Tag: International Ladies Garment Workers Union

WE NEVER FORGET: March 25, 1911, 4:40 pm: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Life So Cheap and Property So Sacred

Janet RayeWe Never Forget
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap———-

Life So Cheap; Property So Sacred
———-

From The New York Call of March 27, 1911:

The Real Triangle by John Sloan, crpd, NY Call p1, Mar 27, 1911
“The Real Triangle” by John Sloan

From the Jewish Daily Forward of January 10, 1910:

The “Triangle” company…With blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers’ movement, and with feeling will this history recall the names of the strikers of this shop-of the crusaders.

City Hall, New York City,
-December 28, 1910

Testimony before the New York State Senate and Assembly Joint Investigating Committee on Corrupt Practices and Insurance Companies Other Than Life Insurance:

Judge M. Linn Bruce, Counsel
Chief Edward F Croker, NYC Fire Department

Bruce: How high can you successfully combat a fire now?
Croker: Not over eighty-five feet.
Bruce: That would be how many stories of an ordinary building?
Croker: About seven.
Bruce: Is this a serious danger?
Croker: I think if you want to go into the so-called workshops which are along Fifth Avenue and west of Broadway and east of Sixth Avenue, twelve, fourteen or fifteen story buildings they call workshops, you will find it very interesting to see the number of people in one of these buildings with absolutely not one fire protection, with out any means of escape in case of fire.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Established at Labor Lyceum in New York City

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 6, 1900
New York, New York – Garment Workers Meet to Establish International Union

From the New York Tribune of June 4, 1900:

ILGWU Fdg Conv, NY Tb p12, June 4, 1900

An international union of cloakmakers and garment workers was formed in this city yesterday [June 3rd]. Delegates from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Newark and other cities met in convention in the Labor Lyceum, No. 64 East Fourth-st. The new organization will be known as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Officers were elected as follows: Herman Grossman, president; Marcus O. Braff [Bernard Braff], secretary. General Executive Board—Isadore Silverman, Baltimore; Samuel Salat, New York; Joseph Schwarz, Philadelphia; Adolph Schwerger [Schweiger], Philadelphia, and Jacob Leibowitz, Newark.

President Grossman said that the principal objects of the organization included agitation for the adoption of union labels on all manufactured garments and the regulation of prices when feasible. It is expected that local unions will not only be formed in cities in the United States, but also in Canada. Between forty thousand and fifty thousand garment workers, the president said, would be represented in the new National body. The convention will be continued to-day.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: Clara Lemlich and Fannie Zinsher, “Two Little Heroines”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Clara Lemlich, Cooper Un Nov 22 re Uprising, NY Call p2, Nov 23, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 3, 1910
New York, New York – Clara Lemlich and Fannie Zinsher, Heroines

From The Progressive Woman of May 1910:

TWO LITTLE HEROINES

Clara Lemlich, Fannie Zinsher, Survey p553, p551, Jan 22, 1910
From The Survey of January 22, 1910
—–

I have listened to all the speakers and I have no patience for talk. I am one who feels and suffers for the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike.—Clara Lemlich at the famous Cooper Union meeting.

The spontaneous strike of 20,000 shirt waist makers in New York City was the greatest event in the history of woman’s work. The majority of the strikers were mere girls, few of them over twenty years of age. They had no “great” leaders, but among them were individualities strong enough and great enough to hold a place in the history of our country’s industrial development. Two of these were Fannie Zinsher and Clara Lemlich. The following from The Survey [“The Spirit of the Strikers” by Mary Brown Sumner] is a sketch of the lives of these two brave little girls:

I have two pictures of Fanny Zinsher in my mind, one as she came from Russia at fourteen, fleeing from persecution to free America, with round cheeks, smiling, irresponsible lips and clear eyes full of interest and delight in living; the other after five years of American freedom, with sad sweet eyes whose sight was strained by the flashing of the needle and by study late at night, mouth drooping with a weight of sadness and responsibility and an expression of patience and endurance far beyond her twenty years.

She came a little high school girl from Kishineff to San Francisco. She did not know what work for wages was, but she and her brother four years older had to turn to and support a mother and a little brother. Three hundred power-machines in one long room of the garment factory welcomed this little human machine-in-the-making. The roar and flash of the needles terrified her. She tried to work, but her nerves went more and more to pieces, her frightened eyes failed to follow her fingers as they guided her work and the second day she slit a finger open and was laid up for three weeks. When she returned she could adapt herself no better to the nervous strain. At piece work she could earn little over one dollar a week, until a kind forewoman removed her to a smaller room where in time she rose to five dollars.

