You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday February 14, 1915
From The Labor World: "States Should End Thug Movement"
Yesterday's Labor World offers an editorial piece from the New York Morning World which opines upon the private armies of corporations and governments which allow those armies to police its citizens. The government specifically referred to was that of the state of New Jersey where strikers were recently murdered by deputized company gunthugs. New Jersey now joins Colorado in shame: "Has she no concern for her own honor and reputation?"
STATES SHOULD END THUG MOVEMENT
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New York Editor Declares Governments that
Allow Private Armies, Failures.
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NEW YORK, Feb. 12.-In a leading editorial on the shooting of New Jersey strikers, the Morning World asks:
How much longer are state governments in this country going to tolerate private war in industrial disputes? How much longer are they going to tolerate the private employment of hired gunmen to deal with labor troubles?
The editor continues:
Their Crime.
The New Jersey strikers were apparently not armed; they were not rioting and they were not on the property of their former employers. The worst offense they had committed was to flag a train supposed to carry strike-breakers and then stand aside on being warned to do so.
For this offense they were attacked by a private army of detectives and deputies, and two-score or more of men were shot down, some of them receiving fatal wounds. At one of the plants the statement is made that "if there has been any violence it is probably due to business depression, and the consequent nonemployment of workers." What this means we do not pretend to know, but we know that there is more anarchy behind it than there is behind all the anarchist societies of the country.
Government a Failure.
Government is a failure in a state where this can happen-in a state which permits an industrial quarrel to reach the stage of bloodshed; in a state which permits private corporations to arm detectives to do the police work that the state itself was created to do; in a state which manifests no official concern over a private war until it is time to count the dead and wounded.
This a might poor time for employers to shoot down strikers, whatever may be the right or the wrong of the original controversy. It is a mighty poor time for states to surrender their police power and leave the protection of property to private gunmen. New Jersey has seen the shameful effects of anarchy in Colorado. Has she no concern for her own honor and reputation?
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[photograph added]
THE CIR & THE ROOSEVELT STRIKE
The Commission on Industrial Relations took on the Roosevelt Strike in a limited way, addressing the issue of wages while leaving the question of the Roosevelt Massacre to its own hired investigators. Below, we offer a few examples of recent news accounts.
From the New York Tribune of February 4, 1914:
There was also another victim of a strike present yesterday [February 3rd]. This was Paul Babik, an employe at the Liebig works of the American Agricultural Chemical Company, at Chrome, N. J. He arrived for the morning session with his wife and three small children.
Babik was shot in the leg in the recent struggle with the deputies at Roosevelt, and also in the left hand. He is expected to tell of the conduct of the deputies in the recent violence, while the commission may also call his wife to describe living conditions in Roosevelt Borough.
[We could find no evidence that Mr. Babik was actually called to testify]
From The Washington Herald of February 5, 1915:
Wives and Children of Roosevelt Strikers with Mother Jones
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One of the most interesting witnesses the commission has called is Antonio [Antoni] Wiater, a [Polish man] residing at Chrone [Chrome], N. J., where he was employed by the Liebig Company, part of the fertilizer trust, up to the time the employes of the concern started the strike at Roosevelt, N. J. Wiater is a stocky, thrifty citizen, neat in appearance, but with that haggard, haunted look betokening, as Mother Jones puts it, "one of the men who hasn't had enough to eat for several generations."
Up to three months before the Roosevelt strike, Wiater worked for a copper concern, and, by dint of plugging at it Sundays, holidays, and all other days, and "doing a little overtime now and then," he made sometimes as high as $15 a week, on which he was able, he declared, to support his wife and five children and sometimes a save a dollar or two a week. So thrifty was he that when the war came on and the output of copper was restricted and Wiater lost his job, he had amassed $35 against the rainy day that was now upon him.
Wages Were Reduced.
Tony took a job with the Liebig Company at $2 a day, "handling pick and shovel." But again the war interfered. The Chemical Trust reduced that wage to $1.60 a day. As A. Barton Hepburn later in the day testified, the vice president of the Chemical Company said they had lots of application for work, and they thought the men would soon come around. The strike followed, however, and Wiater was again out of a job.
It is the intensely human document which Tony's list of necessary expenses as compared with his income furnishes, however, that is of chief interest. These are the facts he laid before the commission, producing his bills as vouchers: His wages at $1.60 per day for twenty-seven days before the strike was declared totaled $43.20. Against this charge: Rent, for a three-room house, for a wife and five children, $9.50; groceries, $10; butcher, $10.70; baker, $8.30; coal, $2.50; wood, $2.50; life insurance for all five members, $4.60, or a total for housing, warmth and food of $48.10, leaving a deficit already of $4.90.
Chairman Walsh asked about clothing. Tony pointed not without pardonable pride to the suit of clothes he was wearing.
"I got it nine years," he declared.
As to shoes, he said the acid in the chemical works was so strong that he wore out a pair of shoes sometimes in two weeks. Walsh added $10 for clothes, and brought in total absolutely necessary expenditures per month of the Wiater family up to $60. The answer is that Tony Wiater is in debt, despite the fact that Mrs. Wiater takes in washing and helps to piece out for the children.
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[photograph added]
From the New York Evening World of February 4, 1915:
"When I work for $3 a day, I can't keep up," said the witness. "I couldn't make enough to eat and buy clothes. It costs me over $70 a month. I make $60 and my wife helps. Even then I fall behind.
"Gentlemen, how can I live on $1.60 a day?"
The workman's only dissipation, he said, was to smoke a pipe.
"I'd like to have my children go to picture shows and have a good time," he said, "But there's no money; how can they?"
TESTIFIES IN CLOTHES
NINE YEARS OLD.
It was explained by Chairman Walsh at recess that Wiater was not to be questioned regarding the shooting at Roosevelt.
The commission announced ten days ago that it would not go into the merits of the shooting, but would leave that investigation to its paid helpers. The witness was called, the Chairman said, to illustrate to the commission how inadequate were the wages paid to the fertilizer factory hands for the support of them and their families.
Q. How much do you pay for clothes? A. I don't buy no clothes. The clothes I got here on me, I have had nine years.
Q. When did your wife have a dress made last? A. She never had any. She makes them herself.
[photograph added]
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SOURCES
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Feb 13, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Feb 4, 1915
(source also for photo of Babik family)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
The Washington Herald
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Feb 5, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Evening World
(New York, New York)
-Feb 4, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Industrial relations: final report and testimony, Vol 9
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations,
Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
https://books.google.com/...
8208: New York City, February 4, 1915—10 a. m. Present : Chairman Walsh,
Commissioners O'Connell, Lennon, Harriman, Ballard, Weinstock, and Garretson.
https://books.google.com/...
8229: AM Session-Testimony of Mr. Antoni Wiater
https://books.google.com/...
8237-45: PM Session-Testimony of AW continued
https://books.google.com/...
Roosevelt Massacre of 1915
http://www.dailykos.com/...
IMAGES
Roosevelt Massacre X2
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
Mother Jones at Roosevelt, New Jersey
& detail of same (used to represent wife and children of Mr. Wiater)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
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The Workers Song Dropkick Murphys
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about.
-Ed Pickford
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