the firm of Sturm-Mayer
signed up and took back about five hundred workers. Also, a committee
of the state Senate began an inquiry into the strike, thus further
educating the public into an understanding of the causes lying back of
all the discontent, and accounting for much of the determination not
to give in.

All the same, the prospects seemed very dark, and the strikers and
their leaders had settled down to a steady, dogged resistance. It was
like nothing in the world so much as holding a besieged city, and
the outcome was as uncertain, and depended upon the possibility
of obtaining for the beleaguered ones supplies of the primitive
necessaries of life, food and fuel. And the fort was held until about
the middle of January came the news that Hart, Schaffner and Marx had
opened up negotiations, and presently an agreement was signed, and
their thousands of employes were back at work.

They were back at work under an agreement, which, while it did not,
strictly speaking, recognize the union, did not discriminate against
members of the union. Nay, as the workers had to have representation
and representatives, it was soon found that in practice it was only
through their organization that the workers could express themselves
at all.

This is not the place in which to enlarge upon the remarkable success
which has attended the working out of this memorable agreement. It is
enough to say that ever since all dealings between the firm and
their employes have been conducted upon the principle of collective
bargaining.

The agreement with Messrs. Hart, Schaffner and Marx was signed on
January 14, 1911, and the Joint Conference Board then bent all
its efforts towards some settlement with houses of the Wholesale
Clothiers' Association and the National Tailors' Association for the
twenty or thirty thousand strikers still out.

Suddenly, without any warning the strike was terminated. How and why
it has never been explained, even to those most interested in its
support. All that is known is that on February 3 the strike was called
off at a meeting of the Strikers' Executive Committee, at which Mr.
T.A. Rickert, president of the United Garment Workers of America, and
his organizers, were present. This was done, without consulting the
Joint Conference Board, which for fourteen weeks had had charge of
the strike, and which was composed of representatives from the United
Garment Workers of America, the Garment Workers' local Dist