George Moses Price

Background

He was born on May 21, 1864 in Poltava, Russia, (now Ukraine) to Alexander and Leah (Schwartz) Price.

Education

He was educated at the Real Gymnasium in Poltava before joining the exodus of Russian Jews to the United States in 1882.

He attended the University Medical College (New York University), from which he received the M. D. degree in 1895.

Career

Nothing is known of Price's first years in New York City, but by 1885, when he became a city sanitary inspector for the Tenth Ward, he had begun his lifelong effort to improve the industrial health conditions of his fellow immigrants in the ghetto garment shops and tenements of the Lower East Side. In 1894 he was appointed an inspector for the Tenement Commission.

For the next two decades Price combined a career in the private practice of medicine with one in public health, until 1904, as an inspector for the New York City Health Department.

The cloakmakers' strike of 1910 resulted in establishment of a Joint Board of Sanitary Control with responsibility for health and sanitation in the garment industry. Price was designated director of the board and remained in that capacity until its demise in 1925. The board's first report, an investigation of working conditions in 1, 243 coat and suit shops in the city, appeared shortly before the tragic Triangle Waist Company fire of March 1911, which took the lives of 142 young women operatives. The report forced the state legislature to create a State Factory Commission in August, Price was made director of investigation. With Price heading its inspection of manufacturing establishments, the commission issued two reports: the first, in 1912, recommended legislation to correct the most flagrant abuses in sanitation and fire safety; the second, in 1913, was an inquiry into wage rates in the different industries of the state.

Price's inspired dedication to industrial health and safety enabled the Joint Board of Sanitary Control to survive the end of the Protocol in 1916 and to continue its pioneering joint union-management efforts to create healthful work environments in the industry. These efforts, combined with a gradual shift of the consumer garment market in New York City, led to the migration of the industry from lower Manhattan to the more spacious and sanitary midtown garment center.

In 1913, after the Joint Board's findings revealed that garment workers suffered from a high incidence of tuberculosis and other industry-related diseases, and that medical care for the immigrant labor force was virtually nonexistent, Price founded the Union Health Center, to which he thereafter devoted his full time. The center stressed preventive medicine and undertook massive health education programs for the union's members. Price also persuaded the I. L. G. W. U. to establish an insurance scheme whereby a member incapable of working would receive a weekly stipend during his illness.

He died at his home in Manhattan at the age of seventy-eight, of cerebral thrombosis and general arteriosclerosis.

Achievements

• George Moses Price was the director of the Joint Board of Sanitary Control and he worked to improve health conditions in the garment industry. Under his leadership the common drinking cup and the roller towel in factories were eliminated as health hazards, the quality of light and air in the factories were improved. Price also founded the Union Health Center, it was the first attempt by a trade union to provide medical services for its members and became a model for later union clinics developed during and after the New Deal period. Price wrote several books on industrial hygiene and public health, one of which, The Modern Factory: Safety, Sanitation and Welfare (1914), was translated into many languages and helped spur factory reforms in a number of industrial countries.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hygiene and Sanitation; a Text-Book for Nurses

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Modern Factory; Safety, Sanitation and Welfare

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Preliminary Report of the Factory Investigating Commission, 1912 ..; Volume 2

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Connections

On July 22, 1891, he married Anna Kopkin. They had two children, Lucy Ella and Leo.

Father:

Alexander Price

Mother:

Leah (Schwartz) Price

Spouse:

Anna Kopkin

Daughter:

Lucy Ella Price

Son:

Leo Price