United States 1900

Synopsis

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was one of the most radical and colorful labor organizations in the early decades of the twentieth century. Although the union embraced workers from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, a decisive element in its composition was the wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants who flooded into the United States from the 1880s through the 1920s. Especially important in the union's founding and evolution were dedicated socialists and anarchists who articulated the vision of a better world to be achieved through the collective struggle of workers against their own oppressors. The ILGWU embraced all workers—regardless of specific occupation or skill level—in the women's garment industry and was one of the few unions in the American Federation of Labor of that time to be organized on an industrial...