Background
Morris Sigman was born on May 15, 1881 in Costesh, Bessarabia, Province of Hatino Uezd, the son of Samuel and Rebecca (Sikernetsky) Sigman.
Morris Sigman was born on May 15, 1881 in Costesh, Bessarabia, Province of Hatino Uezd, the son of Samuel and Rebecca (Sikernetsky) Sigman.
The son of a farmer in a small Bessarabian-Russian village, he received little schooling, and as a Jew and a subject of the czar of Russia he lived in an atmosphere of persecution and hate.
At twenty-one he emigrated to London, where for a year he worked in a men's clothing shop. Initiated into the ideals of the labor movement, he journeyed to New York in 1903 and found employment on the East Side as a presser in a cloak shop, where he soon formed the Independent Cloakmakers' Union.
Joining at first with those in the labor movement who favored opposition of "dual unions, " he was led into the Industrial Workers of the World when it was formed in 1905; by 1908 he had come to believe that destroying existing unions by founding opposition unions was detrimental to the interests of the workers, and he helped to induce his and other I. W. W. locals of ladies' garment workers to affiliate with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union of the American Federation of Labor. When the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union undertook to control cut-throat competition and deplorably bad working conditions, the employers resisted, and the union became involved in a series of bitter strikes. In the historic strike of 1910, which established the union on a firm foundation, Sigman honorably acquitted himself in the difficult and dangerous position of chairman of the picket committee. When the employers consented to negotiate with the union he was selected as a member of the joint conference committee.
This established the famous "Protocol, " signed September 2, 1910, which created permanent machinery consisting of representatives of labor, capital, and the public to supervise and regulate all relations in the industry.
But permanent peace was not attained. During a strike in 1915 Sigman and seven other leaders were arrested and confined to jail while awaiting trial on charges of murder; with the others, he was later acquitted by a jury.
In his own Pressers' Union, Local No. 35, he served in every important post from member of the executive board to business agent and manager. He was also the organizer and manager of the Boston unions in their formative period; the organizer, 1909, and manager, 1917-21, of the New York Joint Board of Cloakmakers' Unions (the co"rdinating body of the local unions of this trade); and vice-president, 1920-22, secretary-treasurer, 1914-15, of the International Union.
He was in charge of establishing the New York Joint Board of the Dressmakers' Unions, and acted as its first manager.
In February 1923 he became general president, a position he held to October 1928, when ill health caused him to resign. During his term as president two events shook the union to its very foundations. Before the World War a difference of opinion, later known as the Left and Right controversy, had developed within the ranks; after the Bolshevik revolution the Communists assumed leadership of the Lefts and organized themselves under the auspices of the Trade Union Educational League, formed in 1920.
Sigman condemned this procedure as a dual union movement which aimed to disrupt the International Union and succeeded in disbanding the opposing Lefts, but the union suffered severe losses in membership. At the same time economic conditions in the industry once more became chaotic through the appearance of the jobber, who controlled the markets. Under Sigman's leadership a new economic program for the industry was devised.
Failing to win the employers through negotiation, the union induced the governor to appoint an advisory committee, which succeeded in reconciling the two elements, and temporarily at least conditions were improved. Sigman died in Storm Lake, Iowa.
Like most Jewish labor leaders he retained his socialist ideology, but reversed the emphasis. In his youth he stressed ultimate ideals; in his later years he fostered immediate reforms, with the hope that in addition to improving the conditions of the time they might ultimately bring about the overthrow of the wage system.
Although neither an orator nor a "showman, " he was an effective and logical speaker. He showed little trace of vanity and remained to the end the simple but intelligent worker.
His wife was Mathilda Sikernetsky, who was his cousin and whom he had married on March 17, 1912.