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 District Council, the strikers’ own Executive Committee, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the Women’s Trade Union League.

This meant the close of the struggle.  Three out of the four commissary stations were closed the following day, and the fourth a week later.

As regards the great mass of strikers then left, it was but a hunger bargain.  They had to return to work without any guarantee for fair treatment, without any agency through which grievances could be dealt with, or even brought before the employers.  And hundreds of the workers had not even the poor comfort that they could go back.  Business was disorganized, work was slack, and the Association houses would not even try to make room for their rebellious employes.  The refusal of work would be made more bitter by the manner of its refusal.  Several were met with the gibe, “You’re a good speaker, go down to your halls, they want you there.”  One employer actually invited a returned striker into his private office, shook hands with him as if in welcome, and then told him it was his last visit, he might go!

The beginning of the present stage of the industrial rebellion among working-women in the United States may be said to have been made with the immense garment-workers’ strikes.  All have been strikes of the unorganized, the common theory that strikes must have their origin in the mischief-breeding activities of the walking delegate finding no confirmation here.  They were strikes of people who knew not what a union was, making protest in the only way known to them against intolerable conditions, and the strikers were mostly very young women.  One most significant fact was that they had the support of a national body of trade-union women, banded together in a federation, working on the one hand with organized labor, and on the other bringing in as helpers large groups of outside women.  Such measure of success as came to the strikers, and the indirect strengthening of the woman’s cause, which has since borne such fruit, was in great part due to the splendid reinforcement of organized labor, through the efforts of this league of women’s unions.

I need touch but lightly on the strikes in other branches of the sewing trades, where the history of the uprising was very similar.