Little David, the Giant

Every day at noon, the shmooze begins. All over Manhattan's grimy Garment Center, in its warrens of disheveled one-room "shops" crammed into loft buildings and slatternly tenements, the sharp whir of sewing machines stops. Workers and bosses pour onto the sidewalk and gather in clots at the curb under the glowering sun. Above the bray of automobile horns, hunched, rumpled men shout in Yiddish, Italian and English, leaning against the clogged trucks, stepping out of the way of rattling racks of dresses without missing a verb or a gesture.

Pressers and cutters, sample-makers and finishers, their clothes all somehow keep a memory of the immigrants' bundle, of steamy East Side kitchens, of under-shirted evenings at an open window. In the shops above, "the girls" gossip over their box lunches at the long tables among stacks of unfinished "garments" (it is never "blouses" or "slips" or "dresses" in the Center).

The Leader. The shmoozers are the ladies' garment workers, who clothe the U.S. woman above the wrist, below the neck, and above the ankle. Just about everything that goes into a woman's bureau drawer or hangs in her closet comes from this compact, 23-block area that runs north from 34th Street to Times Square, west from Broadway to Ninth Avenue. Flanking it to the south is the U.S. fur center, seven noisome streets. On its eastern border are the millinery shops where half of U.S. ladies' hats are fashioned.

As individuals, the garment workers are the most disputatious, diverse, and in some ways the most innately disrespectful of authority of any segment in all U.S. labor. But they have a boss who is much more than a boss. To them, busy, bumptious little David Dubinsky is leader, father, prophet and demigod. To his I.L.G.W.U., they display furious devotion. It is a school, a welfare clinic, a social life and a political mentor. It is, as some of them say, a way of life.

Twelve blocks north of. the Center on Broadway, David Dubinsky runs his International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from a chromium and air-conditioned building once owned by Henry Ford. To a large extent, he also runs the Manhattan garment district (where 70% of all women's clothes are made) and all the other centers of the industry scattered across the U.S. and Canada.

Plunging from a chuckle to a shout, bellowing into a telephone in his broad Yiddish accent, flourishing an unlit cigar, Dubinsky directs this show with shirt-sleeved zest and an even hand. Says he: "You've got to be on your toes, not on your bottom."

The Way Is Untraditional. The industry takes his orders and likes it. So do his workers. The country over, the little ex-tailor from Lodz is cited even by hard-shelled reactionaries as "the one good labor leader." Says one employer: "That Dubinsky runs a union the best goddam way a union can be run."

That way was not the traditional way of A.F.L., to which Dubinsky's I.L.G.W.U. belongs. Like A.F.L. Founder Samuel Gompers, its old-line craft unionists cling to the dying faith that wages and hours are labor's only proper concern. If Hutcheson's carpenters or Moreschi's hod carriers got their pork chops, the rest of the world could go hang. Dubinsky insists that pork chops are not enough. He believes that what affects working men anywhere affects working men everywhere.

The Maverick. Last week David Dubinsky climbed on a train and headed for the A.F.L. Executive Council meeting in Toronto. As usual, A.F.L. elders received him warily. At 57, Dubinsky is a brash youth and a maverick among the chieftains of the council, who clung to isolationism as long as they dared, who had backed reluctantly into political action and who once regarded unemployment insurance as dangerously socialistic.

Dubinsky had his heart set on a pet project. Since the World Federation of Trade Unions fell to the Communists, the world's non-Communist labor has had no international voice and no mechanism for united action. Dubinsky wanted an outfit to speak for the legitimate gripes of world labor. "If you don't, the Communists will," says Dubinsky. "They can say, 'why even your leaders fail you.'"

Four days later, the eleven aging paladins emerged from the council rooms with something of the look of driven elephants. Beaming at their heels came Dave Dubinsky. The A.F.L., President William Green announced, would send five delegates to a London meeting in the fall to establish a new world federation of free labor. For Dubinsky and his friends, it was a full victory after a determined four-year fight.

Order out of Chaos. Such far-flung notions of its job are basic to the nation's most remarkable union. Once dominated by Communists itself, the I.L.G.W.U. is now the pillar of the anti-Communist Left. Despite the heaviest hand in management in all U.S. industry, no other union is so popular with its employers.

From conditions that gave the word "sweat shop" to the language, it has won the most complete welfare program in the U.S. From a snarl of crafts and nationalities, from a rank & file in which women (considered unreliable by organized labor) outnumber men three to one, it has built one of the nation's strongest industrial unions. From chaotic conditions, where there was a strike with every season, it has brought order. It has had no major strike in 15 years.

