THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE
I
Among the active members of the Ladies Waist Makers' Union in New York,
there is a young Russian Jewess of sixteen, who may be called Natalya
Urusova. She is little, looking hardly more than twelve years old, with a
pale, sensitive face, clear dark eyes, very soft, smooth black hair,
parted and twisted in braids at the nape of her neck, and the gentlest
voice in the world, a voice still thrilled with the light inflections of
a child.
She is the daughter of a Russian teacher of Hebrew, who lived about three
years ago in a beech-wooded village on the steppes of Central Russia.
Here a neighbor of Natalya's family, a Jewish farmer, misunderstanding
that manifesto of the Czar which proclaimed free speech, and
misunderstanding socialism, had printed and scattered through the
neighborhood an edition of hand-bills stating that the Czar had
proclaimed socialism, and that the populace must rise and divide among
themselves a rich farm two miles away.
Almost instantly on the appearance of these bills, this unhappy man and a
young Jewish friend who chanced to be with him at the time of his arrest
were seized and murdered by the government officers--the friend drowned,
the farmer struck dead with the blow of a cudgel. A Christian mob formed,
and the officers and the mob ravaged every Jewish house in the little
town. Thirty innocent Jews were clubbed to death, and then literally cut
to pieces. Natalya and her family, who occupied the last house on the
street, crept unnoticed to the shack of a Roman Catholic friend, a woman
who hid sixteen Jewish people under the straw of the hut in the fields
where she lived, in one room, with eight children and some pigs and
chickens. Hastily taking from a drawer a little bright-painted plaster
image of a wounded saint, this woman placed it over the door as a means
of averting suspicion. Her ruse was successful. "Are there Jews here?"
the officer called to her, half an hour afterward, as the mob came over
the fields to her house.
"No," said the woman.
"Open the door and let me see."
The woman flung open the door. But, as he was quite unsuspecting, the
officer glanced in only very casually; and it was in utter ignorance that
the rage of the mob went on over the fields, past the jammed little room
of breathless Jews.
As soon as the army withdrew from the town, Natalya and her family made
their way to America, where, they had been told, one had the right of
free belief and of free speech. Here they settled on the sixth floor of a
tenement on Monroe Street, on the East Side of New York. Nothing more
different from the open, silent country of the steppes could be conceived
than the place around them.
The vista of the New York street is flanked by high rows of dingy brick
tenements, fringed with jutting white iron fire-escapes, and hung with
bulging feather-beds and pillows, puffing from the windows. By day and by
night the sidewalks and roads are crowded with people,--bearded old men
with caps, bare-headed wigged women, beautiful young girls, half-dressed
babies swarming in the gutters, playing jacks. Push carts, lit at night
with flaring torches, line the pavements and make the whole thronged,
talking place an open market, stuck with signs and filled with
merchandise and barter. Everybody stays out of doors as much as possible.
In summer-time the children sleep on the steps, and on covered chicken
coops along the sidewalk; for, inside, the rooms are too often small and
stifling, some on inner courts close-hung with washing, some of them
practically closets, without any opening whatever to the outer air.
Many, many of Natalya's neighbors here are occupied in the garment
trade. According to the United States census of 1900, the men's clothing
made in factories in New York City amounted to nearly three times as much
as that manufactured in any other city in the United States. The women's
clothing made in factories in New York City amounted to more than ten
times that made in any other city; the manufacture of women's ready-made
clothing in this country is, indeed, almost completely in the hands of
New York's immense Jewish population.[12]
As soon after her arrival as her age permitted, Natalya entered the
employment of a shirt-waist factory as an unskilled worker, at a salary
of $6 a week. Mounting the stairs of the waist factory, one is aware of
heavy vibrations. The roar and whir of the machines increase as the door
opens, and one sees in a long loft, which is usually fairly light and
clean, though sometimes neither, rows and rows of girls with heads bent
and eyes intent upon the flashing needles. They are all intensely
absorbed; for if they be paid by the piece, they hurry from ambition, and
if they be paid by the week, they are "speeded up" by the foreman to a
pace set by the swiftest workers.
In the Broadway establishment, which may be called the Bruch Shirt-waist
Factory, where Natalya worked, there were four hundred girls--six hundred
in the busy season. The hours were long--from eight till half past
twelve, a half hour for lunch, and then from one till half past six.
Sometimes the girls worked until half past eight, until nine. There were
only two elevators in the building, which contained other factories.
There were two thousand working people to be accommodated by these
elevators, all of whom began work at eight o'clock in the morning; so
that, even if Natalya reached the foot of the shaft at half past seven,
it was sometimes half past eight before she reached the shirt-waist
factory on the twelfth floor. She was docked for this inevitable
tardiness so often that frequently she had only five dollars a week
instead of six. This injustice, and the fact that sometimes the foreman
kept them waiting needlessly for several hours before telling them that
he had no work for them, was particularly wearing to the girls.
Natalya was a "trimmer" in the factory. She cut the threads of the waists
after they were finished--a task requiring very little skill. But the
work of shirt-waist workers is of many grades. The earnings of makers of
"imported" lingerie waists sometimes rise as high as $25 a week. Such a
wage, however, is very exceptional, and, even so, is less high than might
appear, on account of the seasonal character of the work.
The average skilled waist worker, when very busy, sometimes earns from
$12 to $15 a week. Here are the yearly budgets of some of the better paid
workers, more skilled than Natalya--operatives receiving from $10 to $15
a week.
Rachael, a shirt-waist operative of eighteen, had been at work three
years. She had begun at $5 a week and her skill had increased until in a
very busy week she could earn from $14 to $15 by piece-work. "But," she
said, "I was earning too much, so I was put back at week's work, at $11 a
week. The foreman is a bad, driving man. Ugh! he makes us work
fast--especially the young beginners."
