Tag: Working-Class Women

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Petrucci of Ludlow Tent Colony Testifies on Insults to Women by Colorado State Soldiers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday February 19, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mary Petrucci Testifies on “Insults” to Women

Family at Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913-1914
Men, Women and Children at Ludlow Tent Colony

During the afternoon session of February 17th, the Congressional Investigating Committee heard testimony from Mary Petrucci, a resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony. Few, if any, newspapers seem interested in the plight of the women at the hands of soldiers, especially after their husbands are taken away by these very same militiamen. We, therefore, offer the entire testimony of Mrs. Petrucci as a small glimpse into the lives of the coal mining women as they cope with the  military occupation authorized by Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado.

———-

Testimony of Mary Petrucci
-afternoon session, Tuesday February 17th, Trinidad.

Mary Petrucci was called as a witness, and having been first duly sworn testified as follows:

Direct examination by Mr. Clark [Attorney for the Miners]:

Q. State your name ? — A. Mary Petrucci.
Q. Where do you live ? — A. At Ludlow.
Q. In the tent colony?— A. Yes, sir.
Q. I will ask you if, at any time recently, and about when, you attempted to come to Trinidad on the 6.10 morning train — A. On the 1st day of February it was in the morning, and I come to take the train for Trinidad, and my sister was sick.
Q. You say your sister was sick ? — A. Yes, sir; my sister was sick.
Q. And who, if anyone, was with you, and did you have any children with you or not? — A. Yes; I had two babies.
Q. How old were they?— A. One 4 months, the other one 2 years old.
Q. Was your husband with you ? — A. Yes, sir.
Q. How many people tried to board the train that morning ? -A. There were two from the tent colony and they were stopped there by the soldiers.
Q. Was there a big crowd there that morning? — A. Not so very.
Q. How many? — A. Oh, about two.
Q. Two or three people besides yourself and your family ? — A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, what happened — you say you were stopped?— A. Yes, sir; we went to go to the depot and the soldiers told us that we couldn’t come to town this morning, and we asked them why, and they told us they didn’t know why; and the other woman asked them if they wanted to come to see the doctor, and they had to come to telephone to the headquarters of the militia here in Trinidad, and they let them pass and we had to turn back.
Q. Did you talk to the brakeman or the conductor about it? — A. When we were turning back, he asked us what was the matter, and I told him the soldiers would not let us go to the depot, and he asked us why and I told him I didn’t know, and he told me to get onto the last coach, and the soldier says, “Halt, before you get a bullet in you.”
Q. What was it he said ? — A. Before I got a bullet in me.
Q. Did you have your babies with you at that time ? — A. Yes, and my baby very nearly frozen.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Oklahoma Kate” Calls for Marriage and Motherhood Strike until Industrial Conditions for Women Improve

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Roosevelt Letter re Race Suicide to Marie Van Horst Oct 18, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 26, 1912
Boston, Massachusetts – Kate Barnard Calls for Strike on Matrimony and Motherhood

From the Duluth Labor World of December 21, 1912:

TOO MANY BABIES IN AMERICA NOW?
———-
Oklahoma Kate Tells Effete Boston There Is
No Need for More Race As It Is Now.
———-

OVER-WORKED MOTHERS FIRST
CAUSE OF CRIME
———-
Calls Strike On Matrimony and Motherhood Until
Women Are Granted Better Conditions.
———-

Kate Barnard, Marriage Strike, NY Eve Wld p24, Dec 19, 1912

BOSTON, Dec. 19.—”Don’t get married, girls; go on a mother strike until industrial conditions for women are better,” was the appeal made here today by Miss Kate Barnard, prison commissioner of Oklahoma, where she is sometimes called “Oklahoma Kate.”

[Miss Barnard declared:]

We have no need for more of our race as it is at present. I have decided not to marry until women are far better off industrially and politically, and I’m not an old woman, either.

Miss Barnard is—well, perhaps she might be 30—or thereabouts—and she is very pretty.

Where Crime Starts.

[Said Miss Barnard;]

The first cause of crime is the overworking of mothers and those who some day will be mothers.

She told how Oklahoma got its child labor law, which has been a model for 17 states since, and said this and the compulsory education law were aimed directly at conservation of humanity and reduction of crime.

[She declared:]

It’s a farce to pass a child labor law or a compulsory education law unless you provide against poverty, keeping children out of school.

