ABSTRACT
On January 19, 1913, over 4,000 striking Italian women garment workers gathered at Cooper Union in New York City to learn that the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) had signed an agreement with manufacturers without their approval. With jeers and the stomping of feet, the women rejected the union leaders’ instructions to return to work. Several women rushed to the stage, forcing speakers off the platform with cries of “a frameup,” and urged workers to abandon the ILGWU in favor of the more militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). A “storm of protest,” as the New York Times called it, spread to the streets. Thousands of Italian women workers hurled stones at the windows of a nearby shirtwaist factory and sat in the center of Third Avenue. The next day, in an icy snowstorm, 20,000 workers, mainly Italian, marched through the city’s garment districts. 1
