The Jew’s conception of a labor organization is that of a tradesman rather than that of a workman. In the clothing manufacture, whenever any real abuse arises among the Jewish workmen, they all come together and form a giant union, and at once engage in a strike. They bring in 95 per cent. of the trade. They are energetic and determined. They demand the entire and complete elimination of the abuse. The demand is almost always unanimous, and is made with enthusiasm and bitterness. They stay out a long time, even under the greatest of suffering. During a strike large numbers of them are to be found with almost nothing to live upon and their families suffering, still insisting, on the streets and in their halls, that the great cause must be won. But when once the strike is settled, either in favor of or against the cause, they are contented, and that usually ends the union, since they do not see any practical use for a union when there is no cause to fight for. Consequently the membership of a Jewish union is wholly uncertain. The secretary’s books will show 60,000 members in one month and not 5,000 within three months later. If, perchance, a local branch has a steady thousand members, and if they are indeed paying members, it is likely that they are not the same members as in the year before.[46] This is, with the modifications pertaining to time and place, the history of practically every trades-union organization among the Jewish immigrants from the Slavic countries. From the first union of Jewish tailors, which was organized in New York in 1877, through the time of the first comprehensive strike of workers in the clothing trade in that city in 1890, the still larger one in 1894; down to the great waist makers’ strike in 1909 and the great strikes in New York, Chicago and Cleveland in 1910 and 1911, the leadership has remained almost the same for about a quarter century. Abraham Cahan (b. in Podberezhye, near Wilna, 1860; a. 1882), who was the first to deliver Socialist speeches in Yiddish in the United States, is still practically at the head of that movement among his countrymen. Morris Hillquit (b. in Riga, Russia, 1870; a. 1887) began his activity as a Socialist leader among the immigrants before he was of age, and is now a recognized leader of the Socialists of the country, being also the author of a History of Socialism in the United States. Joseph Barondess (b. in Kamenetz-Podolsk, 1867; a. 1885), the leader of the second great cloak makers’ strike, who is now a communal worker and a leader among the Zionists, is still looked upon as a representative of the Jewish working classes in New York. The same conditions prevail in other large cities; only there the movement began somewhat later, and the local leaders seldom attained lasting prominence even locally; for the movement is more than anything else a newspaper movement, and those