You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday November 3, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: "The Garment Workers' Strike"
From this month's edition of the
Review comes an illustrated article on the Great Garment Workers' strike now being fought to a finish by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in the city of Chicago. We find a photograph of a strikers' parade, led by young women, one bearing a sign that proclaims:
"We Shall Fight Until We Win." This sign was carried, along with others equally militant, as the strikers marched through the Loop District on October 12th.
Other photographs document the starvation wages that the workers receive for long hours of work. On the back of those pay envelopes is the admonition from their employers: "TO SAVE IS PRUDENT." This reminds of the line from the I. W. W. tune: "If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn."
In another set of photographs, the Chicago police can be seen bravely maintaining law and order on behalf their masters, the Manufactures' Association.
The article ends with a credit to the courage and tenacity of the Chicago Garment Strikers:
The splendid spirit of the strikers shows no signs of weakening.
From the International Socialist Review of November 1915:
ON October 12th the streets of the Loop District of Chicago, thronged with the usual crowds of shoppers and business men and women, witnessed one of the most striking parades ever seen in this city. While the capitalist press has been proclaiming that all of the clothing shops were filled and that most of the striking garment workers had returned to work, 15,000 men, women and girls paraded before the eyes of many thousand people who had previously learned of the struggle only through biased and lying newspapers.
The faces of this determined army of workers, many holding aloft banners bearing some piteous cry for a chance to live, or a militant call to revolt, spoke more eloquently to the Chicago public than mere argument. And the banners were the voices of the vast throng made articulate.
You knew the conditions that were imposed upon us —
They were unbearable.
You skimped our wages as much as you could.—
We barely existed.
You overworked us in rush season, underworked us in slack
and always underpaid.
Your profits have stopped because
our labor power has stopped.
Our revolt is against poverty and all
the misery that poverty brings.
These and a hundred other banners were flung to the winds as the tramp of many feet was heard up one street and down another in the busy Loop district. And these are the people who make your clothes, the pants, coats, vests and overcoats which keep the male population of this country warm and comfortable during the colds of winter.
Four weeks ago 20,000 of these Chicago garment workers went out on strike for shorter hours and more pay—25 per cent increase in all wages; over-time to be paid for at the rate of time and a half; 48 hours to constitute a week's work; fining systems to be abolished and recognition of the union demanded. The minimum wage scale was to be as follows for week workers:
Cutters, $26.00 per week.
Trimmers, $20.00 per week.
Examiners and bushelmen,
$20.00 per week.
Apprentices, $8.00 per week.
A 25 per cent increase was demanded
for the piece workers.
A member of the Review staff was fortunate enough to secure several pay envelopes, copies of which we reproduce here. One of these needle workers, a corner maker who put in forty hours, earned the magnificent sum of $3.01, while this finisher, who worked thirty-five hours and a half, received only $2.66. This would be a niggardly wage for a day's work.
The clothing firms, ever fearful that one of these pay envelopes may be reproduced, showing the awful wage conditions prevailing in their shops, do not even print their firm names upon these envelopes, although they have the "face" to print a plea to the workers to SAVE on the back of them.
Inside of four weeks over seventy small firms have signed up and over 5,000 garment workers returned to their jobs under union conditions. But the thirty-eight largest firms have refused to meet the strikers and will not even consider arbitration. Thousands of scabs have been brought to Chicago and the police and hired detectives are sturdily and right faithfully "protecting" them, while the hired sluggers are on the job beating up the "easiest" looking folks they see in the neighborhood of the strike shops.

Riot call after riot call has been sent in by the police and hundreds of men, women and girls have been arrested on utterly false charges. The hired sluggers start trouble and then the pickets are gathered in. As usual, those who are supposed to uphold the law, and to enforce the law, are permitting all forms of law breaking on the part of the employers and their strong arm squads, and are throwing all the weight of government on the side of the clothing firms.
