Modern United States History

 

For this first assignment, you will be writing a brief response to the Gilded Age primary sources linked below, all of which deal with the experience of workers  and immigrants during this period of vast economic change.  After you read, I want you to write a  brief response, taking in to consideration the following questions.  You can use all three documents in this assignment though you are not required to do so.  If you would like to focus on just one account, that is fine as well.

1.  What is the experience of work like for these individuals?  Conditions, wages and discipline can be considered here.

2.  How does the nature of their work affect their family/personal life?

3.  How do these individuals attempt to change their conditions and how successful are they?

When you’ve completed your response, please enter it into the dropbox folder marked Assignment 1.  Let me know if you have any questions or  problems.  The response (which should be 1-2 pages double-spaced) will be due before class on Monday February 5.

Here are the links and a hard copy of the sources.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/social_history/5sweatshop_girl.cfm

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/social_history/14miner.cfm

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/social_history/12capmaker.cfm

The Story of a Sweatshop Girl: Sadie Frowne
Independent, LIV (Sept 25, 1902), 2279 82.

My mother was a tall, handsome, dark complexioned woman with red cheeks, large brown eyes and a great quantity of jet black, wavy hair. She was well educated, being able to talk in Russian, German, Polish and French, and even to read English print, tho, of course, she did not know what it meant. She kept a little grocer’s shop in the little village where we lived at first. That was in Poland, somewhere on the frontier, and mother had charge of a gate between the countries, so that everyody who came through the gate had to show her a pass. She was much looked up to by the people, who used to come and ask her for advice. Her word was like law among them.

She had a wagon in which she used to drive about the country, selling her groceries, and sometimes she worked in the fields with my father.

The grocer’s shop was only one story high, and had one window, with very small panes of glass. We had two rooms behind it, and were happy while my father lived, altho we had to work very hard. By the time I was six years of age I was able to wash dishes and scrub floors, and by the time I was eight I attended to the shop while my mother was away driving her wagon or working in the fields with my father. She was strong and could work like a man.

When I was a little more than ten years of age my father died He was a good man and a steady worker, and we never knew what it was to be hungry while he lived After he died troubles began, for the rent of our shop was about $6 a month and then there were food and clothes to provide. We needed little, it is true, but even soup, black bread and onions we could not always get.

We struggled along till I was nearly thirteen years of age and quite handy at housework and shop keeping, so far as I could learn them there. But we fell behind in the rent and mother kept thinking more and more that we should have to leave Poland and go across the sea to America where we heard it was much easier to make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told her how hard it was to live in Poland, and Aunt Fanny advised her to come and bring me. I was out at service at this time and mother thought she would leave me as I had a good place and come to this country alone, sending for me afterward But Aunt Fanny would not hear of this. She said we should both come at once, and she went around among our relatives in New York and took up a subscription for our passage.

We came by steerage on a steamship in a very dark place that smelt dreadfully. There were hundreds of other people packed in with us, men, women and children, and almost all of them were sick It took us twelve days to cross the sea, and we thought we should die, but at last the voyage was over, and we came up and saw the beautiful bay and the big woman with the spikes on her head and the lamp that is lighted at night in her hand (Goddess of Liberty).

Aunt Fanny and her husband met us at the gate of this country and were very good to us, and soon I had a place to live out (domestic servant), while my mother got work in a factory making white goods.

I was only a little over thirteen years of age and a greenhorn, so I received $9 a month and board and lodging, which I thought was doing well. Mother, who, as I have said, was very clever, made $9 a week on white goods, which means all sorts of underclothing, and is high class work

But mother had a very gay disposition. She liked to go around and see everything, and friends took her about New York at night and she caught a bad cold and coughed and coughed She really had hasty consumption, but she didn’t know it, and I didn’t know it, and she tried to keep on working, but it was no use. She had not the strength Two doctors attended her, but they could do nothing, and at last she died and I was left alone. I had saved money while out at service, but mother’s sickness and funeral swept it all away and now I had to begin all over again.

Aunt Fanny had always been anxious for me to get an education, as I did not know how to read or write, and she thought that was wrong. Schools are different in Poland from what they are in this country, and I was always too busy to learn to read and write. So when mother died I thought I would try to learn a trade and then I could go to school at night and learn to speak the English language well.

So I went to work in Allen street (Manhattan) in what they call a sweatshop, making skirts by machine. I was new at the work and the foreman scolded me a great deal.

“Now, then,” he would say, “this place is not for you to be looking around in. Attend to your work. That is what you have to do.”

I did not know at first that you must not look around and talk, and I made many mistakes with the sewing, so that I was often called a “stupid animal.” But I made $4 a week by working six days in the week For there are two Sabbaths here our own Sabbath, that comes on a Saturday, and the Christian Sabbath that comes on Sunday. It is against our law to work on our own Sabbath, so we work on their Sabbath.

In Poland I and my father and mother used to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, but here the women don’t go to the synagogue much, tho the men do. They are shut up working hard all the week long and when the Sabbath comes they like to sleep long in bed and afterward they must go out where they can breathe the air. The rabbis are strict here, but not so strict as in the old country.
I lived at this time with a girl named Ella, who worked in the same factory and made $5 a week. We had the room all to ourselves, paying $1.50 a week for it, and doing light housekeeping. It was in Allen street, and the window looked out of the back, which was good, because there was an elevated railroad in front, and in summer time a great deal of dust and dirt came in at the front windows. We were on the fourth story and could see all that was going on in the back rooms of the houses behind us, and early in the morning the sun used to come in our window.

We did our cooking on an oil stove, and lived well, as this list of our expenses for one week will show:

ELLA AND SADIE FOR FOOD (ONE WEEK)

Tea $0.06
Cocoa .10
Bread and rolls .40
Canned vegatables .20
Potatoes .10
Milk .21
Fruit .20
Butter .15
Meat .60
Fish .15
Laundry .25

Total $2.42

Add rent 1.50

Grand total $3.92

Of course, we could have lived cheaper, but we are both fond of good things and felt that we could afford them.

We paid 18 cents for a half pound of tea so as to get it good, and it lasted us three weeks, because we had cocoa for breakfast. We paid 5 cents for six rolls and 5 cents a loaf for bread, which was the best quality. Oatmeal cost us 10 cents for three and one half pounds, and we often had it in the morning, or Indian meal porridge in the place of it, costing about the same. Half a dozen eggs cost about 13 cents on average, and we could get all the meat we wanted for a good hearty meal for 20 cents two pounds of chops, or a steak, or a bit of veal, or a neck of lamb something like that. Fish included butter fish, porgies, codfish and smelts, averaging about 8 cents a pound.

Some people who buy at the last of the market, when the men with the carts want to go home, can get things very cheap, but they are likely to be stale, and we did not often do that with fish, fresh vegetables, fruit, milk or meat Things that kept well we did buy that way and got good bargains. I got thirty potatoes for 10 cents one time, tho generally I could not get more than 15 of them for that amount. Tomatoes, onions and cabbages, too, we bought that way and did well, and we found a factory where we could buy the finest broken crackers for 3 cents a pound, and another place where we got broken candy for 10 cents a pound. Our cooking was done on an oil stove, and the oil for the stove and the lamp cost us 10 cents a week.

It cost me $2 a week to live, and I had a dollar a week to spend on clothing and pleasure, and saved the other dollar. I went to night school, but it was hard work learning at first as I did not know much English.

Two years ago I came to this place, Brownsville, where so many of my people are, and where I have friends. I got work in a factory making underskirts all sorts of cheap underskirts, like cotton and calico for the summer and woolen for the winter, but never the silk, satin or velvet underskirts. I earned $4.50 a week and lived on $2 a week, the same as before.

I got a room in the house of some friends who lived near the factory. I pay $1 a week for the room and am allowed to do light housekeepingthat is, cook my meals in it. I get my own breakfast in the morning, just a cup of coffee and a roll, and at noon time I come home to dinner and take a plate of soup and a slice of bread with the lady of the house. My food for a week costs a dollar, just as it did in Allen street, and I have the rest of my money to do as I like with. I am earning $5.50 a week now, and will probably get another increase soon.

