Perhaps they were truly alone here, without family, living as boarders in some house or with a family so poor, they were not noticed.
There are seven without names.
Saturday, April 1, 1911
Late last night I heard Babbo talking about returning to Sicily. But Mama surprised me with her answer. She said no. She said Teresa is buried here and she won’t leave her.
Luisa has not gone out since Rosa’s funeral. Somehow that made it worse for her. She sits and stares. Luisa feels it is her fault. She thought Rosa was right there, right beside her. But, instead, Rosa got pushed into the panic of girls close to the windows.
I know this much: Luisa will not go back to work at the Triangle factory.
I went to the market to get salt, sardines, and bread for Mama. Arturo was at the bakery. He asked about Luisa and gave me a free loaf of bread. His sister Tina is safe, but even Arturo is not smiling these days.
Later
Audenzio came to visit us this evening, and Mama gave him some coffee. She’s grateful that Audenzio went with Zi’ Vincenzo to the morgue. It would have been too much for Zi’ Vincenzo to go alone to see those pine coffins lined up, one beside the other in a row.
Now I wonder what Zi’ Vincenzo will do. Perhaps he will go back home to Sicily. For it will be hard to work and take care of two little boys here, even with Zi’ Maria and Mama and other paesani to help.
I have not seen my sparrow friend for a long time. I wonder if he has a nest someplace and is too busy to visit me. Or maybe he has flown away from here. Sometimes that is what I want to do, too.
Sunday, April 2, 1911
Sarah had told me there was to be a large memorial meeting at the big Metropolitan Opera House today at three o’clock. I thought for a long time.
This morning while Babbo was drinking coffee I got up my courage. I told him I wanted to go to a memorial meeting for Rosa and the other people who had died.
I did not know what Babbo would say, or what I would do if he said no. But Babbo looked up at me, then nodded. “Okay,” he answered me in English. “Okay you go.”
Sarah was waiting for me near the steps of the Opera House. Streaming in the doors beside us were gentlemen in high black hats and ladies in furs and hats with beautiful long feathers. They sat in the opera boxes while Sarah and I scurried to seats in the balcony.
“There are so many fine-looking ladies and gentlemen here, Sarah,” I whispered.
But Sarah shrugged. Her words sounded bitter. “No doubt they are very pleased with themselves for opening their pocketbooks for the families of the poor dead girls.”
What did Sarah mean? Wasn’t it a good thing that these rich ladies and men wanted to help? But I was afraid to ask her more. Sarah’s eyes have seemed angrier than ever since the fire. I wonder if she blames herself for Clara’s death. But what could she have done?
Then the speeches began. The first announcement brought loud cheers. The relief committee had received a total of seventy-five thousand dollars to help the families of the Triangle workers. No matter what Sarah said, I was glad that these people were willing to help people like Zi’ Vincenzo.
Then some of the speakers began to call for the formation of committees to look into fire protection. Around us, workers began to hiss and jeer. A man in front of me yelled, “You never cared about that before you had to watch girls jump to the sidewalk!”
I shivered. Sarah gripped my arm and pointed. “Look, Rose Schneiderman is getting up to speak.”
I remembered Rose, with her fiery red hair. She had inspired the girls in our strike. She had worked in the cloakmakers’ strike, too. She looked tiny on the stage. The great hall suddenly became absolutely still. I leaned forward on the edge of my seat.
Rose Schneiderman’s speech was not long. I don’t remember all she said. But I will never forget these words:
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 140-odd are burned to death…. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. And the only way is through a strong working-class movement.
Suddenly I understood, the way you wipe a window clear of mist.
We must save ourselves. That is what our strike was about. But the strike was just the beginning.
We must keep fighting.
Monday, April 3, 1911
This weekend, flyers were distributed everywhere. There will be a funeral parade on Wednesday at one in the afternoon for the seven dead who have been unclaimed. The mayor has said that their bodies can be buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.
The flyers were written in English, Yiddish, and Italian. I took one in English and read it to Mama, Babbo, Luisa, and Vito as we ate our macaroni tonight.
The flyer said that all workers are called upon to make “a last sad tribute of sympathy and affection.”
I took a breath. “Babbo, I would like to leave work on Wednesday to march in the parade.”
Babbo looked into my eyes and nodded slowly. Then he cleared his throat and looked around the table at each of us. “That is right, Angela. And I will come to watch. You, too, Mama, you come, with Vito. And you, Luisa. It is time you went outside again.”
Babbo stood up and headed toward the door. He put his hand on the doorknob. “Angela is a smart girl, Mama. No?”
Mama nodded. “Sì, she did well in school. She has almost filled up that little book her teacher gave her, all in English. Perhaps she would like to go to night school, as some girls do.”
Then, to my surprise, Luisa cleared her throat and spoke up. “Angela is a good worker, too. She is respected as a girl who stands up for her beliefs and is willing to fight for others.”
Luisa looked directly at me. “Sometimes people say to me, ‘Aren’t you Angela Denoto’s sister? I heard her translate speeches during the shirtwaist strike. That young girl has courage.’”
