Tag: The Outlook

Hellraisers Journal: Charles Moyer, President of Western Federation of Miners, Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers; House Committee to Investigate Miners’ Strikes in Michigan and Colorado

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Quote Mother Jones, Stick Together, MI Mnrs Bltn p1, Aug 14, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 1, 1914
Indianapolis, Indiana – President Moyer Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention

From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1914:

Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners gave a long speech at the Convention of the United Mine Workers now in progress in Indianapolis. In his speech, President Moyer described the ongoing violations of Constitutional Rights in both the Colorado and the Michigan strikes:

Charles Moyer, Pres WFM, Survey p433, Jan 10, 1914

…..What is being done in the state of Colorado in the miners’ strike, is being done in the state of Michigan. I don’t think it is any worse. In the state of Colorado men and women have been mistreated by the military, by the armed thugs of the mine owners’ association; they have been arrested without warrant; they have been sent to jail; they have been deprived of all of those rights that are supposed to belong to an American citizen, or one living under this government, the same as they have in Colorado.

Mother Jones has been deprived of her liberty by the military, and is now confined in the custody of the military of that state, without any warrant, absolutely deprived of her constitutional rights.

In the state of Michigan representatives of organized labor have been assaulted, ordered from the state, deprived of every right that we are supposed to enjoy under this great Constitution of ours, and yet, after months of effort we are at this time uncertain as to whether our national government, our representatives down at Washington, are going to make an investigation: are going to inquire into the facts as whether or not these things that we claim and that we believe we furnished them a preponderance of evidence of, are in violation of our American citizenship. They say, I believe, as an excuse for their hesitancy in acting, that they do not want to interfere with state rights, and in answer to that we say that the Constitution of the United States gives the right to every American citizen to meet in peaceable assembly, to freely express himself in speech…..

[Photograph added emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Charles Moyer, President of Western Federation of Miners, Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers; House Committee to Investigate Miners’ Strikes in Michigan and Colorado” →

Hellraisers Journal: Big Annie Clemenc, Strikers’ Flag Bearer, Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home in Calumet, Michigan

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Poem Ellis B Harris re Annie Clemenc n Women of Calumet, Mnrs Mag p14, Nov 27, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 19, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home

From the Dayton Daily News of January 18, 1914:

Annie Clemenc Ill in Calumet, Dayton OH Dly Ns p21, Jan 18, 1914

Saturday January 19, 1914 – Calumet, Michigan
–Annie Clemenc, Seriously Ill, Cared for at Her Mother’s Home

Annie Clemenc of Calumet has been very ill and under a doctor’s care since early this month.  Charles Edward Russell who is in the strike zone as part of the Socialist Party Investigating Committee went to visit her on January 10th. He reported that “she lay in her mother’s house, unconscious part of the time and part of the time shaken with nervous convulsions.” She is receiving sickness benefits from Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota (Slovene National Benefit Society), something she has never needed before.

We are left to wonder how much of a role the Italian Hall Massacre plays in her  illness. Annie, as President of the Calumet Women’s Auxiliary (W. F. of M.), was the driving force behind organizing the Christmas Party for the strikers’ children. The evening began with so much joy, but then ended with Annie holding a dead child in her arms, and attempting hopelessly to revive the little one.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Big Annie Clemenc, Strikers’ Flag Bearer, Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home in Calumet, Michigan” →

Hellraisers Journal: “I Make Cheap Silk (The Story of a Fifteen-year old Weaver in the Paterson Silk Mills, as Told by Her to Inis Weed and Louise Carey.)”

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Quote EGF Organize Women, IW p4, June 1, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 5, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Young Weaver Tells of Conditions in Silk Mill

From The Masses of November 1913:

Paterson Story of Theresa, Age 15, by Inis Weed and Louise Carey, Masses p7, Nov 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “I Make Cheap Silk (The Story of a Fifteen-year old Weaver in the Paterson Silk Mills, as Told by Her to Inis Weed and Louise Carey.)”” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I

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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 25, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on the Scene with Striking Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part I of III]

New York Garment Worker, Cmg Ntn p2, Jan 25, 1913

GRANDMOTHER! what are you doing here?” I asked of an old, old Italian woman who came up panting to the fourth floor of Clinton Hall. She turned around, looked me over with her black, penetrating eyes, which in spite of her age had not lost their luster and said:

“Me striker. Who you are?” I showed her my speaker’s card issued by the joint committee of the Socialist party and the United Hebrew Trades and she nodded her head in approval. I told her I was anxious to hear the story of the strike from the lips of the workers themselves.

“Me no speak much English,” she replied, “but me tella you just what me feel.” 

She pulled up her gray, worn shawl which had slid down from her bent shoulders, smoothed her snow-white hair and slowly in broken English told me her tale of woe and suffering.

As she talked on I observed her closely and wondered what had kept up the fire and activity in that aged body, perhaps her very sorrow and unbelievable struggle for existence, for the revelations made by these aged lips sent a chill through me, filled my heart with horror. I knew that her case was not singular, that her condition was characteristic of the condition of all of her sisters in the trade and they constitute 60 per cent of the entire number of 15,000 women workers in men’s and children’s clothing industry.

