You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday October 27, 1915
From The Day Book: Woman Longs for Death, Wants Rest from Starvation Wages
Sometimes long hours at starvation wages becomes too much to bear. Jane Whitaker in the Chicago Day Book of October 25th relates one woman's story of despair:
WOMAN CRAVES DEATH AS RESULT OF LOW WAGES
PAID BY MERCHANT PRINCES
BY JANE WHITAKER
The antidote to dispair.
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"There'll be pie in the sky bye and bye," sang Hillstrom, the I. W. W. poet who will be shot to death in Utah in the near future, and in the past two weeks I have been thinking of that satire a great deal more than I have thought of other things, as on each visiting night I have called on a woman who is recovering from an operation at one of the leading hospitals, where she is in a charity bed.
Less than two years ago I met her shortly after she had lost her husband and adopted baby by death, one within a very short time of the other. She was saddened but she wasn't hopeless. Still fairly young, with a nature that craved happiness and demanded of life that it should give her what she craved, she faced the future firm in the belief that though she was frail and not very strong as a result of several operations, she was going to find a rising sun some day instead of the sun that had gone down.
Rarely in the interval I heard of her again. She left the city to visit her husband's people for quite a while; later she had come back and started a rooming house; later, finding this would not more than pay her rent and still left her without a living, she gave that up and tried to hold positions-jobs, she called them. Then I was told she was in the hospital to be operated on, and so I went to visit her.
It was on Saturday night two weeks ago. She was to be operated on early Tuesday morning. She was pleased to see me, but while I babbled the usual things we say when we do not know just what to say, she remained silent, looking at me with her large brown eyes very sober.
Then she did a curious thing. From her purse that hung by the side of the little white table she extracted some sheets of paper.
"Here is my obituary, Jane Whitaker," she said. "I'm not coming back."
I smiled at her because I thought it merely nervous depression. "The operation isn't such a serious one," I assured her. "You'll wake up to find the same old sun shining down, honey, you won't need to be afraid."
"Afraid?" Her brown eyes were afire. "Afraid? I'm not afraid to die, but I'm not going to keep on living. I tell you I won't. I must be finished. There isn't anything for me to live for."
"You're a little hysterical," I said.
She laughed it wasn't a bitter laugh, but it was hopeless.
Know what I did before I came here? Not much different from what I've been doing right along, but I went to work in one of the big department stores-Siegel-Cooper's-up in the grocery department. They paid me $3 a week and I was supposed to get 4 cents on the dollar on what I sold. I was at a center counter. I sold oranges at 22 and 29 cents a dozen; lemons at 1 cent each; apples 4 lbs. for 10 cents. I worked from 8:15 to 6:10, with from 25 to 45 minutes for lunch, according to how busy I was at the lunch time, and I worked one week. For the one week I received, including my commission, $4.57.
She was silent a while and I was silent, too. Then she resumed:
Jane Whitaker, you write a lot about how little women are paid, but you don't get down to the thing behind it the fact that a woman gets where she'd rather be dead than alive and keep it up. I don't want to live! When I came here to be examined and they told me it meant another operation I said: "This is a piece of luck; I'll be better off here. They take me in charity and I won't have any expense while I'm here, and if I'm lucky enough to die I won't have to worry any more about anything.
She lived. She hasn't been discharged from the hospital yet, but I told her I was going to write the story.
[She said:]
Please don't use my name..They told me I could come back again at Siegel-Cooper's and that is better than nothing since I'm still here.
She smiled wanly.
If I had died I wouldn't have had to think about earning $4.57 in 6 days, would I?" she asked. "Dying seems rather good when you're tired. You know you'll get a rest and you won't have to worry about living and eating and paying your room rent. It's a rest, anyway, isn't it?
I didn't repeat to her the words Hillstrom has written in such biting satire, but I thought of them for perhaps the fiftieth time:
There'll be pie in the sky bye and bye.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Below the fold, our readers can find a few recent reports from
The Day Book on the Great Chicago Garment Workers' Strike.
From The Day Book of October 25, 1915:
Big features of garment strike today:
Chairman Utpatel, council mediation committee, goes to Mayor Thompson, saying all city protection should be taken away from garment millionaires till they arbitrate.
Facts of sluggings by private police laid before mayor, but he says he's got to "take it under advisement."
Buck anti-slugger ordinance will win when voted on a week from tonight, say aldermen.