Whims & Fig Leaves. This has been achieved in spite of rather than because of the industry, which is skittery and as subject to sudden sinking spells as any industry that lives to satisfy woman's whim. Its 11,000 employers are mostly small businessmen who must move rapidly and warily in a trade that is bitterly competitive, determinedly rapacious. A man with a design idea and a batch of orders can have a Cadillac and an establishment on Riverside Drive in six months. Then, like a gust of wind in a wheat field, women's minds change and a hundred employers find themselves back at the cutting table.

Its books are an economist's nightmare, and a fact-finder's despair. For every firm that goes broke because of production costs, ten fail because they were caught with their racks full of dresses that women didn't happen to like. What is good today is instantly copied and a glut tomorrow. If Eve walked down Seventh Avenue wearing the first fig leaf, two manufacturers would be making fig leaves with ermine trim within three days, three would be promoting oak leaves instead, and nine would be offering Eve's "same identical garment"--but cheaper.

Out of the Past. The I.L.G.W.U's history and nature are deeply rooted in New York City's immigrant past. In a great, terrorized wave, a tide of Russian, Polish and Rumanian Jews swept into New York at century's end, fleeing from the czar's pogroms and from poverty to a visionary El Dorado. They settled in the slums of the Lower East Side, bewildered, lonely people whose Yiddish tongue made them strangers in a strange land.

With the invention of the commercial sewing machine, more & more U.S. housewives got rid of the stuffed dress forms that had stood for generations like lumpy ghosts in back parlors. The burgeoning garment trade fell upon the immigrants. Bane of the industry were the contractors, hard-pressed men who drove wages down & down as they bid against each other for jobbers' work. Contractors crammed workers into airless, squalid rooms, forced them to rent their sewing machines and pay for the thread they used, imposed fines for laughing or looking out the window. To earn $9 a week, men worked from 5 a.m. to past midnight. They bought bagels from shop peddlers, hung them from hooks so that they could eat without stopping work.

The immigrants brought with them a vociferous passion for brave new worlds. They were Socialists and anarchists, Marxists, Kropotkinites and syndicalists, looking to America not simply for better wages, but for the better life.

The Firebrand. With them came David Dubinsky, born Dobnievski, from his native Poland. He arrived with the reputation and history, at 18, of a revolutionary firebrand. The youngest of six children, David went to work at his father's bakery in Lodz at the age of 13, called his first strike (against the local bakers, including his father) at 15. Promptly jailed as a strike leader, young, sharp-witted David soon had one cell of prisoners rolling cigarettes for Dubinsky to sell to the others. He smuggled letters for a small fee. When someone squealed, Dubinsky got the knout.Said the warden to his father: "Such a little louse, and such a great dirt he has done."

Exiled to Siberia a year later for socialistic agitation, Dubinsky escaped and beat his way back to Lodz, hiding from the police. Late in 1910 he smuggled himself over the boarder and came to New York.

With the help of the socialist friends, the young baker became a "cutter" overnight and joined the I.L.G.W.U.'s powerful Local 10. "In the union," he admits, "I was merely paying dues. My activity was the Socialist Party."

The Blueprint. The I.L.G.W.U. was already taking on its distinctive character. The amazing Protocol of Peace, devised by young louis Brandeis to settle the cloakmakers' "Great Revolt" of 1910, was a blueprint years ahead of its time. Its borads of grievances and arbitration were precursors of the WLB and NLRB.

It instituted labor-management committees to inspect sanitary conditions, curb contractors' malpractices and set piece rates. The I.L.G.W.U.'s Socialist leaders were demanding of industry the security that rugged individualism refused them. They set up unemployment funds, fought for pension plans, minimum wage scales and sickness benefits. In 1913 they established the first union health center in one shabby room. Says Dubinsky today: "This was the sentiment of the members. They championed the same ideas that later on Roosevelt made them the law of the land. I merely probably expanded it."

There were also "the girls." Earnest, gregarious, romantic, thousands of Jewish and Italian girls swarmed into the shops. Huddled in crowded misery that was unlike the village life they had known, they seized on the union for social contacts, and demanded of it the better life America had promised. A woman's local established the first union vacation spot in 1915, in Pine Hill, N.Y. They organized little amateur theatricals and uplift courses that ranged from parliamentary law to mandolin playing.

Whip in Hand. In the '20s, the Communists fought for control of the union. The employers hired "Legs" Diamond and his gang, the Communists replied by signing on the Little Augie mob. These racketeers and their successors plagued the industry for years. In 1927, after a disastrous strike called by the Communists, the International was left with only 32,000 members and $1,500,000 in debts. Dubinsky had become head of his local, and his was the only one solvent.

