1909–1910 
1909–1910
Fannie managed to earn enough to feed her children and send them to school, but she never made enough money to escape poverty.
Despite Marx & Haas Clothing Company’s concessions to the labor union, the workrooms were crowded and the air was filthy. Many of the employees got sick with tuberculosis, a highly contagious, incurable disease that often became fatal. If they arrived to work even a few minutes late, as punishment they were locked in the basement for an hour and not allowed to go to their sewing machines. Because seamstresses were paid by the number of garments they sewed each day, the lost hour was precious.
Company owners seemed to be on the lookout for a chance to challenge and ultimately break the garment workers’ union. In 1909 they found one. A man who worked as a tailor at Marx & Haas tried to use the elevator instead of walking up six flights of stairs to the workroom floor. He had trouble breathing because he suffered from tuberculosis. Although the boss had ordered the tailor to take the stairs, he refused. The boss docked him a week’s pay. To protest this unfairness, Fannie and many union workers walked out of the factory.
The next day, September 13, 1909, Marx & Haas locked out all one thousand union workers and gave their jobs to nonunion people. Fannie organized strikers to march in a picket line in front of the factory. They carried protest signs and tried to convince the replacement workers not to take their jobs.
“Not fair!” they shouted. “Scabs!”
Union members used the word scab for strikebreakers, people willing to cross the picket line and work during a strike. It was an insult, as if calling someone lousy or rotten.
After an eight-week strike, the United Garment Workers of America (largely women and children) and the Clothiers Exchange agreed on abolition of subcontractors, a fifty-two-hour workweek, time and a half for overtime, no work on five legal holidays, and no discrimination for strike activity. Rochester, New York, 1913.
Police arrest a woman for picketing during a garment workers’ strike in Chicago, similar to Fannie’s strike in St. Louis. Eventually, 41,000 garment workers join the walkout. Chicago, Illinois, 1910.
So many workers refused to cross the picket line, the plant nearly had to close. Marx & Haas went to court to stop the picketing. The judge agreed with the company owners and told strikers that they must stop protesting and return to the factory, or they would lose their jobs. Fannie and other union leaders would be arrested if they even walked down the street by the Marx & Haas building! The workers stopped picketing, but did not go back to work. The strike continued.
One month into the labor dispute, UGWA Local 67’s president died of tuberculosis, and Fannie became president. Her youngest daughter was now twelve, and Fannie agreed to work for the UGWA full-time. She traveled from city to city, telling people about the low wages and unhealthy working conditions at Marx & Haas, and asking them to support the striking garment workers.
At first, Fannie was scared when she stood on-stage to speak to a crowd, but remembering the anxious faces of the hardworking girls at their sewing machines gave her strength and courage.
“Help us fight,” she told union coal miners during a speech in Illinois in November 1909. “We women work in factories on dangerous machinery, and many of us get horribly injured or killed. Many of your brothers die in the mines. There should be a bond of sympathy between us, for we both encounter danger in our daily work.”
The miners stomped their feet and shouted their agreement. Some were so moved by Fannie’s speech, they wiped tears from their eyes.
Traveling the country for two years, Fannie saw workers everywhere had the same troubles: long hours, low pay, and dangerous conditions.
Women and girls sewing in a clothing shop, likely a smaller operation than the garment factory where Fannie worked. Speedy sewing was essential, as like Fannie, they did piecework, meaning they were paid per piece of finished clothing. St. Louis, Missouri, date unknown.
Coal miners take a break. The boy, Joseph “Jo” Puma (seated), worked as a nipper, fetching and carrying for the miners and learning the trade. Jo’s mother said he was fourteen years old. Pittston, Pennsylvania, January 1911.
In December 1909, Fannie visited Chicago, where she discovered that girls in button factories worked in unheated buildings, and often cut their fingers on jagged mussel shells. A cut might not seem serious, but continually reaching into tubs of dirty water for the shells, the girls risked fatal infection. At the time, there were more cases of pneumonia, typhus, and gangrene among button factory laborers than in any other industry.
In Detroit cigar factories, ten-year-old boys had to stand on benches in order to reach their work. With fingers stained from tobacco, they tied wet sponges over their nostrils to block out poisonous fumes.
Traveling for months, Fannie spoke at union halls across the country. She asked people to support the striking garment workers in St. Louis by buying only clothes with the “union-made” label inside them. Those tags guaranteed that the workers who made those garments were treated better. Shirts and trousers without the union label came from sweatshops like the one where Fannie had worked.
Factory owners viewed young girls and boys as well-suited to making cigars due to their small hands. Children were also more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike than adult workers. The youngsters first cut the cigar wrappers to their proper length with a sharp, handleless chaveta knife, then measured and formed the tobacco into bundles, which they placed in the wrappers, using a special board to finally roll and seal the cigar. Tampa, Florida, 1909.
A newspaper advertisement showing various union labels, and urging consumers to demand that products they buy carry the label, thus promoting better wages and working conditions for laborers.
In July 1910, Fannie spoke to union carpenters in Iowa. Her voice rang with feeling and her dark eyes snapped. “Injury to one is an injury to all!” she said. People jumped to their feet, clapping and whooping so hard, the ruckus nearly shook the building.
“Pass the hat!” someone hollered, and a cap went hand to hand. Coins jingled and bills rustled. The union carpenters donated one thousand dollars ($25,700 today) to help the striking garment workers in St. Louis feed their families.
Fannie spoke as many as six times a day, and people listened. So many refused to buy nonunion clothing that Marx & Haas had to close one factory. With the money Fannie raised, the St. Louis strikers held out for two years until Marx & Haas gave in to the union. Working conditions did not substantially improve, but the company agreed to re-hire union workers and raise wages.
