The young women who worked in America’s factories in 1910 began their day before sunup, picking their way to work six days a week through dusty, muddy, crowded city streets. Tired of poor pay and long, hard hours, they were beginning to join forces and campaign for a better life. But these working women, desperate for social justice, were only part of America’s working class, struggling against the results of industrial growth and development as the second decade of the century unfolded.
United Women
Suffrage and socialism gained momentum as Americans sought to improve their domestic problems alongside growing hopes for political reform. In fact, it was between 1903 and 1914 that the women’s movement really grew in organization and strength. Originally conceived in the late 1800s, by 1910, the suffrage movement attracted mostly wealthy socialites. But they were quick to sympathize with their poorer working sisters, and supported their unions in the belief that once women obtained the right to vote, improved workers’ rights would logically follow.
Working women had the most to gain from equality. They worked mostly in the garment districts, toiling in small, filthy, old buildings where grime-coated windows blotted out any sunlight and denied the workers access to fresh air because they were often nailed shut. Noise from mechanical looms and shuttles was deafening. The average employee earned about $6 a week, was foreign born, aged between sixteen and twenty-five, and was unable to speak English.
These young women were at the mercy of their shop foremen, who fined them for talking, laughing, singing, and staining or tearing the fabric on which they worked. None of them received overtime for their ten-to twelve-hour workdays. They worked in isolation and fear, and it was in their employers’ interest to keep them this way. Some middle-class women were scandalized and did their best to spread the word. "Unless you have lived among oppression and injustice," wrote Isabella Ford, a feminist and author of Industrial Women and How to Help Them, "it is most difficult to realize how full of it is our industrial system particularly when it touches women."
"On Strike Against God and Nature"
Although the International Ladies Garment Workers Union had organized in the United States by 1900, most young working women hesitated to join, fearing for their jobs. But misery nibbled away at their fear, and slowly and secretly membership grew until, in 1909, the garment workers believed their numbers were strong enough to demand better conditions. However, their requests for an improved working environment, shorter hours, and higher pay were denied. They considered their options and discussed calling a strike.
Speaking for her fellow workers, Clara Lemlich, a veteran textile worker and striker who had once had her ribs broken when police broke up a picket line, called for unity among employees of Leiserman and Company in Philadelphia and the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York. Citing the Jewish pledge, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise," she called for a strike vote that led to the Revolt of the Thirty Thousand.
The revolt was a bitter strike that lasted almost a year and proved that women could be organized into a power to be reckoned with. Newspaper accounts of the strike drew attention to the union, and soon between one thousand and fifteen hundred new members were joining for each day that it continued. Signs along the picket lines read, "We are striking for Human Treatment," and "We strike for Justice." The media reported each picketing worker’s arrest to publicize the campaign fully.
Women who had never toiled outside their homes, and who were often married to the very industrialists and government officials who mistreated the workers, sympathized with the strikers. They did what they could to help. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont and Mrs. J. B. Harriman, two wealthy New York socialites and active suffragettes who were married to two of the richest men in New York, gathered resources and money to help their striking sisters. Lillian D. Wald, who was a widely recognized health care reformer, and muckraker Ida M. Tarbell used the power of the press to lash out against the injustices suffered by the women.
Despite popular support for the striking workers, the courts were on the side of traditional industrial oppression and ruled against them all. One court magistrate, finding a striker guilty of disorderly conduct, said, "You are on strike against God and Nature." Finally, on February 15, 1910, the strike was called off. The defeated workers returned to work in the grimy factories. But they returned with a new optimism based on a strong sense of unity among all the women within the suffrage movement.