Rachael, too, had been driven out of Russia by Christian persecution. Her
little sister had been killed in a massacre. Her parents had gone in one
direction, and she and her two other sisters had fled in another to
America.
Here in New York she lived in a tenement, sharing a room with two other
girls, and, besides working in the shirt-waist factory, did her own
washing, made her own waists, and went to night school.
Her income was seriously depleted by the seasonal character of her work.
Out of the twelve months of the year, for one month she was idle, for
four months she had only three or four days' work a week, for three
months she had five days' work a week, and for four months only did she
have work for all six days. Unhappily, during these months she developed
a severe cough, which lost her seven weeks of work, and gave her during
these weeks the expense of medicine, a doctor, and another boarding
place, as she could not in her illness sleep with her two friends.
Her income for the year had been $348.25. Her expenses had been as
follows: rent for one-third of room at $3.50 a month, $42; suppers with
landlady at 20 cents each, $63; other meals, approximately, $90; board
while ill, seven weeks at $7, $49; doctor and medicine (about) $15;
clothing, $51.85; club, 5 cents a week, $2.60; total, $313.45, thus
leaving a balance of $34.80.
Shoes alone consumed over one-half of the money used for clothing. They
wore out with such amazing rapidity that she had needed a new pair once a
month. At $2 each, except a best pair, costing $2.60, their price in a
year amounted to $24.60.[13]
In regard to Rachael's expenditure and conservation in strength, she had
drawn heavily upon her health and energy. Her cough continued to exhaust
her. She was worn and frail, and at eighteen her health was breaking.
Anna Klotin, another older skilled worker, an able and clever Russian
girl of twenty-one, an operative and trimmer, earned $12 a week. She had
been idle twelve weeks on account of slack work. For four weeks she had
night work for three nights a week, and payment for this extra time had
brought her income up to $480 for the year. Of this sum she paid $312 ($6
a week) for board and lodging alone in a large, pleasant room with a
friendly family on the East Side. To her family in Russia she had sent
$120, and she had somehow contrived, by doing her own washing, making her
own waists and skirts, and repairing garments left from the previous
year, to buy shoes and to pay carfare and all her other expenses from the
remaining $48. She had bought five pairs of shoes at $2 each, and a suit
for $15.
Fanny Wardoff, a shirt-waist worker of twenty, who had been in the United
States only a year, helped her family by supporting her younger brother.
For some time after her arrival in this country the ill effects of her
steerage voyage had left her too miserable to work. She then obtained
employment as a finisher in a skirt factory, where her best wage was $7.
But her earnings in this place had been so fluctuating that she was
uncertain what her total income had been before the last thirteen weeks.
At the beginning of this time she had left the skirt factory and become
a finisher in a waist factory, where she earned from $10 to $12 a week,
working nine and a half hours a day.
Her place to sleep, and breakfast and dinner, in a tenement, cost $2.50 a
week. She paid the same for her younger brother, who still attended
school. The weekly expense was palpably increased by 60 cents a week for
luncheon and 30 cents for carfare to ride to work. She walked home,
fifteen blocks.
Her clothing, during the eight months of work, had cost about $40. Of
this, $8 had been spent for four pairs of shoes. Two ready-made skirts
had cost $9, and a jacket $10. Her expense for waists was only the cost
of material, as she had made them herself.
She spent 35 cents a week for the theatre, and economized by doing her
own washing.
Here are the budgets of some shirt-waist operatives earning from $7 to
$10 a week, less skilled than the workers described above, but more
skilled than Natalya.
Irena Kovalova, a girl of sixteen, supported herself and three other
people, her mother and her younger brother and sister, on her slight wage
of $9 a week. She was a very beautiful girl, short, but heavily built,
with grave dark eyes, a square face, and a manner more mature and
responsible than that of many women of forty. Irena Kovalova had not been
out of work for one whole week in the year she described. She had never
done night work; but she had almost always worked half a day on
Sunday--except in slack weeks. She was not certain how many of these
there had been; but there had been enough slack time to reduce her income
for her family for the year to $450. They had paid $207 rent for four
rooms on the East Side, and had lived on the remaining $243, all of which
Irena had given to her mother.
Her mother helped her with her washing, and she had worn the clothes she
had the year before, with the exception of shoes. She had been forced to
buy four pairs of these at $2 a pair. They all realized that if Irena
could spend a little more for her shoes they would wear longer. "But for
shoes," she said, with a little laugh, "two dollars--it is the most I
ever could pay."
She was a girl of unusual health and strength, and though sometimes very
weary at night and troubled with eye strain from watching the needle, it
was a different drain of her vitality that she mentioned as alarming. She
was obliged to work at a time of the month when she normally needed rest,
and endured anguish at her machine at this season. She had thought, she
said gravely, that if she ever had any money ahead, she would try to use
it to have a little rest then.
Molly Zaplasky, a little Russian shirt-waist worker of fifteen, operated
a machine for fifty-six hours a week, did her own washing, and even went
to evening school. She had worked for five months, earning $9 a week for
five weeks of this time, and sometimes $6, sometimes $7, for the
remainder. She and her sister Dora, of seventeen, also a shirt-waist
maker, had a room with a cousin's family on the East Side.
Dora had worked a year and a half. She, too, earned $9 a week in full
weeks. But there had been only twenty-two such weeks in that period. For
seventeen weeks she had earned $6 a week. For four weeks she had been
idle because of slackness of work, and for nine weeks recently she had
been too ill to work, having developed tuberculosis. Dora, too, did her
own washing. She made her own waists, and went to evening school. She had
paid $2.75 a week for partial board and for lodging. The food, not
included in her board, cost about $1 a week. The little Molly had paid
for Dora's board and lodging in her nine weeks' illness. Dora, who had
worked so valiantly, was quietly expecting just as valiantly her turn in
the long waiting list of applicants for the Montefiore Home for
consumptives. She knew that the chance of her return to Molly was very
slight.
