You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday February 15, 1915
Chicago, Illinois - Frank Walsh Addresses Chicago Women's Trade Union League
Today's edition of the Chicago
Day Book reports that Frank P. Walsh gave a speech before a meeting of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League yesterday in which he addressed
criticism of the
Commission on Industrial Relations and spared no words to express his opinion of a certain corporation that fails to pay its employees a living wage:
If the commission has earned the criticism that it has leaned to labor it comes from the fact that we have not let well enough alone. If we find a rotten condition we're going to tear it open.
What reason is there for a telephone girl getting less than a living wage? The American Telephone & Telegraph Co. owns or controls all phone companies of the United States. Their rates are fixed by governmental bodies. Labor is the greatest factor in their operation. This implies inherently the right to fix wages.
Those girls are working for the telephone company at a wage lower than it costs them to live decently. That is a condition all of us are responsible for. This is your own crime and not the crime of the corporation. You, the public, have the power to fix the wages higher.
Mother Jones was also present at the meeting, according to the report:
Mother Jones went to the front and shook hands with Walsh when he finished his speech.
Saturday's
Day Book announced the arrival of Mr. Walsh in the city of Chicago and promoted the upcoming speech:
FRANK WALSH TO SPEAK HERE
Frank Walsh of Kansas City, chairman of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, will address the public meeting of the Women's Trade Union League on Sunday afternoon in Schiller hall, 64 W. Randolph st., at 3:30. Walsh has just returned to Chicago, field headquarters of the commission, after conducting extended hearings in the east.
For the past year Walsh has been devoting almost his entire time to the study and investigation of the causes of unrest among the workers and his address on Sunday will be of special interest.
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From The Day Book of February 15, 1915:
HIGHER PAY TO TELEPHONE GIRLS IS ASKED
BY FRANK WALSH
Frank P. Walsh, chairman United States Industrial Relations Commission, swore an oath before an audience of the Woman's Trade Union league, in the Schiller building yesterday. He declared "by almighty God" that when the commission he is head of finds capitalists and corporations using autocratic powers over the working class the commission is not going to hide that condition, but is going "to tear it open."
He said if the American Telegraph & Telephone Co. is working thousands of hello girls at "less than a living wage" the commission will say so. The hello girls are human and the commission is going to be human all the way through. It's the business of the public which controls the wire corporations by regulative laws to see that the hello girls get the decent pay of decent women.
Walsh served notice he won't keep his month shut about "greedy exploitation," "intolerable industrial conditions," "well-fed persons driving bargains with hungry ones," or anything else that hits the commission as rotten wrong between capital and labor. He said the commission had been accused of lacking "judicial poise," and replied:
Agnes Nestor
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I have no judicial poise. I haven't got a job that requires judicial poise. If I had it I wouldn't use it. Miss Agnes Nestor tells me that one cause of industrial unrest is lawyers. Being a lawyer perhaps I ought to know something about that and something about judicial poise from first-hand investigation.
Mother Jones went to the front and shook hands with Walsh when he finished his speech.
It was the speech of a fighting man. Rockefeller papers such as the New York Sun and the Brooklyn Eagle have been hitting Walsh for dragging the Rockefellers into the limelight. The Chicago Tribune has kicked at the commission for the way it has dug into the facts about the foundations rich men are starting to save poor people from the poverty caused by the industries owned by these rich men. Yesterday Walsh practically said: "Hands off! We're going through on this; you can't stop us."
He shook two clenched fists and his eyes blazed as he spoke of "misinformation born of passionate greed and dishonesty." The telephone trust, the Armour fertilizer combine, the Colorado coal companies, report to their directors and stockholders everything about money and machinery but nothing about the human beings who run the works. Newspaper readers, the public, "have not had the actual facts," he said.
[Said Walsh:]
It is said the commission has been leaning toward labor...Nine members constitute the commission. The law says three shall represent capital, three shall be from labor ranks and three from the general public. For a year I've been trying to find out just who I represent. I find it is the ultimate consumer.
If called on to say what class I represent so far as numbers are concerned I have to say I represent the working class of the United States.
In leading industries on one side are the victims of abuses. On the other side invariably is the man or body of men who have autocratic power, power to inflict pain and wrong. One side desires to drag it out and let it be known to all men. The other side wants the sleeping dog to lie. They want to let well enough alone.
If the commission has earned the criticism that it has leaned to labor it comes from the fact that we have not let well enough alone. If we find a rotten condition we're going to tear it open.
What reason is there for a telephone girl getting less than a living wage? The American Telephone & Telegraph Co. owns or controls all phone companies of the United States. Their rates are fixed by governmental bodies. Labor is the greatest factor in their operation. This implies inherently the right to fix wages.
Those girls are working for the telephone company at a wage lower than it costs them to live decently. That is a condition all of us are responsible for. This is your own crime and not the crime of the corporation. You, the public, have the power to fix the wages higher.
The speaker sneered at the idea of any man keeping his "judicial poise" facing the facts of West Virginia, Michigan and Colorado. He asked:
Should I keep quiet and not say the coal company in two counties of Colorado [Las Animas and Huerfano] owns and controls all public officials, including the judiciary? If I discover that the Colorado murders trace back to one day when the mine owners shut the door on the workmen's committee and refused to confer, should I speak out about it?
Directors and stockholders in corporations must be held responsible for the labor conditions in the enterprise out of which they derive their profits.
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[photographs added]
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SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 13, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Feb 15, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
The Commercial Telegraphers' Journal:
The Official Organ of the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America,
Volumes 11-12
The Union, 1913
-from the July 1913 edition:
"Industrial Relations Commission Appointed"
(Provides more information on the appointments of members specifically to represent
the public, labor, and business on the commission. Note: Delano eventually
resigned and was replaced by Richard Aishton, vice-president of the Chicago &
Northwestern Railroad. )
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Frank P. Walsh
(search: Frank P Walsh, & choose p.24)
http://books.google.com/...
Seal of the National Women's Trade Union League
http://www.nwhm.org/...
Agnes Nestor
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Frank P Walsh from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Feb 15, 1915
(There is a long and interesting article on Walsh with this image,
sadly behind a pay-wall.)
http://www.newspapers.com/...
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Working Girl Blues - Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard
Well, I’m tired of workin’ my life away
And givin’ somebody else all of my pay
While they get rich on the profits that I lose
And leavin’ me here with those workin’ girl blues
I-dee-o-lady, workin’ girl blues
And I can’t even afford a new pair of shoes
While they can live in any old penthouse they choose
And all that I’ve got is the workin’ girl blues
-Hazel Dickens
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2:49 PM PT: March 17, 1915 given as date that Aishton replaced Delano:
https://books.google.com/...