The Passaic Textile Strike (film)
| The Passaic Textile Strike | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Samuel Russak |
| Produced by | Alfred Wagenknecht (producer) |
| Written by | Margaret Larkin (titles) |
| Starring | See below |
| Cinematography |
Lester Balog Sam Brody Bill Schwartfeller |
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Release date
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Running time
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70 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent, English titles |
The Passaic Textile Strike is a 1926 American silent film directed by Samuel Russak and produced by Alfred Wagenknecht. The film was produced to raise public awareness and financial support for the 1926 Passaic Textile Strike, which involved over 15,000 New Jersey textile mill workers in a work stoppage lasting more than a year. Although in good part a fictional melodrama, The Passaic Textile Strike is regarded as important by film historians both for its documentary footage and for the fact that it is one of the only early American labor films to have been preserved largely intact.
Activists in the Workers (Communist) Party were important leaders of a strike of largely immigrant factory workers in several large wool and silk mills located in and around Passaic, New Jersey, a walkout of over 15,000 workers which began in January 1926. As a means of building public sympathy and generating funds for support of the strikers, the Communist Party, in conjunction with the International Workers Aid branch of the Communist International, shot a film dramatizing the alleged injustices faced by the striking workers and depicting the efforts of the Communist Party to lead the impoverished millworkers against their exploitive employers in a heroic light.
Reels 1 and 2 of the film, "The Prologue," present a melodramatic depiction of the life of a fictional Polish worker, Stefan Breznac, who comes to Passaic from Europe in 1907. Stefan takes a job in a woolen mill and earns a raise. He sends for his sweetheart, Kada, to come to America to share in his newfound prosperity. The couple start a family, but are soon struck by the misfortune of Stefan's employer imposing wage cuts which force the Breznac's to withdraw their 14-year-old daughter, Vera, from school to go to work to help support the family.
The "big boss" of the mill, a fictional German capitalist named Mr. Mulius, takes a fancy to the teenager and makes her his assistant at a raise of wages so as to win her confidence. That afternoon the porcine bourgeois takes her home via a roundabout route through the countryside. On cue, Mr. Mulius' driver pretends to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere so that his employer may have his way with the helpless young girl. A disheveled Vera is eventually dropped off at home as her brazen employer enjoys a satisfying cigarette.
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