Sidney Hillman, president garment workers' union, says forces in better shape today than any time since strike started.
Three newspapers, Herald, Tribune and Post, have all rebuked manufacturers and said there ought to be arbitration. Hearst's Examiner only one playing manufacturers' game.
Judge LaBuy says he exercised "discretionary power" when he wouldn't give strikers jury trial. Doesn't answer charge of Att'y Cohen that he was "biased and prejudiced."
Hundreds of strikers along with Chicago Political Equality league women sell National News, money to go to strike fund.
Manufacturers fined before Judge Flannigan for breaking child labor and 10-hour laws.
"Million dollar fortunes of Kuppenheimers, Rosenwalds and others have been made out of the sweat and blood of these women and girls who have been coming before our committee the past week, and the next step for us will be to show the people of Chicago what an enormous amount of bloody dollars have been made out of the people like those on strike," declared Ald. Henry Utpatel, as he went into Mayor Thompson's office at noon today.
Ten women from the Women's Political Equality league, headed by Mrs. Margaret Dobyns, walked in on Mayor Thompson this noon and demanded, in the name of humanity that he do something toward bringing arbitration in the garment workers' strike or else, take all of Chicago's police protection away from the clothing bosses.
"There is something wrong with the strikers attitude," replied Thompson, "or the chief of police would not need to detail four hundred officers on the strike. When their attitude changes, then I may be able to do something."
Then Alderman Utpatel walked in while Thompson and the ten women were still standing in the mayor's office.
"Do you know, Mayor Thompson," he said, "that the mayor of New York did during a recent garment strike, just what we are asking you to do and that the result was arbitration and a final settlement?"
Mayor Thompson dismissed the meeting with "I will try and do something."
As Jimmy Simpson, vice president Marshall Field & Co., rode past his store corner at State and Washington this noon, women called to him, "Paper, mister.". The women were Ellen Gates Starr of Hull house and Mrs. J. Paul Welling. They were selling National News strike edition. On other corners around the loop were these Chicago Political Equality league women: Mrs. L. E. Gordon, Mrs. Charles Negley, Mrs. G. Washington Hall, Mrs. Julius Loeb, Mrs. E. D. Loewenthal, Mrs. McMahon.
Wm. M. Muchnick, manager of the U. S. Woolen Mills, 538 S. Clark st, was fined $5 and costs each on two charges brought against him by Oscar Nelson, factory inspector. The company had violated the child labor law and failed to keep a proper time record. Other cases are being tried before Judge Flannigan.
From The Day Book of October 25, 1915:
NOTHIN' DOOIN' ON THE FREE SPEECH STUFF-8 ARRESTED
Streets are public property.
This is supposed to be a free country.
All of which has to do with Mandel Bros, and Holden ct.
Believing that city police would not dare interfere with the constitution of the United States which grants free speech to all American people, 2,000 Chicagoans gathered in Holden ct Sunday night to listen to a series of political economy addresses. But Mandel Bros, claim Holden ct, over which they have built their department store, is a private driveway.
Marshall Field's, Carson-Pirie-Scott and Stevens probably agree with Mandel Bros., for they have all built their stores over what was a public street open to the free use of all the people, and now claim the street as private property. They use Holden ct as a private loading yard for delivery wagons and won't even let a wagon drive in it unless, the wagon is on their business.
Forty speakers were on the job. Soon the police appeared. There were not many police and there was no trouble. The police simply disagreed with the right of the people to be there and the audience did not argue. In a few minutes the courts was cleared.
On a street that not even the department stores claim is private property eight speakers again tried to tell their message. They were arrested. They are: L. W. Hardy, 1645 Belmont av.; Geo. Koop, 4023 N. Leamington av.; Jos. Frank Hallatt, 21 N. Morgan; Redwood Bailey, 809 N. State; Morris Becker, 807 S. State; Michael Walsh, 122 N. Sheldon; Chas. Kruse, 809 S. State.
[Photograph added.]
From The Day Book of October 25, 1915:
STRIKERS ON THE JOB SELLING PAPER FOR THEIR BENEFIT
The only free copy of the National News was handed to Mayor Thompson by a group of striking garment workers who awaited him outside of his office for two hours this morning. The mayor thanked them. The girls went downstairs to sell copies of the paper in the corridors of the city hall and county building.
Twenty-five thousand copies of the paper have been printed for the garment workers to sell. The money collected will be turned in to the strike fund.
