LYNN — Wearing a top hat and frock coat, actor Jonathan Wacker held up an old newspaper with joy.
“Look, the New York Times,” he said, while three women in bonnets and dresses gathered around him to hear the news.
“‘Within a few weeks, an extensive movement has been made among the journeymen shoemakers in the principal shoe manufacturing towns in Massachusetts in favor of a general strike for higher wages,'” Wacker said. “‘The journeymen organizing have determined that the principal movement is among the workmen of Lynn.'”
Saturday, Lynn Walking Shoe Tours and actors from the historical reenactment group History Alive Inc. held an event commemorating the 1860 Lynn shoemakers’ strike at the gallery (GALA) at LynnArts, 25 Exchange St.
Exactly 160 years after approximately 3,000 workers in the city’s footwear manufacturing industry went on strike, the actors wore costumes, raged about poor working conditions and sang the defiant “The Shoemakers’ Song.”
“Alright everybody, listen up,” said actor Carl Schultz. “There’s been a new statement from a presidential candidate, no less. I wonder what bosses will think when they see that even Abraham Lincoln supports our cause.”
Saturday’s event was part of Lynn Walking Shoe Tours’ A Moment Throughout Lynn’s History series commemorating significant periods in city history. It was supported in part with a grant from the Lynn Cultural Council, which receives funds from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
According to organizer and Lynn Walking Shoe Tours President Michelle Guzmán, who has lived in Lynn for 27 years, she chose to highlight the 1860 shoemakers’ strike because the fight for fairness is still a relevant topic today.
“We’re still fighting,” she said, mentioning the continuing fight for equal pay for men and women.
Many in the audience agreed with Guzmán’s connection, and shared stories about relatives who had to fight for better working conditions.
“In the 1930s, my father was an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothes Workers Union working in the factories here,” said David Gass, of Lynn. “There was nothing like this, a united strike that happened in the 1860s… This is a wonderful example of what can happen.”
John Vago, of Lynn, said more presentations on Lynn’s history should be available to the public.
“Presentations like this are one of the many ways that I learn about the history of our country that I did not learn in school,” he said. “My parents came here in the 1920s, they were Jewish immigrants from Hungary, and they both were active supporters of the working class and of unions, and they were communists also.”
Sarah Gillis, of Lynn, said the presentation resonated with her because her great-grandmother went to Scotland and sent money back to her family in Lynn to support them.
“She worked long hours, hard days,” Gillis said. “She ended up not meeting several of her younger siblings (in the U.S.) because they were born after she left. She didn’t meet her younger sister until she was 87.”
The reenactment portion of the event was concluded with the singing of “The Shoemakers Song.” The song was written for the strikers by Allen Peabody, of Wenham, and puts new lyrics to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”
“Up and let us have a strike, fair prices we’ll demand, firmly let us all unite, unite throughout the land,” they sang, while one of the women brandished a sign reading, “The laborer is worthy of her hire.”
According to Rachel Tose, who narrated parts of Saturday’s event, the shoemakers’ strike is an early example of Lynn residents pioneering social justice and organized labor in the U.S. As a “shoe town” and one of the most prominent manufacturing sites in New England, Lynn’s shoemakers’ strike prompted walkouts from more than 20,000 workers in 25 other “shoe towns,” the largest instance of mass striking in the U.S. prior to the Civil War.
The conditions at the time, especially following job losses and economic decline during the Panic of 1857 three years earlier, were right for a mass workers’ strike, Tose said.
“Men earned $3 a week, women only $1. It wasn’t enough to support a family, let alone repay your debts,” Tose said.
Strikers also sought recognition of labor unions, in addition to increased wages, Tose said, and the strikes had wide community community support.
Part of the reason for the strikes were popular was shoemaking was a “family affair,” Tose said, with fathers and brothers working the leather and mothers and sisters doing the necessary stitching.
Having started on Feb. 22, 1860, the strike eventually ended a few weeks later on April 10, when 30 city employers agreed to raise wages and recognize labor unions. The strikers claimed a “partial victory,” Tose said.
