Tag: New York NY

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1901, Part II: Found Described as “Servant Girls’ Friend” -Has Plans for Organization

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, re Servant Girls Organizing, Kvl TN Sntl p5, May 23, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 10, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1901, Part II
Found Described as “Servant Girls’ Friend,” Plans to Organize

From Montana’s Great Falls Daily Tribune of June 10, 1901:

Mother Jones to Orgz Servants Girls, Grt Fls Tb MT p1, June 10, 1901

From the Great Falls Daily Tribune of June 11, 1901:

MOTHER JONES’ PLAN.

A dispatch in yesterday’s Tribune told us that “Mother” Jones was meeting with success in her efforts to organize the servants girls of New York into unions. Also that the movement was likely to spread all over the country.

It has been quite a common belief that the girls had things about their own way as it is, but the “Mother” Jones insists that it is a mistake, and she wants to improve their condition. Here are some of the changes she wants made:

Ten hours a day work and no more. An increase of the wages according to the size of the house and the work required. No one shall work for less than $3 per week. Cooks shall not act as ladies’ maids or take care of babies. Nurse girls shall not be required to act as cooks. It shall not be necessary to stay in at nights while the mistress goes out. If more than ten hours work shall be required a double shift must be employed. An amusement room shall be furnished so that the girls shall not be compelled to sit in the kitchen. Visitors shall be allowed to call on them any night they are off duty. Wages shall be paid every week.

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1901, Part II: Found Described as “Servant Girls’ Friend” -Has Plans for Organization” →

Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: How the National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR May 14, 1915—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 8, 1911
The National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women and Children

From The Coming Nation of June 3, 1911:

How Women Help Women

By Grace Potter

[Part I of II.]

Child Labor, Flower Makers, Cmg Ntn p10, June 3, 1911

Child Labor, T, Cmg Ntn p10, June 3, 1911

HE National Consumers’ League believes that the six million wage-working women in the United States are in many ways earning their bread under greater difficulties than the men wage slaves endure.

The shirt waist strike two years ago and the present strike of the box makers in New York illustrate one of the handicaps women suffer. Whatever move they made in the progress of their battle, the shirt-waist strikers were hauled into police court. They were often treated brutally by policemen, they were thrust into cells, they were fined, they were imprisoned. They suffered as no men strikers ever have in New York. The police were not deterred from unjust action against these young women by the thought of the way they might vote at the next election, because women have no vote.

Woman’s inferior physical strength, her maternal cares, her need to give attention to her home the while she is a wage earner, all are handicaps, too.

The National Consumers’ League is trying to make conditions better for working women because she is so handicapped. Incidentally they are making conditions better for men in many places.

It was over twenty years ago that the Consumers’ League was started in New York City. It has spread to many states and many countries since then and it is still spreading. It has two definite aims:

1. To abolish the sweating system.
2. To extend among all mercantile establishments commendable conditions.

These are the means taken to accomplish such ends:

1. The Consumers’ League Label.
2. The White List of Fair Houses.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: How the National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: The New York Age: “Oklahoma Whites Attempt To Destroy Entire Negro Section” -the Tulsa Massacre

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919—————-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 5, 1921
Tulsa, Oklahoma – Whites Burn Greenwood Section, Massacre Citizens

From The New York Age of June 4, 1921:

Tulsa Massacre BNR HdLn, NY Age p1, June 4, 1921——Tulsa Massacre re Negro Section, NY Age p1, June 4, 1921—–Tulsa Massacre Extra 75 Dead, NY Age p1, June 4, 1921

Tulsa, Okla, Wednesday, June1.-Governor Robertson, in a message received here at noon proclaimed all of Tulsa county under martial law, as a result of rioting which is reported to have caused the deaths of a least seventy-five persons, mostly Negroes, and the wounding of many more.

