Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I

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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 25, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on the Scene with Striking Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part I of III]

New York Garment Worker, Cmg Ntn p2, Jan 25, 1913

GRANDMOTHER! what are you doing here?” I asked of an old, old Italian woman who came up panting to the fourth floor of Clinton Hall. She turned around, looked me over with her black, penetrating eyes, which in spite of her age had not lost their luster and said:

“Me striker. Who you are?” I showed her my speaker’s card issued by the joint committee of the Socialist party and the United Hebrew Trades and she nodded her head in approval. I told her I was anxious to hear the story of the strike from the lips of the workers themselves.

“Me no speak much English,” she replied, “but me tella you just what me feel.” 

She pulled up her gray, worn shawl which had slid down from her bent shoulders, smoothed her snow-white hair and slowly in broken English told me her tale of woe and suffering.

As she talked on I observed her closely and wondered what had kept up the fire and activity in that aged body, perhaps her very sorrow and unbelievable struggle for existence, for the revelations made by these aged lips sent a chill through me, filled my heart with horror. I knew that her case was not singular, that her condition was characteristic of the condition of all of her sisters in the trade and they constitute 60 per cent of the entire number of 15,000 women workers in men’s and children’s clothing industry.

She told me of twenty long years spent in the clothing workshops where the air is constantly surcharged with the foulest odors and laden with disease germs, she complained of the lack of sunlight of which she had so much in her own land. Here she had to spend her days working by artificial light. She complained of the long hours when work was plentiful, of the dread of slack time, of the small wages at best. 

A bread winner for her own children in her younger days, when she first came to this country, she was now supporting two grand-children whose mother fell a victim to the ravages of consumption. Consumption invaded the old Italian woman’s family, as it had invaded the families of most of the clothing workers, carrying them off in the prime of life. The old woman was exceptionally strong, and she and the two small children she was supporting were the only survivors of the whole family.

These children, who are the apple of her eye, she keeps in a two-room flat of a rear eight-story tenement house located on East Houston street, the district where most of the clothing workers lived in order to be near their workshops, and where the population is recorded to be 1,108 to every acre. She pays $8 a month for rent and keeps two boarders to help pay it.

Strike for Love of Grandchildren

This woman who lacks only five years to the allotted three score and ten must finish 20 pair of pants, that is, sew on the lining, serge the seams, finish up the legs, sew on buttons and tack the buttonholes in order to make a dollar a day; $6 a week is the highest she ever makes in season. The season in the clothing industry lasts from March to June and from September to December. The old woman is no exception, to the rule, $6 per week, in fact, is above the average, many make less and very few more. They have no regular hours, but work as long as there is work, sometimes twelve, and fourteen hours a day.

It was not herself that the old Italian woman considered so much, as her poor orphan grand-children who had to take up the trade where she would leave it off.

“Why me strike you ask?” all the venom of the years of sorrow and wretchedness, all the bitter memory of her sacrificed children, cried out in her voice of defiance. 

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: Anna Rudnitzky of the Chicago Garment Makers’ Strike of 1910

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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 21, 1912
Photograph of Anna Rudnitzky of the 1910 Chicago Garment Makers’ Strike

From The Progressive Woman of November 1912:

Anna Rudnitzky of Chicago Garment Strike of 1910, Prg Wmn p5, Nov 1912

From Life and Labor of April 1912:

Life and Labor p99, Apr 1912

 Time Is Passing

[by Anna Rudnitzky]

Anna Rudnitzky of Chicago, Prg Wmn p5, Nov 1912
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?

“Life and Labor” is great!

ANNA RUDNITZKY

[Emphasis added.] 

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Hellraisers Journal: From Forverts: The Entire Jewish Neighborhood Is In Grief; “Mothers and Relatives Sob and Keen”

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Quote Forverts, The Kiss, JDF, Mar 26, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 27, 1911
New York City – Mothers Sob and Keen for Blocks Around Site of Tragic Fire

From Forverts of March 26, 1911
 -“The Entire Jewish Quarter Is In Grief”

Triangle Fire, Grief, JDF Msthd, HdLn p1, Mar 26, 1911

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