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BY ORDER OF
THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT
The words gonorrhea and syphilis had occurred in that article and
Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice, did not like them. By the so-called Comstock Law of 1873, which
had been adroitly pushed through a busy Congress on the eve of
adjournment, the Post Office had been given authority to decide what
might be called lewd, lascivious, indecent, or obscene, and this
extraordinary man had been granted the extraordinary power, alone of all
citizens of the United States, to open any letter or package or pamphlet
or book passing through the mails and, if he wished, lay his complaint
before the Post Office. So powerful had his society become that anything
to which he objected in its name was almost automatically barred; he had
turned out to be sole censor for ninety million people. During some
forty years Comstock had been damming the rising tide of new thought,
thereby causing much harm, and only now was his hopeless contest against
_September Morn_ making him absurd and an object of ridicule.
But at this same time also John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was organizing the
Bureau of Social Hygiene, in part to educate the working public
regarding what were politely termed “social evils.” A fine start was
being made although no surveys had been completed. Lacking data,
lecturers had to speak in generalities. Nevertheless, to me, who had sat
through hours of highly academic exposition expressed in cultivated
tones, their approach seemed timorous and their words disguised with
verbiage. I saw no reason why these facts could not be given in a few
minutes in language simple enough for anyone to understand.
When my series was finished it was printed in pamphlet form. I sent a
copy to Dr. Prince Morrow of the Bureau, asking for his opinion and any
corrections he might suggest for the next edition; to my delight he
replied he would like to see it spread by the million. The Bureau had
names and backing but was not proceeding very fast towards educating
working people regarding venereal disease; the articles in the _Call_,
on the other hand, were reaching this same class by the thousand—yet the
one which mentioned syphilis was suppressed.
I continued assiduously to write pieces for the _Call_. One of these
reported the laundry strike in New York City in the winter of 1912,
unauthorized by Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor,
which claimed it alone had the right to declare strikes. To get the
details I went into the houses of the Irish Amazons, who with their
husbands had walked out without being called out, simply because they
could not stand it any longer. They were the hardest worked, the poorest
paid, had the most protracted and irregular hours of any union members.
One man described his typical day: he rose at five, had ten minutes for
lunch, less for supper, and dragged himself home at eleven at night. I
was glad they had the courage to rebel, and it took courage to be a
picket—getting up so early on bitterly cold mornings and waiting and
waiting to waylay the strikebreakers and argue with them. The police
were ready to pounce when the boss pointed out the ringleaders.
This was the only time I came in contact with men and women on strike
together. I could see the men had two things in their minds: one
economic—the two-dollar extra wage and the shorter hours they might win;
the other political—the coming of the social revolution. The women
really cared for neither of these. Dominating each was the relationship
between her husband, her children, and herself. She might complain of
being tired and not having enough money, but always she connected both
with too many offspring.
Some of the strikers thought I might help them out, but I was not at all
sure I believed either in direct action or legislation as a remedy for
their difficulties. This lack of conviction prevented me from having the
necessary force to aid them organize themselves, and in such an
emergency a forceful leader was called for. The night of their rally I
was amazed at the complete confusion. Anybody could speak—and was doing
so.
I felt helpless in the midst of this chaos, and distressed at their
helplessness. But I knew the person who could manage the situation
effectively, and so I sent for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a direct
actionist identified with the I.W.W. Her father, Tom Flynn, a labor
organizer, was the same type of philosophical rebel as my father, long
on conversation but short on work. Elizabeth had been out in the logging
camps of the West, where she had won the complete adoration of the
lumberjacks. At her tongue’s end were the words and phrases they
understood, and she knew exactly the right note to stir them.
Elizabeth stood on the platform, dramatically beautiful with her black
hair and deep blue eyes, her cream-white complexion set off by the
flaming scarf she always wore about her throat. Nothing if not
outspoken, she started by saying it was folly for the strikers to give
up their bread and butter by walking out. They could achieve their ends
more quickly if they threw hypothetical _sabots_ into the machinery. “If
a shirt comes in from a man who wears size fifteen, send him back an
eighteen. Replace a dress shirt with a blue denim. That’s what the
laundry workers of France did, and brought the employers to their
knees.”
The audience was being held spellbound by this instruction in the fine
art of sabotage when some of Gompers’ strong-arm men appeared, and the
battle was on. They tramped up on the stage, moved furniture and chairs
about, made so much noise Elizabeth’s voice could not be heard, and
finally ejected some of her sympathizers.
