The Great War and the Striking Summer of 1915

The year 1915 would bring Bridgeport’s triumphant, striking summer. World War I transformed Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a powerful arsenal for the allied war effort at home and abroad. Munitions contracts on a massive scale would profoundly alter the physical landscape, population, and workforce. In a twelve-month period in 1915, Remington-Union Metallic Cartridge would construct a 1.5 million square foot manufacturing facility, the world’s largest building under one roof, on Bridgeport’s East Side. Women workers would play a powerful role in 1915 Bridgeport beginning with a highly publicized teachers’ protest that rocked the city. That summer fifty-five strikes were called. In August over 12,000 striking Bridgeport women would win the eight-hour day mostly without any national labor involvement. During the Striking Summer of 1915 Bridgeport was born again as a progressive eight-hour a day town.

Lecture researched and presented by Carolyn Ivanoff