WILLIAM PATTERSON UNIVERSITY

PATERSON JAIL RECORDS AND THE SILK STRIKE

PUBLIC HISTORY 3510

MAY 2, 2012

BY

CATHY TONNON

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Field work for Public History 3510 is required of all students and for this particular

semester the focus of all projects was to correlate to the opening of the Great Falls National

Historic Site in Paterson New Jersey and specifically focus on the Paterson Silk Industry. My

field work involved creating a data base of Paterson jail records which are being housed at

Lambert Castle and are maintained by the Passaic County Historical Society. There are several

very large bound journals dating from 1883 – 1957 and the Passaic County Historical Society

would like to have a data base file of every listing compiled so anyone wishing to look up their

genealogy could go to this file and locate the specific journal as well as the specific page of the

journal which lists a particular name. This sounds like a rather boring task but was actually quite

interesting. I was amazed to see children as young as nine and ten jailed in the same space for

similar crimes as someone in their forties and fifties. These crimes were mostly petty larceny and

disorderly conduct for the children with some for assault as well as drunkenness for the adults.

One entry I found particularly interesting was for a seventy-two year old woman jailed for

murder and another woman in her seventy’s jailed for assault.

For the purposes of this class I photographed pages of the 1913 journal and pages from

the 1882-83 journal which lists name, nationality, date and nature of incarceration. This

information was used along with other primary and secondary sources to determine if the silk

strike had an effect on the crimes committed in Paterson during the period of the silk strike.

Research from the primary sources along with additional secondary sources was used to give

further evidence either for or against crime being of a more violent nature due to the economic

and social duress of that time.

From the beginning weavers were primarily fighting the increased work load brought

about by the new four-loom system which they felt doubled their already over-burdened

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workday.1 In the early twentieth century the right to strike was not permitted, in fact, it was

illegal to strike or belong to a union. Nevertheless, between 1912 -1913 there was on strike after

another in Paterson.2 The 1913 strike began at the Doherty mill, Paterson’s largest and newest

silk mill and eventually became a major struggle between the nearly twenty-five thousand

striking silk weavers and the owners of the mills.3 When the dyer’s helpers, ribbon weavers,

winders and throwing workers joined the broad-silk weavers, they successfully shut down the

silk mills and silk dyeing plants for close to six months. These twenty-five thousand strikers

inevitably clashed with the strike police and over 2,000 arrests were made. The most common

offenses were unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. The refusal of the skilled weavers to be

stepped on by the silk manufacturers made Paterson notorious as a center for labor militance and

radicalism during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth

century. Many accounts classify the workers as “recent immigrants with a tendency for violence

and disorder”. In fact, they were mostly European immigrants who brought with them, their

radical traditions of struggle.4 Other accounts portray the strikers as a mostly peaceful but

disorderly crowd. Entries in the Paterson Jail Records however indicate the arrests were mostly

for disorderly conduct or unlawful assembly and would appear to substantiate the latter portrayal

of the striker.

Furthermore, Paterson’s skilled silk weavers were considered the most highly skilled of

all American textile weavers and commanded much higher wages than their counterparts

                                                                                                                         1  British  Library,  British  Doctoral  Thesis,  278.  2  Jane  Wallerstein,  Voices  from  the  Paterson  Silk  Mills,  (South  Carolina,  2000),  145.  3  Delight  Dodyk,  Steve  Golin,  The  Paterson  Silk  Strike  of  1913,  (New  Jersey,  1987),  20.  4  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/peopleevents/e_strike.html.    

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elsewhere.5 They took out mortgages equal to that of local small businessmen and considered

themselves of the same class. As well, many of the small business owners had supported strikers

against manufacturers in previous strikes.6 From 1889 – 1891, manufacturers complained about

the lack of support from municipal government as well as small businessmen. What’s more,

police in Paterson had never intervened in previous strikes, much to the outrage of silk

manufacturers, until the 1913 strike.7 This change was brought about by changes in the form of

local government as well as changes in the patterns of immigration. Early in the twentieth

century a new alliance was formed between the silk manufacturers and the “strong-mayor” form

of municipal government which put the government on the side of manufacturers. In 1911 the

number of local legislative members was reduced by half and was dominated by big business.

Commissioners appointed by the first mayor of the “business democracy” were recruited from

the ranks of the city manufacturing industry and the large-scale retail elite. 8 During strikes in the

late 19th century, strikers had access to city halls, saloons, and public squares and parks.

Unfortunately this did not hold true for the 1913 strike; picketing, mass meetings, and IWW

leaders were all suppressed by law enforcement almost immediately. Strikers were barred from

access to public halls and saloons, demonstrating the attempt by large business owners to

dominate and narrow the scale of class struggle.9

Solidarity among the strikers was helped by the anxiety taking place over economic

changes taking place in Paterson as well as the influence of the IWW, the Industrial Workers of

the World. Organizers from the national IWW were invited to help in 1913 because of their

                                                                                                                         5  Helena  Flam,  Democracy  in  Debt:  Credit  and  Politics  in  Paterson,  N.J.  1890-­‐1930,  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1985),  440.  6  IBID,  442.  7  IBID,  444.    8  IBID,  446.  9  IBID,  447.  

