Industrialization and Immigration

An Overview of Manufacturing Centers
Paterson had experienced early industrialization because of its great waterfalls, which allowed factories to be powered without waiting for the development of steam or coal power. The Society for Useful Manufactures was established there in the 1700s, and a bustling silk industry grew. Irish and Italian immigrants moved there and it became an early site of labor struggles.

Newark was seen as a "market town" up through the 1830s, selling mostly to the more-rural hinterlands further out in New Jersey. Then, however, there was a shift, and goods were produced more for New York and international markets.

Elizabeth, Trenton and Camden also became more industrialized in the mid-1800s. Some of Camden's main manufactured goods were Campbell's soup, rubber and radios. The great variety of industries in Trenton was famously marked by its bridge bearing the words "Trenton Makes, The World Takes."

Paterson Silk Mills and Italian Radicalism
 In February 1913, workers went out on strike and shut down Paterson's silk industry. The immediate cause of the strike was that a major weaving plant had introduced a new “three-four” loom system, where new automated devices on the mills let a weaver tend to three or four mills instead of one or two. The transition from one to two had already provoked unrest, and the new threat of four further incited them.

They were threatened both by the layoffs that this would cause, and said it would also fundamentally transform the nature of the work. It would become a cruder process making an inferior product, and would not really reduce effort, thus making people work twice as much for the same pay. (Zieger.)

Zieger says that this was evidenced in how “even a group of cooperative silk workers … agreed.” Presumably, if the mechanization had really made work easier or more profitable, the cooperative would have favored it, because the workers themselves would have profited or enjoyed easier work days.

A previous silk strike in 1835 had been lead largely by children of Irish immigrants. (Roediger & Foner) More recently, there had been a “major work stoppage” from late 1911 into early 1912. (Zieger.)

In both the 1835 and 1913 strikes, the motives cannot be reduced to wage levels or other simple measures. The issues of hours and child labor in the first, and of mechanization in the second, show a broader goal of greater control over life, of breaking from the role of crude exertion.

Roediger and Foner also talk about struggles to become or remain something other than hired laborers. The “strains of gnosticism” within craft guilds' organizations, agitation around time for self-education, and the establishment of mechanics' libraries are some of the things they highlighted in their history of the U.S. working-day. The strikes in Paterson, then, can be seen as part of a tradition of battles for creative control and intellectual development.

All of the city's established leadership mobilized against the strikers. The hostility of Paterson officials was strengthened by fairly-recent legal changes. At the Botto House, a film clip mentioned that a law introduced in 1907 put the police under more-direct control of City Hall, and thus of industry leaders. The film implied that before 1907 there had been some greater measure of community control and police had remained more neutral in strikes.

I haven't been able to find more information yet about this change in police management but I'd very much like to. But, indeed, the account of the earlier 1835 strike does not mention police brutality, although the press was sharply defaming of the strikers, and industry owners blacklisted and otherwise tried to marginalize militant workers. (  Roediger & Foner.)

When the city suppressed all gatherings of strikers in Paterson, a sympathetic Socialist mayor in the nearby suburb of Haledon invited the strikers to meet there. The central meeting place became the house of the Botto family, mill workers who also ran part of the house as an inn. Strike committees communicated with each other there and speakers addressed huge crowds from the balcony. (Botto House archives.)

The IWW, whose base was in Idaho and Nevada lumber camps, and who had offices in Chicago and Detroit, sent organizers to help the silk workers run the strike. It was seen as an opportunity to expand the IWW into the heavy-industrial northeast. But eastern workers saw the IWW presence more as a way of “dramatizing their plight and wringing concessions from frightened capitalists” than as something to be permanently invested in. In the end, the strike failed to stop the introduction of the new loom technology. (Zieger.)

 “Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement” discusses how Italian-American radicals were still very much connected to anarchist communities back in their homeland, and a network of media contacts, money, and travel assisted organizing on both sides of the ocean. (Turcato.) This influence can be seen in the circulation of radical Italian-language newspapers around Paterson, and from Paterson to the rest of the country.

