Morris Sigman (1880–1931) was president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from 1923 to 1928. Biography Early life Born in Akkerman (then in Bessarabia Province of the Russian Empire), Morris Sigman spent his youth working as a lumberjack before moving to London in 1902. In 1903, Sigman emigrated to New York City and began work as a presser in the cloak industry. He organized the Independent Cloak and Skirt Pressers' Union (1904) and allied it with the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. In 1905, the Independent Cloak and Skirt Pressers' Union was one of the founding unions of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but by 1908, the union had left the IWW and joined the ILGWU. Work with the ILGWU Shortly after joining the ILGWU, Morris Sigman began to hold local and national roles within the union. Sigman had been heavily involved in the garment workers' strikes of 1910, and was later arrested for murder in what became known as the "Trial of Seven Cloakmakers." With Morris Hillquit as their defense attorney, he and other cloakmakers were found not guilty in 1915. Sigman served as the manager of Local 35 New York Cloak Pressers Union (1913), and then general manager of the Joint Board of Cloakmakers in New York City (1917–1921). At the international level, Sigman was a vice president of the ILGWU (1910–1913), before becoming Secretary-Treasurer (1914–1915) and first vice president (1920–1923). He was elected president of the ILGWU in 1923. In 1923, the ILGWU president Benjamin Schlesinger resigned and the convention elected Morris Sigman, who had served as the Secretary Treasurer of the ILGWU. Sigman had served as Secretary Treasurer before resigning after a dispute with Schlesinger. As a former IWW member and anti-communist, Sigman immediately began to remove Communist Party members from leadership positions in prominent cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. Consequently, Sigman was unable to regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers’ Local 22, where the Communist Party membership support prevailed.. As a result, the left wing allies, which included many anarchists, and socialists rallied to prevent the ILGWU from physically retaking their union hall. Sigman then proposed an agreement that he later negotiated with the industry in 1925, but the defiant unions led a campaign to reject the proposal. This union-led campaign resulted in more than 30,000 union members gathering at Yankee Stadium to call