Of Special Interest to Carpenters. From Local Union No. 18. United Garment Workers of America.

[New York?, ca. 1910.]. 8vo (11” x 8.5”) circular. 4 pp., illus. CONDITION: Separated at spine or main fold and repaired with document repair tape, old vertical and horizontal folds with some separation along folds.

A scarce advertising circular featuring an appeal from the women of the United Garment Workers of America to union men to buy the union-manufactured trousers of Sweet, Orr & Co. in order to support the organization and ensure humane working conditions.

The cover illustration depicts a carpenter at work wearing overalls in his workshop. The appeal, a page-long letter signed by the female officers of two chapters of the UGWA, appears on page three, with the portraits of four women in their finery opposite, apparently these same officers. The portraits are captioned: “Carpenters wear the overalls and trousers we make.” The letter begins “To you, my brother:—If you are a Union man, be manly enough to stand by your principles. Always,” and continues:

Wear Sweet, Orr & Co.’s Union-made pants and overalls. As far as possible see that everything you buy bears the Union label…Help whenever and wherever the chance is offered. To forget to think of it is a school-boy excuse. Be a man… If the Garment you wear could tell its own story would it say: ‘I was made in a vile sweat-shop, by labor ground under the tyrannical heel of oppression, and where all conditions are unfavorable, morals are polluted and filth and disease stalk hand in hand.’ Or would the garment you wear say: ‘I was made at one of the spacious factories of Sweet, Orr & Co., by happy, contented young men and women, and where every cutter, maker and forwarder, is a member either of Local Union No. 18 or No. 84, United Garment Workers of America’ […] If Union men everywhere care to better the condition of workers in this branch of human industry, an opportunity is offered to drive the sweat-shop oppressor from a business that would be better without him … Sweet, Orr & Co. encouraged the organization of their employees in 1891. They continue to do so.

In 1893 the UGWA led a successful strike of some 16,000 garment workers in New York City. The organization came to prominence through the 1910 Garment Workers’ Strike in Chicago which the union initially supported. Initiated by a group of female laborers at Hart Schaffner & Marx—Chicago’s largest manufacturer—the strike quickly mushroomed into a citywide labor demonstration of nearly 40,000 workers that lasted until February 1911. At the union’s 1914 convention in Nashville, two-thirds of the organization’s more radical membership split from the organization to form the rival Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

A noteworthy use in advertising of the voice of unionized female labor to drum up business on the basis of pro-union sentiment.