 |  | |
 |
|  |
 |  | |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
|
|
Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
For a century Paterson has been a nationally known proving ground in the struggle between employers and workers. Its industrial reputation as "The Silk City" has been balanced by its renown for hard-fought strikes, many resulting from technological improvements in the weaving industry elsewhere that have spelled meager wages and the stretchout for weavers operating Paterson's old-fashioned looms.
Since the city has 25,000 union members, much of the talk concerns labor conditions. So conscious is the average Paterson worker of the city's labor history that the dates of marriages, trips, and other personal events are commonly fixed by the year of an important strike. A Paterson strike converts the downtown district into a huge picket line and a mass meeting. In recent years the dyers' union has turned out as many as 5,000 members on a single picket line.
The city's reputation for labor disputes has for years distressed all the elements involved-the labor organizations, the chamber of commerce, and the city officials. In 1936 the city administration sought a solution by establishing The Industrial Commission with an expert in industrial problems as consultant. The law provides representation on the seven-man committee for mill owners, the bar, bankers, manufacturers, the chamber of commerce, service organizations, labor, and the mayor, ex officio.
Although its main purpose is to strengthen Paterson's industries, the commission also aims to anticipate labor difficulties and to avoid strikes by conferences and arbitration. It played a conspicuous part in the silk settlement of June 1937, and intervened in a number of other disputes, but by its nature lacks the power to alter fundamental economic maladjustments. Business leaders incline to the belief that outside agitators are the cause of strikes. The millworkers retort that $10 weekly wages are the reason; and the larger manufacturers, who would prefer to pay better wages, declare that they are helpless in the face of Paterson's own brand of sweatshop competition, the family shop.
The proprietors of these shops are known as "cockroach bosses." The term, coined by a young girl organizer during the 1931 strike, has been accepted with self-contempt by the family shop bosses themselves, who believe in organization to protect themselves against the price-cutting converters (jobbers) but cannot stay organized.
These 400 manufacturers constitute the "curb exchange," a sidewalk trading place on Washington Street between Ellison and Market Streets. From early morning until late afternoon the manufacturers mill around, selling raw silk, buying finished silk, sight unseen; here family-shop operators contract to weave the converters raw silk on a commission basis. Only acts of God and man, such as stormy weather or an Oriental war, clear the place. Even more than the large manufacturer, the cockroach boss is sensitive to the tide of Asiatic affairs.
Although scores of silk mills have moved from Paterson and few of the remaining shops have even as many as 100 employees, the industry still produces every kind of goods from fancy ribbons to coffin linings. The dominant industry is silk dyeing, whose 15,000 workers handle 75 percent of the Nation's textile output. Other important manufactures of Paterson are men's shirts, women's underwear, airplane motors, and other metal
products.
The variety of Paterson's population equips it for an international outlook. More than 30 percent of the population is foreign born. Italians, Jews, Syrians, Poles, Germans, Russians, and Irish predominate. They form the backbone of the trade union movement and they have brought to Paterson a keen European interest in the arts and sports.
When the city is not talking labor problems, it is listening to concerts in music halls, participating in open forums at churches or "Y's," attending amateur theatricals, or using one of the city's many playgrounds. Paterson has drawn on its own character to attract cultural events and entertainments. This has been achieved, on the one hand, by capital's traditional patronage of the arts, and on the other by labor's quest for personal development.
|
|
|
Return To |
|
|