It isn’t piecework in our factory, but one is paid by the amount of work done just the same. So it is like piecework. All the hands get different amounts, some as low as $3.50 and some of the men as high as $16 a week. The factory is in the third story of a brick building. It is in a room twenty feet long and fourteen broad There are fourteen machines in it. I and the daughter of the people with whom I live work two of these machines. The other operators are all men, some young and some old.

At first a few of the young men were rude. When they passed me they would touch my hair and talk about my eyes and my red cheeks, and make jokes. I cried and said that if they did not stop I would leave the place. The boss said that that should not be, that no one must annoy me. Some of the other men stood up for me, too, especially Henry, who said two or three times that he wanted to fight Now the men all treat me very nicely. It was just that some of them did not know better, not being educated.

Henry is tall and dark, and he has a small mustache. His eyes are brown and large. He is pale and much educated, having been to school. He knows a great many things and has some money saved I think nearly $400. He is not going to be in a sweatshop all the time, but will soon be in the real estate business, for a lawyer that knows him well has promised to open an office and pay him to manage it.

Henry has seen me home every night for a long time and makes love to me. He wants me to marry him, but I am not seventeen yet, and I think that is too young. He is only nineteen, so we can wait.

I have been to the fortune teller’s three or four times, and she always tells me that tho I have had such a lot of trouble I am to be very rich and happy. I believe her because she has told so many things that have come true. So I will keep on working in the factory for a time. Of course it is hard, but I would have to work hard even if I was married.

I get up at half past five o’clock every morning and make myself a cup of coffee on the oil stove. I eat a bit of bread and perhaps some fruit and then go to work Often I get there soon after six o’clock so as to be in good time, tho the factory does not open till seven I have heard that there is a sort of clock that calls you at the very time you want to get up, but I can’t believe that because I don’t see how the clock would know.

At seven o’ clock we all sit down to our machines and the boss brings to each one the pile of work that he or she is to finish during the day, what they call in English their” stint” This pile is put down beside the machine and as soon as a skirt is done it is laid on the other side of the machine. Sometimes the work is not all finished by six o’clock and then the one who is behind must work overtime. Sometimes one is finished ahead of time and gets away at four or five o’clock, but generally we are not done till six o’clock.

The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it It goes so quick tho, that it does not hurt much. I bind the finger up with a piece of cotton and go on working. We all have accidents like that Where the needle goes through the nail it makes a sore finger, or where it splinters a bone it does much harm. Sometimes a finger has to come off. Generally, tho, one can be cured by a salve.

All the time we are working the boss walks about examining the finished garments and making us do them over again if they are not just right So we have to be careful as well as swift But I am getting so good at the work that within a year I will be making $7 a week, and then I can save at least $3.50 a week. I have over $200 saved now.

The machines are all run by foot power, and at the end of the day one feels so weak that there is a great temptation to lie right down and sleep. But you must go out and get air, and have some pleasure. So instead of lying down I go out, generally with Henry. Sometimes we go to Coney Island, where there are good dancing places, and sometimes we go to Ulmer Park to picnics. I am very fond of dancing, and, in fact, all sorts of pleasure. I go to the theater quite often, and like those plays that make you cry a great deal “The Two Orphans” is good. Last time I saw it I cried all night because of the hard times that the children had in the play. I am going to see it again when it comes here.

For the last two winters I have been going to night school at Public School 84 on Glenmore avenue. I have learned reading, writing and arithmetic. I can read quite well in English now and I look at the newspapers every day. I read English books, too, sometimes. The last one that I read was”A Mad Marriage,” by Charlotte Braeme. She’s a grand writer and makes things just like real to you. You feel as if you were the poor girl yourself going to get married to a rich duke.

I am going back to night school again this winter. Plenty of my friends go there. Some of the women in my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant peole are all low. People say now that I am clever and fine in conversation.

We have just finished a strike in our business. It spread all over and the United Brotherhood of Garment Workers was in it That takes in the cloakmakers, coatmakers, and all the others. We struck for shorter hours, and after being out four weeks won the fight We only have to work nine and a half hours a day and we get the same pay as before. So the union does good after all in spite of what some people say against it that it just takes our money and does nothing.

I pay 25 cents a month to the union, but I do not begrudge that because it is for our benefit The next strike is going to be for a raise of wages, which we all ought to have. But tho I belong to the union I am not a Socialist or an Anarchist I don’t know exactly what those things mean There is a little expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give money to help.

Some of the women blame me very much because I spend so much money on clothes. They say that instead of a dollar a week I ought not to spend more than twenty five cents a week on clothes, and that I should save the rest But a girl must have clothes if she is to go into high society at Ulmer Park or Coney Island or the theatre. Those who blame me are the old country people who have old fashioned notions, but the people who have been here a long time know better. A girl who does not dress well is stuck in a corner, even if she is pretty, and Aunt Fanny says that I do just right to put on plenty of style.

I have many friends and we often have jolly parties. Many of the young men like to talk to me, but I don’t go out with any except Henry.

Lately he has been urging me more and more to get married -but I think I’ll wait

Brooklyn, N. Y.

A Miner’s Story
The Independent, LIV (June 12, 1902), 1407-10.
I am thirty five years old, married, the father of four children, and have lived in the coal region all my life. Twenty three of these years have been spent working in and around the mines. My father was a miner. He died ten years ago from “miners’ asthma”
Three of my brothers are miners; none of us had any opportunities to acquire an education. We were sent to school ( such a school as there was in those days) until we were about twelve years of age, and then we were put into the screen room of a breaker to pick slate. From there we went inside the mines as driver boys. As we grew stronger we were taken on as laborers, where we served until able to call ourselves miners. We were given work in the breasts and gangways. There were five of us boys. One lies in the cemetery fifty tons of top rock dropped on him. He was killed three weeks after he got his job as a miner a month before he was to be married.
In the fifteen years I have worked as a miner I have earned the average rate of wages any of us coal heavers get To day I am little better off than when I started to do for myself. I have $100 on hand; I am not in debt; I hope to be able to weather the strike without going hungry.
I am only one of the hundreds you see on the street every day. The muscles on my arms are no harder, the callous on my palms no deeper than my neighbors’ whose entire life has been spent in the coal region. By years I am only thirty five. But look at the marks on my body; look at the lines of worriment on my forehead; see the gray hairs on my head and in my mustache; take my general appearance, and you’ll think I’m ten years older.
You need not wonder why. Day in and day out, from Monday morning to Saturday evening, between the rising and the setting of the sun, I am in the underground workings of the coal mines. From the seams water trickles into the ditches along the gangways; if not water, it is the gas which hurls us to eternity and the props and timbers to a chaos.
Our daily life is not a pleasant one. When we put on our oil soaked suit in the morning we can’t guess all the dangers which threaten our lives. We walk sometimes miles to the place to the man way or traveling way, or to the mouth of the shaft on top of the slope. And then we enter the darkened chambers of the mines. On our right and on our left we see the logs that keep up the top and support the sides which may crush us into shapeless masses, as they have done to many of our comrades.
We get old quickly. Powder, smoke, after damp, bad air all combine to bring furrows to our faces and asthma to our lungs.
I did not strike because I wanted to; I struck because I had to. A miner the same as any other workman must earn fair living wages, or he can’t live. And it is not how much you get that counts. It is how much what you get will buy. I have gone through it all, and I think my case is a good sample.
I was married in 1890, when I was 23 years old quite a bit above the age when we miner boys get into double harness. The woman I married is like myself. She was born beneath the shadow of a dirt bank; her chances for school weren’t any better than mine; but she did have to learn how to keep house on a certain amount of money. After we paid the preacher for tying the knot we had just $185 in cash, good health and the good wishes of many friends to start us off.
Our cash was exhausted in buying furniture for housekeeping. In 1890 work was not so plentiful, and by the time our first baby came there was room for much doubt as to how we would pull out Low wages, and not much over half time in those years, made us hustle. In 1890 91, from June to May, I earned $368.72. That represented eleven months’ work, or an average of $33.52 per month Our rent was $10 per month; store not less than $20. And then I had my oil suits and gum boots to pay for. The result was that after the first year and a half of our married life we were in debt Not much, of course, and not as much as many of my neighbors, men of larger families, and some who made less money, or in whose case there had been sickness or accident or death. These are all things which a miner must provide for I have had fairly good work since I was married I made the average of what we contract miners are paid; but, as I said before, I am not much better off than when I started.