Her expenditure for food, shelter, and clothing for the year had been as
follows: room and board (exclusive of nine weeks' illness), $161.25;
clothing, $41.85; total, $203.10. As her income for the year had been
$297.50, this left a balance of $94.40 for all other expenses. Items for
clothing had been: suit, $12; jacket, $4.50; a hat, $2.50; shoes (two
pairs), $4.25; stockings (two pairs a week at 15 cents), $15.60;
underwear, $3; total, $41.85.
One point should be accentuated in this budget--the striking cost of
stockings, due to the daily walk to and from work and the ill little
worker's lack of strength and time for darning. The outlay for footwear
in all the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the fact that
much of their work is done sitting.
Here are the budgets of some of the shirt-waist makers who were earning
Natalya's wage of $6 a week, or less than this wage.
Rea Lupatkin, a shirt-waist maker of nineteen, had been in New York only
ten months, and was at first a finisher in a cloak factory. Afterward,
obtaining work as operator in a waist factory, she could get $4 in
fifty-six hours on a time basis. She had been in this factory six weeks.
Rea was paying $4 a month for lodging in two rooms of a tenement-house
with a man and his wife and baby and little boy. She saved carfare by a
walk of three-quarters of an hour, adding daily one and a half hours to
the nine and a half already spent in operating. Her food cost $2.25 a
week so that, with 93 cents a week for lodging, her regular weekly cost
of living was $3.18, leaving her 82 cents for every other expense. In
spite of this, and although she had been forced to spend $3 for
examination of her eyes and for eyeglasses, Rea contrived to send an
occasional $2 back to her family in Europe.
Ida Bergeson, a little girl of fifteen, was visited at half past eight
o'clock one evening, in a tenement on the lower East Side. The gas was
burning brightly in the room; several people were talking; and this
frail-looking little Ida lay on a couch in their midst, sleeping, in all
the noise and light, in complete exhaustion. Her sister said that every
night the child returned from the factory utterly worn out, she was
obliged to work so hard and so fast.
Ida received the same wage as Natalya--$6 a week. She worked fifty-six
hours a week--eight more than the law allows for minors. She paid $4 a
week for board and a room shared with the anxious older sister, who told
about her experience. Ida needed all the rest of her $2 for her clothing.
She did her own washing. As the inquirer came away, leaving the worn
little girl sleeping in her utter fatigue, she wondered with what
strength Ida could enter upon her possible marriage and
motherhood--whether, indeed, she would struggle through to maturity.
Katia Halperian, a shirt-waist worker of fifteen, had been in New York
only six months. During twenty-one weeks of this time she was employed in
a Wooster Street factory, earning for a week of nine-and-a-half-hour days
only $3.50. Katia, like Natalya, was a "trimmer."
After paying $3 a week board to an aunt, she had a surplus of 50 cents
for all clothing, recreation, doctor's bills, and incidentals.
To save carfare she walked to her work--about forty minutes' distance.
Her aunt lived on the fourth floor of a tenement. After working nine and
a half hours and walking an hour and twenty minutes daily, Katia climbed
four flights of stairs and then helped with the housework.
Sonia Lavretsky, a girl of twenty, had been self-supporting for four
years. She lived in a most wretched, ill-kept tenement, with a family who
made artificial flowers. She had been totally unable to find work for the
last five months, but this family, though very poor, had kept her with
them without payment through all this time.
She had been three months an operative, putting cuffs on waists. Working
on a time basis, she earned $3 the first week and $4 the second. She was
then put on piece-work, and in fifty-four hours and a half could earn
only $3. Laid off, she found employment at felling cloaks, earning from
$3 to $6 a week. But after twelve weeks, trade in this place also had
grown dull.
During her idle time she became "run down" and was ill three weeks.
Fortunately, a brother was able to pay her doctor's bills, until he also
was laid off during part of her idle time.
When Sonia had any money she gave her landlady, for part of a room in the
poor tenement with the flower-makers, $3.50 a month, and about $2.50 a
week for food. Before her dull season and slack work began, she had paid
20 cents a week dues to a self-education society and social club.
Her brother had given her all the clothing she had. The burden of her
support evidently fell heavily upon him and upon the poverty-stricken
family of her hostess. And Sonia was in deep discouragement. She was
about to go away from New York in hopes of finding work in Syracuse.
Getta Bursova, an attractive Russian girl of twenty, had worked for eight
years--ever since she was twelve. She had been employed as a waist
operative for six years in London and for two in New York.
Here she worked nine and a half hours daily in a factory on Nineteenth
Street, earning $5 to $6 a week. Of this wage she paid her sister $4 a
week for food and lodging in an inside tenement room in very poor East
Side quarters, so far from her work that she was obliged to spend 60
cents a week for carfare. In her busy weeks she had never more than $1.40
a week left, and often only 60 cents, for her clothing and every other
expense.
Getta had been idle, moreover, for nearly six months. During this time
she had been supported by her sister's family.
In spite of this defeat in her fortunes, her presence had a lovely
brightness and initiative, and her inexpensive dress had a certain
daintiness. She was eager for knowledge, and through all her busy weeks
had paid 10 cents dues to a self-education society.
Nevertheless, her long dull season was a harassing burden and
disappointment both for herself and her sister's struggling family.