The Paterson anarchist Gruppo L'Era Nuova (New Era Group) published a paper, La Questione Sociale, starting in 1895. It was run by people like weaver and photographer Gaetano Bresci, who would later go back to Italy and and assassinate King Umberto I, and Willian  McQueen, who was arrested in 1902 for “inciting riot,” while another strike in Paterson was underway. (“Conference May Settle...”) The Questione was banned from the U.S. Mail in 1908 for “inciting murder,” but continued to be published and circulated around the city until 1916.

Errico Malatesta, a radical leader back on the Italian mainland, came to Paterson for a time to assist in editing the paper. He also made numerous speaking tours to American immigrant communities. In 1903, a new publication, Cronaca Sovversiva, was established by many of the same people, and printed out of Barre, Vermont.

Another Italian-language radical paper, L'Aurora, was published out of West Hoboken, starting in 1899. (Turcato.) West Hoboken later merged with Union Hill, in 1925, to become present-day Union City. (Karaban.)

Turcato writes that the Questione is particularly important when understood in the tradition of the Italian radical press. In the absence of formal organizations, crushed by repression, daily and weekly news sources were ways for them to communicate to each other and get their ideas out in an accessible way. The publications themselves were also often social centers for agitation, working with them was a way to become involved with more practical organizing, and they were sites for established organizers to regroup after being scattered. (17.)

La Questione Sociale was mailed around the country, and international subscribers – numerous in Italy, France and Switzerland, and somewhat present in Brazil – were not expected to pay for the paper, and had only to express interest. (Turcato, 20.) This policy was possible because the Paterson readership base, and local militants, were able to subsidize free distribution to other countries. Although exact circulation numbers are unknown, Turcato writes that La Questione “could have [been] read in every other Italian household” in Paterson. (20.)

Repression
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Later, historian Sophie Elwood interviewed many Italian-Americans in Paterson and very few of them spoke about any history of anarchism among their neighbors or parents. If anything, they described the political activities of their families as “socialist.” (Salerno.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">While the anarchist class struggle tradition is socialist/communist, to be sure, and publications like La Questione Sociale were printed under a declared “anarchistic-socialistic” banner, the later leaving-out of the term “anarchist” from almost everyone's descriptions is significant. And the word Socialist is probably meant to convey something closer to the politics of the Socialist Party, which was, by and large, restricting itself to legal and legislative tactics.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%"> Salerno writes that a reason for this historical amnesia may have been the terror induced by the Palmer Raids, which targeted people for arrest and deportation. Five hundred people wound up being deported in the Palmer Raids 1919 and 1920. These eventually targeted not just immigrants but many hubs of leftist and anarchist activity in the country. (“Between the Wars.”)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%"> The most intense nation-wide wave of raids happened in January 1920. In Paterson, thirty members of Gruppo L'Era Nuova were arrested, and their papers and files were seized. In going through their papers, investigators singled out – circling, writing report on, and paying special attention to – articles in La Questione Sociale and other publications that called out white “race hatred,” questioned the social myths around race, and denounced drafting people into the army to fight for “democracy” while lynchings continued in America. (Salerno, 117-121.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%"> Salerno makes the case that refusal to buy into America's racial caste system was one of the primary acts that made Italian immigrants seen as dangerous by the military and government. General Palmer himself, speaking of the nationwide threat of subversion, said, “These organizations have endeavored to enlist Negroes on their side, and in many respects have been succesful." (Salerno, 118.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%"> The Irish and others who came in mass to New Jersey also carried radical traditions with them. Many Irish people, for instance, came from communities strongly engrained with the Irish-republican struggle against British colonization. But the Italians of the early 1900s seemed especially well-organized to continue their activities in a new land.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%"> Salerno also reports that some of the largest mass lynchings in American history were carried out in Tampa, Florida and New Orleans against Italians who didn't obey segregation laws, written and unwritten.

The Great Migration
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">A broad history of the Great Migration is presented in The Warmth of Other Suns .

