The Bagel by Maria Balinska

Author:Maria Balinska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2008-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

24. Pioneering newspaper editor Abraham Cahan.

There then appeared a certain Jacob Goldstein, a representative of the Boston Jewish Bakers’ Union. He himself wasn’t even a baker. With strong arguments he demonstrated that Jewish bakery workers could definitely be organised, just like workers of other nationalities, and perhaps even better, if only we would try to organise them. And Goldstein’s speech had such an effect that the convention designated money to organise the East Side Jewish bakers. And the International borrowed this same Goldstein from the Jewish Bakers’ Union and made him the special organiser for New York. Goldstein had a silver tongue and a golden heart. He knew how to touch the heart of each listener, especially the bakers… . How can I describe the way Mr Goldstein just started speaking and immediately found his way into our hearts? That we just started following him, like children follow their mother.17

It was, however, far from plain sailing in New York for Goldstein, despite his silver tongue. By the end of 1906 he had managed to amalgamate three Jewish locals into one but he still faced challenges – a not insignificant problem being a two-year economic down turn, always a difficult time for unions and a boon for left-wing radicals with an anti-capitalist agenda. These tensions were being played out on the Lower East Side as they were across the country. But by late autumn 1908 the bakers of the Lower East Side had rejoined the International – after an absence of fifteen years – in the newly chartered Local 100. The stage was now set for the strike that would usher in one of the most important years in Jewish labour history.

* * *

The 1909 strike began, as most strikes had previously, at the beginning of May. The bakers were demanding a maximum ten-hour day; a minimum salary; recognition of the union and use of the union label. They also added to their list something for which the Jewish labour movement was to become famous: that the bosses allow their workers to give one night’s work to unemployed bakers:

The Jewish locals demand from their steady men to support the loafing men, not with money but with work… . [We] take the list of loafing men and the list of steady men and [determine] just how much the steady men must give up of their time to enable the loafing men to get enough work to cover their immediate expenses and a little above.18

The baker bosses refused to countenance any of these demands. They had high hopes that this strike would be a repeat of the 1905 disaster where violence alienated the public and reinforced the open shop. It was indeed a bloody strike. ‘Bricks Fly Thick in Bakers’ Fight,’ ran the New York Times headline; ‘Strikers Storm East Side Shops – One Raider’s Skull Fractured with Sugar Bowl’. But this time, most of the reporting expressed scepticism as to how much of the violence was being caused by the strikers and how much by the bosses.

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