When half a million mothers
in the richest city
in the richest country in the world
feel the pinch of hunger
as they are feeling it here now
nothing can prevent trouble.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 23, 1917
New York, New York – Mother Jones to Aid in Demand for Food
Food riots have broken out in New York City and in Philadelphia as the working-class women of those cities refuse to maintain proper civic order while they watch their children starve. In Philadelphia, police opened fire, killing one man and seriously wounding another. The police, as usual, claim that the workers fired first, and the word of the police has been printed as fact by the kept press of the nation.
Mother Jones is now in New York City to support the working-class women in their demand for food at prices that they can afford. She was interviewed by a reporter in her room at the Union Square Hotel.
From the New York Tribune of February 22, 1917:
“Mother” Jones To Head
Parade of 10,000
—–Will Take Delegation to President
if Mayor Fails, She Declares
—–
“Mother” Jones, aged strike leader of Colorado fame, will lead an army of 10,000 East Side woman to the city Hall next Saturday afternoon, she declares. She will ask Mayor Mitchel “just what he proposes to do” about the food shortage in New York. If his proposals are unsatisfactory she will take a delegation of “starving women” to Washington on Sunday and lay the case of New York’s poor before the President.
“Mother” Jones arrived in this city yesterday to “help the food strike along.” In her room at the Union Square Hotel last night the aged labor leader made her plans known somewhat reluctantly. Publicity, she said, might result in them being “blocked”
[She said:]
But they can’t hold this movement back. When half a million mothers in the richest city in the richest country in the world feel the pinch of hunger as they are feeling it here now nothing can prevent trouble. I came here to try to prevent it, though, and I shall do everything possible.
On Saturday I’ll lead all the women who’ll follow me down to the Mayor. More than ten thousand will go. We’ll put the matter up to him and ask for action. If he won’t give us action, some of us will go to Washington and ask the President.
If the president fails I will appeal to Rockefeller, Morgan and some of the other local millionaires for a hand out for their starving fellow-citizens. A few millions from each of them would help a lot. They’ll give it, too, I think, if I tell ’em a thing or two.
If food can’t be gotten any other way, you bet your boots stomachs will be filled by force. There is a tremendous popular feeling for forceful objection to conditions as they exist. Revolution sounds sensational now; so it did in France before 1789.
[Mother Jones further stated:]
The powers that be are determined to plunge the United States into war.
Pacificist propaganda she described as well meaning, but ineffectual and insignificant when compared with the “tremendous pressure” that is, in her belief, being brought to bear upon the Administration by those in favor of a declaration of war with Germany.
———-
[Photograph added.]
The same edition of the Tribune claims that Socialist, not hunger, are to blame for the food riots:
SOCIALISTS AID RIOTS OF WOMEN
—–Leaders Mingle Appeals for Votes with
Denunciation of High Prices
—–Back of the food riots among the Jewish women of greater New York have been prominent men and women Socialist and I. W. W. leaders of the city.
The meeting in Forwards Hall, 175 East Broadway, Tuesday night, when 10,000 women attempted to get in, was arranged by the Socialist leaders of the Hebrew trade unions, Jacob Panken and William Karlin. Street corner speakers capitalized the opportunity of denouncing the high price of foodstuffs yesterday by appealing to the women to urge their husbands to vote the Socialist ticket at the next election.
Among those who are leading the Jewish women in the present food crisis are Mrs. Ida Harris, president of the Mothers’ Vigilant League, a prominent radical; Mrs. Hannah Pastor, mother of Rose Pastor Stokes, the Socialist lecturer; William Karlin, another prominent Socialist; Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Panken, the former the most popular Socialist leader in the East Side, and Representative Meyer London, who, it is reported, is advising the other leaders as to the best way to conduct the campaign against the high cost of living.
Votes for Socialists Urged
Mrs. Eva Weissenbaum, of 120 South First Street, who has appointed a committee to visit the school principals of Williamsburg to enlist their aid, yesterday said to her many audiences:
There is only one way in which to permanently dethrone the robbers who take the bread from our mouths. Tell your husbands to vote the Socialist ticket. Remove the Congressmen and city officials who have promised you better living conditions and have not kept faith.
“The Forwards” the leading Jewish organ of th Socialists and I. W. W. in the city, yesterday appeared with the following headlines:
America has at last heard the cry of the poor women. The entire press of the country is shrieking with the cries of the housewives against the terrible prices now prevalent.
At Forwards Hall and New Plaza Hall, at Havemeyer and South Third streets, William burg, the radical leaders yesterday opened headquarters for conducting the campaign.
There Jacob Pankin issued a statement, in which he said:
The city administration cannot be held entirely to account. But the city can do something. There’s plenty of food if you have the money to purchase it. The city should and must appropriate $1,000,000 to buy foods to be sold at cost or below cost to the people.
