About a week ago, my cousin and I got together to visit the old industrial neighborhood where our grandparents lived after coming over from Poland in 1912 (i.e., the Dundee section of Passaic). We brought our cameras and did some photography, as the place has just a bit more character than your typical modern suburb. It was a hot, humid afternoon, so we didn’t stay too long. We got some interesting pictures and got out, luckily unscathed (the area is still a low-income immigrant neighborhood, now hosting Mexicans and other Latinos; although most of them are good, hard-working people, there is some crime, and even some street-gang activity has been reported).

A few days later, we swapped a handful of e-mails about some family history questions that came up during our little walkabout. My cousin’s mother had worked in one of the big textile mills in Dundee, a factory called Forstmann. We both wondered where those mills were. My cousin vaguely remembered that they had been torn down, maybe in the early 1960s (one of the other big woolen mills, Gera, had survived until the huge 1985 fire that took down a huge chunk of the old Dundee factories; the other big mill, Botany, survives to this day, although being used for other things). But other than that, we were stumped. So, it was time for a bit of Googling. In went the key words “Forstmann” and “Passaic” (or “Dundee”, as an alternate). And surprisingly, out came a lot of interesting information.

It turns out that Forstmann has a significant place in the history of the American industrial labor movement. In 1926, the management of Botany and Forstmann decided to cut wages by 10%, responding to increasing competition from newer mills in New England and the South. Through an interesting combination of circumstances involving Jewish intellectuals, idealistic socialists, and real live Communists (true-unblue Reds loyal to the Comintern in Moscow), the exploited immigrant masses called a strike that soon spread to the other mills. Before long there were pickets and marches and nasty guard dog attacks and burly cops and National Guard troops swinging clubs and pointing guns. True insurrection and bloodshed, right here in northern New Jersey!

It turns out to be quite an interesting story, not unlike the Newark urban riots of 1967. And yet, the two events have been remembered quite differently. We just marked the 40th anniversary of the Newark “disorders”, with ceremonies and big articles in the papers (including the NY Times), and a PBS TV show, and plenty of discussions in local classrooms. By comparison, in 1966, at the 40th anniversary of the Forstmann strike, there was nothing. I grew up about 5 miles from Forstmann, and visited the Dundee neighborhood where it took place every week back in 1966 (to visit the grandparents, by then retired; as it turns out, my “babci” had previously worked at Forstmann!). But there was nary a peep about it in my classroom, on TV, or in the local paper. There’s not even a commemorative plaque at the shopping center that was eventually built on the site. It would be another 41 years until I found out about the great strike of ’26.

I can’t help but wonder why there was (and is) such silence for what was a major event, almost right in my own backyard. I suspect it was because of the “Communist” angle. From what I read, the Commies did not play a major role in the strike. It certainly did not lead to the formation of the People’s Republic of Passaic. They were somewhat like the young “hippie generation” in Newark (including activist Tom Hayden). Both groups thought the whole thing was about what they had in mind, but later found out that it wasn’t. But still, in 1966, the USA was rather paranoid about Communism and didn’t want to teach its children that real-live Reds once walked the streets of American cities and arguably had local support. Heck, almost 20 years later, Ronald Reagan was still battling “the Evil Empire”. So, the stories of pickets marching over the Ackerman Avenue bridge from Garfield, with fire trucks dousing them using high-pressure hoses, were relegated to the dustiest shelves of the library basements. Anticipating Norma Rae by quite a few decades, there actually was a film made about the Passaic strike, emphasizing the role played by women (who made up a great percentage of the mill workers back then). But wouldn’t you know – it was a silent film, something that was totally forgotten once the talkies started in the 1930s.

I feel a bit sad about all of this. Had I learned in 1966 about the big strike that happened right up the road, I would have had time to question my grandmother about it (my grandfather died that year). This would have required a translator, given that she didn’t speak much English and I spoke even less Polish. But my mother was fluent in both and would have helped (especially if it were a class assignment suggested by a teacher). It would have made for an interesting Sunday visit, versus another boring afternoon watching TV in her crowded little apartment. She and my grandfather had been in the country for about 14 years when the strike began. By that time, they had 4 children; my Uncle Bruno had just been born. How did the strikes affect them? Did they join in, or did they cross the line and keep working? Did they go to any speeches or rallies? Were they scared? Did they know other people who were on strike (they must have)? How bad did things get economically? Did anyone go hungry? Did things get better or worse after the strike was over? Did the young idealists and intellectuals really have any regard for their kind?

That info is gone forever. My mother is the last surviving child, but she now has advanced dementia and spends most of her time sleeping. She may vaguely remembers Forstmann, but she couldn’t put together a story about it (she would have been 4 at the time of the strike; perhaps her parents didn’t talk much about it, and there were the big events of WW2 a decade or so later to divert her attention).

The only consolation is that we now have the Internet; without that, I might never have known about the big strike that my family must have been involved in. It was fear of Communism that buried this important bit of local history from me, but it was “Internet communitarianism” that eventually brought it back. Ah yes, the Internet – give what information that you can to it, and take what information that you need from it. Let’s hope that the modern day industrialists and information police won’t break whatever techno-idealism is left out there among the non-profit bloggers and wiki people on the web. Perhaps at Marx’s tomb in London you can still hear the call, updated for modern times: [information] workers of the world [wide web], unite!