A young Chicago-based Albert Goldman, then working as a tailor and having recently joined the new Communist movement, on the image and the reality of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. The A.C.W.A. was born as a radical rebellion, the Chicago Uprising of 1910, against the A.F.L.’s conservative United Garment Workers of America, led by the ‘Socialist’ leadership around Sidney Hillman. That leadership was both ‘progressive,’ becoming the by-word for ‘social-unionism’, and whose overriding anti-Communism led it to make common cause with the government and gangsters, which would come to dominate whole locals.

‘The Policies of The Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ by Albert Verblin (Albert Goldman) from The Toiler. No. 142. October 23, 1920.

Among the bourgeois liberals and democrats for whom the A.F. of L. is somewhat reactionary, such a “radical” union as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America stands in great esteem. That is the only kind of a “progressive” union that appeals to these bourgeois radicals. And that is only natural because what these bourgeois radicals want above all is peace between capital and labor. The idea of the class-war is very distasteful and terrifying to their refined tastes and they would like to find some “peaceful solution” of the bitter economic and social war between the masters and slaves. And in the machinery of reconciliation invented by the leaders of the Amalgamated or rather by Hart Schaffner and Marx, the liberal editors and readers of The Nation, The New Republic and such magazines find the cure-all for all social and economic ills of society. That is why they think so much of the Amalgamated.

But the class-conscious worker, especially the one who works in the clothing industry knows better. He knows that the whole machinery of reconciliation is nothing wore than a sham because he knows that there can be no such thing as peace between worker and employer. The machinery of adjustment is far more in favor of the bosses than it is in favor of the workers. Otherwise the bosses would not praise it as much as they do.

How “Conciliation” Works.

During the war and a year or so after the armistice, there was such an enormous profit in clothing that the manufacturers were ready to grant a great deal in order to have continuous production. The agreement which the Amalgamated offered the employers’ was exactly what they wanted. It guaranteed production because it strictly prohibited any stoppages on the part of the workers. The bosses aware of their interests accepted the agreement and sent their workers to join the union. In some cases the bosses had to drag the workers into the union.

The whole agreement with the machinery of adjustment can be characterized as follows: It gives the bosses an opportunity to choke the workers in the slack season and it takes away from the workers the chance to get back at the bosses during the busy season. During the slack season the the employers can do almost anything with the workers while during the busy season they use the agreement to make the workers give them continuous production.

One can hardly blame the bosses for playing such a clever game. That is to their interest and in that they show themselves far more class-conscious than the “leaders” of the union. The bosses have a class-conscious militant policy while the leaders have a typically petty-bourgeois, trader’s and peddler’s policy.

“Leaders” Use Radical Phrase.

One must also realize that the leaders of the Amalgamated are, without exception, “Socialists.” They are continually throwing out phrases about the future society, but since they are satisfied with the present society (who would not be at a salary of $7,500 a year?) these phrases are meaningless and used to mislead those workers who have just begun to see the light. They have succeeded in building as strong a machine as any good old A.F. of L. Union and they are not averse to using a dictatorship of the union politicians in order to crush any opposition from the rank and file.

Everything went along smoothly up to the present time. The workers made money and were to a large extent satisfied. There was a little murmur of protest here and there but it did not amount to much. But when the crisis came upon the clothing industry and thousands of workers were thrown out of employment and many thousands more worked only part time, discontent became rife and the “socialist leaders” who, like their friends of the Socialist Party, are nothing but petty-bourgeois reformers and opportunists, began to seek for some means to quiet the discontent.

The “Unemployment Fund”

The first thing our “leaders” did was to come out with a scheme of an “unemployment fund” that would solve the problem of unemployment. This unemployment fund is to be given by the bosses. Think of it! The bosses would take the money which the workers made for them by their hard labor and make an unemployment fund. It doesn’t make much difference to the bosses whether they pay the money in the form of wages or of an unemployment fund. Pres, Hillman gave the whole thing away when before the Board of Arbitration at Baltimore he said, “If you don’t give us an unemployment fund we shall have to ask for higher wages.”

The class-conscious worker looks with contempt on an unemployment fund that comes from the bosses. First because it doesn’t come from the bosses but from the sweat and blood of the workers and second because he does not wish to enter into any partnership with his enemies. If there is to be an unemployment fund let it come direct from the workers.

To solve the unemployment problem, as far as it can be solved under the present capitalist system, by demanding week work from the bosses instead of the slavish speed-up system of piece-work is too revolutionary a step for the socialist leaders. That would endanger the organization (they mean their jobs) because it would mean a big strike. But week work is the only thing that in any way can solve the problem of the unemployed. In the last two years or so the piece-work system with overtime created a super-abundance of suits and that is one of the reasons why we have such terrible unemployment. The capitalists cried “Production, production” and the union leaders echoed “Production, production” and as a result we are going around idle.

Cooperative Schemes To Fool Workers.

The second thing the leaders did to quiet the rising discontent is to enter the cooperative movement. A discussion of the cooperative movement in relation to the unions would take too much time but the idea, as Hillman expressed it, that the cooperative banks and factories would help win strikes is ridiculous. The workers win strikes by struggle and by showing a spirit of solidarity. All the cooperatives will do will be to add some more job-holders to the present business-agents and other officials.

Thus by these policies do the “leaders” try to blind the eyes of the workers. Instead of developing a revolutionary class-conscious spirit they develop a peddler’s spirit of reformism, It is up to the class-conscious workers to agitate in the shops and factories, form shop committees and workers’ councils and in that way wrest the power from the union politicians and place the union on a real class-conscious revolutionary basis.

The Toiler was a significant regional, later national, newspaper of the early Communist movement published weekly between 1919 and 1921. It grew out of the Socialist Party’s ‘The Ohio Socialist’, leading paper of the Party’s left wing and northern Ohio’s militant IWW base and became the national voice of the forces that would become The Communist Labor Party. The Toiler was first published in Cleveland, Ohio, its volume number continuing on from The Ohio Socialist, in the fall of 1919 as the paper of the Communist Labor Party of Ohio. The Toiler moved to New York City in early 1920 and with its union focus served as the labor paper of the CLP and the legal Workers Party of America. Editors included Elmer Allison and James P Cannon. The original English language and/or US publication of key texts of the international revolutionary movement are prominent features of the Toiler. In January 1922, The Toiler merged with The Workers Council to form The Worker, becoming the Communist Party’s main paper continuing as The Daily Worker in January, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/142-oct-23-1920-Toiler-LOC.pdf