Chapter III: Part 3

A. The three and four loom systems are now in use in
Pennsylvania. The federal report on the Condition of Woman
and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, says: “In
Pennsylvania, where the broad silks manufactured are of the
plainer grades, not requiring the skill, efficiency and
attention given to the higher grades made in Paterson, woman
and child weavers have the field practically to themselves.”

B. Mr. Kinkead would certainly not wish to maintain that,
when the change is made from a two to a four loom system, the
earnings of weavers, who preferred to stick to two looms, would
not be cut. If you cut a chair caner’s wage from ten to eight
cents a chair, there is no compulsion for him to make more
chairs than before; but he does if he has a family hanging on
his earnings. The silk manufacturer who, when he makes the
change, pays a weaver more than before if he will work four
looms instead of two, and less than before if he continues to
work two is merely dodging if he claims there is no compulsion
about it.

C. A more accurate analysis of the government figures would
give the average wage of Paterson weavers as $11.80 instead of
$11.69; that of the Pennsylvania weavers as $6.99 instead of
$6.56. The error that Mr. Kinkead suggests was, however, not
made.

As a matter of fact, such a staff inquiry as Mr. Kinkead suggests has been in progress and in the June magazine number THE SURVEY will publish an article by John A. Fitch.—Ed.]

JOTTINGS

DRAMATIZING THE PATERSON STRIKE

Seizing on the suggestion that some master of pageantry ought to give symbolic expression to the mass strike, a leader of the Paterson strike proposed that the silk workers should themselves present to the public the meaning of its chief incidents. Within a few days Madison Square Garden had been rented for June 7, and large committees, composed in no small degree of volunteers from the 10,000 silk strikers in New York city, were at work on the details of the arrangements.

A pageant of six episodes has been planned by John Reed, a magazine writer who was himself arrested on the Paterson picket line a few weeks ago.

The episodes, as interpreted by the pageant committee, divide themselves into two groups: the one representing the struggle of the strikers against economic and legal tyranny; the other, the democratic government of the strike by the workers.

Brief titles of the episodes are: The Mills Alive—The People Dead—The Strike; The Mills Dead—The People Alive—The Picket Line and Arrests; Forty Pickets before an Irresponsible Judge; The Strike Victim’s Funeral; The Striking Mothers Send their Children to Strike Mothers in New York; The Legislature of the Strikers in Helvetia Hall Passes the Eight Hour Law. The strike leaders, in this last scene, will give propaganda speeches addressed to the audience. Their speeches are to be the only monologues in the performance.

A thousand strikers will march from Paterson to New York to take part in the pageant. The music will be furnished by their mass singing and by their bands which now play at all large strike meetings. Both the actors and singers are being trained by John Reed.

CITY FATHERS TO FOREGATHER

At Binghamton on June 5-7 the mayors and other municipal officials of New York state are to hold their fourth annual conference. Each of the forty-eight mayors is to tell in five minutes what is the greatest problem of his city.

VACANT LOT GARDENING IN TORONTO

Toronto has joined the ranks of the cities in which there is an active vacant lot gardening movement. Over thirty parcels of vacant land in the business section of the city have been loaned to the Playgrounds Association and prepared for gardening by the Plowmen’s Association of York Township.

Early in this month the actual tilling began and the start of the new venture was celebrated by a dinner to the plowmen on the evening of that day. Seeds and implements have been promised so that the children will have everything necessary for successful gardening.

May 31, 1913