The Typewriter Is Not a Typesetter

The 1919 Printing Strike That Wasn’t

In 1919, typesetters in New York wanted better working hours and better pay at job shops that handled much of the work for magazines. Their powerful union, the International Typographic Union (ITU), refused to authorize a general strike. Members of union locals took matters in their own hands, even though they risked the ire of publishers, being fired by employers, and getting labeled as socialists or worse.

The absurd wage and hours they wanted? Instead of $36 a week for 48 hours of work, they wanted $50 for 44 hours — about $17 an hour or $742 a week in 2019 money. “50–44” became the watchword. One typesetter would enter a shop and ask a foreman, “50–44?” The foreman would reply, inevitably, “No soap,” and typesetters would suddenly say they were going to take a vacation. While a big increase, coming on top of a $6 a week bump in 1918, the last year of World War I, it was long overdue.

This inflamed publishers and pundits, who railed against the behavior, both because it wasn’t officially union sanctioned — as much as business leaders and many periodicals’ owners hated unions — and as they had no alternatives. Hiring technically non-scab replacement typesetters wasn’t feasible, because there was so much other work at newspapers and book publishers in the city. Most…