Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 12, 1901 Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1901, Part IV Scranton Silk Strike Called Off; Smallest Girls Celebrate with Parade
From the Scranton Tribune of April 29, 1901:
At a general meeting of the employes of the silk mills of this city, held yesterday afternoon in St. Thomas College hall, the strike which has been on during the last three months was formally declared off and the announcement made that work will be resumed Tuesday morning.
This afternoon the younger girls will celebrate the end of the strike by holding a parade, and tonight a mass meeting will be conducted in College hall, at which Editor William Mailly, of the New York Worker; National Committeeman Frederick Dilcher, of the United Mine Workers of America, and “Mother” Mary Jones will make addresses…..
AN OPEN SESSION.
[Yesterday’s meeting] was open, and of very short duration. The announcement was briefly made that the strike was over, and all hands were ordered back to work Tuesday morning. “Mother” Jones then made a short address, in which she briefly mentioned the successful culmination of the long struggle, and then urged all of the younger girls to participate in today’s parade…
“Mother” Jones spent Saturday in Paterson. Trouble seems brewing there, and a general strike is threatened on account of difficulties with the ribbon workers.
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[Drawing added.]
THE YOUNG UNIONISTS. ———- Bootblacks and Newsboys’ Union Yesterday Were Dined at College Hall -Several Speeches Made. ———-
A unique, but pleasing, spectacle was presented yesterday afternoon, when between three and four hundred boys representing the youngest and newest union in this city filed into St. Thomas’ College hall and there listened to a number of addresses, ate and were merry.
It was the initial appearance of the Bootblacks’ and Newsboys’ union in the city streets and everywhere the youngsters were greeted with friendly and good natured smiles…
“Mother” Jones gave a hearty, cheerful address to the boys, in which she spoke of the necessity of organization and assured the lads of the benefits which would arise to them from their union. Reading rooms will be established for them, those of their number who are musically inclined formed into a band, instructors provided and other advantages secured.
William Mailly, editor of the New York Worker, also addressed the boys. He spoke along the same lines as “Mother” Jones, and, among other things, told of the recent strike of the New York newsboys…..
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 11, 1901 Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1901, Part III The Sunday School Teacher and the Little Wage Slaves
From the Illinois State Register of April 23, 1901:
Christian Zeal Off the Track.
Chicago American: When human beings make idiots of themselves the most extraordinary things are sometimes done by those who think they are doing good.
“Mother Jones,” who interests herself in working people and their condition, declares that she attended Sunday school at Birmingham, Ala., and heard a teacher address the following remarks to a class of little millhands ten or twelve years old:
“God put it in the heart of Mr. B— to build a factory so that you little children can have work and earn money, so that you can put a nickel in the box for the poor little heathen Chinese children.”
That kind of thing is apt to make the devil suffer from the effects of too violent laughter.
“Mr. B—” spoken of by the foolish Sunday school teacher is, of course, one of the most dangerous elements in civilization. He exploits child life in his money-making process. In the midst of a poor community he establishes a factory, knowing that want will induce parents, when the opportunity offers, to force their little children to work long hours in crowded rooms.
“Mr. B—” gets his money by killing just so many children a year and stunting the growth of all of them.
It would be far better for the world if, instead of building a factory and employing a thousand children, he would erect a gallows and hang five hundred. That would a least give the remaining five hundred children some kind of chance for normal development.
As long as there are persons like “Mr. B—” to build factories in which children shall be worked to death, and foolish, ignorant teachers to talk like the one quoted here, this world cannot call itself civilized.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 10, 1901 Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1901, Part II Scranton Silk Strikers-Little Tots Worked by Master Class
From St. Louis Labor of April 13, 1901:
The Strike in Scranton
Mother Jones makes the following statement concerning the strike of the 5,000 silk mill hands in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Most of them are little tots ranging from 8 to 14 years of age. The poverty of the parents compels them to swear that these babies are of the age when they can be legally worked by the master class. In one mill I found children who toiled twenty-four long, weary days of ten hours each; and at the end of that time received $2 apiece. The vampire who runs the plant felt deeply aggrieved because his little slaves went on strike. He complained that he had built and paid for a new mill and cleared $10,000 in two years, and just as he was getting his head above water, the ungrateful little wretches run away! And then some people say there is no hell! And others that there is no wage slavery! Why, I have got a trunk full of evidence showing that miners were plucked of all their earnings, and didn’t have a dollar from one end of the year to the other. This is capitalism with a vengeance, the robber system that is upheld by those who vote Republican and Democratic tickets.
