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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 25, 1910
New York, New York – Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike Making History
From the Duluth Labor World of January 22, 1910:
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By ROBERTUS LOVE.
[Part I of II.]
IN the history of the world no such scenes have been witnessed as those which nearly two months past have characterized the strike of the shirt waist makers in the city of New York. Nearly 35,000 girls and women, members of the Ladies’ Shirt Waist Makers’ union, were engaged at first in this greatest strike of women workers ever known. For the first time since industrial conditions became such that women have been compelled to go out from home and support themselves and dependent relatives nearly all the workers in a great industry in one of the foremost cities of the world have engaged in a struggle with their employers, refusing to return to work until certain demands which they consider just shall be complied with by the bosses.
Conspicuous and significant features of the shirt waist girls’ strike have been the entrance into the struggle of many women of great wealth and high social position and of others whose collegiate culture may be calculated by the unthinking to lift them so far above the plane of the working girl that a feeling of sympathy for her is scarcely expected of them.
Yet these college bred women not only have declared their sympathy for the strikers, but many have gone on active service as watchers and pickets to aid them in inducing nonunion girls not to take their places.
Wealthy Women Aid.
Among those of immense wealth who have been vigorous workers for and contributors to the cause are Miss Anne Morgan, daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan, and Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, formerly the wife of William K. Vanderbilt, and the mother of Consuelo, duchess of Marlborough. Miss Morgan has given money and attended meetings in the interest of the strikers, while Mrs. Belmont, who not long ago became an ardent woman’s suffragist, has raised a considerable fund for the shirt waist girls among men and women of wealth and has gone personally to the night police court in the city of New York and waited hours and hours to go on the bonds of some of the girls who had been arrested, charged with violating the law in their earnestness as pickets.
On one occasion just before Christmas Mrs. Belmont remained until after midnight in the night court waiting for the cases of four striking girls to be called. She told the magistrate she could give her house at 477 Madison avenue as bond for the girls’ appearance. The magistrate, not recognizing her personally, asked if she was sure the house was worth $800, the aggregate required for the bonds.
“I think it is,” Mrs. Belmont replied. “It is valued at $400,000. There may be a mortgage on it for $100,000.”
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Vassar Graduate Arrested.
Miss Violet Pike, a graduate of Vassar college, spent nearly ten hours in a police station cell, having been arrested when she was serving as a watcher outside one of the establishments where the girls were on strike. Miss Pike declared she had committed no offense whatever, but had been mistaken by the police for one of the strikers.
At a conference attended by Mrs. Belmont, Miss Morgan and other wealthy women a call was extended for young men students of Columbia university and young women students of Barnard college to volunteer as watchers and picketers. Many students responded. Scores of young women, graduates or undergraduates of some of the most noted colleges in the east, have gone on duty before 8 o’clock on the chill December mornings and remained throughout the day outside the shirt waist shops, their chief duty being to see that the strikers serving as pickets were not molested by thugs under employ of the bosses or unjustly arrested by the police. Picketing in connection with strikes is permitted by law in the state of New York. It is unlawful to use the word “scab” in addressing a person, “strike breaker” being the approved form. Many of the girls arrested, being ignorant of this law, were haled into court and fined because they yelled “scab” at some girl who had gone to work for one of the bosses.
Churches Help Strikers.
Late in December, when about four-fifths of the strikers had returned to work, most of them having been taken back on their own terms, some of the churches began to take steps to aid the girls. About 7,000 still were out, most of whom had been employed in the larger shops, whose proprietors, being rich, could hold out indefinitely. The Rev. Dr. Henry A. Stimson, pastor of Manhattan Congregational church, invited Miss Rose Schneidermann [Schneiderman], leader of the strikers, to speak in his pulpit. A collection was taken up, all of which was turned over to Miss Schneidermann for use in continuing the strike. Dr. Stimson spoke words of encouragement.
About the same time Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free synagogue, who went to New York a few years ago from Portland, Ore., delivered a sermon in which he declared that,
[S]hort of organization, there is no way in which the workers can bring about a permanent condition which shall assure them wages and hours that shall be just and reasonable.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist
NY Independent Apr 27, 1905
“Cap Makers Story”, NY, Mar 1905
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=vPtGAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA938
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Jan 22, 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1910-01-22/ed-1/seq-7/
See also:
Tag: NYC Waistmakers Uprising of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/nyc-waistmakers-uprising-of-1909-1910/
Rose Schneiderman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Schneiderman
RS found in the news from Nov 22, 1909 thru Mar 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?dateFilterType=range&date1=11%2F22%2F1909&date2=03%2F31%2F1910&language=&ortext=&andtext=&phrasetext=rose+schneiderman&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date
All for One
-Autobiography of Rose Schneiderman
with Lucy Goldthwaite
P. S. Eriksson, 1967
https://books.google.com/books?id=SQcFAQAAIAAJ&dq=editions:0wxSc-Fzp9UC
Henry A Stimson
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Stimson%2C%20Henry%20A%2E%20%28Henry%20Albert%29%2C%201842%2D1936
Rabbi Stephen Wise
-Stephen Samuel Wise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Samuel_Wise
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Bread and Roses – Judy Collins