During one meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, tension broke out between the working-class Lower East Siders who filled the galleries (and saw class solidarity as the ultimate solution to the problems of industrial safety) and the middle- and upper-class women in the boxes who sought reforms like creation of a bureau of fire prevention. The meeting would have broken up in disorder if not for a stirring speech by Rose Schneiderman, a Polish-born former hat worker who had once led a strike at the Triangle factory. Although she barely spoke above a whisper, Schneiderman held the audience spellbound. I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies, if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public—and we have found you wanting.
Dora Rodriguez Professor Rutledge English 1302 29 March 2014 Working Women in America On the 25 March 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. One hundred forty-six died on that day, most of whom were women. These young ladies had been locked in during working hours to keep the union organizers out. “The Triangle fire shocked the nation” (Davidson et al. 599).
If you compared our work week at this present time, to the workweek that these women endured, you would be distraught. Each room in the factory had around 80 women working, with two male supervisors. The noise was horrific, as the women worked with the machinery. There was no protection to the ears, eyes, or throat while these women were working. The rooms were hot with no air circulation.
The Lowell Mill Girls were fed up with the mistreatment. They decided to protest. “One of the first strikes of cotton-factory operatives that ever took place in this country was that in Lowell, in October, 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike, en masse. This was done.
With only a month to prepare and the Court having struck down a similar law in New York to regulate hours, the court hearing began. Luckily, Brandeis had noticed the missing element from the Lochner v. New York case and had quickly compiled detailed evidence of how longer working hours effected women’s safety and health. Together, the data made up the “Brandeis brief” that soon became famous worldwide. It stated things such as “accidents to working women occur most frequently at the close of the day, or after a long period of uninterrupted work,” and “the evil effect of overwork before as well as after marriage upon childbirth is marked and disastrous.” These harsh conditions, he said, also drove women to drink and go to saloons, instead of being fit mothers and keeping up with the housework. Muller’s attorney, however, argued that Oregon’s law violated women’s rights.
Trolley service was completely cut by a sympathy strike a short time after the negotiations began. The power strike also caused other strikes to follow; like when the city’s eight major hotels to close when hotel restaurant employees walked off their jobs to enforce wage demands. The Pittsburgh power strike of 1946 was a just one of the many strike during 1946. The United States was at a time where it was just coming out of the war, and workers went one strike because they knew they could get more money out of their employers. Work Cited
Women were once only seen in homes cleaning and cooking and the era of Rosie was the first step in women’s rights. Though at the end of the war men returned to their old factory jobs forcing women out of their maculating jobs, they showed women as a whole that they could do the same thing men could. While women did not end up reentering the work force until the 1970’s they were not in such high demand at this time either
The role of women before war: Upper-class women did not work before the war and few worked after it. Working-class women, on the other hand, had to work to help keep their families. They worked before the war mostly in factories and in domestic services as maids. As many as 11% of all women worked as domestic servants before the war. The war gave them the chance to work in a greater variety of jobs but most of these new jobs were lost at the end of the war.
The women of the early 20th century helped by filling in the jobs that men used, volunteering as nurses, and giving hope to the soldiers to fight back with. Women completely stabilized all the jobs that were left by the men. Around 1 to 2 million women joined the workforce during the war, such as in governmental jobs, in public transport, in the post office, in business clerks and
So much so what could be called, “…the most hope-filled, union in the nation’s history…” (Pg.174 A History of Hope) was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). With over two hundred delegates and many more industrial workers the goal of the IWW was to create worker solidarity and social freedom for those involved with the group. The Lawrence Strike of 1912 is a perfect example of the impact the IWW had on its members. On New Year’s Day 1912 a new law was passed cutting the wages of the workers. By the time everyone received his or her paychecks two weeks later.