You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Wednesday July 19, 1916
Denver, Colorado – I. W. W. Organizing Housemaids
From the Chicago Daily Tribune of July 14, 1916:
SABOTAGE COOKS’ SCHEME TO
MAKE MISTRESS KIND
—–
Denver Domestic Workers’ Union
Black Lists
Rich Housewives Who Do Not Behave.
—–Denver, Colo., July 13-Sabotage is the new weapon the Denver Domestic Workers’ union will use to reform rich mistresses, Miss Jane Street, organizer, said today. About 1,000 housewives here are listed, their virtues and faults catalogued and classified.
Interesting things happen when an I. W. W. maid or cook arrives in a blacklisted household to train the mistress in the way she should honor and obey her servants.
Red pepper in soup accidental breaking of priceless china, salty sherbet at milady’s bridge party, hot tea “accidentally” poured on one’s gown where it is decollette, and father’s shirt too stiff with much starch, make the housewife treat the next maid or cook with proper respect.
[Photograph added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 14, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28685573/
IMAGE
Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015079021849;view=2up;seq=1;size=75
See also:
Letter from Jane Street to Mrs. Elmer S Bruse
http://www.iww.org/history/library/Street/letter
The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict,
1880-1917
-by Meredith Tax
University of Illinois Press, 1980
(Search preview with “Jane Street.”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=sIJ6FHla0doC
The Housemaids’ Defiance by Denver Housemaids’ Union
Lyrics & links to sheet music & karaoke download:
http://politicalfolkmusic.org/wordpress/denver-housemaids-union-the-housemaids-defiance/
We are coming all together;
We are organized to stay.
For nigh on fifty years or more,
We’ve worked for little pay.
But now we’ve got our union,
We’ll do it never more.
Chorus:
It’s a long day for housemaid Mary;
It’s a long day’s hard toil.
It’s a burden too hard to carry,
So our mistress’s schemes we’ll foil.
We’ll be silent no longer.
We won’t be kept down.
And we’re out for a shorter day this summer,
Or we’ll fix Denver town.
We’ve answered all your doorbells,
And we’ve washed your dirty kid.
For lo these many, weary years,
We’ve done as we were bid.
But we’re goin’ to fight for freedom,
And for our rights, we’ll stand.
And we’re goin’ to stick together
In One Big Union band.
We’ve washed your dirty linen,
And we’ve cooked your daily foods.
We’ve eaten in your kitchens,
And we’ve stood your ugly moods.
But now we’ve joined the union,
And we’re organized to stay.
You’ve paid the going wages.
That’s what kept us on the run.
You say you’ve done your duty,
You cranky son-of-a-gun.
We’ve stood for all your crazy bunk,
And still you rave and shout
And call us inefficient
And a lazy gad-about.
Tune: It’s a Long Way Down to the Soupline
-performed by Lucas Stark