Boss Davis, the ringleader of the plute cannibals, has offered this compromise: If the strikers allow him to measure their work and take his word for it, he will pay them 25 cents a week more. If they won’t allow him to measure, they must go back at the old rate. It’s a scheme with robbery on its face , and little ones won’t yield.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 9, 1901 Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1901, Part I Found Threatening Silk Mill Owners of Scranton with Arrest
From the Wilkes-Barre Daily News of April 1, 1901:
SILK OPERATORS TO BE ARRESTED ———- “Mother” Jones Gives Out Important Statement ———-
STRIKE NOT SETTLED ———- Strikers Bluntly Refuse Ten Per Cent. Increase Offered. ———-
HELD CONFERENCE YESTERDAY WITH SECRET BALLOT -“MOTHER” JONES OFF FOR CLEVELAND TO STUMP THE STATE.
SCRANTON, Pa., March 30-“I leave for Cleveland. Ohio, at once to seek financial aid for silk strikers.” was the statement given me to-night by “Mother” Jones, the noted labor leader.
I will stump the State and when I return I expect to arrest every mill owner who has in open defiance of the State law, employed children under 14 years of age in their factories. Warrants will be issued for parents also.
The strike has not yet ended. At the conference to-day of the leadership the silk workers it was decided by almost an unanimous vote to reject the offer of the operators of a 10 per cent, advance and the bitter struggle which last night seemed to be nearing a satisfactory settlement has been renewed under a new coupe which will carry the greatest battle of feminine labor into the courts…..
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 8, 1921 Bogalusa, Louisiana – Widows of Murdered Union Men Seek Measure of Justice
From the Duluth Labor World of May 7, 1921:
COURT FINALLY TELLS MOBBERS TO FACE TRIAL ———- Southern Lumber Company and Its Agents Must Answer for Murder of Union Men. ———-
The New York Times November 23, 1919
NEW ORLEANS. May 5.—After resorting to technicalities for 18 months Federal Judge Foster has ordered the city of Bogalusa, the Great Southern Lumber company and other persons sued for damages as the result of killings at Bogalusa, in November [22nd], 1919, to stop fighting for delay and get ready for trial. It will probably be another year before the mobbers will be placed on the witness stand and forced to tell of their connection with the murder of several trade unionists and the attempted lynching of Sol Dacus, influential negro in Bogalusa, who urged fellow negro workers to stand with the white workers in the mill strike of that year.
The suits were started by the widows of the mudered unionists. In the case of George Williams the charge is made that he was beaten nearly to death because he refused to quit his business of draying and return work in the mill.
The widows charge that their husbands were killed for the “sole purpose of destroying organized labor” in Bogalusa, and that the company sounded the mill’s siren whistle to assemble the mob.
The mob first went to the home of Dacus, but the negro hid in the swamp, and with the aid of white workers made his way to New Orleans and later to Gulfport, Miss. When the mob failed to find Dacus his home was demolished, his family terrified and $1,300 worth of war savings stamps stolen.
After a strike extending over three months the 5,000 silk workers of Scranton have secured a favorable settlement of their grievances, winning a complete victory, and returning to work under better conditions than they have ever experienced before. This has come about after a most stubborn fight, and only the solidarity of the strikers, under the leadership of Mother Jones gained the victory.
The strike began on January 23, when the girls at one of the mills were compelled to strike because of the treatment received from one of the forewomen. The girls had formed a union the Saturday previous and efforts were being made to disrupt it. The other mills followed the example, and within two weeks all the twelve mills in the city were closed down.
The smaller children led the way, and were the first ones to rebel. And they rebelled none too soon.The writer had the opportunity to see some of them during the past week, and he can say truthfully that anything heretofore said about their age or appearance has not been overdrawn. It is a sickening sight to see the pinched, colorless faces of these children. Their bodies are dwarfed and misshapen through the drudgery of the mill and their legs show startlingly frail and thin below the short dresses.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 6, 1911 “The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II
From Life and Labor of May 1911:
The Triangle Fire
By Martha Bensley Bruere
Well, the fire is over, the girls are dead, and as I write, the procession in honor of the unidentified dead is moving by under my windows. Now what is going to be done about it?
Harris and Blanck, the Triangle Company, have offered to pay one week’s wages to the families of the dead girls-as though it were summer and they are giving them a vacation! Three days after the fire they inserted in the trade papers this notice:
NOTICE, THE TRIANGLE WAIST CO. beg to notify their customers that they are in good working order. HEADQUARTERS now at 9-11 University Place.