No family uses more that 50 cents’ worth of potatoes a week. The million dollars would buy potatoes for the million families of the city for two weeks. Thousands of women will do the work of selling for the City, if need be.
I have been assured that a large part of the Italian section of the lower East Side will participate in Saturday’s outpouring. Members of the Mothers’ Anti-High Price League, which has just been organized, will wear buttons, and it won’t be long before these buttons will be so universal as to show that the entire populace of the city is in protest.
———-
From Pennsylvania’s Allentown Democrat of February 22, 1917:
ONE MAN KILLED IN FOOD RIOT
AT PHILADELPHIAWives and Mothers of
Refinery Strikers Led
the Quaker City Riot
—–Strikers Opened Fire on Police,
Who Returned Fire, Killing Striker
and Fatally Injuring Bystander
—–International News Service.-
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 21.-Led by a woman with her baby in her arms a mob of striking sugar employes of the Franklin Sugar Refinery in an effort to back up their wives and mothers, who had staged a food riot, opened fire on a squad of police at Delaware Ave. and Reed St. tonight, and in the battle that followed a striker was shot to death, a bystander probably fatally injured, while scores of strikers, women food rioters and police were hurt by flying missiles and bullets.
A riot call that brought every high official of the police department and all the reserves south of Market St. was necessary before the outbreak could be quelled. Meanwhile the zone of the disturbance was practically placed under martial law, and to insure the safety of the people Supt. Robinson ordered two saloons in that district closed.
Mrs. Florence Shadle, 32 years old, who commanded the mob, was arrested on the charge of inciting to riot, and will be arraigned in court tomorrow.
Mario Quenas Detkabze [Marciionas Petkus], a Pole [Lithuanian], was the slain man. John Bromley, 22 years old, was shot in the stomach, and is in a dying condition at the Pennsylvania hospital.
The riot followed a demonstration by the wives and mothers of the strikers, who marched past the refinery crying for food and aid. The police dispersed the women, their action resulting in a pitched battle between the women and strike-breakers who were just leaving the refinery.
In answer to an attack of strikers upon police and strike-breakers the mounted men opened fire, and the first man to drop was Detkabze, who was 30 years old. He died on the way to Mt. Sanai hospital of a pistol wound.
Among the others who fell before the policemen’s bullets was Bromley. According to the police he was not concerned in the riot, but ran into the danger zone out of pure curiosity. The women’s demonstration, which had reached a climax in the riot, was the result of a meeting held late in the afternoon at Lithuanian hall.
Then it was decided that the wives, mothers and daughters should march in a body to the refinery and demand that the concession sought by the strikers be granted. As they marched through the streets the women cried aloud that they were starving.
[They cried:]
We want food.
Our husbands want work.
The first man injured during the fracas, was Police Sergeant Jolly, whose jaw was broken with a brick.
Most of the women participating in the outbreak were Jewish but there were several Poles, Italians and representatives of other races in the angry crowd that after the first onslaught congregated in small but animated groups along the line of pushcarts on which the vendors displayed their vegetable wares.
In addition to the police, Mrs. Pauline Goldberg was active in suppressing the disorder that threatened the curbstone merchants.
Mrs. Goldberg is chairman of the committee of housewives which instituted a boycott of potatoes and onions. She was passing along 7th St., when the outbreak was at its height. Some of the more fiery spirits among the women were clamoring for violent treatment of the produce sellers and their wares. Mrs. Goldberg pitched into the thick of the fray and quieted the women.
After the riot had subsided somewhat Mrs. Goldberg was able to explain just what she and her associates were aiming to accomplish and persuaded some of the more active spirits in the attack on the dealers to return to their homes. She said their aim was simply a peaceful boycott on food products which had been increasing in price so much that they were barely able to purchase them.
———-
[Emphasis and drawing added.]
SOURCES
Note: Updated March 10, 2017 with correct name and nationality of Labor Martyr, Marciionas Petkus.
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-February 22, 1917
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1917-02-22/ed-1/seq-4/
Allentown Democrat
(Allentown, Pennsylvania)
-February 22, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/70805498/
Name: Marciionas Petkus
Find a Grave
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16019775
For name and nationality:
“A Wobbly Martyr’s Grave” by Bob Helms
https://libcom.org/library/wobbly-martyrs-grave-bob-helms
IMAGES
Mother Jones, UMWJ, Feb 10, 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.RA11-PA1
NYC Food Riots, Women Appeal to Mayor, NYTb Feb 22, 1917
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1917-02-22/ed-1/seq-4/
Chicago Hunger Riot, ISR, Mar 1915
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=7Ko9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA517