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On January 25, 1926, pushed to the point of desperation by wage cuts, lengthened hours, and unsafe work conditions, the largely immigrant workforce in the textile mills of Passaic, New Jersey, shut down their city's textile industry for over a year. Although the strikers at first hired professional filmmakers to cover the event, they were forced to finish the job themselves when the original crew eventually bowed out, declaring the filming conditions unsafe. The result is a landmark in the history of the documentary genre. The film opens with a prologue that tells the story of a representative family and its experience in the mills, and continues with the unfolding of the strike and the formation of a union. Some of the events depicted are reenactments, and the strike was still unresolved when the film was completed; yet Passaic Textile Strike was a resounding success, raising money for the International Workers Aid and spreading the gospel of labor solidarity nationwide.
In Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of the Museum of Modern Art by Steven Higgins, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2006, p. 117.
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