Nearly ten square blocks of the Negro section of the city, where an armed battled has been in progress since last night, in in flames……

Detachments of guardsmen, armed with machine guns, were scattered throughout the city. Guards surrounded the armory while others assisted in rounding up Negroes and segregating them in the jail. Convention Hall, Baseball Park and other places which had been turned into prison camps….. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The New York Age: “Oklahoma Whites Attempt To Destroy Entire Negro Section” -the Tulsa Massacre” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Worker: “Women in Industry Should Organize” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF Organize Women, IW p4, June 1, 1911———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 3, 1911
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Organize Women in Strong Industrial Unions

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 1, 1911:

WOMEN IN INDUSTRY SHOULD ORGANIZE
———-

BY ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN

EGF, ISR p606, Apr 1911

From the viewpoint of a revolutionary socialist there is certainly much to criticize in the present labor organizations. They have their shortcomings, of so pronounced a character that many thoughtful but pessimistic workers despair of practical benefit from assisting or considering them further. Yet unionism remains a vital and a burning question to the toilers, both men and women.

[…..]

Little need be said of he seven million wage-earning women. That unionism is their one great weapon, hardly admits of argument. Even more than their brother toilers do these underpaid and overworked women need co-operative effort on their own behalf. Yet many of their experiences with the old unions have been neither pleasant nor encouraging. Strike after strike of cloak makers, shirt waist makers, dressmakers, etc on the East Side of New York has been exploited by rich faddists for woman’s suffrage, etc., until the points at issue were lost sight of in the blare of automobile horns attendant on their coming and going. A band of earnest, struggling workers made the tail of a suffrage kite in the hands of women of the very class driving the girls to lives of misery or shame, women who could have financed the strike to a truly successful conclusion were they seriously disposed, is indeed a deplorable sight. But the final settlement of the many widely advertised strikers left much to be desired.

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Hellraisers Journal: “The General Strike” by William D. Haywood -from Speech at New York City, March 1911, Part II

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Quote Make Cp Suffer Pocket Book, GS by BBh, ISR p681, May 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 18, 1911
“The General Strike” -from Speech by Big Bill Haywood, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

HdLn General Strike GS by BBH, ISR p680, May 1911

[Part II of II]

BBH, ISR p68, Aug 1910And in Wales it was my good fortune to be there, not to theorize but to take part in the general strike among the coal miners. Previous to my coming, or in previous strikes, the Welsh miners had been in the habit of quitting work, carrying out their tools, permitting the mine managers to run the pumps, allowing the engine winders to remain at work, carrying food down to the horses, keeping the mines in good shape, while the miners themselves were marching from place to place singing their oldtime songs, gathering on the meeting grounds of the ancient Druids and listening to the speeches of the labor leaders; starving for weeks contentedly, and on all occasions acting most peaceably; going back to work when they were compelled to by starvation.

But this last strike was an entirely different one. It was like the shoemakers’ strike in Brooklyn. Some new methods had been injected into the strike. I had spoken there on a number of occasions previous to the strike being inaugurated, and I told them of the methods that we adopted in the west, where every man employed in and around the mine belongs to the same organization; where when we went on strike the mine closed down. They thought that that was a very excellent system. So the strike was declared. They at once notified the engine winders, who had a separate contract with the mine owners, that they would not be allowed to work. The engine winders passed a resolution saying that they would not work. The haulers took the same position. No one was allowed to approach the mines to run the machinery.

Well, the mine manager, like mine managers everywhere, taking unto himself the idea that the mines belonged to him, said, “Certainly the men won’t interfere with us. We will go up and run the machinery.” And they took along the office force. But the miners had a different notion and they said, “You can work in the office, but you can’t run this machinery. That isn’t your work. If you run that you will be scabbing; and we don’t permit you to scab-not in this section of the country, now.” They were compelled to go back to the office. There were 325 horses underground, which the manager, Llewellyn, complained about being in a starving condition. The officials of the union said, “We will hoist the horses out of the mine.” “Oh, no, we don’t want to bring them up. We will all be friends in a few days.”

