Word: schaffner
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...more than three decades of labor wars. Curiously, he was not a violent man. He was an earnest schemer who believed that most things could be settled by compromise. A young man in button shoes, speaking broken English, he brought about settlement of a strike at Hart Schaffner & Marx which became the basis for peace in the company for 35 years...
...first U.S. troops had scarcely entered Paris last August when huge billboard posters with an American-flag background appeared all over the city. On them was this legend: "Congratulations on a job well done-Hart Schaffner & Marx." A few days later the London Daily Mail angrily protested that American businessmen in uniform were transacting business in Paris. But who had scored this advertising scoop for the big U.S. clothing firm no one seemed able...
...strike started when 16 female button sewers at a Hart Schaffner & Marx factory, earning $3 to $8 a week, walked out over a 4? reduction in piecework pay. (One of the 16 strikers was round-faced, Russian-born Bessie Abramovitz, whom Hillman later married.) For three weeks, more & more workers left their sweatshops until the 16 strikers had become 41,000. Each night there were meetings, usually at Hull House, addressed by Welfare Worker Jane Addams, Lawyer Clarence Darrow, and the strike leaders...
...Hillman, a brash young man in high lace shoes, who spoke hopelessly fractured English, persuaded the strikers to ask for modest terms. This was a great accomplishment. He gained the friendship of Joseph Schaffner, who took a sudden vow to better conditions in all his factories. Finally, Sidney Hillman slipped a clause into the strike settlement calling for a permanent arbitration board, an almost revolutionary innovation in labor relations...
Some of the businessmen who will attend: Walter S. Montgomery, president of Spartan Mills, Spartansburg, S.C. (cotton goods); Meyer Kestnbaum, executive vice president and treasurer of Hart Schaffner & Marx; Noble A. Cathcart, assistant to the president of Crowell-Collier Publishing Co.; Roy E. Larsen, president of Time Inc.; Byron Gray, president of International Shoe Co.; H. Leslie Atlass, vice president of Columbia Broadcasting System; Joseph Hazen, vice president of Warner Bros. Also represented is labor by A.F. of L.'s Arnold Zander, C.I.O.'s Richard Deveraux...