I’m grateful to the bagel for introducing me to American and particularly Jewish American labor history.
One British review of my book berated me for ‘devoting an inordinately lengthy section to the history of the New York bakery unions’ struggles’ but those struggles led to real change for people’s lives (and also arguably resulted in more hygienic bread!).
The conditions in the cellar bakeries of the Lower East Side at the turn of the 19th Century into the 20th were grim. Here’s one account from the New York Press in 1894:
Trays of pretzel biscuit (that is, bagels) more or less fresh from the oven, stood upon the barrels… the wooden floor was rotten and bent under the weight of a person in every part… and wet, so wet that if a man stepped on that portion the splash of the water underneath could plainly (be heard)… the shop was thorougly infested with a great vareity of insect life… real genuine cockroaches, about an inch long, were seen springing at a lively rate in the direction of the half moulded dough.
It took until 1909 – with the support of the whole community on the Lower East Side – to establish a lasting bakers’ union and set minimum wages. But it would be a turning point for the entire Jewish labor movement in New York. This was the beginning of a period during which Jewish unionists would play a leading role in the wider American movement, most famously in the garment industry.
One of demands acceded to by the bakery bosses in the 1909 strike was a system which was pioneered by the Jewish unions in the US – a system by which employed workers gave up one night a week to unemployed workers. One of the union leaders described it this way:
The Jewish locals demand from their steady men to support the loafing men, not with money but with work… [We] take the list of loafing men and the list of steady men and [determine] just how much the steady men must give up of their time to enable the loafing men to get enough work to cover their immediate expenses and a little above.
Any lessons there for today’s recession?
Maria Balinska, author of The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.
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