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Hellraisers Journal: “How Girls Can Strike” -William Mailly on Uprising of the 20,000 for The Progressive Woman

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Esther of NYC Uprising Beaten by Father n Brother, Prog Wmn p6, Feb 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 4, 1910
New York, New York – Girls Persist Despite Hunger, Cold and Beatings

From The Progressive Woman of February 1910:

How Girls Can Strike

BY WILLIAM MAILLY

“A whole lot has been published about what the rich women have done in this shirtwaist strike,” said a woman friend, “but I haven’t seen very much about what the girls themselves have done. Why isn’t something said about them?”

I had been going the rounds of the halls where the shop meetings of the strikers were held, collecting the proceeds from the Special Strike Edition of the Call. It was a dull, wet day, the East Side streets were slippery and dirty with a nasty mush consisting of a week-old snow mixed with the regular refuse that the rich metropolis is too poor to remove promptly from its working class districts. One did not walk through such streets; one slid, splashed and floundered and felt lucky to be able to do that without falling. And the cold rain soaked one through to the skin in short order.

Uprising Scab Scared of Girl Strikers, New York Call p4, Dec 29, 1909

I was leaving Astoria hall on East Fourth street when Gottlieb, the chairman of Casino hall, across the street, accosted me. He was accompanied by a young girl. She was thinly clad, her clothes were shabby, her shoes were torn and sodden, and her face and hands blue with cold.

“Mr. Mailly,” said Gottlieb, “look at this girl. I want to tell you about her. This is the worst case I have in our hall. It’s the worst case I’ve heard of. This girl is only sixteen years old—she has no father or mother living; she has no relatives or friends; she has only been in this country about six months; she can hardly talk English.

“Listen, Mr. Mailly.” Gottlieb was getting more excited as he went on.

This girl hasn’t had anything to eat all day—she is hungry-she must have something—and we can’t give it to her. Also she can not pay the rent of the room she lives in—she must get out if she cannot pay. We can do nothing; we have nothing.

And listen. Think of it. This girl, she got from a man a five-dollar bill for one copy of the Call in the Cafe Monopole on Second avenue today and she brought it in and gave it over to me. And she so hungry and with not a cent, and we needn’t have known she got that five dollars. Think of it! And she says she won’t scab-she doesn’t care what happens to her. But oh, Mr. Mailly, we must help her. You must give her something now. I have brought her to show you.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 26, 1910
New York, New York – How the Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike Began

From the Duluth Labor World of January 22, 1910:

NYC Uprising Greatest Girls Strike, LW p7, Jan 22, 1910—–

By ROBERTUS LOVE.

[Part II of II.]

How General Strike Began.

The general strike was not declared until Nov. 22, when at a great mass meeting in the hall of Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln made his first speech in the east, President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor delivered an address on the shirt waist workers’ situation. A Jewish girl [Clara Lemlich], representing many thousands of her nationality who work in the waist shops, advanced to the front of the platform and delivered in Yiddish an appeal to those of her race to strike immediately. More than 2,000 right hands went up in response. The sentiment for an immediate and wholesale strike spread to the Italian and American shirt waist makers, and the “walk out” of seven-eighths of those employed in that industry was the result.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

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:

NYC Uprising Greatest Girls Strike, LW p7, Jan 22, 1910—–

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: “The Strike of the Singers of the Shirt” by Rose Strunsky for International Socialist Review, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Clara Lemlich, Cooper Un Nov 22 re Uprising, NY Call p2, Nov 23, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 13, 1910
Rose Strunsky on New York City’s Shirtwaist Uprising, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of January 1910:

The Strike of the Singers of the Shirt
—–

By Rose Strunsky.
—–

[Part II of II.]

NYC Uprising, 40,000 Shirtwaist Strikers March, ISR p620, Jan 1910

The next day [November 24th, following the November 23rd mass meeting at Cooper Union], when the girls in the shops were informed of the general strike, they rose without a question, left their work and went out. Six hundred shops joined the union in a few days. The spontaneous and enthusiastic response to the call came as a great surprise to every one. None had guessed of this latent fire-neither the leaders, nor the Woman’s Trade Union League, nor the girls themselves. None knew that it was there. In forty-eight hours it reached forty thousand girls. Their demands were for the recognition of the union, a twenty per cent, increase in their wages and shorter hours—a fifty-two hour working week.

