American Women Activists' Writings by Kathryn Cullen-DuPont

Author:Kathryn Cullen-DuPont
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461698746
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2013-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

While I was in the anthracite area in the Spring of 1911, the IWW local of Philadelphia sent for me. A critical situation had arisen among the workers in the plant of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, occupying a large area in the center of the city. It has long since moved to Chester, Pennsylvania. Twelve hundred employees, among whom were some IWW members, had been suddenly laid off by the company without reason. They were gathered around the plant in protest. It was our plan to try to organize them all into the IWW and fight for reinstatement. So we held a street meeting at the corner of 15th and Buttonwood Streets. The first few speakers were not molested, but when I spoke, I was arrested. The cops said officials of the company had telephoned a complaint. I was taken by car downtown and lodged in the jail in City Hall, under the statue of William Penn.

The police magistrate before whom I appeared was a squat politician who growled at me: “These people don’t want you there!”—meaning the bosses, of course. The workers had hooted and booed the cops for arresting me and demonstrated that they did want to hear me. He sneered at our efforts to organize the men and called it “a money-making scheme.” He was the first to call me “an outside agitator,” a name I heard often in the next few years. I was fined $10 for “disturbing the peace.”

The next week, after passing the word quietly around the plant, we returned to the widest streets bordering on it—Broad and Spring Garden, where we attempted to hold another meeting. Again no one else was arrested until I spoke. I was ordered to stop and “move on” and when I refused I was arrested. The police said they “had orders from higher up,” though they acted reluctantly in face of the angry workers. Again the charge was “obstructing the highway and breach of the peace.” I was taken before the same irate Irish judge who again fined me $10. We held a protest meeting on City Hall Plaza, which was generally used as a forum for Sunday meetings in those days, and enlisted much popular support.

On the occasion of one of these arrests, I believe it was the first, a very provocative act was committed by the police. A Negro policeman, and there were very few at that time, was thrust forward by the white cops to make the arrest and face the jeers and catcalls of over a thousand workers, predominantly Irish. The contemptible meanness of forcing him to arrest a white woman—and an Irish one at that—was clear to me. I felt the man trembling when he grasped my arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll see that they don’t hurt you!” I assured him. He smiled down at me, at my naïveté and size, too, I presume. I was greatly relieved when we reached the local police station, followed by hundreds of workers. I felt I had delivered him safely.

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