I grew up in one of those rust belt factory factory towns invoked by our “president” in his recent declaration of war on the 70% of us who do not support him. I’d like to offer to readers a first hand description of the reality of the “good old days” to which this man wants to return us
A few months ago a guy from my home town, Little Falls NY, told me he had found a lost series of articles by a radical public health nurse, Helen Schloss, on the horrific condition of the working class in our town in 1913. After unsuccessful efforts to get the local paper to carry the series of thirteen articles from the socialist paper, The New York Call, we decided to publish them in book form at an on-demand site, Lulu.com, and make copies available to historical societies and schools in the area. The booklet is on sale at that site, at cost for $3.84 and as a FREE PDF.
A century ago Little Falls was full of factories and home to at least twice its present population, with foreign-born immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe living in extremely crowded housing on the south side of the Mohawk River, which was itself literally an open sewer. Not only did industrial waste flow unchecked into the river but toilets were located directly over the water in many cases. Workers slept in shifts in the slums and small children did piece work for the mills in their living quarters. Schloss decries the wasteful spending of the rich mill owners on their luxurious homes and elegant churches while mothers died of untreated infections on the other side of town. She was particularly affected by the fate of a small girl who fell to her death in a terribly crowded tenement.
The Russian-born Schloss came to Little Falls in April of 1912, hired by a group of wealthy women to address the ongoing tuberculosis epidemic among the poor. She soon developed a disdain for “the good ladies” when her struggle for better housing and safer working conditions met with obstruction from their husbands. She describes her discouragement as she realizes that the workers simply cannot follow her advice on how to avoid disease.
By the time a strike spontaneously broke out in the textile mills, she was alienated from her wealthy employers and desperate to help the striking families. Shocked by Police Chief Long’s observation that all of the strikers “ought to be shot,” she helped to organize a soup kitchen, only to be jailed for inciting to riot. After two weeks in the Herkimer County lock-up, she returned to the battle, which finally ended in January, 1913 with modest pay increases for the strikers. She and the other young woman strike leader,Matilda Rabinowitz went on to many other labor struggles in the following years.
This is a great first hand look at the lives of a largely white working class in a American small town — the reality as opposed to the Trumpian dream world of a golden past.
JayRaye has featured Helen’s role in the great mining strike at Ludlow, Colorado in an installment of his Hell Raisers Journal series here on DK, and I have more on this forgotten heroine at my site Upstate Earth.
Again, download Helen's lost series here. She deserves to have her voice heard, just as this dauntless young woman made herself heard yesterday in Washington: