Photograph Of Garment Workers Strike

The Images, Cartoons, and Other Visual Sources That Shaped America

Table of Contents

Overview

About the Artist

Document Image

Context

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

https://doi.org/10.3735/9781935306733.book-part-065

You don't have access to this content. Please try to log in with your institution. Sign In

Abstract

This photograph shows garment workers on strike in New York City. In September 1909, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, one of some 600 such shops and factories in New York City, went on strike. (A shirtwaist is a tailored woman’s blouse worn with a skirt.) The workers at two other shops joined them. Then on November 22, 1909, thousands of workers in the “needles trade” filled the Great Hall at Cooper Union on East Seventh Street in Manhattan. Among them were Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, and Clara Lemlich, a Jewish immigrant who worked in the garment trade. That day, Lemlich called for a general strike, launching the New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, often referred to as the “Uprising of the 20,000.”