Tag: Rabbi Stephen Wise

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: Citizen’s Mass Meeting Stands for Factory Fire Prevention after Triangle Disaster

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

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 9, 1911
Mass Meeting at Metropolitan Opera House Stands for Fire Prevention

From The Survey of April 8, 1911:

The Survey Social Charitable Civic, Apr 8, 1911

THE COMMON WELFARE

PREVENTION OF FACTORY FIRES

Prevention was the keynote of the whole week in discussion of the Triangle factory fire in New York and in other industrial cities which have begun to take stock of their risks. There were many meetings, chief of which was the citizens’ mass meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, reported on succeeding pages, which resulted in the appointment of a committee of five made up of Eugene A. Philbin, chairman; Mary A. Dreier, Edward T. Devine, William Jay Schieffelin, Lillian D. Wald, and Peter Brady. The New York American has organized a committee on prevention of which Ernest Flagg, an eminent architect, is chairman and the other members are Fire Chief Croker, P. Tecumseh Sherman, formerly state commissioner of labor, and William Archer, a builder.

A conference under call of R. Fulton Cutting, president of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, appointed a committee consisting of Mr. Cutting, Franklin B. Kirkbride, Leopold Plaut, Homer Folks and John A. Kingsbury which, in conjunction with the mass meeting committee, is organizing a permanent body on fire prevention.

On Wednesday (after this issue had gone to press) public burial was given the eight unclaimed bodies and the workers of the city planned an enormous silent parade in their honor.

One of the events of the week was the opening of the Triangle Waist Company in another building. A violation of the law was immediately filed against it for installing a row of sewing machines in front of the exit to the fire-escapes. The proprietor asked the Ladies ‘ Shirtwaist Union to organize his shop, but no action was taken.

Real Triangle by Sloan re Fire, Survey p81, Apr 8, 1911 Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: Citizen’s Mass Meeting Stands for Factory Fire Prevention after Triangle Disaster” →

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

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 4, 1911
New York, New York – Rose Schneiderman Speaks at Metropolitan Opera House

From The New York Times of April 3, 1911:

MASS MEETING CALLS FOR NEW FIRE LAWS
———-
Metropolitan Opera House Gathering Decides to
Name a Standing Committee on Protection.
———-

WORKERS NOT IN ACCORD
———-
Woman Union Leader Says They Have Lost Faith
In the Public and Must Rely on Themselves.
———-

Triangle Fire, Compliance Fire Escape by B Robinson, NY Tb p1, Mar 28, 1911

More people went to the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday to participate in the council on the Asch Building fire disaster than could find seats in the grand tier, where the boxes were reserved, or in the orchestra and galleries, where they were open to all. Those in the grand tier came in automobiles, and were admitted at a special side entrance opened thirty minutes before the other doors. Those in the orchestra floor for the main part were from the upper west side, while the east siders overflowed one gallery after another until they had packed the house.

The meeting, which lasted from 3 o’clock until 5:20, proved to be more cosmopolitan than harmonious. The men in the upper galleries, instead of applauding the programme brought forward by the leaders to obtain better fire protection laws, reserved their loudest cheers for those who dissented from the programme, on the ground that citizens’ committees were incapable of doing any real good and had always proved a failure.

The outcome of the meeting was the adoption of resolutions by a partial vote calling for the creation of a permanent committee to advocate new legislation and see that there is no official neglect to enforce such laws as now exist.

The dissenters from this programme held that there would be no improvement for the working classes until in class solidarity they demanded it at the polls and through committees of their own. They advocated the organization of working people into Assembly district committees and the giving of fire inspectorship privileges to labor union officials.

The Speakers Interrupted.

Rose Schneiderman,ed, LOC, see Chg Un Lbr Adv p26, Jan 1909

Every little while from the topmost gallery shouts from Socialists interrupted the speakers, and once the meeting got away from the Chairman’s control while those upstairs cheered for the interrupters and those below attempted to hiss them down. There was one moment when feeling grew tense to a snapping point, and the audience was held too closely by the speaker’s words to interrupt or applaud as the girl who had been speaking went back up the stage to her seat.

Rose Schneiderman, who led the workers out of the Triangle factory in their strike two years ago and bailed them out after being arrested, found words difficult when she tried to speak. She stood silent for a moment, and then began to speak hardly above a whisper. But the silence was such that everywhere they carried clearly……

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Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

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:

NYC Uprising Greatest Girls Strike, LW p7, Jan 22, 1910—–

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: The Nation: Mary Heaton Vorse on Civil Liberty, Steel Strikers and Pennsylvania Cossacks

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 18, 1919
Pennsylvania Cossacks, Steel Strikers, and Civil Liberty

From The Nation of November 15, 1919:

Civil Liberty in the Steel Strike

By MARY HEATON VORSE

GSS, PA Cossacks in Clairton, Lt Dg p10, Oct 4, 1919

THE steel strike has been marked by the orderliness of the strikers on the one hand, and on the other by the sweeping denial of their civil rights, and by the brutality of that extraordinary body of men, the State Constabulary of Pennsylvania. When one states that in Homestead, for example, there was a reign of terror, that men were beaten for no cause and chased down the street into strange houses; that men and women were arrested and fined for no cause and their fines remitted under promise that they would go back to work; and that posters fomenting race hatred are even now in current circulation in the steel mills, the statements sound fantastic. Let the documents, however, speak for themselves. One may choose almost at random from a wealth of material. The cases cited are not isolated; town after town had its own story of terrorism to tell.

In spite of Judge Gary’s statement to the contrary, men were persecuted and dismissed for union activities.

Not only were such methods used to discourage the men from organizing, but the rights of free speech and free assembly were denied them. No meetings were allowed in Farrell, Monessen, and Donora. In McKeesport people were arrested while attending a meeting and fined excessively. Rabbi Wise was refused a permit to hold a meeting in Duquesne, the burgess of this town remarking with naive truth: “Jesus Christ couldn’t hold a meeting in Duquesne.” Since September 22 [the date the Steel Strike began] no meetings have been allowed in Pittsburgh except at the Labor Temple. The strike in that city is unpopular with the authorities. Because the sheriff does not like Mr. Foster, he arbitrarily takes away the workers’ civil liberties, though at no time has there been even a suggestion of disorder in Pittsburgh.

Before the strike was actually in progress, the State Constabulary was called in and an extra police force of 5,000 was deputized in Allegheny County alone. Among these deputies were Negro strike breakers—in the towns of Donora and Monessen—and this during a time when an epidemic of race riots had swept the country.

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