In 1896 my wife was sick eleven weeks. The doctor came to my house almost every day. He charged me $20 for his services. There was medicine to buy. I paid the drug store $18 in that time. Her mother nursed her, and we kept a girl in the kitchen at $1.50 a week, which cost me $15 for ten weeks, besides the additional living expenses.
In 1897, just a year afterward, I had a severer trial. And mind, in those years, we were only working about half time. But in the fall of that year one of my brothers struck a gas feeder. There was a terrible explosion. He was hurled downward in the breast and covered with the rush of coal and rock. I was working only three breasts away from him and for a moment was unable to realize what had occurred Myself and a hundred others were soon at work, however, and in a short while we found him, horribly burned over his whole body, his laborer dead alongside of him.
He was my brother. He was single and had been boarding. He had no home of his own. I didn’t want him taken to the hospital, so I directed the driver of the ambulance to take him to my house. Besides being burned, his right arm and left leg were broken, and he was hurt internally. The doctors there were two at the house when we got there said he would die. But he didn’t. He is living and a miner to¬day. But he lay in bed just fourteen weeks, and was unable to work for seven weeks after he got out of bed He had no money when he was hurt except the amount represented by his pay. All of the expenses for doctors, medicine, extra help and his living were borne by me, except $25, which another brother gave me. The last one had none to give. Poor work, low wages and a sickly woman for a wife had kept him scratching for his own family.
It is nonsense to say I was not compelled to keep him, that I could have sent him to a hospital or the almshouse. We are American citizens and we don’t go to hospitals and poorhouses.
Let us look at things as they are to day, or as they were before this strike commenced.
My last pay envelope shows my wages, after my laborer, powder, oil and other expenses were taken off, were $29.47; that was my earnings for two weeks, and that was extra good The laborer for the same time got some $21. His wages are a trifle over $10 a week for six full days. Before the strike of 1900 he was paid in this region $1.70 per day, or $10.20 a week If the ten per cent. raise had been given, as we expected, his wages would be $1.87 per day, or $11.22 per week, or an increase of $1.02 per week. But we all know that under the present system he doesn’t get any eleven dollars.
Well, as I said, my wages were $29.47 for the two weeks, or at the rate of$58.94 per month My rent is $10.50 per month. My coal costs me almost $4 per month. We burn a little over a ton a month on an average and it costs us over $3 per ton. Light does not cost so much; we use coal oil altogether.
When it comes down to groceries is where you get hit the hardest. Everybody knows the cost of living has been extremely high all winter. Butter has been 32, 36 and 38 cents a pound; eggs as high as 32 cents a dozen; ham, 12 and 16 cents a pound; potatoes away up to a dollar, and cabbage not less than a cent a pound Fresh meat need not be counted Flour and sugar did not advance, but they were about the only staples that didn’t. Anyhow, my store bill for those two weeks was $11. That makes $22 per month The butcher gets $6 per month Add them all, and it costs me, just to live, $42.50. That leaves me $17 per month to keep my family in clothes, to pay my church dues and to keep the industrial insurance going. My insurance alone costs me 55 cents a week, or $2.20 a month.
The coal president never allows his stable boss to cut the amount of fodder allotted to his mules. He insists on so many quarts of oats and corn to the meal and so much hay in the evening. The mule must be fed; the miner may be, if he works hard enough and earns money to buy the grub.
Company stores are of the time that has been Their existence ended two years ago. But we’ve got a system growing up that threatens to be just as bad Let me explain. Over a year ago I was given a breast to drive at one of our mines and was glad to get it. My wife took her cash and went around the different places to buy. When I went to the office for my first pay the “supee” met me and asked me if I didn’t know his wife’s brother George kept a store. I answered “Yes,” and wanted to know what that had to do with it.” Nothing, only I thought I’d call your attention it it,” he answered.
No more was said then. But the next day I got a quiet tip that my breast was to be abandoned This set me thinking. I went to the boss and, after a few words, told him my wife had found brother in law George’s store and that she liked it much better than where she had bought before. I told him the other store didn’t sell the right kind of silk waists, and their patent leather shoes were away back. Brother in law George had the right kind of stuff and, of course, we were willing to pay a few cents more to get just what we wanted. That was sarcastic, but it’s the cash that has the influence. I have had work at that colliery ever since. I know my living costs me from 10 to 15 per cent extra. But I kept my job, which meant a good deal.