The girls were on the job early this morning in the loops to sell the paper. The majority of them were at their corners at 6 o'clock. Union leaders expect to sell the entire edition.
Bevies of clubwomen were also on the job, led by Mrs. Medill McCormick, Mrs. James Morrison, Miss Ellen Starr, Miss Grace Abbott, Miss Nettie Richardson and Miss S. P. Breckinridge.
Yesterday Miss Starr of Hull house told the current events class of Evanston at the Congregational church of the garment workers' strike.
If anything is done by the police you never hear of it, but let a striker do something and you are informed by every newspaper," she said. "Several society women and myself called upon the mayor twice by appointment and were refused an interview. But Martin Isaacs, president of the Manufacturers' ass'n, had no trouble in seeing the mayor and the chief of police.
[Photograph added.]
From The Day Book of October 25, 1915:
JUDGE LABUY DISCUSSES HIS STAND IN STRIKERS' CASE
"I used my discretion as I had the power and right in law to do." This is Judge LaBuy's explanation of his action in Maxwell police station last Friday when he refused demand of 6 arrested strikers for a jury trial and ordered the case set for a future hearing.
"But when it comes up again you will have to grant transfer the case for a jury trial, will you not?" the judge was asked today.
"That is true," he replied, "but my course will expedite the process of law and will save trouble."
"Did you know that a letter condemning your action has been written to Chief Justice Olson by the attorneys of the strikers?" he was asked.
"Yes," he said, "but I have jurisdiction in the court where I sit. I do not believe anyone conversant with law will deny the right of my action and I know that no one has a right to dictate what I shall do in my own court"
[Photograph added.]
From The Day Book of October 26, 1915:
ATTY FOR STRIKERS WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT TRIALS
How far can a judge go in putting off jury trial? Judge LaBuy's action in strike cases has raised the question now. Lawyers are going to ask Chief Justice Olson of municipal courts what can be done.
Judge LaBuy not only refused to enter order for jury trial, but, according to Benjamin E. Cohen, attorney for six strikers, shut off the garment workers' lawyer by saying: "You have said enough; hereafter shut up; I know what I am doing." Cohen's letter to Chief Justice Olson reads:
October 23, 1915
Sir: On Oct 21, 1915, the cases of Samuel Silverman, Sam Simon, Charlie Myer, Beckie Friedman, Abe Levin and L. Levey appeared on the call at the Maxwell street station before his honor, Judge LaBuy. In the above matters Mr. William A. Cunnea, my associate, represents the defendants, all of whom were arrested the day before for alleged disorder in connection with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' strike, charges of disorderly conduct, commonly known as 2012, having been placed against them.
When said cases were called I demanded jury trials on behalf of the defendants and asked that the cases be transferred for jury trial. Instead of entering such an order Judge Joseph LaBuy proceeded to hear the testimony of two police officers and then, from the bench, announced: "I overrule your motion for jury trial at this time; the city is not ready in the above cases; the cases are continued for trial before me on Nov. 2; I will see that peace is preserved in the Maxwell street district."
When I again reminded him that no jury waivers had been signed and that the defendants still insisted upon their rights to trial by jury, I was politely but firmly informed by the court: "You have said enough; here after shut up; I know what I am doing."
While I realize that the Hon. Joseph LaBuy is supreme in his conduct of the court in the Maxwell street station I think a suggestion from you, as chief justice, that the ordinary rules of court should be complied with, and that statements from the bench indicating a bias and prejudice against a certain class of defendants be eliminated, will tend to keep peace in the Maxwell street district far better than the statements from the bench above quoted.
Very respectfully yours. (Signed)
Benj. E. Cohen.
[Photograph added.]
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SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
(Also source for image of headline.)
-Oct 25, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Oct 26, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Chicago Garment Workers Strike,
Parade on Oct 12, ISR of Nov 1915
https://books.google.com/...
Chicago Garment Strikers attacked by police
on horses (X2), ISR, Nov 1915
https://books.google.com/...
We Shall Fight Until We Win,
ISR, Nov 1915, Chicago ACW Strike
https://books.google.com/...
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America,
emblem:
https://books.google.com/...
See also-
For more on National News,
published in Chicago by Carl E Person:
https://books.google.com/...
https://books.google.com/...
For more on Carl E Person:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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I Hate the Capitalist System-Barbara Dane
I hate the company bosses,
I'll tell you the reason why:
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die.
-Sarah Ogan Gunning
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