It was probably better in the end that the American Federation of Labor
eventually took the laundry workers under its wing, because the I.W.W.
was not an organized body, but merely an agitational force which
scarcely had the necessary strength to lead a successful strike in New
York City. Its influence in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was far more
potent. Joe Ettor, once bootblack in California, with Arturo Giovanitti,
scholar, idealist, poet, and editor of _Il Proletario_, had been
stirring up the unorganized textile strikers with impassioned eloquence.
So compelling were the words of these two that workers of seven
nationalities, chiefly Italian, had walked out spontaneously.
The accidental shooting of a girl picket provided an excuse, farfetched
as it may seem, to jail the firebrands, Ettor and Giovanitti, who were
charged with being “accessories _before_ the fact,” which meant they
were accused of having known beforehand she was going to be shot by the
police and were, therefore, responsible. Now, the strikers had martyrs,
and the I.W.W. heroes of the West poured in to help. Bill Haywood,
William E. Trautman of the United Brewery Workers, Carlo Tresca, editor
and owner of an Italian paper in New York, contributed to put on the
biggest show the East had ever seen—parades, banners, songs, speeches.
The entire Italian population of America was aroused. These were then a
people unto themselves. For much longer than the two generations
customary among other immigrant races they retained their habits,
traditions, and language, ate their own type of food and read their own
newspapers.
Italians in New York who were in accord with the strikers decided on a
step, novel in this country although it had been tried in Italy and
Belgium. The primary reason for the failure of all labor rebellions was
the hunger cries of the babies; if they were only fed the strikers could
usually last out. It was determined to bring the children of the textile
workers to New York, where they could be taken care of until the issue
was settled. This resolution was made without knowing how many there
might be; provision would be forthcoming somehow.
Again because I was an American, a nurse, and reputed to be sympathetic
to their cause and the cause of children, the committee asked me with
John Di Gregorio and Carrie Giovanitti to fetch the youngsters. As soon
as I agreed, telephone calls were put through to Lawrence, and a
delegate took the midnight train to make the preliminary arrangements.
We found the boys and girls gathered in a Lawrence public hall and,
before we started, I insisted on physical examinations for contagious
diseases. One, though ill with diphtheria, had been working up to the
time of the strike. Almost all had adenoids and enlarged tonsils. Each,
without exception, was incredibly emaciated.
Our hundred and nineteen charges were of every age, from babies of two
or three to older ones of twelve to thirteen. Although the latter had
been employed in the textile mills, their garments were simply worn to
shreds. Not a child had on any woolen clothing whatsoever, and only four
wore overcoats. Never in all my nursing in the slums had I seen children
in so ragged and deplorable a condition. The February weather was
bitter, and we had to run them to the station. There the parents, with
tears in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts, relinquished their
shivering offspring.
The wind was even icier when we reached Boston, and money was scarce. I
had only enough for railroad fares and none for chartering buses or
hiring taxis. Consequently, again we had to scurry on foot from the
North to the South Station. But, once more on the train, great was the
enthusiasm of the boys and girls, who entertained themselves by singing
the _Marseillaise_ and the _Internationale_. All knew the words as well
as the tunes, though the former might be in Polish, Hungarian, French,
German, Italian, and even English. The children who sang those songs are
now grown up. I wonder how they regard the present state of the world.
As we neared New York I began to worry about our arrival. We were all
weary. Would preparations have been made to feed this hungry mob and
house it for the night? But I should have trusted the deep feeling and
the dramatic instinct of the Italians. Thousands of men and women were
waiting. As my assistants and I left the train, looking like three Pied
Pipers followed by our ragged cohorts, the crowd pushed through the
police lines, leaped the ropes, caught up the children as they came, and
hoisted them to their shoulders. I was seized by both arms and I, too,
had the illusion of being swept from the ground.
The committee had secured permission to parade to Webster Hall near
Union Square. Our tired feet fell into the rhythm of the band. As we
swung along singing, laughing, crying, big banners bellying and torches
flaring, sidewalk throngs shouted and whistled and applauded.
At Webster Hall supper was ready in plentiful quantity. Many of our
small guests were so unused to sitting at table that they did not know
how to behave. Like shy animals they tried to take cover, carrying their
plates to a chair, a box, anything handy. Almost all snatched at their
food with both fists and stuffed it down, they were so hungry.
Socialists had not initiated this fight but they were in it. Many had
come to offer shelter for the duration of the strike—perhaps six weeks,
perhaps six months, perhaps a year—with visions in their minds of
beautiful, starry-eyed, helpless little ones. Instead they were
presented with bedraggled urchins, many of whom had never seen a
toothbrush. But they rallied round magnificently; I cannot speak too
highly of them.
