Timeline

The past few weeks have been rife with landmarks for the 1917 food riots, so I thought I would post a rough timeline that I have been working off of.

Sunday 2/18

• Protest in Claremont Park (Bronx)

Monday 2/19

• Williamsburg: 2,000 women pledge to enforce boycott
• Five women place announcement in the Forward for the next morning (1,000 gather at Rutger's Square the next morning)
  

Tues 2/20

• Altercation on Orchard Street (woman vs. onion peddler); spreads to Rivington
  

• 50 women congregate at the Forward building; they later move to Rutgers Sq. to make speeches
• The crowd grows to 1,000 women; someone suggest marching to City Hall; the women are led by Mrs. Ida Harris & Marie Ganz.
• 300 to 400 women arrive at City Hall, shouting “We want food! Give us bread! Feed our children!” in Yiddish and English
• Marie Ganz is arrested for shouting and inciting the crowd to “Stay here until you’re heard!”; 200 women storm the police station and secure her release
• Mrs. Harris holds mass meeting at P.S. 62 (across from Seward Park)
• 2,000 to 5,000 people (mostly female) crowd into the Forward’s Hall at ameeting called by the Socialist party; by 7PM, room is packed, 2 hrs. pass before individual speeches can be heard.
• Jacob Panken, Socialist lawyer, allowed to speak; asks that violence not be used, that food not be destroyed since there are low levels of it, calls for mass demonstration of half a million women and children the following Saturday.
• Mother’s Anti-High Price League (MAHPL) is formed
  

Wed 2/21

• Women ban sale of all vegetables

Thurs 2/22

• Chicken & fish added to boycott; newspapers report no customers for vendors

Sat 2/24

• Midafternoon, approx. 5,000 march to Madison Square; crowd is approx. 90% foreign-born and 80% female with many children & baby carriages
• Socialist speaker Bella Zilberman asks rhetorically how many listeners would march to the Waldof-Astoria where Gov. Whitman was rumored to be to “show them that you are hungry,” more than 1,000 women and children go to the hotel, causing a riot.
• Committee of MAHPL Socialist separately go to where Governor actually is, the St. Regis Hotel
• Reports also of 5,000 to 10,000 people joining here in mass meeting
  

Sun 2/25

• MAHPL holds mass coalition meeting in P.S. 62 off Rutgers Sq.

Mon 2/26

• Wholesalers cut prices, retail prices plummet for next two weeks
• Mayor’s Food Supply Committe distributes copies of a circular extolling the nutrutional virtues of rice to 800,000 schoolchildren; women respond with anti-rice protest, “We American Can Not Live on Rice”
  

Tues 2/27

• MAHPL sends delegates to Albany to request relief measures; bombard officials with letters demanding state-managed food sales; they also go to NYC’s aldermen.
  

Wed 3/1

• 100 women arrested in the Bronx
• Shipments of 20,000 lbs. of Pacific Coast smelts arrived in city by emergencyorder to be sold at “minimal cost”
  

Tues 3/7

• Potatoes and other vegetables reappear on pushcarts

Wed 3/8

• Brazilian beans and hominy are also sold; pamphlets distributed about their value (in reality, these are rare foods being used to avoid direct competition with trade)
  

Sat 3/11

• Potatoes return to pre-boycott price ($0.06/lb)

Mon 3/13

• MAHPL again sends delegates to Albany

Second week in March

• Onions go from $0.18/lb to $0.11 & $0.12/lb.; potatoes from $0.10 to $0.07
• Chickens go from $0.32 to $0.22
  
• Eventually prices rose again, sharp climb again in 1918