Luisa paused, her eyes glistening with tears. “And I tell them, ‘Sì, Angela is my sister, and I’m proud of her.’”
I have almost reached the end of my book. Tonight I looked back and read my scratchy handwriting and my simple words. I thought about all that has changed since Miss Kelly gave me this diary.
Perhaps next week I will visit Miss Kelly at school and show her my book. I have a question to ask her, too. I would like to know more about evening school.
Miss Kelly said that if I filled the pages, she would give me a new book. Instead, though, I will buy a new one for myself with money I have saved. Maybe I’ll even buy two. One, I will keep. The other I will give to Miss Kelly to pay her back for this one. She can give it to the next Italian girl who leaves school.
Yes, that is what I will do.
Tuesday, April 4, 1911
Sarah stood up at the end of the day, just as the machines were shut off and a hush came into the room. She announced in a loud voice that tomorrow there would be a parade of workers to bury the unclaimed dead. She looked at Mr. Klein. “We will all go tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
Mr. Klein stood still a moment. He nodded and cleared his throat. It was as if he knew it would be useless to resist. And so he announced, “This shop is closed tomorrow afternoon.”
Zi’ Vincenzo came to eat macaroni with us tonight, along with Pietro and Alfio. He says a Red Cross lady has been to visit him. The Red Cross will give him money because Rosa died in the fire.
Zi’ Vincenzo has decided to go back to Sicily. Perhaps he will come back soon with a new wife.
But later, when Zi’ Maria heard this, her eyes twinkled. “Let him go home for a visit. But I don’t think he needs to look so far as Sicily to find a new wife. When the time comes …”
We
ll, at that I had to smile. My guess is that Zi’ Vincenzo will come back to Elizabeth Street alone. After all, who can dare go against what Zi’ Maria wants?
It was also decided that the boys will stay here with us while their father visits Sicily.
“That’s good,” said Vito. “My shoeshine business is doing so well, I can use Pietro’s help as my assistant.”
I think we’re all glad about this. We’ve lost so much, but having Pietro and Alfio here will make our hearts lighter.
Wednesday, April 5, 1911
It was dark and wet this morning, almost as if the skies had decided to cry. All the girls left work together and met the parade at Seward Park, near East Broadway and Canal Street. At one o’clock an empty hearse covered with flowers and pulled by six white horses passed by.
I didn’t have a hat, and the rain streamed on top of my head and into my eyes. No one spoke. As one, we began to follow behind the hearse. Along the way, in the tenements, women leaned out their windows and waved white handkerchiefs. They were silent at first. But as we passed, low mourning moans burst from their lips.
As we passed, the windows emptied and the doors of the tenements opened. The women and men and children who had been watching came out and joined the procession, until it swelled larger and larger.
All the while it rained on us. The mud soaked my thin shoes, but I marched through the puddles just the same.
We got to Washington Square, and the park was filled with people. From the park we could see the Asch Building, where the Triangle factory was. Suddenly there was a loud piercing wail. We held hands without caring whose hand we gripped.
We were supposed to march by the building. But the policemen were afraid of a riot, so the line moved under the arch in Washington Square and up Fifth Avenue. We formed lines of eight across. I don’t know how many people marched today. I heard a policeman say more than one hundred thousand, with thousands more lined up to watch.
Sometimes in the crowds of people here, I feel invisible. If I disappeared, no one would miss me. But today it felt good to be with other people. I didn’t feel alone. I felt part of something. And, somehow, I didn’t feel so hopeless.
We held hands and our bodies bumped against one another and we walked in step in the rain. And I thought that if only we could keep walking together, maybe we could change something.
We marched until night came. Once, I tripped, and Sarah put out her hand to steady me. Her hand on my arm felt firm and alive. That made me cry, thinking how Rosa and Clara and all the others would never taste rain again, or feel the warm touch of someone’s hand, or see the lamps glowing yellow in the night.
The rain never stopped. At first I wiped cold drops off my face. After a while I didn’t bother. I didn’t want to let go of the hands I clutched. And so the cold rain mixed with my tears and streamed down my face.
Then from one of the tall towers around us a bell began to ring. It was a deep, sad chime. It seemed to echo through the whole of New York City.
I suppose it was just a clock.
But to me it seemed as if the bell were listening — that somehow the bell could hear our sorrow.
And so it was crying, just as we were, for all the girls who had died.
Angela did return to her old school to show her diary to Miss Kelly. Through the years, she continued to keep a diary and often donated blank journals to elementary schools as gifts for students. Although some children probably used them for scribbling, or even for toilet paper, that didn’t bother Angela. She simply wanted to encourage others to write about their lives.
In 1912, Sarah Goldstein left factory work to become an organizer and speaker for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. She traveled all over the country and often wrote newspaper and magazine articles. Sarah never married, but she was a devoted aunt to her brother’s four children. Sarah and Angela remained friends throughout their lives.
