Experience on a picket line can be a life-changer. Led by the industrial Amalgamated Food Workers union, thousands of waiters, bussers, cooks and dishwashers struck New York City’s hotels for wages, conditions, and a union during January 1934, beginning a year that would forever transform the U.S. labor movement.

‘Thousands Surround Waldorf Astoria in Mass Picket Line’ by Diana Rice from The Militant. Vol. 7 No. 4. January 29, 1934.

All day they waited in the strike hall, all prepared for long struggle. During the afternoon the hall packed up tight, new men coming in every few minutes. By five, the fateful hour, it was jammed. The general strike was on! Upstairs, shop committees were meeting. Downstairs, they lined up for the big march to the Waldorf. At five-ten it set out.

Most of the 2,000 who started out had never been on a picket line before. At first, they seemed a little puzzled as to just what to do. But the ranks were tight and orderly, not even the heavy early evening traffic breaking them. They walked across the city, towards Park Avenue, towards the luxury they helped make possible all these years.

Passersby looked and wondered. “Must be a parade,” somebody said. “No. Something about child labor.” What do they know? What do they care? At Park Avenue a woman all bundled in furs turned and spoke savagely: “You ought to be glad you’re not on the breadline.” She was the kind these strikers cooked for and waited on and half-starved for all these years. Never again! This was the day of reckoning, of the general strike.

At each step they felt closer together, learning at last that only together and through each other can they gain the simplest thing, decent hours, decent pay, decent conditions. Only together, through the Union.

The line reaches the Waldorf, there columns join in. After a while more men come, as shop after shop is pulled out. Secretary Field rushes down the line with a bulletin–Park Central out, Breslin out, Astor, Lexington…one after another. The men came from the Lexington, bringing their tools with them. The line grew and grew. Groups of sympathizers joined on. At last 3,000 strong, marching, round and round the Waldorf.

At first quietly, feeling strange. Then confidence grew. The line became solid, marching solid, and somewhere an old-timer began to sing “Solidarity”. Men listened, men who had never heard the words before, and in a few minutes the whole line was singing. “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!”

“Down With the Scabs!” Men who had worked alone, each separated from the other for years, tired, exploited, finding brotherhood and strength together. Solidarity forever! And the line began to shout “Down with the scabs!” “Join the strike!” “Recognize our Union!” “All out on the picket line!”

The next time round, the windows in the grill were covered. It must have upset the diners’ stomachs to hear the cries outside, to remember that the glorious Waldorf had harbored men ungrateful enough to want dinners for themselves. Inside, Oscar told the reporters: “There’s a place for such men. They ought to be in jail.” Oscar grown rich pandering to the rich. And the Times headline: “800 March for the Diversion of Diners.”

Oh, those diners. Harry Gerguson, the well-known criminal…he doesn’t belong in jail, according to Oscar. He belongs in the Waldorf, being fed by scab-slaves. Judge Samuel Seabury, the tower of jus-tice, the special pal of Mayor La Guardia, eating behind drawn curtains so he should not have to think of the empty stomachs. And delighted because Mr. Boomer had some scabs handy to cook up his dinner!

More and more men. Twenty-two hotels now, marching round and round in perfect order, round and round the Waldorf. Men learning, learning. Men singing solidarity for the first time. Free, walking round and round, less tired than during all those years when they walked on soft carpets, serving from silver dishes at white covered tables! Strong!

“For the Union makes us strong!” And at last back across town, picking up more med on the way, back to the strike hall and after a little rest to the mass meetings. Down to Bryant Hall filling up with tense, quiet, tired men. This is the climax of the day. The first blow has been struck. The general strike is well under way.

The meeting in Bryant Hall is short. None of the speakers takes much time. It is a quiet meeting. No hackneyed agitational phrases. The speakers do not have to excite the audience by words. The experience of rotten working conditions has already spoken. They do not have to be exhorted to action; they have already acted and need now only to consider how best to go on acting. When the plans are outlined for the next day’s campaign, a grim mood sweeps the room. Build committees, post pickets, pull shops, stop scabs! This is no picnic…it’s the general strike…the workers’ fight against the bosses for a right to stand up and act like men!

Ben Gitlow leads off. He packs in plenty in a few words. Best of all are his stories of Oscar. Oscar the Great, the darling of the fat-feeders of Park Avenue. Oscar the slave-driver. How he used to run the bar at the Geneva and hand out jobs only to men who spent plenty of money at his bar. How he used to be a partner in a Broadway brothel. That lovely man! Kostas tries to speak. He is too hoarse. The croak that comes out of his throat is greeted with friendly applause. Gordon, too, is worn out with the effort of months and the strain of the last few days. He manages a few words but his voice vanishes amid the same comradely applause and laughter. The hoarseness is a sign, a symbol of work done.

Secretary Gund of the A.F.W. is speaking. He mentions the A.F. of L. A wave of boos. Those strike-breakers! The Amalgamated–that’s, our union, the union of the General Strike.

Cannon speaks about the Union, the Amalgamated. He speaks of its racial and religious and political democracy, of its solidarity, of the grand principle of industrial unionism which brings together in one solid fighting mass the workers in every shop, every kind of worker from the most skilled down to the least skilled, all workers together, backing each other and going on to victory together! “This is your Union! It’s what you make it! Stand by the Union, build it strong, and victory must come.” This is the keynote of the evening.

There is a tremendous burst of applause. The meeting is over. Somewhere the words of the song learned on the picket-line are heard. “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!”

Down the rickety wooden stairs to the street. Groups of strikers in excited talk. The fight is on…no let-up now until victory comes. One young striker turns to another: “This will be good for the labor movement,” he says. “All over the country,” the other answers. “All over the world, I think,” says the first. Yes, this strike is part of the labor movement. Fellow-worker Wright of the Dressmakers Local 22 brought that message too: “We are with you, fellow-workers, your fight is our fight.”

In the street one man says, “Let’s go to Headquarters, there’s another meeting there.” His fellow-worker says it’s too late. “Let’s go anyway.” They go, and others with them. They want again to stand together, to feel their new power, the power of the union, of solidarity.

That is how the General Strike was launched in the hotel and restaurant industry of New York City, the first step to winning for the workers in the hotels and restaurants of the whole country, decent working conditions and the right to live like men and women instead of like slaves.

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1934/jan-29-1934.pdf