Now you must take into consideration that I am a contract miner and that my earnings are more than the wages of three fourths of the other fellows at the same colliery. It is not that I am a favorite with the boss. I just struck a good breast Maybe next month my wages would be from two to six or seven dollars less.
In the days of Pardee, Coxe, Fagley, Fulton, Dewees, Paterson, Riley, Replier, Graeber and a hundred others, men were better paid than they have ever been since the centralization ideas of the late Franklin B. Gowen became fixed institutions in the anthracite counties. It may be true that in the days of the individual operation the cost per ton of mining coal was less than it is to day. But it is not right that the entire increase in the cost of mining should be charged to the miner. That is what is being done, if you count the reductions made in wages.
We miners do not participate in the high prices of coal. The operators try to prove otherwise by juggling with figures, but their proving has struck a fault, and the drill shows no coal in that section One half of the price paid for a ton of coal in New York or Philadelphia goes into the profit pocket of the mine owner, either as a carrier or miner.
We all know that the price of coal has advanced in the past twenty years. We also know that wages are less, that the cost of living is higher. I remember the time, when I was a wee lad, my father used to get his coal for $1 per ton. Now I pay $3. In those days we lads used to go to the dirt banks and pick a load of coal, and it cost our parents only a half a dollar to get it hauled home. We dare not do that now. Then we did not need gum boots, safety lamps or any such things as that; and for all of them we must now pay out of wages that have been reduced.
Our condition can be no worse; it might and must be better. The luxuries of the rich we do not ask; we do want butter for our bread and meat for our soup. We do not want silk and laces for our wives and daughters. But we want to earn enough to buy them a clean calico once in a while. Our boys are not expecting automobiles and membership cards in clubs of every city, but they want their fathers to earn enough to keep them at school until they have a reasonably fair education.
Pennsylvania
A Cap Maker’s Story: Rose Schneiderman
The Independent, LVIII, no. 2943 (Apr. 27, 1905), 935-38.
Rose SchneidermanMy name is Rose Schneiderman, and I was born in some small city of Russian Poland. I don’t know the name of the city, and have no memory of that part of my childhood. When I was about five years of age my parents brought me to this country and we settled in New York.
So my earliest recollections are of living in a crowded street among the East Side Jews, for we also are Jews.
My father got work as a tailor, and we lived in two rooms on Eldridge Street, and did very well, though not so well as in Russia, because mother and father both earned money, and here father alone earned the money, while mother attended to the house. There were then two other children besides me, a boy of three and one of five.
I went to school until I was nine years old, enjoying it thoroughly and making great progress, but then my father died of brain fever and mother was left with three children and another one coming. So I had to stay at home to help her and she went out to look for work.
A month later the baby was born, and mother got work in a fur house, earning about $6 a week and afterward $8 a week, for she was clever and steady.
I was the house worker, preparing the meals and looking after the other children – the baby, a little girl of six years, and a boy of nine. I managed very well, tho the meals were not very elaborate. I could cook simple things like porridge, coffee and eggs, and mother used to prepare the meat before she went away in the morning, so that all I had to do was to put it in the pan at night.
The children were not more troublesome than others, but this was a hard part of my life with few bright spots in it. I was a serious child, and cared little for children’s play, and I knew nothing about the country, so it was not so bad for me as it might have been for another. Yet it was bad, tho I did get some pleasure from reading, of which I was very fond: and now and then, as a change from the home, I took a walk in the crowded street.
Mother was absent from half past seven o’clock in the morning till half past six o’clock in the evening.
I was finally released by my little sister being taken by an aunt, and the two boys going to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, which is a splendid institution, and turns out good men. One of these brothers is now a student in the City College, and the other is a page in the Stock Exchange.
When the other children were sent away mother was able to send me back to school and I stayed in this school (Houston Street Grammar) till I had reached the Sixth Grammar Grade.
