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James McCauley joined the Gotham Knife Cutters in 1889, and in 1901 helped to organize the United Cloak and Suit Cutters' Association, Local 6, for which he later served as vice-president and president. He later worked in New York, and became a member of the New York Cutters' Union, Local 10. McCauley was a frequent delegate to the ILGWU Conventions in its early years (1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1910), and he was elected president at the ILGWU Boston convention in 1904. At the 1905 convention of the ILGWU, McCauley declined the delegates' re-nomination of him to the presidency.