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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 5, 1912
The New York City Street Cleaners Strike of November 1911
From the International Socialist Review of January 1912:
[Part I of II.]
If 4,000 Wall street brokers or 4,000 assorted employers suddenly left their offices or were carried off by a pestilence in New York, the life and activities of that city, after the first sensation, would go on much as usual. Society and industry would proceed with but little interruption. But when 4,000 humble street cleaning employes suddenly quit work in the metropolis in the second week in November [1911] the entire administration of the second greatest city in the world was upset and for a time demoralized. High-salaried officials could do little but gnash their teeth be carried out. Rich and powerful merchants shrieked and groaned at the sight of the piles of odoriferous garbage standing untouched in front of their palaces of profit. Comfortable and well-fed householders and property owners held their noses and begged the agitated city government to do something. Four million people were threatened with pestilence and disease, which inevitably would have been widespread had not these despised and usually silent workers chosen a cold and freezing period in which to strike.
On the night of November 8 these garbage wagon drivers went out, their demand being a return to the daylight collection of garbage instead of the continental system of night work recently installed by Mayor Gaynor. The men contended that they were imposed upon by this continental system, the work at night being much more of a strain, and that in addition the hours had been increased from eight to ten or eleven without any additional pay.
When the demand for a change was first made of Commissioner Edwards the garbage cleaners received the following bulldozing reply, duly expressive of the feelings of a politician toward his underlings:
I understand that there is some dissatisfaction on the· part of the drivers on account of night work. I want the drivers in the Department of Street Cleaning to thoroughly understand that night work will go on as usual, and any absentees or men failing to· go to work will be dismissed from the Department of Street Cleaning and never be allowed to return.
Stable foremen will suspend any men failing to go to work and will forward charges to the main office.
WILLIAM H. EDWARDS,
Commissioner.This reply was backed up by the following communication from Mayor Gaynor to Edwards:
Sir: In regard to the threatened strike of the drivers and garbage collectors of your department, be so good as to notify them at once by general order to strike just as soon as they see fit. And see to it that not one of the strikers gets back into the city employment again. We can get along without them. It will inconvenience the householders for a few days, but they will stand it patiently. Let the contract system be resorted to, if necessary.
The city pays the men of your department the highest wages for the shortest hours, and in addition, a pension law was passed for them last winter. If they think they can make the city conform to their dictation by striking they will find themselves grievously mistaken. The city’s business has to be done as the charter prescribes, and no strike can force it to be done in any other way. The city is not in a position of a private employer and able to make any terms with its employes it sees fit.
W. ]. GAYNOR,
Mayor.In the face of official opposition and stern determination as expressed by the foregoing communications, the men themselves stood firm, with at least the result that the political scientists have a practical lesson to help solve as well as discuss.
Thousands of wagon loads of garbage were piling up in the streets, and in the congested districts of the east side there were some streets almost impassable. Extraordinary efforts were made to remove garbage from business centers and elite residential districts. It is in this instance as in all others that the poor and uninfluential are discriminated against. The fashionable localities looked fairly clean, while just a few squares away in the tenement districts the fermenting piles of cast-off filth were breeding disease germs that would first attack the poor, but that might indeed ravage the city.
[Emphasis added.]
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