Labor Leaders

"A member fears nowadays to express an honest opinion, in some locals, for fear of being hooted down or even losing a job."

"Jennie Matyas is recognized by the outside Labor and Education Movement, because she is a leader in her own rights, while countless others remain obscure through the good graces of the men whom they have helped into office."

"Fannia Cohn's service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of worker's education."

"Our recent entrance into politics, which in my mind is the bane of the Union, has added more woes. Most of the paid officers and active members became politicians, calously [sic] neglecting the duties for which they were elected. Getting wages weekly by the union, a paid officer can abuse his duties more freely now than heretofore, the excuse-elections campaign."

"The Smith-Connally bill's passage marked the beginning of an organized effort to wreck bona fide unions through legislation."

"When I was about five years of age my parents brought me to this country and we settled in New York. So my earliest recollections are of living in a crowded street among the East Side Jews, for we also are Jews."

"Just go through any of the public buildings at midnight and you will see old and middle-aged women on their knees scrubbing away the dirt that men of business have brought in during the day. That gives you a picture of how well men carry the burdens of women."

"When servility, bootlicking, personal favoritism and above all sensationalism will be wiped off as obstacles to real progress,"

"Fannia Cohn’s service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person for the cause of worker’s education. She remains a tragic figure amidst her own fellow workers…Were she a man it would have been entirely different."

"May I state at the out-set, that I always regarded the Hearst press as yellow, violently anti-labor and reactionary? In the course of my organizing activities in several parts of this country, the Hearst press consistently attacked us, blaming the ILG and its organizers for instigating strikes, causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods, homes, etc. As last as 1936, the Hearst press, writing about the leadership of the CIO in the Roosevelt campaign attacked our ILG and its leadership, including yourself, as Communists. (I was given the distinction of being an Anarchist and a friend of Emma Goldman, an honor I shall never deny.) I recall that in 1927 a similar stunt was performed by Hearst in printing the story of the lives of Sacco-Vanzetti, who were electrocuted, the articles notwithstanding. The Hearst press has already been on the decline for several years because the awakened labor rank and file refused to be bull-dozed any longer. Today, the printing of your story in the classic Hearst sensational style, is simply giving his yellow, reactionary press a new lease on life, to say the least. I followed the articles and must admit that Mr. Joseph Mulvaney, the fellow who induced you to consent to his writing these stories, will be handsomely rewarded by Hearst, for the circulation will surely jump a score of thousands or more. do not know what objectives you aim to reach in consenting to be publicized in such a fashion, save one-to give the writer a chance to earn a living (is he at least a Union man?)"

"I was always considered a "shaigitz" when I was young and as a militant out-spoken trade-unionist during my activities in the labor movement, I am not afraid of telling the truth to you now."

"According to traditional Marxist theory housewives were problematical as to their class consciousness; they often were unreliable allies of radical men. They were usually grouped with peasants and intellectuals as a potentially conservative drag line on the forward march of proletarian men. Women's equality was a stated goal of all Marxist movements, but the way women's issues were treated, one got the clear message that what women did was marginal to the struggle, unless they excelled at doing it the way men did. The great and celebrated heroines-La Pasionaria, Mother Bloor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Clara Lemlich did not organize housewives; they organized female factory workers, women's auxiliaries or men."

"The labor activist Clara Lemlich described marriage as a young woman's only hope of getting free of the factory. "In the beginning," she wrote, "they are full of hope and courage. Almost all of them think that some day they will be able to get out of the factory and work up, but continuing work under long hours and miserable conditions they lose their hopes. Their only way to leave the factory is marriage.""

"A Ukrainian immigrant and lifelong radical, Lemlich had moved to New York City in 1903 and led her coworkers at various factories out on strikes between 1906 and 1909. She, like Rose Schneiderman and many others of her time, was one of the early U.S. labor movement's revolutionary "fiery Jewish girls" who would soon leave a mark in their new homeland's history books."

"When these girls are brought to Court, to a court of men, do you know how they are punished? They are fined and punished for the things that men have done."

"Senators, we are here to stay, 800,000 women in New York State alone. We have learned a good many things. We have learned to organize in the industrial field. Give us a chance, the workingwomen together with the working men, through an intelligent vote and we will make good in the political field."

