More than 10,000 silk workers and employers, most of them Jewish, will be affected by the proposed United Textile Workers of America strike, statistics revealed today.
Under the provisions of employer-employee contracts signed after the 1933 general strike, workers may not walk out unless the Industrial Relations Board finds forty per cent of the 100,000 silk looms in the United States lying idle.
“Mushroom mills” have sprung up here, displacing the huge mills of a once proud silk industry, a survey shows. In the “mushroom mill,” it is charged, the entire family works at the looms far into the night, cutting prices and lowering the wage scale.
Rayon, too, is declared to have contributed to ruining the Paterson silk industry. Selling far below the price of silk, it has been so highly developed that only the expert eye can distinguish it from the natural product.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
