Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 8, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Shirtwaist Strikers Fight to Live, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:
Fighting to Live
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By Tom A. Price.
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[Part II of II.]
[Mother Jones in Philadelphia.]
Mother Jones. This little woman whose heart is as big as the nation and beats wholly for humanity, came to Philadelphia while the trumpet was still reverberating after the call to arms had been sounded. Under her bold leadership the fighters were organized before the manufacturers had fairly realized that their workers had at last been stung to revolt by the same lash which had so often driven them to slavery.
In impassioned speech after impassioned speech Mother Jones urged the girls on to battle. Shaking her gray locks in defiance she pictured the scab in such a light that workers still shudder when they think of what she would have considered them had they remained in the slave pens of the manufacturers. Every man and woman and child who heard her poignantly regrets the fact that her almost ceaseless labors at last drove her to her bed where she now lies ill.
But she had instilled into the minds of her followers the spirit which prompted her to cross a continent to help them. That spirit remains and is holding in place the standard which she raised. It is leading the girls to every device possible to help the cause. Many of them are selling papers on the street that they may earn money to contribute to the union which they love.
Marie Comaford and Mary Miller, whose pictures accompany this article, have been on the streets constantly since December 22, selling papers every day. Their labor has been so generously rewarded by those who sympathize with the cause that they have been able to turn over to the union large sums every day.
Marie Comaford and Mary Miller Selling Papers —–
During the first days of the strike those who had entered the battle fought silently, but when tales reflecting on their sincerity of purpose and veracity were scattered broadcast by the sneaking agents of the employers the strikers opened up their hearts to the writer and told him stories of slavery which were almost unimaginable in their horror. Their statements portray a scheme of things such as should bring the blush of shame to the face of every Philadelphian.
I learned that the reptilian employers here send agents to the immigrant ships before they are docked, there to shoot the venom of the sweatshop into the lives of innocent girls who know nothing of the deceit which these men cloak under fur overcoats and a benignant smile. The little hoards of these immigrants have been snatched from their hands and placed in the coffers of millionaires on the pretense that it is an equitable charge for “teaching them the business.”
Men as well as girls are mulcted of their all in the same manner.A. Goldfein is one of these. When he entered the “land of the free” six months ago he was accosted by a labor agent and told that he might learn to be a cutter and make big money if he would pay $25 for the privilege. He paid the money and was sent to the factory of Beyer, Frank & Company. Here he was assigned to a bench and told that to begin he would receive three dollars a week. He is a grown man, intelligent, and he has been working at that same bench during six months. He still draws three dollars every Saturday night, and no more. It took the man more than eight weeks to earn back the money which he had paid for his job.
And these toilers, after paying for their jobs, are assigned to work in filthy and ill-conditioned factories where the air is foul and there is no adequate sanitary equipment. It is on record that in one of these places there are 250 men and women employed. Two hundred of these are women. Yet there is but one toilet for each sex! And to cap the climax the place is on an upper floor and during the greater part of the day there is not enough pressure of water to carry it into the closets. The sinks are not flushed for hours at a time.
Out of this place workers have been ordered frequently by physicians who tell them remaining means certain death. They go if it is possible to obtain another job. Otherwise they stay, and finally die in their places. These men and women are as much murdered as were the miners who died in their pit at Cherry, Illinois, and the employer is as much a murderer as any other man who slays wantonly.
Health has been driven from the factories by pestilence using the whip of filth. Germs of disease fester and multiply in every crack. Yet the great State of Pennsylvania sits back complacently and sees its Bureau of Factory Inspection in the hands of a group of incompetent jobsters who hold their offices as payment for the crimes they have committed for the party in power. Manufacturers receive word long before hand when an inspection is to be made and the place is cleared up for the occasion. This happens only once or twice a year and in some instances the factories are never even swept at other times.
Child labor laws are laughed at. Children of any age may work if they will. Places are provided where they can stunt their growth and dwarf their minds by sitting at a bench all day for the purpose of earning the price of one lunch eaten by the manufacturer who washes down each mouthful of food with a gulp of the blood of his victims. Factories are inspected but the inspectors never see these children. Regular hiding places are maintained for the tots. Big packing cases are kept in the lofts. As soon as the word is passed up that an officer is on his way to go through a farcial travesty on an inspection the little ones are made to get into the packing cases, which are then turned so the open side will be towards the floor.
These little girls are among the most ardent of the workers for the cause. They do picket duty and are at all times ready to instill life and hope into the mind of any doubter who may have been induced by implied threats to remain at work. In winning to the cause the women of public note who have given their aid to these girls have played an important part. Speeches made by them at various meetings of women’s clubs have met with ready response in every instance.
If ever the competitive system was shown to be archaic, unscientific and utterly unequal to the demands made upon industrialism as it now exists in the world, we have a striking example of its futility in this city—a city of great private fortunes, immense enterprises and almost unprecedented productiveness.
Only last summer we were assured that as soon as the tariff question was settled by the “law-makers” at Washington—”law-makers” who devoted their efforts mainly to what we are told was the protection of home industries—an era of peace and plenty would dawn. Capital, assured of a reasonable profit, would strike hands with labor certain of an adequate wage.
The question was settled and we have been waiting for the dawn. We are still waiting. Labor was never before so restless or so poorly paid, the cost of living considered, and capital was never before so arrogant in its own conceit, so grudging of the dole it provides for the creators of wealth.
The striking shirt-waist girls are between the upper and the nether mill-stones. They must not only fight the wolf of hunger, forever nosing about their doors, but they must combat daily a subsidized police force which, fawning upon the man who has, browbeats and bullyrags, at al most every corner, the girl who has not.
As an observer on the ground I am not unduly impressed by the affected sympathy of certain society women for the toilers. I have seen these fads flare up and fade away before. I have studied the society woman somewhat on her native heath.
She figures more gracefully, to my mind, as center rush at a bargain counter onslaught than as a protagonist of labor. Like women of another class, whom we do not mention in the drawing rooms of society, she has a past which inspires little or no confidence in her professions. I speak of the professional society woman. Of course there are good women among the socially elect, just as there are bad women among the members of the workers’ army, but exceptions prove nothing, not even a rule.
Miss Anne Morgan, daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan, a most estimable spinster, I am informed and believe, seems to have received a faint glimmer of reason, a glimmer that may develop into a full flame later on. I hope so. She is credited with a resolve to start a shirt-waist factory with a million capital and run it on the profit-sharing basis. Miss Morgan with her father behind her might make a go of such an undertaking, but profit-sharing between a private capitalist and a retinue of employes is a half-way measure at best. It tends to breed condescension on the one hand and on the other it brings out the worst traits of human nature, sycophancy and dependence. It destroys initiative and promotes individual inertia.
Co-operation is better and is a decided step in advance, but the trouble is co-operation proves too much for the dilettante philanthropists. Their interests are centered in private graft, miscalled individualist, and they know that a real success along such lines is likely to provoke inquiry among the “proletariat.”
“If,” the man of common sense is apt to inquire, “co-operation is a success on a small community scale, why would not government co-operation be a good thing for the people as a whole?”
[Photograph of Mother Jones is from the Cover of February Review.]
[Emphasis added.]
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