#textile workers

Crowded table to table, textile workers lean over their machines, sewing clothing in the Garment District, June 28, 1944. New York had always been the chief producer of clothing in the U.S. but it also became a fashion center during World War II, when Parisian fashion was unavailable.

Today’s #WorkerWednesday shows employees of the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. etching designs on textile rollers at the company’s Print Works Division in Eddystone, Pennsylvania.

This circa 1937 photograph is part of the Hagley Library’s collection of Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company photographs (Accession 1969.025). Joseph Bancroft, an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware in 1831. The firm was incorporated as the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889.

Needle Trades Workers, Michael Siporin, New Masses, May 1931.

International Women’s Day: The flame burns bright

The 23rd of February [March 8 on the modern calendar] was International Woman’s Day. The social-democratic circles had intended to mark this day in a general manner: by meetings, speeches, leaflets. It had not occurred to anyone that it might become the first day of the revolution. Not a single organisation called for strikes on that day. What is more, even a Bolshevik organisation, and a most…