Workmen's Advocate Domestic News April 25, 1886

The Strike and Boycott of Skinner, the Skin.

The strike ordered by the Textile Workers' Progressive Union of Holyoke against Wm. Skinner & Son, silk manufacturers, is still in progress, and a boycott endorsed by the powerful Central Labor Union of New York, the Textile Workers' Protective Union of America, and the Holyoke Trades Assembly is carried on against these scab bosses. Their foreman, Goetz, was recently tried for kicking a poor orphan girl, fourteen years of age, in the abdomen, so that she was confined to her bed for several days. Goetz was placed under $200 bail, and upon the day fixed for trial the poor girl was not able to leave her bed, necessitating a postponement. This suited Goetz, who came prepared, at the trial which subsequently took place, with a number of scab "witnesses," by whose suborned testimony, and the evident rottenness of the jury, many of the citizens of Holyoke say, he was permitted to go scot free.

Workingmen have learned a lesson by these proceedings, which could not but fill honest people with a contempt for the law. The judge, it seems, admitted the right of foremen to "use force if necessary." Holyoke workmen will remember this advice, perhaps, on a future occasion, when it will not sound so well in the ears of tyrants as it did the other day in court.

The Textile Workers' Union requests all fair-minded people to refrain from buying satin sleeve linings, mohair braids, pure silk braids, silk serge, colored and black machine twist, button-hole twist and sewing silk manufactured by Skinner & Son, who, by their unjust treatment, forced their help to strike, and refused to receive any proposals from them on the ground that they can get all the scab labor that they want. And, further, they demand that all who work for them renounce the Union. They have blacklisted their help, thus preventing them from getting work in any other mill in the city. A. B. C.