In 1912, during the strikes of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, some Italian children were sent to families in New York City to be cared for while their parents were on strike. Through their network of contacts and friends, the Denoto family became involved and took in two children.
During this time, Audenzio continued to visit the Denoto family. At first, Angela suspected he liked Luisa. When she mentioned this to Luisa, her sister laughed. It was clear to everyone else that Audenzio’s real interest was Angela herself. With the blessing of their families and friends, Angela and Audenzio married in 1915, when she was twenty.
Audenzio became a union organizer. The couple’s home was a center for labor meetings and discussions. Audenzio and Angela had three daughters: Teresa, Rosie, and Claire. All finished high school. It gave Angela deep satisfaction to see her daughter Teresa graduate from college and go on to receive a master’s degree in social work with a special interest in children and public health.
When Angela was seventy-three, her daughters helped her self-publish a memoir of her experiences during the shirtwaist strike and the Triangle fire, based on the diary she kept as a teenager. In 1971, sixty years after the Triangle fire, Angela attended several commemoration events. At these events Angela often read a portion of her eyewitness account of the tragedy.
Angela survived her husband and lived long enough to see her namesake and granddaughter, Angela, earn a doctorate in sociology at New York University. The university now owns the Asch Building, where the Triangle Waist Company fire occurred.
Luisa married a grocer from Elizabeth Street, from a family her parents knew well. She and her husband moved to New Jersey, where they raised their two children. Angela’s father was killed in a construction accident ten years after the Triangle fire, and Angela’s mother went to live with Luisa for the rest of her days.
Vito started a restaurant supply business and became very successful. Two of his best workers were Alfio and Pietro, who rose through the ranks to become managers. The boys’ success pleased their father, Vincenzo, as well as their stepmother, Maria.
The Shirtwaist Strikes and the Triangle Fire
Hear My Sorrow takes place at one of the most vibrant and tumultuous times in American history, when millions of immigrants came to these shores seeking jobs, education, and better lives. Some fled poverty in their homelands, while others fled political and religious oppression. Many of these immigrants settled in New York City, where they found jobs in the growing ready-to-wear garment industry.
Most workers in the garment industry were young Jewish and Italian immigrants living on New York City’s Lower East Side. By 1910, women made up 70 percent of the approximately 83,000 workers in the garment industry. There were more than 2,700 factories, many of them small shops called sweatshops. About 600 shops, employing about 35,000 to 40,000 workers, mostly teenagers and young women, made shirtwaist blouses, a popular style at the time.
Conditions in the shops were harsh, and pay was low. Workers were often employed not by owners, but by subcontractors, who purchased material from a textile manufacturer and hired workers to cut and sew the garments. These subcontractors passed on as many costs as possible to their workers. Women machine operators generally earned anywhere from $7 to $14 a week. Learners usually began at $3 to $4 a week. Often these young women worked fifty-six hours a week or more.
The shirtwaist strike of 1909–1910, often called the “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand,” is one of the most important strikes in United States history. It was the largest strike of women that had ever taken place up to that point, and it demonstrated that women could be a force in America’s labor movement.
The shirtwaist strike brought women of various social classes together in a common effort to seek justice. The strike was led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), founded in 1900. The New York City group, Local 25, came into being a few years later, in 1906. The union was young and small, with less than a thousand members before the strike began in 1909. One o
f the most fascinating aspects of the strike was the involvement of middle- and upper-class women in the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), led by Mary Dreier, who helped bring the struggle to the attention of the public.
In the fall of 1909, small strikes had been taking place against shops such as the Triangle Waist Company. On November 22, 1909, at a meeting in the “Great Hall” at Cooper Union, a machine operator named Clara Lemlich called for a general strike of all workers.
As the strike progressed, the public was surprised at the solidarity the young, inexperienced immigrant women showed. Union leaders guessed that a few thousand Jewish workers would heed the call to strike, but by the end of the day on Wednesday, November 23, about 20,000 workers had walked off the job. Shop owners hired thugs and prostitutes to intimidate, hassle, and even beat the girls. Police officers were bribed. Hundreds of strikers were arrested.
New research has helped bring to light the complex nature of this strike. Until recently, most of the research and writing on the shirtwaist strike dismissed the role of the Italian women in the strike, concluding that they simply were not involved, or were apathetic. (Of the 15,000 to 25,000 young women who went out on strike, most were Jewish immigrants, whereas only about 2,000 were Italian immigrants.)
Contemporary scholars, relying on Italian-language newspapers, oral histories, and other sources, are helping shed new light on the complex relationship of Italian women and their families during the 1909 strike. This new research points to a history of activism back in Italy by parents of the girls involved in the strike, as well as to a distrust of American unions such as the ILGWU in favor of more militant organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World. After the shirtwaist strikes, Italian-American women became an integral part of the U.S. labor movement, playing leading roles in many subsequent strikes. In this book I have tried to suggest the complexity of these issues, as well as the tension in one Italian family as its members try to balance a commitment to social activism with the struggle for day-to-day existence.
Dear America: Hear My Sorrow Page 11
