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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 7, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Shirtwaist Strikers Fight to Live, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:
Fighting to Live
—–By Tom A. Price.
—–[Part I of II.]
ARRASSED by a subsidized police force which drives them from corner to corner at the behest of their employers, disputing their right to live and move and exercise free speech upon the streets once resonant with the peal of Liberty’s bell; lashed by the slave whip of necessity in the hands of manufacturers who grudge them a paltry dole sufficient to keep body and soul together, three thousand girls in Philadelphia are fighting against tremendous odds for the privileges which, according to the frequent boast of American orators, are elementary—the common heritage of all.
It is no longer a question of higher wages, important as that feature of the struggle is and has been from the beginning. It is a question of emancipation from something infinitely worse than hunger, a condition far more distressing than want.
Without sympathy save among those of their own order; without resources; without a knowledge in many cases of our language, much less our laws, these girls have shown a heroism, a devoted self-sacrifice, which should command the admiration of all men. With fear of neither confinement nor bodily harm in their minds they go forth every day to do picket duty under the very eyes of the police whom they know are against them, not only as a matter of policy but as a matter of absolute necessity.
They know that it is not possible for a “cop,” wearing the uniform of the great “City of Brotherly Love,” to permit them to claim a single right which is theirs under the law which no one violates oftener than the very men who are sworn in to uphold its provisions. They know they have no redress from the insults and the assaults of these blue-coated minions of wealth. They know they must risk violence at the hands of scabs and that they may not oppose force with force without running the risk of spending a night in a cell.
But no girl among the striking shirtwaist operators is daunted by these conditions. Every day deluded workers who have been listening to the insidious arguments of the manufacturers and have remained at their machines are won over to the cause by the cogent, vital arguments of these fearless pickets. It has been found that a plain statement of the facts will undeceive the most dyed-in-the-wool scab. Is it any wonder, then, that the employers have called upon the police for protection? They need it.
The action of these pickets is noted by the press of the city, with one exception, as brazen effrontery. By the general public—educated as it is by subsidized papers—their action is called a foolish defiance of that still more foolish economic law which would regulate wages rather than rewards by the exigencies of supply and demand.
The policeman at the crossing makes the girls move on. And they are moving on. Moving on in an ever-increasing army which will undoubtedly snatch the victory from a band of lawless, pitiless, ghoulish capitalists who try to insist that their’s is the right to amass money at the expense of a people whose country is called the mother of liberty and the greatest nation in the world.
Magistrates accept accusation as prima facie evidence of guilt. And the girls are guilty. They are guilty of thinking and feeling and fighting. They are guilty of demanding that intangible thing that our revolutionary army fought for and which colonial leaders handed down to a nation which has guarded it so loosely that a few men have been able to place it out of sight in a coffer of gold where the value of its chains make Liberty no less a prisoner.
Strikers here do not riot, although in any day’s papers accounts may be read of such occurrences. It is the employer who, in his hours of enforced idleness, incubates conspiracies in his counting rooms and hatches riots on the streets through his paid agents — cowards who would never brave a battle without the assurance that police were ready to protect them as soon as danger should appear.
Under the leadership of heroines like Pauline Moscovitz; cheered in their struggle with want by the impassioned oratory of Mother Jones; urged to fight on by members of other labor unions which are helping them personally and with funds, the girls have become so imbued with the spirit of victory that it would be impossible to call the strike off now even should every leader advise such action. Promises will no longer attract these workers. Probabilities are rejected before they are offered. Nothing will be accepted but the right to live like human beings should live in a humane country.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Spirit of Revolt, Philly Dec 19, NY Call Dec 21, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1909/091221-newyorkcall-v02n315-DAMAGED.pdf
The International Socialist Review, Volume 10
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 1909-June 1910
C. H. Kerr & Company, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ
ISR-Feb 1910
“Fighting to Live” by Tom A. Price
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v10n08-feb-1910-ISR-gog.pdf
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA673
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31175013801918&view=2up&seq=696
See also:
Tag: Philadelphia Shirtwaist Strike of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/philadelphia-shirtwaist-strike-of-1909-1910/
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 10, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1909, Part II:
-Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers
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Union Maid