Policemen paid out of public money to use their clubs and guns on working men, working women and working girls in the interest of a manufacturers' organization, is one of the fiercest angles of the garment workers' strike in Chicago. A committee from Hull House and women's clubs has supplied the chief of police and a city council committee with names, and details of these events: 1. A girl who would not move up the street slapped across the mouth by a copper. 2. A girl thrown face foremost onto the floor of a packed patrol wagon so violently she fainted and, girls inside the wagon had to break glass windows to let in air. 3. One man shot in the left leg. 4. Another man shot in the right leg. The list runs on so that out of more than four hundred arrested in a week there is a pile of evidence of police brutality. Plenty of laws and court decisions say these workers have a clear right to peacefully picket. Their picketing has been peaceful. Yet the police arrest them and charge them with disorderly conduct and conspiracy.
The police get us whether we picket in peace or with violence.

The Chicago Day Book, which has consistently backed the strikers in this battle for bread, reports, among many others, the following typical incident. When it is remembered that the strikers were merely peacefully and legally and rightfully picketing, it may remind us that the people who profess to most strongly oppose Violence, are those who most consistently use it.
Rose Goodman, 21, of 1256 Turner avenue, worked for Sachs & Co. On Oct. 4, about 5 p. m., near Harrison and Sherman streets, she saw an officer strike an old woman he was about to arrest. She asked why he was so rough with an old woman and the officer, No. 4470, told her to move on, adding: "Get to hell out of here." When deponent started to speak again Officer 4470 said: "If you don't go I'll kill you." Deponent further states that Officer 4470 struck her on her stomach and then gave a swift shove upon her shoulders so that she lost her balance, falling close to the feet of a mounted police horse in motion. Thrown into wagon with 15 other girl strikers.
On the way to the station she fainted. On recovery from fainting the other girls in the wagon pointed to a window they had broken to gain air to revive her. At the station she lost consciousness, was taken home in a cab, and the following day again lost consciousness, suffered pains in chest and abdomen, where blows were struck upon her body by Police Officer No. 4470 and others who threw her into the wagon. She is now under the care of a physician.
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America are conducting the strike. Sidney Hillman, the general president of the organization, is putting in 24 hours a day directing it. The organization not only has to fight the police, but also has to contend with the opposition of Samuel Gompers, who has issued an injunction forbidding the local A. F. of L. unions to support the strike in any way. In the near future the Review will tell the story of why these clothing workers withdrew from the United Garment Workers of America.
At their first convention, which was held in New York City in December, 1914, they took a decided stand in favor of industrial unionism as the following extracts from the convention proceedings show:
If in any given locality the workingmen engaged in any one of the tailoring trades will be organized in one big local union instead of in many small ones, as they are now, but subdivided into branches as the convenience of the members may require, and these big trade locals will, in turn, unite in a very close alliance, there will be a solidified and powerful organization of the entire industry.
Along with the industrial form of organization we must also develop the Industrial spirit, which means the general enlightenment of the workingmen, and particularly the teachings of universal working class solidarity and abolition of the wage system.
When that will be accomplished, our organization will become a mighty, militant and invincible power.
-----
Mass meetings are held daily and Mother Jones is on the job. Meetings are held regularly in four or five halls and the splendid spirit of the strikers shows no signs of weakening.
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
Charles H. Kerr, Editor & Publisher
-November 1915
https://books.google.com/...
"The Garment Workers Strike"
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America,
emblem
https://books.google.com/...
ISR, Nov 1915, The Garment Workers Strike
https://books.google.com/...
Chicago Garment Workers Strike,
proof of starvation wages, ISR, Nov 1915
https://books.google.com/...
SR, Nov 1915, Chicago Garment Workers Strike,
back of pay envelope
https://books.google.com/...
ISR Nov 1915, Chicago Garment Strike,
police attacking strikers
https://books.google.com/...
ISR, Nov 1915, Chicago Garment Workers Strike,
police with clubs
https://books.google.com/...
International Socialist Review,
November 1915, Charles H Kerr
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
The Clothing Workers of Chicago 1910-1922
-The Chicago Joint Board Amalgamated
Clothing Workers of America
Chicago, 1922
https://books.google.com/...
Chapter IV: The Break from the
United Garment Workers in 1914
https://books.google.com/...
Chapter V: The Strike of 1915
https://books.google.com/...
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McDonald's Assists Employees with Managing Their Low Wages!
Practical Money Skills, H/T Shockwave
http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/
The sample budget, no heat, no food:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
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Hallelujah I'm a Bum-Utah Phillips
Oh, why don't you save all the money you earn?
If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn.
-Harry McClintock
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