"The history of the Donnelly Garment Company and its battle with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) is one that defies conventional understandings of American life in the Great Depression. It is a story of a female entrepreneur succeeding in an era of economic paralysis, and one of a union failing to organize a factory in a period when workers won substantive rights. ILGWU president David Dubinsky, Nell Donnelly Reed, and Senator James A. Reed were the principal figures in a contest to organize a single garment factory, a legal battle that came to represent much larger questions: what responsibility did employers have for their employees? To what extent would women, having recently won voting rights, take on a prominent role in the world of business and work? Was the federal government's support of unions allowing foreign radicalism to seep into American free markets?
In assessing these questions, an exploration of what ILGWU president David Dubinsky referred to as "the bitterest battle," a battle that culminated in several courtroom trials and appeals, reveal how a reputable and respected union leader, a uniquely self-made female entrepreneur, and a retired senator in his twilight years, came to embody the strains of Depression-era politics and society."
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