A Matter of Moral Justice
Authors: Carson Matter 
Published: January 2022

A Matter of Moral Justice explores the little-studied power laundry industry and its workers, beginning with the birth of the industry at the turn of the twentieth century and concluding with an epilogue on the state of the industry in the early twenty-first century. While providing a broad overview of working conditions, the book focuses on the activism of Black women, who by 1930 comprised a significant proportion of the power laundry workforce. In the urban industrial North, where the industry flourished, Black women eager to escape domestic service actively sought jobs in power laundries, taking their place, albeit on the lowest rungs, on the industrial ladder. This book examines the working conditions and occupational structure in the laundry industry and then narrows the focus to New York City, a leading center of the industry and one of the few places where the workers won union representation. The workers’ campaign spanned many decades and elicited the intervention of some of New York’s most prominent laborites, including New York Women’s Trade Union League president Rose Schneiderman; Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America president Sidney Hillman and his partner and fellow labor leader, Bessie Hillman; Negro Labor Committee president Frank Crosswaith; and a cadre of committed communist and African American organizers. The campaign took place during a period of cataclysmic change for American workers, one that saw the birth and growth of industrial feminism; the Great Migration of more than six million Black southerners to the urban industrial centers of the North and West; the rise of the “New Negro,” inspired by mass migration, Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalist movement, and the explosion of Black trade unionism; the emergence of the CIO and New Deal Order; the heyday of Communist Party organizing; two world wars; and the burgeoning civil rights and women’s movements. This book locates the women’s activism within the context of these movements, which inspired and shaped their organizing and to which they contributed. The book explores the multitude of factors that led to unionization in 1937, including the Wagner Act, the emergence of the CIO, communist organizing, and, most importantly, the militant and interracial organizing of the workers themselves. The final third of the book explores what happened to the workers once they organized under the ACWA-affiliated Laundry Workers Joint Board and thus provides an opportunity to assess the relationship between the industrial union movement and women and people of color employed in the traditionally low-wage industrial service sector. Following LWJB as it transitioned from its radical, grassroots, community-based origins into a bureaucratic organization led by white men illuminates some of the limitations of the industrial union movement for women and people of color but also demonstrates how Black working-class women overcame seemingly insurmountable odds and used the openings provided to mobilize in pursuit of equal treatment and dignity at work. Their stories challenge assumptions about worker passivity and about the inability of the most exploited to organize. Resurrecting these moments of resistance complicates the history of the industrial union movement and provides insights on organizing in the twenty-first century, when women and people of color in the postindustrial service and care sectors have been leading some of the most militant battles for economic and social justice. This story then contributes to our understanding of how race and gender shape working conditions, the formulation of union tactics, and the struggle for union control and union power in modern America.