ABSTRACT
On September 22, 1910, in one of Chicago’s leading garment firms, sixteen women walked off their jobs. Women first confronted an unresponsive boss and then turned to the district council of the United Garment Workers. While the union leadership considered their grievances, the strikers went from shop to shop talking to other workers. In order to profit at the monopolist’s expense, many of the small neighborhood tailors had immediately unionized their shops and even offered aid to the strikers. Like the local garment industry, the Chicago Socialist organization had grown up along neighborhood lines, and Socialist women generally worked within their communities. Nellie M. Zeh’s genius was her sense of the Party as a political machine to be regeared and sent full throttle for just this type of emergency work. She had proved herself the outstanding female organizer of Chicago Socialist turf and had pioneered door-to-door canvassing of proletarian housewives.
