Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 13, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – 15,000 Striking Silk Workers Cheer the I. W. W.
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
On the Paterson Picket Line
By William D. Haywood
[Part II of II]
Industrial Worker May 8, 1913
The night preceding this silent manifestation of protest against capitalist brutality the wildest demonstration of the strike took place in Armory Hall, where John Golden and Sarah Conboy, of the American Federation of Labor, escorted by manufacturers and policemen, came to try to repeat the infamous strikebreaking tactics they attempted a year ago in Lawrence. They came heralded by the local press, by the civil authorities, by the clergy, and the employers as the instruments through which the great silk strike would be settled. The armory had been obtained for them through state officials. The state militia had been called out and stood in the ante-rooms with guns loaded for action. Chief of Police Bimson and his entire force were on hand. The fire department had been ordered to hold themselves in readiness and had their hose attached to hydrants in the immediate vicinity.
The striking silk workers were invited to attend this meeting. It had been previously arranged that they would attend in a body and listen to what the A. F. of L. had to say, providing that they would be given a chance to reply to state the position of the strikers and the principles of the Industrial Workers of the World.
15,000 Cheer for I. W. W.
When organizers of the I. W. W. appeared in the hall, the 15,000 people present went wild. For minute after minute they yelled and cheered with ever-increasing -volume. The floor and gallery was a waving forest of the red membership books of the I. W. W. held aloft by what seemed to be countless thousands. After a time Organizer Ewald W. Koettgen of the I. W. W., appeared on the platform and announced that the I. W. W. speakers would not be allowed to present their side. Or rather, he intended to announce this, but he got no further than “I. W. W.”-when the audience leaped to its feet, and for perhaps fifteen minutes drowned every utterance with frantic cheers. Koettgen at last managed to make himself heard and said: ”Let’s all go home.” As one man the audience arose and began to file out. As these departed thousands on the outside who had not been able to enter, rushed in and soon the armory was again filled. Those who left went to their own halls where they greeted every utterance of their speakers with roars of applause.
For an hour and three-quarters Golden and Mrs. Conboy tried to speak, only to be drowned down by the unceasing cheers that the audience sent up for the I. W. W. In desperation Mrs. Conboy tried the appeal-to-home-mother-and-patriotism stunt and seizing an American flag, waved it from the stage, which act was greeted by another outburst of derisive cheers. When Golden finally made himself heard about 300 persons stayed to listen, the hall having been cleared by police clubs.
It was the funeral of the A. F. of L., so far as Paterson was concerned. It was remarked afterward that it was indeed fitting and appropriate that the A. F. of L. should choose an armory, the training quarters of the bayonet-carrying murderers of the capitalist class, as its own burying place.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 12, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Silk Workers on Picket Line, Braving Death, Standing Firm
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
On the Paterson Picket Line
By William D. Haywood
[Part I of II]
FIVE o’clock every morning finds thousands of Paterson silk workers on the picket line with spirits as dauntless as ever despite the fact that after twelve weeks of struggle, starvation is staring them in the face. Some of them have been out in front of the battle for sixteen weeks.
The picket line is the modern barricade. It is there that the strike will be either lost or won. It is the picket line that has taught the Paterson silk workers the meaning of the class struggle. Here men and women daily meet the guns of hired thugs and the clubs of policemen. Braving death, suffering indignity and humiliation, nearly 800 strikers have been arrested on trumped-up charges and thrown into jail. Some of them have been jailed a number of times.
It takes courage to face a term in the Paterson bastile. It was built in 1854, before the era of alleged prison reform began. In the cellhouse where most of the strikers have been thrown the cells are narrow, with two bunks, one above the other. The ventilation is bad and the sanitation worse. The food is on a par with the usual prison fare.
