The Garment Jungle

Laurie Mitchell,Joanna Barnes,Lee J. Cobb,Kerwin Mathews

During the 1950s, the New York garment industry is going through a turmoil. On one side, the industry workers want to organize themselves into labor unions that will fight for them in obtaining better wages, better working conditions and other benefits. On the other side, the factory owners and their managers staunchly oppose unionization. At one of the largest garment companies, Roxton Fashions, the owner, Walter Mitchell, is fighting against his workers' wishes to unionize. For the past 15 years, Walter Mitchell has been using the mob muscle in order to protect his company against unions. His gangster friend Artie Ravidge, and his henchmen, provide Walter Mitchell and Roxton Fashions with such protection against union men who agitate the workers into forming their own union locals. This protection includes murder, whenever necessary, to eliminate stubborn union men. Unfortunately, when Walter Mitchell's business partner, Fred Kenner, argues in favor of allowing a union into their factory, he meets with a suspicious fatal accident. The freight elevator in which he was traveling plummets to the ground, after being serviced by a suspicious repair-man. After the funeral, Walter Mitchell's son, Alan Mitchell, who recently returns from the Korean War, starts asking questions about the rumors concerning Fred Kenner's assassination and about the role of the mob in his father's company. His father denies the rumors but his son becomes more suspicious. When a garment industry union organizer, Tulio Renata, comes into the factory and creates a scene, arguing with the factory owner and promising the forming of a union local for the workers, the owner's son starts making inquiries on his own, against his father's wishes. He befriends union man Tulio Renata in order to learn more about the just and fair aims of the union directed at the garment industry. First viewed with mistrust, the factory owner's son, gradually gains the respect and the trust of Renata, of the union men and the workers themselves. But this union-friendly attitude of Alan Mitchell draws the ire of his father who, once more, uses his gangster friend Artie Ravidge's services to eliminate his foes. Only, this time, his own son is on the side of the unions.—nufs68