Then came a big strike. . . . About 100 girls went out. The result was a victory, which netted us-I mean the girls-$2 increase in our wages on the av… - Rose Schneiderman

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Then came a big strike. . . . 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. . . . Soon notices... were hung in the various shops: “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.

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About Rose Schneiderman

Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972) was a Polish-born American socialist and feminist, and one of the most prominent labor union leaders who was a woman. As a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League, she drew attention to unsafe workplace conditions, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, and as a suffragist she helped to pass the New York state referendum of 1917 that gave women the right to vote. Schneiderman was also a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and served on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She is credited with coining the phrase "Bread and Roses," to indicate a worker's right to something higher than subsistence living.

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Additional quotes by Rose Schneiderman

Political democracy will not do us much good unless we have industrial democracy; and industrial democracy can only come through intelligent workers participating in the business of which they are a part, and working out the best methods for all.

Woman suffrage will only accomplish the results we expect of it and hope of it if women develop into an intelligent electorate, and I would like to impress upon you the need of becoming familiar with industrial conditions so that when we get the power we can change them; and it seems to me that it is up to the women of leisure who are working in some way in the suffrage movement not to cry out or protest against the working woman's indifference to suffrage but to recognize her distinct contribution as an organized worker and to be ready to stand by her in her heavily handicapped struggle to better her conditions. Some of the leaders of the New York State have done this magnificently, but there are thousands who have not and who stand aloof and indifferent to the great struggle.

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I was 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.

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