The early American clothing trade was divided not only between employers and workers, but also among competing classes of garment laborers. Custom tailors, who made higher-grade clothing to individual orders, distrusted shop tailors and ready-made clothing workers, while each group accused the other of undermining strikes by acting as strikebreakers, or “scabs.” The Journeymen Tailors Union attempted to impose unity under the leadership of John Brown Lennon, who became general secretary in 1886, but its craft-based structure repeatedly collided with the rapidly expanding factory clothing system. In 1891, the union’s jurisdictional disputes helped spur the creation of the United Garment Workers of America, while the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union emerged in 1900. The AFL recognized all three organizations, creating a bitter contest over which union had the right to organize workers producing non-custom clothing. The UGWA ultimately won control over most ready-made and special-order manufacture, leaving the JTU increasingly confined to custom tailoring. By 1909, the JTU was attempting to reclaim workers through “raiding”—organizing laborers already claimed by the UGWA—an admission that the union system had become as fractured as the industry itself. The conflict intensified after socialist Canadian organizer Eugene Brais defeated Lennon in 1910, bringing industrial-union ideas into direct conflict with AFL president Samuel Gompers and the older craft-union leadership. A 1914 attempt to transform the organization into the International Tailors’ Industrial Union and merge with Sidney Hillman’s dissident faction failed, as did repeated efforts to unite with the UGWA and ILGWU. The fragmentation weakened organized labor’s leverage during the rise of mass garment manufacturing, while workers moved between rival organizations and employers benefited from jurisdictional confusion. The JTU survived until 1935, when it finally merged into Hillman’s Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1880s–1930s
The Tailors’ Union War: Scabbing, Jurisdictional Raids, and the Collapse of Craft Control
Journeymen Tailors Union (JTU) / 1880s–1930s
The early American clothing trade was divided not only between employers and workers, but also among competing classes of garment laborers. Custom tailors, who made higher-grade clothing to individual orders, distrusted shop tailors and ready-made clothing workers, while each group accused the other of undermining strikes by acting as strikebreakers, or “scabs.” The Journeymen Tailors Union attempted to impose unity under the leadership of John Brown Lennon, who became general secretary in 1886, but its craft-based structure repeatedly collided with the rapidly expanding factory clothing system. In 1891, the union’s jurisdictional disputes helped spur the creation of the United Garment Workers of America, while the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union emerged in 1900. The AFL recognized all three organizations, creating a bitter contest over which union had the right to organize workers producing non-custom clothing. The UGWA ultimately won control over most ready-made and special-order manufacture, leaving the JTU increasingly confined to custom tailoring. By 1909, the JTU was attempting to reclaim workers through “raiding”—organizing laborers already claimed by the UGWA—an admission that the union system had become as fractured as the industry itself. The conflict intensified after socialist Canadian organizer Eugene Brais defeated Lennon in 1910, bringing industrial-union ideas into direct conflict with AFL president Samuel Gompers and the older craft-union leadership. A 1914 attempt to transform the organization into the International Tailors’ Industrial Union and merge with Sidney Hillman’s dissident faction failed, as did repeated efforts to unite with the UGWA and ILGWU. The fragmentation weakened organized labor’s leverage during the rise of mass garment manufacturing, while workers moved between rival organizations and employers benefited from jurisdictional confusion. The JTU survived until 1935, when it finally merged into Hillman’s Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
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