She told how her bill provides that if a widow has children at work, they can be taken from the mill and sent to school and the state will pay their wages, just as though they were at work. There are 5,461 children now at school in Oklahoma under this provision.

”Last” But Five Years.

Miss Barnard described child labor in glass factories where little workers “last” from three to five years.

[She cried:]

And I say that the American girls have no time for matrimony until this is changed. We don’t need any more of the race until we can clear up what we have.

Ida Tarbell, the well known magazine writer, also spoke. She has concluded that married women and girls who enter industrial life without pressing need form one of the worst dangers to civilization in this coun­try.

Miss Tarbell has been paying special attention to the question of the minimum wage for women and to­day declared:

The minimum wage for women in Boston should be set at $9 while in New York it should be $1 higher. I’d hate to have any girl I cared about working in New York for less than $10.

Discussing the observations she has made while gathering material for a new series of articles on the new business ethics of today. Miss Tarbell said:

How They Live a Mystery.

Plenty of girls in New York are living on $6 a week and are keeping straight on it, too. It can be done, but how the girls do it is a mystery. Those girls living on those few meager dollars and living right are the heroines of the age.

The girl who lives at home and accepts a position for $5 or $6 a week is the girl who makes it hard for the homeless and self-supporting girl to make a living—makes it hard for her to remain a good girl.

The woman who works for less than a living wage is the woman who marries and continues to work. She is the most vicious element in a workaday world. We’ve got to realize that marriage and the home are something more than two people living together and supporting themselves. We’ve got to realize what a function it is in the great scheme of things.

The whole basis, of our social development is the family. In the first place there are children to be considered. A woman must give up her work or race suicide is the result. Of course from the economic view point the couple are much better off if the woman stays at home and the man works. If they are both working the aggregate earnings are more, but the aggregate expenses are comparatively greater also and there is no conserving done; none of the countless things that make a dollar have a dollar’s purchasing power.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1911, Part II: Found Pleading Cause of Striking Miners of Westmoreland County

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Greensburg PA Cmas 1910, Steel 2, p83—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 20, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1911, Part II
Found Pleading Cause of Striking Miners of Westmoreland County 

From The Indianapolis Star of June 28, 1911:

WOMAN PLEADS FOR MINERS
———-

“MOTHER JONES TELLS TALE
———-
Describes Hardships of Pennsylvania Strikers,
but Urges Board to Encourage Men
to Continue Fight.

Mother Jones crpd ed, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

Following an address by “Mother” Jones, known to all miners of the country, members of the executive board of the United Mine Workers of America yesterday adopted resolutions relative to the strike in the Irwin district in western Pennsylvania, where about 6 000 mine workers have been out for a year and a half.

Mrs. Jones, who is 79 years old, has spent most of her time in the strike region during the past year and is thoroughly familiar with conditions there. She told the members of the executive board of the hardships which the miners and their families have endured during the strike and urged the board to adopt resolutions commending the strikers and advising them to continue the fight.

Her address had the desired effect upon the members of the board, and a committee was appointed to draw up resolutions.

PLEDGES CONTINUED SPPORT.

The resolutions provide that the executive board indorse the strikers and urge them to continue their fight, and the board pledges its continued support to the miners. It is also provided that a general meeting be held in the region, at which a vote is to be taken to ascertain if a majority of the miners favor the continuance of the strike

The miners organization is spending about $90,000 a month to support the families of the strikers. It is said that the operators refuse to recognize the organization in the district and will not consider any compromise.

Francis Feehan president of the Pittsburg district and a number of organizers also appeared before the board yesterday to present their views on the strike.

“Mother” Jones expects to return to the Irwin district soon to continue her work among the families of the strikers.

—————

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1911, Part II: Found Pleading Cause of Striking Miners of Westmoreland County” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “One Boss Less, The Minersville Strike” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part II

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF Organize Women, IW p4, June 1, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 2, 1911
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Describes Strike of Young Girls at Minersville

From the International Socialist Review of July 1911:

EGF re Minersville Girls Strike Part II, ISR p8, July 1911—–EGF re Minersville Girls Strike EVD Speaks, ISR p11, July 1911

Coombs became desperate. He threatened to move his factory to Brooklyn, where he claims a site has already been purchased, but the girls realize that he is bound to this region by economic ties which cannot easily be severed. He rents houses and owns a splendid residence in Minersville, and controls factories for Phillips in Tremont, Valley View, Mahoney City, Trackville and other places. Here he is a pillar of society, hobnobs with judges, and has his own automobile. Whereas, his importance would sink into insignificance in a great industrial center.

