Cloth Hat and Capmakers

CLOTH HAT AND CAPMAKERS. In its formation and early years an almost classic Jewish socialist union, the Capmakers suffered from inordinate Left infighting and drifted under moderating leadership toward the center of the political spectrum. Heir to a succession of unsuccessful or short-lived union efforts and an increasingly successful (but hardly socialist) Hatters Union among blocked hat makers, the Capmakers grew up economically out of a vast expansion of the headwear industry in the New York area. Organized in 1887, Cloth Hat and Cap Operators Local No. 1 turned first to the Socialist Labor Party for aid, but it resisted affiliation with the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance on the grounds of union autonomy. Led by socialists, some of the most important being former DeLeonites—the union also resisted affiliation with the American Federation of Labor until 1905. By then, the union had been rechartered (in 1901, as United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of America) and had thrown its energies against the efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World (perceived as a newfangled DeLeonism) to create a presence in New York through a Wobbly capmakers’ affiliate. Intent upon a more “constructive” socialist labor policy, the Capmakers enthusiastically endorsed Socialist Party candidates and participated widely in New York socialist activities into the 1930s.

The union came of age under the unchallenged leadership of Max Zaritsky. Erstwhile underground revolutionary and son of a prosperous Minsk merchant, Zaritsky had entered the trade from the business side and rapidly rose to leadership. Enjoying a small-scale version of Amalgamated Clothing Workers president Sidney Hillman’s success, Zaritsky in 1917 became the union’s first president and directed it through its World War I-era growth and consolidation.

By the 1920s, when Zaritsky had considerably moderated his socialist practice, he faced opposition from undiminished old-time Socialists and from younger Communists, both emboldened by deteriorating conditions. Winning abandonment of the piece rate, he soon insisted on its return for the sake of labor productivity and manufacturing profits. He resigned in 1925, taking a position with the Jewish Daily Forward, but returned in 1927 and remained for the duration of this career. The Trade Union Education League had organized against him from the early 1920s, at one point nearly taking a majority of capmakers’ locals. Led by organizer Gladys Schechter, the Communists again challenged in 1926–1927, but were beaten back through the gerrymandering of locals.

The Communist shift to the dual unionism of the Trade Union Unity League, and Zaritsky’s subsequent expulsion of dissidents, virtually destroyed Left influence in the trade. Zaritsky’s own loyalties had by this time become markedly Zionist, and he later abandoned socialist ideas altogether for something approaching a corporate view of labor and management.

Unlike the case in a number of other needle trades, the Left posed no further threats to Zaritsky’s leadership of the proliferating unionization under the New Deal. Politically a wholehearted supporter of the American Labor Party, he led his troops in alliance with the David Dubinsky wing of the party. After Sidney Hillman’s death, Alex Rose (a leader of the millinery workers, a Labor Zionist, and a bitter anticommunist crusader since the early 1920s) maneuvered the formation of the Liberal Party, dedicated to a Cold War liberalism and to patronage. Into the 1940s–1950s, a persistent strain of Jewish (especially Yiddish) radicalism, in all varieties from anarchist to communist, nevertheless remained among the old-timers. Although it cooperated widely with employers in the postwar years, the union grew dramatically smaller owing to the shrinking of the hat trade. Merger with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (later Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union) brought it back eventually toward a progressive milieu. By that time, Jewish membership—concentrated in the leadership—had diminished within the union, which was itself to become steadily weaker because of the incoming rush of imported goods.

Robinson, Donald H. Spotlight on a Union. New York: Dial Press, 1948.

Guide to the United Hatters, Cap, and Millinery Workers International Union Records TAM.054, Tamiment Library, New York University. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_054/bioghist.html