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"Because
they refused to accept a wage cut from a scale that was
bringing them little if anything over three dollars a week, fifty girls
and women employed in the shirt and overall factory of Ferguson &
Levin, 77 Chatham street, went on strike Tuesday at noon, after
exhausting all possible efforts to come to an understanding with their
grasping employers.
The girls are members of Local 140 of the Shirt
Waist and Laundry Workers, of which Miss Dora Gurdon, one of the
strikers, is President.
For some time past the girls have been working
only part time. In most cases this meant a weekly wage of three
dollars or less. The firm seemed to consider this too much money
for respectable girls to have the handling of. Perhaps they
thought it might lead to extravagant habits like automobiling or giving
box parties at the Nixon. Such diversion, would, of course, take
their minds from their work.
The W.C.T.U. and the Y.W.C.A. and other such
organizations of "society" folk have not heard of the troubles
of these poor, underpaid girls. They are too busy
"reforming" in places where the greatest amount of newspaper
notoriety is procurable. So the girls were compelled to apply to
the organized wage earners of the city for support and succor in their
dire need.
Men Rally to Their Support
They did not apply in vain. When the case
was reported to the Iron City Central Trades Council, President Arthur
E. Ireland threw himself into the work with all his energy. Her
first tried to show the employers the injustice they were working on the
girls; explained to the how impossible and how unreasonable it was to
expect respectable women to support themselves on three dollars a week;
showed them that their present position in the industrial field had been
attained largely through the help of organized labor, and urged them to
deal justly with their employes. All his overtures were in vain.
On Tuesday the girls met in Old Elks' Hall and
decided not to submit to a cut in their meager wages. They were
addressed by members of the executive board of the Iron City Council,
who assured them of the support of that body. The Council will,
through its affiliated organizations, throw the support of more than one
hundred thousand wage earners to the unfortunate strikers.
Said President Ireland of the Council in
reference to the trouble: "It is shameful to think that there
are beings existing in this age of civilization who call themselves men
and still expect our sister to subsist honorably and respectably on
three dollars a week. It is an insult to virtuous womanhood that
ought to be taken up by every man in this land who claims to have one
vestige of respect for the noble name of woman...."
Full article appears on microfilm in the Iron City
Trades Journal, September 11, 1908. |