Before being transferred to this county jail, the prisoners are, as a rule, compelled to spend a night in the city jail before appearing before Recorder Carroll’s court. The conditions that have been imposed on the strikers in the city jail are beyond description, reminding one of accounts of the hell-holes of Russia. Here seven and eight men have been crowded into a single cell intended to be occupied by one. No bedding of any kind is provided and no food is furnished. One group of strikers reported they were held for nineteen hours without even water.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail, Part II
From The Masses of June 1913:
The Paterson Evening News April 28, 1913
[Part II of II]
And so it was that I went up to the County Jail. In the outer office I was questioned again, searched for concealed weapons, and my money and valuables taken away. Then the great barred door swung open and I went down some steps into a vast room lined with three tiers of cells. About eighty prisoners strolled around, talked, smoked, and ate the food sent in to them by those outside. Of this eighty almost half were strikers. They were in their street clothes, held in prison under $500 bail to await the action of the Grand Jury. Surrounded by a dense crowd of short, dark-faced men, Big Bill Haywood towered in the center of the room. His big hand made simple gestures as he explained something to them. His massive, rugged face, seamed and scarred like a mountain, and as calm, radiated strength. These slight, foreign-faced strikers, one of many desperate little armies in the vanguard of the battle-line of Labor, quickened and strengthened by Bill Haywood’s face and voice, looked up at him lovingly, eloquently. Faces deadened and dulled with grinding routine in the sunless mills glowed with hope and understanding. Faces scarred and bruised from policemen’s clubs grinned eagerly at the thought of going back on the picket-line. And there were other faces, too-lined and sunken with the slow starvation of a nine weeks’ poverty—shadowed with the sight of so much suffering, or the hopeless brutality of the police—and there were those who had seen Modestino Valentine shot to death by a private detective. But not one showed discouragement; not one a sign of faltering or of fear.As one little Italian said to me, with blazing eyes: “We all one bigga da Union. I. W. W.—dat word is pierced de heart of de people!”
“Yes! Yes! Dass righ’! I. W. W.! One bigga da Union”—they murmured with soft, eager voices, crowding around.
[Introduced to Quinlan and Strikers by Big Bill]
I shook hands with Haywood, who introduced me to Pat Quinlan, the thin-faced, fiery Irishman now under indictment for speeches inciting to riot.
“Boys,” said Haywood, indicating me, “this man wants to know things. You tell him everything”—
They crowded around me, shaking my hand, smiling, welcoming me. “Too bad you get in jail,” they said, sympathetically. “We tell you ever’t’ing. You ask. We tell you. Yes. Yes. You good feller.”
And they did. Most of them were still weak and exhausted from their terrible night before in the lockup. Some had been lined up against a wall, as they marched to and fro in front of the mills, and herded to jail on the charge of “unlawful assemblage”! Others had been clubbed into the patrol wagon on the charge of “rioting,” as they stood at the track, on their way home from picketing, waiting for a train to pass! They were being held for the Grand Jury that indicted Haywood and Gurley Flynn. Four of these jurymen were silk manufacturers, another the head of the local Edison compony—which Haywood tried to organize for a strike—and not one a workingman!
“We not take bail,” said another, shaking his head. “We stay here. Fill up de damn jail. Pretty soon no more room. Pretty soon can’t arrest no more picket!”
It was visitors’ day I went to the door to speak with a friend. Outside the reception room was full of women and children, carrying packages, and pasteboard boxes, and pails full of dainties and little comforts lovingly prepared, which meant hungry and ragged wives and babies, so that the men might be comfortable in jail. The place was full of the sound of moaning; tears ran down their work-roughened faces; the children looked up at their fathers’ unshaven faces through the bars and tried to reach them with their hands.
“What nationalities are all the people!” I asked. There were Dutchmen, Italians, Belgians, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Poles—
“What nationalities stick together on the picket- line?”
A young Jew, pallid and sick-looking from insufficient food, spoke up proudly. “T’ree great nations stick togedder like dis.” He made a fist. “T’ree great nations—Italians, Hebrews an’ Germans”—
“But how about the Americans?”
They all shrugged their shoulders and grinned with humorous scorn. “English peoples not go on picket-line,” said one, softly. “’Mericans no lika fight!” An Italian boy thought my feelings might be hurt, and broke in quickly: “Not all lika dat. Beeg Beell, he ‘Merican. You ‘Merican. Quin’, Miss Flynn, ‘Merican. Good! Good! ‘Merican workman, he lika talk too much.”
This sad fact appears to be true. It was the English-speaking group that held back during the Lawrence strike. It is the English-speaking continent that remains passive at Paterson, while the “wops” the “kikes,” the “hunkies”—the ‘degraded and ignorant races from Southern Europe”—go out and get clubbed on the picket-line and gaily take their medicine in Paterson jail.
