[1] While cotton and woolen mills had been constructed in the area as early as the 1860s, it was not until 1889, when Congress increased the rate of tariffs on imported worsted wool that the textile industry expanded in any meaningful way.

[2] The workers at these facilities were predominantly foreign-born, including among them representatives of 39 nationalities, with immigrants from Poland, Italy, Russia, Hungary in particular evidence.

[2] With an income of approximately $1,400 estimated to be necessary to maintain a basic "American standard of living," many New Jersey factory workers found themselves on the brink of financial disaster.

[5] A conscious effort was made by the mill owners to employ as many different nationalities as possible in their facilities, thereby making the task of labor organization even more difficult.

[7] Despite the divergent nationalities involved, it was judged that, given the limits placed upon new immigration, these foreign-born workers had been more tightly attached to their occupations and "greatly Americanized."

Communist union organizer Ben Gitlow observed that these workers "understand English and have acclimated themselves to many of the American customs," cemented together by their American-born children into "one homogeneous whole.

This committee was told in no uncertain terms that any individuals known to be members of the UFC would be similarly terminated, a hardline position which further inflamed the situation.

Stopped in their tracks, the police began clubbing the massed strikers and dispersed the crowd with the use of tear gas and firehoses of icy-cold water.

[11] The strikers paused for a day before making their next effort, this time donning steel helmets and passing triumphantly through the police line as cameramen documented the scene from the safe confines of armored cars and via an airplane overhead.

[16] This simultaneously reduced the maintenance cost of the strike and served as a vehicle to garner publicity and support for the work stoppage.

A more innovative attempt to garner public sympathy and financial support came in the form of a motion picture shot to aid the strikers' cause.

[17] In April Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas and Communist Robert W. Dunn, members of the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), challenged the virtual imposition of martial law by Bergen County's sheriff, by speaking to strikers there.

[12] Vorse produced a regular Textile Strike Bulletin to keep strikers and sympathetic outsiders abreast of developments in the ongoing work stoppage.

[11] The strikers' General Relief Committee tried to raise funds by issuing and selling a heavily illustrated, poignant photographic survey of the strike entitled "Hell in New Jersey."

Despite the series of successful strike actions and public relations victories, the Passaic labor stoppage dragged on interminably, with no end in sight.

As early as March 28, 1926, strike leader Albert Weisbord had appealed to the American Federation of Labor's Executive Council for help.

[24] This simmering acrimony between the union's headquarters and its active members in New Jersey finally erupted in 1928, when the UTW expelled the entire Passaic local for its support of the ongoing Communist-led strike of textile workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

[25] In 2006, graduate students in New York University's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program discovered the missing reel 5 while processing films belonging to the Communist Party USA's collection.