ABSTRACT
Founded in 1900, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was one of the most radical and colorful labor organizations in the early decades of the twentieth century. Major strikes of the union had a profound impact that went well beyond its own multiethnic membership. Especially important in the union’s founding and evolution were dedicated socialists and anarchists who articulated a vision of a better world to be achieved through the collective struggle of workers against their own oppression. Nonetheless, the ILGWU’s trajectory (and that of the U.S. labor movement in the twentieth century) took it in a far less radical direction, a story reflected in the strikes conducted by the union in New York City, the center of its power.