It was a responsibility to apportion the children properly, but I had
willing and intelligent help. The Poles had sent a Polish delegate, the
French had sent a French delegate, and so on, in order that all might be
placed in homes where they could be understood. Luckily several families
were willing to take more than one child so that we were usually able to
keep brother and sister together. Each, before it was handed over, was
given a medical examination. The temporary foster-parents had to promise
to write the real parents, and also to send a weekly report to the
committee of how their charges were getting on. The tabulation was
thorough, and not until four in the morning did the last of us go to
bed.
The next week, ninety-two more children were brought down, but I had no
part in this, because I was on a case. Hysteria had now risen to such a
height that some of the parents at the Lawrence Station were beaten and
arrested by the police. Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the only Socialist
member of Congress, asked for an investigation of circumstances leading
up to the walkout. Although I had not been identified with it, he
requested me to be present at the hearings.
When Gompers testified, he literally shook with rage, and it seemed to
me he was about to have apoplexy. The mill owners charged that the whole
affair had been staged solely for notoriety and that the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children should step in.
Unfortunately, the witnesses for the strikers were not well-documented.
When it was obvious that the Congressional Committee was not receiving
the correct impression, Berger asked me to take the stand and describe
the condition of the children as I had seen them. Writing up statistics
on hospital reports had given me the habit of classification. I was able
from my brief notes to answer every question as to their nationalities,
their ages, their weights, the number of those without underclothes and
without overcoats. Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding led the inquiry, and
I could see he was in sympathy with my vehement replies.
The publicity had been so well managed by the Italians and their leaders
that popular opinion turned in favor of the strikers, and they
eventually won. At the end of March the little refugees, who had
endeared themselves to their foster-parents, went back to the mill
district. It was hard to recognize the same children of six weeks
before, plumped up and dressed in new clothes. In November Ettor and
Giovanitti were acquitted.
The Paterson silk strike of the next year, in which the workers were
again predominantly Italian, may have been as important as the one at
Lawrence, but it was by no means so obviously dramatic. Paterson was a
gloomy city, and, as a river, the Passaic was sadder than the Merrimac.
Though the leadership was far more cohesive, caution was evidenced on
every hand. Its chief interest to me lay in Bill Haywood’s
participation. At Lawrence he had only been one of the committee,
whereas at Paterson he was in charge for the first time in the East.
Always before he had advised strikers to “take it on the chin” and not
be too gentle in hitting back. But here, before ten thousand crowding up
to the rostrum, I heard him warn, “Keep your hands in your pockets, men,
and nobody can say you are shooting.”
An American was apt to be at a disadvantage in handling foreigners,
particularly when they felt aggrieved. They objected to his manner of
going about things, so different from their own, and he, on the other
hand, could not fully understand their psychology, and had the added
obstacle of being compelled to work through an intermediary in language.
At Paterson the Italian groups were not behind Bill. As soon as he began
to temper his language and sound a more wary note of advice, his
once-faithful adherents repudiated him. His clarion call of “Hands in
the Pockets,” which was intended to create favorable popular opinion by
proving them “good boys,” had actually _tied_ their hands, and
detectives beat and bullied them just the same. The public was not
impressed and they were resentful. They claimed he did not have the old
fighting spirit he had shown when directing the miners of the West, he
was getting soft, he was a sick man. Although he had actually progressed
tactically and left them where they were, from that time on he lost his
power of leadership.
Following the method which had been so successful at Lawrence, Jack Reed
endeavored to dramatize direct action in an enormous pageant at Madison
Square Garden. He even had pallbearers carry an actual coffin into the
hall to pictorialize the funeral of a worker who had been shot at
Paterson. I could feel a tremor go through the audience, but, on the
whole, conviction was lacking.
The pageant was a fitting conclusion to one period of my life. I believe
that we all had our parts to play. Some had important ones; some were
there to lend support to a scene; some were merely voices off stage.
Each, whatever his role, was essential. I only walked on, but it had its
influence in my future.
No matter to what degree I might participate in strikes, I always came
back to the idea which was beginning to obsess me—that something more
was needed to assuage the condition of the very poor. It was both absurd
and futile to struggle over pennies when fast-coming babies required
dollars to feed them.
I was thoroughly despondent after the Paterson debacle, and had a
sickening feeling that there was to be no end; it seemed to me the whole
question of strikes for higher wages was based on man’s economic need of
supporting his family, and that this was a shallow principle upon which
to found a new civilization. Furthermore, I was enough of a Feminist to
resent the fact that woman and her requirements were not being taken
into account in reconstructing this new world about which all were
talking. They were failing to consider the quality of life itself.
