Hellraisers Journal: Annie Clemenc, the Miners’ Joan of Arc, Departs from Calumet on Speaking Tour with Ella Reeve Bloor

GIRL PICKETS CRY ‘CATS’ AS
WOMEN POLICE NAB ‘EM
———-
Waitresses Who Asked That Guards of Own Sex
Be Posted Regret Experiment
———-
WISH MEN WERE BACK
———At 11 o’clock yesterday morning Policewomen Mrs. Anna Loucks and Miss Mary Boyd took their stand in front of Henrici’s restaurant, against which the waitresses’ union began their “strikeless” strike three weeks ago.

At 11:30 the first pickets, with small American flags pinned on their waists, began to parade up and down in front of the restaurant. They smiled in pleasant greeting to the policewomen. The policewomen politely returned the greetings of the pickets.

At 12:30 two strikers violated the law and were promptly arrested by the policewomen.

At 1 o’clock the waitresses were calling the policewomen “cats” and wishing the policemen were back on the job. The reason for their wish affords an interesting study in psychology.

Minnie Meyers and Julia Conery were the first pickets to be arrested in Chicago by policewomen.

PICKETS ARE ARRESTED.

These two admonished a restaurant patron not to enter the “unfair” place. The policewomen heard the remarks and without hesitation placed the pickets under arrest.

Grasping the waitresses gently but firmly by the arm the policewoman began the march to the police station. When either one of the prisoners lagged a stern tug on the coat sleeve urged her on.

An inquisitive crowd of several score persons followed the policewomen and their prisoners. Some one in the crowd jeered: “Why don’t women stand by women?”

After booking the first two prisoners the policewomen returned and arrested four other girls in the course of the noon hour. During the evening meal hour no girl was arrested.

ASKED FOR POLICEWOMAN

If the pickets did violate the law, it was at a safe distance from either of the policewomen.

The policewomen were detailed at Henrici’s by Chief of Police Gleason in compliance with the request of a women’s meeting held at Hull House Sunday, at which Miss Jane Addams presided. The women thought that the policewomen would be more gentle in handling the girls than the policemen. By last night it was the unanimous opinion of the waitresses that the policewomen were less desirable than the men, because, they said, “to be led to jail by a women was so humiliating.”

Miss Harriet Vittum, one of the committee that called the meeting Sunday approved the way the policewomen arrested the pickets yesterday.

“If the waitresses were violating the law, the policewomen did only their duty in taking them to jail,” she said. “It was not to prevent the arrest of girls that we asked that policewomen be substituted for policemen. It was to stop the brutality with which the girls were arrested by the policemen.”

[Emphasis added]

Annie Clemenc
& the Great Keweenaw Copper Strike
-by Lyndon Comstock
NC, 2013
https://books.google.com/books?id=0-FGAgAAQBAJ

The Inter Ocean
(Chicago, Illinois)
-of Feb 27, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/35003780/

IMAGE
Mother Bloor, Annie Clemenc and Dog Picket
https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/12/16/anna-clemence-the-story-of-a-militant-working-class-woman-by-ella-reeve-bloor-from-working-woman-vol-2-no-7-july-1931/
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/wt/v2n07-jul-1931-WW-R7414.pdf

See also:

The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 27, 1914
“Putrid Police Action” v Waitresses
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-27/ed-1/seq-30/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-27/ed-1/seq-31/