MORDECHAJ POGORELSKI THE JEWISH LABOR MOVEMENT As early as 1882, seventy Jewish weavers went out on strike against the factory owner, Aron Suraski, demanding higher wages. Most of the strikers were Chasidic Jews, as was their employer. This stoppage set a precedent for other job actions over wage disputes. A massive shutdown — which spread throughout the entire textile industry in 1894, involving mainly non-Jews — came about after the Czarist regime demanded inspections and productivity quotas, issuing each worker a booklet to jot down his quota for the day. In protest, all of the silk workers left the factories. The walkout lasted for more than three weeks. Only after the police commissioner and the factory inspector promised the strikers they could not be laid off without cause and would receive pay on a weekly basis did the employees return to work. This had an effect on other industries as well. Some ten thousand workers had participated in that strike. Also in 1894, Jewish weavers led a demonstration around their fac- tory, daring to even enter the building and eject the strikebreakers. The workers in the textile industry had won a twelve-hour work day. The weavers’ average weekly earnings ranged between six and seven rubles. In 1900, with the advent of the great economic crisis in Bialy- stok, the number of employed weavers dropped sharply because three-quarters of the factories closed down. The unemployment rate was high, the situation critical. To call attention to their predicament, the jobless weav- ers and their wives did not permit the Torah to be read at Sabbath services in the synagogue, a spectacular event. The community was forced to open two kitchens for those out of work, charging a small sum for soup with bread. Some people were so poor they did not have the four kopeks to pay for this meager meal. The organizers of these kitchens had no choice but to pro- vide these destitute individuals with free food. This crisis greatly strengthened the labor Bundist movement in Bialystok. While in 1898 only two hundred enrolled Bundists could be counted, in 1901 there were already about seven hundred. The Bundists agitated in the streets, urging the Jewish masses to throw away their banal novels and replace them with Bundist literature provided by two libraries in Bialystok, one run by Rabbi Szmuel Mohi- lewer, the Zionist-oriented rabbi. These books were in Hebrew and dealt mainly with the need to settle in Israel. The other library, under the management of Awrom Kutik, contained Russian, German and Yiddish books. Many radical and socialist volumes were to be found in Kutik’s library. 12 The two libraries played a major role in evolving Jewish socialist and nationalist consciousness, and served as sources of general knowledge. The two main currents, Zionism and socialism, merged as one ideol- ogy in the minds of the masses under the influence of the Bundist literature. Bialystok was one of the main centers of the Bund. From 1900 to 1905 the Bund Central Committee was located there. Three party leaders, Nojach Portnoj, Dr. Pawel Rozental and his wife, Ana, lived in Bialystok. Moreover, the third and fourth conferences of the Bund were held there. The Bundist movement grew stronger from year to year. Besides the official organ of the central commit- tee, the Bundist Voice, several Bundist tabloids appeared from time to time, as well as a newspaper, Bialystoker Stimme (unrelated to the magazine published by the Bialystoker Center in New York), which reflected the interests of the local workers. Not only did unjust working conditions in Bialy- stok generate a labor movement prepared to strike and bargain collectively with management but the workers were encouraged to support a strong labor counterforce to the formerly dominant factory owners. Reb. Moshe Ber! Bezim was well known in Bialystok for his readiness to help all those in need; he was one of the organizers of “Linas Hatzedek,” and chief aide of Dr. Chazanowitz. The Bialystoker Memorial Book