Hellraisers Journal: How A Cold Storage Egg Inspired Organization of Domestic Workers’ I. U.

Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday September 27, 1916
Denver, Colorado – Domestic Workers and the Blacklist

The Denver’s Domestic Workers’ Industrial Union, Local No. 113 of the Industrial Workers of the World was founded last spring by Miss Jane Street. Today we offer part one (of two parts) of an article about that union and its tactics from The Washington Post of September 24, 1916:

How A Cold Storage Egg Started
The Servant Girls Union
—–

In Denver, Colo., looms at the present moment happy promise of a solution of the vexatious servant girl problem. How happy that promise is will be seen in the fact that a housemaids’ union now organizing in that city will be conducted on lines which have the frank approval of Denver’s most prominent hostess and society leader.

Mrs. Crawford Hill, noted Southern beauty and acknowledged head of Denver’s inner social circle-called the “sacred thirty-six”-and Miss Jane Street, the capable leader of the dissatisfied cooks, housemaids and parlor maids, are represented as working hand in hand in this effort to make mistresses and servants satisfied with each other.

“Servants have to be trained,” is the unanimous declaration of the other Denver mistresses.

“Mistresses have to be trained,” says Miss Jane Street, spokeswoman for the crusading Denver servants, to which Denver’s society autocrat is reported as assenting with an emphatic “aye, aye.”

Caused by Two Eggs.

Most great causes in social evolution, as is well known, have had an insignificant, ofttimes ridiculous, instigation. In the present instance that honor belongs to an egg-to be precise, two eggs.

These two eggs lay side by side in the refrigerator in the kitchen of a handsome Denver residence. When Mary, the cook, opened the refrigerator door one morning late in August her gaze rested on them and a certain difference in their outward aspect inspired her with a brilliant idea.

Mary knew-from long experience, alas! only too well-that one of those eggs was new-laid, virgin-fresh, specially ordered for her mistress’ breakfast, and that the other egg fairly exhaled age, cheapness and cold storage.

Well, Mary, the cook, promptly acted on her inspiration-being further inspired by memories of a long list of similar grievances against her mistress.

She boiled the virgin-fresh egg and ate it. Feeling much refreshed in body and in spirit, she then boiled the cheap and ancient cold storage egg and served it to her mistress.

The rest of the story is best told as Mary, the cook, herself told it that very night at the regular weekly “experience meeting” of dissatisfied domestic workers. Said Mary, the cook:

“She fired me, and I had to go for a policeman to help me get my clothes and my money.”

Capable Miss Jane Street presided at this same “experience meeting.” Right then and there the agitation was begun, which now promises so much for the servant girls of Denver-and, incidentally for their mistresses.

Of course, there were other “experiences” related at this historic meeting. The ears of the wife of a certain rich Denver merchant would have burned had she heard her cook frankly discuss her eccentric ways, and many another prominent woman would have blushed to hear her maid graphically describe her “awful temper” and tell how lazy she was.

“I worked for Mrs. X,” said one cook, mentioning the name of a prominent woman. “She always bought the best for the family to eat and the cheapest cold storage eggs she could buy for the servants to eat.”

Will Demand Their Rights.

Another speaker took a fling at the newly organized Housewives’ Assembly. She said:

The morning papers say that certain women on Capitol hill held a meeting the other day to form a housewives’ assembly. These housewives are going to help the maids become more dignified and remove from domestic service the stigma of degradation. They are going to help us. We don’t want their help.

We are not asking anything of them. When the time comes we will not ask anything; we’ll demand our rights. Remove the stigma of degradation from our work! Why don’t they say they will emancipate us from slavery?

They talk of us like we’re slaves. We don’t need any one to remove the stigma of degradation from our work. There is no stigma about it. If there is any degradation about it, who put it there but these same housewives who talk so much about it?

There is more dignity about our work, let me tell you, than there is about the position of a society woman.

“You’ve got to train the woman you work for,” said one maid, who declared that she had a model mistress. “Spoil ’em and you work like a slave. The cook at my house has luncheon ready at 12:30 o’clock, and if they’re late they have to eat cold food. We’re treated white in our house because we demand our rights[*]. We demand short hours, and we get them.”

[To be continued…]

*Note: By the use of the phrase, “we’re treated white,” this fellow worker demonstrates that she needs more education as to the founding principles of the Industrial Workers of the World. The I. W. W., from its founding, has taken a stand against discrimination based upon race, color or nationality. All fellow workers should be treated with dignity and respect.

SOURCES

The Washington Post
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Sept 24, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28842206/

Women and the American labor movement: from colonial times to the eve of World War I
-by Philip Sheldon Foner
Free Press, 1980
https://books.google.com/books?id=3vQEAQAAIAAJ

The I. W. W.: A Study of American Syndicalism, Volume 83
-by Paul Frederick Brissenden
Columbia University, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=4QkAAAAAYAAJ

IMAGES
Jane Street, Baltimore Sun, Sept 24, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/214644123/
Jane Street, Blacklist, W(DC) Post, Sept 24, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28842206/

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: Denver Housemaids’ Union, Led by Jane Street, Keeping a List of Unfair Mistresses
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-denver-housemaids-union-led-by-jane-street-keeping-a-list-of-unfair-mistresses/