But just as they were telling me these things the keeper ordered me to the “convicted room,” where I was pushed into a bath and compelled to put on regulation prison clothes. I shan’t attempt to describe the horrors I saw in that room. Suffice it to say that forty-odd men lounged about a long corridor lined on one side with cells; that the only ventilation and light came from one small skylight up a funnel-shaped airshaft; that one man had syphilitic sores on his legs and was treated by the prison doctor with sugar-pills for “nervousness;” that a seventeen-year-old boy who had never been sentenced had remained in that corridor without ever seeing the sun for over nine months; that a cocaine-fiend was getting his “dope” regularly from the inside, and that the background of this and much more was the monotonous and terrible shouting of a man who had lost his mind in that hell-hole and who walked among us.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 7, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail
From The Masses of June 1913:
“Speaking of Anarchy” by Art Young
[Part I of II]
There’s war in Paterson. But it’s a curious kind of war. All the violence is the work of one side—the Mill Owners. Their servants, the Police, club unresisting men and women and ride down law-abiding crowds on horseback. Their paid mercenaries, the armed Detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. Their newspapers, the Paterson Press and the Paterson Call, publish incendiary and crime-inciting appeals to mob-violence against the strike leaders. Their tool, Recorder Carroll, deals out heavy sentences to peaceful pickets that the police-net gathers up. They control absolutely the Police, the Press, the Courts.
Opposing them are about twenty-five thousand striking silk-workers, of whom perhaps ten thousand are active, and their weapon is the picket-line. Let me tell you what I saw in Paterson and then you will say which side of this struggle is “anarchistic” and “contrary to American ideals.”
At six o’clock in the morning a light rain was falling. Slate-grey and cold, the streets of Paterson were deserted. But soon came the Cops-twenty of them—strolling along with their nightsticks under their arms. We went ahead of them toward the mill district. Now we began to see workmen going in the same direction, coat collars turned up, hands in their pockets. We came into a long street, one side of which was lined with silk mills, the other side with the wooden tenement houses. In every doorway, at every window of the houses clustered foreign-faced men and women, laughing and chatting as if after breakfast on a holiday. There seemed no sense of expectancy, no strain or feeling of fear. The sidewalks were almost empty, only over in front of the mills a few couples—there couldn’t have been more than fifty-marched slowly up and down, dripping with the rain. Some were men, with here and there a man and woman together, or two young boys. As the warmer light of full day came the people drifted out of their houses and began to pace back and forth, gathering in little knots on the corners. They were quick with gesticulating hands, and low-voiced conversation. They looked often toward the corners of side streets.
Suddenly appeared a policeman, swinging his club. “Ah-h-h!” said the crowd softly.
Six men had taken shelter from the rain under the canopy of a saloon. “Come on! Get out of that!” yelled the policeman, advancing. The men quietly obeyed. “Get off this street! Go home, now! Don’t be standing here!” They gave way before him in silence, drifting back again when he turned away. Other policemen materialized, hustling, cursing, brutal, ineffectual. No one answered back. Nervous, bleary-eyed, unshaven, these officers were worn out with nine weeks’ incessant strike duty.
On the mill side of the street the picket-line had grown to about four hundred. Several policemen shouldered roughly among them, looking for trouble. A workman appeared, with a tin pail, escorted by two detectives. “Boo! Boo!” shouted a few scattered voices. Two Italian boys leaned against the mill fence and shouted a merry Irish threat, “Scab! Come outa here I knocka you’ head off!” A policeman grabbed the boys roughly by the shoulder. “Get to hell out of here!” he cried, jerking and pushing them violently to the corner, where he kicked them. Not a voice, not a movement from the crowd.
A little further along the street we saw a young woman with an umbrella, who had been picketing, suddenly confronted by a big policeman.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared. “God damn you, you go home!” and he jammed his club against her mouth. “I no go home!” she shrilled passionately, with blazing eyes. “You bigga stiff !”
Silently, steadfastly, solidly the picket-line grew. In groups or in couples the strikers patrolled the sidewalk. There was no more laughing. They looked on with eyes full of hate. These were fiery-blooded Italians, and the police were the same brutal thugs that had beaten them and insulted them for nine weeks. I wondered how long they could stand it.
It began to rain heavily. I asked a man’s permission to stand on the porch of his house. There was a policeman standing in front of it. His name, I afterwards discovered, was McCormack. I had to walk around him to mount the steps.
Suddenly he turned round, and shot at the owner: “Do all them fellows live in that house?” The man indicated the three other strikers and himself, and shook his head at me.
“Then you get to hell off of there!” said the cop, pointing his club at me.
“I have the permission of this gentleman to stand here,” I said. “He owns this house.”