Betty Lukin, a shirt-waist maker of twenty, had been making sleeves for
two years. For nine months of the year she earned from $6 to $10 a week;
for the remaining three months only $2 a week. Her average weekly wage
for the year would be about $6. Of this she spent $3 a week for suppers
and a place in a tenement to sleep, and about 50 cents a week for
breakfast and luncheon--a roll and a bit of fruit or candy from a push
cart. Her father was in New York, doing little to support himself, so
that many weeks she deprived herself to give him $3 or $4.
She spent 50 cents a week to go to the theatre and 10 cents for club
dues. She had, of course, very little left for dress. She looked ill
clad, and she was, naturally, improperly nourished and very delicate.
Two points in Betty's little account are suggestive: one is that she
could always help her father. In listening to the account of an organizer
of the Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a man who had known some 40,000 garment
workers, I exclaimed on the hardships of the trade for the number of
married men it contained, and was about to make a note of this item when
he eagerly stopped me. "Wait, wait, please," he cried generously. "When
you put it down, then put this down, too. It is just the same for the
girls. The most of them are married to a family. They, too, take care of
others."
To this truth, Betty's expense of $3 to $4 for her father from her
average wage of $6, and little Molly's item of nine weeks' board and
lodging for her sister, bear eloquent testimony. On the girls' part they
were mentioned merely as "all in the day's work," and with the tacit
simplicity of that common mortal responsibility which is heroic.
The other fact to be remarked in Betty's account is that she spent 60
cents a week for club dues and the theatre, and only 50 cents for all her
casual sidewalk breakfasts and luncheons from the push carts. Such an
eager hunger for complete change of scene and thought, such a desire for
beauty and romance as these two comparative items show, appear in
themselves a true romance. Nearly all the Russian shirt-waist makers
visit the theatre and attend clubs and night classes, whatever their wage
or their hours of labor. Most of them contribute to the support of a
family.
These shirt-waist makers, all self-supporting, whose income and outlay
are described above, were all--with the exception of Irena Kovalova, who
supported a family of four--living away from home. Natalya lived with her
mother and father.
She did not do her own washing, though she made her own waists and those
of her sister and mother. But her story is given because in other
ways--in casual employment, long hours, unfair and undignified treatment
from her employers, and in the conditions of her peaceable effort to
obtain juster and better terms of living--her experience has seemed
characteristic of the trade fortunes of many of the forty thousand
shirt-waist makers employed in New York for the last two years.
In conditions such as described above, Natalya and other shirt-waist
makers were working last fall, when one day she saw a girl, a
piece-worker, shaking her head and objecting sadly to the low price the
foreman was offering her for making a waist. "If you don't like it,"
said the foreman, with a laugh, "why don't you join your old 'sisters'
out on the street, then?"
Natalya wondered with interest who these "sisters" were. On making
inquiry, she found that the workers in other shirt-waist factories had
struck, for various reasons of dissatisfaction with the terms of their
trade.
The factories had continued work with strike breakers. Some of the
companies had stationed women of the street and their cadets in front of
the shops to insult and attack the Union members whenever they came to
speak to their fellow-workers and to try to dissuade them from selling
their work on unfair terms. Some had employed special police protection
and thugs against the pickets.
There is, of course, no law against picketing. Every one in the United
States has as clear a legal right to address another person peaceably on
the subject of his belief in selling his work as on the subject of his
belief in the tariff. But on the 19th of October ten girls belonging to
the Union, who had been talking peaceably on the day before with some of
the strike breakers, were suddenly arrested as they were walking quietly
along the street, were charged with disorderly conduct, arraigned in the
Jefferson Market Court, and fined $1 each. The chairman of the strikers
from one shop was set upon by a gang of thugs while he was collecting
funds, and beaten and maimed so that he was confined to his bed for
weeks.
A girl of nineteen, one of the strikers, as she was walking home one
afternoon was attacked in the open daylight by a thug, who struck her in
the side and broke one of her ribs. She was in bed for four weeks, and
will always be somewhat disabled by her injury. These and other illegal
oppressions visited on the strikers roused a number of members of the
Woman's Trade-Union League to assist the girls in peaceful picketing.
Early in November, a policeman arrested Miss Mary E. Dreier, the
President of the Woman's Trade-Union League, because she entered into a
quiet conversation with one of the strike breakers. Miss Dreier is a
woman of large independent means, socially well known throughout New York
and Brooklyn. When the sergeant recognized her as she came into the
station, he at once discharged her case, reprimanded the officer, and
assured Miss Dreier that she would never have been arrested if they had
known who she was.
This flat instance of discrimination inspired the officers of the Woman's
Trade-Union League to protest to Police Commissioner Baker against the
arbitrary oppression of the strikers by the policemen. He was asked to
investigate the action of the police. He replied that the pickets would
in future receive as much consideration as other people. The attitude of
the police did not, however, change.
It was to these events, as Natalya Urusova found, that the foreman of the
Bruch factory had referred when he asked the girls, with a sneer, why
they didn't join their "sisters." Going to the Union headquarters on
Clinton Street, she learned all she could about the Union. Afterward, in
the Bruch factory, whenever any complaints arose, she would say casually,
in pretended helplessness, "But what can we do? Is there any way to
change this?" Vague suggestions of the Union headquarters would arise,
and she would inquire into this eagerly and would pretend to allow
herself to be led to Clinton Street. So, little by little, as the long
hours and low wages and impudence from the foreman continued, she induced
about sixty girls to understand about organization and to consider it
favorably.
On the evening of the 22d of November, Natalya, and how many others from
the factory she could not tell, attended a mass meeting at Cooper Union,
of which they had been informed by hand-bills. It was called for the
purpose of discussing a general strike of shirt-waist workers in New York
City. The hall was packed. Overflow meetings were held at Beethoven Hall,
Manhattan Lyceum, and Astoria Hall. In the Cooper Union addresses were
delivered by Samuel Gompers, by Miss Dreier, and by many others.
