Thanks Mr. Edison!

Thomas Edison was first experimenting with film and the "moving picture" in the early 1900's. In 1903 he made at least two (very) short films made - one of a fish market on the Lower East Side and one of the pushcart vendors.

How amazing to be able to see into a world that existed over a hundred years ago! [I wonder if anyone will be that interested about us is one hundred years....]

Those Lobster Palaces!

In Marie Ganz's memoir she recounts a curbside speech where she beseeches the crowd to go "up to those lobster palaces you hear so much about, walk in, order a meal and tell them to send the bill to the mayor!"

Here is a great article on just what those lobster palaces were - "gaudy" and "extravagant" restaurants catering to the theatre crowd, incorporating intimate seating with fine dining and live entertainment! There are some really fun anecdotes shared here too.

Thanks Edwardian Promenade!

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
  

A Christmas Dinner

Thank you to The Food Timeline and their page of Historic American Christmas Dinner Menus.

This is from 1917, just a few months before the food riots started. Perhaps some people living in the (now Lower) East Side might have read this menu as posted in the NYTimes.

[1917]
"Christmas Dinner, Park Avenue Hotel: Blue Points, Cenery, Olives, Cream of Tomato, Roast Vermont Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Celery Dressing, Hashed Cream Potatoes, Mashed Turnips, Romaine Salad, Plum Pudding, Brandy Sauce or Ice Cream Cake, Demi-tasse."
---"No Meat Christmas in the Big Hotels," The New York Times, December 16, 1917 (p. XX8)

I also like this menu from a few years prior. Very exotic!

[1913]
"Christmas Dinner: Oysters, Mangoes, Celery, Stuffed Olives, Tomato Soup, Roast Turkey, Cranberry Jelly, Roast Sweet Potatoes, Mashed Turnips, Brussels Sprouts, Orange and Celery Salad, Vanilla Blanc-mange, English Plum Pudding, Fruit, Coffee."
---A Calendar of Dinners with 615 Recipes, Marion Harris Neil [Procter & Gamble:Cincinnati] 1913 (p. 229)

Thanks Flickr!

I was researching a meeting turned riot mentioned in Marie Ganz's memoir, Rebels: Into Anarchy and Out Again, that occurred in 1914. This isn't directly associated with the food riots but gives a nice glimpse into the political temperature of the time.

A google of some of the name mentioned by Marie garnered this article from the NYTimes: I.W.W. ARMY RIOTS IN COOPER ONION; Host of 300 Invades Socialist Symposium on Problem of the Unemployed. Then, thanks to the magic of Flickr, I stumbled upon some great photos. I was searching because Marie talks about the lights going out at the meeting, followed by bright flashes that illuminated the room. She thought it was a bomb, but realized that it was reporters taking photos.


I was hoping for those actual photos but found these again. A date is not attached to the photos, but the clothing indicates that it's the right time period. Here is a group of people gathered for a strike vote. In 1914 there were numerous strikes in the garment industry.






Here is a photo of a strike vote. I love seeing these women vote! If this photo is indeed from 1914, it must have been so exciting since women did not gain the right to vote until 1919!

The Mighty Potato

I love potatoes.

I have an unnatural obsession with them.

On a personal note, this all started two years ago when I had to write a short play based on a recipe for french fries which became a multi-country/multi-era riff on the history of the potato - The Potato Play: A Brief & Innacurate History - and just about every project I've worked on since has been connected in some way to the potato. In fact, The Potato Play was produced this past September at a potato-themed fundraiser in England (the U.N. named 2008 the Year of the Potato) and I just received an apron with potatoes on it as a thank-you for the rights to the play.

But I digress. I am back with Mabel and am looking at her recipes. She opens her chapter on vegetables with, naturally, the potato.

She writes:

Why is potato so valuable a food?
1. It is easy to cultivate.
2. It can be kept through the winter.
3. It is easy to prepare as a food.
4. Potatoes give us the needed bulk rather than any large amount of nutritive value. Because potatoes lack protein they should be used with meat or fish or eggs in combination with milk and cheese. Potatoes are cheaper when bought by the quantity, and as they keep well, should not be purchased in small amounts unless necessary.

Even in 1917 they were advocating for potato skins!
"...if we peel a potato before boiling it we lose a great deal of this good mineral matter with the peeling."

