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.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 3, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Textile Workers Revolt Against Pay Cut, Part II
From the InternationalSocialistReview of December 1912:
[Part II of II]
Shortly after [the October 30th] affair the strikers and the strike committee were holding a meeting in The Slovak Sokol Hall, the principal social center of the working population, when the door was thrown open with a crash and the police and hired guards burst in. Women, who composed the majority of the audience, were hurled right and left. Men who protested were struck on the head. Furniture was overturned. The musical instruments of the Slovak Band were broken and battered. One cop who happened to notice the framed charter of the local textile union of the Industrial Workers of the World, drove his club through the middle of it. It hangs in the hall now, its broken glass held together by an edging of red ribbon with a knot of red covering the hole made by the club. All the members of the strike committee and all persons suspected of being connected with the strike were arrested and dragged to the local lock-up, a place so vile that the State Prison Inspector has threatened the town with mandamus proceedings unless it is cleaned up.
Legere, however, could not be found. The building was searched for him and the police, not wishing to investigate the dark cellar, fired three shots into it at random, any one of which might have killed Legere had he not already been taken to a place of safety by a devoted band of workers. He went to Utica that night, got some needed printing done, sent off some messages, and then returned to Little Falls where he was immediately arrested and taken to the county jail at Herkimer, another place that has been condemned by the State Prison Inspector.
Bakeman, Hirsh, Bochino and George Vaughan of Schenectady, were already there, along with thirty-nine others, strikers and sympathizers. When visited later, some of them were still wearing the bloody shirts that they wore when arrested. They were joined by Miss Helen Schloss, a young Socialist woman of New York, who for several months had been a tenement investigator for a club of the well-to-do women of Little Falls. Despite warnings from her lady employers, Miss Schloss cast her lot with the strikers, gave up her position, joined the relief committee, and went out on the picket line with the workers. For this she incurred the enmity of the police and her spectacular arrest by Chief Long himself followed. She was put in Herkimer jail on a charge of “inciting to riot” and as a special honor was given the cell occupied by Chester Gillette, electrocuted for the murder of his sweetheart. She was finally released on bail and went right back to work in the relief kitchen.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 2, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Textile Workers Revolt Against Pay Cut, Part I
From the InternationalSocialistReview of December 1912:
[Part I of II]
ON October 1 of this year a law went into effect in the state of New York making it illegal for female industrial slaves to work more than 54 hours a week. Some employers immediately took advantage of the situation and paid their workers what they call “pro rata”-that is, they punished the beneficiaries of this law by reducing the contents of their pay envelopes to correspond with the reduced number of hours. Departments of industry are so closely connected nowadays that the men were affected in an equal degree with the women.
Slaves in most parts of the state seem to have received the reduction with submission, but not so the employes of the knitting mills in Little Falls. When their second pay day came around and they found their $7 envelopes short from 60 cents to $2, they did what the mill workers of Lawrence did in a similar situation-they rebelled.
On October 10more than 1,500 workers, embracing nearly all the departments in the Phoenix and Gilbert Knitting Mills and four nationalities-Polish, Slavish, Austrian and Italian-walked out and poured into the streets to the sound of “The Marseillaise.” The Americans stayed and scabbed.
The revolt was entirely spontaneous and most of the workers were uncertain what to do next, but a few of them knew. They appealed to the one organization that can handle such a situation-the I. W. W. Organizers Fillippo Bochino and Fred Hirshcame hurrying from Rochester and Schenectady respectively, and the battle was on.
The first few days were quietly spent in putting the strike on an organized basis, and then as the need for a good chairman for the strike committee became evident, Benjamin J. Legere, a fighting Socialist and graduate of the Lawrence school was sent for. Though he was just entering on a short vacation after several months of exhausting work agitating for the Ettor-Giovannitti defense, he arrived promptly. He showed the strikers how to form a mass picket line that moves in an endless chain and helped to get all the different committees in working order.
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