Speech commemmorating Triangle fire victims: ‘Too much blood has been spilled’ (100 years Friday)

http://blog.nj.com/perspective/2011/03/too_much_blood_has_been_spille.html

Published: Sunday, March 20, 2011, 5:55 AM

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

Rose Schneiderman (1866-1972), an organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Women’s Trade Union League, spoke at a protest of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on April 2, 1911. Her words of mourning — and warning:

“I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting.


Kheel Center Cornell University
Rose Schneiderman


“The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.

“This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. 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.

Source: Kheel Center Cornell University

FULL speech at link.

Outside of NYC, I mean. I myself am going to ring our school bell at 3:45 (that would be 4:45 eastern) to mark the moment the first alarm bell went off for the Triangle fire.
I am also going to try to organize a walk at noon hour.

We must never forget these young women (although there were a few supervisor men who died, I think) who had NO VOICE, NO PLACE AT THE TABLE.

Thanks for putting this link here, Omaha Steve. And thanks for sending your union brothers and sisters to Madison last week. I cheered the NE/IA signs!