The ITU Hall

American workers have created labor organizations since the 1790s. The earliest examples were trade or craft organizations, designed to protect certain skills. Workers have created many different labor organizations in order to address grievances and meet their needs.

One common form was the labor union. Unions fought for better hours, higher pay, fairer treatment, safer conditions, and pensions upon retirement. As their power expanded, unions like the I T U also sought greater involvement in shop floor management, more say in investment decisions, and political influence. 

“What does it mean to be an American, or to become an American?” For many members of Woonsocket’s immigrant working-class communities in the early twentieth century, their sense of being an American was fused with their identity as laborers. In the 1930s, like workers across the nation boosted by FDR’s pro-union administration, Woonsocket’s mill workers engaged in labor activism. They articulated the purview of their American citizenship, which included the right to scrutinize hiring practices, wages, and working conditions. In fighting for “common standards,” workers forged bonds across ethnicities, genders, and occupations. In Woonsocket, the greatest among the unions was the I T U - or the Independent Textile Union – which formed in 1931 towards the beginning of the Great Depression. 

The I T U was originally organized by skilled mule spinners led by Joseph Schmetz, but the union welcomed all workers regardless of background, gender, skill, or occupation, making it particularly threatening to the area’s industrialists. Union members fought for better hours, higher pay, and better working conditions.

Culturally, the union embraced traditional American heroes, and was fervently committed to democracy on the shop floor. Nationalistic, progressive and democratic, they celebrated industrial society as an accomplishment of labor and decried the threat to liberty of concentrated capital. They introduced an unprecedented level of democracy on the shop floor. Workers not only won high wages and shorter hours, but they also had a powerful say on hiring, the introduction of new technology and other traditional prerogatives of management. 

Under the banner of American democracy, the I T U was able to transform insular ethnic groups, such as the French Canadians, into dedicated unionists. Skilled organizers, such as Lawrence Spitz, created a truly democratic union. In time, the I T U represented 80% of the city’s textile workers, along with bakers, barbers, electricians, painters, plumbers, shoe repairers, store clerks, sheet metal workers, rubber workers, and newspapermen. The I T U also established an impressive array of welfare, educational, and cultural activities, which ranged from medical clinics and housing projects to history classes and large summer beach festivals. In time, the I T U became the most powerful political force in the city. In the 1940s, members agreed to change the name to Industrial Trades Union to reflect both its broad constituency and diverse membership.

Strikes sometimes shift the balance of power enough to secure basic rights for workers. The national textile strike of 1934 inaugurated such change in the Blackstone Valley. Streetcar strikes in the 1900s upset the political balance in Rhode Island. The long, bitter textile strikes in the 1920s changed little on the shopfloor but engendered a class consciousness in Woonsocket. The national textile strike of 1934 revealed pent-up frustrations and gross inequities in power. In Woonsocket, it centered on one manufacturer, Woonsocket Rayon, who would not comply with demands. The results heightened class consciousness in the Blackstone Valley, leading to the growth of the I T U and opening the door for New Deal politicians to assume power in Rhode Island.

Workers took pride in their labor. They believed that “labor produces all wealth”--meaning that union workers asserted that they, by their labors, built America. As Americans celebrated their new technological civilization, the I T U wrote that the labor movement’s goals of Peace, Liberty, and Economic Security were equally modern and indispensable. Not all saw it this way though, and workers had turned to various organizations in order to make their point: trade unions, industrial unions, mutual benefit societies, protective organizations, and political parties. Their ribbons and badges attested to their pride. 

Workers of a particular ethnicity often concentrated in similar occupations and workplaces, securing employment through family members, kin, or people of a similar ethnic background. United by these ties, immigrant workers formed ethnic organizations like the French-Canadian L’Union Saint-Jean- Baptiste D'Amérique, the Polish Fietewiazha Drowgista, and the Italian society Principe di Napoli. Mutual benefit associations reflected immigrants’ efforts to address their needs, and resulted from their suspicion of what they saw as impersonal American institutions. 

While the I T U focused on using its large membership to build political power, ultimately electing candidates who would cement and advance workers’ gains in laws, many labor activists and groups chose to eschew this model of organizing. Rather than winning elections and improving the current capitalist system, these “radical” activists believed that the cause of workers would be best served by direct action – like strikes – and emphasizing the role of class struggle between workers of the world and their bosses in order to change society more dramatically. 

For example, the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, tried to organize such unions as part of a larger shift to a cooperative society. The Industrial Workers of the World, founded in 1905, wanted to organize all workers everywhere into “one big union” that would upend the current order of labor relations and capitalism, leading to their being feared by businessmen and politicians alike. 

The I T U was subject to these debates over goals internally, like many unions at the time. Rather than emphasize class struggle, leaders like Joseph Schmetz and Larry Spitz called for industrial democracy through unionism. They helped win eight hour workdays, weekends off, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, pensions, and other now-commonplace benefits that helped many unionized workers join the growing middle class.

The I T U shared many of the socialist goals of its predecessors, but called for industrial democracy rather than class struggle

In Woonsocket, radicals in the I T U like Joseph Schmetz and Larry Spitz pressed the cause of industrial unionism. Previously, eight-hour workdays had been undesirable to those in control, and unattainable to those on the factory floor. Radical politicians like Socialist Party Leader Eugene Debs also pressed the issue. Rarely accepted in their own time, activists set the agenda, often enabling those who followed to appear reasonable and acceptable. Beloved by some and hated by others, Joseph Schmetz (I T U) and Anne Burlak (National Textile Workers Union) believed fervently in the cause of economic justice and human dignity. 

The liberal agenda began shifting from workers’ rights to civil rights in the middle of the 20th century. McCarthyism (or the purging of anyone suspected of holding communist/socialist/leftist views) helped conservatives reclaim the flag. Scandals involving labor racketeers drew national press attention. In Woonsocket, French-Canadian activists more willing to accept limits on union activity gained control of the I T U. By the 1950s, the pressures of deindustrialization and internal divisions weakened the I T U, leaving it a shadow of its former self. Unable to stop the movement of industry from moving South to states without strong union presences, the I T U could no longer retain the same degree of workplace control. “Bread and butter” issues (or related more directly to money and income) supplanted those of shop floor democracy. 

By the 1950s, the movement of industry to the south and internal divisions within the I T U eroded the base of the union, but the legacy of the union lived on in Woonsocket in the form of an articulated working-class identity and sense of American belonging. 

Next to the I T U Hall is the museum gallery, which is used for special exhibits that change about four times a year. Don't forget to return downstairs to view the Merci Boxcar, which is located next to the front desk and gift shop.