You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday February 4, 1904
New York, New York - Rose Schneiderman on How the Women Cap Makers Got Their Pay
Rose Schneiderman
at her sewing machine.
The women Cap Makers succeeded last year in organizing themselves into a local, charted as Local 23. The young local immediately got down to work, making some adjustments in when the women get their paychecks. Rose Schneiderman tells the story:
[In] June we decided to put our strength to the test. In the summer the men usually worked only half-day on Saturdays, which was pay day. But even when there was no work we women had to hang around until three or four o'clock before getting our pay. I headed a committee which informed Mr. Fox that we wanted to be paid at the same time as the men...After I presented our case he studied me with a grin and then said, "You want your pay, do you? Well, Ill see about it." He didn't say outright that he agreed; he wouldn't give us that much satisfaction. But on the first Saturday in July, when we went for our pay at twelve noon, there it was ready for us.
The young union local also took part in the Cap Maker's Convention which opened on the first of May last year. The Union Cap Makers all took the day off without pay, declaring the day to be a holiday. Rose Schneiderman was elected delegate. Later the women took part in the parade, riding in a wagon, it not being considered ladylike for women to march in the streets on foot.
We are happy to see these young women organizing themselves into a union alongside the men, and hope that one day they will follow the example of Mother Jones who formed the women of the mine camps into armies which fought the scabs with mops and brooms in a most unladylike fashion.
SOURCES
All For One
-by Rose Schneiderman
-with Lucy Goldthwaite
NY, 1967
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
-ed by Mary Field Parton
Charles H Kerr Pub, 1990
Pittston Strike Commemorative Edition
See Also:Thursday April 23, 1903
New York City, New York - Women Organize Local of Cap Makers Union
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Photo: Rose Schneiderman at her sewing machine
http://bofarrell.net/...
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Wednesday February 4, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado - Mary Thomas with her daughters in filthy cell, keeps on singing!
Mary Thomas, noted singer and resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony, was one of the women arrested on January 23rd, the day that General Chase tumbled from his horse and ordered his troops to "Ride Down the Women!" Soon her two little daughters, three and four, were brought to her, and the three of them were held in the filthy cold cell for several days.
Her crime was talking back to an officer who had ordered her to move off the sidewalk from where she had been watching the parade. She told him:
You go on and go wash your dirty clothes you have on before you order me off of the sidewalk.
The militiaman began to pull her and she fought back using her fingernails on him. She was taken to jail where she placed a call to Louie Tikas at the Ludlow Tent Colony to let him know of her arrest.
At night she stood at the broken window and sang beautiful arias to her supporters gathered outside in the ally. She gives this account:
Then the hundreds of men prisoners in the basement jail...joined in. It almost drove the police and military out of their minds. It caught on through town, and soon all you could hear was "Union Forever" throughout Trinidad.
I continued this procedure daily. The crowds came, and grew bigger and bigger. Finally it got so that the police had to disperse them. This made them angry and they would break the jail windows. It was no use to replace the panes, for they would just be broken again the next day.
Apparently, the little girls also caused some trouble in the jail cell. Mrs. Thomas tells the story of her release:
In the middle of the night two officers came rattling the door. "What are you trying to do?" they yelled. I didn't know what they were talking about having been wakened out of a sound sleep. Then I noticed that the place was swimming in water. My children must not have turned off the tap. A mopping crew came immediately, supervised by a guard.
A few hours later the jailer and another man unlocked our door and said angrily, "Get out!"
"What? Without notice?" I said jokingly.
"Get out , and take that wrecking crew with you!" I lost no time in obeying that welcome command, and we headed for the union headquarters.
SOURCES
Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Utah Press, 1982
Those Damn Foreigners
-by Mary T[homas] O'Neal
Minerva Book, 1971
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Tuesday February 4, 2014
More on Mary Thomas O'Neal:
Mary Thomas O’Neal is one of the few Ludlow survivors who left a first-person account, published as Those Damn Foreigners in 1971. As Martelle observes in an end note, her memoir “differs radically” from the testimony she gave shortly after the massacre; Papanikolas had similar doubts about the reliability of her memory when he interviewed her; and the oral history comes with the caveat that she herself was aware that her memory was deteriorating. But there’s no doubt that she was a coal miner’s wife (though she was separated from her husband during the strike); that she was active in the union cause, lending her talent as a singer to its recruiting parties; and that she was in Ludlow camp with her children the day of the massacre.
SOURCE
"Notebook: The Ludlow Massacre Revisited"
(scroll down)
http://www.steamthing.com/...
Article leads to links to Interview with Mrs. O'Neal.
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The Battle Cry of Freedom
We will win the fight today, boys,
We'll win the fight today,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union;
We will rally from the coal mines,
We'll fight them to the end,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union.
The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the gunthugs, and up with the law;
For we're coming, Colorado, we're coming all the way,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union.
-Frank Hayes