Bushwick Glass Works (Brookfield)

STARTING A GREAT STRIKE.

BUTLER AND IRONS HAVE A RIVAL IN THE EAST.

HUNDREDS OF GLASSWORKERS DRIVEN FROM THE FURNACES BY THE FIAT OF A DEMAGOGUE.

Druggists and others who use green-glass bottles may have considerable trouble in securing those articles for some time to come. The glassblowers employed in all the country east of Pittsburg have just been ordered to strike by one John Coffey, of Philadelphia, Master Workman of the Druggists' Ware Glassworkers' League, Eastern Division.

Mr. Coffey, as far as can be ascertained from the glassblowers hereabout, is a demagogic sort of person who has just been elevated to a position of trust by his fellow workmen. He is now celebrating his elevation by the peculiar sort of methods recently employed by one Butler out in Chicago, who engineered so disastrously the strike of packers, and by Martin Irons, who gained such an unsavory reputation in connection with the strike on Jay Gould's Southwestern system. By reason of Mr. Coffey's imperative orders all the glassblowers employed at Hagerty Brothers & Co., in Brooklyn, and nearly all of those employed at the Bushwick Glass Works are also out. This enforced strike, which is not approved by a great majority of the men who are members of the Glassblowers' League, was brought about in this way.

Last Summer the Executive Committee of the League had a meeting at Atlantic City, N.J., and adopted as their scale of wages for the blast from September, 1886, to July, 1887, the scale adopted some few years ago, less 10 per cent., that is the same scale as was employed during the year 1885-6. This was submitted to the Green Glassware Manufacturers' Association, East, of which William Brookfield, of the Bushwick Glass Works, of Brooklyn, is President. The Manufacturers' Association held that the scale was too high, as it was nearly equal to the highest wages paid at anytime during the war, and the condition of trade did not warrant the payment of so high a rate. So they asked that the rate be made 20 per cent. Below the scale. The manufacturers, too, asked that the employment of two apprentices to each furnace be permitted, though the union men refused to allow the employment of any apprentices.

A long discussion followed, to which the workmen were represented by F. S. Tomlin, whom the manufacturers have always been ready and willing to see and treat with, as he is an intelligent, fair-minded, and thoroughly competent man, willing to hear as well as be heard. With him a compromise was finally effected by which it was agreed to pay the men 15 per cent. Below the scale and give the manufacturers the right to employ and train the two apprentices they asked for. On this basis, which was perfectly satisfactory to the Executive Committee, the men were ordered to go to work, and they did so on the 1st of November. They were not badly off certainly, for under it they would make from $5 to $9 a day.

Just after the furnaces were started, and when the men were well at work, there came a call for a special meeting of the league at Camden, N.J. Not knowing that anything of importance was coming up, a large number of the factories failed to be represented at this meeting, held two weeks ago. Its principal outcome was the deposition of Tomlin from the position he had so long and satisfactorily occupied and the substitution of John Coffey, a radical workman and agitator of the Home Club school.

Hardly had Coffey been inducted into office, before, like a flash from a clear sky, came the order to strike. There had been no notification to the Manufacturers' Association and none to the men in this section of the county at least. No reasons were given for ordering the strike, and no opportunity was offered to avert it. The only theory for it's being ordered that either manufacturers or workmen can give is that two small cooperative concerns, one of them in Scranton, Penn., were prying the scale adopted by the league before the compromise scale was accepted. The workmen in the factories throughout New Jersey refused to strike at first, and in about half the factories throughout the country where league workmen were employed this was the case.

Coffey was dumbfounded by the refusal of the glassblowers to obey his mandate. So he started out on a missionary tour among the stubborn workmen. He has been to Ellenville, N.Y., and the men there left work after his visit. He was in Brooklyn last week, and the men left work yesterday according to his orders. This week he will devote to trying to drive them out of all the New Jersey factories. He will probably have a lively time over there, as the men are not disposed to give up their work at satisfactory rates to accommodate his whim. The Cohanzie Works at Bridgeton, N.J., have already accepted the wage of bottle, and its manufacturers have announced that they will not be dictated to, but will fight and employ only non-union men. The blowers struck there, but soon offered to return to work. Their offer was promptly refused. The blowers in New Jersey who are opposed to Coffey's arbitrary order are under the leadership of William Monks, of Millville, one of their old Executive Committee, a conservative man, who is opposed to Irons-Butler-Coffey methods in labor matters.

Last Tuesday the workmen at the Bushwick Glass Works notified Mr. Brookfield that they had been ordered to strike, but added that they should not do so, because they had signed an agreement with him to work until July next. That agreement, they said, they would stick to. Coffey heard of their agreement and came on here. Finding the men inclined to stick to their agreement with Mr. Brookfield, he began to work with the apprentices, who are indentured to the firm for five years, and induced men to strike. Then he had a meeting of the blowers on the evening of Thanksgiving Day and persuaded them to strike as well. He then met Hagerty Brothers & Co.'s men, and they struck when they finished work last night. They were paid off for the work they had done up to date.

When asked yesterday about conditions of affairs at his works, Mr. Brookfield said: "When my men went to work on the 1st of November I made them all sign an agreement to work out the blast — That is until July 1 — before I would start the furnaces. They did it willingly. When the strike was ordered the men voluntarily told me that they would stick by their agreement for I went to the factory at once and ordered the fire drawn. I accepted their promise to work for me as one made in good faith and allowed work to go on. Then Coffey came up here and got my apprentices who didn't know any better than listen to him, to strike. Then he corralled the blowers on Thursday night, and Friday a committee of the men came and told me they had got to strike in spite of their agreement, or else violate their obligation to their union. Part of the men belong to the Knights of Labor."

"Today when I again ordered the fire drawn, seven men who were ready to strike refused to do so. Seven others, finding the ice broken, followed their example, and so I have had 14 men at work to-day. How long they will be allowed to remain at work I cannot say, for coaxing and intimidation will probably both be used. If there is any more trouble, I shall close the factory and won't start it again until I know the man are at work to stay. It's cheaper to abandon the plant than to have this sort of thing going on, and I'll certainly do it. Why, in the meeting on Thursday night, when one of my men protested against Coffey's order, Coffey ordered him out of the room and issued an order that hereafter no member of the league should work with him on pain of expulsion from the union. That's the high-handed manner in which he runs things, and it isn't any wonder that the workmen are kicking against him. So far as our factory is concerned, the strike, directly and indirectly, affects some 200 working people."

Mr. Coffey's order, if carried into affect, will through some 8,000 people out of work and close all the factories where druggists' bottles are blown in this state, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Eastern states. A large majority of the blowers are satisfied with the present scale of wages, and the only trouble seems to be about the employment of apprentices. Coffey and his followers are not willing that the boys employed in the factories shall be allowed to learn the trade, which they seemingly desire should die out with them.

Manufacturers and Manufacturers' agents in this city yesterday refused to take any orders for green glass wares, and could not make any promises as to when goods already ordered will be delivered. A long fight is expected unless the dissatisfaction among the workmen leads to Coffey's orders being disobeyed outright.