The Labor Movement / Furniture Strike Of 1911 Spirit Of Solidarity Memorial in Grand Rapids, Michigan

    At the turn of the 20th century, Grand Rapids, Michigan was one of the leading areas of furniture manufacturing in the United States. It was known throughout the country as Furniture City and accounted for approximately 30% of all furniture built in the U.S.

   Which made the owners and operators of the furniture companies very wealthy and very powerful. So much so that the owners of the factories in Grand Rapids pretty much controlled the entire economy of the city.

    Recognizing that their control of industry (and finance) gave them carte blanche to lord over the city, the owners of the factories colluded with one another to control the wages and work hours of the areas labor force, which was comprised primarily of immigrants from the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and a few other European countries (nearly the entirety of my ancestral roots).

    The factory owners were growing extremely wealthy off the skills and abilities of their employees, but were not sharing that wealth - there was no trickle down effect in effect, which did not sit well with the working men & women in the factories.

   After months of being stonewalled in their efforts to negotiate an increase in wages and a reduction in work hours, over 6000 workers from the 47 furniture factories in Grand Rapids at the time finally decided that a strike would be necessary, and on April 19th, 1911, that is exactly what they did.

   The strike lasted four long months, supported by city government (esp. the Mayor) and the Catholic Church, but opposed by the Christian Reformed Church and the Fountain Street Church (which a number of the factory owners attended).

   Ultimately the strike was broken by pressure from the Christian Reformed Church on it's predominantly Dutch congregation ( Dutch immigrants being the majority of the strikers).

   While a few factories did institute changes favorable to the workers, most did not, so the strike was initially considered a failure. The factory owners retaliated against employees who had participated in the strike, causing thousands of skilled workers to leave Grand Rapids for better paying jobs in other cities. 

   However, the short-sighted efforts of the factory owners to maintain ironfisted control of their labor force not only eventually resulted in a skill and brain drain, it  lead to the closing of several of the factories themselves. Five years before the great depression of 1929 devastated the economy of the United States and the world, the economy of Grand Rapids, dependent as it was on furniture production,  began to tank.

   One lasting change that was directly attributable to the strike was in the Grand Rapids city government - the factory owners had been upset the popular mayor had supported the striking workers, and worked hard for the next five years to get him (and other office holders who had sided against them) out of office and their hand-picked people elected to replace them by engaging in gerrymandering to insure they would have enough votes to control the entire city.

   Grand Rapids is stil home to a few furniture manufacturers, but their presence is minuscule compared to the factories of the early twentieth century that earned the city the nickname "Furniture City".

   In 2007 a sculpture created by Robert Chenlo was unveiled to commemorate the strikers and the labor movement. It is located in Ah-Nab-Awen park on the west  bank of the Grand river, not too far from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential museum.