Lasting Room, Bass Shoe Company, photograph by William H. Harris, Wilton Maine, ca. 1905. Courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Lasting Room, Bass Shoe Company, photograph by William H. Harris, Wilton Maine, ca. 1905. Courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
In 1932, the Lewiston-Auburn Manufacturers Association crushed the local shoemakers union, the Lewiston-Auburn Shoeworkers Protective Association (LASPA), which walked off the job over pay cuts. Given this failure, the next time local shoe workers wanted to strike, they called a national union, the United Shoe Workers of America, of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organizers who had been successful in winning concessions for shoe workers in Massachusetts.
Lewiston-Auburn manufacturers refused to speak to CIO organizers or their followers. Local authorities called them "outside agitators." The manufacturers wanted to work with the revived local union, LASPA, which was easier to control because it had community ties and fewer resources to maintain a strike. The two unions sometimes had physical conflicts on the picket lines.