But the New York cloak makers' strike may be historical, not only
for its results in the cloak industry, but for its contribution to the
industrial problems of the country.
No outsider can read the statement of the terms of the manufacturers'
preference without feeling that a joint agreement committee should have
been established to consider cases of alleged unfair discrimination
against Union workers. On the other hand, no outsider can hear without a
feeling of uneasiness such an assertion as was made to one of the
writers--that strike breakers had been obliged to pay an initiation fee
of one hundred dollars to enter the Cloak Makers' Union.
There is undoubtedly, on both sides, need of patience and a long
educational process to change the attitude of hostility and bitterness
engendered by over twenty years of a false policy of antagonism. But
never before, in the cloak makers' history, have the men and women gone
back to work after a strike holding their heads as high as they do
to-day.[32] It can be reasonably believed that their last summer's
struggle will achieve a permanent gain for the workers' industrial
future. This narrative of the industrial fortunes of the women cloak
makers in New York in the last year is given for its statement of the
effects of the struggle for the Preferential Union Shop on their trade
histories, and for its account of their gains as workers in the same
trade with men.
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