eks when
the better pieces of work were more plentiful; and in the slack weeks $6
and $7. Ermengard had no complaint whatever to make about her own trade
fortunes. All her concern and conversation were for the numbers of women
cloak makers who lacked her own wonderful strength. Successful without
education, she was astonishingly destitute of the wearisome fallacy of
complacent self-reference characteristic of many people of uncommon
ability. During the past year she had twice been discharged for
organizing the workers in cloak factories where she was employed. In the
first establishment subcontracting had made conditions too hard for most
of the women; and in the second, wages were too low for a decent
livelihood for most of the workers.

These instances serve to express in the industry and lives of women cloak
workers the subcontracting system, long seasonal hours, home work, and an
unstandardized wage--the features under discussion in the cloak making
trade in the spring of 1910.

The whole cloak making trade of New York presents, for an outside
observer, the kaleidoscopic interest of a population not static. The
cutter of one decade is the employer of another decade. In the general
strike of the cloakmakers in 1896 nearly all the manufacturers were
German. In the strike of last summer nearly all the manufacturers were
Galician and Russian.

This aspect of the New York needle trades must be borne in mind in
realizing those occurrences in the last strike which led to the present
joint effort of both manufacturers and workers to standardize the wage
scale, to regulate seasonal hours, to abolish the subcontracting system
and home work, and to establish the preferential Union shop throughout
the metropolitan industry.

Dr. Henry Moskowitz, an effective non-partisan leader in achieving the
settlement of the strike, was an eye-witness and student of all its
crises, and the outline of its history below is mainly drawn from his
chronicle and observation.

Between the cloak makers and the manufacturers of New York a contest
waged in numerous strikes had continued for twenty-five years. The
agreements reached at the close of these strikes had been only temporary,
because the cloak makers were never able to maintain a Union strong
enough to hold the points won at the close of the struggle. The cloak
makers had always proved themselves heroic strikers, but feeble
Unionists, lacking sustained power. Again and again, men and