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"Di shlang in gan edn" 1910 witnessed a profusion of labor strikes, the largest of which was that of the cloak-makers. Their strike was settled slowly, with some shops acceding to union demands and others hiring scab labor. Although laborers were often impoverished by the strikes, working as a scab was considered a terrible betrayal of one's fellow workers and the labor movement as a whole. As a result, the Yiddish press, which was often connected to the labor movement, consistently warned its readers not to break strikes and become a scab or hire scab labor in the shops. In this re-appropriation of the famous biblical myth, Eve, the "cloak-maker," is lured by a snake marked "cloak manufacturer," who offers her the apple of "scabbery." Adam, also a "cloak-maker," picks flowers marked "settled shops," which refer to those shops that already settled with the unions. |
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