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

Share

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.

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

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

Share

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.

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

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

Share

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.

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

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Chicago Garment Workers Strike by Robert Dvorak, Part II

Share

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

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 3, 1910
Chicago, Illinois – Report on Strike of 41,000 Garment Workers, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:

Chg Garment Workers Strike, by Dvorak, Alberta Anna, ISR p353, Dec 1910

[Part II.]

Not satisfied with cutting the rates and wages of the tailors, the firm instituted a system whereby the employes were charged from five to fifteen dollars for the least damage done to a garment. Lost spools, bobbins and other implements were charged up to the workers and taken out of their wages.

During the slack months, the piece workers were forced to report for work. They sat around in the shops, work or no work, earning no money, but stifling in the close, dust laden atmosphere of the fabric smelling shops.

When the pre-season months, those that constitute the busy time in the clothing industry, arrived, things changed as if by magic. Every employe was driven at top speed. Girls who had worked late into the night at home, threading needles or doing other work in order to make more money and sidestep the ten-hour law, came down to work next morning almost ill. None, however, were ever allowed to go home when sick.

Girls who asked permission to go home when sick were given some powders—good for every ailment from an earache to a sick stomach. If these powders failed to cure and the girl fainted, as happened several times each day, a doctor was summoned. But never, under any circumstances, was a girl or boy given permission to go home when sick, at least not until more substantial evidence than a sickly appearance or a mere statement was given.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Chicago Garment Workers Strike by Robert Dvorak, Part II”

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Chicago Garment Workers Strike by Robert Dvorak, Part I

Share

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

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 2, 1910
Chicago, Illinois – Report on Strike of 41,000 Garment Workers, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of December 1910: 

Chg Garment Workers Strike, by Dvorak, Alberta Anna, ISR p353, Dec 1910

[Part I.]

PERSONS who look upon the present Garment Workers’ strike in Chicago as a pure and simple labor battles are securing only an outward glimpse of the situation.

The strike itself, truly enough, was brought on by a revolt of the poor under paid girls and boys, men and women. It was a simultaneous upheaval of over 41,000 garment workers brought on by sixteen girls against petty persecution, low wages, abuse and long hours, an upheaval, unorganized at the start, which later took on the form of a fight for recognition of the union.

Behind the scenes, however, shut off from the public view, there is a mortal combat of big and small interests going on. A combat that is likely to settle, once for all, a battle of many years’ standing.

Like every other trustified industry, the production of clothing was at first limited to a number of independent manufacturers. These concerns unhampered by much competition grew to giant proportions.

Chicago, however, grew as rapidly as did the concerns. The city was soon divided into neighborhoods of various nationalities. Among these nationalities there were many venturesome persons who went into the tailoring business and made it a point to appeal to people of their own tongue.

Thus it was that gradually the business of the big concerns began to decrease. The more the city grew in population the more small tailor shops sprang up until they were growing, it seemed, over night, like mushrooms.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Chicago Garment Workers Strike by Robert Dvorak, Part I”