There are a number of recipes for potatoes along with tips on how to rejuvinate old potatoes. Recipes include:
Baked Potato
Browned Potatoes
Baked Creamed Potatoes (use leftover potatoes!)
Mashed Potatoes
Rivc Potatoes (using a potato-ricer)
Creamed Potatoes with Cheese
Fried Potatoes
Another Creamed Potatoes with Cheese
Potato Pancake

A Note From Mabel

Thanks once again to the power of google, I stumbled upon a blog which had a link to a home-keeping guide from 1917: "The Home and Its Management: A Handbook in Homemaking, With 300 Inexpensive Cooking Receipts" by Mabel Hyde Kittredge. As you might imagine, it is a treasure trove of information, advice and insight into the life of an early 20th century housewife, so I'll provide the link to the full document (with illustrations!) here. But read on for a few gems I've culled:

On hiring staff:

[Having a servant or staff] does not mean that the work connected with homes are tasks for which any woman is too fine and so hires a person to do the work for her. It means (or should mean) that in many homes there are too many things for one woman to do, especially in homes where children are to be cared for.

On the rights of servants:

A servant is less protected by law than any other business woman. Thirty-nine states have laws limiting the working hours of women in factories and stores. In only nineteen are women workers in hotels and restaurants included; in only five are public institution servants protected; and in no State are the servants in our homes protected by law. They are obliged to work as many hours as the head of the house directs, or give up the place.

On how to treat servants:

Do not ask any woman to perform for you any labor that hurts her dignity or any act that each individual should do for herself. Never address a servant with anger or as if she belonged to you. Show all employees the same courtesy you expect from them. Remember that you make them just as angry as they make you; you probably seem unreasonable and at times stupid.

Her chapter on the dining room is filled with etiquette lessons, both for the servants (meal preparation, table setting, cleaning) and household member. She closes her chapter with a quote by Booker T. Washington:

See to it that a certain ceremony, a certain importance, be attached to the partaking of food.

Words for us to all live by!

More on Mabel soon.....

Entertainment on the Lower East Side

The Organ Grinder

Postcards from the Past

I have been fascinated by every image I have seen of the Lower East Side in the early 1900's. But it's strange to think that the photos are, in some cases, less than 100 years old. Perhaps that's why there is something both familiar and intimate about them, as well as foreign and incomprehensible. Here are some postcard images shared with me by a friend's mom.

Enjoy!


Delancey Street (btwn Suffolk & Rivington, 1908

If you look closely at the sign, it reads" Extra News! A Great Bankruptcy (Sale?)" and below "Come In and Convince Yourself!"




Orchard & Hester Streets, 1905.

I really need to print these out and get a magnifying glass. I wonder what the woman in the lower lefthand corner is carrying - a basket full of flowers? Or I suppose it could be live fowl! I also love the little girl playing in the street.


Thanks Jesse & mom!

The Ebay Connection

It really is amazing what you can find on ebay. I was searching for items for potential props and set pieces and for the heck of it did a search for pushcarts and check out what I found. Click on the image and a new, larger image should appear so.



It's a whole article on pushcarts in NYC's Lower East Side. Most intriguingly, only the first three pages of this feature article is shown on the ebay listing and the third page ends with a classification of the pushcart community:

"The Americans sell lunches, the Greeks fruit and ice cream almost exclusively, while the Italians widen the list by adding vegetables. But the Jew-"

And there it ends! Doh!

The Cost of Living

To understand this crisis, it is essential to put the numbers into context.

Scholar Dana Frank notes that the women involved in the riots were not the poorest (though they were surely still below the poverty line and those who were the poorest were certainly affected even more dramatically). Their husbands earned between $10 and $15/wk. A Mrs. Ida Markowitz told a reporter that she supported 5 children on $10/wk. Another woman, Elizabeth Broslin, said that she had only $4 a week on which to feed herself and her four children.

So, at the low end of the scale, a monthly income would be $40 and on the high end, it would be $60.

In cost of living surveys from the early 1900s, it was revealed that immigrant families broke down their income thusly:

30% rent
40% food
30% everything else (clothing, washing, materials, fuel, light, medical services, insurance, recreation)

And of course, this is just one estimate. Others place food costs at 40-60% of monthly income.

It is also important to remember that women shopped for food nearly every day. There was not place to store food aside from perhaps one small shelf -- refrigerators were a newfangled idea and far too expensive to actually own. So not only were these women on very tight budgets but they knew exactly how much each item on their grocery list cost and were acutely aware of any changes in price.

Consider that at one point, people were buying "loose" (or unbottled) milk $0.01 or $0.02 at a time!

Food for War

I found this image courtesy Flickr via the US Library of Congress. According to the author of the post, this is the translation:

Food will win the war - You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it - Wheat is needed for the allies - waste nothing.

Just a month after the immigrant housewives earned lower prices through riots and boycotts, the U.S. entered WWI, effectively raising prices again and, as this poster shows, making food even more of a commodity.

The Power and The People

On Thanksgiving, I sat down to watch the film documentary, New York: A Documentary by Ric Burns. Originally broadcast on PBS it's a phenomenal series that I recommend to all. I watched Episode 4: The Power and The People, which explores 1898 to 1914. It stops just short of when the food riots took place but it puts into context the lives of the thousands of immigrants who streamed into the Lower East Side via Ellis Island. It also amazed me how much film footage there is of immigrants and NYC life that exists from the time period. Seeing moving images from the early 1900's is so thrilling - more-so than seeing video from the latter part of the century.

