Historical Events of the Revolutionary World Movement

1926 Passaic textile strike

Passaic is the battle-field

Of boss and working class

Our war cry "We shall never yield"

We vow "they shall not pass!"

Your bloodhound thugs can bark and beat

And throw us into jail

But bravely their assaults we'll meet

Their dirty work shall fail.

We do not battle for the Lord

But for a living wage

This drives the greedy master horde

To curse and fume and rage.

In this great war for human right

Alone we do not stand

All are concerned in this great fight

All workers of this land.

Should we be vanquished on this field

By the army of black Greed

Then workers everywhere must yield

To those who make them bleed

Workers join us in this fight

Its yours as well as ours

We'll win if we will all unite

Against the ruling powers.

The 1926 Passaic textile strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity. Conducted in its initial phase by a "United Front Committee" organized by the Trade Union Educational League of the Workers (Communist) Party, the strike began on January 25, 1926 and officially ended only on March 1, 1927, when the final mill being picketed signed a contract with the striking workers. It was the first Communist-led work stoppage in the United States. The event was memorialized by a seven reel silent movie intended to generate sympathy and funds for the striking workers.

From the end of the 19th Century, Passaic, New Jersey, located just south of the city of Paterson, was the heart of an industrial district which included the towns of Lodi, Wallington, Garfield, and the city of Clifton. While cotton and woolen mills had been constructed in the area as early as the 1860s, it was not until 1889, when Congress increased the rate of tariffs on imported worsted wool that the textile industry expanded in any meaningful way.

In the middle part of the 1920s, there were over 16,000 workers employed in the wool and silk mills located in and around Passaic, New Jersey. The largest of the mills in the area, the German-owned Botany Worsted Mill, employed 6,400 workers, with three other giant mills employing thousands more. The workers at these facilities were predominantly foreign-born, including among them representatives of 39 nationalities, with immigrants from Poland, Italy, Russia, Hungary in particular evidence. Fully half the workforce was female.

Wages of these workers were miserable. A 1926 survey indicated that male workers in the Passaic textile mills averaged wages of from $1,000 to $1,200 per year, while female workers typically earned from $800 to $1,000 per annum. Female workers worked 10 hours a day to earn this sum, with the pace of work rapid and the use of the piecework system prevalent. With an income of approximately $1,400 estimated to be necessary to maintain a basic "American standard of living," many New Jersey factory workers found themselves on the brink of financial disaster.

This was not just a question of creature comforts for many Passaic textile workers, but a matter of life and death. The 1925 report of the New Jersey Department of Health showed a death rate for infants under 1 year of age that was 43% higher than for the rest of the state, 52% higher for children aged 1–5 and 5-9. Sanitary conditions were poor and an exhaustingly long work week in poorly ventilated facilities resulted in a higher than average rate of tuberculosis[4] as well as other diseases.