Word: sit
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Smaller sit-down strikes were disrupted by various means. In Philadelphia 60 sit-downers in a clothing factory were ousted by two policemen. In Decatur, Ill., 47 sit-downers in a wallpaper mill walked out when a sheriff threatened to oust them by force. In Los Angeles eleven sit-downers in a bakery quit, after the proprietor, with police aid, had prevented food being delivered to them and confined them for 48 hours to a diet of their own pies (twelve kinds...
...workers in a shoe factory sat down on union orders. Among the strikers were two sons and a daughter of Morris Baidowsky, president of the company. The union, sensible of filial relationships, allowed them to leave the factory and go to the movies. At nightfall a committee of 26 sit-downers was selected to stay the night while others went home. The secretary & treasurer of the company, Herman Baidowsky, another son, came to spend the night, He promised that if they would not break anything they could have light all night, and he would see that they got bedding...
...Another sit-down strike never occurred. In a leather plant at Grand Haven, Mich., 300 workers organized a "stay-in." They did their work by day, slept in the plant by night. The management of the plant did nothing, for the stay-inners were trying to prevent sit-downers from seizing the plant. Said the leader of the stay-inners: "We have nothing to gain from C. I. O. organization here and we have taken steps to make certain that our jobs will not be jeopardized...
Four days later Homer Martin, President of the United Automobile Workers, invaded New Jersey and made a speech at Newark in answer to Mr. Hoffman. He pointed out that strikes are legal. "What is the difference," he asked "if a man sits down inside or sits down outside?" The only difference he could find was that sitting down inside is easier and safer for the striker. To the argument that sit-down strikes break property laws, he argued back that the right to a good pay check is a property right just as much as the right to own property...
...either way he is in effect deprived of the use of his property. Nevertheless, a plant cannot be shut from the outside unless a substantial majority of its employes join the strike. A very small minority of employes can generally shut down a plant by a sitdown. If the sit-down should be made legal, the question would still remain whether society would tolerate having its industries shut down at will by any minority that chooses to use the weapon...