Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 29, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Women Working in Textile Mills Live on Slave Wages
From the Binghamton Press and Leader of December 27, 1912:
ARBITRATORS HEAR HOW WOMEN SLAVE IN LITTLE FALLS MILLS ———- Eating While Working, Wool Winder Has Made as Much as $7 in a Week ———-
Little Falls, Dec. 27.-Three members of the State Board of Arbitration, acting as mediators in the Little Falls textile strike, which has lasted for months, began taking testimony today.
The strikers were heard first, all witnesses being members of the union. They declared they had quit work because their wages were hardly sufficient for them to live on.
Mary Sroka, two years in America, testified that by working from 7 a. m. to 6 p. m. and taking very little time for luncheon, she had once made $6 in a week of five days. Sometimes, she said, she made only $2.50 and $3. She was an inspector in the finishing room of the Phoenix Mills.
Mrs. Suie Mizerak, a winder of wool, testified that she worked from 6 a. m. to 8 p. m., eating her meals as she worked, and made from $5 to $7 a week.
Stanislawa Cououn, an 18-year-old girl, testified that she received $1 a day for her work as a folder.
Agnes Kalolaka, a spinner, said she received $7 a week before the 54-hour law went into effect; thereafter, she received $6.37.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 28, 1912 New Pamphlets Now Available from I. W. W. Headquarters in Chicago
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of December 26, 1912:
On the Firing Line
Extracts from the Report of the General Executive Board to the Seventh Annual Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World Held in Chicago, Ill., Sept. 17 to 27, 1912 -I. W. W. General Executive Board: Thomas Halcro F. H. Little, Ewald Koettgen, George Speed
Ettor and Giovannitti Before the Jury at Salem, Massachusetts, November 23, 1912
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 26, 1912 Boston, Massachusetts – Kate Barnard Calls for Strike on Matrimony and Motherhood
From the Duluth Labor World of December 21, 1912:
TOO MANY BABIES IN AMERICA NOW? ———- Oklahoma Kate Tells Effete Boston There Is No Need for More Race As It Is Now. ———-
OVER-WORKED MOTHERS FIRST CAUSE OF CRIME ———- Calls Strike On Matrimony and Motherhood Until Women Are Granted Better Conditions. ———-
BOSTON, Dec. 19.—”Don’t get married, girls; go on a mother strike until industrial conditions for women are better,” was the appeal made here today by Miss Kate Barnard, prison commissioner of Oklahoma, where she is sometimes called “Oklahoma Kate.”
[Miss Barnard declared:]
We have no need for more of our race as it is at present. I have decided not to marry until women are far better off industrially and politically, and I’m not an old woman, either.
Miss Barnard is—well, perhaps she might be 30—or thereabouts—and she is very pretty.
Where Crime Starts.
[Said Miss Barnard;]
The first cause of crime is the overworking of mothers and those who some day will be mothers.
She told how Oklahoma got its child labor law, which has been a model for 17 states since, and said this and the compulsory education law were aimed directly at conservation of humanity and reduction of crime.
[She declared:]
It’s a farce to pass a child labor law or a compulsory education law unless you provide against poverty, keeping children out of school.
She told how her bill provides that if a widow has children at work, they can be taken from the mill and sent to school and the state will pay their wages, just as though they were at work. There are 5,461 children now at school in Oklahoma under this provision.
”Last” But Five Years.
Miss Barnard described child labor in glass factories where little workers “last” from three to five years.
[She cried:]
And I say that the American girls have no time for matrimony until this is changed. We don’t need any more of the race until we can clear up what we have.
Ida Tarbell, the well known magazine writer, also spoke. She has concluded that married women and girls who enter industrial life without pressing need form one of the worst dangers to civilization in this country.
Miss Tarbell has been paying special attention to the question of the minimum wage for women and today declared:
The minimum wage for women in Boston should be set at $9 while in New York it should be $1 higher. I’d hate to have any girl I cared about working in New York for less than $10.
Discussing the observations she has made while gathering material for a new series of articles on the new business ethics of today. Miss Tarbell said:
How They Live a Mystery.
Plenty of girls in New York are living on $6 a week and are keeping straight on it, too. It can be done, but how the girls do it is a mystery. Those girls living on those few meager dollars and living right are the heroines of the age.
The girl who lives at home and accepts a position for $5 or $6 a week is the girl who makes it hard for the homeless and self-supporting girl to make a living—makes it hard for her to remain a good girl.
The woman who works for less than a living wage is the woman who marries and continues to work. She is the most vicious element in a workaday world. We’ve got to realize that marriage and the home are something more than two people living together and supporting themselves. We’ve got to realize what a function it is in the great scheme of things.
The whole basis, of our social development is the family. In the first place there are children to be considered. A woman must give up her work or race suicide is the result. Of course from the economic view point the couple are much better off if the woman stays at home and the man works. If they are both working the aggregate earnings are more, but the aggregate expenses are comparatively greater also and there is no conserving done; none of the countless things that make a dollar have a dollar’s purchasing power.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 23, 1912
American Flag Stands Tall Over Miners’ Tent Colony at Eskdale, West Virginia
From The Coming Nation of December 7, 1912:
Winning the Fight at Eskdale ———-
By Alfred Segal
———-
THERE was a tremendous excitement in the little village of Eskdale, W. Va.