Finally, a girl of eighteen asked the chairman for the privilege of the
floor. She said: "I have listened to all the speeches. I am one who
thinks and feels from the things they describe. I, too, have worked and
suffered. I am tired of the talking. I move that we go on a general
strike."
The meeting broke into wild applause. The motion was unanimously
indorsed. The chairman, Mr. Feigenbaum, a Union officer, rapped on the
table. "Do you mean faith?" he called to the workers. "Will you take the
old Jewish oath?" Thousands of right hands were held up and the whole
audience repeated in Yiddish:[14] "If I turn traitor to the cause I now
pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."
This was the beginning of the general shirt-waist strike. A committee of
fifteen girls and one boy was appointed at the Cooper Union meeting, and
went from one to the other of the overflow meetings, where the same
motion was offered and unanimously indorsed.
II
"But I did not know how many workers in my shop had taken that oath at
that meeting. I could not tell how many would go on strike in our factory
the next day," said Natalya, afterward. "When we came back the next
morning to the factory, though, no one went to the dressing-room. We all
sat at the machines with our hats and coats beside us, ready to leave.
The foreman had no work for us when we got there. But, just as always, he
did not tell when there would be any, or if there would be any at all
that day. And there was whispering and talking softly all around the room
among the machines: 'Shall we wait like this?' 'There is a general
strike,' 'Who will get up first?' 'It would be better to be the last to
get up, and then the company might remember it of you afterward, and do
well for you,' But I told them," observed Natalya, with a little shrug,
"'What difference does it make which one is first and which one is last?'
Well, so we stayed whispering, and no one knowing what the other would
do, not making up our minds, for two hours. Then I started to get up."
Her lips trembled. "And at just the same minute all--we all got up
together, in one second. No one after the other; no one before. And when
I saw it--that time--oh, it excites me so yet, I can hardly talk about
it. So we all stood up, and all walked out together. And already out on
the sidewalk in front the policemen stood with the clubs. One of them
said, 'If you don't behave, you'll get this on your head.' And he shook
his club at me.
"We hardly knew where to go--what to do next. But one of the American
girls, who knew how to telephone, called up the Woman's Trade-Union
League, and they told us all to come to a big hall a few blocks away.
After we were there, we wrote out on paper what terms we wanted: not any
night work, except as it would be arranged for in some special need for
it for the trade; and shorter hours; and to have wages arranged by a
committee to arbitrate the price for every one fairly; and to have better
treatment from the bosses.
"Then a leader spoke to us and told us about picketing quietly, and the
law.[15]
"Our factory had begun to work with a few Italian strike breakers.[16]
The next day we went back to the factory, and saw five Italian girls
taken in to work, and then taken away afterward in an automobile. I was
with an older girl from our shop, Anna Lunska. The next morning in front
of the factory, Anna Lunska and I met a tall Italian man going into the
factory with some girls. So I said to her: 'These girls fear us in some
way. They do not understand, and I will speak to them, and ask them why
they work, and tell them we are not going to harm them at all--only to
speak about our work.'
"I moved toward them to say this to them. Then the tall man struck Anna
Lunska in the breast so hard, he nearly knocked her down. She couldn't
get her breath. And I went to a policeman standing right there and said,
'Why do you not arrest this man for striking my friend? Why do you let
him do it? Look at her. She cannot speak; she is crying. She did nothing
at all,' Then he arrested the man; and he said, 'But you must come, too,
to make a charge against him.' The tall Italian called a man out of the
factory, and went with me and Anna Lunska and the three girls to the
court."
But when Natalya and Anna reached the court, and had made their charge
against the tall Italian, to their bewilderment not only he, but they,
too, were conducted downstairs to the cells. He had charged them with
attacking the girls he was escorting into the factory.
"They made me go into a cell," said Natalya, "and suddenly they locked us
in. Then I was frightened, and I said to the policeman there, 'Why do you
do this? I have done nothing at all. The man struck my friend. I must
send for somebody.'
"He said, 'You cannot send for any one at all. You are a prisoner.'
"We cried then. We were frightened. We did not know what to do.
"After about an hour and a half he came and said some one was asking for
us. We looked out. It was Miss Violet Pike. A boy I knew had seen us go
into the prison with the Italian, and not come out, and so he thought
something was wrong and he had gone to the League and told them.
"So Miss Pike had come from the League; and she bailed us out; and she
came back with us on the next day for our trial."
On the next morning the case against the tall Italian was rapidly
examined, and the Italian discharged. He was then summoned back in
rebuttal, and Natalya and Anna's case was called. Four witnesses, one of
them being the proprietor of the factory, were produced against them, and
stated that Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the Italian was
escorting. At the close of the case against Natalya and Anna, Judge
Cornell said:[17] "I find the girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile
for me to fine them. Some charitable women would pay their fines or they
could get a bond. I am going to commit them to the workhouse under the
Cumulative Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity of
thinking over what they have done."
"Miss Violet Pike came forward then," said Natalya, "and said, 'Cannot
this sentence be mollified?'
"And he said it could not be mollified.
"They took us away in a patrol to the Tombs.
"We waited in the waiting-room there. The matron looked at us and said,
'You are not bad girls. I will not send you down to the cells. You can do
some sewing for me here.' But I could not sew. I felt so bad, because I
could not eat the food they gave us at noon for dinner in the long hall
with all the other prisoners. It was coffee with molasses in it, and
oatmeal and bread so bad that after one taste we could not swallow it
down. Then, for supper, we had the same, but soup, too, with some meat
bones in it. And even before you sat down at the table these bones
smelled so it made you very sick. But they forced you to sit down at the
table before it, whether you ate or drank anything or not. And the
prisoners walked by in a long line afterward and put their spoons in a
pail of hot water, just the same whether they had eaten anything with the
spoons or not.