The day after they were installed in their new quarters, the Building Department of New York City discovered that 9-11 University Place was not even fireproof, and that the firm had already blocked the exit to the one fire escape by two rows of sewing machines, 75 in a row, and that at the same time repairs were begun on the old quarters in the burned building under a permit winch called for no improvements or alterations of any conditions existing before the fire. It called for repairs only, which means, it was generally conceded, that the place would be re-opened in the same condition it was in before the fire.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 5, 1911 “The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part I
From Life and Labor of May 1911:
The Triangle Fire
By Martha Bensley Bruere
The Triangle Shirt Waist Shop in New York City, which was the scene of the great fire on March 25th, when 143 [146] workers were killed, was also the starting point of the strike of the forty-thousand shirt waist workers in 1909.
The girls struck because they wished to stand together for decent shop conditions, wages on which they could live and reasonable hours, and neither Mr. Harris nor Mr. Blanck, both of whom were members of the Manufacturers’ Association, would allow their workers to unite in any way at all.
It happened that I did picket duty morning and night before that shop and saw the striking girls go up to the strike-breakers and ask timidly:
“Don’t you know there’s a strike by the Triangle?”
It was before this Triangle Shop that the girls were clubbed by the police and by the hired thugs who assisted them; and it was in the streets around it that a large number of arrests were made. The girl pickets were dragged to court, but every one from this shop was discharged. The police and the government of the city had banded themselves together to protect the property of Harris and Blanck, the Triangle Shirt Waist firm.
The six hundred girls who worked at the Triangle Shop were beaten in the strike. They had to go back without the recognition of the union and with practically no change in conditions. On the 25th of March it was these same policemen who bad clubbed them and beaten them back into submission, who kept the thousands in Washington Square from tramping upon their dead bodies, sent for the ambulances to carry them away, and lifted them one by one into the receiving coffins which the Board of Charities sent down in wagon loads.
I was coming down Fifth Avenue on that Saturday afternoon when a great swirling, billowing cloud of smoke swept like a giant streamer out of Washington Square and down upon the beautiful homes in lower Fifth Avenue. Just as I was turning into the Square two young girls whom I knew to be working in the vicinity came rushing toward me, tears were running from their eyes and they were white and shaking as they caught me by the arm.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 4, 1911 Louis Duchez on Murder of Shirtwaist Makers in New York City, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:
THE MURDER OF THE SHIRT WAIST MAKERS
IN NEW YORK CITY
BY LOUIS DUCHEZ
Photographs by American Press Ass’n.
[Part II of II.]
Violations of the law? Yes, enough to hang half a dozen rich exploiters and politicians. But these men won’t hang.
The owner of the building claimed he lived up to the letter of the law. So did the owners of the shirtwaist concern, Blanck and Harris. They blame the city officials. The State Commission of Labor also blames the city officials. On the other hand, the city officials are hunting for someone to point to. One of these gentlemen divides the guilt between God and the “public conscience.”
The more important facts, however, are as follows: While the holocaust was taking place the superintendent of public buildings, Rudolph P. Miller, was on a pleasure trip to Panama. Under questioning conducted by Fire Marshal Beers he admitted that the Asch building, in which the fire took place, had not been inspected since it was built, ten years ago. He said he was not even sure that he passed on the building before it was occupied. Miller is not an architect; he is simply a civil engineer-with a “pull.” In his testimony he also admitted that he knew of “graft” from building owners being accepted by inspectors. Miller blamed the police department.
According to the state law, “fire-proof” buildings need not put up more than one fire escape. And that’s all the Asch building had. And this one was useless. When the flames heated the flimsy iron work. it bent like wire. Besides, the scaling ladders were not fit to use and the extension ladders reached only to the 6th floor. The hose, too, was rotten, and the fire apparatus was only so in name. Then iron shutters blocked the fire escape, such as it was.
The locked doors have been mentioned. There was no fire escape to the roof. The machines were so closely packed together, in order to save space. that a panic resulted when the fire first started. Large piles of combustible goods obstructed every aisle and opening, also, if the building and conditions had been deliberately planned for the cremation of human beings, it could not have been more perfect.
To look at the Asch building since the fire one could not tell from the outside that anything had happened to it, were it not for the broken windows. As a matter of fact, the damage only reached $5,000. Everything was insured-but the slaves.
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—————At a general meeting of the employes of the silk mills of this city, held yesterday afternoon in St. Thomas College hall, the strike which has been on during the last three months was formally declared off and the announcement made that work will be resumed Tuesday morning.
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