Joseph Schlossberg, Pioneer Labor Leader, Long-time Zionist Leader, Dies at 95

A funeral service was held today for Joseph Schlossberg, a founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and of the National Committee for Labor Israel, who died Friday at the age of 95. A native of Russia, he came to this country when he was 13 and soon went to work in the needle-trades sweatshops, When the ACW was founded in 1914, Mr. Schlossberg was secretary-treasurer of the New York Joint Board of the United Brotherhood of Tailors. He was elected general secretary-treasurer of the ACW and held that position for more than 25 years. At the time of his death, Mr. Schlossberg was secretary-treasurer emeritus of the union that was headed by the late Sidney Hillman. Active in organizing the needle trades and in the forefront of eliminating sweatshops, Mr. Schlossberg campaigned for the rights of organized labor long before the New Deal era. A prolific writer on labor problems, he contributed canticles to the Yiddish and English labor press for 40 years and published a collection of essays in 1935 entitled “The Workers and Their World.”

Mr. Schlossberg was a long-time Zionist and was active in calling the first Congress for Labor Palestine in New York in 1918. He was a charter member of the National Labor Committee for Labor Israel and in 1934 was elected its president. A cultural center was established in his honor in Ashkelon, Israel by Histadrut, the Israel Labor Federation. He was editor of the ACW’s weekly organ, Advance, for a number of years; editor of Arbeiter, a Yiddish labor weekly, from 1904 to 1911; and editor of Abendblatt, an American Yiddish labor daily, from 1899 to 1902. Mr. Schlossberg had been a director of the American Union, HLAS, Amalgamated Bank of New York, Yiddish Scientific Institute, and a governor of the American Association for Jewish Education.