sity among their ethnic employees (Cohen, 41).Employers also used racial prejudice as a weapon against employees who were contemplating a strike. Blacks comprised ten to twelve percent of the steel workers in Chicago before the first major strike, yet blacks roles in the earlier unions were limited (Cohen, 42). Most of them lived too far away from the union meeting halls to attend. Still, white union leaders made no good faith efforts to include them. The result was that after the 1919 steel strike began, employers had no difficulty hiring 40,000 blacks nationwide and 8,000 in Chicago as strike breakers (Cohen, 42). The strike collapsed first in Chicago. Soon after, it failed nationally as well.Whereas the steel strikers failed in only a few months, the packing strikers held out a few years. Packers were still unsuccessful and for many of the same reasons that caused the steel strike to collapse (Cohen, 43). One dissimilarity, though, was in the labor experience of blacks. Packers had learned from previous strikes that they needed black support to make their unions successful (Cohen, 45).That unions needed an united ethnic front could not be proven more convincingly than when workers in the garment industry succeeded with its unionization in 1919. Jews were well-organized and held many of the union leadership roles throughout the needle industry of Chicago (Cohen, 47). The Jews openly courted Poles, Italians, and blacks with literature that was published in foreign languages where necessary and encouraged them to take officer positions (Cohen, 48). Consequently, clothing workers gained shorter hours, increased wages, and an established arrangement for reviewing complaints of all laborers within the industry (Cohen, 48). The strikers in the clothing industry did not have to battle with such large national foes as did the steel and packing industries, but ethnic unity was still necessary for their success. Laborers needed better unity, be...