"Then we walked to our cells. It was night, and it was dark--oh, so dark
in there it was dreadful! There were three other women in the cell--some
of them were horrid women that came off the street. The beds were one
over the other, like on the boats--iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket.
But it was so cold you had to put both over you; and the iron springs
underneath were bare, and they were dreadful to lie on. There was no air;
you could hardly breathe. The horrid women laughed and screamed and said
terrible words.
"Anna Lunska felt so sick and was so very faint, I thought what should we
do if she was so much worse in the night in this terrible darkness, where
you could see nothing at all. Then I called through the little grating to
a woman who was a sentinel that went by in the hall all through the
night, 'My friend is sick. Can you get me something if I call you in the
night?'
"The woman just laughed and said, 'Where do you think you are? But if you
pay me, I will come and see what I can do.'
"In a few minutes she came back with a candle, and shuffled some cards
under the candlelight, and called to us, 'Here, put your hand through the
grate and give me a quarter and I'll tell you who your fellows are by the
cards.' Then Anna Lunska said, 'We do not care to hear talk like that,'
and the woman went away.
"All that night it was dreadful. In the morning we could not eat any of
the breakfast. They took us in a wagon like a prison with a little
grating, and then in a boat like a prison with a little grating. As we
got on to it, there was another girl, not like the rest of the women
prisoners. She cried and cried. And I saw she was a working girl. I
managed to speak to her and say, 'Who are you?' She said, 'I am a
striker. I cannot speak any English.' That was all. They did not wish me
to speak to her, and I had to go on.
"From the boat they made us go into the prison they call Blackwell's
Island. Here they made us put on other clothes. All the clothes they had
were much, much too large for me, and they were dirty. They had dresses
in one piece of very heavy, coarse material, with stripes all around, and
the skirts are gathered, and so heavy for the women. They almost drag you
down to the ground. Everything was so very much too big for me, the
sleeves trailed over my hands so far and the skirts on the ground so far,
they had to pin and pin them up with safety-pins.
"Then we had the same kind of food I could not eat; and they put us to
work sewing gloves. But I could not sew, I was so faint and sick. At
night there was the same kind of food I could not eat, and all the time I
wondered about that shirt-waist striker that could not speak one word of
English, and she was all alone and had the same we had in other ways.
When we walked by the matron to go to our cells at night, at first she
started to send Anna Lunska and me to different cells. She would have
made me go alone with one of the terrible women from the street. But I
was so dreadfully frightened, and cried so, and begged her so to let Anna
Lunska and me stay together, that at last she said we could.
"Just after that I saw that other girl, away down the line, so white, she
must have cried and cried, and looking so frightened. I thought, 'Oh, I
ought to ask for her to come with us, too' But I did not dare. I thought,
'I will make that matron so mad that she will not even let Anna Lunska
and me stay together,' So I got almost to our cell before I went out of
the line and across the hall and went back to the matron and said: 'Oh,
there is another Russian girl here. She is all alone. She cannot speak
one word of English. Please, please couldn't that girl come with my
friend and me?'
"She said, 'Well, for goodness' sake! So you want to band all the
strikers together here, do you? How long have you known her?'
"I said, 'I never saw her until to-day.'
"The matron said, 'For the land's sake, what do you expect here?' but she
did not say anything else. So I went off, just as though she wasn't going
to let that girl come with us; for I knew she would not want to seem as
though she would do it, at any rate.
"But, after we were in the cell with an Irish woman and another woman,
the door opened, and that Russian girl came in with us. Oh, she was so
glad!
"After that it was the same as the night before, except that we could see
the light of the boats passing. But it was dark and cold, and we had to
put both the quilt and the blanket over us and lie on the springs, and
you must keep all of your clothes on to try to be warm. But the air and
the smells are so bad. I think if it were any warmer, you would almost
faint there. I could not sleep.
"The next day they made me scrub. But I did not know how to scrub. And,
for Anna Lunska, she wet herself all over from head to foot. So they
said, very cross, 'It seems to us you do not know how to scrub a bit. You
can go back to the sewing department.' On the way I went through a room
filled with negresses, and they called out, 'Look, look at the little
kid,' And they took hold of me, and turned me around, and all laughed and
sang and danced all around me. These women, they do not seem to mind at
all that they are in prison.
"In the sewing room the next two days I was so sick I could hardly sew.
The women often said horrid things to each other, and I sat on the bench
with them. There was one woman over us at sewing that argued with me so
much, and told me how much better it was for me here than in Russian
prisons, and how grateful I should be.
"I said, 'How is that, then? Isn't there the same kind of food in those
prisons and in these prisons? And I think there is just as much
liberty.'"
On the last day of Natalya's sentence, after she was dressed in her own
little jacket and hat again and just ready to go, one of the most
repellent women of the street said to her, "I am staying in here and
you're going out. Give me a kiss for good-by." Natalya said that this
woman was a horror to her. "But I thought it was not very nice to refuse
this; so I kissed her a good-by kiss and came away."
The officers guarded the girls to the prison boat for their return to New
York. There, at the ferry, stood a delegation of the members of the
Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union waiting to receive them.
Such is the account of one of the seven hundred arrests made during the
shirt-waist strike, the chronicle of a peaceful striker.
As the weeks went on, however, in spite of the advice of the Union
officers, there were a few instances of violence on the part of the Union
members. Among thirty thousand girls it could not be expected that every
single person should maintain the struggle in justice and temperance with
perfect self-control. In two or three cases the Union members struck back
when they were attacked. In a few cases they became excited and attacked
strike breakers. In one factory, although there was no violence, the
workers conducted their negotiations in an unfair and unfortunate manner.
