Sex, lies and woodworkers.

Grand Rapids in 1900 was a bustling river town, not fully settled, but no a longer frontier. The red light district was located in the river valley while the mansions of the wealthy overlooked the city from Heritage Hill.

Scattered along the river and throughout the city were 85 furniture and woodworking factories. Berkey & Gay, Widdicomb, American School Furniture Co. (American Seating), Sligh, Stickley Bros. and others were making this city of 87,576 the furniture capital of the United States, a title it held until the Great Depression.

It was the cheap labor that bothered Thomas Kidd, secretary, of the newly formed Amalgamated Wood Workers International Union. Low wages were depressing the earnings of his members. If his union was to grow, Grand Rapids workers needed to be brought into the fold. Kidd made numerous speaking trips to the city, passionately presenting his case to the English, Irish, German, Dutch, Polish and Lithuanian finishers, rubbers, cabinetmakers, sanders and machine hands who comprised the 7,000 workers of Furniture City, USA.

An important factor that Kidd had to overcome was the Christian Reformed church's opposition to trade unions. In one speech, Kidd pointed out that it was time the Grand Rapids workers got together: "The most foolish and silly thing the working men have done of late years is to allow themselves to be kept divided by the religious question. Whoever heard of a corporation, a trust, or a combination of any kind, of capitalists allowing any question foreign to the objects for which they are organized to enter into their consideration at all? Everything likely to create discord is wisely cast aside, and all keep their eye on the main thing - the dollar. That is what they are after."

He told his listeners that they needed to get with the coming trend: "The union label is the coming power, and it will do away with strikes. The Wood Workers have adopted a label and already a large furniture manufacturer in Chicago is using it on all his furniture. A Minneapolis manufacturer will at once begin using 22,000 labels a week, and there will be no more strikes there. Furniture without the label can easily be boycotted through the central bodies in other cities."

Wages in Grand Rapids were pretty good, but, he said, "if the workers here remain unorganized, it will only be a matter of time when the employers will have to cut you still lower in order to compete with furniture from other parts. Reason as you will, experience proves conclusively that you will never get better wages unless you organize."

In March of 1900, the AWWIU held its national convention in Grand Rapids, bringing the union to the workers if they would not come to the union. As hosts, the members of two small locals, 46 and 84, hand made convention badges of "white maple veneer handsomely lettered and mounted." Sixty-eight delegates, mostly German immigrants, attended the week-long session. The constitution was amended and union policies debated. However, all was not work. The Germans, definitely not following the temperance fashion of the times, attended a social session. "The hall was crowded, over four hundred present. 'Elks milk' was the first order of business and after several trips of the white-aproned dispensers, the fun began."

An invitation had been sent to the local furniture makers inviting them to meet with the union's officers to discuss the advantages of the union label. Several companies agreed to meet, but the appointed time came and went ... with no furniture representatives. Unwilling to waste the evening, the AWWIU officers decided to take in a performance of Sappho, a story of "a fallen woman." The risque play, which had been banned in New York, showed the actress baring her arms and feet. However, female flesh was not the only thing laid bare that night. The lure of "culture" was apparently too strong for even upright, respectable businessmen, for there, seated in the crowded theater, were the errant furniture barons.

Kidd never did organize the furniture workers of Grand Rapids, despite his charismatic appeal and unceasing efforts. It would take another organizer and another union to lead Grand Rapids furniture workers in the Great 1911 Furniture Strike.