We are making efforts not only to tie up all of his other plants, but every factory and mill in this region, where wages are inadequate and women are shamelessly exploited. Our attempts in Tremont illustrate our difficulties and Mr. Coombs’ methods. While we were addressing the girls from one factory Mr. Coombs rushed past in his machine and into his factory, where he detained the girls for about five minutes. His intimation that if they listened to the agitators they need not report for work further had effect, for when he dismissed them, they marched convict-like, arm in arm, past the meeting, and could not be induced to listen.

These girls had their wages raised to nine cents to head off a strike. Thus, they are profiting by the struggle of the girls in Minersville, while virtually scabbing on them. Far from being discouraged, however, we feel that Coombs has shown his fear, and we intend to arouse these girls to a realization of the situation.

This strike, the first of its kind in the anthracite region, has been invaluable, as it has served to set ablaze the smouldering rebellion of other women workers. It was followed by a strike in the silk mill of Shamokin, and a partial strike in the silk mill of Pottsville.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “One Boss Less, The Minersville Strike” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “One Boss Less, The Minersville Strike” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part I

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF Organize Women, IW p4, June 1, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 1, 1911
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on Strike by Young Girls at Minersville, Pennsylvania

From the International Socialist Review of July 1911:

EGF re Minersville Girls Strike, Part I, ISR p8, July 1911

[Part I of II.]

THE particular employer engaged in this conflict is typical. Over twelve years ago he came to Minersville and opened a factory. Since that time a chain of factories have been installed throughout the anthracite regions and the farming belt that lies South of Pottsville, absorbing all the unused labor of women and girls, who previously engaged in domestic tasks at home, until, through marriage, they established homes of their own.

Dependent for a living upon brothers, fathers and husbands, the factory gate seemed the door of opportunity to them. Life had been a stepping from their father’s threshold to their husband’s, a sheltered, healthy, but often monotonous and uneventful existence. Many of the younger generation were educated in the public schools and felt the lure of the big cities; others were not satisfied with the domestic life, and so the factory spelled a varied experience, a wider life and independence. They welcomed it eagerly and were engulfed in its hungry maw.

When Coombs came to Minersville he was poor and unknown. He was financed by a man named Phillips, a Jewish oculist and rabbi, who likewise commenced his career poor. But running expenses of shirt and underwear factories are less in Pennsylvania towns than in New York or Philadelphia, and girls are cheaper. In the large cities girls are supposed to secure at least a living wage, as most of them are dependent solely upon their earnings. Often they do not, and lives of shame and horror are the result. But the majority attempt to secure it, and a pretence is made by the employers to pay it. Not so here. Wages are simply fit for spending money and do not nearly equal living expenses. The girls still live at home. They have lost the illusion of being self-supporting, and make no pretense of being. They are as dependent on their families as ever they were. and the outrageous condition prevails of miners and farmers raising and caring for daughters to turn them over to the factory owners as instruments of production, practically free of charge.

They lend their children to Coombs and Phillips, and receive them back physical wrecks, hollow-eyed, flat-chested, nervous from overwork. Young girls are taken from schools at a tender age and crushed in the industrial prisons that disfigure the hills and valleys. The vitality of future generations is sapped through the grinding toil these future mothers must endure. From every point of view—financially, physically and morally—these factories have been a blight and a curse to every region they invade.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Writes to Peter Powers; Tells of Women and Children Thrown into Rat-Infested Jail

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, PA Strike Greensburg Women Sing Jail, Ab p146, 1925—————–

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 29, 1911
Mother Jones Tells of Women and Children in Rat-Infested Jail 

From the Evansville Press of June 29, 1911:

PETER POWERS TALK
-WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIGHT JAIL RATS.

PA Miners Strike Westmoreland Sadie Baker in Jail crpd by G Gardner, Ark Dem p6, June 20, 1911

Gilson Gardner’s story of women and girls thrown into a vermin-infested rat-hole called a jail because they “disturbed the peace” by beating a tin can and singing at a strikebreaker in Westmoreland-co, Pa., is not overdrawn.