Then I had to leave in order to help support the family. I got a place in Hearn’s as cash girl, and after working there three weeks changed to Ridley’s, where I remained for two and a half years. I finally left because the pay was so very poor and there did not seem to be any chance of advancement, and a friend told me that I could do better making caps.
So I got a place in the factory of Hein & Fox. The hours were from 8 a m. to 6 p. m., and we made all sorts of linings or, rather, we stitched in the linings golf caps, yachting caps, etc. It was piece work, and we received from 3 h cents to 10 cents a dozen, according to the different grades. By working hard we could make an average of about $5 a week. We would have made more but had to provide our own machines, which cost us $45, we paying for them on the installment plan. We paid $5 down and $1 a month after that.
I learned the business in about two months, and then made as much as the others, and was consequently doing quite well when the factory burned down, destroying all our machines 150 of them. This was very hard on the girls who had paid for their machines. It was not so bad for me, as I had only paid a little of what I owed.
The bosses got $500,000 insurance, so I heard, but they never gave the girls a cent to help them bear their losses. I think they might have given them $10, anyway,
Soon work went on again in four lofts, and a little later I became assistant sample maker. This is a position which, tho coveted by many, pays better in glory than in cash It was still piece work, and tho the pay per dozen was better the work demanded was of a higher quality, and one could not rush through samples as through the other caps. So I still could average only about $5 per week.
After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we girls needed an organization. The men had organized already, and had gained some advantages, but the bosses had lost nothing, as they took it out of us.
We were helpless; no one girl dare stand up for anything alone. Matters kept getting worse. The bosses kept making reductions in our pay, half a cent a dozen at a time. It did not sound important, but at the end of the week we found a difference.
We didn’t complain to the bosses; we didn’t say anything except to each other. There was no use. The bosses would not pay any attention unless we were like the men and could make them attend.
One girl would say that she didn’t think she could make caps for the new price, but another would say that she thought she could make up for the reduction by working a little harder, and then the first would tell herself, “If she can do it, why can’t I?” They didn’t think how they were wasting their strength.
A new girl from another shop got in among us. She was Miss Bessie Brout, and she talked organization as a remedy for our ills. She was radical and progressive, and she stimulated thoughts which were already in our minds before she came.
Finally Miss Brout and I and another girl went to the National Board of United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers when it was in session, and asked them to organize the girls.
They asked us:
“How many of you are there willing to be organized?”
“In the first place about twelve,” we said We argued that the union label would force the bosses to organize their girls, and if there was a girls’ union in existence the bosses could not use the union label unless their girls belonged to the union.
We were told to come to the next meeting of the National Board, which we did, and then received a favorable answer, and were asked to bring all the girls who were willing to be organized to the next meeting, and at the next meeting, accordingly, we were there twelve strong and were organized.
When Fox found out what had happened he discharged Miss Brout, and probably would have discharged me but that I was a sample maker and not so easy to replace. In a few weeks we had all the girls in the organization, because the men told the girls that they must enter the union or they would not be allowed to work in the shop.
Then came a big strike. Price lists for the coming season were given in to the bosses, to which they did not agree. After some wrangling a strike was declared in five of the biggest factories. There are 30 factories in the city. About 100 girls went out. The result was a victory, which netted us- I mean the girls- $2 increase in our wages on the average.
All the time our union was progressing very nicely. There were lectures to make us understand what trades unionism is and our real position in the labor movement I read upon the subject and grew more and more interested, and after a time I became a member of the National Board, and had duties and responsibilities that kept me busy after my day’s work was done.
But all was not lovely by any means, for the bosses were not at all pleased with their beating and had determined to fight us again. They agreed among themselves that after the 26th of December, 1904, they would run their shops on the “open” system. This agreement was reached last fall, and soon notices, reading as follows, were hung in the various shops:
NOTICE
After the 26th of December, 1904, this shop will be run on the open shop system, the bosses having the right to engage and discharge employees as they see fit, whether the latter are union or nonunion.
Of course. we knew that this meant an attack on the union. The bosses intended gradually to get rid of us, employing in our place child labor and raw immigrant girls who would work for next to nothing.
