The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1911-06-23

When something over year ago the
great firm of Marx & Haas in St. Louis
locked out thousand garment workers
and declared for the ''non-union shop,
it little guessed that two of its girl EN-
ployes were to be largely instrumental
in compelling it to deal fairly and
squarely with its people or close the
doors of it's two great factories. Today
the st. Louis garment firm faces the
two alternatives, brought about through
the determined stand of the locked out
unionists and the grit and determination
of two young ladies, Miss Fannie Shellens
and Miss Katharine Hurley.
Last Monday evening in the Labor
Temple, under the auspices of the local
Ladies' Label League, a crowd that filled
every foot of room in the hall and over
flowed into the entrance hall, listened
for over an hour to the earnest, eloquent
appeal of these women to the manhood
and womanhood of Everett to help their
people in their struggle for union condi-
tions. 1t was tragedy of the working
people told to working people by work
ing people and if there was one in that
audience that did not feel the sting of
capitalist injustice, one whose heart did
not respond to the call for aid, one who
did not resolve to join the fight for hui
manity against inhumanity, of human
rights against the rule of the dollar, that
one is lost to any sense of shame or
decency.
Theirs was the everyday story of the
sufferers in the industrial treadmill. 1t
was told in simple language. No tricks
of oratory, no reaching for studied eff
fects, no efforts at thrilling climaxes.
But no polished orator, loaded with bril-
liant metaphor, could have reached the
audience as those girls did. They were
telling the story of their own lives, the
every day history of their comrades in
the factories And because they had
lived it, their portrayal of conditions in
sweatshops and non union factories,
their struggle to organize for their bet
terment, the gradual amelioration of
working conditions, the great strike, the
resultant suffering, was pictured with
an eloquence that went straight as an
arrows flight to the consciousness of
the auditors.
Union men and women have better
idea of the nature of the class struggle
today than they had last week. We
needed something like that to arouse us.
We in this western country have our
own problems to solve, our own diff
culties to overcome. We think our in
dustrial conditions are bad-and they
are-but we have nothing yet That ap-
proaches the conditions of toll surround
ing the factory and sweat shop workers
in the big eastern cities. Much has been
written of those conditions, but constant
reading has not accomplished what these
girls who have been a part of that sys-
tenn are accomplishing by direct touch
with the workers in this more favored
western cline.
For years the garment workers in the
factories of Marx and Haas in St. Louis
have been organized. Bit by bit through
the power of united effort they lessened
this evil, bettered that condition. Every
concession they have wrung from their
employers has been at the cost of suffer
ING and sacrifice. Not one condition has
come to them as a voluntary offering
but has been paid for many times over.
They stand for the union shop because
more probably than any other trade,
they have learned that the so-called
'open shop" is a delusion and a snare.
Sixteen months ago nine hundred peo-
pie in the employ of Marx & Haas were
locked out. Of this number six hundred
were females, mostly young girls. They
had made their employers wealthy but
they themselves left the factory doors
as poor as the day they entered. Their
skill had given their employers every
thing, they themselves had nothing.
Their international, financially ex-
hausted by the great strikes of New York
and Philadelphia, could aid them but lit
tie. They met the onslaught of capital
reinforced by the powers of government
The police force of st. Louis became a
strike breaking agency. The courts
| menial as usual, issued sweeping injunc
tions against them. From the churches
which so often listen to the solemn ut
terance, ''inasmuch as ye have done it tc
the least of these, my little ones, "
'Ihave done it unto me" came no wore
4 of sympathy, no offer of aid. Their ait
came from the union and socialist forces
of st. Louis. 1t has always been thai
4 way. The workers, tired as they wer'
!, with their own troubles, their own
J struggle for existence, have been tn
ones to forget for the moment their owl
! problems in the overshadowing trouble
of their comrades in distress. And som
. way, some how, they fought on. Six
: teen months of fighting has seen bu
! twenty five girls out of six hundred de
sert their colors.
. Miss Sellens and Miss Hurley saw on
thing clearly. In the unequal struggl
| there was but one way to bring tina