I have just received a letter from Mother Jones, “the angel of the miners,” who has gone into Westmoreland-co, Pa., to lead in the unequal fight of the impoverished men, women and children against the gigantic corporations.

[Writes Mother:]

There were three generations in jail because they could not pay $10 apiece in fines to a corporation ‘squire, who might as well have demanded $10,000 as $10. There was a mother, her three months’ old baby and a grandmother besides two little children who could not walk, huddled together in a foul prison fighting off rats. Can such conditions prevail in Russia? I doubt it. I know they would not be tolerated in monarchial England or Germany. The men of this nation who permit such outrages are cowards.

The so-called judge who sentenced the women and children to jail without mercy is an ardent church-goer. Last Sunday 2,000 miners and their wives and children marched-it’s an old custom and second nature of miners to hold processions. The church people sent the Cossacs to tell us not to play the band or do any singing, as they were praying. Perhaps if we had disobeyed we would nave been in contempt or court.

PA Miners Strike Westmoreland Women n Babies in Jail by G Gardner, Ark Dem p6, June 20, 1911
Mrs. Dot Smith, Aged 19, and Her Three-
Months-Old Baby, Sentenced to 20 Days
in County Jail For Beating a Tomato Can
and Making Sarcastic Remarks While
a Scab Was Passing Her House.

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Gilson Gardner: Mothers and Babes Locked Up in Rat Infested Jail at Greensburg, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, PA Strike Greensburg Women Sing Jail, Ab p146, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 22, 1911
Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Mothers and Babes Locked Up in Rat-Infested Jail

From the Arkansas Democrat of June 20, 1911:

MOTHERS AND BABES TO JAIL
———-
In Famous Westmoreland Coal Strike,
Which Has Been in Progress Nearly
18 Months, Company is Said to be
Taking Severe Steps to End Trouble.
———-

(By Gilson Gardner.)

PA Miners Strike Westmoreland Women n Babies in Jail crpd by G Gardner, Ark Dem p6, June 20, 1911

Greensburg, Pa.-(Staff Special.)-The famous Westmoreland coal strike, which has been in progress nearly a year and a half, has reached a new stage. To win, the coal companies now find it necessary to send mothers with babes and little girls to the county bastile.

A little crippled girl, 14 years old, was sitting on the front porch of her home when the village scab went by on his way from work. The little girl began to laugh at the scab and to sing, “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?” For this the town constable, Pat McDonough, in behalf of the Westmoreland Coal Company, swore out a warrant and had it served by the deputy constable. The little crippled girl was arrested, taken to Irwin, a village two miles away, where she was brought up before the local justice of the peace-“Squire” H. L. Meeroff. Tho squire found the cripple girl guilty of “breaking the peace” and sentenced her to the county jail for 20 days. So the prisoner was taken 10 miles to Greensburg, where she was locked up in a jail provided for hardened criminals.

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Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: How the National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR May 14, 1915—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 9, 1911
National Consumers’ League Stands with Working Women & Children, Part II

From The Coming Nation of June 3, 1911:

How Women Help Women

By Grace Potter

[Part II of II.]

Child Labor, Making Flowers in Basement, Cmg Ntn p10, June 3, 1911

How Infection is Carried in Clothes

Not the healthiest living nor the strongest constitution is always proof against the germs of scarlet fever, for instance. They are carried readily in clothing, say, an overcoat. Perhaps, even, the man or the woman or children who worked on that overcoat, no one of them had scarlet fever. But the baby of the family where the coat was finished might have had it. The poor haven’t time to care for their sick. They don’t know what ails their children often when they are really very ill. A doctor costs money. It costs much time, which is the same as money to them, to take the little one to a dispensary and wait through hours of weary impatience for attention. Perhaps, too, their child would be taken from them and put in a hospital. And the poor have a reasonable dread of hospitals. So when the babies are taken sick they often go through a disease like diphtheria, tonsillitis, or scarlet fever, without anyone knowing what is the matter.

The little one has to be kept in the same room where the work is going on. It is the least dark room of the two or three or four in their flat. When the baby is picked up for the scant attention which is all that a tenement mother with the tenderest mother feelings in the world can give, the baby leaves infection upon its mother’s dress and the infection is the next moment transmitted to the coat mother is working with. The coat when done is carefully folded, taken back to the shop, later shipped to St. Paul, perhaps, and there bought by a prosperous business man.

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