You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday December 22, 1903
From The Labor World: "Boycott Is Placed On Chinese Restaurants"
While the front page of the latest issue of Duluth's Labor World is full of Solidarity, the back page is sadly lacking. We have no problem with boycotts being placed on anti-union establishments, but when it is done with such anti-Asian venom, it shows a shameful lack of Solidarity with our fellow workers who are employed in those establishments:
Cooks And Waiters' Union Declares War on the C---ks.
Failing to get satisfactory answers from the proprietors of Chinese restaurants as to the unionizing of their restaurants the cooks and waiters union have inaugurated a campaign against them. This action was taken after the action of the Trades Assembly at its last meeting, and promise of support by union labor in general.
The Cooks and waiters are not opposed to the C------n going into business but they do expect them to pay union wages and adhere to union conditions. This is strongly against the practices of the M-------ns. They come from a country that champions cheap labor. If it were not for the action of Congress, America would have been C------d long ago. The National Law Making body saw the danger of Chinese immigration many years ago. It was after due deliberation that it passed a law preventing the importation of cheap Asiatic labor into America. Those C------n who were in the country at the time were permitted to remain. [One Chinese man] and others pretend to have been here then, although thousands have stolen their way into the country via Canada, thence to some obscure point.
The Duluth unions should be supported by every American in their crusade against the C------n. Several avowed enemies of organized labor have asserted that they will support the Chinese restaurants for no other reason than that union labor was against them. This is carrying the matter too far. Whatever ones scruples may be, there should be no question as to his attitude when it come to a difference between the American working man and the Chinese.
We strongly disagree with the shameful lack of unity asserted in this article. There should be nothing but Solidarity between the Chinese and the American worker. Hateful words used in the article have been redacted, and will never appear in the pages of the
Hellraisers Journal.
SOURCE
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-of Dec 19, 1903
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Monday December 22, 1913
New York, New York - Max Blanck of Triangle Factory Infamy, Fined for Locked Doors
The Real Triangle by John Sloan
The New York Call, March 27,1911
We would like, today, to rectify and error. It passed without notice here at
Hellraisers when, on December 1st, Mr.Max Blanck was fined $20 for having Becky Katzman, 19, cut lace on a Sunday. This is a violation of state law. It was just last August that Mr. Blanck found himself in court for locking a door at the Triangle Factory, now at its new location on the corner of Sixteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. There were 150 young women in the shop at the time. He was fined $20 for this violation of fire codes with an apology from Chief Justice Russell at having to impose any fine at all, considering that this was Blanck's "first offense."
SOURCE
The Triangle Fire
-by Leon Stein
NY, 1962
See also:"Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up: Life So Cheap & Property So Sacred"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And two others
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Photo: The Real Triangle
http://jennilukactranslations.wordpress.com/...
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Sunday December 22, 2013
The famous speech by Rose Schneiderman, lest we forget:
I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies, if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public—and we have found you wanting.
The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch fire.
This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death.
We have tried you, citizens! We are trying you now and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning for us—warning that we must be intensely orderly and must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back when we rise—back into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. And the only way is through a strong working-class movement.
SOURCE
The New York Times
April 3, 1911: "Mass Meeting Calls for New Fire Laws"
pdf!http://query.nytimes.com/...
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Mayn Rue Platz
Nit zukh mikh vu di mirtn grinen.
Gefinst mikh dortn nit, mayn shats.
Vu lebns velkn bay mashinen,
Dortn iz mayn rue plats.
Don't look for me where myrtles are green.
You will not find me there, my beloved.
Where lives wither at the machines,
There is my resting place.
-Morris Rosenfeld