By working hard we could make an average of about $5 a week. We would have made more but had to provide our own machines, which cost us $45, we paying for them on the installment plan. We paid $5 down and $1 a month after that. – Rose Schneiderman
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. – Rose Schneiderman
We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. – Rose Schneiderman
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. – Rose Schneiderman
The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. – Rose Schneiderman
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. – Rose Schneiderman
Our people were very restive, saying that they could not sit under that notice, and that if the National Board did not call them out soon they would go out of themselves. – Rose Schneiderman
We have women working in the foundries, stripped to the waist, if you please, because of the heat. – Rose Schneiderman
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. – Rose Schneiderman
So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take – just that and no more. – Rose Schneiderman
I learned the business in about two months, and then made as much as the others, and was consequently 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. – Rose Schneiderman
I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement. – Rose Schneiderman
After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we girls needed an organization. The men had organized already, and had gained some advantages, but the bosses had lost nothing, as they took it out on us. – Rose Schneiderman
The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with. – Rose Schneiderman
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. – Rose Schneiderman
But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us. – Rose Schneiderman
The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death. – Rose Schneiderman
Surely these women won’t lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that. – Rose Schneiderman
