News, Utica Morning Herald and
Daily Gazette.
July 29, 1879.
Foreign Items
Signor
Bennedetto Cairoli, the Italian Premier, has paid a long visit to General Garibaldi. It is
believed he obtained the promise of his support for the present government.
At
Ottawa, a party of a hundred “Young Britons,” while returning home late Saturday night from
escorting the Montreal Britons to the cars, were fired upon by some 300 Union
men. One of the Britons was wounded. The prompt arrival of the police prevented
a serious riot. Several arrests were made.
Varieties
A
crowd of men were watching a calf in North Carolina choke to death with an apple
in its throat when a small boy stepped up, knocked over the calf, and laying its neck across a rail, smashed the
apple from the outside.Then the calf swallowed it and got up well.
Colonel
McLaughlin and Professor Miller, the celebrated wrestlers, had a tussle at
Titusville Saturday night that lasted from early in the evening until after
mid-night, when it was declared a draw.
A Working Woman’s Argument With Fall River Strikers.
The Boston Advertiser reports the
following interview with the mother of a Fall River employee who had been
threatened if he did not quit work.
The mother said: Last night three spinners
called at her house. One of them asked for her son Joe. He wanted him to come
downstairs, as they wanted to have some talk with him. She said she could not
allow him to go out of the house. They told her that they wished Joe to come
out of the mill. She said that she could not take him out: she said she had no
husband to rely upon for the support of herself and her children, and that she
needed his earnings to furnish food for her family. The spinners said that they
were fighting for the return of the fifteen per centum, and that when they got
it, it would make a difference in the earnings of her children of thirty
dollars a month, for all the help in the mill would get the fifteen per centum
when the spinners got it.
In the strike they had a hard battle to fight, and
they would not allow her boy to continue working in the mill: they must have
him out first, and then they intended to take out the others, and he would be
supported from the union.
Woman: How much support would the union
give him?
Spinner: We would get him $3 a week now,
and more after a while.
Woman: And will $3 a week keep my children
in bread? This morning my milkman, my butcher and my storeman all shut down on
me.
Spinner: But your boy is taking the bread
out of my mouth; has he any right to do that?
Woman: No, he hasn’t, and if you go down to
the mill in the morning and if he is working on your mules, you can take them,
and go to work, and he can go on another pair if there are any, and if not he
can go to his light looms, but if you won’t have your mules you can’t say he is
taking the bread out of your mouth if he works on them to earn food for himself
and his little brothers and sisters.
Spinner: But we are working for him to get
more pay as well as ourselves, and it’s a shame for him to be a “lobstick.”
Woman: Yes, it is a shame for him to be a “lobstick”
but it is a greater shame to be a beggar when you are strong enough to work for
a living.
Spinner (with an oath): What do you mean
by a beggar?
Woman: I mean that every week I should
have to go up to the Union and drop my shoulders and my head down and ask for
my $3 like a common beggar. I’m an honest woman and try to earn my living and
pay my debts. I owe $13 now as the balance of my debts I contracted during the
strike four years ago, and the only way of paying my debts is to earn money by
working for it. I take in washing when I can and sewing, and we must work for
the most we can get. We would like to get more but it is no use throwing away
what we can get.
This morning the boy went to his work as
usual, but she was warned that trouble would happen to her and the boy if he
did not stay away, and so this afternoon he did not return to his work.
 |
| Spinner at Fall River |
Recommended reading:
Strike by Joe Bakewell.
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