for the New Jersey Relief Administration. Six years later he was appointed to the New York City division of the Works Progress Administration.
When Brehon B. Somerwell went to Washington, D.C. to lead the Army Construction Program, he made Mitchell head of the labor relations division of the Army Construction Program. In 1942 Mitchell became director of industrial personnel for the War Department, in charge of one million men. After World War II he returned to the private sector; in 1947 he was director for labor relations and operations at Bloomingdale Brothers.

Mitchell was a potential running mate for the 1960 Republican presidential candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. However, Nixon chose Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. After an unsuccessful run for Governor of New Jersey in 1961, he retired from politics.In 1953 Mitchell was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Army in charge of manpower and reserve forces affairs. Several months later he was nominated by President Eisenhower to replace Secretary Martin P. Durkin, who had resigned in protest in September 1953.[1]
On October 9, 1953, Mitchell became the Eighth Secretary of Labor and served in that capacity for the remainder of the Eisenhower Administration. He was an advocate of labor--he fought against employment discrimination, opposed right-to-work laws, and was concerned about the plight of migrant workers

The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created in 1953 because of the pervasive corruption on the waterfront in the Port of New York-New Jersey. This corruption was documented in the early 1950's during public hearings held by the New York State Crime Commission with the assistance of the New Jersey Law Enforcement Council.   As a result, in August 1953, the States of New York and New Jersey, with the approval of the Congress and the President of the United States, enacted a compact creating the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
WHY THE COMMISSION WAS CREATED IN 1953
In the early 1950's, an aging freighter, its belly loaded with crates, cartons, barrels and drums, is docked alongside one of the many ancient finger piers jutting into the waters of the Port of New York-New Jersey. At the sound of a whistle blown by a hiring foreman, a semi-circle of apprehensive longshoremen gathers in the hope that they will be selected to unload the vessel.
The foreman, often an ex-felon with a long criminal record, chooses laborers who are willing to "kickback" a portion of their wages for the opportunity to unload the ship, piece by piece. Each hapless dock worker must subject himself to this notorious daily "shape-up" to attain even the possibility of employment. The union, dominated by racketeers and criminals, does little to ease the burden of the rank-and-file worker.
Elsewhere on the pier lurk the loansharks, all too willing to "assist" the underpaid longshoreman in feeding his family or in supporting his vices. The inability to repay these usurious loans results in violent consequences for the longshoreman-borrower. Bookmaking on the pier increases business for the loansharks.
Cargo theft and pilferage are rampant. Pier guards are unwilling or unable to contain thievery.
At the foot of the pier, a parasitic "public loader" coerces truckers to employ him to unload and load trucks, even though the "services" of these loaders are not needed or wanted.
International Workers of the World
n the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of their short-term goals, particularly in the American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries.
The shooting began at once. If those deputies say they fired in the air and that the strikers fired at them first, they lie. The strikers did not fire. They had nothing with which to fire. They simply were butchered. It's impossible to describe how those unarmed defenseless men were shot down. Some ran and escaped injury. Those who were unable to get to high ground made for the swamps, and it was those men that were shot, beaten, and then shot again.
* The Literary Digest, January 30, 1915
*  We Never Forget: The Roosevelt Massacre of January 19, 1915, Daily Kos, 1/26/2015
The Depression

had wiped out jobs, factories and faith in the political system. Trenton's city government was helpless: For the hard winter of 1931-32, Mayor Frederick Donnelly set up a public works program to give jobs to the desperate. It found work for only 500 out of 7,000 unemployed, at $3 a day. Then it ran out of money.

​On April 21, 1936, for the first time since the Revolutionary War, a force calling itself hostile and insurrectionary occupied the state Capitol in Trenton.

Unlike the heavily armed redcoats and Hessians of 1776, however, these invaders were peaceful. They were unemployed men, not professional soldiers, and their only uniform seemed to consist of beat-up suspenders and patched pants.

They sought not to overthrow the government, but to publicize how desperate their condition had become during the Great Depression years and to pressure the Legislature into restoring relief payments to the jobless.

The protesters called themselves the "Army of Unoccupation" and promised not to harm or damage anything -- just sit there. "We'll do just as much as the real Legislature," one of them told the State Gazette. "Nothing."
Merger of New Jersey's AFL and CIO
The New Jersey merger took place five years after the national AFL and CIO federations came together — a decision made after a Republican Congress overrode Democratic President Harry Truman’s veto and passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which sharply restricted the rights of workers to strike, boycott and picket, and allowed the creation of “right to work” states. With Murphy nodding his approval, Jacobson would tell members attending the 1961 convention it was his sincere hope that “New Jersey’s united labor movement will make possible the greatest degree of progress for the cause of the workers of this industrial state.” On September 26, 1961, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, symbolically “tied the knot” linking the hands of AFL leader Vincent Murphy and CIO chief Joel Jacobson.
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/In-The-States/New-Jersey-State-AFL-CIO-50-Years-of-Making-a-Difference
*  New Jersey State AFL-CIO: 50 Years of Making a Difference, Charles Wowkanech and Laurel Brennan, 9/26/2011, AFL-CIO Today
​*  The Importance of Unions, NJ AFL-CIO TODAY
9) 1970 U.S. Postal Strike
> No. of strikers: 210,000
> Period: March, 1970
> Affected area: began in New York City, spread nationwide
During the Nixon administration, U.S. postal workers were not allowed to engage in collective bargaining. Increased dissatisfaction with wages, working conditions, benefits and management led the postal workers in New York City to strike. Encouraged by New Yorks example, postal workers nationwide followed suit. With mail and parcel delivery at a standstill, Nixon ordered the National Guard to replace the striking workers  a measure that proved ineffective. The strike was so effective that within two weeks negotiations took place. The unions demands for higher wages and improved conditions were largely met, and they were granted the right to negotiate.
10) UPS workers strike
> No. of strikers: 185,000
> Period: August 1997
> Affected area: nationwide
The largest strike of the 1990s was lead by 185,000 UPS Teamsters. They were looking for the creation of full-time jobs rather than part-time, increased wages and the retention of their multiemployer pension plan. These workers gained major support from the public and eventually had all of their demands met. UPS, however, lost more than $600 million in business as a result of the ordeal.

Post-war suburban growth

In 1958, William Levitt, who had previously built projects on Long Island and Pennsylvania, built his third Levittown, an 11,000-house project in Willingboro. It was the third Levitt-created city, and the last in the United States—yet every suburban development built since then has borne the imprint of Bill Levitt's dream.
The development was divided into four sections (called Quads I-IV), two on each side of the highway. By the time it was finished in 1975, Twin Rivers consisted of 2,700 housing units, 1,700 of them townhouses.
- Teamsters and organized crime
The 8,000-member Local 560 has been under trusteeship since June 1986, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman that such action was necessary to free the union from mob control.


In appointing a trustee, Ackerman said Local 560 was ''an orgy of criminal activity'' and that members were intimidated to ensure silence. Federal prosecutors had sued under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, charging Local 560 was controlled by organized crime figure Anthony ''Tony Pro'' Provenzano.


Provenzano is serving a 20-year prison term for a racketeering conviction. He has been linked to the unsolved disappearance of national Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
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