Here are several images and observations that stuck with me:

- The scores of families on board the ships with infant children (I can hardly imagine making the long trip in steerage alone, let alone trying to care for an infant as well)
- The sacks of belongings that the immigrants carried - all of their belongings tied up in a tablecloth and slung across their back
- The filth in the streets - refuse from pushcarts and people left behind - while children blithely played around it
- The condition of clothing, particularly of women and mothers. Several images showed women wearing dresses smeared with black. In times where families lived day to day, mothers forewent new dresses for years in order to provide food, clothing and shelter for their children. Access to water was also limited. Add to this long, difficult working days and it's no wonder that clean clothing was not a luxury. I had, of course, learned this from past research but it was jarring to see it on the screen before me.

This is a documentary to be watched again and again, in order to fully digest the images and facts. Tonight, I hope to watch the fifth episode, Cosmopolis (1914-1931), in the hopes that there be some mention of the food riots.

Snapshot from the Past

Found this great image online from Carrie Brown's book, Rosie's Mom. It is titled, simply, "Poor women's food riot in New York." The book focuses on the generation of women who came before the iconic "Rosie the Riveter," taking their place in the workforce and aiding both World War I and the women's movement. Thanks to the Women's Review of Books: A Feminist Guide to Good Reading for their review of this book online, along with the accompanying photo.

Images such as this one are crucial to understanding the impact that the rising food prices had on these women. From a dramaturgical standpoint, they also give us concrete tangible evidence of how the women dressed and what the crowd looked and felt like.

Think for a moment about these women. Many of them - most of them, perhaps - had never taken part in a protest. To attend this, they would have had to abandon their daily duties (cooking, cleaning, caring for children and boarders, working in the factories or at home). They might never before have found themselves in a large gathering of women, outside of religious services. These women were also of a lower economic class; in addition to being subservient members of the household, they were also expected to be subservient members of the community at large.

To complete the picture, here they were being encouraged to speak their mind and take a stand for themselves and their families -- an overwhelming prospect to say the least.

What must it have been like to walk down the street, accompanied by hundreds of women, to join together in an open square, surrounding by police officers on foot and horseback, to demand lower prices?

Any NYC geography buffs or landmarks sleuths out there who can help me identify where they are gathering?

Facts About Rice

After the riots began, the city started distributing pamphlets about the nutritional values of rice.  This was in an attempt to persuade immigrants to replace their regular staple of potatoes with rice.  This was partially because rice was cheaper, but also because, as Dr. Haven Emerson (head of the NYC Health Department) apparently said, to stop immigrants from intruding their "European habits into the United States).

The pamphlets were distributed to schoolchildren and contained the following:

- 18 recipes for rice dishes, "cheap & nutritious"

- claims that rice contained more "strength-giving" material than potatoes, because potatoes are 3/4 water, while rice has practically no water.  

- suggestions of adding cheese, peas, beans or lentils to the rice

- a cartoon character, "Miss Grab-It-All" who attempted to teach some tenement dwellers how to make soup out of bones

- the assurance that rice would give children "practically all the food they'd need

This was documented by William Freiburger in "War, Prosperity & Hunger: The New York Food Riots of 1917."  Antoinette W. Satterfield also talks about the leaflet in her Master's paper for her M.S. in Library Science where she documented public disseminations from the U.S. Government to American housewives in the 1900's.  She noted that the leaflet also gave the tip to cook the rice in skim milk instead of water for added nutrients and recipes for desserts and bread, using rice.

My next mission is to track down a copy of this, if one still exists! 

Petition to the President

A petition to the President:

"We housewives of the city of New York, mothers and wives of workmen, desire to call to your attention, Mr. President, to the fact that, in the midst of plenty, we and our families are facing starvation.  

The rise in the cost of living has been so great and uncalled for that even now we are compelled to deny ourselves and our children the necessities of life.

We pay for our needs out of the wages of our husbands, and the American standard of living cannot be maintained when potatoes are 7 cents a pound, bread 6 cents, cabbage 20 cents, and onions 18 cents, and so forth.  

We call to you, Mr. President, in this crisis that we are facing, to recommend to Congress or other authority, measures for relief. "

(Source: Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, Elizabeth Ewen)

First-Hand Voices

Marie Ganz immigrated to the United States with her family in 1896 when she was just five years old. They settled in the Lower East Side.  She was able to attend school but soon had to leave in order to help support her family.  From that point forward, her education came in the sweatshops of the LES and the radical socialist groups that thrived in that part of the city.  It was her association with the "radicals" that led to her identity of an anarchist, bearing the nickname "Sweet Marie."

