Archive Transcript: Pamphlets
How Much Is Your Life Worth?
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HOW MUCH IS YOUR LIFE WORTH?
The financial pages of the newspapers tell every day of the changes in the prices on t he stock market. The man who has invested money is watching them very carefully, because those changes mean profit or loss. They man mean wealth or bankruptcy.
The stock owner has a voice in the control of the Industry where he has invested his money; that is, protection that the business that he has invested money in should be profitable and add to his income. If anything goes wrong in the business end of it, he uses his voice to make the changes necessary to right that wrong.
You have invested your life and energy in the garment industry. Your income, your happiness and the happiness of your family depend on the present and future of the Industry. You must, therefore, have a voice in the conditions of the Industry. You must have a voice in determining how many hours you should work and how much your share should be in wages and other working conditions.
THE LADIES' GARMENT WORKERS' UNION IS YOUR MOUTHPIECE. It speaks for you. It is your voice. The Union is your protection. It is your only protection against hardships at present and in the future.
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The Garment Workers of Cleveland have seen this fact clearly. They know that their future is tied into the garment industry. They know that their wages, working conditions, and hours of labor depend upon the strength of the voice that your Union has in it. A strong Union has a strong voice and the conditions of labor are the best.
If your wages are to be kept from falling-if your hours of work are to be kept from increasing—if your conditions are to be kept decent and endurable, you must strengthen the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Only your Union stands between you and low wages, long hours, and inhuman working conditions.
The Cleveland ladies' Garment Workers know this to be true through long and bitter experience. You yourself, know it to be true.
The Ladies' Garment Industry is in a serious condition today because your manufacturer, who has no agreement with the Union, has opened "sweat shops" in small towns and villages, where farmer girls are working long hours for very low wages. In this crisis
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the Cleveland Ladies' Garment Workers' Union offers you your only chance for self-defense. By your failing to join the Union you are helping to develop the "sweat shop conditions" for which you will suffer. If things will go in that way, it will not take long before you will lose your jobs and the work will all be made in the out-of-town sweat shops.
One hope alone lies between you and slavery, sweat shop wages and conditions. That hope is organization. This fight is not the other fellow's. You can't turn it over to someone else. If you do, you will find yourself defeated before you begin. It is your fight. You, as a Cleveland Garment Worker, must take up the challenge in order to defend yourself and your family from being exploited.
It is your duty to yourself, your family and your fellow worker to join and support whole-heartedly the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
With Fraternal Greetings,
Cleveland joint Board of the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union