An American flag waves over the main street of Eskdale (perhaps to give assurance that Eskdale is really in America and not in Russia); but on the same street you see little children barefoot, now in November, because they haven’t any shoes, and you see the families of striking miners, evicted and driven into the highways by the Coal Dukes, living under tents because they have no homes. You are ashamed to enjoy the meager comforts of your hotel room after you have lived a day with the misery of Eskdale.
Two rods from the tents stand the coal hills with their fabulous wealth-the fine tables set by nature for all her children and yet within sight of the feast they are starving.
Well, the heart of Eskdale was beating like a trip-hammer. Word had come down through the hills that the governor had declared martial law over the strike district and that the soldiers were coming.
The echoes of gun-shots were rolling down into the valley. They came into Eskdale like the rumble of cannon. Somewhere up in the hills there was another battle on between miners and mine guards-one of those fights that make the quickly-dug, rude graves that you can find in lonely places in the coal hills.
Oh, yes, it’s lawlessness all right. But you can see it and hear it and some people can understand it. For years and years West Virginia has been ruled by respectable, invisible lawlessness which controlled courts, ran the legislatures and elected United States senators and is now responsible for the barefoot little children and the homeless exiles in the tents.
The soldiers were coming.
It runs through Eskdale’s mind that what it wants is a living wage, justice and fair-dealing and here the governor was sending the soldiers.
The shot echoes crashed without pause down the valley, waking sleeping babies under the tents and arousing strange stirrings in the hearts of the men and women of Eskdale, needing bread, but hungering only for freedom.
And then the distant toot of the engine which was pulling the martial law special and the soldiers, broke upon the village. Eskdale crowded to the railroad track. The train rumbled past toward the depot.
In the first car were the soldiers, guns held firmly in front of them, ready for work.
And in the second car-
“Scab, scab,” cried a boy, shrill-voiced.
He pointed at a window in the second car-at a face, soiled, weary-eyed, unshaven, crowned with a battered hat. And behind this face there was another and another-a whole car-load of such faces.
“Scab, scab”-the men and women took up the cry. They could not understand that these men were like themselves the dupes of the system.
Martial law had come into the strike zone with a shipment of strike-breakers whom it was protecting, with orders to shoot to kill if one of them was molested. The state of West Virginia had become a strike-breaking agency.
And to the inhabitants of its hills, the state had given so little protection through all these years. They had asked for laws that would emancipate them from the tyranny of the mine guard system-and had been denied. They had asked for compensation laws that would protect their families against the consequences of fatal accident in the mines-and had been denied.
And here were the strike-breakers come to take their jobs and to live upon their hills under protection of their militia.
“Scab, scab,” they jeered.
[Hunger Squad Pitched Against Hunger Squad]
I was there and spoke to the strike-breakers-men and boys recruited from the hunger squads of the East Side of New York, none of them miners, weary with the futile search for work at their trades, and desperate enough to throw themselves at adventure as strike-breakers for the sake of a job.
The despair of hunger, you see, knows no state lines. It recruits the strike-breaker in New York. It scourges to violence the striking miner of West Virginia. Hunger squad is pitched against hunger squad.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 16, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Strikers Seek Protection; Insanity Case Fails Against Nurse
From the Grant County Socialist (Medford, Oklahoma) of December 14, 1912:
STRIKERS APPEAL TO GOV. DIX FOR STATE MILITIA ———- Only Resort Little Falls Workers Can See ———- Bosses Would Establish Case of Insanity to Incarcerate Helen Schloss. ———-
Binghamton Press and Leader (New York) December 5, 1912
Little Falls, N. Y., Dec. 6.-“Send the State militia to Little Falls!” is the appeal to Governor Dix that the striking textile workers of this city sent out today.
This is the only avenue of escape from the inhuman and brutal persecution of the local police and the company’s hired thugs that the strikers think they have left.
The strike is now in its eighth week, and the solidarity of the workers is second only to that demonstrated by the 22,000 textile workers in the historic Lawrence strike. There’s nothing that can break the united spirit of the men and women and children that are fighting for bread except the atrocious activities of the hirelings of the mill owners. It is their high-handed methods in stifling the rebellious spirit of the workers that have driven the strikers to appeal for the state militia.
[…..]
How Miss Schloss Was Hounded
Helen Schloss, the city nurse, who, after seeing the condition of the strikers, decided to give up her position in order to be better able to help the strikers, today told the story of how the special police persecuted her in an effort to discourage her activities in the strike.
Not being able to persuade her to withdraw from the strikers’ ranks, they determined to find out some way of getting her out of the way, at least till the strike is over. Without knowing anything Miss Schloss was subjected to an examination of her state of mind by 3 local physicians. For two long hours they questioned her in a manner that would put the much heard of third degree to shame. All this in an effort to establish the fact of her insanity.
Miss Schloss, however, stood the test, and at times it looked as if the doctors who investigated her mental status were not er rational themselves. They finally gave up the job in disgust.
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