She told me of twenty long years spent in the clothing workshops where the air is constantly surcharged with the foulest odors and laden with disease germs, she complained of the lack of sunlight of which she had so much in her own land. Here she had to spend her days working by artificial light. She complained of the long hours when work was plentiful, of the dread of slack time, of the small wages at best. 

A bread winner for her own children in her younger days, when she first came to this country, she was now supporting two grand-children whose mother fell a victim to the ravages of consumption. Consumption invaded the old Italian woman’s family, as it had invaded the families of most of the clothing workers, carrying them off in the prime of life. The old woman was exceptionally strong, and she and the two small children she was supporting were the only survivors of the whole family.

These children, who are the apple of her eye, she keeps in a two-room flat of a rear eight-story tenement house located on East Houston street, the district where most of the clothing workers lived in order to be near their workshops, and where the population is recorded to be 1,108 to every acre. She pays $8 a month for rent and keeps two boarders to help pay it.

Strike for Love of Grandchildren

This woman who lacks only five years to the allotted three score and ten must finish 20 pair of pants, that is, sew on the lining, serge the seams, finish up the legs, sew on buttons and tack the buttonholes in order to make a dollar a day; $6 a week is the highest she ever makes in season. The season in the clothing industry lasts from March to June and from September to December. The old woman is no exception, to the rule, $6 per week, in fact, is above the average, many make less and very few more. They have no regular hours, but work as long as there is work, sometimes twelve, and fourteen hours a day.

It was not herself that the old Italian woman considered so much, as her poor orphan grand-children who had to take up the trade where she would leave it off.

“Why me strike you ask?” all the venom of the years of sorrow and wretchedness, all the bitter memory of her sacrificed children, cried out in her voice of defiance. 

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Battle for Bread at Lawrence” by Mary E. Marcy, Part III

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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quote BBH Weave Cloth Bayonets, ISR p538—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 6, 1912
“The Battle for Bread at Lawrence” by Mary E. Marcy, Part III

From the International Socialist Review of March 1912

” The Battle for Bread at Lawrence”
-by Mary Marcy, Part III
———-

[Wonderful Solidarity]

 

Lawrence Family of Striker, ISR p543, March 1912

The wonderful solidarity displayed by the strikers has surprised everybody. There are more languages spoken in the confines of Lawrence than in any other district of its size in the world. But in spite of these barriers, the strike was an almost spontaneous one and seventeen races, differing widely in speech and custom, rose in a concerted protest. Lacking anything like a substantial organization at the outset, they have clung together in furthering a common cause without dissension. Too much credit cannot be given Comrades Joseph Ettor and Wm. D. Haywood in the splendid work of organization and education they have carried on in Lawrence.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Battle for Bread at Lawrence” by Mary E. Marcy, Part III” →

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.”

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

Hellraisers Journal: “Golden Princes” Blanck and Harris Indicted in Connection with Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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Quote Morris Rosenfeld fr Triangle Requiem, JDF Mar 29, 1911, L Stein 1962———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 23, 1911
New York, New York – Blanck and Harris Indicted for Manslaughter

From The Outlook of April 22, 1911:

Indictments in the Asch Fire Case

Triangle Fire, Blanck n Harris Indicted, Tacoma Tx p1, Apr 19, 1911

Last week the Grand Jury of New York found indictments against the proprietors of the Triangle Waist Company, Issac Harris and Max Blanck. These two men constitute the firm who employed the factory operatives of whom 143 [146] lost their lives in the terrible disaster in Washington Place, New York, on March 25. The indictments against them are for manslaughter in the first and second degree, and they are based, so the District Attorney states, on what he believes to be strong evidence that some at least of the doors through which the girls might have escaped were habitually kept locked and were locked at the time of the fire.

The law requires that doors in such a factory shall open outwardly where practicable, and shall not be locked, bolted, or fastened during working hours. The evidence before the coroner’s jury has been conflicting on this point, but the Grand Jury, it is asserted, had before it a fragment of a tightly locked door. Meanwhile, Mr. Whitman, the District Attorney, laid before the Grand Jury the testimony of witnesses who stated that the doors on the Washington Place side of the building were kept locked, and the Italian Consul is reported to have taken affidavits of many Italian girls who swore that the Washington Place doors were locked and never used for exit.

It is further asserted that it is capable of proof that two girls in particular lost their lives directly because these doors were locked.

We need not point out that the men accused are entitled to a suspension of opinion until they are actually tried. Whatever may be the facts in this case, there is considerable evidence that it is deplorably common custom for doors in similar establishments to be locked.

Immediately after the fire The Outlook quoted from the report of a special committee made up from the Cloakmakers’ Union and the Cloak Manufacturers’ Association. It stated that they had found twenty-two shops in which the doors leading to the hall and stairways were locked during the day, while other provisions of law were constantly violated in a much larger number of shops.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II

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

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 11, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Visit the Home of a Striker

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]

[Leaving the Picket Line in Youngstown, Ohio:]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918It was seven o’clock. The morning vigil was over; the strike was unbroken. The deluge had not occurred. The men, weary with watching, broken with inaction and with suspense, drifted to their homes.

