Greeting by Morris Kovler
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A greeting
This section is by Morris Kovler. I didn't find much about him, Hard to find anything about Kovler, but he's listed in a Cornell Archive of union correspondence in his capacity as manager of the ALGWU.
On the occasion of the publication of this book of memoirs by our brother Morris Goldowsky, it is more than fitting that the manager of the Cloak Pressers Union, Local 35, where Goldowsky spent many years as an officer, should greet him for undertaking to describe in a book his personal life story, which is closely connected with the history of our Cloakmakers’ Union and of our Local 35.
Life endowed our brother Morris Goldowsky with the gift of being an observer with a good nature: of being able to get along with and befriend people—and to work together with them in the various trade unions and socialist organizations where he happened to be one of the leaders or active co-workers. As such, with his good qualities, I remember him as an officer of our Cloak Pressers Local 35, from which he retired from his work several years ago, after decades of activity.
It may be that Morris Goldowsky is the most suitable person to convey the historical facts of the last half-century, because during the more than four decades that I myself have been connected with Local 35, there truly was not a single important moment around us in which Goldowsky was not directly involved. Thus, one cannot pass over the great, historic Cloakmakers’ strike of 1910 without finding Goldowsky there.
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We come to the year 1916, the year of the struggle for the existence of the Cloakmakers’ Union—and here too Goldowsky was involved. We come to the difficult and bitter period of strikes in the by-then established Cloakmakers’ Union, and here too we encounter Goldowsky. The “Jewish Gewerkschaften” [Jewish trade unions], where Goldowsky is now president, he also helped in the work on all fronts throughout the many years of their existence.
Now, as that half-century—the “golden era” of building and struggle—is being brought to a close, Morris Goldowsky appears as one who participated in every struggle for a better life here in America, just as he had begun doing in his earlier youth in Tsarist Russia . . .
Therefore we greet him here, in the name of the union and in our own name, on the publication of his book—a description of the era that has passed. This book certainly deserves that everyone who has any interest at all in that period should take the trouble to read it.
Morris Kovler, Manager of the Cloak, Suit, Skirt and Sportswear Pressers Union, Local 35, A. L. G. W. U.