On Sept. 22, 1910, seventeen-year old garment worker HANNAH SHAPIRO led a walkout at a Hart, Schaffner & Marx factory in Chicago. The strike quickly spread to other plants, involving 40,000 garment workers across the city, protesting wages, hours, and working conditions. In 1872, Harry and Max Hart, German immigrants who arrived in Chicago as boys 14 years earlier, founded Harry Hart & Bro., a small mens clothing store on State Street. In 1879, along with brothers-in-law Levi Abt and Marcus Marx, the Harts formed Hart, Abt & Marx. The company not only sold clothing but also employed dozens of women around the city to manufacture close to $1 million worth of garments a year. In 1887, when Joseph Schaffner joined the firm, its name was changed to Hart, Schaffner & Marx. In 1900, HS&M owned dozens of small garment factories—identified by many observers as “sweatshops”—around the city with annual sales of roughly $15M; about two-thirds of its several thousand employees were foreign-born men and women. The company became a target of one of the biggest strikes in Chicago. Shapiro, an 18-year-old Russian-born woman working at one of the Hart Schaffner shops, led a walkout in response to a wage cut. Within three weeks, about 40,000 Chicago garment workers were on strike. In 1911, Hart, Schaffner & Marx became one of the first companies to settle with the workers when it signed a collective bargaining agreement that was one of the most comprehensive ever to occur in the clothing industry; by 1915, the majority of the companys employees were members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a new union that was an outgrowth of the Chicago strikes. (From the Encyclopedia of Chicago History)
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:36:16 +0000
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