Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 21, 1912 Photograph of Anna Rudnitzky of the 1910 Chicago Garment Makers’ Strike
From The Progressive Woman of November 1912:
From Life and Labor of April 1912:
Time Is Passing
[by Anna Rudnitzky]
Anna Rudnitzky
I HAVE so much I want to say. What bothers me most is time is passing. Time is passing and everything is missed. I am not living, I am just working.
But life means so much, it holds so much, and I have no time for any of it; I just work. Am I not right?
In the busy time I work so hard; try to make the machine run faster and faster because then I can earn some money and I need it, and then night comes, and I am tired out and I go home and I am too weary for anything but supper and bed. Sometimes union meetings, yes, because I must go. But I have no mind and nothing left in me. The busy time means to earn enough money not only for today but to cover the slack time, and then when the slack time comes I am not so tired, I have more time, but I have no money, and time is passing and everything is missed.
Romance needs time. We can think about it, yes, but to live it needs time. Music I love, to hear it makes me happy, but it is passing. The operas and the theatres and the dramas, they are here but for me they are just passing. To study, to go to high school, to the university, I have no time and I have no money.
Then the world is so beautiful. I see the pictures of the trees and the great rivers and the mountains,and away back in Russia I was told about Niagara Falls. Now why if I work all day and do good work, why is there never a chance for me to see all these wonders?
I have been thinking. First we must get a living wage and then we must get a shorter work-day, and many, many more girls must do some thinking. It isn’t that they do not want to think, but they are too tired to think and that is the best thing in the Union, it makes us think. I know the difference it makes to girls and that is the reason I believe in the Union. It makes us stronger and it makes us happier and it makes us more interested in life and to be more interested is oh, a thousand times better than to be so dead that one never sees anything but work all day and not enough money to live on. That is terrible, that is like death.
And so now the Women’s Trade Union League has helped me so much, and the Union has helped me so much, and I want to help others, and so we must have “Life and Labor” written in Yiddish too so that all the Jewish girls can understand. And then I think we ought to have it in Polish and Bohemian and Lithunian and Italian. Can you do this? How can I help you to do it?
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 8, 1911 The National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women and Children
From The Coming Nation of June 3, 1911:
How Women Help Women
By Grace Potter
[Part I of II.]
HE National Consumers’ League believes that the six million wage-working women in the United States are in many ways earning their bread under greater difficulties than the men wage slaves endure.
The shirt waist strike two years ago and the present strike of the box makers in New York illustrate one of the handicaps women suffer. Whatever move they made in the progress of their battle, the shirt-waist strikers were hauled into police court. They were often treated brutally by policemen, they were thrust into cells, they were fined, they were imprisoned. They suffered as no men strikers ever have in New York. The police were not deterred from unjust action against these young women by the thought of the way they might vote at the next election, because women have no vote.
Woman’s inferior physical strength, her maternal cares, her need to give attention to her home the while she is a wage earner, all are handicaps, too.
The National Consumers’ League is trying to make conditions better for working women because she is so handicapped. Incidentally they are making conditions better for men in many places.
It was over twenty years ago that the Consumers’ League was started in New York City. It has spread to many states and many countries since then and it is still spreading. It has two definite aims:
1. To abolish the sweating system.
2. To extend among all mercantile establishments commendable conditions.
These are the means taken to accomplish such ends:
1. The Consumers’ League Label.
2. The White List of Fair Houses.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 3, 1911 Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Organize Women in Strong Industrial Unions
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 1, 1911:
WOMEN IN INDUSTRY SHOULD ORGANIZE ———-
BY ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN
From the viewpoint of a revolutionary socialist there is certainly much to criticize in the present labor organizations. They have their shortcomings, of so pronounced a character that many thoughtful but pessimistic workers despair of practical benefit from assisting or considering them further. Yet unionism remains a vital and a burning question to the toilers, both men and women.
[…..]
Little need be said of he seven million wage-earning women. That unionism is their one great weapon, hardly admits of argument. Even more than their brother toilers do these underpaid and overworked women need co-operative effort on their own behalf. Yet many of their experiences with the old unions have been neither pleasant nor encouraging. Strike after strike of cloak makers, shirt waist makers, dressmakers, etc on the East Side of New York has been exploited by rich faddists for woman’s suffrage, etc., until the points at issue were lost sight of in the blare of automobile horns attendant on their coming and going. A band of earnest, struggling workers made the tail of a suffrage kite in the hands of women of the very class driving the girls to lives of misery or shame, women who could have financed the strike to a truly successful conclusion were they seriously disposed, is indeed a deplorable sight. But the final settlement of the many widely advertised strikers left much to be desired.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 25, 1911 Miss Agnes Nestor Speaks on Behalf of Chicago Garment Strikers
Columbus, Ohio-Convention of United Mine Workers of America -Monday January 23, 1911, Sixth Day-Afternoon Session
President Lewisstated that Miss Agnes Nestor of Chicago was in the convention and desired to address the delegates in behalf of the striking garment workers in that city.
