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In October 1925, due to a depression in the textile industry a 10 percent wage cut was imposed by mill owners. The strike that followed went for thirteen months and was vigorously and violently opposed by mill owners and police authorities. This was not an uncommon consequence of striking, and strikers were often fired upon throughout the early Twentieth Century by both police forces and the National Guard as was demonstrated in the modern section of D.W. Griffith's INTOLERANCE (1916) and many other films of the time. THE PASSAIC TEXTILE STRIKE was made by the strikers' Relief Committee to not only show what was happening on the picket lines but to also provide much needed funds for the relief of strikers and their families.
This is a 1925 documentary about the Passaic Textile Workers Strike, outspokenly unconcerned with artistic merit and more with relaying the struggles of Union forming. Whats remarkable today, nearly a century later, is seeing how closely linked hegemonic capitalism is upheld by policing, and what’s most impressive is that this little thing also manages to squeeze in a message about the effectiveness of working class solidarity beyond gender and color lines. Fairly boring considering it’s entirely long at 70 minutes without a score (put on your own music?) but it can be both heartening and devastating to know how long the working class struggle has been going on, certainly even before 1925. Wages here have been stagnant for nearly two decades even though the cost of living is on a never ending scale upwards and even though the pandemic made bosses even richer than before. Capitalism is a disease.
