Tag: Quarry Workers Journal

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Great Steel Strike: “Their Weapons and Ours” -Unity, “Almost a Miracle”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 20, 1919
Mary Heaton Vorse on Organizing Steel Workers in Youngstown

From the Pittsburg [Kansas] Workers Chronicle of December 19, 1919:

THEIR WEAPONS AND OURS.
—–

(By Mary Heaton Vorse.)

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

Not long ago a friend of mine came to Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] who wanted to know about the strike. He wanted me to tell him first of all what had impressed me most. My answer was the answer that anyone who had watched the strike must have given. What had impressed me the most was the courage of the men; what had impressed me the most was their endurance; what had impressed me most was their uncomplaining patience.

It had seemed almost a miracle to me that men of a dozen or more nationalities and half a dozen states, separated into isolated communities, should one fine day have struck altogether, 350,000 strong.

The longer I stayed and the more knew about the strike, the more in credible did the strike seem, for as I went from town to town staying a few days now in one community and now in another, I realized how little organization they had before the strike started.

Take Youngstown for instance. No one had ever organized Youngstown and everyone said that Youngstown never could be organized.

In Youngstown and East Youngstown and the nineteen small communities surrounding it where steel is made, there are about 70,000 steel workers. The first large meeting ever held of the National Committe occurred in January of this year. Between that time and September 22 there was never a larger force of organizers in this whole district than six. Six men organized Youngstown and the surrounding country. Six men and that was all.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Great Steel Strike: “Their Weapons and Ours” -Unity, “Almost a Miracle”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 2, 1919
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Steel Strikers’ Fight for Freedom Goes On

From The Quarry Workers Journal of November 1919:

CONDITIONS AMONG COAL STRIKERS
AS SEEN BY A WOMAN
—–
By Mary Heaton Vorse,
Author of “The Prestons.” Etc.
—–

[Part II.]

MHV, Author of Prestons, ed, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

Life is hard enough under ordinary conditions for the steel workers’ wives. They live in joyless towns, their men never had a chance to get really rested; there is always a new baby, and most of them remain forever strangers for they never have time or opportunity to learn English.

Lately the senators have talked about Americanization of the foreign workers. They will have to humanize the steel industry first. They will have to teach such men as Judge Gary the elementary things concerning Americanism.

In times of strike, terror and suspense are added to the lives of the women. Fear of want is their constant companion. How do they stick it out? How can they have such endurance and fortitude? In every town the men are constantly being arrested. The shadow of the constabulary is forever over the strikers.

The bosses make house to house canvasses and play upon the fears and credulity of the women, and yet you find them-like the mother of the laughing children-ready to wait two or three weeks more so that someone needier than herself would have first chance at commissary stores. Holding on in the face of sneering threats, holding on with want just around the corner, holding on with hunger waiting in ambush. Holding on in spite of the appealing hands of children plucking forever at their skirts, reminding them that it is they in the last analysis who are going to suffer.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote MHV, Women of Steel Strike ed, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 1, 1919
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – The Steel Strikers: Courageous Men, Enduring Women

From The Quarry Workers Journal of November 1919:

CONDITIONS AMONG [STEEL] STRIKERS
AS SEEN BY A WOMAN
—–
By Mary Heaton Vorse,
Author of “The Prestons.” Etc.
—–

[Part I.]

MHV, Author of Prestons, ed, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

This week the commissary stores are being opened in all the steel towns. For six weeks the strikers had nothing. They have been living on their savings; some who have had no savings, have existed from hand to mouth, picking up a chance bit of work here and there and being helped out by their friends.

The first strike relief which will have been given will be the groceries given out twice a week from the commissary stores. Not everyone can have these groceries. They are for those who are starving or on the edge of want, for it would be unthinkable at this stage of organized labor that any one should be forced to scab by hunger.

You do not need much imagination to understand what endurance it has taken on the part of the rank and file to stay out on strike for six weeks without strike benefit or relief. It is going to take even more endurance from now on, when the narrow line will have to be drawn between those actually in want and those nearly in want.

Yesterday I saw how that was being done. When a striker applies for re lief, one of the strike committee goes around to talk the matter over with the family. I went out in Pittsburgh with a Polish fellow-worker who was going out to make such visits of investigation.

We had some difficulty in finding the house where the strikers live. We went down back alleys, past refuse dumps that seemed as venerable as the dilapidated meeting house on the corner. Like everything else in this neighborhood, it was falling to pieces. The paint had scaled from its pillars, but it spoke of a former day before all the mild red brick of the houses had been defiled with the grime soot, and when the well to do, comfortable families lived a family in a house, instead of a family in a room.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1919, Part I: Found Speaking to Steel Workers in Clairton, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Quarry Workers re Mother Jones n GSS, Jr p2, Aug 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal –Thursday October 16, 1919
Mother Jones News for August 1919, Part I
Clairton, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Stands with Steel Workers

From The Quarry Workers Journal of August 1919:

Mother Jones Crpd Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919

[T]he same spirit [of liberty] that impelled men to fight for freedom in other times is not dead now. Mother Jones, gray-haired, stooped and bent under the load of her 89 years of fighting for labor, but with a soul on fire and the flash of her eyes undimmed, hearing of the outrages [against union organizers] in North Clairton, sent a wire demanding that she be billed for a speech in North Clairton on Sunday, Aug. 10. Her offer has been accepted. Thousands of mine workers, in grateful remembrance of the many sacrifices Mother Jones has made for them, insist that they too are going to be in North Clairton and if she is going to be dragged to jail by the brutal Carnegie Steel Co police with the sanction of the municipal authorities, they want to be eye-witnesses’ to the depths to which corporate hirelings can sink.

The spirt of liberty still lives! The American Federation of Labor proposes to plant its banner in every steel center in western Pennsylvania. Other national figures in the labor movement will follow Mother Jones. Wires are pouring into the office of the national committee for organizing iron and steel workers announcing the names of men who wish to enlist “for the duration of the war.” North Clairton and other autocratic boroughs will have to back up. Democracy is on the ascendency. Justice for labor is the cry that is encircling the world and wise men will heed this cry.

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1919, Part I: Found Speaking to Steel Workers in Clairton, Pennsylvania” →