“Never mind! Do what I tell you! Come off of there, and come off damn quick!”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
With that he leaped up the steps, seized my arm, and violently jerked me to the sidewalk. Another cop took my arm and they gave me a shove.
“Now you get to hell off this street!” said Officer McCormack.
“I won’t get off this street or any other street. If I’m breaking any law, you arrest me!”
Officer McCormack, who is doubtless a good, stupid Irishman in time of peace, is almost helpless in a situation that requires thinking. He was dreadfully troubled by my request. He didn’t want to arrest me, and said so with a great deal of profanity.
“I’ve got your number,” said I sweetly. “Now will you tell me your name?”
“Yes,” he bellowed, “an’ I got your number! I’ll arrest you.” He took me by the arm and marched me up the street.
He was sorry he had arrested me. There was no charge he could lodge against me. I hadn’t been doing anything. He felt he must make me say something that could be construed as a violation of the Law. To which end he God damned me harshly, loading me with abuse and obscenity, and threatened me with his night-stick, saying, “You big — — lug, I’d like to beat the hell out of you with this club.”
I returned airy persiflage to his threats.
Other officers came to the rescue, two of them, and supplied fresh epithets. I soon found them repeating themselves, however, and told them so. “I had to come all the way to Paterson to put one over on a cop !” I said. Eureka! They had at last found a crime! When I was arraigned in the Recorder’s Court that remark of mine was the charge against me!
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 16, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – Patrick Quinlan Found Guilty of Inciting to Riot
From The Paterson Evening News of May 15, 1913:
I. W. W. Leader is Confident That Upper Court Will Reverse Finding of Local Jury-He Is First I. W. W. Leader in the County of Importance to be Convicted on Inciting to Riot Charge-Will be Prepared to Give Bail Tomorrow After Judge Klenert Passes Sentence Which Ensure His Liberty Pending Decision on the Appeal.
—–
“Guilty as charged in the indictment,” was the verdict rendered by the jury that sat in the second trial of Patrick Quinlan, the I. W. W. leader. The case closed at at 3:15 yesterday afternoon, when Judge Klenert had finished his charge to the jury, and at 5:10 o’clock the talesmen filed out of the ante-room and announced the result of their short deliberation to Deputy County Clerk Mort Tower, who was waiting to receive the verdict.
At 5:15 the News extra was on the streets giving the first information of the verdict.
Quinlan was not present when the verdict was announced by foreman James Space, but the court room was nearly filled with faithful followers and strikers who anxiously awaited the fate of their leader……
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 15, 1913 New York, New York – Detachment of Paterson Children Arrive in City
From the Paterson Evening News of May 13, 1913:
WILL CARE FOR MORE CHILDREN ———-
“New Yorkers are anxious to take care of your children until the strike is over, and help you win your battle,” said Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a recent address at Helvetia hall. This seems to be true if the following dispatch from New York is to be believed:
New York, May 13 [Tuesday].-Seven or eight hundred men and women pushed and shoved and almost came to blows on Saturday [May 10] for the possession of sixty-five frightened little boys and girls. They were the third detachment of children of the striking Paterson silk weavers sent here to be farmed out to board among strike sympathizer, and the men and women who almost mobbed them were fighting for one of them to care for.
Industrial Workers of the World followers, their friends and few curious people began to gather early yesterday afternoon at the Labor Temple. They came because the Paterson strike committee had sent out 250 postcards asking volunteers to board and lodge 150 children, who would be allotted to their temporary guardians at five o’clock. Twice before in the last ten days this appeal had been sent out, and already 175 children have found homes in New York. A special committee, of which F. Sumner Boyd is chairman, and Mrs. Anna M. Sloan director, has had charge of the distribution.
When children arrived by auto truck from Paterson at 5.30 o’clock there were only sixty-five of them. They ranged in age from four to fourteen years, and when Miss Jessie Ashley and Miss Ethel Byrne, Paterson nurse, the others who had brought here had seated them in rows at Labor Temple hall and announced that only sixty-five, instead of 150, would be assigned, trouble began…
[Mr. Boyd declared:]
We shall probably bring 100 or more over the middle of the week, and we already have more than twice as many applications for the children as we have children to be cared for. We will bring them all, though.
