Here we have an original letterpress printing plate from the 1940s, a halftone photoengraving on its type high wood mount, cut to print organizing material for the Industrial Workers of the World.
Mirror the image in your head (estimated generation included) and it reads WE WANT A UNION SHOP, paired with a second panel naming the Schirmer-Dornbirer Pump Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Metal and Machinery Workers union, I.W.W. Local 10, closing with AFTER 8 HOURS REFUSE TIME A HALF, the old Wobbly position that treating overtime pay as a bonus defeated the point of the eight hour day in the first place. Bad the bone for the people!
Schirmer-Dornbirer Pump Co. was a real Cleveland manufacturer, run by manager W.P. Schirmer and still in business into the late 1930s. The IWW's own published chronology records a strike at that shop that won workers a 45 cent an hour raise, part of a run of postwar shop floor victories fought by the Cleveland Metal and Machinery Workers local under organizer Frank Cedervall, before the local broke from the national IWW in 1950 over the anti-Communist provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. This plate was cut for that fight, against that employer, in that city.
The old printing plate came out of an old estate in Chicago. It was likely created in the 1940s.
The plate measures 4 1/2” x 4” x 1” and shows honest age and honest use. The wood mount has a hairline split along one edge and torn, browned paper tags on the back, most likely old mounting or proof labels rather than anything added later. The metal face carries surface oxidation consistent with age, and the halftone screen is intact and readable under raking light, softened in a few spots where the plate saw real work. The clean black and white image in this listing is a modern recreation made to show an estimated of what the plate originally printed.
I ship FedEx to street addresses in the continental USA only (no PO Boxes). Free shipping on the historical labor movement artifact.
Take it the streets! No sudden death overtime!