On December 22nd the above notice appeared, and the National Board, which had known about it all along, went into session prepared for action.
Our people were very restive, saying that they could not sit under that notice, and that if the National Board did not call them out soon they would go out of themselves.
At last word was sent out, and at 2.30 o’clock all the workers stopped, and, laying down their scissors and other tools, marched out, some of them singing the “Marseillaise.”
We were out for thirteen weeks, and the girls established their reputation. They were on picket duty from seven o’clock in the morning till six o’clock in the evening, and gained over many of the nonunion workers by appeals to them to quit working against us.
Our theory was that if properly approached and talked to few would be found who would resist our offer to take them into our organization.
No right thinking person desires to injure another. We did not believe in violence and never employed it.
During this strike period we girls each received $3 a week; single men $3 a week, and married men $5 a week This was paid us by the National Board.
We were greatly helped by the other unions, because the open shop issue was a tremendous one, and this was the second fight which the bosses had conducted for it.
Their first was with the tailors, whom they beat. If they now could beat us the outlook for unionism would be bad.
Some were aided and we stuck out, and won a glorious victory all along the line. That was only last week The shops are open now for all union hands and for them only.
While the strike lasted I tried to get work in a factory that was not affected, but found that the boss was against me.
Last spring I had gone as a member of a committee to appeal to this boss on behalf of a girl who had been four years in his employ and was only getting $7 a week. She wanted $1 raise and all legal holidays. Previously she had had to work on holidays. After argument we secured for her the $1 raise and half a day on every legal holiday.
When the strike broke out, looking for work, I went to this boss, and he stared at me, and said: “What do you want?”
“You asked for a girl.”
“You you I don’t want you,” said he. “Can’t I have my choice?”
“Certainly,” said I, “I could never work where I am not wanted”
I suppose he expected me to revenge myself by keeping other girls away, but I sent him others till he filled the place. He resented my having served on the committee, and so he did not want me, but I felt honored by the manner in which I was treated. It showed that I had done my duty.
The bosses try to represent this open shop issue as tho they were fighting a battle for the public, but really it is nothing of the sort. The open shop is a weapon to break the unions and set men once more cutting each other’s throats by individual competition.
Why, there was a time in the cap trade when men worked fourteen hours a day, and then took the heads of their machines home in bags and setting them up on stands, put mattresses underneath to deaden the sound and worked away till far into the morning. We don’t want such slavery as that to come back.
The shops are open now for all union people, and all nonunion people can join the union. In order to take in newcome foreigners we have for them cut the initiation fees down to one half what we Americans have to pay, and we trust them till they get work and their wages.
In order to give the newcomers a chance we have stopped night work, which doesn’t suit the bosses, because it causes them to pay more rent when they can’t use their buildings night and day. It costs them the price of another loft instead of costing the workers their health and lives as in the old days.
Our trade is well organized, we have won two victories and are not going backward.
But there is much to be done in other directions. The shop girls certainly need organization, and I think that they ought to be easy to organize, as their duties are simple and regular and they have a regular scale of wages.
Many saleswomen on Grand and Division streets, and, in fact, all over the East Side, work from 8 a m till 9 p. m. week days, and one-half a day on Sundays for $5 and $6 a week; so they certainly need organization.
The waitresses also could easily be organized, and perhaps the domestic servants. I don’t know about stenographers. I have not come in contact with them.
Women have proved in the late strike that they can be faithful to an organization and to each other. The men give us the credit of winning the strike.
Certainly our organization constantly grows stronger, and the Woman’s Trade Union League makes progress.
The girls and women by their meetings and discussions come to understand and sympathize with each other, and more and more easily they act together.
It is the only way in which they can hope to hold what they now have or better present conditions.
Certainly there is no hope from the mercy of the bosses.
Each boss does the best he can for himself with no thought of the other bosses, and that compels each to gouge and squeeze his hands to the last penny in order to make a profit.
So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take just that and no more.
New York, March 20, 1905