Like the 175 children that have already been brought here, those who came yesterday were all found on examination by physicians in Paterson to be below normal from malnutrition.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 3, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – Bill Haywood on the General Strike of Silk Workers, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1913:
The Rip in the Silk Industry
By William D. Haywood ———-
[Part II of II]
The Red Badge of Toil
In this connection it is worth while to relate an incident-one of the most dramatic of the strike. The Paterson bosses lost no time in injecting the “patriotic” issue after the fashion of Lawrence, Little Falls and Akron. The red flag, they howled, stood for blood, murder and anarchy-the Star Spangled Banner must be upheld, etc., etc. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was on the platform at a big strike meeting one day explaining the significance of the red flag when a striking dyer sprang up from the middle of the audience crying:
“I know ! Here is the red flag!”
And aloft he held his right hand-stained a permanent bloody crimson, gnarled from years of toil, and corroded by the scarlet dye which it was his business to put into the fabrics worn by the dainty lady of the capitalist class as well as by the fawning prostitute.
For an instant there was silence and then the hall was rent by cries from the husky throats as all realized this humble dyer indeed knew the meaning of the red badge of his class.
Ribbon weaving is largely done by men and women. In this department the bosses have developed a speeding up system with reductions in pay, overlooking no opportunity to introduce improved machinery. Thus they increase production, at the same time they lowered the pay, until the workers are now demanding a scale which 19 years ago was imposed upon them! That is, the weavers now ask a wage that prevailed two decades ago.
The significance of this demand makes it plain that in the evolution of industry and the introduction of new machinery the workers have obtained no benefit, while the bosses have reaped ever increasing profits.
Many children are employes in the silk industry, most of them being between the ages of 14 and 16. However there are few violations of the child labor law, not because. the manufacturers care anything about either the law or the children, but because the making of high grade silk requires the careful and efficient work that only adults can give. However the Paterson capitalists have begun to set up plants in the southern states as well as in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, installing there new style looms which can be operated by girls and children.
Meeting For Children
One of the best and most enthusiastic meetings held during the strike was that for the benefit of the children of the mills. They packed Turner Hall and listened eagerly and with appreciation as speakers outlined to them the development in the manufacture of silk from the cocoon to the completed fabric lying on the shelves of the rich department store.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 2, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – Bill Haywood on the General Strike of Silk Workers, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of May 1913:
The Rip in the Silk Industry
By William D. Haywood ———-
[Part I of II]
WHEN the broad silk weavers in Henry Doherty’s mill in Paterson, N. ]., left their machines last February they inaugurated what has proved to be the closest approach to a general strike that has yet taken place in an American industry.
They revolted against the 3 and 4 loom system which until recently has been confined to the state of Pennsylvania. This system is restricted to the lower grades of silk, messaline and taffeta.
There are almost 300 silk mills in Paterson. Doherty was the first manufacturer to introduce this system there and later it was carried into 26 other mills. The silk workers soon realized that unless this scheme for exploiting them still further was checked, it would in time pervade the entire industry in the Jersey city.
The silk workers of Paterson are the most skilled in the United States and the employers thought that if there was anywhere in the country where this system could be successfully adopted it was in Paterson. They thought that their workers would stand for it. The workers themselves were not consulted, as the manufacturers afterward realized to their sorrow, when a general strike was called embracing the industry in all its branches and extending to all states where silk is manufactured.
At present no less than 50,000 silk workers are on strike in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, including those in the preparatory processes, the “throwster” mills, dye houses, broad silk making in all grades, as well as in nearly all the ribbon mills.
In many respects this strike is hardly less significant than that at Lawrence. It involves nearly as many workers and the conditions are just as bad. But the Paterson revolt has attracted less public attention than did the woolen fight. This is due to several reasons.
In the first place, the manufacturers, through their control of outside newspapers, were able to bring about a general conspiracy of silence. The New York papers, for example, after the first few days in which they gave prominence to the strike, were warned through subtle sources that unless there was less publicity they would be made to suffer through loss of support and advertising. Then the Paterson strikers were fortunate in having among them several trained veterans in the labor movement, such as Adolph Lessig, Ewald Koettgen, and Louis Magnet, who had been members of the I. W. W. since 1906, and knew what to do towards putting the strike on an organized basis. For a time they were able to take care of themselves without relying much on outside help. Besides, the authorities kept their hands off for a time, after their first fright in which they threw Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca and later Patrick Quinlan and Alex Scott, the Socialist editor, into jail. These organizers got on the job instantly and have done excellent work.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 19, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – General Strike Committee to Establish Relief Station
From The Paterson Evening News of March 18, 1913:
Realizing that the ultimatum of the manufacturers and their decision not to confer with the strikers in any way, means either a defeat for the present strike movement or a long fight, the General Strike Committee of the Textile Workers of Paterson has decided to begin at once raising funds for the purpose of caring for the needy workers and their families in order that those now on strike may be able to live until the manufacturers awake to a realization of the fact that the mills are going to remain closed until the strikers get some recognition of their demands.
