Comrade Yetta

by Albert Edwards

"It's nine o'clock now," Yetta said. "If you don't reëmploy those girls by three—that's six hours—or give the union a serious reason for their discharge, I'll call a strike on your shop."

"Go ahead and call it," he said savagely. "My girls have had enough of your dirty union. They won't try striking again."

Although Yetta had managed to deliver her ultimatum with outward calm and a show of confidence, the next six hours were the most unpleasant she had ever spent. Would the girls walk out at her call? If they did not, it would surely kill the union. Edelstein was certainly offering them all sorts of inducements to stay. The other bosses were back of him, urging him on. They wanted to break the union. What had she to offer the girls but hunger and an ideal? There were not ten dollars in the treasury. Most of the girls were still in debt from the first strike; many of them would be dispossessed by their landlords if they struck again.

But Yetta's side was stronger than she realized. The success of the strike had taught the girls the tangible value of loyalty. The break-up of the employers' association had had the opposite effect. Each and every boss had tried to desert his fellows first and so make better terms with the union. Edelstein did not trust—would have been a fool to trust—the other employers. They were using him as a catspaw, and he knew it. If he succeeded in breaking the union, they would gladly profit by it. But, after all, they were his competitors; if he got into trouble single-handed, they would just as gladly profit by that. He consulted his forewomen. They all believed that enough of the force would go out to tie up his shop. So the three girls were reëmployed.

This victory gave Yetta new strength and confidence. She had taken the measure of her opponents and was not afraid any more. She went about her work with a firmer tread, with a greater faith in the eventual triumph of her cause. Her decisive stand with Edelstein had turned the balance. The bosses began to accept the union as an inevitable thing. Yetta did not have to call a strike for many months, not until the girls had recovered their breath and gathered enough strength to demand and win a new increase in wages.

Her work as business agent absorbed only a small amount of her time. Most of it went into efforts to organize the other garment workers. The success of the vest-makers had made a great impression on the sweated trades. The idea of "union" was popular. Sooner or later they were bound to organize—as the inevitable logic of events forces labor to unite everywhere. It was not smooth sailing by any means. But Yetta gradually grew to the stature of her work. Although she was sometimes discouraged at the slowness of her progress, Mabel was always radiant and talked much of her remarkable success.

But in her effort to ally the various garment trades, Yetta was face to face with the thorniest problem of labor organization. In union there is strength, and if we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately. But if you re-read the history of our country during the years between the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution, and recall the various efforts at secession which culminated in the Civil War, you will be impressed by the difficulty of living up to this beautifully simple idea of united action in politics. It is not different in labor organization.

In almost every industry there are small trades of highly skilled men who occupy a favorable strategic position. It is so with "the cutters" in the business of making clothes. Their union was the oldest of all. Practically every man in the country who knew the trade was a member. They could not be replaced by unskilled "scabs." They were in a position to insist that the bosses address them as "Mister." Why should they join forces with these new and penniless unions? What had they to gain by putting their treasury at the disposal of the struggling "buttonhole workers"?

Why should the opulent province of New York enter into a union with tiny Delaware or far-away Georgia? In the proposed Congress how could representation be justly distributed? The cutters would not listen to any proposal which did not give them an overwhelming voice in the Council. It is against such cold facts as these that the theory of Industrial Unionism, which had sounded so alluring to Yetta as Longman outlined it, has to make headway.