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1910Thanhouser Company1,000 feetDrama

The Girl Strike Leader

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“Hal Stephens, a wealthy young man, devotes all his time to enjoying himself, thereby earns the disapproval of his staid old father. The elder Stephen sees the young man start off on an auto trip with some gay friends, and decides to call a halt. He notifies his son by telegram that it is time he went to work, and presents him with the factory. This arouses the merriment of his friends, but Hal declares that he will buckle down and go to work. He tells his father, however, that he desires to start incognito, and the father consents.

“Hal enters the factory and goes to work as an ordinary laborer, his identity being unknown to all. He meets Lou, a young working girl, and falls in love with her. The manager of the place, one Conners, tries to make love to Lou, and Hal protects her. There is an order put up reducing salaries 10%, and Lou induces the others to strike rather than to submit. The strikers, starved out, finally return to work, with the exception of Lou, who is defiant to the end. Hal finds her weeping on the steps of her home and tells her of his love. She agrees to marry him. After she has accepted him, he leads her to the factory, announces his identity, assumes possession, and restores wages to the old scale, after having discharged the rogue Conners.”

Summary from The Moving Picture World · 9 July 1910

What the papers said

1 review · 1 article · 1 advertisement

“One of those pictures which thrill one despite their improbability. It may go in stories but never in fact, that an owner of a factory marries one of his girl employees, and a strike leader at that; but even though that is true, one cannot but feel a thrill of pleasure to see this dramatic story work out to its …

Read in full · 1 min

“One of those pictures which thrill one despite their improbability. It may go in stories but never in fact, that an owner of a factory marries one of his girl employees, and a strike leader at that; but even though that is true, one cannot but feel a thrill of pleasure to see this dramatic story work out to its conclusion. Of dime novel order, melodramatic in all the rest, it is interesting because it represents a final triumph of sturdy human qualities.”

The Moving Picture World · 26 July 1910

Article

2 July 1910The Moving Picture News1 min

“A happy solution to the vexed labor problem is supplied in The Girl Strike Leader, the Thanhouser release of Friday, July 10. It shows that if the owners of factories could investigate working conditions firsthand, that is by intimate association with the workers, labor questions would be in a better way of answer. In the picture under discussion a factory owner’s son does the investigation stunt. In the guise of a common workman, he watches at the factory and sifts such labor troubles as he finds to the very bottom. He finds that not his father but the foreman of the factory, a mere salaried employee, is responsible for the feeling of unrest that prevails. Upon the discharge of the foreman, the wheels commence to run smoothly. A stirring ‘strike’ and a pretty love affair do much to make the picture the success that it is.”

Advertisement

9 July 1910The New York Dramatic Mirror1 min

“Dealing with the most momentous of national problems—the labor question. Your patrons will like this solution. Please them!”

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Cast and crew

Cast
Mrs. George W. Walters as poor factory woman
Mrs. George Walters

Every name opens that person's page, with each film they appear in and which of them you can watch.

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More about this film

Bowers’ notes

The release date was given in error as July 10, 1910 in Thanhouser’s advertisement in the July 2, 1910 issue of The Moving Picture World.

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1910 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “The Girl Strike Leader”. thanhouser.org/films/the-girl-strike-leader/

Where a print is held

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