Tag: Margaret Robins

Hellraisers Journal: “The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II -from Life and Labor, Official Organ of WTUL

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Rose S, Triangle Fire Mourners March, Girls at Top of Buildings, NY Tb p2, Apr 6, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 6, 1911
“The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II

From Life and Labor of May 1911:

The Triangle Fire

By Martha Bensley Bruere

Well, the fire is over, the girls are dead, and as I write, the procession in honor of the unidentified dead is moving by under my windows. Now what is going to be done about it?

Triangle Fire, Mourning Procession, LnL p139, May 1911

Harris and Blanck, the Triangle Company, have offered to pay one week’s wages to the families of the dead girls-as though it were summer and they are giving them a vacation! Three days after the fire they inserted in the trade papers this notice:

NOTICE, THE TRIANGLE WAIST CO. beg to notify
their customers that they are in good working order.
HEADQUARTERS now at 9-11 University Place.

The day after they were installed in their new quarters, the Building Department of New York City discovered that 9-11 University Place was not even fireproof, and that the firm had already blocked the exit to the one fire escape by two rows of sewing machines, 75 in a row, and that at the same time repairs were begun on the old quarters in the burned building under a permit winch called for no improvements or alterations of any conditions existing before the fire. It called for repairs only, which means, it was generally conceded, that the place would be re-opened in the same condition it was in before the fire.

That is what the employers have done.

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Hellraisers Journal: Women’s Trade Union League Joins Mass March for the Unidentified Victims of the Triangle Fire

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Rose S, Triangle Fire Mourners March, Girls at Top of Buildings, NY Tb p2, Apr 6, 1911———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 8, 1911
Women March in Cold Rain for Unidentified Victims of Triangle Fire

From the New York Tribune of April 6, 1911:

Triangle Fire, March in Downpour for Unidentified Victims, NY Tb p1, Apr 6, 1911

Triangle Fire, Rose S re We Marched by Buildings, NY Tb p1, Apr 6, 1911

There was majestic silence and sullen rain. But it was a silence that spoke. Their fellow workers to the number 145 had been launched into eternity as the result of the Asch Building fire on March 25. And so [thousands] marched in murmurless protest through the principal streets of the city yesterday.

The steady downpour did not divert girls  who were without umbrellas, without hats, without overshoes and rubber coats from their determination to show public honor to fellow workers who had perished…..

If the day had been filled with sunshine the funeral procession would have been impressive. Perhaps, however, there would then have been the chance to minimize the intensity of feeling existing among the marching members of the sympathizing unions. Only a high devotion and sense of duty could be responsible for yesterday’s protest.

Low hanging clouds and fog shrouded the tops of buildings. The Metropolitan tower was invisible above its clock. There was the suggestion of smoke in the atmosphere. The streets were filled with puddles of water. Women in lamb’s wool coats, accustomed to ride in automobiles, were splashed by passing vehicles as they trudged along in the beating rain, anxious to demonstrate the sympathy felt by the Woman Suffrage party. Hundreds of thousands stood on the sidewalks, their umbrellas appropriately indicating unbroken borders of black. Policemen, mounted and afoot, wore regulation black raincoats.

There was no playing of plaintive music, no muffled drum beat. The spectacle was without ostentation, flourish or display. Banners bore the legend “We mourn our loss” in black and white. There was a solemn expression on the faces of those who marched and those who watched from office buildings, stores and private houses. Flags on public buildings were at half-mast; thousands of other structures were draped in funeral decorations.

Triangle Fire, We Mourn Our Loss, NYC Apr 5, ISR p670, May 1911

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: Fighting Garment Workers of Chicago by Robert Dvorak, Part II

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

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 4, 1911
Chicago, Illinois – Garment Workers Strike Continues, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of January 1911:

Chg Garment Workers Strike Police v Strkrs crpd, ISR Cv Jan 1911

BY ROBERT DVORAK

[Part II of II.]

The most admirable and contagious strike meetings were held in thirty-seven various halls in the city and money was pouring in from all parts of the country, with letters of encouragement and promise of further aid when another blow, again from union headquarters, once more nearly demoralized the strikers.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: Fighting Garment Workers of Chicago by Robert Dvorak, Part I

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 3, 1911
Chicago, Illinois – Garment Workers Strike Continues, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of January 1911:

Chg Garment Workers Strike by Dvorak, Title Fighting, ISR p385, Jan 1911

[Part I of II.]

MAULED by city police, assaulted and beaten by armed, hired sluggers, shot by strike breakers and now being faced with a winter full of the horrors of cold and starvation, the striking garment workers of Chicago still remain undaunted.

Not even the best efforts of the mayor, the city council, the Chicago Federation of Labor and very influential persons, such as Raymond Robins and other “Good Samaritans” can force the “ignorant strikers” to accept meaningless but well worded terms of peace from the hard pressed renegades, Hart, Schaffner and Marx.

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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: New York Call Extra: “Shirtwaist Strikers Present Facts of Great Struggle to the Public of New York City”

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 December 30, 1909
New York, New York – The Call Supports Uprising of Shirtwaist Makers

From The New York Call of December 29, 1909:

New York Call Extra Uprising Edition, p1, Dec 29, 1909

SHIRTWAIST STRIKERS PRESENT FACTS OF GREAT
STRUGGLE TO THE PUBLIC OF NEW YORK CITY

—–

WORKING GIRLS’ STRIKE RESULT OF OPPRESSION
—–
Discontent With Shop Conditions Had Been Steadily Growing
for Years-What Led Up to Present Situation-Employers
Desperate and Losing Ground Rapidly, While Strikers
Are Standing Solid, but Financial Aid Is Needed.
—–

By WILLIAM MAILLY.

When 30,000 workers in one trade, mostly girls under twenty years of age, quit work with one accord and go on a general strike almost without warning and with little preparation there must be some exceptional reason for their action.

The present strike of shirtwaist makers is an exceptional strike. Behind it is a long, bitter story of working conditions that had gradually become unbearable-a story of low wages that went lower in hard times, but never higher in good times, of long hours of day and night and Sunday labor in the busy season and idleness or semi-idleness in the dull season, of unsanitary shop conditions, with poor light, foul air and unhealthy surroundings, of the tyranny, and some times worse, of petty bosses and foreman, of a subcontracting system which relieved the manufacturer, so-called, of responsibility, but made it possible for contractors to employ labor at beggarly wages and to reap large profits-all these things had combined to make the general lot of the shirtwaist makers miserable, degrading and increasingly oppressive.

And these things prevailed because the shirtwaist makers were unorganized. They had no union. They were competing among themselves to their own undoing and the great benefit of their employers. They were helpless to resist oppression because they not act together. They were victims because they submitted being victimized.

What Led to the Revolt.

But a change had to come. Such a state of things could cannot prevail indefinitely. And when the change did come it came all the more quickly because the force that impelled it had been gaining strength for so long a time. Like a long-smoldering volcano that suddenly erupts, so the growing discontent among the shirtwaist-makers found vent in a revolt that burst forth within a few hours…..

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