Sidney Hillman

Sidney Hillman was born in Žagarė, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, on March 23, 1887, the son of Lithuanian Jewish parents. Sidney's maternal grandfather was a small-scale merchant; his paternal grandfather was a rabbi known for his piety and lack of concern for material possessions. Hillman's father was himself an impoverished merchant, more concerned with reading and prayer than with his faltering business. By the age of 13, Hillman had memorized several volumes of the Talmud. The next year he was chosen by the Hillman rabbinical clan to go away to attend yeshiva in Vilijampolė, a small town across the river from the city of Kaunas. The study circle's members read radical literature and books on political economy, and Hillman was here exposed to the works of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer in Russian translation. ==Career==

Russia Early in 1903, Hillman passed from the training grounds of the Marxist study circle to fully fledged membership in the Bund, a revolutionary socialist union of Jewish workers within the Pale in conflict with the Tsarist authorities. Hillman became a leading activist in the Bund, leading the first May Day march ever conducted by the organization through the streets of Kovno in 1904. Hillman was arrested shortly thereafter for his revolutionary activities and sat in prison for several months, where he learned more about revolutionary social theory from fellow prisoners. Hillman played only a minor local role during the Russian Revolution of 1905, engaging in the distribution of leaflets, raising funds for the revolutionary organization, and informally speaking on the streets to groups of workers. Great Britain In 1906, Tsarist repression in the form of police raids and organized pogroms forced the Russian socialist movement back underground. Hillman joined the exodus of revolutionaries from the country in October 1906, traveling under a false passport through Germany to Manchester, England, where he joined his uncle, a prosperous furniture dealer, and two brothers already living there. Hillman's prospects were poor in New York and he soon set out for Chicago, where a friend and a more favorable job market awaited him. As in the case in World War I, Hillman used the influence of the federal government to advance both labor's social goals and its immediate organizing needs. Hillman was unable to persuade the Board to debar labor law violators but did help introduce arbitration as an alternative to strikes in defense industries. Hillman's prioritization of emergency production for national defense over labor radicalism brought him criticism from others within the CIO, as when he stood with the Roosevelt administration's decision to send in troops to break a wildcat strike at the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, California in 1941. (The strikers' wage demands were soon conceded in arbitration, which the Communist-supported strike had forestalled.) Hillman also believed in the need for unions to mobilize their members politically. He and Lewis founded Labor's Non-Partisan League, which campaigned for Roosevelt in 1936 and again in 1940, even though Lewis himself had endorsed Wendell Willkie that year. Hillman was the first chair of the CIO Political Action Committee, founded in 1942, as well as of the National Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC) (which co-founded the 1948 Progressive Party). In July 1943, Philip Murray of the CIO led formation of the CIO-PAC, of which Hillman was the first head. In Roosevelt's last election in 1944, Hillman raised nearly $1 million on behalf of the Democrat national ticket. Hillman was also credited with grass roots activities, registering labor voters and bringing them in heavy numbers to the polls. In 1945, he attended the World Trade Union Conference in London alongside many renowned trade unionists. ==Personal life==

. Hillman and Bessie Abramowitz were married in 1916 and had two daughters. == Death ==

Hillman, who had been sick for some time, died of a heart attack at age 59 on July 10, 1946, at his summer home in Point Lookout, New York. His body was interred in a mausoleum located at Westchester Hills Cemetery, 20 miles north of New York City. ==Legacy==

According to labor historian David Brody, Hillman built upon the conservative job-oriented unionism that dominated the American scene, discarding his youthful radicalism and opposition to capitalism. Hillman was realistic, nonideological, and eager for tangible results. Under Hillman's leadership, the Amalgamated became an active partner in the men's clothing business, building two banks, fostering low-cost unemployment insurance, and setting up internal educational and social support programs for union members. This was the "New Unionism"of the 1920s, which combined a large powerful union, with many small capitalist enterprises, all of them controlled by Jews who could talk together easily. Hillman's broader perspective gave him a leading role in forming the CIO and establishing entirely new mass-production unions that confronted not small local Jewish capitalists but world-class corporations. Hillman also was a pioneer in integrating union power with major political powers on a national level. The New Deal had proven a bonanza for union membership growth, and beginning with the 1936 presidential election, Hillman pushed hard for labor to give systematic nationwide support to Roosevelt and the New Deal cause. His main rival was John L. Lewis, who broke with Roosevelt, and with the CIO, leaving Hillman the central labor politician in the national Democratic Party. Hillman's successor as head of the ACWA, Jacob Potofsky, took a far less visible role within the CIO, a federation which re-united with the AFL in 1955. The American Labor Party that Hillman had helped create passed out of existence in that same year. The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Bronx was the first limited equity housing cooperative in the United States. It was funded and inspired by Hillman and Abraham Kazan. A street in the neighborhood, Hillman Avenue, is named for him. Hillman is also the namesake of the Hillman Housing Corporation, a housing cooperative sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and part of Cooperative Village in Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Sidney Hillman Foundation, established in his honor, gives annual awards to journalists and writers for work that supports social justice and progressive public policy. The first Sidney Hillman Awards were announced in 1950. In addition, from 1949 to 1995 the foundation made annual awards honoring public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good. ==See also==