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highly publicized success in organizing new immigrants in Lawerence, Massachusetts in 1912.10

Contrary to popular belief, the IWW organizers did not initiate violence or aggressiveness but

advocated democratic and nonviolent techniques of organizing involving women and

immigrants. The main difference between the strike in Paterson and other strikes was the desire

of the weavers, who were at a higher education level, to create a “more human way of life”. 11

One of the slogans of the silk weavers was “Eight Hours Work, Eight Hours Rest, and Eight

Hours Pleasure.” To go on strike for a better livelihood was an important part of their life and

they tried to get their message across on the picket line by singing songs; violence was not a part

of their strategy. However, when the police came to break up their meetings, some violence did

appear but the strikers did not have guns, guns were only carried by the police.12 That’s not to

say that strikers were primarily passive, there was a contingent of recent immigrants, not as

entrenched in the Paterson community, who were more prone to violence and disorder. They

were primarily undisciplined and inexperienced and inclined to directing their actions against

strike breakers as well as the policemen who were sent to break up any public gatherings. There

were also three unsuccessful attempts by strikers to derail trains used by the silk industry to

move their goods.13 The Paterson Guardian published articles relating to the more than eighteen

hundred arrests of disorderly strikers during the months of April through July 1913.14

Interestingly, most of the more violent arrests were of the recent Italian and Jewish immigrant

population. The more established immigrants of Irish, English, German, and Dutch descent were

able to resist arrest through personal influence with police officers or were jailed only for

                                                                                                                         10  Steve  Golin,  The  Fragile  Bridge:  Paterson  Silk  Strike  1913,  (Philadelphia:  Temple  University  Press,  1988),  85.  11  IBID,  90.  12  Jane  Wallerstein,  Voices  from  the  Paterson  Silk  Mills,  (South  Carolina,  2000),  160.  13  British  Library,  British  Doctoral  Thesis,  284.  14  IBID,  285-­‐286.  

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disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly.15 This information is also confirmed by the entry

listings in the jail records for the months of February through July 1913.

The silk strike of 1913 was triggered by the broad-silk weavers who by gathering the

support of the dyer’s helpers, ribbon weavers, winders and throwing workers, succeeded in

transforming it into a general strike. The other essential ingredient to the strike was the unity

among the different nationality groups whose basis for solidarity centered on the movement for

an eight-hour work day but was primarily a resistance to the increased workload that would

occur from the four-loom process. What finally won the strike for the manufactures was their

ability to outlast the strikers who had exhausted their credit with local store owners and local

supporters. Crimes previously recorded in the jail records ranged from petty larceny,

drunkenness, assault and battery, and spying. During the strike most of the jail entries were for

disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, with some instances of assault. Most astonishing to

me were the reduced number of entries for drunkenness, perhaps this was due to the amount of

picketing or the lack of funds to buy alcohol. Anyhow, what started for me as a basic, somewhat

mundane task of compiling a data base of jail records, ended in a better understanding of the

issues and events of the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

 

                                                                                                                         15  British  Library,  British  Doctoral  Thesis,  288.  

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Bibliography    

Cappio, Alfred P. Paterson silk strike of 1913. Paterson: Passaic County Historical Society, 1975.

Dodyk, Delight W., Steve Golin. The Paterson Silk Strike of 1913. The New Jersey Department of Higher Education, 1987.

Flam, Helena. "Democracy in Debt: Credit and Politics in Paterson, N. J., 1890-1930." Journal of Social History Vol. 18 , Spring 1985: 439-462.

Garber, M. The Silk Industry of Paterson, New Jersey, 1840-1913: Technology. High Wycomb: University Microfilms, 1968.

Golin, Steve. The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike 1913. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Osborne., J. D. Industrialization & the politics of disorder : Paterson silkworkers, 1880-1913 . 1979.

Owusu, Thomas Y. Economic transition in the city of Paterson, N.J., 1800-1990 : causes, impacts and urban planning implications . Wayne: William Paterson University, 2003.

Tripp, Anne Huber. The I.W.W. and the Paterson silk strike of 1913. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Wallerstein, Jane. Voices From the Paterson Silk Mills. Charleston, South Carolina, 2000.

Websites  

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/peopleevents/e_strike.html http://www.patersongreatfalls.org/silkstrike.html Excerpts from The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike 1913 by Steve Golin http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/102paterson/102facts2.htm http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=paterson+silk+strike+of+1913&qpvt=paterson+silk+strike+of+1913&FORM=IGRE

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