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Labor issues part of local history

By Bob Cudmore

The Knights of Labor apparently was the first union to organize Amsterdam mill hands. According to historian Hugh Donlon, a wage cut suffered by Sanford carpet workers in 1884 led to a strike that brought union organizers to town.

There was a major knitting mill strike and management lockout involving the Knights of Labor in 1886, marked by frequent physical clashes.  The mill owners eventually prevailed in ousting the Knights of Labor from the city, at least temporarily.

As mentioned in last week’s column, one of the Knights of Labor leaders was a woman, Leonora Carney Barry.  Barry worked in the Pioneer Street Knitting Mill to support her three children after her husband died.

Barry wrote, “Day after day, I sat sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen.”

An eloquent speaker, Barry became a leader of the 1500-member Amsterdam local of the Knights of Labor, which included many women. Eventually she left Amsterdam, leaving her children with relatives, and went on to head the women’s department in the national union.  She resigned in 1889 amid opposition to her idea that women should be full-fledged union members.  She lived until 1930 and was popular on the lecture circuit as an advocate for temperance, suffrage and women’s rights.

1914 GLOVERS STRIKE

According to historian Barbara McMartin, some 1,500 glove cutters went on strike at almost all the glove firms in Fulton County in 1914. The strike began in Gloversville and spread within hours to Johnstown. As the strike went on, 15,000 glove industry workers were idled.

McMartin said the glove cutters--primarily Russian Jews, Italians, English and native-born Americans--argued they had not received any significant pay increase since 1897. The manufacturers were united in their stand that current trade conditions prevented a pay raise.

The New York State Board of Mediation and Arbitration issued findings on the strike after holding hearings in Fulton County that year, in general ruling against the union. The glovers eventually returned to work, without their long sought pay raise. There were some raises after World War I. McMartin said the glove manufacturers won a hollow victory in that the industry now had begun its ultimate decline in Fulton County.

McMartin said the union promoted socialist ideas.  One cutter, Herman Abbott, pointed to starving little children and miserable working conditions and said the quicker the state owns the glove industry, the better.

THE BIG STRIKE

What carpet workers called the big strike took place in 1952 when members of the Textile Workers Union of America were on the picket lines for twelve weeks at factories in northern states including Mohawk Carpets and Bigelow-Sanford in Amsterdam.  That year Herbert Shuttleworth II had become president of Mohawk Carpets.

“We got eleven cents (an hour raise),” said the late Amsterdam union leader Tony Murdico. “There were no ifs, ands or buts. We had to go back to work with 11 cents.”

When Bigelow-Sanford moved its Amsterdam operations to its plant in Thompsonville, Connecticut in 1955 some attributed the move to labor unrest.  However, Amsterdam textile union leader Fred Krokenberger said his members had accepted concessions. Krokenberger noted that while Amsterdam only had four union grievances in four years, workers in Thompsonville had participated in 17 work stoppages in two years.  In any event, by 1971 Bigelow Sanford had closed its Thompsonville mills and moved all manufacturing to southern states.

WILLIAM DUCHESSI

William Duchessi of Amsterdam was a local then national officer of the Textile Workers Union of America in the 1960s and 1970s.  He died in 1979.  William Duchessi’s nephew, John Duchessi, Jr., was mayor of Amsterdam from 1996 to 2003.

Tuesday, August 29, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Labor issues

Wednesday, August 30, 2023-From the Archives- , March 12, 2021-Episode 361-Sarah Patten, author of “The Measure of Gold,” a historical novel set in Europe in World War II with a focus on French Resistance women spies.

Thursday, August 31, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Matthew was more than a haberdasher

On the September Historians schedule, the Underground RR and an interview with Charles H. Yaple, from Marathon, N.Y. Professor Emeritus, SUNY Cortland (schedule could change, we will be the first to let you know)

...and some football history

Friday, September 1, 2023-Episode 490-Christopher Gorham is author of Anna Rosenberg, The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, August 29, 2023

68 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:26AM

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