They had felt that all their conditions except the amount of wages were
just, and they admired and were even remarkably proud of the management,
a firm of young and well-intentioned manufacturers. Early in the general
strike, however, they went out without a word to the management, without
even signifying to it in any way the point they considered unjust. The
management did not send to inquire. After a few days it resumed work with
strike breakers. The former employees began picketing. The management
sent word to them that it would not employ against them, so long as they
were peaceful and within the law, any of the means of intimidation that
numbers of the other firms were using--special police and thugs. The
girls sent word back that they would picket peacefully and quietly. But
afterward, on their own admission, which was most disarming in its
candor, they became careless and "too gay." They went picketing in too
large numbers and were too noisy. Instantly the firm employed police.
Before this, however, the girls had begun to discuss and to realize the
unintelligence of their behavior in failing to send a committee to the
management to describe their position clearly and to obtain terms. They
now appointed and instructed such a committee, came rapidly to terms with
the management, and have been working for them in friendly relations ever
since.
While in general the strike was both peaceful in conduct and just in
demand and methods of demand on the part of the strikers, these
exceptions must, of course, be mentioned in the interests of truth.
Further, it would convey a false impression to imply that every striker
arrested had as much sense and force of character as Natalya Urusova.
Natalya was especially protected in her ordeal by a vital love of
observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present
writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these
qualities she could spend night after night locked up with the women of
the street, in her funny, enormous prison clothes, and remain as
uninfluenced by her companions as if she had been some blossoming
geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cellar as a convenience for a
few minutes, and then carried out again to her native fresh air. But such
qualities as hers cannot be demanded of all very young and unprotected
girls, and to place them wantonly with women of the streets has in
general an outrageous irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently
implied by the experience of a girl of Natalya's individual penetration
and self-reliance.
III
In the period since the strike began many factories had been settling
upon Union terms. But many factories were still on strike, and picketing
on the part of the Union was continuing, as well as unwarranted arrests,
like Natalya's, on the part of the employers and the police. The few
exceptions to the general rule of peaceful picketing have been stated.
Over two hundred arrests were made within three days early in December.
On the 3d of December a procession of ten thousand women marched to the
City Hall, accompanying delegates from the Union and the Woman's
Trade-Union League, and visited Mayor McClellan in his office and gave
him this letter:--
HONORABLE GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN,
Mayor of the City of New York.
We, the members of the Ladies' Shirt-waist Makers' Union, a
body of thirty thousand women, appeal to you to put an
immediate stop to the insults and intimidations and to the
abuses to which the police have subjected us while we have been
picketing. This is our lawful right.
We protest to you against the flagrant discrimination of the
Police Department in favor of the employers, who are using
every method to incite us to violence.
We appeal to you directly in this instance, instead of to your
Police Commissioner.
We do this because our requests during the past six months have
had no effect in decreasing the outrages perpetrated upon our
members, nor have our requests been granted a fair hearing.
Yours respectfully,
S. SHINDLER, Secretary.
The Mayor thanked the committee for bringing the matter to his attention,
and promised to take up the complaint with the Police Commissioner.
But the arrests and violence of the police continued unchecked.
On the 5th of December the Political Equality League, at the instigation
of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, held a packed meeting for the benefit of the
Shirt-waist Makers' Union. Many imprisoned girls were present, and gave
to the public clear, straightforward stories of the treatment they had
received at the hands of the city. The committee of the meeting had
offered the Mayor and other city officials a box, but they refused to be
present.
Again the arrests and violence continued without protection for the
workers. Nevertheless their cause was constantly gaining, and although
all attempts at general arbitration were unsuccessful, more and more
employers settled with the operatives. They continued to settle during
December and January until the middle of February. All but thirteen of
the shops in New York had then made satisfactory terms with the Union
workers. It was officially declared that the strike was over.
Natalya's shop had settled with the operatives on the 23d of January, and
she went back to work on the next day.
She had an increase of $2 a week in wages--$8 a week instead of $6. Her
hours were now fifty-two a week instead of sixty--that is to say, nine
and one-half hours a day, with a Saturday half-holiday. But she has
since then been obliged to enter another factory on account of slack
work.
Among the more skilled workers than Natalya in New York to-day, Irena
Kovalova, who supports her mother and her younger brother and sister, has
$11 a week instead of $9. She is not obliged to work on Sunday, and her
factory closes at five o'clock instead of six on Saturday. "I have four
hours less a week," she said with satisfaction. The family have felt able
to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material for a suit,
costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this for Irena as a present.
Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, Anna Klotin, who sent
$120 home to her family last year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8
a week, and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her former $12 a
week. Hers was one of the thirteen factories that did not settle. Of
their one hundred and fifty girls, they wished about twenty of their more
skilled operators to return to them under Union conditions, leaving the
rest under the old long hours of overtime and indeterminate, unregulated
wages. Anna was one of the workers the firm wished to retain on Union
terms, but she felt she could not separate her chances in her trade from
the fortunes of her one hundred and thirty companions. She refused to
return under conditions so unjust for them. She has stayed on in her
boarding place, as her landlady, realizing Anna's responsible character,
is always willing to wait for money when work is slack. She has bought
this year only two pairs of shoes, a hat for 50 cents, and one or two
muslin waists, which she made herself. She has lived on such work as she
could find from time to time in different factories. Anna did not grudge
in any way her sacrifice for the less skilled workers. "In time," she
said, "we will have things better for all of us." And the chief regret
she mentioned was that she had been unable to send any money home since
the strike.