“You’re cold, ma’am,” my guide said to me, gently; “I want you should come to my house to get breakfast; my house it ain’t far.”

It seemed to me an imposition to appear in a strange woman’s house at that hour in the morning, especially as Mike let fall casually that he had eight children. A strike and eight children and a husband seemed to me quite enough for any woman to cope with, but he would not let me go without a cup of coffee. We walked past little detached dwellings, small frame houses and some of concrete.

These have been lately built. They show the modern impulse toward better housing. Here and there a rambler was planted over a door; there were porches, and plots of ground surrounded the houses. This was the most meritorious community, from the point of view of decency, that I have seen in any steel town.

Later we met a handsome lad coming out of the gate—Steve’s oldest boy on his way to high school. Then we went into the kitchen, and my first impression was of rows and rows of brightly polished shoes all ready to be hopped into—any amount of brightly polish-little shoes standing neatly two by two.

Now, any student of domestic life will know what this means. How many families are there who can get the boys to black their shoes the night before? I can’t in my household—indeed, it takes savage pertinacity to st shoes blacked at all. Just the sight of those shoes made me realize that my hostess was no ordinary woman. In the meantime Mike was calling up the stairs:

Mother, come down and see who’s here! Come down and see what I’ve got in the kitchen!” To hear him one would have supposed that I was a birthday present. And when “mother” appeared there was nothing that could have shown a third person that I was not an old friend. The owners of the shiny shoes came into the room with their shy “good mornings.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 10, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Observes the Picket Line

From The Fresno Morning Republican of February 8, 1920:

Mary Heaton Vorse can see-and tell what she sees. Her study of a Slovak steel striker is mighty well done, entitled “Behind the Picket Line,” in the Outlook for January 21.

[Emphasis added.]

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]
[Note: see Introduction by “The Editors” below.]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918
When I got out of the street car, he detached himself from the darkness and murmured:

“Ma’am, I come to meet you.”

It was not yet five, and black as midnight, except as the fiery salvos of the newly started blast-furnace of the Ohio plant shattered the night with glory. No need to ask how he knew me. Women do not usually get off the cars at five in the morning at this point.

On my way to the picket line I had been alone, with the exception of two uneasy-looking scabs. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t like to. The right of the individual workman to work when and how he wished seemed a rather hypocritical theory to me at that moment. It seemed about as tenable as the right of the individual citizen to desert to the enemy in war time.

For weeks I had been immersed in the strike. I had gone merely as an observer, rather skeptically even, and the thundering immensity of the thing had caught me up.

The people—that is to say, the public, those not directly interested—look on strikes as unchancy occurrences, violent manifestations which interfere with the ordered flow of existence. Something that wouldn’t happen at all if it were not for “outside agitators”—that most slippery of all explanations.

What had happened to me was that I had looked at the strike close to, and it had resolved itself into the lives of human beings—thousands of human beings thinking the same thing, thousands of human beings hoping the same thing, thousands and thousands of human beings hoping and willing the same thing, with the terrible patience of the simple. It is a dramatic thing when thousands of men all through the country, men in eight different States, men in fifty different towns and communities, all decide to stay home, all decide to do nothing, because they wish to alter certain conditions.

Men who never saw each other, men who never will see each other, many men who couldn’t understand each other if they were to meet, all doing the same thing, sitting quiet—abstaining violently from action, all bound together by the same thought—the men in all these widely sundered communities thinking together about the same thing. That is one of the things a strike resolves itself into when you look at it close to.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Book Review from Ladies’ Garment Worker Journal: “One of Them” by Elizabeth Hasanovitz

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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 14, 1918
“One of Them” by Elizabeth Hasanovitz, Union Garment Worker

“One of Them” describes lingering remnants of the old sweat-shop in the every-day shop vernacular.

From The Ladies’ Garment Worker of October 1918:

The Garment Worker offers a review of a new book by Elizabeth Hasanovitz, member of Ladies’ Waist and Dressmakers’ Union, Local No. 25.

“One of Them”

By Elizabeth Hasanovitz,
Just Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Price $2.00

[Book Review by Aaron Rosebury]
Book Ad, One of Them by Hasanovitz, Liberator p46, Nov 1918
From The Liberator of November 1918.

This book is described by the publishers as “The pilgrimage of a Russian girl to the Land of Freedom and her life in the garment factories of New York; an unforgettable picture of an unconquerable soul.” But to us who live, move and have our being in the very union referred to in its pages the book is not only the individual experience of one unconquerable soul. It typifies thousands of souls who united in soul and effort to conquer sweat-shop conditions and modern shop slavery and finally succeeded in effecting a great industrial change.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Book Review from Ladies’ Garment Worker Journal: “One of Them” by Elizabeth Hasanovitz” →