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Hellraisers Journal: “The General Strike” by William D. Haywood -from Speech at New York City, March 1911, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Make Cp Suffer Pocket Book, GS by BBh, ISR p681, May 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 17, 1911
“The General Strike” -from Speech by Big Bill Haywood

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

HdLn General Strike GS by BBH, ISR p680, May 1911

[Part I of II]

BBH, ISR p68, Aug 1910Comrades and Fellow-Workers:

I came tonight to speak to you on the general strike. And this night, of all the nights in the year, is a fitting time. Forty years ago today there began the greatest general strike known in modern history, the French Commune; a strike that required the political powers of two nations to subdue, namely, France and the iron hand of a Bismarck government of Germany. That the workers would have won that strike had it not been for the copartnership of the two nations, there is to my mind no question. They would have overcome the divisions of opinions among themselves. They would have re-established the great national workshops that existed in Paris and throughout France in 1848. The world would have been on the highway toward an industrial democracy, had it not been for the murderous compact between Bismarck and the government of Versailles.

We are met tonight to consider the general strike as a weapon of the working class. I must admit to you that I am not well posted on the theories advanced by Jaures, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others who write and speak about the general strike. But I am not here to theorize, not here to talk in the abstract but to get down to the concrete subject of whether or not the general strike is an effective weapon for the working class. There are vote-getters and politicians who waste their time coming into a community where 90 per cent of the men have no vote, where the women are disfranchised 100 per cent and where the boys and girls under age of course are not enfranchised. Still they will speak to these people about the power of the ballot, and they never mention a thing about the power of the general strike.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The General Strike” by William D. Haywood -from Speech at New York City, March 1911, Part I” →

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

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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.

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

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Murder of the Shirt Waist Makers” by Louis Duchez, Part I

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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap, NY Met Opera Hse, Apr 2, Survey p84, Apr 8, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 3, 1911
Louis Duchez on Murder of Shirtwaist Makers in New York City, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

THE MURDER OF THE SHIRT WAIST MAKERS
IN NEW YORK CITY

BY LOUIS DUCHEZ

Photographs by American Press Ass’n.

[Part I of II.]

Triangle Fire, Fire Hose n Ladder, ISR p666, May 1911

TRUTH is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

As I write this story of the bold, brutal and cold-blooded murder of one hundred and twenty-five [129] girls, averaging nineteen years of age, and twenty [17] men, here in New York, I wonder if what I have seen and heard and felt is real.

It was Saturday evening, March 25. Only five minutes more and the slaves at the sewing machines would be hurrying to their “homes,” carrying their starvation wages for the week. More than 500 of them were employed by the Triangle Waist Company, the non-union concern which led the fight on the shirt waist girls more than a year ago. The slave pen was located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a “fire proof” building in the very heart of the congested section of the city.

In some corner unknown on the eighth floor highly inflammable materials caught fire. Before anyone had time to look around big tongues of flame were licking up everything in the room.

A general rush was made for the elevators and stairways. The elevators did their best, but during the few minutes in which the tragedy occurred only fifty girls were lowered.

The stairways were the principal ways of escape—and the doors leading to these stairways were locked. For it was the custom of this firm, as it is the custom in other shirtwaist factories in New York, to lock the doors after work begins in the morning and to keep them locked all day, so that the employes may be searched before going home for pieces of goods, thread or buttons, and so that they may be prevented from going out and “stealing time” during the day.

Everywhere throughout the three floors silk and cotton goods hung from racks or were piled up on tables, and the little blaze which started in the unknown corner was like a spark in a powder magazine. In ten minutes the three floors were all afire. Huge clouds of flame belched from nearly every window.