"In the first two decades of the 20th century, the suffrage movement was infused with immigrant working-class women, in which Jewish women were very prominent. Their numbers–pouring into parades and suffrage organizations–were in the tens of thousands. The two most prominent Jewish immigrant suffrage leaders were Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich. Both were heroines of the Triangle Shirt Waist strike [Uprising of the 20,000] and fire. Lemlich became a communist, Schneiderman a Roosevelt Democrat. They both linked suffrage to the legislative and economic concerns of wage-earning women."

"Schneiderman had long pushed for cross-racial engagement in the laundry sector, recognizing the power in numbers and the symbolic advantage of a fully integrated labor effort."

"The once radical Rose Schneiderman herself had become an established mover and shaker in the country's labor leadership. Appointments to New York's Minimum Wage Advisory Board and FDR's National Recovery Act (NRA) Labor Advisory Board were evidence of her mellowing politics, and Schneiderman also drew criticism from the long-running Communist paper the Daily Worker for being an "ally" of "the A. F. of L. machine." Schneiderman's close relationship with the Roosevelts and discomfort with the emerging radical movements that would define the 1930s political landscape were another factor. The ideological gap between different eras of the WTUL would lead to its eventual dissolution in 1949."

"The shops. Well, there is just one row of machines that the daylight ever gets to-that is the front row, nearest the window. The girls at all the other rows of machines back in the shops have to work by gaslight, by day as well as by night. Oh, yes, the shops keep the work going at night, too."

"I, for one, favor a limited tenure of office to get new and dynamic forces to the forefront, to gain a stronger morale for the members."

"You men as a body who make the laws, and men of money who support the makers of the law are responsible for this system of ours that forces 30,000 girls out into the streets."

"Less than five feet tall, she was a powerful speaker and excellent writer, lovingly called La Pasionara (the Passionate One)...Emma became chair of the Texas Communist Party, then a strong voice for the oppressed. Forced to leave Texas by Red-baiting, she returned later to be a teacher and a beloved inspiration always."

"The 20th anniversary Chicano Activists Reunion organizers had made efforts to recognize women's accomplishments. The featured speaker at the Labor Lunch and guest of honor at the banquet was Emma Tenayucca, the young leftist heroine of the huge Mexican pecan shellers' strike in San Antonio in the 1930s, called "La Pasionaria" by local people, and now in her 80s."

"Communist Mexican-American labor activist Emma Tenayuca, "the Passionflower of Texas," led protests, walkouts, and demonstrations to protest the deplorable working and living conditions that Latino workers faced in her native San Antonio...Like many labor activists of her generation, Tenayuca was later blacklisted for her political affiliations, but there was no erasing the impact she'd made on San Antonio and the labor movement as a whole."

"As a twenty-three-year-old member of the Workers' Alliance and secretary of the Texas Communist Party, Emma Tenayuca emerged as the fiery local leader. Although not a pecan sheller, Tenayuca, a San Antonio native, was elected to head the strike committee. During the six-week labor dispute from 6,000 to 10,000 strikers faced tear gas and billy clubs "on at least six occasions." Emma Tenayuca courageously organized demonstrations and she along with over 1,000 pecan shellers were jailed. Known as "La Pasionaria," Tenayuca, in an interview with historian Zaragosa Vargas, reflected on her activism as follows: "I was pretty defiant. [I fought] against poverty, actually starvation, high infant death rates, disease and hunger and misery. I would do the same thing again.""

"(Ronald Reagan is) nothing but a bag of hot air."

"But where are the intellectuals: Where are the Clarence Darrows?...Where are all of those writers who went out and picketed when Sacco and Vanzetti were put in jail? You see, we do have a big movement against war. Against nuclear war, in particular. But I just don’t know...if I could see in the future somebody who could take the presidency and have a knowledge of the program... I would hate to see another Carter or another movie star, because they don’t know foreign policy; they don’t know history."

