A reader named Barbara, having come across Papa’s account of the February 4, 1930 Dressmakers’ strike, writes:
My 95 year old grandmother was a seamstress in the New York garment district during the Depression. She participated in two strikes. We are trying to piece together the years that these strikes took place, and some of the other details. She remembers leaving work at 12:00 (your [grand]father’s diary says 10:00), she was in the needle district, and that everyobody was pouring out of work and wandering around in the streets, as your [grand]father says. She says that they didn’t have signs and picket, that it was all workers in the streets, she doesn’t remember any violence.
And, on the subject of whether or not the Dressmakers represented a subset of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union:
It was the whole ILGWU. My grandmother has referred to it as the Dressmakers Union throughout the years. When I read the whole long name of the Union, I thought the Dressmakers were a subsection. She said no, that the ILGWU was the actual union she was a part of.
Long live the Internets!