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New book looks at the New York Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913

  • Writer: The Left Chapter
    The Left Chapter
  • 2 hours ago
  • 1 min read


A new book by J.N. Cheney, an independent socialist historian focusing on the labor movement, radical politics, and community action in New York State's Mohawk Valley, looks at a largely forgotten but important moment in US labour history.


The Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913 took place between the famous Bread & Roses Strike and the Paterson Silk Strike, which likely contributes to its relative obscurity. Conditions for the strike were similar to the one in Lawrence, Massachusetts, as it involved mostly working-class immigrant women fighting for better wages and living conditions. The strike involved or was supported by numerous figures in the socialist and labor movements, including Bill Haywood, Helen Keller, Matilda Rabinowitz, Helen Schloss, Joseph Ettor, Benjamin Legere, and Eugene Debs among others.


Published in November, Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 is the first book to thoroughly detail and analyze the events and causes of the strike.



"The Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913 was a pivotal but long-neglected event in American labor history. This book offers a groundbreaking corrective, as it chronicles the dramatic struggle of immigrant women against powerful mill owners, brutal police repression, and a hostile press as they fought for their dignity and survival. Drawing on extensive archival research, this study resurrects a forgotten history and provides a pioneering theoretical framework for understanding class struggle, nativism, and labor organizing in the Progressive Era, restoring a vital local struggle to its national importance."



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