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%"> World War I stopped 90 percent of European immigration to America. The outbreak of the war in 1914 caused “a temporary business recession and a sharp drop in immigration.” The recession soon ended, and by 1915 the economy was booming with production of war goods for the European allies. The absence of European immigrants created northern job opportunities for black southerners.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Leaving the south for urban centers was not ideal, but a combination of racial violence cutting off economic opportunities, plus a loss of lands gained during the Reconstruction, made staying in the south impossible for many thousands of people. So, the 1915 economic boom sparked the First Great Migration which lasted until 1930.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Southern states panicked, and began to make laws to police and imprison northern “labor agents” for “enticing” black people to leave. Police shut down trains, raided and confiscated papers like Chicago Defender to stop news of work and housing opportunities from spreading. But, this did little to stop the exodus overall. (Wilkerson, pg. 161 - 163)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The state's African-American population rose from 89,760 in 1910 to 208,830 in 1930. (Census Browser.) By comparison, from 1860 to 1910, only 64,400 more African-Americans had wound up living in New Jersey. (West Jersey History Project.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">New Jersey was not the most welcoming place - it had been the last Northern state to outlaw slavery. And, upon the Emancipation Proclamation being signed, state legislators had drafted quota laws to guard against the possibility of a "flood" of black emigrants from the south (which did not happen.) By the mid 1940s, African-Americans in Newark and Trenton were organizing with the Congress of Racial Equality and other groups against job and housing discrimination. <h2 style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The Passaic Wool Industry <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%"> Following the war, jobs were still numerous, but the need to keep the economy profitable pivoted, in some key cases, in crushing out all attempts at worker organization.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%"> In the town of Passaic, a major wool-manufacturing center somewhat south of Paterson, closer to the industrial corridor near New York, strikers shut down the wool industry for much of 1926.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The weaving industry, present on a small-scale since the 1860s, had taken off in 1889 when Congress increased tariffs on imported worsted-wool. The workers, half men and half women, were mostly recent immigrants, Italians as well as Poles, Hungarians, Russians. A 10 percent pay-cut had been enacted October 1925, exacerbating conditions of child labor and general poverty. (DeLeon & Fine.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">There was high support for going on strike. But the United Textile Workers (UTW), the only union present, was AFL-affiliated, and the AFL didn't support going on strike. The Communist Party sent people to assist the strikers, via the United Front Committee. (Baxandall.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Then, on January 25, some people at the Botany Worsted Mill were fired for organizing with the United Front Committee, and 4,000 others walked out in their defense. This soon grew to 15,000 of the town's 17,000 wool-workers. (DeLeon & Fine.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Although committees of bakers, cobblers, and others in town supplied the strikers with bread, shoes, and other provisions, and strike committees raised funds from supporters around the country, and the ACLU provided support for arrested picketers, there was no sign of concessions by management by summer of that year. Finally, on August 12, a committee elected by the strikers met with the AFL-affiliated UTW. The committee agreed that, because management didn't want to negotiate with the Communist-lead UFC, they'd turn strike leadership over to the UTW, which by this time finally agreed to represent strikers. (DeLeon & Fine.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">However – neither the UTW nor the AFL as a whole raised funds or gave much support to the Passaic workers, morale began to decline, and the strike was finally broken in December with no means to support it. Flynn, who had returned to New Jersey to rally support for the strike, saw the Communist Party retreat as a profound betrayal. (Baxandall.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The outcome of UTW negotiations with mill owners resulted in militant or 'Red' workers not being hired back, and in general, a downturn in the textile industry left many weavers unemployed. The 10% paycut was reversed, but the UFT did not stay to organize, and no union was recognized in Passaic. (Baxandall.) The author notes this was a tragic year for working-class people across the country, and victory “would have been a miracle even with ideal leadership.” (143.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%"> Despite the absence of any union presence, there were Women's Councils that “survived long after the strike was lost.” Baxandall relates Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's accounts of these women's councils. Flynn, a Communist leader who'd agitated and fundraised for the Paterson silk strike two decades earlier, returned to New Jersey where she helped to organize these Women's Councils. They “discussed conditions in factories... as well as problems with maternity, childcare, and housework.” After the strike their main function was to provide mutual aid and support in this domestic work as well as in the factories. (Baxandall, 17.)

CIO Agitation and AFL Conservatism
Although the IWW involved itself in the Paterson strike, and the Communist Party organized much of the activity at Passaic, the dominant trend leaned more towards the moderate strategies of the American Federation of Labor. Unwilling to use confrontational tactics, they came across as insufficient to many people, who split off to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

The CIO had some Communist support but was a broad front of people of many political persuasions. They were more often seen as 'troublemakers' by bosses, who were more willing to sign contracts and make deals with the AFL. But even that alliance would fall apart during the Great Depression, when people's demands became more urgent, and businesses were no longer confident in their ability to grow.

