Strikes by the Polish Women in the Detroit Cigar Factories
Cigars … Luxurious, expensive, elitist….
But about a century ago working-class Americans enjoyed cigars every day, and Detroit was famous for manufacturing the best smokes in the nation.
In 1841 George Miller opened the first cigar factory on Woodward, south of Jefferson. Within the next few decades thousands of Detroit men, and later women, made their living stemming, stripping and bunching tobacco, and rolling Seed and Havanas, five-cent cigars and stogies. The cigar industry became one of the most important in the city.
In order to grow, the cigar business needed cheap labor.
In Detroit, as in the rest of the country, male and often unionized cigar workers were replaced with immigrant women workers, who were perceived as inexpensive, reliable, and docile, hence unlikely to cause trouble. After all, they did not have unions to support them.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Poles were the largest ethnic group in Detroit. Not surprisingly, the Detroit cigar industry targeted young Polish women as their “ideal workers”. To make it easier for the women, the companies even built factories in Polish neighborhoods.
Two such buildings, San Telmo located on Michigan Avenue, and Mazer-Cressman on Grandy, is still standing today.
To attract female workers some cigar companies occasionally equipped their factories with showers, spacious lunchrooms, and even hired piano players to entertain them during the ten-hour workdays.
However, these modern facilities were an exception to the rule. Throughout the Detroit cigar boom, the vast majority of the women continued to work in hot, humid, smelly, even nauseating facilities and often earned only half the wage of the male workers.
No wonder that in 1916 the “docile” Polish immigrant women organized a major strike and proved the factory owners wrong.
Poor working conditions, the practice of withholding pay during the first few months of employment, along with sexual harassment led the Polish women of Lilies to strike on June 29, 1916. The strike spread and in a few days shut down all the major cigar factories.
(Radzilowski, movie 1: 0.52 – 2:06 Photos: Lilies, the site, San Telmo, Polish churches on the East and West Side, Dom Polski. Length: 1’14”)
During the Great Depression, women’s wages plummeted further and women walked out of the cigar factories many times.
In 1937, inspired by the automotive workers of Flint, they staged a major sit-in.
(Radziłowski 4: strike of 1937: 0:29 – 2:28. Length :1’59“)
After the First World War cigars gradually started losing popularity to cigarettes. In recent decades, however, cigars have made a comeback.
Although due to state regulations nobody rolls them in Detroit anymore, cigar lounges offer a variety of cigars, including the newest edition, the “20 minutes in Detroit” cigar.
While enjoying one of those you might reflect on the era of Detroit cigar making and on the courageous Polish women who in the first half of the twentieth century fought for economic justice and workers’ rights.