The following circular is being mailed broadcast to labor organizations throughout the country and it is expected that by the beginning of the week funds will commence flowing in.
———-
“AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN JURY TO ALL.”
SILK STRIKERS STRIKE AND RELIEF FUND.
HEADQUARTERS, TURN HALL, PATERSON, N. J.
TO ALL WAGE EARNERS AND FRIENDS OF LABOR:
Over 25,000 silk workers in Paterson are out on strike today for better conditions and a living wage. We are struggling against the manufacturers in a fight for living conditions. Our fight that we must win if we are to be able to live and to provide for our wives and children.
The Manufacturers’ Association of Paterson is a wealthy organisation, stacked by wealthy interests. It is a fight of the workers against the bosses and against unlivable conditions.
We have no one to appeal to for help except our brother workers, and those outside interests who believe in fair play for the workingman and we now make that appeal,
Every dollar that is raised will feed some hungry mouth and strengthen some willing worker to keep up the fight against unfair conditions.
To all workingmen and to all lovers of the square deal we make this appeal. The time to answer it is NOW. We need your help, WILL YOU GIVE IT.
SIGNED, RELIEF COMMITTEE.
GENERAL STRIKE COMMITTEE TEXTILE WORKERS OF PATERSON, N. J.
———-
In addition to this a subscription will be taken locally and food and money will be gratefully received, donations may be made outright or subscriptions made to pay any desired amount a week during the progress of the strike.
The News will acknowledge receipt of all monies sent in and also other donations.
The General Relief Committee is headed by Frederick Jenny as chairman, and they have established permanent headquarters in Turn hall.
The announcement is made that the strikers expect to be able to take care of all those who are in immediate need.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 18, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – Silk Strikers Will Not Scab Under The Flag
From the Paterson Evening News of March 17, 1913:
The patriotic demonstration of the manufacturers of Paterson [for their self-declared “Flag Day”] proved rather disappointing in its result this morning, for when the whistles blew at all of the mills represented in the manufacturers’ association, the expected rush of workers to get back to their loom did not occur.
Saturday afternoon, a huge flag was stretched across Market street, near Paterson, with the legend under it: “We Live Under This Flag, We Work Under This Flag and We Will Defend This Flag.”
The Socialist retorted by stretching a flag to the wind in front of their headquarters bearing the words: “We Won’t Scab Under This Flag.” and the I.W. W. distributed a number of small buttonhole flags to the workers bearing the same words and instructed the pickets at the mill to show the flag to any of the workers who wanted to go back.
[…..]
Display of American Flag Not Very General.
While nearly all the mills hung out the American flag, the appeal to patriotism did not meet with very much success, as far as the strikers returning to work was concerned. The request that merchants display the National colors, disclosed the fact that only two American flags were hung to the breeze along Market street. At the Socialist headquarters on Main street an American flag has been hung and beneath a sign bearing this inscription was hung: “Dont Scab Under This Flag.” This is the slogan that has been adopted by the strikers in answer to the call of the manufacturers.
[…..]
Efforts of Strikers to Prevent Break In Strike is Successful.
Many who have been following the strike carefully believed that a break would occur this morning in many of the mills of all those out on strike. A committee meeting of the ribbon weavers held in Helvetia Hall, yesterday afternoon, indicated the fact that this branch of the industry are standing more firm than ever before. Practically every delegate who was present stated that the strikers had expressed the sentiment that unless the manufacturers granted them some demands they would not return to work. This is practically the same feeling that exists among the greater majority of the broad silk weaver and dyers. They are all determined to remain firm in their stand and will not return to work until the manufacturers have made some counter compromise.
[…..]
Haywood Arrives at Turn Hall.
[As Miss Flynn was addressing the strikers, meeting] Haywood arrived from New York city. He was met at the depot by Organizer Koettgen. There was no police escort this time to take him to police headquarters, so he continue to Turn Hall without interference. He listened attentively to Miss Flyn who continued her remarks […..and] followed with an address…which was well received and which will be printed in The News tomorrow.
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