The Great Depression and The WPA
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">In the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration was part of the New Deal, meant to provide jobs and ways out of poverty.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">One of the novel projects of the WPA was to sponsor new cooperative housing and working setups, with cooperatively-managed agriculture and small scale industry to put people back to work. These were set up away from congested city centers, to give residents better living standards.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Ninety-nine such new communities were build around the country, with one, Jersey Homesteads, being built in southern Jersey in 1933. Jewish farmer and merchant Benjamin Brown applied for a grant from the WPA, and was accepted. He used it to buy up land outside of Hightstown, establishing Homesteads, where a good deal of unemployed Jewish textile workers moved. They established a farm and a needlework factory.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">In 1939, the factory there closed down, and the cooperative farm collapsed the next year. People stayed on the land but had to find work elsewhere. The settlement became the small town of Roosevelt.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">A suburb called Greenbrook was almost built in central Jersey, just outside of New Brunswick in 1935. The opposition was largely rallied around racist backlash. It succeeded in stopping construction, even though in reality, had it been built, it would have been racially segregated anyway, since the New Deal program didn't allow black people equal access to new housing. (Jackson.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">It appears that, in addition to racism, Jersey Homesteads was raised as a “spectre” to turn people against the Greenbrook development. Even while Homesteads was up and running, it was held up by conservatives as an example of dangerous “Soviet influence.” Although Jersey Homesteads folded and Greenbrook was never built, these are beginnings of the wave of suburbanization that would sweep the country after the next world war. <h3 style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The Federal Writers' Program, Some Cases of Unrest <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">"The WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey" was one of a series of state guide books sponsored by the WPA. The book was written, collaboratively, by a number of authors, hired through the WPA's Federal Writers' Program to go around the state and collect information. These authors included William Carlos Williams and Louis Adamic.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">The New Jersey Guild Associates, representing the authors, sponsored the book. They had enough influence that, even when things the authors wanted included weren't published, they were able to mention in the introduction that the book had been censored.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">So, on page xix, the Guild regretfully tells us that information about the tear-gassing of strikers at Seabrook F arms, the use of private detectives by the Radio Corporation Manufacturing Corporation in Camden, and strike-breaking activities of other industries, was removed from the text – somewhat strangely, they tell us, since the information is available in newspapers from the time of the events.

Jersey City: War of the Meadows
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%"> From 1917 to 1940, Mayor Frank Hague ran a machine that controlled Jersey Citypolitics. This case-study is valuable, because it shows an Irish political class gaining power within the state's Democratic Party, along with the emergence of other modern power trends. The relations between City Hall and organized labor also shifted widely over the course of Hague's rule. The alliance with AFL-alligned unions that was possible during the boom years of the 1920s fell apart during the Depression- when the business class once again had to fight to stay profitable, and couldn't accomodate even the modest goals of business unions.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Mayor Hague was a controversial figure, criticized in the statewide press and noted for his “espousal of concentration camps for communists, which in his thinking meant CIO organizers.” However, his machine drew strength from being able to please many varied demographics, promising that “in return for votes, there was something for everyone.” Free medical centers and other public services were set up for the poor, the Catholic religious establishment was appeased by crackdowns on gambling and vice, patrons were given jobs, picnics were hosted, and the new Roosevelt Stadium was built for sports fans. (Platt, 275-278.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">During the 1920s, “Police turned back strikebreakers, something unheard of at the time.” This period saw an alliance between workers' organizations and the city machine. Teddy Brandle, head of the city Ironworkers' Union, rose to prominence in the State Federation of Labor, and campaigned for Hague in 1924. (McKean.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">But, in 1931, Hague contracted non-union workers in the construction of the Pulaski Skyway and crushed organization attempts. The escalating conflict around this became known as the “War of the Meadows.” Police broke picket lines, and private security guards shot and injured those involved. Brandle in turn sent squads of loyal supporters out, some of whom stopped a car carrying six non-union workers and beat one of them, William T. Harrison, to death. (Hart.)

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 200%">Picketers were able to create a five-day work stoppage that July. (Hart, 101-113.) But non-union construction continued, and fourteen workers wound up dying in work-related accidents before the Skyway was complete.