Julius Hochman ^People

At the age of 1 he was apprenticed to a tailor. Two years later he participated in an unsuccessful strike and decided to become a socialist. Immigrating to America at15, Hochman worked as a skirt- and dressmaker in New York, and attended evening high school, the Rand School of Social Science, and Brookwood Labor College. In his early twenties Hochman became an effective International Ladies' Garment Workers'Union organizer of the Chicago, Boston, Toronto, and Montreal dress markets, and in 1925 was elected a vice president of the ilgwu. During the ensuing intra-union conflict between theleft and right, Hochman sided with theanticommunist Sigman group. His most important service to the union was in formulating programs for the stabilization of the garment industry. In 1929, appointed manager of the newly constituted New York Dress Joint Board, he was able to effect many of his ideas including piece- rate andtime studies, which cemented labor-management cooperation aimed at increasing in- dustrial efficiency. Hochman devoted his efforts to maintain New York as the nation's dominant dressmaking center. In 1941, through an agreement with dress manufactu-rers, he accomplished some of his most cherished objectives: obligatory standards ofefficiency, an industry-wide planning program, and the establishment of the New York Dress Institute to make New York the world's fashion center. He wrote Why This Strike(1936) and Industry Planning Through Collective Bargaining (1941).