Over New Year, 1908 the tenements of New York City’s Lower East Side struck against high rents. Over 10,000 would participate in the the strike, involving mostly immigrant families and led by the Socialist Party.

‘Great Rent Strike on the East Side’ from The Worker (New York). Vol. 17 No. 40. January 4, 1908.

Organized Movement to Compel Reduction of Charges in Tenement Houses Gathers Strength.

Socialist and Progressive Organizations Take the Lead–Agitation by Means of Meetings and Leaflets–Police Have to Haul In Their Horns–Many Landlords Have Already Given In.

The rent strike on the East Side s covering a wider area each day and is rapidly being brought under systematic and organized control thru the initiative and advice of the Socialists of the Eighth A.D. By this organized direction of the revolt many tenants have already secured concessions from the landlords.

The houses involved in this strike are occupied by the lowest paid and hardest-worked proletarians of this city. They are mostly sweatshop workers, whose employers have been hit hard by the present Industrial de pression and have been forced to close shop in a great number of cases, and in others to making sweeping reductions in their working force. The tenants of these houses in the most “prosperous” of times find it difficult to make ends meet, and now, what with the increase in the cost of provisions, the prohibitive rent charges, and part-time work or no work at all, are actually depriving themselves of the very necessities of life. A dollar, or two. or even three and that is what they hope to get off their rent, will mean that much more money diverted toward purchasing foodstuffs, which they stand badly in need of.

An Anti High Rent League has been organized consisting of delegates from Socialist and progressive organizations. Thru circulars and in the meetings announcements are made that tenants can secure the assistance of the league by organizing their tenements and sending a committee to the league headquarters. The tenements are then organized and each family contributes $3 to a common fund as a guarantee of loyalty to the other strikers of the tenement. Should any family desert the strike it forfeits the sum it has contributed. Should any family be dispossessed others take into their rooms parts of the household goods and the common fund is used to assist them. It has also been decided that each striking family contribute 25 cents which, together with other funds raised, will be used for legal expenses to fight evictions. Several Socialist lawyers have volunteered their services in this work. A press committee has been elected to furnish official news of the strike and affiliated organizations issue no literature and arrange no meetings without the consent of the Anti High Rent League. Ten thousand leaflets bearing on the strike have been ordered. It is understood that no further objection is made by the police department to holding street meetings which will be held from now on.

Following are the resolutions signed and adopted by the striking tenants of the most populous section of the lower East Side:

“We, the tenants of….having realized our present misery, came to the following conclusions: Whereas the present industrial depression has affected us most severely; and, whereas our husbands are out of work and cannot earn a living; and, whereas the rent for the last two years has risen skywards so that even in the so-called days of prosperity the rent was a heavy burden upon us therefore we resolve to demand of you to decrease the rent immediately.”

The comrades of the 8th A.D. are pushing the fight against the exorbitant rents charged for “rooms” that are hardly fit for human habitation. committee is making a thoro canvass of the tenements involved in the strike, distributing copies of the resolutions in English and Jewish, which the tenants readily sign. Their clubroom has been thrown open for the use of the strikers, which is filled to overflowing with women and children who come for advice, some of them having received dispossess notices, altho in some instances their rent is paid up to the end of the month. The lawyers who have volunteered their services will instruct all applicants how to organise and make their resistance effective. The meetings arranged in the interest of the strikers are crowded. Socialist speakers are well received and the substantial aid given the strike by the Socialist Party organizations is having an educational influence on the tenants of much value to the Socialist cause.

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/080104-worker-v17n40.pdf