Dubinsky managed what probably no other labor leader could have: he wangled loans for the bankrupt International union from commercial banks. After he became president of the International in 1932, Dubinsky got his real chance in the New Deal. Seeing NRA coming, Dubinsky had softened up the industry with quick, organizational strikes, picked up 160,000 new members in six months. When NRA was nullified by the Supreme Court, Dubinsky announced that he would strike any employer who tried to back out of its agreements. Says he slyly: "First you get a whip, and then when everyone knows you have it, put it in the refrigerator."

"Papa." To union members, David Dubinsky is known fondly as "Papa" behind his back, as "Dubinsky" or "D.D." to his face. Waiting to see him in the reception room of his sumptuous office, the visitor does not have to be told when the boss goes by. The door flies open explosively and a stubby little man in slacks and sport shirt bursts out, waving a handful of papers, spouting orders, and trailing hovering assistants like gulls behind a tug. In moments of repose, behind a blond curved desk that was once Edsel Ford's, Dubinsky squirms with one leg curled beneath him in the traditional tailor's pose, while his snapping brown eyes watch his visitor steadily--calm, curious, appraising. He plucks papers from the litter on his desk with a triumphant instinct that would have done credit to W.C. Fields.

How Many Watches? Dubinsky's life is the union. Immensely likable, he is cordial to everyone, but intimate with no one. He takes home to dinner anybody he happens to be working with. Home is what he calls "a good proletarian penthouse" on unfashionable West Sixteenth Street. (Says Dubinsky: "I never tell reporters, because right away they say, 'aha, a labor leader lives in a penthouse,' as though a labor leader shouldn't be comfortable.") He pays $190 a month rent, lives there with his wife, their divorced daughter and her child Ryna, who is the apple of her grandfather's eye. The rooms are crowded with pictures, antiques, and knickknacks. Waving his hand, Dubinsky explains: "See all these gifts, gifts, so many I didn't know what to do with them. How many wrist watches can you wear?" Now when a local wants to show its gratitude, Dubinsky has his secretary tell it what he can use. He points across the room: "Like the Capehart--I wouldn't spend the money."

Handsome, auburn-haired Emma Dubinsky keeps a sharp eye on her husband's occasional extravagances, and reminds him that though he may be a demigod at the office, he is just a husband at home. Recently, the I.L.G.W.U. bought Dubinsky a Cadillac. He is delighted with it, but Emma Dubinsky is wary. "That's all we need," she says. "Dubinsky with a liveried chauffeur."

And Heaven Too. Dubinsky's union and its locals are currently worth more than $26 million. Its membership includes 406,000 of the industry's 450,000 workers. Now there are as many Italians as Jews, as older Jewish immigrants have died off, and their children, scorning the trade, studied to become teachers, lawyers and doctors. I.L.G.W.U. locals are strong in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia. In fact, the only major holdout is the Donnelly Garment Co. in Kansas City, against which the union has vainly hurled hordes of organizers for years, at a cost of $500,000.

The I.L.G.W.U.'s domain embraces five buildings in New York (including the old Tammany Hall), 16 in other cities. It runs three FM stations, has just bought an AM station. Its educational department is the nation's best, and the union offers scholarships to Harvard and Wisconsin to deserving young unionists. Its recreation program runs everything from hikes to dance groups.

Union wages are high, but management gets its money's worth. The standard I.L.G.W.U. work-week is 35 hours, the average wage $70. Slowdowns and featherbedding, the plague of many industries, have no place in the garment district. An operator, guaranteed $57.75 a week minimum by contract, can make up to $150 at piecework rates if she is unusually quick and skillful. In 1941, the I.L.G.W.U. instituted labor's first management-engineering department to help firms run their businesses better.

Initiation fees average $10 (though some aristocratic locals like the cutters exact a week's pay). In return, the union member gets $30 worth of free medical treatment ($1.25 for a general examination), vacation pay, sickness insurance, old-age pension plan, and a $500 death benefit. All but the death benefit is paid for by the employer, who puts 3% to 5% of his weekly payroll into a general welfare fund.

The International's proudest showpiece is Unity House, in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. For $38 a week, the unionist can get all his meals, and swimming, boating, tennis, and dancing every night. Unity's handsome main building was designed by famed Architect William Lescaze and in its lounge are the Rivera murals turned down by Rockefeller Center as too Marxist (the union doesn't fear the ideology, thinks it got a bargain on the art).