President Lewis stated that Miss Nestor had credentials from the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Woman’s Trade Union League.
Delegate Walker, District 12—
I move that an invitation be extended to Miss Agnes Nestor to address the convention. (Seconded and carried by unanimous vote.)
President Lewis-
I take pleasure in introducing the young lady spoken of in the credentials received from Chicago. Miss Nestor will address the convention in behalf of the striking garment workers in that city.
Miss Agnes Nestor—
Mr. Chairman and Delegates to this Convention: I am here to tell you something about the garment workers’ strike now going on in Chicago and to make an appeal for funds. This is an extraordinary strike. It is a wonderful strike, it is a strike of unorganized workers. It began with the unorganized workers in one of the shops of Hart, Schaffner & Marx and spread to every shop of that concern and every other unorganized garment factory in Chicago until it reached 40,000 garment workers. It began the latter part of September and spread to the greatest extent in October. These people have been on strike now nearly four months.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 12, 1911 Chicago, Illinois – Socialist Women Stand with Striking Garment Workers
From The Progressive Woman of January 1911:
———-
The Chicago Garment Workers’ Strike
ANNA A. MALEY
Workers of the world, unite! This is in deed the golden rule of labor—a rule that in the fullest application will give us one day a united workers’ world
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 4, 1911 Chicago, Illinois – Garment Workers Strike Continues, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of January 1911:
BY ROBERT DVORAK
[Part II of II.]
The most admirable and contagious strike meetings were held in thirty-seven various halls in the city and money was pouring in from all parts of the country, with letters of encouragement and promise of further aid when another blow, again from union headquarters, once more nearly demoralized the strikers.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 3, 1911 Chicago, Illinois – Garment Workers Strike Continues, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of January 1911:
[Part I of II.]
MAULED by city police, assaulted and beaten by armed, hired sluggers, shot by strike breakers and now being faced with a winter full of the horrors of cold and starvation, the striking garment workers of Chicago still remain undaunted.
Not even the best efforts of the mayor, the city council, the Chicago Federation of Labor and very influential persons, such as Raymond Robins and other “Good Samaritans” can force the “ignorant strikers” to accept meaningless but well worded terms of peace from the hard pressed renegades, Hart, Schaffner and Marx.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 3, 1910 Chicago, Illinois – Report on Strike of 41,000 Garment Workers, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:
[Part II.]
Not satisfied with cutting the rates and wages of the tailors, the firm instituted a system whereby the employes were charged from five to fifteen dollars for the least damage done to a garment. Lost spools, bobbins and other implements were charged up to the workers and taken out of their wages.
During the slack months, the piece workers were forced to report for work. They sat around in the shops, work or no work, earning no money, but stifling in the close, dust laden atmosphere of the fabric smelling shops.
When the pre-season months, those that constitute the busy time in the clothing industry, arrived, things changed as if by magic. Every employe was driven at top speed. Girls who had worked late into the night at home, threading needles or doing other work in order to make more money and sidestep the ten-hour law, came down to work next morning almost ill. None, however, were ever allowed to go home when sick.
Girls who asked permission to go home when sick were given some powders—good for every ailment from an earache to a sick stomach. If these powders failed to cure and the girl fainted, as happened several times each day, a doctor was summoned. But never, under any circumstances, was a girl or boy given permission to go home when sick, at least not until more substantial evidence than a sickly appearance or a mere statement was given.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 2, 1910 Chicago, Illinois – Report on Strike of 41,000 Garment Workers, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:
[Part I.]
PERSONS who look upon the present Garment Workers’ strike in Chicago as a pure and simple labor battles are securing only an outward glimpse of the situation.
The strike itself, truly enough, was brought on by a revolt of the poor under paid girls and boys, men and women. It was a simultaneous upheaval of over 41,000 garment workers brought on by sixteen girls against petty persecution, low wages, abuse and long hours, an upheaval, unorganized at the start, which later took on the form of a fight for recognition of the union.
Behind the scenes, however, shut off from the public view, there is a mortal combat of big and small interests going on. A combat that is likely to settle, once for all, a battle of many years’ standing.
Like every other trustified industry, the production of clothing was at first limited to a number of independent manufacturers. These concerns unhampered by much competition grew to giant proportions.
Chicago, however, grew as rapidly as did the concerns. The city was soon divided into neighborhoods of various nationalities. Among these nationalities there were many venturesome persons who went into the tailoring business and made it a point to appeal to people of their own tongue.
Thus it was that gradually the business of the big concerns began to decrease. The more the city grew in population the more small tailor shops sprang up until they were growing, it seemed, over night, like mushrooms.
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