You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday March 17, 1905
Chicago, Illinois - Teamsters Meet with Striking Garment Workers, May Aid Strike
Striking Garment Worker
The Teamsters of Chicago may yet come to the aid of the members of the United Garment Workers who have been on strike in this city since November. Nineteen cutters employed in the clothing department of an establishment owned by Montgomery Ward & Co. went out on strike claiming that that firm was sending work out to non-union shops. The strike soon spread to other establishments involving an estimated 6,000 garment workers. The garment workers have been appealing to the Teamsters for assistance, and it now appears that assistance from the Teamsters may be close at hand.
The garment workers were assisted by Mother Jones early on in their strike. In December, Mother spoke at a mass meeting at Brand's Hall along with the Garment Union's national president, T. A. Rickert and the president of the Illinois Federation of Labor, Barney Cohen. At that time, Mother praised the city's labor movement, declaring that it had made things "mighty uncomfortable" for the employers of Chicago.
We are hoping that a show of Solidarity between these two unions will continue to make things uncomfortable for the proponents of the "open shop."
From the Chicago Daily Tribune of March 15, 1905:
TEAMSTERS HAVE A SCHEME TO
AID CLOTHING STRIKERS.
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Drivers Will Not Quit Work, but Will
Not "Resist" the "Intimidation" of
the Garment Workers' Pickets
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1903 Charter of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
with the
American Federation of Labor
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Union teamsters will enter the strike of the garment workers today. The joint plan of campaign against the employers was devised last night by committees from the strikers and the teamsters' joint council after the latter body had refused to sanction a sympathetic strike of any of the drivers' unions. It embraces the new union ideas of "nonresistance" and "flying squadrons."
The teamsters are to supply the first and the garment workers the second parts of the strategic warfare. Drivers will continue to haul goods for the strike bound houses until they meet with interference. Then they will stop their wagons on the ground that both their own lives and their employers' property are being endangered. Squads of pickets from the ranks of the garment workers, posted at opportune points, will furnish the requisite intimidation.
In a clash between pickets and employes of the M. Born Tailoring company, Franklin street and St. Charles place, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, several persons were knocked down and trampled on in a mob. A riot call sent to the Harrison street station brought a wagon load of policemen to the scene, and the crowds were dispersed.
Hoisting engineers now may class themselves among the aristocrats of labor. By an agreement signed with their employers they hereafter will receive wages amounting to $6 a day. With two exceptions-bricklayers and sewer masons-no other workmen can rival the new incomes of these members of the building trades.
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[Photograph added.]
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SOURCES
Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-March 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Annual Report of the State Board of Arbitration of Illinois,
Volume 10, Part 1905
-Illinois. State Board of Arbitration
The Board, 1906
https://books.google.com/...
"Teamsters' Sympathetic Strike, Chicago."
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
For summary of 1905 Chicago Teamsters Strike
http://cw.routledge.com/...
IMAGES
Striking garment worker
http://www.newspapers.com/...
1903 IBT Charter with AFL
http://teamster.org/...
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Solidarity Forever - Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong
-Ralph Chaplin
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