International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Morris Sigman, President. Records,
1923-1928

Sigman was a Russian-born garment worker who emigrated to the U.S. in 1903. He worked in the New York garment industry and quickly became involved in union activities. He organized the Independent Cloak Pressers' Union and allied it with the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Sigman was also one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Morris Sigman held leadership roles in a number of garment workers' unions, including the Joint Board of Cloakmakers and ILGWU Local 35 (New York Cloak Pressers Union). He was elected Secretary-Treasurer and first Vice-President of the ILGWU before assuming the Presidency in 1923. He resigned from office in 1928. His health deteriorating, he retired to a farm in Storm Lake, Iowa, where he died on July 19, 1931.

Sigman's tenure as president of the ILGWU was a tempestuous one in which the union faced a long and bitter internal struggle with Communist members for control of the organization. A lengthy strike of the New York cloakmakers in 1926 proved to be another costly battle for the union during this period. But Sigman's term was also marked by some significant accomplishments, including a reform effort that made possible substantial union contributions to the restructuring of the garment industry.

Significant individual correspondents include: Luigi Antonini; David Dubinsky; William Z. Foster; Morris Hillquit; Julius Hochman; Samuel Gompers; William Green; Herbert H. Lehman; John L. Lewis; Salvatore Ninfo; Meyer Perlstein; Elias Reisberg; Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York; and Norman Thomas.

Notable organizations in represented in the collection include: the American Federation of Labor; the British Trades Union Congress; Brookwood Labor College; the Chicago Federation of Labor; the Committee of One Hundred for the Defense of Imprisoned Needle Trade Workers; the Governor's Advisory Commission on the Cloak and Suit Industry (New York State); the International Association of Machinists; ILGWU Locals 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 17, 20, 22, 35, 50, 64, and 80; the ILGWU Workers' Education Bureau; the Needle Trade Union (Warsaw, Poland); Needle Trades Workers' Union of the USSR; the New York State Federation of Labor; the Tailors' and Garment Workers' Trade Union (Great Britain); the Trade Union Educational League; the Unemployment Insurance Fund of the Cloak, Suit and Skirt Industry of New York City; Union Labor Life Insurance Company; the United Garment Workers of America; the United Ladies' Tailors Trade Union (Great Britain); the United Mine Workers of America; Unity House (the ILGWU-owned workers' resort); radio station WEVD (the Eugene Debs memorial radio station in New York City); and the Wholesale Dress Manufacturers' Association.

Among the topics covered are: communist activity in the ILGWU, and the leadership's battle against a communist takeover of the union; conditions in the U.S. garment industry, particularly in New York City; education for workers; inter- and intra-union relations; ILGWU locals, with an emphasis on the New York City area; strikes in the garment industry (in particular the Cloakmakers' strike of 1926), as well as in other industries; life and unemployment insurance for union members; relations with other garment workers' unions in the U.S., Great Britain, Poland and the Soviet Union, and with the International Clothing Workers' Federation in Amsterdam; relations with the garment manufacturers; unemployment insurance; union legal matters; and union organizing activities.

General correspondence is filed alphabetically A-Z, followed by subject correspondence, A-Z.