Calvin Coolidge was president in 1926, and American capitalism was riding high. But in 1926, fifteen thousand wool workers in Passaic, New Jersey, went on strike. The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike, a new book by Jacob A. Zumoff, a historian at New Jersey City University, tells its story. Passaic’s worker uprising occurred in the early days of the Communist Party USA, and while the strike ultimately failed, it showed that the party could organize workers, even those who had not previously belonged to unions, and could mobilize significant public support for their struggles.

The Passaic workers — mostly immigrants, many women — struck to demand that the bosses recognize their union and abandon plans for a 10 percent pay cut. The Communist Party (CP), particularly Albert Weisbord, played a crucial role in organizing the workers, mobilizing public support — that is, organizing solidarity strikes at nearby factories, picket lines, fundraising for relief for the strikers and their families, and sympathetic media attention — and making the Passaic strike into a national issue. The CP punched way above its weight: there were more strikers in Passaic than there were Communists in the United States.

Alfred Wagenknecht, a veteran communist from the left wing of the Ohio Socialist Party who had served prison time for resisting World War I, organized the relief effort that allowed the workers to stay out on strike for so long (about a year). Wagenknecht was a formidable fundraiser and coalition builder, organizing donated goods and labor from other union workers — bread from the bakery workers’ union in New York City, free haircuts from local barbers — and creating a system of stores and kitchens where strikers and their families could get food, coffee, or medical attention. The Communists also organized childcare for the strikers, including several summer camps.