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:
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 29, 1910
Spokane Fellow Workers Learn of Birth of Baby Boy to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
From the Spokane Spokesman Review of May 28, 1910:
GURLEY FLYNN IS MOTHER
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I. W. W.’S EX-LEADER ENDS WARFARE TO CARE FOR SON.
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Youngster Will Be Named Frederic Vincent Jones,
According to Letter.
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The birth of a son to Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Jones, leader of the recent street speaking fight in this city, is announced in a letter received by Mrs. Fred Heslewood, of E703 Providence avenue. Mrs. Jones is with her mother in New York, engaged in the preparation of a book called “Women in the Industrial World.”The boy has been named Frederic Vincent Jones, it is said. It was born May 19.
Mr. Jones, better known by her maiden name, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, was the leader of the street speakers in their fight against the authorities last winter. She was arrested on a charge of criminal conspiracy, found guilty by a jury in a justice court, and acquitted on appeal to the superior court. She spent one night in the county jail and made charges of misconduct against the jailers that were taken up later by members of the Woman’s club. She left for New York before the final adjustment of the street speaking difficulties. Her husband’s home is in Missoula, Mont.
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[Photograph added is from Spokesman Review of July 9, 1909.]
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 16, 1920
New York, New York – Socialists Nominate Convict 9653 for President
From the Washington Herald of May 14, 1920:
CONVICT 2253 MADE NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT
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Socialist Convention Delegates in Tears
at Mention Of Eugene V. Debs.
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CHEER SOVIET RUSSIA
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Stedman, Chicago Lawyer, Running Mate
on “Conservation Platform.”
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New York, May 13.-Eugene Victor Debs, convict 2253 [9653] in Federal Prison at Atlanta, where he is serving a ten-year sentence for violation of the espionage act, today was nominated as candidate for President of the United States by the Socialist party convention. Seymour Stedman, of Chicago, attorney and close friend of Debs, was chosen as candidate for Vice President.
Radicals in the convention experienced their second defeat at the hands of the conservatives when an attempt to substitute the left wing platform, declaring for a soviet form of government in the United States, was defeated by a vote of 74 to 55.
Swept by an emotion which brought tears to their eyes, the delegates sprang to their feet at the first mention of the name of Debs, whose nomination was proposed by Edward Henry, of Indiana. For thirty minutes delegates and visitors shouted and gesticulated, sang [the “Internationale”] and cheered…..
[Emphasis added.]
Note: The Herald is using “Convict 2253,” the number given to Debs at Moundsville Prison. When Debs was transferred to Atlanta in June of 1919, he became “Convict 9653.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
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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.
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:
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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.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 17, 1910
New York, New York – Shirtwaist Makers: “On Strike Against God”
From The Public of January 14, 1910:
The Girls’ Strike in New York Winning Out.
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More than 30,000 of the shirtwaist makers on strike in New York [see The Public of January 7] were reported on the 7th to have won their fight. Two hundred and seventy-one manufacturers had at that time signed the agreement with the union, granting all the demands of the girls. There were still about 6,000 girls out.
+
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One of the men strikers who recently appeared in the Children’s court against a strike-breaker, was asked by Magistrate Olmstead if he were working. “Not now,” replied the striker, “we are on strike.” “No,” said Magistrate Olmstead. “I know you are not working and are on strike. You are on strike against God and nature, whose prime law is that man shall earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. You are on strike against God.” Thereupon Elizabeth Dutcher of the Women’s Trade Union League sent the following cablegram to George Bernard Shaw:
Shaw, 10 Adelphi Terrace, London.
Magistrate tells shirtwaist maker here he is on strike against God, whose prime law is man should earn bread in sweat of brow. Please characterize. Reply. Charges paid.
The following reply was promptly received:
Women’s Trade Union League, New York.
Delightful, medieval America always in the intimate personal confidence of the Almighty.
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
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By Rose Strunsky.
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[Part II of II.]
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.
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