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

Share

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

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on Suffering of Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

Worker Carrying Garments to Finish, Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

The clothing workers have suffered and starved, and, it must be admitted, tried to improve their condition by frequent strikes and attempts at organization. But their organizations, even as their strikes bore local character. One part of the trade, or one branch, or subdivision would go out on the warpath, but its struggle was doomed from the start, for the rest of the industry continued its work as if nothing had happened.

The German hated the Jew, the Jew the Italian, who is trying to wrench the trade from him, the Italian despised the Russian, the Russian the American, the cutter looked down upon the operator, the operator exploited the finisher, the finisher the helper, and while this was going on the employers exploited them all to their heart’s content.

The United Garment Workers of America, though considered the mother body of the clothing trade occupied themselves chiefly with one branch the overall-making, which is mostly in the hands of American women, and paid but little attention to the woes and sorrows of the tailors, perhaps, because the latter was considered beyond redemption.

Thus have men, women and children slaved for over seventy-five years. Thus have thousands upon thousands gone to their early graves, victims of consumption, heart disease, malnutrition, insanity. The man in charge of the claim department of the Workingman’s Circle, most of whose members are garment workers, told the writer that nine-tenths of their members died before they reached the age of forty.

And with the tailors the general public suffered. Unsanitary work-rooms, sweat-shop labor means infection of the garments, and eventually of the public who wear them. Our coats and suits were and still are made in places where smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, consumption and numerous other contagious diseases make great inroads. Our garments are made by workers themselves afflicted with disease, as a matter of fact, the workers in the sweat-shops and tenements not only work on the garments we wear, but often use them to sleep on or to cover themselves with.

Thus have ninety-two million people all over the country been subject to disease and contagion carried to them in their garments from Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Rochester and New York. For these cities produce 70 per cent of the entire output of man’s and children’s clothing, while New York alone produces one-third of the entire output.

New York was always the largest center in the clothing industry. The city has the natural advantages for production of all grades of clothing. Here, too, a large body of tailors land from Europe, and for the most part remain. The tailors form the nucleus for the better grades of work, while the hundreds of thousands of immigrants landing here yearly enable the employers to obtain cheap labor for the lower grade of garments.

The 125,000 striking garment workers think and say that their strike should be the concern of the entire nation. That their demand for the abolition of the sweat-shop and the subcontracting system should meet the endorsement of every thinking man and woman.

As a matter of fact, even the capitalist press, always ready to slur labor and denounce strikes has exhibited a more human attitude in this strike. It has gone even so far as to express its approval of the abolition of the sweatshop, this perhaps, not because it loves the garment workers so much, but that it wants to protect the general public more.

Then again the sudden display of solidarity has almost taken our newspaper men off their feet. And how wonderful this display is at present can be fully appreciated by an eye witness only. From the highest to the lowest, the few Americans as well as the great body of foreigners, the bulk of Jewish men even as the Italian women stand out for the recognition of their union, for the joint settlement with all branches

“When did the tailor learn this class solidarity? How did he come by it?” ask our upholders of the present regime. They know not, or don’t care to know that the world moved a bit of late, that the progress of evolution, the age of industrialism has advanced the cause of the working class. That the workers are not only firmly-planted on the economic field, but that they have a great political party, the Socialist party, that they have a great press in almost all languages represented in the tailoring industry, the Socialist press.

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

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

Share

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

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 26, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel Observes Ten Thousand Pickets

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

NY Loft Shop Garment Workers,  Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

Ten Thousand Pickets

A tumult, a commotion, a shout and I found myself eagerly peering out of the window; many heads pressed close about and in back of me. They were coming from the field work, the pickets I mean. Not two, not ten, not a hundred, but 10,000 strong, an army of labor, a city in itself.

My God! how powerful they looked. Every stone in the street pavements, every brick of the dark grim tenements seemed to have spoken to me of it. I was moved to tears of joy. I felt like a long-lost traveler who had at last found the right road. Now I knew it. There is where the true power, the road to freedom, was to be found in the combination and solidarity of labor.

These ten thousand tailor pickets were a power that even New York could not combat. It would take the entire police force to fight them man to man, or rather man to woman, for the women are really the greater fighters, the most determined pickets of the two.

Out of the picket line came an Italian woman, a mother of six children. She was beaten up by the police while watching her shop with a few others. The brutal thugs in police uniform knocked her about, bruised her face, disheveled her hair, tore her clothes off her back and Lord knows what else they might have done to her had she not been rescued by the army of 10,000.

Thus is the working class mother treated by our capitalist government, for no other crime than the earnest desire to earn an honest living for her children.

She took it calmly, stoically, as they all take it, the true Roman matrons that they are. “It’s all for my childs,” she said. “I fight them again. I no care.”

And still the picket line marched onward like a threatening cloud from above. They feared nothing, not even the elements. Occasionally one would fall out of their midst for the same reasons as the Italian woman came out of the picket line, but the men, like the women, took the medicine dealt out to them by the police and thugs like good fellows.

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

Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: “One of the Striking Garment Workers of New York” by Lewis Hine

Share

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 21, 1913
New York, New York – Photograph of Striking Garment Worker by Lewis Hine

From The Coming Nation of January 18, 1913:

Striking NYC Garment Worker by Lewis Hine, Cmg Ntn Cv, Jan 18, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: “One of the Striking Garment Workers of New York” by Lewis Hine”

Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: Photographs by Lewis Hine: “And after a few years in the steel mills…..”