The Policeman. The purse strings to all this wealth are tightly controlled by Dubinsky himself. But he is one of the U.S.'s lowest-paid major labor leaders, and at his own insistence. John L. Lewis gets $50,000; the teamsters' Dan Tobin, $30,000. Dubinsky's salary is $15,600. To the disgust of his staff, he keeps other union salaries down comparably. Says he: "If we took more, we would not give a good goddam about the workers." He insists every penny be accounted for publicly, spends $100,000 a year to send 32 accountants from local to local checking their books. They seldom find much, but the local learns the lesson that little David teaches: "There's no profit in trying to beat Dubinsky."

The I.L.G.W.U. prowls the clattering industry like a policeman on a beat. Its business agents drop in to inspect a jobber's books. Its committees negotiate piece rates for new garments. With its efficient research department, it knows more about an employer's business than he does himself.

Grievances are handed up smoothly through echelons to an impartial chairman, a $25,000-a-year job which such men as Harry Hopkins, Charles Poletti and Jimmy Walker have filled.

Contractors cut wages at their peril. If shops try to escape and take to the hinterland in quest of cheaper labor, the union pursues them like the bloodhounds after Eliza. "There are some in hiding," says Dubinsky, "but not for long."

Like other well-policed citizens, some employers wistfully look back to the days when a red-blooded man could go on a tear. Bosses cannot easily fire any worker. They complain that they are "married" to their contractors for good or evil, but admit the return to cutthroat competition would be disastrous. Others mutter about "protected shops," to which the union gives preferential treatment because they signed up early. (The union confesses it made such deals in its youth, insists that they are made no longer.)

"I Killed Them Off." Inside the union, Dubinsky's only real opposition, as he is the first to point out, comes from the Communists, a few of whom remain in the union, safely cauterized. Dubinsky has an explanation for his lack of opponents: "I killed them off. The idea is you take a stand every time on everything that happens in the world. And furthermore, I never wait for an opponent to attack." There is another explanation. There is only one slate--the Dubinsky slate. Opponents have never mustered enough strength to offer one of their own.

Dubinsky has his critics. He has sent $13 million in ten years to worthy causes the world over. The I.L.G.W.U. has built an orphanage in China, a trade school in France, supports a Boys' Town in Italy. It lent $1,000,000 to Israel, gave $250,000 to the United Jewish Appeal. Such donations are "suggested" to the locals. If a local votes approval, Dubinsky explains blandly, "in a democratic organization, that imposes an obligation on the membership." If a member fails to honor such obligations, he ceases to be in good standing--that means no vacation pay. It was this discovery of clay feet in the "model" union that finally broke Westbrook Pegler's heart. Hating most unions as he did, he had previously hesitated to profess himself antiunion; that did it.

Pegler's objections don't seem to disturb many of the garment workers. But some of the rank & file complain that Dubinsky has become so preoccupied with politics that he has neglected union affairs. There have been recent faint shadows of trouble, a new threat of racketeering. Last fall plug-uglies beat up three union officials. An I.L.G.W.U. organizer named William Lurye was murdered in the Garment Center (TIME, May 23), and though Dubinsky vowed revenge in a funeral ceremony attended by 65,000 workers, Lurye's killers are still at large.

Dubinsky believes deeply that labor must be in politics, and is in it deeply himself. He quit the Socialist Party and became a Roosevelt elector in 1936. Dubinsky helped form the American Labor Party in New York, and when the A.L.P. was taken over by the Communists, he and other right-wing liberals set up the Liberal Party. That meant a final break with the late Sidney Hillman of C.I.O.'s Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Dubinsky has only scorn for the liberal who thinks he can collaborate with the Communist: "He can't sit on two stools with only one rump," snorts Dubinsky.

Financed largely by the I.L.G.W.U., the Liberal Party polled 222,562 votes for Truman, and Harry Truman is grateful. He often calls the little man from Lodz for advice. But Dubinsky will have no truck with lesser fry. Once Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing sent for him. "To hell with him," said Dubinsky, "let him come to me."

For all its success, David Dubinsky's I.L.G.W.U. cannot serve as a model for all labor. Its methods are too closely tied to an industry where quarrels have the quality of a family row, and the workers refer to the boss as "Hey, Danny!" Its role as stabilizer and policeman would not be adaptable or even desirable in other mass industries. It is a unique union in a unique industry. But it is also a pioneer in fields that are common to all unions. Other social-minded unions are now also bidding for the welfare benefits the Socialist I.L.G.W.U. first demanded.

Dubinsky exemplifies the slow growth of U.S. labor toward full respect and full responsibility. Says he: "In the old days, it was the class struggle and to hell with the boss. Now it is collaboration and concern about the industry." Ex-Socialist Dubinsky, apostle of free enterprise and of rewards proportionate to the skill and industry of each worker, is happy with the results. Says he: "We have made more progress than socialism."

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