The staunchest allies of the shirt-waist makers in their attempt to
obtain wiser trade conditions were the members and officers of the
Woman's Trade-Union League, whose response and generosity were constant
from the beginning to the end of the strike. The chronicle of the largest
woman's strike in this country is not yet complete. A suit is now pending
against the Woman's Trade-Union League and the Union for conspiracy in
restraint of trade, brought by the Sittomer Shirt-waist Co. A test suit
is pending against Judge Cornell for false imprisonment, brought by one
of the shirt-waist strikers.
The whole outcome of the strike in its effect on women's wages in the
shirt-waist trade, their income and outlay in their work, both
financially and in vitality, cannot, of course, yet be fully known. The
statement that there has been a general rise of wages must be modified in
other ways than that suggested by the depletion of Anna Klotin's income
in the year since the strike. In factories where price on piece-work is
subject to arbitration between a Union committee of the workers and the
firm, the committee is not always able to obtain a fair price for labor.
One of the largest factories made a verbal agreement to observe Union
conditions, but it signed no written contract, and has since broken its
word. It discriminates against Union members, and it insists on Sunday
work and on night work for more than two nights a week. Further, during
the seventeen weeks of the strike many shirt-waist orders ordinarily
filled in New York were placed with New Jersey and Pennsylvania firms.
The present New York season has been unusually dull, and now, on this
writing, early in August, many girls are discouraged on account of the
slight amounts they earn through slack work.
"But that is not the fault of the employers," said one of the workers.
"You must be reasonable for them. You cannot ask them for work they are
not able to obtain to give you." Her remark is quoted both from its
wisdom and for another purpose. She was the girl who will always be
disabled by the attack of her employer's thug. Her quiet and instinctive
mention of the need of justice in considering conditions for employers
had for the listener who heard her a most significant, unconscious
generosity and nobility.
Looking back upon the shirt-waist strike nearly a year afterward, its
profoundest common value would appear to an unprejudiced onlooker to be
its spirit. Something larger than a class spirit, something fairer than a
mob spirit, something which may perhaps be called a mass spirit,
manifested itself in the shirt-waist makers' effort for better terms of
life.
"The most remarkable feature of the strike," says a writer in the
_Call_,[18] "is the absence of leaders. All the girls seem to be imbued
with a spirit of activity that by far surpasses all former industrial
uprisings. One like all are ready to take the chairmanship,
secretaryship, do picket duty, be arrested, and go to prison."
There has never before been a strike quite like the shirt-waist makers'
strike. Perhaps there never will be another quite like it again. When
every fair criticism of its conduct has been faced, and its errors have
all been admitted, the fact remains that the New York strike said, "All
for one and one for all," with a magnetic candor new and stirring in the
voice of the greatest and the richest city of our country--perhaps new
in the voice of the world. Wonderful it is to know that in that world
to-day, unseen, unheard, are forces like those of that ghetto girl who,
in the meanest quarter of New York, on stinted food, in scanty clothes,
drained with faint health and overwork, could yet walk through her life,
giving away half of her wage by day to some one else, enjoying the
theatre at night, and, in the poorest circumstances, pouring her slight
strength out richly like a song for pleasure and devotion. Wonderful it
is to know that when Natalya Urusova was in darkness, hunger, fright, and
cold on Blackwell's Island, she still could be responsibly concerned for
the fortunes of a stranger and had something she could offer to her
nobly. Wonderful to know that, after her very bones had been broken by
the violence of a thug of an employer, one of these girls could still
speak for perfect fairness for him with an instinct for justice truly
large and thrilling. Such women as that ennoble life and give to the
world a richer and altered conception of justice--a justice of
imagination and the heart, concerned not at all with vengeance, but
simply with the beauty of the perfect truth for the fortunes of all
mortal creatures.
Besides the value to the workers of the spirit of the shirt-waist strike,
they gained another advantage. This was of graver moment even than an
advance in wages and of deeper consequences for their future. They
gained shorter hours.
What, then, are the trade fortunes of some of those thousands of other
women, other machine operatives whose hours and wages are now as the
shirt-waist makers' were before the shirt-waist strike? What do some of
these other women factory workers, unorganized and entirely dependent
upon legislation for conserving their strength by shorter working hours,
give in their industry? What do they get from it? For an answer to these
questions, we turn to some of the white goods sewers, belt makers, and
stitchers on children's dresses, for the annals of their income and
outlay in their work away from home in New York.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: _Union Label Bulletin_, Vol. 2, No. I, p. 1.]
[Footnote 13: This expense would at this date probably be heavier, as the
working girls at one of the St. George's Working Girls' Clubs estimated
early this summer that shoes of a quality purchasable two years ago at $2
would now cost $2.50.]
[Footnote 14: Constance Leupp, in the _Survey_.]
[Footnote 15: The circular of advice issued a little later by the Union
reads as follows:--
RULES FOR PICKETS
Don't walk in groups of more than two or three.
Don't stand in front of the shop; walk up and down the block.
Don't stop the person you wish to talk to; walk along side of him.
Don't get excited and shout when you are talking.
Don't put your hand on the person you are speaking to. Don't touch
his sleeve or button. This may be construed as a "technical
assault."
Don't call any one "scab" or use abusive language of any kind.
Plead, persuade, appeal, but do not threaten.
If a policeman arrest you and you are sure that you have committed
no offense, take down his number and give it to your Union
officers.]
[Footnote 16: In the factories where the Russian and Italian girls worked
side by side, their feeling for each other seems generally to have been
friendly. After the beginning of the strike an attempt was made to
antagonize them against each other by religious and nationalistic
appeals. It met with little success. Italian headquarters for Italian
workers wishing organizations were soon established. Little by little the
Italian garment workers are entering the Union.]
[Footnote 17: Extract from the court stenographer's minutes of the
proceedings in the Per trial.]
[Footnote 18: Therese Malkiel, December 22.]