In Eighteen Ninety two an immigration agent for the Canadian Pacific Railroad,
bought 12,000 acres in the Pennsylvania Mountains and there built a lavish
summer resort hotel for German-speaking Jews. White Pines flourished until
World War I, when anti-German hysteria and pressure from the federal government
forced Owners to sell the resort.
The new
owners, however, were far from what the hotel’s opponents had hoped for, or
expected. In 1919 the new owners of the White Pines buildings sold 750
acres and a lake for $85,000 to Two Local Unions.
The Local
Union bought White Pines as a permanent home for its new program of worker
education and leisure activities that it first ran in a rented house in the
Catskills in the summer of 1919.
The
Locals bold experiment in running a worker resort near the summer homes of
millionaires, however, soon floundered. So in 1924, they sold the
property to the General Executive Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers'
Union (ILGWU), the largest women’s union in the United States, which undertook
a series of major improvements that would transform the White Pines into a
"workers' play land."
Less
concerned about profits than with showing "labor in its proper light,"
the ILGWU renovated the main building, expanded the kitchen, built an amphitheater,
added new bungalows, and increased wages for its expanded staff, which included
on-site doctor, chef, and dietician. To make attendance affordable to
rank and file members, it charged minimal fees and, when necessary, financially
subsidized the operation.
Representing
"a promise of a better day and our ability to bring that day," The
White Pines thrived during the 1920s. Here, union members and their
families enjoyed a broad range of summer sports, dramatic performances,
concerts, and lectures on current events, economics, art and literature, and
social psychology presented by college professors, union leaders, and public
figures.
The
mostly-New Yorker staff grew to several dozen people over time, including
dining room servers, musicians, and a lifeguard. The ILGWU also rented the
facility out to other unions, which made The White Pines a getaway spot for the
larger labor movement.
The 1930s
and 1940s brought many changes to The White Pines. During the Great
Depression, thousands of women joined the ILGWU, and the American labor
movement enjoyed a new vitality and unprecedented legitimacy.
The ILGWU
also began to organize women garment workers in northeastern Pennsylvania’s
coal country, a region that since the early 1900s had become a haven for
non-union garment factories, called "runaways," where employers hired
coal miners' wives and daughters for meager wages.
The
federal government's closure of New Jersey's Atlantic City resorts during World
War II helped The White Pines turn a profit between 1942 and 1949. Buoyed
by the high blue-collar wages and strong union culture of the post-war economic
boom, The White Pines improved its facilities and added a rustic recreation
center called the Philadelphia Building.
After
World War II, The White Pines became the union showcase that its founders had
dreamed of. Noting the impressive facilities and programs for children
writing, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote after a visit in 1945, "You could not put
children in a more favorable environment." In the summers that followed,
some 10,000 visitors came each summer for vacations, retreats, forums, and
conferences, all of which featured activities designed to booster union solidarity,
including musical productions that featured union songs.
Urging
members to become well informed and politically active, Unity House also
offered numerous lectures, as well as books in its library, on social,
economic, and labor issues. To uphold union ideals, ILGWU allowed the Hotel and
Restaurant Workers to organize its staff in 1950 and also banned foreign-made
products from the gift shop.
In the
post-war era, The White Pines also expanded its mission beyond the
entertainment and education of its membership. In 1948, ILGWU president David
Dubinsky hosted an unprecedented weekend meeting for some 200 manufacturers,
which helped avert a strike. Other "employer weekends" soon followed.
Other unions also took advantage of the resort's impressive facilities for
their meetings, including the National Association of Letter Carriers and the
AFL-CIO.
In 1956, The
White Pines opened a new 1,200-seat lakeside theater modeled on Radio City
Music Hall, complete with a ninety-foot stage and up-to-date lighting and sound.
Performers on the new stage included comedians, opera companies, the Harlem
Dance Theater Group, and Radio City Music Hall entertainers
In the
1950s, the ILGWU could afford the subsided the operation. In 1953, for example,
78 percent of the guests were ILGWU members who paid a discounted rate.
By the 1960s, The White Pines, like neighboring resorts in Pike and Monroe
Counties, were struggling, as air travel, cruises, and suburban country clubs
offered vacationers many alternatives to the Poconos.
When the White
Pines administration building burnt down in 1969, the ILGWU replaced the
building and hoped that the proposed creation of the Delaware Water Gap
National Recreation Area would increase its appeal. In 1972, The White Pines
opened a new main building that began to host newcomers to the union, including
Hispanics, Asian Americans, and African Americans, who joined the aging Italian
and Jewish membership.
The
American garment industry, however, was experiencing serious decline as sewing
jobs moved overseas and ILGWU membership fell from its 1968 peak of 451,000 to
360,000 in the mid-1970s. By the late 1980s only 160,000 members remained.
Attempts to attract a younger crowd of members to The White Pines, with the
addition of "El Coco Loco" Lounge, did not help. In January
1990, faced with declining membership and annual subsidies of some $1,000,000,
the union reluctantly closed the resort.
In the
middle decades of the twentieth century The White Pines provided recreation,
instruction, and entertainment to thousands of ethnic, blue-collar, and
middle-class Americans. The White Pines had also effectively cultivated a
"union culture" that ensured loyalty and strengthened the ILGWU
during strikes and hard times.
