Out of ninety-eight arrested all but nineteen were fined in sums of from one to ten dollars.
With the aid of the police and a complaisant bench the Triangle Company had been successful in its attempt to empty the young union's treasury, and had likewise intimidated the workers till their courage and spirit were failing them. The manufacturers had accomplished their object.
At this stage the New York Women's Trade Union League took up the battle of the girls. Every morning they stationed allies in front of the factory, to act as witnesses against illegal arrest, and to prevent interference with lawful picketing. The wrath of the police was then turned upon the League. First one and then another ally was arrested, this performance culminating in the unlawful arrest of Mary Dreier, president of the League. The police were sadly fooled upon this occasion, and their position was not in any degree strengthened, when they angrily, and just as unreasonably freed their prisoner, as soon as they discovered her identity. "Why didn't you tell me you was a rich lady? I'd never have arrested you in the world."
This was good copy for the newspapers, and the whole story of wrongful discharge, unlawful arrest and insulting treatment of the strikers by the police began to filter into the public mind through the columns of the daily press. It was shown that what had happened in the case of the Triangle employés had been repeated, with variations, in the case of many other shops. Respectable and conservative citizens began to wonder if there might not be two sides to the story. They learned, for instance, of the unjust "bundle" system, under which the employer gives out a bundle of work to a girl, and when she returns the completed work, gives her a ticket which she can convert into cash on pay day. If the ticket, a tiny scrap of paper, should be lost, the girl had no claim on the firm for the work she had actually done. Again, some employers had insisted that they paid good wages, showing books revealing the astonishing fact that girls were receiving thirty dollars, thirty-five dollars, and even forty dollars per week. Small reason to strike here, said the credulous reader, as he or she perused the morning paper. But the protest of the libelled manufacturer lost much of its force, when it was explained that these large sums were not the wage of one individual girl, but were group earnings, paid to one girl, and receipted for by her, but having to be shared with two, three or four others, who had worked with and under the girl whose name appeared on the payroll.
Monday, November 22, was a memorable day. A mass meeting had been called in Cooper Union to consider the situation. Mr. Gompers was one of the speakers. At the far end of the hall rose a little Jewish girl, and asked to be heard. Once on the platform, she began speaking in Yiddish, fast and earnestly. She concluded by saying she was tired of talking, and so would put the motion for a general strike of the whole trade. One who was present, describing the tense dramatic moment that followed, writes: "The audience unanimously endorsed it. 'Do you mean faith?' said the chairman. 'Will you take the old Jewish oath,' And up came 2,000 Jewish hands with the prayer, 'If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither and drop off at the wrist from this arm I now raise.'" The girl was Clara Lemlich, from the Leiserson factory. She did not complain for herself, for she was a fairly well-paid worker, making up to fifteen dollars in the rush season, but for her much poorer sisters.
The response within that hall typified the response next day outside.
I quote the words of an onlooker:
From every waist-making factory in New York and Brooklyn, the girls poured forth, filling the narrow streets of the East Side, crowding the headquarters at Clinton Hall, and overflowing into twenty-four smaller halls in the vicinity. It was like a mighty army, rising in the night, and demanding to be heard. But it was an undisciplined army. Without previous knowledge of organization, without means of expression, these young workers, mostly under twenty, poured into the Union. For the first two weeks from 1,000 to 1,500 joined each day. The clerical work alone, involved in, registering and placing recruits was almost overwhelming. Then halls had to be rented and managed, and speakers to be procured. And not for one nationality alone. Each hall, and there were twenty-four, had to have speakers in Yiddish, Italian and English. Every member of the League was pressed into service. Still small halls were not enough. Lipzin's Theatre was offered to the strikers, and mass meetings were held there five afternoons a week.
Meanwhile committees were appointed from each shop to settle upon a price list. As the quality of work differed in different shops, a uniform wage was impossible and had to be settled by each shop individually. When the hundreds of price lists were at last complete, meetings were arranged for each shop committee and their employers. Again the price list was discussed, and a compromise usually effected. In almost every shop, however, an increase of from 15 to 20 per cent. was granted.
Apart from wages, the contract insured significant improvements. Besides calling for recognition of the union it demanded full pay for legal holidays, limited night work during the rush season to eight P.M., abolished all Sunday work, did away with the inside contracting system, under which one girl took out work for several, and provided for a fair allotment of work in slack seasons.
After one hundred and ninety firms had signed up, and the majority of the strikers had returned to their shops, an attempt was made to settle with the still obdurate employers through arbitration, at the suggestion of the National Civic Federation.