Cleveland once ranked as one of the nation’s leaders in garment manufacturing, thanks in large part to the Cleveland Worsted Mills. An immense sight in its heyday, the plant suffered years of neglect and decline after its closure, until a fire destroyed much of the complex. Today the industrial giant is largely forgotten, but the impact it had on Cleveland and environmental laws has remained.
In 1878, Joseph Turner started the Turner Worsted Mill, renamed the Cleveland Worsted Mill in 1902. The Cleveland Plant, located at 5932 Broadway Avenue, handled every aspect of the worsted cloth process, from scouring and sorting wool to boiling the cloth. At the height of production in the 1920s, the mill ran more than 500 looms and consumed 25-35,000 pounds of wool daily.
As one of the leading employers of the area's large immigrant population, namely Poles and Czechs, the company expanded rapidly. In 1908 it completed a $200,000 addition, including a six-story brick steel factory building and a three-story office building. To ease employee concerns about safety, it constructed exterior stairways and elevator shafts in the new building and also added elevators in existing buildings. With the addition the facility became the second largest plant for worsted production in the country.
Despite its national recognition and financial success, the company had a difficult relationship with its employees. In 1934, the plant closed for almost three months due to striking over union discrimination. In 1937, complaints were made against the company for “terrorizing and intimidating employees” to keep them from joining the Textile Workers Organizing Committee and workers again went on strike for a few weeks. Striking broke out again in August 1955, brought on by a breakdown in talks between company officials and the Textile Workers Organization. Rather than continue talks, Cleveland Worsted Mills chose to liquidate its assets in January 1956.
Although the company was gone, disaster struck the plant again in 1993. In April, investigators found 100 barrels of potentially hazardous materials left improperly stored in the warehouse complex. The material was found to be flammable and reports state the building had no working sprinkler system. Investigators determined that the barrels would remain in the building until they knew what they contained and who was responsible for them as there was some dispute over who owned the property. While city officials were trying to determine who owned the property, an arson fire destroyed the complex on July 4. City fire officials were aware of the danger the barrels within the mill presented and had already devised a plan to fight the blaze they correctly figured was inevitable.
As a result of the fire, new laws were put in place with tougher punishments for environmental offenders. It became a crime for companies to walk away from a site without cleaning up contamination. Moreover, the courts could force them to pay for the cleanup, and any damage incurred was the company’s responsibility. Environmental nuisances were added to the state's nuisance abatement laws that allow the state to take over such properties.
The city spent $3 million to clean up the debris from the fire and fill in the land. A few years later, it became the Boys and Girls Club of Cleveland. The organization runs a recreational and educational site on more than five acres of the 12.5-acre complex.
]]>In 1888, Charles Eisenman and Jacob Kastriner pooled their resources to create a company that would provide boys with quality shirts and washtogs. The company was originally named the Kastriner and Eisenmann company but underwent a number of name changes before finally in 1914 settling on Kaynee, a phonetic spelling of the founders' surname initials.
From the very beginning Kaynee offered employees a number of benefits and services that are unheard of in most companies of today’s world. There was a staffed day care free for all employees and workers could visit the children on breaks. In addition to a large cafeteria and kitchen for employees, there was also a recreation room for various indoor games and activities, most notably exercise. A large area was used primarily as a dance floor but could also be transformed into a motion picture theater. The company used this area to host a number of dances and concerts for their employees in efforts to promote company loyalty.
The company also invested in improving the welfare and education of all employees. Medical and dental offices were located on the premises, providing inexpensive and convenient healthcare for employees and their family. Employees could choose to participate in continuation school, the expense taken care of by the Kaynee Company, in order to further their education in avenues related to the business and work they were performing.
In 1915, the company donated a play area to the neighborhood, equipped with tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and sand boxes for younger children. The company looked to improve conditions under which children in the district grew up. This generosity was not altruistic as much as it was a strategic business decision. A company representative stated, “All that Kaynee does is done in the cause of better business. Children who are brought up in the open grow into better men and women, and the better men and women are, the healthier they are- the better employees they will make.”
Kaynee was also able to find a way to promote itself while simultaneously supporting children’s education and astuteness. From 1940 to 1953, Quiz Kids was a popular weekly show in which a panel of children were asked a series of trivia questions and gave very detailed answers without the help of calculators or notes. Kaynee used the show to promote their line of boys clothing in commercials and started a new Quiz Kids line. Kaynee also sponsored a contest for boys to write in why they wanted to be a quiz kid and the winner would be featured on the show.
Despite the plethora of welfare programs available to employees, problems arose. Workers began pushing for unionization at the behest of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. On November 8, 1934, workers began a strike for unionization. A majority of the employees refused to strike or join the union and was thus susceptible to attacks by strikers. Despite what union leaders claimed, a large number of employees did not walk out; the plant entrances were barred by the picket line and they were unable to begin work. On November 12, Kaynee announced the closing of its Cleveland plants and cancelled all orders placed for delivery. The decision came in the wake of brutal attacks on their employees when riding to and from work and even at their homes. The strike ended January 1935 when the two entities reached an agreement that provided collective bargaining, reinstatement of workers without discrimination, equalization of work, and a reconsideration of wage rates.
The company quickly resumed production and continued operations peacefully until the 1950s. Aetna International bought a large share of stock in 1952 and later sold it to Piedmont Shirt Co. of Greenville, South Carolina. Piedmont bought out the company in 1958 and soon closed both plants (the other being in Williamsburg, Kentucky), putting around 600 employees out of work. The company is still in operation today but is known as Rifle Kaynee and is based in New Jersey.
]]>The Fisher Body Ohio Company in Collinwood - located on E. 140th Street and Coit Road - began production in 1921. This new division of General Motors was one of the many industrial plants that emerged and proliferated due to the neighborhood's rail yard and Cleveland lines. Spread across three shifts, 7,000 employees at Fisher Body worked to manufacture Chevrolet bodies almost exclusively.
At 2 p.m. on 28 December 1936, approximately 200 workers at the Fisher Body plant abruptly stopped work and staged a sit-down. Once the news spread of the strike, 125 picketers marched on the street in support of the strike. The workers gave their demands: They wanted their hours cut to three seven-hour shifts so layoffs could be avoided. On holidays and Sundays the workers expected to be paid double. Finally, they wanted the union members who discussed the settlement of their terms be paid for the time they spent negotiating. However, negotiation proved to be long and difficult The men remained inside Collinwood's Fisher Body for more than a month.
Other General Motor plants were in the middle of a strike when Collinwood began their sit-down, and others followed. The situation was severe enough to gain the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was not pleased with General Motors' refusal to budge, and the federal government stepped in to see that negotiations began between strikers and General Motors Corporation, which "account[ed] for about one-twentieth of the economic activity of the United States."
Finally, on February 12, 1937, General Motors held a conference in Flint, Michigan. The following day a band marched through the streets of Collinwood followed by members of the United Automobile Workers of America union and other Fisher Body employees. The parade ended at Public Hall where union members voted on the agreement struck between General Motors and the U.A.W.A.
The loss of $1,800,000 in wages over the six-week period had hit both the families of the strikers and a number of Collinwood businesses hard. In Cleveland, the strike caused the greatest unemployment since 1929; the year of the stock market crash that began the Great Depression. According to the Plain Dealer, "Word of the strike settlement was received with rejoicing by the whole Collinwood district, where many of the strikers live and where merchants had felt the financial effect of the stoppage of thousands of weekly pay envelopes."
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