Before the strike was several hours old twenty shops settled and five hundred girls won. The next day forty-one shops settled and seven thousand girls returned to work and each day brings bosses who are willing to settle on union terms.

Morning, afternoon and evening every hall on the East Side and the large halls in the city that could be gotten, were filled with strikers and sympathizers, to discuss ways and means and to encourage each other in the struggle.

The war was on, and the chivalrous instincts in the old veterans of the class struggle came out. Besides the Socialists and the Women’s Trade Union League, the United Hebrew Workers [United Hebrew Trades] sent out committees to help these new militants; the American Federation of Labor offered Mr. Mitchell to give his aid and advice, and Solomon Shindler [Schindler], the Gompers of the East Side, has directed their forces from the very beginning.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The Strike of the Singers of the Shirt” by Rose Strunsky for International Socialist Review, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1909, Part II: Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones to Philly Shirtwaist Makers Dec 19, NY Call Dec 21, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 10, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1909, Part II:
-Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers

On Sunday evening, December 19th, Mother Jones spoke to shirtwaist makers of Philadelphia at meetings held at the Labor Lyceum and Mercantile Hall. By unanimous vote and to deafening cheers, a strike was declared and set to begin at 9 a. m. on December 20th.

From The New York Call of December 21, 1909:

[Mother Jones Speaks.]

Mother Jones, Elkhart IN Dly Rv p2, Crpd, July 19, 1909

The action of Director Clay in forbidding the holding of a meeting in the Arch Street Theater, last night, to declare the strike was severely criticised by Mother Jones, in her speeches. She denounced the city administration as roundly as she denounced the bosses, who, she declared, had become wealthy through the toil of the girls before her.

[She said:]

They have an Independence Hall down here on Chestnut street; I wonder what it means to those who, for some deep political purpose, prevented you from having independence in the way of having a meeting to assert your rights? Tomorrow morning I hope every girl in this hall will walk out of the shops and let the employers make the waists themselves. Walk out at 9 o’clock, and don’t wear your Sunday-go-to-meetings clothes.

Let the people see you. Let them see that you are going to strike the shackles of slavery off your body. Get the spirit of revolt and be a woman. It’s not a Mrs. Belmont or an Anne Morgan that we want, but independent workers who will assert their rights.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1909, Part I: Found in New York City Speaking to Shirtwaist Strikers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Parade past swells who wear waists, Speech Dec 9, NY Cl p2, Dec 10, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 9, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1909, Part I:
-Found in New York City Speaking to Shirtwaist Strikers

From the New York Call of December 10, 1909:

“This is not a play this is a fight!”

Mother Jones, Elkhart IN Dly Rv p2, Crpd, July 19, 1909

With these ringing words, Mother Jones, the valiant agitator for the freedom of the workers, struck the keynote of the enthusiastic mass meeting, in behalf of the waist strikers, held by Local New York, of the Socialist party in Thalia Theater yesterday afternoon. The big crowd applauded this sentiment to the echo……

Mother Jones Speaks.

Mother Jones, the friend of the miners and champion of all oppressed, was greeted with a very hearty reception by the big crowd. She was in excellent conditions. As she scored the system with sledge-hammer blows of logic and wit, the enthusiasm of the crowd broke into storms of applause.

[Said Mother Jones in opening:]

Through all the ages you have built a wonderful monument of civilization, but you don’t own it. You make all the fine waists, but you do not wear them. You work hard and are poorly paid, and now you have been forced to strike for better conditions of labor, shorter hours and higher wages.

You ought to parade past the shops where you work and up the avenues where the swells who wear the waists you make live. They won’t like to see you, they will be afraid of you!

If I belonged to a union and was on strike I would insist that we parade past the shops and homes of the masters.

You must stick together to win. The boss looks for cheap workers. When the child can do the work cheaper he displaces the woman. When the woman can do the work cheaper he displaces the man. But when you are organized you have something to say about the conditions of labor and your wages. You must stand shoulder to shoulder. The women must fight in the labor movement beside man. Every strike that I have ever been in was won by the women.

Last Great Fight of Man.

[Declared Mother Jones, as she concluded amid storms of applause:]

Whether you know of it or not, this is the last great fight of man against man. We are fighting for the time when there will be no master and no slave. When the fight of the workers to own the tools with which they toil is won, for the first time in human history man will be free.

———-

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1909, Part I: Found in New York City Speaking to Shirtwaist Strikers” →