_Chapter Seven_
THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY
“_Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night._”
WILLIAM BLAKE
During these years in New York trained nurses were in great demand. Few
people wanted to enter hospitals; they were afraid they might be
“practiced” upon, and consented to go only in desperate emergencies.
Sentiment was especially vehement in the matter of having babies. A
woman’s own bedroom, no matter how inconveniently arranged, was the
usual place for her lying-in. I was not sufficiently free from domestic
duties to be a general nurse, but I could ordinarily manage obstetrical
cases because I was notified far enough ahead to plan my schedule. And
after serving my two weeks I could get home again.
Sometimes I was summoned to small apartments occupied by young clerks,
insurance salesmen, or lawyers, just starting out, most of them under
thirty and whose wives were having their first or second baby. They were
always eager to know the best and latest method in infant care and
feeding. In particular, Jewish patients, whose lives centered around the
family, welcomed advice and followed it implicitly.
But more and more my calls began to come from the Lower East Side, as
though I were being magnetically drawn there by some force outside my
control. I hated the wretchedness and hopelessness of the poor, and
never experienced that satisfaction in working among them that so many
noble women have found. My concern for my patients was now quite
different from my earlier hospital attitude. I could see that much was
wrong with them which did not appear in the physiological or medical
diagnosis. A woman in childbirth was not merely a woman in childbirth.
My expanded outlook included a view of her background, her
potentialities as a human being, the kind of children she was bearing,
and what was going to happen to them.
The wives of small shopkeepers were my most frequent cases, but I had
carpenters, truck drivers, dishwashers, and pushcart vendors. I admired
intensely the consideration most of these people had for their own.
Money to pay doctor and nurse had been carefully saved months in
advance—parents-in-law, grandfathers, grandmothers, all contributing.
As soon as the neighbors learned that a nurse was in the building they
came in a friendly way to visit, often carrying fruit, jellies, or
gefüllter fish made after a cherished recipe. It was infinitely pathetic
to me that they, so poor themselves, should bring me food. Later they
drifted in again with the excuse of getting the plate, and sat down for
a nice talk; there was no hurry. Always back of the little gift was the
question, “I am pregnant (or my daughter, or my sister is). Tell me
something to keep from having another baby. We cannot afford another
yet.”
I tried to explain the only two methods I had ever heard of among the
middle classes, both of which were invariably brushed aside as
unacceptable. They were of no certain avail to the wife because they
placed the burden of responsibility solely upon the husband—a burden
which he seldom assumed. What she was seeking was self-protection she
could herself use, and there was none.
Below this stratum of society was one in truly desperate circumstances.
The men were sullen and unskilled, picking up odd jobs now and then, but
more often unemployed, lounging in and out of the house at all hours of
the day and night. The women seemed to slink on their way to market and
were without neighborliness.
These submerged, untouched classes were beyond the scope of organized
charity or religion. No labor union, no church, not even the Salvation
Army reached them. They were apprehensive of everyone and rejected help
of any kind, ordering all intruders to keep out; both birth and death
they considered their own business. Social agents, who were just
beginning to appear, were profoundly mistrusted because they pried into
homes and lives, asking questions about wages, how many were in the
family, had any of them ever been in jail. Often two or three had been
there or were now under suspicion of prostitution, shoplifting, purse
snatching, petty thievery, and, in consequence, passed furtively by the
big blue uniforms on the corner.
The utmost depression came over me as I approached this surreptitious
region. Below Fourteenth Street I seemed to be breathing a different
air, to be in another world and country where the people had habits and
customs alien to anything I had ever heard about.
There were then approximately ten thousand apartments in New York into
which no sun ray penetrated directly; such windows as they had opened
only on a narrow court from which rose fetid odors. It was seldom
cleaned, though garbage and refuse often went down into it. All these
dwellings were pervaded by the foul breath of poverty, that moldy,
indefinable, indescribable smell which cannot be fumigated out,
sickening to me but apparently unnoticed by those who lived there. When
I set to work with antiseptics, their pungent sting, at least
temporarily, obscured the stench.
I remember one confinement case to which I was called by the doctor of
an insurance company. I climbed up the five flights and entered the
airless rooms, but the baby had come with too great speed. A boy of ten
had been the only assistant. Five flights was a long way; he had wrapped
the placenta in a piece of newspaper and dropped it out the window into
the court.
Many families took in “boarders,” as they were termed, whose small
contributions paid the rent. These derelicts, wanderers, alternately
working and drinking, were crowded in with the children; a single room
sometimes held as many as six sleepers. Little girls were accustomed to
dressing and undressing in front of the men, and were often violated,
occasionally by their own fathers or brothers, before they reached the
age of puberty.