Share

Quote Mother Jones, Revolution in Our Veins, Altoona Tb p6, Jan 12, 1920—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 15, 1913
“After a few years in the steel mills…..” by Lewis Hine

From The Coming Nation of January 11, 1913:

Lewis Hine, Steel workers after a few years in steel mills, Cmg Ntn Cv, Jan 11, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Coming Nation: Photographs by Lewis Hine: “And after a few years in the steel mills…..””

Hellraisers Journal: Railroad Workers by Lewis Hine from Cover of Coming Nation: “They Build the Roads and Others Ride.”

Share

Quote EVD, Starve Quietly, Phl GS Speech IA, Mar 19, 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 11, 1912
Railroad Workers by Lewis Hine: They Build the Roads; Others Ride.

From The Coming Nation of December 7, 1912:

Railroad Workers by Lewis Hine, Cmg Ntn Cv, Dec 7, 1912

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Railroad Workers by Lewis Hine from Cover of Coming Nation: “They Build the Roads and Others Ride.””

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Her Last Hope Gone”-Cast Aside to Starve Alone on City Streets of U. S. A.

Share

Quote BBH re Capitalist Class, Lbr Arg p4, Mar 23, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 1, 1912
In the Land of Plenty, U. S. A. – “Her Last Hope Gone” by Lewis Hine

From The Coming Nation of July 27, 1912:

Woman on Sidewalk Head in Hands All Hope Gone by Lewis Hine, Cmg Ntn Cv, July 27, 1912

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Her Last Hope Gone”-Cast Aside to Starve Alone on City Streets of U. S. A.”

Hellraisers Journal: “Knight of the Round Belly” by Robert Minor: U. S. Supreme Court Rules Against Nation’s Child Workers

Share

Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR p10641, May 14, 1915

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 1, 1922
“The Knight of the Round Belly” by Robert Minor
-United State Supreme Court Rules Against Nation’s Child Workers

From The Liberator of July 1922:

US Supreme Court re Child Labor Laws, Drawing by Robert Minor, Lbtr p18, July 1922

January 1911, South Pittston Pennsylvania
-Breaker Boys of Pennsylvania Coal Company by Lewis Hine

 The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrates the utmost recesses of the boy’s lungs. A kind of slave driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience.

Breaker Boys, Jan 1911, Lewis Hine

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Knight of the Round Belly” by Robert Minor: U. S. Supreme Court Rules Against Nation’s Child Workers”

Hellraisers Journal: Report from Children’s Bureau Describes Conditions for Children Working in Shrimp and Oyster Canneries

Share

Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR p10641, May 14, 1915—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 25, 1922
Report Describes Child Labor in Shrimp and Oyster Canning Industry

From the Pittston Gazette of May 23, 1922:

 

POOR CONDITION FOR CHILD WORKERS
IN FISH CANNERIES
———-

Lewis Hine Feb 1911, Three Little Girl Oyster Shuckers
Josie, six year old, Bertha, six years old, Sophie, 10 years old,
all shuck regularly at Maggioni Canning Co,
Port Royal, South Carolina. -by Lewis Hine, February 1911

A report made public today by the U. S. Department of Labor through the Children’s Bureau describes child labor in the oyster and shrimp-canning industry during the period between the first and second Federal child labor laws, when no Federal regulation of child labor existed. Special significance attaches to the report in view of the decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, rendered on May 15, which held the Federal Child Labor Tax Law unconstitutional and thus leaves the children again without the protection of a Federal law. The report, entitled “Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in Oyster and Shrimp canning communities on the Gulf Coast,” calls attention to the very young ages of many of the children employed, the detrimental conditions under which they worked, the poor school facilities, the marked retardation in school, and the employment of mothers of young children.

The work of both the children and their parents was subject to all the irregularities of the canning industry, the report states. Since the work depended on the catch, it began any time between 3 and 7 o’clock in the morning and lasted a few hours, a whole day, or sometimes on into the evening. Of the 544 working children under 16 years of age included in the study, more than three-fifths worked whenever the factory was open. The others worked only occasionally or before and after school and on Saturdays. The majority of the children-334 of the 544 who worked-were under the age of 14 years, the minimum fixed by both of the Federal laws. Some were as young as six years of age or under.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Report from Children’s Bureau Describes Conditions for Children Working in Shrimp and Oyster Canneries”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Photograph by Lewis Hine of Young Spinner Shows “Toiling Childhood”

Share

Quote Mother Jones, Child Labor Silk Mills, WB Dly Ns p1, May 11, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 6, 1912
Photograph by Lewis Hine of Young Spinner: “Toiling Childhood”

From The Coming Nation of May 4, 1912:

Toiling Childhood, Girl Spinner, Cmg Ntn Cv, May 4, 1912

November 1908, Vivian Cotton Mills, Cherryville, North Carolina
Young Spinner by Lewis Hine for National Child Labor Committee:

Young Girl Spinner, Cherryville NC by Lewis Hine, Nov 1908

“Spinner in Vivian Cotton Mills, Cherryville, N.C. Been at it 2 years. Where will her good looks be in ten years?”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Photograph by Lewis Hine of Young Spinner Shows “Toiling Childhood””