lved,
not only beating the Unionists, but driving themselves, the weaker
manufacturers, out of the industry.

One by one, they left the association, sought the Union headquarters, and
settled with the cloak makers. The profit reaped by these firms starting
to work induced others to meet the workers' demands. By the end of July
and the first week in August, six hundred smaller firms, employing
altogether 20,000 cloakmakers, had settled.[26] In many instances the
men and women marched back to their work with bands of music playing and
with flying flags and banners.

In July two attempts were made, on behalf of the cloak makers, by the
State Board of Arbitration to induce the manufacturers to meet the Union
members and to arbitrate with them. These attempts failed because the
Union insisted on the question of the closed shop as essential. The
manufacturers refused to arbitrate the question of the closed shop.

At this juncture a public-spirited retailer of Boston, Mr. Lincoln
Filene, entered the controversy. Mr. Filene resolved that, as a large
consumer, he and his class had no right to shirk their responsibility by
passively acquiescing in sweat-shop conditions. As an intermediary
between the wholesaler and the public, the retailer had an important part
in the conflict, not only because he suffered directly from the temporary
paralysis of the industry, but also because his indifference to the
claims of the worker for a just wage, sanitary factory conditions,
abolition of home work, and for a decent working-day was equivalent to an
active complicity in the guilt of the manufacturer. Through Mr. Filene's
intervention, the manufacturers and the Union officials agreed to confer,
and to request Mr. Louis Brandeis of Boston to act as chairman.

Mr. Brandeis had, at the outset, the confidence of both parties. Each
side recognized in him that combination of wide legal learning and a
social economic sense which had made him an effective participant in the
development of the progressive political and industrial policies of the
nation. The employers welcomed Mr. Brandeis because they had faith in his
sense of fairness. The cloak makers welcomed him because of his brilliant
and signal service to the entire trade-union movement and to American
working women in securing from the United States Supreme Court the
decision which declared constitutional the ten-hour law for the women
laundry workers of Oregon.

The conference that was