"Chicana labor leaders and politicians, like Denver's Dolores McGran González, testified before congressional committees, ran for local office, and served as national delegates to the Progressive Party Convention in the late 1930s. Other women who have become models of female-inspired activities of the period are Dolores Hernández, who was killed on October 10, 1933 during a strike of 15,000 farm workers in Visalia, California. Another woman labor union leader made history in 1936 when she led pecan sheller strikers in San Antonio in a successful strike effort. Emma Tenayuca Brooks, then a 17-year-old labor organizer and orator, became a beacon of hope to beleagured workers throughout the United States. For her efforts, she has had to live 40 years in obscurity and anonymity. In civil rights and educational reform, a strong women's advocate, Mariá L. Hernández of Lytle, Texas, worked tirelessly throughout the 1930s demonstrating, speaking, and protesting the educational status of Mexican-Americans in the United States."

"I would say that the times are absolutely different. Unfortunately, American history books, especially at the high school level...and I examined about three of them here in 1968, I haven’t examined any since then. But they were not analytical. They were not critical. You will find history books that will tell you we still don’t know why the Depression occurred – a world-wide Depression. England went on the bill. Certainly, World War I had a lot to do with it. Why did we have a World War II? The unbearable, actually, the unbearable load or money that Germany had to pay us, which actually stripped their economy. Germany never had what you would call a true democratic society."

"It would be difficult to say that minorities have not advanced. You will find quite a few members of the state legislature, a few senators, but quite a number who are Mexican. You will find a number who are in the Senate. You will find a lot of Blacks. But, again, you have a split there; you have a split."

"I attended one convention, that was all. The woman for whom I had the greatest admiration was, of course, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The man for whom I had the...was not Browder, who was the secretary, but was Foster – William C. Foster...along with those heroes whom I did have – women heroes – Mrs. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Babe Diedrickson"

"I have expected my country, your country, to become the scientific Athens, but I don’t think that will be the case."

"I was beginning to miss more and more meals, so...I’ve come from a family of eleven; I was one of the oldest. I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t help, I couldn’t do anything, so I left San Antonio. I went to San Francisco and stayed there for twenty years, and to my surprise, I return and I find myself some sort of a heroine."

"I once read that people from...among those graduates at West Point you wouldn’t find any liars and cowards: you get Poindexter; you got North. I mean, these guys filled their minds that covert actions, terrorism – the same type that we’re trying to fight"

"I would like to see a history...not just of the Communists but of the Left Wing movement and its narrow, factional, sectarian approach."

"I was removed; because I was a Communist, I was removed from leadership of the Workers’ Alliance of the CIO."

"There were spontaneous strikes. You don’t have those if you have a good organizer."

"The Workers’ Alliance was an organization for the unemployed. And I think it did a tremendous job, because all of the housing projects that are here are due to the Workers’ Alliance...they were organized by the Communists and Socialists."

"If I had to give any credit to myself, I would say that I was a darn good organizer, and if I did it was because I read the works of the...I read quite a bit about the anarchists’ organization."

"You had this factionalism all the time."

"Any effort of the Mexican workers to organize was met with brutal force, from the very beginning."

"The Wobblies could come into a town and establish free speech. They’d bring in...one would come by railroad then – ride the rods and so forth and so on – they they’d come into a town. They had one group that would go out. That group would be arrested. They’d get another group to get up and speak, and then another group would fill the damn jail. And you had lawyers there."

"1938 was the hardest year because by that time the Depression had really struck every city, every place."

"Look, it was not the Black, the savages or the Indians who brought about a government such as the Hitler regime...I think after four, almost five hundred years of European domination that this next period would be one of revolt against European domination. And there are lots of lives being lost in Nicaragua and these other places."

"I read quite a bit. I would say I read, well, I didn’t read all of Das Kapital, but I read that and Price and Profit, Wage, Labor & Capital, so I had an idea of how capital was made; how it was used, and so forth and so on."

"I don’t think that women will ever be completely and totally free – or any of the minorities – until you have socialism."

"The question was always one of land, and it wasn’t tackled in Mexico until the time of Cardenas. And it wasn’t tackled in Cuba until Castro."

"Theodore Roosevelt...he was an imperialist, but he had a liberal approach."

"We’ve been spending too much money on armaments. We haven’t had any peace since World War II. We had troops in Korea, Vietnam, South American, Europe. We cannot continue to do that."