Finding the doors locked to the stairways, the girls rushed to the windows. With their hair and clothes afire, they leaped from the eighth, ninth and tenth story windows. Some were seen climbing upon the sills and deliberately plunging to the pavement. Others, it is said, were pushed out by the pressure behind. In one instance two girls came down from the ninth story in each other‘s arms. Others were seen embracing and kissing each other before making the fatal leap.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Murder of the Shirt Waist Makers” by Louis Duchez, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Outlook: “The Factory Girl’s Danger” by Miriam Finn Scott -Stories from the Triangle Fire

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Hellraisers Journal: Metropolitan Opera House: Rose Schneiderman Speaks to Public: “We Have Found You Wanting”—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 24, 1911
Stories from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

From The Outlook of April 15, 1911:

THE FACTORY GIRL’S DANGER

BY MIRIAM FINN SCOTT

On Friday evening, March 24, two young sisters walked down the stairways from the ninth floor where they were employed and joined the horde of workers that nightly surges homeward into New York’s East Side. Since eight o’clock they had been bending over shirt-waists of silk and lace, tensely guiding the valuable fabrics through their swift machines, with hundreds of power driven machines whirring madly about them; and now the two were very weary, and were filled with that despondency which comes after a day of exhausting routine, when the next day, and the next week, and the next year, hold promise of nothing better than just this same monotonous strain.

Triangle Fire, One of Hundred by TAD, NY Eve Jr Mar 26 to 28, 1911, Lbr Arts, Cornell U, Wiki
“Operators Wanted. Inquire Ninth Floor.”

They were moodily silent when they sat down to supper in the three-room tenement apartment where they boarded. At last their landlady (who told me of that evening’s talk, indelibly stamped upon her mind) inquired if they were feeling unwell.

“Oh, I wish we could quit the shop!” burst out Becky, the younger sister, aged eighteen. “That place is going to kill us some day.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for March 1901, Part II: Found at United Mine Workers’ Convention in Hazleton, Pennsylvania

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Quote Mother Jones, Fight n Keep On, Hzltn Pln Spkr p4, Nov 15, 1900———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 11, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1901, Part II
Found Arriving in Hazleton, Pa., for Mine Worker’s Convention

From the Philadelphia Times of March 13, 1901:

HdLn re UMW Hazltn Conv, Phl Tx p1, Mar 13, 1901

John Mitchell, Prz UMW, Phl Tx p1, Mar 13, 1901National Organizer Chris Evans
Makes an Impassioned Appeal to
the Delegates at Hazleton.
———-
LEGISLATION IS DISCUSSED
———-
Bills Now Pending at Harrisburg
Come Up for Debate in the
Convention and Evoke
Heated Discussion.
———-
[Mother Jones Arrives]

From a Staff Correspondent.

Hazleton, March 12.

National Organizer Chris Evans, in a speech before the convention of the miners here this afternoon, struck the keynote of the situation when he made an impassioned appeal for uniformity…..

…It is sure that a resolution will be introduced in the convention, making a demand for uniformity in the day wage scale for each of the three districts.

The convention was called to order by President Mitchell in the Grand Opera House at 10 o’clock. The house was filled, and it is believed that 700 delegates are in attendance.

In his opening address President Mitchell referred to the great growth in this region since the strike of last fall, which, he said, had proven that there is a community of interest between the anthracite and bituminous miners which makes needless the argument that they should stand together in one union.

[…..]

UMW Officers, Mt, Dilcher, etc, Phl Tx p7, Mar 13, 1901

[…..]

Mitchell Refuses a House.

President Mitchell created somewhat of a sensation this afternoon by positively refusing to accept the offer of a house which the anthracite miners have decided to give him. In a touching speech he thanked the men very kindly for their appreciation of his efforts, and strongly urged them to devote the money to erecting a monument to those members of the union who gave up their lives in the cause of unionism at Latimer in 1897……

“Mother” Jones arrived here to-night from Scranton and immediately went to MacAdoo, where she and District President Duffy and National Organizer Chris Evans addressed a big meeting. “Mother” Jones will remain here several days and will likely address the convention to-morrow.

A. H. ACORNLET.

———-

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for March 1901, Part II: Found at United Mine Workers’ Convention in Hazleton, Pennsylvania” →