Sidney Hillman

• Born: March 23, 1887
• Birthplace: Žagarė, Lithuania
• Died: July 10, 1946
• Place of death: Point Lookout, Long Island, New York

Lithuanian-born labor leader

A prominent union organizer, Hillman helped shape national labor regulations and practices. He participated in the creation of the American Clothing Workers Union (ACWU) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Early Life

The second of seven children, Sidney Hillman (SIHD-nee HIHL-muhn) was born on March 23, 1887, in Žagarė, Lithuania, to Samuel, a merchant, and Judith, a shopkeeper. Although poor, Hillman enjoyed an average, if uneventful, childhood. Hillman was a descendant of a string of rabbis, and when he demonstrated a habit of reading, his parents enrolled him at the age of fourteen in a yeshiva in a suburb in Kovno, Slobodka. Shortly thereafter he found a Russian-language tutor, Michael Zacharias, who exposed him to a range of secular subjects, including modern politics. Zacharias resided with his aunt and uncle, Dr. and Mrs. Matis, who were members of the Bund, an underground socialist political network. A few months after Hillman’s fifteenth birthday, following a spat with the chief rabbi of his yeshiva concerning his secular pursuits, Hillman abandoned his religious studies. Homeless and unemployed, he moved in with the Matis family. In his new environment, Hillman discovered similarly oriented, intellectually curious individuals, with whom he studied politics and philosophy. He acquired his earliest political views, which included tenets of socialism and an appreciation for democracy.

Hillman was arrested for the first time on May 1, 1904, after leading a parade of one hundred laborers marching in protest. Eventually released after political maneuvering by Dr. Matis and his father, Hillman returned to his childhood home in Žagarė. He was then arrested again in August of 1905, amid the uprisings that occurred throughout the region. Released four months later, he again returned home, this time met by his parents’ pleas to move west. After initial hesitancy, Hillman migrated to Manchester, England, where his uncle resided, in late 1906. Nine months later, on August 1, 1907, he boarded a ship in Liverpool and disembarked ten days later at a port in New York City. Hillman began his life in America at twenty years of age.

Life’s Work

Toward the end of 1907, unsatisfied with New York’s lower East Side, Hillman moved to Chicago, Illinois. He enrolled in English classes at the Hebrew Institute of Chicago, continued to educate himself by reading, and attended socialist lectures. After almost two years of employment at Sears, Roebuck and Company, in the spring of 1909, he took a job at Hart, Schaffner, and Marx, a clothing manufacturer, where he worked as a garment cutter under the watchful gaze of reputedly unforgiving floor managers. On September 22, 1910, a small group of women—including Hillman’s future wife, Bessie Abramowitz—walked off the job. This initiated a mass strike, which, by late October, counted approximately forty-five thousand participants, including Hillman. Hillman assumed a leadership position in the chaos of the strike, negotiating with factory heads and encouraging workers to accept a settlement. As a result of this experience, Hillman learned the power of collective action and acquired an appreciation for impartial arbiters as mediators between labor and management.

By the beginning of 1911, Hillman was in charge of the local United Garment Workers (UGW) union branch. In this capacity, he became a close associate of such progressive reformers as Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, and John E. Williams. All three influenced Hillman’s thinking about the relationship between labor and government in the context of a political democracy. In January of 1914, Hillman accepted a job in New York with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Although he stayed with the ILGWU only nine months, the position introduced him to notable Jewish torchbearers like Louis Brandeis, Morris Hillquit, and Abraham Cahan. When a late 1914 dispute between factions of the UGW resulted in the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), Hillman was recruited to serve as the organization’s first president. Under Hillman’s leadership, the ACWA provided services and opportunities for its members, which included various education programs, housing cooperatives, and unemployment insurance.

As a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hillman served on the National Recovery Administration’s Labor Advisory Board from 1933 to 1936 and on the National Industrial Recovery Board. In such capacity, he prodded the government into accepting greater responsibility in the lives of American laborers. For example, he participated in writing the 1935 Wagner Act, which secured collective bargaining rights for workers and also called for the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established regulations concerning workday-length and minimum wages. In 1937, Hillman helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) with John L. Lewis; in this position Hillman fostered political initiatives by rallying laborers throughout the country. He remained one of FDR’s labor advisers, serving as the associate director of the Office of Production Management in 1941 and becoming a member of the labor division of the War Production Board in 1942. In the postwar years, Hillman helped establish the World Federation of Trade Unions, which aimed to help rebuild Europe.

Hillman died of a heart attack, his fourth, on July 10, 1946, on Long Island, New York, leaving behind his wife Bessie and daughters Selma and Philoine. Although Hillman never returned to Orthodox Jewish practices, he considered himself Jewish, both culturally and politically. He followed the philosophy of Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who ultimately led kaddish at Hillman’s funeral.

Significance

Hillman is known for his contributions to union activism. He was an effective and pragmatic mediator between labor and management. In his early career, he helped to establish use of impartial arbiters as a standard practice in labor-management negotiations. As a union organizer, he successfully united various ethnic labor groups. As a political consultant, he encouraged the federal adoption of regulations, which he believed promoted fair labor practices. Hillman believed that the government ought to manage the relationship between businesses and society. His moderating and practical stance enabled him to effectively negotiate between conflicting parties, ultimately allowing him to advance the rights of workers.

Bibliography

Epstein, Melech. Profiles of Eleven. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1965. Biographical sketch of Hillman as an immigrant and a labor leader.

Fraser, Steven. Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. A thorough text that focuses on the details of Hillman’s professional career, from his time in Lithuania through his death in New York.

Gould, Jean. Sidney Hillman: Great American. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952. A detailed account of Hillman’s personal life.

Josephson, Matthew. Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor. New York: Doubleday, 1952. A biography of Hillman, which traces his life in tandem with the evolution of American industry.

Soule, George Henry. Sidney Hillman: Labor Statesman. New York: Macmillan, 1939. Early Hillman biography, detailing his participation in various labor organizations.