In 1920, Marie wrote and published a fascinating memoir: Rebels: Into Anarchy -- And Out Again.  It's available online in its complete form and I highly recommend.  Not only does it provide a vibrant image of the LES in the early part of the 20th century but it's a strong female voice that deserves a wider audience.

In most of the articles that describe the events of February 20, 1917 - the day that a group of 400 women marched to City Hall to demand action from the Mayor - it is reported that the police asked Marie Ganz to tell the crowd to go home (they allowed her to speak in Yiddish) and that they could send representation the next day.  Instead, an angry crowd renewed its cries of "Give us bread!"  This apparent defiance of police orders led to her arrest (though hundreds of women protested immediately for her release - and it worked).  It paints of picture of Ms. Ganz as an antagonistic agitator.  (It is important to note, that at this point, she had already been arrested once.)  Nonetheless, when I read Rebels, in the chapter "Hunger," I was only mildly surprised to hear a different story:

"...from the steps I addressed the crowd in Yiddish, telling them to return to their homes and be patient for a day longer.  But they grew more and more excited as I spoke, and the officers must have thought I was trying to incite a riot, for a policeman stepped up to me, laid hold of my arm, and said quietly, "Miss Ganz, Captain Dwyer has ordered me to arrest you."

I wonder - is the very different story captured in the papers the "truth"?  Or was it distorted through language barrier?  Class barrier?  Gender barrier?

Lessons from the Forward

I have been reading the book How We Lived by Irving Howe and Kenneth Libo, thanks to actor Katy Rubin who leant me her copy.  

What a treasure trove!

I have taken copious notes but wanted to share this particular gem from The Forward, July 25, 1915:

4 Rules for Women

1) Don't say "I have nothing to worry about" just because you've already got a husband.

2) If your husband likes gefilte fish, don't shove fried fish down his throat and say: "You dope; you don't know what good is."

3) Don't neglect the cleanliness of your house and clothes just because your nextdooreker does it.

4)  If you've been cursed with growths of hair on your throat, cheeks or upper lip...don't forget that makes a bad impression.  Go immediately to your druggist and for one dollar buy Wonderstone.

Sound advice!

Parallelity

Yesterday, we had our last rehearsal of our two week developmental residency at Abrons Arts Center in the Lower East Side.  We made some great discoveries in our time there and I look forward to having the images of the seven wonderful actresses who have been involved in this first phase of development percolating in my mind as I set forth to craft the script.  

As I was thinking about things today, I wanted to remind myself of why this tiny sliver of history, almost 100 years old, is so relevant today.  A search through current blogs, news sites and You Tube will answer that question. I'll be collecting modern sources over the coming weeks but in the meantime, I read this entry today on the blog Wonkette; it was posted back in April about the food crisis and trends of 2008.

The Tenement Museum: Jennifer's Visit

These are Jennifer's wonderful words about her experience at the museum:

My first thought upon entering the tenements was how incredibly small they were. I've been living in New York for three years now, and I'm used to small living conditions - but I was quite astounded at how many people were living in those crammed apartments. I wondered how my sense of self would develop in those cramped conditions: never having privacy and constantly being seen and heard by those around me. Would I like the sense of community? Or would I be constantly exhausted because of it? It seems that the poorer you are, the more at the mercy of the elements you are - the more wealth, the more insulated and therefore the more removed. Being poor in those tenements meant being at the mercy of life and all its elements - you are forced to give up your boundaries: personal, spatial and emotional.

What worlds blossomed inside of them in reaction to the harsh working conditions, cramped living arrangements? I am sure it was a small sweet world hiding in the twenty layers of wallpaper, in the cracked floorboards and coal dusted windows, a world that when bent, when folded unto itself, meeting itself again in a warm embrace allows for possibility in the small places that bed and give permission.

The tour also made me realize how a riot could easily emerge from this cramped, tough existence - with over two thousand people living on a small city block, unrest would be commonplace and it probably wouldn't take much to incite people to action.

It also made me think about my great grandfather, Solomon Moses, who came to the States when he was 16 years old, completely alone and not speaking a word of English - how those tenements were populated by people just like him and how I am not that far removed from his story and ultimately all of those who lived in the tenements. I think it's important for all of us to remember that we are a country of immigrants and need to be more tolerant of those trying to seek a better life here in America.

This reminds me of the ending quote in Don Lee's wonderful book, Country of Origin:

As they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, Lisa imagined what her mother must have been feeling right then, seeing the United States for the very first time. A land where all was possible, where truth prevailed, goodness was rewarded, and beauty could be found in the meeting of outcasts. Oh, what a sight, Lisa marveled.

We are orphans, all of us, she thought. And this is our home.

- Jennifer Moses, Cast Member