The daily worker., 1925-09-26


open shops. What use of such an ag-
reement which ties our hands?
liver since then there has been
~ the small little open shop-not
the open shop so you Immediately
know where it is-but a hole in Har-
lem, two rooms in the back of some
yard, or downtown Green Street,
where employers moved it, rotten, dir
ty, everything already something
of the past. If they would take a nice
big loft we would know about it, so
they take little holes where we could
not know and it would take us some
time to find out. So our people are
now working under the most miser-
able conditions. no ventilation, no
air, fire traps. The employers get
those who have just come from the
other side,-get them and teach them
and exploit them to the worst extent
because they do not know any better.
Il was shop chairman. If ordered
a stoppage the employer had a perfect
right to discharge me. But we said
we would not work unless we see
everytime they cut something we have
it. So we made a stoppage in the
shop and we managed it so that 1
didn't get fired, either The Associa-
ton sent letter demanding that either
we be put back to work or send other
workers on our jobs. The executive
took it up and sent a committee to
make us go to work. We explained
we cannot and will not work unless
we know we get everything that is
cut. We had gone back once or twice
with the boss's promise to give us
everything, but always he cheated us.
THERE was a conference in Bos-
= ton and l and two members of
the executive went and explained the
situation. The question is: Are we
to sit eight months in a shop and not
make living? We had a fight and
l cried,-I was so much younger then;
would notacry3 todayllu (Her black.
eyes flashed true, she would not cry
today. We came back and continued
the strike; finally, the boss came and
held up his hands, and said Honor
able peace!' and we came to an ag-
reement.
These little shops became a great
detriment. In the beginning a few
here and few there, and because the
union did nothing to check them they
sprang up everywhere, with these
terrible conditions, competing with
the big shop, and many employers
went into jobbing SO the big shop
went out gradually safely to say
more than one half the industry is
jobbing. We call them bedroom shops
-cockroach shops.
"a room like this would be a big
shop, and with all pressing machines
and everything, how can you have
it sanitary? You will find that many
of them are going into the business
with $500 that they sometime borrow
from loan associations and many of
our people are losing their pay after
working for a few weeks for such
little employers. And, too the unions
have the problem of having to organ
ize five or six hundred new shops and
also having many of our workers not
only have to work in these miser-
able conditions, but pay not secure
many lose their last few cents.
"TITHAT can the union do to elimin-
w ate those conditions? They
say: Yes, true, but we cannot do any
thing. We say: We have to begin
to have another policy and see to it
that we do organization work all the
year round by our own people Not
by those, as they have it, who are not
Of the trade. Up to 1919 our own
people did organizing work. They
would say to me- We need six or
eight people to go to Brooklyn. And
would go. 1t was more quiet then;
once had to hit man with my um-
brelIa, but would do that only when
necessary.